galleries—Chatsworth, Hardwicke, Arundel; and the numberless old Abbeys.
I walk through the tall-windowed hospitals and asylums of the great
cities and hear chants caught up and wandering from ward to ward.
I see all over the land the beautiful centuries-grown villages and
farmhouses nestling down among their trees; the dear old lanes and
footpaths and the great clean highways connecting; the fields, every one
to the people known by its own name, and hedgerows and little straggling
copses, and village greens; I see the great sweeps of country, the rich
wealds of Sussex and Kent, the orchards and deep lanes of Devon, the
willow-haunted flats of Huntingdon, Cambridge and South Lincolnshire;
Sherwood Forest and the New Forest, and the light pastures of the North
and South Downs; the South and Midland and Eastern agricultural
districts, the wild moorlands of the North and West, and the
intermediate districts of coal and iron.
The oval-shaped manufacturing heart of England lies below me; at night
the clouds flicker in the lurid glare; I hear the sob and gasp of pumps
and the solid beat of steam and tilt-hammers; I see streams of pale
lilac and saffron-tinted fire. I see the swarthy Vulcan-reeking towns,
the belching chimneys, the slums, the liquor-shops, chapels, dancing
saloons, running grounds, and blameless remote villa residences.
I see the huge warehouses of Manchester, the many-storied mills, the
machinery, the great bale-laden drays, the magnificent horses; I walk
through the Liverpool Exchange; the brokers stand in knots; the
greetings, the frock-coats, the rosebuds; the handling and comparing of
cotton samples.
Leeds lies below me; I hear the great bell; I see the rush along Boar
Lane and Briggate. I enter the hot machine shops, smelling of oil and
wooldust. I see Sheffield among her hills, and the white dashing of her
many water-wheels, and the sulphurous black cloud going up to heaven in
her midst.
Newcastle I recognise, and her lofty bridge; and I look out over the
river gates of the Mersey.
XXXIX
I see a great land poised as in a dream—waiting for the word by which it
may live again.
I see the stretched sleeping figure—waiting for the kiss and the
re-awakening.
I hear the bells pealing, and the crash of hammers, and see beautiful
parks spread—as in toy show.
* * * * *
I see a great land waiting for its own people to come and take
possession of it.
XL
The clouds fly overhead still, and the waves curdle in the blue beneath;
the smell of the newmown grass comes, and the tall white cliffs stand
up.
All depends upon a Word spoken.
Do you think perhaps that there is no answer? do you think that the high
lighthouses looking out over the water, the sea itself careering beyond
them, that the ploughed lands, and the rocks that are hewn into great
cities, are indifferent to who own, to who trespass upon them? that they
are dumb, dead, and of no account?
Do you think that they have nothing to say to all this, that they will
not deliver themselves upon whom they choose, that they have it not in
their power to bless and to curse, ah! that they cannot repay love a
hundredfold?
Do you not know that the streets, houses, public buildings of the city
where you live, have tongues, arms, eyes? that they are on the watch?
that the trees and streams around you are alive with answers, and that
the common clay knows the tread of its true owner?
Do you think that England or any land will rise into life, will display
her surpassing beauty, will pour out her love, to the touch of false
owners—to people who finger banknotes, who make traffic, buying and
selling her, who own by force of titledeeds, laws, police—who yet deny
her, turning their backs upon her winds and her waves, and ashamed to
touch her soil with their hands?
Do you think that she will arise to the call of these? O do you not know
how she yearns for the mastery of her true owners, how she leans herself
backward, displaying her charms, inviting—breathing courage even into
faint souls to know their manhood—to come upon her boldly, to let none
stand between?
O know well that it shall be. That the land they dwell on, that the
Earth, for whatsoever people is worthy, shall become impossible to be
separated from them—even in thought.
* * * * *
Of those who are truly the People, they are jealous of their land; the
woods and the fields and the open sea are covered with their
love—inseparable from life.
Every hedgerow, every old lumb and coppice, the nature of the soils in
every field and part of a field, the suffs, the bedrock, pastures,
ploughlands and fallows; the quarries and places of the best stone for
roadmending, building, walling, roofing, draining; the best stuff for
mending footpaths; the best water for miles round, and the taste and
quality of the various wells and springs; the clays for puddling and for
brickburning, the basseting out and dips of the beds; the cattle and
livestock up and down, their various breeds, treatment and condition;
the moors, forests, streams, rivers, seacoasts, familiar by sunlight,
moonlight, starlight, and on dark nights—every nook and corner of them;
the old trees and their histories, the waterside trees, and where
pheasants frequently roost, and the places for netting rabbits and
hares, or for spearing trout by lantern-light; or where the crab-apple
and cluster-berry and mountain-flax and agrimony grow;
The haunts of the wild duck and snipe, the decoy of the corncrake, the
nests of the storm-cock and the water-hen and the pewit; the legends
told of old hollows and caves and crags; the bold and beautiful
headlands, the taste of the air upon them; the old streets in the towns,
and their histories, and the histories of the houses in them, and of
those who lived in the houses; the old villages and their traditions,
customs, specialties, notorious characters, feasts and frolics;
The knowledge of the arts of sea and river fishing, oyster and scallop
dredging, the trawl, the seine and the drift-net, farming,
fruit-growing, timbergrowing pilling and dressing, canal-making,
sea-walling, ship-building, irrigation; the great crafts in stone, wood,
iron—of the mason’s, the smith’s, the joiner’s, the tool-maker’s work;
of the clean use of tools, of all faithful and perfect work, and the joy
and majesty that comes of it—
Everything that the land has—calls an answer in the breasts of the
people, and quickly grows love for the use of those that live on it.
Without this love no People can exist; this is the creation nourishment
and defence of Nations. It is this that shall save England (as it has
saved Ireland); which ultimately—of the very Earth—shall become the
nurse of Humanity.
* * * * *
Between a great people and the earth springs a passionate attachment,
lifelong—and the earth loves indeed her children, broad-breasted,
broad-browed, and talks with them night and day, storm and sunshine,
summer and winter alike.
[Here indeed is the key to the whole secret of education.]
Owners and occupiers then fall into their places; the trees wave proud
and free upon the headlands; the little brooks run with a wonderful new
music under the brambles and the grass.
[Determined—is the word henceforth—to worship nothing, no ownership,
which is unreal; no title-deeds, money-smells, respectabilities,
authorities;
To be arrogant, unpersuadable, faithful, free—not unworthy of the trees
waving upon the high tops and of the earth rolling through the starlit
night.]
Government and laws and police then fall into their places—the earth
gives her own laws; Democracy just begins to open her eyes and peep! and
the rabble of unfaithful bishops, priests, generals, landlords,
capitalists, lawyers, kings, queens, patronisers and polite idlers goes
scuttling down into general oblivion.
Faithfulness emerges, self-reliance, self-help, passionate comradeship.
* * * * *
Freedom emerges, the love of the land—the broad waters, the air, the
undulating fields, the flow of cities and the people therein, their
faces and the looks of them no less than the rush of the tides and the
slow hardy growth of the oak and the tender herbage of spring and stiff
clay and storms and transparent air.
* * * * *
All depends upon a word spoken or unspoken.
The clouds fly overhead still, and the smell of the new-mown grass is
wafted by. It comes and recedes again.
I hear the awful syllable Change, and see all things, qualities,
impersonations, gliding from the embraces of their own names; but I hear
beyond;
I hear beyond the sound of the hone and strickle, and look in the eyes
of the Mower, under the shade of his broad straw hat.
* * * * *
It comes and recedes again, and comes nearer.
The little waves lip up against the great black ship as she glides down
river—
O sailor sitting on a plank over the side, beware!
The ship itself, the rigging, the tidal river, the docks, the wharves,
and long busy streets, and country beyond—the shows of life and death—
Who makes and who unmakes them?
* * * * *
I touch you lightly. I am the spray.
I touch you that you remember, and forget not who you are.
XLI
I look upon him who makes all things.
I sit at his feet in silence as he lights his pipe, and feel the
careless resting of his fingers upon my neck.
I see the fire leaping in the grate; I see the nodding of grasses and
blackberry sprays in the hedges; I hear the long surge and hush of the
wind;
I hear his voice speaking to me.
* * * * *
O rivers and hills of Albion, O clouds that sail from the Atlantic to
the North Sea, and wrinkled old Abbeys and modern towers and streets of
heavily laden drays,
Behind your masks I am aware of an imperceptible change: surely it must
be the appearance of a Face.
XLII
The word travels on.
I have been on tramp, and my boots are dusty and hobnailed, and my
clothes are torn: do not ask me into your house; (God knows; I might
spoon my food with a knife!)
Give me a penny on the doorstep and let me pass on. I have sat with you
long, and loved you well, unknown to you, but now I go otherwhere.
XLIII
The word travels on.
Out of the mists of time, out of innumerable births, of endless
journeys, transfigurements, lives, deaths, sorrows, emerging, my voice
sounds to myself, to you, nearer than all thought: tentatively trying
the first notes, wonderingly at its beauty, of the Song—strange word!—of
Joy.
To spread abroad over the earth, to be realised in time: Freedom to be
realised in time, for which the whole of History has been a struggle and
a preparation:
The dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.
* * * * *
[O Blessed is he that has passed away!
Blessed, alive or dead, whom the bitter taunts of existence reach
not—nor betrayals protruded from dear faces, nor weariness nor cold nor
pain—dwelling in heaven, and looking forth in peace upon the world.
Blessed, thrice blessed, by day, by night! Blessed who sleeps with him,
blessed who eats walks talks, blessed who labors in the field beside
him; blessed whoever, though he be dead, shall know him to be eternally
near.]
* * * * *
I am the poet of hitherto unuttered joy.
A little bird told me the secret in the night, and henceforth I go about
seeking to whom to whisper it.
I see the heavens laughing, I discern the half-hidden faces of the gods
wherever I go, I see the transparent-opaque veil in which they hide
themselves; yet I dare not say what I see—lest I should be locked up!
Children go with me, and rude people are my companions. I trust them and
they me. Day and night we are together and are content.
To them what I would say is near; yet is it in nothing that can be
named, or in the giving or taking of any one thing; but rather in all
things.
Laughter, O laughter! O endless journey! O soul exhaled through
suffering, arising free! Little bird petrel through the stormy seas
diving darting—thy boundless home—O clouds and sunshine shattering! Elf
in thine own dark eyes gazing! O beckoner of companions, hastening
onward—winged spirit divine, girt round with laughter, laughter,
laughter.
XLIV
I am come to be the interpreter of yourself to yourself;
[Do I not stand behind the sun and moon, do I not wait behind the air
that you breathe, for this!]
Born beyond Maya I now descend into materials.
* * * * *
The dandelion by the path, and the pink buds of the sycamore, and the
face of the sweep who comes to sweep your chimney, shall henceforth have
a new meaning to you, (how do you know that I am not the chimney-sweep?)
The nettles growing against the gate post, and the dry log on the grass
where you stop and sit, the faithful tool that is in your hand and the
sweat on your forehead, the sound of the dear old village band across
far fields—
These shall be for memorials between us, and I in them will surely draw
towards you.
* * * * *
And to you, when I am dead, they shall deliver the words which still I
had not sense and courage to speak. Hear them.
Where I was not faithful these shall be faithful to you; where I was
vain and silly these shall look you clear of all vanity and silliness;
where I was afraid to utter my thoughts dumb things shall utter for you
words impossible to be misunderstood.
The sun shall shine, the clouds draw across the sky, the fire leap in
the grate, the kettle boil—to purposes which you cannot fathom; the
simplest shall look you in the face to meanings ever profounder and
profounder than all Thought.
Behind them, behind the woven veil—accepting, not rejecting, my own
vanities, cowardices, giving them also their due place—I too wait in
silence, till the full-armed shall come to give me birth again.
XLV
In silence I wait and accept all—the glare of misapprehension I accept—I
sit at the fashionable dinner-table and accept what is brought to me.
I am a painter on the house-side, the sight of the distant landscape
pleases me, and the scraps of conversation caught from the street below.
My back aches singling turnips through the long hot day; my fingers
freeze getting potatoes.
I help the farmer drive his scared cattle home at midnight by the fitful
flicker of lightning. I go mowing at early morning while the twilight
creeps in the North East—I sleep in the hot hours—and mow again on into
the night.
I am a seeing unseen atom traveling with others through space or
remaining centuries in one place; again I resume a body and disclose
myself.
I am one of the people who spend their lives sitting on their haunches
in drawing-rooms and studies; I grow gradually feebler and fretfuler. I
am a boy once more in tall hat and gloves walking wearily among crowds
of well-dressed (hopelessly well-dressed) people, up and down a certain
promenade.
I enter the young prostitute’s chamber, where he is arranging the
photographs of fashionable beauties and favorite companions, and stay
with him; we are at ease and understand each other.
I dance at the village feast in the upper room of a public; my partner
shows me the steps and figures. The elderly harper, so noble and
dignified, accompanies his son’s fiddle—or goes round to collect the
pence—but all the while his thoughts are with his only daughter in
Australia.
The wheel turns, but whatever it brings uppermost is well.
XLVI
I lie abed in illness, and experience strange extensions of spirit. I am
close to those afar off, and the present and near at hand are
discounted. I spend nights of pain and loneliness.
I dream of the beautiful life. I go down to the sea with fisher folk,
and spend chill nights on the great deep under the stars; the sun rises
on faces round me of freedom and experience. I see everywhere the old
simple occupations—the making and mending of nets, the growing of flax
and hemp, the tending of gardens, cattle—the old sweet excuses for
existence, their meaning now partly understood—the faith that grows in
the open air and out of all honest work till it surrounds and redeems
the soul.
The blacksmith blows up his fire; he listens for the sound of the great
heat. He taps the glowing iron in advance of the blows of the striker,
and turns it deftly with the tongs.
The budder of roses bends among the low bushes; with a quick motion he
flirts out the wood and binds the bud on the wild stock. The wire-weaver
stands at his loom, working the treadles with his foot and throwing the
shuttle with alternate hand.
The old coach-body maker stands at his bench, grey-haired, worn,
thoughtful—the young apprentice comes down whistling from the trimming
shop to ask him a question.
The sunlight streams in broad shafts through the chinks of the blinds
into the carpenter’s shop; with grizzled beard and hair, and something
of a stoop in his shoulders, the governor stands penciling out a fresh
job; a tall young fellow sits astride of a door-style, cutting a
mortise, and a dab of light on the floor sends a reflection up in his
arch-humored face.
The bathers in the late twilight, almost dark, advance naked under the
trees by the waterside, five or six together, superb, unashamed,
scarcely touching the ground.
The budding pens of love scorch all over me—my skin is too tight, I am
ready to burst through it—a flaming girdle is round my middle. Eyes,
hair, lips, hands, waist, thighs—O naked mad tremors; in the dark
feeding pasturing flames!
* * * * *
O soul, spreading, spreading—impalpable sunlight behind the sunlight!
The tall thin grey-bearded man I meet daily in the street—with lined
brow, silent, full of experience;
The stout matron in the greengrocer’s shop, loquacious, clear-eyed, with
clear indubitable voice;
The thick-thighed hot coarse-fleshed young bricklayer with the strap
round his waist;
The young printer (but he has a wife and family at home) with large
dreamy projecting eyes, going absent, miles away, over his work—thinking
of Swedenborg and the dance of atoms and angels;
The young woman at the refreshment bar, her thick light-colored hair,
her well-formed features, and the bored look in her eyes as she returns
the chaff of the carefully-dressed young man across the counter;
The military-looking official at the door of the hotel—the despondency
of drink which he conceals beneath his loud-voiced smart exterior;
The ragged boy with rare intense eyes not to be misunderstood—in the
midst of much dirt and ignorance the soul through suffering
enfranchised, exhaled—here too shining like the sunlight, redeeming
justifying all it lights on;
The slut of a girl who has become a mother, the ready doubt among her
neighbors who was the father; the stupid loving way in which she crams
the child to her breast—sitting on a stone by the fire-side utterly
oblivious of opinion;
The good-natured fair-haired Titan at work in the fields; the little
woman with large dark eyes who is so clever and managing among the poor,
and with their children;
The thin close-lipped friz-haired commercial traveler, unwearied,
walking long distances to save railway or coach fare, well posted in all
local information for fifty miles round;
His wife, so comfortable and fore-thoughtful at home, so evil-tongued
abroad, and the bevy of red-haired red-cheeked girls, well drilled in
scrubbing and cooking, and not without a veneer of accomplishments;
The railway lamp-foreman, tall, strong, fleet of foot, with gentle
voice—lover of the fields and flowers, going long walks Sundays or late
evenings by moonlight—sending the balance of his earnings to support his
aged father and mother;
The bright sunny girl-child with long beautiful hair (envied of the
other children) and poignant blossoming lips and eyes;
The girl in the tobacconist’s shop, her drooping lashes, her taper
fingers, and provocative inimitable composure—and all the time her
mother is incurably dying;
The hunch-backed cobbler, young, thwarted, thinking incessantly of
Jesus—praying night and day for the gift of preaching;
The drunken father reeling home in the rain across country—he has more
than a mile to go—singing, cursing, tumbling hands and knees in the
mire; his son following unbeknown at a little distance (he had been
watching a long time for his father outside the beershop); the late moon
rising on the strange scene, the hiccuped oaths of the old man through
the silence of the night.
XLVII
Lo! I touch you.
Softly yearningly I touch you, and pass on—dreaming the dream of the
soul’s slow disentanglement.
* * * * *
Sharp-cut, thin-lipped, sad, scholastic; plain-featured, unembarrassed,
affectionate; and you, beautiful careless boy! and you, strange eternal
anxious mother-face!
* * * * *
How shall I say what I have to say? How shall I speak the word which
sums up all words that are spoken? How shall I speak that for which the
moon and the stars and running waters and the universe itself subsist,
to speak it?—which if it could be uttered in a word there were no need
of all these things.
* * * * *
O Death, take me away.
Take me away, kindly Death; lead me forth, lead me through the entire
universe.
Let me pass; hold me back, I say, no longer; for I am tired, I am sick,
of talking—and I forebode other ways.
* * * * *
For I would be the dust;
And I would be the silver rays of the moon and the stars, and the
washing sound of the midnight sea;
And nourishing sweet air and running water, for the lips of them that I
choose;
To pass, to put on the invisible cap, to run round about the world,
unseen.
And I will be the plain ungarnished facts of life, with continual
nearnesses;
The train arriving at the station shall not be nearer or more solid; nor
the lifting and transporting of boxes and goods, nor the grasp of the
handles to them that open and shut the doors.
I will be the ground underfoot and the common clay;
The ploughman shall turn me up with his ploughshare among the roots of
the twitch in the sweet-smelling furrow;
The potter shall mould me, running his finger along my whirling edge (we
will be faithful to one another, he and I);
The bricklayer shall lay me: he shall tap me into place with the handle
of his trowel;
And to him I will utter the word which with my lips I have not spoken.
XLVIII
I arise and pass.
* * * * *
I am a spirit passing by, a light air on the hills saying unto you: In
death there is peace.
Out of all mortal suffering, out of the bruised and broken heart, out of
tears, tears—falling seen, falling inward and unseen—out of the
withering flame of desire, and out of all illusion,
My spirit exhaled—floats free—my brother and sister—for you—over the
world eternally.
[Joy, O joy!]
* * * * *
For you, too, beyond this visible—through the gates of mortal passion
and suffering—for the exhaled spirit,
For you, too, beyond this broken dream, this bitter waking in tears,
Something—how can I tell it?—which I have seen, which I might perhaps
give you: and yet which I cannot give you, but in me waits also for
you—O how long?
Something that I have promised. I give you the token. Faithfully when
you recognise and return it shall you have that you desire.
* * * * *
I am the light air on the hills—deny me not; my desire which was not
satisfied is satisfied, and yet can never be satisfied.
I pass and pass and pass.
From the hills I creep down into the great city—fresh and pervading
through all the streets I pass;
Him I touch, and her I touch, and you I touch—I can never be satisfied.
I who desired one give myself to all. I who would be the companion of
one become the companion of all companions.
The lowest and who knows me not, him I know best and love best;
The child of the suffering heart I take; my arms pass under his
shoulders and under the hollow of his thighs; his arm lies around my
neck, my lips yearn close to his—on my breast at length he slumbers
peacefully and long.
The blind and aged woman descends the steps leading to the basement of
the tall London house; the east wind blows bitter with dust along the
street; she feels along the wall, and for the door, and timidly knocks.
I cannot see who opens the door, but it is slammed immediately in her
face. I take her by the hand and speak words to her, and her sightless
eyes are as though they saw once more.
Once I walked the world of rocks and grass, of space and time, of
ambition and action, and could imagine no other—for I was in that one;
now I roam through other fields and have the freedom of worlds
innumerable, and am familiar where before was darkness and silence.
XLIX
I arise and pass.
* * * * *
In her tall-windowed sitting room—alone—
[The setting sun casts long shafts of light across the path and beneath
the trees where knee-deep in grass a milkwhite calf is browsing,]
In her tall-windowed sitting room, with its antique pierglasses and
profuse handsome ornaments—alone—
The old dowager sits.
Her silver-grey hair lies smooth under a lace cap; lace and silk are her
dress, her thin fingers are well stocked with rings.
Lonely is the great house; her old life and the voices of children have
long passed away. She goes to the window to pass the time and through
the glass looks out upon the still landscape; after a while she turns
and rings a bell—a tall young footman appears.
Her voice is quiet and gentle as she gives her order, and flexible still
with intelligence; very taking with their old-fashioned refinement are
her manners;
But in a moment what she requires is there, and she is alone
again—everything is done for her.
Into her chair once more she resigns herself, to knit an antimacassar.
* * * * *
Without, how peaceful the scene!
The crisp sound of browsing, the liquid blue-violet eyes of the white
calf, her budding horns, her sweet breath, her muscular tongue
encircling the tufts of grass, the impatient sideway thrust of the head
with which she tears them,
The fearlessness with which she gives her head to be caressed and hugged
by the little girl just come down from the farm.
* * * * *
The sun withdraws his rays; the many shadows are merged in one;
The sweet odor of the white campion comes floating, and of the wild
roses in neighboring hedgerows, and of the distant bean-fields;
Twilight comes, and dusk comes, and the height of the sky lifts and
lifts;
The last of the long daylight fades:
Over the fields and by the hedgerows and along the sprawling suburban
streets of London the last of the long daylight fades:
Over the roof of the high opera-house—late grey and ghostly in contrast
with the myriad twinkling lamps below—by those within unthought of, it
fades:
Where—amid a blaze of light and color, elate, to her full height drawn,
tier upon tier of faces, thousands of eyes confronting, and saturated
with the excitement of the moment, every vein in her beautiful body
bounding—
The prima donna lifts clear and unfaltering in the finale her splendid
voice,
And retires amid a storm of flowers.
* * * * *
The sower goes out to sow, alone in the morning, the early October
morning so beautiful and calm.
The flanks of the clods are creeping with thin vapor, and the little
copse alongside the field is full of white trailing veils of it;
While now like a flood the rising yellow sunlight pours in, among the
brambles and under the square oak-boughs, and splashes through in great
streaks of light over the ploughed land.
* * * * *
Beautiful is the morning. Alone over the field, to and fro, to and fro,
with ample alternate hand-sweep he goes. At every step, right and left,
the grain broadcast flies in a glittering shower.
With the Sun and the Earth for companions, with browned arms and face
and dazzle-lidded eyes, thick-booted, untiring, all day the sower goes
sowing—
What in due time shall become daily bread in the mouths of thousands.
* * * * *
The caravan has halted: it is the hour of prayer, the tents are already
pitched;
On his carpet the old Sheikh kneels upright—his arms and eyes uplifted;
above, the living blue breathless miracle bends—the sky!
The others are round him with their faces buried in the sand; the camels
are tethered a few paces off.
His voice ascends. By the doors of the tents from the scanty fires just
lighted three columns of smoke, perfectly straight, also ascend.
* * * * *
That is all. The smoke creeps upward and is lost continually in the
blue; his voice who prays creeps upward and is lost.
Around spreads, silent, with loose stones and a few weeds, the desert;
above, the sky.
The Sky!
L
I arise and pass.
After eighty years, having been once like the rest a little vacant-eyed
child in his mother’s arms; having thence lived and toiled and enjoyed
much hither and thither over the earth; Now being very weary, and day
after day and week after week growing more and more weary; all all old
interests refusing, for death longing—the old lawyer lies down to sleep.
It is but for an hour or two. Death comes not yet. The leaves still
tremble in the evening wind, the clouds in solemn transformation float
on, voices of children call in the garden below.
The last few miles, the old familiar country—the well-known roads and
garden-lands—yet no glance thereon.
The strange immortal instinct pressing—the veiled figure always in
front, beckoning.
* * * * *
Now at this time the creatures of the forest to their lairs retiring
await the approach of night; the great mountains stand in awe amid the
hush of their own waters; twilight fades and the stars once more appear.
Deep under dead leaves in the wood or buried in the earth, the baby fly,
white and unformed—the two dark specks which will be its eyes just
appearing—in its oakspangle cradle sleeps. With their mother plaited in
a ball of dry grass, warm and soft, the young fieldmice lie quiet, or
chirrup nosing for their food. The pools of water are full of creatures
that cannot rest; to the starlit surface rising they spread wings and
fly forth into the fields of air. In heaven whirled by resistless
tradition and necessity descending from God knows when, Jupiter the
great planet swims—and swathes itself wondrous in clouds—prophetic.
Heaven bends above, the Earth opens disclosing innumerable births
beneath. He lies weary, slumbering for a moment. The pen, the desk, the
half-finished letter, are there; the gas makes a slight singing noise
overhead.
* * * * *
Solid walls and stones grow transparent and penetrable: the earth and
all that is in it fade and recede to make way for the Traveler.
LI
I arise and pass.
* * * * *
An unfinished house standing at the edge of a field is burning—and the
roof has caught first.
One vast sheet of flame ascends spiral in the night, and casts its glare
upon thousands of faces in the street and fields below.
* * * * *
Lo! the wonderful colors of the flame! The pitchy night above; the
dazzling white and red mixed with the greens and blue-greens of the
burning metals; and the great twisted column of tawny smoke, with red
sparkles flying on the wind.
Lo! the strange light cast upon the wall of full-foliaged elms; and far
more wonderful than all, at their feet, the crowd of living faces—
The mad pushing sweating crowd, the flushed eager faces—dominated all,
controlled and riveted by that flaming sign.
* * * * *
Holy! holy! holy!
Night and flame, night and flame, entering in! entering (O arched wonder
of many eyes!) through the visible into the invisible—
* * * * *
Holy! holy! holy!
Night and flame entering in (and one with you, treading softly through
the myriad marvelous chambers)—
* * * * *
To dwell; to dwell for months, years; to transfuse, enlarge, to touch
with wonder, ardor, exultation; to be remembered afterwards, years and
years perhaps, upon his bed, by that child there: the jets of flame
through the roof, the strange wreathing smoke, the solemn dark of the
sky, the bravery of the firemen, the thrill of the falling timbers; to
mix with the yearnings of the growing lonely boy, to be a strange symbol
burning in his heart; to fire the slumbering train (in some compressed
girl-soul) of adventurous resolve; to mingle with the fears of
motherhood;
At last to merge and become indistinguishable—in each one of these to
merge, night and flame!—leaving out not one.
* * * * *
Holy! holy! holy!
And lo! the crowd still standing.
* * * * *
And now out of all two alone.
By the curbstone, in the forefront of the crowd, a man—a navvy—with his
hands clasped in front of him on the breast of his little son!
The boy, timid, standing between his father’s feet, pressing back
against his legs, with his own little hands the great hands clasping;
The two, equal childlike, with parallel upward eyes by the flame
riveted,
Their rapt unconscious demeanor, the strong likeness between them,
And the meanings, apart, which the wonderful roaring gesticulating flame
in the night signifies secretly to each.
LII
I arise and pass.
* * * * *
With struggles and strange exhausting birth-leapings, with long
intervals of sleep,
[When it is all over, with long long sweet sleep;]
With the unwashed wet of birth, of love, still upon me;
With the clinging of the love of men and women, with the sweat of
night-long companions, with the bruised sweetness of love;
With sleep, sleep, with the wine of life and death, with kisses given
and received, with the reaching of arms round neck and shoulder, and the
answer of quiet eyes;
With nakedness unashamed, with divine comradeship, and laughter; with
the enclosing shadow of Death, far lost in daring outposts on the verge
of the Unknown; with soldiership and armor unremitted, exultant;
With childhood and the least trifle content; with eternal Nowness; with
perfected Carelessness; with night, day, rain, sun, winter, summer,
morning, evening, solitude, pain, pleasure, and the looking forth of
innumerable faces;
With Chastity and Ascendancy; with invulnerability and superhuman power;
with Unchastity and Effusion; with live clinging threads of love
reaching down to the remotest time;
With the endless journey begun; with trades by sea and land; simple
food, coarse clothing, common features; with the breath of the common
air, and the freemasonry of the old crafts all over the world;
Shaggy coat-shakings, revolts, rejections of accepted things, travels,
disappearances, re-appearances, swoonings away, oblivions; arising again
on earth, irresistible, to supreme mastery,
To Savagery and the wild woods, with unfettered step; to rocks and
hanging branches; to the dens of the animals, to wind and sun, blowing
shining through, and I through them, to evade and arise;
With joy over the world, Democracy, born again, into heaven, over the
mountain-peaks and the seas in the unfathomable air, screaming, with
shouts of joy, whirling the nations with her breath, into heaven arising
and passing,
I arise and pass—dreaming the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.
LIII
Where you are:
Where the firelight flickers about your room, and the wind moans in the
window, and the railway whistle over suburban roofs sounds hollow
through the night;
Where you sit alone, and your thoughts spread making a great space about
you;
Where you go forth at early morning with your bass of trusty tools, and
your shadow shoots long before you down the frosty sparkling road—where
you return at evening weary and out of humor with your life,
I dream the dream.
* * * * *
Where you open your eyes upon the world, and the beauty of it is upon
you like the touch of beloved fingers;
Where the still flame burns in your soul, hidden away from the lightest
breath of curious man; where the fire of consecration burns;
Yet the world closes in at last, and the lamp grows dim, and you lie
like one half dead—of the bitter wounds of the faces of men and the
taunts of existence;
I dream the dream: I dream the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.
* * * * *
Where you bend ankle-deep in mud all day in the rice plantations for a
few half-pence; and the sun sails on—slow, slow—over the steamy land;
Where you walk following the old employ, shepherding sheep in the sweet
crisp air of the high lands;
Where you stand pale and worn-eyed in the gloomy North amid the hot
smell of machinery and the wicked scream of wheels; where you stand
adjusting the threads, making the same answering movement of the hand
for the millionth time;
Where you lie wedged in under a coal seam, working by the light of a
tallow dip stuck in clay; or grind scythes all day, bending over, or
race your wheel with the racing steel;
Where you sit high up on the fragrant mountains of Ceylon, with a great
flood of moonlight at your feet, leaning your soul out from the verandah
to the slow lifting and floating of palm-fronds in the exquisite breeze;
and memories come trooping back upon you like the clouds of small yellow
butterflies that along your coasts—between the sand and the sea—beat
annually up against the wind;
Where you recline by your camp-fire in the African wild, watching the
moonlight dances of the natives—the fantastic leaps of the dancer, the
rhythmical hand-clapping of the spectators;
Where you drop down the river in the sun, past the dreaded mud-banks and
wildernesses of mangroves;
I dream the dream.
LIV
Where you sit in your armchair by the hearth, sleeping long and long;
where you wake to look back upon your life lying hushed below you—like
one who looks back from the summit of a mountain;
And the children that came to you in the morning have gone from you at
evening dusk,
And the lesson of unfulfilled longing is yours, and of the inflow of
immortality;
Where they go out over the earth, where the children of the universal
mother go; and the wind carries them over the sea, blowing them into all
lands; where they flow through the straits and narrows and over the
great oceans of the earth, dwelling for nights together among the white
leaping crests under the stars;
Where strange faces meet, under other-slanting suns, amid new scenes and
colors;
Where light encounters dark, and in their meeting glance lie new social
ideals and civilisations slumbering;
Where the mother of them all sits dreaming;
* * * * *
Where the young poet peers in by moonlight through the bars of the tomb
of Dante, and turns away with a silent prayer;
Where the artist with easel and palette sits swathed in coats upon a
hillside watching the untroubled dawn;
Where the old Hindu feeling the approach of death leaves his family and
retires to a hut in the jungle, there to spend his last days in prayer
and solitude;
Where royalty dwells lonely in spacious chambers, or moves along
corridors past scarlet-coated footmen;
Where young and old at eventide in the dreamy flicker of firelight sit
silent, or go away wandering in thought after the brother, the son, and
lover of their dreams, following quickly softly with each and kissing
the sacred footsteps through the dark;
Where the young mother prays for hours bending over the face of her
sleeping child; where the young man dreams all night of the face of his
new-found friend and the kisses of his lips;
Where the river glides down by night past the great city broadening to
the sea;
I dream the dream.
* * * * *
The wind blows up fresh and cold where the waves are slapping against
the jetty; red and green lights skim rapidly over the water;
The cold light of the half moon stands overhead, breaking its way
through combed fleece clouds, the horizon stretches misty white like the
edge of an ice-bound sea;
The moon pushes her way for a moment through the clouds, to look down
upon the stilled scene of human toil and suffering; the wind blows up
keen against those who still linger on the jetty;
Keenly it blows away over the waste sea, and wraps itself round a
thousand solitary watchers of the deep.
On the wind I ride,
And dream the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement;
LV
I have passed away and entered the gate of heaven. I am absolved from
all torment. All is well to me.
A tiny infant am I once more, leaning out from my mother’s arms as one
leans from a balcony. But the world hangs flat before me like a painted
curtain: the sun and the moon and men’s faces are all alike. This is my
dream. The sound of music comes calling to me, calling, calling.
Listening I lean forward with open mouth and far-distant gaze, and am
profoundly still. [Let who looks upon me see with his own eyes my dark
soul’s myriad re-awakening.]
I am a wild cat crouching at night in the angle of a bough. I am Arjuna
reasoning on the battle-field with Krishna—learning the lessons of
divine knowledge. I am a teacher scanning the faces of those who sit
opposite to me. All is well.
I labor all day in the drizzle with pick and shovel; the smell of fire I
strike from the rock pleases me; I return home tired and wet in the
early dusk to my tea.
I am one of a rustic party of actors; in the old farm-parlor we rehearse
our parts, with shouts of laughter. I go into the cowshed last thing at
night with my lantern to see that all is well.
I am a shepherd on the breezy hills; the wholesome aromatic odors of the
grass transfuse me; my sheep graze on and on through the noonday; I lie
in the sun and think and speak of little beside ewes and tups.
I stand in the chamber of Death and gaze upon the swathed larval
form—the solid world recedes around it; through the just open window
come the cries of hawkers and the creak of cart-wheels.
I laugh and chat with the other girls and women in the edge-tool
warehouse; I run home in the evening to my old mother and to prepare the
dinners for next day.
The din of the riveting shop goes on round me; I hate the bully
red-faced master coming on his rounds—with his insulting voice—and
answer him not: murderous thoughts haunt my mind.
I plot with others to murder the captain on board ship. I am satisfied
with the deed and experience no remorse. It is off the coast of China. I
go ashore afterwards and spend the night at a sing-song shop.
* * * * *
All is well. The least action as well as the greatest. The beautiful and
the deformed are alike beautiful. I am happy now and not to-morrow, and
am absolved from motives.
* * * * *
On the northern-most point of Australia, decent in my single
cowry-shell, I stand. The white man comes ashore in his boat from the
great ship, and gives me some old hoop-iron, and I give him a few wooden
lances in return.
I am a long-eyed Japanee. In the shadow of the sacred thicket I
lie—where the great seated image of Buddha (hollow within for a shrine)
breaks above me against the blue sky. The sharp shadows lie under his
sleepy lids and soft mouth smiling inwardly. I see on his forehead the
sacred spot, and from between his feet the emblematic lotus springing.
[All is well.]
In the shadow of the thicket I lie spreading my fevered limbs to the
cool breeze, bruising their unslaked passion against the stony earth—in
the cool shadow I lie and gaze at his face I know so well, and through
the immortal calm of it the spirit of the Holy One steals upon me; the
fever of life departs.
I stand near the door of my cottage, busy with the week’s washing,
thinking of my husband; in the doorway to and fro my baby swings in the
little seat he has made; petulant soft wafts of spring air steal in,
this warm February morning. I am very happy.
* * * * *
I am very happy. By the door of my own little house at last I stand
entranced. I look out upon the world and know not which way to go.
O world you have been very gentle to me! Strangely as to the dead your
beauty comes to me now. Little house where I have lived so long, I thank
you too: I know well that you are different from what you appear.
Disembodied I cry, I cry, over the earth—I shake the sleepers in their
tombs with unutterable joy:
O arise! O air and elements break forth into singing! Great sea washing
the shores of earth! O earth of countless tombs! the hour of your
disclosure is at hand; the bounds of mortality at length are past!
* * * * *
I arise and pass once more: I travel forth into all lands: nothing
detains me any longer. By the ever beautiful coast-line of human life,
in all climates and countries, wandering on, a stranger, unwearied, I
meet the old faces: I come never away from home.
I lift the latch of the cottage door, and the place I love is laid for
me for supper; I depart, yet never to depart again.
Laws and limitations fade, time and distance are no more, no bars can
hold me, no chamber shut me in: on those that bear me to the grave I
descend in peace.
The arched doors of the eyebrows of innumerable multitudes open around
me: new heavens I see, and the earth made new because of them.
* * * * *
I will stop here then. I will not leave the earth after all. I am
content and need go no farther.
* * * * *
And was this, O love, the cause of your so long aching?
That you might have the adit, that you might enter in at last and be at
rest?
LVI
Slowly on You, too, the meanings: the light-sparkles on water, tufts of
weed in winter—the least things—dandelion and groundsel.
Have you seen the wild bees’ nest in the field, the cells, the grubs,
the transparent white baby-bees, turning brown, hairy, the young bees
beginning to fly, raking the moss down over the disturbed cells? the
parasites?
Have you seen the face of your brother or sister? have you seen the
little robin hopping and peering under the bushes? have you seen the sun
rise, or set? I do not know—I do not think that I have.
When your unquiet brain has ceased to spin its cobwebs over the calm and
miraculous beauty of the world;
When the Air and the Sunlight shall have penetrated your body through
and through; and the Earth and Sea have become part of it;
When at last, like a sheath long concealing the swelling green shoot,
the love of learning and the regard for elaborate art, wit, manners,
dress, or anything rare or costly whatever, shall drop clean off from
you;
When your Body—for to this it must inevitably return—is become shining
and transparent before you in every part (however deformed);
Then (O blessed One!) these things also transparent possibly shall
surrender themselves—the least thing shall speak to you words of
deliverance.
* * * * *
The stones are anywhere and everywhere: the temple roof is the sky.
The materials are the kettle boiling on the fire, the bread in the oven,
the washing dolly, the axe, the gavelock—the product is God;
And the little kitchen where you live, the shelves, the pewter, the
nightly lamp, the fingers and faces of your children—a finished and
beautiful Transparency of your own Body.
LVII
I saw the cow give birth to her first-born calf; I saw the beautiful
helpless creature laid under her nose; I saw the calm woman who
sprinkled the young thing with meal and tended the exhausted mother.
I see the many women who manage cattle well, and gardens, and understand
the breeding of sheep;
I see the noble and natural women of all the Earth; I see their
well-formed feet and fearless ample stride, their supple strong frames,
and attitudes well-braced and beautiful;
On those that are with them long Love and Wisdom descend; everything
that is near them seems to be in its place; they do not pass by little
things nor are afraid of big things; but they love the open air and the
sight of the sky in the early morning.
Blessed of such women are the children: and blessed are they in
childbirth. The open air and the sun and the moon and the running
streams they love all the more passionately for the sake of that which
lies sleeping within them.
LVIII
Recurved and close lie the little feet and hands, close as in the
attitude of sleep folds the head, the little lips are hardly parted;
The living mother-flesh folds round in darkness, the mother’s life is an
unspoken prayer, her body a temple of the Holy One.
* * * * *
I am amazed and troubled, my child, she whispers—at the thought of you;
I hardly dare to speak of it, you are so sacred;
When I feel you leap I do not know myself any more—I am filled with
wonder and joy—Ah! if any injury should happen to you!
I will keep my body pure, very pure; the sweet air will I breathe and
pure water drink; I will stay out in the open, hours together, that my
flesh may become pure and fragrant for your sake;
Holy thoughts will I think; I will brood in the thought of mother-love.
I will fill myself with beauty: trees and running brooks shall be my
companions;
And I will pray that I may become transparent—that the sun may shine and
the moon, my beloved, upon you,
Even before you are born.
LIX
Out of Night and Nothingness a Body appears.
The threads of a thousand past ages run together in it; out of its loins
and the look of its eyes a thousand ages part their way into the future.
* * * * *
Eyes out of which I see, Ears through which I hear—formed in my mother’s
womb in silence;
Mother of mine, walking the earth no more (to me closer than ever), out
of all tears, suffusing light over the world, equal with God—for whose
sake Night and Day evermore are sacred;
Body, by which I ascend and know Myself—Mysteries of life and death
slowly parting and transforming around me:
O glad, not for one year or two but for how many thousands, I out of
deep and infinite Peace salute you.
* * * * *
The doctor does not give Health, but the winds of heaven;
Happiness does not proceed by chance, nor is got by supplication, but is
inevitable wherever the Master is.
Doubt parts aside. I hear grown and bearded men shouting in the woods
for joy, shouting singing with the birds; I hear the immense chorus over
all the world, of the Return to Joy.
* * * * *
Come, my friend, in the still autumn morning, while the sun is yet low
upon the hills, among the dead leaves come walk with me.
Those and the like of those that have been my companions are with You
also, and shall be to all time. I give you but a hint and a word of
commendation. I open a door outwards.
The gentle and stormy winds, the clouds sailing in heaven; the
plough-stilts, the boat-tiller; sitting at dinner with the winter sun
looking in at the open door, natural men and women (common as unquarried
rock) around you; love, granted or not granted; the companionship of the
dead;
The savage eternal peaks, the solitary signals—Walt Whitman, Jesus of
Nazareth, your own Self distantly deriding you—
These are always with you.
* * * * *
Have you doubted?—It is well. But now you shall forget your doubts.
Have you suffered?—It is good to suffer; but soon you shall suffer no
longer.
Have you looked at the sky and the earth and the long busy streets and
thought them dead of all poetry and beauty?—It is you have been ill,
nigh to death; but be at peace: life shall surely return to you.
I have seen your struggles, your long wakeful nights; I have sat by you.
I have heard the voice which calls you. Come with me. Here is Rest, here
is Peace I give you. A little while by the edge of this wood sitting, I
with You; then to depart; yet never to depart again.
Words unspoken, yet wafted over all lands, through all times, eternal;
no more mine than yours—I give them again to the wide embracing Air.
Haply a little breath for you to breathe—to enter, scarcely perceived,
into your body—a little time to dwell, transforming, within you.
Haply mementos, indications, broken halves of ancient changeless
Symbols, eternal possessions, treasures incorruptible,
Of Love which changes not—to be duly presented again—the broken halves
to be joined.
* * * * *
I a child sitting at your feet, content—the odor of dead leaves all
around; or walking with you, your comrade, through the night (often we
lean and touch each other’s lips as we go); or very old, and near and
dear to Death:
Are you sure you know me when you look upon me?
Behold a mystery!—these eyes, these lips, this hair, these loins—see you
me in them, you shall see me where they are not.
Long looking, the face of the world shall change—surely by the edge of
the little wood I will come and sit with you.
* * * * *
All riches promised, and far more, I give to you.
Have you used the Summer well, then the Winter shall be beautiful to
you. Have you made good use of Life, then Death shall be exceeding
glorious.
* * * * *
All this day we will go together; the sun shall circle overhead; our
shadows swing round us on the road; the winter sunshine shall float
wonderful promises to us from the hills; the evening see us in another
land;
The night ever insatiate of love we will sleep together, and rise early
and go forward again in the morning;
Wherever the road shall lead us, in solitary places or among the crowd,
it shall be well; we shall not desire to come to the end of the journey,
nor consider what the end may be: the end of all things shall be with
Us.
LX
This is my trade; teach me yours and I will teach you mine.
Are you a carpenter, a mason, a grower of herbs and flowers, a breaker
of horses? a wheel-wright, boat-builder, engine-tenter,
dockyard-laborer? do you take in washing or sewing, do you rock the
youngest in the cradle with your foot while you knit stockings for the
elder ones? It is well—Weaning yourself from external results learn the
true purposes of things.
Wherever the sea and the land are, is my trade, and it has been known
since the eldest Time: the ancient Mysteries and Oracles hinted at it,
the venerable sages of India knew it, and men and women who walked this
earth before all history; in the remotest stars it is exactly the same
as here, and in all the circles of intelligences whether they dwell in
fire or water or in the midst of what is solid, or in the thinnest
vacuum.
Many an old woman sitting by her cottage door is far more profoundly
versed in it than I am. Many a fisherman pouncing on crabs along the
shores of the Mediterranean has in it long ago served his
apprenticeship. If you think or desire by coming with me to know more or
be better than these, you mistake me and what I have to tell you.
Learning and superiority are of no use in the face of all this: they
depart much as they came. But to come near to understanding the use of
materials is divine, and he that has never despised a weaker or more
ignorant than himself is nearest to this.
Many are the roads, but there is one end to which they all lead; there
are many profitable trades, but there is one whose profits are past all
reckoning.
LXI
Hand in hand for an hour I sit with you in the Great Garden of Time
Equals We, possessors and enjoyers, ask no more than simply to be. This
hour, equal of all others that were or shall be, itself perfect: the
other hours as they come or go, perfect.
Meeting once, to meet often and often again (is not the whole garden
ours?), we shall not forget, we will not hasten or delay.
* * * * *
From this day it is not so much we that change, as the hours that glide
past us; each bends low as it passes with a gift.
Earth-kings on their thrones faintly fore-shadowed this; the old myths
and legends of heaven were the indistinct dreams of the everlasting
peace of the soul.
LXII
And you too, ye hours of suffering and warfare, grim unrest, we
confront, each perfect; we contain you; storms and darkness surging
around, we have seen round you.
Hours of pain and darkness within, evil conscience and heavy burdens of
concealment! hours of black and obstinate desire, eyes turning aswerve,
trembling guilty tongue—hungry mortal hours! caught in the cleave of
your jaws, I deny you not.
Far from it: I welcome you. You are my friends as good as any, I give
you equal places with the rest, if not better—for what indeed should I
understand if you had not taught me?
* * * * *
Each beautiful, countless myriads to be known,
Over the hills and green plains of Eternity pasturing, for ever
widening—mortal, immortal, swift-footed, slow-footed—O ye Hours and
Desires, you are all mine!
My herd, my beauties! my glossy, supple, with arched necks, my gentle
and caressing, my wild, fierce, passionate—divine, satanic—there is
room, and plenty, for you all!
O beautiful creatures! not because sometimes you show your teeth at each
other will I disown you; not if you should all turn upon one to rend
him, will I cast that one out—never so black or ungainly be he.
Avaunt! Over the hills with lightning speed fly, tossing your nostrils:
but know that I easily outspeed you all—you cannot delude or escape Me.
Wild herd! begetting and begetting innumerable progeny (all mine),
See if to my chariot at length harnessed I will not drive you,
irresistible and triumphant, through all the kingdoms of Space.
LXIII
Beautiful is the winter by the sea; the gray waves come rolling with
locks tossed back by the North wind.
In his hut on the beach the fisherman cooks his dinner; the clock that
belongs in the herring-boat ticks against the wall; the drift-nets are
mended; the boat is overhauled and repaired, the boat-lanterns and the
pump are painted.
Out on the great deep the balance and plunge goes on; the sail steadies
in the wind; the land and well-known points fade; the circle of water
completes itself.
* * * * *
Beautiful is the winter inland; the wind and wild clouds with rain rush
over the world; the valleys are full of the sound of streams.
The farmer cleans out his ditches and drains, and mends the foot-paths
across his fields; the turnip-pit is completed; and the apples and
potatos are picked over in the store-room.
The snow descends upon the young blade of corn; the soft-fingered flakes
wrap all the world in white; frost seals the earth in silence.
He stands by the door of the house-place at night; the moon leans out,
and the stars and the great planets from heaven; Orion hunts with his
dogs. In the morning the field-fares and starlings go by in flights.
* * * * *
Do I ask of you perfections? do you think that Winter is perhaps less
perfect than Summer? or that there is not perfection everywhere, where
the soul casts its light?
Be not careful about perfections: I declare to you the day shall come
when everything shall be perfect to you.
To be ungainly or deformed shall after all be no hindrance, your
ignorance and rags shall not avail for a disguise;
Past your own futility and vanity you shall walk unfettered, and just
gaze upon them as you go by; if learning and skill admit you to wonders,
ignorance and awkwardness shall give you entrances equally or more
desirable.
Take care (I have warned you before) how you touch these words: with
curious intellect come not near, lest I utterly destroy you; but come
with bold heart and true and careless, and they shall bless you beyond
imagination.
I do not turn you back from self-seeking; on the contrary I know that
you shall never rest till you have found your Self;
If you seek it in money, fame, and the idle gratification of inordinate
organs and bumps—that is all very well for a time; but you will have to
do better than that.
If you seek it in Duty, Goodness, Renunciation, they also are very well
for a time; but you will do better.
LXIV
Beautiful is the figure of the lusty full-grown groom on his superb
horse: the skin of the animal is saturated with love.
* * * * *
Radiant health!
O kisses of sun and wind, tall fir-trees and moss-covered rocks! O
boundless joy of Nature on the mountain tops—coming back at last to you!
Wild songs in sight of the sea, wild dances along the sands, glances of
the risen moon, echoes of old old refrains coming down from unimagined
times!
O rolling through the air superb prophetic spirit of Man, pulse of
divine health equalising the universe, vast over all the world expanding
spirit!
O joy of the liberated soul (finished purpose and acquittal of
civilisation), daring all things—light step, life held in the palm of
the hand! O swift and eager delight of battle, fierce passion of love
destroying and destroying the body!
Eternal and glorious War! Liberation! the soul like an eagle—from gaping
wounds and death—rushing forth screaming into its vast and eternal
heaven.
See! the divine mother goes forth with her babe (all creation circles
round)—God dwells once more in a woman’s womb; friend goes with friend,
flesh cleaves to flesh, the path that rounds the universe.
O every day sweet and delicious food! Kisses to the lips of
sweet-smelling fruit and bread, milk and green herbs. Strong well-knit
muscles, quick-healing glossy skin, body for kisses all over!
Radiant health! to breathe, O joy! to sleep, ah! never enough to be
expressed!
For the taste of fruit ripening warm in the sun, for the distant sight
of the deep liquid sea!
For the sight of the naked bodies of the bathers, bathing by the hot
sea-banks, the pleasant consciousness of those who are unashamed, the
glance of their eyes, the beautiful proud step of the human animal on
the sand;
For the touch of the air on my face or creeping over my unclothed body,
for the rustling sound of it in the trees, and the appearance of their
tall stems springing so lightly from the earth!
Joy, joy and thanks for ever.
LXV
For the face of the farm-lad who came and sat beside me, the handfuls of
pease that he offered me—for the taste of their juicy sweet pods;
The pressure of the Earth against me as I lay on it, the light sense
riding on it of tremendous forces charioting me onward; for the like
sense in my will and actions, of being borne along!
O the splendid wind careering over earth and ocean, the sun darting
between the great white clouds! O the lifting of arms to Nature—heaven
wrapped around one’s body!
The unflagging pleasure of food, the crisp and toothsome growths of the
soil! draughts of running water in summer;
The evenings by the fire in winter, the ease after labor, the steady
sleepy heat, the sleepy flicker on the wall, the presence of others in
the room; for the voices of children;
For the beautiful faces—and ever more beautiful appearing—of those I
meet in the doorway or at meals, the mortal father mother sister brother
faces;
For the glorified face of him I love: the long days out alone together
in the woods, the nights superb of comradeship and love.
O joy returning morn noon and night! day-long as in a dream walking over
earth enchanted, waking deep midnight out of sleep in the ocean of joy!
[Lo! the beautiful surface, the rippling of waves, the moon shining
down.]
Deep deep draughts of all that life can give, drawn in to feed the
flame—
Joy, joy and thanks for ever.
[O burning behind all worlds, immortal Essences, Flames of this
ever-consuming universe, never-consumed—to laugh and laugh with you, and
of our laughter
Shake forth creation!]
* * * * *
Wonderful! wave after wave; clouds, rain, wind, day and night;
The sea by night in storms, and the morning over the hills, for grief
and joy, for solitude and companionship; for the birth of babes and the
putting away of the husks of the feeble and aged in the ground;
For the great processions of the seasons over the Earth, and the dead
lying below; and the dead rising again in the pure translucent air to
begin a new existence, with unutterable joy bursting outwards from them
beyond all mortal bounds—
With shouts and pæans into the blue æther of God—
Joy, joy and thanks for ever.
* * * * *
And for the strange individual decree of each one,
The daily hunger and thirst after sympathy, ever-new, for the pleasant
putting-forth of affection, and for the excess—for prostrate unspeakable
love!
For the pleasant moods of the soul, for the finite masterly enjoyment of
the world; and for the painful moods, for the vicious agony and the vast
dark after-death of desire—for the transcendent pouring and pouring of
the soul out into other worlds!
For the tragic moments of life, and for the long same stretches of the
commonplace;
For the wonderful looming rise upon one of the great Arch of Death as
one approaches it, for the dim perception of the infinite stretches
beyond!
For the final deep abiding sense of rest—in Thee;
For the touch of Thyself growing continually out of everything more
actual, starlike, perfect;
And for all experience;
Joy, joy and thanks for ever.
LXVI
O the sound of trumpets, the wild clangor of wings! forging aloft into
the air! O Freedom for men!
Sounds of innumerable voices singing! Starry lamps twinkling to each
other across the huge concave of Time!
Dread Creators of the flying earth through space! Travelers yourselves
upon it! Fliers through all forms! Enduers of all disguises!
In your hut by the sea shore looking back upon the myriad constellations
whence you descended! In the eyes of her you love, in the faithful face
of your enemy in battle, aware at last of the drift of Creation!
O joy! joy! inextinguishable joy and laughter!
Lo! the Conscience, the tender green shoot in each one, growing,
arising, Ygdrasil casting its leaves, elements and nations, over the
universe!
Lo! the Moral laws so long swathing the soul, loosing, parting at last
for the liberation of that which they prepared.
Lo! Death in majesty appearing, tender and beautiful, walking on earth
the floor of heaven, through the night, through the long transparent
night singing singing—
In her arms the children of all creation, all creatures of the field and
the children of men, nursing,
In their ears singing low, singing soft, the song—the interpreting
song—that the darting sun sings, and the maiden by her window, the song
of the leaping waters and of love—
And of joy, of inconceivable joy, O ecstasy! thrilling every object of
thought.
LXVII
I hear the electric thunderbolt strike the earth. It shivers and it
staggers in its orbit.
Leap, children of men, arise! Set your faces dead as flint. For great is
the prize before you.
The hour has struck! the Masters appear! Back, O elements and destiny!
From this hour, War! ever more splendid and glorious War! the long
tradition of the Earth!
The flame of the Soul, burning through all materials!
* * * * *
Long the battle, clouds of dust hiding heaven. Earth trembles like a
startled horse.
They that fight descend, radiant with eternal lightnings. The gods blaze
forth upon each other.
The flags fly of all nations up and down. The long result of history,
and penetrating and preceding all history, completes itself.
Lo, Freedom! haughty, magnificent, moving like a dream before the
half-awakened eyes of men—never faithless to her, never at last one
faithless.
LXVIII
And so I heard a voice say What is Freedom?
* * * * *
I have heard (it said) the lions roaring in their dens; I have seen the
polyp stretching its arms upward from the floor of the deep;
I have heard the cries of slaves and the rattling of their chains, and
the hoarse shout of victims rising against their oppressors; I have seen
the deliverers dying calmly on the scaffold.
I have heard of the centuries-long struggle of nations for
constitutional liberty—the step-by-step slowly-won approaches as to some
inner and impregnable fastness;
I know the wars that have been waged, the flags flying to and fro over
the earth; I know that one tyranny has been substituted for another, and
that the forms of oppression have changed:
But what is Freedom?
* * * * *
Villeins and thralls become piece-men and day-tal men, and the bondsmen
of the land become the bondsmen of Machinery and Capital; the escaped
convicts of Labor fit admiringly the bracelets of Wealth round their own
wrists.
I have seen the slaves of Opinion and Fashion, of Ignorance and of
Learning, of Drink and Lust, of Chastity and Unchastity:
One skin cast leaves another behind, and that another, and that yet
another;
I have seen over the world the daily fear of Death and Hell, of Pain and
momentary overhanging Chance;
I have seen recluses craning their lives up into impossible heavens,
thinkers hopelessly meditating after philosophic Truth, incurables lying
covered with bed-sores, household drudges running from the hearth to the
slopstone and from the slopstone to the hearth all their lives;
Something of all these slaveries I know—they are very well in their way—
But what is Freedom?
* * * * *
And I heard (in the height) another voice say:
I AM.
In the recluse, the thinker, the incurable and the drudge, I AM. I am
the giver of Life, I am Happiness.
I am in the good and evil, in the fortunate and the unfortunate, in the
gifted and the incapable, alike; I am not one more than the other.
The lion roaring in its den, and the polyp on the floor of the deep, the
great deep itself, know ME.
The long advances of history, the lives of men and women —the men that
scratched the reindeer and mammoth on bits of bone, the Bushmen painting
their rude rock-paintings, the mud-hovels clustering round mediæval
castles, the wise and kindly Arab with his loving boy-attendants, the
Swiss mountain-herdsman, the Russian patriot, the English mechanic,
Know ME. I am Happiness in them, in all—underlying. I am the Master,
showing myself from time to time as occasion serves.
I am not nearer to one than the other; they do not seek me so much as I
advance through them.
* * * * *
Out of all would YOU emerge?
Would you at last, O child of mine, after many toils and endless warfare
(for without such all is in vain) emerge and become MY EQUAL?
[Wonderful, wonderful is this that I tell you! Would you too become a
Master—when you have seen and known all slaveries, and have ceased to
put one before the other?]
Would you, whom I have often silently been with, to whom in the early
morning I have come kissing you on the lips to leave Happiness for your
waking, whom I have taught long and long my own ways, even for
this—become my Equal? would you look me at last in the face?
* * * * *
It shall be then. The way is long but the centuries are long. Faint not.
Does my voice sound distant? Faint not.
Even now for a moment round your neck, advancing, I stretch my arms; to
my lips I draw you, I press upon your lips the seal of a covenant that
cannot be forgotten.
LXIX
I—who write—translate for you these thoughts: I wipe a mirror and place
it in your hands [look long, O friend, look long, satiate yourself]—
I bring you to your own, to take, or leave for a while, as pleases you
best. I have perfect faith in you.
And can wait: the whole of Time is before me.
LXX
The little red stars appear once more shining among the hazel catkins;
the pewit tumbles and cries as at the first day, the year begins again,
The wind blows east, the wind blows west, the old circle of days and
nights completes itself;
But henceforth the least thing shall speak to you words of deliverance;
the commonest shall please you best;
And the fall of a leaf through the air and the greeting of one that
passes on the road shall be more to you than the wisdom of all the books
ever written—and of this book.