VI. LEGEM TUAM DILEXI.
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he 'Infinite.' Word horrible! at feudWith life, and the braced moodOf power and joy and love;Forbidden, by wise heathen ev'n, to beSpoken of Deity,Whose Name, on popular altars, was 'The Unknown,'Because, or ere It was reveal'd as OneConfined in Three,The people fear'd that it might proveInfinity,The blazon which the devils desired to gain;And God, for their confusion, laugh'd consent;Yet did so far relent,That they might seek relief, and not in vain,In dashing of themselves against the shores of pain.Nor bides alone in hellThe bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel.But for compulsion of strong grace,The pebble in the roadWould straight explode,And fill the ghastly boundlessness of space.The furious power,To soft growth twice constrain'd in leaf and flower,Protests, and longs to flash its faint self farBeyond the dimmest star.The sameSeditious flame,Beat backward with reduplicated might,Struggles alive within its stricter term,And is the worm.And the just Man does on himself affirmGod's limits, and is conscious of delight,Freedom and right;And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour,By day and night,Buildeth new bulwarks 'gainst the Infinite.For, ah, who can expressHow full of bonds and simplenessIs God,How narrow is He,And how the wide, waste field of possibilityIs only trodStraight to His homestead in the human heart,And all His artIs as the babe's that wins his Mother to repeatHer little song so sweet!What is the chief news of the Night?Lo, iron and salt, heat, weight and lightIn every star that drifts on the great breeze!And theseMean Man,Darling of God, Whose thoughts but live and moveRound him; Who woos his willTo wedlock with His own, and does distilTo that drop's spanThe atta of all rose-fields of all love!Therefore the soul select assumes the stressOf bonds unbid, which God's own style expressBetter than well,And aye hath, cloister'd, borne,To the Clown's scorn,The fetters of the threefold golden chain:Narrowing to nothing all his worldly gain;(Howbeit in vain;For to have noughtIs to have all things without care or thought!)Surrendering, abject, to his equal's rule,As though he were a fool,The free wings of the will;(More vainly still;For none knows rightly what 'tis to be freeBut only heWho, vow'd against all choice, and fill'd with aweOf the ofttimes dumb or clouded Oracle,Does wiser than to spell,In his own suit, the least word of the Law!)And, lastly, bartering life's dear bliss for pain;But evermore in vain;For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!)Is Love's obedienceAgainst the genial laws of natural sense,Whose wide, self-dissipating wave,Prison'd in artful dykes,Trembling returns and strikesThence to its source again,In backward billows fleet,Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet,Thrilling each vein,Exploring every chasm and coveOf the full heart with floods of honied love,And every principal streetAnd obscure alley and laneOf the intricate brainWith brimming rivers of light and breezes sweetOf the primordial heat;Till, unto view of me and thee,Lost the intense life be,Or ludicrously display'd, by forceOf distance; as a soaring eagle, or a horseOn far-off hillside shewn,May seem a gust-driv'n rag or a dead stone.Nor by such bonds alone--But more I leave to say,Fitly revering the Wild Ass's bray,Also his hoof,Of which, go where you will, the marks remainWhere the religious walls have hid the bright reproof.
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