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

And is it well what one hath said?—
‘Ye who shall watch beside my bed,
Get music, not so much to swell
As to be half inaudible,
Around my agony. While ye wait
My passing through the shadowy gate,
Speak me no word articulate.

‘Touch for me, touch some tremulous chords—
Touch,—I am weary of all words—
Of hearing, be it e'er so sweet,
What hath capacity of deceit.
Let then my spirit on life's brink
Some undeceiving music drink,
And so it shall be well, I think.

182

‘Speak me no words—the poet sings
That all our human words have wings.
Ah! if those wings at times attain
A golden splash on their dark grain
From some blue sky-cleft far away,
They mostly wear the black or grey
That doth beseem the bird of prey.

‘Speak then no words—but some soft air
Play; as it scarcely ripples there,
Or, rather say, as its true wing
With silver over-shadowing
Throbs—and no more—my soul beneath
Shall pass without one troubled breath
From sleep to dreams, from dreams to death.

‘Wherefore be utter'd words kept far,
Such as may that dim music mar,
That exquisite vagueness finely brought,
A gentle anodyne to thought—
Speak me not any words, O friend!
At least one moment at life's end
I want to feel, not comprehend.’

183

II

How many words since speech began
Have issued from the lips of man?
How few with an undying chant
The gallery of our spirits haunt,
And with immortal meanings twined
More precious welcome ever find
From the deep heart of human-kind?

Words that ring on world without end,
Words that all woe and triumph blend—
Broken, yet fragments where we scan
Mirror'd the perfect God and man;
Words whereunto we deem that even
All power because all truth is given—
We count of all the dearest seven.

O kingly silence of our Lord!
O wordless wonder of the Word!
O hush, that makes, while Heav'n is mute,
Music supreme and absolute!
Silence—yet with a sevenfold stroke
Seven times a wondrous bell there broke
Upon the Cross, when Jesus spoke.

184

One word, one priestly word, He saith—
The advocacy of the death,
The intercession by the Throne,
Wordless beginneth with that tone.
All the long music of the plea
That ever mediates for me
Is set upon the selfsame key.

One royal word—though love prevails
To hold Him faster than the nails,
And though the dying lips are white
As foam seen through the dusk of night:
That hand doth Paradise unbar,
Those pale lips tell of worlds afar
Where perfect absolutions are.

One word, one human word—we lift
Our adoration for the gift
Which proves that, dying, well He knew
Our very nature through and through.
Silver the Lord hath not, nor gold,
Yet His great legacy behold—
The Virgin to the virgin-soul'd.

185

Three hours of an unfathom'd pain,
Of drops falling like summer rain,
The earthquake dark like an eclipse—
Three hours the pale and dying lips
By their mysterious silence teach
Things far more beautiful than speech
In depth or height can ever reach.

One word, the Eli twice wail'd o'er—
'Tis anguish, but 'tis something more,
Mysteriously the whole world's sin,
His and not His, is blended in.
It is a broken heart whose prayer
Crieth as from an altar-stair
To One who is, and is not, there.

One word, one gentle word. In pain
He condescendeth to complain—
Burning, from whose sweet will are born
The dewinesses of the morn.
The Fountain which is last and first,
The Fountain whence life's river burst,
The Fountain waileth out, ‘I thirst.’

186

One royal word of glorious thought,
A hundred threads are interwrought
In it—the thirty years and three,
The bitter travail of the Tree,
Are finished—finished, too, we scan
All types and prophecies—the plan
Of the long history of man.

One word, one happy word—we note
The clouds over Calvary float
In distances, till fleck or spot
In the immaculate sky is not;
And on the Cross peace falls like balm;
And the Lord's soul is yet more calm
Than the commendo of His psalm.

III

Word of the Priest, the one forgiver,
Word of the atonement wrought for ever,
Of Him who bore in depths unknown
The burden that was not His own;
Word of the human son and friend
That doth true human love commend
Until humanity shall end;

187

Word that bestow'd in one brief breath
The double gift of life and death—
Death to the sufferer sweet surprise,
Life in the lawns of Paradise;
Word in the passion-palm once writ,
And lo! earth's waters all are lit
Now with pathetic touch of it;

Word that breathes forth for aye sithence
Record of more than innocence,
The full assurance reach'd at length,
The laying hold upon a strength—
The resignation sweet and grand
Of self into a Father's hand.
Quietly passing from this land,

Be more to me at last, O words,
Than all that trembles from the chords!
Words that have no deceit or hate,
Be with me dying—I can wait,
If ye be with me on that day,
If your sweet strength within me stay,
A little for the harps to play.