{The Earthquake 1885}

115

The Second Day.

(ANTHROPOMORPHISM.)

_____

117

THE SECOND DAY.

Two miles of field and wood as flies the crow,
But thrice two miles of azure curves and bends
As winds the peaceful river, turning oft
With lingering feet as turns and turns again
On her own footprints some sweet dreaming maid
Who gathers ferns and flowers with listless hand,
Lay like a jewel a green promontory
Sparkling bright emerald on the breast of Tweed.
Thither next day our happy company
In barges, boats, and shallops idly rowed,
A bright flotilla, all the rainbow’s hues
Fluttering in sunshine and in azure depths
Brokenly mirror’d; Satyrs, Nymphs, and Fauns,
The Graces under pink silk parasols,
The Muses under Gainsborough hats of straw,
Venus, white-vestured and without her doves,                                     118
Chattering to Vulcan in blue spectacles,
The modern Syrens, singing as they dipt
White hands in crystal o’er the shallop’s side,
Followed each other merrily as we went.
And here the willow trailed her yellow locks
In golden shallows whence the kingfisher
Flashed like a living topaz and was gone;
And here the clustering water-lilies spread
Their oilèd leaves and alabaster cups,
Tangled amid the river’s sedgy hair;
And there from shadowy oaks that fringed the stream
The squirrel stood upright and lookt at us
With beaded eyes; and all the flowery banks
Were loud with hum of bees and song of birds;
And often on the smooth and silent pools,
Brimful of golden warmth and heavenly light,
The salmon sprang a foot into the sun,
Sparkled in panoply of silver mail,
And sank in the circle of his own bright leap!

     For on the promontory which we sought                                          119
A Hermit in the olden time had dwelt,
White-hair’d, white-bearded, cress and pulse his food,
The crystal stream his drink; and still the rock
Preserved the outline of his mossy cell;
And where his naked foot had press’d the grass
Under the shadowy boughs of oak and beech,
The blue of heaven had fallen and blossom’d up
In azure harebells multitudinous,
For ever misted with their own soft breath
Of sunless summer dew.
                                          Gaily we sailed,
And after many windings serpentine
We reached the place. Against the grassy banks
Our boats discharged their many-coloured freight,
Till all the flowery slopes and dusky glades
Were busy and bright with smiling human shapes;
And through the warm and honeysuckled ways,
Tangled with bramble, ferns, and foxglove bells,
We pushed our path until we found indeed
The mossy cell, with overhanging eaves                                                120
Encalendured with lichens like the Cross,
And down below the dewy grass, knee-deep,
And countless hyacinths with their waxen stems
And fairy bells of thin transparent blue.
Most cool and still, embower’d on every side,
With just a peep of azure overhead,
Was that sweet sanctuary, hush’d as a nest
Deserted, with no stir of summer sound;
And down the mossy rock a crystal dew
Stole coldly, while one sparkling minute drop
Fell like quicksilver on a flowering fern,
Gleam’d, and rolled luminous to the chill green ground.

Hard by the cell we found an open lawn
Sprinkled with fronds of fern and azure flowers,
And here full soon we spread our snowy cloths
And picnick’d in the sunlight. From the boughs
The gold-bill’d blackbird and the bluewing’d jay
Gazed down on such a scene as birds beheld
When Oberon’s enchanted cavaliers                                                     121
Stole forth to banquet underneath the moon;
And they whose scientific bolts and brooms
Had driven the fairies forth from field and farm,
So that the shepherdess and dairymaid
No longer fear the roguish pixy’s thumb
Punishing idleness, were merriest there,
And laughed as loud as if the work-a-day world
Were sweetly haunted yet! In lily hands
The light glass tinkled, while the beaded wine
Cream’d and ran o’er, and every learnèd lap
Was like a Dryad’s, full of ripen’d fruit;
And presently for sport our Satyrs plucked
Flowers of the wood, and pelted merrily
Some saucy-eyed Bacchantes, who upsprang
White-bosom’d, dimple-breasted, and escaped
Hotly pursued into the flowery glades—
Whence silvery peals of laughter, stifled cries,
Were wafted to us on the summer air.

     Then to her throne, a high and mossy bank                                       122
Emblazon’d with the crowsfoot’s dusky gold,
Our Barbara moved, with royally lifted hand
Enjoining silence; happily her court
Clustered about her, as she smiled and cried—
“Surround me and attend, all ye whose souls,
Though glad with summer light and warm with milk
Of Venus (which we moderns call champagne!)
Remember that Great Problem, and our oath
Each day to take it as a summer theme.
Here on this very spot, in yonder cell,
The holy Hermit dwelt and ponder’d it
Alone, so many a hundred years ago.
Alas! how few in this our feverish age
Dare play the hermit now? Our anchorites
Are noisy men, who tell their beads for show,
And print their prosings in the magazines
Beside the gigman’s diatribes at “God,”
Spelt with a little “g”!                                                                          [4:19]
                                       A quiet voice,
That of a bright-eyed preacher from the north—                                  123
(Our Norman, ripe and mellow as Friar Tuck,
Yet tender-soul’d as sweet Maid Marian!)—
Made echo:—“Wisely spoken! Here and there
A few sad thinkers crawl on hands and knees
Into the temples of the solitude;
But these, being reverent, are awed and dumb,—
Unlike the jaunty, dapper, newly breech’d
Child of the age, who, strutting in the sun
Selling his birthright for a penman’s praise,
Denies his Heavenly Father!”
                                                 “Pardon me,”
Broke in the scoffer, Douglas Sutherland,
“The age we live in has its vanities
I grant you, but it stands supreme in this,—
The use of soap and water, the crusade
Still needful against other-worldliness.
If holiness be gauged by length of nail,
Heart’s purity by epidermic crust,
I grant your anchorites were blessed men;
If not, quite otherwise; and for the rest,                                                124
The Heavenly Father they perceived and praised,
Their magnified non-natural Heavenly Father,
Was, like themselves, a dull old Anchorite,
Unclean and useless, brooding in a den
With Fever for his servant, Pestilence
To scatter forth his breathings. Nowadays
We prize a cleanlier Godhead, scorning dreams
Which at the best are childish,—in a word,
Anthropomorphic!”
                                   Then that other’s face,
A little angry, for a burning soul
With faith at white heat cannot jest with fire,
Flash’d scornfully and almost pityingly—
“The babe must have his rattle, and the child
His catchword! Verily, Science is at best
A foolish Virgin, thinking to destroy
The Eternal Verity with a cumbrous phrase!
Anthropomorphic, say you, is the dream,—
A man’s, an infant’s, vision of himself
Flashed upon mental darkness? Be it so.                                               125
Then as a child that in the cradle lies
And feels the darkness stir, and seems to feel
The brightness of a face he cannot see,
I, who am old, accept the happy dream,
And, since you will it so, the phrase as well.
Go, range the empty heaven of fantasy
Upon Spinoza’s wingèd horse of brass
(Which, coming down to earth with thunder-shock,
Stuns him that rides and robs him of an eye),
Or lose your wits in Hegel’s cloud of words,
Or prone on hands and knees inspect the worms
With Darwin, or with Spencer blankly stare
At vacuum and the Inconceivable;
But what if, like those leaders, lonely men,
You find yourselves at last without a Friend?
Meantime I stretch a hand out in the darkness
And touch—my Father's; nay, I wake and gaze,
And lo! I see the very Face and Form
I have dream’d of; and, a child once more, I say
‘Our Father,’ and I know my prayer is heard!                                       126
God help me if my God be not indeed
The Father of my simple childish faith!”

Then Douglas shrugged his shoulders, scorning speech
With one in Superstition’s swaddling clothes;
But something in the brave benignant face,
Bright-eyed and lofty-brow’d, and in the voice
So tender with its soft deep Highland burr,
Subdued us, and we listened reverently
Ev’n where we doubted most; and when he ceased
A certain timid echo in our hearts
Murmur’d approval. Thereupon our Queen
Besought him, having faith so absolute,
To carry our fitful torch of tale-telling
A little space that day, then hand it on
To the next, and next. He shook his head and smiled,
Then answer’d, being urged—“To me at least
Your Problem is no Problem after all—
I solved it at my Heavenly Father’s knee,
Spelling His Name out of the Book Divine,                                           127
And looking up into those loving eyes
With which He shines upon the worst and best;
But since you wish it, I will tell a tale
Of that same heavenly Presence—how it came
To one who was in heart a little child,
But who, being lessen’d by the over-wise,
Beheld the gentle dream dissolve away?”                                             [5:24]

Then, without further prelude, he began
This story of the monk Serapion,
Who in the evening of his days embraced
The sweet anthropomorphic heresy.

 

[Notes:
Alterations in the 1901 edition of ‘The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan’:
v. 4, l. 19: Spelt with a little “g”!’
v. 5, l. 24: Beheld the gentle dream dissolve away.” ]

_____

128

Serapion.

I.

ON the mountain heights, in a cell of stone,
          Dwelt Serapion;
There, winter and summer, he linger’d alone.

Most drear was the mountain and dismal the cell;
          Yet he loved them well—
Contented and glad in their silence to dwell.

And ever his face wore an innocent ray,
          And his spirit was gay,
And he sang, like the angels who sing far away!

The goathered, who gathered his flocks ere the night,
          In the red sunset light,
Heard the voice ring above him, from height on to height.

Ofttimes, from his cell on the cold mountain’s crown,                                      129
          He came merrily down,
And stood, with a smile, ’mid the folk in the town.

With raiment all ragged, worn shoon on his feet,
          He walk’d in the street,
Yet his eyes were so happy, his voice was so sweet!

And ever his face wore the grace and the gleam
          Of a beautiful dream,
Like the light of the sun shed asleep on a stream!

And the folk cried aloud, as they gathered to see:
          “Of all men that be,
The brightest and happiest surely is he!”

And they question’d: “O! why is thy face ever bright,
          And thy spirit so light,
Down here in the valley, up there on the height?”

He answer’d: “What makes me so happy and gay
          Wheresoever I stray?
The Lord I behold all the night, all the day!

“He walks like a Shepherd in raiment of gold                                                 130
          On the mountain-tops cold;
He comes to my cell; on my knees I behold.

“He smiles like my father who died long ago;
          His eyes sweetly glow—
Those eyes are as sapphires; His beard is as snow!

“Yea, night-time and day-time he comes to my call,
          The dear Father of all,
With a face ever fair, with a solemn footfall!”

Then the folk cried again: “Of all mortals that be,
          Surely gladdest is he!”  .  .  .  .
Wise monks from afar came to hear and to see.

 

II.

As they climb’d through the snows to his cell, they could hear
          His voice ringing clear,
In a hymn to the Lord who for ever seem’d near.

They enter’d and saw him. He sat like a wight                                                131
          Who beholds some strange sight—
Face fix’d, his eyes shining, most peaceful and bright!

“O brother! what makes thee so happy?” they cried.
          With a smile he replied:
“The Lord who so loves me, my Guardian and Guide!

“He comes in the night and He comes in the day
          From his Heaven far away;
I feel His soft touch on my hair, as I pray.

“He smiles with grave eyes like my father long dead,
          His hand bows my head,
From the breath of His nostrils a blessing is shed!”

Through their ranks as they listened a cold shudder ran,
          And the murmur began:
“Can God have the touch and the breath of a man?

“No soul can conceive Him, no sight may descry
          The Most Strange, the Most High,
Not the quick when they live, not the holy who die.”

But Serapion answer’d: “I hear and I see;                                                       132
          He comes hourly to me;
He speaks in mine ear, as I pray on my knee!”

They murmur’d: “Blaspheme not! He dwells far away;
          None fathom Him may;
For He is not as man, nor is fashion’d of clay.

“Can the God we conceive not have ears and have eyes?
          Who sayeth so, lies!
Cast thy heresy off, hear our words, and be wise!

“For God is not flesh, as His worshippers be—
          Nay, a Spirit is He,
Not shapen for mortals to hear or to see.

“Inconceivable, Holy, Divine evermore,
          All His works ruling o’er;
Yet by these we conceive Him, and darkly adore.”

Then Serapion answer’d: “How strange! For He seems,
          In my beautiful dreams,
To be near, with a kind face that brightens and beams!”

They murmur’d: “These fancies are false and abhorred;                                   133
          Since the God who is Lord
Neither face hath nor form, though His wrath is a sword!

“Put the vision behind thee! Be sure no man’s eye
          Can conceive or descry
What is hidden from angels of God in the sky!”

But Serapion answer’d: “He comes to my prayer:
          He is kind, He is fair;
His smile is as sunlight, that sleeps on the air.

“Not as men, but more splendid and stately and tall
          Is the Father of all.
He walks on the snows with a solemn footfall!”

But they cried: “By some fiend is thy solitude stirred!
          Shall the Light and the Word,
The Spirit Almighty, be seen and be heard?

“Put the vision aside; like a dream let it flit,
          And the shadow of it;
Lest the heresy drive thee, accurst, to the Pit.”

They spake and he listened. For nights and for days                                        134
          He hark’d in amaze,
While they proved that a Phantom had gladden’d his gaze.

At last all was clear, and his forehead was bent
          In submissive assent.
They confess’d him and bless’d him, and joyfully went.

 

III.

There he sat, still as stone, sadly thinking it o’er,
          At his desolate door.
Then, alone in his cell, tried to pray, as before.

He reached out his arms to the cold, empty air,
          Kneeling woefully there;
He prayed unto God; but none came to his prayer.

He walked from his cell on the cold mountain’s crown,
          Wending silently down,
Till he stood as before, ’mid the folk in the town.

With raiment all ragged, worn shoon on his feet,                                              135
          He stood in the street;
And his eyes were not happy, his voice was not sweet!

The gladness was gone that made golden his face;
          Yea, there linger’d no trace
Of the smile and the sunshine, the peace and the grace.

And the folk whisper’d low, as they gathered to see—
          “Of all men that be,
The saddest and weariest surely is he!”

He climb’d up the mountain, and sat there alone;
          And his spirit made moan—
“My God, they have slain Thee! My God, Thou art gone!

“Their breath hath destroy’d Thee, my Father!” he said—
          “Thou art lost! Thou art fled!”
And the sense of his doom was as dust on his head.

136

IV.

The goatherd still gather’d his flocks ere the night,
          In the red sunset-light;
But heard no voice singing, afar on the height!

 

_____

137

Silent we cluster’d when the tale was done,
Till Verity exclaimed: “As that lone monk
Who suffered pedants to destroy his God,
So is our England now! For many years
She dwelt apart and ponder’d that pure thought
Which turned to heavenly song in Milton’s mouth,
And never questioning taught her wisest sons
To bow their heads beneath the Father’s hand;
Then in an evil hour her ear was turn’d
To specious pleadings which profaned the faith
And quickened unbelieving; from that hour
Faith faded, the heroic stature sank
Cubit by cubit, and her heroes changed
To problem-haunted pigmies, clustering mites
On the green cheese of Science. Faugh, how rank
The stale thing smells, to nostrils which have drunk
The pure air sweeten’d by the mountain snows
Where men even yet may find the living God!”

     Cried Sparkle quickly, “I will grant you, Faith                                  138
Was marvellous, when Faith was possible!
But which is best for outcast Nature’s Son,
Fatherless, illegitimately born,
And at the best remitted to the care
Of an abandon’d mother—which is best,
To play the farce of filial faith to One
Who utterly declines to show His face,
Nay, who, if He exists, denies Himself,
And leaves His offspring unprovided for,
Or boldly, calmly, facing all events,
To say, ‘In all the world where’er I search
I find no trace of Fatherhood at all,
No token of His kindness or His care,—
Only inexorable Law pursuing
Me and my brethren, and that greater one,
Nature, our mother. Blessings upon her,
Upon her poor blind eyes and beauteous face
Still sunny with insufferable love!
Blessings upon her, and sweet reverence,
Who loveth us, her children! On her breast                                           139
We wakened, ever in her circling arms
We found kind shelter; when our hearts are sore,
Our spirits weary, she can comfort us
With countless ministrations, woven smiles
Of light and flowers and sunshine; when at last
We are wearied out with our brief day of life,
She hath a bed of quiet ready, strewn
With grass and scented shadow. Bid me kneel
To her who never fail’d in acts of love,
And lo! how eagerly, how reverently,
I haste to bend the knee; but bid me kneel
To Him I know not, who since life began
Hath never stood acknowledged or revealed,
And lo! I rise erect with folded arms
In the full pride and privilege of Man,
Rejecting, scorning, or denying Him!
How hath He helped me? When my finger ached
Or my soul sicken’d of some dark disease,
Where was my Father—where was He for whom
I shriek’d through all the watches of the night                                       140
In pain and protestation? Did He come
To comfort and sustain me? When I shrank
Affrighted from the clammy hands of Death,
When in mine arms the maiden of my love
Lay dead and cold, slain by her own first kiss,
Where was the Father that ye vaunt so much?
I owe Him life? Perchance. Love too? Ah me,
A little love to mock a little life
Forlorn, and swiftly flying! He hath chosen,
To leave me in the wilderness of thought
Abandon’d and rejected; I in turn,
Finding He fails me in my hour of need,
Finding He cannot save me from the fangs
Of His own bloodhounds, Death and Force and Law,
Reject Him, and abandon that old dream
Of ever looking on a Father’s face!’”

More would his lips have utter’d in a strain
By some deemed blasphemous, but angry cries
Broke in upon the current of his speech;                                               141
And many there, remembering the fear
Which drove them thither from the City’s streets,
Drew timorously together, as if fearing
The Earthquake’s jaws might open under them.
“Enough!” cried Barbara—“you touch the harp
Of feeling with too strenuous a touch,
And jar the delicate chords too cruelly!
For me, I mourn the faith which long ago
Led men into the desert sands to pray,
And tomb’d the hermit in his narrow cell;
Then love was pain, and pain was privilege,
And he who sought the Father was content
To find Him bleeding on the wayside Cross,
Or looking sadly from the Sepulchre.
Now who will justify the holiness
Of self-renouncement, shaming with some tale,
Quaint as a missal love-illuminèd,
Our peevish problem-haunted modernness?
Come, Bishop, for you have not spoken yet,
Though clad in wisdom and in purity                                                     142
As whitely as your ancestors, the monks.”

Close to her side stood Bishop Eglantine,
The gentle priest who dwells an anchorite
Amid the busiest throngs of living men—
A man who, sitting at the laden board
Of Knowledge, looking with a longing eye
On the rare dainties that he must not touch,
Grows gaunt and lean with intellectual fasts;
So spare, the soul seems shining through his flesh
Like light through alabaster. Tall he stood,
Upgazing through the thin transparent roof
Of leaves upon some peaceful sight in heaven,
And when he smiled in answer to her words
His smile was spectre-like and virginal,
Too faint for flesh and blood. Not far away
The plumper Bishop Primrose laughing sat,
Broad as his Church and sunnier than his creed,
And held a bright-eyed child between his knees.
A Roman lily and an English rose                                                          143
Were these two prelates; one proclaiming Christ
Ghostly and sad and sacrificial,
The other, Christ the brown young Shepherd, clad
With strength as with a garment, bending down
To lift a lambkin struggling among thorns,
And bear it on his back across the hills
Into the Master’s fold.
                                       Quoth Eglantine,
With courteous bow to all the circle round,
“Ev’n as you spoke my thoughts were far away
With one who tenderly renounced the flesh
And found in pain sweet comfort long ago.
Here is the tale—scarcely indeed a tale—
’Tis given in a monkish chronicle,
And is so brief, that he who runs may hear.”

 

_____

144

Ramon Monat.

1.

HIDDEN from the light of day,
All his care to plead and pray,
     In his cell sat Ramon Monat,
          Gaunt and grey.
 

2.

Suddenly before his sight
Stood the Virgin robed in white,—
     In her arms fresh-gather’d roses
          Red and bright.
 

3.

“Ramon, Ramon,” murmur’d she,
“See the gifts I bring to thee,
     Roses, red celestial roses,
          Pluck’d by me!

145

4.

“Walking in His gardens fair,
’Midst the golden glory there,
     My sweet Son, the Lord Christ Jesus,
          Hears thy prayer!
 

5.

“Lo, He sendeth thee to-day
These blest flowers from far away!” . . .
     Wildly sobbing, Ramon Monat
          Answer’d “Nay!

6.

“Holy Mother, on thy breast
Let the flowers of rapture rest,—
     Not for me—I am not worthy—
          Gifts so blest!

7.

“Ah, but if my brows might gain
(Hear me, though the prayer is vain),
     For a moment’s space, my Master’s
          Crown of pain!”

146

8.

From his sight the Virgin fair
Vanish’d, as he sank in prayer;
     Presently, again he saw her,
          Standing there!

9.

Weeping bitterly she said,
“See, the gift I bring instead—
     Lo, the cruel crown of sorrow,
          Bloody-red!”

10.

When the Virgin Mother mild,
Weeping like a little child,
     Set the thorns on Ramon’s forehead,
          Ramon smiled!

11.

Lonely there for many a day,
Rack’d with anguish, gaunt and grey,
     Happy with that crown of sorrow,
          Ramon lay.

147

12.

Then, when ’twas his Master’s will,
There they found him dead and chill,
     Sweetly, in his crown of sorrow,
          Smiling still!

 

_____

148

“The lunatic, the anchorite, and the poet
Are of rank superstition all compact,”
Cried Douglas, lifting high his cap and bells;
“Your Ramon Monat wore his crown of thorns
Upon his pallid brow as jauntily
As Cæsar throws the purple round his limbs.
Such creatures on the body of Mother Church
Crawl’d thickly, till good Doctor Rational,
Call’d when the lady’s state was perilous,
Said, ‘Wash thyself—be clean, take exercise!’
And so the vermin died. He serves God best
Who loves his kind, and teaches them to rinse
Both soul and body, until both appear
As clean—as a sheep’s heart!”
                                               A speech so bold
Jarr’d with the gentle temper of the hour,
The peaceful woods, the summer afternoon,
The dreamy spirit of that sylvan scene.
“Peace, knave!” cried Barbara mock-seriously,                                    149
“Moments there are when even cap and bells
Must lose their privilege, and fools be dumb
For fear of stripes!”—and to him on the grass
She tossed a bunch of grapes, which Douglas caught
And munch’d in silence, lying on his back.
Then came a pause, so deep that we could hear
The breathing of the silence, the soft stir
Of birds among the boughs, the waterfall
Crooning itself to sleep within the woods.

Quoth Bishop Primrose: “Your ascetics shrank
Sense after sense, until their very souls
Became as mere Narcissi, pondering
Their own reflections, figuring in their pride
A moral catalepsy, death not life.
He serves God best who launches fearlessly
Out on the living waters, and proclaiming
The great celestial haven, leads the way
With all sails set, that the poor storm-toss’d fleet
Of Humankind may follow fearlessly!                                                    150
Ev’n so the preachers of our Church have done,
Spreading glad tidings up and down the world,
And working out salvation for themselves
Through the redemption of the human race!”

“Alas!” another speaker interposed,
“The Storm is loud for ever on the seas,
And while the proud strong Churches of the creeds
Sail to and fro with golden argosies,
Each night a fleet of fishing-boats goes down
And no man heeds! Science is tenderer;
She puts a beacon on each rocky cape,
And sounds the shallows, that poor mariners
May know the seas their ships must navigate.
Meantime the tumult of Euroclydon
Roars on the Deep; and mark! the tempest blows
Not to but from the far-off Heavenly Land,
Beating the vessels back on dusky shores
To shipwreck close at home. I’d rather trust
The roughest pilot born upon the coast,                                                151
Familiar with the dangers round about,
Than any of your Priests who shut their eyes
And wring their hands and pray! This world of ours
Is at the mercy of the elements;
Who tries to weigh them? Science does her best,
While poor Religion quakes, and conjures up
More spectres than the storm itself can breed.”
He added: “Just the other day in church,
Drifted there Heaven knows how and Heaven knows why,
I heard the preacher preach, and dreamed a dream;
If you will have it, here it is in verse,
Rude as the maker, rugged as the theme,”—
And no one interposing, he began.

 

_____

152

In a Fashionable Church.

I.

WHAT Shape is this with hands outreaching,
Walking the waters of Hell, and preaching?
The waves are rolling beneath and glistening,
Each breaking wave is a white face, listening!

The rift is roaring, the rain is moaning—
His robe streams back as He stands intoning;
With jet-black troughs the mad seas break at Him,
And the lightning springs, like a hissing snake, at Him!

God, doth He guess any soul can hear Him,
With the wind so wailing, the storm so near Him?
Yet now and then sounds His voice of wonder there,
Like the plash of a shower in the pause of thunder, there.

The Devil sits by those waters evil,                                                       153
Pensive, as is the wont of the Devil,
So bored and blasé his expression is
None would guess what his true profession is.

The waters and he are tired together
Of such eternally stormy weather;
Always that wind is roaring busily,
Till the heart feels faint and the head rocks dizzily.

Always gusty both night and morrow!
No wonder the Devil is full of sorrow,
No wonder he sneers at the Figure preaching there
With bright eyes burning and hands outreaching there.

The Devil thinks, “What use of trying
To preach a sermon ’midst such a crying?
If He bade the Almighty close His batteries,
The damn’d beneath Him might guess what the matter is!”

And lo! the Figure with white robe streaming                                        154
Raises His hand while the winds are screaming—
As He stood on the earth when the Pharisees found Him,
He stands, and the same Storm beats around Him.

As long ago ’neath the empyrean
He walked on the waters Galilean,
With only the poor damn’d souls to discern it, He
Walks, and has walked through a long eternity!

God with the still small voice’s calling!
Soft as rain on the grass ’tis falling,
Yet little blame to the souls who are near to it
If they break and groan and give no ear to it!

Something it is for the damn’d below Him
To see the patient Figure and know Him! . . . .
What a wind! what a raining and roaring now!
Lightning, thunder, and black rain pouring now!

 

155

II.

Up with a start I waken groaning,
And hear sweet Honeydew’s voice intoning.
Only a dream!—and in church I am again,
Half asleep, in the midst of the sham again!

Hark! how the soft-eyed, soft-voiced creature
Preaches, with sweetness in every feature!
The ladies listen, the maids sit dutiful,
The spinsters quiver, and murmur, “Beautiful!”

Surely as every Sunday passes
The scented silken superior classes
Flutter flounces and flash like sunny dew
Around the Reverend Mr. Honeydew.

Cambric handkerchiefs scatter scent about,
Pomaded heads are devoutly bent about,
Silks are rustling, lips are muttering,
To the dear man’s emotional pausing and fluttering.

The actor with his shaven cheek here                                                    156
Studies his art and learns to speak here;
Every period properly weighted is,
With gentle matter the sermon freighted is.

Sir Midas, portly and resplendent,
With the little Midases attendant,
And Lady Midas, all eyes upon her here,
Sit and smile in the pew of honour here.

Even the agnostic and revolter
Gather before this Chapel’s altar,
For none of the bigot’s mad insanity
Deforms dear Honeydew’s Christianity.

In such an excellent pastor’s leading,
So full of brightness and dainty breeding,
Even the faith ecclesiastical
Seems entertaining and less fantastical!

The preacher is an excellent fellow!                                                      157
His matter and manner are ever mellow. . . .
But afar the tempest of Hell is thundering,
The Figure preaching, the Devil wondering!

 

_____

158

 

STRANGE as some low and far off thunder-peal
Heard in the still heat of a summer day,
While shepherds looking upward in the sun
See purple banks of cloud that ominously
Roll in the distance, came the speaker’s words;
And as they ended we beheld indeed
Hell, or Creation adumbrating Hell,
Breathing with ululations of despair.
Hearing the wails of sin, the moans of men,
The hopeless, ceaseless wash of weary lives
Which sigh for sunlight or some shore of peace,
We pitied that supreme despairing Shape
Who treads the waves of woe with luminous feet,
And since He cannot still them, grows as sad
As the wild waters He is walking on.
And all were silent until Barbara rose                                                    159
And sigh’d: “The sun is sinking in the west;
Our happy day is ended—let us go!”
And murmuring like bees around the queen
We wandered slowly to the river-side.

Now like a gentle herdsman stood the sun
Pausing upon the brae-tops while he drove
His fleecy flocks of cloud into their fold
Beneath the faintly glimmering evening star;
And coming from the shadow of the woods,
Hushing our cries, we saw the gloaming grow,
The trees behind us black, the prospects dim,
But all things looming large in lustrous air,
The river-pools as full of deep strange light
As the still sky. The air, too, seem’d alive
With ominous sound akin to that strange light:
The bull-frogs croaking from the river shallows,
The cat-owl calling from the distant glade,
The murmuring waterfall now faintly heard
Drowsy and half asleep. Then from the woods                                     160
Rang sudden laughter, sharp and silvery clear,
Of merry maidens, and the music seem’d
As hollow as a bell, and when we spoke
Our voices had an eerie and empty sound
As if through vast and echoing corridors
We walked in awe.
                                  But soon upon the stream
Our bright flotilla homeward sailed again,
And ere we reached the silent Priory woods
The azure gates of darkness, swinging wide,
Revealed the lucent starry-paven floors,
And all the lamps of heaven ranged in rows
Each in its order round the Altar-steps,
From which a pale and silver-vestured Moon
Pour’d bright ablution and upraised the Host.

Then, as the glory wrapt us round and round,
And the dark river, sparkling to our oars,
Flash’d back the dewy splendour, soft and low
Some voices joined in song; and thus they sang:—

 

Storm in the night! and a voice in the Storm is crying:                                      161
“They have taken my Lord, and I know not where He is lying!”

“I sat in the Tomb by His side, with a soul unshaken,
I chafed His clay-cold hands,—for I knew He must waken.

“Before He closed His eyes, He said to the weeping—
‘’Tis but a little while—I shall wake from sleeping!’

“Cold and stiff He lay, not seeing or hearing;
The Tomb was sealed with a rock,—but I sat unfearing.

“For a light lay on His eyes, and His face was gleaming;
I heard Him sigh in His sleep, and thought ‘He is dreaming!’

“And then, with a thunder-peal, the rock was riven;
Bright, in the mouth of the Tomb, stood Angels of Heaven!

“He did not stir, though I whispered, ‘Master, awaken!’ . . .
Then brightness blinded my eyes,—and lo, He was taken!

“I woke in the Tomb alone, and the wind chill’d through me:
‘O Master,’ I moan’d, ‘remember Thy promise to me!’

“I crept through the night and sought Him. . . . Hither and thither
The swift Moon walk’d, and the white-tooth’d Sea ran with her.

“I stole from palace to palace, from prison to prison,
I found no trace of my Lord, though they said ‘He hath risen!’

“I heard the Nations weeping—I questioned the Nations:                                162
One said, ‘He is dead!’ another, ‘He lives—have patience!’

“Twice—on the desert sands, in the City Holy,
I have found two piercèd footprints, vanishing slowly!

“Wearily still I wander and still pursue Him—
He promised and I await Him, wailing unto Him!

“And now they say, ‘He is dead—hath the world forsaken.’
Ah no, He hath promised!—hath waken’d,—or will awaken!”

Storm in the night! and a voice in the storm still crying:
“They have taken my Lord, and I know not where He is lying!”

 

[Note:
A reworked version Storm in the Night was published in ‘The Buchanan Ballads Old and New’ (1892) and also in ‘The New Rome’ (1898) in the section entitled ‘The Last Christians’.]

______________________________

The Earthquake continued

_____

The Earthquake Contents