CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER I
The story of my heart commences seventeen years ago. In the glow of
youth there were times every now and then when I felt the necessity of
a strong inspiration of soul-thought. My heart was dusty, parched for
want of the rain of deep feeling; my mind arid and dry, for there is a
dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls on a ledge.
It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always in one
place and always surrounded by the same circumstances. A species of
thick clothing slowly grows about the mind, the pores are choked,
little habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is
inclosed in a husk. When this began to form I felt eager to escape from
it, to throw off the heavy clothing, to drink deeply once more at the
fresh foundations of life. An inspiration—a long deep breath of the
pure air of thought—could alone give health to the heart.
There is a hill to which I used to resort at such periods. The labour
of walking three miles to it, all the while gradually ascending, seemed
to clear my blood of the heaviness accumulated at home. On a warm
summer day the slow continued rise required continual effort, which
caried away the sense of oppression. The familiar everyday scene was
soon out of sight; I came to other trees, meadows, and fields; I began
to breathe a new air and to have a fresher aspiration. I restrained my
soul till reached the sward of the hill; psyche, the soul that longed
to be loose. I would write psyche always instead of soul to avoid
meanings which have become attached to the word soul, but it is awkward
to do so. Clumsy indeed are all words the moment the wooden stage of
commonplace life is left. I restrained psyche, my soul, till I reached
and put my foot on the grass at the beginning of the green hill itself.
Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain
a wider horizon of feeling; with every inhalation of rich pure air, a
deeper desire. The very light of the sun was whiter and more brilliant
here. By the time I had reached the summit I had entirely forgotten the
petty circumstances and the annoyances of existence. I felt myself,
myself. There was an intrenchment on the summit, and going down into
the fosse I walked round it slowly to recover breath. On the
south-western side there was a spot where the outer bank had partially
slipped, leaving a gap. There the view was over a broad plain,
beautiful with wheat, and inclosed by a perfect amphitheatre of green
hills. Through these hills there was one narrow groove, or pass,
southwards, where the white clouds seemed to close in the horizon.
Woods hid the scattered hamlets and farmhouses, so that I was quite
alone.
I was utterly alone with the sun and the earth. Lying down on the
grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and the
distant sea far beyond sight. I thought of the earth’s firmness—I felt
it bear me up: through the grassy couch there came an influence as if I
could feel the great earth speaking to me. I thought of the wandering
air—its pureness, which is its beauty; the air touched me and gave me
something of itself. I spoke to the sea: though so far, in my mind I
saw it, green at the rim of the earth and blue in deeper ocean; I
desired to have its strength, its mystery and glory. Then I addressed
the sun, desiring the soul equivalent of his light and brilliance, his
endurance and unwearied race. I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing
into its depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and sweetness. The rich
blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my soul towards it, and
there it rested, for pure colour is rest of heart. By all these I
prayed; I felt an emotion of the soul beyond all definition; prayer is
a puny thing to it, and the word is a rude sign to the feeling, but I
know no other.
By the blue heaven, by the rolling sun bursting through untrodden
space, a new ocean of ether every day unveiled. By the fresh and
wandering air encompassing the world; by the sea sounding on the
shore—the green sea white-flecked at the margin and the deep ocean; by
the strong earth under me. Then, returning, I prayed by the sweet
thyme, whose little flowers I touched with my hand; by the slender
grass; by the crumble of dry chalky earth I took up and let fall
through my fingers. Touching the crumble of earth, the blade of grass,
the thyme flower, breathing the earth-encircling air, thinking of the
sea and the sky, holding out my hand for the sunbeams to touch it,
prone on the sward in token of deep reverence, thus I prayed that I
might touch to the unutterable existence infinitely higher than deity.
With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the intense
communion I held with the earth, the sun and sky, the stars hidden by
the light, with the ocean—in no manner can the thrilling depth of these
feelings be written—with these I prayed, as if they were the keys of an
instrument, of an organ, with which I swelled forth the note of my
soul, redoubling my own voice by their power. The great sun burning
with light; the strong earth, dear earth; the warm sky; the pure air;
the thought of ocean; the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a
rapture, an ecstasy, and inflatus. With this inflatus, too, I prayed.
Next to myself I came and recalled myself, my bodily existence. I held
out my hand, the sunlight gleamed on the skin and the iridescent nails;
I recalled the mystery and beauty of the flesh. I thought of the mind
with which I could see the ocean sixty miles distant, and gather to
myself its glory. I thought of my inner existence, that consciousness
which is called the soul. These, that is, myself—I threw into the
balance to weight the prayer the heavier. My strength of body, mind and
soul, I flung into it; I put forth my strength; I wrestled and
laboured, and toiled in might of prayer. The prayer, this soul-emotion
was in itself-not for an object-it was a passion. I hid my face in the
grass, I was wholly prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, I was
rapt and carried away.
Becoming calmer, I returned to myself and thought, reclining in rapt
thought, full of aspiration, steeped to the lips of my soul in desire.
I did not then define, or analyses, or understand this. I see now that
what I laboured for was soul-life, more soul-nature, to be exalted, to
be full of soul-learning. Finally I rose, walked half a mile or so
along the summit of the hill eastwards, to soothe myself and come to
the common ways of life again. Had any shepherd accidentally seen me
lying on the turf, he would only have thought that I was resting a few
minutes; I made no outward show. Who could have imagined the whirlwind
of passion that was going on within me as I reclined there! I was
greatly exhausted when I reached home. Occasionally I went upon the
hill deliberately, deeming it good to do so; then, again, this craving
carried me away up there of itself. Though the principal feeling was
the same, there were variations in the mode in which it affected me.
Sometimes on lying down on the sward I first looked up at the sky,
gazing for a long time till I could see deep into the azure and my eyes
were full of the colour; then I turned my face to the grass and thyme,
placing my hands at each side of my face so as to shut out everything
and hide myself. Having drunk deeply of the heaven above and felt the
most glorious beauty of the day, and remembering the old, old, sea,
which (as it seemed to me) was but just yonder at the edge, I now
became lost, and absorbed into the being or existence of the universe.
I felt down deep into the earth under, and high above into the sky, and
farther still to the sun and stars. Still farther beyond the stars into
the hollow of space, and losing thus my separateness of being came to
seem like a part of the whole. Then I whisper-ed to the earth beneath,
through the grass and thyme, down into the depth of its ear, and again
up to the starry space hid behind the blue of day. Travelling in an
instant across the distant sea, I saw as if with actual vision the
palms and cocoanut trees, the bamboos of India, and the cedars of the
extreme south. Like a lake with islands the ocean lay before me, as
clear and vivid as the plain beneath in the midst of the amphitheatre
of hills.
With the glory of the great sea, I said, with the firm, solid, and
sustaining earth; the depth, distance, and expanse of ether; the age,
tamelessness, and ceaseless motion of the ocean; the stars, and the
unknown in space; by all those things which are most powerful known to
me, and by those which exist, but of which I have no idea whatever, I
pray. Further, by my own soul, that secret existence which above all
other things bears the nearest resemblance to the ideal of spirit,
infinitely nearer than earth, sun, or star. Speaking by an inclination
towards, not in words, my soul prays that I may have something from
each of these, that I may gather a flower from them, that I may have in
myself the secret and meaning of the earth, the golden sun, the light,
the foam-flecked sea. Let my soul become enlarged; I am not enough; I
am little and contemptible. I desire a great-ness of soul, an
irradiance of mind, a deeper insight, a broader hope. Give me power of
soul, so that I may actually effect by its will that which I strive
for.
In winter, though I could not then rest on the grass, or stay long
enough to form any definite expression, I still went up to the hill
once now and then, for it seemed that to merely visit the spot repeated
all that I had previously said. But it was not only then.
In summer I went out into the fields, and let my soul inspire these
thoughts under the trees, standing against the trunk, or looking up
through the branches at the sky. If trees could speak, hundreds of them
would say that I had had these soul-emotions under them. Leaning
against the oak’s massive trunk, and feeling the rough bark and the
lichen at my back, looking southwards over the grassy fields,
cowslip-yellow, at the woods on the slope, I thought my desire of
deeper soul-life. Or under the green firs, looking upwards, the sky was
more deeply blue at their tops; then the brake fern was unrolling, the
doves cooing, the thickets astir, the late ash-leaves coming forth.
Under the shapely rounded elms, by the hawthorn bushes and hazel,
everywhere the same deep desire for the soul-nature; to have from all
green things and from the sunlight the inner meaning which was not
known to them, that I might be full of light as the woods of the sun’s
rays. Just to touch the lichened bark of a tree, or the end of a spray
projecting over the path as I walked, seemed to repeat the same prayer
in me.
The long-lived summer days dried and warmed the turf in the meadows. I
used to lie down in solitary corners at full length on my back, so as
to feel the embrace of the earth. The grass stood high above me, and
the shadows of the tree-branches danced on my face. I looked up at the
sky, with half-closed eyes to bear the dazzling light. Bees buzzed over
me, sometimes a butterfly passed, there was a hum in the air,
greenfinches sang in the hedge. Gradually entering into the intense
life of the summer days—a life which burned around as if every grass
blade and leaf were a torch—I came to feel the long-drawn life of the
earth back into the dimmest past, while the sun of the moment was warm
on me. Sesostris on the most ancient sands of the south, in ancient,
ancient days, was conscious of himself and of the sun. This sunlight
linked me through the ages to that past consciousness. From all the
ages my soul desired to take that soul-life which had flowed through
them as the sunbeams had continually poured on earth. As the hot sands
take up the heat, so would I take up that soul-energy. Dreamy in
appearance, I was breathing full of existence; I was aware of the grass
blades, the flowers, the leaves on hawthorn and tree. I seemed to live
more largely through them, as if each were a pore through which I
drank. The grasshoppers called and leaped, the greenfinches sang, the
blackbirds happily fluted, all the air hummed with life. I was plunged
deep in existence, and with all that existence I prayed.
Through every grass blade in the thousand, thousand grasses; through
the million leaves, veined and edge-cut, on bush and tree; through the
song-notes and the marked feathers of the birds; through the insects’
hum and the colour of the butterflies; through the soft warm air, the
flecks of clouds dissolving—I used them all for prayer. With all the
energy the sunbeams had poured unwearied on the earth since Sesostris
was conscious of them on the ancient sands; with all the life that had
been lived by vigorous man and beauteous woman since first in dearest
Greece the dream of the gods was woven; with all the soul-life that had
flowed a long stream down to me, I prayed that I might have a soul more
than equal to, far beyond my conception of, these things of the past,
the present, and the fulness of all life. Not only equal to these, but
beyond, higher, and more powerful than I could imagine. That I might
take from all their energy, grandeur, and beauty, and gather it into
me. That my soul might be more than the cosmos of life.
I prayed with the glowing clouds of sun-set and the soft light of the
first star coming through the violet sky. At night with the stars,
according to the season: now with the Pleiades, now with the Swan or
burning Sirius, and broad Orion’s whole constellation, red Aldebaran,
Arcturus, and the Northern Crown; with the morning star, the
light-bringer, once now and then when I saw it, a white-gold ball in
the violet-purple sky, or framed about with pale summer vapour floating
away as red streaks shot horizontally in the east. A diffused saffron
ascended into the luminous upper azure. The disk of the sun rose over
the hill, fluctuating with throbs of light; his chest heaved in fervour
of brilliance. All the glory of the sunrise filled me with broader and
furnace-like vehemence of prayer. That I might have the deepest of
soul-life, the deepest of all, deeper far than all this greatness of
the visible universe and even of the invisible; that I might have a
fulness of soul till now unknown, and utterly beyond my own conception.
In the deepest darkness of the night the same thought rose in my mind
as in the bright light of noontide. What is there which I have not used
to strengthen the same emotion?