Epilogue: Prayer

From "Gargoyles" "Collected Works" iii p. 95

 

The light streams stronger through the lamps of sense.
            Intelligence
Grows as we go. Alas: its icy glimmer
            Shows dimmer, dimmer
The awful vaults we traverse. Were the sun
            Himself the one
 Glory of space, he would but illustrate
            The night of Fate.
Are not the hosts of heaven in vain arrayed?
            Their light dismayed
Before the vast blind spaces of the sky?
            O galaxy
Of thousands upon thousands closely curled!
            Your golden world
Incalculably small, its closest cluster
            Mere milky lustre
Staining the infinite darkness! Base and blind
            Our minion a mind
Seeks a great light, a light sufficient, light
            Insufferably bright,
Hence hidden for an hour: imagining
            This vast vain thing,
We call it God, and Father. Empty hand
            And prayer unplanned
Stretch fatuous b to the void. Ah! men my friends,
            What fury sends
This folly to intoxicate your hearts?
            Dread air dispart
Your vital ways from the unsavoury follies,
            Black melancholies
Sit straddled on your bended backs. The throne
            Of the unknown
Is fit for children. We are too well ware
            How vain is prayer,
How nought is great, since all is immanent,
            The vast content
Of all the universe unalterable.
            We know too well
How no one thing abides awhile at all,
            How all things fall.
Fall from their seat, the lamentable place,
            Before their face,
Weary and pass and are no more. So we,
            Since hope must be,
Look to the future, to the chance minute
            That life may shoot
Some flower at least to blossom in the night,
            Since vital light
Is sure to fail us on the hideous way.
            What? Must we pray?
Verily, O thou littlest babe, too weak
            To stir or speak,
Capable hardly of a thought, yet seed
            Of word and deed!
To thine assured fruition we may trust
            This weary dust.
We who are palsied, a (and so wise!)
            Lift up our eyes
To little children, as the storm-tossed bark
            Hails in the dark
Some hardly visible harbour light; we hold
            The hours of gold
To our own breasts, whose hours are iron and brass: -
            So swift the pass
And grind us down: - we hold the wondrous light
            Our scattering sight
Yet sees, the one star in a night of woe.
            We trust, and so
Lift up our voices in the dying day
            Indeed to pray:

O little hands that are so strong,
            Lead us along!

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      a minion: here it might mean "our servitor mind,": our minds below the higher aspects. This word also means "favourite," "darling," and the like.

     b fatuous: "simple-minded," "silly," "feeble in mind."

     a palsied: "shaking," "lam," with old and feeble limbs.

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