University of Virginia Library

SECTION V. Matin Bells.

MATIN BELLS.

THE GRAND OLD CHURCH.

A CHRISTOPHANY.—I.

A CHRISTOPHANY.—II.

THE NEW MAGDALEN.

Christ came, as often He makes His theophany,
Came in the street—
Came as a Lonely One, came as the Only One,
Naked of feet;
Robed but in tatterings spotted with spatterings
Cast by the mire.
Clouts, as in merriment shaping a cerement,
Veiled not His fire
Breathing sweet awfulness on the unlawfulness
Bursting its bound,
On the iniquity and the obliquity
Surging around;
Till all the blindnesses seeking for kindnesses
But without rest,
All dumb maternities in dark eternities,
Hid in His breast;
All the sad billowings hungry for pillowings
Hailed in Him part,
All the wild malices drunk with hell chalices
Brake on His heart.
Christ as a Pariah stood forth a barrier
Meeting the foe,
Hushing the harlotry, exiled by varletry
Outcast in woe.
Beggary, shameful dress, took an unblameful dress,
Touched by His hand;
Thirsting and neediness, lusting and greediness,
Owned His command.
And the unshriven lot sprang a forgiven lot
Fair from His light,
Born into blessedness from the caressedness
Found in that sight.
Christ as the Holy One, Christ as the Lowly One
Bearing His Cross,
Spake to me winning souls, sware of all sinning souls
None should be loss.
Tears for pain's harrowings, horrors and harrowings,
Fell a sweet flood,
Blotting out sentences barring repentances—
Great tears of blood;
Words for the wondering, words for the blundering
Orphans adrift,
Staggering on so late, deaf and disconsolate—
Words to uplift.
“Who is this brittle reed, who is this little reed
Down in the dust,
Withered and wearily bending and drearily
Blown by each gust?
Once she was dutiful, once she was beautiful,
Bright as the morn;
Now she goes toilingly, now she goes soilingly,
Branded with scorn.
No one may name her more, no one can shame her more,
Blighted in brow;
Marked for indignity, shunned by benignity,
Look at her now!
Victim of vanity, dead to humanity,
Drowning in drink—
Type of the terrible refuge inerrable,
Over the brink;
Under the shimmering stars and the glimmering
Gas-litten gloom!
Fear, though sin's sediment is no impediment
Now to her doom;
Draggled and wandering, troubled and pondering
What will be next,
Past any miracle, hopeless, hysterical,
Misery's text!
Yet in her flightiness girt by Almightiness'
Infinite care,
Yet from obscurity meant in a purity
Richer to share.
Who is this little reed, who is this brittle reed
Bending so low?
Who is this rumpled thing, who is this crumpled thing
Halting and slow?
Tell me of sadnesses, tell me of madnesses,
Then you can guess
Who is this blighted one, who this unrighted one
Dumb with distress?
I'm not contemning her, I'm not condemning her,
Others may grudge
Least crumb of feelingness for mute appealingness;
Who is her judge?
Wicked I call her not, erring I thrall her not
With the old bond;
Past the sour Pharisee, over her heresy
Light leaps beyond.
All I can see in her, all soon to flee in her
Is passing night,
Trespassing, sorrowful, quenched by the morrow full
Of visions bright;
Only the meeknesses, only the weaknesses
Bidding her stray,
Turned into sweetnesses of my completenesses
In the new day.
I lift a stone for her, I who atone for her,
I fix a brand!
I would set throne for her, if all alone for her,
Proud by her stand.
Love sees the beautiful mating the dutiful
In a true tryst,
Love sees divinity and new virginity
Reborn in Christ.
Love sees no sin in her, love sees begin in her
Innocence quite,
Love sees a glorious lot and victorious
Loveliness white.
Where is the Stoical spirit heroical,
Raising her up!
Where is the womanly hand, giving humanly
Her the love cup?
Not mere mortality hers, but reality
No man hath priced;
Out of her viciousness comes all deliciousness;
She is the Christ.”

THE PILGRIM.

JUDAS ISCARIOT.

I had a dream of marble palaces
Bathed in blue skies, and broken images
Of emperors and gods, discrowned, dethroned,
And the great rule of iron and blood atoned
By blood and iron at last and laid in dust,
With all its pomp of consecrated lust
And loves dissolved and liberties denied
By venerable vices deified.
And then I met Him, met the Master, strong
In meekness that was might, amid a throng
Of Galilæans clamouring to be led
Against the Spoiler who with spacious tread
Bestrode the earth at His unbounded will
And drained it dry, and asked another still
To torture in those convolutions vast,
And leave when sucked an empty shell at last.
Yes, grim and gaunt as famished hounds were they
That smelled the blood and hungered for the prey,
Snapping and snarling at His heels, and all
(Who yet came greedy to be fed at call)
At strife among themselves, in impotence
Of blind ambition for pre-eminence;
Good stuff for soldiers, panting to be led
With large and loyal hearts, but with no head
For calculation's calm and symphonies
Of stately plots and measured strategies;
Like bloodhounds straining in the leash, with tense
And trembling muscles and one murderous sense
Of the red tainted track they nosed and knew,
And wild to wallow in the deathly dew
With garments rolled in battle and in gore,
While fierce their eyes stared steadfast on before.
But I had brains, I nursed a patient heart
And felt within me power to hold a part
Not all unequal to the coming clash
Of awful arms, when warring worlds would crash
And better peace with fairer land and sky
Would slow emerge from earth's great agony.
He talked of kingdoms, too, and said a sword
Would be His sceptre and He looked our Lord,
From that pure brow which dominated each
To the firm footstep with its royal reach
That went straight forward to its certain end,
Nor swerved one jot nor would one tittle bend
From the appointed purpose. He was King,
His voice had just the right imperial ring
With all its woman's tenderness, and spoke
As with authority and in us woke
Strange feelings, higher thoughts, a grander state,
And swept us onward like the march of fate.
But He delayed, and dallied with the fire
His words had lit and fanned to vast desire,
Commensurate with Israel's regal scope
And broad humanities of blessed hope.
Affairs were ripe, the actors ready, time
Had struck the hour with stern impatient chime
For venture and for victory, and yet
He lingered when the feast seemed almost set
And in the hand the prize, the precious meed,
For the great heart that grasped the present need
And beat in tune. The Roman wolf lay drowsed
With wine and wassail, and at ease caroused
Although in harness, careless of the wave
That hung and gathered and might be his grave.
The legionaries, swollen with pride and lust,
Contemptuous, marked no murmur of the gust
Precursor of the storm, and threw in play
The dice that nigh had thrown a world away.
No fear from them, the mercenary spear
That sold its favours only when paid dear
And (were we masters, as we might have been)
Had fought for us. The peril waxed unseen,
A grisly menace; step by step it drew
Nearer, and to a bodied blackness grew
In sullen workshops, on the silent mount
And desert shore, and at the shining fount
Where maidens met and babbled; and from marts
Went up the troubled sigh of bruiséd hearts,
Amid the wrangling of the rogues and fools.
Yes, out of Rabbis' dim and dusty schools,
Arose a solemn rustling to the skies
Of yellow parchments and phylacteries,
Borne on the breath of prayer and pious hate
That knocked for ever at Jehovah's gate.
And even the royal harlot's perfumed bed,
Where drugged with wanton dreams the golden head
Lay lapt in pride, found in that purple blot
Room for a hope that was one splendid spot
And made sin well nigh beautiful. The feet
Of laughing children down the sultry street,
Mimicked in sport, that did most brightly feign,
The expected hour when Israel yet should reign.
And to and fro, with lustrous oval cheek,
Intent on trade and talk the curious Greek
With news a glittering shadow came and went,
And higgled for a mite, and bowed and bent
In supple grace. From stormy cape and crag,
And parthian wastes, flashed out the danger flag
For those who knew the tempest signs; the air
Was thick with portents, up the starry stair
Climbed new strange beacons, and the deepening gloom
Heavy with thunder travailed as for doom.
Lo, through the east an ominous whisper sped
From land to land, the midnight skies were red
With wrath and ruin, and a bloody blade
Aloft was brandished in the shivering shade
Above infatuate Rome; a rumour crept
Through silken chambers, where the tyrant slept
On rose-strewn couches, boding change and strife
And fair beginnings of a larger life.
But He was silent, He delayed, though still
His words were firebrands, which He flung at will
Among us, many a bright and burning phrase,
To kindle hearts and set the world ablaze;
Division ever was His thrilling theme,
In house and home, and in the mightier scheme
Of courts and councils, sire against the son,
And friends against their friends that were as one,
With treachery and treason every breath
And parents hounding children to the death
Or children parents. While the stars for Him
Contended up in Heaven, though earth waxed dim,
And kings went down, and dynasties were cast
As autumn leaves and stubble on the blast,
And out of chaos and the cosmic pall
His own new kingdom mounting over all.
And we, He said in words like thunder tones,
Should rule with Him and sit on equal thrones
And judge the nations with our sceptred hands
Beneath the bluer skies, in greener lands,
Baptised with blood that marked the era's close,
While wildernesses blossomed as the rose.
And I believed Him, I believe Him yet,
Though now in darkness that dear Sun has set
To soar again with broader brighter rays,
And usher in the true heroic days.
I thought to serve Him by one desperate deed,
And make our holy faith the conquering creed
Again, and bring again for David's shrine
The human grandeur and the grace divine,
With more than David's empire and a home
For Israel vaster than the dreams of Rome.
And so I played the traitor, I who meant
Only to force His hand, and on Him leant
And on His promise as on some tall tower,
With no misgiving of His will or power;
I would compel Him thus to make us free,
And flash the sign to hungry Galilee,
Expectant, hot with the Messiah's name,
Like tinder quick to burst into a flame
When fell the fatal spark, a word, a look,
A gesture or a passage from the Book
That metes our marching orders. I was sure
Of His fixed purpose, and in Him secure.
I never doubted He would then draw back
Or turn a hair's breadth from the appointed track
And predetermined goal, while putting by
The investiture of all Eternity;
I never dreamed when God Himself sent down
His benediction and a heavenly crown
In Jordan's flood and on the holy hill
Of transformation, He would yet stand still
And strike no worthy blow and give no sign
When prophecies were ripe and hours benign.
I never guessed His was no earthly reign,
And all he said was darkly used to feign
Another kingdom and another power
Within us, when the heart itself would flower,
Responding to the Spirit and hold sway
In parable with Him some distant day.
I thought the lightning now would be His sword,
And angels flock in legions round their Lord
From miracle to miracle, and none
But He (as old deliverers had done)
Would lead us forth to conquest and its palms,
With rolling thunder of re-echoed psalms,
And call down bolts from the blue firmament
As awful seals of our enfranchisement.
They thought me thief when I with patriot thrill
Preferred my country and God's righteous will
Revealed by prophets to the passing need
Of poverty's just tolls, in higher heed,
For holy wars and treasuries and aims
Of statesmanship and kingdoms' broader claims,
To build foundations for divinest dues
And be the seed of royal revenues.
Myself I never served, I scorned defence
Of lofty acts and larger providence
Beyond the flight of petty minds that drudged
Their dreary mill-round, and from ruts misjudged
In their dull progress that could only creep,
My glorious visions and the imperial sweep
Which bade me store my little, though in stealth,
For our renewed and ransomed commonwealth.
No pulse of gain, no dream of traitorous greed
Moved me one moment to the daring deed
So gravely planned, and all without offence;
I thought the armies of Omnipotence,
The hierarchies of the heavens and Space
Would at his bidding in their bright embrace
With Cherubim and Seraphim in hosts,
Fall on the city and and its vantage posts,
And seize the Temple and the towers and cast
The tyrant out with one consuming blast.
And then He yielded tamely, though His look
So calm and kingly and unearthly shook
His captors, cowed and grovelling to the dust
In abject terror, like a whirlwind's gust;
While valiant Peter drew his sword to slay
And struck one blow in the old sturdy way
For vengeance and for Israel's sake, and then
A desperate front and more determined men
Had roused the people to His rescue, fired
With hate of years and by His love inspired.
But, lo, He meekly stayed the storm, and sheathed
The crimson blade of promise, as He breathed
Words like a blessing that were bitter woes
Upon the coward renegades and foes.
So they forsook Him, all—even Peter fled
And followed far, as if no blood were shed,
But then denied Him thrice. I flew on wings
Of hope and fear, with awful questionings,
To spread the news and gather friends and speed
The Galileans to their Captain's need.
But sudden panic held those fiery hearts,
Though still I urged all stratagems and arts
And past forgiveness lied to make them move;
They asked for angels, portents, signs to prove
It was God's mission, and the destined time
For action when the least delay was crime.
And rose the barrier never to be crost,
The precious hours passed by, and all was lost;
While that false rabble, not content to fly
And mock Messiah, now cried “Crucify!”
I took the silver, which I won in craft
To fill our coffers and to wing our shaft,
And threw it down though in the Holy Place
Before the priests, and cursed them to their face.
And may Jehovah keep that curse for me,
Till Christ returns and Israel yet is free;
And may it rest on that poor dastard land
Which for its Saviour would not lift a hand,
And rot their life and poison all they do
With blight, and as a cancer eat it through.
I saw Him die, whose service was one death
For us; I marked the torture of each breath
So bravely borne, and heard those human lips
Sob forth their love in the last dread eclipse
And care for others, and that bitter cry
Wrung from a broken heart in agony.
But, in the ghostly shadow ere it fled,
I, drawn still nearer by the light He shed
From the red Cross which was His royal throne—
A light that seemed to fall on me alone,
In my black horror—caught His tender look,
And read my pardon there as in the Book.
He knew I stole and plotted but for Him,
And every pulse beat true in every limb—
For the great cause—He knew, who came to save
As all hearts' King, and like a King forgave.
But now I cannot live apart from Christ,
And thus I go to keep a wedding-tryst
(To show Him I am faithful to the end)
With beautiful dear death, my only friend,
If in His Paradise we yet may meet,
Though I be dust beneath His blessèd feet.

THE GREAT QUEST.

THE BOOK OF PRIVATE PRAISE.

RIPENING.

THE LAUGHTER OF THE LORD.

“He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh—the Lord.”
We are going up or downward at a headlong heedless pace,
And the Lord can only tell
When He rings the judgment bell,
What must be the final ending of this helter skelter race
And the blind and brute contending for the spoils and gilded space—
If it shall be heaven or hell.
We are drifting with new teraphs to an unfamiliar shape,
And it may be form of seraphs and it may be form of ape;
As we ramble on and scramble
In a most ungodly speed,
Changing every day our creed,
Hanging crowns upon the bramble
And neglecting flower for weed;
While we flirt and lie and gamble
(But do little unless fee'd)
For the loaves and for the fishes
And the larger cups and dishes,
Though in nothing else agreed;
And with only our good wishes,
For the fools who don't succeed.
O we feast among the dying and we dance upon the dead,
And with tears of orphans crying do we butter all our bread
And the souls of women sighing are our silken dresses' thread;
As we hurry on and scurry
Through the welter and the worry,
For the scarlet robes and honours
Or the new antique Madonnas;
While on breaking hearts and broken china heedlessly we tread,
And the sneer is gaily spoken and the snare of falsehood spread
By our rulers with each token of morality but dread;
As with merry song and zither
Which have lightly brought us hither
We are hastening, none knows whither,
From the darkness to its double and the riddle yet unread
And the triumph or the trouble—though the Lord is overhead,
Though the Lord is overhead.
When the serpent Silence hisses and the tempest now is near,
Between kissing and the kisses, between weeping and the tear,
When the wise owl on the rafter
Of the belfry holds his tongue,
Where the iron throats are hung
As he looks before and after—
Then I seem between the moonrise and the moon at times to hear
When the night is at its noonrise, like faint thunder in my ear,
Far away the awful Laughter
Of the laughing of the Lord,
As he whets His judgment sword
Ere He rides on high abroad,
Thronèd on the winds His chariot
In the clouds above Him solemn,
Like a white cathedral column
And the clouds beneath that cling,
With his doom for each Iscariot
Who is traitor to his King.
In the pauses of the battle, in the respite of the lost,
When the death-bolts do not rattle on the breastplates torn and tost
With the buffets of the victors, ere the flaming doors are slammed
By the mute infernal lictors on the wretches doomed and damned;
In the lull between the shadow and the glinting of the shine
When the grasses of the meadow have the ruddy look of wine,
While the passion of the praying is not bodied forth in prayer
And the hand that would be slaying has not fallen as a slayer,
As the maiden with relenting of ripe lips and heaving breast
Will not yield the full consenting to the feared and longed-for rest;
In the sweet and sudden capture of the moment ethical
And the sacred secret rapture under fast and funeral,
In all interludes and breathing-spaces of the day and night,
Ere the thought has found its wreathing word or deed has leapt to light;
O I hear before and after
Every intertwined repose,
As eternities unclose,
The divine and dreadful Laughter
Of the laughing of the Lord,
As if on the sky's blue rafter
It recoiled and re-arose
At the laughing of the Lord;
O I hear beyond the leasing of our utmost life in joy,
And in sadness never-ceasing round all time as though a toy,
Inextinguishable numbers long and slow and soft and sweet
Mingled as with fires and slumbers and the snow's white wingèd feet,
In a musical emotion beyond melody and still
With a calling to devotion of an awful iron Will,
An infinity of throbbings as upon a thousand chords
Out of love's impassioned sobbings and the muffled clash of swords,
In unutterable pity and unutterable power
Dew to toilers of the city and to blighted hopes a flower,
But most terrible and holy in the murmur of the marts,
With a lifting for the lowly and a healing to sore hearts.
Rolling down the endless ages, and for all with tender pleas
Through the sternest of the stages like the wash of far-off seas.
We are always upward going
To the stars, or storming back
Down to the forbidden track;
While we hurry on in flurry,
And but little care or know,
With the gnawing tooth of worry,
Save that yet we forward go
To new issues and new tissues,
Which for ever form and flow,
In our polities and flesh
And the makings and the breakings
As we rise and fall afresh.
And it may be that the finding in our learning and our schools
Still is nothing but the binding of the sacrificial cord
To the altar and the axes that are sharpening for the fools,
At the taking of His taxes by the judgment of the Lord;
And the pearls of splendid fancies that deceive the deaf and blind
Are the froth of false romances from a dark distempered mind,
And a curse is on the heaping of the wise or wealthy hoard
Which will crumble at the reaping of the judgment of the Lord.
When I see the sin and folly
And the crowned and conquering fault,
But the Christ hid in the holly,
And the feasting like a vault—
When I see the sin and folly,
Then I wonder that in thunder
Flashes not the final “Halt!”
And between the lavish courses of fair women and red wine,
The delights of Heaven and horses and the swilling as of swine,
And the garbage of divorces and the crowding of the shrine,
In the little hesitations for the penance or the lust
And the dainty calculations where the trimmings vie with trust
Or artistic expectations from the ethics of the dust;
Lo, upon the painted rafter I perceive the hanging sword
And the sentence that comes after and reverses our award,
And I hear the awful Laughter of the laughing of the Lord.

THE LOVE OF GOD.

Between daylight and the dawning under twilight's tender awning
Came a vision bright to me,
With its treasures offered me—
Came an Angel with a message, came an angel with the presage
Of the better things to be
And the fairer sights to see,
Looked in sadness on my errors, smiled away my foolish terrors;
As a mother watching kindly o'er her baby straying blindly
Takes it safely on her knee,
So the Angel lifted me
From the turmoil and the dreary toil that left me wan and weary
High above the wicked welter of the evil to the shelter
Of the many-fruited tree,
With its happy healing branches and the only balm that staunches
Earthly wounds and human weakness of the souls that turn in meekness
To its shadow full and free,
And the shine that cannot flee.
And he said, “O timid mortal, why outside the open portal
Homeless, helpless dost thou linger, knocking with a doubtful finger,
When these blessings are for thee,
In their riches all for thee—
When God's love, a boundless ocean, answering the least devotion,
Rolls around and for no fee?
Lay aside thy sinful burden and accept the holy guerdon
Which He gives and only He.
Lo, without the gate are knolling death-bells and the billows tolling
Pitiless, and on thy lee
Hungry rocks of cruel iron frown forbidding and environ
Those delicious sunny gardens where the temptress reigns and hardens
With distress, as none but she—
Beautiful and false is she.
But within the pearly porches, where no heat of summer scorches
And no icy shaft of winter's angry rain or snowflake splinters
On the pilgrims tired and trembling and in loneliness dissembling
Vainly with heroic features sadness of poor hunted creatures,
Falling silent two and three—
Walk the blessed ones, and we
Know the truth behind the curtain of the sense and its uncertain
Avenues that have no ending but the grave and keep descending,
And behold the Vision (shrouded here) in all its bliss unclouded
Bathing in the boundless ocean of the love beyond emotion,
Where with all do all agree;
And these treasures are for thee;
Enter in and drink the juices dropping from their sacred sluices,
Shed as if alone for thee.”
So I passed the gracious portal, and in taking food immortal,
Drank eternity through me.

“PRAISE-GOD-BAREBONES.” I.

PRAISE-GOD-BAREBONES. II.

THE PALACE OF PRAISE. III.

SPECTACULA MUNDI. IV.

THE MAGIC WAND.

THE NOTE OF NATURE.

“OPEN THOU MINE EYES.”

THE STAR OF THE MAGI.

GOD'S TUNERS.

A GOOD REPORT.

MY SPECULUM.

MY BRIDAL-CHAMBER.

O I am waiting for my Lord to come,
And dwell within the compass of this breast
Empalaced by Him as a fitting home,
Wherein He may a little while take rest,
Unworthy I shall ever be, but yet
I daily purge my humble house and sweep
The dim and dusty rooms for Him, and set
A table garnished with obeisance deep.
And I have emptied it of all things vile
By penitence of tears and holy fast,
To win one word of welcome or a smile
Which would bestow a bountiful repast.
I do renounce the squalid world and mean
Delights that only humour the vain flesh,
And make myself mere nothingness but clean
Whereon he can at pleasure build afresh.
The vacant chair stands ready for His seat,
A willing mind in duteous homage bent,
Responsive to His touch, that He may eat
And drink of utter love and be content.
This pure heart is prepared by sweetest thought
Like bridal-chambers with fair linen white
To take its King and Husband in, and wrought
Thereby with Him to beauty infinite.

GENESIS OF A SOUL.

“HAVE WE NOT ALL ONE FATHER?”

SHE PASSED IN MUSIC.

She passed in music, for her death
Was wonderful and fair;
As if the Master with her breath
Did play His perfect air.
For all her life was leading up
Unto this gracious plan,
In sweetness like a loving cup
Until it over-ran.
And through her days' young festival
She kept a secret tune,
Which with its voices virginal
Made her bright bosom June.
Sometimes we heard or seemed to hear
The fragrance of a cry,
Which fashioned hope of solemn fear
And yet was mystery.
But in her shadow of sweet shame
She dreaded jest or doubt,
And only the dissolving frame
Could let its glory out.
She could not utter one small part,
Who treasures had to give;
Till the great music broke her heart,
And dying learned to live.

DYING DAILY.

Father, I feel this heart of mine
Just from its very love
Must break, with all its precious wine,
In yearning so above.
I am so crushed by mercy's weight
And blessings yet to be,
I can no longer bear the freight
With which Thou loadest me.
It seems in praise's every burst
Of passion and desire,
As only true thanksgiving durst,
I must in song expire,
Each moment is a miracle,
A gift that cannot fade;
And in Thy tender crucible,
I hourly am re-made.
For what is this poor narrow breast
That Thou should'st ever come,
To live there as no passing guest
And honour it as Home?
Ah, when I know I darkly lie
So oft in bondage rude,
At thought of Thee I daily die
From utter gratitude.

‘YET THE STAR WAS THERE.”

I took my magic glass and swept the sky
And found the systems there, the rhythmic romp,
The centuried circuits and the measured fall
Of planets pulsing through eternity;
I marked the wonder of the woven pomp,
Wheel within wheel, and knew and loved them all.
I mapt them with a careless eye, and went
From star to star, as through his native land
The master walks and communes with his kin;
They seemed by just my purpose to be bent,
And moved in concert with my guiding hand—
But everywhere I carried my own sin.
I looked among my fellows, and I saw
The common round of common thoughts and things;
No brighter maiden and no broader man,
But dull submission to one dreary law,
Instead of hush that heralds coming kings
To mould the world with new majestic plan.
Then in a moment rushed a sudden light
Upon my glance, so dark to that which gave
A clue and utterance to the whole—as where,
In palaces of purple orient night,
The wash of seas in some far coral cave
Awakes dull eyes—and yet the star was there.

FALLING UP.

LIVING THE LIFE.

THE SORROW OF THINGS.

COLLOQUIUM CUM DEO.

NUMBERED AND WEIGHED.

REHOBOTH.

BEAUTIFUL FOE.

THE GREATNESS OF GOD.

EDEN FLOWERS.

I.—HELL.

MEMORY.

II.—HEAVEN.

MEMORY.

THE LOST SACRAMENT.

Wearied of men and babble and brute ways,
The wretched millround of the sordid days.
I turned to Nature and myself, and sought
A calmer refuge in the realm of thought,
And remedies for ills that had no cure
In earthly medicine. Gladsomely I went
Along a pathless road serene and sure,
Where all was so familar and yet strange,
As if in search of some Lost Sacrament
And the great choosing beyond reach of change.
I saw my God in Nature, as we see
Through stained cathedral glass a form of grace
That shines and shifts and has no settled place
And here is One, and there the mystic Three
Or now as clear as sunlight and now dark;
A revelation both of sun and moon,
That gleams with many a blessed shape or boon,
And vanishes in splendour, as we mark.
For there were windows that kept out the beams
Of noontide, or just painted a dim floor
And silent marble with their mighty dreams,
Or half unbosomed raptures of white charms
To cheat the wondering eye; and there a door
Of dazzlement, but like forbidding arms
Not without welcome too, would opening shut
The escaping glory back ere it could give
A gleam, except a fragment fugitive,
Yet was itself the secret, with a knot
Which all could read though none by wisdom cut;
And there rose pillars that uplifted nought,
But radiant and rejoicing in their lot,
Like beautiful fond actions idly done
At hazard and in happiness for none,
Beyond our censure, above praises wrought
As in an empty world. The fragrancy
Of architecture, and the hidden clue
That lends each fabric its fair hope and line,
Were there and yielded up the riddling tears
With exhalations of all poetry
And mysteries of ancient faiths and fears.
I feasted upon flowers, and lightly stole
Its colour from the inward core of things
Behind the curtain on the wheels and wings
Which move the systems in their measured track;
I found the part was bigger than the whole,
And in the night the Truth that guided back.
For light and shadow there were one, and led
Up though by devious circuits to the same
Supremacy of goal, the faint tops high
Beyond the footstep's most ecstatic tread
But yet in spirit unutterably nigh—
And one the notion and its righteous name.
I saw the sweet of littleness, the joy
Past our expression in the cloistered cell,
Alike the perfume of a passing toy
And spring whence passion drew its awesome spell.
For the dumb stone and silent services
Of woods and waters, as at peace they stood
In pictured trance, had tender languages
To ears of trust and souls of maidenhood;
And in their seasons ministered as much
As shouting myriads of the troublous town,
Where overhangs the heaven of iron one frown,
With the low murmur or the tiny touch
Which marry us to God by subtlest tie.
And Nature, as the throbbing heart of man
Doth pause and beat again or it must die,
Betwixt the full performance and its plan
Sleeps, and awakes to work in beauty. Thus
I saw beneath the outwardness of sky
And earth the splendid unreality,
The noteless things and nullities, that bore
No narrow measure of mere Space and Time
And yet possessed a meaning dear to us;
The vision of some far forgotten shore,
Of elder days and in some other clime;
And though they did not bow to every call
Were mingled with the Infinite and All,
And memories of lofty moods, and breath
Of larger moments one with life and death.
The precious trifles, and the infant plays
That nothing are and nothing mean and still
Help us to triumph over armoured ill
And roll the worlds on their predestined ways
Or build up creeds and characters, I saw—
And something less in stars than in the straw
Crushed by a pilgrim heel. The grace that shone
Just for a maddening minute and was gone
Before we grasped it and its jewelled text
Was grander than utilities of gold
That bulked in royal palaces and filled
The minds of people with the glare perplext;
And kin to what was stateliest and old,
Or through the breast of boundless Nature thrilled.
The doing little greatly and for nought
Save the mere bliss of doing it so well,
The flower of stillness and the festival
And knowledge more than being and unbought
By vulgar arts of precept practical,
A biding in the bourne where secrets dwell;
Laid on me kindly hands, and lured my heart
To seek those circles of green rest apart.
And there among the elements I found
The archetypes of whatso'er we think,
In ecstasy that overflows the brink
Of this small earth and makes it holy ground;
The love that lives in dying, as the box
Of alabaster broken for the head
We honour, which is Christ to us and spread
With splendour—if no halo orthodox;
And silver fountains of most futile tears
Seen through a tawny cloud of tumbled hair,
And then a wealth of subtlety and heed
Lavished upon a leaf to form it fair
For ever and for ever through the lands;
And angels whispering into shell-like ears
Some word of light to be the saving seed
Of worlds to come, when dropt by baby lips
Which babble on through earthquake and eclipse,
And mould the service of imperial hands;
The minor thoughts and dim moralities,
Unseen, unknown, and yet the life of each
And all who are uncrowned but rule and teach
With sceptres of the sweet philosophies.
I bathed me deep in that most gentle hope
Which falls as dew and wraps us closely round
Lest we should spill our music on the ground
And fail in sin and darkness, or the scent
Of beautiful rich souls be idly spent
Before they climbed the summit of the slope.
But first I laved my sullied mouth and arms
In the white waters of that Purity
Which flows from God and is the vital breath
Of saints that walk with Him, though fearfully,
In joy, beyond the malices of harms
Through stillness as of night's delicious death.
And thus my eyes were opened, and I saw
The vision of the Blessed One, whose name
Is Silence and our Comfort, and the law
Which guards us virgin-wise from shade of shame
And recreates with charity as wine
Poured into dumb dead veins, and turns divine.
But mingling then with masses, or the lone
Sad little lot of man oppressed by fate,
Or left to struggle forth disconsolate
And all forgotten, I did find at length
The wonder of a new immortal strength,
And while unkinged the substance of a throne.
For in the tender policies of trust
And offices of lowliness, but sweet;
That moved unmarked in regions pale and pent,
Beneath the cloud and through the grey blind dust;
By daily washing of the beggars' feet,
I had regained the grand Lost Sacrament.

GOD'S LOVE.

THE ONE BEAUTIFUL.

THE COSMOS.