THE VOICE OF THE DAWN
Breathless but scathless, we emerge from the mazes of metaphysics and
psychology where man and the soul are ever playing hide-and-seek; and
where Khalid was pleased to display a little of his killing skill in
fencing. To those mazes, we promise the Reader, we shall not return
again. In our present sojourn, however, it is necessary to go through
the swamps and Jordans as well as the mountains and plains. Otherwise,
we would not have lingered a breathing while in the lowlands of
mystery. But now we know how far Khalid went in seeking health, and
how deep in seeking the Me, which he would disentangle from the meshes
of philosophy and anchoretism, and bring back to life, triumphant,
loving, joyous, free. And how far he succeeded in this, we shall soon
know.
On the morning of his last day in the pines, meanwhile, we behold him
in the chariot of Apollo serenading the stars. He no longer would
thrust a poker down his windpipe; for he breathes as freely as the
mountain bears and chirps as joyously as the swallows. And his lungs?
The lungs of the pines are not as sound. And his eyes? Well, he can
gaze at the rising sun without adverting the head or squinting or
shedding a tear. Now, as a sign of this healthy state of body and
mind, and his healthier resolve to return to the world, to live
opposite his friend the Hermit on the other antipode of life, and
furthermore, as a relief from the exhausting tortuosities of thought
in the last Chapter, we give here a piece of description notably
symbolical.
* * * * *
"I slept very early last night; the lights in the chapel of the abbey
were still flickering, and the monks were chanting the complines. The
mellow music of a drizzle seemed to respond sombrely to the melancholy
echo of the choir. About midnight the rain beat heavily on the pine
roof of the forest, and the thunder must have struck very near,
between me and the monks. But rising very early this morning to
commune for the last time with the pensive silence of dawn in the
pines, I am greeted, as I peep out of my booth, by a knot of ogling
stars. But where is the opaque breath of the storm, where are the
clouds? None seem to hang on the horizon, and the sky is as limpid and
clear as the dawn of a new life. Glorious, this interval between night
and dawn. Delicious, the flavour of the forest after a storm.
Intoxicating, the odours of the earth, refreshed and satisfied.
Divine, the whispers of the morning air, divine!
"But where is the rain, and where are the thunderbolts of last night?
The forest and the atmosphere retain but the sweet and scented
memories of their storming passion. Such a December morning in these
mountain heights is a marvel of enduring freshness and ardour. All
round one gets a vivid illusion of Spring. The soft breezes caressing
the pines shake from their boughs the only evidence of last night's
storm. And these are more like the dew of Summer than the lees of the
copious tears of parting Autumn. A glorious morning, too glorious to
be enjoyed by a solitary soul. But near the rivulet yonder stands a
fox sniffing the morning air. Welcome, my friend. Welcome to my
coffee, too.
"I gather my mulberry sticks, kindle them with a handful of dried pine
needles, roast my coffee beans, and grind them while the water boils
in the pot. In half an hour I am qualified to go about my business.
The cups and coffee utensils I wash and restore to the chest--and what
else have I to do to-day? Pack up? Allah be praised, I have little
packing to do. I would pack up, if I could, a ton of the pine air and
the forest perfume, a strip of this limpid sky, and a cluster of those
stars. Never at such an hour and in this season of the year did I
enjoy such transporting limpidity in the atmosphere and such
reassuring expansiveness on the horizon. Why, even the stars, the
constellations, and the planets, are all here to enjoy this with me.
Not one of them, I think, is absent.
"The mountains are lost in the heavens. They are seeking, as it were,
the sisters of the little flowers sleeping at their feet. The moon,
resembling a crushed orange, is sinking in the Mediterranean. The
outlines of earth and sky all round are vague, indistinct. Were not
the sky so clear and the atmosphere so rare, thus affording the
planets and the constellations to shed their modicum of light, the
dusk of this hour would have deprived the scene of much of its pensive
beauty of colour and shade. But there is Pegasus, Andromeda,
Aldebaran, not to mention Venus and Jupiter and Saturn,--these alone
can conquer the right wing of darkness. And there is Mercury, like a
lighted cresset shaken by the winds, flapping his violet wings above
the Northeastern horizon; and Mars, like a piece of gold held out by
the trembling hand of a miser, is sinking in the blue of the sea with
Neptune; the Pleiades are stepping on the trail of the blushing moon;
the Balance lingers behind to weigh the destinies of the heroes who
are to contend with the dawn; while Venus, peeping from her tower over
Mt. Sanneen, is sending love vibrations to all. I would tell thee more
if I knew. But I swear to thee I never read through the hornbook of
the heavens. But if I can not name and locate more of the stars, I can
tell thee this about them all: they are the embers of certainty
eternally glowing in the ashes of doubt.
"The Eastern horizon is yet lost in the dusk; the false dawn is
spreading the figments of its illusion; the trees in the distance seem
like rain-clouds; and the amorphous shadows of the monasteries on the
mountain heights and hilltops all around, have not yet developed into
silhouettes. Everything, except the river in the wadi below, is yet
asleep. Not even the swallows are astir. Ah, but my neighbour yonder
is; the light in the loophole of his hut sends a struggling ray
through the mulberries, and the tintinnabulations of his daughter's
loom are like so many stones thrown into this sleeping pond of
silence. The loom-girl in these parts is never too early at her
harness and shuttle. I know a family here whose loom and spinning
wheel are never idle: the wife works at the loom in the day and her
boy at the wheel; while in the night, her husband and his old mother
keep up the game. And this hardly secures for them their flour and
lentils the year round. But I concern not myself now with questions of
economy.
"There, another of my neighbours is awake; and the hinges of his door,
shrieking terribly, fiendishly, startle the swallows from their sleep.
And here are the muleteers, yodling, as they pass by, their
'Dhome, Dhome, Dhome,
O mother, he is come;
Hide me, hide me quickly,
And say I am not home.'
"Lo, the horizon is disentangling itself from the meshes of darkness.
The dust of haze and dusk on the scalloped edges of the mountains, is
blown away by the first breath of dawn. The lighter grey of the
horizon is mirrored in the clearer blue of the sea. But the darkness
seems to gather on the breast of the sloping hills. Conquered on the
heights, it retreats into the wadi. Ay, the darkest hour is nearest
the dawn.
"Now the light grey is become a lavender; the outlines of earth and sky
are become more distinct; the mountain peaks, the dusky veil being
rent, are separating themselves from the heaven's embrace; the trees
in the distance no longer seem like rain-clouds; and the silhouettes
of the monasteries are casting off the cloak of night. The lavender is
melting now into heliotrope, and the heliotrope is bursting here and
there in pink; the stars are waning, the constellations are dying out,
and the planets are following in their wake. The darkness, too, which
has not yet retreated from the wadi, must soon follow; for the front
guard of the dawn is near. Behold the shimmer of their steel! And
see, in the dust of the retreating darkness, the ochre veins of the
lime cliffs are now perceptible. And that huge pillar, which looked
like the standard-bearer of Night, is transformed into a belfry; and a
monk can be seen peeping through the ogive beneath it. Mt. Sanneen, its
black and ochre scales thrown in relief on a coat of grey, is like a
huge panther sleeping over the many-throated ravine of Kisrawan. Ah,
the pink flower of dawn is bursting in golden glory, thrilling in
orange and saffron, flaming with the ardency of love and hope. The
dawn! The glow and glamour of the Eastern dawn!...
* * * * *
"The dawn of a new life, of a better, purer, healthier, higher
spiritual kingdom. I would have its temples and those of the vast
empire of wealth and material well-being, stand side by side. Ay, I
would even rear an altar to the Soul in the temple of Materialism, and
an altar to Materialism in the temple of the Soul. Each shall have
its due, each shall glory in the sacred purity and strength of life;
each shall develop and expand, but never at the expense of the other.
I will have neither the renunciation which ends in a kind of idiocy
dignified with a philosophic or a theologic name, nor the worldliness
which ends in bestiality. I am a citizen of two worlds--a citizen of
the Universe; I owe allegiance to two kingdoms. In my heart are those
stars and that sun, and the LIGHT of those stars and that sun.
"Yes, I am equally devoted both to the material and the spiritual. And
when the two in me are opposed to each other, conflicting, inimical,
obdurate, my attitude towards them is neither that of my friend the
Hermit nor that of my European superman. I sit down, shut my eyes,
compose myself, and concentrate my mind on the mobility of things. If
the clouds are moving, why, I have but to sit down and let them move
away. I let my No-will, in this case, dominate my will, and that
serves my purpose well. To be sure, every question tormenting us would
resolve itself favourably, or at least indifferently, if we did not
always rush in, wildly, madly, and arrogate to ourselves such claims
of authority and knowledge as would make Olympus shake with laughter.
The resignation and passiveness of the spirit should always alternate
equitably with the terrible strivings of the will. For the dervish who
whirls himself into a foaming ecstasy of devotion and the strenuous
American who works himself up to a sweating ecstasy of gain, are the
two poles of the same absurdity, the two ends of one evil. Indeed, to
my way of thinking, the man on the Stock Exchange and the demagogue on
the stump, for instance, are brothers to the blatant corybant."