Pomegranates from an English Garden

Amid your veritable muck,
More than the grasshoppers would truck,
For yours, their passionate life away,
That spends itself in leaps all day
To reach the sun, you want the eyes
To see, as they the wings to rise
And match the noble hearts of them!
Thus the contemner we contemn, —
And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward
Its stroke off, caught upon our guard,
– Not struck enough to overturn
Our faith, but shake it – make us learn
What I began with, and, I wis,
End, having proved, – how hard it is
To be a Christian!

His friend now reproaches him with the thanklessness of the task he is undertaking, in trying to so little purpose to disturb the peace of a man who has no such high-flown views of duty; whereupon he relates to him a wonderful experience he had on Easter-morn three years before: —

XIV

I commence
By trying to inform you, whence
It comes that every Easter-night
As now, I sit up, watch, till light,
Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs,
Give, through my window-pane, grey proofs
That Easter-day is breaking slow.
On such a night three years ago,
It chanced that I had cause to cross
The common, where the chapel was,
Our friend spoke of, the other day —
You’ve not forgotten, I dare say.
I fell to musing of the time
So close, the blessed matin-prime
All hearts leap up at, in some guise —
One could not well do otherwise.
Insensibly my thoughts were bent
Toward the main point; I overwent
Much the same ground of reasoning
As you and I just now. One thing
Remained, however – one that tasked
My soul to answer; and I asked,
Fairly and frankly, what might be
That History, that Faith, to me
– Me there – not me in some domain
Built up and peopled by my brain,
Weighing its merits as one weighs
Mere theories for blame or praise,
– The kingcraft of the Lucumons,
Or Fourier’s scheme, its pros and cons, —
But my faith there, or none at all.
“How were my case, now, did I fall
“Dead here, this minute – should I lie
“Faithful or faithless?”

To this solemn question a friendly answer seems to come from Common Sense, assuring him that all would be right; for, though his ship might not sail very grandly into the eternal haven, it was enough if, in whatever state of wreck, it arrived at all; which leads him to utter the deepest wish and expectation of his heart: —

Would the ship reach home!
I wish indeed “God’s kingdom come – ”
The day when I shall see appear
His bidding, as my duty, clear
From doubt! And it shall dawn, that day,
Some future season; Easter may
Prove, not impossibly, the time —
Yes, that were striking – fates would chime
So aptly! Easter-morn, to bring
The Judgment! – deeper in the spring
Than now, however, when there’s snow
Capping the hills; for earth must show
All signs of meaning to pursue
Her tasks as she was wont to do
– The skylark, taken by surprise
As we ourselves, shall recognise
Sudden the end. For suddenly
It comes; the dreadfulness must be
In that; all warrants the belief —
“At night it cometh like a thief,”
I fancy why the trumpet blows;
– Plainly, to wake one. From repose
We shall start up, at last awake
From life, that insane dream we take
For waking now.

* * * * *

The next stanza gives the famous description of the fiery aurora, when even “the south firmament with north-fire did its wings refledge!” (Compare description of lunar rainbow in “Christmas-Eve.”) He feels sure that his wish is realized, and the Judgment Day has come!

XV

* * * * *

I found
Suddenly all the midnight round
One fire. The dome of heaven had stood
As made up of a multitude
Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack
Of ripples infinite and black,
From sky to sky. Sudden there went,
Like horror and astonishment,
A fierce vindictive scribble of red