Classic Poem

In either mood, to bless or curse ,
God bringeth forth the breath of man;
No angel sire, no woman nurse
Shall change the work that God began:

One spirit shall be like a star,
He shall delight to honour one;
Another spirit he shall mar:
None shall undo what God hath done.

The weaker holier season wanes;
Night comes with darkness and with sins;
And, in all forests, hills, and plains,
A keener, fiercer life begins.

And, sitting by the low hearth fires,
I start and shiver fearfully;
For thoughts all strange and new desires
Of distant things take hold on me;

And many a feint of touch or sound
Assails me, and my senses leap
As in pursuit of false things found
And lost in some dim path of sleep.

But, momently, there seems restored
A triple strength of life and pain;
I thrill, as though a wine were poured
Upon the pore of every vein:

I burn — as though keen wine were shed
On all the sunken flames of sense —
Yea, till the red flame grows more red,
And all the burning more intense,

And, sloughing weaker lives grown wan
With needs of sleep and weariness,
I quit the hallowed haunts of man
And seek the mighty wilderness.

— Now over intervening waste
Of lowland drear, and barren wold,
I scour, and ne'er assuage my haste,
Inflamed with yearnings manifold;

Drinking a distant sound that seems
To come around me like a flood;
While all the track of moonlight gleams
Before me like a streak of blood;

And bitter stifling scents are past
A-dying on the night behind,
And sudden piercing stings are cast
Against me in the tainted wind.

And lo, afar, the gradual stir,
And rising of the stray wild leaves;
The swaying pine, and shivering fir,
And windy sound that moans and heaves

In first fits, till with utter throes
The whole wild forest lolls about:
And all the fiercer clamour grows,
And all the moan becomes a shout;

And mountains near and mountains far
Breathe freely: and the mingled roar
Is as of floods beneath some star
Of storms, when shore cries unto shore.

But soon, from every hidden lair
Beyond the forest tracts, in thick
Wild coverts, or in deserts bare,
Behold They come — renewed and quick —

The splendid fearful herds that stray
By midnight, when tempestuous moons
Light them to many a shadowy prey,
And earth beneath the thunder swoons.

— O who at any time hath seen
Sight all so fearful and so fair,
Unstricken at his heart with keen
Whole envy in that hour to share

Their unknown curse and all the strength
Of the wild thirsts and lusts they know,
The sharp joys sating them at length,
The new and greater lusts that grow?

But who of mortals shall rehearse
How fair and dreadfully they stand,
Each marked with an eternal curse,
Alien from every kin and land?

— Along the bright and blasted heights
Loudly their cloven footsteps ring!
Full on their fronts the lightning smites,
And falls like some dazed baffled thing.

Now through the mountain clouds they break,
With many a crest high-antlered, reared
Athwart the storm: now they outshake
Fierce locks or manes, glossy and weird,

That sweep with sharp perpetual sound
The arid heights where the snows drift,
And drag the slain pines to the ground,
And all into the whirlwind lift

The heavy sinking slopes of shade
From hidden hills of monstrous girth,
Till new unearthly lights have flayed
The draping darkness from the earth.

Henceforth what hiding-place shall hide
All hallowed spirits that in form
Of mortal stand beneath the wide
And wandering pale eye of the storm?

The beadsman in his lonely cell
Hath cast one boding timorous look
Toward the heights; then loud and well,
— Kneeling before the open book —

All night he prayeth in one breath,
Nor spareth now his sins to own:
And through his prayer he shuddereth
To hear how loud the forests groan.

For all abroad the lightnings reign,
And rally, with their lurid spell,
The multitudinous campaign
Of hosts not yet made fast in hell:

And us indeed no common arm,
Nor magic of the dark may smite,
But, through all elements of harm,
Across the strange fields of the night —

Enrolled with the whole giant host
Of shadowy, cloud-outstripping things
Whose vengeful spells are uppermost,
And convoyed by unmeasured wings,

We foil the thin dust of fatigue
With bright-shod phantom feet that dare
All pathless places and the league
Of the light shifting soils of air;

And loud, mid fearful echoings,
Our throats, aroused with hell's own thirst,
Outbay the eternal trumpetings;
The while, all impious and accurst,

Revealed and perfected at length
In whole and dire transfigurement,
With miracle of growing strength
We win upon a keen warm scent.

Before us each cloud fastness breaks;
And o'er slant inward wastes of light,
And past the moving mirage lakes,
And on within the Lord's own sight —

We hunt the chosen of the Lord;
And cease not, in wild course elate,
Until we see the flaming sword
And Gabriel before His gate!

O many a fair and noble prey
Falls bitterly beneath our chase;
And no man till the judgment day,
Hath power to give these burial place;

But down in many a stricken home
About the world, for these they mourn;
And seek them yet through Christendom
In all the lands where they were born.

And oft, when hell's dread prevalence
Is past, and once more to the earth
In chains of narrowed human sense
We turn, — around our place of birth,

We hear the new and piercing wail;
And, through the haunted day's long glare,
In fearful lassitudes turn pale
With thought of all the curse we bear.

But, for long seasons of the moon,
When the whole giant earth, stretched low,
Seems straightening in a silent swoon
Beneath the close grip of the snow,

We well-nigh cheat the hideous spells
That force our souls resistless back,
With languorous torments worse than hell's
To the frail body's fleshly rack:

And with our brotherhood the storms,
Whose mighty revelry unchains
The avalanches, and deforms
The ancient mountains and the plains, —

We hold high orgies of the things,
Strange and accursed of all flesh,
Whereto the quick sense ever brings
The sharp forbidden thrill afresh.

And far away, among our kin,
Already they account our place
With all the slain ones, and begin
The Masses for our soul's full grace.