CHILDREN OF FREEDOM

_O Freedom, beautiful beyond compare, thy kingdom is established!_

_Thou with thy feet on earth, thy brow among the stars, for ages us thy children_

_I, thy child, singing daylong nightlong, sing of joy in thee._

YORK MINSTER

Solid and ghostly in the pale winter morning—

Thy vast floor worn, worn by the tiny foot-falls of centuries,

The great grey Alps, thy columns, cutting sharply their strong lines against the delicate tracery of roof and window—

Solid and ghostly, in visionary beauty thou stretchest O nave,

All desolate—vast and desolate.

* * * * *

The murmurs of the outer world tremble faintly along the roof like the murmur of the sea in some vast sea-shell;

Below, nothing visible moves save one ancient verger, pacing to and fro or drowsing in his armchair by the stove.

* * * * *

But hark now; from behind the screen the droning mumble of morning prayers!

It ceases, and the thin boy-voices of the scanty choir take up the chant.

Strangely from its invisible source, like some river once running strong but now losing itself in runlets in the sand,

As from out the old mediæval world, faint and far comes sounding that refrain—

The quaint barbaric tentative uncertain-toned Gregoric refrain, soaring,

Soaring, soaring, through the great desolate nave wandering, in the ears of the one drowsy verger dying.

* * * * *

And all around over the world spreads winter,

Heavy and silent;

There is no music heard in the streets, nor sound of hope or of pleasuring—but pinched faces are there,

And in wretched homes reign cold and starvation.

* * * * *

The Church is dead. Snow covers the ground. Silence and heavy misery spread their wings dull against the faces of the people. The Church is dead.

* * * * *

All the long years of Christianity have come to this;

All the preaching and the prayers and the psalm-singing of centuries have come to this;

All the rapt outpourings of the soul to God, and hidden yearnings of ages, to this?

The Church is dead. Snow covers the ground. Snug in their firelit homes, with closed shutters and surrounded by every luxury, the Wealthy the Pious and the Respectable sit—

And without, the People are dying of cold and starvation.

* * * * *

A nation is dying—

Dying slowly and surely of Unbelief—and there can be no deadlier disease: no plague of the middle ages, no cholera epidemic, deadlier.

A nation is dying—

Rotting down piece-meal, lethargic even in its misery, weary and careworn even in its luxury, to the grave.

* * * * *

And I sit and sing.

All the dark winter night, and though the night were ten times pitchier than it is,

I sit and sing.

Though the gloom spread all around me, though the wan pinched faces plead terribly upon me, in the midst still I sit and sing: Joy! Joy!—for I have seen;

Deep in the wide wan eyes I have seen:

And what I have seen—is sufficient.

* * * * *

O what lies deeper far than the life and death of nations—

As the calm Ocean lies deep below the storms which vex its surface;

What all the ages and ages of human life on earth has never never failed;

What is to humanity as the sun rising in the morning is to nature—

Ever fresh and young and potent, creating new worlds for itself as it were by merely looking forth upon them;

What rises winged out of all graves—with laughter—leaving the long vistas of corpses behind; and out of the graves of nations;

What for each man rises out of his own grave, and is never vanquished;

Deep deep—below all words—in the eyes of these wan children,

I have seen—and that is sufficient.

* * * * *

O the fresh fresh air blowing!

Here on the summit of this leafless poplar, under the immense night, while the tender growing light just outlines the distant hills,

To sit and sing—for pure joy simply to sit and sing!

SUNDAY MORNING AFTER CHURCH

Sunday morning just after church—and a light warm wind from the North flutters laden with the scent of hay out to sea;

The sea lies crisp and calm, slate-green, stretching itself miles and miles to the wind—wonderful, ecstatic, pushing back with liquid-velvet paws upon the shore.

* * * * *

On the sea-side esplanade there is a good-sized crowd—perhaps a thousand grown men and women walking up and down on one exclusive and fashionable stretch of grass.

It is quite a sight. Scarlet parasols and blue and white lined with pink, tall hats shining speckless, kid-gloves reaching to the elbow—with glitter of gold and silver bangles, and soft sheen and rustle of dresses. All subdued and polite, colors carefully chosen, voices low, movements measured.

Let us take a seat here. How pleasant the air is! and the shade of the great clouds! and the dazzling effect of so many going to and fro!

Here comes one—her face not very easy to be seen for her parasol—but her chin is softly rounded, and the tinge and tissue of her skin most delicate. She wears a very light salmon-pink silk slashed with blue. She is with her mother and an elder sister, and seems to be doing her best, gentle child, to be the correct thing.

Here another of bolder sort—dark handsome eyes, just flashing often enough to keep him amused on the man who is walking beside her; lips a trifle too red, but contrasting well with the great yellow rose on her shoulder and the violet velveteen tunic; figure admirable, but her face somewhat wan beneath its petulance and inquisitiveness.

There goes an old beau, carefully brushed grizzled hair, faultless boots—knows everybody, a good-natured and amusing crony; here a grey-haired baronet and his wife, both demure and short-sighted (no question but they have been to church); there again, a few steps to the left, three young men arm in arm, carefully got up, exchanging whispered comments.

* * * * *

Hist! this elderly matron and her daughter are coming to sit beside us!

Heavy and heated, in rich silks deeply flounced and embroidered, and tight spindle-heeled boots—they seem glad of a rest.

The dress of the elder one especially is a study—the flounces, the innumerable quantity of beads, the formless mass of plaits and gathers, the wonderful arrangement of whale-bones in the body, the strict lacing down the back, the frills and lace round neck and shoulders, the several rings seen on the for a moment ungloved hand, the lump of trinkets suspended from her waist, and the usual headgear [—one cannot help thinking of the chaotic mass of human work this idle red easy-tempered woman carries about on her body].

* * * * *

I close my eyes for a moment. How pleasant still and soft the air is!

A vision goes past of dark and unspoken things—of criminals in prison, of rags and disease and destitution.

Naked and outcast forms hurry by;

The mother snatches some half-pence from her boy match-seller, and makes for the nearest gin-shop; squalid streets and courts are in the background, and filthy workshops;

Forms of humanity pass before me, unclothed; voices hover round, wordless;

Strange clinging voices call; through the long high arches floating, through the night strange voices call.

* * * * *

O freedom! O shadow and night! and forms half-shapen in the womb of night—to the outlet of deliverance!

* * * * *

These naked and outcast—I contemplate them long, undisguised; what they are is not hidden from me, I go back of them and beyond.

I pass as one among them, and feel the touch of their bodies, and of their arms twining—and turn down tired and sleep beside those who sleep;

Half-human, crazy, hungry, condemned, bitter-lipped, forsaken,

The young man with divine face so pale and misshapen I see—I see the poor thin body of the dying mother.

[She is ignorant and unlettered, but when she talks to me in perfect child-like trust of the future of her orphaned children I think I have heard the words of the profoundest Wisdom that ever were uttered.]

* * * * *

The rags fall off, the prison doors fly wide.

In vast phalanx, as out of night and oblivion,

Unclothed, majestic, with wounds and disfigurements, as of him who hung upon the Cross—

With stretched arms, shadow-gigantic and shining, as just alighted on the earth—they stand. I hear their voices call—

Strange wild and inarticulate—

Through the long high arches floating, through the night their voices call.

* * * * *

I open my eyes again. The gay crowd still glides past, exchanging greetings, the flounces and lace are still on the chair beside me. I catch the fluffy smell.

I rise and pass down towards the sea. It lies there, unnoticed as before, slate-green and solemn, stretching miles and miles away; but the wind has risen and is rising, and in the distance here and there it is fretful with sharp white teeth.

HIGH IN MY CHAMBER

High in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime—Midnight.

The great city sleeps with arms outstretched supine under the stars—deep-breathing, hushed;

Into the kennels of sleep are gone the loud-baying cares of day, and hunted man rests for a moment.

* * * * *

The spangled stream has gone.

The long procession of carriages through fashionable quarters, the stream of faces past gay shop-windows,

And high above them the weary face of the needle-woman straining the last hour of daylight—

All are gone.

Into the hidden chamber of the dark the stream of life has poured itself,

For the conception of a new day.

* * * * *

The note of sorrow sleeps;

The weary throbbing brain and heart are lulled—assuaged is the tossing sea;

The wretched prisoner—the prisoner of the needle and dingy attic—is released: she dreams her impossible dream;

The prisoners of here and there, and of Necessity gripping close as a vice, are at liberty: they roam out beyond the star-circled walls of time and hear strange secrets whispered.

* * * * *

But the hour swings onward.

To good and evil alike—to the watching and the sleeping heart alike;

To the mother as she lies beside her infant, sleeping, yet wakeful to its slightest movement; to the father as he sleeps beside the mother;

To the young man as he lies beside his new-made bride, worshiping sleepless on her bosom;

To the folded bud of childhood, sleeping deep as on a tranquil sea—to the bud just disclosed from Eden; and to the child-like relaxed sleep again of extreme old age;

The hour swings onward.

* * * * *

To the waking fever of remorse;

To the long cadaverous vigil of physical pain;

And to the long vigil of the heart-broken wife praying vainly for respite from thought;

The hour swings onward.

High in heaven over the supine city—over the wilderness of roofs beneath the stars—

The hour swings surely onward.

* * * * *

Again the great bell booms.

Blossoming out of silence the rich music swells—

Then dies away—the second stroke of midnight.

And now as if awoken by that note of warning, over the vast city clash a thousand brazen chattering tongues,

Ding, ding, clack, clack,

From far and near, from railway-tower and steeple—blurring the thoughtful night—ding ding, clack clack,

With scrambling stroke they hurry to tell the hour—and so straightway are silent.

But the great bell goes booming slowly on,

High in its tower in heaven among the stars,

Thoughtful, deep-voiced, alone—till it has finished.

* * * * *

So pass the hours, the spacious solemn hours, the shrill chattering hours,

Out into the night they pass, out into the morning,

For the conception of a new day.

2

High in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime,

Deep deep deep, past all mortal hearing, down in the kennels of sleep below the world—

The slow and muffled chime.

* * * * *

The strokes of the changing hours of Man,

The slow spacious thoughts of the changing generations—

Through the night rising I hear.

The thoughts of them who gather the generations into the great fold;

Through whose hearts the trampling millions pass—as surely indeed as through city streets;

The thoughts of them through whose hearts the weary exiles, the prisoners of time, pass, liberating their souls in prayer till the air is charged with lightning—

Through the night rising I hear.

* * * * *

These are they who dream the impossible dream—and it comes true;

Who hear the silent prayers, who accept the trampling millions, as the earth dreaming accepts the interminable feet of her children;

Who dream the dream which all men always declare futile;

Who dream the hour which is not yet on earth—

And lo! it strikes.

3

High in my chamber I hear the deep Bell chime.

* * * * *

Softly softly up through the universe,

Vibrant in every leaf soft-answering, scarce audible ascending,

The great undertone—the deep rich musical solvent, swelling over the world, saturated with love, soft like the winds of spring (O who will give it utterance?)—

Through the night rising I hear.

DEEP BELOW DEEP

Deep below deep,

Tearless, impenetrably frozen in misery—

Is it a child or an old man?

[His face is the color of ashes: it is like a vacant spot without light.]

* * * * *

A child surely, by his top-heavy knock-kneed gait and perching semi-perceptive ways;

An old man, by the two deep horizontal furrows in his brow.

* * * * *

Come in my child out of the bitter wind, and sit awhile by my fire, and eat.

You need not speak or explain yourself: just sit down, and when you have eaten draw your chair close and get warm.

[Perhaps he will thaw, I think, and tell me the story of his life.]

But he sits silent—his hand in mine—with his head deep on his breast; and hardly moves—except once or twice to pick a bit of rag off the end of his trousers and throw it into the fire.

Now his cap is off I see it is a fine head—a well-formed head and brow with short light curling hair;

But when he lifts it his eyes are bleared and slow, with heavy lids, and they refuse to meet mine.

* * * * *

We sit awhile silent; then with slow fitful answers, only now and then volunteering a word:

* * * * *

It was my own fault:

I went into t’ pit when they did not want me to;

They gave me a good education—I can read and write well enew—but I would go into t’ pit.

The very first day I was crushed by a wagon and was laid up a twelve-month: It was my legs that was crushed—but I got over it.

Then my father died. My mother behaved very bad to me: I don’t live with them now. When I am in work I lodge down by the Brewery, but now I sleep where I can.

I have had twelve year at it. I am now twenty-three.

It was all right at first, but times have been very bad lately. When you work half time you can’t save nothing.

I have been out of work three months. They shortened hands, and I was thrown out. They don’t care: when times is bad they throw you out to make it worse.

There’s hundreds clemming one place or another, and they don’t care.

It’s all the same to them that’s well off themselves, and they have done it to spite us.

* * * * *

Silence.

Again the sunken head, again the impenetrable weary crushed frozen look—

There was no thaw or change whatever.

I knew him for many months, but there was no thaw or change to speak of.

EXCEPT THE LORD BUILD THE HOUSE

She lies, whom Money has killed, and the greed of Money,

The thrice-driven slave, whom a man has calmly tortured,

And cast away in the dust—and calls it not murder,

Because he only looked on; while his trusted lieutenants

Supply and Demand pinned the victim down—and her own mother Nature slew her!

* * * * *

The old story of the sewing machine—the treadle machine;

Ten hours a day and five shillings a week, a penny an hour or so—if the numbers were of importance.

Of course she fell ill. Indeed she had long been ailing, and the effort and the torture were slowly disorganising her frame; and already the grim question had been asked: “Might she have rest?” (—the doctor said _must_—and for many a month, too.)

And the answer came promptly as usual. “Have rest? —as much as she wanted! It was a pity, but of course if she could not work she could go. They would make no difficulty, as Supply would fill up her place as soon as vacant.”

One more struggle then. And now she _must_ go, for work is impossible, and Supply _has_ filled her place, and there is no difficulty—or difference—except to her.

For her only the hospital pallet, and the low moaning of the distant world;

For her only the fever and the wasting pain and the nightmare of the loud unceasing treadles;

And the strange contrast in quiet moments of the still chamber and the one kindly face of the house-surgeon, stethoscope in hand, at her bedside;

For her only, hour after hour, the dull throbbing recollection of the injustice of the world,

The bleak unlovely light of averted eyes thrown backwards and forwards over her whole life,

And the unstaunched wound of the soul which is their bitter denial.

And at last the lessening of the pain, and a sense of quietude and space, and through the murky tormented air of the great city a light, a ray of still hope on her eyes peacefully falling;

And then in a moment the passing of the light, and a silence in the long high-windowed ward;

And one with an aster or two and a few chrysanthemums and one with a blown white rain-bewept rose half-timidly coming,

To lay on her couch, with tears.

* * * * *

And so a grave.

In the dank smoke-blackened cemetery, in the dismal rain of the half-awakened winter day,

A grave, for her and her only.

* * * * *

And yet not for her only, but for thousands—

For hundreds of thousands—to lie undone, forsaken,

Tossed impatiently back from the whirling iron—

The broken wheels, or may be merely defective—

Who cares?—

That as they spin roll off and are lost in the darkness,

Run swiftly away (as if they were alive!) into the darkness, and are hidden;

Who cares? who cares?

Since for each one that is gone Supply will provide a thousand.

* * * * *

Who cares? who cares?

O tear-laden heart!

O blown white rose heavy with rain!

O sacred heart of the people!

Rose, of innumerable petals, through the long night ever blossoming!

Surely by thy fragrance wafted through the still night-air,

Surely by thy spirit exhaled over the sleeping world, I know,

Out of the bruised heart of thee exhaled, I know—

And the vision lifts itself before my eyes:—

* * * * *

_Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it._

In vain millions of yards of calico and miles of lace-work turned out per annum;

In vain a people well clad in machine-made cloth and hosiery;

In vain a flourishing foreign trade and loose cash enough for a small war;

In vain universal congratulations and lectures on Political Economy;

In vain the steady whirr of wheels all over the land, and men and women serving stunted and pale before them, as natural as possible;

_Except Love build the house, they labor in vain who build it._

* * * * *

O rich and powerful of the earth!

Behold, your riches are all in vain—you are poorer than the poorest of these children!

Against one such whom you have wronged your armies your police and all the laws that you can frame shall not prevail.

Your palaces of splendor are reared from the beginning upon a foundation of lies, and the graves that you have dug for others shall be for your own burial.

* * * * *

The word is gone forth!

The wealth the power that you have coveted crumble from your grasp as in a dream.

You have thought to drive armies of starving slaves to win idleness and luxury for you;

But it shall be as a dream: they shall surely elude you.

Behold, your armies shall vanish away—even while the word is on your lips, while your hand of command is lifted,

Your armies shall vanish away like smoke, they shall surely surely elude you.

* * * * *

In Death shall they vanish away,

(O fragrance wafted through the still night-air!)

In Death shall they breathe through your bonds and become as the impalpable winds.

Like deserters at night stealing away in thousands out of a camp,

They shall pass a ghostly army to the other side:

Broken and worn and sick—a ghostly army shall they pass and vanish;

And ye shall dream that they are gone.

* * * * *

But they are not gone.

For with the morning, out of the ground,

Out of their mother Earth—star-thick, and ye cannot bind them more than ye can bind the stars—

Out of the heart of their mother, and out of the hearts of the asters and star-shaped chrysanthemums,

Arising—

Through the hollow air and down the rustling flowing rivers,

Over the meadows with the feet of the wind whitening the grass,

From the mystic chambers of their innumerable homes—out of the mystic doors—

Out of the doors of Death and Birth, in thousands, out of the doors of preparation,

Full-equipped hastening, from all sides swiftly gathering,

A radiant army into your great towns pouring,

Down your long streets striding, they shall return.

* * * * *

Spirits of awful knowledge,

(Clad anew with fleshly hands and feet, through sunlit eyes still glancing,)

And of deep-gathered silent age-long experience;

Spirits of the suffering brotherhood, spirits of awful authority—

Before whom materials shrivel and the accumulations of Custom are blown on the wind like chaff—

A self-appointed army they shall return:

* * * * *

Out of whom the word of transformation—

Whispered on many a half-awakened winter day to the silent earth alone—

Shall be spoken aloud as with a trumpet over the world—and the world shall be changed.

I COME FORTH FROM THE DARKNESS

I come forth from the darkness to smite Thee.— Who art thou, insolent of all the earth, With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread, And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils Daylong and nightlong dark in the earth for thee? Coward, without a name! Ignorant curse!—and yet with names as many Alas! almost as Wealth has. Unclean life That makest a blight wherever thou alightest! I smite thee back. Darest thou yet be seen? (How long, how long, O patient suffering men will ye endure?) Darest thou yet be seen? I smite thee back. Go, return whence thou camest. The gardens and the beautiful terraces, The palaces and theatres and halls Of our fair cities shall not see thee more.

* * * * *

From this day the word is gone forth which waited long to be spoken.

Who walks the streets shall see the lightning which is not in the clouds but in the eyes of men,

Poising itself to strike.

* * * * *

O shallow-pate, walking for ever in indifferent ignorance!

Thou with the languid averted eyes and impossible patronising airs,

Thou forged bank-note which the great winds will blow crackling into the coping of heaven,

Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes?

* * * * *

Thou at thy club or country seat or in thy study, or sitting in the front pew at church—so luxurious, refined, learned,

So pious—yet all out of other men’s labor;

Thou eager after elegant recognitions through the street hastening—

Vulgar and infidel—from her path the poor woman with her bundle impatiently pushing;

Thou in the household, in the shop, on the railway, with nameless airs the shameful difference marking;

Thou oily in the pulpit ever preaching: Peace, peace—where there is no peace;

Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes—

To see and still to see—to stare with astonishment

Over this wide and troubled Ocean, washing so near-importunate upon thee?

* * * * *

This strange thing that it throws up in thy path!

With wild eyes, bloodshot, haggard!

Hast thou observed it?—hast thou well regarded?

In thy smooth progress, say, hast well regarded?

* * * * *

What? and thou seest nothing?—O look look!

The grey old Ocean shivers in his sleep:

Dreamwalker by the perilous brink, O look!

The grey old Ocean shivers, turns his lids

Whose lashes are the lightning, and arises

Staggering from his hollows (Hear, O hear

The hoarse wolf-howling in the pitchy night).

The thunder of his footsteps shakes the interminable shore:

Dream-walker, look!

This white thing in thy path!

Art mad? O look!—the wild eyes seest thou not?

The warning arm?—no flimsy phantom this,

No pale stray figment of thy brain: but He.

* * * * *

Thus by the shore continually,

Pale spectral close-lipped haggard full in thy path warning He stands,

And thou complacent languid with averted eyes passest by him and onward, continually, to thy doom.

* * * * *

Thou shalt never open thine eyes: (deep flashes to deep:)

But the lightning which thou seest not shall wither thee up,

And suddenly, in a moment, the flood uprising shall erase thee.

* * * * *

O Deep flashing upward continually,

Wild beautiful Ocean of faces!

Ocean of glittering salt spray of tears!

Of proud perpetual faith glooming through the long night!

Ocean of day and night!

With white waves riding up continually,

White faces nearing through the gloom—eager in endless beauty!

Not lightnings only:

Tenderest phosphorescence over the wide-heaving surface gleaming,

This also is thine.

* * * * *

O pity! pity!

And it might draw the heart of a man in pity from him!

If he had eyes—to see, and still to see—

To and fro through the streets wandering starless,

Faces _not_ charged with lightning, but with sorrow, voiceless unsmiting distant-luminous,

(Auroral surely towards some greater day,)

Eyes wistful-ignorant—the bloom of youth so fast going never to return—

From dirt-bespattered countenances pathetically looking,

Trustful reliant eyes—and whom to rely on?

(Whom, these dumb thousands of years?)

Parted lips yearning,

Pale woman lips mute-appealing,

Through the gay street unnoticed passing,

From the haunts of fashion flying, from the blank stare of the houses of wealth and refinement,

To hide their sorrow where none shall understand,

Joyless, unaccusing.

(O lips, your accusation is it not heard in the topmost heaven?)

* * * * *

Faces of the world’s deliberate refusal;

Dead-pale faces, shrunken, as of leaves that the frost kills,

Going about to hide themselves from the sun, to lie rotting and rotting in the dark, like the leaves—

In the dark soil which their generations enrich.

* * * * *

Face of the stedfast eyes, growing ever paler—of the weary human shuttle,

Swift between factory and slum to the terrible engine-pulse of necessity alternating.

Sacred pathetic face of the aged slave, out of the world descending,

Of the old woman, mender of carpets—giver of much and receiver of little in this life;

Face of unquestioning submission, kindly consecrating face, out of the world at length with farewell benedictions descending,

Sublimely ignorant of all offence.

Weak face of the drunkard—soon to be labeled suicide;

Pale covert-eyed face of the thief;

Faces ever, faces riding up continually, eager in endless beauty,

O it might draw the heart of a man from him with pity to behold you.

* * * * *

But the world which has deliberately refused you, how shall it dare to pity you?

[O vulgar and infidel and shallow and insolent of all the earth, and ye who have taught yourselves so that ye _can_ give no help,

Come ye not here. Is it not sacred ground?

Come ye not here. Defile not with your pity.

Nay, for ye are smitten back and gone whence ye shall never return—

You and your pity—abolished into the void.]

Dumb awful prisoners! who except Death shall dare to pity you?

To kiss you with the close kiss of deliverance?

To take you up unto the mountain tops and show you the country you have conquered for men?

* * * * *

The word which waited so long to be spoken, behold it is gone forth.

Lo! shooting of swift auroral gleams,

Thoughts hither and thither spreading, coherent,

Words, hark! babbling multitudinous,

Waves to and fro in the sunlight flowing, lisping—

Louder and louder lisping—into one consent waking!

* * * * *

O hearts, not in vain!

Joy, joy—so long a stranger upon earth—

Joy is come up! see the great laughing Ocean!

The deep floor paved with flowers!

Joy is come up. Its waves flow over the world!

To and fro, to and fro, tossing, tumultuously dancing,

The sunlight-smitten waves flow over the world!

How is the great deep changed! Joy is come up.

Wealth the great gloom, the last worst tyranny,

Sinks—is gone down for ever. Arise! arise!

The gardens and the beautiful terraces,

The palaces and theatres and halls

Of our fair cities await your smiles, O Man:

Your solemn love which is their dignity,

Your earnest solemn love, their sacrament,

With outstretched arms they wait.

Arise, O Man!

The long inheritance of the ages waits:

Lo! the fair earth is thine—at length is thine.

Joy! Joy!

The light air and the nimble winds, the blue

Cloud-islanded seas of heaven, the great glad fields

Waving with golden grain, green orchards dusk

With pensive shadows—all the round earth is thine.

* * * * *

Child that shalt bless thy mother,

Joy, joy! The earth is thine.

SUNDAY MORNING NEAR A MANUFACTURING TOWN

Sunday, a still autumn morning, and all the roads on the outskirts are throng with people.

Where the streets begin to run wild towards the country, with patch-work of garden-allotments, and occasional hedgerows and overhanging trees, they go—

Pale-faced men and girls hardly escaped for an hour or two from breathing the eternal smoke.

* * * * *

The sun shines softly—it is very pleasant.

Here comes a whole family: the mother holds a baby to her breast, the father carries the little boy on his arm—two other children play around them;

There go two factory girls, with faded shawls thrown over their heads—their arms round each other’s necks; both have clear soft eyes, and both have fawn-colored opaque skins, marked with the small-pox;

Here shambling along in the opposite direction a group of ill-made boys, carrying dinner-kerchiefs crammed and purple-stained with blackberries. They have been out early and are returning.

Most of the men stand about in knots on the road or in their gardens, some smoking—some with fox-terriers and coursing-dogs.

Handsomely stand the yellow and the lilac dahlias on their tall stalks; and the marigolds and other flowers look well amid the green. The air is full of the scent of celery.

Some are banking up their celery-beds, some are getting potatos, others lie on their backs enjoying the lazy air, others are gathering flowers.

Here comes one with a nosegay of all sorts, here another with a great armful of dahlias nodding amid their leaves as he walks, here another with quantities of brown and yellow calceolaria—almost every one has a flower of some sort.

There is plenty of chaff as the groups of young mechanics pass the groups of chatting laughing girls—some go apart arm in arm together.

Withal the wan look of many faces there is I know not what sense of naturalness and wholesome feeling abroad to-day (the stuffy people are safe out of the way in church)—

The air is full of voices and laughter; from some of the neighboring cottages come sounds of music.

* * * * *

It is well. I welcome you, O crisp uprising life!

I welcome you, O crisp green shoot which the still bright morning has called forth!

It does not need much to see how deep your roots are fed in the strong soil of necessity;

Not much to see how native and fresh a life you indicate,

And that the limp decaying leaves and dead things of the earth will not overlie you much longer.

IN THE DRAWING ROOMS

In the drawing-rooms I saw scarce one that seemed at ease;

They were half-averted sad anxious faces, impossible pompous faces, drawling miowling faces, peaked faces well provided with blinkers,

And their owners kept standing first on one leg and then on the other.

* * * * *

I felt very depressed.

Wherever I went it was the same—it was like a nightmare—I could not escape from it.

Ever the same miowls and drawls, the same half-averted sad uneasy looks, the same immensely busy people doing really nothing, the same one-legged weary idling, mutual boredom, and vampire business.

In the street I could not escape it—at the soirée, the lecture room, the concert; I felt stifled; the sky above me was like lead, and the earth—I could have lain on it and cried as a child,

For I felt like one deprived of his natural food, exhausted, and faint with starvation.

[For indeed it is so, that man can not live by bread alone. This is the silent decree of immortality whereby into his body are wrought for its nourishment unseen intangible essences—of the faces of his fellows and of the touch of their bodies and the breath of their lives about him. Which avenues if they be shut—if the faces be like closed doors, and the hands be withdrawn, and the breath of society about him be corrupt—a man shall shrivel and die, as surely as an infant from its mother’s breasts forbidden.]

And at the railway station, and in the train flying over field and river through the dark, I could not escape that vampire horror.

* * * * *

Was this then the sum of life?

A grinning gibbering organisation of negations—a polite trap, and circle of endlessly complaisant faces bowing you back from all reality!

Was it that men should give all their precious time and energy to the plaiting of silken thongs and fetters innumerable—

To bind themselves prisoners—to condemn themselves to pick oakum of the strands of real life for ever?

Was it mere delusion and bottomless nightmare? really at last the much talked-of and speculated-about existence in two dimensions only?

* * * * *

And as I thought of the fields and rivers below me in the dark, returning life thrilled in a faint wave of laughter through me from the beautiful bounding earth;

And as a woman for the touch of a man,

So I cried in my soul even for the violence and outrage of Nature to deliver me from this barrenness.

* * * * *

Well, as it happened just then—and as we stopped at a small way-station—my eyes from their swoon-sleep opening encountered the grimy and oil-besmeared figure of a stoker.

Close at my elbow on the foot-plate of his engine he was standing, devouring bread and cheese,

And the firelight fell on him brightly as for a moment his eyes rested on mine.

* * * * *

That was all. But it was enough.

The youthful face, yet so experienced and calm, was enough;

The quiet look, the straight untroubled unseeking eyes, resting upon me—giving me without any ado the thing I needed.

[Indeed because they sought nothing and made no claim for themselves, therefore it was that they gave me all.]

* * * * *

For in a moment I felt the sting and torrent of Reality.

The swift nights out in the rain I felt, and the great black sky overhead, and the flashing of red and green lights in the forward distance,

The anxious straining for a glimpse sideways into the darkness—cap tied tightly on—the dash of cold and wet above, the heat below:

All this I felt, as it had been myself.

The weird look of hedgerows and trees in the wild glare as we pass, the straining and leaping of the engine, and the precious human freight madly borne behind,

The great world reeling by, the rails and the ballast ribbon-like unreeling—out of darkness arriving—phantasmal inexorable flawless!

[Stand firm, bridge of many arches while we pass swiftly over the tops of the trees!

Hold, ties and struts and well-braced girders, hold while our iron feet ring resounding over the river!

Hold firm, phantasmal world, even as thou dost—inexorably firm—whether for good or evil, hold!]

O the mad play!

And the dumb sense of tension when wife or sister or friend is one of the precious freight;

And the long hours of unremitted watchfulness, and the faithful unremitting service of the machinery;

And the faithful responsive wheeling of the stars, fulfilling the hours,

The slow lifting of the Moon through the clouds, the changes of light, west and east,

And the breaking of the morning.

* * * * *

All these in his eyes who stood there, lusty with well-knit loins, devouring bread and cheese—all these and something more:

Nature standing supreme and immensely indifferent in that man, yet condensed and prompt for decisive action:

True eyes, true interpreters, striking as a man wielding a sledge strikes, in whom long practice has ensured the absolute consent of all his muscles!

True eyes, true interpreters—of abounding gifts free givers—

Without wrigglings and contortions, without egotistic embarrassments, grimaces, innuendos,

Without constraint and without stint, free!

O eyes, O face, how in that moment without any ado you gave me all!

How in a moment the whole vampire brood of flat paralytic faces fled away, and you gave me back the great breasts of Nature, when I was rejected of others and like to die of starvation.

I do not forget.

It is not a little thing—though you passed away so quickly and were wholly unconscious of it.

* * * * *

It is not a little thing, you—wherever you are—following the plough, or clinging with your feet to the wet rigging, or nursing your babe through the long day when your husband is absent, or preparing supper for his return, or you on the foot-plate of your engine—

Who stand mediating there against Necessity, wringing favors and a little respite for your fellows, translating the laws for them, making a channel for the forces;

In whom through faithful use, through long patient and loyal exercise the channels have become clean—

[Clean and free the channels of your soul, though your body be smirched and oily—]

It is not a little thing that by such a life your face should become as a lantern of strength to men;

That wherever you go they should rise up stronger to the battle, and go forth with good courage.

Nay, it is very great.

* * * * *

I do not forget.

Indeed I worship none more than I worship you and such as you,

Who are no god sitting upon a jasper throne,

But the same toiling in disguise among the children of men and giving your own life for them.

IN A MANUFACTURING TOWN

As I walked restless and despondent through the gloomy city,

And saw the eager unresting to and fro—as of ghosts in some sulphurous Hades;

And saw the crowds of tall chimneys going up, and the pall of smoke covering the sun, covering the earth, lying heavy against the very ground;

And saw the huge refuse-heaps writhing with children picking them over,

And the ghastly half-roofless smoke-blackened houses, and the black river flowing below;

As I saw these, and as I saw again far away the Capitalist quarter,

With its villa residences and its high-walled gardens and its well-appointed carriages, and its face turned away from the wriggling poverty which made it rich;

As I saw and remembered its drawing-room airs and affectations, and its wheezy pursy Church-going and its gas-reeking heavy-furnished rooms and its scent-bottles and its other abominations—

I shuddered:

For I felt stifled, like one who lies half-conscious—knowing not clearly the shape of the evil—in the grasp of some heavy nightmare.

* * * * *

Then out of the crowd descending towards me came a little ragged boy:

Came—from the background of dirt disengaging itself—an innocent wistful child-face, begrimed like the rest but strangely pale, and pensive before its time.

And in an instant (it was as if a trumpet had been blown in that place) I saw it all clearly, the lie I saw and the truth, the false dream and the awakening.

For the smoke-blackened walls and the tall chimneys, and the dreary habitations of the poor, and the drearier habitations of the rich, crumbled and conveyed themselves away as if by magic;

And instead, in the backward vista of that face, I saw the joy of free open life under the sun:

The green sun-delighting earth and rolling sea I saw,

The free sufficing life—sweet comradeship, few needs and common pleasures—the needless endless burdens all cast aside,

Not as a sentimental vision, but as a fact and a necessity existing, I saw

In the backward vista of that face.

* * * * *

Stronger than all combinations of Capital, wiser than all the Committees representative of Labor, the simple need and hunger of the human heart.

Nothing more is needed.

All the books of political economy ever written, all the proved impossibilities, are of no account.

The smoke-blackened walls and tall chimneys duly crumble and convey themselves away;

The falsehood of a gorged and satiated society curls and shrivels together like a withered leaf,

Before the forces which lie dormant in the pale and wistful face of a little child.

WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THEE

Weary with the restless burden of this world last night I fell

Dreaming on my couch, in Nature’s bosom, and the dream was well;

For with morning I awoke triumphant like a child in glee,

Singing: World, I prithee tell me, What have I to do with thee?

* * * * *

I who am a child, content if but with wonder and with love,

With the quiet Earth beneath me and the splendid Sun above,

To whom laughter comes unbidden in the watches of the night,

Whom a daisy in the meadow fills with ever new delight—

World, unquiet world I dwell in, with thy wearisome grimaces,

(Like an old and odious lover, who importunately paces

Ever up and down before one,) world of fashion, world of cant,

World of philanthropic schemes, committee-meetings, crazes, rant,

World of void affected duties, world quite dumb of love’s decree,

O thou solemn prig, pray tell me, What have I to do with thee?

* * * * *

I whom nature made rejoicing in my meed of strength and skill,

Proud with those I love to labor, lingering in the sweet air, till

Twilight brings the firelit home and faces, whom she counted free

To all her stores, nor stayed to reckon, whom she taught the mystery

Of the whole Earth inly heaving with desire hid at the core,

Whom she filled with tender grieving, whom she smote with passion sore—

World of brick walls in perspective, world of avenues of dirt,

World of hideous iron railings, stucco and the window-squirt,

World of pigmy men and women, dressed like monkeys, that go by,

World of squalid wealth, of grinning galvanised society,

World of dismal dinner-parties, footmen, intellectual talk,

Heavy-furnished rooms, gas, sofas, armchairs, girls that cannot walk,

Books that are not read, food music novels papers flung aside,

World of everything and nothing—nothing that will fill the void;

World that starts from manual labor, as from that which worse than damns,

Keeps reality at arm’s length, and is dying choked with shams,

World, in Art and Church and Science, sick with infidelity,

O thou dull old bore, I prithee, What have I to do with thee?

* * * * *

Who is master? Tell me that. Didst thou make me? or thinkest thou

By the bold array thou donnest, by thy frowns and puckered brow,

To impose that flam upon me? Nay! for far too clearly through

Thy false life and fancy make-up, through the artificial hue

Health paints not upon thy cheek, thy glassy eyes with sunken rims

Staring, and the meaningless spasmodic corpse-dance of thy limbs—

Right through thy whole being looking into what once was thy heart

I behold how hollow lifeless and corrupt a thing thou art.

* * * * *

Strange!—yet so it is—that stronger than a world on granite piled,

More than all Wealth and Tradition is the weak sigh of a child.

We—the future’s dreamers—come, and coming look thee in the face:

“World, to _Right-about_” we bid thee; “_March_—and quickly—into space!”

AS TO YOU O MOON

As to you O Moon—

I know very well that when the astronomers look at you through their telescopes they see only an aged and wrinkled body;

But though they measure your wrinkles never so carefully they do not see you personal and close—

As you disclosed yourself among the chimney-tops last night to the eyes of a child,

When you thought no one else was looking.

* * * * *

Gustily ran the wind down the bare comfortless street, the clouds flew in long wild streamers across your face, the few still on foot were hurrying homewards—

When, as between the wisps of rain O moon you shone out wonderfully bare and bright,

Lo! far down in the face of a boy I saw you.

* * * * *

Dashed with rain, wet with tears,

Stopping suddenly to lean his head against a wall, caught by your look—

The pale smudged face, the tense glittering eyes, never swerving a moment,

The curls fringing his dirty cap, the rare pale light of wonder and of suffering:

Yes, far down, as in a liquid pool in the woods, centuries down under the surface, as I passed I distinctly saw you.

* * * * *

I should like to know what you were doing there,

You old moon, with your magic down in that boy’s soul so powerfully working,

While all the time the appearance of you was journeying up above in the sky!

I should like to know how many thousands and thousands you have looked at like that, so quietly and calm-deceptively:

Why, the reflected light is in their eyes yet—pale sleepless maidens looking out from ivied casements, choral processions winding upwards at dusk to the groves of Ashtoreth, cave-dwellers ages ago sitting at the mouths of their caves—I see the glitter of sparkles as from an immense ocean.

* * * * *

You are an artful old (heavenly) body!

One might almost think that there really was nothing behind those wrinkles,

And that the effluences of gravitation and magnetism which the astronomers think so much of were really the last word to be said about you—as a child might know an elderly dame by the camphor bag which she carried in her pocket, and nothing more.

Yet I fancy that as you jog along round the earth you take very good note in your quiet way of the limpid faces looking up at you, peering deep—centuries down—into each;

I fancy that you are not ill-pleased to pass as you do for a harmless old lady—plucking thus with the less hindrance the flowers that you love;

I fancy that somewhere among the niches and chasms of those rugged craters you surely treasure them up, sacred and faithful, against a day that we little dream of;

Anyhow I see plainly that like all created things you do not yield yourself up as to what you are at the first or the thousandth onset,

And that the scientific people for all their telescopes know as little about you as any one—

Perhaps less than most.

* * * * *

How curious the mystery of creation, the juggle of the open daylight! and all things sworn conspirators to that end!

Lo! the quiet moon in the sky—yet to a child it has told its secret.

SQUINANCY-WORT

What have I done?— I am a little flower, Out of many a one That twinkles forth after each passing shower. White, with a blushful glow, In the sweet meadows I grow, Or innocent over the hill tops sport and run.— What have I done?

Many an age agone, Before man walked on earth, I was. In the sun I shone; I shook in the wind with mirth; And danced on the high tops looking out seaward—where I had birth Web-footed monsters came And into the darkness went In ponderous tournament, Many an age agone. But on the high tops I dwelt ever the same, With sisters many a one, Guiltless of sin and shame!— What have I done?

What have I done?—_Man_ came, Evolutional upstart one! With the gift of giving a name To everything under the sun. What have I done?—Man came (They say nothing sticks like dirt), Looked at me with eyes of blame, And called me “Squinancy-wort.”

What have I done? I linger (I cannot say that I live) In the happy lands of my birth; Passers-by point with the finger; For me the light of the sun Is darkened. Oh, what would I give To creep away and hide my shame in the earth!— What have I done?

Yet there is hope. I have seen Many changes since I began. The web-footed beasts have been (Dear beasts!)—and gone, being part of some wider plan. Perhaps in his infinite mercy God will remove this Man!

_Not of myself—I have no power of myself_—

_But out of you who read do I write these words_;

_And whether you understand them or not is nothing to me: I sort rather with those who do not read them._

LO! I OPEN A DOOR

Lo! I open a door.

Through all suffering, through being an outcast myself, in prison and condemned,

Lying on the floor of existence as one accursed and outlawed—

Who shall not pass by me into joy eternal?

BY THIS HEART

By this heart sacred for you O children—for you a few years beating;

By the deep yearnings of it, flowing, following you—and the world made holy wherever you have trod;

By the firm pulse of it, and by its silent-dropping dark tears;

By its weakness and by its immortal strength;

By the love with which it encloses, in which it continually laves you;

By you greater yourselves; and by the love which I see flowing surely from you to me;

By these I put all evil aside

And I approach you, nearer, nearer—even so nearer than all thought—

And remain with you, doubting fearing nothing.

* * * * *

For fear I put away from you, and the wretched unrest of the world;

And from the Maya of appearances I deliver you: believe me here is deliverance;

[And not here only, in this inch of space and time, but wherever....]—

And I show you the inheritance of the riches of all time.

* * * * *

Yet sorrow, the gift of gifts, revealer of eternal joy, I give you not;

But One shall come in the night-time, bringing it, to transmute the world for you,

Taking you by the hand, even while you live, through the great gate of Death into Elysian fields.

There as the nightingale through the night beside his mate sings,

In the soft dark—filled with the spirit of the stars and of the flowing river and the wafted fragrance of the fields: the sunlit memories of the day about him, and above him his own voice in the clear height poised unfaltering—

So in perfect contentment thro’ all your mortal work

Shall your spirit sublimely sing.

AS ONE WHO FROM A HIGH CLIFF

I look upon my life as from afar: I hear its murmur, mark its changeful sheen, (As one who from a high cliff marks the waves He just now rode on,) Beautiful, gleaming, shot with hues from heaven, With strange pale lustre—beautiful indeed, O God, from this great eminence of Death.

TO ONE IN TROUBLE

The Lord of heaven and earth, out of darkness, out of silence, by ways that thou understandest not, shall redeem thy soul.

THESE WAVES OR YOUR GREAT HEART

You battling with your own heart, speaking the words of peace in vain,—

* * * * *

The convulsive waves heave and break, do they not?

They go moaning down the dark shore, bitterly, unabating,

Heavily with weary thud falling falling—into the darkness falling.

* * * * *

O heart!

This is the ocean that is broken (on its surface) with measureless never-ending unrest.

O heart!

This is the wide and immense ocean: over which who shall sail?

O child!

You that shiver there in the night-wind by the dread white-lipped shore!

Do you guess how wide this Ocean is?

Do you know how it rolls its waters away beyond the farthest horizon that you have imagined?

Afar, afar—spreading blue beneath the sun by coasts of calm and tropic beauty, by coasts of tumbling laughing beauty, by bays and bars and river-narrow straits?—

This ocean of the heart?—

Afar, afar—or bearing on its breast the great white-sailed ships of the earth, or the broad disc of the moon, or the images of men’s homes in unimagined lands?

* * * * *

Thought you, frail phantom roaming by the shore,

Gazing wide into the night—a stranger where you had fancied yourself most at home—

Thought you that this great Ocean was to be like an ornamental water in your garden?

Thought you that you knew whence these convulsive waves?—the winds that stirred them, the deeps where they were born?

Think you they weep your sorrows alone, or shake the ground only under your feet?

* * * * *

Not so! not so!

But ever flowing from afar,

From the immeasurable past, from the illimitable shores of human life for ever flowing—on its margin passionately breaking,

With strange uncipherable meanings, whose words are the myriad years,

With speechless terror and amazement to the children beside it,

With amazement of expanded identity, and the inflow of immortal swift-riding purposes, incontrollable, leading straight to death,

In living procession out of the deep—O child! to you they come,

These waves of your great heart, rolling flowing without end:

Through long long ages, under storm and sunshine, by day and night, in indomitable splendor rolling,

At your feet now mournfully breaking.

THUS AS I YEARNED FOR LOVE

Thus as I yearned for love,

At length the clouds parted,

And I knew the old old vision:

Him with the sorrowful eyes (pain, unrelenting pain),

With the distant piercing unapproachable eyes, I knew,—

The face from the murky clouds disclosed, and withdrawn again.

* * * * *

O night, fold upon fold, impenetrable, with silent tears in the darkness falling—mute night, remover of all evidence!

O dawn, with early rising almost before it is light, and preparations for a long journey!

O day, with children playing by the roadside, and greetings exchanged, and cheery demeanor!

* * * * *

And somewhere, unseen, over all, the same unapproachable eyes looking as ever down.

ETERNAL HUNGER

Eternal Hunger! O through the black night Rave, Winds. The forest fanes Tremble, rock, crash, and ring incessantly The cry of homeless spirits. Roar Ye torrents from the mountains. Roar O Sea, Rave under the pale stars. O gulf of Death Yawn blackening beneath. But O great Heart, O Love greater than all, Over the mountains the forests and the seas, O’er the black chasm of death, in spectral haste Thou ridest, and the hungry winds and waves Are but Thy hounds: Thou the eternal huntsman!

Great heart and lonely, indomitable in pride As the pale Titan! a storm-battling eagle Art thou above the promontory of the world; Aý, and ah me! A tender little bird Wind-blown and baffled from its nest for ever.

Pain, ah! eternal pain. I hear Aeolian harpings wail and die Down forest glades, and through the hearts of men, Pain, pain, eternal pain! High round the cloud-girt pinnacle of gaunt snow I hear the wind moan Pain, eternal pain.

O man, O child of Man! Thou frail and baffled bird, thou weary thing, Thou strong to suffer, of satanic pride, I take thee up into this height of pain, And shew thee all the kingdoms of the earth, Yea, all the kingdoms of the hearts of men— The pure and light-strewn kingdoms of strong love:

Gaze long in silence, friend; gaze long for all are thine.

CHILD OF THE LONELY HEART

Child of the lonely heart, O clinging supplicating soul, Through thy chamber, thy prison, thy palace, the body, solitary roaming, The great world through the windows sadly, questioningly exploring.—

_O love, love, love, At thy feet, By thy side, My hand if only resting in thine: See, I am so little, I ask so little— If thou wilt take this little overflowing cup Into thy great ocean._

_O love, love, love, Thee alone. Always only thee: I find nothing beautiful but thee. Lo! when I look forth, what is it all? These lines of houses, This sad interminable sky, This gay life—which is my pretext—but underneath I am sick sick at heart For one touch of true love._

_O love, love, love, Since I was a little child, and till I die, the same. Nothing I reserve— I am so little and I ask so little: If thou wilt take this little overflowing cup Into thy great ocean._

Child of the lonely heart, O clinging supplicating soul, Through thy chamber, thy prison, thy palace— Ah! children, through the world, through the ages, by thousands and thousands, by millions and millions,

Unaware, unwhispered—in your own great fellowship uninitiate— Blindly yearning, tentatively questioningly darkly exploring, Through the great Mother-heart eternally ascending!

TO ONE WHO IS WHERE THE ETERNAL ARE

Pass friend pass: Lest body and soul with desire I be consumed, Pass, pass from me. Your eyes burn in upon me. Out of the night, Out of the darks of time, flashing, out of the still Still height I cannot attain to, solemnly Stedfastly gazing— Their light pierces my brain.

O this is cruel! Knowing that I cannot attain, Why do you mock me?—passing me like a shadow, Passing, passing, and again returning; In the night within me like a great star shining,

In the world without passing me like a shadow. If I were the yellow sands your feet once trod, By the deep blue where they were still delaying; Were I the sea that clipped your body round, The shores, the ships,— Ah me!— Were I the thing your hand most idly touched, The light that fell upon your Southern home, The murmur of the forest in your ears, Where you, friend, once walked, dreaming!

Time answers like the closing of a door, I am an exile. The swift years have set Their gulf between us—you are safe from me; Torment me then no longer: pass O pass, Kiss me with shadowy lips, and pass from me.

I see the deep gulf roll below me now— The leaden-colored flood, the scum, the swirl, The shadow-peopled banks. I feel the cold dank wind: Death blows upon it. I reel upon the edge— Sickness comes o’er me, clammy faintness, death.

2

Now am I near to Death. The world for me is changed. The noiseless wing Sways over all. The mountains are unreal, The stones I walk on are not stones, the air Breathes from another world, the voices call, The hands I grasp remind me. All is still, Still as deep night within. Without, the world Hangs beautiful and distant like a vision.

Hush! all is silent.— Now it is very near. Noiselessly through the darkness, noiselessly Gliding—ah! nearer nearer! Softly out of the night, with soft step stealing Nearer, ah, nearer! With faint breath over Ocean, fresh and cool, Death! death! O friend, O far-infolder, speak! Is it Thou indeed Pouring faint fragrance, drowning drowning me Out of the world at length?—at length O friend, O hesitating long!

Ah! let me die! Snatch me thou Wonderful, Thou with Almighty arms, enfold me, crush me Close through all creature-pain at length to Thee.

3

The passion is gone past. Now know I that death has been near me all my life—that it is a part of my life. [O beautiful Ocean! O dim fluid plains and aerial distances! O headland where I stand for ever gazing!]

The passion is gone past. O friend, pale friend, stay with me now I pray. Your eyes no more Out of the dark consume me—fitfully flashing Where the great waves break, weary without end.

Swaying swaying, softly eternally swaying, The flood lies calm now. Stay with me then I pray. Dwell with me through the day; And through the night, and where it is neither night nor day, Dwell quietly. Pass pass not any more.

Thou canst not pass. I too am where thou art: through all this life I walk the quiet kingdoms of the dead Fast hand in hand with thee. Press now the sweet life of thy lips on mine; I hold thee fast: Not by the yellow sands nor the blue deep, But in my heart thy heart of hearts— A great star, growing, shining.

THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT

You, proud curve-lipped youth, with brown sensitive face,

Why, suddenly, as you sat there on the grass, did you turn full upon me those twin black eyes of yours,

With gaze so absorbing so intense, I a strong man trembled and was faint?

Why in a moment between me and you in the full summer afternoon did Love sweep—leading after it in procession across the lawn and the flowers and under the waving trees huge dusky shadows of Death and the other world?

I know not.

Solemn and dewy-passionate, yet burning clear and stedfast at the last,

Through the long night those eyes of yours, dear, remain to me—

And I remain gazing into them.

TO A STRANGER

O faithful eyes, day after day as I see and know you—unswerving faithful and beautiful—going about your ordinary work unnoticed,

I have noticed—I do not forget you.

I know the truth the tenderness the courage, I know the longings hidden quiet there.

Go right on. Have good faith yet—keep that your unseen treasure untainted.

Many shall bless you. To many yet, though no word be spoken, your face shall shine as a lamp.

It shall be remembered, and that which you have desired—in silence—shall come abundantly to you.

TO A FRIEND

Faithful eyes, fail not.

Though sorrows come upon you, though temptations try, though age and grief assault you—fail not, fail not.

How many hang upon you for your light,

Shining in darkness—as the stars that shine

Upon the mighty deep for mariners!

O eyes, be true, give all away for that—

Give all your days and all good name and honor,

If need should be, for that. That we may steer

Through the dark night by you.

OF THE LOVE THAT YOU POURED FORTH

Of the love that you poured forth, dear friend, in vain—like a cup of water in the wide and thirsty desert—but it was all your life to you,

Do you dream that it is lost?

Perhaps it is—it may well seem so just now to you—yet indeed I do not think so.

AS A WOMAN OF A MAN

Democracy!

O sombre swart face, now thou art very beautiful to me!

O haughty brow, with glittering withdrawn eyes, not a little contemptuous,

Thou art very beautiful to me!

* * * * *

I am as a child before thee;

All that I have learned, all my fancical knowledge,

My familiarity with times and distances,

All my refinement is nothing—my delicate hands, manners,

My glibness is nothing;

I crave the touch of thy soul, thou strong one,

I crave thy love.

* * * * *

Come! who art no longer a name:

Gigantic Thou, with head aureoled by the sun—wild among the mountains—

Thy huge limbs naked and stalwart erected member,

Thy lawless gait and rank untameable laughter,

Thy heaven-licking wildfire thoughts and passions—

I desire.

* * * * *

All conventions, luxuries, all refinements of civilization, and tyrannous wants,

Acquisitions, formulated rules, rights, prescriptions, and whatever constitutes a barrier—

I discard.

* * * * *

All the cobwebs of science, and precedents and conclusions of authority,

All possessions, and impedimenta of property, all rights of bundles and baggage—

I disown.

* * * * *

I stand prepared for toil, for hardship—this instant if need be to start on an unforeseen and distant journey—

I am wholly without reserve:

As a woman of a man so I will learn of thee,

I will draw thee closer and closer,

I will drain thy lips and the secret things of thy body,

I will conceive by thee, Democracy.

O LOVE—TO WHOM THE POETS

O love—to whom the poets have made verses—

Whom the shepherds on the hills have piped to, and maidens sighed within their lonely bowers,

Whom the minstrels have sung, handing down their songs from one generation to another—

To thy praise over the world resounding

I add my strain.

* * * * *

Not because thou art fair;

Not because thine eyes glance winningly, nor because of the sly arch of thine eyebrows;

Not because thy voice is like music played in the open air,

And thy coming like the dawn on the far-off mountains;

Not because thou comest with the dance and the song, and because the flashing of thy feet is like the winds of Spring;

Nor because thou art sweetly perfumed,

Do I praise thee.

* * * * *

Not because thy dwelling is among knights and ladies—afar from all that is common or gross;

Not because thou delayest to the sound of playing fountains on marble terraces,

And white hands caress thee and clip thy wing-feathers,

And meek thoughts and blameless conversation attend thee;

Not because thy place is among the flowers and the wine-cups in spacious halls,

And because the sight of Death appals thee;

Nor because, love, thou art a child:

* * * * *

But because as on me now, full-grown giantesque out of the ground out of the common earth arising,

Very awful and terrible in heaven thou appearest;

Because as thou comest to me in thy majesty sweeping over the world with lightnings and black darkness,

[And the old order shrivels and disappears from thy face,]

I am as a leaf borne, as a fragrance exhaled before thee—

As a bird crying singed by the prairie-fire;

Because Thou rulest O glorious, and before thee all else fails,

And at thy dread new command—at thy new word Democracy—the children of the earth and the sea and the sky find their voices, and the despised things come forth and rejoice;

Because in thy arms O strong one I laugh Death to scorn—nay I go forth to meet him with gladness;

Ay, because thou takest away from me all strength but thine own,

Because thou takest all doubt and power of resistance,

Because out of disallowed and unaccepted things—and always out of these—full-armed and terrific,

Like a smiting and consuming flame, O Love, O Democracy,

Even out of the faces and bodies of the huge and tameless multitudes of the Earth,

A great ocean of fire with myriad tongues licking the vault of heaven,

Thou arisest—

Therefore O love O flame wherein I burning die and am consumed, carried aloft to the stars a disembodied voice—

O dread Creator and Destroyer,

Do I praise Thee.

WHO YOU ARE I KNOW NOT

Who you are I know not, but I have it before me that you shall know.

For a certainty you are not greater or less than me: I neither look upon you with envy nor with pity, with deference nor with contempt.

Endowments and dignities and accomplishments are of no account whatever; but honesty, and to stand in time under the great law of Equality—after which you will be satisfied, and joy will take possession of you.

Till then, farewell. Do not follow me, but go your own way voyaging—and then haply some time we shall meet.

HAVE FAITH

Do not hurry: have faith.

Remember that if you become famous you can never share the lot of those who pass by unnoticed from the cradle to the grave, nor take part in the last heroism of their daily life;

If you seek and encompass wealth and ease the divine outlook of poverty cannot be yours—nor shall you feel all your days the loving and constraining touch of Nature and Necessity;

If you are successful in all you do, you cannot also battle magnificently against odds;

If you have fortune and good health and a loving wife and children, you cannot also be of those who are happy without these things.

* * * * *

Covet not overmuch. Let the strong desires come and go; refuse them not, disown them not; but think not that in them lurks finally the thing you want.

Presently they will fade away and into the intolerable light will dissolve like gossamers before the sun.

2

Do not hurry: have faith.

The sportsman does not say, I will start a hare at the corner of this field, or I will shoot a turkey-buzzard at the foot of that tree;

But he stands indifferent and waits on emergency, and so makes himself master of it.

So do you stand indifferent, and by faith make yourself master of your life.

For all things are possible, yet at any one time and place only one thing is possible;

And all things are good, yet at any one time and place can you extract the good only from that which is before you.

Have faith. If that which rules the universe were alien to your soul, then nothing could mend your state—there were nothing left but to fold your hands and be damned everlastingly.

But since it is not so—why what can you wish for more?—all things are given into your hands.

Do you pity a man who having a silver mine on his estate loses a shilling in a crack in his house-floor?

And why should another pity you?

3

Do not hurry.

As at the first day the clouds suffused with light creep over the edges of the hills, the young poplar poises itself like an arrow planted in the ground, the birds warble with upturned bills to the sun;

The sun rises on hundreds of millions of human beings; the hemisphere of light follows the hemisphere of darkness, and a great wave of life rushes round the globe;

The little pigmies stand on end (like iron filings under a magnet) and then they fall prone again. And this has gone on for millions of years and will go on for millions more.

* * * * *

Absolve yourself to-day from the bonds of action.

[Wait, wait ever for the coming of the Lord. See that you are ready for his arrival.]

Begin to-day to understand that which you will not understand when you read these words for the first time, nor perhaps when you have read them for the hundredth time.

Begin to-day to understand why the animals are not hurried, and do not concern themselves about affairs, nor the clouds nor the trees nor the stars—but only man—and he but for a few thousand years in history.

[For it is one thing to do things, but another to be concerned about the doing of them.]

Behold the animals. There is not one but the human soul lurks within it, fulfilling its destiny as surely as within you.

The elephant, the gnat floating warily towards its victim, the horse sleeping by stolen snatches in the hot field at the plough, or coming out of the stable of its own accord at the sound of the alarm bell and placing itself in the shafts of the fire-engine—sharing the excitement of the men; the cats playing together on the barn floor, thinking no society equal to theirs, the ant bearing its burden through the grass—

Do you think that these are nothing more than what you see? Do you not know that your mother and your sister and your brother are among them?

4

I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me.

I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for awhile to roam fourfooted among the brambles. I caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner, and swore that I would be faithful.

Thee my brother and sister I see and mistake not. Do not be afraid. Dwelling thus and thus for a while, fulfilling thy appointed time—thou too shalt come to thyself at last.

Thy half-warm horns and long tongue lapping round my wrist do not conceal thy humanity any more than the learned talk of the pedant conceals his—for all thou art dumb we have words and plenty between us.

Come nigh little bird with your half-stretched quivering wings—within you I behold choirs of angels, and the Lord himself in vista.

Crooning and content the old hen sits—her thirteen chicks cheep cheerily round her, or nestle peeping out like little buds from under her wings;

Keen and motherly is her eye, placid and joyful her heart, as the sun shines warm upon them.

5

Do not hurry: have faith.

[Whither indeed should we hurry? is it not well here?

A little shelter from the storm, a stack of fuel for winter use, a few handfuls of grain and fruit—

And lo! the glory of all the earth is ours.]

The main thing is that the messenger is perhaps even now at your door—and to see that you are ready for his arrival:

A little child, a breath of air, an old man hobbling on crutches, a bee lighting on the page of your book—who knows whom He may send?

Some one diseased or dying, some friendless, outcast, criminal—

One whom it shall ruin your reputation to be seen with—yet see that you are ready for his arrival.

* * * * *

Likely whoever it is his coming will upset all your carefully laid plans;

Your most benevolent designs will likely have to be laid aside, and he will set you to some quite commonplace business, or perhaps of dubious character—

Or send you a long and solitary journey; perhaps he will bring you letters of trust to deliver—perhaps the prince himself will appear—

Yet see that you are ready for his arrival.

* * * * *

Is your present experience hard to bear?

Yet remember that never again perhaps in all your days will you have another chance of the same.

Do not fly the lesson, but have a care that you master it while you have the opportunity.

6

These things I say not in order to excite thought in you—rather to destroy it—

Or if to excite thought, then to excite that which destroys itself;

For what I say is not born of thought and does not demand thought either for comprehension or proof;

And whoever dwells among thoughts dwells in the region of delusion and disease—and though he may appear wise and learned yet his wisdom and learning are as hollow as a piece of timber eaten out by white ants.

Therefore though thought should gird you about, remember and forget not to disendue it, as a man takes off his coat when hot; and as a skilful workman lays down his tool when done with, so shall you use thought and lay it quietly aside again when it has served your purpose.

7

A veil of illusion hangs following the lines of all things,

Over the trees and running waters, and up the sides of the mountains and over the sea and the cities, and circling the birds in the air as they fly—

So that these themselves you see not, only the indications of them, and yourself you see not, only the indication.

As long as through the eyes of desire, and of this and that, you look—and of vanity; as long as you hurry after results and are overwhelmed with the importance of anything you can do or leave undone—so long will the veil lie close, do not be deceived.

* * * * *

On all sides God surrounds you, staring out upon you from the mountains and from the face of the rocks, and of men, and of animals.

Will you rush past for ever insensate and blindfold—hurrying breathless from one unfinished task to another, and to catch your ever-departing trains—as if you were a very Cain flying from his face?

* * * * *

Resume the ancient dignity of your race, lost, almost forgotten as it is.

What is it surely that you are fretting about? Is it the fashions, or what men say about you, or the means of livelihood, or is it the sense of duty this way and that, or trivial desires, that will not let you rest?

Are you so light, like a leaf, that such things as these will move you—are you so weak that one such slender chain will deprive you of inestimable Freedom?

And yet the lilies of the field and the beasts that have no banks of deposit or securities are not anxious: they have more dignity than you.

* * * * *

As long as you harbor motives so long are you giving hostages to the enemy; while you are a slave (to this and that) you can only obey. It is not You who are acting at all.

Brush it all aside.

Pass disembodied out of yourself. Leave the husk, leave the long long prepared and perfected envelope.

Enter into the life which is eternal, pass through the gate of indifference into the palace of mastery, through the door of love out into the great open of deliverance;

Give away all that you have, become poor and without possessions—and behold! you shall be lord and sovereign of all things.

I HEARD A VOICE

I heard a voice say unto me:—

Now since thou art neither beautiful nor witty, it is in vain that thou hangest about the doors of the admired palaces;

For thou wilt not gain admission—thou!

* * * * *

But here outside is a plot of waste ground where canst build thee a little cabin—all thine own;

And since it is close by the common road and there is no fence about it,

Many a weary traveler parched with the heat of the day shall turn in unto thee for a cup of cold water.

And that shall suffice for Thy life.

I KNOW THAT YOU ARE SELF-CONSCIOUS

I know that you are self-conscious,

That you are troubled—haunted—tormented. It is not pleasant!

* * * * *

But how wonderful is the mere sense of space in the world—after the sick-chamber and days of illness!

And how wonderful is the sense of measureless space in the soul, and of freedom, thenceforth inalienable!

Look then in the glass once more, and satisfy yourself thoroughly about it:

Do you not see, this time, that there is some one else looking in it also,

Beside you, over your shoulder?

WHO ARE YOU

Who are you who go about to save them that are lost?

Are you saved yourself?

* * * * *

Do you not know that who would save his own life must lose it?

Are you then one of the ‘lost’?

* * * * *

Be sure, very sure, that each one of these can teach you as much as, probably more than, you can teach them.

Have you then sat humbly at their feet, and waited on their lips that they should be the first to speak—and been reverent before these children—whom you so little understand?

Have you dropped into the bottomless pit from between yourself and them all hallucination of superiority, all flatulence of knowledge, every shred of abhorrence and loathing?

Is it equal, is it free as the wind between you?

Could you be happy receiving favors from one of the most despised of these?

Could you be yourself one of the lost?

* * * * *

Arise, then, and become a savior.

AMONG THE FERNS

I lay among the ferns,

Where they lifted their fronds, innumerable, in the greenwood wilderness, like wings winnowing the air;

And their voices went past me continually.

* * * * *

And I listened, and lo! softly inaudibly raining I heard not the voices of the ferns only, but of all living creatures:

Voices of mountain and star,

Of cloud and forest and ocean,

And of the little rills tumbling amid the rocks,

And of the high tops where the moss-beds are and the springs arise.

As the wind at mid-day rains whitening over the grass,

As the night-bird glimmers a moment, fleeting between the lonely watcher and the moon,

So softly inaudibly they rained,

Where I sat silent.

* * * * *

And in the silence of the greenwood I knew the secret of the growth of the ferns;

I saw their delicate leaflets tremble breathing an undescribed and unuttered life;

And, below, the ocean lay sleeping;

And round them the mountains and the stars dawned in glad companionship for ever.

* * * * *

And a voice came to me, saying:

In every creature, in forest and ocean, in leaf and tree and bird and beast and man, there moves a spirit other than its mortal own,

Pure, fluid, as air—intense as fire,

Which looks abroad and passes along the spirits of all other creatures, drawing them close to itself,

Nor dreams of other law than that of perfect equality;

And this is the spirit of immortality and peace.

* * * * *

And whatsoever creature hath this spirit, to it no harm may befall:

No harm can befall, for wherever it goes it has its nested home, and to it every loss comes charged with an equal gain;

It gives—but to receive a thousand-fold;

It yields its life—but at the hands of love;

And death is the law of its eternal growth.

* * * * *

And I saw that was the law of every creature—that this spirit should enter in and take possession of it,

That it might have no more fear or doubt or be at war within itself any longer.

And lo! in the greenwood all around me it moved,

Where the sunlight floated fragrant under the boughs, and the fern-fronds winnowed the air;

In the oak-leaves dead of last year, and in the small shy things that rustled among them;

In the songs of the birds, and the broad shadowing leaves overhead;

In the fields sleeping below, and in the river and the high dreaming air;

Gleaming ecstatic it moved—with joy incarnate.

And it seemed to me, as I looked, that it penetrated all these things, suffusing them;

And wherever it penetrated, behold! there was nothing left down to the smallest atom which was not a winged spirit instinct with life.

* * * * *

Who shall understand the words of the ferns lifting their fronds innumerable?

What man shall go forth into the world, holding his life in his open palm—

With high adventurous joy from sunrise to sunset—

Fearless, in his sleeve laughing, having outflanked his enemies?

His heart like Nature’s garden—that all men abide in—

Free, where the great winds blow, rains fall, and the sun shines,

And manifold growths come forth and scatter their fragrance?

Who shall be like a grave, where men may bury

Sin and sorrow and shame, to rise in the new day

Glorious out of their grave? who, deeply listening,

Shall hear through his soul the voices of all creation,

Voices of mountain and star, voices of all men,

Softly audibly raining?—shall seize and fix them,

Rivet them fast with love, no more to lose them?

Who shall _be_ that spirit of deep fulfilment,

Himself, self-centred? yet evermore from that centre

Over the world expanding, along all creatures

Loyally passing—with love, in perfect equality?

* * * * *

Him immortality crowns. In him all sorrow

And mortal passion of death shall pass from creation.

They who sit by the road and are weary shall rise up

As he passes. They who despair shall arise.

* * * * *

Who shall understand the words of the ferns winnowing the air?

_Death shall change as the light in the morning changes;_

_Death shall change as the light ’twixt moonset and dawn._

I HEARD THE VOICE OF THE WOODS

I heard the voice of the woods and of the grass growing silently and of the delicate bending ferns,

And it said:

For the dumb and for the generations of them that have no voice my speech is—

For them too help comes.

* * * * *

I am the spirit of the Earth.

Round me the woods and mountains roll, rising and falling to the far sea;

In the hollow below me roars the great river to its doom;

The clouds draw onward; and the voices of the generations of men are woven like thin gossamer through the air about me.

Yet here where I am there is peace—such as mortal yet on earth hath hardly known,

But which shall be known, and even now is known.

* * * * *

Where the stems stand dividing the winnowed sunlight,

Where the green floor is dappled with soft warm moss, and the swift hum of the bee is heard,

And the air glides through like a gracious spirit inbreathing beauty,

I walk—meditating the voiceless children, drawing them to myself with deep unearthly love.

* * * * *

Come unto me, O yearning and inarticulate (for whom so many ages I have waited),

Breathing your lives out like a long unuttered prayer,

Come unto me: and I will give you rest.

For I am not the woods nor the grass nor the bending ferns;

Nor any pale moonlight spirit of these;

And I am not the air;

Nor the light multitudinous life therein;

Nor the sun and its radiant warmth;

But I am one who include—and am greater—

One (out of thousands) who hold all these, embosomed,

Safe in my heart: fear not.

* * * * *

In your eyes deep-looking I will touch you so as to be free from all pain;

Where the last interpretations are, in the uttermost recesses, I will reach you;

Utterance at length shall your pent-up spirit have,

To pour out all that is in you—to speak and be not afraid.

* * * * *

Dear brother, listen!

I am no shadow, no fickle versemaker’s fiction,

Many are the words which are not spoken, but here there is speech;

Many are the words which are not spoken, but in due time all shall be spoken:

There is neither haste nor delay, but all shall be spoken.

* * * * *

Come up into the fragrant woods and walk with me.

The voices of the trees and the silent-growing grass and waving ferns ascend;

Beyond the birth-and-death veil of the seasons they ascend and are born again;

The voices of human joy and misery, the hidden cry of the heart—they too ascend into new perpetual birth.

All is interpreted anew:

In man the cataracts descend, and the winds blow, and autumn reddens and ripens;

And in the woods a spirit walks which is not wholly of the woods,

But which looks out over the wide Earth and draws to itself all men with deep unearthly love.

* * * * *

Come, walk with me:

On the soft moss—though you guess not my arm is about you—

By the white stems, where the gracious air is breathing,

On the green floor, through the pale green winnowed sunlight,

Walk: and leave all to me.

THE WIND CHANTS WELL TO-DAY

The wind chants well over the world to-day;

It runs in waves up the slopes of the corn-fields, and sounds deep and distant, like the sea, among the firs;

The tall grasses in sheltered spots quiver on their wiry stems—for it is flowering time—

And shake faint clouds of pollen upon the air.

* * * * *

Strange purposes inhabit the woodland hollows and the high air to-day;

The long-legged spider threading the blades of grass, touching trying retreating, encloses strange purposes, the wind encloses strange purposes.

* * * * *

But I know you well O wind—you cannot escape me.

You are very subtle, you have innumerable disguises:

You are one thing to the grass with its beautiful hanging anthers and branched stigma,

And another thing to the birds, and another to the solemn swaying fir-trees.

You conceal yourself well, O wind, but I am level with you to-day—you cannot hide yourself from me.

I go arm in arm, I ride over the world with you. I visit a thousand spots and leave my messages—

And am as invisible as you.

I AM A VOICE

I am a voice singing the song of deliverance—

Centuries long, centuries long, floating aloft in ecstasy.

Surprised at myself—to find myself looking out on this landscape here—to be engaged on these occupations and plans which people call mine, but which are not mine at all—to be living in this house which it is nothing to me whether I live in it or not—to be fretting myself with these and these anxieties and cares—to be this limited and foolish mortal that I am;

Yet again at intervals soaring aloft, going back again to my home in the sky,

To sing for all time

The song of joy—of deliverance.

O SEA, WITH WHITE LINES OF FOAM

O sea, with white lines of foam caught by the winter sun,

O pale blue transparent sky with wind, long stretches of coast faint-outlined, and waving grasses!

How often to seek you, out of the pent life of custom and brick perspective, a boy I came,

Filled with vague desires, hardly knowing what or wherefore—like thine, O restless sea and ceaseless blowing wind—

Came to pour forth my soul to yours, ye beautiful creatures—sad, sad, longing yearning without end!

* * * * *

Say, great sea—whose music continues to-day the same as then; O wonderful illimitable sky, the same; O grasses shivering just for all the world as now—

Say, have you not given me, by strange ways, the thing that I sought?

For now returning,

Satisfied, filled to the full of all desires, grateful as a lake sparkling in the sunshine,

Filled to the full, desiring yearning no more—faint only with joy and the fragrance of the love which distils from you—

Upon you I look once more.

* * * * *

Changed are your words; changed are your words O grasses and pale blue flowing winds, and yours ye streets and faces that pass along them!

Changed are your words to me.

I heard you—but it was as one that hears an unknown tongue; I thought I saw you, but I see that you deceived me.

And now I do not know why I should ever make another move—what you say has entirely checkmated me.

But to those that go forward, go ye ever forward before them; and to them that listen let your strange vocabulary continue.

HOME

Among all men my home is: I have seen them and there is no people, unto the ends of the earth, with whom I will not dwell.

* * * * *

I give my body to the sea and to the dust—to be dashed on the rocks, or to break in green spray in springtime over the fields and hedge-rows—or to lie rotting in the desert for the sustenance of flies;

My soul, if it be so, to peregrinate all creature-kingdoms and every condition of man—with equal joy the lowest;

But I to return, to remain, to turn again to my old home, to dwell—as ever—where the prince of love once led me,

When he touched the walls of my hut with his finger from within, and passing through like a fire delivered me with great unspeakable deliverance from all evil.

OFF GASPÉ

A few small huts, a narrow strip of cultivated land; Behind, the frowning mountains of Gaspé, forest-clad; in front, the wide sea-mouth of the St. Lawrence.

* * * * *

How lost and ignorant! says one passing by on board ship—wondering that life can be supported in such a place,

So rude and so remote—no arts, no papers, telegrams—scarcely the ordinary commodities!

The monotonous sea, the brief summer, the sullen forests, the scanty products of land and water, the occasional visits of the priest from over the mountains!

A living death—he says.

* * * * *

Yet here too—and in winter snow and ice—here too the human heart, not dead at all, just the same as in the midst of great cities, lives and blooms;

Here lies close to the sky and the rocks and the sea, and is at home—as the star is at home in the sky, and the daisy in the grass;

Without communication with New York or London, and yet in the centre of the world as much as either, and with news and telegrams coming from a long way farther.

* * * * *

O human heart!

Neither lost nor ignorant—living at first hand from thy source,

I perceive that thy home and mine are the same—one house though the doors be different.

Not here or there; not here, O friend, in the centre of the world and there outcast and forlorn [rather outcast and forlorn and lost and ignorant he who thinks thus]—

But ever at home—to thee greetings and congratulations and love wafted over the water,

I send.

* * * * *

A thousand gulls and guillemots on the calm sea-bosom in the flooding sun-warmth basking!

This ship sailing for thee, like a sign through a gleam of summer—thou dwelling between the steep forests and the shore with joy in thy heart as I have!

BY THE SHORE

All night by the shore.

The obscure water, the long white lines of advancing foam, the rustle and thud, the panting sea-breaths, the pungent sea-smell,

The great slow air moving from the distant horizon, the immense mystery of space, and the soft canopy of the clouds!

* * * * *

The swooning thuds go on—the drowse of ocean goes on:

The long inbreaths—the short sharp outbreaths—the silence between.

* * * * *

I am a bit of the shore: the waves feed upon me, they come pasturing over me;

I am glad, O waves, that you come pasturing over me.

I am a little arm of the sea: the same tumbling swooning dream goes on—I feel the waves all around me, I spread myself through them.

How delicious! I spread and spread. The waves tumble through and over me—they dash through my face and hair.

The night is dark overhead: I do not see them, but I touch them and hear their gurgling laughter.

* * * * *

The play goes on!

The strange expanding indraughts go on!

Suddenly I am the Ocean itself: the great soft wind creeps over my face.

I am in love with the wind—I reach my lips to its kisses.

How delicious! all night and ages and ages long to spread myself to the gliding wind!

But now (and ever) it maddens me with its touch: I arise and whirl in my bed, and sweep my arms madly along the shores.

* * * * *

I am not sure any more which my own particular bit of shore is;

All the bays and inlets know me: I glide along in and out under the sun by the beautiful coast-line;

My hair floats leagues behind me; millions together my children dash against my face;

I hear what they say and am marvelously content.

* * * * *

All night by the shore;

And the sea is a sea of faces.

* * * * *

The long white lines come up—face after face comes and falls past me—

Thud after thud. Is it pain or joy?

Face after face—endless!

* * * * *

I do not know; my sense numbs; a trance is on me—I am becoming detached!

I am a bit of the shore:

The waves feed upon me, they pasture all over me, my feeling is strangely concentrated at every point where they touch me;

I am glad O waves that you come pasturing over me.

* * * * *

I am detached, I disentangle myself from the shore; I have become free—I float out and mingle with the rest.

The pain, the acute clinging desire, is over—I feel beings like myself all around me, I spread myself through and through them, I am merged in a sea of contact.

Freedom and equality are a fact. Life and joy seem to have begun for me.

* * * * *

The play goes on!

Suddenly I am the great living Ocean itself—the awful Spirit of Immensity creeps over my face.

* * * * *

I am in love with it. All night and ages and ages long and for ever I pour my soul out to it in love.

I spread myself out broader and broader for ever, that I may touch it and be with it everywhere.

There is no end. But ever and anon it maddens me with its touch, I arise and sweep away my bounds.

* * * * *

I know but I do not care any longer which my own particular body is—all conditions and fortunes are mine.

By the ever-beautiful coast-line of human life, by all shores, in all climates and countries, by every secluded nook and inlet,

Under the eye of my beloved Spirit I glide:

O joy! for ever, ever, joy!

I am not hurried—the whole of eternity is mine;

With each one I delay, with each one I dwell—with you I dwell.

The warm breath of each life ascends past me;

I take the thread from the fingers that are weary, and go on with the work;

The secretest thoughts of all are mine, and mine are the secretest thoughts of all.

* * * * *

All night by the shore;

And the fresh air comes blowing with the dawn.

The mystic night fades—but my joy fades not.

I arise and cast a stone into the water (O sea of faces I cast this poem among you)—and turn landward over the rustling beach.

A MILITARY BAND

With open mouths and eyes intent they press around the stand,

A thousand listeners, in the flare of gas beneath the trees,

Young men and boys mostly, yet some older, and a few girls and women.

* * * * *

The red-coats sit in circle round their leader—solid and robust—their lips retracted, taking short quick breaths, their throats full-veined and swollen;

The first cornets ring out wild and clear, backed by the ripienos, the tenors and the trombones;

The euphonium takes its strong and leading part, the cry of the hautboy is heard—apart—like the cry of a wounded animal, the flutes and flageolets pipe merrily, and the drums resound.

* * * * *

But the circle of faces—pale in the flickering gas—scarcely moves.

Look! how intent they are, face after face, with eyes fixed, strained, as though they would pierce through brass and scarlet!

What is it you fix so intently, O faces, have you never seen a red-coat before?

But no, they hardly see the red-coats: though all eyes centre there they hardly see what is before them.

* * * * *

Lo! a great curtain hanging from the topmost sky right down to the bottom of creation—

Flat, enormous, without rent, covering the whole world (yet hardly half-an-inch in diameter)—

Before each listener it hangs, and on it all things are painted.

* * * * *

Wonderful, figured all over from top to bottom, from side to side, wonderful wonderful—and for each one different:

On it—for some—forms of lust displayed, the glory of limbs flame-girdled, floating from side to side, with fierce clutches of beauty—(O eyes no wonder you are intent!)

On it—for some—the battle-field mounting in smoke, the flag, the roar, the appalling roar of faced cannon, the certain death: the heroic the decisive the furious and disdainful act, the deathless figure of bravery—(O eyes no wonder you are intent!)

On it—see here!—a maiden at her window, peeping over her flowers: the pure, the sweet, the stainless starlike face, for the vow of true knighthood only—(O eyes no wonder you are intent!)

Lo there! even more beautiful, the face of year and year-long wife-hood: the friend, the trusted one without whom life cannot be imagined—dual love dividing and filling the universe—(O glistening eyes no wonder you are intent!)

On it—Ah! these are the eyes of the lost one, the departed mother: the tender watchful beseeching eyes, the sacred light—not God himself more sacred;

This is the glorious brow of comradeship, faithful unalterable, to heroic deeds arousing;

On it—here for this boy—scenes of the wild ocean and adventure, the ship in a storm, the raft, the lightning, and the rescue;

For another, ambition, the political arena, the debate, the crowded galleries, the centering of eyes;

The footlights of the stage, the murmured delight of the audience, the enthusiastic encore;

Scenes of travel, the lands of day-dreams and longing, the Andes, the Pacific, the Polar aurora and the ice, the trackless forests of Central America and Siberia and Western Australia, and of the Amazon; the wild animals of Central Africa;

The ancient cities, the historical world-old sites, the birth-places of gods, the thrones of kings, the centres of civilisation, the churches, ceremonials, processions, pilgrimages, the markets, railroads, great feats of engineering;

Faces, costumes, forms, objects innumerable—all these figured, arabesqued,

Running in free lines over the curtain which hangs from the zenith to the nadir;

And on it besides with the rest arabesqued and running,

The band-stand with the scarlet and the brass, and the conductor energetic with his baton in the midst, and the swollen veins and lithe lips of the first cornet player;

And on it running waved and dazzling the lines of gas against dark shade-masses of foliage—shot through with the electric scream of the flageolets and underborne with the deep thunder of drums;

And on it the faint blue evening sky and the faint faint stars behind it.

* * * * *

Wonderful, wonderful!

I too look upon the curtain: I see the figures, the symbols, the shining hieroglyphs written with free hand across it—I see the sun and moon;

I see the great dark background on which they are written—flat, enormous—falling from the zenith to the nadir.

See! how it flaps and sways in the cool night-air, as if it were about to give way—surely there is something behind it!—yet no rent.

Holding yet well together, holding your secret faithfully,

Curtain of each soul, curtain of creation, tiny curtain, vast enveloping all the universe,

Veil of the imperfect creature, under which the wings form—growing thinner momently and more transparent—

Amnion-veil of the vast universe—growing thinner—

O shot through with the scream of flageolets and underborne with the deep thunder of drums! almost pierced with the fixed gaze and strain of innumerable eyes!

Ah, wonderful wonderful!

Gazed upon thousands of years, nearer nearer, fascinating, drawing ever drawing multitudes towards it;

Children sitting at a theatre thinking the drop-scene the real play itself—others older guessing somewhat how the matter stands—lights dimly seen moving behind, corners lifted or swaying;

The Andes and Pacific dividing down their middle line, the vast forests disclosing in their depths, ancient cities blossoming like huge flowers and fading away in fragrance; the faint-blue star-spangled sky of evening rolling swiftly and noiselessly together, the round earth floating for a moment in the sunlight—and then gone, like the last patches of gold and blue on a soap-bubble; faces of brothers and sisters, faces of the speechless animals, opening back, myriads myriads of years back in perspective to him who sits upon the throne—

* * * * *

Ah, wonderful wonderful!

In the great dark of the night swaying floating like a flag which a gentle wind dwells among the folds of—

Great mother Thou that foldest all creatures in thy folds—

Whom to explore, the children traveling from ages and ages back, by long pilgrimages and routes labyrinthine ever pressing on, to decipher, to unravel, to read the words that are written:

Once more and the stars shall fall showering from thee—the shining hieroglyphs shall fade; black for a moment thou shalt hang—then rolling swiftly together—

* * * * *

Lo! what mortal eye hath not seen nor ear heard—

All sorrow finished—the deep deep ocean of joy opening within—the surface sparkling—

The myriad-formed disclosed, each one and all, all things that are, transfigured—

Being filled with joy, hardly touching the ground, reaching cross-shaped with out-stretched arms to the stars, along of the mountains and the forests, habitation of innumerable creatures, singing joy unending—

As the sun on a dull morning breaking through the clouds, so from behind the sun another sun, from within the body another body—these shattered falling—

Lo! now at last or yet awhile in due time to behold that which ye have so long sought—

O eyes no wonder you are intent.

WINGS

Wings, wings!

I beheld the young leaves breaking from the buds and poised on the tips of the branches;

I saw a squadron of anemones in the meadows all waving in the wind as impatient to take flight together;

I looked at the acorn buried in the earth, and lo! it divided and put forth two seed-wings; and the embryo plant resembled the penis and dual testicles of man and the animals;

And the starling like-shaped flew overhead through the trees, and the lark hung, a cross, in heaven;

And the butterfly flew by—emblem of the soul—and the bee hung downwards in the wind-flower cup;

And I stood by the hive in the garden and marked how from its lips the bees shot like arrows into the wide valley below;

And I stood in the great assembly and marked how from the decisive lips of the orator the winged words darted and transfixed the audience;

And I saw on the Central American savannahs the half-wild horses racing and bounding together down to the rivers or resting in the shade of the trees;

The light-footed tireless wolf I saw, and the eagle soaring over the mountains; and I watched the moth glide from the entrails of the caterpillar, and the gnat all perfect and stainless from its watery case;

And within myself and under the skin—deep down—I felt the wings of Man distinctly unfolding.

* * * * *

And as I lay on the great hill-side the kisses of the sun alighted on me after their long flight, and rested; and the birds warbled through the midday; and the flowers and the earth itself and the great tree-boles sent forth their incense-swarms of atoms;

And behold! beyond the mountains and the great clouds floating by I beheld dim vast and aerial the figure as of a man with arms outstretched over the universe;

And as I gazed—lo! slowly all these other things swam with me and became incorporate with that figure, and the clouds floated and the streams ran down from ledge to ledge within it;

And the trees with their square arms took on a new signification, and the little seeds with their twin cotyledons were for an emblem, and I saw whither the birds were hastening, and the direction of the index of all generation;

And the starlings flew through the spaces of its thoughts, and the anemone squadrons trembled along its flanks;

And the horses galloping over the plains could not escape the plains they galloped over, nor the light-footed wolf its quest;

And the eagle could not deny its own form as it soared over the mountains—nor I the knowledge of that which was unfolding within me:

And I understood the meaning of the wings.

ON AN ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP

Mid-ocean, night—

The spars loom square and black against the sky, and the mast-head light sways slowly.

* * * * *

I hear as in a dream the never-ending lullaby, the continued surge of water off the bows, the vibration and smothered pulse of the engines.

* * * * *

Deep in the bowels of the great ship, half-naked huge-limbed grimy-eyed sweating, the firemen tend their thirty-six fires.

From time to time one slips on deck to enjoy the cool;

He lights his pipe. The moon along the high ridge of a pitch-black mass of cloud steals, peering over fitfully on the silent gulfs.

* * * * *

The ship glides on and on. Oily-surfaced heaves and sways the deep as far as eye can see.

Eight bells strike. The watch changes.

One bell—two bells. The deck is almost deserted. And still the ship glides on and on—the deep sways slightly rustling;

The look-out man in the bows cries ‘All is well’—and the lamps are brightly burning.

2

In the morning as usual the deck is alive with passengers

[The great ocean-plains swelling sparkling for hundreds, thousands, of miles round us, the visible circle unbroken by island or any object]—

Of all nations languages degrees, of various habits trades traditions,

Strangers to each other and to the water—they look with curious eyes upon the novel scene.

* * * * *

An elderly Indian civilian, saloon-passenger, in grey check morning suit and tennis shoes, blameless and wealthy, looks down with curious eyes from the rail of the upper deck upon the crowded emigrant groups;

He turns to draw the attention of the young lady standing beside him.

It is a strange and varied scene—the sparkling waters, the rigging and cordage, the children in red hoods playing on the sunny deck, the basking groups, some playing cards, some smoking, chatting—the silent companionless ones, pensive far-away-looking over the waves;

The Irish, mostly sitting or reclining in knots, young and old, men and women, in gay colors, resting their heads on each other or wrapped in pairs under one shawl—joking laughing kissing screaming slapping;

Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Norwegians, Laplanders, Swedes—some with red shirts and jack-boots, boys with concertinas and pipes, rosy Dutch girls, and mothers with tribes of children.

* * * * *

Here walking up and down with their brother three English girls, fresh and bright as daisies—on their way to join their parents in the West;

Here a little lady from Dublin with clear low voice singing to a circle of companions;

There in a corner by himself unnoticed among the rest, in low musical chant by the hour reciting praying, sits an old Russian Jew.

Greybeard, with veined forehead, a tailor by trade—his son-in-law has sent for him to Texas;

Through Hamburg and Hull and Liverpool he has traveled, eating no Gentile food but dry bread.

The Hebrew text lies before him—but he knows it by memory mostly;

Prayers for the day he recites [“Abraham taught the morning prayer and Isaac the afternoon and Jacob the evening prayer”]—

Prayers for the captain and for the crew and the passengers and for all sea-travelers [“prayers for self alone God will not hear”]—

Prayers against storm, shipwreck, disease and famine, and all dangers of the deep—not forgetting the warning of Jonah; and for each man’s ruach against the ruach of the ocean; and against the changes of clime and time—

All these he recites, sitting alone with his thoughts amid strangers.

* * * * *

It is a strange and varied scene.

The dark passion-eyed little Irish devil of a New York saloon-keeper with his blasphemous stories and unscrupulous confessions—takes it in from his point of view;

The long-headed long-twinkling-eyed elderly woman in her print hood, helpful and receptive, with broad mouth—enjoyer of jokes, not easily shocked—takes it in also from hers;

The gold-miner with slouch hat and easy dress leans with his back against the bulwarks—he has seen it all twice before;

He has been home just now to Cornwall to visit his wife and children, and is off again to the mountains of Idaho. By his side stands his seventeen-year-old son, silent, clear-eyed, loving well his father.

The cheerful elderly spinster brings her camp-stool on deck and chats to a companion—laughing hysterically over her own fears, and how she pushed against the side of her berth in the night when it was rough, to steady the rolling ship!

The American horse-dealer (he is bringing over some cart-horses from England) walks up and down—grey-eyed, with decisive chin and lips, easy careless sociable and ’cute.

Under the awning aft by the saloon gangway an elderly and well-to-do matron and her two daughters recline in easy chairs; the lean grey-haired ship’s purser, proud of his gentlemanly manners, stops as he passes to say a few words to them;

And the ship glides on and on—the water breaks from the bows,

The spars stand square and black against the sky, and the masts sway to and fro slowly.

3

What a scene!

Here in this hollow cup a thousand souls floating on the unmeasured deep—

A little dust of humanity gathered at random on the shores of one continent, to be tossed at random to the winds of another.

* * * * *

The young clerk with wife and babe, from London, going out to try his fortune at farming in Manitoba:

The great big-boned steerage steward, so kindly to the children and sensible—native of Rome, proud of his Latin origin, member of the Carbonari and imprisoned by Austrians in his time—now serving out treacle and bread and butter to emigrants;

The spruce first-cabin waiters and brawny slipshod humored crew,

The cooks, officers, the clean red-whiskered little captain on the bridge, the smug decent doctor, the oily-jacketed look-out behind his screen in the bows;

The taking of observations at breakfast time and again at noon, the sun’s limbs brought down to the horizon—the logarithms and tables, the charts and the log;

The long heave and gasp of the engines, the gulls slow floating behind or darting after waste slops;

The huge side of the ship, an iron wall 170 yards long to the waves, the flowers mirrors gilt and velvet of the saloon, the piano, the gossip, the elegant dinner, the mutual advances and recognitions, the parson who consents to read service on Sunday, the philanthropist interested in gutter children, the two self-possessed American girls, the young Englishmen doing the great tour;

The bare sanded boards of the steerage cabins, the crowded emigrant meals, the swinging watercan and electric lamp, the stretched arms with mugs and plates;

The berths with hundreds of sleepers at night, the family groups during the day;

The father, awkward and ox-like, with nine motherless children, caring for their little wants—the women pityingly helping him;

The narrow-eyed pale young basket-maker reading his Bible in his berth all day; the Lancashire laddie and his pals singing salvation-comics at meal-times;

The military-got-up old fellow (years and years ago he was in the regulars) so clean and spruce—brushing his boots carefully every morning; the little boy of twelve traveling all by himself, petted by the cook and peeling potatos for bits of dainties;

The love-making, bible-reading, card-playing, singing—the women sewing or washing baby-linen;

The captain’s cabin, with charts and glasses, the crew’s quarters in the forecastle—men smoking in their bunks—the stoke-hole, the bar, the engine-room;

The warm evenings with renewals of animation—

Jingles of music in the cabins, hymns and comic songs and dances on deck to the accordion;

The inquisitive-eyed priest, the same that read the service, looking out from the saloon door—peering fleshly at the better-looking boys and girls;

At dusk the crew running among the women-passengers —firemen, cabin and deck-hands—fingering and fooling; the women enjoying;

The incorrigible nigger cook’s boy, with muscular developed frame, protruding his great lips at the girls and then drawing them back with a grin showing huge rows of white teeth;

The mean pudding-faced Swedish lad and Irish woman spitting at each other—with no other language in common;

The sickness, the smells, the refuse meat swept from floors and tables and thrown in bucketfuls overboard;

The coarse half-smothered lust, the gluttony and waste of food;

And the great ship gliding on and on—in her course pointed by the earth-pole and the stars and the sun—

The spars standing square and black against the sky, and the mast-head light swaying slowly.

4

The evening before last the water was oily-calm, floating blue flecked with yellow up to the western horizon.

Behind, the track of the great ship lay like white lace, with ridgy waves thrown off and rustling as they receded on each side; in the distance brooding the dappled clouds hovered ’twixt sky and sea—dove-color and grey and heavy with unformed rain.

* * * * *

After sunset there was preaching and singing forward on deck.

One or two ladies from the saloon distributed tracts, some from the steerage joined in praying, and called upon the Lord for safety during the voyage.

Quite a little crowd got round, some earnest, some jeering, some quiet spectators—(the cabin-boys mostly dancing in pairs round the corner in time to the hymns).

All the while the great masts kept swaying slowly to and fro in the sky—as though never moving forward from their place—the huge vault rising enormous with dappled moonlit clouds in the east;

While from the west the faint daylight still shone upon the worshipers, and the sound of their music melted and died on the vast sea-bosom.

* * * * *

Later on, when the deck was almost deserted—All faintest dove-grey and silver, the gleaming water passing up without distinction into the gleaming sky, with moon behind the clouds—

All one hue, in faintest silent perpetual movement, like no earthly scene,

Immaterial, transfigured, the huge wash of ocean two miles deep lying so calm below—

The moonlit ocean of air unsuspected above the clouds—suspended between—

Gliding on and on, as in a mirror or a dream....

* * * * *

All so calm, large, undisturbed, vast in extent and power: the sea stretching out to the touch of the air—miles, hundreds, thousands of miles—

The sympathetic answer of the floating cloud-layer to the floating heaving water-layer below....

* * * * *

I saw a vision of my own intimate passing out over the waters, and between them and the clouds—the vessel going on and leaving us—

Liberated, identified, all pain stript off and left with the husk behind—senses of enjoyment strangely widened, lifted—

Moving on at will, passing along the waters, the slow air—catching the faint scent, the whispers, the coherent incoherent words,

The marvelous calm, peace, grandeur, vastness, the incommunicable joy—

Entering into it, and being at rest.

5

In the morning all was changed again.

Drizzly and grizzly chopped the grey water with leaden clouds and rain; the horizon was a circle of mist;

Coldly and flabbily the passengers looked out upon the world.

* * * * *

Sullen like a marble cliff just tinged with blue, a huge slab a quarter mile long and eighty feet rising over the water,

Scored, festooned, beetling, with cavernous hollows washed by the sea,

With mist trailing to leeward of it, and thin mist passing over its white flat top, with white fragments dotting the sea around it—

Sullen silent and lonely a great iceberg floated by.

* * * * *

For a few minutes the passengers were roused, and crowded the side of the vessel—some of the firemen running up from the stoke-hole to have a look.

But presently like bees stupefied with cold they dispersed to their cabins and to sleep, and the deck was clear again.

6

To-day, bright and fresh, with new warmth, as it were wafted from the approaching land—all is gay and cheerful.

The deep inky-blue of mid-ocean yields to a lighter tint, and the waves break merrily into flashes of turquoise light crowned with foam.

Six narrow-winged gulls pass by—flying low, serpentine—hunting across the water;

Every now and then shoals of porpoises appear—hundreds at a time—playing splashing swimming alongside, towards the wind, leaping half-a-dozen together out of the water—

[Bounding three or four yards, with evident enjoyment and commotion at the sight of the ship—their sharp backfins and divided horizontal tails plainly visible;]

Then a whale is seen spouting, or a fleet of Portuguese men of war drifts by, rose-color and blue—or a real ship is sighted and spoken with.

* * * * *

So the day speeds on; and pleasant is basking on the sunny deck, and pleasant the new companionships and the confidences; and the food tastes sweet, and the air has a breath of land in it, as of most distant hayfields; and hope and expectation range high;

And the evening falls, and late on into the warm night the clustered wanderers on the fore-deck sing the songs of the old country,

While the spars loom square and black against the stars, and the mast-head light sways slowly.

BY LAKE WACHUSETT

The night-breeze murmurs odorous through the wild chestnuts where Lake Wachusett lies embowered in trees;

The moon shines over the mountains not other than when the wild man walked them;

The crickets and frogs cry shrill, the bull-frog twangs his bass, and the firefly shines fitful among the bushes;

While solitary in his boat the fisher is known by his lamp gleaming over the water.

* * * * *

Murmured as in a dream I catch the import of creation.

Like a far-off sound which the attentive listener mistakes not:

Through the chirruping of the crickets and high fluting of the frogs, through the lull of the breeze and the voice of the fisherman singing across the lake—through the calls of the Indians faintly lingering still among the laurel and pine tangles—

Through the face of the moon leaning down from the sky, and the fitful bird-eluding flash of the firefly—

Nay, through the remembered faces and calls of the city, and all sights and sounds—

Still I catch the old old theme, the theme of birth and deliverance.

* * * * *

Tremble on O breeze overhead, tremble O prince of love, with thy wings the whole universe overshadowing,

Calling Thou from their hidden dwelling-places the souls of men to their deliverance:

Where they lie hidden in the waters calling, or fitful in the air flashing—or in all strange elusive forms hiding vainly their birth-marks, yet by Thy voice discovered;

Where by the solitary lamp upon the lake, after trout and pickerel, or upon the pavements of cities, or with the moon through the mild night, or on the gleaming water-surfaces with cool gurgling throats—

Eluding, grotesque—still to thy voice they answer unwitting.

* * * * *

Tremble on O breeze glittering dissolving all things transparent—tremble O prince of love with thy wings all things overshadowing:

Calling invoking out of chaos, out of the mad jumble and whirligig of the world, through all destinies and forms and long agelong preparations—

Souls winged and equipped for freedom.

O MIGHTY MOTHER

O mighty Mother—in silence receive thy child.

Weary, fainting, having traveled far and forsaken thee, having undertaken burdens too great to be borne—

Atlas of griefs and sorrows, well nigh borne down beneath the load—

Thy foolish child, wandering afar from thee, yet led by what divine madness?—

O mighty Mother receive.

* * * * *

Never again to stray.

Having circled the globe, having completed the many-thousand-year-long round which thou secretly appointedst for me—

Through what mystifications troubles delays, what returning on old tracks, what torments and inward suffering (thou knowest best)—

What entanglements and illusions—

O mighty Mother receive!

* * * * *

Outcast and friendless (for that was my necessary doom) and homeless on the verge of creation I first knew myself—sorrow was the wall which divided me from thee.

I beheld thee afar and knew thee not; I was a prisoner and guessed not that I was in prison.

* * * * *

But now at thy feet—thanks, thanks!

Pouring out my soul in gratitude to thee—thy child so foolish, to Thee, dear mother:

Whilst thou one by one disentanglest the loaded heavy chains which I have dragged so far—

(One by one, for not all at once will they come off, and fast and eating into my flesh are they riveted)—

At thy feet I sit and sing, knowing thou hast sworn to give me Freedom.

* * * * *

Ages shall my song last, for not all at once can I disburden myself;

Ages will I sing for joy—warbling in thy presence—as the birds to the risen sun;

Then at last arising Thou mother shalt take me by the hand: we will leave the earth, and thou shalt learn me to fly through heaven.

AFTER LONG AGES

_Tired child, on thy way to Paradise:_

* * * * *

_Does the path seem long? Rest here and let us beguile a few moments._

_Rest here, in mortal form Thou that I see advancing—Child of sin and sorrow and suffering rest close here._

* * * * *

_Hast thou heard faintly between the clouds in the ever-lasting blue the music of voices and of wings? Hast thou gazed deep into the eyes of the animals?_

_Hast thou silent in the great secret caverns of thy own heart heard the awful footsteps of thy Lover advancing?_

_Be at peace. Fear not. Behold, thou shalt conquer all evil._

_Clouds of gloom shall wrap thy soul; the long days without grace shall weary thee; the voice of whom thou lovest shall speak to thee as of old no more._

_Be at peace. Fear not. Behold, thou shalt conquer all evil._

* * * * *

_Turn, lift up thine eyelids, to me, beautiful one; clear away the shadows of the lashes from those liquid deeps;_

_Turn full-orbed thy gaze against mine. Fear not. Serene, serene as heaven is all that is between us._

_Who is it that I see sitting at her lattice window—far down those liquid deeps?_

_Who is it the voice of whose singing comes borne to me like the sound of a voice across the far sea?_

_What is this figure, dear child, that I see moving so mysteriously in those depths—_

_Vague-outlined, hinted, as of one moving behind a curtain?_

* * * * *

_Lo! the caged one, the solitary prisoner feeling around the walls of her prison!_

_Lo, the baffled beaten and weary soul! lo, the crowned and immortal god!_