Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? “Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.” THE DREAD OF HEIGHT BY FRANCIS THOMPSON “_If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say; We see: your sin remaineth._”--John ix. 41 Not the Circean wine Most perilous is for pain: Grapes of the heaven’s star-loaden vine, Whereto the lofty-placed Thoughts of fair souls attain, Tempt with a more retributive delight, And do disrelish all life’s sober taste. ’Tis to have drunk too well The drink that is divine, Maketh the kind earth waste, And breath intolerable. Ah, me! How shall my mouth content it with mortality? Lo, secret music, sweetest music, From distances of distance drifting its lone flight, Down the arcane where Night would perish in night, Like a god’s loosened locks slips undulously: Music that is too grievous of the height For safe and low delight, Too infinite For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea! So let it be, Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small: So let it be, O music, music, though you wake in me No joy, no joy at all; Although you only wake Uttermost sadness, measure of delight, Which else I could not credit to the height, Did I not know, Did I not know, That ill is statured to its opposite; And even of sadness so, Of utter sadness, make Of extreme sad a rod to mete The incredible excess of unsensed sweet, And mystic wall of strange felicity. So let it be, Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small, And bitter meat The food of Gods for men to eat; Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread Less ways of heat, Than whom to their wind-carpeted High banquet hall, And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat. But ah! withal, Some hold, some stay, O difficult joy, I pray, Some arms of thine, Not only, only arms of mine! Lest like a weary girl I fall From clasping love so high, And lacking thus thine arms, then may Most hapless I Turn utterly to love of basest rate; For low they fall whose fall is from the sky. Yea, who me shall secure But I, of height grown desperate, Surcease my wing, and my lost fate Be dashed from pure To broken writhings in the shameful slime: Lower than man, for I dreamed higher, Thrust down, by how much I aspire, And damned with drink of immortality? For such things be, Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell Is but made possible By foreta’en breath of Heaven’s austerest clime.