Book VI, Canto V: Wisdom and Work

Deterioration. — II

" ' Did the fiend overwhelm you with deterioration ?
Deterioration is a mystery ;
Yet none descendeth below the appointed deep.
Henceforward the way mounteth upward ;
It is darkest ere the day dawn.
For none fadeth away into nonentity.
Nor doth any carcase fester, unmitigated defilement.
The fiend ignored, having blinded himself, a core of soundness in the prodigal.
He feigned that all was dead ;
Being Death himself, he could feel no life around him.
Yet cheerfulness and amiability were well ;
good also were generosity and patience.
These qualities rejoiced the heart of his friends.
Now surroundings more favourable being provided.
Where germs of excellence may awaken.
The passion-driven may possess himself at last.
Enthralled and goaded by the slaver.
Cramped and grovelling in low dungeons.
He never straightened himself to his full height.
Nor looked around him to far horizons ;
Hindered, attained not his full stature —
His were no opportunities for development ;
Never for a moment was he a free man ;
Free to realise individuality.
Be sure the Universe needed the dread experience ;
He was a scapegoat for Humanity :
Moreover, he was endowed with genius ;
And her royal gifts are gain —
However terrible the price paid ;
Whatever roaring gulfs the diver sounded,
He emergeth with a pearl of price ;
And for that let us be thankful !
Offerings laid at the world's feet, they are the world's ;
Yet returning into his bosom, they are his also,
Yea ! his own for ever !
For he and the world are indeed one.
The destructible shall be destroyed,
Consumed with ineffable anguish,
And the unessential die.
But Individuality transformed
Will rise regenerate from the ashes,
Ideally-moulded, fair.
Or when doth God cease to heed.
To yearn for whom he foreknew ?
Sending to eanh a chosen messenger,
Cease to yearn for His bosom-friend ?
Nay, but all souls lie in His bosom ;
Verily they are His children !
What though the mortal loitered,
Frail tongue faltered in delivery
Of the message thereto entrusted,
Will Love hate, therefore, and forget ?
Omnipotence own to failure.
Or impatient Justice break her tool.
Fling aside what herself hath fashioned?
Will God change like men ?
Fickle, irresolute as one of you?
Whom He loveth He loves for ever,
And will heal the hurt of His lamb.

" ' Did Satan tell you Nature made the man ?
Nay, rather, God in man hath fashioned her.
To these, whom he averred that Nature slew,
Or cruel men, but whom we say God called.
Since they who die are only half in Him,
And half without, Death turns one pale dread face.
Yet shows another mild and merciful ;
For death is ever in the line of life.
Anomalies pertain alone to sense ;
Yea, even to fairies of the fur and feather
Death is new birth to a life beyond,
Subserveth life ; the spirit travelleth,
Through lower lives, to manhood, and yet higher.
Were there no God, or were the God malign,
Child-mirth and lark-song were impossible.

" ' Hath not the World- Soul fallen from his height,
His height of native Virtue, fallen low.
To sin and suffer, with the souls in him,
Who are ourselves, and every animal,
Divergent, battling, erst one harmony?
And they are elements within the Human,
Dissonancy clashing in the man,
Fallen, that all may rise to altitude.
No otherwise attainable, I ween.
Now every lower life may climb, through man,
To angel, dowered with experience.
How else to be assimilated ? Wherefore,
In yon dim realms of feeling under us
Confusion reigneth ; creatures are at war,
A mutual prey ; disorder rules, and death ;
The strong wrest breathing-place from feebler lives, —
Till Bouddh, with free will's high prerogative,
Feeds the lean mother-tiger on his body,
And, dying, brings the very Life to birth :
Now Justice, Mercy, dawn in the wild waste.

" ' All, sons of light, will form one Harmony,
Mutually permeable, cells
Functioned to serve with punctual, never-failing
Service the Body, never isolated,
False selves, to alien injury ; one only
Orbs to his own completeness in another.
Then each will labour for the common weal,
Aware the commonwealth hath nourished him,
Laid fair foundations for his energy.
With free environment ; one breathes for all
Inevitably ; now with glad intent.
If each divined with kindly fellow-feeling
Alien need, and thirsted to supply,
Justice and Love would change your earth to Heaven,
And hallow poor relations of mankind ;
All human impulses were innocent.
And spontaneity benevolence.
"'All, sons of light, will form one Harmony,
Obedient orblets in their natal Orb,
Every one mirror, minister to other.
Warbling melodious in fontal spheres ;
We in our Mother Earth, the while She sings
Herself, with sister worlds, around the Sun,
And He, in his own course, obeys Another :
Beyond all moons, and suns of sense abideth
One Lifegiver invisible : the lion
Will lie low with the lamb, sublimely calm,
His lightnings veiled, his thunder laid to rest,
Sirength couchant, folding meek Humility ;
A little child, with tender eyes, will lead
Them both to Eden-lake at evening-time.

" 'Yours will be world-pervading faculty,
Known only now so far as fugitive
Aroma rising in the dewy dark
Of night may tell a tale of breathing flowers.
Who laugh illumed with morning, blithely fair,
Or as the drowsy bird who dreams and
And twitters in the woven nest ere dawn.
Foretells lull choir, awake in the clear sun.
Earnests already of earth-emancipation,
Presaging a more ample life than yours,
Open around, with sheath-dividing gleam
Of diffident warm colour, vivid hues
Of slumbering summer ; so the chambered cave
Allures with twilit possibility.
Body and soul, evolving many folded.
As germen, embryo, shadow what will be.
In ever complicating miracle.
Doth Nature lure her children with vain vow,
Hi)pe hollow, longing ne'er to be fulfilled ?
Only in seeming ; for her satisfaction
Is ever more than of immediate want ;
Only in seeming ; she withholds to grant ;
Her mandate is upon you ; build your nest
For mottled ovals yet unmoulded ; winnow
The air with wings for lovelier lands afar ;
Find other lands beyond the sundering sea !
" ' Earth, air, and water are alive with voices,
Though men are only aware of a poor few.
The many aisles of forest, rapt by day
To deep dread silence, roar like ocean loud
For other ears more sensitive to sound ;
Although no Storm descend in his hot wrath
To lay a violent hand upon their pride,
Nor, with the stress of his enormous weight.
Strong swoop of his immense and monstrous vans.
Swaying huge boughs to writhen agony,
Their foliage streaming as in a flooded torrent.
Hound on Confusion — all the leaves wild whirl.
Trees creak, scream, shattering, ancient towers uprooted —
By night beasts battle, bellowing o'er crushed prey !
But, even in the hush of sultry noon.
There is a Babel hum of population
From dense tribes of inhabitants that swarm
Through bark and leaf; the velvet moth that flits
By twilight sings like birds ; fine ears will hear.
While vision banquets upon hues unnamed.
Marrying sights and sounds for a new world.

"' Well - wedded worlds are mutually involved ;
But though the Centre radiate through all,
Yet are they mutually impervious
To any but a few inhabitants
Of either ; but in trance the soul may burn
From sphere to sphere, and find a home in either ;
In trance profound the soul is free of many,
Remembereth what she lost from memory ;
Some long-secluded chamber of the Past,
Experience obliterate, remote,
Whose windows are unbarred again to light.
Light leaps to illuminate the annihilated,
Forgotten, dark ; for Spirit, after death,
From vantage-ground of her eternity
Proudly resumes her ante-natal sphere.
And blends with earth-life ; her young eagle vision
Surveys the suite of halls palatial,
Once more reclaimed for knowledge, where she swept,
Moved with her beautiful, imperial train
Of fair and noble faculties, from life
To life, a never-dying Queen divine.
High throned, in glory, above Space, and
Time.

" ' Ponder the holy hieroglyph of Pain,
That hideth a high meaning ; Christ endured,
Hoping for joy of world-redemption, wrought
Through crucifixion ; are not all the Christ ?
Who wail, unknown their grand prerogative,
But, when they are crowned, feel leap in them the virtue,
Conceived anon through mortal suffering.
Then they exult, oblivious of the woe ;
Earth a dim moment in their never-ending,
Irradiate career from heaven to heaven.
Whose virtue (for the human race is one),
A virtue sinewed from the strife with evil,
In time will heal the human family,
Full orb the grand Atonement of the Lord.
He, with whom myriad years are as one day,
Beholds men through the well-beloved Son.
Pause ; nor presume to wrench by violence
Flower from bud ; await the month for bloom.

"'The Deep is only Wisdom dark from depth :
We lose our lower lives indeed therein,
Only to find the higher lives we lost. . . .
How do I know? One gave to me the vision !
Blest are the pure in heart, for they see
God;
Galahad saw Him, even Percivale.' . . .
I felt the fiend gone from me ; for the child
Rebuked him, like the lifting of the cross.
' O not without the sorrow, and the sin,
May be our human pilgrimage ? Ah ! why ? '
'And what if God Himself hath life by these ? '
He answered, with a shadow on his joy,
Musing as though bewildered ; then resumed—
" ' What is your Faith ? a hand that feels the Hand,
Which ever holds it ; numb are all beside ;
Yea, many of you are numb, and deaf, and blind.
A woman loses children at one swoop !
(I find her in the hovel, in the palace ;
I find her in the fanes of all the creeds,
Yea, drifted in the sands of ignorance) — -
A woman loses children at one swoop ;
The wave, engulphing all, rejects her only,
Flings her alone upon the unchilded shore ;
The mother loved them more than all the world,
More than her own self . . . doth she smile ? . . . she sees
With far-away, sunk, visionary eyes,
Or inner eyes, that lend rapt air to these.
Them all reposing on the heart of God,
Yonder, as here, and they are with her still,
Because herself reposeth with them there.
Upon that heart ; then wherefore should she weep? —
Her faith, the world-o'ercoming victory !
She is among the cloud of witnesses.
Who testify poor human weakness can
Smile in the face of dire Extremity,
Because she recogniseth her own Father,
However closely-veiled ! our children trust
Our poor love, though, alas ! we fail them oft,
Confounding ours with that great Love behind. . . .

" ' Notes of a singer soaring into heaven !
They seem to mount on ample, unfolded wings.
Like some white bird, who, joyful, breasts the blue.
Or undulate, frail boat upon a billow ;
They are rays of light, aslope on a mild cloud.
Or doves, who pulsate, gleaming to and fro
About the carven cathedral front of Rheims,
Thwart silent, old-world, visionary glory
Of shrined saint aureoled, kings robed, and weird forms.
Now we are ware of dawn among pure snows
Of mountain mystical ; keen flame divides
Our downy vapours, and pervades their grey ;
An upward-mounting beam, that shines from earth,
Arriving at the very heart of God,
Swiftly arrives to nestle there at home,
Disclosing Him a moment with no veil
To our dazed wonder ! seraphim are flying,
Expatiate in blue celestial air.
Alight, wave wings from radiant promontory,
Clash, mix, confound their raptures in midheaven !
And now a gentle languor fades the strain.
Fallen gently, like a feather ; but in yon flashed
Ecstasy did you not surprise your lost,
Reposing happy in the fields of Heaven ?
And tell me ! do you deem such sounds could soar,
And wake such dreaming, if one tortured child
Had but one life of want and anguish given,
Then foundered in the void ? It could not be !
Might such a strain indeed afford such vision.
If God were not, or did desert one child ?
If this were more than seeming, all would wither.
Core-eaten shows of the false world fall in !

Caged Lark

" ' Hear the caged lark, athrob with the swift song,
Who floods our sense with notes, a hurrying throng !
In spirit, doth he bathe in the blue day,
And soar away
Over the dewy woodland, and green field?
Or doth he fancy a sweet nest concealed
In the warm turf, a downy mate and brood.
While he finds food ?
Blithe captive, seems your prison ample, fair,
Free voyage in illumined realms of air.
Buoyed on your own full tides of happiness ?
Dear bird, we bless
Your glad content ! poor feet on a soiled sod
May never rise ; and yet yoii rise to God !
Ah ! mortal men may feel, confined to earth.
Faith's morning-mirth ! . . .
" ' What work is thine ? to mirror in thine art,
Though feebly, as One may the power impart,
The human Quest, the Age's mind and heart :
While Nature doth her lineaments uncover
To you, who have been her lowly and fond lover.
Build humbly a high music from within
With pain and pleasure, righteousness and sin,
That shall not prove a merely jingling rhyme
To wheedle idle whimsies of the time.
Nor blared applause of idle fool to win.
Perishing with him ; uttered when you burn,
The world may welcome, or the world may spurn.
Uttered for love thereof, as in your prime,
The message you are commissioned to deliver,
If men will hear, well ! — if not, to the Giver
Who breathes it though you will the word return.
Dare not to claim for self the utterance ;
One, out of His perfection, will advance
The same to stand His own ambassador.
Yea, full accomplish what He sent it for.
In other ways, moreover, look that thou
Serve men — help whom or want or sorrow bow.'

" His clear young tones, mine antidote to bane,
Methought resumed : I heard them once again.
' The God in us, with God who is in the world.
Perchance electeth fi'om eternity
Time-process, evil relative, for ends
Of grander good, beyond us, absolute ;
But here we falter,
Grope darkling, and surmise with bated breath :
Yet our deep Best will justify the Lord :
How strengthen thews of any champion
Save through the powerful antagonist ?
Civilisations only fall to ruin.
That richer may be reared from their decay ;
From chaos ever nobler order grows.
Who repents
Hath God behind him, and the World-Idea,
To uplift him when he fails ; a mother holds
Her child, who falling, learns at length to walk.
Even that awful Shade, that made for Death,
Changing resolves itself to Life at length :
Trust only in the sound, strong Heart of all!
Nor only Reason, Love belongs to (Jod :
Our Human sunders ; our Divine will blend.
Evil and good are complemental ; more
I know not ; but there is a Deep beyond,
In the Abysmal Spirit. . . . Hide your eyes
Before the mystery of mysteries ! ' . . .
He shading his, that sought the Infinite,
I droop mine, blinded with the blaze of light :
Methought now all the innocent victim-blood
Streamed with the Lord's upon the holy rood :
I saw, and worshipped ; I believed in God. . . .

"And then he vanished. I awoke; but earth
Was lighter than before for his sweet birth :
Winter without me, in my heart was spring,
Where all the happy birds began to sing."