48
POEMS OF ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
Fool, fool! where am I? O my God! Fool, fool!
Why did we do 't? Eve, Eve! where are you? quick!
His tread is in the garden! hither it comes!
Hide us, O bushes! and ye thick trees, hide
He comes, on, on. Alack, and all these leaves,
These petty, quivering and illusive blinds,
Avail us nought: the light comes in and in;
Displays us to ourselves; displays—ah, shame—
Unto the inquisitive day our nakedness.
He comes; He calls. The large eye of His truth,
His full, severe, all-comprehending view,
Fixes itself upon our guiltiness.
O God, O God! what are we? what shall we be?
What is all this about, I wonder now?
Yet I am better, too. I think it will pass.
'Tis going now, unless it comes again.
A terrible possession while it lasts.
Terrible, surely; and yet indeed 'tis true.
E'en in my utmost impotence I find
A fount of strange persistence in my soul;
Also, and that perchance is stronger still,
A wakeful, changeless touchstone in my brain,
Receiving, noting, testing all the while
These passing, curious, new phenomena—
Painful, and yet not painful unto it.
Though tortured in the crucible I lie,
Myself my own experiment, yet still
I, or a something that is I indeed,
A living, central, and more inmost I,
Within the scales of mere exterior me's,
I,—seem eternal, O thou God, as Thou;
Have knowledge of the evil and the good,
Superior in a higher good to both.
Why did we do 't? Eve, Eve! where are you? quick!
His tread is in the garden! hither it comes!
Hide us, O bushes! and ye thick trees, hide
He comes, on, on. Alack, and all these leaves,
These petty, quivering and illusive blinds,
Avail us nought: the light comes in and in;
Displays us to ourselves; displays—ah, shame—
Unto the inquisitive day our nakedness.
He comes; He calls. The large eye of His truth,
His full, severe, all-comprehending view,
Fixes itself upon our guiltiness.
O God, O God! what are we? what shall we be?
What is all this about, I wonder now?
Yet I am better, too. I think it will pass.
'Tis going now, unless it comes again.
A terrible possession while it lasts.
Terrible, surely; and yet indeed 'tis true.
E'en in my utmost impotence I find
A fount of strange persistence in my soul;
Also, and that perchance is stronger still,
A wakeful, changeless touchstone in my brain,
Receiving, noting, testing all the while
These passing, curious, new phenomena—
Painful, and yet not painful unto it.
Though tortured in the crucible I lie,
Myself my own experiment, yet still
I, or a something that is I indeed,
A living, central, and more inmost I,
Within the scales of mere exterior me's,
I,—seem eternal, O thou God, as Thou;
Have knowledge of the evil and the good,
Superior in a higher good to both.
