Classic Poem

I REARED my growing Soul on dainty food,
I fed her with rich fruit and garnered gold
Sown freely by the pious provident hands
Of the wise dead of old.

The long procession of the fabulous Past,
Rolled by for her—the earliest dawn of time;
The seven great Days; the garden and the sword;
The first red stain of crime;

The fierce rude chiefs who smote, and burned, and slew,
And all for God; the pitiless tyrants grand,
Who piled to heaven the eternal monuments,
Unchanged amid the sand;

The fairy commonwealths, where Freedom first
Inspired the ready hand and glowing tongue
To a diviner art and sweeter song
Than men have feigned or sung;

The strong bold sway that held mankind in thrall,
Soldier and jurist marching side by side,
Till came the sure slow blight, when all the world
Grew sick, and swooned, and died;

Again the long dark night, when Learning dozed
Safe in her cloister, and the world without
Rang with fierce shouts of war and cries of pain,
Base triumph, baser rout;

Till rose a second dawn of light again,
Again the freemen stood in firm array
Behind the foss, and Pope and Kaiser came,
Wondered and turned away;

And then the broadening stream, till the sleek priest
Aspired to tread the path the Pagan trod,
And Rome fell once again, and the brave North
Rose from the Church to God.

All these passed by for me, till the vast tide
Grew to a sea too wide for any shore;
Then doubt o'erspread me, and a cold disgust,
And I would look no more.

For something said, “The Past is dead and gone,
Let the dead bury their dead, why strive with Fate?
Why seek to feed the children on the husks
Their rude forefathers ate?”

“For even were the Past reflected back
As in a mirror, in the historic page,
For us its face is strange, seeing that the Race
Betters from age to age.”

“And if, hearing the tale we told ourselves,
We marvel how the monstrous fable grew;
How in these far-off years shall men discern
The fictive from the true?”


Then turned I to the broad domain of Art,
To seek if haply Truth lay hidden there;
Well knowing that of old close links connect
The true things and the fair.

Fair forms I found, and rounded limbs divine,
The maiden's grace, the tender curves of Youth
The majesty of happy perfect years,
But only half the truth.

For there is more, I thought, in man, and higher,
Than animal graces cunningly combined;
Since oft within the unlovely frame is set
The shining, flawless mind.

So I grew weary of the pallid throng,
Deep-bosomed maids and stalwart heroes tall
One type I saw, one earthy animal seal
Of comeliness in all!

But not the awful, mystical human soul—
The soul that grovels and aspires in turn—
The soul that struggles outward to the light
Through lips and eyes that burn.

So, from the soulless marbles, white and bare
And cold, too-perfect art, I turned and sought
The canvases, where Christian hands have fixed
The dreams of saintly thought.

Passion I found, and love, and godlike pain,
The swift soul rapt by mingled hopes and fears,
Eyes lit with glorious light from the Unseen,
Or dim with sacred tears.

But everywhere around the living tree
I marked the tangled growths of fable twine,
And gross material images confuse
The earthly and divine.

I saw the Almighty Ruler of the worlds,
The one unfailing Source of Light and Love,
A frowning gray-beard throned on rolling clouds,
Armed with the bolts of Jove.

The Eternal Son, a shapeless new-born child,
Supine upon His peasant-mother's knees,
Or else a ghastly victim, crushed and worn
By corporal agonies.

The virgin mother—now a simple girl;
Or old and blurred with tears, and wan with sighs;
And now a Pagan goddess, giving back
Unspiritual eyes.

Till faring on what spark of heaven was there,
Grew pale, then went out quite; and in its stead
Dull copies of dull common life usurped
The empire of the dead.

Or if sometimes, rapt in a sweet suspense,
I knew a passionate yearning thrill my soul,
As down long aisles from lofty quires I heard
The solemn music roll;

Or if at last the long-drawn symphony,
After much weary wandering seemed to soar
To a finer air, and subtle measures born
On some diviner shore,

I thought how much of poor mechanical skill,
How little fire of heart, or force of brain,
Was theirs who first devised or now declared
That magical sweet strain;

And how the art was partial, not immense,
As Truth is, or as Beauty, but confined
To this our later Europe, not spread out,
Wide as the width of mind.


So then from Art, and all its empty shows
And outward-seeming truth, I turned and sought
The secret springs of knowledge which lie hid
Deep in the wells of thought.

The hoary thinkers of the Past I knew;
Whose dim vast thoughts, to too great stature grown,
Flashed round as fitful lightning flashes round
The black vault of the Unknown.

Who, seeing that things are Many, and yet are One;
That all things suffer change, and yet remain—
That opposite flows from opposite, Life and Death,
Love, Hatred, Pleasure, Pain—

Raised high upon the mystical throne of life
Some dim abstraction, hopeful to unwind
The tangled maze of things, by one rude guess
Of an untutored mind.

The sweet Ideal Essences revealed,
To that high poet-thinker's eyes I saw;
The archetypes which underset the world
With one broad perfect Law.

The fair fantastic Commonwealth, too fair
For earth, wherein the wise alone bore rule—
So wise that oftentimes the sage himself
Shows duller than the fool;

And that white soul, clothed with a satyr's form,
Which shone beneath the laurels day by day,
And, fired with burning faith in God and Right,
Doubted men's doubts away;

And him who took all knowledge for his own,
And with the same swift logical sword laid bare
The depths of heart and mind, the mysteries
Of earth and sea and air;

And those on whom the visionary East
Worked in such sort, that knowledge grew to seem
An ecstasy, a sudden blaze, revealed
To crown the mystic's dream;

Till, once again, the old light faded out,
And left no trace of that fair day remain—
Only a barren method, binding down
Men's thoughts with such a chain.

That knowledge sank self-slain, like some stout knight
Clogged by his harness; nor could wit devise
Aught but ignoble quibbles, subtly mixed
With dull theologies.

Not long I paused with these; but passed to him
Who, stripping, like a skilful wrestler, cast
From his strong arms the precious deadly web,
The vesture of the past;

And looked in Nature's eyes, and, foot to foot,
Strove with her daily, till the witch at length
Gave up, reluctant, to the questing mind
The secret of her strength.

And then the old fight, fought on modern fields,—
Whether we know by sense or inward sight—
Whether a law within, or use alone,
Mark out the bounds of right—

All these were mine; and then the ancient doubt,
Which scarce kept silence as this master taught
The undying soul, or that one subtly probed
The process of our thought,

And shuddered at the dreadful innocent talk
To the cicala's chirp beneath the trees—
Love poised on silver wings, love fallen and fouled
By black iniquities;

And laughed to scorn their quest of cosmic law,
Saw folly in the Mystic and the Schools,
And in the Newer Method gleams of truth
Obscured by childish rules;

Rose to a giant's strength, and always cried—
You shall not find the truth here, she is gone;
What glimpse men had, was ages since, and these
Go idly babbling on—
Jangles of opposite creeds, alike untrue,
Quaint puzzles, meaningless logomachies,
Efforts to scan the infinite core of things
With purblind finite eyes.

Go, get you gone to Nature, she is kind
To reasonable worship; she alone
Thinks scorn, when humble seekers ask for bread,
To offer them a stone.


And Nature drew me to her, and awhile
Enchained me. Day by day, things strange and new
Rose on me; day by day, I seemed to tread
Fresh footsteps of the true.

I laid life's house bare to its inmost room
With lens and scalpel, marked the simple cell
Which might one day be man or creeping worm,
For aught that sense could tell,—

Thrust life to its utmost home, a speck of gray
No more nor higher, traced the wondrous plan,
The wise appliances which seem to shape
The dwelling-place of man,—

Nor halted here, but thirsted still to know,
And, with half-blinded eyesight, loved to pore
On that scarce visible world, born of decay
Or stranded on the shore.

Marked how the Mother works with earth and gas,
And with what subtle alchemy knows to blend
The vast conflicting forces of the world
To one harmonious end;

And, nightly gazing on the splendid stars,
Essayed in vain with reverent eye to trace
The chain of miracles by which men learnt
The mysteries of space;

And toiled awhile with spade and hammer, to learn
The dim long sequences of life, and those
Unnumbered cycles of forgotten years
Ere life's faint light arose;

And loved to trace the strange sweet life of flowers,
And all the scarce suspected links which span
The gulf betwixt the fungus and the tree,
And 'twixt the tree and man.

Then suddenly, “What is it that I know?
I know the shows and changes, not the cause;
I know but long successions, which usurp
The name and rank of Laws.

“And what if the design I think I see
Be but a pitiless order, through the long
Slow wear of chance and suffering working out
Salvation for the strong?

“How else, if scheme there be, can I explain
The cripple or the blind, the ravening jaw,
The infinite waste of life, the plague, the sword,
The evil, thriftless law,

“Or seeming errors of design, or strange
Complexities of structure, which suggest
A will which sported with its power, or worked
Not careful for the best?”

I could not know the scheme, nor therefore spend
My soul in painful efforts to conform
With those who lavished life and brain to trace
The story of a worm;

Nor yet with those who, prizing over-much
The unmeaning jargon of their science, sought
To hide, by arrogance, from God and man
Their poverty of thought,

And, blind with fact and stupefied by law,
Lost sight of the Creator, and became
Dull bigots, narrowed to a hopeless creed,
And priests in all but name.


Thus, tired with seeking truth, and not content
To dwell with those weak souls who love to feign
Unending problems of the life and love
Which they can ne'er explain;

Nor those who, parrot-like, are proud to clothe
In twenty tongues the nothing that they know;
Nor those whom barren lines and numbers blind
To all things else below;

And half-suspecting, when the poet sang
And drew my soul to his, and round me cast
Fine cords of fancy, but a sleight of words,
Part stolen from the past—

I thought, My life lies not with books, but men!
Surely the nobler part is his who guides
The State's great ship through hidden rocks and sands,
Rude winds and popular tides,—

A freeman amongst freemen,—and contrives,
By years of thought and labour, to withdraw
Some portion of their load from lives bent down
By old abusive law!

A noble task; but how to walk with those
Who by fate's subtle irony ever hold
The freeman's ear—the cunning fluent knave,
The dullard big with gold?

And how, when worthier souls bore rule, to hold
Faction more dear than Truth, or stoop to cheat,
With cozening words and shallow flatteries
The Solons of the street?

Or, failing this, to wear a hireling sword—
Ready, whate'er the cause, to kill and slay,
And float meanwhile, a gilded butterfly,
My brief inglorious day—

Or, in the name of Justice, to confuse,
For hire, with shameless tongue and subtle brain,
Dark riddles, which, to honest minds unwarped,
Were easy to explain—

Or, with keen salutary knife, to carve
For hire the shrinking limb; or else to feign
Wise words and healing powers, though knowing naught
In face of death and pain—

Or grub all day for pelf 'mid hides and oils,
Like a mole in some dark alley, to rise at last,
After dull years, to wealth and ease, when all
The use for them is past—

Or else to range myself with those who seek
By reckless throws with chance, by trick and cheat,
Swift riches lacking all the zest of toil,
And only bitter-sweet.

Or worst, and still for hire, to feign to hear
A voice which called not, calling me to tell
Now of an indolent heaven, and now, obscene
Threats of a bodily hell.


Then left I all, and ate the husks of sense;
Oh, passionate coral lips! oh, shameful fair!
Bright eyes, and careless smiles, and reckless mirth!
Oh, golden rippling hair!

Oh, rose-strewn feasts, made glad with wine and song
And laughter-lit! oh, whirling dances sweet,
When the mad music faints awhile and leaves
Low beats of rhythmic feet!

Oh, glorious terrible moments, when the sheen
Of silk, and straining limbs flash thundering by,
And name and fame and honour itself, await
Worse hazard than the die!

All these were mine. Then, thought I, I have found
The truth at last; here comes not doubt to pain;
Here things are what they seem, not figments, born
Of a too busy brain.

But soon, the broken law avenged itself;
For, oh, the pity of it! to feel the fire
Grow colder daily, and the soaring soul
Sunk deep in grosser mire.

And oh, the pity of it! to drag down lives
Which had been happy else, to ruin, and waste
The precious affluence of love, which else
Some humble home had graced.

And oh! the weariness of feasts and wine;
The jests where mirth was not, the nerves unstrung,
The throbbing brain, the tasteless joys, which keep
Their savour for the young.

These came upon me, and a vague unrest,
And then a gnawing pain; and then I fled,
As one some great destruction passes, flees
A city of the dead.


Then, pierced by some vague sense of guilt and pain,
“God help me!” I said “There is no help in life,
Only continual passions waging war,
Cold doubt and endless strife!”

But He is full of peace, and truth, and rest,
I give myself to Him; I yearn to find
What words divine have fallen from age to age
Fresh from the Eternal mind.

And so, upon the reverend page I dwelt,
Which shows Him formless, self-contained, all-wise,
Passionless, pure, the soul of visible things,
Unseen by mortal eyes;

Who oft across dim gulfs of time revealed,
Grew manifest, then passed and left a foul
Thick mist of secular error to obscure
The upward gazing soul;

And that which told of Opposite Principles,
Of Light with Darkness warring evermore;
Ah me! 'twas nothing new, I had felt the fight
Within my soul before.

And those wise Answers of the far-off sage,
So wise, they shut out God, and can enchain
To-day in narrow bonds of foolishness
The subtle Eastern brain.

And last, the hallowed pages dear to all,
Which bring God down to earth, a King to fight
With His people's hosts; or speaking awful words
From out the blaze of light,—

Which tell how earthly chiefs who loved the right,
Were dear to Him; and how the poet-king
Sang, from his full repentant heart, the strains
Sad hearts still love to sing.

And how the seer was filled with words of fire,
And passionate scorn and lofty hate of Ill,
So pure, that we who hear them seem to hear
God speaking to us still,

But mixed with these, dark tales of fraud and blood,
Like weeds in some fair garden; till I said,
“These are not His; how shall a man discern
The living from the dead?

“I will go to that fair Life, the flower of lives;
I will prove the infinite pity and love which shine
From each recorded word of Him who once
Was human, yet Divine.

“Oh, pure sweet life, crowned by a godlike death;
Oh, tender healing hand; oh, words that give
Rest to the weary, solace to the sad,
And bid the hopeless live!

“Oh, pity, spurning not the penitent thief;
Oh, wisdom, stooping to the little child;
Oh, infinite purity, taking thought for lives
By sinful stains defiled!

“With thee will I dwell, with thee.” But as I mused,
Those pale ascetic words rene