“By them went Fido marshal of the field:
Weak was his mother when she gave him day;
And he at first a sick and weakly child,
As e’er with tears welcomed the sunny ray;
Yet when more years afford more growth and might,
A champion stout he was, and puissant knight,
As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright.
“Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand;
Stops and turns back the sun’s impetuous course;
Nature breaks Nature’s laws at his command;
No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force;
Events to come yet many ages hence,
He present makes, by wondrous prescience;
Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense.”
“Yesterday, at dawn,” says Hafiz, “God delivered me from all worldly
affliction; and amidst the gloom of night presented me with the water
of immortality.”
In the life of Sadi by Dowlat Shah occurs this sentence: “The eagle of
the immaterial soul of Shaikh Sadi shook from his plumage the dust of
his body.”
Thus thoughtfully we were rowing homeward to find some autumnal work to
do, and help on the revolution of the seasons. Perhaps Nature would
condescend to make use of us even without our knowledge, as when we
help to scatter her seeds in our walks, and carry burrs and cockles on
our clothes from field to field.
All things are current found
On earthly ground,
Spirits and elements
Have their descents.
Night and day, year on year,
High and low, far and near,
These are our own aspects,
These are our own regrets.
Ye gods of the shore,
Who abide evermore,
I see your far headland,
Stretching on either hand;
I hear the sweet evening sounds
From your undecaying grounds;
Cheat me no more with time,
Take me to your clime.
As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed leisurely up the gentle
stream, shut in between fragrant and blooming banks, where we had first
pitched our tent, and drew nearer to the fields where our lives had
passed, we seemed to detect the hues of our native sky in the southwest
horizon. The sun was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so
rich a sunset as would never have ended but for some reason unknown to
men, and to be marked with brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll
of time. Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to steal over
the stream, the whole river valley undulated with mild light, purer and
more memorable than the noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary
vales uninhabited by man. Two herons, _Ardea herodias_, with their long
and slender limbs relieved against the sky, were seen travelling high
over our heads,—their lofty and silent flight, as they were wending
their way at evening, surely not to alight in any marsh on the earth’s
surface, but, perchance, on the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol
for the ages to study, whether impressed upon the sky, or sculptured
amid the hieroglyphics of Egypt. Bound to some northern meadow, they
held on their stately, stationary flight, like the storks in the
picture, and disappeared at length behind the clouds. Dense flocks of
blackbirds were winging their way along the river’s course, as if on a
short evening pilgrimage to some shrine of theirs, or to celebrate so
fair a sunset.
“Therefore, as doth the pilgrim, whom the night
Hastes darkly to imprison on his way,
Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright
Of what’s yet left thee of life’s wasting day:
Thy sun posts westward, passed is thy morn,
And twice it is not given thee to be born.”
The sun-setting presumed all men at leisure, and in a contemplative
mood; but the farmer’s boy only whistled the more thoughtfully as he
drove his cows home from pasture, and the teamster refrained from
cracking his whip, and guided his team with a subdued voice. The last
vestiges of daylight at length disappeared, and as we rowed silently
along with our backs toward home through the darkness, only a few stars
being visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in thought, or in
silence listened to the monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of
rudimental music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics of
her dimly lighted halls;
“Pulsæ referunt ad sidera valles,”
and the valleys echoed the sound to the stars.
As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded
that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are
worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind. It is recorded in
the Chronicle of Bernaldez, that in Columbus’s first voyage the natives
“pointed towards the heavens, making signs that they believed that
there was all power and holiness.” We have reason to be grateful for
celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man. The
stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our
fairest and most memorable experiences. “Let the immortal depth of your
soul lead you, but earnestly extend your eyes upwards.”
As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most
excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all
men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly,
sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is
her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and
purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare
mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. They are so far akin to
Silence, that they are but bubbles on her surface, which straightway
burst, an evidence of the strength and prolificness of the
under-current; a faint utterance of Silence, and then only agreeable to
our auditory nerves when they contrast themselves with and relieve the
former. In proportion as they do this, and are heighteners and
intensifiers of the Silence, they are harmony and purest melody.
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and
all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety
as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not
daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we
may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum,
where no indignity can assail, no personality disturb us.
The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when
most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his
audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth’s
speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which
kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked
by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made,
and just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, they
have obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked as an
enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad to a
strange Delphi and her mad priestess, their age has been dark and
leaden. Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any
sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever sounding and
resounding in the ears of men.
A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are
struck. We not unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to our own
unwritten sequel, to the written and comparatively lifeless body of the
work. Of all books this sequel is the most indispensable part. It
should be the author’s aim to say once and emphatically, “He said,”
ἔφη, ἔ. This is the most the book-maker can attain to. If he make his
volume a mole whereon the waves of Silence may break, it is well.
It were vain for me to endeavor to interrupt the Silence. She cannot be
done into English. For six thousand years men have translated her with
what fidelity belonged to each, and still she is little better than a
sealed book. A man may run on confidently for a time, thinking he has
her under his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too must at
last be silent, and men remark only how brave a beginning he made; for
when he at length dives into her, so vast is the disproportion of the
told to the untold, that the former will seem but the bubble on the
surface where he disappeared. Nevertheless, we will go on, like those
Chinese cliff swallows, feathering our nests with the froth, which may
one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the sea-shore.
We had made about fifty miles this day with sail and oar, and now, far
in the evening, our boat was grating against the bulrushes of its
native port, and its keel recognized the Concord mud, where some
semblance of its outline was still preserved in the flattened flags
which had scarce yet erected themselves since our departure; and we
leaped gladly on shore, drawing it up, and fastening it to the wild
apple-tree, whose stem still bore the mark which its chain had worn in
the chafing of the spring freshets.