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

This is the eternal life. All spheres are one:
The sphere of our own vast monarchal sun
And all the suns of space;
The sphere of this world's hare-bells, and the sphere
Of yonder gold-brown runnel tinkling clear
Through pebbly shoals and bays.

The eternal life impinges upon this.
The red-lipped maid and lover, when they kiss,
Join lips in heaven, not here:
The murderer, poising high his bloody brand,
Stabs deep his victim in another land
Than this. Hell's gates are near.

All things that here seem local and apart
Unite their powers in one surpassing Art
Which circles strong and weak

215

When life climbs upward to a higher range.
The sculptor's work becomes a living strange
New form. The dead eyes speak.

The poet hears the music of his strain
As outward chords of music; and, again,
The great composer hears
The passionate torrent of unspoken speech
Which, latent in his notes, he could not reach
Nor utter to our ears.

The painter sees the hills and dales he sought
Not now mere subjects of pictorial thought,
Mere panoramic things;
He marks the actual height of azure air
Which on his canvas was exceeding fair,—
Each actual oak-branch swings.

The silver rivulets he painted leap
Now down an actual craggy pine-clothed steep;
The blue waves that he limned
Dance underneath true sunlight, and the sky,
Real, hears real larches and real aspens sigh;
The stars flash out undimmed.

216

He painted Cleopatra? Lo! she stands—
With laughing eyes and with beseeching hands
She lures him to her side.
Among the women of his artist's dream
He now may choose that one whose glances gleam
Most tenderly, for bride.

Sphere touches sphere. They mingle and collide.
Hell's arches gloom and threaten by the side
Of heaven's doors all aglow.
The man who sits beside us, it may be,
Is fire-tossed on the intolerable sea
Of hell, could we but know.

A darkness not of night, unlit by stars,
Void of the moon—a gloom which no sound jars
(Harsh sounds were welcome there!)
Wraps all the lonely weary wastes of earth
For some, doomed spirits from their very birth,
The bond-slaves of despair.

For others the whole earth is glad and sweet.
With the spring's buoyant pulse their pulses beat;
Their endless life is won:

217

This world to them is heaven, for they create
In this dark world of wretchedness and hate
Light fairer than the sun.

And so with God. Behind the lying sphere
Of the unjust grim god who rules us here
Another Godhead dwells:
A God whose eyes can pierce beyond the feasts
Of Churches,—past the idols of the priests,
Past all their heavens and hells.

To him the poets, one by one, appeal.
When shines the sunlight of his face, they feel
That hell's flame dies away:
That darkling lands whereover chaos reigned,
Where captives in murk dungeons pined and plained,
Are crimsoned with the day.

To him, past God and God, the poets reach.
Him they believe in; him their hearts beseech;
His eyes and his alone
They seek. Their spirits search behind the stars,
Making away with every mist that bars
The sky-way to his throne.

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All souls who come between they hurl aside,
Whether they be by centuries deified
Or for one instant strong.
The same swift inspiration through them flows
Whence Jewish prophets' fiery speech arose
And David's eager song.

Behind the souls that hate, the Gods that slay,
Ephemeral dying Gods of yesterday
Whose thrones one moment gleam,
The changeless just Eternal One abides:
And past him all the ages' movement glides
Like an unending dream.