Fighting
Here is a temple strangely wrought:
Within it I can see
Two spirits of a diverse thought
Contend for mastery.
One is an angel fair and bright,
Adown the aisle comes he,
Adown the aisle in raiment white,
A creature fair to see.
The other wears an evil mien,
And he hath doubtless slipt,
A fearful being dark and lean,
Up from the mouldy crypt.
Is that the roof that grows so black?
Did some one call my name?
Was it the bursting thunder crack
That filled this place with flame?
I move—I wake from out my sleep:
Some one hath victor been!
I see two radiant pinions sweep,
And I am borne between.
Beneath the clouds that under roll
An upturned face I see—
A dead man’s face, but, ah, the soul
Was right well known to me!
A man’s dead face! Away I haste
Through regions calm and fair:
Go vanquish sin, and thou shall taste
The same celestial air.
After the Fashion of an Old Emblem
I have long enough been working down in my cellar,
Working spade and pick, boring-chisel and drill;
I long for wider spaces, airy, clear-dark, and stellar:
Successless labour never the love of it did fill.
More profit surely lies in a holy, pure quiescence,
In a setting forth of cups to catch the heavenly rain,
In a yielding of the being to the ever waiting presence,
In a lifting of the eyes upward, homeward again!
Up to my garret, its storm-windows and skylights!
There I’ll lay me on the floor, and patient let the sun,
The moon and the stars, the blueness and the twilights
Do what their pleasure is, and wait till they have done.
But, lo, I hear a waving on the roof of great pinions!
’Tis the labour of a windmill, broad-spreading to the wind!
Lo, down there goes a shaft through all the house-dominions!
I trace it to a cellar, whose door I cannot find.
But there I hear ever a keen diamond-drill in motion,
Now fast and now slow as the wind sits in the sails,
Drilling and boring to the far eternal ocean,
The living well of all wells whose water never fails.
So now I go no more to the cellar to my labour,
But up to my garret where those arms are ever going;
There the sky is ever o’er me, and the wind my blessed neighbour,
And the prayer-handle ready turns the sails to its blowing.
Blow, blow, my blessed wind; oh, keep ever blowing!
Keep the great windmill going full and free;
So shall the diamond-drill down below keep going
Till in burst the waters of God’s eternal sea.
George Rolleston
Dead art thou? No more dead than was the maid
Over whose couch the saving God did stand—
“She is not dead but sleepeth,” said,
And took her by the hand!
Thee knowledge never from Life’s pathway wiled,
But following still where life’s great father led,
He turned, and taking up his child,
Raised thee too from the dead,
O living, thou hast passed thy second birth,
Found all things new, and some things lovely strange;
But thou wilt not forget the earth,
Or in thy loving change!
A Prayer in Sickness
Thou foldest me in sickness;
Thou callest through the cloud;
I batter with the thickness
Of the swathing, blinding shroud:
Oh, let me see thy face,
The only perfect grace
That thou canst show thy child.
O father, being-giver,
Take off the sickness-cloud;
Saviour, my life deliver
From this dull body-shroud:
Till I can see thy face
I am not full of grace,
I am not reconciled.
Quiet Dead!
Quiet, quiet dead,
Have ye aught to say
From your hidden bed
In the earthy clay?
Fathers, children, mothers,
Ye are very quiet;
Can ye shout, my brothers?
I would know you by it!
Have ye any words
That are like to ours?
Have ye any birds?
Have ye any flowers?
Could ye rise a minute
When the sun is warm?
I would know you in it,
I would take no harm.
I am half afraid
In the ghostly night;
If ye all obeyed
I should fear you quite.
But when day is breaking
In the purple east
I would meet you waking—
One of you at least—
When the sun is tipping
Every stony block,
And the sun is slipping
Down the weathercock.
Quiet, quiet dead,
I will not perplex you;
What my tongue hath said
Haply it may vex you!
Yet I hear you speaking
With a quiet speech,
As if ye were seeking
Better things to teach:
“Wait a little longer,
Suffer and endure
Till your heart is stronger
And your eyes are pure—
A little longer, brother,
With your fellow-men:
We will meet each other
Otherwhere again.”
Let Your Light So Shine
Sometimes, O Lord, thou lightest in my head
A lamp that well might pharos all the lands;
Anon the light will neither rise nor spread:
Shrouded in danger gray the beacon stands!
A pharos? Oh dull brain! poor dying lamp
Under a bushel with an earthy smell!
Mouldering it stands, in rust and eating damp,
While the slow oil keeps oozing from its cell!
For me it were enough to be a flower
Knowing its root in thee, the Living, hid,
Ordained to blossom at the appointed hour,
And wake or sleep as thou, my Nature, bid;
But hear my brethren in their darkling fright!
Hearten my lamp that it may shine abroad
Then will they cry—Lo, there is something bright!
Who kindled it if not the shining God?
Triolet
When the Heart Is a Cup
When the heart is a cup
In the body low lying,
And wine, drop by drop
Falls into that cup
From somewhere high up,
It is good to be dying
With the heart for a cup
In the body low lying.
The Souls’ Rising
See how the storm of life ascends
Up through the shadow of the world!
Beyond our gaze the line extends,
Like wreaths of vapour tempest-hurled!
Grasp tighter, brother, lest the storm
Should sweep us down from where we stand,
And we may catch some human form
We know, amongst the straining band.
See! see in yonder misty cloud
One whirlwind sweep, and we shall hear
The voice that waxes yet more loud
And louder still approaching near!
Tremble not, brother, fear not thou,
For yonder wild and mystic strain
Will bring before us strangely now
The visions of our youth again!
Listen! oh listen!
See how its eyeballs roll
