Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

I stood before the vail of the Unknown,
And round me in this life's dim theatre
Was gathered a whole townsfolk, all astir
With various interludes: I watched alone,
And saw a great hand lift the vail, then shone,
Descending from the innermost expanse,
A goddess to whose eyes my heart at once
Flew up with awe and love, a love full-blown.

Naked and white she was, her fire-girt hair
Eddied on either side her straight high head,
Swaddled within her arms in lambent flame,
An unborn life, a child-soul, did she bear,
And laid it on a young wife's breast and fled,
Yet no one wondered whence the strange gift came!

II
DEATH.

Again that stage was vacant, that dusk crowd
Was murmuring as before: again that hand
Gathered the curtain; I saw rise and stand
Against the inmost blackness like a cloud,
No feature seen, but o'er his brows a proud
Spiked crown that held the thick mist clothing him,
A strong imperious creature, tall and slim,
And hateful too, thus hid within that shroud.

Stooping he raised within his long thin arms
A scared old man and rolled him up, and fled:
And all the crowd shrieked out, and muttering charms,
Threw down their fiddle-bows and merchandise,—
Around the stark corpse knelt with suppliant cries,
Nor ceased still wondering where was gone—the dead!

III
LIFE.

Young men and maidens, darkling, pair by pair,
Travelled a road cut through an ancient wood:
It was a twilight in a warm land, good
To dwell in; the path rose up like a stair,
And yet they never ceased, nor sat down there;
Above them shone brief glimpses of blue sky,
Between the black boughs plumed funereally,
Before them was a faint light, faint but fair.

Onward they walked, onward I with them went,
Expecting some thrice-welcome home would show
A hospitable board, and baths and rest;
But still we looked in vain all hopes were spent,
No home appeared; and still they onward go,
I too, footweary traveller, toward the West.

IV
GAIN AND LOSS.

Oft-times we consummate our fond desires,
Nor seldom does the strong man seize his prize,
But ere that day comes expectation dies;
Fruition is not like what Hope inspires,
No more than are the ashes like the fires
That shed them: when we start upon the road,
Arcadia blooms somewhere, the blest abode
Of nymphs and perfect men, till, by surprise,
Noon strikes the bell, and all around remains
The same sad commonplace; nor are we grieved,
Our staff unworn, our scrip with numerous gains
Refilled,—with Patience, cleansed eyes undeceived,
Silence of heart, meekness to match our fate;
Experience guides us on, but shuts the golden gate.

V
LOOKING FORWARD.

How very strangely are these travellers made!
Happily with no choice but still to live,
Weaving and shaping, so to be arrayed,
Crying to nature, Stay! to fate, Give, give!
Still hastening towards to-morrow, when to-day
Fails to bring forth, from its too numerous toils
And manifold emotions, those great spoils
Wherewith to build a tower of strength and stay
Reaching to heaven. Alas! we only find
To-morrow like to-day, with the same sky,
Silent and blue, silent and dark and high;
The only changes, thunder, storm, and wind:
And round us rise still, darkening all the air,
Groves we have reared, that only blossoms bear.

VI
HOPE DEFERRED.

Courage of heart and hand, Faith first of all:
Such is the prayer of the perplexèd man,
As the storm-scattered blossoms round him fall,
And shrinking from the rod and from the ban
Of starless chance. Prayer prompted by desires
For mastery and godhead sense denies,
And by sky-pointing mediæval spires,
Symbols of creeds the beaten hound still tries
To shelter under in this pilgrimage,
Passing from birth to death. But let us hear
What Nature, cruel mother! says so sage,—
Still listening if perchance gods interfere—
‘Gain faith and courage through self-harmony,
And live your lives, nor only live to die.’

VII
FAITH.

‘Follow Me,’ Jesus said; and they uprose,
Peter and Andrew rose and followed Him,
Followed Him even to heaven through death most grim,
And through a long hard life without repose,
Save in the grand ideal of its close.
‘Take up your cross and come with Me,’ He said;
And the world listens yet through all her dead,
And still would answer had we faith like those.

But who can light again such beacon-fire!
With gladsome haste and with rejoicing souls—
How would men gird themselves for the emprise?
Leaving their black boats by the dead lake's mire,
Leaving their slimy nets by the cold shoals,
Leaving their old oars, nor once turn their eyes.

VIII
AT PRESENT.

But what have we instead? Shelves, miles on miles
Of books, in all the tongues, from all the years
Since fabulous Babel's topless tower appears
Through the heroic mist: Museums, piles
Of fragments, dead faiths' and dead learnings' spoils:
And in the study, victory crowns the hair
Of our new Hercules, the young, the fair,
Analysis, untired for all his toils.

And what besides? the church bells ring at one
With custom as respect requires at home;
Abroad, in cap-and-bells their long ears pent,
Fools go on pilgrimage with knaves; at Rome
A blind, self-styled Infallible, old man,
Coaxes ‘God's mother’ with a monument!

IX
SELF-DECEPTION.

There's a Seēr's peak on Ararat, they say,
From which we can descry the better world;
Not that supernal kingdom whence were hurled
The rebel-angels ere Creation's day,
But Eden-garden, Adam's first array,
Round which the Flood-waves stood back like a wall,
And whither still are sent the souls of all
The good dead, where the cherubim sing and play.

Dear lovely land we wait for and desire,
Whence fondly-loved lost faces look back still,
Waiting for us, so distant and apart;
But from the depth between what mists aspire—
What wrinkled sea rolls severing hill from hill—
Vision! 'tis but a reflex of the heart!

X
CONTENTMENT IN THE DARK.

We asked not to be born: 'tis not by will
That we are here beneath the battle-smoke,
Without escape; by good things as by ill,
By facts and mysteries enchained: no cloak
Of an Elijah, no stairs whereupon
Angels ascending and descending shine
Over the head here pillowed on a stone,
Anywhere found;—so say they who repine.
But each year hath its harvest, every hour
Some melody, child-laughter, strengthening strife,
For mother Earth still gives her child his dower,
And loves like doves sit on the boughs of life.

Ought we to have whate'er we want, in sooth?
To build heaven-reaching towers, find Jacob's stair;
Alchemists' treasures, everlasting youth,
Or aught that may not stand our piercing air?

Nay, even these are ours, but only found
By Poet in those fabulous vales, due east,
Where grows the amaranth in charmèd ground;
And he it was thenceforth became the Priest,
And raised Jove's altar when the world was young:
He too it was, in Prophet's vesture stoled,
Spake not but sang until life's roof-tree rung,
And we who hear him still are crowned with gold.

XI
THE UNIVERSE VOID.

Revolving worlds, revolving systems, yea,
Revolving firmaments, nor there we end:
Systems of firmaments revolving, send
Our thought across the Infinite astray,
Gasping and lost and terrified, the day
Of life, the goodly interests of home,
Shrivelled to nothing; that unbounded dome
Pealing still on, in blind fatality.

No rest is there for our soul's wingèd feet,
She must return for shelter to her ark—
The body, fair, frail, death-born, incomplete,
And let her bring this truth back from the dark:
Life is self-centred, man is nature's god;
Space, time, are but the walls of his abode.

XII
SPIRITUAL LONGINGS UNANSWERED.

Self-centred, self-illumined, from our eyes
Life shines out on the spheres of other lives;
Giving, exchanging, filling sweet-celled hives
Of memory; sense transformed in heavenly wise
And made divine; do we not formalise
The Beautiful, the Good, the Just? and so
The flower-crowned loves and friendships round us grow,
Whose choral voices echo to the skies.

But still the questing beast goes forth, we cry
Whence came we at the first? from what soil grew
This endless Reason that aspires so high?
Where go we? useless questions these appear,
For we know nought of that dark sun, the True,
Whose latent heats create our spiritual year.

XIII
DEVELOPMENT IN NATURE.

Walled up in sense, we know no general plan:
Æons long past creative power went on,
Evolving lights and forces round the throne,
And in the ordered nucleus of the plan
Blossomed and brightened the umbrageous span
Of this our world, beneath the Fates' fell care,
The Tree of Life outspreading everywhere,
And seedling fruits from short-lived blooms began.

Have these old mysteries ceased? from fiery steeps,
From deepening swamps the mute snake writhed along;
Anon the bird screamed—then the furred beast creeps
Growling; then Adam speaks erect and strong.
Shall there not rise again from Nature's deeps
One more, whose voice shall be the perfect song?

XIV
SCIENCE ABORTIVE.

With what vain speculations do we slake
The mental thirst! What matter, cycles hence,
If higher creatures at mankind's expense
Start into life with senses broad awake
To truths we only dream of; hands to shake
The pillars of the temple we but grope
Feebly about, who will gain entrance, cope
With the dæmon, and all prison-fetters break?

The churchyard dust a thousand times blown wide
Would see them, hear them not; the question men
Ten hundred various creeds and gods have raised
To answer, by Death's door we must abide;
Blinded by life itself, by fears half-crazed,
We raise another god and ask again!

XV
ONENESS OF ALL.

(PEBBLES IN THE STREAM.)

upon this rustic bridge on this warm day
We rest from our too-thoughtful devious walk;
Over our shadows its melodious talk
The stream continues, while oft-times a stray
Dry leaf drops down where these bright waters play
In endless eddies, through whose clear brown deep
The gorgeous pebbles quiver in their sleep;
The stream still flows, but cannot flow away.

Could I but find the words that would reveal
The unity in multiplicity,
And the profound strange harmony I feel
With these dead things, God's garments of to-day;
The listener's soul with mine they would anneal,
And make us one within eternity.

XVI
A SYMBOL.

At early morn I watched, scarce consciously,
Through the half-opened casement the high screen
Of our trees touched now by the bright'ning sheen
Of the ascending sun: the room was grey
And dim, with old things filled this many a day,
Closing me in, but those thick folds of trees
Shone in the fresh light, trembled in the breeze:
A shadow crossed them on its arrowy way
Cast by a flying bird I could not see;
Then called a voice far off that seemed to say,
Come, we are here! Such might or might not be
What the voice called, but then methought I knew
I was a soul new-born in death's dark clay,
Awakening to another life more true.

END.