[Decoration]
THERE is one adolescent moment never to be forgotten,--the moment when
the boy learns that this world contains nothing more wonderful than a
certain pair of eyes. At first the surprise of the discovery leaves
him breathless: instinctively he turns away his gaze. That vision
seemed too delicious to be true. But presently he ventures to look
again,--fearing with a new fear,--afraid of the reality, afraid also
of being observed;--and lo! his doubt dissolves in a new shock of
ecstasy. Those eyes are even more wonderful than he had imagined--nay!
they become more and yet more entrancing every successive time that he
looks at them! Surely in all the universe there cannot be another such
pair of eyes! What can lend them such enchantment? Why do they appear
divine?... He feels that he must ask somebody to explain,--must
propound to older and wiser heads the riddle of his new emotions. Then
he makes his confession, with a faint intuitive fear of being laughed
at, but with a strange, fresh sense of rapture in the telling. Laughed
at he is--tenderly; but this does not embarrass him nearly so much as
the fact that he can get no answer to his question,--to the simple
"Why?" made so interesting by his frank surprise and his timid
blushes. No one is able to enlighten him; but all can sympathize with
the bewilderment of his sudden awakening from the long soul-sleep of
childhood.
* * * * *
Perhaps that "Why?" never can be fully answered. But the mystery that
prompted it constantly tempts one to theorize; and theories may have a
worth independent of immediate results. Had it not been for old theories
concerning the Unknowable, what should we have been able to learn about
the Knowable? Was it not while in pursuit of the Impossible that we
stumbled upon the undreamed-of and infinitely marvellous Possible?
* * * * *
Why indeed should a pair of human eyes appear for a time to us so
beautiful that, when likening their radiance to splendor of diamond or
amethyst or emerald, we feel the comparison a blasphemy? Why should we
find them deeper than the sea, deeper than the day,--deep even as the
night of Space, with its scintillant mist of suns? Certainly not because
of mere wild fancy. These thoughts, these feelings, must spring from
some actual perception of the marvellous,--some veritable revelation of
the unspeakable. There is, in very truth, one brief hour of life during
which the world holds for us nothing so wonderful as a pair of eyes. And
then, while looking into them, we discover a thrill of awe vibrating
through our delight,--awe made by a something _felt_ rather than seen: a
latency,--a power,--a shadowing of depth unfathomable as the cosmic
Ether. It is as though, through some intense and sudden stimulation of
vital being, we had obtained--for one supercelestial moment--the glimpse
of a reality, never before imagined, and never again to be revealed.
There is, indeed, an illusion. We seem to view the divine; but this
divine itself, whereby we are dazzled and duped, is a ghost. Not to
actuality belongs the spell,--not to anything that is,--but to some
infinite composite phantom of what has been. Wondrous the vision--but
wondrous only because our mortal sight then pierces beyond the surface
of the present into profundities of myriads of years,--pierces beyond
the mask of life into the enormous night of death. For a moment we are
made aware of a beauty and a mystery and a depth unutterable: then the
Veil falls again forever.
The splendor of the eyes that we worship belongs to them only as
brightness to the morning-star. It is a reflex from beyond the shadow of
the Now,--a ghost-light of vanished suns. Unknowingly within that
maiden-gaze we meet the gaze of eyes more countless than the hosts of
heaven,--eyes otherwhere passed into darkness and dust.
Thus, and only thus, the depth of that gaze is the depth of the Sea of
Death and Birth,--and its mystery is the World-Soul's vision, watching
us out of the silent vast of the Abyss of Being.
Thus, and only thus, do truth and illusion mingle in the magic of
eyes,--the spectral past suffusing with charm ineffable the apparition
of the present;--and the sudden splendor in the soul of the Seer is but
a flash,--one soundless sheet-lightning of the Infinite Memory.