University of Virginia Library

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.