Classic Poem

Man.

In youth I thought the world was bright;
The starry fields were full of light:
The grassy fields were full of bloom:
But oh, how surely brightness goes!
Full of high hopes, my life arose:
Hopeless, it travelleth to the tomb.

Satan.

That is the end of all — to seek
God's love, to burn to unfold and speak
God's gospel to the human race,
And then to hear death through the air
Thunder his gospel of despair,
Or lose all for a woman's face!

Man.

Of all the curses God can shower
The heaviest surely is the dower
Of genius, burthening heart and brain:
To feel an ever-intenser woe
Than others, or a rapturous glow
So fierce it deepens into pain!

Satan.

That is your lot. For ever thus
To teach immortal truths to us,
Yet lonely through life's waves to steer.
That is the glory of the thing:
To carve, or write, or paint, or sing,
Yet never find an audience here.

Man.

If God be true, I can endure,
Struggle to be unselfish, pure:
Yet fear I, judging by the past,
Lest, like the brain of Talleyrand,
The noblest genius in the land
May mix with sewage at the last.

Satan.

That is the beauty of the thing!
To think that mighty brains, which sing
Of passionate joys and passionate pain
And flowers and stars and sunlit skies,
May serve, when once their owner dies,
To choke a gutter or a drain.

Man.

To love more deeply, hour by hour,
The simple beauty of a flower,
The stars God's conjuring hand forthshook
And yet to feel that all one's might
Can add no one star to the night
Nor one white lily to the brook!

Satan.

That is your helpless genius-dower.
Man's song cannot create one flower:
The mightiest sculptor time may send
To mould the marble, cannot flush
The white stone with the bright blood's blush;
Cold marble is it to the end.

Man.

To know so much! to feel the right
Far past the rampires of the night
To penetrate to God's high throne!
And yet to feel thought sinking back,
Defeated, on the same old track,
And to be left once more alone!

Satan.

Again the dower of genius, this.
To madden for Jehovah's kiss;
Right through the starlit rooms of space
To hunt his shadow, endless task;
To see God's eyes flash through his mask,
But never to discern his face.

Man.

Prisoned to be by time and space!
To long to have gazed on Jesus' face
And seen the royal kindness there!
The Churches tell us he arose.
But when or how? what preacher knows?
Their gods are ghosts, their words are air.

Satan.

You'll never know. And, when you die
And think a passage through the sky
Will open (as it oped for him!)
You will be shoved i' the ground instead,
And beetles round about your head
Will gather for their gambols grim.

Man.

To know what noble souls have died,
And what sweet women! to be tied
For ever to an English blonde.
Never to know the exact rich bliss
Which pulsed through Cleopatra's kiss!
This makes a passionate soul despond.

Satan.

Aye, God will let thy spirit dream:
But when it comes to facts, I deem
He'll not send beauty to thy bed.
Her whom thy lust would stretch out there
He'll marry to a green-grocer,
And send thee an ill-breath'd bride instead,

Man.

To yearn across death's solemn night
So thunder-dark, yet see no light
Of one dead well-loved starry face
Flash out for all one's yearning! this
Last sadness lurks within each kiss;
This coldness thrills through each embrace.

Satan.

Yes: when thy mother dies, thy friend,
Thy wife, thy sweetheart, that's the end,
The end of all — be sure of this.
Kiss while thou canst. Within the tomb
No widower wins a young girl's bloom.
Death proffers not a second kiss.

Man.

To peer between life's prison-bars
And watch those golden ships, the stars;
Yet never in life, or death maybe,
To board a single star-ship! no.
For ever through heaven's deeps we go,
Yet hail no consort on the sea.

Satan.

The same with life. The human soul
Is like your earth-ship. Though its goal
May lie beyond eternity,
Alone for ever it must steer
And never through all ages hear
One true voice hail across the sea.

C HRIST .

O genius-heart, be brave and strong.
When thou despairest, suffering long,
Think on my life, remember me.
Thy soul soars on, all stars of space
Sail on, before my Father's face,
And harbourage lies beyond the sea.