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

Nor, Satan, hast thou learned with all thine art
The subtle secret of one woman's heart:—
She serves, thou deem'st, the tyrant best?
She yields herself,—as freely as the snow
That lets the passers by tramp to and fro
Above it, baring its white breast?

Thou deem'st that true love fails, and lust succeeds?
That love may whisper to the river-reeds,
But cannot reach a woman's ear?
Thou deem'st the tyrant's plan the plan that wins:
That woman courts man for his very sins,
And worships best in abject fear?

But for a moment she shall love the base:
Nor is this true love. Then her sweet sad face,
Divine through deepest agony,
Shall seek the presence of a heavenly friend:—
Who suffers anguish to the very end
Must, ere that end comes, worship me.

I win her love by my own wreath of thorn.
O Satan, thou canst hate, and thou canst scorn;
Thy vaunting words are fierce and strong:

352

This thou canst never do—by love redeem
One woman; change wild passion's sin-stained dream
Into an angel's sinless song!

I yielded up the tender marriage-kiss,
The common lot of love, content with this—
That in far days beyond my dream
All women of all nations should agree
That man's most noble love sprang first from me:
The stars I lighted, daily gleam.

No flower of love in your wild world to-day
Blossoms, save for love-seeds I flung away
Upon the breeze of Palestine.
New life to woman—this it was I gave.
She passed with me the portals of the grave,
And rose with her white hand in mine.

Never she weeps to-day, but I too weep.—
I send the stars to guide true lovers' sleep.
I make the bright sea blue for these.
The Father hath put all things in my hand:
I make the emerald grass adorn the land,
And gem with ruby fruit the trees.

353

O Satan, Satan, thou shalt pass away!
A million years are but one single day
Before high God's eternal gaze.
Two thousand years have passed since Calvary's gloom
Deepened around me,—still thy sins consume
Thyself, and all who seek thy ways.

O lonely spirit, who hast no power to see
The deathless spirit of love that shines in me
And in the Father of all things;
O spirit, who feedest on thine own despair
And see'st alone the shadow in the air
Of thine own form and sombre wings:

O spirit, who see'st in woman just a flower,
White, fragrant, sweet to pluck in pleasure's hour,
And who wouldst have man share thy creed;
O spirit, who on the blood-red battle-plain
See'st nought but wet heaps of the newly slain,—
In cornfields see'st alone the weed:

O spirit, to whom the stars are blots on space;
Who tarriest in thy dreary dwelling-place,
Despairing, doubting, and alone:

354

How would it be if from the highest air
A voice said: “Thine ineffable despair
Is ended. Thou too hast a throne.

“Thou hast a throne, but not the lonely seat
Whereon thou sittest while the storm-winds beat
Around and o'er thee through the vast.”
How were it with thee if the high God said:
“O Satan, raise unto the stars thine head;
Thy woes and sins lie in the past.”

There is a loneliness divinely sweet,
My Father's; his in whom all spirits meet,
And yet who dwells apart, alone.
In every petal of each new-born rose
His sweet creative bounty blooms and glows:
All seas make music round his throne.

The purple depths of the eternal space
Serve him for home and boundless dwelling-place;
Yet dwells he in the humblest heart.
His loneliness is ever unlike thine,
For Love creates the loneliness divine,
And Hate is regnant where thou art.

355

The eyes of Love are those alone which see.—
When the great English warrior followed me
And passed into the land divine,
What sawest thou, Satan, with thy lurid eyes?
Thou thoughtest death came like a fell surprise;
That Gordon's thoughts were even as thine.

Thou sawest his body flung into the wave.
“The Nile,” thou thoughtest, “is this soldier's grave.
He toiled. God hath rewarded well.
His faith in God,—what was it but a dream?
Soon will his corpse grow rotten in the stream.”
Such was thy thought, when Gordon fell.

But I, the spirit of God beyond the gloom,
Knew that for love there is no grave, no tomb:—
God dies not. Those who live in him
Share the eternal life that was before
The first wave rippled on earth's first green shore;
That will be when all stars wax dim.

This is the eternal life I came to show:—
The life all men may share in here below,
And carry out in heights above:

356

The life that through God's veins with great throbs burns;
The life whose rapture thrills him when he turns
Weakness to strength, and hate to love.

This, God's own life, was, ere one sea-bird flew
Above the primal ocean faint and blue
And dull and lifeless, stretching far:
Before the deep primordial dark was lit
By the first golden fire-spark piercing it
With flame that gathered to a star.

And this the life of God beyond all creeds,
Beyond the thoughts of frail men and their deeds,
Beyond their stars, and dreams of space,
Extends for ever towards the eternal gloom
Where solar systems plunge into their tomb
As cataracts plunge, and end their race.

When over the last purple steep of sky
The gold star-cataracts plunge themselves, and die,
When heaven is left again alone,
God's heart will still be starful, and supreme:
Across his soul's sky still the stars will gleam,
And through his thought the winds will moan.

357

The heart that said, “Let light awake and be!”
That bade the first blue billows of the sea
Arise and laugh in dawn's bright air:
The heart that said, “Let golden sunrise flame:”
Will still abide unchangeably the same
When suns nor moons nor waves are there.

The heart that bade the storm-winds wail or roar
Along the rocks of many an iron shore
And summoned thunders from the deep
Will still abide the same, when the last breeze
Dies in a whisper in the dying trees,—
When the tired thunder sinks to sleep.