Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

Front matter

CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY.

CHRISTMAS-EVE

AND

Christmas-Eve

CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY.

<>I. Out of the little chapel I burst Into the fresh night air again. I had waited a good five minutes first In the doorway, to escape the rain That drove in gusts down the common's centre, At the edge of which the chapel stands, Before I plucked up heart to enter: Heaven knows how many sorts of hands Reached past me, groping for the latch Of the inner door that hung on catch,

More obstinate the more they fumbled, Till, giving way at last with a scold Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled One sheep more to the rest in fold, And left me irresolute, standing sentry In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry, Four feet long by two feet wide, Partitioned off from the vast inside— I blocked up half of it at least. No remedy; the rain kept driving: They eyed me much as some wild beast, That congregation, still arriving, Some of them by the mainroad, white A long way past me into the night, Skirting the common, then diverging; Not a few suddenly emerging From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps,— —They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,

Where the road stops short with its safeguard border Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;— But the most turned in yet more abruptly From a certain squalid knot of alleys, Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, Which now the little chapel rallies And leads into day again,—its priestliness Lending itself to hide their beastliness So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on Those neophytes too much in lack of it, That, where you cross the common as I did, And meet the party thus presided, "Mount Zion", with Love-lane at the back of it, They front you as little disconcerted, As, bound for the hills, her fate averted And her wicked people made to mind him, Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.

<>II. Well, from the road, the lanes or the common, In came the flock: the fat weary woman, Panting and bewildered, down-clapping Her umbrella with a mighty report, Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones; then, with snort, Like a startled horse, at the interloper Who humbly knew himself improper, But could not shrink up small enough, Round to the door, and in,—the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making your very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered Little old-faced, peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother

Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place; She too must stop, wring the poor suds dry Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping Already from my own clothes' dropping, Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on; Then, stooping down to take off her pattens, She bore them defiantly, in each hand one, Planted together before her breast And its babe, as good as a lance in rest. Close on her heels, the dingy satins Of a female something, past me flitted, With lips as much too white, as a streak Lay far too red on each hollow cheek; And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied All that was left of a woman once, Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.

Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief, And eyelids screwed together tight, Led himself in by some inner light. And, except from him, from each that entered, I got the same interrogation— "What, you, the alien, you have ventured "To take with us, elect, your station? "A carer for none of it, a Gallio?"— Thus, plain as print, I read the glance At a common prey, in each countenance, As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho: And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder, The draught, it always sent in shutting, Made the flame of the single tallow candle In the cracked square lanthorn I stood under, Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting, As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:

I verily thought the zealous light (In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite, Would shudder itself clean off the wick, With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick. There was no standing it much longer. "Good folks," said I, as resolve grew stronger, "This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor, "When the weather sends you a chance visitor? "You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you, "And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you! "But still, despite the pretty perfection "To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness, "And, taking God's word under wise protection, "Correct its tendency to diffusiveness, "Bidding one reach it over hot ploughshares,— "Still, as I say, though you've found salvation, "If I should choose to cry—as now—'Shares!'— "See if the best of you bars me my ration!

"Because I prefer for my expounder "Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder: "Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest, "Supposing I don the marriage-vestiment; "So, shut your mouth, and open your Testament, "And carve me my portion at your quickliest!" Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad With wizened face in want of soap, And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope, After stopping outside, for his cough was bad, To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, And so avoid disturbing the preacher, Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise At the shutting door, and entered likewise,— Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, Crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, And found myself in full conventicle, —To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,

On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, Which, calling its flock to their special clover, Found all assembled and one sheep over, Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.

<>III. I very soon had enough of it. The hot smell and the human noises, And my neighbour's coat, the greasy cuff of it, Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises, Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure Of the preaching man's immense stupidity, As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, To meet his audience's avidity. You needed not the wit of the Sibyl To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling— No sooner had our friend an inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,

(Whenever it was the thought first struck him How Death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in Hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the Book of books to pieces: And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,— So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt: Nay, had but a single face of my neighbours Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labours Were help which the world could be saved without, 'Tis odds but I had borne in quiet A qualm or two at my spiritual diet; Or, who can tell? had even mustered Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:

But the flock sate on, divinely flustered, Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon With such content in every snuffle, As the devil inside us loves to ruffle. My old fat woman purred with pleasure, And thumb round thumb went twirling faster, While she, to his periods keeping measure, Maternally devoured the pastor. The man with the handkerchief, untied it, Showed us a horrible wen inside it, Gave his eyelids yet another screwing, And rocked himself as the woman was doing. The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking, Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking! My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it, And saying, like Eve when she plucked the apple, "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it," I flung out of the little chapel.

<>IV. There was a lull in the rain, a lull In the wind too; the moon was risen, And would have shone out pure and full, But for the ramparted cloud-prison, Block on block built up in the west, For what purpose the wind knows best, Who changes his mind continually. And the empty other half of the sky Seemed in its silence as if it knew What, any moment, might look through A chance-gap in that fortress massy:— Through its fissures you got hints Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassy Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, Like furnace-smoke just ere the flames bellow,

All a-simmer with intense strain To let her through,—then blank again, At the hope of her appearance failing. Just by the chapel, a break in the railing Shows a narrow path directly across; 'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss— Besides, you go gently all the way uphill: I stooped under and soon felt better: My head grew light, my limbs more supple, As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter; My mind was full of the scene I had left, That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, —How this outside was pure and different! The sermon, now—what a mingled weft Of good and ill! were either less, Its fellow had coloured the whole distinctly; But alas for the excellent earnestness, And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,

But as surely false, in their quaint presentment, However to pastor and flock's contentment! Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes, With his provings and parallels twisted and twined, Till how could you know them, grown double their size, In the natural fog of the good man's mind? Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps, Haloed about with the common's damps. Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover; The zeal was good, and the aspiration; And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, Pharaoh received no demonstration By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three, Of the doctrine of the Trinity,— Although, as our preacher thus embellished it, Apparently his hearers relished it With so unfeigned a gust—who knows if They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?

But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them! These people have really felt, no doubt, A something, the motion they style the Call of them; And this is their method of bringing about, By a mechanism of words and tones, (So many texts in so many groans) A sort of reviving or reproducing, More or less perfectly, (who can tell?—) Of the mood itself, that strengthens by using; And how it happens, I understand well. A tune was born in my head last week, Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester; And when, next week, I take it back again, My head will sing to the engine's clack again, While it only makes my neighbour's haunches stir, —Finding no dormant musical sprout In him, as in me, to be jolted out.

'Tis the taught already that profit by teaching; He gets no more from the railway's preaching, Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I, Whom therefore the flock casts a jealous eye on. Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion," To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?

<>V. But wherefore be harsh on a single case? After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, Does the selfsame weary thing take place? The same endeavour to make you believe, And much with the same effect, no more: Each method abundantly convincing, As I say, to those convinced before, But scarce to be swallowed without wincing, By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me, I have my own church equally.

And in this church my faith sprang first! (I said, as I reached the rising ground, And the wind began again, with a burst Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me, I entered His church-door, Nature leading me) —In youth I looked to these very skies, And probing their immensitics, I found God there, His visible power; Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense Of that power, an equal evidence That His love, there too, was the nobler dower. For the loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless god Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought: But also, God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away

As it were, an handbreadth off, to give Room for the newly-made to live, And look at Him from a place apart, And usc His gifts of brain and heart, Given, indeed, but to keep for ever. Who speaks of man, then, must not sever Man's very elements from man, Saying, "But all is God's "—whose plan Was to create man and then leave him Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him, But able to glorify Him too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer, Made perfect as a thing of course. Man, therefore, stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock, And, looking to God who ordained divorce

Of the rock from His boundless continent, Sees in His Power made evident, Only excess by a million fold O'er the power God gave man in the mould. For, see: Man's hand, first formed to carry A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain, —Advancing in power by one degree; And why count steps through eternity? But Love is the ever springing fountain: Man may enlarge or narrow his bed For the water's play, but the water head— How can he multiply or reduce it? As easy create it, as cause it to cease: He may profit by it, or abuse it; But 'tis not a thing to bear increase As power will: be love less or more In the heart of man, he keeps it shut

Or opes it wide as he pleases, but Love's sum remains what it was before. So, gazing up, in my youth, at love As seen through power, ever above All modes which make it manifest, My soul brought all to a single test— That He, the Eternal First and Last, Who, in His power, had so surpassed All man conceives of what is might,— Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, —Would prove as infinitely good; Would never, my soul understood, With power to work all love desires, Bestow e'en less than man requires: That He who endlessly was teaching, Above my spirit's utmost reaching, What love can do in the leaf or stone, (So that to master this alone,

This done in the stone or leaf for me, I must go on learning endlessly) Would never need that I, in turn, Should point him out a defect unheeded, And show that God had yet to learn What the meanest human creature needed,— —Not life, to wit, for a few short years, Tracking His way through doubts and fears, While the stupid earth on which I stay Suffers no change, but passive adds Its myriad years to myriads, Though I, He gave it to, decay, Seeing death come and choose about me, And my dearest ones depart without me. No! love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it!

And I shall behold Thee, face to face, O God, and in Thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast Thou! Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now, I shall find as able to satiate The love, Thy gift, as my spirit's wonder Thou art able to quicken and sublimate, With this sky of Thine, that I now walk under, And glory in Thee as thus I gaze, —Thus, thus! oh, let men keep their ways Of seeking Thee in a narrow shrine— Be this my way! And this is mine!

<>VI. For lo, what think you? suddenly 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 cöalesced, And supreme the spectral creature lorded. In a triumph of whitest white,— Above which intervened the night. But above night too, like the next, The second of a wondrous sequence,

Reaching in rare and rarer frequene, Till the heaven of heavens be circumflext, 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, one 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, for ever in Thy presence, "In extatic 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 recognise. I felt terror, no surprise: My mind filled with the cataract, At one bound, of the mighty fact. I remembered, He did say Doubtless, that, to this world's end, Where two or three should meet and pray,

He would be in the midst, their Friend: Certainly He was there with them. And my pulses leaped for joy Of the golden thought without alloy, That 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 if 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— "Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, "I left but now, as scarcely fitted "For Thee: I knew not what I pitied: "But, all I felt there, right or wrong, "What is it to Thee, who curest sinning? "Am I not weak as Thou art strong? "I have looked to Thee from the beginning, Straight up to Thee through all the world "Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled "To nothingness on either side: "And since the time Thou wast descried, "Spite of the weak heart, so have I

"Lived ever, and so fain would die, "Living and dying, Thee before! "But if Thou leavest me—"

<>IX. Less or more, I suppose that I spoke thus. When,—have mercy, Lord, on us! The whole Face turned upon me full. And I spread myself beneath it, As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it In the cleansing sun, his wool,— Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some defiled, discoloured web— So lay I, saturate with brightness. And when the flood appeared to ebb, Lo, I was walking, light and swift, With my senses settling fast and steadying,

But my body caught up in the whirl and drift Of the Vesture's amplitude, still eddying On, just before me, still to be followed, As it carried me after with its motion: What shall I say?—as a path were hollowed And a man went weltering through the ocean, Sucked along in the flying wake Of the luminous water-snake. Darkness and cold were cloven, as through I passed, upborne yet walking too. And I turned to myself at intervals,— "So He said, and so it befals. "God who registers the cup "Of mere cold water, for His sake "To a disciple rendered up, "Disdains not His own thirst to slake "At the poorest love was ever offered: "And because it was my heart I proffered,

"With true love trembling at the brim, "He suffers me to follow Him "For ever, my own way,—dispensed "From seeking to be influenced "By all the less immediate ways "That earth, in worships manifold, "Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise, "The Garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"

<>X. And so we crossed the world and stopped. For where am I, in city or plain, Since I am 'ware of the world again? And what is this that rises propped With pillars of prodigious girth? Is it really on the earth, This miraculous Dome of God? Has the angel's measuring-rod

Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, 'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem, Meted it out,—and what he meted, Have the sons of men completed? —Binding, ever as he bade, Columns in this colonnade With arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race To the breast of … what is it, yon building, Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, With marble for brick, and stones of price For garniture of the edifice? Now I see: it is no dream: It stands there and it does not seem; For ever, in pictures, thus it looks, And thus I have read of it in books, Often in England, leagues away, And wondered how those fountains play,

Growing up eternally Each to a musical water-tree, Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, To the granite lavers underneath. Liar and dreamer in your teeth! I, the sinner that speak to you, Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew Both this and more! For see, for see, The dark is rent, mine eye is free To pierce the crust of the outer wall, And I view inside, and all there, all, As the swarming hollow of a hive, The whole Basilica alive! Men in the chancel, body, and nave, Men on the pillars' architrave, Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,

All famishing in expectation Of the main-altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment Blends with heaven's the taper-fires Pant up, the winding brazen spires Heave loftier yet the baldachin; The incense-gaspings, long kept in, Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant Holds his breath and grovels latent, As if God's hushing finger grazed him, (Like Behemoth when He praised him) At the silver bell's shrill tinkling, Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling On the sudden pavement strewed With faces of the multitude. Earth breaks up, time drops away, In flows heaven, with its new day

Of endless life, when He who trod, Very Man and very God, This earth in weakness, shame and pain, Dying the death whose signs remain Up yonder on the accursed tree,— Shall come again, no more to be Of captivity the thrall, But the one God, all in all, King of kings, and Lord of lords, As His servant John received the words, "I died, and live for evermore!"

<>XI. Yet I was left outside the door. Why sate I there on the threshold-stone, Left till He returns, alone Save for the Garment's extreme fold Abandoned still to bless my hold?—

My reason, to my doubt, replied, As if a book were opened wide, And at a certain page I traced Every record undefaced, Added by successive years,— The harvestings of truth's stray ears Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf Bound together for belief. Yes, I said—that He will go And sit with these in turn, I know. Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims Too giddily to guide her limbs, Disabled by their palsy-stroke From propping me. Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies:

And He, whose eye detects a spark Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark, May well sec flame where each beholder Acknowledges the embers smoulder. But I, a mere man, fear to quit The clue God gave me as most fit To guide my footsteps through life's maze, Because Himself discerns all ways Open to reach Him: I, a man He gave to mark where faith began To swerve aside, till from its summit Judgment drops her damning plummet, Pronouncing such a fatal space Departed from the Founder's base: He will not bid me enter too, But rather sit, as now I do, Awaiting His return outside. —'Twas thus my reason straight replied,

And joyously I turned, and pressed The Garment's skirt upon my breast, Until, afresh its light suffusing me, My heart cried,—what has been abusing me That I should wait here lonely and coldly, Instead of rising, entering boldly, Baring truth's face, and letting drift Her veils of lies as they choose to shift? Do these men praise Him? I will raise My voice up to their point of praise! I see the error; but above The scope of error, see the love.— Oh, love of those first Christian days! —Fanned so soon into a blaze, From the spark preserved by the trampled sect, That the antique sovereign Intellect Which then sate ruling in the world, Like a change in dreams, was hurled

From the throne he reigned upon: —You looked up, and he was gone! Gone, his glory of the pen! —Love, with Greece and Rome in ken, Bade her scribes abhor the trick Of poetry and rhetoric, And exult, with hearts set free, In blessed imbecility Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet, Leaving Livy incomplete. Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter! —Love, while able to acquaint her With the thousand statues yet Fresh from chisel, pictures wet From brush, she saw on every side, Chose rather with an infant's pride To frame those portents which impart Such unction to true Christian Art.

Gone, Music too! The air was stirred By happy wings Terpander's bird (That, when the cold came, fled away) Would tarry not the wintry day,— As more-enduring sculpture must, Till a filthy saint rebuked the gust With which he chanced to get a sight Of some dear naked Aphrodite He glanced a thought above the toes of, By breaking zealously her nose off. Love, surely, from that music's lingering, Might have filched her organ-fingering, Nor chose rather to set prayings To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings. Love was the startling thing, the new; Love was the all-sufficient too; And seeing that, you see the rest. As a babe can find its mother's breast

As well in darkness as in light, Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right. True, the world's eyes are open now: —Less need for me to disallow Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled, Peevish as ever to be suckled, Lulled by the same old baby-prattle With intermixture of the rattle, When she would have them creep, stand steady Upon their feet, or walk already, Not to speak of trying to climb. I will be wise another time, And not desire a wall between us, When next I see a church-roof cover So many species of one genus, All with foreheads bearing Lover Written above the earnest eyes of them; All with breasts that beat for beauty,

Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them, In noble daring, stedfast duty, The heroic in passion, or in action,— Or, lowered for the senses' satisfaction, To the mere outside of human creatures, Mere perfect form and faultless features. What! with all Rome here, whence to levy Such contributions to their appetite, With women and men in a gorgeous bevy, They take, as it were, a padlock, and clap it tight On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding On the glories of their ancient reading, On the beauties of their modern singing, On the wonders of the builder's bringing, On the majesties of Art around them,— And, all these loves, late struggling incessant, When faith has at last united and bound them, They offer up to God for a present!