148. Pain

THE MAN that hath great griefs I pity not;

’Tis something to be great

In any wise, and hint the larger state,

Though but in shadow of a shade, God wot!

Moreover, while we wait the possible,

This man has touched the fact,

And probed till he has felt the core, where, packed

In pulpy folds, resides the ironic ill.

And while we others sip the obvious sweet—

Lip-licking after-taste

Of glutinous rind, lo! this man hath made haste,

And pressed the sting that holds the central seat.

For thus it is God stings us into life,

Provoking actual souls

From bodily systems, giving us the poles

That are His own, not merely balanced strife.

Nay, the great passions are His veriest thought,

Which whoso can absorb,

Nor, querulous halting, violate their orb,

In him the mind of God is fullest wrought.

Thrice happy such an one! Far other he

Who dallies on the edge

Of the great vortex, clinging to a sedge

Of patent good, a timorous Manichee;

Who takes the impact of a long-breathed force,

And fritters it away

In eddies of disgust, that else might stay

His nerveless heart, and fix it to the course.

For there is threefold oneness with the One;

And he is one, who keeps

The homely laws of life; who, if he sleeps,

Or wakes, in his true flesh God’s will is done.

And he is one, who takes the deathless forms,

Who schools himself to think

With the All-thinking, holding fast the link,

God-riveted, that bridges casual storms.

But tenfold one is he, who feels all pains

Not partial, knowing them

As ripples parted from the gold-beaked stem,

Wherewith God’s galley onward ever strains.

To him the sorrows are the tension-thrills

Of that serene endeavour,

Which yields to God for ever and for ever

The joy that is more ancient than the hills.