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LAW'.
Here I make oath--?Although the heart that knows its bitterness?Hear loath,?And credit less--?That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses fierce?Which hiss against his tears,?Dread, loss, nor love frustrate,?Nor all iniquity of the froward years?Shall his inur-ed wing make idly bate,?Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight?To lose observance quite;?Seal from half-sad and all-elate?Sagacious eyes?Ultimate Paradise;?Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate.
Pacing the burning shares of many dooms,?I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars?To judgment cite,?If I have borne aright?The proving of their pure-willed ordeal.?From food of all delight?The heavenly Falconer my heart debars,?And tames with fearful glooms?The haggard to His call;?Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal,?And she sits meek now, and expects the light.
In this Avernian sky,?This sultry and incumbent canopy?Of dull and doomed regret;?Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet,?At intervals,?Trembles, and falls,?Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet--?Ah, far too sweet?But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet;?Leaving this pallid trace,?This loitering and most fitful light a space,?Still some sad space,?For Grief to see her own poor face:-
Here where I keep my stand?With all o'er-anguished feet,?And no live comfort near on any hand;?Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term,?When this morass of tears, then drained and firm,?Shall be a land--?Unshaken I affirm--?Where seven-quired psalterings meet;?And all the gods move with calm hand in hand,?And eyes that know not trouble and the worm.
THE DREAD OF HEIGHT.
If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say: We
see: your sin remaineth. JOHN ix. 41.
Not the Circean wine?Most perilous is for pain:?Grapes of the heavens' star-loaden vine,?Whereto the lofty-placed?Thoughts of fair souls attain,?Tempt with a more retributive delight,?And do disrelish all life's sober taste.?'Tis to have drunk too well?The drink that is divine,?Maketh the kind earth waste,?And breath intolerable.
Ah me!?How shall my mouth content it with mortality??Lo, secret music, sweetest music,?From distances of distance drifting its lone flight,?Down the arcane where Night would perish in night,?Like a god's loosened locks slips undulously:?Music that is too grievous of the height?For safe and low delight,?Too infinite,?For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea!
So let it be,?Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small:?So let it be,?O music, music, though you wake in me?No joy, no joy at all;?Although you only wake?Uttermost sadness, measure of delight,?Which else I could not credit to the height,?Did I not know,?That ill is statured to its opposite;?Did I not know,?And even of sadness so,?Of utter sadness make,?Of extreme sad a rod to mete?The incredible excess of unsensed sweet,?And mystic wall of strange felicity.?So let it be,?Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small,?And bitter meat?The food of gods for men to eat;?Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread?Less ways of heat,?Than whom to their wind-carpeted?High banquet-hall,?And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat.
But ah withal,?Some hold, some stay,?O difficult Joy, I pray,?Some arms of thine,?Not only, only arms of mine!?Lest like a weary girl I fall?From clasping love so high,?And lacking thus thine arms, then may?Most hapless I?Turn utterly to love of basest rate;?For low they fall whose fall is from the sky.?Yea, who me shall secure?But I of height grown desperate?Surcease my wing, and my lost fate?Be dashed from pure?To broken writhings in the shameful slime:?Lower than man, for I dreamed higher,?Thrust down, by how much I aspire,?And damned with drink of immortality??For such things be,?Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell?Is but made possible?By forta'en breath of Heaven's austerest clime.
These tidings from the vast to bring?Needeth not doctor nor divine,?Too well, too well?My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing;?That dread theology alone?Is mine,?Most native and my own;?And ever with victorious toil?When I have made?Of the deific peaks dim escalade,?My soul with anguish and recoil?Doth like a city in an earthquake rock,?As at my feet the abyss is cloven then,?With deeper menace than for other men,?Of my potential cousinship with mire;?That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock,?My fearful powers retire,?No longer strong,?Reversing the shook banners of their song.
Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven,?A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint,?Or for a will accipitrine to pursue!?The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given,?Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint,?Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint,?Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew.
ORIENT ODE.
Lo, in the sanctuaried East,?Day, a dedicated priest?In all his robes pontifical exprest,?Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly,?From out its Orient tabernacle drawn,?Yon orb-ed sacrament confest?Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn;?And when the grave procession's ceased,?The earth with due illustrious rite?Blessed,--ere the frail fingers featly?Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte,?His sacerdotal stoles unvest--?Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast,?The sun in august exposition meetly?Within the flaming monstrance of the West.?O salutaris hostia,?Quae coeli pandis ostium!?Through breach-ed darkness' rampart, a?Divine assaulter, art thou come!?God whom none may live