  CHRISTMAS-EVE.Between Christmas-Eve and Easter-Morn lies the earth history of the Incarnate Son of God. Into the shadows of our world He came; and, after a brief night amid its darkness, rose again into the light of heaven. These titles then may well include the whole substance of Christianity. Christmas suggests the thought of heaven come down to earth; Easter, of earth raised up to heaven. “Christmas-Eve” leads naturally to the contemplation of the Christian Faith; “Easter-Day,” to the contemplation of the Christian Life. Each poem turns on an impressive natural phenomenon which suggests the blending of heaven and earth—the one, of the night, a lunar rainbow; the other, of the dawn, the aurora borealis. The speaker (who is the same throughout the former poem) begins his Christmas-Eve experiences with the flock assembling in “Zion Chapel,” a congregation of rude, unlettered people, worshipping with heart and soul indeed, but with little mind and less taste. It is not from choice that he is there. It is a stormy night of wind and rain, from which he has taken shelter in the “lath and plaster entry” of the little meeting house. I. ***** 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 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; 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;— 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, And meet the party thus presided, “Mount Zion” with Love-lane at the back of it, They front you as little disconcerted And her wicked people made to mind him, Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him. In the same light and humorous, half irreverent style, he proceeds to a somewhat detailed description of the people and their uncouth worship—not altogether a caricature, but evidently wanting in that sympathy with the good at the heart of it, the thought of which was afterwards so strongly borne in upon his soul. So, he “very soon had enough of it,” and gladly “flung out of the little chapel” “into the fresh night air again.” 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, 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:— Through its fissures you got hints Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassy 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; Besides, you go gently all the way uphill I stooped under and soon felt better; 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 coloured the whole distinctly; But alas for the excellent earnestness, And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly, 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, 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; 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 wherefore be harsh on a single case? After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, Does the selfsame weary thing take place? The same endeavour 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 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, 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. Then follows a long and rather abstruse passage, leading up to the following lofty and inspiring conclusion:— So, gazing up, in my youth, at love As seen through power, ever above 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 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; 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, 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, —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, The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death’s repose of it. And I shall behold thee, face to face, O God, and in thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast thou! I 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, 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! The lunar rainbow, so wonderfully described in the next stanza, is the occasion and point of departure of the poetic vision or ecstasy which occupies the remainder of the poem— 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, 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 colours chorded, Which still, in the rising, were compressed, Until at last they coalesced, 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, Fainter, flushier and flightier,— Rapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc? He did see One emerging from the glory— 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 recognise. I felt terror, no surprise; My mind filled with the cataract, At one bound of the mighty fact. “I remember, he did say “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, That I saw his very vesture’s hem. Then rushed the blood black, 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!” The confession of his sin in despising His friends in the little chapel is speedily followed by a gracious token of forgiveness:— IX. ***** The whole face turned upon me full. And I spread myself beneath it, As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it In the cleansing sun, his wool,— Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some defiled, discoloured web— So lay I, saturate with brightness. His sin thus purged (how exquisitely wrought out the lovely simile of the sun-cleansed wool!), he is “caught up in the whirl and drift of the vesture’s amplitude,” and thus clinging to the garment’s hem, is carried across land and sea—to a scene so complete a contrast to the one he has just left that he is confused, and some time elapses before he discovers that he is in front of St. Peter’s at Rome:— 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? 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 the colonnade With arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race To the breast of ... what is it, yon building, Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, 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, And wondered how these fountains play, Growing up eternally Each to a musical water-tree, Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, To the granite layers underneath. There follows a description of the worship in the great cathedral—not now, as before, unsympathetic and merely critical, but giving evidence of the liveliest appreciation of the feelings of the intelligent and devout ritualist, as in the following passage:— 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, 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 for evermore!” Still he cannot enter into it. He is left outside the door. Distracted with conflicting emotions, his reason repelled by the superstition, his spirit attracted by the lofty devotion which he discovers at the heart of the too gorgeous ritual—he cannot make up his mind whether he should join them for the one reason, or shun them for the other— XI. ***** Though Rome’s gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies: And he, whose eye detects a spark 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 Open to reach him: I, a man Able to mark where faith began 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 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! I see the error; but above The scope of error, see the love.— Oh, love of those first Christian days! —Fanned so soon into a blaze, 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. The remainder of the stanza is taken up with a most eloquent, but somewhat difficult passage, illustrating the triumph of the new Love over the old Culture. In the following stanza he makes up his mind that he “will feast his love, then depart elsewhere, that his intellect may find its share”; so the next transition, by the same mode of rapture, is to a German University. What he sees there provokes again his latent humour:— XIV. Alone! I am left alone once more— (Save for the garment’s extreme fold Abandoned still to bless my hold) 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, Frankfort, Or GÖttingen, I have to thank for ’t? It may be GÖttingen,—most likely. Through the open door I catch obliquely Glimpses of a lecture-hall; And not a bad assembly neither, Ranged decent and symmetrical Which, holding still by the vesture’s hem, I also resolve to see with them, Cautious this time how I suffer to slip The chance of joining in fellowship 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. 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! 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, And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence He pushed back higher his spectacles, Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells, And giving his head of hair—a hake Of undressed tow, for colour 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. The stanza which follows gives an account of the discourse, which is a learned discussion of “this Myth of Christ,” “which, when reason had strained and abated it of foreign matter, left, for residuum, a man!—a right true man,” but nothing more. He has no difficulty in determining his duty here (“this time He would not bid me enter.”) The religious atmosphere in which Papist and Dissenter live may be far from pure, in the one case for one reason, and in the other for the opposite; but either of the two is immeasurably better than the vacuum left when the Critic has done his work of destruction. Then follows a long argument to show the unreasonableness of denying the divinity of Christ, only a part of which can be given here. XVI. ***** 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, Impregnating its pristine clarity, —One, by his daily fare’s vulgarity, Its gust of broken meat and garlic; To turn the frankincense’s fuming And vapours 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; 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 (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that’s left) Elsewhere by voices manifold; 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, 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 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, 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 GÖttingen, Compose Christ’s flock! They, you and I, Are sheep of a good man! Reasonings that grow out of the main discussion are continued throughout stanzas 17-20, till once more he is caught up and carried back to his original starting point. The remainder of the poem can now be given without interruption, and will be readily understood. (The exquisite development of the simile of the cup and the water will be specially noted, as also the charitable wish so strikingly expressed on behalf of the poor Professor, that before the end comes he may know Christ as “the God of salvation.”) 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, Into the little chapel again. 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. There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place; Yet my nearest neighbour’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, Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number, And woke up now at the tenth and lastly. But again, could such 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 waive what’s pedagogic, The subject-matter itself lacks logic: 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! 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, despatched 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 “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! 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, 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 earthern vessel, holding treasure, Which lies as safe in a golden ewer; 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 to-day’s buffoonery, Of posturings and petticoatings, Beside his Bourbon bully’s gloatings In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery! Nor may the Professor forego its peace 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,— 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 neighbours 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,— 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 truth shine out, stand ever before us! I put up pencil and join chorus 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.As Christmas-Eve has suggested the subject of the Christian Faith, Easter-Day gives occasion to a discussion concerning the Christian Life—the life of those who are “risen with Christ.” The poem is in substance a conversation or discussion between two persons, one of whom (a thorough Christian) finds it very hard, while the other (who takes a much lower and more common-place view of spiritual things) thinks it quite easy, to be a Christian. It is not, however, in the form of a conversation. As usual in Browning’s work, one speaks, stating his own views and quoting the other’s, which are therefore distinguished from his own (except when he quotes, as he sometimes does, from himself) by quotation marks. The argument is too abstruse to be followed out in all its ramifications; but enough of it can be given to render quite intelligible the extracts from it which we find it possible to give. The opening sentence will give the theme:— 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. After some preliminary discussion about faith in its relation to life, the easy-going friend takes this position:— ***** “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, “Slighting the stupid joys of sense, “In patient hope that, ten years hence, “‘Somewhat completer,’ he may say, “‘My list of coleoptera!’ “While just the other who most laughs “At him, above all epitaphs “Aspires to have his tomb describe “Himself as sole among the tribe “Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed “A Grignon with the Regent’s crest. “So that, subduing, as you want, “Whatever stands predominant “Among my earthly appetites “For tastes and smells and sounds and sights, “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.” “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! To which the other replies by reproaching him for ingratitude to God, who really asks us to give up nothing that is good, but only to observe such moderation in our pleasures that life is all the more enjoyable, while sorrow almost disappears, transfigured in the light of love. This answer has such a ring of the true metal in it, that the speaker begins his rejoinder with the question, “Do you say this, or I?” and then proceeds (in a passage of wonderful power) to expose the superficiality of the view he is endeavouring to support. The counsel was, to choose by all means the safe side, by giving up everything as literally as did the martyrs in the early days of persecution; at which a shudder of doubt comes over him, and he answers (note the very remarkable illustration of the moles and the grasshoppers):— X. ***** If after all we should mistake, And so renounce life for the sake Our friends we jeered at, send the jeer Back to ourselves with good effect— “There were my beetles to collect! “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 ’twere only hope,— 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 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 To be a Christian! His friend now reproaches him with the thanklessness of the task he is undertaking, in trying to so little purpose to disturb the peace of a man who has no such high-flown views of duty; whereupon he relates to him a wonderful experience he had on Easter-morn three years before:— XIV. I commence By trying to inform you, whence As now, I sit up, watch, till light, Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs, Give, through my window-pane, grey proofs 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. 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 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, 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?” 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 recognise Sudden the end. For suddenly It comes; the dreadfulness must be In that; all warrants the belief— “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 For waking now. ***** The next stanza gives the famous description of the fiery aurora, when even “the south firmament with north-fire did its wings refledge!” (Compare description of lunar rainbow in “Christmas-Eve.”) He feels sure that his wish is realized, and the Judgment Day has come! ***** 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 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,— 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, Regorged, and out it surging flew Furiously, and night writhed inflamed, 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, 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 retrocede Was too late now. “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. The choice was made; And naked and disguiseless stayed, And unevadable, the fact. My brain held ne’ertheless compact Its senses, nor my heart declined Its office; rather, both combined To help me in this juncture. I Gave boldness: since my life had end 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 “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, “Endeavouring to reconcile “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?” XVII. A final belch of fire like blood, Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy, 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.” As in “Christmas-Eve,” the question rises of a Presence in the awful scene. XIX. ***** What if, ’twixt skies And prostrate earth, he should surprise The imaged vapour, 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,— I saw him. One magnific pall Mantled in massive fold and fall His head, 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 With the fulfilment of decree. Who fell before his feet, a mass, No man now. Then follows the Sentence, excluding him from the heaven of spirit, and leaving him to the world of sense, hopeless for ever of anything higher—a sentence which seemed to him at first to be rather a reward than a punishment, as he thought of “earth’s resources—vast exhaustless beauty, endless change of wonder!” Even a fern-leaf a museum in itself! The answer of the Voice to this shallow thought leads us into the very loftiest regions of the imagination, suggesting views of the future of the redeemed which make the soul thrill with eager expectancy— XXIV. Then the Voice, “Welcome so to rate “The arras-folds that variegate “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; “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! “Of beauty in its plenitude: “But since the pledge sufficed thy mood, “Retain it! plenitude be theirs “Who looked above!” At this answer “sharp despairs shot through” him, at the thought of what he had missed; but on reflection he finds comfort in the prospect of the possibilities of Art. Again the inexorable voice is heard, pronouncing loss unspeakable. Even if he could be a Michelangelo (Buonarroti), it would be only the initial earthly stage of his development that was possible for him. (The whole passage is magnificent; but perhaps the exquisitely wrought-out illustration of the lizard in its narrow rock-chamber will be most enjoyed.) XXVI. ***** “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 “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? “Does it confound thee,—this first page “Emblazoning man’s heritage?— “Can this alone absorb thy sight, “As pages were not infinite,— “Like the omnipotence which tasks “Itself, to furnish all that asks “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! “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, “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: “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 “In on him at the chisel’s stroke,— “So, in God’s eye, the earth’s first stuff “Was, neither more nor less, enough “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? “That chambered rock, the lizard’s world, “Your easy mallet’s blow has hurled “To nothingness for ever; 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, “As paradise gives proof. Deride “Their choice now, thou who sit’st outside!” The poem proceeds in the same lofty strain, till—humbled to the dust at the thought of the unutterable folly of his choice, especially in view of the love of God expressed on Calvary, a love which he had slighted in the happy days gone by—he presents the touching plea of the 31st stanza, the result of which appears in what follows, spoken of by Professor Kirkman of Cambridge, as “the splendid consummation of Easter-Day so closely resembling the well-known crisis in Faust.” XXXI. And I cowered deprecatingly— “Thou Love of God! Or let me die, “Or grant what shall seem heaven almost! “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, “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 As the whole God within his eyes Embraced me. XXXIII. When I lived again, The day was breaking,—the grey 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 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! Still every now and then my head Raised glad, sinks mournful—all grows drear 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? AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT. THE CHAUTAUQUA PRESS. In order to create a permanent library of useful and standard books for the homes of our C. L. S. C. members, and to reduce the expense of the Seal courses, we have organized the Chautauqua Press. The first issues of the Chautauqua Press will be “The Garnet Series,” four volumes in the general line of the “required readings” for the coming year, as follows:— READINGS FROM RUSKIN. With an Introduction by H. A. Beers, Professor of English Literature in Yale College. This volume contains chapters from Ruskin on “The Poetry of Architecture,” “The Cottage—English, French, and Italian,” “The Villa—Italian,” and “St. Mark’s,” from “Stones of Venice.” READINGS FROM MACAULAY. With an Introduction by Donald G. Mitchell (“Ik Marvel”). This volume contains Lord Macaulay’s Essays on “Dante,” “Petrarch,” and “Machiavelli,” “Lays of Ancient Rome,” and “Pompeii.” ART, AND THE FORMATION OF TASTE. By LUCY CRANE. With an Introduction by Charles G. Whiting of “The Springfield [Mass.] Republican.” This volume contains lectures on “Decorative Art, Form, Color, Dress, and Needlework,” “Fine Arts,” “Sculpture,” “Architecture,” “Painting.” THE LIFE AND WORKS OF MICHAEL ANGELO. By R. DUPPA [Bohn’s Edition]. With an Introduction by Charles G. Whiting. Any graduate or undergraduate of the C. L. S. C. reading the four volumes of the Chautauqua Library Garnet Series will be entitled to the new Garnet Seal (University Seal) on his diploma. These volumes are designed as much for the general market as for members of the C. L. S. C., and will form the nucleus of a valuable library of standard literature. PRICE OF EACH VOLUME, 75 CENTS. OR $3 FOR THE SET, ENCLOSED IN NEAT BOX. Address CHAUTAUQUA PRESS, 117 Franklin Street, Boston, Mass. Transcriber’s note: Page vi, ‘implicity’ changed to ‘implicitly,’ “explicitly or implicitly affirmed” Page 13, apostrophe inserted before ‘Twas,’ “’Twas moonset at starting” Page 15, single quote changed to double quote before ‘How,’ ““How they’ll greet us!” Page 42, comma changed to full stop after ‘chivalry,’ “of chivalry. In those days” Page 50, double quote inserted after ‘awhile,’ “since, and lost awhile.”” Page 51, single quote changed to double quote before ‘Touch,’ ““Touch him ne’er so” Page 54, full stop inserted after ‘shone,’ “his presence shone.” Page 61, full stop inserted after ‘sight,’ “soul was in sight.” Page 67, double quote inserted after ‘sound,’ “new sense was sound.”” Page 77, full stop inserted after ‘end,’ “uninterruptedly to the end.” Page 81, single quote changed to double quote before ‘Here,’ ““Here, the creature” Page 108, quoting regularized in stanza VIII. Page 122, single quote inserted before ‘My,’ “‘My list of coleoptera!” Page 133, ‘omipotence’ changed to ‘omnipotence,’ “Like the omnipotence which” |
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