The Ascent of Man Part 2

Woe, woe to Man and all his hapless brood!

No rest for him, no peace is to be found; He may have tamed wild beasts and made the ground Yield corn and wine and every kind of food; He may have turned the ocean to his steed, Tutored the lightning's elemental speed To flash his thought from aetna to Atlantic; He may have weighed the stars and spanned the stream, And trained the fiery force of panting steam To whirl him o'er vast steppes, and heights gigantic: But the storm-lashed world of feeling-- Love, the fount of tears unsealing, Choruses of pa.s.sion pealing-- l.u.s.t, ambition, hatred, awe, Clashing loudly with the law, But the phantasms of the mind Who shall master, yea, who bind!

What help is there without, what hope within Of rescue from the immemorial strife?

What will redeem him from the spasm of life, With all its devious ways of shame and sin?

What will redeem him from ancestral greeds, Grey legacies of hate and h.o.a.r misdeeds, Which from the guilty past Man doth inherit-- The past that is bound up with him, and part Of the pulsations of his inmost heart, And of the vital motions of his spirit?

Ages mazed in tortuous errors, Ghostly fears, and haunting terrors, Minds bewitched that served as mirrors For the foulest fancies bred In a fasting hermit's head, Such as cast a sickly blight On all shapes of life and light.

Yea, panting and pursued and stung and driven, The soul of Man flies on in deep distress, As once across the world's harsh wilderness Latona fled, chased by the Queen of heaven; Flying across the homeless Universe From the inveterate stroke of Juno's curse; On whom even mother earth closed all her portals, Refusing shelter in her cooing bowers, Or rest upon her velvet couch of flowers, To the most weary of all weary mortals.

Within whose earth-enc.u.mbered form, Like two fair stars entwined in storm, Or wings astir within the worm, Feeling out for light and air, Struggled that celestial pair, Phoebus of unerring bow, And chaste Dian fair as snow.

Ah, who will harbour her? Ah, who will save The fugitive from pangs that rack and tear; Who, finding rest nor refuge anywhere, Seems doomed to be her unborn offspring's grave; The seed of Jove, murdered before their birth-- Did not the sea, more merciful than earth, Bid Delos stand--that wandering isle of Ocean-- Stand motionless upon the moving foam, To be the exile's wave-encircled home, And lull her pains with leaves in drowsy motion, Where the soft-boughed olive sighing Bends above the woman lying And in spasms of anguish crying, Shuddering through her mortal frame, As from dust is struck the flame Which shall henceforth beam sublime Through the firmament of Time?

Oh, balmy Island bedded on the brine, Harbour of refuge on the tumbling seas, The fabulous bowers of the Hesperides Ne'er bore such blooming gold as glows in thine: Thou green Oasis on the tides of Time Where no rude blast disturbs the azure clime; Thou Paradise whence man can ne'er be driven, Where, severed from the world-clang and the roar, Still in the flesh he yet may reach that sh.o.r.e Where want is not, and, like the dew from heaven, There drops upon the fevered soul The balm of Thought's divine control And rapt absorption in the whole: Delivery in the realm of art Of the world-racked human heart-- Forms and hues and sounds that make Life grow lovelier for their sake.

By sheer persistence, strenuous and slow, The marble yields and, line by flowing line And curve by curve, begins to swell and shine Beneath the ring of each far-sighted blow: Until the formless block obeys the hand, And at the mastering mind's supreme command Takes form and radiates from each limb and feature Such beauty as ne'er bloomed in mortal mould, Whose face, out-smiling centuries, shall hold Perfection's mirror up to 'prentice nature.

Not from out voluptuous ocean Venus rose in balanced motion, G.o.ddess of all bland emotion; But she leaped a shape of light, Radiating love's delight, From the sculptor's brain to be Sphered in immortality.

New spirit-yearnings for a heavenlier mood Call for a love more pitiful and tender, And 'neath the painter's touch blooms forth in splendour The image of transfigured motherhood.

All hopes of all glad women who have smiled In adoration on their first-born child Here smile through one glad woman made immortal; All tears of all sad women through whose heart Has pierced the edge of sorrow's sevenfold dart Lie weeping with her at death's dolorous portal.

For in married hues whose splendour Bodies forth the gloom and grandeur Of life's pageant, tragic, tender, Common things transfigured flush By the magic of the brush, As when sun-touched raindrops glow, Blent in one harmonious bow.

But see, he comes, Lord of life's changeful shows, To whom the ways of Nature are laid bare, Who looks on heaven and makes the heavens more fair, And adds new sweetness to the perfumed rose; Who can unseal the heart with all its tears, Marshal loves, hates, hopes, sorrows, joys, and fears In quick procession o'er the pa.s.sive pages; Who has given tongue to silent generations And wings to thought, so that long-mouldered nations May call to nations o'er the abyss of ages: The poet, in whose shaping brain Life is created o'er again With loftier raptures, loftier pain; Whose mighty potencies of verse Move through the plastic Universe, And fashion to their strenuous will The world that is creating still.

Do you hear it, do you hear it Soaring up to heaven, or somewhere near it?

From the depths of life upheaving, Clouds of earth and sorrow cleaving, From despair and death retrieving, All triumphant blasts of sound Lift you at one rhythmic bound From the thraldom of the ground.

All the sweetness which the glowing Violets waft to west winds blowing, All the burning love-notes aching, Rills and thrills of rapture shaking Through the hearts that throb to breaking Of the little nightingales; Mellow murmuring waters streaming Lakeward in long silver trails, Crooning low while earth lies dreaming To the moonlight-tangled vales; Swish of rain on half-blown roses h.o.a.rding close their rich perfume, Which the summer dawn uncloses Sparkling in their morning bloom; Convent peals o'er pastoral meadows, Swinging through hay-scented air When the velvet-footed shadows Call the hind to evening prayer.

Yea, all notes of woods and highlands; Sea-fowls' screech round sphinx-like islands Couched among the Hebrides; Cuckoo calls through April showers, When the green fields froth with flowers And with bloom the orchard trees.

Boom of surges with their hollow Refluent shock from cave to cave, As the maddening spring tides follow Moonstruck reeling wave o'er wave.

Yea, all rhythms of air and ocean Married to the heart's emotion, To the intervolved emotion Of the heart for ever turning In a whirl of bliss and pain, Blending in symphonious strain All the vague, unearthly yearning Of the visionary brain.

All life's discords sweetly blending, Heights on heights of being ascending, Harmonies of confluent sound Lift you at one rhythmic bound From the thraldom of the ground; Loosen all your bonds of birth, Clogs of sense and weights of earth, Bear you in angelic legions High above terrestrial regions Into ampler ether, where Spirits breathe a finer air, Where upon world alt.i.tudes G.o.d-intoxicated moods Fill you with beat.i.tudes; Till no longer cramped and bound By the narrow human round, All the body's barriers slide, Which with cold obstruction hide The supreme, undying, sole Spirit struggling through the whole, And no more a thing apart From the universal heart Liberated by the grace Of man's genius for a s.p.a.ce, Human lives dissolve, enlace In a flaming world embrace.

_A SYMBOL._

Hurrying for ever in their restless flight The generations of earth's teeming womb Rise into being and lapse into the tomb Liketransient bubbles sparkling in the light; They sink in quick succession out of sight Into the thick insuperable gloom Our futile lives in flashing by illume-- Lightning which mocks the darkness of the night.

Nay--but consider, though we change and die, If men must pa.s.s shall Man not still remain?

As the unnumbered drops of summer rain Whose changing particles unchanged on high, Fixed, in perpetual motion, yet maintain The mystic bow emblazoned on the sky.

_TIME'S SHADOW._

Thy life, O Man, in this brief moment lies: Time's narrow bridge whereon we darkling stand, With an infinitude on either hand Receding luminously from our eyes.

Lo, there thy Past's forsaken Paradise Subsideth like some visionary strand, While glimmering faint, the Future's promised land, Illusive from the abyss, seems fain to rise.

This hour alone Hope's broken pledges mar, And Joy now gleams before, now in our rear, Like mirage mocking in some waste afar, Dissolving into air as we draw near.

Beyond our steps the path is sunny-clear, The shadow lying only where we are.

THE ASCENT OF MAN.

PART II.

"Love is for ever poor, and so far from being delicate and beautiful, as mankind imagined, he is squalid and withered ... homeless and unsandalled; he sleeps without covering before the doors, and in the unsheltered streets."--PLATO.

_THE PILGRIM SOUL._

Through the winding mazes of windy streets Blindly I hurried I knew not whither, Through the dim-lit ways of the brain thus fleets

A fluttering dream driven hither and thither.-- The fitful flare of the moon fled fast, Like a sickly smile now seeming to wither,

Now dark like a scowl in the hurrying blast As ominous shadows swept over the roofs Where white as a ghost the scared moonlight had pa.s.sed.

Curses came mingled with wails and reproofs, With doors banging to and the crashing of gla.s.s, With the baying of dogs and the clatter of hoofs,

With the rush of the river as, huddling its ma.s.s Of weltering water towards the deep ocean, 'Neath many-arched bridges its eddies did pa.s.s.

A hubbub of voices in savage commotion Was mixed with the storm in a chaos of sound, And thrilled as with ague in shuddering emotion

I fled as the hunted hare flees from the hound.

Past churches whose bells were tumultuously ringing The year in, and clashing in concord around;

Past the deaf walls of dungeons whose curses seemed clinging To the tempest that shivered and shrieked in amazement; Past brightly lit mansions whence music and singing

Came borne like a scent through the close-curtained cas.e.m.e.nt, To vaults in whose shadow wild outcasts were hiding Their misery deep in the gloom of the bas.e.m.e.nt.

By vociferous taverns where women were biding With features all withered, distorted, aghast; Some sullenly silent, some brutally chiding,

Some reeling away into gloom as I pa.s.sed On, on, through lamp-lighted and fountain-filled places, Where throned in rich temples, resplendent and vast,

The Lord of the City is deafened with praises As worshipping mult.i.tudes kneel as of old; Nor care for the crowds of cadaverous faces,

The men that are marred and the maids that are sold-- Inarticulate ma.s.ses promiscuously jumbled And crushed 'neath their Juggernaut idol of gold.

Lost lives of great cities bespattered and tumbled, Black rags the rain soaks, the wind whips like a knout, Were crouched in the streets there, and o'er them nigh stumbled

A swarm of light maids as they tripped to some rout.

The silk of their raiment voluptuously hisses And flaps o'er the flags as loud laughing they flout

The wine-maddened men they ne'er satiate with kisses For the pearls and the diamonds that make them more fair, For the flash of large jewels that fire them with blisses,

For the glitter of gold in the gold of their hair.

They smiled and they cozened, their bold eyes shone brightly And lightened with laughter, as, lit by the flare

Of the wind-fretted gas-lamps, they footed it lightly, Or, closely enlacing and bowered in gloom, With mouth pressed to hot mouth, their parched lips drain nightly