Matin Bells and Scarlet and Gold :: :: University of Virginia Library

I in my palace lowly, I at this dreadful task
Sealed to a service holy still for no helper ask;
Mine is the ceaseless doing, work that no other can,
Sadly by watch and wooing always to strengthen man;
Only to build him stronger up by my tempting art,
Fashioned as times wax longer more to the perfect part.

329

God may not take my portion, God will not suffer so
Blackened by base distortion, bearing my ceaseless woe.
But for His will I labour daily and nightly worse,
He has the trump and tabor, I the perpetual curse;
Multitudes damn and doubt me grovelling at His throne,
He incomplete without me leaves me to drudge alone.

Not for myself I weary on as the ages roll,
Chained to an office dreary, gathering tithe and toll;
But by these circuits fateful grinding His measures out,
All for a King ungrateful bringing the goal about.
Troubled the toil and endless, bitter its means and ways,
While I pursue a friendless path with no cheering rays;
Doomed to unthankful living breathed through my agents rude,
Fed on my death, and giving me but a solitude.
Continents form and crumble, systems arise and go,
Types by the thousand stumble down in the shifting show;
Nature has clouds that dim it, the heavens and earth their range;
I have no settled limit known, and I never change.

God in His awful distance wanteth my ghostly art,
Would not possess existence ever from me apart;
Each has the need of other unto the close of time,
I am His foe and brother, one in the cosmic chime.
Mine is the sombre shadow haunting the homes of night,
Spread upon mount and meadow His is the laughing light;
I am the evil dwelling grimly in creature things,
He is the goodness welling forth from eternal springs.
Yet to a far-off marriage reaching through right and ill,
Wrong and oblique miscarriage, both are inspiring still;
Both do prepare the morrow hinted by sun and moon,
I by the sin and sorrow, He with a brighter boon.

330

I am His partner lowly bearing the burden's heat,
Bound by a purpose holy—He has the ruler's seat.
I along roads erratic sleeplessly moulding man
Win not his Peace Sabbatic, but universal ban.
Joy cometh nowise near me hungry for human bliss,
Mortals if using fear me, making my work amiss.
I, who procure them pleasures, counting not years or cost,
Taste not myself the treasures always for me but lost.
Worship to Him goes daily up from priest-ridden earth,
And though His servants gaily tax me they give but dearth.
Men for Him raise the column as to its native sky,
While I remain a solemn fate and necessity.

Ever the purblind peoples groping in shade and shame,
Toying with towers and steeples, tremble to hear my name;
Foist upon me afflictions wrought by their own weak hands,
Heaping me maledictions through the self-tortured lands;
Paint me in colours growing deeper and darker yet,
When from their wicked sowing they at the reaping fret.
Thoughts of their private plotting only on me they lay,
While they are rank and rotting just with their own decay.
All that I do they garble, turned to offence and vice,
Paying to God the marble court and the sacrifice;
Reckoning mine their fancies tainted by mire and mould,
Dross and the morbid dances—meting to Him the gold.

I am not the Creator, framing their course and creed;
I am no Legislator, shaping that bruised reed.
But the whole imperfection, breaches of slighted law,
Blemish and predilection still for the fatal flaw;
Follies of their devising, blots and their native lust,
Scorn for a re-arising out of congenial dust;

331

These with their stains and errors, steps that delight to be
Straying and stupid terrors, lightly are thrown on me.
I did not form them dimly, blent of the common clay,
Passion and powers that grimly sap them and eat away;
I did not mix their feelings fast with unmating fire,
Wedding to earthly reelings pulses of pure desire.

Did I unmake and mar them, fresh from the Almighty hand;
And with my cunning bar them, when they would upright stand?
Yet in their brighest jewel, volition fair and free,
Lay hid the faint and cruel germ of a fall to be.
I did but helpless follow the road marked out as mine,
And in the darkness hollow a prison with God's line.
How could I baulk my being and cheat the iron law,
Which deals me night for seeing and shuts me out in awe?
I just obeyed the nature, which in me sternly drew
Others, and to this stature by certain stages grew.
I do not loathe the beauty, I never hated right,
But must fulfil my duty and turn my face from Light.

Ah, who shall tell the sadness which sears my destined bound,
And with the mirth of madness girds all my service round?
For when I break a nation or some poor fragile heart,
It is the obligation of my lone, awful part.
I have no choice, no action can be except for ill,
Ground to its smallest fraction within the fated mill.
And though I curse the sentence I love it because mine,
Nor would I give repentance to earn the Peace Divine.
I know when sin is greatest in evil deed or thought,
While grief is green and latest, I do but what I ought.
No way is open other than that which God will go,
I work and am His brother—I tempt and am His foe.

332

I in my circuits slowly am labouring for the end,
A climax grand and holy to which creations tend;
That yet may never finish the upward-climbing task,
Nor may I once diminish my own, nor would I ask.
And if I gain for mortals, by trying or by test,
Escape through golden portals, I may not therefore rest.
The joy they reach by anguish o'er which they mount and shine,
Though for their hour they languish—it cannot still be mine.
The sweetness in the profit by conquests won from me,
If worlds get pleasure off it, I may not likewise see.
For everyone a haven comes to each tossing tide,
Or path with sorrow paven—I only stand outside.

But on I go by acrid dull streams, with penal rods;
My work is truly sacred, the complement of God's.
His enemy, the spoiler of His best deeds and man's,
I am a fellow-toiler and share His broadest plans.
His tool, His jailer, keeping the rebels He would bind,
I hold a watch unsleeping and purge His dust behind.
Were I at last to perish, expunged from earth and sky,
How could the Maker cherish or lift mortality?
The universal struggle, that hammers out His claim,
By force and fraud that juggle with men, would miss its aim.
And thus I search new nations, within my furnace fused,
By fire of fierce temptations—I cursing, curst, and used.