Classic Poem

Yesterday , to a girl I said—
“I take no pity on the unworthy dead,
The wicked, the unjust, the vile who die;
'Twere better thus that they should rot and lie.
The sweet, the lovable, the just
Make holy dust;
Elsewhere than on the earth
Shall come their second birth
Until they go each to his destined place,
Whether it be to bliss or to disgrace,
'Tis well that both should rest, and for a while be dead.”
“There is nowhere else,” she said.

“There is nowhere else.” And this was a girl's voice
Who, some short tale of summers gone to-day,
Would carelessly rejoice,
As life's blithe springtide passed upon its way
And all youth's infinite hope and bloom
Shone round her; nor might any shadow of gloom
Fall on her as she passed from flower to flower;
Love sought her, with full dower
Of happy wedlock and young lives to rear;
Nor shed her eyes a tear,
Save for some passing pity, fancy-bred
All good things were around her—riches, love,
All that the heart and mind can move,
The precious things of Art, the undefiled
And innocent affection of a child
Oh girl, who sunny ways alone dost tread,
What curse is this that blights thy comely head?
For right or wrong there is no further place than here,
No sanctities of hope, no chastening fear?
“There is nowhere else,” she said.

“There is nowhere else,” and in the wintry ground
When we have laid the darlings of our love—
The little lad with eyes of blue,
The little maid with curls of gold,
Or the belovèd agèd face
On which each passing year stamps a diviner grace—
That is the end of all, the narrow bound.
Why look our eyes above
To an unreal home which mortal never knew—
Fold the hands on the breast, the clay-cold fingers fold?
No waking comes there to the uncaring dead!
“There is nowhere else,” she said.
Strange; is it old or new, this deep distress?
Or do the generations, as they press
Onward for ever, onward still,
Finding no truth to fill
Their starving yearning souls, from year to year
Feign some new form of fear
To fright them, some new terror
Couched on the path of error,
Some cold and desolate word which, like a blow,
Forbids the current of their faith to flow,
Makes slow their pulse's eager beat,
And, chilling all their wonted heat,
Leaves them to darkling thoughts and dreads a prey,
Uncheered by dawning shafts or setting ray?

Ah, old it is, indeed, and nowise new,
This is the poison-growth that grew
In the old thinkers' fancy-haunted ground.
They, blinded by some keen too-vivid gleam
Of the Unseen, to which all things did seem
To shape themselves and tend,
Solved, by some Giant Force, the Mystery of Things,
And, soaring all too high on Fancy's wings,
Saw in dead matter both their Source and End.
They felt the self-same shock and pain
As I who hear these prattlings cold to-day.
Not otherwise of old the fool to his heart did say
“There is no other place of joy or grief,
Nor wrong in doubt, nor merit in belief:
There is no God, nor Lord of quick and dead;
There is nowhere else,” they said.

And, indeed, if any to whom life's path were rough
Should say as you, he had cause maybe at sight.
Truly, the way is steep and hard enough,
And wrong is tangled and confused with right;
And from all the world there goes a solemn sound
Of lamentations, rising from the ground,
Confused as that which shocks the wondering ear
Of one who, gliding on the still lagune,
Finds the oar's liquid plash and tune
Lost in wild cries of frenzy and of fear,
And knows the Isle of Madness drawing near;
And the great scheme, if scheme there be indeed,
Is a book deeper than our eyes may read,
Full of wild paradox, and vain endeavour,
And hopes and faiths which find completion never.
For such a one, in seasons of dismay
And dark depression deepening to despair,
Clouds come ofttimes to veil the face of day,
And there is no ray left of all the beams of gold,
The glow, the radiance bright, the unclouded faith of old.

But you, poor child forlorn,
Ah! better were it you were never born;
Better that you had flung your heart away
On some coarse lump of clay;
Better defeat, disgrace, childlessness, all
That can a solitary life befall,
Than to have all things and yet be
Self-bound to dark despondency,
And self-tormented, beyond reach of doubt,
By some cold word that puts all yearnings out.

“There is nowhere else,” she said:
This is the outcome of their crude Belief
Who are, beyond all rescue and relief,
Being self-slain and numbered with the dead
“There is no God but Force,
Which, working always on its destined course,
Speeds on its way and knows no thought of change.
Within the germ the molecule fares free,
Holding the potency of what shall be;
Within the little germ lurks the heaven-reaching tree:
No break is there in all the cosmic show.
What place is there, in all the Scheme Immense,
For a remote unworking Excellence
Which may not be perceived by any sense,
Which makes no humble blade of grass to grow,
Which adds no single link to things and thoughts we know?”

“For everything that is, indeed,
Bears with it its own seed;
It cannot change or cease and be no more:
All things for ever are even as they were before,
Or if, by long degrees and slow,
More complex doth the organism grow,
It makes no break in the eternal plan;
There is no gulf that yawns between the herb and man.”

Poor child, what is it they have taught,
Who through deep glooms and desert wastes of thought
Have brought to such as you their dreary creed?
Have they no care, indeed,
For all the glorious gains of man's long past,
For all our higher hope of what shall be at last?
“All things are moulded in one mould;
They spring, they are, they fade by one compulsion cold—
Some dark necessity we cannot know,
Which bids them wax and grow,—
That is sufficient cause for all things, quick and dead!”
“There is no Cause else,” she said.

Oh, poor indeed, and in evil case,
Who shouldst be far from sound of doubt
As a maiden in some restful place
Whose tranquil life, year in year out,
Is built on gentle worship, homely days
Lit each by its own light of prayer and praise,
For whom the spire points always to the sky,
And heaven lies open to the cloistered eye.
For us, for us, who mid the weary strife
And jangling discords of our life
Are day by day opprest,
'Twere little wonder were our souls distrest,
God, and the life to be, and all our early trust
Being far from us expelled and thrust;
But for you, child, who cannot know at all
To what mysterious laws we stand or fall,
To what bad heights the wrong within may grow,
To what dark depths the stream of hopeless lives may flow!

For let the doubter cavil as he can,
There is no wit in man
Which can make Force rise higher still
Up to the heights of Will,—
No phase of Force which finite minds can know
Can self-determined grow,
And of itself elect what shall its essence be:
The same to all eternity,
Unchanged, unshaped, it goes upon its blinded way;
Nor can all forces nor all laws
Bring ceasing to the scheme, nor any pause,
Nor shape it to the mould in which to be—
Form from the wingèd seed the myriad-branching tree,—
Nor guide the force once sped, so that it turn
To Water-floods that quench or Fires that burn,
Or now to the electric current change,
Or draw all things by some attraction strange
Or in the brain of man, working unseen, sublime,
Transcend the narrow bounds of Space and Time.
Whence comes the innate Power which knows to guide
The force deflected so from side to side,
That not a barren line from whence to where
It goes upon its way through the unfettered air?
What launched the prisoned atom on its fruitful course?
Ah, it was more than Force
Which gave the Universe of things its form and face!
Force moving on its path through Time and Space
Would round no orb, but leave all barren still
A higher Power, it was, the worlds could form and fill;
And by some pre-existent harmony
Were all things made as Fate would have them be—
Fate, the ineffable Word of an Eternal Will.

All things that are or seem,
Whether we wake who see or do but dream,
Are of that Primal Will phantasms, if no more;
Who sees these right sees God, and seeing doth adore.
Joy, suffering, evil, good,
Whate'er our daily food,
Whate'er the mystery and paradox of things,
Low creeping thoughts and high imaginings.
The laughters of the world, the age-long groan,
Bring to his mind one name, one thought alone;
All beauty, right, deformity, or wrong,
Sing to his ear one high unchanging song;
And everything that is, to his rapt fancy brings
The hidden beat through space of the Eternal Wings.

Where did the Idea dwell,
At first, which was of all the germ and seed?
Which worked from Discord order, from blind Force
Sped all the Cosmos on its upward course?
Which held within the atom and the cell
The whole vast hidden Universe, sheltered well,
Till the hour came to unfold it, and the need?
What did the ever-upward growth conceive,
Which from the obedient monad formed the herb, the tree,
The animal, the man, the high growths that shall be?
Ever from simpler to more complex grown,
The long processions from a source unknown
Unfold themselves across the scene of life
Oh blessèd struggle and strife,
Fare onward to the end, since from a Source
Thou art, which doth transcend and doth determine Force!
Fare onward to the end; not from Force, dead and blind,
Thou comest, but from the depths of the Creative Mind.

Fare on to the end, but how should ending be,
If Will be in the Universe, and plan?
Some higher thing shall be, that which to-day is Man
Undying is each cosmic force:
Undying, but transformed, it runs its endless course.
It cannot wane, or sink, or be no more.
Not even the dust and lime which clothe us round
Lose their own substance in the charnel-ground,
Or carried far upon the weltering wind;
Only with other growths combined,
In some new whole they are for ever—
They are, and perish never.
The great suns shed themselves in heat and light
On the vast vacant interstellar air,
Till when their scattered elements unite
They are replenished as before they were.
Nothing is lost, nor can be: change alone,
Unceasing, never done,
Shapes all the forms of things, and keeps them still
Obedient to the Unknown Perfect Will.
And shall the life that is the highest that we know,
Shall this, alone, no more increase, expand and grow?
Nay, somewhere else there is, although we know not where,
Nor what new shape God gives our lives to wear
We are content, whatever it shall be:
Content, through all eternity,
To be whatever the Spirit of the World deems best;—
Content to be at rest;
Content to work and fare through endless days;
Content to spend ourselves in endless praise:
Nay, if it be the Will Divine,
Content to be, and through long lives to pine,
Far from the light which vivifies, the fire
Which breathes upon our being and doth inspire
All soaring thoughts and hopes which light our pathway here;
Content, though with some natural thrill of fear,
To be purged through by age-long pain,
Till we resume our upward march again;
Content, at need, to take some lower form,
Some humbler herb or worm
To be awhile, if e'er the eternal plan
Go back from higher to lower, from man to less than man.
Not so, indeed, we hold, but rather this—
That all Time gone, that all that was or is,
The scarpèd cliff, the illimitable Past,
This truth alone of all truths else hold fast:—
From lower to higher, from simple to complete,
This is the pathway of the Eternal Feet;
From earth to lichen, herb to flowering tree,
From cell to creeping worm, from man to what shall be
This is the solemn lesson of all time,
This is the teaching of the voice sublime:
Eternal are the worlds, and all that them doth fill;
Eternal is the march of the Creative Will;
Eternal is the life of man, and sun, and star;
Ay, even though they fade a while, they are;
And though they pause from shining, speed for ever still.