.
Amid the vague Immense:
None can their chronicle declare,
Nor why they be, nor whence.
II
Mother of all things made,
Matchless in artistry,
Unlit with sight is she.—
And though her ever well-obeyed
Vacant of feeling he.
III
The Matron mildly asks—
A throb in every word—
“Our clay-made creatures, lord,
How fare they in their mortal tasks
Upon Earth’s bounded bord?
IV
“The fate of those I bear,
Dear lord, pray turn and view,
And notify me true;
Shapings that eyelessly I dare
Maybe I would undo.
V
“Sometimes from lairs of life
Methinks I catch a groan,
Or multitudinous moan,
As though I had schemed a world of strife,
Working by touch alone.”
VI
“World-weaver!” he replies,
“I scan all thy domain;
But since nor joy nor pain
Doth my clear substance recognize,
I read thy realms in vain.
VII
“World-weaver! what is Grief? And what are Right, and Wrong, And Feeling, that belong To creatures all who owe thee fief? What worse is Weak than Strong?” . . .
VIII
—Unlightened, curious, meek,
She broods in sad surmise . . .
—Some say they have heard her sighs
On Alpine height or Polar peak
When the night tempests rise.
The Problem
Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it—
We who believe the evidence?
Here and there the watch-towers knell it
With a sullen significance,
Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained sense.
Hearts that are happiest hold not by it;
Better we let, then, the old view reign;
Since there is peace in it, why decry it?
Since there is comfort, why disdain?
Note not the pigment the while that the painting determines humanity’s joy and pain!
The Subalterns
I
“Poor wanderer,” said the leaden sky,
“I fain would lighten thee,
But there be laws in force on high
Which say it must not be.”
II
—“I would not freeze thee, shorn one,” cried
The North, “knew I but how
To warm my breath, to slack my stride;
But I am ruled as thou.”
III
—“To-morrow I attack thee, wight,”
Said Sickness. “Yet I swear
I bear thy little ark no spite,
But am bid enter there.”
IV
—“Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say;
“I did not will a grave
Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
But I, too, am a slave!”
V
We smiled upon each other then,
And life to me wore less
That fell contour it wore ere when
They owned their passiveness.
The Sleep-Worker
When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see—
As one who, held in trance, has laboured long
By vacant rote and prepossession strong—
The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;
Wherein have place, unrealized by thee,
Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong,
Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song,
And curious blends of ache and ecstasy?—
Should that morn come, and show thy opened eyes
All that Life’s palpitating tissues feel,
How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise?—
Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,
Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame,
Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?
The Bullfinches
Brother Bulleys, let us sing
From the dawn till evening!—
For we know not that we go not
When the day’s pale pinions fold
Unto those who sang of old.
When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,
Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,
Roosting near them I could hear them
Speak of queenly Nature’s ways,
Means, and moods,—well known to fays.
All we creatures, nigh and far
(Said they there), the Mother’s are:
Yet she never shows endeavour
To protect from warrings wild
Bird or beast she calls her child.
Busy in her handsome house
Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;
Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,
While beneath her groping hands
Fiends make havoc in her bands.
How her hussif’ry succeeds
She unknows or she unheeds,
All