Gnosis

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech,

Feeling deeper than all thought:

Souls to souls never can teach

What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils;

Man by man was never seen;

All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known;

Mind with mind did never meet;

We are columns left alone

Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,

Far apart though seeming near,

In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company

But a babbling summer stream?

What our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the Sun of Love

Melts the scattered stars of thought,

Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed

By the Fount which gave them birth,

And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain,

Swelling till they meet and run,

Shall all be absorbed again,

Melting, flowing, into one.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

The Spirit of the Age

A WONDROUS light is filling the air,

And rimming the clouds of the old despair;

And hopeful eyes look up to see

Truth's mighty electricity,--

Auroral shimmerings swift and bright,

That wave and flash in the silent night,--

Magnetic billows travelling fast,

And flooding all the spaces vast

From dim horizon to farthest cope

Of heaven, in streams of gathering hope.

Silent they mount and spread apace,

And the watchers see old Europe's face

Lit with expression new and strange,--

The prophecy of coming change.

Meantime, while thousands, wrapt in dreams,

Sleep heedless of the electric gleams,

Or ply their wonted work and strife,

Or plot their pitiful games of life;

While the emperor bows in his formal halls,

And the clerk whirls on at the masking balls;

While the lawyer sits at his dreary files,

And the banker fingers his glittering piles,

And the priest kneels down at his lighted shrine,

And the fop flits by with his mistress fine,--

The diplomat works at his telegraph wires:

His back is turned to the heavenly fires.

Over him flows the magnetic tide,

And the candles are dimmed by the glow outside.

Mysterious forces overawe,

Absorb, suspend the natural law.

The needle stood northward an hour ago;

Now it veers like a weathercock to and fro.

The message he sends flies not as once;

The unwilling wires yield no response.

Those iron veins that pulsed but late

From a tyrant's will to a people's fate,

Flowing and ebbing with feverish strength,

Are seized by a Power whose breadth and length,

Whose height and depth, defy all gauge

Save the great spirit of the age.

The mute machine is moved by a law

That knows no accident or flaw,

And the iron thrills to a different chime

Than that which rang in the dead old time.

For Heaven is taking the matter in hand,

And baffling the tricks of the tyrant band.

The sky above and the earth beneath

Heave with a supermundane breath.

Half-truths, for centuries kept and prized,

By higher truths are polarized.

Like gamesters on a railroad train,

Careless of stoppage, sun or rain,

We juggle, plot, combine, arrange,

And are swept along by the rapid change.

And some who from their windows mark

The unwonted lights that flood the dark,

Little by little, in slow surprise

Lift into space their sleepy eyes;

Little by little are made aware

That a spirit of power is passing there,--

That a spirit is passing, strong and free,--

The soul of the nineteenth century.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

December

NO more the scarlet maples flash and burn

Their beacon-fires from hilltop and from plain;

The meadow-grasses and the woodland fern

In the bleak woods lie withered once again.

The trees stand bare, and bare each stony scar

Upon the cliffs; half frozen glide the rills;

The steel-blue river like a scimitar

Lies cold and curved between the dusky hills.

Over the upland farm I take my walk,

And miss the flaunting flocks of golden-rod;

Each autumn flower a dry and leafless stalk,

Each Mossy field a track of frozen sod.

I hear no more the bobin's summer song

Through the gray network of the wintry woods;

Only the cawing crows that all day long

Clamor about the windy solitudes.

Like agate stones upon earth's frozen breast,

The little pools of ice lie round and still;

While sullen clouds shut downward east and west

In marble ridges stretched from hill to hill.

Come once again, O southern wind,--once more

Come with they wet wings flapping at my pane;

Ere snow-drifts pile their mounds about my door,

One parting dream of summer bring again.

Ah, no! I hear the windows rattle fast;

I see the first flakes of the gathering snow,

That dance and whirl before the northern blast.

No countermand the march of days can know.

December drops no weak, relenting tear,

By our fond summer sympathies ensnared;

Nor from the perfect circle of the year

Can even winter's crystal gems be spared.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

My Old Palette

MANY a year has fled away

Since this old palette was new,

As may be seen by the spots of green

And yellow and red and blue.

Many a picture was painted from this,

While many were only dreamed;

And shadow and light like the black and white

Across my life have streamed.

Accept, my friend, this plain old board

All plastered and imbrowned,

Where the pleasure and strife of a painter's life

Have left a mosaic ground.

The color that went to the picture's soul

Has left but its body behind;

Yet strive to trace on its cloudy face

Some gleam of the artist's mind.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

Bird Language

ONE day in the bluest of summer weather,

Sketching under a whispering oak,

I heard five bobolinks laughing together

Over some ornithological joke.

What the fun was I couldn't discover.

Language of birds is a riddle on earth.

What could they find in whiteweed and clover

To split their sides with such musical mirth?

Was it some prank of the prodigal summer,

Face in the cloud or voice in the breeze,

Querulous catbird, woodpecker drummer,

Cawing of crows high over the trees?

Was it soame chipmunk's chatter, or weasel

Under the stone-wall stealthy and sly?

Or was the joke about me at my easel,

Trying to catch the tints of the sky?

Still they flew tipsily, shaking all over,

Bubbling with jollity, brimful of glee,

While I sat listening deep in the clover,

Wondering what their jargon could be.

'Twas but the voice of a morning the brightest

That ever dawned over yon shadowy hills;

'Twas but the song of all joy that is lightest,--

Sunshine breaking in laughter and trills.

Vain to conjecture the words they are singing;

Only by tones can we follow the tune

In the full heart of the summer fields ringing,

Ringing the rhythmical gladness of June!

Christopher Pearse Cranch

The Locomotive

WHIRLING along its living freight, it came,

Hot, panting, fierce, yet docile to command--

The roaring monster, blazing through the land

Athwart the night, with crest of smoke and flame;

Like those weird bulls Medea learned to tame

By sorcery, yoked to plough the Colchian strand

In forced obedience under Jason's hand.

Yet modern skill outstripped this antique fame,

When o'er our plains and through the rocky bar

Of hills it pushed its ever-lengthening line

Of iron roads, with gain far more divine

Than when the daring Argonauts from far

Came for the golden fleece, which like a star

Hung clouded in the dragon-guarded shrine.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

The Photograph

PHOEBUS Apollo, from Olympus driven,

Lived at Admetus, tending herds and flocks:

And strolling o'er the pastures and the rocks

He found his life much duller than in Heaven.

For he had left his bow, his songs, his lyre,

His divinations and his healing skill,

And as a serf obeyed his master's will.

One day a new thought waked an old desire.

He took to painting, with his colors seven,

The sheep, the cows, the faces of the swains,

All shapes and hues of forests and on plains.

These old sun-pictures all are lost, or given

Away among the god. Man owns but half

The Sun-god's secret--in the Photograph.

Christopher Pearse Cranch