And soul and body dwelt apart;
And weary wisdom without heart
Stared on the dead round heaven and sighed,
“Is death too hollow as thou art,
Or as man’s living pride?”
And saying so died.
And my soul heard the songs and groans
That are about and under thrones,
And felt through all time’s murmur thrill
Fate’s old imperious semitones
That made of good and ill
One same tune still.
Then “Where is God? and where is aid?
Or what good end of these?” she said;
“Is there no God or end at all,
Nor reason with unreason weighed,
Nor force to disenthral
Weak feet that fall?
“No light to lighten and no rod
To chasten men? Is there no God?”
So girt with anguish, iron-zoned,
Went my soul weeping as she trod
Between the men enthroned
And men that groaned.
O fool, that for brute cries of wrong
Heard not the grey glad mother’s song
Ring response from the hills and waves,
But heard harsh noises all day long
Of spirits that were slaves
And dwelt in graves.
The wise word of the secret earth
Who knows what life and death are worth,
And how no help and no control
Can speed or stay things come to birth,
Nor all worlds’ wheels that roll
Crush one born soul.
With all her tongues of life and death,
With all her bloom and blood and breath,
From all years dead and all things done,
In the ear of man the mother saith,
“There is no God, O son,
If thou be none.”
So my soul sick with watching heard
That day the wonder of that word,
And as one springs out of a dream
Sprang, and the stagnant wells were stirred
Whence flows through gloom and gleam
Thought’s soundless stream.
Out of pale cliff and sunburnt health,
Out of the low sea curled beneath
In the land’s bending arm embayed,
Out of all lives that thought hears breathe
Life within life inlaid,
Was answer made.
A multitudinous monotone
Of dust and flower and seed and stone,
In the deep sea-rock’s mid-sea sloth,
In the live water’s trembling zone,
In all men love and loathe,
One God at growth.