The rites prepared, the victim bared, The knife uprising toward the blow, To the altar-stone she sprang alone, "Me, not my darling, no!" He caught her away with a sudden cry; Suddenly from him brake his wife, And shrieking "I am his dearest, II am his dearest !" rush'd on the knife. And the Priest was happy, "O, Father Odin, We give you a life. Which was his nearest ? Who was his dearest ? The Gods have answer'd We give them the wife! The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her the wages of going on, and not to die. THE HIGHER PANTHEISM. THE sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him? Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why; For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I"? Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom, Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and gloom. Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice. Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool; And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this Vision were it not He? Now over and now under, now direct, Pointed itself to pierce, but sank down shamed At all that beauty; and as I stared, a fire, The fire that left a roofless Ilion, That popular name of thine to shadow forth The all-generating powers and genial heat Of Nature, when she strikes thro' the thick blood Shot out of them, and scorch'd me that Of cattle, and light is large, and lambs That Gods there are, for all men so believe. I prest my footsteps into his, and meant Surely to lead my Memmius in a train Of flowery clauses onward to the proof That Gods there are, and deathless. Meant? I meant? I have forgotten what I meant : my mind Stumbles, and all my faculties are lamed. "Look where another of our Gods, the Sun, Apollo, Delius, or of older use All-seeing Hyperion - what you willHas mounted yonder; since he never Could dead flesh creep, or bits of roast- | In a fall of snow, and so press in, per ing ox Moan round the spit-nor knows he what he sees; King of the East altho' he seen, and girt With song and flame and fragrance, slowly lifts His golden feet on those empurpled stairs That climb into the windy halls of heaven: And here he glances on an eye new-born, And gets for greeting but a wail of pain; And here he stays upon a freezing orb That fain would gaze upon him to the last; And here upon a yellow eyelid fall'n And closed by those who mourn a friend in vain, Not thankful that his troubles are no force sides, And rosy knees and supple roundedness, Fledged as it were with Mercury's anklewing, Whirls her to me but will she fling herself, Shameless upon me? Catch her, goatfoot: nay, Hide, hide them, million-myrtled wilder ness, And cavern-shadowing laurels, hide! do I wish What? that the bush were leafless? or to whelm All of them in one massacre? O ye Gods, No madness of ambition, avarice, none: Only such cups as left us friendly-warm, His vast and filthy hands upon my will, Wrenching it backward into his; and spoils My bliss in being; and it was not great; For save when shutting reasons up in rhythm, Or Heliconian honey in living words, To make a truth less harsh, I often grew Tired of so much within our little life, Or of so little in our little life Poor little life that toddles half an hour Crown'd with a flower or two, and there an end And since the nobler pleasure seems to fade, Why should I, beastlike as I find myself, Not manlike end myself? our privilege What beast has heart to do it? And what man, What Roman would be dragg'd in triumph thus ? Not I; not he, who bears one name with her Whose death-blow struck the dateless doom of kings, When, brooking not the Tarquin in her veins, She made her blood in sight of Collatine And all his peers, flushing the guiltless air, Spout from the maiden fountain in her heart. And from it sprang the Commonwealth, which breaks As I am breaking now! "And therefore now Let her, that is the womb and tomb of all, Great Nature, take, and forcing far apart Those blind beginnings that have made me man Dash them anew together at her will Through all her cycles into man once more, Or beast or bird or fish, or opulent flower: But till this cosmic order everywhere Shatter'd into one earthquake in one day Cracks all to pieces, and that hour perhaps Is not so far when momentary man Shall seem no more a something to himself, But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes, And even his bones long laid within the grave, The very sides of the grave itself shall pass, Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void, Into the unseen forever, till that hour, My golden work in which I told a truth That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel, And numbs the Fury's ringlet-snake, and plucks The mortal soul from out immortal hell, Shall stand: ay, surely: then it fails at last And perishes as I must; for O Thou, Passionless bride, divine Tranquillity, Yearn'd after by the wisest of the wise, Who fail to find thee, being as thou |