Sometimes I went to a deep, narrow valley in the hills, silent and
solitary. The sky crossed from side to side, like a roof supported on
two walls of green. Sparrows chirped in the wheat at the verge above,
their calls falling like the twittering of swallows from the air. There
was no other sound. The short grass was dried grey as it grew by the
heat; the sun hung over the narrow vale as if it had been put there by
hand. Burning, burning, the sun glowed on the sward at the foot of the
slope where these thoughts burned into me. How many, many years, how
many cycles of years, how many bundles of cycles of years, had the sun
glowed down thus on that hollow? Since it was formed how long? Since it
was worn and shaped, groove-like, in the flanks of the hills by mighty
forces which had ebbed. Alone with the sun which glowed on the work
when it was done, I saw back through space to the old time of
tree-ferns, of the lizard flying through the air, the lizard-dragon
wallowing in sea foam, the mountainous creatures, twice-elephantine,
feeding on land; all the crooked sequence of life. The dragon-fly which
passed me traced a continuous descent from the fly marked on stone in
those days. The immense time lifted me like a wave rolling under a
boat; my mind seemed to raise itself as the swell of the cycles came;
it felt strong with the power of the ages. With all that time and power
I prayed: that I might have in my soul the intellectual part of it; the
idea, the thought. Like a shuttle the mind shot to and fro the past and
the present, in an instant.
Full to the brim of the wondrous past, I felt the wondrous present. For
the day—the very moment I breathed, that second of time then in the
valley, was as marvellous, as grand, as all that had gone before. Now,
this moment was the wonder and the glory. Now, this moment was
exceedingly wonderful. Now, this moment give me all the thought, all
the idea, all the soul expressed in the cosmos around me. Give me still
more, for the interminable universe, past and present, is but earth;
give me the unknown soul, wholly apart from it, the soul of which I
know only that when I touch the ground, when the sunlight touches my
hand, it is not there. Therefore the heart looks into space to be away
from earth. With all the cycles, and the sunlight streaming through
them, with all that is meant by the present, I thought in the deep vale
and prayed.
There was a secluded spring to which I sometimes went to drink the pure
water, lifting it in the hollow of my hand. Drinking the lucid water,
clear as light itself in solution, I absorbed the beauty and purity of
it. I drank the thought of the element; I desired soul-nature pure and
limpid. When I saw the sparkling dew on the grass—a rainbow broken into
drops—it called up the same thought-prayer. The stormy wind whose
sudden twists laid the trees on the ground woke the same feeling; my
heart shouted with it. The soft summer air which entered when I opened
my window in the morning breathed the same sweet desire. At night,
before sleeping, I always looked out at the shadowy trees, the hills
looming indistinctly in the dark, a star seen between the drifting
clouds; prayer of soul-life always. I chose the highest room, bare and
gaunt, because as I sat at work I could look out and see more of the
wide earth, more of the dome of the sky, and could think my desire
through these. When the crescent of the new moon shone, all the old
thoughts were renewed.
All the succeeding incidents of the year repeated my prayer as I noted
them. The first green leaf on the hawthorn, the first spike of meadow
grass, the first song of the nightingale, the green ear of wheat. I
spoke it with the ear of wheat as the sun tinted it golden; with the
whitening barley; again with the red gold spots of autumn on the beech,
the buff oak leaves, and the gossamer dew-weighted. All the larks over
the green corn sang it for me, all the dear swallows; the green leaves
rustled it; the green brook flags waved it; the swallows took it with
them to repeat it for me in distant lands. By the running brook I
meditated it; a flash of sunlight here in the curve, a flicker yonder
on the ripples, the birds bathing in the sandy shallow, the rush of
falling water. As the brook ran winding through the meadow, so one
thought ran winding through my days.
The sciences I studied never checked it for a moment; nor did the books
of old philosophy. The sun was stronger than science; the hills more
than philosophy. Twice circumstances gave me a brief view of the sea
then the passion rose tumultuous as the waves. It was very bitter to me
to leave the sea.
Sometimes I spent the whole day walking over the hills searching for
it; as if the labour of walking would force it from the ground. I
remained in the woods for hours, among the ash sprays and the
fluttering of the ring-doves at their nests, the scent of pines here
and there, dreaming my prayer.
My work was most uncongenial and useless, but even then sometimes a
gleam of sunlight on the wall, the buzz of a bee at the window, would
bring the thought to me. Only to make me miserable, for it was a waste
of golden time while the rich sunlight streamed on hill and plain.
There was a wrenching of the mind, a straining of the mental sinews; I
was forced to do this, my mind was yonder. Weariness, exhaustion,
nerve-illness often ensued. The insults which are showered on poverty,
long struggle of labour, the heavy pressure of circumstances, the
unhappiness, only stayed the expression of the feeling. It was always
there. Often in the streets of London, as the red sunset flamed over
the houses, the old thought, the old prayer, came.
Not only in grassy fields with green leaf and running brook did this
constant desire find renewal. More deeply still with living human
beauty; the perfection of form, the simple fact of form, ravished and
always will ravish me away. In this lies the outcome and end of all the
loveliness of sunshine and green leaf, of flowers, pure water, and
sweet air. This is embodiment and highest ex-pression; the scattered,
uncertain, and designless loveliness of tree and sunlight brought to
shape. Through this beauty I prayed deepest and longest, and down to
this hour. The shape—the divine idea of that shape—the swelling muscle
or the dreamy limb, strong sinew or curve of bust, Aphrodite or
Hercules, it is the same. That I may have the soul-life, the
soul-nature, let divine beauty bring to me divine soul. Swart Nubian,
white Greek, delicate Italian, massive Scandinavian, in all the
exquisite pleasure the form gave, and gives, to me immediately becomes
intense prayer.
If I could have been in physical shape like these, how despicable in
comparison I am; to be shapely of form is so infinitely beyond wealth,
power, fame, all that ambition can give, that these are dust before it.
Unless of the human form, no pictures hold me; the rest are flat
surfaces. So, too, with the other arts, they are dead; the potters, the
architects, meaningless, stony, and some repellent, like the cold touch
of porcelain. No prayer with these. Only the human form in art could
raise it, and most in statuary. I have seen so little good statuary, it
is a regret to me; still, that I have is beyond all other art.
Fragments here, a bust yonder, the broken pieces brought from Greece,
copies, plaster casts, a memory of an Aphrodite, of a Persephone, of an
Apollo, that is all; but even drawings of statuary will raise the
prayer. These statues were like myself full of a thought, for ever
about to burst forth as a bud, yet silent in the same attitude. Give me
to live the soul-life they express. The smallest fragment of marble
carved in the shape of the human arm will wake the desire I felt in my
hill-prayer.
Time went on; good fortune and success never for an instant deceived me
that they were in themselves to be sought; only my soul-thought was
worthy. Further years bringing much suffering, grinding the very life
out; new troubles, renewed insults, loss of what hard labour had
earned, the bitter question: Is it not better to leap into the sea?
These, too, have made no impression; constant still to the former
prayer my mind endures. It was my chief regret that I had not
endeavoured to write these things, to give expression to this passion.
I am now trying, but I see that I shall only in part succeed.
The same prayer comes to me at this very hour. It is now less solely
associated with the sun and sea, hills, woods, or beauteous human
shape. It is always within. It requires no waking; no renewal; it is
always with me. I am it; the fact of my existence expresses it.
After a long interval I came to the hills again, this time by the
coast. I found a deep hollow on the side of a great hill, a green
concave opening to the sea, where I could rest and think in perfect
quiet. Behind me were furze bushes dried by the heat; immediately in
front dropped the steep descent of the bowl-like hollow which received
and brought up to me the faint sound of the summer waves. Yonder lay
the immense plain of sea, the palest green under the continued
sunshine, as though the heat had evaporated the colour from it; there
was no distinct horizon, a heat-mist inclosed it and looked farther
away than the horizon would have done. Silence and sunshine, sea and
hill gradually brought my mind into the condition of intense prayer.
Day after day, for hours at a time, I came there, my soul-desire always
the same. Presently I began to consider how I could put a part of that
prayer into form, giving it an object. Could I bring it into such a
shape as would admit of actually working upon the lines it indicated
for any good?
One evening, when the bright white star in Lyra was shining almost at
the zenith over me, and the deep concave was the more profound in the
dusk, I formulated it into three divisions. First, I desired that I
might do or find something to exalt the soul, something to enable it to
live its own life, a more powerful existence now. Secondly, I desired
to be able to do something for the flesh, to make a discovery or
perfect a method by which the fleshly body might enjoy more pleasure,
longer life, and suffer less pain. Thirdly, to construct a more
flexible engine with which to carry into execution the design of the
will. I called this the Lyra prayer, to distinguish it from the far
deeper emotion in which the soul was alone concerned.
Of the three divisions, the last was of so little importance that it
scarcely deserved to be named in conjunction with the others. Mechanism
increases convenience—in no degree does it confer physical or moral
perfection. The rudimentary engines employed thousands of years ago in
raising buildings were in that respect equal to the complicated
machines of the present day. Control of iron and steel has not altered
or improved the bodily man. I even debated some time whether such a
third division should be included at all. Our bodies are now conveyed
all round the world with ease, but obtain no advantage. As they start
so they return. The most perfect human families of ancient times were
almost stationary, as those of Greece. Perfection of form was found in
Sparta; how small a spot compared to those continents over which we are
now taken so quickly! Such perfection of form might perhaps again
dwell, contented and complete in itself, on such a strip of land as I
could see between me and the sand of the sea. Again, a watch keeping
correct time is no guarantee that the bearer shall not suffer pain. The
owner of the watch may be soulless, without mind-fire, a mere creature.
No benefit to the heart or to the body accrues from the most accurate
mechanism. Hence I debated whether the third division should be
included. But I reflected that time cannot be put back on the dial, we
cannot return to Sparta; there is an existent state of things, and
existent multitudes; and possibly a more powerful engine, flexible to
the will, might give them that freedom which is the one, and the one
only, political or social idea I possess. For liberty, therefore, let
it be included.
For the flesh, this arm of mine, the limbs of others gracefully moving,
let me find something that will give them greater perfection. That the
bones may be firmer, somewhat larger if that would be an advantage,
certainly stronger, that the cartilage and sinews may be more enduring,
and the muscles more powerful, something after the manner of those
ideal limbs and muscles sculptured of old, these in the flesh and real.
That the organs of the body may be stronger in their action, perfect,
and lasting. That the exterior flesh may be yet more beautiful; that
the shape may be finer, and the motions graceful. These are the
soberest words I can find, purposely chosen; for I am so rapt in the
beauty of the human form, and so earnestly, so inexpressibly, prayerful
to see that form perfect, that my full thought is not to be written.
Unable to express it fully, I have considered it best to put it in the
simplest manner of words. I believe in the human form; let me find
something, some method, by which that form may achieve the utmost
beauty. Its beauty is like an arrow, which may be shot any distance
according to the strength of the bow. So the idea expressed in the
human shape is capable of indefinite expansion and elevation of beauty.
Of the mind, the inner consciousness, the soul, my prayer desired that
I might discover a mode of life for it, so that it might not only
conceive of such a life, but actually enjoy it on the earth. I wished
to search out a new and higher set of ideas on which the mind should
work. The simile of a new book of the soul is the nearest to convey the
meaning—a book drawn from the present and future, not the past. Instead
of a set of ideas based on tradition, let me give the mind a new
thought drawn straight from the wondrous present, direct this very
hour. Next, to furnish the soul with the means of executing its will,
of carrying thought into action. In other words, for the soul to become
a power. These three formed the Lyra prayer, of which the two first are
immeasurably the in more important. I believe in the human being, mind
and flesh; form and soul.
It happened just afterwards that I went to Pevensey, and immediately
the ancient wall swept my mind back seventeen hundred years to the
eagle, the pilum, and the short sword. The grey stones, the thin red
bricks laid by those whose eyes had seen Cæsar’s Rome, lifted me out of
the grasp of house-life, of modern civilisation, of those minutiae
which occupy the moment. The grey stone made me feel as if I had
existed from then till now, so strongly did I enter into and see my own
life as if reflected. My own existence was focused back on me; I saw
its joy, its unhappiness, its birth, its death, its possibilities among
the infinite, above all its yearning Question. Why? Seeing it thus
clearly, and lifted out of the moment by the force of seventeen
centuries, I recognised the full mystery and the depths of things in
the roots of the dry grass on the wall, in the green sea flowing near.
Is there anything I can do? The mystery and the possibilities are not
in the roots of the grass, nor is the depth of things in the sea; they
are in my existence, in my soul. The marvel of existence, almost the
terror of it, was flung on me with crushing force by the sea, the sun
shining, the distant hills. With all their ponderous weight they made
me feel myself: all the time, all the centuries made me feel myself
this moment a hundred-fold. I determined that I would endeavour to
write what I had so long thought of, and the same evening put down one
sentence. There the sentence remained two years. I tried to carry it
on; I hesitated because I could not express it: nor can I now, though
in desperation I am throwing these rude stones of thought together,
rude as those of the ancient wall.