The Doom of a City

PART I.

THE CITY.

I.
The sky was spacious warm and bright,
The clouds were pure as morning snow ;
In myriad points of living light
The sea lay laughing to and fro.
Above the hills a depth of sky,
Dim-pale with heat and light intense,
Was overhung by clouds piled high
In mountain-ranges huge and dense ;
Whose rifts and ridges ran aloft
Far to their crests of dazzling snow,
Whence spread a vaporous lustre soft
Veiling the noontide's azure glow.
Through mists of purple glory seen
Those dim and panting hill-waves lay,
Absorbed into the heavens serene,
Dissolving in the perfect day.

But when the sun burned high and bare
In his own realm of solemn blue,
The clouds hung isolated there,
Dark purple grandeurs vast and few ;
Like massive sculptures wrought at large
Upon that dome's immensity,
Like constant isles whose foamlit marge
Rose high from out that sapphire sea.

And all the day my boat sped on
With rapid gliding smooth as rest,
As if by mystic dreamings drawn
To some fair haven in the West ;
Flew onward swift without a gale
As if it were a living thing,
And spread with joy its snow-white sail
As spreads a bird its snow-white wing ;
Flashed on along the lucid deep
Dividing that most perfect sphere,
A vault above it glowing steep,
A vault beneath it no less clear ;
Within whose burning sapphire-round
The clouds the air the land the sea
Lay thrilled with quivering glory, drowned
In calm as of Eternity.

II.
Anear the dying of that royal day
Those amber-vested hills began to swerve ;
And soon a lofty Pharos, gleaming white
Upon its isle set darkly in the light,
Beckoned us onward to the spacious bay
Encompassed broadly by their noble curve.
And so at length we entered it ; and faced
The thin dark lines of countless masts, all traced
Spread out like an interminable waste
Of red and saffron sand, devoured by slow
Persistent fire ; beneath whose desolate glow
A City lay, thick-zoned with solemn green
Of foliage massed upon the steeps around.
Between those mast-lines flamed the crystal fires
Of multitudinous windows ; and on high
Grand marble palaces and temples, crowned
With golden domes and radiant towers and spires,
Stood all entranced beneath that desert sky,
Based on an awful stillness. Dead or dumb
That mighty City through the breathless air
Thrilled forth no pulse of sound, no faintest hum
Of congregated life in street and square :
Becalmed beyond all calm those galleons lay,
As still and lifeless as their shadows there,
Fixed in the magic mirror of the bay
As in a rose-flushed crystal weirdly fair.
A strange, sad dream : and like a fiery pall,
Blazoned with death, that sky hung over all.

III.
Where, eastward from the town, the shore was low,
I drew at length my shallop up the sand, —
The quiet and gloomless twilight gathering slow ;
And took my way across the lonely strand,
And onward to the City, lost in thought.
Who shall his own wild life-course understand ?
From terror through great terrors I am brought
To front my fate in this mysterious land.
In my old common world, well fenced about
With myriad lives that fellowed well my own,
Terror and deadly anguish found me out
And drove me forth to seek the dread Unknown ;
Through all whose terrors I have yet been brought,
Though hopeless, helpless, utterly alone.
May yet my long wild night be blessed with morn ?
Some revelation from the awful Throne
Awaits me surely : if my life, torn free
From dire Egyptian bondage, has been led
In safety through the all-devouring sea ;
If, lost in foodless deserts, it was fed
Though murmuring ever ; hath it truly trod
Such paths for nothing ? Shall it not be brought
To stand awe-stricken 'neath some Mount of God
Wrapt in thick clouds of thunder fire and gloom,
And hear the Law of Heaven by which its doom
To good or evil must be henceforth wrought ?

IV.
The moon hung golden large and round,
Soothing its beauty up the quiet sky
In swanlike slow pulsations, while I wound
Through dewy meads and gardens of rich flowers,
Whose fragrance like a subtle harmony
Was fascination to the languid hours.
A tender mist of light was interfused
Upon the hills and waters, woods and leas,
Throughout the gloomless gloaming ; and I mused
Dim thoughts deep-floating in delicious dream,
Until the long stern lines of cypress trees,
Amidst whose plumes funereal there did seem
To creep with quivering sobs a moaning breath,
Awed back my heart to life — to life and death.
Far in the mystic moonlight lay outspread,
In trance of solemn beauty still and weird,
That Camp and City of the ancient dead ;
And far around stood up in dense array
Those monumental marbles ever reared
By men still battling with the powers of Life
To those released before them from its sway :
Victors or vanquished in the fearful strife,
What matters ? — ah, within our Mother's breast,
From toil and tumult, sin and sorrow free,
Sphered beyond hope and dread, divinely calm,
They lie, all gathered into perfect rest ;
And o'er the trance of their Eternity
The Cypress waves more holy than the palm.

V.
A funeral train was gathered round a bier :
The reverend priest with lifted hands and face,
Appealing silently to Heaven's grace
For this young soul called early from our sphere ;
And white-robed maidens pale, whose hands scarce held
What further symbol flowers they had to shed
Upon their sweet lost sister, — awe and dread
Numbing their noisier grief, they stood compelled
To meet Death's eyes which wither youth from Life ;
And leaning sole against a tree apart,
As one might lean just stricken to the heart,
A youth, wrought calm by woe's self-slaying strife —
His head was sunken nerveless on his breast,
He stood a dumb blind statue of Despair.
While all yet moved not, I approached them there,
Murmuring : They bring this maiden to her rest
Beneath the pure sad moon, in thoughtful night,
Rather than in the garish day whose King
Rides through the Heavens for ever triumphing
Throned above ruth in never-darkened light ;
That ere the blank dawn chills them they may gaze,
And see her soul as some white cloud on high
Floating serenely up the star-strewn sky. . . .
My steps were now close near them, when amaze
Convulsed me with a swooning suddenness —
What people dwell within this Silent Land,
Who thus have placed, through day and night to stand,
This Scene complete in all its images
Of Life in solemn conference with Death,
Amidst the wide and populous solitude
Of Death's own realm ? — a people of strange mood.
For all, — the maidens meek with bated breath
And eyes weighed down by awe and fear and sorrow,
The priest appealing to the Heavens above,
The youth whose mortal night could hope no morrow,
The sweet young girl new riven from his love, —
All save the flowers, the withered flowers alone,
Were carven weirdly in unconscious stone.

VI.
Beneath my gaze was spread the princely mart.
From out the folded hills came broad the stream
Whose pulse flowed lifefull through the City's heart —
The City dead in ever-voiceless dream.
From all her stately mansions, reared apart
'Midst lawns and gardens, came no lamplight gleam,
No cheerful glow and smoke of household fire ;
No festal music dying through the night,
Sad in its death as joyous in its birth ;
No serenades intoning soft desire,
To which young hearts in secret throb delight ;
No noise of banded revellers issuing forth
With shouts and songs and jars,
Who find the pale moon reeling jollily
And twinkling laughters in the high cold stars.
Between the hills and sea
Only a dark dead dearth
Of soulless silence yawned in dreadful mystery.

VII.
My limbs were shuddering while my veins ran fire,
And hounded on by dread
No less than by desire,
I plunged into the City of the Dead,
And pierced its Mausolean loneliness —
Between the self-sufficing palaces,
Broad fronts of azure, fire and gold, which shone
Spectrally pallid in the moonlight wan ;
Adown great streets ; through spacious sylvan squares,
Whose fountains plashing lone
Fretted the silence with perpetual moan ;
Past range on range of marts which spread their wares
Weirdly unlighted to the eyes of heaven,
Jewels and silks and golden ornaments,
Rich perfumes soul-in-soul of all rare scents,
Viols and timbrels, — O wild mockery !
Where are the living shrines for these adornings ?
Shall love-tormented phantoms hither hie,
Resolved that the tomb be no more mute,
And thrill their heart-sick plaints from lyre and lute
To plead against fair phantoms' cruel scornings ;
Wakening dim ghosts of buried melodies
To shiver out beneath the scornful skies,
And wander homeless till they fail of breath
About this desert realm of timeless death ?

VIII.
What saw I in the City, which could make
All thought a frenzy and all feeling madness ?
What found I in the City for whose sake
Blank death were welcome as a restful gladness ?
I hold it truth, that what the stars and moon
Can gaze upon with clear and steadfast eyes,
Still soaring as of old to reach their noon,
Serenely regnant in unwithered skies ;
That scene should never fill a human being
With hopelessness of horror in the seeing.
Can souls be blighted where the mere trees grow ?
Can lives be frozen where the dead streams flow?
Can Man be prostrate where the fleeting mountains
Stand up and fling abroad their joyous fountains ?
Could oceans, hills, stars, heavens, those imageries
And shadows of our sole realities,
Endure but for a moment undestroyed
Were we extinct — Eternity left void ?
O truth beyond our sin and death's concealing ! —
The ghastliest den, worst Hell of pain and fear,
In which a spirit can have will, thought, feeling,
Is to that spirit no unnatural sphere ;
Nor justifies that spirit for the death
Of firm self- trust, of love and hope and faith.

IX.
What found I in the City, then, which turned
My deep and solemn hope to wild despair ?
What mystery of horror lay inurned
Within the royal City great and fair?
What found I ?— Dead stone sentries stony-eyed,
Erect, steel-sworded, brass-defended all,
Guarding the sombrous gateway deep and wide
Hewn like a cavern through the mighty wall ;
Stone statues all throughout the streets and squares,
Grouped as in social converse or alone ;
Dim stony merchants holding forth rich wares
To catch the choice of purchasers of. stone ;
Fair statues leaning over balconies,
Whose bosoms made' the bronze and marble chill ;
Statues about the lawns, beneath the trees ;
Firm sculptured horsemen on stone horses still ;
Statues fixed gazing on the flowing river
Over the bridge's sculptured parapet ;
Statues in boats, amidst its sway and quiver
Immovable as if in ice- waves set : —
The whole vast sea of life about me lay,
The passionate, heaving, restless, sounding life,
With all its tides and billows, foam and spray,
Arrested in full tumult of its strife
Frozen into a nightmare's ghastly death,
Struck silent from its laughter and its moan ;
The vigorous heart and brain and blood and breath
Stark, strangled, coffined in eternal stone.

X.
Look away there to the right — How the bay lies broad and bright,
All athrob with murmurous rapture in the glory of the moon !
See in front the palace stand, halls and columns nobly planned ;
Marble home for marble dwellers is it not full fair and boon ?
See the myriads gathered there in that green and wooded square,
In mysterious congregation, — they are statues every one :
All are clothed in rich array ; it is some high festal day ;
The solemnity is perfect with that pallid moon for sun.
See the theatre ranged high to its dome of deep blue sky ;
Tier on tier of serried statues glare impassioned on its stage,
On its background of deep night, on its sculptured Chorus white,
On its lofty sculptured actors locked in deadly tragic rage:
Perhaps the drama was too great, — Titans, Furies, eyeless
Fate
Brooded in such sulphurous darkness thunder-swollen o'er its doom,
That the multitude abide overwrought and petrified,
Waiting till satyric sun-bursts rend away the crushing gloom.
Turn, and o'er the river mark that huge structure scowling dark :
It is black stone seamed with crimson, hopeless death with cruel gore :
In it stony jailers guard stony prisoners evil-starred ;
Dungeoned thus within their dungeon, they are calm and groan no more.
Note the temples every one — How the great gods are undone !
Not a steer or goat or doveling for their holy hunger dies :
Cold, long quenched their sacred fires ; dull, long dumb their flattering quires ;
All the very priesthood staring at rich gifts with stolid eyes !
Not a maid whose yielding charms can enrich a god's bold arms ;
Yet perchance they dwell contented though thus shorn of wealth and state :
Nectar-and-ambrosia-blest, they may bask in perfect rest,
Since (with marble joints and larynx) Man rests unimportunate !
Ha ! search eagerly around — every vault beneath the ground,
Every mansion, every chariot, every galley, everywhere ;
And for ever, ever find all this blissful human kind
Lifted up from clay's corruption into marble firm and fair:
Fear and shame and anguish stilled, every evil passion killed,
Crooked forms and ugly faces grown transcendent works of art ;
While the grand or lovely mood of the fair and young and good
Is beatified in beauty that can nevermore depart. . . .
And the full moon gazeth down on the smokeless lampless town,
In a solemn trance of triumph, with her choir of radiant stars ;
For their peace is vext no more by a curse-and- shriekswelled roar,
By ferocities, obscenities, inebriate brawls and jars :
Nay, the very grass and trees, and the disencumbered breeze,
And the stainless river-waters, and the broad bright glittering bay, —
Do they all joy that the strife of our sordid restless life
Is now locked in adamantine bonds of perfect peace for aye ?
Ever-loved and gracious Earth, Mystic Mother of our birth,
This is cruel, bitter, terrible, this joy in our dead rest !
Canst Thou still leap forth and run, glory-speeded round the Sun,
O Thou Niobe of World-stars, with Thy fairest and Thy best—
With Thy vigorous youthful darling lying stone-cold on
Thy breast !

XI.
The Palace gates stand open wide and free ;
The King and Queen and all their company,
Transfigured in full splendour of their pride,
Came flowing forth in one refulgent tide,
While trumpets rang their silver-throated blare
Of jubilation through the sunny air ;
Swept onward slowly 'neath the azure skies
Between the myriads of adoring eyes,
And poured into the Theatre's dense sea
Of many-billowed life triumphantly ;
As some grand river in the sunset shine
May pour its boon of gold and crimson wine,
Brimming the fulness of the purpled ocean
Which heaves and sparkles, murmuring proud emotion.
Gathered together, all awaited there
Such scenic storms as purify life's air ;
Whose scathless lightnings shimmer wildly grand,
Whose lofty thunders soothe sure peace more bland ;
And now, without a throb, without a breath,
They wait, all frozen into icy death.

XII.
O marble Monarch, far more awful now
Than when thy crown begirt a throbbing brow !
No tyrant ever lived so dire and dread
As He who sways the sceptre in thy stead ;
Never before on earth did any state
Beneath oppression cower thus desolate,
Thus utterly resigned to crushing Fate !
SILENCE broods ghastly on the dead realm's throne
Whatever life, in prayer, or sigh, or moan,
Would shake the Nightmare of his tyranny,
Shudders with anguish, horror, lunacy,
To feel its scorned and strangled pleadings creep
Like homeless spectres through the vacant deep,
And wither into nothingness at last —
Devoid of refuge, unrelieved, aghast.

XIII.
The Palace gates indeed stand open wide :
Perchance the stately sepulchre may hide
Some single life amidst the desolation,
Preserved alone in mystical salvation,
Entranced apart in holy contemplation ?
Pace up the steps, tread through the hall, — and see
In scattered groups all lounging listlessly
Those armoured gallants of the Royal Guard —
Poor fellows ! they have found it sadly hard
To make their stately moments speed along,
Though spurred with wine and gaming, jest and song,
Cruelly mulcted of their sumptuous share
In the great festival proceeding there.

XIV.
Haste on, haste on ; awaken from their tomb
The ghostly echoes, swarming through the gloom,
Haunting your footsteps, gathering rank on rank,
Rustling demoniac through the deadly blank ;
Better, far better that the air be rife
With weird deliriums of demoniac life,
Than void with utter idiotic death.
Haste on, with burning blood and breathless breath; —
How clear are all things round the rapid flight !
Shrouded in gloom or washed with pale moonlight,
The chemistry of terror thus intense
Burns them all lurid on the shrinking sense. —
See the mild maiden letting loose her soul
In tears and blushes o'er the tender scroll
Which plains his anguish since they two were parted,
And raves that she, poor thing, is stony-hearted.
Hurry from room to room, from hall to hall ;
And mark the effigies on every wall —
Warriors and minstrels, nobles, Kings, and priests,
Adoring, conquering, feasting royal feasts ;
Olympian forms, ladies divinely fair
With lily-sceptred hands and flower-crowned hair
See each and all ev'n as you hurry past
Burst into sudden life, and swarming fast
Join in the tingling chase through death and night,
While clamorous echoes voice their mad delight.

XV.
Most sweet young Mother ! thou hadst ample pleasure
Left quiet alone here with thine infant treasure ;
Which, poised unsurely on its feeble limbs,
Across the sea-strange marble toward thee swims, —
One foot half-lifted, while the arms outplead
For thine extended arms to help its need :
It stands, them kneelest ; never on thy breast
Shall it fall forward in. triumphant rest.

XVI.
Far in his lofty turret whence the bay
And half of Heaven's vault were seen alway ;
The bay, the distant ocean, and with these
Broad scope of temples streets and palaces,
The theatre, the square ; the moving throngs,
Whose converse-murmurs flashing into songs
And laughters winged with joy were wont to rise
And wander birdlike through the sun-tranced skies,
Rippling deliciously the languid air ;
Alone, yet not alone, the Sage dwelt there.
Doubtless his individual life required
In seeming solitude to be inspired
By constant intercourse with general life,
And with the universal Spirit rife
In Man and Nature, — One in all their forms,
Alike contented with its worlds and worms,
Through all its countless masks alike resplendent,
The Breath of Life, eternal and transcendent.

XVII.
He sits, the full-length statue of a Sage,
Amid the busts of those of every age
Who handed on the torch of Wisdom, bright
With growing splendour, 'thwart the billowy night
Of shoreless Ignorance. Before him lies
The roll which telleth on what mysteries
He shed its lustre till they shone out clear :
I trace its periods by the moonlight here.
It is with swelling reverence dedicate,
" Unto the King magnifical and great ;
The bounteous Sun by whom we live and move
And flourish ever : Who commands our love
Even more throughly than our perfect awe ;
Swaying His burning Throne by Heavenly law,
While lifted far — by nature as by birth —
Above the petty statutes of our earth :
Who while His warmth createth and sustaineth
Rich life in all, lights all ; and no less deigneth
To feed abundantly with life and light
What humble spheres may strive to temper night
In realms left dark while His imperial sway
Vouchsafed! happier realms their boon of day :
To Him, by Whom our heritage is grown
The flower o' the World; to Him whose godlike throne
Shall ever stand beside its subject sea,
Fulgent with valour, arts and equity,
Based on a princely people's love and bliss :
CHRYSANDROS, TYRANT OF COSMOPOLIS !"

XVIII.
Follow the problems which he hath resolved
Though heretofore in clouds of doubts involved :
" Shall this fair World consume in course of time ?
Our Earth is young ? or old ? or in her prime ? "
Whereto the Theses proud, less said than sung
In liberal phrases of his golden tongue :
" This glorious Universe shall live for ever ;
By all decay and death diminished never,
Nor added to by constant birth and growth ;
But in the balanced interchange of both,
Ascending slowly by successive stages
Of nobler Good and Beauty through the Ages ;
Until its infinite Ether and the Whole
Of stars and spheres that through it flashing roll
Shall be informed with conscious Life and Soul :
The All, one perfect Sphere, breathing one breath
Of cosmic Life too pure for birth or death. . . .
Our Earth has scarcely ceased to be a child,
Sweet in its grace, but ignorant and wild :
She putteth on about these very years
The bloom of maidenhood, whose smiles and tears
Are all of Love : she openeth out her heart
In throbs of passionate rapture, to impart
The dearest secrets of her treasured beauty
To Man, her Lord ; constrained by yearning duty
Which he shall recompense with wiser love :
How blest are we all previous men above,
Born in this Spring of her millennial Youth ! —
O gracious Truth, divine and tranquil Truth,
As I long years have worshipped only Thee,
Thou hast at length unveiled Thy face to me,
That I may ever of Thy priesthood be ! "

XIX.
I trace not further in the tingling scroll
The steps by which he reached this glorious goal.
It is too horrible : — alone, alone,
I make mad dalliance with the empty flesh,
Whose form is whole, whose ghastly bloom is fresh ;
And by my side, that hater of the soul —
The grinning, the accursed Skeleton !
It is too horrible — O dreadful God,
Thou know'st — only Thou,
What dismal paths my shuddering feet have trod ;
Yet never knew I agony until now ;
Never, — O Thou who heardst me when I said
Coldly and quietly, with confirming heart,
" I take thee, Misery, for my faithful Bride :
Despair hath smoothed the secret marriage-bed
Wherein we two, embracing close, may hide,
And wreak our stern unwitnessed vow —
Never in life, nor after death, to part.
I love thee for the love which only Thou
Dost bear me : Thy caresses
Sting my faint heart, Thy kisses on my brow
Are fire and numbing frost, Thy tingling tresses
Like serpents creep about me even now.
O my enamoured Darling, deadly sweet !
Sorcery smitten Sorceress !
Queen of lurid loveliness !
Most tender-hearted ministrant of ill !
My life, my soul is lying at your feet ;
Possess me, use me, at your own wild will ! "

XX.
O fool, fool, fool ! cherishing fatal madness !
Mad with self-consciousness of guilt and woe,
Mad with the folly of the world's much gladness
While it was no less sunk in guilt and woe ;
I shut myself up from the lives around me,
Eating my own foul heart — envenomed food ;
And while dark shadows more and more enwound me,
Nourished a dreary pride of solitude ;
The cords of sympathy which should have bound me
In sweet communion with earth's brotherhood,
I drew in tight and tighter still around me,
Strangling my best existence for a mood.
What — Solitude in midst of a great City,
In midst of crowded myriads brimmed with Life ! —
When every tear of anguish or of pity,
When every shout of joy and scream of strife,
When every deed and word and glance and gesture,
Every emotion, impulse, secret thought
Pent in the soul from all material vesture,
Through all those myriads spread and interwrought ;
Inspiring each the air with its own spirit,
Rayed forth as light is from a fount intense ;
The universal ./Ether forced to bear it,
A certain though mysterious influence
Affecting duly every other creature
That breathed its breath of life ; for good or ill,
For pain or pleasure, acting on each nature,
Beyond the consciousness, despite the will.
Dire Vanity ! to think to break the union
That interweaveth strictly soul with soul
In constant, sane, life-nourishing communion :
The rivers ever to the ocean roll,
The ocean-waters feed the clouds on high
Whose rains descending feed the flowing rivers :
All the world's children must how quickly die
Were they not all receivers and all givers !

XXI.
But this is Solitude, O dreadful Lord !
My spirit starves in this abysmal air —
Of every human word,
Of sigh and moan, of music and of prayer,
Of passionate heart-beats felt though never heard,
So utterly stript bare :
The awful heavens are tranquil and divine,
Serene and saintly in their purple deep
The moon and young stars shine ;
No living souls beneath their influence leap,
No other eyes are fixed on them with mine :
Men said that Death and Sleep
Are brothers ; — yes, as lurid lightnings may
Be kindred to the glory of calm day,
Or darkness of the restful night-tide boon
The Soul is murdered ; and her world bereft
By some dire doom still left,
A fadeless corpse whose perfect form is rife
"With ghastly affectations of true life."

XXII.
How long, how long, I cowered beside the Sage ;
Whose head was lifted, fronting full the skies
In tranquil triumph from his victory lone.
Beneath that broad brow rough with thought and age,
The pitiless light-beams glittered on his eyes,
Like fatal swords flashed keen against a stone
To sharpen them for piercing to the heart, —
How was his triumph smitten, pierct, and slain !
But cowering there apart,
Upon those swelling eyeballs, that stern head,
I ever gazed ; while in my burning brain
A cold thought soothing spread :
As one who drains a poison-chalice slowly.
In fixed and infinite longing to be dead ;
So let my yearning vision cleave amain
To this grand marble image melancholy,
Till I have drunken in to the last drain
That poisonous Spirit of Death which fills it wholly. . . .
The flesh that crept like worms is growing numb ;
The raging fire of blood is dying cold ;
The rout of fiendish thoughts are almost dumb :
The heavens fade like a Vision cycles-old,
Where from dead eyes gaze thoughts uncomprehended :
Thank God, I soon shall cease to be alone ;
My mad discordant life is nearly blended
With all this realm's unsuffering death of stone.

PART II.

THE JUDGMENTS.

I.
A multitudinous roaring of the ocean !
Voices of sudden and earthquaking thunder
From the invisible mountains !
The heavens are broken up and rent asunder
By curbless lightning-fountains,
Streaming and darting through that black commotion,
In which the moon and stars are swallowed with the sky.
Throughout the Mausolean City spread
Drear palpitations, long-drawn moan and sigh ;
And then — an overwhelming whirlwind blast ?
Or else, indeed, the irrepressible cry
Of all its statues waking up aghast !
Doth God in final Judgment come thus heralded ?

II.
I saw Titanic forms dark, solemn, slow,
Like thunderclouds imperious o'er the wind
Sweep far with haughty tramplings to and fro ;
I heard great voices peal and trumpets blow :
Strange fragments of their chanting shook my mind.

" If the owl haunts doleful ruins and lives in the sombre night,
Could it joy in the cheerful homes of men, could it love the noonday light ?
If the serpent couches in jungles and deserts of burning sand,
Would it rather cast its slough in the peopled corn-rich land?
If the great bear prowls alone in desolate wastes of ice,
Could it joy to range in herded power through a tropic
Paradise ?
If the vulture gorges on carrion and all abhorrent things,
Would it rather slake with fruits and wine the rush of its obscene wings ?

" We sought through the archives of Fate, through all the records of Doom,
Records of noontide refulgence, records of lightning-seared gloom :
And lo, we have never found while the highth and the depth we explored,
We have never yet traced out Punishment or Reward.
" Peace may be happy and sweet ; bitter and heart-tending Strife ;
Sin is corruption and death, Virtue is health and life :
But every being is placed in that sphere, in that crisis, that spot,
Which alone its own nature demands and asserts for its
As itself from itself its web the spider spins out,
Doth each all the net of relations which weave it about :
The sun shines the sun by the lustre he lavishes forth ;
For his might and his life and his light circles round him the earth :
All the World — this infinite azure robe sphere-spangled sublime,
In which God walks forth revealed and veiled to the creatures of Space and Time,
Is all interwoven in one (each atom, each star, as each soul,
Evolving so duly the threads of its work for its part in the Whole) :
With a woof and warp of might and light and mysteries all is wrought,
For the many-figured many-hued being and passion and thought.

" Here hath a spirit full bliss to breathe ever-bland golden air;
Here hath a spirit wild hurrying storms of doubt, dread, anguish, despair :
For the world-realms are swept on their path for ever, through day and night ;
And their course is advanced no less, no more, in the gloom than in the light :
And the journey is infinite truly, — through every various clime
Do the countless myriads wander on, through every season of time ;
Cool water for him in the desert-blaze, red fire for him in the frost,
Languor for him in the summer-peace, fierce heart for the tempest-tost :
While all whence they know not whither they know not wend;
Who appraiseth the means and progress, who conceiveth the end ?
But we swear by the Life Eternal, we swear by Eternal
Death,
We swear by the Fate supreme which rules in every pulse and breath ;
That strong or weak, simple or wise, polluted or most holy
Each each day is fed with the food befitting him fully and solely."

III.
Again deep peace, again the stars and moon :
I stood between the theatre and square,
Beholding as before the statues there
Unstirred and silent in the lethal swoon.

Lo ! in the empyrean grew a light —
A great and awful Splendour, through its shroud
Of fold on fold of massy thundercloud
Intensely burning down with steadfast might.

Wherefrom a Voice descended vast and lone ;
Of thunder-dreadfulness, of sea-fierce anger,
Yet in its lofty silver-volumed clangour
DESTROYED UTTERLY ;

Instantly shudderings shook the stony crowd ;
Some rigid arms with writhing spasms were lifted,
Some dungeon-throats with frenzy-spasms rifted
By hideous strangled voices shrieking loud :

Abominable Fate,
We hurl thee back thy hate !
The poison and the wine —
Our sins' and souls are thine !
Ah ! pangs of utter death
Stifle our breath —
Hear us ; we plead ; hear us ; oh, wait ! "

No answer came save trumpet-voices blaring
Death and destruction as in furious fray ;
And while those forms gasped out their cry despairing
They sank down crumbling into dusty spray.
Then, as the trumpet clamours died away,
Did crash on crash in clear succession sound,
Like lingering peals of thunder ; each the knell
Of house or column falling to the ground
In sudden ruin, as those statues fell.

And next, as if the solid hills were all
Disseated now to glide tremendously
Over the town and plunge athwart the sea,
A mass of gloom enveloped in its pall
Temple and palace, basement dome and spire ;
Then o'er the marble crowd submerging came :
Its black oppression burned throughout my frame,
A torture of intolerable fire.
Yet when at length its ponderous bulk was rolled
Over the shrinking waters out of sight,
The City and the steadfast statues white
Stood all unchanged about me ; but, behold,
The uttered condemnation had been wrought
Upon the ruined fragments, — they were naught.

IV.
That cloud-consuming fire still held the sky,
Blotting its worlds out wholly ; while the sphere
Seemed listening breathless in an awful fear,
Till that great Voice again rang forth on high :

"WHEN NOW THE SAPLESS TREE BEARS BLOOM NOR
FRUIT,
WHY LINGER TRUNK AND ROOT?

With nerveless gestures pitiful to see
They moaned their helpless hopeless litany,
" We lived, we lived, O great and dreadful Lord ! "

Then as they crumbled into dust away,
The Answer speeded from the hills behind, —
A noise of rushing like a mighty wind :

The ashen fire-flood in a tempest grey
Hissed through the City and the wan array ;
And hurrying o'er the sea, as if its might
With grim joy hasted to fulfil such trust,
Swept all the human and palatial dust.
To irretrievable Chaos, Death and Night.

And when that deadly storm of fire was past,
A Voice came roaring like its final blast :

" WHOSE VIRTUE CANNOT PAY THEIR LIFE'S EXPENSE,
WHOSE SOULS ARE LOST IN SENSE,
THEY ARE NO MORE; THEMSELVES WITH GOD HAVE
WILLED, —
THEIR .EON is FULFILLED."

V.
Once more that fire possessing sole the sky,
Once more deep silence o'er the lessened throng
Of waiting statues ; and it lasted long
Ere that great Voice again pealed forth on high :

SURES
HE MUST DESCEND FROM HIS EXALTED PLACE :
YET, IF IN DEEP DISGRACE
HE DO NOT SINK STILL DEEPER, TILL HIS BREATH
BE WHOLLY QUENCHED IN DEATH ;
BUT LEARN TO BUILD AGAIN HIS KINGLY HEART,
THE THRONE AWAITS HIM AND THE KINGLY PART."

Ah ! what a multitude of statues then
Were shaken by the thunder of this doom ! —
" O Lord ! all perish if Thou wilt consume
In justice ! Lord have mercy on frail men ! "

Ev'n as the crash of smitten structures roared
The answering Judgment-terrors filled the sky :
Inexorably swift it streamed and poured
A red-fire deluge from that cloud on high,
Which drowned the City and the multitude,
Devouring all the space from hills to sea.
Hissing and roaring the resistless flood
Plunged through the trembling earth, in haste to flee
With its vast ravage ; and the earth gaped wide
To swallow in that cup of wrath amain,
Then gnashed her seared and riven jaws to hide
What shook her yet with shuddering throbs of pain.
How many had become the torrent's prey,
Swept down abrupt into some lower sphere !
But of the rest — can vision cheat me here ?
What forms are these amidst the wan array
Of human marble ? Strange new stony forms —
These serpents, panthers, wolves, these apes and swine,
Vultures and hawks and owls, with sheep and kine,
And many others, brutes and birds and worms,
Couched in unutterably piteous rest,
The sorcery of that Judgment-fire attest.

VI.
No more wild agonies shook the steadfast Earth :
That night of cloud, unable to sustain
Its soul of fire, was withering ; when again
Upon the silence that great Voice flowed forth :
" WHEN HE WHO SHOULD HAVE TRAVELLED ALL THE
DAY,
Whereunto statue-voices low implored :
" Free human fellowship is very sweet ;
Bitter with our own kind as foes to meet —
Heavy the load of uncompanioned life !
Alas, we are so weary-sick of strife !
Grant us awhile Thy perfect peace, O Lord ! "
The humble plaining of that saddest prayer,
Relapsing into stony silentness,
So filled my heart that I was unaware
Until surrounded by its sway and stress,
How the deep Ocean rushing from its lair
Bellowed against the hillslopes planted broad ;
While fierce from sea-vast cloudglooms in the air,
Blazoned with dreadful sentences of God
In writhed and quivering lightnings wrought, the rain
Intense of swerveless thunderbolts streamed down,
Crashing amidst the ruins of the town,
And shrieking through the loud inundant main.

VII.
The flood below, the flood above ebbed soon
Completely ; fair and still the green earth lay,
Beneath a heaven surcharged with tenfold day,
More holy-sweet of lustre than the moon.
I gazed : the statues stood there as before,
Like dateless boulders by the old sea-shore :
But of the City's vast palatial pride
Of all the works of Man on every side —
The theatre's stupendous cirque of tiers,
The pharos and the galleons and the piers,
Remained no vestige ; save that here and there,
Bathed in the sea of crystal-lucent air,
Some fragment wall, some column cleft stood dim,
More like strange rocks than structures reared by Him.
Had that swift deluge been the stream of Time,
And every billow some vast age sublime,
Over the vacant City flowing ever
Until a mind should swoon in the endeavour
Such infinite cycles of its course to mete,
ERASURE had been scarcely more complete.

VIII.
The cloud was vanished from the perfect sky ;
Heaven earth and sea all floated from my sight,
Bathed in a dimness of exceeding light
Too pure, intense, and calm for mortal eye.

And yet I saw as we may see in trance, —
Saw how a gradual change beatified
The statues who had never yet replied
When those dread Judgments took dread utterance.

As Memnon woke to music with the dawn,
They in the solemn splendour seemed to rouse
From death to life, with glory on their brows ;
A calm grand life, eyes shut and breath undrawn.

The crystal sea of sky then streamed away,
The inmost Heavens revealed themselves abroad :
A Throne . . . the Vision of the Living God . . .
Ravished and blind upon the earth I lay.

Once more a Voice descended vast and lone,
The Voice of Infinite Love Omnipotent ;
Sweeter than life or death, it swelled and blent
The Universe all tuned into one tone :

" THE SOLDIER WHO HAS FOUGHT THE NOBLE FIGHT,
PERSISTENT FOR THE RIGHT,
ENDURING ALL AND DARING ALL TO PROVE
HlS GLAD UNPURCHASED LOVE
AND FAITHFULNESS, IN TRIUMPH AND DEFEAT :
WHAT DOOM FOR HIM is MEET ?

THE BATTLE, WITH THE DAY IT FILLED, is DONE ;
THE FIELD is LOST OR WON :
BY HOLY VISIONS BLEST ;
THAT ON THE MORROW HE MAY RISE UP STRONG
HOPEFUL AND FRESH AND YOUNG,
HlS SHARP WOUNDS HEALED, TO DO AND DARE ONCE MORE
HEROIC AS BEFORE,
BUT WITH A LOFTIER RANK, WITH NOBLER POWER,
WlTH FAR MORE GENEROUS DOWER.
AND SO FOR EVER THROUGH THE NlGHTS AND DAYS
WHILE HE REMAINETH LORD OF HIS OWN PRAISE,
HE MAY GO ON, EXALTED MORE AND MORE,
TlLL FINAL TRIUMPH CROWN THE FATEFUL WAR ;
TILL LOVE AND LIFE AND BLISS (WHICH ONCE WAS
FAITH)
HAVE VANQUISHED WHOLLY EVIL, FALSEHOOD, DEATH ;
THE LOFTIEST STATION THAT HIS SOUL CAN FILL,
THE UTMOST SWAY COMMENSURATE WITH HIS WILL,
THE ALL OF WISDOM THAT HE CAN BELIEVE,
OF LOVE AND GOODNESS THAT HE CAN RECEIVE,
AND HIM WHO REIGNS ETERNALLY THEREON."

IX.
I heard it all, — there prostrate on the ground ;
I floated in the Voice as in a sea,
Or as a cloud may float dissolvingly
Within the sapphire noontide's burning bound.

And when it ebbed it left my shrinking soul
To shudder back into its cave of clay,
Blind, hopeless, one dead atom fallen astray
From vital union in and with the Whole.

After a time, from such fierce consciousness
Of personal being as is lunacy —
As not to know is perfectly to be —
I was withdrawn by human utterances :

" O Lord ! let us be hidden, let us die !
Thy love and wisdom are too infinite !
We throb unpeaceful in Thy perfect light,
Star-specks of gloom no Sun can glorify.

" Were we less dark than our old midnight sphere,
Transplant us not into Thy blinding day.
Lord, we adore Thee, Perfect, Sole, for aye —
Our sins and weakness crush our spirits here ! "

X.
No answer sounded. I arose and stood.
The gates of Heaven were shut, the Vision gone :
But still undimmed miraculously shone
That tenfold noon of glareless sanctitude.

They stood — the Spirits who had conquered life ;
Erect, yet pleading, hands uplifted, there ;
Glorious — yet wan with that divine despair :
Was this the crowning issue of the strife ?

The noble faces slowly turned to where
The dim hills floated, exquisitely drawn
Or interfused, like breathless streaks of dawn,
Upon the breathless ocean of wide air.

Thereon uplifted stood a lofty band ;
Some burning with the glory of their wings ;
Some golden-crowned and purple-robed like Kings ;
Some clad in white, a palm-branch in the hand ;

Some like stern warriors armed with shield and sword ;
Some swaying crystal cups in which the fire
Of red wine quivered ; while a radiant quire
Striking their harps sang loud with sweet accord.

XI.
" Dear Friends, come ! we wait for you ;
Strong and wise and pure and true.
Why, alas, ascend so few ?

" Where are the myriads that should now be here ?
How have they wasted all the lavish dower
With which God fitted them to rule their sphere —
The Passion and the Vision and the Power ?
For ever hoping, disappointed ever,
We know too well the constant tragic doom :

Vision hath seen, with scarce a work-endeavour,
Then closed its eyes for more voluptuous gloom ;
Passion hath disenshrined the awful soul,
Its large heart tempting fatal fleshly lusts ;
And Power hath shaken off divine control,
To gorge itself with universal trusts.

" For the undone Many, ruth.
Ye have conquered, true to truth ;
Dare our wine of Joy and Youth.

" The tree whose trunk and branches dark and bare
Withstood the storms of Winter, planted strong ;
Doth glorify itself in summer's air
With leaf and fruit and nested bird's blithe song :
The earth-realm labouring blind and dumb and cheerless,
Yet ever onward, through the reign of night ;
Leaps forth with joy majestically fearless
Into the pure new heaven of morning light.
Again stern Winter with its storms shall come,
But find the tree grown stronger 'gainst its wrath ;
Again the night-gloom, weary, blind and dumb,
But find the realm far forward on its path.

" Then dear Friends, come, come away !
Now is Summer, now is Day.
Joy assumes imperial sway ! "

XII.
As when the warm spring-breezes overblow
Some silent, frozen, melancholy main,
Its waters heave and throb and rend their chain,
And singing in the sunbeams flash and flow :

So with the breathing of that gracious song
Those Spirits burst their trance of silent sadness ;
Their bosoms heaved with glorious life and gladness ;
Clear-eyed, erect, full-voiced, advanced their throng :

" O Brothers of this Heaven supreme and glorious !
O Sisters of this greeting full of love !
Into what a dawn of perfect day victorious,
Do ye usher us, and welcome us above !
The World o'erflows with life serene and tender ;
The air, the light is all celestial wine ;
Our inmost soul is interfused with splendour
And harmony divine !

" As birds the boundless azure sky-deep winging,
As breezes flowing round and round the earth,
As flowers into the vernal welcome springing,
As fountains leaping seaward bright with mirth ;
Our thoughts throughout Infinity float chainless,
Our souls encompass spheres of life sublime,
Our beings thrill and glow with new life stainless,
Our swift joy laughs at Time !

" The worlds go wheeling far their cycled courses, —
From the fathomless Unbirth of the Abyss,
By golden laws attuning counter-forces
Built up into the noonday Heaven of Bliss :
And pervading all, sustaining all, enwreathing
With Its infinite embrace beneath, above,
The Ether — the Divine eternal breathing
Of Life and Light and Love ! " .

XIII.
So singing they advanced with measured pace ;
And like a silver morning-mist were drawn
Slow floating up the hillside wood and lawn,
Unto that high seraphical embrace.

All stood triumphant, beautiful, divine,
Between the heaven and earth ; all stood there bright;
Informed, transfigured with the holy light
As crystal cups with sacramental wine.

I would have stood there evermore and gazed
Entranced in adoration, consciousless,
Upon that beauty of all holiness
In human forms embodied and upraised.

Alas ! the universal light too soon
Was fading, flowing backward to its fount,
Until they stood upon that sombre mount
Sole-shining o'er the dark earth as a moon.

And still the glory-stream flowed back to God ;
And they with it were floated up the sky ;
Whose gates shut blank against my straining eye,
And left the earth a dark and soulless clod —

Left all the earth like some most desolate shore
Wherefrom has ebbed the free and living tide ;
And left me stranded on its dark waste wide,
A wreck to be recovered nevermore.

O Life ! this is thy deepest woe of all —
That as a soul regains its heaven of birth,
The body drags it swooning back to earth,
Stunned, hopeless, blind with its tremendous fall.

XIV.
When I arose the ever ancient Night
Filled with his sombre pomp the earth and sky :
No memories of that doom of dire affright
Perturbed the calm ; and undismayed on high
The moon and stars where they had shone before
Shone on in cold and stern sublimity.
The hills loomed dark upon the silent shore,
Round which the waves in thoughtful monotone
Rolled their old voice of Ever — evermore.
A royal City dwelt upon this throne, —
And what now left of all its wealth and pride ?
A few strange groups of pallid-gleaming stone !
But Nature cares not for the ruin wide,
Her dreaming beauty glows in perfect bloom :
Most cold, imperial, unlamenting Bride,
Her Lord and Bridegroom scarcely in the tomb. . .
The moon sank slowly down from heaven's crest ;
Pale radiance lined and flecked the eastern gloom ;
A stir, a breathing thrilled the world's deep rest ;
No wakening bird, half-wakened, here and there
Uttered uncertain warning from its nest ;
But spread a cold and fresh and fragrant air,
That seemed with lifeful breath to cleanse away
The grosser shades and vapours everywhere,
And all memorials of the night's dismay,
That pure and odorous the earth might greet
The first divine embraces of the Day,
Now hurrying up the heavens with fiery feet,
The crown of burning gold upon his head,
Cloud-robed with gold and purple* light and heat . .
Ages on ages in their course have shed
Ruin of fire and tempest on the earth,
Uncounted aeons of her sons are dead ;
Yet she exults with aboriginal mirth,
Nor feels her frame grow weak, her blood grow cold,
But pure and strong and young as at her birth
When first God's hand her glorious path outrolled :
For day by day He seals her with His sign —
Night's tomb is rent, the gates of heaven unfold
To let the ever-youngest Dawn divine,
Bathe her in balms of sempiternal youth.
I think no human soul which here doth pine
In personal anguish and with general ruth,
Without these Dawn-evangels fresh from God
Could feel its immortality a truth.
Dear are all dawns ; but this that coming trod
The eastern heavens to kiss the earth's pale brow
With heavenly benedictions, when the rod
Of the Avenging Justice was but now
Withdrawn from penal smitings dire ! — what speech
That mortals use, what words of lofty vow
Or soaring chant can emulate and reach
The awe, the bliss, the gratitude, the love,
That saving dawn brought with it from above ?

XV.
What a dawn ascendeth fair through the pure and silent air,
Fain to greet with holy rapture what a glorious virgin
Earth !
From her sins and fears and woes, from her memories, by the throes
Of a fierce regeneration born anew in perfect birth !
But what forms, what forms are they, there between the sea-loved bay
And the spiritual hills with the woods that clothe their feet;
Human forms erect in power, beasts that crouch and birds that cower,
But all wrought in fadeless marble, white and shining, pure and sweet?
Lo ! as ever more and more broadening out the dawn doth soar,
Kindling emerald purple golden quivering splendours round her way ;
What a flush — as if of Life kindling with triumphant strife
Through the torpid marble — fires them, though they all so steadfast stay !
Lo ! as ever more and more music with the dawn doth soar,
Breezes whisper, leaflets murmur, waters warble joy for day ;
What a thrill — as if of Life stirring with triumphant strife
Through the rigid marble — heaves them, though they all so silent stay !
These are forms that couch and stand, still as marble fountains grand,
Still in meek victorious patience, till the Sea of Life arise ;
Till the World-sustaining Sea, Soul of all Eternity,
Once more fill them with Its waters of the Life that never dies.
When the Royal Sun shall leap glorious on yon eastern steep,
Gazing grand athwart this province of his measureless domains ;
Straightway at that conquering sign, straightway at that glance divine,
Soul shall fill them, stone encarnate, life-blood gush through all their veins.
And this Nature which doth dream in Titanic sloth supreme,
Hill and river, wood and meadow, heaven of azure, careless sea,
Shall have all its want fulfilled, strength employed and bosom thrilled
By a lordly domination — soul and thought and passion free.
Oh, that these who in this hour shall attain such solemn dower,
Consecrated Lords and Bridegrooms wedding this fair virgin Earth,
Have such holy strength of will, love faith truth unquenchable,
Wisdom, justice, making concord of inheritance and worth,
As shall give a nobler being from the blissful marriage birth !

XVI.
As one who in the morning-shine
Reels homeward, shameful, wan, adust,
From orgies wild with fiery wine
And reckless sin and brutish lust :
And sees a doorway open wide,
And then the grand Cathedral space ;
And hurries in to crouch and hide
His trembling frame, his branded face.
The organ-thunders surge and roll
And thrill the heights of branching stone ;
They shake his mind, they crush his soul
His heart knells to them with a moan :
He hears the voice of holy prayer,
The chanting of the fervent hymn ;
They pierce his depths of sick despair,
He trembles more, his eyes are dim.

He sees the world-wide morning flame
Through windows where in glory shine
The saints who fought and overcame,
The martyrs who made death divine :
He sees pure women bent in prayer,
Communing low with God above : —
Too pure ! what right has he to share
Their silent feast of sacred love ?

How can he join the songs of praise ?
His throat is parched, his brain is wild :
How dare he seek the Father's gaze,
Thus hopeless, loveless, and defiled ?
How taint the pureness — though he yearn
To join such fellowship for aye ? . . .
He creeps out pale — May he return
Some time when he shall dare to stay !

As he within that holy fane,
Was I upon that solemn shore ;
One murky cloud, one spoiling stain,
One jarring note, — all these and more :
A Spectre from the wicked Past,
Familiar with the buried years ;
The joys that fade, the griefs that last,
The baffled hopes, the constant fears ;

The fair, fair dawn of many a day
That sinks in storm-clouds red and wild ;
The souls that in their huts of clay
Are crushed and buried, all defiled ;
The Lusts that rage like savage steeds,
While Will with reinless hand sleeps on,
And drunken Thought but goads their speeds, -
Then one mad plunge, and all is gone ;

The Moods that strew palm-branches now
And with Hosannas fill the sky,
Then shortly crown with thorns the brow
And mock and scourge and crucify ;
The error, guile and infamy,
The waste of foul and bloody strife,
The unforeseen catastrophe,
That make the doleful drama, Life.

Ah, what had I to do with these
Young lovely souls serene and clear,
Awaking up by fine degrees
To life unsullied as its sphere ?
The Spectre that has roamed forlorn,
Sin-restless, through the sombre night ;
Must creep to its old grave at morn,
Nor blot the world of life and light.

XVII.
Where I had left it, on the lonely strand,
Uninjured lay my boat, and lovely ; seeming
Some fair sea-creature, of the midsea dreaming
To light foam-whispers on the yellow sand.

While yet we skimmed the wavelets of the bay,
Methought there rose, ev'n as the sun arose,
A vehement Chorus hurrying to its close —
Fresh as the breath of the awakened day.

With vital fires the morning seemed to glow
While it rang onward like a trumpet-blast
Of keen reveille crying : NIGHT is PAST !

The stars for ever sweep through space, surrounding
Their sun-kings and God's central hidden Throne
With splendour and deep music far-resounding,
Though heard by pure celestial ears alone :
Their music chants His lofty praise for ever,
Their splendours burn to Him the Light Divine ;
In their grand uneager motions pausing never,
They live and sing and shine.

Eternally they sweep on their vast courses,
With solemn joy fulfilling His behest ;
While the balance of stupendous counter-forces
Buildeth up a stable Infinite of rest.
And the Ether, breathing life through vast pulsations,
Thrills with rapture to their God-supported flight ;
And its waves against the rushing constellations
Break in the foam of light.

Each world-sphere groweth grandly through the ages
From its lifeless weltering unsubstantial birth,
Through unnumbered fiery throes and cyclic stages
Till it shines in heaven a life -abounding earth ;
Till its vapours are green fields and glorious oceans,
Till with countless living beings it is rife :
By harmony constraining dread commotions
It is crowned and thronged with life.

Until conscious, doubting, worshipping Immortals,
As they journey on their infinite Life-way,
Passing through its Birth and Death mysterious portals
Inform with spirit-fire the clothing clay :
And the dead, spectral, consciousless Material
Is a dwelling-place for essences divine ;
Throbs with thought and passion deathlessly ethereal,
A Heaven-honoured shrine.

All spirits from their infancy's blind sleeping
Must struggle to a strong and noble prime
Through sins, dangers, anguish, terrors, — ever reaping
Costly fruits in every season of swift Time :
From their fountain in its deepest dark foundation,
Glory-shrouded in the shadow of God's Throne,
Through all worlds to their highest soaring station
By unrest all have grown.

Life is only by perpetual on-flowing ;
Torpid rest is the true life-devouring death ;
Through stern struggles all things ever are upgrowing ;
Sighs and meanings prove a vital-throbbing breath.
One alone — Eternal, Infinite, All-holy,
Is in changeless rest ; the Perfect grows nor grew :
Finite souls and all things live by progress solely,
All are but what they do.

PART III.

THE RETURN.

I.
Long tranquil days one more than seven'
The beamless sun from out the main
Went burning through the vault of Heaven,
And circled to the deep again :
While day by day in dreamful ease
We glided o'er the glistening seas.

Long calm autumnal nights just seven
The moon with all her starry train
Went shining through the vault of Heaven,
And circled to the deep again :
While night by night in dreamful ease
We glided o'er the glimmering seas.

Long days so rich in rest, so still ;
As warm as love, as calm as truth ;
Long nights which did those days fulfil,
As some sweet girl a fervent youth :
While day and night in dreamful ease
We floated o'er the silent seas.

Time set within his circled sky
A topaz sun, a diamond moon,
And thick star-pearls, and made thereby
A marriage-ring of blissful boon ;
With which in ever-dreamful ease
We floated o'er the happy seas.

Did Nature sleep, and dream in sleep
Of all the Spring and Summer toil
Her children were about to reap, —
The wealth of corn and wine and oil :
As day and night in dreamful ease
We floated o'er the sleeping seas ?

Or was it her deep-thoughted mood ;
A little sad, such loss had been ;
And grieved, the dear Past seemed so good ;
Yet proud, triumphant and serene :
As day and night in dreamful ease
We floated o'er the solemn seas ?

I lay in one long trance of rest
And contemplation, — free from thought
Of Future issue, worst or best
To be from Past and Present wrought :
While day and night in dreamful ease
We glided o'er the tranced seas.

II.
Before me, in the drowsy night outspread,
The City whence in anguish I had fled
A vast dark Shadow loomed :
So still, so black, it gloomed,
It seemed the darkness of a great abyss
Gulphed in a desert bare ;
Around whose precipice
Dim lamps burnt yellow in the vacant air,
Lifted on high portentous. Yet to me
Its dark suggestions were of Life, not Death ;
Its awful mass of life oppressed my soul :
The very air appeared no longer free,
But dense and sultry in the close controul
Of such a mighty cloud of human breath.
The shapeless houses and the monstrous ships
Were brooding thunderclouds that could eclipse
The burning sun of day ;
Surcharged with storms of such electric life,
Keen as the lightning to its chosen prey,
Curbless and dreadful when aroused to strife. .
Who once has gazed upon the face of Death
Confounds no more its calm with calmest Sleep ;
The terror of that beauty shadoweth
His spirit with an influence too deep.

III.
And while I gazed upon the sleeping City,
And pondered its unnumbered destinies,
A flood of awe and fear and love and pity
Swelled in my heart and overflowed my eyes
With unexpected tears.
The burden of the message I had brought
From that great City far across the sea
Lay heavy on my soul ; as if for years
And years I had been wandering wearily
In travail with it : now the time was spent ;
Now, as a cloud with fire and thunder fraught,
I must give birth with throes of agony,
And perish in the bearing. So I leant
Back in the boat, all desolate and distraught,
Pangs shuddering through the faintness of cold fears :
Death passed his hand across my brow ; but went
To lay its plenary pressure on some heart
That throbbed true life — 'for this poor pulse,' thought
He,
' Is not worth quelling ' — I watched him depart
Bearing all peace with him ; when suddenly
That Spirit which will never be withstood
Came down and shook and seized and lifted me, —
As men uplift a passive instrument
Through which to breathe whatever fits their mood,
Stately triumphal march or war-note dread,
Anthem, gay dance, or requiem for the dead ;
And through my lips with irrepressible might
Poured forth its own stern language on the night.

IV.
" Haughty and wealthy and great, mighty, magnificent, free,
Empress in thine own right of the earth-surrounding sea !
Broad and deep flows the river that feedeth thy mighty heart,
Bringing from all the zones to crowd thine imperial mart
Of all their produce the best — their silks, their gems, their gold,
Their fruits and corn and wine, their luxuries thousandfold:
Thy merchants are palaced princes, thy nobles scorn great kings,
Thy meanest children swell with pride beneath thy shadowing wings ;
And thy voice throughout the world, complacently serene,
Proclaims ' Of all my Sisters, I am the rightful Queen !
This one is blind, this deaf, and that other is but a mute ;
This one is fair indeed, but drunken and dissolute ;
This is a very slave, dishonoured long ago ;
This one is dying of age, that other of want and woe ;
This one is proud and great, but a heathen in her soul,
And subject to fatal frenzies, raging beyond control :
But I, I am rich and strong, I am wise and good and free ;
Throned above them, Empress sole of the earth-surrounding Sea ! '

" Yes, indeed thy power is great, but thy evil is great no less,
And thy wealth is poor to pay the debt of thy guiltiness ;
And the world is judged with justice, and thou must pass through that fire
Which hath tested so sternly the glitter of Venice and
Carthage and Tyre :
For no wealth can bribe away the doom of the Living
God,
No haughtiest strength confront the sway of His chastening rod.
Repent, reform, or perish ! the Ages cry unto thee :
Listen, oh listen, ere yet it be late, thou swarthy Queen of the Sea !
" Thy heritage vast and rich is ample to clothe and feed
The whole of thy millions of children beyond all real need;
One of the two main wheels whereon thy Faith doth move
Is that each as he loves himself so shall he his neighbour love:
But thy chief social laws seem strictly framed to secure
That one be corruptingly rich, another bitterly poor,
And another just starving to death : thy fanes and mansions proud
Are beleaguered with filthy hovels wherein poor wretches crowd,
Pining in body and soul ; untaught, unfed by those
Who are good if they merely dribble bland alms upon fatal woes —
Resigning scarcely aught of their pleasure and pride and content,
Nor dreaming that all their life is one huge embezzlement.

" The sumptuous web of thy trade encompassing all the globe
Is fretted by gambling greed like a moth-eaten robe,
Is slimed by creeping fraud, is poisoned by falsehood's breath,
Is less a garment of life than a shroud of rotting death.
"The mass of thy rulers live with scarcely one noble aim,
Scarcely one clear desire for a not inglorious fame ;
Slaves to a prudence base, idolaters unto Might,
Jailers of lofty zeal, infidels to pure Right,
Deaf to the holy voice of the Conscience of the World,
Blind to the banner of God when it floats in the storm unfurled ;
They, and with them the array of thine actual Priesthood, thy proud
And numberless Father-confessors, — ineffable crowd
Of scribes who by day and by night, unceasingly blatant, dictate
Thine every move in the contest with Time the Servant of Fate.

" Thy flaring streets each night affront the patient skies
With an holocaust of woes, sins, lusts and blasphemies ;
When thy thousands of harlots abroad with the other thousands are met
Of those who made them first and who keep them harlots yet :
So dreadful, that thou thyself must sometimes look for the fire
That rained from heaven on Sodom to make thee one funeral pyre.
" Thy Church has long been becoming the Fossil of a
Faith ;
The Form of dry bones thou hast, but where are the blood and breath ?
Dry bones, that seem a whole, with dead sinews binding the parts,
Inert save when bejuggled to ghastly galvanic starts :
Though thou swearest to thy people, ' The King is but sick, not dead ' —
Gaining the time while you choose you another in His stead ;
Though thy scribes and thy placemen all, most of whom know the fact,
Vouchsafe in His name to write, pretend by His will to act :
Where are the signs of His life ? — While living He never ceased
To thrill with the breath of His being thy realm from the
West to the East ;
While He lived He fought with sin, with fleshly lust and pride ;
While He lived His poor and mean were wealthy and dignified ;
While He lived His reign was freedom, faith, chastity, peace and love ;
And the symbol borne on his banner was not the raven but dove ;
While He lived there yawned a Hell with a Devil for his foes,
And a God-ruled Heaven of triumph before his followers rose ;
While He lived the noblest of men were wholly devoted to Him,
The saints, the bards, the heroes, in soul and mind and limb, —
Who now without a Leader, mournful in silence wait,
Girding each one himself to his lonely fight with Fate.

" But thou, O Queen, art false : a liar, if He is dead
And becoming a mammoth fossil whose seon is wholly sped ;
A traitor if still He lives and shall for ever reign,
For thou spurnest the laws most sacred of all He doth ordain,
Should Christ come now from Heaven, to reap the harvest sown
When He buried Himself in the earth, watered with blood of His own,
How many Christians indeed could He gather with strictest care
From thy two hundred myriads who claim in Him a share?
He agonised to save thee and thy children all ;
And He saveth scarcely enough to delay thy deadly fall.
" For fall thou wilt, thou must — so proud as thy state is now,
Thou and thy sisters all, scarce better or worse than thou,
If ye do not all repent, and cleanse each one her heart
From the foulness circling with its blood to poison every part.
Woe to thy pampered rich in their arrogant selfishness ;
Woe to thy brutelike poor who feel but their breaddistress ;
Woe to thy people who dare not live without hope of wealth,
Who look but to fruits of the earth for their life and saving health ;
Woe to thy rulers who rule for the good of themselves alone,
Fathers who give their children crying for bread a stone
Woe to thy mighty men whose strength is unused or sold ;
Thy sages who shut their eyes when Truth is stern to behold ;
Woe to thy prophets who smile Peace, Peace, when it is a sword ;
Thy poets who sing their own lusts instead of hymns of the Lord;
Thy preachers who preach the life of what they feel to be death ;
Thy sophists who sail wild seas without the compass of faith ;
Thy traders trading in lies and in human bodies and souls ;
Thy good men cursing those better who strive on to loftier goals : —
The final Doom evolveth, burdened with woe on woe,
Sure as the justice of God while yet by His patience slow;
For the earth is pervaded wholly, through densest stone and clod,
With the burning fire of the law of the Truth of the
Living God ;
Consuming the falsehood, the evil, the pride, the lust, the shame,
With ever-burning unrelenting irresistible flame ;
Until all save the purest spirit, eternal, of truth and love,
Be altogether consumed away, beneath as well as above."