The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

The primary thoughts embodied in this poem are taken from the celebrated treatise on Purgatory by St. Catherine of Genoa. Two of them will be recognized by those acquainted with Cardinal Newman's magnificent poem, ‘The Dream of Gerontius,’ pp. 330 and 336, edition of 1868. Both are in entire accordance with the teaching of that treatise.

In Genoa by the sea
Saint Catherine sang and thus, while o'er the wave
Glittered the star of eve. Whence came her lore?
Not from scholastic parchments, texts obscure,
But creeds of Holy Church felt in their depths,
And from that reflex cast on saintly minds
Down from the mirror of the Mind Supreme
When God sends gifts to man.

What land is that—
That Land majestic, mystic, wondrous, blest,
Yet heart-subduing too, and soul-o'erawing
Where passion riots not, where love earth-soiled
Divinely blighted, withering to the root,
Leaves room for heavenly love? What Land is that
Where earthly mists obscure not Truths eterne,
Thenceforth but seen like ghosts of fair shapes dead
Or Souls in limbo pent? What Land is that
Whose piercing airs from God's own mountain launched
Cancel disease, reclothes the leper's bones
As though with infant's flesh; takes from our nature
Its downward leaning, girds it as with wings
Of heavenward aspiration? 'Tis not earth!
Before earth's sons have reached that hallowed site
Her probatory state is past for ever.

356

They that fought bravely from their labours rest
And bathe in healing wells. The songs of heaven
Reach them: the All-Blessèd Vision is not theirs—
It will be theirs! That thirst for God unsated
Which from the human bars the inferior kinds,
Chief prophecy of man's predestined greatness,
Survives, their sorrow sole. If lesser griefs
Be theirs, they heed not such.

What clime is that
Still as the Church's Holy Saturday
Sabbath twice hallowed of God's New Creation
His second, by endurance wrought not act—
That Saturday when now the Week of Woes
Behind us lies, Christ's obsequies complete—
That Sabbath both of rest and expectation
When now once more the lights are lit, the Cross
Unveiled, the ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ sung,
When sleeps the Saviour in the tomb close sealed,
When they who love Him share His sacred rest
Low bent and listening while the vesper psalms
Now rise, now sink, like waves that hide, then shew
Some ever-setting sun? Deepest that rest
Man knows on earth; yet deeper theirs the Souls
That breathe that cleansing clime. They sinned on earth;
They sin no more. In them that buried sin
From circumstance of time and place sequestered
Sleeps like a sheathèd sword. Their Will with God's
At last—now first—is one. Such Unity
Alone could breed such rest.

What Grief is that
Which, teaching man his primal greatness, shames
His joy foregone in pleasures wed to dust?
Such joy man knew not first. The Sire of men

357

'Mid flowers of Eden walked without a smile:
The gladness of all kinds that round him ranged
Seemed though a beauteous yet an alien thing.
God saw, and gave that man for mate an equal
Made in God's image. That was Love's first grade.
Later, God walked Himself upon the earth,
The God-Man, the Redeemer, Lord and Friend.
Thenceforth man's love attained its second grade;
Thenceforth, all love, if bound to earth alone,
Madness had seemed, not love. Life veils Love's greatness:
Life veils not less the greatness of high Grief:
We are but trivial lovers all our life—
We are but trivial mourners. Thanks to God,
Who grants us at life's close one sovereign Love,
One Grief, the cure for all.

See and discern!
‘I said that ye are Gods.’ Through sin alone
Was added: ‘Ye shall die as beasts that perish.’
Each Soul at its creation is all pure;
Forth as it issues from beneath God's Hand,
(If Poets thus may speak in parable,
Not wronging Truth dim-seen in Fancy's glass.)
A flash comes o'er it, as from God's own Face;
Comes, and is gone! The Soul, in Body bound,
Sees it no more. That moment did its work:
That moment launched abroad o'er every Soul
Like flight of wild swans o'er a dark lake's mirror
Those spirit-cravings which are Spirit's self,
Those wing'd Ideas which are Reason's essence,
Conscience's inspiration. What are these?
The great Ideas of the Good, the True,
The Fair, the Pure, the Just, the Infinite,—
These are the irradiation of man's being;

358

These light with hope the cradles and the graves:
Where'er there's greatness here on earth, its source
Was that brief flash! That was not ‘Blessed Vision,’
A Gift reserved. Christ's Heritage in Souls
It was; to sinful Adam's dread Bequest
The counter hope sublime. That primal Beam
Made Truth Revealed believable through Faith
To Man, though fallen. It hurled God's warrior forth
To battle with the monsters of man's life;
Gave souls their ‘Militant State,’ and—victory won—
Their thrones upon God's throne!

One other moment
Like that there is—but one! 'Tis when the Soul,
Its Militant State surceased, stands up, death past,
Ah pure no more, before Christ's judgment seat.
Christ's Countenance that hour—for infinite
That hour the depths of its compassionateness—
Reveals the award—a pardon and a penance:
The past is judged and dies; the Soul, self-seeing,
Through no compulsion, sadly yet in hope,
Flees to the cleansing realm. There Suffering nigh
Greater than Action seals its holy work
Since there God acts alone. That suffering Soul
Rejoices in its pain. Had choice been given
To leave that realm, its healing incomplete,
Before high Justice had its uttermost farthing,
Before God's Will was utterly fulfilled,
That Soul had cried, ‘Not so!’ Two moments these:—
The earliest stamps on man his Maker's image,
The last renews that image dimmed by sin.
Makes penance sorrow's balm.

What means that penance?
A Sorrow nobler than earth's noblest Joy!—
Sorrow of Souls supremely loving God

359

That see not God. On earth we see the earth;
In Heaven the Saints see God. In Purgatory
The Souls behold Him not. Near them He is—
Nearer than here on earth were soul and body:
Such nearness unto souls that see not God
Is sorrow—sorrow's sharpest. Could a mother
Hearing for years the small feet of her child
Pattering along some upper chamber's floor
Content her with the sound?—a child rejoice
Who, seeing all others, saw no more her mother
Yet heard her voice well known?

The Sophist asks
How with such suffering solace can consist?
The Master answers: Who are blest on earth?
The great, the rich, the strong? Not such, but those
Who, stormed against by Fortune and by Fate,
Racked by disease, worn out by long frustrations,
Not less can hear Christ's whisper in their hearts,
‘Blessed the mourners.’ That Beatitude
Sits throned in Purgatory. ‘O felix culpa!’
'Tis not our Earth. 'Tis not a second Eden,
Not endless spring and never-fading flowers;
Not gambols of those playmates lion and lamb;—
Not these; but earth redeemed and promised heaven
Man's Vision of his God. Without that Vision
The heaven of heavens were but a vulgar joy
Needing perchance no previous Purgatory.
The discipline of earthly pain suffices
To unfilm pure eyes to mysteries of Grace
Withheld from worldly sight. Austerer pain
Unfilms them to the mysteries of Glory;
No servile pain, not selfish; greater pain
Born of a greater love. Thus taught, man learns
That lesson all too high for Souls flesh-bound,

360

The creature was not for the creature made
But for the sole Creator; for that cause
Longs for his Maker as the blind for light,
Pants for Him as the hart for water-springs,
Rushes to God as rivers to the sea
Life's hindrance once removed. Hail, holy Death!
We glimpse God's light through crevices and chinks,
Till thy strong mace shatters our earthly prison;
Then from the dead face dawns that smile of death
Which mutely thanks its God!

Hail, Holy Souls!
Calm as that smile are ye, as mute, as bright!
Ye know that God is near. That sacred presence
Grows stronger than your consciousness of self:
Self, weakening, murmurs but ‘Thy will be done,’
Dying, is glad to die. O precious pains
How unlike pains of earth!—ambitions wrecked
Suspicions, fears, remorse without repentance.
O pains, how unlike those of reprobate Spirits!
Who, bound by fiat of a will all hate,
To proffered grace extend a hand clasped hard
In death and after death! The Holy Souls
Fast rooted in God's love hate sin alone:
Sin's chain is burst; sin's stain awhile remains.
Not life with all its medicinal woes,
Nor Death that o'er the dying rolls at once
Lethe and Eunoe, could cleanse that stain.
But more than life or death is God's Compassion:
It shaped for man—perhaps ere yet that fruit
Fatal was plucked—a sphere purer than earth
Whose fire is fire of light. O Spirits blind!
Who see in Purgatory no Paradise,
Why gaze but on that planet's shadowy side!

361

Its bright side sees the sun!

Hail, saintly realm!
Those seeds of greatness in the human soul
Sown when, created first, it saw God's Face,
Re-sown when it beheld its great Redeemer's,
Mature themselves in your inspiring clime,
Energies, instincts, spiritual faculties
Proportioned to that spiritual universe
Man's destined heritage, and greater far
Than all God's visible worlds—‘My portion Thou.’
O noble, travailing Soul! that generatest
A greater Soul, and heavenlier than thyself,—
A greater, yet in part the same—rejoice!
The worm one day shall soar!

All praise to Him
Who made the Militant State, so brave, so fair;
It takes us far upon the heavenward road:
All praise to Him Who made the Suffering State;
It lays us down before the gate of Heaven.
The first waged war on things external half,
The last on that interior foe—Self-Love,
Specious Self-Love, that ‘subtlest beast of the field,’
That Serpent old which round man's inmost being
Winds itself, fold on fold. A touch all fire
Unrings it: to its victim's feet it falls.
Self-love extinct, true Love stands up delivered:
The two Commandments crowned resume their sway
The second in sublime subordination:
Man's eyes are opened; man beholds his God.
O sons of earth, if this be Purgatory,
What thing is Heaven itself?

See Dante's Purgatorio, canto xxxiii.

University of Virginia Library

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