Part 2 / Act 5 — DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Ah, Love, but a day And the world has changed! The sun 's away, And the bird estranged; The wind has dropped, And the sky 's deranged: Summer has stopped. Look in my eyes! Wilt thou change too? Should I fear surprise? Shall I find aught new In the old and dear, In the good and true, With the changing year? Thou art a man, But I am thy love. For the lake, its swan; For the dell its dove; And for thee—(oh, haste!) Me, to bend above, Me, to hold embraced.

Is all our fire of shipwreck wood, Oak and pine? Oh, for the ills half-understood, The dim dead woe Long ago Befallen this bitter coast of France! Well, poor sailors took their chance; I take mine. A ruddy shaft our fire must shoot O'er the sea: Do sailors eye the casement—mute Drenched and stark, From their bark— And envy, gnash their teeth for hate O' the warm safe house and happy freight —Thee and me? God help you, sailors, at your need! Spare the curse! For some ships, safe in port indeed, Rot and rust, Run to dust, All through worms i' the wood, which crept, Gnawed our hearts out while we slept: That is worse. Who lived here before us two? Old-world pairs. Did a woman ever—would I knew!— Watch the man With whom began Love's voyage full-sail,—(now gnash your teeth!) When planks start, open hell beneath Unawares?

The swallow has set her six young on the rail, And looks seaward: The water 's in stripes like a snake, olive-pale To the leeward,— On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind. "Good fortune departs, and disaster 's behind,"— Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail! Our fig-tree, that leaned for the saltness, has furled Her five fingers, Each leaf like a hand opened wide to the world Where there lingers No glint of the gold, Summer sent for her sake: How the vines writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake! My heart shrivels up and my spirit shrinks curled. Yet here are we two; we have love, house enough, With the field there, This house of four rooms, that field red and rough, Though it yield there, For the rabbit that robs, scarce a blade or a bent; If a magpie alight now, it seems an event; And they both will be gone at November's rebuff. But why must cold spread? but wherefore bring change To the spirit, God meant should mate his with an infinite range, And inherit His power to put life in the darkness and cold? Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold! Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!

I will be quiet and talk with you, And reason why you are wrong. You wanted my love—is that much true? And so I did love, so I do: What has come of it all along? I took you—how could I otherwise? For a world to me, and more; For all, love greatens and glorifies Till God's aglow, to the loving eyes, In what was mere earth before. Yes, earth—yes, mere ignoble earth! Now do I mis-state, mistake? Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth? Expect all harvest, dread no dearth, Seal my sense up for your sake? Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! not so, indeed! You were just weak earth, I knew: With much in you waste, with many a weed, And plenty of passions run to seed, But a little good grain too. And such as you were, I took you for mine: Did not you find me yours, To watch the olive and wait the vine, And wonder when rivers of oil and wine Would flow, as the Book assures? Well, and if none of these good things came, What did the failure prove? The man was my whole world, all the same, With his flowers to praise or his weeds to blame, And, either or both, to love. Yet this turns now to a fault—there! there! That I do love, watch too long, And wait too well, and weary and wear; And 't is all an old story, and my despair Fit subject for some new song: "How the light, light love, he has wings to fly At suspicion of a bond: My wisdom has bidden your pleasure good-by, Which will turn up next in a laughing eye, And why should you look beyond?"

I leaned on the turf, I looked at a rock Left dry by the surf; For the turf, to call it grass were to mock: Dead to the roots, so deep was done The work of the summer sun. And the rock lay flat As an anvil's face: No iron like that! Baked dry; of a weed, of a shell, no trace: Sunshine outside, but ice at the core, Death's altar by the lone shore. On the turf, sprang gay With his films of blue, No cricket, I 'll say, But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned too, The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight, Real fairy, with wings all right. On the rock, they scorch Like a drop of fire From a brandished torch, Fall two red fans of a butterfly: No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead, See, wonderful blue and red! Is it not so With the minds of men? The level and low, The burnt and bare, in themselves; but then With such a blue and red grace, not theirs,— Love settling unawares!

"Still ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or no? Which needs the other's office, thou or I? Dost want to be disburdened of a woe, And can, in truth, my voice untie Its links, and let it go? "Art thou a dumb, wronged thing that would be righted, Entrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear! No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith, requited With falsehood,—love, at last aware Of scorn,—hopes, early blighted,— "We have them; but I know not any tone So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow: Dost think men would go mad without a moan, If they knew any way to borrow A pathos like thy own? "Which sigh wouldst mock, of all the sighs? The one So long escaping from lips starved and blue, That lasts while on her pallet-bed the nun Stretches her length; her foot comes through The straw she shivers on; "You had not thought she was so tall: and spent, Her shrunk lids open, her lean fingers shut Close, close, their sharp and livid nails indent The clammy palm; then all is mute: That way, the spirit went. "Or wouldst thou rather that I understand Thy will to help me?—like the dog I found Once, pacing sad this solitary strand, Who would not take my food, poor hound. But whined and licked my hand." All this, and more, comes from some young man's pride Of power to see,—in failure and mistake, Relinquishment, disgrace, on every side,— Merely examples for his sake, Helps to his path untried: Instances he must—simply recognize? Oh, more than so!—must, with a learner's zeal, Make doubly prominent, twice emphasize, By added touches that reveal The god in babe's disguise. Oh, he knows what defeat means, and the rest! Himself the undefeated that shall be: Failure, disgrace, he flings them you to test,— His triumph, in eternity Too plainly manifest! Whence, judge if he learn forthwith what the wind Means in its moaning—by the happy prompt Instinctive way of youth, I mean; for kind Calm years, exacting their accompt Of pain, mature the mind: And some midsummer morning, at the lull Just about daybreak, as he looks across A sparkling foreign country, wonderful To the sea's edge for gloom and gloss, Next minute must annul,— Then, when the wind begins among the vines, So low, so low, what shall it say but this? "Here is the change beginning, here the lines Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss The limit time assigns." Nothing can be as it has been before; Better, so call it, only not the same. To draw one beauty into our hearts' core, And keep it changeless! such our claim; So answered,—Nevermore! Simple? Why this is the old woe o' the world; Tune, to whose rise and fall we live and die. Rise with it, then! Rejoice that man is hurled From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled! That 's a new question; still replies the fact, Nothing endures: the wind moans, saying so; We moan in acquiescence: there 's life's pact. Perhaps probation—do I know? God does: endure his act! Only, for man, how bitter not to grave On his soul's hands' palms one fair good wise thing Just as he grasped it! For himself, death's wave; While time first washes—ah, the sting!— O'er all he 'd sink to save.

Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, This autumn morning! How he sets his bones To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet For the ripple to run over in its mirth; Listening the while, where on the heap of stones The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet. That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true; Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows. If you loved only what were worth your love, Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you: Make the low nature better by your throes! Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!

I "As like as a Hand to another Hand!" Whoever said that foolish thing, Could not have studied to understand The councils of God in fashioning, Out of the infinite love of his heart, This Hand, whose beauty I praise, apart From the world of wonder left to praise, If I tried to learn the other ways Of love in its skill, or love in its power. "As like as a Hand to another Hand:" Who said that, never took his stand, Found and followed, like me, an hour, The beauty in this,—how free, how fine To fear, almost,—of the limit-line! As I looked at this, and learned and drew, Drew and learned, and looked again, While fast the happy minutes flew, Its beauty mounted into my brain, And a fancy seized me; I was fain To efface my work, begin anew, Kiss what before I only drew; Ay, laying the red chalk 'twixt my lips, With soul to help if the mere lips failed, I kissed all right where the drawing ailed. Kissed fast the grace that somehow slips Still from one's soulless finger-tips. II 'Tis a clay cast, the perfect thing, From Hand live once, dead long ago: Princess-like it wears the ring To fancy's eye, by which we know That here at length a master found His match, a proud lone soul its mate, As soaring genius sank to ground, And pencil could not emulate The beauty in this,—how free, how fine To fear almost!—of the limit-line. Long ago the god, like me The worm, learned, each in our degree: Looked and loved, learned and drew, Drew and learned and loved again, While fast the happy minutes flew, Till beauty mounted into his brain And on the finger which outvied His art he placed the ring that's there, Still by fancy's eye descried, In token of a marriage rare: For him on earth, his art's despair, For him in heaven, his soul's fit bride. III Little girl with the poor coarse hand I turned from to a cold clay cast— I have my lesson, understand The worth of flesh and blood at last! Nothing but beauty in a Hand? Because he could not change the hue, Mend the lines and make them true To this which met his soul's demand,— Would Da Vinci turn from you? I hear him laugh my woes to scorn— "The fool forsooth is all forlorn Because the beauty, she thinks best, Lived long ago or was never born,— Because no beauty bears the test In this rough peasant Hand! Confessed 'Art is null and study void!' So sayest thou? So said not I, Who threw the faulty pencil by, And years instead of hours employed, Learning the veritable use Of flesh and bone and nerve beneath Lines and hue of the outer sheath, If haply I might reproduce One motive of the powers profuse, Flesh and bone and nerve that make The poorest coarsest human hand An object worthy to be scanned A whole life long for their sole sake. Shall earth and the cramped moment-space Yield the heavenly crowning grace? Now the parts and then the whole! Who art thou, with stinted soul And stunted body, thus to cry, 'I love,—shall that be life's strait dole? I must live beloved or die!' This peasant hand that spins the wool And bakes the bread, why lives it on, Poor and coarse with beauty gone,— What use survives the beauty?" Fool! Go, little girl with the poor coarse hand! I have my lesson, shall understand.

There is nothing to remember in me, Nothing I ever said with a grace, Nothing I did that you care to see, Nothing I was that deserves a place In your mind, now I leave you, set you free. Conceded! In turn, concede to me, Such things have been as a mutual flame. Your soul's locked fast; but, love for a key, You might let it loose, till I grew the same In your eyes, as in mine you stand: strange plea! For then, then, what would it matter to me That I was the harsh, ill-favored one? We both should be like as pea and pea; It was ever so since the world begun: So, let me proceed with my reverie. How strange it were if you had all me, As I have all you in my heart and brain, You, whose least word brought gloom or glee, Who never lifted the hand in vain— Will hold mine yet, from over the sea! Strange, if a face, when you thought of me, Rose like your own face present now, With eyes as dear in their due degree, Much such a month, and as bright a brow, Till you saw yourself, while you cried "Tis She!" Well, you may, you must, set down to me Love that was life, life that was love; A tenure of breath at your lips' decree, A passion to stand as your thoughts approve, A rapture to fall where your foot might be. But did one touch of such love for me Come in a word or a look of yours, Whose words and looks will, circling, flee Round me and round while life endures,— Could I fancy "As I feel, thus feels He;" Why, fade you might to a thing like me, And your hair grow these coarse hanks of hair, Your skin, this bark of a gnarled tree,— You might turn myself!—should I know or care, When I should be dead of joy, James Lee?

Oh, the beautiful girl, too white, Who lived at Pornic, down by the sea, Just where the sea and the Loire unite! And a boasted name in Brittany She bore, which I will not write. Too white, for the flower of life is red: Her flesh was the soft seraphic screen Of a soul that is meant (her parents said) To just see earth, and hardly be seen, And blossom in heaven instead. Yet earth saw one thing, one how fair! One grace that grew to its full on earth: Smiles might be sparse on her cheek so spare, And her waist want half a girdle's girth, But she had her great gold hair. Hair, such a wonder of flix and floss, Freshness and fragrance—floods of it, too! Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross: Here, Life smiled, "Think what I meant to do!" And Love sighed, "Fancy my loss!" So, when she died, it was scarce more strange Than that, when delicate evening dies, And you follow its spent sun's pallid range, There's a shoot of color startles the skies With sudden, violent change,— That, while the breath was nearly to seek, As they put the little cross to her lips, She changed; a spot came out on her cheek, A spark from her eye in mid-eclipse, And she broke forth, "I must speak!" "Not my hair!" made the girl her moan— "All the rest is gone or to go; But the last, last grace, my all, my own, Let it stay in the grave, that the ghosts may know! Leave my poor gold hair alone!" The passion thus vented, dead lay she; Her parents sobbed their worst on that; All friends joined in, nor observed degree: For indeed the hair was to wonder at, As it spread—not flowing free, But curled around her brow, like a crown, And coiled beside her cheeks, like a cap, And calmed about her neck—ay, down To her breast, pressed flat, without a gap I' the gold, it reached her gown. All kissed that face, like a silver wedge 'Mid the yellow wealth, nor disturbed its hair: E'en the priest allowed death's privilege, As he planted the crucifix with care On her breast, 'twixt edge and edge. And thus was she buried, inviolate Of body and soul, in the very space By the altar; keeping saintly state In Pornic church, for her pride of race, Pure life and piteous fate. And in after-time would your fresh tear fall, Though your mouth might twitch with a dubious smile, As they told you of gold, both robe and pall, How she prayed them leave it alone awhile, So it never was touched at all. Years flew; this legend grew at last The life of the lady; all she had done, All been, in the memories fading fast Of lover and friend, was summed in one Sentence survivors passed: To wit, she was meant for heaven, not earth; Had turned an angel before the time: Yet, since she was mortal, in such dearth Of frailty, all you could count a crime Was—she knew her gold hair's worth. At little pleasant Pornic church, It chanced, the pavement wanted repair, Was taken to pieces: left in the lurch, A certain sacred space lay bare, And the boys began research. 'Twas the space where our sires would lay a saint, A benefactor,—a bishop, suppose, A baron with armor-adornments quaint, Dame with chased ring and jewelled rose, Things sanctity saves from taint; So we come to find them in after-days When the corpse is presumed to have done with gauds Of use to the living, in many ways: For the boys get pelf, and the town applauds, And the church deserves the praise. They grubbed with a will: and at length—O cor Humanum, pectora cæca, and the rest!— They found—no gaud they were prying for, No ring, no rose, but—who would have guessed?— A double Louis-d'or! Here was a case for the priest: he heard, Marked, inwardly digested, laid Finger on nose, smiled, "There's a bird Chirps in my ear:" then, "Bring a spade, Dig deeper!"—he gave the word. And lo, when they came to the coffin-lid, Or rotten planks which composed it once, Why, there lay the girl's skull wedged amid A mint of money, it served for the nonce To hold in its hair-heaps hid! Hid there? Why? Could the girl be wont (She the stainless soul) to treasure up Money, earth's trash and heaven's affront? Had a spider found out the communion-cup, Was a toad in the christening-font? Truth is truth: too true it was. Gold! She hoarded and hugged it first, Longed for it, leaned o'er it, loved it—alas— Till the humor grew to a head and burst, And she cried, at the final pass,— "Talk not of God, my heart is stone! Nor lover nor friend—be gold for both! Gold I lack; and, my all, my own, It shall hide in my hair. I scarce die loth If they let my hair alone!" Louis-d'or, some six times five, And duly double, every piece. Now, do you see? With the priest to shrive, With parents preventing her soul's release By kisses that kept alive,— With heaven's gold gates about to ope, With friends' praise, gold-like, lingering still, An instinct had bidden the girl's hand grope For gold, the true sort—"Gold in heaven, if you will; But I keep earth's too, I hope." Enough! The priest took the grave's grim yield: The parents, they eyed that price of sin As if thirty pieces lay revealed On the place to bury strangers in, The hideous Potter's Field. But the priest bethought him: "'Milk that 's spilt' —You know the adage! Watch and pray! Saints tumble to earth with so slight a tilt! It would build a new altar; that, we may!" And the altar therewith was built. Why I deliver this horrible verse? As the text of a sermon, which now I preach: Evil or good may be better or worse In the human heart, but the mixture of each Is a marvel and a curse. The candid incline to surmise of late That the Christian faith proves false, I find; For our Essays-and-Reviews' debate Begins to tell on the public mind, And Colenso's words have weight: I still, to suppose it true, for my part, See reasons and reasons; this, to begin: 'Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart At the head of a lie—taught Original Sin, The Corruption of Man's Heart.

Would it were I had been false, not you! I that am nothing, not you that are all: I, never the worse for a touch or two On my speckled hide; not you, the pride Of the day, my swan, that a first fleck's fall On her wonder of white must unswan, undo! I had dipped in life's struggle and, out again, Bore specks of it here, there, easy to see, When I found my swan and the cure was plain; The dull turned bright as I caught your white On my bosom: you saved me—saved in vain If you ruined yourself, and all through me! Yes, all through the speckled beast that I am, Who taught you to stoop; you gave me yourself, And bound your soul by the vows that damn: Since on better thought you break, as you ought, Vows—words, no angel set down, some elf Mistook,—for an oath, an epigram! Yes, might I judge you, here were my heart, And a hundred its like, to treat as you pleased! I choose to be yours, for my proper part, Yours, leave or take, or mar me or make; If I acquiesce, why should you be teased With the conscience-prick and the memory-smart? But what will God say? Oh, my sweet, Think, and be sorry you did this thing! Though earth were unworthy to feel your feet, There's a heaven above may deserve your love: Should you forfeit heaven for a snapt gold ring And a promise broke, were it just or meet? And I to have tempted you! I, who tried Your soul, no doubt, till it sank! Unwise, I loved, and was lowly, loved and aspired, Loved, grieving or glad, till I made you mad, And you meant to have hated and despised— Whereas, you deceived me nor inquired! She, ruined? How? No heaven for her? Crowns to give, and none for the brow That looked like marble and smelt like myrrh? Shall the robe be worn, and the palm-branch borne, And she go graceless, she graced now Beyond, all saints, as themselves aver? Hardly! That must be understood! The earth is your place of penance, then; And what will it prove? I desire your good, But, plot as I may, I can find no way How a blow should fall, such as falls on men, Nor prove too much for your womanhood. It will come, I suspect, at the end of life, When you walk alone, and review the past; And I, who so long shall have done with strife, And journeyed my stage and earned my wage And retired as was right,—I am called at last When the devil stabs you, to lend the knife. He stabs for the minute of trivial wrong, Nor the other hours are able to save, The happy, that lasted my whole life long: For a promise broke, not for first words spoke, The true, the only, that turn my grave To a blaze of joy and a crash of song. Witness beforehand! Off I trip On a safe path gay through the flowers you flung: My very name made great by your lip, And my heart aglow with the good I know Of a perfect year when we both were young, And I tasted the angels' fellowship. And witness, moreover ... Ah, but wait! I spy the loop whence an arrow shoots! It may be for yourself, when you meditate, That you grieve—for slain ruth, murdered truth: "Though falsehood escape in the end, what boots? How truth would have triumphed!"—you sigh too late. Ay, who would have triumphed like you, I say! Well, it is lost now; well, you must bear, Abide and grow fit for a better day: You should hardly grudge, could I be your judge! But hush! For you, can be no despair: There's amends: 'tis a secret: hope and pray! For I was true at least—oh, true enough! And, Dear, truth is not as good as it seems! Commend me to conscience! Idle stuff! Much help is in mine, as I mope and pine, And skulk through day, and scowl in my dreams At my swan's obtaining the crow's rebuff. Men tell me of truth now—"False!" I cry: Of beauty—"A mask, friend! Look beneath!" We take our own method, the devil and I, With pleasant and fair and wise and rare: And the best we wish to what lives, is—death; Which even in wishing, perhaps we lie! Far better commit a fault and have done— As you, Dear!—forever; and choose the pure, And look where the healing waters run, And strive and strain to be good again, And a place in the other world ensure, All glass and gold, with God for its sun. Misery! What shall I say or do? I cannot advise, or, at least, persuade: Most like, you are glad you deceived me—rue No whit of the wrong: you endured too long, Have done no evil and want no aid, Will live the old life out and chance the now. And your sentence is written all the same, And I can do nothing,—pray, perhaps: But somehow the world pursues its game,— If I pray, if I curse,—for better or worse: And my faith is torn to a thousand scraps, And my heart feels ice while my words breathe flame. Dear, I look from my hiding-place. Are you still so fair? Have you still the eyes? Be happy! Add but the other grace, Be good! Why want what the angels vaunt? I knew you once: but in Paradise, If we meet, I will pass nor turn my face.

Stop, let me have the truth of that! Is that all true? I say, the day Ten years ago when both of us Met on a morning, friends—as thus We meet this evening, friends or what?— Did you—because I took your arm And sillily smiled, "A mass of brass That sea looks, blazing underneath!" While up the cliff-road edged with heath, We took the turns nor came to harm— Did you consider, "Now makes twice That I have seen her, walked and talked With this poor pretty thoughtful thing, Whose worth I weigh: she tries to sing; Draws, hopes in time the eye grows nice; "Reads verse and thinks she understands; Loves all, at any rate, that's great, Good, beautiful; but much as we Down at the bath-house love the sea, Who breathe its salt and bruise its sands: "While ... do but follow the fishing-gull That flaps and floats from wave to cave! There's the sea-lover, fair my friend! What then? Be patient, mark and mend! Had you the making of your skull?" And did you, when we faced the church With spire and sad slate roof, aloof From human fellowship so far, Where a few graveyard crosses are, And garlands for the swallows' perch,— Did you determine, as we stepped O'er the lone stone fence, "Let me get Her for myself, and what's the earth With all its art, verse, music; worth— Compared with love, found, gained, and kept? "Schumann's our music-maker now; Has his march-movement youth and mouth? Ingres's the modern man that paints; Which will lean on me, of his saints? Heine for songs; for kisses, how?" And did you, when we entered, reached The votive frigate, soft aloft Riding on air this hundred years, Safe-smiling at old hopes and fears,— Did you draw profit while she preached? Resolving, "Fools we wise men grow! Yes, I could easily blurt out curt Some question that might find reply As prompt in her stopped lips, dropped eye, And rush of red to cheek and brow: "Thus were a match made, sure and fast, 'Mid the blue weed-flowers round the mound Where, issuing, we shall stand and stay For one more look at baths and bay, Sands, sea-gulls, and the old church last— "A match 'twixt me, bent, wigged and lamed, Famous, however, for verse and worse, Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chair When gout and glory seat me there, So, one whose love-freaks pass unblamed,— "And this young beauty, round and sound As a mountain-apple, youth and truth With loves and doves, at all events With money in the Three per Cents; Whose choice of me would seem profound:— "She might take me as I take her. Perfect the hour would pass, alas! Climb high, love high, what matter? Still, Feet, feelings, must descend the hill: An hour's perfection can't recur. "Then follows Paris and full time For both to reason: 'Thus with us!' She 'll sigh, 'Thus girls give body and soul At first word, think they gain the goal, When 't is the starting-place they climb! "'My friend makes verse and gets renown; Have they all fifty years, his peers? He knows the world, firm, quiet and gay; Boys will become as much one day: They 're fools; he cheats, with beard less brown. "'For boys say, Love me or I die! He did not say, The truth is, youth I want, who am old and know too much; I'd catch youth: lend me sight and touch! Drop heart's blood where life's wheels grate dry!' "While I should make rejoinder"—(then It was no doubt, you ceased that least Light pressure of my arm in yours)— "'I can conceive of cheaper cures For a yawning-fit o'er books and men. "'What? All I am, was, and might be, All, books taught, art brought, life's whole strife, Painful results since precious, just Were fitly exchanged, in wise disgust, For two cheeks freshened by youth and sea? "'All for a nosegay!—what came first; With fields on flower, untried each side; I rally, need my books and men, And find a nosegay:' drop it, then, No match yet made for best or worst!" That ended me. You judged the porch We left by, Norman; took our look At sea and sky; wondered so few Find out the place for air and view; Remarked the sun began to scorch; Descended, soon regained the baths, And then, good-by! Years ten since then; Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now, By a window-seat for that cliff-brow, On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths. Now I may speak: you fool, for all Your lore! Who made things plain in vain? What was the sea for? What, the gray Sad church, that solitary day, Crosses and graves and swallows' call? Was there naught better than to enjoy? No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due? No forcing earth teach heaven's employ? No wise beginning, here and now, What cannot grow complete (earth's feat) And heaven must finish, there and then? No tasting earth's true food for men, Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet? No grasping at love, gaining a share O' the sole spark from God's life at strife With death, so, sure of range above The limits here? For us and love, Failure; but, when God fails, despair. This you call wisdom? Thus you add Good unto good again, in vain? You loved, with body worn and weak; I loved, with faculties to seek: Were both loves worthless since ill-clad? Let the mere star-fish in his vault Crawl in a wash of weed, indeed, Rose-jacynth to the finger-tips: He, whole in body and soul, outstrips Man, found with either in default. But what 's whole can increase no more, Is dwarfed and dies, since here 's its sphere. The devil laughed at you in his sleeve! You know not? That I well believe; Or you had saved two souls: nay, four. For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist, Ankle or something. "Pooh," cry you? At any rate she danced, all say, Vilely; her vogue has had its day. Here comes my husband from his whist.

Here was I with my arm and heart And brain, all yours for a word, a want Put into a look—just a look, your part,— While mine, to repay it ... vainest vaunt, Were the woman, that's dead, alive to hear, Had her lover, that's lost, love's proof to show! But I cannot show it; you cannot speak From the churchyard neither, miles removed, Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek, Which stabs and stops, that the woman I loved Needs help in her grave and finds none near, Wants warmth from the heart which sends it—so! Did I speak once angrily, all the drear days You lived, you woman I loved so well, Who married the other? Blame or praise, Where was the use then? Time would tell, And the end declare what man for you, What woman for me, was the choice of God. But, Edith dead! no doubting more! I used to sit and look at my life As it rippled and ran till, right before, A great stone stopped it: oh, the strife Of waves at the stone some devil threw In my life's midcurrent, thwarting God! But either I thought, "They may churn and chide Awhile, my waves which came for their joy And found this horrible stone full-tide: Yet I see just a thread escape, deploy Through the evening-country, silent and safe, And it suffers no more till it finds the sea." Or else I would think, "Perhaps some night When new things happen, a meteor-ball May slip through the sky in a line of light, And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall, And my waves no longer champ nor chafe, Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!" But, dead! All 's done with: wait who may, Watch and wear and wonder who will. Oh, my whole life that ends to-day! Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still, "The woman is dead that was none of his; And the man that was none of hers may go!" There's only the past left: worry that! Wreak, like a bull, on the empty coat, Rage, its late wearer is laughing at! Tear the collar to rags, having missed his throat; Strike stupidly on—"This, this and this, Where I would that a bosom received the blow!" I ought to have done more: once my speech, And once your answer, and there, the end, And Edith was henceforth out of reach! Why, men do more to deserve a friend, Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise, Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face. Why, better even have burst like a thief And borne you away to a rock for us two, In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief, Then changed to myself again—"I slew Myself in that moment; a ruffian lies Somewhere: your slave, see, born in his place!" What did the other do? You be judge! Look at us, Edith! Here are we both! Give him his six whole years: I grudge None of the life with you, nay, loathe Myself that I grudged his start in advance Of me who could overtake and pass. But, as if he loved you! No, not he, Nor any one else in the world, 'tis plain: Who ever heard that another, free As I, young, prosperous, sound and sane, Poured life out, proffered it—"Half a glance Of those eyes of yours and I drop the glass!" Handsome, were you? 'T is more than they held, More than they said; I was 'ware and watched: I was the scapegrace, this rat belled The cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched: The others? No head that was turned, no heart Broken, my lady, assure yourself! Each soon made his mind up; so and so Married a dancer, such and such Stole his friend's wife, stagnated slow, Or maundered, unable to do as much, And muttered of peace where he had no part: While, hid in the closet, laid on the shelf,— On the whole, you were let alone, I think! So, you looked to the other, who acquiesced; My rival, the proud man,—prize your pink Of poets! A poet he was! I've guessed: He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read, Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh! There was a prize! But we both were tried. Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark, Tekel, found wanting, set aside, Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark Till comfort come and the last be bled: He? He is tagging your epitaph. If it would only come over again! —Time to be patient with me, and probe This heart till you punctured the proper vein, Just to learn what blood is: twitch the robe From that blank lay-figure your fancy draped, Prick the leathern heart till the—verses spirt! And late it was easy; late, you walked Where a friend might meet you; Edith's name Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked; If I heard good news, you heard the same; When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped; I could bide my time, keep alive, alert. And alive I shall keep and long, you will see! I knew a man, was kicked like a dog From gutter to cesspool; what cared he So long as he picked from the filth his prog? He saw youth, beauty and genius die, And jollily lived to his hundredth year. But I will live otherwise: none of such life! At once I begin as I mean to end. Go on with the world, get gold in its strife, Give your spouse the slip and betray your friend! There are two who decline, a woman and I, And enjoy our death in the darkness here. I liked that way you had with your curls Wound to a ball in a net behind: Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's, And your mouth—there was never, to my mind, Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut; And the dented chin too—what a chin! There were certain ways when you spoke, some words That you know you never could pronounce: You were thin, however; like a bird's Your hand seemed—some would say, the pounce Of a scaly-footed hawk—all but! The world was right when it called you thin. But I turn my back on the world: I take Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips. Bid me live, Edith! Let me slake Thirst at your presence! Fear no slips: 'Tis your slave shall pay, while his soul endures, Full due, love's whole debt, summum jus. My queen shall have high observance, planned Courtship made perfect, no least line Crossed without warrant. There you stand, Warm too, and white too: would this wine Had washed all over that body of yours. Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim, Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,— Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved! Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise! Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine, Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things, Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well, Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs. And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass, Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, When a great illumination surprises a festal night— Outlined round and round Rome's dome from space to spire) Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight. In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth, Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I; And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth, As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky: Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far. Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow, Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone, But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon; And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too. All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul, All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth, All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole, Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth: Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause. Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told; It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws, Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:— But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught: It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said: Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought: And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head! Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared; Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow; For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared, That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. Never to be again! But many more of the kind As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me? To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be. Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name? Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands? There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by. And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized? Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know. Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign: I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce. Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,—yes, And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground, Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep; Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found, The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in his hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!" Not that, amassing flowers, Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours, Which lily leave and then as best recall?" Not that, admiring stars, It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars; Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!" Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men; Irks care the crop full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast? Rejoice we are allied To that which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe. Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! For thence,—a paradox Which comforts while it mocks,— Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale. What is he but a brute Whose flesh has soul to suit, Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play? To man, propose this test— Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? Yet gifts should prove their use: I own the Past profuse Of power each side, perfection every turn: Eyes, ears took in their dole, Brain treasured up the whole; Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn"? Not once beat "Praise be thine! I see the whole design, I, who saw power, see now Love perfect too: Perfect I call thy plan: Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what thou shalt do!" For pleasant is this flesh; Our soul, in its rose-mesh Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest: Would we some prize might hold To match those manifold Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best! Let us not always say, "Spite of this flesh to-day I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!" As the bird wings and sings. Let us cry, "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!" Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term: Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a God though in the germ. And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new: Fearless and unperplexed, When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armor to indue. Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. For note, when evening shuts, A certain moment cuts The deed off, calls the glory from the gray: A whisper from the west Shoots—"Add this to the rest, Take it and try its worth: here dies another day." So, still within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, "This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved the Past." For more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. As it was better, youth Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made: So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid! Enough now, if the Right And Good and Infinite Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, With knowledge absolute, Subject to no dispute From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone. Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe? Not on the vulgar mass Called "work," must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. Ay, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,— Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!" Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure. He fixed thee 'mid this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest: Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. What though the earlier grooves, Which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press? What though, about thy rim, Skull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips aglow! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel? But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I—to the wheel of life With shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake thy thirst: So, take and use thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene: It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth, Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek, And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu: Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest, Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth, Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi, From Xanthus, my wife's uncle now at peace: Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name. I may not write it, but I make a cross To show I wait His coming, with the rest, And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.] I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine, And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find, Or else the lappet of a linen robe, Into the water-vessel, lay it right, And cool his forehead just above the eyes, The while a brother, kneeling either side, Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm,— He is not so far gone but he might speak." This did not happen in the outer cave, Nor in the secret chamber of the rock, Where, sixty days since the decree was cut, We had him, bedded on a camel-skin, And waited for his dying all the while; But in the midmost grotto: since noon's light Reached there a little, and we would not lose The last of what might happen on his face. I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet, With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him, And brought him from the chamber in the depths, And laid him in the light where we might see: For certain smiles began about his mouth, And his lids moved, presageful of the end. Beyond, and halfway up the mouth o' the cave, The Bactrian convert, having his desire, Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goat That gave us milk, on rags of various herb, Plantain and quitch, the rocks' shade keeps alive: So that if any thief or soldier passed, (Because the persecution was aware,) Yielding the goat up promptly with his life, Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize, Nor care to pry into the cool o' the cave. Outside was all noon and the burning blue. "Here is wine," answered Xanthus,—dropped a drop; I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright, Then chafed his right hand, and the Boy his left: But Valens had bethought him, and produced And broke a ball of nard, and made perfume. Only, he did—not so much wake, as—turn And smile a little, as a sleeper does If any dear one call him, touch his face— And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed. Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept: It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome, Was burned, and could not write the chronicle. Then the Boy sprang up from his knees, and ran, Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought, And fetched the seventh plate of graven lead Out of the secret chamber, found a place, Pressing with finger on the deeper dints, And spoke, as 't were his mouth proclaiming first, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once, And sat up of himself, and looked at us; And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word: Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cry Like the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff, As signal we were safe, from time to time. First he said, "If a friend declared to me, This my son Valens, this my other son, Were James and Peter,—nay, declared as well This lad was very John,—I could believe! —Could, for a moment, doubtlessly believe: So is myself withdrawn into my depths, The soul retreated from the perished brain Whence it was wont to feel and use the world Through these dull members, done with long ago. Yet I myself remain; I feel myself: And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile!" [This is the doctrine he was wont to teach, How divers persons witness in each man, Three souls which make up one soul: first, to wit, A soul of each and all the bodily parts, Seated therein, which works, and is what Does, And has the use of earth, and ends the man Downward: but, tending upward for advice, Grows into, and again is grown into By the next soul, which, seated in the brain, Useth the first with its collected use, And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,—is what Knows: Which, duly tending upward in its turn, Grows into, and again is grown into By the last soul, that uses both the first, Subsisting whether they assist or no, And, constituting man's self, is what Is— And leans upon the former, makes it play, As that played off the first: and, tending up, Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man Upward in that dread point of intercourse, Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him. What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man. I give the glossa as Theotypas.] And then, "A stick, once fire from end to end; Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark! Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself A little where the fire was: thus I urge The soul that served me, till it task once more What ashes of my brain have kept their shape, And these make effort on the last o' the flesh, Trying to taste again the truth of things"— (He smiled)—"their very superficial truth; As that ye are my sons, that it is long Since James and Peter had release by death, And I am only he, your brother John, Who saw and heard, and could remember all. Remember all! It is not much to say. What if the truth broke on me from above As once and ofttimes? Such might hap again: Doubtlessly He might stand in presence here, With head wool-white, eyes flame, and feet like brass, The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen— I who now shudder only and surmise 'How did your brother bear that sight and live?' "If I live yet, it is for good, more love Through me to men: be naught but ashes here That keep awhile my semblance, who was John,— Still, when they scatter, there is left on earth No one alive who knew (consider this!) —Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands That which was from the first, the Word of Life. How will it be when none more saith 'I saw'? "Such ever was love's way: to rise, it stoops. Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bidden teach, I went, for many years, about the world, Saying 'It was so; so I heard and saw,' Speaking as the case asked: and men believed. Afterward came the message to myself In Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach, But simply listen, take a book and write, Nor set down other than the given word, With nothing left to my arbitrament To choose or change: I wrote, and men believed. Then, for my time grew brief, no message more, No call to write again, I found a way, And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taught Men should, for love's sake, in love's strength believe; Or I would pen a letter to a friend And urge the same as friend, nor less nor more: Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed. But at the last, why, I seemed left alive Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand, To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things; Left to repeat, 'I saw, I heard, I knew,' And go all over the old ground again, With Antichrist already in the world, And many Antichrists, who answered prompt, 'Am I not Jasper as thyself art John? Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayest forget: Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?' I never thought to call down fire on such, Or, as in wonderful and early days, Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb; But patient stated much of the Lord's life Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work: Since much that at the first, in deed and word, Lay simply and sufficiently exposed, Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match, Fed through such years, familiar with such light, Guarded and guided still to see and speak) Of new significance and fresh result; What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars, And named them in the Gospel I have writ. For men said, 'It is getting long ago: Where is the promise of his coming?'—asked These young ones in their strength, as loth to wait, Of me who, when their sires were born, was old. I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully, Since I was there, and helpful in my age; And, in the main, I think such men believed. Finally, thus endeavoring, I fell sick, Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end, And went to sleep with one thought that, at least, Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness, We had the truth, might leave the rest to God. Yet now I wake in such decrepitude As I had slidden down and fallen afar, Past even the presence of my former self, Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap, Till I am found away from my own world, Feeling for foothold through a blank profound, Along with unborn people in strange lands, Who say—I hear said or conceive they say— 'Was John at all, and did he say he saw? Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!' "And how shall I assure them? Can they share —They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strength About each spirit, that needs must bide its time, Living and learning still as years assist Which wear the thickness thin, and let man see— With me who hardly am withheld at all, But shudderingly, scarce a shred between, Lie bare to the universal prick of light? Is it for nothing we grow old and weak, We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too. To me, that story—ay, that Life and Death Of which I wrote 'it was'—to me, it is; —Is, here and now: I apprehend naught else. Is not God now i' the world his power first made? Is not his love at issue still with sin, Visibly when a wrong is done on earth? Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around? Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise To the right hand of the throne—what is it beside, When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods my soul, And, as I saw the sin and death, even so See I the need yet transiency of both, The good and glory consummated thence? I saw the power; I see the Love, once weak, Resume the Power: and in this word 'I see,' Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of both That moving o'er the spirit of man, unblinds His eye and bids him look. These are, I see; But ye, the children, his beloved ones too, Ye need,—as I should use an optic glass I wondered at erewhile, somewhere i' the world, It had been given a crafty smith to make; A tube, he turned on objects brought too close, Lying confusedly insubordinate For the unassisted eye to master once: Look through his tube, at distance now they lay, Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear! Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth I see, reduced to plain historic fact, Diminished into clearness, proved a point And far away: ye would withdraw your sense From out eternity, strain it upon time. Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death, Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread, As though a star should open out, all sides, Grow the world on you, as it is my world. "For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,— Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, How love might be, hath been indeed, and is; And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost Such prize despite the envy of the world, And, having gained truth, keep truth: that is all. But see the double way wherein we are led, How the soul learns diversely from the flesh! With flesh, that hath so little time to stay, And yields mere basement for the soul's emprise, Expect prompt teaching. Helpful was the light, And warmth was cherishing and food was choice To every man's flesh, thousand years ago, As now to yours and mine; the body sprang At once to the height, and stayed: but the soul,—no! Since sages who, this noontide, meditate In Rome or Athens, may descry some point Of the eternal power, hid yestereve; And, as thereby the power's whole mass extends, So much extends the æther floating o'er The love that tops the might, the Christ in God. Then, as new lessons shall be learned in these Till earth's work stop and useless time run out, So duly, daily, needs provision be For keeping the soul's prowess possible, Building new barriers as the old decay, Saving us from evasion of life's proof, Putting the question ever, 'Does God love, And will ye hold that truth against the world?' Ye know there needs no second proof with good Gained for our flesh from any earthly source: We might go freezing, ages,—give us fire, Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth, And guard it safe through every chance, ye know! That fable of Prometheus and his theft, How mortals gained Jove's fiery flower, grows old (I have been used to hear the pagans own) And out of mind; but fire, howe'er its birth, Here is it, precious to the sophist now Who laughs the myth of Æschylus to scorn, As precious to those satyrs of his play, Who touched it in gay wonder at the thing. While were it so with the soul,—this gift of truth Once grasped, were this our soul's gain safe, and sure To prosper as the body's gain is wont,— Why, man's probation would conclude, his earth Crumble; for he both reasons and decides, Weighs first, then chooses: will he give up fire For gold or purple once he knows its worth? Could he give Christ up were his worth as plain? Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift, Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact, And straightway in his life acknowledge it, As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire. Sigh ye, 'It had been easier once than now'? To give you answer I am left alive; Look at me who was present from the first! Ye know what things I saw; then came a test, My first, befitting me who so had seen: 'Forsake the Christ thou sawest transfigured, him Who trod the sea and brought the dead to life? What should wring this from thee!'—ye laugh and ask. What wrung it? Even a torchlight and a noise, The sudden Roman faces, violent hands, And fear of what the Jews might do! Just that, And it is written, 'I forsook and fled:' There was my trial, and it ended thus. Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could grow: Another year or two,—what little child, What tender woman that had seen no least Of all my sights, but barely heard them told, Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh, Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God? Well, was truth safe forever, then? Not so. Already had begun the silent work Whereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze, Might need love's eye to pierce the o'erstretched doubt. Teachers were busy, whispering 'All is true As the aged ones report: but youth can reach Where age gropes dimly, weak with stir and strain, And the full doctrine slumbers till to-day.' Thus, what the Roman's lowered spear was found, A bar to me who touched and handled truth, Now proved the glozing of some new shrewd tongue, This Ebion, this Cerinthus or their mates, Till imminent was the outcry 'Save our Christ!' Whereon I stated much of the Lord's life Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work. Such work done, as it will be, what comes next? What do I hear say, or conceive men say, 'Was John at all, and did he say he saw? Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!' "Is this indeed a burden for late days, And may I help to bear it with you all, Using my weakness which becomes your strength? For if a babe were born inside this grot, Grew to a boy here, heard us praise the sun, Yet had but yon sole glimmer in light's place,— One loving him and wishful he should learn, Would much rejoice himself was blinded first Month by month here, so made to understand How eyes, born darkling, apprehend amiss: I think I could explain to such a child There was more glow outside than gleams he caught, Ay, nor need urge 'I saw it, so believe!' It is a heavy burden you shall bear In latter days, new lands, or old grown strange, Left without me, which must be very soon. What is the doubt, my brothers? Quick with it! I see you stand conversing, each new face, Either in fields, of yellow summer eves, On islets yet unnamed amid the sea; Or pace for shelter 'neath a portico Out of the crowd in some enormous town Where now the larks sing in a solitude; Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sand Idly conjectured to be Ephesus: And no one asks his fellow any more 'Where is the promise of his coming?' but 'Was he revealed in any of his lives, As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?' "Quick, for time presses, tell the whole mind out, And let us ask and answer and be saved! My book speaks on, because it cannot pass; One listens quietly, nor scoffs but pleads, 'Here is a tale of things done ages since; What truth was ever told the second day? Wonders, that would prove doctrine, go for naught. Remains the doctrine, love; well, we must love, And what we love most, power and love in one, Let us acknowledge on the record here, Accepting these in Christ: must Christ then be? Has he been? Did not we ourselves make him? Our mind receives but what it holds, no more. First of the love, then; we acknowledge Christ— A proof we comprehend his love, a proof We had such love already in ourselves, Knew first what else we should not recognize. 'T is mere projection from man's inmost mind, And, what he loves, thus falls reflected back, Becomes accounted somewhat out of him; He throws it up in air, it drops down earth's, With shape, name, story added, man's old way. How prove you Christ came otherwise at least? Next try the power: he made and rules the world: Certes there is a world once made, now ruled, Unless things have been ever as we see. Our sires declared a charioteer's yoked steeds Brought the sun up the east and down the west, Which only of itself now rises, sets, As if a hand impelled it and a will,— Thus they long thought, they who had will and hands: But the new question's whisper is distinct, Wherefore must all force needs be like ourselves? We have the hands, the will; what made and drives The sun is force, is law, is named, not known, While will and love we do know; marks of these, Eye-witnesses attest, so books declare— As that, to punish or reward our race, The sun at undue times arose or set Or else stood still: what do not men affirm? But earth requires as urgently reward Or punishment to-day as years ago, And none expects the sun will interpose: Therefore it was mere passion and mistake, Or erring zeal for right, which changed the truth. Go back, far, farther, to the birth of things; Ever the will, the intelligence, the love, Man's!—which he gives, supposing he but finds, As late he gave head, body, hands and feet, To help these in what forms he called his gods. First, Jove's brow, Juno's eyes were swept away, But Jove's wrath, Juno's pride continued long: As last, will, power, and love discarded these, So law in turn discards power, love, and will. What proveth God is otherwise at least? All else, projection from the mind of man! "Nay, do not give me wine, for I am strong, But place my gospel where I put my hands. "I say that man was made to grow, not stop; That help, he needed once, and needs no more, Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn: For he hath new needs, and new helps to these. This imports solely, man should mount on each New height in view; the help whereby he mounts, The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall, Since all things suffer change save God the Truth. Man apprehends him newly at each stage Whereat earth's ladder drops, its service done; And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved. You stick a garden-plot with ordered twigs To show inside lie germs of herbs unborn, And check the careless step would spoil their birth; But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go, Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds, It is no longer for old twigs ye look, Which proved once underneath lay store of seed, But to the herb's self, by what light ye boast, For what fruit's signs are. This book's fruit is plain, Nor miracles need prove it any more. Doth the fruit show? Then miracles bade 'ware At first of root and stem, saved both till now From trampling ox, rough boar and wanton goat. What? Was man made a wheelwork to wind up, And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? No!—grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets: May learn a thousand things, not twice the same. "This might be pagan teaching: now hear mine. "I say, that as the babe, you feed awhile, Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself, So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth: When they can eat, babe's nurture is withdrawn. I fed the babe whether it would or no: I bid the boy or feed himself or starve. I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ, Behold this blind man shall receive his sight! I cry now, 'Urgest thou, for I am shrewd And smile at stories how John's word could cure— Repeat that miracle and take my faith?' I say, that miracle was duly wrought When, save for it, no faith was possible. Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world, Whether the change came from our minds which see Of shows o' the world so much as and no more Than God wills for his purpose,—(what do I See now, suppose you, there where you see rock Round us?)—I know not; such was the effect, So faith grew, making void more miracles Because too much: they would compel, not help. I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise. Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the proved? In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof, Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung? Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die! "For I say, this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest; A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it chokes; A stomach's when, surcharged with food, it starves. With ignorance was surety of a cure. When man, appalled at nature, questioned first, 'What if there lurk a might behind this might?' He needed satisfaction God could give, And did give, as ye have the written word: But when he finds might still redouble might, Yet asks, 'Since all is might, what use of will?' —Will, the one source of might,—he being man With a man's will and a man's might, to teach In little how the two combine in large,— That man has turned round on himself and stands, Which in the course of nature is, to die. "And when man questioned, 'What if there be love Behind the will and might, as real as they?'— He needed satisfaction God could give, And did give, as ye have the written word: But when, beholding that love everywhere, He reasons, 'Since such love is everywhere, And since ourselves can love and would be loved, We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not,'— How shall ye help this man who knows himself, That he must love and would be loved again, Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, Rejecteth Christ through very need of him? The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flags Loaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies. "If he rejoin, 'But this was all the while A trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee, Thy story of the places, names and dates, Where, when and how the ultimate truth had rise, —Thy prior truth, at last discovered none, Whence now the second suffers detriment. What good of giving knowledge if, because O' the manner of the gift, its profit fail? And why refuse what modicum of help Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible I' the face of tenth—truth absolute, uniform? Why must I hit of this and miss of that, Distinguish just as I be weak or strong, And not ask of thee and have answer prompt, Was this once, was it not once?—then and now And evermore, plain truth from man to man. Is John's procedure just the heathen bard's? Put question of his famous play again How for the ephemerals' sake, Jove's fire was filched, And carried in a cane and brought to earth: The fact is in the fable, cry the wise, Mortals obtained the boon, so much is fact, Though fire be spirit and produced on earth. As with the Titan's, so now with thy tale: Why breed in us perplexity, mistake, Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words?' "I answer, Have ye yet to argue out The very primal thesis, plainest law, —Man is not God but hath God's end to serve, A master to obey, a course to take, Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become? Grant this, then man must pass from old to new, From vain to real, from mistake to fact, From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. How could man have progression otherwise? Before the point was mooted 'What is God?' No savage man inquired 'What am myself?' Much less replied, 'First, last, and best of things.' Man takes that title now if he believes Might can exist with neither will nor love, In God's case—what he names now Nature's Law— While in himself he recognizes love No less than might and will: and rightly takes. Since if man prove the sole existent thing Where these combine, whatever their degree, However weak the might or will or love, So they be found there, put in evidence,— He is as surely higher in the scale Than any might with neither love nor will, As life, apparent in the poorest midge, (When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its wing,) Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self— Given to the nobler midge for resting-place! Thus, man proves best and highest—God, in fine, And thus the victory leads but to defeat, The gain to loss, best rise to the worst fall, His life becomes impossible, which is death. "But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouch He is mere man, and in humility Neither may know God nor mistake himself; I point to the immediate consequence And say, by such confession straight he falls Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast, Made to know that he can know and not more: Lower than God who knows all and can all, Higher than beasts which know and can so far As each beast's limit, perfect to an end, Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more; While man knows partly but conceives beside, Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, And in this striving, this converting air Into a solid he may grasp and use, Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be. Such progress could no more attend his soul Were all it struggles after found at first And guesses changed to knowledge absolute, Than motion wait his body, were all else Than it the solid earth on every side, Where now through space he moves from rest to rest. Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect He could not, what he knows now, know at first; What he considers that he knows to-day, Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown; Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns Because he lives, which is to be a man, Set to instruct himself by his past self: First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn, Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind, Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law. God's gift was that man should conceive of truth And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake, As midway help till he reach fact indeed. The statuary ere he mould a shape Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next The aspiration to produce the same; So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout, Cries ever 'Now I have the thing I see:' Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought, From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself. How were it had he cried, 'I see no face, No breast, no feet i' the ineffectual clay'? Rather commend him that he clapped his hands, And laughed 'It is my shape and lives again!' Enjoyed the falsehood, touched it on to truth, Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeed In what is still flesh-imitating clay. Right in you, right in him, such way be man's! God only makes the live shape at a jet. Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship? The pattern on the Mount subsists no more, Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness; But copies, Moses strove to make thereby, Serve still and are replaced as time requires: By these, make newest vessels, reach the type! If ye demur, this judgment on your head, Never to reach the ultimate, angels' law, Indulging every instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing! "Such is the burden of the latest time. I have survived to hear it with my ears, Answer it with my lips: does this suffice? For if there be a further woe than such, Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand, So long as any pulse is left in mine, May I be absent even longer yet, Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss, Though I should tarry a new hundred years!" But he was dead: 't was about noon, the day Somewhat declining: we five buried him That eve, and then, dividing, went five ways, And I, disguised, returned to Ephesus. By this, the cave's mouth must be filled with sand. Valens is lost, I know not of his trace; The Bactrian was but a wild childish man, And could not write nor speak, but only loved: So, lest the memory of this go quite, Seeing that I to-morrow fight the beasts, I tell the same to Phœbas, whom believe! For many look again to find that face, Beloved John's to whom I ministered, Somewhere in life about the world; they err: Either mistaking what was darkly spoke At ending of his book, as he relates, Or misconceiving somewhat of this speech Scattered from mouth to mouth, as I suppose. Believe ye will not see him any more About the world with his divine regard! For all was as I say, and now the man Lies as he lay once, breast to breast with God. [Cerinthus read and mused; one added this: "If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men Mere man, the first and best but nothing more,— Account him, for reward of what he was, Now and forever, wretchedest of all. For see; himself conceived of life as love, Conceived of love as what must enter in, Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved: Thus much for man's joy, all men's joy for him. Well, he is gone, thou sayest, to fit reward. But by this time are many souls set free, And very many still retained alive: Nay, should his coming be delayed awhile, Say, ten years longer (twelve years, some compute), See if, for every finger of thy hands, There be not found, that day the world shall end, Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ's word That he will grow incorporate with all, With me as Pamphylax, with him as John, Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this? Yet Christ saith, this he lived and died to do. Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, Or lost!" But 't was Cerinthus that is lost.]

"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." ['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin. And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh: And while above his head a pompion-plant, Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye, Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, And now a flower drops with a bee inside, And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch,— He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross And recross till they weave a spider-web, (Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times,) And talks to his own self, howe'er he please, Touching that other, whom his dam called God. Because to talk about Him, vexes—ha, Could He but know! and time to vex is now, When talk is safer than in winter-time. Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep In confidence he drudges at their task, And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe, Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.] Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! 'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that: Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same. 'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun,) Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, And in her old bounds buried her despair, Hating and loving warmth alike: so He. 'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm, And says a plain word when she finds her prize, But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks About their hole—He made all these and more, Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else? He could not, Himself, make a second self To be His mate; as well have made Himself: He would not make what He mislikes or slights, An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains: But did, in envy, listlessness or sport, Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be— Weaker in most points, stronger in a few, Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while, Things He admires and mocks too,—that is it. Because, so brave, so better though they be, It nothing skills if He begin to plague. Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash, Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived, Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,— Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all, Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain; Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme, And wanton, wishing I were born a bird. Put case, unable to be what I wish, I yet could make a live bird out of clay: Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban Able to fly?—for, there, see, he hath wings, And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire, And there, a sting to do his foes offence, There, and I will that he begin to live, Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns Of grigs high up that make the merry din, Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not. In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay, And he lay stupid-like,—why, I should laugh; And if he, spying me, should fall to weep, Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong, Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again,— Well, as the chance were, this might take or else Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry, And give the manikin three sound legs for one, Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg, And lessoned he was mine and merely clay. Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme, Drinking the mash, with brain become alive, Making and marring clay at will? So He. 'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him, Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord. 'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs That march now from the mountain to the sea; 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; 'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, And two worms he whose nippers end in red; As it likes me each time, I do: so He. Well then, 'supposeth He is good i' the main, Placable if His mind and ways were guessed, But rougher than His handiwork, be sure! Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself, And envieth that, so helped, such things do more Than He who made them! What consoles but this? That they, unless through Him, do naught at all, And must submit: what other use in things? 'Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint That, blown through, gives exact the scream o' the jay When from her wing you twitch the feathers blue: Sound this, and little birds that hate the jay Flock within stone's throw, glad their foe is hurt: Put case such pipe could prattle and boast forsooth, "I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing, I make the cry my maker cannot make With his great round mouth; he must blow through mine!" Would not I smash it with my foot? So He. But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease? Aha, that is a question! Ask, for that, What knows,—the something over Setebos That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought, Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance. There may be something quiet o'er His head, Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief, Since both derive from weakness in some way. I joy because the quails come; would not joy Could I bring quails here when I have a mind: This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth. 'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch, But never spends much thought nor care that way. It may look up, work up,—the worse for those It works on! 'Careth but for Setebos The many-handed as a cuttle-fish, Who, making Himself feared through what He does, Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar To what is quiet and hath happy life; Next looks down here, and out of very spite Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real, These good things to match those as hips do grapes. 'T is solace making baubles, ay, and sport. Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle: Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped, Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame, And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban; A bitter heart that bides its time and bites. 'Plays thus at being Prosper in a way, Taketh his mirth with make-believes: so He. His dam held that the Quiet made all things Which Setebos vexed only: 'holds not so. Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex. Had He meant other, while His hand was in, Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick, Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow, Or overscale my flesh 'neath joint and joint, Like an orc's armor? Ay,—so spoil His sport! He is the One now: only He doth all. 'Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits Him. Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why? 'Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose, But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate Or love, just as it liked him: He hath eyes. Also it pleaseth Setebos to work, Use all His hands, and exercise much craft, By no means for the love of what is worked. 'Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world When all goes right, in this safe summer-time, And he wants little, hungers, aches not much, Than trying what to do with wit and strength. 'Falls to make something: 'piled yon pile of turfs, And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk, And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top, Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill. No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake; 'Shall some day knock it down again: so He. 'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof! One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope. He hath a spite against me, that I know, Just as He favors Prosper, who knows why? So it is, all the same, as well I find. 'Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises Crawling to lay their eggs here: well, one wave, Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck, Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large tongue, And licked the whole labor flat: so much for spite. 'Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies) Where, half an hour before, I slept i' the shade: Often they scatter sparkles: there is force! 'Dug up a newt He may have envied once And turned to stone, shut up inside a stone. Please Him and hinder this?—What Prosper does? Aha, if He would tell me how! Not He! There is the sport: discover how or die! All need not die, for of the things o' the isle Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees; Those at His mercy,—why, they please Him most When ... when ... well, never try the same way twice! Repeat what act has pleased, He may grow wroth. You must not know His ways, and play Him off, Sure of the issue. 'Doth the like himself: 'Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears But steals the nut from underneath my thumb, And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence: 'Spareth an urchin that contrariwise, Curls up into a ball, pretending death For fright at my approach: the two ways please. But what would move my choler more than this, That either creature counted on its life To-morrow and next day and all days to come, Saying, forsooth, in the inmost of its heart, "Because he did so yesterday with me, And otherwise with such another brute, So must he do henceforth and always."—Ay? Would teach the reasoning couple what "must" means! 'Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So He. 'Conceiveth all things will continue thus, And we shall have to live in fear of Him So long as He lives, keeps His strength: no change, If He have done His best, make no new world To please Him more, so leave off watching this,— If He surprise not even the Quiet's self Some strange day,—or, suppose, grow into it As grubs grow butterflies: else, here we are, And there is He, and nowhere help at all. 'Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop. His dam held different, that after death He both plagued enemies and feasted friends: Idly! He doth His worst in this our life, Giving just respite lest we die through pain, Saving last pain for worst,—with which, an end. Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire Is, not to seem too happy. 'Sees, himself, Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink, Bask on the pompion-bell above: kills both. 'Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball On head and tail as if to save their lives: Moves them the stick away they strive to clear. Even so, 'would have Him misconceive, suppose This Caliban strives hard and ails no less, And always, above all else, envies Him; Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights, Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh, And never speaks his mind save housed as now: Outside, 'groans, curses. If He caught me here, O'erheard this speech, and asked "What chucklest at?" 'Would, to appease Him, cut a finger off, Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best, Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree, Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste: While myself lit a fire, and made a song And sung it, "What I hate, be consecrate To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate For Thee; what see for envy in poor me?" Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend, Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime, That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch And conquer Setebos, or likelier He Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die. [What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once! Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—or, yes, There scuds His raven that has told Him all! It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move, And fast invading fires begin! White blaze— A tree's head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there, His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him! Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos! 'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip, Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!]