LITMIR.BIZ

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Had hungering fed thereon, from low-browed crypt

       Up to the soaring pinnacles that, tipt

       With stars, gave signal when the sun drew nigh!

       Dark caverns in and under; vivid sky

       Its home and aim! Say, from the glory slipt,

       And down into the shadows dropt and dipt,

       Or reared from darkness up so holy-high?—

       Thou build'st the temple of thy holy ghost

       From hid foundation to high-hidden fate—

       Foot in the grave, head at the heavenly gate,

       From grave and sky filled with a fighting host!

       Man is thy temple; man thy work elect;

       His glooms and glory thine, great architect!

      V.

      If thou hadst been a painter, what fresh looks,

       What outbursts of pent glories, what new grace

       Had shone upon us from the great world's face!

       How had we read, as in eternal books,

       The love of God in loneliest shiest nooks!

       A lily, in merest lines thy hand did trace,

       Had plainly been God's child of lower race!

       And oh how strong the hills, songful the brooks!

       To thee all nature's meanings lie light-bare,

       Because thy heart is nature's inner side;

       Clear as, to us, earth on the dawn's gold tide,

       Her notion vast up in thy soul did rise;

       Thine is the world, thine all its splendours rare,

       Thou Man ideal, with the unsleeping eyes!

      VI.

      But I have seen pictures the work of man,

       In which at first appeared but chaos wild:

       So high the art transcended, they beguiled

       The eye as formless, and without a plan.

       Not soon, the spirit, brooding o'er, began

       To see a purpose rise, like mountain isled,

       When God said, Let the Dry appear! and, piled

       Above the waves, it rose in twilight wan.

       So might thy pictures then have been too strange

       For us to pierce beyond their outmost look;

       A vapour and a darkness; a sealed book;

       An atmosphere too high for wings to range;

       And so we could but, gazing, pale and change,

       And tremble as at a void thought cannot brook.

      VII.

      But earth is now thy living picture, where

       Thou shadowest truth, the simple and profound

       By the same form in vital union bound:

       Where one can see but the first step of thy stair,

       Another sees it vanish far in air.

       When thy king David viewed the starry round,

       From heart and fingers broke the psaltery-sound:

       Lord, what is man, that thou shouldst mind his prayer!

       But when the child beholds the heavens on high,

       He babbles childish noises—not less dear

       Than what the king sang praying—to the ear

       Of him who made the child and king and sky.

       Earth is thy picture, painter great, whose eye

       Sees with the child, sees with the kingly seer.

      VIII.

      If thou hadst built some mighty instrument,

       And set thee down to utter ordered sound,

       Whose faithful billows, from thy hands unbound,

       Breaking in light, against our spirits went,

       And caught, and bore above this earthly tent,

       The far-strayed back to their prime natal ground,

       Where all roots fast in harmony are found,

       And God sits thinking out a pure consent;—

       Nay, that thou couldst not; that was not for thee!

       Our broken music thou must first restore—

       A harder task than think thine own out free;

       And till thou hast done it, no divinest score,

       Though rendered by thine own angelic choir,

       Can lift one human spirit from the mire.

      IX.

      If thou hadst been a poet! On my heart

       The thought flashed sudden, burning through the weft

       Of life, and with too much I sank bereft.

       Up to my eyes the tears, with sudden start,

       Thronged blinding: then the veil would rend and part!

       The husk of vision would in twain be cleft!

       Thy hidden soul in naked beauty left,

       I should behold thee, Nature, as thou art!

       O poet Jesus! at thy holy feet

       I should have lien, sainted with listening;

       My pulses answering ever, in rhythmic beat,

       The stroke of each triumphant melody's wing,

       Creating, as it moved, my being sweet;

       My soul thy harp, thy word the quivering string.

      X.

      Thee had we followed through the twilight land

       Where thought grows form, and matter is refined

       Back into thought of the eternal mind,

       Till, seeing them one, Lo, in the morn we stand!—

       Then started fresh and followed, hand in hand,

       With sense divinely growing, till, combined,

       We heard the music of the planets wind

       In harmony with billows on the strand!—

       Till, one with earth and all God's utterance,

       We hardly knew whether the sun outspake,

       Or a glad sunshine from our spirits brake—

       Whether we think, or winds and blossoms dance!

       Alas, O poet leader, for such good

       Thou wast God's tragedy, writ in tears and blood!

      XI.

      Hadst thou been one of these, in many eyes,

       Too near to be a glory for thy sheen,

       Thou hadst been scorned; and to the best hadst been

       A setter forth of strange divinities;

       But to the few construct of harmonies,

       A sudden sun, uplighting the serene

       High heaven of love; and, through the cloudy screen

       That 'twixt our souls and truth all wretched lies,

      

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