Christmas Eve

XII

So I summed up my new resolves:     Too much love there can never be.And where the intellect devolves     Its function on love exclusively,I, a man who possesses both,Will accept the provision, nothing loth,—Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,That my intellect may find its share.And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest,And see them applaud the great heart of the artist,Who, examining the capabilities     Of the block of marble he has to fashion     Into a type of thought or passion,—Not always, using obvious facilities,Shapes it, as any artist can,Into a perfect symmetrical man,Complete from head to foot of the life-size,Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes,—But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummateA Colossus by no means so easy to come at,And uses the whole of his block for the bust,     Leaving the mind of the public to finish it,Since cut it ruefully short he must:On the face alone he expends his devotion,     He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it,—Saying, "Applaud me for this grand notion"Of what a face may be! As for completing it     "In breast and body and limbs, do that, you!"All hail! I fancy how, happily meeting it,     A trunk and legs would perfect the statue,Could man carve so as to answer volition.     And how much nobler than petty cavils,     Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels,Some artist of another ambition,Who, having a block to carve, no bigger,Has spent his power on the opposite quest,     And believed to begin at the feet was best—For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure!

XIII

No sooner said than out in the night!My heart lighter and more light:And still, as before, I was walking swift,     With my senses settling fast and steadying,But my body caught up in the whirl and drift     Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddyingOn just before me, still to be followed,     As it carried me after with its motion,—What shall I say?—as a path, were hollowed,     And a man went weltering through the ocean,Sucked along in the flying wakeOf the luminous water-snake.

XIV

Alone! I am left alone once more—     (Save for the garment's extreme fold     Abandoned still to bless my hold)Alone, beside the entrance-doorOf a sort of temple,-perhaps a college,—Like nothing I ever saw beforeAt home in England, to my knowledge.The tall old quaint irregular town!     It may be… though which, I can't affirm… any     Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany:And this flight of stairs where I sit down,Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, FrankfortOr Gottingen, I have to thank for't?It may be Gottingen,—most likely.Through the open door I catch obliquelyGlimpses of a lecture-hall;     And not a bad assembly neither,Ranged decent and symmetrical     On benches, waiting what's to see there:Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,I also resolve to see with them,Cautious this time how I suffer to slipThe chance of joining in fellowshipWith any that call themselves his friends;     As these folk do, I have a notion.     But hist—a buzzing and emotion!All settle themselves, the while ascendsBy the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,     Step by step, deliberate     Because of his cranium's over-freight,Three parts sublime to one grotesque,If I have proved an accurate guesser,The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.I felt at once as if there ranA shoot of love from my heart to the man—That sallow virgin-minded studious     Martyr to mild enthusiasm,As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious     That woke my sympathetic spasm,(Beside some spitting that made me sorry)And stood, surveying his auditoryWith a wan pure look, well-nigh celestial,—     Those blue eyes had survived so much!     While, under the foot they could not smutch,Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,Till the auditory's clearing of throatsWas done with, died into a silence;     And, when each glance was upward sent,     Each bearded mouth composed intent,And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,—He pushed back higher his spectacles,Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,And giving his head of hair—a hake     Of undressed tow, for colour and quantity—One rapid and impatient shake,     (As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tieWhen about to impart, on mature digestion,Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)—The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.

XV

And he began it by observing     How reason dictated that menShould rectify the natural swerving,     By a reversion, now and then,To the well-heads of knowledge, fewAnd far away, whence rolling grewThe life-stream wide whereat we drink,Commingled, as we needs must think,With waters alien to the source;To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;Since, where could be a fitter timeFor tracing backward to its primeThis Christianity, this lake,This reservoir, whereat we slake,From one or other bank, our thirst?So, he proposed inquiring firstInto the various sources whence     This Myth of Christ is derivable;Demanding from the evidence,     (Since plainly no such life was livable)How these phenomena should class?Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,Or never was at all, or whetherHe was and was not, both together—It matters little for the name,So the idea be left the same.Only, for practical purpose' sake,'Twas obviously as well to takeThe popular story,—understanding     How the ineptitude of the time,And the penman's prejudice, expanding     Fact into fable fit for the clime,Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it     Into this myth, this Individuum,—Which, when reason had strained and abated itOf foreign matter, left, for residuum,A Man!—a right true man, however,Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour:Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient     To his disciples, for rather believingHe was just omnipotent and omniscient,     As it gives to us, for as frankly receivingHis word, their tradition,—which, though it meantSomething entirely differentFrom all that those who only heard it,In their simplicity thought and averred it,Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:For, among other doctrines delectable,Was he not surely the first to insist on     The natural sovereignty of our race?—     Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,The vesture still within my hand.

XVI

I could interpret its command.This time he would not bid me enterThe exhausted air-bell of the Critic.Truth's atmosphere may grow mephiticWhen Papist struggles with Dissenter,Impregnating its pristine clarity,—One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,     Its gust of broken meat and garlic;—One, by his soul's too-much presumingTo turn the frankincense's fuming     And vapours of the candle starlikeInto the cloud her wings she buoys on.     Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,     May poison it for healthy breathing—But the Critic leaves no air to poison;Pumps out with ruthless ingenuityAtom by atom, and leaves you—vacuity.Thus much of Christ does he reject?And what retain? His intellect?What is it I must reverence duly?Poor intellect for worship, truly,Which tells me simply what was told     (If mere morality, bereft     Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)Elsewhere by voices manifold;With this advantage, that the stater     Made nowise the important stumble     Of adding, he, the sage and humble,Was also one with the Creator.You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:     But how does shifting blame, evade it?Have wisdom's words no more felicity?     The stumbling-block, his speech—who laid it?How comes it that for one found ableTo sift the truth of it from fable,Millions believe it to the letter?Christ's goodness, then—does that fare better?Strange goodness, which upon the score     Of being goodness, the mere dueOf man to fellow-man, much more     To God,—should take another viewOf its possessor's privilege,And bid him rule his race! You pledgeYour fealty to such rule? What, all—From heavenly John and Attic Paul,And that brave weather-battered Peter,Whose stout faith only stood completerFor buffets, sinning to be pardoned,As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,—All, down to you, the man of men,Professing here at Gottingen,Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,Are sheep of a good man! And why?The goodness,—how did he acquire it?Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?Choose which; then tell me, on what groundShould its possessor dare propoundHis claim to rise o'er us an inch?     Were goodness all some man's invention,     Who arbitrarily made mentionWhat we should follow, and whence flinch,—What qualities might take the style     Of right and wrong,—and had such guessing     Met with as general acquiescingAs graced the alphabet erewhile,When A got leave an Ox to be,No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G4,—For thus inventing thing and titleWorship were that man's fit requital.But if the common conscience mustBe ultimately judge, adjustIts apt name to each qualityAlready known,—I would decreeWorship for such mere demonstration     And simple work of nomenclature,     Only the day I praised, not nature,But Harvey, for the circulation.I would praise such a Christ, with prideAnd joy, that he, as none beside,Had taught us how to keep the mindGod gave him, as God gave his kind,Freer than they from fleshly taint:I would call such a Christ our Saint,As I declare our Poet, himWhose insight makes all others dim:A thousand poets pried at life,And only one amid the strifeRose to be Shakespeare: each shall takeHis crown, I'd say, for the world's sake—Though some objected—"Had we seen"The heart and head of each, what screen"Was broken there to give them light,"While in ourselves it shuts the sight,"We should no more admire, perchance,"That these found truth out at a glance,"Than marvel how the bat discerns"Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,"Led by a finer tact, a gift"He boasts, which other birds must shift"Without, and grope as best they can."No, freely I would praise the man,—Nor one whit more, if he contendedThat gift of his, from God descended.Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?No nearer something, by a jot,Rise an infinity of nothings     Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,     Make that creator which was creature?Multiply gifts upon man's head,And what, when all's done, shall be saidBut—the more gifted he, I ween!     That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,And this might be all that has been,—     So what is there to frown or smile at?What is left for us, save, in growthOf soul, to rise up, far past both,From the gift looking to the giver,And from the cistern to the river,And from the finite to infinity,And from man's dust to God's divinity?

XVII

Take all in a word: the truth in God's breastLies trace for trace upon curs impressed:Though he is so bright and we so dim,We are made in his image to witness him:And were no eye in us to tell,     Instructed by no inner sense,The light of heaven from the dark of hell,     That light would want its evidence,—Though justice, good and truth were stillDivine, if, by some demon's will,Hatred and wrong had been proclaimedLaw through the worlds, and right misnamed.No mere exposition of moralityMade or in part or in totality,Should win you to give it worship, therefore:And, if no better proof you will care for,—Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?     Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, moreOf what right is, than arrives at birth     In the best man's acts that we bow before:This last knows better—true, but my fact is,'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.And thence I conclude that the real God-functionIs to furnish a motive and injunctionFor practising what we know already.And such an injunction and such a motiveAs the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,"High-minded," hang your tablet-votiveOutside the fane on a finger-post?Morality to the uttermost,Supreme in Christ as we all confess,Why need we prove would avail no jotTo make him God, if God he were not?What is the point where himself lays stress?Does the precept run "Believe in good,"In justice, truth, now understood"For the first time?"—or, "Believe in me,"Who lived and died, yet essentially"Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can takeThe same to his heart and for mere love's sakeConceive of the love,—that man obtainsA new truth; no conviction gainsOf an old one only, made intenseBy a fresh appeal to his faded sense.

XVIII

Can it be that he stays inside?     Is the vesture left me to commune with?     Could my soul find aught to sing in tune withEven at this lecture, if she tried?Oh, let me at lowest sympathizeWith the lurking drop of blood that liesIn the desiccated brain's white rootsWithout throb for Christ's attributes,As the lecturer makes his special boast!If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.Admire we, how from heart to brain     (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)One instinct rises and falls again,     Restoring the equilibrium.And how when the Critic had done his best,And the pearl of price, at reason's test,Lay dust and ashes levigableOn the Professor's lecture-table,—When we looked for the inference and monitionThat our faith, reduced to such condition,Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,—     He bids us, when we least expect it,Take back our faith,—if it be not just whole,     Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!"Go home and venerate the myth"I thus have experimented with—"This man, continue to adore him"Rather than all who went before him,"And all who ever followed after!"—     Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?     That's one point gained: can I compass another?Unlearned love was safe from spurning—Can't we respect your loveless learning?Let us at least give learning honour!What laurels had we showered upon her,Girding her loins up to perturbOur theory of the Middle Verb;Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitarO'er anapasts in comic-trimeter;Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'5While we lounged on at our indebted ease:Instead of which, a tricksy demonSets her at Titus or Philemon!When ignorance wags his ears of leatherAnd hates God's word, 'tis altogether;Nor leaves he his congenial thistlesTo go and browse on Paul's Epistles.—And you, the audience, who might ravageThe world wide, enviably savage,Nor heed the cry of the retriever,More than Herr Heine (before his fever),—I do not tell a lie so arrant     As say my passion's wings are furled up,And, without plainest heavenly warrant,     I were ready and glad to give the world up—But still, when you rub brow meticulous,     And ponder the profit of turning holy     If not for God's, for your own sake solely,—God forbid I should find you ridiculous!Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,"Christians,"—abhor the deist's pravity,—Go on, you shall no more move my gravityThan, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,I find it in my heart to embarrass themBy hinting that their stick's a mock horse,And they really carry what they say carries them.

XIX

So sat I talking with my mind.     I did not long to leave the door     And find a new church, as before,But rather was quiet and inclinedTo prolong and enjoy the gentle restingFrom further tracking and trying and testing."This tolerance is a genial mood!"(Said I, and a little pause ensued)."One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,     "And sees, each side, the good effects of it,"A value for religion's self,     "A carelessness about the sects of it."Let me enjoy my own conviction,     "Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness,"Still spying there some dereliction     "Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!"Better a mild indifferentism,     "Teaching that both our faiths (though duller"His shine through a dull spirit's prism)     "Originally had one colour!"Better pursue a pilgrimage     "Through ancient and through modern times     "To many peoples, various climes,"Where I may see saint, savage, sage"Fuse their respective creeds in one"Before the general Father's throne!"

XX

—'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!The black night caught me in his mesh,Whirled me up, and flung me prone.I was left on the college-step alone.I looked, and far there, ever fleetingFar, far away, the receding gesture,And looming of the lessening vesture!—Swept forward from my stupid hand,While I watched my foolish heart expandIn the lazy glow of benevolence,     O'er the various modes of man's belief.I sprang up with fear's vehemence.     Needs must there be one way, our chiefBest way of worship: let me striveTo find it, and when found, contriveMy fellows also take their share!This constitutes my earthly care:God's is above it and distinct.For I, a man, with men am linkedBut not a brute with brutes; no gainThat I experience, must remainUnshared: but should my best endeavourTo share it, fail—subsisteth everGod's care above, and I exultThat God, by God's own ways occult,May—doth, I will believe—bring backAll wanderers to a single track.Meantime, I can but testifyGod's care for me—no more, can I—It is but for myself I know;     The world rolls witnessing around me     Only to leave me as it found me;Men cry there, but my ear is slow:There races flourish or decay—What boots it, while yon lucid wayLoaded with stars divides the vault?But soon my soul repairs its faultWhen, sharpening sense's hebetude,She turns on my own life! So viewed,No mere mote's-breadth but teems immenseWith witnessings of providence:And woe to me if when I lookUpon that record, the sole bookUnsealed to me, I take no heedOf any warning that I read!Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,God's own hand did the rainbow weave,Whereby the truth from heaven slidInto my soul?—I cannot bidThe world admit he stooped to healMy soul, as if in a thunder-pealWhere one heard noise, and one saw flame,I only knew he named my name:But what is the world to me, for sorrowOr joy in its censure, when to-morrowIt drops the remark, with just-turned headThen, on again, 'That man is dead'?Yes, but for me—my name called,—drawnAs a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,—Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,With a rapid finger circled round,Fixed to the first poor inch of groundTo fight from, where his foot was found;Whose ear but a minute since lay freeTo the wide camp's buzz and gossipry—Summoned, a solitary manTo end his life where his life began,From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and heldBy the hem of the vesture!—

XXI

                                   And I caughtAt the flying robe, and unrepelled     Was lapped again in its folds full-fraughtWith warmth and wonder and delight,God's mercy being infinite.For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,Out of the wandering world of rain,Into the little chapel again.

XXII

How else was I found there, bolt upright     On my bench, as if I had never left it?—Never flung out on the common at night,     Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,Or the laboratory of the Professor!For the Vision, that was true, I wist,True as that heaven and earth exist.There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;Yet my nearest neighbour's cheek showed gall.     She had slid away a contemptuous space:And the old fat woman, late so placable,Eyed me with symptoms hardly mistakable,Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.In short, a spectator might have fanciedThat I had nodded, betrayed by slumber.Yet kept my scat, a warning ghastly,Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.But again, could such disgrace have happened?     Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?     Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?Could I report as I do at the close,First, the preacher speaks through his nose:Second, his gesture is too emphatic:     Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,     The subject-matter itself lacks logic:Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task callOf making square to a finite eyeThe circle of infinity,And find so all-but-just-succeeding!Great news! the sermon proves no readingWhere bee-like in the flowers I bury me,Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!And now that I know the very worst of him,What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks,Shall I take on me to change his tasks,And dare, despatched to a river-head     For a simple draught of the element,     Neglect the thing for which he sent,And return with another thing instead?—Saying, "Because the water found"Welling up from the underground,"Is mingled with the taints of earth,"While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,"And couldst, at wink or word, convulse"The world with the leap of a river-pulse,—"Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,     "And bring thee a chalice I found, instead;"See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!     "One would suppose that the marble bled."What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:     "The waterless cup will quench my thirst."—Better have knelt at the poorest streamThat trickles in pain from the straitest rift!For the less or the more is all God's gift,Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.And here, is there water or not, to drink?I then, in ignorance and weakness,Taking God's help, have attained to thinkMy heart does best to receive in meeknessThat mode of worship, as most to his mind,Where earthly aids being cast behind,His All in All appears sereneWith the thinnest human veil between,Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,The many motions of his spirit,Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.For the preacher's merit or demerit,It were to be wished the flaws were fewerIn the earthen vessel, holding treasureWhich lies as safe in a golden ewer;     But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?Heaven soon sets right all other matters!—     Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,     This soul at struggle with insanity,Who thence take comfort—can I doubt?—Which an empire gained were a loss without.May it be mine! And let us hopeThat no worse blessing befall the Pope,Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,     Of posturings and petticoatings,     Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatingsIn the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!Nor may the Professor forego its peace     At Gottingen presently, when, in the duskOf his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,     Prophesied of by that horrible husk—When thicker and thicker the darkness fillsThe world through his misty spectacles,And he gropes for something more substantial     Than a fable, myth or personification,—May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,     And stand confessed as the God of salvation!Meantime, in the still recurring fear     Lest myself, at unawares, be found,     While attacking the choice of my neighbours round,With none of my own made—I choose here!The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;I have done: and if any blames me,Thinking that merely to touch in brevity     The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,—Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,     On the bounds of the holy and the awful,—I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,Who head and heart alike discernest     Looking below light speech we utter,     When frothy spume and frequent sputterProve that the soul's depths boil in earnest!May truth shine out, stand ever before us!I put up pencil and join chorusTo Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,     The last five verses of the third section     Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,To conclude with the doxology.

1

See Rev. i. 20.

2

Canopy over the High Altar.

3

Terpander, a famous Lesbian musician and lyric poet, 670 B.C.

4

Gimel, the Hebrew G, means camel.

5

"The Suppliants," a fragment of a play by Aeschylus.