Christmas Eve
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I
Out of the little chapel I burst Into the fresh night-air again.Five minutes full, I waited first In the doorway, to escape the rainThat drove in gusts down the common's centre At the edge of which the chapel stands,Before I plucked up heart to enter. Heaven knows how many sorts of handsReached past me, groping for the latchOf the inner door that hung on catchMore obstinate the more they fumbled, Till, giving way at last with a scoldOf the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled One sheep more to the rest in fold,And left me irresolute, standing sentryIn the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,Six feet long by three feet wide,Partitioned off from the vast inside— I blocked up half of it at least.No remedy; the rain kept driving. They eyed me much as some wild beast,That congregation, still arriving,Some of them by the main road, whiteA long way past me into the night,Skirting the common, then diverging;Not a few suddenly emergingFrom the common's self thro' the paling-gaps—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,Where the road stops short with its safeguard borderOf lamps, as tired of such disorder;—But the most turned in yet more abruptly From a certain squalid knot of alleys,Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, Which now the little chapel ralliesAnd leads into day again,—its priestlinessLending itself to hide their beastlinessSo cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),And putting so cheery a whitewashed face onThose neophytes too much in lack of it, That, where you cross the common as I did, And meet the party thus presided,"Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,They front you as little disconcertedAs, bound for the hills, her fate averted,And her wicked people made to mind him,Lot might have marched with Gomorrahbehind him.II
Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,In came the flock: the fat weary woman,Panting and bewildered, down-clapping Her umbrella with a mighty report,Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones; then, with snort,Like a startled horse, at the interloper(Who humbly knew himself improper,But could not shrink up small enough)—Round to the door, and in,—the gruffHinge's invariable scoldMaking my very blood run cold.Prompt in the wake of her, up-patteredOn broken clogs, the many-tatteredLittle old-faced peaking sister-turned-motherOf the sickly babe she tried to smotherSomehow up, with its spotted face,From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;She too must stop, wring the poor ends dryOf a draggled shawl, and add therebyHer tribute to the door-mat, soppingAlready from my own clothes' dropping,Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on: Then, stooping down to take off her pattens, She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,Planted together before her breastAnd its babe, as good as a lance in rest. Close on her heels, the dingy satinsOf a female something, past me flitted, With lips as much too white, as a streak Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;And it seemed the very door-hinge pitiedAll that was left of a woman once,Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief,With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,And eyelids screwed together tight,Led himself in by some inner light.And, except from him, from each that entered, I got the same interrogation—"What, you the alien, you have ventured "To take with us, the elect, your station?"A carer for none of it, a Gallio!"— Thus, plain as print, I read the glanceAt a common prey, in each countenance As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder, The draught, it always sent in shutting,Made the flame of the single tallow candleIn the cracked square lantern I stood under, Shoot its blue lip at me, rebuttingAs it were, the luckless cause of scandal:I verily fancied the zealous light(In the chapel's secret, too!) for spiteWould shudder itself clean off the wick,With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.1There was no standing it much longer."Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,"This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor"When the weather sends you a chance visitor?"You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,"And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!"But still, despite the pretty perfection "To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,"And, taking God's word under wise protection, "Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,"And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares,— "Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,"If I should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'— "See if the best of you bars me my ration!"I prefer, if you please, for my expounder"Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;"Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest "Supposing I don the marriage vestiment: "So shut your mouth and open your Testament,"And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad With wizened face in want of soap, And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,(After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,And so avoid disturbing the preacher)—Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewiseAt the shutting door, and entered likewise,Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, And found myself in full conventicle,—To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, Which, calling its flock to their special clover, Found all assembled and one sheep over,Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.III
I very soon had enough of it. The hot smell and the human noises,And my neighbour's coat, the greasy cuff of it, Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, To meet his audience's avidity.You needed not the wit of the Sibyl To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling: No sooner our friend had got an inklingOf treasure hid in the Holy Bible,(Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,How death, at unawares, might duck himDeeper than the grave, and quenchThe gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the book of books to pieces:And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,—So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt: Nay, had but a single face of my neighbours Appeared to suspect that the preacher's laboursWere help which the world could be saved without,'Tis odds but I might have borne in quietA qualm or two at my spiritual diet,Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:But the flock sat on, divinely flustered, Sniffing, methought, its dew of HermonWith such content in every snuffle,As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.My old fat woman purred with pleasure, And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,While she, to his periods keeping measure, Maternally devoured the pastor.The man with the handkerchief untied it,Showed us a horrible wen inside it,Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,And rocked himself as the woman was doing.The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it; So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple, "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"I flung out of the little chapel.IV
There was a lull in the rain, a lull In the wind too; the moon was risen,And would have shone out pure and full, But for the ramparted cloud-prison,Block on block built up in the West,For what purpose the wind knows best,Who changes his mind continually.And the empty other half of the skySeemed in its silence as if it knewWhat, any moment, might look throughA chance gap in that fortress massy:— Through its fissures you got hints Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassyBurning to yellow, and whitest yellow,Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,All a-simmer with intense strainTo let her through,—then blank again,At the hope of her appearance failing.Just by the chapel, a break in the railingShows a narrow path directly across;'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss—Besides, you go gently all the way uphill. I stooped under and soon felt better;My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.My mind was full of the scene I had left, That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, —How this outside was pure and different!The sermon, now—what a mingled weftOf good and ill! Were either less, Its fellow had coloured the whole distinctly;But alas for the excellent earnestness, And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,However to pastor and flock's contentment!Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes, With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,Till how could you know them, grown double their size In the natural fog of the good man's mind,Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,Haloed about with the common's damps?Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover; The zeal was good, and the aspiration;And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, Pharaoh received no demonstration,By his Baker's dream of Basket Three,Of the doctrine of the Trinity,—Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,Apparently his hearers relished itWith so unfeigned a gust—who knows ifThey did not prefer our friend to Joseph?But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them! These people have really felt, no doubt,A something, the motion they style the Call of them; And this is their method of bringing about,By a mechanism of words and tones,(So many texts in so many groans)A sort of reviving and reproducing, More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)The mood itself, which strengthens by using; And how that happens, I understand well.A tune was born in my head last week,Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;And when, next week, I take it back again,My head will sing to the engine's clack again, While it only makes my neighbour's haunches stir,—Finding no dormant musical sproutIn him, as in me, to be jolted out.'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;He gets no more from the railway's preaching Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?V
But wherefore be harsh on a single case? After how many modes, this Christmas Eve,Does the self-same weary thing take place? The same endeavour to make you believe,And with much the same effect, no more: Each method abundantly convincing,As I say, to those convinced before, But scarce to be swallowed without wincingBy the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,I have my own church equally:And in this church my faith sprang first! (I said, as I reached the rising ground,And the wind began again, with a burst Of rain in my face, and a glad reboundFrom the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,I entered his church-door, nature leading me)—In youth I look to these very skies,And probing their immensities,I found God there, his visible power; Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense Of the power, an equal evidenceThat his love, there too, was the nobler dower.For the loving worm within its clod,Were diviner than a loveless godAmid his worlds, I will dare to say. You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought: But also, God, whose pleasure broughtMan into being, stands away As it were a handbreadth off, to giveRoom for the newly-made to live,And look at him from a place apart,And use his gifts of brain and heart,Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.Who speaks of man, then, must not severMan's very elements from man,Saying, "But all is God's"—whose planWas to create man and then leave himAble, his own word saith, to grieve himBut able to glorify him too,As a mere machine could never do,That prayed or praised, all unawareOf its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,Made perfect as a thing of course.Man, therefore, stands on his own stockOf love and power as a pin-point rock:And, looking to God who ordained divorceOf the rock from his boundless continent,Sees, in his power made evident,Only excess by a million-foldO'er the power God gave man in the mould.For, note: man's hand, first formed to carryA few pounds' weight, when taught to marryIts strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain, —Advancing in power by one degree; And why count steps through eternity?But love is the ever-springing fountain:Man may enlarge or narrow his bedFor the water's play, but the water-head—How can he multiply or reduce it? As easy create it, as cause it to cease;He may profit by it, or abuse it, But 'tis not a thing to bear increaseAs power does: be love less or more In the heart of man, he keeps it shut Or opes it wide, as he pleases, butLove's sum remains what it was before.So, gazing up, in my youth, at loveAs seen through power, ever aboveAll modes which make it manifest,My soul brought all to a single test—That he, the Eternal First and Last,Who, in his power, had so surpassedAll man conceives of what is might,—Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,—Would prove as infinitely good;Would never, (my soul understood,)With power to work all love desires,Bestow e'en less than man requires;That he who endlessly was teaching,Above my spirit's utmost reaching,What love can do in the leaf or stone,(So that to master this alone,This done in the stone or leaf for me,I must go on learning endlessly)Would never need that I, in turn, Should point him out defect unheeded,And show that God had yet to learn What the meanest human creature needed,—Not life, to wit, for a few short years,Tracking his way through doubts and fears,While the stupid earth on which I stay Suffers no change, but passive adds Its myriad years to myriads,Though I, he gave it to, decay,Seeing death come and choose about me,And my dearest ones depart without me.No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it. Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it,And I shall behold thee, face to face,O God, and in thy light retraceHow in all I loved here, still wast thou!Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,I shall find as able to satiate The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonderThou art able to quicken and sublimate, With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,And glory in thee for, as I gazeThus, thus! Oh, let men keep their waysOf seeking thee in a narrow shrine—Be this my way! And this is mine!VI
For lo, what think you? suddenlyThe rain and the wind ceased, and the skyReceived at once the full fruitionOf the moon's consummate apparition.The black cloud-barricade was riven,Ruined beneath her feet, and drivenDeep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay readyFor a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them and stood steady.'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,From heaven to heaven extending, perfectAs the mother-moon's self, full in face.It rose, distinctly at the base With its seven proper colours chorded,Which still, in the rising, were compressed,Until at last they coalesced, And supreme the spectral creature lordedIn a triumph of whitest white,—Above which intervened the night.But above night too, like only the next, The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,Another rainbow rose, a mightier,Fainter, flushier and flightier,—Rapture dying along its verge.Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,Whose, from the straining topmost dark,On to the keystone of that arc?VII
This sight was shown me, there and then,—Me, out of a world of men,Singled forth, as the chance might hapTo another if, in a thunderclapWhere I heard noise and you saw flame,Some one man knew God called his name.For me, I think I said, "Appear!"Good were it to be ever here."If thou wilt, let me build to thee"Service-tabernacles three,"Where, forever in thy presence,"In ecstatic acquiescence,"Far alike from thriftless learning"And ignorance's undiscerning,"I may worship and remain!" Thus at the show above me, gazingWith upturned eyes, I felt my brain Glutted with the glory, blazingThroughout its whole mass, over and underUntil at length it burst asunderAnd out of it bodily there streamed,The too-much glory, as it seemed,Passing from out me to the ground,Then palely serpentining roundInto the dark with mazy error.VIII
All at once I looked up with terror.He was there.He himself with his human air.On the narrow pathway, just before.I saw the back of him, no more—He had left the chapel, then, as I.I forgot all about the sky.No face: only the sightOf a sweepy garment, vast and white,With a hem that I could recognize.I felt terror, no surprise;My mind filled with the cataract,At one bound of the mighty fact."I remember, he did say "Doubtless that, to this world's end,"Where two or three should meet and pray, "He would be in their midst, their friend;"Certainly he was there with them!" And my pulses leaped for joy Of the golden thought without alloy,Then I saw his very vesture's hem.Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;And I hastened, cried out while I pressedTo the salvation of the vest,"But not so, Lord! It cannot be"That thou, indeed, art leaving me—"Me, that have despised thy friends!"Did my heart make no amends?"Thou art the love of God—above"His power, didst hear me place his love,"And that was leaving the world for thee."Therefore thou must not turn from me"As I had chosen the other part!"Folly and pride o'ercame my heart."Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;"Still, it should be our very best."I thought it best that thou, the spirit, "Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,"And in beauty, as even we require it— "Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,"I left but now, as scarcely fitted"For thee: I knew not what I pitied."But, all I felt there, right or wrong,"What is it to thee, who curest sinning?"Am I not weak as thou art strong? "I have looked to thee from the beginning,"Straight up to thee through all the world"Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled"To nothingness on either side:"And since the time thou wast descried,"Spite of the weak heart, so have I"Lived ever, and so fain would die,"Living and dying, thee before!"But if thou leavest me–"IX
Less or more,I suppose that I spoke thus.When,—have mercy, Lord, on us!The whole face turned upon me full. And I spread myself beneath it, As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe itIn the cleansing sun, his wool,—Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some denied, discoloured web—So lay I, saturate with brightness. And when the flood appeared to ebb,Lo, I was walking, light and 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.Darkness and cold were cloven, as throughI passed, upborne yet walking too.And I turned to myself at intervals,—"So he said, so it befalls."God who registers the cup "Of mere cold water, for his sake"To a disciple rendered up, "Disdains not his own thirst to slake"At the poorest love was ever offered:"And because my heart I proffered,"With true love trembling at the brim,"He suffers me to follow him"For ever, my own way,—dispensed"From seeking to be influenced"By all the less immediate ways "That earth, in worships manifold,"Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise, "The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"X
And so we crossed the world and stopped. For where am I, in city or plain, Since I am 'ware of the world again?And what is this that rises proppedWith pillars of prodigious girth?Is it really on the earth,This miraculous Dome of God?Has the angel's measuring-rodWhich numbered cubits, gem from gem,'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,Meted it out,—and what he meted,Have the sons of men completed?—Binding, ever as he bade,Columns in the colonnadeWith arms wide open to embraceThe entry of the human raceTo the breast of… what is it, yon building,Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,With marble for brick, and stones of priceFor garniture of the edifice?Now I see; it is no dream;It stands there and it does not seem;For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,And thus I have read of it in booksOften in England, leagues away,And wondered how these fountains play,Growing up eternallyEach to a musical water-tree,Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,To the granite layers underneath.Liar and dreamer in your teeth!I, the sinner that speak to you,Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knewBoth this and more. For see, for see,The dark is rent, mine eye is freeTo pierce the crust of the outer wall,And I view inside, and all there, all,As the swarming hollow of a hive,The whole Basilica alive!Men in the chancel, body and nave,Men on the pillars' architrave,Men on the statues, men on the tombsWith popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,All famishing in expectationOf the main-altar's consummation.For see, for see, the rapturous momentApproaches, and earth's best endowmentBlends with heaven's; the taper-firesPant up, the winding brazen spiresHeave loftier yet the baldachin;2The incense-gaspings, long kept in,Suspire in clouds; the organ blatantHolds his breath and grovels latent,As if God's hushing finger grazed him,(Like Behemoth when he praised him)At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,Quick cold drops of terror sprinklingOn the sudden pavement strewedWith faces of the multitude.Earth breaks up, time drops away,In flows heaven, with its new dayOf endless life, when He who trod,Very man and very God,This earth in weakness, shame and pain,Dying the death whose signs remainUp yonder on the accursed tree,—Shall come again, no more to beOf captivity the thrall,But the one God, All in all,King of kings, Lord of lords,As His servant John received the words,"I died, and live for evermore!"XI
Yet I was left outside the door."Why sit I here on the threshold-stone"Left till He return, alone"Save for the garment's extreme fold"Abandoned still to bless my hold?"My reason, to my doubt, replied,As if a book were opened wide,And at a certain page I tracedEvery record undefaced,Added by successive years,—The harvestings of truth's stray earsSingly gleaned, and in one sheafBound together for belief.Yes, I said—that he will goAnd sit with these in turn, I know.Their faith's heart beats, though her head swimsToo giddily to guide her limbs,Disabled by their palsy-strokeFrom propping mine. Though Rome's gross yokeDrops off, no more to be endured,Her teaching is not so obscuredBy errors and perversities,That no truth shines athwart the lies:And he, whose eye detects a sparkEven where, to man's, the whole seems dark,May well see flame where each beholderAcknowledges the embers smoulder.But I, a mere man, fear to quitThe clue God gave me as most fitTo guide my footsteps through life's maze,Because himself discerns all waysOpen to reach him: I, a manAble to mark where faith beganTo swerve aside, till from its summitJudgment drops her damning plummet,Pronouncing such a fatal spaceDeparted from the founder's base:He will not bid me enter too,But rather sit, as now I do,Awaiting his return outside.—'Twas thus my reason straight repliedAnd joyously I turned, and pressedThe garment's skirt upon my breast,Until, afresh its light suffusing me,My heart cried—What has been abusing meThat I should wait here lonely and coldly,Instead of rising, entering boldly,Baring truth's face, and letting driftHer veils of lies as they choose to shift?Do these men praise him? I will raiseMy voice up to their point of praise!I see the error; but aboveThe scope of error, see the love.—Oh, love of those first Christian days!—Fanned so soon into a blaze,From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,That the antique sovereign IntellectWhich then sat ruling in the world,Like a change in dreams, was hurledFrom the throne he reigned upon:You looked up and he was gone.Gone, his glory of the pen!—Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,Bade her scribes abhor the trickOf poetry and rhetoric,And exult with hearts set free,In blessed imbecilityScrawled, perchance, on some torn sheetLeaving Sallust incompleteGone, his pride of sculptor, painter!—Love, while able to acquaint herWhile the thousand statues yetFresh from chisel, pictures wetFrom brush, she saw on every side,Chose rather with an infant's prideTo frame those portents which impartSuch unction to true Christian Art.Gone, music too! The air was stirredBy happy wings: Terpander's3 bird(That, when the cold came, fled away)Would tarry not the wintry day,—As more-enduring sculpture must,Till filthy saints rebuked the gustWith which they chanced to get a sightOf some dear naked AphroditeThey glanced a thought above the toes of,By breaking zealously her nose off.Love, surely, from that music's lingering,Might have filched her organ-fingering,Nor chosen rather to set prayingsTo hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.Love was the startling thing, the new:Love was the all-sufficient too;And seeing that, you see the rest:As a babe can find its mother's breastAs well in darkness as in light,Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.True, the world's eyes are open now:—Less need for me to disallowSome few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,Peevish as ever to be suckled,Lulled by the same old baby-prattleWith intermixture of the rattle,When she would have them creep, stand steadyUpon their feet, or walk already,Not to speak of trying to climb.I will be wise another time,And not desire a wall between us, When next I see a church-roof coverSo many species of one genus, All with foreheads bearing loverWritten above the earnest eyes of them; All with breasts that beat for beauty,Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them, In noble daring, steadfast duty,The heroic in passion, or in action,—Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,To the mere outside of human creatures,Mere perfect form and faultless features.What? with all Rome here, whence to levy Such contributions to their appetite,With women and men in a gorgeous bevy, They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tightOn their southern eyes, restrained from feedingOn the glories of their ancient reading,On the beauties of their modern singing,On the wonders of the builder's bringing,On the majesties of Art around them,— And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,When faith has at last united and bound them, They offer up to God for a present?Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,— And, only taking the act in referenceTo the other recipients who might have allowed it, I will rejoice that God had the preference.