And doth creation’s tide for ever flow,
Nor ebb with like destruction? World on world,
Are they for ever heaping up, and still
The mighty measure never full?
To act
Is powers habit; alway to create,
God’s; which, thus ever causing worlds, to Him
Nought cumbrous more than new down to a wing,
Aye multiplies at once my power and pain.
I have seen many frames of being pass.
This generation of the universe
Will soon be gathered to its grave. These worlds,
Which bear its sky-pall, soon will follow thine.
I, both. All things must die.
What are ye orbs?
The words of God—the Scriptures of the skies?
For words with Him cannot be passing, nor
Less real, vast, or glorious than yourselves.
The world is a great poem, and the worlds
The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts.
Ye cannot die.
Think not on death. Here all
Is life, light, beauty. Harp not so on death.
I cannot help me, spirit! Chide no more.
As who dare gaze the sun, doth after see
Betwixt him and else a dark sun in his eye;
So I, once having braved my burning doom,
See nought beside—or that in everything.
Hark, what is that I hear?
An angel weeping—
Earth’s guardian angel. She is ever weeping.
See where she flies, spirit-torn, round the heavens,
Like a fore-feel of madness about the brain.
Star, stars!
Stop your bright cars!
Stint your breath—
Repent ere worse—
Think of the death
Of the universe.
Fear doom, and fear,
The fate of your kin-sphere.
As a corse in the tomb,
Earth! thou art laid in doom:
The worm is at thy heart.
I see all things part:—
The bright air thicken,
Thunder-stricken:
Birds from the sky
Shower like leaves:
Streamlets stop
Like ice on leaves:
The sun go blind:
Swoon the wind
On the high hill top—
Swoon and die:
Earth rear off her cities
As a horse his rider;
And still, with each death-strain,
Her heart-wound tear wider:
The lion roar and die
With his eye-balls on the sky:
The eagle scream
And drop like a beam:
Men crowd and cry,
Out on this deathful dream!
A low dull sound—
’Tis the march of many bones
Under ground;
Up! and they fling,
Like a fly’s wing,
Off them the grey grave-stones;
They sit in their biers—
Father and mother,
Man and wife,
Sister and brother,
As in life;
Lady and lover—
Love all over.
Their flesh re-appears—
Their hearts beat—
Their eyes have tears:
Woe! woe!
Do they speak?
Stir? No!
Tongues were too weak,
Save to repeat
Woe!
But they smile
In a while;
For to wipe from His word
The dust of years,
He comes! he comes! the Lord,
Man-God, re-appears;
To bless, and to save
From death and the grave—
To redeem and deliver
For ever and ever!
The dead rise—
Death dies.
Go, Time, and sink
Thy great thoughts in the sea!
And quench thy red link!
Let him flutter to rest
On thy God-nursing breast,
Eternity!
Mother Eternity!
What is for me?
Poor angel! Ah! it is the good who suffer.
Look! like a cloud, she has wept herself away.
What of this world we view and all yon worlds?
If God made not all things from nothing, how
Is He creator? Something must exist
If otherwise, eternal with Himself;
And all things had not origin in Him.
He made all things of Him. The visible world
Is as the Christ of nature; God the maker
In matter made self manifest through time.
All things are formed of all things—all of God.
The world is made of wonders. Every day
Is born a new creation. Every orb
Hath its revealed word; and every race
Of Being hath its judgment, or shall have.
Are all these worlds, then, stocked with souls like man’s—
Free, fallible, and sinful?
Ay, they are.
All creature-minds, like man’s, are fallible.
The seraph who in Heaven highest stands
May fall to ruin deepest. God is mind—
Pure, perfect, sinless. Man imperfect is—
Momently sinning. Evil then results
From imperfection. The idea of good
Is owned in imperfection’s lowest form.
God would not, could not, make aught wholly ill,
Nor aught not like to err. Man never was
Perfect nor pure, or he would be so now.
Thy nature hath some excellencies—these
Oft thwarted by low lusts and wicked wills.
What then? They are necessitate in kind,
As change in nature, or as shade to light.
No darkness hath the sun—no weakness God:
These only be the faulty qualities
Of secondary natures—planets, men.
God hath no attributes unless To Be
Be one: ’twould mix Him with the things He hath made.
God is all God, as life is that which lives.
I am a mighty spirit, and yet I
Am but to God what lightning is to light:
Lightning slays one thing—light makes all things live.
Bear, then, thy necessary ills with grace;
No positive estate or principle
Is Evil—debtor wholly for its form
And measure to defect—defect to good.
Good’s the sole positive principle in the world;
It is only thus, that what God makes, He loves—
And must: the others are but off-shoots. Ill
Is limited. One cannot form a scheme
For universal evil; not even I.
Can imperfection from perfection come?
Can God make aught defective?
How aught else?
There are but three proportions in all things—
The greater—equal—less. God could not make
A God above Himself, nor equal with—
By nature and necessity the Highest;
So, if He make, it must be lesser minds
Little and less from angels down to men,
Whose natures are imperfect, as His own
Must be all-perfect. These two states are not,
Except as whole unto its parts, opposed;
And evil is itself no ill unless
Creation be.
Is God the cause of evil?
So far as evil comes from imperfection,
And imperfection from the things He hath made,
And what He hath made from His will to make.
Oh! let me rest, be it but a moment’s pause!
This endless light-like journey wearies me.
Remember still my spirit toils in dust—
A dark close cloud.
Alight, then, on this orb.
I am not wearied: I will watch by thee.
He sleeps—he dreams. How far men see in dreams!
In dreams they can accomplish worlds of things:
The heart then suffers a fusion of all feeling
Back to its youthful hours of innocence,
And nakedness, and paradise; ere yet
The world had wound a perishing garb around it;
While yet its God came down and spake to it.
Such and so great are dreams. My might, my being
To him is but a dream’s. And could a state
To come fill up their dream-stretched minds, they might
Be gods. And may it not be so? Then man
Is worth my ruining. What
