Phantasmagoria and Other Poems/The Three Voices/First Voice
THE THREE VOICES.
THE FIRST VOICE.
With hands tight clenched through matted hair,
He crouched in trance of dumb despair:
There came a breeze from out the air.
It passed athwart the glooming flat—
It fanned his forehead as he sat—
It lightly bore away his hat,
All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could,
With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown.
Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him.
Awhile like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude,
In words just short of being rude:
For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,
And he was going out to dine.
With grave indifference to his speech,
Fixing her eyes upon the beach,
She said "Each gives to more than each."
He could not answer yea or nay;
He faltered "Gifts may pass away."
Yet knew not what he meant to say.
"If that be so," she straight replied,
"Each heart with each doth coincide.
What boots it? For the world is wide."
And he, not wishing to appear
Less wise, said "This Material Sphere
Is but Attributive Idea."
But when she asked him "Wherefore so?"
He felt his very whiskers glow,
And frankly owned "I do not know."
While, like broad waves of golden grain,
Or sunlit hues on cloistered pane,
His colour came and went again.
Pitying his obvious distress,
Yet with a tinge of bitterness,
She said "The More exceeds the Less."
"A truth of such undoubted weight,"
He urged, "and so extreme in date,
It were superfluous to state."
Roused into sudden passion, she
In tone of cold malignity:
"To others, yes; but not to thee."
But when she saw him quail and quake,
And when he urged "For pity's sake!"
Once more in gentle tone she spake:
"Thought in the mind doth still abide;
That is by Intellect supplied,
And within that Idea doth hide.
"And he, that yearns the truth to know,
Still further inwardly may go,
And find Idea from Notion flow.
"And thus the chain, that sages sought,
Is to a glorious circle wrought,
For Notion hath its source in Thought."
When he, with racked and whirling brain,
Feebly implored her to explain,
She simply said it all again.
Wrenched with an agony intense,
He spake, neglecting Sound and Sense,
And careless of all consequence:
"Mind—I believe—is Essence—Ent—
Abstract—that is—an Accident—
Which we—that is to say—I meant—"
When, with quick breath and cheeks all flushed,
At length his speech was somewhat hushed,
She looked at him, and he was crushed.
It needed not her calm reply;
She fixed him with a stony eye,
And he could neither fight nor fly,
While she dissected, word by word,
His speech, half guessed at and half heard.
As might a cat a little bird.
Then, having wholly overthrown
His views, and stripped them to the bone,
Proceeded to unfold her own.
So passed they on with even pace,
Yet gradually one might trace
A shadow growing on his face.