Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 25.djvu/18

10 Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, have felt That perfect disenthralment which is God; Nor know I which to hold worst enemy,— Him who on speculation's windy waste Would turn me loose, stript of the raiment warm By Faith contrived against our nakedness, Or him who, cruel-kind, would fain obscure, With painted saints and paraphrase of God, The soul's east-window of divine surprise. Where others worship, I but look and long; For, though not recreant to my fathers' faith, Its forms to me are weariness, and most That drony vacuum of compulsory prayer, Still pumping phrases for the ineffable, Though all the valves of memory gasp and wheeze. Words that have drawn transcendent meanings up From the best passion of all bygone time, Steeped through with tears of triumph and remorse, Sweet with all sainthood, cleansed in martyr-fires, Can they, so consecrate and so inspired, By repetition wane to vexing wind? Alas! we cannot draw habitual breath In the thin air of life's supremer heights, We cannot make each meal a sacrament, Nor with our tailors be immortal souls,— We men, too conscious of earth's comedy, Who see two sides, with our posed selves debate, And only on great days can be sublime! Let us be thankful when, as I do here, We can read Bethel on a pile of stones, And, seeing where God has been, trust in Him.

Brave Peter Fischer there in Nuremberg, Moulding Saint Sebald's miracles in bronze, Put saint and stander-by in that quaint garb Familiar to him in his daily walk, Not doubting God could grant a miracle Then and in Nuremberg, if so He would; But never artist for three hundred years Hath dared the contradiction ludicrous Of supernatural in modern clothes. Say it is drift, not progress, none the less, With the old sextant of the fathers' creed, We shape our courses by new-risen stars, And, still lip-loyal to what once was truth, Smuggle new meanings under ancient names, Unconscious perverts of the Jesuit, Time. Change is the mask that all Continuance wears To keep us youngsters harmlessly amused; Meanwhile some ailing or more watchful child, Sitting apart, sees the old eyes gleam out, Stern, and yet soft with humorous pity too.