The Poems of William Watson Part 12

If greater than I be her tenant, Let him answer my challenging call: Till then I admit no rival, But crown myself master of all."

And forth as that word went bruited, By Man unto Man were raised Fanes of devout self-homage, Where he who praised was the praised; And from vast unto vast of creation The new evangel ran, And an odour of world-wide incense Went up from Man unto Man; Until, on a solemn feast-day, When the world's usurping lord At a million impious altars His own proud image adored, G.o.d spake as He stept from His ambush: "O great in thine own conceit, I will show thee thy source, how humble, Thy goal, for a G.o.d how unmeet."

Thereat, by the word of the Maker The Spirit of Man was led To a mighty peak of vision, Where G.o.d to His creature said: "Look eastward toward time's sunrise."

And, age upon age untold, The Spirit of Man saw clearly The Past as a chart out-rolled,-- Beheld his base beginnings In the depths of time, and his strife, With beasts and crawling horrors For leave to live, when life Meant but to slay and to procreate, To feed and to sleep, among Mere mouths, voracities boundless, Blind l.u.s.ts, desires without tongue, And ferocities vast, fulfilling Their being's malignant law, While nature was one hunger, And one hate, all fangs and maw.

With that, for a single moment, Abashed at his own descent, In humbleness Man's Spirit At the feet of the Maker bent; But, swifter than light, he recovered The stature and pose of his pride, And, "Think not thus to shame me With my mean birth," he cried.

"This is my loftiest greatness, To have been born so low; Greater than Thou the ungrowing Am I that for ever grow."

And G.o.d forbore to rebuke him, But answered brief and stern, Bidding him toward time's sunset His vision westward turn; And the Spirit of Man obeying Beheld as a chart out-rolled The likeness and form of the Future, Age upon age untold; Beheld his own meridian, And beheld his dark decline, His secular fall to nadir From summits of light divine, Till at last, amid worlds exhausted, And bankrupt of force and fire, 'Twas his, in a torrent of darkness, Like a sputtering lamp to expire.

Then a war of shame and anger Did the realm of his soul divide; "'Tis false, 'tis a lying vision,"

In the face of his G.o.d he cried.

"Thou thinkest to daunt me with shadows; Not such as Thou feign'st is my doom: From glory to rise unto glory Is mine, who have risen from gloom.

I doubt if Thou knew'st at my making How near to thy throne I should climb, O'er the mountainous slopes of the ages And the conquered peaks of time.

Nor shall I look backward nor rest me Till the uttermost heights I have trod, And am equalled with Thee or above Thee, The mate or the master of G.o.d."

Ev'n thus Man turned from the Maker, With thundered defiance wild, And G.o.d with a terrible silence Reproved the speech of His child.

And man returned to his labours, And stiffened the neck of his will; And the aeons still went rolling, And his power was crescent still.

But yet there remained to conquer One foe, and the greatest--although Despoiled of his ancient terrors, At heart, as of old, a foe-- Unmaker of all, and renewer, Who winnows the world with his wing, The Lord of Death, the undying, Ev'n Asrael the King.

And lo, Man mustered his forces The war of wars to wage, And with storm and thunder of onset Did the foe of foes engage, And the Lord of Death, the undying, Was beset and harried sore, In his immemorial fastness At night's aboriginal core.

And during years a thousand Man leaguered his enemy's hold, While nature was one deep tremor, And the heart of the world waxed cold, Till the phantom battlements wavered, And the ghostly fortress fell, And Man with shadowy fetters Bound fast great Asrael.

So, to each star in the heavens, The exultant word was blown, The annunciation tremendous, _Death is overthrown!_ And s.p.a.ce in her ultimate borders Prolonging the jubilant tone, With hollow ingeminations, Sighed, _Death is overthrown!_ And G.o.d in His house of silence, Where He dwelleth aloof, alone, Paused in His tasks to hearken: _Death is overthrown!_

Then a solemn and high thanksgiving By Man unto Man was sung, In his temples of self-adoration, With his own mult.i.tudinous tongue; And he said to his Soul: "Rejoice thou For thy last great foe lies bound, Ev'n Asrael the Unmaker, Unmade, disarmed, discrowned."

And behold, his Soul rejoiced not, The breath of whose being was strife, For life with nothing to vanquish Seemed but the shadow of life.

No goal invited and promised And divinely provocative shone; And Fear having fled, her sister, Blest Hope, in her train was gone; And the coping and crown of achievement Was h.e.l.l than defeat more dire-- The torment of all-things-compa.s.sed, The plague of nought-to-desire; And Man the invincible queller, Man with his foot on his foes, In boundless satiety hungred, Restless from utter repose, Victor of nature, victor Of the prince of the powers of the air, By mighty weariness vanquished, And crowned with august despair.

Then, at his dreadful zenith, He cried unto G.o.d: "O Thou Whom of old in my days of striving Methought I needed not,--now, In this my abject glory, My hopeless and helpless might, Hearken and cheer and succour!"

And G.o.d from His lonely height, From eternity's pa.s.sionless summits, On suppliant Man looked down, And His brow waxed human with pity, Belying its awful crown.

"Thy richest possession," He answered, "Blest Hope, will I restore, And the infinite wealth of weakness Which was thy strength of yore; And I will arouse from slumber, In his hold where bound he lies, Thine enemy most benefic;-- O Asrael, hear and rise!"

And a sound like the heart of nature Riven and cloven and torn, Announced, to the ear universal, Undying Death new-born.

Sublime he rose in his fetters, And shook the chains aside Ev'n as some mortal sleeper 'Mid forests in autumntide Rises and shakes off lightly The leaves that lightly fell On his limbs and his hair unheeded While as yet he slumbered well.

And Deity paused and hearkened, Then turned to the undivine, Saying, "O Man, My creature, Thy lot was more blest than Mine.

I taste not delight of seeking, Nor the boon of longing know.

There is but one joy transcendent, And I h.o.a.rd it not but bestow.

I h.o.a.rd it not nor have tasted, But freely I gave it to thee-- The joy of most glorious striving, Which dieth in victory."

Thus, to the Soul of the Dreamer, This Dream out of darkness flew, Through the horn or the ivory portal, But he wist not which of the two.

Sh.e.l.lEY'S CENTENARY

(4TH AUGUST 1892)

Within a narrow span of time, Three princes of the realm of rhyme, At height of youth or manhood's prime, From earth took wing, To join the fellows.h.i.+p sublime Who, dead, yet sing.

He, first, his earliest wreath who wove Of laurel grown in Latmian grove, Conquered by pain and hapless love Found calmer home, Roofed by the heaven that glows above Eternal Rome.

A fierier soul, its own fierce prey, And c.u.mbered with more mortal clay, At Missolonghi flamed away, And left the air Reverberating to this day Its loud despair.

Alike remote from Byron's scorn, And Keats's magic as of morn Bursting for ever newly-born On forests old, Waking a h.o.a.ry world forlorn With touch of gold,

Sh.e.l.ley, the cloud-begot, who grew Nourished on air and sun and dew, Into that Essence whence he drew His life and lyre Was fittingly resolved anew Through wave and fire.

'Twas like his rapid soul! 'Twas meet That he, who brooked not Time's slow feet, With pa.s.sage thus abrupt and fleet Should hurry hence, Eager the Great Perhaps to greet With Why? and Whence?

Impatient of the world's fixed way, He ne'er could suffer G.o.d's delay, But all the future in a day Would build divine, And the whole past in ruins lay, An emptied shrine.

Vain vision! but the glow, the fire, The pa.s.sion of benign desire, The glorious yearning, lift him higher Than many a soul That mounts a million paces nigher Its meaner goal.

And power is his, if naught besides, In that thin ether where he rides, Above the roar of human tides To ascend afar, Lost in a storm of light that hides His dizzy car.

Below, the unhastening world toils on, And here and there are victories won, Some dragon slain, some justice done, While, through the skies, A meteor rus.h.i.+ng on the sun, He flares and dies.

But, as he cleaves yon ether clear Notes from the unattempted Sphere He scatters to the enchanted ear Of earth's dim throng, Whose dissonance doth more endear The showering song.

In other shapes than he forecast The world is moulded: his fierce blast,-- His wild a.s.sault upon the Past,-- These things are vain; Revolt is transient: what _must_ last Is that pure strain,

Which seems the wandering voices blent Of every virgin element,-- A sound from ocean caverns sent,-- An airy call From the pavilioned firmament O'erdoming all.

And in this world of worldlings, where Souls rust in apathy, and ne'er A great emotion shakes the air, And life flags tame, And rare is n.o.ble impulse, rare The impa.s.sioned aim,

'Tis no mean fortune to have heard A singer who, if errors blurred His sight, had yet a spirit stirred By vast desire, And ardour fledging the swift word With plumes of fire.

A creature of impetuous breath, Our torpor deadlier than death He knew not; whatsoe'er he saith Flashes with life: He spurreth men, he quickeneth To splendid strife.

And in his gusts of song he brings Wild odours shaken from strange wings, And unfamiliar whisperings From far lips blown, While all the rapturous heart of things Throbs through his own,--

His own that from the burning pyre One who had loved his wind-swept lyre Out of the sharp teeth of the fire Unmolten drew, Beside the sea that in her ire Smote him and slew.

A GOLDEN HOUR

A beckoning spirit of gladness seemed afloat, That lightly danced in laughing air before us: The earth was all in tune, and you a note Of Nature's happy chorus.

'Twas like a vernal morn, yet overhead The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting: The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said, O'er Winter's world comes flitting.

Or was it Spring herself, that, gone astray, Beyond the alien frontier chose to tarry?

Or but some bold outrider of the May, Some April-emissary?

The apparition faded on the air, Capricious and incalculable comer.-- Wilt thou too pa.s.s, and leave my chill days bare, And fall'n my phantom Summer?