Part 26

Where, as my clothing clams me, mire-bestarred, And the enfeebled light dies out of day, Leaving the liquid shades to reign, I say, “This is a hardship to be calendared!”

Yet sires of mine now perished and forgot, When worse beset, ere roads were shapen here, And night and storm were foes indeed to fear, Times numberless have trudged across this spot In sturdy muteness on their strenuous lot, And taking all such toils as trifles mere.

BEFORE LIFE AND AFTER

A TIME there was—as one may guess And as, indeed, earth’s testimonies tell— Before the birth of consciousness, When all went well.

None suffered sickness, love, or loss, None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings; None cared whatever crash or cross Brought wrack to things.

If something ceased, no tongue bewailed, If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung; If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed, No sense was stung.

But the disease of feeling germed, And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong; Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed How long, how long?

NEW YEAR’S EVE

“I HAVE finished another year,” said God, “In grey, green, white, and brown; I have strewn the leaf upon the sod, Sealed up the worm within the clod, And let the last sun down.”

“And what’s the good of it?” I said. “What reasons made you call From formless void this earth we tread, When nine-and-ninety can be read Why nought should be at all?

“Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, ‘who in This tabernacle groan’— If ever a joy be found herein, Such joy no man had wished to win If he had never known!”

Then he: “My labours—logicless— You may explain; not I: Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess That I evolved a Consciousness To ask for reasons why.

“Strange that ephemeral creatures who By my own ordering are, Should see the shortness of my view, Use ethic tests I never knew, Or made provision for!”

He sank to raptness as of yore, And opening New Year’s Day Wove it by rote as theretofore, And went on working evermore In his unweeting way.

1906.

GOD’S EDUCATION

I SAW him steal the light away That haunted in her eye: It went so gently none could say More than that it was there one day And missing by-and-by.

I watched her longer, and he stole Her lily tincts and rose; All her young sprightliness of soul Next fell beneath his cold control, And disappeared like those.

I asked: “Why do you serve her so? Do you, for some glad day, Hoard these her sweets—?” He said, “O no, They charm not me; I bid Time throw Them carelessly away.”

Said I: “We call that cruelty— We, your poor mortal kind.” He mused. “The thought is new to me. Forsooth, though I men’s master be, Theirs is the teaching mind!”

TO SINCERITY

O SWEET sincerity!— Where modern methods be What scope for thine and thee?

Life may be sad past saying, Its greens for ever graying, Its faiths to dust decaying;

And youth may have foreknown it, And riper seasons shown it, But custom cries: “Disown it:

“Say ye rejoice, though grieving, Believe, while unbelieving, Behold, without perceiving!”

—Yet, would men look at true things, And unilluded view things, And count to bear undue things,

The real might mend the seeming, Facts better their foredeeming, And Life its disesteeming.

February 1899.