I think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be
opened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one
night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light--my eyes found
these lines:
_"Listen, I will be honest with you:
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches;
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd--you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an
irresistible call to depart;
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
remain behind you;
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting;
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands
toward you....
'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"_
The thing had come around by India--a quotation from Walt, in a
little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night.
I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile
patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should
have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was
a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after
clearance--opened far out on the white water.
They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out
of them.... Romance means _Not to stay_.... Bit by bit, the story
unfolds that the Plan is good--that the Plan is unutterably good, that
one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are
God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the
world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until
the petty things of life, in _no_ arrangements or combinations, can
hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all.
One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The
men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in
the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself
to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay--don't
stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I
assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as
a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind--the next step of
the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there--not to take our
mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects--by
no means to take our card-indexes and letter files--to travel light,
to pick up the brighter shells by the way--every glimpse ahead showing
higher light--a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry
our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper
tropics?... To become as little children--to be open hearted and free
handed--to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent
separateness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the
light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do
that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly
to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs.
Weigh up your external possessions--weigh them carefully--for their
amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God....
To become as a little child--to know that the forests are filled with
other than things to eat--to love the mysteries awake, to love the
fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings--to be fearless
and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as
it comes:
* * * * *
... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for _High
Flight_. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it
must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait--that is the old song
of Earth--young waiting--big waiting--holy waiting. _I love it._ I love
the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I
am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music.
Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together--touched
great white things--talked and laughed and loved until long after
three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has
everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait,
openarmed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel--and in others. I
dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be
bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so _glad_
this morning!
* * * * *
The children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and
let them say it--the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of
Democracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young
women,--the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of
the Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and
lives--the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the
deeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found
it in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the
open road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits
for all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at
home--the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual
concept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden
in flaky white under the masses of the bees....
I laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and
story, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and
clergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs
best out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his
story through.... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's: