Читать книгу Christmas Eve - Robert Browning - Страница 5

But wherefore be harsh on a single case?

     After how many modes, this Christmas Eve,

Does the self-same weary thing take place?

     The same endeavour to make you believe,

And with much the same effect, no more:

     Each method abundantly convincing,

As I say, to those convinced before,

     But scarce to be swallowed without wincing

By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,

I have my own church equally:

And in this church my faith sprang first!

     (I said, as I reached the rising ground,

And the wind began again, with a burst

     Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound

From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,

I entered his church-door, nature leading me)

—In youth I look to these very skies,

And probing their immensities,

I found God there, his visible power;

     Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense

     Of the power, an equal evidence

That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.

For the loving worm within its clod,

Were diviner than a loveless god

Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.

     You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:

     But also, God, whose pleasure brought

Man into being, stands away

     As it were a handbreadth off, to give

Room for the newly-made to live,

And look at him from a place apart,

And use his gifts of brain and heart,

Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.

Who speaks of man, then, must not sever

Man's very elements from man,

Saying, "But all is God's"—whose plan

Was to create man and then leave him

Able, his own word saith, to grieve him

But able to glorify him too,

As a mere machine could never do,

That prayed or praised, all unaware

Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,

Made perfect as a thing of course.

Man, therefore, stands on his own stock

Of love and power as a pin-point rock:

And, looking to God who ordained divorce

Of the rock from his boundless continent,

Sees, in his power made evident,

Only excess by a million-fold

O'er the power God gave man in the mould.

For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry

A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry

Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,

     —Advancing in power by one degree;

     And why count steps through eternity?

But love is the ever-springing fountain:

Man may enlarge or narrow his bed

For the water's play, but the water-head—

How can he multiply or reduce it?

     As easy create it, as cause it to cease;