225. From ‘Humanitad’

TO make the Body and the Spirit one

With all right things, till no thing live in vain

From morn to noon, but in sweet unison

With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain

The Soul in flawless essence high enthroned,

Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,

Mark with serene impartiality

The strife of things, and yet be comforted,

Knowing that by the chain causality

All separate existences are wed

Into one supreme whole, whose utterance

Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance

Of Life in most august omnipresence,

Through which the rational intellect would find

In passion its expression, and mere sense,

Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind,

And being joined with it in harmony

More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,

Strike from their several tones one octave chord

Whose cadence being measureless would fly

Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord

Return refreshed with its new empery

And more exultant power,—this indeed

Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed.

O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn!

O chalice of all common miseries!

Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne

An agony of endless centuries,

And we were vain and ignorant nor knew

That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew.

Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds,

The night that covers and the lights that fade,

The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds,

The lips betraying and the life betrayed;

The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we

Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.

Is this the end of all that primal force

Which, in its changes being still the same,

From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course,

Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame,

Till the suns met in heaven and began

Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man!

Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though

The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain,

Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know,

Stanch the red wounds—we shall be whole again,

No need have we of hyssop-laden rod,

That which is purely human, that is Godlike, that is God.

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