Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind, With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind;Must be obsequious to the body's powers, Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways;Must do obeisance to the days, And wait the little pleasure of the hours;Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be Captive in statuted minority!
So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee.
So still the ruler by the ruled takes rule, And wisdom weaves itself i' the loom o' the fool.
The splendent sun no splendour can display, Till on gross things he dash his broken ray, From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy spray.
Did not obstruction's vessel hem it in, Force were not force, would spill itself in vain We know the Titan by his champed chain.
Stay is heat's cradle, it is rocked therein, And by check's hand is burnished into light;If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright?
God's Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin;Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well, Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell.
The heavens decree All power fulfil itself as soul in thee.
For supreme Spirit subject was to clay, And Law from its own servants learned a law, And Light besought a lamp unto its way, And Awe was reined in awe, At one small house of Nazareth;And Golgotha Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath, And Life do homage for its crown to death.
So is all power, as soul in thee increased!
But, knowing this, in knowledge's despite I fret against the law severe that stains Thy spirit with eclipse;When--as a nymph's carven head sweet water drips, For others oozing so the cool delight Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone -Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains.
Memnonian lips!
Smitten with singing from thy mother's east, And murmurous with music not their own:
Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone A passionless statue stands.
Oh, pardon, innocent one!
Pardon at thine unconscious hands!
"Murmurous with music not their own," I say?
And in that saying how do I missay, When from the common sands Of poorest common speech of common day Thine accents sift the golden musics out!