Christ's Company and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Christ's Company and Other Poems

By Richard Watson Dixon

Dixon, Richard Watson (1833-1900)

[dedication]

Christ's Company.

The Holy Mother at the Cross.

Poems.

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

Christ's Company.

St. Paul.

PART OF AN EPISTLE FROM GALLIO, THE DEPUTY OF ACHAIA, TO HIS BROTHER SENECA.

Yes; I am grown incapable, 'tis true,
To comprehend our fathers what they were;
But so are all men now, and so are you.
This fallen age can neither see nor hear
The heroic strength of thought which laid
Itself to work, and conquest made
From the wide Infinite displayed
To its wide eyes, and in that trade
Of region conquest carried men by tribes
To people its new colonies: upbraid,
Banter not me, my Stoic, for thy gibes
Be double-edged; I mean that thought
Of Homer or of Plato brought
A tract unknown, perhaps unsought,
To man's domains; and men upcaught,

As in a bark, by such thoughts' mightiness,
Were rapt together to the new-found port,
And there got apanage, with no dangerous press
Of numbers, and no famine, for
Such thought was as the harvest store
Of diverse grains for usance, or
Such that each man could bite its core—
Each of a million; yes, that was the age
Of Argonauts; but we who now explore,
We who are writing up the present page
In earth's accounts, can only just
Sharpen a thought which may or must
Touch one soul only to its lust:
No region conquest here, no trust
In each of millions that we speak for him;
Can more than one find room upon the thrust
Point of a pin? We make a splinter trim.
Yes, and we subdivide at best
The realms of old at large possessed;
This truth stings you like all the rest:
We are not great, it is confessed.

But there's another danger, solemner;
The thoughts that work within our children's breast,
Shall we miss these? Our children make demur
To thy sad creed, e'en while we see
The old age rotting utterly,
And we in ruin well agree.
Yes, there is hope of things to be;

Here, while our legionaries from this hill
Look lazily along the languid sea,
Where the white sails wear windward, waving still
With flagging arms to one another:
What bring the galleys as they row there,—
Ind spice, or Cretan grit; or smother
Isle slaves in the monoxylo there?
Yields earth no more to earth's monopolizer
Than such cheap tribute? Nothing rarer, loather,
Than these mean gains? Sad earth! dost thou despise her,
Ostian-mouthed Rome, so much as this?
Dost thou demand no more? Dost miss
No gifts of earth, but tithe anise,
Still murmuring, Let be what is?

I say, a thought brain-warm and new may grow
In any skull to light up the abyss
Of any nature, till it overflow
(I'll tell you something by and by)
On all the nations, and off-wry
Our business-like supremacy.
For instance, our belief is high;
We are the few for whom the many work:
Suppose it should be bruited in reply,
That nature moves the world in equal cirque;
How wildly should we retograde
Confounded from the web we've made
O'er all the world with spear and spade!
Again, our creed is now our trade,

That the brute multitude may crouch and pray
At popular altars, little reverence paid
By us, who supervise the popular way,
Aristocrats, philosophers:
Suppose an intimation stirs
That God holds by His worshippers,
The swine are right and wisdom errs:
Then, all are right but thou and I and I,
And there is hooting where a fool occurs;
Brother, behold a possibility!
Changes may come; see how the air
Stirs curls that leave the forehead bare
Of your Domitian, so aware,
While you by hint and dint prepare
His soul with Stoic maxims for the world,
And with Greek dramas and such other fare
For growing upwards rightly trimmed and curled.
You Stoic poet, is it well
To blow the wrong end of the shell,
Concluding with a Stoic spell
All life as in a citadel,
Half active, and half theoretic; so,
Just as the father of your porch did tell?

At least you rightly keep your creed, to go
Retracing with poetic skill
The springs Castalian rill by rill!
Those stories anciently did thrill
The blind man of Olympus hill.

Your Hercules I've read, as good almost
As if in Trachis written; still, yet still
An age whose greatest poet is a post
Of that old porch, is a strange age,

I am no Stoic, yet a sage,
Living in Greece here, where yet rage
Some flutterers 'gainst your iron cage:
We are Platonists in Greece here, we maintain
A various expectation, which bids gauge
The world as not set in this state and strain
For ever; hold in spite of sin
A chastity of mind wherein
Some glimpse of that reserve we win,
Which Essence holds amidst the din
Of outward life and death: since man is base,
Is nature base, doth God fail? Not so thin
Of faith am I; nay, though I grant this phase,
This present, which we all abhor,
May be the last save one that o'er
The world shall pass, yet I ignore
Thy sentence, “There remains no more.”
Nay, there's an infinite nothing; we shall come
Thither at least, and have not reached that shore;
We have at least then so much floating room.

Now with your leave let me rehearse
In brief what prompts me, the reverse
Of your conclusion; why I nurse
This hope of better out of worse.

Five days ago held I a curule hall:
A heap of Jews rushed, mad as if the thyrse
Drave them: they haled along a certain Paul
As prisoner, whom they did accuse
Of those strange questions of the Jews
Of which I gave you lately news:
Their laws, they said, he did refuse
To worship by; among their heretics
Numbered him; but what chiefly served to bruise
Their Jew galls was that he had dared to mix
Them with the Gentiles; he had said
That all men have one common Head,
One common law, one common bread,
Life, death, flesh, spirit, hope, and dread.
These wretched Jews are quite as proud as we;
Moreover, Paul affirmed one, sometime dead
By Roman law, a seer of Galilee,
To be alive: I think I wrote
Something of this report remote
To illustrate this very thought
That the dead die not;—time will show 't.
This seer then Paul affirmed to be the Christ,
Or prophet, for whose advent the Jews doat.

All this so angered me, I seized one priest
And scourged him, drove the rest away,
Dismissed their prisoner—hold here—stay—
Their prisoner—what may I say?
Describe those features? He did sway

An arm and side towards his slanderers,
And fixed an eye upon me like the ray
Of humid star; a certain reverence errs
From further portrait, but he seemed,
A fire-calm soul; a something dreamed
Between us, as his eyeballs gleamed
With inner vision, which outbeamed
And sunned him, as I had beheld a man
Had gone through all the forms of thought esteemed
Amongst us, by the which we think we can
Gain the truth's truth; I think that he
Had taken from them all the fee,
Nor failed to find not one to be
The knowledge, but had found the key
Some other way, he looked beyond them all,
Yet far from sadness, confident and free,
As if he held them still, let nothing fall
Of all that ever he had learned,
But all by inner force had turned
To one harmonic; I discerned
A pathos which not flamed but burned—
A pathos which consisted in the truth,
As I should call it, not from passion churned,
Not tearful pathos suddenly uncouth,
But rising from the very might,
With which he held the Infinite;
As if some moment past his night
Had changed to glory in a blight

Which withered all desire except to tell
How God did once through all his senses smite.
I am too old to think old things: 'tis well;
Such men would die, for what they hold;
He has seen that which doth enfold
His eyesight always, yea, upmould
His nature, which nor heat nor cold
Can suffer in the welding glow of faith.

I questioned Barrhus why he lowered the gold
Spiral upon my lituus, which he hath,
Until Paul's exit, doing force
To Rome's majesty; this of course
Insufferable by the laws
Divine and human;—whence the source
Of such a strange neglect I had observed?
Barrhus, my oldest of apparitors,
Fixed his grim head towards me, never swerved,
Weeping stone tears from Scythian eyes,
And clipped me such a mint of lies—
Or truths—heart-told in any wise,
About Paul's preaching;—novelties
I almost thought, until I thought again
You say that nothing new can ever rise;
He said that Paul was one of many men,
Who words and works and wonders show,
In name of Him their nation slew,
Whom they aver to live anew,
Whom they allege to Greek and Jew,

In whose name they do bid all men repent,
With many other doctrines which ensue
From this; even Barrhus spoke as he were sent
To sound this one word to me then
Straight out from heaven, not as if men
Had taught it him, and he again
Taught me a secondhand refrain.
The sum of all was hope in things to come,
And faith that gives hope substance in our pain,
And love that perfects faith; yes, love the sum
Of sums: the sweetness in the thing
Seemed here, that love was named the ring
Which linketh man to God, the wing
Which strikes the eternal shadowing
With one firm shadow; the great category
(Rest here, rest here) from which the truth doth sing,
Through every other form with brightest glory.

Winds weary with the old sea tune
Slide inland with some cloud, and soon
From woods that whisper summer noon,
Weigh their wight wings with odour boon;
So I, long salted in our ocean drear
Of disbelief that Essence can be won
By any form of thought invented here,
Felt such a gush of joy about
My heart-roots, as if in and out
'Twas life-blood billowed; and as stout
As once we sent the battle-shout,

Pitching clear notes against barbaric din,—
Oh, brother, my soul's voice against the rout
Of unbeliefs a man doth nurse within,
Arising and protesting wild,
Spake, speaking out untruth defiled;
Spake, speaking in the truth exiled;
Spake, Little head and weary child,
Come home, God loves, God loves through sin and shame;
Come home, God loves his world: and thy so-styled
Instincts, which whispered this even in the name
Of doubts and of carnalities,
Were true conclusions, nature-wise;
In thy old scorned formalities
And creeds, God looks thee in thine eyes!

Wherefore believe again thine ancient lore,
For whatsoever Reason doth devise,
Her fiery wings and fire-cloud cars to soar,
They truly gain the living height,
Because as their most proper freight
They carry love, the infinite
Of man, up to the rapturous site
Of love, the infinite in nature spread.
Shall forms in nature always play at sleight
With forms in man, that nature's chief and head?
Nay, God is an authority,
We deem, in nature; let Him be
Authority in us, that we
Hold this for certainty, that He

Yields up Himself to all our grasps of thought—
Our little nets cast in the shoreless sea,
Our dartles launched in skilled or skilless sort,
Our reason in its many modes,
Its paths lead to the star abodes,
Spherical music lights those roads
To love's true ending, which is God's.
O Love, thou art the secret of our God;
Thou art, O Love, the centre of heaven's codes;
The due thou art by all to all things owed!

This love within me grew alive
So late in this my life, I strive
To give it language; do thou give
Me audience; we so late arrive
Where we have been so many years agone;
Yet think of this, with whom should God connive
At such a madman as would gather stone
For his own grave? Rather be built
Houses for dwelling with the silt
Of every creed and knowledge, spilt
From the deep waters, which do lilt
With prescient music unto mortal ears,—
Plena sunt omnia Dei; in our guilt,
Failure and pain this very love inheres.

I wrote all this to thee last night
Beneath my lonely chamber light,
Impelled through the long hours to write
Up to this point, at which the blight

Of the stealthy morning withered my pale lamp,
And in my vases all the fir-cones lite
Drew their brown mouths a little wider, ramp
Sweet briars with all their berries red,
A palsy took the arbute dead
Asleep till now; he shook and said,
It is high morning overhead,
Where are my birds that sported in my boughs?
The nearer cones no answer breathed, afraid
To lose an instant of their dear carouse
Of the new morning's life divine;
Then first I slept amid the shine
Of all my loving flowers quirine;
And then Paul's face, which did decline
All through the broken waters of my sleep,
Changed wonderfully in a magic sign,
Became in part another's, part did peep
A visage at me terrible,—
'Twas my own look, I knew half well,
My very self; dead mutterings tell
This truth to me; and then the spell
Wrought so that through one ghostly countenance
Two souls did strive to speak, to think, to quell
Each other; then I woke and tell my chance.

Paul spake of One: what man is He,
We ask; what other could He be
Save whom I saw, whom all may see
Of us—another and the Me?

Thou wouldst inquire concerning Him, of whom
Spake Paul—the Christ? My dream I tell to thee,
I saw another striving to become
Myself in self; this was the Christ
I think, be sure I have not missed
Paul's meaning, that God's Word uprist
Doth grant the truth to all who list.
Oh, just, and pious, and pitiful heart of God!
There is one Word of Truth who makes acquist
Of human words pronounced in our exode,
From other unto other faith—
Most holy word, as Philo saith
(Another Jew) doth knit the rath
Unto the late with equal breath.

God grant He may have whispered unto me,
For some fulfilment this poor soul to graith;
God grant He may have walked in Galilee,
For there belike my love may dwell;
From this full morning breathes the smell
Of olden years; from hidden dell
A wind breathes over deserts fell
With whitened bones. Farewell, farewell.

St. John.

I

Nothing has come to the night except the moon:
I see her now; the black and heavy clouds
Rustle in foam before her, tossed and strewn,
As when at first God's word the clammy crowds,
Half mist, half water, and all ghost, upfroze,
And bared for man the nether firmament
Between the sea and sky, what time the rent

II

Clouds like a garment parted from it, and close
The dark fogs sauntered earthwards; now as soon
Yon clouds part upwards, downwards; and outflows
Vast amber, and the night in happy boon
Is happy now, solemn and clear and cold;
And full of happy love, broods love—possessed
O'er the dark world, like dove upon her nest.

III

And I am happy now, so manifold
The past is, and the present so serene:
Thought I my soul was ready for the gold
Of visions? but they come not; therefore e'en
As ever, let me think to keep my soul
Fixed on the whole circumference, which weds
The centre ever to itself, and spreads

IV

In light like waves for ever; on the whole
Of love in love divinely multiplied;
Not generated in the onward roll
Of ages, though to men 'tis centuried;
But rather in all points of time perfected,
As in the bosom of the mind divine,
So in the thoughts of life which thence outshine;

V

And thirdly, in the sparkles thence deflected
Into the bosom of this world of man;
In oracles and laws of grace connected
Through the six ages; God alone, who can
Know how the stream of time doth measure round
Into a breathing circle held within—
The eternal circle which doth both begin

VI

And end it; He alone can know the sound
Which that glad circle in its rounding makes
In both my ears: for say, was I not found
In the blest bosom of that love, which slakes
Our human thirst, when all the rest at gaze
With distant eyes were murmuring, Is it I?
Lord, is it I? And think ye no reply

VII

Did make me nearer to the hidden ways
Of love, no response beat into my ear
From that deep heart which pulsed the awful rays
To the eyes beneath whose curve I did upsteer
My reverend gaze, whilst holding solemn state
In the upper room;—no benediction pressed
Like a spear's head of bliss into my breast?

VIII

Yea, truly, as I then beheld elate
The very form itself of love indeed;
And comprehended in a moment's fate
That which all comprehending doth exceed,
By science all incomprehensible;
Incomprehensible things comprehending,
So ever since that saintly ray's first sending

IX

The bliss renews itself in visions still,
And urges me for ever to aspire
To that great knowledge which drew out my will
To ecstasy, as fire to flame draws fire;
And thus last night the triple period
Saw I of love; beheld I love in man,
In angels, and in God; that love began

X

In agony, lived in service, but in God
Existed in a wise no tongue may tell;
That, as flowers issue from the underclod,
Man's anguish gives angelic love its shell
Of service; whence the angels owe to man
Much bliss; of love and anguish God doth mix
Peace, which He gives His world in golden pyx.

XI

I saw last night three boding crows which ran
Before my feet; I followed, and they sped
Their flight; I followed still each flapping van,
That washed like nearer waves above my head,
Like nearer waves of the dark sea of night,
Almost against my face their raven spray,
As down I followed by a narrow way.

XII

I saw a garden full of flowers so bright,
That emeralds set around deep ruby dyes,
And seed of pearl in golden agraffes pight,
To them were dim; the lion's glowing eyes
Reflected on the tiger's head and tongue
Were dim: with starry glow their dartles burst
The night mists, and with purple grain traversed.

XIII

I saw where some were red as glutted prong,
To which the blood doth cling in ruddy beads,
Sanguinely gleaming, with jagged leaves and long,
And whispered one another round the meads,
Which held in fiery travail all their wrath:
I would have asked if they would wake all night,
But got no answer, for to my affright

XIV

Those were not crows: unto an inner path,
Which greenly wound within the sanguine belt,
A shining serpent lured me; he his bath
Chose in the coolest green, whose sweets he smelt,
And there beheld the gecko with his spots
Move sideways underneath the crumbling frond,
Where the white woody fibres blazed the bond

XV

Hit in the scrannel wind-bit knees and knots;
That serpent flew upon the gecko, swift
As evil thoughts do fly on evil thoughts:
The lizard both its stings at once did lift
At head and tail; while, circling it, the lithe
Wheel of the serpent surged and spun and quaked,
The lizard shuddering like a body naked

XVI

In hues of fear, which down his corse did writhe,
Alternating in motion, till the snake
Struck, and the gecko stung, each almost blithe
To feel the wounds such threatening could make.
Thus they two fought together, till I saw
What I do say, that they did bite and clip
And poison one another, till the whip

XVII

Of fury wrought against their nature's law;
Immingled each in each they lay deformed,
Each of his own dimension; then the maw
Of the dragon 'gan to hiss, the snake outwormed
Into the dragon's head and double tail;
Thus they transchanged their natures, and again
The snake pursued, the gecko fled in vain.

XVIII

Then from the venom, which did foam and fail
Into the ground, my trembling eyeballs saw
A straight and pulp-leaved shoot spring up, and trail
A hurtful form in the thick air, and draw
Its rankness to the rotten soil beneath:
It grew with bristly spots of hair, whose tops
Bore berries green, gathered in pending drops,

XIX

In act to fall from out their careless sheath,
Like caterpillars curled in greenish balls
Before they loose from plants their greedy teeth:
This plant grew upwards as a serpent crawls,
And like a lizard was its lateral bend,
And in its substance 'twas a man; its face
Dwelt upon wickedness, so crafty base,

XX

I thought a mandrake would itself extend
No other way from its old womb of earth;
Then saw I that this belt of green did trend
With growths no other than had had their birth
From the dull strife of those two venomed things:
Very satyrs did they hurtle in the press,
And shouldered one another motionless,

XXI

Tempting me: one I grasped through all its stings,
And crushed my hand into its pulpy cells;
But soon drew back in horror, for two wings
Whirred out and shrieked above me, and the bells
Wept in white tears, to which a thousand flies
Flew, and would blacken them with swarming specks,
Before the night could feel white tears to vex

XXII

Her wicked heart: these wings whirred circle-wise
Above me, and I cannot tell till now
What wings they were; I give you this surmise,
That they did spring out of the wounded bough,
As from Medusa's blood the father sprung
Of half the Grecian fiends; then did I flee
From that green hideous belt, and sheltered me

XXIII

In a white brake beyond a space of dung,
Which wound within the green belt; there I walked
Softly awhile before I felt the lung
Of the deep night breathe on the lengthy stalked
Flowers, faintly faring in their families:
As white were these as those I left were green,
And bathed in pearl-white light; and as the scene

XXIV

Of the broad moon, o'erhanging its own rise,
Were to be peopled by the swarming brood
Of larvas, lenures, and anatomies,
Which should o'ercross her, and remain subdued,
Tortured and writhing in the searching beam;
So saw I o'er these flowers so smoothly hewn
A great light rising whiter than the moon,

XXV

So did the fogs and mists take heart to gleam
Round that white fire, but could not live upon 't;
So did the bats and owls leave their night theme
And ramp and scream, but could not bear to haunt
Upon it, but whirred madly up and down,
And all the ground was fell alive with snakes,
So that great terror seized me in the brakes,

XXVI

And I went forward towards that light'ning crown
Over the innumerous ghostly flowers of night;
Until I reached it, and beheld full blown
A mighty flower of flowers dressed in white,
In very heart of that translucent flame,
Without one leaf it rose up from the ground,
And gloriously issued in its white flower round.

XXVII

Then even as I looked that flower became
A glorious lady, standing in meek pride,
Upon whose front, “called out of Misraim,”
I read, written in blood: “I am the Bride
Won by my knight Christ with the sword of wood,
The thorns, the nails, the spear.” She spoke, and her
Two hands fell round the cross, her ransomer.

XXVIII

Upon the lotus of her face I stood
Long meditating; while I scanned her robes
Of whitest samite, striped with stripes like blood,
And partly soiled with ashes, sad as Job's,
Whom Satan did reprove with many a stroke;
And all the seam was wrought with little crosses
Of brightest flame, which pierced little bosses

XXIX

Of hearts that seemed like eyes, and wept and spoke.
Her form was beautiful and wondrous tall,
Her eyes were like half-moons in cloudy smoke,
Her height was as a pillar in a wall,
Her hair was as a flowery banner free,
Her glory like a fountain in the rocks,
Her graciousness like vines to tender flocks,

XXX

Her eyes like lilies shaken by the bees,
Her hair a net of moonbeams in a cloud,
Her thinness like a row of youngling trees,
And golden bees hummed round her in a crowd,
And “pascit inter lilia,” she sung.
Her voice was as the sound of water borne
From draw-wells deep, and poured among the corn.

XXXI

Then I, “Ah, loose to me that heavenly tongue,
And tell me what it is that I have seen,
Ah, spouse, ah, sister of my Lord, upstrung
In spirit have I reached the very queen,
As many times before in other scene
Thou hast enlightened me with heavenly mien,
Now mayest thou also to thy servant deign.

XXXII

“Now tell me what the triple belt doth mean,
With the three kinds of flowers, red, green, and white;
And wherefore dost thou tarry here, serene,
Who mightest worship in the very height
Beside the rainbow, most blessed?” She sung, “Behold
I feed among the lilies, and they grow
Again, without the sense of any woe.”

XXXIII

With temperate joy her smile rose gently cold,
As if the wind should bid a sough-reed work
Its circle-ripples in the water-wold;
“I am God's love in anguish in the mirk
Plains which the king of hell usurped, and hath;
And not my lilies do I comfort only,
But every flower, bell-formed, long-leaved, or conely.

XXXIV

“The ruddy flowers are sons of strife and wrath,
Right seldom do they see the praise of God;
The green flowers flourish but for Satan's swath,
God doth not bid them occupy the sod:
Yet one time shall I dwell among them, fain
To stay their greenness from its venom food,
And Christ's true mysteries shall purge their blood.

XXXV

“The white flowers are my children, by the rain
Of blood and water nourished; they are sad
And faint, thou seest; but they have life in pain:
Hereafter shalt thou view me pure and glad,
Yea, throned and gloried in the Seraphin,
My ministers, who guard me in their guise;
Christ's body hath chief glory in the skies.”

XXXVI

Those golden bees, which all this time within
Reach of her balmy breath clung murmuringly,
Like dance of gnats, which in the morning spin
Their maze beneath some widely spreading tree,
In spite of all the spider's cruel eyes,
And dare not venture forth their wanderings
Lest the new air should damp their gauzy wings.

XXXVII

These golden bees in such a wondrous wise
Did now increase their lustre, and about
That dame did flash such splendid ministries,
And spun with such swift motion, that their rout
Dazzled her from my eyesight clean away;
Nor aught could I discern a little space,
But groped in darkness, with a stumbling pace

XXXVIII

Leaving that spot and tottering on my way,
Until I felt my garment drag behind
Over rough stones; and there knelt I to pray,
And there the freshness of a river wind
Rise to my face, and on my hands and knees
I leaned, and felt cold water creep along,
Up to my wrists, the while a mighty gong

XXXIX

Burst awfully from out the very breeze:
At length I could look up, and to a sea
Of fire wavetops; not wavetops of these seas
Ægean, white wavetops or black; the lee
Shore where I stood received a fiery train
Of phosphor billows, which did seethe so free,
They made that river boundless as the sea.

XL

Then leaped I in, impelled by secret pain;
This was the way in which I won the heaven;
The many billows heard my breath complain,
Then bore me downwards with a mighty steven:
Like a pale man just dead, in peace my corse
Rolled downwards like a log o'ercharged with weeds
To where the widening river bed recedes

XLI

Into the ocean; there the tidal force
Cast me upon this island lone and drear,
When as I oped mine eyes I saw the course
Of heaven begin: a mountain rose i' the air
Cut with strict stairs of jasper, and along
Its windings downwards coming did I see
A heavenly throng in glorious panoply.

XLII

Yea, that great glory sweeping in a throng
Of aureoles before me; saints were there
Bowed till their wings o'ercrossed them; while a song
Streamed from their lips apart, which never were
Stirred from that curve of rapture tremulous;
And they rose heads o'er heads, on high, on high,
Gold, golden glory, to the verge of sky;

XLIII

From which they issued multitudinous;
Wherein appeared a glow of ruby bright,
And clear sweet sapphire; 'twas the very house
Of veiling; whence on all the raiment white,
On golden glories and on golden hair
Spread thickly like a golden fleece about
On virgin shoulders, and so threaded out

XLIV

On lilies with their gold crowns crumbled fair,
And solemn leaves curled with some thought severe,
Or heads bowed forward with the weight of prayer,
On heads uplifted backwards to revere,
Streamed forth a mighty blessing from above,
Streamed forth a splendour from the ruby red,
And a great pureness from the sapphire dread.

XLV

Ranged row on row they come; the light of love
Burned softly in their eyes, row ranged on row
Of men in heavenly panoply, a grove
Of violet plumes and lifted swords; below
And through, 'twixt arm and shoulder, and between
Plumed helm and helm, wild eyes and golden hair
And passionate lips; with throngings here and there,

XLVI

The goodly people of that heavenly queen,
Blessedest, sweetest, holiest, fairest, all;
Unto me and below me as I ween,
Whilst I beyond them upwards to the wall
Of heaven did gaze, where as if unawares
A mystery passed in the light of light
Along the whole length of the heaven's height.

XLVII

The wall rose solemnly in many squares,
Of scarlet brick, above a moated space
Of water clear; and by unending stairs
This company was crossing to my place,
Their splendours ever reaching lower and lower,
I gazing higher and higher, for my chin
An angel lifted, and 'twas from within

XLVIII

His golden wings that veiled his sight that hour,
That I too looked and saw a mystery
Proceed, while mightily shone out the flower
Of the gold wings upon the violet sky,
Came in their battles, all the seraphim
With giant plumes, with glory-beaming eyes,
Long bands and wrapping robes, in solemn guise,

XLIX

Came Michael, and an army followed him;
His sword, two-handed, carried he before,
His vast eyes on the hilt, his shield's broad rim
Swung half of it behind him; in the score
Of his knights followed all the cherubim;
And half the stars shone in his banner wide
And in it all the winds were multiplied.

L

Came Gabriel, with his banner over him,
White lilies, brass-bright flowers, and leaves of green;
A lily, too, he carried seemed to brim,
With golden flames, which mounted pure and clean
To touch his blessed mouth, and then would trim
Themselves within the lily leaf again:
Gabriel's fair head sank even with dream-pain

LI

Came Raphael, and an army followed him;
His staff was in his hand, as he strode on;
His gourd was slung behind; one mighty limb
Showed itself bare in passing; and upon
His track came many a knightly palmer grim:
On horses these, their horses well beseen
As those who fight on earth for heaven's queen.

LII

Came Uriel, and his banner over him—
Red-pointed flames that lightened on the field
Of steadfast judgment, sapphirine, till dim
The eyesight, and the brain behind it reeled;
Behind him walked the strong robed seraphim;
A roll and book in his two hands he bore,
At which great trembling all my entrails tore.

LIII

Came Chamuel, and his banner over him,
Half red, half blue, and barred with golden bars;
Upon a seat of cloud he seemed to swim,
Red, yellow, grey, and passed across the stars;
Across his knees, in both his hands, a slim,
Long quivering rod, with sword leaves at the end;
Chamuel went swiftly, seeming to ascend.

LIV

Came Jophiel, and an army followed him:
In his right hand a sword gleamed sharp and clear,
Whose edge he felt with his left hand, and grim
Smiled he to find it biting very sheer;
His thousands thronged behind of seraphim,
Armed likewise all; his fiery footsteps cleft
The little white clouds on the pathway weft.

LV

Come Zadkiel, and an army followed him;
Closed were their hands, and wings half shut to sail;
Grey and much crimson seemed their vesture, dim,
Much like a dream, as when the light doth fail
In melancholy wrack and crimson bar
Above a storm; his army flitted on
Like falling leaves; some sadness, all were gone.

LVI

These all went solemnly, as if to war;
The seven archangels, with his army each;
They drifted in their march away, till far
In the blind sky together in one reach,
Like a great flight of birds: I watching, saw
Their great pavilions set far off like palls,
Beyond the utmost circle of heaven's walls.

LVII

High to the west three cloudlike palls I saw;
The highest, foamy flakes of gray and rose;
The next long strips of blue with saffron flaw;
The last of gray, and over it clear glows
Of yellow vapour: 'neath them all a vast
Blue lake, and under it a long grey shore,
And so another lake, paler; then more

LVIII

Of long gray shore, with pale fire-fringe, that passed
Beneath it, folding in another lake
Of water blue; and to grim hills at last,
Whose upper parts were white with many a flake
Of shining lava; and their slopes were gray,
And ended in the earth with one great wild
Border of lurid suphur triply piled.

LIX

Thither did all God's angels pass away,
And then a voice cried, Woe, Jerusalem:
And by this time I saw myself; I say,
Could see myself the way that I saw them,
Drawn by my two arms upwards, lifted straight
Upward, and laid upon a thick red cloud,
Like blood soaked into snow, and overbowed

LX

By horrid frost, and bruised by heavy weight:
How weak was I with visions, O Lord God,
Not having eaten for so long! my fate
Alone of men to quake beneath the rod
Of coming woes; yea still to gaze and hear
The four beasts answer even where I lay,
And great cloud angels rend themselves away

LXI

From the four corners of my cloudy bier:
Above which rose the great white throne, and shook
And muttered like a cauldron: deadly near
It was; and straight the senses all forsook
This trunk; like as when foam spreads heavily
On tides, some spume clings in a small shore-bay
Some little time, so clung I where I lay.

LXII

I and my cloud: the rest was mystery.
Oh, humble heart, forbear to speak at all;
Yet verily the love-beam beamed on me.
Then like a rainbow did that lady call,—
“For ever shalt thou teach God's love to man
In wondrous fulness both of joy and pain,
Apostle of the Lamb that once was slain,

LXIII

“And prophet thou !—apostle, thou dost scan
The round of love in triple period,
Prophet—not any prophet is so wan—
Tell out the vials of the wrath of God.”
I gather that beyond these coasts Ægean
Beyond this little world of Greeks, where nought
But man exists, nor knowledge save of thought,

LXIV

The throne of love waves in the empyrean,
In angel clouds, flame hues, sharp crystal wracks;
In mountain spears uplifted as a pæan,
In mighty rivers sent through golden tracks,
In lands unknown, where, yet a little while
And men shall pray: lo, now, a sorrow-smile,
The purple cloud swells over isle and isle.

St. Peter.

Thou brightness of the everlasting light,
Unspotted mirror of the power divine,
Wisdom and Word, thou Son of God,
My heart is broken like a clod,
My tears are falling on the sod,
Whereas through this long period,
Says sorrow,

They all forsook Thee, and alike we fled;
Ah, how am I so much behind them all?
Thy Master, ah, thy thrice denied,
Even now they shall have crucified;
Wherefore this sobbing may divide
The weight thou feelest in heart and side,
Says sorrow.

John saith that they who love do fear the most;
In truth, that very love makes faint and weak;
The truest sometimes fail the most;
He left Thee in that traitor host,
When torches frayed the olive coast,
The olives witnessing, “Thou know'st,”
In darkness.

Saith Philip, that the mortal body weighs
The spirit with much trouble to the earth;
The senses flatter and perplex,
And lust the understanding wrecks,
This œnomel the false flower decks,
Whose sweets rise up through waxen necks
In darkness.

Lazarus says he saw a hand stretch forth
From end to end of heaven instantly;
And holy beams were working out
Great scrolls that lightened all about,
The mighty sky, which seemed, in doubt,
To darken inwards, but without
To glory.

And on these beams a glory suddenly
Rose in the heaven of heavens immeasured height,
Which brightened them as if upon
Some plain of dædal flowers, which spun
Darkly within the wind, the sun
Had paled, and then at once begun
To glory.

This comforts me the most, O Master great,
Oh, worker ever, as it may be seen,
In anguish, as Thou dost fulfil
Composedly the mighty will,
Which pierceth as a mighty drill
The fashions of the ages, till
Through ages

The one design connects: ah, still the sod
Bids me drain out my tears and wash it through;
O Lord, it bids mine eyes renew
Their sorrow, for thine eyes so true,
As the sad rain might mesh the hue
Of flowers tenderer than grew
Through ages.

Sadly the grassy sod sobs to the leaves;
Come down to me, and I will bury you;
In my deep bosom ye shall lie;
Too long ye wave and flag on high;
The dews drop softly from the sky
Like syllables, “weep, weep, and die;”
The leaves fall.

The little trefoils twinkle their sweet eyes;
The little banks of grass together thrust
With shrivelled points, will never tear you,
On their small poignards they shall bear you,
Frittered like flame their points shall spare you,
The binding weed shall gently snare you
(The leaves fall)

Down to my fresh moss heart, where ye shall watch
Your scarlet purple mother branches gleam;
While worm and emmet work anon,
To trace in each its skeleton,
And all heaven's curdling clouds roll on
O'er fruits which, lurid, sanguine, dun,
(The leaves fall,)

Droop lower and lower towards me: ah, come down,
Ye stay and flutter all too long! the fig
Swoops in large circles, and where frets
The anxious vine, she sadly sets
The ashy spider with his nets
To do her watching while she lets
The leaves fall.

The hoary nightshade drops her berries here,
The tragacanth with purple eyelids weeps,
The ivy-thorn his leaves depends
To where the comfort woodbine wends
To rescue from the briar her friends;
'Tis sadly thinking for what ends
'Twas borrowed.

For my Lord's brow—my tears fall last of all;
My bitter weeping closes up the night;
I cannot hear, I weep so sore
The thorn lamenting evermore
To thin leaves stirring on the floor
Of moss that trembles to the core,
'Twas borrowed.

Yet have I secret comforts in my soul,
I think my soul finds comfort in strange ways,
Where others would but die, or sink
Depth after depth from the first brink
Of sinning; this, as I must think,
Doth distance me at least a link
From others,

From traitorous mouths which do but hide the truth,
As clouds that hold no water hide the heavens,
And slip from guilt to guilt like beasts
In tracks, as Pharisees and priests,
Who strive the greatest's, not the least's,
Sedile to occupy at feasts
From others.

Then jostle one another and devour;
So these composed souls, being set one way,
If they transgress, pursue the wrong
Sleekly from guile to guile along
A path well downwards, in a throng—
So common 'tis—like swine the prong
Drives onward

Without reprieve; they do but overbear
The one course which their nature gave at first,
While I, though in me was made breach,
Because I hate them, rally reach;
I fell before their hoot and screech,
Because I hate the ways that each
Drives onward.

Oh, coward, coward, coward! But this I know,
That love in God is goodness, and in Christ
That love is mercy, and in man
That love is sorrow; I shall plan,
Unplan, and grasp, and gasp, and scan,
From this my life out; who shall ban
My sorrow?

Not earth that drinks my tears; not heavenly sky,
Not they who took with me the bread and wine;
Perhaps not God who looks on me,
The Father, thinking of the tree
Of cursing in me rooted, see
The flinders; not the victim, He,
My sorrow!

St. Mary Magdalene.

Kneeling before the altar step,
Her white face stretched above her hands;
In one great line her body thin
Rose robed right upwards to her chin;
Her hair rebelled in golden bands,
And filled her hands;

Which likewise held a casket rare
Of alabaster at that tide;
Simeon was there and looked at her,
Trancedly kneeling, sick and fair;
Three parts the light her features tried,
She rest implied.

Strong singing reached her from within,
Discordant, but with weighty rhymes;
Her swaying body kept the stave;
Then all the woods about her wave,
She heard, and saw, in mystic mimes,
Herself three times.

Once, in the doorway of a house,
With yellow lintels painted fair,
Very far off, where no men pass,
Green and red banners hung in mass
Above scorched woodwork wormed and bare,
And spider's snare.

She, scarlet in her form and gold,
Fallen down upon her hands and knees,
Her arms and bosom bare and white,
Her long hair streaming wild with light,
Felt all the waving of the trees,
And hum of bees.

A rout of mirth within the house,
Upon the ear of madness fell,
Stunned with its dread, yet made intense;
A moment, and might issue thence
Upon the prey they quested well,
Seven fiends of hell.

She grovelled on her hands and knees,
She bit her breath against that rout;
Seven devils inhabited within,
Each acting upon each his sin,
Limb locked in limb, snout turning snout,
And these would out.

Twice, and the woods lay far behind,
Gold corn spread broad from slope to slope;
The copses rounded in faint light,
Far from her pathway gleaming white,
Which gleamed and wound in narrow scope,
Her narrow hope.

She on the valley stood and hung,
Then downward swept with steady haste;
The steady wind behind her sent
Her robe before her as she went;
Descending on the wind, she chased
The form she traced.

She, with her blue eyes blind with flight,
Rising and falling in their cells,
Hands held as though she played a harp,
Teeth glistening as in laughter sharp,
Flew ghostly on, a strength like hell's,
When it rebels.

Behind her, flaming on and on,
Rushing and streaming as she flew;
Moved over hill as if through vale,
Through vale as if o'er hill, no fail;
Her bosom trembled as she drew
Her long breath through.

Thrice, with an archway overhead,
Beneath, what might have seemed a tomb;
White garments fallen fold on fold,
As if limbs yet were in their hold,
Drew the light further in the gloom,
Of the dark room.

She, fallen without thought or care,
Heard, as it were, a ceaseless flow
Of converse muttered in her ear,
Like waters sobbing wide and near,
About things happened long ago
Of utter woe.

The Holy Mother at the Cross.

Of Mary's pains may now learn whoso will,
When she stood underneath the groaning tree
Round which the true Vine clung: three hours the mill
Of hours rolled round; she saw in visions three
The shadows walking underneath the sun,
And these seemed all so very faint to be,
That she could scarcely tell how each begun,
And went its way, minuting each degree
That it existed on the dial stone:
For drop by drop of wine unfalteringly,
Not stroke by stroke in blood, the three hours gone
She seemed to see.

Three hours she stood beneath the cross; it seemed
To be a wondrous dial stone, for while
Upon the two long arms the sunbeams teemed,
So was the head-piece like a centre stile;
Like to the dial where the judges sat
Upon the grades, and the king crowned the pile,
In Zion town, that most miraculous plat
On which the shadow backward did defile;

And now towards the third hour the sun enorme
Dressed up all shadow to a bickering smile
I' the heat, and in its midst the form of form
Lay like an isle.

Because that time so heavily beat and slow
That fancy in each beat was come and gone;
Because that light went singing to and fro,
A blissful song in every beam that shone;
Because that on the flesh a little tongue
Instantly played, and spake in lurid tone;
Because that saintly shapes with harp and gong
Told the three hours, whose telling made them one;
Half hid, involved in alternating beams,
Half mute, they held the plectrum to the zone,
Therefore, as God her senses shield, it seems
A dial stone.

Three hours she stood beside the cross; it seemed
A splendid flower; for red dews on the edge
Stood dropping; petals doubly four she deemed
Shot out like steel knives from the central wedge,
Which quadranted their perfect circle so
As if four anthers should a vast flower hedge
Into four parts, and in its bosom, lo,
The form lay, as the seed-heart holding pledge
Of future flowers; yea, in the midst was borne
The head low drooped upon the swollen ledge
Of the torn breast; there was the ring of thorn;
This flower was fledge.

Because her woe stood all about her now,
No longer like a stream as ran the hour;
Because her cleft heart parted into two,
No more a mill-wheel spinning to time's power;
Because all motion seemed to be suspense;
Because one ray did other rays devour;
Because the sum of things rose o'er her sense,
She standing 'neath its domè as in a bower;
Because from one thing all things seemed to spume,
As from one mouth the fountain's hollow shower;
Therefore it seemed His and her own heart's bloom,
A splendid flower.

Now it was finished; shrivelled were the leaves
Of that pain-flower, and wasted all its bloom,
She felt what she had felt then; as receives,
When heaven is capable, the cloudy stroom
The edge of the white garment of the moon;
So felt she that she had received that doom;
And as an outer circle spins in tune,
Born of the inner on the sky's wide room,
Thinner and wider, that doom's memories,
Broken and thin and wild, began to come
As soon as this: St. John unwrapt his eyes,
And led her home.