Classic Poem

Through all my years of waken'd thought I've been
Haunted in spirit by a sullen grief,
Which sleeps, or is not heard, amid the move
Of work or strife; but, like the owl i' the tow'r,
Hoots out within me in my twilight hours,
Or when some cloud brings on a fancied night
And makes unnatural pause to earth and soul

And I have thought this brooding trouble came
Out of my life's misfortunes; or arose
From conscious errors — duties left undone,
Returning on me, crying to be done;
Or from my heart's poor weaknesses that leave
A festering spot in memory. And I
Have labour'd to outreason this and that —
To make my heart pure, and to pluck and prune
Weeds and unwholesome growths. I thought, as each
Seem'd to infect my life, if this one thing
Were wrung out of my blood, O I could breathe
Freely the air of peace, and nothing else
Could choke my joy again And so it was,
That when with pain and struggle I could drag
My grief out to the light, and drive 't away,
My being open'd all its cells and drew
A deep long draught of joy, that seem'd to exhaust
The bluest clefts of heaven — one glad breath! —
But when I look'd into myself again,
Alas! my ghost was there in another shape.
I had but dragg'd to light an effect, the cause
Pass'd through my grasp, like air — a ghost indeed!

It haunts a house deserted — haply one
That has not yet been fill'd There is, I know,
A Presence in whose life all phantoms die

Thou say'st that God is ever everywhere:
But if He be not in my consciousness ,
He's not in me — There is a twofold life —
The life we all have, and the life with God,
Which few, or none on earth, partake in full
Yet is a human soul the only thing
That can receive that God-life; and for this
It is immortal. Had we never known
The light of that existence, we had lived
Contented in our blindness and the dark.
I have but seen enough to know my want —
My only want; for that, supplied, supplies
All other wants of the soul, or makes them none
And, like a dungeon'd prisoner, I've groped
Around my years of night to find the dawn:
The faintest glimmer piercing through my cell
Has fill'd me with the liberty of day.

I have been very lonely! I have shunn'd
What we name company to be less lone,
And sought my comfort in the wilds. But not
Alltimes to find: for I have gone and come
Bewilder'd as a day of mist and cloud,
That sets in night without one beam of sun,
Or patch of blue, to tell that Heaven is. —
And I have shunn'd the duties of my day
As waste of soul, and envied nobler art —
Forgetting that the artist gives his work
The stamp of its nobility. The gods
Are with us in our sphere: accomplish that —
We cannot choose but step into a higher
Though Cromwell was a king by right of brain,
He won his sceptre with a captain's sword

The duties God assigns me I would leave
For those assign'd to others; therefore stand
Powerless between. Heaven's ends will not be moved
Save in accomplish'd act. I have not learn'd
To know God's features in my daily work,
Else were it all-sufficient — it alone.
The food each labouring spirit needs the most
Is in its nearest duty — beauteous growth
Of the eternal being in the act.
For Right and Duty, Conscience and the Truth,
Are God's own breath, by which weak men have been
Inspired with a divinity of strength

Ye who in spirit are not yet awake,
Dream while your night remains; for, soon or late,
The morn breaks sleep, and then farewell dream things —
The satisfaction of a plenteous board,
The joy of wine-cups, and the light exchange
Of surface friendships, rumours and vague thoughts;
Which vanish till again, in after time,
With a diviner meaning they come back.
The one sole want dawns on the awaken'd soul —
The want for God in all, and all in God —
This utter vagueness to the soul that sleeps;
But O how truly all in all, he knows
Who once has seen the Eternal. Life's unrest
Is his thereafter, till he grows to God;
But that unrest the token of his growth.

Therefore I argue not against my grief,
Which being Heaven-sent, leads back to Heaven.