The dark age is our darkness and not the darkness of life. It is

not well for us who in the beginning came forth with the wonder-light

about us, that it should have turned in us to darkness, the song of

life be dumb. We close our eyes from the many-coloured mirage of

day, and are alone soundless and sightless in the unillumined cell

of the brain. But there are thoughts that shine, impulses born of

fire. Still there are moments when the prison world reels away a

distant shadow, and the inner chamber of clay fills full with fiery

visions. We choose from the traditions of the past some symbol of

our greatness, and seem again the Titans or Morning Stars of the prime.

In this self-conception lies the secret of life, the way of escape

and return. We have imagined ourselves into forgetfulness, into

darkness, into feebleness. From this strange and pitiful dream of

life, oh, that we may awaken and know ourselves once again.

But the student too often turns to books, to the words sent back

to him, forgetful that the best of scriptures do no more than stand

as symbols. We hear too much of study, as if the wisdom of life

and ethics could be learned like ritual, and of their application

to this and that ephemeral pursuit. But from the Golden One, the

child of the divine, comes a voice to its shadow. It is stranger

to our world, aloof from our ambitions, with a destiny not here to

be fulfilled. It says: "You are of dust while I am robed in

opalescent airs. You dwell in houses of clay, I in a temple not

made by hands. I will not go with thee, but thou must come with me."

And not alone is the form of the divine aloof but the spirit behind

the form. It is called the Goal truly, but it has no ending. It

is the Comforter, but it waves away our joys and hopes like the

angel with the flaming sword. Though it is the Resting-place, it

stirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to conquest. It is the

Friend indeed, but it will not yield to our desires. Is it this

strange, unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by

what is written, or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness.

But in vain we store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint

furniture of thought. No archangel makes his abode therein. They

abide only in the shining. How different from academic psychology

of the past, with its dry enumeration of faculties, reason,

cognition and so forth, is the burning thing we know. We revolted

from that, but we must take care lest we teach in another way a

catalogue of things equally unliving to us. The plain truth is,

that after having learned what is taught about the hierarchies and

various spheres, many of us are still in this world exactly where

we were before. If we speak our laboriously-acquired information we

are listened to in amazement. It sounds so learned, so intellectual,

there must need be applause. But by-and-by someone comes with quiet

voice, who without pretence speaks of the "soul" and uses familiar

words, and the listeners drink deep, and pay the applause of silence

and long remembrance and sustained after-endeavor. Our failure

lies in this, we would use the powers of soul and we have not yet

become the soul. None but the wise one himself could bend the bow

of Ulysses. We cannot communicate more of the true than we ourselves

know. It is better to have a little knowledge and know that little

than to have only hearsay of myriads of Gods. So I say, lay down

your books for a while and try the magic of thought. "What a man

thinks, that he is; that is the old secret." I utter, I know,

but a partial voice of the soul with many needs. But I say, forget

for a while that you are student, forget your name and time. Think

of yourself within as the titan, the Demi-god, the flaming hero

with the form of beauty, the heart of love. And of those divine

spheres forget the nomenclature; think rather of them as the

places of a great childhood you now return to, these homes no

longer ours. In some moment of more complete imagination the

thought-born may go forth and look on the olden Beauty. So it

was in the mysteries long ago and may well be today. The poor

dead shadow was laid to sleep in forgotten darkness, as the fiery

power, mounting from heart to head, went forth in radiance. Not

then did it rest, nor ought we. The dim worlds dropped behind it,

the lights of earth disappeared as it neared the heights of the

Immortals. There was One seated on a throne, One dark and bright

with ethereal glory. I arose in greeting. The radiant figure

laid its head against the breast which grew suddenly golden, and

father and son vanished in that which has no place nor name.

--January 15, 1896

On W. Q. Judge's Passing

It is with no feeling of sadness that I think of this withdrawal.

He would not have wished for that. But with a faltering hand I try

to express one of many incommunicable thoughts about the hero who

has departed. Long before I met him, before even written words of

his had been read, his name like an incantation stirred and summoned

forth some secret spiritual impulse in my heart. It was no surface

tie which bound us to him. No one ever tried less than he to gain

from men that adherence which comes from impressive manner. I hardly

thought what he was while he spoke; but on departing I found my

heart, wiser than my brain, had given itself away to him; an inner

exaltation lasting for months witnessed his power. It was in that

memorable convention in London two years ago that I first glimpsed

his real greatness. As he sat there quietly, one among many, not

speaking a word, I was overcome by a sense of spiritual dilation,

of unconquerable will about him, and that one figure with the grey

head became all the room to me. Shall I not say the truth I think?

Here was a hero out of the remote, antique, giant ages come among us,

wearing but on the surface the vesture of our little day. We, too,

came out of that past, but in forgetfulness; he with memory and

power soon regained. To him and to one other we owe an unspeakable

gratitude for faith and hope and knowledge born again. We may say

now, using words of his early years: "Even in hell I lift up my

eyes to those who are beyond me and do not deny them." Ah, hero,

we know you would have stayed with us if it were possible; but

fires have been kindled that shall not soon fade, fires that shall

be bright when you again return. I feel no sadness, knowing there

are no farewells in the True: to whosoever has touched on that

real being there is comradeship with all the great and wise of time.

That he will again return we need not doubt. His ideals were those

which are attained only by the Saviours and Deliverers of nations.

When or where he may appear I know not, but I foresee the coming

when our need invokes him. Light of the future aeons, I hail, I

hail to thee!

--April 15, 1896

Self-Reliance

Perhaps it is now while we are in a state of transition, when old

leaders have gone out of sight and the new ones have not yet taken

their place in the van, that we ought to consider what we are in

ourselves. Some questions we ought to ask ourselves about this

movement: where its foundations were laid? what the links are?

where is the fountain of force? what are the doors? You answer

the first and you say "America," or you say "India." But if that

old doctrine of emanations be true it was not on earth but in the

heavenworld where our minds immortal are linked together. There

it was born and well born, and grew downwards into earth, and all

our hopes and efforts and achievements here but vaguely reflect

what was true and perfect in intent above, a compact of many hearts

to save the generations wandering to their doom. Wiser, stronger,

mightier than we were those who shielded us in the first years;

who went about among us renewing memory, whispering in our hearts

the message of the meaning of life, recalling the immemorial endeavor

of the spirit for freedom, knowledge, mastery. But it is our

movement and not the movement of the Masters only. It is our own

work we are carrying on; our own primal will we are trying to give

effect to. Well may the kingly sages depart from bodies which were

torment and pain to them. They took them on for our sakes, and we

may wave them a grateful farewell below and think of the spheres

invisible as so much richer by their presence, more to be longed for,

more to be attained. I think indeed they are nearer heart and mind

there than here. What is real in us can lose no brotherhood with

such as they through death. Still flash the lights from soul to

soul in ceaseless radiance, in endless begetting of energy, thought

and will, in endless return of joy and love and hope. I would

rather hear one word of theirs in my heart than a thousand in my ears.

I would rather think of my guide and captain as embodied in the flame

than in the clay. Although we may gaze on the grave, kindly face

living no more, there can be no cessation of the magic influence,

the breath of fire, which flowed aforetime from the soul to us.

We feel in our profoundest hearts that he whom they call dead is

living, is alive for evermore.

He has earned his rest, a deep rest, if indeed such as he cease

from labor. As for us, we may go our ways assured that the links

are unbroken. What did you think the links were? That you knew

some one who knew the Masters? Such a presence and such a Companion

would indeed be an aid, a link. But I think where ever there is

belief in our transcendent being, in justice, our spiritual unity

and destiny, wherever there is brotherhood, there are unseen ties,

links, shining cords, influx from and unbroken communication with

the divine. So much we have in our own natures, not enough to

perfect us in the mysteries, but always enough to light our path,

to show us our next step, to give us strength for duty. We should

not always look outside for aid, remembering that some time we must

be able to stand alone. Let us not deny our own deeper being, our

obscured glory. That we accepted these truths, even as intuitions

which we were unable intellectually to justify, is proof that there

is that within us which has been initiate in the past, which lives

in and knows well what in the shadowy world is but a hope. There

is part of ourselves whose progress we do not comprehend. There

are deeds done in unremembered dream, and a deeper meditation in

the further unrecorded silences of slumber. Downward from sphere

to sphere the Immortal works its way into the flesh, and the soul

has adventures in dream whose resultant wisdom is not lost because

memory is lacking here. Yet enough has been said to give us the hint,

the clue to trace backwards the streams of force to their fount.

We wake in some dawn and there is morning also in our hearts, a love,

a fiery vigor, a magnetic sweetness in the blood. Could we track

to its source this invigorating power, we might perhaps find that

as we fell asleep some olden memory had awakened in the soul, or

the Master had called it forth, or it was transformed by the wizard

power of Self and went forth to seek the Holy Place. Whether we

have here a guide, or whether we have not, one thing is certain,

that behind and within the "Father worketh hitherto." A warrior

fights for us. Our thoughts tip the arrows of his quiver. He wings

them with flame and impels them with the Holy Breath. They will

not fail if we think clear. What matters it if in the mist we do

not see where they strike. Still they are of avail. After a time

the mists will arise and show a clear field; the shining powers

will salute us as victors.

I have no doubt about our future; no doubt but that we will have

a guide and an unbroken succession of guides. But I think their

task would be easier, our way be less clouded with dejection and

doubt, if we placed our trust in no hierarchy of beings, however

august, but in the Law of which they are ministers. Their power,

though mighty, ebbs and flows with contracting and expanding nature.

They, like us, are but children in the dense infinitudes. Something

like this, I think, the Wise Ones would wish each one of us to speak:

"O Brotherhood of Light, though I long to be with you, though it

sustains me to think you are behind me, though your aid made sure

my path, still, if the Law does not permit you to act for me today,

I trust in the One whose love a fiery breath never ceases; I fall

back on it with exultation: I rely upon it joyfully." Was it not

to point to that greater life that the elder brothers sent forth

their messengers, to tell us that it is on this we ought to rely,

to point us to grander thrones than they are seated on? It is

well to be prepared to face any chance with equal mind; to meet

the darkness with gay and defiant thought as to salute the Light

with reverence and love and joy. But I have it in my heart that

we are not deserted. As the cycles went their upward way the

heroic figures of the dawn reappear. Some have passed before us;

others in the same spirit and power will follow: for the new day

a rearisen sun and morning stars to herald it. When it comes let

it find us, not drowsy after our night in time, but awake, prepared

and ready to go forth from the house of sleep, to stretch hands

to the light, to live and labor in joy, having the Gods for our

guides and friends.

--May 15, 1896

The Mountains

While we live within four walls we half insensibly lose something

of our naturalness and comport ourselves as creatures of the

civilization we belong to. But we never really feel at home there,

though childhood may have wreathed round with tender memories old

rooms and the quaint garden-places of happy unthinking hours.

There is a house, a temple not built with hands; perhaps we thought

it a mere cabin when we first formed it, and laid aside humbly many

of our royal possessions as we entered, for the heavens and the

heaven of heavens could not contain all of our glory. But now it

seems vast enough, and we feel more at home there, and we find

places which seem nearer of access to our first life. Such are

the mountains. As I lie here on the monstrous mould of the hillside

covered with such delicate fringes of tiny green leaves, I understand

something of his longing who said: "I lift up mine eyes to the hills,

from whence cometh my aid." Oh, but the air is sweet, is sweet.

Earth-breath, what is it you whisper? As I listen, listen, I know

it is no whisper but a chant from profoundest deeps, a voice hailing

its great companions in the aether spaces, but whose innumerable

tones in their infinite modulations speak clear to us also in our

littleness. Our lips are stilled with awe; we dare not repeat

what here we think. These mountains are sacred in our Celtic

traditions. Haunt of the mysteries, here the Tuatha de Danaans

once had their home. We sigh, thinking of the vanished glory, but

look with hope for the fulfilment of the prophecy which the seer

of another line left on record, that once more the Druid fires

should blaze on these mountains. As the purple amplitude of night

enfold them, already the dark mounds seem to throw up their sheeny

illuminations; great shadowy forms, the shepherds of our race,

to throng and gather; the many-coloured winds to roll their aerial

tides hither and thither. Eri, hearth and home of so many mystic

races, Isle of Destiny, there shall yet return to thee the spiritual

magic that thrilled thee long ago. As we descend and go back to

a life, not the life we would will, not the life we will have, we

think with sorrow of the pain, the passion, the partings, through

which our race will once more return to nature, spirit and freedom.

We turned back mad from the mystic mountains

All foamed with red and with faery gold;

Up from the heart of the twilight's fountains

The fires enchanted were starward rolled.

We turned back mad--we thought of the morrow,

The iron clang of the far-away town:

We could not weep in our bitter sorrow

But joy as an arctic sun went down.

--May 15, 1896

Works and Days

When we were boys with what anxiety we watched for the rare smile

on the master's face ere we preferred a request for some favor, a

holiday or early release. There was wisdom in that. As we grow

up we act more or less consciously upon intuitions as to time and

place. My companion, I shall not invite you to a merrymaking when

a bitter moment befalls you and the flame of life sinks into ashes

in your heart; nor yet, however true and trusted, will I confide

to you what inward revelations of the mysteries I may have while

I sense in you a momentary outwardness. The gifts of the heart

are too sacred to be laid before a closed door. Your mood, I know,

will pass, and tomorrow we shall have this bond between us. I wait,

for it can be said but once: I cannot commune magically twice on

the same theme with you. I do not propose we should be opportunists,

nor lay down a formula; but to be skillful in action we must work

with and comprehend the ebb and flow of power. Mystery and gloom,

dark blue and starshine, doubt and feebleness alternate with the

clear and shining, opal skies and sunglow, heroic ardor and the

exultation of power. Ever varying, prismatic and fleeting, the

days go by and the secret of change eludes us here. I bend the

bow of thought at a mark and it is already gone. I lay the shaft

aside and while unprepared the quarry again fleets by. We have

to seek elsewhere for the source of that power which momentarily

overflows into our world and transforms it with its enchantment.

On the motions of an inner sphere, we are told, all things here depend;

on spheres of the less evanescent which, in their turn, are enclosed

in spheres of the real, whose solemn chariot movements again are

guided by the inflexible will of Fire. In all of these we have part.

This dim consciousness which burns in my brain is not all of myself.

Behind me it widens out and upward into God. I feel in some other

world it shines with purer light: in some sphere more divine than

this it has a larger day and a deeper rest. That day of the inner

self illuminates many of our mortal days; its night leaves many

of them dark. And so the One Ray expanding lives in many vestures.

It is last of all the King-Self who wakes at the dawn of ages,

whose day is the day of Brahma, whose rest is his rest. Here is

the clue to cyclic change, to the individual feebleness and power,

the gloom of one epoch and the glory of another. The Bright Fortnight,

the Northern Sun, Light and Flame name the days of other spheres,

and wandering on from day to day man may at last reach the end of

his journey. You would pass from rapidly revolving day and night

to where the mystical sunlight streams. The way lies through

yourself and the portals open as the inner day expands. Who is

there who has not felt in some way or other the rhythmic recurrence

of light within? We were weary of life, baffled, ready to forswear

endeavor, when half insensibly a change comes over us; we doubt

no more but do joyfully our work; we renew the sweet magical

affinities with nature: out of a heart more laden with love we

think and act; our meditations prolong themselves into the shining

wonderful life of soul; we tremble on the verge of the vast halls

of the gods where their mighty speech may be heard, their message

of radiant will be seen. They speak a universal language not for

themselves only but for all. What is poetry but a mingling of

some tone of theirs with the sounds that below we utter? What is

love but a breath of their very being? Their every mood has colors

beyond the rainbow; every thought rings in far-heard melody. So

the gods speak to each other across the expanses of ethereal light,

breaking the divine silences with words which are deeds. So, too,

they speak to the soul. Mystics of all time have tried to express

it, likening it to peals of faery bells, the singing of enchanted

birds, the clanging of silver cymbals, the organ voices of wind

and water bent together--but in vain, in vain. Perhaps in this

there is a danger, for the true is realized in being and not in

perception. The gods are ourselves beyond the changes of time

which harass and vex us here. They do not demand adoration but an

equal will to bind us consciously in unity with themselves. The

heresy of separateness cuts us asunder in these enraptured moments;

but when thrilled by the deepest breath, when the silent, unseen,

uncomprehended takes possession of thee, think "Thou art That,"

and something of thee will abide for ever in It. All thought not

based on this is a weaving of new bonds, of illusions more difficult

to break; it begets only more passionate longing and pain.

Still we must learn to know the hidden ways, to use the luminous

rivers for the commerce of thought. Our Druid forefathers began

their magical operations on the sixth day of the new moon, taking

the Bright Fortnight at its flood-time. In these hours of expansion

what we think has more force, more freedom, more electric and

penetrating power. We find too, if we have co-workers, that we

draw from a common fountain, the same impulse visits us and them.

What one possess all become possessed of; and something of the

same unity and harmony arises between us here as exists for all

time between us in the worlds above. While the currents circulate

we are to see to it that they part from us no less pure than they came.

To this dawn of an inner day may in some measure be traced the sudden

inspirations of movements, such as we lately feel, not all due to

the abrupt descent into our midst of a new messenger, for the elder

Brothers work with law and foresee when nature, time, and the

awakening souls of men will aid them. Much may now be done. On

whosoever accepts, acknowledges and does the will of the Light in

these awakenings the die and image of divinity is more firmly set,

his thought grows more consciously into the being of the presiding

god. Yet not while seeking for ourselves can we lay hold of final

truths, for then what we perceive we retain but in thought and memory.

The Highest is a motion, a breath. We become it only in the imparting.

It is in all, for all and goes out to all. It will not be restrained

in a narrow basin, but through the free-giver it freely flows.

There are throngs innumerable who await this gift. Can we let this

most ancient light which again returns to us be felt by them only

as a vague emotion, a little peace of uncertain duration, a passing

sweetness of the heart? Can we not do something to allay the sorrow

of the world? My brothers, the time of opportunity has come. One

day in the long-marshaled line of endless days has dawned for our

race, and the buried treasure-houses in the bosom of the deep have

been opened to endow it with more light, to fill it with more power.

The divine ascetics stand with torches lit before the temple of wisdom.

Those who are nigh them have caught the fire and offer to us in turn

to light the torch, the blazing torch of soul. Let us accept the

gift and pass it on, pointing out the prime givers. We shall see

in time the eager races of men starting on their pilgrimage of

return and facing the light. So in the mystical past the call of

light was seen on the sacred hills; the rays were spread and gathered;

and returning with them the initiate-children were buried in the

Father-Flame.

--June 15, 1896

The Childhood of Apollo

It was long ago, so long that only the spirit of earth remembers

truly. The old shepherd Tithonius sat before the door of his hut

waiting for his grandson to return. He watched with drowsy eyes

the eve gather, and the woods and mountains grow dark over the isles--

the isles of ancient Greece. It was Greece before its day of beauty,

and day was never lovelier. The cloudy blossoms of smoke curling

upward from the valley sparkled a while high up in the sunlit air,

a vague memorial of the world of men below. From that too the

colour vanished, and those other lights began to shine which to

some are the only lights of day. The skies dropped close upon the

mountains and the silver seas, like a vast face brooding with

intentness; there was enchantment, mystery, and a living motion

in its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus enfolding his

starry children with the dark radiance of aether.

"Ah!" murmured the old man, looking upward, "once it was living;

once it spoke to me. It speaks not now, but it speaks to others

I know--to the child who looks and longs and trembles in the dewy

night. Why does he linger now? He is beyond his hour. Ah, there

now are his footsteps!"

A boy came up the valley driving the grey flocks which tumbled

before him in the darkness. He lifted his young face for the

shepherd to kiss. It was alight with ecstasy. Tithonius looked

at him with wonder. A light golden and silvery rayed all about

the him so that his delicate ethereal beauty seemed set in a star

which followed his dancing footsteps.

"How bright your eyes!" the old man said, faltering with sudden awe.

"Why do your white limbs shine with moonfire light?"

"Oh, father," said the boy Apollo, "I am glad, for everything is

living tonight. The evening is all a voice and many voices. While

the flocks were browsing night gathered about me: I saw within it

and it was living everywhere; and all together, the wind with dim-

blown tresses, odour, incense and secret-falling dew, mingled in

one warm breath. They whispered to me and called me 'Child of the

Stars,' 'Dew Heart,' and 'Soul of Fire.' Oh, father, as I came up

the valley the voices followed me with song; everything murmured

love; even the daffodils, nodding in the olive gloom, grew golden

at my feet, and a flower within my heart knew of the still sweet

secret of the flowers. Listen, listen!"

There were voices in the night, voices as of star-rays descending.

"Now the roof-tree of the midnight spreading

Buds in citron, green, and blue:

From afar its mystic odors shedding,

Child, on you."

Then other sweet speakers from beneath the earth, and from the

distant waters and air followed in benediction, and a last voice

like a murmur from universal Nature:

"Now the buried stars beneath the mountains

And the vales their life renew,

Jetting rainbow blooms from tiny fountains,

Child, for you.

"As within our quiet waters passing

Sun and moon and stars we view,

So the loveliness of life is glassing,

Child, in you.

"In the diamond air the sun-star glowing

Up its feathered radiance threw;

All the jewel glory there was flowing,

Child, for you.

"And the fire divine in all things burning

Yearns for home and rest anew,

From its wanderings far again returning,

Child, to you."

"Oh, voices, voices," cried the child, "what you say I know not,

but I ray back love for love. Father, what is it they tell me?

They embosom me in light and I am far away even though I hold

your hand."

"The gods are about us. Heaven mingles with the earth," said

Tithonius trembling. "Let us go to Diotima. She has grown wise

brooding for many a year where the great caves lead to the underworld.

She sees the bright ones as they pass by where she sits with shut

eyes, her drowsy lips murmuring as nature's self."

That night the island seemed no more earth set in sea, but a music

encircled by the silence. The trees long rooted in antique slumber

were throbbing with rich life; through glimmering bark and drooping

leaf a light fell on the old man and boy as they passed, and vague

figures nodded at them. These were the hamadryad souls of the wood.

They were bathed in tender colours and shimmering lights draping

them from root to leaf. A murmur came from the heart of every one,

a low enchantment breathing joy and peace. It grew and swelled

until at last it seemed as if through a myriad pipes that Pan the

earth spirit was fluting his magical creative song.

They found the cave of Diotima covered by vines and tangled strailers

at the end of the island where the dark-green woodland rose up from

the waters. Tithonius paused, for he dreaded this mystic prophetess;

but a voice from within called them: "Come in, child of light;

come in, old shepherd, I know why you seek me!" They entered,

Tithonius trembling with more fear than before. A fire was blazing

in a recess of the cavern and by it sat a majestic figure robed

in purple. She was bent forward, her hand supporting her face,

her burning eyes turned on the intruders.

"Come hither, child," she said, taking the boy by the hands and

gazing into his face. "So this frail form is to be the home of

the god. The gods choose wisely. They take no warrior wild, no

mighty hero to be their messenger to men, but crown this gentle

head. Tell me--you dream--have you ever seen a light from the sun

falling upon you in your slumber? No, but look now; look upward."

As she spoke she waved her hands over him, and the cavern with its

dusky roof seemed to melt away, and beyond the heavens the heaven

of heavens lay dark in pure tranquillity, a quiet which was the

very hush of being. In an instant it vanished and over the zenith

broke a wonderful light. "See now," cried Diotima, "the Ancient

Beauty! Look how its petals expand and what comes forth from its

heart!" A vast and glowing breath, mutable and opalescent, spread

itself between heaven and earth, and out of it slowly descended a

radiant form like a god's. It drew nigh radiating lights, pure,

beautiful, and starlike. It stood for a moment by the child and

placed its hand on his head, and then it was gone. The old shepherd

fell upon his face in awe, while the boy stood breathless and entranced.

"Go now," said the Sybil, "I can teach thee naught. Nature herself

will adore you and sing through you her loveliest song. But, ah,

the light you hail in joy you shall impart in tears. So from age

to age the eternal Beauty bows itself down amid sorrows that the

children of men may not forget it, that their anguish may be

transformed smitten through by its fire."

--November 15, 1896

The Awakening of the Fires

When twilight flutters the mountains over

The faery lights from the earth unfold,

And over the hills enchanted hover

The giant heroes and gods of old:

The bird of aether its flaming pinions

Waves over earth the whole night long:

The stars drop down in their blue dominions

To hymn together their choral song:

The child of earth in his heart grows burning

Mad for the night and the deep unknown;

His alien flame in a dream returning

Seats itself on the ancient throne.

When twilight over the mountains fluttered

And night with its starry millions came,

I too had dreams; the thoughts I have uttered.

Come from my heart that was touched by the flame

I thought over the attempts made time after time to gain our freedom;

how failure had followed failure until at last it seemed that we must

write over hero and chieftain of our cause the memorial spoken of

the warriors of old, "They went forth to the battle but they always

fell;" and it seemed to me that these efforts resulted in failure

because the ideals put forward were not in the plan of nature for us;

that it was not in our destiny that we should attempt a civilization

like that of other lands. Though the cry of nationality rings for

ever in our ears, the word here has embodied to most no other hope

than this, that we should when free be able to enter with more

energy upon pursuits already adopted by the people of other countries.

Our leaders have erected no nobler standard than theirs, and we who,

as a race, are the forlorn hope of idealism in Europe, sink day by

day into apathy and forget what a past was ours and what a destiny

awaits us if we will but rise responsive to it. Though so old in

tradition this Ireland of today is a child among the nations of

the world; and what a child, and with what a strain of genius in

it! There is all the superstition, the timidity and lack of judgment,

the unthought recklessness of childhood, but combined with what

generosity and devotion, and what an unfathomable love for its heroes.

Who can forget that memorable day when its last great chief was

laid to rest? He was not the prophet of our spiritual future;

he was not the hero of our highest ideals; but he was the only

hero we knew. The very air was penetrated with the sobbing and

passion of unutterable regret. Ah, Eri, in other lands there is

strength and mind and the massive culmination of ordered power,

but in thee alone is there such love as the big heart of childhood

can feel. It is this which maketh all thy exiles turn with longing

thoughts to thee.

Before trying her to indicate a direction for the future, guessed

from brooding on the far past and by touching on the secret springs

in the heart of the present, it may make that future seem easier

of access if I point out what we have escaped and also show that

we have already a freedom which, though but half recognized, is

yet our most precious heritage. We are not yet involved in a social

knot which only red revolution can sever: our humanity, the ancient

gift of nature to us, is still fresh in our veins: our force is

not merely the reverberation of a past, an inevitable momentum

started in the long ago, but is free for newer life to do what we

will with in the coming time.

I know there are some who regret this, who associate national

greatness with the whirr and buzz of many wheels, the smoke of

factories and with large dividends; and others, again, who wish

that our simple minds were illuminated by the culture and wisdom

of our neighbours. But I raise the standard of idealism, to try

everything by it, every custom, every thought before we make it

our own, and every sentiment before it finds a place in our hearts.

Are these conditions, social and mental, which some would have us

strive for really so admirable as we are assured they are? Are

they worth having at all? What of the heroic best of man; how

does that show? His spirituality, beauty and tenderness, are

these fostered in the civilizations of today? I say if questions

like these bearing upon that inner life wherein is the real greatness

of nations cannot be answered satisfactorily, that it is our duty

to maintain our struggle, to remain aloof, lest by accepting a

delusive prosperity we shut ourselves from our primitive sources

of power. For this spirit of the modern, with which we are so

little in touch, is one which tends to lead man further and further

from nature. She is no more to him the Great Mother so reverently

named long ago, but merely an adjunct to his life, the distant

supplier of his needs. What to the average dweller in cities are

stars and skies and mountains? They pay no dividends to him, no

wages. Why should he care about them indeed. And no longer

concerning himself about nature what wonder is it that nature

ebbs out of him. She has her revenge, for from whatever standpoint

of idealism considered the average man shows but of pigmy stature.

For him there is no before or after. In his material life he has

forgotten or never heard of the heroic traditions of his race,

their aspirations to godlike state. One wonders what will happen

to him when death ushers him out from the great visible life to

the loneliness amid the stars. To what hearth or home shall he

flee who never raised the veil of nature while living, nor saw it

waver tremulous with the hidden glory before his eyes? The Holy

Breath from the past communes no more with him, and if he is

oblivious of these things, though a thousand workman call him

master, within he is bankrupt, his effects sequestered, a poor

shadow, an outcast from the Kingdom of Light.

We see too, that as age after age passes and teems only with the

commonplace, that those who are the poets and teachers falter and

lose faith: they utter no more of man the divine things the poets

said of old. Perhaps the sheer respectability of the people they

address deters them from making statements which in some respects

might be considered libelous. But from whatever cause, from lack

of heart or lack of faith, they have no real inspiration. The

literature of Europe has had but little influence on the Celt in

this isle. Its philosophies and revolutionary ideas have stayed

their waves at his coast: they had no message of interpretation

for him, no potent electric thought to light up the mystery of his

nature. For the mystery of the Celt is the mystery of Amergin the

Druid. All nature speaks through him. He is her darling, the

confidant of her secrets. Her mountains have been more to him

than a feeling. She has revealed them to him as the home of her

brighter children, her heroes become immortal. For him her streams

ripple with magical life and the light of day was once filled with

more aerial rainbow wonder. Though thousands of years have passed

since this mysterious Druid land was at its noonday, and long

centuries have rolled by since the weeping seers saw the lights

vanish from mountain and valley, still this alliance of the soul

of man and the soul of nature more or less manifestly characterizes

the people of this isle. The thought produced in and for complex

civilizations is not pregnant enough with the vast for them, is

not enough thrilled through by that impalpable breathing from

another nature. We have had but little native literature here

worth the name until of late years, and that not yet popularized,

but during all these centuries the Celt has kept in his heart some

affinity with the mighty beings ruling in the unseen, once so

evident to the heroic races who preceded him. His legends and

faery tales have connected his soul with the inner lives of air

and water and earth, and they in turn have kept his heart sweet

with hidden influence. It would make one feel sad to think that

all that beautiful folklore is fading slowly from the memory that

held it so long, were it not for the belief that the watchful

powers who fostered its continuance relax their care because the

night with beautiful dreams and deeds done only in fancy is passing:

the day is coming with the beautiful real, with heroes and heroic deeds.

It may not be well to prophecy, but it is always permissible to

speak of our hopes. If day but copies day may we not hope for

Ireland, after its long cycle of night, such another glory as

lightened it of old, which tradition paints in such mystic colours?

What was the mysterious glamour of the Druid age? What meant the

fires on the mountains, the rainbow glow of air, the magic life in

water and earth, but that the Radiance of Deity was shining through

our shadowy world, that it mingled with and was perceived along

with the forms we know. There it threw up its fountains of life-

giving fire, the faery fountains of story, and the children of

earth breathing that rich life felt the flush of an immortal vigour

within them; and so nourished sprang into being the Danaan races,

men who made themselves gods by will and that magical breath.

Rulers of earth and air and fire, their memory looms titanic in

the cloud stories of our dawn, and as we think of that splendid

strength of the past something leaps up in the heart to confirm

it true for all the wonder of it.

This idea of man's expansion into divinity, which is in the highest

teaching of every race, is one which shone like a star at the dawn

of our Celtic history also. Hero after hero is called away by a

voice ringing out of the land of eternal youth, which is but a

name for the soul of earth, the enchantress and mother of all.

There as guardians of the race they shed their influence on the isle;

from them sprang all that was best and noblest in our past, and

let no one think but that it was noble. Leaving aside that mystic

sense of union with another world and looking only at the tales of

battle, when we read of heroes whose knightly vows forbade the use

of stratagem in war, and all but the equal strife with equals in

opportunity; when we hear of the reverence for truth among the

Fianna, "We the Fianna of Erin never lied, falsehood was never

attributed to us"--a reverence for truth carried so far that they

could not believe their foemen even could speak falsely--I say

that in these days when our public life is filled with slander

and unworthy imputation, we might do worse than turn back to that

ideal Paganism of the past, and learn some lessons of noble trust,

and this truth that greatness of soul alone insures final victory

to us who live and move and have our being in the life of God.

In hoping for such another day I do not of course mean the renewal

of the ancient order, but rather look for the return of the same

light which was manifest in the past. For so the eternal Beauty

brings itself to the memory of man from time to time brooding over

nations, as in the early Aryan heart, suffusing life and thought

with the sun-sense of pervading Deity, or as in Greece where its

myriad rays, each an intuition of loveliness, descended and dwelt

not only in poet, sage and sculptor, but in the general being of

the people. What has been called the Celtic renaissance in

literature is one of the least of the signs. Of far more

significance is the number of strange, dreamy children one meets,

whose hearts are in the elsewhere, and young people who love to

brood on the past, I speak of which is all the world to them.

The present has no voice to interpret their dreams and visions,

the enraptured solitude by mountain or shore, or what they feel

when they lie close pressed to the bosom of the earth, mad with

the longing for old joys, the fiery communion of spirit with spirit,

which was once the privilege of man. These some voice, not

proclaiming an arid political propaganda, may recall into the

actual: some ideal of heroic life may bring them to the service

of their kind, and none can serve the world better than those who

from mighty dreams turn exultant to their realisation: who bring

to labour the love, the courage, the unfailing hope, which they

only possess who have gone into the hidden nature and found it

sweet at heart.

So this Isle, once called the Sacred Isle and also the Isle of

Destiny, may find a destiny worthy of fulfilment: not to be a

petty peasant republic, nor a miniature duplicate in life and aims

of great material empires, but that its children out of their faith,

which has never failed may realise this imemorial truth of man's

inmost divinity, and in expressing it may ray the light over every

land. Now, although a great literature and great thought may be

part of our future, it ought not to be the essential part of our

ideal. As in our past the bards gave way before the heroes, so

in any national ideal worthy the name, all must give way in its

hopes, wealth, literature, art, everything before manhood itself.

If our humanity fails us or become degraded, of what value are

the rest? What use would it be to you or to me if our ships

sailed on every sea and our wealth rivaled the antique Ind, if

we ourselves were unchanged, had no more kingly consciousness of

life, nor that overtopping grandeur of soul indifferent whether

it dwells in a palace or a cottage?

If this be not clear to the intuition, there is the experience of

the world and the example of many nations. Let us take the highest,

and consider what have a thousand years of empire brought to England.

Wealth without parallel, but at what expense! The lover of his

kind must feel as if a knife were entering his heart when he looks

at those black centres of boasted prosperity, at factory, smoke

and mine, the arid life and spiritual death. Do you call those

miserable myriads a humanity? We look at those people in despair

and pity. Where is the ancient image of divinity in man's face:

where in man's heart the prompting of the divine? There is nothing

but a ceaseless energy without; a night terrible as hell within.

Is this the only way for us as a people? Is nature to be lost;

beauty to be swallowed up? The crown and sceptre were taken from

us in the past, our path has been strewn with sorrows, but the

spirit shall not be taken until it becomes as clay, and man forgets

that he was born in the divine, and hears no more the call of the

great deep in his heart as he bows himself to the dust in his bitter

labours. It maddens to think it should be for ever thus, with us

and with them, and that man the immortal, man the divine, should

sink deeper and deeper into night and ignorance, and know no more

of himself than glimmers upon him in the wearied intervals of

long routine.

Here we have this hope that nature appeals with her old glamour

to many, and there is still the ancient love for the hero. In a

land where so many well nigh hopeless causes have found faithful

adherents, where there has been so much devotion and sacrifice,

where poverty has made itself poorer still for the sake of leader

and cause, may we not hope that when an appeal is made to the

people to follow still higher ideals, that they will set aside

the lower for the higher, that they will not relegate idealism

to the poets only, but that it will dwell in the public as the

private heart and make impossible any nations' undertaking

inconsistent with the dignity and beauty of life? To me it seems

that here the task of teacher and writer is above all to present

images and ideals of divine manhood to the people whose real gods

have always been their heroes. These titan figures, Cuculain,

Finn, Oscar, Oisin, Caolte, all a mixed gentleness and fire, have

commanded for generations that spontaneous love which is the only

true worship paid by men. It is because of this profound and long-

enduring love for the heroes, which must be considered as forecasting

the future, that I declare the true ideal and destiny of the Celt

in this island to be the begetting of humanity whose desires and

visions shall rise above earth illimitable into godlike nature,

who shall renew for the world the hope, the beauty, the magic,

the wonder which will draw the buried stars which are the souls of

men to their native firmament of spiritual light and elemental power.

For the hero with us there is ample scope and need. There are the

spectres of ignoble hopes, the lethal influences of a huge material

civilisation wafted to us from over seas, which must be laid. Oh,

that a protest might be made ere it becomes more difficult, ere

this wild, beautiful land of ours be viewed only as a lure to draw

money from the cockney tourist, and the immemorial traditions around

our sacred hills be of value only to advertise the last hotel. Yet

to avert the perils arising from external causes is but a slight

task compared with the overcoming of obstacles already existent within.

There is one which must be removed at whatever cost, though the hero

may well become the martyr in the attempt. It is a difficulty which

has its strength from one of the very virtues of the people, their

reverence for religion. This in itself is altogether well. But

it is not well when the nature of that religion enables its priests

to sway men from their natural choice of hero and cause by the threat

of spiritual terrors. I say that where this takes place to any

great extent, as it has with us, it is not a land a freeman can

think of with pride. It is not a place where the lover of freedom

can rest, but he must spend sleepless nights, must brood, must scheme,

must wait to strike a blow. To the thought of freedom it must be

said to our shame none of the nobler meaning attaches here. Freedom

to speak what hopes and ideals we may have; to act openly for what

cause we will; to allow that freedom to others--that liberty is

denied. There are but too many places where to differ openly from

the priest in politics is to provoke a brawl, where to speak as

here with the fearlessness of print would be to endanger life.

With what scorn one hears the aspiration from public freedom from

lips that are closed with the dread by their own hearthside! Let

freedom arise where first it is possible in the hearts of men, in

their thoughts, in speech between one and another, and then the

gods may not deem us unworthy of the further sway of our national

life. I would that some of the defiant spirit of the old warrior

brood were here, not indeed to provoke strife between man and man,

or race and race, but rather that we might be fearless in the

spirit of one who said "I do not war against flesh and blood, but

against principalities and powers"--and against influences which

fetter progress, against an iron materialism where the beauty of

life perishes, let us revolt, let us war for ever.

But with all this I, like others who have narrowly watched the signs

of awakening life, do not doubt but that these things will pass as

greater potencies throng in and impel to action. Already the rush

of the earth-breath begins to fill with elation our island race and

uplift them with the sense of power; and through the power sometimes

flashes the glory, the spiritual radiance which will be ours hereafter,

if old prophecy can be trusted and our hearts prompt us true. Here

and there some rapt dreamer more inward than the rest sees that

Tir-na-noge was no fable, but is still around him with all its mystic

beauty for ever. The green hills grow alive with the star-children

fleeting, flashing on their twilight errands from gods to men.

When the heart opens to receive them and the ties which bind us to

unseen nature are felt our day will begin and the fires awaken,

our isle will be the Sacred Island once again and our great ones

the light-givers to humanity, not voicing new things, but only of

the old, old truths one more affirmation; for what is all wisdom,

wherever uttered, whether in time past or today, but the One Life,

the One Breath, chanting its innumerable tones of thought and joy

and love in the heart of man, one voice throughout myriad years

whose message eterne is this--you are by your nature immortal,

and you may be, if you will it, divine.

--Jan. 15, Feb. 15, 1897

Our Secret Ties

Our deepest life is when we are alone. We think most truly, love

best, when isolated from the outer world in that mystic abyss we

call soul. Nothing external can equal the fulness of these moments.

We may sit in the blue twilight with a friend, or bend together by

the hearth, half whispering, or in a silence populous with loving

thoughts mutually understood; then we may feel happy and at peace,

but it is only because we are lulled by a semblance to deeper

intimacies. When we think of a friend, and the loved one draws nigh,

we sometimes feel half-pained, for we touched something in our

solitude which the living presence shut out; we seem more apart,

and would fain cry out--"Only in my deep heart I love you, sweetest

heart; call me not forth from this; I am no more a spirit if I

leave my throne." But these moods, though lit up by intuitions

of the true, are too partial, they belong too much to the twilight

of the heart, they have too dreamy a temper to serve us well in life.

We should wish rather for our thoughts a directness such as belongs

to the messengers of the gods, swift, beautiful, flashing presences

bent on purposes well understood.

What we need is that this interior tenderness shall be elevated

into seership, that what in most is only yearning or blind love

shall see clearly its way and hope and aim. To this end we have

to observe more intently the nature of the interior life. We find,

indeed, that it is not a solitude at all, but dense with multitudinous

being: instead of being alone we are in the thronged highways of

existence. For our guidance when entering here many words of warning

have been uttered, laws have been outlined, and beings full of wonder,

terror, and beauty described. Yet there is a spirit in us deeper

than our intellectual being which I think of as the Hero in man,

who feels the nobility of its place in the midst of all this, and

who would fain equal the greatness of perception with deeds as great.

The weariness and sense of futility which often falls upon the mystic

after much thought is due, I think, to this, that here he has duties

demanding a more sustained endurance just as the inner life is so

much vaster and more intense than the life he has left behind.

Now, the duties which can be taken up by the soul are exactly those

which it feels most inadequate to perform when acting as an embodied

being. What shall be done to quiet the heart-cry of the world:

how answer the dumb appeal for help we so often divine below eyes

that laugh? It is sadder than sorrow to think that pity with no

hands to heal, that love without a voice to speak, should helplessly

heap their pain upon pain while earth shall endure. But there is

a truth about sorrow which I think may make it seem not so hopeless.

There are fewer barriers than we think: there is, in fact, an inner

alliance between the soul who would fain give and the soul who is

in need. Nature has well provided that not one golden ray of all

our thoughts is sped ineffective through the dark; not one drop

of the magical elixirs love distills is wasted. Let us consider

how this may be. There is a habit we nearly all have indulged in:

we often weave little stories in our minds expending love and pity

upon the imaginary beings we have created. But I have been led to

think that many of these are not imaginary, that somewhere in the

world beings are thinking, loving, suffering just in that way, and

we merely reform and live over again in our life the story of

another life. Sometimes these faraway intimates assume so vivid

a shape, they come so near with their appeal for sympathy that the

pictures are unforgettable, and the more I ponder over them the

more it seems to me that they often convey the actual need of some

soul whose cry for comfort has gone out into the vast, perhaps to

meet with an answer, perhaps to hear only silence. I will supply

an instance. I see a child, a curious, delicate little thing,

seated on the doorstep of a house. It is an alley in some great

city; there is a gloom of evening and vapour over the sky; I see

the child is bending over the path; he is picking cinders and

arranging them, and, growing closer, as I ponder, I become aware

that he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a house, the

mansion of his dream. Here spread along the pavement are large

rooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that

is his own. So his thought plays. Just then I catch a glimpse

of the corduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot

crushes through the cinders. I feel the pain in the child's heart

as he shrinks back, his little love-lit house of dreams all rudely

shattered. Ah, poor child, building the City Beautiful out of a

few cinders, yet nigher, truer in intent than many a stately, gold-

rich palace reared by princes, thou wert not forgotten by that

mighty spirit who lives through the falling of empires, whose home

has been in many a ruined heart. Surely it was to bring comfort

to hearts like thine that that most noble of all meditations was

ordained by the Buddha. "He lets his mind pervade one quarter of

the world with thoughts of Love, and so the second, and so the

third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above,

below, around, and everywhere, does he continue to pervade with

heart of Love far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure."

The love, though the very fairy breath of life, should by itself

and so imparted have a sustaining power some may question, not those

who have felt the sunlight fall from distant fiends who think of them;

but, to make clearer how it seems to me to act, I say that love,

Eros, is a being. It is more than a power of the soul, though it

is that also; it has a universal life of its own, and just as the

dark heaving waters do not know what jewel lights they reflect with

blinding radiance, so the soul, partially absorbing and feeling the

ray of Eros within it, does not know that often a part of its nature

nearer to the sun of love shines with a brilliant light to other

eyes than its own. Many people move unconscious of their won charm,

unknowing of the beauty and power they seem to others to impart.

It is some past attainment of the soul, a jewel won in some old

battle which it may have forgotten, but none the less this gleams

on its tiara and the star-flame inspires others to hope and victory.

If is true here than many exert a spiritual influence they are

unconscious of, it is still truer of the spheres within. Once the

soul has attained to any possession like love, or persistent will,

or faith, or a power of thought, it comes into psychic contact with

others who are struggling for these very powers. The attainment

of any of these means that the soul is able to absorb and radiate

some of the diviner elements of being. The soul may or may not be

aware of the position it is placed in and its new duties, but yet

that Living Light, having found a way into the being of any one

person, does not rest there, but sends its rays and extends its

influence on and on to illumine the darkness of another nature.

So it comes that there are ties which bind us to people other than

those whom we meet in our everyday life. I think they are more

real ties, more important to understand, for if we let our lamp go

out some far away who had reached out in the dark and felt a steady

will, a persistent hope, a compassionate love, may reach out once

again in an hour of need, and finding no support may give way and

fold the hands in despair. Often indeed we allow gloom to overcome

us and so hinder the bright rays in their passage; but would we

do it so often if we thought that perhaps a sadness which besets us,

we do not know why, was caused by some heart drawing nigh to ours

for comfort, that our lethargy might make it feel still more its

helplessness, while our courage, our faith, might cause "our light

to shine in some other heart which as yet has no light of its own."

--March 15, 1897

Priest or Hero?

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and

self-contained

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

No one kneels to another, nor to one of his kind that lived thousands

of years ago." ---Walt Whitman

I have prefixed some ideas about spiritual freedom addressed to

the people of Ireland with these lines from the poet of another

land, because national sentiment seems out of date here, the old

heroism slumbers, alien thought and an exotic religion have

supplanted our true ideals and our natural spirituality. I hope

that the scornful words of one who breathed a freer air might

sting to shame those who have not lost altogether the sentiment

of human dignity, who have still some intuitions as to how far

and how wisely a man may abase himself before another, whether

that other claim divine authority or not. For this is the true

problem which confronts us as a nation, and all else is insignificant

beside. We have found out who are the real rulers here, who dictate

politics and public action with no less authority than they speak

upon religion and morals, It was only the other day that a priest,

one of our rulers, declared that he would not permit a political

meeting to be held in his diocese and this fiat was received with

a submission which showed how accurately the politician gauged

the strength opposed to him. And this has not been the only

occasion when this power has been exerted: we all know how many

national movements have been interfered with or thwarted; we know

the shameful revelations connected with the elections a few years

back; we know how a great leader fell; and those who are idealists,

God's warriors battling for freedom of thought, whose hope for the

world is that the intuitions of the true and good divinely implanted

in each man's breast shall supersede tradition and old authority,

cannot but feel that their opinions, so much more dangerous to

that authority than any political ideal, must, if advocated, bring

them at last to clash with the priestly power. It is not a war

with religion we would fain enter upon; but when those who claim

that heaven and hell shut and open at their bidding for the spirit

of man, use the influence which belief in that claim confers, as

it has been here, to fetter free-will in action, it is time that

the manhood of the nation awoke to sternly question that authority,

to assert its immemorial right to freedom.

There live of old in Eri a heroic race whom the bards sang as

fearless. There was then no craven dread of the hereafter, for

the land of the immortals glimmered about them in dream and vision,

and already before the decaying of the form the spirit of the hero

had crossed the threshold and clasped hands with the gods. No demon

nature affrighted them: from them wielding the flaming sword of

will the demons fled away as before Cuculain vanished in terror

shadowy embattled hosts. What, I wonder, would these antique

heroes say coming back to a land which preserves indeed their

memory but emulates their spirit no more? We know what the bards

thought when heroic Ireland became only a tradition; when to

darkened eyes the elf-lights ceased to gleam, luring no more to

the rich radiant world within, the Druidic mysteries, and the

secret of the ages. In the bardic tales their comrade Ossian

voices to Patrick their scorn of the new. Ah, from the light and

joy of the faery region, from that great companionship with a race

half divine, come back to find that but one divine man had walked

the earth, and as for the rest it was at prayer and fasting they

ought to be! And why? Because, as Patrick explained to Ossian,

if they did not they would go to hell. And this is the very thing

the Patricks ever since have been persuading the Irish people to

believe, adding an alien grief unto their many sorrows, foisting

upon them a vulgar interpretation of the noble idea of divine justice

to cow them to submission with the threat of flame. Ossian, chafing

and fuming under the priestly restriction, declared his preference

for hell with the Finians to paradise with Patrick. His simple

heroic mind found it impossible to believe that the pure, gentle

but indomitable spirits of his comrades could be anywhere quenched

or quelled, but they must at last arise exultant even from torment.

When Ossian rejects the bribe of paradise to share the darker world

and the fate of his companions, there spake the true spirit of man;

spark of illimitable deity; shrouded in form, yet radiating

ceaselessly heroic thoughts, aspirations, deathless love; not to

be daunted, rising again and again from sorrow with indestructible

hope; emerging ever from defeat, its glooms smitten through and

through with the light of visions vast and splendid as the heavens.

Old bard, old bard, from Tir-na-noge where thou, perchance wrapt

by that beauty which called thee from earth, singest immortal songs,

would that one lightning of they spirit could pierce the hearts

now thronged with dread, might issue from lips which dare not speak.

I do not question but that the heroic age had its imperfections,

or that it was not well that its too warlike ardour was tempered

by the beautiful, pathetic and ennobling teaching of Christ. The

seed of new doctrines bore indeed many lovely but exotic blossoms

in the saintly times, and also many a noxious weed. For religion

must always be an exotic which makes a far-off land sacred rather

than the earth underfoot: where the Great Spirit whose home is

the vast seems no more a moving glamour in the heavens, a dropping

tenderness at twilight, a visionary light on the hills, a voice in

man's heart; when the way of life is sought in scrolls or is heard

from another's lips. The noxious weed, the unendurable bitter which

mingled with the sweet and true in this exotic religion was the

terrible power it put into the hands of men somewhat more learned

in their ignorance of God than those whom they taught: the power

to inflict a deadly wrong upon the soul, to coerce the will by

terror from the course conscience had marked out as true and good.

That power has been used unsparingly and at times with unspeakable

cruelty whenever those who had it thought their influence was being

assailed, for power is sweet and its use is not lightly laid aside.

As we read our island history there seems a ruddy emblazonry on

every page, a hue shed from behind the visible, the soul dropping

its red tears of fire over hopes for ever dissolving, noble ambitions

for ever foiled. Always on the eve of success starts up some fatal

figure weaponed with the keys of the hereafter, brandishing more

especially the key of the place of torment, warning most particularly

those who regard that that key shall not get rusty from want of

turning if they disobey. It has been so from the beginning, from

the time of the cursing of Tara, where the growing unity of the

nations was split into fractions, down to the present time. I

often doubt if the barbarities in eastern lands which we shudder

at are in reality half so cruel, if they mean so much anguish as

this threat of after-torture does to those who believe in the power

of another to inflict it. It wounds the spirit to the heart: its

consciousness of its own immortality becomes entwined with the

terror of as long enduring pain. It is a lie which the all-

compassionate Father-Spirit never breathed into the ears of his

children, a lie which has been told here century after century with

such insistence that half the nation has the manhood cowed out of it.

The offence of the dead chief whose followers were recently assailed

weighed light as a feather in the balance when compared with the

sin of these men and their shameful misuse of religious authority

in Meath a little while ago. The scenes which took place there,

testified and sworn to by witness in the after trials, were only

a copy of what generally took place. They will take place again

if the necessity arises. That is a bitter fact.

A dim consciousness that their servitude is not to God's law but

to man's ambition is creeping over the people here. That is a very

hopeful sign. When a man first feels he is a slave he begins to

grow grey inside, to get moody and irritable. The sore spot becomes

more sensitive the more he broods. At last to touch it becomes

dangerous. For, from such pent-up musing and wrath have sprung

rebellions, revolutions, the overthrow of dynasties and the fall

of religions, aye, thrice as mighty as this. That Thought of freedom

lets loose the flood-gates of an illimitable fire into the soul;

it emerges from its narrow prison-cell of thought and fear as the

sky-reaching genie from the little copper vessel in the tale of

Arabian enchantment; it lays hand on the powers of storm and

commotion like a god. It would be politic not to press the

despotism more; but it would be a pity perhaps if some further

act did not take place, just to see a nation flinging aside the

shackles of superstition; disdainful of threats, determined to

seek its own good, resolutely to put aside all external tradition

and rule; adhering to its own judgment, though priests falsely

say the hosts of the everlasting are arrayed in battle against it,

though they threaten the spirit with obscure torment for ever and

ever: still to persist, still to defy, still to obey the orders

of another captain, that Unknown Deity within whose trumpet-call

sounds louder than all the cries of men. There is great comfort,

my fellows, in flinging fear aside; an exultation and delight

spring up welling from inexhaustible deeps, and a tranquil sweetness

also ensues which shows that the powers ever watchful of human

progress approve and applaud the act.

In all this I do not aim at individuals. It is not with them I

would war but with tyranny. They who enslave are as much or more

to be pitied than those whom they enslave. They too are wronged

by being placed and accepted in a position of false authority.

They too enshrine a ray of the divine spirit, which to liberate

and express is the purpose of life. Whatever movement ignores the

needs of a single unity, or breeds hate against it rather than

compassion, is so far imperfect. But if we give these men, as we

must, the credit of sincerity, still opposition is none the less

a duty. The spirit of man must work out its own destiny, learning

truth out of error and pain. It cannot be moral by proxy. A

virtuous course into which it is whipt by fear will avail it nothing,

and in that dread hour when it comes before the Mighty who sent it

forth, neither will the plea avail it that its conscience was in

another's keeping.

The choice here lies between Priest and Hero as ideal, and I say

that whatever is not heroic is not Irish, has not been nourished

at the true fountain wherefrom our race and isle derive their mystic

fame. There is a life behind the veil, another Eri which the bards

knew, singing it as the Land of Immortal Youth. It is not hidden

from us, though we have hidden ourselves from it, so that it has

become only a fading memory in our hearts and a faery fable upon

our lips. Yet there are still places in this isle, remote from

the crowded cities where men and women eat and drink and wear out

their lives and are lost in the lust for gold, where the shy peasant

sees the enchanted lights in mountain and woody dell, and hears

the faery bells pealing away, away, into that wondrous underland

whither, as legends relate, the Danann gods withdrew. These things

are not to be heard for the asking; but some, more reverent than

the rest, more intuitive, who understand that the pure eyes of a

peasant may see the things kings and princes, aye, and priests,

have desired to see and have not seen; that for him may have been

somewhat lifted the veil which hides from men the starry spheres

where the Eternal Beauty abides in the shining--these have heard

and have been filled with the hope that, if ever the mystic truths

of life could be spoken here, there would be enough of the old

Celtic fire remaining to bring back the magic into the isle. That

direct relation, that vision, comes fully with spiritual freedom,

when men no longer peer through another's eyes into the mysteries,

when they will not endure that the light shall be darkened by

transmission, but spirit speaks with spirit, drawing light from

the boundless Light alone.

Leaving aside the question of interference with national movements,

another charge, one of the weightiest which can be brought against

the priestly influence in this island, is that it has hampered the

expression of native genius in literature and thought. Now the

country is alive with genius, flashing out everywhere, in the

conversation even of the lowest; but we cannot point to imaginative

work of any importance produced in Ireland which has owed its

inspiration to the priestly teaching. The genius of the Gael could

not find itself in their doctrines; though above all things mystical

it could not pierce its way into the departments of super-nature

where their theology pigeon-holes the souls of the damned and the

blessed. It knew of the Eri behind the veil which I spoke of, the

Tir-na-noge which as a lamp lights up our grassy plains, our haunted

hills and valleys. The faery tales have ever lain nearer to the

hearts of the people, and whatever there is of worth in song or

story has woven into it the imagery handed down from the dim druidic

ages. This is more especially true today, when our literature is

beginning to manifest preeminent qualities of imagination, not the

grey pieties of the cloister, but natural magic, beauty, and heroism.

Our poets sing Ossian wandering the land of the immortals; or we

read in vivid romance of the giant chivalry of the Ultonians, their

untamable manhood, the exploits of Cuculain and the children of Rury,

more admirable as types, more noble and inspiring than the hierarchy

of little saints who came later on and cursed their memories.

The genius of the Gael is awakening after a night of troubled dreams.

I returns instinctively to the beliefs of its former day and finds

again the old inspiration. It seeks the gods on the mountains,

still enfolded by their mantle of multitudinous traditions, or

sees them flash by in the sunlit diamond airs. How strange, but

how natural is all this! It seems as if Ossian's was a premature

return. Today he might find comrades come back from Tir-na-noge

for the uplifting of their race. Perhaps to many a young spirit

starting up among us Caolte might speak as to Mongan, saying: "I

was with thee, with Finn." Hence, it may be, the delight with

which we hear Standish O'Grady declaring that the bardic divinities

will remain: "Nor, after centuries of obscuration, is their power

to quicken, purify, and exalt, yet dead. Still they live and reign,

and shall reign." After long centuries--the voice of a spirit ever

youthful, yet older than all the gods, who with its breath of sunrise-

coloured flame jewels with richest lights the visions of earth's

dreamy-hearted children. Once more out of the Heart of the Mystery

is heard the call of "Come away," and after that no other voice

has power to lure: there remain only the long heroic labours which

end in companionship with the gods.

These voices do not stand for themselves alone. They are heralds

before a host. No man has ever spoken with potent utterance who

did not feel the secret urging of dumb, longing multitudes, whose

aspirations and wishes converge on and pour themselves into fearless

heart. The thunder of the waves is deeper because the tide is rising.

Those who are behind do not come only with song and tale, but with

stern hearts bent on great issues, among which, not least, is the

intellectual liberation of Ireland. That is an aim at which some

of our rulers may well grow uneasy. Soon shall young men, fiery-

hearted, children of Eri, a new race, roll our their thoughts on

the hillsides, before your very doors, O priests, calling your

flocks from your dark chapels and twilight sanctuaries to a temple

not built with hands, sunlit, starlit, sweet with the odour and

incense of earth, from your altars call them to the altars of the

hills, soon to be lit up as of old, soon to be the blazing torches

of God over the land. These heroes I see emerging. Have they not

come forth in every land and race when there was need? Here, too,

they will arise. Ah, may darlings, you will have to fight and suffer:

you must endure loneliness, the coldness of friends, the alienation

of love; warmed only by the bright interior hope of a future you

must toil for but may never see, letting the deed be its own reward;

laying in dark places the foundations of that high and holy Eri

of prophecy, the isle of enchantment, burning with druidic splendours,

bright with immortal presences, with the face of the everlasting

Beauty looking in upon all its ways, divine with terrestrial mingling

till God and the world are one.

There waits brooding in this isle a great destiny, and to accomplish

it we must have freedom of thought. That is the greatest of our

needs, for thought is the lightning-conductor between the heaven-

world and earth. We want fearless advocates who will not be turned

aside from their course by laughter or by threats. Why is it that

the spirit of daring, imaginative enquiry is so dead here? An

incubus of spiritual fear seems to beset men women so that they

think, if they turn from the beaten track seeking the true, they

shall meet, not the divine with outstretched hands, but a demon;

that the reward for their search will not be joy or power but

enduring pain. How the old bard swept away such fears! "If thy

God were good," said Ossian, "he would call Finn into his dun."

Yes, the heroic heart is dear to the heroic heart. I would back

the intuition of an honest soul for truth against piled-up centuries

of theology. But this high spirit is stifled everywhere by a dull

infallibility which is yet unsuccessful, on its own part, in awakening

inspiration; and, in the absence of original though, we pick over

the bones of dead movements, we discuss the personalities of the

past, but no one asks the secrets of life or of death. There are

despotic hands in politics, in religion, in education, strangling

any attempt at freedom. Of the one institution which might naturally

be supposed to be the home of great ideas we can only say, reversing

the famous eulogy on Oxford, it has never given itself to any

national hero or cause, but always to the Philistine.

With the young men who throng the literary societies the intellectual

future of Ireland rests. In them are our future leaders. Out of

these as from a fountain will spring--what? Will we have another

generation of Irishmen at the same level as today, with everything

in a state of childhood, boyish patriotism, boyish ideals, boyish

humour? Or will they assimilate the aged thought of the world and

apply it to the needs of their own land? I remember reading somewhere

a description by Turgenieff of his contemporaries as a young man;

how they sat in garrets, drinking execrably bad coffee or tea. But

what thoughts! They talked of God, of humanity, of Holy Russia;

and out of such groups of young men, out of their discussions,

emanated that vast unrest which has troubled Europe and will trouble

it still more. Here no questions are asked and no answers are

received. There is a pitiful, blind struggle for a nationality

whose ideas are not definitely conceived. What is the ideal of

Ireland as a nation? It drifts from mind to mind, a phantom thought

lacking a spirit, but a spirit which will surely incarnate. Perhaps

some of our old heroes may return. Already it seems as if one had

been here; a sombre Titan earlier awakened than the rest who passed

before us, and sounded the rallying note of our race before he

staggered to his tragic close. Others of brighter thought will

follow to awaken the fires which Brigid in her vision saw gleaming

beyond dark centuries of night, and confessed between hope and

tears to Patrick. Meanwhile we must fight for intellectual freedom;

we must strive to formulate to ourselves what it is we really wish

for here, until at last the ideal becomes no more phantasmal but

living; until our voices in aspiration are heard in every land,

and the nations become aware of a new presence amid their councils,

a last and most beautiful figure, as one after the cross of pain,

after the shadowy terrors, with thorn-marks on the brow from a

crown flung aside, but now radiant, ennobled after suffering, Eri,

the love of so many dreamers, priestess of the mysteries, with the

chant of beauty on her lips and the heart of nature beating in

her heart.

--April 15-May 15, 1897

The Age of the Spirit

I am a part of all that I have met:

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untraveled world .....

....... Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

--Ulysses

We are no longer children as we were in the beginning. The spirit

which, prompted by some divine intent, flung itself long ago into

a vague, nebulous, drifting nature, though it has endured through

many periods of youth, maturity, and age, has yet had its own

transformations. Its gay, wonderful childhood gave way, as cycle

after cycle coiled itself into slumber, to more definite purposes,

and now it is old and burdened with experiences. It is not an age

that quenches its fire, but it will not renew again the activities

which gave it wisdom. And so it comes that men pause with a feeling

which they translate into weariness of life before the accustomed

joys and purposes of their race. They wonder at the spell which

induced their fathers to plot and execute deeds which seem to them

to have no more meaning than a whirl of dust. But their fathers

had this weariness also and concealed it from each other in fear,

for it meant the laying aside of the sceptre, the toppling over

empires, the chilling of the household warmth, and all for a voice

whose inner significance revealed itself but to one or two

among myriads.

The spirit has hardly emerged from the childhood with which nature

clothes it afresh at every new birth, when the disparity between

the garment and the wearer becomes manifest: the little tissue

of joys and dreams woven about it found inadequate for shelter:

it trembles exposed to the winds blowing out of the unknown. We

linger at twilight with some companion, still glad, contented, and

in tune with the nature which fills the orchards with blossom and

sprays the hedges with dewy blooms. The laughing lips give utterance

to wishes--ours until that moment. Then the spirit, without warning,

suddenly falls into immeasurable age: a sphynx-like regard is upon

us: our lips answer, but far from the region of elemental being we

inhabit, they syllable in shadowy sound, out of old usage, the

response, speaking of a love and a hope which we know have vanished

from us for evermore. So hour by hour the scourge of the infinite

drives us out of every nook and corner of life we find pleasant.

And this always takes place when all is fashioned to our liking:

then into our dream strides the wielder of the lightning: we get

glimpse of the great beyond thronged with mighty, exultant, radiant

beings: our own deeds become infinitesimal to us: the colours

of our imagination, once so shining, grow pale as the living lights

of God glow upon them. We find a little honey in the heart which

we make sweeter for some one, and then another lover, whose forms

are legion, sighs to us out of its multitudinous being: we know

that the old love is gone. There is a sweetness in song or in the

cunning reimaging of the beauty we see; but the Magician of the

Beautiful whispers to us of his art, how we were with him when he

laid the foundations of the world, and the song is unfinished,

the fingers grow listless. As we receive these intimations of

age our very sins become negative: we are still pleased if a voice

praises us, but we grow lethargic in enterprises where the spur

to activity is fame or the acclamation of men. At some point in

the past we struggled mightily for the sweet incense which men

offer to a towering personality: but the infinite is for ever

within man: we sighed for other worlds and found that to be saluted

as victor by men did not mean acceptance by the gods.

But the placing of an invisible finger upon our lips when we would

speak, the heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we

grow contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the

spirit has ceased from its labours, that the high-built beauty of

the spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple

in the desert sinks into the sand, watched only by a few barbarians

too feeble to renew its ancient pomp and the ritual of its once

shining congregations. Before we, who were the bright children

of the dawn, may return as the twilight race into the silence,

our purpose must be achieved, we have to assume mastery over that

nature which now overwhelms us, driving into the Fire-fold the

flocks of stars and wandering fires. Does it seem very vast and

far away? Do you sigh at the long, long time? Or does it appear

hopeless to you who perhaps return with trembling feet evening

after evening from a little labour? But it is back of all these

things that the renewal takes place, when love and grief are dead;

when they loosen their hold on the spirit and its sinks back into

itself, looking out on the pitiful plight of those who, like it,

are the weary inheritors of so great destinies: then a tenderness

which is the most profound quality of its being springs up like

the outraying of the dawn, and if in that mood it would plan or

execute it knows no weariness, for it is nourished from the First

Fountain. As for these feeble children of the once glorious spirits

of the dawn, only a vast hope can arouse them from so vast a despair,

for the fire will not invigorate them for the repetition of petty

deeds but only for the eternal enterprise, the purpose of the

immemorial battle waged through all the ages, the wars in heaven,

the conflict between Titan and Divinity, which were part of the

never-ending struggle of the human spirit to assert its supremacy

over nature. Brotherhood, the declaration of ideals and philosophies,

are but calls to the hosts, who lie crushed by this mountain nature

piled above them, to arise again, to unite, to storm the heavens

and sit on the seats of the mighty.

As the titan in man ponders on this old, old purpose wherefor all

its experience was garnered, the lightnings will once more begin

to play through him and animate his will. So like the archangel

ruined let us arise from despair and weariness with inflexible

resolution, pealing once more the old heroic shout to our fallen

comrades, until those great powers who enfold us feel the stirring

and the renewal, and the murmur runs along the spheres, "The buried

Titan moves once again to tear the throne from Him."

--June 1897

A Thought Along the Road

They torture me also.--Krishna

The night was wet: and, as I was moving down the streets, my mind

was also journeying on a way of its own, and the things which were

bodily present before me were no less with me in my unseen traveling.

Every now and then a transfer would take place, and some of the

moving shadows in the street would begin walking about in the clear

interior light. The children of the city, crouched in the doorways,

or racing through the hurrying multitude and flashing lights, began

their elfin play again in my heart; and that was because I had

heard these tiny outcasts shouting with glee. I wondered if the

glitter and shadow of such sordid things were thronged with

magnificence and mystery for those who were unaware of a greater

light and deeper shade which made up the romance and fascination

of my own life. In imagination I narrowed myself to their ignorance,

littleness, and youth, and seemed for a moment to flit amid great

uncomprehended beings and a dim wonderful city of palaces.

Then another transfer took place and I was pondering anew, for a

face I had seen flickering through the warm wet mist haunted me;

it entered into the realm of the interpreter, and I was made aware

by the pale cheeks, and by the close-shut lips of pain, and by

some inward knowledge, that there the Tree of Life was beginning

to grow, and I wondered why it is that it always springs up through

a heart in ashes: I wondered also if that which springs up, which

in itself is an immortal joy, has knowledge that its shoots are

piercing through such anguish; or again, if it was the piercing

of the shoots which caused the pain, and if every throb of the

beautiful flame darting upward to blossom meant the perishing of

some more earthly growth which had kept the heart in shadow.

Seeing to how so many thoughts spring up from such a simple thing,

I questioned whether that which started the impulse had any share

in the outcome, and if these musing of mine in any way affected

their subject. I then began thinking about those secret ties on

which I have speculated before, and in the darkness my heart grew

suddenly warm and glowing, for I had chanced upon one of those

shining imaginations which are the wealth of those who travel upon

the hidden ways. In describing that which comes to us all at once,

there is a difficulty in choosing between what is first and what

is last to say: but, interpreting as best I can, I seemed to

behold the onward movement of a Light, one among many Lights, all

living, throbbing, now dim with perturbations, and now again clear,

and all subtly woven together, outwardly in some more shadowy shining,

and inwardly in a greater fire, which, though it was invisible,

I knew to be the Lamp of the World. This Light which I beheld I

felt to be a human soul, and these perturbations which dimmed it

were its struggles and passionate longings for something, and that

was for a more brilliant shining of the light within itself: it

was in love with its own beauty, enraptured by its own lucidity;

and I saw that as these things were more beloved they grew paler,

for this light is the love which the Mighty Mother has in her heart

for her children, and she means that it shall go through each one

unto all, and whoever restrains it in himself is himself shut out;

not that the great heart has ceased in its love for that soul, but

that the soul has shut itself off from influx, for ever imagination

of man is the opening or the closing of a door to the divine world:

now he is solitary, cut off, and, seemingly to himself, on the

desert and distant verge of things: and then his thought throws

open the swift portals; he hears the chant of the seraphs in his

heart, and he is made luminous by the lighting of a sudden aureole.

This soul which I watched seemed to have learned at last the secret

love: for, in the anguish begotten by its loss, it followed the

departing glory in penitence to the inmost shrine where it ceased

altogether; and because it seemed utterly lost and hopeless of

attainment and capriciously denied to the seeker, a profound pit

arose in the soul for those who, like it were seeking, but still

in hope, for they had not come to the vain end of their endeavors.

I understood that such pity is the last of the precious essences

which make up the elixir of immortality, and when it is poured

into the cup it is ready for drinking. And so it was with this

soul which drew brilliant with the passage of eternal light through

its new purity of self-oblivion, and joyful in the comprehension

of the mystery of the secret love, which, though it has been declared

many times by the greatest of teachers among men, is yet never known

truly unless the Mighty Mother has herself breathed it in the heart.

And now that the soul had divined this secret, the shadowy shining

which was woven in bonds of union between it and its fellow-lights

grew clearer; and a multitude of these strands were, so it seemed,

strengthened and placed in its keeping: along these it was to send

the message of the wisdom and the love which were the secret sweetness

of its own being. Then a spiritual tragedy began, infinitely more

pathetic than the old desolation, because it was brought about by

the very nobility of the spirit. This soul, shedding its love like

rays of glory, seemed itself the centre of a ring of wounding spears:

it sent forth love and the arrowy response came hate-impelled: it

whispered peace and was answered by the clash of rebellion: and

to all this for defence it could only bare more openly its heart

that a profounder love from the Mother Nature might pass through

upon the rest. I knew this was what a teacher, who wrote long ago,

meant when he said: "Put on the whole armour of god," which is

love and endurance, for the truly divine children of the Flame are

not armed otherwise: and of those protests, sent up in ignorance

or rebellion against the whisper of the wisdom, I saw that some

melted in the fierce and tender heat of the heart, and there came

in their stead a golden response which made closer the ties, and

drew these souls upward to an understanding and to share in the

overshadowing nature: and this is part of the plan of the Great

Alchemist, whereby the red ruby of the heart is transmuted into

the tenderer light of the opal; for the beholding of love made

bare acts like the flame of the furnace, and the dissolving passions,

through an anguish of remorse, the lightnings of pain, and through

an adoring pity, are changed into the image they contemplate and

melt in the ecstasy of self-forgetful love, the spirit which lit

the thorn-crowned brows, which perceived only in its last agony

the retribution due to its tormentors, and cried out, "Father,

forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Now although the love of the few may alleviate the hurt due to the

ignorance of the mass, it is not in the power of anyone to withstand

for ever this warfare; for by the perpetual wounding of the inner

nature it is so wearied that the spirit must withdraw from a

tabernacle grown too frail to support the increase of light within

and the jarring of the demoniac nature without: and at length

comes the call which means, for a while, release, and a deep rest

in regions beyond the paradise of lesser souls. So, withdrawn

into the Divine Darkness, vanished the Light of my dream. And

now it seemed as if this wonderful weft of souls intertwining as

one being must come to naught; and all those who through the gloom

had nourished a longing for the light would stretch out hands in

vain for guidance: but that I did not understand the love of the

Mother, and that although few, there is no decaying of her heroic

brood; for, as the seer of old caught at the mantle of him who

went up in the fiery chariot, so another took up the burden and

gathered the shining strands together: and to this sequence of

spiritual guides there is no ending.

Here I may say that the love of the Mother, which, acting through

the burnished will of the hero, is wrought to highest uses, is in

reality everywhere, and pervades with profoundest tenderness the

homeliest circumstance of daily life; and there is not lacking,

even among the humblest, an understanding of the spiritual tragedy

which follows upon every effort of the divine nature bowing itself

down in pity to our shadowy sphere; an understanding in which the

nature of the love is gauged through the extent of the sacrifice

and pain which is overcome. I recall the instance of an old Irish

peasant, who, as he lay in hospital wakeful from a grinding pain

in his leg, forgot himself in making drawings, rude yet reverently

done, of incidents in the life of the Galilean teacher. One of

these which he showed me was a crucifixion, where, amidst much

grotesque symbolism, were some tracings which indicated a purely

beautiful intuition; the heart of this crucified figure, no less

than the brow, was wreathed about with thorns and radiant with light:

"For that," said he, was where he really suffered." When I think

of this old man, bringing forgetfulness of his own bodily pain

through contemplation of the spiritual suffering of his own, nobly

undergone, had given him understanding, and he had laid his heart

in love against the Heart of Many Sorrows, seeing it wounded by

unnumbered spears yet burning with undying love.

Though much may be learned by observance of the superficial life

and actions of a spiritual teacher, it is only in the deeper life

of meditation and imagination that it can be truly realized; for

the soul is a midnight blossom which opens its leaves in dream,

and its perfect bloom is unfolded only where another sun shines

in another heaven: there it feels what celestial dews descend on it,

and what influences draw it up to its divine archetype: here in

the shadow of earth root intercoils with root and the finer

distinctions of the blossom are not perceived. If we knew also

who they really are, who sometimes in silence, and sometimes with

the eyes of the world at gaze, take upon them the mantle of teacher,

an unutterable awe would prevail; for underneath a bodily presence

not in any sense beautiful may burn the glory of some ancient

divinity, some hero who laid aside his sceptre in the enchanted

land to rescue old-time comrades fallen into oblivion: or again,

if we had the insight of the simple old peasant into the nature

of this enduring love, out of the exquisite and poignant emotions

kindled would arise the flame of a passionate love which would

endure long aeons of anguish that it might shield, though but for

a little, the kingly hearts who may not shield themselves.

But I too, who write, have launched the rebellious spear, or in

lethargy have ofttimes gone down the great drift numbering myself

among those who not being with must needs be against: therefor I

make no appeal; they only may call who stand upon the lofty

mountains; but I reveal the thought which arose like a star in

my soul with such bright and pathetic meaning, leaving it to you

who read to approve and apply it.

--July 15, 1897

The Fountains of Youth

I heard that a strange woman, dwelling on the western coast, who

had the repute of healing by faery power, said a little before she

died, "There's a cure for all things in the well at Ballykeele":

and I know not why at first, but her words lingered with me and

repeated themselves again and again, and by degrees to keep

fellowship with the thought they enshrined came more antique

memories, all I had heard or dreamed of the Fountains of Youth;

for I could not doubt, having heard these fountains spoken of by

people like herself, that her idea had a druid ancestry. Perhaps

she had bent over the pool until its darkness grew wan and bright

and troubled with the movements of a world within and the

agitations of a tempestuous joy; or she had heard, as many still

hear, the wild call to "Come away," from entreating lips and flame-

encircled faces, or was touched by the star-tipped fingers, and

her heart from the faery world came never back again to dwell as

before at ease in this isle of grey mists and misty sunlight.

These things are not fable only, for Ireland is still a land of

the gods, and in out of the way places we often happen on wonderlands

of romance and mystic beauty. I have spoken to people who have

half parted from their love for the world in a longing for the

pagan paradise of Tir-na-nog, and many who are outwardly obeisant

to another religion are altogether pagan in their hearts, and Meave

the Queen of the Western Host is more to them than Mary Queen of

Heaven. I was told of this Meave that lately she was seen in

vision by a peasant, who made a poem on her, calling her "The

Beauty of all Beauty": and the man who told me this of his friend

had himself seen the jetted fountains of fire-mist winding up in

spiral whirls to the sky, and he too had heard of the Fountains

of Youth.

The natural longing in every heart that its youth shall not perish

makes one ponder and sigh over this magical past when youth, ecstasy,

and beauty welled from a bountiful nature at the sung appeal of her

druid children holding hand in hand around the sacred cairn. Our

hearts remember:

A wind blows by us fleeting

Along the reedy strand:

And sudden our hearts are beating

Again in the druid-land.

All silver-pale, enchanted,

The air-world lies on the hills,

And the fields of light are planted

With the dawn-frail daffodils.

The yellow leaves are blowing

The hour when the wind-god weaves,

And hides the stars and their glowing

In a mist of daffodil leaves.

We stand in glimmering whiteness,

Each face like the day-star fair,

And rayed about in its brightness

With a dawn of daffodil air.

And through each white robe gleaming,

And under each snow-white breast,

Is a golden dream-light streaming

Like eve through an opal west.

One hand to the heart, another

We raise to the dawn on high;

For the sun in the heart is brother

To the sun-heart of the sky.

A light comes rising and falling,

As ringed in the druid choir

We sing to the sun-god, calling

By his name of yellow fire.

The touch of the dew-wet grasses,

The breath of the dawn-cool wind,

With the dawn of the god-light passes

And the world is left behind.

We drink of a fountain giving

The joy of the gods, and then--

The Land of the Ever-living

Has passed from us again.

Passed far beyond all saying,

For memory only weaves

On a silver dawn outraying

A cloud of daffodil leaves.

And not indirectly through remembrance only, but when touched

from within by the living beauty, the soul, the ancient druid in

man, renews its league with the elements; and sometimes as the

twilight vanishes and night lays on the earth her tender brow, the

woods, the mountains, the clouds that tinted like seraphim float

in the vast, and the murmur of water, wind and trees, melt from

the gaze and depart from the outward ear and become internal

reveries and contemplations of the spirit, and are no more separate

but are part of us. Yet these vanishings from us and movements in

worlds not realized, leave us only more thirsty to drink of a

deeper nature where all things are dissolved in ecstasy, and heaven

and earth are lost in God. So we turn seeking for the traces of

that earlier wisdom which guided man into the Land of Immortal Youth,

and assuaged his thirst at a more brimming flood of the Feast of Age,

the banquet which Manannan the Danann king instituted in the haunt

of the Fire-god, and whoever partook knew thereafter neither

weariness, decay, not death.

These mysteries, all that they led to, all that they promised for

the spirit of man, are opening today for us in clear light, their

fabulous distance lessens, and we hail these kingly ideals with

as intense a trust and with more joy, perhaps, than they did who

were born in those purple hours, because we are emerging from

centuries indescribably meagre and squalid in their thought, and

every new revelation has for us the sweetness of sunlight to one

after the tears and sorrow of a prison-house. The well at Ballykeele

is, perhaps, a humble starting-point for the contemplation of such

mighty mysteries; but here where the enchanted world lies so close

it is never safe to say what narrow path may not lead through a

visionary door into Moy Argatnel, the silver Cloudland of Manannan,

where

"Feet of white bronze

Glitter through beautiful ages."

The Danann king with a quaint particularity tells Bran in the poem

from which these lines are quoted, that

"There is a wood of beautiful fruit

Under the prow of thy little skiff."

What to Bran was a space of pale light was to the eye of the god

a land of pure glory, Ildathach the Many-coloured Land, rolling

with rivers of golden light and dropping with dews of silver flame.

In another poem the Brugh by the Boyne, outwardly a little hillock,

is thus described:

"Look, and you will see it is the palace of a god."

Perhaps the mystic warriors of the Red Branch saw supernatural

pillars blazoned like the sunset, and entered through great doors

and walked in lofty halls with sunset-tinted beings speaking a

more beautiful wisdom than earth's. And they there may have seen

those famous gods who had withdrawn generations before from visible

Eire: Manannan the dark blue king, Lu Lamfada with the sunrise on

his brow and his sling, a wreath of rainbow flame, coiled around him,

the Goddess Dana in ruby brilliance, Nuada silver-handed, the Dagda

with floating locks of light shaking from him radiance and song,

Angus Oge, around whose head the ever-winging birds made music,

and others in whose company these antique heroes must have felt

the deep joy of old companionship renewed, for were not the Danann

hosts men of more primeval cycles become divine and movers in a

divine world. In the Brugh too was a fountain, to what uses

applied the mystical imagination working on other legends may

make clearer.

The Well of Connla, the parent fountain of many streams visible and

invisible, was the most sacred well known in ancient Ireland. It

lay itself below deep waters at the source of the Shannon, and

these waters which hid it were also mystical, for they lay between

earth and the Land of the Gods. Here, when stricken suddenly by

an internal fire, the sacred hazels of wisdom and inspiration

unfolded at once their leaves and blossoms and their scarlet fruit,

which falling upon the waters dyed them of a royal purple; the

nuts were then devoured by Fintann the Salmon of Knowledge, and

the wisest of the druids partook also. This was perhaps the greatest

of the mysteries known to the ancient Gael, and in the bright

phantasmagoria conjured up there is a wild beauty which belongs to

all their tales. The suddenly arising dreams of a remote divinity,

the scarlet nuts tossing on the purple flood, the bright immortals

glancing hither and thither, are pictures left of some mystery we

may not now uncover, thought tomorrow may reveal it, for the dawn-

lights are glittering everywhere in Ireland. Perhaps the strange

woman who spoke of the well at Ballykeele, and the others like her,

may know more about these fountains than the legend-seekers who so

learnedly annoted their tales. They may have drunken in dreams of

the waters at Connla's well, for many go to the Tir-na-nog in sleep,

and some are said to have remained there, and only a vacant form

is left behind without the light in the eyes which marks the presence

of a soul. I make no pretence of knowledge concerning the things

which underlie their simple speech, but to me there seems to be

for ever escaping from legend and folk-tale, from word and custom,

some breath of a world of beauty I sigh for but am not nigh to as

these are. I think if that strange woman could have found a voice

for what was in her heart she would have completed her vague oracle

somewhat as I have done:

There's a cure for all things in the well at Ballykeele,

Where the scarlet cressets o'erhang from the rowan trees;

There's a joy-breath blowing from the Land of Youth I feel,

And earth with its heart at ease.

Many and many a sun-bright maiden saw the enchanted land

With star-faces glimmer up from the druid wave:

Many and many a pain of love was soothed by a faery hand

Or lost in the love it gave.

When the quiet with a ring of pearl shall wed the earth

And the scarlet berries burn dark by the stars in the pool,

Oh, its lost and deep I'll be in the joy-breath and the mirth,

My heart in the star-heart cool.

--September 15, 1897