I
Just as I wonder at the twofold screen Of twisted innocence that you would plait For eyes that uncourageously await The coming of a kingdom that has been, So do I wonder what God's love can mean To you that all so strangely estimate The purpose and the consequent estate Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen.
No, I have not your backward faith to shrink Lone-faring from the doorway of God's home To find Him in the names of buried men;Nor your ingenious recreance to think We cherish, in the life that is to come, The scattered features of dead friends again.
II
Never until our souls are strong enough To plunge into the crater of the Scheme --Triumphant in the flash there to redeem Love's handsel and forevermore to slough, Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough And reptile skins of us whereon we set The stigma of scared years -- are we to get Where atoms and the ages are one stuff.
Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste Of life in the beneficence divine Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine That we have squandered in sin's frail distress, Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste, The mead of Thought's prophetic endlessness.
The ClerksI did not think that I should find them there When I came back again; but there they stood, As in the days they dreamed of when young blood Was in their cheeks and women called them fair.
Be sure, they met me with an ancient air, --And yes, there was a shop-worn brotherhood About them; but the men were just as good, And just as human as they ever were.
And you that ache so much to be sublime, And you that feed yourselves with your descent, What comes of all your visions and your fears?
Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time, Tiering the same dull webs of discontent, Clipping the same sad alnage of the years.
Fleming HelphenstineAt first I thought there was a superfine Persuasion in his face; but the free glow That filled it when he stopped and cried, "Hollo!"Shone joyously, and so I let it shine.
He said his name was Fleming Helphenstine, But be that as it may; -- I only know He talked of this and that and So-and-So, And laughed and chaffed like any friend of mine.
But soon, with a queer, quick frown, he looked at me, And I looked hard at him; and there we gazed With a strained shame that made us cringe and wince:
Then, with a wordless clogged apology That sounded half confused and half amazed, He dodged, -- and I have never seen him since.
For a Book by Thomas HardyWith searching feet, through dark circuitous ways, I plunged and stumbled; round me, far and near, Quaint hordes of eyeless phantoms did appear, Twisting and turning in a bootless chase, --When, like an exile given by God's grace To feel once more a human atmosphere, I caught the world's first murmur, large and clear, Flung from a singing river's endless race.
Then, through a magic twilight from below, I heard its grand sad song as in a dream:
Life's wild infinity of mirth and woe It sang me; and, with many a changing gleam, Across the music of its onward flow I saw the cottage lights of Wes*** beam.
Thomas HoodThe man who cloaked his bitterness within This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries, God never gave to look with common eyes Upon a world of anguish and of sin:
His brother was the branded man of Lynn;
And there are woven with his jollities The nameless and eternal tragedies That render hope and hopelessness akin.
We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel A still chord sorrow-swept, -- a weird unrest;And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal, As if the very ghost of mirth were dead --As if the joys of time to dreams had fled, Or sailed away with Ines to the West.
The Miracle"Dear brother, dearest friend, when I am dead, And you shall see no more this face of mine, Let nothing but red roses be the sign Of the white life I lost for him," she said;"No, do not curse him, -- pity him instead;Forgive him! -- forgive me!..God's anodyne For human hate is pity; and the wine That makes men wise, forgiveness.I have read Love's message in love's murder, and I die."And so they laid her just where she would lie, --Under red roses.Red they bloomed and fell;But when flushed autumn and the snows went by, And spring came, -- lo, from every bud's green shell Burst a white blossom.-- Can love reason why?
Horace to LeuconoeI pray you not, Leuconoe, to pore With unpermitted eyes on what may be Appointed by the gods for you and me, Nor on Chaldean figures any more.
'T were infinitely better to implore The present only: -- whether Jove decree More winters yet to come, or whether he Make even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shore Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last --Be wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill Your bosom with large hopes; for while I sing, The envious close of time is narrowing; --So seize the day, -- or ever it be past, --And let the morrow come for what it will.
Reuben BrightBecause he was a butcher and thereby Did earn an honest living (and did right), I would not have you think that Reuben Bright Was any more a brute than you or I;For when they told him that his wife must die, He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, And cried like a great baby half that night, And made the women cry to see him cry.
And after she was dead, and he had paid The singers and the ***ton and the rest, He packed a lot of things that she had made Most mournfully away in an old chest Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.
The AltarAlone, remote, nor witting where I went, I found an altar builded in a dream --A fiery place, whereof there was a gleam So swift, so searching, and so eloquent Of upward promise, that love's murmur, blent With sorrow's warning, gave but a supreme Unending impulse to that human stream Whose flood was all for the flame's fury bent.
Alas! I said, -- the world is in the wrong.
But the same quenchless fever of unrest That thrilled the foremost of that martyred throng Thrilled me, and I awoke...and was the same Bewildered insect plunging for the flame That burns, and must burn somehow for the best.