University of Virginia Library

I.

Alas the day! Alas the hour!
The sullen clouds, with downward roll,
And heart of hidden thunders lower
Over the brightness of his soul.
He sits in sadness, in his room,
Wrapped in the old Tartarean gloom,
Murmuring, in dire perplexity,
“This is a fearful mystery;—
I cannot think how this can be!”

II.

It is the holy Sabbath day;
The Bible rests upon his knee;
He cannot read, he cannot pray,
Although his lips the words may say
With shuddering effort, yet the “Nay”
Is in his heart; and piteously
He murmurs low—“A mystery—
I cannot think how this may be!”

III.

Ye pitying heavens help him now!
And take the cloud from off his brow,
And draw the fang from out his smart:—
Into the garden of his heart
The storm hath gone, with cruel cry,
And all is dead from sward to sky!

IV.

For he has read how, unto Him
Who ruleth all things with a nod,
Time is as nought; how unto God
A thousand years are as a day,
Or as a night-watch; and he feels
His heart rock in the stormy “Nay!”
That will be heard, both night and day,
Although he struggles hard to pray
And cannot, though he kneels!

V.

At church, he seems a guilty thing;
He hears the full-choired anthems ring
With roll, and surge, and golden swing,
The bannered aisles about;
But they have lost the air divine:—
Seems all a blank, and idiot sign,
The bright soul shaken out!

VI.

Through the east window shines the sun,
With mellow splendour, warm and dun;
Through violet tints, and gorgeous streams
Of falling robes, and softest creams
Of rapt saints' halos—flashing gleams
Of roses dankling—mingled beams
Rich as the silks of Trebizond:—
He marks the sunlight as it paints
That glorious cloud of holy saints,
Until his shuddering spirit faints;
For, though he sees that heaven of saints,
There is no other heaven beyond!

VII.

He hears the golden gust and rush
Of rich and mellow organ thunder,
Now winding heavenward in a gush
Of swelling praise and holy wonder,
Now falling, with a soft rebound,
Rolling deep basses round and round;
Till fluted notes again aspire
In lark-like dartings;—from the choir,
With upward flutterings, higher and higher,
One note rich-throbbing in desire
Goes giddy in a whirl of fire
Up shuddering solitudes of sound;
And then returning,
Earthward yearning,
Lo! the luted music falls
Soft as water down the walls
Of sparry grottos, underground;
Then, like sword-blades glancing brightly,
Plunge the sudden notes out lightly,
Till the treble swerves and skips,
And the muffled thunder, low
Rolling inward, heaves and dips,
Like a midnight sea-swell;—lo!
Clarion-bugles seem to blow,
And all the loosened grandeurs go
Rocking sweetly to and fro,
In a sumptuous overflow,
And throbbing harmonies kiss like lips:
Still, amid the golden blare,
Rolling thunderous through the air
The bannered aisles about,
Like a curse flung into prayer,
Hears he hissing his wild doubt;
And he feels the holy chapel
Holier were, were he without.