Whence comes the innate Power which knows to guide
The force deflected so from side to side,
That not a barren line from whence to where
It goes upon its way through the unfettered air?
What sways the prisoned atom on its fruitful course?
Ah, it was more than Force
Which gave the Universe of things its form and face!
Force moving on its path through Time and Space
Would nought enclose, but leave all barren still
A higher Power, it was, the worlds could form and fill;
And by some pre-existent harmony
Were all things made as Fate would have them be—
Fate, the ineffable Word of an Eternal Will.
All things that are or seem,
Whether we wake who see or do but dream,
Are of that Primal Will phantasms, if no more;
He who sees these sees God, and seeing doth adore.
Joy, suffering, evil, good,
Whatever our daily food,
Whate'er the mystery and paradox of things,
Low creeping thoughts and high imaginings.
The laughters of the world, the age-long groan,
Bring to his mind one name, one thought alone;
All beauty, right, deformity, or wrong,
Sing to his ear one high unchanging song;
And everything that is, to his rapt fancy brings
The hidden beat through space of the Eternal Wings.
Where did the Idea dwell,
At first, which was of all the germ and seed?
Which worked from Discord order, from blind Force
Sped all the Cosmos on its upward course?
Which held within the atom and the cell
The whole vast hidden Universe, sheltered well,
Till the hour came to unfold it, and the need?
What did the ever-upward growth conceive,
Which from the obedient monad formed the herb, the tree,
The animal, the man, the high growths that shall be?
Ever from simpler to more complex grown,
The long processions from a source unknown
Unfold themselves across the scene of life.
Oh blessed struggle and strife,
Fare onward to the end, since from a Source
Thou art, which doth transcend and doth determine Force!
Fare onward to the end; not from Force, dead and blind,
Thou comest, but from the depths of the Creative Mind.
Fare on to the end, but how should ending be,
If Will be in the Universe, and plan?
Some higher thing shall be, that which to-day is Man.
Undying is each cosmic force:
Undying, but transformed, it runs its endless course;
It cannot wane, or sink, or be no more.
Not even the dust and lime which clothe us round
Lose their own substance in the charnel-ground,
Or carried far upon the weltering wind;
Only with other growths combined,
In some new whole they are for ever—
They are, and perish never.
The great suns shed themselves in heat and light
Upon the unfilled interstellar air,
Till all their scattered elements unite
And are replenished as before they were.
Nothing is lost, nor can be: change alone,
Unceasing, never done,
Shapes all the forms of things, and keeps them still
Obedient to the Unknown Perfect Will.
And shall the life that is the highest that we know,
Shall this, alone, no more increase, expand and grow?
Nay, somewhere else there is, although we know not where,
Nor what new shape God gives our lives to wear.
We are content, whatever it shall be;
Content, through all eternity,
To be whatever the Spirit of the World deem best;—
Content to be at rest;
Content to work and fare through endless days;
Content to spend ourselves in endless praise:
Nay, if it be the Will Divine,
Content to be, and through long lives to pine,
Far from the light which vivifies, the fire
Which breathes upon our being and doth inspire
All soaring thoughts and hopes which light our pathway here;
Content, though with some natural thrill of fear,
To be purged through by age-long pain,
Till we resume our upward march again;
Content, if need, to take some lower form,
Some humbler herb or worm
To be awhile, if e'er the eternal plan
Go back from higher to lower, from man to less than man.
Not so, indeed, we hold, but rather this—
That all Time gone, that all that was or is,
The scarpèd cliff, the illimitable Past,
This truth alone of all truths else hold fast:—
From lower to higher, from simple to complete,
This is the pathway of the Eternal Feet;
From earth to lichen, herb to flowering tree,
From cell to creeping worm, from man to what shall be.
This is the solemn lesson of all time,
This is the teaching of the voice sublime:
Eternal are the worlds, and all that them do fill;
Eternal is the march of the Creative Will;
Eternal is the life of man, and sun, and star;
Ay, even though they fade a while, they are;
And though they pause from shining, speed for ever still.
A GREAT GULF.
If any tender sire
Who sits girt round by loving faces
And happy childhood's thousand graces,
Through sudden crash or fire
Should 'scape from this poor life to some mysterious air,
And, dwelling solitary there,
Should feel his unfilled yearning father's heart
Pierced through by some intolerable smart;
And, sickening for the dear lost lives again,
Should through his overmastering pain
Break through the awful bounds the Eternal sets between
That which lives Here, and There, the Seen and the Unseen;
And having gained once more
The confines of the Earth, the scarce-left place
Which greets him with unchanged familiar face—
The well-remembered door,
The rose he watered blooming yet,
Nought to remember or forget,
No change in all the world except in him,
Nor there save in some sense, already dim
Before the unchanged past, so that he seem
A mortal spirit still, and what was since, a dream;