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143

Canto the Sixth. Love beats Logic.

1. Ranolf's theism and belief as to Future Life. 2. Hardly satisfying to Amo. Both too content with the present to be troubled much about the Future. 3. Old truth—conviction of immortality got by moral experience, (4) and mysterious ‘soul-motions’ such as the ‘Aprile’ of Browning alludes to. 5. Too much care for the future ungrateful perhaps? 6. Amo learns to write. 7. The Lovers make and feel the beauty of the scene.

I.

Like him who glancing at the sun's full splendour
Is by that lightning-ringed blue disc half-blinded,
Then Ranolf, by the greatness of his theme
So dazzled, told the Maiden simple-minded
Whose thirsting eyes, with looks how rapt and tender
Drank fawn-like at his voice's cheery stream,
Of one Great Spirit ubiquitous;—for ever
Unknown;—invisible—intangible—
Inaudible; whose nature none can tell;
Subtler than Thought in essence; and yet never
To be disproved—discarded—disavowed;
Educing Good with infinite endeavour
From Evil for some mystic end allowed;
Whose work, Mankind, would be a cheat detected,
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A palpable abortion and confusion
(Truly an inconceivable conclusion!)
If not in some serener Sphere perfected:
For He was good—all Life and time proclaimed it,
Where Good was ever in the slow ascendant;
And that blind bias (Conscience as we named it)—
Towards what seems good and better—though dependent
On other powers, for knowledge, be it granted,
Of what is good and better,—was implanted
Within our brain at first, and could not be
Belied or outraged by Himself who framed it;
So must the Evil and the wrong be righted
In some great World of bliss we could not see,
Where suffering innocence would be requited,
And ties of rent affections reunited.
And this, which Reason pleaded for,—the best
And brightest of that Spirit's emanations—
Souls in their very structure revelations
Of his high nature on their own impressed,
Had felt and died for; on the facts insisting
Their souls were forced and fashioned to attest—
The certain Life immortal, to remove
And remedy all mortal woes existing;
And that supreme predominance of Love!
And therefore they who most their Souls may nourish
On Love, and hearken to his high decreeing,
Doing all right and every wrong repressing,
With pure self-sacrifice for others' blessing—
Must be the least unlike that Power supernal—
Most with that Will in their poor way agreeing;
Must be the fittest to survive and flourish
In that transcendant Sphere of Life eternal—
Of ever blest and beatific Being.
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II.

Poor, vague, and disappointing merely
These reasonings to the listening Maid appeared;
Scarce lighting up that shadowy Life more clearly
Than the rude faith wherein she had been reared.
Some simple tale of pathos and pure wonder,
The founts divine of pity and awe unsealing,
With death's great mystery mystically dealing,
Her mental clouds had sooner rent asunder—
More strongly stirred her fancy and her feeling.
But all was Gospel from his lips that fell;
His tongue more gifted than with Prophet's spell.
And what he felt might well for her suffice,
Who, free from anxious fear too curious, nice,
Held this no theme to handle too austerely,
Wholly absorb, or trouble her too nearly!
Her lovelit bosom knew no listless pining
For future worlds or lives beyond divining,
With so much glory in the Present shining.
And Ranolf had no taste for doubts intrusive,
Nor chafed too much at reasons inconclusive.
The mystery of the mighty Universe
He loved to play with as a subtle jest,
As children with conundrums; none the worse
Because the answer could not soon be guessed.
While its reality was a pure joy
That well might heart and life and love employ—
A bliss no doubt, no mystery could destroy!
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III.

And though he showed himself content no more
Even now than in old student-days of yore
To practise and abide by what he saw
Even then might be for Man a settled Law;
He could not, while he reasoned, quite forget
The possible truth so long before descried,
Which of itself had made him feel as yet
How slight his power to be that Maiden's guide;
That time-developed secret of the soul,
How the conviction of its glorious goal
And ultimate high destiny divine,
Is haply not designed to be the dower
Of any play of intellectual power—
No cold deduction Logic's subtlest line
Could dimly draw from shadowy postulate,
Mental or moral axiom overfine,
Admitted or disputed, as innate
Or for purblind Experience to acquire;
No theme to wrangle on with wordy strife:
But down—far down—in gulfs of Spirit profound,
Which action and keen passion only sound—
Lies, a pure gem for purified desire;
But rather, perfect gold by patience won,
Must by severer Alchemy be run
Out of each Soul plunged in the actual fire,
And smelted in the crucible of Life.

IV.

No! he could not forget that Truths like these
May lurk secreted for the Soul to seize
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Out of the chaos of her own emotions;
Heights of celestial rapture—depths like Ocean's
Of sacred sorrow; mystic yearnings speech
Is speechless for no intellect can reach;
Divinely-darkling inmost sympathies,
Dimly discerned—awakened—half-exprest
Haply by the blind might of Music best
Echoing Infinitude; ‘strange melodies’
That lustrous Song-Child languished to impart,
Breathing his boundless Love through boundless Art—
Impassioned Seraph from his mint of gold
By our full-handed Master-Maker flung;
By him whose lays, like eagles, still upwheeling
To that shy Empyrean of high feeling,
Float steadiest in the luminous fold on fold
Of wonder-cloud around its sun-depths rolled.
Whether he paint, all patience and pure snow,
Pompilia's fluttering innocence unsoiled;—
In verse, though fresh as dew, one lava-flow
In fervour—with rich Titian-dyes aglow—
Paint Paracelsus to grand frenzy stung,
Quixotic dreams and fiery quackeries foiled;
Whose rocket-rush of Power, at death's far height
Melts in a silvery rain of loving Light;—
Or—of Sordello's delicate Spirit unstrung
For action, in its vast Ideal's glare
Blasting the Real to its own dumb despair,—
On that Venetian water-lapped stair-flight,
In words condensed to diamond, indite
A lay too like the Sun—dark with excessive bright:—
Still,—though the pulses of the world-wide throng
He wields, with racy life-blood beat so strong,—
Subtlest Dissector of the Soul in song!—
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—No! with that possible Soul-truth full in sight,
'Twas little disappointment, less surprise,
To Ranolf that he read in Amo's eyes
Not all the satisfaction and delight
She looked for when the queries first she pressed
Which he with more delight and greater zest
Would doubtless, if he could, have set at rest.

V.

But all these things apart—to them the Real
The Present seemed so rapturous an Ideal,
It seemed almost a sin to speculate
Or spend a thought upon another state;
Seemed flat ingratitude to Him who spread
A banquet so superb his guests before,
To ask, when on its dainties they had fed,
What His great bounty had provided more?
While sitting at His luxury-laden board,
To guess what fair festivities the Lord
Of the redundant feast had yet in store,
Music or dance to follow when 'twas o'er!

VI.

And so to lighter themes they gaily turn;
And “Rano! when shall I begin to learn”—
Said then the lively girl, “the white man's art
Of seeing talk—and sending, word for word,
To distant eyes unspoken speech unheard?”—
And Ranolf straightway hastened to impart
A first fond lesson in the mystery deep
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Of letters—guiding that confiding hand
To trace huge characters on marbled sand,
Or clean smooth claystone of some yellow steep;
With many a toying frolicsome reproof,
And merry chiding, when the stalk of fern
And taper fingers seemed resolved to turn
Some curve from what was aimed at far aloof;
And both would join in joyous outcry wild
At each great blunder of the Woman-Child;
With childlike guerdon of a kiss no less
Rewarded at each wonderful success.
But such a keen and kindling sympathy
Between their hearts and minds electric played,
Both Taught and Teacher could delighted see
How swiftly and how sweetly, so conveyed,
The pupil would imbibe that mystery;
How soon that lovely Learner would o'ercome
The task of noting down in symbols dumb
The speech the learner with her loving smile
Was teaching to the Teacher all the while.

VII.

And now, upon a knoll beside the Lake,
Embowered with trees their resting-place they make.
The savoury light repast was over, won
By Manu's indefatigable gun,
Whose echo through the day they oft had caught
Faint from the glens or o'er the waters brought.
Their young elastic spirits they resigned
To the soft hour's delicious influence,
And the full consciousness of all the bliss
Of love like theirs in such a life as this;
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As sweet and free to their enamoured sense
As the pure air without a sound or sigh
They breathed in its sunlit serenity.
The solitude—the stillness so intense—
The blue ethereal lake—the liquid sky—
The silent banks and bluffs that watched around;—
The silent beams that broadly visible streamed
Through limpid veils of atmosphere, and gleamed
Along the silent hills that looked, spell-bound,
As if they felt the shadows o'er them grow,
From every fold and crevice creeping slow
And linking to exclude each slanting ray
That slumberous on their burnished shoulders lay:—
Or where those faint cliffs seemed in fading day
Refining to a vision far away;
Soft tints aërial—tender streaks of shade,
Or mottling stains their painted verdure made.—
All was so rapt and mute and motionless—
The pictured dream of lonely loveliness
Diffused o'er hearts that needed no such balm
The soft contagion of its soothing calm!
Twin hearts—mere atoms in the wide expanse—
They seemed absorbed in its voluptuous trance;
Yet 'twas the rapturous love that through them thrilled
That rather into Nature's frame instilled
Their own impassioned warmth, until it glowed
As fit for spirits in bliss some high divine abode!
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