Ranolf and Amohia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ranolf and Amohia

A dream of two lives. By Alfred Domett. New edition, revised

Domett, Alfred (1811-1887)

BOOK THE FIRST. THE SAILOR-STUDENT.

Canto the First. The Sea-boy.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. Will-o'-wisp-chasing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Third. From Wisp to Morass.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Terra Firma.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

Canto the Fifth. Cloud-blowing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

Canto the Sixth. Land-Life or Sea-Life?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. The Shipwreck.

II.

III.

IV.

BOOK THE SECOND. THE SOUTH-SEA VILLAGERS.

Canto the First. The Rescue.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. The ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. A Woodland Jaunt.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fifth. The Legend of Tawhaki.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Sixth. Mythical Cosmogonies.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Seventh. The Captive.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE THIRD. ALL IN A SUMMER NIGHT.

Canto the First. Miroa's Tidings.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Second. The Song-cheered Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Third. The Star-lit Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. Legends of the Spirit-Land.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Amohia at the Fountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. Silence and Moonlight.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Seventh. The Meeting.

II.

III.

IV.

II.

VOLUME II.

BOOK THE FOURTH. A LATTER-DAY EDEN.

Canto the First. Flight of the Lovers.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Canto the Second. Miroa's Story.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Third. Love and Nature luxuriant.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Trees and the Tree-God.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. The Fountain-Terraces.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. A Geyser Yoked.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. English Maidens.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE FIFTH. STILL IN EDEN.

Canto the First. The Haunted Mountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. Sports on the Lake.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Cicada.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. A loving Questioner.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. A cheery Theorist.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Sixth. Love beats Logic.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. An airy Nest.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE SIXTH WAR.

Canto the First. The Beleaguered Fortress.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. War needs Idealizing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Third. The grand Assault.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Fight between ‘Sounding Sea’ and ‘Angry Star.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Love fed by War.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. An old wrong avenged.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

[section]

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. Death of the ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE SEVENTH. SELF-SACRIFICE.

Canto the First. Weariness.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. A sad Resolve.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. Death of the Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Where is Comfort?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fifth. A Vision.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. The Departure.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Seventh. After-Experiences.

II.

III.

IV.

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VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

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Canto the Fourth. Terra Firma.

1. Universe-solutions. 2, 3. The Atomic Theory and Evolution (4) tell nothing as to First Causes—of Motion or powers of Atoms; 5, or of Life, whose orderly Evolution required; in organisms Impulses towards it; and a World arranged for it—both provided beforehand: clear proof of ‘Mind.’ 6. Nature, as by her general system, so in her smallest works, proves this foresight. 7. Could Chance effect this?—theory too improbable.

8. Other considerations as to First Cause and Final Results; Means and Ends. What makes Law resemble Chance; and Necessity. 9. The fancy of ‘Mind-Stuff’ merely assumes Mind is Matter, which is inconceivable. 10. All these are Second Causes; make them First—you make them Divine.

11. All existence, then, originates in what we must call ‘Mind.’ 12. This Power more probably perfect than imperfect. 13. So Ranolf sticks to his ‘Theism.’

I.

How many a sage has solved the Universe
Yet left the wondrous Mystery none the worse!

Hast seen a Lioness and Cubs at play?
Look! she is down upon her side and they
With noisy growl and harmless bite
Are worrying her in their small way,
Triumphant ramping o'er the creature dread;
But on the least alarm or impulse slight,
Lifting her haughty head,
With easy paw she puts them all aside,
And glares out fierce in majesty and pride!—

The mighty Mother, Nature, in such sort
Does with her philosophic children sport:
O! they have got her wholly at their feet,
Her mystery known, their mastery complete!
Then, with some little fact or newer light,
Quiet—disdaining even disdain—
She throws them all abroad again;
Reveals fresh depths to their astonished sight,
Resumes her sacred secrecy and might,
And reasserts her ancient reign.

II.

See Ranolf now with curious wonder whist,
Listening a Sage high-towering, wiry-witted,
German—a prime profound Materialist!—
“O lynx-eyes lightening through each Logic-mist—
Eyebrows with vehement fierce enquiry knitted—
Nose wide-upturned, importunate; comprest
Yet wistful working lips that never rest!
He looks an intellectual Corkscrew—fitted
To worm his wriggling and resistless way
To Nature's tightest-bottled secrets! Play—

Child's play, with that most penetrative muzzle
Were his, to ferret out her mysteries—take
The Universe to pieces, and remake—
Put it together like a Chinese puzzle!”

III.

And what did this Machine, this Logic-Mill
Grinding of mere necessity, not will,
Turn out as flour the hungry Soul to fill?
What drops of Truth did this Retort distil?

“Atoms! you build the Universe, with Gravity and Motion!
All Force is Force Mechanical; in Earth or Air or Ocean
Or depths of Space, of Spirit-Force we have no need or notion!
From Ether springs in Vortex-rings your being—your beginning;
By knot or clot therein begot, you spirally go spinning!
You clash, vibrate and generate Heat—your elastic quiver;
For Light—you smite through Ether's night a billion-league-long shiver!
You shrink and swell, attract—repel; heap single kinds in gases;
Or in proportions rare—exact, combine your varied classes
In molecules that join compact in elemental masses.
But restless Chance forced some of you, now mutually repelling,
In Æons past to mix and make one Molecule excelling
Whose myriads formed a tissue fine with plastic powers indwelling—

That ‘Protoplasm’ Light and Heat from their Sun-hidden sluices
Streamed on and stung into self-multiplying cells and juices—
Coaxed into creatures organised for simplest wants and uses.
These Molecules, impelled at first by just that Force mechanic
Which lifelike works in falling stones and crystals inorganic
We christen ‘Plastidules’—such plastic vivid stuff providing;—”

“O nothing like hard names in Greek, their weaker points for hiding
When to foregone conclusions Wits o'er cracking ice are gliding!
Here, crept in somehow while fine words our senses were beguiling,
See Life, mysterious Stranger, stands beside us blandly smiling!”—
A hint from Ranolf's Tutor this—his lecture-notes compiling.

“Then Chance and outward Nature's force compelled slow variation
In organs dowered with inward power of happy adaptation;
And creatures owning these endured; the rest died out neglected;
Defects from Sire to Son increased, or organs new perfected;
Thus for survival in the end the fittest were selected;
And Being's glorious cycle thus through all its grades unfolded,
The lower still advanced to higher,—lured, fostered, fed and moulded,

Or checked—killed off, as things around might well or badly suit them,
And favouring Chance or frowning chose to ruin or recruit them,
Till Monads grew to Man!—And whence his mighty Soul's resources?
Sunclear!—Each Atom has a Soul—the sum of all its forces—
Immutable—immortal—One—through all its myriad courses:
Each kind through chance-alliances, vicissitudes, convulsions,
Still true to its peculiar powers, attractions and repulsions.
And Plastidules have Souls as well—each Soul an aggregation
Of Souls of all the Atoms that it holds in combination;
But fickle, complex, varied, ever changeable and changing;
Through tangled files and piles on piles of finest fibre ranging,—
Till Man's great Soul at last their whole complexities embraces!
For Motion and Sensation are of all Soul-Life the bases;
(Touch a mimosa-leaf—it shrinks, a crab—it slinks off sideways;
To move—to feel, with Will—without, how close are their allied ways!)
Brain-molecules of course have both; and when, like church-bells ringing,
When stimulants, with nerves of sense for bell-ropes, set them swinging
Up in the belfry-brain, their subtle shiftings and vibrations

Are Consciousness and Thought, with all their endless commutations;—”

“Hoho! but here methinks the Ice with thundering cracks is starry!”—

“Down motor-nerves to muscles then, those tremors run nor tarry,
But Thought to Voluntary Act by reflex working carry.
And what are Likes—Dislikes?—Why, mere repulsions or attractions
Nerve-atoms keep—the source of all emotions—passions—actions.
As rose organic Life, the new accretions—complications
Roused in responsive brain by new external needs—relations,
Inherited, gave Instincts born with after generations:
Till, say, the White Ant's wondrous care for ‘tribal welfare’—rising
To moral worth that weal required—the brain still aggrandizing,
In Man to ‘Conscience’ soared at last, and ‘Duty’ self-despising!—
Yes! 'tis brain-atom-groups upbuild your stormy rage, you Tyrant!
Their countless links of forces forge your hopes, O heaven-aspirant!
While passion-atoms in your brain, pale Lover, 'tis, that pester
That blooming pile of Molecules (whose powers as such attest her,
Repelling while attracting too) your lovely peace-molester!”

IV.

“Brilliant that Evolution-theory!” cried
The youth's hard-headed, sceptical old Guide;
“Famous that Atom-creed (from India brought)—
But yet to solve the Eternal Mystery—nought!

“For whence came ‘Motion’ first? what is the Force
Which Motion gives to Matter in its course,
Or what when lying hid in Matter stayed?
And how is ‘Heat’ by mere vibrations made?
What sudden mystic transformation serves
To make them in that way affect our nerves
We label ‘Heat’? or can they tell aright
How undulating Ether gives us ‘Light’?—
The cause—nay, mode of all is lost in Night!

“Then whence came ‘Atoms’? whence their power to change
As Elements both form and essence?—Strange!
Here are accomplished Beings, skilled to tell
Both friends and foes when rushing on pell-mell;
Myriads that most in puzzling drill excel,
In cunning multiples attract—repel,
And practise pure Arithmetic so well!
A petty Pantheon of fine Godlets, see!
Making a miniature Mythology,
With furious loves, hates, powers, a set apiece,
And transformations weird that never cease,
Out-metamorphosing the Gods of Rome or Greece!—
Could Matter or Mechanic Force, in fact
Such chemic, mental feats originate—enact?

V.

“Next, whence came ‘Life’? and Life's ascending scale?—
For this, could Atoms and their Sphere avail?—
Well, that amazing Plastidule admit
Could start Life-forms—the Sphere around to fit,
(Though how Life sprung from Matter, Science gives
No hint—from lifeless things gets nought that lives;)
Grant, for such Forms to rise from grade to grade
That working wise Environment must aid,
Could modulate on such harmonious plan
The golden course the mighty Music ran
Till ‘closed the diapason full in Man;’
Still—if Life-germs and that wise Sphere indeed
Could to this grand array of Being lead,
Two things perforce their action must precede:
First—an unbounded impulse and desire
In living things to rise still higher and higher
In orderly ascent; on every hand
To spread on system—normally expand;
A self-constructing power to seize and hold
All from which aptest organs it could mould,
And let the germs of ampler life unfold:
And next, a World—forefashioned to refuse
All that erroneous tendencies might use—
Disorder need; forefraught with all supplies
For wants that made its tenants fitly rise—
For ordered Progress pre-arranged,—Earth, Seas and Skies!

“Was there not here an End—that guided—swayed—
Means from the first so suitably arrayed
To reach results so complex—well-defined?—
And what is this but Forethought—Purpose—Mind?”

VI.

Notes from lectures or from reading;
Talk between those two succeeding—
Student led and Tutor leading,
May we offer—not unheeding
Task of pruning—lopping—weeding?

Free Nature! how careless, confiding!
Half playfully, furtively hiding
Truths ever momentous, abiding,
In her least or her lowliest works!
There assurance of Power presiding—
Foreseeing—forethinking—foreguiding—
In silence and secrecy lurks!

Think of the foresight proved in that small fact—
Next century's oak within an acorn packed!

But ‘Mummy-corn’! O greater wonder hid
Than from the summit of its Pyramid
Those famous ‘Forty Ages’ saw or did!
Rome rose—toiled through long glories—slow decay;
Still, seeming dead, that grain's-germ ready lay
To shoot, a blade—a beautiful green birth
Soon as it touched ev'n England's warm moist earth!
Truly this Life-in-death with new life fired,
Some ‘knowledge of affinities’ required—
Some lasting holdfast to an end desired!

What sense in sense-less tissue there can be!
Mark—in a tiny mote you scarce can see
‘The movement to achieve an end precedes
And makes the organ for the end it needs.’
A floating jelly-speck in filmy skin—
Protean globule changing form at will—
Borne on by currents that revolve within,
Wraps itself round the mite of food it meets
And turns into a stomach! Feat of feats!
How do such prescient impulses begin?—
Mark other jellied sea-motes simpler still,
Where neither limb nor organ you espy,
Nor any structure Science can detect,
Expanding into spider-webs, erect
Shell-marvels of minutest masonry
That for ingenious geometric skill
With mightiest Angelo's or Wren's may vie;—
How do such impulses such ends fulfil?

‘Fancy the antenatal human Ear!’
(Says one consummate Master of Thought severe)
‘In secret framed—of microscopic size—
That grand Piano of three thousand strings,
Each to distinct vibrations fitly tuned
Of the outer air with which it ne'er communed,
Anticipates all Music's melodies.’
What! had the Cause from which this marvel springs
No mental power to regulate—review
All the relations of these complex things—
Purposely make them each to each so true?

But say, through Æons film by film 'twas spun,
With power to breed it passed from Sire to Son;—
By greater prescience then the end was won.

O wise dorr-beetle! you make fit supply
For eggs you lay the moment ere you die;
Look forward to results with foresight keen—
From want beforehand will an offspring screen
You and your ancestors have never seen;
With means most apt unconsciously achieve
Ends you know nothing of, nor could conceive!
Is there no Power to which your wants were known?
No guidance here—or sense beyond your own?

See working Bees, from whom their Queen has flown,
A sexless grub with ‘royal jelly’ feed,
And make it ‘grow a Queen’ new swarms to breed!
Could all the Reason, Science, Skill of Man,
Working their utmost since the World began,
Work towards an End upon a subtler plan
Or surer, than these brainless Insects can?

VII.

“Dear Matter-mongers! what, another God
To cap the crew created by your nod;
His work all this;—nor better work nor worse
Than when he tumbled out the Universe—
That rich result of Atoms in their dance,
That Chaos tossed to Cosmos by mere—Chance!

“Chance—Chance!”—O do not too irreverent deem
The youth, if wider teachings through him sent
A little thrill of mocking wonderment
At this superb idea of Chance Supreme:

1

“Come any Muse of—Fog! your fond voice raise!
Chant to great Chance some—disenchanting praise!
He said: ‘Against Resistance Pressure strained
Through Space, while Atom-showers in myriads rained:
I bade the glorious hurly-burly whirl,
The clusters cling, the Dervish-dances twirl;
I—hounding on the boundless blindman's-buff,
To build the Universe was God enough!’—
Sufficing God—this Chance!

2

“‘Prime Wizard I and King of Conjurors; say
Cardpacks by millions mixed before me lay;
No skill I used—no care to look or learn—
No knowledge of their sequences to spurn
Wrong combinations or the right retain;
All sleight of hand I scorned and craft of brain;
I shuffled—shuffled; twas my only spell—
And all—hey-presto! into Order fell!’—
Astounding God—this Chance!

3

“‘My happiest hazard bade this beauteous scheme
With forces every-way responsive teem;
Inspired the living plastic power that dwells
Expert in Atoms, Molecules, and Cells;
Their infinite propensities to strain

Towards ends they so triumphantly attain;
To pile up organs multiplied—as means
On means—to compass intricate machines!’—
Inventive God—this Chance!

4

“‘I gave the Elements the power and skill
To keep these Life-Machines ascending still;
Gave Earth and Seas and Skies the genius rare
Discreetly to select—extinguish—spare;
Made them a mould to shape each cunning cast,
Each newer marvel nobler than the last;
Gave Life and Nature answering powers, till both
Flashed forth the million miracles of—growth!’—
Aspiring God—this Chance!

5

“‘Lo! all results of all I did—not planned—
All of one kind, as all successful, stand!
No blots about my blind creations lurk;
No failures e'er disgraced my witless work;
My creatures no incongruous mixtures marred;
From all vagaries every race I barred;
From ways aberrant warded cell and seed;
Set limits to varieties of breed!’—
Methodic God—this Chance!

6

“‘My luck to no gross junctions lapsed or led—
Harpy or Centaur or Empusa dread!
In Earth's rock-depths on record never left
Worse malformations than a monstrous Eft;
No botch or bungle since my work began—

The monstrous Eft a miracle—like Man!
E'en forms extinct ordained due part to play
In one unfolding harmonised array!’—
Unerring God—this Chance!

7

“‘But O! of miracles the crown and cream—
Of my elaborate accidents supreme!
The brain I made from sense so subtly free
That first discovered it was made by Me!
O skill my suicidal skill to beat
And deify myself by self-defeat!
What other God such deadliest foe could frame
To turn High-Priest to glorify his name?’—
Surely no God—but Chance!”

VIII.

And then that old Enquirer, who
His free conclusions calmly drew
From facts alone his foes held true,
Would thus from time to time anew
The apologetic strain pursue.

O shining Apostles of Matter,
If in antitheistical panic
Effete superstitions you shatter,
In Chance and your Forces Mechanic
No Cause that is Primal you gain!
All notion from Nature dissever
Of Cause then (an idle endeavour!)

Or confess:—for the meanest of Forces
Which up to that rank you would strain—
Though but Motion's first faint indication;
Or, for something it holds in relation—
Say the Scene of its earliest stirring,
Beforehand—throughout—and for ever
Prepared for its sure operation;
Though too subtle that scene for sensation,
Any feeling, or seeing or hearing:—
You assume all the skill—the resources,
All the purpose to compass whatever
The final results may contain!

‘Your Newton's—Shakspeare's genius—('tis allowed)
Were latent once within a fiery cloud!’—
The marvel is, what from the first impelled
And guided onward in the course they held
Blind forces through all mazes—tangles—ties—
Till to such grand achievements they could rise;
Made from the first each step involve the next,
Unchecked—unfoiled—unfailing—unperplexed!

Find Being's slight beginnings slighter still,
Through ampler Æons creeping, if you will;
The less the means that lead to mighty ends
The more the Power employing them transcends;
The grand results themselves the slowlier grown,
The greater is the Prescient Purpose shown!

Chance is no Chance that works out wonders fine
As matchless Skill or Forethought could design.
But Law seems Chance, when Law's great system lends
All means it lets occur their destined ends:
Makes special ends that seem to fail, no less
New means to some more general success.
The Power that plays the game of Nature knows
All the results of all the dice he throws:
Whate'er turns up, it is to him the same;
High throws or low alike advance his game:
No lawless tampering with the dice he needs,
When such the game that every throw succeeds!

Necessity's no less an idle dream,
Though all results inevitable seem.
Law seems Necessity, if Will decree
That no exception to its Law shall be!

Necessity! its very name implies
'Tis an Effect itself, and must arise
From some compelling Cause beyond itself that lies.

IX.

But here's a new material forged! enough
To work these wonders all alone—‘Mind-Stuff!’
‘Each molecule of Matter has a germ
Of Mind attached called Mind-Stuff (mark the term)
Not Mind itself—but with its likes combined,
Able, so subtly linked, to turn to Mind!’

Well, not the prior question to discuss,
Whence came the ‘germ,’ and who attached it thus?
Here Science must a miracle endorse,
Or beg the point unproved (‘no Spirit-Force
Exists’)—assume it as a thing of course.—
Mind-Stuff!—Thought-Matter say; Death-Life; Black-White!
Can hyphens make all Nature's darkness—light?
You join two names—(but what is that when done?)
Of things unknown to prove them known—and one!

Or is Mind, Matter?—If on that you rest,
Give us three feet of Love (as children jest)
Which lest some cubic inch of Envy mar,
Hermetically seal it in a jar!
‘Ten times a Thought!’—bottle the product! Say
How many scruples weighty Reasons weigh!
Or polarise a flash of Wit, and find
At what nice angle Fancy's rays inclined
Start true reflections—off a polished Mind!

X.

Attraction—Atoms—Plastidules—'tis clear—
Impulsive organs—upward-guiding Sphere—
Motion—Necessity—or aught behind
Of simpler Force that you could feign or find—
All Second Causes these—whereby the First
Is of no jot of Might or Mind amerced.
But if to make them First your Faith incline,
Or make Mind, Matter's self; such Faith in fine
But shifts to them or this the powers divine
Old creeds to their ‘Creators’ would assign.

XI.

Yes! it seems—to one conclusion
No ingenious shift—illusion—
Should the Reason blind;
One great Fact defies rebuttal:—
All Existence, simple, subtle,
Points you with behest imperious
To a Source, profound, mysterious,
Ne'er to be defined;
Yet of Might so transcendental,
All the Powers that men call ‘mental’
Are its dim reflections merely,
Glimmerings of a Glory clearly
Inexpressible more nearly
Than as ‘Primal Mind’!

XII.

Yet of this First Intelligence confessed
Ineffable, may nought be fairly guessed?
Can we in sober reason think or feign
The ALL an Imperfection? or maintain
The Absolutely Perfect, an Ideal,
A Fancy, nowhere actual proved or real?
But say 'tis realised; what wonder we
Seeing so little of that All should be
Unable to discern how what is styled
‘Evil’ by us, through Nature running wild,
Can be with such Perfection reconciled?

A full round Moon the Universal Scheme,
We catch the Crescent's ragged golden gleam;
In Man's wide Faiths if hoary Light be found
Would feebly reillume the faded round,
Faint reflex of far glory!—'tis mayhap
Real as that ‘old Moon in the new Moon's lap’!

But since on two great negatives profound
Science and Metaphysics are at one,
And all their mightiest Masters most renowned—
Grant Darkness all its grandeur—own that none
Can prove ‘Divine Existence’ cannot be;
While for its ‘nature,’ all alike agree
Your Kants and Newtons, Doctors wigged and gowned,
Helpless as smockfrocked Hobnail at his plough,
Baffled before that mystery must bow;
On what compulsion must good sense allow
That this Unknown ‘First Cause’ in deed or will
Has just but so much power for good and ill
As in the Universe we see displayed?
When even the fraction seen of Power—Skill—Mind—
Say in that play of Atoms, so transcends
All human estimate, even Science ends
Her coolest quest bewildered and half blind?
Were it not then a paradox most strange
Should finite Mind, thus paralysed before
Its best-proved Actual, limit and degrade
All possible Existence to the range
Of what its impuissance can conceive?
We say, nor—Sages Positive!—ignore

What truths you teach, 'tis harder to believe
That which has done so much cannot do more
And all the Evil that exists retrieve
With compensating Good somewhere in store—
Than that the fault lies with the human Mind,
Too weak or lowly-placed the cause to find
Why from the first throughout the Universe
The best has not excluded all the worse.

And more preposterous it is to dream
The Universe is an abortive scheme,
Worked by a Power unequal to its task,
Or its presumed incompetence to mask,
Than that the vast Obscure which round us lies,
Somehow—somewhere—the Being must comprise
Our most exalted Nature must demand;
Reality than our Ideal more grand;
And therefore, in some way least understood,
Nay, which the Finite could not understand,—
Perfectly wise—just—powerful—loving—good!

To Reason less repugnant seems this creed,
And less credulity than theirs to need
Who for ‘First Cause’ in blind Momentum trust,
Or find Divinity in finer dust.

XIII.

Thus have we faintly shadowed forth
How, tutored by a Mind, sagacious, deep
With the true sceptic caution of the North,
Apt by no Master's word to swear, nor let

The current of a Creed in fashion sweep
Firm Reason off her feet whate'er its set,
How, for a Soul so led—bold—healthy—bright
As his—the Sea-bred Youth's of whom we write,
The young fresh faith in so-called ‘God’—that came
From deeper depths than Logic's, as before
Sprung greenly through Doubt's furnace, and no more
Shrivelled or shrunk in scientific blight,
Than dewy grass through window-panes descried
Waving unscorched in vivid flickering flame
Reflected from the fire that burns inside.