Chronicles and Characters :: :: University of Virginia Library

There is a stillness of the upper air,
Foreboding change; when mighty winds prepare
In secret sudden war upon the world.
And when that stillness breaks, forests are hurl'd
Asunder, and sea-sceptring navies drown'd.
There is another stillness, more profound,
Worse change foreboding; of the inmost soul,
In that dread moment when, from the controul
Of life's long acquiescence in whate'er
Life's faith has been, revolted thoughts prepare
War on man's nature. When that stillness breaks,
A heart breaks with it, in the shock that shakes
Deep-planted custom, and roots up the hold
Of long-grown habit, and observance old.

From such a stillness in himself, at last,
Licinius raised his voice. The spasm, that pass'd

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Across the quivering features of the man,
Smit by stern speech from lips Olympian,
Vext, as it rose, the staggering voice, down-weigh'd
With heavy meanings hard to express.

II.

He said:
“Immortal gods, by Rome revered! to me,
A mortal man, revering Rome, did she
This creed bequeath: that to all sons she bears
There is but One Necessity (made theirs
In Rome's requital for a Roman's name)
—Living, or dying, never to know shame:
Never to shrink from pain: never recant
Recorded faith: never be suppliant
For life less noble than 'tis man's to make
Death in the cause which, even tho' gods forsake,
Honour, retain'd, keeps sacred to the last.
This, also, in the records of Rome's Past
My life read once: and read long since, indeed,
Too far to new-live now a new-learn'd creed:
—That, when to all the creatures under heaven
Their severally allotted tasks were given,
On man—man only—the injunction fell,
To do, by daring, the impossible:
That he who doth, tho' dying, dauntless still,
Plant the pale standard of unbaffled Will
On Fate's breach'd battlements, and to the end,

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Defeating thus defeat itself, contend
Tenacious in the teeth of tenfold odds,
Uplifts the life he loses to the gods.

“Lies! lies! all lies! Since gods live careless lives,
Concern'd in nought for which man's being strives.
Justice? men deem'd the image of the mind
Of gods—a mere invention of mankind!
Love?—some blind blood-beat in the veins of youth!
Belief?—man's substitute for knowledge! Truth?
—Unknown in Heaven! Why man, whom you despise,
O'erweening gods, for getting all these lies
By heart in vain, seems nobler after all,
More godlike, than yourselves.
“Nor yet, so small,
So slight, so all unworthy, first appear'd
Man's race, but what you gods have interfered
Too much with man's condition to assume
This late indifference to your work—his doom.
Since one thing have you been at pains to do,
—To cheat the chosen fools that trusted you,
False gods, and filch thanksgiving, foully gain'd,
For all whereto the woeful end ordain'd
Was but betrayal.
“What! then, all meant nought?
All, all, that Delos told and Delphi taught,
Tho' a god spake it? All your oracles,
Your priests, your bards, your sacred woods and wells?

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Liars of lies! all pledged to cheat man's hope
In gods too careless, or too weak, to cope,
With aught man suffers!
“Well can I believe
How man's imperfect progress might deceive,
And fail, as 'twere (man's prowess, at the best,
Crippled by means inadequate confess'd!)
The august hopes, by some bright periods
Of his brave promise, in the mind of gods
Inspired. But I, a man, no way can find
Among the many wanderings of my mind,
To imagine even how gods (whose godheads are
Glorious with power, each perfect as a star)
Should at the last fall short of hopes by them
In man's mind once awaken'd.
“Gods, condemn,
Punish man, plague him . . . but forsake him? No!
Not for your own sakes! Lest your godhoods grow,
From long disuse of godlike attributes,
Less lovely even than the life of brutes,
Not being so helpful.
“Yet, howe'er that be,
I, at the least, have loved ye, trusted ye,
So long that, tho' for me you fight no more,
Still must I fight for you. 'Twill soon be o'er:
Or one way, or another. Soonest, best,
I think: nor greatly care to know the rest.
One thing's to gain yet—death. No room to range

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From what I am! The gods may change, Fate change,
I cannot. Not each casual tomb will fit
The fame a Roman's death consigns to it.
And I for this too-long-continued life
Must find fit end: hew out, with gods at strife,
Tho' sword break, heart break, all break, in the attempt,
Memorial—mournful, but, at least, exempt
From all incongruous contradiction vile.
Nor is life left me to lament, meanwhile,
Life's failure—frustrate faith, and fruitless deed!
One life, wherewith to fail, or to succeed,
Is man's. One only. I, at my life's end,
Cannot go back to the beginning—mend
What it hath made me—unlove what I loved—
Love what I loathed—condemn what I approved—
New-self myself, to suit occasion new.
The arrow, sped, must still its flight pursue
As first the bowman aim'd it, tho' since then
The bowman shift his ground. Life speeds with men
Even thus. And few can chuse, none change, what's done.
A man hath but one mother: and but one
Childhood: one past: one future: but one hearth:
One heart—to give or keep: one Heaven: one earth:
And one religion.
“Yet thus much, tho' spent
His force, and spoil'd his whole life's element,
A man may do: and this, at least, will I!
Ere, quench'd, the fires that still consume me, die,

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I will collect their scatter'd heats, push all
Life's ashes, even while yet the embers fall,
Into a heap, and send the dying flame
Full in Heaven's face!
“O worthy of thy name,
Loxian Apollo! Boots it me to know
That men may see thee, as I see thee now,
Far from the life thy beauty doth but wrong,
Calm on the golden summits of Old Song?
No singer I! but a dull soldier: fit
Simply to love a thing, and fight for it,
Or hate a thing, and fight against it. Vent
My soul in song, I cannot, I! content
To do, at least, what merits to be sung:
Hold fast, when old, the faith I pledged when young:
Live up to it: die for it, if needs be.
What comfort, O Apollo, dwells for me,
Or what for any man, in leave to praise
The life of gods whose life his own betrays?
Their loves, that love him not? their power, that is
The mockery of the weakness they leave his?
Sing no more songs, Apollo, in men's ears!
Leave us, ye gods, in silence to the tears
You understand not! Spare this much vext earth
Distracting visions of Heaven's unshared mirth!
This, also, ere I die” . . . . .

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III.

But there, his heart
Brake the thought in it, sharply; as a dart
Breaks in the effort of a wounded man
To pluck it from the wound.
O'er Heaven's face ran
A tremble of white anger: like the light
Of wind-blown stars when, on a winter night,
The howling earth-born gust, that devastates
His own dark birthplace, having burst the grates
Of some grim-pillar'd forest (whose black bars
Release him, groaning) strives against the stars;
Their icy brilliance only kindling thus
To a keener glory. Eyes contemptuous,
Eyes cruel with calm scorn of all that pain
Which scorch'd his own, burn'd on him. The disdain
Of brows divine, in phalanx infinite
And formidable of transcendent light,
Glow'd from Heaven's depths against him. But all these
Luminous and severe solemnities
He noticed not. For, when the wretched man
First to accuse the assembled gods began,
Love, from the midmost rosy Heaven, where he
Was sporting, stole a-tip-toe, curiously,
Closer at each word, by no eyes perceived
Save Psyche's, brightening while her bosom heaved
With some unwonted spasm, and her sad brow
Flush'd, as a pale star flushes when the glow

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Of the full-flowing sunset, sweet and warm,
Is pour'd upon it. With half-lifted arm,
And troubled countenance, and listening ear,
Love, thus, in pensive posture, linger'd near
Whence came that voice (among their bright abodes
Ambrosial, then first heard by those glad gods)
Of Human Pain denouncing Heavenly Joy.
And, on the blind face of the beauteous Boy
The man's look lightening, as he lifted it
Defiant of whatever it might meet
In Heaven, was caught, and fasten'd where it fell,
By new incentive irresistible
To special indignation. Even as when
In the throng'd circus, from the swarm of men
That hem and hurt him, some wild beast selects
One man, whom suddenly his wrath detects
As most obnoxious, and, in mid assault
On all the others, swiftly swerves, makes halt,
And flies at him that's nearest; so the man,
From all that hostile cirque Olympian
Selecting Love, cried to him

IV.

“Thou immature
And mindless god! whose smiling sinecure
Is but a blindfold childhood never grown!
Comest thou to mock at what thou hast not known
—Man's full-grown misery at the end of all

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The strivings of a life, spent past recall,
Used out, in urging, on its destin'd way
To dissolution, force that went astray
By struggling upwards? Such a vapour streams
From altars vainly lit; which, tho' it seems
To go up to the gods, goes nowhere—is
Made nothing, merged in that wide nothingness
Men take for Heaven! Thou purblind lord of all
Purblindest instincts! thee, not Love I call,
But Lust. For man's loss, Love must needs be sad:
Lust, with no eyes to see man's loss, is glad,
As thou art. Yet, since men misname thee Love,
Loose, if thou canst, what, pent in me, doth move
Importunate, as some dumb creature curst
With such a secret as at length must burst
Its heart, endeavouring to be understood.
O Love, if thou be Love, pluck off that hood
That hides thine eyes from human grief. Revere
Love's last result on earth—a wretch's tear!
Break silence, Love! Thee only, of the gods,
I ask . . . What is it heaves earth's sullen clods
When Spring winds, wet with tears from trembling boughs,
Breathe, and behold! in place of snows (those snows
Themselves earth's seasonable comforters)
The abounding violet! Or what Spirit stirs
In tones and scents that bathe man's wearied heart
With fresh belief, and bid the strong tears start
For solemn joy? What mystic inmate gives

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Some sense of loveliness to all that lives:
Some worth, tho' hinder'd, to the humblest worm
That crawls; some purpose to the poorest germ
That buds unwitness'd from the meanest seed:
Some beauty to the barest rock's worst weed?
Which, thro' all pores of Being, everywhere
Passing, at last, into Man's Life; and there
Changing what was (till such a change it knew)
Merely, perchance, some droplet of wild dew,
Clasping a thorn, to Pity; some tost sea,
To Aspiration passionate; some tree,
That struggles with the savage gust forlorn
All night, wherein a wild bird sings at morn
Exulting, to the Fortitude of Faith;
In Man grows audible; speaks out, and saith
To Heaven “Await me!” with a human voice:
Man here, God everywhere! Which doth rejoice,
And droop, live, strive, and grieve, and grow, with man:
And so, completing from all points, the plan
Of a god's vast experience in God's Bliss,
—Too perfect, too immeasurable, to miss
The manifold significance of tears,
Strength strain'd from weakness, struggle that endears
Triumph, and failure forced into success,—
Looks down thro' all inferior grades to bless
Life's hopes with Love's assurance of the end
Whereto all Life, by Love inspired, doth tend!
Such a god dare not be indifferent

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To man's success or failure: He, the Event,
Which man, His Means, he fashions to fulfil:
A god's means, therefore worth a god's care still!
Oh, such a god, my spirit whispers me,
Tho' nameless yet, and yet unknown, must be.
I seek His Face among your faces all,
Olympians; and, not finding it, I call
Earth's woe to witness that you do not well,
Being gods, to leave man godless . . . You! that tell,
Smiling the while, as you depart serene,
Me that have loved you, me whose life hath been
Yours, tho' in vain, yours past recovery, here
At that life's cheated end, to now revere
What love of you hath bid me loathe . . . .
“If He—
If He, indeed, were—what ye are not, ye!—
That God—that Love, which . . . Ah, but know I not,
Too well, with cause to curse them all for what
They are—and do—His worshippers? the late
Last form of man's forlornness . . . men that hate
Even each other!
“Fair, false Forms depart!
Happy in ignorance of the human heart
You have deceived! Apollo, load some star
With liquid music far from earth! Far, far
From eyes worn out with weeping wasted love,
O Venus, guide whatever golden dove
Delights to draw thy lucid wheels!

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“But we?
The men that loved you, and are left?
“Ah me,
What goal to us remains, whose course some Fate
Impels unwilling where no prize can wait
The weary runner?
“He, that late is come
To rule from your abandon'd thrones the scum
And sewage of that rough-hewn rabble world
Wrought from the ruins of Rome's pride down-hurl'd,
Why comes He now, who comes so late? He too,
Hath He not all too long connived with you
At man's disaster? If He love to be
Beloved of men, why so long linger'd He?
Letting men grow familiar, age by age,
With gods not destined to endure; engage,
Unwarn'd, to you the homage, He now claims,
And you resign; while men that got your names
By heart, have now no heart left to unlearn
The faith which, sued for ages, given, you spurn!
Is nothing sure? Must man's existence be
Barter'd and bandied thus eternally
From god to god? By each new master made
Pull down in haste what each last master bade
The o'ertask'd drudge build up with toil intense?
Oh, for some voice Love's sanction to dispense
To Life's endeavour! oh for one, but one,
Of all you gods, whose forms I gaze upon

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With grief left godless, to assure at last
This else-wrong'd spirit, that, in despite the Past,
Which fail'd in power, the Present, by despair
Darken'd, the Future, desolate and bare,
It did not ill to trust an instinct, wrong'd
Not seldom, oft rebuked, but yet prolong'd
Thro' strangling hinderance and confounding chance;
Which, fronting Heaven with constant countenance,
Would whisper, ‘I am love, and love is there,
And love to love is kindred everywhere!’
But which of all the gods can do this?”