University of Virginia Library

For years I toiled, a meditative man,
Since youthful reason born of sense began
Its course imperious, eager to find out
(Through thorny paths of speculative doubt)
The meaning of the mystery of Life,
With its strange riddles of destructive strife
Unceasing. Muoh I longed and longed to know,
What boded all this wilderness of woe,
And whither tended; why the poor and weak
Who had no hands to help, no voice to speak,
More than the wicked suffered, and were blent
(Themselves so pure and just and innocent)
In judgment with the bad; if cosmic pain
Were purgatorial, and not borne in vain
By weeping millions who in sorrow moved,
A thing permitted, not by God approved;
If evil might be an imperfect form
Of undeveloped good, through stress and storm
Evolving into something better, and at length
Unfolding all the loveliness and strength
Of the completed work, though now it seem
A black defect in what we dimly deem
The orb of Nature; and if haply vice,
Though framed in subtle fashions to entice,
Might be the remnant of a bygone age,
The reminiscence of a lower stage
Or animal condition, which in time
By virtue with its aims and acts sublime
Would be removed. Thus did I reason long,
Sore troubled by the tyranny of wrong,
That like a plague spot to creation clings,
And the survival of unfittest things—
The wanton sufferings, and the fateful dance
Of misery that seemed to strike at chance
The undeserving, not the guilty lust,
With distribution idle or unjust.
My fond inquries farther still went back,
Upon a midnight and mysterious track,
To life's appearance—whether from within,
Or from without, its sources might begin—
If from some other distant planet hurled
A moss-grown fragment, to this formless world
Its fair commencement gave; or if at last,
When matter had through countless stages pass'd,
Life fashioned out of self-begotten throes,
By gradual change and stress essential rose
The grand result and necessary term
Of set conditions, which implied the germ.
I saw that life, which slumbered in the stone,
Dreamed in the plant, in animals alone
Awoke to active functions, more or less,
And in man only was self-consciousness;
That there was progress upward from the clod,
Through links angelic, to the perfect God.

Then the instructed reason higher drew,
And winged with many-coloured fancies flew
On bolder quests, beyond our senses' lies,
Theosophies and grave theogonies.
Was the Supreme a Tyrant ruled by Fate,
Who governed as He could by fear and hate,
Inspired by wanton cruelty and lust,
And grinding creatures grimly into dust
From which he wrought them, like a brittle toy
Made to be broken, in His short-lived joy;
O'erruled by solemn Destiny, that lay
An awful burden on his empty sway?
Or was He truly, absolutely good
But not Almighty, and in vain withstood
At times the efforts of an Evil Power
That shared with Him the dread imperial dower,
And oft defeated by disastrous claims,
His schemes of mercy and benigner aims?
Did He create the universe, and give
Fixed constitutions by which all might live,
Then leave it darkly to the storms of chance,
The prey of strife and evil circumstance;
Led by that narrow rule and faithless friend,
Non-intervention, which frustrates its end,
Which serves no purpose but engenders hate,
While making self the measure of the State;
Like landlords who hold half a world in fee,
And drain its life-blood—proud and absentee?
Or was He—and I heard no glad reply—
Impersonal, a pale necessity,
Mechanically working out, by laws
That shaped and guided stars alike and straws,
His dark unconscious will, through heartless modes,
To some dim end, not moved by moral codes?
To universal chaos, or the doom
Of final fire, or equilibrium's gloom
And stagnant close, when forces all at length
Have stayed the burning fever of their strength?
A mere machine, both deaf and dumb and blind,
Heedless of what His progress left behind,
And dully pushing on, in cold calm ways
The inexorable course that spurned delays?
Was He the slave of His own system, fooled
By the strong laws He made but had not schooled?
For lo! I saw that philosophic thought,
Which every day a grosser darkness wrought,
Kept thrusting farther and yet farther back,
Beyond creation's broad and sunny track,
The near Creator into mist and shade,
For ever building up a barricade
Of laws between the creature and the God,
And blotting out the path by which we trod
To heaven of old, and giving in its stead
Poor thin abstractions and negations dead,
The husks of mental food, that neither filled
The heart's deep hunger, nor one moment stilled
That innate passion which possesses all,
To find a God who answers to their call.

Long barren years I laboured in my mind,
Revolving much and tossed by every wind
Of every doctrine, as it wildly blew
In shy and shifting gusts for ever new,
From scientific quarters; till I found
Their boastful trumpets gave no certain sound,
While all were false or foolish—idle terms
And names, without the quick informing germs
Of principles or facts, a fruitless lore
That made no hearer wiser than before—
Mere learnéd jargon, theories of schools,
Not meat for men, but only food for fools.

Then I betook me, from the mists of doubt,
To exercise of prayers and dreams devout,
With faith and fasting, practices Divine
And all the ancient godly discipline
Of soul and body; wrapt in solemn trance
Which comes from sweet and serious governance
And self-effacement. From the Holy Book,
As drinks the pilgrim of the desert brook,
I drank deep draughts of spiritual life
And inward stillness born through clouds of strife
In blissful sunshine. There I read of One,
Who, as no earthly conqueror had done,
Lived, wrought, and ministered in every thing,
Without sin but not without suffering,
For human weal, and carried to its end
God's thought in man, which sin availed to bend
From its grand purpose, in the ages past
When that grim shadow over all was cast
And ever lengthened; who, as none of yore,
The burden of our cares and sorrows bore,
And bought us peace at a tremendous price,
Through life and death, by the dread sacrifice
Of perfect manhood, and that heavenly throne
Which He surrendered but to make our own
And seat us with Him; while by laying down
All that was won, He gained a brighter crown
Even in the darkness, when He offered up
His victeries and drained the bitter cup
Of anguish; for He conquered most in loss,
And triumphed as a King upon the Cross.
Him I accepted as the Perfect Man,
Who had fulfilled the fair eternal plan,
God's high idea, to educate our race
And still exalt by stages that abase—
By fiery sufferings that alone refine,
Till human wills were one with the Divine.
Him I accepted as the Perfect God,
Who bowed His head to the avenging rod
Of wounded Justice long at war with Time,
Nor in His low estate was less sublime,
But greater than when, clothed in Royal robes
He stood in glory on the starry globes;
Who thus revealed that God was truly Love,
As well as Law, nor had a heart above
The little cares and stirs of daily strife,
But mingled freely with our common life.
From Him I learned a nobler track to try,
And yielding to the yoke of liberty
By willing service formed, I found the Truth
Which its disciples gives eternal youth
In rest and joy, and that serene content
Which is the faithful soul's enfranchisement.
To Him my homage I directed, urged
By burning hopes that in my bosom surged
With waves of promise, by assurance led
And with the blessed food of knowledge fed,
That filled my heart when I expected least,
With the rich dainties of a daily feast.
For Him I treasured every brighter thought,
That in my spirit holy music wrought,
With separation solemn, compassed round
By many a secret prayer and sacred bound
Of praises, till I had no other aim
Than that which bade me witness to His Name.
By Him transformed, in all my parts and powers,
I faced the fiercest onset of the hours
That bounded me, and conquered them at length,
Not in my own but with a vaster strength,
Which stirred my inmost pulse with feelings strange
And through my being sent the roots of change.
In him I lived and moved, in union sweet
That knit me closely to His blessed feet
By holy ties; and thence communion came
(As on the altar falls the heavenly flame)
With consecrating touch and kindly might,
Which flooded all my soul with saving light.
Through Him I access had to higher spheres,
Beyond the narrow circle of the years,
Above the grasp of even the greatest mind,
To mysteries of joy that lie behind
The cloudy veil that shuts the vision in,
And links us to a sordid world of sin.

Thus dedicated by devotion's choice,
Which spoke aloud with no uncertain voice,
Self-offered, I to wondrous heights attained
In service willing yet not unconstrained
By the great love of Christ, which deeply wrought
Sweet revolutions in the realms of thought
And sentiment, till the old self was dead,
And only He reigned royally instead—
Till I had broken every cumbering chain,
That bound me to a mortal state of pain.
But now my soul seemed full of dazzling light,
And like a glorious planet in its might,
Revolving gladly round the central source,
Whence it derived its fairness and its force—
That sacred Sun which never seemed to set,
And as it broadened shone more brightly yet—
Rolled out along its holy, happy path,
Above the angry waves of human wrath
And tread of human tempests, and the call
Of fleshly claims that tempt and trouble all;
Put forth, as in the presence of its Lord,
Its every movement in complete accord
With Him, and in the sunshine of His Face,
Still gathered daily richer powers and grace,
And daily travelled farther from the round
Of sorrow; while I soared above its seat,
And trod it down with my triumphant feet,
And broke its bitter sway, and beat it back
Far, far beneath my own unsullied track,
Despoiling it of all its darkling pride,
That like a shadow ever at my side
Once haunted me, and dogged my devious way,
And like the pall of night upon me lay.
But when the last black lingering stain was gone,
And sin a fading memory lived on
A little season, just to point my bliss
By the deep contrast of that state and this—
A mere tradition or a doubtful dream,
Or flickering note in the resplendent beam
Of sanctity—when I had reached the height
Where reigned perfection in its own pure light
By faith unfaltering, agonizing prayers,
And all the arduous penitential stairs
That climb to glory—then my body took
The bright expression of the spirit's look,
And underwent a sweet and solemn change,
Transfiguration beautiful and strange,
As did my Master on the Holy Mount,
When He returned a moment to the fount
Of abdicated Godhead. Weakness fled
With all the sickness and the grief that shed
A dire eclipse on every human course,
And flowed from sin as water from its source.
Yea, death itself and death's o'ershadowing shroud,
Passed from me like the passing of a cloud.
I was immortal, and my fleshly frame,
The avenue through which such suffering came
In elder days of evil, now partook
Of life immortal, when it once forsook
The yoke and bondage of Satanic sway,
To choose the noble and the narrow way.
And when the better law expelled the worse,
Then perished sin with all its power and curse.
And sorrow once for many years my mate,
Arising early and abiding late
To scourge my soul, now meteor-like had set
And left behind no record of regret
Nor lurid trail of troubled thought. I stood,
The centre of a sunny world of good
And sweetness, that yet never seemed to cloy,
While still expanding golden gates of joy
And vestibules of hope: as one who stands
Apart from earth in lonely mountain lands,
And sees around him curled the snow-white wreath
Of wrinkled clouds, and traces down beneath
And far beyond the limit of his ken
The dim and dusty ways of mortal men,
Who, from the watch tower of his glorious height,
Appear like insects sporting in the night.

Now faith and reason melted into one,
(As divers colours mingle in the sun
And by their sweet and kindly union make
A perfect beauty) when they learned to take
And give alike, and each to other lent
The one desired and destined complement.
And in the splendour of their wedded rays,
I caught the meaning of mysterious ways,
And all those dark and those defiant plots
Which underlay all life in tangled knots
And riddles. For my soul was full of love
Unbounded and unfolding, nor would move
To any lesser law, and its clear gaze
Resolved at once the thickness of the haze
And horror of the gloom, that o'er the earth
Spread the grey curtains of despair and dearth,
Poured still disorder and a deepening shade
And revelled in the misery they made.
Before my vision stretched the perfect plan,
That compassed all the history of man,
Which mortals view but piecemeal, and I saw
The majesty and moulding of the law
Which bound in one the scant and scattered parts,
And covered more than sciences and arts
In grand connexions; which embraced the whole,
From the mean outset to the mighty goal,
And contradictions that were still at strife
Joined in the marriage of harmonious life;
Which showed how mortals, who mere fragments knew,
No semblance of the wondrous picture drew
In its broad branches, and outlying shoots
That nourished were by deep eternal roots;
Which proved that earthly happiness was small,
And carnal welfare not the end of all
But accidental, not the main intent
Of this world's work, but its embellishment
And casual trappings—while affliction grew,
As naturally as the breezes blew,
From the great heart of Love that is Divine,
To be a sweet and saving discipline
And steps of progress, and a kindly nurse
To guard the soul from some yet darker curse—
As wise physicians, shunning graver ill,
Strange poison into healthy frames instil;
Which taught me that the glorious aim of things,
Through agonies and overshadowings,
Was to illumine all the human sky
With the broad light of love and purity
And humble trust, and out of suffering's school
To bring these lessons as the living rule
And master motives of each word and act,
Transforming specious dreams to splendid fact,
Till self was blotted out of every soul,
And simple love of God possesst the whole.
I saw that only love could conquer vice,
By the sweet yielding of self-sacrifice,
Which (not destruction) is the vital truth,
Explaining what seems cruel or uncouth
In earth's stern struggle, and though creatures live
Upon each other yet they no less give
Life for each other as the final cost
Of mere existence, saved alone when lost;
Which all must pay, with or without their will,
Who would the part at birth bestowed fulfil,
As factors in that plan which cannot fall,
The grand organic unity of all.
For if perfection I at length had gained,
By many a tearful cry and footstep stained
With penal blood, 'twas only when my love
(Brooding o'er self a moment like the dove
About to leave for ever its sweet rest)
Flew forth abroad on mercy's noble quest,
Disdaining danger, and mid earthquake throes
Snatching an awful rapture of repose
Upon the edge of storms, and misery's breath
Fanning to life even in the jaws of death—
The olive branch of peace and of good will
Bearing across the angry waves of ill
And sorrow—with the music of its voice,
Compelling hearts most hopeless to rejoice—
Following the raven, as day follows night,
And putting every shade of woe to flight
By its pure presence—bringing in its train
Each pure and pleasant gift and blessed gain
Unbought of gold—and dovelike to its nest
Took sick and helpless souls that needed rest—
Yea, gathered to it all created things,
Beneath the shadow of its sheltering wings.

Thus by devotion conquering years of strife,
I plucked the fruitage of the Tree of Life.
Which blooms where none before me ever trod,
Hard by the fountain in the throne of God,
That flows unceasing—thus I plucked and ate,
For nothing else my hunger now could sate;
While deep within me mighty pulses thrilled,
And the large spaces of my spirit filled
With melody and meaning all my own,
Of solemn joys till then undreamed, unknown,
And unconjectured. Fast I grew in grace,
As grows a stately plant in some green place
Of watered gardens, where the summers rest
With ripening rays that make it bright and blest
And fruitful. All my fertile being burst,
Through the dark fetters with which life was curst,
In fragrant flower and beauty; as the sun
Breaks through the clouds its glorious race to run,
Most jubilant. I drew from secret springs,
That lapt my soul in sacred murmurings;
And through my heart, as ages still went by,
I drank the fulness of eternity.