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CATHAIR FHARGUS.
(FERGUS’S SEAT.)
A mountain in the Island of Arran, the summit of which resembles a gigantic human profile.
- WITH face turned upward to the changeful sky,
- I, Fergus, lie, supine in frozen rest;
- The maiden morning clouds slip rosily
- Unclasped, unclasping, down my granite breast;
- The lightning strikes my brow and passes by.
- There’s nothing new beneath the sun, I wot:
- I, “Fergus” called,—the great pre‐Adamite,
- Who for my mortal body blindly sought
- Rash immortality, and on this height
- Stone‐bound, forever am and yet am not,—
- There’s nothing new beneath the sun, I say.
- Ye pigmies of a later race, who come
- And play out your brief generation’s play
- Below me, know, I too spent my life’s sum,
- And revelled through my short tumultuous day.
- O, what is man that he should mouth so grand
- Through his poor thousand as his seventy years?
- Whether as king I ruled a trembling land,
- Or swayed by tongue or pen my meaner peers,
- Or earth’s whole learning once did understand,—
- What matter? The star‐angels know it all.
- They who came sweeping through the silent night
- And stood before me, yet did not appal:
- Till, fighting ’gainst me in their courses bright,*
- Celestial smote terrestrial.—Hence, my fall.
- Hence, Heaven cursed me with a granted prayer;
- Made my hill‐seat eternal: bade me keep
- My pageant of majestic lone despair,
- While one by one into the infinite deep
- Sank kindred, realm, throne, world: yet I lay there.
- There still I lie. Where are my glories fled?
- My wisdom that I boasted as divine?
- My grand primeval women fair, who shed
- Their whole life’s joy to crown one hour of mine,
- And live to curse the love they coveted?
“The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.”
page: 242- Gone—gone. Uncounted æons have rolled by,
- And still my ghost sits by its corpse of stone,
- And still the blue smile of the new‐formed sky
- Finds me unchanged. Slow centuries crawling on
- Bring myriads happy death:—I cannot die.
- My stone shape mocks the dead man’s peaceful face,
- And straightened arm that will not labor more;
- And yet I yearn for a mean six‐foot space
- To moulder in, with daisies growing o’er,
- Rather than this unearthly resting‐place;—
- Where pinnacled, my silent effigy
- Against the sunset rising clear and cold,
- Startles the musing mstranger sailing by,
- And calls up thoughts that never can be told,
- Of life, and death, and immortality.
- While I?—I watch this after world that creeps
- Nearer and nearer to the feet of God:
- Ay, though it labors, struggles, sins, and weeps,
- Yet, love‐drawn, follows ever Him who trod
- Through dim Gethsemane to Cavalry’s steeps.
- O glorious shame! O royal servitude!
- High lowliness, and ignorance all‐wise!
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- Pure life with death, and death with life imbued;—
- My centuried splendors crumble ’neath Thine eyes,
- Thou Holy One who died upon the Rood!
- Therefore, face upward to the Christian heaven,
- I, Fergus, lie: expectant, humble, calm;
- Dumb emblem of the faith to me not given;
- The clouds drop chrism, the stars their midnight psalm
- Chant over one, who passed away unshriven.
- “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”,
- So from yon mountain graveyard cries the dust
- Of child to parent, husband unto wife,
- Consoling, and believing in the Just:—
- Christ lives, though all the universe died in strife.
- Therefore my granite lips forever pray,
- “O rains, wash out my sin of self abhorred:
- O sun, melt thou my heart of stone away,
- Out of Thy plenteous mercy save me, Lord.”
- And thus I wait till Resurrection‐day.
