The Fourfold Aspect

When ye stood up in the houseWith your little childish feet,And, in touching Life's first shows,First the touch of Love did meet,--Love and Nearness seeming one,By the heartlight cast before,And of all Beloveds, noneStanding farther than the door;Not a name being dear to thought,With its owner beyond call;Not a face, unless it broughtIts own shadow to the wall;When the worst recorded changeWas of apple dropt from bough,When love's sorrow seemed more strangeThan love's treason can seem now;--Then, the Loving took you upSoft, upon their elder knees,Telling why the statues droopUnderneath the churchyard trees,And how ye must lie beneath themThrough the winters long and deep,Till the last trump overbreathe them,And ye smile out of your sleep.Oh, ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if they saidA tale of fairy shipsWith a swan-wing for a sail;Oh, ye kissed their loving lipsFor the merry merry tale--So carelessly ye thought upon the Dead!

Soon ye read in solemn storiesOf the men of long ago,Of the pale bewildering gloriesShining farther than we know;Of the heroes with the laurel,Of the poets with the bay,Of the two worlds' earnest quarrelFor that beauteous Helena;How Achilles at the portalOf the tent heard footsteps nigh,And his strong heart, half-immortal,Met the keitai with a cry;How Ulysses left the sunlightFor the pale eidola raceBlank and passive through the dun light,Staring blindly in his face;How that true wife said to Poetus,With calm smile and wounded heart,"Sweet, it hurts not!" How AdmetusSaw his blessed one depart;How King Arthur proved his mission,And Sir Roland wound his horn,And at Sangreal's moony visionSwords did bristle round like corn.Oh, ye lifted up your head, and it seemed, the while ye read,That this Death, then, must be foundA Valhalla for the crowned,The heroic who prevail:None, be sure can enter inFar below a paladinOf a noble noble tale--So awfully ye thought upon the Dead!

Ay, but soon ye woke up shrieking,As a child that wakes at nightFrom a dream of sisters speakingIn a garden's summer-light,--That wakes, starting up and bounding,In a lonely lonely bed,With a wall of darkness round him,Stifling black about his head!And the full sense of your mortalRushed upon you deep and loud,And ye heard the thunder hurtleFrom the silence of the cloud.Funeral-torches at your gatewayThrew a dreadful light within.All things changed: you rose up straightway,And saluted Death and Sin.Since, your outward man has rallied,And your eye and voice grown bold;Yet the Sphinx of Life stands pallid,With her saddest secret told.Happy places have grown holy:If ye went where once ye went,Only tears would fall down slowly,As at solemn sacrament.Merry books, once read for pastime,If ye dared to read again,Only memories of the last timeWould swim darkly up the brain.Household names, which used to flutterThrough your laughter unawares,--God's Divinest ye could utterWith less trembling in your prayers.Ye have dropt adown your head, and it seems as if ye treadOn your own hearts in the pathYe are called to in His wrath,And your prayers go up in wail--"Dost Thou see, then, all our loss,O Thou agonized on cross?Art thou reading all its tale?"So mournfully ye think upon the Dead!

Pray, pray, thou who also weepest,And the drops will slacken so.Weep, weep, and the watch thou keepestWith a quicker count will go.Think: the shadow on the dialFor the nature most undone,Marks the passing of the trial,Proves the presence of the sun.Look, look up, in starry passion,To the throne above the spheres:Learn: the spirit's gravitationStill must differ from the tear's.Hope: with all the strength thou usestIn embracing thy despair.Love: the earthly love thou losestShall return to thee more fair.Work: make clear the forest-tanglesOf the wildest stranger-landTrust: the blessed deathly angelsWhisper, "Sabbath hours at hand!"By the heart's wound when most gory,By the longest agony,Smile! Behold in sudden gloryThe TRANSFIGURED smiles on thee!And ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if He said,"My Beloved, is it so?Have ye tasted of my woe?Of my Heaven ye shall not fail!"He stands brightly where the shade is,With the keys of Death and Hades,And there, ends the mournful tale--So hopefully ye think upon the Dead!