Part 10

“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.”

“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

“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.”

—“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.”

—“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!”

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 things making for Death’s taking! —So the green-gowned faeries say Living over Blackmoor way.

Come then, brethren, 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.