University of Virginia Library

Heroes? The noblest and the best
Are those of whom we never know;
God's Greatest are God's Lowliest,
Who move unnoted to their rest
Nor build their pride on human woe.
Napoleons of Sword or Song,
The proud, the radiant, and the strong,
The inheritors of Earth, are clay
To the slain Saints of every day.
The Kings of Action and of Thought
Pass in their pride and leave no sign,
But the slain Martyr's flesh is wrought
By suffering to Life divine.
In the eternal Judge's sight
This truth refutes the common lie:
What men call Genius hath no right
To scorn one single human tie.

Come up, ye Poets, and be tried!
Stand up, you shrieking, mouthing throng!
Shall you be spared and justified
For a few scraps of selfish song?
By Heaven, the weary world could spare
All poets since Creation's day,
If one poor human heart's despair,
One poor lost Soul's unheeded prayer,
Must be the price it hath to pay!
Bury your Homers mountain-deep,
Strangle your Shakespeares ere they wake,
If they their heritage must keep,
If they Parnassus-ward must creep
O'er souls they stain and hearts they break.
For what is Verse, and what is Fame?
Great reams of paper, much acclaim!
And what are Poets at the best
But busy tongues that often bore us?
One noble heart, one loving breast
Is worth the whole long-winded chorus!

But hold! true Poesy keeps ever
Great wisdom as its pearl of price;
The sleepless Dream, the long Endeavour,
The questioning Thought that resteth never,
Demand no living sacrifice.
Your Goethe's pyramid was made
Of broken hearts and lives betrayed,
Wherefore men found it, when complete,
A pyramid of Self-conceit.
And take your Shelley (tho' I hold
The fellow had a harp of gold):
He stained the Soul he had to save
The day he turn'd from Harriet's grave.
But leave me Burns, and Byron too,—
They had their faults, and those not few,
And gave the nations much offence
By riot and concupiscence,
But Love was in the rogues! they paid
Full dearly for the pranks they played,
And never, in their wildest revel,
Pleaded the privilege of Fame,
Or called on Genius and the Devil
To justify their guilt and shame!

Some men, all women, worship Strength:
Carlyle did, till experience taught him
That even the athlete pays at length
The bills that Time and Death have brought him.
Rough Thomas loudly preached for long
That hero-worship of the Strong,
The right of muscle and of sinew
To use the weak and crush the small,
‘Do something! show the spirit in you,
Work, in God's name!’ men heard him call.
‘Speech, sirs, is silvern—silence gold!’
He cried aloud with lungs of leather;
Nay, even when wearied out and old
He could not keep his tongue in tether.
Friedrich, Napoleon, Mirabeau,
Danton and Goethe were his crazes!
They stood like puppets in a row,
Tall spectres of a wax-work show,
While lustily he shrieked their praises.
Meantime the bleeding Christ went by,
And heard the acclaim in Cheyne Walk,
Heard from the threshold, with a sigh,
The creed of Silence proved by Talk,
And passing slowly on, footsore,
Left on the noisy Prophet's door
The mark of Passover, for token
A Lamb must die, a life be broken.
'Twas done, and in a little space,
Silent at last as in a tomb,
The Prophet, tears on his worn face,
Sat old and lonely in the gloom
How did his Heroes help him then?
What word had Friedrich, Mirabeau,
Napoleon, and the mighty men
He glorified with tongue and pen,
To assuage the tempest of his woe?
Old Hurricane, I hated thee
When, shrieking down Humanity,
High as a Dervish thou upleapt,—
But in thine hour of agony,
I could have kissed thy wounds and wept.
The pity! ah, the pity of it!
Well, Life is piteous at the best.
Thou wast most mighty, poor old Prophet,
When weakest, saddest, silentest!
Tho' all the gods were dead, and He,
The great God, who is One in Three,
‘Did naught’ (at least in thy opinion,
Though thou did'st cry His Name so loud)
Though Belial reigned in His dominion
And led the many-headed crowd,
Yet supernatural Shapes of Fear,
Fiend-like or god-like, pass'd thee by,
And Froude, thy Nemesis, was near
With watchful biographic eye.
Heir to thy weariness and folly,
He warm'd thy night-cap, brought thy gruel,
Sat by thine arm-chair, melancholy,
And fed thy fantasy with fuel.
And now across the earth he passes,
Babbling of thee and Parson Lot,
And serves up tepid for the masses
Thy gospel, once so piping hot;
Feeds little strong men with his praise,
Just as you fed the strong and great,
Bewails the dark degenerate days,
The dreadful Democratic craze,
The shipwreck of our ancient State;
Longs for another Drake (or gander),
Of whom in Eyre he saw some traces,
Some rough, swashbuckler, bold commander,
To govern the inferior races;
Thro' the colonial seas careering
Avers philanthropies are vile,
And rests, forlornly pamphleteering,
The Peter Patter of Carlyle.

Man is most godlike, I affirm,
Not when he seeks to top the skies,
And peer, poor evanescent Worm,
Into the heavenly Sphinx's eyes,
Not when he vainly tries to patter
Of Gods and heroes, Mind and Matter,
Or cries, with folly sublimated,
‘Lo, I am first of things created,’
Or flapping further leaden-bodied
Assumes a legislative godhead;—
But when, in tears, he humbly kneeling
Prays in the silence of the night,
Knows himself blind, and dimly feeling
With frail arms upward, craves for Light!
Then, from without or from within,
Comes in that solemn silent hour
The miracle which turns his sin
To hope, to insight, and to power!
Then comes the Voice from far away,
Saying: ‘My love shall be thy guerdon!
Be of good heart, poor thing of clay,
Soon shall I turn thy night to day,
And free thy Soul from flesh, its burden!’
He listens, breaks to tears, and straightway
Feels this rough load of bone and brawn
Grow lighter, sees a heavenly Gateway
Swing on its hinges far withdrawn,
Revealing glimpses bright and blest
Of good old-fashion'd Realms of Rest,—
The Heaven which all his kin have sighed for,
Which bards have dreamed of, martyrs died for,
Which Christ the Master postulated,
Which every creed hath pictured there,
Which Death itself hath adumbrated
Out of the cloud of Life's despair!

Dear foolish Creed! sweet Superstition!
Fair childish Dream, now faded wholly!
By men of brains and erudition
Despised as ignorance and folly!
Humanity, the wise inform us,
Is intellectua, or naugn,
And Heroes, wondrous and enormous,
Have soared to thrones of godlike thought,
Attesting that Humanity
By its own seed redeemed may be,
And that the Titans of each nation
May face the Saturn of Creation.
For ‘God’—if there be God at all—
Does nothing (that's the Chelsea teaching!)
And to be weak and frail and small,
To reach up arms and feebly call
On some veil'd Nurse, in blind beseeching,
Is just to forfeit altogether
The privilege of Adam's seed!—
‘No, if in Nature's stormy weather,
You'd find a foothold and a creed,
A light, a buckler, an example,
A sign to swear by (or to swear at),
Find out some Hero strong and ample
Who on your neck hath strength to trample,
Crying, “Qui meruit palmam ferat!”
Follow that form the small birds sing to,
O'er fields of slain the vultures wing to,
While women wail and warriors revel!
Since you can find no God to cling to,
Worship some proud heroic Devil!’ . . .

Well, to my Tale—for I'm digressing
Most damnably, and space is pressing.

At times, indeed, despite the curse
Of Knowledge in him, my poor Hero,
Lord of his own Soul's universe,
Yet lone as Lapland, low as zero,
Felt childishly beatified,
Foolishly pious, tried to gulp a
Tear of repentance down, and cried—
‘Lord of the meek, forgive my pride,
O mea culpa! mea culpa!’
For even a Hero, one who deems
Himself the centre of Creation,
Who, proud of God's attention, beams
With self-approving admiration,
Is only clay! A great philosopher
Will often whimper on the sly,
And sceptics often try to cross over
The Bridge of Prayers that spans the Sky.
On moonlight nights, on Sabbath days,
When Earth herself lies still and prays
Rock'd in the sad Sea's quiv'ring arms,
And God's Hand, laid upon her breast,
'Mid folds of trembling darkness, charms
Her fears to momentary rest,
All creatures, proud or lowly, share
That dusky rapture of despair!
And now the Outcast who had sneer'd
At all the schemes of Earth and Heaven,
Who fear'd no wrath or tempest, feared
The peace, the joy, which God had given!
And gazing in that Maiden's eyes
Full of soft love and sad surmise,
He saw a starry radiance shine
That show'd him base, and her divine!
Ah, then he could have prayed, and wept,
Humble, and low, and spirit-sore—
But the mood pass'd, and o'er him crept
The cankering curse of pride once more.
Yet those were happy, happy days!
'Twas Eden tho' the Snake was there!
Eternal Summer shed its rays
O'er these still seas, thro' these green ways,
And all was primitive and fair!
Life grew so still and softly sweet
The rapturous heart scarce seemed to beat,
And sense and spirit seem'd to swoon
To the hot hush of one long Noon;
Sometimes thro' forest paths of green
They walk'd, and thro' the leafy sheen
O'erhead, beheld the bright skies grow
Miraculously white, like snow;
Or to some grotto's shade they came
And saw with slimy weeds o'ergrown
Some carven god without a name
Sit in the chillness all alone,
And on her face the little Maid
Fell for a space and softly prayed,
Then dipt her finger tips into
The cool green drops of sunless dew
That on the idol dript and fell,
And laid them on her lover's brow,
And seem'd to say, ‘Love, all is well—
He gives us both his blessing now!’
Sometimes upon the peaceful Sea
They paddled out in light canoes,
And floating softly, silently,
O'er deep cool voids of rainbow hues,
Saw far below them, far as was
The mirror'd heaven as smooth as glass,
Thro' soft translucent depths of dream,
Down, down, within the clear abysm,
Bright creatures of the Ocean gleam
And fade, like colours in the prism;—
There, rocked on crystal waves that were
As clear and shadowless as air,
They seem'd suspended near the sun
Between two Heavens that throb'd as one!
Sometimes they climb'd the peaks, and stood
Full in the moonlight's amber glood,
And saw the great stars as bright as gold
Steal breathless from the azure fold,
And like strange luminous living things
Move to their silent pasturings;
And down beneath them, far as gaze
Could see into the ocean-ways,
Such shapes as in a mirror shone,
And softly pasturing too, crept on!
And all around them on the heights
Eternity set beacon-lights,
And meteors, flashing suddenly,
Fell radiant from sky to sea,
While sadly as some heart bereaven
Throb'd the great luminous Heart of Heaven!

Almighty God, who out of clay
Fashioned us creatures of a day,
Who gave us vision to perceive,
And souls to wonder and believe,
How calmly, coldly, we behold
Thy daily marvels manifold!
Thy raiment-hem of glory sweeps
Across the darkness of the Deeps,
And quickens light and life, O God,
In all it touches, stone or clod—
And we . . . things of a day, an hour,
Accept the wonder as our dower,
And wearying of the splendour, lust
For darkening pleasures of the dust.
Tho' Thou hast girdled us around
With ecstasies of sight and sound,
Tho' all without us and within
Thy Thought takes form and adumbration,
Dark is the answer it doth win
From us, the waifs of Thy creation!
We cry for Miracles, and lo!
All Nature is illumed for us!
The sun, the stars, the flowers, the snow,
Change at Thy touch miraculous—
In vain, in vain, the Mystery,
We understand not, tho' we see,
And like sick children, turning thence,
Fret out our little sum of sense!
Yet sometimes to Thy touch we quicken
A moment, like that Man and Maiden,—
And while Thy wonders round us thicken
We pause and marvel, passion-laden,—
Then lifted in some air divine
High o'er this world to yonder Sky,
See, where Thy constellations shine,
The Darkness of Thy Face go by!
An instant only!—could the wonder
Last but another, then indeed
Our bonds of flesh were torn asunder,
And we were purified and freed—
But no!—the thrill celestial
Ceases and down to Earth we fall,
And coldly once again survey
Thy miracles of Night and Day!

Back to our lovers! Could I tell
Of all they felt and dream'd and thought,
How Love for ever changed the spell
That bound their spirits fever-fraught,
How night and day their lives were blent
In rapture and abandonment,
My song would never end!—the Hours
Flew by like maidens crown'd with flowers,
Each like the other dancing on,
Till many nights and days were gone,
How many—who can tell? Not I—
For in these passionate relations
We count not Time as it goes by,
But measure it by palpitations:
At last, we waken, and look back
Along the pleasant flowery track
By which we've journey'd, to discover
The flowers are flown, the leaves are dead;—
So, at least, was it with our Lover,
When his long honeymoon was over
And the first bloom of Love had fled.
And how it would have ended, whether
He would have stealthily departed,
Or roughly cut the tender tether
That held their sunny lives together,
And left the maiden broken-hearted,
I know not. Fate, the wild Witch-woman
Who thwarts the plans of all things human,
Came flying to that Isle so sunny
With imps of mischief in her train,
And changed Love's waning moon of honey
Into a baleful star of pain!