Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WANDERER: 6. PALINGENSIS: EUTHANASIA (WRITTEN AFTER LONG ILLNESS), by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON


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THE WANDERER: 6. PALINGENSIS: EUTHANASIA (WRITTEN AFTER LONG ILLNESS), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Spring to the world, and strength to me, returns
Last Line: A finer fervor trembles on its face.
Alternate Author Name(s): Meredith, Owen; Lytton, 1st Earl Of; Lytton, Robert
Subject(s): Euthanasia; Sickness; Travel; Illness; Journeys; Trips


SPRING to the world, and strength to me, returns;
And flowers return, -- but not the flowers I knew.
I live: the fire of life within me burns;
But all my life is dead. The land I view
I know not; nor the life which I regain.
Within the hollow of the hand of death
I have lain so long, that now I draw the breath
Of life as unfamiliar, and with pain.

Of life: but not the life which is no more; --
That tender, tearful, warm, and passionate thing;
That wayward, restless, wistful life of yore;
Which now lies, cold, beneath the clasp of Spring,
As last year's leaves: but such a life as seems
A strange new-comer, coy and all-afraid.
No motion heaves the heart where it is laid,
Save when the past returns to me in dreams.

In dreams, like memories of another world:
The beauty, and the passion, and the pain,
The wizardry by which my youth was whirled
Round vain desires, -- so violent, yet so vain!
The love which desolated life, yet made
So dear its desolation: and the creeds
Which, one by one, snapped in my hold like reeds,
Beneath the weight of need upon them laid!

For each man deems his own sand-house secure
While life's wild waves are lulled; yet who can say,
If yet his faith's foundations do endure,
It is not that no wind hath blown that way?
Must we, even for their beauty's sake, keep furled
Our fairest creeds, lest earth should sully them,
And take what ruder help chance sends, to stem
The rubs and wrenchings of this boisterous world?

Alas! 't is not the creed that saves the man:
It is the man that justifies the creed:
And each must save his own soul as he can,
Since each is burthened with a different need.
Round each the bandit passions lurk; and, fast
And furious, swarm to strip the pilgrim bare;
Then, oft, in lonely places unaware,
Fall on him, and do murder him at last.

And oft the light of truth, which through the dark
We fetched such toilful compass to detect,
Glares through the broken cloud on the lost bark,
And shows the rock -- too late, when all is wrecked!
Not from one watch-tower o'er the deep, alone,
It streams, but lightens there and lightens here
With lights so numberless (like heaven's eighth sphere)
That all their myriad splendors seem but one.

Time was, when it seemed possible to be
(Then, when this shattered prow first felt the foam)
Colum bus to some far Philosophy,
And bring, perchance, the golden Indies home.
O siren isles of the enchanted main
Through which I lingered! altars, temples, groves,
Whelmed in the salt sea wave, that rolls and roves
Around each desolated lost domain!

Over all these hath passed the deluge. And,
Saved from the sea, forlornly face to face
With the gaunt ruin of a world, I stand.
But two alone of all that perisht race
Survive to share with me my wanderings;
Doubt and Experience. These my steps attend,
Ever; and oft above my harp they bend,
And, weeping with me, weep among its strings.

Yet, -- saved, though in a land unconsecrate
By any memory, it seems good to me
To build an altar to the Lord; and wait
Some token, either from the land or sea,
To point me to my rest, which should be near.
Rude is the work, and simple is my skill;
Yet, if the hand could answer to the will,
This pile should lack not incense. Father, hear

My cry unto thee. Make thy covenant
Fast with my spirit. Bind within Thy bow
The whole horizon of my tears. I pant
For Thy refreshing. Bid Thy fountains flow
In this dry desert, where no springs I see.
Before I venture in an unknown land,
Here will I clear the ground on which I stand,
And justify the hope Thou gavest me.

I cannot make quite clear what comes and goes
In fitful light, by waning gleams descried.
The Spirit, blowing where it listeth, blows
Only at times, some single fold aside
Of that great veil which hangs o'er the Unknown:
Yet do the feeble, fleeting lights that fall,
Reveal enough, in part, for hope in all:
And that seems surest which the least is shown.

God is a spirit. It is also said
Man is a spirit. Can I therefore deem
The two in nature separate? The made
Hath in it of the Maker. Hence I seem
A step towards light; -- since 't is the property
Of spirit to possess itself in all
It is possest by; -- halved yet integral;
One person, various personality.

To say the Infinite is that which lies
Beyond the Finite,...were it not to set
A border mark to the immensities?
Far as these mortal senses measure yet
Their little region of the mighty plan,
Through valves of birth and death -- are heard forever
The finite steps of infinite endeavor
Moving through Nature and the mind of man.

If man, -- the finite spirit, -- in infinity
Alone can find the truth of his ideal,
Dare I not deem that infinite Divinity
Within the finite must assume the real?
For what so feverish fancy, reck less hurled
Through a ruined brain, did ever yet descry
A symbol sad enough to signify
The conscious God of an unconscious world?

Wherefore, thus much perceived, to recognize
In God, the infinite spirit of Unity,
In man, the finite spirit, here implies
An interchanged perception; -- Deity
Within humanity made manifest:
Not here man lonely, there a lonely God;
But, in all paths by human nature trod,
Infinity in Finity exprest.

This interchange, upon man's part, I call
Religion: revelation on the part
Of Deity: wherefrom there seems to fall
'T is consequence (the point from which I start)
If God and man be one (a unity
Of which religion is the human side)
This must in man's religion be descried,
A consciousness and a reality.

Whilst man in nature dwells, his God is still
In nature; thence, in time, there intervenes
The Law: he learns to fortify his will
Against his passions, by external means:
And God becomes the Lawgiver: but when
Corruption in the natural state we see,
And in the legal hopeless tyranny,
We seem to need (if needed not till then)

That which doth uplift nature, and yet makes
More light the heavy letter of the law.
Then for the Perfect the Imperfect aches,
Till love is born upon the deeps of awe.
Yet what of this,...that God in man may be,
And man, though mortal, of a race divine,
If no assurance lives which may incline
The heart of man to man's divinity?

"There is no God"...the Fool saith -- to his heart,
Yet shapes a godhead from his intellect.
Is mind than heart less human,...that we part
Thought from affection, and from mind erect
A deity merely intellectual?
If God there be, devoid of sympathy
For man, he is not man's divinity.
A God unloving were no God at all.

This felt,...I ask not..."What is God?" but "What
Are my relations with Him?" this alone
Concerns me now: since, if I know this not,
Though I should know the sources of the sun,
Or what within the hot heart of the earth
Lulls the soft spirit of the fire, although
The mandate of the thunder I should know,
To me my knowledge would be nothing worth.

What message, or what messenger to man?
Whereby shall revelation reach the soul?
For who, by searching, finds out God? How can
My utmost steps, unguided, gain the goal
Of necessary knowledge? It is clear
I cannot reach the gates of heaven, and knock
And enter: though I stood upon the rock
Like Moses, God must speak ere I can hear,

And touch me ere I feel him. He must come
To me (I cannot join Him in the cloud),
Stand at the dim doors of my mortal home;
Lift the low latch of life; and enter, bowed
Unto this earthly roof; and sit within
The circle of the senses; at the hearth
Of the affections; be my guest on earth,
Loving my love, and sorrowing in my sin.

Since, though I stripped Divinity, in thought,
From passion, which is personality,
My God would still be human: though I sought
In the bird's wing or in the insect's eye,
Rather than in this broken heart of mine,
His presence, human still: human would be
All human thought conceives. Humanity,
Being less human, is not more divine.

The soul, then, cannot stipulate or refuse
The fashion of the heavenly em bassy.
Since God is here the speaker, He must choose
The words He wills. Already I descry
That God and man are one, divided here,
Yet reconcilable. One doubt survives.
There is a dread condition to men's lives:
We die: and, from its death, it would appear

Our nature is not one with the divine.
Not so. The Man-God dies; and by his death
Doth with his own immortal life combine
The spirit pining in this mortal breath.
Who from himself himself did alienate
That he, returning to himself, might pave
A pathway hence, to heaven from the grave,
For man to follow -- through the heavenly gate.

Wert thou, my Christ, not ignorant of grief?
A man of sorrows? Not for sorrow's sake
(Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief!)
Beneath the thorns did thy pure forehead ache:
But that in sorrow only, unto sorrow,
Can comfort come; in manhood only, man
Perceive man's destiny. In Nature's plan
Our path is over Midnight to To-morrow.

And so the Prince of Life, in dying, gave
Undying life to mortals. Once he stood
Among his fellows, on this side the grave,
A man, perceptible to flesh and blood:
Now, taken from our sight, he dwells no less
Within our mortal memory and thought;
The mystery of all he was, and wrought,
Is made a part of general consciousness.

And in this consciousness I reach repose.
Spent with the howling main and desert sand
Almost too faint to pluck the unfading rose
Of peace, that bows its beauty to my hand.
Here Reason fails, and leaves me; my pale guide
Across the wilderness -- by a stern command,
Shut out, like Moses, from the Promist Land.
Touching its own achievement, it hath died.

Ah yet! I have but wrung the victory
From Thought! Not passionless will be my path.
Yet on my life's pale forehead I can see
The flush of squandered fires. Passion hath
Yet, in the purpose of my days, its place.
But changed in aspect: turned unto the East,
Whence grows the dayspring from on high, at least
A finer fervor trembles on its face.





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