What is it then to me If others are inquisitive to see? Why should I quit my place to go and ask If other men are working at their task? Leave my own buried roots to go And see that brother plants shall grow ; And turn away from Thee, O Thou most Holy Light, To look if other orbs their orbits keep aright, Around their proper sun, Deserting Thee, and being undone. O let me love my love unto myself alone, And know my knowledge to the world unknown; And worship Thee, O hid One, O much sought, As but man can or ought, Within the abstracted'st shrine of my least breathed-on thought. Better it were, thou sayest, to consent; Feast while we may, and live ere life be spent ; Close up clear eyes, and call the unstable sure, In self-belyings, self-deceivings roll, And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul. Nay, better far to mark off thus much air, And call it Heaven: place bliss and glory there: And say, what is not, will be by-and-by. 'WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING.' It fortifies my soul to know That, though I perish, Truth is so: I steadier step when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall. 'PERCHÈ PENSA? PENSANDO S'INVECCHIA.' To spend uncounted years of pain, The problem of our being here; And purpose of our being here? THE SHADOW1 I dreamed a dream: I dreamt that I espied, A Shadow sit upon a grave-a Shade, As thin, as unsubstantial, as of old Came, the Greek poet told, To lick the life-blood in the trench Ulysses made- 'I am the Resurrection of the Dead. The night is past, the morning is at hand, And I must in my proper semblance stand, Appear brief space and vanish,-listen, this is true, I am that Jesus whom they slew.' And shadows dim, I dreamed, the dead apostles came, And bent their heads for sorrow and for shame Sorrow for their great loss, and shame For what they did in that vain name. And in long ranges far behind there seemed Pale vapoury angel forms; or was it cloud? that kept Strange watch; the women also stood beside and wept. The MS. of this poem is incomplete. And Peter spoke the word: 'O my own Lord, What is it we must do? Is it then all untrue? Did we not see, and hear, and handle Thee, Upon the Mount in Galilee, On the lake shore, and here at Bethany, And at the word the women wept aloud. And the Shade answered, 'What ye say I know not; But it is true I am that Jesus whom they slew, Whom ye have preached, but in what way I know not.' And the great World, it chanced, came by that way, And whom to pray to, at the least one day Whether the fact so many years ago Had, or not, happened, how was he to know? And the poor Pope was sure it must be so, It mattered not a jot Whether the thing, indeed, were so or not; Religion must be kept up, and the Church preserved, And for the people this best served. And then he turned, and added most demurely, 'Whatever may befal, We Catholics need no evidence at all, The holy father is infallible, surely!' And English canons heard, Religion rests on evidence, of course, And dignitaries of the Church came by. It had been worth to some of them, they said, It had been proved in twenty ways at once, And the Shade answered, that He did not know; And women, mild and pure, Forth from still homes and village schools did pass, And asked, if this indeed were thus, alas, What should they teach their children and the poor? But it was truth, the fact was so. Who had kept all commandments from his youth [From Dipsychus.] ISOLATION. Where are the great, whom thou would'st wish to praise thee? Where are the pure, whom thou would'st choose to love thee! Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee, Whose high commands would cheer, whose chidings raise thee? Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find In the stones, bread, and life in the blank mind. IN VENICE; DIPSYCHUS SPEAKS. O happy hours! O compensation ample for long days Of what impatient tongues call wretchedness! To walk the watery way of palaces! O beautiful, o'ervaulted with gemmed blue, Of Oriental glory; these long ranges Of classic chiselling, this gay flickering crowd, |