II Vox Clamantis

Vox Clamantis

I

Long, long the barren years;

Long, long, O God, hast thou

Appointed for our tears

This term of exile. Lo,

Life is but nothing thus:

Old friendships perishèd;

Not hand in hand with us

The dying father dead;

Narrow’d the mind that should

Thro’ all experience range

And grow; in solitude

Unheard the wheels of change.

When sadly numbering

The wasted golden hours

Our fate hath put to wing,

That had perchance been ours

To have seen, to have known, to have trod

About from pole to girth

This heritage of God,

This wondrous sculptured earth,

Seeing that never again

The usurer Time gives back,

How should we not complain

This Present, barren-black?

We said, ‘We must not mourn;

The end is always good;

Well past the pain well borne.’

But Sorrow in her mood

Would not be comforted,

And cried, ‘I know the truth;

Where are the distant dead,

And where the wasted youth?

Let Wisdom take her ground

And Hope do what she can;

Ill heals the dreadful wound

That severs half a man.’

Sorrow, not so beguiled,

Would take my hand and lead,

But waiting Wisdom smiled

And took my hand instead,

And answered, ‘Well I rede

The shackled win the goal;

The body’s strengthener Need,

And Sorrow of the soul.

But mine the part be given

To guide and hers to follow,

And so win thro’ to heaven.’

And Sorrow said, ‘I follow.’

II

To sadness and to self

We should not enter in—

Sadness the shadow of self

And self the shadow of sin—

Unless because the whole

Of human life appears

Clear only when the soul

Is darken’d thro’ with tears.

The day too full of light

With light her own light mars;

But in the shading night

The shining host of stars.

That, leaving manhood, men

Should kiss the hands of grief

And, loving but the wen,

The wart, the wither’d leaf,

Amass a hoard of husks

When joy is in the corn

Nor ever evening dusks

Without the tints of morn,

Informs with doubt if good

Be, or omnipotent;

Since in the brightest blood

This idle discontent.

Joy, jester at herself,

And happiness, of woe,

If self at peace with self

Know not, when shall he know?

So one, a prosperous man;

Nightly the people fill

His toast, and what he can

Is only what he will.

They shout; his name is wed

With thunders; torches flare;

Tost in a wretched bed

He chews a trifling care.

III

One says in scorn, ‘The strife

To live well keeps us well,

And ’tis the unworthy life

That makes the prison cell.’

And one, ‘An angel stood

On sands of withering heat;

The flowerless solitude

Grew green beneath his feet.’

A third, ‘Many would lief

Endure thy solitude

As else. Ascribe thy grief

To poison in the blood.’

And I, ‘O Soul, content

Yet in thine exile dwell,

And live up to thy bent.

Not more than well is well;

But take the sports divine,

The largesse of the earth;

Wind-drinking steeds be thine

And blowsèd chase—the mirth

Of those who wisely draw

Their lives in nature’s vein

And live in the large law,

Of slaying or being slain.

‘Or learn by looking round.

Lift up thine eyes. Avow

The gardener of thy ground

Doth worthier work than thou.

From his poor cot he wends

At early break of day;

His pretty charges tends

In his unskilful way.

Much wearied with his toil

He labours thro’ the hours,

And pours upon the soil

Refreshment for his flowers.

‘Tho’ bent with aged stoop,

To him no rest is given,

But the heads of those that droop

He raises up to heaven.

Half ready for the grave,

His weakness he forgets,

More scrupulous to save

The breath of violets.

But at the evening hour

When he shall seek repose,

The voice of every flower

Will bless him as he goes.’