Something of life in spirit and blood,
Something of nature’s fair and good:
And while it sounded, those great souls
Did thrill as racers at the goals
And burn in all their aureoles;
But she the lady, as vapour-bound,
Stood calmly in the joy of sound,
Like Nature with the showers around:
And when it ceased, the blood which fell
Again, alone grew audible,
Tolling the silence as a bell.
The sovran angel lifted high
His hand, and spake out sovranly:
“Tried poets, hearken and reply!
“Give me true answers. If we grant
That not to suffer, is to want
The conscience of the jubilant, —
“If ignorance of anguish is
But ignorance, and mortals miss
Far prospects, by a level bliss, —
“If, as two colours must be viewed
In a visible image, mortals should
Need good and evil, to see good, —
“If to speak nobly, comprehends
To feel profoundly, — if the ends
Of power and suffering, Nature blends, —
“If poets on the tripod must
Writhe like the Pythian to make just
Their oracles and merit trust, —
“If every vatic word that sweeps
To change the world must pale their lips
And leave their own souls in eclipse, —
“If to search deep the universe
Must pierce the searcher with the curse,
Because that bolt (in man’s reverse)
“Was shot to the heart o’ the wood and lies
Wedged deepest in the best, — if eyes
That look for visions and surprise
“From influent angels, must shut down
Their eyelids first to sun and moon,
The head asleep upon a stone, —
“If ONE who did redeem you back,
By His own loss, from final wrack,
Did consecrate by touch and track
“Those temporal sorrows till the taste
Of brackish waters of the waste
Is salt with tears He dropt too fast, —
“If all the crowns of earth must wound
With prickings of the thorns He found, —
If saddest sighs swell sweetest sound, —
“What say ye unto this? — refuse
This baptism in salt water? — choose
Calm breasts, mute lips, and labour loose?
“Or, O ye gifted givers! ye
Who give your liberal hearts to me
To make the world this harmony,
“Are ye resigned that they be spent
To such world’s help?”
The Spirits bent
Their awful brows and said “Content.”
Content! it sounded like Amen
Said by a choir of mourning men;
An affirmation full of pain
And patience, — ay, of glorying
And adoration, as a king
Might seal an oath for governing.
Then said the angel — and his face
Lightened abroad until the place
Grew larger for a moment’s space, —
The long aisles flashing out in light,
And nave and transept, columns white
And arches crossed, being clear to sight
As if the roof were off and all
Stood in the noon-sun,— “Lo, I call
To other hearts as liberal.
“This pedal strikes out in the air:
My instrument has room to bear
Still fuller strains and perfecter.
“Herein is room, and shall be room
While Time lasts, for new hearts to come
Consummating while they consume.
“What living man will bring a gift
Of his own heart and help to lift
The tune? — The race is to the swift.”
So asked the angel. Straight the while,
A company came up the aisle
With measured step and sorted smile;
Cleaving the incense-clouds that rise,
With winking unaccustomed eyes
And love-locks smelling sweet of spice.
One bore his head above the rest
As if the world were dispossessed,
And one did pillow chin on breast,
Right languid, an as he should faint;
One shook his curls across his paint
And moralized on worldly taint;
One, slanting up his face, did wink
The salt rheum to the eyelid’s brink,
To think — O gods! or — not to think.
Some trod out stealthily and slow,
As if the sun would fall in snow
If they walked to instead of fro;
And some, with conscious ambling free,
Did shake their bells right daintily
On hand and foot, for harmony;
And some, composing sudden sighs
In attitudes of point-device,
Rehearsed impromptu agonies.
And when this company drew near
The spirits crowned, it might appear
Submitted to a ghastly fear;
As a sane eye in master-passion
Constrains a maniac to the fashion
Of hideous maniac imitation
In the least geste — the dropping low
O’ the lid, the wrinkling of the brow,
Exaggerate with mock and mow, —
So mastered was that company
By the crowned vision utterly,
Swayed to a maniac mockery.
One dulled his eyeballs, as they ached
With Homer’s forehead, though he lacked
An inch of any; and one racked
His lower lip with restless tooth,
As Pindar’s rushing words forsooth
Were pent behind it; one his smooth
Pink cheeks did rumple passionate
Like AEschylus, and tried to prate
On trolling tongue of fate and fate;
One set her eyes like Sappho’s — or
Any light woman’s; one forbore
Like Dante, or any man as poor
In mirth, to let a smile undo
His hard-shut lips; and one that drew
Sour humours from his mother, blew
His sunken cheeks out to the size
Of most unnatural jollities,
Because Anacreon looked jest-wise;
So with the rest: it was a sight
A great world-laughter would requite,
Or great world-wrath, with equal right
Out came a speaker from that crowd
To speak for all, in sleek and proud
Exordial periods, while he bowed
His knee before the angel— “Thus,
O angel who hast called for us,
We bring thee service emulous,
“Fit service from sufficient soul,
Hand-service to receive world’s dole,
Lip-service in world’s ear to roll
“Adjusted concords soft enow
To hear the wine-cups passing, through,
And not too grave to spoil the show:
“Thou, certes, when thou askest more,
O sapient angel, leanest o’er
The window-sill of metaphor.
“To give our hearts up? fie! that rage
Barbaric antedates the age;
It is not done on any stage.
“Because your scald or gleeman went
With seven or nine-stringed instrument
Upon his back, — must ours be bent?
“We are not pilgrims, by your leave;
No, nor yet martyrs; if we grieve,
It is to rhyme to — summer eve:
“And if we labour, it sh
all be
As suiteth best with our degree,
In after-dinner reverie.”
More yet that speaker would have said,
Poising between his smiles fair-fed
Each separate phrase till finished;
But all the foreheads of those born
And dead true poets flashed with scorn
Betwixt the bay leaves round them worn,
Ay, jetted such brave fire that they,
The new-come, shrank and paled away
Like leaden ashes when the day
Strikes on the hearth. A spirit-blast,
A presence known by power, at last
Took them up mutely: they had passed.
And he our pilgrim-poet saw
Only their places, in deep awe,
What time the angel’s smile did draw
His gazing upward. Smiling on,
The angel in the angel shone,
Revealing glory in benison;
Till, ripened in the light which shut
The poet in, his spirit mute
Dropped sudden as a perfect fruit;
He fell before the angel’s feet,
Saying, “If what is true is sweet,
In something I may compass it:
“For, where my worthiness is poor,
My will stands richly at the door
To pay shortcomings evermore.
“Accept me therefore: not for price
And not for pride my sacrifice
Is tendered, for my soul is nice
“And will beat down those dusty seeds
Of bearded corn if she succeeds
In soaring while the covey feeds.
“I soar, I am drawn up like the lark
To its white cloud — so high my mark,
Albeit my wing is small and dark.
“I ask no wages, seek no fame:
Sew me, for shroud round face and name,
God’s banner of the oriflamme.
“I only would have leave to loose
(In tears and blood if so He choose)
Mine inward music out to use:
“I only would be spent — in pain
And loss, perchance, but not in vain —
Upon the sweetness of that strain;
“Only project beyond the bound
Of mine own life, so lost and found,
My voice, and live on in its sound;
“Only embrace and be embraced
By fiery ends, whereby to waste,
And light God’s future with my past.”
The angel’s smile grew more divine,
The mortal speaking; ay, its shine
Swelled fuller, like a choir-note fine,
Till the broad glory round his brow
Did vibrate with the light below;
But what he said I do not know.
Nor know I if the man who prayed,
Rose up accepted, unforbade,
From the church-floor where he was laid, —
Nor if a listening life did run
Through the king-poets, one by one
Rejoicing in a worthy son:
My soul, which might have seen, grew blind
By what it looked on: I can find
No certain count of things behind.
I saw alone, dim, white and grand
As in a dream, the angel’s hand
Stretched forth in gesture of command
Straight through the haze. And so, as erst,
A strain more noble than the first
Mused in the organ, and outburst:
With giant march from floor to roof
Rose the full notes, now parted off
In pauses massively aloof
Like measured thunders, now rejoined
In concords of mysterious kind
Which fused together sense and mind,
Now flashing sharp on sharp along
Exultant in a mounting throng,
Now dying off to a low song
Fed upon minors, wavelike sounds
Re-eddying into silver rounds,
Enlarging liberty with bounds:
And every rhythm that seemed to close
Survived in confluent underflows
Symphonious with the next that rose.
Thus the whole strain being multiplied
And greatened, with its glorified
Wings shot abroad from side to side,
Waved backward (as a wind might wave
A Brocken mist and with as brave
Wild roaring) arch and architrave,
Aisle, transept, column, marble wall, —
Then swelling outward, prodigal
Of aspiration beyond thrall,
Soared, and drew up with it the whole
Of this said vision, as a soul
Is raised by a thought. And as a scroll
Of bright devices is unrolled
Still upward with a gradual gold,
So rose the vision manifold,
Angel and organ, and the round
Of spirits, solemnized and crowned;
While the freed clouds of incense wound
Ascending, following in their track,
And glimmering faintly like the rack
O’ the moon in her own light cast back.
And as that solemn dream withdrew,
The lady’s kiss did fall anew
Cold on the poet’s brow as dew.
And that same kiss which bound him first
Beyond the senses, now reversed
Its own law and most subtly pierced
His spirit with the sense of things
Sensual and present. Vanishings
Of glory with AEolian wings
Struck him and passed: the lady’s face
Did melt back in the chrysopras
Of the orient morning sky that was
Yet clear of lark and there and so
She melted as a star might do,
Still smiling as she melted slow:
Smiling so slow, he seemed to see
Her smile the last thing, gloriously
Beyond her, far as memory.
Then he looked round: he was alone.
He lay before the breaking sun,
As Jacob at the Bethel stone.
And thought’s entangled skein being wound,
He knew the moorland of his swound,
And the pale pools that smeared the ground;
The far wood-pines like offing ships;
The fourth pool’s yew anear him drips,
World’s cruelty attaints his lips,
And still he tastes it, bitter still;
Through all that glorious possible
He had the sight of present ill.
Yet rising calmly up and slowly
With such a cheer as scorneth folly,
A mild delightsome melancholy,
He journeyed homeward through the wood
And prayed along the solitude
Betwixt the pines, “O God, my God!”
The golden morning’s open flowings
Did sway the trees to murmurous bowings,
In metric chant of blessed poems.
And passing homeward through the wood,
He prayed along the solitude,
“THOU, Poet-God, art great and good!
“And though we must have, and have had
Right reason to be earthly sad,
THOU, Poet-God, art great and glad!”
CONCLUSION.
Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart:
And I was ‘ware of walking down
That same green forest where had gone
The poet-pilgrim. One by one
I traced his footsteps. From the east
A red and tender radiance pressed
Through the near trees, until I guessed
The sun behind shone full and round;
While
up the leafiness profound
A wind scarce old enough for sound
Stood ready to blow on me when
I turned that way, and now and then
The birds sang and brake off again
To shake their pretty feathers dry
Of the dew sliding droppingly
From the leaf-edges and apply
Back to their song: ‘twixt dew and bird
So sweet a silence ministered,
God seemed to use it for a word,
Yet morning souls did leap and run
In all things, as the least had won
A joyous insight of the sun,
And no one looking round the wood
Could help confessing as he stood,
This Poet-God is glad and good.
But hark! a distant sound that grows,
A heaving, sinking of the boughs,
A rustling murmur, not of those,
A breezy noise which is not breeze!
And white-clad children by degrees
Steal out in troops among the trees,
Fair little children morning-bright,
With faces grave yet soft to sight,
Expressive of restrained delight.
Some plucked the palm-boughs within reach,
And others leapt up high to catch
The upper boughs and shake from each
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 38