FREDERICK WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
Lo, if some pen should write upon your rafter
MENE and MENE in the folds of flame,
Think you could any memories thereafter
Wholly retrace the couplet as it came?
Lo, if some strange, unintelligible thunder
Sang to the earth the secret of a star
Scarce could ye catch, for terror and for wonder,
Shreds of the story that was pealed so far.
Scarcely I catch the words of his revealing,
Hardly I hear Him, dimly understand,
Only the Power that is within me pealing
Lives on my lips and beckons to my hand.
Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest
Cannot confound nor doubt Him nor deny:
Yea, with one voice, O, world, though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.
Rather the earth shall doubt when her retrieving
Pours in the rain and rushes from the sod.
Rather than he for whom the great conceiving
Stirs in his soul to quicken into God.
Ay, though thou then shouldst strike him in his glory,
Blind and tormented, maddened and alone,
Even on the cross would he maintain his story,
Yes, and in hell would whisper, I have known.
THE REDEEMER
WILLIAM SHARP (Fiona Macleod)
I know that my Redeemer liveth-but out of the depths of time
He hath not called to me yet. But from th' immeasurable tracts
That widen unending to where beginneth eternity
Falleth at times a voice, heart-thrilling, soul-piercing, life-giving,
High sometimes and clear, as a lark singing in a holy dawn,
Hushed and far off again as a dreaming wave upon seas
Lit by a low vast moon, and windlessly sleeping, but ever
Sweet with a human love, and full of ineffable yearning,
And crying of soul unto soul from infinite deep unto deep.
And sometimes I look and gaze out upon uttermost darkness
And hear the wail of desolate winds moaning around the
world-
Till darkness shivers to light, and clashing through earth and heaven
I hear great wings make music, and marvellous thunderous
Shout "Thy Redeemer liveth, and calleth for thee!"
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
To God, the everlasting, who abides,
One Life within things infinite that die:
To Him whose purity no thought divides:
Whose breath is breathed through immensity.
Him neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard;
Yet reason, seated in the souls of men,
Though, pondering oft on the mysterious word,
Hath e'er revealed His Being to mortal ken.
Earth changes, and the starry wheels roll round;
The seasons come and go, moons wax and wane;
The nations rise and fall, and fill the ground,
Storing the sure results of joy and pain:
Slow knowledge widens toward a perfect whole,
From that first man who named the heaven,
To him who weighs the planets as they roll,
And knows what laws to every life are given.
Yet He appears not. Round the extreme sphere
Of science still thin ether floats unseen:
Darkness still wraps Him round; and ignorant fear
Remains of what we are, and what have been.
Only we feel Him; in aching dreams,
Swift intuitions, pangs of keen delight,
The sudden vision of His glory seems
To sear our souls, dividing the dull night:
And we yearn toward Him. Beauty, Goodness, Truth;
These three are one; one life, one thought, one being;
One source of still rejuvenescent youth;
One light for endless and unclouded seeing.
Mere symbols we perceive-the dying beauty,
The partial truth that few can comprehend,
The vacillating faith, the painful duty,
The virtue laboring to a dubious end.
O God, unknown, invisible, secure,
Whose being by dim resemblances we guess,
Who in man's fear and love abidest sure,
Whose power we feel in darkness and confess!
Without Thee nothing is, and Thou art nought
When on Thy substance we gaze curiously:
By Thee impalpable, named Force and Thought,
The solid world ceases not to be.
Lead Thou me, God, Law, Reason, Duty, Life!
All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow-
Lead me, for I will follow without strife;
Or, if I strive, still must I blindly follow.
Once when my heart was passion free
To learn of things divine,
The soul of nature suddenly
Outpoured itself in mine.
I held the secrets of the deep
And of the heavens above;
I knew the harmonies of sleep,
The mysteries of love.
And for a moment's interval
The earth, the sky, the sea-
My soul encompassed each and all,
As now they encompass me.
To one in all, to all in one-
Since love the work began
Life's everwidening circles run
Revealing God to man.
There is an Eye that never sleeps
Beneath the wing of night;
There is an ear that never shuts
When sink the beams of light.
There is an arm that never tires
When human strength gives way;
There is a love that never fails
When earthly loves decay.
That Eye unseen o'erwatcheth all;
That Arm upholds the sky;
That Ear doth hear the sparrows call;
That Love is ever nigh.
From THE PASSAGE TO INDIA
Ah, more than any priest, O soul, we too believe in God,
But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.
O soul thou pleasest me, I thee
Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night, Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flow,
Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,
Bathe me, O God, in thee, mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.
O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou center of them,
Thou mightier center of the true, the good, the loving,
Thou moral spiritual fountain-affection's source-thou reservoir
(O pensive soul of me-O thirst unsatisfied-Waitest not there?
Waitest not haply for us somewhere the Comrade perfect?)
Thou pulse, thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,
That circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,
Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of Space.
How should I think, how breathe, a single breath, how speak, If, out of myself I could not launch, to those superior universes?
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