“The man knows more, but shuts his lids the same:
“Lightning’s cause comprehends nor man nor child
“Why then, my scheme, your better knowledge broke,
“Presently readjusts itself, the small
“Proportioned largelier, parts and whole named new:
“So much, no more two thousand years have done!
“Pope, dost thou dare pretend to punish me, (1780)
“For not descrying sunshine at midnight,
“Me who crept all-fours, found my way so far—
“While thou rewardest teachers of the truth,
“Who miss the plain way in the blaze of noon,—
“Though just a word from that strong style of mine,
“Grasped honestly in hand as guiding-staff,
“Had pricked them a sure path across the bog,
“That mire of cowardice and slush of lies
“Wherein I find them wallow in wide day?”
Paul,—’tis a legend,—answered Seneca,
But that was in the day-spring; noon is now
We have got too familiar with the light.
Shall I wish back once more that thrill of dawn?
When the whole truth-touched man burned up, one fire?
—Assured the trial, fiery, fierce, but fleet,
Would, from his little heap of ashes, lend
Wings to the conflagration of the world
Which Christ awaits ere He make all things new—
So should the frail become the perfect, rapt (1800)
From glory of pain to glory of joy; and so,
Even in the end,—the act renouncing earth,
Lands, houses, husbands, wives and children here,—
Begin that other act which finds all, lost,
Regained, in this time even, a hundredfold,
And, in the next time, feels the finite love
Blent and embalmed with its eternal life.
So does the sun ghastlily seem to sink
In those north parts, lean all but out of life,
Desist a dread mere breathing-stop, then slow (1810)
Reassert day, begin the endless rise.
Was this too easy for our after-stage?
Was such a lighting- up of faith, in life,
Only allowed initiate, set man’s step
In the true way by help of the great glow?
A way wherein it is ordained he walk,
Bearing to see the light from heaven still more
And more encroached on by the light of earth,
Tentatives earth puts forth to rival heaven,
Earthly incitements that mankind serve God (1820)
For man’s sole sake, not God’s and therefore man’s,
Till at last, who distinguishes the sun
From a mere Druid fire on a far mount?
More praise to him who with his subtle prism
Shall decompose both beams and name the true.
In such sense, who is last proves first indeed;
For how could saints and martyrs fail see truth
Streak the night’s blackness? Who is faithful now,
Untwists heaven’s pure white from the yellow flare
O’ the world’s gross torch, without a foil to help (1830)
Produce the Christian act, so possible
When in the way stood Nero’s cross and stake,—
So hard now that the world smiles “Rightly done!
“It is the politic, the thrifty way,
“Will clearly make you in the end returns
“Beyond our fool’s sport and improvidence:
“We fools go thro’ the cornfield of this life,
“Pluck ears to left and right and swallow raw,
“—Nay, tread, at pleasure, a sheaf underfoot,
“To get the better at some poppy-flower,— (1840)
“Well aware we shall have so much wheat less
“In the eventual harvest: you meantime
“Waste not a spike,—the richlier will you reap!
“What then? There will be always garnered meal
“Sufficient for our comfortable loaf,
“While you enjoy the undiminished prize!”
Is it not this ignoble confidence,
Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,
Makes the old heroism impossible?
Unless…what whispers me of times to come? (1850)
What if it be the mission of that age,
My death will usher into life, to shake
This torpor of assurance from our creed,
Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring
The formidable danger back, we drove
Long ago to the distance and the dark?
No wild beast now prowls round the infant camp;
We have built wall and sleep in city safe:
But if the earthquake try the towers, that laugh
To think they once saw lions rule outside, (1860)
Till man stand out again, pale, resolute,
Prepared to die,—that is, alive at last?
As we broke up that old faith of the world,
Have we, next age, to break up this the new—
Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report—
Whence need to bravely disbelieve report
Through increased faith in thing reports belie?
Must we deny,—do they, these Molinists,
At peril of their body and their soul,—
Recognised truths, obedient to some truth (1870)
Unrecognised yet, but perceptible?—
Correct the portrait by the living face,
Man’s God, by God’s God in the mind of man?
Then, for the few that rise to the new height,
The many that must sink to the old depth,
The multitude found fall away! A few,
E’en ere the new law speak clear, keep the old,
Preserve the Christian level, call good good
And evil evil (even though razed and blank
The old titles stand), thro’ custom, habitude, (1880)
And all they may mistake for finer sense
O’ the fact than reason warrants,—as before,
They hope perhaps, fear not impossibly.
Surely some one Pompilia in the world
Will say “I know the right place by foot’s feel,
“I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?”
But what a multitude will fall, perchance,
Quite through the crumbling truth subjacent late,
Sink to the next discoverable base,
Rest upon human nature, take their stand
On what is fact, the lust and pride of life! (1890)
The mass of men, whose very souls even now
Seem to need re-creating,—so they slink
Worm-like into the mud light now lays bare,—
Whose future we dispose of with shut eyes
“They
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