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the pure divine intolerance

      Of that assault of ether and of fire;

      It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,

      Almost with hate repels the light it brings;

      It trembles at its naked power of Truth

      And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

      Inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law,

      It sullies with its mire heaven’s messengers:

      Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence

      It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;

      It meets the sons of God with death and pain.

      A glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene,

      Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,

      Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,

      The cross their payment for the crown they gave,

      Only they leave behind a splendid Name.

      A fire has come and touched men’s hearts and gone;

      A few have caught flame and risen to greater life.

      Too unlike the world she came to help and save,

      Her greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast

      And from its dim chasms welled a dire return,

      A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall.

      To live with grief, to confront death on her road, –

      The mortal’s lot became the Immortal’s share.

      Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,

      Awaiting her ordeal’s hour abode,

      Outcast from her inborn felicity,

      Accepting life’s obscure terrestrial robe,

      Hiding herself even from those she loved,

      The godhead greater by a human fate.

      A dark foreknowledge separated her

      From all of whom she was the star and stay;

      Too great to impart the peril and the pain,

      In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.

      As one who watching over men left blind

      Takes up the load of an unwitting race,

      Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,

      Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,

      Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.

      The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here

      Bringing a noon that seemed like every noon.

      For Nature walks upon her mighty way

      Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;

      Leaving her slain behind she travels on:

      Man only marks and God’s all-seeing eyes.

      Even in this moment of her soul’s despair,

      In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,

      No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;

      She told the secret of her woe to none:

      Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.

      Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;

      Even her humanity was half divine:

      Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,

      Her nature felt all Nature as its own.

      Apart, living within, all lives she bore;

      Aloof, she carried in herself the world:

      Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,

      Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights;

      The universal Mother’s love was hers.

      Against the evil at life’s afflicted roots,

      Her own calamity its private sign,

      Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.

      A solitary mind, a world-wide heart,

      To the lone Immortal’s unshared work she rose.

      At first life grieved not in her burdened breast:

      On the lap of earth’s original somnolence

      Inert, released into forgetfulness,

      Prone it reposed, unconscious on mind’s verge,

      Obtuse and tranquil like the stone and star.

      In a deep cleft of silence twixt two realms

      She lay remote from grief, unsawn by care,

      Nothing recalling of the sorrow here.

      Then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved,

      And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom

      And recognised the close and lingering ache,

      Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place,

      But knew not why it was there nor whence it came.

      The Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn:

      Heavy, unwilling were life’s servitors

      Like workers with no wages of delight;

      Sullen, the torch of sense refused to burn;

      The unassisted brain found not its past.

      Only a vague earth-nature held the frame.

      But now she stirred, her life shared the cosmic load.

      At the summons of her body’s voiceless call

      Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,

      Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,

      Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,

      Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams

      Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.

      Her house of Nature felt an unseen sway,

      Illumined swiftly were life’s darkened rooms,

      And memory’s casements opened on the hours

      And the tired feet of thought approached her doors.

      All came back to her: Earth and Love and Doom,

      The ancient disputants, encircled her

      Like giant figures wrestling in the night:

      The godheads from the dim Inconscient born

      Awoke to struggle and the pang divine,

      And in the shadow of her flaming heart,

      At the sombre centre of the dire debate,

      A guardian of the unconsoled abyss

      Inheriting the long agony of the globe,

      A stone-still figure of high and godlike Pain

      Stared into Space with fixed regardless eyes

      That saw grief’s timeless depths but not life’s goal.

      Afflicted by his harsh divinity,

      Bound to his throne, he waited unappeased

      The daily oblation of her unwept tears.

      All the fierce question of man’s hours relived.

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