The Ascent of Man Part 4

And the lamplight in drowning seemed coldly to shiver, And clasping Love close for the leap from on high, Said--"Let us go hence, Love; go home, Love, for ever;

"For life casts us forth, and Man dooms us to die."

As if stung by a snake the Child shuddered and started, And clung to me close with a pa.s.sionate cry:

"Stay with me, stay with me, poor, broken-hearted; Pain, if not pleasure, we two will divide; Though with the sins of the world I have smarted,

"Though with the shame of the world thou art dyed, Weak as I am, on thy breast I'll recover, Worn as thou art, thou shalt bloom as my bride:

"Bloom as the flower of the World for the lover Whom thou hast found in a lost little Child."

And as he kissed my lips over and over--

Child now, or Man, was it who thus beguiled?-- Even as I looked on him, Love, waxing slowly, Grew as a little cloud, floating enisled,

Which spreads out aloft in the blue sky till solely It fills the deep ether tremendous in height, With far-flashing snow-peaks and pinnacles wholly

Invisible, vanishing light within light.

So changing waxed Love--till he towered before me, Outgrowing my lost G.o.ds in stature and might.

As he grew, as he drew me, a great awe came o'er me, And stammering, I shook as I questioned his name; But gently bowed o'er me, he soothed and bore me,

Yea, bore once again to the haunts whence I came, By dark ways and dreary, by rough roads and gritty, To the penfolds of sin, to the purlieus of shame.

And lo, as we went through the woe-clouded city, Where women bring forth and men labour in vain, Weak Love grew so great in his pa.s.sion of pity That all who beheld him were born once again.

_SAVING LOVE._

Would we but love what will not pa.s.s away!

The sun that on each morning shines as clear As when it rose first on the world's first year; The fresh green leaves that rustle on the spray.

The sun will shine, the leaves will be as gay When graves are full of all our hearts held dear, When not a soul of those who loved us here, Not one, is left us--creatures of decay.

Yea, love the Abiding in the Universe Which was before, and will be after us.

Nor yet for ever hanker and vainly cry For human love--the beings that change or die; Die--change--forget: to care so is a curse, Yet cursed we'll be rather than not care thus.

_NIRVANA._

Divest thyself, O Soul, of vain desire!

Bid hope farewell, dismiss all coward fears; Take leave of empty laughter, emptier tears, And quench, for ever quench, the wasting fire Wherein this heart, as in a funeral pyre, Aye burns, yet is consumed not. Years on years Moaning with memories in thy maddened ears-- Let at thy word, like refluent waves, retire.

Enter thy soul's vast realm as Sovereign Lord, And, like that angel with the flaming sword, Wave off life's clinging hands. Then chains will fall From the poor slave of self's hard tyranny-- And Thou, a ripple rounded by the sea, In rapture lost be lapped within the All.

_MOTHERHOOD._

From out the font of being, undefiled, A life hath been upheaved with struggle and pain; Safe in her arms a mother holds again That dearest miracle--a new-born child.

To moans of anguish terrible and wild-- As shrieks the night-wind through an ill-shut pane-- Pure heaven succeeds; and after fiery strain Victorious woman smiles serenely mild.

Yea, shall she not rejoice, shall not her frame Thrill with a mystic rapture! At this birth, The soul now kindled by her vital flame May it not prove a gift of priceless worth?

Some saviour of his kind whose starry fame Shall bring a brightness to the darkened earth.

THE ASCENT OF MAN.

PART III.

"Our spirits have climbed high By reason of the pa.s.sion of our grief,-- And from the top of sense, looked over sense To the significance and heart of things Rather than things themselves."

E. B. BROWNING.

_THE LEADING OF SORROW._

Through a twilight land, a moaning region, Thick with sighs that shook the trembling air, Land of shadows whose dim crew was legion, Lost I hurried, hunted by despair.

Quailed my heart like an expiring splendour, Fitful flicker of a faltering fire, Smitten chords which tempest-stricken render Rhythms of anguish from a breaking lyre.

Love had left me in a land of shadows, Lonely on the ruins of delight, And I grieved with tearless grief of widows, Moaned as orphans homeless in the night.

Love had left me knocking at Death's portal-- Shone his star and vanished from my sky-- And I cried: "Since Love, even Love, is mortal, Take, unmake, and break me; let me die."

Then, the twilight's grisly veils dividing, Phantom-like there stole one o'er the plain, Wavering mists for ever round it gliding Hid the face I strove to scan in vain.

Spake the veiled one: "Solitary weeper, 'Mid the myriad mourners thou'rt but one: Come, and thou shalt see the awful reaper, Evil, reaping all beneath the sun."

On my hand the clay-cold hand did fasten As it murmured--"Up and follow me; O'er the thickly peopled earth we'll hasten, Yet more thickly packed with misery."

And I followed: ever in the shadow Of that looming form I fared along; Now o'er mountains, now through wood and meadow, Or through cities with their surging throng.

With none other for a friend or fellow Those relentless footsteps were my guide To the sea-caves echoing with the hollow Immemorial moaning of the tide.

Laughed the sunlight on the living ocean, Danced and rocked itself upon the spray, And its shivered beams in twinkling motion Gleamed like star-motes in the Milky Way.

Lo, beneath those waters surging, flowing, I beheld the Deep's fantastic bowers; Shapes which seemed alive and yet were growing On their stalks like animated flowers.

Sentient flowers which seemed to glow and glimmer Soft as ocean blush of Indian sh.e.l.ls, White as foam-drift in the moony shimmer Of those sea-lit, wave-pavilioned dells.

Yet even here, as in the fire-eyed panther, In disguise the eternal hunger lay, For each feathery, velvet-tufted anther Lay in ambush waiting for its prey.

Tiniest jewelled fish that flashed like lightning, Blindly drawn, came darting through the wave, When, a stifling sack above them tightening, Closed the ocean-blossom's living grave.

Now we fared through forest glooms primeval Through whose leaves the light but rarely shone, Where the b.u.t.tressed tree-trunks looked coeval With the time-worn, ocean-fretted stone; Where, from stem to stem their tendrils looping, Coiled the lithe lianas fold on fold, Or, in cataracts of verdure drooping, From on high their billowy leaf.a.ge rolled.

Where beneath the dusky woodland cover, While the noon-hush holds all living things, b.u.t.terflies of tropic splendour hover In a maze of rainbow-coloured wings: Some like stars light up their own green heaven Some are spangled like a golden toy, Or like flowers from their foliage driven In the fiery ecstasy of joy.

But, the forest slumber rudely breaking, Through the silence rings a piercing yell; At the cry unnumbered beasts, awaking, With their howls the loud confusion swell.

'Tis the cry of some frail creature panting In the tiger's lacerating grip; In its flesh carnivorous teeth implanting, While the blood smokes round his wrinkled lip.

'Tis the scream some bird in terror utters, With its wings weighed down by leaden fears, As from bough to downward bough it flutters Where the snake its glistening crest uprears: Eyes of sluggish greed through rank weeds stealing, Breath whose venomous fumes mount through the air, Till benumbed the helpless victim, reeling, Drops convulsed into the reptile snare.

Now we fared o'er sweltering wastes whose steaming Clouds of tawny sand the wanderer blind.

Herds of horses with their long manes streaming Snorted thirstily against the wind; O'er the waste they scoured in shadowy numbers, Gasped for springs their raging thirst to cool, And, like sick men mocked in fevered slumbers, Stoop to drink--and find a phantom pool.

What of antelopes crunched by the leopard?

What if hounds run down the timid hare?

What though sheep, strayed from the faithful shepherd, Perish helpless in the lion's lair?

The all-seeing sun shines on unheeding, In the night shines the unruffled moon, Though on earth brute myriads, preying, bleeding, Put creation harshly out of tune.

Cried I, turning to the shrouded figure-- "Oh, in mercy veil this cruel strife!

Sanguinary orgies which disfigure The green ways of labyrinthine life.