Section 54
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of
will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete,
That not a worm is cloven in vain,
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless
fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall
fall
At last—far off—at last, to
all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream, but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
Section 55
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the
grave,
Derives it not from what we
have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil
dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of
cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and
grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and
call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
Section 56
"So careful of the type?" But no.
From scarped cliff and quarried
stone
She cries, "A thousand types
are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to
death:
The spirit does but mean the
breath:
I know no more." And he, shall
he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his
eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry
skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—-
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and
claw
With ravine shriek’d against his creed—-
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the
Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of
the prime,
That tare each other in their
slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and
bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.