The Bubbles of Sáki.
From Fitzgerald's exquisite version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, I
take the following quatrains which may serve as a text for what I have
to say:
So when the angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And offering you his cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your lips to quaff, you shall not shrink.
Why, if the soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the air of Heaven ride,
Wert not a shame--wert not a shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?
'Tis but a tent where takes his one-day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrásh
Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.
And fear not lest Existence, closing your
Account, and mine, shall know the like no more;
The Eternal Sáki from that bowl hath pour'd
Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour.
When you and I behind the veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds
As the Sev'n Seas shall heed a pebble-cast.
A moment's halt--a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the waste,
And lo!--the phantom caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from--O, make haste!
* * *
There was the door to which I found no key;
There was the veil through which I could not see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was--and then no more of Thee and Me.
* * *
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust
Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn
Are scatter'd and their mouths are stopt with dust.
With them the seed of wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand wrought to make it grow
And this was all the harvest that I reap'd--
"I come like water, and like wind I go."
* * *
Ah Love, could thou and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the heart's desire!
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again--
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same garden--and for one in vain!
And when like her, O Sáki, you shall pass
Among the guests, star-scattered on the grass,
And in your blissful errand reach the spot
Where I made one--turn down an empty glass!
* * *
And, again, in another poem from Carmen Silva's Roumanian folk-songs:
Hopeless.
Into the mist I gazed, and fear came on me,
Then said the mist: "I weep for the lost sun."
We sat beneath our tent;
Then he that hath no hope drew near us there,
And sat him down by us.
We asked him: "Hast thou seen the plains, the mountains?"
And he made answer: "I have seen them all."
And then his cloak he showed us, and his shirt,
Torn was the shirt, there, close above the heart,
Pierced was the breast, there, close above the heart--
The heart was gone.
And yet he trembled not, the while we looked,
And sought the heart, the heart that was not there.
He let us look. And he that had no hope
Smiled, that we grew so pale, and sang us songs.
Then we did envy him, that he could sing
Without a heart to suffer what he sang.
And when he went, he cast his cloak about him,
And those that met him, they could never guess
How that his shirt was torn about the heart,
And that his breast was pierced above the heart,
And that the heart was gone.
I gazed into the mist, and fear came on me,
Then said the mist: "I weep for the lost sun."
This poem of Omar and of Fitzgerald is perhaps our best expression of
the sadness and the grandeur of insoluble problems. It is the sweetness
of philosophical sorrow which has no kinship with misery or distress. In
the strains of the saddest music the soul finds the keenest delight. The
same sweet, sorrowful pleasure is felt in the play of the mind about the
riddles which it cannot solve.
In the presence of the infinite problem of life, the voice of Science is
dumb, for Science is the coördinate and corrected expression of human
experience, and human experience must stop with the limitations of human
life. Man was not present "When the foundations of the Earth were laid,"
and beyond the certainty that they were laid in wisdom and power, man
can say little about them. Man finds in the economy of nature "no trace
of a beginning; no prospect of an end!" He may feel sure, with Hutton,
that "time is as long as space is wide." But he cannot conceive of space
as actually without limit, nor can he imagine any limiting conditions.
He cannot think of a period before time began, nor of a state in which
time shall be no more. The mind fails before the idea of time's eternal
continuity. So time becomes to man merely the sequence of the earthly
events in which he and his ancestors have taken part. Even thus limited
it is sadly immortal, while man's stay on the earth is but of "few days
and full of trouble." "Oh, but the long, long while this world shall
last!" or as the grim humorist puts it, "we shall be a long time dead."
Though the meaning of time, space, existence lies beyond our reach, yet
some sort of solution of the infinite problem the human heart demands.
We find in life a power for action, limited though this power may be.
Life is action, and action is impossible if devoid of motive or hope.
It is my purpose here to indicate some part of the answer of Science to
the Philosophy of Despair. Direct reply Science has none. We cannot
argue against a singer or a poet. The poet sings of what he feels, but
Science speaks only of what we know. We feel infinity, but we cannot
know it, for to the highest human wisdom the ultimate truths of the
universe are no nearer than to the child. Science knows no ultimate
truths. These are beyond the reach of man, and all that man knows must
be stated in terms of his experience. But as to human experience and
conduct, Science has a word to say.
Therefore Science can speak of the causes and results of Pessimism. It
can touch the practical side of the riddle of life by asking certain
questions, the answers to which lie within the province of human
experience. Among these are the following: