<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341460" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Door Of Humility</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">ENGLAND <br>We lead the blind by voice and hand,<br>And not by light they cannot see;<br>We are not framed to understand<br>The How and Why of such as He;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But natured only to rejoice<br>At every sound or sign of hope,<br>And, guided by the still small voice,<br>In patience through the darkness grope;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Until our finer sense expands,<br>And we exchange for holier sight<br>The earthly help of voice and hands,<br>And in His light behold the Light.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let there be Light! The self-same Power<br>That out of formless dark and void<br>Endued with life's mysterious dower<br>Planet, and star, and asteroid;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That moved upon the waters' face,<br>And, breathing on them His intent,<br>Divided, and assigned their place<br>To, ocean, air, and firmament;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That bade the land appear, and bring<br>Forth herb and leaf, both fruit and flower,<br>Cattle that graze, and birds that sing,<br>Ordained the sunshine and the shower;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That, moulding man and woman, breathed<br>In them an active soul at birth<br>In His own image, and bequeathed<br>To them dominion over Earth;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That, by whatever is, decreed<br>His Will and Word shall be obeyed,<br>From loftiest star to lowliest seed;-<br>The worm and me He also made.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when, for nuptials of the Spring<br>With Summer, on the vestal thorn<br>The bridal veil hung flowering,<br>A cry was heard, and I was born.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To be by blood and long descent<br>A member of a mighty State,<br>Whose greatness, sea-girt, but unpent<br>By ocean, makes the world more great;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That, ranging limitless, hath won<br>A Rule more wide than that of Rome,<br>And, journeying onward with the sun,<br>In every zone hath found a home;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That, keeping old traditions fast,<br>Still hails the things that are to be,<br>And, firmly rooted in the Past,<br>On Law hath grafted Liberty;-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That is a birthright nobler far<br>Than princely claim or Right Divine<br>From far-off rapine, wanton war,<br>And I could feel this birthright mine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And not the lowliest hand that drives<br>Or share or loom, if so it be<br>Of British strain, but thence derives<br>A patent of nobility.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The guiding of the infant years<br>Onward to good, away from guile,<br>A mother's humanising tears,<br>A father's philosophic smile;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Refining beauty, gentle ways,<br>The admonitions of the wise,<br>The love that watches, helps, and prays,<br>And pities, but doth ne'er despise;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An ancient Faith, abiding hope,<br>The charity that suffers long,<br>But flames with sacred zeal to cope<br>With man's injustice, nature's wrong;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Melodious leisure, learnëd shelf,<br>Discourse of earnest, temperate mind,<br>The playful wit that of itself<br>Flashes, but leaves no wound behind;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The knowledge gleaned from Greece and Rome,<br>From studious Teuton, sprightly Gaul,<br>The lettered page, the mellow tome,<br>And poets' wisdom more than all;-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">These, when no lips severe upbraid,<br>But counsel rather than control,<br>In budding boyhood lend their aid<br>To sensibility of soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, more than mentor, mother, sire,<br>Can lend to shape the future man<br>With help of learning or of lyre,<br>Of ancient rule, or modern plan,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is that which with our breath we bring<br>Into the world, we know not whence,<br>That needs nor care nor fostering,<br>Because an instinct and a sense.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And days and years are all forgot<br>When Nature's aspect, growth, and grace,<br>And veering moods, to me were not<br>The features of the Loved One's face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The cloud whose shadow skims the lake,<br>The shimmering haze of summer noon,<br>The voice of April in the brake,<br>The silence of the mounting moon,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Swaying of bracken on the hill,<br>The murmur of the vagrant stream,<br>These motions of some unseen Will,<br>These babblings of some heavenly dream,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Seemed tokens of divine desire<br>To hold discourse with me, and so<br>To touch my lips with hallowed fire,<br>And tell me things I ought to know.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I gazed and listened, all intent,<br>As to the face and voice of Fate,<br>But what they said, or what they meant,<br>I could surmise not, nor translate.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They did but lure me to unrest,<br>Unanswered questioning, longings vain,<br>As when one scans some palimpsest<br>No erudition can explain;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But left me with a deep distaste<br>For common speech, that still did seem<br>More meaningless than mountain waste,<br>Less human than the far-off stream.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So that a stranger in the land<br>Wherein I moved, where'er I went,<br>I dwelt, whom none could understand,<br>Or exorcise my discontent.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I to them, and they to me<br>Seemed from two different planets come,<br>And, save to flower and wild-bird's glee,<br>My heart was deaf, my soul was dumb.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But slowly dawned a happier time<br>When I began to apprehend,<br>And catch, as in some poet's rhyme,<br>The intimations of a friend;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Nature spake no unknown tongue,<br>But language kindred to my thought,<br>Till everything She said, I sung,<br>In notes unforced, in words unsought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I to Her so closely drew,<br>The seasons round, in mind and mood,<br>I felt at length as if we knew<br>Self-same affection, self-same feud:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That both alike scorned worldly aim,<br>Profit, applause, parade, and pride,<br>Whereby the love of generous fame<br>And worthy deeds grows petrified.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I did as yet not understand<br>Nature is far more vast than I,<br>Deep as the ocean, wide as land,<br>And overarching as the sky;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And but responded to my call,<br>And only felt and fed my need,<br>Because She doth the same for all<br>Who to her pity turn and plead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall man have mind, and Nature none,<br>Shall I, not she, have soul and heart?<br>Nay, rather, if we be not one,<br>Each is of each the counterpart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She too may have within her breast<br>A conscience, if not like to yours,<br>A sense of rightness ill at rest,<br>Long as her waywardness endures.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And hence her thunder, earthquakes, hail,<br>Her levin bolts, her clouds' discharge:<br>She sins upon a larger scale,<br>Because She is herself more large.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hence, too, when She hath pierced with pain<br>The heart of man, and wrecked his years,<br>The pity of the April rain,<br>And late repentance of her tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She is no better, worse, than we;<br>We can but say she seems more great,<br>That half her will, like ours, is free,<br>And half of it is locked in Fate.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor need we fear that we should err<br>Beyond our scope in reasoning thus,-<br>That there must be a God for Her,<br>If that there be a God for us.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The chiming of the Sabbath bell,<br>The silence of the Sabbath fields,<br>Over the hamlet cast a spell<br>To which the gracious spirit yields.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sound is there none of wheel or wain,<br>Husht stands the anvil, husht the forge,<br>No shout is heard in rustic lane,<br>No axe resounds in timbered gorge.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No flail beats time on granary floor,<br>The windmill's rushing wings are stayed,<br>And children's glee rings out no more<br>From hedgerow bank or primrose glade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The big-boned team that firm and slow<br>Draw yoked, are free to couch or stray;<br>The basking covey seem to know<br>None will invade their peace to-day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And speckless swains, and maidens neat,<br>Through rustic porch, down cottage stair,<br>Demurely up the village street<br>Stream onward to the House of Prayer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They kneel as they were taught to kneel<br>In childhood, and demand not why,<br>But, as they chant or answer, feel<br>A vague communion with the sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But when the impetuous mind is spurred<br>To range through epochs great but gone,<br>And, heedless of dogmatic word,<br>With fearless ardour presses on,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Confronting pulpit, sceptre, shrine,<br>With point by Logic beaten out,<br>And, questioning tenets deemed divine<br>With human challenge, human doubt,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hoists Reason's sail, and for the haze<br>Of ocean quits Tradition's shore,<br>Awhile he comes, and kneels, and prays,<br>Then comes and kneels, but prays no more;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And only for the love he bears<br>To those who love him, and who reared<br>His frame to genuflexion, shares<br>In ritual, vain, if still revered.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His Gods are many or are none,<br>Saturn and Mithra, Christ and Jove,<br>Consorting, as the Ages run,<br>With Vestal choir or Pagan drove.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Abiding still by Northern shores,<br>He sees far off on Grecian coast<br>Veiled Aphrodite, but adores<br>Minerva and Apollo most.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beauty of vision, voice, and mind,<br>Enthrall him so, that unto him<br>All Creeds seem true, if he but find<br>Siren, or saint, or seraphim.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And thus once more he dwells apart,<br>His inward self enswathed in mist,<br>Blending with poet's pious heart<br>The dreams of pagan Hedonist.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If Beauty be the Spirit's quest,<br>Its adoration, creed, and shrine,<br>Wherein its restlessness finds rest,<br>And earthly type of the Divine,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Must there for such not somewhere be<br>A blending of all beauteous things<br>In some one form wherein we see<br>The sum of our imaginings?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The smile on mountain's musing brow,<br>Sunrise and sunset, moon and star,<br>Wavelets around the cygnet's prow,<br>Glamour anear and charm afar;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The silence of the silvery pool,<br>Autumn's reserve and Summer's fire,<br>Slow vanishings of Winter's rule<br>To free full voice of April's choir;-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The worshippers of Beauty find<br>In maiden form, and face, and tress;<br>Faint intimations of her mind<br>And undulating loveliness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">X</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bound, runnels, bound, bound on, and flow!<br>Sing, merle and mavis, pair and sing!<br>Gone is the Winter, fled the snow,<br>And all that lives is flushed with Spring.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Harry the woods, young truant folk,<br>For flowers to deck your cottage sills,<br>And, underneath my orchard oak,<br>Cluster, ye golden daffodils!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Unfettered by domestic vow,<br>Cuckoo, proclaim your vagrant loves,<br>And coo upon the self-same bough,<br>Inseparable turtle-doves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Soar, laverock, soar on song to sky,<br>And with the choir of Heaven rejoice!<br>You cannot be more glad than I,<br>Who feel Her gaze, and hear Her voice:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who see Her cheek more crimson glow,<br>And through Her veins love's current stream,<br>And feel a fear She doth but know<br>Is kin to joy and dawning dream.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bound, rivulets, bound, bound on, and flow!<br>Sing, merle and mavis, pair and sing!<br>Gone from the world are want and woe,<br>And I myself am one with Spring.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They err who say that Love is blind,<br>Or, if it be, 'tis but in part,<br>And that, if for fair face it find<br>No counterpart in mind and heart,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It dwells on that which it beholds,<br>Fair fleshly vision void of soul,<br>Deeming, illusioned, this enfolds,<br>Longing's fulfilment, end, and whole.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were such my hapless carnal lot,<br>I too might evanescent bliss<br>Embrace, fierce-fancied, fast forgot,<br>Then leave for some fresh loveliness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But April gaze, and Summer tress,<br>With something of Autumnal thought,<br>In Her seem blent to crown and bless<br>A bond I long in dreams have sought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She looks as though She came to grace<br>The earth, from world less soiled than this,<br>Around her head and virgin face<br>Halo of heavenly holiness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He who hath roamed through various lands,<br>And, wheresoe'er his steps are set,<br>The kindred meaning understands<br>Of spire, and dome, and minaret;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By Roman river, Stamboul's sea,<br>In Peter's or Sophia's shrine,<br>Acknowledges with reverent knee<br>The presence of the One Divine;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who, to the land he loves so well<br>Returning, towards the sunset hour<br>Wends homeward, feels yet stronger spell<br>In lichened roof and grey church-tower;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Round whose foundations, side by side,<br>Sleep hamlet wit and village sage,<br>While loud the blackbird cheers his bride<br>Deep in umbrageous Vicarage.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Was it that sense which some aver<br>Foreshadows Fate it doth not see,<br>That gave unwittingly to Her<br>The name, for ever dear to me,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Borne by that tearful Mother whom,<br>Nigh unto Ostia's shelving sand,<br>Augustine laid in lonely tomb,<br>Ere sailing for his Afric land?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But I at least should have foreseen,<br>When Monica to me had grown<br>Familiar word, that names may mean<br>More than by word and name is shown;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That nought can keep two lives apart<br>More than divorce 'twixt mind and mind,<br>Even though heart be one with heart;-<br>Alas! Alas! Yes, Love is blind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How could I think of jarring Creeds,<br>And riddles that unread remain,<br>Or ask if Heaven's indulgence heeds<br>Broils born of man's polemic brain,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And pause because my venturous mind<br>Had roamed through tracks of polar thought,<br>Whence mightiest spirits turn back blind,<br>Since finding not the thing they sought,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Love, with luring gifts in hand,<br>Beauty, refinement, smile, caress,<br>Heart to surmise and understand,<br>And crowning grace of holiness,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Stood there before me, and, with gaze<br>I had been purblind not to see,<br>Said, ``I to you will, all my days,<br>Give what you yearn to give to me''?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Must both then sorrow, while we live,<br>Because, rejoicing, I forgot<br>Something there was I could not give,<br>Because, alas! I had it not.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She comes from Vicarage Garden, see!<br>Radiant as morning, lithe and tall,<br>Fresh lilies in her hand, but She<br>The loveliest lily of them all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The thrushes in their fluting pause,<br>The bees float humming round her head,<br>Earth, air, and heaven shine out because<br>They hear her voice, and feel her tread.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Up in the fretted grey church-tower,<br>That rustic gaze for miles can see,<br>The belfry strikes the silvery hour,<br>Announcing her propinquity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I who, fearful to be late,<br>Passed long since through the deerpark pale,<br>And loitered by the churchyard gate,<br>Once more exclaim, ``Hail! loved one! hail!''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We pass within, and up the nave,<br>Husht, because Heaven seems always there,<br>Wend choirward, where, devoutly grave,<br>She kneels, to breathe a silent prayer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She takes the flowers I too have brought,<br>Blending them deftly with her own,<br>And ranges them, as quick as thought,<br>Around the white-draped altar-throne.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How could she know my gaze was not<br>On things unseen, but fixed on Her,<br>That, as She prayed, I all forgot<br>The worship in the worshipper?-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While She beheld, as in a glass,<br>The Light Divine, that I but sought<br>Sight of her soul?-Alas! Alas!<br>Love is yet blinder than I thought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who hath not seen a little cloud<br>Up from the clear horizon steal,<br>And, mounting lurid, mutter loud<br>Premonitory thunder-peal?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Husht grows the grove, the summer leaf<br>Trembles and writhes, as if in pain,<br>And then the sky, o'ercharged with grief,<br>Bursts into drenching tears of rain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I through the years had sought to hide<br>My darkening doubts from simple sight.<br>'Tis sacrilegious to deride<br>Faith of unquestioning neophyte.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what, methought, is Doubt at best?<br>A sterile wind through seeded sedge<br>Blowing for nought, an empty nest<br>That lingers in a leafless hedge.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pain, too, there is we should not share<br>With others lest it mar their joy;<br>There is a quiet bliss in prayer<br>None but the heartless would destroy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But just as Love is quick divined<br>From heightened glow or visage pale,<br>The meditations of the Mind<br>Disclose themselves through densest veil.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And 'tis the unloving and least wise<br>Who through life's inmost precincts press,<br>And with unsympathetic eyes<br>Outrage our sacred loneliness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, when their sacrilegious gaze<br>The mournful void hath half surmised,<br>To some more tender soul they raise<br>The veil of ignorance it prized.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">`What though I write farewell I could<br>Not utter, lest your gaze should chide,<br>'Twill by your love be understood<br>My love is still, dear, at your side.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Nor must we meet to speak goodbye,<br>Lest that my Will should lose its choice,<br>And conscience waver, for then I<br>Should see your face and hear your voice.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``But, when you find yourself once more,<br>Come back, come back and look for me,<br>Beside the little lowly door,<br>The Doorway of Humility.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There! Peace at last! The far-off roar<br>Of human passion dies away.<br>``Welcome to our broad shade once more,''<br>The waning woodlands seem to say:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The music of the vagrant wind,<br>That wandered aimlessly, is stilled;<br>The songless branches all remind<br>That Summer's glory is fulfilled.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The fluttering of the falling leaves<br>Dimples the leaden pool awhile;<br>So Age impassively receives<br>Youth's tale of troubles with a smile.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus, as the seasons steal away,<br>How much is schemed, how little done,<br>What splendid plans at break of day!<br>What void regrets at set of sun!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The world goes round, for you, for me,<br>For him who sleeps, for him who strives,<br>And the cold Fates indifferent see<br>Crowning or failure of our lives.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then fall, ye leaves, fade, summer breeze!<br>Grow, sedges, sere on every pool!<br>Let each old glowing impulse freeze,<br>Let each old generous project cool!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is not wisdom, wit, nor worth,<br>Self-sacrifice nor friendship true,<br>Makes venal devotees of earth<br>Prostrate themselves and worship you.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The consciousness of sovran powers,<br>The stubborn purpose, steadfast will,<br>Have ever, in this world of ours,<br>Achieved success, achieve it still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Farewell, ye woods! No more I sit;<br>Great voices in the distance call.<br>If this be peace, enough of it!<br>I go. Fall, unseen foliage, fall!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nay, but repress rebellious woe!<br>In grief 'tis not that febrile fool,<br>Passion, that can but overthrow,<br>But Resignation, that should rule.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In patient sadness lurks a gift<br>To purify the life it stings,<br>And, as the days move onward, lift<br>The lonely heart to loftier things;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bringing within one's ripening reach<br>The sceptre of majestic Thought,<br>Wherefrom one slowly learns to teach<br>The Wisdom to oneself it taught.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And unto what can man aspire,<br>On earth, more worth the striving for,<br>Than to be Reason's loftier lyre,<br>And reconciling monitor;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To strike a more resounding string<br>And deeper notes of joy and pain,<br>Than such as but lamenting sing,<br>Or warble but a sensuous strain:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So, when my days are nearly sped,<br>And my last harvest labours done,<br>That I may have around my head<br>The halo of a setting sun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet even if be heard above<br>Such selfish hope, presumptuous claim,<br>Better one hour of perfect love<br>Than an eternity of Fame!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where then for grief seek out the cure?<br>What scenes will bid my smart to cease?<br>High peaks should teach one to endure,<br>And lakes secluded bring one peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Farewell awhile, then, village bells,<br>Autumnal wood and harvest wain!<br>And welcome, as it sinks or swells,<br>The music of the mighty main,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That seems to say, now loud, now low,<br>Rising or falling, sweet or shrill,<br>``I pace, a sentry, to and fro,<br>To guard your Island fortress still.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The roses falter on their stalk,<br>The late peach reddens on the wall,<br>The flowers along the garden walk<br>Unheeded fade, unheeded fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My gates unopened drip with rain,<br>The wolf-hound wends from floor to floor,<br>And, listening for my voice in vain,<br>Waileth along the corridor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Within the old accustomed place<br>Where we so oft were wont to be,<br>Kneeling She prays, while down her face<br>The fruitless tears fall silently.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>SWITZERLAND</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXI<br>Rain, wind, and rain. The writhing lake<br>Scuds to and fro to scape their stroke:<br>The mountains veil their heads, and make<br>Of cloud and mist a wintry cloak.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through where the arching pinewoods make<br>Dusk cloisters down the mountain side,<br>The loosened avalanches take<br>Valeward their way, with death for guide,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And toss their shaggy manes and fling<br>To air their foam and tawny froth,<br>From ledge and precipice bound and spring,<br>With hungry roar and deepening wrath;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Till, hamlet homes and orchards crushed,<br>And, rage for further ravin stayed,<br>They slumber, satiated, husht,<br>Upon the ruins they have made.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I rise from larch-log hearth, and, lone,<br>Gaze on the spears of serried rain,<br>That faster, nigher, still are blown,<br>Then stream adown the window pane.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The peasant's goatskin garments drip,<br>As home he wends with lowered head,<br>Shakes off the drops from lid and lip,<br>Then slinks within his châlet shed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The cattle bells sound dull and hoarse,<br>The boats rock idly by the shore;<br>Only the swollen torrents course<br>With faster feet and fuller roar.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Mournful, I shape a mournful song,<br>And ask the heavens, but ask in vain,<br>``How long, how long?'' Ah! not so long<br>As, in my heart, rain, wind, and rain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I ask the dark, the dawn, the sun,<br>The domeward-pointing peaks of snow,<br>Lofty and low alike, but none<br>Will tell me what I crave to know.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My mind demands, ``Whence, Whither, Why?''<br>From mountain slope and green defile,<br>And wait the answer. The reply-<br>A far-off irresponsive smile.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I ask the stars, when mortals sleep,<br>The pensive moon, the lonely winds;<br>But, haply if they know, they keep<br>The secret of secluded minds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall I in vain, then, strive to find,<br>Straining towards merely fancied goal?<br>Where in the lily lurks the mind,<br>Where in the rose discern the soul?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">More mindless still, stream, pasture, lake,<br>The mountains yet more heartless seem,<br>And life's unceasing quest and ache<br>Only a dream within a dream.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We know no more, though racked with thought<br>Than he who, in yon châlet born,<br>Gives not the riddle, Life, a thought,<br>But lays him down and sleeps till morn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sometimes he kneels; I cannot kneel,<br>So suffer from a wider curse<br>Than Eden's outcasts, for I feel<br>An exile in the universe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The rudeness of his birth enures<br>His limbs to every season's stings,<br>And, never probing, so endures<br>The sadness at the heart of things.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When lauwine growls, and thunder swells,<br>Their far-off clamour sounds to me<br>But as the noise of clanging bells<br>Above a silent sanctuary.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is their silence that appals,<br>Their aspect motionless that awes,<br>When searching spirit vainly calls<br>On the effect to bare the Cause.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I get no answer, near or far;<br>The mountains, though they soar so high,<br>And scale the pathless ether, are<br>No nearer unto God than I.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There dwells nor mystery nor veil<br>Round the clear peaks no foot hath trod;<br>I, gazing on their frontage pale,<br>See but the waning ghost of God.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is Faith then but a drug for sleep,<br>And Hope a fondly soothing friend<br>That bids us, when it sees us weep,<br>Wait for the End that hath no end?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then do I hear voice unforgot<br>Wailing across the distance dim,<br>``Think, dear! If God existeth not,<br>Why are you always seeking Him?''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like glowing furnace of the forge,<br>How the winds rise and roar, as they<br>Up twisting valley, craggy gorge,<br>Seek, and still seek, to storm their way;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, baffled, up the open slope<br>With quickening pulses scale and pant,<br>Indomitably bent to cope<br>With bristling fronts of adamant.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All through the day resounds the strife,<br>Then doth at sunset hour subside:<br>So the fierce passions of our life<br>Slowly expire at eventide.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By Nature we are ne'er misled;<br>We see most truly when we dream.<br>A singer wise was he who said,<br>``Follow the gleam! Follow the gleam!''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I dreamed, last night, again I stood,<br>Silent, without the village shrine,<br>While She in modest maidenhood<br>Left, fondly clasped, her hand in mine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, with a face as cerecloth white,<br>And tears like those that by the bier<br>Of loved one lost make dim the sight,<br>She poured her sorrows in mine ear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``I love your voice, I love your gaze,<br>But there is something dearer still,<br>The faith that kneels, the hope that prays,<br>And bows before the Heavenly Will.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Not where hills rise, or torrents roll,<br>Seek Him, nor yet alone, apart;<br>He dwells within the troubled soul,<br>His home is in the human heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Withal, the peaceful mountains may<br>'Twixt doubt and yearning end the strife:<br>So ponder, though you cannot pray,<br>And think some meaning into life:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Nor like to those that cross the main<br>To wander witless through strange land,<br>Hearing unmastered tongues, disdain<br>The speech they do not understand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Firm stands my faith that they who sound<br>The depths of doubt Faith yet will save:<br>They are like children playing round<br>A still remembered mother's grave;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Not knowing, when they wax more old,<br>And somewhat can her vision share,<br>She will the winding-sheet unfold,<br>And beckon them to evening prayer.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, with my hand betwixt her hands,<br>She laid her lips upon my brow,<br>And, as to one who understands,<br>Said, ``Take once more my vestal vow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``No other gaze makes mine to glow,<br>No other footstep stirs my heart,<br>To me you only dearer grow,<br>Dearer and nearer, more apart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Whene'er you come with humble mind,<br>The little Door stands open wide,<br>And, bending low, you still will find<br>Me waiting on the other side.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her silence woke me. . . . To your breast<br>Fold me, O sleep! and seal mine ears;<br>That She may roam through my unrest<br>Till all my dreams are drenched with tears!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why linger longer, subject, here,<br>Where Nature sits and reigns alone,<br>Inspiring love not, only fear,<br>Upon her autocratic throne?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her edicts are the rigid snow,<br>The wayward winds, the swaying branch;<br>She hath no pity to bestow,<br>Her law the lawless avalanche.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though soon cascades will bound and sing,<br>That now but drip with tears of ice,<br>And upland meadows touched by Spring<br>Blue gentian blend with edelweiss,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hence to the Land of youthful dreams,<br>The Land that taught me all I know.<br>Farewell, lone mountain-peaks and streams;<br>Yet take my thanks before I go.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You gave me shelter when I fled,<br>But sternly bade me stem my tears,<br>Nor aimless roam with rustling tread<br>'Mong fallen leaves of fruitless years.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">ITALY</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Upon the topmost wheel-track steep,<br>The parting of two nations' ways,<br>Athwart stone cross engraven deep,<br>The name ``Italia'' greets the gaze!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I trembled, when I saw it first,<br>With joy, my boyish longings fed,<br>The headspring of my constant thirst,<br>The altar of my pilgrim tread.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now once again the magic word,<br>So faintly borne to Northern home,<br>Sounds like a silvery trumpet heard<br>Beneath some universal dome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The forests soften to a smile,<br>A smile the very mountains wear,<br>Through mossy gorge and grassed defile<br>Torrents race glad and debonair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From casement, balcony and door,<br>Hang golden gourds, droops tear-tipped vine,<br>And sun-bronzed faces bask before<br>Thin straw-swathed flasks of last year's wine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Unyoked, the patient sleek-skinned steers<br>Take, like their lords, no heed of time.<br>Hark! now the evening star appears,<br>Ave Maria belfries chime.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The maidens knit, and glance, and sing,<br>With glowing gaze 'neath ebon tress,<br>And, like to copse-buds sunned by Spring,<br>Seem burgeoning into tenderness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On waveless lake where willows weep,<br>The Borromean Islands rest<br>As motionless as babe asleep<br>Upon a slumbering Mother's breast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Land of sunshine, song, and Love!<br>Whether thy children reap or sow,<br>Of Love they chant on hills above,<br>Of Love they sing in vale below.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But what avail the love-linked hands,<br>And love-lit eyes, to them that roam<br>Passionless through impassioned lands,<br>Since they have left their heart at home!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Among my dreams, now known as dreams<br>In this my reawakened life,<br>I thought that by historic streams,<br>Apart from stress, aloof from strife,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By rugged paths that twist and twine<br>Through olive slope and chesnut wood<br>Upward to mediaeval shrine,<br>Or high conventual brotherhood,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Along the mountain-curtained track<br>Round peaceful lake where wintry bands<br>Halt briefly but to bivouac<br>Ere blustering on to Northern lands;-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through these, through all I first did see,<br>With me to share my raptures none,<br>That nuptialled Monica would be<br>My novice and companion:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That we should float from mere to mere,<br>And sleep within some windless cove,<br>With nightingales to lull the ear,<br>From ilex wood and orange grove;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Linger at hamlets lost to fame,<br>That still wise-wandering feet beguile,<br>To gaze on frescoed wall or frame<br>Lit by Luini's gracious smile.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now, but companioned by my pain,<br>Among each well-remembered scene<br>I can but let my Fancy feign<br>The happiness that might have been;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Imagine that I hear her voice,<br>Imagine that I feel her hand,<br>And I, enamoured guide, rejoice<br>To see her swift to understand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Alack! Imagination might<br>As lief with rustic Virgil roam,<br>Reverent, or, welcomed guest, alight<br>At Pliny's philosophic home;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hear one majestically trace<br>Rome's world-wide sway from wattled wall,<br>And read upon the other's face<br>The omens of an Empire's fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like moonlight seen through forest leaves,<br>She shines upon me from afar,<br>What time men reap the ripened sheaves,<br>And Heaven rains many a falling star.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I gaze up to her lofty height,<br>And feel how far we dwell apart:<br>O if I could, this night, this night,<br>Fold her full radiance to my heart!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But She in Heaven, and I on earth,<br>Still journey on, but each alone;<br>She, maiden Queen of sacred birth,<br>Who with no consort shares her throne.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What if She ever thought She saw<br>The self within myself prefer<br>Communion with the silent awe<br>Of far-off mountains more than Her;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That Nature hath the mobile grace<br>To make life with our moods agree,<br>And so had grown the Loved One's face,<br>Since it nor checked nor chided me;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or from the tasks that irk and tire<br>I sought for comfort from the Muse,<br>Because it grants the mind's desire<br>All that familiar things refuse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How vain such thought! The face, the form,<br>Of mountain summits but express,<br>Clouded or clear, in sun or storm,<br>Feebly Her spirit's loftiness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Did I explore from pole to pole,<br>In Nature's aspect I should find<br>But faint reflections of Her soul,<br>Dim adumbrations of Her mind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O come and test with lake, with stream,<br>With mountain, which the stronger be,<br>Thou, my divinest dearest dream,<br>My Muse, and more than Muse, to me!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They tell me that Jehovah speaks<br>In silent grove, on lonely strand,<br>And summit of the mountain peaks;<br>Yet there I do not understand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The stars, disdainful of my thought,<br>Majestic march toward their goal,<br>And to my nightly watch have brought<br>No explanation to my soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The truth I seek I cannot find,<br>In air or sky, on land or sea;<br>If the hills have their secret mind,<br>They will not yield it up to me:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like one who lost mid lonely hills<br>Still seeks but cannot find his way,<br>Since guide is none save winding rills,<br>That seem themselves, too, gone astray.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so from rise to set of sun,<br>At glimmering dawn, in twilight haze,<br>I but behold the face of One<br>Who veils her face, and weeps, and prays.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What know I that She doth not know?<br>What I know not, She understands:<br>With heavenly gifts She overflows,<br>While I have only empty hands.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O weary wanderer! Best forego<br>This questioning of wind and wave.<br>For you the sunshine and the snow,<br>The womb, the cradle, and the grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How blest, when organ concords swell,<br>And anthems are intoned, are they<br>Who neither reason nor rebel,<br>But meekly bow their heads and pray.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And such the peasants mountain-bred,<br>Who hail to-day with blithe accord<br>Her Feast Who to the Angel said,<br>``Behold the Handmaid of the Lord!''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Downward they wind from pastoral height,<br>Or hamlet grouped round shattered towers,<br>To wend to shrine more richly dight,<br>And bring their gift of wilding flowers;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their gifts, their griefs, their daily needs,<br>And lay these at Her statue's base,<br>Who never, deem they, intercedes<br>Vainly before the Throne of Grace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall I, because I stand apart,<br>A stranger to their pious vows,<br>Scorn their humility of heart<br>That pleads before the Virgin Spouse,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Confiding that the Son will ne'er,<br>If in His justice wroth with them,<br>Refuse to harken to Her prayer<br>Who suckled Him in Bethlehem?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Of all the intercessors born<br>By man's celestial fancy, none<br>Hath helped the sorrowing, the forlorn,<br>Lowly and lone, as She hath done.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The maiden faithful to Her shrine<br>Bids demons of temptation flee,<br>And mothers fruitful as the vine<br>Retain their vestal purity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Too trustful love, by lust betrayed,<br>And by cold worldlings unforgiven,<br>Unto Her having wept and prayed,<br>Faces its fate, consoled and shriven.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The restless, fiercely probing mind<br>No honey gleans, though still it stings.<br>What comfort doth the spirit find<br>In Reason's endless reasonings?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They have no solace for my grief,<br>Compassion none for all my pain:<br>They toss me like the fluttering leaf,<br>And leave me to the wind and rain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If Conscience be God's Law to Man,<br>Then Conscience must perforce arraign<br>Whatever falls beneath the ban<br>Of that allotted Suzerain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And He, who bids us not to swerve,<br>Whither the wayward passions draw,<br>From its stern sanctions, must observe<br>The limits of the self-same Law.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet, if obedient Conscience scan<br>The sum of wrongs endured and done<br>Neither by act nor fault of Man,<br>They rouse it to rebellion.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Life seems of life by life bereft<br>Through some immitigable curse,<br>And Man sole moral being left<br>In a non-moral Universe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My Conscience would my Will withstand,<br>Did Will project a world like this:<br>Better Eternal vacuum still,<br>Than murder, lust, and heartlessness!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If Man makes Conscience, then being good<br>Is only being worldly wise,<br>And universal brotherhood<br>A comfortable compromise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O smoke of War! O blood-steeped sod!<br>O groans of fratricidal strife!<br>Who will explain the ways of God,<br>That I may be at peace with life!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The moral riddle 'tis that haunts,<br>Primeval and unending curse,<br>Racking the mind when pulpit vaunts<br>A Heaven-created Universe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet whence came Life, and how begin?<br>Rolleth the globe by choice or chance?<br>Dear Lord! Why longer shut me in<br>This prison-house of ignorance!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>FLORENCE</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">City acclaimed ere Dante's days<br>Fair, and baptized in field of flowers,<br>Once more I scan with tender gaze<br>Your glistening domes, your storied towers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I feel as if long years had flown<br>Since first with eager heart I came,<br>And, girdled by your mountain zone,<br>Found you yet fairer than your fame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was the season purple-sweet<br>When figs are plump, and grapes are pressed,<br>And all your sons with following feet<br>Bore a dead Poet to final rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You seemed to fling your gates ajar,<br>And softly lead me by the hand,<br>Saying, ``Behold! henceforth you are<br>No stranger in the Tuscan land.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And though no love my love can wean<br>From native crag and cradling sea,<br>Yet Florence from that hour hath been<br>More than a foster-nurse to me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When mount I terraced slopes arrayed<br>In bridal bloom of peach and pear,<br>While under olive's phantom shade<br>Lupine and beanflower scent the air,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The wild-bees hum round golden bay,<br>The green frog sings on fig-tree bole,<br>And, see! down daisy-whitened way<br>Come the slow steers and swaying pole.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The fresh-pruned vine-stems, curving, bend<br>Over the peaceful wheaten spears,<br>And with the glittering sunshine blend<br>Their transitory April tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O'er wall and trellis trailed and wound,<br>Hang roses blushing, roses pale;<br>And, hark! what was that silvery sound?<br>The first note of the nightingale.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Curtained, I close my lids and dream<br>Of Beauty seen not but surmised,<br>And, lulled by scent and song, I seem<br>Immortally imparadised.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When from the deep sweet swoon I wake<br>And gaze past slopes of grape and grain,<br>Where Arno, like some lonely lake,<br>Silvers the far-off seaward plain,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I see celestial sunset fires<br>That lift us from this earthly leaven,<br>And darkly silent cypress spires<br>Pointing the way from hill to Heaven.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then something more than mortal steals<br>Over the wavering twilight air,<br>And, messenger of nightfall, peals<br>From each crowned peak a call to prayer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now the last meek prayer is said,<br>And, in the hallowed hush, there is<br>Only a starry dome o'erhead,<br>Propped by columnar cypresses.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Re-roaming through this palaced town,<br>I suddenly, 'neath grim-barred pile,<br>Catch sight of Dante's awful frown,<br>Or Leonardo's mystic smile;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, swayed by memory's fancy, stroll<br>To where from May-day's flaming pyre<br>Savonarola's austere soul<br>Went up to Heaven in tongues of fire;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or Buonarroti's plastic hand<br>Made marble block from Massa's steep<br>Dawn into Day at his command,<br>Then plunged it into Night and Sleep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No later wanderings can dispel<br>The glamour of the bygone years;<br>And, through the streets I know so well,<br>I scarce can see my way for tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A sombre shadow seems to fall<br>On comely altar, transept fair;<br>The saints are still on frescoed wall,<br>But who comes thither now for prayer?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Men throng from far-off stranger land,<br>To stare, to wonder, not to kneel,<br>With map and guide-book in their hand<br>To tell them what to think and feel.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They scan, they prate, they marvel why<br>The figures still expressive glow,<br>Oblivious they were painted by<br>Adoring Frà Angelico.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Did Dante from his tomb afar<br>Return, his wrongs redressed at last,<br>And see you, Florence, as you are,<br>Half alien to your gracious Past,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Finding no Donatello now,<br>No reverent Giotto 'mong the quick,<br>To glorify ascetic vow<br>Of Francis or of Dominic;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Self-exiled by yet sterner fate<br>Than erst, he would from wandering cease,<br>And, ringing at monastic gate,<br>Plead, ``I am one who craves for peace.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what he sought but ne'er could find,<br>Shall I, less worthy, hope to gain,<br>The freedom of the tranquil mind,<br>The lordship over loss and pain?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">More than such peace I found when I<br>Did first, in unbound youth, repair<br>To Tuscan shrine, Ausonian sky.<br>I found it, for I brought it there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXVI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet Art brings peace, itself is Peace,<br>And, as I on these frescoes gaze,<br>I feel all fretful tumults cease<br>And harvest calm of mellower days.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For Soul too hath its seasons. Time,<br>That leads Spring, Summer, Autumn, round,<br>Makes our ephemeral passions chime<br>With something permanent and profound.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, as in Nature, April oft<br>Strives to revert to wintry hours,<br>But shortly upon garth and croft<br>Re-sheds warm smiles and moistening showers,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or, for one day, will Autumn wear<br>The gayer garments of the Spring,<br>And then athwart the wheatfields bare<br>Again her graver shadows fling;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So, though the Soul hath moods that veer,<br>And seem to hold no Rule in awe,<br>Like the procession of the year,<br>It too obeys the sovran Law.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor Art itself brings settled peace,<br>Until the mind is schooled to know<br>That gusts subside and tumults cease<br>Only in sunset's afterglow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Life's contradictions vanish then,<br>Husht thought replacing clashing talk<br>Among the windy ways of men.<br>'Tis in the twilight Angels walk.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>ROME</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXVII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The last warm gleams of sunset fade<br>From cypress spire and stonepine dome,<br>And, in the twilight's deepening shade,<br>Lingering, I scan the wrecks of Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Husht the Madonna's Evening Bell;<br>The steers lie loosed from wain and plough;<br>The vagrant monk is in his cell,<br>The meek nun-novice cloistered now.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pedant's presumptuous voice no more<br>Vexes the spot where Caesar trod,<br>And o'er the pavement's soundless floor<br>Come banished priest and exiled God.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The lank-ribbed she-wolf, couched among<br>The regal hillside's tangled scrubs,<br>With doting gaze and fondling tongue<br>Suckles the Vestal's twin-born cubs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet once again Evander leads<br>Æneas to his wattled home,<br>And, throned on Tiber's fresh-cut reeds,<br>Talks of burnt Troy and rising Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From out the tawny dusk one hears<br>The half-feigned scream of Sabine maids,<br>The rush to arms, then swift the tears<br>That separate the clashing blades.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Lictors with their fasces throng<br>To quell the Commons' rising roar,<br>As Tullia's chariot flames along,<br>Splashed with her murdered father's gore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her tresses free from band or comb,<br>Love-dimpled Venus, lithe and tall,<br>And fresh as Fiumicino's foam,<br>Mounts her pentelic pedestal.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With languid lids, and lips apart,<br>And curving limbs like wave half-furled,<br>Unarmed she dominates the heart,<br>And without sceptre sways the world.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nerved by her smile, avenging Mars<br>Stalks through the Forum's fallen fanes,<br>Or, changed of mien and healed of scars,<br>Threads sylvan slopes and vineyard plains.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With waves of song from wakening lyre<br>Apollo routs the wavering night,<br>While, parsley-crowned, the white-robed choir<br>Wind chanting up the Sacred Height,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where Jove, with thunder-garlands wreathed,<br>And crisp locks frayed like fretted foam,<br>Sits with his lightnings half unsheathed,<br>And frowns against the foes of Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You cannot kill the Gods. They still<br>Reclaim the thrones where once they reigned,<br>Rehaunt the grove, remount the rill,<br>And renovate their rites profaned.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Diana's hounds still lead the chase,<br>Still Neptune's Trident crests the sea,<br>And still man's spirit soars through space<br>On feathered heels of Mercury.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No flood can quench the Vestals' Fire;<br>The Flamen's robes are still as white<br>As ere the Salii's armoured choir<br>Were drowned by droning anchorite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The saint may seize the siren's seat,<br>The shaveling frown where frisked the Faun;<br>Ne'er will, though all beside should fleet,<br>The Olympian Presence be withdrawn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here, even in the noontide glare,<br>The Gods, recumbent, take their ease;<br>Go look, and you will find them there,<br>Slumbering behind some fallen frieze.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But most, when sunset glow hath paled,<br>And come, as now, the twilight hour,<br>In vesper vagueness dimly veiled<br>I feel their presence and their power.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What though their temples strew the ground,<br>And to the ruin owls repair,<br>Their home, their haunt, is all around;<br>They drive the cloud, they ride the air.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, when the planets wend their way<br>Along the never-ageing skies,<br>``Revere the Gods'' I hear them say;<br>``The Gods are old, the Gods are wise.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Build as man may, Time gnaws and peers<br>Through marble fissures, granite rents;<br>Only Imagination rears<br>Imperishable monuments.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let Gaul and Goth pollute the shrine,<br>Level the altar, fire the fane:<br>There is no razing the Divine;<br>The Gods return, the Gods remain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXVIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Christ is arisen. The place wherein<br>They laid Him shows but cerements furled,<br>And belfry answers belfry's din<br>To ring the tidings round the world.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Grave Hierarchs come, an endless band,<br>In jewelled mitre, cope embossed,<br>Who bear Rome's will to every land<br>In all the tongues of Pentecost.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Majestic, along marble floor,<br>Walk Cardinals in blood-red robe,<br>Martyrs for Faith and Christ no more,<br>Who gaze as though they ruled the globe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With halberds bare and doublets slashed,<br>Emblems that war will never cease,<br>Come martial guardians, unabashed,<br>And march afront the Prince of Peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, in his gestatorial Chair<br>See Christ's vicegerent, bland, benign,<br>To crowds all prostrate as in prayer<br>Lean low, and make the Holy Sign.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then trumpets shrill, and organ peals,<br>Throughout the mighty marble pile,<br>Whileas a myriad concourse kneels<br>In dense-packed nave and crowded aisle.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hark to the sudden hush! Aloft<br>From unseen source in empty dome<br>Swells prayerful music silvery-soft,<br>Borne from far-off celestial Home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, when the solemn rite is done,<br>The worshippers stream out to where<br>Dance fountains glittering in the sun,<br>While expectation fills the air.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now on high balcony He stands,<br>And-save for the Colonna curse,-<br>Blesses with high-uplifted hands<br>The City and the Universe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Christ is arisen! But scarce as when,<br>On the third day of death and gloom,<br>Came ever-loving Magdalen<br>With tears and spices to His tomb.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXXIX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Tiber winds its sluggish way<br>Through niggard tracts whence Rome's command<br>Once cast the shadow of her sway,<br>O'er Asian city, Afric sand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor even yet doth She resign<br>Her sceptre. Still the spell is hers,<br>Though she may seem a rifled shrine<br>'Mid circumjacent sepulchres.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One after one, they came, they come,<br>Gaul, Goth, Savoy, to work their will;<br>She answers, when She most seems dumb,<br>``I wore the Crown, I wear it still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``From Jove I first received the gift,<br>I from Jehovah wear it now,<br>Nor shall profane invader lift<br>The diadem from off my brow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``The Past is mine, and on the Past<br>The Future builds; and Time will rear<br>The next strong structure on the last,<br>Where men behold but shattered tier.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``The Teuton hither hies to teach,<br>To prove, disprove, to delve and probe.<br>Fool! Pedant! Does he think to reach<br>The deep foundations of the globe?''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For me, I am content to tread<br>On Sabine dust and Gothic foe.<br>Leave me to deepening silent dread<br>Of vanished Empire's afterglow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In this Imperial wilderness<br>Why rashly babble and explore?<br>O, let me know a little less,<br>So I may feel a little more!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XL</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For upward of one thousand years,<br>Here men and women prayed to Jove,<br>With smiles and incense, gifts and tears,<br>In secret shrine, or civic grove;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, when Jove did not seem to heed,<br>Sought Juno's mediatorial power,<br>Or begged fair Venus intercede<br>And melt him in his amorous hour.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sages invoked Minerva's might;<br>The Poet, ere he struck the lyre,<br>Prayed to the God of Song and Light<br>To touch the strings with hallowed fire.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With flaming herbs were altars smoked<br>Sprinkled with blood and perfumed must,<br>And gods and goddesses invoked<br>To second love or sanction lust.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And did they hear and heed the prayer,<br>Or, through that long Olympian reign,<br>Were they divinities of air<br>Begot of man's fantastic brain?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In Roman halls their statues still<br>Serenely stand, but no one now<br>Ascends the Capitolian Hill,<br>To render thanks, or urge the vow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through now long centuries hath Rome<br>Throned other God, preached other Creed,<br>That here still have their central home,<br>And feed man's hope, content his need.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Against these, too, will Time prevail?<br>No! Let whatever gestates, be,<br>Secure will last the tender tale<br>From Bethlehem to Calvary.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Throughout this world of pain and loss,<br>Man ne'er will cease to bend his knee<br>To Crown of Thorns, to Spear, to Cross,<br>And Doorway of Humility.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XLI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If Reason be the sole safe guide<br>In man implanted from above,<br>Why crave we for one only face,<br>Why consecrate the name of Love?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Faces there are no whit less fair,<br>Yet ruddier lip, more radiant eye,<br>Same rippling smile, same auburn hair,<br>But not for us. Say, Reason, why.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why bound our hearts when April pied<br>Comes singing, or when hawthorn blows?<br>Doth logic in the lily hide,<br>And where's the reason in the rose?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why weld our keels and launch our ships,<br>If Reason urge some wiser part,<br>Kiss England's Flag with dying lips<br>And fold its glories to the heart?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In this gross world we touch and see,<br>If Reason be no trusty guide,<br>For world unseen why should it be<br>The sole explorer justified?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The homing swallow knows its nest,<br>Sure curves the comet to its goal,<br>Instinct leads Autumn to its rest,<br>And why not Faith the homing soul?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is Reason so aloof, aloft,<br>It doth not 'gainst itself rebel,<br>And are not Reason's reasonings oft<br>By Reason proved unreasonable?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He is perplexed no more, who prays,<br>``Hail, Mary Mother, full of grace!''<br>O drag me from Doubt's endless maze,<br>And let me see my Loved One's face!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XLII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Upon this rock!'' Yet even here<br>Where Christian God ousts Pagan wraith,<br>Rebellious Reason whets its spear,<br>And smites upon the shield of Faith.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On sacred mount, down seven-hilled slopes,<br>Fearless it faces foe and friend,<br>Saying to man's immortal hopes,<br>``Whatso began, perforce must end.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not men alone, but gods too, die;<br>Fanes are, like hearths, left bare and lone;<br>This earth will into fragments fly,<br>And Heaven itself be overthrown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why then should Man immortal be?<br>He is but fleeting form, to fade,<br>Like momentary cloud, or sea<br>Of waves dispersed as soon as made.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet if 'tis Force, not Form, survives,<br>Meseems therein that one may find<br>Some comfort for distressful lives;<br>For, if Force ends not, why should Mind?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is Doubt more forceful than Belief?<br>The doctor's cap than friar's cowl?<br>O ripeness of the falling leaf!<br>O wisdom of the moping owl!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Man's Mind will ever stand apart<br>From Science, save this have for goal<br>The evolution of the heart,<br>And sure survival of the Soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XLIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Umbilicum lonely stands<br>Where once rose porch and vanished dome;<br>But he discerns who understands<br>That every road may lead to Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Enthroned in Peter's peaceful Chair,<br>The spiritual Caesar sways<br>A wider Realm of earth and air<br>Than trembled at Octavian's gaze.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His universal arms embrace<br>The saint, the sinner, and the sage,<br>And proffer refuge, comfort, grace<br>To tribulation's pilgrimage.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here scientific searchers find<br>Precursors for two thousand years,<br>Who in a drouthy world divined<br>Fresh springs for human doubts and fears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here fair chaste Agnes veils her face<br>From prowlers of the sensual den,<br>And pity, pardon, and embrace<br>Await repentant Magdalen.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Princess and peasant-mother wend<br>To self-same altar, self-same shrine,<br>And Cardinal and Patriarch bend<br>Where lepers kneel, and beggars whine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And is there then, in my distress,<br>No road, no gate, no shrine, for me?<br>The answer comes, ``Yes, surely, yes!<br>The Doorway of Humility.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O rival Faiths! O clamorous Creeds!<br>Would you but hush your strife in prayer,<br>And raise one Temple for our needs,<br>Then, then, we all might worship there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But dogma new with dogma old<br>Clashes to soothe the spirit's grief,<br>And offer to the unconsoled<br>Polyglot Babel of Belief!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XLIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The billows roll, and rise, and break,<br>Around me; fixedly shine the stars<br>In clear dome overhead, and take<br>Their course, unheeding earthly jars.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet if one's upward gaze could be<br>But stationed where the planets are,<br>The star were restless as the sea,<br>The sea be tranquil as the star.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hollowed like cradle, then like grave,<br>Now smoothly curved, now shapeless spray,<br>Withal the undirected wave<br>Forms, and reforms, and knows its way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, waters, bear me on where He,<br>Ere death absolved at Christian font,<br>Removed Rome's menaced majesty<br>Eastward beyond the Hellespont.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Foreseeing not what Fate concealed,<br>But Time's caprice would there beget,<br>That Cross would unto Crescent yield,<br>Caesar and Christ to Mahomet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is it then man's predestined state<br>To search for, ne'er to find, the Light?<br>Arise, my Star, illuminate<br>These empty spaces of the Night!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XLV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Last night I heard the cuckoo call<br>Among the moist green glades of home,<br>And in the Chase around the Hall<br>Saw the May hawthorn flower and foam.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Deep in the wood where primrose stars<br>Paled before bluebell's dazzling reign,<br>The nightingale's sad sobbing bars<br>Rebuked the merle's too joyful strain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The kine streamed forth from stall and byre,<br>The foal frisked round its mother staid,<br>The meads, by sunshine warmed, took fire,<br>And lambs in pasture, bleating, played.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The uncurbed rivulets raced to where<br>The statelier river curled and wound,<br>And trout, of human step aware,<br>Shot through the wave without a sound.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Adown the village street, as clear<br>As in one's wakeful mid-day hours,<br>Beheld I Monica drawing near,<br>Her vestal lap one crib of flowers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lending no look to me, she passed<br>By the stone path, as oft before,<br>Between old mounds Spring newly grassed,<br>And entered through the Little Door.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Led by her feet, I hastened on,<br>But, ere my feverish steps could get<br>To the low porch, lo! Morning shone<br>On Moslem dome and minaret!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>CONSTANTINOPLE</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XLVI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now Vesper brings the sunset hour,<br>And, where crusading Knighthood trod,<br>Muezzin from his minaret tower<br>Proclaims, ``There is no God but God!''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Male God who shares his godhead with<br>No Virgin Mother's sacred tear,<br>But finds on earth congenial kith<br>In wielders of the sword and spear:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Male God who on male lust bestows<br>The ruddy lip, the rounded limb,<br>And promises, at battle's close,<br>Houri, not saint nor seraphim.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Swift through the doubly-guarded stream,<br>Shoots the caïque 'neath oarsmen brisk,<br>While from its cushioned cradle gleam<br>The eyes of yashmaked odalisque.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Unchanged adown the changing years,<br>Here where the Judas blossoms blaze,<br>Against Sophia's marble piers<br>The scowling Muslim lean and gaze;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And still at sunset's solemn hour,<br>Where Christ's devout Crusader trod,<br>Defiant from the minaret's tower<br>Proclaim, ``There is no God but God!''</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XLVII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Three rival Rituals. One revered<br>In that loved English hamlet where,<br>With flowers in Vicarage garden reared,<br>She decks the altar set for prayer:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Another, where majestic Rome,<br>With fearless Faith and flag unfurled<br>'Gainst Doubt's ephemeral wave and foam,<br>Demands obedience from the world.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The third, where now I stand, and where<br>Two hoary Continents have met,<br>And Islam guards from taint and tare<br>Monistic Creed of Mahomet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet older than all three, but banned<br>To suffer still the exile's doom<br>From shrine where Turkish sentries stand,<br>And Christians wrangle round Christ's tomb.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where then find Creed, divine or dead,<br>All may embrace, and none contemn?-<br>Remember Who it was that said,<br>``Not here, nor at Jerusalem!''</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>ATHENS</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XLVIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To Acrocorinth's brow I climb,<br>And, lulled in retrospective bliss,<br>Descry, as through the mists of time,<br>Faintly the far Acropolis.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Below me, rivers, mountains, vales,<br>Wide stretch of ancient Hellas lies:<br>Symbol of Song that never fails,<br>Parnassus communes with the skies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I linger, dream-bound by the Past,<br>Till sundown joins time's deep abyss,<br>Then skirt, through shadows moonlight-cast,<br>Lone strand of sailless Salamis,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Until Eleusis gleams through dawn,<br>Where, though a suppliant soul I come,<br>The veil remains still unwithdrawn,<br>And all the Oracles are dumb.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So onward to the clear white Light,<br>Where, though the worshippers be gone,<br>Abides on unmysterious height<br>The calm unquestioning Parthenon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Find I, now there I stand at last,<br>That naked Beauty, undraped Truth,<br>Can satisfy our yearnings vast,<br>The doubts of age, the dreams of youth;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That, while we ask, in futile strife,<br>From altar, tripod, fount, or well,<br>Form is the secret soul of life,<br>And Art the only Oracle;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That Hera and Athena, linked<br>With Aphrodite, hush distress,<br>And, in their several gifts distinct,<br>Withal are Triune Goddesses?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That mortal wiser then was He<br>Who gave the prize to Beauty's smile,<br>Divides his gifts among the Three,<br>And thuswise baffles Discord's guile?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But who is wise? The nobler twain,<br>Who the restraining girdle wear,<br>Contend too often all in vain<br>With sinuous curve and frolic hair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just as one sees in marble, still,<br>Pan o'er Apollo's shoulder lean,<br>Suggesting to the poet's quill<br>The sensual note, the hint obscene.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Doth then the pure white Light grow dim,<br>And must it be for ever thus?<br>Listen! I hear a far-off Hymn,<br>Veni, Creator, Spiritus!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XLIX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The harvest of Hymettus drips<br>As sweet as when the Attic bees<br>Swarmed round the honey-laden lips<br>Of heavenly-human Sophocles.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The olives are as green in grove<br>As in the days the poets bless,<br>When Pallas with Poseidon strove<br>To be the City's Patroness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The wine-hued main, white marble frieze,<br>Dome of blue ether over all,<br>One still beholds, but nowhere sees<br>Panathenaic Festival.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O'erhead, no Zeus or frowns or nods,<br>Olympus none in air or skies;<br>Below, a sepulchre of Gods,<br>And tombs of dead Divinities.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet, are they dead? Still stricken blind,<br>Tiresiaslike, are they that see,<br>With bold uncompromising mind,<br>Wisdom in utter nudity;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Experiencing a kindred fate<br>With the First Parents of us all,<br>Jehovah thrust through Eden's Gate,<br>When Knowledge brought about their Fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hath Aphrodite into foam,<br>Whence She first flowered, sunk back once more,<br>And doth She nowhere find a home,<br>Or worship, upon Christian shore?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her shrine is in the human breast,<br>To find her none need soar or dive.<br>Goodness or Loveliness our quest,<br>The ever-helpful Gods survive.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hellas retorts, when Hebrew gibes<br>At Gods of levity and lust,<br>``God of Judaea's wandering tribes<br>Was jealous, cruel, and unjust.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Godhead, withal, remains the same,<br>And Art embalms its symbols still;<br>As Poets, when athirst for Fame,<br>Still dream of Aganippe's rill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>L</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why still pursue a bootless quest,<br>And wander heartsore farther East,<br>Because unanswered, south or west,<br>By Pagan seer or Christian priest?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Brahma and Buddha, what have they<br>To offer to my shoreless search?<br>``Let Contemplation be,'' they say,<br>``Your ritual, Nothingness your Church.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Passion and purpose both forsake,<br>Echoes from non-existent wall;<br>We do but dream we are awake,<br>Ourselves the deepest dream of all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``We dream we think, feel, touch, and see,<br>And what these are, still dreaming, guess,<br>Though there is no Reality<br>Behind their fleeting semblances.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus the East answers my appeal,<br>Denies, and so illudes, my want.<br>Alas! Could I but cease to feel,<br>Brahma should be my Hierophant.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, hampered by my Western mind,<br>I cannot set the Spirit free<br>From Matter, but Illusion find,<br>Of all, the most illusory.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>DELPHI</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>LI</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The morning mists that hid the bay<br>And curtained mountains fast asleep,<br>Begin to feel the touch of day,<br>And roll from off both wave and steep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In floating folds they curve and rise,<br>Then slowly melt and merge in air,<br>Till high above me glow the skies,<br>And cloudless sunshine everywhere.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Parnassus wears nor veil nor frown,<br>Windless the eagle wings his way,<br>As I from Delphi gaze adown<br>On Salona and Amphissa.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was the sovran Sun that drew<br>Aloft and scattered morning haze,<br>And now fills all the spacious blue<br>With its</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Austin">Alfred Austin</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341460" data-title="The Door Of Humility de Alfred Austin" data-description="ENGLAND We lead the blind by voice and hand, And not by light they cannot see; We are not framed to understand The How and Why of such as He; But natured only to rejoice At every sound or sign of hope, And, guided by the still small voice, In pa..."></div> </div> </div>

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