Christmas Eve | Page 9

his heart and for mere love's sake

Conceive of the love,--that man obtains
A new truth; no conviction
gains
Of an old one only, made intense
By a fresh appeal to his
faded sense.
XVIII
Can it be that he stays inside?
Is the vesture left me to commune with?

Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with
Even at this lecture,
if she tried?
Oh, let me at lowest sympathize
With the lurking drop
of blood that lies
In the desiccated brain's white roots
Without throb
for Christ's attributes,
As the lecturer makes his special boast!
If
love's dead there, it has left a ghost.
Admire we, how from heart to
brain
(Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)
One instinct rises
and falls again,
Restoring the equilibrium.
And how when the Critic
had done his best,
And the pearl of price, at reason's test,
Lay dust
and ashes levigable
On the Professor's lecture-table,--
When we
looked for the inference and monition

That our faith, reduced to such
condition,
Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,--
He bids us,
when we least expect it,
Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole,

Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,
Which fact pays damage
done rewardingly,
So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!
"Go
home and venerate the myth
"I thus have experimented with--
"This

man, continue to adore him
"Rather than all who went before him,

"And all who ever followed after!"--
Surely for this I may praise you,
my brother!
Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?
That's one
point gained: can I compass another?
Unlearned love was safe from
spurning--
Can't we respect your loveless learning?
Let us at least
give learning honour!
What laurels had we showered upon her,

Girding her loins up to perturb
Our theory of the Middle Verb;
Or
Turk-like brandishing a scimitar
O'er anapasts in comic-trimeter;
Or
curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'
[Footnote: "The Suppliants," a
fragment of a play by Aeschylus.] While we lounged on at our indebted
ease:
Instead of which, a tricksy demon
Sets her at Titus or
Philemon!
When ignorance wags his ears of leather
And hates
God's word, 'tis altogether;
Nor leaves he his congenial thistles
To
go and browse on Paul's Epistles.
--And you, the audience, who
might ravage
The world wide, enviably savage,
Nor heed the cry of
the retriever,
More than Herr Heine (before his fever),--
I do not tell
a lie so arrant
As say my passion's wings are furled up,
And,
without plainest heavenly warrant,
I were ready and glad to give the
world up--
But still, when you rub brow meticulous,
And ponder
the profit of turning holy
If not for God's, for your own sake solely,

--God forbid I should find you ridiculous!
Deduce from this lecture
all that eases you,
Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,

"Christians,"--abhor the deist's pravity,--
Go on, you shall no more
move my gravity
Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,
I find it
in my heart to embarrass them
By hinting that their stick's a mock
horse,
And they really carry what they say carries them.
XIX
So sat I talking with my mind.
I did not long to leave the door
And
find a new church, as before,
But rather was quiet and inclined
To
prolong and enjoy the gentle resting
From further tracking and trying
and testing.
"This tolerance is a genial mood!"
(Said I, and a little

pause ensued).
"One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,
"And sees,
each side, the good effects of it,
"A value for religion's self,
"A
carelessness about the sects of it.
"Let me enjoy my own conviction,

"Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness,
"Still spying
there some dereliction
"Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!"
Better a
mild indifferentism,
"Teaching that both our faiths (though duller

"His shine through a dull spirit's prism)
"Originally had one colour!

"Better pursue a pilgrimage
"Through ancient and through modern
times
"To many peoples, various climes,
"Where I may see saint,
savage, sage
"Fuse their respective creeds in one
"Before the
general Father's throne!"
XX
--'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!
The black night caught me in
his mesh,
Whirled me up, and flung me prone.
I was left on the
college-step alone.
I looked, and far there, ever fleeting
Far, far
away, the receding gesture,
And looming of the lessening vesture!--

Swept forward from my stupid hand,
While I watched my foolish
heart expand
In the lazy glow of benevolence,
O'er the various
modes of man's belief.
I sprang up with fear's vehemence.
Needs
must there be one way, our chief
Best way of worship: let me strive

To find it, and when found, contrive
My fellows also take their
share!
This constitutes my earthly care:
God's is above it and
distinct.
For I, a man, with men am linked
But not a brute with
brutes; no gain
That I experience, must remain
Unshared: but
should my best endeavour
To share it, fail--subsisteth ever

God's
care above, and I exult
That God, by God's own ways occult,

May--doth, I will believe--bring back
All wanderers to a single track.

Meantime, I can but testify
God's care for me--no more, can I--
It
is but for myself I know;
The world rolls witnessing around me

Only to leave me as it found me;
Men cry there, but my ear is slow:

There races flourish or decay
--What boots it, while yon lucid way


Loaded with stars divides the vault?
But soon my soul repairs