III

But with these Ocean-scenes the Sea-hoy fed
On others fruitful both for heart and head;
Had glimpses of strange lands and men as strange:
Saw with each clime their minds and manners change:
Learnt how on God by various names they call,
While God's great smile shines equally on all;—
Allah, unimaged, One; Brahma, Vishnu,
And Siiva—monster-imaged One in Three;
Ormusd—' Ahuramasda '—name profound—
'Living I Am'—that splendour! One of Two
At war—dark Ahriman his throne invading,
Piercing with evil first the shell so sound,
His cosmic Egg-of-Order's perfect round;—
Manitou, mistlike with his pipewhiff fading;—
Buddha—prince, mystic, moralist—at last
Made God for teaching that no God can be:—
Arab—Hindu—Red Indian—Jew—Parsee;
Chinese Joss-beater, little reverent, too—
That cracker-loving creature of the past—
Blithe spirit—soul a lifeless leaden cast;
Who with high-sublimated Gods, a store,
His Buddha, Fo—Confutzee's Tien—Taou
That pure God-Intellect of Lao-tse,
Breathes blinding fog—Convention-fixed of yore—
Of grossest superstition With the rest,
The necromancing negro of the West,
The terrorist of Obeah. These he scanned;
And many a charm on each delightful land
Lavished by Art's or liberal Nature's hand:
Inhaled the breath that through dense mist distils
From green spruce woods and all the sea-air fills
page 27 With sweet sour odours from Canadian hills:
Dwelt with enraptured gaze on Hindostan's
Umbrageous bowers of spice and spreading fans,
And glistening ribbon-leaves and arching plumes;
Her Starr)- palms and sacred peepuls set
On many-fingered roots, a snaky net;
Or propping their highroofed magnificence
On pendent pillars; clustering gorgeous glooms
Whence pointed domes of marble mosques and tombs
Emerge—from that deepbosoming defence
Black green—into the burning atmosphere;
Or gilt pagodas rise above the shade
Like spires of thick cardoon-leaves closely laid,
All in blue tanks reflected, still and clear.
Or else that tropic Isle of Springs entranced
The lad—who revelled in its noonday glare
And silence deep, so tremulously hot—
So gently interrupted when it chanced
A sudden and soft fluttering in the air,
Like silverpaper rumpled, startlingly
Whispered some flying rainbow-fragment nigh,
Darting in downy purple golden-shot;
Or, as suspended by his long bill's tip
On viewless wings a-quiver poised, to sip
A crimson cactus-bloom—the honied dew
Which from that silky breast, so fit in hue
And texture fine, the airy suckling drew.
Safely that land of merry slaves he saw
Late ruined by a half-completed law j
When thoughtless theorists had flung aside
The evil bonds by ancient Custom tied,
Nor better bonds they wore themselves, supplied;
Had left to tyrannies of grovelling sense
page 28 The victims of their vain benevolence;
Left them still basely free from forethought, care,
And loftier loads the self-dependent bear;
Left them untaught to welcome Labour's pains,
More nobly slaves to all a freeman's chains;
To feel, the highest freedom all cm reach
Is but the highest self-restraint of each;
True freedom is a grave and sober thing,
With loyalty to Right crowned inward king;
While laws of Duty made despotic, make
The only freedom mobs nor kings can break.