Desert

This profit yet remains

Of exile and the hour

That life in losing gains

Perhaps a fuller flower.

Not less the prunèd shoot,

Not less the barren year,

Which yields the perfect fruit,

Which makes the meaning clear.

For on this desert soil

A blessing comes unsought—

Space for a single toil,

Time for a single thought.

When in distractions tost,

Since oft distractions claim

For moments never lost

Of each its higher aim,

We live, we learn the wealth

The joyous hours may bring,

But jealous time by stealth

Puts all of it to wing;

Pursuing empty arts

We gain no noble goal,

And lose, in learning parts,

The grandeur of the whole.

If Patience, pouring tears—

She cannot but lament

The long unfruitful years

Of exile, idly spent—

Have patience, she will find

They were not all in vain,

But each has left behind

A little store of gain—

A wider wisdom bought

With labour; problems solved;

The themes of inner thought

More thoroughly revolved.

So one who entertain’d

The prosperous of the earth;

No good from any gain’d,

But lost his wealth and worth;

In wrath he gather’d round

The indigent and old;

Each wretch, amazed he found,

Had left a gift of gold.

So one who sought a land

Where all the earth is ore;

But had he sifted sand

He would have gather’d more.

The Sun arose and took

The lofty heav’ns of right;

From out the heav’ns he shook

The pestilence of his light.

He paced upon his path

And from his right hand hurl’d

The javelins of his wrath,

Contemptuous of the world.

Before his scornful lips

The forests fell down dead,

And scowling in eclipse

Disbanding thunders fled.

He fills the hills with fire

And blasts the barren plain;

He hath stript the stricken briar,

And slain the thorn again.

He cracks the rocks, and cakes

The quagmires into crust,

And slays the snake, and makes

The dead leaf writhe in dust.

He halts in heav’n half way

And blackens earth with light;

And the dark doom of day

Lies on us like the night.

A Land of clamorous cries;

Of everlasting light;

Of noises in the skies

And noises in the night.

There is no night; the Sun

Lives thro’ the night again;

The image of the Sun

Is burnt upon the brain.

O God! he still returns;

He slays us in the dust;

The brazen Death-Star burns

And stamps us into dust.

III

The air is thunder-still.

What motion is with us?

Deep shocks of thunder fill

The deep sky ruinous;

As if, down lumbering large

Upon these desert tracts,

He had fallen about the marge

In cloudy cataracts.

And spot by spot in dust

The writhing raindrops lie,

And turn like blood to rust—

Writhe, redden, shrink, and dry.

A Land where all day long,

Day-long descanting dirge,

The heavy thunders hang

And moan upon the verge;

Where all day long the kite

Her querulous question cries,

And circles lost in light

About the yellow skies;

And thou, O Heart, art husht

In the deep dead of day,

Half restless and half crusht,

Half soaring too away.

Day-long the querulous kite

Her querulous question cries,

And sails, a spot of night,

About the vasty skies.

The puff’d cheeks of typhoons

Blow thro’ the worthless clouds

That roll in writhing moons

In skies of many moods,

None fruitful; and the clouds

Take up the dust and dance

A dance of death and shrouds—

Mock, mow, retire, advance.

Where is the rain? We hear

The footsteps of the rain,

Walking in dust, and, near,

Dull thunders over the plain.

Cloud?—dust. The wind awakes;

The base dust we have trod

Smokes up to heaven and takes

The thunderings of God.

No rain. The angry dust

Cries out against the rain;

The clouds are backward thrust;

The monstrous Sun again.

We hoped the rain would fall

After the dreadful day,

For we heard the thunders call

Each other far away.

We hoped for rain because

After thunder rain is given;

And yet it only was

The mockery of heaven.

He is the lord of us;

He will unconquered sink,

Red, but victorious,

And smoking to the brink.

Shout, barren thunders, shout

And rattle and melt again!

So fall the fates about,

So melt the hopes of men.

Rattle aloft and wake

The sleepers on the roofs,

Wild steeds of heav’n, and shake

Heav’n with your echoing hoofs.

Awake the weary at night

Until they cry, “The rain!”—

Then take to tempestuous flight

And melt into air again.

This is the land of Death;

The sun his taper is

Wherewith he numbereth

The dead bones that are his.

He walks beside the deep

And counts the mouldering bones

In lands of tumbling steep

And cataracts of stones.

About his feet the hosts

Of dead leaves he hath slain

Awaken, shrieking ghosts

Demanding life again.

O silent Sepulchre,

Great East, disastrous clime;

O grave of things that were;

O catacombs of time;

O silent catacombs;

O blear’d memorial stones;

Where laughing in the tombs

Death plays with mouldering bones;

And through dead bones the stalk

Of the living herb is thrust;

And we, the living, walk

In wastes of human dust.

Dust—thou art dust. Thy Sun,

Thy lord, and lord of dust,

Doth stamp thee into one

Great plain of dust; and dust

Thy heav’ns, thy nights, thy days;

Thy temples and thy creeds;

Thy crumbling palaces;

Thy far forgotten deeds,—

Infinite dust. Half living,

We clothe ourselves in dust

And live, not to be living,

But because we must.

Thy winds are full of death;

Death comes we know not whence;

Thy forests have a breath

Of secret pestilence;

Thy rivers rolling large

Are blest with no sweet green,

But silent at the marge

The waiting monsters seen.

No scented silence, eve,

But night a noisy gloom;

And we thy captives live,

The derelicts of doom.

II

Vox Clamantis

Long, long the barren years;

Long, long, O God, hast thou

Appointed for our tears

This term of exile. Lo,

Life is but nothing thus:

Old friendships perishèd;

Not hand in hand with us

The dying father dead;

Narrow’d the mind that should

Thro’ all experience range

And grow; in solitude

Unheard the wheels of change.

When sadly numbering

The wasted golden hours

Our fate hath put to wing,

That had perchance been ours

To have seen, to have known, to have trod

About from pole to girth

This heritage of God,

This wondrous sculptured earth,

Seeing that never again

The usurer Time gives back,

How should we not complain

This Present, barren-black?

We said, ‘We must not mourn;

The end is always good;

Well past the pain well borne.’

But Sorrow in her mood

Would not be comforted,

And cried, ‘I know the truth;

Where are the distant dead,

And where the wasted youth?

Let Wisdom take her ground

And Hope do what she can;

Ill heals the dreadful wound

That severs half a man.’

Sorrow, not so beguiled,

Would take my hand and lead,

But waiting Wisdom smiled

And took my hand instead,

And answered, ‘Well I rede

The shackled win the goal;

The body’s strengthener Need,

And Sorrow of the soul.

But mine the part be given

To guide and hers to follow,

And so win thro’ to heaven.’

And Sorrow said, ‘I follow.’

To sadness and to self

We should not enter in—

Sadness the shadow of self

And self the shadow of sin—

Unless because the whole

Of human life appears

Clear only when the soul

Is darken’d thro’ with tears.

The day too full of light

With light her own light mars;

But in the shading night

The shining host of stars.

That, leaving manhood, men

Should kiss the hands of grief

And, loving but the wen,

The wart, the wither’d leaf,

Amass a hoard of husks

When joy is in the corn

Nor ever evening dusks

Without the tints of morn,

Informs with doubt if good

Be, or omnipotent;

Since in the brightest blood

This idle discontent.

Joy, jester at herself,

And happiness, of woe,

If self at peace with self

Know not, when shall he know?

So one, a prosperous man;

Nightly the people fill

His toast, and what he can

Is only what he will.

They shout; his name is wed

With thunders; torches flare;

Tost in a wretched bed

He chews a trifling care.

III

One says in scorn, ‘The strife

To live well keeps us well,

And ’tis the unworthy life

That makes the prison cell.’

And one, ‘An angel stood

On sands of withering heat;

The flowerless solitude

Grew green beneath his feet.’

A third, ‘Many would lief

Endure thy solitude

As else. Ascribe thy grief

To poison in the blood.’

And I, ‘O Soul, content

Yet in thine exile dwell,

And live up to thy bent.

Not more than well is well;

But take the sports divine,

The largesse of the earth;

Wind-drinking steeds be thine

And blowsèd chase—the mirth

Of those who wisely draw

Their lives in nature’s vein

And live in the large law,

Of slaying or being slain.

‘Or learn by looking round.

Lift up thine eyes. Avow

The gardener of thy ground

Doth worthier work than thou.

From his poor cot he wends

At early break of day;

His pretty charges tends

In his unskilful way.

Much wearied with his toil

He labours thro’ the hours,

And pours upon the soil

Refreshment for his flowers.

‘Tho’ bent with aged stoop,

To him no rest is given,

But the heads of those that droop

He raises up to heaven.

Half ready for the grave,

His weakness he forgets,

More scrupulous to save

The breath of violets.

But at the evening hour

When he shall seek repose,

The voice of every flower

Will bless him as he goes.’

Self-Sorrows

These stones that idly make

An idle land and lie,

Fantastic forms, or break

Down crumbling hills not high

In arid cataracts

Where meagre cattle stray

To search the meagre tracts

Of bitter grass: for aye

They move not, live not, lie

Dull eyes that watch the world,

And exiles asking why

God brought them here or hurl’d.

We would we could have torn

This winding web of fate

Which round us barely born

Hath bought us to this state

Of being cast away

Among these tombs. The river

Of life here day by day

Runs downward slower ever

Into black washes. True

Yet holds our destiny—

To live a year or two,

Look round us once and die.

If we should try to trace

In portions, line by line,

The beauty of a face

To know why thus divine,

Seeing but many curves,

We miss the inner soul

And find no part deserves

That merit of the whole.

And so to analyse

Thy mournful spirit vain,

O Exile; but our sighs

Suffice to prove the pain.

To grow from much to more

In knowledge, and to put

A power to every power,

A foot before a foot,

Toward that goal of good

That glimmers thro’ the night

Above the time and mood,

A star of constant light;

At last to meet the dark,

The goal not reach’d indeed,

But full of hours and work,

Are, Exile, not thy creed.

And less to leap to catch

The spinning spokes of change;

In our brief life to snatch

All aspects and to range

Full-face with every view;

To sit with those who toil,

Great spirits, toiling too;

Still less to fan or foil

Those fires that, rushing fast

Thro’ all the people’s life,

Break roaring round the past

In renovating strife.

If in the energic West

Man ever grows more large,

Like ocean without rest

Exploring at the marge,

Here lower yet he turns

For ever downward thrust—

The baleful Sun-God burns

And breaks him into dust;

Or like his native plains

Where nothing new appears,

Or hath appeared, remains

Unchanged a thousand years.

Tho’ sorrows darkly veiled

At all men’s tables (nor

The guests make question, paled,

Nor children hush before

Those presences of grief)

Sit, yet to all men due

Due rights; the sweet relief

Of home; the friendship true;

The dying word; to feel

Their country in their keep;

To heave along the wheel,

And push against the steep.

But in this wilderness,

Wed to a rock or two,

What joys have we to bless?

Far, far, our friends and few;

And thou, O happy Land,

We dream of thee in vain—

One moment see, then stand

Within this waste again.

The great earth in her zones

Matureth day by day;

But we, like waiting stones,

Know time but by decay.

Grief hath a shadow, shame;

And manhood, meanly tost

In woes without a name

And sorrows that are lost,

Look’d at, when in the streets

True sorrow, seal’d with sores

And wrap’d in rags, entreats

A charity from ours,

Manhood can best control;

But this dark exile hath

Worse wounds, and of the soul—

A misery and a wrath.

Exile

Happy the man who ploughs

All day his native croft;

He looks to heaven and knows,

Smiling, the lark aloft.

Happy the man whose toil

Leads on laborious hills;

The rock beneath the soil

The measure of his ills.

Happiest, who can go forth

Thro’ every age and clime,

His home the whole of earth,

His heritage all time.

In vasty Wilds and with

No crimson petals pranckt

The shallow briars breathe

And bloom and die unthankt.

And we the useless Briar,

And round us Desert spread

The red Sun rolls his fire

And smites the Desert dead;

Death, Silence, and the Star

With scornful nostrils curl’d;

And half-forgotten, far,

The movements of the world.

One hour released I rusht

About the world again;

The living thousands crusht;

The streets were full of rain;

I felt the north wind sting

And glory’d in the sleet;

I heard my footsteps ring

Along the frosty street;

And saw—less seen than felt—

Swift-flashing Italy,

And that bright city built

Upon the mirroring Sea.

III

My country, my England, home,

Are thy flowers bright, thy bells

Ringing the spring welcome,

The winter long farewells?

Are thy fields fair—each flower

Fill’d with the heav’nly dew,

My country, at this hour

When I am thinking of you?

Art thou so far, so fair?

Across what leagues of foam,

My country? Art thou still there,

My England, my country, my home?

This hateful desert land

Is pent by a great sea

That booms upon the strand

For ever. Salt the sea

And salt the shore; the thorn

And cactus stand and gaze

Upon these waves; new-born

The young grass ends her days;

Straightly the beach is lined.

I wander to the shore.

The sunset dies behind,

The full moon springs before.

Of these great Deeps that link

The land I love with this,

I wander to the brink,

I watch the waters kiss

This lonely shore. O Waves,

O Winds and Waters, where

My country? Sing, O Waves,

And tell me of it here.

O Night? O Moon that comest,

A sad face fronting mine?

O dusking Deep that boomest,

What tidings of it thine?

O Homeland, at this hour

What joys are thine? This moon

What lovers in what bower

Sees? and what jocund tune

From smoky villages

Is heard? What homely light

Shines welcome through the trees?

What watch-dog barks delight?

What lingering linnet flings

Her good-night in the air?

What honeysuckle rings

Her chime of fragrance there?

One moment, and I see

The cot, the lane, the light,

The moon behind the tree,

The evening turn to night;

One moment know the scent

Of smoke of fragrant fires,

And hear the cattle pent

Within the wattled byres.

One moment—and I wake;

The vision fades and falls;

These lifeless deserts make

Me adamantine walls.

III

Soul-Scorn

No cloak of cloudy wrack

The mistless mystery mars,

But all the desert is black

Beneath the quivering stars.

I hear the pinions creak

Of night-birds, beating by;

And lost hyaenas shriek

Unto the spectral sky.

The Stars, immortal Sons

Of God, are full of fire;

But we, rejected ones,

Know heav’n but in desire.

My Soul said, ‘Art thou dead?

The chasm of night is riv’n;

What dost thou see?’ I said,

‘The full-fired fires of heav’n.’

‘Look not but see,’ he said.

I said, ‘I know not whether

They are the hosts of God

Clashing their spears together.

So bright the stars appear

Their splendour smokes in heav’n;

I think indeed I hear

Their distant voices ev’n.’

He said, ‘See not but know.’

I said, ‘I cannot see;

I think perhaps they go

To some great victory.’

He said, ‘For ever they go,

Still onward, on and on;

And that is why they know

The victory’s clarion.’

I said, ‘I am too weak

To do more than I must.’

He said, ‘Then cease to seek

And perish in the dust.’

Resolve

Bound in misfortune’s bands,

Blindfold and brought to nought,

I would reach out my hands

And touch eternal thought.

I cannot choose but try

Behind these prison bars

To measure earth and sky

And know the whole of stars;

And what I rede I write,

Vain visions as they rise,

Vain visions of the night,

Unworthy others’ eyes.

I said, ‘Tho’ dungeon’d here

In these deep dens of night,

My soul shall persevere

To seek supernal light;

Untainted Truth to know

From that fair face of Lies

Whose heav’nly features glow

Like Truth’s, save in the eyes;

Till, after all these years,

The wisdom come unsought

To see the stars as spheres

And sound the bounds of thought.’

Desert-Thoughts

I hold with them who see

Nor only idly stand

The deed of thought to be

Worth many deeds of hand.

Ever as we journey sink

The old behind the new,

And Heav’n commands we think

As justly as we do.

One golden virtue more

Than virtue we must prize,

One iron duty more

Than duty, to be wise.

Who to himself hath said,

‘This chamber must be closed;

This tract of truth I dread,

This darkness God-imposed

May not be lifted,’ keeps

An ever-open door

Thro’ which deception creeps,

Confounding more and more,

Until to wild extremes

Of falsehood driv’n he dies,

Intoxicate with dreams

And drunk with a thousand lies.

And more if he have taken

A secret lie for friend,

He shall be found forsaken,

And terrible his end.

So one doth travelling ride;

A dreadful forest fears;

Rejoiced at length a guide

He meeteth unawares.

With thunder overthrown

Day dies in solitude;

The guide, a monster grown,

Devours him in the wood.

Idle and base the cry

‘If it be so, so be it;

But if it be so, then I

Will look not lest I see it.’

Or this, ‘If it be so

We lose this thing or that;

’Twere better not to know.’

The lightning spareth not

The timorous soul who hides

His head in danger thus:

The iron fact abides;

Things were not made for us.

Who answers, who repines?

Not he who works in love,

But he who thinks divines

The thing he cannot prove.

He takes his stand and rolls

The phrase he hopes for Heav’n,

But cheats the hungry souls

And gives them bread of leav’n.

His ears are filled with wax,

His bandaged eyeballs blind,

And yet no doubts perplex,

And he can see the wind.

Though all in science good,

By incessant question found,

Beyond it strayed we brood

And argue round and round;

And where we hoped the end,

Such distance we have come,

Amazed we only find

The point we started from;

And fancies, like the breath

We utter, do but prove

A cloud above, beneath,

To fog us as we move.

We climb from cloud to cloud

The airy precipice;

Fain would we reach to God;

We fall thro’ the abyss.

The vapours will not bear.

Wild-clutching we are hurl’d

Thro’ measurements of air

Again upon the world.

Clear rings the answer high,

‘The mystery makes itself;

The mystery is a lie;

Be cleansed and know thyself.’

If with unshaken will,

Resolving not to stray

But to be rising still,

We clamber day by day

From truth to truth, at last,

In valleys of the night

Not lost, we know the vast

And simple upper light,

Only one labouring knows.

The base, tumultuous wreck

Of rock and forest shows;

The summit, a single peak.

So sought, so seen, so found.

And what the end so high?

A summit splendour crown’d

Between the earth and sky,

Where with sidereal blaze

The mistless planets glow,

And stars unsully’d gaze

On unpolluted snow.

No strife the vast reveals

But perfect peace indeed—

The thunder of spinning wheels

At rest in eternal speed.

The Gains of Time

Loll’d in the lap of home;

Full-fed with fruits of time

Ripen’d on labour’d loam

By others, since the prime;

Ingrate, we give no thought

To all these golden things

The toiling past hath brought,

The toiling present brings.

But on this silent shore

And waste barbarian,

We hear the engines roar

And mind the might of man.

So one in savage lands:

He enters all alone;

No weapon in his hands.

The secret spears unthrown,

The creepers lose their guile,

Seeing his face, distrest

They know not why. A smile,

A sign or two, a jest,

And all on bended knees

Withhold the savage stroke.

With beating heart he sees

The lessening steamer-smoke.

He draws a power to be

From powers sacrificed;

And in his eyes we see

The teaching of the Christ,

And all the great beside,

The oracles of time

From Delphic clefts have cried

Or crasht in thundering rhyme.

A book his finger parts;

He moves thro’ adverse cries;

Master of many arts

And careless of the skies.

What are thy mighty deeds,

O Past, thy gains, O Time?

A dust of ruin’d creeds,

A scroll or two of rhyme?

A temple earthquake-dasht?

A false record of things?

A picture lightning-flasht

Of cruel eyes of kings?

No, these: a wiser rule;

A science of ampler span;

A heart more pitiful;

More mind; a nobler man.

Invocation

Thee most we honour, thee,

Great Science. Hold thy way.

The end thou canst not see,

But in the end the day.

Seek without seeking ends,

And shatter without ruth;

On thee our fate depends;

Be faithful, keep the truth.

We think it false to dream

Beyond the likely fact;

We grant thee, Truth, supreme,

Whatever thou exact.

I pray thee, Truth, control

My destiny distraught,

And move my sightless soul

In thy high ways of thought.

Hold thou my hand. I go

Wherever thou wilt guide,

Tho’ bleak the bitter snow

And black the mountain side.

Or if thou bid’st descend,

I fear not for myself,

Tho’ raging thunders rend

And lightnings lash, the gulf.

My deeds I will endow,

My spirit render clean,

O Truth, with thee; and thou

Wilt make the desert green;

And haply show withal

The wells that will not sink,

Sweet pastures for the soul,

And in the desert drink.

Confounded by these briars,

Thy stars will compass me

And be the beacon fires

To light mine eyes to thee.

But in my state infirm

That Spirit comes and cries

To me in wrath, ‘O worm,

They see not who have eyes,

How thou that hast not? Know,

My children drink the sun,

Taking them wings to go

Where others walk or run:

Yet scarcely one life-taught

Can ever rightly heed

The issue of a thought

Or do a fruitful deed.’

Despairs

I call no curse on fate,

I call no curse on thee,

O barren bitter state

Of exile, such to me.

I would but only this:

I wish that I could go

And see the thing that is,

And, seeing, better know;

And take things in my hand

And find if false or fit;

But in this far-off land

What hope is there of it?

There is no hope of it;

I see but sad despair,

Unless it may be writ

God cureth care by care.

So one in prison thrust;

He ages span by span,

But in the prison dust

Becomes a better man.

So one is blind from birth;

All day he sitteth still;

He cannot see the earth,

But heaven when he will.

I thought that I might rise

And, looking to the stars,

Lift up my blinded eyes

And bless God unawares,

In words whose merit this—

Poor buds of blighting air—

To know no loveliness

But breathe the scent of prayer;

Since Heaven hath decreed

Who suffers lives with God,

And he who writes indeed

Must write in his own blood

I thought, tho’ fetter’d fast,

I yet might move my hands

To cast or to recast

Some labour—sift the sands

For knowledge—search the vast

Some hidden hope to find—

Perhaps to help at last

The cause of humankind.

O hope abandon’d! Not

In me the worth or wit.

God gave this lowly lot

Because I merit it.

In humble ways I move

Myself to little things;

The heated hands I prove,

I watch the light that springs

Or fades in fever’d eyes;

My only solace here,

Not to be rich or wise

But to have done with fear.

God sees the silent space

Where footstep never trod;

And in the lonely place

The listener is God.

IV

Induration

Deep, deep in league with Fate,

Fate fast in league with Sorrow,

And Sorrow with my state,

I would that I could borrow,

O Deep, a depth from thee,

O Fate, thy fixèd calm,

O Sorrow, what to me

Thou givest not, thy balm;

That I might worthier show

A scorn of your controls,

And let Misfortune know

Iron chains make iron souls.

If chain’d we could but take

Contagion from the steel,

And wisdom’s mantle shake

Around us head to heel,

And chill the eyes and rest

No longer violent,

The steel, still more imprest,

Would banish discontent.

The strongest chains are burst

When we have done with care;

A joy lives in the worst,

A gladness in despair.

So when great clouds all night

Hold high debate of thunder

In awful tones that fright

The huddled cities under;

And roar their rage and move

About the breadths of space,

And sudden flashes prove

The madness in their face;

At length, when break of day

Shows heav’nly peace newborn,

They muttering melt away

Before the might of morn.

Wisdom’s Counsel

But Wisdom wearying said,

‘I know a nobler way.

Let Fate with Sorrow wed

And give the Deep his day;

But turn thine eyes and see

With some more love sincere

The prisoners that with thee

Are also dungeon’d here—

The pale flower in the chink,

The spider at the grate,

The bird that comes to drink

His tollage from thy plate.’

Grief, sitting sad’ning still

With cold eyes inward cast,

Looks round the empty will

And dreary chambers vast

Of thought. She cannot sit;

She loathes her selfish tears;

She looks once more without,

And lo! worse grief appears.

Her tears bechidden freeze;

She watches the world’s need,

And deeper sorrow sees,

And that that weeps indeed.

There is no misery

Attired in mourning wear,

Worse misery may not see,

And that that goeth bare.

We have no heavy cross

To some one’s is not small;

We weep no heavy loss

But some one weeps his all;

And not the grief unseen,

And not the aching mind,

Cries like the sorrow seen

And shivering in the wind.

Half stun’d I look around

And see a land of death—

Dead bones that walk the ground

And dead bones underneath;

A race of wretches caught

Between the palms of Need

And rub’d to utter naught,

The chaff of human seed;

And all like stricken leaves,

Despondent multitudes

The wind of winter drives

About the broken woods.

The toiler tills the field,

But at his bosom coil’d

The blood-leach makes him yield

The pence for which he toil’d,

And grows and drops off fat

From these poor breathless ones,

Who know not this or that

But work themselves to bones;

And this one fever’d flags,

And that one hopeless tries,

Or uncomplaining drags

A giant leg, and dies.

Impatience

Vain drug! If I am sick

Can others’ sickness heal?

Or dead, death make me quick?

I care not what they feel.

What reck I? Let me go.

Is not my bosom full?

The sorrow that I know

Makes others’ sorrow dull.

I will shut up the soul,

For only joy is just.

Stones with the river roll,

And we ev’n as we must.

Why should I think of thee,

O Wisdom, and thy lies?

Better laugh and foolish be

Than laugh not and be wise.

The wild-birds heed thee not;

Of thee no torrents roar;

The deep seas know no jot

Of all thy little lore;

But man who cannot ’scape

To follow thee and trust,

Thou takest by the nape

And grindest in the dust.

World-Sorrows

Lo! here accursèd caste

Hath made men things that creep;

The beggars totter past,

The baser sultans sleep;

The limping lepers crawl,

The tricking traders cheat;

The lean ones cry and fall,

The fat ones curse and beat;

Never hath freedom’s cry

The stifling stillness cleaved;

The hopeless millions die

That yet have never lived.

No noble god of earth,

Man can but snatch and eat;

Starvation murders worth,

Wealth makes the beast complete.

What horror here! Is this

Thy revelation, Truth?

I shake at the abyss.

What hunger, rage, and ruth,

How hopeless! Heaven, we men

Are not the gods we think!—

Base pismires of the fen

That fight and bite and sink.

O myriad-childed Mother,

Sitting among their graves

Who thee and one another

Have made for ever slaves,

Great East; O aged Mother,

Too old for Fear and Hope—

Fear that is Pleasure’s brother,

And Sorrow’s sister, Hope—

As erst in ages gone,

So now, thou art half dead,

Thy countenance turned to stone

By an eternal dread.

With lips that dare not move

And awful lids apart,

While yet faint pulses prove

The life about thy heart,

Thou sitt’st at dreadful gaze

Into the dreadful Vast:

For thou canst well appraise

The future by the past,

Where thou beholdest Death

Confound and desolate,

And men like ants beneath

The giant feet of Fate.

III

Are these thy mighty deeds,

O Past, thy gains, O Time?

This wrack of ruin’d creeds,

This scroll or two of rhyme?—

A temple earthquake-dasht;

A false record of things;

A picture, lightning-flasht,

Of cruel eyes of kings;

A mangled race that bleeds

In cruel custom’s claws,

Besotted by their creeds,

And murder’d by their laws?

Right easily understood

Fate’s lesson is, tho’ slow;

She takes a nation’s blood

To jot a word or two.

And for sufficient space

To write a line of hers,

She wipes away a race

And dashes down the verse,

And cries, ‘So much to each,

And man may mark or not;

But what I choose to teach

Shall never be forgot.’

Philosophies

If it be not to be,

Or being be in vain,

That high philosophy

Shall ever counsel men

To mend this mindless state

In which, as in the East,

We drift on floods of fate,

As helpless as the beast,

Then here the issue is—

Look on this land and weep—

A race as ruin’d as this,

A misery as deep.

Seeing how pent we are

Within our human ways,

That save in ceaseless war

We cannot spend our days,

In struggle each with each

To get a breathing space,

While Heaven, out of reach,

Looks on with scornful face;

I wonder, for man’s sake,

Cannot that mind of his

Which made the engine make

A better state than this?

Here sitting in my place

There comes to me unsought

The beautiful sad face

Of this undying thought.

And with it as in scorn

The present state descried

Of monsters heaven-born

And angels crucify’d,

Where, scourged to unnatural toil,

In palsy’d posture bent,

Man creeping near the soil

Forgets the firmament.

III

Since, since we first began

To measure near and far,

And know that the thoughts of man

His chiefest actions are,

A thousand cries in sooth

Call us thro’ time amain,

And every cry a truth

And every truth a gain,

And yet the needful task,

To mend this state withal,

Remains undone; we ask,

What is the good of all?

Do, cries the lofty seer;

Believe, the prelate cries;

Be, beauty’s priest austere

Persuades. The man replies,

‘We have three beds at home

Where eight of us must lie;

Three blankets and one room,

My children, wife and I.

All day our work we mind;

But little money gain;

At night the wintry wind

Whines thro’ the window-pane.’

So one doth read at ease

With comfortable wine

Devout philosophies

That say, for him, divine,

To be, to bear, to act,

To know oneself, be strong,

Are all the heav’ns exact.

He answers, ‘I am strong;

I fear not any fate;

I do; I nobly bear.’

A beggar at his gate

Cries in the bitter air.

Lies

Come, lie to us, let us glow;

Pour out the red wine; speak;

Pour out the sweet lies—so

We shall be warm and sleek.

Tell us in manner high

The flattering things that soothe;

But hush the outer cry

And crush the inner truth.

What matters all the din

Of truth—discordant cries?

We quaff the joyous wine

And lap ourselves in lies.

The lordly anthem peals

The while the people rot;

The gilded church reveals

The penury of their lot.

No matter—let them starve!

The gorgeous mass atones;

These glorious arches serve

To sepulchre their bones.

Come, hymn the dying wretch

With pæans on the harps;

Nard and vermilion fetch

To paint and scent the corpse.

Into the hand of man,

When by the gods first form’d,

They gave this talisman,

The dull stone Reason, arm’d

With which to brave the skies

And make the earth his throne.

But to his infant eyes

A brighter treasure shone—

The tinsel Fancy, flame

Illusive; and alas,

He flung away the gem

And took the glittering glass.

III

Vain, vain the visions—vain,

Dreams that intoxicate

In the dark day when men

Come face to face with fate.

Not out of knowledge grown

The empty dogmas rise,

But gilded bubbles blown

From the foul froth of lies.

Cease! Let the lies be hurl’d

Back to the darkling past.

Truth, only, saves the world,

And Science rules the vast.

Truth-Service and Self-Service

Alas! we know not what

Withholds us from the goal

For ever; an inner rot

Consumes the seeing soul.

Only the truth will serve;

But he who follows it,

And finds, has not the nerve

To rule the world with it.

The cunning keep the crown;

And fate decrees that he

Who lives with truth alone

Shall win no victory.

Not to be granted great,

Not to be crowned in youth,

His soul is passionate

With anger for the truth.

He feels the spirit-drouth,

He seeks the mad emprise

To mock the mocking mouth

And smite the lips of lies.

Not his the happy guile

To veil the flinching eye,

Here where we sit and smile

To hear each other lie.

But ours to live, forsooth;

We keep a decent face

And seize the skirts of truth

And skip into a place;

With bearded wisdom thence

Our noble plan unfold

For gathering good—pretence

Indeed for gathering gold.

But he—he cannot rise;

He slowly falls apart;

For all these human lies

Are needles in his heart.

He has the truth, he thinks;

He shivers in his rags;

The laughing liar chinks

His bursting money-bags

Of lie-begotten pelf,

And climbs the ladder of lies

To fortune—for himself,

And not for wisdom, wise.

We crown the charlatan;

But show to him who shapes

A priceless work for man

The gratitude of apes.

So one with toil hath writ

The work which is his life.

Being poor, he has no wit;

His reader is his wife;

They live in direst need;

No fortunate patron shows

The work for men to read;

He dies, and no one knows.

A jealous rival burns

The work he will not save;

The buried poet turns

And mutters in his grave.

III

Old Ape, old Earth, we smile,

Thou ancient Land of Lies,

At all thy simple guile,

Thy wisdom that’s not wise.

Scum of the populace,

The chatterer, cheat, and fool,

Thou puttest in high place

To scourge thee and to rule;

But him who thee hath given

The good food of the land

Or water out of heaven

Thou bitest in the hand.

Wraths

My soul is full of fire,

Wrath and tempestuous dirge;

I feel but one desire,

To find a sword and scourge:

Since man, by right of birth

And nature’s gift at least

A god upon the earth,

Remaineth but a beast,

Ill-ruling, blind and halt,

And not by powers’ unknown,

Or far-off Heaven’s, fault,

But chiefly by his own.

Lies!—let us drink them up,

The sweet and bitter lies!

Man takes the maddening cup

And drinks and dreams and dies.

Pure as revealing morn

The angel Truth stands there;

But we, oh basely born!

Dare not to look at her.

Not by eternal laws

Condemn’d to eternal ruth,

We suffer; but because

We dare not face the truth.

We wreath and sanctify us

To the inferior gods;

For things which vilify us

We lash ourselves with rods.

We rip our veins and bleed

Before the gods of mire;

For Moloch, without need,

Consume our babes in fire;

But the greatest God of all

In eternal silence reigns;

To His high audience-hall

No human soul attains.

Vision of Nescience

A vision of the night.

I started in my bed.

A finger in the night

Was placed upon my head.

A ray of corruption, blue

As in encharnel’d air

On corpses comes. I knew

A Death, a Woman there.

Delirious, knee to knee,

They drank of love like wine,

He skeleton thin, and she

Most beautiful, most divine.

He with his eyes half warm’d

Out of their wan eclipse

With lipless kisses storm’d

Upon her living lips,

And like a vulture quaff’d,

And raised his hideous head

With joy aloft, and laugh’d

Like vultures sipping blood.

The purple, fold by fold,

Fell from her, and, unseen,

The diadem of gold

By which I knew her queen.

Nor he unknown: for at

His feet the fiery brand

And freezing fetters that

Endow him with command.

And on his head a crown

Of thirsty thorns of flame

That flicker’d up and down

In words that went and came

Like God’s, ‘I am of God’;

And said, ‘Duty to me

Is duty unto God’;

And said, ‘Come unto me,

And I will give you rest.’

Then as I wonder’d, lo!

I saw the Woman waste

To nothing; and he, as tho’

Blood nourisht by her blood,

Grow grosser in the gloom

And leprous like the toad

That battens in the tomb.

And both corrupted pined.

And lo! a voice that wept,

And then a faint far wind

Of laughter; and I slept.

Methought the heav’ns were crusht;

A myriad angels stood;

A wind of thunder rusht

Before the feet of God.

He spake: ‘Accursèd men,

I find your earth a hell;

Show me what ye have done;

I bade ye order well.’

They said, ‘Well we have pray’d,

Lord, and for Heaven’s hope

A thousand temples made.’

And His lightning lickt them up.

V

The Deeps

Spirit, tho’ without a name,

Great, the left hand of God;

Who coolest the quick flame

And bendest back the rod

His awful right hand bears,

Till the dull worm of earth

No worse in darkness fares

Than things of brighter birth,

Nor in the lapse of hell

All everlasting gloom,

Help us to suffer well

These dark days of our doom.

Swift Smiter of extremes,

Who only lettest us live;

Who feedest with bright dreams

At midnight, and dost give

Even to the poorest wretch

Of this distressful land

A draught, a rag, a stretch

Of soil, a loving hand,

Ours too the guardian Thou;

And if no other good

Thou wilt bestow, endow

At least with fortitude.

Long, long the barren years.

A deeper darkness grows;

The road-side tree appears

No more; the shadows close.

Lost, I sit down with night

And weave night-horrors here—

Sad voices heard in flight,

And warnings in the air,

And convocations of thunder

Above tumultuous woods,

And white stars weeping under

Black threatening of clouds.

Loss

Death too hath come with Sorrow.

Sorrow enough to-day

Brings Death with her to-morrow,

Unwelcome guest, to stay

With us. If I be sick

I know not, care not, and

The night is very thick;

My tract of toil is sand.

Hated the daily toil;

Hated the toil I loved;

Daily the worthless soil

Sinks back as it is moved.

I seized the hands of Grief;

I would not thus be thrown;

But Death came like a thief

Behind and seized my own

I held debate with Pain,

And half persuaded her;

Then came the utterance plain

Of Death, the Answerer.

‘Cryest thou so before

Thou sufferest?’ he said;

‘Wait yet a little more

And thou shalt cry indeed.’

Sorrow so darkly veiled

Will take my hand and lead.

O Wisdom, thou hast failed,

And Sorrow, she must lead;

And Death with her. He goes

Before and readeth plain

The painful list of those

Dear ones whom he hath slain.

They fail, they fall, they sink,

Torn from the treacherous sands;

The deeps of death they drink

And reach out madden’d hands.

A mist across the deep

Of future and of past,

The rock whereon we creep,

The present we hold fast,

Visible alone. Around,

The rolling wreathes of fog;

The unseen surges sound;

Dead eyes are in the fog.

We have no airy scope;

We are not things that fly;

We are but things that grope

From hand to hand and die.

Not many friends, O God,

Ours, and so far, so dear.

So far that less manhood,

Losing, can nobly bear

The loss, as, having, more

Must love. What bitter loss

To us so distant. For

No dying word to us;

No hand in ours; not even

To see the well-known spot,

The room, the chair is given;

To visit the sacred plot.

* * *

III

O Lily that to the lips

Pal’st at the name of death,

And with’rest in eclipse,

And yieldest a sickly breath:

And Rose that sheddest thy leaves

And tremblest as they fall,—

Know ye what power bereaves

And takes the sum of all?

Now slowly perishing

Down to the leafless core,

Ye die; no lovely thing;

A heart, and nothing more.

If we could think that death

As surely as we dream,

To us who dwell beneath

The summit of supreme

Prospective—Love and Peace—

Will open Heav’nly sweets;

It would be wise to cease,

If ceasing thus completes;

Unless the further faith,

Malefiant power pursue

In death those who in death

Have hoped to struggle thro’.

The tropic night is husht

With hateful noises—hark!

The fluttering night-moth crusht

By reptiles in the dark

About the bed; the sound

Of tiny shrieks of pain;

Of midnight murders round;

Of creatures serpent-slain.

A moan of thunder fills

The stagnant air; and soon

A black cloud from the hills

Devours the helpless moon.

Those faces stampt in air

When all the hateful night

We toss, and cannot bear

The heated bed, and night

Is full of silent sounds

That walk about the bed

(The whining night-fly wounds

The ear; the air is dead;

The darkness madness; heat

A hell): appear and gaze;

Are silent; at the feet

Stand gazing; going gaze.

VI

Death

The Sun said, ‘I have trod

The hateful Darkness dead,

And the hand of approving God

Is placed upon my head.’

And cried, ‘Where art thou, Night?

Come forth, thou Worm; appear,

That I may slay thee quite.’

And the Night answered, ‘Here.’

And the Sun said, ‘My might

Is next to His, Most High;

Canst thou destroy me, Night?’

And the Night answered, ‘Aye.’

This moonèd Desert round,

Those deeps before me spread,

I sought for Hope, and found

Him beautiful, but dead.

In this resounding Waste

I sought for Hope, and cried,

‘Where art thou, Hope?’—Aghast,

I found that he had died.

I cried for Hope. The Briars

Pointed the way he’d gone;

Cold were the Heav’nly Fires,

Colder the numb-lipped Moon.

‘Where art thou, Hope?’—‘I go,

Returning,’ he had said;

I found him white as snow

And beautiful, but dead.

He would return, he said.

When that I heeded not,

Lo, he had fallen dead.

Dead; Hope is dead; is not.

I tear my hands with briars,

My face in earth I thrust;

I curse the heav’nly fires,

I drink the desert dust.

A threat of thunder fills

Us. Lo, a voice! The waves

A breathless horror stills;

The sand, a sea of graves.

Methought the mocking Moon

Open’d her yellow lips

And spake. The Planets swoon

In vapoury eclipse.

‘Fool, all the world is dust;

Even I who shine on thee.

There perish and add thy dust

To that sepulchral sea.’

III

In exile here I trod

And with presumptuous breath

Call’d out aloud for God:

The Answer came from Death.

O World, thy quest is cold;

O World, who answereth?

Distracted thou hast call’d;

The Answer came from Death.

I call’d for God and heard

No voice but that of Death:

Then came the bitter word,

‘Fool, God himself is Death.

Great Death; not little death

That nips the flowers unfurl’d

And stays the infant’s breath;

But Death that slays the world.

And in despair I ran,

And stumbled at the marge,

And saw from span to span

Death’s ocean rolling large;

And only the breadth accursed

Of billows barring hope,

That thunder’d, ‘Death,’ and burst

In tears upon the slope.

Nor in the Heavens hope.

The Sun drew in and shrank

His flashes from the cope,

And answer’d, ‘Death,’ and sank.

I sought the sacred Night

And solace of the Stars,

For surely in their light

No shade of Death appears.

Like tears their Answer came,

Dropt one by one from heaven;

Their Answer was the same;

No other word was given.

But then the Silence said,

‘Resolve thy visioning mind:

Is action for the dead

Or seeing in the blind?

Cry not with fruitless breath.

Is it not understood,

If God had utter’d Death

Then also Death is good?

Abandon Wrath and Ruth.

Touch not the High, nor ask.

For God alone the Truth.

Perform thy daily task.’

VII

The Monsoon

What ails the solitude?

Is this the Judgment Day?

The sky is red as blood;

The very rocks decay

And crack and crumble, and

There is a flame of wind

Wherewith the burning sand

Is ever mass’d and thin’d.

Even the sickly Sun

Is dimmèd by the dearth,

And screaming dead leaves run

About the desolate earth.

Die then; we are accurst!

And strike, consuming God!

The very tigers thirst

Too much to drink of blood;

The eagle soareth not;

The viper bites herself;

The vulture hath forgot

To rend the dying wolf.

The world is white with heat;

The world is rent and riv’n;

The world and heavens meet;

The lost stars cry in heav’n.

* * *

Art thou an Angel—speak,

Stupendous Cloud that comest?

What wrath on whom to wreak?

Redeemest thou, or doomest?

Thine eyes are of the dead;

A flame within thy breast

Thy giant wings outspread,

Like Death’s, upon the west

Thy lifted locks of hair

Are flames of fluttering fire;

Thy countenance, of Despair

Made mad with inner ire.

III

Who cries! The night is black

As death and not as night;

The world is fallen back

To nothing; sound and light

And moon and stars and skies,

Thunder and lightning—all

Gone, gone! Not even cries

The cricket in the hall,

The dog without. At last

The end of all the hours.

Was that a Spirit pass’d

Between the slamming doors?

We slept not yet we wake!

Was it a voice that cried,

‘Awake, ye sleepless; wake,

Ye deathless who have died’?

No voice. No light, no sound.

It was the fancy that

At midnight makes rebound

Of thoughts we labour at

At mid-day. Let us sleep.

The night is very black,

The heat a madness—sleep

Before the day comes back.

Who cries!—The voice again!

It is the storm that breaks!

The tempest and the rain!

The quivering crash that shakes!

The thunder and the flash,

The brand that rips and roars,

The winds of God that dash

And split a thousand doors!

The chariots of God

That gallop on the plain

And shake the solid sod!

Awake!—The rain, the rain!

Thunder and burst, O Sky;

Thunder and boil, O Deep;

Let the thick thunder cry;

Let the live lightning leap!

Smite white light like the sword

Of Heav’n from heav’n’s height;

Consume the thing abhor’d

And quell the dreadful night!

Smite white light like the brand

Of God from heav’n to earth;

And purge the desolate land

Of this destroying dearth!

O Wilderness of Death,

O Desert rent and riv’n,

Where art thou?—for the breath

Of heav’n hath made thee Heav’n.

I know not now these ways;

The rocky rifts are gone,

Deep-verdured like the braes

Of blest Avilion.

Here where there were no flowers

The heav’nly waters flow,

And thro’ a thousand bowers

Innum’rable blossoms blow.

* * *

Reply

This day relenting God

Hath placed within my hand

A wondrous thing; and God

Be praised. At His command,

Seeking His secret deeds

With tears and toiling breath,

I find thy cunning seeds,

O million-murdering Death.

I know this little thing

A myriad men will save.

O Death, where is thy sting?

Thy victory, O Grave?

August 21, 1897.

Before Thy feet I fall,

Lord, who made high my fate;

For in the mighty small

Thou showedst the mighty great.

Henceforth I will resound

But praises unto Thee;

Tho’ I was beat and bound,

Thou gavest me victory.

Tho’ in these depths of night

Deep-dungeon’d I was hurl’d,

Thou sentest me a light

Wherewith to mend the world.

O Exile, while thine eyes

Were weary with the night

Thou weepedst; now arise

And bless the Lord of Light.

Hereafter let thy lyre

Be bondsman to His name;

His thunder and His fire

Will fill thy lips with flame.

He is the Lord of Light;

He is the Thing That Is;

He sends the seeing sight;

And the right mind is His.

III

The cagèd bird awake

All night laments his doom,

And hears the dim dawn break

About the darken’d room;

But in the day he sips,

Contented in his place,

His food from human lips,

And learns the human face.

So tho’ his home remain

Dark, and his fields untrod,

The exile has this gain,

To have found the face of God.

Confounded at the close,

Confounded standing where

No further pathway shows,

We find an angel there

To guide us. God is good;

The seeing sight is dim;

He gives us solitude

That we may be with Him.

By that we have we lose;

By what we have not, get;

And where we cannot choose

The crown of life is set.

Lo, while we ask the stars

To learn the will of God,

His answer unawares

Strikes sudden from the sod.

Not when we wait the word

The word of God is giv’n;

The voice of God is heard

As much from earth as heav’n.

The voice of God is heard

Not in the thunder-fit;

A still small voice is heard,

Half-heard, and that is it.

PÆANS

Man

Man putteth the world to scale

And weigheth out the stars;

Th’ eternal hath lost her veil,

The infinite her bars;

His balance he hath hung in heaven

And set the sun therein.

He measures the lords of light

And fiery orbs that spin;

No riddle of darkest night

He dares not look within;

Athwart the roaring wrack of stars

He plumbs the chasm of heaven.

The wings of the wind are his;

To him the world is given;

His servant the lightning is,

And slave the ocean, even;

He scans the mountains yet unclimb’d

And sounds the solid sea.

With fingers of thought he holds

What is or e’er can be;

And, touching it not, unfolds

The sealèd mystery.

The pigmy hands, eyes, head God gave

A giant’s are become.

But tho’ to this height sublime

By labour he hath clomb,

One summit he hath to climb,

One deep the more to plumb—

To rede himself and rule himself,

And so to reach the sum.

1898.

Life

From birth to death the life of man

Is infinite on the earth,

To know and do that which he can

And be what he is worth.

Our mortal life, however wrought,

Eternity is indeed;

For every moment brings a thought,

And every thought’s a deed;

And that is so much infinite

Which may be divided much;

And if we live with might and mirth

Our human life is such.

For him who has not might and mirth

That which is not now is never;

And he who can live well on earth

Does live in heaven for ever.

1898.

World-Song

O Vision inviolate, O Splendour supernal,

We stand in Thy white light like lamps alit in day;

Before Thee, Omnipotent, in sight of Thy glory,

Our countenance is witherèd like stars in the sun.

Before Thee our symphonies are still’d into silence;

Thy wisdom we wot not nor ever shall we know;

But from Thy high throne, O God, Thy voice and Thy thunder

In utterance reïterate give glory and strength.

Finis

Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been corrected without note. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. Original list of Contents at the beginning contained only listings for Parts in the section IN EXILE so links for individual poem titles have been added for reader convenience.

page 26, But but because we must. ==> [But because] we must.