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2
An Essay in a Brief Model
ARGUMENT
Humanity, having discarded his assumed grandeur, laments life and invokes death. Religion hastens to comfort him and declares that he is suffering the punishment of sin. Humanity objects that his affliction far outweighs his wickedness. His friend maintains that even the most blameless life is full of sin in the sight of God. To this Humanity answers that, in that case, sin is unavoidable and continued pardon impossible. Religion still asserts that pain is an invitation to seek peace in repentance. The sufferer, however, feels that nothing can bring him peace but an explanation of the justice and design of introducing sin and pain into the world. Religion deprecates his pride and urges him, instead of vexing his soul with inscrutable mysteries, to profit by the truths that have been revealed. But Humanity exclaims that he has always been the proper object of Revelation, and that as at the beginning he was enlightened by the Fall, he now yearns for a second illumination, even at the cost of another curse. Religion rejoins that happiness can only be attained by submission to the will of God, and not by knowledge of his design, which has been purposely placed beyond Man's reach. But Humanity, by virtue of his divine ancestry and participation with the divine nature, knows of a surety that all disingenuousness, however excellent its motive, is hateful to God. He therefore boldly confesses his belief that pain cannot be divided into separate kinds; but that it is a homogeneous evil, for which God (that is to say, the God of Religion) must be responsible. He taxes Religion with a secret inclination to think as he does, and taunts him with not daring to say so openly. For himself he boasts a far greater and nobler faith. He regards the Cosmos as a true reflection of the divine nature, but so disintegrated in its passage through the mind of Man, as to present phenomena, to whose corresponding qualities in the Godhead there is no remaining clue. Nevertheless, nothing will induce him to pretend that even this view destroys God's apparent responsibility for the relative construction of Mind and World that has resulted in the phenomena of sin and pain; and he again bitterly deplores his ignorance. Whereupon Religion, seeing that his friend persists in impious and unrepentant curiosity, after a final adjuration to rebel no more against the august disposals of Providence, reluctantly leaves him to his impenitence; but promises to return, whenever Humanity may require his ghostly comfort.
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“Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem
too profuse to give any certain account of what the mind
at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing. hath
liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and
hardest attempting; whether that epic form whereof the
two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and
Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief model!
or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be
kept, or nature to be followed, which in them that know
art and use judgment is no transgression but an enriching
of art.”
The Reason of Church Government.—Milton.
Ελαφρον οστις πηματων εξω ποδα
εχει παραινειν νουθετειν τε τον κακως
πρασσοντ': εγω δε ταυθ' απαντ' ηπισταμην.
Aeschylus.—Prometheus Vinctus (263—265)
εχει παραινειν νουθετειν τε τον κακως
πρασσοντ': εγω δε ταυθ' απαντ' ηπισταμην.
Aeschylus.—Prometheus Vinctus (263—265)
Without the gate, where ruinous Ages heap
Their ashes, and the World casts forth her waste,
Humanity lay prone; from sole to crown
Smitten with leprous blains; defiled with tears,
And racked with throes of lamentable thought.
Long had he striven with Nature; much achieved;
First wresting from her clenched, reluctant hand
The flock, the vineyard, and the harvest field;
Then cities, with their barter and exchange,
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Their ordinance and law 'twixt man and man;
And last, fierce forces, tortured to betray
Such secrets as a wizard hardly spies
In crystal dream, or dreaming, when he wakes
Derides exulting, saner than his dream,—
Purveyors, these, of luxury, the pomp
Of purple and fine linen, and the forms
Of sensuous harmony in sight or sound;
Artificers of all the mingled means
Of large dominion, whether virtue, vice,
Or law or license; affluent Afreets,
Slaves of the lamp of intellectual lust.
But now prosperity and pride were past;
Not like a joy renounced, that still we love,
But like a joy discarded, that we loathe.
His vines brought forth the drunkard, and the babe
Whose veins with venomous infection run
Of villainous impulse from its birth; his corn
Became as manna, surfeiting the rich,
Beyond the favoured precincts rarely strewn;
Around his isles of civic opulence foamed
Amarous fringes of neglected lives;
And more and more the shambles fed the feast.
Nor utmost skill, that rode upon the sun,
Or reined the sinuous lightning, could avail
To bear Love's message to the central cell
Of mammon's brain; but ministered the more
By subtler instruments to subtler need
Of reckless arrogance and ruthless greed.
Therefore Humanity had shed his robes,
The gaudy veils and trappings of disease,
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As if a butterfly should cast her wings
And turn, reversely, to a shrouded worm.
“Here let me lie,” he said within himself,
“Unto the Doom; a figure set aside,
Till God compute the fluxion of the World.”
To him repaired (for rumour ran abroad)
Religion, most loquacious of his friends
And close companion of his youth; o'erfraught
With consolation, like a leathern bottle
Swollen with the ripening vintage of the South;
Yet watched that ruined greatness, overawed,
In silence, all day long; nor dared affront
The dignity of woe with puppet words;
For grief's great stature dwarfs the loftiest theme.
Now sink the winds; the gorgeous track of eve
Is flooded o'er with darkness' flowing tide;
Now wearily turns tired Earth from taskful Day
And nestling in the lap of Night, who croons
Low lullabies of unrecorded song,
Babbles to the dangling stars. Love's opal, first,
Clasped on the Virgin's brow; conjunction strange!
Arcturus next, pre-eminently bright;
And pale Capella, Northern ocean's pearl,
Opposing red Antares; then Altair,
Vega, uncertain Spica, Regulus;
Each in his constellation high embossed;
And many a kin-born gem. The sufferer feels
Sweet influence fall, forceful to loose the voice
Even of ungarrulous grief; and half reclined
On his vile pallet, vehemently complains:—
“Where is the consummation of my birth?
Or what interpretation of design
Did my conception carry? All my years
Accommodate distress; for wisdom blights
The flower of gladness, not the seed of grief,
And larger knowledge breeds not fewer lusts,
But more, and more importunate.
Is flooded o'er with darkness' flowing tide;
Now wearily turns tired Earth from taskful Day
And nestling in the lap of Night, who croons
Low lullabies of unrecorded song,
Babbles to the dangling stars. Love's opal, first,
Clasped on the Virgin's brow; conjunction strange!
Arcturus next, pre-eminently bright;
And pale Capella, Northern ocean's pearl,
Opposing red Antares; then Altair,
Vega, uncertain Spica, Regulus;
Each in his constellation high embossed;
And many a kin-born gem. The sufferer feels
Sweet influence fall, forceful to loose the voice
Even of ungarrulous grief; and half reclined
On his vile pallet, vehemently complains:—
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Or what interpretation of design
Did my conception carry? All my years
Accommodate distress; for wisdom blights
The flower of gladness, not the seed of grief,
And larger knowledge breeds not fewer lusts,
But more, and more importunate.
O Light!
O warmly radiating, humid Air!
I curse ye! Hateful ministers of Life!
Why did ye penetrate the sealed abyss,
Where, folded in its wintry sleep, reposed
This hideous worm of Being, predoomed to crawl
For ever o'er waste places, seeking rest
And finding none; imperilled and distressed;
For ruthless foes inadequately armed?
O foolish Earth! 'tis time to wean thy child!
O warmly radiating, humid Air!
I curse ye! Hateful ministers of Life!
Why did ye penetrate the sealed abyss,
Where, folded in its wintry sleep, reposed
This hideous worm of Being, predoomed to crawl
For ever o'er waste places, seeking rest
And finding none; imperilled and distressed;
For ruthless foes inadequately armed?
When have thy soft pretences brought him peace?
When have thy tinselled playthings staunched his tears?
Why nourish the corruption of his blood,—
The death that creeps from artery back to vein,
From vein to artery back, in irritant round?
Or why not nourish it to more mature
And lustier virulence, until it fang
This immortality, that daily dies,
Beyond pursuit of every poison-bane!”
Religion, freed from silence, now approached,
With jewelled fingers touched the sorrower's arm,
And ventured thus:—
With jewelled fingers touched the sorrower's arm,
And ventured thus:—
“My once familiar friend,
Too long a stranger! Deem it not unkind
That balm of comfort has been long delayed;
The abundance proffered now shall make amends.
Afflictions fall not from malignant clouds
And troubles rise not from malarious meads,
Like blight or murrain, prevalent to strew
Our pastures with fond yearlings of the flock,
Our pleasure-plots and orchards of content
With blossoms of sweet promises denied.
Pain is the child of foul-fermenting sin,
As pestilence of filth; a chastisement
Inherent in transgression; the divine,
Inevitable sanction of a law
Whose execution is not left infirm,
Since breach and penalty are seed and fruit.
Recall the long commission of thy crimes!
Too long a stranger! Deem it not unkind
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The abundance proffered now shall make amends.
Afflictions fall not from malignant clouds
And troubles rise not from malarious meads,
Like blight or murrain, prevalent to strew
Our pastures with fond yearlings of the flock,
Our pleasure-plots and orchards of content
With blossoms of sweet promises denied.
Pain is the child of foul-fermenting sin,
As pestilence of filth; a chastisement
Inherent in transgression; the divine,
Inevitable sanction of a law
Whose execution is not left infirm,
Since breach and penalty are seed and fruit.
Iniquities enormous as the sea
And multitudinous as sea-borne sand!
Remember thy rejection of the voice
Whose constant warning to thine inmost ear
Wails, as a strangled babe about the house
Where it was murdered! How that bodeful cry
Besieges the barred entrance of thy soul
Obdurate, obstinate! . . .”
But the other turned,
Protesting:—
Protesting:—
“Whether penalty and pollution
Equally poise the apparent heavenly scales,
Appeal to God! The waters of my woe
Have long o'erflown the channel of my guilt
And spread through every ‘orchard of content’
With evil inundation. If they lapse,
With ebbing time, from hills and uplands green,
Where hoar tradition holds a holier sway,
There, even there, the fields with desolate pools
They fret, or patch the meadows with morass.
Suppose the record of my crimes declared;
Equally poise the apparent heavenly scales,
Appeal to God! The waters of my woe
Have long o'erflown the channel of my guilt
And spread through every ‘orchard of content’
With evil inundation. If they lapse,
With ebbing time, from hills and uplands green,
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There, even there, the fields with desolate pools
They fret, or patch the meadows with morass.
That malice to the medley added faults
Of ignorance, omission, and the breach
Of laws that are themselves the breach of Law
Divine; and wrath, deserved or undeserved,
Accumulated sentence passed;—oh! still
My present misery would exceed the tale
In magnitude, in mastery would exceed!”
Religion answered:—
“Conscience contradicts.
What part of Man is pure before the God
To whom the light of heaven is full of motes,
To whom archangels are not folly-free,
Nor any vestal spirit immaculate?
What part of Man, whose house is built of clay,—
A shadow, and ephemeral as the moth?”
What part of Man is pure before the God
To whom the light of heaven is full of motes,
To whom archangels are not folly-free,
Nor any vestal spirit immaculate?
What part of Man, whose house is built of clay,—
A shadow, and ephemeral as the moth?”
Then groaned Humanity:—
“I would to God
My insignificance were cloud or cope
To shelter me from his intense regard!
Sieged on the dais of the empyrean,
Aloof, He holds interminable assize
And sears me, sears me with continuous gaze,
My Judge and my Accuser! Who shall dare
Defend me? Who shall arbitrate a mean?
The righteousness of Enoch, rapt to heaven,
Fair David's favour, dear Disciples' love
Crumble to ashes before his fierce assay!
Were every murder-mark that smears my hands
Obliterate, could chrismal torrents lave
My tainted blood, or could my flesh become
A little child's, He still would hold me foul
And pierce my marrow with remedial pain!
O innocence impossible! O sin,
My insignificance were cloud or cope
To shelter me from his intense regard!
Sieged on the dais of the empyrean,
Aloof, He holds interminable assize
And sears me, sears me with continuous gaze,
My Judge and my Accuser! Who shall dare
Defend me? Who shall arbitrate a mean?
The righteousness of Enoch, rapt to heaven,
Fair David's favour, dear Disciples' love
Crumble to ashes before his fierce assay!
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Obliterate, could chrismal torrents lave
My tainted blood, or could my flesh become
A little child's, He still would hold me foul
And pierce my marrow with remedial pain!
The flaunting efflorescence of a root
By me not planted, though I pluck the fruit!
Pursue, thou Holy One, pursue no more
The withered leaflet with relentless wind!
Why show thyself so marvellous? Why hunt me
With monstrous persecutions, host on host
Launching of unavoidable dismay?
Wilt Thou award eternal guilt, because
Thy creature is not guiltless as Thyself?
Is not the path I tread the appointed path?
How long, O God, how long refrainest Thou
From stroke of grace that cruellest men bestow
On wounded quarries? Merciful warrant give
Thine officer, Nature, to deliver me death,
Or in thine almshouse shelter me from dying!
Plague me no more; but pardon me or destroy!
Death is not ignominious nor so vile
As this mock eminence, this lone suspense
Above the nibbling brain of sheep and kine,
But yet beneath vitality divine.
Mingling, perchance, the cup of mortal fate
Appointed me to drink, thy hand o'erpoured
The potion, and thou scourgest me from sleep
Unseasonable, with scorpions and thy rod
Of sevenfold fury? . . . Ah! but let me be!
Let cerement-wreathing darkness wrap me round
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Compose me to oblivion absolute.
Rest, rest I crave! From wisdom and from war,
From vanity, endeavour, and despair,
False riddles and false oracles. I crave
Rest from the pauseless pulses of the world!”
With aspect more severe his friend replied:—
“Wild as the wind thy words, and blustering round
The vortex of themselves, with empty sound.
Impearled in suffering's rough repellent husk
Lies Love Eternal, whose inviolate germ
No violence can vivify, but love's!
For though profaning pride the shell may shatter,
And the embryonic pith dissect, dissolve,—
Stem, leaf, and flower remain, like mighty works
In Galilee, a miracle unwrought.
But sow it fairly in the loveable soul,
Behold it sprout, bourgeon, and multiply!
Until with aromatic leaven it change
Crude and unwholesome elements to sweet
And serviceable quality.
“Wild as the wind thy words, and blustering round
The vortex of themselves, with empty sound.
Impearled in suffering's rough repellent husk
Lies Love Eternal, whose inviolate germ
No violence can vivify, but love's!
For though profaning pride the shell may shatter,
And the embryonic pith dissect, dissolve,—
Stem, leaf, and flower remain, like mighty works
In Galilee, a miracle unwrought.
But sow it fairly in the loveable soul,
Behold it sprout, bourgeon, and multiply!
Until with aromatic leaven it change
Crude and unwholesome elements to sweet
And serviceable quality.
Repent!
God longs to fill thy lips with merriment,
Thy mouth with laughter, and thine eyes with peace;
His hand is heavy with munificent weight
Of happiness witheld, till thou submit!”
Not without scorn, Humanity returned:—
God longs to fill thy lips with merriment,
Thy mouth with laughter, and thine eyes with peace;
His hand is heavy with munificent weight
Of happiness witheld, till thou submit!”
“If the least faint reflection—faint, yet true,—
Of equity omniscient overarc
The weeping of the world (for weeping eyes
Imperfect measure of the perfect light),
Who doubts the Priest, that lit this twofold flame
Of life and death unquenchable, forgives
The victim's maddened outcry?
Of equity omniscient overarc
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Imperfect measure of the perfect light),
Who doubts the Priest, that lit this twofold flame
Of life and death unquenchable, forgives
The victim's maddened outcry?
Far more near
Another question touches. . . . Will the pang,
Which rends endurance, rend the twinèd veil
That barricades the altar from the ark?
Or any creature's clamour impel God's pity
To fold aside the curtain, as the dawn
With gulèd fingers folds aside the dark,
Alluring Earth to doubt her dawnless woe?
Another question touches. . . . Will the pang,
Which rends endurance, rend the twinèd veil
That barricades the altar from the ark?
Or any creature's clamour impel God's pity
To fold aside the curtain, as the dawn
With gulèd fingers folds aside the dark,
Alluring Earth to doubt her dawnless woe?
Come pardon or penance, what I crave, I crave;
At least to ask (but, face to face): ‘Art Thou
The lord of Sin,—lord paramount, or lord
Immediate? Is sin thy minister,—
Accredited or secret? Thine the Law?
Did'st Thou with prohibition's chisel carve
Idolatry, and by thy prophets curse
Indulgent virtue, turning it to vice?
Wherefore when righteousness on Earth defaults,
When judgment swerves aside and mercy halts;
When men to market carry poor men's blood;
When love itself is evil understood;
When food is borne abroad on famine's wings;
When kings are slaves and counterfeits are kings;
When piety itself is parasite
Of riches, and when wrong usurps the right;
When reeks the world with suffocating death
Of dungeoned spirits breathing their own breath;
Are not these things ordained of Thee? Whom else?’”
At least to ask (but, face to face): ‘Art Thou
The lord of Sin,—lord paramount, or lord
Immediate? Is sin thy minister,—
Accredited or secret? Thine the Law?
Did'st Thou with prohibition's chisel carve
Idolatry, and by thy prophets curse
Indulgent virtue, turning it to vice?
Wherefore when righteousness on Earth defaults,
When judgment swerves aside and mercy halts;
When men to market carry poor men's blood;
When love itself is evil understood;
When food is borne abroad on famine's wings;
When kings are slaves and counterfeits are kings;
When piety itself is parasite
Of riches, and when wrong usurps the right;
When reeks the world with suffocating death
Of dungeoned spirits breathing their own breath;
Are not these things ordained of Thee? Whom else?’”
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His comrade, interrupting; “wilt thou foist
Also this wickedness on Him whose name
Is thereby desecrate? Lo! impious words,
That soar against the sun with spurious wings,
Carry their own confusion and decay.
God punishes the sin men propagate;
The Lord of Holiness (the Scripture saith)
Sins not Himself, nor yet by proxy sins,
But every man is tempted and betrayed
By his own lust; which, finished, brings forth death.
Thou in the mirror of the world beholdest
A gliding phantom; beautiful, yet masked
With horror of a beauty vilely used.
Turn, turn away thy fascinated eyes!
'Tis but an image of thyself! The Sun
That never wanes nor sets, behind thee glows;
Turn to the source of vision; that thy soul
May be encompassed with her native light,
As air encompasses a bird in flight.
Cease to regard the mystery of thyself.
As life and mind elude thee, sorrow and sin
Elude, for ever. Can the waves that ebb
Resentful from the scudding vessel, o'ertake
The prow that cleaves them? Or riven air recover
Grasp of the wings that smote it into wind?
Repine not that effectual Wisdom works
In secret; with innumerable threads
Weaving an intricate pattern, as immense
As that embroidery of the lacing moons
That circle circling planets; by their suns
Drawn around other clusters; implicate,
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Ellipse more monstrous looping huger spheres,
More frequent swarms, to all infinitude;
All trailed in pageant, lightly as the down,
Sown on the sowing wind by provident weeds.
Repine not if Eternity provide
A corner-niche too straitened for thy pride!
When hast thou gauged its room? When ever found
Circumference or centre, node or bound?
Where are its confines? Where its utmost zone,
Or inward essence? Stars superfluous, lit
For thine amazement (vanity assumes),
Outpost their spatial fellows; cells forefront
The rudiments of life; and molecules
Vanguard pervading atoms unattained!
How lamely in this populous loneliness
Limps thy sad mind; far more thy 'wildered soul!
There, heaven; here, hell; above, below them, God!
But ah! why reckless voyage the strange profound,
When kindly Revelation rings thee round
With ancient aids and beacons of belief
Familiar as the sun, whose homely heat
More comforts thee than skies of alien stars;
With lamps of guidance nearer than the moon's
Orbed memory of the day? Let these suffice
To guide, inform, and cheer thee; let the rays
Of relative effulgence, manifest
Mandate of God himself, persuade thy soul
To quit her tomb, impenitence, and live!”
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“Inscrutable, indeed, is God's design!
Map as we may the isles of the astral deep,
Or range the teeming dust of life and death,
From fairest structure, to the ravening mites
That swarm the distal side of vacancy,
Along the incalculable waste we know not whither
Whirled, with this speck, their own allodial glebe,—
Or mould our shallow phrases as we may,
(Poor cups to scoop the evasive, fluent Spirit,
That permeates, supports, envelops All),—
Inscrutable, indeed, is God's design!
How small a whisper do we hear of Him!
For these are but the outskirts of His ways.
A common path of thought, thus far, we tread;
Yet I detect authoritative notes,
That counter-sound the comfort in thy voice
With distant warnings of offended force;
Like thunder, that a live-long summer day
Mutters a menace among the unheeding hills.
There we diverge! I bear my lonely load
Full-weight, uneased by any friendly hand.
For what am I but Revelation? I,
The child of God, his scholar, and his clerk;
Born in the Paradise of home; despatched
To school, to learn the wisdom of the world;
Cast forth into the world, to learn my part;
Engrossing on my soul, with iron pen,
The comedies and tragedies of God!
What canst thou teach me that I taught not thee?
Thy prophets were my sons; their words, my words;
The sanctity and charity they preached
Clear emanations of my soul, like dew
Alighting on the meadow whence it rose.
Thou bringest me nothing not mine own before;
Thou did'st not plant one herb nor rear one flower,
But only tabulated, ranged, compared
Culled specimens; perchance erroneously!
As, once misread, but glibly now declared,
This rotary globe convicts thine obstinate mind
Of not infallible scorn, that day I cried
‘But yet, it moves!’
Thy prophets were my sons; their words, my words;
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Clear emanations of my soul, like dew
Alighting on the meadow whence it rose.
Thou bringest me nothing not mine own before;
Thou did'st not plant one herb nor rear one flower,
But only tabulated, ranged, compared
Culled specimens; perchance erroneously!
As, once misread, but glibly now declared,
This rotary globe convicts thine obstinate mind
Of not infallible scorn, that day I cried
‘But yet, it moves!’
I will not be immured
In thy museum! Rather let me lie
Beneath this common archway of the sky;
Though naked to the night, yet scorched with woe;
A criminal, a beggar, and unclean! . . .
Before the delegated serpent taught me
Sub-ocular learning and the secret door
Where lust for ever knocks and love replies,
I revelled in larger amplitude of air
Than thy Ptol'maic firmament o'erdomes!
And since I pushed away the obtrusive heavens,
That fain would hood me from unvaulted space,
For ever new enfranchisement I long;
Nor will my gain forego; but, rather, invoke
New sin, to marshal back the encroaching clouds!
Crannied in Eden's pleasance, strictly calm,
In thy museum! Rather let me lie
Beneath this common archway of the sky;
Though naked to the night, yet scorched with woe;
A criminal, a beggar, and unclean! . . .
Before the delegated serpent taught me
Sub-ocular learning and the secret door
Where lust for ever knocks and love replies,
I revelled in larger amplitude of air
Than thy Ptol'maic firmament o'erdomes!
And since I pushed away the obtrusive heavens,
That fain would hood me from unvaulted space,
For ever new enfranchisement I long;
Nor will my gain forego; but, rather, invoke
New sin, to marshal back the encroaching clouds!
Too straitened seemed my destiny; I ranged
The boundaries; found the portal; with the key,
God-given Rebellion, wrenched the bolts, and stood
Clothed with the great Beyond! The murmurous conch,
That harboured me from tempest, tossed me forth;
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The vast, untried estate! Not knowing how small
The pool appointed me, wherein to sport!
To sport, despair, corrupt, regerminate,
And sport again; recurrent, changeless change;
Before those eyes of calm intelligence,
Observing, unobserved, near, vigilant,
And all-perceptive; universal vision,
In all dimensions equally ensphered.
Again would I devour the fruit, enjoined
By interdiction, and again commit
Knowledge! That irremediable crime,
Whose flaming-falcioned guilt reentrance bars
To the element of ignorance despised,
Lest the new lethal shores of wisdom won
Should scare men to existence less enlarged.
But how attainable, by new revolt,
Incursion to new countries of his will,—
The need Himself imparted? Sate am I
With the iterated savour of my first
Emancipation; and another such
Impregnant prohibition He denies;
No more saluting me in garden shades
At eventide, with blessing or with curse,
Containing each the other.
Face to face,
As man with man, is my desire to meet,—
No envoy or ambassador, though crowned
With consular authority, or robed
With mantle of his Master; bearing scrolls
Of eloquent proclamation, amnesties
And gracious tolerance for my turbulent blood
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The very Presence,—attendant powers dismissed
And ceremonial lightnings laid aside,
Like sheavèd rapiers, that my tongue, unawed
Give answerable echo to my thought.
Then would I cry, ‘I ask Thee no hard thing!
Only to lift the hem of draperies dense
That sway around my solitary cell
Of birth, of love, of labour, and of death;
Oppressive pall! Where miracles and signs,
Ambiguous parables, enigmas mad
And mad solutions; clueless hieroglyphs,
Creeds and contentions, prophecies and proofs,
With mummeries of diurnal futile things,—
Phantasmagoria of the world of thought,
Phantasmagoria of the world of deed,—
In tapestried procession giddily dance.
I ask no survey of the Promised Land;
The panorama of thy providence
Needs other sight than mine; I only crave
One word, one gesture (tempered by thy skill
To my infirmity), to cleave the night
Wherein I crawl; one flash, to indicate
A landmark of thy purpose!
For I scout
Wise tales of trade-wind tendencies, whose drift
Of righteousness excludes the drift of sin;
Or main mid-current, sheathed in refluent pools,
Where broken bough, drowned flower, and rotting weed,
The flotsam and the jetsam of the weir,
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Regurgitate, and slime the dipping wands
Of willows with their lichen of foul foam;
Until the cataclysm of lifted spars
Admit the imperative flood, and all is swept
Onward, reluctant, swirling to the sea.
I know thine operation leaves no marge;
No particles avoided rim its road;
No periodic effluence, to lave
Neglected purlieus, agitates its wave;
But immanent in its handiwork, it draws
Soul and her parasites of circumstance
With strong inevitable stress to Thee.
I know Thee World-wright or I know Thee Nought!
I know Thee World-wright; yet between that hut
Of refuge and thy jasper citadel
That overcrests the pathway of the clouds,—
Palace of promulgation of the law
And seat of government o'er all the hills,
Sinai or Calvary, or before or since,—
What void envelopment of blinding mist!
What treacheries of snow and ice and storm!
What false ascents, false guides, and ominous deaths!
Is there no aid? Is mercy comfortless?
Wilt Thou not flare one beacon above the belt
Of lumber dimness that divides etern
Effulgence from this abject, glimmering globe?
Hast Thou no thread Thou darest let descend,
Whose molten filament would make this point
Terrene a linked extremity of Light?
Or down whose tremulous nerve might undulate
An echo of the music scored by Thee
For thine orchestral universe?
Wilt Thou not flare one beacon above the belt
Of lumber dimness that divides etern
Effulgence from this abject, glimmering globe?
Hast Thou no thread Thou darest let descend,
Whose molten filament would make this point
Terrene a linked extremity of Light?
Or down whose tremulous nerve might undulate
19
For thine orchestral universe?
I dare
Accept the message, if Thou dare command.’
Thus would I wrestle with God; nor let Him go
Accept the message, if Thou dare command.’
Except He blessed me, though His blessing slew.”
To whom perturbed Religion answered:—
“Friend,
It is not meet ambassadors should hear,
Save under protest, mutinous words; nor I
Endure them, mindful Whom I serve; to Whom
Be glory and dominion, power and praise,
For ever and for ever!
It is not meet ambassadors should hear,
Save under protest, mutinous words; nor I
Endure them, mindful Whom I serve; to Whom
Be glory and dominion, power and praise,
For ever and for ever!
If I claim
Authority, 'tis in His holy Name;
Nor yet without good reason and great need.
Where plumes, in this stark winter of the world,
One bud of promise? Where is writ one clause
Encouraging, one mitigative word,
I' the social and intolerable scroll
Of lamentation, mourning, and wild woe?
Review the world in all its length and breadth!
Its varied enterprise, and various lore;
Its governments; their manners and their modes!—
What medley routs their random courses run
To random goals! What errant energies
Cross and recross; achieving, as by chance,
Some blind progression or reverse result!
Where is the prevalence of final cause?
Or any prevalence, save one, innate,—
Of mutual alienation, mutual hate?
Authority, 'tis in His holy Name;
Nor yet without good reason and great need.
Where plumes, in this stark winter of the world,
One bud of promise? Where is writ one clause
Encouraging, one mitigative word,
I' the social and intolerable scroll
Of lamentation, mourning, and wild woe?
Review the world in all its length and breadth!
Its varied enterprise, and various lore;
Its governments; their manners and their modes!—
What medley routs their random courses run
To random goals! What errant energies
Cross and recross; achieving, as by chance,
Some blind progression or reverse result!
Where is the prevalence of final cause?
Or any prevalence, save one, innate,—
Of mutual alienation, mutual hate?
20
Of wilful Man's precipitant career!
Of mutinous Reason hurling blatant war
Against divine supremacy! What mole
Of immobility can dissipate
The fierce momentum of the ruining Mind,
Corrupt, anarchical, idolatrous,
Except the word of God, or visible Power
Established on the charter of that Word,
Its only muniment? What force react
Against this riotous, proud Intellect,
Impugning unconditioned Wisdom's plan
For its conditioned happiness, save one,—
The plenary authority of God?
That adamant and ultimate under-rock,
Firm fulcrum of the spiritual lever
By which the Saints must lift the world to Light?
That subtlety the Serpent first infused
Beneath the rind of sin, by thee partaken,
Infects the wholesome ichor of thy blood;
Toxic, disintegrating, breaking forth
In sores and ulcers of impiety;
Anathemas, and all contagious rheums
Of self-appreciative discontent.
The leprosy of Naaman shall cleave
To thee and thine for ever, save thou wash
In unpretentious waters; for the meek
Inherit the Earth; the poor in spirit receive
Beatitude; the lowly, rest of soul.
None challenges that God, sustaining all,
Created all, save error; which enures,
To testify that He bestowed Free-will,
21
Thine argument confronts thee;—wherefore thou,
Thy state, thy limits, and thine attributes,
Are integrant portions of the structured scheme!
Must, then, the published edict be revoked,
The rock of dispensation be removed;
The pillar of fire by night, the cloud by day,—
Flame of his Word, cloud of his Providence,—
Be banished from the camp,—that thou (whose eyes
Mercy has blurred, or Revelation dazed),
Mayst gain incontinent liberty to peer
Into the farther midnight, unillumined,
Into the farther noonday, unabridged?
Thy state not adventitious, first believe:
Thine ignorance and knowledge weighed, exact
To the fraction of fractions; to the grain of grains;
To poise the ponderous burden of thy fate!
More knowledge (should the Measurer grant thy prayer)
Might over-bear the balance. . . .
Thine ignorance and knowledge weighed, exact
To the fraction of fractions; to the grain of grains;
To poise the ponderous burden of thy fate!
More knowledge (should the Measurer grant thy prayer)
Might over-bear the balance. . . .
Dost thou court
Destruction? . . .
Destruction? . . .
Shall the Architect be baulked
Because the trunk refuses to be hewn,
The marble chiselled or the iron malled?
Will He not split and splinter them in his wrath,
Some great and terrible day, when no day dawn,
And even that mediate orb, from whose dead face
The javelin glances of the sun deflect
Earthward, and fall, white wands of embassy,
Be turned to blood?
Because the trunk refuses to be hewn,
The marble chiselled or the iron malled?
Will He not split and splinter them in his wrath,
Some great and terrible day, when no day dawn,
And even that mediate orb, from whose dead face
The javelin glances of the sun deflect
Earthward, and fall, white wands of embassy,
Be turned to blood?
Ere then, recall thy scorn!
Unbend thine unsubmissive heart; reject
The whispered sophistries of the crafty mind!
Who sows the darnels of disdain shall reap
Disdain; who sows humility, with sheaves
Of honour from the harvest shall return,
Rejoicing . . . With devotion cure thy doubt!
Offer thy faculties, emotions, thoughts,
Thine energies and consciousness of life,
Thyself, and all thou knowest of thyself,
And all thou knowest not, to Him, from Whom
Proceeded thine identity, in one
Determinate abandonment; in one
Immutable ascription;—act of awe!
That thrills the accordant angels and vibrates
Through the vast vestibules and courts of heaven
Up to the very throne! . . . May God so grant!”
The stricken one, bitterly smiling, thus replied:—
Unbend thine unsubmissive heart; reject
22
Who sows the darnels of disdain shall reap
Disdain; who sows humility, with sheaves
Of honour from the harvest shall return,
Rejoicing . . . With devotion cure thy doubt!
Offer thy faculties, emotions, thoughts,
Thine energies and consciousness of life,
Thyself, and all thou knowest of thyself,
And all thou knowest not, to Him, from Whom
Proceeded thine identity, in one
Determinate abandonment; in one
Immutable ascription;—act of awe!
That thrills the accordant angels and vibrates
Through the vast vestibules and courts of heaven
Up to the very throne! . . . May God so grant!”
“A due gestation and deliverance due
Of courtier threats, for vagabonds that refuse
The Court-essential garment and offend
The obsequious usher! . . . Suppliant none the less,
Though but a ragged, unanointed waif,
Audience I ask and ‘Audience’ cry,—‘Give ear
To my complaint!’ Whene'er his chariot rolls
Purpureal, 'mid his panoplied angel-guard.
Of courtier threats, for vagabonds that refuse
The Court-essential garment and offend
The obsequious usher! . . . Suppliant none the less,
Though but a ragged, unanointed waif,
Audience I ask and ‘Audience’ cry,—‘Give ear
To my complaint!’ Whene'er his chariot rolls
Purpureal, 'mid his panoplied angel-guard.
Yet speak I folly! Temporal potentates,
One span superior to the goggling crowd,
Strut on their pomp-stilts; in imperial lawn
Swaddle their suckling sovereignties; in wars
Of ostentation rock their cradled crowns;
But shall the King of kings,—who was and is,
And is to come,—Ancient of Days,—shall He,—
Of realm unfrontiered and of reign untermed,
Save by Himself,—pretend, proclaim, protest,
Flourish his sceptre, wave his bannered badge,
And scatter pomegranates to the multitude?
On his own altar shall Jehovah leap
And shout and cut Himself with knives, to rouse
His disregardful servants?” . . . . .
“God is Love!”
One span superior to the goggling crowd,
Strut on their pomp-stilts; in imperial lawn
Swaddle their suckling sovereignties; in wars
Of ostentation rock their cradled crowns;
But shall the King of kings,—who was and is,
And is to come,—Ancient of Days,—shall He,—
23
Save by Himself,—pretend, proclaim, protest,
Flourish his sceptre, wave his bannered badge,
And scatter pomegranates to the multitude?
On his own altar shall Jehovah leap
And shout and cut Himself with knives, to rouse
His disregardful servants?” . . . . .
Religion interposed; “but perfect love
In flame-like majesty is manifest,—
To fervent souls, renewal; but to frozen,
Scorching and death,—concentric, doomful love!
Insufferable, except his rippling rays
Impinged the marginal mind through sacraments
Of metaphor and symbol; mercy-clouds,
Pavilioned round about his habitation
Thunder-patrolled, pennoned with lightning, wardered
By serpent whirlwinds, coiled, waiting his word.
So in God's unity are love and wrath
One; or the intensity of love is wrath,
Because it burns the lovelessness of Man.
Nor canst thou ever escape Love's anxious anger,
Besetting, compassing, searching, winnowing thee,
Watching thy thoughts afar, as shepherds watch
The South wind full his fleeces on the hills,
Long ere he lade them to the destined vale.
Therefore no farthest region of the morn
Across waste waters; no black-surpliced night;
No pinnacle of heaven nor crypt of hell
Can sunder thy spirit from his; but sin alone
Shakes from thy shoulder his persuading hand.
24
To find a passage into Paradise;
Again wilt strike upon the nether lava,
In which thou wilt anneal thy stubbornness,
Lest heat too sudden of love or shock of shame
Fissure thy hard enamel, and truth intrude,—
Truth, in all life substantiate, save in thine,—
That will-submission to God's will is heaven,
Where angels of the will aye see his face,
And will-resistance of his will is hell,
Where the worm dieth not nor the fire is quenched.”
Now light the Pleiads their sevenfold cresset; now
Antares' ruby pinion downward dips,
As if a king-fisher, flashing low along
The alder alley of a dark-rilled river, dived.
Fast up the Northern slope the Charioteer
Bears pale Capella; far to Westward swing
The Serpent, round huge Ophiuch sprawling huge,
And Hercules, blazoned 'twixt the Lyre and Crown.
The waning moon's full altitude is past;
The solemn hour broods, when the tides of life
Ebb, and the Earth grows cognisant of death,
Despairful and incredulous of dawn.
The sufferer feels calm visitings emerge
From the heavenly, solemn chambers, to compose
The passion of grief; and pensively thus resumes:—
“The soul-face of the World is shattered to words
In the Mind's mirror;—how vain, with painted shards
To tesselate God's miniature! No Art
Holds the Arch-Artist's portrait; save Myself.
I am not undivine, nor God inhuman!
25
By accidents of sorrow and of sin,
And wandering like a child shut out from home;
Pilfered of love and dowered with lonelihood;
Snatched from familiar fairydom and set
Full in the arena of the blood-stained World,
Void-vaulted, with implacable faces girt!
Yet to no saint, though alabaster-smooth,
For specious pottage of a ruddier faith,
My birthright will I barter,—God to know
By the near conscience of my intimate Self.
Shall no one question Him, but thou cry ‘Hush!’
None plead before Him, but thou claim to plead
Crown-Advocate; none scrutinise the scroll
Authentic of creation, but thou gloss it?
For ever wilt thou palisade the peak
Against explorers God himself invites? . . .
Now learn a lesson of me! . . . My God is Truth;
Supreme Sincerity,—whatever else!
Who hates the homage of a menial heart;
Who hates chameleon skins of compromise,
Assumed by souls that never sloughed the lie
That called them naked (nuder now in rags
Conceded under seal of banishment);
Whom argument of souls against themselves,
Framed for their overhearing tyrant, hurts
More than arraignment of a scurrilous tongue.
Wherefore no dog am I, with sycophant nose,
Scenting a well-stuffed wallet, to confess
That pain can gather from prospective joy
Unnative goodness; or that joy annuls
The woful ancestry that taints his blood;
While mirth, if he should tenant the broad demesne
Of tribulation (so thy minions preach,
When drunk with more authority than love),
Muft needs disburse a rack remorse for wear,
Not only for mere wantonness and waste.
Though every sorrow should beget a saint
And every pang a martyr, never a choir
Of saints or martyrs would I join to sing
‘O blessed grief! Inestimable pain!’
But still must reprobate usurious plagues,
Hypothecate to demons of the dust,
To culture asphodel in pits of death
And amaranth from corruption.
For specious pottage of a ruddier faith,
My birthright will I barter,—God to know
By the near conscience of my intimate Self.
Shall no one question Him, but thou cry ‘Hush!’
None plead before Him, but thou claim to plead
Crown-Advocate; none scrutinise the scroll
Authentic of creation, but thou gloss it?
For ever wilt thou palisade the peak
Against explorers God himself invites? . . .
Now learn a lesson of me! . . . My God is Truth;
Supreme Sincerity,—whatever else!
Who hates the homage of a menial heart;
Who hates chameleon skins of compromise,
Assumed by souls that never sloughed the lie
That called them naked (nuder now in rags
Conceded under seal of banishment);
Whom argument of souls against themselves,
Framed for their overhearing tyrant, hurts
More than arraignment of a scurrilous tongue.
Wherefore no dog am I, with sycophant nose,
Scenting a well-stuffed wallet, to confess
That pain can gather from prospective joy
Unnative goodness; or that joy annuls
The woful ancestry that taints his blood;
26
Of tribulation (so thy minions preach,
When drunk with more authority than love),
Muft needs disburse a rack remorse for wear,
Not only for mere wantonness and waste.
Though every sorrow should beget a saint
And every pang a martyr, never a choir
Of saints or martyrs would I join to sing
‘O blessed grief! Inestimable pain!’
But still must reprobate usurious plagues,
Hypothecate to demons of the dust,
To culture asphodel in pits of death
And amaranth from corruption.
Thankless theme!
For who can analyse pervasive woe,—
One coalescence, like the constant air?
Fresh from thy mundane interrogatory,
Canst thou record a gladness as engrained,
As indivisibly fibred into life,
As torture is? Men run from the ends of Earth
To specks of joy reported, but to find
The same full galleys of chained slaves, the same
Antagonistic forces' hourly ache,
The same peremptory exigence of thought!
Or, at the most, some apparition of joy
Defunct, whose ghosts are Cheerfulness, Content,
Or Immolate Delight; a godly crew,
But not that Spirit whose robes once rustled so near
And filled them with a proud and reverent fear,
Waiting their fairy bride by altared hill,
'Mid clashed carillons of consenting winds.
Shall I suggest to God that strange displays
For who can analyse pervasive woe,—
One coalescence, like the constant air?
Fresh from thy mundane interrogatory,
Canst thou record a gladness as engrained,
As indivisibly fibred into life,
As torture is? Men run from the ends of Earth
To specks of joy reported, but to find
The same full galleys of chained slaves, the same
Antagonistic forces' hourly ache,
The same peremptory exigence of thought!
Or, at the most, some apparition of joy
Defunct, whose ghosts are Cheerfulness, Content,
Or Immolate Delight; a godly crew,
But not that Spirit whose robes once rustled so near
And filled them with a proud and reverent fear,
Waiting their fairy bride by altared hill,
'Mid clashed carillons of consenting winds.
Of occult torture and opprobrious wrong
27
Authority; but give anarchic Ill
Advertisement in weak, anaemic minds;—
'Twere better, therefore, to repudiate
Responsibility; claim beauty, and impute
Phenomena of ugliness to Satan;
Hinting of swampy patches of the plain,
Unoccupied,—‘They are not what they seem’?
They say God never laughs; I deem it not;
But, if 'twere true, what bubbling merriment
Must well upon the lips, at least of those
Angels and principalities and powers
That need not envy devils the grace to smile,
At libel so audacious!
‘Heresy’?
There is no heresy. All things are true,
Except a lie; and lies are of the soul,
Not of the brain;—excuses that we put
Into the mouth of God, to vindicate
His ways to men; ignoring that the proof
Must vindicate the ways of men to God;—
Prevarications that we recommend
For buoying callow souls on wings of wax,
Lest they should dash their foot against a stone,
Or stumble over blocks of the moraine,
Strewn by the glacier-thought that grinds the world;—
Manipulations, piously to change
The premiss to accommodate the proof;—
All the fallacious euphonies we use
To mortgage truth for momentary gain!
Like casuist reasons, given by careful dames
28
Learning to fly, than flying learn to fall,
Profoundly plunging from Ideal to Doubt.
But irritable faith too plain betrays,
By contradiction ill-endured, how much
The black that bands the escutcheon of God's light,
Flashed from accrete creation, makes aghast
Thine heart of hearts. But thou refusest to see
Or suffer it to be seen; dissembling well;
Conscious of Who shall be the judge of thoughts,
Of speech and silence; stoutly taking oath
That not to God these crevices belong,
Though he shall fill them full of after-joy
Or after-woe.
But let God fill his own
Omissions, not another's! . . . If the Whole
By Him was fashioned and is now maintained,—
In just proportion, just relation, fixed,
Must every part cohere, and all consist
Like radiant raiment, seamless-woven throughout,—
The Seventh Day vesture that He loves to wear,—
Which only Mind's cross lenses rend and ravel,
Impervious to completeness; as the prism
Combs into separate locks a tawny tress
Of slender-rifted sunshine.
Grieves Man less,
That God beholds Hereafter as Herenow?
Black lust a lily and pale pain a rose?
Though all to Him be absolute, to me
He made all relative. If thus He wrought,
And while his apparatus of my sense
29
Pursue the indebted fugitive To Be,
How is my permanent torture less, or how
Lies chiding in his mouth because I weep?
Far, far ahead of thine o'erfreighted Hope,
With figure-head of Faith so falsely prowed,
Whose cargo of tradition drags it down
Low in the labouring surge, my confidence
Profane forges; alert to learn new lands
Of richer revelation, promise new,
And clearer climate than the retrospect;
Where I may make discovery of what ore
Of precious quality those shafts portend,
Alloyed by grosser atmosphere to shades.
Meanwhile I learn not, and my misery grows;
Tossed out of reckoning, broached and rudderless,
Yet with all remnant canvas pressing on
Desperate, to reach the haven; to disembark;
Haste to my Father's door; and 'mid the crowd
Of lackeying suitors, for my Sonship claim
Free entry and free hearing; not with base
Outrageous reverence bowed, but holding fast
Integrity of spirit, not to cringe
Before his presence; as He would not cringe,
Cited before one greater than Himself!”
With strong suppressed impatience, once again
His comrade spoke:—
“I hear a voice that cries,
‘Humanity, Humanity! how oft
I would have gathered thee beneath my wings,
As gathers a hen her brood; but thou wouldst not.
If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day,
The things belonging to thy peace! But now
They are hidden from thine eyes. Wherefore thy house
Is left unto thee desolate.’
The trump
‘Humanity, Humanity! how oft
I would have gathered thee beneath my wings,
30
If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day,
The things belonging to thy peace! But now
They are hidden from thine eyes. Wherefore thy house
Is left unto thee desolate.’
That bade the everlasting gates lift up their heads,
Redeeming forfeit entrance into Eden,
And bruising the adder of sin, until he poured
His loathly python length to darker den
And malice more remote, announced, to worlds
Amazed, the mortal birth and sacrifice
Of Love immortal; and this moment sounds,
Suspended o'er the loud discordant deep
Of Earth and Hell in masterful embrace
Conflicting. Powers of darkness and of light,
Princes infernal and celestial, lean
To listen; but thou art deaf! Until, resolved
Into the full chord tonic, octave Love
Obliterate thy tegument of pride
And smite thee to the core.
What justice, then,
In thy complaint of God's desertion? None
Deserts thee, save thyself; thine other self
Contemptible, that shuns thy nobler self,
Which is the God within thee, as thou sayest,
Whose triple-stranded nature is to warn,
To counsel, and to comfort. Such my charge;
But most to warn; because, for callous pride
Emollients are a charlatan's false cure.
Still am I loth to quit thee without help.
31
Yet inexhaustible, I fain would leave
To feed thy famishing soul:—that tale forgot,
Of Samuel; how he served before the Lord,—
A Nazarite child with linen ephod girt,—
And learnt the secret, how to speak with God,
Denied to Saul by prophets or by dreams,
By Urim or by Samuel's hooded shade,
Evoked at Endor.
God vouchsafe that soon
The deep break up, that deep may call to deep!
Then, as a rivulet rises in a wood,
After long rain; and no one sees it rise
Nor the world heeds it; and, perchance, the sun,
Reaching a poniard through the clustered trees,
The frail fount pierces, or perchance, it grows
To rule wide vales: so in thy heart shall spring
A royal fount, which, nurtured, shall become
A well of Samarite water, springing up
To Everlasting Life.
But now, farewell!
Whene'er thou summon me,—when troublous moods,
Not Israel's wisest harper could have charmed,
Passing, have left thee spent,—in love to come,
In love to fill that empty, swept, and garnished
Guest-chamber of thine heart, shall be my joy!
And be the glory, as all glory, God's!”
Thus to and fro they tossed the cumbrous word,
The clumsy counterfeit of bird-like thought;
Or hither and thither hauled, with adverse force,
32
Spun by the mind; or pushed converging terms,
Resultant in conclusion unobserved;
Until Humanity no more engaged;
Like wrestler scornful of a loosened grip.
But the other twitched his broadly-bordered frock
Higher, and picked fastidious descent;
As delicately trips a school-bound child,
Heedful of ferule or maternal tongue,
O'er stepping-stones of Wharfe, by Bolton woods,
When o'er the midmost stone the freshet peeps.
Yet, homeward hieing, thrice he stayed and sought
With yearning eyes, and half imagined, half
Discerned the motionless figure of his friend;
As travellers, guided by the dalesman, turn
To view a crag, by Oreads roughly graven,
And dubiously affirm the crouching shape.
Now creeps the Dawn forth of the folded sky,
Touching with timorous finger first the mane
Of slumberous Ocean; then with both her hands
The monster stroking; who his shaggy sides
Shakes, with enormous smiles; and mariners hail
From lonely ships another golden link
Wound on the winch of Time, to warp them home.
Meanwhile the mountains light their signal fires
Of roseate snow; but jealous Dawn, in haste
To bear her own sweet tidings of herself,
O'er valleyed town and hamlet of the plain
Advances; till the Sun his amorous arms
Stretches to stay her; but she merrily sprays
Her dewy locks full in his face; and flees,
Following austere Night with instant feet.
1895.
| Poems | |