PART I_Towards democracy

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY

[Illustration: _Edwd. Carpenter from a photograph by F. Holland Day, in

1900._]

TOWARDS

DEMOCRACY

_Complete Edition in Four Parts_

Published by

GEORGE ALLEN AND UNWIN LIMITED

AT RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET,

LONDON, W.C.

1918.

BY EDWARD CARPENTER

_All rights reserved_

First Published 1883; Second Edition 1885;

Third Edition 1892; Fourth Part 1902;

Complete Edition 1905; Reprinted 1908, 1909, 1912, 1913

CONTENTS

1. PAGE

2. PART I

3. TOWARDS DEMOCRACY (1881–2) 3

4. PART II

5. _O Freedom, beautiful beyond compare_ 111

6. York Minster 112

7. Sunday Morning after Church 115

8. High in My Chamber 119

9. Deep Below Deep 122

10. Except the Lord 124

11. I Come Forth from the Darkness 130

12. Sunday Morning near a Manufacturing Town 137

13. In the Drawing Rooms 139

14. In a Manufacturing Town 144

15. What Have I to do with Thee 146

16. As to You, O Moon 149

17. Squinancy Wort 152

18. _Not of Myself_ 154

19. Lo! I Open a Door 154

20. By this Heart 154

21. As one who from a high Cliff 156

22. To One in Trouble 156

23. These Waves of Your Great Heart 156

24. Thus as I Yearned for Love 158

25. Eternal Hunger 159

26. Child of the Lonely Heart 160

27. To One who is where the Eternal are 162

28. Through the Long Night 165

29. To a Stranger 166

30. To a Friend 166

31. Of the Love that you poured forth 167

32. As a Woman of a Man 167

33. O Love, to whom the Poets 169

34. Who You are I Know Not 171

35. Have Faith (1884) 172

36. I Heard a Voice 179

37. I Know that You are Self-conscious 179

38. Who are You 180

39. Among the Ferns 181

40. I Heard the Voice of the Woods 184

41. The Wind Chants Well 187

42. I am a Voice 188

43. O Sea with White Lines 188

44. Home 190

45. Off Gaspé 190

46. By the Shore 192

47. A Military Band 195

48. Wings 201

49. On an Atlantic Steamship 203

50. By Lake Wachusett 213

51. O Mighty Mother 215

52. AFTER LONG AGES (1883–4) 218

53. PART III

54. _We are a menace to you, O civilisation_ 259

55. After Civilisation 260

56. The word Democracy 263

57. The Meaning of it All 266

58. These Populations 266

59. Andromeda 268

60. The Triumph of Civilisation 269

61. The Dead Christ 270

62. Christmas Eve 271

63. _Little Heart within thy Cage_ 272

64. When I am near to you 273

65. Cradled in Flame 273

66. All Night Long 274

67. Of the Past 274

68. Love’s Vision 275

69. Nearer than ever Now 276

70. O Thou whose Form 276

71. The Elder Soldier to the Younger 277

72. Into the Regions of the Sun (1886) 278

73. As it Happened 280

74. Parted Lips 283

75. Summer-heat 284

76. A rivederci 284

77. Who will Learn Freedom 285

78. After all Suffering 286

79. When a Thousand Years have Passed 287

80. A Message Committed to the Waves 288

81. Rest at Last 290

82. The Wind of May 291

83. _O Earth, scene of what toil_ 292

84. A Voice over the Earth 293

85. In the Chamber of Birth 301

86. A Cottage among the Hills 302

87. Alice 303

88. Baby Song 304

89. Early Morning 305

90. The Golden Wedding 306

91. The Mother to her Daughter 307

92. A Sprig of Aristocracy 308

93. A Scene in London 308

94. S. James’ Park 309

95. The Twin Statues of Amenophis 311

96. Artemidorus, Farewell 313

97. From Turin to Paris 315

98. To the End of Time 321

99. On the Eve of Departure 322

100. Arenzano 323

101. O Tender Heart 324

102. The Carter 326

103. The Stone-cutter 327

104. The Voice of One Blind 327

105. A Song in Old Age 329

106. In Extreme Age 331

107. After the Day’s Work 332

108. I saw a Vision 332

109. Ah! Blessed is he that hath Escaped 333

110. The Great Leader 333

111. I Accept You 333

112. Sol 333

113. A Glimpse 334

114. The Long Day in the Open 334

115. The Idler 335

116. In the Deep Cave of the Heart 335

117. _Fly Messenger! through the Streets of the Cities_ 336

118. The Coming of the Lord 337

119. The Curse of Property 340

120. Over the Great City 342

121. Underneath and After All 343

122. A Hard Saying 344

123. Not for a Few Months or Years 345

124. Disentanglement 345

125. The Mortal Lover 347

126. The End of Love 349

127. A New Life 350

128. The Law of Equality 351

129. To Thine Own Self be True 352

130. Abandon Hope all Ye that Enter Here 353

131. To One Dead 353

132. Of all the Suffering 354

133. A Long Journey 356

134. The Secret of Time and Satan (1888) 358

135. Brief is Pain 364

136. The Body and the Book 366

137. PART IV

138. _Because the Starry Lightnings_ 368

139. Who shall Command the Heart 369

140. From Caverns Dark 370

141. The Lake of Beauty 372

142. The wandering Psyche 373

143. I hear thy call, Mysterious Being 374

144. So thin a Veil divides 376

145. The open Secret 376

146. The Songs of the Birds, who hears 377

147. A Child at a Window 380

148. Night 381

149. April 381

150. Lucifer 382

151. The Ocean of Sex 383

152. As the Greeks Dreamed 385

153. In a Scotch-Fir Wood 386

154. The Dream goes by 387

155. Surely the Time will come 388

156. The one Foundation 390

157. A Mightier than Mammon 394

158. _O little Sister Heart_ 407

159. Forms Eternal as the Mountains 408

160. Spending the Night alone 408

161. O Joy divine of Friends 409

162. O Child of Uranus 410

163. One at a Time 411

164. The dead Comrade 412

165. Philoläus to Diocles 413

166. Hafiz to the Cup-bearer 416

167. In the stone-floored Workshop 417

168. The Trysting 419

169. The Lover far on the Hills 422

170. The Babe 423

171. _O Gracious Mother_ 425

172. I saw a fair House 426

173. A Dream of Human Life 428

174. The Coast of Liguria 429

175. Easter Day on Mt. Mounier 431

176. At Mentone 433

177. Monte Carlo 435

178. India, the Wisdom-land (1890) 440

179. Tanzbödeli 442

180. A Village Church 445

181. Sheffield 450

182. A Lancashire Mill-hand 452

183. A Trade 454

184. The Ploughboy 455

185. The Jackdaw 456

186. By the Mersey 457

187. In the British Museum Library 459

188. Empire 462

189. The British, A. D. 1901 467

190. Portland 468

191. China, A. D. 1900 471

192. _Standing beyond Time_ 476

193. Who but the Lover should know 477

194. The Everlasting Now 479

195. Now is the accepted Time 479

196. A Summer Day 480

197. The central Calm 481

198. Widening Circles 482

199. When I Look upon your Faces 483

200. Life behind Life 483

201. The stupid old Body 484

202. The wandering lunatic Mind 485

203. As a Mould for some fair Form 487

204. Nothing less than All 487

205. Believe yourself a Whole 490

206. The Body within the Body 491

207. In an old Quarry 494

208. The Soul to the Body 494

209. To become a Creator 497

210. After Fifty Years 499

211. Out of the House of Childhood 500

212. Little Brook without a Name (1902) 502

213. Lo! what a World I Create 506

214. A NOTE ON “TOWARDS DEMOCRACY” 509

PART I

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY

_The sun, the moon and the stars, the grass, the water that flows round

the earth, and the light air of heaven:_

_To You greeting. I too stand behind these and send you word across

them._

Freedom at last!

Long sought, long prayed for—ages and ages long:

The burden to which I continually return, seated here thick-booted and

obvious yet dead and buried and passed into heaven, unsearchable;

[How know you indeed but what I have passed into you?]

And Joy, beginning but without ending—the journey of journeys—Thought

laid quietly aside:

These things I, writing, translate for you—I wipe a mirror and place it

in your hands.

The sun shines, as of old; the stars look down from heaven; the moon,

crescent, sails in the twilight; on bushy tops in the warm nights,

naked, with mad dance and song, the earth-children address themselves to

love;

Civilisation sinks and swims, but the old facts remain—the sun smiles,

knowing well its strength.

The little red stars appear once more on the hazel boughs, shining among

the catkins; over waste lands the pewit tumbles and cries as at the

first day; men with horses go out on the land—they shout and chide and

strive—and return again glad at evening; the old earth breathes deep and

rhythmically, night and day, summer and winter, giving and concealing

herself.

* * * * *

I arise out of the dewy night and shake my wings.

Tears and lamentations are no more. Life and death lie stretched below

me. I breathe the sweet æther blowing of the breath of God.

Deep as the universe is my life—and I know it; nothing can dislodge the

knowledge of it; nothing can destroy, nothing can harm me.

Joy, joy arises—I arise. The sun darts overpowering piercing rays of joy

through me, the night radiates it from me.

I take wings through the night and pass through all the wildernesses of

the worlds, and the old dark holds of tears and death—and return with

laughter, laughter, laughter:

Sailing through the starlit spaces on outspread wings, we two—O

laughter! laughter! laughter!

III

Freedom! the deep breath! the word heard centuries and centuries

beforehand; the soul singing low and passionate to itself: Joy! Joy!

Not as in a dream. The earth remains and daily life remains, and the

scrubbing of doorsteps, and the house and the care of the house remains;

but Joy fills it, fills the house full and swells to the sky and reaches

the stars: all Joy!

O freed soul! soul that has completed its relation to the body! O

soaring, happy beyond words, into other realms passing, salutations to

you, freed, redeemed soul!

* * * * *

What is certain, and not this? What is solid?—the rocks? the mountains?

destiny?

The gates are thrown wide open all through the universe. I go to and

fro—through the heights and depths I go and I return: All is well.

I conceive the purport of all suffering. The blear-eyed boy, famished in

brain, famished in body, shivering there in his rags by the angle of the

house, is become divine before me; I hold him long and silently by the

hand and pray to him.

I conceive a millennium on earth—a millennium not of riches, nor of

mechanical facilities, nor of intellectual facilities, nor absolutely of

immunity from disease, nor absolutely of immunity from pain; but a time

when men and women all over the earth shall ascend and enter into

relation with their bodies—shall attain freedom and joy;

And the men and women of that time looking back with something like envy

to the life of to-day, that they too might have borne a part in its

travail and throes of birth.

All is well: to-day and a million years hence, equally. To you the whole

universe is given for a garden of delight, and to the soul that loves,

in the great coherent Whole, the hardest and most despised lot is even

with the best; and there is nothing more certain or more solid than

this.

Freedom! the deep breath!

The old Earth breathes deep and rhythmically, night and day, summer and

winter; the cuckoo calls across the woodland, and the willow-wren

warbles among the great chestnut buds; the laborer eases himself under a

hedge, and the frog flops into the pond as the cows approach;

In the theatre Juliet from her balcony still bends in the moonlight, and

Romeo leans up from the bushes below; in the pale dawn, still, faint

with love he tears himself away; the great outlines of the fields and

hills where you were born and grew up remain apparently unchanged.

If I am not level with the lowest I am nothing; and if I did not know

for a certainty that the craziest sot in the village is my equal, and

were not proud to have him walk with me as my friend, I would not write

another word—for in this is my strength.

My thoughts are nothing, but I myself will reach my arms through time,

constraining you.

* * * * *

These are the days which nourished and fed me so kindly and well; this

is the place where I was born, the walls and roofs which are familiar to

me, the windows out of which I have looked. This is the overshadowing

love and care of parents; these are the faces and deeds, indelible, of

brothers and sisters—closing round me like a wall—the early world in

which I lay so long.

This is to-day: the little ship lies ready, the fresh air blowing, the

sunlight pouring over the world. These are the gates of all cities and

habitations standing open; this is the love of men and women

accompanying me wherever I go; these are the sacred memories of that

early world, time may never change.

And this is the word which swells the bosom of the hills and feeds the

sacred laughter of the streams, for man: the purpose which endures for

you in those old fields and hills and the sphinx-glance of the stars.

I, Nature, stand, and call to you though you heed not: Have courage,

come forth, O child of mine, that you may see me.

As a nymph of the invisible air before her mortal beloved, so I glance

before you—I dart and stand in your path—and turn away from your

heedless eyes like one in pain.

I am the ground; I listen the sound of your feet. They come nearer. I

shut my eyes and feel their tread over my face.

I am the trees; I reach downward my long arms and touch you, though you

heed not, with enamored fingers; my leaves and zigzag branches write

wonderful words against the evening sky—for you, for you—say, can you

not even spell them?

O shame! shame! I fling you away from me (you shall not know that I love

you). Unworthy! I strike you across the face; does the blood mount to

your cheek now? my glove rings at your feet: I dare you to personal

combat.

Will you come forth? will you do the daring deed? will you strip

yourself naked as you came into the world, and come before me, and

regard unafraid the flashing of my sword? will you lose your life, to

Me?

* * * * *

O child of mine!

See! you are in prison, and I can give you space;

You are choked down below there, by the dust of your own raising, and I

can give you the pure intoxicating air of the mountains to breathe;

I can make you a king, and show you all the lands of the earth;

And from yourself to yourself I can deliver you, and can come, your

enemy, and gaze long and long with yells of laughter into your eyes!

The caddis worm leaves the water, and takes on wings and flies in the

upper air; the walking mud becomes amorous of the winged sunlight, and

behaves itself in an abandoned manner.

The Earth (during its infancy) flies round the Sun from which it sprang,

and the mud flies round the pond from which it sprang.

The earth swims in space, the fish swim in the sea, the bird swims in

the air, and the soul of man in the ocean of Equality—towards which all

the other streams run.

* * * * *

Here, into this ocean, everything debouches; all interest in life begins

anew. The plantain in the croft looks different from what it did before.

Do you understand? To realise Freedom or Equality (for it comes to the

same thing)—for this hitherto, for you, the universe has rolled; for

this, your life, possibly yet many lives; for this, death, many deaths;

for this, desires, fears, complications, bewilderments, sufferings,

hope, regret—all falling away at last duly before the Soul, before You

(O laughter!) arising the full grown lover—possessor of the password.

The path of Indifference—action, inaction, good, evil, pleasure, pain,

the sky, the sea, cities and wilds—all equally used (never shunned),

adopted, put aside, as materials only; you continuing, love

continuing—the use and freedom of materials dawning at last upon you.

O laughter! the Soul invading, looking proudly upon its new kingdom,

possessing the offerings of all pleasures, forbidden and unforbidden,

from all created things—if perchance it will stoop to accept them; the

everlasting life.

* * * * *

From that day forward objects turn round upon themselves with an

exceedingly innocent air, but are visibly not the same;

Fate is leveled, and the mountains and pyramids look foolish before the

glance of a little child; love becomes possessed of itself, and of the

certainty of its own fruition (which it never could have before).

* * * * *

Here the essence of all expression, and the final surrender of Art—for

this the divine Artists have struggled and still struggle;

For this the heroes and lovers of all ages have laid down their lives;

and nations like tigers have fought, knowing well that this life was a

mere empty blob without Freedom.

Where this makes itself known in a people or even in the soul of a

single man or woman, there Democracy begins to exist.

Of that which exists in the Soul, political freedom and institutions of

equality, and so forth, are but the shadows (necessarily thrown); and

Democracy in States or Constitutions but the shadow of that which first

expresses itself in the glance of the eye or the appearance of the skin.

Without that first the others are of no account, and need not be further

mentioned.

VII

Inevitable in time for man and all creation is the realisation: the

husks one behind another keep shelling and peeling off.

Rama crosses to Ceylon by the giant stepping-stones; and the Ganges

floats with the flowers and sacred lamps of pilgrims; Diotima teaches

Socrates divine lore; Benedict plunges his midnight lust in nettles and

briars; and Bruno stands prevaricating yet obstinate before his judges.

The midnight jackals scream round the village; and the feigned cry of

the doe is heard as she crosses the track of the hunter pursuing her

young; the chaffinch sits close in her perfect nest, and the shining

leaping waters of the streams run on and on.

The great stream of history runs on.

Over the curve of the misty horizon, out of the dim past (do you not see

it?) over the plains of China and the burning plains of India, by the

tombs of Egypt and through the gardens beneath the white tower of Belus

and under the shadow of the rock of Athens, the great stream descends:

Soft slow broad-bosomed mother-stream—where the Ark floats, and Isis in

her moon-shaped boat sails on with the corpse of Osiris, and the

child-god out of the water rises seated on a lotus flower, and Brahma

two-sexed dwells amid the groves, and the maidens weep for Adonis.

* * * * *

Mighty long-delaying vagrant stream! Of innumerable growing rustling

life! Out of some cavern mouth long ago where the cave-dwellers sat

gnawing burnt bones, down to to-day—with ever growing tumult, and glints

of light upon thee in the distance as of half-open eyes, and the sound

of countless voices out of thee, nearer, nearer, past promontory after

promontory winding, widening, hastening!

Now to-day, turbid wild and unaccountable in sudden Niagara-plunge

toward thy nearer oceanic levels descending—

How wonderful art thou!

VIII

Lo! to-day the falling waters—the ribbed white perpendicular

seas—shaking the ground with their eternal thunder! Lo! above all rising

like a sign into the immense height of the sky, the columned vapor and

calm exhalation of their agony—

The Arisen and mighty soul of Man!

[The word runs like fire along the ground; who shall contain it? the

word that is nothing—as fire is nothing and yet it devours the land in a

moment.]

* * * * *

Lo! to-day the eagle soul that stretches its neck into the height,

looking before and after; the living banner calling with audible

inaudible voice through all times; the spirit whose eyes are heavy with

gazing out over the immense world of MAN!

[O spirit! spirit! spirit! spirit! stretching thy arms out over the

world,

Calling to thy children—spirit of the brow of love and feet of war and

thunder—

Thou art let loose within me!

No delicate fiction art thou to me now—the sound of thy steps appals me

with joy as thou stridest—fills me with joy and power.

Go, go, my soul, stream out on the wind with this one—I laugh as the

ancient cities shake like leaves in the din and tumult;

Go shout on the winds that the world is alive, that the Arisen one

controls it—

I laugh as the ground rocks under my feet, I laugh as I walk through the

forest, and the trees reel to and fro, and their great dead branches

chatter——

Shout on the winds, though the foaming hell grows hoarse with gusty

thunder, shout that the crashing distracted hurrying eddying world is

taken

Prisoner in the highest!]

Ah! the live Earth trembles beneath thy footsteps; the passionate deep

shuddering words run along the ground: who shall contain, who shall

understand them?

Surely, surely, age after age out of the ground itself arising, from the

chinks of the lips of the clods and from between the blades of grass, up

with the tall-growing wheat surely ascending——

Deep-muttered, vast, inaudible—they come—the strange new words, through

the frame of the great Mother and through the frames of her children

trembling:

* * * * *

Freedom!

And among the far nations there is a stir like the stir of the leaves of

a forest.

Joy, Joy arising on Earth!

And lo! the banners lifted from point to point, and the spirits of the

ancient races looking abroad—the divinely beautiful daughters of God

calling to their children.

* * * * *

The nations of the old and of the new worlds!

See, what hastening of feet, what throngs, what rustling movement!

Lo! the divine East from ages and ages back intact her priceless jewel

of thought—the germ of Democracy—bringing down! [Gentle and venerable

India well pleased now at last to hear fulfilled the words of her

ancient sages.]

Lo, Arabia! peerless in dignity, eternal in manhood of love and

war—pivoting like a centre the races of mankind; Siberia, the aged

mother, breaking forth uncontrollable into exultant shouting, from Kokan

to farthest Kamschatka and the moss-morasses of the Arctic Sea!

See how they arise and call to each other! Norway with wild hair

streaming, dancing frantic on her mountain tops? Italy from dreams, from

languid passionate memories amid her marble ruins, to deeds again

arising; Greece; Belgium; Denmark; Ireland—liberty’s deathless flame

leaping on her Atlantic Shore!

O the wild races of Africa, beautiful children of the sun, hardy and

superb, givers of gifts to the common stock without which all the other

gifts were useless! The native tribes still roaming in the freedom of

the earth and the waters: the Greenlander and his little boy together in

their canoe towing the dead seal, the tawny bronzed Malay, and Papuan,

and Australian through the interminable silent bush tracking infallibly

for water or the kangaroo!

Lo! the great users and accumulators of materials, the proud and

melancholy Titans struggling with civilisation! England, ringed with

iron and with the glitter of her waves upon her; Germany; France;

Russia—and the flow of East and West, and the throes of womanhood and

the future; lo! Spain—dark, proud, voiceless, biting her lips, with high

white arm beckoning beckoning! And you, too, ye manifold Stars and

Stripes—unto what great destiny!

The peoples of the Earth; the intertwining many-colored streams!

China, gliding seemingly unobservant among the crowd, self-restrained,

of her own soul calmly possessed; the resplendent-limbed Negro and

half-caste (do you not see that old woman there with brow and nose and

jaw dating conclusively back from far away Egypt?); the glitter-eyed

caressing-handed Hindu, suave thoughtful Persian, and faithful Turk;

Mexico and the Red Indian (O unconscious pleading eyes of the dying

races!); Japan and the Isles of the Pacific, and the caravan wanderers

and dwellers in the oases of Sahara.

O glancing eyes! O leaping shining waters! Do I not know that thou

Democracy dost control and inspire, that thou, too, hast relations to

these—and a certainty—

As surely as Niagara has relations to Erie and Ontario?

Lo! the spirit floats in the air.

On his lips it kisses the young man from China, and the patient old man,

and the spiritual-faced boy;

And on his lips the long-eyed Japanee; and on his thick lips the Negro:

Come!

And to the forlorn emigrant, to the old Irish woman with shriveled brown

anxious face, and to her barefoot beautiful daughter, and to the young

fair-haired woman from Sweden:

Come!

And to the Portuguese lad with shining teeth and smiling mouth, and to

the long-haired Italian, and to the ruddy Scot;

And to the young Tamil boy holding up flowers and pouring his morning

libation of water to the Sun, and to his grandmother superintending the

household with quiet loving care; and to the rows of Hindu villagers

squatted by the water tanks at early morning, bathing and chatting, and

to the women their wives cleaning their brass-glancing waterpots; and to

the noble Mahratta women, and to the beautiful almond-eyed women of

Egypt, and to the shifty clever Eurasian, and to the stunted dweller by

the sacred unfrozen lake of Thibet:

Come!—and to the wanderers lighting their camp-fires at the feet of the

world-old statues at Thebes; and to the sacred exiles on the march to

Irkutsk; to the wild riders across the plains of Wallachia;

And to the sweet healthy-bodied English girl, and to the drink-marked

prostitute, and to the convicted criminals, the diseased decrepit and

destitute of all the Earth:

Lo! my children I give myself to you; I stretch my arms; on the lips

each one in the name of all I kiss you:

Come! And out of your clinging kisses, see! I create a new world.

Who understands?

Who draws close as a little child?

Ah! who is he who stands closest? And has heard the word, himself,

uttered out of the ground from between the clods?

* * * * *

Who is the wise statesman who walks hand in hand with his people,

guiding and guided?

Who is the child of the people, moving joyous, liquid, free, among his

equals, touching nearest the serene untampered facts of earth and sky?

Who is the poet whom love has made strong strong strong with all

strength?

Ah! who is he who says to the great good Mother: _Cling fast, O Mother,

and hold me; clasp thy fingers over my face and draw me to thee for

ever?_

The scene changes; the sun and the stars are veiled, the solid earth

alone is left. I am buried (I too that I may rise again) deep underfoot

among the clods.

Each one a transparent miracle, competent with man and his vast-aspiring

religions and civilisations—but for me they are only dirt.

Level wastes of sand and scrub; mudflats by the mouths of rivers; old

disheveled rocks and oozy snow; trickling slime-places and ponds and

bogs and mangrove marshes and chattering shale-slopes and howling

deserted ridges and heaps of broken glass and old bones and shoes and

pots and pans in blind alleys and fogs along flat shores and crimes

betrayals murders thefts respectability, bad smells by house doors,

filthy-smelling interiors of factories and drawing-rooms, stale scents,

gas, dirt, evil faces, drunkenness, cruelty to animals, and the cruelty

of animals to each other——

This is the solid earth in the midst of which I am buried.

* * * * *

O I am mad! the lightning flashes on evil raw places. I stretch uneasily

in my grave and tumble the towers of great cities with my feet; the

volcanos lurch and spill their molten liquor.

I hate those nearest me, and am closed, captious and intolerant. I sweep

a great space round me and sulk in the middle of it.

Now underneath the earth on which you walk I sport in the fire of Hell;

Satan is my friend and vicious blood-spilling lusts and clenched teeth

push the way for me to destruction. I dance in the flames and will claw

every one in: take care how you cross me!

Your talk of goodness I despise. To every conceivable sin I hold out my

hand. My touch blackens you. I crawl forth out of slime and worms and

blink at the sun. I press my way madly through the gallows-crowd to him

who bears my reprieve held up on high.

This is the Cross; these are the eyes of Christ—and of the

crossing-sweeper;

This is the Divine love which encloses and redeems all evil. Ah! here is

peace!

* * * * *

Flat curtains hang round me in every direction (as they hang round you),

and behind them the live people go dancing and laughing: but we are not

going to be baffled.

Sex still goes first, and hands eyes mouth brain follow; from the midst

of belly and thighs radiate the knowledge of self, religion, and

immortality.

XII

The clods press suffocating closer and closer—grit and filth accumulate

in the eyes and mouth, I can neither see nor speak—the devil and the

worms dance around.

The immortal worms make their obeisance to you, and the religious devil

grins at you—they compliment you on your superiority.

The Earth is for you, and all that is therein—save what anyone else can

grab; and universal love is for you—and to sleek yourself smoother than

others in the glass; and to fly on from world to world, leaving sweet

odors behind you, and to get cleverer and cleverer and better and better

as you go, and to be generally superior!

How very nice! the devil and the worms thank you for your kind

invitation to accompany them; but regret that they are engaged.

XIII

This is poison! do not touch it—the black brew of the cauldron out of

which Democracy firks its horned and shameless head.

O disrespectable Democracy! I love you. No white angelic spirit are you

now, but a black and horned Ethiopian—your great grinning lips and teeth

and powerful brow and huge limbs please me well.

Where you go about the garden there are great footmarks and an uncanny

smell; the borders are trampled and I see where you have lain and rolled

in a great bed of lilies, bruising the sweetness from them.

I follow you far afield and into the untrodden woods, and there remote

from man you disclose yourself to me, goat-footed and sitting on a

rock—as to the Athenian runner of old.

You fill me with visions, and when the night comes I see the forests

upon your flanks and your horns among the stars. I climb upon you and

fulfil my desire.

XIV

The heights heighten and the depths deepen; from beneath the eyelids of

man look forth new heavens and a new earth. The glitter of sunlight upon

the waves is there.

Here underneath, the great lubricous roots grasp downward in darkness at

the rocks; there the tall shaft shoots into air, and the leaves float

poised in the sunshine—but the word conceals itself.

* * * * *

Of the goat-legged God peering over the tops of the clouds; of the wild

creature running in the woods of whom the rabbits are not afraid; of him

who peeps his horns in at the windows of the churches, and the

congregation cross themselves and the parson saws his loudest; of the

shameless lusty unpresentable pal; of the despised one hobbling on

hoofs—I dream.

Of the despised and rejected, arising with healing in his wings, of the

sane sweet companion in the morning, of the Lover who neither adorns nor

disguises himself—I dream.

O Democracy, I shout for you!

* * * * *

Back! Make me a space round me, you kid-gloved rotten-breathed paralytic

world, with miserable antics mimicking the appearance of life.

England! for good or evil it is useless to attempt to conceal yourself—I

know you too well.

I am the very devil. I will tear your veils off, your false shows and

pride I will trail in the dust,—you shall be utterly naked before me, in

your beauty and in your shame.

For who better than I should know your rottenness, your self-deceit,

your delusion, your hideous grinning corpse-chattering death-in-life

business at top? (and who better than I the wonderful hidden sources of

your strength beneath?)

Deceive yourself no longer.

* * * * *

Do you think your smooth-faced Respectability will save you? or that

Cowardice carries a master-key of the universe in its pocket—scrambling

miserably out of the ditch on the heads of those beneath it?

Do you think that it is a fine thing to grind cheap goods out of the

hard labor of ill-paid boys? and do you imagine that all your Commerce

Shows and Manufactures are anything at all compared with the bodies and

souls of these?

Do you suppose I have not heard your talk about Morality and Religion

and set it face to face in my soul to the instinct of one clean naked

unashamed Man? or that I have not seen your coteries of elegant and

learned people put to rout by the innocent speech of a child, and the

apparition of a mother suckling her own babe!

Do you think that there ever was or could be Infidelity greater than

this?

Do you grab interest on Money and lose all interest in Life? Do you

found a huge system of national Credit on absolute personal Distrust? Do

you batten like a ghoul on the dead corpses of animals, and then expect

to be of a cheerful disposition? Do you put the loving beasts to torture

as a means of promoting your own health and happiness? Do you, O

foolishest one, fancy to bind men together by Laws (of all ideas the

most laughable), and set whole tribes of unbelievers at work year after

year patching that rotten net? Do you live continually farther and

farther from Nature, till you actually doubt if there be any natural

life, or any avenging instinct in the dumb elements?— And then do you

wonder that your own Life is slowly ebbing—that you have lost all

gladness and faith?

I do not a bit. I am disgusted with you, and will not cease till I have

absolutely floored you. I do not care; you may struggle; but I am the

stronger.

* * * * *

Ah, England! Have I not seen, do I not see now, plain as day, through

thy midst the genius of thy true life wandering—he who can indeed, who

can alone, save thee—

Seeking thy soul, thy real life, out of so much rubbish to disentangle?

Plaintive the Divine Child haply a moment by some cottage door, or by

the side of some mechanic at his bench, lingering, passes on;

Through the great magnificent land, through its parks and country

palaces and bewildering splendors of the resorts of wealth and learning,

shy and plaintive, passes:

Is there no hand held out?

Do not the learned people know him? Have the wealthy nothing to give?

Will not the philanthropic reach a hand to this one?

* * * * *

The guides are all talking. They are settling the affairs of the

universe. [They never cease.]

They have not settled yet which way to go themselves: how shall they

give help to an ignorant child?

They are busy moreover distributing money and pamphlets: and surely

nothing more can be needed.

They are very busy. They are worn out and rest not. Their faces are

without sleep.

Nevertheless they go on. Was it said that any man could be contented? It

is a lie;—or happy? It is mere foolishness. These things are the dreams

of youthful ignorance.

The affairs of the universe and the continual fluctuations of the Stock

Exchange are too great an anxiety.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the old woman was staggering homeward under a load of

sticks—but none offered to relieve her of her burden. But indeed when

you think of it, how could they? for it would have spoiled their

clothes.

The poor boy was taken with a fit upon the doorstep, but it was best not

to take him all dirty and slavering into the nicely-carpeted house!

The criminal had suffered shipwreck in life and was deserted; but of

course it would not have done to be seen consorting with him.

O happy happy guides! to whom such mighty issues are confided!

Happy happy Child! who need not stay to hear the end of their talk! whom

I saw, in vision, silent and musing within itself, pass away from among

those people.

XVI

Will you continually deny yourself, you? Will you for ever turn aside?

These are not the times, remember, of canary birds—when the thunder

growls along the horizon.

O England, do I not know thee—as in a nightmare strangled tied and

bound?

Thy poverty—when through thy filthy courts from tangles of matted hair

gaunt women with venomous faces look upon me?

When I see the thin joyless faces of their children, and the brick walls

scarcely recognisable as brick for dirt, and the broken windows; when I

breathe the thick polluted air in which not even plants will live; when

oaths and curses are yelled in my ears, and the gibbering face of drink

starts upon me at every corner;

When I turn from this and consider throughout the length and breadth of

the land, not less but more hateful, the insane greed of riches—of which

poverty and its evils are but the necessary obverse and counterpart;

When I see deadly Respectability sitting at its dinner table, quaffing

its wine, and discussing the rise and fall of stocks; when I see the

struggle, the fear, the envy, the profound infidelity (so profound that

it is almost unconscious of itself) in which the moneyed classes live;

When the faces of their children come to me pleading, pleading—every bit

as much as the children of the city poor—pleading for one touch of

nature: Of children who have been stuffed with lies all their lives, who

have been told that they cannot do without this and that and a thousand

things—all of which are wholly unnecessary, and a nuisance, (as who

should tell one that it were not safe to walk on the naked Earth, but

only on ground embarrassed with straw and all manner of rubbish up to

one’s knees;)

Of children who have been taught to mix the nonsense manners and

diarrhœa of drawing-rooms with their ideals of right and wrong; to

despise manual labor and to reverence ridicule; to eat and drink and

dress and sleep in unbelief and against all their natural instincts; and

in all things to mingle the disgust of repletion with the very thought

of pleasure—till their young judgments are confused and their instincts

actually cease to be a guide to them;

Of strong healthy boys who positively believe they will starve unless

they enter the hated professions held out to them;

When I see avenues of young girls and women, with sideway flopping

heads, debarred from Work, debarred from natural Sexuality, weary to

death with nothing to do, (and this thy triumph, O deadly respectability

discussing stocks!)

When I see, flickering around, miserable spectrums and nostrums of

reform—mere wisps devoid of all body—philanthropic chatterboxes, [Nay, I

do not hold with you! For if you kill me to death talking to me in a

drawing-room, what in the name of heaven are you going to do to the

unfortunate in hospital?]

When I hear and see the droning and see-sawing of pulpits; when the

vision of perfect vulgarity and commonplaceness arises upon me—of

society—and of that which arrogates to itself the sacred name of

England;

The puppet dance of gentility—condescension, white hands, unsoiled

dress, charitable proprietorship—in the street, the barracks, the

church, the shop, the house, the school, the assembly,

In eating drinking and saying Good morning and Good night—of the theory

of what it is to be a lady or a gentleman;

Of exclusiveness, and of being in the swim; of the drivel of

aristocratic connections; of drawing-rooms and levees and the theory of

animated clothespegs generally; of belonging to clubs and of giving

pence to crossing-sweepers without apparently seeing them; of helplessly

living in houses with people who feed you, dress you, clean you, and

despise you; of driving in carriages; of being intellectual; of prancing

about and talking glibly on all subjects on the theory of setting things

right—and leaving others to do the dirty work of the world; of having

read books by the score, and being yet unable to read a single page; of

writing, and yet ignorant how to sign your name; of talking about

political economy and politics and never having done a single day’s

labor in your life; of being a magistrate or a judge and never having

committed a common crime, or been in the position to commit one; of

being a parson and afraid to be seen toping with Christ in a public; a

barrister and to travel in a third class carriage; an officer and to

walk with one of your own men;

When I see the sea, spreading, of infidelity, of belief in

externals—in money, big guns, laws, views, accomplishments, cheap

goods—towncouncilors, cabinet ministers, M.P.’s, generals, judges,

bishops—all alike;

When I look for help from the guides and see only a dead waste of

aimless abject closeshaven shabby simpering flat pompous peaked

punctilious faces:

O England, whither—strangled tied and bound—whither whither art thou

come?

XVII

I choke!

[Or should choke—did I not know very well I could tear all these bonds

to pieces like withes of dry grass: did I not know too that these are

after all in place as they are, nor could be better than they are:

The natural sheath protecting the young bud—fitting close, stranglingly

close, till the young thing gains a little more power, and then falling

dry, useless, their work finished, to the ground.]

Strangled, O God? Nay—the circle of gibbering faces draws closer, the

droning noises become louder, the weight gets heavier, unbearable—One

instant struggle! and lo!

* * * * *

It is Over!—daylight! the sweet rain is falling and I hear the songs of

the birds.

* * * * *

Blessings and thanks for ever for the sweet rain; blessings for the

fresh fresh air blowing, and the meadows illimitable and the grass and

the clouds;

Blessings and thanks for you, you wild waters eternally flowing: O come

flowing, encroaching, over me, in my ears: I salute you who are pure and

sweet (ah! what designs, what love, are hid within you!)—

I praise you for your faithfulness for ever.

XVIII

To descend, first;

To feel downwards and downwards through this wretched maze of shams for

the solid ground—to come close to the Earth itself and those that live

in direct contact with it;

To identify, to saturate yourself with these, their laws of being, their

modes of life, their needs (the Earth’s also), thoughts, temptations and

aspirations;

This—is it not the eternal precept?—is the first thing: to dig

downwards. Afterwards the young shoot will ascend—and ascending easily

part aside the overlying rubbish.

These are not the times of canary birds—nor of trifling with art and

philosophy and impertinent philanthropic schemes; this is the time of

grown Men and Women:

Of or among the people; always living close to the earth and the people,

and creating what they create, out of them.

* * * * *

Young Men and Women, I—though not of myself alone—call you: the time is

come. (Is not the sweet rain falling?)

You—for whom the bitter cup and the sweet are so strangely mixed—how

strangely none but you can tell;

You—in whom divine strength is one with the uttermost weakness;

In soberness of spirit, as to some long and patient task in death alone

ending, I call.

* * * * *

Strong in peace, strong in turmoil and conflict, strong in yourselves,

undaunted, with large hearts, with large strong hands,

Spreaders of health (better than any doctor) to individuals, to the

diseased prostrate nation, sustainers of ridicule, clearers of the

ground laden with the accumulated wreck and rubbish of centuries,

Lovers of all handicrafts and of labor in the open air, confessed

passionate lovers of your own sex,

Arise!

Heroes of the enfranchisement of the body (latest and best gift long

concealed from men), Arise!

As the North wind in summer runs over the world, making a clear light

down to the very horizon—so is the world prepared for you.

* * * * *

Come! I too call you. I too have looked in your eyes, O you of great

faith and few words; you cannot escape, now.

Under your eyelids I have seen, shy, hidden away, pure without taint,

one with the fresh air to sweeten all the world—lo! the greatest faith

of all.

You sacred ones, first interpreters, you holders up of new ideals, you

greatest and least,

You who are and by your mere presence create Democracy—Arise!

Thou Woman, gentleborn and sensitive, yet incapable of being shocked or

disgusted—Arise!

Thou one strong Man in love sufficient, out of the heart of the

people—Arise!

XIX

Heroes, lovers, judges; despised, outcast, ridiculed; princes and kings

and destitute; drudges and slaves; mothers, free women and feminine

neuters; actors, parsons, squires, capitalists, rich dinners, fine

houses (it is all the same: I go back upon my own words), the parks and

the opera; unobtrusive, unguessed, day by day, and year by year; talking

loud, talking soft, in the fashion, and out; dreaming of duty, love,

release, nature, organisation, hatred, death; ascetic, lusty, genial,

maimed, incoherent, proud; by tradition military, money-broking,

official, commercial, idle, literary, church, chapel and club; in all

forms and in all places; weary yet unwearied; before dawn rising and

through the window peering at the untroubled sky; weak yet indomitable;

suffering yet filled with exceeding joy—

Age after age, under the Earth, hidden, the womb of the dead generations

arising to life again, myriads of seeds, chrysalids, pupæ, cysts,

rootlets, transparent white bulbs of souls in Hades, by faith working

many miracles; thrills of magnetism through the whole vast frame, summer

heat and winter cold and the kiss of the living air; death and decay and

weakness and prostration and poisonous inbreaths, and nearer nearer

nearer nearer life and joy everlasting.

Through the city crowd pushing wrestling shouldering, against the tide,

face after face, breath of liquor, money-grubbing eye, infidel skin,

shouts, threats, greetings, smiles, eyes and breasts of love,

breathless, clutches of lust, limbs, bodies, torrents, bursts, savage

onslaughts, tears, entreaties, tremblings, stranglings, suicidal, the

sky, the houses, surges and crests of waves, white faces from afar

bearing down nearer nearer, almost touching, and glances unforgotten and

meant to be unforgotten.

I do not forget you: I see you quite plainly.

* * * * *

Tangles of social claims, convenances, toy-duties, fine soft-carpeted

house, array of servants, failing and failing health, growing and

settled sadness, ennui, wearisome pleasures, hyper-sensitiveness.

Golden hand-cuffs, the prison life of Custom without one touch of

nature, desperate beating of wings and breast against the bars, trailing

slime and winding web of lies impossible to escape from.

Careful obediences; sleek hat and well-brushed coat; blameless deference

to public opinion; the desk, the counter, the Exchange, the walk home,

the favorable comments of passers-by;

And within, blinding burning hatred, bottomless yawning pits opening in

the midst of life—of love, of jealousy, of desire—vast gales and

whirlwinds carrying away the superstructure and the plans of years.

Waves and storms of the ocean within; shipwreck and disaster of life;

fortune, health, honor, love, gone down seeming irretrievably in the

great signless waste; and still the stars shining calm on the flying

spray, and the immense placid heaven unmoved going back to innumerable

other worlds and radiant birth-places and pilgrimages and possessions of

the Soul without end.

XXI

I do not forget you. I see you quite plainly.

But why should one god leave his throne to scrape favors at the feet of

other gods?

Surely it is enough to be here—and always to be Here.

* * * * *

I weave these words about myself to form a seamless web without

beginning or ending. I do not spin a yarn for you to reel off at your

leisure; nor do I pour out water into pots.

This is one of my bodies—of the female—which if you penetrate with true

sexual power, clinging it shall conceive, and you shall know me in

part—by the answer of the eyes of children, yours and mine, looking up

from the grass and down from the sky upon you as you walk.

And if you understand me I will draw you away from all sorrow—so that no

evil can happen to you. Not at first will it be so, but afterwards,

after a time.

XXII

You cannot escape me (and this place of my Presence I will never leave

till I have saturated myself, till the waves of my love have traveled

over the whole vast ocean of existence from where I stand):

The horse galloping over the plains cannot escape the plains it gallops

over.

Leagues and leagues out in the sunlight I lie, the winds of heaven blow

over me—I desire nothing more, I am perfectly content.

* * * * *

Yes, you cannot escape me.

At night I creep down and lie close in the great city—there I am at

home—hours and hours I lie stretched there; the feet go to and fro, to

and fro, beside and over me.

Oaths and curses and obscene jokes; the group of laughing men and girls

tumbling out of the doors of the beershop, the haggard old woman under

the flaring gas-jet by the butcher’s stall (the butcher sometimes gives

her a bit of waste meat in charity), the butcher himself with his smooth

grisled hair and florid face—you cannot escape me.

You, soaring yearning face of youth threading the noisy crowd, though

you soar to the stars you cannot escape me.

* * * * *

I remain where I am. I make no effort. Wherever you go it is the same to

me: I am there already.

The murmuring of many voices is in my ears. As I lie on my side hour

after hour the drowse of myriads of feet is upon me:

Hour after hour, hour after hour,—and I sleep, well content.

XXIII

Closer and closer will I come, till I lay hold of you—myself and none

other.

As one grasps a drowning man with a grasp that will not be relaxed, so

will I grasp you—you shall not escape me.

* * * * *

Ah! Death, and Hell with thy gaping jaws, into thee at length I am

curious to descend; curious am I to go where the old empty masks of Fear

and Disaster are kept, and to see where they hang—hereafter useless for

ever.

XXIV

Are you laughed at, are you scorned? Do they gaze at you and giggle to

each other as you pass by? Do they despise you because you are

mis-shapen, because you are awkward, because you are peculiar, because

you fail in everything you do—and you know it is true?

Do you go to your chamber and hide yourself and think that no one thinks

of you, or when they do only with contempt?

My child, there is One that not only thinks of you, but who cannot get

on at all without you.

* * * * *

Are you alone in the world?

Have you sinned? have you a terrible secret within you which must out,

yet you dare not reveal it?

Have you a face so disfigured that no one will look straight in your

eyes?

Have you a mortal disease? do you feel the beating pulse of it in the

dead of the night? At midday when the passers by go to and fro in the

bright sunshine, do you feel the shadowy call of it to another world?

Are you tormented with inordinate clutching lusts which you dare not

speak? are you nearly mad with the sting of them, and nearly mad with

terror lest they should betray you?

My child, there is One who understands perfectly. There is nothing

betrayed, and there is nothing to betray.

* * * * *

It is all straightforward.

There is no fraction of your days, your body, your thoughts, your

passions, which has not deliberately and calmly been prepared—and which

shall not deliberately and calmly be removed again when it has played

its part.

There is no prejudice here, or weakness or self-righteousness, nor any

apartness at all;

You are included, and all that is done and felt by you is done and felt

at the same instant by not you;

Whatever you are and whatever you do, there is One who will and does

look you candidly in the face, and understands you.

* * * * *

You may recoil from that gaze; but if you learn to encounter and return

it (whether in one or many lifetimes) you will see that from it at

length all secret terrors, shams, disfigurements, death itself, vanish

away;

And you will not only not be alone in the world, but you will be a

sovereign lord over the world.

XXV

Apart from all evil—from all that seems to you evil—your Soul, my

friend, that towards which you aspire, which will become you one

day—your true Self—rides,

Above your phantasmal self continually.

* * * * *

Do not fear: it is there.

Through all the baffling and confusion, through all the seeming

haphazard and labyrinth darkness of life, it is there—overseeing;

quietly selecting, directing, ordaining. It is lord of all.

If there were chance, it were evil: but there is not. The soul surrounds

chance and takes it captive;

And all experience—what you call good and what you call evil, alike—it

takes and greedily absorbs, nor ever can have enough.

* * * * *

Are you not sometimes aware of your own body how it goes about, moving

hither and thither? are you not aware of it in the street among others,

exchanging greetings (and those who exchange the greetings absolutely

equal before you)?

Are you not aware of it at night, lying awake, perhaps in pain? Are you

not aware of it wandering over the hills at sunrise, or out at sea—in

the agonised white faces of the people on board—and the ship is

foundering?

Are you not aware of it North and South, East and West, by day and

night, in winter and summer, in childhood and in age, gathering,

culling, assimilating, without end, and with unerring instinct?

And You, all the time—YOU?

What?—Like some great Egyptian King-God, seated, marble, with wide eyes

looking out over the procession, chariots and horsemen, which creeps

past in his honour—over them to the plains and the winding river.

* * * * *

Do not fear; do not be discouraged by the tiny insolences of people. For

yourself be only careful that you are true.

The dreams of the dark-faced yearning swift-souled Egyptians, conceiving

into stone eternal types of calm passion, the dreams of Pheidias, the

dreams of the dreamers of all the earth falling passionate before the

visionary beauty of womanhood and manhood—Are true.

The dust, the wretched blur and distortion are but for a moment. They

are no more than they are. When you shall behold yourself in the clean

mirror of God you shall be wholly satisfied.

* * * * *

The body is a root of the soul. As the body in air, so the soul sustains

itself in love.

The medium in which the Knowledge of Yourself subsists is Equality. When

you have penetrated into that medium (as the young shoot penetrates into

the sunlight) you shall know that it is so—you shall realise

Yourself—but not till then.

* * * * *

Hereafter the face of Nature, the faces of the sea and the fields, the

faces of the animals—hereafter the faces of them that pass in the

street—are changed.

Nothing escapes, the line is cast over them all, they cannot choose but

yield themselves—to you, my friend—delivering the essence of their life

to you.

Hereafter certain things, all-important before, become indifferent;

certain thoughts with which you had tormented yourself torment you no

longer; the chains fall off. On the other hand the ways which were

forbidden and inaccessible become accessible—on all hands the doors

stand open to your touch.

XXVI

Wonderful! The doors that were closed stand open. Yet how slight a thing

it is.

The upturning of a palm? the curve of a lip, an eyelid? Nothing.

Nothing that can be seen with the mortal eye or heard by the ear,

nothing that can be definitely thought, spoken, or written in a book—

Yet the doors that were trebled-bolted and barred, and the doors

weed-overgrown and with rusty old hinges,

Fly open of themselves.

XXVII

Did you once desire to shine among your peers—or did you shrink from the

knowledge of your own defect in the midst of them?

Did you, friend, covet so to be more beautiful, witty, virtuous—to be

able to tell a story or sustain an argument well, or to be able to

discourse on any subject, or to be a skilful rider or a good shot?

Or shrank from the ridicule which the reverse of these excited—which was

certain and is still certain to come upon you?

Was it really your own anxious face you used to keep catching in the

glass? was it really you who had so many things, one way or another, you

wanted to conceal from others—so many opinions too to disguise?

* * * * *

All that is changed now.

But what if your prayers had been granted? What if you had become

exceptional and had secured for yourself a place with the strong and the

gifted and the beautiful?

What if when you arrived the eyes of all had been turned upon you; and

when you had passed by—one by one, sad, thoughtful, depressed, the weak

more conscious of his or her weakness, the stupid more conscious of

stupidity, the deformed more painfully conscious of his or her

deformity, to their solitary chambers they had gone apart and prayed

they had never been born?

What if you had taken advantage of the weak and defenceless and

oppressed of the whole Earth—and had bartered away belief in the Soul

standing omnipotent in the most despised things?

What if you had gladly disguised and covered your own defect, allowing

thus the ignorant ridicule of the world to fall more heavily on those

who could not or would not act a lie?

What if you had been a rank deserter, a cowardly slave, taking refuge

always with the stronger side?

Ah! what if to one weary traveler in the world, in the steep path

painfully mounting, you making it steeper still had added the final

stone of stumbling and despair?

Better to be effaced, crazy, criminal, deformed, degraded.

Better instead of the steep to be the most dull flat and commonplace

road.

Better to go clean underfoot of all weak and despised persons—so that

they shall not even notice that you are there;

None so rude and uneducated but you shall go underfoot of them, none so

criminal but you shall when the occasion serves go underfoot of them,

none so outcast but they shall pass along you and not even notice that

you are there.

XXVIII

The undistinguished old Earth! the dusty clods!

The mere brown handfuls crumbled through the fingers, out of which

proceed the trees and the grasses and the animals roaming through them,

and man with his vast-aspiring religions and civilisations.

The common and universal;

The servant girl tying up her hair before the broken mirror hung from a

nail in the wall; the daisy child-face looking at you from the side of

the path as you pass; the slow humor of old gaffers on the village seat

in the sun:

These contain you. With all your ambitions you cannot escape and go

beyond these. It is impossible.

The bride attiring herself in her white veil, the brilliant and admired

wit of the salons, the mathematician in his study, cannot go beyond

these,

Any more than the earth can go beyond and fly out of space. It is

impossible; it is unthinkable.

* * * * *

Far around and beyond whatever is exceptional and illustrious in human

life stretches that which is average and unperceived;

All distinctions, all attainments, all signal beauty, skill, wit, and

whatever a man can exhibit in himself, swim and are lost in that great

ocean.

The subtle learning of the learned, the beauty of the exceptionally

beautiful, the wit of the witty, the fine manners and customs of the

courtly—all these things proceed immediately out of the common and

undistinguished people and those who stand in direct contact with

Nature, and return into them again.

The course of all is the same; they are tossed up thinner and thinner,

into mere spray at last—like a wave from the breast of the Ocean—and

fall back again.

You try to set yourself apart from the vulgar. It is in vain. In that

instant vulgarity attaches itself to you.

If it did not, you would cease to exist.

XXIX

Gold is not finer than lead, nor lead than gold (every atom of each has

its own life movement intelligence, and ridicules epithets);

The stars are not more human to the soul than is the deep background of

Night behind them. And what would the shoal of merry leaping children

playing there in the sun be without the mother-love in which they swim

all the while as in an ocean?

To be Yourself, to have measureless Trust; to enjoy all, to possess

nothing.

That which you have, your skill, your strength, your knack of pleasant

thoughts—they belong to all. It is a fact, and the others looking on you

know it.

That which you have not, your scornful defects, your dumbnesses, your

aches and pains and silent hours of suffering, to understand that you

can give of them too, inexhaustible store—as the old brown earth gives

out of her heart, to men; and she knows it, but they do not know it.

* * * * *

To walk along the path which has an equal good on either hand; to give

the sign of equality;

To entertain no possible fear or doubt about the upshot of things—to be

Yourself, to have measureless Trust:

Perhaps that is best of all.

XXX

Curious how much—and the disentangling of self—depends upon Ideals!

Who is this, for instance, easy with open shirt, and brown neck and

face—the whites of his eyes just seen in the sultry twilight—through the

city garden swinging?

The fountain plashes cool in its basin, and mixes its murmur with the

sound of feet going to and fro upon graveled walks;

The massed foliage above catches the evening light, catches the rising

wind, and sways like the sea on a calm day; the voices of children are

heard—but who is this?

[Who anyhow is he that is simple and free and without afterthought? who

passes among his fellows without constraint and without encroachment,

without embarrassment and without grimaces, and does not act from

motives?

Who is ignorant or careless of what is termed politeness, who makes life

wherever he goes desirable, and removes stumbling-blocks instead of

creating them?]

* * * * *

Grave and strong and untamed,

This is the clear-browed unconstrained tender face, with full lips and

bearded chin, this is the regardless defiant face I love and trust;

Which I came out to see, and having seen do not forget.

* * * * *

And not I alone.

See! on the little public round the fountain scattered—on the seats

lounging, or walking to and fro—the strange effect!

The dressed-up man of the world eyes him curiously—and does not forget;

The pale student eyes him: he envies his healthy face and unembarrassed

manner;

The delicate lady sees him well, though she does not seem to; secretly

now she loathes her bejeweled lord and desires piteously the touch of

this man’s muscular lithe sun-embrowned body;

The common people salute him as their equal and call him by his name;

the children know him: they run after him and catch him by the hand.

Curious! how all the poetry, the formative life, of the scene—the

rushing scent of the lime trees, the evening light, the swaying of the

foliage, the rustle of feet below,

The yearning threads of the fine lady’s life—how the sympathy of the

little public by the fountain—all gathers round this figure.

There was a time when the sympathy and the ideals of men gathered round

other figures;

When the crowned king, or the priest in procession, or the knight

errant, or the man of letters in his study, were the imaginative forms

to which men clung;

But now before the easy homely garb and appearance of this man as he

swings past in the evening, all these others fade and grow dim. They

come back after all and cling to him.

And this is one of the slowly unfolded meanings of Democracy.

XXXI

The world travels on—and shall travel on.

A few centuries shall not exhaust the meanings of it. In you and me too,

inevitably, its meanings wait their unfolding.

No old laws, precedents, combinations of men or weapons, can retard it;

no new laws, schemes, combinations, discoveries, can hasten it; but only

the new births within the Soul, you and me.

Sacred for this is the Day and sacred is the Night, sacred are Life and

Death because, O wonderful, of this!

* * * * *

When Yes has once been pronounced in that region then the No of millions

is nothing at all; then fire, the stake, death, ridicule, and bitter

extermination, are of no avail whatever;

When the Ideal has once alighted, when it has looked forth from the

windows with ever so passing a glance upon the Earth, then we may go in

to supper, you and I, and take our ease—the rest will be seen to;

When a new desire has declared itself within the human heart, when a

fresh plexus is forming among the nerves—then the revolutions of nations

are already decided, and histories unwritten are written.

XXXII

I charge you, O traveler, that you disbelieve not—a voice comes in the

cool of the evening:

I charge you that in the secret unspoken word you disbelieve not,

sacred, and the first almighty Thing,

Moving among cities and over the open sea—advancing to deliverance in

us;

Night and day, youth and old age, willing and unwilling—advancing to

deliverance in us.

Dumb and of no account, her beauty now and then only (or at night when

no one is near) before the glass disrobing, trembling, lonely,

unresponded—yet mightier than all the array and splendor of the Earth—I

charge you that you do not disbelieve!

* * * * *

Outwards all proceeds: Brahma from himself sheds and shreds the

universes; I from myself, you from yourself.

To-day the slave goes first, in his chains, and the voiceless, and those

that are without arguments and always in the wrong;

And the prisoner with slouched head, and the suspected and insulted in

rags, and those whose hearts bleed silently because of what they see;

And the old forsaken mother, and the cast-aside woman, and the child,

and the favorless and the drunkard shall go first;

The mechanic to-day shall go before his master, the bricklayer shall be

saluted in the street before the architect, the navvy shall be accounted

more than the politician, and I will give the illiterate the advantage

of those that read and write.

The scouted and the exiled and the unheard-of, laborers in the fields

and in mines, quarrymen and limekilners and brickburners and makers and

cleaners of drains and household drudges, shall be nearest in honor: the

burdened of every day, and the sufferers, the over-worked and

hope-forlorn, and the concealers of sin and sorrow and despair, shall

head the procession.

And with them One (of whom I have spoken) moving unseen hither and

thither—side by side first with one and then with another—shall resume

and make all plain, shall be himself the beginning and ending of it all.

XXXIII

When He descends, when He comes to take dominion—

Do you think that anything else will do? do you think that he will

perhaps be put off by offers sufficiently liberal, and arguments?

Do you think that he will be deeply impressed by your grave How, how?

and It cannot be?—or that he will ascend into your high houses and take

his ease with you, and lounge smoking and looking wearily at the sky

till he forgets what he has come for?

Do you think he will pay great attention to your hat and boots, or to

what they write before or after your name, or to what they say of you

next door—or will ask what church you go to, or what conventicle or

schism-shop, or enquire into the soundness of your investments?

Do you think he will drive about with you in your carriages dispensing

charities like an Oriental prince—and occasionally even say a few words

to the coachman—or that it will be pretence or mere kindly patronage if

he prefers the coachman’s company to yours?

Do you think that perhaps he will be very bland and gentle, and never be

rude or coarsely dressed, and that he will be highly interested in what

you tell him, and that he won’t at a single look know all that ever you

did?

Do you suppose that he will not know which is the top and which is the

bottom of things, or that he will be impressed by your cleverness and

smart repartees, or that he will reckon you up by the number of books

you have read?

Do not deceive yourself—for it is yourself that you are trying to

deceive—not Him.

XXXIV

The magistrate sits on the bench, but he does not exercise judgment; the

doctor dispenses medicine but has heard no tidings of what health is;

the parson opens his mouth, but no intelligible sound comes forth; the

merchant distributes evils just the same as goods.

* * * * *

Do you suppose it is all for nothing that disbelief has gone out over

the world; that weariness has taken possession of the souls of the rich,

and that fatal darkness enfolds the head of wealth and education;

That men disbelieve in the human heart and think that the source of

power is set otherwhere than in its burning glowing depths: that the

powers which they worship are but so many withered emblems of power—dead

scoriæ nodding and jostling over the living lava-stream?

Do you suppose it is all for nothing that the eyes of brothers avoid in

the street, and none sees what is before him; that the heel is upon the

head, and Earth alone regards the faces of them that are oppressed—that

the stones in the wintry fields are become confidants, and the ground is

sown with compressed thought, like seeds?

[When yet there is peace over the world, as of the Sea swooning away

into its hollows; and differences are sullen like rocks at ebb-tide, and

brackish dismal mudflats lie between, and the sun stands motionless

overhead, and Contempt trickles malarious, and Avoidance and Negation

and Fear loom up against the sky, and men cling like rotting weeds about

their bases, and the soul stifles for the swingeing life of the waves

and the breath of the wind that blows from one end of the world to the

other.]

* * * * *

Do you suppose it means nothing that that which satisfied once satisfies

now no more (not till the whole round has been made), but unrest and

hunger are eating through men’s souls?

That a new need gone up is more than all precedent, and History shrivels

before the will, even if it be only of one man; that the pilgrimage has

begun, and men are leaving their long-loved homes by thousands—and the

tenderest-hearted are the first to sever the old ties?

That centuries of suffering have compressed thought and purpose into

one—till they are harder than rock; so that you shall remove mountains,

but you shall not remove the word which has gone forth?

That expediency and logic expostulate in vain, and man has become wholly

unreasonable, and is calm to drop utility into the bottomless pit; and

the wise cover their lights, but the fools flash theirs and are whirled

away—like fireflies in a thunderstorm?

* * * * *

Do you suppose it means nothing when the godlike Hand comes forth—the

awful hand, sacred with the kisses of the generations of men?

When the hand of Necessity comes forth from the cloud and covers dark

the faces of them who have never known it, turning them back from their

ruin—but stands in the clear sky, beckoning bright, like a pillar of

fire for weary fugitives?

When the awful vision moves across the sky, and the earth is electric

under it—and the grass stands stiffly, and the blue thistle in the hedge

is erect with meaning,

And men are amorous for the naked stinging touch of the world, and to

wrestle limb to limb with the wind and the waves;

When poverty and hardship smile for their espousal, and fierce endurance

is fused in one passion with love, and the glitter of concealment is

torn away, and the loins are compressed and the eyes aflame with lust,

Towards that which shall surely be born?

* * * * *

When Wealth is slowly and visibly putrefying and putrefying the old

order of things;

When the surface test is final—the rainbow-colored scum—and society

rotting down beneath it; a trick of clothing or speech, metallic chink

in the pocket, white skin, soft hands, fawning and lying

looks—everywhere the thrust of rejection, the bond of redemption

nowhere; the sacred gifts all violated stale and profaned—men and women

falling off from them listless, like satiated leeches;

When Labor is not loyal and true, nor the Laborers loyal and true to

each other; when a man has no pride in the creation of his hands, nor

rejoices to make it perfect; when machinery is perfectly organised and

human souls are hopelessly disorganised;

Do you think all these things mean nothing?

XXXV

Ah, England! Ah, beating beating heart!

No wonder you are weary! weary of talk!

Weary seeking amid the scramble, amid the scramble of words and the

scramble of wealth,

Amid the fashionable, the scientific, the artistic, the commercial, the

political, the learned and literary scramble—weary,

Seeking, seeking, seeking for a God!

* * * * *

As it ever was and will be—

As a thief in the night, silently and where you least expect,

Unlearned perhaps, without words, without arguments, without influential

friends or money—leaning on himself alone—

Without accomplishments and graces, without any liniments for your old

doubts, or recipes for constructing new theological or philosophical

systems—

With just the whole look of himself in his eyes—

The Son of Man shall—yes, shall—appear in your midst. O beating heart,

your lover and your judge shall appear.

* * * * *

He will not bring a new revelation; he will not at first make any reply

to the eager questions about death and immortality; he will present no

stainless perfection;

But he will do better: he will present something absolute, primal—the

living rock—something necessary and at first hand, and men will cling to

him therefor;

He will restore the true balance; he will not condemn, but he will be

absolute in himself;

He will be the terrible judge to whom every one will run;

He will be the lover and the judge in one.

* * * * *

The Son of Man—

Ponder well these words.

After all I cannot explain them: it is impossible to explain that which

is itself initial and elementary.

You will look a thousand times before you see that which you are looking

for—it is so simple—

Not science, O beating heart, nor theology, nor rappings, nor

philanthropy, nor high acrobatic philosophy,

But the Son—and so equally the Daughter—of Man.

XXXVI

I hear the sound of the whetting of scythes.

The beautiful grass stands tall in the meadows, mixed with sorrel and

buttercups; the steamships move on across the sea, leaving trails of

distant smoke. I see the tall white cliffs of Albion.

I smell the smell of the newmown grass, the waft of the thought of

Death; the white fleeces of the clouds move on in the everlasting blue,

with the dashing and the spray of waves below.

It comes and recedes again, and comes nearer—out of the waves and the

tall white cliffs and the clouds and the grass.

XXXVII

The towers of Westminster stand up by the river, and, within, the

supposed rulers contend and argue, but they hear nothing. It comes to

them last.

The long lines of princely mansions stretch through Belgravia and

Kensington—closelipped, deaf, plaguestricken.

Lines of carriages crowd the Park; tier above tier at the Opera are

faces and flowers; there are clubs and literary cliques and

entertainments, but of the voice of human joy, native once more in the

world, there is scarcely a note.

Over all the towns and villages of the land the fingers of the spires

point dumb to the driving clouds.

York Minster stands up like a watchtower in the rising sun, and from the

midst of its Roman walls looks out over leagues of meadows and

cornfields; Salisbury stands up, and Ely lonesome among its old-world

fens; but they report nothing seen.

From the Hoe at Plymouth the promenade loafers look down upon the decks

of passing vessels; the line of the breakwater stretches, and the wild

sea beyond;

The convicts, thousands, motionless-faced, in yellow-dressed gangs dot

the thinly-grassed rocks and fortress walls of the Isle of Portland.

Victoria, the Queen, peers from the high windows of Osborne back upon

Portsmouth crowded with shipping, and the grass downs of the Island that

lies behind it.

The mail-steamers go to and fro, of Dover and Folkestone, the passengers

arrive from the Continent, idlers are watching the arrivals, and police

officers in disguise—but they report nothing;

Winchelsea and Rye stand forgotten by the water, on rocks beaten now

only by the waving meadows; the old martello towers dot the long low

shores.

Down the Thames with the tide the great vessels come swinging; St.

Paul’s looks out upon them, white, in far glimpses over the great city;

the sea-gulls dip and hover where the waters meet. The cutters of

Yarmouth leave the river and make between the long sands for the open

sea and the banks.

XXXVIII

England spreads like a map below me. I see the mud-flats of the Wash

striped with water at low tide, the embankments grown with mugwort and

sea-asters, and Boston Stump and King’s Lynn, and the squaresail brigs

in the offing.

Beachy Head stands up beautiful, with white walls and pinnacles, from

its slopes of yellow poppy and bugloss; the sea below creeps with a grey

fog, the vessels pass and are folded out of sight within it. I hear

their foghorns sounding.

Flamborough Head stands up, dividing the waves. Up its steep gullies the

fishermen haul their boats; in its caves the waters make perpetual

music.

I see the rockbound coast of Anglesey with projecting ribs of wrecks;

the hills of Wicklow are faintly outlined across the water. I ascend the

mountains of Wales; the tarns and streams lie silver below me, the

valleys are dark. Moel Siabod stands up beautiful, and Trifan and Cader

Idris in the morning air.

I descend the Wye, and pass through the ancient streets of Monmouth and

of Bristol. I thread the feathery birch-haunted coombs of Somerset.

I ascend the high points of the Cotswolds, and look out over the rich

vale of Gloucester to the Malvern hills, and see the old city clustering

round its Church, and the broad waters of the Severn, and the distant

towers of Berkeley Castle.

* * * * *

The river-streams run on below me. The broad deep-bosomed Trent through

rich meadows full of cattle, under tall shady trees runs on. I trace it

to its birthplace in the hills. I see the Derbyshire Derwent darting in

trout-haunted shallows over its stones. I taste and bathe in the clear

brown moor-fed water.

I see the sweet-breathed cottage homes and homesteads dotted for miles

and miles and miles. It comes near to them. I enter the wheelwright’s

cottage by the angle of the river. The door stands open against the

water, and catches its changing syllables all day long; roses twine, and

the smell of the woodyard comes in wafts.

The Castle rock of Nottingham stands up bold over the Trent valley, the

tall flagstaff waves its flag, the old market-place is full of town and

country folk. The river goes on broadening seaward. I see where it runs

beneath the great iron swing-bridges of railroads, there are canals

connecting with it, and the sails of the canal-boats gliding on a level

with the meadows.

The great sad colorless flood of the Humber stretches before me, the

low-lying banks, the fog, the solitary vessels, the brackish marshes and

the water-birds; Hull stretches with its docks, vessels are

unlading—bags of shell-fish, cargoes of oranges, timber, fish; I see the

flat lands beyond Hull, and the enormous flights of pewits.

The Thames runs down—with the sound of many voices. I hear the sound of

the saw-mills and flour-mills of the Cotswolds, I can see racing boats

and hear the shouts of partisans, villages bask in the sun below me;

Sonning and Maidenhead; anglers and artists are hid in nooks among tall

willow-herbs; I glide with tub and outrigger past flower-gardens,

meadows, parks; parties of laughing girls handle the oars and tiller

ropes; Teddington, Twickenham, Richmond, Brentford glide past; I hear

the songs, I hear Elizabethan echoes; I come within sound of the roar of

London.

I see the woodland and rocky banks of the Tavy and the Tamar, and of the

arrowy Dart. The Yorkshire Ouse winds sluggish below me; afar off I

catch the Sussex Ouse and the Arun, breaking seaward through their gaps

in the Downs; I look down from the Cheshire moors upon the Dee.

In their pride the beautiful cities of England stand up before me; from

the midst of her antique elms and lilac and laburnum haunted gardens the

grey gateways and towers of Cambridge stand up; ivy-grown Warwick peeps

out of thick foliage; I see Canterbury and Winchester and Chester, and

Worcester proud by her river-side, and the ancient castles—York and

Lancaster looking out seaward, and Carlisle; I see the glistening of

carriage wheels and the sumptuous shine of miles of sea frontage at

Brighton and Hastings and Scarborough; Clifton climbs to her heights

over the Avon; the ruins of Whitby Abbey are crusted with spray.

I hear the ring of hammers in the ship-yards of Chatham and Portsmouth

and Keyham, and look down upon wildernesses of masts and dock-basins. I

see the observatory at Greenwich and catch the pulses of star-taken time

spreading in waves over the land. I see the delicate spider-web of the

telegraphs, and the rush of the traffic of the great main lines, North,

West, and South. I see the solid flow of business men northward across

London Bridge in the morning, and the ebb at evening. I see the eternal

systole and diastole of exports and imports through the United Kingdom,

and the armies of those who assist in the processes of secretion and

assimilation—and the great markets.