Christmas Eve

The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
Received at once the full fruition
Of the moon's consummate apparition.
The black cloud-barricade was riven,
Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,
North and South and East lay ready
For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,
Sprang across them and stood steady.
'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
As 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 lorded
In 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 hap
To another if, in a thunderclap
Where 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, gazing
With upturned eyes, I felt my brain
Glutted with the glory, blazing
Throughout its whole mass, over and under
Until at length it burst asunder
And out of it bodily there streamed,
The too-much glory, as it seemed,
Passing from out me to the ground,
Then palely serpentining round
Into 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 sight
Of 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 pressed
To 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—