Christmas Eve

XXI

 
                                   And I caught
At the flying robe, and unrepelled
     Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught
With warmth and wonder and delight,
God's mercy being infinite.
For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,
When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,
Out of the wandering world of rain,
Into the little chapel again.
 

XXII

 
How else was I found there, bolt upright
     On my bench, as if I had never left it?
—Never flung out on the common at night,
     Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,
Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,
Or the laboratory of the Professor!
For the Vision, that was true, I wist,
True as that heaven and earth exist.
There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,
With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;
Yet my nearest neighbour's cheek showed gall.
     She had slid away a contemptuous space:
And the old fat woman, late so placable,
Eyed me with symptoms hardly mistakable,
Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.
In short, a spectator might have fancied
That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber.
Yet kept my scat, a warning ghastly,
Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,
And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.
But again, could such disgrace have happened?
     Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;
And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?
     Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?
Could I report as I do at the close,
First, the preacher speaks through his nose:
Second, his gesture is too emphatic:
     Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,
     The subject-matter itself lacks logic:
Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.
Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,
Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call
Of making square to a finite eye
The circle of infinity,
And find so all-but-just-succeeding!
Great news! the sermon proves no reading
Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,
Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!
And now that I know the very worst of him,
What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?
Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks,
Shall I take on me to change his tasks,
And dare, despatched to a river-head
     For a simple draught of the element,
     Neglect the thing for which he sent,
And return with another thing instead?—
Saying, "Because the water found
"Welling up from the underground,
"Is mingled with the taints of earth,
"While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,
"And couldst, at wink or word, convulse
"The world with the leap of a river-pulse,—
"Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,
     "And bring thee a chalice I found, instead;
"See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!
     "One would suppose that the marble bled.
"What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:
     "The waterless cup will quench my thirst."
—Better have knelt at the poorest stream
That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!
For the less or the more is all God's gift,
Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.
And here, is there water or not, to drink?
I then, in ignorance and weakness,
Taking God's help, have attained to think
My heart does best to receive in meekness
That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
Where earthly aids being cast behind,
His All in All appears serene
With the thinnest human veil between,
Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
The many motions of his spirit,
Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.
For the preacher's merit or demerit,
It were to be wished the flaws were fewer
In the earthen vessel, holding treasure
Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;
     But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?
Heaven soon sets right all other matters!—
     Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,
This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,
     This soul at struggle with insanity,
Who thence take comfort—can I doubt?—
Which an empire gained were a loss without.
May it be mine! And let us hope
That no worse blessing befall the Pope,
Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,
     Of posturings and petticoatings,
     Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings
In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!
Nor may the Professor forego its peace
     At Gottingen presently, when, in the dusk
Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,
     Prophesied of by that horrible husk—
When thicker and thicker the darkness fills
The world through his misty spectacles,
And he gropes for something more substantial
     Than a fable, myth or personification,—
May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,
     And stand confessed as the God of salvation!
Meantime, in the still recurring fear
     Lest myself, at unawares, be found,
     While attacking the choice of my neighbours round,
With none of my own made—I choose here!
The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;
I have done: and if any blames me,
Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
     The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,—
Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
     On the bounds of the holy and the awful,—
I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,
And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,
Who head and heart alike discernest
     Looking below light speech we utter,
     When frothy spume and frequent sputter
Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!
May truth shine out, stand ever before us!
I put up pencil and join chorus
To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,
     The last five verses of the third section
     Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,
To conclude with the doxology.