Ranolf and Amohia A dream of two lives. By Alfred Domett. New edition, revised |
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| 6. | Canto the Sixth. Land-Life or Sea-Life?
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 | Ranolf and Amohia |  |
93
Canto the Sixth. Land-Life or Sea-Life?
1. Choice of a profession. 2. ‘Physic.’ 3. ‘Law.’ 4. ‘Divinity.’ 5. Again to Sea. 6. Sea-sketches. Sunset on the Line. 7. A luminous Sea. 8. An Iceberg.
I.
O blest escape from psychologic QuestAnd metaphysic Sieves for sifting air!
Life-theories and their seesaw Swing at rest,
Life's livelier Roundabout on earth to share!—
Not unamused, ‘in that obscure sojourn
Though long detained,’ our Optimist must turn
To some profession now, and haply learn
How in the hungry press of strugglers best
The means of life his own right hand may wrest.
But better is the narrow humble sphere
Which sets from childhood's days before the eyes
Some calling which to climb to were a prize,
Which, difficult to win, is therefore dear—
Than wider means which leave the cultured lad
Himself to choose what path of life to run;
Let Fancy tell what Duty should be done,
Make worthless what can be for wishing had,
And prove how too much choice is worse than none.
94
Church—Physic—Law—which most attractive seemed,
Or rather least repulsive should be deemed.
II.
What marvellous study like the human frame!What webs and tissues by that living loom
Woven to rarest texture, richest bloom;
What wefts and warps of flexile ducts that wind
In never-tangled courses intertwined;
What mechanisms intricate, exact,
In orderly profusion ranged and packed;
What cunning cordage curiously inlaced;
What delicate engines of supply and waste;
What fine concoctions and witch-juices strange
For metamorphosis and magic change;
What subtlest forces balanced and combined;
Leaving poor human skill so far behind,
All Art seems artless, all Invention blind!
(Wonders, all Chance! some wondrous Sages say!)
But then how saddening, that superb array
No more in healthy and harmonious play,
But festering in disorder and decay!
What grander triumph can Experience show
Than the cool Surgeon's, who in conquering strife
With fell disease, with science-guided knife
Dares open wide the dreadful door of Life
Some perilous moments, and his dexterous feat
Of desperate rescue rapidly complete
With sure decisive stroke, lest the grim Foe
Should entrance gain and all his work o'erthrow!
“Aye!” thought our student, with a transient glow,
95
The labour of a life were well bestowed?
But then, alas! to that proud power the road
Through fetid chambers of Dissection lies
Whereat a very Ghoul's foul gorge would rise.”
III.
Well, cannot Law awake some genuine spark
Of true ambition—pay for patient toil?
What spectacle more pleasing than to mark
Some Master of inimitable fence
Strike Falsehood to the heart through every foil
And feint of scoundrel skill? mark learning, sense,
And trained acumen flash their sunlike rays
Through all the vile, perversely winding ways
Of vice; illuminate the burrowed maze
And crannies Craft and Cunning know to shape,
And stop their every earthhole of escape!
Is not the Law a mighty mesh to snare
The many-shifted meanness of mankind?
Of cheated Innocence the Champion fair
Against all wrongs by tyrant Wealth designed?
Its task, what nobler since the world began,
To sort and settle by right Reason's plan
All deeds Man does or duties owes to Man?
To stamp the drill and discipline of schools
On the rude progeny of fertile Chance;
Through Time's still widening wilderness to chase
With the slow hounds of principles and rules
(Though mostly distanced in the dubious race)
The ever-doubling hares of Circumstance?
Nay! may not even youth's impatience glance
With pitying interest or perhaps with praise—
At that mole-eyed devotion of old days
Which with such mousing perseverance strove—
Such creeping subtlety and crabbed love,
To fit dead forms to living ages, lacking
Responsive facts that made their sole defence;
In search of reasons, dull inventions racking
For aims that had to reason no pretence;
And stretching Ingenuity to cracking,
To reconcile absurdity to sense?—
Of true ambition—pay for patient toil?
What spectacle more pleasing than to mark
Some Master of inimitable fence
Strike Falsehood to the heart through every foil
And feint of scoundrel skill? mark learning, sense,
And trained acumen flash their sunlike rays
Through all the vile, perversely winding ways
Of vice; illuminate the burrowed maze
And crannies Craft and Cunning know to shape,
And stop their every earthhole of escape!
Is not the Law a mighty mesh to snare
The many-shifted meanness of mankind?
Of cheated Innocence the Champion fair
Against all wrongs by tyrant Wealth designed?
Its task, what nobler since the world began,
To sort and settle by right Reason's plan
All deeds Man does or duties owes to Man?
To stamp the drill and discipline of schools
On the rude progeny of fertile Chance;
Through Time's still widening wilderness to chase
With the slow hounds of principles and rules
(Though mostly distanced in the dubious race)
The ever-doubling hares of Circumstance?
Nay! may not even youth's impatience glance
96
At that mole-eyed devotion of old days
Which with such mousing perseverance strove—
Such creeping subtlety and crabbed love,
To fit dead forms to living ages, lacking
Responsive facts that made their sole defence;
In search of reasons, dull inventions racking
For aims that had to reason no pretence;
And stretching Ingenuity to cracking,
To reconcile absurdity to sense?—
“Fine theories all!” thought Ranolf—“but that bowl
Of Law—what golden bias guides its roll
We know; how riches crush the right—how long
Perverted learning bolsters up the wrong;
And doubtless as distasteful it must be
To dabble in diseased morality
As physical corruption. Is it true
Besides, that Wrong, like Right, to get its due,
Let Justice fairly judge between the two,
Must have its Advocate, whate'er he feel,
To brawl and burst with simulated zeal?—
'Twere odious as, for those sly silent fees,
To cant condolement with high-fed Disease,
Paddle with Luxury's pampered pulse—and steal
Through sham sick rooms with cat-like pace and purr
Sleeking palled Fashion's pleasure-ruffled fur.”
Of Law—what golden bias guides its roll
We know; how riches crush the right—how long
Perverted learning bolsters up the wrong;
And doubtless as distasteful it must be
To dabble in diseased morality
As physical corruption. Is it true
Besides, that Wrong, like Right, to get its due,
Let Justice fairly judge between the two,
Must have its Advocate, whate'er he feel,
To brawl and burst with simulated zeal?—
'Twere odious as, for those sly silent fees,
To cant condolement with high-fed Disease,
Paddle with Luxury's pampered pulse—and steal
Through sham sick rooms with cat-like pace and purr
Sleeking palled Fashion's pleasure-ruffled fur.”
The petulant rash judgments of a boy
Were these—all too impatient of the alloy
Which human doings that have most of gold
Too strictly analyzed must needs unfold?—
They were enough to sway him, so are told.
Were these—all too impatient of the alloy
Which human doings that have most of gold
Too strictly analyzed must needs unfold?—
They were enough to sway him, so are told.
97
IV.
Try then the Church. “What Church?” our youngster sighed:
“Is there within the world's circumference wide
A Church or any Temple—in this dearth
Of Faith, with half her heavenly cables snapt,
Hope's anchor scarcely left—has life or worth
To make its intellectual votaries feel
What in old days they felt; that martyr zeal,
Forgetfulness of present self and rapt
Possession of the Infinite on Earth
That gave a grandeur to the Life it scorned?
But who would brook a Church if unadorned
With absolute love of Truth? unless it gave
To Thought the utmost freedom it could crave;
Followed where'er it led, true Reason's light;
Avowed itself to Truth an utter slave,
Truth ever and Truth only—come what might?
And who that loved his own free soul could bear
To work, a digger in the dark gold mine
Of spiritual Truth, or bold researches try
Where scientific Doubts with deadly shine
Like Icebergs freeze, or Faith's bleached fragments lie
Whitening the hot Saharas of Despair—
Handcuffed and fettered with the leaden links
Of dogmas stereotyped—creeds cut-and-dry
And double-dry? heart-paralysed by dread
Of all but what smooth smug ‘Society’
That feels by fashion and by custom thinks,
Gives pass and permit to? Whose Soul so dead
As dare put on a Soul-deliverer's power
While forced or fain a Law Divine to trace
Of Spiritual Storms in frothy-bubbling suds
Raised in some legal Washtub where they scour
And rinse hot-steaming ritualistic duds—
Awestruck lest ultra-rubric rag and clout
Lose cabalistic colour, gloss or grace,
Ere it can rage its tiny tempest out?—
Or who with strangely grovelling Quixotry
Would think to quell the Evil all about
With candlesticks and censers?—satisfy
The crave for Infinite Good that cannot die,
With trim and tinselled haberdashery?
Who, in a fight so fierce in such an age,
With lackered shields and silvered wooden swords
Of ceremonious mummeries would engage?
With pagan posture-tricks such warfare wage
And pantomime, in place on Thespian boards—
Stage-twirlings in the death-tug! Who could dote
In imbecile expectance to assuage
Sharp pangs of soul with prayers run up by rote
In self-complacent trills with pompous throat?
Would any heart remorse had desperate driven,
Or milder sense of ‘Sin’ abased, on heaven
In accents guided by the gamut call,
And do-re-mi-sol-fa the God of All?”
“Is there within the world's circumference wide
A Church or any Temple—in this dearth
Of Faith, with half her heavenly cables snapt,
Hope's anchor scarcely left—has life or worth
To make its intellectual votaries feel
What in old days they felt; that martyr zeal,
Forgetfulness of present self and rapt
Possession of the Infinite on Earth
That gave a grandeur to the Life it scorned?
But who would brook a Church if unadorned
With absolute love of Truth? unless it gave
To Thought the utmost freedom it could crave;
Followed where'er it led, true Reason's light;
Avowed itself to Truth an utter slave,
Truth ever and Truth only—come what might?
And who that loved his own free soul could bear
To work, a digger in the dark gold mine
Of spiritual Truth, or bold researches try
Where scientific Doubts with deadly shine
Like Icebergs freeze, or Faith's bleached fragments lie
Whitening the hot Saharas of Despair—
Handcuffed and fettered with the leaden links
Of dogmas stereotyped—creeds cut-and-dry
And double-dry? heart-paralysed by dread
Of all but what smooth smug ‘Society’
That feels by fashion and by custom thinks,
Gives pass and permit to? Whose Soul so dead
As dare put on a Soul-deliverer's power
98
Of Spiritual Storms in frothy-bubbling suds
Raised in some legal Washtub where they scour
And rinse hot-steaming ritualistic duds—
Awestruck lest ultra-rubric rag and clout
Lose cabalistic colour, gloss or grace,
Ere it can rage its tiny tempest out?—
Or who with strangely grovelling Quixotry
Would think to quell the Evil all about
With candlesticks and censers?—satisfy
The crave for Infinite Good that cannot die,
With trim and tinselled haberdashery?
Who, in a fight so fierce in such an age,
With lackered shields and silvered wooden swords
Of ceremonious mummeries would engage?
With pagan posture-tricks such warfare wage
And pantomime, in place on Thespian boards—
Stage-twirlings in the death-tug! Who could dote
In imbecile expectance to assuage
Sharp pangs of soul with prayers run up by rote
In self-complacent trills with pompous throat?
Would any heart remorse had desperate driven,
Or milder sense of ‘Sin’ abased, on heaven
In accents guided by the gamut call,
And do-re-mi-sol-fa the God of All?”
His youthful scorn would graver minds endorse?—
Senses or Reason—any hook to raise
The loach-like groundling Soul with—all must praise;
The end—Soul-raising—no one contravenes;
But why absurdly deify the means?—
Then greater is a Priesthood's duty too
Old Truth admitted to apply—enforce,
Than to explore the Universe for new.
But how much priestly truth is granted true?
Science her freshets still must thunder down
Of physical Truth, though drowsing Churches drown.
Should not the eye be open?—hand be free
To seize at once whate'er the eye may see
Of nascent truth, and let the dying go?
What, if your Priests, like Shepherds half asleep,
Over the gold-brown gloss of dogmas keep
Vain watch, while half their sheep a-hungered stray
To succulent green pastures far away?
For Forms of Faith, though beautiful they be,
If e'er the Truth, their living spirit, flee,
What are they like but cold and stony flowers,
Those geysers boiling up through emerald bowers
In far-off islands he was soon to see,
Clothe with a sparry spume, that hardens white
Around the perished plant concealed from sight,
But still retains in delicate array
Each form of tiny leaf and tender spray,
Cold, crumbling, colourless—in lifeless pride—
No growing green, no circling sap inside!
Senses or Reason—any hook to raise
The loach-like groundling Soul with—all must praise;
The end—Soul-raising—no one contravenes;
But why absurdly deify the means?—
Then greater is a Priesthood's duty too
Old Truth admitted to apply—enforce,
99
But how much priestly truth is granted true?
Science her freshets still must thunder down
Of physical Truth, though drowsing Churches drown.
Should not the eye be open?—hand be free
To seize at once whate'er the eye may see
Of nascent truth, and let the dying go?
What, if your Priests, like Shepherds half asleep,
Over the gold-brown gloss of dogmas keep
Vain watch, while half their sheep a-hungered stray
To succulent green pastures far away?
For Forms of Faith, though beautiful they be,
If e'er the Truth, their living spirit, flee,
What are they like but cold and stony flowers,
Those geysers boiling up through emerald bowers
In far-off islands he was soon to see,
Clothe with a sparry spume, that hardens white
Around the perished plant concealed from sight,
But still retains in delicate array
Each form of tiny leaf and tender spray,
Cold, crumbling, colourless—in lifeless pride—
No growing green, no circling sap inside!
But how should he presume by thought or deed
To set up for a sower of Truth's seed?—
Not his the credence that could teach a creed;
The doubly-sure assurance that could feed
Another's faith with fervour of its own.
Faith has its temperate as its torrid zone;
And widely different as joy from grief
Is certain knowledge from sincere belief.
To set up for a sower of Truth's seed?—
Not his the credence that could teach a creed;
The doubly-sure assurance that could feed
Another's faith with fervour of its own.
Faith has its temperate as its torrid zone;
And widely different as joy from grief
Is certain knowledge from sincere belief.
100
V.
Well, ere his choice was fixed—his father died,And left the youth with more of gold supplied
Than for his moderate wishes would provide.
So to the Sea, his passion all the time,
He took. To rove from clime to clime
At least would gratify his ruling taste:
At least, he knew, upon the watery waste
His buoyant spirits kept in play would be—
His soul unfettered still, his fancy free.
VI.
And now behold this Ranolf once againTossing, a student-sailor on the main;
Sending from time to time, home-hearts to please,
Some glimpses of the glories of the seas,
And snatches of reflection—such as these:
“How grandly—when throughout the silent day,
Some ample Day, serene, divine,
Beneath the glowing Line,
Our helpless Ship had hung as in a trance
In light-blue glassiness of calm that lay
A wide expanse
Encircled by soft depths of ether clear,
Whose melting azure seemed to swim
Surcharged and saturate with balmiest brilliancy—
How grandly solemn was the Day's decline!
Down as if wholly dropped from out the Sky
The fallen Sun's great disc would lolling lie
Upon the narrowed Ocean's very rim,
Awfully near!
A hush of deep suspense, grave, almost grim,
Wrapt all the pure, blank, empty hemisphere:
While straight across the gleaming crimson floor,
From the unmoving Ship's black burnished side,
There ran a golden pathway right into the coré
Of all that throbbing splendour violet-dyed;
Whither it seemed an easy task to follow
The liquid ripples tremblingly o'erflowing
Into the intense and blinding hollow
Of palpitating purple, showing
The way as through an open door
Into some world of burning bliss, undreamt of heretofore!
Whose heart would not have swelled, the while
Deep adoration and delight came o'er him
At that stupendous mystery, close before him!
Not less, but more stupendous that he knew
Perchance, whate'er the subtle surface-play
Of Science had to teach of level ray
Reflected or refracted; and could say
Nay, almost count the millions to a mile,
How far away
That pure quintessence of dark fire, deep-lying
In fathomless Flame-Oceans round him flying,
His inconceivable circumference withdrew:
Knew marvels of the fringe of flames that frisk
In ruddy dance about his moon-masked face,
Set on like petals round a sunflower's disc—
Each glorious petal shooting into space
A thousand times as far as Earth's vast globe is thick!—
Could tell of that Fire-firmament immense
Whose element-melting heat intense
Makes iron into vapour boil—
With alternating outrush and recoil
Now towering high in polar crests of gold,
Now spreading broad—a cestus round him rolled;
While Chasm-Spots that worlds were pebbles thrown into,
Gape wide beneath—close up—are many or few—
As crests or girdle take their turn,
With sway and resway rhythmic burn!—
Stupendous ever! aye, though Science fancy-quick
Foreguess full many a World
Worn out, and, crushed to cinders, flying fleet;
Or in cold black rotundity complete
Into his cooling bosom headlong hurled,
Just by collision to strike out fresh heat,
And feed with flame, renew and trim,
And keep awhile from falling dim
That monstrous unimaginable wick!
Say rather—for one system's billioned years keep bright
Its awful, mystic, God-created Light!”
Some ample Day, serene, divine,
Beneath the glowing Line,
Our helpless Ship had hung as in a trance
In light-blue glassiness of calm that lay
A wide expanse
Encircled by soft depths of ether clear,
Whose melting azure seemed to swim
Surcharged and saturate with balmiest brilliancy—
How grandly solemn was the Day's decline!
Down as if wholly dropped from out the Sky
The fallen Sun's great disc would lolling lie
Upon the narrowed Ocean's very rim,
Awfully near!
101
Wrapt all the pure, blank, empty hemisphere:
While straight across the gleaming crimson floor,
From the unmoving Ship's black burnished side,
There ran a golden pathway right into the coré
Of all that throbbing splendour violet-dyed;
Whither it seemed an easy task to follow
The liquid ripples tremblingly o'erflowing
Into the intense and blinding hollow
Of palpitating purple, showing
The way as through an open door
Into some world of burning bliss, undreamt of heretofore!
Whose heart would not have swelled, the while
Deep adoration and delight came o'er him
At that stupendous mystery, close before him!
Not less, but more stupendous that he knew
Perchance, whate'er the subtle surface-play
Of Science had to teach of level ray
Reflected or refracted; and could say
Nay, almost count the millions to a mile,
How far away
That pure quintessence of dark fire, deep-lying
In fathomless Flame-Oceans round him flying,
His inconceivable circumference withdrew:
Knew marvels of the fringe of flames that frisk
In ruddy dance about his moon-masked face,
Set on like petals round a sunflower's disc—
Each glorious petal shooting into space
A thousand times as far as Earth's vast globe is thick!—
Could tell of that Fire-firmament immense
Whose element-melting heat intense
Makes iron into vapour boil—
With alternating outrush and recoil
102
Now spreading broad—a cestus round him rolled;
While Chasm-Spots that worlds were pebbles thrown into,
Gape wide beneath—close up—are many or few—
As crests or girdle take their turn,
With sway and resway rhythmic burn!—
Stupendous ever! aye, though Science fancy-quick
Foreguess full many a World
Worn out, and, crushed to cinders, flying fleet;
Or in cold black rotundity complete
Into his cooling bosom headlong hurled,
Just by collision to strike out fresh heat,
And feed with flame, renew and trim,
And keep awhile from falling dim
That monstrous unimaginable wick!
Say rather—for one system's billioned years keep bright
Its awful, mystic, God-created Light!”
VII.
“Naraka—Niflheim—Tartarus—or Tophet!
From what dead heart and poor unpicturing brain,—
Too dull to see or realize
Its own demoniac phantasies—
Of Bonze, Skald, Brahmin, talapoin, or prophet—
Goth, Syrian, Greek, or old Hindu,
Of Aryan or Semitic strain,—
Came singly or from all upgrew
That rank arch blasphemy and dream insane
Of torture-gulfs where Infinite Love
All human guess or gauge above
Preserves in fiery suffocation
The myriads of its own creation?
I care not—I; but when I came
On deck in darkness yesternight,
That very place appeared to be
Laid bare before my startled sight!
For far and wide in pale effulgence dire,
One boundless ghastly welter of white fire,
The Ocean rolled; a hoary Sea
Of awful incandescence rolled and broke away
In bursts of firespray—tongues of lambent flame
That writhed and tossed in burning play,
And with a baleful glare
Put out the stars—quenched what mild radiance fell
From the clear skies, as that unhallowed spell
Of blighting Superstition can outblaze
With its fierce coruscations of despair
The genuine rays
Of light from heaven that fall like dew,
Divine illuminings serene and true.
From what dead heart and poor unpicturing brain,—
Too dull to see or realize
Its own demoniac phantasies—
Of Bonze, Skald, Brahmin, talapoin, or prophet—
Goth, Syrian, Greek, or old Hindu,
Of Aryan or Semitic strain,—
Came singly or from all upgrew
That rank arch blasphemy and dream insane
Of torture-gulfs where Infinite Love
All human guess or gauge above
103
The myriads of its own creation?
I care not—I; but when I came
On deck in darkness yesternight,
That very place appeared to be
Laid bare before my startled sight!
For far and wide in pale effulgence dire,
One boundless ghastly welter of white fire,
The Ocean rolled; a hoary Sea
Of awful incandescence rolled and broke away
In bursts of firespray—tongues of lambent flame
That writhed and tossed in burning play,
And with a baleful glare
Put out the stars—quenched what mild radiance fell
From the clear skies, as that unhallowed spell
Of blighting Superstition can outblaze
With its fierce coruscations of despair
The genuine rays
Of light from heaven that fall like dew,
Divine illuminings serene and true.
“And yet such thoughts did ill beseem
This vision—so would any deem,
And other lore and wiser learn,
Who o'er the taffrail marked the excess
And marvel of the loveliness
Of those swift-whirling volumes of soft light
Fast-flashing with gold star-drops sparkling bright
In myriads through the alabaster glow—
Those spangled gyres and wreaths of dazzling snow
That still in wide expanding trail
Went roaring off her stern
So grandly as our Vessel through
The surging phosphorescence flew;
Streaming behind her, as the snowy plumes
Of those rich birds the Aztecs old
Reared at their royal Town of Gold,
Stream when at dusk they slowly sail
Streaking the depth of Amazonian glooms.
Ah! surely no sound heart these glories seeing
Would thence derive the notion of a Being
Creating only to destroy;
Or framing Phlegethons and fire-washed caves
Swarming with frenzied Spirits thicker than these waves
With millions of medusæ all alight with joy!”
This vision—so would any deem,
And other lore and wiser learn,
Who o'er the taffrail marked the excess
And marvel of the loveliness
Of those swift-whirling volumes of soft light
Fast-flashing with gold star-drops sparkling bright
In myriads through the alabaster glow—
Those spangled gyres and wreaths of dazzling snow
That still in wide expanding trail
Went roaring off her stern
So grandly as our Vessel through
104
Streaming behind her, as the snowy plumes
Of those rich birds the Aztecs old
Reared at their royal Town of Gold,
Stream when at dusk they slowly sail
Streaking the depth of Amazonian glooms.
Ah! surely no sound heart these glories seeing
Would thence derive the notion of a Being
Creating only to destroy;
Or framing Phlegethons and fire-washed caves
Swarming with frenzied Spirits thicker than these waves
With millions of medusæ all alight with joy!”
VIII.
“St. Lawrence! yes, I well remember
Thy Gulf—that morning in September.—
Fast flew our Ship careering lightly
Over the waters breaking brightly;
Alongside close as if their aim
Were but her vaunted speed to shame,
Sleek porpoises like lightning went
Cleaving the sunny element;
Now where the black bows smote their way
How would they revel in the roaring spray!
Like victors in the contest now
Dash swift athwart the flying prow;
Or springing forward three abreast
Shoot slippery o'er each foamy crest—
Shoot upwards in an airy arc
As three abreast they passed the bark:—
Pied petrels coursed about the sea
And skimmed the billows dexterously;
Sank with each hollow, rose with every hill,
So close, yet never touched them till
They seized their prey with rapid bill:—
Afar, the cloudy spurts of spray
Told that the grampus sported there
With his ferocious mates at play.
Meanwhile the breeze that freshly blew
From every breaking wavetop drew
A plume of smoke that straightway from the sun
The colours of the rainbow won,
So that you saw wherever turning
A thousand small volcanoes burning,
Emitting vapours of each hue
Of orange, purple, red and blue.
The Sky meanwhile was all alive
With snow-bright clouds that seemed to drive
Swiftly, as though the Heavens in glee
Were racing with the racing Sea:
Each flitting sight and rushing sound
Spread life and hope and joy around;
Ship, birds and fishes, Sky and Ocean
All restless with one glad emotion!—
Thy Gulf—that morning in September.—
Fast flew our Ship careering lightly
Over the waters breaking brightly;
Alongside close as if their aim
Were but her vaunted speed to shame,
Sleek porpoises like lightning went
Cleaving the sunny element;
Now where the black bows smote their way
How would they revel in the roaring spray!
Like victors in the contest now
Dash swift athwart the flying prow;
Or springing forward three abreast
Shoot slippery o'er each foamy crest—
Shoot upwards in an airy arc
As three abreast they passed the bark:—
105
And skimmed the billows dexterously;
Sank with each hollow, rose with every hill,
So close, yet never touched them till
They seized their prey with rapid bill:—
Afar, the cloudy spurts of spray
Told that the grampus sported there
With his ferocious mates at play.
Meanwhile the breeze that freshly blew
From every breaking wavetop drew
A plume of smoke that straightway from the sun
The colours of the rainbow won,
So that you saw wherever turning
A thousand small volcanoes burning,
Emitting vapours of each hue
Of orange, purple, red and blue.
The Sky meanwhile was all alive
With snow-bright clouds that seemed to drive
Swiftly, as though the Heavens in glee
Were racing with the racing Sea:
Each flitting sight and rushing sound
Spread life and hope and joy around;
Ship, birds and fishes, Sky and Ocean
All restless with one glad emotion!—
“But what a change! when suddenly we spy
Apart from all that headlong revelry—
Pencilled above the sky-line, like a Spectre drear,
A silent Iceberg solemnly appear,—
Pausing ghost-like our greeting to await.—
The crystal Mountain, as we come anear
And feel the airs that from it creep
So chilling o'er the sunny Deep,
Discloses—while it slowly shifts,
Now blue, faint-glistening semilucent clifts,
Now melancholy peaks, dead-white and desolate.
Apart from all that headlong revelry—
Pencilled above the sky-line, like a Spectre drear,
A silent Iceberg solemnly appear,—
Pausing ghost-like our greeting to await.—
The crystal Mountain, as we come anear
And feel the airs that from it creep
So chilling o'er the sunny Deep,
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Now blue, faint-glistening semilucent clifts,
Now melancholy peaks, dead-white and desolate.
“But comes it not, this Guest unbidden
This wanderer from a home far-hidden,
Dim herald of the mysteries of the Pole
With tidings from that cheerless region fraught—
Comes it not o'er us like the sudden Thought,
The haunting phantom of a World apart,
The blank and silent Apparition
That, ever prompt to gain serene admission,
Lurks on the crowded confines of the heart,
The many-pictured purlieus of the Soul;
Nay, sometimes thrusts its unexpected presence
Upon our brightest-tinted hours of pleasaunce?—
This wanderer from a home far-hidden,
Dim herald of the mysteries of the Pole
With tidings from that cheerless region fraught—
Comes it not o'er us like the sudden Thought,
The haunting phantom of a World apart,
The blank and silent Apparition
That, ever prompt to gain serene admission,
Lurks on the crowded confines of the heart,
The many-pictured purlieus of the Soul;
Nay, sometimes thrusts its unexpected presence
Upon our brightest-tinted hours of pleasaunce?—
“That Polar realm is ransacked—known;
Our outside World of Matter, still
Lies pervious to determined will:
And shall the World of Spirit never
Its secrets yield to true endeavour?—
Five thousand years have doubtless shown
But little of that Spirit-zone:
For Science is a Child as yet
At hornbook rude and primer set:
And Man is just emerging from the past
Eternity of Darkness; from the vast
Æons and ages of a measureless Night,
Rubbing his eyes at the unwonted light:
How should he read all things aright
And say what can or cannot be—or utter
Out of his heart the Universe, whose growth
And whole existence yet is but the flutter
Of an ephemeral water-moth?
Take fifty thousand years—a span
In the conceivable career of Man;
Think you, with riper knowledge—skill profounder—
No grand explorers, bolder, sounder,
Will break into that Spirit-zone—reveal
Not iron-bound realms of ruthless ice and snow
Or narrow straits where freezing waters flow,
No shooting lights, or shifting gleams;
But prospects trustier than the dance and play
Protean of those dumb magnetic storms—
Auroras lovelier than our sanguine dreams
Of fondest Inspiration—Forms
Of Being more essentially divine
Than all that in Thought's topmost triumphs shine?
And prove how real the region whence our stray
And shadowy intimations find their way;
With what true signs and tokens rife
Those glimmering dreams and fine forebodings steal
Into the circle of our little day,
Into the glad familiar Sea of Life?’
Our outside World of Matter, still
Lies pervious to determined will:
And shall the World of Spirit never
Its secrets yield to true endeavour?—
Five thousand years have doubtless shown
But little of that Spirit-zone:
For Science is a Child as yet
At hornbook rude and primer set:
And Man is just emerging from the past
Eternity of Darkness; from the vast
Æons and ages of a measureless Night,
Rubbing his eyes at the unwonted light:
How should he read all things aright
And say what can or cannot be—or utter
Out of his heart the Universe, whose growth
107
Of an ephemeral water-moth?
Take fifty thousand years—a span
In the conceivable career of Man;
Think you, with riper knowledge—skill profounder—
No grand explorers, bolder, sounder,
Will break into that Spirit-zone—reveal
Not iron-bound realms of ruthless ice and snow
Or narrow straits where freezing waters flow,
No shooting lights, or shifting gleams;
But prospects trustier than the dance and play
Protean of those dumb magnetic storms—
Auroras lovelier than our sanguine dreams
Of fondest Inspiration—Forms
Of Being more essentially divine
Than all that in Thought's topmost triumphs shine?
And prove how real the region whence our stray
And shadowy intimations find their way;
With what true signs and tokens rife
Those glimmering dreams and fine forebodings steal
Into the circle of our little day,
Into the glad familiar Sea of Life?’
| Ranolf and Amohia | |