A Hidden Life and Other Poems | Page 9

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 mind can dim the fair, Why should it not enhance the fairness too?" But then the poor mind lay itself all dim, And ruffled with the outer restlessness Of striving death and life. And a tired man May drop his eyelids on the visible world, To whom no dreams, when fancy flieth free, Will bring the sunny excellence of day; Nor