University of Virginia Library

HUNCHBACK AND ANGEL WINGS.

Hunchbacked and foul? And yet God made me so;
This piece of dark deformity
Came from the fulness of His loving Heart
And was His thought and of Himself a part,
As much as beauty's most bewitching show,
And is no mere enormity.
It has a meaning and a proper place
Somewhere in blue-rose gardens
Above, or in the bosom of broad earth,
And to the Maker's eye a secret grace;
If eye of other hardens,
And sees alone a land of utter dearth.
Last night I dreamed of pinions—
And up aloft I voyaged on great vans
That oared the purple space in proud content
And larger scope than any time-bound plans,
With Heaven my own dominions
And all the freedom of the firmament.
I am assured this very hunch of mine
Is one with bright and blest immortal things,
A sign of something better;
It will at last in unveiled glory shine
And blossom into sweet white angel wings,
When I have burst my fetter.
I know the thorn is an imperfect flower,
And shall by kindly tending
Have yet a goodly ending,
And even forget its nature and rude arms
Forsaking these for soft and other charms
And add its colour to some great Queen's bower.
The balance must be one and true and right,
For me just as for nations;
And I was carried in God's blessed womb
That bare me with a precious seed of light,
And I can read the joy beyond the tomb
In splendid compensations.
For earth is but a stage, and many still
Await the soul that travels forth and far
And heeds the horizon of no single star
Or constellation; but, a pilgrim rapt
By upward holy vision
And careless of the fleeting form or ill,
With feet of firm decision
Presses right onward through wide realms unmapt
And belted shade and iron brute bar and shoal,
In fierce and fiery chrisms
Over unplumbed abysms,
Straight to the grand inevitable goal.
Hunchback and foul? Nay, I am wondrous fair
To him who deeper looks than husk or skin,
And loves and hears the flutter
Of ardent unconjecturable hope
In golden courts and palaces within;
That steps a priest up the pure altar stair,
Baulked by a prison shutter
But shining out of its mean envelope,
With promise of all being
And infinite glad seeing.
The scaffolding of strnctures that will rise
Beyond our climbing fancies
Or transcendental truth of wildest dreams
In gentlest joyous fashion heavenly-wise,
Doth veil a moment unimagined gleams
Of uttermost romances;
But there the Temple, crowned and sure as fate,
And girt with many a column
In testimony solemn,
And builded by no touch of human hands
Unto its orbèd calmness consummate,
Inhabited by vernal
Airs and the Breath Eternal,
White, as of carven sunlight awful stands.