After Paradise or Legends of Exile With Other Poems: By Robert, Earl of Lytton (Owen Meredith) |
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| STRANGERS.
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 | After Paradise or Legends of Exile |  |
208
STRANGERS.
(A RHAPSODY.)
Children are born, about whose lucid brows
The blue veins, visibly meandering, stream
Transparent: children in whose wistful eyes
Are looks like lost dumb creatures in a crowd,
That roam, and search, and find not what they seek.
These children are life's aliens. The wise nurse
Shakes her head, murmuring “They will not live!”
A piteous prophecy, yet best for them
The death that, pitifully premature,
Remits the pitiless penalty of birth;
Letting the lost ones steal away unhurt,
Because unnoticed, from a world not theirs.
The blue veins, visibly meandering, stream
Transparent: children in whose wistful eyes
Are looks like lost dumb creatures in a crowd,
That roam, and search, and find not what they seek.
These children are life's aliens. The wise nurse
Shakes her head, murmuring “They will not live!”
A piteous prophecy, yet best for them
The death that, pitifully premature,
Remits the pitiless penalty of birth;
Letting the lost ones steal away unhurt,
Because unnoticed, from a world not theirs.
Strangers and star-born strayaways forlorn,
Who come so careless of the outlandish wealth
You carry with you, dropping as you go
Treasures beyond the reach of Orient Kings,
What seek you here where your unvalued gifts
Shall leave you beggars for an alms denied?
Earth yields not their equivalent. No field
So profitless but some poor price it hath;
A spurious picture or a spavin'd horse
May find in time their willing purchasers;
But never for its worth shall you exchange
A soul's unmarketable opulence.
And when at last, of those who (unenrich'd
By your impovrishment) the gift forget,
Your thirst and hunger crave a broken crust,
A drop of water from the wayside well,
Stripes shall correct such importunities.
209
You carry with you, dropping as you go
Treasures beyond the reach of Orient Kings,
What seek you here where your unvalued gifts
Shall leave you beggars for an alms denied?
Earth yields not their equivalent. No field
So profitless but some poor price it hath;
A spurious picture or a spavin'd horse
May find in time their willing purchasers;
But never for its worth shall you exchange
A soul's unmarketable opulence.
And when at last, of those who (unenrich'd
By your impovrishment) the gift forget,
Your thirst and hunger crave a broken crust,
A drop of water from the wayside well,
Stripes shall correct such importunities.
Linger not! live not! give not! Hide your gifts,
Ungiven, deeper than Remembrance digs
Among the haunted ruins she explores
For riches lost. And if abrupt mischance
Their buried store reveal, without a blush
Disown it, for a lie may sometimes save
A miser's life. The truth would serve as well,
Were truth not unbelievable; for, stored
In coin not current here and gems unprized,
Your treasures are worth nothing to the wretch
They tempt to make them, by a murder, his.
But this the assassins know not, and ill-arm'd,
Ill-arm'd and worse than weaponless, are you!
To whose inefficacious grasp was given
In solemn mockery the seraphic sword
That only archangelic hands can hold.
Your own have clutch'd it by the burning blade,
And, when you wield it, 'tis yourselves you wound. [OMITTED]
Ungiven, deeper than Remembrance digs
210
For riches lost. And if abrupt mischance
Their buried store reveal, without a blush
Disown it, for a lie may sometimes save
A miser's life. The truth would serve as well,
Were truth not unbelievable; for, stored
In coin not current here and gems unprized,
Your treasures are worth nothing to the wretch
They tempt to make them, by a murder, his.
But this the assassins know not, and ill-arm'd,
Ill-arm'd and worse than weaponless, are you!
To whose inefficacious grasp was given
In solemn mockery the seraphic sword
That only archangelic hands can hold.
Your own have clutch'd it by the burning blade,
And, when you wield it, 'tis yourselves you wound. [OMITTED]
211
You that have Feeling, think you to have all?
Poor fools, and you have absolutely nought!
In reckonings of this world's arithmetic
Everything else is something by itself,
Feeling alone is nothing. Could you add
That nothing to what counts for anything,
Forthwith a tenfold potency perchance
The unreckonable zero might bestow
Upon the reckon'd unit. But what boots
A value so vicarious?
Poor fools, and you have absolutely nought!
In reckonings of this world's arithmetic
Everything else is something by itself,
Feeling alone is nothing. Could you add
That nothing to what counts for anything,
Forthwith a tenfold potency perchance
The unreckonable zero might bestow
Upon the reckon'd unit. But what boots
A value so vicarious?
Yours the spell
Whose all-transfigurating sorceries
Convert the dust man grovels in to gold;
Robing the pauper royal in the pomp
Of princely exultations, changing night
To morning, death to life, the wilderness
To paradise; beatifying pain,
Cleansing impurity, and strewing thick
The gulphs of Hell with starry gleams of Heaven.
But use it not! Unsanction'd miracles
Are sentenced sins. Writ large for all to read,
About the world's street corners Reason posts
“Beware of the Miraculous!” Whereto
Prudence appends, the placard to complete,
“Miracles are forbidden!” Use it not,
Your gift unblest! Lo, Virtue's High Priest comes,
Calls the Sanhedrim's long-phylacteried train,
Consults the scriptured scrolls, within them finds
No warrant for the wonders you perform,
And them and you doth anathematise.
Whose all-transfigurating sorceries
Convert the dust man grovels in to gold;
Robing the pauper royal in the pomp
Of princely exultations, changing night
To morning, death to life, the wilderness
To paradise; beatifying pain,
Cleansing impurity, and strewing thick
212
But use it not! Unsanction'd miracles
Are sentenced sins. Writ large for all to read,
About the world's street corners Reason posts
“Beware of the Miraculous!” Whereto
Prudence appends, the placard to complete,
“Miracles are forbidden!” Use it not,
Your gift unblest! Lo, Virtue's High Priest comes,
Calls the Sanhedrim's long-phylacteried train,
Consults the scriptured scrolls, within them finds
No warrant for the wonders you perform,
And them and you doth anathematise.
Linger not! live not! give not! All your gifts
Shall turn to stones and scourges in the hands
That crave them, and to live is to be lost.
Shall turn to stones and scourges in the hands
That crave them, and to live is to be lost.
213
Thou starry snowflake, whose still flight transforms
The frozen crystal's constellated crown
To an ethereal feather, seek not here,
Celestial stranger, seek not here on earth,
Where Purity were nameless but for thee,
The warmth that wastes, the fervours that defile!
Upon our wither'd branches hang not thou
Thy votive wreaths, nor our bleak paths invest
With thy pale presence! Vainly dost thou cling
About our fasten'd casements, vainly spread
So close beside our doors thy spotless couch.
Behind them dwells Ingratitude. The voice
That welcomed thine arrival will anon
Resent thy lingering, and exclaim “Enough!”
Trust not the looks that smile, the lips that sigh,
“I love thee!” For to-day those words mean “Come!”
To-morrow “Go!” Men's words are numberless,
And yet in man's speech only the same word
Means “No” to-morrow that meant “Yes” to-day.
The frozen crystal's constellated crown
To an ethereal feather, seek not here,
Celestial stranger, seek not here on earth,
Where Purity were nameless but for thee,
The warmth that wastes, the fervours that defile!
Upon our wither'd branches hang not thou
Thy votive wreaths, nor our bleak paths invest
With thy pale presence! Vainly dost thou cling
About our fasten'd casements, vainly spread
So close beside our doors thy spotless couch.
Behind them dwells Ingratitude. The voice
That welcomed thine arrival will anon
Resent thy lingering, and exclaim “Enough!”
Trust not the looks that smile, the lips that sigh,
“I love thee!” For to-day those words mean “Come!”
To-morrow “Go!” Men's words are numberless,
And yet in man's speech only the same word
214
Linger not, live not, give not, you forlorn
Gift-laden strangers! With your gifts ungiven,
And so at least undesecrated, die! [OMITTED]
Gift-laden strangers! With your gifts ungiven,
And so at least undesecrated, die! [OMITTED]
What fills with such invincibility
The frail seed striving thro' the stubborn soil?
The sun so long one herbless spot caress'd,
That in the darkling germ beneath it stirr'd
A tender trouble, and that trouble seem'd
A promise. “Can it be, the Sun himself
Hath sought me? He so glorious, he so great,
And I so dark, so insignificant!
Dear Sun, with all the strength thy love reveal'd,
Responding to thy summons, I am here!”
And the rich life of granaried Lybia glows
Revelling already in a single grain.
The frail seed striving thro' the stubborn soil?
The sun so long one herbless spot caress'd,
That in the darkling germ beneath it stirr'd
A tender trouble, and that trouble seem'd
A promise. “Can it be, the Sun himself
Hath sought me? He so glorious, he so great,
And I so dark, so insignificant!
Dear Sun, with all the strength thy love reveal'd,
Responding to thy summons, I am here!”
215
Revelling already in a single grain.
Doth the Sun answer, “Little one, too much
Thou hast responded, now respond no more”?
No, for throughout the illimitable heights
And deeps of boundless Being, to attain
It scarce suffices, at the most and best,
To tend beyond the unattainable,
And too much love is still not love enough.
The Sun may set, but all his rising wrought
To life's enraptured consciousness remains.
The Sun disowns not, even when he deserts,
What he put forth his fervours to evoke.
Man's love alone its doing disavows,
And makes denial of its dearest deed. [OMITTED]
Thou hast responded, now respond no more”?
No, for throughout the illimitable heights
And deeps of boundless Being, to attain
It scarce suffices, at the most and best,
To tend beyond the unattainable,
And too much love is still not love enough.
The Sun may set, but all his rising wrought
To life's enraptured consciousness remains.
The Sun disowns not, even when he deserts,
What he put forth his fervours to evoke.
Man's love alone its doing disavows,
And makes denial of its dearest deed. [OMITTED]
216
Beneath a dead bird's long-uncared-for cage,
That hangs forgotten in the cloister'd court
Of some lone uninhabitable house,
From the chink'd pavement slowly creeping comes
A thin weak stem that opens like a heart,
And puts forth tenderly two tiny hands
Of benediction to that cage forlorn,
Then dies, as tho' its little life had done
All it was born to do. The flint-set earth
Requites the dead bird's gift—one casual seed,
And from her stony breast a blossom blows.
That hangs forgotten in the cloister'd court
Of some lone uninhabitable house,
From the chink'd pavement slowly creeping comes
A thin weak stem that opens like a heart,
And puts forth tenderly two tiny hands
Of benediction to that cage forlorn,
Then dies, as tho' its little life had done
All it was born to do. The flint-set earth
Requites the dead bird's gift—one casual seed,
And from her stony breast a blossom blows.
But, pouring forth Uranian star-seed, strew
Incipient heavens thro' all the hollowness
Of human gratitude for gifts divine,
And nothing from the sowing of such seed
Shall blossom but the bitterness of death. [OMITTED]
Incipient heavens thro' all the hollowness
Of human gratitude for gifts divine,
And nothing from the sowing of such seed
Shall blossom but the bitterness of death. [OMITTED]
217
The sun-led seasons, the revolving years,
Day with his glory, night with all her stars,
The present, and the future, and the past,
And earth, and heaven, should but a bauble be!
The unvalued gift of an extravagant soul,
Given undemanded, broken by a breath,
The sport of one exorbitant desire,
The easy spoil of one minute mischance,
And all for nothing! What? the unheedful flint
Spares room to house the blossom that requites
A chance seed fallen from a dead bird's cage,
And nothing, nothing, in the long long years,
That bring to other losses soon or late
The loss of loss remember'd, shall arise?
Nothing, not even a penitential tear,
A fleeting sigh, a momentary smile,
The benediction of a passing thought
218
The quite-forgotten gift of too much love! [OMITTED]
All other loss comparison avails
To lessen, and all other ills worse ill
May mitigate. Defeated monarchs find
Cold comfort left in Cæsar's legions lost:
The ruin'd merchant in the bankrupt State:
The bedless beggar in the bed-rid lord.
The sight of Niobe dries many tears,
And by the side of open graves are graves
Long seal'd, like old wounds cicatrised by time.
But this is an immitigable ill,
A lastingly incomparable loss,
A forfeiture of refuge that exiles
Its victim even from the lonest lodge
219
Commiserate each other. The excess
Of one o'erweening moment hath ursurpt
The whole dominion of eternity;
Yet even the usurpation was a fraud,
For what seem'd all was nothing; and its dupes,
Who mourn that moment's loss, have with it lost
The right to say that it was ever theirs. [OMITTED]
Sceptic, approach and, into this abysm
Of torment gazing, tremblingly believe!
Behold in Hell the soul's appalling proof
Of her dread immortality! What else
Could for a moment undestroy'd endure
The least of such annihilating pangs?
Transmute them into corporal sufferings. Hurl
Their victim from the visionary top
Of some sky'd tower, and on its flinted base
Shatter his crumpled carcass: if the heart
Still beats, lay bare each lacerated nerve
And sear with scorching steel the sensitive flesh:
Or lift the bleeding ruins of the wretch,
Lay them in down, bandage with cruel care
The broken limbs, and nurse to life again
Their swooning anguish: then from eyes that burn
Chase slumber, and to lips that parch deny
Release from thirst. It boots not! Flesh and blood
Death to his painless sanctuary takes,
And life's material mechanism stops.
The first pang is the last. But all these pangs
(And add to these what worse, if worse there be,
The torturer's teeming art hath yet devised)
Attain not the tenth part of those endured
Without cessation by the soul that loves,
When love is only suffering. What escape,
What refuge, from self-torment hath the soul?
Or what for love is left unoverthrown
By love's own overthrow?
Of torment gazing, tremblingly believe!
Behold in Hell the soul's appalling proof
Of her dread immortality! What else
Could for a moment undestroy'd endure
The least of such annihilating pangs?
Transmute them into corporal sufferings. Hurl
220
Of some sky'd tower, and on its flinted base
Shatter his crumpled carcass: if the heart
Still beats, lay bare each lacerated nerve
And sear with scorching steel the sensitive flesh:
Or lift the bleeding ruins of the wretch,
Lay them in down, bandage with cruel care
The broken limbs, and nurse to life again
Their swooning anguish: then from eyes that burn
Chase slumber, and to lips that parch deny
Release from thirst. It boots not! Flesh and blood
Death to his painless sanctuary takes,
And life's material mechanism stops.
The first pang is the last. But all these pangs
(And add to these what worse, if worse there be,
The torturer's teeming art hath yet devised)
Attain not the tenth part of those endured
Without cessation by the soul that loves,
221
What refuge, from self-torment hath the soul?
Or what for love is left unoverthrown
By love's own overthrow?
The growth of love,
Outgrowing the wide girdle of the world,
Hath in itself absorb'd sun, moon, and stars,
Life, Death, and Thought's illimitable realm,
Leaving in Time no moment, and in Space
No point, its omnipresence kindles not
To palpitant incandescence—and what then?
A word, nay not so much, a breath unbreathed,
A look, and all this universe of love,
Cramm'd with the curse of Tantalus, becomes
A pitiless infinitude of fierce
Importunate impossibilities,
Where nothing is but what may never be. [OMITTED]
Outgrowing the wide girdle of the world,
Hath in itself absorb'd sun, moon, and stars,
Life, Death, and Thought's illimitable realm,
Leaving in Time no moment, and in Space
No point, its omnipresence kindles not
To palpitant incandescence—and what then?
A word, nay not so much, a breath unbreathed,
A look, and all this universe of love,
Cramm'd with the curse of Tantalus, becomes
A pitiless infinitude of fierce
Importunate impossibilities,
Where nothing is but what may never be. [OMITTED]
222
Among the ruins of a world destroy'd
What art thou seeking? Its destroyer? Look!
He stands before thee. And thou knowst him not.
The traitor of thy perisht universe
Hath perisht with it. Nay, that world and he,
Whose creature and creator was thyself,
Save in thyself existed not. Away,
Disown'd survivor of what never was! [OMITTED]
There is a sigh that hath no audible sound,
And, like a ghost that hath no visible form,
Breathing unheard thro' solitudes unseen,
Its presence haunts the Desert of the Heart.
Fata Morgana! Fair Enchantress, Queen
Of all that ever-quivering quietness,
There dost thou dreaming dwell, and there create
Those fervid desolations of delight,
Where dwell with thee the joys that never were!
And, like a ghost that hath no visible form,
Breathing unheard thro' solitudes unseen,
223
Fata Morgana! Fair Enchantress, Queen
Of all that ever-quivering quietness,
There dost thou dreaming dwell, and there create
Those fervid desolations of delight,
Where dwell with thee the joys that never were!
And, when in darkness fades the phantom scene,
The wizard stars that nightly trembling light
That undiscover'd loneliness are looks
From eyes that love no longer. All the winds
That whisper there are breaths of broken vows
And perjured promises. The pale mirage
That haunts the simmering hyaline above
Is all the work of ghosts, and its bright wastes
Teem with fantastic specters of the swoons
Of prostrate passions, hopes become despairs,
And dreams of bliss unblest. In that weird sky
There is no peace, but a perpetual trance
Of torturous ecstasy. Vext multitudes
Of frantic apparitions mingle there,
And part, and vanish, waving vaporous arms
Of supplication—to each other lured,
And by each other pantingly repulsed.
The goblin picture of a passionate world
Painted on nothingness! And all the sands,
Heaved by the sultry sighings of the heart
Of this unquietable solitude,
Are waves that everlastingly roll on
O'er wrecks deep-sunken in a shoreless sea
Whose bed is vast oblivion. Out of sight,
Into that sea's abysmal bosom pour'd,
Flow all desires unsatisfied, all pains
Unpitied, all affections unfulfill'd,
And sighs, and tears, and smiles misunderstood.
The wizard stars that nightly trembling light
That undiscover'd loneliness are looks
From eyes that love no longer. All the winds
That whisper there are breaths of broken vows
And perjured promises. The pale mirage
That haunts the simmering hyaline above
Is all the work of ghosts, and its bright wastes
Teem with fantastic specters of the swoons
Of prostrate passions, hopes become despairs,
And dreams of bliss unblest. In that weird sky
224
Of torturous ecstasy. Vext multitudes
Of frantic apparitions mingle there,
And part, and vanish, waving vaporous arms
Of supplication—to each other lured,
And by each other pantingly repulsed.
The goblin picture of a passionate world
Painted on nothingness! And all the sands,
Heaved by the sultry sighings of the heart
Of this unquietable solitude,
Are waves that everlastingly roll on
O'er wrecks deep-sunken in a shoreless sea
Whose bed is vast oblivion. Out of sight,
Into that sea's abysmal bosom pour'd,
Flow all desires unsatisfied, all pains
Unpitied, all affections unfulfill'd,
And sighs, and tears, and smiles misunderstood.
There all the adventurous argosies that sail'd
In search of undiscover'd worlds, reduced
To undiscoverable wrecks, remain.
And there perchance, at last, no more estranged
From all around them, since not stranger they
Than all things else, where all things else are strange.
In that wide strangeness unrejected rest
The world's rejected strangers—loves unloved,
And lives unlived, and longings unappeased.
225
To undiscoverable wrecks, remain.
And there perchance, at last, no more estranged
From all around them, since not stranger they
Than all things else, where all things else are strange.
In that wide strangeness unrejected rest
The world's rejected strangers—loves unloved,
And lives unlived, and longings unappeased.
| After Paradise or Legends of Exile | |