In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too) The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete, As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet. Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known, I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own. There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink, I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think) Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst E'en the Giver in one gift.-Behold, I could love if I durst! But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake. -What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small, Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appall? In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all? Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift? Here, the creature surpass the Creator,-the end, what Began? Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can? Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power. To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul, Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole? And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest) These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best? Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height This perfection,-succeed with life's day-spring, death's minute of night? Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake, Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now -and bid him awake From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set Clear and safe in new light and new life, --a new harmony yet To be run, and continued, and endedwho knows?-or endure ! The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure; By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss, And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this. XVIII "I believe it! "Tis thou, God, that givest, 't is I who receive: In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my prayer As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air. From thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth: I will?-the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair? This;-t is not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do! See the King-I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through. Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would-knowing which, I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou-so wilt thou! So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath, Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death! As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved! He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak. "T is the weakness in strength, that I cry for my flesh, that I seek In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!" XIX I know not too well how I found my way home in the night. There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right, Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware: I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there, As a runner beset by the populace famished for news Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews; And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not, For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest. Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth; In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills; In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills; In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe: E'en the serpent that slid away silent,he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers: And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, With their obstinate, all but hushed voices-" E'en so, it is so!" 1845. 1855.1 A WOMAN'S LAST WORD What so wild as words are? In debate, as birds are, See the creature stalking What so false as truth is, False to thee? Where the serpent's tooth is Where the apple reddens Lest we lose our Edens, Be a god and hold me Be a man and fold me With thine arm! Teach me, only teach, Love! As I ought I will speak thy speech, Love, Meet, if thou require it, That shall be to-morrow, I must bury sorrow Out of sight: EVELYN HOPE BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead! Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geraniumflower, Beginning to die too, in the glass: Little has yet been changed, I think : The shutters are shut, no light may pass Save two long rays through the hinge's chink. Sixteen years old when she died! Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; It was not her time to love; beside, And now was quiet, now astir, Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? What, your soul was pure and true, The good stars met in your horoscope, Made you of spirit, fire and dewAnd, just because I was thrice as old And our paths in the world diverged so wide, Each was naught to each, must I be told? We were fellow mortals, naught beside? No, indeed! for God above Is great to grant, as mighty to make, And creates the love to reward the love: I claim you still, for my own love's sake! Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: Much is to learn, much to forget Ere the time be come for taking you. But the time will come-at last it will, When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) In the lower earth, in the years long still, That body and soul so pure and gay? Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, And your mouth of your own geranium's red guished gray Melt away That a girl with eager eyes and yellow Something to see, by Bacchus, some hair thing to hear, at least! There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast; While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast. Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull, Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull ! -I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool. But the city, oh the city-the square with the houses! Why, They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye! Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry; You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by; Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high; And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly. What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights: You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees. Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once; In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns. 'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell. Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. Late August or early. September, the stunning cicala is shrill, And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill. Enough of the seasons,-I spare you the months of the fever and chill. Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin : No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in: You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin. By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth; Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath. At the post-office such a scene-picture-the new play, piping hot! And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot. Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes, And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's! Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so, Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero, "And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,) the skirts of Saint Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lentlectures more unctuous than ever he preached." Noon strikes,--here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still it's the greatest pleasure in life. But bless you, it's dear-it 's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate. They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city! Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still-ah, the pity, the pity! Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals. |