Classic Poem

H OW still and motionless!
In pier and arch the massive marble stands,
Unmoving as the mountains blue
That from afar rise up and bless,
In silence, all the breadth of lower lands:
While the fresh grass, in circle true,
Is seen
Enwrapping the round mound in graveyard green.
Marble, and turf, and silence drear, —
Surely the monuments of Death are here!

Alas!
What change surprising
From that brief transient time when this great mass,
This mighty work, was slow uprising!
Then, from the early dawn to sunset hour,
Rang the loud noises of constructive power.
The cries of busy men, in active crowd,
Incessant to their fellows shouting aloud;
The creaking of huge derricks, and the click
Of masons' tools shaping the stone and brick: —
These sounds of strenuous men
In labor free,
Then waked the echoes of this lonely glen.
Nor could the eye then see
The beauty of the pier, nor could observe
The circling arch fulfil its shapely curve
Aright.
Rough scaffold framework hid from sight
The mighty pier, and timber centerings
Covered the arch with things
Of meaner worth, and doomed, at some near day,
To swift decay:
So that no part of the great plan
Could meet the eye of man.
And all the while no drop of water ran
Through all its growing bulk, although
For that, and that alone, its bulk was made to grow.

But when, at length, complete in grace
The perfect structure stands; —
When every stone, lifted by skilful hands
High o'er the watery plain,
Fills its appointed place; —
When the full round of the brick main,
From side to side,
Leads its straight channel for the crystal tide; —
When grassy turf above learns to enfold
Its rounded form against the wintry cold,
And all is ready:
Behold, how marvellous the range
Of sudden change!
Down drop the dingy lines unsteady
Of meaner things. The centerings yield, and show
The marble arch below.
The rough, coarse framings of the scaffolds fall,
Uncovering the ashlar wall.
The strenuous noises of the workmen cease,
In silence and deep peace.
The transient ugliness, that marred
While yet it builded, stands no more on guard;
But now, in humble duty,
Gives place to perfect and enduring beauty:
While, under the sod,
For the first time, the crystal flood —
To the vast city a life-giving river —
Flows through, and flows forever.

This solid mass from Silence sprung,
And into Silence goes; —
Finding its sole true work in its repose.
Not by the babbling tongue
Of coarser, grosser human-kind
Was it created; but by the silent mind
Of the skilled Architect. Its plan was wrought
Of him who brought
The fair ideal, in its every part,
By his high art,
To full perfection in his noiseless thought,
While yet the noises of the public mart —
The world of gross construction —
Were all unheard.
The spoken word —
That bridge leading from thought to full production; —
The formal contract firm; — and then
The marshalling of men,
The pick, the spade, the thundering blast of rocks,
The quarrying of huge blocks; —
The steady strain
Of human and mechanic force, combined
With might and main,
Muscle and mind; —
The masons' skill that poises
Aloft in air
Enormous weights of stone,
And there
Alone
Fixes their new airial station; —
The tools that cut and bore, the wheels that grind; —
Yea, all the innumerable noises,
The cries that usher in some new creation
To its full birth
Here in the Earth:
All these had no part
In the silent thought of that high art,
That spirit unseen — so oft unheeded —
From which alone this mighty work proceeded.

But though from silence thus the idea springs,
Yet ever barren had it been on earth,
Nor ever known a birth,
Had not these lower noises, and the things
That caused them, come to clothe
The abstract thought in form and substance both.
But even so,
Although
So needful is the process of erection,
These outer things do form
No real, integral part of the work's perfection,
Which in the spirit hath its germ or norm.
The scaffold rough, though near,
Yet enters not
With woody fibres, destined soon to rot,
Into the substance of the marble pier,
Which, by its help, arose.
In the stone arch no atom is enfolded
Of the centering on which its curve was moulded;
For every builder knows
Such mixture strange would be its own undoing,
And overwhelm the mighty work with ruin.

So Man's true life can find
Its fountain of eternal birth,
Not on the earth,
But only in the Eternal Mind
Of God . From that Eternity,
Silent to us,
Comes all that we can see
Or know of life: and thus,
That which is silent spirit, antedates
All consciousness of earthly things and states.
But when God'S silence into human speech
Is uttered, then, mingled with woe and sin,
The transient noises of the earth begin.
Birth is proclaimed,
In the very act, by inarticulate cries.
Sorrows and struggles reach
Through all our lives, and every part is shamed
By what is seen,
In God'S most holy eyes,
To be unclean.
For, if the cloudless heavens are not
Clean in His sight,
And if the very Angels holy
He charge with folly:
How shall our mortal life be brought
To perfectness so bright,
That it may dare encounter nigh
The lightning glance of that All-seeing Eye?

Man must grow:
And that growth must be slow.
Little by little, day by day,
And hour by hour, in work or play,
The fabric of a life arises.
Its tame monotonies, its sharp surprises,
Its routine weary, and its sudden crises, —
These come to all.
Passion and pride breed strife
From trivial friction of the daily life.
And often, in that daily life, befall
Misunderstandings and mistakes,
Prejudice, hatred, rivalry, and scorn,
That thrust the poisoned thorn
Of slander into the heart: which breaks
With broken love. The partisan, whose zeal
Revels in shameless lies,
Inflames at length the maddened multitude,
Till, in its rage, it rise,
And fight its battles out with deadly steel,
Confused noise, and garments rolled in blood.
Ten thousand are the tools, with keenest edge,
That cut the stone, rough from its rocky ledge,
Into the polished form it takes,
Before a part of the finished work it makes.
And mighty sword-blows, oft, alone
Can carve the stubborn heart of stone.
The close network of circumstance,
Of race, and nation, time, and chance,
Of parentage, and marriage, husbands, wives,
Or children, or companions, — all
The innumerable things or great or small,
That shape men's lives
While they on earth abide,
Showing a transient truth that men may get
Some knowledge of, while these same things do hide
Substance which God alone can see as yet: —
Without these transient things, no human life
On earth can be upbuilded.
None are shielded
From struggle and from sin, from woe and strife.
These all men see:
And until life is ended,
They see but little else, however splendid
The inner and enduring house may be.

And that enduring inner house, that grows
Within the grossness of this world of ours,
What is it in itself? Who knows?
What are its powers?

It is what we call character:
That is, the man himself , — apart
From all the accidents, the stress, and stir,
And many-sided strife,
Which, from the start,
Have helped to mould and form that inner life.
As each is born alone,
And each must die alone,
So each one really lives alone,
And builds alone.
Into the still and awful solitude
Of the human soul,
Who can intrude?
Until the whole
Upbuilding of that inner house is done,
From the foundation to the topmost stone,
No eye looks on,
But the Eye of God alone.
The circumstance, that formed the man
'Mid struggles and sharp pains,
Passes away: the Man himself remains.
The chisel keen, that ran
With biting edge over the shaping stone,
May have been lost,
Or broken,
Or else devoured with rust; —
Nay, ev'n the skilful man
Who wielded it may, for long ages gone,
Have been an handful of forgotten dust:
And yet the carved stone
Remains, alone.
So with our time and chance,
Words heard or spoken,
Things done or suffered, failed in, or attained,
The while with slow advance
Our growth is gained:
These things are not , what yet they do betoken .
They with their transient forces,
Wholly external,
Can give no drop to swell the secret sources
Of life eternal;
Yet, in their brief and passing hour,
They have the power
To help, to form, to cherish,
A human soul:
And that shall never perish,
While endless ages roll!

But, lo!
Death comes!
To us, who know,
Angel of God is he.
He comes, —
And see!
With one touch of his ice-cold wings
He brushes off the worn-out scaffoldings, —
The coarse and worthless things
Of time and sense;
And God 's ideal,
In all its pure, complete magnificence,
Stands forth, a substance real.
Then vulgar noise gives place
To holy silence. In that hush profound,
The transient things that this world gave
Lose all their grace;
And, like leaves dead,
Fall shivering down into the open grave,
And there are buried
Deep in the cold ground.
The ugliness of time,
All suddenly unbound,
And vanishing at a breath,
Unveils the beauty of Eternity
In all its spotless prime.
While underneath
The bright green turf which here we see,
And know,
As Death,
The glorious River
Of life, true Life, now first begins to flow,
And flows for ever!