24
ORACLES
Stain not the planets, the unfathomed home,
The spaceless, unformed faces in the dome
Brighter and blacker than all things,
Borne under the eternal wings
No whither: solitary are the winter woods
And caves not habited,
And that supreme grey head
Watching the groves: single the foaming
amber floods,
And O! most lone
The melancholy mountain shrine and throne,
While far above all things God sits, the
ultimate alone !
Ill.
I sate upon the mossy promontory
Where the cascade cleft not his mother rock,
But swept in whirlwind lightning foam and
glory,
Vast circling with unwearying luminous shock
To lure and lock
Marvellous eddies in its wild caress ;
And there the solemn echoes caught the stress,
The strain of that impassive tide,
Shook. it and flung it high and wide,
Till all the air took fire from that melodious
roar ;
All the mute mountains heard,
Bowed, laughed aloud, concurred,
And passed the word along, the signal of
wide war.
All earth took up the sound,
And, being in one tune securely bound,
Even as a star became the soul of silence
most profound.
IV.
Thus there, the centre of that death that
darkened,
I sat and listened, if God’s voice should
break .
_And pierce the hollow of my ear that
hearkened,
Lest God should speak and find me not
awake>
For his own sake.
No voice, no song might pierce or penetrate
That enviable universal state.
The sun and moon beheld, stood still.
Only the spirit’s axis, will,
Considered its own soul and sought a deadlier
deep,
And in its monotone mood
Of supreme solitude
Was neither glad nor sad because it did not
sleep ;
But with calm eyes abode
Patient, its leisure the galactic load,
Abode alone, nor even rejoiced to know that
it was God.
Vv.
All change, all motion, and all sound, are
weakness !
Man cannot bear the darkness which is death.
Even that calm Christ, manifest in meekness,
Cried on the cross and gave his ghostly breath,
On the prick of death,
Voice, for his passion could not bear nor dare
The interlunar, the abundant air
Darkened, and silence.on the shuddering
Hill, and the unbeating wing
Of the legions of His Father, and so died.
But I, should I be still
Poised between fear and will?
Should I be silent, I, and be unsatisfied?
For solitude shall bend
Self to all selffulness, and have one friend,
Self, and behold one God, and be, and look
beyond the End. |
VI.
O Solitude ! how many have mistaken
Thy name for Sorrow’s, or for Death's or
Fear’s !
Only thy children lie at night and waken—
How shouldst thou speak and say that no
man hears?
O Soul of Tears !
For never hath fallen as dew thy word,
Nor is thy shape showed, nor as Wisdom’s
heard
1 Via Lactea, the ‘‘ Milky Way,”