Sir Lancelot A Legend of The Middle Ages. By Frederick William Faber: Second edition |
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| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
| VII. |
| VIII. |
| IX. |
| X. | BOOK X.
THE COMMUNION. |
 | Sir Lancelot |  |
301
BOOK X. THE COMMUNION.
303
On the round summit of Black Combe I stand,
While yet the rosy lips of evening seem
To drink the level sea, and Mona's peaks,
Their brief illumination past, retire
Into the invisible distance one by one.
On either side a very realm is spread
Of old conventual lands and Church domain.
Southward the cape of Furness by the hills
And sister gulfs from England seems cut off,
A kingdom for the Abbot, royalties
Of blythest tillage and uncounted wealth
Of ore that stains the brooks and narrow ways,
As though some recent battlefield were nigh.
Northward to Calder Cell and wild St. Bees,
And to the dusky verge of Copeland Chase,
The Church, out-balancing the knightly fiefs
By unity much more than breadth of glebe,
Upon that exquisite sea-border dwelt.
While yet the rosy lips of evening seem
To drink the level sea, and Mona's peaks,
Their brief illumination past, retire
Into the invisible distance one by one.
On either side a very realm is spread
Of old conventual lands and Church domain.
Southward the cape of Furness by the hills
And sister gulfs from England seems cut off,
A kingdom for the Abbot, royalties
Of blythest tillage and uncounted wealth
Of ore that stains the brooks and narrow ways,
As though some recent battlefield were nigh.
Northward to Calder Cell and wild St. Bees,
And to the dusky verge of Copeland Chase,
The Church, out-balancing the knightly fiefs
By unity much more than breadth of glebe,
Upon that exquisite sea-border dwelt.
Another face is breathed upon the land,
A mighty change, which on this summit lone
Invokes the past before me, and persuades
My verse to wander from its end awhile
The better to attain that end at last
With more intelligent solemnity;
And let it be permitted to the bard,
Through the strong habit of monition formed
By pastoral office pleading with the poor
And the hardhearted rich, to buy the right
Of pleading from this sombre mountain-top
With the cold reason of the worldly wise,
And let the earnest will atonement make
For this poetic fault, while I forget
The trespass of suspended action now
Through hope to achieve a practical design:—
Lofty the old tribunal where I stand
A self-called preacher, haply then too high
A strain for me, yet let me be forgiven
If I offend through pure though ill-taught love!
A mighty change, which on this summit lone
Invokes the past before me, and persuades
My verse to wander from its end awhile
The better to attain that end at last
304
And let it be permitted to the bard,
Through the strong habit of monition formed
By pastoral office pleading with the poor
And the hardhearted rich, to buy the right
Of pleading from this sombre mountain-top
With the cold reason of the worldly wise,
And let the earnest will atonement make
For this poetic fault, while I forget
The trespass of suspended action now
Through hope to achieve a practical design:—
Lofty the old tribunal where I stand
A self-called preacher, haply then too high
A strain for me, yet let me be forgiven
If I offend through pure though ill-taught love!
While yet I muse, in pale etherial folds
The twilight deepens at my feet, and earth
And ocean scarce distinguishable were,
But that a wavy belt of sand emits
A dull uncertain glimmer, to the eye
Less obvious every moment; while above
The stars encumber with their multitude
The heavenly dome, each sparkling, as it seems,
Through a pure liquid teardrop on its orb.
O desolate, most desolate! The man
Who in the Thirteenth Age might haply climb
This mountain watch-tower could behold a scene
Which spoke of Christian verities, and love
And homage paid to them by humankind,
A scene which like a monument set forth
The truth, and in an obvious type displayed
Even to gross eyes the splendour of the Faith.
But now—O weep for that transfigured Now—
Let the full heart in thoughtful silence weep!
The twilight deepens at my feet, and earth
And ocean scarce distinguishable were,
But that a wavy belt of sand emits
A dull uncertain glimmer, to the eye
Less obvious every moment; while above
The stars encumber with their multitude
The heavenly dome, each sparkling, as it seems,
Through a pure liquid teardrop on its orb.
O desolate, most desolate! The man
Who in the Thirteenth Age might haply climb
This mountain watch-tower could behold a scene
Which spoke of Christian verities, and love
And homage paid to them by humankind,
A scene which like a monument set forth
The truth, and in an obvious type displayed
Even to gross eyes the splendour of the Faith.
But now—O weep for that transfigured Now—
Let the full heart in thoughtful silence weep!
305
Yet, great the consolation to be found
In what the Past bequeaths of heavenly ways
And of the style, if such presumptuous words
Be lawful here, of Providential Acts
And Dealings with the fallen race of man.
For such the picture of the Church—the eye
Trembles in gazing—through all time displayed;
The earth hath been the death-bed of the Church
For ever and for ever; not an age
Hath come and gone when it was not believed
By those, who through the Present's darkling glass
Beheld but fragments of her fortunes then,
She was outworn and at the point to fail,
Unequal to her calling, to her strife,
Her many-sided combat with the world,
And as infallibly, in that her hour
Of weakness, found unto another youth
Even then most near when seeming most to fail.
In what the Past bequeaths of heavenly ways
And of the style, if such presumptuous words
Be lawful here, of Providential Acts
And Dealings with the fallen race of man.
For such the picture of the Church—the eye
Trembles in gazing—through all time displayed;
The earth hath been the death-bed of the Church
For ever and for ever; not an age
Hath come and gone when it was not believed
By those, who through the Present's darkling glass
Beheld but fragments of her fortunes then,
She was outworn and at the point to fail,
Unequal to her calling, to her strife,
Her many-sided combat with the world,
And as infallibly, in that her hour
Of weakness, found unto another youth
Even then most near when seeming most to fail.
But hast thou from a mountain-girdled plain,
Or through the vista of a lake-lit dell,
Watched the magnificent gathering of a storm,
The silent muster of the fiery clouds
With such determinate slowness wheeling up,
The swiftness of loose vapours and torn mists
With a wan sunshine on them, and the rents
Opening and closing like huge furnace-doors,
Contrasting so with that immoveable
And pausing centre, till the unwieldly host,
The mighty fabric all complete, begins
Its solid march across the hushed blue sky?
With what a steadfast course it sweeps along,
And overbears the ineffectual winds,
Which scarce can ruffle its advancing edge!
Then in that preparation, in that pause,
In that on-rolling, in that vocal fire,
In the portentous swervings here and there,
In the disparting, reuniting cloud,
In the deep ever-growing shade it casts,
And in that strong attraction which the storm
Exerts upon thyself—thou hast well read,
In all their various uniformity,
The solemn chronicles of Holy Church!
And doth the storm in its mutations grow
To be less cognizably one? the calms
Which follow its wild speaking, are they less
Terrific than its voice? and is there not
An order, nay, a most undoubted grace,
In its confusions? Such an awful storm—
How often self-transfigured, disarrayed,
Growing, aggressive, gathered, and dispersed,
Yet palpably divine!—is Holy Church,
So utterly the same that she can be
Exceeding mutable; and this last power
May breathe some life into our flagging hopes,
Baffling the craven love of ancient times,
And gloriously repelling, as a shield,
Foul accusations of decay. For she
With sweet spontaneous effort can give forth
New forms of ancient doctrine, fit to mate
New changes and new wants in Christendom,—
Whether in primitive germs long since implied,
And by ascetic men elicited;
Or, on evasive error to lay hold,
Through subtle process distantly inferred;
Nay, sometimes with majestic increment,
Awful enlivening of her hidden strength
To exhilarate her children's drooping hearts,
Varying her ancient catholic harmonies,
Fresh salient truths our Mother superadds,
And with accumulated youth moves on,—
A Living Storm, O how much to be feared
And how much to be loved! no Written Thing,
No Literary Puzzle of the past,
No difficult, discoverable Lore,
The churlish scholar's sole exclusive prize,—
But never lost, and therefore needing not
To be recovered,—open, tangible,
Belonging to the multitudinous Poor,
Christ's Presence with the Simple Ones of earth!
Or through the vista of a lake-lit dell,
Watched the magnificent gathering of a storm,
The silent muster of the fiery clouds
With such determinate slowness wheeling up,
The swiftness of loose vapours and torn mists
With a wan sunshine on them, and the rents
Opening and closing like huge furnace-doors,
Contrasting so with that immoveable
And pausing centre, till the unwieldly host,
The mighty fabric all complete, begins
Its solid march across the hushed blue sky?
With what a steadfast course it sweeps along,
And overbears the ineffectual winds,
Which scarce can ruffle its advancing edge!
Then in that preparation, in that pause,
306
In the portentous swervings here and there,
In the disparting, reuniting cloud,
In the deep ever-growing shade it casts,
And in that strong attraction which the storm
Exerts upon thyself—thou hast well read,
In all their various uniformity,
The solemn chronicles of Holy Church!
And doth the storm in its mutations grow
To be less cognizably one? the calms
Which follow its wild speaking, are they less
Terrific than its voice? and is there not
An order, nay, a most undoubted grace,
In its confusions? Such an awful storm—
How often self-transfigured, disarrayed,
Growing, aggressive, gathered, and dispersed,
Yet palpably divine!—is Holy Church,
So utterly the same that she can be
Exceeding mutable; and this last power
May breathe some life into our flagging hopes,
Baffling the craven love of ancient times,
And gloriously repelling, as a shield,
Foul accusations of decay. For she
With sweet spontaneous effort can give forth
New forms of ancient doctrine, fit to mate
New changes and new wants in Christendom,—
Whether in primitive germs long since implied,
And by ascetic men elicited;
Or, on evasive error to lay hold,
Through subtle process distantly inferred;
Nay, sometimes with majestic increment,
Awful enlivening of her hidden strength
To exhilarate her children's drooping hearts,
Varying her ancient catholic harmonies,
307
And with accumulated youth moves on,—
A Living Storm, O how much to be feared
And how much to be loved! no Written Thing,
No Literary Puzzle of the past,
No difficult, discoverable Lore,
The churlish scholar's sole exclusive prize,—
But never lost, and therefore needing not
To be recovered,—open, tangible,
Belonging to the multitudinous Poor,
Christ's Presence with the Simple Ones of earth!
Such is the steadfast look, and scenery
Sublime as an eternal mountain chain,
In storm involved or transient sunshine keen,
Of that primeval beauty of the Church,
Beheld far off by us who can embrace
Enough of God's broad counsels to discern
The general aspect of the Christian Past.
Yet to the warriors mingling in the strife
With rolling garments, fire, and dust, and blood,
All seemed confusion o'er the battling earth,
And nothing clear but Heaven's blue tract above;
And unto them the End was ever nigh,
Not seemingly—but with mysterious truth
Brought near, as we are touching on it now.
Sublime as an eternal mountain chain,
In storm involved or transient sunshine keen,
Of that primeval beauty of the Church,
Beheld far off by us who can embrace
Enough of God's broad counsels to discern
The general aspect of the Christian Past.
Yet to the warriors mingling in the strife
With rolling garments, fire, and dust, and blood,
All seemed confusion o'er the battling earth,
And nothing clear but Heaven's blue tract above;
And unto them the End was ever nigh,
Not seemingly—but with mysterious truth
Brought near, as we are touching on it now.
Hereon we build our faith and hope to-day;
Not without tokens of an outward sort
In silent gratitude received, as signs
Of Love which every morning sees renewed
And of Compassion lasting as the hills.
Not without tokens of an outward sort
In silent gratitude received, as signs
Of Love which every morning sees renewed
And of Compassion lasting as the hills.
There is a time which goes not to the account
Of past or present, and which cannot be
Part of the days unborn,—the future's verge,
A stirring antepast of change to come,
That little space when men can ascertain,
Even in the crowded turmoil of their age,
A pushing root which has not flowered as yet,
Nor had green leaves, but, succoured by their acts,
Protrudes into the surface of their times.
Then earnestness keeps vigil, wrapped in such
Quiescent expectation as mine eye,
Not wholly fancy-free, hath deemed it saw
Upon the bright church steeples on the night
When the last workday of the weary week
Comes with sweet sunlit evenings, so to pay
Preluding homage to the lonely feast
Grudged, if accorded, to the English poor.
The silent faces of those buildings seem
To speak from out the radiant foliage drawn
Around the grassy chamber of the dead,
Even as the future will appear to throw
Discordant meaning and expression strange
Into the countenance of the present days.
Such is the true account of every time;—
No time to us is future, present, past,
But such commingling of the three as gives
To men a light and guarantee to act,
With cheering motive summoned from the past,
And urgent call by present needs expressed,
And that forecasting purpose which alone
Can stamp a value on a Human Act,
And wed it to God's Will,—and such an aim
The future is commissioned to supply.
There is no actual Present in the world,
No such free time, to a believing man.
Of past or present, and which cannot be
Part of the days unborn,—the future's verge,
A stirring antepast of change to come,
308
Even in the crowded turmoil of their age,
A pushing root which has not flowered as yet,
Nor had green leaves, but, succoured by their acts,
Protrudes into the surface of their times.
Then earnestness keeps vigil, wrapped in such
Quiescent expectation as mine eye,
Not wholly fancy-free, hath deemed it saw
Upon the bright church steeples on the night
When the last workday of the weary week
Comes with sweet sunlit evenings, so to pay
Preluding homage to the lonely feast
Grudged, if accorded, to the English poor.
The silent faces of those buildings seem
To speak from out the radiant foliage drawn
Around the grassy chamber of the dead,
Even as the future will appear to throw
Discordant meaning and expression strange
Into the countenance of the present days.
Such is the true account of every time;—
No time to us is future, present, past,
But such commingling of the three as gives
To men a light and guarantee to act,
With cheering motive summoned from the past,
And urgent call by present needs expressed,
And that forecasting purpose which alone
Can stamp a value on a Human Act,
And wed it to God's Will,—and such an aim
The future is commissioned to supply.
There is no actual Present in the world,
No such free time, to a believing man.
Summon the Past; and let it be that Age
Through which the wayward channel of my song
Wanders, and ask an oracle of it.
Learn from its lips how history may become
A travelling voice of prophecy, that rings
With cumulative echoes, and expounds
The solemn shadows of the Past to be
Forestallings of the Judgment, images,
Successively presented, of the growth,
The strife, the victory, and the doom of sin.
Learn from its lips how then the Church was laid
Beneath the shadow of the Empire dying,
And how before the awe-struck West she lit,
Like a fresh Angel, on the Hills of Rome!
Through which the wayward channel of my song
Wanders, and ask an oracle of it.
309
A travelling voice of prophecy, that rings
With cumulative echoes, and expounds
The solemn shadows of the Past to be
Forestallings of the Judgment, images,
Successively presented, of the growth,
The strife, the victory, and the doom of sin.
Learn from its lips how then the Church was laid
Beneath the shadow of the Empire dying,
And how before the awe-struck West she lit,
Like a fresh Angel, on the Hills of Rome!
Long, yet most grateful, hath the study been,
And with no vague design by me pursued,
To trace the under-currents of that age,
The secret bearings, which might haply give
A bias to its temper, and might serve
To mould the forms of intellectual life
In such peculiar greatness. Hard it is,
Even for imagination, to beget
The thought of what the life of Christians was
In those past ages, and most hard to shift
The inward habit of our modern thoughts
In such adjustment as to arbitrate
Fairly between the Present and the Past,
Neither too much extolling, nor too much
Condemning, through impatience of research:
For Christ is alway present with His Spouse,
Both when she sits on throues, and when she weeps
In ashes vile; and where that Presence is,
Dwells truest Greatness, never so much veiled
But that meek faith may see where she must kneel.
And with no vague design by me pursued,
To trace the under-currents of that age,
The secret bearings, which might haply give
A bias to its temper, and might serve
To mould the forms of intellectual life
In such peculiar greatness. Hard it is,
Even for imagination, to beget
The thought of what the life of Christians was
In those past ages, and most hard to shift
The inward habit of our modern thoughts
In such adjustment as to arbitrate
Fairly between the Present and the Past,
Neither too much extolling, nor too much
Condemning, through impatience of research:
For Christ is alway present with His Spouse,
Both when she sits on throues, and when she weeps
In ashes vile; and where that Presence is,
Dwells truest Greatness, never so much veiled
But that meek faith may see where she must kneel.
Not in the pride of study let us come,
Nor in idolatrous regard of Past
Or Present, nor with an ignoble lust
Of fame, by curious lore to be enhanced;
But rather with a meditative love
Of these our times, where our sole duties lie,
With meek misgivings anxious to discern
On every cape a lighthouse, by the Past
Beneficently raised to guide and warn:
Or in more hopeful posture still, with prayer
And study locked in mutual embrace,
Disciples, round the opening of a tomb,
Where the dear relics of a Saint repose
Which we to our own Altars would translate,
Upon our knees expectant, so to catch
The perfume of devout Antiquity.
Nor in idolatrous regard of Past
Or Present, nor with an ignoble lust
310
But rather with a meditative love
Of these our times, where our sole duties lie,
With meek misgivings anxious to discern
On every cape a lighthouse, by the Past
Beneficently raised to guide and warn:
Or in more hopeful posture still, with prayer
And study locked in mutual embrace,
Disciples, round the opening of a tomb,
Where the dear relics of a Saint repose
Which we to our own Altars would translate,
Upon our knees expectant, so to catch
The perfume of devout Antiquity.
There is a German faith, which may be seen
Grimly depicted on the cottage walls
Of that too hopeful people: in a cave
Within an ancient forest's silent gloom,
Amid a grassless labyrinth of tall pines
Which scarce the song-birds tenant, sleeps a man
With his dropped sword unbroken at his feet,
His huge bowed head, and hands with gauntlets off,
And his long ruddy beard in coils around:
A very fearful warrior, by the serfs
Discovered once, but in his cavern left,
Most awful even in his helpless sleep,
Whose dreams are of a world long past away
And with slow circuit coming back again!
Who hath not heard of that most mighty king
Hight Barbarossa, who once scourged the West,
And how he lost his politic renown
Amid those isolated points of life,
The crowd of old Transalpine commonwealths,
And how he battled with our lord the Pope,
And bruised, as others have before and since,
His crownèd brow against Saint Peter's Chair?
Deem him not wholly evil: he was one
Of those perverted grandeurs of the past
Marred and misshaped by Satan, to stand forth
As laughing-stocks for ages; but the world,
Envying the blissful Church who loseth not
The living intercession of her Saints,
And can approach their far-off rest by prayers,
Fables that her past glories too survive,
Simply withdrawn, until their time returns.
So covetous are men of what is great,
So rightly covetous, that faiths, grotesque
As this, have hearts that put their trust therein.
And verily such wholesome legends stand
In front of deep and most inspiring truths,
Bearing the quaint device, whereby the minds
Of untaught men may plainly comprehend
The whole philosophy of that wise awe
And loving reverence due unto the past.
So Barbarossa slumbers in his cave
Where wailing pines make endless lullaby;
So Arthur sleeps in Avalon to-day,
Whose grassy cone all Somerset beholds;
O verily those sleepers will return!
Grimly depicted on the cottage walls
Of that too hopeful people: in a cave
Within an ancient forest's silent gloom,
Amid a grassless labyrinth of tall pines
Which scarce the song-birds tenant, sleeps a man
With his dropped sword unbroken at his feet,
His huge bowed head, and hands with gauntlets off,
And his long ruddy beard in coils around:
A very fearful warrior, by the serfs
Discovered once, but in his cavern left,
Most awful even in his helpless sleep,
Whose dreams are of a world long past away
And with slow circuit coming back again!
Who hath not heard of that most mighty king
Hight Barbarossa, who once scourged the West,
And how he lost his politic renown
Amid those isolated points of life,
The crowd of old Transalpine commonwealths,
And how he battled with our lord the Pope,
And bruised, as others have before and since,
311
Deem him not wholly evil: he was one
Of those perverted grandeurs of the past
Marred and misshaped by Satan, to stand forth
As laughing-stocks for ages; but the world,
Envying the blissful Church who loseth not
The living intercession of her Saints,
And can approach their far-off rest by prayers,
Fables that her past glories too survive,
Simply withdrawn, until their time returns.
So covetous are men of what is great,
So rightly covetous, that faiths, grotesque
As this, have hearts that put their trust therein.
And verily such wholesome legends stand
In front of deep and most inspiring truths,
Bearing the quaint device, whereby the minds
Of untaught men may plainly comprehend
The whole philosophy of that wise awe
And loving reverence due unto the past.
So Barbarossa slumbers in his cave
Where wailing pines make endless lullaby;
So Arthur sleeps in Avalon to-day,
Whose grassy cone all Somerset beholds;
O verily those sleepers will return!
How fearful is the onward flight of Time,
A luminous avenue which guides our eyes
And leaves them fixed upon the Judgment-seat!
And to the scholar, in his lowly search
Amid the shipwrecked pageants of the Past,
It is a grave and yet affectionate thought,
Which many an ancient liturgy supplies,
That Ages are not cold and abstract names,
But spiritual Powers instinct with life
And gifts, and Witnesses intelligent
Of human conduct, Angels deemed of old:
As if each Age, though squaring not perchance
With our material measures, subject were
To its own Guardian Angel thus allowed
His season to administer the Church,
Thereon to impress the signet of his will,
And fashion it in his peculiar grace,
Bending its virtues while he thus constrains
Recoiling ills to take a special course,—
If to those blessèd Hosts there be a will
Beyond the Mind of God. And, so it is,
Each Age with after-baptism is surnamed
By the kind Church from its chief mode of good,
While by the worldly from the gross recoil
Of evil on the surface is it called.
And deeper than a pleasant thought may be
The strong imagination, that we hold
Sublime and yet endearing intercourse
With some one of the radiant Host of Heaven,
Cherubic Mind or deep Seraphic Heart,
Or steadfastness of some paternal Throne,
Whene'er we ponder in confiding love
The function of an Age, some special Age
Singled with thoughtful choice.
A luminous avenue which guides our eyes
And leaves them fixed upon the Judgment-seat!
And to the scholar, in his lowly search
Amid the shipwrecked pageants of the Past,
It is a grave and yet affectionate thought,
Which many an ancient liturgy supplies,
That Ages are not cold and abstract names,
But spiritual Powers instinct with life
And gifts, and Witnesses intelligent
Of human conduct, Angels deemed of old:
312
With our material measures, subject were
To its own Guardian Angel thus allowed
His season to administer the Church,
Thereon to impress the signet of his will,
And fashion it in his peculiar grace,
Bending its virtues while he thus constrains
Recoiling ills to take a special course,—
If to those blessèd Hosts there be a will
Beyond the Mind of God. And, so it is,
Each Age with after-baptism is surnamed
By the kind Church from its chief mode of good,
While by the worldly from the gross recoil
Of evil on the surface is it called.
And deeper than a pleasant thought may be
The strong imagination, that we hold
Sublime and yet endearing intercourse
With some one of the radiant Host of Heaven,
Cherubic Mind or deep Seraphic Heart,
Or steadfastness of some paternal Throne,
Whene'er we ponder in confiding love
The function of an Age, some special Age
Singled with thoughtful choice.
O then how sweet,
And yet how infinitely solemn, seems
The chamber of the student, oft in prayer
With his mute books around him, while he calls,
With such meek invocation as he may,
The Angels of the Ages to supply
The keys of those old written chronicles;
And purchases his knowledge with a vow,
Morning and eve renewed, abjuring fame,
That he will dedicate to Holy Church
The scanty produce of his patient toils.
So let us study with those Angels round,
The Spirits of the Ages, while we trace
In frequent signature the blessèd Cross
Upon our bosoms, making all our lore
Unworldly, as we gain it, and our thoughts
Dissevering from the taint of self-conceit.
And yet how infinitely solemn, seems
The chamber of the student, oft in prayer
With his mute books around him, while he calls,
With such meek invocation as he may,
The Angels of the Ages to supply
The keys of those old written chronicles;
And purchases his knowledge with a vow,
Morning and eve renewed, abjuring fame,
That he will dedicate to Holy Church
The scanty produce of his patient toils.
313
The Spirits of the Ages, while we trace
In frequent signature the blessèd Cross
Upon our bosoms, making all our lore
Unworldly, as we gain it, and our thoughts
Dissevering from the taint of self-conceit.
O when we lift the veil from off those days,
With what a sacred beauty is the heart
O'erwhelmed, and by how strange a scene surprised!
We live on earth, and Heaven is far away,
Another world, and by itself insphered
In jealous separation from the spot
Whereon our blindfold spirits feel and act.
This is the instinct of our present age.
But, then, with bold magnificence of thought,
Which nothing but a pure simplicity
Of faith and holy living could inspire,
Heaven was invoked to fill the vacant earth,
So that the teeming solitudes ran over
With its bright presence, and material forms
Were clothed with spirit, yea, full oft absorbed
In heavenly splendour, to forgetfulness
Translated of their own original use.
For through its several kingdoms earth to them
With Heaven was all inlaid: its awful touch
On private life, and on the social state
And the grave forms of law, had power to shed
A gracious beauty and imposing mien,
With no reluctant homage then confessed,
When with such sanctions sealed as overbore
By their dread import idle questioning.
With what a sacred beauty is the heart
O'erwhelmed, and by how strange a scene surprised!
We live on earth, and Heaven is far away,
Another world, and by itself insphered
In jealous separation from the spot
Whereon our blindfold spirits feel and act.
This is the instinct of our present age.
But, then, with bold magnificence of thought,
Which nothing but a pure simplicity
Of faith and holy living could inspire,
Heaven was invoked to fill the vacant earth,
So that the teeming solitudes ran over
With its bright presence, and material forms
Were clothed with spirit, yea, full oft absorbed
In heavenly splendour, to forgetfulness
Translated of their own original use.
For through its several kingdoms earth to them
With Heaven was all inlaid: its awful touch
On private life, and on the social state
And the grave forms of law, had power to shed
A gracious beauty and imposing mien,
With no reluctant homage then confessed,
When with such sanctions sealed as overbore
By their dread import idle questioning.
In the prerogative of kings men saw
Somewhat of God's Authority transfused,
A show of regency which barely veiled
The gesture of His Attributes behind.
And in the ceremonials of the law
Vengeance with healing discipline was joined,
Which men of darkened conscience at this day
Would fain put from them as a power that bears
Uneasy witness to the unseen world;
And mercy with mysterious vagueness flowed
From the pure impulse of the sovereign will,
Not seldom by divine suggestion ruled.
And utterly unknown was that vile thought
And base division, which would now degrade
The secular power, and with unblest divorce
Confine it in a barren sphere, apart
From spiritual regards and rights divine
Of Holy Church, the radiant element
Whose exile, happily yet unconfirmed
By the discordant nations, would have left
The sphere of politics a formless world
Without a sun, and daily working back
Into that moral chaos whence it sprung,
When Rome's great Spirit o'er the gloom went out,
And stirred the darkness of that uncouth Past,
And with creative harmony called up,
Like some enchantress verily inspired,
From out the strife of battling principles,
That birth of beauty, Western Christendom.
Somewhat of God's Authority transfused,
A show of regency which barely veiled
314
And in the ceremonials of the law
Vengeance with healing discipline was joined,
Which men of darkened conscience at this day
Would fain put from them as a power that bears
Uneasy witness to the unseen world;
And mercy with mysterious vagueness flowed
From the pure impulse of the sovereign will,
Not seldom by divine suggestion ruled.
And utterly unknown was that vile thought
And base division, which would now degrade
The secular power, and with unblest divorce
Confine it in a barren sphere, apart
From spiritual regards and rights divine
Of Holy Church, the radiant element
Whose exile, happily yet unconfirmed
By the discordant nations, would have left
The sphere of politics a formless world
Without a sun, and daily working back
Into that moral chaos whence it sprung,
When Rome's great Spirit o'er the gloom went out,
And stirred the darkness of that uncouth Past,
And with creative harmony called up,
Like some enchantress verily inspired,
From out the strife of battling principles,
That birth of beauty, Western Christendom.
Nor were the thoughts of men in those great days
Less sensibly uplifted, or their hearts
With an inspiring wisdom less sustained.
To them the world was sweetly populous
With old ancestral truths and touching faiths
And beautiful surmises, imaging
Upon the face of nature heavenly forms
With something more than bare similitudes.
The qualities of precious stones, the ways
Of the wild tenants of the sylvan chase,
The hidden will which in the growing plant
Fashioned the leaves and coloured the gay flower,—
All were to them as ritual books that taught
A Christian science, and laid bare the veins
Of spiritual Presence that enriched
Their world, and would so aptly reinforce
The languid pulse of our impoverished lives:
A science not yet utterly withdrawn
From us, but in the realm of herbs and flowers
Among our native peasants living still
In moving legends, expositions wild,
And meek acknowledgment of powers unseen,
Which at the roots of our salubrious plants
Give battle to the spirits of misrule
With varying success. And yet methinks,
With some vibrations in the popular heart
Still ascertainable, traditions live
Descended from antiquity, and are
The poetry of shepherds and poor men,
Not without influence on their Christian lives,
Sometimes by local usage canonized,
More oft by lips of hoary ancients taught,
And handed on in shrines of prose or verse.
Less sensibly uplifted, or their hearts
With an inspiring wisdom less sustained.
To them the world was sweetly populous
With old ancestral truths and touching faiths
And beautiful surmises, imaging
Upon the face of nature heavenly forms
With something more than bare similitudes.
315
Of the wild tenants of the sylvan chase,
The hidden will which in the growing plant
Fashioned the leaves and coloured the gay flower,—
All were to them as ritual books that taught
A Christian science, and laid bare the veins
Of spiritual Presence that enriched
Their world, and would so aptly reinforce
The languid pulse of our impoverished lives:
A science not yet utterly withdrawn
From us, but in the realm of herbs and flowers
Among our native peasants living still
In moving legends, expositions wild,
And meek acknowledgment of powers unseen,
Which at the roots of our salubrious plants
Give battle to the spirits of misrule
With varying success. And yet methinks,
With some vibrations in the popular heart
Still ascertainable, traditions live
Descended from antiquity, and are
The poetry of shepherds and poor men,
Not without influence on their Christian lives,
Sometimes by local usage canonized,
More oft by lips of hoary ancients taught,
And handed on in shrines of prose or verse.
Beautiful Past! And yet thou art to me
But a true gage wherewith to take the height
And measure of the Present: or, at most,
The testament of an affectionate sire,
Which, when the wealth bequeathed is through neglect
Dispersed, or irretrievable mischance,
Hath still a value to the pious heart
For each expression of his wish, and trains
Of monitory thought that flow therefrom.
For surely there is more than weak self-love,
A nobler and more feeling wisdom, couched
In that habitual attitude of mind,
Which would regard the Present as brought near
In such relation to ourselves, our acts
And aspirations, that it should present
A scene of more sublime magnificence,
More stirring interests, more expressive grace,
Than the most gorgeous section of the Past.
But a true gage wherewith to take the height
And measure of the Present: or, at most,
The testament of an affectionate sire,
Which, when the wealth bequeathed is through neglect
Dispersed, or irretrievable mischance,
Hath still a value to the pious heart
For each expression of his wish, and trains
316
For surely there is more than weak self-love,
A nobler and more feeling wisdom, couched
In that habitual attitude of mind,
Which would regard the Present as brought near
In such relation to ourselves, our acts
And aspirations, that it should present
A scene of more sublime magnificence,
More stirring interests, more expressive grace,
Than the most gorgeous section of the Past.
Here lie our duties, loves and hopes and fears;
Here have we tenderest intercourse with those
Our fellow-workers, with the lately dead
Most intimate affections; here we pray,
And tremble at the plain responses sent
Unto our prayers; here we retard or aid
The solemn progress of the mighty change,
Which in the bosom of its swift advance
Bears us along, unconscious yet how far
Or on what road we travel, but most wise
When least reluctant, tranquil in our faith,
Our masculine belief as Christian men,
Yea, more than tranquil, with abounding joy,
So long as Conscience ascertain each step,
Chanting a sponsal anthem as we go,
As blind but happy minstrels on the prow
Of gallant change upon discovery bound.
Here have we tenderest intercourse with those
Our fellow-workers, with the lately dead
Most intimate affections; here we pray,
And tremble at the plain responses sent
Unto our prayers; here we retard or aid
The solemn progress of the mighty change,
Which in the bosom of its swift advance
Bears us along, unconscious yet how far
Or on what road we travel, but most wise
When least reluctant, tranquil in our faith,
Our masculine belief as Christian men,
Yea, more than tranquil, with abounding joy,
So long as Conscience ascertain each step,
Chanting a sponsal anthem as we go,
As blind but happy minstrels on the prow
Of gallant change upon discovery bound.
Time hath no havens: in the stress of storm
The world perforce remains upon the sea.
O desolate, O weary wandering world!
For where can she put in, or where refit
Her shattered rigging, or where hope to cast
An anchor, save before the Judgment-seat,
Whose rocky base flings back the languid tide
And the spent waves of time, lest they should quicken
The deep calm pulses of eternity?
O were it well to breathe so bold a prayer,
Or seek an office which so far transcends
My faculties, it were that I might sing
Through a long course of meditative years
In rapturous flights and loud impassioned verse
The grandeur of the Present Times, the change
Which, like a vast on-coming cloud, bids fair
To eclipse the mighty forms of ancient days
With forms more mighty still; and not as now,
With querulous sweetness to frequent the woods,
And mate the running streams with lisping song!
The world perforce remains upon the sea.
O desolate, O weary wandering world!
For where can she put in, or where refit
Her shattered rigging, or where hope to cast
An anchor, save before the Judgment-seat,
Whose rocky base flings back the languid tide
317
The deep calm pulses of eternity?
O were it well to breathe so bold a prayer,
Or seek an office which so far transcends
My faculties, it were that I might sing
Through a long course of meditative years
In rapturous flights and loud impassioned verse
The grandeur of the Present Times, the change
Which, like a vast on-coming cloud, bids fair
To eclipse the mighty forms of ancient days
With forms more mighty still; and not as now,
With querulous sweetness to frequent the woods,
And mate the running streams with lisping song!
The earth is all awake; from her long sleep,
Her stagnant slumber when the glory passed
Even from her dreams, she started and awoke,
And battled blindly with her hands as one
Whose brain the mists of slumber still oppress.
But now with troubled dignity she fronts
The dawn of her new duties like a queen.
On every side the aspect of the world
Shifts visibly: gigantic figures rise,
Like clouds at sea, upon the horizon line
Of the close future, and together draw
In heavy preparation, yearly clothed
With more distinct array, and looking out,
A bland and noble destiny, on earth,
Who with a tremour of impatience waits
Such blissful usurpation of her realms.
Her stagnant slumber when the glory passed
Even from her dreams, she started and awoke,
And battled blindly with her hands as one
Whose brain the mists of slumber still oppress.
But now with troubled dignity she fronts
The dawn of her new duties like a queen.
On every side the aspect of the world
Shifts visibly: gigantic figures rise,
Like clouds at sea, upon the horizon line
Of the close future, and together draw
In heavy preparation, yearly clothed
With more distinct array, and looking out,
A bland and noble destiny, on earth,
Who with a tremour of impatience waits
Such blissful usurpation of her realms.
For keen expectancy doth now project
Into the souls of men an earnestness
And a courageous hope, for long unknown;
And daring dreamers scattered here and there,
Like prophets, fling the ancient idols down,
And tune the solemn voice of humankind
To a new music, borrowing it may be
Some sweetness from the Past, but most enriched
With wild and novel keys, whereon the hands
Of Time and Chance have never pressed before.
And who so blind that he misreads the signs
Which thicken round him, or mistakes the sound
Of barriers falling in the East and West,
And national distinctions waxing faint,
Worn by the pressure of more ample thoughts,
More ample sympathies, and by the powers
Newly conferred for his new wants on man,—
Congenial energies which hope may hail
As opportune allies,—while all earth's sons
Seem now about to be together thrown
And blended in one single brotherhood?
Into the souls of men an earnestness
And a courageous hope, for long unknown;
And daring dreamers scattered here and there,
Like prophets, fling the ancient idols down,
And tune the solemn voice of humankind
318
Some sweetness from the Past, but most enriched
With wild and novel keys, whereon the hands
Of Time and Chance have never pressed before.
And who so blind that he misreads the signs
Which thicken round him, or mistakes the sound
Of barriers falling in the East and West,
And national distinctions waxing faint,
Worn by the pressure of more ample thoughts,
More ample sympathies, and by the powers
Newly conferred for his new wants on man,—
Congenial energies which hope may hail
As opportune allies,—while all earth's sons
Seem now about to be together thrown
And blended in one single brotherhood?
Who would not too with exultation point
At that large-hearted wisdom which eludes
The measure of all party names, and rends
With a high-souled disdain the vulgar shapes
Of faction, and with wise constructive love,
Goodness accounting man's sole greatness, truth
The world's sole beauty, learns to sympathize,
And with discerning jealousy to walk,
With these in whatsoever places found,
With whatsoever hateful powers allied,
Saving the honour of the blessèd Faith?
For thus, if sin mar not the goodly work,
The unconscious world through these capacious hearts
Is edging forward into unity.
And, for that invocation of high Heaven
To come into the bosom of our age,
A psalm for such long centuries unsung,—
Is it not even now begun on earth?
Is it not heard far off and near at once,
Rising from separate hearts, like fragrant curls
Of odour from a hundred censers swung
With even modulation? Doth not earth
Already glow with somewhat of a light
Above her own, beatified in part
As Heaven pervades her kingdoms more and more?
At that large-hearted wisdom which eludes
The measure of all party names, and rends
With a high-souled disdain the vulgar shapes
Of faction, and with wise constructive love,
Goodness accounting man's sole greatness, truth
The world's sole beauty, learns to sympathize,
And with discerning jealousy to walk,
With these in whatsoever places found,
With whatsoever hateful powers allied,
Saving the honour of the blessèd Faith?
For thus, if sin mar not the goodly work,
The unconscious world through these capacious hearts
Is edging forward into unity.
And, for that invocation of high Heaven
To come into the bosom of our age,
A psalm for such long centuries unsung,—
Is it not even now begun on earth?
Is it not heard far off and near at once,
319
Of odour from a hundred censers swung
With even modulation? Doth not earth
Already glow with somewhat of a light
Above her own, beatified in part
As Heaven pervades her kingdoms more and more?
What if the Right Divine hath been withdrawn
From kings and from the mystery of birth,
Revoked for long misuse, and we in them
Now recognize a power on civil law
Dependent, for the sake of God, and not
As God, by us acknowledged and obeyed—
Hath not the heavenly Right been lodged anew
Deep in the bosom of the Christian State,
Buried within the Popular Will, and thus
Magnificently perilled, that the world
A third time with fresh auspices may strive
That holy Right and Presence to retain?
O solemn venture! who would not be cheered
By danger thus sublime? Who would not pray,
Ah with what diffidence of sinful man!
That holy lamp, once stifled in the air
Of ancient Monarchies, may be relumed
Within the shrine of Christian common-wealths;
And thence dispelling that unhappy cloud
Of misbelief, which hath three ages clogged
The better destinies of humankind,
A new and glorious vision may be seen,
A Christendom, more vast than that of old,
In catholic faith and ritual sweetly joined,
Embracing with its beautiful restraints
The Spirit of Democracy, made wise
Through many sufferings, solemn and serene
As earth would fain desire, about to meet
The dawn and day-break of Eternity!
From kings and from the mystery of birth,
Revoked for long misuse, and we in them
Now recognize a power on civil law
Dependent, for the sake of God, and not
As God, by us acknowledged and obeyed—
Hath not the heavenly Right been lodged anew
Deep in the bosom of the Christian State,
Buried within the Popular Will, and thus
Magnificently perilled, that the world
A third time with fresh auspices may strive
That holy Right and Presence to retain?
O solemn venture! who would not be cheered
By danger thus sublime? Who would not pray,
Ah with what diffidence of sinful man!
That holy lamp, once stifled in the air
Of ancient Monarchies, may be relumed
Within the shrine of Christian common-wealths;
And thence dispelling that unhappy cloud
Of misbelief, which hath three ages clogged
The better destinies of humankind,
A new and glorious vision may be seen,
A Christendom, more vast than that of old,
In catholic faith and ritual sweetly joined,
Embracing with its beautiful restraints
The Spirit of Democracy, made wise
Through many sufferings, solemn and serene
As earth would fain desire, about to meet
320
Ah me! and have I ventured to aspire
Upon the prow of this majestic change
To sit, and watch the vessel of the world
Dipping uneasily into the deep,
And tune my trustful anthems as it heaves,
Embodying these my burning hopes in song?
Peace! peace! ambitious heart! for all unmeet
For thy poor strivings were such glorious task:
And peace, ye clamorous hopes! which, like a brood
Of callow hawks impatient to essay
The limpid ether round yon hanging cliff,
Project themselves too far beyond the bound
Of heaven-taught sadness. But if we would gaze
In studious prayer, as on a crystal lake
Whose clearness makes its depths more palpable,
All day upon the Fourfold Countenance
Of the deep Gospels, we should learn perforce
This sobering lesson, that the men most nigh
Unto the Person of the Son of God
Withheld their yearning lips from hopeful strain
Of trust in human conduct: zealous James
Be witness, and the trumpet tongue of Jude,
Or ready Levi's loud judicial tone,
Or that vindictive jealousy of him
Who leaned upon the Saviour's very Heart.
Let these confront the kind permitted truths,
Broad hope, and credulous belief of good,
In ardent Paul, or Luke whose anxious pen,
Blandest physician of repenting souls,
In his affectionate Gospel would amass
All hopeful traits of those who might approach
Our Lord, all merciful regards by Him
To their weak trust in times of need vouchsafed.
Upon the prow of this majestic change
To sit, and watch the vessel of the world
Dipping uneasily into the deep,
And tune my trustful anthems as it heaves,
Embodying these my burning hopes in song?
Peace! peace! ambitious heart! for all unmeet
For thy poor strivings were such glorious task:
And peace, ye clamorous hopes! which, like a brood
Of callow hawks impatient to essay
The limpid ether round yon hanging cliff,
Project themselves too far beyond the bound
Of heaven-taught sadness. But if we would gaze
In studious prayer, as on a crystal lake
Whose clearness makes its depths more palpable,
All day upon the Fourfold Countenance
Of the deep Gospels, we should learn perforce
This sobering lesson, that the men most nigh
Unto the Person of the Son of God
Withheld their yearning lips from hopeful strain
Of trust in human conduct: zealous James
Be witness, and the trumpet tongue of Jude,
Or ready Levi's loud judicial tone,
Or that vindictive jealousy of him
Who leaned upon the Saviour's very Heart.
Let these confront the kind permitted truths,
Broad hope, and credulous belief of good,
In ardent Paul, or Luke whose anxious pen,
Blandest physician of repenting souls,
In his affectionate Gospel would amass
All hopeful traits of those who might approach
Our Lord, all merciful regards by Him
321
England! dear England! Island of the Saints!
Thy broad blythe champaign, and sheep-spotted wolds,
Thy ferny forest-lands, and hawthorn glades,
Thy park-like fields, and water-meadows green,
And rushy brooks, lie deep within my heart.
Ah! how I compass with affectionate thought
A thousand sweet localities, whereon
The light of our religious past is blent
With the dark presence of our modern sin!
My boyhood was a year-long pilgrimage
Amassing pleasant sights, which now are turned
To deeper things than wells of poetry.
And at this tearful hour I summon up,
With individual features all distinct,
Thy lifeless abbeys, and monastic homes,
Quickened with but the semblance of a life,
Thy broken crosses, convent-peopled fens,
Disfigured minsters, fountains, woods and hills
With saintly surnames; and I now behold
In accurate vision, thoughtfully composed,
Thy lovely Frame, thy seven and thirty Shires,
Three goodly Palatines, and Islands five,
With Ely's Royal Franchise for a sixth,
And Town that keeps the sea-gates of the Tweed:
And a bright shade upon the vision falls,
Stooping thereon with palpable embrace.
As, when the staff by delegated hands
(How justly figuring England's futile past!)
Laid on his face no sign of life evoked,
Forthwith the Hebrew prophet stretched himself
Upon the Sunamite's sun-stricken child,
Hand touching hand, eye firmly pressing eye,
And living lips upon the dead lips closed.—
Even so methinks her Guardian Angel lies
Incumbent on my native country's breadth,
Limb upon limb at once, and working there
No partial restoration; and the warmth
So secretly is thrilling through her flesh,
So equally pervading all her veins
With tremulous augmentation ascertained,
The earth is barely conscious of a change,
Though with some half-incredulous fear annoyed.
But there lie England and her Angel, shut
From the world's notice, as the prophet was,
Left, with closed doors, upon the lifeless child.
The living Church beyond the seas may pray,
The Saxon Saints will intercede above,
And we, in happy expectation, wait,
Not idle in our measure and degree,
To cry, God speed the silent miracle!
Thy broad blythe champaign, and sheep-spotted wolds,
Thy ferny forest-lands, and hawthorn glades,
Thy park-like fields, and water-meadows green,
And rushy brooks, lie deep within my heart.
Ah! how I compass with affectionate thought
A thousand sweet localities, whereon
The light of our religious past is blent
With the dark presence of our modern sin!
My boyhood was a year-long pilgrimage
Amassing pleasant sights, which now are turned
To deeper things than wells of poetry.
And at this tearful hour I summon up,
With individual features all distinct,
Thy lifeless abbeys, and monastic homes,
Quickened with but the semblance of a life,
Thy broken crosses, convent-peopled fens,
Disfigured minsters, fountains, woods and hills
With saintly surnames; and I now behold
In accurate vision, thoughtfully composed,
Thy lovely Frame, thy seven and thirty Shires,
Three goodly Palatines, and Islands five,
With Ely's Royal Franchise for a sixth,
And Town that keeps the sea-gates of the Tweed:
And a bright shade upon the vision falls,
Stooping thereon with palpable embrace.
As, when the staff by delegated hands
(How justly figuring England's futile past!)
Laid on his face no sign of life evoked,
Forthwith the Hebrew prophet stretched himself
Upon the Sunamite's sun-stricken child,
Hand touching hand, eye firmly pressing eye,
322
Even so methinks her Guardian Angel lies
Incumbent on my native country's breadth,
Limb upon limb at once, and working there
No partial restoration; and the warmth
So secretly is thrilling through her flesh,
So equally pervading all her veins
With tremulous augmentation ascertained,
The earth is barely conscious of a change,
Though with some half-incredulous fear annoyed.
But there lie England and her Angel, shut
From the world's notice, as the prophet was,
Left, with closed doors, upon the lifeless child.
The living Church beyond the seas may pray,
The Saxon Saints will intercede above,
And we, in happy expectation, wait,
Not idle in our measure and degree,
To cry, God speed the silent miracle!
It is St. Peter's Day, the sacred Feast
Which, not from holy Paul's great name disjoined,
Bequeaths a blessing on departing June.
Sweetly the spirit of the morning fills
The abbey yard and hollow meads around.
Those golden beams! how silently they range
Upon the foliage of the hanging woods!
And nature's joy, which is the love of God,
Winds up the brook between the alder-trunks,
Brightening the waters with a breeze-like motion,
Wanders among the meadow flowers, revealed
By silent wakes that crisp the nodding herbs
Parted and fanned aside as if by wings,
And, o'er the elastic mosses hovering up,
Stealing the savoury damp that saturates
The tesselated herbage of the woods,
Freights the warm dew as it returns to heaven
With breaths of incense and the songs of birds.
Which, not from holy Paul's great name disjoined,
Bequeaths a blessing on departing June.
Sweetly the spirit of the morning fills
The abbey yard and hollow meads around.
Those golden beams! how silently they range
Upon the foliage of the hanging woods!
And nature's joy, which is the love of God,
Winds up the brook between the alder-trunks,
Brightening the waters with a breeze-like motion,
Wanders among the meadow flowers, revealed
By silent wakes that crisp the nodding herbs
Parted and fanned aside as if by wings,
And, o'er the elastic mosses hovering up,
Stealing the savoury damp that saturates
The tesselated herbage of the woods,
323
With breaths of incense and the songs of birds.
And in the heart of that sweet sunken dell
The Abbey, like a sentient creature, lies
Couched on the dewy sward; and from the towers,
Gateways and buttresses of ruddy stone,
It breathes a voice into the listening woods.
The upper air is all alive with bells,
While on the undulating waves of sound
Float the dark clamorous fleets of happy daws;
And, down below, the very stones respire
Celestial music from their viewless pores,
While the loud choirs with pealing organs vie,
Chanting the Blessèd Mass; all down the nave
The thrilling torrent of the music rolls,
Like an imprisoned tide, now seems to heave
The mighty roof, and now with refluent stream
Pours its sweet trouble eastward, and escapes,
But for awhile, beneath the transept arch,
Till the dumb stones and lucid windows yield
An outlet to that throbbing sea of sound.
It is the Preface; ah how meet and right
With Angels and Archangels, and the band
Of Apostolic Vicars gathered now
Unto their rest and glory, to adore
The Holy One with ceaseless solemn songs!
That Mixolydian strain! how sweetly sad,
Tutoring dejected hearts in cheerfulness,
Expressive of man's twofold state below
As lost in Adam and redeemed in Christ!
Ah! thus is all the music of the world
Confined within the Cross, whose vocal swells,
Inaudible except to reverent ears,
With glorious surges of heart-music fill
The fertile breast of Christ's most Holy Church;—
Yet not without a faint alluring sound
Breathed on the outer world, to win the souls
That not in power but weakness linger near,
While in triumphant elegies the Bride
Sings, sweetly sings, her Lord's unmated Griefs!
The Abbey, like a sentient creature, lies
Couched on the dewy sward; and from the towers,
Gateways and buttresses of ruddy stone,
It breathes a voice into the listening woods.
The upper air is all alive with bells,
While on the undulating waves of sound
Float the dark clamorous fleets of happy daws;
And, down below, the very stones respire
Celestial music from their viewless pores,
While the loud choirs with pealing organs vie,
Chanting the Blessèd Mass; all down the nave
The thrilling torrent of the music rolls,
Like an imprisoned tide, now seems to heave
The mighty roof, and now with refluent stream
Pours its sweet trouble eastward, and escapes,
But for awhile, beneath the transept arch,
Till the dumb stones and lucid windows yield
An outlet to that throbbing sea of sound.
It is the Preface; ah how meet and right
With Angels and Archangels, and the band
Of Apostolic Vicars gathered now
Unto their rest and glory, to adore
The Holy One with ceaseless solemn songs!
That Mixolydian strain! how sweetly sad,
Tutoring dejected hearts in cheerfulness,
Expressive of man's twofold state below
As lost in Adam and redeemed in Christ!
Ah! thus is all the music of the world
Confined within the Cross, whose vocal swells,
Inaudible except to reverent ears,
With glorious surges of heart-music fill
324
Yet not without a faint alluring sound
Breathed on the outer world, to win the souls
That not in power but weakness linger near,
While in triumphant elegies the Bride
Sings, sweetly sings, her Lord's unmated Griefs!
Who is yon Kneeler that like one entranced
Bends o'er the marble step, with both hands crossed
Upon his bosom, raining holy tears
From un-uplifted eyes? O is it grief,
Or the enlarged abundance of his heart,
Thus weeping from him like a summer shower?
And is it prayer which parts his quivering lips,
Or viewless rapture, winged with more than words,
Escaping from the worn Ascetic's frame,
Like trembling odours by the solar beam
Wrung with extatic pain from silent flowers?
It is Sir Lancelot, the Hermit-Knight,
The son received into his Mother's arms,
The Crown of Penance, Triumph of the Cross
And Victory of Christ's Almighty Love!
Bends o'er the marble step, with both hands crossed
Upon his bosom, raining holy tears
From un-uplifted eyes? O is it grief,
Or the enlarged abundance of his heart,
Thus weeping from him like a summer shower?
And is it prayer which parts his quivering lips,
Or viewless rapture, winged with more than words,
Escaping from the worn Ascetic's frame,
Like trembling odours by the solar beam
Wrung with extatic pain from silent flowers?
It is Sir Lancelot, the Hermit-Knight,
The son received into his Mother's arms,
The Crown of Penance, Triumph of the Cross
And Victory of Christ's Almighty Love!
Press the loud organs, roll the living psalm
In jubilant thunders o'er the prostrate crowd;
Once more—a loftier strain!—swell, swell the hymns,—
Ye choirs, let loose the burning bolts of song;
See how they flash and lighten from the roof!
Hark! how divinely doth the storm of sound
Gather in folded harmonies, far off
And near;—fill the loud anthems higher still,
Fill the deep womb of music to the brim,
Until the soul of every kneeler there,
Won from the body, mount upon the stream,
The cloudy stream of music, and ascend
Far above sin and earth, within the sight
And audience of seraphic liturgies!
In jubilant thunders o'er the prostrate crowd;
Once more—a loftier strain!—swell, swell the hymns,—
Ye choirs, let loose the burning bolts of song;
See how they flash and lighten from the roof!
Hark! how divinely doth the storm of sound
Gather in folded harmonies, far off
And near;—fill the loud anthems higher still,
Fill the deep womb of music to the brim,
Until the soul of every kneeler there,
Won from the body, mount upon the stream,
The cloudy stream of music, and ascend
325
And audience of seraphic liturgies!
Down, like descending Angels, see the clouds
Of music, how they fold their quivering wings
Above the Altar, mute and self-absorbed!
Silence! the potent Canon hath begun.
See how it glasses in symbolic acts
And holy gestures, that exalted scene,
Which fell in Patmos on the mind of him,
The Virgin Seer! Behold how it reflects,
Nay, by a dread Illapse brings down to earth,
The heavenly Worship of the Immaculate Lamb,
The Liturgy which never ends above,
Answered by earth's ineffable response
From out the Wonder of the Blessèd Mass!
Of music, how they fold their quivering wings
Above the Altar, mute and self-absorbed!
Silence! the potent Canon hath begun.
See how it glasses in symbolic acts
And holy gestures, that exalted scene,
Which fell in Patmos on the mind of him,
The Virgin Seer! Behold how it reflects,
Nay, by a dread Illapse brings down to earth,
The heavenly Worship of the Immaculate Lamb,
The Liturgy which never ends above,
Answered by earth's ineffable response
From out the Wonder of the Blessèd Mass!
What thoughts, or rather, in the silent room
Of thought deposed, what blissful Presence filled
Sir Lancelot, when the Altar's Burning Coal,
As with the rapt Isaias, touched his lips,
Not song of minstrel, but the hearts of Saints
With voiceless thrill must utter to themselves.
Of thought deposed, what blissful Presence filled
Sir Lancelot, when the Altar's Burning Coal,
As with the rapt Isaias, touched his lips,
Not song of minstrel, but the hearts of Saints
With voiceless thrill must utter to themselves.
On Hawcoat Brow in days of old there stood
A deep alcove, a semicirque of stone,
With canopy of sculptured palm-leaves roofed,
From which the mountains of three famous realms,
Laved by the western seas, far off appeared.
Thither the gentle monks of Furness came,
Lonely or paired, what time the setting sun
Flamed o'er the golden sea and purple hills.
Duly each summer evening there they went
To feed the love of nature, whose prime seat
Is aptly fixed upon those modest thrones,—
The hearts of men of meditative ways
And frequent prayer. And to their chastened thoughts
Haply that landscape witnessed not so much
To God's creative love, as woke the thought
Of all that dread magnificent scene of wealth
By Satan shown from Quaratana's top,
Tempting the rightful Heir, and claiming then—
Ah how the lordly minsters and sweet rites
Of Holy Church have falsified the claim!—
The beauty of the world to be his own,
Of old conceded to him, and abjured
By angry Heaven.
A deep alcove, a semicirque of stone,
With canopy of sculptured palm-leaves roofed,
From which the mountains of three famous realms,
Laved by the western seas, far off appeared.
Thither the gentle monks of Furness came,
Lonely or paired, what time the setting sun
Flamed o'er the golden sea and purple hills.
Duly each summer evening there they went
To feed the love of nature, whose prime seat
Is aptly fixed upon those modest thrones,—
The hearts of men of meditative ways
And frequent prayer. And to their chastened thoughts
326
To God's creative love, as woke the thought
Of all that dread magnificent scene of wealth
By Satan shown from Quaratana's top,
Tempting the rightful Heir, and claiming then—
Ah how the lordly minsters and sweet rites
Of Holy Church have falsified the claim!—
The beauty of the world to be his own,
Of old conceded to him, and abjured
By angry Heaven.
Such stations, for repose
And contemplation mixed, may yet be seen
By him who from Arezzo climbs the hill,
Whose other side, like some Cyclopean wall,
Rises a hoary rampart from the vale
Of Maldoli, so pleasantly outstretched
With sward and trees beneath the pilgrim's eye:
Or who essays—O not without a thought
Deeper and chaster than the curious mood
Of restless voyager!—to scale the steep,
The pine-clad mountain of the Hermitage,
Whose threshold by the monitory name
Of Antony from mundane thoughts is barred.
There mid the rocks and whispering forests dwell
Saint Romuald's sons, begotten in the faith,
The noble of Ravenna whose high heart
Burned, like a seraph's, with extatic love,
Whose transports glistened through unceasing tears.
Ah! he who by the seven clear water-springs
Shall sit, and overlook the solemn waste
And labyrinth of wild Apennines all round,
And white-stoled figures gliding through the pines,
Noiseless as sunbeams, and shall haply hear
The famous clock which lifts its mighty voice
In admonition of the coming End,
Throughout the savage desert audible,—
He, though his faith were cold as Alpine stone,
Shall feel how deep the simple love of earth
Was fixed in those ascetic brotherhoods,
Who seemed with such a single aim to love
God, that they left no room for love of man:
And in his heart shall carry to his home
This common wisdom, haply new to him,—
He, who would love the world to tears, must first
Renounce for God the love the world returns.
And contemplation mixed, may yet be seen
By him who from Arezzo climbs the hill,
Whose other side, like some Cyclopean wall,
Rises a hoary rampart from the vale
Of Maldoli, so pleasantly outstretched
With sward and trees beneath the pilgrim's eye:
Or who essays—O not without a thought
Deeper and chaster than the curious mood
Of restless voyager!—to scale the steep,
The pine-clad mountain of the Hermitage,
Whose threshold by the monitory name
Of Antony from mundane thoughts is barred.
There mid the rocks and whispering forests dwell
Saint Romuald's sons, begotten in the faith,
The noble of Ravenna whose high heart
Burned, like a seraph's, with extatic love,
Whose transports glistened through unceasing tears.
Ah! he who by the seven clear water-springs
Shall sit, and overlook the solemn waste
And labyrinth of wild Apennines all round,
And white-stoled figures gliding through the pines,
Noiseless as sunbeams, and shall haply hear
327
In admonition of the coming End,
Throughout the savage desert audible,—
He, though his faith were cold as Alpine stone,
Shall feel how deep the simple love of earth
Was fixed in those ascetic brotherhoods,
Who seemed with such a single aim to love
God, that they left no room for love of man:
And in his heart shall carry to his home
This common wisdom, haply new to him,—
He, who would love the world to tears, must first
Renounce for God the love the world returns.
Yet those monastic wilds may not compare
With the broad prospect seen from Hawcoat Brow.
But rather apt resemblance may we find,
By some inferior deemed, in that Monk's Seat
Perched on the old Lactarian hills that rise
By Arola above Sorrento's steep,
A younger-born Camaldoli; for there
The enchanted eye may wander from the cliffs
Of Capri northward to Miseno's horn,
While far above its giant beeches towers
The snowy summit of the Angel's Mount,
And old Vesuvio, querulously calm,
Sighs forth his azure smoke incessantly;
Till the tired sight, enraptured, seeks repose
Upon the nodding clouds of umbrage sunk
Beneath it, on the silent chestnut groves
Of Arola, or sees, (and while it sees
Sleeps, cradled on the beautiful expanse,)
The murmuring crescent of Parthenope!
With the broad prospect seen from Hawcoat Brow.
But rather apt resemblance may we find,
By some inferior deemed, in that Monk's Seat
Perched on the old Lactarian hills that rise
By Arola above Sorrento's steep,
A younger-born Camaldoli; for there
The enchanted eye may wander from the cliffs
Of Capri northward to Miseno's horn,
While far above its giant beeches towers
The snowy summit of the Angel's Mount,
And old Vesuvio, querulously calm,
Sighs forth his azure smoke incessantly;
Till the tired sight, enraptured, seeks repose
Upon the nodding clouds of umbrage sunk
Beneath it, on the silent chestnut groves
Of Arola, or sees, (and while it sees
Sleeps, cradled on the beautiful expanse,)
The murmuring crescent of Parthenope!
From Hawcoat hill an unfrequented road
Leads to the beach, and by the tower there stands,
Upon a weedy plot of wayside turf,
A little hut, wherein the kindly monks,
When Mass was said, installed the grateful Knight,
In blissful peace, absolved and reconciled.
Not vain to him was that most wondrous view,—
Sea-girdled Mona, the advancing hills
Beyond the misty Solway caught and lost
In the blue haze, the scattered peaks of Wales
On the south shore like castles in the sea,
The convex of the Furness mountains, pierced
By the bright snaky Duddon, and Black Combe
Unveiling there his shadow-dappled face
With mute expression, to Sir Lancelot known;
While, like a soft suffusion of fair light,
Calmly pervading many an inlet round,
The summer sea with luminous heaving spread.
Leads to the beach, and by the tower there stands,
Upon a weedy plot of wayside turf,
328
When Mass was said, installed the grateful Knight,
In blissful peace, absolved and reconciled.
Not vain to him was that most wondrous view,—
Sea-girdled Mona, the advancing hills
Beyond the misty Solway caught and lost
In the blue haze, the scattered peaks of Wales
On the south shore like castles in the sea,
The convex of the Furness mountains, pierced
By the bright snaky Duddon, and Black Combe
Unveiling there his shadow-dappled face
With mute expression, to Sir Lancelot known;
While, like a soft suffusion of fair light,
Calmly pervading many an inlet round,
The summer sea with luminous heaving spread.
And now to him adopted once again
Into the depths of Christian privilege,
His soul was free to wander unrebuked
Through the broad pastures of the ancient Truth
And Faith of catholic ages. To his mind
Two special fields of thought were now disclosed,
Not new, but in surpassing freshness clad,
Transcending far the light of novelty:
Even as the vales behind the mask of spring,
The glory of its verdure, hide themselves,
And while, entangled in the dream, our eyes
The open views of leafless winter seek,
From bush and brake familiar features peer,
Scarce recognized for well-known household forms.
Two Powers lay open to his reverent love,
Waiting the homage of a soul at peace,
In full communion with the Holy Church;
For such and such alone, (unless it be
The thoughts of children travel in those lands,
And sinning souls are vexed by glimpses sent
Reversed in broken dreams) shall find unbarred
The royal roads of secret intercourse,
Which cross the confines of the Invisible World.
Free was he now in meditative awe
To commune with the Angels and the Dead.
Into the depths of Christian privilege,
His soul was free to wander unrebuked
Through the broad pastures of the ancient Truth
And Faith of catholic ages. To his mind
Two special fields of thought were now disclosed,
Not new, but in surpassing freshness clad,
Transcending far the light of novelty:
Even as the vales behind the mask of spring,
The glory of its verdure, hide themselves,
And while, entangled in the dream, our eyes
The open views of leafless winter seek,
From bush and brake familiar features peer,
Scarce recognized for well-known household forms.
Two Powers lay open to his reverent love,
Waiting the homage of a soul at peace,
In full communion with the Holy Church;
For such and such alone, (unless it be
The thoughts of children travel in those lands,
329
Reversed in broken dreams) shall find unbarred
The royal roads of secret intercourse,
Which cross the confines of the Invisible World.
Free was he now in meditative awe
To commune with the Angels and the Dead.
There have been holy men whose spirit's eye,
By outward rite to inward love sublimed,
Hath been so couched, that at the Blessèd Mass
Angelic bands in manifest array
Have in the celebration borne their part,
Aiding the mortal priest: such extasy,
So legends tell, was anciently vouchsafed
To him of Tolentino, seraphlike,
Who from ascetic infancy grew up,
A lovely marvel mid his childish peers,
Unto the giant stature of a Saint.
So by angelic hands upon the side
Of Juliana, who in Florence wore
The Servite Mantle first, a visible seal,
The Sacred Host was once impressed, withdrawn
From out the hand of the astonished priest
Who held it to her bosom; for so wrought
The extatic hunger of the heavenly Food,
What time her feebleness could ill sustain
Common reception: and ascetic love,
Outgrowing, not supplanting, ritual acts,
Might consummate an inward Eucharist.
By outward rite to inward love sublimed,
Hath been so couched, that at the Blessèd Mass
Angelic bands in manifest array
Have in the celebration borne their part,
Aiding the mortal priest: such extasy,
So legends tell, was anciently vouchsafed
To him of Tolentino, seraphlike,
Who from ascetic infancy grew up,
A lovely marvel mid his childish peers,
Unto the giant stature of a Saint.
So by angelic hands upon the side
Of Juliana, who in Florence wore
The Servite Mantle first, a visible seal,
The Sacred Host was once impressed, withdrawn
From out the hand of the astonished priest
Who held it to her bosom; for so wrought
The extatic hunger of the heavenly Food,
What time her feebleness could ill sustain
Common reception: and ascetic love,
Outgrowing, not supplanting, ritual acts,
Might consummate an inward Eucharist.
O Mother Church! who taught thine eye to see
The jealous veil of separation worn
Almost to nothing twixt the world of sight
And brighter world of faith, by those deep thrills
Of joy expecting her mysterious Food?
Who taught thy voice at that sweet point of time,
When feasting souls, all eagle-like, ascend,
And in no self-sustaining rapture burst
On high into the quivering beams of song—
Who taught thy voice in that transcendent hour
Boldly to claim the Angels for thy peers,
And call Archangels fellow-worshippers,
While the expectation of thy kneeling sons
Outstrips the ritual, soars above the earth,
And, hidden among the Angels, finds its home?
The jealous veil of separation worn
Almost to nothing twixt the world of sight
And brighter world of faith, by those deep thrills
Of joy expecting her mysterious Food?
Who taught thy voice at that sweet point of time,
330
And in no self-sustaining rapture burst
On high into the quivering beams of song—
Who taught thy voice in that transcendent hour
Boldly to claim the Angels for thy peers,
And call Archangels fellow-worshippers,
While the expectation of thy kneeling sons
Outstrips the ritual, soars above the earth,
And, hidden among the Angels, finds its home?
Sweet and tear-moving thoughts now calmly rose
Within Sir Lancelot's mind; he seemed to dwell
Rather with Angels than his fellow men.
Their everlasting order and deep peace
Such grateful contemplation did afford,
As to the feeble but far-kenning sight
Of saintly men who bow themselves to die,
By thankless labours and rude days outworn.
O beautiful Restraints in early years
From secret sins and negligence in prayer,
That make the darkness reverend, and disclose
The sparkling eye of solitude by day,
How blessèd are your offices to man!
Your presence is an endless ritual,
Whereby the soul makes real to herself
The Omnipresence of the Holy Three,
A truth so high, so infinitely raised
Above the baser moods of our terrestrial life,
We need the Patriarch's Ladder thus to scale
That height of doctrine most ineffable.
Within Sir Lancelot's mind; he seemed to dwell
Rather with Angels than his fellow men.
Their everlasting order and deep peace
Such grateful contemplation did afford,
As to the feeble but far-kenning sight
Of saintly men who bow themselves to die,
By thankless labours and rude days outworn.
O beautiful Restraints in early years
From secret sins and negligence in prayer,
That make the darkness reverend, and disclose
The sparkling eye of solitude by day,
How blessèd are your offices to man!
Your presence is an endless ritual,
Whereby the soul makes real to herself
The Omnipresence of the Holy Three,
A truth so high, so infinitely raised
Above the baser moods of our terrestrial life,
We need the Patriarch's Ladder thus to scale
That height of doctrine most ineffable.
And hourly doth the soft constraining sense
Of your companionship and grave regards
Enhance our private acts, and solemnize
What else in our retirèd modesties
Might fail in dignity, until it grows
A ceremonial, by the humbled pride
And sober fancy not disdained as help
To loftier contemplation, breeding still,—
When we lie down to sleep and when we rise
And for our public life prepare ourselves
With all such comely types of inward things
As God hath made to wait on those vile acts,—
Meekness of corporal attitude and grace
Of outward lowliness, which shall not fail
In time to win a beautiful response
From out the shrines of our interior life.
Of your companionship and grave regards
Enhance our private acts, and solemnize
What else in our retirèd modesties
Might fail in dignity, until it grows
331
And sober fancy not disdained as help
To loftier contemplation, breeding still,—
When we lie down to sleep and when we rise
And for our public life prepare ourselves
With all such comely types of inward things
As God hath made to wait on those vile acts,—
Meekness of corporal attitude and grace
Of outward lowliness, which shall not fail
In time to win a beautiful response
From out the shrines of our interior life.
Such meditation on the thrice three rings
Of blest adoring spirits, which surround
The Enthronèd Presence in the courts above,
In ceaseless Energy, or Servitude
Of an unutterably loving fear,
Contemplating the Attributes Divine,—
Precluded not a special homage paid
To his own Guardian Angel. Woe is me
That any blissful Sprite should be detained
From his more intimate happiness in Heaven,
To be the staff of my irregular steps,
My wayward treading and poor floundering feet,
Along the miry paths of human sin.
O I could pity thee, Angelic Guide!
For thy base office, when I loathe myself
For hourly sins and pusillanimous ways,
Though at such seasons dearest far to thee!
So now the Knight his Guardian Angel sought
With that subordinate worship, which the Church
To all her children studiously suggests,
An aid, if not a need, to sinning souls.
His deep affections did he oft project
Into the invisible world, a local world
Not cast far off, but with its confines stretched
Hard by, yea truly touching on himself.
Oft did he lean upon his unseen Friend
With realized embrace of kindly thoughts
And answered invocation, craving still
To lose that friendship in the holier love
Of God and dearer neighbourhood of Christ,
And therefore supplicating for the hour,
When in the calm and orderly delight
Of resurrection we shall bid farewell,
Farewell unto his office, not his love,
To that sweet Guardian, whose commissioned help
Penance and Grace have prospered, and that day
(O be it so) have brought us satisfied
Unto the wakening likeness of our Lord,
The restful haven where we fain would be!
Of blest adoring spirits, which surround
The Enthronèd Presence in the courts above,
In ceaseless Energy, or Servitude
Of an unutterably loving fear,
Contemplating the Attributes Divine,—
Precluded not a special homage paid
To his own Guardian Angel. Woe is me
That any blissful Sprite should be detained
From his more intimate happiness in Heaven,
To be the staff of my irregular steps,
My wayward treading and poor floundering feet,
Along the miry paths of human sin.
O I could pity thee, Angelic Guide!
For thy base office, when I loathe myself
For hourly sins and pusillanimous ways,
Though at such seasons dearest far to thee!
So now the Knight his Guardian Angel sought
With that subordinate worship, which the Church
To all her children studiously suggests,
An aid, if not a need, to sinning souls.
His deep affections did he oft project
Into the invisible world, a local world
332
Hard by, yea truly touching on himself.
Oft did he lean upon his unseen Friend
With realized embrace of kindly thoughts
And answered invocation, craving still
To lose that friendship in the holier love
Of God and dearer neighbourhood of Christ,
And therefore supplicating for the hour,
When in the calm and orderly delight
Of resurrection we shall bid farewell,
Farewell unto his office, not his love,
To that sweet Guardian, whose commissioned help
Penance and Grace have prospered, and that day
(O be it so) have brought us satisfied
Unto the wakening likeness of our Lord,
The restful haven where we fain would be!
But greater still—if in such sacred things
Comparison befit our words or thoughts—
Was the sweet ravishment of tranquil joy,
Felt by the Knight in intercourse renewed
With those at rest, the holy suffering Souls
Twixt earth and heaven, to earthly hearts a bond
More sensibly imposed upon our hopes
And pure affections, than the wandering love
Which meets the Angels on its heavenward road.
The peaceful intercession of the Dead,
The privilege of prayer for them, in faith
That knows not what or where their spirits are,
Yet lest they miss of aught they might obtain,
Progress or increment or deepened peace,
In that their present state still dares to pray,
And loves her daring;—such his blameless joys,
Part of the deep Communion of the Saints,
Part, not the Crown; a higher Union still
Remains which my weak song may not essay,
Nor vileness contemplate except far off.
These were the blameless joys Sir Lancelot felt,
Blameless by man, but O far more than that,
Far more than unblamed sacrifice to Him,
In whose pure Eye the Universal Church,
The myriad Saints already throned in heaven,
The pilgrim Dead still somewhere on their road
Bedewed with peaceful fires, the scattered few
Who live and fight, one only Body are!
Comparison befit our words or thoughts—
Was the sweet ravishment of tranquil joy,
Felt by the Knight in intercourse renewed
With those at rest, the holy suffering Souls
Twixt earth and heaven, to earthly hearts a bond
More sensibly imposed upon our hopes
And pure affections, than the wandering love
Which meets the Angels on its heavenward road.
The peaceful intercession of the Dead,
The privilege of prayer for them, in faith
That knows not what or where their spirits are,
Yet lest they miss of aught they might obtain,
Progress or increment or deepened peace,
In that their present state still dares to pray,
And loves her daring;—such his blameless joys,
Part of the deep Communion of the Saints,
Part, not the Crown; a higher Union still
333
Nor vileness contemplate except far off.
These were the blameless joys Sir Lancelot felt,
Blameless by man, but O far more than that,
Far more than unblamed sacrifice to Him,
In whose pure Eye the Universal Church,
The myriad Saints already throned in heaven,
The pilgrim Dead still somewhere on their road
Bedewed with peaceful fires, the scattered few
Who live and fight, one only Body are!
But further heights there were for him to climb,
Which common Christians in their low estate
Gaze on from far; and speak with puzzled words,
A cloudy nomenclature, of the stairs
Which lead unto the temple of the Saints,
By science not unmeasured, and to us
A profitable knowledge, if it put
More emulous life into our trivial acts.
Which common Christians in their low estate
Gaze on from far; and speak with puzzled words,
A cloudy nomenclature, of the stairs
Which lead unto the temple of the Saints,
By science not unmeasured, and to us
A profitable knowledge, if it put
More emulous life into our trivial acts.
Those mystical Ascents Sir Lancelot now
Essayed to climb upon his bended knees,
As pilgrims climb the tear-dropped Stairs at Rome.
And first from Meditation was he led
To Recollection, where his mental powers
Acted less fretfully, the vestibule
Of mystic Contemplation, in whose depths
The passive souls of Saints abide and breathe.
More wonderful that Spiritual Calm
Which follows Recollection, when the heart,
With holy Presences dilated, hangs
In tranquil balance fixed upon one thought,
One special and engrossing Act of Christ,
Or with collected vagueness all diffused,
And lost within a breathless extasy
Of rapturous homage to the Triune God,
And wherein even the body takes its part,
By mortifying practices sublimed,
Not seldom lifted gently from the ground
With slow ascension, and with upraised arms
And garments floating on the radiant air;—
Unearthly favours, yet accompanied
With perfect recognition of the Will
To make all fitting Acts of Faith and Love,
Of Self-oblation and heroic Vows.
Essayed to climb upon his bended knees,
As pilgrims climb the tear-dropped Stairs at Rome.
And first from Meditation was he led
To Recollection, where his mental powers
Acted less fretfully, the vestibule
Of mystic Contemplation, in whose depths
The passive souls of Saints abide and breathe.
More wonderful that Spiritual Calm
Which follows Recollection, when the heart,
With holy Presences dilated, hangs
In tranquil balance fixed upon one thought,
One special and engrossing Act of Christ,
Or with collected vagueness all diffused,
And lost within a breathless extasy
Of rapturous homage to the Triune God,
334
By mortifying practices sublimed,
Not seldom lifted gently from the ground
With slow ascension, and with upraised arms
And garments floating on the radiant air;—
Unearthly favours, yet accompanied
With perfect recognition of the Will
To make all fitting Acts of Faith and Love,
Of Self-oblation and heroic Vows.
A further truth Sir Lancelot had to learn;
That God is jealous of His Own good gifts,
When they are loved in place of God Himself.
And as erewhile within the gloomy Ark
He shut great Noe when the floods were out,
So in a prison, painful, dim, and straight,
Doth He confine the Saints to be prepared,
By keen ablution of the inward man,
For contemplation of His Blessèd Self.
Dryness of Sense there comes to tempt the soul
No more to persevere in bootless prayer;
Dryness of Spirit next, when loving Fast
And cheering Vigil, nay, the Mass itself
Doth but augment the sadness of the heart,
And prompts it kneeling at the Altar-step,
To hate the God who gives His Flesh to us:—
A Penal Light, so theologians call
This piercing grief, as giving to the Saints
Knowledge of previous darkness to enhance
The beauty of the sunrise yet to come.
Such was the Penal Light the Florentine,
Of Pazzi's noble stock, five years endured;
But days were years unto Sir Lancelot's soul
Now that his pilgrimage drew near its close.
That God is jealous of His Own good gifts,
When they are loved in place of God Himself.
And as erewhile within the gloomy Ark
He shut great Noe when the floods were out,
So in a prison, painful, dim, and straight,
Doth He confine the Saints to be prepared,
By keen ablution of the inward man,
For contemplation of His Blessèd Self.
Dryness of Sense there comes to tempt the soul
No more to persevere in bootless prayer;
Dryness of Spirit next, when loving Fast
And cheering Vigil, nay, the Mass itself
Doth but augment the sadness of the heart,
And prompts it kneeling at the Altar-step,
To hate the God who gives His Flesh to us:—
A Penal Light, so theologians call
This piercing grief, as giving to the Saints
Knowledge of previous darkness to enhance
The beauty of the sunrise yet to come.
Such was the Penal Light the Florentine,
Of Pazzi's noble stock, five years endured;
But days were years unto Sir Lancelot's soul
Now that his pilgrimage drew near its close.
For soon to him the half-enlightened dawn
Of Contemplation broke, wherein his eye
Compassed Affirmative Truths, which lay distinct,
In several orders lucidly combined,
And tangible by thought if not by words.
Then finally his soul was introduced
To that Clear Darkness, which the Saints so name
Because the abounding light of Heaven obscures
Our helpless reason, blinds our keenest thoughts,
Buries our faith, and overlays the will,
And through its dim confusing splendour gives
Some joyous cognizance of Things Divine,
Places and Persons, Names and Vocal Sounds,—
Till in her Passive Union with her Lord
The soul, long waiting, years ago betrothed,
Keeping her plighted troth by strictest acts
Of diligent penance and ascetic love,
Finds her sweet Bridal Hour come unawares,
And Heaven begun ere Earth is passed away!
335
Compassed Affirmative Truths, which lay distinct,
In several orders lucidly combined,
And tangible by thought if not by words.
Then finally his soul was introduced
To that Clear Darkness, which the Saints so name
Because the abounding light of Heaven obscures
Our helpless reason, blinds our keenest thoughts,
Buries our faith, and overlays the will,
And through its dim confusing splendour gives
Some joyous cognizance of Things Divine,
Places and Persons, Names and Vocal Sounds,—
Till in her Passive Union with her Lord
The soul, long waiting, years ago betrothed,
Keeping her plighted troth by strictest acts
Of diligent penance and ascetic love,
Finds her sweet Bridal Hour come unawares,
And Heaven begun ere Earth is passed away!
Such were the joys that now engrossed the months
Which followed his forgiveness by the Church,
Joys, which in that forgiveness only found
Their lawful root; and every passing week
Beheld a change come o'er his bodily frame.
We might believe it was the will of Heaven
By its immediate and upholding Hand,
Foregoing usual customs, to confine
The life within his frame, where health and strength
Their strongholds had forsaken and betrayed,
Until the work of grace was now complete,
The penance done, the sinner reconciled,
The individual soul, with travail long
And dark and dubious, born unto the Church
A second time with new baptismal life
From out that cloudy Font, by love reserved
For such as forfeited by mortal sin
The sweet adoption of the Watery Birth,
And facile grace so freely there consigned.
Which followed his forgiveness by the Church,
Joys, which in that forgiveness only found
Their lawful root; and every passing week
Beheld a change come o'er his bodily frame.
We might believe it was the will of Heaven
By its immediate and upholding Hand,
Foregoing usual customs, to confine
The life within his frame, where health and strength
Their strongholds had forsaken and betrayed,
Until the work of grace was now complete,
The penance done, the sinner reconciled,
The individual soul, with travail long
And dark and dubious, born unto the Church
A second time with new baptismal life
From out that cloudy Font, by love reserved
336
The sweet adoption of the Watery Birth,
And facile grace so freely there consigned.
For now without apparent cause of age
Or sickness, as if that sustaining Hand
Had been withdrawn, by some invisible vents
His life ebbed from him gently like a stream.
Prayer and the feeble breathings of his praise,
The weariness of rapture in his heart
Immured, the speechless fervour of his joy,
The very murmurs of the placid sea,
The very tolling of the abbey bells,
The very pulses of the summer day,
The very tingling of the starry nights,
Preyed on his life, and seemed with silent shocks
To disembarrass his impatient soul
Of its half ruined tenement of flesh.
Some portion of his perishable life
Now daily grew eternal: no one hour
Straitened or held the solemn act of death:
But immortality in vases caught
His life as it was spilled, a silent scene
Of mystery: the ocean never ebbed
So silently as did that vital stream.
Or sickness, as if that sustaining Hand
Had been withdrawn, by some invisible vents
His life ebbed from him gently like a stream.
Prayer and the feeble breathings of his praise,
The weariness of rapture in his heart
Immured, the speechless fervour of his joy,
The very murmurs of the placid sea,
The very tolling of the abbey bells,
The very pulses of the summer day,
The very tingling of the starry nights,
Preyed on his life, and seemed with silent shocks
To disembarrass his impatient soul
Of its half ruined tenement of flesh.
Some portion of his perishable life
Now daily grew eternal: no one hour
Straitened or held the solemn act of death:
But immortality in vases caught
His life as it was spilled, a silent scene
Of mystery: the ocean never ebbed
So silently as did that vital stream.
Towards the close of an October day,
St. Denys' Eve, which seemed for warmth to be
An afterthought of summer, from that Seat
Within the stone alcove Sir Lancelot watched
The bright and early sunset: all around
A soft pathetic brilliance overspread
The autumnal scene, such splendour as befits
The days which through the immediate gates of night
Withdraw, and earth her welcome hour no more
Within the roseate antechamber waits
Of painted twilight. Not a sound was heard,
Which intercepted from the listening ear
The deep tranquillity of earth, and sky,
And the bright plain of sea: a drowsy hum
From the faint ivy-flowers that fringed the wall,—
The autumnal banquet of the languid bees,—
A quickening in the murmur of the waves
From Walney Meetings where the clashing tides
Are locked in mutual eddies,—these were sounds
With no intrusive power to dispossess
The patient sense of that celestial calm.
St. Denys' Eve, which seemed for warmth to be
An afterthought of summer, from that Seat
Within the stone alcove Sir Lancelot watched
The bright and early sunset: all around
A soft pathetic brilliance overspread
The autumnal scene, such splendour as befits
The days which through the immediate gates of night
Withdraw, and earth her welcome hour no more
Within the roseate antechamber waits
337
Which intercepted from the listening ear
The deep tranquillity of earth, and sky,
And the bright plain of sea: a drowsy hum
From the faint ivy-flowers that fringed the wall,—
The autumnal banquet of the languid bees,—
A quickening in the murmur of the waves
From Walney Meetings where the clashing tides
Are locked in mutual eddies,—these were sounds
With no intrusive power to dispossess
The patient sense of that celestial calm.
The wooded hill sloped seaward from the brow
Where the Monk's Chair was placed: a broad expanse
Of tinted foliage lay upon the right;
A wilderness of yellow birch it was
With vivid searlet delicately veined
Or spotted, as the birds had dropped the seed
Of the wild cherry whose ensanguined leaves
Flamed in the sunset, while the fir-tree domes
Of everlasting green came floating up,
Like clouds, from out the depths of underwood.
Westward, but with a radiant strait between,
The Isle of Walney to the sandy skirts
Of the low mainland clung, a counterscarp
By nature reared against the leaning sea
To guard the monks' peninsula, and then,
Though treeless now, it was a wall of wood
That from the water rose, and ever fell
Eastward, or in the act of falling seemed,
With such continuous pressure was the hand
Of the wild-blowing west detained thereon.
And down the glittering channel was an eye
Of golden sand, a smooth and wave-girt ring,
Surmounted by a coronet of rock,
The shoal of Fouldrey, where the flocking gulls
With mournful cries their nightly councils held,
For human habitation then unclaimed.
There now, its age of pride and glory past,
In slow decay the abbot's mouldering pile
Fights with the winds and waves, the rude allies
Of time, and still their joint assaults resists.
A touching solitude it is, beheld
Through the grey sea-fogs looming, like the wreck
Of some huge ship to those who roam far off
In Furness by the Druid's hoary ring
On Birkrigg, or the groves of Aldingham,
Or heights that guard fair Urswick's reedy pool,
The quiet haunt of silky-feathered coots,
Or those who try the perilous ascent
Of Gleaston's crazy towers;—more mournful still
That isolated ruin will appear,
When in the cold illumination lost
Of sunset, on the line of sandhills poured
And dreary leagues of wet and furrowed beach,
With some poor fishing vessels laid aslant
Among the slimy stones beneath the pile:
Or at full sea more melancholy still,
At dead of night, when on the waves below
The moonbeams through the vacant crennels play
In tremulous agitation, while for hours
Doth ocean, like Penelope of old,
Weave and unweave those threads of silver light,
And at pale dawn upon the watery loom
Where be the signs of that nocturnal toil?
Where the Monk's Chair was placed: a broad expanse
Of tinted foliage lay upon the right;
A wilderness of yellow birch it was
With vivid searlet delicately veined
Or spotted, as the birds had dropped the seed
Of the wild cherry whose ensanguined leaves
Flamed in the sunset, while the fir-tree domes
Of everlasting green came floating up,
Like clouds, from out the depths of underwood.
Westward, but with a radiant strait between,
The Isle of Walney to the sandy skirts
Of the low mainland clung, a counterscarp
By nature reared against the leaning sea
To guard the monks' peninsula, and then,
Though treeless now, it was a wall of wood
That from the water rose, and ever fell
Eastward, or in the act of falling seemed,
With such continuous pressure was the hand
Of the wild-blowing west detained thereon.
And down the glittering channel was an eye
Of golden sand, a smooth and wave-girt ring,
338
The shoal of Fouldrey, where the flocking gulls
With mournful cries their nightly councils held,
For human habitation then unclaimed.
There now, its age of pride and glory past,
In slow decay the abbot's mouldering pile
Fights with the winds and waves, the rude allies
Of time, and still their joint assaults resists.
A touching solitude it is, beheld
Through the grey sea-fogs looming, like the wreck
Of some huge ship to those who roam far off
In Furness by the Druid's hoary ring
On Birkrigg, or the groves of Aldingham,
Or heights that guard fair Urswick's reedy pool,
The quiet haunt of silky-feathered coots,
Or those who try the perilous ascent
Of Gleaston's crazy towers;—more mournful still
That isolated ruin will appear,
When in the cold illumination lost
Of sunset, on the line of sandhills poured
And dreary leagues of wet and furrowed beach,
With some poor fishing vessels laid aslant
Among the slimy stones beneath the pile:
Or at full sea more melancholy still,
At dead of night, when on the waves below
The moonbeams through the vacant crennels play
In tremulous agitation, while for hours
Doth ocean, like Penelope of old,
Weave and unweave those threads of silver light,
And at pale dawn upon the watery loom
Where be the signs of that nocturnal toil?
All things around their usual aspect wore,
An exquisite, and yet most common, peace.
But there was something in that evening sky,
A trouble of red light, that would arrest
And overawe the heart whose varying moods
By natural signs through simple love were steered.
Somewhat of pathos was there, intermixed
In that solemnity with which the sun
Went to his setting, something I would call
Portentous, that might tranquillize the mind
Through timorous expectation.
An exquisite, and yet most common, peace.
But there was something in that evening sky,
339
And overawe the heart whose varying moods
By natural signs through simple love were steered.
Somewhat of pathos was there, intermixed
In that solemnity with which the sun
Went to his setting, something I would call
Portentous, that might tranquillize the mind
Through timorous expectation.
From his chair
Sir Lancelot looked out upon the sea.
The sun was veiled behind a heavy cloud,
Which hung above the water with a space
Of light between the ocean and itself,
That seemed to burn with tongues of shooting flame,
An endless, endless distance to the west;
And sable bars of dusky vapour shot
Athwart the abyss of gold, while up the vale,
The hollow vale of Duddon, in a gloom
Of misty purple shadow far withdrawn,
There ran a single line of sullen light
Where the cold sea an entrance found, and there
Behind the frowning portals of the gorge
Was lost to view; even as the closing grave
Screens from all eyes, save only those of faith,
The track where passing souls prolong their flight:
A melancholy type, not unobserved
By him whose mind for many a month had been
Tinged with the solemn thoughts of death. And yet
There wanted not a truer image far
Of that dread passage, in the glory stretched
Across the infinite illumined sea,
And in the golden mountain-tops that formed
The radiant distance where old Mona lay
Right in the bosom of the setting sun.
Sir Lancelot looked out upon the sea.
The sun was veiled behind a heavy cloud,
Which hung above the water with a space
Of light between the ocean and itself,
That seemed to burn with tongues of shooting flame,
An endless, endless distance to the west;
And sable bars of dusky vapour shot
Athwart the abyss of gold, while up the vale,
The hollow vale of Duddon, in a gloom
Of misty purple shadow far withdrawn,
There ran a single line of sullen light
Where the cold sea an entrance found, and there
Behind the frowning portals of the gorge
Was lost to view; even as the closing grave
Screens from all eyes, save only those of faith,
The track where passing souls prolong their flight:
A melancholy type, not unobserved
By him whose mind for many a month had been
Tinged with the solemn thoughts of death. And yet
There wanted not a truer image far
Of that dread passage, in the glory stretched
Across the infinite illumined sea,
And in the golden mountain-tops that formed
The radiant distance where old Mona lay
Right in the bosom of the setting sun.
340
He looked until his eyes were dimmed with tears,
Such thoughts that glory stirred; and bodily strength
Appeared to go forth from him as he gazed,
Drained from his eyes by that surpassing light
Whose sweet compulsion had drawn up those tears.
It seemed as if that natural pomp had been
A silent incantation which had power
To evoke the spirit from its earthly frame,
Worn and decayed by too much fellowship
With the outward elements, and wet and cold
And blinding mists that on high summits dwell:
Though he had stood amongst them like the rock
That fronts the innocuous fury of the waves,
And, to appearance, flung the damps and storms
From off his temperate health as from a shield.
Now with the radiant vision overpowered,
Sir Lancelot leaned, half swooning, on his staff,
Which was an ill-shaped Cross of ruddy yew
By nature framed, through chance or through design,
As men may deem material forms endowed
With spirit, and capricious growths o'er-ruled
To be suggestive to the feeling heart;
And on the staff the knight from Holy Writ,
A Latin legend carved, whose import was—
`We justly bear the Cross because therein
`We bear the harvest of our deeds, but nought
‘Was done amiss by Him who bore it first.’
Such thoughts that glory stirred; and bodily strength
Appeared to go forth from him as he gazed,
Drained from his eyes by that surpassing light
Whose sweet compulsion had drawn up those tears.
It seemed as if that natural pomp had been
A silent incantation which had power
To evoke the spirit from its earthly frame,
Worn and decayed by too much fellowship
With the outward elements, and wet and cold
And blinding mists that on high summits dwell:
Though he had stood amongst them like the rock
That fronts the innocuous fury of the waves,
And, to appearance, flung the damps and storms
From off his temperate health as from a shield.
Now with the radiant vision overpowered,
Sir Lancelot leaned, half swooning, on his staff,
Which was an ill-shaped Cross of ruddy yew
By nature framed, through chance or through design,
As men may deem material forms endowed
With spirit, and capricious growths o'er-ruled
To be suggestive to the feeling heart;
And on the staff the knight from Holy Writ,
A Latin legend carved, whose import was—
`We justly bear the Cross because therein
`We bear the harvest of our deeds, but nought
‘Was done amiss by Him who bore it first.’
From the sea-shore there wandered at that hour
A poor half-witted boy, with long white hair
And eyes with wild unmeaning lustre bright,
Well known in Furness as the Lucky Guy.
His days, as ever seems to be the wont
Of those in his sad plight, in open air
Among the woods and flowery lanes were passed.
Nor wanted he an office that might yield
To his poor parents some return of gain,
Beyond the dole which at the abbey door
On Fridays he received, when Father Hugh
Gave him his blessing, and with kindly thought,
Long baffled, showed him how to sign the Cross.
Oft in the fields near Hawcoat was he seen
In the close centre of a hollow bush,
With head and hands apparent, and a ring
Of eager sheep that gathered round the spot,
While he flung down the juicy shoots, and peered
From out his nest to watch the greedy strife,
And clapped his hands, and with a shrill delight
Chuckled to see the passions that displaced
The quiet nature of the patient flock.
And many a time did his pleased mother hear
The neighbours round good-naturedly complain
That Guy with covetous diligence was first
To rifle all the summer's tender growth
Upon the trees, and at the halls and towers
From Morecambe Bay to Ulpha, and the Grange
By Waberthwaite, where dwelt St. Michael's clerk,
While flesh of sheep on sprigs of holly fed
More than the fatted buck was prized, the flock
Of Guy's own tending was the most in quest.
And when the vexed Atlantic after storms
Subsided to its heavy swell, a toil
Of different sort was his, upon the shore
To cull the fans of rosy carrageen,
Which from the Irish rocks the fretting tide
Had chafed, and, with a single handful rich,
The booty of a long day's search he then
To Father Jocelyn at the Abbey sold,
Who by his ghostly blessing turned it white,
So Guy believed, and in the holy hands
Of that pure-hearted lover of the herbs
And the cool simples, that poor ocean weed
An angel held and gained a wondrous power,
As Paul of Elliscales could well attest,
Or Cicely of the farm on Goldmire Green,
To banish pining weakness from the limbs
And prop the body up as on a staff.
A poor half-witted boy, with long white hair
And eyes with wild unmeaning lustre bright,
Well known in Furness as the Lucky Guy.
His days, as ever seems to be the wont
Of those in his sad plight, in open air
341
Nor wanted he an office that might yield
To his poor parents some return of gain,
Beyond the dole which at the abbey door
On Fridays he received, when Father Hugh
Gave him his blessing, and with kindly thought,
Long baffled, showed him how to sign the Cross.
Oft in the fields near Hawcoat was he seen
In the close centre of a hollow bush,
With head and hands apparent, and a ring
Of eager sheep that gathered round the spot,
While he flung down the juicy shoots, and peered
From out his nest to watch the greedy strife,
And clapped his hands, and with a shrill delight
Chuckled to see the passions that displaced
The quiet nature of the patient flock.
And many a time did his pleased mother hear
The neighbours round good-naturedly complain
That Guy with covetous diligence was first
To rifle all the summer's tender growth
Upon the trees, and at the halls and towers
From Morecambe Bay to Ulpha, and the Grange
By Waberthwaite, where dwelt St. Michael's clerk,
While flesh of sheep on sprigs of holly fed
More than the fatted buck was prized, the flock
Of Guy's own tending was the most in quest.
And when the vexed Atlantic after storms
Subsided to its heavy swell, a toil
Of different sort was his, upon the shore
To cull the fans of rosy carrageen,
Which from the Irish rocks the fretting tide
Had chafed, and, with a single handful rich,
The booty of a long day's search he then
To Father Jocelyn at the Abbey sold,
342
So Guy believed, and in the holy hands
Of that pure-hearted lover of the herbs
And the cool simples, that poor ocean weed
An angel held and gained a wondrous power,
As Paul of Elliscales could well attest,
Or Cicely of the farm on Goldmire Green,
To banish pining weakness from the limbs
And prop the body up as on a staff.
Next to his mother there was none on earth,
Save Father Hugh perchance, whom Guy had loved
More than Sir Lancelot, in the three short months
Of their acquaintance; for the boy discerned
Between the greeting of the rustics pitched
Somewhere 'twixt mirth and kindness, and the voice
And gentle bearing of the well-born Knight;
Who oft would aid him when upon the sand
With painful stoop he gleaned the precious weed,
While to the wonder-stricken youth he spoke
Of the Great God upon that blank sea-side
In ways that bred a pleasurable awe
And inward stirring of his thoughts, which was
Akin to reason, and enough for prayer.
Save Father Hugh perchance, whom Guy had loved
More than Sir Lancelot, in the three short months
Of their acquaintance; for the boy discerned
Between the greeting of the rustics pitched
Somewhere 'twixt mirth and kindness, and the voice
And gentle bearing of the well-born Knight;
Who oft would aid him when upon the sand
With painful stoop he gleaned the precious weed,
While to the wonder-stricken youth he spoke
Of the Great God upon that blank sea-side
In ways that bred a pleasurable awe
And inward stirring of his thoughts, which was
Akin to reason, and enough for prayer.
When Guy beheld Sir Lancelot on his staff
In attitude of pain or awkward sleep,
He dropped his bunch of carrageen, and raised
The feeble man against the stone alcove.
Sir Lancelot spoke not, but he smiled his thanks,
And gazed once more upon the setting sun.
The orb now rested on the burnished waves
Alone and disencumbered, not a mote
Of fleecy cloud in transit o'er its face.
And from the sunken vale behind there rose
In bland pulsations on the quiet air
Saint Mary's vesper bell; toll after toll
In modulated melancholy came,
Borne seaward on the breeze: and simple Guy
Who saw the sinking sun, the dying man,
And heard the plaining bell, not wrongly deemed
All meant alike, all were harmonious parts
Of some most touching pageant, for the love
Of God and Jesus celebrated there.
Still the Knight gazed upon the setting sun:
It seemed as if from out that radiant fount
He quaffed the golden light with thirsty sense,
So earnestly he gazed, till like a tide,
An influx of eternity, it rose
Upon his mortal nature more and more
With placid might, until from every depth
Of his terrestrial being it dislodged
The feeble remnants of his strength, and thence
With bodily thrills of deep adoring love
The spirit from its trammels disengaged:
And while he sank in that poor stripling's arms,
His hands devoutly on his bosom crossed,
'Twas rather immortality than death
Which was the first to win his life. He passed,
A passage painless as the gates of sleep,
A wafture like an Angel's even wing,
What time the vesper summons ceased to toll
And with its last vibration o'er the sea
Ran till it touched the silent thrilling orb,—
Whereat the latest rim of setting sun
Paused—and went down beneath the line of waves,—
And with an after-flash that shot on high
Seemed like an Arm of Light that beckoned him;—
No soul was e'er more gently dispossessed!
In attitude of pain or awkward sleep,
He dropped his bunch of carrageen, and raised
The feeble man against the stone alcove.
Sir Lancelot spoke not, but he smiled his thanks,
And gazed once more upon the setting sun.
The orb now rested on the burnished waves
Alone and disencumbered, not a mote
Of fleecy cloud in transit o'er its face.
And from the sunken vale behind there rose
In bland pulsations on the quiet air
343
In modulated melancholy came,
Borne seaward on the breeze: and simple Guy
Who saw the sinking sun, the dying man,
And heard the plaining bell, not wrongly deemed
All meant alike, all were harmonious parts
Of some most touching pageant, for the love
Of God and Jesus celebrated there.
Still the Knight gazed upon the setting sun:
It seemed as if from out that radiant fount
He quaffed the golden light with thirsty sense,
So earnestly he gazed, till like a tide,
An influx of eternity, it rose
Upon his mortal nature more and more
With placid might, until from every depth
Of his terrestrial being it dislodged
The feeble remnants of his strength, and thence
With bodily thrills of deep adoring love
The spirit from its trammels disengaged:
And while he sank in that poor stripling's arms,
His hands devoutly on his bosom crossed,
'Twas rather immortality than death
Which was the first to win his life. He passed,
A passage painless as the gates of sleep,
A wafture like an Angel's even wing,
What time the vesper summons ceased to toll
And with its last vibration o'er the sea
Ran till it touched the silent thrilling orb,—
Whereat the latest rim of setting sun
Paused—and went down beneath the line of waves,—
And with an after-flash that shot on high
Seemed like an Arm of Light that beckoned him;—
No soul was e'er more gently dispossessed!
344
How tranquilly the mild sea-murmur comes
This balmy day to try the echoing tones
Of great Black Combe! A tender voice it is,
And with sweet feeling doth accompany
The wind, that wild and wayward organist
Who o'er the huge sonorous hill presides,
And ever plays to yon responsive sea
Low dirgelike music; or with troubled keys
Loud voluntaries, passionately struck,
Ruffle the mane of ocean as the storm
Rolls upward, winding his terrific blast
Which frets the purple plain with snowy spray.
But now, methinks, in tender concert joined,
The shadowy Mountain with its neighbouring Sea
Would fain essay on my behalf a dirge,
A requiem for the lone Sir Lancelot,—
That wandering Presence unforgotten yet
Upon the silent summit of the hill,
Late, at the truthful bidding of my thoughts,
So oft environed by his restless feet,
So often vocal with his prayer or praise.
This balmy day to try the echoing tones
Of great Black Combe! A tender voice it is,
And with sweet feeling doth accompany
The wind, that wild and wayward organist
Who o'er the huge sonorous hill presides,
And ever plays to yon responsive sea
Low dirgelike music; or with troubled keys
Loud voluntaries, passionately struck,
Ruffle the mane of ocean as the storm
Rolls upward, winding his terrific blast
Which frets the purple plain with snowy spray.
But now, methinks, in tender concert joined,
The shadowy Mountain with its neighbouring Sea
Would fain essay on my behalf a dirge,
A requiem for the lone Sir Lancelot,—
That wandering Presence unforgotten yet
Upon the silent summit of the hill,
Late, at the truthful bidding of my thoughts,
So oft environed by his restless feet,
So often vocal with his prayer or praise.
Spirit! in whose companionship my mind
For days of meditative love hath been,
O with what true compassion have I burned
For thine invented griefs, with what a heart
Of sympathy have I been wrought to tears,
And to hot rising thoughts more sharp than tears,
In musing o'er thy weariness, thy months
Of self-accusing penance, and thy joys,—
The sacred Image granted to thine eye
Of Jesus, and the timorous approach
Of thine affections to the Mother Maid,
The ritual Cross, and depth of sacrament
Laid up unheeded in the common gift
Of speech whereby we name the special Name
Which stirs high Heaven and shakes the bolts of hell,
The Keys of Absolution in thy soul
Revolving sensibly, the vocal Dead
Into sweet contact coming with thy prayers,
The Angelic Ladders which to thy pure eye
Broke forth, obscuring all the solemn types
Of things inanimate, and blossoming
In steplike forms and luminous ascents
From out the apparent poverty of earth!
For days of meditative love hath been,
O with what true compassion have I burned
For thine invented griefs, with what a heart
Of sympathy have I been wrought to tears,
And to hot rising thoughts more sharp than tears,
In musing o'er thy weariness, thy months
Of self-accusing penance, and thy joys,—
The sacred Image granted to thine eye
Of Jesus, and the timorous approach
Of thine affections to the Mother Maid,
The ritual Cross, and depth of sacrament
Laid up unheeded in the common gift
345
Which stirs high Heaven and shakes the bolts of hell,
The Keys of Absolution in thy soul
Revolving sensibly, the vocal Dead
Into sweet contact coming with thy prayers,
The Angelic Ladders which to thy pure eye
Broke forth, obscuring all the solemn types
Of things inanimate, and blossoming
In steplike forms and luminous ascents
From out the apparent poverty of earth!
Witness, ye cornices of mountain rock!
Where I have murmured verses by the hour,
Ye winds! on which my voice hath oft been raised
With tremulous feeling, and, ye waterfalls!
Which interwove your music with my strains;—
Witness, thou quiet-lapsing Nen, and fields
Belted with silent steeples, like a ring
Of citadels to keep low thoughts away,—
Choice haunt of rural silence, undisturbed
Save by the infrequent boatman's song, or plaint,
For let us not misname it noisy mirth,
Of corncrake, its monotonous vespers singing,
In the concealment of the meadow-grass!—
Or those much-cherished colonists, a pair
Of turtle-doves, with their soft woodland notes
Deepening so unaccountably the calm,
The summer-calm of those most pastoral banks!—
Witness, if with unfeeling pains of art,
Or if with idle purpose I have sung
This lofty song, or dared to press the keys
Of spiritual music with an awe
Less deep than that wherewith a serious man
Upon a week-day in an empty Church
Bids the loud organ speak, and calls the stones
To echo worship when the lips of men
Are silent, and, with frequent change of tune,
Oft like hushed breezes sinking self-subdued,
Plays to the Altar and the Angels there!
Where I have murmured verses by the hour,
Ye winds! on which my voice hath oft been raised
With tremulous feeling, and, ye waterfalls!
Which interwove your music with my strains;—
Witness, thou quiet-lapsing Nen, and fields
Belted with silent steeples, like a ring
Of citadels to keep low thoughts away,—
Choice haunt of rural silence, undisturbed
Save by the infrequent boatman's song, or plaint,
For let us not misname it noisy mirth,
Of corncrake, its monotonous vespers singing,
In the concealment of the meadow-grass!—
Or those much-cherished colonists, a pair
Of turtle-doves, with their soft woodland notes
Deepening so unaccountably the calm,
The summer-calm of those most pastoral banks!—
Witness, if with unfeeling pains of art,
Or if with idle purpose I have sung
This lofty song, or dared to press the keys
Of spiritual music with an awe
Less deep than that wherewith a serious man
Upon a week-day in an empty Church
Bids the loud organ speak, and calls the stones
346
Are silent, and, with frequent change of tune,
Oft like hushed breezes sinking self-subdued,
Plays to the Altar and the Angels there!
Spirit! which I have summoned from the Past,
(Freedom perchance too bold) and singled out
From the great multitude of souls who lie
Deep in the bosom of eternal light,
Not without purpose have I dared to think,
To speak, for those of that departed Age,
Investing them through thee with such a light
As hath to mine own conscience been a lamp,
And might enlarge the hearts of those I love,
If God so further mine unworthy verse.
(Freedom perchance too bold) and singled out
From the great multitude of souls who lie
Deep in the bosom of eternal light,
Not without purpose have I dared to think,
To speak, for those of that departed Age,
Investing them through thee with such a light
As hath to mine own conscience been a lamp,
And might enlarge the hearts of those I love,
If God so further mine unworthy verse.
So have I sung as one who greatly fears
Lest the uncouth aspect of his real wish,
And urgent clamour of bold words, should scare
The hearts he fain would lure unto an end,
A mighty end whose safety and whose strength
He hath to his own conscience ascertained
By inward thought, the test of outward act,
And secret anguish of some dreadful hours
That leaned their weight on one most feeble truth,
Torturing the firmness which they could not break.
And if at times the pressure of a thought,
Rumours of actual conflict, or the wound
Of personal strife, have rent the figured veil,
And from its hidden course the indignant song,
Weary of its disguise, hath broken forth,
With the shrill Present drowning those soft strains
Which came refined by distance from the Past,
The very fault in minstrel-craft but serves
To make the surface of my song reflect,
Even as the unconscious mirror of a lake,
The shadows of the times, when hardy truth,
By poor conventions overlaid, hath dared
To emerge above the impediments, and stand
Before the unwilling presence of the world,
Through deeds which for the moment have appeared
To shift the ancient bounds of right and wrong,—
Times when the strife 'twixt Earnestness and Forms
Hath reached its height, and victory's golden beam
Inclines, but hath not absolutely sunk.
Lest the uncouth aspect of his real wish,
And urgent clamour of bold words, should scare
The hearts he fain would lure unto an end,
A mighty end whose safety and whose strength
He hath to his own conscience ascertained
By inward thought, the test of outward act,
And secret anguish of some dreadful hours
That leaned their weight on one most feeble truth,
Torturing the firmness which they could not break.
And if at times the pressure of a thought,
Rumours of actual conflict, or the wound
Of personal strife, have rent the figured veil,
And from its hidden course the indignant song,
Weary of its disguise, hath broken forth,
With the shrill Present drowning those soft strains
Which came refined by distance from the Past,
The very fault in minstrel-craft but serves
To make the surface of my song reflect,
Even as the unconscious mirror of a lake,
347
By poor conventions overlaid, hath dared
To emerge above the impediments, and stand
Before the unwilling presence of the world,
Through deeds which for the moment have appeared
To shift the ancient bounds of right and wrong,—
Times when the strife 'twixt Earnestness and Forms
Hath reached its height, and victory's golden beam
Inclines, but hath not absolutely sunk.
O Hearts of England! loyal, good and true,
Lovers of home beyond all other men,
Yet without homes for your uncertain souls,—
Forgive me, if from out my happy home
Of faith that hath forgotten how to doubt,
In hopeful love one counsel more I give.
Simplicity is ever nigh to Truth,
And hath a royal road thereto,—a road
Better than long inductions, and the lore
Of coarse disdainful polemics, and steps,
Hardly and separately won, of proofs
And disentangled doubts,—a royal road
Which if ye humbly tread, why should ye fear
Though Conscience with infallible constraints,
Turning your faces homeward, bring your steps
Back to the foot of Peter's Sovran Chair?
Lovers of home beyond all other men,
Yet without homes for your uncertain souls,—
Forgive me, if from out my happy home
Of faith that hath forgotten how to doubt,
In hopeful love one counsel more I give.
Simplicity is ever nigh to Truth,
And hath a royal road thereto,—a road
Better than long inductions, and the lore
Of coarse disdainful polemics, and steps,
Hardly and separately won, of proofs
And disentangled doubts,—a royal road
Which if ye humbly tread, why should ye fear
Though Conscience with infallible constraints,
Turning your faces homeward, bring your steps
Back to the foot of Peter's Sovran Chair?
| Sir Lancelot | |