PSALM OF THE WEST. LAND of the willful gospel, thou worst and thou best ; Till out of thy heart's dear neighborhood, out of thy side, Bride. Cry hail! nor bewail that the wound of her coming was wide. Lo, Freedom reached forth where the world as an apple hung red; Let us taste the whole radiant round of it, gayly she said: thee; Perilous godhoods of choosing have rent thee and riven thee; Will's high adoring to Ill's low exploring hath driven thee— Freedom, thy Wife, hath uplifted thy life and clean shriven thee! Her shalt thou clasp for a balm to the scars of thy breast, For Weakness, in freedom, grows stronger than Strength with a chain; And Error, in freedom, will come to lamenting his stain, Till freely repenting he whiten his spirit again ; And Friendship, in freedom, will blot out the bounding of race; And straight Law, in freedom, will curve to the rounding of grace; And Fashion, in freedom, will die of the lie in her face; And Desire flame white on the sense as a fire on a height, light Of the fire and the star shines one with a duplicate might; And Science be known as the sense making love to the All, And Art be known as the soul making love to the All, And Love be known as the marriage of man with the AllTill Science to knowing the Highest shall lovingly turn, Till Art to loving the Highest shall consciously burn, Till Science to Art as a man to a woman shall yearn, -Then morn! When Faith from the wedding of Knowing and Loving shall purely be born, And the Child shall smile in the West, and the West to the East give morn, And the Time in that ultimate Prime shall forget old regret ting and scorn, Yea, the stream of the light shall give off in a shimmer the dream of the night forlorn. Once on a time a soul Too full of his dole In a querulous dream went crying from pole to pole Went sobbing and crying For ever a sorrowful song of living and dying, How life was the dropping and death the drying Of a Tear that fell in a day when God was sighing. And ever Time tossed him bitterly to and fro As a shuttle inlaying a perilous warp of woe In the woof of things from terminal snow to snow, Till, lo! And he sank on the grass of the earth as a lark on its nest, And he lay in the midst of the way from the east to the west. Then the East came out from the east and the West from the west, And, behold! in the gravid deeps of the lower dark, While, above, the wind was fanning the dawn as a spark, The East and the West took form as the wings of a lark. One wing was feathered with facts of the uttermost Past, And one with the dreams of a prophet; and both sailed fast And met where the sorrowful Soul on the earth was cast. And the Soul was a-tremble like as a new-born thing, Till the spark of the dawn wrought a conscience in heart as in wing, Saying, Thou art the lark of the dawn; it is time to sing. Then that artist began in a lark's low circling to pass; At the height of the lips of a woman above the ground, And then with a universe-love he was hot in the wings, strings Of the large hid harp that sounds when an all-lover sings; And the sky's blue traction prevailed o'er the earth's in might, And the passion of flight grew mad with the glory of height And the uttering of song was like to the giving of light; And he learned that hearing and seeing wrought nothing alone, And that music on earth much light upon Heaven had thrown, And he melted-in silvery sunshine with silvery tone; And the spirals of music e'er higher and higher he wound Till the luminous cinctures of melody up from the ground Arose as the shaft of a tapering tower of sound— Arose for an unstricken full-finished Babel of sound. But God was not angry, nor ever confused his tongue, For not out of selfish nor impudent travail was wrung The song of all men and all things that the all-lover sung. Then he paused at the top of his tower of song on high, And the voice of the God of the artist from far in the sky Said, Son, look down: I will cause that a Time gone by Far spread, below, The sea that fast hath locked in his loose flow Lay bound about with night on every hand, But ever the idiot sea-mouths foam and fill, And like as grim-beaked pelicans level file To where the Past's lone Rock o'erglooms the spray, Master, Master, break this ban: The wave lacks Thee. Oh, is it not to widen man Stretches the sea? Oh, must the sea-bird's idle van Alone be free? Into the Sea of the Dark doth creep As the face of a walker in his sleep, About the night doth peer and peep Lo, here is made a hasty cry : Where this waste hell of slate doth lie The sail goeth limp: hey, flap and strain ! |