An English Madonna :: :: University of Virginia Library

If God's heart were like man's, then thou wouldst never sorrow.—
But that is just the point. Do we, God-moulding, borrow
Robes of our own hearts' hue
Wherewith to clothe the unknown and unexplained Creator?
Is Nature lover of ours, or man's worst deadliest hater?
Are there deep eyes behind the sky's deep blue?

Because we love, we say that God must love. It follows?
Because we love the bright red-chested blue-backed swallows
And the king-fisher's sheen,—
Because the summer light upon the mountains hoary
Is sweet,—we say that God displays therein his glory;
The thought is high and comforting, I ween—

But is the fancy true? The coming years must settle.—
Whether the beauty of God shines forth in white rose-petal
And petal of red rose,
Or whether flower and flower show forth their own selves merely;
And whether, when we pray, we hear our own voice clearly
But no God's-answer down the gold stair goes.

O deadly perilous age, when dread and dubitation
Assail all sacred hopes! When doubt and perturbation
Invade all things that be!
When for the robes of priests that once shone fair and pleasant
Within the Church's walls, we have the omnipresent
White foaming surplice-robes of Mystery's sea!

We love and therefore God must love! We long to perish
That those we love may live. Just so. So Christ must cherish

The high design to die
For the whole race,—God longs to be the world's Redeemer
Because each pure and true, large, noble-hearted dreamer
Longs likewise,—Who made God long? You and I.

Is God the shadow of man, not man the moulded creature?
Did man make God alike in heart and form and feature
And set his image there?
When we cast prayer upon the deep, and think we find it,
Doth the wave wash it back to which we first resigned it,—
No answered yearning—just the same old prayer?

We often and often feel—“The cosmic heart is tender:
None other than Love's heart could spread this cosmic splendour
Of scarlet sunset-gleams
Mixed with pale-blue and green and gentle lemon-colour
Over the deep of sky. Clouds void of love were duller
Surely?” We mix our own with cosmic dreams.

“The purple mountain-top the glory of God forthshoweth:
Through the great sunrise-fire the flame of God's heart gloweth,
And God's might in the sea
Urges the blue and green translucid laughing breakers
Across the flowerless floor. We, revelling, are partakers
Surely in God's own resonant windy glee!

“Our own deep love implies a deeper underneath it.”
Our love is not enough. Large-hearted, we bequeath it
To God, lest he run short.
“Our love is shadow of God's,” we say: “Ours is the fountain
Small, silver-voiced,—but God's is the background of mountain
Displaying behind the rill its stately port.”

We long to live and live, for ever and for ever.
“God is too good,” we say, “the thread of life to sever:”

But are we very sure
That, just because we love our life, and dread to quit it,
A cosmic ear can hear our prayer, and will permit it?
If no ear hears, what matter if prayer be pure!—

If there be nought behind the splendid-winged red sunset
To sympathize with man, what matter if prayer's onset
With far more fiery wings
Storm through the sunset-clouds? If no God rule the breakers,
What are they, after all, but shepherdless mane-shakers?
What are the clouds but stray unherded things?

What is my love for thee, if no God heed nor hold it,
But just a golden star loose on the heavens, unfolded,
Swimming athwart the night?
What is my passion if no God's face through the passion
Gleams,—lifting, helping all, with infinite compassion,—
Giving my love interminable might?

And what art thou, O love, if no strong God deliver
Thee from the shadow of death, but one more flower to quiver
And tremble by life's stream
Just for one passing hour, as other blossoms trembled
And then death's sudden hand, that for that hour dissembled,
Swept them to where his hungry green caves gleam?

That is the awful doubt.—Whether our deepest yearning
Hath aught to correspond in Nature ever turning
Towards us her agelong gaze.
Whether there be a soul of sympathy to reach us—
Or whether all the years, swift-passing, have to teach us
Is summed up in their windy surface-ways.

Springs, summers, autumns, springs,—red leaves and green and golden:
White winters; springs again;—so hath it been from olden
Far viewless days till this.

Love, passion, failure, death. Dark eyes that make the laurel
Coveted for their sake. Blue seas where crimson coral
Yearns for the white-fringed sweet wave's Southern kiss.

Dark Northern tides,—and thee,—and thy wave-silvery laughter.—
But now that thou art born, what gift will follow after?
Can God who brought thee, keep?
Or must thou also pass? Is there no God to hold thee?
Must in the end that same cold piteous silence fold thee
In the same pale unintermittent sleep?