The Poetical Works of (Richard Monckton Milnes) Lord Houghton ::

Sunshine often falls refulgent
After all the corn is in;
Often Allah grants indulgent
Pleasure that may guard from sin:
Hence your wives may number four;
Though he best consults his reason,
Best secures his house from treason,
Who takes one and wants no more.

Nor less well the man once gifted
With one high and holy Thought,
Will not let his mind be shifted,
But adores it, as he ought;
Well for him whose spirit's youth
Rests as a contented lover,
Nor can other charms discover
Than in his absorbing Truth!

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But the heaven-enfranchised Poet
Must have no exclusive home,
He must feel, and freely show it,—
Phantasy is made to roam:
He must give his passions range,
He must serve no single duty,
But from Beauty pass to Beauty,
Constant to a constant change.

With all races, of all ages,
He must people his Hareem;
He must search the tents of sages,
He must scour the vales of dream:
Ever adding to his store,
From new cities, from new nations,
He must rise to new creations,
And, unsated, ask for more.

In the manifold, the various,
He delights, as Nature's child,—
Grasps at joys the most precarious,
Rides on hopes, however wild!
Though his heart at times perceives
One enduring Love hereafter,
Glimmering through his tears and laughter,
Like the sun through autumn leaves.

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II. THE EASTERN EPICUREAN.

You are moaning, “Life is waning,”
You are droning, “Flesh is weak:”
Tell me too, what I am gaining
While I listen, while you speak.

If you say the rose is blooming,
But the blast will soon destroy it,
Do so, not to set me glooming,
But to make me best enjoy it.

Calm the heart's insatiate yearning
Towards the distant, the unknown:
Only do so, without turning
Men to beasts, or flesh to stone.

Cry not loud, “The world is mad!
Lord! how long shall folly rule?”
If you've nothing but the sad
To replace the jovial fool.

Sorrow is its own clear preacher,—
Death is still on Nature's tongue;—
Life and joy require the teacher,
Honour Youth and keep it young.

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Even you, ascetics, rightly,
Should appreciate Love and Joy;—
For what you regard so lightly
Where's the merit to destroy?

III.

“To endure and to pardon is the wisdom of life.” Kuràn, 42, v. 41.

Father! if we may well endure
The ill that with our lives begins,
May'st Thou, to whom all things are pure,
Endure our follies and our sins!

Brothers! if we return you good
For evil thought or malice done,
Doubt not, that in our hearts a blood
As hot as in your own may run.

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IV. PHYSICAL AND MORAL BLINDNESS.

[_]

The hab'ts here alluded to are familiar to every traveller in those parts of the East where a large portion of the population are subject to ophthalmia and other diseases of the eyes, brought on by dirt and carelessness. In Egypt the number is much increased by those who have blinded themselves, or been blinded by their parents, to avoid the conscription.

The child whose eyes were never blest
With heavenly light, or lost it soon,
About another's neck will rest
Its arm, and walk like you at noon;
The blind old man will place his palm
Upon a child's fresh-blooming head,
And follow through the croud in calm
That infantine and trusty tread.

We, too, that in our spirits dark
Traverse a wild and weary way,
May in these sweet resources mark
A lesson, and be safe as they:
Resting, when young, in happy faith
On fair affection's daily bond,
And afterwards resigned to death,
Feeling the childly life beyond.

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V. DISCORDANT ELEMENTS.

In the sight of God all-seeing
Once a handful of loose foam
Played upon the sea of being,
Like a child about its home:
In his smile it shone delighted,
Danced beneath his swaying hand,
But at last was cast benighted
On the cold and alien land.

Can it wait till waves returning
Bear it to its parent breast?
Can it bear the noontide's burning,
Dwelling Earth's contented guest?
Oh! no,—it will filter slowly
Through the hard ungenial shore,
Till each particle be wholly
In the deep absorbed once more.

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VI. THE TWO THEOLOGIES.

THE MYSTIC

It must be that the light divine
That on your soul is pleased to shine
Is other than what falls on mine:

For you can fix and formalize
The Power on which you raise your eyes,
And trace him in his palace-skies;

You can perceive and almost touch
His attributes as such and such,
Almost familiar overmuch.

You can his thoughts and ends display,
In fair historical array,
From Adam to the judgment-day.

You can adjust to time and place
The sweet effusions of his grace,
And feel yourself before his face.

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You walk as in some summer night,
With moon or stars serenely bright,
On which you gaze—at ease—upright.

But I am like a flower sun-bent,
Exhaling all its life and scent
Beneath the heat omnipotent.

I have not comforts such as you,—
I rather suffer good than do,—
Yet God is my Deliverer too.

I cannot think Him here or there—
I think Him ever everywhere—
Unfading light, unstifled air.

I lay a piteous mortal thing,—
Yet shadowed by his spirit's wing,
A deathless life could in me spring:

And thence I am, and still must be;
What matters whether I or He?—
Little was there to love in me.

I know no beauty, bliss, or worth,
In that which we call Life on earth,
That we should mourn its loss or dearth:

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That we should sorrow for its sake,
If God will the imperfect take
Unto Himself, and perfect make.

O Lord! our separate lives destroy!
Merge in thy gold our soul's alloy,—
Pain is our own, and Thou art Joy!

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VII. LOSS AND GAIN.

Myriad Roses, unregretted, perish in their vernal bloom,
That the essence of their sweetness once your Beauty may perfume.

Myriad Veins of richest life-blood empty for their priceless worth,
To exalt one Will imperial over spacious realms of earth.

Myriad Hearts are pained and broken that one Poet may be taught
To discern the shapes of passion and describe them as he ought.

Myriad Minds of heavenly temper pass as passes moon or star,
That one philosophic Spirit may ascend the solar car.

Sacrifice and Self-devotion hallow earth and fill the skies,
And the meanest Life is sacred whence the highest may arise.

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VIII. THE MOTH.

Parted from th' eternal presence,
Into life the Soul is born,
In its fragmentary essence
Left unwittingly forlorn.

In the shrubbery's scented shadows
First the insect tries its wings,
In the evening's misty meadows
It pursues the faëry rings.

Where the trelliced roses clamber,
And the jasmine peeps between,
Looks the gardener's lowly chamber
On the garden—on the green.

Through the sultry veil of vapour,
Like a nearer nether star,
Shines the solitary taper,
Seen and known by friend afar.

Then the Moth, by strange attraction,
Leaves the garden, leaves the field,
Cannot rest in sweet inaction,
Cannot taste what earth can yield.

205

As the lov'd one to the lover,
As a treasure, once your own,
That you might some way recover,
Seems to him that fiery cone.

Round he whirls with pleasure tingling—
Shrinks aghast—returns again—
Ever wildly intermingling
Deep delight and burning pain.

Highest nature wills the capture,
“Light to light” th' instinct cries,
And, in agonising rapture,
Falls the Moth, and bravely dies!

Think not what thou art, Believer;
Think but what thou may'st become;
For the World is thy deceiver,
And the Light thy only home!

206

IX. THE SAYINGS OF RABIA.

[_]

Rabia was a holy woman, who lived in the second century of the Hegira. Her sayings and thoughts are collected by many devotional Arabic writers: they are a remarkable development of a purely Christian mystical spirit so early in the history of Islam; the pantheistic mysticism of Sufism soon followed, and obtained a signal victory over the bare positive theism of the Prophet, clothing the heartless doctrine with a radiant vesture of imagination.

I.

A pious friend one day of Rabia asked,
How she had learnt the truth of Allah wholly?
By what instructions was her memory tasked—
How was her heart estranged from this world's folly?

She answered—“Thou who knowest God in parts,
Thy spirit's moods and processes, can tell;
I only know that in my heart of hearts
I have despised myself and loved Him well.”

II.

Some evil upon Rabia fell,
And one who loved and knew her well
Murmured that God with pain undue
Should strike a child so fond and true:
But she replied—“Believe and trust
That all I suffer is most just;

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I had in contemplation striven
To realise the joys of heaven;
I had extended fancy's flights
Through all that region of delights,—
Had counted, till the numbers failed,
The pleasures on the blest entailed,—
Had sounded the ecstatic rest
I should enjoy on Allah's breast;
And for those thoughts I now atone
That were of something of my own,
And were not thoughts of Him alone.”

III.

When Rabia unto Mekkeh came,
She stood awhile apart—alone,
Nor joined the croud with hearts on flame
Collected round the sacred stone.

She, like the rest, with toil had crossed
The waves of water, rock, and sand,
And now, as one long tempest-tossed,
Beheld the Kaabeh's promised land.

Yet in her eyes no transport glistened;
She seemed with shame and sorrow bowed;
The shouts of prayer she hardly listened,
But beat her heart and cried aloud:—

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“O heart! weak follower of the weak,
That thou should'st traverse land and sea,
In this far place that God to seek
Who long ago had come to thee!”

IV.

Round holy Rabia's suffering bed
The wise men gathered, gazing gravely—
“Daughter of God!” the youngest said,
“Endure thy Father's chastening bravely;
They who have steeped their souls in prayer
Can every anguish calmly bear.”

She answered not, and turned aside,
Though not reproachfully nor sadly;
“Daughter of God!” the eldest cried,
“Sustain thy Father's chastening gladly,
They who have learnt to pray aright,
From pain's dark well draw up delight.”

Then she spoke out,—“Your words are fair;
But, oh! the truth lies deeper still;
I know not, when absorbed in prayer,
Pleasure or pain, or good or ill;
They who God's face can understand
Feel not the motions of His hand.”

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X. PLEASURE AND PAIN.

Who can determine the frontier of Pleasure?
Who can distinguish the limit of Pain?
Where is the moment the feeling to measure?
When is experience repeated again?

Ye who have felt the delirium of passion—
Say, can ye sever its joys and its pangs?
Is there a power in calm contemplation
To indicate each upon each as it hangs?

I would believe not;—for spirit will languish
While sense is most blest and creation most bright;
And life will be dearer and clearer in anguish
Than ever was felt in the throbs of delight.

See the Fakeer as he swings on his iron,
See the thin Hermit that starves in the wild;
Think ye no pleasures the penance environ,
And hope the sole bliss by which pain is beguiled?

No! in the kingdoms those spirits are reaching,
Vain are our words the emotions to tell;
Vain the distinctions our senses are teaching,
For Pain has its Heaven and Pleasure its Hell!

210

XI. THE PEACE OF GOD.

“The blessed shall hear no vain words, but only the word—Peace.” Kuran, chap. xix. v. 63.

Peace is God's direct assurance
To the souls that win release
From this world of hard endurance—
Peace—he tells us—only Peace.

There is Peace in lifeless matter—
There is Peace in dreamless sleep—
Will then Death our being shatter
In annihilation's deep?

Ask you this? O mortal trembler!
Hear the Peace that Death affords—
For your God is no dissembler,
Cheating you with double words:—

To this life's inquiring traveller,
Peace of knowledge of all good;
To the anxious truth-unraveller,
Peace of wisdom understood:—

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To the loyal wife, affection
Towards her husband, free from fear,—
To the faithful friend, selection
Of all memories kind and dear:—

To the lover, full fruition
Of an unexhausted joy,—
To the warior, crowned ambition,
With no envy's base alloy:—

To the ruler, sense of action,
Working out his great intent,—
To the prophet, satisfaction
In the mission he was sent:—

To the poet, conscious glory
Flowing from his Father's face:—
Such is Peace in holy story,
Such is Peace in heavenly grace.

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XII. CHRISTIAN ENDURANCE.

TO HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Mortal! that standest on a point of time,
With an eternity on either hand,
Thou hast one duty above all sublime,
Where thou art placed serenely there to stand:

To stand undaunted by the threatening death,
Or harder circumstance of living doom,
Nor less untempted by the odorous breath
Of Hope, that rises even from the tomb.

For Hope will never dull the present pain,
And Time will never keep thee safe from fall,
Unless thou hast in thee a mind to reign
Over thyself, as God is over all.

'Tis well on deeds of good, though small, to thrive,
'Tis well some part of ill, though small, to cure,
'Tis well with onward, upward, hopes to strive,
Yet better and diviner to endure.

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What but this virtue's solitary power,
Through all the lusts and dreams of Greece and Rome,
Bore the selected spirits of the hour
Safe to a distant, immaterial home?

What but this lesson, resolutely taught,
Of Resignation, as God's claim and due,
Hallows the sensuous hopes of Eastern thought,
And makes Mohammed's mission almost true?

But in that patience was the seed of scorn—
Scorn of the world and brotherhood of man;
Not patience such as in the manger born
Up to the cross endured its earthly span.

Thou must endure, yet loving all the while,
Above, yet never separate from, thy kind,—
Meet every frailty with the gentlest smile,
Though to no possible depth of evil blind.

This is the riddle thou hast life to solve;
But in the task thou shalt not work alone:
For, while the worlds about the sun revolve,
God's heart and mind are ever with his own!

The meaning of the word “Muslim:”—“El Islam” also signifies “the resigning.”

University of Virginia Library

I. THE THINKER AND THE POET.

II. THE EASTERN EPICUREAN.

III.

IV. PHYSICAL AND MORAL BLINDNESS.

V. DISCORDANT ELEMENTS.

VI. THE TWO THEOLOGIES.

THE MYSTIC

VII. LOSS AND GAIN.

VIII. THE MOTH.

IX. THE SAYINGS OF RABIA.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

X. PLEASURE AND PAIN.

XI. THE PEACE OF GOD.

XII. CHRISTIAN ENDURANCE.

TO HARRIET MARTINEAU.