University of Virginia Library

Behold me will-less, witless in the night;
With hands that feel the illimitable dark
I walk, untouched, untouching; every face
Is senseless as a mask, save when I cry
‘O little children turn away your eyes.’—
This for the day; but when the hush is spread
Wherein Thou givest Thy belovèd sleep,
I call Thee to my witness—though I sin,
I suffer: I confess, do all we can
Thou art not mocked, nor dost Thou mock at us.
Who laughs to scorn the anger of a babe?
Or who despises infants, if they play
At building houses? so we storm and toil,
And squander all our passion and our thought,
And Thou regardest not; for on us lies
The weight of everlasting nothingness.
War with the angels; neither war nor peace
With us, who flutter willing to our doom,
And need no sword to drive from Paradise.
See, I believe more fully than the Saint
Who trod the waters in the might of love.
See, I believe, and own him for the fool
Who saith ‘there is no God’, and therefore sins.
Believe—what profit in it? I have loved:—
Ay, once I strained and stretched thro' haze of doubt
If haply I might catch with passionate hand
The garment-hem of Thee: I half believed,
But wholly loved; once (Thou rememberest) prayed,
‘I love Thee, love Thee; only give me light,
And I will follow Thee where'er Thou goest.’
‘I will’ I said and knew not; now I know
And will not, cannot will.[OMITTED]
What? Is a way cleft thro' the stony floors,
And dost Thou stand Thyself above the stair,
In Thine old sweetness and benignity,
Spreading Thy wounded hands, and saying ‘Son,
Thou sinnest, I have suffered. Mount and see
The fulness of my Passion: though these steps
Be hard to flesh and blood, remember this,
That along all intolerable paths
The benediction of my feet hath passed.[OMITTED]
To gentleness so inexpressible,
To love so far beyond imagining
I answer not; but in my soul fill up
The faint conception of the artist monk,
Who soared with Paul into the seventh heaven,
But could not paint the anger of the Lamb.
I seem to lie for ever in some porch,
While down the nave there creeps the awful dirge,
And writhes about the pillars—whispering
The uttermost extremity of man:
Till the low music ceases; and a scream
Breaks shuddering from the choïr, ‘Let me not
Be burnt in fires undying.’[OMITTED]
And some are there unscathed of flame or sword,
Yet on their brows the seal of suffering,
And in their hands the rose of martyrdom,
(Have pity upon me, ye that were my friends)
With arms about each other,—aureoles
That mingle into one triumphant star;
A fount of wonder in their pensive eyes,
Sprung from the thought that pain is consummate—
‘To him that overcometh’—half forgotten
The victory, so long the battle was,
Begun when manhood was a thing to be:
Not as they send the boyish sailor out,
A father's lingering hand amid his hair,
A mother's kisses warm upon his cheek,
And in his heart the unspoken consciousness
That though upon his grave no gentle fingers
Shall set the crocus, yet in the old home
There shall be aye a murmur of the sea,
A fair remembrance and a tender pride.
Not so for these the dawn of battle rose.[OMITTED]
So one by one the knights were panoplied.
But now they enter in where never voice
Of clamorous Babylon shall vex them more,
To Syon the undivided, to the peace,
The given peace earth neither makes nor mars,
Beyond the angels, and the angels' Queen,
Beyond the avenues of saints, where rests,
Deep in the Beatifical Idea,
The sum of peace, the Human Heart of God.[OMITTED]
Ah! whose is that red rose that only lies
Unclaimed[OMITTED]