The Human Inheritance :: :: University of Virginia Library

In these dark days of storm and stress and strife
That wand'ring Man, whom some strange fate hath curs'd
With blinded vision 'mid the glory of life,—
Where the clear blaze of light should else have burst
Upon him with its splendour from the first,
Cheering his wayward path—still strives to find
Soul's egress from the gath'ring gloom behind:

Still strives, despite strange dreams that chill the soul,
And deadening weight of countless centuries,
And baffled hopes that lead to some false goal,
And mighty yearnings and triumphant cries
Drown'd deep amid unspeakable agonies,
And ages, breaking in a glorious dawn,
Setting 'midst desolation bleak and wan;

Still strives against the mist of some strange doom
That shrouds the universe to find a way
That, twisting thro' the stars, doth reach the womb
Of all creation, where the omnipotent sway
Of central life with unbeclouded ray
For ever triumphs, and the Hand that wakes
The spheres harmonic perfect music makes.

Dimly he knows an unremember'd past
Wherein he had an unknown birth afar
In those great deeps of time which reach at last
Those utmost years, when earth, a flaming star,
Quiver'd in heaven like a blood-red scar,
And the moon belched her fires, and higher spun
The huge mass of th' intolerable sun.

Deep in the dark abyss of primal years
He shudder'd into life, and groped with hands
Uncertain up creation's gradual tiers
Until a day when sovereign he stands
And knows for his the mighty youthful lands,
And views the seas break with an alien roar,
But laughs and names them his for evermore.

Dimly in vague uncertain dreams he knows
How long unnumber'd centuries have rolled
Above him with their tide of savage woes,
Dim years, whose hoary memories enfold
Strange secrets mortal tongue hath never told—
Beginnings vast, portentous, and sublime
With Titan-struggles towards a fuller time.

And later still, but not less vague, he dreams
Of elder days in the vast Asian plain
Fed by the waters of forgotten streams,
When tribal hordes appeared and gather'd grain
Where only desert sands before had lain;
Till, growing to mighty hosts, they spread to where,
Southward and westward, new lands seem'd more fair.

Where in those dim and twilight lands the soul
Woke slowly to the secret of the stars,
Till Godhood shone from midnight pole to pole;
And in the fiery flash of burning Mars
Prophets beheld God's summons to new wars,
And every circling moon that made the plains
Whiter than snow heard the wild priests' refrains,

Wild songs of warlike worship, and swift prayer
Snatching at hope, and burning sacrifice,
And maidens with their wealth of desert hair
About them floating, in their dream-fill'd eyes
The victim ecstasy when the deep skies
Rang to fanatic tumult, with sweet breath
Chanting the god whose secret name was Death.

When, 'mid the desert cities before dawn
The wild-eyed priests with long rejoicing call
Summon'd the faithful thro' the silent, wan,
Grey, twilight morning to the eastern wall
To wait, till one great moment saw them fall
Prostrate in worship,—and above the sands
The sun-god rose with blessing for all lands.

Dimly man these remembers: scarce less faint
The solemn morning of Egyptian years;
The long lost glory and the deathless taint
Of lustful Pharaohs, and the countless tears
That fed the Nile from unremember'd biers
Of sun-scorched, whip-lashed slaves, by whose deathtoil
The slow wise Sphinxes crown'd the barren soil

To look for aye with superhuman gaze
Across th' inhabitable waste of sand,
And see, mayhap, far off these latter days,—
And, farther still, some mighty moulding Hand
Shape the predestined fate of every land—
And seeing, speak not—only, far off, where
The sands fade wave-like, watch with steadfast stare:

And far removed from all the busy strife
Of populous cities dwelling by the Nile,
How the great Pyramids, through human life
Incalculable, 'neath the cold calm smile
Of Ramses, grew, and watch'd mile after mile
Whiten each year with myriad human bones,
And heard whole generations pass in groans.

Faintly afar he hears the throbbing chant
Of worshippers by old forgotten fanes,
Harsh cymbals clashing, and fierce breaths that pant
From dusky maidens madden'd by wild strains—
Tall brown-skinned maidens from the burning plains,
With breasts sun-moulded, and with shadowy eyes
Inheritors of Egypt's mysteries.

Where swart Assyria swelters 'neath the sun
He lists the anguish of the priests of Baal;
He sees the chamber sacred unto One,
Where daily sounds a low ecstatic wail
From maiden beautiful, rapt, naked, pale—
The bride of God—yet yearning with fierce fire
For mortal love's unsatisfied desire:

As in a dream he sees tumultuous hosts
Spread locust-wise o'er devastated lands,
And swarthy warriors bathe by Red Sea coasts:
He hears the clamour of battle on the sands,
And the swords swing in fierce delirious hands,
And in the purple air sees pennons fly
Scarlet, as dipped in blood of those that die.

Dimly these bygone memories return,
As to the full-grown man the faint far days
Of childhood in his recollection burn
Faint as the glow-worm's lamp on moonlit ways—
A few brief visions cross again his gaze,
But still the silent ages that have been,
Silent remain behind an unpierced screen.

At times his eyes in backward vision strained
Behold more clear the phantoms of the past,
When mighty kings of shadowy memories reigned
And each great teacher's utterance was cast
Like seed abroad—as fruitful seed to last
From scatter'd sowing till maturing days
Found golden-fruited boughs in every place.

His inward-looking eyes thus view once more,
Where in the almond blossom scented air
The white pagodas line each river shore,
A vast assemblage list with wond'ring stare
New solemn accents fall from lips that dare
The wrath of troubled priests,—and the clear voice
Confucian call, “No more in dreams rejoice!”

Like far-off swallows, striving rest to gain
In long-pursued and ever-fleeing spring,
Winging their flight o'er sea and desolate plain
From winter's frown to where glad song-birds sing
All day and night 'mid sweet lands blossoming—
So sped the mighty teacher's word-wing'd thought
Afar beyond where wrangling priests still fought.

For as a runlet bubbling from a hill
Struggles thro' moss and rocky channell'd steeps
Till one day all its waters shiver and thrill
As far below the shining ocean sleeps,
And crown'd with spray with one great cry it leaps
From earth-chain'd life to that maternal breast
Where every seaward river findeth rest:

So wends by slow degrees and tortuous way
New truth's thin streamlet thro' far-scattered minds,
Till soon or late there dawns a pregnant day
Borne on the wings of revolution winds,
And the scant streamlet widening leaps and finds
Its waves wash fruitful teeming lands at last
And roll a highway to the ocean vast.

Or, deeper still, he sees that ancient Ind
Where empires grew, religions wax'd and waned
Leaving faint cloudy memories behind,
Till of these also no dim trace remained—
Till, like a wave that gathers waves, there gain'd
The mighty soul of Buddha devotees
From Cashmere snows to distant Cingal seas.

He views some silent windless twilight die
And fade into a sultry moonlit eve:
Above, the purple shaded star-lamped sky—
Beneath, the Ganges, whose swift waters leave
An utter'd echo of old thoughts that grieve—
And, rising o'er the sands that shelve its tide,
Great shadow-haunted palms dream side by side.

Seated thereby, a man with far-off eyes
That pierce the darkness lying beyond death,
Speaks low with fervent words divinely wise—
And, as the final word he uttereth,
The silent audience, like a pent up breath,
Once more are conscious of the earthly air:
They look again, and Buddha is not there—

He hath passed by; and every conscious star
Leaps in the heavens as if his gaze to meet;
He passes thro' the jungle, and afar
The tiger growls within his grim retreat,
But stirs not; the immeasurably sweet
And midnight music of the nightingale
In quivering worship greets him sad and pale.

Godhood is visible to natural things
More clear than to the soul—the woods that dream
Become vast choirs shaking their green-branch'd wings
Angelic, and every forest stream
Lifts up its chiming murmurs, and the gleam
That is earth's smile grows more divinely bright,
Burning with fire of spiritual light.

The many-colour'd memories that haunt
The long-undwelt-in mansions of man's mind
Point westward now: across the Hellespont
His spirit strives the chain'd past to unbind;
Palm-shadow'd mystic Ind grows faint behind,
And, rising over the rejoicing sea,
Greece, sun-crown'd, stands—serene, and great, and free:

The storied fame of all the old-world hills
Is made apparent: double-peak'd Parnassus
Doth skyward dream, the white air slowly fills
With sweet blown scents from off Pentelicus,
And the bees hum in violet-loved Hymettus,
Olympus guards green Tempe, and the dawn
Rests like a band of gold on Helicon.

Clearest he sees the sovereign city rise,
Queenlike and glorious in her ancient state:
The Parthenon, supreme beneath the skies;
The marble-pillar'd theatre where the great
Thunder of Æschylus bared the vault of Fate;
And, with a deathless splendour such as his,
The flow'r-like glory of the Acropolis.

As one who dreams, and sees a great fair land
Spread out before him, watching with pleasur'd eyes
Mountain, and stream, and forest ever fann'd
By exile minstrel winds from the blue skies,
And far seas moaning for lost Paradise
In sad eternal music (for these keep
That deathless secret in their utmost deep)—

Starts suddenly, and sees a face he knows
Grow into light that makes the rest a dream—
So, dreamlike, from man's vision backward flows
The old Greek glory, like a fading beam
O' the moon before the dawn's first amber gleam,—
And, fixt, his concentrated vision sees
The broad brows of the clear-eyed Socrates.

Seated amid great dusky olive shades,
That move reluctant 'neath the breathless trees
Till 'mid wild rose and honeysuckle glades
They hide and dream, and fann'd by the cool breeze
That from the white foam-crested sounding seas
Bloweth with briny odours, he doth rest
And muse on life and death—and which is best.

The great wind of the human spirit blew
Thro' this Greek soul, which organ-like gave birth
To clear majestic notes of music new,
And, from the old compound of sorrow and mirth,
Wrought a new scheme of God, and man, and earth:
Through him it blew such mighty harmonies
His voice still sounds adown the centuries.

The weary soul of man finds rest in these,
The lives he lived to in his earliest days,—
Whether his wing'd thought with brave pinions flees
To that far past half lost to human gaze
When the soul of Egypt, weary with men's frays
And blood and anguish, hid with all her lore
In the great Sphinx she stares from evermore—

Or whether, later still (and like the dove
From seas alighting on green olive boughs)
Resting with him whose heart of boundless love
Made all the Orient echo with its vows—
Or circling round the fate-confronting brows
(A swallow finding spring) of him who drank
With cheerful soul the cup of hemlock rank.

These bring him peace, these names awaken hope;
But still his spirit knows another name:
A later star this rose upon life's slope,
Later, but fuller; yet the Syrian's fame
Rose from an unknown birth, a death of shame
Rounded it off—and though he is long dead
His voice still peals like thunder overhead.

Man feels him still, and knows him not a dream
Dreamt in forgotten days—no empty breath
Blown out with unheld meanings, but a stream
As of white light upon black seas of death—
Or as a glad great living voice that saith
The one word Water, where 'mid burning sands
Men famish'd yearn with scorched beseeching hands.

He still is part man's present. It may be
The unborn years slow forming in Time's womb
Shall rise and live and fade successively
And know him not, save as a prophet whom
Past ages worshipp'd as the Lord of Doom—
A bodiless echo sounding thro' all time
Some meaningless message that was once sublime:

Thus may it be: meanwhile man's spirit is
A wind-harp answering to the Nazarene:
Man is a beach where the sea's mysteries
Are whisper'd low, or thunder'd through a screen
Of white mysterious foam—where God is seen
A waving arm about a dream of eyes:
A fluctuant sea beneath Christ's wind man lies.

The human soul still shudders with the sob
That thrill'd the dusk of drear Gethsemane,
The bitter cry no lapsing years can rob
From sorrow wedded to eternity;
That garden dreamed a vast futurity,
That weary night, of fierce successive woes—
Of good men's scorn, and pitiless hate of foes.

Man turns with weary gaze and looks again
Into his troubled past: his tired eyes see
A calm shore fringed with dead wind-echoing cane,
And tall flags swaying in hushful Galilee;
A bittern booms his sad call sullenly,
And, with an hourly pain, a plover's cry
Wails like a wailing soul thrust from God's sky:

The yellow moon, half drown'd in deep dark blue,
With still remaining crescent curves a trace
Of gold upon the vast profound; a few
Great stars, heavy with changeful sphere-fires, gaze
To the lake's utmost depths, and in the bays
Seem to lie panting, as when side by side
Great water-lilies move in a moving tide:

One sits on the dim shore as though his sight
Held not familiar things of wave or land;
His eyes burn slowly with some inner light
Of scarce hid glory, and his listless hand
Traces his central thought upon the sand
Till the scooped grains read God, and then
Father, and Infinite Love, and for all men.

100

He stirs once at the desolate bittern's boom,
And prays for man: when the wild plover cries,
His heart throbs with the mystery of Doom:
And when the windless twilight water sighs,
The tears grow slowly in his human eyes,—
He sees the scourge, the cross, the hyssop rod,
Death, and the grave—beyond, the glory of God!

Such are the dreams man knows have made his life:
And yet, his youth and boyhood past away,
His manhood finds him still at endless strife,
And life unrounded by a fuller day;
Faiths rise, and live, and flourish, and decay;
And, as a helmless ship by every wind
Blown here and there, so seems man's baffled mind.

His years have seen him oft—as some tired ox
Stops wearily by some delicious rain
Of clear spring water hid by ferns and rocks
From the rough highway dust, and so again
On with long aching miles until its pain
Sinks at some similar fount one glad time more—
Cease from the weary road he travelleth o'er

101

And rest with such as Buddha, such as Christ;
Rest with them, live with them, hope with them, be
A sharer in each old joy sacrificed;
Think with their mighty searching thought, and see
With their clear eyes beyond mortality—
Then suddenly find all things vain, and rise
And stagger forward blind-like 'neath blank skies.

He hath been as a man with toil aweary
Yet mocked by baffling sleep upon his bed,
And sometimes eased with dreams wherein no dreary
Phantoms of hideous days and years stain'd red
Stare ever at him, and no fair hopes dead
Rise ghost-like weeping, and no more in pain
Old aspirations move white lips again.

The fair dream stirs and fades away, as breaks
A soft young cloud before the ruthless wind—
And as the cloud in snowy feathery flakes
Weeps towards the earth for ravish'd life behind,
So the sweet dream dispell'd can no more find
Joy in itself, but melts in bitter tears
And is a dream no more for coming years.

102

Fair hopes for ever baffled, and the way
Of life as hard to climb!—thus grim Despair
With fixt immoveable lips that never pray
Walks by his side unchidden:—ev'rywhere
The wide world throbs with life, the summer air
Palpitates with the outsung souls of birds,
The milk-time lowing of the sweet-breath'd herds

Sounds from the meadows, from the windless fir
The cushat calls, and somewhere, as a voice
Heard in a dream, the cuckoo's note doth stir
The high-air silence, with a humming noise
The wild bees haunt the clover, and rejoice
The heaven-loving larks half lost to view,
Small founts of song in the still sea of blue,

And sea, and wind, and hill, and flow'r, and grass
Make up with separate music one great choir:
And then Despair says, “Fool, all these things pass
To nothingness, as stubble in the fire
Doth wholly burn—and deeper still and higher
The woman Vanitas with blank cold eyes
Scans deepest depths and sweeps the utmost skies

103

“And sees nought there save ever day and night
A faceless Shadow move, that with cold hands
Incessantly draws back from the dear light
Some living thing, a bird from forest-lands,
A leaping fish, a lizard on the sands,
A babe from its young mother, and the breath
From a great soul—and this, O man, is Death!”

And at these words man looks with tearless eyes
And hearkens with deaf ears: heav'n's song-fill'd vault
Is loud with discord; the divine surprise
Of the sun's advent hath some hidden fault;
The mighty morning winds no more exalt
The wondrous regions that were once their own:
And, knowing this, man answers with a moan.

At times he turns and looks with steadfast gaze
Into the coward eyes of the drear shape
That with him toils the intolerable ways
And all the earth with hopelessness doth drape,—
And then the shadow fades, and swift escape
To all the glory and splendour of the earth
Man makes again—a veritable new birth.

104

And often now in the great peaceful calm
Of early mornings some faint distant song
He seems to hear—as though an echoed psalm
From heaven adown the gold clouds waved along,
Or distant angel-wings bore up the wrong
And misery of the world to where griefs die
And wake in rapture singing through the sky.

He hears, and young hope stirs within his heart,
A fledgeling bird that dare not rise as yet
On untried wings thro' the chill air to dart:
He cannot quite the bitterness forget
Of all the ended dreams that he hath met
On life's long pilgrimage—thus hardly dares
To hope again as on his way he fares.

But day by day the Christ-dream changing takes
A grander form: no longer in the past
The Saviour dwells—his voice afar off makes
A music deep, as of an organ-blast
Fill'd with harmonious prophesying vast:—
Twin souls divided, seeking each the other,
One calling God, and one crying ever Brother.

105

Man's soul is as a pine upon a height
Fronting dim seas—at times each branch a lyre
Of morning music, when the golden light
Waves round its boughs with unconsuming fire,
And soft-wing'd winds re-echo the desire
Of each lark's song, and all the world seems fair
With the eyes of summer smiling ev'rywhere:

And later, when the evening mists have crept
Up the steep slopes, it sigheth wearily;
A slow sound breaks as though each tired wave wept
A wailing child upon the mother sea;
A cold wind strikes its chill'd wings suddenly
But doth not take the air; and some vague woe
Through each strong bough doth with a tremor go:

Then comes the dark; and the tempestuous deep
Lashes the height with spray, and wild winds cry
With dreadful voices—till its branches leap
And beat the air with suppliant agony,
While Death stares down from the deserted sky;
And somewhere in the darkness seems to grope
A searching voice that moans “There is no hope!”

106

Thus joy, despondency, and deep despair
Alternate with him: yet each new year brings
A growing strength the ways of Fate to bear:
A great hope deepens with successive springs
That somewhere Truth, the highest angel, sings
A great glad song that, hearkening, man shall find
His eyes grown clear, and be no longer blind.

One truth, more old than the time-honour'd hills,
More ancient than the hoary ancient sea,
Before the world was, or the sun that fills
The world with day, or in the vast, blank, free
Space of heaven the first star fierily
Burn'd thro' the dark and silence—one great Word
That spake, shall wonderfully again be heard.

Beyond the wheeling atom of the earth,
Beyond the utmost sun that lights this sun,
A vision of life in some divine new birth
Where seed of man and breath of God are one,
And the old blind groping is for ever done—
This breaks upon man's sight—his fret and strife
Sink at this vision'd glory of new life.

107

Beyond himself, beyond the human soul,
Farther than Christ or Christ's own farthest love,
The source of life, that makes the ages roll
To vast sad music till at last they move
Crown'd and triumphant to new birth above,
Dimly man now discerns, with eager eyes
Lit with the light of some divine surprise:

And with the vision, as a tall tree sways
All blossom'd o'er, with mingled love and awe
His whole soul blooms into the flower of praise—
Not for the working of some great cold law,
But that great truth beyond the petty flaw
Of human doubt—that mighty love, whose breath,
Whose gift to life is never-dying death,—

Eternal change, no stagnant blissful dream!
Forth from the life supreme man's spirit went:
He hath gone thro' the darkness till the gleam
Of light at last shines on him well-nigh spent:
Rest shall he have, as earthly sleep is sent,
To make new life more dear; then onward still
'Neath the clear light of the omnipotent will!

108

There is no deathless life—but blesséd death
Kisses the soul asleep, that when at last
It wakes again with new triumphant breath
It heeds no more the weary toilsome past:
Thus shall it be until the æons vast
Draw man so nigh to God no human sight
Can farther pierce th' ineffable great light.

Thus, dark and gloom behind, but light before,
Man takes new strength. The lights of past times grow
Fainter and fainter, but afar doth soar
A vaster glory—as when from the low
Sea-wash'd horizon with a motion slow
The full moon rises, and each lesser star
Seems by a gentle hand withdrawn afar.