DE PROFUNDIS.
Omniscient silence let these thoughts invoke;
Heavenly music may these sounds convoke;
Should now the affording crucible stir,
Let logic and melody accord and confer.
Illuminative ruminative eye,
Open! awaken! perceive and espy
The spectral galaxy of dispersed truth,
Far scattered before the sophistic proof.
In prismatic semblance its varied hue,
Diffractive, projects, but converges through
The second prism of thy powerful sight,
Uniting the colourful cords of light.
Effulgent Truth let thy radiance grow,
And, flooding dark voids, brightly golden glow!
Reveal to me thy resplendent glory,
When rain-mottled billows of wind unfurled.
When I, quite alone, in my cottage gazed
Upon the orange sabres the fire blazed.
Witnessing the forms of mortal desire
Flourish in the shapeless shape of the fire:
A catching flare only living to die
In cindering all it is nourished by;
A selfish possessor of human frames
Which, jaundicing joys and blackening names,
Turns hunger to sordid gluttonous greed,
And makes of mere want the direst need;
Yields affections to sickly jealous spite,
As delicate fruits to ugliest blight;
Turns love's fine syrup to vinegary lust,
Perishing virtue with perishing rust;
Scars beauteous faith with seething deceit,
Warping the truth with contorting conceit;
‘Fore duteous spirit of life, old nurse,
Rocking the cradle and driving the hearse!
Why raise the infant with vital power
If only to raze its adult hour?
Who sees thy visage recalls to the mind
Dark augurs ahead, dark histories behind.
For melancholy pays the heavy debt
Blind folly incites the vices beget;
For desperation's deeply sinking knife
Bleeds evil, bleeds good, bleeds hope, and bleeds life!
——The wind sent a shot of rattling rain
Thick volleying against a window pane,
Which broke the hex of self-immolation,
And staunched its curses’ assimilation.
Rising to my feet in a febrile state,
Hoping by movements its fumes to abate,
I paced about the blazing stifling room,
Sweating and panting in the flickering gloom,
Till, turning, I saw the dim reflection
Of an ill face's sallow complexion.
Horror distorted its every feature,
Horrified was that horrible creature.
(If beauty is virtue because a wealth
Of the soul's, the mind's, or the body's, health,
What denizen of vice did then I see
Attesting a foul decline in all three?)
Its craterous skin was in grease besmeared,
Seeping and curdling on a reeking beard;
Its yellow pallor, flushed with heated blood,
Was by hues of green mixed to shades of mud;
Its eyes, the dark hollows of evil ghosts,
Aband of the vigour that virtue hosts,
Stared, started, and darted onto the door,
For, seeing themselves, they could see no more.
As seems to subvert the soul it impels;
Outside I faltered, as the door flew back
At the wind that roared with the thunder’s crack.
I wandered, groaned, paused awhile and, dazed,
In the dimly lit darkness vaguely gazed:
Swiftly driven trails of rain were scattered
In coursing drifts that rapidly pattered
On the sodden turf, on the wetted rocks,
On the thin lissom branches' leafy locks.
Edged shafts of light that from the windows cast
Caught the flecks of rain in their golden blast;
Thin dashes, fine shavings, of bronze in flight,
Or gilded sparks, water gilt gold in light.
Yet beyond, the crashing within the deep
Of this potent night, passed in potent sleep
By the good and wise, while the otherwise,
Disdained by sleep, must for restlessness rise,
And hear Omnipotent Nature attest
Such powers as druids and witches professed.
Equivocation held me fast though I
Was chilled by the rains and winds of the sky,
Till, advancing through the aërial might
Of this violent, elemental, night,
With the swift unconscious execution
Of the deep unfathomed resolution,
All light soon faded; the world turned to sound;
Rain hissed all around, and rapped on the ground,
As it seemed, to mist the air while flying,
To make the earth liquid, landing, lying.
The windblasts’ chorus of quick-flapping sheets
Shook out from the trees doleful ailing bleats,
Rung on crooked forks by shockwaves, roaring,
Slanting the vertical torrents pouring.
When darkness enshrouds the mortal he sees
His meagre life’s span’s contracted degrees.
Five senses alone show to him this Place,
Five small apertures into time and space,
If one is closed his prison cell shadows,
If five are closed his cell is his gallows.
My feet dragged onward, I limped overland,
Though tripping, though slipping; walking to stand,
And, gasping with mingled pain and sorrow,
Ventured to think — but not of to-morrow.
Did I in the past foresee a decline?
Was that woe at twelve an oracle sign?
Or was it that I unhappy from birth
Regretted still further prospects on earth?
As a boy I knew that I loved repose,
And idly reclined, and sadly arose.
Unhappily must worthless sloth destroy
The man, as it damages first the boy.
My temper worsened, my efforts relaxed,
The lenitive leant, the lenitive taxed,
And, in spite of all fair-willed advice,
Yet, rendered myself unto ease’s vice.
Vainly knowledge over ignorance pours!
As gallons of water on narrow straws.
Vainly! vainly! have the ages striven
To close the fissures successively riven
By each generation, which newly drives
Through the old the ill youth’s folly revives.
In vain to build on the shifting sands!
In vain to gnarl the hard labouring hands!
In vain to— cease! It is vainest to say
All life is as vain as my life to-day.
Some means to some ends seem lightly tending,
As rivers turn course by slightly bending,
But what is the end of the never-ending?
Does eternity fall to mortal will?
Or a moment banish abiding ill?
O patience and trust! I know I must wait,
For wisdom, a blessing soon and still late.
Though we dwell on fear yet we live on hope,
And cling to an edge, or hang by a rope.
When I as a child expected to die,
From a fit of asthma, I wrote that ‘I
Love my mother and siblings’ as a note,
That love might live while they read what I wrote.
And, indeed, if love be preserved in time,
May that love still live, may it last in rhyme!
Frayed memories approach——nay, but let them pass,
For darkness does not reflect in the glass.
The past is a strange land, the present too,
Each thrusts each other, as the future, through
Like a summer’s haze, too turbidly free,
The more I would look, the less I should see.
For who is old Time?—A past present when
The present was a future past, that then
Of the future made the present at last
When the present foregone became the past!
——Through long sodden reeds and thorny hedges,
By molten fields’ sharply bounded edges,
Still I trudged, though the weight of former years
Loosed a cascade of rain-dissembled tears;
And no further thoughts on the anvil left
Could hammer a spark, or were quickly cleft,
No more could I lift the most barren thought
For heart overcome and mind overwrought;
More I felt—less I thought—the mind is such,
Thought engorges on little feelings much.
——Scars of white light struck across the sky,
Palely lighting the land as they bolted by:
Boulders marbled in liquid reflected
An inky sheen of lightning directed;
Branches charcoaled with darkness connected
Thin craggy bones to the woodlands looming,
With amplified stormy torrents booming,
With magnified brutishness entombing,
A million creatures’ eyes which peer,
Instilling through wanderers’ spirits Fear.
Fear! that treads the fast heels of ambition,
Fear! that stalks the steeped paths to perdition,
Fear! of bloody eye, frosting breath, and spear,
We cannot evade as we see thee Fear!
A panic arose, still the charges flashed,
Striking visions like drums, as trees it slashed.
Great branches fell to a snap and a click,
Greater thunders, lashed with a lightning flick,
Burst open the seams of the air, whose rage
Roared, grumbled, and clapped, a momentary age.
And now my skin burnt with a soaked itching,
And now my eyes blinked at the blasts’ pitching,
And now a foot cramped for an ankle twist,
And now a leg bent to a ragged list.
Gorse thrust its daggers as I passed and to
Its bushes some cloth and some blood withdrew;
Burs cast their hooks from their bracken covers
With thorns allied, briars, stings, and others;
Then freed to a plain all wantonly lit
With seething arrows—which lividly pit
The stuff of the air, I ran, for madness
Followed the fear that followed on sadness.
One stride, another, meeting stride with stride
And my body staggered from side to side;
One stride, another, my wasted arms stirred,
Like things archaeologists disinterred;
Hot irritant sweat flushed into my skin,
And smarted my pores like pricks of a pin;
The trees shed matter; twigs, branches, and leaves,
Up-gathered on whirls, down-pelted in heaves;
Howling dæmons orbited round the wind
Full bitterly cursing the curse, ‘We Sinned!’
Rearing like shingle on coasts, rain flailing,
Heavier-weighted, plummeted hailing;
‘O God!’ I roared, the oft recorded term,
‘Destroy this vile, wretched, man-shapen worm!
——A jagged root thrust from the swollen ground,
Struck an aimless foot and, tossing it round,
Thus dismasted, sunk, and toppled aside,
My hulk, the vain wreckage of human pride;
Then I, half-stunned, on my side still lying,
Shook in the mud, deluded and crying:
‘How is water created from vapour?
How is the fat man made out of caper?
How is the timepiece worn by its making?
How was my bone meal brought to this aching?
O, led again to self-pity I moan,
Once again undone, once again alone!
I will not strive, no! nor further aspire!
Let my life once born, so ill-lived, expire!
Who is equal to life, to this struggle,
To this mortal, continuous, juggle?
I must yield! surrender! faint on the ground,
Too dire exhausted, too lost to be found!
Am I calm? Very calm, the worst has past
And left me the balsam of peace at last.
Though my calf is seized I never mind it,
If we scratch an itch we never find it,
If we rub our eyes it makes them sorer,
If we hoard our wealth it make us poorer.
But how is error become my habit?
Why does guidance guide me as a rabbit?
Am I imbecile? No. Villainous? No.
Merely ugly? No. But why am I so?
The years link fine as gold chains on others,
You wear them well you panoplied lovers!
Mine drag as chains of a different order,
Strong, locked, thick irons, hard-rusted border;
I know that he who most carries his weight
Least feels it, but learn it too late——too late!
And I am forlorn in a world so bright
I hardly can see, but long for a Night
Which if I could craft by cutting my throat,
I might——but evils examples promote.
Defeated, resigned, unfinished, let loose
To wander and sag upturned in a noose,
For this have I striven thus to exist,
To suffer for years——and now to desist?
No, no! ‘t is not to be held, nor wondered,
Existence from goodness should ever be sundered!
Pessimists’ thought itself optimises,
Carnivore beasts exist on demises,
Their substitutes are crude postures of faith,
Fools guessing the deadly dangerous safe,
Clinging in blindness to thistles and stings,
Rejoicing in all their agony brings!
It must not be! It cannot be suffered,
Man’s soul lives not to fade being buffered!
If out of the passage of death I came
For a stranded life on a crag of shame,
Then woe betide purpose! woe betide all
That, living to rise, but rises to—— FALL!’
——Thence ceased my lament, for all struggles cease,
As peace fashions war and war fashions peace.
PART II.
———I cannot say (for I do not know which)
I slept (if I slept I slept in a ditch)
Or waking dreamt. Minds are caverns of jewels
So richly laden, scintillating pools
Of topaz, amber, scarlet ruby, blue
Royal sapphire, gold, inlaid gold, and through
Such abundance I roamed, forgetting how;
It is the effect I remember now.
Behind a tall window I gazed outside,
Through melancholy’s overflowing tide,
A roof I saw, and nothing more. I thought...
Of a misted land... that I reached— and caught.
A soft gentle rainfall showered the air,
And drifted... as strands of delicate hair,
Formulated of many single points,
Which hiss as their trail sheds, threads, and anoints
Tart blackberries, currants, and ripening plums,
Or brushing on saps conglobing in gums,
Roll gently; collect, halt, gather, and drop
To a blade of grass or an ear of crop.
Thus shifting from sense to sense and from view
To view and turning from ageing to new,
All feelings pulsed thoughts, all thoughts feelings heard,
And every thing merged, till none was absurd.
The sky cleared——its moisture spent on the earth,
Seeping and teeming and furnishing birth;
A sunset smelted the firmament’s maw,
Refining its most precious metals’ ore,
First by liberating platinum near
Its centre, then boiling a golden tier
Of gloaming, beat a thick aureate band
Which bronzed as it cooled as it stretched, as sand
Is smoothed by very particular gusts,
And browns as an oxidised iron rusts;
Then the bronze alloyed in the furnace blast,
Into melded plates, tempered brasses, cast
A hammered armour, polished, and pendant
On the sun’s rays stretched, threaded, descendent.
How pleasing it was to see! and yet how
Displeasing it is to think faded now.
Fleeting Satisfaction! whether induced
By drowsy midday warmth, whether produced
By cold snaps, or the autumnal breezes,
Which briskly cool fainter suns, well pleases
As long as its novelty lasts, not long,
And then it palls like an overheard song;
So Attention wanders back to seeking
Prizes collected by labour’s eking,
But only because it seeks by action
A taste again of lost satisfaction.
Thus the day, lately sped, yields to the dark,
As slow becomes thought as light becomes stark;
I see a lone figure, shrouded he stands,
On a silent expanse of desert sands,
Splashing colours liquefied in the night
Long trails of pure crimson, blue, and green, light
Whipped into space, and inspiring the heart,
A first sign of reverence, worship, and art.
Two antique lazuli gems in his hands
Shimmer out long self-perpetual strands
Of blue light; four blood-stones glowed on his arms,
Duller but stronger, eight threatening charms;
And visible porphyry on his rings
Rolled with his fingers, the crowns of those kings.
He spoke, ‘What art thou?’ I stammered, ‘My name—’
‘Thy name,’ he then interrupted, ‘is Shame,
And Heretic, Miser, Blasphemer, Swine,
In common with all sacrilegious kine!
Spawn of the century, born of the marsh,
Wretched in bearing, aggressive and harsh,
One among others, following, leading,
Reprobate lives determined on feeding
Every each appetite, all of thy whims,
And rotting the tree of Piety’s limbs
Sprouted this century, all of them dying!
Plagued by the vindictive wormwood: lying,
Whose driftless conceits in an abject mind,
As ivies’ tendrils and clutching claws wind
Around a host victim, weaken their source
Of growth, until it is perished in course.
And so collapses in entirety
The purpose of man’s society;
For man’s society is but a spark
Of the immortal dance of Light and Dark,
And man’s society alone thou knows,
From man’s society thy poison flows,
Through man’s society all must travel
To see its knotted restraints unravel,
Outside, where opals and snowflakes hover,
Where turquoise and lavender crystals smother
Huge boulders of ice which shine in the tones
Of sky-discovered light, there, in those zones
Of æther dwell stormy petrels, where hail
Stammers upon a bleak soul in a wail
Of laughter! a chorus that welters in
The tissue-like stuff of cynical skin,
And only the vestments of faith withstand
Those blasts, thick-spun of material grand:
Gold effusions of sublimated pens,
Shed diamond tears in thousands, and tens
Of permanent wounds sustained in the fights
Waged in the mind through the torturous nights,
When, plumbed in hells of imagination,
Terrified mortals scream for salvation!’
He lifts an amuletic charm up higher
And lights its Oriental emerald’s fire.
‘My soul is aflame as this selfsame jewel,
But yours is immersed in your flesh, O fool!
To have quenched such flames in Modernity,
Warrants death for now, for eternity!’
With primeval ferocity he threw
A rock at my head, that falcon-like flew,
And I, shielding me with my hands, received
A bone-jolting bruise, thus, insult aggrieved,
I closed with him, wrathful, and savagely grasped
His shoulders, knocking the body I clasped;
Then kicking, punching, strangling, and shrieking,
Slaves to the wars our passions were wreaking,
We fought, until a cry of great anguish,
Dreadful and fatal, augured his languish.
He staggered back, twitching, clutching his breast,
And, bracing his limbs, inflated his chest:
With his eyes fast closed, and his legs upright,
With his stretched back arched, and his mouth shut tight,
He sighed; a long constant breath ascended
From his body, which slowly descended
To the ground to lie dead and suspended.
A most burdened imagination tears
Apart the mind its imaginings bears.
It seeks the amethystine wines of joy
And the lemony acids of annoy,
It longs for a delicate fragrant air
And the black polluting wreaths of despair.
O but I want for strong cogitation
On a morning of still meditation!
O but I want for adventuring stalks
Of variety on evening walks!
To breathe night air, blue night air, to wander
Through a pillowed breeze, to have and squander
Small candlelight stars in the vague gazes
That a light appreciation raises,
With thoughts conceived of the exalted dead
Nourishing all upon joys daily fed,
Of constellated affections in man
And suppurations’ redresses began,
Of advancements undaunted resisting
The entropic allies of desisting!
But Philistine Analysis flattens,
(As fresh sentiments leaven) and fattens,
These, the objects of its deadening gaze,
And haply would the whole mind of man craze.
——Behold! a new face emerges from whirls
Of a vortex rippling water in purls,
One blink and he stands before me beaming
A convivial warmth, and aye dreaming
What a balm are friendly faces to souls
Long floundered upon the troubled old shoals
That desperate feelings so resemble!
They as the local fires of night tremble
At a brushing wind in the winter feasts,
Whose frost-bitten celebrants around beasts,
Spitted and roasted, foregather with cheer,
Warming and smiling on meat and good beer.
I asked him, ‘How are you?’ He answered, ‘Well!
How are you?’ He returned with humour, ‘Tell!’
Then, for answer, I poured a profusion
Of thoughts unchecked, devoid of conclusion.
‘I am well but unwell, happy but fear,
And hardly know how I came to be here.
An eerie disquiet intrudes on me,
As though I had strayed from reality;
Hardly a dream, yet it must be untrue
Honoured distinctions should vanish from view.
A diver I see, I know not why, walk
Firmly forward to the marginal chalk
Of tremendous cliffs defying strong blows
A gleeful ocean relentlessly throws;
He stands like an osprey taut, ever still,
With a body of set and hardened will,
Straining for poise; then, inclining his frame,
Flicks his feet so— and, with action the same,
Full tips in a moment himself upside——
Down! nor ever a sound to coincide.
Disappears. What skill! what temper and force!
Thus some have entered in knowledge’s source.
But not, alas! has yours truly of course.
I, egoist, with vain struggles and gasps,
Drown in the thing my hand desperately grasps!’
Then closing this speech I pitifully cried,
Each sob increasing the more that I tried
To stop, but kindly he turned full away,
Finding a sudden deep interest in stray
Dragonflies rumbling, near a small streamlet
Drowsily gurgling; though, finding me yet
Inclined to summon my sorrows apace
In strangled out tears, he took from his case
A flask he first drunk himself then tendered
Quickly to me and heartily rendered
When agreed, I drank: and what a change!
A sudden jollity blooming would range
Across my demeanour, notions and airs
Formerly laboured redundant with cares
Suffused with ardour! The glow of stained glass,
When stray broken rays on clouded days pass
Its dormant dyes, might parallel the great
Transfiguration that flask did create.
He nodded satisfied and answered my words,
‘All firsts are seconds, all seconds are thirds.’
Me. ‘How so, Sir?’ Him. ‘You know, Sir, that reason
Is a thought that is true for a season?
You mind that the mind knows how to construe,
But cannot know how it knows how to do?
What is sincerity? Sin’s verity.
And what its main quality? Brevity.
Your fault, dear fellow, a fault you might lose
Lies in too greatly diluting your booze.’
Then laughing he drank a measure again,
And set to a sprint; I chased him in pain,
While calling, pleading, ‘I cannot follow!’
Moved like a quail pursuing a swallow,
Him. ‘It is nothing, dear boy, it is easy!’
Me. ‘It is hard, very hard, I am wheezy.’
I stopped short of breath, he drank at his flask,
Him. ‘The world is a pub and this is my cask.
Nothing aids the quenching pleasure like thirst,
The best is bettered, you know, by the worst.’
Me. ‘But is it not warned great drinking is snared
With far sharper cares than sorrowing flared?
And is it not found religion enfolds
A peaceful content the body withholds?’
Him. ‘Pshaw! Nonsense! What harm is in mixtures
Rosily garnishing gloomy fixtures?
There never was a man melancholic
Who was not for a time alcoholic,
Why! find me the man who happily knows
A fuller, stronger, and quicker-stirred, doze
Than the sot’s, captured in drain or in bush;
All he requires is a pull for the— push!
But let me tell you of two incidents,
And say if you see a coincidence,
In each depicting a person of sense
Falling at last on a crutch of intents.
——It was a day brightly plastered with heat,
Skipping in dancing itself on the street.
Dear Quince and Christmas came strolling along
Happy in fellowship, singing a song;
So, linking our arms, a trio we passed
A many fine hour, a many sight last
To be seen by each eye, though by each eye
I surely thought soul (for ‘t were a mere lie)
To talk of a soul as an eye)——we crossed
A stony bridge, on a river, well mossed,
And pleasing ourselves in daydreams that lent,
A colour to life, we gaily went.
There was the lover abstractedly sat
Pulling at grass in a straw summer hat
With throbs of passion welled up in his chest
And rapturous thought diffused in his breast:
“My love is my love is my love is mine,
My love is high love is my love, and thine;
Is she beautiful? Beautiful! Yes, no.
For what can I say my love doth love so?
For her, her glances, her motions— herself,
And not for beauty, for duty, nor wealth.
O gathered sum of my expectation!
A darling born in imagination!”
Here was the misanthrope vegetating,
And in his degraded state berating:
“How weary I am of being a mime!
Ringing the notes of another man’s chime,
How weary I am indeed of hearing
My aping speech at company nearing;
How weary! O weary! Weary and sick
I am with tasting the earth that I lick.
How weary, at last, I grow of speaking
Of my weariness weariness wreaking.
Is there no dilation acceptable,
Is there no expansion, immutable,
Capable of rousing me from vapours
Inflamed with winds sparking on papers?
No, neither exists, to learn nor to teach,
So wither I, wither all that I reach!”
And there the apothecary would sell
His things, that do much but do not make well,
With prepossessed hypochondriacs near,
Enquiring for cures to all but their fear.
And then the pollster adverting his cause,
Exclaiming and framing views without pause:
“Abolish Victorian attitudes!
(But sanction our bottomless platitudes.)
Destroy the tradition of selfishness!
(In name, but retain it as elfishness.)
Lessen the burden on all of our poor!
(And see that the rich employ them no more.)”
“Blast him, the damnable scoundrel!” roared Quince,
“And let his carcase his wisdom evince!
What impudence is manifest in those
Who scorn the past in their modern repose!”
“But why,” I asked, “do they of nothing know?”
“They frolic in the surface spindrift so,
They forget the portentous deeps below.
Clutching trifles ‘neath the colourful shades,
Of luxury’s brightening lamp, that fades,
These types so common in the world to-day,
In ignorance whittle their lives away.
Deafen your ears to their modern day song,
Politically sound but utterly wrong,
That flagrant licence makes liberalism,
As envy and theft makes socialism.
If religion is the opiate of the masses
Communism is the opiate of the asses!
Be wary of the age; avert your eyes,
We reached the blustery coast-town at last.
And this I warn you,’ (he drank once again)
‘Is painful to tell and woe to retain.
For Christmas, on reaching near to the shore,
Stopping us, told of a cancerous sore
Found in his brain by a doctor and too
Vitally placed to deter or undo.
“My friends,” he said, bravely calm as we looked
Up to the sky, “Every ill can be brooked,
By ones such as we, by ones sure in faith,
Who, honestly sure, are honestly safe.
Can you hear the white sea, washing spray high,
Sounds it not like a million bells nigh?
How beautiful! splendid! poetical!
Unparalleled! wonderful! magical!
Regard the sunset trembling on a wave,
Infinities of orange stars enswathe
Each roller vexed to break ashore, to burst
Into a snowy froth then roll immersed
With effervescent vortices dragging
Bottle green shards, opal stones, weeds sagging,
And salt grains mortaring pebbles and shells,
Formed in the sea’s architecture of swells.
What an array of worlds lives in this world!
And what array into which is this hurled?
If I ascended in the air, suppose,
And, still increasing the ascension, rose
Beyond the view of the Earth or Mars
And climbed through the darkness’s deeps, with stars’
Innumerable garniture strewn around,
Or nebulæ puffs in glitterings drowned,
While still ascending, ask no how or why,
Gone Saturn’s rings and vast Jupiter’s eye;
Would it never end? Indeed it might end
But only as new beginnings intend!
My friends, embrace me, you see me dying,
I stand beyond the compass of lying,
One thought resurfaces still to my mind
Life is before me as well as behind,
And yet the atheist exists! How strange
That man should, with all of his wit, derange
The landscape of existence into shade,
And see it, midst all of its light, quite fade!
Ah they see! But to notice is a thing
Far different, one is to speak, one sing.
We are warm, contented, free but secure,
Trusting our faith after God is made pure.
Then stay me, guide me, and help me, until
My suffering dies with bodily ill,
As I hope, leaving the spirit to roam
Still in its mission to reach its true Home.
For if none can bear their fortunes to be,
Then, dear friends and old, have pity on me!”
So spoke a brave man, a good man, and wise,
But doubt is ever a strain to disguise.
After he perished, pious, contented,
Both of us drank overmuch and lamented.
Across the years Quince and I in respect
Of him, attended the church, circumspect
In appearance awhile, but each in truth
Drunk in the pews on sixty-per-cent proof;
But with age we parted in company,
Reluctantly, slowly, decidedly.
The last that I saw him, slouched and shaking
At a bar, on a brandy joy making,
He told me that, were it not for his dread,
He since would have shot himself in the head;
And so I was scarcely amazed to hear
The dismal news, at the turn of the year,
From his son, that he lay, gasping for breath
In a hospital bed, nearing to death,
And wanted to see me again before
All that was left of his apple was core.
So I saw him, thin and jaundiced, a man,
Fractiously spitting out phlegm in a pan,
We greeted each other, I said, ‘Dear Quince
What does my bringing this Bible evince?
We haven’t observed its precepts at all
And now I bring it to comfort withal.’
Then casually opening it I found
Chapter the First of St. John, and the sound
Of the words I read was pleasant, and yet
The more that I read the more he would fret,
Until he, snarling and frowning, declared,
“Religiousness shared is lunacy spared!
I asked you to come because I had guessed
You’d savour the wine concealed in my vest.”
Which taking, he drank, then spluttered out choking,
Coughing and gagging, hacking and croaking,
Shouting out, “Kill me! This life is a hell,
Its worst deception was once being well!
Death the only conqueror! Death of course
Cometh presiding on a snorting horse
Called Sickness!”——“Calm yourself my friend! Recall
Those wise comforts generated for all
In this state of high disquiet and fear
Are not they yet true as before?”——“Not here!”
Then, pulling his shirt, his stomach showed round,
A distended, swollen, and yellow, flesh-mound.
“What of this?” he spat, shaking and seething,
Racking his frame in labours of breathing.
“What call you this if not God’s wickedness?’
Numbly I read from the Bible: “Witness
Of that Light——” but he yelled “All Christians flee
‘There is nothing——nothing there——to help me!”
Thus he poured wine in his drip for relief,
And in extremity renounced belief.’
The attendant sounds of despair well write
The tale of animal anguish and plight,
But ill they feel to a sensitive friend,
Who hopes for a peaceful release to end
The burden of trouble felt by people
Neither eased by the bottle nor steeple.
If aught can instruct of such scenes ‘t is this:
In present-day good bides all future bliss.
———He tried to drink from his flask but he found
Only a drop which he dropped to the ground.
His face was a picture of all his soul
Broken in places with lines, and yet whole.
He attempted to smile, but the effect
Was ghastlier far than grimaces checked.
It seemed only just that now he should fade
Walking away in the midst of a glade.
PART III.
Havoc and Chaos linked arms in a dance
And sang of follies which nourished their chance:
Havoc. ‘O Shelley! O Shelley! Thou prince of mess!
Thou justified ills which others confess!
Thy life was a picture of all our creed,
Its arrogance mingled with callous greed,
Its churlishness born of unsubtle thoughts
Which detracted ones and protracted noughts.’
Chaos. But poor Percy Bysshe! He lived not long!
Nietzsche! now he was a giant of wrong!’
Havoc. ‘And Schopenhauer.’ Chaos. ‘O! who could forget
Old miserable Schoppy’s miserable bet.’
Havoc. ‘He believed, if I correctly recall,
That all is nothing while nothing is all!’
Chaos. ‘Haha! What days! How we goaded them then!’
Havoc. ‘Why, the Lord was slipping.’ Chaos. ‘He slips again.
Now all are Nietzsches and Schoppies and such.
They none of them wonder—’
Havoc. ‘Not one?’
Chaos. ‘Not much.’
Havoc. ‘My! My! To think not a one of them do
‘T is worse than if none did wonder but two.’
Chaos. ‘‘T is better you mean.’ Havoc. ‘‘T is better in fact,
‘Reminds me of one who knew what he lacked.’
Chaos. ‘Bertrand you mean?’ Havoc. ‘Yes! Bertrand. I wondered
Once if he’d join the side he had plundered.
Chaos. Old Russell? Never! He so loved a fire
He wished that the world could be a big pyre.’
Havoc. ‘Don’t we all?’ Chaos. ‘Yes; but he was uniquely——
Inclined to argue his case obliquely.
He thought that mere neutrals could prevent war,
Why! it worked for Chamberlain!’
Havoc. ‘More! O more!’
Chaos. ‘He said religion did more harm than good!
So bees would say of the hive if they could!’
Havoc. ‘No stop! Ha! stop! I cannot abide it,
Such
talk tears up the thoughts kept inside it!
Chaos. ‘Then come Havoc! We are called, can you hear?
The men of the earth are summoning Fear
Again, and we his attendants must aid
That monstrous old bandit on a new raid.’
Havoc. ‘His camp keeps succulent things I enjoy
I will go, dear Chaos, and death to all joy!’
So their ugly heads disappeared from view,
But that they lurk yet I know and I knew.
Then a voice I heard of an aged man
That, venerable, hallowed, deeply began:
‘Hear O my children a legend of yore!
There once was a strife ‘twixt rich man and poor.
Xram the prophet and Slegne the scribe
Plundered the Rich with a promise’s bribe.
A promise’s bribe! A promise’s bribe!
Hear, O my sons, of the promise’s bribe!
The Poor had suffered, the Poor often do,
The Rich had slumbered, the Rich slumber too,
And truth be told not one nor the other
Quite looked upon the other as Brother.
Xram, a Namreg and caustic-kept man,
Saw what he could, and his censures began;
“Whip the whip hand!” was Bellowed in the land,
“Fleecing the shepherds!” was carefully planned,
“Robbing the rich!” to be frank was the caw
But made without need to give to the poor.
Well the poor in coin, as you know my sons,
Are oft the richer and happier ones;
But money, ‘t is true, fulfils many wants,
It payeth for troughs, it payeth for fonts,
It is innocent——but stained by vermin,
Be they bedecked in sackcloth or ermine.
Money, my sons, will inspire the greatest
Still to bend down and gather the latest,
Money, my lads, uncouples the fastest,
Money, my boys, amazes the hardest,
Money! what is it but the accepted
Rod for ruling a people corrected!
But the poor were longing! the rich were proud!
When suddenly Slegne, inking a cloud
Of hatred, against the fortunate few,
Took up the powder of madness——and blew!
And the eyes of too many were blinded!
But their minds were made quick and reminded
Every new day of another new way
The rich would make their Injustice to pay.
O my dear sons! my lads! look around you
This massacred earth was beautiful too!
I saw it, yet, it must be forgotten
For the sake of this Malice begotten!
Now honour in a plundered Nodnol burns,
While fat Slessurb deducts all Sirap earns.
Silently Nilreb recovers his force
And bludgeons old Emor and Snehta hoarse.
Then creaking old Dirdam in tradition
Of lazing, like Nilbud, stokes sedition.
Then Wocsom the sly, with Gnikep the strong,
Prepares those forces, which are left, to wrong.
‘Let right be done!’ is bellowed but vainly,
What forces are left prevail too plainly.
Notgnihsaw the foolish but mighty warns,
As always, but yields to money, and yawns.
So in comes the tide, so sets down the sun,
The past lies prostrate, the present has won.
The arts are famished, the ugly ascend,
And so, O my sons, will the era end.
Unless Arrebnac and Awatto bond
With Notgnillew, to join points beyond
And revive the flames of their fathers soon,
Or else see them quench, see the crescent moon,
Sickle-like, take on the part of the sun
Revealing the earth grey, sallow, and dun!’
——A massive convulsion shook through my frame,
Stirring my blood till my consciousness came
Back from the mist of this dreaming or trance,
That, aching I stood to see at a glance,
The storm had abated, morning was near,
And dear seemed life to me then——very dear!
Though the prelude to potent storms is cloud
Solemnly billowed and thundering loud,
Its piece will often progress to a hush,
Such as is heard when a snow thaws to slush,
Such as is heard when the snow falls at night,
Preparing for morn a fairyland sight.
Perhaps the waters maintained discussions
In their so softly arranged percussions.
Perhaps the winds approvingly muttered
In the ears of the leaves as they fluttered.
Perhaps the lights of the stars were blinking
With a mirth at the clouds gently shrinking.
I looked around me while walking about,
Knowing not where, but still moving with doubt.
The trees brightening canopy admits
A portion of all the season permits;
Breathing the sapphire phosphors of morning,
Its lanterns of starlit twilight dawning.
It produces a great exaltation
After an exhausting relaxation.
I like creating, I like destroying,
But I seldom could enjoy enjoying,
We know some have a dying life, and some
Have a living death, a tuneless old drum
Knocking a hole in itself for the sake
Of something to knock at, something to break.
Sea, sky, and land, are beautiful, and we
Are something comprising each of the three,
In balance the picture is attractive
But too little of one is distractive.
Some as wild sea must dice with their fortunes,
Some as thin sky must alter with forenoons,
Some, as dull land that repeats without change,
Make of themselves all the length of their range.
But enough of the failings of others,
Much too often hypocrisy’s covers
Now I must try not to take but to give,
And in doing so perhaps, for once, live.
Unlock O mind! clarify, and witness,
More is without than within of fitness;
Water still savours as golden-hued cream,
And oxygen enters my lungs like a stream;
I know of no reason why evil can
Establish itself, unless it be man
Too resolved on happiness’s pursuit
To be happy, or to eat of its fruit.
Wherein is Purpose, in breathing or food,
In drinking, talking, or sleeping——in mood?
Or is it in incubated designs
Of politics, artistry, or star-signs?
Or is it in schedules and daily ways,
In the boiled egg, in the nice displays
Of appearance, nursed on a reflection
Of lamps toning a sidelong direction?
Suffer the truth, purpose is not living
To live, nor is it standing nor sitting,
In whatever posture, we are not here
To nurture our wrath or varnish our fear;
To be epicures, to be selfish, nor think
That others can float by making us sink.
Leave others to others, leave yourself too,
Witness God’s Purpose rise up into view
Like summits of mountains, like crests of waves,
Like crowns upon sovereigns, crooks upon staves;
It is the end completed, not shattered,
Wisdom and truth amassed, and not tattered;
It is, in fine, in the mind the embrace
Of all things seen in their part and their place.
Rejoice! for hope this discovery brings:
All things are imperfect except all things.
To talk of a broken plurality
In a colossal common unity
Is only to talk of a broken head
Changing the world with a void in its stead.
Who doubts the truth asserts the truth of doubt,
Confuting the case in making it out.
Either of two, fast-opposing, ideas
Must be truest, and when truth's light appears,
A tenfold darkness yields to one part light,
As blindness is conquered at hint of sight,
So Hope revives from the winters of thought,
So breaks its shell and, so seeking, is sought.
Its roots stretch left and right to discover,
A morsel's food, a morsel, another,
A thimble of rain, a bed of repose,
And space beyond all its comforts enclose.
Good time’s so freely imparted estates,
Enlightened hope’s lasting patience awaits.
Till finding its head upraised above ground,
The sapling hope thus discovers a round
Warming Sun, a light which nourishes so
That a meagre hope may rapidly grow.
What sun? That sun reasoned hopes ever find,
The dearest benefactress of mankind,
Happiness! Virtue’s bright lamp, seldom seen,
She shines eternal on a pleasance green;
Not upon Despair, that underground place
Where nihilist doctrines torment the race.
Where all panic in irregular breath
At the grim god of atheism: Death.
Mark this: the mind is the limited thing,
Far less than the threads that its theories string.
Thus the wise are wise because they conceive,
Those bounds to the mind they do not perceive.
Thus misconceived are they who would disdain
One certain Belief for certainly vain.
Beneath all doubt one certainty rises,
Hope loves that well false despair despises.
Who refutes God implies himself to be
Almighty God, for omniscient is he;
Who retorts, 'The onus is with belief.'
Must live beyond all of wisdom's relief
For every proof must a new disproof make,
And every disproof a former proof break.
All words are but sounds whose sounds are but links
Employed to express what man thinks he thinks.
The farthest truth human reason can sense
Is the sheen dimly seen of Transcendence.
What a wonderful thing is man’s hindsight!
Quite as common as rare is his foresight.
It deciphers, declares, every answer,
It can bloody its foes like a lancer
With gossip’s probing scalpel, cutting flesh
That, scored and hanging, vomits blood afresh;
But can it account for Totality,
Its reasons, its methods, and sanity?
Can it conceive the ultimate causes
Working at large, though sanctioning pauses?
No, it is feeble, mere acting, pretence,
Affright and Disturbances’ consequence,
Employed in games in a world so bizarre
It thinks it is normal——normal! Selah!
This modern life is a well-laden trap,
A spinning bauble, the hum and the clap
Of sycophants, automatically worked
By a commotion their cowardice jerked.
‘Is it a matter of moment?’ was asked,
And everyone frisked and everyone basked;
‘Is it a matter of willing?’ was said,
And everyone fought and everyone bled;
‘Is it a matter of magic?’ was thought,
And everyone ceremonial taught;
‘No,’ was whispered, ‘it concerns devotion
To a God whose spirit is an ocean
That fills every void and strides every rift,
Upon the surface of which the waves lift
That daringly think themselves to be God,
Instead of a Bertrand, Richard, or Rod!
No, no, forget this preening of ashes,
This glancing nightlight, its fretting flashes.
Divert awhile, though it be most abhorred
These days to stray beyond narrowly-shored
Inlets of acceptable scholarship,
Yet stray awhile, release the reddened grip
Upon the towline of the standard creed
Ceasing to prostrate; beginning to heed.
Be wise; be ever governed by reason,
Fall not to the sway of passion's treason.
Though the flesh is weak, though passion is strong,
Who permits no baseness commits no wrong.
Patch thy grief with proverbs, and know in course,
Reform is better than selfish remorse.
Heed the unhappy, their sayings remark,
Brightness discovers itself in the dark.
If you are shouting, you are not heeding,
If you are doubting, you are not reading.
Endure the ill humours of another,
Seven times seventy times of your brother.
Secure thyself from the inward danger,
Endure the ill humours of the stranger.
Happy men are remarkably able,
As heavy armour is light at table.
Fools throw a stone no wise man recovers,
And know their houses better than others.
Barbers learn to shave by shaving fools,
And unable workmen quarrel with tools.
What was always naught will never be aught.
What is quickly sold is foolishly bought.
The increase of law is increase of crime,
And justice suffers by the law in time.
See pleasure release the prisoner of pain,
See in luxury loss, in suffering gain.
Vice comes on horseback, but departs on foot;
As quickly stains, but slowly cleans off, soot.
Though it can cause a lasting sadness,
Anger is merely a fit of madness.
Our weaknesses can originate powers,
As April showers bring forth May flowers.
Butter yet melts in the mouths of the cold,
Earth yet inters the bodies of the bold.
Insight sees truth but wisdom follows it,
Wit spies folly and idly borrows it.
Such Precept with moral wisdom agrees
But weakens attention by slow degrees.
The True Christian’s life is a continuous prayer,
The atheist’s life a feast upon air.
Then what fools are they who build upon sand
To spite a church they do not understand!
They forego their faith in name but in fact
Their faith display in their every act,
Their every breath indicating the cause
Of their will to live is their trust in scores
Of circumstantial matters——in sunlight,
In air, in earth, fecund food, and eyesight;
All cognisance granted through unknown ways
Of unknown things in unknowable days,
All bodily functions working through sleeps
To maintain the force their consciousness keeps,
And why when all this consciousness treasures
Is Famine caused through feeding on pleasures?
The True Christian strives upon every hour
To improve himself by a higher power.
While the lustful lap their lips at bulges,
While the addict every drug indulges,
While the vain man cherishes his muscles,
While the temptress calculates her rustles,
While illiteracy asks a question,
While ill literacy states suggestion,
While the self-conceited whelp is mincing,
And, with oft-repeated yelp, is wincing,
While the braggart drums his vain self-praises,
And puffs his face as a pastry raises,
While on a stratum beneath strata lie
Society’s damned, and motionless die,
While brainwashed alumni scorn their mothers
With relish before the sight of others,
In the name of their dogma’s politics,
With the zeal to destroy its heretics,
Still the True Christian endeavours to find
That sense upon earth preserved in his mind.
Nor call it vain you who live on a whim,
Those guiding lights you disdain guide him.
You say, ‘I cannot see them’, or you say,
‘I would, but, ‘t is an uncomfortable way’.
Most uneasy is comfort ill founded;
Most unsteady is solace ill grounded;
Most unready are people unsounded,
All their comforts turn menace rebounded.
Christ! on the cross Thy legend was graven:
KING OF THE JEWS. Thy tonsure was shaven
With flaying thorns, but why should we cherish
The tale of Thy dying?——We all perish!
Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Blasphemy vile!
What! and we live and we feed the meanwhile?
What! and we admire ourselves in mirrors?
Are we just as He was, mighty pillars?
Lord forgive us! Do we know what we do
In defacing the memory of goodness and You?
I will not deny Thy divinity!
But assert it beyond the trinity!
Thy Providence kept in faith arranges
Material, which our sin deranges.
Yet none obstruct providence's motions,
Nor rivers resist the flood of oceans;
As wheels within wheels turn against in vain
The wheel within which their axles have lain,
So sinners who, striving to thwart God's will,
Swim against the tide, are borne along still;
So sufferers reduced to hollowed shells
Float along the main, on the rising swells,
All the more buoyantly, all the swifter,
We the lifted, He only the Lifter.
Remember! when the dissolution takes
All that the living composition makes;
Remember! when the cold hand of death turns
Into ice the flames which in action burns;
Remember, for memory will persist
In its work although weaker hands desist,
That, like the warming sun of December,
Faith will defrost you, should you remember.
I once in a dream saw Heaven’s warden,
He stood erect, and his name was Gordon,
Saying, ‘Earth is a refinery of souls
Its necessary sufferings: burning coals.’
It is so, these are the means, not the ends,
The strings upon which the object depends.
O Object of objects, Vision of trust,
Remind us! Remind us! Do what Thou must!
Restore us! provide us understanding,
We are lost ships, all searching for landing,
Consciously fearing, dolefully nearing
Terrible visions, terribly hearing
Frightfully dreadful, dreadfully frightful,
Peace and Content, so call the insightful
The End, the Death, the Last Termination,
Of all this substance’s scintillation.
Too much aware of resistless sunsets,
Our joy often clouds in burdens of frets,
And nothing indeed can silence their sighs,
Too logically caused, except the sunrise,
And so it dawns, in the moments of death,
When contented life yields up a last breath.
How beautiful looks the unclouded brow!
More beautified far in sleeping than now,
How wonderful is the merciful end
That such a peaceful expression can lend!
Fear it not, Fear is only a stranger
Looking severe, but meaning no danger,
And do not presume too much upon fate,
Calmly its actions and judgements await.
Expect not to-morrow this life to-day.
We may hope to live——still I hope I may,
But make of this minute a fine little life,
If you cannot your own, ease others’ strife.
Till by sunset that knell, which ever rings
In our night and death, summons honour’s wings
To fly us forth from this temporal land,
Into eternity’s fatherly hand.
As drops of rain upon the stretching sea,
Which risen in haste had vaporously
Amassed themselves thick in their greying clouds,
Clotting their moisture and weaving their shrouds,
Whose silvered stitches when ripped by the strain
Of too zealous growth collapsed into rain,
Fall earnestly out of their misted gaols,
Whose cages had pent their watery tails,
And rapidly rap their heads on the sea,
Whose waters embrace more water to be,
Thus end our lives, with a brief bowing nod:
Falling to rise reunited with God.
——Such things I thought to myself whilst walking,
Sometimes in silence, sometimes in talking,
As morning lit up the meadows and hills,
The puddles and pastures, warrens and rills,
Pink, scarlet, then orange, yellow, then clear
Till daylight in clarity’s garb came near,
THE CONCLUSION.
All things are divided——yet they are one,
And in them we see all purpose——or none.
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