 | Flotsam and Jetsam |  |
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A CHRISTMAS HYMN.
(New Style, 1875.)
I
Again the dumb delight,The winding-sheet of Winter white!
The great World's feverish moan sinks mute and muffled,
As Nature lays cool hands divine
Upon its weary heart, awhile unruffled:
The splendour-fibred trees pure coral shine;
All still!—and if small birds, so black and large, perchance
In sudden startled quest
On the dazzling tracery rest
And shake snow-powder off, they but enhance
The sacred silence of the bright white universal trance.
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II
Then bells burst out alongThe pale dim-burnished sky they throng;
Their floating tones in yellow light dissolving,
Like joys that die in rapture soft;
Or peal on peal in headlong haste revolving,
Full many a merry somersault aloft
The airy tumblers turn in their ethereal play;
Or down, down, down they come
From the full resounding dome,
In frank, confiding, open-armed array,
Like blissful Angels charged to bring their old good news today!
III
But why so glad, you bells?'Tis shame and wrong your rapture tells!
Cold Morn! why halo round with cheery kindness
Your chill return, which but recalls
That deed of rabid hate and ruinous blindness,
Most piteous scene in History's pictured halls,
The one World-murder done in ghostly Palestine!
Is it a cause for mirth
That the dull ferocious Earth
In mirk and mystery left so long to pine,
So welcomes Spirits when they come surcharged with light divine!
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IV
Swords flash and sceptres wave—Could none that gentlest grandeur save!
O widest woe! that this, Time's boon most royal,
A rabble spurned with ribald scorn—
No worldly might to worth so wondrous loyal!—
See! 'tis the golden solitary Morn;
See! splendid mists, still palms and glistening kine; the Sun
Undiamonds the blades
Of the shortening fig-tree shades;
Soft clouds ascending gently one by one
The hollow cave of liquid light, emerge o'er mountains dun;
V
If, by the poppied corn,There sits in Syrian garb wayworn,
Upon a rock the level beams are firing,
One who, of ample brow sublime,
And ardent look serene yet so aspiring,
Speaks such great-hearted music, for a time
The brazen-kilted Knight his Emperor's work delays,
Must draw the studded rein;
And the boor his creaking wain
Let stand—spellbound by thoughts that so amaze—
So boundless, kindling, fresh, they match that rising Day-Star's rays:
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VI
If still, as Sunset fillsWith awe the hushed vermilion hills,
Blue dusk the listening fishers' lake obscuring—
Those easy and immortal words
Drop quietly as footprints less enduring
Red petrified sea-beaches' keep of birds
A million years ago alit from vanished skies:—
Can none, O churlish Fate!
Of the brave and wise and great—
None look into those deep mysterious eyes,
And read how vast a human Soul informs that clay disguise!
VII
To murder one so young!To still that wonder-teeming tongue
Ere half the fulness of its mellowed glory
Had flashed in mild sheet-lightnings forth!
Who knows, had that majestic Life grown hoary,
Long versed in all man's weakness, woes and worth,
What beams had pierced the clouds that veil this voyage of care!
Not Zeus, nor Baal's throne
Nor Osiris quelled alone,
But Doubt, or worse assurance of Despair,
Or Superstition's brood that blends the tiger with the hare!
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VIII
Who knows but we had caughtSome hint from pure impassioned Thought,
How Matter's links and Spirit's that still fly us,
Can break and still leave Spirit free;
How Will can act o'ermastered by no bias;
Why Good omnipotent lets Evil be;
What balm heals beauteous Nature's universal flaw;
And how, below, above,
It is Love, and only Love
Bids keen Sensation glut Destruction's maw—
Love rolls this groaning Sea of Life on pitiless rocks of Law!
IX
This day, then, must we askBefits it not its radiant mask,
Where Spring's green pulses sleep, so soon to waken,
Beneath bright innocence of snow?
But rather, like the human heart forsaken,
Some grand still Polar waste, where sad rays throw
Long violet solemn shades, and luridly illume
Each iceberg's sullen frown,
As the blood-red Sun goes down
At ghastly noon, and to their dismal doom
Leaves moaning crags and grinding floes in loneliest lifeless gloom?
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X
Nay—is it then so slightA thing that this Day sprung to light
Of moral beauty Man's supreme ideal;
A soul of sympathy so vast
'Twas scarce conceived till first he made it real!
That of all Facts left for the heart at last—
Looming beyond the light by Logic's pharos thrown,
Its faintest circled rim,
In the supersensuous dim,
The most majestic—loveliest—made its own
The purest, widest, truest Soul, and loftiest ever known!
XI
At least—at lowest, say,A quickening breeze of Life this day
Came, when into dead calm had feebly drifted
Man's Hope of Hopes—an Albatross
Flapping vain wings to rise—and freshly lifted
The worn Seafarer for a flight across
Some thousands of new years o'er the Material Deep
Where Man must founder not,
Or his very race would rot!
Fell swamp from which kind Fate his course must keep
Or down 'mid crawlers of the slime 'twill be his doom to creep!
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XII
What! this One, Nature's—all!(Though why not God's, that Mystery call?)
O none the less Mankind's upsoaring splendid
Through brightening gyres of Circumstance
Is with his great heart-truths and hopes so blended,
To keep that height they give its only chance!—
So firmly through the woof—to crown the array so dense
Of Shapes of light and love—
Amaranthine flowers he wove,
The imperial purple of pre-eminence
Man wears, were tattered, would you tear those wreaths immortal thence!
XIII
True, this Soul-Conqueror—this—World-melting Marvel from the Abyss—
Cared not, in subtly faint Hellenic fashion
To syllogise of life to-be,
But kindled to insatiate thirst and passion
That old ambition of Eternity
Which fires Man's heart for noblest deeds it dreams of here!
Breath mightiest and alone
To evoke its grandest tone;
Of each harmonious rise in his career,
Each diapason of ascent, the stirring key-note clear!
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XIV
But this One bade him strain,Say you, to heights he seeks in vain—
Ideal perfections that bemock his station?
Nay, but the endless strain and strife
Secure his nature's endless elevation!—
The germ, deep-hid in life, of higher life,
Conscience, this Sunburst woke; Truth, Justice, Love, his ray
So quickened to outflower
With predominance and power,
The palmy growth still claims imperious way
Through this World's cramping crystal walls to some diviner Day!
XV
And if, in fine excessAnd secret happy consciousness,
The fervid aim at fitness for instalment
In some rare clime Truth, Love and Right
Flush with full bloom unreached in this enthralment,
Be forced to leap into a faith like sight
In such rare clime extant, its actual glorious goal,—
Against assurance sure
It must endlessly endure!
Shall not the first these heart-depths to unroll
Be hailed Discoverer and dear King among the Lords of Soul!
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XVI
Spurn from his Faith—of WillLove-fired to selfless war with Ill,
And deathless life to soothe the undying fever—
Hell's blight, the shamble's stains and steams;
It were a Sun to flood and flush for ever
The boundless blue—no cloud-hole's shower of beams
Silvering the sea-gloom—glory girt with hate and shame!
A lily pure, that creed
Would be loved—what crimson weed
Of Greece so loved! sweet faiths of graceful fame
Olympian poppies of no charm beside its fragrant flame!
XVII
What though wan Logic deemsIllusions these immortal dreams;
Hesperian garden-growth of golden apples
Which she can prove not—see nor touch;
Their realm at least is real; for all she grapples
Of actual fruit or blossom hangs o'er such
A shadowy garden's wall, and springs from roots within;
Aye! all she sees and knows
But in Mystery springs and grows:
Her simplest queries can no answer win:
‘What can Attraction be? or Force? or Motion how begin?’
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XVIII
To sing that golden fruitHope, Justice, Love, are never mute;
White Maidens warbling through the Dusk its splendour;
And Science, our Alcides true
Shall make the Dragon—Matter—yet surrender
The Spirit-realm it guards and glides into!
Meanwhile the men of mightiest heart our course must light;
All honour be to them,
And to Him the diadem
Who rose, the Atlas from whose heaven-bathed height
In clearest prospect glowed the unimaginable sight!
XIX
Fear you 'twill die away,Flit, wholly fade in fancied Day?
Is the World's long advance a masque so hollow!
But Heart is pioneer of Mind—
The pillared fire her patient march must follow!
He, to transfigure, glorify his kind,
Made all the Universe a breathing human breast;
Man's race, one rose of snow
Through Eternity to blow,
His great Idea! shall Hope or Reason rest
Below, while, though mist-veiled, on high, towers so sublime a crest!
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XX
Look where gigantic flowersMost gorgeous deck Peruvian bowers;
Milk-white lake-lilies purple-hearted shining
Shield-broad, each leaf an islet wide,
A leathery floor with crinkled wine-dark lining
Deep-cabled, firm, where ghostlike stalk and glide
Plover and Ibis shy, by no vibration checked:
—'Tis on black lakes obscure
Which the forest-glooms immure;
Ink-waters strange that no light-rays reflect:—
So in sad days of darkest doubt Truth's brightest blooms expect!
XXI
Think you the mighty SeaOf Nature can exhausted be?
Press on, O Man! no upward impulse scorning!
High instincts pant their race to run!
Fresh Souls will come auroral—sons of Morning,
To rouse and rein these coursers of the Sun
Along the empyreal path He was the first to trace!—
—Then still recall, O Earth,
With a festal smile, his birth!
For this, o'er Earth's benumbed and beauteous face,
Still, Winter, breathe your chilly charms of kindliest innocent grace!
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XXII
You hollies scarlet-bossed,Purfle with dainty rims of frost
Your puckered leaves for this—or gleam snow-spangled!
Prank every fringe with crystals gay,
You cedars! Ring sweet bells, by fears unjangled;
Peal forth melodious promise of a day
When in more luminous love—more loving knowledge great—
In the serene sunshine
Of intelligence divine,
The whole majestic World shall walk elate
With her sublimest hero's faith in Man's exalted fate!
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