Chapter VI

I am not proud--meek angels, ye invest
New meeknesses to hear such utterance rest
On mortal lips,--"I am not proud"--_not proud!_
Albeit in my flesh God sent His Son,
Albeit over Him my head is bowed
As others bow before Him, still mine heart
Bows lower than their knees. O centuries
That roll in vision your futurities
My future grave athwart,--
Whose murmurs seem to reach me while I keep
Watch o'er this sleep,--
Say of me as the Heavenly said--"Thou art
The blessedest of women!"--blessedest,
Not holiest, not noblest, no high name
Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame
When I sit meek in heaven!
For me, for me,
God knows that I am feeble like the rest!
I often wandered forth, more child than maiden
Among the midnight hills of Galilee
Whose summits looked heaven-laden,
Listening to silence as it seemed to be
God's voice, so soft yet strong, so fain to press
Upon my heart as heaven did on the height,
And waken up its shadows by a light,
And show its vileness by a holiness.
Then I knelt down most silent like the night,
Too self-renounced for fears,
Raising my small face to the boundless blue
Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears:
God heard _them_ falling after, with His dew.

VII.

So, seeing my corruption, can I see
This Incorruptible now born of me,
This fair new Innocence no sun did chance
To shine on, (for even Adam was no child,)
Created from my nature all defiled,
This mystery, from out mine ignorance,--
Nor feel the blindness, stain, corruption, more
Than others do, or _I_ did heretofore?
Can hands wherein such burden pure has been,
Not open with the cry "unclean, unclean,"
More oft than any else beneath the skies?
Ah King, ah, Christ, ah son!
The kine, the shepherds, the abased wise
Must all less lowly wait
Than I, upon Thy state.
Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!

VIII.

Art Thou a King, then? Come, His universe,
Come, crown me Him a King!
Pluck rays from all such stars as never fling
Their light where fell a curse,
And make a crowning for this kingly brow!--
What is my word? Each empyreal star
Sits in a sphere afar
In shining ambuscade:
The child-brow, crowned by none,
Keeps its unchildlike shade.
Sleep, sleep, my crownless One!

IX.

Unchildlike shade! No other babe doth wear
An aspect very sorrowful, as Thou.
No small babe-smiles my watching heart has seen
To float like speech the speechless lips between,
No dovelike cooing in the golden air,
No quick short joys of leaping babyhood.
Alas, our earthly good
In heaven thought evil, seems too good for Thee;
Yet, sleep, my weary One!

X.

And then the drear sharp tongue of prophecy,
With the dread sense of things which shall be done,
Doth smite me inly, like a sword: a sword?
_That_ "smites the Shepherd." Then, I think aloud
The words "despised,"--"rejected,"--every word
Recoiling into darkness as I view
The DARLING on my knee.
Bright angels,--move not--lest ye stir the cloud
Betwixt my soul and His futurity!
I must not die, with mother's work to do,
And could not live-and see.

XI.

It is enough to bear
This image still and fair,
This holier in sleep
Than a saint at prayer,
This aspect of a child
Who never sinned or smiled;
This Presence in an infant's face;
This sadness most like love,
This love than love more deep,
This weakness like omnipotence
It is so strong to move.
Awful is this watching place,
Awful what I see from hence--
A king, without regalia,
A God, without the thunder,
A child, without the heart for play;
Ay, a Creator, rent asunder
From His first glory and cast away
On His own world, for me alone
To hold in hands created, crying--SON!

XII.

That tear fell not on Thee,
Beloved, yet thou stirrest in thy slumber!
THOU, stirring not for glad sounds out of number
Which through the vibratory palm-trees run
From summer-wind and bird,
So quickly hast thou heard
A tear fall silently?
Wak'st thou, O loving One?--

FOOTNOTES:

[7] It is a Jewish tradition that Moses died of the kisses of God's lips.

_AN ISLAND._

All goeth but Goddis will.--OLD POET.

I.

My dream is of an island-place
Which distant seas keep lonely,
A little island on whose face
The stars are watchers only:
Those bright still stars! they need not seem
Brighter or stiller in my dream.

II.

An island full of hills and dells,
All rumpled and uneven
With green recesses, sudden swells,
And odorous valleys driven
So deep and straight that always there
The wind is cradled to soft air.

III.

Hills running up to heaven for light
Through woods that half-way ran,
As if the wild earth mimicked right
The wilder heart of man:
Only it shall be greener far
And gladder than hearts ever are.

IV.

More like, perhaps, that mountain piece
Of Dante's paradise,
Disrupt to an hundred hills like these,
In falling from the skies;
Bringing within it, all the roots
Of heavenly trees and flowers and fruits:

V.

For--saving where the grey rocks strike
Their javelins up the azure,
Or where deep fissures miser-like
Hoard up some fountain treasure,
(And e'en in them, stoop down and hear,
Leaf sounds with water in your ear,--)

VI.

The place is all awave with trees,
Limes, myrtles purple-beaded,
Acacias having drunk the lees
Of the night-dew, faint-headed,
And wan grey olive-woods which seem
The fittest foliage for a dream.

VII.

Trees, trees on all sides! they combine
Their plumy shades to throw,
Through whose clear fruit and blossom fine
Whene'er the sun may go,
The ground beneath he deeply stains,
As passing through cathedral panes.

VIII.

But little needs this earth of ours
That shining from above her,
When many Pleiades of flowers
(Not one lost) star her over,
The rays of their unnumbered hues
Being all refracted by the dews.

IX.

Wide-petalled plants that boldly drink
The Amreeta of the sky,
Shut bells that dull with rapture sink,
And lolling buds, half shy;
I cannot count them, but between
Is room for grass and mosses green,

X.

And brooks, that glass in different strengths
All colours in disorder,
Or, gathering up their silver lengths
Beside their winding border,
Sleep, haunted through the slumber hidden,
By lilies white as dreams in Eden.

XI.

Nor think each arched tree with each
Too closely interlaces
To admit of vistas out of reach,
And broad moon-lighted places
Upon whose sward the antlered deer
May view their double image clear.

XII.

For all this island's creature-full,
(Kept happy not by halves)
Mild cows, that at the vine-wreaths pull,
Then low back at their calves
With tender lowings, to approve
The warm mouths milking them for love.