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SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST by FREDERICK WILLIAM HENRY MYERS

First Line: O JESUS, IF ONE MINUTE, IF ONE HOUR
Last Line: LEAST, AS I KNOW, OF ALL MEN WOMAN-BORN.
Subject(s): JOHN THE BAPTIST, SAINT (1ST CENTURY);
O JESUS, if one minute, if one hour
Thou wouldst come hitherward and speak with John!
Nay, but be present only, nay, but come:
And I shall look, and as I look on thee
Find in thine eyes the answer and the end.

And I am he who once in Nazareth,
A child, nor knowing yet the prophet's woe,
In childly fashion sought thee, and even then
Perceived a mute withdrawal, open eyes
That drooped not for caressing, brows that knew
Dominion, and the babe already king.

Ah Mary, but thou also, thou as I,
With eager tremulous humilities,
With dumb appeal and tears that dared not flow,
Hast laid thy loving arms about the boy,
And clasped him wistfully and felt him far.

And ever as I grew his loveliness
Grew with me, and the yearning turned to pain.
Then said I,—"Nay, my friends, no need is now
For John to tarry with you; I have seen,
I have known him; I go hence, and all alone
I carry Jesus with me till I die."

And that same day, being past the Passover,
I gat me to the desert, and stayed to see
Joseph and Mary holding each a hand
Of one that followed meekly; and I was gone,
And with strange beasts in the great wilderness
I laid me, fearing nothing, and hardly knew
On what rough meat in what unwonted ways
I throve, or how endured the frost and fire;
But moaned and carried in my heart for him
A first and holy passion, boy for boy,
And loved the hills that look on Nazareth
And every fount that pours upon the plain.

Then once with trembling knees and heart afire
I ran, I sought him: but my Lord at home
Bright in the full face of the dawning day
Stood at his carpentry, and azure air
Inarched him, scattered with the glittering green:
I saw him standing, I saw his face, I saw
His even eyebrows over eyes grey-blue,
From whence with smiling there looked out on me
A welcome and a wonder,—"Mine so soon?"—
Ah me, how sweet and unendurable
Was that confronting beauty of the boy!
Jesus, thou knowest I had no answer then,
But leapt without a word, and flung away,
And dared not think thereof, and looked no more.

And after that with wonder rose in me
Strange speech of early prophets, and a tale
First learnt and last forgotten, song that fell
With worship from the lonely Israelites,
Simeon and Anna; for these twain as one
Fast by the altar and in the courts of God
Led a long age in fair expectancy.
For all about them swept the heedless folk,
Unholy folk and market merchandise,
They each from each took courage, and with prayer
Made ready for the coming of a King.
So, when the waves of Noe on forest and hill
Ran ruinous, and all herbs had lost the life
Of greenness and the memory of air,
The cedar-trees alone on Lebanon
Spread steadfastly invulnerable arms.

That was no sleep when clear the vision came,
Bright in the night and truer than the day:—
For there with brows newborn and locks that flew
Was Adam, and his eyes remembered God;
And Eve, already fallen, already in woe,
Knowing a sweeter promise for the pain;
And after these, unknown, unknowable,
The grave gigantic visage of dead men,
With looks that are not ours, with speech to say
That no man dares interpret; then I saw
A maiden such as countrymen afield
Greet reverently, and love her as they see;
And after that a boy with face so fair,
With such a glory and a wonder in it,
I grieved to find him born upon the earth
To man's life and the heritage of sin;
And last of all that Mary whom I knew
Stood with such parted lips and face aglow
As long-since when the angel came to her;
And all these pointed forward, and I knew
That each was prophet and singer and sire and seer,
That each was priest and mother and maid and king,
With longing for the babe of Nazareth,
For that man-child who should be born and reign.

And once again I saw him, in latter days
Fraught with a deeper meaning, for he came
To my baptizing, and the infinite air
Blushed on his coming, and all the earth was still;
Gently he spake; I answered; God from heaven
Called, and I hardly heard him, such a love
Streamed in that orison from man to man.
Then shining from his shoulders either-way
Fell the flood Jordan, and his kingly eyes
Looked in the east, and star-like met the sun.
Once in no manner of similitude,
And twice in thunderings and thrice in flame,
The Highest ere now hath shown him secretly;
But when from heaven the visible Spirit in air
Came verily, lighted on him, was alone,
Then knew I, then I said it, then I saw
God in the voice and glory of a man.

And one will say, "And wilt thou not forget
The unkindly king that hath forgotten thee?"
Nay, I remember; like my sires who sat
Faithful and stubborn by Euphrates' stream,
Nor in their age forgot Jerusalem,
Nor reared their children for another joy.

O Jesus, if thou knewest, if thou couldst know,
How in my heart through sleep and pain and prayer
Thy royalty remaineth; how thy name
Falls from my lips unbidden, and the dark
Is thick with lying shades that are not thou,—
Couldst thou imagine it, O tender soul!
At least in vision thou wouldst come to me;
I should not only hear of dumb that sing
And lame that leap around thee, and all thy ways
Joyful, and on thy breast another John.

How should I not remember? Is dusk of day
Forgetful, or the winter of the sun?
Have these another glory? or whom have I
In all the world but Jesus for my love?
Whereinsoever breath may rise and die
Their generations follow on, and earth
Each in their kind replenisheth anew,
Only like him she bears not nor hath borne
One in her endless multitude of men.

And these were ever about me; morn by morn
Mine eyes again desired him, and I saw
The thronging Hebrews thicken, and my heart
Sank, and the prophet served another day.

Yet sometimes when by chance the rulers came,
Encharnelled in their fatness, men that smile,
Sit in high seats, and swell with their desire,
My strong limbs shook, and my heart leapt and fell
With passion of sheer scorn, with speech that slew,
With glances that among them running dealt
Damnation, as on Egypt ran the flame.
For such men never when I look on them
Can keep their pride or smiling, but their brow
Droops from its base dominion, and their voice
Rings hollower with a stirring fear within,
Till flushes chill to paleness, and at length
From self-convicted eyes evanisheth
The false and fickle lumour of their joy.

For quick and fitfully with feast and song
Men make a tumult round them, and console
With sudden sport a momentary woe;
But if thou take one hence, and set him down
In some strange jeopardy on enormous hills,
Or swimming at night alone upon the sea,
His lesser life falls from him, and the dream
Is broken which had held him unaware,
And with a shudder he feels his naked soul
In the great black world face to face with God.

This also for that miserable man
Is a worse trouble than his heart can know,
That in the strait and sodden ways of sin
He has made him alien to the plenteous day,
Cut off from friendliness with woods that wave
And happy pasture and carousing sea,
And whatsoever loving things enjoy
Simply the kind simplicity of God.
For these are teachers; not in vain His seers
Have dwelt in solitudes and known that God
High up in open silence and thin air
More presently reveals him, having set
His chiefest temples on the mountain-tops,
His kindling altar in the hearts of men.
And these I knew with peace and lost with pain,
And oft for whistling wind and desert air
Lamented, and in dreams was my desire
For the flood Jordan, for the running sound
And broken glitters of the midnight moon.
But now all this fades from me, and the life
Of prophecy, and summers that I knew.
Yea, and though once I looked on many men
And spake them sweet and bitter speech, and heard
Such secrets as a tempest of the soul
Once in a lifetime washes black and bare
From desperate recesses of shut sin,
Yet all is quite forgotten, and to-day
From the strange past no sign remains with me
But simple and tremendous memories
Of morning and of even and of God.

Ah me, ah me, for if a man desire
Gold or great wealth or marriage with a maid,
How easily he wins her, having served
Seven years perchance, and counting that for gain;
But whoso wants God only and lets life go,
Seeks him with sorrow, and pursues him far,
And finds him weeping, and in no long time
Again the High and Unapproachable
Evanishing escapeth, and that man
Forgets the life and struggle of the soul,
Falls from his hope, and dreams it was a dream.

Yet back again perforce with sorrow and shame
Who once hath known him must return, nor long
Can cease from loving, nor endures alone
The dreadful interspace of dreams and day,
Once quick with God; nor is content as those
Who look into each other's eyes and seek
To find one strong enough to uphold the earth,
Or sweet enough to make it heaven: aha,
Whom seek they or whom find? for in all the world
There is none but thee, my God, there is none but thee.

And this it is that links together as one
The sad continual companies of men;
Not that the old earth stands, and Ararat
Endureth, and Euphrates till to-day
Remembers where God walked beside the stream;
Nay rather that souls weary and hearts afire
Have everywhere besought him, everywhere
Have found and found him not; and age to age,
Though all else pass and fail, delivereth
At least the great tradition of their God.

For even thus on Ur and Mahanaim
By Asian rivers gathering to the sea,
When the huge stars shone gold, and dim and still
Dewed in the dusk the innocent yearlings lay,
With constant eyes the serious shepherd-men
Renewed the old desiring, sought again
The mute eternal Presence; and for these
Albeit sometimes the sundering firmament
One moment to no bodily sense revealed
Unspeakably an imminence of love;—
Yet by no song have our forefathers known
To set the invisible in sight of men,
Nor in all years have any wisdom found
But patient hope and dumb humility.

Yea, Lord, I know it, teach me yet anew
With what a fierce and patient purity
I must confront the horror of the world.
For very little space on either hand
Parts the sane mind from madness; very soon
By the intenser pressure of one thought
Or clearer vision of one agony
The soothfast reason trembles, all things fade
In blackness, and the demon enters in.—
I would I never may be left of thee,
O God, my God, in whatsoever ill;
Be present while thou strikest, thus shall grow
At least a solemn patience with the pain;—
When thou art gone, what is there in the world
Seems not dishonoured, desperate with sin?
The stars are threatful eyeballs, and the air
Hangs thick and heavy with the wrath of God,
And even pure pity in my heart congeals
To idle anger with thy ways and thee,
Nor any care for life remains to me,
Nor trust in love, nor fellowship with men,
But past my will the exasperated brain
Thinks bitter thoughts, and I no more am John.

It is not when man's heart is nighest heaven
He hath most need of servant-seraphim,—
Albeit that height be holy and God be still,
And lifted up he dies with his desire,
That only once the Highest for dear love's sake
Would set himself in whispers of a man:—
Nay, but much rather when one flat on earth
Knows not which way to grovel, or where to flee
From the overmastering agony of sin,
Then his deed tears him till he find one pure
To know it and forgive: "For God," saith he,
"Still on the unjust sends unchangeable
These scornful boons of summer and of rain,
And howsoever I fall, with dawn and day
Floods me, and splendidly ignores my sin."

And how should pity and anger cease, or shame
Have done with blushes, till the prophet know
That God not yet hath quite despaired of men?
Oh that the heavens were rent and one came down
Who saw men's hurt with kindlier eyes than mine,
Fiercelier than I resented every wrong,
Sweated more painful drops than these that flow
In nightly passion for my people's sin,—
Died with it, lived beyond it,—nay, what now?
If this indeed were Jesus, this the Lamb
Whom age by age the temple-sacrifice
Not vainly had prefigured, and if so
In one complete and sacred agony
He lifted all the weight of all the world,—
And if men knew it, and if men clung to him
With desperate love and present memory,—
I know not how,—till all things fail in fire;
That were enough, and, o my God, for them,
For them there might be peace, but not for me.

And even Elias often on the hills
Towered in a flaming sunset, sick at heart;
Often with bare breast on the dewy earth
Lay all night long, and all night comfortless
Poured his abounding bitterness of soul:
I know that not without a wail he bore
The solitude of prophets till that day
When death divine and unbelievable
Blazed in the radiant chariot and blown fire,
Whereof the very memory melts mine eyes
And holds my heart with wonder: can it be
That thus obscurely to his ministers
Jehovah portioneth eternal love?

Here in the hazardous joy of woman and man
Consider with how sad and eager eyes
They lean together, and part, and gaze again,
Regretting that they cannot in so brief time,
With all that sweet abandonment, outpour
Their flowing infinity of tenderness.
God's fashion is another; day by day
And year by year he tarrieth; little need
The Lord should hasten; whom he loves the most
He seeks not oftenest, nor wooes him long,
But by denial quickens his desire,
And in forgetting best remembers him,
Till that man's heart grows humble and reaches out
To the least glimmer of the feet of God,
Grass on the mountain-tops, or the early note
Of wild birds in the hush before the day,—
Wherever sweetly in the ends of the earth
Are fragments of a peace that knows not man.

Then on our utter weakness and the hush
Of hearts exhausted that can ache no more,
On such abeyance of self and swoon of soul
The Spirit hath lighted oft, and let men see
That all our vileness alters God no more
Than our dimmed eyes can quench the stars in heaven:—
From years ere years were told, through all the sins,
Unknown sins of innumerable men,
God is himself for ever, and shows to-day
As erst in Eden, the eternal hope.

Wherefore if anywise from morn to morn
I can endure a weary faithfulness,
From minute unto minute calling low
On God who once would answer, it may be
He hath a waking for me, and some surprise
Shall from this prison set the captive free
And love from fears and from the flesh the soul.

For even thus beside Gennesaret
In solemn night some demon-haunted man
Runs from himself, and nothing knows in heaven
But blackness, yet around him unaware
With standing hills and high expectancy,
With early airs and shuddering and calm,
The enormous morning quickens, and lake and tree
Perceive each other dimly in a dream:
And when at last with bodily frame forspent
He throws him on the beach to sleep or die,
That very moment rises full and fair
Thy sun, o Lord, the sun that brings the day.

I wait it; I have spoken; even now
This hour may set me in one place with God.
I hear a wantoning in Herod's hall,
And feet that seek me; very oft some chance
Leaps from the folly and the wine of kings;—
O Jesus, spirit and spirit, soul and soul,—
O Jesus, I shall seek thee, I shall find,
My love, my master, find thee, though I be
Least, as I know, of all men woman-born.



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