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

Earth was beneath me,
And above
The blue sky scribbled o'er with clouds;
And wanton airs that would enwreath me
Blew kisses soft as love,
And gossamers wove dewy shrouds.
I stood upon the glory of a summit
And watched the pageant of the passing life,
The eternal strife
That flowed from founts more deep than earthly plummet;
The mystery of mortal things,
The awe and overshadowings.

What were the meaning
Of despair,
That seemed to settle on the globe,
And whither the unriddled leaning
Of ruin to repair,
Wrapt in the ocean's royal robe;
I asked who saw each moment gauntly, gaily,
Enacted the red murder of the years
Like clashing spears,
While every creature killed its fellow daily—
In hunger for more room and light—
And only the brute might seemed right.

It looked the panting
And delight
Of nothing less than Crownèd Death,
That broke upon me with the chanting
Of doom and sore affright,
And sorrow burdened earth's hard breath;
Pain in the highest and the lowest revelled,
And madness feasted upon Nature's heart
In woe apart,
And all alike at last was rudely levelled;

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The red rose maid, the splendid lie,
Were simply formed to sin and die.

And yet a whisper
From forlorn
Recesses and their half sealed book,
With every blade a separate lisper,
Gave me a larger look
And lifted me to views unborn;
I marked, or thought I marked, beneath the wrangling
And bitter contest of the ceaseless wrath
A secret path
Away from horrors of the dumb dread strangling,
Done in that silent nameless woe,
Where each thing was the other's foe.

I saw a glimmer,
Then a gleam,
Which brightened to the perfect glow
And broadened through the spaces dimmer
To something more than dream,
Till sight was light above, below;
I found the evil and the troubled tossings
Were but the desperate struggle to be free
And climb to Thee,
O Father, if by crimes and awful crossings;
A needful passage of the flood,
That only purged through fire and blood.

I knew the losing,
And the fangs
Corroding breasts like rust,
Would be (if asked) each mortal's choosing
With all their precious pangs,
For hearts firm-rooted in pure trust;
And but in flames of everlasting burnings,
The upward trial without stint or end
And death made friend,
Could we attain the height of fullest learnings—
Redeemed by tears and iron rod—
And man himself be truly God.

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And there was pity
And its power
Deep in the writhings of dark clay,
Down in the murmur of the city,
Self-tortured into flower
And feeling after the noonday;
Yea, love amid the sadness and the surging
Prevailed, though masked, with solemn miracle
Ineffable,
And gathered beauty from the scorn and scourging;
For under penance of the earth and sky,
Throbbed out a sweet Necessity.

And the grim slaughter
Loud or mute
In wide creation, like a sword
Wreaking its lust on land and water,
Was but the Master's lute
Who touched at times a broken chord;
The fear that stifled, and the staring anguish
In storms world-shaking and the tiny twinge,
Were but the fringe
Of that ascent by which to God we languish;
And yet each teardrop fitted in,
The glorious suffering and the sin.

No longer puzzled,
I beheld
That dawning beam of destined scope,
Though hell itself seemed oft unmuzzled
With fury that rebelled
But yielded to the larger hope;
And we who fought against our lot in blindness
Or tottered faintly from the reeling rank
And sullen sank,
Yet drew in every breath the inner kindness;
The voice that cursed the fated strife,
Drank of its fulness very life.

And thus though stricken
Breast and brow,

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And feebly clinging to my post,
While ordeals round me threatening thicken,
I read the enigma now
Exulting when I sorrow most;
Thence only, not from cloister or by college,
Comes the serener philosophic sight
And orbed light,
From clustering rays of all our broken knowledge;
I am content to be, a part
Of that which is God's bleeding Heart.