Chapter XIII

Carry him out! more room! come up behind!
One peephole vacant! now the show’s at height.
Strange, that our predecessors--though not blind--
Ne’er fully saw or understood the sight,
Withal so anxious to display their light
For our illumination! But away:
Our time for all such questioning is quite
Too limited. Enough, while yet ’tis day,
To use the precious hours. Let night come when it may.

FLORENCE, 1873.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF HUMANITY

As one who, late at eve returning home
Under the stars, hears on the common road
A fellow-footstep fall, and sees one come
Dimly, he knows not whom, nor can forebode;

But cries to him ‘God speed thee,’ and is glad
Hearing his restful answer through the night,
And dreams of love, and though his heart be sad
Feels darkly some strange instinct of delight;

So I to thee. If on this earthly way
Our paths had lain together, I perchance
In the sweet sunlight had beheld thy day
And known thee as thou art--as in a trance,--

And loved thee, and thou me. But seeing now
Sad night compels us, and our way is won
Through ignorance and blindness to the brow
Of that fair mountain of the morning Sun
Whence Truth is manifest, let us remain
In word and action strangers, yet in heart
One and well-known by every joy and pain
That makes divine our little human part.

1872.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING

O weary child of man, O mortal friend,
Afar, unseen, by road or river-bend,
By mountain, plain, or city, still the same,
Human, unfriended, with the piercing flame
Of endless sorrow in thine aching heart:
Hear me, for unto thee my spirit yearns;
Touch me, behold me, where the twilight turns,
Uplifting white arms to the tireless morn:
Hear me, for in thy torment I am torn;
Hear me, for in thy passion I have part.

O child, O child, how sadly sang the world
Its old old song of keen cold carelessness,
How blindly blew the wind of loneliness
About thy soul in frozen garments furled;
How with pale speechless lips and wan didst pace
Crushing beneath thy days that deadly feud;
How to the bitter wall didst turn thy face,
Glad from the glances of the multitude.

Ah! here or there; the same sad song of woe,
More desolate than world-despair or death,
The cry of souls the cruel sun severeth,
The moan of love to madness smitten low.
Ah, here or there; the same sad end of things,
The same fond fruitless ineffectual life,
High-feathered hope and passionate pulse of wings,
Chill sorrow, failure, and despairing strife.

Behold, beyond the mountains of the West,
Where sparkle white domes of the purple hills,
The light of evening Earth’s broad bosom fills
And like a golden dove broods o’er her breast,
And fades, afar--for you and me, afar,--
Shared token of our common deep desire,
Which fadeth not, but like a beacon-star
Devours the darkness of our hearts with fire.

1872.

THE ANGEL OF DEATH--AND LIFE

I call thee in all hours of life and death:
Friend, whom the days hide and the months and years
Darken before my face: I call and cry
Still, as of old time, ere the morning star
Mounts in the moonlit heavens; and still, ere dawn
Visits the vale of sleep, I call to thee.
Friend, like a stranger loved and known before,
Or brother long forgot, with intricate
World-written countenance, obscure to read,
Yet flashing ancient meanings: thou, for whom,
Morning and night, with ever-new desire,
I, waiting, watch without the gates of Time,
If haply at length thy vagrant feet efface
The way of our estrangement; yea, O thou,
Who in that way’s delay decipherest
These words of my great need, I call to Thee.

O wilt thou hear me: know that night by night
I dwell beside thee, and before the dawn
Touch thy loved forehead with my lips, and fill
With joy each hour of waking. Evernear
I gaze upon thee as thou goest forth
To each day’s due encounter; step by step,
And hour by hour each stroke of all thy work
Wears out the world to more transparency
Between us. Even now the flinty way,
Flaming beneath thy feet, is grown like glass;
My glance is on thee from the well-turned field,
The mill, the net, the loom, and woven stuff,
From desk and counter and rock-quarried gold,
Waste seas and stormbeat headlands, and from all
The faces of thine enemies in the fight--
Strike home: the stroke is fair for me and thee.
Nay, from these words I spring to meet thy soul,
Which else were lonely in the world of men;
O take them as the token of a love
Within, without thee, Lord and minister,
Unknown, of all thy actions, until death
Reveal it, visual, thine, the perfect life.

Yea, now I call to Love that is in thee,
And cry, as one that sees her shadow pass
And the lamp flash, waiting without the house
For his fair one at the window: O come forth,
That I may see thee as thou art, and hear
Thy hidden thought, and hold thy very self
In presence undisturbed. Thou are descried:
Thy light is beauty and cannot be hid;
But, through the tangle of frail purposes
That fringe the lattice windows of thy life,
Shines to perpetual promise. Fear thou not.
Ay, though I come clad grimly as for war,
In brazen heat or scaly northern cold,
By rock or river, famine, hatred, fire;
Though I assail thee at the cannon’s mouth,
Or drag thee down to listless years of pain,
Arise thou, and with forehead unabashed
Come forth, and so confront me. In that day,
Thine eyes, beholding mine, within their depths
Shall see, resurgent from the past, all forms
Of long-lost joy and lovely memory,
All faces and fair smiles of time, set forth
And forward in the future; all else fled.
O stand and conquer so: for see, I touch
Thee through this outer world, in the hot Sun
I slay thee with my lips, all day to thee
I whisper in the Light, and to myself
Desirous draw thee in the Lightning flash
Arrayed in death. Arise and vanquish me:
Grasp firm my tangled hair, brandish thy sword,
Breathe heavily thy hot breath in my ears,
And I will yield; and thou shalt know that Love
Stands ever by thy side through Life and Death,
Signing allegiance of a thousand hearts
That still are One.
O hear my voice once more.
I am with thee. Rise up, thy duty calls;
Pass down into the world; I am with thee.

FLORENCE, 1873.

SONNETS