l^wm---s^ Book .O ?WASH& " BOSTON D. LOTHROP & COMPANY Franklin and Hawley Streets Copyright, 1886, by D. LOTHROP & COMPANY. PRESS OF HENRY H. CLARK & CO., BOBTON. PREFACE. When Miss Hersey and I were working to- gether on the Select Poems of Browning last July, she suggested that an edition of the "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" might be an appropriate book for the coming holiday season. I assented most heartily, and urged her to prepare the book at once, that it might be in the printer's hands before I should return from Europe in October. My contribution to the work, I said, should be the Preface ; and to this promise, made with little thought that it would be taken seriously, she and the pub- lishers now hold me. What more need I say? That I believe Browning to be a great religious poet, and why I believe it ? But what could I say that has not been sufficiently said — and far better IV PREFACE. than I could put it — in Miss Hersey's intro- ductory essay ? Let me simply commend both that and the poems which follow to all " Christen folk " as good reading for Christmas-Eve or Easter-Day, or any other time in the year. W. J. ROLFE. Cambridge, Dec. 16, 1886. CONTENTS Introductory Essay on Browning's Theory con- cerning Personal Immortality 7 Christmas-Eve 23 Easter-Day 75 Saul 113 An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physi- cian 137 Notes 149 5 The Theory of Robert Browning CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. " Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe : But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear ; The rest may reason and welcome : His we musicians know." l With such sublime confidence in his own inspiration Robert Browning speaks. Whatever we may think of him as a poet, or of his theory of poetry, there can be little difference of opinion about him as an intellect. He represents the most advanced, liberal, logical, scien- tific thought of the century. Not even an enemy can claim that Browning is in thraldom to Church or to Science. Like Bacon he has taken all knowledge for his province. There is no poet but Shakespeare who gives to even the cursory reader such an impression of wide range and strong grasp. Archdeacon Farrar re- minded us that simply to read the tables of contents of the volumes of Browning's Poems is to make the whole circle of the problems and the experiences of life. There is, then, a certain rare value in the thought of such a man on any one of the vital questions of the time. Robert Browning is a scholar. He is also a brave thinker, who does not fear the worst that truth can re- veal. Add to these facts the further one, that (as many of us believe) he is a poet, with a royal commission to i Abt Vogler, Robert Browning. 7 8 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING see and to expound things as they are, and there is rea- son enough for trying to find his theory on so vital a theme as that of Personal Immortality. Perhaps such an investigation of the work of a great artist, made for the sake of discovering his belief on one of the thousand canons of life, may have an unpleasant suggestion of the attempt to submit a work of art to the analysis of the laboratory. I can say only, that I am aware of the force of the charge, but that the occasion seems to me to justify the attempt. The age seeks pas- sionately any fact which throws light upon the next phase of the soul's life. The artist comes that we may have life, and that we may have it more abundantly. The poet, especially, clings to life. From all time, he has sung the Credo of immortality. David hinted it before he even realized it ; Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe — the poet of retribution, of reconciliation, and of unrest — have all celebrated it; but theirs has been for the most part a song of longing, and of consequent expectation, rather than of well-grounded belief. The argument from desire is so pretty that it ought to be useful as well ; but the world lies in hunger and cold, longing for food and fire. No soul which sees life can fail to doubt, sometimes, if desire is indeed the avatit-courier of satisfaction. In cool blood one has always had to reply to the poet's confident, " There is a life to come, because only by such life can the universe become a harmony," with, " But how do you know that the universe is meant to be a harmony?" It has re- mained for modern science to give to the poet a fact so cogent and reasonable that it is unassailable, and, at the same time, so lofty and majestic that it is fit stimulant for the highest imagination, — the fact of the persistence of force. CONCERNING PERSON AI« IMMORTALITY. 9 The most careful science of the day declares it ab- surd to suppose every energy of the universe conserved, except that marvelous energy which we call the human mind. If that goes out into blank non-activity at death, it is an absurdity beyond belief, the only instance of the destruction of a force. Browning is the first poet who has assimilated this theory completely. It comes forward constantly in his poetry. It is evidently the foundation of his impregnable belief in immortality. 1 Browning believes that the soul will continue, because no force nor motion can be lost. For the proof of this conviction of the permanence of spiritual power, one cita- tion is so complete that it may serve for the score which might be given : " There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as before The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more : On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect round. " All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hotir. " And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days ? Have we withered or agonized ? Why else was the pause prolonged, but that singing might issue thence ? Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?" 2 1 The reader must distinguish, as the writer will endeavor to do, between the phrase " Personal Immortality " and the term " Immortality." I do not wish to represent Browning as claiming so manifest a logical impossibility as that, because no force is wasted, each unit of force will remain forever apart from all other units. I shall hope to show presently that Browning's belief in personal immortality rests upon another set of facts. 2 Abt Vogler, stanzas 9, 10, 11. IO THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING This exposition is perfect enough to satisfy the logi- cian. Indeed, it is so complete as to make us doubt whether the poet, so much as the philosopher, speaks. Abt Vogler would have been greater poetry if it had been less evident syllogistic reasoning. But we come to the next step in Browning's theory of the universe. Granting that force must persist, he is still fronted by the question, " What, then, is the signifi- cance of this life ? Why the struggle, the darkness, the failure, or even the success ? If all effort is permanent, if the thing that hath been is that which shall be, why all the stress and strain of earth ? " To these questions he proposes an answer so simple that it might seem bor- rowed from the cant of the pseudo-theologian, did we not know the honesty and the scientific spirit of the man. He replies: "This life is a test, an epoch, — brief, it is true, but determining the direction of the persisting force. Energy is bound to survive in some form or other ; but its form of survival is the grand enigma which this world settles." Let the poet speak for himself. Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day are rendered doubly important, in such a study as this, by the fact that they are the solitary poems in which Browning speaks with- out the cothurnus of the drama. In Easter-Day the soul is pictured as surprised by the Judgment-Day: " In very deed (I uttered to myself) that Day ! The intuition burned away All darkness from my spirit too : There stood I, found and fixed, I knew, Choosing the world. Since my life had end And my choice with it — best defend, Applaud both ! CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. II A voice Beside me spoke thus, ' Life is done, Time ends, Eternity 's begun, And thou art judged forevermore.' < This world, This finite life thou hast preferred, In disbelief of God's own word, To heaven and to infinity. Here the probation was for thee, To show thy soul the earthly mixed With heavenly it must choose betwixt. The earthly joys lay palpable, — A taint, in each, distinct as well ; The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, Above them, but as truly were Taintless, so, in their nature, best. Thy choice was earth : thou didst attest 'Twas fitter spirit should subserve The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve Beneath the spirit's play. Thou art shut Out of the heaven of spirit ; glut Thy sense upon the world : 'tis thine Forever, — take it!'" 1 Browning dwells with ever-deepening seriousness on the eternal nature of human, earthly choice. It maj be instantaneous, it may be despairing, it may be at the last moment, — all these hopes he will hold out to us; but when it comes, it determines. We may grumble at the nature of the task set before us, but the demand is inexorable. If we dally, we lose. But ever so feebly to choose heaven, to refuse earth, is to win eternal life. This brief outline of his theory must now be filled out 1 Easter-Day, xvi., xvii., xx. 12 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING by a group of citations.. The first is from the lips of the Pope, in The Ring arid the Book. He says to Ca- ponsacchi, the brave, tempted, conquering, triumphant, heart-broken young priest : " Never again elude the choice of tints ; White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so ; Life's business being just the terrible choice." 1 Again the Pope speaks : " Is this our ultimate stage ? or starting-place To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb, 'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove Advantage for who vaults from low to high, And makes the stumbling-block a stepping-stone ? " a Still again : " Life is probation, and this earth no goal, But starting-point of man." There was never more lofty condemnation of the quer- ulous spirit which criticises the plan by which the soul wins from earth's struggle immortal life : " Is God mocked, as He asks ? Shall I take on me to change his tasks, And dare, dispatched to a river-head . For a simple draught of the element, Neglect the thing for which He sent, And return with another thing instead ? — Saying, ' Because the water found Welling up from underground Is mingled with the taints of earth, While Thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, And couldst at wink or word convulse 1 The Pope, 1. 1234. 2 The Pope, 1. 409. CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. 1 3 The world with the leap of a river-pulse ! — Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, And bring Thee a chalice I found instead : See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy ! One would suppose that the marble bled. What matters the water ? A hope I have nursed The waterless cup will quench my thirst.' Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift ; For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam." 1 The soul which accepts its conditions thrives and strengthens with the struggle: " When the fight begins within himself, A man 's worth something." 2 " I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. Who keeps one end in view, makes all things serve." 8 In Saul, Browning speaks of this life as " The dream, the probation, the prelude," * and foresees the man, now sore beset, « By the pain-throb triumphantly winning intensified bliss, And the next world's reward and repose by the struggle in this." 5 The Ring and the Book is one long, splendid argument for another life. Its general nature is that of the so- called moral argument. Human justice, with its inade- quacy, must be a prophecy of *a divine justice, complete and satisfying. But I want here to cite three memorable passages which concern the relation of choice to eternal * Christmas-Day, xxii. s /* « Balcony, Part Third. » Bishop Blougram's Apology. * Saul, xvii. 5 Saul, xvu. 14 THE THEORY OP ROBERT BROWNING destiny. The first is one of the most terrible that Browning has written. Count Guido — a profligate, a liar, a murderer — has filled up the measure of his crimes. Here at last is come u a devil more damn'd In evils to top Macbeth." He has shamefully deceived Pompilia, the cleanest, most child-like soul that ever lived. He has held her bound on the rack of hideous moral torture for two years. At last he has murdered her and both her foster-parents. Caponsacchi, a young priest, has made a brave attempt, half successful, to save Pompilia. He has learned the beauty of her soul and the incredible deformity of Guido's. In an impassioned speech before the judges of the cause, he depicts the future of the Count : " And thus I see him slowly and surely edged Off all the table-land whence life upsprings Aspiring to be immortality. So I lose Guido in the loneliness, Silence, and dusk, till at the doleful end, At the horizontal line, creation's verge, From what just is, to absolute nothingness — Lo, what is this he meets, strains onward still ? What other man, deep further in the fate, Who, turning at the prize of a footfall To flatter him and promise fellowship, Discovers in the act a frightful face — Judas, made monstrous by much solitude ! There let them grapple, denizens o' the dark, Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound, In their one spot out of the ken of God Or care of man for ever and evermore." 1 1 Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 1. 1898. CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. 1 5 But even for this creature, unmatched in history but by Judas, the godly Pope has a shadow of a hope. If there be but the least chance for so depraved a soul, no pain is too great, and no judgment too severe, to win it. As the Pope signs Guido's death-warrant he exclaims : " I stood at Naples once, a night so dark I could have scarce conjectured there was earth Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all ; But the night's black was burst through by a blaze — Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, Through her whole length of mountain visible ; There lay the city — thick and plain with spires, And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see one instant and be saved. " x It is of course most fitting that the murdered Pompilia should have a word of hope and mercy for her husband. One faintest desire after righteousness will, she believes, bring forgiveness : " But where will God be absent ? In His face Is light, but in His shadow healing, too ! Let Guido touch the shadow, and be healed ! " 2 The value of struggle, the stimulus of temptation, the saving power of pain, — these are the gracious lights in " this present evil world." " Was the trial sore ? Temptation sharp ? Thank God a second time ! Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestalled in triumph ? Pray 1 Lead us into no such temptations, Lord ! ' Yea, but, O Thou whose servants are the bold, Lead such temptations by the head and hair, Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, That so he may do battle and have praise." 3 » The Pope, 1. 2133. 2 Pompilia, 1. 1720. 8 The Pope, 1. 1182. l6 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING No modern theologian believes more completely in the development of character by the experiences of life than does Robert Browning. If he is set down by some theologians as an irreligious poet, it is because — along with this conviction held in common with the Calvinists — he has the other conviction that the fittest and only the fittest will survive. This is modern doctrine. We have accustomed ourselves to it in the realm of animal life, so that the phrase no longer shocks us. We are content that the age of the mastodon is past. We prac- tise the selecting process with our domestic animals. We even look on, with regret truly, but with repose, while the weakest is pushed to the wall in the struggle between labor and capital. But we are not yet accus- tomed to regard God as the originator of all this mighty system, whose primary law is, " To him that hath shall be given." Still less are we ready to spur our imagination to the task of conceiving a coming phase of life where the process shall go on eternally, where good shall en- large and expand, and where evil shall slowly but surely gather its folds about its victim — say, rather, about its lover — until all life and all desire for life go out to- gether. To this realization Robert Browning has come. The power which conquers the universe is a moral power. This moral power has its root in choice, — human choice made in this world. " There 's a fancy some lean to and others hate — That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state, Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins : Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, Repeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series ; Only the scale 's to be changed, that 's all. CONCERNING PERSON AE IMMORTALITY. 1 7 Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen, By the means of Evil, that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene, — When its faith in the same has stood the test — Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labor are surely done ; There remaineth a rest for the people of God : And I have had troubles enough, for one." x Out of Browning's conviction of the omnipotence of individual, earthly choice comes his belief in individual persistence. "Why such pains," he asks, "to develop the force of a person, unless that force is to remain ? " By every charm of which poetry is mistress he labors to convince us that he speaks truth when he says, " And I shall behold Thee, face to face, O God ! " Browning has one poem which avowedly deals with this subject alone, — La Saisiaz. It is too complex in emo- tion to be fairly quotable. I commend it to my readers in its completeness. But I must say that, unlike most of Browning's work, it has in it the note of personal feeling, sorrow, disturbance. It seems to me less valuable as a test of its author's real, established thought about the secret of life than many of the more scattered touches. There is no way of accounting for Browning's passion for the development of the individual except by saying th?t he sees the vision of the future in which the indi- vidual persists. He will that the impulses of the human soul be worked out at all hazards. Fear, faltering, irres- olution, — what are all these but paraphrases for weak personality ? These are the foes against which he sets his fiercest lance. No poem has been more perversely 1 Old Pictures in Florence, stanzas 21, 22. 1 8 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING interpreted than The Statue a?id the Bust. Its whole force lies in the lines which so sublimely condense the parable of the Foolish Virgins : " The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Was the unlit lamp and the ungirt lion." 1 The same feeling is the motif of that crux of Ameri- can Browning students, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. On this Mr. Arlo Bates has given us recently so perfect a prose variation — he disclaims the word "expla- nation " — that I must rather quote him than paraphrase him. "Childe Roland is the most supreme expression of a noble allegiance to an ideal, — the most absolute faithfulness to a principle, regardless of all else. . . . What does it matter what the tower signifies, — whether it be this, that, or the other? The essential thing is that, after a lifetime pledged to this, — whatever the ideal may be, — the opportunity has come after a cumulative series of disappointments, and more than all amid an overwhelming sense that failure must be certain where so many have failed. . . . And the sublime climax comes in the constancy of the hero : 'Ina sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set And blew ! ' " 2 Constancy, courage, resolution, — these are the virtues which save character. But one more step and my analysis is complete. These are the high, difficult virtues. A great teacher says, 1 The Statue and the Bust, p. 123. 2 Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, End. CONCERNING PERSON AI, IMMORTALITY. 1 9 " Be strong, be brave, and you shall live ! " But must he answer to the cry, "How can we find strength and courage ? " — "I do not know." ? Certainly Browning has a more hopeful reply. Sidney Lanier tells us that the last twenty centuries have spent their best power upon the development of the idea of personality. Literature, education, govern- ment, and religion have learned to recognize the individ- ual as the unit of force. Browning goes a step further. He declares that so powerful is a complete personality that its very touch gives life and courage and potency. He turns to history for the inspiration of enduring virtue and the stimulus for sustained effort, and he finds both in Jesus Christ. In him is, at once, the possibility, the promise, and the proof that each human soul may live forever. Personality — symmetrical and unmarred — is divine. To love a completely noble person is to have in one's soul the supreme stimulus to noble and per- sistent action. No lower motive will avail. Love is the only force which conquers easily and invariably the temp- tations to irresolution and cowardice. Strong virtue is instantly preferred to weak yielding, because no sacrifice is so painful as would be the sense of shocked and in- jured love. So divine ingenuity takes advantage of every human function for purposes of help. The imagination is quickened by the figure of the Christ, the heart is touched by his pain, and the brain fired by his courage and persistence. God will not transcend his laws to pre- serve a human soul, but he will devise means for saving it within these laws. " And thence I conclude that the real God-function Is to furnish a motive and injunction For practising what we know already." 20 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING Such a motive, Browning goes on to declare, is Christ. Man — " Gropes for something more substantial Than a fable, myth, or personification. May Christ do for him what no mere man can, And stand confessed as the God of salvation ! " * In concluding, I want to notice three poems of Brown- ing in which this potency of the Christ motive is declared and explained. They will rank among his very greatest poems in point of artistic form as well as in ethical meaning. They are A Death in the Desert, The Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician, and Saul. A Death in the Desert is a monologue given by a dis- ciple of John, and describing the last hour of the Apostle. The scene is sketched, — a solitary cave, in whose mid- chamber — " Since noon's light reached there a little," bedded on a camel-skin, the old man lies unconscious. He rouses at the very end, and makes a supreme effort for a last word of cheer to his disciples. He feels the cloud of doubt gathering about his followers. When he shall die, — " There is left on earth No one alive who knew (consider this ! ) — Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands That which was from the first the Word of Life." Upon him is the full need for complete human assur- ance. Judge with what intensity he speaks. He meets and faces the most dangerous arguments against the religion of Christ. His weapons may be held in trem- 1 Christmas-Eve. CONCERNING PKRSONAIv IMMORTALITY. 21 bling hands, but they are potent yet. He recalls for the listening group the person and the ineffable love of Christ. Then he breathes once more the secret of this life: " For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, — Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ; And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost Such prize despite the envy of the world, And, having gained truth, keep truth : that is all. Helpful was the light, And warmth was cherishing, and food was choice To every man's flesh, thousand years ago, As now to yours and mine ; the body sprang At once to the height and stayed; but the soul, — no ! Since sages who, this noontide, meditate In Rome or Athens, may descry some point Of the eternal power, hid yester eve ; And as thereby the power's whole mass extends, So much extends the ether floating o'er The love that tops the might, the Christ in God. I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise." The whole poem is subtle and mystical; but once understood it is rich in suggestion. The growth of the soul, its new powers born to-day out of the weaknesses of yesterday, its certainties, its hopes, are all touched with the hand of poet and philosopher. The Epistle of Karshish is addressed to a wise doc- tor, Ahib, by a young disciple. It relates in friendly yet scientific tone a meeting of Karshish with a strange 22 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING man, — Lazarus. The conviction of Lazarus that he was raised from the dead by a Nazarene is treated, of course, like a curious delusion. But struggling under this calm incredulity of the physician is the passionate desire of the human soul for a personal affection and a personal force outside itself and omnipotent. I quote two short passages in which the contest between the doubt of the scientist and the longing of the child reaches its climax: " This man so cured regards the curer then, As — God forgive me — who but God himself, Creator and Sustainer of the world, That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile ! — 'Sayeth that such an One was born and lived, Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat, And must have so avouched himself, in fact, In hearing of this very Lazarus Who saith — but why all this of what he saith ? Why write of trivial matters, things of price Calling at every moment for remark ? The very God ! think, Ahib ! dost thou think ? So, the All-Great were the All-Loving, too — So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, ' O heart I made, a heart beats here ! Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself. Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with myself to love, And thou must love me who have died for thee ! The madman saith He said so ; it is strange.' " Saul is a dramatic monologue from the lips of David. It describes one of those strange interviews between himself and Saul when the soul of the king was re- called from its wanderings by means of music. David CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. 23 finds an "agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb." Then he sings to him, — first, the songs of the people — the sheep call, the reapers' tune, the funeral hymn. Then comes a great melody of patriotism, — "All Brought to blaze on the head of one creature, — King Saul ! " David promises him such fame as the world has not known. " Each deed thou hast done Dies, revives, goes to work in the world — Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor. So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part In thy being ! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art ! " But David feels how empty is the promise of immortal faine to the soul craving immortal life. It is a stirring strain. But the weakness which paralyzes the Positivist is in his song. The immortality of the race and the permanence of human society are truths, but they fall far short of being the whole truth. Without the vision of the dignity of the Person, the world becomes a crude rehearsal of some great drama, with the heroic parts all silenced. As David sings, a dream quickens within him. Out of the darkness of the age gleams the great Christ- figure — the warm personal presence — which is alone sufficient to enliven and sustain the struggling powers of the captive king. 11 Saul, it shall be A face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me Thou shalt love and be loved by forever ; a hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See, the Christ stand ! " 24 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING. A Personal Force comes to the aid of a personal struggle. Browning believes so firmly that only such a Force can avail in such a struggle that he suggests to us the miracle of its revelation even in the century of David. If that is anthropomorphism, the readers of the most modern of poets must make the most of it. The hope of permanent influence in society is not enough for the soul which longs to live consciously and forever. Browning promises us, by the mouth of David, a double immortality — one in the influences which we have initiated; but the other, and the larger and more vital, in the characters which we have completed. To such a life Browning calls the soul. He has satis- fied himself that force persists, that mind is the supreme force, that personal character is the highest fruit of mind. The worth and permanence of the individual soul is re- vealed to him as a certainty. He stands in a throng of poets, some of whom commend us to nature as the source of peace, some, to the future of humanity, some, to the joys of the moment. But — " He, there, with the brand flamboyant broad o'er night's forlorn abyss, Crowned by prose and verse ; and wielding with Wit's bauble, Learn- ing's rod — Well? — Why, he at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God." HELOISE EDWINA HERSEY. CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. FLORENCE, i8jo. CHRISTMAS-EVE. Out of the little chapel I burst, Into the fresh night-air again. Five minutes full I waited, first In the doorway, to escape the rain That drove in gusts down the common's centre, At the edge of which the chapel stands, Before I plucked up heart to enter. Heaven knows how many sorts of hands Reached past me, groping for the latch Of the inner door that hung on catch, More obstinate the more they fumbled, Till, giving way at last with a scold Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled One sheep more to the rest in fold, And left me irresolute, standing sentry In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry, Four feet long by two feet wide, Partitioned off from the vast inside — I blocked up half of it at least. No remedy ; the rain kept driving. They eyed me much as some wild beast, That congregation, still arriving, Some of them by the main road, white A long way past me into the night, Skirting the common, then diverging ; -7 28 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Not a few suddenly emerging From the common's self through the paling-gaps, — They house in the gravel-pits perhaps, Where the road stops short with its safeguard border Of lamps, as tired of such disorder ; — 30 But the most turned in yet more abruptly From a certain squalid knot of alleys, Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, Which now the little chapel rallies And leads into day again, — its priestliness Lending itself to hide their beastliness So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on Those neophytes too much in lack of it, That, where you cross the common as I did, 40 And meet the party thus presided, " Mount Zion " with Love-lane at the back of it, They front you as little disconcerted As, bound for the hills, her fate averted, And her wicked people made to mind him, Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him. II. Well, from the road, the lanes, or the common, In came the flock : the fat weary woman, Panting and bewildered, down-clapping Her umbrella with a mighty report, 50 Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones ; then, with a snort, Like a startled horse, at the interloper 6o CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 29 (Who humbly knew himself improper, But could not shrink up small enough) — Round to the door, and in, — the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making my very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered, Little, old-faced, peaking, sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place ; She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping Already from my own clothes' dropping, Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on ; Then, stooping down to take off her pattens, 7° She bore them defiantly, in each hand one, Planted together before her breast And its babe, as good as a lance in rest. Close on her heels, the dingy satins Of a female something, past me flitted, With lips as much too white, as a streak Lay far too red on each hollow cheek ; And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied All that was left of a woman once, Holding at least its tongue for the nonce. ^ 8 Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief, And eyelids screwed together tight, 3C CHRISTMAS-KVE AND EASTER-DAY. Led himself in by some inner light. And, except from him, from each that entered, I got the same interrogation — " What, you, the alien, you have ventured To take with us, the elect, your station ? A carer for none of it, a Gallio ? " — Thus, plain as print, I read the glance 9c At a common prey, in each countenance As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho. And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder, The draught, it always sent in shutting, Made the flame of the single tallow candle In the cracked square lantern I stood under, Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting, As it were, the luckless cause of scandal : I verily fancied the zealous light, (In the chapel's secret, too !) for spite 100 Would shudder itself clean off the wick, With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick. There was no standing it much longer. " Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger, " This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor, When the weather sends you a chance visitor ? You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you, And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you ! But still, despite the pretty perfection To which you carry your trick of exclusive ness, no And, taking God's word under wise protection, Correct its tendency to diffusiveness, And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares, — CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 3 1 Still, as I say, though you've found salvation, If I should choose to cry, as now, ' Shares ! ' — See if the best of you bars me my ration ! I prefer, if you please, for my expounder Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder ; Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest, Supposing I don the marriage-vestiment : 120 So, shut your mouth and open your Testament, And carve me my portion at your quickliest ! " Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad With wizened face in want of soap, And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope, (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad, To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, And so avoid disturbing the preacher) — Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise At the shutting door, and entered likewise, 130 Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, And found myself in full conventicle, — To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting, On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, Which, calling its flock to their special clover, Found all assembled and one sheep over, Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine. in. I very soon had enough of it. The hot smell and the human noises, 140 And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it, 32 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises, Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure Of the preaching-man's immense stupidity, As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, To meet his audience's avidity. You needed not the wit of the Sibyl To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling : No sooner got our friend an inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, 150 (Whene'er 'twas that the thought first struck him, How death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the book of books to pieces : And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours, — So, tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. 160 And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt : Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors Were help which the world could be saved without, 'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet A qualm or two at my spiritual diet, Or — (who can tell?) — perchance even mustered Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon : But the flock sat on, divinely flustered, Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon 170 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 33 With such content in every snuffle, As the devil inside us loves to ruffle. My old fat woman purred with pleasure, And thumb round thumb went twirling faster, While she, to his periods keeping measure, Maternally devoured the pastor. The man with the handkerchief untied it, Showed us a horrible wen inside it, Gave his eyelids yet another screwing, And rocked himself as the woman was doing. 180 The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking, Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking ! My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it ; So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple, " I wanted a taste, and now there 's enough of it," I flung out of the little chapel. IV. There was a lull in the rain, a lull In the wind too ; the moon was risen, And would have shone out pure and full, But for the ramparted cloud-prison, 190 Block on block built up in the West, For what purpose the wind knows best, Who changes his mind continually. And the empty other half of the sky Seemed in its silence as if it knew What, any moment, might look through A chance gap in that fortress massy : — 34 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Through its fissures you got hints Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy 200 Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, Like furnace-smoke just ere the flames bellow, All a-simmer with intense strain To let her through, — then blank again, At the hope of her appearance failing. Just by the chapel, a break in the railing Shows a narrow path directly across ; 'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss — Besides, you go gently all the way uphill. I stooped under and soon felt better ; 210 My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter. My mind was full of the scene I had left, That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, — How this outside was pure and different ! The sermon, now — what a mingled weft Of good and ill ! were either less, Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly ; But alas for the excellent earnestness, And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly, 220 But as surely false, in their quaint presentment, However to pastor and flock's contentment ! Say, rather, such truths looked false to your eyes, With his provings and parallels twisted and twined, Till how could you know them, grown double their size In the natural fog of the good man's mind, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 35 Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps Haloed about with the common's damps ? Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover ; The zeal was good, and the aspiration ; 230 And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, Pharaoh received no demonstration By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three, Of the doctrine of the Trinity, — Although, as our preacher thus embellished it, Apparently his hearers relished it With so unfeigned a gust — who knows if They did not prefer our friend to Joseph ? But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them ! These people have really felt, no doubt, 240 A something, the motion they style the Call of them ; And this is their method of bringing about, By a mechanism of words and tones, (So many texts in so many groans) A sort of reviving or reproducing, More or less perfectly — (who can tell ? ) — Of the mood itself, that strengthens by using ; And how it happens, I understand well. A tune was born in my head last week, Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek 250 Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester ; And when, next week, I take it back again, My head will sing to the engine's clack again. While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir, — Finding no dormant musical sprout In him, as in me, to be jolted out. 36 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Tis the taught already that profits by teaching ; He gets no more from the railway's preaching Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I ; Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on. 260 Still, why paint over their door " Mount Zion," To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy ? V. But wherefore be harsh on a single case ? After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, Does the selfsame weary thing take place ? The same endeavor to make you believe, And with much the same effect, no more : Each method abundantly convincing, As I say, to those convinced before, But scarce to be swallowed without wincing, 270 By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me, I have my own church equally: And in this church my faith sprang first ! (I said, as I reached the rising ground, And the wind began again, with a burst Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me, I entered His church-door, Nature leading me), — In youth I looked to these very skies, And, probing their immensities, 280 I found God there, His visible power ; Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense Of the power, an equal evidence That His love, there too, was the nobler dower. CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 37- For the loving worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless god Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. You know what I mean : God 's all, man 's naught : But also, God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away 290 As it were a handbreadth off, to give Room for the newly-made to live, And look at Him from a place apart, And use His gifts of brain and heart, Given, indeed, but to keep for ever. Who speaks of man, then, must not sever Man's very elements from man, Saying, " But all is God's " — whose plan Was to create man and then leave him Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him, 300 But able to glorify Him too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer, Made perfect as a thing of course. Man, therefore, stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock, . And, looking to God who ordained divorce Of the rock from His boundless continent, Sees, in His power made evident, 310 Only excess by a million-fold O'er the power God gave man in the mould. For, note : man's hand, first formed to carry A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry 38 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain, — Advancing in power by one degree ; And why count steps through eternity ? But love is the ever-springing fountain : Man may enlarge or narrow his bed For the water's play, but the water-head — 320 How can he multiply or reduce it ? As easy create it, as cause it to cease ; He may profit by it, or abuse it, But 'tis not a thing to bear increase As power does : be love less or more In the heart of man, he keeps it shut Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but Love's sum remains what it was before. So, gazing up, in my youth, at love As seen through power, ever above 33° All modes which make it manifest, My soul brought all to a single test — That He, the Eternal First and Last, Who, in His power, had so surpassed All man conceives of what is might, — Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, — Would prove as infinitely good ; Would never (my soul understood), With power to work all love desires, Bestow e'en less than man requires : 340 That He who endlessly was teaching, Above my spirit's utmost reaching, What love can do in the leaf or stone (So that to master this alone, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 39 This done in the stone or leaf for me, I must go on learning endlessly) Would never need that I, in turn, Should point Him out defect unheeded, And show that God had yet to learn What the meanest human creature needed, — 350 Not life, to wit, for a few short years, Tracking his way through doubts and fears, While the stupid earth on which I stay Suffers no change, but passive adds Its myriad years to myriads, Though I, He gave it to, decay, Seeing death come and choose about me, And my dearest ones depart without me. No : love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, 360 The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it 1 And I shall behold Thee, face to face, God, and in Thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast Thou ! Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now, 1 shall find as able to satiate The love, Thy gift, as my spirit's wonder Thou art able to quicken and sublimate, With this sky of Thine that I now walk under, 370 And glory in Thee for, as I gaze Thus, thus ! Oh, let men keep their ways Of seeking Thee in a narrow shrine — Be this my way ! And this is mine ! 4-0 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. VI. For lo, what think you ? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud-barricade was riven, 380 Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West ; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing, that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them and stood steady. 'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, From heaven to heaven extending, perfect As the mother-moon's self, full in face. It rose, distinctly at the base With its seven proper colors chorded, 390 Which still, in the rising, were compressed, Until at last they coalesced, And supreme the spectral creature lorded In a triumph of whitest white, — Above which intervened the night. But above night too, like only the next, The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, 400 Fainter, flushier, and flightier, — Rapture dying along its verge ! Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 41 Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc ? VII. This sight was shown me, there and then, — Me, one out of a world of men, Singled forth, as the chance might hap To another if, in a thunderclap Where I heard noise and you saw flame, 410 Some one man knew God called his name. For me, I think I said, " Appear ! Good were it to be ever here. If Thou wilt, let me build to Thee Service-tabernacles three, Where, forever in Thy presence, In ecstatic acquiescence, Far alike from thriftless learning And ignorance's undiscerning, I may worship and remain ! " 420 Thus at the show above me, gazing With upturned eyes, I felt my brain Glutted with the glory, blazing Throughout its whole mass, over and under, Until at length it burst asunder, And out of it bodily there streamed The too-much glory, as it seemed, Passing from out me to the ground, Then palely serpentining round Into the dark with mazy error. 430 42 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. VIII. All at once I looked up with terror. He was there. He Himself with His human air, On the narrow pathway, just before. I saw the back of Him, no more — He had left the chapel, then, as I. I forgot all about the sky. No face : only the sight Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, With a hem that I could recognize. 440 I felt terror, no surprise ; My mind filled with the cataract, At one bound, of the mighty fact. " I remember, He did say Doubtless, that, to this world's end, Where two or three should meet and pray, He would be in the midst, their friend ; Certainly He was there with them." And my pulses leaped for joy Of the golden thought without alloy, 450 That I saw His very vesture's hem. Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear, And I hastened, cried out while I pressed To the salvation of the vest, " But not so, Lord ! It cannot be That Thou, indeed, art leaving me — Me, that have despised Thy friends ! CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 43 Did my heart make no amends ? Thou art the love of God — above 460 His power, didst hear me place His love, And that was leaving the world for Thee : Therefore Thou must not turn from me As if I had chosen the other part. Folly and pride o'ercame my heart. Our best is bad, nor bears Thy test ; Still, it should be our very best. I thought it best that Thou, the Spirit, Be worshipped in spirit and in truth, And in beauty, as even we require it — 470 Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, I left but now, as scarcely fitted For Thee : I knew not what I pitied. But, all I felt there, right or wrong, What is it to Thee, who curest sinning ? Am I not weak as Thou art strong ? I have looked to Thee from the beginning, Straight up to Thee through all the world Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled To nothingness on either side : 480 And since the time Thou wast descried, Spite of the weak heart, so have I Lived ever, and so fain would die, Living and dying, Thee before ! But if Thou leavest me — " 44 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. IX. Less or more, I suppose that I spoke thus. When, — have mercy, Lord, on us ! — The whole Face turned upon me full. And I spread myself beneath it, 490 As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it In the cleansing sun, his wool, — Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some defiled, discolored web — So lay I, saturate with brightness. And when the flood appeared to ebb, Lo, I was walking, light and 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 500 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. Darkness and cold were cloven, as through I passed, upborne yet walking too. And I turned to myself at intervals, — " So He said, and so it befalls. 510 God who registers the cup Of mere cold water, for His sake To a disciple rendered up, Disdains not His own thirst to slake CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 45 At the poorest love was ever offered : And because it was my heart I proffered. With true love trembling at the brim, He suffers me to follow Him For ever, my own way, — dispensed From seeking to be influenced 520 By all the less immediate ways That earth, in worships manifold, Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise, The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold ! " x. And so we crossed the world and stopped. For where am I, in city or plain, Since I am 'ware of the world again ? And what is this that rises propped With pillars of prodigious girth ? 530 Is it really on the earth, This miraculous Dome of God ? Has the angel's measuring-rod Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, 'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem, Meted it out, — and what he meted, Have the sons of men completed ? — Binding, ever as he bade, Columns in this colonnade With arms wide open to embrace 540 The entry of the human race To the breast of . . . what is it, yon building, Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, 46 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. With marble for brick, and stones of price For garniture of the edifice ? Now I see ; it is no dream ; It stands there and it does not seem : For ever, in pictures, thus it looks, And thus I have read of it in books Often in England, leagues away, 550 And wondered how these fountains play, Growing up eternally, Each to a musical water-tree, Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, To the granite lavers underneath. Liar and dreamer in your teeth ! I, the sinner that speak to you, Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew Both this and more. For see, for see, 560 The dark is rent, mine eye is free To pierce the crust of the outer wall, And I view inside, and all there, all, As the swarming hollow of a hive, The whole Basilica alive ! Men in the chancel, body, and nave, Men on the pillars' architrave, Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation 570 Of the main-altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 47 Blends with heaven's ; the taper-fires Pant up, the winding brazen spires Heave loftier yet the baldachin ; The incense-gaspings, long kept in, Suspire in clouds ; the organ blatant Holds his breath and grovels latent, As if God's hushing finger grazed him 580 (Like Behemoth when He praised him) At the silver bell's shrill tinkling, Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling On the sudden pavement strewed With faces of the multitude. Earth breaks up, time drops away, In flows heaven, with its new day Of endless life, when He who trod, Very man and very God, This earth in weakness, shame, and pain, 590 Dying the death whose signs remain Up yonder on the accursed tree, — Shall come again, no more to be Of captivity the thrall, But the one God, All in all, King of kings, Lord of lords, As His servant John received the words, " I died, and live forevermore ! " XI. Yet I was left outside the door. 600 " Why sit I here on the threshold-stone, Left till He return, alone 48 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 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 6lo 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 me. Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured 620 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 630 Open to reach Him : I, a man Able to mark where faith began CHRISTMAS- EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 49 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, 640 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 ! 6 S o I see the error ; but above The scope of error, see the love. — O, 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 ! 660 Gone, his glory of the pen ! — Love, with Greece and Rome in ken, 50 CHRISTMAS-EVK AND EASTER-DAY. 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 670 With 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 : Terpanders bird (That, when the cold came, fled away) — Would tarry not the wintry day, — 680 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. 690 Love was the startling thing, the new ; Love was the all-sufficient too : CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 5 1 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, 700 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 7™ 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 senses' satisfaction, To the mere outside of human creatures, Mere perfect form and fautless features. What ? with all Rome here, whence to levy Such contributions to their appetite, 720 With women and men in a gorgeous bevy, They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight 52 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 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 ? 730 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 of 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, 740 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 thou 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, 750 Into a perfect symmetrical man, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 53 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, 759 He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it, — Saying, 'Applaud me of 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, 770 Has spent his power on the opposite quest, And belived 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 beat 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 780 54 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTKR-DAY. 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. XIV. Alone ! I am left alone once more — (Save for the garment's extreme fold Abandoned still to bless my hold) 79° Alone, beside the entrance-door Of a sort of temple, — perhaps a college, — Like nothing I ever saw before At home in England, to my knowledge. The tall, old, quaint, irregular town ! It may be . . though which, I can't affirm . . any Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany ; And this flight of stairs where I sit down, Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, or Frankfort, Or Gottingen, that I have to thank for 't ? 800 It may be Gottingen, — most likely. Through the open door I catch obliquely Glimpses of a lecture-hall ; And not a bad assembly neither — Ranged decent and symmetrical On benches, waiting what 's to see there ; Which, holding still by the vesture's hem, I also resolve to see with them, Cautious this time how I suffer to slip CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 55 The chance of joining in fellowship 810 With any that call themselves His friends, As these folks do, I have a notion. But hist — a buzzing and emotion ! All settle themselves, the while ascends By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk, Step by step, deliberate Because of his cranium's over-freight, Three parts sublime to one grotesque, If I have proved an accurate guesser, The hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned Professor. 820 I felt at once as if there ran A shoot of love from my heart to the man — That sallow, virgin-minded, studious Martyr to mild enthusiasm, As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious That woke my sympathetic spasm, (Beside some spitting that made me sorry) And stood, surveying his auditory With a wan pure look, well-nigh celestial, — Those blue eyes had survived so much ! 830 While, under the foot they could not smutch, Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, Till the auditory's clearing of throats Was done with, died into a silence ; And, when each glance was upward sent, Each bearded mouth composed intent, And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence, — He pushed back higher his spectacles, 56 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells, 3 4 o And giving his head of hair — a hake Of undressed tow, for color and quantity — One rapid and impatient shake, (As our own young England adjusts a jaunty tie When about to impart, on mature digestion, Some thrilling view of the surplice-question) — The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse, Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse. XV. And he began it by observing 850 How reason dictated that men Should rectify the natural swerving, By a reversion, now and then, To the well-heads of knowledge, few And far away, whence rolling grew The life-stream wide whereat we drink, Commingled, as we needs must think, With waters alien to the source ; To do which, aimed this eve's discourse : Since, where could be a fitter time 860 For tracing backward to its prime, This Christianity, this lake, This reservoir, whereat we slake, From one or other bank, our thirst ? So, he proposed inquiring first Into the various sources whence This Myth of Christ is derivable ; Demanding from the evidence CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 57 v Since plainly no such life was liveable) How these phenomena should class ? 870 Whether 't were best opine Christ was, Or never was at all, or whether He was and was not, both together — It matters little for the name, So the idea be left the same. Only, for practical purpose' sake 'T was obviously as well to take The popular story, — understanding How the ineptitude of the time, And the penman's prejudice, expanding 880 Fact into fable fit for the clime, Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it Into this myth, this Individuum, — Which, when reason had strained and abated it Of foreign matter, left, for residuum, A Man ! — a right true man, however, Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor ; Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient To his disciples, for rather believing He was just omnipotent and omniscient, 890 As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving His word, their tradition, — which, though it meant Something entirely different From all that those who only heard it, In their simplicity thought and averred it, Had yet a meaning quite as respectable : For, among other doctrines delectable, Was he not surely the first to insist on 58 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. The natural sovereignty of our race ? — Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place. 900 And while his cough, like a drouthy piston, Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him, I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him, The vesture still within my hand. XVI. I could interpret its command. This time He would not bid me enter The exhausted air-bell of the Critic. Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic When Papist struggles with Dissenter, 910 Impregnating its pristine clarity, — One, by his daily fare's vulgarity, Its gust of broken meat and garlic ; — One, by his soul's too-much presuming To turn the frankincense's fuming And vapors of the candle starlike Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, May poison it for healthy breathing — But the Critic leaves no air to poison ; 920 Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity Atom by atom, and leaves you — vacuity. Thus much of Christ, does he reject ? And what retain ? His intellect ? What is it I must reverence duly ? Poor intellect for worship, truly, Which tells me simply what was told CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 59 (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that 's left) Elsewhere by voices manifold ; 930 With this advantage, that the stater Made nowise the important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one with the Creator. You urge Christ's followers' simplicity : But how does shifting blame, evade it ? Have wisdom's words no more felicity ? The stumbling-block, His speech — who laid it? How comes it that for one found able To sift the truth of it from fable, 940 Millions believe it to the letter ? Christ's goodness, then — does that fare better ? Strange goodness, which upon the score Of being goodness, the mere due Of man to fellow-man, much more To God, — should take another view Of its possessor's privilege, And bid him rule his race ! You pledge Your fealty to such rule ? What, all — From heavenly John and Attic Paul, 950 And that brave weather-battered Peter Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened, — All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at Gottingen, Compose Christ's flock ! They, you, and I 60 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Are sheep of a good man ! and why ? The goodness, — how did he acquire it ? Was it self-gained, did God inspire it ? 960 Choose which ; then tell me, on what ground Should its possessor dare propound His claim to rise o'er us an inch ? Were goodness all some man's invention, Who arbitrarily made mention What we should follow, and whence flinch, — What qualities might take the style Of right and wrong, — and had such guessing Met with as general acquiescing As graced the alphabet ere while, 970 When A got leave an Ox to be, No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G, — For thus inventing thing and title Worship were that man's fit requital. But if the common conscience must Be ultimately judge, adjust Its apt name to each quality Already known, — I would decree Worship for such mere demonstration And simple work of nomenclature, 9^0 Only the day I praised, not nature, But Harvey, for the circulation. I would praise such a Christ, with pride And joy, that He, as none beside, Had taught us how to keep the mind God gave Him, as God gave His kind Freer than they from fleshly taint : CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 6 1 I would call such a Christ our Saint, As I declare our Poet, him Whose insight makes all others dim : 990 A thousand poets pried at life, And only one amid the strife Rose to be Shakespeare : each shall take His crown, I 'd say, for the world's sake — Though some objected — " Had we seen The heart and head of each, what screen Was broken there to give them light, While in ourselves it shuts the sight, We should no more admire, perchance, That these found truth out at a glance, 1000 Than marvel how the bat discerns Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns, Led by a finer tact, a gift He boasts, which other birds must shift Without, and grope as best they can." No, freely I would praise the man, — Nor one whit more, if he contended That gift of his, from God, descended. Ah, friend, what gift of man's does not ? No nearer something, by a jot, 1010 Rise an infinity of nothings Than one : take Euclid for your teacher ; Distinguish kinds : do crownings, clothings, Make that Creator which was creature ? Multiply gifts upon man's head, And what, when all 's done, shall be said But — the more gifted he, I ween! 62 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. That one 's made Christ, this other, Pilate, And this might be all that has been, — So what is there to frown or smile at ? 1020 What is left for us, save, in growth Of soul, to rise up, far past both, From the gift looking to the Giver, And from the cistern to the river, And from the finite to infinity, And from man's dust to God's divinity ? XVII. Take all in a word : the truth in God's breast Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed : Though He is so bright and we so dim, 1030 We are made in His image to witness Him : And were no eye in us to tell, Instructed by no inner sense, The light of heaven from the dark of hell, That light would want its evidence, — Though justice, good, and truth were still Divine, if, by some demon's will, Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed Law through the worlds, and right misnamed. No mere exposition of morality 1040 Made or in part or in totality, Should win you to give it worship, therefore : And, if no better proof you will care for, — Whom do you count the worst man upon earth ? Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more Of what right is, than arrives at birth CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 63 In the best man's acts that we bow before : This last knows better — true, but my fact is, 'T is one thing to know, and another to practise. And thence I conclude that the real God-function 1050 Is to furnish a motive and injunction For practising what we know already. And such an injunction and such a motive As the God in Christ, do you waive, and " heady, High-minded," hang your tablet- votive Outside the fane on a finger-post ? Morality to the uttermost, Supreme in Christ as we all confess, Why need we prove would avail no jot To make Him God, if God He were not? 1060 What is the point where Himself lays stress ? Does the precept run, " Believe in good, In justice, truth, now understood For the first time"? — or, " Believe in Me, Who lived and died, yet essentially Am Lord of Life " ? Whoever can take The same to his heart and for mere love's sake Conceive of the love, — that man obtains A new truth ; no conviction gains Of an old one only, made intense 1070 By a fresh appeal to his faded sense. XVIII. " Can it be that He stays inside ? Is the vesture left me to commune with ? Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with 64 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Even at this lecture, if she tried ? Oh, let me at lowest sympathize With the lurking drop of blood that lies In the desiccated brain's white roots Without a throb for Christ's attributes, As the lecturer makes his special boast ! If love 's dead there, it has left a ghost. Admire we, how from heart to brain (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb) One instinct rises and falls again, Restoring the equilibrium. And how when the Critic had done his best, And the pearl of price, at reason's test, Lay dust and ashes levigable On the Professor's lecture-table, — When we looked for the inference and monition That our faith, reduced to such a condition, Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole, — He bids us, when we least expect it, Take back our faith, — if it be not just whole, Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it, Which fact pays damage done rewardingly, So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly ! 1 Go home and venerate the Myth I thus have experimented with — This Man, continue to adore Him Rather than all who went before Him, And all who ever followed after ! ' — Surely for this I may praise you, my brother ! Will you take the praise in tears or laughter ? CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 65 That 's one point gained : can I compass another ? Unlearned love was safe from spurning — Can't we respect your loveless learning ? Let us at least give learning honor ! What laurels had we showered upon her, mo Girding her loins up to perturb Our theory of the Middle Verb ; Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar O'er anapaests in comic-trimeter ; Or curing the halt and maimed ' Iketides, ' While we lounged on at our indebted ease : Instead of which, a tricksy demon Sets her at Titus or Philemon ! When ignorance wags his ears of leather And hates God's word, 't is altogether ; 1120 Nor leaves he his congenial thistles To go and browse on Paul's Epistles. — And you, the audience, who might ravage The world wide, enviably savage, Nor heed the cry of the retriever, More than Herr Heine (before his fever), — I do not tell a lie so arrant As say my passion's wings are furled up, And, without plainest heavenly warrant, I were ready and glad to give the world up — "30 But still, when you rub the brow meticulous, And ponder the profit of turning holy If not for God's, for your own sake solely, — God forbid I should find you ridiculous ! Deduce from this lecture all that eases you, 66 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you, ' Christians,' — abhor the deist's pravity, — Go on, you shall no more move my gravity, Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse I find it in my heart to embarrass them 1140 By hinting that their stick 's a mock horse, And thety really carry what they say carries them." XIX. So sat I talking with my mind. I did not long to leave the door And find a new church, as before, But rather was quiet and inclined To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting From further tracking and trying and testing. "This tolerance is a genial mood ! " 115° (Said I, and a little pause ensued). " One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, And sees, each side, the good effects of it, A value for religion's self, A carelessness about the sects of it. Let me enjoy my own conviction, Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness Still spying there some dereliction Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness ! Better a mild indifferentism, n6o Teaching that all our faiths (though duller His shine through a dull spirit's prism) Originally had one color ! Better pursue a pilgrimage CHRISTMAS-KVK AND EASTER-DAY. 67 Through ancient and through modern times To many peoples, various climes, Where I may see saint, savage, sage, Fuse their respective creeds in one Before the general Father's throne ! " — XX. 'T was the horrible storm began afresh ! The black night caught me in his mesh Whirled me up, and flung me prone. I was left on the college-step alone. I looked, and far there, ever fleeting Far, far away, the receding gesture, And looming of the lessening vesture ! — Swept forward from my stupid hand, While I watched my foolish heart expand In the lazy glow of benevolence, il8 ° O'er the various modes of man's belief. I sprang up with fear's vehemence. — " Needs must there be one way, our chief Best way of worship : let me strive To find it, and when found, contrive My fellows also take their share ! This constitutes my earthly care : God's is above it and distinct. For I, a man, with men am linked, And not a brute with brutes ; no gain «9° That I experience, must remain Unshared : but should my best endeavor To share it, fail — subsisteth ever 68 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. God's care above, and I exult That God, by God's own ways occult, May — doth, I will believe — bring back All wanderers to a single track. Meantime, I can but testify God's care for me — no more, can I — It is but for myself I know : The world rolls witnessing around me Only to leave me as it found me ; Men cry there, but my ear is slow : Their races flourish or decay — What boots it, while yon lucid way Loaded with stars, divides the vault ? But soon my soul repairs its fault When, sharpening sense's hebetude, She turns on my own life ! So viewed, No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense With witnessings of Providence : And woe to me if when I look Upon that record, the sole book Unsealed to me, I take no heed Of any warning that I read ! Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve, God's own hand did the rainbow weave, Whereby the truth from heaven slid Into my soul ? — I cannot bid The world admit He stooped to heal My soul, as if in a thunder-peal Where one heard noise, and one saw flame, I only knew He named my name ; CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 69 But what is the world to me, for sorrow Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow It drops the remark, with just-turned head, Then, on again, ' That man is dead ' ? Yes, but for me — my name called, — drawn As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn, He has dipt into on a battle-dawn : 1230 Bid out of life by a nod, a glance, — Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance, — With a rapid finger circled round, Fixed to the first poor inch of ground To fight from, where his foot was found ; Whose ear but a minute since lay free To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry — Summoned, a solitary man, To end his life where his life began, From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van ! 1240 Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held By the hem of the vesture ! " — XXI. And I caught At the flying robe, and unrepelled Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught With warmth and wonder and delight, God's mercy being infinite. For scarce had the words escaped my tongue, When, at a passionate bound, I sprung, Out of the wandering world of rain, 1250 Into the little chapel again. 70 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. XXII. How else was I found there, bolt upright On my bench, as if I had never left it ? — Never flung out on the common at night Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, Or the laboratory of the Professor ! For the Vision, that was true, I wist, True as that heaven and earth exist. 1260 There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place ; Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall, She had slid away a contemptuous space : And the old fat woman, late so placable. Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable, Of her milk of kindness turning rancid. In short a spectator might have fancied That I had nodded betrayed by slumber, Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly, 1270 Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number, And woke up now at the tenth and lastly. But again, could such a disgrace have happened? Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it ; And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end ? Unless I heard it, could I have judged it ? Could I report as I do at the close, First, the preacher speaks through his nose : Second, his gesture is too emphatic : Thirdly, to wave what 's pedagogic, 1280 The subject-matter itself lacks logic : CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 71 Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. Great news ! the preacher is found no Pascal, Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call Of making square to a finite eye The circle of infinity, And find so all-but-just-succeeding ! Great news ! the sermon proves no reading Where bee-like in the flowers I may bury me, Like Taylor's, the immortal Jeremy ! 1290 And now that I know the very worst of him, What was it I thought to obtain at first of him Ha ! Is God mocked, as He asks ? Shall I take on me to change His tasks, And dare, dispatched to a river-head For a simple draught of the element, Neglect the thing for which He sent, And return with another thing instead ? — Saying, " Because the water found Welling up from underground, 1300 Is mingled with the taints of earth, While Thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, And couldst, at wink or word, convulse The world with the leap of a river-pulse, — Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, And bring thee a chalice I found, instead : See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy ! One would suppose that the marble bled. What matters the water ? A hope I have nursed, The waterless cup will quench my thirst." — 1310 Better have knelt at the poorest stream 72 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. That trickles in pain from the straitest rift ! For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam. And here, is there water or not, to drink ? I, then, in ignorance and weakness, Taking God's help, have attained to think My heart does best to receive in meekness That mode of worship, as most to His mind, Where earthly aids being cast behind, 1320 His All in All appears serene With the thinnest human veil between, Letting the mystic lamps, the seven, The many motions of His spirit, Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven. For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure, Which lies as safe in a golden ewer ; 1329 But the main thing is, does it hold good measure ? Heaven soon sets right all other matters ! — Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, This soul at struggle with insanity, Who thence take comfort, (can I doubt ?) Which an empire gained, were a loss without. May it be mine ! And let us hope That no worse blessing befall the Pope, Turn'd sick at last of the day's buffoonery, Of posturings and petticoatings, 1340 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 73 Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery ! Nor may the Professor forego its peace At Gottingen, presently, when, in the dusk Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase Prophesied of by that horrible husk ; — When thicker and thicker the darkness fills The world through his misty spectacles, And he gropes for something more substantial Than a fable, myth, or personification, — 1350 May Christ do for him, what no mere man shall, And stand confessed as the God of salvation ! Meantime, in the still recurring fear Lest myself, at unawares, be found, While attacking the choice of my neighbors round, With none of my own made — I choose here ! The giving out of the hymn reclaims me ; I have done : and if any blames me, Thinking that merely to touch in brevity The topics I dwell on, were unlawful, — 1360 Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, On the bounds of the holy and the awful, — I praise the heart, and pity the head of him, And refer myself to Thee, instead of him, Who head and heart alike discernest, Looking below light speech we utter When frothy spume and frequent sputter Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest ! May the truth shine out, stand ever before us ! 74 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. I put up pencil and join chorus 1370 To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology, The last five verses of the third section Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection, To conclude with the doxology. EASTER-DAY. i. How very hard it is to be A Christian ! Hard for you and me, — Not the mere task of making real That duty up to its ideal, Effecting thus, complete and whole, A purpose of the human soul — For that is always hard to do ; But hard, I mean, for me and you To realize it, more or less, With even the moderate success Which commonly repays our strife To carry out the aims of life. " This aim is greater," you will say, " And so more arduous every way." — But the importance of their fruits Still proves to man, in all pursuits, Proportional encouragement. " Then, what if it be God's intent That labor to this one result Should seem unduly difficult ? " Ah, that's a question in the dark — And the sole thing that I remark Upon the difficulty, this ; We do not see it where it is, At the beginning of the race : 75 76 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. As we proceed, it shifts its place, And where we looked for crowns to fall, We find the tug 's to come, — that 's all. II. At first you say, " The whole, or chief Of difficulties, is belief. 30 Could I believe once thoroughly, The rest were simple. What ? Am I An idiot, do you think, — a beast ? Prove to me, only that the least Command of God is God's indeed, And what injunction shall I need To pay obedience ? Death so nigh, When time must end, eternity Begin, — and cannot I compute, Weigh loss and gain together, suit 40 My actions to the balance drawn, And give my body to be sawn Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied To horses, stoned, burned, crucified, Like any martyr of the list ? How gladly ! — if I made acquist, Through the brief minute's fierce annoy, Of God's eternity of joy." in. And certainly you name the point Whereon all turns : for could you joint 50 This flexile finite life once tight CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 77 Into the fixed and infinite, You, safe inside, would spurn what 's out, With carelessness enough, no doubt — Would spurn mere life : but when time brings To their next stage your reasonings, Your eyes, late wide, begin to wink Nor see the path so well, I think. IV. You say, " Faith may be, one agrees, A touchstone for God's purposes, 60 Even as ourselves conceive of them. Could He acquit us or condemn For holding what no hand can loose, Rejecting when we can't but choose ? As well award the victor's wreath To whosoever should take breath Duly each minute while he lived — Grant heaven, because a man contrived To see its sunlight every day He walked forth on the public way. 7° You must mix some uncertainty With faith, if you would have faith be. Why, what but faith, do we abhor And idolize each other for — Faith in our evil, or our good, Which is or is not understood Aright by those we love or those We hate, thence called our friends or foes ? Your mistress saw your spirit's grace, 7.8 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. When, turning from the ugly face, 80 I found belief in it too hard ; And she and I have our reward. — Yet here a doubt peeps : well for us Weak beings, to go using thus A touchstone for our little ends, Trying with faith the foes and friends ; — But God, bethink you ! I would fain Conceive of the Creator's reign As based upon exacter laws Than creatures build by with applause. 90 In all God's acts — (as Plato cries He doth) — He should geometrize. Whence, I desiderate ..." V. I see ! You would grow as a natural tree, Stand as a rock, soar up like fire. The world 's so perfect and entire, Quite above faith, so right and fit ! Go there, walk up and down in it ! No. The creation travails, groans — Contrive your music from its moans, 100 Without or let or hindrance, friend ! That 's an old story, and its end As old — you come back (be sincere) With every question you put here (Here where there once was, and is still. We think, a living oracle, CHRISTMAS- EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 79 Whose answers you stand carping at) This time flung back unanswered flat, — Beside, perhaps, as many more As those that drove you out before, «o Now added, where was little need ! Questions impossible, indeed, To us who sat still, all and each Persuaded that our earth had speech Of God's, writ down, no matter if In cursive type or hieroglyph, — Which one fact freed us from the yoke Of guessing why He never spoke,. You come back in no better plight Than when you left us, — am I right? 120 VI. So, the old process, I conclude, Goes on, the reasoning 's pursued Further. You own, " 'T is well averred, A scientific faith 's absurd, — Frustrates the very end 't was meant To serve. So, I would rest content With a mere probability, But, probable ; the chance must lie Clear on one side, — lie all in rough, So long as there be just enough 130 To pin my faith to, though it hap Only at points : from gap to gap One hangs up a huge curtain so, Grandly, nor seeks to have it go 80 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Foldless and flat along the wall. What care I if some interval Of life less plainly may depend On God ? I 'd hang there to the end ; And thus I should not find it hard To be a Christian and debarred ho From trailing on the earth, till furled Away by death. — Renounce the world ! Were that a mighty hardship ? Plan A pleasant life, and straight some man Beside you, with, if he thought fit, Abundant means to compass it, Shall turn deliberate aside To try and live as, if you tried You clearly might, yet most despise. One friend of mine wears out his eyes, 150 Slighting the stupid joys of sense, In patient hope that, ten years hence, 1 Somewhat completer,' he may say, ' My list of coleoptera /' While just the other who most laughs At him, above all epitaphs Asprres to have his tomb describe Himself as sole among the tribe Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed A Grignon with the Regent's crest. 160 So that, subduing, as you want, Whatever stands predominant Among my earthly appetites For tastes and smells and sounds and sights, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 8 1 I shall be doing that alone, To gain a palm-branch and a throne, Which fifty people undertake To do, and gladly, for the sake Of giving a Semitic guess, Or playing pawns at blindfold chess." 170 VII. Good ! and the next thing is, — look round For evidence enough. 'T is found, No doubt : as is your sort of mind, So is your sort of search : you '11 find What you desire, and that 's to be A Christian. What says history ? How comforting a point it were To find some mummy-scrap declare There lived a Moses ! Better still, Prove Jonah's whale translatable 180 Into some quicksand of the seas, Isle, cavern, rock, or what you please, That faith might clap her wings and crow From such an eminence ! Or, no — The human heart 's best ; you prefer Making that prove the minister To truth ; you probe its wants and needs, And hopes and fears, then try what creeds Meet these most aptly, — resolute That faith plucks such substantial fruit 190 Wherever these two correspond, She little needs to look beyond, 82 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. And puzzle out who Orpheus was, Or Dionysius Zagjrias. .- . * You '11 find sufficient, as I say, To satisfy you either way ; You wanted to believe ; your pains Are crowned — you do : and what remains ? " Renounce the world ! " — Ah, were it done By merely cutting one by one Your limbs off, with your wise head last, How easy were it ! — how soon past, If once in the believing mood ! 11 Such is man's usual gratitude, Such thanks to God do we return, For not exacting that we spurn A single gift of life, forego One real gain, — only taste them so With gravity and temperance, That those mild virtues may enhance Such pleasures, rather than abstract — Last spice of which, will be the fact Of love discerned in every gift ; While, when the scene of life shall shift, And the gay heart be taught to ache, As sorrows and privations take The place of joy, — the thing that seems Mere misery, under human schemes, Becomes, regarded by the light Of love, as very near, or quite As good a gift as joy before. So plain is it that, all the more CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 83 God's dispensation 's merciful, More pettishly we try and cull Briers, thistles, from our private plot, To mar God's ground where thorns are not ! " VIII. Do you say this, or I ? — Oh, you ! Then, what, my friend ? — (thus I pursue Our parley) — you indeed opine That the Eternal and Divine 230 Did, eighteen centuries ago, In very truth . . . Enough ! you know The all-stupendous tale, — that Birth, That Life, that Death ! And all, the earth Shuddered at, — all, the heavens grew black Rather than see ; all, nature's rack And throe at dissolution's brink Attested, — all took place, you think, Only to give our joys a zest, And prove our sorrows for the best ? 240 We differ, then ! Were I, still pale And heartstruck at the dreadful tale, Waiting to hear God's voice declare What horror followed for my share, As implicated in the deed, Apart from other sins, — concede That if He blacked out in a blot My brief life's pleasantness, 't were not So very disproportionate ! Or there might be another fate — 250 84 CHRISTMAS-KVK AND KASTER-DAY. I certainly could understand (If fancies were the thing in hand) How God might save, at that day's price, The impure in their impurities, Give formal license and complete To choose the fair and pick the sweet. But there be certain words, broad, plain, Uttered again and yet again, Hard to mistake, or overgloss — Announcing this world's gain for loss, And bidding us reject the same : The whole world lieth (they proclaim) In wickedness, — come out of it ! Turn a deaf ear, if you think fit, But I who thrill through every nerve At thought of what deaf ears deserve, — How do you counsel in the case ? IX. " I 'd take, by all means, in your place, The safe side, since it so appears : Deny myself, a few brief years, The natural pleasure, leave the fruit Or cut the plant up by the root. Remember what a martyr said On the rude tablet overhead ! I I was born sickly, poor and mean, A slave : no misery could screen The holders of the pearl of price From Cassar's envy ; therefore twice CHRISTMAS-EVB AND KASTER-DAY. 85 I fought with beasts, and three times saw My children suffer by his law ; 280 At last my own release was earned : I was some time in being burned, But at the close a Hand came through The fire above my head, and drew My soul to Christ, whom now I see. Sergius, a brother, writes for me This testimony on the wall — For me, I have forgot it all.' You say right ; this were not so hard ! And since one nowise is debarred 290 From this, why not escape some sins By such a method ? " x. Then begins To the old point, revulsion new — (For 't is just this, I bring you to) If after all we should mistake, And so renounce life for the sake Of death and nothing else ? You hear Our friends we jeered at, send the jeer Back to ourselves with good effect — " There were my beetles to collect ! " 300 " My box — a trifle, I confess, But here I hold it, ne'ertheless ! " Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart And answer) we, the better part Have chosen, though 't were only hope, — 86 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Nor envy moles like you that grope Amid your veritable muck, More than the grasshoppers would truck, For yours, their passionate life away, That spends itself in leaps all day 31° To reach the sun, you want the eyes To see, as they the wings to rise And match the noble hearts of them ! Thus the contemner we contemn, — And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward Its stroke off, caught upon our guard, — Not struck enough to overturn Our faith, but shake it — make us learn What I began with, and, I wis, End, having proved, — how hard it is 320 To be a Christian ! XI. " Proved, or not, Howe'er you wis, small thanks, I wot, You get of mine, for taking pains To make it hard to me. Who gains By that, I wonder ? Here I live In trusting ease ; and here you drive At causing me to lose what most Yourself would mourn for, had you lost ! " XII. But, do you see, my friend, that thus You leave St. Paul for yEschylus ? — CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 87 Who made his Titan's arch-device The giving men blind hopes to spice The meal of life with, else devoured In bitter haste, while lo, death loured Before them at the platter's edge ! If faith should be, as I allege, Quite other than a condiment To heighten flavors with, or meant (Like that brave curry of his Grace) To take at need the victuals' place ? 340 If, having dined, you would digest Besides, and turning to your rest Should find instead . . . XIII. Now, you shall see And judge if a mere foppery Pricks on my speaking ! I resolve To utter . . yes, it shall devolve On you to hear as solemn, strange, And dread a thing as in the range Of facts, — or fancies, if God will — E'er happened to our kind ! I still 350 Stand in the cloud, and while it wraps My face, ought not to speak, perhaps ; Seeing that if I carry through My purpose, if my words in you Find a live actual listener, My story, reason must aver False after all — the happy chance ! 88 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. While, if each human countenance I meet in London day by day, Be what I fear, — my warnings fray 360 No one, and no one they convert, And no one helps me to assert How hard it is to really be A Christian, and in vacancy I pour this story ! XIV. I commence By trying to inform you, whence It comes that every Easter-night As now, I sit up, watch, till light, Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs, Give through my window-pane, gray proofs 370 That Easter-day is breaking slow. On such a night three years ago, It chanced that I had cause to cross The common, where the chapel was, Our friend spoke of, the other day — You 've not forgotten, I dare say. I fell to musing of the time So close, the blessed matin-prime All hearts leap up at, in some guise — One could not well do otherwise. 380 Insensibly my thoughts were bent Toward the main point ; I overwent Much the same ground of reasoning As you and I just now. One thing CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 89 Remained, however — one that tasked My soul to answer ; and I asked, Fairly and frankly, what might be That History, that Faith, to me — Me there — ■ not me in some domain Built up and peopled by my brain, 390 Weighing its merits as one weighs Mere theories for blame or praise, — The kingcraft of the Lucumons, Or Fourier's scheme, its pros and cons, — But my faith there, or none at all. " How were my case, now, did I fall Dead here, this minute — should I lie Faithful or faithless ? " — Note that I Inclined thus ever ! — little prone For instance, when I lay alone 400 In childhood, to go calm to sleep And leave a closet where might keep His watch perdue some murderer Waiting till twelve o'clock to stir, As good authentic legends tell : 14 He might : but how improbable ! How little likely to deserve The pains and trial to the nerve Of thrusting head into the dark ! " — Urged my old nurse, and bade me mark 410 Beside, that, should the dreadful scout Really lie hid there, and leap out At first turn of the rusty key, Mine were small gain that she could see, go CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Killed not in bed but on the floor, And losing one night's sleep the more. I tell you, I would always burst The door ope, know my fate at first. This time, indeed, the closet penned No such assassin : but a friend 420 Rather, peeped out to guard me, fit For counsel, Common Sense, to wit, Who said a good deal that might pass, — Heartening, impartial too, it was, Judge else : " For, soberly now, — who Should be a Christian if not you ? " (Hear how he smoothed me down.) " One takes A whole life, sees what course it makes Mainly, and not by fits and starts — In spite of stoppage which imparts 430 Fresh value to the general speed. A life, with none, would fly indeed : Your progressing is slower — right ! We deal with progress and not flight. Through baffling senses passionate, Fancies as restless, — with a freight Of knowledge cumbersome enough To sink your ship when waves grow rough, Though meant for ballast in the hold, — I find, 'mid dangers manifold, 440 The good bark answers to the helm Where faith sits, easier to o'erwhelm Than some stout peasant's heavenly guid Whose hard head could not, if it tried, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 91 Conceive a doubt, nor understand How senses hornier than his hand Should tice the Christian off his guard. More happy ! But shall we award Less honor to the hull which, dogged By storms, a mere wreck, waterlogged, 45c Masts by the board, her bulwarks gone, And stanchions going, yet bears on, — Than to mere life-boats, built to save. And triumph o'er the breaking wave ? Make perfect your good ship as these, And what were her performances \ r I added — "Would the ship reach home! I wish indeed 'God's kingdom come — ' The day when I shall see appear His bidding, as my duty, clear From doubt ! And it shall dawn, that day, Some future season ; Easter may Prove, not impossibly, the time — Yes, that were striking — fates would chime So aptly ! Easter-morn, to bring The Judgment ! — deeper in the spring Than now, however, when there's snow Capping the hills ; for earth must show All signs of meaning to pursue Her tasks as she was wont to do — The skylark, taken by surprise As we ourselves, shall recognize Sudden the end. For suddenly It comes : the dreadfulness must be 460 92 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. In that; all warrants the belief — 4 At night it cometh like a thief.' I fancy why the trumpet blows ; — Plainly, to wake one. From repose We shall start up, at last awake From life, that insane dream we take 480 For waking now, because it seems. And as, when now we wake from dreams, We laugh, while we recall them, ' Fool, To let the chance slip, linger cool When such adventure offered ! Just A bridge to cross, a dwarf to thrust Aside, a wicked mage to stab — And, lo ye, I had kissed Queen Mab ! ' — So shall we marvel why we grudged Our labor here, and idly judged Of heaven, we might have gained, but lose ! 490 Lose ? Talk of loss, and I refuse To plead at all ! You speak no worse Nor better than my ancient nurse When she would tell me in my youth I well deserved that shapes uncouth Frighted and teased me in my sleep : Why could I not in memory keep Her precept for the evil's cure ? ' Pinch your own arm, boy, and be sure You '11 wake forthwith ! ' " 5 oo CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 93 XV. And as I said This nonsense, throwing back my head With light complacent laugh, I found Suddenly all the midnight round One fire. The dome of heaven had stood As made up of a multitude Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack Of ripples infinite and black, From sky to sky. Sudden there went, Like horror and astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red 510 Quick flame across, as if one said (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There — Burn it ! " And straight I was aware That the whole ribwork round, minute Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, Was tinted, each with its own spot Of burning at the core, till clot Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire As fanned to measure equable, — 520 Just so great conflagrations kill Night overhead, and rise and sink, Reflected. Now the fire would shrink And wither off the blasted face Of heaven, and I distinct might trace The sharp black ridgy outlines left Unburned like network — then, each cleft The fire had been sucked back into, 94 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Regorged, and out it surging flew Furiously, and night writhed inflamed, 530 Till, tolerating to be tamed No longer, certain rays world-wide Shot downwardly. On every side Caught past escape, the earth was lit ; As if a dragon's nostril split And all his famished ire o'erflowed ; Then, as he winced at his lord's goad, Back he inhaled : whereat I found The clouds into vast pillars bound, Based on the corners of the earth, 540 Propping the skies at top : a dearth Of fire i' the violet intervals, Leaving exposed the utmost walls Of time, about to tumble in And end the world. XVI. I felt begin The Judgment-Day : to retro cede Was too late now. " In very deed," (I uttered to myself) " that Day ! " The intuition burned away All darkness from my spirit too : 550 There stood I, found and fixed, I knew, Choosing the world. The choice was made ; And naked and disguiseless stayed, And unevadable, the fact. My brain held ne'ertheless compact CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 95 Its senses, nor my heart declined Its office ; rather, both combined To help me in this juncture. I Lost not a second, — agony Gave boldness : since my life had end 560 And my choice with it — best defend, Applaud both ! I resolved to say, " So was I framed by Thee, such way I put to use Thy senses here ! It was so beautiful, so near, Thy world, — what could I then but choose My part there ? Nor did I refuse To look above the transient boon Of time ; but it was hard so soon As in a short life, to give up 570 Such beauty : I could put the cup Undrained of half its fulness, by ; But, to renounce it utterly, — That was too hard ! Nor did the cry Which bade renounce it, touch my brain Authentically deep and plain Enough to make my lips let go. But Thou, who knowest all, dost know Whether I was not, life's brief while, Endeavoring to reconcile . 580 Those lips (too tardily, alas !) To letting the dear remnant pass, One day, — some drops of earthly good Untasted ! Is it for this mood, That Thou, whose earth delights so well, Hast made its complement a hell ? " 96 CHRISTMAS- EVE AND EASTER-DAY. XVII. A final belch of fire like blood, Overbroke all heaven in one flood Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy, 590 Then ashes. But I heard no noise (Whatever was) because a Voice Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done, Time ends, Eternity 's begun, And thou art judged for evermore." XVIII. I looked up ; all seemed as before ; Of that cloud-Tophet overhead, No trace was left : I saw instead The common round me, and the sky Above, stretched drear and emptily 600 Of life. 'T was the last watch of night, Except what brings the morning quite ; When the armed angel, conscience-clear, His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear And gazes on the earth he guards, Safe one night more through all its wards, Till God relieve him at his post. "A dream — a waking dream at most!" (I spoke out quick, that I might shake The horrid nightmare off, and wake.) 610 "The world gone, yet the world is here ? Are not all things as they appear ? Is Judgment past for me alone ? — CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 97 And where had place the great white throne ? The rising of the quick and dead ? Where stood they, small and great ? Who read The sentence from the opened book ? " So, by degrees, the blood forsook My heart, and let it beat afresh ; I knew I should break through the mesh 620 Of horror, and breathe presently : When, lo, again, the Voice by me ! XIX. I saw . . . Oh, brother, 'mid far sands The palm-tree-cinctured city stands, Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue, Leans o'er it, while the years pursue Their course, unable to abate Its paradisal laugh at fate ! One morn, — the Arab staggers blind O'er a new tract of death, calcined 630 To ashes, silence, nothingness, — And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies And prostrate earth, he should surprise The imaged vapor, head to foot, Surveying, motionless and mute, Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt, It vanish up again ? — So hapt My chance. He stood there. Like the smoke Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke, — 640 I saw Him. One magniflc pall 98 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Mantled in massive fold and fall His dread, and coiled in snaky swathes About His feet : night's black, that bathes All else, broke, grizzled with despair, Against the soul of blackness there. A gesture told the mood within — That wrapped right hand which based the chin, That intense meditation fixed On His procedure, — pity mixed 6 5 o With the fulfilment of decree. Motionless, thus, He spoke to me, Who fell before His feet, a mass, No man now. XX. "All is come to pass. Such shows are over for each soul They had respect to. In the roll Of Judgment which convinced mankind Of sin, stood many, bold and blind, Terror must burn the truth into : Their fate for them ! — thou hadst to do 660 With absolute omnipotence, Able its judgments to dispense To the whole race, as every one Were its sole object. Judgment done, God is, thou art, — the rest is hurled To nothingness for thee. This world, This finite life, thou hast preferred, In disbelief of God's own word, To heaven and to infinity. CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 99 Here the probation was for thee, 6 7° To show thy soul the earthly mixed With heavenly, it must choose betwixt. The earthly joys lay palpable, — A taint in each, distinct as well ; The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, Above them, but as truly were Taintless, so, in their nature, best. Thy choice was earth : thou didst attest 'T was fitter spirit should subserve The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve Beneath the spirit's play. Advance 680 No claim to their inheritance Who chose the spirit's fugitive Brief gleams, and yearned, ' This were to live Indeed, if rays, completely pure From flesh that dulls them, could endure,— Not shoot in meteor-light athwart Our earth, to show how cold and swart It lies beneath their fire, but stand As stars do, destined to expand, Prove veritable worlds, our home ! ' Thou saidst, — ' Let spirit star the dome Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak, No nook of earth, — I shall not seek Its service further ! ' Thou art shut Out of the heaven of spirit ; glut Thy sense upon the world : 't is thine Forever — take it!" 69a IOO CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. XXI. " How ? Is mine, The world ? " (I cried, while my soul broke Out in a transport,) " Hast thou spoke Plainly in that ? Earth's exquisite Treasures of wonder and delight, For me ? " XXII. The austere Voice returned, — " So soon made happy ? Hadst thou learned What God accounteth happiness, Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess What hell may be His punishment For those who doubt if God invent Better than they. Let such men rest Content with what they judged the best. Let the unjust usurp at will : The filthy shall be filthy still : Miser, there waits the gold for thee ! Hater, indulge thine enmity ! And thou, whose heaven self-ordained Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained, Do it ! Take all the ancient show ! The woods shall wave, the rivers flow, And men apparently pursue Their works, as they were wont to do, While living in probation yet. I promise not thou shalt forget The past, now gone to its account ; But leave thee with the old amount CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. IOI Of faculties, nor less nor more, Unvisited, as heretofore, By God's free spirit, that makes an end. So, once more, take thy world ! expend Eternity upon its shows, Flung thee as freely as one rose 730 Out of a summer's opulence, Over the Eden-barrier whence Thou art excluded. Knock in vain ! " XXIII. I sat up. All was still again. I breathed free : to my heart, back fled The warmth. " But, all the world ! " — I said. I stooped and picked a leaf of fern, And recollected I might learn From books, how many myriad sorts Of fern exist, to trust reports, 740 Each as distinct and beautiful As this, the very first I cull. Think, from the first leaf to the last ! Conceive, then, earth's resources ! Vast Exhaustless beauty, endless change Of wonder ! and this foot shall range Alps, Andes, — and this eye devour The bee-bird and the aloe-flower ? XXIV. Then the Voice, " Welcome so to rate The arras-folds that variegate 750 102 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. The earth, God's antechamber, well ! The wise, who waited there, could tell By these, what royalties in store Lay one step past the entrance-door. For whom was reckoned not too much This life's munificence ? For such As thou, — a race, whereof scarce one Was able, in a million, To feel that any marvel lay In objects round his feet all day ; 760 Scarce one, in many millions more, Willing, if able, to explore The secreter, minuter charm ! — Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm Of power to cope with God's intent, — Or scared if the south firmament With north-fire did its wings refledge ! All partial beauty was a pledge Of beauty in its plenitude : But since the pledge sufficed thy mood, 770 Retain it ! plenitude be theirs Who looked above ! " xxv. Though sharp despairs Shot through me, I held up, bore on. " What matter though my trust were gone From natural things ? Henceforth my part Be less with nature than with art ! For art supplants, gives mainly worth To nature ; 'tis man stamps the earth — CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 103 And I will seek his impress, seek The statuary of the Greek, 780 Italy's painting — there my choice Shall fix ! " XXVI. " Obtain it ! " said the Voice. — " The one form with its single act, Which sculptors labored to abstract, The one face, painters tried to draw, With its one look, from throngs they saw. And that perfection in their soul, These only hinted at ? The whole, They were but parts of ? What each laid His claim to glory on ? — afraid 790 His fellow-men should give him rank By the poor tentatives he shrank Smitten at heart from, all the more, That gazers pressed in to adore ! 1 Shall I be judged by only these ? ' If such his soul's capacities, Even while he trod the earth, — think, now What pomp in Buonarroti's brow, With its new palace-brain where dwells Superb the soul, unvexed by cells 800 That crumbled with the transient clay ! What visions will his right hand's sway Still turn to form, as still they burst Upon him ? How will he quench thirst, Titanically infantine, Laid at the breast of the Divine ? 104 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Does it confound thee, — this first page Emblazoning man's heritage ? — Can this alone absorb thy sight, As pages were not infinite, — 810 Like the omnipotence which tasks Itself, to furnish all that asks The soul it means to satiate ? What was the world, the starry state Of the broad skies, — what, all displays Of power and beauty intermixed, Which now thy soul is chained betwixt, — What else than needful furniture For life's first stage ? God's work, be sure, No more spreads wasted, than falls scant : 820 He filled, did not exceed, man's want Of beauty in this life. But through Life pierce, — and what has earth to do, Its utmost beauty's appanage, With the requirement of next stage ? Did God pronounce earth ' very good ' ? Needs must it be, while understood For man's preparatory state ; Nothing to heighten nor abate : Transfer the same completeness here 830 To serve a new state's use, — and drear Deficiency gapes every side ! The good, tried once, were bad, retried. See the enwrapping rocky niche, Sufficient for the sleep, in which The lizard breathes for ages safe : CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 105 Split the mould — and as this would chafe The creature's new world-widened sense, One minute after day dispense The thousand sounds and sights that broke 840 In on him at the chisel's stroke, — So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff Was, neither more nor less, enough To house man's soul, man's need fulfil. Man reckoned it immeasurable ? So thinks the lizard of his vault ! Could God be taken in default, Short of contrivances, by you, — Or reached, ere ready to pursue His progress through eternity ? 850 That chambered rock, the lizard's world, Your easy mallet's blow has hurled To nothingness forever; so Has God abolished at a blow This world, wherein his saints were pent, — Who, though found grateful and content, With the provision there, as thou, Yet knew He would not disallow Their spirit's hunger, felt as well, — Unsated, — not unsatable, 860 As Paradise gives proof. Deride Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside ! " XXVII. I cried in anguish, " Mind, the mind, So miserably cast behind, 106 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. To gain what had been wisely lost ! O, let me strive to make the most Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped Of budding wings, else now equipped For voyage from summer isle to isle ! And though she needs must reconcile 8 7 o Ambition to the life on ground, Still, I can profit by late found But precious knowledge. Mind is best — I will seize mind, forego the rest, And try how far my tethered strength May crawl in this poor breadth and length. Let me, since I can fly no more, As least spin dervish-like about (Till giddy rapture almost doubt I fly) through circling sciences, 880 Philosophies and histories ! Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, Fining to music, shall asperse Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain Intoxicate, half-break my chain ! Not joyless, though more favored feet Stand calm, where I want wings to beat The floor. At least earth's bond is broke ! " XXVIII. Then, (sickening even while I spoke) " Let me alone ! No answer, pray, 890 To this ! I know what Thou wilt say ! All still is earth's, — to know, as much £HRISTMAS-EVK AND EASTER-DAY. 107 As feel its truths, which if we touch With sense, or apprehend in soul, What matter ? I have reached the goal — ' Whereto does knowledge serve ? ' will burn My eyes, too sure, at every turn ! I cannot look back now, nor stake Bliss on the race, for running's sake. The goal 's a ruin like the rest ! " — 900 " And so much worse thy latter quest," (Added the Voice) " that even on earth — Whenever, in man's soul, had birth Those intuitions, grasps of guess, That pull the more into the less, Making the finite comprehend Infinity, — the bard would spend Such praise alone, upon his craft, As, when wind-lyres obey the waft, Goes to the craftsman who arranged 910 The seven strings, changed them and rechanged — Knowing it was the South that harped. He felt his song, in singing, warped ; Distinguished his and God's part : whence A world of spirit as of sense Was plain to him, yet not too plain, Which he could traverse, not remain A guest in : — else were permanent Heaven on earth, which its gleams were meant To sting with hunger for full light, — 920 Made visible in verse, despite The veiling weakness, — truth by means 108 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Of fable, showing while it screens, — Since highest truth, man e'er supplied, Was ever fable on outside. Such gleams made bright the earth an age ; Now, the whole sun 's his heritage ! Take up thy world, it is allowed, Thou who hast entered in the cloud ! " XXIX. Then I — " Behold, my spirit bleeds, 930 Catches no more at broken reeds, — But lilies flower those reeds above : I let the world go, and take love ! Love survives in me, albeit those I love be henceforth masks and shows, Not loving men and women : still I mind how love repaired all ill, Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends With parents, brothers, children, friends ! Some semblance of a woman yet 940 With eyes to help me to forget, Shall live with me ; and I will match Departed love with love, attach Its fragments to my whole, nor scorn The poorest of the grains of corn I save from shipwreck on this isle, Trusting its barrenness may smile With happy foodful green one day, More precious for the pains. I pray For love, then, only ! " CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 109 XXX. At the word, 950 The Form, I looked to have been stirred With pity and approval, rose O'er me, as when the headsman throws Axe over shoulder to make end — I fell prone, letting Him expend His wrath, while, thus, the inflicting Voice Smote me. " Is this thy final choice ? Love is the best ? 'T is somewhat late ! And all thou dost enumerate Of power and beauty in the world, 9 6o The mightiness of love was curled Inextricably round about. Love lay within it and without, To clasp thee, — but in vain! Thy soul Still shrunk from Him who made the whole, Still set deliberate aside His love ! — Now take love ! Well betide Thy tardy conscience ! Haste to take The show of love for the name's sake, Remembering every moment Who 970 Beside creating thee unto These ends, and these for thee, was said To undergo death in thy stead In flesh like thine : so ran the tale. What doubt in thee could countervail Belief in it ? Upon the ground That in the story had been found Too much love ! How could God love so ? IIO CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. He who in all His works below Adapted to the needs of man, 980 Made love the basis of the plan, — Did love, as was demonstrated : While man, who was so fit instead To hate, as every day gave proof, — Man thought man, for his kind's behoof, Both could and did invent that scheme Of perfect love : 't would well beseem Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise, Not tally with God's usual ways ! " XXXI. And I cowered deprecatingly — 990 "Thou Love of God ! Or let me die, Or grant what shall seem heaven almost ! Let me not know that all is lost, Though lost it be — leave me not tied To this despair, this corpse-like bride ! Let that old life seem mine — no more — With limitation as before, With darkness, hunger, toil, distress : Be all the earth a wilderness ! Only let me go on, go on, 1000 Still hoping ever and anon To reach one eve the Better Land ! " XXXII. Then did the Form expand, expand — I knew Him through the dread disguise, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Ill As the whole God within His eyes Embraced me. XXXIII. When I lived again, The day was breaking, — the gray plain I rose from, silvered thick with dew. Was this a vision ? False or true ? Since then, three varied years are spent, And commonly my mind is bent To think it was a dream — be sure A mere dream and distemperature — The last day's watching : then the night, — The shock of that strange Northern Light Set my head swimming, bred in me A dream. And so I live, you see, Go through the world, try, prove, reject, Prefer, still struggling to effect My warfare ; happy that I can Be crossed and thwarted as a man, Not left in God's contempt apart, With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. Thank God, she still each method tries To catch me, who may yet escape, She knows, the fiend in angel's shape ! Thank God, no paradise stands barred To entry, and I find it hard To be a Christian, as I said ! IQ 3° Still every now and then my head Raised glad, sinks mournful — all grows drear 112 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Spite of the sunshine, while I fear And think, " How dreadful to be grudged No ease henceforth, as one that 's judged, Condemned to earth for ever, shut From heaven ! " But Easter-Day breaks ! But Christ rises ! Mercy every way Is infinite, — and who can say ? SAUL i. Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak, Kiss my cheek, wish me well ! " Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek. And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent, Neither drunken nor eaten have we ; nor until from his tent Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet, Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet. For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days, Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise, To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife, And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon life. io II. Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved ! God's child, with his dew On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue "3 1 14 SAUL. Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heat Were now raging to torture the desert ! " III. Then I, as was meet, Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet, And ran o'er the sand, burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped ; I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped ; Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone, That extends to the second inclosure, I groped my way on Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed, 20 And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid, But spoke, " Here is David, thy servant ! " And no voice replied. At the first I saw naught but the blackness; but soon I descried A something more black than the blackness — the vast, the upright Main prop which sustains the pavilion : and slow into sight Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all; — Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, showed Saul. SAUL. 115 IV. He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side ; He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangs 30 And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs, Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb. V. Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies we twine round its chords Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide — those sunbeams like swords ! And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one, So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done. They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed ; And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star 40 Into eve and the blue, far above us, — so blue and so far ! — Il6 SAUL. VI. Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland will each leave his mate To fly after the player ; then, what makes the crickets elate, Till for boldness they fight one another : and then, what has weight To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand house — There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse ! God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear, To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here. VII. Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when hand Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand 50 And grow one in the sense of this world's life. — And then, the last song When the dead man is praised on his journey — " Bear, bear him along With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets ! are balm-seeds not here To console us ? The land has none left, such as he on the bier. Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!" — And then, the glad chant SAUL. 117 Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — And then, the great march Wherein man runs to man to assist him and but- tress an arch Naught can break ; who shall harm them, our friends ? — Then, the chorus intoned As the Levites go up to the altar in glory en- throned . . 60 But I stopped here : for here in the darkness, Saul groaned. VIII. And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart ; And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered : and sparkles 'gan dart From the jewels that woke in his turban at once with a start — Ail its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart. So the head: but the body still moved not, still hung there erect. And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked, As I sang, — JX " Oh, our manhood's prime vigor I No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor smew unbraced. Il8 SAUL. Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up to rock, 70 The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine, And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses, for ever in joy ! Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst guard 80 When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward ? Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung The low song of the nearly-departed, and heard her faint tongue Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more attest, SAUL. 119 I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best ! ' Then they sung through their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest. And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true : And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood of wonder and hope, Present promise, and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope, — 90 Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch ; a people is thine ; And all gifts which the world offers singly, on one head combine ! On one head, all the beauty and strength, love, and rage (like the throe That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor, and lets the gold go), High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them, — all Brought to blaze on the head of one creature — King Saul ! " x. And lo, with that leap of my spirit, — heart, hand, harp, and voice, Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bid- ding rejoice Saul's fame in the light it was made for — as when, dare I say, 120 SAUIv. The Lord's army in rapture of service, strains . through its array, 100 And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot — " Saul ! " cried I, and stopped, And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung propped By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name. Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim, And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held, (he alone, While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — leaves grasp of the sheet ? Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet, And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old, With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold — no Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest — all hail, there they are ! — Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest SAUL. 121 For their food in the ardors of summer ! One long shudder thrilled All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled, At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware. What was gone, what remained ? all to traverse 'twixt hope and despair, Death was past, life not come : so he waited. Awhile his right hand Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forth- with to remand 120 To their place what new objects should enter : 't was Saul as before. I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean — a sun's slow decline Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine Base with base to knit strength more intensely : so, arm folded arm O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided. XI. What spell or what charm, (For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next should I urge 122 SAUL. To sustain him where song had restored him? — Song filled to the verge His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields 130 Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty : be- yond, on what fields, Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by ? He saith, " It is good ; " still he drinks not : he lets me praise life, Gives assent, yet would die for his own part. XII. Then fancies grew rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep Fed in silence — above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep, And I lay in my hollow, and mused on the world that might lie 'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky : And I laughed — " Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, mo Let me people at least with my fancies, the plains and the rocks, Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show SAUL. 123 Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know ! Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains, And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now these old trains Of vague thought came again ; I grew surer ; so, once more the string Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus — XIII. " Yea, my king, " I began — "thou dost well in rejecting mere com- forts that spring From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute : In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit. 150 Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, — how its stem trembled first Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler ; then safely outburst The fan-branches all round ; and thou mindest when these too, in turn Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect ; yet more was to learn, E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight, When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow ? or care for the plight I 24 S AUIy. Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them ? Not so ! stem and branch Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall stanch Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine. Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for ! the spirit be thine ! 160 By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy. Crush that life, and behold its wine running ! each deed thou hast done Dies, revives, goes to work in the world ; until e'en as the sun Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface, Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace The results of his past summer-prime, — so, each ray of thy will, Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till they too give forth A like cheer to their sons, who in turn fill the South and the North 170 With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past ! SAUIv. 125 But the license of age has its limit ; thou diest at last : As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height, So with man — so his power and his beauty for ever take flight. No ! again a long draught of my soul-wine ! Look forth o'er the years ! Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual ; begin with the seer's ! Is Saul dead ? in the depth of the vale make his tomb — bid arise A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the skies, Let it mark where the great First King slumbers : whose fame would ye know ? Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go 180 In great characters cut by the scribe, — Such was Saul, so he did ; With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid, — For not half, they '11 affirm, is comprised there ! Which fault to amend, In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend (See, in tablets 't is level before them) their praise, and record With the gold of the graver, Saul's story, — the statesman's great word 126 SAUI,. Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet winds rave : So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part In thy being ! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art." XIV. And behold while I sang . . . But O Thou who didst grant me that day, And before it not seldom hast granted Thy help to essay, Carry on, and complete an adventure, — my Shield and my Sword In that act where my soul was Thy servant, Thy word was my word, — Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavor And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever On the new stretch of heaven above me — till, mighty to save, Just one lift of Thy hand cleared that distance — God's throne from man's grave ! Let me tell out my tale to its ending — my voice to my heart, Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part, 200 As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep, SAUL. 127 And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep ! For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder and Kidron retrieves Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine. XV. I say then, — my song While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever more strong Made a proffer of good to console him — he slowly resumed His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand replumed His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes Of his turban, and see — the huge sweat that his countenance bathes, 210 He wipes off with the robe ; and he girds now his loins as of yore, And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before. He is Saul, ye remember in glory, — ere error had bent The broad brow from the daily communion ; and still, though much spent Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose, 128 SAUL. To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose. So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by the pile Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile, And sat out my singing, — one arm round the tent- prop, to raise His bent head, and the other hung slack — till I touched on the praise 220 I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there ; And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak-roots which please To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know If the best I could do had brought solace : he spoke not, but slow Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: through my hair The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind power — All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower. 230 SAUI,. 129 Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine — And oh, all my heart how it loved him ! but where was the sign ? I yearned — "Could I help thee, my father, invent- ing a bliss, I would add to that life of the past, both the future and this. I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence, As this moment, — had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense ! " XVI. Then the truth came upon me. No harp more — no song more ! outbroke — XVII. " I have gone the whole round of creation : I saw and I spoke : I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain And pronounced on the rest of His handwork — returned Him again 240 His creation's approval or censure : I spoke as I saw. I report, as a man may of God's work — all's love, yet all 's law. Now I lay down the judgeship He lent me. Each faculty tasked 130 SAUL. To perceive Him, has gained an abyss, where a dew-drop was asked. Have I knowledge ? confounded it shrivels at Wis- dom laid bare. Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care ! Do I task any faculty highest, to image success ? I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and no less In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul, and the clod. 250 And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which in bending up- raises it too) The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete, As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet. Yet with all this abounding experience, this Deity known, I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own. There 's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink, I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think) Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst SAUI,. 131 E'en the Giver in one gift. — Behold ! I could love if I durst ! 260 But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'er- take God's own speed in the one way of love : I abstain, for love's sake. — What, my soul ? see thus far and no farther ? when doors great and small, Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appall ? In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all ? Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt His own love can compete with it ? Here, the parts shift ? Here, the creature surpass the Creator, the end, what Began ? — Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, And dare doubt He alone shall not help me, who yet alone can ? 270 Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power, To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvel- lous dower Of the life he was gifted and filled with ? to make such a soul, Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole ? 132 SAUL. And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest) These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best ? Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height This perfection, — succeed with life's dayspring, death's minute of night ? Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake, Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid him awake 280 From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new harmony yet To be run, and continued, and ended — who knows? — or endure ! The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure ; By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss, And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggle in this. XVIII. " I believe it ! 't is Thou, God, that givest, 't is I who receive : In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe. SAUL. 133 All 's one gift : Thou canst grant it, moreover, as prompt to my prayer As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air. 290 From Thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, Thy dread Sabaoth : /will? — the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth To look that, even that in the face too ? why is it I dare Think but lightly of such impuissance ? what stops my despair ? This ; — 't is not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do ! See the King — I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through. Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — knowing which, I know that my service is perfect. — Oh, speak through me now ! Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst Thou — so wilt Thou ! 300 So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, utter- most crown — And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no breath, 134 SAtju Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death ! As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved ! He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak. 'T is the weakness in strength that I cry for ! my flesh that I seek In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee : a Man like to me, 310 Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever ! a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the Christ stand ! " XIX. I know not too well how I found my way home in the night. There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right, Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware : I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strug- glingly there, As a runner beset by the populace famished for news — SAUL. 135 Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews ; And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge : but I fainted not, 320 For the Hand still impelled me at once and sup- ported, suppressed All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest. Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth — Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth ; In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills ; In the shuddering forests' held breath ; in the sudden wind thrills ; In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still Though averted, in wonder and dread; and the birds stiff and chill That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe : 330 E'en the serpent that slid away silent, — he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers ; 136 SAUL. The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers. And the little brooks witnessing murmured, per- sistent and low, With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — " E'en so ! it is so ! " AN EPISTLE CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN. Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, The not-incurious in God's handiwork (This man's-flesh He hath admirably made, Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapor from His mouth, man's soul) — To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast, Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks 9 Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip Back and rejoin its source before the term, — And aptest in contrivance (under God) To baffle it by deftly stopping such : — The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace), Three samples of true snake-stone — r rarer still, One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) And writeth now the twenty-second time. 20 My journeyings were brought to Jericho : Thus I resume. Who studious in our art 137 138 AN EPISTLE. Shall count a little labor unrepaid ? I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone On many a flinty furlong of this land. Also, the country-side is all on fire With rumors of a marching hitherward — Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear ; Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls : 30 I cried and threw my staff and he was gone. Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, And once a town declared me for a spy ; But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, Since this poor covert where I pass the night, This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence A man with plague-sores at the third degree Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here ! 'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 40 And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. A viscid choler is observable In tertians, I was nearly bold to say ; And falling-sickness hath a happier cure Than our school wots of : there 's a spider here Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back ; Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind, The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to ? Hie service payeth me a sublimate 50 Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. AN EPISTLE. 139 Best wait : I reach Jerusalem at morn, There set in order my experiences, Gather what most deserves and give thee all — Or I might add, Judea's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy — Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar — 60 But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end. Yet stay : my Syrian blinketh gratefully, Protesteth his devotion is my price — Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal ? I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush, What set me off a-writing first of all. An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang ! For, be it this town's barrenness — or else The Man had something in the look of him — His case has struck me far more than 't is worth. 7° So, pardon if — (lest presently I lose In the great press of novelty at hand The care and pains this somehow stole from me) I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind, ' Almost in sight — for, wilt thou have the truth ? The very man is gone from me but now, Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. Thus then, and let thy better wit help all. 'Tis but a case of mania — subinduced By epilepsy, at the turning-point 80 140 AN EPISTLE. Of trance prolonged unduly some three days : When, by the exhibition of some drug Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art Unknown to me and which 't were well to know, The evil thing out-breaking all at once Left the man whole and sound of body indeed, — But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide, Making a clear house of it too suddenly, The first conceit that entered might inscribe Whatever it was minded on the wall So plainly at that vantage, as it were, (First come, first served) that nothing subsequent Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls The just-returned and new-established soul Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart That henceforth she will read or these or none. And first — the man's own firm conviction rests That he was dead (in fact they buried him) — That he was dead and then restored to life By a Nazarene physician of his tribe : — 1 'Sayeth, the same bade " Rise," and he did rise. " Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry. Not so this figment ! — not, that such a fume, Instead of giving way to time and health, Should eat itself into the life of life, As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and all ! For see, how he takes up the after-life. The man — it is one Lazarus a Jew, Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, The body's habit wholly laudable, 11 AN EPISTLE. H l As much, indeed, beyond the common health As he were made and put aside to show. Think, could we penetrate by any drug And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep ! Whence has the man the balm that brightens all ? This grown man eyes the world now like a child. Some elders of his tribe, I should premise, Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep, To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, Now sharply, now with sorrow, — told the case, — He listened not except I spoke to him, But folded his two hands and let them talk, Watching the flies that buzzed : and yet no fool. And that 's a sample how his years must go. Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life, Should find a treasure, — can he use the same With straitened habits and with tastes starved small And take at once to his impoverished brain The sudden element that changes things, '3 That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand, And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust ? Is he not such an one as moves to mirth — Warily parsimonious, when no need, Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times ? All prudent counsel as to what befits The golden mean, is lost on such an one. The man's fantastic will is the man's law. So here — we call the treasure knowledge, say, — Increased beyond the fleshly faculty — * 142 AN EPISTLE. Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven : The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value in proportion of all things, Or whether it be little or be much. Discourse to him of prodigious armaments Assembled to besiege his city now, And of the passing of a mule with gourds — 'T is one ! Then take it on the other side, Speak of some trifling fact — he will gaze rapt 150 With stupor at its very littleness — (Far as I see) as if in that indeed He caught prodigious import, whole results ; And so will turn to us the bystanders In ever the same stupor (note this point) That we too see not with his opened eyes. Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, Preposterously, at cross purposes. Should his child sicken unto death, — why, look For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 160 Or pretermission of his daily craft ! While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child At play or in the school or laid asleep, Will startle him to an agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like. Demand The reason why — " 't is but a word," object — " A gesture " — he regards thee as our lord Who lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us (dost thou mind ?) when, being young, We both would unadvisedly recite 170 AN KPISTI.K. 143 Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. Thou and the child have each a veil alike Thrown o'er your heads, from under which yc both Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know ! He holds on firmly to some thread of life — (It is the life to lead perforcedly) Which runs across some vast distracting orb 180 Of glory on either side that meagre thread, Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet — The spiritual life around the earthly life : The law of that is known to him as this, His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. So is the man perplext with impulses Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, — And not along, this black thread through the blaze — " It should be " balked by " here it cannot be." 190 And oft the man's soul springs into his face As if he saw again and heard again His sage that bade him " Rise " and he did rise. Something, a word, a tick of the blood within Admonishes : then back he sinks at once To ashes, who was very fire before, In sedulous recurrence to his trade Whereby he earneth him the daily bread ; And studiously the humbler for that pride, Professedly the faultier that he knows 200 144 AN EPISTLE. God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. Indeed the especial marking of the man Is prone submission to the heavenly will - Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last For that same death which must restore his being To equilibrium, body loosening soul Divorced even now by premature full growth : He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live So long as God please, and just how God please. 210 He even seeketh not to please God more (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be — Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do : How can he give his neighbor the real ground, His own conviction ? Ardent as he is — Call his great truth a lie, why still the old " Be it as God please " reassureth him. I probed the sore as thy disciple should, 220 " How, beast," said I, " this stolid carelessness Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march To stamp out like a little spark thy town, Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once ? " He merely looked with his large eyes on me. The man is apathetic, you deduce ? Contrariwise he loves both old and young, Able and weak, affects the very brutes And birds — how say I ? flowers of the field — As a wise workman recognizes tools 230 AN EPISTLE . 145 In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb : Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin — An indignation which is promptly curbed : As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240 Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure — and I must hold my peace ! Thou wilt object — why have I not ere this Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source, Conferring with the frankness that befits ? Alas ! it grieveth me, the learned leech Perished in a tumult many years ago, Accused, — our learning's fate, — of wizardry, Rebellion, to the setting up a rule 250 And creed prodigious as described to me. His death, which happened when the earthquake fell (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss To occult learning in our lord the sage Who lived there in the pyramid alone) Was wrought by the mad people — that 's their wont ! On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, To his tried virtue, for miraculous help — How could he stop the earthquake ? That 's their way ! 146 AN EPISTLE. The other imputations must be lies : 260 But take one, though I loathe to give it thee, In mere respect for any good man's fame : (And after all, our patient Lazarus Is stark mad ; should we count on what he says ? Perhaps not : though in writing to a leech 'T is well to keep back nothing of a case.) This man so cured regards the curer, then, As — God forgive me ! — who but God himself, Creator and Sustainer of the world, That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile ! — 270 'Sayeth that such an One was born and lived, Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat, And must have so avouched Himself, in fact, In hearing of this very Lazarus Who saith — but why all this of what he saith ? Why write of trivial matters, things of price % Calling at every moment for remark ? I noticed on the margin of a pool 280 Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange ! Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, Which, now that I review it, needs must seem Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth. Nor I myself discern in what is writ Good cause for the peculiar interest And awe indeed this man has touched me with. AN EPISTLK. 147 Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus : 290 I crossed a ridge of short, sharp, broken hills Like an old lion's cheek-teeth. Out there came A moon made like a face with certain spots Multiform, manifold and menacing : Then a wind rose behind me. So we met In this old sleepy town at unaware, The man and I. I send thee what is writ. Regard it as a chance, a matter risked To this ambiguous Syrian — he may lose, Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. 300 Jerusalem's repose shall make amends For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine ; Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell ! The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think ? So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, " O heart I made, a heart beats here ! Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself. Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of Mine, But love I gave thee, with Myself to love, 310 And thou must love Me who have died for thee ! " The madman saith He said so : it is strange. NOTES. NOTES ON CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. These two poems were written at Florence in 1850, and published in London in the same year. Numerous changes have been made in the text since the first edition. They are cited in the Notes. In annotating the text, my principle has been simply to explain allusions, however simple, and to try to throw light on constructions which may seem obscure to the reader who is not familiar with Browning's peculiar method. The Biblical allusions I have explained by citations, even where they were well known, because it is often pleasant to be able to trace a phrase on the instant to chapter and verse. Moreover, the student will find it interesting to observe Browning's extraor- dinary familiarity with Scripture. In defining words I have preferred to err on the side of over-explicitness, because the effect of a line is lost if the reader must stop to consult a dictionary, or make a rough guess at the meaning. But I have tried to remember that this Selection is not a text-book, and so have barred out all merely curious notes. I have called attention, in the introductory essay, to the fact that this poem (the title would indicate that we are to consider the two together as one work) is unique, because in it Browning speaks in his own proper person. One Word More (Men and Women) is the only other 15* 152 NOTES. poem in which he avowedly does so. It is often easy in his other works to infer the face behind the mask, but, like Shakespeare's Sonnets, these two poems must gather significance from their personal character. 3. Five minutes full I waited. There is a long break in the time between 1. 2 and 1. 3. The narrator retraces his steps to the moment, perhaps a half-hour before, when he had entered the chapel. A glance at 1. 185, below, will show the somewhat obscure connection. 70. Pattens. Wooden clogs worn to keep the feet dry. 73. A lance in rest. Ancient armor has a projection on the right side of the coat-of-mail which supported the lance, and was called "the rest." The lance in rest was an excellent defence. 81. Like the Penitent Thief. Luke xxiii. 40. Of course no resemblance is asserted ex- cept that of previous occupation. 89. Gallio. See Acts xvii. 12 fol. : "And when Paul was now about to open his mouth, Gallio said unto the Jews, ' If it were a mat- ter of wrong or of wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you. But if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it ; for I will be no judge of such matters.' And he drave them from the judg- ment-seat. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment- seat. And Gallio cared for none of these things." 92. Tally ho. The cry to urge on the hounds. NOTES. 153 102. St. John's Candlestick. See Rev. i. 12 and 20: "The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches." 105. Grand Inquisitor. The highest office of the Inquisition was first held in Spain by Torquemada in 1483. He was president for life of the Supreme Inquisition. During the time that he held the office (fifteen years) 8800 people were burned alive. 108. Seven Churches. See on 1. 102 above. 115. " Shares." The forced rhyme of this whole introduction is a part of the mockery with which Browning treats the situation. Whenever he throws aside the irony, he changes the tone of the verse by choosing his rhymes seriously. (See 1. 187 fol.) As soon as he returns to the ridicule the rhymes become droll again. (See Is. 227, 228.) 1 20. Marriage vestiment. See Matt. xxii. 11 fol. Vestment is the usual form, but Browning coins this correctly enough from the Latin vesti- mentum. 132. Pentacle. A six-pointed star formed by two equal triangles. It was a mystic figure much used by astrologers of the Middle Ages. 133. Conventicle. The word was opprobriously applied to assemblies of dis- senters from the Church of England. It means cimply a small gathering. 154 NOTES. 143. Pig-of-lead. An oblong mass of crude lead, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds. 157. In severance. Loose, without connection. 170. Dew of 'Hermon. See Ps. cxxxiii. 3 : "As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion." Hermon (Mount Sion) is located at the southern extremity of the Leb- anon range of hills, thirty miles southwest of Damascus. 222. Pharaoh, etc. See Gen. xl. 16 fol. 238. Joseph. It will be recalled that Joseph interpreted the baker's dream of the three baskets, and declared it to prophesy the death which Pharaoh was preparing for him. But the preacher finds in the dream a proof of the Trinity, and the adoring people prefer his absurdity to Joseph's plain sense. 533. The angeVs measuring-rod. See Rev. xxi. 15 fol.: "And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof and the wall thereof." 557. Liar, etc. The exclamation is the quick retort to the suggestion by his hearer, that the story is a lie or a dream. 565. Basilica. The word originally meant a hall of justice, but, as the Roman basilicas suggested the form of the early Christian churches, the name came to be applied to the latter. NOTKS. 155 567. Architrave. The lower part of the structure (entablature) which rests directly upon the columns. The frieze and cornice are imme- diately above the architrave. 576. Baldachin. A structure in the form of a canopy, supported by pillars and placed over an altar. 582. Like Behemoth, etc. For God's praise of Behemoth, see Job xl. 15 fol. 583. At the silver belVs shrill tinkling. At the elevation of the host (sacrament) a bell is rung, and the multitude at the sound fall on their knees. 600. I died, etc. See Rev. i. 18. 634. Judgment drops, etc. The figure is of a tower which leans from the perpendicular, and becomes both unsightly and unsafe. 656. The antique, sovereign Intellect. From the middle of the century before Christ, till the end of the reign of Augustus (14 A. D.), it was literally true that Intellect ruled the world. Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Maecenas were all distinguished patrons of letters and learn- ing. Not only is the age resplendent with brilliant names, but it is also true that government was never administered more in accordance with the logic of history. 668. Sallust. Caius Sallustius Crispus was born in 86 B.C., and was a prominent man during the rise of Caesar. He became governor of Numidia, and returned to Rome with immense 156 NOTES. wealth. He lived in the greatest luxury, and devoted himself to the study and writing of history. Of his greatest works only fragments are extant, the rest having probably been wantonly destroyed. 676. True Christian Art. It was characteristic of Christian art to prefer moral sig- nificance to beauty and grace of form. A slight degree of moral meaning, or even of moral intention, outweighed every other quality. Art was judged by ethical, not by aesthetic standards. Pictures of saints, of martyrs, of the Deity, were acceptable, no matter how faulty the anatomy or repulsive the design. A ban was laid, in art as in life, upon human nature, unless distorted or perverted to conform to certain conven- tional, religious ideals of restraint, suffering, and deprivation. A premium was thus set upon imitation of traditional models, upon disregard of nature or absolute infidelity to her facts, upon all that leaves art beggared of imagination, originality, truth to nature, accuracy, and taste. With the exception of a few artists whose genius was great enough to assert itself in spite of these tendencies, art degenerated into a mere fanciful symbolism {Portents, 1. 675) or a Chamber of Horrors. 678. Terpander's bird. The nightingale. Terpander was born in 676 B. C, and was called the Father of Greek music. He lived at Antissa, the town which professed to contain the grave of Orpheus. 684. Aphrodite. The Greek goddess of Love, identified with the Roman Venus. 755. A Colossus. A gigantic statue. The name was first applied to that at Rhodes. NOTES. 157 799. Halle, Weimar, etc. University towns of Germany. Halle is in Saxony, on the Saale. The university is famous for its theology. Weimar is on the Ilm. Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland all lived there. Cassel has no university, but has excellent opportunities for study. Frankfort is on the Oder, in the province of Brandenburg. Gottingen is in Hanover, on the Seine. 825. Preludious. An instance of Browning's license of coinage, especially bold when he wants a droll rhyme. 841. A hake of undressed tow. Hake is still provincially used to denote a hank or bunch of flax or tow ready for the spinner. 846. So??ie thrilling view of the surplice qtcestion. It may be hazarded that more intellect and more discussion have been lavished in England for the last twenty years upon the distinction between High Church and Low Church than upon the relation of Ireland to England. But not many Englishmen are sufficiently outside of the conflict to take so clear a view as Browning of the actual merits of the case. 901. Drouthy. The form drouth is more commonly used in England than drought. Here the word means simply dry, squeaking. 970. When A got leave, etc. The letters of early alphabets were originally hieroglyphs, made out of rough drawings of the objects to be denoted. A represented the head of the ox, being the initial letter of the Hebrew word Aleph, an ox. B represented a tent (Beth) ; G, the head and neck of a camel (Gimel). 158 NOTES. 982. Harvey. Physician to James I. and Charles I. He discovered the circulation of the blood. 1004. Other birds. For purposes of poetry the bat may be called a bird, per- haps. But it is well to remember that the species belongs actually to the mammalia. 1056. Fane. A temple. Do you insist upon worshipping outside the usual method, and pointing a finger of direction to your own favorite road, although it leads away from the one trodden for ages by worshipful souls? 1089. Levigable. Capable of being reduced to fine powder. 1 1 12. The Middle Verb. The reflexive form of the verb. 1 1 13. Turk-like, etc. That is, disputing fiercely over the technicalities of Greek metre. The anapaest is an unusual foot in trimeter. 1 115. The halt and maimed " Iketides." A tragedy of iEschylus ( The Suppliants), which has come down to us in a much mutilated form. 1 1 26. Herr Heine {before his fever). Heine's life up to 1848 was one of the wildest dissipation. A 4 " that time he was violently ill, lost his sight, and was never restored to health. Soon after, he renounced his infidelity. 1 131. Meticulous. Fearful, timid. NOTES. 159 1257. Raree-show. Peep-show; rare show. The word perpetuates a mispro- nunciation of rare. 1283. Pascal. A celebrated French philosopher, mathematician, and religionist (1623-1622). 1307. Breccia. Pudding-stone. FIRST READINGS OF CHRISTMAS-EVE. i. The first edition has " Out of the little chapel I flung Into the fresh night-air again. Five minutes I waited, held my tongue." 211. The first edition has " light." 283. The first edition has " the " for that. 444. The first edition has " I remembered." 602. The first edition has " sat I there." 682. The first edition has " Till a filthy saint rebuked the gust With which he chanced to get a sight He glanced a thought above the toes of." 716. The first edition has "the senses." 722. The first edition has " And it tight." 160 NOTES. 885. The first edition has " Gave, for residuum." 921. The first edition has " by " for with. 954. The first edition has " the more." 966. The first edition has " where " for whence. 1015. The first edition has " his head." 1097. The first edition has " the damage." 1 149. The first edition has "the plainest." 1 1 50. The first edition has " this world." 1 1 64. The first edition has " Sending me on a pilgrimage." 1303. The first edition has " At a word." 1304. The first edition has " Its river-pulse." 1310. The first edition has " That the waterless cup." 1356. The first edition has " Without my own made." 1373. The first edition has " in " for of. EASTER-DAY. The second part of this poem will seem to most readers even more stupendous than Christmas-Eve. It is said that modern poets are half ashamed to mention God or Christ. Not so this poet. The vital question, " What does life mean ? " seems to me more completely answered in this poem than in any utterance which the world has heard since the Sermon on the Mount. The reasonableness of a probation upon earth, the definite- NOTES. l6l ness of God's command to men and women, the cer- tainty which follows choice — of evil or of good — are all given the force of high poetic expression. Browning tries to reveal the divine method of utilizing the great moments of the soul's life to make spiritual the long run of human experience. In a dream, a vision, — whether in the body or out of the body who can say ? — the soul meets the announcement of the Judgment-Day. He has chosen earth. The effort to realize the unseen has wearied him. He has revelled in life's joys with a delusive hope of lifting by and by his eyes to heaven. Now comes the supreme surprise. A voice says, " The world for thee ! Take it ! " But in the same instant are revealed to the soul the barrenness of knowledge, the incompleteness of beauty, the poverty of love compared with the things which God has prepared for them that love him. The soul is granted each request for future freedom in this world, but each is given with a scorn as bitter as death and a reproach as deep as hell. At last the soul sees the world in its true meaning, — a vesti- bule, fair it is true, but empty, — leading to a palace of divine beauty. The children who linger playing outside over their heaps of moneys, of knowledges, of love, are blind to the light that streams from the royal presence- chamber. When a sense of this fatal and stupid loss at last forces itself upon the soul he entreats but one boon, — that he may be permitted, at least, to pursue life as if he had not forfeited the chance of salvation. " Only let me go on, go on, Still hoping ever and anon To reach one eve the Better Land." Now the Voice first gives hope of forgiveness and of renewed opportunity. To realize the value of proba- 1 62 NOTES. tion, and to desire that it may continue, is a long step toward fulfilling the end of life. And so the curtain of the poem drops upon the sunlight of Easter morn. 1 54. Coleoptera. An order of insects, including the beetles. 160. A Grignon with the Regent* s crest. Grignon was a French antiquary (1723- 1780). He con- ducted many important excavations, and was also a practical worker in metals. His mark on a snuff-box is proof of its artistic value. 169. A Semitic guess. The group of Semitic languages, of which the Hebrew and Assyrian are members, has given philologists more room for guesses than all other languages together. 194. Dionysus Zagrius. Zagrius was a surname of the mystic Dionysus (Bacchus). The legends regarding him are almost inextricably confused, the traditions of various times and countries relating to analo- gous deities having been transferred to him. 393. The Lucumons. The Tarquins, so-called from the name of the elder, — Lu- 394. Fourier's scheme. Fourier was a French writer on socialism (1772- 1837) who devised an elaborate plan for the life of a community. 447. Tice. Entice, but not an abbreviation. NOTES. 163 488. Queen Mab. " She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love." Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Sc. 4. 574. That was too hard. Compare the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, Canto 66 : " I must abjure the balm of life : I must, Scared by some after-reckoning, ta'en on trust, Or lured with hope of some diviner drink To fill the cup — when crumbled into dust ! " 630. A new tract of death. See Gen. xix. 28 : " And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord ; and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." 670. Here the probation was for thee. Compare the Pope's soliloquy, in the Ring and the Book: "The moral sense grows but by exercise, 'Tis even as man grew, probatively Initiated in Godship, set to make A fairer moral world than this he finds. Life is probation, and this earth no goal, But starting-point for man, compel him strive, Which means in man as good as reach the goal." 672. It must choose betwixt. Miss E. D. West, in an excellent article on Browning as a Preacher {LittelVs Living Age, Dec. 23, 187 1), says : "The idea 1 64 NOTES. of a struggle and a wrestling in which the wills of men are to be engaged — the central idea of early and mediaeval Christian thought — is recognized fully and distinctly by Browning in all that he has written. He holds that men's business in this world is labor and strife and conquest, and not merely free, unconscious growth and harmonious development. He differs thoroughly from the modern thinking, which sees no moral evil distinct from and antagonistic to good ; and again and again, directly or indirectly, his poems let us see how wide is his separation, both in belief and feeling, from the many poets of these present days, who have returned to the idea round which the old Greek poetry had all revolved, of the power- lessness of man's will and the drifting of his life before an unalterable destiny. In a recent criticism of Browning he is distinguished as being pre-eminently the poet of impulse. This he doubtless is, but it seems to me that his chief point of difference from the majority of modern poets is in his being emphatically the poet of the will." 7 1 2. The filthy shall be filthy still. Com. Rev. xxii. n. 748. The bee-bird and the aloe-flower. The bee-bird is the spotted fly-catcher, so called from its catching bees. The aloe belongs to a genus of evergreen plants. Its blossom is symbolical among the Mohammedans. 798. Buonarroti's brow. Michael Angelo Buonarroti. NOTBS. 165 SAUL. The account of the strange relation which existed between Saul and David is contained in 1 Samuel xvi. 14 fol. : " But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. And Saul's servants said unto him, ' Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee. Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man who is a cunning player on an harp : and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.' And Saul said unto his servants, ' Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me.' Then answered one of the servants, and said, ' Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Beth-lehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him.' Wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse and said, ' Send me David thy son, which is with the sheep.' And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul. And David came to Saul and stood before him : and he loved him greatly; and he became his armor- bearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, ' Let David, I pray thee, stand before me ; for he hath found favor in my sight.' And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." The first nine sections or strophes of Saul were pub- lished in No. VII. of Bells and Poinegranates, in 1845. 1 66 NOTES. The last ten sections were added, and the whole poem published in Men and Women, in 1855. The first version was printed in short lines, three feet in one and two in the next. But when the revision was made, it was printed in the more suitable and dignified penta- meter. The various verbal changes are specified in the Notes. David's song to Saul is divided into two great parts. The first seven strophes are mere repetition of music and words with which Saul has long been familiar. The senses — almost extinct in the long fast and agony — must be called back by well-known tones. So we have I. The charms which the brutes know: {a) To the sheep. (b) " " quail. (