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Ranolf and Amohia

Canto the Third

page 49

Canto the Third.

I.

For, as he whiffed and watched above his head
The dainty spirals float and curl and spread,
"Well then," he thought, "if we perforce must dub
These German Giants with their Logic-club,
Unwieldy champions much too prone to beat
The air with ponderous weapons, to defeat
Those agile Jacks of Science, or to screen
From errant Knights of Scepticism keen
The beauteous Truths they clumsily immure
In cavern dim or castle-cage secure;
If, like the bristled monstrous minims seen
To jerk and writhe and wriggle goggle-eyed
Within the lighted circle on the wall
Thrown by the microscopic lantern's sheen—
These crabbed and cribbed Philosophers go near
To craze, because the Apparent's magic sphere
So hems them in; and Hegel above all
Seems, like the fabled Scorpion girt with fire,
With his own logic-nippers to inflict
A bite that kills himself, in mad desire
And effort to escape from bonds so strict,
That radiant round of the Phenomenal—
page 50 What then?—the grand mysterious outside
Is there— there still, and cannot be denied:
Howe'er the thing we may define or name
The' Unapparent' still exists the same.

"For grant it may be made by reasoning plain
That all the fair impressions on the brain
Are not the pictures of such things around,
Where no realities are like them found,
But from those decorating Senses gain,
In passing through them, all the daedal dress
Of qualities we fancy they possess.—
'Not in the rose the red—nor in light-rays
Its texture splits, but in the eyes that gaze;
Not in the thunder—honey—fire, the roar,
The heat or sweetness we perceive; all these
Lie in the Sense that hears, tastes, feels or sees;
Well, it remains as certain as before
The causes of these feelings lie without,
Beyond us still; for who pretends to doubt
We do not, cannot of ourselves excite
These manifold sensations?—by what right
Is it asserted, then, that outside sphere
Of causes is not varied, powerful, bright
And beautiful as aught we see or hear
Or any way perceive within the Mind?
You say, 'Light—colour—sound—taste—smell,
Are states of consciousness, but none can tell
What in themselves they are! So far 'tis well.
Nature in her insentient solitude
But as eternal Darkness must be viewed,
Eternal Silence.' Wherefore thus decide?
What if your bold conclusion be denied?
page 51 'The Light is in ourselves' say you—
Well, so must be the Darkness too.—
'All Nature dark without the eye,
Silent without the ear!' But why?
The Silence and the Darkness you must own
Are our alternatives alone,
Not Nature's!—when the Light and Sound are gone
From us, the causes of the Sound and Light,
Are these effaced because they cease to smite
Our organs? or must these become the same
Ceasing to act upon our consciousness,
As what within that consciousness is left
When ceasing to be acted on?—the things we name
Silence and Darkness? states we feel, bereft
Of those mysterious agents that no less
Are active—glorious—infinite—divine—
Ever impulsive—eager to impress
On other Souls whom other organs bless,
Say (for their nature none of course can guess)
Lights gorgeous, jewel-tinted, more than shine
For us—for our beholding all too fine;
And melodies of such entrancing tone
As would outravish all to mortal music known!
What! make the wondrous Universe depend
On our perceptions—there begin and end?
Must Senses like our own exhaust its powers?
May there not be more Senses too than ours?
Does the Sun cease to be a Sun, and die,
Hurled from his throne in yon majestic Sky,
Whene'er the Worm that grooves the flowery fret
Of pulpit-work—or Spider at his net
On some rose-knotted oak-carved canopy
Within a great Cathedral's gloom and grace—
page 52 May lose the few feint rays it fells through panes
That serve to bound e'en, while they brighten, all
Its tiny being's scant-accorded space—
Dim rays half quenched in that transparent pall,
Vet rainbow-rich with saintly blazonry
And dusky with a wealth of angel-stains?

II.

" Well! if this non-apparent Something still
Exists, nay seems the universe to fill,
Producing all we are and all we know;
And if its Sphere be such, the human brain
Must never hope an entrance to obtain
For science to its wonders—overthrow
Or undermine its jealous walls—or gain
At least some glimpses] of the fait domain—
By observation or deduction slow,
By force of Intellect—perhaps too poor
A tool to burst the Imperial Pahce-door—
(Though I for one will never cease to think
The endlessly-expanding sphere allowed
To Man's Experience must one day supply
Some solid basis, starting-point or link—
Though many a thousand years it take, whereby Science
Demonstrative shall pierce the cloud
And back with glittering spoil come laden gloriously!)
But if this may not be-what then is dear?
What is the worst we then should have to fear?
Why, to confess, that Supernatural sphere,
That Unapparent region, must be such,
For Intellect thereon to logicise
Would be to try rich colours with the touch
Or test melodious sounds with keen bright eyes—
page 53 As Dante's heard the sculptured Widow's speech—
On that white frieze-like Purgatorial bank
Whose end each way his eyesight could not reach
Ask death for her son's murderer as she sank
At Trajan's feet, and ceased not to beseech
Till his roused virtue had vouchsafed her prayer;
Then saw the sound of visible replies
The marble Emperor made her voiceless cries.
That feat we would not ape, but rather dare
Confess that in an atmosphere so rare
The leaden wing of Logic cannot rise;
That by Emotion, not Reflection, best
The Soul is borne aloft in that fine air—
Feeling, not Thought, her fiery chariot there!
The highest Sentiment were then confest
The base whereon the highest Truth must rest
True till a higher Truth were felt or found
And by the beating hearts of men around
As such accepted—welcomed—honoured—crowned
Still raised, refined, as Science purged away
What films of Error might obscure its ray;
Aught from that lower realm that might alloy
Its gold, would Logic fasten on—destroy;
And everything she honestly disproved,
Must be relinquished—howsoe'er beloved,

III.

"One truth we feel is safe at least—that Mind
Was ne'er by Matter compassed—caused—designed;
Or any chance or law, unconscious—thoughtless—blind.
No Logic e'er can prove—no healthy brain
The monstrous opposite can entertain:
Intelligence must have a Cause—'tis plain;
page 54 And so the Mind is framed, it must consent,
That Cause must be itself intelligent

"Nor much avails the talk against 'Design.'
True, to use means, consider and contrive
And step by step slow towards an end to strive,
Has more in it of human than divine:
Yet at one flash to will and have it done,
To make conception and completion one;
Is not this justly to be deemed a sign
Of more—not less—of that peculiar might
Of forethought—adaptation—infinite
Resources in one faculty combined,
Glimpses of which we call, whene'er they shine
In finite creatures, consciousness and mind?

"But if that primal Cause, as means, employ
Growth—progress—evolution, does indeed
This fact, that other of 'design' destroy?
If Clime or outward Circumstance succeed
In forcing life into its myriad Shapes
Of beauty, fitness, symmetry so rare—
Scarce for an instant candid thought escapes
Of that designing mind its former need.
For who gave Circumstance this genius vast.
So wisely to select, extinguish, spare—
Turn out such wond' rous mechanism at last?
Whence the mould's power to shape each cunning cast?
Chance is no Chance that leads to ends as fine
As boundless Skill or Science could design.
'Law;' 'Method'! these still need the Something higher—
Designing Mind and purpose, still require-
page 55 And should you prove the human race began,
Forsooth! in manlike ape, or apelike man,
(Though why the Ape is not advancing now,
Through ages can no hair-breadth's progress show
To higher aims—let those explain who can!)
Are not Man's soaring spirit and its claim,
Its maker, mystery, miracle, the same
As if in that more vulgar conjuring way
He sprang at one great leap from ruddy day?—
Truly, the rudimentary display
In lowlier forms, of organs—powers—we meet
In loftier—of design gives proof complete:
And were, to show design, the thing designed,
How for our finite could that infinite Mind
A more conclusive, clearer method find,
Than thus to let the self-same pathway lead
To his great ends, whereby he had decreed
Our minds designing, should themselves proceed?
And as a Painter somewhere in the dark
Leaves on his pictures his distinctive mark,
Or, haply, best the authorship to tell
Of earlier works that fond in memory dwell,
Might give to quiring Seraphs as they gaze
Enraptured on the beatific blaze
Of present Deity's immediate rays—
Haloed with every heavenly attribute—
Some favourite form of viol, harp, or lute
His less ambitious art had oft bestowed
On blind old Minstrel begging by the road;
Or peasants revelling, rid of creaking drays
And milk-white ox-teams and their latest load,
Last shaking purple hill of vintage-fruit;
page 56 The grand Designer thus, to prove when done
His works harmonious and the Worker one,
Might thus his works initial—thus impress
Ignobler traces of the lower and less
On loftier works of one Almightiness;
And show how such excess of plastic skill
Can with one method—one material still
Stop at the low or reach the high at will

IV.

"But of that conscious Cause—what next declare?
Must we attribute, by deduction fair.
But just so much of power for good or ill
To this mysterious Being's deed or will
As in the Universe we see displayed?
That were indeed to limit and degrade
All possible Existence to a. range
Lower and narrower (a conclusion strange)
Than what poor finite Mortals can conceive.
In spite of Hume—'tis harder to believe
He who has done so much can not do more,
And all the evil that exists retrieve
With compensating good somewhere in store—-
Than that the fault lies with the human Mind,
Too weak and narrow the true cause to find
Why from the first throughout the universe
The best has not excluded all the worse.
And more preposterous it is to dream
The Universe is an abortive scheme,
Worked by a Power unequal to its task,
Or to complete a plan it cannot mask,
page 57 Than to believe that Power—so great confest,
Spite of apparent flaws we seem to trace
In all its works—is far beyond the best
And mightiest our conceptions can embrace—
And therefore (though so much we take on trust)
Perfectly wise, good, powerful, loving, just."

V.

Well—this fresh faith in God and Good, no more,
For such a soul—so healthy, bold, and bright,
Shrivelled or shrunk in metaphysic blight—
Wherein it flourished greenly as before,
As if from deeper source unreached it came—
Than dewy grass through window-panes descried
Waving unscorched in vivid flickering flame
Reflected from the fire that burns inside.
No! strong and joyous—so he ran,
Bright and joyous like the Sun,
His free course from Boy to Man.
Evil in its thousand forms,
Fester as it might, without,
Failed to drive that heart so stout
To the fiends—Despondence—Doubt;
Deadly Serpents he could shun
Or their writhing coils repress
With that hardy hopefulness
Almost infantine, which strangles
In its cradle crawling worms
So lethal, loathly, So he found,
Though as yet 'twas theory, crowned
Only by experience slight,
Evil—sickness, pain and peril,
All that sinks cold hearts and duller,
page 58 Into icy creeds and sterile,
Like the sardonyx or beryl
Like the prism's crystal angles—
Could but make the pure while light
Of the Good that lurks around
Everywhere and infinite,
Flash in rays of richer colour,
Streaks and stains more exquisite—
Pity—Patience—Self-denial—
Love—Endurance through all trial,
And a thousand virtues—feelings—
Gaining thence their sole revealings.

Sanguine, say you, his temper!—If his blood
Coloured his reasonings 'twas at least as good
As props the atrabiliar doctrines dyed
So darkly on the melancholic side,
We ground on those mudbanks of Doubt alone
In the ebb of the world's heart or our own;
Tangled in shallows of Despondence dark
Only when life is at low-water mark.
Not in our healthiest, our completest state
Do such misgivings our wise joys abate:
And youth's glad trust is worth most mental wealth;
For Confidence is Life—and Hope is health
At least his seemed so—who with pipe renewed
This way his dry soliloquy pursued:
"What! fear we hopeful Confidence is blind;
That the Heart's sunshine needs the clouded Mind!
Must Reason then be spurned from her high seat,
Or that most natural passion held a cheat?
That thirst for deathless life, that high desire
With which all wakened Intellects aspire,
page 59 As the dread Serpent of Eternity
Had bitten them with fangs like those accurst
Once fabled of the dipsas—causing thirst
That quenchless burnt for ever! must this be
Held a mere lure to lead the human race
Through the long ages to some loftier place,
And from the myriad generations spent
And wasted in the wearisome ascent,
Evolve some sample of consummate skill
Whom powers with instincts harmonized should fill—
The clearest Reason and the purest Will?
That perfect race—must it, too, have its day,
Rise, growth, and culmination, and decay,
Then, like its predecessors, pass away?
What! could your great Contriver, then, contrive
No better shift his vast machine to drive,
Only at such a failure to arrive?
Either prevent illusive Hope' suprise,
Or mate the illusion's fathomless disguise
At least impervious to human eyes?
What kind of God would show for one short hour
Such want, yet waste, of Goodness and of Power?
If such the Universe, at once declare
Some Demon-Bungler has been busy there;
Willing and yet too clumsy to deceive,
Creating spirits to aspire and grieve
And die without redemption or reprieve \
Myriads on myriads fleeting like a breath,
Endless vicissitude of Life and Death;
The swarming star-shoals coming—going—whence
Or whither? without object in the dense
Infinitude of futile impotence!
page 60 Nor boots it that the central, primal Cause
Itself might boast of permanence or pause,
Be an eternal Now—a boundless Here—
Nor like his vain creation disappear.
No! any God I would believe or teach
Should be at lowest competent to reach
The good of All through happiness of Each;
Each life progressive, and the last result
In bliss unqualified should all exult;
Perfect as well as permanent should be,
Creation's glorious Crown, and every glad degree.
Nor call God's goodness other than our own,
Different In kind, not in degree alone;
If so, let nothing be denied, averred;
Vote all assertions on the theme absurd,
Give it no thought, nor waste on it a word."

VI.

So, as we said, still high and clear forth stood,
For this inquirer's cheery thought and mood,
God and the great predominance of Good;
So could his heart retain its joyous tone;
Run, over in a worship of its own;
Nor, as the taper's wax in wintry room
Melts, but congeals in winding-sheets of gloom,
Would for a moment feel its fervid flow
Chilled by keen Scepticism's cheerless page,
Or the cold spirit of a critical age
Into ill-omened dreams of hopeless woe.
If, in an argument it e'er befell
His reason baffled, made a feebler stand,
His haughty senses settled it off-hand,
page 61 Perhaps with greater reason—who can tell?
Once when, with pro's and con's eternal tired,
Some good materialist had talked him dead—
"Here try this lovely disputant—I smell
God's goodness in this damask rose," he said;
"O listen to the luscious miracle!
With such convincing fragrance 'tis inspired.
With such an eloquent glow—with hues so rare
And useless—arguments beyond compare,
Its crimson beauty burns upon the air!"

VII.

Yet not for this could he the more incline
To cramping creeds, or any partial shrine;
His heart was but one endless protestation
Against the slightest shackles on free
Thought; Rather than not attain the end he sought,
His strong intolerant love of toleration,
His towering spirit of tyrannous liberty,
Had forced all mental bond-slaves to be free
Then all for Nature! "She alone for me!
"What!" he would cry in his impetuous style,
Climbing, perhaps some mountain-peak the while,

" What need of Temples! All around,!
Through Earth's expanse, through Heaven's profound,
A conscious Spirit, beauty-crowned,
A visible glory breathes and breaks,
And of these mountains, moors and lakes
A Holiest of the Holies makes!
Above—around—where'er you be.
The true Shekinah shining see!
With ever-fuming Incense there
page 62 An Altar burns for praise and prayer!
Whence better to the Lord of Love
Can sorrow waft its will above
Than from some desert-waste forlorn.
Where sadly, of all splendour shorn,
Creeps-in the stilly-dripping Morn?
Why not in deep prostration groan
On God for help when all alone
Where forests make their mighty moan?
Why not the exulting burst of praise
Pour forth where hills their great tops raise
Majestic in the silent blaze
Of Sunset over Ocean's haze?
What! shall the Spirit only draw
Near that unknown and nameless Awe
Where, beauteous though it be, there stands
Some puny work of human hands?
But I, O mystic Might! no less
As thy all-hallowed home will bless
Sublimest Nature's loveliness \
But I will dare, 0 Power Divine!
Revere One true transcendent Shrine
This flashing Universe of Thine!'

VIII.

Enough of this.—Twas time for him to turn
To some profession now, and haply learn
How in the hungry press of smugglers best
The means of life his own right hand may wrest.
But better is the narrow, humble sphere
Which sets from childhood's days before the eyes
Some calling which to climb to were a prize—
page 63 Which, difficult to win, is therefore dear—
Than wider means which leave the cultured lad
Himself to choose what path of life to run—
Let Fancy tell what Duty should be done,
Make worthless what can be for wishing had,
And prove how too much choice is worse than none.
And this felt Ranolf—puzzled sore to name
Church—Physic—Law—which most attractive seemed,
Or rather least repulsive should be deemed.

What marvellous study like the human frame!
What webs and tissues by that living loom
Woven to rarest texture, richest bloom;
What wefts and warps of flexile ducts that wind
In never-tangled courses intertwined;
What mechanisms intricate, exact,
In orderly profusion ranged and packed;
What cunning cordage curiously inlaced;
What delicate engines of supply and waste;
What line concoctions and witch-juices strange
For metamorphosis and magic change;
What subtlest forces balanced and combined;
Leaving poor human skill so far behind,
All Art seems artless, all Invention blind!
But then how saddening, that superb array
No more in healthy and harmonious play,
But festering in disorder and decay!
What grander triumph can Experience show
Than the cool surgeon's, who, in conquering strife
With fell disease, with science-guided knife
Dares open wide the dreadful door of Life
Some perilous moments, and his dexterous feat
Of desperate rescue rapidly complete
page 64 With sure decisive stroke, lest the grim Foe
Should entrance gain and all his work o'erthrow!
"Aye!" thought our student, with a transient glow,
"For object so exalted who denies
The labour of a life were well bestowed?
But then, alas! to that proud power the road
Through fetid chambers of Dissection lies
Whereat a very Ghoul's foul gorge would rise,"

Well, cannot Law awake some genuine spark
Of true ambition—pay for patient toil?
What spectacle more pleasing than to mark
Some Master of inimitable fence
Strike Falsehood to the heart through every foil
And feint of scoundrel skill? mark learning, sense.
And trained acumen flash their sunlike rays
Through all the vile, perversely winding ways
Of vice; illuminate the burrowed maze
And crannies Craft and Cunning know to shape,
And stop their every earthhole of escape!
Is not the Law a mighty mesh to snare
The many-shifted meanness of mankind?
Of cheated Innocence the Champion fair
Against all wrongs by tyrant wealth designed?
Its task, what nobler since the world began,
To sort and settle by right Reason's plan
All deeds Man does or duties owes to Man?
To stamp the drill and discipline of schools
On the rude progeny of fertile Chance
Through Time's still widening wilderness to chase
With the slow hounds of principles and rules
(Though mostly distanced in the dubious race)
page 65 The ever-doubling hares of Circumstance?
Nay! may not even youth's impatience glance
With pitying interest or perhaps with praise-—
At that mole-eyed devotion of old days
Which with such mousing perseverance strove—
Such creeping subtlety and crabbed love,
To fit dead forms to living ages, lacking
Responsive facts that made their sole defence;
In search of reasons, dull inventions racking
Fo aims that had to reason no pretence;
And stretching Ingenuity to cracking,
To reconcile absurdity to sense?—
"Fine theories all!" thought Ranolf—"but that bowl
Of Law—what golden bias guides its roll
We know; how riches crush the right—how long
Perverted learning bolsters up the wrong;
And doubtless as distasteful it must be
To dabble in diseased morality
As physical corruption. Is it true
Besides, that Wrong, like Right, to get its due,
Let Justice fairly judge between the two,
Must have its Advocate—whate'er he feel
To brawl and burst with simulated zeal?—
'Twere odious as, for those sly silent fees,
To cant condolement with high-fed Disease,
Paddle with Luxury's pampered pulse—and steal
Through sham sick rooms with cat-like pace and purr
Sleeking palled Fashion's pleasure-ruffled fur."

Try then the Church, "What Church?" our youngster sighed:
"Is there within the world's circumference wide
A Church or any Temple—in this dearth
Of Faith, with half her heavenly cables snapt,
page 66 Hope's anchor scarcely left—has life or worth
To make its intellectual votaries feel
What in old days they felt; that martyr zeal,
Forgetfulness of present self and rapt
Possession of the Infinite on Earth
That gave a grandeur to the Life it scorned?
But who would brook a church if unadorned
With absolute love of Truth? unless it gave
To Thought the utmost freedom it could crave;
Followed where'er it led, true Reason's light;
Avowed itself to Truth an utter slave,
Truth ever and Truth only—come what might?
And who that loved his own free soul could bear
To work, a digger in the dark gold mine
Of spiritual Truth, or bold researches try
Where scientific Doubts with deadly shine
Like Icebergs freeze, or Faith's bleached fragments lie
Whitening the hot Saharas of Despair—
Handcuffed and fettered with the leaden links
Of dogmas stereotyped—creeds cut-and-dry
And double-dry? heart-paralysed by dread
Of all but what smooth smug 'Society'
That feels by fashion and by custom thinks,
Gives pass and permit to? Whose Soul so dead
As dare assume the glorious character
Of Soul-Deliverer, trembling lest he stir
Some wash-tub of Formality about—
Dumb till it rage its tiny tempest out?
Or who with strangely grovelling Quixotry
Would think to quell the Evil all about
Wita candlesticks and censers?—satisfy
The crave for Infinite Good that cannot die.
With trim and tinselled haber dashery?
page 67 Who, in a fight so fierce in such an age,
With lackored shields and silvered wooden swords
Of ceremonious mummeries would engage?
With pagan posture-tricks such warfare wage
And pantomime, in place on Thespian boards—
Stage-twirlings in the death-tug! Who could dote
In imbecile expectance to assuage
Sharp pangs of soul with prayers run up by rote
In self-complacent trills with pompous throat?
Would any heart remorse had desperate driven.
Or milder sense of 'Sin' abased, on heaven
In accents guided by the gamut call.
And do-re-mi-sol-fa the God of All? "

His youthful scorn would graver minds endorse?—
A priesthood's duty is as great, of course,
Old Truth admitted to apply—enforce,
As to explore the Universe for new
But how much priestly truth is granted true?
Will Science check Truth's still increasing flow,
Whether it drown a drowsing Church or no?
Should not the eye be open?—hand be free
To seize at once whate'er the eye may see
Of nascent truth, and let the dying go?
What, if like Shepherds more than half asleep,
Over the gold-brown gloss a Priesthood keep
Vain watch, while half their sheep a-hungered stray
To succulent green pastures far away?
For Forms of Faith, though beautiful they be,
If e'er the Truths their living spirit, flee,
What are they like but cold and stony flowers,
These geysers boiling up through emerald bowers
In far-off islands he was soon to see,
page 68 Clothe with a sparry spume, that hardens white
Around the perished plant concealed from sight,
But still retains in delicate array
Each form of tiny leaf and tender spray,
Cold, crumbling, colourless—in lifeless pride—
No growing green, no circling sap inside!

IX.

Well, ere his choice was fixed—his father died,
And left the youth with more of gold supplied
Than would for his immediate wants provide.
So to the Sea, his passion all the time,
He took. To remove from clime to clime,
At least would gratify his ruling taste:
At least, he knew upon the watery waste
His buoyant spirits kept in play would be—
His soul unfettered still, his fancy free.