inner unseen tides of that spiritual awakening now so seeming near for
all mankind. For what holds poesy at its heart holds music there, and
harmony and rhythm and something of that divine potency that lies in
number; and with Theosophy at our doors we do not need Plato to tell us
that
rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul,
on which they mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements and
making the soul graceful in him who is rightly educated.
The following are a handful of poems by women--most of them,
significantly enough, by wholly or comparatively unknown
writers--from among the last month's journals and papers, by no
means a representative list, but just a few that found their way in
the natural course to the study desk. Some compel attention because
of the wholesomeness of sentiment and a certain honest openness in
their delivery, others because of their musical lilt and flow, still
others because of both. There are a few that may live, some that of a
certainty will not and that yet have a value now. But that may be said
of a hastily gathered handful of anything in its era.
They are typical of a surprisingly large class, while none of those
whose poems are herewith quoted, with the exception of Edith M. Thomas,
have so far written very much.
The first, by Angela Morgan in the _Cosmopolitan_, is a real
Theosophical challenge, a veritable battle-cry, with something of the
trenchant force and fire that flashes and thunders from out the lines
of the old _Beowulf_:
Reined by an unseen tyrant's hand,
Spurred by an unseen tyrant's will,
Aquiver at the fierce command
That goads you up the danger hill,
You cry: "O Fate, O Life, be kind!
Grant but an hour of respite--give
One moment to my suffering mind;
I cannot keep the pace and live."
But Fate drives on and will not heed
The lips that beg, the feet that bleed.
Drives, while you faint upon the road,
Drives, with a menace for a goad;
With fiery reins of circumstance
Urging his terrible advance
The while you cry in your despair,
"The pain is more than I can bear."
Fear not the goad, fear not the pace,
Plead not to fall from out the race--
It is your own Self driving you,
Your Self that you have never known,
Seeing your little self alone,
Your Self, high-seated charioteer,
Master of cowardice and fear,
Your Self that sees the shining length
Of all the fearful road ahead;
Knows that the terrors that you dread
Are pigmies to your splendid strength;
Strength you have never even guessed,
Strength that has never needed rest.
Your Self that holds the mastering rein,
Seeing beyond the sweat and pain
And anguish of your driven soul
The patient beauty of the goal.
Fighting upon the terror field
Where man and Fate come breast to breast,
Pressed by a thousand foes to yield,
Tortured and wounded without rest,
You cried, "Be merciful, O Life!
The strongest spirit soon must break
Before this all-unequal strife,
This endless fight for failure's sake."
But Fate, unheeding, lifted high
His sword and thrust you through to die.
And then there came one strong and great,
Who towered high o'er Chance and Fate,
Who bound your wound and eased your pain
And bade you rise and fight again.
And from some source you did not guess
Gushed a great tide of happiness--
A courage mightier than the sun--
You rose and fought, and fighting, won.
It was your own Self saving you,
Your Self no man has ever known,
Looking on flesh and blood alone;
The Self that lives as close to God
As roots that feed beneath the sod.
That one who stands behind the screen,
Looks through the window of your eyes--
A being out of Paradise.
The Self no human eye hath seen,
The living one who never tires,
Fed by the deep eternal fires.
Your flaming star, with two-edged sword,
Made in the likeness of the Lord.
Angel and guardian at the gate,
Master of Death and King of Fate.
Perhaps more musical and exquisite in its technic is the following (by
Edith M. Thomas in the _Century_), yet one looks in vain for the note
of positive assurance that sings and rings out of the poem just quoted.
Now one expects in poetry something more than rhymed philosophy, of
course, and sheer beauty of rhythm has more than once endowed paucity
of thought with an almost immortality. But the content is important,
none the less. In the preceding poem one feels a mighty conviction
forcing its way through every limitation to the goal of expression. The
work of the older and better known poetess is more clearly poetic--to
those who know the path and know the way its Sphinx-like questionings
evoke their own answer in the deeps of consciousness. To the many,
however, the first poem must reveal more.
THE UNKNOWING
I know not where I am:
Beneath my feet a whirling sphere,
And overhead (and yet below)
A crystal rampart cutting sheer--
The traveling sun its oriflam.
What do I know?
I know not what I do:
I wrought at that, I wrought at this,
The shuttle still perforce I throw;
But if aright or if amiss
The web reveals not, held to view.
What do I know?
I know not what I think:
My thoughts?--As in a shaft of light
The dust-motes wander to and fro,
And shimmer in their flight;
Then, either way, in darkness sink.
What do I know?
I know not who am I:
If now I enter on the Scheme,
Or revenant from long ago;
If but some World-Soul's moment-dream,
Or, timeless, in Itself I lie.
What do I know?
Here is a sweet touch from the Kansas City _Star_. The very name of the
writer of it is so in keeping with tender dutifulness and so suggestive
of clean-swept hearths and ministries to tiny, clinging hands, that
one wonders if it be not a pseudonym. A miniature "psalm of daily duty"
is it:
At morn I yearned a song to sing
That would inspire and teach
In words so true all men would hear
In them their own soul's speech.
But Duty stopped my pen and showed
The day's dull round of care--
The service to another's need--
A burden I should share.
At night the Day sung to the past
Her record clear and strong,
And richer, sweeter than I dreamed
I heard complete my song.
--_Emily Householder_
And from the same paper another ringing note on the sacredness of the
day's duty--but this is no psalm, rather a trumpet call, gorgeous,
full, and technically so splendid that it suggests the ancients:
TODAY
Voice, with what emulous fire thou singest free hearts of old fashion,
English scorners of Spain sweeping the blue sea-way,
Sing me the daring of life for life, the magnanimous passion
Of man for man in the mean populous streets of Today.
Hand, with what color and power thou couldst show, in the ring
hot-sanded,
Brown Bestiarius holding the lean, tawn tiger at bay,
Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed;
Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing Today.--_Helen Gray Cone_
Will you have music? Then read these, so different in content, so
unlike in the touch, for one is threaded through with compassion and
tenderness while the other is just a little note of joy in life, which
might rise out of self as well as unself in certain not yet conscious
natures.
CANDLEMAS
O hearken, all ye little weeds
That lie beneath the snow,
(So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!)
The sun hath risen for royal deeds,
A valiant wind the vanguard leads;
Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds
Before ye rise and blow.
O furry living things, adream
On winter's drowsy breast,
(How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!)
Arise and follow where a gleam
Of wizard gold unbinds the stream,
And all the woodland windings seem
With sweet expectance blest.
My birds, come back! the hollow sky
Is weary for your note.
(Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!)
Ere May's soft minions hereward fly,
Shame on ye, laggards, to deny
The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye,
The tawny, shining coat!--_Alice Brown_
THE WAVES OF BREFFNY
The grand road from the mountain goes shining to the sea,
And there is traffic on it and many a horse and cart;
But the little roads of Cloonagh are dearer far to me
And the little roads of Cloonagh go rambling through my heart.
A great storm from the ocean goes shouting o'er the hill,
And there is glory in it, and terror on the wind;
But the haunted air of twilight is very strange and still,
And the little winds of twilight are dearer to my mind.
The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way,
Shining green and silver with the hidden herring shoal;
But the little waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray,
And the little waves of Breffny go sweeping through my soul.
--_Eva Gore-Booth_
The two following poems attack the same theme, a fruitful and varied
one to lovers of Lomaland where the winter rains are the year's
beneficence. But note the full rich lines of the work of the unknown
writer, albeit the sonnet is of course the more difficult poetic form.
THE FOUNTAINS OF THE RAIN
The merchant clouds that cruise the sultry sky,
As soon as they have spent their freight of rain,
Plot how the cooling thrift they may regain:
All night along the river-marsh they lie,
And at their ghostly looms swift shuttles ply,
To weave them nets wherewith the streams to drain;
And often in the sea they cast a seine,
And draw it, dripping, past some headland high.
Many a slender naiad, with a sigh,
Is in their arms uptaken from the plain;
The trembling myrmidons of dew remain
No longer than the flash of morning's eye,
Then back unto their misty fountains fly:
This is the source and journey of the rain.
--_Edith Matilda Thomas_
RAIN
The patient rain at early summer dawn;
The long, lone autumn drip; the damp, sweet hush
Of springtime, when the glinting drops seem gone
Into the first notes of the hidden thrush;
The solemn, dreary beat
Of winter rain and sleet;
The mad, glad, passionate calling of the showers
To the unblossomed hours;
The driving, restless midnight sweep of rain;
The fitful sobbing, and the smile again,
Of spring's childhood; the fierce unpitying pour
Of low-hung leaden clouds; the evermore
Prophetic beauty of the sunset storm,
Transfigured into color and to form
Across the sky. O wondrous changing rain!
Changeful and full of temper as man's life;
Impetuous, fierce, unpitying, kind again,
Prophetic, beauteous, soothing, full of strife:
Through all thy changing passions hear not we
Th' eternal note of the Unchanging Sea?
--_Laura Spencer Portor_
Nothing is worse than bad poetry, unless it be bad art of every kind,
of which the world today is having a surfeit. That we find a greater
abundance of wretched verse, however, than of wretched painting and
sculpture, and that there are still those who think that the poet's
equipment need consist of little more than an unbalanced emotionalism,
we may attribute perhaps to the fact that the pen and ink are readier
to hand with the majority than palette and brush or calipers and
modeling tool. Conceit and ignorance, working together, have made "to
write poetry" almost a reproach.
The remedy would seem to be to diffuse a few simple truths, such
as that true poetry has nothing to do with emotionalism, nor
sentimentality, nor bad spelling, nor with metres that "interfere,"
like a clumsy horse's feet; and that where one in ten thousand who care
for poetry may try to write it and succeed, the rest will fail and will
neglect their proper duties besides. It is so in art, in literature
generally, in music, in all things--the safe path is to drop the gleam
and fire and fragrance of the soul-touch into one's life _in the shape
of a more courageous performance of the daily task, whatever it may
be_, and be content with that, which is the greatest thing in the
world, anyway. If the Muse should decide to pick us out, willy nilly,
she has ways of letting us know. Poesy has its technic, as has all art,
and sentimental ignorance can never hope to pose as inspiration among
those who know.
The real point to be emphasized is that this is part of a certain
outreaching on idealistic lines of which the wholly remarkable work
of the young women of the present generation in music, composition,
painting, and sculpture, constitutes other parts. And this outreaching
towards an art expression along various lines is so general, and is
so differentiated in essence from the results of ordinary scholastic
work or the general movement for the higher education of woman, that it
cannot justly be ignored.
Few young women will, in the ordinary course, win a separate fame along
the solitary path of pure art. Most of them, and most of those who come
within the radius of the influence of their aspirations and their art
work, will become wives, home-makers, mothers. Many more will become
teachers, or are that now, wielding potent influence. It is these who
will strike the keynote for the quality of atmosphere that is to shape,
as it will surround, the generations yet unborn; and, because of that,
the feeling and aspiration that many of the poems seen in our current
journals disclose, is important and significant at this transitional
time.
ANCIENT ASTRONOMY: by Fred J. Dick, M. Inst. C. E.
In perhaps no department of thought has appreciation of the
achievements of antiquity been more inadequate than in that of
astronomy. This is all the more remarkable when we remember that many
facts have been published and are accessible, amply sufficient to
convince any unbiased student as to the hoary antiquity of the science;
and also as to the fact that in the remotest times it was a science
whose exactitude surpassed that of modernity because based upon immense
periods of observation and a profound knowledge of the harmonious laws
underlying celestial motions; in comparison with which knowledge our
generalizations and mathematical triumphs pale into insignificance.
Such statements are hardly likely to meet ready acceptance from those
who have not yet realized the immense antiquity of the human race,
the cyclic rises and falls of nations and races coeval with vanished
continents, and the fact that there were times when humanity had divine
instructors in the arts and sciences. Yet without some recognition of
these basic ideas it is hardly possible to comprehend even faintly the
significance of some statements made in the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_--one
of the oldest treatises on astronomy extant. There are many
others--perhaps thousands--but they are not accessible at the present
time, probably because they would be still less understood.
Another thing hardly likely to be appreciated in some quarters is the
fact that on account of the intimate connexion between the facts of
astronomy and cyclic laws affecting human destiny, this science for
long ages was one of the sacred sciences, and its deeper mysteries were
carefully guarded--as they are still, for that matter.
This last consideration throws an interesting light on the performance
of Hipparchos (whom our text-books dub "the father of astronomy"),
for he was not only silent as to the sources of his facts, but his
data have been shown to be inconsistent with his methods, and are only
explainable when calculated out on the principles enunciated in the
_Sûrya-Siddhânta_. In short, he has been thus shown to have had access
to Eastern sources of information, while at the same time some things
were withheld.
This is but an instance of a policy which had been pursued for a very
considerable period anterior to the time of Hipparchos. Just so much
was given as would afford a stimulus for investigation; for humanity
entered upon novel and strenuous conditions some five thousand years
ago, and has had to win for itself a new path in science, as in other
departments of activity.
Key-notes are sounded, and instruction given, at cyclic periods;
yet man must win his own path to knowledge, and guarded sources of
information could not help him, until he prove himself morally as well
as intellectually fitted to advance.
This brings us naturally to a survey of modern achievement in
astronomy, and the conclusion is almost irresistible that it has
reached a point where further light must come, if only the enthusiastic
followers of this kingly science would raise their eyes from the
mechanical skeleton they have built so laboriously, and realize that
the universe is living and conscious--in the interstellar spaces, as
well as in the little fiery-looking balls that float therein. We should
remember that it is part of human destiny to enter into the wider
consciousness which alone holds the master-clues.
The above conclusion is supported by the statement of Simon Newcomb
that the unsolved problems of astronomy seem to increase with every
year, instead of diminishing.
It is a curious reflection, in these days of "exact" science, that real
exactitude can only be obtained, as in pure mathematics, by proceeding
from universals to particulars, never from particulars to universals.
Yet the latter method has perforce to be adopted when no other way
is in sight. That it fails, is shown by the simple fact that few of
the "elements" or "constants" in modern astronomy are exactly known.
No tables have yet been constructed, based upon purely mathematical
formulae, which represent the actual motions, say of the superior
planets. Those in the _Nautical Almanac_ are simply derived from such
hypothetical formulae, with corrections found necessary by experience
extended over what is an almost ludicrously insufficient term of years.
We should like to see the astronomical formula in use which would show
that the obliquity of the ecliptic, 23,000 years ago, was slightly more
than 27°. No longer ago than August 1905 an eclipse of the sun began
twenty seconds before the predicted time.
Fortunately our astronomers do not live in ancient China, or they might
have been beheaded for this want of accuracy!
On the other hand, the achievements in the domain of theory during
the last two centuries or less have been so remarkable that it is
to be hoped the methods and facts given in the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_ may
yet receive some attention from competent mathematicians, once they
perceive their importance. The apparent discrepancies with modern
facts, it may be pretty safely asserted, will be found to yield
valuable results upon careful analysis.
Investigators will find that, contrary to the assumptions of some
critics of Eastern chronology, a "year" does not mean a day, nor a
month--although it is sometimes called "a day of the gods" in Eastern
writings.
One of the first things to arrest attention in the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_ is
that in a "great age" of 4320 thousand years there are exactly forty
revolutions of the Earth's apsides, one revolution of which occupies
108 thousand years. (Young's _General Astronomy_, § 199.) The line of
apsides is the major axis of the Earth's orbit. Here we glimpse a basic
connexion between the great cycles of time and the apsidal revolutions.
Let us quote a few aphorisms from Book I of this ancient work.
27. By their [the planets'] movement the revolution is accounted
complete at the end of the asterism Revatî.
29. In an age the revolutions of the Sun ... are 4,320,000.
30. Of the Moon 57,753,336.
31. ... of Jupiter 364,220.
32. ... of Saturn 146,568.
33. Of the Moon's apsis 488,203. Of its node, in the contrary
direction 232,238.
34. Of asterisms 1,582,237,828.
36. ... From rising to rising of the Sun are reckoned terrestrial
civil days.
37. Of these there are in an age 1,577,917,828. Of lunar days
1,603,000,080.
From these figures we find the mean value of the sidereal year during
a cycle of 4320 thousand years to be 0.002403 of a day longer than
at present, which of course means that there are slow changes in the
length of the orbital major axis.
There is a point worthy of attention regarding the asterism Revatî,
to which these revolutions are referred, and which is thus seen to
mark the origin of the Hindû movable zodiac. The precise star has
either disappeared, or has not, so far, been publicly indicated. But
the place of the origin was carefully calculated in 1883, and found
to have a longitude of about 20.5 degrees. Again, from the numerous
facts connected with the important epoch of 3102 B. C., which marked
the beginning of the current cycle of 432,000 years (See _Traité de_
_l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale_, by M. Bailly, M. Acad. Franç.,
1787), its place was about five degrees westward of the other. This
shows it to have a positive movement of 4´´ per year, giving one
complete revolution in 324,000 years.
This proper motion, if that of an actual star, is of the same order
of magnitude as that of many stars. It would perhaps be interesting
to glance at the relation between stellar movements and the greater
cycles dealt with in ancient astronomy, for all analogy would indicate
revolution in orbits to be a general law; and moreover, probabilities
would indicate that our system is not too remote from the center of the
stellar system. Assuming the average cross speed to be twenty miles per
second, stars at 7 light-years distance would make one revolution while
the Earth's apsides made four. Those at 70 light-years, one in a "great
age." Those at the estimated distance of the farthest visible stars,
5000 light-years, would perform a revolution in just one manvantara of
308 million years.
Doubtless all such revolutions are superposed on other lesser
revolutions down to those known, as in cases of double stars, etc. And
it may be suggested that there are not improbably a number of axes
of revolution, or rather principal planes of revolution, having some
harmonious mutual inclination.
In order properly to relate the above mean value of the sidereal year
to its present value, we should have to know our place in this cycle
of 4320 thousand years; and the same observation applies to the other
figures. We may return to this point at another time, as the necessary
data are given in the same work. The effect of stellar proper motions,
already referred to, would have to be considered.
The figures for the Moon make the mean value of the sidereal month
1.103 seconds longer than its present estimated value.
Those for Jupiter make its mean sidereal period about a quarter of
a day shorter than the present one of 4332.58 days; while those for
Saturn come out 6.55 days more than the present period of 10,759.22
days.
The methods of calculation and tables connected with the
_Sûrya-Siddhânta_ were rigorously applied by M. Bailly to an observed
interval extending from the epoch in 3102 B. C. to a certain moment
on May 21, 1282 of our era, at Benares--a period of 4383 years and 94
days; and the mean place of the Moon thus found was less than a minute
of arc different from that calculated for the same interval by the
modern tables of Cassini. An astronomy which could achieve a result
like this by methods and tables at least five thousand years old,
points to the enormous duration of some prior high civilization.
The precessional movement of 54´´, peculiar to the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_,
being referred to "Revatî" with its 4´´ direct motion, gives 50´´, like
ours.
It is as well perhaps to recall what Iamblichus states:
The Assyrians have not only preserved the memorials of seven and
twenty myriads [270,000] of years as Hipparchos says they have, but
likewise of the whole apocatastases [planetary sidereal periods]
and periods of the seven rulers of the world. (Proklos on Plato's
_Timaios_, Bk. 1.)
H. P. Blavatsky, commenting on this, says it is
about 850,000 years since the submersion of the last large island
(part of the Continent), the Ruta of the Fourth Race, or the
Atlantean; while Daitya, a small island inhabited by a mixed race,
was destroyed about 270,000 years ago, during the glacial period or
thereabouts. But the Seven Rulers, or the seven great Dynasties of
the _divine_ kings belong to the traditions of every great people of
antiquity. (_The Secret Doctrine_, I, 651.)
She also informs us that
The chronology and computations of the Brâhman Initiates[2] are based
upon the Zodiacal records of India, and the works of ... Asuramaya.
The Atlantean zodiacal records cannot err, as they were compiled under
the guidance of those who first taught astronomy, among other things,
to mankind. (_The Secret Doctrine_, II, 49.)
[2] But these are not the modern Brâhmans, as is clearly explained in
H. P. Blavatsky's own writings.--F. J. D.
THE PATH: by Gertrude Van Pelt, M. D.
Thou wilt shew me the path of life.--_Psalms_, xvi. 11