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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Eve, by Robert Browning
+#4 in our series by Robert Browning
+
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+Title: Christmas Eve
+
+Author: Robert Browning
+
+Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6670]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 12, 2003]
+[Date last updated: February 4, 2008]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+
+
+I
+
+Out of the little chapel I burst
+  Into the fresh night-air again.
+Five minutes full, I waited first
+  In the doorway, to escape the rain
+That drove in gusts down the common's centre
+  At the edge of which the chapel stands,
+Before I plucked up heart to enter.
+  Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
+Reached past me, groping for the latch
+Of the inner door that hung on catch
+More obstinate the more they fumbled,
+  Till, giving way at last with a scold
+Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
+  One sheep more to the rest in fold,
+And left me irresolute, standing sentry
+In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,
+Six feet long by three feet wide,
+Partitioned off from the vast inside--
+  I blocked up half of it at least.
+No remedy; the rain kept driving.
+  They eyed me much as some wild beast,
+That congregation, still arriving,
+Some of them by the main road, white
+A long way past me into the night,
+Skirting the common, then diverging;
+Not a few suddenly emerging
+From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps
+--They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
+Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
+Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;--
+But the most turned in yet more abruptly
+  From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
+Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,
+  Which now the little chapel rallies
+And leads into day again,--its priestliness
+Lending itself to hide their beastliness
+So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
+And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
+Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
+  That, where you cross the common as I did,
+  And meet the party thus presided,
+"Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,
+They front you as little disconcerted
+As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,
+And her wicked people made to mind him,
+Lot might have marched with Gomorrah
+behind him.
+
+
+II
+
+Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,
+In came the flock: the fat weary woman,
+Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
+  Her umbrella with a mighty report,
+Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
+  A wreck of whalebones; then, with snort,
+Like a startled horse, at the interloper
+(Who humbly knew himself improper,
+But could not shrink up small enough)
+--Round to the door, and in,--the gruff
+Hinge's invariable scold
+Making my very blood run cold.
+Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered
+On broken clogs, the many-tattered
+Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother
+Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
+Somehow up, with its spotted face,
+From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;
+She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry
+Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby
+Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping
+Already from my own clothes' dropping,
+Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:
+  Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,
+  She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,
+Planted together before her breast
+And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.
+  Close on her heels, the dingy satins
+Of a female something, past me flitted,
+  With lips as much too white, as a streak
+  Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;
+And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied
+All that was left of a woman once,
+Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.
+Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief,
+With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,
+And eyelids screwed together tight,
+Led himself in by some inner light.
+And, except from him, from each that entered,
+  I got the same interrogation--
+"What, you the alien, you have ventured
+  "To take with us, the elect, your station?
+"A carer for none of it, a Gallio!"--
+  Thus, plain as print, I read the glance
+At a common prey, in each countenance
+  As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.
+And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,
+  The draught, it always sent in shutting,
+Made the flame of the single tallow candle
+In the cracked square lantern I stood under,
+  Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting
+As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:
+I verily fancied the zealous light
+(In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite
+Would shudder itself clean off the wick,
+With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.
+ [Footnote: See Rev. i. 20.]
+There was no standing it much longer.
+"Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,
+"This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor
+"When the weather sends you a chance visitor?
+"You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,
+"And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!
+"But still, despite the pretty perfection
+  "To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,
+"And, taking God's word under wise protection,
+  "Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,
+"And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares,--
+  "Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,
+"If I should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'--
+  "See if the best of you bars me my ration!
+"I prefer, if you please, for my expounder
+"Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;
+"Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest
+  "Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:
+  "So shut your mouth and open your Testament,
+"And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"
+Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad
+  With wizened face in want of soap,
+  And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,
+(After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,
+To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,
+And so avoid disturbing the preacher)
+--Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise
+At the shutting door, and entered likewise,
+Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,
+  And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,
+  And found myself in full conventicle,
+--To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,
+On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,
+  Which, calling its flock to their special clover,
+  Found all assembled and one sheep over,
+Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.
+
+III
+
+I very soon had enough of it.
+  The hot smell and the human noises,
+And my neighbour's coat, the greasy cuff of it,
+  Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,
+Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure
+  Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,
+As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,
+  To meet his audience's avidity.
+You needed not the wit of the Sibyl
+  To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:
+  No sooner our friend had got an inkling
+Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,
+(Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,
+How death, at unawares, might duck him
+Deeper than the grave, and quench
+The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)
+Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,
+  As to hug the book of books to pieces:
+And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,
+  Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,
+Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,--
+So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.
+And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:
+  Nay, had but a single face of my neighbours
+  Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labours
+Were help which the world could be saved without,
+'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet
+A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,
+Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered
+  Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:
+But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,
+  Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon
+With such content in every snuffle,
+As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.
+My old fat woman purred with pleasure,
+  And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,
+While she, to his periods keeping measure,
+  Maternally devoured the pastor.
+The man with the handkerchief untied it,
+Showed us a horrible wen inside it,
+Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,
+And rocked himself as the woman was doing.
+The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,
+Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!
+My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;
+  So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,
+  "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"
+I flung out of the little chapel.
+
+IV
+
+There was a lull in the rain, a lull
+  In the wind too; the moon was risen,
+And would have shone out pure and full,
+  But for the ramparted cloud-prison,
+Block on block built up in the West,
+For what purpose the wind knows best,
+Who changes his mind continually.
+And the empty other half of the sky
+Seemed in its silence as if it knew
+What, any moment, might look through
+A chance gap in that fortress massy:--
+  Through its fissures you got hints
+  Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,
+Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassy
+Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,
+Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,
+All a-simmer with intense strain
+To let her through,--then blank again,
+At the hope of her appearance failing.
+Just by the chapel, a break in the railing
+Shows a narrow path directly across;
+'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss--
+Besides, you go gently all the way uphill.
+  I stooped under and soon felt better;
+My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,
+  As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.
+My mind was full of the scene I had left,
+  That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,
+  --How this outside was pure and different!
+The sermon, now--what a mingled weft
+Of good and ill! Were either less,
+  Its fellow had coloured the whole distinctly;
+But alas for the excellent earnestness,
+  And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,
+But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,
+However to pastor and flock's contentment!
+Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,
+  With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,
+Till how could you know them, grown double their size
+  In the natural fog of the good man's mind,
+Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,
+Haloed about with the common's damps?
+Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;
+  The zeal was good, and the aspiration;
+And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,
+  Pharaoh received no demonstration,
+By his Baker's dream of Basket Three,
+Of the doctrine of the Trinity,--
+Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,
+Apparently his hearers relished it
+With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if
+They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?
+But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!
+  These people have really felt, no doubt,
+A something, the motion they style the Call of them;
+  And this is their method of bringing about,
+By a mechanism of words and tones,
+ (So many texts in so many groans)
+A sort of reviving and reproducing,
+  More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)
+The mood itself, which strengthens by using;
+  And how that happens, I understand well.
+A tune was born in my head last week,
+Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek
+  Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;
+And when, next week, I take it back again,
+My head will sing to the engine's clack again,
+  While it only makes my neighbour's haunches stir,
+--Finding no dormant musical sprout
+In him, as in me, to be jolted out.
+'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;
+He gets no more from the railway's preaching
+  Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:
+Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.
+Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"
+To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?
+
+
+V
+
+But wherefore be harsh on a single case?
+  After how many modes, this Christmas Eve,
+Does the self-same weary thing take place?
+  The same endeavour to make you believe,
+And with much the same effect, no more:
+  Each method abundantly convincing,
+As I say, to those convinced before,
+  But scarce to be swallowed without wincing
+By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,
+I have my own church equally:
+And in this church my faith sprang first!
+  (I said, as I reached the rising ground,
+And the wind began again, with a burst
+  Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound
+From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,
+I entered his church-door, nature leading me)
+--In youth I look to these very skies,
+And probing their immensities,
+I found God there, his visible power;
+  Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense
+  Of the power, an equal evidence
+That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.
+For the loving worm within its clod,
+Were diviner than a loveless god
+Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.
+  You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:
+  But also, God, whose pleasure brought
+Man into being, stands away
+  As it were a handbreadth off, to give
+Room for the newly-made to live,
+And look at him from a place apart,
+And use his gifts of brain and heart,
+Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.
+Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
+Man's very elements from man,
+Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan
+Was to create man and then leave him
+Able, his own word saith, to grieve him
+But able to glorify him too,
+As a mere machine could never do,
+That prayed or praised, all unaware
+Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,
+Made perfect as a thing of course.
+Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
+Of love and power as a pin-point rock:
+And, looking to God who ordained divorce
+Of the rock from his boundless continent,
+Sees, in his power made evident,
+Only excess by a million-fold
+O'er the power God gave man in the mould.
+For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry
+A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry
+Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,
+  --Advancing in power by one degree;
+  And why count steps through eternity?
+But love is the ever-springing fountain:
+Man may enlarge or narrow his bed
+For the water's play, but the water-head--
+How can he multiply or reduce it?
+  As easy create it, as cause it to cease;
+He may profit by it, or abuse it,
+  But 'tis not a thing to bear increase
+As power does: be love less or more
+  In the heart of man, he keeps it shut
+  Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but
+Love's sum remains what it was before.
+So, gazing up, in my youth, at love
+As seen through power, ever above
+All modes which make it manifest,
+My soul brought all to a single test--
+That he, the Eternal First and Last,
+Who, in his power, had so surpassed
+All man conceives of what is might,--
+Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,
+--Would prove as infinitely good;
+Would never, (my soul understood,)
+With power to work all love desires,
+Bestow e'en less than man requires;
+That he who endlessly was teaching,
+Above my spirit's utmost reaching,
+What love can do in the leaf or stone,
+(So that to master this alone,
+This done in the stone or leaf for me,
+I must go on learning endlessly)
+Would never need that I, in turn,
+  Should point him out defect unheeded,
+And show that God had yet to learn
+  What the meanest human creature needed,
+--Not life, to wit, for a few short years,
+Tracking his way through doubts and fears,
+While the stupid earth on which I stay
+  Suffers no change, but passive adds
+  Its myriad years to myriads,
+Though I, he gave it to, decay,
+Seeing death come and choose about me,
+And my dearest ones depart without me.
+No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,
+  Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,
+The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it.
+  Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it,
+And I shall behold thee, face to face,
+O God, and in thy light retrace
+How in all I loved here, still wast thou!
+Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,
+I shall find as able to satiate
+  The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder
+Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,
+  With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,
+And glory in thee for, as I gaze
+Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways
+Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine--
+Be this my way! And this is mine!
+
+VI
+
+For lo, what think you? suddenly
+The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
+Received at once the full fruition
+Of the moon's consummate apparition.
+The black cloud-barricade was riven,
+Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
+Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,
+  North and South and East lay ready
+For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,
+  Sprang across them and stood steady.
+'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
+From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
+As the mother-moon's self, full in face.
+It rose, distinctly at the base
+  With its seven proper colours chorded,
+Which still, in the rising, were compressed,
+Until at last they coalesced,
+  And supreme the spectral creature lorded
+In a triumph of whitest white,--
+Above which intervened the night.
+But above night too, like only the next,
+  The second of a wondrous sequence,
+  Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,
+Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,
+Another rainbow rose, a mightier,
+Fainter, flushier and flightier,--
+Rapture dying along its verge.
+Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
+Whose, from the straining topmost dark,
+On to the keystone of that arc?
+
+VII
+
+This sight was shown me, there and then,--
+Me, out of a world of men,
+Singled forth, as the chance might hap
+To another if, in a thunderclap
+Where I heard noise and you saw flame,
+Some one man knew God called his name.
+For me, I think I said, "Appear!
+"Good were it to be ever here.
+"If thou wilt, let me build to thee
+"Service-tabernacles three,
+"Where, forever in thy presence,
+"In ecstatic acquiescence,
+"Far alike from thriftless learning
+"And ignorance's undiscerning,
+"I may worship and remain!"
+  Thus at the show above me, gazing
+With upturned eyes, I felt my brain
+  Glutted with the glory, blazing
+Throughout its whole mass, over and under
+Until at length it burst asunder
+And out of it bodily there streamed,
+The too-much glory, as it seemed,
+Passing from out me to the ground,
+Then palely serpentining round
+Into the dark with mazy error.
+
+VIII
+
+All at once I looked up with terror.
+He was there.
+He himself with his human air.
+On the narrow pathway, just before.
+I saw the back of him, no more--
+He had left the chapel, then, as I.
+I forgot all about the sky.
+No face: only the sight
+Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,
+With a hem that I could recognize.
+I felt terror, no surprise;
+My mind filled with the cataract,
+At one bound of the mighty fact.
+"I remember, he did say
+  "Doubtless that, to this world's end,
+"Where two or three should meet and pray,
+  "He would be in their midst, their friend;
+"Certainly he was there with them!"
+  And my pulses leaped for joy
+  Of the golden thought without alloy,
+Then I saw his very vesture's hem.
+Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,
+With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;
+And I hastened, cried out while I pressed
+To the salvation of the vest,
+"But not so, Lord! It cannot be
+"That thou, indeed, art leaving me--
+"Me, that have despised thy friends!
+"Did my heart make no amends?
+"Thou art the love of God--above
+"His power, didst hear me place his love,
+"And that was leaving the world for thee.
+"Therefore thou must not turn from me
+"As I had chosen the other part!
+"Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.
+"Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;
+"Still, it should be our very best.
+"I thought it best that thou, the spirit,
+  "Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,
+"And in beauty, as even we require it--
+  "Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,
+"I left but now, as scarcely fitted
+"For thee: I knew not what I pitied.
+"But, all I felt there, right or wrong,
+"What is it to thee, who curest sinning?
+"Am I not weak as thou art strong?
+  "I have looked to thee from the beginning,
+"Straight up to thee through all the world
+"Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled
+"To nothingness on either side:
+"And since the time thou wast descried,
+"Spite of the weak heart, so have I
+"Lived ever, and so fain would die,
+"Living and dying, thee before!
+"But if thou leavest me----"
+
+IX
+
+                            Less or more,
+I suppose that I spoke thus.
+When,--have mercy, Lord, on us!
+The whole face turned upon me full.
+  And I spread myself beneath it,
+  As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it
+In the cleansing sun, his wool,--
+Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness
+  Some denied, discoloured web--
+So lay I, saturate with brightness.
+  And when the flood appeared to ebb,
+Lo, I was walking, light and swift,
+  With my senses settling fast and steadying,
+But my body caught up in the whirl and drift
+  Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying
+On, just before me, still to be followed,
+  As it carried me after with its motion:
+What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed
+  And a man went weltering through the ocean,
+Sucked along in the flying wake
+Of the luminous water-snake.
+Darkness and cold were cloven, as through
+I passed, upborne yet walking too.
+And I turned to myself at intervals,--
+"So he said, so it befalls.
+"God who registers the cup
+  "Of mere cold water, for his sake
+"To a disciple rendered up,
+  "Disdains not his own thirst to slake
+"At the poorest love was ever offered:
+"And because my heart I proffered,
+"With true love trembling at the brim,
+"He suffers me to follow him
+"For ever, my own way,--dispensed
+"From seeking to be influenced
+"By all the less immediate ways
+  "That earth, in worships manifold,
+"Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,
+  "The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"
+
+
+X
+
+And so we crossed the world and stopped.
+  For where am I, in city or plain,
+  Since I am 'ware of the world again?
+And what is this that rises propped
+With pillars of prodigious girth?
+Is it really on the earth,
+This miraculous Dome of God?
+Has the angel's measuring-rod
+Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,
+'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,
+Meted it out,--and what he meted,
+Have the sons of men completed?
+--Binding, ever as he bade,
+Columns in the colonnade
+With arms wide open to embrace
+The entry of the human race
+To the breast of... what is it, yon building,
+Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,
+With marble for brick, and stones of price
+For garniture of the edifice?
+Now I see; it is no dream;
+It stands there and it does not seem;
+For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,
+And thus I have read of it in books
+Often in England, leagues away,
+And wondered how these fountains play,
+Growing up eternally
+Each to a musical water-tree,
+Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,
+Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,
+To the granite layers underneath.
+Liar and dreamer in your teeth!
+I, the sinner that speak to you,
+Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew
+Both this and more. For see, for see,
+The dark is rent, mine eye is free
+To pierce the crust of the outer wall,
+And I view inside, and all there, all,
+As the swarming hollow of a hive,
+The whole Basilica alive!
+Men in the chancel, body and nave,
+Men on the pillars' architrave,
+Men on the statues, men on the tombs
+With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,
+All famishing in expectation
+Of the main-altar's consummation.
+For see, for see, the rapturous moment
+Approaches, and earth's best endowment
+Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires
+Pant up, the winding brazen spires
+Heave loftier yet the baldachin; [Footnote: Canopy over the High Altar.]
+The incense-gaspings, long kept in,
+Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant
+Holds his breath and grovels latent,
+As if God's hushing finger grazed him,
+(Like Behemoth when he praised him)
+At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,
+Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling
+On the sudden pavement strewed
+With faces of the multitude.
+Earth breaks up, time drops away,
+In flows heaven, with its new day
+Of endless life, when He who trod,
+Very man and very God,
+This earth in weakness, shame and pain,
+Dying the death whose signs remain
+Up yonder on the accursed tree,--
+Shall come again, no more to be
+Of captivity the thrall,
+But the one God, All in all,
+King of kings, Lord of lords,
+As His servant John received the words,
+"I died, and live for evermore!"
+
+
+XI
+
+Yet I was left outside the door.
+"Why sit I here on the threshold-stone
+"Left till He return, alone
+"Save for the garment's extreme fold
+"Abandoned still to bless my hold?"
+My reason, to my doubt, replied,
+As if a book were opened wide,
+And at a certain page I traced
+Every record undefaced,
+Added by successive years,--
+The harvestings of truth's stray ears
+Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf
+Bound together for belief.
+Yes, I said--that he will go
+And sit with these in turn, I know.
+Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims
+Too giddily to guide her limbs,
+Disabled by their palsy-stroke
+From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke
+Drops off, no more to be endured,
+Her teaching is not so obscured
+By errors and perversities,
+That no truth shines athwart the lies:
+And he, whose eye detects a spark
+Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark,
+May well see flame where each beholder
+Acknowledges the embers smoulder.
+But I, a mere man, fear to quit
+The clue God gave me as most fit
+To guide my footsteps through life's maze,
+Because himself discerns all ways
+Open to reach him: I, a man
+Able to mark where faith began
+To swerve aside, till from its summit
+Judgment drops her damning plummet,
+Pronouncing such a fatal space
+Departed from the founder's base:
+He will not bid me enter too,
+But rather sit, as now I do,
+Awaiting his return outside.
+--'Twas thus my reason straight replied
+And joyously I turned, and pressed
+The garment's skirt upon my breast,
+Until, afresh its light suffusing me,
+My heart cried--What has been abusing me
+That I should wait here lonely and coldly,
+Instead of rising, entering boldly,
+Baring truth's face, and letting drift
+Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?
+Do these men praise him? I will raise
+My voice up to their point of praise!
+I see the error; but above
+The scope of error, see the love.--
+Oh, love of those first Christian days!
+--Fanned so soon into a blaze,
+From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,
+That the antique sovereign Intellect
+Which then sat ruling in the world,
+Like a change in dreams, was hurled
+From the throne he reigned upon:
+You looked up and he was gone.
+Gone, his glory of the pen!
+--Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,
+Bade her scribes abhor the trick
+Of poetry and rhetoric,
+And exult with hearts set free,
+In blessed imbecility
+Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet
+Leaving Sallust incomplete
+Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!
+--Love, while able to acquaint her
+While the thousand statues yet
+Fresh from chisel, pictures wet
+From brush, she saw on every side,
+Chose rather with an infant's pride
+To frame those portents which impart
+Such unction to true Christian Art.
+Gone, music too! The air was stirred
+By happy wings: Terpander's* bird
+*[Footnote: Terpander, a famous Lesbian musician and lyric poet, 670 B.C.]
+(That, when the cold came, fled away)
+Would tarry not the wintry day,--
+As more-enduring sculpture must,
+Till filthy saints rebuked the gust
+With which they chanced to get a sight
+Of some dear naked Aphrodite
+They glanced a thought above the toes of,
+By breaking zealously her nose off.
+Love, surely, from that music's lingering,
+Might have filched her organ-fingering,
+Nor chosen rather to set prayings
+To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.
+Love was the startling thing, the new:
+Love was the all-sufficient too;
+And seeing that, you see the rest:
+As a babe can find its mother's breast
+As well in darkness as in light,
+Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.
+True, the world's eyes are open now:
+--Less need for me to disallow
+Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,
+Peevish as ever to be suckled,
+Lulled by the same old baby-prattle
+With intermixture of the rattle,
+When she would have them creep, stand steady
+Upon their feet, or walk already,
+Not to speak of trying to climb.
+I will be wise another time,
+And not desire a wall between us,
+  When next I see a church-roof cover
+So many species of one genus,
+  All with foreheads bearing _lover_
+Written above the earnest eyes of them;
+  All with breasts that beat for beauty,
+Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,
+  In noble daring, steadfast duty,
+The heroic in passion, or in action,--
+Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,
+To the mere outside of human creatures,
+Mere perfect form and faultless features.
+What? with all Rome here, whence to levy
+  Such contributions to their appetite,
+With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,
+  They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight
+On their southern eyes, restrained from
+  feeding
+On the glories of their ancient reading,
+On the beauties of their modern singing,
+On the wonders of the builder's bringing,
+On the majesties of Art around them,--
+  And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,
+When faith has at last united and bound them,
+  They offer up to God for a present?
+Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,--
+  And, only taking the act in reference
+To the other recipients who might have allowed it,
+  I will rejoice that God had the preference.
+
+XII
+
+So I summed up my new resolves:
+  Too much love there can never be.
+And where the intellect devolves
+  Its function on love exclusively,
+I, a man who possesses both,
+Will accept the provision, nothing loth,
+--Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,
+That my intellect may find its share.
+And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest,
+And see them applaud the great heart of the artist,
+Who, examining the capabilities
+  Of the block of marble he has to fashion
+  Into a type of thought or passion,--
+Not always, using obvious facilities,
+Shapes it, as any artist can,
+Into a perfect symmetrical man,
+Complete from head to foot of the life-size,
+Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes,--
+But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummate
+A Colossus by no means so easy to come at,
+And uses the whole of his block for the bust,
+  Leaving the mind of the public to finish it,
+Since cut it ruefully short he must:
+On the face alone he expends his devotion,
+  He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it,
+--Saying, "Applaud me for this grand notion
+"Of what a face may be! As for completing it
+  "In breast and body and limbs, do that, you!"
+All hail! I fancy how, happily meeting it,
+  A trunk and legs would perfect the statue,
+Could man carve so as to answer volition.
+  And how much nobler than petty cavils,
+  Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels,
+Some artist of another ambition,
+Who, having a block to carve, no bigger,
+Has spent his power on the opposite quest,
+  And believed to begin at the feet was best--
+For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure!
+
+XIII
+
+No sooner said than out in the night!
+My heart lighter and more light:
+And still, as before, I was walking swift,
+  With my senses settling fast and steadying,
+But my body caught up in the whirl and drift
+  Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying
+On just before me, still to be followed,
+  As it carried me after with its motion,
+--What shall I say?--as a path, were hollowed,
+  And a man went weltering through the ocean,
+Sucked along in the flying wake
+Of the luminous water-snake.
+
+XIV
+
+Alone! I am left alone once more--
+  (Save for the garment's extreme fold
+  Abandoned still to bless my hold)
+Alone, beside the entrance-door
+Of a sort of temple,-perhaps a college,
+--Like nothing I ever saw before
+At home in England, to my knowledge.
+The tall old quaint irregular town!
+  It may be... though which, I can't affirm... any
+  Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany:
+And this flight of stairs where I sit down,
+Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort
+Or Gottingen, I have to thank for't?
+It may be Gottingen,--most likely.
+Through the open door I catch obliquely
+Glimpses of a lecture-hall;
+  And not a bad assembly neither,
+Ranged decent and symmetrical
+  On benches, waiting what's to see there:
+Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,
+I also resolve to see with them,
+Cautious this time how I suffer to slip
+The chance of joining in fellowship
+With any that call themselves his friends;
+  As these folk do, I have a notion.
+  But hist--a buzzing and emotion!
+All settle themselves, the while ascends
+By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,
+  Step by step, deliberate
+  Because of his cranium's over-freight,
+Three parts sublime to one grotesque,
+If I have proved an accurate guesser,
+The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.
+I felt at once as if there ran
+A shoot of love from my heart to the man--
+That sallow virgin-minded studious
+  Martyr to mild enthusiasm,
+As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious
+  That woke my sympathetic spasm,
+(Beside some spitting that made me sorry)
+And stood, surveying his auditory
+With a wan pure look, well-nigh celestial,--
+  Those blue eyes had survived so much!
+  While, under the foot they could not smutch,
+Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.
+Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,
+Till the auditory's clearing of throats
+Was done with, died into a silence;
+  And, when each glance was upward sent,
+  Each bearded mouth composed intent,
+And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,--
+He pushed back higher his spectacles,
+Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,
+And giving his head of hair--a hake
+  Of undressed tow, for colour and quantity--
+One rapid and impatient shake,
+  (As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie
+When about to impart, on mature digestion,
+Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)
+--The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,
+Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.
+
+XV
+
+And he began it by observing
+  How reason dictated that men
+Should rectify the natural swerving,
+  By a reversion, now and then,
+To the well-heads of knowledge, few
+And far away, whence rolling grew
+The life-stream wide whereat we drink,
+Commingled, as we needs must think,
+With waters alien to the source;
+To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;
+Since, where could be a fitter time
+For tracing backward to its prime
+This Christianity, this lake,
+This reservoir, whereat we slake,
+From one or other bank, our thirst?
+So, he proposed inquiring first
+Into the various sources whence
+  This Myth of Christ is derivable;
+Demanding from the evidence,
+  (Since plainly no such life was livable)
+How these phenomena should class?
+Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,
+Or never was at all, or whether
+He was and was not, both together--
+It matters little for the name,
+So the idea be left the same.
+Only, for practical purpose' sake,
+'Twas obviously as well to take
+The popular story,--understanding
+  How the ineptitude of the time,
+And the penman's prejudice, expanding
+  Fact into fable fit for the clime,
+Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it
+  Into this myth, this Individuum,--
+Which, when reason had strained and abated it
+Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,
+A Man!--a right true man, however,
+Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour:
+Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient
+  To his disciples, for rather believing
+He was just omnipotent and omniscient,
+  As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving
+His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant
+Something entirely different
+From all that those who only heard it,
+In their simplicity thought and averred it,
+Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:
+For, among other doctrines delectable,
+Was he not surely the first to insist on
+  The natural sovereignty of our race?--
+  Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.
+And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,
+Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,
+I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,
+The vesture still within my hand.
+
+
+XVI
+
+I could interpret its command.
+This time he would not bid me enter
+The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.
+Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic
+When Papist struggles with Dissenter,
+Impregnating its pristine clarity,
+--One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,
+  Its gust of broken meat and garlic;
+--One, by his soul's too-much presuming
+To turn the frankincense's fuming
+  And vapours of the candle starlike
+Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.
+  Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,
+  May poison it for healthy breathing--
+But the Critic leaves no air to poison;
+Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity
+Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity.
+Thus much of Christ does he reject?
+And what retain? His intellect?
+What is it I must reverence duly?
+Poor intellect for worship, truly,
+Which tells me simply what was told
+  (If mere morality, bereft
+  Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)
+Elsewhere by voices manifold;
+With this advantage, that the stater
+  Made nowise the important stumble
+  Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
+Was also one with the Creator.
+You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:
+  But how does shifting blame, evade it?
+Have wisdom's words no more felicity?
+  The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it?
+How comes it that for one found able
+To sift the truth of it from fable,
+Millions believe it to the letter?
+Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better?
+Strange goodness, which upon the score
+  Of being goodness, the mere due
+Of man to fellow-man, much more
+  To God,--should take another view
+Of its possessor's privilege,
+And bid him rule his race! You pledge
+Your fealty to such rule? What, all--
+From heavenly John and Attic Paul,
+And that brave weather-battered Peter,
+Whose stout faith only stood completer
+For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,
+As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,--
+All, down to you, the man of men,
+Professing here at Gottingen,
+Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,
+Are sheep of a good man! And why?
+The goodness,--how did he acquire it?
+Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?
+Choose which; then tell me, on what ground
+Should its possessor dare propound
+His claim to rise o'er us an inch?
+  Were goodness all some man's invention,
+  Who arbitrarily made mention
+What we should follow, and whence flinch,--
+What qualities might take the style
+  Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing
+  Met with as general acquiescing
+As graced the alphabet erewhile,
+When A got leave an Ox to be,
+No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G*,--
+*[Footnote: Gimel, the Hebrew G, means camel.]
+For thus inventing thing and title
+Worship were that man's fit requital.
+But if the common conscience must
+Be ultimately judge, adjust
+Its apt name to each quality
+Already known,--I would decree
+Worship for such mere demonstration
+  And simple work of nomenclature,
+  Only the day I praised, not nature,
+But Harvey, for the circulation.
+I would praise such a Christ, with pride
+And joy, that he, as none beside,
+Had taught us how to keep the mind
+God gave him, as God gave his kind,
+Freer than they from fleshly taint:
+I would call such a Christ our Saint,
+As I declare our Poet, him
+Whose insight makes all others dim:
+A thousand poets pried at life,
+And only one amid the strife
+Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take
+His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake--
+Though some objected--"Had we seen
+"The heart and head of each, what screen
+"Was broken there to give them light,
+"While in ourselves it shuts the sight,
+"We should no more admire, perchance,
+"That these found truth out at a glance,
+"Than marvel how the bat discerns
+"Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,
+"Led by a finer tact, a gift
+"He boasts, which other birds must shift
+"Without, and grope as best they can."
+No, freely I would praise the man,--
+Nor one whit more, if he contended
+That gift of his, from God descended.
+Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?
+No nearer something, by a jot,
+Rise an infinity of nothings
+  Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:
+Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,
+  Make that creator which was creature?
+Multiply gifts upon man's head,
+And what, when all's done, shall be said
+But--the more gifted he, I ween!
+  That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,
+And this might be all that has been,--
+  So what is there to frown or smile at?
+What is left for us, save, in growth
+Of soul, to rise up, far past both,
+From the gift looking to the giver,
+And from the cistern to the river,
+And from the finite to infinity,
+And from man's dust to God's divinity?
+
+
+XVII
+
+Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
+Lies trace for trace upon curs impressed:
+Though he is so bright and we so dim,
+We are made in his image to witness him:
+And were no eye in us to tell,
+  Instructed by no inner sense,
+The light of heaven from the dark of hell,
+  That light would want its evidence,--
+Though justice, good and truth were still
+Divine, if, by some demon's will,
+Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed
+Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.
+No mere exposition of morality
+Made or in part or in totality,
+Should win you to give it worship, therefore:
+And, if no better proof you will care for,
+--Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?
+  Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more
+Of what right is, than arrives at birth
+  In the best man's acts that we bow before:
+This last knows better--true, but my fact is,
+'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
+And thence I conclude that the real God-function
+Is to furnish a motive and injunction
+For practising what we know already.
+And such an injunction and such a motive
+As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,
+"High-minded," hang your tablet-votive
+Outside the fane on a finger-post?
+Morality to the uttermost,
+Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
+Why need we prove would avail no jot
+To make him God, if God he were not?
+What is the point where himself lays stress?
+Does the precept run "Believe in good,
+"In justice, truth, now understood
+"For the first time?"--or, "Believe in me,
+"Who lived and died, yet essentially
+"Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take
+The same to his heart and for mere love's sake
+Conceive of the love,--that man obtains
+A new truth; no conviction gains
+Of an old one only, made intense
+By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Can it be that he stays inside?
+  Is the vesture left me to commune with?
+  Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with
+Even at this lecture, if she tried?
+Oh, let me at lowest sympathize
+With the lurking drop of blood that lies
+In the desiccated brain's white roots
+Without throb for Christ's attributes,
+As the lecturer makes his special boast!
+If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.
+Admire we, how from heart to brain
+  (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)
+One instinct rises and falls again,
+  Restoring the equilibrium.
+And how when the Critic had done his best,
+And the pearl of price, at reason's test,
+Lay dust and ashes levigable
+On the Professor's lecture-table,--
+When we looked for the inference and monition
+That our faith, reduced to such condition,
+Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,--
+  He bids us, when we least expect it,
+Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole,
+  Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,
+Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,
+So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!
+"Go home and venerate the myth
+"I thus have experimented with--
+"This man, continue to adore him
+"Rather than all who went before him,
+"And all who ever followed after!"--
+  Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!
+Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?
+  That's one point gained: can I compass another?
+Unlearned love was safe from spurning--
+Can't we respect your loveless learning?
+Let us at least give learning honour!
+What laurels had we showered upon her,
+Girding her loins up to perturb
+Our theory of the Middle Verb;
+Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar
+O'er anapasts in comic-trimeter;
+Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'
+[Footnote: "The Suppliants," a fragment of a play by Aeschylus.]
+While we lounged on at our indebted ease:
+Instead of which, a tricksy demon
+Sets her at Titus or Philemon!
+When ignorance wags his ears of leather
+And hates God's word, 'tis altogether;
+Nor leaves he his congenial thistles
+To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.
+--And you, the audience, who might ravage
+The world wide, enviably savage,
+Nor heed the cry of the retriever,
+More than Herr Heine (before his fever),--
+I do not tell a lie so arrant
+  As say my passion's wings are furled up,
+And, without plainest heavenly warrant,
+  I were ready and glad to give the world up--
+But still, when you rub brow meticulous,
+  And ponder the profit of turning holy
+  If not for God's, for your own sake solely,
+--God forbid I should find you ridiculous!
+Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,
+Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,
+"Christians,"--abhor the deist's pravity,--
+Go on, you shall no more move my gravity
+Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,
+I find it in my heart to embarrass them
+By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,
+And they really carry what they say carries them.
+
+
+XIX
+
+So sat I talking with my mind.
+  I did not long to leave the door
+  And find a new church, as before,
+But rather was quiet and inclined
+To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting
+From further tracking and trying and testing.
+"This tolerance is a genial mood!"
+(Said I, and a little pause ensued).
+"One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,
+  "And sees, each side, the good effects of it,
+"A value for religion's self,
+  "A carelessness about the sects of it.
+"Let me enjoy my own conviction,
+  "Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness,
+"Still spying there some dereliction
+  "Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!"
+Better a mild indifferentism,
+  "Teaching that both our faiths (though duller
+"His shine through a dull spirit's prism)
+  "Originally had one colour!
+"Better pursue a pilgrimage
+  "Through ancient and through modern times
+  "To many peoples, various climes,
+"Where I may see saint, savage, sage
+"Fuse their respective creeds in one
+"Before the general Father's throne!"
+
+
+XX
+
+--'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!
+The black night caught me in his mesh,
+Whirled me up, and flung me prone.
+I was left on the college-step alone.
+I looked, and far there, ever fleeting
+Far, far away, the receding gesture,
+And looming of the lessening vesture!--
+Swept forward from my stupid hand,
+While I watched my foolish heart expand
+In the lazy glow of benevolence,
+  O'er the various modes of man's belief.
+I sprang up with fear's vehemence.
+  Needs must there be one way, our chief
+Best way of worship: let me strive
+To find it, and when found, contrive
+My fellows also take their share!
+This constitutes my earthly care:
+God's is above it and distinct.
+For I, a man, with men am linked
+But not a brute with brutes; no gain
+That I experience, must remain
+Unshared: but should my best endeavour
+To share it, fail--subsisteth ever
+God's care above, and I exult
+That God, by God's own ways occult,
+May--doth, I will believe--bring back
+All wanderers to a single track.
+Meantime, I can but testify
+God's care for me--no more, can I--
+It is but for myself I know;
+  The world rolls witnessing around me
+  Only to leave me as it found me;
+Men cry there, but my ear is slow:
+There races flourish or decay
+--What boots it, while yon lucid way
+Loaded with stars divides the vault?
+But soon my soul repairs its fault
+When, sharpening sense's hebetude,
+She turns on my own life! So viewed,
+No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense
+With witnessings of providence:
+And woe to me if when I look
+Upon that record, the sole book
+Unsealed to me, I take no heed
+Of any warning that I read!
+Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,
+God's own hand did the rainbow weave,
+Whereby the truth from heaven slid
+Into my soul?--I cannot bid
+The world admit he stooped to heal
+My soul, as if in a thunder-peal
+Where one heard noise, and one saw flame,
+I only knew he named my name:
+But what is the world to me, for sorrow
+Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow
+It drops the remark, with just-turned head
+Then, on again, 'That man is dead'?
+Yes, but for me--my name called,--drawn
+As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,
+He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:
+Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,--
+Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,
+With a rapid finger circled round,
+Fixed to the first poor inch of ground
+To fight from, where his foot was found;
+Whose ear but a minute since lay free
+To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry--
+Summoned, a solitary man
+To end his life where his life began,
+From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!
+Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held
+By the hem of the vesture!--
+
+
+XXI
+
+                            And I caught
+At the flying robe, and unrepelled
+  Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught
+With warmth and wonder and delight,
+God's mercy being infinite.
+For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,
+When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,
+Out of the wandering world of rain,
+Into the little chapel again.
+
+
+XXII
+
+How else was I found there, bolt upright
+  On my bench, as if I had never left it?
+--Never flung out on the common at night,
+  Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,
+Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,
+Or the laboratory of the Professor!
+For the Vision, that was true, I wist,
+True as that heaven and earth exist.
+There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,
+With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;
+Yet my nearest neighbour's cheek showed gall.
+  She had slid away a contemptuous space:
+And the old fat woman, late so placable,
+Eyed me with symptoms hardly mistakable,
+Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.
+In short, a spectator might have fancied
+That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber.
+Yet kept my scat, a warning ghastly,
+Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,
+And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.
+But again, could such disgrace have happened?
+  Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;
+And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?
+  Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?
+Could I report as I do at the close,
+First, the preacher speaks through his nose:
+Second, his gesture is too emphatic:
+  Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,
+  The subject-matter itself lacks logic:
+Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.
+Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,
+Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call
+Of making square to a finite eye
+The circle of infinity,
+And find so all-but-just-succeeding!
+Great news! the sermon proves no reading
+Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,
+Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!
+And now that I know the very worst of him,
+What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?
+Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks,
+Shall I take on me to change his tasks,
+And dare, despatched to a river-head
+  For a simple draught of the element,
+  Neglect the thing for which he sent,
+And return with another thing instead?--
+Saying, "Because the water found
+"Welling up from the underground,
+"Is mingled with the taints of earth,
+"While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,
+"And couldst, at wink or word, convulse
+"The world with the leap of a river-pulse,--
+"Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,
+  "And bring thee a chalice I found, instead;
+"See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!
+  "One would suppose that the marble bled.
+"What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:
+  "The waterless cup will quench my thirst."
+--Better have knelt at the poorest stream
+That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!
+For the less or the more is all God's gift,
+Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.
+And here, is there water or not, to drink?
+I then, in ignorance and weakness,
+Taking God's help, have attained to think
+My heart does best to receive in meekness
+That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
+Where earthly aids being cast behind,
+His All in All appears serene
+With the thinnest human veil between,
+Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
+The many motions of his spirit,
+Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.
+For the preacher's merit or demerit,
+It were to be wished the flaws were fewer
+In the earthen vessel, holding treasure
+Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;
+  But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?
+Heaven soon sets right all other matters!--
+  Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,
+This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,
+  This soul at struggle with insanity,
+Who thence take comfort--can I doubt?--
+Which an empire gained were a loss without.
+May it be mine! And let us hope
+That no worse blessing befall the Pope,
+Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,
+  Of posturings and petticoatings,
+  Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings
+In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!
+Nor may the Professor forego its peace
+  At Gottingen presently, when, in the dusk
+Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,
+  Prophesied of by that horrible husk--
+When thicker and thicker the darkness fills
+The world through his misty spectacles,
+And he gropes for something more substantial
+  Than a fable, myth or personification,--
+May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,
+  And stand confessed as the God of salvation!
+Meantime, in the still recurring fear
+  Lest myself, at unawares, be found,
+  While attacking the choice of my neighbours round,
+With none of my own made--I choose here!
+The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;
+I have done: and if any blames me,
+Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
+  The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,--
+Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
+  On the bounds of the holy and the awful,--
+I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,
+And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,
+Who head and heart alike discernest
+  Looking below light speech we utter,
+  When frothy spume and frequent sputter
+Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!
+May truth shine out, stand ever before us!
+I put up pencil and join chorus
+To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,
+  The last five verses of the third section
+  Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,
+To conclude with the doxology.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Eve, by Robert Browning
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