University of Virginia Library

The goatherd still gather'd his flocks ere the night,
In the red sunset-light;
But heard no voice singing, afar on the height!

Silent we cluster'd when the tale was done,
Till Verity exclaimed: ‘As that lone monk
Who suffered pedants to destroy his God,
So is our England now! For many years
She dwelt apart and ponder'd that pure thought
Which turned to heavenly song in Milton's mouth,
And never questioning taught her wisest sons
To bow their heads beneath the Father's hand;
Then in an evil hour her ear was turn'd
To specious pleadings which profaned the faith
And quickened unbelieving; from that hour
Faith faded, the heroic stature sank
Cubit by cubit, and her heroes changed
To problem-haunted pigmies, clustering mites
On the green cheese of Science. Faugh, how rank
The stale thing smells, to nostrils which have drunk
The pure air sweeten'd by the mountain snows
Where men even yet may find the living God!’

Cried Sparkle quickly, ‘I will grant you, Faith
Was marvellous, when Faith was possible!
But which is best for outcast Nature's Son,
Fatherless, illegitimately born,
And at the best remitted to the care
Of an abandon'd mother—which is best,
To play the farce of filial faith to One
Who utterly declines to show His face,
Nay, who, if He exists, denies Himself,
And leaves His offspring unprovided for,
Or boldly, calmly, facing all events,
To say, “In all the world where'er I search
I find no trace of Fatherhood at all,
No token of His kindness or His care,—
Only inexorable Law pursuing
Me and my brethren, and that greater one,
Nature, our mother. Blessings upon her,
Upon her poor blind eyes and beauteous face
Still sunny with insufferable love!
Blessings upon her, and sweet reverence,
Who loveth us, her children! On her breast
We wakened, ever in her circling arms
We found kind shelter; when our hearts are sore,
Our spirits weary, she can comfort us
With countless ministrations, woven smiles
Of light and flowers and sunshine; when at last
We are wearied out with our brief day of life,
She hath a bed of quiet ready, strewn
With grass and scented shadow. Bid me kneel
To her who never fail'd in acts of love,
And lo! how eagerly, how reverently,
I haste to bend the knee; but bid me kneel
To Him I know not, who since life began
Hath never stood acknowledged or revealed,
And lo! I rise erect with folded arms
In the full pride and privilege of Man,
Rejecting, scorning, or denying Him!
How hath He helped me? When my finger ached
Or my soul sicken'd of some dark disease,
Where was my Father—where was He for whom
I shriek'd through all the watches of the night
In pain and protestation? Did He come
To comfort and sustain me? When I shrank
Affrighted from the clammy hands of Death,
When in mine arms the maiden of my love
Lay dead and cold, slain by her own first kiss,
Where was the Father that ye vaunt so much?
I owe Him life? Perchance. Love too? Ah me,
A little love to mock a little life
Forlorn, and swiftly flying! He hath chosen,
To leave me in the wilderness of thought
Abandon'd and rejected; I in turn,
Finding He fails me in my hour of need,
Finding He cannot save me from the fangs
Of His own bloodhounds, Death and Force and Law,
Reject Him, and abandon that old dream
Of ever looking on a Father's face!”’

More would his lips have utter'd in a strain
By some deemed blasphemous, but angry cries
Broke in upon the current of his speech;
And many there, remembering the fear
Which drove them thither from the City's streets,
Drew timorously together, as if fearing
The Earthquake's jaws might open under them.
‘Enough!’ cried Barbara—‘you touch the harp
Of feeling with too strenuous a touch,
And jar the delicate chords too cruelly!
For me, I mourn the faith which long ago
Led men into the desert sands to pray,
And tomb'd the hermit in his narrow cell;
Then love was pain, and pain was privilege,
And he who sought the Father was content
To find Him bleeding on the wayside Cross,
Or looking sadly from the Sepulchre.
Now who will justify the holiness
Of self-renouncement, shaming with some tale,
Quaint as a missal love-illuminèd,
Our peevish problem-haunted modernness?
Come, Bishop, for you have not spoken yet,
Though clad in wisdom and in purity
As whitely as your ancestors, the monks.’

Close to her side stood Bishop Eglantine,
The gentle priest who dwells an anchorite
Amid the busiest throngs of living men—
A man who, sitting at the laden board
Of Knowledge, looking with a longing eye
On the rare dainties that he must not touch,
Grows gaunt and lean with intellectual fasts;
So spare, the soul seems shining through his flesh
Like light through alabaster. Tall he stood,
Upgazing through the thin transparent roof
Of leaves upon some peaceful sight in heaven,
And when he smiled in answer to her words
His smile was spectre-like and virginal,
Too faint for flesh and blood. Not far away
The plumper Bishop Primrose laughing sat,
Broad as his Church and sunnier than his creed,
And held a bright-eyed child between his knees.
A Roman lily and an English rose
Were these two prelates; one proclaiming Christ
Ghostly and sad and sacrificial,
The other, Christ the brown young Shepherd, clad
With strength as with a garment, bending down
To lift a lambkin struggling among thorns,
And bear it on his back across the hills
Into the Master's fold.

Quoth Eglantine,
With courteous bow to all the circle round,
‘Ev'n as you spoke my thoughts were far away
With one who tenderly renounced the flesh
And found in pain sweet comfort long ago.
Here is the tale—scarcely indeed a tale—
'Tis given in a monkish chronicle,
And is so brief, that he who runs may hear.’