Christmas Eve | Page 4

that I, in turn,
Should point him out defect
unheeded,
And show that God had yet to learn
What the meanest
human creature 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