Octaves

To get at the eternal strength of things,And fearlessly to make strong songs of it,Is, to my mind, the mission of that manThe world would call a poet. He may singBut roughly, and withal ungraciously;But if he touch to life the one right chordWherein God's music slumbers, and awakeTo truth one drowsed ambition, he sings well.

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;We shrink too sadly from the larger selfWhich for its own completeness agitatesAnd undetermines us; we do not feel --We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shameOf uncreated failure; we forget,The while we groan, that God's accomplishmentIs always and unfailingly at hand.

To mortal ears the plainest word may ringFantastic and unheard-of, and as falseAnd out of tune as ever to our ownDid ring the prayers of man-made maniacs;But if that word be the plain word of Truth,It leaves an echo that begets itself,Persistent in itself and of itself,Regenerate, reiterate, replete.

Tumultuously void of a clean schemeWhereon to build, whereof to formulate,The legion life that riots in mankindGoes ever plunging upward, up and down,Most like some crazy regiment at arms,Undisciplined of aught but Ignorance,And ever led resourcelessly alongTo brainless carnage by drunk trumpeters.

To me the groaning of world-worshippersRings like a lonely music played in hellBy one with art enough to cleave the wallsOf heaven with his cadence, but withoutThe wisdom or the will to comprehendThe strangeness of his own perversity,And all without the courage to denyThe profit and the pride of his defeat.

While we are drilled in error, we are lostAlike to truth and usefulness. We thinkWe are great warriors now, and we can bragLike Titans; but the world is growing young,And we, the fools of time, are growing with it: --We do not fight to-day, we only die;We are too proud of death, and too ashamedOf God, to know enough to be alive.

There is one battle-field whereon we fallTriumphant and unconquered; but, alas!We are too fleshly fearful of ourselvesTo fight there till our days are whirled and blurredBy sorrow, and the ministering wheelsOf anguish take us eastward, where the cloudsOf human gloom are lost against the gleamThat shines on Thought's impenetrable mail.

When we shall hear no more the cradle-songsOf ages -- when the timeless hymns of LoveDefeat them and outsound them -- we shall knowThe rapture of that large release which allRight science comprehends; and we shall read,With unoppressed and unoffended eyes,That record of All-Soul whereon God writesIn everlasting runes the truth of Him.

The guerdon of new childhood is repose: --Once he has read the primer of right thought,A man may claim between two smithy strokesBeatitude enough to realizeGod's parallel completeness in the vagueAnd incommensurable excellenceThat equitably uncreates itselfAnd makes a whirlwind of the Universe.

There is no loneliness: -- no matter whereWe go, nor whence we come, nor what good friendsForsake us in the seeming, we are allAt one with a complete companionship;And though forlornly joyless be the waysWe travel, the compensate spirit-gleamsOf Wisdom shaft the darkness here and there,Like scattered lamps in unfrequented streets.

When one that you and I had all but swornTo be the purest thing God ever madeBewilders us until at last it seemsAn angel has come back restigmatized, --Faith wavers, and we wonder what there isOn earth to make us faithful any more,But never are quite wise enough to knowThe wisdom that is in that wonderment.

Where does a dead man go? -- The dead man dies;But the free life that would no longer feedOn fagots of outburned and shattered fleshWakes to a thrilled invisible advance,Unchained (or fettered else) of memory;And when the dead man goes it seems to me'T were better for us all to do awayWith weeping, and be glad that he is gone.

Still through the dusk of dead, blank-legended,And unremunerative years we searchTo get where life begins, and still we groanBecause we do not find the living sparkWhere no spark ever was; and thus we die,Still searching, like poor old astronomersWho totter off to bed and go to sleep,To dream of untriangulated stars.

With conscious eyes not yet sincere enoughTo pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuatesBetween me and the glorifying lightThat screens itself with knowledge, I discernThe searching rays of wisdom that reach throughThe mist of shame's infirm credulity,And infinitely wonder if hard wordsLike mine have any message for the dead.

I grant you friendship is a royal thing,But none shall ever know that royaltyFor what it is till he has realizedHis best friend in himself. 'T is then, perforce,That man's unfettered faith indemnifiesOf its own conscious freedom the old shame,And love's revealed infinitude supplantsOf its own wealth and wisdom the old scorn.

Though the sick beast infect us, we are fraughtForever with indissoluble Truth,Wherein redress reveals itself divine,Transitional, transcendent. Grief and loss,Disease and desolation, are the dreamsOf wasted excellence; and every dreamHas in it something of an ageless factThat flouts deformity and laughs at years.

We lack the courage to be where we are: --We love too much to travel on old roads,To triumph on old fields; we love too muchTo consecrate the magic of dead things,And yieldingly to linger by long wallsOf ruin, where the ruinous moonlightThat sheds a lying glory on old stonesBefriends us with a wizard's enmity.

Something as one with eyes that look belowThe battle-smoke to glimpse the foeman's charge,We through the dust of downward years may scanThe onslaught that awaits this idiot worldWhere blood pays blood for nothing, and where lifePays life to madness, till at last the portsOf gilded helplessness be battered throughBy the still crash of salvatory steel.

To you that sit with Sorrow like chained slaves,And wonder if the night will ever come,I would say this: The night will never come,And sorrow is not always. But my wordsAre not enough; your eyes are not enough;The soul itself must insulate the Real,Or ever you do cherish in this life --In this life or in any life -- repose.

Like a white wall whereon forever breaksUnsatisfied the tumult of green seas,Man's unconjectured godliness rebukesWith its imperial silence the lost wavesOf insufficient grief. This mortal surgeThat beats against us now is nothing elseThan plangent ignorance. Truth neither shakesNor wavers; but the world shakes, and we shriek.

Nor jewelled phrase nor mere mellifluous rhymeReverberates aright, or ever shall,One cadence of that infinite plain-songWhich is itself all music. Stronger notesThan any that have ever touched the worldMust ring to tell it -- ring like hammer-blows,Right-echoed of a chime primordial,On anvils, in the gleaming of God's forge.

The prophet of dead words defeats himself:Whoever would acknowledge and includeThe foregleam and the glory of the real,Must work with something else than pen and inkAnd painful preparation: he must workWith unseen implements that have no names,And he must win withal, to do that work,Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill.

To curse the chilled insistence of the dawnBecause the free gleam lingers; to defraudThe constant opportunity that livesUnchallenged in all sorrow; to forgetFor this large prodigality of goldThat larger generosity of thought, --These are the fleshly clogs of human greed,The fundamental blunders of mankind.

Forebodings are the fiends of Recreance;The master of the moment, the clean seerOf ages, too securely scans what is,Ever to be appalled at what is not;He sees beyond the groaning borough linesOf Hell, God's highways gleaming, and he knowsThat Love's complete communion is the endOf anguish to the liberated man.

Here by the windy docks I stand alone,But yet companioned. There the vessel goes,And there my friend goes with it; but the wakeThat melts and ebbs between that friend and meLove's earnest is of Life's all-purposefulAnd all-triumphant sailing, when the shipsOf Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swingForever from the crumbled wharves of Time.