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

Our minor daily acts are in our hand
To do, or not to do. Our deeds are planned
Slowly from day to day.
We fix the hour for meeting with a friend.
We bring our mapped-out labour to an end.
We speak. The months obey.

The human will is free. Yes, free indeed!
Along its woodland path it can proceed,
Dealing with wood-side flowers.
It gathers here a pink anemone
And there a blue-bell, bluer than the sea
In its most sunlit hours.

The human will appoints its daily track;
Climbs the steep mountain,—loiters, or turns back;
The human heart is proud:

346

It says, “I will, or will not do this thing;”
It says, “I will see Venice in the spring:”
Its laugh is long and loud.

“This woman I will love,—or here abstain:”
“Here I will yield me to sweet passion's reign,—
There exercise control:”
“To-day dark hair allures me,—but to-night
Strange tresses golden-pure or auburn-bright
May magnetise my soul.”

Ah! so God lets the human spirit dream.
He lets us revel in the silver gleam
Of the electric light:
Then on a sudden through the night's blue damp
Flashes his heavenly mountain-shadowed lamp,
His moon, full on our sight.

He watches us illume pale town on town
When dying sunset steals away its crown
Of colours from the air;
He marks our glow-worm lamps through street on street
Crawl slowly one by one, with flashing feet,
Till legions glitter there:

347

He watches through the night the yellow gas
Flicker behind the dust-streaked London glass;
He waits till all is done,—
Then brings his single golden-armoured knight
To quench ten million lustres with one light,
Parades his conquering sun.

He lets the human will create one flower;
He lets us rear geraniums for one hour,
Red petals and green stalks:
He lets the human will and human hand
Adorn a window-frame with bloom well planned,
Or edge the garden walks:

And then he spreads the countless tropic bloom
As if in mockery through the tropic gloom
Of forests dark and dim,
Weird places never pierced by human eye,
Designing all flower-souls to satisfy
With the lone sight of him.

The human will maps out futurity.
“I love this maid. To-morrow she shall be
For ever mine, I deem!”

348

God at the very altar stands austere,
Saying, in tones that thrill the human ear,
“Your marriage is a dream.”

God binds what we unbind, and setteth free
What we would join.—We marry. Straightway he
Annuls the marriage-bond.
What we would seal as final, he unseals:
Removes the mist of marriage, and reveals
Limitless heights beyond.

We plan—he finishes: commence—he ends.
He takes the old, and gives our hearts new friends.
He lifts the gloomy night
Far from our gaze, and fills the sky and air
With morning's golden rapture, and the fair
Song of the new-born light.

Again, when we are weary of the day,
He hurls the burning ceaseless sun away
And hangs in heaven the moon:
He spreads across the solemn skies his peace
Nocturnal,—darkens daylit towers and trees
That stars may gem his throne.

349

We make our strange machines, our doll-like toys:
God's hand is stretched across the heavens, and buoys
The stars whose wild prows race.
We mould and shape our sculpture, wrought of stone:
But God's triumphant sculptor-hand alone
Could mould the model's grace.

Our gods and heroes, full of strength and force,
Ride down the road of time, that echoing course,
With sword and shield and plume:
Full of heroic fire of life are they;
Souls reverenced by the race until to-day;
Vast epochs they illume.

We mould our leaders. We construct all these:
Napoleon, Frederick, Ajax, Hercules,
The Cæsars,—that wild line.
But God constructed, at an epoch's close,
The heart of Christ, and filled it with repose
Ineffably divine.

We plant one tree, and nurture it with care.
In all stars God can make all seasons bear
Their fruited stores of grain.

350

Our tree has withered? Lo! a million springs
Are bringing forth their green-leaved fosterlings
Beneath his bounteous rain.

We reap one field in autumn. Lo! God stands
And reaps the far skies with immortal hands;
The stars are as his sheaves:
And the great comets plunging through the night,
Whirling through ceaseless space with wild delight,
Glean the lost stars he leaves.

We toil all day, and through the midnight hours:
We guard our lands with grey grim castle towers:
We mark our frontier line.
God sends his wild snow-warriors in the dark:
Our lands are like the sea, without an ark—
White wastes, from pine to pine!

Our mortal armies meet. We deck them out—
The glittering wrestlers close with curse and shout;
Guns flash,—the quick swords gleam.
But lo! God's moon beholds the hosts at night:
Their strength is withered, and their lordly might
Has faded like a dream.

351

God's moon is still superb above the plain;
But on the ground red heaps of cloth remain,—
Red, mixed with green and blue.
No eye can tell the Russian from the Turk;
The Southern sword is as the Highland dirk,
Wet with the same strange dew.

All love, all life, God rules. We rule a part:
But he with vigilant and ceaseless heart
Observes and sways the whole.—
A day's delight we plan. The vast surprise
Of death he springs on us before the eyes
Of our astonished soul.

We hold the right to put to shameful death
One crime-clad soul, to stay the mortal breath
Of one man,—this is ours.
But God? He can with one storm-blast unmake
The living universe,—as we can shake
One dewdrop from the flowers.