A Hidden Life and Other Poems | Page 9

it. The deeper darkness
drank the light again, And lay unslaked. But ere the darkness came, In
the full revelation of the flash, He saw, along the road, borne on a horse
Powerful and gentle, the sweet lady go, Whom years agone he saw for
evermore. "Ah me!" he said; "my dreams are come for me, Now they
shall have their time." And home he went, And slept and moaned, and
woke, and raved, and wept. Through all the net-drawn labyrinth of his
brain The fever raged, like pent internal fire. His father soon was by
him; and the hand Of his one sister soothed him. Days went by. As in a
summer evening, after rain, He woke to sweet quiescent consciousness;
Enfeebled much, but with a new-born life.
As slow the weeks passed, he recovered strength; And ere the winter
came, seemed strong once more. But the brown hue of health had not
returned On his thin face; although a keener fire Burned in his larger
eyes; and in his cheek The mounting blood glowed radiant (summoning
force, Sometimes, unbidden) with a sunset red.
Before its time, a biting frost set in; And gnawed with fangs of cold his
shrinking life; And the disease so common to the north Was born of
outer cold and inner heat. One morn his sister, entering, saw he slept;
But in his hand he held a handkerchief Spotted with crimson. White

with terror, she Stood motionless and staring. Startled next By her own
pallor, when she raised her eyes, Seen in the glass, she moved at last.
He woke; And seeing her dismay, said with a smile, "Blood-red was
evermore my favourite hue, And see, I have it in me; that is all." She
shuddered; and he tried to jest no more; And from that hour looked
Death full in the face.
When first he saw the red blood outward leap, As if it sought again the
fountain heart, Whence it had flowed to fill the golden bowl; No terror,
but a wild excitement seized His spirit; now the pondered mystery Of
the unseen would fling its portals wide, And he would enter, one of the
awful dead; Whom men conceive as ghosts that fleet and pine, Bereft
of weight, and half their valued lives;-- But who, he knew, must live
intenser life, Having, through matter, all illumed with sense, Flaming,
like Horeb's bush, with present soul, And by the contact with a
thousand souls, Each in the present glory of a shape, Sucked so much
honey from the flower o' the world, And kept the gain, and cast the
means aside; And now all eye, all ear, all sense, perhaps; Transformed,
transfigured, yet the same life-power That moulded first the visible to
its use. So, like a child he was, that waits the show, While yet the
panting lights restrained burn At half height, and the theatre is full.
But as the days went on, they brought sad hours, When he would sit,
his hands upon his knees, Drooping, and longing for the wine of life.
Ah! now he learned what new necessities Come when the outer sphere
of life is riven, And casts distorted shadows on the soul; While the poor
soul, not yet complete in God, Cannot with inward light burn up the
shades, And laugh at seeming that is not the fact. For God, who speaks
to man on every side, Sending his voices from the outer world,
Glorious in stars, and winds, and flowers, and waves, And from the
inner world of things unseen, In hopes and thoughts and deep
assurances, Not seldom ceases outward speech awhile, That the inner,
isled in calm, may clearer sound; Or, calling through dull storms,
proclaim a rest, One centre fixed amid conflicting spheres; And thus
the soul, calm in itself, become Able to meet and cope with outward
things, Which else would overwhelm it utterly; And that the soul,
saying _I will the light_, May, in its absence, yet grow light itself, And
man's will glow the present will of God, Self-known, and yet divine.
Ah, gracious God! Do with us what thou wilt, thou glorious heart!

Thou art the God of them that grow, no less Than them that are; and so
we trust in thee For what we shall be, and in what we are.
Yet in the frequent pauses of the light, When fell the drizzling thaw, or
flaky snow; Or when the heaped-up ocean of still foam Reposed upon
the tranced earth, breathing low; His soul was like a frozen lake
beneath The clear blue heaven, reflecting it so dim That he could scarce
believe there was a heaven; And feared that beauty might be but a toy
Invented by himself in happier moods. "For," said he, "if my