Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A VISION OF SAINTS: CONCLUSION, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A VISION OF SAINTS: CONCLUSION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: But many a saintly form I knew, and passed
Last Line: For ever!
Subject(s): Saints


But many a saintly form I knew, and passed
Without a word, because no vision long
Endures, and that for all no mortal life
Might well suffice. Did I not mark thy fair
Nude youthful grace, Sebastian -- beautiful
As young Apollo on the Olympian hill,
Or Marsyas, his victim -- fettered fast
And pierced by rankling shafts while thou didst raise
Thy patient eyes to Heaven? Saw I not thee,
Oh sainted childlike Agnes, with thick locks
Of gold, which, grown miraculously long,
Guarded thy maiden modesty; or thee,
S. Agatha, with thy white wounded breast --
Martyrs and saints? Or thee of recent days,
S. Vincent, who thy late-enfranchised years,
Freed from the prison bonds thou long hadst borne,
Didst spend in works of mercy, and didst care,
As might a father, for the childish lives
Forlorn which no man heeded? Saw I not
Thee, saintly Jeremy, whose daily feet
Paced 'neath the long-armed oaks of Golden Grove,
Above our winding Towy; or thy mild,
Benevolent gaze, good Howard, who didst die.
Christ-like, for souls in prison? Saw I not,
Blessing our land, thy apostolic form,
Dear Wesley, through whose white soul Love Divine
Shone unrefracted, whose pure life was full
Of love for God and man, whose faithful hand
Relit the expiring fire, which sloth and sense
And the sad world's unfaith had well-nigh quenched
And left in ashes; or thy saintly friend,
Fletcher of Madeley, clean consumed of faith
And ruth for perishing souls; or thee, whose zeal
Laid all thy learning at His feet who gave it,
Eliot, apostle to the dying race
Of the Red Indian, on their trackless plains
Preaching in their own tongue the gracious news
Thy learning opened; or thy comely form,
Brave Dorothy, who thy abounding life,
'Neath smoke-stained skies, 'mid coarse and brutal souls,
Gavest to the maimed and sick, content to be
A happy life-long martyr, and didst die
Alone at last of hopeless torture-pains
Incurable, yet cheerful barest thy cross
Even to the end; or ye, oh priceless lives!
After long years of terror, day and night,
Till death itself seemed better than your dread,
Shed for the Faith by many a savage isle
Of the Pacific seas; or ye whose graves
'Mid fever-swamps or silent forest depths
The Moslem slaver mocks, sent to sure death
For Africa. Nay, nay, I marked ye all,
But might not tarry more, so vast has grown,
Lost in dim eld, and longer, hour by hour,
The ever lengthening pageant of the Blest.

And then I marked no other name men know,
For now we passed along the close-set files
Of saints and martyrs, bearing each the palm,
Discerned no more by robes antique, or mien,
Or speech, but of the modern centuries,
And as we live to-day. So thick they rose
Streaming from earth, as when the autumnal year
Sheds its fair throng of meteors on the sky.
So those pure souls, white with a glittering train
Of light, flashed upward, till I might not take
Count of their number, for of every race
And hue and creed they came, of every age,
Both young and old -- all to the heavens above
Ascending; and an infinite thankfulness
Took me, and joy, because our day, that seems
To some so void of faith, so full of pain
And chilled with deadly doubt, not less than those
The faithful ages might, sent forth its tale
Of victories of the Faith. Nor bore they all
The name of Christ, but some there were who held
The old unchanging Faith from whence He came
Whom yet their fathers slew, and some who called
On that ascetic Prince who draws the East
With some faint law of Mercy and of Love
For all created essences, one hope
To be with God, even though Man's nature rush
To His as doth the river to the sea,
Absorbed in Him for ever; and of those
To whom the fierce false Prophet calling, taught,
Though stained with fanatic zeal and grovelling sense,
Amid the noise of base idolatries,
The unity of God, the pure, the wise,
Who sits to judge the world; there came who left
The sensual stye and rose above the din
Of the world's wranglings, and who were indeed
His saints, though Him they knew not.
But of all
The most part were of Him, each Christian race
Sending its cloud of witnesses to swell
The innumerable host. There, came the thralls
Of Duty, willing servants old and young,
Who love the bonds that bind them, knowing well
Their fealty freedom; men who toil enchained
Of household care, knowing not rest nor ease,
For those they love, and live their briefer lives
Unmurmuring; and grave statesmen who toil on
To the laborious end, though life sink low,
Whom natural rest allures, but strive on still
While the sharp tooth of slander gnaws their souls;
Or women who have given their ease, their life,
To weary cares, nor heed them if they know
Their children happy; or who from the hush
Of cloistered convents serve with prayer and praise;
Or who amid the poor and lowly folk
Of all the Churches, as their Master erst,
Toil amid sin and pain, and are content
To live compassionate days and ask no more
Of wages for their service, but, consumed
Of pity, give their lives to save the lost
And hopeless; or who love to minister,
Spurning the weakness of their sex, the bloom
Of delicate ease, and grace and luxury,
And, 'mid the teeming homes of healing, bend
To succour bodily ill, while night by night
The sick and maimed, in restless slumbers tost,
Lie groaning till the dawn, and cries of pain
Wring the soft hearts whose duty binds them fast,
While the gay festive hearths of friends or home
Thrill with sweet music and the rhythmic feet
Of careless youth and joyance, and the rose
And lily of their gentle girlhood wait
Their coming, but in vain, till youth is past,
And with it earthly love. All these fair souls
In one incessant effluence of light
Soared from the earth, the army of the saints
Who in all time have set themselves to work
The Eternal Will.
And yet not all of pain
And suffering were they, who thus leaving earth,
Rose to high Heaven. To some, high sacrifice
Is joy, not pain. For some, from youth to age
The even current of their lives flows on,
Broken by scarce a ripple, scarce a cloud
Veiling the constant blue -- the daily use
Of humble duty, the unchanging round
Of homely life; the father's work, who toils
Ungrudging day by day, from year to year,
To keep the lives he loves, and dies too soon
His children round his bed, nor knows at all
The tremours of the saint; the lowly tasks
Which fill the unchanging round of busy lives,
And keep them pure; the willing, cheerful care
Of mothers. Wert thou not among the throng,
Dear life long fled, who, after tranquil years
Unbroken and unclouded by great griefs
Or bodily pains, on the sad year's last day
Wentest from us; who threescore years and ten
Didst wear thy children's love; whose pitying hand
Was always open; whose mild voice and eye
Drew rich and poor alike, a soul that soared
Not on great sacrifice, indeed, or high
And saintly pains, but trod life's level plain
As 'twere high snows, and daily did inform
Earth with some hue of Heaven; on whose loved tomb
No word is graven, save thy name and date
Of birth and death, because it seemed that none
Might fit the gracious life and beautiful,
Whose glory was its humbleness, whose work,
Built of sweet acts and precious courtesies,
The exemplar of a home? Nay, well I know
High Heaven were not Heaven, wanting thee
And such as thou. Within the gates of God
Are many mansions, and each saintly soul
Treads its own path, fills its own place, but all
Are perfected and blest.
And yet how few
Of that great congress saw I. He who keeps
Lone vigils with the stars notes on night's face
Some ghostly, scarce-suspected vapour gleam,
And turns his optic-glass to it; and, lo!
A mist of suns! wherefrom the sensitive disc
Fixes the rays, first scattered, then more dense
With longer time, star after hidden star
Stealing from out the unimagined void
And twinkling into light, till on its face
Those dark unplumbed abysses show no speck
Of vacant gloom, a white and shining wall
Of glomerated worlds, broad as the bound
Which feeble fancy, yearning for an end,
Builds round the verge of Space. So that bright throng
Grew denser as I gazed, till Heaven was full
Of the white cloud of witnesses, who still,
As always since the worlds and Time began,
Stand round the throne of God.
Then while I gazed,
As in that vision fair which filled the eyes
Of the blest seer of Patmos, suddenly
The angels with veiled faces cast them down
Prostrate, and then a peal of glorious sound,
Mightier than any sound of earth, which chased
My dream, and well-remembered words I heard:
"Blessing and Glory, Wisdom, Thanksgiving,
Honour, and Power, and Might be unto Thee
For ever and for ever."
Then methought
My soul made answer:
"Yea, and victory
Over Thy Evil. Not Thy saints alone
Are Thine, and if one soul were lost to Thee,
Thine arm were shortened. All the myriad lives
Which are not here, but pine in bitter dole,
Do Thou redeem at last, after what toils
Thou wilt, in Thine own time, of Thine own will,
Purged, if Thou wilt, by age-long lustral pain,
Banished for long. Yet through new spheres untried
Of Being let them rise, sinner and saint,
Higher and higher still, till all shall move
In harmony with Thee and Thy great Scheme,
Which doth transcend the bounds of Earth and Time;
Still let them work Thy work. Yet bring them home;
Let none be lost! For see how far Thy Heavens
Are higher than our earth, how brief the tale
Of little years we live, how low and small
Our weak offence, transgression of a child
Grown petulant, on whom the father looks
With pity, not with wrath. On those dead souls
Which unillumined in the outer depths
Lie yet, too gross for Heaven, send Thou a beam
From Thy great Sun, and, piercing through them, wake
The good that slept on earth: and, like the throb
Of radiant light which pulses through the mist
With which Thy Space is sown, and wakes new worlds,
Atom by atom drawn or else repelled;
Or as the vibrant subtle note which thrills
Upon the sensitive film, and traces on it
Figure on figure, curve with curve inlaced
Into some perfect flower; so do Thou, Lord,
Sound with Thy light and voice the dumb dark depths
And, working on the unnumbered souls which lie
Far from Thee, shine and call, and, waking in them
A latent order, purge them. Make their will
Harmonious with the Will which governs all,
And orb into some higher form, and start
As Thy new worlds to life, till all Thy skies
Shine with recovered souls. Then shall it be
As those great voices would, and Thou fulfilled
Alike in Earth and Heaven."

But as I woke
To this poor world again, almost with tears,
Not wholly did the vision fade, but still
Those high processions lingering with me seemed
To purify my soul. What was the world,
Its low designs and hopes, its earthborn joys,
Base grovelling pleasures, and unfruitful pains,
To those and such as they -- those eyes that saw
Not earth, but Heaven; those stainless feet that trod
Through lilied meads of saintly sacrifice
And strange unearthly snows? Surely 'twas well
To have seen them clearer than the mists of earth
Concede to waking sight. Come thou again,
Fair dream, and often, till thou art a dream
No more, but waking. March to victory,
Great army, from the legendary Past,
Through the brief Present, where Life's pilgrims toil
To-day, and rise triumphant, or fall prone,
Prest by their load; through that unnoted tract
Of the dim Future which our thought pourtrays,
Far fairer than the world's sad Past; which yet
Shall have its struggles too, its sins, its wrongs,
Its saints, its martyrs!
March in spotless line,
Lengthening the ranks of those who, gone before,
Are now triumphant, till the End shall come,
Which hushes all our lower strifes, attunes
Discords to harmonies, rounds and makes complete
The cycle of our Lives; till Sacrifice
And Pain are done, and Death, and the Dread Dawn
Breaks which makes all things new, and the great Sun
Rising upon the worlds, dispels the Night
Of Man's sad Past, and routs the gathered clouds
Of Evil, and ascends a Conqueror,
Wielding full splendours of unwaning Day
For ever!





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net