The ecstasy-dilated eye,
Not uncharged with tears that ran
Upward from his heart of man;
By the cheek, from hour to hour,
Kindled bright or sunken wan
With a sense of lonely power;
By the brow uplifted higher
Than others, for more low declining
By the lip which words of fire
Overboiling have burned white
While they gave the nations light:
Ay, in every time and place
Ye may know the poet’s face
By the shade or shining.
VIII.
‘Neath a golden cloud he stands,
Spreading his impassioned hands.
“O God’s Earth!” he saith, “the sign
From the Father-soul to mine
Of all beauteous mysteries,
Of all perfect images
Which, divine in His divine,
In my human only are
Very excellent and fair!
Think not, Earth, that I would raise
Weary forehead in thy praise,
(Weary, that I cannot go
Farther from thy region low,)
If were struck no richer meanings
From thee than thyself. The leaning
Of the close trees o’er the brim
Of a sunshine-haunted stream
Have a sound beneath their leaves,
Not of wind, not of wind,
Which the poet’s voice achieves:
The faint mountains, heaped behind,
Have a falling on their tops,
Not of dew, not of dew,
Which the poet’s fancy drops:
Viewless things his eyes can view
Driftings of his dream do light
All the skies by day and night,
And the seas that deepest roll
Carry murmurs of his soul.
‘Earth, I praise thee! praise thou me!
God perfecteth his creation
With this recipient poet-passion,
And makes the beautiful to be.
I praise thee, O beloved sign,
From the God-soul unto mine!
Praise me, that I cast on thee
The cunning sweet interpretation,
The help and glory and dilation
Of mine immortality!”
IX.
There was silence. None did dare
To use again the spoken air
Of that far-charming voice, until
A Christian resting on the hill,
With a thoughtful smile subdued
(Seeming learnt in solitude)
Which a weeper might have viewed
Without new tears, did softly say,
And looked up unto heaven alway
While he praised the Earth —
“O Earth,
I count the praises thou art worth,
By thy waves that move aloud,
By thy hills against the cloud,
By thy valleys warm and green,
By the copses’ elms between,
By their birds which, like a sprite
Scattered by a strong delight
Into fragments musical,
Stir and sing in every bush;
By thy silver founts that fall,
As if to entice the stars at night
To thine heart; by grass and rush,
And little weeds the children pull,
Mistook for flowers!
— Oh, beautiful
Art thou, Earth, albeit worse
Than in heaven is called good!
Good to us, that we may know
Meekly from thy good to go;
While the holy, crying Blood
Puts its music kind and low
‘Twixt such ears as are not dull,
And thine ancient curse!
X.
“Praised be the mosses soft
In thy forest pathways oft,
And the thorns, which make us think
Of the thornless river-brink
Where the ransomed tread:
Praised be thy sunny gleams,
And the storm, that worketh dreams
Of calm unfinished:
Praised be thine active days,
And thy night-time’s solemn need,
When in God’s dear book we read
No night shall be therein:
Praised be thy dwellings warm
By household faggot’s cheerful blaze,
Where, to hear of pardoned sin,
Pauseth oft the merry din,
Save the babe’s upon the arm
Who croweth to the crackling wood:
Yea, and, better understood,
Praised be thy dwellings cold,
Hid beneath the churchyard mould,
Where the bodies of the saints
Separate from earthly taints
Lie asleep, in blessing bound,
Waiting for the trumpet’s sound
To free them into blessing; — none
Weeping more beneath the sun,
Though dangerous words of human love
Be graven very near, above.
XI.
“Earth, we Christians praise thee thus,
Even for the change that comes
With a grief from thee to us:
For thy cradles and thy tombs,
For the pleasant corn and wine
And summer-heat; and also for
The frost upon the sycamore
And hail upon the vine!”
THE VIRGIN MARY TO THE CHILD JESUS.
But see the Virgin blest
Hath laid her babe to rest.
MILTON’S Hymn on the Nativity.
I.
Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One!
My flesh, my Lord! — what name? I do not know
A name that seemeth not too high or low,
Too far from me or heaven:
My Jesus, that is best! that word being given
By the majestic angel whose command
Was softly as a man’s beseeching said,
When I and all the earth appeared to stand
In the great overflow
Of light celestial from his wings and head.
Sleep, sleep, my saving One!
II.
And art Thou come for saving, baby-browed
And speechless Being — art Thou come for saving?
The palm that grows beside our door is bowed
By treadings of the low wind from the south,
A restless shadow through the chamber waving:
Upon its bough a bird sings in the sun,
But Thou, with that close slumber on Thy mouth,
Dost seem of wind and sun already weary.
Art come for saving, O my weary One?
III.
Perchance this sleep that shutteth out the dreary
Earth-sounds and motions, opens on Thy soul
High dreams on fire with God;
High songs that make the pathways where they roll
More bright than stars do theirs; and visions new
Of Thine eternal Nature’s old abode.
Suffer this mother’s kiss,
Best thing that earthly is,
To glide the music and the glory through,
Nor narrow in Thy dream the broad upliftings
Of any seraph wing.
Thus noiseless, thus. Sleep, sleep my dreaming One!
IV.
The slumber of His lips meseems to run
Through my lips to mine heart, to all its shiftings
Of sensual life, bringing contrariousness
In a great calm. I feel I could lie down
As Moses did, and die,[7] — and then live most.
I am ‘ware of you, heavenly Presences,
That stand with your peculiar light unlost,
Each forehead with a high thought for a crown,
Unsunned i’ the sunshine! I
am ‘ware. Ye throw
No shade against the wall! How motionless
Ye round me with your living statuary,
While through your whiteness, in and outwardly,
Continual thoughts of God appear to go,
Like light’s soul in itself. I bear, I bear
To look upon the dropt lids of your eyes,
Though their external shining testifies
To that beatitude within which were
Enough to blast an eagle at his sun:
I fall not on my sad clay face before ye, —
I look on His. I know
My spirit which dilateth with the woe
Of His mortality,
May well contain your glory.
Yea, drop your lids more low.
Ye are but fellow-worshippers with me!
Sleep, sleep, my worshipped One!
V.
We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem;
The dumb kine from their fodder turning them,
Softened their horned faces
To almost human gazes
Toward the newly Born:
The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks
Brought visionary looks,
As yet in their astonied hearing rung
The strange sweet angel-tongue:
The magi of the East, in sandals worn,
Knelt reverent, sweeping round,
With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground,
The incense, myrrh and gold
These baby hands were impotent to hold:
So let all earthlies and celestials wait
Upon Thy royal state.
Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!
VI.
I am not proud — meek angels, ye invest
New meeknesses to hear such utterance rest
On mortal lips,— “I am not proud” — not proud!
Albeit in my flesh God sent His Son,
Albeit over Him my head is bowed
As others bow before Him, still mine heart
Bows lower than their knees. O centuries
That roll in vision your futurities
My future grave athwart, —
Whose murmurs seem to reach me while I keep
Watch o’er this sleep, —
Say of me as the Heavenly said— “Thou art
The blessedest of women!” — blessedest,
Not holiest, not noblest, no high name
Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame
When I sit meek in heaven!
For me, for me,
God knows that I am feeble like the rest!
I often wandered forth, more child than maiden
Among the midnight hills of Galilee
Whose summits looked heaven-laden,
Listening to silence as it seemed to be
God’s voice, so soft yet strong, so fain to press
Upon my heart as heaven did on the height,
And waken up its shadows by a light,
And show its vileness by a holiness.
Then I knelt down most silent like the night,
Too self-renounced for fears,
Raising my small face to the boundless blue
Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears:
God heard them falling after, with His dew.
VII.
So, seeing my corruption, can I see
This Incorruptible now born of me,
This fair new Innocence no sun did chance
To shine on, (for even Adam was no child,)
Created from my nature all defiled,
This mystery, from out mine ignorance, —
Nor feel the blindness, stain, corruption, more
Than others do, or I did heretofore?
Can hands wherein such burden pure has been,
Not open with the cry “unclean, unclean,”
More oft than any else beneath the skies?
Ah King, ah, Christ, ah son!
The kine, the shepherds, the abased wise
Must all less lowly wait
Than I, upon Thy state.
Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!
VIII.
Art Thou a King, then? Come, His universe,
Come, crown me Him a King!
Pluck rays from all such stars as never fling
Their light where fell a curse,
And make a crowning for this kingly brow! —
What is my word? Each empyreal star
Sits in a sphere afar
In shining ambuscade:
The child-brow, crowned by none,
Keeps its unchildlike shade.
Sleep, sleep, my crownless One!
IX.
Unchildlike shade! No other babe doth wear
An aspect very sorrowful, as Thou.
No small babe-smiles my watching heart has seen
To float like speech the speechless lips between,
No dovelike cooing in the golden air,
No quick short joys of leaping babyhood.
Alas, our earthly good
In heaven thought evil, seems too good for Thee;
Yet, sleep, my weary One!
X.
And then the drear sharp tongue of prophecy,
With the dread sense of things which shall be done,
Doth smite me inly, like a sword: a sword?
That “smites the Shepherd.” Then, I think aloud
The words “despised,”— “rejected,” — every word
Recoiling into darkness as I view
The DARLING on my knee.
Bright angels, — move not — lest ye stir the cloud
Betwixt my soul and His futurity!
I must not die, with mother’s work to do,
And could not live-and see.
XI.
It is enough to bear
This image still and fair,
This holier in sleep
Than a saint at prayer,
This aspect of a child
Who never sinned or smiled;
This Presence in an infant’s face;
This sadness most like love,
This love than love more deep,
This weakness like omnipotence
It is so strong to move.
Awful is this watching place,
Awful what I see from hence —
A king, without regalia,
A God, without the thunder,
A child, without the heart for play;
Ay, a Creator, rent asunder
From His first glory and cast away
On His own world, for me alone
To hold in hands created, crying — SON!
XII.
That tear fell not on Thee,
Beloved, yet thou stirrest in thy slumber!
THOU, stirring not for glad sounds out of number
Which through the vibratory palm-trees run
From summer-wind and bird,
So quickly hast thou heard
A tear fall silently?
Wak’st thou, O loving One? —
AN ISLAND.
All goeth but Goddis will. — OLD POET.
I.
My dream is of an island-place
Which distant seas keep lonely,
A little island on whose face
The stars are watchers only:
Those bright still stars! they need not seem
Brighter or stiller in my dream.
II.
An island full of hills and dells,
All rumpled and uneven
With green recesses, sudden swells,
And odorous valleys driven
So deep and straight that always there
The wind is cradled to soft air.
III.
Hills running up to heaven for light
Through woods that half-way ran,
As if the wild earth mimicked right
The wilder heart of man:
Only it shall be greener far
IV.
More like, perhaps, that mountain piece
Of Dante’s paradise,
Disrupt to an hundred hills like these,
In falling from the skies;
Bringing within it, all the roots
Of heavenly trees and flowers and fruits:
V.
For — saving where the grey rocks strike
Their javelins up the azure,
Or where deep fissures miser-like
Hoard up some fountain treasure,
(And e’en in them, stoop down and hear,
Leaf sounds with water in your ear, — )
VI.
The place is all awave with trees,
Limes, myrtles purple-beaded,
Acacias having drunk the lees
Of the night-dew, faint-headed,
And wan grey olive-woods which seem
The fittest foliage for a dream.
VII.
Trees, trees on all sides! they combine
Their plumy shades to throw,
Through whose clear fruit and blossom fine
Whene’er the sun may go,
The ground beneath he deeply stains,
As passing through cathedral panes.
VIII.
But little needs this earth of ours
That shining from above her,
When many Pleiades of flowers
(Not one lost) star her over,
The rays of their unnumbered hues
Being all refracted by the dews.
IX.
Wide-petalled plants that boldly drink
The Amreeta of the sky,
Shut bells that dull with rapture sink,
And lolling buds, half shy;
I cannot count them, but between
Is room for grass and mosses green,
X.
And brooks, that glass in different strengths
All colours in disorder,
Or, gathering up their silver lengths
Beside their winding border,
Sleep, haunted through the slumber hidden,
By lilies white as dreams in Eden.
XI.
Nor think each arched tree with each
Too closely interlaces
To admit of vistas out of reach,
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 53