I
To get at the eternal strength of things, And fearlessly to make strong songs of it, Is, to my mind, the mission of that man The world would call a poet.He may sing But roughly, and withal ungraciously;But if he touch to life the one right chord Wherein God's music slumbers, and awake To truth one drowsed ambition, he sings well.
II
We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;We shrink too sadly from the larger self Which for its own completeness agitates And undetermines us; we do not feel --We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame Of uncreated failure; we forget, The while we groan, that God's accomplishment Is always and unfailingly at hand.
III
To mortal ears the plainest word may ring Fantastic and unheard-of, and as false And out of tune as ever to our own Did ring the prayers of man-made maniacs;But if that word be the plain word of Truth, It leaves an echo that begets itself, Persistent in itself and of itself, Regenerate, reiterate, replete.
IV
Tumultuously void of a clean scheme Whereon to build, whereof to formulate, The legion life that riots in mankind Goes ever plunging upward, up and down, Most like some crazy regiment at arms, Undisciplined of aught but Ignorance, And ever led resourcelessly along To brainless carnage by drunk trumpeters.
V
To me the groaning of world-worshippers Rings like a lonely music played in hell By one with art enough to cleave the walls Of heaven with his cadence, but without The wisdom or the will to comprehend The strangeness of his own perversity, And all without the courage to deny The profit and the pride of his defeat.
VI
While we are drilled in error, we are lost Alike to truth and usefulness.We think We are great warriors now, and we can brag Like Titans; but the world is growing young, And we, the fools of time, are growing with it: --We do not fight to-day, we only die;
We are too proud of death, and too ashamed Of God, to know enough to be alive.
VII
There is one battle-field whereon we fall Triumphant and unconquered; but, alas!
We are too fleshly fearful of ourselves To fight there till our days are whirled and blurred By sorrow, and the ministering wheels Of anguish take us eastward, where the clouds Of human gloom are lost against the gleam That shines on Thought's impenetrable mail.
VIII
When we shall hear no more the cradle-songs Of ages -- when the timeless hymns of Love Defeat them and outsound them -- we shall know The rapture of that large release which all Right science comprehends; and we shall read, With unoppressed and unoffended eyes, That record of All-Soul whereon God writes In everlasting runes the truth of Him.
IX
The guerdon of new childhood is repose: --Once he has read the primer of right thought, A man may claim between two smithy strokes Beatitude enough to realize God's parallel completeness in the vague And incommensurable excellence That equitably uncreates itself And makes a whirlwind of the Universe.
X
There is no loneliness: -- no matter where We go, nor whence we come, nor what good friends Forsake us in the seeming, we are all At one with a complete companionship;And though forlornly joyless be the ways We travel, the compensate spirit-gleams Of Wisdom shaft the darkness here and there, Like scattered lamps in unfrequented streets.
XI
When one that you and I had all but sworn To be the purest thing God ever made Bewilders us until at last it seems An angel has come back restigmatized, --Faith wavers, and we wonder what there is On earth to make us faithful any more, But never are quite wise enough to know The wisdom that is in that wonderment.
XII
Where does a dead man go? -- The dead man dies;But the free life that would no longer feed On fagots of outburned and shattered flesh Wakes to a thrilled invisible advance, Unchained (or fettered else) of memory;And when the dead man goes it seems to me 'T were better for us all to do away With weeping, and be glad that he is gone.
XIII