O May I Join the Choir Invisible!

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George Eliot
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Title: O May I Join the Choir Invisible!
and Other Favorite Poems
Author: George Eliot
Release Date: March 4, 2007 [eBook #20742]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK O MAY I
JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!***
Transcribed from the 1884 D. Lothrop and Company edition by David
Price, email [email protected]
{Book cover: cover.jpg}
O MAY I JOIN
THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!
BY
GEORGE ELIOT
AND OTHER FAVORITE POEMS
_ILLUSTRATED_

BOSTON
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY
FRANKLIN AND
HAWLEY STREETS
Copyright by
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY
1884
{"May I reach that purest Heaven!": p0.jpg}
O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live
again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred
to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
Of miserable
aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like
stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's minds
To vaster
issues.
So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,

Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the
growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we
struggled, failed and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred
despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious
parent shaming still its child,
Poor, anxious penitence is quick
dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the
large and charitable air;
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That
sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden
of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet
be better--saw rather
A worthier image for the sanctuary
And
shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship
so
To higher reverence more mixed with love--
That better self
shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky

Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever.
This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious

For us who strive to follow.

May I reach
That purest heaven--be to other souls
The cup of
strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure
love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence
of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I
join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO
AIX.
{At Aerschot up leaped of a sudden the Sun: p1.jpg}
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris and he:
I galloped, Dirck galloped,
we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts
undrew,
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through.
Behind
shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we
galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace--
Neck by neck,
stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and
made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup and set the pique
right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor
galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks
crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom a great yellow star came
out to see;
At Duffeld 'twas morning as plain as could be;
And from
Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime--
So Joris broke
silence with "Yet there is time!"
At Aerschot up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle
stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past;

And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last
With resolute shoulders,
each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray;
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my

voice, and the other pricked out on his track,
And one eye's black
intelligence--ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own
master, askance;
And the thick heavy spume-flakes, which aye and
anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos
galloped bravely, the fault's not in her;
"We'll remember at Aix"--for
one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and
staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As
down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
So we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no
cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh;

'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by
Delhem a dome spire sprung white,
And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for
Aix is in sight!
"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and
croup over, lay dead