A Soul in Prison

"Answered a score of times." Oh, looked for teacher,

is this all you will teach me? I in the dark

reaching my hand for you to help me forth

to the happy sunshine where you stand, "Oh shame,

to be in the dark there, prisoned!" answer you;

"there are ledges somewhere there by which strong feet

might scale to daylight: I would lift you out

with just a touch, but that your need's so slight;

for there are ledges." And I grope and strain,

think I've found footing, and slip baffled back,

slip, maybe, deeper downwards. "Oh, my guide,

I find no ledges: help me: say at least

where they are placed, that I may know to seek."

But you in anger, "Nay, wild wilful soul,

thou will rot in the dark, God's sunshine here

at thy prison's very lip: blame not the guide;

have I not told thee there is footing for thee?"

and so you leave me, and with even tread

guide men along the highway… where, I think,

they need you less.

                    Say 'twas my wanton haste,

or my drowsed languor, my too earthward eyes

watching for hedge flowers, or my too rapt gaze

it the mock sunshine of a sky-born cloud,

that led me, blindling, here: say the black walls

grew round me while I slept, or that I built

with ignorant hands a temple for my soul

to pray in to herself, and that, for want

of a window heavenwards, a loathsome night

of mildew and decay festered upon it,

till the rotted pillars fell and tombed me in:

let it so be my fault, whichever way,

must I be left to die? A murderer

is helped by holy hands to the byway road

that comes at God through shame; a thief is helped;

A harlot; a sleek cozener that prays,

swindles his customers, and gives God thanks,

and so to bed with prayers. Let them repent,

lay let them not repent, you'll say "These souls

may yet be saved, and make a joy in heaven:"

you are thankful you have found them, you whose charge

is healing sin. But I, hundreds as I,

whose sorrow 'tis only to long to know,

and know too plainly that we know not yet,

we are beyond your mercies. You pass by

and note the moral of our fate: 'twill point

a Sunday's sermon… for we have our use,

boggarts to placid Christians in their pews—

"Question not, prove not, lest you grow like these:"

and then you tell them how we daze ourselves

on problems now so many times resolved

that you'll not re-resolve them, how we crave

new proofs, as once an evil race desired

new signs and could not see, for stubbornness,

signs given already.

                    Proofs enough, you say,

quote precedent, "Hear Moses and the prophets."

I know the answer given across the gulf,

but I know too what Christ did: there were proofs,

enough for John and Peter, yet He taught

new proofs and meanings to those doubting two

who sorrowing walked forth to Emmaus

and came back joyful.

                    "They," you'd answer me,

if you owned my instance, "sorrowed in their doubt,

and did not wholly doubt, and loved."

                    Oh, men

who read the age's heart in library books

writ by our fathers, this is how you know it!

Do we say "The old faith is obsolete,

the world wags all the better, let us laugh,"

we of to-day? Why will you not divine

the fathomless sorrow of doubt? why not divine

the yearning to be lost from it in love?

And who doubts wholly? That were not to doubt.

Doubt's to be ignorant, not to deny:

doubt's to be wistful after perfect faith.

You will not think that: you come not to us

to ask of us, who know doubt, what doubt is,

but one by one you pass the echoes on,

each of his own pulpit, each of all the pulpits,

and in the swelling sound can never catch

the tremulous voice of doubt that wails in the cold:

you make sham thunder for it, to outpeal

with your own better thunders.

                    You wise man

and worthy, utter honest in your will,

I love you and I trust you: so I thought

"Here's one whose love keeps measure to belief

with onward vigorous feet, one quick of sight

to catch the clue in scholars' puzzle-knots,

deft to unweave the coil to one straight thread,

one strong to grapple vague Protean faith

and keep her to his heart in one fixed shape

and living; he comes forward in his strength,

as to a battlefield to answer challenge,

as in a storm to buffet with the waves

for shipwrecked men clutching the frothy crests

and sinking; he is stalwart on my side—

mine, who, untrained and weaponless, have warred

at the powers of unbelief, and am borne down—

mine, who am struggling in the sea for breath."

I looked to you as the sick man in his pain

looks to the doctor whose sharp medicines

have the taste of health behind them, looked to you

for—well, for a boon different from this.

My doctor tells me "Why, quite long ago

they knew your fever (or one very like);

and they knew remedies, you'll find them named

in many ancient writers, let those serve:"

and "Thick on the commons, by the daily roads,

the herbs are growing that give instant strength

to palsied limbs like yours, clear such filmed sight:

you need but eyes to spy them, hands to uproot,

that's all."

All, truly.

                    Strong accustomed eyes,

strong tutored hands, see for me, reach for me!

But there's a cry like mine rings through the world,

and no help comes. And with slow severing rasp

at our very heart-roots the toothed question grates,

"Do these, who know most, not know anything?"

Oh, teachers, will you teach us? Growing, growing,

like the great river made of little brooks,

our once unrest swells to a smooth despair:

stop us those little brooks; you say you can.

Oh, teachers, teach us, you who have been taught;

learn for us, you who have learned how to learn:

we, jostling, jostled, through the market world

where our work lies, lack breathing space, lack calm,

lack skill, lack tools, lack heart, lack everything,

for your work of the studies. Such roughed minds

we bring to it as when the ploughman tries

his hard unpliant fingers at the pen;

so toil and smudge, then put the blurred scrawl by,

unfinished, till next holiday comes round.

Thus maybe I shall die and the blurred scrawl

be still unfinished, where I try to write

some clear belief, enough to get by heart.

Die still in the dark! Die having lived in the dark!

there's a sort of creeping horror thinking that.

'Tis hard too, for I yearned for light, grew dazed,

not by my sight's unuse and choice of gloom,

but by too bold a gaze at the sun,

thinking to apprehend his perfect light

not darkly through a glass.

                    Too bold, too bold.

Would I had been appeased with the earth's wont

of helpful daily sunbeams bringing down

only so much heaven's light as may be borne—

heaven's light enough for many a better man

to see his God by. Well, but it is done:

never in any day shall I now be

as if I had not gazed and seen strange lights

swim amid darknesses against the sky.

Never: and, when I dream as if I saw,

'tis dreaming of the sun, and, when I yearn

in agony to see, still do I yearn,

not for the sight I had in happier days,

but for the eagle's strong gaze at the sun.

Ah, well! that's after death, if all be true.

Nay, but for me, never, if all be true:

I love not God, because I know Him not,

I do but long to love Him—long and long

with an ineffable great pain of void;

I cannot say I love Him: that not said,

they of the creeds all tell me I am barred

from the very hope of knowing.

                    Maybe so;

for daily I know less. 'Tis the old tale

of men lost in the mouldy vaults of mines

or dank crypt cemeteries—lamp puffed out,

guides, comrades, out of hearing, on and on

groping and pushing he makes farther way

from his goal of open daylight. Best to wait

till some one come to seek him. But the strain

of such a patience!—and "If no one comes!"

He cannot wait.

                    If one could hear a voice,

"Not yet, not yet: myself have still to find

what way to guide you forth, but I seek well,

I have the lamp you lack, I have a chart:

not yet; but hope." So might one strongly bear

through the long night, attend with hearkening breath

for the next word, stir not but as it bade.

Who will so cry to us?

                    Or is it true

you could come to us, guide us, but you will not?

You say it, and not we, teachers of faith;

must we believe you? Shall we not more think

our doubt is consciousness of ignorance,

your faith unconsciousness of ignorance;

so you know less than we?

                    My author here,

honest at heart, but has your mind a warp—

the zealot's warp, who takes believed for proved;

the disciple's warp, who takes all heard for proved;

the teacher's warp, who takes all taught for proved,

and cannot think "I know not"? Do you move

one stumbling-block that bars out souls from Heaven?

your back to it, you say, "I see no stone;

'tis a fool's dream, an enemy's false tale

to hinder passengers." And I who lean

broken against the stone?

                    Well, learned man,

I thank you for your book. 'Tis eloquent,

'tis subtle, resolute; I like the roar

of the big battling phrases, like those frets

of hissing irony—a book to read.

It helps one too—a sort of evidence—

to see so strong a mind so strongly clasped

to creeds whose truth one hopes. What would I more?

'tis a dark world, and no man lights another:

'tis a dark world, and no man sees so plain

as he believes he sees… excepting those

who are mere blind and know it.

                    Here's a man

thinks his eyes' stretch can plainly scan out God,

and cannot plainly scan his neighbour's face—

he'll make you a hobgoblin, hoofs and horns,

of a poor cripple shivering at his door

begging a bit of food.

                    We get no food;

stones, stones: but then he but half sees, he trows

'tis honest bread he gives us.

                    A blind world.

Light! light! oh God, whose other name is Light,

if—

                    Ay, ay, always if: thought's cursed with ifs.

Well, where's my book?—No "ifs" in that, I think;

a readable shrewd book; 'twill win the critics.