Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks, An army issues out of wilderness, With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;Obstruction in the van; insane excess Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks, And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone, The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.
They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.
Then was the gracious birth of man's new day;Divided from the haunted night it shone.
That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.
Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:
It was another earth unto him sang.
Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?
From the Persuader came it, in those vales Whereunto she melodiously invites, Her troops of eager servitors regales?
Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;Nor either points for us the way of flame.
From him predestined mightier it came;
His task to hold them both in breast, and yield Their dues to each, and of their war be field.
The foes that in repulsion never ceased, Must he, who once has been the goodly beast Of one or other, at whose beck he ran, Constrain to make him serviceable man;Offending neither, nor the natural claim Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name.
Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife To hold them fast conjoined within him still;Submissive to his will Along the road of life!
And marvel not he wavered if at whiles The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.
For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.
Delicious licence called it Nature's cry;Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;A tread on shingle timed his lame advance Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance, He of the troubled marching army leaned On godhead visible, on godhead screened;The radiant roseate, the curtained white;Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.
He drank of fictions, till celestial aid Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;Sagely the generous Giver circumspect, To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;And ever that imagined succour slew The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.
In fellowship religion has its founts:
The solitary his own God reveres:
Ascend no sacred Mounts Our hungers or our fears.
As only for the numbers Nature's care Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds, So to Divinity the spring of prayer From brotherhood the one way upward leads.
Like the sustaining air Are both for flowers and weeds.
But he who claims in spirit to be flower, Will find them both an air that doth devour.
Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored External gifts bestowed but on the sword;Beheld himself, with less and less disguise, Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes, His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail;See a black adversary's ghost prevail;
Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win While still the conflict tore his breast within.
Out of that agony, misread for those Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased, The ghost of his black adversary rose, To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.
And long with him was wrestling ere emerged A mind to read in him the reflex shade Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;By craven compromises hourly swayed.
Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried, The man's mind opened under weight of cloud.
To penetrate the dark was it endowed;
Stood day before a vision shooting wide.
Whereat the spectral enemy lost form;
The traversed wilderness exposed its track.
He felt the far advance in looking back;
Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm.
Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire, That ere it lightened smote a coward heart, Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;A stranger still, religiously divined;
Not yet with understanding read aright.
But when the mind, the cherishable mind, The multitude's grave shepherd, took full flight, Himself as mirror raised among his kind, He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight:
Knew that his force to fly, his will to see, His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, Had come of many a grip in mastery, Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, And of his bosom made him lord, to keep The starry roof of his unruffled frame Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep Below, above, aye with a wistful aim.
The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown, By traitor inmates baited, upward burned;Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned, The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.
To whom unwittingly did he aspire In wilderness, where bitter was his need:
To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed For light and air, he struck through crimson mire.
