style="font-size:15px;"> The opal night, whose odours are gray dreams—Core of its petal-cup, the radiant moon!
All, all the unnumbered meanings of the earth,
Changing with every cloud that passes o'er;
All, all, from rocks slow-crumbling in the frost
Of Alpine deserts, isled in stormy air,
To where the pool in warm brown shadow sleeps,
The stream, sun-ransomed, dances in the sun;
All, all, from polar seas of jewelled ice,
To where she dreams out gorgeous flowers—all, all
The unlike children of her single womb!
Oh, my heart labours with infinitude!
All, all the messages that these have borne
To eyes and ears, and watching, listening souls;
And all the kindling cheeks and swelling hearts,
That since the first-born, young, attempting day,
Have gazed and worshipped!—What a unity,
To mean each one, yet fuse each in the all!
O centre of all forms! O concord's home!
O world alive in one condensed world!
O face of Him, in whose heart lay concealed
The fountain-thought of all this kingdom of heaven!
Lord, thou art infinite, and I am thine!
I sought my God; I pressed importunate;
I spoke to him, I cried, and in my heart
It seemed he answered me. I said—"Oh! take
Me nigh to thee, thou mighty life of life!
I faint, I die; I am a child alone
'Mid the wild storm, the brooding desert-night."
"Go thou, poor child, to him who once, like thee,
Trod the highways and deserts of the world."
"Thou sendest me then, wretched, from thy sight!
Thou wilt not have me—I am not worth thy care!"
"I send thee not away; child, think not so;
From the cloud resting on the mountain-peak,
I call to guide thee in the path by which
Thou may'st come soonest home unto my heart.
I, I am leading thee. Think not of him
As he were one and I were one; in him
Thou wilt find me, for he and I are one.
Learn thou to worship at his lowly shrine,
And see that God dwelleth in lowliness."
I came to Him; I gazed upon his face;
And Lo! from out his eyes God looked on me!—
Yea, let them laugh! I will sit at his feet, As a child sits upon the ground, and looks Up in his mother's face. One smile from him, One look from those sad eyes, is more to me Than to be lord myself of hearts and thoughts. O perfect made through the reacting pain In which thy making force recoiled on thee! Whom no less glory could make visible Than the utter giving of thyself away; Brooding no thought of grandeur in the deed, More than a child embracing from full heart! Lord of thyself and me through the sore grief Which thou didst bear to bring us back to God, Or rather, bear in being unto us Thy own pure shining self of love and truth! When I have learned to think thy radiant thoughts, To love the truth beyond the power to know it, To bear my light as thou thy heavy cross, Nor ever feel a martyr for thy sake, But an unprofitable servant still,— My highest sacrifice my simplest duty Imperative and unavoidable, Less than which All, were nothingness and waste; When I have lost myself in other men, And found myself in thee—the Father then Will come with thee, and will abide with me.
* * * * *
SCENE XI.—LILIA teaching LADY GERTRUDE. Enter LORD SEAFORD. LILIA rises. He places her a chair, and seats himself at the instrument; plays a low, half-melancholy, half-defiant prelude, and sings.
SONG.
Look on the magic mirror;
A glory thou wilt spy;
Be with thine heart a sharer,
But go not thou too nigh;
Else thou wilt rue thine error,
With a tear-filled, sleepless eye.
The youth looked on the mirror,
And he went not too nigh;
And yet he rued his error,
With a tear-filled, sleepless eye;
For he could not be a sharer
In what he there did spy.
He went to the magician
Upon the morrow morn.
"Mighty," was his petition,
"Look not on me in scorn;
But one last gaze elision,
Lest I should die forlorn!"
He saw her in her glory,
Floating upon the main.
Ah me! the same sad story!
The darkness and the rain!
If I live till I am hoary,
I shall never laugh again.
She held the youth enchanted,
Till his trembling lips were pale,
And his full heart heaved and panted
To utter all its tale:
Forward he rushed, undaunted—
And the shattered mirror fell.
[He rises and leaves the room. LILIA weeping.]
PART IV.
