University of Virginia Library

Suddenly, softly, I awoke from sleep;
My lattice open to the morning sun,
Call of a distant cuckoo, lyric notes
Of many a voice, leaf-whispers.

May, once more,
Her dewy fragrant kiss, and all the love
It wakes us to,—a joyous, beauteous world!
Long shadows lying on the luminous grass;
The lilac's purple honeycombs enswathed
In freshest foliage; snowy pear-tree bloom;
Birds on our daisied lawn, or flitting swift
Through floating under boughs to elmtops fledged
Against the tenderly translucent sky;
And, through the leafage, glimpses of a realm
Of woodland slopes and vales, and distant hills
Of bright horizon. O the sweet old rapture!
May in my inmost soul awaking too.
This might be Earth's first morning, or the rise
Of that New Heav'n and Earth—

Ah pain! ah grief!
As happy wingèd thing afloat on air
Smit with a cruel pang, down-fluttering, drops,
My heart so fell—

They say “There is No God!”

Evil May-day, by my account. Long since,
Whispers of bale were rife; dark prophecies
And dim forebodings brought a passing qualm,
A momentary shiver; that was all;
As peradventure may a man have heard
Rumour of pestilence in Eastern lands,
Of little import: “creeping westward” next:
“Within our country's border” (this is grave):
And then a pause, time slides, the man has turn'd
To his affairs and pleasures; when one day
What's this the mirror shows him?—Heaven and Hell!
The plague-spot on his tongue! His lot is drawn.

Yes, look upon thy hands and touch thy head;
'Tis thou—that wakedst oft in other Mays,
Didst kneeling say thy pray'r, and look aloft
As into thy dear Father's face, and see
His handiwork all round thee, all done right:
The lilies of the field and the seven stars,
Beast, bird, and insect, and immortal Man.
“These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good!”—
“In wisdom hast Thou made them all.”

Poor fool!
Gaze round upon the flow'rs and grass and sunshine,
Bathe in their brightness, hear the senseless birds
Chatter and chirp, and be thou merry too.
All's but a dream; and why torment thyself?
—Because the plague is come. The bird is hit.
The dream is fled; and now I wake aghast.
I see this world a body without soul;
I see the flow'rs and greenery of May
A garland on a corpse. “There is No God.”

Nay, courage! let the fearful mood pass by.
Here is no plague. Behind those branching elms
Our shady lane winds to the village green,
Its ancient cottages, its ivied tower,
With graves of twenty generations. Hark!
The dial: sturdy Labour forth has trudged
With tools in hand; Age on his doorstep greets
The friendly radiance; Childhood swarms to school
And hums like bees in clover, till the song
Heartily rises; and our week moves round,
As weeks and years and centuries have moved,
Over this English village in its vale,
Secluded from the world,—not separate.
There goes the flutter of a distant train
Speeding to the great city full of men
And men's accumulated thought and work,
With ships from every sea along her wharves.
Art thou delirious? or wilt thou count
All this, insanity—the varied life
In fields and cities, work and worship and love,
Whate'er binds men together, linking past,
Present, and future—

O let be! let be!
No form of speech can do me any good,
My own or other men's devisal, fresh
As primrose, venerable as churchyard yew.
Having heard sentence pass'd, no other words
Can carry meaning; one brief dismal phrase
Knolls on the air—“No God!” and still—“No God!”

Pretence of continuity! talk, preach,
Write books; build cities, churches, monuments;
Patch up and varnish histories, pedigrees;
Take childish titles, worship toyshop crowns;
Sustain (save when alone or with a friend)
The masquerade of dignity; pass on
Old phrases, teach them to the children; make
Your little mark, or big, as one who scribes
Two letters, or full name, or date therewith,
Upon a tree, and dies, and in a while
The tree perishes also. Vain conceit!
Swim with me, fellow-bubbles, catch fine hues
And picture-like reflections, and then burst!
The swift stream flows, the shoreless sea of forms
Melting, reshaping, seeming (since our life
Is like a flash of lightning) permanent;
But rolling ever from darkness into darkness.
God was behind that darkness once;—that sea
His effluent power. But now, there is No God.

After the first sharp pain I wrote this down
To ease awhile my heart-ache. Count not these
But idle words; for since I wotted first
Of my own being, never grief like that.
“Able to soothe all sadness but despair”
The poet sang: no finest solaces
Had any comfort. Through the dismal time
I dragg'd from sleep to sleep, groaning the while,
As one sore-wounded drags from pause to pause;
And sleep was like a swoon, or else perturb'd
With shapeless terror.

But sleep grew more calm
(I know not when or how began the change)—
And all things with it; wind and wave went down,
And life took on its ordinary look
By slow gradations. All was as before?
Not so. I was not in perpetual pain;
Only half-paralysed. Month after month,
And after that sad year, another year,
And after this, another year: I went
And came and talk'd and laugh'd, like those around me:
Only I recollected now and then,
And shiver'd, whispering to myself “No God.”

No God, No Soul; they are the self-same thought.
And I, that think it, turning into mire
To-morrow or next year, I care not much
What may befall a race of things like me,
A little better luck, a little worse,
As each flits by and vanishes for ever.
To-morrow will be Nothing; and To-day
That leads to it, is Next to Nothing. Go!
Laugh, weep, do what you will, eat, drink, and die—
The sad old phrase found true.

Is't selfishness
Thus craves for God, that God may give us life
After this life? New life be as it may.
That irks me nothing. It is this my life
I would not lose, the life within this life.
And I have lost it, if there be No God.

Of all pathetic things the most is this—
A happy bright-eyed Child, some four years old,
Making acquaintance with man's common world.
Joy, wonder, eager questionings; anon
An anxious look, a swift and wide-eyed stare
At his dear Oracle; and merry laughs
And low contented songs made by himself
Are his; and youthful strange imaginings!
And sometimes you may see those innocent eyes
Fix'd in a meditative trance, the while
He strives to see some vaguest vapoury form
Of thought within him.

O this world of ours!

I am your Prophet, Priest, and Oracle,
My little Son; whatever I respond
Is fate. One only answer vexes you—
“I do not know.” You try and try again
For something better, and are ill-content.
But often must you hear those baffling words;
And often must you say them to yourself
When manhood, which you deem omniscient,
Is yours in turn,—is like what we have found.
O guard thee, Prophet, well, not to mislead
Thy neophyte! The dream, the phantasy
Thou puttest in his mind, is truth for him,
Until he finds it untrue. This young soul
Tremulous with wonder, curiosity,
Imagination, (look but in his face)
Drinks in the world through every joyful sense;
Sensation turns to thought and thought revives
Sensation in the memory; thus is built
The body of the mind by slow degrees,
With order'd imagery, with habitudes
Of movement; and the little world it lives in
Is its own making chiefly. All the while,
The great world lives around it, and includes
It with the rest of things. A word of mine,
Be it the emptiest breath, can take firm shape
In my son's world; the herald's animals,
Insert them in his natural-history book,
Were just as credible as any there;
Angel is no whit harder to conceive
Than eagle, and a Heaven above the clouds
(Reach'd by balloon perhaps) much easier
Than suns and planets and space without a bound.
Thou shalt not build a false world, little Son,
If skill of mine can sift the follies out
Men have mix'd up with everything. My care
Is less to teach than save thee from being taught
Half-truths and falsehoods in thy tender time.

Beware, my Son, of words! The Human Race
Hath stored its wisdom there, its errors there,
Mistakes and follies and duplicities.
Of words false gods are made, each doom'd at last
A worn-out idol to the lumber-loft
Or trim museum,—concourse wonderful,
Superb, grotesque, pathetic, and obscene!

Childhood will ask, “Who made all these things?” “God.”
“Where does God live?”—suppose I point and say,
“On that high mountain top”; my child regards
The peak with joyful awe; but one day climbs
And finds a barren frosty crag,—nor heeds
The wide spread glory of things encircling it.
He hears of Heaven above the clouds; his book
At school confutes it: starry heaven goes blank.
Words said to children can be only true,
Or not, in their direct and simple sense.
“At such and such a place, God walked with men;
They saw and heard Him; what he said and did
Is warrant for your duties and your hopes.”
The warm young spirit trustfully accepts,
Lies down, uprises, in a full belief,
From day to day, for many days and years,
Till one day comes the question, “Is this true?”
Nay, teach the plans, ways, character of God,
With Man's relations to Him thence deduced,
In any form of words you will: how fence
The fatal question out—“But is this true?”
The answer “No!” smites all truth to the ground,
The vine and prop together; Truth itself,
Immortal Truth, lies murder'd!

Foolishness,
Dishonesty and cowardice of men,
What bitter pain, what cruel wrongs ye breed!
As if our case were not perplex'd enough,
And troublesome enough, and sad enough,
But we must writhe in self-inflicted pangs!

But in the reign of Science you are born.
Theology, with pomp and riches yet,
Sits mumbling, droning, in his padded chair,
Gouty, asthmatic, ailing every way.
A young audacious voice rings through the land—
“Ask questions, men, where ye may hope reply
By gauge of human faculties, may test
Reply when found. First cause and final cause
In every case being out of reach, henceforth
Fix eye and thought upon the scrutable;
Travel, examine, and subdue throughout
The great domain of Science; step by step,
Link after link, trace, test, confirm and fix
The sequences of natural law; reduce
The complex to the simple; thus control,
So far as man may do so, human life,
The race itself; attain, whate'er it be,
No twilight Land of Dreams, Fool's Paradise,
Hid in a theologic labyrinth
Or metaphysic jungle. How sublime
In its simplicity, one single fact
In pure mechanic formula express'd,
(Shall it be call'd Vibration?—possibly)
And all phenomena its aspects merely!
This we shall find at last.”

And then? what then?
Are we at home henceforward in the world?
All comfortably settled in our minds,
Knowing the immortal truth—Vibration?
Shall we spoonfeed our babes on science-pap,
Till teeth find tougher work? train them to scan
The mechanism of all phenomena,
To measure and set it down in proper form,—
The ne plus ultra this, which cannot baulk?
Again I say, Beware of words, my Son.
Exact and systematic knowledge—good!
But now, of what? Of the true nature of things?
That is abjured. No step found possible
In that direction. Of phenomena?
“Surely.” But I deny it: very close
We peer, and make our atoms very small,
Yet after all 'tis but the coarser part
Of any one phenomenon of nature
Which we can measure and make record of.
Science is measurement, no more, no less,
Whatever sauce we add. Minds wholly fill'd
With Physical Science (and a fond conceit
That they alone know Nature) miss and lose
The natural appearances of things
Beyond all common ignorance. Day and night,
Earth, ocean, sky, the seasons, peopled full
With countless forms of life; a world imbued
With mystic beauty, wonder, awfulness,
Powers inexpressible and infinite,
Whereto man's spirit exquisitely thrills,
Raised, rapt, and soaring on celestial wings,—
Which ecstasy begetteth Art in some,
In every sane soul Worship in some wise,
Voiceful or silent,—shall we see instead
The tall ghost of a pair of compasses
Stalking about a world of diagrams,
And algebraic regiments that march
And countermarch, and wheel?

O learn all this—
If so thou fail not to come back at last,
My son, to nature's own rich symbolism!
Value appearances, and study these
To see them well,—your first relationship,
Your last and truest too, with circumstance;
More excellent by far to apprehend
Than all disclosures of analysis.
Upon the surface earthly Beauty blooms,
Yielding itself to every loving eye,
Known heavenly in its correspondences
When Seer or Poet comes; immortal flow'r,
Belovèd of Man's soul, no trivial thing,
No fleeting thing as flimsy proverbs wail!
Inferior truths are good in their degree,
But the first-met is first, nor ever can
Be weigh'd or measured. That the world is fair
Concerns us more than that the world is round,
(Though this, like every truth, be well to fix);
The rose, the primrose, and the hawthorn-flow'r,
The colours of the dawn or evening air,
Clouds, mountains, rivers, woodlands, grassy meads,
The varying ocean and the starry night,
The countless shapes of animals, and most
The human form, and miracle of face,
Have in their beauty more significance
Than tabulated light-waves which impinge
On optic nerves and yield the brain a sense
Of red, blue, yellow—Science knows not how.
Science can but afford a pitying smile
If you forget that just where warmth begins
Of human interest in a question, there
Science stops short. And let her have the praise
Of keeping in her limit, if she keep,
And lack not limitation's humbleness.

Beware, I say, of words, warm, wide, and loose;
Beware of cold and rigid formulæ
No less; both full of power—they are not things,
Nor even thoughts, but shadowings-forth of thoughts,
Wearing a phantom dignity themselves.
True, that we think by these: most men by words,
The grave mathematician by his signs,
Expressing a mechanic universe,
Yet giving irrepressible Fancy room
To sport in magical curves and deem herself
Almost creative in mechanic wise,
Leaving out life and beauty merely. Words
Have melody and colour, and therewith
The Poet's art can build a lovelier world,
Nay, truer than the common, for the gold
Is smelted from the dross that made it dull.
Be ever thankful of poetic truth,
And hold it fast. Value Appearances,
And let Imagination teach their worth,
Counting this practical. A sane clear mind
To see, and to imagine, is a mind
Of noblest rank: learning will nourish it,
But not to any show of learning: such
Are Seers and Poets. Through appearances
Beheld with keen and sympathetic eyes
Imaginative insight pierces deep
To something secret,—not mechanical
But spiritual, and wholly beyond reach
Of Science, which too often is so vain
As therefore to deny it scornfully;
Spiritual, and not contain'd or circumscribed
In any science ever formulated,
Or any creed that is or will be made,
Or aught that eye can see, or ear can hear;
For subtler, dearer, more delicious beauty
Lives in the soul than in the outer world,
And therefore fact is poor to dreams and hopes,
Child-fancies beggar all the famous things.

Ah, might we trust the Poets all in all!
Too often they divert themselves and us
With gambols in the air. Amorous of words,
Temptable by a rhyme or phrase, they make
Language their end not means; or sometimes stoop
To stroke the public ear and give those jaws
The food they gape for.

Men, in short, my Son,
Speak truth by most imperfect signs at best,
And with it many follies, many lies,
Deceiving or deceived, being only men,
Weak, wavering, limited. Yet men alone
See, note, explore, make record of, would fain,
But cannot ever, comprehend the world,
Life being a mystery, not a mechanism;
Orderly Miracle, where some men see
The Order, some the Wonder, most, and shape
Their diagrams, their phantasies; the Wise,
Wedding experience and imagination—
Both; and lift up their eyes and hands to God.

As to the Future, that is God's affair.
I am not Ruler of the Universe,
Nor in His secrets; but I hold Him good,
His riches boundless, and His will to give.
Also that Man has share, whatever share,
In working out the Universal Plans,
And man's own fate is partly in his power
For each of us; how far we cannot know.
This I do know, immortal thoughts alone,
Eternal things, have interest for my soul—
That which is truly me, my inmost self.

Man can help men, and also hinder them.
Men's evil and folly are to guard against,
Assuming many shapes; not dangerous least
In Books, pretended utterances of thought.
I say it who have loved books all my life.
The tongue may lie, or, self-deceiving, show
Folly as wisdom, may omit or add,
Transpose, misrepresent: more easily
The pen; and lo, by typographic art
What inky robes of grave authority
Do words put on, and in the library
The volume takes its seat among its peers,
Or quasi-peers. Nowhere such solemn shams
As pen and printer's ink can make! Man's tongue
Is flexible, but eye, face, voice, and gesture,
Body and whole demeanour help you well
To check or to corroborate his speech
(Put faith in physiognomy!); a Book
Wears deep disguise; may be a puppet-thing,
And not a man at all. The World of Books
Is full of glamour; evil, good, false, true,
Living and dead; enchanted wilderness
Where many wander, few can find a path,
Or gather what is good for them. My Boy,
I vow, shall not begin to read too soon!
Learning can nourish Wisdom, when good food
Is quietly digested; but, too oft,
Unfit, ill-cook'd, or overloaded meals
Lie crude and swell the belly with wind, or breed
Dull fat, mistook for portliness and strength.
And surely never since the world began
So many Learned Fools as now-a-days,
Or Learned Folly with so loud a voice.
Even the Wiser slip from sanity
At times, and swell the roaring storm of words.

I am your Oracle and Prophet now,
Young Mortal, weak and ignorant as I am
And fain to question rather than reply.
Yet have I journey'd on the road of life
Full many a mile, and bought experiences,
Have seen, done, joy'd and suffer'd, with a soul
Not timid, neither hard, sincere in grain,
Open to every influence, not engross'd
Of any, wishing well to all I met.
On foot, but not a beggar, have I fared,
Rested in huts and inns and palace halls,
Conversed on equal terms with many men,
Crept through dark valleys, climbed the mountain tops,
And known all kinds of weather. Here I sit
By fireside, with a baby on my knee.
A Boy with golden curls and grave blue eyes.
Asking me questions. Shall I tell him truth?
Yes, Dearest, now and ever! But to know
The needful questions is to be mature.
A child but asks as prompted—mostly, too,
Prompted by Ignorance in Wisdom's mask;
She uses words unmeaningly, and crowds
Life's pathways with memorials of man's folly.
Prompt him I must, and honestly give answer.
“Who made the world?”—Great God: we use that name.
How do we know Him?—In the heart and soul.
What is He?—No man hath the power to know.”
This is enough to tell him at the time.

Man hath no thoughts to think what God is like,
And much less words to say; but he can feel
At times the Presence great and wonderful
Beyond all words and thoughts and dreams, and yet
Wherein we live and move and have our being.
All great truths are incomprehensible;
Much more the Living Centre of them all.
The clearest moments of the noblest men
Give insight thitherward, and what they see
Belongs to man, though some regard it not.
Soon the clouds roll together, the ground-fogs
Grow thick, and all the vision disappears;
But what the best eyes at their best behold
Is Truth Divine; the test whereof is this—
A lofty sanity of thought and life
In whoso doth receive it, harmony
Felt in his inmost being, nor wholly hid
From other men. But how impossible
To put the vision into words, nor weave
Therewith a snare! O folly, to suppose
That speech, however wonderful it be,
Is more than makeshift! Could I stop thine ears
Till thou art somewhat ripened in thy mind,
My Son, from all more free discourse of God,
Dogmatic, controversial, personal,
I would; and I will do it, all I can.

It may be thou art born to a troublous time,
Retributive on nations for their sins.
At least, thou shalt escape one evil thing—
My Evil May-day, doleful to endure,
Sad to remember. Yet it pass'd; I live;
And God lives.

And God lives. Yes, begin and end with that,
For, whichsoever way you turn your face
And journey through th' illimitable vast,
You come to Nothing or you come to God.
“We come to Matter,” you reply, “more Matter,
Matter in many forms, ourselves being of them,
Man too is made of world-stuff.”

Which contains
No mind, affection, moral principle,
Or ruling will; yet breeds them in its dance
Of purposeless gyration, turns (O strange!)
At last to speculation on itself,
And finds at choice, dust or divinity.
—I say, we come to Nothing, or to God.
‘Confront us then with Him. Who sees his face
Or hears his voice? They told us in our youth
He paced a garden, spoke from a certain hill,
And wore a man's true body for a time.
They painted Him, an Old Man propt on clouds,
A Young Man, flowing-hair'd, with aureole,
Walking on water, flying through the air;
Much wondrous, much familiar circumstance.
But all this fading into fairy-tales,
What have we?’

Truth. And know this well, once more,
Every high truth is inexpressible,
And God, the highest, absolutely. Men
Strive after some conception, symbol-wise,
But make, too often, symbol into idol;
And all these idols forged by human brain,
Better or worse, and aiding more or less,
Misleading less or more, long-lived or short,
Are perishable things. The idol falls;
And then it seems the pillars of the world
That break, the roof of heav'n that crashes in.
A little cloud of dust was in our eyes;
Look up: God sits enthroned, thy lord and king;
Look round, His earth is wide and beautiful.
If once thou hast that vision, treasure it,
Speak little of it, let it nourish thy life
In fair thoughts, just deeds, and self-harmony,
While the unceasing noise of human talk
Hums round unheeded, and the multitude
Concerns itself with whatsoe'er it will.
Jove's thunderbolt, Apollo's fiery car,
Being phrases put aside, seems solar force
Less wonderful, or th' all pervasive thrill
Of electricity? The human mind
And moral laws, do these depend on names?
The world is wider, deeper than our thought;
We walk as if in twilight: but, at times,
How, whence, we know not, all is lighted up,
Transfigured. What is shown to us? A glimpse
Of inmost truth.

So and not otherwise
Poetic and religious thoughts are born,
Nor else interpretable. This great Light,
More glorious than the sun's, this Divine Stream
This emanation from the Life of Life,
Named or not named, and fitliest received
With silent joy, these cloudless blissful hours
Or moments, who shall hope to represent?
The finest mesh of words being all too coarse,
The loftiest tones of poem or of creed
But distant echoes of the vibrant Soul
Throbbing and pulsing in its bath of Light,
Fill'd with the presence of the Living God,
One Power evolving multiformity,
Pervading and transcending every form.

Such vision you may keep, or you may lose.
And what destroys it, or prevents it? This—
The setting-up False Vision in its place,
By obsolete pretended evidence,
Untrue in fact, impossible in kind,
Still palm'd on innocent souls when full of trust
And love and wonder. Once these holy names
And emblems meant what now they cannot mean,
As well thou knowest; yet thou teachest them
For absolute truth to tender longing souls,
Fastening their faith, their highest faculty,
To forms decay'd, worm-eaten through and through.
Vile coward! murderer of thy children's peace,
Preparing for them sick and crooked lives,
The end perhaps despair. But God's light shines,
Though men shut out, discolour, distort the ray.

Man, in a sense, makes God. In the same sense
Man makes the world: his world is what he makes it.
Each man his world, his God. But tell me now:
The natural, true, and most miraculous World,
Which no man ever saw, can ever see,
The Living Absolute Eternal God,
Whom no man ever saw, can ever see,—
Do these depend on how a man shall think
Or picture them, or any set of men?
The God a man hath made he may pull down
The World a man makes alters with himself
The true, the everlasting Life remains,
Surest of all things,—personal, universal,
Ineffable, incomprehensible,
Perceived, received, as with the flower of the soul.
God rules us whether we take heed or no.
'Tis duty less than privilege and joy
To recognise Him; nor such boon to all
In equal measure. Judge its potency
In the few most receptive, not the crowd.
To live, one needs not know that earth is round,
Much less the laws of planets and of suns,
But, all men ignorant, each man were lower'd,
And crippled even in his daily needs.
Were all born blind, then who would guess the light?
All deaf, then who imagine any sound?
And many see the light who nothing know
Of the Sun's greatness, only dimly see
The beauty it gives birth to; many have ears
And yet by music's magic no more touch'd
Than carven figures by the organ-storm
Shaking their substance atoms. Must thou gain
These other men's impossible consent
Before thou tremblest to the mystic joy
That frees thy spirit with a gift of wings
In Music's atmosphere? or give account
To them of how and why thou thus art moved
By Beauty, natural or interpreted?
Doubt, or distrust, or disbelieve, since some
With ears that hear not, eyes that cannot see,
Bring scales to measure and weigh your consciousness?
Nay, know'st thou Love?—a Love sublime and pure,
The world's transfiguration, through thy soul's.
If thou hast ever been assured of this,
Shall icy hearts or sneering tongues convict
High Love, and not themselves, of foolishness?
Consider then: if that most glorious Power
Far beyond audible and visual sense,
Felt at the inmost of thy soul of souls
In moments clear and rare, at other times
Be thickly veil'd from thee or quite obscured,
Wilt thou accept the bright hour or the dark
To teach thee truth? If cerpain other men
Deny the vision wholly, wilt thou choose
Negation for thy having? and because
Of the great glory and wonder of the light
That shone upon thee, say it was a dream,
No truth at all? Forget Him if thou wilt.
Deny Him. Thou art free. Nor will He strike
With angry flash; not so the world is made.
No penalties are set for unbelief,
Except the natural and inevitable
Contain'd in not believing. Count these nothing,—
Who shall refute, gainsay thee? go thy ways;
The loss is in thyself; and if unfelt,
The greater. Even as the man devoid
Of music misses nothing, loveless man
Pines not for lack of love, so he to whom
This world is empty of Divinity
From earth's dark centre to the Milky Way,
Sees this world full as other men's, and seems
To live in the same world. O marvellous!
Here walk two human creatures side by side:
But seest thou in what kind of world each moves?
Not with the bodily eye. Each makes his world,
And counts his own the only. To but few
Is given the Poet's, Prophet's ecstasy:
Yet theirs the witness we accept at last.

Many are dull and scarcely heed at all.
But some turn all to question:—“What is Life,
This marvel of all marvels? Show to us
Without delay, Whence, How, and What it is,
Or must we not affirm it meaningless?
At most, a puzzle fit to stretch our wits,
The whilst we eat, drink, fight, laugh, propagate,
And play at reason, virtue, and so forth?
Guess it a dustheap, somehow grown alive,
Or else a sort of mental phantasy?
Surely, if we can't sift things, we have right
To rate them as we choose.” There wisdom spoke!
Not peevish folly, or forward babyhood.
But this at least is true beyond a doubt,—
Man's Life has meaning, else the World has none,
This Universe is but a puff of smoke
Floating in whirls about the gulf of space,
We atoms in the midst, and all our thoughts
Are less than nothing.

What Life is, I know not,
Nor claim the right to know; but gladly accept
The highest hints and intimations given,
As likest truth. I know not what God is,
Nor count it reasonable to suppose
A man could know; but that God lives and rules,
My soul in times of pure and tranquil vision
Sees without effort; which great central truth
Sways into order all the world of thought,
That else were chaos. And, since I am I,
To me, a person, He, a person, lives;
A Living God, of power immeasurable,
Nature incomprehensible, and plans
Inscrutable; of whom I know by faith,—
A reasonable and necessary faith,
Correlative to ignorance, and yet
No way self-contradictory, a clue
In a prodigious labyrinth, a lamp
In a great darkness.

Why no more is known?
Enough it is the nature of things; and how
In sooth could I conceive it otherwise,
Create a different world? What use this faith?—
What use wide-sweeping universal thoughts?
Nay what use is the Universe itself? ...
At least we'll take for granted it exists,
Though questions may lack answers! “Matter,” “Spirit,”
What may these be? one thing, or separate?—
I care not which; for how should that concern?
All is, of need, connected, up and down,
And grossest link'd with subtlest. We must live
In a material world, must therein work,
Thereby be wrought upon. I am conjoin'd—
This personal I, (invisible as God)—
To my own bodily organs first of all;
Related strictly to the beast, the bird,
The blade of grass, the clod of earth, the cloud,
The faintest haze of suns within the sky.
That nearest fiery orb makes flow my blood;
Electric ether vivifies my brain;
And I, made up of these, who am not these,
Exist in personal being, think, enquire,
Reason, imagine, feel, and nothing know:
But in my dearest moments I think—God.
Ask you, What use is Faith? Faith is like Health;
Which, if you have in full serene possession,
You feel it every moment of the day,
In every fibre of your frame, each mood
And movement of your mind, yet for most part
Unconsciously. Inherit health and lose it,
Then shall you know its worth. But some poor men
Have never had it, and their seeming life
Is three parts death; some fling away their share
To buy diseases, or, when sense is dull'd,
Count dulness armour, take defect for strength;
Few have full measure: O to be like them!
For health is life, tho' sickness in a sort
Lives on, and nearly all the world is sick.
Faith is a higher wider subtler health,
What ether is to air, what harmony
Is to a throng of disconnected sounds;
A pure truth inexpressible in words,
All the great truths being measureless, and God
The truth of truths.

Spend not thy life in questions:
Go on thy journey, find there what thou may'st.
The past is past and had its own beliefs,
To day lies round, pours in, miraculous,
And in man's soul the springs of prophecy
Well up from their unfathomable source
Unceasingly, while he has faith in God.
Belief in God—here is the fountain-head
Of all religion, and, could that run dry
To all the human race, then human life
Were but a sandy desert full of asps.
No God—No Man. Blind matter all without;
Within delusive shadows. Hold God fast.

May-Day was evil when I miss'd my God:
Earth, sea and sky fall'n empty of a sudden.
All the wide universe a dismal waste
Peopled with phantoms of my flitting self,
And mocking gleams chance-kindled and chance quench'd,
All meaning nothing. Natural May-Day
Revived to me when I found God again;
World full of beauty and significance
Wisely and justly govern'd, and I too
Part and partaker of the wondrous whole;
Made capable to feel, enjoy, adore,
To think and reason, not to comprehend.

Manhood is Freedom: O to use it well,
Acting upon the element where I move
According to its nature and my own,
(Obscurely folded in the germ at first,
Form'd by successive subtle acts of will)
Acting to greater purpose than appears;
Nor too much sorrowing over seeming loss
Nor anxious for security of gain,
Mild, equal-minded, fearless! To such level
Rise I in happy hour, spring-tide of soul,
Aware, without words, and beyond all words,
That God was, is, and evermore remains;
The Living Centre of this Universe,
Which is itself imagined and not seen;
Always the Centre, reach'd by various roads
From many points by many different minds.
Who move tow'rds Him, converge. Who move from Him
Diverge, and wander out to lonely Space,
Where they see nothing and hear nothing, save
A hollow echo of their own voice return'd
As from the Cavern of Eternal Death.
But from the Centre, Everlasting Life
Expands and pulses in perpetual waves.

Man's property is Will; and he thereby
Can turn his face to God, change his own world;
For some things must be fix'd, and some left free.
See we not Good and Bad? upgoing lines
And down, to Best and Worst, to Heaven and Hell?
Man, as I deem, hath foretaste of them both.
But these, too, people image as they may
In gross fantastic verbal crudities,
Dark prisons, devils, tortures, pits of fire,
Unfading gardens, milk-white robes, gold harps,
A Heaven of vague “eternal happiness.”
Not so it beckons me: pure health, fit work,
For Human Creatures chasten'd, purified,
Each to his best; each, clear in aim and course,
Doing his proper part with strenuous joy:
Humility and self-forgetfulness,
Low work or high, in boundless universe;
Not dull—a joyous, free, and busy Heaven,
Hope never baulk'd there, knowledge climbing on,
Wisdom expanding, love without a pain,
Sweet helpful interchange of thought and mirth;
Beauty to fill each spirit to its content;
Limitless growth: the Mystery Divine
Peacefully clear, yet still a Mystery,
The Spiritual Sun of all the Heavens;
Infinitely remote, but fully felt;
Whence radiate, and whereto in turn are drawn
All powers, all spirits,—the lowest in their turn.