Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (19 page)

‘While I should make rejoinder’ – (then

It was, no doubt, you ceased that least

Light pressure of my arm in yours)

‘“I can conceive of cheaper cures

[90] For a yawning-fit o’er books and men.

XIX

‘“What? All I am, was, and might be,

All, books taught, art brought, life’s whole strife,

Painful results since precious, just

Were fitly exchanged, in wise disgust,

For two cheeks freshened by youth and sea?

XX

‘“All for a nosegay! – what came first;

With fields on flower, untried each side;

I rally, need my books and men,

And find a nosegay”: drop it, then,

[100] No match yet made for best or worst!’

XXI

That ended me. You judged the porch

We left by, Norman; took our look

At sea and sky, wondered so few

Find out the place for air and view;

Remarked the sun began to scorch;

XXII

Descended, soon regained the baths,

And then, good-bye! Years ten since then:

Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now,

By a window-seat for that cliff-brow,

[110] On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths.

XXIII

Now I may speak: you fool, for all

Your lore! Who made things plain in vain?

What was the sea for? What, the grey

Sad church, that solitary day,

Crosses and graves and swallows’ call?

XXIV

Was there naught better than to enjoy?

No feat which, done, would make time break,

And let us pent-up creatures through

Into eternity, our due?

[120] No forcing earth teach heaven’s employ?

XXV

No wise beginning, here and now,

What cannot grow complete (earth’s feat)

And heaven must finish, there and then?

No tasting earth’s true food for men,

Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?

XXVI

No grasping at love, gaining a share

O’ the sole spark from God’s life at strife

With death, so, sure of range above

The limits here? For us and love,

[130] Failure; but, when God fails, despair.

XXVII

This you call wisdom? Thus you add

Good unto good again, in vain?

You loved, with body worn and weak;

I loved, with faculties to seek:

Were both loves worthless since ill-clad?

XXVIII

Let the mere star-fish in his vault

Crawl in a wash of weed, indeed,

Rose-jacinth to the finger-tips:

He, whole in body and soul, outstrips

[140] Man, found with either in default.

XXIX

But what’s whole, can increase no more,

Is dwarfed and dies, since here’s its sphere.

The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!

You knew not? That I well believe;

Or you had saved two souls: nay, four.

XXX

For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist,

Ankle or something. ‘Pooh,’ cry you?

At any rate she danced, all say,

Vilely; her vogue has had its day.

[150] Here comes my husband from his whist.

A Death in the Desert

[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene:

It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,

Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek

And goeth from
Epsilon
down to
Mu
:

Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,

Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,

Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered
Xi
,

From Xanthus, my wife’s uncle, now at peace:

Mu
and
Epsilon
stand for my own name.

[10] I may not write it, but I make a cross

To show I wait His coming, with the rest,

And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]

I said, ‘If one should wet his lips with wine,

And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,

Or else the lappet of a linen robe,

Into the water-vessel, lay it right,

And cool his forehead just above the eyes,

The while a brother, kneeling either side,

Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm, –

[20] He is not so far gone but he might speak.’

This did not happen in the outer cave,

Nor in the secret chamber of the rock

Where, sixty days since the decree was out,

We had him, bedded on a camel-skin,

And waited for his dying all the while;

But in the midmost grotto: since noon’s light

Reached there a little, and we would not lose

The last of what might happen on his face.

I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet,

[30] With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him,

And brought him from the chamber in the depths,

And laid him in the light where we might see:

For certain smiles began about his mouth,

And his lids moved, presageful of the end.

Beyond, and half way up the mouth o’ the cave,

The Bactrian convert, having his desire,

Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goat

That gave us milk, on rags of various herb,

Plantain and quitch, the rocks’ shade keeps alive:

[40] So that if any thief or soldier passed,

(Because the persecution was aware)

Yielding the goat up promptly with his life,

Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize,

Nor care to pry into the cool o’ the cave.

Outside was all noon and the burning blue.

‘Here is wine,’ answered Xanthus, – dropped a drop;

I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright,

Then chafed his right hand, and the Boy his left:

But Valens had bethought him, and produced

[50] And broke a ball of nard, and made perfume.

Only, he did – not so much wake, as – turn

And smile a little, as a sleeper does

If any dear one call him, touch his face –

And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed.

Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:

It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,

Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.

Then the Boy sprang up from his knees, and ran,

Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought,

[60] And fetched the seventh plate of graven lead

Out of the secret chamber, found a place,

Pressing with finger on the deeper dints,

And spoke, as ’twere his mouth proclaiming first,

‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’

Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once,

And sat up of himself, and looked at us;

And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word:

Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cry

Like the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff,

[70] As signal we were safe, from time to time.

First he said, ‘If a friend declared to me,

This my son Valens, this my other son,

Were James and Peter, – nay, declared as well

This lad was very John, – I could believe!

– Could, for a moment, doubtlessly believe:

So is myself withdrawn into my depths,

The soul retreated from the perished brain

Whence it was wont to feel and use the world

Through these dull members, done with long ago.

[80] Yet I myself remain; I feel myself:

And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile!’

[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,

How divers persons witness in each man,

Three souls which make up one soul: first, to wit,

A soul of each and all the bodily parts,

Seated therein, which works, and is what Does,

And has the use of earth, and ends the man

Downward: but, tending upward for advice,

Grows into, and again is grown into

[90] By the next soul, which, seated in the brain,

Useth the first with its collected use,

And feeleth, thinketh, willeth, – is what Knows:

Which, duly tending upward in its turn,

Grows into, and again is grown into

By the last soul, that uses both the first,

Subsisting whether they assist or no,

And, constituting man’s self, is what Is –

And leans upon the former, makes it play,

As that played off the first: and, tending up,

[100] Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man

Upward in that dread point of intercourse,

Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.

What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.

I give the glossa of Theotypas.]

And then, ‘A stick, once fire from end to end;

Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark!

Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself

A little where the fire was: thus I urge

The soul that served me, till it task once more

[110] What ashes of my brain have kept their shape,

And these make effort on the last o’ the flesh,

Trying to taste again the truth of things –’

(He smiled) – ‘their very superficial truth;

As that ye are my sons, that it is long

Since James and Peter had release by death,

And I am only he, your brother John,

Who saw and heard, and could remember all.

Remember all! It is not much to say.

What if the truth broke on me from above

[120] As once and oft-times? Such might hap again:

Doubtlessly He might stand in presence here,

With head wool-white, eyes flame, and feet like brass,

The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen –

I who now shudder only and surmise

“How did your brother bear that sight and live?”

‘If I live yet, it is for good, more love

Through me to men: be naught but ashes here

That keep awhile my semblance, who was John, –

Still, when they scatter, there is left on earth

[130] No one alive who knew (consider this!)

– Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands

That which was from the first, the Word of Life.

How will it be when none more saith “I saw”?

‘Such ever was love’s way: to rise, it stoops.

Since I, whom Christ’s mouth taught, was bidden teach,

I went, for many years, about the world,

Saying “It was so; so I heard and saw,”

Speaking as the case asked: and men believed.

Afterward came the message to myself

[140] In Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach,

But simply listen, take a book and write,

Nor set down other than the given word,

With nothing left to my arbitrament

To choose or change: I wrote, and men believed.

Then, for my time grew brief, no message more,

No call to write again, I found a way,

And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taught

Men should, for love’s sake, in love’s strength believe;

Or I would pen a letter to a friend

[150] And urge the same as friend, nor less nor more:

Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed.

But at the last, why, I seemed left alive

Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,

To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared

When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things;

Left to repeat, “I saw, I heard, I knew, ”

And go all over the old ground again,

With Antichrist already in the world,

And many Antichrists, who answered prompt

[160] “Am I not Jasper as thyself art John?

Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayst forget:

Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?”

I never thought to call down fire on such,

Or, as in wonderful and early days,

Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb;

But patient stated much of the Lord’s life

Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work:

Since much that at the first, in deed and word,

Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,

[170] Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,

Fed through such years, familiar with such light,

Guarded and guided still to see and speak)

Of new significance and fresh result;

What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars,

And named them in the Gospel I have writ.

For men said, “It is getting long ago:

Where is the promise of His coming?” – asked

These young ones in their strength, as loth to wait,

Of me who, when their sires were born, was old.

[180] I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully,

Since I was there, and helpful in my age;

And, in the main, I think such men believed.

Finally, thus endeavouring, I fell sick,

Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end,

And went to sleep with one thought that, at least,

Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness,

We had the truth, might leave the rest to God.

Yet now I wake in such decrepitude

As I had slidden down and fallen afar,

[190] Past even the presence of my former self,

Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,

Till I am found away from my own world,

Feeling for foot-hold through a blank profound,

Along with unborn people in strange lands,

Who say – I hear said or conceive they say –

“Was John at all, and did he say he saw?

Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!”