Astrophel and Other Poems | Page 4

if ill things be,?Or if aught of the work of the wrong of the world be thine. We hear not the footfall of terror that treads the sea, We hear not the moan of winds that assail the pine:?We see not if shipwreck reign in the storm's dim shrine; If death do service and doom bear witness to thee?We see not,--know not if blood for thy lips be wine.
But in all things evil and fearful that fear may scan, As in all things good, as in all things fair that fall, We know thee present and latent, the lord of man;?In the murmuring of doves, in the clamouring of winds that call And wolves that howl for their prey; in the midnight's pall, In the naked and nymph-like feet of the dawn, O Pan,?And in each life living, O thou the God who art all.
Smiling and singing, wailing and wringing of hands,?Laughing and weeping, watching and sleeping, still?Proclaim but and prove but thee, as the shifted sands?Speak forth and show but the strength of the sea's wild will That sifts and grinds them as grain in the storm-wind's mill. In thee is the doom that falls and the doom that stands: The tempests utter thy word, and the stars fulfil.
Where Etna shudders with passion and pain volcanic?That rend her heart as with anguish that rends a man's, Where Typho labours, and finds not his thews Titanic,?In breathless torment that ever the flame's breath fans, Men felt and feared thee of old, whose pastoral clans Were given to the charge of thy keeping; and soundless panic Held fast the woodland whose depths and whose heights were Pan's.
And here, though fear be less than delight, and awe?Be one with desire and with worship of earth and thee, So mild seems now thy secret and speechless law,?So fair and fearless and faithful and godlike she,?So soft the spell of thy whisper on stream and sea,?Yet man should fear lest he see what of old men saw?And withered: yet shall I quail if thy breath smite me.
Lord God of life and of light and of all things fair,?Lord God of ravin and ruin and all things dim,?Death seals up life, and darkness the sunbright air,?And the stars that watch blind earth in the deep night swim Laugh, saying, "What God is your God, that ye call on him? What is man, that the God who is guide of our way should care If day for a man be golden, or night be grim?"
But thou, dost thou hear? Stars too but abide for a span, Gods too but endure for a season; but thou, if thou be God, more than shadows conceived and adored of man,?Kind Gods and fierce, that bound him or made him free, The skies that scorn us are less in thy sight than we, Whose souls have strength to conceive and perceive thee, Pan, With sense more subtle than senses that hear and see.
Yet may not it say, though it seek thee and think to find One soul of sense in the fire and the frost-bound clod, What heart is this, what spirit alive or blind,?That moves thee: only we know that the ways we trod?We tread, with hands unguided, with feet unshod,?With eyes unlightened; and yet, if with steadfast mind, Perchance may we find thee and know thee at last for God.
Yet then should God be dark as the dawn is bright,?And bright as the night is dark on the world--no more. Light slays not darkness, and darkness absorbs not light; And the labour of evil and good from the years of yore Is even as the labour of waves on a sunless shore.?And he who is first and last, who is depth and height, Keeps silence now, as the sun when the woods wax hoar.
The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life?Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread,?Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife,?Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead. No service of bended knee or of humbled head?May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife:?And life with death is as morning with evening wed.
And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here Seem soft and splendid and fervid as sleep may seem?Be more than the shine of a smile or the flash of a tear, Sleep, change, and death are less than a spell-struck dream, And fear than the fall of a leaf on a starlit stream. And yet, if the hope that hath said it absorb not fear, What helps it man that the stars and the waters gleam?
What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense,?The night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain?Were lords and masters yet of