A TALE OF THE MODERN TIME.
June 1840.
PART I.
I
An old man once I knew whose aged hair
A summer brilliance evermore retained:
Youthful his voice and full not flawed nor spare;
His cheek all smooth and like a child's engrained,
Or marble altar innocently stained
With roses mirrored in its tablet white—
Like May his eye; his foot-fall slow but light.
II
Yet no one marvelled at him: of his ways
Rarely men spake as of the buried dead;
And dropped him from their lips with trivial phrase:
‘Gentle he was, and kind,’ the neighbours said,
‘Albeit an idle life and vain he led.’
Odours he loved from flowers at twilight dim;
And breath and song of morn: children loved him.
III
I have beheld him on a wintry plant
An eye delighted bending full an hour!
As though the Spring o'er every tendril scant
Crept 'neath his ken. Methought he had the power
To see the growing root plain as the flower.
O'er a leaf's margin he would pore and gaze
As o'er some problem of the starry maze!
IV
Over a rose his palm he loved to curve
As though it brought him warmth from out the ground.
Instinctively his step would often swerve
Following slow streams that down in darkness wound:
His body there he bent above the sound
Heard but by him. A virgin world he trod
As though it were the precinct of some god.
V
I wondered at him long: but youth and awe
Restrained me from demanding of his story.
At last, it chanced one day this man I saw
Reclining 'neath an oak rifted and hoary
Last tree of a wild, woodland promontory.
Far round, below, the forest deep and warm
Lay waving in the light of an illumined storm.
VI
I placed me at his feet: his eyes were closed;
Celestial brightness hung upon his mien,
And all his features, tranquilly composed:
I gazed on him, and cried, ‘Where hast thou been
In youth? What done, what read, what heard, what seen?’
Irreverent was the inquest: yet the man
Looked on me with a smile, and thus began.
VII
The Tale, true told, of every Human Being
Were awful; yet upon each new-born child,
As though none else there lived, the Eye All-seeing
Rested in glory! Heaven looked down and smiled:
And choirs of joyful Angels undefiled
Around the cradle sang and evermore
In youth walked near him, after, and before.
VIII
Stranger! the veil of Sense in mercy hides
The perils round us, as the mercies! Say,
Amid the forest on the mountain sides
What miles of mazes hast thou tracked to-day?
Had some black chasm girt visibly thy way
Couldst thou secure have wandered thus? Not so—
The danger is not ours while danger none we know.
IX
My life hath been a marvel. Thine no less.
If thou that marvel hast not yet discerned
Lament not therefore. Unto wretchedness
That knowledge grew for which our parents yearned.
The best and happiest ofttime least have learned
Of Man's dread elements—what dust—what spirit—
That which we are, what have, what make, and what inherit.
X
Action in trance, in panic Thought were lost,
If all we are we knew ourselves to be.
O'er a great deep, now calm, now tempest-tossed
Rises one rock; but, hid below the sea
That rock slants down—a mountain! Such are we—
Our being's summit only o'er the deeps
Ascends: the rest is blind, and in the abysses sleeps.
XI
In Man the Finite from the Depth ascends:
Centre is Man of all men hear or see;
Chapel where Time with Incorruption blends
Where Dust is wedded to Divinity.
All but omnipotent in Will is he.
Freedom his awful privilege! Like a God
He walks at noon; at night lies cold beneath the sod.
XII
Thou seekest Knowledge: every lore we prize
But as a lamp thereby ourself to know.
Stranger! 'tis well within to turn our eyes
If we look heavenward having turned them so.
Horror unnamed and phantom forms of woe
Rebuke the haughtier quest. With single aim
If thou my tale require receive in joy the same.
PART II.
I
Happy my childhood was; devout and glad:
My youth was full of glory, joy, and might,
Like some volcanic morn, and tempest-clad,
In tropic regions, when from gulfs of night
Day leaps at once to the empyreal height.
Strength without bound in spirit, body, and soul,
I felt: and in my rapture mocked control.
II
In the madness of that strength I went abroad
Where'er Ambition called, or Passion led:
Full many a deep my ploughing bark hath scored:
Full many a plain hath echoed to my tread:
All enterprise I sought: all books I read:
All thoughts I pondered murmuring in my mirth
That text, ‘Be thou, O Man, the Lord of Earth.’
III
Deeply I studied in all tomes and tongues
The Historic legend, Philosophic page:
More deeply yet those earlier mythic songs
Built up by Bard for legislative Sage
Himself a builder up, from age to age,
Of States—true poems—Policies sublime,
Wherein well-balanced Functions metre make, and rhyme.
IV
All Art and Science at the Gentile feast
Of Western pride advanced, I knew right well:
And laughed to mark the great Book of the East
Push on through all as through a garden dell
Bright with frail flowers and paved with glittering shell
Some Asian Elephant. I sought within
For God, and there alone; and recked not of my sin.
V
Corporeal instincts only I denied:
My larger concupiscence temperance feigned.
Humble oft seemed I through the excess of pride
And calm of conscious strength. No muscle strained;
That which the eye desired, the hand attained:
Too proud for Pride's less triumphs I had sworn
To shun them; or, first won, to fling them back in scorn.
VI
Was I then wicked? Child! applauding nations
Such question asked, had called me great and good.
I loved my kind—but more their acclamations:
My thoughts were birds of prey and snatched that food
From weak and strong to gorge their infant brood:—
Much knowing, this I knew not. But the hour
Was come that proved at last my fancied power.
VII
One day a mountain's summit I was pacing:
Through cloudy chasms the sunbursts fell thereon;
Over its plain the mighty winds were racing
Quiring Eolian anthems in loud tone.
Long time I walked in pride and walked alone:
And what I was revolved—and turned again,
To mark the far off towns and visible main.
VIII
Man I considered then: and I looked forth
Upon the works and wonders of his hand:
The deep his beaten road, his palace earth;
Commanding all things; yet beneath command
Of Mind—whereof I grasped the magic wand.
—Fronting the sun, that set in blood, I saw
Man's shape against its disk; and yet I felt not awe.
IX
All treasures of my Thought again I spread
Unrolled as in a map before my eyes;
And walked among them with a conqueror's tread
That moves o'er fields of hard-won victories,
Dreaming of mightier yet. A long disguise
Fell from me in that rapture; and I trod
A worshipper no longer but a God!
X
Towards me a throne descended through the air—
Then lo! the crown of my demoniac Pride
Updrawn, raised up my horror-stricken hair!
For, wheresoe'er I wandered, by my side
Another step appeared to tread and glide:
No mortal form was near: and in the abyss
Of heaven, the mountain floors are echoless.
XI
I stopped; it stopped: I walked; it walked: I turned:
My fears I mocked, unworthy of a man.
Then a cold poison from that heart self-spurned
Welled forth: and I, with eyes unfilmed, began
Once more my life and inmost heart to scan:
Till suddenly what shape in soul I was
Before me I beheld plainly as in a glass.
XII
Then my disease I knew; but not the cure.
Lightning, sent flaming from the breast of heaven,
Revealed my sins long-hid from lure to lure:
Beams from the eyes of God, like shafts were driven
Against me: to her depth my soul was riven
Whereof each portion, conscious and amazed,
In stupor of despair upon the other gazed.
XIII
Thus on my throne, that marble mountain height,
My Soul I saw! I went I know not whither.
Down like a tempest fell from heaven the night:
I heard the sea and rushed in panic thither;
By ghost-like clouds, and woods my step made wither,
And rock, and chasm that seemed to gape and sever,
I rushed—and rushed, methought, for ever and for ever.
PART III.
I
I woke in a great cavern of the main.
The wave rolled in upon its strong breast bearing
A storm of icy wind and cloudy rain
With sound as if of souls that died despairing:
The billows, that rough beach harrowing and tearing,
Thundered far off: while morning, just begun,
Peered dimly through the spray, and through the shadows dun.
II
That shore was piled with death, like Nature's bier.
There, whitening spread a sea-beast's mouldering bones:
The rifted wings of some dead eagle here.
Over the wet cliff went funereal moans.
Yet calm at first I paced those wave-washed stones,
Whose crash the deadlier sound awhile could quell
Of that low step close by, my spirit's knell.
III
Still, still, where'er I turned that step would follow.
My fate above me hung as by a thread:
Beneath me yawned the earth, a vast veiled hollow!
To battle-fields athirst for death I fled.
Yet there, while headlong hosts beside me sped,
That footstep still I heard and knew from all;
Now harsh, now dull as moth fretting a coffin's pall.
IV
Thick, thick like leaves from autumn's skeleton woods
The shafts went by me, and as idly went.
Then back I turned into my solitudes
As slow, in sullen cloud of rage o'er-spent,
As mountain beast into dim forest tent,
With hunger unabated, when the night
Melts; and the eastern wolds spread wide in hated light.
V
Stranger! I tell you part: I speak not all.
Thenceforth I walked alone; and joined my kind
Only when lured by some black funeral:
On capital cities oft, with watchings blind,
I gazed, what time rushed forth the freezing wind
Between their turrets and the wintry stars;
All day I lay in tombs, or caves dim-lit with spars.
VI
On peaks eclipsing to its rim the ocean
Hath been my dwelling: rivers I have seen
Whose sound alone dispersed a gradual motion
O'er cloud-like woods, their deep primeval screen.
Sand-worlds my feet have trod beneath the sheen
Of spheres unnamed. From zone to zone I fled
As though each land in turn grew fire below my tread.
VII
But Heaven had ended now my time of sorrow
When most I seemed in penal horror bound:
Dreamless one night I slept, and on the morrow
Strange tears now first amid the dew I found
Wherewith my heavy hair and cheeks were drowned;
And in my heart, fanned by that morning air,
There lay, as I walked on, my childhood's long-lost prayer.
VIII
Wearied, I sat upon a sunny bank,
Ridged o'er a plain yet white with virgin snows
Though now each balmy noon and midnight dank
Lightened the burden of the vernal rose;
My eyes, their wont it was till daylight's close,
Fixed on my own still shadow, in that light
Intense keenly defined, and dark as night.
IX
I hung above it: sudden, by that shade
Another shadow rested; faint and dim:
At first I thought my tears the phantom made;
Then cried ‘I do but dream it, form and limb.’
In horror then abroad I seemed to swim:
Then my great agony grew calm and dumb;
For now I knew indeed my destined hour was come.
X
My spirit's foe was now the spoil to claim:
My heart's chill seemed his hand upon my heart—
O marvel! clearer while that shade became
No mocking fiend, I saw, no lifted dart;
But a dejected Mourner! down, apart,
His head declined: one hand in grief he pressed
Upon the heaving shadow of a sorrowing breast.
XI
The other round my neck was thrown, so fair,
So kind, so gentle, none thereon might gaze
Nor feel that Love alone had placed it there!
There dropped the cloud of my Self-haunted days.
He who for years had tracked my wandering ways
Had followed me in love! O Virgin-born,
Thy shadow was the light of my eternal morn!
XII
Stranger! there came a joy to me that hour;
Such joy that never can it leave my soul:
All Heaven, condensed to one ambrosial flower,
Fell on my bosom—Truth's inviolate whole!
Obedience was the way; Love was the goal:
God, the true Universe, around me lay:
Systems and suns thenceforth were motes in that clear ray!
XIII
From that time saw I what 'tis Heaven to see,
That God is God indeed, and good to Man.
Theist then first. Who Love's Reality
Hath proved, forgets himself to probe and scan.
Knowledge for him remits her ancient ban:
Back fly those demons outwardly to sin
That lure the soul or turn our inquest sad within.
XIV
Then looked I up; and drank from Heaven that light
Which makes the world within and world around
Alone intelligible, pure, and bright:
My forehead then, but not by me, was crowned:
Then my lost youth, no longer sought, was found:
My penance then complete; or turned to pain
So sweet, the enamoured heart embraced it like a gain.
XV
My kind, new-vested in the eternal glory
Of God made Man, glorious to me became.
Thenceforth those crowns that shine in mortal story
I deemed it grief to bear, madness to claim.
To be a man seemed now man's loftiest aim.
True Rule seemed this—to wait on one the least
Of those who fight God's fight, or join His kingly feast.
XVI
Then the Three Virtues bade me kneel and drink:
Then the Twelve Gifts fell from the heavenly tree:
Then from the Portals Seven, and crystal brink,
Dread Sacraments and sweet came down to me.
Then saw I plain that Saintly Company
Through whom, as Living Laws, that world which Sense
Conceals, is ruled of God, by Prayer's Omnipotence.
XVII
Thus in high trance, and the way unitive,
I watched one year: which sabbath ended, God
Stirred up once more my nest, and bade me live,
Active and suffering. So again I trod
The temporal storm and wrestled with the flood;
And laboured long; and, by His grace, behold,
Two grains I brought, or three, to swell the hills of gold.
XVIII
Lastly, my faculties of body and mind
Decayed, through God's high will and boundless love,
And from the trunk whereon they grew declined,
As leaves from trees or plumes from moulting dove.
Thenceforth, more blest, I soared no more, nor strove;
But sat me down, and wait the end, as waits,
Sun-warmed, a beggar by great palace gates.
XIX
Stranger! this tale of one man's life is over.
No knowledge mine in youth have I unlearned:
But I the sense was gifted to discover
Of lore possessed long since, yet undiscerned:
Truths which, as abstract or remote, I spurned
In youth, as real most my heart now prizes;
And, what of old looked real, now as dream despises;
XX
Or but like dreams reveres. Hollow and vain
To me the pageants of this world appear;
Or truth but symbolled to the truthful brain.
The future world I find already here;
The unbeholden palpable and dear:
Firm as a staff to lean on; or a rod
Of power miraculous, and sent by God.
XXI
Stranger, farewell! Far off a bell is tolling:
A bridal or a funeral bell—whate'er
It chaunts, in harmony the tones are rolling.
All bells alike summon mankind to prayer!
Yea, and for me those twain one day shall pair
Their blended chimes to one. When I am dead
Stain not with tears my grave: it is a bridal bed.
XXII
He ceased. The inmost sense of that I heard
I know not: yet, because the man was wise,
His legend I have written word for word.
All things hold meaning: to unclouded eyes
Where eagle never soared are auguries.
It may be then this weed some balm doth bear;
Some cure for sight long dim; some charm against despair.
