# A Channel Passage and Other Poems/The Altar of Righteousness

Previously printed in Harper's Monthly Magazine, June 1904, pp. 124-129.
THE ALTAR OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
ἐς τὸ πᾶν δέ σοι λέγω,
βωμὸν αἴδεσαι δίκας·
μηδέ νιν
κέρδος ἰδὼν ἀθέῳ ποδὶ λὰξ ἀτίσῃς·
ποινὰ γὰρ επέσται.
κύριον μένει τέλος.
Æsch. Eum. 538-544
πάρα τὸ φῶς ἰδεῖν.
Æsch. Cho. 972
THE ALTAR OF THE RIGHTEOUSNESS
I
and mingle and divide,
Veil the truth whereof they witness, show the truth of
things they hide. Through the darkness and the splendour of the
centuries, loud or dumb, Shines and wanes and shines the spirit, lit with love
of life to come.
Man, the soul made flesh, that knows not death from
life, and fain would know,
Sees the face of time change colour as its tides recoil
and flow.
All his hope and fear and faith and doubt, if aught at
all they be,
Live the life of clouds and sunbeams, born of heaven
or earth or sea.
All are buoyed and blown and brightened by their
hour's evasive breath:
All subside and quail and darken when their hour is
done to death. Yet, ere faith, a wandering water, froze and curdled
into creeds,
Earth, elate as heaven, adored the light that quickens
dreams to deeds.
Invisible: eye hath not seen it, and ear hath not heard
as the spirit hath heard
From the shrine that is lit not of sunlight or starlight the
sound of a limitless word.
And visible: none that hath eyes to behold what the
spirit must perish or see
Can choose but behold it and worship: a shrine that if
light were as darkness would be.
Of cloud and of change is the form of the fashion that
man may behold of it wrought:
Of iron and truth is the mystic mid altar, where worship
is none but of thought.
No prayer may go up to it, climbing as incense of gladness or sorrow may climb:
No rapture of music may ruffle the silence that guards it,
and hears not of time. As the winds of the wild blind ages alternate in passion
of light and of cloud,
So changes the shape of the veil that enshrouds it with
darkness and light for a shroud.
And the winds and the clouds and the suns fall silent,
and fade out of hearing or sight,
And the shrine stands fast and is changed not, whose
likeness was changed as a cloud in the night.
All the storms of time, and wrath of many winds, may
carve no trace On the viewless altar, though the veil bear many a
name and face:
Many a live God's likeness woven, many a scripture
dark with awe,
Bids the veil seem verier iron than the word of life's
own law. Till the might of change hath rent it with a rushing
wind in twain,
Stone or steel it seems, whereon the wrath of chance is
wreaked in vain: Stone or steel, and all behind it or beyond its lifted
sign
Cloud and vapour, no subsistence of a change- unstricken shrine.
God by god flits past in thunder, till his glories turn to
shades:
God to god bears wondering witness how his gospel
flames and fades.
More was each of these, while yet they were, than man
their servant seemed:
Dead are all of these, and man survives who made
them while he dreamed.
Yet haply or surely, if vision were surer than theirs who
rejoiced that they saw,
Man might not but see, through the darkness of godhead,
the light that is surety and law.
On the stone that the close-drawn cloud which veils it
awhile makes cloudlike stands
The word of the truth everlasting, unspoken of tongues
and unwritten of hands. By the sunbeams and storms of the centuries engraven,
and approved of the soul as it reads,
It endures as a token dividing the light from the darkness
of dreams and of deeds.
The faces of gods on the face of it carven, or gleaming
behind and above,
Star-glorified Uranus, thunderous Jehovah, for terror or
worship or love, Change, wither, and brighten as flowers that the wind of
eternity sheds upon time,
All radiant and transient and awful and mortal, and leave
it unmarred and sublime.
As the tides that return and recede are the fears and
the hopes of the centuries that roll,
Requenched and rekindled: but strong as the sun is the
sense of it shrined in the soul.
II
were none,
Ere sorrow had life to lot, ere earth gave thanks for the
sun, Ere man in his darkness waking adored what the soul
in him could,
And the manifold God of his making was manifest evil
and good,
One law from the dim beginning abode and abides in
the end,
In sight of him sorrowing and sinning with none but his
faith for friend.
Dark were the shadows around him, and darker the
glories above,
Ere light from beyond them found him, and bade him
for love's sake love.
About him was darkness, and under and over him
darkness: the night
That conceived him and bore him had thunder for
utterance and lightning for light.
The dust of death was the dust of the ways that the
tribes of him trod: And he knew not if just or unjust were the might of the
mystery of God. Strange horror and hope, strange faith and unfaith, were
his boon and his bane:
And the God of his trust was the wraith of the soul or
the ghost of it slain.
A curse was on death as on birth, and a Presence that
shone as a sword
Shed menace from heaven upon earth that beheld him,
and hailed him her Lord.
Sublime and triumphant as fire or as lightning, he kindled the skies, And withered with dread the desire that would look on the light of his eyes. Earth shuddered with worship, and knew not if hell were not hot in her breath; If birth were not sin, and the dew of the morning the sweat of her death. The watchwords of evil and good were unspoken of men and unheard: They were shadows that willed as he would, that were made and unmade by his word. His word was darkness and light, and a wisdom that makes men mad Sent blindness upon them for sight, that they saw but and heard as he bade. Cast forth and corrupt from the birth by the crime of creation, they stood Convicted of evil on earth by the grace of a God found good.
The grace that enkindled and quickened the darkness of hell with flame Bade man, though the soul in him sickened, obey, and give praise to his name. The still small voice of the spirit whose life is as plague's hot breath Bade man shed blood, and inherit the life of the kingdom of death.
"Bring now for blood-offering thy son to mine altar, and bind him and slay, That the sin of my bidding be done": and the soul in the slave said, "Yea." Yea, not nay, was the word: and the sacrifice offered withal Was neither of beast nor of bird, but the soul of a man, God's thrall. And the word of his servant spoken was fire, and the light of a sword, When the bondage of Israel was broken, and Sinai shrank from the Lord.
With splendour of slaughter and thunder of song as the
sound of the sea
Were the foes of him stricken in sunder and silenced as
storms that flee.
Terror and trust and the pride of the chosen, approved
of his choice,
Saw God in the whirlwind ride, and rejoiced as the winds
rejoice.
Subdued and exalted and kindled and quenched by the
sense of his might,
Faith flamed and exulted and dwindled, and saw not,
and clung to the sight. The wastes of the wilderness brightened and trembled
with rapture and dread
When the word of him thundered and lightened and
spake through the quick and the dead. The chant of the prophetess, louder and loftier than
tempest and wave,
Rang triumph more ruthless and prouder than death,
and profound as the grave.
And sweet as the moon's word spoken in smiles that the
blown clouds mar
The psalmist's witness in token arose as the speech of a
star.
Starlight supreme, and the tender desire of the moon,
were as one
To rebuke with compassion the splendour and strength of
the godlike sun.
God softened and changed: and the word of his chosen,
a fire at the first,
Bade man, as a beast or a bird, now slake at the springs
his thirst. The souls that were sealed unto death as the bones of
the dead lie sealed
Rose thrilled and redeemed by the breath of the dawn
on the flame-lit field.
The glories of darkness, cloven with music of thunder,
shrank
As the web of the word was unwoven that spake, and
the soul's tide sank.
And the starshine of midnight that covered Arabia with
light as a robe
Waxed fiery with utterance that hovered and flamed
through the whirlwind on Job.
And prophet to prophet and vision to vision made
answer sublime,
Till the valley of doom and decision was merged in the
tides of time.
III
As the star of the sundawn bright, As the heart of the sea's hymn deep,
And sweet as the balm of sleep,
Arose on the world a light
Too pure for the skies to keep.
With music sweeter and stranger than heaven had heard
When the dark east thrilled with light from a saviour's
word
And a God grew man to endure as a man and abide
The doom of the will of the Lord of the loud world's
tide,
Whom thunders utter, and tempest and darkness hide,
With larger light than flamed from the peak whereon Prometheus, bound as the sun to the world's wheel,
shone,
A presence passed and abode but on earth a span,
And love's own light as a river before him ran,
And the name of God for awhile upon earth was man.
O star that wast not and wast for the world a sun,
O light that was quenched of priests, and its work
undone,
O Word that wast not as man's or as God's, if God
Be Lord but of hosts whose tread was as death's that
trod
On souls that felt but his wrath as an unseen rod,
What word, what praise, what passion of hopeless
prayer, May now rise up to thee, loud as in years that were,
From years that gaze on the works of thy servants
wrought
While strength was in them to satiate the lust of thought
That craved in thy name for blood as the quest it
sought?
From the dark high places of Rome
Far over the westward foam
God's heaven and the sun saw swell
The fires of the high priest's hell,
And shrank as they curled and clomb
And revelled and ravaged and fell.
IV
wasting flame
By the sons of the priests that had slain thee, whose evil
was wrought in thy name.
From the blood-sodden soil that was blasted with fires of
the Church and her creed
Sprang rarely but surely, by grace of thy spirit, a flower
for a weed.
Thy spirit, unfelt of thy priests who blasphemed thee,
enthralled and enticed
To deathward a child that was even as the child we
behold in Christ.
The Moors, they told her, beyond bright Spain and the
strait brief sea,
Dwelt blind in the light that for them was as darkness,
and knew not thee. But the blood of the martyrs whose mission was witness
for God, they said,
Might raise to redemption the souls that were here, in the
sun's sight, dead. And the child rose up in the night, when the stars were
as friends that smiled,
And sought her brother, and wakened the younger and
tenderer child.
From the heaven of a child's glad sleep to the heaven of
the sight of her eyes
He woke, and brightened and hearkened, and kindled as
stars that rise.
And forth they fared together to die for the stranger's sake,
For the souls of the slayers that should slay them, and
turn from their sins, and wake.
And the light of the love that lit them awhile on a brief
blind quest
Shines yet on the tear-lit smile that salutes them, belated
and blest.
And the girl, full-grown to the stature of godhead in
womanhood, spake
The word that sweetens and lightens her creed for her
great love's sake. From the godlike heart of Theresa the prayer above all
prayers heard,
The cry as of God made woman, a sweet blind wonderful
word,
Sprang sudden as flame, and kindled the darkness of
faith with love,
And the hollow of hell from beneath shone, quickened of
heaven from above.
Yea, hell at her word grew heaven, as she prayed that if
God thought well
She there might stand in the gateway, that none might
pass into hell.
Not Hermes, guardian and guide, God, herald, and
comforter, shed
Such lustre of hope from the life of his light on the night
of the dead.
Not Pallas, wiser and mightier in mercy than Rome's
God shone,
Wore ever such raiment of love as the soul of a saint
put on. So blooms as a flower of the darkness a star of the
midnight born,
Of the midnight's womb and the blackness of darkness,
and flames like morn.
Nor yet may the dawn extinguish or hide it, when
churches and creeds
Are withered and blasted with sunlight as poisonous and
blossomless weeds.
So springs and strives through the soil that the legions of
darkness have trod,
From the root that is man, from the soul in the body,
the flower that is God.
V
Through change and cloud uplift
The soul that soars and seeks her sovereign shrine,
Her faith's veiled altar, there To find, when praise and prayer
Fall baffled, if the darkness be divine. Lights change and shift through star and sun:
Night, clothed with might of immemorial years, is one.
Day, born and slain of night,
Hath hardly life in sight
As she that bears and slays him and survives,
And gives us back for one
Cloud-thwarted fiery sun
The myriad mysteries of the lambent lives Whose starry soundless music saith
That light and life wax perfect even through night and death.
In vain had darkness heard
Light speak the lustrous word
That cast out faith in all save truth and love:
In vain death's quickening rod
Bade man rise up as God,
Touched as with life unknown in heaven above:
Fear turned his light of love to fire
That wasted earth, yet might not slay the soul's desire.
Though death seem life, and night
Bid fear call darkness light,
Time, faith, and hope keep trust, through sorrow and shame,
Till Christ, by Paul cast out,
Return, and all the rout
Of raging slaves whose prayer defiles his name
Rush headlong to the deep, and die,
And leave no sign to say that faith once heard them lie.
VI
Since man, with a child's pride proud, and abashed as a
child and afraid, Made God in his likeness, and bowed him to worship
the Maker he made, No faith more dire hath enticed man's trust than the
saint's whose creed Made Caiaphas one with Christ, that worms on the cross
might feed.
Priests gazed upon God in the eyes of a babe new-born, and therein Beheld not heaven, and the wise glad secret of love, but sin. Accursed of heaven, and baptized with the baptism of hatred and hell, They spat on the name they despised and adored as a sign and a spell. "Lord Christ, thou art God, and a liar: they were children
of wrath, not of grace, Unbaptized, unredeemed from the fire they were born
for, who smiled in thy face." Of such is the kingdom—he said it—of heaven: and
the heavenly word Shall live when religion is dead, and when falsehood is
dumb shall be heard. And the message of James and of John was as Christ's
and as love's own call: But wrath passed sentence thereon when Annas replied
in Paul.
The dark old God who had slain him grew one with the
Christ he slew,
And poison was rank in the grain that with growth of his
gospel grew. And the blackness of darkness brightened: and red in
the heart of the flame Shone down, as a blessing that lightened, the curse of a
new God's name. Through centuries of burning and trembling belief as a
signal it shone,
Till man, soul-sick of dissembling, bade fear and her
frauds begone.
God Cerberus yelps from his throats triune: but his day,
which was night,
Is quenched, with its stars and the notes of its night-birds,
in silence and light. The flames of its fires and the psalms of their psalmists
are darkened and dumb:
Strong winter has withered the palms of his angels, and
stricken them numb.
God, father of lies, God, son of perdition, God, spirit
of ill,
Thy will that for ages was done is undone as a dead
God's will.
Not Mahomet's sword could slay thee, nor Borgia's or
Calvin's praise:
But the scales of the spirit that weigh thee are weighted
with truth, and it slays.
The song of the day of thy fury, when nature and death
shall quail,
Rings now as the thunders of Jewry, the ghost of a dead
world's tale.
That day and its doom foreseen and foreshadowed on
earth, when thou,
Lord God, wast lord of the keen dark season, are sport
for us now. Thy claws were clipped and thy fangs plucked out by
the hands that slew
Men, lovers of man, whose pangs bore witness if truth
were true.
Man crucified rose again from the sepulchre builded to be
No grave for the souls of the men who denied thee, but,
Lord, for thee.
When Bruno's spirit aspired from the flames that thy
servants fed,
The spirit of faith was fired to consume thee and leave
thee dead.
When the light of the sunlike eyes whence laughter
lightened and flamed
Bade France and the world be wise, faith saw thee
naked and shamed.
When wisdom deeper and sweeter than Rabelais veiled
and revealed
Found utterance diviner and meeter for truth whence
anguish is healed, Whence fear and hate and belief in thee, fed by thy
grace from above,
Fall stricken, and utmost grief takes light from the lustre
of love,
When Shakespeare shone into birth, and the world he
beheld grew bright,
Thy kingdom was ended on earth, and the darkness it
shed was light.
In him all truth and the glory thereof and the power and
the pride,
The song of the soul and her story, bore witness that
fear had lied.
All hope, all wonder, all trust, all doubt that knows not
of fear,
The love of the body, the lust of the spirit to see and to
hear, All womanhood, fairer than love could conceive or
desire or adore,
All manhood, radiant above all heights that it held of
yore, Lived by the life of his breath, with the speech of his
soul's will spake, And the light lit darkness to death whence never the
dead shall wake.
For the light that lived in the sound of the song of his
speech was one With the light of the wisdom that found earth's tune in
the song of the sun;
His word with the word of the lord most high of us all
on earth,
Whose soul was a lyre and a sword, whose death was a
deathless birth.
Him too we praise as we praise our own who as he stand
strong;
Him, Æschylus, ancient of days, whose word is the
perfect song.
When Caucasus showed to the sun and the sea what a
God could endure,
When wisdom and light were one, and the hands of the
matricide pure, A song too subtle for psalmist or prophet of Jewry to
know,
Elate and profound as the calmest or stormiest of waters
that flow,
A word whose echoes were wonder and music of fears
overcome,
Bade Sinai bow, and the thunder of godhead on Horeb
be dumb.
The childless children of night, strong daughters of
doom and dread, The thoughts and the fears that smite the soul, and its
life lies dead,
Stood still and were quelled by the sound of his word
and the light of his thought,
And the God that in man lay bound was unbound from
the bonds he had wrought.
Dark fear of a lord more dark than the dreams of his
worshippers knew
Fell dead, and the corpse lay stark in the sunlight of
truth shown true.
VII
heaven at odds, See the light of manhood rise on the twilight of the Gods. Light is here for souls to see, though the stars of faith be dead: All the sea that yearned and trembled receives the sun instead. All the shadows on the spirit when fears and dreams were strong, All perdition, all redemption, blind rain-stars watched so long, Love whose root was fear, thanksgiving that cowered beneath the rod, Feel the light that heals and withers: night weeps upon her God.
All the names wherein the incarnate Lord lived his day
and died
Fade from suns to stars, from stars into darkness
undescried.
Christ the man lives yet, remembered of man as dreams
that leave
Light on eyes that wake and know not if memory bid
them grieve.
Fire sublime as lightning shines, and exults in thunder
yet,
Where the battle wields the name and the sword of
Mahomet.
Far above all wars and gospels, all ebb and flow of time,
Lives the soul that speaks in silence, and makes mute
earth sublime.
Still for her, though years and ages be blinded and
bedinned,
Mazed with lightnings, crazed with thunders, life rides
and guides the wind.
Death may live or death may die, and the truth be light
or night:
Not for gain of heaven may man put away the rule of
right.