The Lacking Sense

SCENE. - A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale I     "O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,      As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?      Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,     With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,      As of angel fallen from grace?" II     - "Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:      In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.      The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly,     Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun      Such deeds her hands have done." III     - "And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,      These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves,      Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features     Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,      Distress into delights?" IV     - "Ah! know'st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,      Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves?      That sightless are those orbs of hers? - which bar to her omniscience     Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones      Whereat all creation groans. V     "She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,      When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;      Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;     Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch      That the seers marvel much. VI     "Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;      Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves;      And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,     Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,      For thou art of her clay."