Alexis Poem by Alexander Anderson

'He saw through his own soul.'

—Tennyson

Alexis grew up, and through all his youth
Ran dreams and splendours, as a summer bow
Lighting upon two hills uprears its arch
Against the clouds, and all the space below
Lies warm within its shadow: So his life,
Beneath such dreams, took golden hues of light,
And beat in wonder. He was yet a child,
Standing upon the flower-grown edge of life,
Yearning for manhood, which was seen afar,
Half-veil'd in shadow. Eager looks he cast
Before him to that wonder-land, which sent
Sweet echoes onward, that, to his rapt ear,
Were perfect music. To his soul within,
Expanding like a bud, these sounds became
Sure guides, that led his glowing thoughts away
To sunny regions, where the Beautiful,
Armida-like, sat canopied with roofs
Of dazzling golden fretwork. Life to him
Was the pure surface of a glossy shell,
Seen with the eye, but felt with no rough touch.
He knew not mankind, for the gift that looks
Beneath, and shapes from word and look the key
To open beings, was not his. He stood
A dreamer in the land of dreams, nor felt
The world jar with their action, but like one
Who feels himself drawn into some delight
And cannot turn, he went, and all the way
He had the unseen company of song,
Which, like low breathings coming from the sea,
Touch'd him to a new being, and he smiled
To think the gods had, in their idle moods,
Leant from their windless halls to touch his lips
With consecrating fire and make him sing—
A working priest of song amid his kind.
And with this thought there came to open up
His life a vision of high fame, as in the night
When the swift lightning runs a fiery track
To earth, and all the night grows white with fear:
So in Alexis rose the sudden hope
Of what might be when all this office fill'd
With the pure reaching forward of the thought
Which makes the poet; energies which strive,
Like some impulsive touch of God's, to shape
A higher life, which he forecasts himself,
And works out as he sings, still looking back
To see if any follow. Thus in him
There was continual bud and bloom, as in
A wood that slopes to catch the first of spring,
When unseen angels open up the flowers,
And bid them turn their clear wet eyes to God.
Fancies were his that like strong sunlight made
Within his heart the prints of joy and love,
As angels' footsteps print the floor of heaven.
So he grew up, and everywhere he found
A wealth of friends, who smiling seem'd to him
The early reflex of those times when truth
Was uppermost—the strength and soul of speech.
He bent himself to all their wish, he found
A pleasure in forestalling purpose, took
Words as a pledge for the fair truth, and smiled
To see the earth roll back to all its plan.
Then fell across his path a brighter beam,
From which his heart drank sweeter melody,
As when a sunbeam falls across a brook,
And gives a lighter music to its sound.
And she, the maiden who upon his life
Came like a wave of sunshine, as it slips
Along a field rich with the look of May,
Was fair and beautiful, and her sweet eyes
Look'd like a spirit's but half an hour in heaven.
What rapture was within him when he saw
This maiden rising up through all his dreams
To crown the inmost thoughts within his soul.
What worship shook his heart, when all the earth
Rose up, like some great organ, in whose tone
He heard the prelude to his life—we know
But cannot utter; for our deepest thoughts
Are known but to ourselves, and will not take
The garb of words. This much we know, that she
Glided throughout his life in light and love,
As down the Ganges floats the steady light
Of one frail lamp, still telling those who watch
Far off upon the bank that all is well.
He now was in the higher bounds, wherein
The early meaning of the glorious earth
Was half unveil'd, and in his soul there stirr'd
A sweet unrest, that was so sweet to him;
He wish'd no other for his paradise.
This was the golden summer of his life,
The mirror of his being, in whose light
He saw the very gods pass on with smiles
And music, leaving in their odorous tracks
The incense of Olympus. What to him
Was all the daily life of living men,
The custom and the course of earthly things?
He saw them not, for like the flower that turns
Its blossoms to the sun it follows still,
So all the thoughts and visions of the soul
Turn'd to that maiden, who for ever stood
Before him, the divinest of all things
That God hath sent into this world of ours.


We pause before we touch the other life,
To dream again the dreams Alexis dreamt;
For life moves on in change, but still the heart
Turns to the softer as the purest, best.
And thus at times our own will muse, and think
Upon Alexis, and his dreams that were
So purely fashion'd; and the new-found song
That in his bosom leapt, as when a stream
Slips down a few feet into foam, and makes
A summer music. These were sunny spots
Lighting upon his life, as when the hills
Lie in a gauze of mist, and through the clouds
Patches of sunlight, God's own gardening, falls.


He stood blindfolded with his dreams, until
The rude fact coming, with unsparing hand,
Snatch'd at the bandage which, unloosen'd, fell,
And left him face to face with sterner life.
O! the harsh truth that must be learn'd with tears
By those who stand a step within the pale
Of life's strange mysteries. As a towering tree,
Struck by a sudden blight, though yet in prime,
Shakes, at the sudden breathing of a wind,
Its leaves from branches shrunk and dry, so at
The shock of real life all the golden thought
Fell off, and left him with a naked heart
To front the rough world with. He stood and saw
His life-dreams lying at his very feet
Shrunk into ashes; for the one high idol
He worshipp'd, took the common form of earth,
And dwindled into a mere human shape,
Laying aside divinity as one
Flings off cast clothing. All those attributes
Which he, as pilgrims deck the shrine of saints,
Had given to that maiden, fell away,
Leaving her Lamia-like to stand and prick
His dreams, until, like other human things,
They warr'd upon each other. Then he turn'd
As one may who has fought for years to reach
His life's aim but to fail, and turn away
A calm face but a bleeding heart within,
The world not heeding of it. Then his life
Fell into gaps and chasms he could not step
Or even bridge, and in him the dislike
For fellowship rose up, and made his heart
A hermit in the breast, nor gave himself
To aims and purposes that work with men,
Drawing them on and up. He made himself
An adept in tongue-fence, and stung with words
The lighter fools around him. Out of this
He made a kind of armour, under which
He found such shelter that they let him pass,
Dreading its sting. But still with this there came,
From the night-time that lay around his heart,
Voices that whisper'd higher things, and sent
A yearning through his being, felt as yet
Like idle sounds that strike upon the ear
When one lies in the shade for summer heat,
Feeling around the edges of a dream.
But from this sting and idle quip of tongue,
As only fit for those who deftly move
Small puppets at a village fair, he turn'd,
And made himself the guest of other minds
In other language. He was strangely stirr'd
To find the same young worship in their hearts,
The same fond idols lying in the dust,
Like broken masterpieces of dead times
When gods had temples: then the fire and heat
Of all their youth-time, sinking down to warm
The roots of manhood, growing out to flower
In high endeavour. It may be that this,
And the contagion shooting from the soul
(For all true souls stand girt in their own heat,
Warming all those who stand within it), made
Alexis find his depth, and shape his life
In other channels. In those noble ones
Who stereotype themselves in words he found
The aspirations and the high desire
To make the human take celestial shape,
And stand a little nearer to the gods.
So this grew in him also, as a bud
Swaying beneath the love-sigh of the spring
Swells out the livelong day, until he found
The looking backward not for any life
Upon this earth. He flung away those dreams
Which lay within the past, as when a rainbow
Fades, leaving one small speck against a cloud,
Pledge of its disappearance, and rose up
To battle manlike—to do what he could
To help his fellows, having in his heart
Those words of Goethe—'One should know his fellows,
And knowing also learn not to despise'—
A higher wisdom still.


So there is now
In this Alexis better thought in germ
To meet the future with. For from his life
The noonday glare has fled, and left behind
The quieter light that draws the eye, as when
We stand and for a moment face the sun,
Seeming to sink between the hill and sky,
Then turn to view the chasten'd light behind—
Faint harbinger of twilight. Life to him
Has half unveil'd its meaning, and he sees
No puppet show to make a wrinkle live
About the lip and eye, but earnest work
For earnest men, within whose band must be
No dainty worker, gloved, and ever strong
In idle words, but bare-arm'd fighters, swift
To take advantage of the rising ground
And wave their fellows onward. He has learnt,
Though he is yet what some call young, that men
Are ever to be on this miraculous earth
To make it better, working hand and brain
To lift it higher, standing firm of foot,
Shoulder to shoulder, striving for all good,
And keeping God and duty in the eye,
As sailors keep the light that marks their port
For guide and haven. Shame on him if he
Should stand an idle Memnon in the crowd,
Giving responses to each one who strikes,
For the mere whim of hearing sound, and thus
Be jester to his fellows, as a mother
May hum a cradle-song to please her child
Fretful with sleep. What need of nursery rhyme
In this great age of sounding wire and wheel,
Science and all her handmaids? Rather toil,
And manly living, manly thought, and all
Those grander interests ever moving on
To where we strive for. Crude and vaguely dim
Is this life of Alexis yet, but still
It rises slowly upward, as the moon
Bound in a slip of crescent rises up
And shines a silver sickle in the sky.
He may fail in the task of working out
What he has laid before him as a plan,
And sink before the crescent culminates
And shines an orb, as vessels sink at sea,
Reaching no port. But now he tears away
The dreamer from his being, calling out
To all his fellows (for in him the wish
To see them reach the purer heights of life
Shoots from the rest, and claims his deepest thought,
As high hills claim the sun) to rise and take
The nobler pathway, working on and up;
Not resting, though the sweat be in our eyes
Blinding our motions, till the brute be shorn
From out our being, and we stand erect,
The earth beneath our feet, the sky above,
And right before us all the nobler path
That narrows not as earthly pathways do,
But ever broadens as it reaches up
Until it ends beside the feet of God.