Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. | Page 5

fool, too wise
With seeing to believe.
Exemplars may be heaped until they hide?The rules that they were made to render plain;?Love may be watched, her nature to decide,
Until love's self doth wane.
Ah me! and when forgotten and foregone?We leave the learning of departed days,?And cease the generations past to con,
Their wisdom and their ways,--
When fain to learn we lean into the dark,?And grope to feel the floor of the abyss,?Or find the secret boundary lines which mark
Where soul and matter kiss--
Fair world! these puzzled souls of ours grow weak?With beating their bruised wings against the rim?That bounds their utmost flying, when they seek
The distant and the dim.
We pant, we strain like birds against their wires;?Are sick to reach the vast and the beyond;--?And what avails, if still to our desires
Those far-off gulfs respond?
Contentment comes not therefore; still there lies?An outer distance when the first is hailed,?And still forever yawns before our eyes
An UTMOST--that is veiled.
Searching those edges of the universe,?We leave the central fields a fallow part;?To feed the eye more precious things amerce,
And starve the darkened heart.
Then all goes wrong: the old foundations rock;?One scorns at him of old who gazed unshod;?One striking with a pickaxe thinks the shock
Shall move the seat of God.
A little way, a very little way?(Life is so short), they dig into the rind,?And they are very sorry, so they say,--
Sorry for what they find.
But truth is sacred--ay, and must be told:?There is a story long beloved of man;?We must forego it, for it will not hold--
Nature had no such plan.
And then, if "God hath said it," some should cry,?We have the story from the fountain-head:?Why, then, what better than the old reply,
The first "Yea, HATH God said?"
The garden, O the garden, must it go,?Source of our hope and our most dear regret??The ancient story, must it no more show
How man may win it yet?
And all upon the Titan child's decree,?The baby science, born but yesterday,?That in its rash unlearned infancy
With shells and stones at play,
And delving in the outworks of this world,?And little crevices that it could reach,?Discovered certain bones laid up, and furled
Under an ancient beach,
And other waifs that lay to its young mind?Some fathoms lower than they ought to lie,?By gain whereof it could not fail to find
Much proof of ancientry,
Hints at a Pedigree withdrawn and vast,?Terrible deeps, and old obscurities,?Or soulless origin, and twilight passed
In the primeval seas,
Whereof it tells, as thinking it hath been?Of truth not meant for man inheritor;?As if this knowledge Heaven had ne'er foreseen
And not provided for!
Knowledge ordained to live! although the fate?Of much that went before it was--to die,?And be called ignorance by such as wait
Till the next drift comes by.
O marvellous credulity of man!?If God indeed kept secret, couldst thou know?Or follow up the mighty Artisan
Unless He willed it so?
And canst thou of the Maker think in sooth?That of the Made He shall be found at fault,?And dream of wresting from Him hidden truth
By force or by assault?
But if He keeps not secret--if thine eyes?He openeth to His wondrous work of late--?Think how in soberness thy wisdom lies,
And have the grace to wait.
Wait, nor against the half-learned lesson fret,?Nor chide at old belief as if it erred,?Because thou canst not reconcile as yet
The Worker and the word.
Either the Worker did in ancient days?Give us the word, His tale of love and might;?(And if in truth He gave it us, who says
He did not give it right?)
Or else He gave it not, and then indeed?We know not if HE is--by whom our years?Are portioned, who the orphan moons doth lead,
And the unfathered spheres.
We sit unowned upon our burial sod?And know not whence we come or whose we be,?Comfortless mourners for the mount of God,
The rocks of Calvary:
Bereft of heaven, and of the long-loved page?Wrought us by some who thought with death to cope.?Despairing comforters, from age to age
Sowing the seeds of hope:
Gracious deceivers, who have lifted us?Out of the slough where passed our unknown youth.?Beneficent liars, who have gifted us
With sacred love of truth!
Farewell to them: yet pause ere thou unmoor?And set thine ark adrift on unknown seas;?How wert thou bettered so, or more secure
Thou, and thy destinies?
And if thou searchest, and art made to fear?Facing of unread riddles dark and hard,?And mastering not their majesty austere,
Their meaning locked and barred:
How would it make the weight and wonder less,?If, lifted from immortal shoulders down,?The worlds were cast on seas of emptiness
In realms without a crown.
And (if there were no God) were left to rue?Dominion of the air and of the fire??Then if there be a God, "Let God be true,
And every man a liar."
But as for me, I do not speak as one?That is exempt: I am with life at feud:?My heart reproacheth me, as there were none
Of so small gratitude.
Wherewith shall I console thee, heart o'