THERE was a man called pure, Because neither with hand nor tongue nor visible act He committed any sin. His friend took him and peeled him like an onion, Stripped off, not the clothes of the body, but the clothes of the soul, And came at last to the dark and secret closet... What did he find? He found what was in himself and in you and me: For the sculptor that thumbed so patiently the clay of earth until it was this radiant rosy flesh, This eyed and tongued body of man and woman, That sculptor, Life, shaped our bodies out of the bodies of the beasts, And even so he shaped our souls and hearts out of the souls and hearts of the beasts... Yea, the babe new-born is, in all save the open mind, (That curious creator within us) A little crying animal desiring milk from its mother... So the friend found in the pure one the deposit of the dead millenniums: But alive there: a jungle and swamp of ancestral beasts and savages... Chaos of the earth at creation: the flowing of fires and floods, and the smokes of the craters... Yea, the bloody black history of man was locked in that breast. He found even hell: the nether region of torment: Hot cravings, dark lusts, the maniac and the slayer, The foul breath of the ravening betrayer of women, the steaming hand of the persecutor, And all things named "carnal"... And at the gate of this deep Hell he found the little devil of Fear pushing back the immortal Sins, And the little devil of Respectability shuddering that the Burning Ones might escape, And the devil of Horror barring the way to the convicts... So the friend said to him: "Come, man of Purity, scourge of the adulterers! A word, unblemished One! "I see that you are good through fear, And not because of your nature... I see that you are stainless because you want to be respectable, And because it is easier to succeed in the world if people think well of you ... "You may have fooled the world and you may have fooled yourself: But Nature is never fooled ... She leaks through in her own mysterious way. She plagues a liar until the whole spirit itches ... For what makes you so smug and dull and such a dead weight on your friends: And why do you breathe invisible corruption about you, And remind one of slime and dung and detestable things? Why does the hearty sinner send joy upon me, and quicken my heart, So that I throw up my hat and applaud the freshness of life, While you, O Unspotted One, eat into my day like a canker of ennui? You breed a hate of virtue and a loathing of goodness ... "Ha, it is the hidden hell breathing through you: It is the smothered beast radiating his foulness through your flesh: It is the adultery in the heart which is less honest and more evil than the adultery in the act ... (Did not the same truth-teller speak of the whited sepulchre?) "Come, you are not only a sinner, but a coward as well: For the sinner of courage goes honestly and commits his sin: And so rids himself of this pus, and cleanses the air for us, And makes us glad, even as a thunderstorm that purifies a muggy day ... "So, a word, friend (I was never so real a friend as now, flaying you alive!) The things you damn in others are the things that are really you: Go, know yourself: turn your eyes inward: walk humbly into your hell: Wear every scarlet stripe of those blood-red flames: And then wait the miracle ... "For behold! Sin? Not so: no, but the human ... Thus are we all ... Shall we say Nature is foul and corrupt? Shall we say the receding road of a million million years down the past Was all a mistake, though it is we that emerge from that road? Shall we damn our Mother, whose nimble fingers are ages that tenderly shaped us? Shall we curse the cyclone that whirled up from the sun and in fierce cycles begot Earth and her children, And now sweeps through us, crying out to us to create? Nay, under the crust of our minds lie the weltering universes Jetting up power enough to fill the skies with new stars ... "But, lo, on the crust, and over the welter, Sits a god: the creator: you: And more than the hills and the seas give you granite and steam The self within offers raw powers and materials ... Take this desire of women and shape of the passion a poem or a city, Take this lusting to kill and conquer the heavens with wings, Take these hungering beasts in your breast and beget civilizations! What you call Hell, is merely unharnessed power! And if you touch these red devils with love and hearty good will Behold as they lift their eyes, the faces of gods ... "Smother not the storm of Life in the soul: But open the way, and shape it, blowing from your hands and lips: Be a god using the storm as your own wings ... The lifter of your spirit! "Then, indeed, you will cease to condemn them who have not the guidance to transform their powers, But live as in nature, Then, indeed, you will go sit with publicans and sinners, And understand and enjoy them." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MOONLIT APPLES by JOHN DRINKWATER A GIRL'S GARDEN by ROBERT FROST THE BOYS by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES DIVINA COMMEDIA (INTRODUCTORY POEMS): 1 by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE CARD-DEALER by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI ODE SUNG AT THE OPENING OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION by ALFRED TENNYSON |