Robert Falconer Part 42

I would be a wind, Whose smallest atom is a viewless wing, All busy with the pulsing life that throbs To do thy bidding; yea, or the meanest thing That has relation to a changeless truth Could I but be instinct with thee--each thought The lightning of a pure intelligence, And every act as the loud thunder-clap Of currents warring for a vacuum.

Lord, clothe me with thy truth as with a robe.

Purge me with sorrow. I will bend my head, And let the nations of thy waves pa.s.s over, Bathing me in thy consecrated strength.

And let the many-voiced and silver winds Pa.s.s through my frame with their clear influence.

O save me--I am blind; lo! thwarting shapes Wall up the void before, and thrusting out Lean arms of unshaped expectation, beckon Down to the night of all unholy thoughts.

I have seen Unholy shapes lop off my s.h.i.+ning thoughts, Which I had thought nursed in thine emerald light; And they have lent me leathern wings of fear, Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust; And G.o.dhead with its crown of many stars, Its pinnacles of flaming holiness, And voice of leaves in the green summer-time, Has seemed the shadowed image of a self.

Then my soul blackened; and I rose to find And grasp my doom, and cleave the arching deeps Of desolation.

O Lord, my soul is a forgotten well; Clad round with its own rank luxuriance; A fountain a kind sunbeam searches for, Sinking the l.u.s.tre of its arrowy finger Through the long gra.s.s its own strange virtue [5]

Hath blinded up its crystal eye withal: Make me a broad strong river coming down With shouts from its high hills, whose rocky hearts Throb forth the joy of their stability In watery pulses from their inmost deeps, And I shall be a vein upon thy world, Circling perpetual from the parent deep.

O First and Last, O glorious all in all, In vain my faltering human tongue would seek To shape the vesture of the boundless thought, Summing all causes in one burning word; Give me the spirit's living tongue of fire, Whose only voice is in an att.i.tude Of keenest tension, bent back on itself With a strong upward force; even as thy bow Of bended colour stands against the north, And, in an att.i.tude to spring to heaven, Lays hold of the kindled hills.

Most mighty One, Confirm and multiply my thoughts of good; Help me to wall each sacred treasure round With the firm battlements of special action.

Alas my holy, happy thoughts of thee Make not perpetual nest within my soul, But like strange birds of dazzling colours stoop The trailing glories of their sunward speed, For one glad moment filling my blasted boughs With the suns.h.i.+ne of their wings.

Make me a forest Of gladdest life, wherein perpetual spring Lifts up her leafy tresses in the wind.

Lo! now I see Thy trembling starlight sit among my pines, And thy young moon slide down my arching boughs With a soft sound of restless eloquence.

And I can feel a joy as when thy hosts Of trampling winds, gathering in maddened bands, Roar upward through the blue and flas.h.i.+ng day Round my still depths of uncleft solitude.

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 d.a.m.ned spikes of doom.'

O take me like a child, If thou hast made me for thyself, my G.o.d, 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s the love of love, To make us ripen for despair, my G.o.d?

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 s.p.a.ce 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 gra.s.sy ways, Drawn up again into the rack of change, Even through the l.u.s.tre 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.h.i.+ning lands, A wonder and a laughter.

The creeds lie in the hollow of men's hearts Like festering pools gla.s.sing 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 I give 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 length

Turn 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.

Ye that cannot pipe or sing, Ye must also come with speed; Ye must come and with you bring Weighty words and weightier deed: Helping hands and loving eyes, These will make them truly wise-- Then will be our Paradise.

As Robert read, the sweetness of the rhythm seized upon him, and, almost unconsciously, he read the last stanza aloud. Looking up from the paper with a sigh of wonder and delight--there was the pale face of Ericson gazing at him from the bed! He had risen on one arm, looking like a dead man called to life against his will, who found the world he had left already stranger to him than the one into which he had but peeped.

'Yes,' he murmured; 'I could say that once. It's all gone now. Our world is but our moods.'

He fell back on his pillow. After a little, he murmured again:

'I might fool myself with faith again. So it is better not. I would not be fooled. To believe the false and be happy is the very belly of misery. To believe the true and be miserable, is to be true--and miserable. If there is no G.o.d, let me know it. I will not be fooled.

I will not believe in a G.o.d that does not exist. Better be miserable because I am, and cannot help it.--O G.o.d!'

Yet in his misery, he cried upon G.o.d.

These words came upon Robert with such a shock of sympathy, that they destroyed his consciousness for the moment, and when he thought about them, he almost doubted if he had heard them. He rose and approached the bed. Ericson lay with his eyes closed, and his face contorted as by inward pain. Robert put a spoonful of wine to his lips. He swallowed it, opened his eyes, gazed at the boy as if he did not know him, closed them again, and lay still.

Some people take comfort from the true eyes of a dog--and a precious thing to the loving heart is the love of even a dumb animal. [6] What comfort then must not such a boy as Robert have been to such a man as Ericson! Often and often when he was lying asleep as Robert thought, he was watching the face of his watcher. When the human soul is not yet able to receive the vision of the G.o.d-man, G.o.d sometimes--might I not say always?--reveals himself, or at least gives himself, in some human being whose face, whose hands are the ministering angels of his unacknowledged presence, to keep alive the fire of love on the altar of the heart, until G.o.d hath provided the sacrifice--that is, until the soul is strong enough to draw it from the concealing thicket. Here were two, each thinking that G.o.d had forsaken him, or was not to be found by him, and each the very love of G.o.d, commissioned to tend the other's heart. In each was he present to the other. The one thought himself the happiest of mortals in waiting upon his big brother, whose least smile was joy enough for one day; the other wondered at the unconscious goodness of the boy, and while he gazed at his ruddy-brown face, believed in G.o.d.

For some time after Ericson was taken ill, he was too depressed and miserable to ask how he was cared for. But by slow degrees it dawned upon him that a heart deep and gracious, like that of a woman, watched over him. True, Robert was uncouth, but his uncouthness was that of a half-fledged angel. The heart of the man and the heart of the boy were drawn close together. Long before Ericson was well he loved Robert enough to be willing to be indebted to him, and would lie pondering--not how to repay him, but how to return his kindness.

How much Robert's ambition to stand well in the eyes of Miss St. John contributed to his progress I can only imagine; but certainly his ministrations to Ericson did not interfere with his Latin and Greek. I venture to think that they advanced them, for difficulty adds to result, as the ramming of the powder sends the bullet the further. I have heard, indeed, that when a carrier wants to help his horse up hill, he sets a boy on his back.

Ericson made little direct acknowledgment to Robert: his tones, his gestures, his looks, all thanked him; but he shrunk from words, with the maidenly shamefacedness that belongs to true feeling. He would even a.s.sume the authoritative, and send him away to his studies, but Robert knew how to hold his own. The relation of elder brother and younger was already established between them. Shargar likewise took his share in the love and the fellows.h.i.+p, wors.h.i.+pping in that he believed.

CHAPTER X. A FATHER AND A DAUGHTER.

The presence at the street door of which Ericson's over-acute sense had been aware on a past evening, was that of Mr. Lindsay, walking home with bowed back and bowed head from the college library, where he was privileged to sit after hours as long as he pleased over books too big to be comfortably carried home to his cottage. He had called to inquire after Ericson, whose acquaintance he had made in the library, and cultivated until almost any Friday evening Ericson was to be found seated by Mr. Lindsay's parlour fire.

As he entered the room that same evening, a young girl raised herself from a low seat by the fire to meet him. There was a faint rosy flush on her cheek, and she held a volume in her hand as she approached her father. They did not kiss: kisses were not a legal tender in Scotland then: possibly there has been a depreciation in the value of them since they were.

'I've been to ask after Mr. Ericson,' said Mr. Lindsay.

'And how is he?' asked the girl.