— I bear a gift for thee in Death. —
Where the dark shadow of the Cross
Bears fruit, midst the Pleiad’s starry crown
A harvest for the dead; there I bear
A gift for thee, my God,- my soul:
Thy keeping’s tender to my hurt.
— It were but Wisdom’s sullen part. —
[i]1. It were but Wisdom’s sullen part,
To keep fast the flame that draws the disconsolate Heart,
Which in this dear love, from change to change
Invariable, as the light to eyes
Darkened and opened; in the soothing thought
Of gradual duty, day by day,
Unfolding, falling back on self
In richer responsibility;
In spirit grown from love to love,
Dear love, divine love, more and more,
Each light and longed-for moment gone,
All gone beyond recall,–and that,
Amid the wreck of time and change,
A far-off, hallowed calm, unbroken silence.
The tumult of our mortal day, and hours,
Makes us deaf to earth’s high harmonies.
We play upon a tiny instrument, yet find
That the air’s wild music enters in,
With what seem chords; we know it not,–
But feel it,–when a sudden wind sweeps by
That withers no blossom, but leaves flowers more sweet;
Nor are we waked but by a sense sublime
Of something far more moving than we know,
Tremulous with the still-unnamable desire
Of fulfillment, and completion.
The soul of all our mortal life is but a point
Of pulsation in an immensity
Of life and joy forever and forever.
Not in the dazzling flash of a summer’s day,
But in the stillness between the pulsations,
Is our true life. For the pulsations change
Not like our changing moods; but as the mood
Of sea and wave beneath the steadfast moon.
A little while, the waves are bright with light,
And then for evermore in the deep night,
The ocean flows in darkness to the shore.
So is our life; a wave, a flash of day,
And then for evermore a still night-flow.
A little while, the glow upon our lives
Is light of gladness, light of love, of life;
A while thereafter darker grief and woe
Shrink to a narrow channel for the soul
To weep in; but forevermore remain,
Pillared aloft and inextinguishable,
Like lights in upland valleys by the sea.
Thus by that law, and by that grace divine,
We bear our loss, we bear our loneliness
As a part of life; with life’s own joys we fill
The interstices; and the pain that we endure
Is but the glowing of the coals of love,
The fanning of its embers, as its breath
Quenches the blaze; so suffering and sin
Seem but as furnishing the soul’s desire
With what it needs; as clouds by day serene
Seem like dark banners waved on the blue air.
No tempest in the soul’s world is so dark
As its eclipse and loss; if this be dark,
Consider that the night is overbrimmed
With lamps and torchlight, and the deep is crossed
By many a barque, that bears its gleaming freight
Toward havens and consoled homes. Alas!
The night-winds blow in vain, and only mock
Our weary eyes. A little while, and grief is turned to joy,
And the heart flutters in the ecstasy of sweet return.
Yes! there is yet, beyond our utmost doubt,
A life, whereof the term shall not be told,
Where all the past shall seem a dim half-light
By which to see and love the life to come;
A life, to reach which shall be great content
Of all that we are born for, and which, begun,
Will have its end in Heaven.
- Ere death is not more than a turning back
Of Life, and joy is but a sigh
Breathed out in silence, and a faint recall
Of the high passion from which we came.
Ere Life, like a sun-beam on the troubled sea,
Shows but the more the deep which it illumines.
This much the soul of man may know for truth:
The end shall be the goal, the goal the first impulsion;
That life shall flow into the life beyond,
And claim the end for its beginning. Thus
Through Nature’s everlasting cycle goes,
As the soul’s joy, the soul’s enduring calm.
- Not for this do the winds lift the dead leaf,
Nor for this do the waves break against the reef.
There is a beauty deeper than our tears;
There is a calm in sorrow more divine
Than our delights; a deep and surer love
Submerges in the loss of love than glowed
With youth’s first ardor, in keenly luster
Polished by intense and transient ecstasy,
That makes the joy a little while too bright,
The passion too large for human life to hold,
Too great the margin of our days contain,
Too high the arch of which her breath impells;
And the heart withers at its Power’s Height.
So that is deepest love, which gives us rest,
Loses all passion, and makes all grief divine.
Not for this do the waters swell with spring;
Not for this do the sea-birds fold their wings,
And dip their glancing pinions in the waves;
Not for this do the stars shine through the darkness,
Sleeping in peace beneath their cloudy robes;
But for some deep celestial beauty,–sweet,
As spring’s first flowers, and perfect, as the stars,
When the divine breath fadeth and their power
Turns to silence, that had carried their amours,
And there perfume, and eloquence of Nature.
The secret they reveal to us is hidden
In Nature’s meaning, never to be learned
By us, but evermore, forevermore,
Transmuted, as life’s sense grows more perfect,
And with its tender yearnings touch the soul,
And draw it, as it will, above the earth
To glancing dalliance with her Principalities.
We know not yet the earth’s divine, sweet speech;
Her beauty is dumb language to our dumbed sense,
And we but listen in a dream; but Faith
Is the interpreter of Nature,
And knows the inarticulate song of things,
Behind the veil of fleshly progenation,
Where is the secret sense of our imperfect knowledge.
Betwixt two foundless terms:
A time before our birth, stretched the endless past,
And that beyond our death, in equal measure
Brings about a congress affine, and recognition of the Infinite;
That, by a self-centering in the soul,
Brings the mute earth into words,
And finds a stable point to rest a thought upon
The Zero of the number’d line,
And the beginning of more stable computation.
[/i]
The bound
Of all perfection and of all defeat
Is fix’d in the decrees of Providence.
'Tis said that God himself at first
Made the Heavens and all which therein is
As well as man, though after man there fell
Affectation, which, to be true, requires
A better proof than an ungrateful lip
Laments at fate.
— The Joy of Poetry and Reading —
[i]Another—why, 'tis a book,
A volume, bound in shining mail:
And when I see the print, my heart
Rejoices, if I can but read
The lovely story to the end.
I hear a verse-
Another—it is surely a strain
Of Homer or of Dante in design,
Or Shakespeare, that I hardly can,
So splendid is the page I view;
And when I know the wise and great
Whose works these are, my heart grows bold,
My soul takes courage in their mould,
And trembles at the touch of song.
I hear a song-
Another-but it is I, who write
With thoughts that are not mine, I guess,
But something must be known of bliss
To make me sing at such a time;
Then comes the song, and through the verse
My spirit soars, and is not me,
Ere I pen these lines, for to keep mine own
Invention. [/i]
— On great men. —
The man, then, had a heart as great as nature,
And was a hero; and no more he needs,
To show what virtues he did bear, than earth
Must needs produce a mountain to affirm
She bears a stone. What other proofs or signs
Could such a man shew forth by that he may attain,
Or by virtue’s course, to find,
That still we cannot; for a certain height,
Whate’er it be, is better than a certain low.
And yet I see one may live long; the gods
Are kind to men, and let them live in honour;
And age hath two advantages: first, it makes
Men wiser, and so it gives them
Leisure to consider where they stand;
As by their youth they did not. Therefore, age
Should not be scorn’d; it is a happy change.
Second, it teaches men to be content,
While they themselves still live, to take repose
From all their former action; to look on
And wonder, at themselves, at their own times
As they pass on, as kings who have their crowns
Bestow the charge of ruling on successors,
And leave them to maintain the place and honour
When they themselves have pass’d, and now at last,
To see a better monarch come in place.
O what a thing is man, that with so vast
An empire he dare give his mind no rest,
But must adventure his best strength to try,
His very being to advance! as if,
If he should fail, not fail by virtue’s fault,
But in her service, his offence were in,
And therefore should be punished!
— Our Desire’s Course, the End to Know Thyself. —
The way, the road, the track to search upon
Which, as by a winding ascent and steep,
Thro’ all the steps thou pry, that lead to it,
Thro’ all the straggling tracks of Time past,
Seems at a distance a plain, broad avenue,
And then to grow as the road waxeth wide,
To spread, but narrower; and the farther
We travel, the farther from us grows
The goal, to which that way so long did lead,
And cometh it at last to obfuscate;
And lo! An unperceived turn, an unknown path
Turned in the shadow of a sudden thought,
Which, coming to us, reveals that for which
’ Tis vain to look for; such a cause and such a clue,
As shall bring us to the goal, in this blind voyage;
’ Tis vain to seek an anchor to ride on,
Or steer us clear of rocks and shoals.
Desire was no anchor; that longed for,
And object of our love: it was not love
That won us to the goal, nor yet the will
To reach that goal. If there is a goal,
It is not so much for man, whose nature hath
No other, but to know what he desires;
To have that only, and no more, his Knowledge
Extends to know himself, but not more.