will understand The doubt, the pain, the triumph, and the Truth!
Zola
Because he puts the compromising chart Of hell before your eyes, you are afraid; Because he counts the price that you have paid For innocence, and counts it from the start, You loathe him. But he sees the human heart Of God meanwhile, and in God's hand has weighed Your squeamish and emasculate crusade Against the grim dominion of his art. Never until we conquer the uncouth Connivings of our shamed indifference (We call it Christian faith!) are we to scan The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth To find, in hate's polluted self-defence Throbbing, the pulse, the divine heart of man.
The Pity of the Leaves
Vengeful across the cold November moors, Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, Reverberant through lonely corridors. The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce, Words out of lips that were no more to speak — Words of the past that shook the old man's cheek Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors. And then there were the leaves that plagued him so! The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then They stopped, and stayed there — just to let him know How dead they were; but if the old man cried, They fluttered off like withered souls of men.
Aaron Stark
Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark, — Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose. A miser was he, with a miser's nose, And eyes like little dollars in the dark. His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark; And when he spoke there came like sullen blows Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close, As if a cur were chary of its bark. Glad for the murmur of his hard renown, Year after year he shambled through the town, — A loveless exile moving with a staff; And oftentimes there crept into his ears A sound of alien pity, touched with tears, — And then (and only then) did Aaron laugh.
The Garden
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