How shall ye help this man who knows himself,
That he must love and would be loved again,
Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ,
Rejecteth Christ through very need of Him?
The lamp o’erswims with oil, the stomach flags
Loaded with nurture, and that man’s soul dies.[71]
The soliloquist of Easter Day, experiencing practically the position imagined by St. John, makes (with the opening of Section XXXI) a final appeal to the Love of God, that he may be permitted to continue in that uncertainty which, in the midst of “darkness, hunger, toil, distress,” yet allows room for hope. Better the sufferings of unending struggle than the deadly calm of despair. To him who has experienced what satiety may bring, the life of probation offers powerful attractions. Whether the Vision may have been a reality or the creation of his own imagination, even this uncertainty is preferable to the judgment that shall grudge “no ease henceforth,” whilst the soul is “condemned to earth for ever.”
Thus the poem closes with the inevitable demand of the soul for progress, for growth; and the collateral recognition of its present life as a state of probation, hence of essential uncertainty—
Only let me go on, go on,
Still hoping ever and anon
To reach one eve the Better Land! (ll. 1001-1003.)
Feeble as is the hope at times, the dawn of Easter Day yet recalls the boundless possibilities opening out for human nature. And, for the moment at least, faith is paramount; no vague, impersonal belief, but that which looks for its direct inspiration to a living Christ.
Christ rises! Mercy every way
Is Infinite,—and who can say?