THE SUMMIT TRACK[1]
Come, climb with me, my soul, and let us change
This City of the plain for yon hill-range
Builded along the Blue.
In the bright shops the sunlight pales,
In the full street the wing’d air fails,
And we are limited too,
We are prevented by houses, and men and women,
A clearer vision we want, a wider view—
Up let us climb!
. . . .Ah, blessed Green-and-Blue
Already see, invading! where
These happier hill-side dwellings share
With rock and turf this livelier air
Blushing with peach-blossom, and blent
With skylark-song, and wattle-scent.
Here is brave sun to spare!
And yonder full-flower’d gorse-lines up the height
Point long gold fingers to yet more air and light. . .
While the long pine-plantations point us down,
And frame, between their dusky branches, bright
Vignettes and panel-pictures of the town. . . .
The town! so seen, beneath ascending skies
And deep in bloomy mist, how beautiful it lies!
O’er rock and tussock, up the steep and on!. . . .
The gardens go, the last red roof has gone;
Only the vault of Heaven, the hills’ bare brow,
And space, and silence now!
Far, far below, the whole spread city lies,
Breathing, enhalo’d; the vast plain spreads round
Its amplitude of vaguely-pattern’d ground,
And far across, into a world of skies,
Leaps the great, silver-white,
Angelic Presence bright
Of the long Alps. . . .till city alike and plain,
And marching mountain-chain
Sweep to yon wide way-out, of sapphire sea. . . .
Ah! here is liberty;
Here can the gaze go free!
And, gazing with it, here
May heart and mind see clear.
Far now below lie all Humanity’s
Close claims; and that which more than human is
In us, awakes! and deeply grows aware
Of that dear Other-One, with whom we share
This Earth-life—’neath her robes of green and blue
Our fellow-dust, our fellow-spirit too!. . . .
Nature, Man’s Sister! whose activities,
Though guided not, like his,
Down nerve and muscle from desire and thought,
Have yet this bright and living splendour wrought;
Whose body is but this grass,
Yonder cold snows, waters that witless roll,
Clouds that uncaring pass:—
But yet whose life, like his, is very Life;
Whose soul is very Soul!
Yes, yes! For though, as Man we may not guess
How flow those currents of her consciousness,
As Spirit, we sense them! What, must flesh and blood
Be Soul’s one vesture? who would have it so
Not yet hath understood!
But I, have I not felt, do not I know?
Nature! my life-long comrade close and true,
My Angel with the great wings green-and-blue,
O, since the darken’d childhood long ago,
When to the little lonely spirit near
Thine answering spirit drew,
Laid mother-arms about the shivering heart,
Smiled in the sad eyes, in the hungering ear
Murmur’d the home-word, Beauty—thou and I,
Thank God, dwell never apart!
What human touch more intimate, more dear?
Who brings me else thine exquisite release:
From passion and pettiness to faith and peace?
Who can so flood self out with Loveliness,
And to all sorrows point the great Redress,
Perfection perfect still? I lay
My hand here in the grass, I press
My cheek against this cold, hard rock—
And lo, thy being’s answering stress
Thrills through me with the old sweet shock,
And to my happy, happy eyes
The tears of love and rapture rise,
And longing! O my Glory, O my Guide!
Could I but serve thee as thou savest me!
Could I but prove, could I but make men see
The earthly and the heavenly company,
The comforter, the comrade, given in thee,
The shining Sister ever at their side!
What need? This outlook shows it! Look, complete
In little, here’s all the Earth-life at my feet....
Nature in her unveiléd majesty,
Simple, superb and sure;
Glad colours, mighty forms, of land, sky, sea:
Man in her arm—the city! sunk in mist,
Blinded with breaths impure
Incident to his subsoil—wrong and pain,
Hate, ignorance, greed of gain....
And yet, as yonder vapours show,
Sun-shot at noon, an opal glow,
And paint the plain into a lawn
Of roses and violets at dawn:—
As yonder chimney-smoke uproll’d
Crowns it with curls of silver and gold,
And leaguéd lamps at black of night
Strew it with galaxies of light:—
So with his varying fun and feud,
His gloom and gleam of circumstance,
Fortunes and fancies many-hued,
Building, and battle and romance,
Man, the inventive and the various,
The complicated and contrarious,
Quickens the Earth-life! kindles it
With restless will and zesty wit;
And, with the ardours of his soul,
The holy passions of his heart,
Stars the Earth-star anew, with Love,
Heroism, Worship, Wisdom, Art!
While Nature, shining, blooming, stands
Beside him, look!—a life akin,
Yet other. Can the Ocean sin?
Has the clean snow a heart, or the sweet sky warm hands?
Nature works, true; but does she toil, or tire?
Remorse, disgust, depression does she know?
Must she renounce, and does she need aspire?
Man on to God through grief, through want must go,
And up sore steeps of difficult desire;
While she, methinks, through Beauty’s open gate
Runs, and is with Him straight!
But both about their Earthly business go
Rhythmic—he quick and short, she gradual and slow;
Through both, great secret currents circulate,
Great world-tides flow, great world-waves undulate.
Movement and change, birth and decay and growth
Modulate both,
And some more subtle Mandate both obey
Whereby, akin yet contrast, they
Each other mould through interplay,
Ever they clasp, or clash, in love or strife,
And evermore the issue’s larger life—
As yonder City vivifies
Her setting rare of plain and skies
And glorious past both, the whole scene lies—
So, world-wide, Man and Nature win fresh worth
Through one another, and new power confer,
The while, in union, both create and share,
Past either mighty, and past either fair,
The life of the whole Earth!
Ay, Nature’s cool, serene
Yellow and blue and green,
Cunningly wove and wed
With Man’s hot orange and red,
Cloud-purple, indigo—
And lo! the ladder of the Earth’s rainbow:
Her treble and his bass in true accord,
The Earth-Song joins the music of the spheres:
Her consciousness and his conjoined to one,
The Cosmic Poem hears
The syllables twain of Earth’s required Word:
Her life and his life in one living whole,
And Earth through Spirit as through space shines on
A Star, a Soul!
Yet O! what join’d them? Could the mere Stardust
Compose itself to unity so just,
And such begetting Harmony beget?
Then in its deadness must
Some deeper being be, that one can trust!
Whence came It? Whither tends It? soil of Earth,
And soul of Earth, are these the limits still?
Hast thou no further Vision glimmering yet
Through thy far view, my Hill?
Once, in the days of old,
Where yonder landscape lies,
A fiery Chaos roll’d....
And changed....at last, to skies,
Rocks,....and these fields and Sea....
And warm Humanity.
Now, daily does Man die, and is re-made;
Daily the mountains melt, the sea exhales,
The fields revive and fade.
———What if, some day, they not revive? if Man
No more at last his race replenish can?
If, o’er the perish’d City, gradually
This hill sink down to the exhausted Sea?
If Man and Nature both, both born of Change,
Through Change to Change should pass and cease to be—
Till the whole Earth-life vanish utterly,
A broken wave, a life-cell fail’d and cast,
A climax past?....
What matter, O what matter? Past the range
Of Rise-and-Fall, past the creating strife:
Beyond all Change, though with all changes rife:
Safe still, for ever safe, is That Which saves!
The Ocean is not counted by its waves;
Containing all, by aught containéd never,
Fadeless and formless, past all forms, for ever
Shines the Essential Life!
Ay, God! Perfection! Spirit! name as we will
Thee Whom our highest name
Can but defame—
Soul of all souls, All-Source, All-Satisfaction,
To Thee, to Thee, ever we break through still!
In Whom both Man and Nature live and move
And have their being; in Whom men think and love,
Struggle and choose and aim; in Whom
Stars come and go, winds drive, and violets bloom.
Purport of all! ’tis Thou the Power still art
Of each Thy separate part;
For Thee, in Thee, they run together, subsume
More of Thy Life, and with Thy Light illume
The shining body and soul of this Earth-Star,
One of Thy Thoughts express’d,
One Word made manifest.
—O, how much more! in Thee continuing far,
Her double note with what all-resonant Chord,
Hark! goes on choiring—O, behold how bright
Her colours, in Thee mounting, smitten are
To what white Light!
In Thy proceeding Poem stands this Word,
Thou, Thinker, through this Thought, art thinking on—
O, Man, and Nature and Earth, I see all gone
On! past themselves—all fused
With all, and yet all free!
Their utmost powers used,
Their lives not lost, but loos’d,
In union, Universal Life, with Thee!
Come down with me, my soul! let us go down
Freely to bondage, and contented stay
At large within the flat and crowded town—
Having brought Sight away!
It was but to climb up a little space,
View the same prospect from a loftier place,
And large is the little! Stainless and high
Over the street presides the Sky,
Over the chaffering stand the Snows,
Thro’ the traffic the Ocean flows!
Larger, larger, the Glory grows!....
With Nature and Man in her radiant span,
The Earth-Star travels, the Earth-Soul glows
Thro’ space, thro’ Spirit....Here on the hill,
Spirit and space, I see them still
Widening on, and out, until
Through!—to what sparkling Sum
Of all ends ended!—
Lo, all the limits come
Magnificently Home,
Triumphant travellers,
Shining and splendid!
- ↑ Traces of the teaching of Plotinus, of Fechner, and of the Vedanta are certain to be found in this poem, for all have helped to make explicit to the writer its main idea. This idea, however, has been with me implicitly as far back as I can remember; and was deeply intensified by a sudden experience some years since, impossible to put into words, but conveying most clearly to the mind the absolute conviction that Reality is Perfection, and One-ness.