The Finding of The Book and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

In the Indian dawn
Many a long, voluminous fold,
Vicious blue and viscous gold,
Twenty living feet of hell,
Glides a snake into the grass
From an old tree in the dell.
Hush! and if thou wilt behold
Vibrant tongue and fang of fire
Through the woodland and the lawn,
Loathlier than by poet drawn,
Yet possessing the strange spell
That doth fascinate too well,

To yon forest, higher, higher,
Let the anaconda pass.
Front not thou that fell small eye,
Lest thou die.

II

In the season's fulness
Out a certain volume came—
Flash and fineness, serpents' flame,
Tints that glitter and enthrall,
Lit it with the rich surprise
Of the art rhetorical.
Fire it had and epigram,
Many a plausible ‘perhaps’;
Finite scales for infinite maps;
Perfect hatred's perfect coolness;
Poetry sometimes, never dulness;
Pictured words which coloured lies
Cast, fantastic fallacies.
Through those painted panes, the eyes;
That one sinless and august
Figure of the Perfect Just,
Crown'd in half-admiring scorn
With a fresh acanthus-thorn,

Patronised with knowing nods
Of a connoisseur of gods;
Doubts well scatter'd if a known
And real God hath any throne;
Lofty words for low surmises,
Mean in beautiful disguises.
Faith! that fatal book pass by,
Lest thou die.

III

In the Indian morn
Out a gallant boy there went,
Archer of the orient.
Young, at the young day he laughed—
Blue heaven smiled on his intent.
Shafts his quiver did contain,
And a death in every shaft;
In his hand his bow was bent,
The long worm rais'd long back, lit head.
Soon his mother came forlorn;
Dead with small stab, as of thorn,
Saw her boy by the serpent, dead,
With an arrow of his craft,
With a sharp and wingèd shaft,
Fastened in its evil brain.

What cared she?—Our darlings slain
Live not with our life again.
What cared she?—Her hunter lay
Dead that day.

IV

In his gentle wrath
One of Christ's young soldiers took
All the peril of that book;
Feared not for the fulgent skin,
Slew the serpent of its thought,
Triumph, as it seemed, did win—
Pen and page of poison! Look,
Strange and terrible surprise!
Something has pierced in of death,
Some fang stricken life's first faith.
All the childlike has passed out
With the small black stab of doubt.
Films are o'er the dewy eyes,
Life's first sweet credulities
Faded under summer skies.
Mother weeps for graces dead,
And will not be comforted.
By the book it overthrew
Faith died too.

V

Make not mourning longer—
Resurrection follows death.
A regenerated Faith
Like the first, but fairer much,
Like the first, but grander, stronger,
Rises where the first fell down—
Proof against the poison'd touch,
Proof against the serpent's tooth.
Broader brow the Risen hath,
Vaster amplitudes of truth;
Understands the peril wholly,
Faces foes more fully seen,
Wider, wiser, more serene,
With a hopeful melancholy.
Mourn not, therefore, overmuch,
Though the child-faith's death be such—
Stronger faith wins starrier crown.
Gone the boy's free thoughtless laughter,
Man's grave smile shall come thereafter,
As he walks contented out
From the shadow of his doubt,
Frosty sunshine round about.

Faith hath her own tonic light—
Faith in Pity infinite
For the infinite pathos found
In our human life all round,
By the God who at its centre
That most sorrowful life did enter,
From it gently feeling thence
Round the vast circumference—
For the first faith, fair and bold,
But by knowledge uncontrolled,
Be consoled.

This poem was written shortly after the appearance of M. Renan's Vie de Jésus, and attempts to convey the author's first impression of that extraordinary performance. The incident of the youth and the snake was read in a volume of travels, but he has not preserved his reference.