Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts
V
What am I but the creature Thou hast made?What have I save the blessings Thou hast lent?What hope I but Thy mercy and Thy love?Who but myself shall cloud my soul with fear?Whose hand protect me from myself but Thine?
I claim the rights of weakness, I, the babe,Call on my sire to shield me from the illsThat still beset my path, not trying meWith snares beyond my wisdom or my strength,He knowing I shall use them to my harm,And find a tenfold misery in the senseThat in my childlike folly I have sprungThe trap upon myself as vermin useDrawn by the cunning bait to certain doom.Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us onTo sweet perdition, but the self-same powerThat set the fearful engine to destroyHis wretched offspring (as the Rabbis tell),And hid its yawning jaws and treacherous springsIn such a show of innocent sweet flowersIt lured the sinless angels and they fell?
Ah! He who prayed the prayer of all mankindSummed in those few brief words the mightiest pleaFor erring souls before the courts of heaven,Save us from being tempted,—lest we fall!If we are only as the potter’s clayMade to be fashioned as the artist wills,And broken into shards if we offendThe eye of Him who made us, it is well;Such love as the insensate lump of clayThat spins upon the swift-revolving wheelBears to the hand that shapes its growing form,—Such love, no more, will be our hearts’ returnTo the great Master-workman for his care,Or would be, save that this, our breathing clay,Is intertwined with fine innumerous threadsThat make it conscious in its framer’s hand;And this He must remember who has filledThese vessels with the deadly draught of life,Life, that means death to all it claims. Our loveMust kindle in the ray that streams from heaven,A faint reflection of the light divine;The sun must warm the earth before the roseCan show her inmost heart-leaves to the sun.
He yields some fraction of the Maker’s rightWho gives the quivering nerve its sense of pain;Is there not something in the pleading eyeOf the poor brute that suffers, which arraignsThe law that bids it suffer? Has it notA claim for some remembrance in the bookThat fills its pages with the idle wordsSpoken of men? Or is it only clay,Bleeding and aching in the potter’s hand,Yet all his own to treat it as he willAnd when he will to cast it at his feet,Shattered, dishonored, lost forevermore?My dog loves me, but could he look beyondHis earthly master, would his love extendTo Him who—Hush! I will not doubt that HeIs better than our fears, and will not wrongThe least, the meanest of created things!
He would not trust me with the smallest orbThat circles through the sky; he would not giveA meteor to my guidance; would not leaveThe coloring of a cloudlet to my hand;He locks my beating heart beneath its barsAnd keeps the key himself; he measures outThe draughts of vital breath that warm my blood,Winds up the springs of instinct which uncoil,Each in its season; ties me to my home,My race, my time, my nation, and my creedSo closely that if I but slip my wristOut of the band that cuts it to the bone,Men say, “He hath a devil”; he has lentAll that I hold in trust, as unto oneBy reason of his weakness and his yearsNot fit to hold the smallest shred in feeOf those most common things he calls his ownAnd yet—my Rabbi tells me—he has leftThe care of that to which a million worlds.Filled with unconscious life were less than naught,Has left that mighty universe, the Soul,To the weak guidance of our baby hands,Turned us adrift with our immortal charge,Let the foul fiends have access at their will,Taking the shape of angels, to our hearts,Our hearts already poisoned through and throughWith the fierce virus of ancestral sin.If what my Rabbi tells me is the truth,Why did the choir of angels sing for joy?Heaven must be compassed in a narrow space,And offer more than room enough for allThat pass its portals; but the underworld,The godless realm, the place where demons forgeTheir fiery darts and adamantine chains,Must swarm with ghosts that for a little whileHad worn the garb of flesh, and being heirsOf all the dulness of their stolid sires,And all the erring instincts of their tribe,Nature’s own teaching, rudiments of “sin,”Fell headlong in the snare that could not failTo trap the wretched creatures shaped of clayAnd cursed with sense enough to lose their souls!
Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word;Sister, I see the cloud is on thy brow.He will not blame me, He who sends not peace,But sends a sword, and bids us strike amainAt Error’s gilded crest, where in the vanOf earth’s great army, mingling with the bestAnd bravest of its leaders, shouting loudThe battle-cries that yesterday have ledThe host of Truth to victory, but to-dayAre watchwords of the laggard and the slave,He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has madeThis world a strife of atoms and of spheres;With every breath I sigh myself awayAnd take my tribute from the wandering windTo fan the flame of life’s consuming fire;So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn,And burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze,Where all the harvest long ago was reapedAnd safely garnered in the ancient barns,But still the gleaners, groping for their food,Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw,While the young reapers flash their glittering steelWhere later suns have ripened nobler grain!
We listened to these lines in silence. They were evidently written honestly, and with feeling, and no doubt meant to be reverential. I thought, however, the Lady looked rather serious as he finished reading. The Young Girl’s cheeks were flushed, but she was not in the mood for criticism.
As we came away the Master said to me—The stubble-fields are mighty slow to take fire. These young fellows catch up with the world’s ideas one after another,—they have been tamed a long while, but they find them running loose in their minds, and think they are ferae naturae. They remind me of young sportsmen who fire at the first feathers they see, and bring down a barnyard fowl. But the chicken may be worth bagging for all that, he said, good-humoredly.