Kitabı oku: «A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul», sayfa 4

JULY

1

 
     ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!
     Moaning, poor Fancy's doves are swept away.
     I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep,
     My consciousness the blackness all astir.
     No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer—
     For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep,
     Who dwellest only in the living day?
 

2

 
     It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,
     Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent—
     Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!
     Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!
     Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,
     The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?—
     My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream.
 

3

 
     Not thine, my Lord, the darkness all is mine—
     Save that, as mine, my darkness too is thine:
     All things are thine to save or to destroy—
     Destroy my darkness, rise my perfect joy;
     Love primal, the live coal of every night,
     Flame out, scare the ill things with radiant fright,
     And fill my tent with laughing morn's delight.
 

4

 
     Master, thou workest with such common things—
     Low souls, weak hearts, I mean—and hast to use,
     Therefore, such common means and rescuings,
     That hard we find it, as we sit and muse,
     To think thou workest in us verily:
     Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews—
     That doubt the captain, watch the storm-spray flee.
 

5

 
     Thou art hampered in thy natural working then
     When beings designed on freedom's holy plan
     Will not be free: with thy poor, foolish men,
     Thou therefore hast to work just like a man.
     But when, tangling thyself in their sore need,
     Thou hast to freedom fashioned them indeed,
     Then wilt thou grandly move, and Godlike speed.
 

6

 
     Will this not then show grandest fact of all—
     In thy creation victory most renowned—
     That thou hast wrought thy will by slow and small,
     And made men like thee, though thy making bound
     By that which they were not, and could not be
     Until thou mad'st them make along with thee?—
     Master, the tardiness is but in me.
 

7

 
     Hence come thy checks—because I still would run
     My head into the sand, nor flutter aloft
     Towards thy home, with thy wind under me.
     'Tis because I am mean, thy ways so oft
     Look mean to me; my rise is low begun;
     But scarce thy will doth grasp me, ere I see,
     For my arrest and rise, its stern necessity.
 

8

 
     Like clogs upon the pinions of thy plan
     We hang—like captives on thy chariot-wheels,
     Who should climb up and ride with Death's conqueror;
     Therefore thy train along the world's highway steals
     So slow to the peace of heart-reluctant man.
     What shall we do to spread the wing and soar,
     Nor straiten thy deliverance any more?
 

9

 
     The sole way to put flight into the wing,
     To preen its feathers, and to make them grow,
     Is to heed humbly every smallest thing
     With which the Christ in us has aught to do.
     So will the Christ from child to manhood go,
     Obedient to the father Christ, and so
     Sweet holy change will turn all our old things to new.
 

10

 
     Creation thou dost work by faint degrees,
     By shade and shadow from unseen beginning;
     Far, far apart, in unthought mysteries
     Of thy own dark, unfathomable seas,
     Thou will'st thy will; and thence, upon the earth—
     Slow travelling, his way through centuries winning—
     A child at length arrives at never ending birth.
 

11

 
     Well mayst thou then work on indocile hearts
     By small successes, disappointments small;
     By nature, weather, failure, or sore fall;
     By shame, anxiety, bitterness, and smarts;
     By loneliness, by weary loss of zest:—
     The rags, the husks, the swine, the hunger-quest,
     Drive home the wanderer to the father's breast.
 

12

 
     How suddenly some rapid turn of thought
     May throw the life-machine all out of gear,
     Clouding the windows with the steam of doubt,
     Filling the eyes with dust, with noise the ear!
     Who knows not then where dwells the engineer,
     Rushes aghast into the pathless night,
     And wanders in a land of dreary fright.
 

13

 
     Amazed at sightless whirring of their wheels,
     Confounded with the recklessness and strife,
     Distract with fears of what may next ensue,
     Some break rude exit from the house of life,
     And plunge into a silence out of view—
     Whence not a cry, no wafture once reveals
     What door they have broke open with the knife.
 

14

 
     Help me, my Father, in whatever dismay,
     Whatever terror in whatever shape,
     To hold the faster by thy garment's hem;
     When my heart sinks, oh, lift it up, I pray;
     Thy child should never fear though hell should gape,
     Not blench though all the ills that men affray
     Stood round him like the Roman round Jerusalem.
 

15

 
     Too eager I must not be to understand.
     How should the work the master goes about
     Fit the vague sketch my compasses have planned?
     I am his house—for him to go in and out.
     He builds me now—and if I cannot see
     At any time what he is doing with me,
     'Tis that he makes the house for me too grand.
 

16

 
     The house is not for me—it is for him.
     His royal thoughts require many a stair,
     Many a tower, many an outlook fair,
     Of which I have no thought, and need no care.
     Where I am most perplexed, it may be there
     Thou mak'st a secret chamber, holy-dim,
     Where thou wilt come to help my deepest prayer.
 

17

 
     I cannot tell why this day I am ill;
     But I am well because it is thy will—
     Which is to make me pure and right like thee.
     Not yet I need escape—'tis bearable
     Because thou knowest. And when harder things
     Shall rise and gather, and overshadow me,
     I shall have comfort in thy strengthenings.
 

18

 
     How do I live when thou art far away?—
     When I am sunk, and lost, and dead in sleep,
     Or in some dream with no sense in its play?
     When weary-dull, or drowned in study deep?—
     O Lord, I live so utterly on thee,
     I live when I forget thee utterly—
     Not that thou thinkest of, but thinkest me.
 

19

 
     Thou far!—that word the holy truth doth blur.
     Doth the great ocean from the small fish run
     When it sleeps fast in its low weedy bower?
     Is the sun far from any smallest flower,
     That lives by his dear presence every hour?
     Are they not one in oneness without stir—
     The flower the flower because the sun the sun?
 

20

 
     "Dear presence every hour"!—what of the night,
     When crumpled daisies shut gold sadness in;
     And some do hang the head for lack of light,
     Sick almost unto death with absence-blight?—
     Thy memory then, warm-lingering in the ground,
     Mourned dewy in the air, keeps their hearts sound,
     Till fresh with day their lapsed life begin.
 

21

 
     All things are shadows of the shining true:
     Sun, sea, and air—close, potent, hurtless fire—
     Flowers from their mother's prison—dove, and dew—
     Every thing holds a slender guiding clue
     Back to the mighty oneness:—hearts of faith
     Know thee than light, than heat, endlessly nigher,
     Our life's life, carpenter of Nazareth.
 

22

 
     Sometimes, perhaps, the spiritual blood runs slow,
     And soft along the veins of will doth flow,
     Seeking God's arteries from which it came.
     Or does the etherial, creative flame
     Turn back upon itself, and latent grow?—
     It matters not what figure or what name,
     If thou art in me, and I am not to blame.
 

23

 
     In such God-silence, the soul's nest, so long
     As all is still, no flutter and no song,
     Is safe. But if my soul begin to act
     Without some waking to the eternal fact
     That my dear life is hid with Christ in God—
     I think and move a creature of earth's clod,
     Stand on the finite, act upon the wrong.
 

24

 
     My soul this sermon hence for itself prepares:—
     "Then is there nothing vile thou mayst not do,
     Buffeted in a tumult of low cares,
     And treacheries of the old man 'gainst the new."—
     Lord, in my spirit let thy spirit move,
     Warning, that it may not have to reprove:—
     In my dead moments, master, stir the prayers.
 

25

 
     Lord, let my soul o'erburdened then feel thee
     Thrilling through all its brain's stupidity.
     If I must slumber, heedless of ill harms,
     Let it not be but in my Father's arms;
     Outside the shelter of his garment's fold,
     All is a waste, a terror-haunted wold.—
     Lord, keep me. 'Tis thy child that cries. Behold.
 

26

 
     Some say that thou their endless love host won
     By deeds for them which I may not believe
     Thou ever didst, or ever willedst done:
     What matter, so they love thee? They receive
     Eternal more than the poor loom and wheel
     Of their invention ever wove and spun.—
     I love thee for I must, thine all from head to heel.
 

27

 
     The love of thee will set all notions right.
     Right save by love no thought can be or may;
     Only love's knowledge is the primal light.
     Questions keep camp along love's shining coast—
     Challenge my love and would my entrance stay:
     Across the buzzing, doubting, challenging host,
     I rush to thee, and cling, and cry—Thou know'st.
 

28

 
     Oh, let me live in thy realities,
     Nor substitute my notions for thy facts,
     Notion with notion making leagues and pacts;
     They are to truth but as dream-deeds to acts,
     And questioned, make me doubt of everything.—
     "O Lord, my God," my heart gets up and cries,
     "Come thy own self, and with thee my faith bring."
 

29

 
     O master, my desires to work, to know,
     To be aware that I do live and grow—
     All restless wish for anything not thee,
     I yield, and on thy altar offer me.
     Let me no more from out thy presence go,
     But keep me waiting watchful for thy will—
     Even while I do it, waiting watchful still.
 

30

 
     Thou art the Lord of life, the secret thing.
     Thou wilt give endless more than I could find,
     Even if without thee I could go and seek;
     For thou art one, Christ, with my deepest mind,
     Duty alive, self-willed, in me dost speak,
     And to a deeper purer being sting:
     I come to thee, my life, my causing kind.
 

31

 
     Nothing is alien in thy world immense—
     No look of sky or earth or man or beast;
     "In the great hand of God I stand, and thence"
     Look out on life, his endless, holy feast.
     To try to feel is but to court despair,
     To dig for a sun within a garden-fence:
     Who does thy will, O God, he lives upon thy air.
 

AUGUST

1

 
     SO shall abundant entrance me be given
     Into the truth, my life's inheritance.
     Lo! as the sun shoots straight from out his tomb,
     God-floated, casting round a lordly glance
     Into the corners of his endless room,
     So, through the rent which thou, O Christ, hast riven,
     I enter liberty's divine expanse.
 

2

 
     It will be so—ah, so it is not now!
     Who seeks thee for a little lazy peace,
     Then, like a man all weary of the plough,
     That leaves it standing in the furrow's crease,
     Turns from thy presence for a foolish while,
     Till comes again the rasp of unrest's file,
     From liberty is distant many a mile.
 

3

 
     Like one that stops, and drinks, and turns, and goes
     Into a land where never water flows,
     There travels on, the dry and thirsty day,
     Until the hot night veils the farther way,
     Then turns and finds again the bubbling pool—
     Here would I build my house, take up my stay,
     Nor ever leave my Sychar's margin cool.
 

4

 
     Keep me, Lord, with thee. I call from out the dark—
     Hear in thy light, of which I am a spark.
     I know not what is mine and what is thine—
     Of branch and stem I miss the differing mark—
     But if a mere hair's-breadth me separateth,
     That hair's-breadth is eternal, infinite death.
     For sap thy dead branch calls, O living vine!
 

5

 
     I have no choice, I must do what I can;
     But thou dost me, and all things else as well;
     Thou wilt take care thy child shall grow a man.
     Rouse thee, my faith; be king; with life be one;
     To trust in God is action's highest kind;
     Who trusts in God, his heart with life doth swell;
     Faith opens all the windows to God's wind.
 

6

 
     O Father, thou art my eternity.
     Not on the clasp Of consciousness—on thee
     My life depends; and I can well afford
     All to forget, so thou remember, Lord.
     In thee I rest; in sleep thou dost me fold;
     In thee I labour; still in thee, grow old;
     And dying, shall I not in thee, my Life, be bold?
 

7

 
     In holy things may be unholy greed.
     Thou giv'st a glimpse of many a lovely thing,
     Not to be stored for use in any mind,
     But only for the present spiritual need.
     The holiest bread, if hoarded, soon will breed
     The mammon-moth, the having-pride, I find.
     'Tis momently thy heart gives out heart-quickening.
 

8

 
     It is thyself, and neither this nor that,
     Nor anything, told, taught, or dreamed of thee,
     That keeps us live. The holy maid who sat
     Low at thy feet, choosing the better part,
     Rising, bore with her—what a memory!
     Yet, brooding only on that treasure, she
     Had soon been roused by conscious loss of heart.
 

9

 
     I am a fool when I would stop and think,
     And lest I lose my thoughts, from duty shrink.
     It is but avarice in another shape.
     'Tis as the vine-branch were to hoard the grape,
     Nor trust the living root beneath the sod.
     What trouble is that child to thee, my God,
     Who sips thy gracious cup, and will not drink!
 

10

 
     True, faithful action only is the life,
     The grapes for which we feel the pruning knife.
     Thoughts are but leaves; they fall and feed the ground.
     The holy seasons, swift and slow, go round;
     The ministering leaves return, fresh, large, and rife—
     But fresher, larger, more thoughts to the brain:—
     Farewell, my dove!—come back, hope-laden, through the rain.
 

11

 
     Well may this body poorer, feebler grow!
     It is undressing for its last sweet bed;
     But why should the soul, which death shall never know,
     Authority, and power, and memory shed?
     It is that love with absolute faith would wed;
     God takes the inmost garments off his child,
     To have him in his arms, naked and undefiled.
 

12

 
     Thou art my knowledge and my memory,
     No less than my real, deeper life, my love.
     I will not fool, degrade myself to trust
     In less than that which maketh me say Me,
     In less than that causing itself to be.
     Then art within me, behind, beneath, above—
     I will be thine because I may and must.
 

13

 
     Thou art the truth, the life. Thou, Lord, wilt see
     To every question that perplexes me.
     I am thy being; and my dignity
     Is written with my name down in thy book;
     Thou wilt care for it. Never shall I think
     Of anything that thou mightst overlook:—
     In faith-born triumph at thy feet I sink.
 

14

 
     Thou carest more for that which I call mine,
     In same sort—better manner than I could,
     Even if I knew creation's ends divine,
     Rousing in me this vague desire of good.
     Thou art more to me than my desires' whole brood;
     Thou art the only person, and I cry
     Unto the father I of this my I.
 

15

 
     Thou who inspirest prayer, then bend'st thine ear;
     It, crying with love's grand respect to hear!
     I cannot give myself to thee aright—
     With the triumphant uttermost of gift;
     That cannot be till I am full of light—
     To perfect deed a perfect will must lift:—
     Inspire, possess, compel me, first of every might.
 

16

 
     I do not wonder men can ill believe
     Who make poor claims upon thee, perfect Lord;
     Then most I trust when most I would receive.
     I wonder not that such do pray and grieve—
     The God they think, to be God is not fit.
     Then only in thy glory I seem to sit,
     When my heart claims from thine an infinite accord.
 

17

 
     More life I need ere I myself can be.
     Sometimes, when the eternal tide ebbs low,
     A moment weary of my life I grow—
     Weary of my existence' self, I mean,
     Not of its plodding, not its wind and snow
     Then to thy knee trusting I turn, and lean:
     Thou will'st I live, and I do will with thee.
 

18

 
     Dost thou mean sometimes that we should forget thee,
     Dropping the veil of things 'twixt thee and us?—
     Ah, not that we should lose thee and regret thee!
     But that, we turning from our windows thus,
     The frost-fixed God should vanish from the pane,
     Sun-melted, and a moment, Father, let thee
     Look like thyself straight into heart and brain.
 

19

 
     For sometimes when I am busy among men,
     With heart and brain an open thoroughfare
     For faces, words, and thoughts other than mine,
     And a pause comes at length—oh, sudden then,
     Back throbs the tide with rush exultant rare;
     And for a gentle moment I divine
     Thy dawning presence flush my tremulous air.
 

20

 
     If I have to forget thee, do thou see
     It be a good, not bad forgetfulness;
     That all its mellow, truthful air be free
     From dusty noes, and soft with many a yes;
     That as thy breath my life, my life may be
     Man's breath. So when thou com'st at hour unknown,
     Thou shalt find nothing in me but thine own.
 

21

 
     Thou being in me, in my deepest me,
     Through all the time I do not think of thee,
     Shall I not grow at last so true within
     As to forget thee and yet never sin?
     Shall I not walk the loud world's busy way,
     Yet in thy palace-porch sit all the day?
     Not conscious think of thee, yet never from thee stray?
 

22

 
     Forget!—Oh, must it be?—Would it were rather
     That every sense was so filled with my father
     That not in anything could I forget him,
     But deepest, highest must in all things set him!—
     Yet if thou think in me, God, what great matter
     Though my poor thought to former break and latter—
     As now my best thoughts; break, before thee foiled, and scatter!
 

23

 
     Some way there must be of my not forgetting,
     And thither thou art leading me, my God.
     The child that, weary of his mother's petting,
     Runs out the moment that his feet are shod,
     May see her face in every flower he sees,
     And she, although beyond the window sitting,
     Be nearer him than when he sat upon her knees.
 

24

 
     What if, when I at last, at the long last,
     Shall see thy face, my Lord, my life's delight,
     It should not be the face that hath been glassed
     In poor imagination's mirror slight!
     Will my soul sink, and shall I stand aghast,
     Beggared of hope, my heart a conscious blight,
     Amazed and lost—death's bitterness come and not passed?
 

25

 
     Ah, no! for from thy heart the love will press,
     And shining from thy perfect human face,
     Will sink into me like the father's kiss;
     And deepening wide the gulf of consciousness
     Beyond imagination's lowest abyss,
     Will, with the potency of creative grace,
     Lord it throughout the larger thinking place.
 

26

 
     Thus God-possessed, new born, ah, not for long
     Should I the sight behold, beatified,
     Know it creating in me, feel the throng
     Of speechless hopes out-throbbing like a tide,
     And my heart rushing, borne aloft the flood,
     To offer at his feet its living blood—
     Ere, glory-hid, the other face I spied.
 

27

 
     For out imagination is, in small,
     And with the making-difference that must be,
     Mirror of God's creating mirror; all
     That shows itself therein, that formeth he,
     And there is Christ, no bodiless vanity,
     Though, face to face, the mighty perfectness
     With glory blurs the dim-reflected less.
 

28

 
     I clasp thy feet, O father of the living!
     Thou wilt not let my fluttering hopes be more,
     Or lovelier, or greater, than thy giving!
     Surely thy ships will bring to my poor shore,
     Of gold and peacocks such a shining store
     As will laugh all the dreams to holy scorn,
     Of love and sorrow that were ever born.
 

29

 
     Sometimes it seems pure natural to trust,
     And trust right largely, grandly, infinitely,
     Daring the splendour of the giver's part;
     At other times, the whole earth is but dust,
     The sky is dust, yea, dust the human heart;
     Then art thou nowhere, there is no room for thee
     In the great dust-heap of eternity.
 

30

 
     But why should it be possible to mistrust—
     Nor possible only, but its opposite hard?
     Why should not man believe because he must—
     By sight's compulsion? Why should he be scarred
     With conflict? worn with doubting fine and long?—
     No man is fit for heaven's musician throng
     Who has not tuned an instrument all shook and jarred.
 

31

 
     Therefore, O Lord, when all things common seem,
     When all is dust, and self the centre clod,
     When grandeur is a hopeless, foolish dream,
     And anxious care more reasonable than God,—
     Out of the ashes I will call to thee—
     In spite of dead distrust call earnestly:—
     Oh thou who livest, call, then answer dying me.