Christmas Eve

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!