Classic Poem

SCENE — Alcove and Garden.

F ESTUS AND C LARA .

F ESTUS . What happy things are youth and love and sunshine!
How sweet to feel the sun upon the heart!
To know it is lighting up the rosy blood,
And with all joyous feelings, prism-hued,
Making the dark breast shine like a spar grot.
We walk among the sunbeams as with angels.
C LARA . Yes, there are feelings so serene and sweet,
Coming and going with a musical lightness,
That they can make amends for their passingness,
And balance God's condition to decay;
As yon light fleecy cloudlet floating along,
Like golden down from some high angel's wing,
Breaks but relieves and beautifies the blue.
I wonder if ever I could love another.
How I should start to see upon the sward
A shadow not thine own armlinked with mine!
See, here is a garland I have bound for thee.
F ESTUS . Nay, crown thyself; it will suit thee better, love.
Place wreaths of everlasting flowers on tombs,
And deck with fading beauties forms that fade.
Put it away, — I will no crown save this:
And could the line of dust which here I trace
Upon my brow but warrant dust beneath —
And nothing more — or could this bubble frame,
Informed with soul, lashed from the stream of life
By its own impetus, but burst at once,
And vanish part on high and part below,
I would be happy, nor would envy death.
Could I, like Heaven's bolt, earthing quench myself,
This moment would I burn mo out a grave.
Might I but be as many years in dying
As I have lived — that might be some relief.
C LARA . What canst thou mean?
F ESTUS . Mean? Is there not a future?
The past, the present and the coming, curse each!
The future, curse it!
C LARA . Shall we not over live
And love as now?
F ESTUS . Ay, live I fear we must.
C LARA . And love: because we then are happiest.
We shall lack nothing having love: and we,
We must be happy everywhere — we two!
For spiritual life is great and clear,
And self-continuous as the changeless sea,
Rolling the same in every age as now;
Whether o'er mountain tops, where only snow
Dwells, and the sunbeam hurries coldly by;
Or o'er the vales, as now, of some old world
Older than ancient man's. As is the sea's,
So is the life of spirit, and the kind.
And then with natures raised, refined, and freed
From these poor forms, our days shall pass in peace
And love; no thought of human littleness
Shall cross our high calm souls, shining and pure
As the gold gates of Heaven. Like some deer lake
Upon a mountain summit they shall rest,
High above cloud and storm of life like this,
All peace and power, and passionless purity;
Or if a thought of other troubled times
Ruffle it for a moment, it shall pass
Like a chance raindrop on its heavenward face.
I love to meditate on bliss to come.
Not that I am unhappy here; but that
The hope of higher bliss may rectify
The lower feeling which we now enjoy.
This life, this world is not enough for us;
They are nothing to the measure of our mind.
For place we must have space; for time we must have
Eternity; and for a spirit godhood.
F ESTUS . Mind means not happiness: power is not good.
C LARA . True bliss is to be found in holy life;
In charity to man — in love to God:
Why should such duties cease, such powers decay?
Are they not worthy of a deathless state —
A boundless scope — a high uplifted life?
Man, like the air-born eagle who remains
On earth only to feed and sleep and die;
But whose delight is on his lonely wing,
Wide sweeping as a mind, to force the skies
High as the lightfall ere, begirt with clouds,
It dash this nether world — immortal man
Rushes aloft, right upwards, into Heaven.
O faith of Christ, sole honor of the world!
F ESTUS . What know men of religion, save its forms?
C LARA . True faith nor biddeth nor abideth form.
The bended knee, the eye uplift is all
Which man need render; all which God can bear.
What to the faith are forms? A passing speck,
A crow upon the sky. God's worship is
That only He inspires; and His bright words,
Writ in the red-leaved volume of the heart,
Return to him in prayer, as dew to Heaven.
Our proper good we rarely seek or make;
Mindless of our immortal powers and their
Immortal end, as is the pearl of its worth,
The rose its scent, the wave its purity.
F ESTUS . Come, we will quit these saddening themes. Wilt sing
To me? for I am gloomy; and I love
Thy singing, sacred as the sound of hymns,
On some bright Sabbath morning, on the moor,
Where all is still save praise; and where hard by
The ripe grain shakes its bright beard in the sun;
The wild bee hums more solemnly; the deep sky,
The fresh green grass, the sun, and sunny brook,
All look as if they knew the day, the hour;
And felt with man the need and joy of thanks.
C LARA . I cannot sing the lightsome lays of love,
Many thou know'st who can; but none that can
Love thee as I do — for I love thy soul;
And I would save it, Festus! Listen then:

Is Heaven a place where pearly streams
Glide over silver sand?
Like childhood's rosy dazzling dreams
Of some far faery land?
Is Heaven a clime where diamond dews
Glitter on fadeless flowers?
And mirth and music ring aloud
From amaranthine bowers?

Ah no; not such, not such is Heaven!
Surpassing far all these;
Such cannot be the guerdon given
Man's wearied soul to please.
For saint and sinner here below
Such vain to be have proved:
And the pure spirit will despise
Whate'er the sense hath loved.

There we shall dwell with Sire and Son,
And with the mother-maid,
And with the Holy Spirit, one:
In glory like arrayed:
And not to one created thing
Shall our embrace be given;
But all our joy shall be in God;
For only God is Heaven.

F ESTUS . I know that thou dost love me. I in vain
Strive to love aught of earth or Heaven but thee.
Thou art my first, last, only love; nor shall
Another even tempt my heart. Like stars,
A thousand sweet and bright and wondrous fair,
A thousand deathless miracles of beauty,
They shall ever pass at all but eyeless distance,
And never mix with thy love; but be lost
All, meanly in its moonlike lustrousness.
C LARA . How still the air is! the tree tops stir not:
But stand and peer on Heaven's bright face as though
It slept and they wore loving it: they would not
Have the skies see them move for summers: would they?
See that sweet cloud! It is watching us, I am certain.
What have we here to make thee stay one second?
Away! thy sisters wait thee in the west,
The blushing bridemaids of the sun and sea.
I would I were like thee, thou little cloud,
Ever to live in Heaven: or seeking earth
To let my spirit down in drops of love:
To sleep with night upon her dewy lap;
And, the next dawn, back with the sun to Heaven,
And so on through eternity, sweet cloud!
I cannot but think that some senseless things
Are happy. Often and often have I watched
A gossamer line sighing itself along
The air, as it seemed; and so thin, thin and bright,
Looking as woven in a loom of light,
That I have envied it, I have, and followed; —
Oft watched the sea-bird's down blown o'er the wave,
Now touching it, now spirited aloft,
Now out of sight, now seen, — till in some bright fringe
Of streamy foam, as in a cage, at last
A playful death it dies, and mourned its death.
F ESTUS . But thinkest thou the future is a state
More positive than this; or that it can be
Aught but another present, full of cares,
And toils, perhaps, and duties; that the soul
Will ever be more nigh to God than now,
Save as may seem from mind's debility:
Just as the sun, from weakness of the eye,
And the illusions made by matter's forms,
Seems hot and wearied resting on the hill?
It would be well. I think, to live as though
No more were to be looked for; to be good
Because it is best, here; and leave hope and fear
For lives below ourselves. If earth persuades not
That I owe prayer and praise and love to God,
While all I have He gives, will Heaven? will Hell?
No; neither, never!
C LARA . I think not all with thee.
Have I not heard thee hint of spirit-friends?
Where are they now?
F ESTUS . Ah! close at hand, mayhap
I have a might immortal; and can ken
With angels. Neither sky nor night nor earth
Hinder me. Through the forms of things I see
Their essences; and thus, even now, behold —
But where I cannot show to thee — far round,
Nature herself — the whole effect of God.
Mind, matter, motion, heat, time, love, and life,
And death and immortality; those chief
And first-born giants all are there; all parts,
All limbs of her their mother; she is all.
C LARA . And what does she?
F ESTUS . Produce: it is her life.
The three named last, life, death, deathlessness,
Glide in elliptic path round all things made —
For none save God can fill the perfect whole:
And are but to eternity as is
The horizon to the world. At certain points
Each seems the other; now, the three are one;
Now, all invisible; and now, as first,
Moving in measured round.
C LARA . How look these beings?
F ESTUS . Ah! Life looks gaily and gloomily in turns;
With a brow chequered like the sward, by leaves
Between which the light glints; and she, careless, wears
A wreath of flowers — part faded and part fresh.
And Death is beautiful and sad and still:
She seems too happy; happier far than life —
In but one feeling, apathy: and on
Her chill white brow frosts bright, a braid of snow
C LARA . And Immortality?
F ESTUS . She looks alone;
As though she would not know her sisterhood.
And on her brow a diadem of fire,
Matched by the conflagration of her eye,
Outflaming even that eye which in my sleep
Beams close upon me till it bursts from sheer
O'erstrainedness of sight, burns.
C LARA . What do they?
F ESTUS . Each strives to win me to herself.
C LARA . How?
F ESTUS . Death
Opens her sweet white arms and whispers, peace!
Come say thy sorrows in this bosom! This
Will never close against thee; and my heart,
Though cold, cannot be colder much than man's.
Come! All this soon must end! and soon the world
Shall perish leaf by leaf, and land by land;
Flower by flower — flood by flood — and hill
By hill, away; Oh! come, come! Let us die.
C LARA . Say that thou wilt not die!
F ESTUS . Nay, I love Death.
But Immortality, with finger spired,
Points to a distant, giant world — and says
There, there is my home! Live along with me:
C LARA . Canst see that world?
F ESTUS . Just — a huge shadowy shape;
It looks a disembodied orb — the ghost
Of some great sphere which God hath stricken dead:
Or like a world which God hath thought — not made.
C LARA . Follow her, Festus! Does she speak again?
F ESTUS . She never speaks but once; and now in scorn,
Points to this dim, dwarfed, misbegotten sphere.
C LARA . Why let her pass?
F ESTUS . That is the great world-question.
Life would not part with me; and from her brow
Tearing her wreath of passion-flowers, she flung
It round my neck and dared me struggle then.
I never could destroy a flower: and none
But fairest hands like thine can grace with me
The plucking of a rose. And Life, sweet Life!
Vowed she would crop the world for me and lay it
Herself before my feet even as a flower.
And when I felt that flower contained thyself —
One drop within its nectary kept for me,
I lost all count of those strange sisters three;
And where they be I know not. But I see
One who is more to me.
C LARA . I know not how
Thou hast this power and knowledge. I but hope
It comes from good hands; if it be not thine
Own force of mind. It is much less what we do
Than what we think, which fits us for the future.
I wish we had a little world to ourselves;
With none but we two on it.
F ESTUS . And if God
Gave us a star, what could we do with it
But that we could without it? Wish it not!
C LARA . I'll not wish then for stars; but I could love
Some peaceful spot where we might dwell unknown,
Where home-born joys might nestle round our hearts
As swallows round our roofs, — and blend their sweets
Like dewy-tangled flowerets in one bed.
F ESTUS . The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love;
The taint of earth, the odor of the skies,
Is in it. Would that I were aught but man!
The death of brutes, the immortality
Of fiend or angel, better seems than all
The doubtful prospects of our painted dust.
And all Morality can teach is — Bear!
And all Religion can inspire is — Hope!
C LARA . It is enough. Fruition of the fruit
Of the great Tree of Life, is not for earth.
Stars are its fruit, its lightest leaf is life.
The heart hath many sorrows beside love,
Yea many as the veins which visit it.
The love of aught on earth is not its chief
Nor ought to be. Inclusive of them all
There is the one main sorrow, life; — for what
Can spirit, severed from the great one, God,
Feel but a grievous longing to rejoin
Its infinite — its author — and its end?
And yet is life a thing to be beloved,
And honored holily, and bravely borne.
A man's life may be all ease, and his death
By some dark chance, unthought of agony: —
Or life may be all suffering, and decease
A flower-like sleep; — or both be full of woe,
Or each comparatively painless. Blame
Not God for inequalities like these!
They may be justified. How canst thou know?
They may be only seeming. Canst thou judge?
They may be done away with utterly
By loving, fearing, knowing God the Truth.
In all distress of spirit, grief of heart,
Bodily agony, or mental woe,
Rebuffs and vain assumptions of the world,
Or the poor spite of weak and wicked souls,
Think thou on God! Think what he underwent
And did for us as man. Weigh thou thy cross
With Christ's, and judge which were the heavier.
Joy even in thine anguish! — such was His,
But measurelessly more. Thy suffering
Assimilateth thee to Him. Rejoice!
Think upon what thou shalt be! Think on God!
Then ask thyself, what is the world, and all
Its mountainous inequalities? Ah, what!
Are not all equal as dust-atomies?
F ESTUS . My soul's orb darkens as a sudden star,
Which having for a time exhausted earth
And half the Heavens of wonder, mortally
Passes for ever, not eclipsed, consumed; —
All but a cloudy vapor darkening there,
The very spot in space it once illumed.
Once to myself I seemed a mount of light;
But now, a pit of night. — No more of this!
Here have I lain all day in this green nook,
Shaded by larch and hornbeam, ash and yew;
A living well and runnel at my feet,
And wild flowers, dancing to some delicate air;
An urn-topped column and its ivy wreath
Skirting my sight as thus I lie and look
Upon the blue, unchanging, sacred skies:
And thou, too, gentle Clara, by my side,
With lightsome brow and beaming eye, and bright
Long glorious locks, which drop upon thy cheek
Like goldhued cloudflakes on the rosy morn.
Oh! when the heart is full of sweets to o'erflowing,
And ringing to the music of its love,
Who but an angel or an hypocrite
Could speak or think of happier states?
C LARA . Farewell!
Remember what thou saidst about the stars.[ Goes .
F ESTUS . Oh! why was woman made so fair? or mar
So weak as to see that more than one had beauty?
It is impossible to love but one.
And yet I dare not love thee as I could;
For all that the heart most longs for and deserves,
Passes the soonest and most utterly.
The moral of the world's great fable, life.
All we enjoy seems given to deceive,
Or may be, undeceive us; who cares which?
And when the sum is done, and we have proved it
Why work it over and over still again?
I am not what I would be. Hear me, God!
And speak to me in thine invisible likeness
The wind, as once of yore. Let me be pure
Oh! I wish I was a pure child again,
As ere the clear could trouble me: when life
Was sweet and calm as is a sister's kiss;
And not the wild and whirlwind touch of passion,
Which though it hardly light upon the lip,
With breathless swiftness sucks the soul out of sight
So that we lose it, and all thought of it.
What is this life wherein Thou hast founded me,
But a bright wheel which burns itself away,
Benighting even night with its grim limbs,
When it hath done and fainted into darkness?
Flesh is but fiction, and it flies away;
The gaunt and ghastly thing we bear about us
And which we hate and fear to look upon
Is truth; in death's dark likeness limned — no more.