My Lyrical Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

Once on a time, the ancient story saith,
Some foolish Mummers danced a masque of Death.
They bore his emblems, trying, every one,
To out-parody the bony Skeleton;
And, as the merriment grew, there glided in
Grim Death Himself, mocking with ghastly grin
At their poor make-believe; as who should say,
“This is the real thing and no mere play.”

“Talk of the Devil,” say we, “and he's here,”
Sudden as thunder-claps, when skies are clear.

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'Twas thus all fears and phantoms of the past,
Shaped into something palpable at last.

One night, as I lay musing on my bed,
The veil was rent that shows the Dead not dead.

Upon a Picture I had fixed mine eyes,
Till slowly it began to magnetize.
So the Ecstatics on their symbol stare,
Until the Cross fades and the Christ is there!
Thus, while I mused upon the picture's face,
A veil of white mist wavered in its place;
And to a lulling motion I sank deep,
With spirit awake and senses fallen asleep,
Down through an air that palpitatingly
Breathed with a breath of life unknown to me;
And when the motion ceased, against the gloom,
There lived another Form within the room,
As if the Dark had suddenly made a face
I saw the haunting Presence of the Place
Embodied, strange and horrible, as rise
The Torturers that stare in dying eyes:
Or, as the Serpent—ere a leaf be stirred—
Looks through the dark on some bewildered bird:
A face in which the life had burned away
To cinders of the soul and ashes gray:
The forehead furrowed with a sombre frown
That seemed the image, in shadow, of Death's crown;
His look a map of misery that told
How all the under-world in blackness rolled.
A human face in hideous eclipse;
No lustre on the hair, nor life i' the lips;

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The faintest gleam of corpse-light, lurid, wan,
Showed me the lying likeness of a Man!
The old soiled lining of some mortal dress:
A Spirit sorely stained with earthiness.

But, almost ere I could have time to fear,
I saw what seemed an Angel standing near,
And on Her face a smile for my relief:
A dream of glory in my night of grief,
Shedding an influent mildness through the awe,
Pleasant to feel, as was the smile I saw:
Indeed, methought she breathed a fragrance faint,
That overcame some rotting charnel-taint.
She wore a purple vesture thin as mist,
The Breath of Dawn, upon the plum dew-kissed.
No flame-hued, flame-shaped, Golden-Holly tree
Ere kindled at the sun so splendidly
As that self-radiant head, with lifted hair
A-wave in many a fiery scimitar.
The purple shine of Violets wet with dew
Was in her eyes that looked me through and through.
We think of Shades as native to the night;
We photograph the other world in white,
That will not paint its tints upon our sight.
But there are Colours of the Eternal Light,
And these were of them; pulsing such live glows
As never reddened blood or ripened rose:
No Mist from the past life as some have deemed
The Dead to be; no pallid shadow dreamed
By Greeks of old, but Life itself this seemed.

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And such a light was in the Angel's face,
It made a glory round about the place
To see by: as you mark in the gold ray
The Motes that dance invisibly in the gray.
But, deep in shadow of his inner night,
The Dark Shape stood and sinned against the Light.

As men have felt, when earth rocked underfoot,
Their trust in it was wrenched up by the root;
The firm foundations of all things had given,
And any instant they might be in heaven:
As one midway across a wide, white road,
In winter, when all night the skies have snowed,
Learns 'tis not earth but frozen stream beneath,
And he is leaning on the arms of Death:
So did I feel to find our earthy bound
Of Substance was no longer safe or sound;
That spirit-springs make quicksand of firm ground;
That spirit-hands withdraw our curtains round;
That spirit between particles can pass
Surely and visibly, as light through glass;
With power to come and go, stand upright, loom
Dense to the eye, outlined against the gloom.

The Dark Shape on me turned its eyes of guile,
Sullen yet fierce. I read the wicked smile
That sneered—“Behold the cause of all your fear!
You need not shudder though while She is near.”
And then he spoke, or seemed to speak, in words,
Although I saw his thoughts like murderous swords,

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Or toothèd wheels, go whirling round within
The fearsome face so shadowy and thin,
And did not always need the speech to know
What dreadful thing it was he had to show.

“Lo! I am one of those doomed souls who dwell
In Heaven's vast Shadow which the Good call Hell.
Lo! I am he, most miserable, who did
His deed of darkness, fancying all was hid;
The Awful eyes being on me all the while,
And demons pointing at me with their smile;
Who carry such a hell within my breast,
That all about me throbs with my unrest,
As though the heavens were shaken, or the earth
Were overtaken in the throes of birth:
Doors tremble open, walls disintegrate,
And world to world flings wide its secret gate.
With such a pulse of power my pangs awake
At midnight, that from sleep they sometimes shake
You! Matter, with Mind's thrillings, doth so quake,
That atoms from their fellow atoms start,
As though each felt the heave of some live heart.”

Then seeing the questioning wonder in my look,
He answered, as my turn of thought he took,

“Yes, it is true, all true, the thing you dreamed;
Most real is the life that only seemed.
Soul's no mere shadow that gross substance throws;
Our passions are not pageantary shows,
Exhaled from Matter, like the cloud from cape,
They are the life's own lasting final shape.
This scheme of things with all the sights you see,
Are only pictures of the things that be.

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What you call Matter is but as the sheath,
Shaped, even as bubbles are, by spirit-breath.
The mountains are but firmer clouds of earth,
Still changing to the breath that gave them birth.
Spirit aye shapeth Matter into view,
As Music wears the forms it passes through.
Spirit is lord of substance, Matter's sole
First cause, formative power and final goal.”

“And who is this,” I asked, “that in Her face
Doth image humanly celestial grace;
That calms my soul as when the Moon looks forth,
Whose smile in heaven makes stillness on the earth?”

“One of those Ministers who are sent below
To walk the earth, patrolling to and fro,
As sentinels on guard, night after night,
That in the darkness make a watch-fire light,
Lest sleeping souls be helplessly surprised
By the wild beasts of worlds not realized.”

I looked, the shining face serenely smiled
Away all terror like a thing beguiled.

“One of the dreadful Angels of the Lord,
Who are His fiery-flaming two-edged sword,
Which at each door and window waves and burns
Until the Angel of the Dawn returns.
They are with you, watching through the murkest hour,
And seen, or unseen, hold us in their power,
That when the devil rages in us, lo!
We strike and strike, and yet there falls no blow.

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They maze and daze us standing there behind,
And, as in dreams, we struggle bound and blind.
The sharpest tortures that I have to bear
Are when I feel Her presence hovering near.
A ray from heaven turns to a sword in hell;
The flash is maddening, we so darkly dwell!
The heat of heaven is like the blazing ring
Of fire that makes the Scorpion try to sting
Itself to death; an air of Heaven's breath
Is poison; hell is spiritual death:
And this awakes us, with its stir and strife,
Like tinglings of the drowned recalled to life.”

I glanced again: I saw the look arise
As of a drawn Sword in the Angel's eyes!

“We have met here for years. She comes to see
Me digging nightly; grope for my lost key;
Her presence kindles round me such a light,
All heaven can see me prowling through the night;
All hell make merry at the gruesome sight.

“I never told my secret in your world,
I kept it at the heart too closely curled;
There, at my life-springs, did I nestle and nurse
The hidden snake, my bosom's clinging curse;
My worm of torment biting bitterly,
And fed it fat for all eternity.
And no eye saw it writhe in my white face,
Or heard it hiss in its dark hiding-place,
When any voice of secret murders told,
And in its might it wantoned and grew bold.
It gnawed my heart as with hell-fire for years.
Drink would not drown it, nor a sea of tears

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Quench it, nor all the waters of the land
Whiten my soul, or wash my red right hand!
Whate'er I did, my heart with hell-fire burned;
Mine eyes with redness swam where'er I turned.
I fled and fled, and could not leave behind
The still, unwinking Bloodhounds of the mind.
I dared not slumber soundly, lest asleep
The unsleeping secret from my lips should leap
In dreams, and I on waking might have found
Myself had turned Informer, and was bound
In handcuffs, with the accusing faces round.

“And so, at last, I pricked the bubble of breath,
I plunged to hide me from Myself in death:
I found the hell-hole in the wild whirlpool;
Plucked the cold hand down on my brain to cool:
I grovelled out my own deep grave; I fell
Right through it, into open arms of hell.

“I fancied, when I took the headlong leap,
That death would be an everlasting sleep;
And the white Winding-sheet and green sod might
Shut out the world, and I have done with sight.
Cold water from my hand had sluiced the warm
And crimson carnage; safe the little form
Lay underground: the tiny trembling waif
Of life hid from the light; my secret safe.
In vain. You cannot hide a deed like this,
With all the heavens one cloud of witnesses:
Useless to blot the blood out with the dust,
When it hath eaten with its ruddy rust
Into your spirit's hand, where, visibly
The murder-stain leers through eternity!
Look there!”

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I looked, and saw what seemed a hand,
Or gore-soaked shadow of one that, like a brand
When breathed on, kindled fiercely as he sighed;
And plucked it from his bosom, where he tried
To hide its guilty red.

“That gripped the knife
That slew my child. This is its ruddy life,
Red-hot; on fire of hell! In burning rings,
The blood my fingers clutched, for ever clings,
And clamps them with relentless ache and smart
So closely that they will not pull apart.
Once only, while I wept and almost prayed,
They yielded just a little: then was played
A spectral trick upon me; all between,
They shone, thin-webbed with gore, and clearly seen
As through a window, through the web there smiled
Up in my face the face of my dead child.
Better to bear this fiery grip of pain,
Than they should open on that sight again.

“The whirling world had flung my life from it,
And I felt falling through the Infinite,
For weeks and months, and years on years of nights
Innumerable, from stupendous heights;
For, as a minute's slumber may be all
As one with that of a million years, my fall
So quickened being, that a minute's fears
Made instantaneous a million years.
No God to call upon, no Power to stay,
No hand to clutch at on my endless way!
When just as I was plunging in a cloud

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That lightened with the laugh of Hell, and showed
It made of devilish faces, which grew glad
And kindled at my coming, and all had
A gap-toothed wicked grin, as though each one
Saw in my face the kindred of its own,—
All the dark host rejoicing as I came;
All making sure as Marksman of his aim,
When lo! a Hawk swoops from its height unheard,
And from before his gun bears off his Bird!—
So, while the gulf I gazed on grew and gaped,
The black cloud curled about me demon-shaped,
And all their claws for cruel welcome spread,
I was caught up; borne swiftening overhead,
By one on wings of light, with lightning shod,
And then I knew that I was going to God,—
That life but sets in life still more profound,
As sunset into sunrise the world round;
That all who enter by the gate of breath,
Must pass before the Awful eyes in death,
And stand all naked to the searching mien.
I could not shrivel nor slink away unseen!

“To me the vast and horrible Unknown
Was one dread face, and all the face one frown!
Pain, sternness, pity eternal in a look
That read my life, wide-open as a book.
Not that the leaves turned over one by one,
Revealing, page by page, all I had done,—
The Sense is as a scroll where manifold
Indelible things are day by day uprolled
And registered for Memory to recall;
Maps of the mental world hung on the wall:
But Life is more than Letter or than Law,
And deftly as the brain may take or draw

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Its daily tallies, never can it keep
In fixèd figure all the fathomless Deep
Of Consciousness conceals, whose restless sea
Ripples on changing sands unceasingly.
Spirit is one. It is the crystal book,
Clear through and through; read at a single look.
To all the thoughts that ever passed through us
In life, in death we grow diaphanous.
We do not think what we have been, we are
Past, present, future, without near or far.
A glimpse of this is lightened, when the blind
Is raised, in drowning, from the seeing Mind!
So the electric flash, thrown on the wheel
Revolving swift in darkness, will reveal
Each whirling spoke distinctly standing still.
In spirit-world at once you find the whole
Of life contemporary with the soul.

“There is strange writing of the passing guest
Featured upon the form it leaves at rest,
Which men in some dim wise may read, but here
Is the live Chronicler itself! the clear
Truth naked—brain and body were but dress—
Quickened by the Eternal consciousness.

“So, when before that face, I felt the frown,
There was no need of Hell to drag me down,
I could have welcomed wafts of burning flame
To clothe my nakedness of deadly shame.
I lifted to my brow one shading hand,
But snatched it burning from the Murderer's brand.
The other to mine eyes I pressed; 'twas red
And wet and dripping with the blood I shed.

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I tried to cover up my aching sight,
And found myself all eye to pitiless light.

“In olden times, it was the wont, they say,
To bring the Murderer where his victim lay,
And at his touch, as to his slaying knife,
The wound would flush: Death speak with lips of Life.

“So, from the frown, a little tiny Child
Looked out on me and innocently smiled!

“I shrieked my guiltiness at sight of it,
And downward plunged, for hiding in the Pit.

“‘Curse God and die,’ the Tempter said of old.
I curse, and back the curses crowd tenfold.
Against the cold Heaven strikes my burning breath,
To fall in dews of wrath with second death.
And still I curse, and yet I cannot die;
And still I watch for Death with pleading eye,
To find that he will nevermore draw nigh.
Would the Almighty One had spit on me,
And wiped the blot from His eternity!