Miserere, Domine!
UNFATHOMABLE One,
Maker of all things, breath
Of all breath, spirit-spun
Thread inwoven in birth and life and death, —
Whence came for thee the mood
To make? What vision, seen by thee alone,
Urged thee from solitude
To an uneasy throne,
Where sounds forever the sad monotone
Of souls in worlds unnumbered, from the dust
Crying for justice against thee, the Just?
Did darker thoughts harass,
And drive thee to these noises, —
Lulled, as on storms thy sea-bird, brooding, poises?
Or hast thou mirrored thee, unveiled, in man,
As for mere vanity
A girl dotes on her image in a glass;
And so thy sorry plan
Is but a shadow-show to flatter thee?
Or, restless evermore,
Hast shaped this jarring scheme because thy peace
Is not of strife surcease,
But instant victory in constant war?
Or was thy making blind
Willfulness, which has brought
Life out of life, moved by no further thought;
Wherefore, unlit by mind,
Thy world is groping out of naught to naught?
Master, what is thy will
For us! Peace? Love? Thou seest, Lord, our life:
Does it thine ends fulfill?
— Yea, they have peace, the strong, the conquerors;
While whipped men nurse their sores.
Yet though cowed rage awhile may sheathe the knife,
Hate hides behind; and strife
But waits upon occasion, — till old scores
Blood shall have blotted: leagued, the wolf-pack preys
But should a leader limp or lag, it slays.
Thou seest blind love enmesh
The wills of men: how in the baser crew
Flesh hungers after flesh,
And feeds; hungers afresh,
And dies; and how the few
Grasp at an iris-bow
Of many-colored hopes that come — to go.
Where is that love supreme
In which souls meet, — where is it satisfied?
Unless the bridegroom conjure his pale bride
From insubstantial dream;
Or, when a maid has died,
Some brooding poet quicken vain desire
With his own spirit’s fire,
And nursing in his soul the dear device,
He make — and be — his own still paradise.
Enisled on heaving sands
Of lone desire, spirit to spirit cries;
While float across the skies
Bright phantoms of fair lands
Where fancies fade not, and where dreams abide.
Then on a day the dear illusions lift:
Sundered, upon a shoreless sea adrift,
With eyes that yearn to eyes,
Mute, with imploring hands,
The twain go driven whither no land lies;
And whether side by side,
Or swept apart by some swift passionate tide,
Each in the bark of each
Lies bound; nor ever soul to soul shall reach.
Time was indeed when some,
Gaunt, with averted eyes and voices dumb
For all save thee, on rocky fastnesses,
In woods, or by waste sands,
Sought by self-scourging and bead-mumbled spell
Guerdon of heaven: ah, why in silences
Fulfilled with thee, sighed they for vague dream-lands
Of mystic asphodel,
Who, long self-cloistered in disgust of men,
Must greet on yonder multitudinous shore
Those they but scorned before,
Still in the spirit human—even as then?
Ancient of days, bemoan’st thou the rent bars
Of sleep? — thine ere the inexplicable pang
Stirred in their sockets thy fixed balls of sight,
And thy lids loosened, and the vital light
Flamed on the dust of uncompacted stars,
Until these joined and sang;
And on the four winds rang
The long thin shrill wild wail of a world’s woe.
Lord, with unshaken soul,
Shalt thou forever, hearing, will it so?
Not halt these spheres that roll
Infect? Not with submissive knowledge own
Good was for thee alone?
Not then, withdrawing thee in thee, atone?
Maker of all things, breath
Of all breath, spirit-spun
Thread inwoven in birth and life and death, —
Whence came for thee the mood
To make? What vision, seen by thee alone,
Urged thee from solitude
To an uneasy throne,
Where sounds forever the sad monotone
Of souls in worlds unnumbered, from the dust
Crying for justice against thee, the Just?
Did darker thoughts harass,
And drive thee to these noises, —
Lulled, as on storms thy sea-bird, brooding, poises?
Or hast thou mirrored thee, unveiled, in man,
As for mere vanity
A girl dotes on her image in a glass;
And so thy sorry plan
Is but a shadow-show to flatter thee?
Or, restless evermore,
Hast shaped this jarring scheme because thy peace
Is not of strife surcease,
But instant victory in constant war?
Or was thy making blind
Willfulness, which has brought
Life out of life, moved by no further thought;
Wherefore, unlit by mind,
Thy world is groping out of naught to naught?
Master, what is thy will
For us! Peace? Love? Thou seest, Lord, our life:
Does it thine ends fulfill?
— Yea, they have peace, the strong, the conquerors;
While whipped men nurse their sores.
Yet though cowed rage awhile may sheathe the knife,
Hate hides behind; and strife
But waits upon occasion, — till old scores
Blood shall have blotted: leagued, the wolf-pack preys
But should a leader limp or lag, it slays.
Thou seest blind love enmesh
The wills of men: how in the baser crew
Flesh hungers after flesh,
And feeds; hungers afresh,
And dies; and how the few
Grasp at an iris-bow
Of many-colored hopes that come — to go.
Where is that love supreme
In which souls meet, — where is it satisfied?
Unless the bridegroom conjure his pale bride
From insubstantial dream;
Or, when a maid has died,
Some brooding poet quicken vain desire
With his own spirit’s fire,
And nursing in his soul the dear device,
He make — and be — his own still paradise.
Enisled on heaving sands
Of lone desire, spirit to spirit cries;
While float across the skies
Bright phantoms of fair lands
Where fancies fade not, and where dreams abide.
Then on a day the dear illusions lift:
Sundered, upon a shoreless sea adrift,
With eyes that yearn to eyes,
Mute, with imploring hands,
The twain go driven whither no land lies;
And whether side by side,
Or swept apart by some swift passionate tide,
Each in the bark of each
Lies bound; nor ever soul to soul shall reach.
Time was indeed when some,
Gaunt, with averted eyes and voices dumb
For all save thee, on rocky fastnesses,
In woods, or by waste sands,
Sought by self-scourging and bead-mumbled spell
Guerdon of heaven: ah, why in silences
Fulfilled with thee, sighed they for vague dream-lands
Of mystic asphodel,
Who, long self-cloistered in disgust of men,
Must greet on yonder multitudinous shore
Those they but scorned before,
Still in the spirit human—even as then?
Ancient of days, bemoan’st thou the rent bars
Of sleep? — thine ere the inexplicable pang
Stirred in their sockets thy fixed balls of sight,
And thy lids loosened, and the vital light
Flamed on the dust of uncompacted stars,
Until these joined and sang;
And on the four winds rang
The long thin shrill wild wail of a world’s woe.
Lord, with unshaken soul,
Shalt thou forever, hearing, will it so?
Not halt these spheres that roll
Infect? Not with submissive knowledge own
Good was for thee alone?
Not then, withdrawing thee in thee, atone?