At Endor

THE GHOST OF SAMUEL

Behold me, then! — Who has sent for me here?
Who has required the tomb
To yield me up? I come
Out of death to thee; behold me, and fear!

THE WITCH

Fear thee! What should I fear, what harm
From ghost so faithful to my charm?

THE GHOST OF SAMUEL

What power art thou, to meddle with the dead
Who gave thee leave to hound
My dead soul underground,
And out of the hollow world's dark core of dread
Draw me helpless in obedience
To ache in this remember'd sense
Of earthly things again?
Who gave thy mind to be
Radiance of such piercing ecstasy
It thrilled down to the dead its craving agony?
The stone above us to its force
Was glass to blazing light or morning air to trumpets:
Cleaving through the grave thy message made its course.
It smote apart the swarming dead
That huddled surging back and fled,
As a prow puts aside the water in its way,
Over the bowing waves superbly passing on.
For it was want of me alone
That came so mightily:
I was the thing demanded, I the chosen prey
Thy hungering passion found,
With all death's infamy humming round.
Tier above tier of spectral glee
Upon my ignominy stared:
Idlers, malignants, folly and lechery,
Scoffers and cheats and hordes of idolatry —
When all this filth was spared,
I alone, out of the whole world's burial,
I must be fetcht away before them all:
I, whom God spoke to once and loved,
I only am not left in peace.
What must I do for my release?
Or is thy mastery proved?

THE WITCH

And this was Samuel! — First I praise
Obedience prompt as ever thou wouldst give
Jehovah in the famous days
When He was on thy side, and let thee live
With Heaven's public favour on thy brow.
But thou art dead, thy body under a stone,
Thy spirit where no living god is known:
My will is thy Jehovah now.

THE GHOST OF SAMUEL

Ay, well I see how vile it is to die:
I know thee, and thy sorcery!
When I had life and God with me,
The light was dangerous to thee;
Thou and thy art must burrow into holes,
Cunningly in the hillside deserts housing:
And often among the stones thy hunted drowsing
Dreamt I had got thee at last and had thee on the coast!
Now I, that once was sacred life, am made
Matter for thy obscene trade.
But rain, that has gone gleaming white,
High in heavenly wind and light,
Falling, drains into the sewers of a town
And pours in darkness there,
Forgotten with the offal scouring down,
Mixt with the grime of roads and staling of horses.
So falling into death my soul is brought
To flow along thy will, and be mixture with thy thought.

THE WITCH

Lo, Samuel's reward
For serving well his Lord!
These are the wages thy Most High
Pays his champions when they die:
Fool! dead fool! and wilt thou still be good?
Thou wert alive when a god beside thee,
Swearing to deal with thy enemies, stood
Flourishing his anger like a headsman's sword:
What is the god thou hast with thee in the grave?
What stroke of flame comes leaping now to save
Thy spirit from me, thy spirit from sorcery?
O thou prophet of the terrible Lord,
Now an old witch can god thee with a word!
Certainly a fallen storm is thy spirit!
Loud as a storm of hail were thy prophecies:
But very soon the troublesome sound
Passes, the whiten'd pelted ground
In a bright hour cheerfully dries;
And down to the wells the melting hail
Trickles away; and a child with a pail
Winds up easily what once was a storm,
Mere innocent quiet water!
Even so from the pit below
I draw this harmless Samuel:
The storm that sounded once like God I bring
Hither to be my serviceable thing.

THE GHOST OF SAMUEL

Enough. I am thine: but I was God's.
In that vast shadow underneath the earth
Evil and good are of an equal worth:
Malice is one with sanctity,
For both are dead there, both are nothing.
Must it not always be
That lucid steel is humbled into rust?
And must it even be
For the bitter mind of evil — ay! for thee —
To wield my spirit now lightly as wind the dust?
But once I was alive; and then
I was the voice of God calling on living men;
And with their lives they answered me.
Men must not be mere swarm on earth,
Like maggots in a carcase prospering;
But, all their countless birth
Of perishing happiness transfiguring,
An increase of rejoicing energy,
Designing its great image in their lives
In gradual promise of their destiny.
And I have seen it. I have seen
Flame like the sun earth's living green,
To be the splendour of the place
Wherein man consummates his race.
For the whole kind of man I have seen
One blessed creature at the last:
Lovely as the divinely fortunate stars
Innumerably burn in one consent
Of perfect motion round their firmament,
One everlasting music there
Of manifold joyous light,
Wherewith to be so glorified
Exults in glowing blue the night.
Even in such security here
Shall beauty on the earth abide,
When all men's lives at last make one immense
Heavenly intelligence,
That like the sphered starlight
Its own illustrious experience
Immortally enjoys:
Imagination that so shapely thrives
And passion so divinely bright,
That, shapely and bright as an untroubled flame
Lives in its vanishing substance still the same,
Steadfast in the change of ever-dying lives
The changeless figure of undying beauty grows,
The same whoever comes or goes,
The mind of God made man.
Let thy art use me all it can!
This is not in thy power — that men have seen
The beauty God and I have meant.
Yea, am I dead, and thine? — But I have been
Alive, and I was God's. I am content.
Translation: 
Language: 
Rate this poem: 

Reviews

No reviews yet.