Christmas Eve

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's³ bird
(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.