Part 9

Regret—though nothing dear That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime, Or bloomed elsewhere than here, To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime, Or mark him out in Time . . .

—Yet, maybe, in some soul, In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose, Or some intent upstole Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows The world’s amendment flows;

But which, benumbed at birth By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be Embodied on the earth; And undervoicings of this loss to man’s futurity May wake regret in me.

AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE

THY shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea, Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine In even monochrome and curving line Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry With the torn troubled form I know as thine, That profile, placid as a brow divine, With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw So small a shade, and Heaven’s high human scheme Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show, Nation at war with nation, brains that teem, Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

THE LACKING SENSE

SCENE.—A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale

“O TIME, whence comes the Mother’s moody look amid her labours, As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves? Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors, With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face, As of angel fallen from grace?”

—“Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly: In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves. The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly, Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun Such deeds her hands have done.”

III

—“And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures, These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves, Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights, Distress into delights?”

—“Ah! know’st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience, Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves? That sightless are those orbs of hers?—which bar to her omniscience Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones Whereat all creation groans.

“She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour, When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves; Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever; Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch That the seers marvel much.

“Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction; Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves; And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction, Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may, For thou art of her clay.”

TO LIFE

O LIFE with the sad seared face, I weary of seeing thee, And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, And thy too-forced pleasantry!

I know what thou would’st tell Of Death, Time, Destiny— I have known it long, and know, too, well What it all means for me.

But canst thou not array Thyself in rare disguise, And feign like truth, for one mad day, That Earth is Paradise?

I’ll tune me to the mood, And mumm with thee till eve; And maybe what as interlude I feign, I shall believe!

DOOM AND SHE

THERE dwells a mighty pair— Slow, statuesque, intense— Amid the vague Immense: None can their chronicle declare, Nor why they be, nor whence.

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?

“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.