 | The Burden of the Bell and Other Lyrics |  |
118
A JUSTIFICATION.
Ah! yes—you do but tell me what I know;
I stand here at the mighty mountain's base,
And see the great world-singers sitting calm
Amongst the mists and sunbeams up aloft,
High up, enthroned beneath the o'erarching heaven.
And between me and them, an interval,
Of chasm and crag and cloud and precipice
And gushing torrents and hot lava-floods,
Saith—“Climb not!—in that strife were shame and death.”
Then wherefore dare to sing? you ask. Go out
Into the orchard closes, good my friend,
And ask the bee and ask the grasshopper,
Why they sing, they, frail creatures of an hour;—
Ask why, beneath the same soft loving sky,
The artist nightingale woos time to stay
With witchery of subtlest cadences,
And the poor sparrow twitters overhead
In self-asserted insignificance.
I stand here at the mighty mountain's base,
And see the great world-singers sitting calm
Amongst the mists and sunbeams up aloft,
High up, enthroned beneath the o'erarching heaven.
And between me and them, an interval,
Of chasm and crag and cloud and precipice
And gushing torrents and hot lava-floods,
Saith—“Climb not!—in that strife were shame and death.”
Then wherefore dare to sing? you ask. Go out
Into the orchard closes, good my friend,
And ask the bee and ask the grasshopper,
Why they sing, they, frail creatures of an hour;—
Ask why, beneath the same soft loving sky,
The artist nightingale woos time to stay
With witchery of subtlest cadences,
And the poor sparrow twitters overhead
In self-asserted insignificance.
119
We are God's creatures all—our natures take
His fashioning, and follow in the track
His finger traceth—one, a noble stream,
Rolling its solemn waters to the sea
With a grand muffled thunder, as it spoke
To God alone amongst the solitudes;—
Another, but a little way-side brook,
Bubbling and babbling as it frets its way
Amidst the reeds and grasses—both alike
Still flowing and still singing as they flow,
In their adjudged vocation. Love them well,
Stern friend, those great crowned spirits sitting there
In the full glory; they exact your love,
Vicegerents as they are of God's behests,
Prophets of truth and beauty, His elect,
But scorn not me, because I stand below,
Armed only with my humbleness, and sing,
Without a thought of crowns, or love, or praise,
But from a natural impulse thereunto,
Which, like God's other creatures under heaven,
I question not and scan not, but obey.
His fashioning, and follow in the track
His finger traceth—one, a noble stream,
Rolling its solemn waters to the sea
With a grand muffled thunder, as it spoke
To God alone amongst the solitudes;—
Another, but a little way-side brook,
Bubbling and babbling as it frets its way
Amidst the reeds and grasses—both alike
Still flowing and still singing as they flow,
In their adjudged vocation. Love them well,
Stern friend, those great crowned spirits sitting there
In the full glory; they exact your love,
Vicegerents as they are of God's behests,
Prophets of truth and beauty, His elect,
But scorn not me, because I stand below,
Armed only with my humbleness, and sing,
Without a thought of crowns, or love, or praise,
But from a natural impulse thereunto,
Which, like God's other creatures under heaven,
I question not and scan not, but obey.
| The Burden of the Bell and Other Lyrics | |