The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Round us spreads the eternal silence.—Not the silence of the deep
Lonely dark-blue open ocean, leagues from headland and from bay,—
Not the silence of the mountains where the solemn summits sleep,—
Not the silence of the star-land at the closing of the day,—
Not the silence of the forest, when its every leaf is still,
When the whole dense tropic woodland basks beneath the tropic sun,
Matches death's eternal silence. Wholly settled seems God's will:
When the human life is ended, then for us that life is done.

Not one sweet word! Not a whisper from beyond the deadly gloom!
Not a single word to cheer us, us the living, on our way!
Not a single flash of torchlight to illuminate the tomb!
Never sunshine, never moonshine, never one thin starry ray!

203

Only yesterday they loved us—then their living eyes were bright—
Only yesterday we held them in our living warm embrace:
What has happened? What has changed them? Still the form rests in our sight;
But the human love has vanished from the dead white quiet face.

Only yesterday they heard us, knew the loving voice and hand,
And to-day the furthest star-gleam in the blue heaven is more near.
What can measure the wild distance? As beside the dead we stand,
We confront a ghostly figure, not the figure once so dear.
Perfect silence, endless distance—past man's measure, past man's thought!
Depth no human lead can fathom—darkness utter and profound!
Well God keeps his final secret. All the ages have besought;
Every soul has craved an answer from the darkness. Not a sound!

204

Is it well, O God, to take them? Is it nobly, rightly, done?
Is this policy of darkness quite the grandest line of all?
If a son must lose his mother, or a mother lose her son,
Is it well to sweep the dead one out of earshot, out of call?
Would not one slight vision help us—just a whisper, just a word,
Just a green leaf sent for token, just a touch from out the gloom?
Life is changed from epic grandeur—it becomes three parts absurd,
One part bitter, when confronted with the sphinx-face of the tomb.

Yes, absurd: for through the sorrow and the mystic awe and dread
Something of grotesqueness glimmers, something farcical and strange.
Why does God create his millions, just to strike those millions dead?
Is he hampered, is he pestered, by the ceaseless love of change?

205

Trouble, endless toil and trouble, to complete a human life—
Pains to educate and train it—and it ends so very soon!
God provides the child a mother, and he sends the man a wife;
Lest the earth trip in the darkness, lo! he sends the earth a moon:

All seems full of thought and labour, wrought with endless love and care;
Blue and grand is the wide ocean, green and flower-sown are the meads,
Full of star-lamps is the darkness, full of fragrance is the air,—
All the living world bears witness to the Lord God's mighty deeds;—
Yes, and mightier than the star-land hung with lamps that gem the night,
Grander than the heaven of August when its utmost calm is won,
Is the rapture God created when he made the darkness bright
With the glory of love that needs not earthly moon or star or sun.

206

Yet it ends in utter darkness! All this noble work of God's
Ends abruptly, ends in failure. Death is Conqueror, so it seems:
Sweetest flesh must turn to ashes, mightiest brains must mix with clods,
Love must wake—within its coffin—from its life of pleasant dreams.
Grandly God mapped out his drama, but the villain of the piece
Was too forceful for the Playwright, Death has got the upper hand:
When he stalks along the footlights, the light-hearted plaudits cease;
Death has introduced some “business” that the Author never planned.

But God's answer came, soft-whispered through the silence of the night:
“Have I moulded one fair planet? Can I not mould thousands more?
Have I made the morning radiant with the great sun's golden light?
Can I not devise new sunshine for the dead souls to adore?

207

Lo! I keep my solemn secret. But I keep it for your sakes.
To the gentle, to the simple, I can whisper through their dream:
I can whisper sweetest comfort to the heart that well-nigh breaks;
When the stars of heaven are clouded, I can make my starlight gleam.

“Not for genius is my message. Genius on the earth may rule,—
Sway the hearts of many women, win the worship of the rose;
Genius is but as a pupil (not an apt one) in my school;
What he doubts, and what he questions, the unlettered peasant knows.
Yes: the simple heart that trusteth never fails to hear my voice,
Knows my secret often better than the genius it may be;
Catches even my faintest whisper, when I bid that heart rejoice,
Past the trumpets of the storm-winds, through the thunders of the sea!

208

“Did the humble ever dread me? Did the lowly patient heart
Ever tremble, as Death's angel made a silence in the room?
Soul by soul, the human millions rise up softly and depart:
Summer after summer sends me every field's and forest's bloom.
Mothers yield to me their children, and the husband yields his wife,
And the night-time yields its starlight, all the splendour it has won:
Am not I, the Lord of deathland, also Lord of birth and life?
Am not I, the Lord of darkness, the creator of the sun?”