AFTER CIVILISATION
_We are a menace to you, O civilisation!_
_We have seen you—we allow you—we bear with you for a time,_
_But beware! for in a moment and, when the hour comes, inevitably,_
_We shall arise and sweep you away!_
AFTER CIVILISATION
In the first soft winds of spring, while snow yet lay on the ground—
Forth from the city into the great woods wandering,
Into the great silent white woods where they waited in their beauty and
majesty
For man their companion to come:
There, in vision, out of the wreck of cities and civilisations,
I saw a new life arise.
* * * * *
Slowly out of the ruins of the past—like a young fern-frond uncurling
out of its own brown litter—
Out of the litter of a decaying society, out of the confused mass of
broken down creeds, customs, ideals,
Out of distrust and unbelief and dishonesty, and Fear, meanest of all
(the stronger in the panic trampling the weaker underfoot);
Out of miserable rows of brick tenements with their cheapjack interiors,
their glances of suspicion, and doors locked against each other;
Out of the polite residences of congested idleness; out of the aimless
life of wealth;
Out of the dirty workshops of evil work, evilly done;
Out of the wares which are no wares poured out upon the markets, and in
the shop-windows,
The fraudulent food, clothing, drink, literature;
Out of the cant of Commerce—buying cheap and selling dear—the crocodile
sympathy of nation with nation,
The smug merchant posing as a benefactor of his kind, the parasite
parsons and scientists;
The cant of Sex, the impure hush clouding the deepest instincts of boy
and girl, woman and man;
The despair and unbelief possessing all society—rich and poor, educated
and ignorant, the money-lender, the wage-slave, the artist and the
washerwoman alike;
All feeling the terrible pressure and tension of the modern problem:
Out of the litter and muck of a decaying world,
Lo! even so
I saw a new life arise.
* * * * *
The winter woods stretched all around so still!
Every bough laden with snow—the faint purple waters rushing on in the
hollows, with steam on the soft still air!
Far aloft the arrowy larch reached into the sky, the high air trembled
with the music of the loosened brooks.
O sound of waters, jubilant, pouring pouring—O hidden song in the
hollows!
Secret of the earth, swelling sobbing to divulge itself!
* * * * *
Slowly, building lifting itself up atom by atom,
Gathering itself together round a new centre—or rather round the
world-old centre once more revealed—
I saw a new life, a new society, arise.
Man I saw arising once more to dwell with Nature;
[The old old story—the prodigal son returning, so loved,
The long estrangement, the long entanglement in vain things]—
The child returning to its home, companion of the winter woods once
more,
Companion of the stars and waters, hearing their words at first hand
(more than all science ever taught),
The near contact, the dear dear mother so close, the twilight sky and
the young tree-tops against it;
The huts on the mountain-side, companionable of the sun and the winds,
the lake unsullied below;
The daily bath in natural running waters, or in the parallel foam-lines
of the sea, the pressure of the naked foot to the earth;
The few needs, the exhilarated radiant life—the food and population
question giving no more trouble;
[No hurry more, no striving one to override the other:
Each one doing the work before him to do, and taking his chance of the
reward,
Doubting no more of his reward than the hand doubts, or the foot, to
which the blood flows according to the use to which it is put;]
The plentiful common halls stored with the products of Art and History
and Science to supplement the simple household accommodations;
The sweet and necessary labor of the day;
All these I saw—for man the companion of Nature.
* * * * *
Civilisation behind him now—the wonderful stretch of the past;
Continents, empires, religions, wars, migrations—all gathered up in him;
The immense knowledge, the vast winged powers—to use or not to use—
He comparatively indifferent, passing on to other spheres of interest.
* * * * *
The calm which falls after long strife, the dignity of rest after toil;
Hercules, his twelve labors done, sitting as a god on the great slope of
Olympus,
Looking out over the Earth, on which he was once a mortal.
THE WORD DEMOCRACY
Underneath all now comes this Word, turning the edges of the other words
where they meet it.
Politics, art, science, commerce, religion, customs and methods of daily
life, the very outer shows and semblances of ordinary objects—
The rose in the garden, the axe hanging behind the door in the outhouse—
Their meanings must all now be absorbed and recast in this word, or else
fall off like dry husks before its disclosure.
* * * * *
Do you not see that your individual life is and can only be secured at
the cost of the continual sacrifice of other lives,
And that therefore you can only hold it on condition that you are ready
in your turn to sacrifice it for others?
The law of Indifference which must henceforth be plainly recognised and
acted upon.
* * * * *
Art can now no longer be separated from life;
The old canons fail; her tutelage completed she becomes equivalent to
Nature, and hangs her curtains continuous with the clouds and
waterfalls;
Science empties itself out of the books; all that the books have said
only falls like the faintest gauze before the reality—hardly concealing
a single blade of grass, or damaging the light of the tiniest star;
The form of man emerges in all objects, baffling the old classifications
and definitions;
[Beautiful the form of man emerges, the celestial ideal—
The feet pressing the ground, the supple strong ancles and wrists, the
cleave of the loins, the shoulders, and poised head aureoled by the
sun;]
The politician turns round upon himself—like the scientist he
acknowledges his brain baffled by the problems; he reaches his hand for
help to the hand of the People;
The commercial man turns round—the firm ground gives way beneath his
feet also; to give now seems better than to get—and what sort of a
trade-motto is that?
All the customs of society change, for all are significant; and the
long-accepted axioms of every day life are dislocated like a hill-side
in a landslip;
The old structures can no longer stand—their very foundations are
shifted—
And men run forth in terror from the old before they can yet find firm
ground for the new.
* * * * *
In all directions gulfs and yawning abysses,
The ground of society cracking, the fire showing through,
The old ties giving way beneath the strain, and the great pent heart
heaving as though it would break—
At the sound of the new word spoken—
At the sound of the word Democracy.
* * * * *
No volcano bursting up through peaceful pastures is a greater revolution
than this;
No vast mountain chain thrown out from ocean depths to form the
primitive streak of a new continent looks further down the future;
For this is lava springing out of the very heart of Man;
This is the upheaval of heaven-kissing summits whose streams shall feed
the farthest generations,
This is the draft and outline of a new creature,
The forming of the wings of Man beneath the outer husk—
The outspread pinions of Equality, whereon arising he shall at last lift
himself over the Earth and launch forth to sail through Heaven.
THE MEANING OF IT ALL
Ages and ages back,
Out of the long grass with infinite pain raising itself into the upright
position,
A creature—fore-runner of Man—with swift eyes glanced around.
* * * * *
So to-day once more,
With pain pain and suffering—driven by what strange instinct—who can
tell?
Out of the great jungle of Custom and supposed Necessity, into a new and
wonderful life, to new and wonderful knowledge,
Surpassing words, surpassing all past experience—the Man, the meaning of
it all,
Uprears himself again.
THESE POPULATIONS
These populations—
So puny, white-faced, machine made,
Turned out of factories, out of offices, out of drawing-rooms, by
thousands all alike—
Huddled, stitched up, in clothes, fearing a chill, a drop of rain,
looking timidly at the sea and sky as at strange monsters, or running
back so quick to their suburban runs and burrows,
Dapper, libidinous, cute, with washed-out small eyes—
What are these?
Are they men and women?
Each denying himself, hiding himself?
Are they men and women?
So timorous, like hares—a breath of propriety or custom, a draught of
wind, the mere threat of pain or of danger?
* * * * *
O for a breath of the sea and the great mountains!
A bronzed hardy live man walking his way through it all;
Thousands of men companioning the waves and the storms, splendid in
health, naked-breasted, catching the lion with their hands;
A thousand women swift-footed and free—owners of themselves, forgetful
of themselves, in all their actions—full of joy and laughter and action;
Garbed not so differently from the men, joining with them in their games
and sports, sharing also their labors;
Free to hold their own, to grant or withhold their love, the same as the
men;
Strong, well-equipped in muscle and skill, clear of finesse and
affectation—
(The men, too, clear of much brutality and conceit)—
Comrades together, equal in intelligence and adventure,
Trusting without concealment, loving without shame but with
discrimination and continence towards a perfect passion.
* * * * *
O for a breath of the sea!
The necessity and directness of the great elements themselves!
Swimming the rivers, braving the sun, the cold, taming the animals and
the earth, conquering the air with wings, and each other with love—
The true the human society!
ANDROMEDA
Now over the Mediterranean shore, fronting the sun,
In the great woods where only the peasant comes
And brings his bottle of wine, and figs, and goat-milk cheese—
The Gods yet dwell, but are not seen of men.
* * * * *
Steeply the ground slopes from the chestnut woods above,
Through tangles of pine and arbutus, myrtle and rosemary,
Down to the sea.
The tasseled evergreen oak grants densest shade—the acacia showers its
fragrance on the air;
In open spots the rock-rose blooms,
And the green lizard’s little heart beats fast in the sun.
* * * * *
Here all day long mindful of times gone by
The sun yet lingers; from the slumbering sea
(On whose clear sands the yellow and hornéd poppy loves to stray)
Sometimes fair Aphrodite lifts an arm
Unseen of mortals.
The Dryads in the aspen branches wave
Their trembling fingers, and young Hyacinth
Droops earthward once more wounded by his lover.
* * * * *
But none resume their ancient human form.
He, the great Liberator, with the wand of love so wonderful
(Who dwelt on earth, and dwells not, but must dwell again),
He comes not—whom they wait.
The rocks, the trees, the flowers, the loving animals,
The sea, the heavenly winds,
The human form that chained within them all
Pleads for deliverance—
He comes not whom they wait.
* * * * *
Only the train shrieks by with monkey faces staring out of the windows;
Hotel and villa desecrate the land;
Wealth trails its slime; the Greek has fled; and Civilisation like a
dismal dragon guards its prey.
THE TRIUMPH OF CIVILISATION
On the outskirts of a great city,
A street of fashionable mansions well withdrawn from all the noise and
bustle;
And in the street—the only figure there—in the middle of the road, in
the bitter wind,
Red-nosed, thin-shawled, with ancles bare and old boots,
A woman bent and haggard, croaking a dismal song.
* * * * *
And the great windows stare upon her wretchedness, and stare across the
road upon each other,
With big fool eyes;
But not a door is opened, not a face is seen,
Nor form of life down all the dreary street,
To certify the existence of humanity—
Other than hers.
THE DEAD CHRIST
(_After the picture by Fra Bartolomeo_)
Once more the dead Christ lies—borne down the ages.
O precious head, still fragrant with the box of ointment broken,
O feet for kisses,
Thin shrunken knees, and hands yet worn with toil,
Dear Mother bending over, breathing clouds
Of love and pity!
Ah! the cruel fate!
Sweet lips she suckled, hands that pressed so small
Against her breasts—pierced now with shameful wounds!
The dead-pale face so gentle, the dear god
She brought forth on the Earth!
* * * * *
O People crucified in every land,
Mothers in all the earth weeping your sons!
Sisters and lovers kissing the feet of love,
Poor way-worn feet, gross toil-disfigured hands,
So loved, so loved!
* * * * *
Once more the dead Christ lies—borne down the ages.
CHRISTMAS EVE
Hark! the bells ringing!
In the deep night, in the depth of the winter of Man,
Lo! once more the son is born.
* * * * *
O agelong, not in Nazareth alone,
Nor now to-day—but through all ages of the past,
The bells of Christmas ringing:
The Savior-music like a dream from heaven
Touching the slumbering heart.
* * * * *
Sweet promise which the people with unerring instinct cling to!
O winter sun arising never more to set!
O Nature slowly changing, slow transforming to the hearts of men,
Shrine of the soul, shrine of the new-born god—of Man himself.
_Little heart within thy cage so many years—year after year—_
_Beating, still beating, so tenderly yearning_
_For Comrade love, the love which is to come;_
_Often near stopping, or wounded like a bird, so full of pain—thy thread
of life almost snapt—_
_Yet with joy so wonderful over all and through all continuing:_
* * * * *
_Soon altogether shalt thou stop, little heart, and the beating and the
pain here shall cease;_
_But out of thee that life breathed into the lips of others shall never
stop nor cease._
_Through a thousand beautiful forms—so beautiful!—through the gates of a
thousand hearts—emancipated freed we will pass on:_
_I and my joy will surely pass on._
WHEN I AM NEAR TO YOU
Now when I am near to you, dear friend,
Passing out of myself, being delivered—
Through those eyes and lips and hands, so loved, so ardently loved,
I am become free;
In the sound of your voice I dwell
As in a world defended from evil.
* * * * *
What I am accounted by the world to be—all that I leave behind:
It is nothing to me any longer.
Like one who leaves a house with all its mouldy old furniture and
pitches his camp under heaven’s blue,
So I take up my abode in your presence—
I find my deliverance in you.
CRADLED IN FLAME
Cradled in flame,
Or like a tiny charm-figure within an agate reclining, from that which
encloses it inseparate, indivisible—
So, deep in my heart, through all that chances,
Thy form, thy form, indelible remains.
ALL NIGHT LONG
All night long in love, in the darkness, passing through your lips, my
love—
Breathing the same breath, being folded in the same sleep, losing sense
of Me and Thee,
Into empyreal regions, beloved of the gods, united, we ascend together.
* * * * *
Then in the morning on the high hill-side in the sun, looking down upon
the spires of the larches and Scotch firs,
Mortal, we tread again the earthy floor.
* * * * *
O Earth, the floor of heaven—
O Sun, shining aloft in the sky so pure—
O children of the sun, ye flowers and streams, and little mortals
walking the earth for a time—
And we too gazing for a time, for a time, for a time, into each other’s
eyes.
OF THE PAST
Of the Past—of those that come no more—
Of the feet that tread the door-sill no more, of the eyes we no more can
look into—
The sound of the voice so longed for, but it is not heard,
The one human form sought for over all the world, in all the throngs of
cities, by sea-coasts and bays, over far continents and islands,
Among all the habitations of the stars, but it is not there—
* * * * *
Of the self swooning down, dying utterly,
Of love, love, without end and without beginning,
Visiting all mortals, the sum of human life,
With wings like a vast bird passing in the night—veiled awful form so
close, yet impossible to detain:
Why dear face so white in the night—so white in the moon’s faint light
as it steals along the hill-top—
Dear face gazing up into mine, dost thou remind me?
LOVE’S VISION
At night in each other’s arms,
Content, overjoyed, resting deep deep down in the darkness,
Lo! the heavens opened and He appeared—
Whom no mortal eye may see,
Whom no eye clouded with Care,
Whom none who seeks after this or that, whom none who has not escaped
from self.
* * * * *
There—in the region of Equality, in the world of Freedom no longer
limited,
Standing as a lofty peak in heaven above the clouds,
From below hidden, yet to all who pass into that region most clearly
visible—
He the Eternal appeared.
NEARER THAN EVER NOW
If I should be taken up into Thee, O blue blue sky—to pass the bounds of
myself, to share thy life, O Nature:
Pouring pouring upon all the words which now are distilled only
painfully from me—pressed out, expressed—
To mingle my breath with Thy breath, my body and its liquids with the
earth and the sea—losing my mortal outline in Thine:
Ah! unto those that I love swiftly running I would become their life,
Nearer would I touch them then, than ever now that I am prisoned in this
form.
O THOU WHOSE FORM
O thou whose form is ever in my heart,
O flesh that holds me pent with terrible force,
Dear limbs and lips that seize upon my life
And in your fire consume it—O sweet love:
Lo all I see—
The clear and sunny hills, the woods, the streams,
The orchards, fields, the lines of poplars tall,
The belfried towns, the river at my feet,
The great blue sky, yea He who stands behind it—
Are mine for thee, to lose themselves in thee.
THE ELDER SOLDIER IN THE BROTHERHOOD TO THE YOUNGER
Dear comrade, at whose feet thus now I kneel,
Of you perhaps so soon to be seen no more—
Here I give you my charge, that afterwards remembering and desiring me,
You may find me again in these others.
* * * * *
Slowly out of their faces I will emerge to you—lo! I swear it,
By the falling rain and dimpled thunderclouds in the East I swear it—
[To become your life whom I have loved so long]
With love absorbing, joy and blessedness enclosing,
I will emerge to you.
* * * * *
That you now to other comrades, and these again to others,
Over the whole world may bear the glad covenant, perfected, finished—
To form an indissoluble union and compact, a brotherhood unalterable,
Far-pervading, fresh and invisible as the wind, united in Freedom—
A golden circle of stamens, hidden beneath the petals of humanity,
And guarding the sacred ark.
* * * * *
Through heroisms and deaths and sacrifices,
Always for the poor and despised, always for the outcast and oppressed,
Through kinship with Nature, and the free handling of all forms and
customs,
Through the treasured teaching of inspired ones—never lost and never
wholly given to the world, but always emerging—
Through love, faithful love and comradeship, at last emancipating the
soul into that other realm (of freedom and joy) into which it is
permitted to no mortal to enter—
Thus to realise the indissoluble compact, to reveal the form of
humanity.
* * * * *
To you, dear comrade, I transmit this charge—bequeathed also to me—
In love remaining faithful to you, as now, never to change,
Through all times and vicissitudes faithful faithful to you.
Here now at your feet, leaning on your knees, in your eyes deep-looking,
All that I have said I confirm.
INTO THE REGIONS OF THE SUN
So at last passing (the great sea stilled, the raging ocean)—passing
away,
All sorrow left behind, the great intolerable burdens which men vainly
try to carry,
All all abandoned, left there lying—
Suddenly lightened, like a bird that shakes itself free from the limed
twigs,
Soaring, soaring, into joy supernal passing,
Lo! the dead we leave behind and pass to the realms of the living.
* * * * *
And not we alone.
By our love poured out, by the manifold threads and strands of
attachment to others— which cannot now be severed;
By not one inwardly refused or disowned whom we have ever met;
By the dear arms of lovers circling each other all night long, by their
kisses and mingled breath,
And love by night and day—thinking of each other when absent, rejoicing
so to be near;
By tramps over the hills, and days spent together in the woods and by
watersides;
By our life-long faithful love—(ah! what more beautiful, what in all
this world more precious!)
By the life-long faithful comradeship now springing on all sides, the
Theban band henceforth to overcome the world—its heroisms and deaths—
And him who gave the calamus-token first;
By all these—
Not alone, no longer alone—
* * * * *
But drawing an innumerable multitude with us,
Into the regions of the sun, into the supernal æther,
With love perfected, bodies changed, and joy—ah! joy on earth
unutterable—
Lo! the dead we leave behind, and pass to the realms of the living.
AS IT HAPPENED
Cross-legged in a low tailor’s den, gasping for breath—
The gas flaring, doors and windows tight shut, the thick sick
atmosphere;
The men in their shirt-sleeves, with close heat from the stove, and
smell of sweat and of the cloth;
Stitching, stitching, 12 hours a day, no set time for meals—
Stitching, cross-stitching, button-holing, binding,
Silk twist, cotton twist, black thread, white thread,
Stouting, felling, pressing, damping,
Basting, seaming, opening seams, rantering,
With sore eyes, sick sick at heart, and furious,
In the low tailor’s den he sits.
* * * * *
All day in his mind—like a hunted criminal—he revolves: How shall I
escape?
How change this miserable pittance for Freedom, and yet not starve?
At night after some brief dream of joy he wakes to tears, tears, tears—
Drenching his bed with tears.
* * * * *
No God, no Truth, no Justice—and under it all, no Love.
[This is what is slowly killing him—no Love.]
A little fire burns in his heart, burns night and day;
The slow pain kills—no Love.
* * * * *
O the deep deep hunger!
The mean life all around, the wolfish eyes, the mere struggle for
existence, as of men starving on a raft at sea—no room for anything
more.
All that he has read in books, all the stories of other times and
lands—Mignon, Eloise, Eros the beautiful boy wandering over the world—so
wonderful a world, and he in this prison, this filthy den!
O the deep deep hunger of Love!
All the obscene talk of the shop is neither here nor there: it cannot
fill the void:
The shallow laughter of his companions and the bought kisses of the
street-girls are the mere husks that the swine did eat.
* * * * *
O little heart, beating, beating!
Heart once so strong, full-pulsed; now often at night out of some dream
of Splendor—
[Dream of Love—some shining form within a garden and at the gate stands
a bearded man, dagger in hand, saying “Thou canst not enter here, except
thou pass the Ordeal.”
And he in his dream, beholding Love beyond, bares his breast gladly to
the knife, and feels the sharp point turn within his heart]—
Waking thus oft to pain and sick sick powerless days,
At last little heart thy strength gives way indeed.
Stumbling, with strange uncertain motion, like one confused—now hurrying
on,
Now halting in thy pace as near to stop,
That something’s wrong with thee is past a doubt.
* * * * *
And the grave doctor comes and says the valves are weak, and recommends
rest and good food and fresh air and other things that are not to be
had: but says nothing of that which lies nearest to the patient.
And he, the patient, half misdoubts himself—thinks likely the doctor
knows best—feels only strangely dull and indifferent; and after a while
rises and goes back to his den and takes his place once more
cross-legged amongst the rest, stitching, stitching; and the horns on
his heel and ancle grow again, and the air seems closer and more
suffocating than ever; but he drags through the days, ever more
lethargic growing, caring not much whether he die or live—thinking
perhaps to die on the whole were better.
* * * * *
When, as it happened—and this was the strangest of all—quite suddenly,
the most unexpected thing in the world,
To a casual little club, which once a week he was in the habit of
attending, there came one night a new member,
Of athletic strength and beauty, yet gentle in his manners,
And with a face like a star—so stedfast clear and true that he the
sufferer felt renewed by merely looking on it.
But what was even more strange, the newcomer turning spoke friendly to
him, and soon seemed to understand,
And from that time forward came and companioned and nursed him, and
stayed whole nights and days with him and loved him.
* * * * *
And out of his despair there grew something so glorious that he forgets
it not, night nor day;
Great waves of health and strength come to him—as to a man who after the
long Arctic night bathes in the warmth and light of the re-arisen Sun;
Even the wretched tailor’s den is transformed; but soon leaving that he
accepts by preference the poorest work in the open under heaven,
And breathes again, and tastes the sweet air afresh;
And watches a new sun rise in the mornings and a new transparency among
the stars at night;
And the body grows strong and hardy, and the little heart gathers and
knits itself together,
And sings, sings, sings:
Sings all day to its friend whether present or absent.
PARTED LIPS
Parted lips, between which love dwells—
Only a little space of breath and shadow,
Yet here the gate of all the world to me.
SUMMER HEAT
Sun burning down on back and loins, penetrating the skin, bathing their
flanks in sweat,
Where they lie naked on the warm ground, and the ferns arch over them,
Out in the woods, and the sweet scent of fir-needles
Blends with the fragrant nearness of their bodies;
* * * * *
In-armed together, murmuring, talking,
Drunk with wine of Eros’ lips,
Hourlong, while the great wind rushes in the branches,
And the blue above lies deep beyond the fern-fronds and fir-tips;
* * * * *
Till, with the midday sun, fierce scorching, smiting,
Up from their woodland lair they leap, and smite,
And strike with wands, and wrestle, and bruise each other,
In savage play and amorous despite.
A RIVEDERCI
Once more in dreams, wandering along the road by the sea,
I tarry a moment leaning my elbows on the wall beside you—
I look out over the blue waves with your eyes, and feel the sun on me as
you that feel it;
My mother it is that sits in the balcony among her pots of oleander in
the little narrow street, my boat that lies half-heeled upon the sand;
These are my mountains that I love,
This is your face and mine clear-cut upon the air,
Your life-warm lips I kiss and mine you kiss again,
And laughing part with bright _a rivederci_.
WHO WILL LEARN FREEDOM?
Who will learn Freedom?
* * * * *
Lo! as the air blows wafting the clinging aromatic scent of the balsam
poplar, dear to me,
Or the sun-warm fragrance of wallflowers, tarrying here for a moment,
then floating far down the road and away;
Or as the early light edging the hills, so calm, unprejudiced, open to
all;
So shall you find what you seek in men and women—your passage and swift
deliverance.
* * * * *
As when one opens a door after long confinement in the house—so out of
your own plans and purposes escaping,
Out of the many mirror-lined chambers of self (grand though they be, but
O how dreary!) in which you have hitherto spent your life—
In these behold once more the incommunicable freedom of the sky, the
green hills, the woods and the waters,
To pass in and out for ever, having abandoned your own objects, looking
calmly upon them, as though they did not exist.
* * * * *
Now who so despised and lost, but what shall be my Savior?
Is there one yet sick and suffering in the whole world? or deformed,
condemned, degraded?
Thither hastening I am at rest—for this one can absolve me.
O I am greedy of love—all all are beautiful to me!
You my deliverers every one—from death, from sin, from evil—
I float, I dissolve in you!
* * * * *
O bars of self you cannot shut me now.
O frailest child, O blackest criminal,
Whoe’er you are I never can repay you—though the world despise you, you
are glorious to me;
For you have saved me from myself,
You delivered me when I was in prison—
I passed through you into heaven,
You were my Christ to me.
AFTER ALL SUFFERING
After all suffering, after all weariness and denial—
The heart almost stopped, food ceasing to nourish, grief making the
tongue dry,
All pleasure in life ceasing, unable to rouse interest in any object or
pursuit,
But love—and that gone far away!
After all,
Nearer to thy heart, O humanity,
By this of suffering we come.
* * * * *
I know that thou canst not deny me:
I know that each pain is a door by which I approach one degree nearer to
thee.
What sorrow is there but I have shared it?
What grief but it has removed an obstruction between me and some one
else?
Look in my face and see. You cannot bar me now.
I pass all doors, and am where I would be.
WHEN A THOUSAND YEARS HAVE PASSED
Think not that the love thou enterest into to-day is for a few months or
years:
The little seed set now must lie quiet before it will germinate, and
many alternations of sunshine and shower descend upon it before it
become even a small plant.
When a thousand years have passed, come thou again. And behold! a mighty
tree that no storms can shake.
* * * * *
Love does not end with this life or any number of lives; the form that
thou seekest lies hidden under wrapping after wrapping;
Nevertheless it shall at length appear—more wondrous far than aught thou
hast imagined.
Therefore leave time: do not like a child pull thy flower up by the
roots to see if it is growing;
Even though thou be old and near the grave there is plenty of time.
A MESSAGE COMMITTED TO THE WAVES
I see the waters flowing as of old—dancing, rippling,
O so light and beautiful;
The river-banks, and pollard willows leaning, and bulrushes where as
boys we used to linger.
* * * * *
All transmuted, turned into words and tongues, licking me round like
flames—unearthly, scorching;
All transmuted—the soft water-depths, the weeds below, the dimples of
sunlight dancing,
The shrill piping of the lark, the kine knee-deep in grass, and the
piled thunderclouds floating in the summer haze—
Like flames, unearthly, scorching.
* * * * *
For here on this water and round these banks we came floating—troops of
friends—yet not on this water; by these banks, yet not by them.
And the dimples glanced, and the birds sang—as now, yet O how different!
* * * * *
Mystery, mystery!
O wonderful orb of creation!
O frame, beauteous ever-living twining frame of human love, chalice of
precious drops poured out, mystic scroll on which our lives in blood are
written,
Great great awful indivisible Nature—birthplace and grave of Humanity!
* * * * *
Tremble tremble, O waves—bear my love too on your breasts to generations
yet unborn;
(Lo! to you I commit it!)
Hear me ye perennial tongues and flames, ye fields and skies speak speak
what I command you!
Ye hieroglyphics stand untampered to remotest time!
O grasses growing so lush about my feet and the feet of those who pass,
while ever you grow on earth forget not the bleeding drops wherewith you
have been watered!
Waft, O breezes, our love and the love of all true lovers, and fail not
while you blow to bring glad messages to those who faint;
For we are borne upon you—
I am borne upon you. From this body, broken and useless, from this
mortal here and there, I fade, I fail utterly; I cannot remain, it is no
use;
Pouring pouring out, losing my name and place, flowing abroad,
surrendering myself to all—I depart, to join the invisible.
Ah heaven! Ah sounds of harmony ineffable!
Ah tears, and deeps of sorrow dread and soundless!
Ah love! ah precious love including all!
* * * * *
So still to all—
To those lingering in prison,
To the aged and forsaken, stranded like wrecks on the bleak shore of
life,
To the heartbroken and weary, to those stunned with despair;
To the wife awaking to the treachery of her husband;
To the exile leaving his dear ones, and probably for ever; to the
crippled and incapable and diseased;
To the pinned workers in back streets oscillating drearily between the
home and the workshop;
To those of the hopeless sad mechanical days over all the earth—the
outcast, the shunned, the persecuted;
The closing days, the narrowing grooves, the heart touched no more by
the sweet illusions, no more to hope responding, no more to the call of
religion;
Ah to all in the mighty brotherhood sufferers—
Dearest, most precious ones,
Corner-stones of human life, hidden bearers of burdens, under-girders of
the great ship with its incalculable freight!
Dearest and most precious of all—ah, sufferers, sufferers,
To you we give our love—
Arise! for great is your triumph!
REST AT LAST
Ah! love—having journeyed through all of life, having become freed even
from thee—there remains nothing glorious but thee.
Exhaled out of all frailty, out of this little tenement of flesh, so
ephemeral,
Out of these hands and feet which are and are not—out of these eyes
through which I look, on which I look—
THOU hast taken possession of earth and heaven: the sun is thy right
hand and the moon thy left:
In Thee all forms, of all I seek, are mine,
And I in them attain at last to rest.
THE WIND OF MAY
O glorious wind, that in my lover’s face blowest,
Even as now in mine—though the deep sea part us—
Fragrant wind, with heart so tenderly laden,
Tell him, my lover, against whose face thou goest,
In his ears and nostrils and eyes and thick hair rippling—
Whose passion-fountain he too, nightlong, daylong,
Drinks at, inbreathing thee—sweet wind, O tell him
My love like thine for ever endures, and fails not.
* * * * *
Great cloud-wet wind, through the thick woods heavily trailing,
Mid millions of flowers their sex-life’s sweetness exhaling,
Hyacinth-bell and May-bloom in countless beauty:
Feed him, body and soul, with secrets fairest,
Disclose thy heart, O wind, and the love thou bearest.
_O Earth, scene of what toil and anguish!_
_Century after century, thousands thousands of years,_
_What reek of battles, smoke of vast wilderness-cities,_
_Going up from age to age, losing itself in the calm immeasurable blue._
* * * * *
_O wonderful unutterable secret! the moon gliding through the trees!_
_The soul of man slowly transforming itself, growing bursting through
the sheaths—the stars looking on!_
_The new creature born anew, in travail and in suffering, ascending into
heaven;_
_Ah! songs and harmonies angelic sounding—ah! joy the mortal frame can
scarce sustain!_
A VOICE OVER THE EARTH
The sound of a voice floating round the Earth, saying:
Lo! I float over the world and over all cities and lands—wherever men
and women are at home I am at home.
I
The snowy peaks, in ranges, that guard the cradles of the human
race—rising over their rocky cliffs, out of their valleys full of
trees—the wind fluctuating the forests, the clouds swift-flying over the
topmost jags;
The great plains, and lower lands, dotted with farms and villages and
cities, for scores, hundreds, thousands, of miles;
The winding rivers and the islands, and the broad seas;
All these I see, and those that inhabit them,
Over the world I float, I range all human experience.
II
The broad Italian landscape spreads below me—the lands of the upper Po
and Bormida;
I see the wave-like congregated hills terraced with vines to their very
tops, the pink or yellow painted homesteads dotted here and there, the
arched stone barns, and villages clustered on the hill tops with
belfries high against the sky.
The old woman, my mother, with walnut brown skin haunts the lonely
farmhouse all day while the others are in the field;
She wanders from chamber to chamber, hardly knowing what she is doing.
Her memory carries her back to the far past—she lives not in the
present.
Sometimes into the great attic overhead she climbs, with its huge
roof-beams and brick floor, and spreads the grapes to dry or leisurely
picks them over.
The haymakers work barefoot in the clover patch, turning the clover and
loading the low-wheeled waggon in the fragrant transparent evening;
The peasant plows with his one-stilted plow, or creaks along the road
with his cart and yoke of cream-colored oxen;
The girls and women with red or yellow kerchiefs stand among the
branches of the mulberry trees by the roadside, picking leaves for the
silkworms;
The country folk congregate on the steps of the village church, looking
out over the hills—the women passing in by ones and twos;
The men play _mora_ over their wine in the little hostelry; the boys
play at ball down the narrow by-streets, using the roofs and buttresses
to baffle their opponents’ strokes;
The old play of daily life goes on—the centuries-long play;
The ruins of the Roman aqueduct still cross the bed of the river, the
ruins of Roman words and customs still lie embedded in the life of
to-day;
The old blood still runs in the veins, the water runs in the rivers, the
crops grow in the fields—the light of youth, of love, of old age, of
death, shines in the eyes.
* * * * *
From the accident of here and now,
From this hill whence for a moment I overlook the fair garden of human
life, from this few feet of human flesh which I inhabit,
From these fierce desires which hem me in, these defects, these
limitations, these mortal sufferings,
This little creature-dom, this brief emprisonment of life,
I descend, I pass, I flow down,
[O words so vain to tell—O strange incredible transformation!]
I pass, I flow down, into the freedom of all times, into the latitude of
all places.
* * * * *
I work on the hills once more with the slave and the freedman among the
vines, I mix the mortar for them that build the aqueduct;
The lover and his girl lean against my breast in the moonlight long ages
back as now;
The face of the mother understands my face a thousand and ten thousand
years ago, as it does to-day;
I am the cream-colored ox with mild eyes, and I am the driver who curses
and goads it;
I am the lover and the loved—I have lost and found my identity.
III
The Piedmontese peasant takes me again into his little cottage of
sun-dried bricks among the vineyards, and gives me a glass of cool wine
in the shade;
I see again the scantily furnished interior, the floor of native rock,
the rickety ladder which serves for staircase to the chamber above, the
table and chairs and one or two cooking utensils;
And the great frame of sticks and canes, big as a four-poster bedstead,
where he breeds his thousands of silkworms.
But here too, alas! there is grief; for the poor son, so passionately
loved of his mother, is wasting away apparently in a decline;
All day with shawl thrown over him he squats in the sun by the door, or
walks feebly to and fro, unable to help his father in the field—at night
he lies awake and hears the wearisome rustle of the silkworms eating
their food;
The mother prays the good God, but knows not whether anything comes of
it—the little figure of Mary in the niche of the wall looks just the
same though hearts are breaking.
IV
Ah! fragrance of human love exhaled!
Great clouds from frail and perishable forms escaping silently,
Into the night, into the vast aerial night of Time!
The little flash of youth, the reaching of hands to hands, of hearts to
hearts, of lips to lips,
The closing in of the outer shell, the chrysalis-death, and the terrible
struggles for liberation;
The larvæ crawling the earth for a time—on hill-sides and in valleys, in
huts and palaces—chained to their little plots of earth, their few frail
feet of flesh;
The great thunderclouds passing over from snowy range to range, touching
the little creatures with their shadows;
The great sun out of the unfathomable touching them too with his
finger—breeding slowly but surely within them the life which must
destroy their mortality.
V
Onwards, onwards, I float.
The smoke and glare, the confused roar and tumult of a manufacturing
town spread all around; sounds of voices ascend past me into the silent
supernal blue.
In the tobacco factory amid rows of girls, with my little bit of mirror
or comb concealed in a nook of my bench—I sit—or photograph placed where
I can see it as I work;
Or in the printing office of the daily paper—printing reports of
law-courts and cricket-matches—I scramble with five or six others to the
boxes for a fat take.
* * * * *
The long trial is over, and I am the prisoner on whom sentence has been
pronounced.
The judge in scarlet and ermine, preceded by liveried heralds blowing
trumpets, strides down the corridors and through the crowd thronging the
steps of the Town Hall, into his blue and silver paneled coach;
Hustled and thumped and buffeted by the police, I am fetched from the
dock by underground passages to the prison van, and bumped through the
streets to the gaol—there to await my execution.
* * * * *
Pale and desperate in the cutlery buffing shop boys and girls bend over
their wheels;
In squalor and monotony the winter daylight through dirty windows dawns
and dies away again upon them;
In squalor and monotony the light of youth and of hope dawns and dies
away again from their eyes;
The master looks round with his hands in his pockets, well satisfied;
The cheap goods ready to fall to pieces as soon as used are duly packed
and despatched to African and Pacific Island traders.
* * * * *
Civilisation plays its part in the history of each nation and each
individual,
Unerringly the time of its unfoldment to each arrives, and again the
time of its dismissal and departure.
* * * * *
Brawny figures move to and fro in the iron works, halfseen through
clouds of flying steam or against the glare of furnaces;
The flame of the Bessemer cupola roars, with showers of sparks, and
rattling of cranes, and shouts of men;
The foreman stands calmly aside, spectroscope in hand, or gives a signal
with uplifted arm;
I see the reversing of the cupola, and the outpour of molten steel,
lilac with yellowing vapor around it;
The rose-colored shafts of sunlight through the high roof, the terraces
and platforms, the glints and halos amid the vapor;
The balcony where the men stand with their hydraulic handles controlling
the huge lifts and cranes beneath them;
The groups steadying with iron poles and hooks the great lifted ingots
of steel, or regulating the outflow of liquid stuff into the moulds;
The man in a corner washing his shoulders and head in a bucket of water;
The steam-hammers, the blocks of yellow-hot iron shimmering in the
heated air;
The steel-melter’s men around the crucibles with their tongs—their feet
and legs swathed in rags to keep off the heat, their sweat-handkerchiefs
held between their teeth;
The daring, recklessness even at times, the delight in the power and
endurance—the drink, gross talk, rough jokes—throwing the great
pressures upon the novices or shamming to pick quarrels with them;
The planing and cutting of armor-plates, the huge resistless
steam-driven machinery, the gouges and drills,
The shaping of the plates (each one numbered) to the lines of the ships
they are intended for—the careful drawing and planning, and following
out of the plans;
The transporting of them to the sea-coast, the riveting of them each in
its place;
And the floating away of these thousands of tons over the ocean and
round the bend of the world.
* * * * *
And he at the forge streaming with sweat, the striker, with bared
breast, turning out claw-hammer heads by the score,
Keeps dreaming and dreaming all day between the strokes, of love which
is to come and change our earth into heaven;
But his brother who works with him laughs at his dreams—and the spring
comes in the woods to all alike:
The gnarled oak breaks into pale yellow buds against the blue, the mouse
stirs under the dry grass, and the corn-crake runs with head erect among
the young green blades of corn.
VI
Each morning anew the mist rests on the hills; the sun rises on fresh
clouds to be dispersed;
It splinters its shafts against the great rock face, and brings out in
bold relief the figure of the quarryman in his loose blue-checked shirt;
Where on a projecting angle he stands, with mighty hammer-stroke driving
the brods and wedges;
Now he splits off a great mass and displaces it with the crowbar,
While overhead among the tree-roots, in a sunny niche of the barings,
A sparrow chirps cheerfully to him.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the scythe-smith goes to see what he can do for his brother in
prison;
He takes the train and finds out the public-house to which the turnkey
goes, and gives him half-a-sovereign to get his brother something to
eat.
The turnkey is a mild old man and would not willingly harm anybody;
He says nothing to the prisoner, but when he leaves his cell each day he
quietly drops a good-sized tommy behind him.
* * * * *
And this is the Hogarthian interior of the Lincolnshire dancing chamber:
the gas, the smoke, the fiddle-scrape, the slopped drink;
The great projecting bay-window with seats in it, the twilight fading on
the groups in the market-place without;
The Dutch-looking ramshackle rooms lighting into one another—farmers’
men and girls tumbling and sitting on each other’s knees;
Fat women gyrating together; the young man pressing his comrade to him
in the dance;
The middle-aged farmer slipping off into a barn at the back with a great
wench: she cries, “How good, how good it is, O come again!”
IN THE CHAMBER OF BIRTH
In the chamber of birth,
Calm and joyful the exhausted mother, with disheveled hair, lies
obliquely across the bed—the little primitive conical-skulled god rests
snug on the pillow in front of her:
The baffling infant face, with closed eyes and flexible upper lip, and
storms and sunshine sweeping across its tiny orb, and filmy clouds of
expression!
* * * * *
But for her O the rest, the rest and the peace now it is all over—no
desire to move, only to lie and rest for joy!
While the bustling cheerful midwife is full of praises and
congratulations, and the good anxious husband comes to the door smiling
again at last.
A COTTAGE AMONG THE HILLS
Outside, the winter moonlight shines so peacefully upon the little
cottage far away among the hills—
Where within the old human drama repeats itself.
The aged grandmother sits in the ruddy glow by the chimney-corner—her
little grandson leans against her knee;
The other children (for some have come in from a neighboring cottage,
and Christmas is now approaching) sing hymn after hymn in tireless
trebles, and the old grand-dad tones the bass in now and then with still
melodious voice;
While silent, with tired and suffering face (thinking of the week’s
work, and of her runaway drunken husband) the mother strips her youngest
naked in the firelight.
* * * * *
Ah! the tender dreams, the griefs, the passions, and the shattered
hopes!
The long culminating experience!
The slow change of the words the children sing—to meanings unimagined!
* * * * *
The flickering light on joists and rafters of the low ceiling;
The old man bent with toil (road-mending now these fifty years);
The rosy children with wide open mouths; the dear god whom they sing
of—ever-coming, ever-expected;
The rose-bud black-eyed boy against his granny’s knee;
And she—her white white hair, high brows, and pale transparent face—so
sacred, calm,
Most like the moonlight shining there without.
ALICE
With little red frock in the fire-light, in the lingering April evening—
(The moonlight over the tree-tops just beginning to shine in at the
cottage door)—
Her big brown eyes and comical big mouth for very gladness unresting,
like a small brown fairy—
She stands, the five-year-old child.
* * * * *
Then, so gentle, with tiny tripping speech, and with a little wave of
the hand—
“Good-night” she says to the fire and to the moon,
And kissing the elder wearier faces,
Runs off to bed and to sleep in the lap of heaven.
BABY SONG
Croonie croonie, Baby baby, up and down,
Sing song, all day long—
Father’s gone away for many a day, but he’ll come back again,
Over the waters, before long.
* * * * *
Croonie croonie, Baby baby, up and down,
Sun shine, winds blow—far behind baby the waters flow;
Winds and sun round him run, peep in his eyes and off they go—
All in fun.
* * * * *
Croonie croonie, Baby baby, O what tears!
Little heart break, little breast shake—fie such tears!
Mother’s arms so tired with dancing,
All day long;
Baby baby—always baby—fretting crying all day long.
* * * * *
Baby baby, come to Mammy,
Stifle sobs upon her breast—
Little blunt gums on the nipple,
That’s the feel we both love best;
Sleep will soon come after titty,
Sobs will cease and baby rest.
* * * * *
Croonie croonie, Baby baby, sleeping sound:
By the door we stand a moment—moonlight dappled on the ground:
Winds are sleeping, waters calm,
Keep our little babe from harm.
* * * * *
The great Earth shall be his cradle,
Rocking rocking day by day;
Star-bespangled curtains spread
Every night above his head;
Suns on suns shall gild his brow:
Baby baby, What art Thou?
EARLY MORNING
The thrush sings meditative high in the bare oak-boughs—while the still
April morning just drops with faint rain, and the honeysuckle climbs
snakelike with green wings among the underwood;
The voice of the ploughman sounds across the valley, and the cackle of
the farmyard mingles with the rumble of a distant train on its way to
the great city:
* * * * *
Where, in her boudoir, by the light of the dying fire—the shutters yet
closed and the candles guttered and gone out—she lies, the Paris beauty,
naked on her low tiger-skin couch;
And he, her lover, naked too, on the floor beside her has slipped—his
head bent forward, and asleep—with her hand in his dark short hair.
THE GOLDEN WEDDING
Now fifty years through wind and sun and rain,
Through the sweet heyday of youth, through life’s maturity and age,
We’ve bloomed and withered, dearest, side by side,
Two trees upon one root.
* * * * *
Rememberest thou
How hand in hand schoolwards we ran, we two,
With tiny feet? Yes, we two, is it not strange?
Or later how the merry pealing bells rang us to Church (no music I
thought like them);
Then we reared five children, fell on troublous times, and toiled and
suffered till we tired of life.
And they went one by one, and launched upon the world and sailed away,
Proud, with all canvas set, while we are left,
Old battered wrecks—here in this cottage of the hills—and wondering
Which the great waves of time will first wash down.
* * * * *
And now dearest one, through all this lapse of years I look into your
eyes,
And see them deep as ever;
Their beauty is to me a passion just as ever,
Voiceless, unfathomable, that no time can touch.
* * * * *
If the great gulf should come and swallow me in sheer oblivion—still it
is good to have known thee;
But that thou should’st die,
That thou should’st perish from thyself and cease to be,
I cannot credit. Somewhere nearer God,
When this thick mortal slumber has gone by,
We shall perchance awaken.
THE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTER
Beautiful child that launchest out on the great sea of life,
Soon I, thy Mother, must leave thee: soon the dark shall close me in,
and leave thee alone in the bright sunshine.
And thy lovers shall come and make love to thee: they shall lay their
fortunes at thy feet, and their strength and the glory of their manhood;
They shall desire thee, for thou art beautiful as the silver sickle moon
arising in heaven before the dawn.
Yet when they come forget not me, O my child: be not deceived by their
words;
For none ever again shall love thee as I love thee, none ever again
shall know, as I know, thy hidden thoughts—none shall read the light
that plays upon thy face as I can read it.
These shall love thee for themselves: they shall seek thee in order to
possess thee; but I have given all that I have to thee.
All the years that we have been together since thou first pressed thy
tiny palm upon my breast to look into my face, until now;
I have given myself to thee.
Before thy feet, or ever thou couldst walk, my love has walked, my
thoughts have circled thee, my desire has made thee very beautiful.
If I might pray, I pray that when thou hast known the love of man
Thou, too, may’st become a mother, and so even through travail and
suffering may’st know the greater love.
Then far away down the years thou shalt remember me;
As when one ascends a mountain the opposite mountain lifts itself higher
and higher, so as thou goest farther from me I will grow upon thee
clearer and closer even than now.
A SPRIG OF ARISTOCRACY
Browned by the sun, with face elate and joyous,
Pitching hay all day in the wide and fragrant hayfields,
Frank and free, careless of wealth (preferring to do something useful,
and to champion the poor and aged)—
O splendid boy, with many more like thee,
England might from her unclean wallowing rise again and live.
A SCENE IN LONDON
Both of them deaf, and close on eighty years old;
She stone blind, and he nearly so;
Side by side crouching over the fire in a little London hovel—six
shillings a week—
Their joints knotted with rheumatism, their faces all day long mute like
statues of all passing expression (no cloud flying by, no gleam of
sunshine there)—lips closed and silent:
* * * * *
But for that now and then taking his pipe out of his mouth,
He puts his face close to her ear and yells just a word into it,
And she nods her blind head and gives a raucous screech in answer,
S. JAMES’ PARK
An island ringed with surf—
A cool green shade and tiny enchanted spot of trees and flowers and
fountains—
The ocean raging round it.
* * * * *
The roar of London interminably stretching, interminably sounding,
Great waves of human life breaking, millions of drops together, torrents
of vehicles pouring, business men marching, gangs of workmen, soldiers,
loafers, street hawkers;
Shopkeepers running out of their shops to look at their own windows, a
woman seized with birth-pangs on a doorstep, ragamuffins and children
swirling by eddies and rapids of fashion;
The everlasting tide, ebbing a little at night rising again in the
day—with fierce continuous roaring—
Yet infringing not on the little island.
* * * * *
Here only a little spray, a dull and distant reverberation;
In the soft shade a pleasant drowsy air, the willows hanging their
branches to the water;
The drake preening his feathers in the sun, or swimming among the flags
by the pond side, regardless of Nelson peering over the tree-tops from
his column, taking no note of the great clock-face of Westminster.
* * * * *
Only a little spray, broken water.
Drop by drop, one by one, or here and there in twos,
Specimens, items out of the deep.
The baker’s man, working 15 hours a day, leaves his handcart in a
convenient spot outside and puts in a quiet quarter of an hour here with
a novel;
The old woman—her thumb gathered and disabled by incessant work on
crape—now as a matter of course thrown out of employ—goes along moaning
and muttering to herself;
The pursy old gentleman who has made his money out of the mourning
warehouse also goes along;
The footman on an errand walks leisurely by, the French nurse plays with
the little English children;
The rather elegant young lady meets her man by appointment at one of the
garden seats; they study Bradshaw together in an undertone, revolving
plans;
The middle-aged widower comes along—thin, so thin, dressed all in black,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing—sitting down for a moment, then up
again—resting only in constant movement;
The tramp, with dead expressionless face—the man who is not wanted, to
whom every one says No—comes along, and throws himself listlessly down
under the trees.
* * * * *
Only a little spray, broken water.
The summer sun falls peaceful on the grass,
The tide of traffic rises a little during the day and ebbs again at
night,
But the great roaring bates not—breaks the surf
Of human life forever on this shore.
THE TWIN STATUES OF AMENOPHIS III AT THEBES
Thousands of years—
As now with the light of evening on their heads and featureless faces,
their bases wrapt in gloom—
All the hours before dawn or after sunset, in the clear circling of the
moon and stars, or through the long cloudless day, braving the terrific
heat,
While the caravans of camels go by below, and the peasant ploughs with
his ancient plough, or reaps his clover and lupins—century after
century;
And the flood-waters of the Nile wash up and recede again, and the sun
darkens in the occasional sandstorm or rarer shower of rain—
Thousands of years:
* * * * *
Like great rocks, human, colossal, part of the Earth itself,
Cosmic, wondrous, far-back allegories of the human soul,
They sit looking out over the world while the generations pass.
* * * * *
And the travelers come and gaze—and go away again, wondering what they
meant who made such things;
The philosophers of Greece come, and Alexander comes, and the Roman
Emperors come; and the Christian fathers and monks (fit successors of
the Egyptian), and the Mahomedan conquerors, and Napoleon, and the
scientific men, come—and go away again;
And the wandering Arabs come and light their camp-fires—and go away
again; and the Cook’s tourist comes and goes away again;
And the river changes its course, and the mountains crumble in the heat
of the sun, and the sandhills shift, and villages are built and are
buried;
But of him who placed the figures there these words do survive:—
“I, Amenhotep, have made the name of the king immortal, and no one has
ever done as I have in my works;
I made these two statues of the king—wondrous huge and high, forty
cubits, dwarfing the Temple front—
In the great sandstone mountains I made them, one on each side, east and
west;
And I caused eight ships to be built, whereon they were floated up the
river;
And placed them here—to last as long as heaven.”
‘ARTEMIDORUS, FAREWELL’
(_inscribed on a mummy case in the British Museum_)
Artemidorus, farewell.
No more no more thy dear lips shall I touch,
Nor kiss thy hands—those clinging hands in mine;
Thy gentle eyes—ah! shall we never gaze
Again upon each other?
Artemidorus, dearest, dearest one,
Leave me, O leave me not.
All the sweet hours that by the Nile we sat
In palm-tree shade, and watched the swallows dip;
Or when we first met at the sacred tank
Deep in the garden grounds of Arsaphes,
And told our secrets (heed’st thou?) to the fishes!
The lotus filling all the air with scent,
The pigeons wheeling, hundreds, overhead—
By our sweet love and laughter, then and since,
A thousand times, and all thy quips and pranks,
Leave me O leave me not.
Where shall I go? what do? why live? O why
Remain when thou art gone? There’s nothing left.
The nights so long, with pain pain at my heart;
The days, the staring Sun, and every sight
Shooting an arrow at me.
Could I but see thee once, or hope to see—
One hair of thy head, one finger of thy hand,
To hear one little word more from thy lips—
’Twere more than all the world. But now the priests
Have got thee in their clutches; and already
They wrap the sacred linen o’er thy head,
Thy features and thy hair they cover up,
And round thy arms thy fingers and thy hands
They wind and wind and wind and wind the bands,
And I shall see thee nevermore, my own.
And then they’ll paint
Thy likeness on the outer mummy case,
And stand it by the wall, as if to mock me,
Throwing my arms around a lifeless shell,
Breaking my heart against it.
And in a hundred years stray folk will come
And ask, “Who was Artemidorus pray?”
Nor listen for an answer—if in sooth
There’s any that can give one. And in time
Strangers perhaps will overrun our land
And violate thy coffin, and unbind
With sacrilegious hands the rags, and find
Only a little dust—Ah! nothing else....
And I shall be a little dust too then....
And whether lord Osiris, the good God,
Will hold our twin souls safely in his hand
Three thousand years through internatal forms
Of bird or beast or serpent, in reserve
For that new day they say has yet to dawn;
Or whether He too will chance fade to dust
Forgetting and forgotten of all men—
Behold I know not.... Only this I know
Of all the words we said in joke or earnest,
And vows we vowed, and solemn troth we plighted,
And all the multitudinous chatter and idle tales
And laughter that we got through, like two streams
That babble for mere gladness down the lands,
Artemidorus dear,
Dearest of all things either in earth or heaven,
For the long silence but one word remains,
Remains but this—“Farewell.”
FROM TURIN TO PARIS
Tireless, hour after hour, over mountains plains and rivers,
The express train rushes on
* * * * *
The shadows change, the sun and moon rise and set;
Day fades into night, and night into day,
The great cities appear and disappear over the horizon.
* * * * *
On through the hot vineyards of Piedmont the express train rushes;
The great-limbed Ligurian peasant sprawls asleep in the third-class
carriage which has been put on for a portion of the course;
The calm grave country girls droop their lids to slumber;
The huge unwieldy friar with elephantine limbs, small eyes, and snout
like an ant-eater—not a particle of religion in his whole body—gazes
blankly out of the window;
And the young mother with black lace on her head looks after her little
brood.
* * * * *
On through the hot vineyards in the fierce afternoon the express train
rushes—the villages on the hill-tops twinkle through the blaze—the
fireman opens the furnace-door of the engine and stokes up again and
again.
The first-class passengers dispose themselves as best they may, with
blinds down, on the hot and dusty cushions;
The respectable and cold-mutton-faced English gentleman and his wife and
daughters, the blasé Chinaman with yellow fan, the little Persian boy so
brown, lying asleep against the side of his instructor,
The deeply-lined large-faced shaven old Frenchman, the Italian artist,
bearded, nearing forty years old, with expressive mouth and clear
discerning eyes,
Dispose themselves as best they may.
* * * * *
The sides of the carriages lie open, like glass.
The young priest fresh from College recites his evensong, then addresses
himself to the conversion of his Protestant fellow-traveler—I see his
winning manners at first, and then his intimidatory frowns followed by
threats of hell-fire;
The group of laughing girls in one compartment are talking three or four
languages;
In another an Italian officer leans close in conversation to a
yellow-haired young woman, and touches her lightly every now and then on
the arm;
In a third sits a bedizened old hag, purveyor of human flesh—with great
greedy clever eyes (once beautiful under their still long lashes), deep
wrinkles (yet not one of wisdom or of sorrow), and thin cruel lips;
On a frequent errand from London to Italy she travels;
I hear her pious expressions as she talks to the lady sitting opposite
to her—I note her habit of turning up her eyes as of one shocked;
And still the train rushes on, and the fields fly past and the
vineyards.
2
Dusk closes down, and the train rushes on and on;
The mountains stand rank behind rank, and valley beyond valley,
Towering up and up over the clouds even into broad day again.
* * * * *
Lo! the great measureless slopes with receding dwindling perspective of
trees and habitations;
Here at their foot the trellised gardens, and rivers roaring under the
stone bridges of towns,
And there the far ledges where the tumbled roofs of tiny hamlets are
perched—the terrace after terrace of vine and wheat, the meadows with
grass and flowers;
The zigzag path, the lonely chalet, the patches of cultivation almost
inaccessible,
The chestnut woods, and again the pinewoods, and beyond again, where no
trees are, the solitary pasturages;
[The hidden upper valleys bare of all but rocks and grass—they too with
their churches and villages;]
And beyond the pasturages, aye beyond the bare rocks, through the great
girdle of the clouds—high high in air—
The inaccessible world of ice, scarce trodden of men.
3
There the rich sunlight dwells, calm like an aureole of glory, over a
thousand forms of snow and rock clear-cut delaying.
But below in the dusk along the mountain-bases the train climbs
painfully,
Crossing the putty-colored ice-cold streams again and again with tardy
wheel;
Till the great summit tunnel is reached, then tilting forward,
With many a roar and rush and whistle and scream from gallery to gallery
It flies—rolls like a terror-stricken thing down the great slopes into
the darkness—and night falls in the valleys.
4
Here too then also, and without fail, as everywhere else,
The same old human face looking forth—
Whether in the high secluded valleys where all winter comes no sound
from the outer world, or whether by the side of the great iron road
where the plate-layer runs to bring a passenger a cup of cold water, or
whether loafing in the market-place of the fourth-rate country town—the
same.
Here too from the door of her little wooden tenement the worn face
looking forth—fringed with grey hair and cap—the old woman peering
anxiously down the road for her old man;
[Saw you not how when he left her in the morning, how anxiously, how
lovingly, with what strange transformation of countenance—Death close
behind her—she prayed him early to return?]
The little boy with big straw hat and short blouse bringing the goats
home at evening, the gape-mouthed shortpetticoated squaw that
accompanies him;
The peasant lying in the field face downwards and asleep, while his wife
and children finish the remainder of his meal; the bullock-faced workers
on the roads or over the lands;
Ever the same human face, ever the same brute men and women—poignant
with what divine obscure attractions!
* * * * *
And the dainty-handed Chinaman in the first-class carriage surveys them
as he passes, with mental comparisons;
And the string of mules waits at the railroad crossing in the last dusk
as the train thunders by, and the navvy with great shady hat and grey
flannel shirt, and scarf round his waist, waits;
And the inhabitants of opposite hemispheres exchange glances with one
another for a moment.
5
The night wears on—and yet the same steady onward speed—the draw of the
great cities, Paris and London, beginning already to be felt;
The pause for a few minutes at a junction—the good coffee and milk, the
warm peaceful air, the late moon just rising, the few poplars near, the
mountains now faint in the distance behind;
The faces seen within the cars, hour after hour, with closed eyes, the
changed equalised expression of them, the overshadowing humanity—
(The great unconscious humanity in each one!)
The old bedizened hag overshadowed,
The young priest and his recalcitrant opponent both equally
overshadowed—their arguments so merely nothing at all; the beautiful
artist-face overshadowed;
The unsafe tunnel passed in the dead of the night, the slow tentative
movement of the train, the forms and faces of men within—visible by the
light of their own lanterns, anxious with open mouths looking upward at
the roof—all overshadowed;
The little traveler asleep with his head on the lap of his
instructor—the Persian boy—traveling he too on a long journey, farther
than London or Paris;
The westward swing of the great planets through the night, the faint
early dawn, the farms and fields flying past once more;
The great sad plains of Central France, the few trees, the innumerable
cultivation, the peasants going out so early to work,
The rising of the sun, for a new day—the great red ball so bold rising
unblemished on all the heart-ache and suffering, the plans, the schemes,
the hopes, the desires, the despairs of millions—
And the glitter and the roar already, and the rush of the life of Paris.
TO THE END OF TIME
Know that to the end of Time and the remotest corner of Space there is
nothing that you cannot take for your own—nothing without personal
relation to yourself, body and soul: to this body, sweet, bitter,
painful, pleasurable, fatal—to that, equal. Not the most fatal drug but
feeds that one, not years of slow exile or of illness.
Through this life, that life—the two always conjoined; through failure,
stedfastness; through the sight of the change and flow of things,
immortality; through the magnificence and splendor of nature (I speak to
you now seated on some wooded slope or hill—the birds, the buds, the sky
after rain), yourself equal in magnificence and splendor.
ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE
Always on the eve of departure,
Thy goods all packed, thy testament signed and witnessed,
Touching with lightest touch all offerings life lays at thy feet:
This is thy fate, O blest one!
* * * * *
After the day’s work leaving the papers behind on the desk, the tools on
the bench,
Letting the garden-line remain in the garden, leaving the newly
sharpened pick in the hardening trough,
Leaving the scissors and the sleeve-board on the floor where they fell,
and the waistcoat-lining unfinished on the machine,
Letting go all the plans and purposes of the day, forgetting about them
as if they had never been:
Lo! this is thy fate, O blest one!
* * * * *
The chains of office round your neck, yet to uncoil and lay them quietly
aside,
The cares of state that have held you since morning holding you no
longer, the axe-handle relaxing its grasp on you;
Out of the old ever-passing, free as air,
For the acceptance of all, and the praise and blame of men, alike
without prejudice:
Lo! this is thy fate, O blest one!
ARENZANO
In the great Church over the little fishing-village,
In the gloom of evening and of the spacious interior—only a few candles
lighted over a side altar—
[The great doors wide open to the twilight over the bay, with
silhouettes of figures entering, and continual tread of feet upon the
stone floor]—
There in the dusk the fisher-wives kneel and pray:
_Ave Maria, ave, ave._
A great throng, hardly visible, with shawls thrown over their heads—and
men and children:
_Ave Maria, ave, ave._
* * * * *
The long monotonous semi-savage refrain and wash of voices,
Unending, like the rhythm of the sea itself,
The untrained choir, the rise suspense and breaking of the wave of
trebles, the answer of the basses in passionate iteration—the mesmeric
influence—
The great Christ over the main altar, half lost in gloom, with arms
outstretched, and crucified,
The faint sweet smell of incense,
The long Past:
* * * * *
The long Past from which it all comes—
Strange voices and refrains,
As from the coasts of Tyre, and the worship of Ashtoreth,
Or this is Isis the ever-virgin Madonna and her infant Horus—one with
the Virgin of the stars—
Or this the antiphonal music of the psalms
Within the Jewish Temple.
* * * * *
The same great needs of human life all down the ages—
Each tiny drop to feel the living wave it forms a part of;
Dear Love; and Death; the narrow clear-cut bounded present, the dread
Unknown, the children clinging to each other—
Not one that dies, not one the waves engulf,
But tears and agony to those remaining.
* * * * *
Ah! who can tell and who can see the end?
Man that art God yet perishest as grass!
I sit here in a corner of thy world-old temple—
(Here in this old fishing-village just as much as anywhere else)—
In the dark unknown unnoticed I sit,
And hear the ceaseless sounding of Thy Sea,
And join the _Ave Maria, ave, ave_.
O TENDER HEART
O tender heart of our humanity,
O bleeding sacred heart, with tears of ages.
* * * * *
Dear Mother, once on earth, now glorified—
Thy arms outstretched in love o’er all creation—
Thy husk lies by the sea-shore, which Thou once
Didst thus and thus inhabit (parted now,
For it could ne’er contain Thee).
* * * * *
O buds and blooms of Spring once more returning,
Bright waters flowing, O heavenly blue still shining,
And Thou still spreading over all and changeless,
O tender heart of our humanity,
O bleeding sacred heart, with tears of ages.
* * * * *
Arise Thou glorified,
Year after year—leaving thy mortal days behind—
Dear mother in the great unseen impending,
Slowly creation orbs about thy form.
I follow where thou walkedst. I behold
Where ages back on earth Thou still didst pass;
I see thee in the streets to-day disguised;
Thy spirit glides eternal—and I follow,
Kissing the sacred foot-prints as I go.
* * * * *
All suffering for thy dear sake is holy—
(O thorn-crowned brow, O bleeding sacred heart)—
Thou that didst bear me and thy children all
With bitter pangs and sorrow for thy cup
(Thy thin hands laid at last within the grave),
All suffering for thy dear sake is holy.
THE CARTER
So in the dirt, amid the filthy smoke and insensate din of the great
city,
Into my attic came my friend the carter and sat with me for a while.
* * * * *
Young and worn, these are the words he said:
“Never before could I have believed it, but I see it all now;
There is nothing like it—no happiness—when you have clean dropped
thinking about yourself.
But you must not do it by halves—while ever there is the least grain of
self left it will spoil all;
You must just leave it all behind—and yourself be the same as others;
If they want anything, and you want it, well it is the same who gets it;
You cannot be disappointed then.
I do not say it is not hard, but I know there is nothing—no
happiness—like it;
It is a new life, and them that has never tasted it, they have no idea
what it is.”
* * * * *
Thus in the din and dirt of the city, as over the mountain tops and in
the far forests alone with Nature,
I saw the unimaginable form dwelling, whom no mortal eye may see,
The unimaginable form of Man, tenant of the Earth from far ages, seen of
the wise in all times—
Dwelling also in the youthful carter.
THE STONE-CUTTER
“And men to-day—are they not always running about to do something?
But He says: _I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do._”
* * * * *
Thus to me the stone-cutter, with chisel and mallet in hand all the
while dishing out a sump-cover,
Standing out there in the Sun, in the light July breeze so cool,
Spoke the words of Christ—the old indestructible words—which all down
the ages,
Whether in the mouth of stone-cutter or carpenter,
Emerge time after time from the heart of the people.
THE VOICE OF ONE BLIND
Blind, ah! blind—it has come upon me now—
A veil thickening between the world and me.
[I saw them move through it—saw the dear faces and figures as in a fluid
haze,
And then they blurred, and then I saw them not.]
* * * * *
Alone? Ah no! who shall describe the joy that has come upon me?
The blow that should have crushed me broke my chains,
And I, that was the prisoner, am free.
* * * * *
Sweet—all of fever fled—all calm now and peaceful,
To feel the warm sun on my hands, or traveling along my forehead,
To hear the sounds—the rustling of the breeze or chirrup of the birds,
the kettle singing or the turned page of the book my loved one reads—
The touches and the hands, the voices and the sweet caresses;
How they come nearer, now!
I go no more to seek, I stay at home, and let them come to me.
* * * * *
And sweet sweet visions—
Ah! forms I saw not when my eyes were clear—
Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mortal friends,
What gods are come about me?
* * * * *
And Thou above all:
Thou, gracious presence, sweet enfolding me
Far far within, touching me nearest of all,
As through so many ages men and women Thou with the sweetness of thy
love hast ravished:
So I touch them through Thee—through Thee to all
I am come nearer now.
A SONG OF ONE IN OLD AGE
Weary and broken, old age, art thou now come upon me?
My faculties drying up like pools of water in summer,
My body dying, my brain rusting, my heart-beat dull and torpid—
Falling off like a dead leaf from the tree, unheeded, useless—
Is this old age then? lonely, ah! how lonely!
* * * * *
The world hurries by so light and glad and joyous—each man following his
call: but I without any;
The spring returns with the budding leaves on the beech so fresh, and
the virgin grass, and the foals and young calves in the fields: as it
has returned so oft before; but I am old and must die—there is no place
for me any longer;
At night in dreams the faces return to me—the faces that I loved, ah!
dearest faces!—but when I wake the world is changed, all changed: there
is no place for them any longer, but strangers are around me.
How should love come to me—what is there that any one should seek me?
Who will pause for the empty husk of a man, and shall I be a supplicant
for pity?
How could I ever have guessed when I was young that this would come upon
me—and yet it has come upon me, as it has come upon so many millions
before?
To die—that is it. This at last is what I have so often counted on—to
die, to be effaced, to be made of no account—and now it is forced upon
me whether I will or no.
* * * * *
O Death, I shall conquer thee yet.
Didst thou think to terrify me?—but lo! was I not dead before thou
camest?
Long long years ago did I not abandon this frail tenement, all but in
name?—was not my last furniture packed up and ready to be transported?
The virgin grass received me, and the beech trees so tenderly green in
spring, and the bodies of my lovers that I loved:
They became my dwelling, and I forgot that I existed.
I passed freely and floated on the ocean of which before I had only been
part of the shore,
I took up my refuge beyond the limits where thou couldst come.
* * * * *
Yet now once more confined,
Here in this prison cell while the walls grow thicker—of all I was a
little spark waits yet its liberation.
Come quickly, Death, and loose this last remainder of me—shatter the
walls,
Break down this body of mine, and let me go.
Or else,
In patience let me wait seeing fulfilled
That which I sought so long—to be effaced.
Hidden I wait—this old husk suits me well—for who will guess the
likeness of me through it?
This is my invisible cap wherein I’ll ramble yet through many byways of
sweet human life.
And thou too, stranger, shalt pity me if thou wilt, and I will accept
thy pity gratefully—
Yet after all perhaps the best gift of the two
I’ll give to thee.
* * * * *
Old age, old age?—No! only there outside.
Here where I am ’tis everlasting youth.
This is where the virgin grass springs from, I see, and the loves that
clothe the frame of humanity.
Out of this old shell passing I begin again—there is no death here,
there can be no death,
Only perpetual joy.
IN EXTREME AGE
Unto Thee, O Nature, I abandon myself:
Accept me, thou beautiful,
Marred and deformed and stunted take me from myself
Unto thy own great uses.
* * * * *
Lo, I outgrow this body! painfully
My life ebbs yet and flows again within it.
These hands and feet, these eyes and brain, these senses, faculties,
have served their turn—
The dinted tools I render back to Thee.
* * * * *
As when a boy I sat upon the beach in the sun, and watched the sparkling
waves,
So now in extreme age sitting here
I trace no change—scarce any change at all.
Some little work done, some formal knowledge gained, some passages of
sweet or sad experience;
But all these only outworks, falling off,
Leave me the same that I have been through life.
(So little one life—so brief, slight, a thing.)
* * * * *
Till now at length, feeling Thee gather round me close,
Close, closer, closer yet,
At last the bounds dissolve which kept us twain,
And I and Thou are one, and I alone am not.
AFTER THE DAY’S WORK
Passing by, passing by all exteriors,
Swimming floating on the Ocean that has innumerable bays—
I too at length nestle down in thy breast, O humanity;
Tired I abandon myself to thee, to be washed from the dust of life in
thy waves.
I SAW A VISION
I saw a vision of Earth’s multitudes going up and down over the
Earth—and I saw the great earth itself wheeling and careering onward
through space.
And behold! here and there to one among the multitude a change came;
And to whomsoever it came continued onward apparently as before—yet as
from the larva springs the perfect image,
So (as it appeared to me) from that mortal form a new being, long long
long in preparation, glided silently up unobserved into the breathless
pure height of the sky.
AH! BLESSED IS HE
Ah! blessed is he that hath escaped—
Whom love hath opened the doors of his cage:
No more returning
Shall he be subject again to sin and sorrow.
THE GREAT LEADER
I use my name and powers, I use my great prestige,
As a joiner uses a tool: they serve my purpose well.
Nevertheless think not that I regard them
Except as things to be destroyed in using.
I ACCEPT YOU
I accept you altogether—as the sea accepts the fish that swim in it.
It is no good apologising for anything you have done, for you have never
been anywhere yet but what I have sustained you—
And beyond my boundaries you cannot go.
SOL
Coruscating flame I behold the soul,
Mine, yours, whoever it may be—
Darting great tongues of flame thousands of miles long,
Thousands of years.
A GLIMPSE
Here at last having arrived I take my rest, my long long fill of rest,
no more to move;
The roaring subsides, the wheels cease to go round, a calm falls on
all—the stars and the daisies shine out visibly from the bosom of God.
* * * * *
You cannot baulk me of my true life.
Climbing over the barriers of pain—of my own weaknesses and sins—I
escape.
Where will you hold me? by the feet, hands? by my personal vanity? would
you shut me in the mirror-lined prison of self-consciousness?
* * * * *
Behold! I acknowledge all my defects—you cannot snap the handcuffs
faster on me than I snap them myself: I am vain, deceitful, cowardly—yet
I escape.
The handcuffs hold me not, out of my own hands I draw myself as out of a
glove; from behind the empty mask of my reputed qualities I depart, and
am gone my way,
Unconcerned what I leave behind me.
* * * * *
Into the high air which surrounds and sustains the world,
Breathing life, intoxicating, with joy unutterable, radiant,
As the wind of Spring when the dead leaves fly before it—
I depart and am gone my way.
THE LONG DAY IN THE OPEN
Hour after hour passes by, the Sun wheels on, the clouds disperse and
re-form;
On all I have to do thou lookest O Nature, I have nothing to conceal
from thee; O Moon traveling so close over the hills,
Dost thou not say what I have to say, are not our purposes one?
THE IDLER
I am he that beholds and praises the universe,
Singing all day like a bird among the branches,
And the leaves put forth and the young buds burst asunder—yet I myself
do nothing at all,
But dwell in the midst of them, singing.
IN THE DEEP CAVE OF THE HEART
In the deep cave of the heart, far down,
Running under the outward shows of the world and of people,
Running under geographies, continents, under the fields and the roots of
the grasses and trees, under the little thoughts and dreams of men, and
the history of races,
Deep, far down,
I see feel and hear wondrous and divine things.
Voices and faces are there; arms of lovers, known and unknown, reach
forward and fold me;
Words float, and fragrance of Time ascends, and Life ever circling.
_Fly messenger! through the streets of the cities ancle-plumed Mercury
fly!_
_Swift sinewy runner with arm held up on high!_
_Naked along the wind, thy beautiful feet_
_Glancing over the mountains, under the sun,_
_By meadows and water-sides,—into the great towns like a devouring
flame,_
_Through slums and vapors and dismal suburban streets,_
_With startling of innumerable eyes—fly, messenger, fly!_
* * * * *
_Joy joy, the glad news!_
_For he whom we wait is risen!_
_He is descended among his children—_
_He is come to dwell on the Earth!_
THE COMING OF THE LORD
I heard a voice saying:
Son of Man stretch forth thy hand over the earth—and over the sea-coasts
and seas and cities of the earth:
I, the King, am come to dwell in my own lands—I am descended among the
children of men.
[Blessed art thou whosoever from whose eyes the veil is lifted to see
Me;
Blessed are thy mornings and evenings—blessed the hour when thou risest
up, and again when thou liest down to sleep.]
* * * * *
Here on this rock in the sun, where the waves obedient wash at my feet,
where the fisherman passing spreads his net on the sands,
I the King sit waiting.
This mountain is my throne—I breathe the incense of the myriad-laden
meadows;
The little white-washed cottages lie below me, and there my dwelling is
also.
2
See you not Me? though I stand in the height of heaven,
Glorious in all forms, am I become as a nothing before you?
Though I walk through the street with a basket on my arm, or leaning on
a stick—or loiter in many disguises?
See you not Me,
Who have looked in your eyes so long for that glance of recognition?
Yet when you see me no form of maid or boy, or one mature or aged,
Or the truth of anything shall escape you.
* * * * *
In the streets of the cities, where the horses’ hoofs sound hollow upon
the asphalte, and the old woman sits by her tray,
And the babble of voices goes by as you stand at the corner,
I will pass with the rest—you shall see me and not mistake me.
The woods no more shall be merely a cover for wild animals, or so much
value in timber, nor the fields for their crops alone,
For I have trodden them—they are holy—and my foot-prints are over all
the land.
* * * * *
Who walks in singleness of heart shall be my companion—I will reveal
myself to him by ways that the learned understand not.
Though he be poor and ignorant I will be his friend—I will swear
faithfulness to him, passing my lips to his, and my hand to betwixt his
thighs.
3
Where I pass, all my children know me;
My feet tread naked the grass of the valleys, the trees know me by
name—they hear my voice—the brook with heaped up waters rushes past me.
[O voices breaking out over the earth, O singing singing singing!]
My sun shines glorious in heaven, and my moon to adorn the night;
They are my right hand and my left hand—see you not Me between?
[Hark! my children sing—all day and night they are singing!]
4
O child—you whom I touch now, having watched over you so long, so long—
Are you worthy to follow and behold me?
* * * * *
Leaving all, leaving all behind,
Caring no more for the world, for all your projects and purposes, than
if you had been stunned by a blow on the head,
Leaving all to me, absolutely all to me,
Then may-be you shall see me.
* * * * *
For though you shall carry on where you are placed, and shall not
forsake your post, though you shall be unwearied, giving all that you
have out of love to the least capable of making a return, though you
shall be active before the world,
Yet shall you not act at all, not one single thing shall you do—but I
will do it for you.
* * * * *
After that the arrows shall not pierce you, nor the heavy rain wet you,
the shafts of malice shall not penetrate to you, nor the fire though it
consume your body shall consume you;
But the sun shall shine, and the faces glance each morning afresh upon
you,
For joy, for joy—and joy.
I the Lord Demos have spoken it: and the mountains are my throne.
THE CURSE OF PROPERTY
Are they not mine, saith the Lord, the everlasting hills?
(Where over the fir-tree tops I glance to the valleys.)
The rich meads with brown and white cattle, and streams with weirs and
water-mills,
And the tender-growing crops, and hollows of shining apple-blossom—
From my mountain terraces as from a throne beholding my lands—
Are they not mine, where I dwell, and for my children?
* * * * *
How long, you, will you trail your slime over them, and your talk of
rights and of property?
How long will you build your houses to hide yourselves in, and your
baggage? to shut yourselves off from your brothers and sisters—and Me?
* * * * *
Beware! for I am the storm; I care nought for your rights of property.
In lightning and thunder, in floods and fire, I will ruin and ravage
your fields;
Your first-born will I slay within your house, and I will make your
riches a mockery.
* * * * *
Fools! that know not from day to day, from hour to hour, if ye shall
live,
And yet will snatch from each other the things that I have showered
among you.
For I will have none that will not open his door to all, treating others
as I have treated him.
The trees that spread their boughs against the evening sky, the marble
that I have prepared beforehand these millions of years in the earth;
the cattle that roam over the myriad hills—they are Mine, for all my
children—
If thou lay hands on them for thyself alone, thou art accursed.
* * * * *
The curse of property shall cling to thee;
With burdened brow and heavy heart, weary, incapable of joy, without
gaiety,
Thou shalt crawl a stranger in the land that I made for thy enjoyment.
The smallest bird on thy estate shall sing in freedom in the branches,
the plough-boy shall whistle in the furrow,
But thou shalt be weary and lonely—forsaken and an alien among men:
For just inasmuch as thou hast shut thyself off from one of the least of
these my children, thou hast shut thyself off from Me.
* * * * *
I the Lord Demos have spoken it—and the mountains are my throne.
OVER THE GREAT CITY
Over the great city,
Where the wind rustles through the parks and gardens,
In the air, the high clouds brooding,
In the lines of street perspective, the lamps, the traffic,
The pavements and the innumerable feet upon them,
I Am: make no mistake—do not be deluded.
* * * * *
Think not because I do not appear at the first glance—because the
centuries have gone by and there is no assured tidings of me—that
therefore I am not there.
Think not because all goes its own way that therefore I do not go my own
way through all.
The fixed bent of hurrying faces in the street—each turned towards its
own light, seeing no other—yet I am the Light towards which they all
look.
The toil of so many hands to such multifarious ends, yet my hand knows
the touch and twining of them all.
* * * * *
All come to me at last.
There is no love like mine;
For all other love takes one and not another;
And other love is pain, but this is joy eternal.
UNDERNEATH AND AFTER ALL
There is no peace except where I am, saith the Lord.
Though you have health—that which is called health—yet without me it is
only the fair covering of disease;
Though you have love, yet if I be not between and around the lovers, is
their love only torment and unrest;
Though you have wealth and friends and home—all these shall come and
go—there is nothing stable or secure, which shall not be taken away;
But I alone remain—I do not change.
As space spreads everywhere, and all things move and change within it,
but it moves not nor changes,
So I am the space within the soul, of which the space without is but the
similitude and mental image;
Comest thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to all life—death
shall no longer divide thee from whom thou lovest.
I am the sun that shines upon all creatures from within—gazest thou upon
me thou shalt be filled with joy eternal.
Be not deceived. Soon this outer world shall drop off—thou shalt slough
it away as a man sloughs his mortal body.
Learn even now to spread thy wings in that other world—the world of
Equality—to swim in the ocean, my child, of Me and my love.
[Ah! have I not taught thee by the semblances of this outer world, by
its alienations and deaths and mortal sufferings—all for this?
For joy, ah! joy unutterable!]
* * * * *
Him who is not detained by mortal adhesions, who walks in this world yet
not of it,
Taking part in everything with equal mind, with free limbs and senses
unentangled—
Giving all, accepting all, using all, enjoying all, asking nothing,
shocked at nothing—
Whom love follows everywhere, but he follows not it—
Him all creatures worship, all men and women bless.
* * * * *
It is for this that the body exercises its tremendous attraction—that
mortal love torments and tears asunder the successive generations of
mankind—
That underneath and after all the true men and women may appear, by long
experience emancipated.
A HARD SAYING
Who loves the mortal creature, ending there, is no more free—he has
given himself away to Death—
For him the slimy black Form lies in wait at every turn, befouling the
universe;
Yet he who loves must love the mortal, and he who would love perfectly
must be free:
[Love—glorious though it be—is a disease as long as it destroys or even
impairs the freedom of the soul.]
* * * * *
Therefore if thou wouldst love, withdraw thyself from love:
Make it thy slave, and all the miracles of nature shall lie in the palm
of thy hand.
NOT FOR A FEW MONTHS OR YEARS
Think not that that which is growing inside you as you battle with these
words is for a few months or years,
Or that it will find its rest and satisfaction in the things for which
the world is so busy striving.
Food ease lust knowledge fame—’twill pasture up as nonchalantly as a
dog, and look in your face for more.
They shall not satisfy it. The list of all the things that can be named
shall not satisfy it.
DISENTANGLEMENT
Be not torn by desire:
When burning clinging love assails thee—like a red-hot thing which
sticks to the flesh it scorches—
Beware!
For love is good and lust is good—but not to tear and rend thee.
* * * * *
Slowly and resolutely—as a fly cleans its legs of the honey in which it
has been caught—
So remove thou, if it only be for a time, every particle which sullies
the brightness of thy mind;
Return into thyself—content to give, but asking no one, asking nothing;
In the calm light of His splendor who fills all the universe, the
imperishable indestructible of ages,
Dwell thou—as thou canst dwell—contented.
2
Now understand me well:
There is no desire or indulgence that is forbidden; there is not one
good and another evil—all are alike in that respect;
In place all are to be used.
Yet in using be not entangled in them; for then already they are bad,
and will cause thee suffering.
* * * * *
When thy body—as needs must happen at times—is carried along on the wind
of passion, say not thou, “I desire this or that”;
For the “I” neither desires nor fears anything, but is free and in
everlasting glory, dwelling in heaven and pouring out joy like the sun
on all sides.
Let not that precious thing by any confusion be drawn down and entangled
in the world of opposites, and of Death and suffering.
For as a light-house beam sweeps with incredible speed over sea and
land, yet the lamp itself moves not at all,
So while thy body of desire is (and must be by the law of its nature)
incessantly in motion in the world of suffering, the “I” high up above
is fixed in heaven.
* * * * *
Therefore I say let no confusion cloud thy mind about this matter;
But ever when desire knocks at thy door,
Though thou grant it admission and entreat it hospitably, as in duty
bound,
Fence it yet gently off from thy true self,
Lest it should tear and rend thee.
3
And him thou lovest or her thou lovest—
If without confusion thou beholdest such one fixed like a star in
heaven, and ever in thy most clinging burning passion rememberest Whom
thou lovest,
Then art thou blessed beyond words, and thy love is surely eternal;
But if by confusion thou knowest not whom thou lovest—but seest only the
receptacle of desire which inhabits the world of change and suffering—
Then shalt thou be whirled and gulfed in a sea of torment, and shalt
travel far and be many times lost upon that ocean before thou shalt know
what is the true end of thy voyage.
THE MORTAL LOVER
This is the little mortal lover in whose heart the low scorching flame
of rejected love burns night and day, withering all his life.
In vain the great mountains and the sea, in vain the sun in heaven, in
vain all faces offer themselves;
There is no rest: only death and annihilation for everything that is
born;
Only a corpse swinging up-river with the tide among the mud-banks, and
swinging down again with the ebb;
And the tide ebbing and flowing aimlessly for ever in a land where all
are dead.
* * * * *
He lies awake all night and strains his eyes for a glimmer of light, but
there is none;
Every pursuit, every hope, all of life, is a mockery—he has been gulled
into existence.
We have been brought here (he says), a mass of sensitive capacities, to
behold a possible satisfaction—then to be trampled underfoot like worms,
without redemption, never again to know each other or ourselves.
The heart aches and burns in slow torture, the sounds of daily life are
a mockery, the pursuits of men are like the laughter of maniacs playing
on the brink of a precipice.
* * * * *
Millions and millions approach the edge—a vast body always moving on
from behind;
The gulf is measureless in depth, but the young and those who are in the
rear know not of it—they only feel the vast onward movement, and with
loud chants and rollicking songs march gaily confidently on;
Then suddenly those who are older and nearing the edge behold the
horrible and naked truth—they see the avalanche of human beings for ever
going over into the abyss;
With shouts and cries of warning they turn upon those that are behind:
but it is useless, they too are pushed on relentlessly;
Behind is a babel of sounds, cries of Forward, Progress, God,
Immortality, and the like; around are shrieks and despairing threats,
curses and plaintive unheeded warnings; before is the abyss of oblivion,
Into which countless generations before have gone, and we must go;
And this is the hell of existence.
* * * * *
He lies awake all night with pain gnawing at his heart, and strains his
eyes for a glimmer of light, but there is none.
THE END OF LOVE
Seek not the end of love in this act or in that act—lest indeed it
become the end;
But seek this act and that act and thousands of acts whose end is love—
So shalt thou at last create that which thou now desirest;
And then when these are all past and gone there shall remain to thee a
great and immortal possession, which no man can take away.
A NEW LIFE
Henceforth I propound a new life for you—that you should bring the peace
and grace of Nature into all your daily life—being freed from vain
striving:
The freed soul, passing disengaged into the upper air, forgetful of
self,
Rising again in others, ever knowing itself again in others.
* * * * *
The villa stands with its picturesque gables and garden, its
rhododendrons all in flower, and exotic firs, with clumps of tulips;
The ploughman to his horses clicks and calls all day in the midst of the
vocal landscape;
The rivers wind lazily about the land; the slow air floats on from the
West and South, bringing on its bosom long-promised gifts.
Out of houses and closed rooms, out of the closed prison of self which
you have inhabited so long;
Into the high air which circles round the world, the region of human
equality,
With outspread wings balanced, resting on that which is not self,
Floating high up as a condor over the mountains in aerial suspense,
Or as an eagle flying screaming over the cities of the earth, with joy
delirious—
So passing enfranchised shall you regain after long captivity
Your own your native abode.
THE LAW OF EQUALITY
You cannot violate the law of Equality for long.
Whatever you appropriate to yourself now from others, by that you will
be poorer in the end;
What you give now, the same will surely come back to you.
If you think yourself superior to the rest, in that instant you have
proclaimed your own inferiority;
And he that will be servant of all, helper of most, by that very fact
becomes their lord and master.
* * * * *
Seek not your own life—for that is death;
But seek how you can best and most joyfully give your own life away—and
every morning for ever fresh life shall come to you from over the hills.
* * * * *
Man has to learn to die—quite simply and naturally—as the child has to
learn to walk.
The life of Equality the grave cannot swallow—any more than the finger
can hold back running water—it flows easily round and over all
obstacles.
A little while snatching to yourself the goods of the earth, jealous of
your own credit, and of the admiration and applause of men,
Then to learn that you cannot defeat Nature so—that water will not run
up hill for all your labors and lying awake at night over it:
The claims of others as good as yours, their excellence in their own
line equal to your best in yours, their life as near and dear to you as
your own can be.
So letting go all the chains which bound you, all the anxieties and
cares,
The wearisome burden, the artificial unyielding armor wherewith you
would secure yourself, but which only weighs you down a more helpless
mark for the enemy—
Having learned the necessary lesson of your own identity—
To pass out, free, O joy!—free, to flow down, to swim in the sea of
Equality—
To endue the bodies of the divine Companions,
And the life which is eternal.
TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE
Not by running out of yourself after it comes the love which lasts a
thousand years.
If to gain another’s love you are untrue to yourself then are you also
untrue to the person whose love you would gain.
Him or her whom you seek will you never find that way—and what pleasure
you have with them will haply only end in pain.
Remain stedfast, knowing that each prisoner has to endure in patience
till the season of his liberation; when the love comes which is for you
it will turn the lock easily and loose your chains—
Being no longer whirled about nor tormented by winds of uncertainty, but
part of the organic growth of God himself in Time—
Another column in the temple of immensity,
Two voices added to the eternal choir.
ABANDON HOPE ALL YE THAT ENTER HERE
To die—for this into the world you came.
Yes, to abandon more than you ever conceived as possible:
All ideals, plans—even the very best and most unselfish—all hopes and
desires,
All formulas of morality, all reputation for virtue or consistency or
good sense; all cherished theories, doctrines, systems of knowledge,
Modes of life, habits, predilections, preferences, superiorities,
weaknesses, indulgences,
Good health, wholeness of limb and brain, youth, manhood, age—nay life
itself—in one word: To die—
For this into the world you came.
* * * * *
All to be abandoned, and when they have been finally abandoned,
Then to return to be used—and then only to be rightly used, to be free
and open for ever.
TO ONE DEAD
You must look at your own body lying dead there quite calmly—
[If you have ever loved and quietly surrendered that love you will
understand what I mean]—
The dear fingers and feet, the eyes you have looked in so often—they are
yours no longer;
You are not bound to them, you are something else than you thought.
Now you see that these things are only a similitude:
A new and wonderful life opens out—so wonderful, O so wonderful!
* * * * *
Those eyes whose answer once you forebore to ask for—do you remember how
after all, how wide and wonderful at last they opened upon you, shining
up for you (yes for you) from depths you saw not in them before?
And that body which now you have forsaken, so now for the first time do
you understand it and its life (all the old passages in it so clear, so
real, so wonderful, so transparent);
Now it radiates back upon you what you are—of whom it is only the
similitude;
And even so it is only one of your similitudes.
OF ALL THE SUFFERING
Of all the suffering—
(Think think of it, and learn what Freedom is)—
All the weary disappointed faces,
The lives narrowed down, the dark and joyless prospect,
Capacities stunted that might have been developed, hope gone, the cross
of anguish on the forehead;
* * * * *
Of the fair might-have-been, the lips so loved that Death has hid from
view,
The dread inexorable past, the nothing left to live for,
Age empty purposeless—a mere cold husk—
Death coming slow, with pain and foul disease;
* * * * *
Of all the cruelty of one to another,
Slights that cut the heart’s tenderest chords, words said that can never
be unsaid;
Of the deliberate cruelty of savages and half-formed people, gloating in
revenge, or amused by others’ pain;
The victim staked out horizontally on the ground, the little fires built
beside or under his arms and legs, or upon his breast,
The careful ingenious torture lasting for hours, the jeers, the diabolic
laughter—the moaning of the deserted and half-charred remnant through
the long night—the stars looking on;
Of the thousands languishing in prisons, slowly succumbing through all
mental tortures into madness;
Of the millions over whom the dread night-mares hang—deaths, partings,
exiles, illness, pain and persecution—the brief respite in sleep, the
waking to despair:
Think think of these, and learn what Freedom is.
* * * * *
Of all the delusion of thinking oneself apart from others—and all the
needless torment that springs from it;
Of the fear that one might somehow tumble out of the world of
Existence—dying oneself while others lived on;
Of the lightning-flashes of love which fitfully and for a moment to
dazed wanderers reveal the truth;
Of after pain endured the immense and widened outlook;
* * * * *
Of the poor little thing that shuts itself in its own cell, and then
looks forth with anxious eyes upon the world—as though there were no
escape—tossed by winds of Chance, subject to Death and Dissolution:
The little primitive cell that grows and differentiates and grows till
that which was in it attains at last to Manhood and Deliverance;
Of all the beating about in the dark round the walls of one’s prison,
yet never hitting the secret door of exit;
Of all the sorrow and blindness that inveil for a time the unformed
embryonic creature—
Inveil fatally and forethoughtfully for ends glorious beyond all mortal
imagination:
Think think of these and learn what Freedom is.
A LONG JOURNEY
The long insatiable yearning of the mortal creature, for absolute
union—never accomplished;
Each mortal love the symbol, the promise, and the part-fulfilment of
that for which all life exists.
* * * * *
Not this year or next, not this life or perhaps the next,
But day by day and day by day as long as thou art, pass thou nearer to
that great joy.
* * * * *
Here too (as so often said before) it is no matter of chance:
It is not that these are lucky having found their mates, and thou art
unfortunate standing alone (for they have not found their mates, and
thou standest not alone);
But every day and every day (for thee as well as for them and all) the
way lies on before—to be slowly accomplished—
To make thyself fit for the perfect love which awaits and which alone
can satisfy thee.
* * * * *
Lo! that divine body which dwells within thy mortal body, slowly
preparing its own deliverance—
What is all suffering before that? to surrender this is but to open the
way for that—’tis but the law of Equality.
Begin to-day to walk the path which alone is gain;
In the sunshine, as the sunshine, calm contented and blessed, envying no
one, railing not, repining not;
Receiving the message of the patient trees and herbs, and of the
creatures of the earth, and of the stars above;
Possessing all within thyself, with showers of beauties and blessings
every moment—to scatter again to others with free hand;
Neither hurrying nor slackening, but sure of thy great and glorious
destiny, walk thou—
And presently all around thee shalt thou see the similitude of him whom
thou seekest:
He shall send a multitude of messengers in advance to cheer thee on thy
way.
THE SECRET OF TIME AND SATAN
Is there one in all the world who does not desire to be divinely
beautiful?
To have the most perfect body—unerring skill, strength, limpid clearness
of mind, as of the sunlight over the hills,
To radiate love wherever he goes, to move in and out, accepted?
The secret lies close to you, so close.
* * * * *
You are that person; it lies close to you, so close—deep down within—
But in Time it shall come forth and be revealed.
* * * * *
Not by accumulating riches, but by giving away what you have,
Shall you become beautiful;
You must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in fresh ones;
Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound and healthy,
but rather by discarding them;
Not by multiplying knowledge shall you beautify your mind;
It is not the food that you eat that has to vivify you, but you that
have to vivify the food.
* * * * *
Always emergence, and the parting of veils for the hidden to appear;
The child emerges from its mother’s body, and out of that body again in
time another child.
When the body which thou now hast falls away, another body shall be
already prepared beneath,
And beneath that again another.
Always that which appears last in time is first, and the cause of
all—and not that which appears first.
2
Freedom has to be won afresh every morning,
Every morning thou must put forth thy strength afresh upon the world, to
create out of chaos the garden in which thou walkest.
(Behold! I love thee—I wait for thee in thine own garden, lingering till
eventide among the bushes;
I tune the lute for thee; I prepare my body for thee, bathing unseen in
the limpid waters.)
3
Wondrous is Man—the human body: to understand and possess this, to
create it every day afresh, is to possess all things.
The tongue and all that proceeds from it: spoken and written words,
languages, commands, controls, the electric telegraph girdling the
earth;
The eyes ordaining, directing; the feet and all that they indicate—the
path they travel for years and years;
The passions of the body, the belly and the cry for food, the heaving
breasts of love, the phallus, the fleshy thighs,
The erect proud head and neck, the sturdy back, and knees well-knit or
wavering;
All the interminable attitudes and what they indicate;
Every relation of one man to another, every cringing, bullying, lustful,
obscene, pure, honorable, chaste, just and merciful;
The fingers differently shaped according as they handle money for gain
or for gift;
All the different ramifications and institutions of society which
proceed from such one difference in the crook of a finger;
All that proceed from an arrogant or a slavish contour of the neck;
All the evil that goes forth from any part of a man’s body which is not
possessed by himself, all the devils let loose—from a twist of the
tongue or a leer of the eye, or the unmanly act of any member—and
swirling into society; all the good which gathers round a man who is
clean and strong—the threads drawing from afar to the tips of his
fingers, the interpretations in his eyes, all the love which passes
through his limbs into heaven:
What it is to command and be Master of this wondrous body with all its
passions and powers, to truly possess it—_that_ it is to command and
possess all things, that it is to create.
4
The art of creation, like every other art, has to be learnt:
Slowly slowly, through many years, thou buildest up thy body,
And the power that thou now hast (such as it is) to build up this
present body, thou hast acquired in the past in other bodies;
So in the future shalt thou use again the power that thou now acquirest.
But the power to build up the body includes all powers.
* * * * *
Do not be dismayed because thou art yet a child of chance, and at the
mercy greatly both of Nature and fate;
Because if thou wert not subject to chance, then wouldst thou be Master
of thyself; but since thou art not yet Master of thine own passions and
powers, in that degree must thou needs be at the mercy of some other
power.
And if thou choosest to call that power ‘Chance,’ well and good. It is
the angel with whom thou hast to wrestle.
5
Beware how thou seekest this for thyself and that for thyself. I do not
say Seek not; but Beware how thou seekest.
For a soldier who is going a campaign does not seek what fresh furniture
he can carry on his back, but rather what he can leave behind;
Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot freely use and
handle is an impediment to him.
So if thou seekest fame or ease or pleasure or aught for thyself, the
image of that thing which thou seekest will come and cling to thee—and
thou wilt have to carry it about;
And the images and powers which thou hast thus evoked will gather round
and form for thee a new body—clamoring for sustenance and satisfaction;
And if thou art not able to discard this image now, thou wilt not be
able to discard that body then: but wilt have to carry it about.
Beware then lest it become thy grave and thy prison—instead of thy
winged abode, and palace of joy.
* * * * *
For (over and over again) there is nothing that is evil except because a
man has not mastery over it; and there is no good thing that is not evil
if it have mastery over a man;
And there is no passion or power, or pleasure or pain, or created thing
whatsoever, which is not ultimately for man and for his use—or which he
need be afraid of, or ashamed at.
The ascetics and the self-indulgent divide things into good and evil—as
it were to throw away the evil;
But things cannot be divided into good and evil, but all are good so
soon as they are brought into subjection.
And seest thou not that except for Death thou couldst never overcome
Death—
For since by being a slave to things of sense thou hast clothed thyself
with a body which thou art not master of, thou wert condemned to a
living tomb were that body not to be destroyed.
But now through pain and suffering out of this tomb shalt thou come; and
through the experience thou hast acquired shalt build thyself a new and
better body;
And so on many times, till thou spreadest wings and hast all powers
diabolic and angelic concentred in thy flesh.
6
And so at last I saw Satan appear before me—magnificent, fully formed.
Feet first, with shining limbs, he glanced down from above among the
bushes,
And stood there erect, dark-skinned, with nostrils dilated with passion;
(In the burning intolerable sunlight he stood, and I in the shade of the
bushes);
Fierce and scathing the effluence of his eyes, and scornful of dreams
and dreamers (he touched a rock hard by and it split with a sound like
thunder);
Fierce the magnetic influence of his dusky flesh; his great foot,
well-formed, was planted firm in the sand—with spreading toes;
“Come out” he said with a taunt, “Art thou afraid to meet me?”
And I answered not, but sprang upon him and smote him.
And he smote me a thousand times, and brashed and scorched and slew me
as with hands of flame;
And I was glad, for my body lay there dead; and I sprang upon him again
with another body;
And he turned upon me, and smote me a thousand times and slew that body;
And I was glad and sprang upon him again with another body—
And with another and another and again another;
And the bodies which I took on yielded before him, and were like
cinctures of flame upon me, but I flung them aside;
And the pains which I endured in one body were powers which I wielded in
the next; and I grew in strength, till at last I stood before him
complete, with a body like his own and equal in might—exultant in pride
and joy.
Then he ceased, and said, “I love thee.”
And lo! his form changed, and he leaned backwards and drew me upon him,
And bore me up into the air, and floated me over the topmost trees and
the ocean, and round the curve of the earth under the moon—
Till we stood again in Paradise.
BRIEF IS PAIN
(“_Kurz ist der Schmerz, und ewig ist die Freude._”)
Slowly, out of all life unfolded, the supreme joy;
Over all storms, above the clouds, beyond Night and the shadow of the
Earth,
The Sun in the blue æther changeless shining.
* * * * *
Grief passes, sorrow endures for a moment;
To a certain stage belonging it dogs the footsteps of the individual;
Then fading and passing it leaves him free, a new creature, transfigured
to more than mortal.
The myriad spindles of the grass reflecting the light, the long and
level meadows waving to the breeze,
The faint haze of summer, blue in deep shadows of the foliage,
The toilers toiling in the fields, the bathers to the water descending
or standing on the banks in the sunlight,
The secret that lies wrapt in the summer noon and the slow evolution of
races,
The which what voice can utter, what words avail to frame it?
* * * * *
Not pleasure alone is good, but pain also; not joy alone but sorrow;
Freed must the psyche be from the pupa, and pain is there to free it.
Throes and struggles and clenchings of teeth—but pain is there to free
it.
* * * * *
Lo! the prison walls must fall—even though the prisoner tremble.
Long the strain, sometimes seeming past endurance—then the dead shell
gives way, and a new landscape discloses.
Curtain behind curtain, wall behind wall, life behind life;
Dying here, to be born there, passing and passing and passing,
At last a new creature behold, transfigured to more than mortal!
* * * * *
For brief after all is pain, but joy ah! joy is eternal!
And thin the veil that divides, the subtle film of illusion—
The prison-wall so slight, at a touch it parts and crumbles,
And opens at length on the sunlit world and the winds of heaven.
THE BODY AND THE BOOK
The chambers are all in order, all the doors stand open.
Enter Thou—this is the house that I have stored for thee among the rest:
To all that is here thou art welcome.
* * * * *
But for me ask not.
Once when the house was closed I dwelt here—a prisoner;
But now that it is open—all open—I have passed out,
Into the beautiful air, over the fields, over the world, through a
thousand homes—journeying with the wind—O so light and joyous,
Light and invisible,
I have passed, and my house is behind me.
* * * * *
Ask not for the prisoner, for he is not here;
Ask not for the free, for thou canst not find him.
Go back thou too and set thy house in order,
Open thy doors, let them stand wide for all to enter—thy treasures, let
the poorest take of them;
Then come thou forth to where I wait for thee.