A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul

MARCH

1

 
     THE song birds that come to me night and morn,
     Fly oft away and vanish if I sleep,
     Nor to my fowling-net will one return:
     Is the thing ever ours we cannot keep?—
     But their souls go not out into the deep.
     What matter if with changed song they come back?
     Old strength nor yet fresh beauty shall they lack.
 

2

 
     Gloriously wasteful, O my Lord, art thou!
     Sunset faints after sunset into the night,
     Splendorously dying from thy window-sill—
     For ever. Sad our poverty doth bow
     Before the riches of thy making might:
     Sweep from thy space thy systems at thy will—
     In thee the sun sets every sunset still.
 

3

 
     And in the perfect time, O perfect God,
     When we are in our home, our natal home,
     When joy shall carry every sacred load,
     And from its life and peace no heart shall roam,
     What if thou make us able to make like thee—
     To light with moons, to clothe with greenery,
     To hang gold sunsets o'er a rose and purple sea!
 

4

 
     Then to his neighbour one may call out, "Come!
     Brother, come hither—I would show you a thing;"
     And lo, a vision of his imagining,
     Informed of thought which else had rested dumb,
     Before the neighbour's truth-delighted eyes,
     In the great æther of existence rise,
     And two hearts each to each the closer cling!
 

5

 
     We make, but thou art the creating core.
     Whatever thing I dream, invent, or feel,
     Thou art the heart of it, the atmosphere.
     Thou art inside all love man ever bore;
     Yea, the love itself, whatever thing be dear.
     Man calls his dog, he follows at his heel,
     Because thou first art love, self-caused, essential, mere.
 

6

 
     This day be with me, Lord, when I go forth,
     Be nearer to me than I am able to ask.
     In merriment, in converse, or in task,
     Walking the street, listening to men of worth,
     Or greeting such as only talk and bask,
     Be thy thought still my waiting soul around,
     And if He come, I shall be watching found.
 

7

 
     What if, writing, I always seem to leave
     Some better thing, or better way, behind,
     Why should I therefore fret at all, or grieve!
     The worse I drop, that I the better find;
     The best is only in thy perfect mind.
     Fallen threads I will not search for—I will weave.
     Who makes the mill-wheel backward strike to grind!
 

8

 
     Be with me, Lord. Keep me beyond all prayers:
     For more than all my prayers my need of thee,
     And thou beyond all need, all unknown cares;
     What the heart's dear imagination dares,
     Thou dost transcend in measureless majesty
     All prayers in one—my God, be unto me
     Thy own eternal self, absolutely.
 

9

 
     Where should the unknown treasures of the truth
     Lie, but there whence the truth comes out the most—
     In the Son of man, folded in love and ruth?
     Fair shore we see, fair ocean; but behind
     Lie infinite reaches bathing many a coast—
     The human thought of the eternal mind,
     Pulsed by a living tide, blown by a living wind.
 

10

 
     Thou, healthful Father, art the Ancient of Days,
     And Jesus is the eternal youth of thee.
     Our old age is the scorching of the bush
     By life's indwelling, incorruptible blaze.
     O Life, burn at this feeble shell of me,
     Till I the sore singed garment off shall push,
     Flap out my Psyche wings, and to thee rush.
 

11

 
     But shall I then rush to thee like a dart?
     Or lie long hours æonian yet betwixt
     This hunger in me, and the Father's heart?—
     It shall be good, how ever, and not ill;
     Of things and thoughts even now thou art my next;
     Sole neighbour, and no space between, thou art—
     And yet art drawing nearer, nearer still.
 

12

 
     Therefore, my brothers, therefore, sisters dear,
     However I, troubled or selfish, fail
     In tenderness, or grace, or service clear,
     I every moment draw to you more near;
     God in us from our hearts veil after veil
     Keeps lifting, till we see with his own sight,
     And all together run in unity's delight.
 

13

 
     I love thee, Lord, for very greed of love—
     Not of the precious streams that towards me move,
     But of the indwelling, outgoing, fountain store.
     Than mine, oh, many an ignorant heart loves more!
     Therefore the more, with Mary at thy feet,
     I must sit worshipping—that, in my core,
     Thy words may fan to a flame the low primeval heat.
 

14

 
     Oh my beloved, gone to heaven from me!
     I would be rich in love to heap you with love;
     I long to love you, sweet ones, perfectly—
     Like God, who sees no spanning vault above,
     No earth below, and feels no circling air—
     Infinitely, no boundary anywhere.
     I am a beast until I love as God doth love.
 

15

 
     Ah, say not, 'tis but perfect self I want
     But if it were, that self is fit to live
     Whose perfectness is still itself to scant,
     Which never longs to have, but still to give.
     A self I must have, or not be at all:
     Love, give me a self self-giving—or let me fall
     To endless darkness back, and free me from life's thrall.
 

16

 
     "Back," said I! Whither back? How to the dark?
     From no dark came I, but the depths of light;
     From the sun-heart I came, of love a spark:
     What should I do but love with all my might?
     To die of love severe and pure and stark,
     Were scarcely loss; to lord a loveless height—
     That were a living death, damnation's positive night.
 

17

 
     But love is life. To die of love is then
     The only pass to higher life than this.
     All love is death to loving, living men;
     All deaths are leaps across clefts to the abyss.
     Our life is the broken current, Lord, of thine,
     Flashing from morn to morn with conscious shine—
     Then first by willing death self-made, then life divine.
 

18

 
     I love you, my sweet children, who are gone
     Into another mansion; but I know
     I love you not as I shall love you yet.
     I love you, sweet dead children; there are none
     In the land to which ye vanished to go,
     Whose hearts more truly on your hearts are set—
     Yet should I die of grief to love you only so.
 

19

 
     "I am but as a beast before thee, Lord."—
     Great poet-king, I thank thee for the word.—
     Leave not thy son half-made in beastly guise—
     Less than a man, with more than human cries—
     An unshaped thing in which thyself cries out!
     Finish me, Father; now I am but a doubt;
     Oh! make thy moaning thing for joy to leap and shout.
 

20

 
     Let my soul talk to thee in ordered words,
     O king of kings, O lord of only lords!—
     When I am thinking thee within my heart,
     From the broken reflex be not far apart.
     The troubled water, dim with upstirred soil,
     Makes not the image which it yet can spoil:—
     Come nearer, Lord, and smooth the wrinkled coil.
 

21

 
     O Lord, when I do think of my departed,
     I think of thee who art the death of parting;
     Of him who crying Father breathed his last,
     Then radiant from the sepulchre upstarted.—
     Even then, I think, thy hands and feet kept smarting:
     With us the bitterness of death is past,
     But by the feet he still doth hold us fast.
 

22

 
     Therefore our hands thy feet do hold as fast.
     We pray not to be spared the sorest pang,
     But only—be thou with us to the last.
     Let not our heart be troubled at the clang
     Of hammer and nails, nor dread the spear's keen fang,
     Nor the ghast sickening that comes of pain,
     Nor yet the last clutch of the banished brain.
 

23

 
     Lord, pity us: we have no making power;
     Then give us making will, adopting thine.
     Make, make, and make us; temper, and refine.
     Be in us patience—neither to start nor cower.
     Christ, if thou be not with us—not by sign,
     But presence, actual as the wounds that bleed—
     We shall not bear it, but shall die indeed.
 

24

 
     O Christ, have pity on all men when they come
     Unto the border haunted of dismay;
     When that they know not draweth very near—
     The other thing, the opposite of day,
     Formless and ghastly, sick, and gaping-dumb,
     Before which even love doth lose his cheer:
     O radiant Christ, remember then thy fear.
 

25

 
     Be by me, Lord, this day. Thou know'st I mean—
     Lord, make me mind thee. I herewith forestall
     My own forgetfulness, when I stoop to glean
     The corn of earth—which yet thy hand lets fall.
     Be for me then against myself. Oh lean
     Over me then when I invert my cup;
     Take me, if by the hair, and lift me up.
 

26

 
     Lord of essential life, help me to die.
     To will to die is one with highest life,
     The mightiest act that to Will's hand doth lie—
     Born of God's essence, and of man's hard strife:
     God, give me strength my evil self to kill,
     And die into the heaven of thy pure will.—
     Then shall this body's death be very tolerable.
 

27

 
     As to our mothers came help in our birth—
     Not lost in lifing us, but saved and blest—
     Self bearing self, although right sorely prest,
     Shall nothing lose, but die and be at rest
     In life eternal, beyond all care and dearth.
     God-born then truly, a man does no more ill,
     Perfectly loves, and has whate'er he will.
 

28

 
     As our dear animals do suffer less
     Because their pain spreads neither right nor left,
     Lost in oblivion and foresightlessness—
     Our suffering sore by faith shall be bereft
     Of all dismay, and every weak excess.
     His presence shall be better in our pain,
     Than even self-absence to the weaker brain.
 

29

 
     "Father, let this cup pass." He prayed—was heard.
     What cup was it that passed away from him?
     Sure not the death-cup, now filled to the brim!
     There was no quailing in the awful word;
     He still was king of kings, of lords the lord:—
     He feared lest, in the suffering waste and grim,
     His faith might grow too faint and sickly dim.
 

30

 
     Thy mind, my master, I will dare explore;
     What we are told, that we are meant to know.
     Into thy soul I search yet more and more,
     Led by the lamp of my desire and woe.
     If thee, my Lord, I may not understand,
     I am a wanderer in a houseless land,
     A weeping thirst by hot winds ever fanned.
 

31

 
     Therefore I look again—and think I see
     That, when at last he did cry out, "My God,
     Why hast thou me forsaken?" straight man's rod
     Was turned aside; for, that same moment, he
     Cried "Father!" and gave up will and breath and spirit
     Into his hands whose all he did inherit—
     Delivered, glorified eternally.
 

APRIL

1

 
     LORD, I do choose the higher than my will.
     I would be handled by thy nursing arms
     After thy will, not my infant alarms.
     Hurt me thou wilt—but then more loving still,
     If more can be and less, in love's perfect zone!
     My fancy shrinks from least of all thy harms,
     But do thy will with me—I am thine own.
 

2

 
     Some things wilt thou not one day turn to dreams?
     Some dreams wilt thou not one day turn to fact?
     The thing that painful, more than should be, seems,
     Shall not thy sliding years with them retract—
     Shall fair realities not counteract?
     The thing that was well dreamed of bliss and joy—
     Wilt thou not breathe thy life into the toy?
 

3

 
     I have had dreams of absolute delight,
     Beyond all waking bliss—only of grass,
     Flowers, wind, a peak, a limb of marble white;
     They dwell with me like things half come to pass,
     True prophecies:—when I with thee am right,
     If I pray, waking, for such a joy of sight,
     Thou with the gold, wilt not refuse the brass.
 

4

 
     I think I shall not ever pray for such;
     Thy bliss will overflood my heart and brain,
     And I want no unripe things back again.
     Love ever fresher, lovelier than of old—
     How should it want its more exchanged for much?
     Love will not backward sigh, but forward strain,
     On in the tale still telling, never told.
 

5

 
     What has been, shall not only be, but is.
     The hues of dreamland, strange and sweet and tender
     Are but hint-shadows of full many a splendour
     Which the high Parent-love will yet unroll
     Before his child's obedient, humble soul.
     Ah, me, my God! in thee lies every bliss
     Whose shadow men go hunting wearily amiss.
 

6

 
     Now, ere I sleep, I wonder what I shall dream.
     Some sense of being, utter new, may come
     Into my soul while I am blind and dumb—
     With shapes and airs and scents which dark hours teem,
     Of other sort than those that haunt the day,
     Hinting at precious things, ages away
     In the long tale of us God to himself doth say.
 

7

 
     Late, in a dream, an unknown lady I saw
     Stand on a tomb; down she to me stepped thence.
     "They tell me," quoth I, "thou art one of the dead!"
     And scarce believed for gladness the yea she said;
     A strange auroral bliss, an arctic awe,
     A new, outworldish joy awoke intense,
     To think I talked with one that verily was dead.
 

8

 
     Thou dost demand our love, holy Lord Christ,
     And batest nothing of thy modesty;—
     Thou know'st no other way to bliss the highest
     Than loving thee, the loving, perfectly.
     Thou lovest perfectly—that is thy bliss:
     We must love like thee, or our being miss—
     So, to love perfectly, love perfect Love, love thee.
 

9

 
     Here is my heart, O Christ; thou know'st I love thee.
     But wretched is the thing I call my love.
     O Love divine, rise up in me and move me—
     I follow surely when thou first dost move.
     To love the perfect love, is primal, mere
     Necessity; and he who holds life dear,
     Must love thee every hope and heart above.
 

10

 
     Might I but scatter interfering things—
     Questions and doubts, distrusts and anxious pride,
     And in thy garment, as under gathering wings,
     Nestle obedient to thy loving side,
     Easy it were to love thee. But when thou
     Send'st me to think and labour from thee wide,
     Love falls to asking many a why and how.
 

11

 
     Easier it were, but poorer were the love.
     Lord, I would have me love thee from the deeps—
     Of troubled thought, of pain, of weariness.
     Through seething wastes below, billows above,
     My soul should rise in eager, hungering leaps;
     Through thorny thicks, through sands unstable press—
     Out of my dream to him who slumbers not nor sleeps.
 

12

 
     I do not fear the greatness of thy command—
     To keep heart-open-house to brother men;
     But till in thy God's love perfect I stand,
     My door not wide enough will open. Then
     Each man will be love-awful in my sight;
     And, open to the eternal morning's might,
     Each human face will shine my window for thy light.
 

13

 
     Make me all patience and all diligence;
     Patience, that thou mayst have thy time with me;
     Diligence, that I waste not thy expense
     In sending out to bring me home to thee.
     What though thy work in me transcends my sense—
     Too fine, too high, for me to understand—
     I hope entirely. On, Lord, with thy labour grand.
 

14

 
     Lest I be humbled at the last, and told
     That my great labour was but for my peace
     That not for love or truth had I been bold,
     But merely for a prisoned heart's release;
     Careful, I humble me now before thy feet:
     Whate'er I be, I cry, and will not cease—
     Let me not perish, though favour be not meet.
 

15

 
     For, what I seek thou knowest I must find,
     Or miserably die for lack of love.
     I justify thee: what is in thy mind,
     If it be shame to me, all shame above.
     Thou know'st I choose it—know'st I would not shove
     The hand away that stripped me for the rod—
     If so it pleased my Life, my love-made-angry God.
 

16

 
     I see a door, a multitude near by,
     In creed and quarrel, sure disciples all!
     Gladly they would, they say, enter the hall,
     But cannot, the stone threshold is so high.
     From unseen hand, full many a feeding crumb,
     Slow dropping o'er the threshold high doth come:
     They gather and eat, with much disputing hum.
 

17

 
     Still and anon, a loud clear voice doth call—
     "Make your feet clean, and enter so the hall."
     They hear, they stoop, they gather each a crumb.
     Oh the deaf people! would they were also dumb!
     Hear how they talk, and lack of Christ deplore,
     Stamping with muddy feet about the door,
     And will not wipe them clean to walk upon his floor!
 

18

 
     But see, one comes; he listens to the voice;
     Careful he wipes his weary dusty feet!
     The voice hath spoken—to him is left no choice;
     He hurries to obey—that only is meet.
     Low sinks the threshold, levelled with the ground;
     The man leaps in—to liberty he's bound.
     The rest go talking, walking, picking round.
 

19

 
     If I, thus writing, rebuke my neighbour dull,
     And talk, and write, and enter not the door,
     Than all the rest I wrong Christ tenfold more,
     Making his gift of vision void and null.
     Help me this day to be thy humble sheep,
     Eating thy grass, and following, thou before;
     From wolfish lies my life, O Shepherd, keep.
 

20

 
     God, help me, dull of heart, to trust in thee.
     Thou art the father of me—not any mood
     Can part me from the One, the verily Good.
     When fog and failure o'er my being brood.
     When life looks but a glimmering marshy clod,
     No fire out flashing from the living God—
     Then, then, to rest in faith were worthy victory!
 

21

 
     To trust is gain and growth, not mere sown seed!
     Faith heaves the world round to the heavenly dawn,
     In whose great light the soul doth spell and read
     Itself high-born, its being derived and drawn
     From the eternal self-existent fire;
     Then, mazed with joy of its own heavenly breed,
     Exultant-humble falls before its awful sire.
 

22

 
     Art thou not, Jesus, busy like to us?
     Thee shall I image as one sitting still,
     Ordering all things in thy potent will,
     Silent, and thinking ever to thy father,
     Whose thought through thee flows multitudinous?
     Or shall I think of thee as journeying, rather,
     Ceaseless through space, because thou everything dost fill?
 

23

 
     That all things thou dost fill, I well may think—
     Thy power doth reach me in so many ways.
     Thou who in one the universe dost bind,
     Passest through all the channels of my mind;
     The sun of thought, across the farthest brink
     Of consciousness thou sendest me thy rays;
     Nor drawest them in when lost in sleep I sink.
 

24

 
     So common are thy paths, thy coming seems
     Only another phase oft of my me;
     But nearer is my I, O Lord, to thee,
     Than is my I to what itself it deems;
     How better then couldst thou, O master, come,
     Than from thy home across into my home,
     Straight o'er the marches that I cannot see!
 

25

 
     Marches?—'Twixt thee and me there's no division,
     Except the meeting of thy will and mine,
     The loves that love, the wills that will the same.
     Where thine meets mine is my life's true condition;
     Yea, only there it burns with any flame.
     Thy will but holds me to my life's fruition.
     O God, I would—I have no mine that is not thine.
 

26

 
     I look for thee, and do not see thee come.—
     If I could see thee, 'twere a commoner thing,
     And shallower comfort would thy coming bring.
     Earth, sea, and air lie round me moveless dumb,
     Never a tremble, an expectant hum,
     To tell the Lord of Hearts is drawing near:
     Lo! in the looking eyes, the looked for Lord is here.
 

27

 
     I take a comfort from my very badness:
     It is for lack of thee that I am bad.
     How close, how infinitely closer yet
     Must I come to thee, ere I can pay one debt
     Which mere humanity has on me set!
     "How close to thee!"—no wonder, soul, thou art glad!
     Oneness with him is the eternal gladness.
 

28

 
     What can there be so close as making and made?
     Nought twinned can be so near; thou art more nigh
     To me, my God, than is this thinking I
     To that I mean when I by me is said;
     Thou art more near me, than is my ready will
     Near to my love, though both one place do fill;—
     Yet, till we are one,—Ah me! the long until!
 

29

 
     Then shall my heart behold thee everywhere.
     The vision rises of a speechless thing,
     A perfectness of bliss beyond compare!
     A time when I nor breathe nor think nor move,
     But I do breathe and think and feel thy love,
     The soul of all the songs the saints do sing!—
     And life dies out in bliss, to come again in prayer.
 

30

 
     In the great glow of that great love, this death
     Would melt away like a fantastic cloud;
     I should no more shrink from it than from the breath
     That makes in the frosty air a nimbus-shroud;
     Thou, Love, hast conquered death, and I aloud
     Should triumph over him, with thy saintly crowd,
     That where the Lamb goes ever followeth.