Chapter XLIX

“Ah, Haydn,” said I, “would you have me change?
What soul shall dwell on God’s most holy hill
But he ‘that sweareth to his own hurt,’ yes,
‘And changeth not’?”
“But yet,” he said, “but yet
If you were wrong to swear? How can it be
That any project so against the soul—
Each instinct of one’s nature—should be right?”

“Yet nature,” said I, “may be but corrupt.
What is this instinct, that it should not lie?
If one should feel the instinct of the lamb
While skipping to welcome the butcher’s knife
That waits to slaughter it, would he be wise
To follow instinct?”
“Why not?” answer’d he:
“The lamb was made that it might die for man:
It follows instinct and dies easily.
The soul was made that it might live for God:
It follows instinct and lives happily.
The cases differ thus. May there not be
Some depth, beyond the reach of mortal sight,
Within whose grooves unseen our spirits glide
Unconscious of the balancings of will?
God’s touch may be too subtle to be sensed.
May it not stir beneath all conscious powers,
A spontaneity that moves the soul
As instinct moves the body?—Ah, to me,
Love seems an instinct that impels them both.”

“How so?” I ask’d, in hope to guide his thought
Toward sacrifice.
“You wish me then,” he said,
“To turn philosopher for you?—I will.
This love, in morals based on faith in man,
And in religion on our faith in God,
Seems, in its essence, an experience
Not wholly feeling, yet not wholly thought,—
Not all of body, yet not all of soul,
Of what we are or what we are to be,—
But more akin to marriage, within self,
Of our two separate natures, form and spirit.
God meant them to be join’d: when wedded thus,
One rests content, the other waits in hope.”

“To rest, to wait,” I said to this; “and if
Such ends displaced were, would there not remain
The work that forms our earthly heritage?”

“And may not God,” rejoin’d he, “grant us more
Than that which we inherit?”
“He may grant
His rest,” I said. “Yet rest, the Paradise
Of work, is yet the Purgatory, too,
Of indolence.”
“The soul’s true Paradise
Is nothing earn’d,” he said. “It is a gift.
With Eden lost, insolvent made by sin,
Work, as I view it, is a loan from Hope
With which man pays the debt of Memory.
But if I reckon right, a pauper still,
He scarce can earn enough to pay them both.
And so our rest, I take it, is a gift
That crowns our strife, yet is not won by it;
Which, as we live not conscious how ’tis earn’d,
We live not conscious how it may be lost.
Things out of consciousness are out of care.
We rest not as in death that furthers naught;
We rest as in a dream, in sleep,—a state
Wherein God watches while the soul regales.
We rest not from the healthful stir of work,
But from the slavery proportioning
Our pleasure to our pain—a law for serfs,
But not for sons. Our rest is peaceful, hush’d,
The very church of choice, as different
From other joy as prayer may be from sport.”

“And does not choice,” I ask’d, “feel often moved
To spurn a lesser for a greater good?
For greater good, too, may not Love on high
Unseat some idol of our ignorance?”—