With all the sway his spirit now exerts
O’er time, space, thought it is but a shadowy sway,
Light as a mountain shadow on a lake.
Mine is the mountain’s self. A touch would shake
To nought whatever his soul now feels or acts;
But not a world-quake could touch aught of mine:
Thus much we differ. I will not envy man.
Power alone makes being bearable.
And yet this dream-power is mind-power—real:
All things are real: fiction cannot be.
A thought is real as the world—a dream
True as all God doth know—with whom all is true.
The deep dense sleep of half-dead exhaustedness!
Would I could feel it. Ah! he wakes at last.
Oh! I have dreamed a dream so beautiful!
Methought I lay as it were here; and, lo!
A spirit came and gave me wings of light,
Which thrice I waved delighted. Up we flew
Sheer through the shining air, far past the sun’s
Broad blazing disk—past where the great great snake
Binds in his bright coil half the host of Heaven—
Past thee, Orion! who, with arm uplift,
Threatening the throne of God, dost ever stand
Sublimely impious; and thy mighty mace
Whirling on high, down from its glorious seat
Drops, crushed and shattered, many a shining world.
And so the brave and beautiful of old
Believed thou wast a giant made of worlds:
And they were rights if thus they bodied out
The immortal mind; for it hath starlike beauty,
And worldlike might; and is as high above
The things it scorns, and will make war with God,
Though He gave it earth and Heaven, and arms to win
Them both; and, spite of lust and pride, to earn them.
And now thy soul informs yon hundred stars,
As mine my limbs—well, ’tis a noble end.
What now to thee be mortal maid or goddess?
Look! she who fled thee once, now loves and longs
To clasp thee to her cold and beamy breast.
Pine moon! thou art as far below him now,
As once she was above thee, thou of the world-belt!
And she who had thee, and who knew thee god,
Died of her boast, and lies in her own dust.
And she who loved thee, the young blushy Morning,
Who caught thee in her arms, and bore thee off
Far o’er the lashing seas to a lonely isle,
Where she might pleasure longer and in secret—
That love undid thee; and it is so now:
Whether the beauty seek, or flee, or have,
’Tis a like ill—this beauty doubly mortal.
What though the moon with madness slew thee there,
Let me believe it was within the arms
That loved thee even in the stroke of death,
And that there snapped the lightning link of life.
Kill, but not conquer, man nor mind may gods.
Thou image of the Almighty error, man!
Banished and banned to Heaven, by a weak world,
Which makes the minds it cannot master gods
And thou, the first and greatest of half-gods,
Which they in olden time did star together
To an idolatrous immortality;
Who nationalized the Heavens, and gave all stars
Unto the spirits of the good and brave,
Forestalling God by ages—wondrous men!
And if—beguiled by wine, and the low wiles
Thou wouldst not creep to meet, and a drunken sleep,
Like to high noon in the midst of all his might,
Close by the brink of immortality—
The deep dominions of thy sea-sire, thou
Didst lose thy light by kings who hate the great,
Thou only hadst to stand up to the sun,
And gain again thine eyes. So the great king,
The world, the tyrant we elect, in vain
Puts out the eyes of mind: it looks to God,
And reaps its light again. Wherefore, revenge!
Out with the sword! the world will run before thee,
Orion! belted giant of the skies!
Thou with the treble strain of godhood in thee!
March! there is nought to hinder thee in Heaven:—
Past that great sickle saved for one day’s work,
When He who sowed shall reap Creation’s field;—
Past those high diademed orbs which show to man
His crown to come;—up through the starry strings
Of that high harp close by the feet of God,
Which He, methought, took up and struck, till Heaven,
In love’s immortal madness, rang and reeled;
The stars fell on their faces; and, far off,
The wild world halted—shook his burning man—
Then, like a fresh-blown trumpet blast, went on,
Or like a god gone mad. On, on we flew,
I and the spirit, far beyond all things
Of measure, motion, time and aught create;
Where the stars stood on the edge of the first nothing,
And looked each other in the face and fled—
Past even the last long starless void, to God;
Whom straight I heard, methought, commanding thus:
Immortal! I am God. Hie back to earth,
And say to all, that God doth say—Love God!
God visits men adreaming: I, awake.
And my dream changed to one of general doom.
Wilt hear it?
Ay, say on! It is but a dream.
God made all mind and motion cease; and, lo!
The whole was death and peace. An endless time
Obtained, in which the power of all made failed.
God bade the worlds to judgment, and they came—
Pale, trembling, corpse-like. To the souls therein
Then spake the Maker: Deathless spirits, rise!
And straight they thronged around the throne. His arm
The Almighty then uplift, and smote the worlds
Once, and they fell in fragments like to spray,
And vanished in their native void. He shook
The stars from Heaven like rain-drops from a bough;
Like tears they poured adown creation’s face.
Spirit and space were all things. Matter, death,
And time, left even not a wake to tell
Where once their track o’er being. God’s own light
Undarkened and unhindered by a sun,
Glowed forth alone in glory. And through all
A dear and tremulous sense of God prevailed,
Like to the blush of love upon the cheek,
Or the full feeling lightening through the eye,
Or the quick music in the chords of harps.
God judged all creatures unto bliss or woe,
According to their deeds, and faith, and His
Own will: and straight the saved upraised a voice
Which seemed to emulate eternity
In its triumphant overblossedness.
The lost leapt up and cursed God to His face—
A curse might make the sun turn cold to hear;
And thee, in all thy burning glory, tremble,
In front of all thine angels, like a chord.
Rage writhed each brow into a changeless scowl.
Madly they mocked at God, and dared His eye,
Safe in their curse of
