A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul

JULY

1     ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!     Moaning, poor Fancy's doves are swept away.     I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep,     My consciousness the blackness all astir.     No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer—     For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep,     Who dwellest only in the living day?2     It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,     Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent—     Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!     Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!     Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,     The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?—     My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream.3     Not thine, my Lord, the darkness all is mine—     Save that, as mine, my darkness too is thine:     All things are thine to save or to destroy—     Destroy my darkness, rise my perfect joy;     Love primal, the live coal of every night,     Flame out, scare the ill things with radiant fright,     And fill my tent with laughing morn's delight.4     Master, thou workest with such common things—     Low souls, weak hearts, I mean—and hast to use,     Therefore, such common means and rescuings,     That hard we find it, as we sit and muse,     To think thou workest in us verily:     Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews—     That doubt the captain, watch the storm-spray flee.5     Thou art hampered in thy natural working then     When beings designed on freedom's holy plan     Will not be free: with thy poor, foolish men,     Thou therefore hast to work just like a man.     But when, tangling thyself in their sore need,     Thou hast to freedom fashioned them indeed,     Then wilt thou grandly move, and Godlike speed.6     Will this not then show grandest fact of all—     In thy creation victory most renowned—     That thou hast wrought thy will by slow and small,     And made men like thee, though thy making bound     By that which they were not, and could not be     Until thou mad'st them make along with thee?—     Master, the tardiness is but in me.7     Hence come thy checks—because I still would run     My head into the sand, nor flutter aloft     Towards thy home, with thy wind under me.     'Tis because I am mean, thy ways so oft     Look mean to me; my rise is low begun;     But scarce thy will doth grasp me, ere I see,     For my arrest and rise, its stern necessity.8     Like clogs upon the pinions of thy plan     We hang—like captives on thy chariot-wheels,     Who should climb up and ride with Death's conqueror;     Therefore thy train along the world's highway steals     So slow to the peace of heart-reluctant man.     What shall we do to spread the wing and soar,     Nor straiten thy deliverance any more?9     The sole way to put flight into the wing,     To preen its feathers, and to make them grow,     Is to heed humbly every smallest thing     With which the Christ in us has aught to do.     So will the Christ from child to manhood go,     Obedient to the father Christ, and so     Sweet holy change will turn all our old things to new.10     Creation thou dost work by faint degrees,     By shade and shadow from unseen beginning;     Far, far apart, in unthought mysteries     Of thy own dark, unfathomable seas,     Thou will'st thy will; and thence, upon the earth—     Slow travelling, his way through centuries winning—     A child at length arrives at never ending birth.11     Well mayst thou then work on indocile hearts     By small successes, disappointments small;     By nature, weather, failure, or sore fall;     By shame, anxiety, bitterness, and smarts;     By loneliness, by weary loss of zest:—     The rags, the husks, the swine, the hunger-quest,     Drive home the wanderer to the father's breast.12     How suddenly some rapid turn of thought     May throw the life-machine all out of gear,     Clouding the windows with the steam of doubt,     Filling the eyes with dust, with noise the ear!     Who knows not then where dwells the engineer,     Rushes aghast into the pathless night,     And wanders in a land of dreary fright.13     Amazed at sightless whirring of their wheels,     Confounded with the recklessness and strife,     Distract with fears of what may next ensue,     Some break rude exit from the house of life,     And plunge into a silence out of view—     Whence not a cry, no wafture once reveals     What door they have broke open with the knife.14     Help me, my Father, in whatever dismay,     Whatever terror in whatever shape,     To hold the faster by thy garment's hem;     When my heart sinks, oh, lift it up, I pray;     Thy child should never fear though hell should gape,     Not blench though all the ills that men affray     Stood round him like the Roman round Jerusalem.15     Too eager I must not be to understand.     How should the work the master goes about     Fit the vague sketch my compasses have planned?     I am his house—for him to go in and out.     He builds me now—and if I cannot see     At any time what he is doing with me,     'Tis that he makes the house for me too grand.16     The house is not for me—it is for him.     His royal thoughts require many a stair,     Many a tower, many an outlook fair,     Of which I have no thought, and need no care.     Where I am most perplexed, it may be there     Thou mak'st a secret chamber, holy-dim,     Where thou wilt come to help my deepest prayer.17     I cannot tell why this day I am ill;     But I am well because it is thy will—     Which is to make me pure and right like thee.     Not yet I need escape—'tis bearable     Because thou knowest. And when harder things     Shall rise and gather, and overshadow me,     I shall have comfort in thy strengthenings.18     How do I live when thou art far away?—     When I am sunk, and lost, and dead in sleep,     Or in some dream with no sense in its play?     When weary-dull, or drowned in study deep?—     O Lord, I live so utterly on thee,     I live when I forget thee utterly—     Not that thou thinkest of, but thinkest me.19     Thou far!—that word the holy truth doth blur.     Doth the great ocean from the small fish run     When it sleeps fast in its low weedy bower?     Is the sun far from any smallest flower,     That lives by his dear presence every hour?     Are they not one in oneness without stir—     The flower the flower because the sun the sun?20     "Dear presence every hour"!—what of the night,     When crumpled daisies shut gold sadness in;     And some do hang the head for lack of light,     Sick almost unto death with absence-blight?—     Thy memory then, warm-lingering in the ground,     Mourned dewy in the air, keeps their hearts sound,     Till fresh with day their lapsed life begin.21     All things are shadows of the shining true:     Sun, sea, and air—close, potent, hurtless fire—     Flowers from their mother's prison—dove, and dew—     Every thing holds a slender guiding clue     Back to the mighty oneness:—hearts of faith     Know thee than light, than heat, endlessly nigher,     Our life's life, carpenter of Nazareth.22     Sometimes, perhaps, the spiritual blood runs slow,     And soft along the veins of will doth flow,     Seeking God's arteries from which it came.     Or does the etherial, creative flame     Turn back upon itself, and latent grow?—     It matters not what figure or what name,     If thou art in me, and I am not to blame.23     In such God-silence, the soul's nest, so long     As all is still, no flutter and no song,     Is safe. But if my soul begin to act     Without some waking to the eternal fact     That my dear life is hid with Christ in God—     I think and move a creature of earth's clod,     Stand on the finite, act upon the wrong.24     My soul this sermon hence for itself prepares:—     "Then is there nothing vile thou mayst not do,     Buffeted in a tumult of low cares,     And treacheries of the old man 'gainst the new."—     Lord, in my spirit let thy spirit move,     Warning, that it may not have to reprove:—     In my dead moments, master, stir the prayers.25     Lord, let my soul o'erburdened then feel thee     Thrilling through all its brain's stupidity.     If I must slumber, heedless of ill harms,     Let it not be but in my Father's arms;     Outside the shelter of his garment's fold,     All is a waste, a terror-haunted wold.—     Lord, keep me. 'Tis thy child that cries. Behold.26     Some say that thou their endless love host won     By deeds for them which I may not believe     Thou ever didst, or ever willedst done:     What matter, so they love thee? They receive     Eternal more than the poor loom and wheel     Of their invention ever wove and spun.—     I love thee for I must, thine all from head to heel.27     The love of thee will set all notions right.     Right save by love no thought can be or may;     Only love's knowledge is the primal light.     Questions keep camp along love's shining coast—     Challenge my love and would my entrance stay:     Across the buzzing, doubting, challenging host,     I rush to thee, and cling, and cry—Thou know'st.28     Oh, let me live in thy realities,     Nor substitute my notions for thy facts,     Notion with notion making leagues and pacts;     They are to truth but as dream-deeds to acts,     And questioned, make me doubt of everything.—     "O Lord, my God," my heart gets up and cries,     "Come thy own self, and with thee my faith bring."29     O master, my desires to work, to know,     To be aware that I do live and grow—     All restless wish for anything not thee,     I yield, and on thy altar offer me.     Let me no more from out thy presence go,     But keep me waiting watchful for thy will—     Even while I do it, waiting watchful still.30     Thou art the Lord of life, the secret thing.     Thou wilt give endless more than I could find,     Even if without thee I could go and seek;     For thou art one, Christ, with my deepest mind,     Duty alive, self-willed, in me dost speak,     And to a deeper purer being sting:     I come to thee, my life, my causing kind.31     Nothing is alien in thy world immense—     No look of sky or earth or man or beast;     "In the great hand of God I stand, and thence"     Look out on life, his endless, holy feast.     To try to feel is but to court despair,     To dig for a sun within a garden-fence:     Who does thy will, O God, he lives upon thy air.

AUGUST

1     SO shall abundant entrance me be given     Into the truth, my life's inheritance.     Lo! as the sun shoots straight from out his tomb,     God-floated, casting round a lordly glance     Into the corners of his endless room,     So, through the rent which thou, O Christ, hast riven,     I enter liberty's divine expanse.2     It will be so—ah, so it is not now!     Who seeks thee for a little lazy peace,     Then, like a man all weary of the plough,     That leaves it standing in the furrow's crease,     Turns from thy presence for a foolish while,     Till comes again the rasp of unrest's file,     From liberty is distant many a mile.3     Like one that stops, and drinks, and turns, and goes     Into a land where never water flows,     There travels on, the dry and thirsty day,     Until the hot night veils the farther way,     Then turns and finds again the bubbling pool—     Here would I build my house, take up my stay,     Nor ever leave my Sychar's margin cool.4     Keep me, Lord, with thee. I call from out the dark—     Hear in thy light, of which I am a spark.     I know not what is mine and what is thine—     Of branch and stem I miss the differing mark—     But if a mere hair's-breadth me separateth,     That hair's-breadth is eternal, infinite death.     For sap thy dead branch calls, O living vine!5     I have no choice, I must do what I can;     But thou dost me, and all things else as well;     Thou wilt take care thy child shall grow a man.     Rouse thee, my faith; be king; with life be one;     To trust in God is action's highest kind;     Who trusts in God, his heart with life doth swell;     Faith opens all the windows to God's wind.6     O Father, thou art my eternity.     Not on the clasp Of consciousness—on thee     My life depends; and I can well afford     All to forget, so thou remember, Lord.     In thee I rest; in sleep thou dost me fold;     In thee I labour; still in thee, grow old;     And dying, shall I not in thee, my Life, be bold?7     In holy things may be unholy greed.     Thou giv'st a glimpse of many a lovely thing,     Not to be stored for use in any mind,     But only for the present spiritual need.     The holiest bread, if hoarded, soon will breed     The mammon-moth, the having-pride, I find.     'Tis momently thy heart gives out heart-quickening.8     It is thyself, and neither this nor that,     Nor anything, told, taught, or dreamed of thee,     That keeps us live. The holy maid who sat     Low at thy feet, choosing the better part,     Rising, bore with her—what a memory!     Yet, brooding only on that treasure, she     Had soon been roused by conscious loss of heart.9     I am a fool when I would stop and think,     And lest I lose my thoughts, from duty shrink.     It is but avarice in another shape.     'Tis as the vine-branch were to hoard the grape,     Nor trust the living root beneath the sod.     What trouble is that child to thee, my God,     Who sips thy gracious cup, and will not drink!10     True, faithful action only is the life,     The grapes for which we feel the pruning knife.     Thoughts are but leaves; they fall and feed the ground.     The holy seasons, swift and slow, go round;     The ministering leaves return, fresh, large, and rife—     But fresher, larger, more thoughts to the brain:—     Farewell, my dove!—come back, hope-laden, through the rain.11     Well may this body poorer, feebler grow!     It is undressing for its last sweet bed;     But why should the soul, which death shall never know,     Authority, and power, and memory shed?     It is that love with absolute faith would wed;     God takes the inmost garments off his child,     To have him in his arms, naked and undefiled.12     Thou art my knowledge and my memory,     No less than my real, deeper life, my love.     I will not fool, degrade myself to trust     In less than that which maketh me say Me,     In less than that causing itself to be.     Then art within me, behind, beneath, above—     I will be thine because I may and must.13     Thou art the truth, the life. Thou, Lord, wilt see     To every question that perplexes me.     I am thy being; and my dignity     Is written with my name down in thy book;     Thou wilt care for it. Never shall I think     Of anything that thou mightst overlook:—     In faith-born triumph at thy feet I sink.14     Thou carest more for that which I call mine,     In same sort—better manner than I could,     Even if I knew creation's ends divine,     Rousing in me this vague desire of good.     Thou art more to me than my desires' whole brood;     Thou art the only person, and I cry     Unto the father I of this my I.15     Thou who inspirest prayer, then bend'st thine ear;     It, crying with love's grand respect to hear!     I cannot give myself to thee aright—     With the triumphant uttermost of gift;     That cannot be till I am full of light—     To perfect deed a perfect will must lift:—     Inspire, possess, compel me, first of every might.16     I do not wonder men can ill believe     Who make poor claims upon thee, perfect Lord;     Then most I trust when most I would receive.     I wonder not that such do pray and grieve—     The God they think, to be God is not fit.     Then only in thy glory I seem to sit,     When my heart claims from thine an infinite accord.17     More life I need ere I myself can be.     Sometimes, when the eternal tide ebbs low,     A moment weary of my life I grow—     Weary of my existence' self, I mean,     Not of its plodding, not its wind and snow     Then to thy knee trusting I turn, and lean:     Thou will'st I live, and I do will with thee.18     Dost thou mean sometimes that we should forget thee,     Dropping the veil of things 'twixt thee and us?—     Ah, not that we should lose thee and regret thee!     But that, we turning from our windows thus,     The frost-fixed God should vanish from the pane,     Sun-melted, and a moment, Father, let thee     Look like thyself straight into heart and brain.19     For sometimes when I am busy among men,     With heart and brain an open thoroughfare     For faces, words, and thoughts other than mine,     And a pause comes at length—oh, sudden then,     Back throbs the tide with rush exultant rare;     And for a gentle moment I divine     Thy dawning presence flush my tremulous air.20     If I have to forget thee, do thou see     It be a good, not bad forgetfulness;     That all its mellow, truthful air be free     From dusty noes, and soft with many a yes;     That as thy breath my life, my life may be     Man's breath. So when thou com'st at hour unknown,     Thou shalt find nothing in me but thine own.21     Thou being in me, in my deepest me,     Through all the time I do not think of thee,     Shall I not grow at last so true within     As to forget thee and yet never sin?     Shall I not walk the loud world's busy way,     Yet in thy palace-porch sit all the day?     Not conscious think of thee, yet never from thee stray?22     Forget!—Oh, must it be?—Would it were rather     That every sense was so filled with my father     That not in anything could I forget him,     But deepest, highest must in all things set him!—     Yet if thou think in me, God, what great matter     Though my poor thought to former break and latter—     As now my best thoughts; break, before thee foiled, and scatter!23     Some way there must be of my not forgetting,     And thither thou art leading me, my God.     The child that, weary of his mother's petting,     Runs out the moment that his feet are shod,     May see her face in every flower he sees,     And she, although beyond the window sitting,     Be nearer him than when he sat upon her knees.24     What if, when I at last, at the long last,     Shall see thy face, my Lord, my life's delight,     It should not be the face that hath been glassed     In poor imagination's mirror slight!     Will my soul sink, and shall I stand aghast,     Beggared of hope, my heart a conscious blight,     Amazed and lost—death's bitterness come and not passed?25     Ah, no! for from thy heart the love will press,     And shining from thy perfect human face,     Will sink into me like the father's kiss;     And deepening wide the gulf of consciousness     Beyond imagination's lowest abyss,     Will, with the potency of creative grace,     Lord it throughout the larger thinking place.26     Thus God-possessed, new born, ah, not for long     Should I the sight behold, beatified,     Know it creating in me, feel the throng     Of speechless hopes out-throbbing like a tide,     And my heart rushing, borne aloft the flood,     To offer at his feet its living blood—     Ere, glory-hid, the other face I spied.27     For out imagination is, in small,     And with the making-difference that must be,     Mirror of God's creating mirror; all     That shows itself therein, that formeth he,     And there is Christ, no bodiless vanity,     Though, face to face, the mighty perfectness     With glory blurs the dim-reflected less.28     I clasp thy feet, O father of the living!     Thou wilt not let my fluttering hopes be more,     Or lovelier, or greater, than thy giving!     Surely thy ships will bring to my poor shore,     Of gold and peacocks such a shining store     As will laugh all the dreams to holy scorn,     Of love and sorrow that were ever born.29     Sometimes it seems pure natural to trust,     And trust right largely, grandly, infinitely,     Daring the splendour of the giver's part;     At other times, the whole earth is but dust,     The sky is dust, yea, dust the human heart;     Then art thou nowhere, there is no room for thee     In the great dust-heap of eternity.30     But why should it be possible to mistrust—     Nor possible only, but its opposite hard?     Why should not man believe because he must—     By sight's compulsion? Why should he be scarred     With conflict? worn with doubting fine and long?—     No man is fit for heaven's musician throng     Who has not tuned an instrument all shook and jarred.31     Therefore, O Lord, when all things common seem,     When all is dust, and self the centre clod,     When grandeur is a hopeless, foolish dream,     And anxious care more reasonable than God,—     Out of the ashes I will call to thee—     In spite of dead distrust call earnestly:—     Oh thou who livest, call, then answer dying me.

SEPTEMBER

1     WE are a shadow and a shining, we!     One moment nothing seems but what we see,     Nor aught to rule but common circumstance—     Nought is to seek but praise, to shun but chance;     A moment more, and God is all in all,     And not a sparrow from its nest can fall     But from the ground its chirp goes up into his hall.2     I know at least which is the better mood.     When on a heap of cares I sit and brood,     Like Job upon his ashes, sorely vext,     I feel a lower thing than when I stood     The world's true heir, fearless as, on its stalk,     A lily meeting Jesus in his walk:     I am not all mood—I can judge betwixt.3     Such differing moods can scarce to one belong;     Shall the same fountain sweet and bitter yield?     Shall what bore late the dust-mood, think and brood     Till it bring forth the great believing mood?     Or that which bore the grand mood, bald and peeled,     Sit down to croon the shabby sensual song,     To hug itself, and sink from wrong to meaner wrong?4     In the low mood, the mere man acts alone,     Moved by impulses which, if from within,     Yet far outside the centre man begin;     But in the grand mood, every softest tone     Comes from the living God at very heart—     From thee who infinite core of being art,     Thee who didst call our names ere ever we could sin.5     There is a coward sparing in the heart,     Offspring of penury and low-born fear:—     Prayer must take heed nor overdo its part,     Asking too much of him with open ear!     Sinners must wait, not seek the very best,     Cry out for peace, and be of middling cheer:—     False heart! thou cheatest God, and dost thy life molest.6     Thou hungerest not, thou thirstest not enough.     Thou art a temporizing thing, mean heart.     Down-drawn, thou pick'st up straws and wretched stuff,     Stooping as if the world's floor were the chart     Of the long way thy lazy feet must tread.     Thou dreamest of the crown hung o'er thy head—     But that is safe—thou gatherest hairs and fluff!7     Man's highest action is to reach up higher,     Stir up himself to take hold of his sire.     Then best I love you, dearest, when I go     And cry to love's life I may love you so     As to content the yearning, making love,     That perfects strength divine in weakness' fire,     And from the broken pots calls out the silver dove.8     Poor am I, God knows, poor as withered leaf;     Poorer or richer than, I dare not ask.     To love aright, for me were hopeless task,     Eternities too high to comprehend.     But shall I tear my heart in hopeless grief,     Or rise and climb, and run and kneel, and bend,     And drink the primal love—so love in chief?9     Then love shall wake and be its own high life.     Then shall I know 'tis I that love indeed—     Ready, without a moment's questioning strife,     To be forgot, like bursting water-bead,     For the high good of the eternal dear;     All hope, all claim, resting, with spirit clear,     Upon the living love that every love doth breed.10     Ever seem to fail in utterance.     Sometimes amid the swift melodious dance     Of fluttering words—as if it had not been,     The thought has melted, vanished into night;     Sometimes I say a thing I did not mean,     And lo! 'tis better, by thy ordered chance,     Than what eluded me, floating too feathery light.11     If thou wouldst have me speak, Lord, give me speech.     So many cries are uttered now-a-days,     That scarce a song, however clear and true,     Will thread the jostling tumult safe, and reach     The ears of men buz-filled with poor denays:     Barb thou my words with light, make my song new,     And men will hear, or when I sing or preach.12     Can anything go wrong with me? I ask—     And the same moment, at a sudden pain,     Stand trembling. Up from the great river's brim     Comes a cold breath; the farther bank is dim;     The heaven is black with clouds and coming rain;     High soaring faith is grown a heavy task,     And all is wrong with weary heart and brain.13     "Things do go wrong. I know grief, pain, and fear.     I see them lord it sore and wide around."     From her fair twilight answers Truth, star-crowned,     "Things wrong are needful where wrong things abound.     Things go not wrong; but Pain, with dog and spear,     False faith from human hearts will hunt and hound.     The earth shall quake 'neath them that trust the solid ground."14     Things go not wrong when sudden I fall prone,     But when I snatch my upheld hand from thine,     And, proud or careless, think to walk alone.     Then things go wrong, when I, poor, silly sheep,     To shelves and pits from the good pasture creep;     Not when the shepherd leaves the ninety and nine,     And to the mountains goes, after the foolish one.15     Lo! now thy swift dogs, over stone and bush,     After me, straying sheep, loud barking, rush.     There's Fear, and Shame, and Empty-heart, and Lack,     And Lost-love, and a thousand at their back!     I see thee not, but know thou hound'st them on,     And I am lost indeed—escape is none.     See! there they come, down streaming on my track!16     I rise and run, staggering—double and run.—     But whither?—whither?—whither for escape?     The sea lies all about this long-necked cape—     There come the dogs, straight for me every one—     Me, live despair, live centre of alarms!—     Ah! lo! 'twixt me and all his barking harms,     The shepherd, lo!—I run—fall folded in his arms.17     There let the dogs yelp, let them growl and leap;     It is no matter—I will go to sleep.     Like a spent cloud pass pain and grief and fear,     Out from behind it unchanged love shines clear.—     Oh, save me, Christ!—I know not what I am,     I was thy stupid, self-willed, greedy lamb,     Would be thy honest and obedient sheep.18     Why is it that so often I return     From social converse with a spirit worn,     A lack, a disappointment—even a sting     Of shame, as for some low, unworthy thing?—     Because I have not, careful, first of all,     Set my door open wide, back to the wall,     Ere I at others' doors did knock and call.19     Yet more and more of me thou dost demand;     My faith and hope in God alone shall stand,     The life of law—not trust the rain and sun     To draw the golden harvest o'er the land.     I must not say—"This too will pass and die,"     "The wind will change," "Round will the seasons run."     Law is the body of will, of conscious harmony.20     Who trusts a law, might worship a god of wood;     Half his soul slumbers, if it be not dead.     He is a live thing shut in chaos crude,     Hemmed in with dragons—a remorseless head     Still hanging over its uplifted eyes.     No; God is all in all, and nowhere dies—     The present heart and thinking will of good.21     Law is our schoolmaster. Our master, Christ,     Lived under all our laws, yet always prayed—     So walked the water when the storm was highest.—     Law is Thy father's; thou hast it obeyed,     And it thereby subject to thee hast made—     To rule it, master, for thy brethren's sakes:—     Well may he guide the law by whom law's maker makes.22     Death haunts our souls with dissolution's strife;     Soaks them with unrest; makes our every breath     A throe, not action; from God's purest gift     Wipes off the bloom; and on the harp of faith     Its fretted strings doth slacken still and shift:     Life everywhere, perfect, and always life,     Is sole redemption from this haunting death.23     God, thou from death dost lift me. As I rise,     Its Lethe from my garment drips and flows.     Ere long I shall be safe in upper air,     With thee, my life—with thee, my answered prayer     Where thou art God in every wind that blows,     And self alone, and ever, softly dies,     There shall my being blossom, and I know it fair.24     I would dig, Master, in no field but thine,     Would build my house only upon thy rock,     Yet am but a dull day, with a sea-sheen!     Why should I wonder then that they should mock,     Who, in the limbo of things heard and seen,     Hither and thither blowing, lose the shine     Of every light that hangs in the firmament divine.25     Lord, loosen in me the hold of visible things;     Help me to walk by faith and not by sight;     I would, through thickest veils and coverings,     See into the chambers of the living light.     Lord, in the land of things that swell and seem,     Help me to walk by the other light supreme,     Which shows thy facts behind man's vaguely hinting dream.26     I see a little child whose eager hands     Search the thick stream that drains the crowded street     For possible things hid in its current slow.     Near by, behind him, a great palace stands,     Where kings might welcome nobles to their feet.     Soft sounds, sweet scents, fair sights there only go—     There the child's father lives, but the child does not know.27     On, eager, hungry, busy-seeking child,     Rise up, turn round, run in, run up the stair.     Far in a chamber from rude noise exiled,     Thy father sits, pondering how thou dost fare.     The mighty man will clasp thee to his breast:     Will kiss thee, stroke the tangles of thy hair,     And lap thee warm in fold on fold of lovely rest.28     The prince of this world came, and nothing found     In thee, O master; but, ah, woe is me!     He cannot pass me, on other business bound,     But, spying in me things familiar, he     Casts over me the shadow of his flight,     And straight I moan in darkness—and the fight     Begins afresh betwixt the world and thee.29     In my own heart, O master, in my thought,     Betwixt the woolly sheep and hairy goat     Not clearly I distinguish; but I think     Thou knowest that I fight upon thy side.     The how I am ashamed of; for I shrink     From many a blow—am borne on the battle-tide,     When I should rush to the front, and take thy foe by the throat.30     The enemy still hath many things in me;     Yea, many an evil nest with open hole     Gapes out to him, at which he enters free.     But, like the impact of a burning coal,     His presence mere straight rouses the garrison,     And all are up in arms, and down on knee,     Fighting and praying till the foe is gone.