TO ------.
The first lines were addressed to Blakesley
(afterwards Dean of Lincoln), but the poem
wandered off to describe an imaginary man.
I.
Clear-Headed friend, whose joyful scorn,
Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain
The knots that tangle human creeds,
The wounding cords that bind and strain.
The heart until it bleeds,
Ray-fringed eyelids
Cf.
“Under the opening eyelids of the morn.”
Lycidas.
of the morn
Roof not a glance so keen as thine:
If aught of prophecy be mine,
Thou wilt not live in vain.
II.
Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit;
Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow:
Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now
With shrilling shafts of subtle wit.
Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords
Can do away that ancient lie;
A gentler death shall Falsehood die,
Shot thro' and thro' with cunning words.
III.
Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch,
Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need,
Thy kingly intellect shall feed,
Until she be an athlete bold,
And weary with a finger's touch
Those writhed limbs of lightning speed;
Like that strange angel which of old,
Until the breaking of the light,
Wrestled with wandering Israel,
Past Yabbok
Jabbok not so sweet as
Yabbok. Cf. Gen. xxxii. 22-32. The
Hebrew J is Y.
brook the livelong night,
And heaven's mazed signs stood still
The stars stood still in their courses to
watch.
In the dim tract of Penuel.
