Christmas Eve | Page 4

needed,?--Not life, to wit, for a few short years,?Tracking his way through doubts and fears,?While the stupid earth on which I stay?Suffers no change, but passive adds?Its myriad years to myriads,?Though I, he gave it to, decay,?Seeing death come and choose about me,?And my dearest ones depart without me.?No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,?Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,?The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it.?Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it,?And I shall behold thee, face to face,?O God, and in thy light retrace?How in all I loved here, still wast thou!?Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,?I shall find as able to satiate?The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder?Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,?With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,?And glory in thee for, as I gaze?Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways?Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine--?Be this my way! And this is mine!
VI
For lo, what think you? suddenly?The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky?Received at once the full fruition?Of the moon's consummate apparition.?The black cloud-barricade was riven,?Ruined beneath her feet, and driven?Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,?North and South and East lay ready?For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,?Sprang across them and stood steady.?'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,?From heaven to heaven extending, perfect?As the mother-moon's self, full in face.?It rose, distinctly at the base?With its seven proper colours chorded,?Which still, in the rising, were compressed,?Until at last they coalesced,?And supreme the spectral creature lorded?In a triumph of whitest white,--?Above which intervened the night.?But above night too, like only the next,?The second of a wondrous sequence,?Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,?Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,?Another rainbow rose, a mightier,?Fainter, flushier and flightier,--?Rapture dying along its verge.?Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,?Whose, from the straining topmost dark,?On to the keystone of that arc?
VII
This sight was shown me, there and then,--?Me, out of a world of men,?Singled forth, as the chance might hap?To another if, in a thunderclap?Where I heard noise and you saw flame,?Some one man knew God called his name.?For me, I think I said, "Appear!?"Good were it to be ever here.?"If thou wilt, let me build to thee?"Service-tabernacles three,?"Where, forever in thy presence,?"In ecstatic asquiescence,?"Far alike from thriftless learning?"And ignorance's undiscerning,?"I may worship and remain!"?Thus at the show above me, gazing?With upturned eyes, I felt my brain?Glutted with the glory, blazing?Throughout its whole mass, over and under?Until at length it burst asunder?And out of it bodily there streamed,?The too-much glory, as it seemed,?Passing from out me to the ground,?Then palely serpentining round?Into the dark with mazy error.
VIII
All at once I looked up with terror.?He was there.?He himself with his human air.?On the narrow pathway, just before.?I saw the back of him, no more--?He had left the chapel, then, as I.?I forgot all about the sky.?No face: only the sight?Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,?With a hem that I could recognize.?I felt terror, no surprise;?My mind filled with the cataract,?At one bound of the mighty fact.?"I remember, he did say?"Doubtless that, to this world's end,?"Where two or three should meet and pray,?"He would be in their midst, their friend;?"Certainly he was there with them!"?And my pulses leaped for joy?Of the golden thought without alloy,?Then I saw his very vesture's hem.?Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,?With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;?And I hastened, cried out while I pressed?To the salvation of the vest,?"But not so, Lord! It cannot be?"That thou, indeed, art leaving me--?"Me, that have despised thy friends!?"Did my heart make no amends??"Thou art the love of God--above?"His power, didst hear me place his love,?"And that was leaving the world for thee.?"Therefore thou must not turn from me?"As I had chosen the other part!?"Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.?"Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;?"Still, it should be our very best.?"I thought it best that thou, the spirit,?"Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,?"And in beauty, as even we require it--?"Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,?"I left but now, as scarcely fitted?"For thee: I knew not what I pitied.?"But, all I felt there, right or wrong,?"What is it to thee, who curest sinning??"Am I not weak as thou art strong??"I have looked to thee from the beginning,?"Straight up to thee through all the world?"Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled?"To nothingness on either side:?"And since the time thou wast descried,?"Spite of the weak heart, so have I?"Lived ever, and so fain would die,?"Living and dying, thee before!?"But if thou leavest me----"
IX
Less or more,?I suppose that I spoke thus.?When,--have mercy, Lord, on us!?The whole face turned upon me full.?And I spread myself beneath it,?As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it?In