Narrative Poems, part 3, Barclay of Ury etc | Page 7

golden
days to come.
But weakness, shame, and folly made
The foil to all his pen portrayed;

Still, where his dreamy splendors shone,
The shadow of himself
was thrown.

Lord, what is man, whose thought, at times,
Up to Thy sevenfold
brightness climbs,
While still his grosser instinct clings
To earth,
like other creeping things!
So rich in words, in acts so mean;
So high, so low; chance-swung
between
The foulness of the penal pit
And Truth's clear sky,
millennium-lit!
Vain, pride of star-lent genius!--vain,
Quick fancy and creative brain,

Unblest by prayerful sacrifice,
Absurdly great, or weakly wise!
Midst yearnings for a truer life,
Without were fears, within was strife;

And still his wayward act denied
The perfect good for which he
sighed.
The love he sent forth void returned;
The fame that crowned him
scorched and burned,
Burning, yet cold and drear and lone,--
A
fire-mount in a frozen zone!
Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed,[9]
Seen southward from
his sleety mast,
About whose brows of changeless frost
A wreath of
flame the wild winds tossed.
Far round the mournful beauty played
Of lambent light and purple
shade,
Lost on the fixed and dumb despair
Of frozen earth and sea
and air!
A man apart, unknown, unloved
By those whose wrongs his soul had
moved,
He bore the ban of Church and State,
The good man's fear,
the bigot's hate!
Forth from the city's noise and throng,
Its pomp and shame, its sin
and wrong,
The twain that summer day had strayed
To Mount
Valerien's chestnut shade.
To them the green fields and the wood
Lent something of their

quietude,
And golden-tinted sunset seemed
Prophetical of all they
dreamed.
The hermits from their simple cares
The bell was calling home to
prayers,
And, listening to its sound, the twain
Seemed lapped in
childhood's trust again.
Wide open stood the chapel door;
A sweet old music, swelling o'er

Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence,--
The Litanies of Providence!
Then Rousseau spake: "Where two or three
In His name meet, He
there will be!"
And then, in silence, on their knees
They sank
beneath the chestnut-trees.
As to the blind returning light,
As daybreak to the Arctic night,
Old
faith revived; the doubts of years
Dissolved in reverential tears.
That gush of feeling overpast,
"Ah me!" Bernardin sighed at last,
I
would thy bitterest foes could see
Thy heart as it is seen of me!
"No church of God hast thou denied;
Thou hast but spurned in scorn
aside
A bare and hollow counterfeit,
Profaning the pure name of it!
"With dry dead moss and marish weeds
His fire the western
herdsman feeds,
And greener from the ashen plain
The sweet spring
grasses rise again.
"Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind
Disturb the solid sky behind;

And through the cloud the red bolt rends
The calm, still smile of
Heaven descends.
"Thus through the world, like bolt and blast,
And scourging fire, thy
words have passed.
Clouds break,--the steadfast heavens remain;

Weeds burn,--the ashes feed the grain!
"But whoso strives with wrong may find
Its touch pollute, its

darkness blind;
And learn, as latent fraud is shown
In others' faith,
to doubt his own.
"With dream and falsehood, simple trust
And pious hope we tread in
dust;
Lost the calm faith in goodness,--lost
The baptism of the
Pentecost!
"Alas!--the blows for error meant
Too oft on truth itself are spent,

As through the false and vile and base
Looks forth her sad, rebuking
face.
"Not ours the Theban's charmed life;
We come not scathless from the
strife!
The Python's coil about us clings,
The trampled Hydra bites
and stings!
"Meanwhile, the sport of seeming chance,
The plastic shapes of
circumstance,
What might have been we fondly guess,
If earlier
born, or tempted less.
"And thou, in these wild, troubled days,
Misjudged alike in blame
and praise,
Unsought and undeserved the same
The skeptic's praise,
the bigot's blame;--
"I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been
Among the highly favored men

Who walked on earth with Fenelon,
He would have owned thee as his
son;
"And, bright with wings of cherubim
Visibly waving over him,

Seen through his life, the Church had seemed
All that its old
confessors dreamed."
"I would have been," Jean Jaques replied,
"The humblest servant at
his side,
Obscure, unknown, content to see
How beautiful man's life
may be!
"Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more
Than solemn rite or sacred

lore,
The holy life of one who trod
The foot-marks of the Christ of
God!
"Amidst a blinded world he saw
The oneness of the Dual law;
That
Heaven's sweet peace on Earth began,
And God was loved through
love of man.
"He lived the Truth which reconciled
The strong man Reason, Faith
the child;
In him belief and act were one,
The homilies of duty
done!"
So speaking, through the twilight gray
The two old pilgrims went
their way.
What seeds of life that day were sown,
The heavenly
watchers knew alone.
Time passed, and Autumn came to fold
Green Summer in her brown
and gold;
Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow
Dropped on the
grave-mound of Rousseau.
"The tree remaineth where it fell,
The pained on earth is pained in
hell!"
So priestcraft from its altars cursed
The mournful doubts its
falsehood nursed.
Ah! well of old the Psalmist prayed,
"Thy hand, not man's, on me be
laid!"
Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above,
And man is hate,
but