Volume I Part 38 (1/2)
Perhaps I like it best: I would not choose Another than the ordered circ.u.mstance.
This farm is G.o.d's as much as yonder town; These men and maidens, kine and horses, his; For them his laws must be incarnated In act and fact, and so their world redeemed.”
Though thus he spoke at times, he spake not oft; Ruled chief by action: what he said, he did.
No grief was suffered there of man or beast More than was need; no creature fled in fear; All slaying was with generous suddenness, Like G.o.d's benignant lightning. ”For,” he said, ”G.o.d makes the beasts, and loves them dearly well-- Better than any parent loves his child, It may be,” would he say; for still the _may be_ Was sacred with him no less than the _is_-- ”In such humility he lived and wrought-- Hence are they sacred. Sprung from G.o.d as we, They are our brethren in a lower kind, And in their face we see the human look.”
If any said: ”Men look like animals; Each has his type set in the lower kind;”
His answer was: ”The animals are like men; Each has his true type set in the higher kind, Though even there only rough-hewn as yet.
The h.e.l.l of cruelty will be the ghosts Of the sad beasts: their crowding heads will come, And with encircling, slow, pain-patient eyes, Stare the ill man to madness.”
When he spoke, His word behind it had the force of deeds Unborn within him, ready to be born; But, like his race, he promised very slow.
His goodness ever went before his word, Embodying itself unconsciously In understanding of the need that prayed, And cheerful help that would outrun the prayer.
When from great cities came the old sad news Of crime and wretchedness, and children sore With hunger, and neglect, and cruel blows, He would walk sadly all the afternoon, With head down-bent, and pondering footstep slow; Arriving ever at the same result-- Concluding ever: ”The best that I can do For the great world, is the same best I can For this my world. What truth may be therein Will pa.s.s beyond my narrow circ.u.mstance, In truth's own right.” When a philanthropist Said pompously: ”It is not for your gifts To spend themselves on common labours thus: You owe the world far n.o.bler things than such;”
He answered him: ”The world is in G.o.d's hands, This part of it in mine. My sacred past, With all its loves inherited, has led Hither, here left me: shall I judge, arrogant, Primaeval G.o.dlike work in earth and air, Seed-time and harvest--offered fellows.h.i.+p With G.o.d in nature--unworthy of my hands?
I know your argument--I know with grief!-- The crowds of men, in whom a starving soul Cries through the windows of their hollow eyes For bare humanity, nay, room to grow!-- Would I could help them! But all crowds are made Of individuals; and their grief and pain, Their thirst and hunger--all are of the one, Not of the many: the true, the saving power Enters the individual door, and thence Issues again in thousand influences Besieging other doors. I cannot throw A ma.s.s of good into the general midst, Whereof each man may seize his private share; And if one could, it were of lowest kind, Not reaching to that hunger of the soul.
Now here I labour whole in the same spot Where they have known me from my childhood up And I know them, each individual: If there is power in me to help my own, Even of itself it flows beyond my will, Takes shape in commonest of common acts, Meets every humble day's necessity: --I would not always consciously do good, Not always work from full intent of help, Lest I forget the measure heaped and pressed And running over which they pour for me, And never reap the too-much of return In smiling trust and beams from kindly eyes.
But in the city, with a few lame words, And a few wretched coins, sore-coveted, To mediate 'twixt my _cannot_ and my _would_, My best attempts would never strike a root; My scattered corn would turn to wind-blown chaff; I should grow weak, might weary of my kind, Misunderstood the most where almost known, Baffled and beaten by their unbelief: Years could not place me where I stand this day High on the vantage-ground of confidence: I might for years toil on, and reach no man.
Besides, to leave the thing that nearest lies, And choose the thing far off, more difficult-- The act, having no touch of G.o.d in it, Who seeks the needy for the pure need's sake, Must straightway die, choked in its selfishness.”
Thus he. The world-wise schemer for the good Held his poor peace, and went his trackless way.
What of the vision now? the vision fair Sent forth to meet him, when at eve he went Home from his first day's ploughing? Oft he dreamed She pa.s.sed him smiling on her stately horse; But never band or buckle yielded more; Never again his hands enthroned the maid; He only wors.h.i.+pped with his eyes, and woke.
Nor woke he then with foolish vain regret; But, saying, ”I have seen the beautiful,”
Smiled with his eyes upon a flower or bird, Or living form, whate'er, of gentleness, That met him first; and all that morn, his face Would oftener dawn into a blossomy smile.
And ever when he read a lofty tale, Or when the storied leaf, or ballad old, Or spake or sang of woman very fair, Or wondrous good, he saw her face alone; The tale was told, the song was sung of her.
He did not turn aside from other maids, But loved their faces pure and faithful eyes.
He may have thought, ”One day I wed a maid, And make her mine;” but never came the maid, Or never came the hour: he walked alone.
Meantime how fared the lady? She had wed One of the common crowd: there must be ore For the gold grains to lie in: virgin gold Lies in the rock, enriching not the stone.
She was not one who of herself could _be_; And she had found no heart which, tuned with hers, Would beat in rhythm, growing into rime.
She read phantasmagoric tales, sans salt, Sans hope, sans growth; or listlessly conversed With phantom-visitors--ladies, not friends, Mere spectral forms from fas.h.i.+on's concave gla.s.s.
She haunted gay a.s.semblies, ill-content-- Witched woods to hide in from her better self, And danced, and sang, and ached. What had she felt, If, called up by the ordered sounds and motions, A vision had arisen--as once, of old, The minstrel's art laid bare the seer's eye, And showed him plenteous waters in the waste;-- If the gay dance had vanished from her sight, And she beheld her ploughman-lover go With his great stride across a lonely field, Under the dark blue vault ablaze with stars, Lifting his full eyes to the radiant roof, Live with our future; or had she beheld Him studious, with s.p.a.ce-compelling mind Bent on his slate, pursue some planet's course; Or reading justify the poet's wrath, Or sage's slow conclusion?--If a voice Had whispered then: This man in many a dream, And many a waking moment of keen joy, Blesses you for the look that woke his heart, That smiled him into life, and, still undimmed, Lies lamping in the cabinet of his soul;-- Would her sad eyes have beamed with sudden light?
Would not her soul, half-dead with nothingness, Have risen from the couch of its unrest, And looked to heaven again, again believed In G.o.d and life, courage, and duty, and love?
Would not her soul have sung to its lone self: ”I have a friend, a ploughman, who is wise.
He knows what G.o.d, and goodness, and fair faith Mean in the words and books of mighty men.
He nothing heeds the show of worldly things, But wors.h.i.+ps the unconquerable truth.
This man is humble and loves me: I will Be proud and very humble. If he knew me, Would he go on and love me till we meet!”?
In the third year, a heavy harvest fell, Full filled, before the reaping-hook and scythe.
The heat was scorching, but the men and maids Lightened their toil with merry jest and song; Rested at mid-day, and from br.i.m.m.i.n.g bowl, Drank the brown ale, and white abundant milk.
The last ear fell, and spiky stubble stood Where waved the forests of dry-murmuring corn; And sheaves rose piled in shocks, like ranged tents Of an encamping army, tent by tent, To stand there while the moon should have her will.
The grain was ripe. The harvest carts went out Broad-platformed, bearing back the towering load, With frequent pa.s.sage 'twixt homeyard and field.
And half the oats already hid their tops, Their ringing, rustling, wind-responsive sprays, In the still darkness of the towering stack; When in the north low billowy clouds appeared, Blue-based, white-crested, in the afternoon; And westward, darker ma.s.ses, plashed with blue, And outlined vague in misty steep and dell, Clomb o'er the hill-tops: thunder was at hand.
The air was sultry. But the upper sky Was clear and radiant.
Downward went the sun, Below the sullen clouds that walled the west, Below the hills, below the shadowed world.
The moon looked over the clear eastern wall, And slanting rose, and looked, rose, looked again, And searched for silence in her yellow fields, But found it not. For there the staggering carts, Like overladen beasts, crawled homeward still, Sped fieldward light and low. The laugh broke yet, That lightning of the soul's unclouded skies-- Though not so frequent, now that toil forgot Its natural hour. Still on the labour went, Straining to beat the welkin-climbing heave Of the huge rain-clouds, heavy with their floods.
Sleep, old enchantress, sided with the clouds, The hoisting clouds, and cast benumbing spells On man and horse. One youth who walked beside A ponderous load of sheaves, higher than wont, Which dared the lurking levin overhead, Woke with a start, falling against the wheel, That circled slow after the slumbering horse.
Yet none would yield to soft-suggesting sleep, And quit the last few shocks; for the wild storm Would catch thereby the skirts of Harvest-home, And hold her lingering half-way in the rain.