Hear me, O Lord, When the black night draws down upon my soul, And voices of temptation darken down The misty wind, slamming thy starry doors, With bitter jests.'Thou fool!' they seem to say 'Thou hast no seed of goodness in thee; all Thy nature hath been stung right through and through.
Thy sin hath blasted thee, and made thee old.
Thou hadst a will, but thou hast killed it--dead--And with the fulsome garniture of life Built out the loathsome corpse.Thou art a child Of night and death, even lower than a worm.
Gather the skirts up of thy shadowy self, And with what resolution thou hast left, Fall on the damned spikes of doom.'
O take me like a child, If thou hast made me for thyself, my God, And lead me up thy hills.I shall not fear So thou wilt make me pure, and beat back sin With the terrors of thine eye.
Lord hast thou sent Thy moons to mock us with perpetual hope?
Lighted within our breasts the love of love, To make us ripen for despair, my God?
Oh, dost thou hold each individual soul Strung clear upon thy flaming rods of purpose?
Or does thine inextinguishable will Stand on the steeps of night with lifted hand, Filling the yawning wells of monstrous space With mixing thought--drinking up single life As in a cup? and from the rending folds Of glimmering purpose, the gloom do all thy navied stars Slide through the gloom with mystic melody, Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul, Hung like a dew-drop in thy grassy ways, Drawn up again into the rack of change, Even through the lustre which created it?
O mighty one, thou wilt not smite me through With scorching wrath, because my spirit stands Bewildered in thy circling mysteries.
Here came the passage Robert had heard him repeat, and then the following paragraph:
Lord, thy strange mysteries come thickening down Upon my head like snow-flakes, shutting out The happy upper fields with chilly vapour.
Shall I content my soul with a weak sense Of safety? or feed my ravenous hunger with Sore-purged hopes, that are not hopes, but fears Clad in white raiment?
I know not but some thin and vaporous fog, Fed with the rank excesses of the soul, Mocks the devouring hunger of my life With satisfaction: lo! the noxious gas Feeds the lank ribs of gaunt and ghastly death With double emptiness, like a balloon, Borne by its lightness o'er the shining lands, A wonder and a laughter.
The creeds lie in the hollow of men's hearts Like festering pools glassing their own corruption:
The slimy eyes stare up with dull approval, And answer not when thy bright starry feet Move on the watery floors.
O wilt thou hear me when I cry to thee?
I am a child lost in a mighty forest;
The air is thick with voices, and strange hands Reach through the dusk and pluck me by the skirts.
There is a voice which sounds like words from home, But, as I stumble on to reach it, seems To leap from rock to rock.Oh! if it is Willing obliquity of sense, descend, Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand, And lead me homeward through the shadows.
Let me not by my wilful acts of pride Block up the windows of thy truth, and grow A wasted, withered thing, that stumbles on Down to the grave with folded hands of sloth And leaden confidence.
There was more of it, as my type indicates.Full of faults, I have given so much to my reader, just as it stood upon Ericson's blotted papers, the utterance of a true soul 'crying for the light.' But Igive also another of his poems, which Robert read at the same time, revealing another of his moods when some one of the clouds of holy doubt and questioning love which so often darkened his sky, did at lengthTurn forth her silver lining on the night:
SONG.
They are blind and they are dead:
We will wake them as we go;
There are words have not been said;
There are sounds they do not know.
We will pipe and we will sing--
With the music and the spring, Set their hearts a wondering.
They are tired of what is old:
We will give it voices new;
For the half hath not been told Of the Beautiful and True.
Drowsy eyelids shut and sleeping!
Heavy eyes oppressed with weeping!
Flashes through the lashes leaping!
Ye that have a pleasant voice, Hither come without delay;Ye will never have a choice Like to that ye have to-day:
Round the wide world we will go, Singing through the frost and snow, Till the daisies are in blow.