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THE ATOM OF GOD: A VISION, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Suppose that god, being a busy god
Last Line: Old faith for pilot on the tides of fate.
Subject(s): God


SUPPOSE that God, being a busy God,
With myriad-million acres to be trod
Hourly in tending his vast globed estate,
Globe upon globe, convolved, immensurate,
Old crumbling worlds for pardon, or repair,
Or dissolution; new worlds on the air
Cooling from vapour, nebulous cores to bind
With solid zones; new balances to find
In his dominion where the long tides go
Of spheres through space in endless ebb and flow,
Matter now locked, congealing, and now free
To range again fields of infinity;
New rhythms to win from the uncompassed void,
New surmise in the task to be employed
Of moulding chaos, and setting with sure hand
Amid the multitudes of his command
The thing so moulded; say that, as he went,
This God so thronged with far omnipotent
Affairs, one aeon'd morning, to fulfil
His starry missions, caught, as poets will,
A sudden brooding fancy of some far
Dim secret locked, unguessed, in every star
That knew him, nor revolted, yet, so played
God's fancy on the host that he had made,
Might own some law, some nature, that his mind,
Rapt in creation, had not stayed to find,
Though he of all commanding had the source
Devised, the mass, the nature, and the course.
Intent upon his task, he let the mood
Go by, and still the labour was renewed
Of crowded mind on teeming circumstance,
And law to quell the mutinies of chance.
But when God rested, then the thought returned,
And beat upon his mind, and something burned
Of curious will to fathom what might be
Deep, deep in universal power. 'I see
World upon world obedient, as I bid
Cast in huge balance on my space, amid
Motion of worlds I yet must number, given
One time, one order, and one way through heaven.
I set my seasons, fixt in their control
Of moving patterned light upon the whole
Body of being under me. I hear
Sweet sounds of mighty volume spun from sphere
To axled sphere harmoniously scaled.
Beauty is ever with me, and unstaled.
And so my enterprise, my dreams of still
Process more proud to magnify my will,
More song, worlds vaster, laws more excellent,
Numbers for my delighted government
Yet in their starry millions multiplied.
All this is well; I made it, and I guide
Its various motion, happy. But I leave
Too long one cause uncertain while I weave
My story out. This matter that I bring
Into so sure a shape and compassing,
What is it? How in central atom framed?
How built the energy that I have tamed
Into this chiming order? What the might
Gathered from swarming chaos to the light,
And infinitely banded to fulfil
The unbounded time of my creating will?'
Stars beckoned, and God's speculation stayed.
But, pausing first, he lent a seven-day'd
Labour to fetch the answer that he sought
For this perplexed brief interval. He wrought
Earth, and the things of earth, and man; and swung
This little globe appointedly among
The globes of his uncounted industry,
Declared its orbit, gendered it to be
Active and tided by the common flow
Of inescapable law, and, leaving so
This moment of invention universed
In destiny among the stars, he first
On man so moulded laid his bidding thus --
'Go, child of God, in one thing prosperous,
That of my good, unveiled, purpose, one
Thing hidden is for your unveiling. Sun
And moon and friendly stars are with you set
For knowledge, and sweet climes and foliage met
And fellowships for comfort on your way;
And that you shall not fail in sloth, this day
Have I made sorrow in your shadow, friend,
To keep you fresh in constancy, and lend
Ardour and indomitable power
To this your quest, my quest. Answer my hour
Of speculation for me. Still, with mind
Established in the beauty you shall find
Aiding on earth, go on till all is told
Of this that even from me my atoms hold,
Secret, unmeasured.'
So, our fable tells,
The mood ordained when earth so dawned, that dwells
Still at the centre of man's enterprise,
'Till all is told.' Not less than in God's eyes
The congregated systems of his plan,
Is earth dominioned mightily to man.
And as God's vision broods upon the whole
Design innumerably spread, the soul
Of man is rapt upon the earth that glides,
His habitation, through the stellar tides.
Nor is man's bounded consecration less
Than God's unbounded. And as all things confess
Through firmamental space God's mastery
In moulding, so man fixes his decree
On grain and mass and season and sap of earth,
Framing fresh lovely argosies from birth
Till death; great bridges flung astride
Loud waters; swift and lonely ships to ride
Waste oceans, towers and bells, altars and tombs,
Engines of flight, and wheels, and windowed rooms
With hearths, and beds, and beams -- all at his will
Shaping from forge and crucible and mill,
Matter no less commanded than by God.
And as the long and difficult paths are trod
Of all his labour, ever, for a sign
Of his dominion, on his annals shine,
All pure, all uncommitted, things of art:
Music and verse; orisons of the heart
Figured in stone and marble; shapes that sing,
Dropt from the brush, their coloured gospelling.
And grief, and loss, and doubt, and bitter change
Are with him, that his purpose shall not range
In mere delight irresolute, content
To fade from thought into an indolent
Drifting of nebulous mood; and still to keep
His diligence firm, establisht, he must reap
His patient year, nursed on to festival,
Or to his body's shame untimely fall.
So labours man, and even as God compels
His starry textures, man the master dwells
On earth, compelling also in his kind.
But as that fleeting fancy of God's mind
In the beginning of man was fixt to be
In man his urge, his aim, his constancy,
So ever in his faring as he goes,
Unwearied in discovery, he knows
One fierce complaining clarion of desire,
One siege unresting; moulding earth and fire,
Leading the waters, harnessing the wind,
Bringing the unperceived, the undefined,
To scale and measurement, he seeks, he seeks
The last arcanum; still the challenge speaks
Over the vast of years, and still he broods,
Not as God, walking in his solitudes,
A moment, once, but age by kindling age,
Unceasing, incorruptible, his wage
But lonely consecrations of the soul --
Crying, 'This heat, this might that I control,
This matter that I bind, this fluid speed
Obedient to my rod, this planted seed
That knows my husbandry, this blood and bone
That of my generation come and own
My governance of spirit -- what are these?
What life in the far central fastnesses
Lies poised in huge momentum? What the word,
The touch, the lodestar of release? Come, gird
Your resolution, Man, on with the quest,
Your quest, of God's commanding.'
. . . . . . . . .
Manifest
Little by little on the ages grew
The knowledge of man's dedication. New
Process on process dwindled or prevailed.
Old alchemies went by, old prophets failed,
Old revelation to denial bowed,
While patient and undaunted still the proud
Brain to its last fulfilment laboured on,
Fulfilment and unfolding. AEons gone,
And aeons, came the long, the appointed day;
God's thought, arrested on his starry way,
A moment earthward turned, and there beheld
Man's lifted finger fall, and from the cell'd
Centre of being strike the primal beam;
And, sounding through the universe, a gleam
Shot volted, blinding all the multitude
Of stars, that even God trembled where he stood,
As the unfolded mystery, divined
Of man, was gathered to the eternal mind.
And where earth was, now, drifting into space,
A smear of dust was all. God turned his face,
And moved again creating, through the wide
Realms of almighty purpose, satisfied.
. . . . . . . . .
So runs the fable out. The hearth is cold,
The lamp is flickering with our story told,
The candle on the stair calls us to sleep,
To-morrow shall have other tales to keep.
Let dreams be as they may, the dawn will bring
Again the bright, the happy birds to sing,
Fresh flowers unfolded, friendship at the gate,
Old faith for pilot on the tides of fate.





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