IN MEMORIAM.
In memory of Eric Ericson, I add a chapter of sonnets gathered from his papers, almost desiring that those only should read them who turn to the book a second time.How his papers came into my possession, will be explained afterwards.
Tumultuous rushing o'er the outstretched plains;A wildered maze of comets and of suns;
The blood of changeless God that ever runs With quick diastole up the immortal veins;A phantom host that moves and works in chains;A monstrous fiction which, collapsing, stuns The mind to stupor and amaze at once;A tragedy which that man best explains Who rushes blindly on his wild career With trampling hoofs and sound of mailed war, Who will not nurse a life to win a tear, But is extinguished like a falling star:--Such will at times this life appear to me, Until I learn to read more perfectly.
HOM.IL.v.403.
If thou art tempted by a thought of ill, Crave not too soon for victory, nor deem Thou art a coward if thy safety seem To spring too little from a righteous will:
For there is nightmare on thee, nor until Thy soul hath caught the morning's early gleam Seek thou to analyze the monstrous dream By painful introversion; rather fill Thine eye with forms thou knowest to be truth:
But see thou cherish higher hope than this;A hope hereafter that thou shalt be fit Calm-eyed to face distortion, and to sit Transparent among other forms of youth Who own no impulse save to God and bliss.
And must I ever wake, gray dawn, to know Thee standing sadly by me like a ghost?
I am perplexed with thee, that thou shouldst cost This Earth another turning: all aglow Thou shouldst have reached me, with a purple show Along far-mountain tops: and I would post Over the breadth of seas though I were lost In the hot phantom-chase for life, if so Thou camest ever with this numbing sense Of chilly distance and unlovely light;Waking this gnawing soul anew to fight With its perpetual load: I drive thee hence--I have another mountain-range from whence Bursteh a sun unutterably bright.
GALILEO.
'And yet it moves!' Ah, Truth, where wert thou then, When all for thee they racked each piteous limb?
Wert though in Heaven, and busy with thy hymn, When those poor hands convulsed that held thy pen?
Art thou a phantom that deceivest men To their undoing? or dost thou watch him Pale, cold, and silent in his dungeon dim?
And wilt thou ever speak to him again?
'It moves, it moves! Alas, my flesh was weak;That was a hideous dream! I'll cry aloud How the green bulk wheels sunward day by day!
Ah me! ah me! perchance my heart was proud That I alone should know that word to speak;And now, sweet Truth, shine upon these, I pray.'
If thou wouldst live the Truth in very deed, Thou hast thy joy, but thou hast more of pain.
Others will live in peace, and thou be fain To bargain with despair, and in thy need To make thy meal upon the scantiest weed.
These palaces, for thee they stand in vain;Thine is a ruinous hut; and oft the rain Shall drench thee in the midnight; yea the speed Of earth outstrip thee pilgrim, while thy feet Move slowly up the heights.Yet will there come Through the time-rents about thy moving cell, An arrow for despair, and oft the hum Of far-off populous realms where spirits dwell.
TO * * * *
Speak, Prophet of the Lord! We may not start To find thee with us in thine ancient dress, Haggard and pale from some bleak wilderness, Empty of all save God and thy loud heart:
Nor with like rugged message quick to dart Into the hideous fiction mean and base:
But yet, O prophet man, we need not less, But more of earnest; though it is thy part To deal in other words, if thou wouldst smite The living Mammon, seated, not as then In bestial quiescence grimly dight, But thrice as much an idol-god as when He stared at his own feet from morn to night.8THE WATCHER.
>From out a windy cleft there comes a gaze Of eyes unearthly which go to and fro Upon the people's tumult, for below The nations smite each other: no amaze Troubles their liquid rolling, or affrays Their deep-set contemplation: steadily glow Those ever holier eye-balls, for they grow Liker unto the eyes of one that prays.
And if those clasped hands tremble, comes a power As of the might of worlds, and they are holden Blessing above us in the sunrise golden;And they will be uplifted till that hour Of terrible rolling which shall rise and shake This conscious nightmare from us and we wake.
THE BELOVED DISCIPLE.
I
One do I see and twelve; but second there Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one;Not from thy nobler port, for there are none More quiet-featured; some there are who bear Their message on their brows, while others wear A look of large commission, nor will shun The fiery trial, so their work is done:
But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer--Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips Seem like the porches of the spirit land;For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by, Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye Burns with a vision and apocalypse Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand.
II
A Boanerges too! Upon my heart It lay a heavy hour: features like thine Should glow with other message than the shine Of the earth-burrowing levin, and the start That cleaveth horrid gulfs.Awful and swart A moment stoodest thou, but less divine--Brawny and clad in ruin!--till with mine Thy heart made answering signals, and apart Beamed forth thy two rapt eye-balls doubly clear, And twice as strong because thou didst thy duty, And though affianced to immortal Beauty, Hiddest not weakly underneath her veil The pest of Sin and Death which maketh pale:
Henceforward be thy spirit doubly dear.9
THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.
There is not any weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star;And black and muddy though the waters are, We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar;And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour.
And I when I encounter on my road A human soul that looketh black and grim, Shall I more ceremonious be than God?