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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/6670-h.zip b/6670-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..021b6e5 --- /dev/null +++ b/6670-h.zip diff --git a/6670-h/6670-h.htm b/6670-h/6670-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff45a40 --- /dev/null +++ b/6670-h/6670-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2103 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> + +<head> + +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> + +<title> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of Christmas Eve, by Robert Browning +</title> + +<style type="text/css"> +body { color: black; + background: white; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +p {text-indent: 4% } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.t1 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 200%; + text-align: center } + +p.t2 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 150%; + text-align: center } + +p.t3 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 100%; + text-align: center } + +p.t3b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 100%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +p.t4 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + text-align: center } + +p.t4b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +p.t5 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 60%; + text-align: center } + +h1 { text-align: center } +h2 { text-align: center } +h3 { text-align: center } +h4 { text-align: center } +h5 { text-align: center } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; } + +p.contents {text-indent: -3%; + margin-left: 5% } + +p.thought {text-indent: 0% ; + letter-spacing: 4em ; + text-align: center } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +p.footnote {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +p.transnote {text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.intro {font-size: 90% ; + text-indent: -5% ; + margin-left: 5% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.quote {text-indent: 4% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Eve, by Robert Browning + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Christmas Eve + +Author: Robert Browning + +Posting Date: March 16, 2014 [EBook #6670] +Release Date: October, 2004 +First Posted: January 12, 2003 +Last Updated: February 4, 2008 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al +Haines. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1> +<br /><br /> + CHRISTMAS EVE<br /> +</h1> + +<p class="t2"> + ROBERT BROWNING<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + I<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Out of the little chapel I burst<br /> + Into the fresh night-air again.<br /> + Five minutes full, I waited first<br /> + In the doorway, to escape the rain<br /> + That drove in gusts down the common's centre<br /> + At the edge of which the chapel stands,<br /> + Before I plucked up heart to enter.<br /> + Heaven knows how many sorts of hands<br /> + Reached past me, groping for the latch<br /> + Of the inner door that hung on catch<br /> + More obstinate the more they fumbled,<br /> + Till, giving way at last with a scold<br /> + Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled<br /> + One sheep more to the rest in fold,<br /> + And left me irresolute, standing sentry<br /> + In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,<br /> + Six feet long by three feet wide,<br /> + Partitioned off from the vast inside—<br /> + I blocked up half of it at least.<br /> + No remedy; the rain kept driving.<br /> + They eyed me much as some wild beast,<br /> + That congregation, still arriving,<br /> + Some of them by the main road, white<br /> + A long way past me into the night,<br /> + Skirting the common, then diverging;<br /> + Not a few suddenly emerging<br /> + From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps<br /> + —They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,<br /> + Where the road stops short with its safeguard border<br /> + Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;—<br /> + But the most turned in yet more abruptly<br /> + From a certain squalid knot of alleys,<br /> + Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,<br /> + Which now the little chapel rallies<br /> + And leads into day again,—its priestliness<br /> + Lending itself to hide their beastliness<br /> + So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),<br /> + And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on<br /> + Those neophytes too much in lack of it,<br /> + That, where you cross the common as I did,<br /> + And meet the party thus presided,<br /> + "Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,<br /> + They front you as little disconcerted<br /> + As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,<br /> + And her wicked people made to mind him,<br /> + Lot might have marched with Gomorrah<br /> + behind him.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + II<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,<br /> + In came the flock: the fat weary woman,<br /> + Panting and bewildered, down-clapping<br /> + Her umbrella with a mighty report,<br /> + Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,<br /> + A wreck of whalebones; then, with snort,<br /> + Like a startled horse, at the interloper<br /> + (Who humbly knew himself improper,<br /> + But could not shrink up small enough)<br /> + —Round to the door, and in,—the gruff<br /> + Hinge's invariable scold<br /> + Making my very blood run cold.<br /> + Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered<br /> + On broken clogs, the many-tattered<br /> + Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother<br /> + Of the sickly babe she tried to smother<br /> + Somehow up, with its spotted face,<br /> + From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;<br /> + She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry<br /> + Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby<br /> + Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping<br /> + Already from my own clothes' dropping,<br /> + Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:<br /> + Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,<br /> + She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,<br /> + Planted together before her breast<br /> + And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.<br /> + Close on her heels, the dingy satins<br /> + Of a female something, past me flitted,<br /> + With lips as much too white, as a streak<br /> + Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;<br /> + And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied<br /> + All that was left of a woman once,<br /> + Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.<br /> + Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief,<br /> + With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,<br /> + And eyelids screwed together tight,<br /> + Led himself in by some inner light.<br /> + And, except from him, from each that entered,<br /> + I got the same interrogation—<br /> + "What, you the alien, you have ventured<br /> + "To take with us, the elect, your station?<br /> + "A carer for none of it, a Gallio!"—<br /> + Thus, plain as print, I read the glance<br /> + At a common prey, in each countenance<br /> + As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.<br /> + And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,<br /> + The draught, it always sent in shutting,<br /> + Made the flame of the single tallow candle<br /> + In the cracked square lantern I stood under,<br /> + Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting<br /> + As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:<br /> + I verily fancied the zealous light<br /> + (In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite<br /> + Would shudder itself clean off the wick,<br /> + With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.<br /> + [Footnote: See Rev. i. 20.]<br /> + There was no standing it much longer.<br /> + "Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,<br /> + "This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor<br /> + "When the weather sends you a chance visitor?<br /> + "You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,<br /> + "And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!<br /> + "But still, despite the pretty perfection<br /> + "To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,<br /> + "And, taking God's word under wise protection,<br /> + "Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,<br /> + "And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares,—<br /> + "Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,<br /> + "If I should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'—<br /> + "See if the best of you bars me my ration!<br /> + "I prefer, if you please, for my expounder<br /> + "Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;<br /> + "Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest<br /> + "Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:<br /> + "So shut your mouth and open your Testament,<br /> + "And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"<br /> + Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad<br /> + With wizened face in want of soap,<br /> + And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,<br /> + (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,<br /> + To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,<br /> + And so avoid disturbing the preacher)<br /> + —Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise<br /> + At the shutting door, and entered likewise,<br /> + Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,<br /> + And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,<br /> + And found myself in full conventicle,<br /> + —To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,<br /> + On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,<br /> + Which, calling its flock to their special clover,<br /> + Found all assembled and one sheep over,<br /> + Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + III<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + I very soon had enough of it.<br /> + The hot smell and the human noises,<br /> + And my neighbour's coat, the greasy cuff of it,<br /> + Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,<br /> + Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure<br /> + Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,<br /> + As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,<br /> + To meet his audience's avidity.<br /> + You needed not the wit of the Sibyl<br /> + To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:<br /> + No sooner our friend had got an inkling<br /> + Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,<br /> + (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,<br /> + How death, at unawares, might duck him<br /> + Deeper than the grave, and quench<br /> + The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)<br /> + Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,<br /> + As to hug the book of books to pieces:<br /> + And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,<br /> + Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,<br /> + Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,—<br /> + So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.<br /> + And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:<br /> + Nay, had but a single face of my neighbours<br /> + Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labours<br /> + Were help which the world could be saved without,<br /> + 'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet<br /> + A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,<br /> + Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered<br /> + Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:<br /> + But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,<br /> + Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon<br /> + With such content in every snuffle,<br /> + As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.<br /> + My old fat woman purred with pleasure,<br /> + And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,<br /> + While she, to his periods keeping measure,<br /> + Maternally devoured the pastor.<br /> + The man with the handkerchief untied it,<br /> + Showed us a horrible wen inside it,<br /> + Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,<br /> + And rocked himself as the woman was doing.<br /> + The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,<br /> + Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!<br /> + My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;<br /> + So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,<br /> + "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"<br /> + I flung out of the little chapel.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + IV<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + There was a lull in the rain, a lull<br /> + In the wind too; the moon was risen,<br /> + And would have shone out pure and full,<br /> + But for the ramparted cloud-prison,<br /> + Block on block built up in the West,<br /> + For what purpose the wind knows best,<br /> + Who changes his mind continually.<br /> + And the empty other half of the sky<br /> + Seemed in its silence as if it knew<br /> + What, any moment, might look through<br /> + A chance gap in that fortress massy:—<br /> + Through its fissures you got hints<br /> + Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,<br /> + Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassy<br /> + Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,<br /> + Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,<br /> + All a-simmer with intense strain<br /> + To let her through,—then blank again,<br /> + At the hope of her appearance failing.<br /> + Just by the chapel, a break in the railing<br /> + Shows a narrow path directly across;<br /> + 'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss—<br /> + Besides, you go gently all the way uphill.<br /> + I stooped under and soon felt better;<br /> + My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,<br /> + As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.<br /> + My mind was full of the scene I had left,<br /> + That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,<br /> + —How this outside was pure and different!<br /> + The sermon, now—what a mingled weft<br /> + Of good and ill! Were either less,<br /> + Its fellow had coloured the whole distinctly;<br /> + But alas for the excellent earnestness,<br /> + And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,<br /> + But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,<br /> + However to pastor and flock's contentment!<br /> + Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,<br /> + With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,<br /> + Till how could you know them, grown double their size<br /> + In the natural fog of the good man's mind,<br /> + Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,<br /> + Haloed about with the common's damps?<br /> + Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;<br /> + The zeal was good, and the aspiration;<br /> + And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,<br /> + Pharaoh received no demonstration,<br /> + By his Baker's dream of Basket Three,<br /> + Of the doctrine of the Trinity,—<br /> + Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,<br /> + Apparently his hearers relished it<br /> + With so unfeigned a gust—who knows if<br /> + They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?<br /> + But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!<br /> + These people have really felt, no doubt,<br /> + A something, the motion they style the Call of them;<br /> + And this is their method of bringing about,<br /> + By a mechanism of words and tones,<br /> + (So many texts in so many groans)<br /> + A sort of reviving and reproducing,<br /> + More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)<br /> + The mood itself, which strengthens by using;<br /> + And how that happens, I understand well.<br /> + A tune was born in my head last week,<br /> + Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek<br /> + Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;<br /> + And when, next week, I take it back again,<br /> + My head will sing to the engine's clack again,<br /> + While it only makes my neighbour's haunches stir,<br /> + —Finding no dormant musical sprout<br /> + In him, as in me, to be jolted out.<br /> + 'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;<br /> + He gets no more from the railway's preaching<br /> + Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:<br /> + Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.<br /> + Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"<br /> + To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + V<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + But wherefore be harsh on a single case?<br /> + After how many modes, this Christmas Eve,<br /> + Does the self-same weary thing take place?<br /> + The same endeavour to make you believe,<br /> + And with much the same effect, no more:<br /> + Each method abundantly convincing,<br /> + As I say, to those convinced before,<br /> + But scarce to be swallowed without wincing<br /> + By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,<br /> + I have my own church equally:<br /> + And in this church my faith sprang first!<br /> + (I said, as I reached the rising ground,<br /> + And the wind began again, with a burst<br /> + Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound<br /> + From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,<br /> + I entered his church-door, nature leading me)<br /> + —In youth I look to these very skies,<br /> + And probing their immensities,<br /> + I found God there, his visible power;<br /> + Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense<br /> + Of the power, an equal evidence<br /> + That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.<br /> + For the loving worm within its clod,<br /> + Were diviner than a loveless god<br /> + Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.<br /> + You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:<br /> + But also, God, whose pleasure brought<br /> + Man into being, stands away<br /> + As it were a handbreadth off, to give<br /> + Room for the newly-made to live,<br /> + And look at him from a place apart,<br /> + And use his gifts of brain and heart,<br /> + Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.<br /> + Who speaks of man, then, must not sever<br /> + Man's very elements from man,<br /> + Saying, "But all is God's"—whose plan<br /> + Was to create man and then leave him<br /> + Able, his own word saith, to grieve him<br /> + But able to glorify him too,<br /> + As a mere machine could never do,<br /> + That prayed or praised, all unaware<br /> + Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,<br /> + Made perfect as a thing of course.<br /> + Man, therefore, stands on his own stock<br /> + Of love and power as a pin-point rock:<br /> + And, looking to God who ordained divorce<br /> + Of the rock from his boundless continent,<br /> + Sees, in his power made evident,<br /> + Only excess by a million-fold<br /> + O'er the power God gave man in the mould.<br /> + For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry<br /> + A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry<br /> + Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,<br /> + —Advancing in power by one degree;<br /> + And why count steps through eternity?<br /> + But love is the ever-springing fountain:<br /> + Man may enlarge or narrow his bed<br /> + For the water's play, but the water-head—<br /> + How can he multiply or reduce it?<br /> + As easy create it, as cause it to cease;<br /> + He may profit by it, or abuse it,<br /> + But 'tis not a thing to bear increase<br /> + As power does: be love less or more<br /> + In the heart of man, he keeps it shut<br /> + Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but<br /> + Love's sum remains what it was before.<br /> + So, gazing up, in my youth, at love<br /> + As seen through power, ever above<br /> + All modes which make it manifest,<br /> + My soul brought all to a single test—<br /> + That he, the Eternal First and Last,<br /> + Who, in his power, had so surpassed<br /> + All man conceives of what is might,—<br /> + Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,<br /> + —Would prove as infinitely good;<br /> + Would never, (my soul understood,)<br /> + With power to work all love desires,<br /> + Bestow e'en less than man requires;<br /> + That he who endlessly was teaching,<br /> + Above my spirit's utmost reaching,<br /> + What love can do in the leaf or stone,<br /> + (So that to master this alone,<br /> + This done in the stone or leaf for me,<br /> + I must go on learning endlessly)<br /> + Would never need that I, in turn,<br /> + Should point him out defect unheeded,<br /> + And show that God had yet to learn<br /> + What the meanest human creature needed,<br /> + —Not life, to wit, for a few short years,<br /> + Tracking his way through doubts and fears,<br /> + While the stupid earth on which I stay<br /> + Suffers no change, but passive adds<br /> + Its myriad years to myriads,<br /> + Though I, he gave it to, decay,<br /> + Seeing death come and choose about me,<br /> + And my dearest ones depart without me.<br /> + No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,<br /> + Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,<br /> + The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it.<br /> + Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it,<br /> + And I shall behold thee, face to face,<br /> + O God, and in thy light retrace<br /> + How in all I loved here, still wast thou!<br /> + Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,<br /> + I shall find as able to satiate<br /> + The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder<br /> + Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,<br /> + With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,<br /> + And glory in thee for, as I gaze<br /> + Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways<br /> + Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine—<br /> + Be this my way! And this is mine!<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + VI<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + For lo, what think you? suddenly<br /> + The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky<br /> + Received at once the full fruition<br /> + Of the moon's consummate apparition.<br /> + The black cloud-barricade was riven,<br /> + Ruined beneath her feet, and driven<br /> + Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,<br /> + North and South and East lay ready<br /> + For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,<br /> + Sprang across them and stood steady.<br /> + 'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,<br /> + From heaven to heaven extending, perfect<br /> + As the mother-moon's self, full in face.<br /> + It rose, distinctly at the base<br /> + With its seven proper colours chorded,<br /> + Which still, in the rising, were compressed,<br /> + Until at last they coalesced,<br /> + And supreme the spectral creature lorded<br /> + In a triumph of whitest white,—<br /> + Above which intervened the night.<br /> + But above night too, like only the next,<br /> + The second of a wondrous sequence,<br /> + Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,<br /> + Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,<br /> + Another rainbow rose, a mightier,<br /> + Fainter, flushier and flightier,—<br /> + Rapture dying along its verge.<br /> + Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,<br /> + Whose, from the straining topmost dark,<br /> + On to the keystone of that arc?<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + VII<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + This sight was shown me, there and then,—<br /> + Me, out of a world of men,<br /> + Singled forth, as the chance might hap<br /> + To another if, in a thunderclap<br /> + Where I heard noise and you saw flame,<br /> + Some one man knew God called his name.<br /> + For me, I think I said, "Appear!<br /> + "Good were it to be ever here.<br /> + "If thou wilt, let me build to thee<br /> + "Service-tabernacles three,<br /> + "Where, forever in thy presence,<br /> + "In ecstatic acquiescence,<br /> + "Far alike from thriftless learning<br /> + "And ignorance's undiscerning,<br /> + "I may worship and remain!"<br /> + Thus at the show above me, gazing<br /> + With upturned eyes, I felt my brain<br /> + Glutted with the glory, blazing<br /> + Throughout its whole mass, over and under<br /> + Until at length it burst asunder<br /> + And out of it bodily there streamed,<br /> + The too-much glory, as it seemed,<br /> + Passing from out me to the ground,<br /> + Then palely serpentining round<br /> + Into the dark with mazy error.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + VIII<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + All at once I looked up with terror.<br /> + He was there.<br /> + He himself with his human air.<br /> + On the narrow pathway, just before.<br /> + I saw the back of him, no more—<br /> + He had left the chapel, then, as I.<br /> + I forgot all about the sky.<br /> + No face: only the sight<br /> + Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,<br /> + With a hem that I could recognize.<br /> + I felt terror, no surprise;<br /> + My mind filled with the cataract,<br /> + At one bound of the mighty fact.<br /> + "I remember, he did say<br /> + "Doubtless that, to this world's end,<br /> + "Where two or three should meet and pray,<br /> + "He would be in their midst, their friend;<br /> + "Certainly he was there with them!"<br /> + And my pulses leaped for joy<br /> + Of the golden thought without alloy,<br /> + Then I saw his very vesture's hem.<br /> + Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,<br /> + With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;<br /> + And I hastened, cried out while I pressed<br /> + To the salvation of the vest,<br /> + "But not so, Lord! It cannot be<br /> + "That thou, indeed, art leaving me—<br /> + "Me, that have despised thy friends!<br /> + "Did my heart make no amends?<br /> + "Thou art the love of God—above<br /> + "His power, didst hear me place his love,<br /> + "And that was leaving the world for thee.<br /> + "Therefore thou must not turn from me<br /> + "As I had chosen the other part!<br /> + "Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.<br /> + "Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;<br /> + "Still, it should be our very best.<br /> + "I thought it best that thou, the spirit,<br /> + "Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,<br /> + "And in beauty, as even we require it—<br /> + "Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,<br /> + "I left but now, as scarcely fitted<br /> + "For thee: I knew not what I pitied.<br /> + "But, all I felt there, right or wrong,<br /> + "What is it to thee, who curest sinning?<br /> + "Am I not weak as thou art strong?<br /> + "I have looked to thee from the beginning,<br /> + "Straight up to thee through all the world<br /> + "Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled<br /> + "To nothingness on either side:<br /> + "And since the time thou wast descried,<br /> + "Spite of the weak heart, so have I<br /> + "Lived ever, and so fain would die,<br /> + "Living and dying, thee before!<br /> + "But if thou leavest me——"<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + IX<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Less or more,<br /> + I suppose that I spoke thus.<br /> + When,—have mercy, Lord, on us!<br /> + The whole face turned upon me full.<br /> + And I spread myself beneath it,<br /> + As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it<br /> + In the cleansing sun, his wool,—<br /> + Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness<br /> + Some denied, discoloured web—<br /> + So lay I, saturate with brightness.<br /> + And when the flood appeared to ebb,<br /> + Lo, I was walking, light and swift,<br /> + With my senses settling fast and steadying,<br /> + But my body caught up in the whirl and drift<br /> + Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying<br /> + On, just before me, still to be followed,<br /> + As it carried me after with its motion:<br /> + What shall I say?—as a path were hollowed<br /> + And a man went weltering through the ocean,<br /> + Sucked along in the flying wake<br /> + Of the luminous water-snake.<br /> + Darkness and cold were cloven, as through<br /> + I passed, upborne yet walking too.<br /> + And I turned to myself at intervals,—<br /> + "So he said, so it befalls.<br /> + "God who registers the cup<br /> + "Of mere cold water, for his sake<br /> + "To a disciple rendered up,<br /> + "Disdains not his own thirst to slake<br /> + "At the poorest love was ever offered:<br /> + "And because my heart I proffered,<br /> + "With true love trembling at the brim,<br /> + "He suffers me to follow him<br /> + "For ever, my own way,—dispensed<br /> + "From seeking to be influenced<br /> + "By all the less immediate ways<br /> + "That earth, in worships manifold,<br /> + "Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,<br /> + "The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + X<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + And so we crossed the world and stopped.<br /> + For where am I, in city or plain,<br /> + Since I am 'ware of the world again?<br /> + And what is this that rises propped<br /> + With pillars of prodigious girth?<br /> + Is it really on the earth,<br /> + This miraculous Dome of God?<br /> + Has the angel's measuring-rod<br /> + Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,<br /> + 'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,<br /> + Meted it out,—and what he meted,<br /> + Have the sons of men completed?<br /> + —Binding, ever as he bade,<br /> + Columns in the colonnade<br /> + With arms wide open to embrace<br /> + The entry of the human race<br /> + To the breast of... what is it, yon building,<br /> + Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,<br /> + With marble for brick, and stones of price<br /> + For garniture of the edifice?<br /> + Now I see; it is no dream;<br /> + It stands there and it does not seem;<br /> + For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,<br /> + And thus I have read of it in books<br /> + Often in England, leagues away,<br /> + And wondered how these fountains play,<br /> + Growing up eternally<br /> + Each to a musical water-tree,<br /> + Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,<br /> + Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,<br /> + To the granite layers underneath.<br /> + Liar and dreamer in your teeth!<br /> + I, the sinner that speak to you,<br /> + Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew<br /> + Both this and more. For see, for see,<br /> + The dark is rent, mine eye is free<br /> + To pierce the crust of the outer wall,<br /> + And I view inside, and all there, all,<br /> + As the swarming hollow of a hive,<br /> + The whole Basilica alive!<br /> + Men in the chancel, body and nave,<br /> + Men on the pillars' architrave,<br /> + Men on the statues, men on the tombs<br /> + With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,<br /> + All famishing in expectation<br /> + Of the main-altar's consummation.<br /> + For see, for see, the rapturous moment<br /> + Approaches, and earth's best endowment<br /> + Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires<br /> + Pant up, the winding brazen spires<br /> + Heave loftier yet the baldachin; [Footnote: Canopy over the High Altar.]<br /> + The incense-gaspings, long kept in,<br /> + Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant<br /> + Holds his breath and grovels latent,<br /> + As if God's hushing finger grazed him,<br /> + (Like Behemoth when he praised him)<br /> + At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,<br /> + Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling<br /> + On the sudden pavement strewed<br /> + With faces of the multitude.<br /> + Earth breaks up, time drops away,<br /> + In flows heaven, with its new day<br /> + Of endless life, when He who trod,<br /> + Very man and very God,<br /> + This earth in weakness, shame and pain,<br /> + Dying the death whose signs remain<br /> + Up yonder on the accursed tree,—<br /> + Shall come again, no more to be<br /> + Of captivity the thrall,<br /> + But the one God, All in all,<br /> + King of kings, Lord of lords,<br /> + As His servant John received the words,<br /> + "I died, and live for evermore!"<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XI<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Yet I was left outside the door.<br /> + "Why sit I here on the threshold-stone<br /> + "Left till He return, alone<br /> + "Save for the garment's extreme fold<br /> + "Abandoned still to bless my hold?"<br /> + My reason, to my doubt, replied,<br /> + As if a book were opened wide,<br /> + And at a certain page I traced<br /> + Every record undefaced,<br /> + Added by successive years,—<br /> + The harvestings of truth's stray ears<br /> + Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf<br /> + Bound together for belief.<br /> + Yes, I said—that he will go<br /> + And sit with these in turn, I know.<br /> + Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims<br /> + Too giddily to guide her limbs,<br /> + Disabled by their palsy-stroke<br /> + From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke<br /> + Drops off, no more to be endured,<br /> + Her teaching is not so obscured<br /> + By errors and perversities,<br /> + That no truth shines athwart the lies:<br /> + And he, whose eye detects a spark<br /> + Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark,<br /> + May well see flame where each beholder<br /> + Acknowledges the embers smoulder.<br /> + But I, a mere man, fear to quit<br /> + The clue God gave me as most fit<br /> + To guide my footsteps through life's maze,<br /> + Because himself discerns all ways<br /> + Open to reach him: I, a man<br /> + Able to mark where faith began<br /> + To swerve aside, till from its summit<br /> + Judgment drops her damning plummet,<br /> + Pronouncing such a fatal space<br /> + Departed from the founder's base:<br /> + He will not bid me enter too,<br /> + But rather sit, as now I do,<br /> + Awaiting his return outside.<br /> + —'Twas thus my reason straight replied<br /> + And joyously I turned, and pressed<br /> + The garment's skirt upon my breast,<br /> + Until, afresh its light suffusing me,<br /> + My heart cried—What has been abusing me<br /> + That I should wait here lonely and coldly,<br /> + Instead of rising, entering boldly,<br /> + Baring truth's face, and letting drift<br /> + Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?<br /> + Do these men praise him? I will raise<br /> + My voice up to their point of praise!<br /> + I see the error; but above<br /> + The scope of error, see the love.—<br /> + Oh, love of those first Christian days!<br /> + —Fanned so soon into a blaze,<br /> + From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,<br /> + That the antique sovereign Intellect<br /> + Which then sat ruling in the world,<br /> + Like a change in dreams, was hurled<br /> + From the throne he reigned upon:<br /> + You looked up and he was gone.<br /> + Gone, his glory of the pen!<br /> + —Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,<br /> + Bade her scribes abhor the trick<br /> + Of poetry and rhetoric,<br /> + And exult with hearts set free,<br /> + In blessed imbecility<br /> + Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet<br /> + Leaving Sallust incomplete<br /> + Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!<br /> + —Love, while able to acquaint her<br /> + While the thousand statues yet<br /> + Fresh from chisel, pictures wet<br /> + From brush, she saw on every side,<br /> + Chose rather with an infant's pride<br /> + To frame those portents which impart<br /> + Such unction to true Christian Art.<br /> + Gone, music too! The air was stirred<br /> + By happy wings: Terpander's* bird<br /> + *[Footnote: Terpander, a famous Lesbian musician and lyric poet, 670 B.C.]<br /> + (That, when the cold came, fled away)<br /> + Would tarry not the wintry day,—<br /> + As more-enduring sculpture must,<br /> + Till filthy saints rebuked the gust<br /> + With which they chanced to get a sight<br /> + Of some dear naked Aphrodite<br /> + They glanced a thought above the toes of,<br /> + By breaking zealously her nose off.<br /> + Love, surely, from that music's lingering,<br /> + Might have filched her organ-fingering,<br /> + Nor chosen rather to set prayings<br /> + To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.<br /> + Love was the startling thing, the new:<br /> + Love was the all-sufficient too;<br /> + And seeing that, you see the rest:<br /> + As a babe can find its mother's breast<br /> + As well in darkness as in light,<br /> + Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.<br /> + True, the world's eyes are open now:<br /> + —Less need for me to disallow<br /> + Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,<br /> + Peevish as ever to be suckled,<br /> + Lulled by the same old baby-prattle<br /> + With intermixture of the rattle,<br /> + When she would have them creep, stand steady<br /> + Upon their feet, or walk already,<br /> + Not to speak of trying to climb.<br /> + I will be wise another time,<br /> + And not desire a wall between us,<br /> + When next I see a church-roof cover<br /> + So many species of one genus,<br /> + All with foreheads bearing <i>lover</i><br /> + Written above the earnest eyes of them;<br /> + All with breasts that beat for beauty,<br /> + Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,<br /> + In noble daring, steadfast duty,<br /> + The heroic in passion, or in action,—<br /> + Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,<br /> + To the mere outside of human creatures,<br /> + Mere perfect form and faultless features.<br /> + What? with all Rome here, whence to levy<br /> + Such contributions to their appetite,<br /> + With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,<br /> + They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight<br /> + On their southern eyes, restrained from<br /> + feeding<br /> + On the glories of their ancient reading,<br /> + On the beauties of their modern singing,<br /> + On the wonders of the builder's bringing,<br /> + On the majesties of Art around them,—<br /> + And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,<br /> + When faith has at last united and bound them,<br /> + They offer up to God for a present?<br /> + Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,—<br /> + And, only taking the act in reference<br /> + To the other recipients who might have allowed it,<br /> + I will rejoice that God had the preference.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XII<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + So I summed up my new resolves:<br /> + Too much love there can never be.<br /> + And where the intellect devolves<br /> + Its function on love exclusively,<br /> + I, a man who possesses both,<br /> + Will accept the provision, nothing loth,<br /> + —Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,<br /> + That my intellect may find its share.<br /> + And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest,<br /> + And see them applaud the great heart of the artist,<br /> + Who, examining the capabilities<br /> + Of the block of marble he has to fashion<br /> + Into a type of thought or passion,—<br /> + Not always, using obvious facilities,<br /> + Shapes it, as any artist can,<br /> + Into a perfect symmetrical man,<br /> + Complete from head to foot of the life-size,<br /> + Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes,—<br /> + But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummate<br /> + A Colossus by no means so easy to come at,<br /> + And uses the whole of his block for the bust,<br /> + Leaving the mind of the public to finish it,<br /> + Since cut it ruefully short he must:<br /> + On the face alone he expends his devotion,<br /> + He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it,<br /> + —Saying, "Applaud me for this grand notion<br /> + "Of what a face may be! As for completing it<br /> + "In breast and body and limbs, do that, you!"<br /> + All hail! I fancy how, happily meeting it,<br /> + A trunk and legs would perfect the statue,<br /> + Could man carve so as to answer volition.<br /> + And how much nobler than petty cavils,<br /> + Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels,<br /> + Some artist of another ambition,<br /> + Who, having a block to carve, no bigger,<br /> + Has spent his power on the opposite quest,<br /> + And believed to begin at the feet was best—<br /> + For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure!<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XIII<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + No sooner said than out in the night!<br /> + My heart lighter and more light:<br /> + And still, as before, I was walking swift,<br /> + With my senses settling fast and steadying,<br /> + But my body caught up in the whirl and drift<br /> + Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying<br /> + On just before me, still to be followed,<br /> + As it carried me after with its motion,<br /> + —What shall I say?—as a path, were hollowed,<br /> + And a man went weltering through the ocean,<br /> + Sucked along in the flying wake<br /> + Of the luminous water-snake.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XIV<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Alone! I am left alone once more—<br /> + (Save for the garment's extreme fold<br /> + Abandoned still to bless my hold)<br /> + Alone, beside the entrance-door<br /> + Of a sort of temple,-perhaps a college,<br /> + —Like nothing I ever saw before<br /> + At home in England, to my knowledge.<br /> + The tall old quaint irregular town!<br /> + It may be... though which, I can't affirm... any<br /> + Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany:<br /> + And this flight of stairs where I sit down,<br /> + Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort<br /> + Or Gottingen, I have to thank for't?<br /> + It may be Gottingen,—most likely.<br /> + Through the open door I catch obliquely<br /> + Glimpses of a lecture-hall;<br /> + And not a bad assembly neither,<br /> + Ranged decent and symmetrical<br /> + On benches, waiting what's to see there:<br /> + Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,<br /> + I also resolve to see with them,<br /> + Cautious this time how I suffer to slip<br /> + The chance of joining in fellowship<br /> + With any that call themselves his friends;<br /> + As these folk do, I have a notion.<br /> + But hist—a buzzing and emotion!<br /> + All settle themselves, the while ascends<br /> + By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,<br /> + Step by step, deliberate<br /> + Because of his cranium's over-freight,<br /> + Three parts sublime to one grotesque,<br /> + If I have proved an accurate guesser,<br /> + The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.<br /> + I felt at once as if there ran<br /> + A shoot of love from my heart to the man—<br /> + That sallow virgin-minded studious<br /> + Martyr to mild enthusiasm,<br /> + As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious<br /> + That woke my sympathetic spasm,<br /> + (Beside some spitting that made me sorry)<br /> + And stood, surveying his auditory<br /> + With a wan pure look, well-nigh celestial,—<br /> + Those blue eyes had survived so much!<br /> + While, under the foot they could not smutch,<br /> + Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.<br /> + Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,<br /> + Till the auditory's clearing of throats<br /> + Was done with, died into a silence;<br /> + And, when each glance was upward sent,<br /> + Each bearded mouth composed intent,<br /> + And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,—<br /> + He pushed back higher his spectacles,<br /> + Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,<br /> + And giving his head of hair—a hake<br /> + Of undressed tow, for colour and quantity—<br /> + One rapid and impatient shake,<br /> + (As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie<br /> + When about to impart, on mature digestion,<br /> + Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)<br /> + —The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,<br /> + Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XV<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + And he began it by observing<br /> + How reason dictated that men<br /> + Should rectify the natural swerving,<br /> + By a reversion, now and then,<br /> + To the well-heads of knowledge, few<br /> + And far away, whence rolling grew<br /> + The life-stream wide whereat we drink,<br /> + Commingled, as we needs must think,<br /> + With waters alien to the source;<br /> + To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;<br /> + Since, where could be a fitter time<br /> + For tracing backward to its prime<br /> + This Christianity, this lake,<br /> + This reservoir, whereat we slake,<br /> + From one or other bank, our thirst?<br /> + So, he proposed inquiring first<br /> + Into the various sources whence<br /> + This Myth of Christ is derivable;<br /> + Demanding from the evidence,<br /> + (Since plainly no such life was livable)<br /> + How these phenomena should class?<br /> + Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,<br /> + Or never was at all, or whether<br /> + He was and was not, both together—<br /> + It matters little for the name,<br /> + So the idea be left the same.<br /> + Only, for practical purpose' sake,<br /> + 'Twas obviously as well to take<br /> + The popular story,—understanding<br /> + How the ineptitude of the time,<br /> + And the penman's prejudice, expanding<br /> + Fact into fable fit for the clime,<br /> + Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it<br /> + Into this myth, this Individuum,—<br /> + Which, when reason had strained and abated it<br /> + Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,<br /> + A Man!—a right true man, however,<br /> + Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour:<br /> + Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient<br /> + To his disciples, for rather believing<br /> + He was just omnipotent and omniscient,<br /> + As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving<br /> + His word, their tradition,—which, though it meant<br /> + Something entirely different<br /> + From all that those who only heard it,<br /> + In their simplicity thought and averred it,<br /> + Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:<br /> + For, among other doctrines delectable,<br /> + Was he not surely the first to insist on<br /> + The natural sovereignty of our race?—<br /> + Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.<br /> + And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,<br /> + Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,<br /> + I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,<br /> + The vesture still within my hand.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XVI<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + I could interpret its command.<br /> + This time he would not bid me enter<br /> + The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.<br /> + Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic<br /> + When Papist struggles with Dissenter,<br /> + Impregnating its pristine clarity,<br /> + —One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,<br /> + Its gust of broken meat and garlic;<br /> + —One, by his soul's too-much presuming<br /> + To turn the frankincense's fuming<br /> + And vapours of the candle starlike<br /> + Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.<br /> + Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,<br /> + May poison it for healthy breathing—<br /> + But the Critic leaves no air to poison;<br /> + Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity<br /> + Atom by atom, and leaves you—vacuity.<br /> + Thus much of Christ does he reject?<br /> + And what retain? His intellect?<br /> + What is it I must reverence duly?<br /> + Poor intellect for worship, truly,<br /> + Which tells me simply what was told<br /> + (If mere morality, bereft<br /> + Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)<br /> + Elsewhere by voices manifold;<br /> + With this advantage, that the stater<br /> + Made nowise the important stumble<br /> + Of adding, he, the sage and humble,<br /> + Was also one with the Creator.<br /> + You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:<br /> + But how does shifting blame, evade it?<br /> + Have wisdom's words no more felicity?<br /> + The stumbling-block, his speech—who laid it?<br /> + How comes it that for one found able<br /> + To sift the truth of it from fable,<br /> + Millions believe it to the letter?<br /> + Christ's goodness, then—does that fare better?<br /> + Strange goodness, which upon the score<br /> + Of being goodness, the mere due<br /> + Of man to fellow-man, much more<br /> + To God,—should take another view<br /> + Of its possessor's privilege,<br /> + And bid him rule his race! You pledge<br /> + Your fealty to such rule? What, all—<br /> + From heavenly John and Attic Paul,<br /> + And that brave weather-battered Peter,<br /> + Whose stout faith only stood completer<br /> + For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,<br /> + As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,—<br /> + All, down to you, the man of men,<br /> + Professing here at Gottingen,<br /> + Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,<br /> + Are sheep of a good man! And why?<br /> + The goodness,—how did he acquire it?<br /> + Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?<br /> + Choose which; then tell me, on what ground<br /> + Should its possessor dare propound<br /> + His claim to rise o'er us an inch?<br /> + Were goodness all some man's invention,<br /> + Who arbitrarily made mention<br /> + What we should follow, and whence flinch,—<br /> + What qualities might take the style<br /> + Of right and wrong,—and had such guessing<br /> + Met with as general acquiescing<br /> + As graced the alphabet erewhile,<br /> + When A got leave an Ox to be,<br /> + No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G*,—<br /> + *[Footnote: Gimel, the Hebrew G, means camel.]<br /> + For thus inventing thing and title<br /> + Worship were that man's fit requital.<br /> + But if the common conscience must<br /> + Be ultimately judge, adjust<br /> + Its apt name to each quality<br /> + Already known,—I would decree<br /> + Worship for such mere demonstration<br /> + And simple work of nomenclature,<br /> + Only the day I praised, not nature,<br /> + But Harvey, for the circulation.<br /> + I would praise such a Christ, with pride<br /> + And joy, that he, as none beside,<br /> + Had taught us how to keep the mind<br /> + God gave him, as God gave his kind,<br /> + Freer than they from fleshly taint:<br /> + I would call such a Christ our Saint,<br /> + As I declare our Poet, him<br /> + Whose insight makes all others dim:<br /> + A thousand poets pried at life,<br /> + And only one amid the strife<br /> + Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take<br /> + His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake—<br /> + Though some objected—"Had we seen<br /> + "The heart and head of each, what screen<br /> + "Was broken there to give them light,<br /> + "While in ourselves it shuts the sight,<br /> + "We should no more admire, perchance,<br /> + "That these found truth out at a glance,<br /> + "Than marvel how the bat discerns<br /> + "Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,<br /> + "Led by a finer tact, a gift<br /> + "He boasts, which other birds must shift<br /> + "Without, and grope as best they can."<br /> + No, freely I would praise the man,—<br /> + Nor one whit more, if he contended<br /> + That gift of his, from God descended.<br /> + Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?<br /> + No nearer something, by a jot,<br /> + Rise an infinity of nothings<br /> + Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:<br /> + Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,<br /> + Make that creator which was creature?<br /> + Multiply gifts upon man's head,<br /> + And what, when all's done, shall be said<br /> + But—the more gifted he, I ween!<br /> + That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,<br /> + And this might be all that has been,—<br /> + So what is there to frown or smile at?<br /> + What is left for us, save, in growth<br /> + Of soul, to rise up, far past both,<br /> + From the gift looking to the giver,<br /> + And from the cistern to the river,<br /> + And from the finite to infinity,<br /> + And from man's dust to God's divinity?<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XVII<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast<br /> + Lies trace for trace upon curs impressed:<br /> + Though he is so bright and we so dim,<br /> + We are made in his image to witness him:<br /> + And were no eye in us to tell,<br /> + Instructed by no inner sense,<br /> + The light of heaven from the dark of hell,<br /> + That light would want its evidence,—<br /> + Though justice, good and truth were still<br /> + Divine, if, by some demon's will,<br /> + Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed<br /> + Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.<br /> + No mere exposition of morality<br /> + Made or in part or in totality,<br /> + Should win you to give it worship, therefore:<br /> + And, if no better proof you will care for,<br /> + —Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?<br /> + Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more<br /> + Of what right is, than arrives at birth<br /> + In the best man's acts that we bow before:<br /> + This last knows better—true, but my fact is,<br /> + 'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.<br /> + And thence I conclude that the real God-function<br /> + Is to furnish a motive and injunction<br /> + For practising what we know already.<br /> + And such an injunction and such a motive<br /> + As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,<br /> + "High-minded," hang your tablet-votive<br /> + Outside the fane on a finger-post?<br /> + Morality to the uttermost,<br /> + Supreme in Christ as we all confess,<br /> + Why need we prove would avail no jot<br /> + To make him God, if God he were not?<br /> + What is the point where himself lays stress?<br /> + Does the precept run "Believe in good,<br /> + "In justice, truth, now understood<br /> + "For the first time?"—or, "Believe in me,<br /> + "Who lived and died, yet essentially<br /> + "Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take<br /> + The same to his heart and for mere love's sake<br /> + Conceive of the love,—that man obtains<br /> + A new truth; no conviction gains<br /> + Of an old one only, made intense<br /> + By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XVIII<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Can it be that he stays inside?<br /> + Is the vesture left me to commune with?<br /> + Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with<br /> + Even at this lecture, if she tried?<br /> + Oh, let me at lowest sympathize<br /> + With the lurking drop of blood that lies<br /> + In the desiccated brain's white roots<br /> + Without throb for Christ's attributes,<br /> + As the lecturer makes his special boast!<br /> + If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.<br /> + Admire we, how from heart to brain<br /> + (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)<br /> + One instinct rises and falls again,<br /> + Restoring the equilibrium.<br /> + And how when the Critic had done his best,<br /> + And the pearl of price, at reason's test,<br /> + Lay dust and ashes levigable<br /> + On the Professor's lecture-table,—<br /> + When we looked for the inference and monition<br /> + That our faith, reduced to such condition,<br /> + Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,—<br /> + He bids us, when we least expect it,<br /> + Take back our faith,—if it be not just whole,<br /> + Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,<br /> + Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,<br /> + So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!<br /> + "Go home and venerate the myth<br /> + "I thus have experimented with—<br /> + "This man, continue to adore him<br /> + "Rather than all who went before him,<br /> + "And all who ever followed after!"—<br /> + Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!<br /> + Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?<br /> + That's one point gained: can I compass another?<br /> + Unlearned love was safe from spurning—<br /> + Can't we respect your loveless learning?<br /> + Let us at least give learning honour!<br /> + What laurels had we showered upon her,<br /> + Girding her loins up to perturb<br /> + Our theory of the Middle Verb;<br /> + Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar<br /> + O'er anapasts in comic-trimeter;<br /> + Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'<br /> + [Footnote: "The Suppliants," a fragment of a play by Aeschylus.]<br /> + While we lounged on at our indebted ease:<br /> + Instead of which, a tricksy demon<br /> + Sets her at Titus or Philemon!<br /> + When ignorance wags his ears of leather<br /> + And hates God's word, 'tis altogether;<br /> + Nor leaves he his congenial thistles<br /> + To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.<br /> + —And you, the audience, who might ravage<br /> + The world wide, enviably savage,<br /> + Nor heed the cry of the retriever,<br /> + More than Herr Heine (before his fever),—<br /> + I do not tell a lie so arrant<br /> + As say my passion's wings are furled up,<br /> + And, without plainest heavenly warrant,<br /> + I were ready and glad to give the world up—<br /> + But still, when you rub brow meticulous,<br /> + And ponder the profit of turning holy<br /> + If not for God's, for your own sake solely,<br /> + —God forbid I should find you ridiculous!<br /> + Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,<br /> + Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,<br /> + "Christians,"—abhor the deist's pravity,—<br /> + Go on, you shall no more move my gravity<br /> + Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,<br /> + I find it in my heart to embarrass them<br /> + By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,<br /> + And they really carry what they say carries them.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XIX<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + So sat I talking with my mind.<br /> + I did not long to leave the door<br /> + And find a new church, as before,<br /> + But rather was quiet and inclined<br /> + To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting<br /> + From further tracking and trying and testing.<br /> + "This tolerance is a genial mood!"<br /> + (Said I, and a little pause ensued).<br /> + "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,<br /> + "And sees, each side, the good effects of it,<br /> + "A value for religion's self,<br /> + "A carelessness about the sects of it.<br /> + "Let me enjoy my own conviction,<br /> + "Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness,<br /> + "Still spying there some dereliction<br /> + "Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!"<br /> + Better a mild indifferentism,<br /> + "Teaching that both our faiths (though duller<br /> + "His shine through a dull spirit's prism)<br /> + "Originally had one colour!<br /> + "Better pursue a pilgrimage<br /> + "Through ancient and through modern times<br /> + "To many peoples, various climes,<br /> + "Where I may see saint, savage, sage<br /> + "Fuse their respective creeds in one<br /> + "Before the general Father's throne!"<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XX<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + —'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!<br /> + The black night caught me in his mesh,<br /> + Whirled me up, and flung me prone.<br /> + I was left on the college-step alone.<br /> + I looked, and far there, ever fleeting<br /> + Far, far away, the receding gesture,<br /> + And looming of the lessening vesture!—<br /> + Swept forward from my stupid hand,<br /> + While I watched my foolish heart expand<br /> + In the lazy glow of benevolence,<br /> + O'er the various modes of man's belief.<br /> + I sprang up with fear's vehemence.<br /> + Needs must there be one way, our chief<br /> + Best way of worship: let me strive<br /> + To find it, and when found, contrive<br /> + My fellows also take their share!<br /> + This constitutes my earthly care:<br /> + God's is above it and distinct.<br /> + For I, a man, with men am linked<br /> + But not a brute with brutes; no gain<br /> + That I experience, must remain<br /> + Unshared: but should my best endeavour<br /> + To share it, fail—subsisteth ever<br /> + God's care above, and I exult<br /> + That God, by God's own ways occult,<br /> + May—doth, I will believe—bring back<br /> + All wanderers to a single track.<br /> + Meantime, I can but testify<br /> + God's care for me—no more, can I—<br /> + It is but for myself I know;<br /> + The world rolls witnessing around me<br /> + Only to leave me as it found me;<br /> + Men cry there, but my ear is slow:<br /> + There races flourish or decay<br /> + —What boots it, while yon lucid way<br /> + Loaded with stars divides the vault?<br /> + But soon my soul repairs its fault<br /> + When, sharpening sense's hebetude,<br /> + She turns on my own life! So viewed,<br /> + No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense<br /> + With witnessings of providence:<br /> + And woe to me if when I look<br /> + Upon that record, the sole book<br /> + Unsealed to me, I take no heed<br /> + Of any warning that I read!<br /> + Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,<br /> + God's own hand did the rainbow weave,<br /> + Whereby the truth from heaven slid<br /> + Into my soul?—I cannot bid<br /> + The world admit he stooped to heal<br /> + My soul, as if in a thunder-peal<br /> + Where one heard noise, and one saw flame,<br /> + I only knew he named my name:<br /> + But what is the world to me, for sorrow<br /> + Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow<br /> + It drops the remark, with just-turned head<br /> + Then, on again, 'That man is dead'?<br /> + Yes, but for me—my name called,—drawn<br /> + As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,<br /> + He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:<br /> + Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,—<br /> + Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,<br /> + With a rapid finger circled round,<br /> + Fixed to the first poor inch of ground<br /> + To fight from, where his foot was found;<br /> + Whose ear but a minute since lay free<br /> + To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry—<br /> + Summoned, a solitary man<br /> + To end his life where his life began,<br /> + From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!<br /> + Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held<br /> + By the hem of the vesture!—<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XXI<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + And I caught<br /> + At the flying robe, and unrepelled<br /> + Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught<br /> + With warmth and wonder and delight,<br /> + God's mercy being infinite.<br /> + For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,<br /> + When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,<br /> + Out of the wandering world of rain,<br /> + Into the little chapel again.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="poem"> + XXII<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + How else was I found there, bolt upright<br /> + On my bench, as if I had never left it?<br /> + —Never flung out on the common at night,<br /> + Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,<br /> + Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,<br /> + Or the laboratory of the Professor!<br /> + For the Vision, that was true, I wist,<br /> + True as that heaven and earth exist.<br /> + There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,<br /> + With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;<br /> + Yet my nearest neighbour's cheek showed gall.<br /> + She had slid away a contemptuous space:<br /> + And the old fat woman, late so placable,<br /> + Eyed me with symptoms hardly mistakable,<br /> + Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.<br /> + In short, a spectator might have fancied<br /> + That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber.<br /> + Yet kept my scat, a warning ghastly,<br /> + Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,<br /> + And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.<br /> + But again, could such disgrace have happened?<br /> + Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;<br /> + And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?<br /> + Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?<br /> + Could I report as I do at the close,<br /> + First, the preacher speaks through his nose:<br /> + Second, his gesture is too emphatic:<br /> + Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,<br /> + The subject-matter itself lacks logic:<br /> + Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.<br /> + Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,<br /> + Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call<br /> + Of making square to a finite eye<br /> + The circle of infinity,<br /> + And find so all-but-just-succeeding!<br /> + Great news! the sermon proves no reading<br /> + Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,<br /> + Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!<br /> + And now that I know the very worst of him,<br /> + What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?<br /> + Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks,<br /> + Shall I take on me to change his tasks,<br /> + And dare, despatched to a river-head<br /> + For a simple draught of the element,<br /> + Neglect the thing for which he sent,<br /> + And return with another thing instead?—<br /> + Saying, "Because the water found<br /> + "Welling up from the underground,<br /> + "Is mingled with the taints of earth,<br /> + "While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,<br /> + "And couldst, at wink or word, convulse<br /> + "The world with the leap of a river-pulse,—<br /> + "Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,<br /> + "And bring thee a chalice I found, instead;<br /> + "See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!<br /> + "One would suppose that the marble bled.<br /> + "What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:<br /> + "The waterless cup will quench my thirst."<br /> + —Better have knelt at the poorest stream<br /> + That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!<br /> + For the less or the more is all God's gift,<br /> + Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.<br /> + And here, is there water or not, to drink?<br /> + I then, in ignorance and weakness,<br /> + Taking God's help, have attained to think<br /> + My heart does best to receive in meekness<br /> + That mode of worship, as most to his mind,<br /> + Where earthly aids being cast behind,<br /> + His All in All appears serene<br /> + With the thinnest human veil between,<br /> + Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,<br /> + The many motions of his spirit,<br /> + Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.<br /> + For the preacher's merit or demerit,<br /> + It were to be wished the flaws were fewer<br /> + In the earthen vessel, holding treasure<br /> + Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;<br /> + But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?<br /> + Heaven soon sets right all other matters!—<br /> + Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,<br /> + This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,<br /> + This soul at struggle with insanity,<br /> + Who thence take comfort—can I doubt?—<br /> + Which an empire gained were a loss without.<br /> + May it be mine! And let us hope<br /> + That no worse blessing befall the Pope,<br /> + Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,<br /> + Of posturings and petticoatings,<br /> + Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings<br /> + In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!<br /> + Nor may the Professor forego its peace<br /> + At Gottingen presently, when, in the dusk<br /> + Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,<br /> + Prophesied of by that horrible husk—<br /> + When thicker and thicker the darkness fills<br /> + The world through his misty spectacles,<br /> + And he gropes for something more substantial<br /> + Than a fable, myth or personification,—<br /> + May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,<br /> + And stand confessed as the God of salvation!<br /> + Meantime, in the still recurring fear<br /> + Lest myself, at unawares, be found,<br /> + While attacking the choice of my neighbours round,<br /> + With none of my own made—I choose here!<br /> + The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;<br /> + I have done: and if any blames me,<br /> + Thinking that merely to touch in brevity<br /> + The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,—<br /> + Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,<br /> + On the bounds of the holy and the awful,—<br /> + I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,<br /> + And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,<br /> + Who head and heart alike discernest<br /> + Looking below light speech we utter,<br /> + When frothy spume and frequent sputter<br /> + Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!<br /> + May truth shine out, stand ever before us!<br /> + I put up pencil and join chorus<br /> + To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,<br /> + The last five verses of the third section<br /> + Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,<br /> + To conclude with the doxology.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Eve, by Robert Browning + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE *** + +***** This file should be named 6670-h.htm or 6670-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/6/7/6670/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Christmas Eve + +Author: Robert Browning + +Posting Date: March 16, 2014 [EBook #6670] +Release Date: October, 2004 +First Posted: January 12, 2003 +Last Updated: February 4, 2008 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al +Haines. + + + + + + + + + + + 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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE *** + +***** This file should be named 6670.txt or 6670.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/6/7/6670/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. 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+"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 + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE *** + +This file should be named chmsv10.txt or chmsv10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, chmsv11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, chmsv10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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