University of Virginia Library

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.