Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts
VI
The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hourBrings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-bornLooks a misshapen and untimely growth,The terror of the household and its shame,A monster coiling in its nurse’s lapThat some would strangle, some would only starve;But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand,And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts,Comes slowly to its stature and its form,Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales,Changes to shining locks its snaky hair,And moves transfigured into angel guise,Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth,And folded in the same encircling armsThat cast it like a serpent from their hold!
If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace,Have the fine words the marble-workers learnTo carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone,And earn a fair obituary, dressedIn all the many-colored robes of praise,Be deafer than the adder to the cryOf that same foundling truth, until it growsTo seemly favor, and at length has wonThe smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-upped dames,Then snatch it from its meagre nurse’s breast,Fold it in silk and give it food from gold;So shalt thou share its glory when at lastIt drops its mortal vesture, and revealedIn all the splendor of its heavenly form,Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings!
Alas! how much that seemed immortal truthThat heroes fought for, martyrs died to save,Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing oldAnd limping in its march, its wings unplumed,Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream!
Here in this painted casket, just unsealed,Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine,Once loved as thou art loved; there beamed the eyesThat looked on Memphis in its hour of pride,That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes,And all the mirrored glories of the Nile.See how they toiled that all-consuming timeMight leave the frame immortal in its tomb;Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gumsThat still diffuse their sweetness through the air,And wound and wound with patient fold on foldThe flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn!Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stainOf the sad mourner’s tear.
But what is this?The sacred beetle, bound upon the breastOf the blind heathen! Snatch the curious prize,Give it a place among thy treasured spoilsFossil and relic,—corals, encrinites,The fly in amber and the fish in stone,The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold,Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring,—Place for the Memphian beetle with thine hoard!
Ah! longer than thy creed has blest the worldThis toy, thus ravished from thy brother’s breast,Was to the heart of Mizraim as divine,As holy, as the symbol that we layOn the still bosom of our white-robed dead,And raise above their dust that all may knowHere sleeps an heir of glory. Loving friends,With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs,And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds,Wrapped this poor image in the cerement’s foldThat Isis and Osiris, friends of man,Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul
An idol? Man was born to worship such!An idol is an image of his thought;Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone,And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold,Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome,Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire,Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words,Or pays his priest to make it day by day;For sense must have its god as well as soul;A new-born Dian calls for silver shrines,And Egypt’s holiest symbol is our own,The sign we worship as did they of oldWhen Isis and Osiris ruled the world.
Let us be true to our most subtle selves,We long to have our idols like the rest.Think! when the men of Israel had their GodEncamped among them, talking with their chief,Leading them in the pillar of the cloudAnd watching o’er them in the shaft of fire,They still must have an image; still they longedFor somewhat of substantial, solid formWhereon to hang their garlands, and to fixTheir wandering thoughts, and gain a stronger holdFor their uncertain faith, not yet assuredIf those same meteors of the day and nightWere not mere exhalations of the soil.
Are we less earthly than the chosen race?Are we more neighbors of the living GodThan they who gathered manna every morn,Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voiceOf him who met the Highest in the mount,And brought them tables, graven with His hand?Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold,That star-browed Apis might be god again;Yea, from their ears the women brake the ringsThat lent such splendors to the gypsy brownOf sunburnt cheeks,—what more could woman doTo show her pious zeal? They went astray,But nature led them as it leads us all.
We too, who mock at Israel’s golden calfAnd scoff at Egypt’s sacred scarabee,Would have our amulets to clasp and kiss,And flood with rapturous tears, and bear with usTo be our dear companions in the dust,Such magic works an image in our souls!
Man is an embryo; see at twenty yearsHis bones, the columns that uphold his frameNot yet cemented, shaft and capital,Mere fragments of the temple incomplete.At twoscore, threescore, is he then full grown?Nay, still a child, and as the little maidsDress and undress their puppets, so he triesTo dress a lifeless creed, as if it lived,And change its raiment when the world cries shame!We smile to see our little ones at playSo grave, so thoughtful, with maternal careNursing the wisps of rags they call their babes;Does He not smile who sees us with the toysWe call by sacred names, and idly feignTo be what we have called them?He is still The Father of this helpless nursery-brood,Whose second childhood joins so close its first,That in the crowding, hurrying years betweenWe scarce have trained our senses to their taskBefore the gathering mist has dimmed our eyes,And with our hollowed palm we help our ear,And trace with trembling hand our wrinkled names,And then begin to tell our stories o’er,And see—not hear-the whispering lips that say,“You know—? Your father knew him.—This is he,Tottering and leaning on the hireling’s arm,—”And so, at length, disrobed of all that cladThe simple life we share with weed and worm,Go to our cradles, naked as we came.