HOPE
Spring sat bright on the hill-top. The pines were lit with her candles,
Glittering-tipt were the gum-trees, the gorse, thick-golden with blossom,
Laugh’d to the laughing Blue. Below, the paddocks were grassy,
Wide was the plain and green, the ribboning river was azure,
White lambs raced in the paddocks, little white clouds in the sky,
And, deep in the plain, up-tossing like tresses her radiant smoke-curls,
From a luminous veil of vapour, the enchantress City bloom’d out—
Her walls as of glass and gold, her windows flashing like eyes.
To the right, like a broad blue sun, sparkled and flash’d the Ocean,
To the left, by winter refresh’d, ran a long white splendour of snow-peaks.
—Ay, once more it was Spring! once more, in spite of the struggle,
Traffic, tempests, and toil, decay and destruction, of ages,
New again, fresh as a child! lovely with light and delighting,
Old Earth uplifted a joyful face to the glad warm kisses of Heaven.
Up the rocky track from the plain, close under the tawny hill-top
(Where, ’mid the pines and blue-gums, and pink-white foam of an orchard,
A low, red roof peep’d out), came two—a man and a woman.
Slender and straight as a blue-gum, graceful and meant to glitter
But all unglittering, came he! his young head sunken with sorrow,
Guilt weighting his eyes, and his step heavy with shame.
A lark sprang carolling up in the sunny resonant blue space;
He neither saw it, nor heard; but the woman with him, his mother,
Middle-aged, massively-built, but moving with buoyance and spirit,
She was glad with the lark and the light, she tasted the freshness and freedom!
The gorse laughed into her heart, and her soul sang up through the Blue—
Till she turn’d and glanced at her son; then, as after the shine the shadow,
After the shadow the shine, sweeps over the face of the plain,
Over her open face rapidly swept and follow’d
Love, pity and grief—dark dread, bright resolution!
Dumbly they walk’d together, until, at the edge of the pine-grove,
By a great grey rock he paus’d, but she went onward, and in.
Down on the rock he sank, his hand in a cushion of shamrock:
Its bright little gold-cups gleam’d, the tussock glisten’d with newness,
Ruddily spir’d the sorrel, and rosily spread the crane’s-bill—
Just as in all past springs! when, from the self-same vantage
Over the plain and the mountains, the sea and the city, daily,
A daring aeronaut, he had launch’d forth flying ambitions,
That over the snows had soar’d, and roam’d more wide than the ocean,
For gallant the dreamer had been, and the dream-ships gallant and good.
Lost, lost were they all now! sunken in glamorous evil
Under the veil of yon City, and he, crouch’d here in his old haunt,
Wingless and worse! companion’d by memories now, not dreams.
O, unescapable gall! how he remember’d....remember’d....
That one bright actual journey, down to the waiting City,
Out to the welcoming world! Gaiety, glitter, adventure,
Merry young mates at last, and the birthright of pleasure and power
Ready at hand, to be tasted.... The money, borrow’d....not stolen,
Ah, not stolen!....Then...then...the incredible, frightful
Falling....the crash! the struggle with horrors, impossible, real!
The bright flight brought to its end by the gloom of a prison-cell.
Free now, back on his rock, at home, yet in prison for ever,
Listless he lay, and gazed on the once-belov’d fair prospect
Languidly, savouring nothing, Disgrace, like a dingy fog-shroud,
Blotting all beauty out. Dully he look’d at the bright Blue,
At the gorse’s gaiety scowl’d; and his eye slunk from the snow-peaks
And the frank face of the sea, but amid the plain like a culprit
Furtively spied, till it found the prison, and there like a chain’d thing
Hung, all helpless awhile—then, fled to a near-by hill-crest,
Seen as a vision, how bright! in those nights of desperate darkness,
Truly in sight now at last, and to-morrow, to-morrow, thank Heaven!
Last of all sights to be! for it fronted fathomless water,
The hiding sea would be all, and life and self-loathing done!....
....A honey-bee boom’d o’er the tussock, and sipp’d at the blossoming shamrock;
He look’d and beheld the blossoms bruis’d by his twisting fingers,
Ruin’d at start of the spring; and his eyes grew cloudy with pity
(He was easily touch’d, fine-fibred); then, dark with a bitter pity
For himself and his own spring, spoil’d!
But now again came his mother,
With food, and they ate together; listlessly he, to content her
(No need of eating to-morrow!), and she in her ministry silent
With a tender, responsive silence, for inly she knew his nature.
Not till the meal was done, his dazed, unwilling attention
Sudden she startled and fix’d, with quiet, terrible words.
“Son! Here are two of us, sinners! You know, for I have not conceal’d it—
Name, or ring, I never have had. But now, I must tell, and you listen!
My friend I robb’d of her mate; to his lust I deliver’d my love;
And you I brought into the world, unfather’d, and by me mother’d—
Crippled before the race. O, boy, I have been through it all—all:
I know all the bewilderment—blackness—blasphemy—blankness—
Shame—the cringing abasement—and then the bitter rebellion,
Isn’t it so? the revolt! the fierce self-justification
Against the disguised fell Fate, the thing not us! that so lured us
First, and then drove and dragg’d, and degraded us, and defiled us!
The self-disgust (for however one came in the ditch one is loathsome),
The self-hate, self-despair, the fierce abhorrence of life.
O worse! for turn as I would from the wickedness I had committed,
Committed it was! It was done! Not Heaven’s own self could undo it,
No repentance erase it, no forgiveness annul—
There in the history of things it was a vileness eternal—
It never could be Not Done.
“You too,—your sin, you abhor it,
Loathe it, spurn it—I know! but alas, my son! you have done it,
And you cannot make it undone—Nay, my dear! I hurt but to help you.
Trust the touch of your mother—the touch of your fellow-sinner!
Together let’s face it! It’s there, it has to be faced. Look, my dearest—
You’ve done it, you cannot undo it.
But—what will you do with it next?
“Ay, son, take courage with me, for there is a way from transgression,
Right straight up into triumph. What will you make of your sin?
Sin that it was, ay, and shame that it is, and blemish eternal.
What else too shall it be? What else eternal become?
God be thank’d! There’s a Law that can turn all blemish to Beauty,
And the worst crime into a tool for the Hand of Eternal Good.
I know, for I’ve seen it done! I see it everywhere, doing!
Look you, and see—yon paddock, green with the ribbonwood grove once,
Until that fire went through; don’t you remember, next morning,
The pitiful, poor black ruin, and how I sat down and cried? But
You—you sow’d it with grass-seed, you turn’d the ruin to riches!
For the blessed Earth-law work’d on, and now, see Jetty and Jewel!
They know where the best grass grows!
“Even so, dear heart, with this ruin
Handle and do! Plough it deep, and harrow it—yes, let Contrition
Bite!—but never stop there! Instantly sow it, with courage
To be and to bear, for yourself, and O, with help and compassion
For the rest who suffer from sin! (Ay, the need and sorrow of sinners
Who knows better than we? So who should better bring help?)
Briskly about it, my son! and the greening grass, and the spring stir,
And the stars in their shining shall hail you, the globe in its rolling shall help you.
For, After Ruin, Renewing! so runs the merciful Life-Law:
Out of Destruction, Growth! and a human life that is broken
Can break on, like a fertilised field, into help for a hungry world!
“The bright sea says it again—Look! Under that brightness, blackness,
Slime and wreckage and ooze: yet, deep in the dregs too, service!
Doesn’t the world need divers? There’s sunken treasure to rescue,
Where but in drowning deeps are laid sure harbour foundations?
And pearls, the gentlest of gems, maybe because made with sorrow,
Only the sea has pearls....You and I have been under and down, son!
In the dregs of the world we’ve been—Woe’s me! some stay there and sleep there....
Not out of Touch, even so....but we’ve quick air in our lungs yet
To bring us back to the air and the beautiful shining surface;
We’re for the sun again—and we’ll not have been down for nothing?
Outcast of men, ay, and justly! still the Omnipotent Mercy
Can meet us down in the depths, and turn us too to Its Use.
“O, think no more what you’ve lost, boy, but what you have learn’d, through transgression!
Count not the cost—that is fixt—but reckon the possible profit.
You can build you a beautiful But, you can start a shining It Shall Be
Now, this minute, my son! You can bury the Past—in the Future!
What matters the boy you have been if, so, now you are more of a man?
“Nay, and let’s look away, look out, look up, from our puny failures
To what is beyond, whole, safe! Over yon smoking City
See the great sky, how clear! Look at the sea, how clean
For all Man’s drainage and wreckage! And the plain that never grows weary,
And the snows, that never sin—How much of the world’s all right yet,
Pure for all our pollution, undamaged by all we have done!
Thanks, O thanks, for the Great Things!....
“More thanks for the so much Greater,
That nought can ever drag down! Past all things and all people,....
Beyond all seas and snows, all lovely shadows and symbols....
Sovereign, strong and sure, the real Realities shine!
Ay, Purity still is pure, Beauty is beautiful always,
Perfection is utterly perfect, and Love is loving for ever,
Never mind you and me! O, isn’t that something rooted,
Something that saves the world?
And praise to the way of Its working!
For that does mind you and me! Look at yon glory going
Out all over the landscape, in the sooty smoke of the City—
Curling up, silver and gold....how it lightens the very light!
And that is the way, I know it! with a soul that seeks for retrieval;
And sends its sacrifice-smoke up, abroad and away.
It catches the Light, that smoke! Humanity’s misty sunshine
It brightens with beautiful banners—Ay, Courage, and Aspiration,
Understanding, Compassion, these from the souls of sinners
Ascending, glorify Life, O merciful, sweet Perfecting,
Dear Magic, beyond our knowing, that works through large and through little,
Everywhere, everywhere! backward, as well as inward, and onward;
Making, of creatures, creators!—Look, son! As yon tiny prison
To that great white wall of the Alps, is the darkest sin of our sinning
To the Unstain’d Life of us all: yet strong with the self-same Power
That calls green grass out of ashes, beauty from refuse vapour,
And cleanness out of corruption, is a soul that turns from its sin.
O son, my son, have you sinn’d? are you down? are you wreck’d and ruin’d?
Up, then! Higher than ever! Out of the broken boyhood,
Through the horror and struggle and darkness and devastation,
Into the masterful manhood of a spirit risen through falling!
Wide, wide the way opens, for one who has learn’d that freedom—
O, better the world by your wreck, boy! Because you’re a sinner, save!”
With that, she arose and left him. Thick, at last, on her lashes
Hung the bitter hot tears, and she stumbled over the tussock;
But, ere she reach’d the house and went upon daily duties,
Back was the light in her eyes, back her soul in the Height.
....But he stay’d still on the rock; and the plain was drown’d and the mountains,
In the amethyst afternoon-haze, as the long bright hours pass’d o’er him
Brooding still and absorb’d, but now in a nobler Sorrow.
His Mother! His passionate, patient, seeing, large-hearted Mother!
Mother to all sad hearts, to all lives crippled or lonely,
Mother-confessor to many—lads and girls in their hot shame,
Husbands and wives in their cares....Recluse, yet comrade....Self-outcast,
Yet welcome sharer of sorrows, understander of souls....
The sick demanded her touch, the eyes of the dying her deep eyes;
Like Fog in face of a breeze, misery melted before her,
Courage came with her coming, cheer remain’d when she went.—
But, for her, what comrade, what comfort, what understander?
Irony! only himself.
Now, as with vision new open’d,
All her way he discern’d—how, to pay, she had pluck’d out
The hot, wild heart that offended, had died to herself, had chosen
For the new, difficult life, the difficult, lone, new country,
Renouncing all ease, all help, all love, save that of her son—O
God, of her traitor son, that sword through her bleeding bosom!
....He recall’d her smiling privations for him, her joyful contriving,
Her strong plans, always for him, her happy pride in his promise....
Then, the magnanimous trust....later, the deep forbearance,
Of that sensitive heart, presaging fresh anguish, a second ruin,
New wounds gashing the old....yet he never had seen but his own tears,
Ever a bright face to his, ever quick eager kisses
For her son, her second betrayer, her worst of failures! O Death, Death,
Death! Make a merciful end. Finish the failure for ever.
....Would it finish it, though, or only carry it further?
She hadn’t slunk to Death....
“Boy, I have been through it all!” O,
Awful, heroic cry of that comrade true to the utmost,
Stripping her soul for his sake, of that splendid, intrepid sufferer,
Ruler of ruin and wreck, of that sinner sainted and shining,
All for hard honour still, and never-be-done requital!
“Your fellow-sinner!” Not his, the cur and the coward! “Your Mother!”
Ah, thank God, yes, yes! his Mother, always his Mother,
Loving, comforting, tender....Ah, now, his anguishing Mother,
In travail still of his spirit, groaning to bring forth his soul....
“O soul of a man, come forth!”....
As one out of deep sleep rising,
Up he leapt to his feet, and look’d about him, and listen’d.
The air was lustrous—it bloom’d, for the sun was near to its setting,
And the gorse, the bush all bloom above thorns, was a Burning Bush.
Bailward the cow-bells rang; he turn’d, and went through the blue-gums’
Cloister of silver columns, down to the bail, where his Mother,
Her milk-pails flashing about her, stood by a ruddy heifer
In the low, rich, broadside light. Gently, but still in silence,
He took from her bucket and stool, then, seated, his head in the bright flank,
But his voice ringing and clear through the music of milking, “Mother!
Your way is mine. Please God, I’ll be better for sinning!” he said.
Then, as she sprang to him swiftly, “But, O Mother! O Mother!
If you’d not been down in the depths, I could have never come up!”
Now the snows were a march of kings, and the sea was a glass of glory;
Halo’d with rose was the plain, and robed in royalest purple;
The hill-top glow’d, and rays from the deep-down city windows
Flash’d through the shining mist like triumph from tear-fill’d eyes.