Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Through all my years of waken'd thought I've been
Haunted in spirit by a sullen grief,
Which sleeps, or is not heard, amid the move
Of work or strife; but, like the owl i' the tow'r,

Hoots out within me in my twilight hours,
Or when some cloud brings on a fancied night
And makes unnatural pause to earth and soul.

And I have thought this brooding trouble came
Out of my life's misfortunes; or arose
From conscious errors—duties left undone,
Returning on me, crying to be done;
Or from my heart's poor weaknesses that leave
A festering spot in memory. And I
Have labour'd to outreason this and that—
To make my heart pure, and to pluck and prune
Weeds and unwholesome growths. I thought, as each
Seem'd to infect my life, if this one thing
Were wrung out of my blood, O I could breathe
Freely the air of peace, and nothing else
Could choke my joy again. And so it was,
That when with pain and struggle I could drag
My grief out to the light, and drive 't away,
My being open'd all its cells and drew
A deep long draught of joy, that seem'd to exhaust
The bluest clefts of heaven—one glad breath!—
But when I look'd into myself again,
Alas! my ghost was there in another shape.
I had but dragg'd to light an effect, the cause
Pass'd through my grasp, like air—a ghost indeed!

It haunts a house deserted—haply one
That has not yet been fill'd. There is, I know,
A Presence in whose life all phantoms die.

Thou say'st that God is ever everywhere:
But if He be not in my consciousness,
He's not in me.—There is a twofold life—
The life we all have, and the life with God,
Which few, or none on earth, partake in full.
Yet is a human soul the only thing
That can receive that God-life; and for this
It is immortal. Had we never known
The light of that existence, we had lived
Contented in our blindness and the dark.
I have but seen enough to know my want—
My only want; for that, supplied, supplies
All other wants of the soul, or makes them none.
And, like a dungeon'd prisoner, I've groped
Around my years of night to find the dawn:
The faintest glimmer piercing through my cell
Has fill'd me with the liberty of day.

I have been very lonely! I have shunn'd
What we name company to be less lone,
And sought my comfort in the wilds. But not
Alltimes to find: for I have gone and come
Bewilder'd as a day of mist and cloud,
That sets in night without one beam of sun,
Or patch of blue, to tell that Heaven is.—
And I have shunn'd the duties of my day
As waste of soul, and envied nobler art—
Forgetting that the artist gives his work
The stamp of its nobility. The gods
Are with us in our sphere: accomplish that—

We cannot choose but step into a higher.
Though Cromwell was a king by right of brain,
He won his sceptre with a captain's sword.

The duties God assigns me I would leave
For those assign'd to others; therefore stand
Powerless between. Heaven's ends will not be moved
Save in accomplish'd act. I have not learn'd
To know God's features in my daily work,
Else were it all-sufficient—it alone.
The food each labouring spirit needs the most
Is in its nearest duty—beauteous growth
Of the eternal being in the act.
For Right and Duty, Conscience and the Truth,
Are God's own breath, by which weak men have been
Inspired with a divinity of strength.

Ye who in spirit are not yet awake,
Dream while your night remains; for, soon or late,
The morn breaks sleep, and then farewell dream things—
The satisfaction of a plenteous board,
The joy of wine-cups, and the light exchange
Of surface friendships, rumours and vague thoughts;
Which vanish till again, in after time,
With a diviner meaning they come back.
The one sole want dawns on the awaken'd soul—
The want for God in all, and all in God—
This utter vagueness to the soul that sleeps;
But O how truly all in all, he knows

Who once has seen the Eternal. Life's unrest
Is his thereafter, till he grows to God;
But that unrest the token of his growth.

Therefore I argue not against my grief,
Which being Heaven-sent, leads back to Heaven.