And bald unmeaning lurks beneath thy smile?
That beauty haunts the dust but to beguile,
And that with Order, Love and Hope are dead?
Pitiless Force, all-moving, all unmoved,
Dread mother of unfathered worlds, assuage
Thy wrath on us, - be this wild life reproved,
And trampled into nothing in thy rage!
Vain prayer, although the last of human kind,
Force is not wrath, but only deaf and blind.
Dread force, in whom of old we loved to see
A nursing mother, clothing with her life
The seeds of Love divine, with what sore strife We hold or yield our thoughts of Love and thee! Thou art not 'calm,' but restless as the ocean,
Filling with aimless toil the endless years
Stumbling on thought, and throwing off the spheres, -
Churning the Universe with mindless motion.
Dull fount of joy, unhallowed source of tears,
Cold motor of our fervid faith and song,
Dead, but engendering life, love, pangs, and fears,
Thou crownedst thy wild work with foulest wrong
When first thou lightedst on a seeming goal,
And darkly blundered on man's suffering soul.
Blind Cyclop, hurling stones of destiny,
And not in fury!— working bootless ill,
In mere vacuity of mind and will -
Man's soul revolts against thy work and thee!
Slaves of a despot, conscienceless and nill,
Slaves, by mad chance be fooled to think them free,
We still might rise, and with one heart agree
To mar the ruthless 'grinding of thy mill!'
Dead tyrant, tho' our cries and groans pass by thee,
Man, cutting off from each new 'tree of life'
Himself, its fatal flower, could still defy thee,
In waging on thy work eternal strife,
The races come and coming evermore,
Heaping with hecatombs thy dead-sea shore.
If we be fools of chance, indeed, and tend
No whither, than the blinder fools in this :
That, loving good, we live, in scorn of bliss,
Its wageless servants to the evil end.
If, at the last, man's thirst for higher things
Be quenched in dust, the giver of his life,
Why press with glowing zeal a hopeless strife, -
Why born for creeping - should he dream of wings?
O Mother Dust! thou hast one law so mild,
We call it sacred — all thy creatures own it —
The tie which binds the parent and the child,
Why has man's loving heart alone outgrown it?
Why hast thou travailed so to be denied?
So trampled by a would-be matricide?
O THOU whom men affirm we cannot know,
It may be we may never see Thee nearer
Than in the clouds,' nor ever trace Thee clearer
Than in that garment which, howe'er aglow
With love divine, is still a changing show,
A little shadowing forth, and more concealing,
A glory which, in uttermost revealing,
Might strike us dead with one supreme life-blow.
We may not reach Thee through the void immense
Measured by suns, or prove Thee anywhere,
But hungry eyes that hunt the wilds above
For one lost face, still drop despairing thence
To find Thee in the heart-life's ravished lair
Else were the 'sting of death' not sin, but love!
THE GOSPEL OF DREAD TIDINGS.
IF that sad creed which honest men and true
Are flouting in the cheerful face of Day,
Are teaching in the schools, and by the way, --
Tho' only guesses on a broken clue,
If such should in the end quench all the blue
Above us, then the saddest souls were they
Who knew and loved the best, and could not lay
The ghost of Hope, and hold the grave in lieu.
O Christ, Thou highest man! if it were so,
And Thou couldst see it, that great heart of Thine Would burn to come amongst us, - not to preach Thy law again, or set our loves a-glow,
Still less in glory, — but to blot each line, Each thought, each word, Thou camest first to teach.
HUNGER that strivest in the restless arms
Of the sea-flower, that drivest rooted things
To break their moorings, that unfoldest wings
In creatures to be wrapt above thy harms;
Hunger, of whom the hungry-seeming waves
Were the first ministers, till, free to range,
Thou madest the Universe thy park and grange,
What is it thine insatiate heart still craves?
Sacred disquietude, divine unrest!
Maker of all that breathes the breath of life, No unthrift greed spurs thine unflagging zest,
No lust self-slaying, hounds thee to the strife; Thou art the Unknown God on whom we wait : Thy path the course of our unfolded fate.
FALSE REST AND TRUE REST.
'AND thou hast taken from me my fair faith, Which like a star lit the waste night of death
A light I thought no blast could ever kill.
O friend of mine, was it with me so ill
To fancy that my lips when void of breath
Should open in that land one entereth
Through portals of the grave-how dark, how chill?
'What hast thou set me in my dear hope's place
But thy stern truth, with white, implacable face,
Cold eyes, shut lips, clenched hand, and barren breast?
I stand, of all my sweet faith dispossessed
Discrowned of my belief. Death hath no grace,
But seems a thing to shudder at. My days
Are joyless and my nights are void of rest.
'I thought that I, in some far paradise,
Should hear the old, sweet voices, and that eyes
Of those I loved and lost my eyes should greet.
O visionary fields that felt the feet
Of my impatient thought, which no more flies
From you to me, but in my cold heart lies
Quite cold and dead, once warm with my heart's heat.
'O, life was full of comfort in those years;
Sweet things I dreamed of the impossible spheres,
I had a haven. If the winds were strong,
Above their roar I caught from far the song
Of beckoning angels. Now no light appears
No song at all, my heart, desirous, hears;
The day is short, but O the night is long!
'O long, O dreary long, that night of death!
No dawn it hath, no star that lighteneth.
There comes no love, no passionate memory
Of all the dear delights that used to be.
Shall one see God there, lying without breath;
Or shall the dead give thanks? the psalmist saith,
Nay, if the dead thank, they thank silently.
'There is no dreariness in death for one
Who sets his eyes on Truth, that cold, calm sun,
By whose impartial and unvarying light
Men might walk surely, who now grope in night.
Who fears, when labor of the day is done,
To rest and sleep? Then wherefore should ye shun
The sleep no dream, no waking, come to spite?
'Lift up and fix on truth thy timorous eyes, Till they can tolerate her awful skies.
Thy rest was warm and sweet, but could it save?
Would thy hope's torch have lasted to the grave?
How suddenly the grim mistrusts arise -
"My soul, wilt thou find hell or paradise?
Pray, dear life, keep me till I grow more brave.
""Oh mighty mystery of mysteries,
I venture forth upon the unsailed seas.
I go to face the awful, the unknown;
Oh Death, how full of terror art thou grown!
I trust I go to lands of perfect peace,
Wherein are all the mighty companies,
Of the illustrious dead, and those my own.
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