Their prayers to shouts and songs!
The story dear our wise men fable call,
Give paltry facts the mighty range;
To me it seems just what should fall,
And nothing very strange.
But were I deaf and lame and blind and sore,
I scarce would care for cure to ask;
Another prayer should haunt thy door—
Set thee a harder task.
If thou art Christ, see here this heart of mine,
Torn, empty, moaning, and unblest!
Had ever heart more need of thine,
If thine indeed hath rest?
Thy word, thy hand right soon did scare the bane
That in their bodies death did breed;
If thou canst cure my deeper pain
Then art thou lord indeed.
Oh That a Wind
Oh that a wind would call
From the depths of the leafless wood!
Oh that a voice would fall
On the ear of my solitude!
Far away is the sea,
With its sound and its spirit tone;
Over it white clouds flee;
But I am alone, alone.
Straight and steady and tall
The trees stand on their feet;
Fast by the old stone wall
The moss grows green and sweet;
But my heart is full of fears,
For the sun shines far away;
And they look in my face through tears,
And the light of a dying day.
My heart was glad last night
As I pressed it with my palm;
Its throb was airy and light
As it sang some spirit psalm;
But it died away in my breast
As I wandered forth to-day—
As a bird sat dead on its nest,
While others sang on the spray.
O weary heart of mine,
Is there ever a Truth for thee?
Will ever a sun outshine
But the sun that shines on me?
Away, away through the air
The clouds and the leaves are blown;
And my heart hath need of prayer,
For it sitteth alone, alone.
A Vision of St. Eligius
I
I see thy house, but I am blown about,
A wind-mocked kite, between the earth and sky,
All out of doors—alas! of thy doors out,
And drenched in dews no summer suns can dry.
For every blast is passion of my own;
The dews cold sweats of selfish agony;
Dank vapour steams from memories lying prone;
And all my soul is but a stifled cry.
II
Lord, thou dost hold my string, else were I driven
Down to some gulf where I were tossed no more,
No turmoil telling I was not in heaven,
No billows raving on a blessed shore.
Thou standest on thy door-sill, calm as day,
And all my throbs and pangs are pulls from thee;
Hold fast the string, lest I should break away
And outer dark and silence swallow me.
III
No longer fly thy kite, Lord; draw me home.
Thou pull’st the string through all the distance bleak;
Lord, I am nearing thee; O Lord, I come;
Thy pulls grow stronger and the wind grows weak.
In thy remodelling hands thou tak’st thy kite;
A moment to thy bosom hold’st me fast.
Thou flingest me abroad:—lo, in thy might
A strong-winged bird I soar on every blast!
Of the Son of Man
I
I honour Nature, holding it unjust
To look with jealousy on her designs;
With every passing year more fast she twines
About my heart; with her mysterious dust
Claim I a fellowship not less august
Although she works before me and combines
Her changing forms, wherever the sun shines
Spreading a leafy volume on the crust
Of the old world; and man himself likewise
Is of her making: wherefore then divorce
What God hath joined thus, and rend by force
Spirit away from substance, bursting ties
By which in one great bond of unity
God hath together bound all things that be?
II
And in these lines my purpose is to show
That He who left the Father, though he came
Not with art-splendour or the earthly flame
Of genius, yet in that he did bestow
His own true loving heart, did cause to grow,
Unseen and buried deep, whate’er we name
The best in human art, without the shame
Of idle sitting in most real woe;
And that whate’er of Beautiful and Grand
The Earth contains, by him was not despised,
But rather was so deeply realized
In word and deed, though not with artist hand,
That it was either hid or all disguised
From those who were not wise to understand.
III
Art is the bond of weakness, and we find
Therein acknowledgment of failing power:
A man would worship, gazing on a flower—
Onward he passeth, lo his eyes are blind!
The unenlivened form he left behind
Grew up within him only for an hour!
And he will grapple with Nature till the dower
Of strength shall be retreasured in his mind.
And each form-record is a high protest
Of treason done unto the soul of man,
Which, striving upwards, ever is oppress’d
By the old bondage, underneath whose ban
He, failing in his struggle for the best,
Must live in pain upon what food he can.
IV
Moreover, were there perfect harmony
’Twixt soul and Nature, we should never waste
The precious hours in gazing, but should haste
To assimilate her offerings, and we
From high life-elements, as doth the tree,
Should grow to higher; so what we call Taste
Is a slow living as of roots encased
In the grim chinks of some sterility
Both cramping and withholding. Art is Truth,
But Truth dammed up and frozen, gagged and bound
As is a streamlet icy and uncouth
Which pebbles hath and channel but no sound:
Give it again its summer heart of youth
And it will be a life upon the ground.
V
And Love had not been prisoned in cold stone,
Nor Beauty smeared on the dead canvas so,
Had not their worshipper been forced to go
Questful and restless through the world alone,
Searching but finding not, till on him shone
Back from his own deep heart a chilly glow
As of a frost-nipped sunbeam, or of snow
Under a storm-dodged crescent which hath grown
Wasted to mockery; and beneath such gleam
His wan conceits have found an utterance,
Which, had they found a true and sunny beam,
Had ripened into real touch and glance—
Nay more, to real deed, the Truth of all,
To some perfection high and personal.
VI
“But yet the great of soul have ever been
The
