bodymatter z3998:fiction">
Self-Deception
Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory
Of possessing powers not our share?—
Since man woke on earth, he knows his story,
But, before we woke on earth, we were.
Long, long since, undower’d yet, our spirit
Roam’d, ere birth, the treasuries of God:
Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit;
Ask’d an outfit for its earthly road.
Then, as now, this tremulous, eager Being
Strain’d, and long’d, and grasp’d each gift it saw.
Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing
Stav’d us back, and gave our choice the law.
Ah, whose hand that day through heaven guided
Man’s blank spirit, since it was not we?
Ah, who sway’d our choice, and who decided
What our gifts, and what our wants should be?
For, alas! he left us each retaining
Shreds of gifts which he refus’d in full.
Still these waste us with their hopeless straining—
Still the attempt to use them proves them null.
And on earth we wander, groping, reeling;
Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.
Ah, and he, who placed our master-feeling,
Fail’d to place our master-feeling clear.
We but dream we have our wish’d-for powers.
Ends we seek we never shall attain.
Ah, some power exists there, which is ours?
Some end is there, we indeed may gain?
The Second Best
Moderate tasks and moderate leisure,
Quiet living, strict-kept measure
Both in suffering and in pleasure—
’Tis for this thy nature yearns.
But so many books thou readest,
But so many schemes thou breedest,
But so many wishes feedest,
That thy poor head almost turns.
And (the world’s so madly jangled,
Human things so fast entangled)
Nature’s wish must now be strangled
For that best which she discerns.
So it must be! yet, while leading
A strain’d life, while overfeeding,
Like the rest, his wit with reading,
No small profit that man earns,
Who through all he meets can steer him,
Can reject what cannot clear him,
Cling to what can truly cheer him!
Who each day more surely learns
That an impulse, from the distance
Of his deepest, best existence,
To the words, “Hope, Light, Persistence,”
Strongly stirs and truly burns!
Despondency
The thoughts that rain their steady glow
Like stars on life’s cold sea,
Which others know, or say they know—
They never shone for me.
Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit’s sky,
But they will not remain.
They light me once, they hurry by;
And never come again.
Revolutions
Before Man parted for this earthly strand,
While yet upon the verge of heaven he stood,
God put a heap of letters in his hand,
And bade him make with them what word he could.
And Man has turn’d them many times: made Greece,
Rome, England, France:—yes, nor in vain essay’d
Way after way, changes that never cease.
The letters have combin’d: something was made.
But ah, an inextinguishable sense
Haunts him that he has not made what he should.
That he has still, though old, to recommence,
Since he has not yet found the word God would.
And Empire after Empire, at their height
Of sway, have felt this boding sense come on.
Have felt their huge frames not constructed right,
And droop’d, and slowly died upon their throne.
One day, thou say’st, there will at last appear
The word, the order, which God meant should be.—
Ah, we shall know that well when it comes near:
The band will quit Man’s heart:—he will breathe free.
The Neckan
In summer, on the headlands,
The Baltic Sea along,
Sits Neckan with his harp of gold,
And sings his plaintive song.
Green rolls beneath the headlands,
Green rolls the Baltic Sea.
And there, below the Neckan’s feet,
His wife and children be.
He sings not of the ocean,
Its shells and roses pale.
Of earth, of earth the Neckan sings;
He hath no other tale.
He sits upon the headlands,
And sings a mournful stave
Of all he saw and felt on earth,
Far from the green sea wave.
Sings how, a knight, he wander’d
By castle, field, and town.—
But earthly knights have harder hearts
Than the Sea Children own.
Sings of his earthly bridal—
Priest, knights, and ladies gay.
“And who art thou,” the priest began,
“Sir Knight, who wedd’st to-day?”—
“I am no knight,” he answer’d;
“From the sea waves I come.”—
The knights drew sword, the ladies scream’d,
The surplic’d priest stood dumb.
He sings how from the chapel
He vanish’d with his bride,
And bore her down to the sea halls,
Beneath the salt sea tide.
He sings how she sits weeping
’Mid shells that round her lie.
“False Neckan shares my bed,” she weeps;
“No Christian mate have I.”—
He sings how through the billows
He rose to earth again,
And sought a priest to sign the cross,
That Neckan Heaven might gain.
He sings how, on an evening,
Beneath the birch trees cool,
He sate and play’d his harp of gold,
Beside the river pool.
Beside the pool sate Neckan—
Tears fill’d his cold blue eye.
On his white mule, across the bridge,
A cassock’d priest rode by.
“Why sitt’st thou there, O Neckan,
And play’st thy harp of gold?
Sooner shall this my staff bear leaves,
Than thou shalt Heaven behold.”—
The cassock’d priest rode onwards,
And vanished with his mule.
But Neckan in the twilight grey
Wept by the river pool.
In summer, on the headlands,
The Baltic Sea along,
Sits Neckan with his harp of gold,
And sings this plaintive song.
A Caution to Poets
What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross’d, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guiers’ stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods.
Swift rush the spectral vapours white
Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing—then blotting from our sight.
Halt! through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.
Strike leftward!
cries our guide; and higher
Mounts up the stony forest-way.
At last the encircling trees retire;
Look! through the showery twilight grey
What pointed roofs are these
