That leads by flowery paths to founts of tears
Sweeps on, and still a pleased expression wears ;
And how to one whose aim is highest set
Lapse is most sinful, and must needs beget
Deepest repentance and disgust most drear,
Back-peering hate and forward-looking fear;
And how we needs our promptings must fulfil
And use, to cure from spiritual ill,
The salve which Nature proffers; and how all
His past ambition on his heart did pall,
And that great aim to be the wisest head
In Italy, had vanished quite and sped
Out of the black-draped portal of his mind,
Leaving cold vacancy and care behind ;-
Long wondered what kind spirit may be charmed
Into those halls, by love so lately warmed,
What expectation, longing or endeavour,
Could rule him, perished to the past for ever,
Drop from the skies to pity and to save,
And gently guide from manhood to the grave,
Stretch a firm hand, beguile away his tears,
And play sweet music to the passing years ;-
Long prayed that some such miracle might be
To make him feel a man again, and free ;—
Till-it was midnight now-upon a height
Above the town he stood: the moon was bright:
The world before him, lapped in slumber sweet,
Seemed to him like an altar at God's feet,
And all its silent breath and each low sound
Incense upwreathing from the sacred ground,-
Even as the church tolled twelve unto the night,
His doubt was done, he felt, he saw aright.
And when the morrow of his vigil rose,
With quiet step a monastery's close
He sought, and said, “Good fathers, I am come
To crave admittance to your peaceful home :
Open your pitying gates, and let me in,
Worn by the world and weary, stained by sin.
And of my past forbear to ask: we all
By devious ways, finding that on us pall
Our old ecstatic life-love and great joy,
The glowing zest and passion of the boy,
Have come to this sweet brotherhood of pain;
Unquestioned, solaced, here may I remain ;
Enough that-oh! ye distant dreaming towers,
Ye sunlit gardens marvellous with flowers,
Ye summers and ye autumns, gay and gold,
Ye ardent spring-tides and blithe winters cold,
Heart-liftings high and raptures of a man
Fade from you here, and sink in silence wan ;—
Open your pitying gates and let me in,
Worn by the world and weary, stained by sin."
So to his cell he went, and many a year In holiest silence, far from any fear,
Offered to Heaven his sacrifice of pain,
His humble doings and his sad tears' rain;
And found at last in charitable deed,
And tender ministrations of his creed,
And night-long prayer, when through his casement
Looked in the happy watchers of the night,
A sense of conquest and security,
Assurance and repose serene and high,
An inner well of ever-springing bliss
Holy and strange above all else that is;
A voice in silence speaking very clear
Beyond all earthly murmurs prized and dear.
CAN Love, high Love, with mocking glamour shine? Can He, who is the presence of the power
Whose wing, breath, whisper are the utmost dower Low dust may dare to hope for of divine,
Love! we may scorn all proof that he is best,
All refutation of each rival boast,
Whose bosoms, like a monarch's honoured host, Warm into fire to give him house and rest,
And can this God o'erstep himself, and make
Havoc in hearts who needs his gifts must rue?
O soul of heaven and earth, it is not true;
Love is true Love; naught can my strong creed shake.
Then not a soft-cheeked stealer as of eld
Into the ear on honeyed zephyr blown
Our new-world Eros: he is graver grown,
Such birth and death, such pain he has beheld.
For he has been on battle-fields, trod pale
The charnel-floor, and by the sick-bed sighed,
And seen his altar devil-parodied
In the coarse limbo of the harlot's sale.
So is he whole and perfect grown : all tears Which men and women to the silent wall On countless nights of anguish have let fall, And all the terrors of ten thousand years,
The strifes, the conquests, the heroic will
Which sets itself to brave disgrace, and lead Weak feet from miry slough to sunny mead Have poured into his blood their good and ill.
O mystic truth, and to all large truths kin
Whose contradiction sums the tested gold
Of thought's long growth, our love grown wise
and bold
Adapts his passion to the war with sin.
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