A Channel Passage and Other Poems | Page 7

a scripture dark with
awe, Bids the veil seem verier iron than the word of life's own law. Till
the might of change hath rent it with a rushing wind in
twain,
Stone or steel it seems, whereon the wrath of chance is
wreaked
in vain:
Stone or steel, and all behind it or beyond its lifted sign
Cloud and vapour, no subsistence of a change-unstricken shrine. God
by god flits past in thunder, till his glories turn to
shades:
God to god bears wondering witness how his gospel flames
and
fades.
More was each of these, while yet they were, than man their
servant seemed:
Dead are all of these, and man survives who made
them while he
dreamed.
Yet haply or surely, if vision were surer than theirs who rejoiced
that they saw,
Man might not but see, through the darkness of
godhead, the light
that is surety and law.
On the stone that the close-drawn cloud which
veils it awhile makes

cloudlike stands
The word of the truth everlasting, unspoken of
tongues and
unwritten of hands.
By the sunbeams and storms of the centuries
engraven, and approved
of the soul as it reads,
It endures as a token dividing the light from the
darkness of
dreams and of deeds.
The faces of gods on the face of it carven, or
gleaming behind and
above,
Star-glorified Uranus, thunderous Jehovah, for terror or
worship or
love,
Change, wither, and brighten as flowers that the wind of
eternity
sheds upon time,
All radiant and transient and awful and mortal, and
leave it
unmarred and sublime.
As the tides that return and recede are the
fears and the hopes of
the centuries that roll,
Requenched and rekindled: but strong as the
sun is the sense of it
shrined in the soul.
II
In the days when time was not, in the time when days were none, Ere
sorrow had life to lot, ere earth gave thanks for the sun, Ere man in his
darkness waking adored what the soul in him could, And the manifold
God of his making was manifest evil and good, One law from the dim
beginning abode and abides in the end, In sight of him sorrowing and
sinning with none but his faith for

friend.
Dark were the shadows around him, and darker the glories
above, Ere light from beyond them found him, and bade him for love's
sake
love.
About him was darkness, and under and over him darkness: the
night That conceived him and bore him had thunder for utterance and
lightning for light.
The dust of death was the dust of the ways that the
tribes of him
trod:
And he knew not if just or unjust were the might of the mystery
of
God.
Strange horror and hope, strange faith and unfaith, were his
boon
and his bane:
And the God of his trust was the wraith of the soul or
the ghost of
it slain.
A curse was on death as on birth, and a Presence that shone
as a
sword
Shed menace from heaven upon earth that beheld him, and
hailed him
her Lord.
Sublime and triumphant as fire or as lightning, he kindled
the
skies,
And withered with dread the desire that would look on the light
of
his eyes.
Earth shuddered with worship, and knew not if hell were not
hot in
her breath;
If birth were not sin, and the dew of the morning the sweat
of her

death.
The watchwords of evil and good were unspoken of men and
unheard: They were shadows that willed as he would, that were made
and
unmade by his word.
His word was darkness and light, and a wisdom
that makes men mad Sent blindness upon them for sight, that they saw
but and heard as
he bade.
Cast forth and corrupt from the birth by the crime of
creation,
they stood
Convicted of evil on earth by the grace of a God found
good. The grace that enkindled and quickened the darkness of hell with
flame
Bade man, though the soul in him sickened, obey, and give
praise to
his name.
The still small voice of the spirit whose life is as plague's
hot
breath
Bade man shed blood, and inherit the life of the kingdom of
death.
"Bring now for blood-offering thy son to mine altar, and bind him
and slay,
That the sin of my bidding be done": and the soul in the
slave
said, "Yea."
Yea, not nay, was the word: and the sacrifice offered
withal Was neither of beast nor of bird, but the soul of a man, God's
thrall.
And the word of his servant spoken was fire, and the light of a
sword,
When the bondage of Israel was broken, and Sinai shrank
from the
Lord.
With splendour of slaughter and thunder of song as the sound

of the
sea
Were the foes of him stricken in sunder and silenced as storms
that
flee.
Terror and trust and the pride of the chosen, approved of his
choice,
Saw God in