Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
The‘ Infinite.’ Word horrible! at feud With life, and the braced mood Of power and joy and love; Forbidden, by wise heathen ev'n, to be
Spoken of Deity, Whose Name, on popular altars, was‘ The Unknown,’ Because, or ere It was reveal'd as One Confined in Three,
The people fear'd that it might prove Infinity, The blazon which the devils desired to gain; And God, for their confusion, laugh'd consent;
Yet did so far relent, That they might seek relief, and not in vain, In dashing of themselves against the shores of pain. Nor bides alone in hell
The bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel. But for compulsion of strong grace, The pebble in the road Would straight explode,
And fill the ghastly boundlessness of space. The furious power, To soft growth twice constrain'd in leaf and flower, Protests, and longs to flash its faint self far
Beyond the dimmest star. The same Seditious flame, Beat backward with reduplicated might,
Struggles alive within its stricter term, And is the worm. And the just Man does on himself affirm God's limits, and is conscious of delight,
Freedom and right; And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour, By day and night, Buildeth new bulwarks‘ gainst the Infinite.
For, ah, who can express How full of bonds and simpleness Is God, How narrow is He,
And how the wide, waste field of possibility Is only trod Straight to His homestead in the human heart, And all His art
Is as the babe's that wins his Mother to repeat Her little song so sweet! What is the chief news of the Night? Lo, iron and salt, heat, weight and light
In every star that drifts on the great breeze! And these Mean Man, Darling of God, Whose thoughts but live and move
Round him; Who woos his will To wedlock with His own, and does distil To that drop's span The atta of all rose-fields of all love!
Therefore the soul select assumes the stress Of bonds unbid, which God's own style express Better than well, And aye hath, cloister'd, borne,
To the Clown's scorn, The fetters of the threefold golden chain: Narrowing to nothing all his worldly gain; ( Howbeit in vain;
For to have nought Is to have all things without care or thought! ) Surrendering, abject, to his equal's rule, As though he were a fool,
The free wings of the will; ( More vainly still; For none knows rightly what‘ tis to be free But only he
Who, vow'd against all choice, and fill'd with awe Of the ofttimes dumb or clouded Oracle, Does wiser than to spell, In his own suit, the least word of the Law! )
And, lastly, bartering life's dear bliss for pain; But evermore in vain; For joy ( rejoice ye Few that tasted have! ) Is Love's obedience
Against the genial laws of natural sense, Whose wide, self-dissipating wave, Prison'd in artful dykes, Trembling returns and strikes
Thence to its source again, In backward billows fleet, Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet, Thrilling each vein,
Exploring every chasm and cove Of the full heart with floods of honied love, And every principal street And obscure alley and lane
Of the intricate brain With brimming rivers of light and breezes sweet Of the primordial heat; Till, unto view of me and thee,
Lost the intense life be, Or ludicrously display'd, by force Of distance; as a soaring eagle, or a horse On far-off hillside shewn,
May seem a gust-driv'n rag or a dead stone. Nor by such bonds alone — But more I leave to say, Fitly revering the Wild Ass's bray,
Also his hoof, Of which, go where you will, the marks remain Where the religious walls have hid the bright reproof.
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