Pomegranates from an English Garden

“To be run and continued, and ended – who knows? – or endure!
“The man taught enough by life’s dream, of the rest to make sure;
“By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
“And the next world’s reward and repose, by the struggles in this.

XVIII

“I believe it! ’Tis thou, God, that givest, ’tis I who receive:
“In the first is the last, in thy will is my powder to believe.
“All’s one gift: thou canst grant it, moreover, as prompt to my prayer,
“As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.
“From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth:
“I will? – the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth
“To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare
“Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
“This; – ’tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
“See the King – I would help him, but cannot, the wishes fall through.
“Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
“To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would – knowing which,
“I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!
“Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou – so wilt thou!
“So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown —
“And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
“One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,
“Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!
“As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
“Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved!
“He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.
“’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek
“In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
“A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
“Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand
“Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!”

XIX

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news —
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth —
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day’s tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of the hills;
In the shuddering forests’ held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still,
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill
That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe:
E’en the serpent that slid away silent – he felt the new law.
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices – “E’en so, it is so!”

Stanza 14.– Observe the meeting of the human and divine in the poet-prophet’s inspiration. As poet, his powers were in their fullest exercise, and still there was an unfathomable heaven of the unknown above him, till “one lift of Thy hand cleared that distance.”

The close of this stanza sets before us the scene of the writing of this reminiscence.

Stanza 15.– The soothing influence of the singing begins to appear. Be sure to keep in mind the picture, so wonderfully illustrated, of the attitude of the two; and mark the words of David, “All my heart how it loved him,” connecting them carefully with the next stanza (16), “Then the truth came upon me.” It is only to the earnestly-loving heart that such a revelation of God could be given. “God is Love, and he that loveth not knoweth not God.” Observe, also, in this short stanza the effect of the intense earnestness of his soul, leading him to lay aside his harp and cease his singing, and simply break out in impassioned speech.

Stanza 17.– Shall God be infinitely above his creature man, in all faculties except one, and that “the greatest of all,” viz., Love? (Note, in passing, the exquisite beauty of the lines: “With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too,” and “As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.” The passage immediately following this line is of course ironical at his own expense, which is indicated by the parenthetical “I laugh as I think”; as if to say “how utterly foolish the thought that such a wide province, such a grand gift, as Love, should be mine quite apart from God, the great Ruler and Giver of all!”)

Stanza 18.– Impossible! God is the giver: all that I have – Love, as well as everything else – is from him; I can wish, but cannot will the thing I would; but God can, therefore God will; his love cannot be frustrated as mine is; it must even for such as “Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,” find Salvation; being infinite it must have its will, and find a way, however hard it be (see the striking line “it is by no breath,” &c.); and there it is! See the Christ stand!

Remember carefully the position as explained in the 15th stanza as you read the magnificent climax, beginning —

“O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee;”

observe also the effect of the spondee with which stanza 18 closes, instead of the usual anapæst; it gives wonderful dignity and strength to the thought. The same effect is produced several times in the early part of the poem by the same means, but nowhere with such power as in this, the grand climax.

What a contrast here to the petty mechanical notions of inspiration which have so often degraded the loftiest subject of human thought; and how marvellously is the presence and the power of the Unseen on such a soul as David’s imaged forth in the lines of the closing stanza, in words which seem almost to utter the unutterable.

AN EPISTLE

CONTAINING THE

STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH,

THE ARAB PHYSICIAN

Karshish, the picker-up of learning’s crumbs,
The not-incurious in God’s handiwork
(This man’s-flesh he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and keep down on earth a space
That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul)
– To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,
Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,
Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks
Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,
Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip
Back and rejoin its source before the term, —
And aptest in contrivance (under God)