That thou didst bear, aflowed the crimson tide
That doth to stain e’en unto this day—
The tide of blood that ebbed the man
From out the flesh and left the God to be.
Mary, mother, wilt thou then leave me catch
These drops, that I do offer them as drink
Unto the brothers of the flesh of me of earth?
Mary, mother of the earth’s loved!
Mary, bearer of the God!
Mary, that I might call thee of a name befitting thee,
I seek, I seek, I seek, and none
Doth offer it to me save this:
Mother! Mother! Mother of the Him;
The flesh that died for me.
THE IDEAS ON IMMORTALITY
“Earth! Earth, the mother of us all! Aye, the mother of us all! How
loth, how loth, like to a child we be, to leave and seek ’mid
dark!”—PATIENCE WORTH.
If the personality of Patience Worth and the nature and quality of her
literary productions are worthy of consideration as evidences of the
truth of her claim to a spiritual existence, then in the sufficiency of
the proof may be found an answer to the world-old question: Is there a
life after death? To what extent the facts that have been presented in
this narrative may be accepted as proof, is for the reader to determine.
But Patience has not been content to reveal a strange personality and a
unique literature; she has had much to say upon this question of
immortality. There is more or less spiritual significance in nearly all
of her poetry and in some of her prose, and while her references to the
after life are usually veiled under figures of speech, they nevertheless
give assurances of its existence. She makes it clear, however, that she
is not permitted to reveal the nature of that life beyond the veil, but
she goes as far apparently as she dares, in the repeated assertion,
through metaphor and illustration, of its reality.
“My days,” she cries, “I have scattered like autumn leaves, whirled
by raging winds, and they have fallen in various crannies ’long the
way. Blown to rest are the sunny spring-kissed mornings of my youth,
and with many a sigh did I blow the sobbing eves that melted into
tear-washed night. Blow on, thou zephyr of this life, and let me
throw the value of each day to thee. Blow, and spend thyself, till,
tired, thou wilt croon thyself to sleep. Perchance this casting of
my day may cease, and thou wilt turn anew unto thy blowing and reap
the casting of the world.
“What then is a sigh? Ah, man may breathe a sorrow. Doth then the
dumbness of his brother bar his sighing? Nay—and hark! The sea doth
sigh, and yonder starry jasmine stirreth with a tremorous sigh; and
morning’s birth is greeted with the sighing of the world. For what?
Ah, for that coming that shall fulfill the promise, and change the
sighing to a singing, and loose the tongue of him whom God doth know
and, fearful lest he tell His hidden mysteries, hath locked his
lips.”
And again she asks: “Needest thou see what God himself sealeth thine
eyes to make thee know?” Meaning, undoubtedly, that only through the
process of death can the soul be brought to an understanding of that
other life; and she declares that even if we were shown, we could not
comprehend. “If thou should’st see His face on morrow’s break,” she
says, “’twould but start a wagging,” a discussion. And she continues:
“Ah, ope the tabernacle, but look thou not on high, for when the filmy
veil shall fade away—ah, could’st thou but know that He who waits hath
looked, aye looked, on thee, and thou hast looked on Him since time
began!” This enigmatical utterance is in itself sufficient to start a
“wagging,” but Patience evidently feels that the solution is beyond our
powers: for she repeatedly asserts that the key to the mystery is within
our reach if we could but grasp it. “Fleet as down blown from its
moorings, seeking the linnet who dropped her seed, so drift ye,” she
says, “ever seeking, when at the root still rests the seed pod.” And
again: “Knowest thou that fair land to which the traveler is loath to
go, but loath, so loath, to leave? Ah, the mystery of the snail’s shell
is far deeper than this.”
Yet she tells us again and again that Nature itself is the proof of
another life. “Why live,” she asks, “the paltry span of years allotted
thee, in desolation, while all about thee are His promises? Thou art,
indeed, like a withered hand that holds a new-blown rose.” The truth,
she says, is not to be found in “books of wordy filling,” but in the
infant’s smile and in the myriad creations and resurrections that are
ever within our cognizance. “I pipe of learning,” she cries, “and fall
silent before the fool who singeth his folly lay.”
The natural evidences she points out are visible to all and within the
comprehension of the feeblest intelligence, but he whose vision is
obscured by book knowledge “is like unto the monk who prays within his
cell, unheedful of the timid sunbeam who would light the page his wisdom
so befogs.” “Ah!” she exclaims, “the labor set thee to unlearn thine
inborn fancies!” meaning, apparently, the suppression of the intuitions
of immortality; and in the same line of thought she cries: “Am I then
drunkened on the chaff of knowledge supped by mine elderborn? Nay, my
forefolk drank not truth, but sent through my veins acoursing, chaff,
chaff, naught by chaff.” Plainly, then, Patience has no great respect
for learning, and it is the book of Nature rather than the book of words
that she would have us read.
I made a song from the dead notes of His birds,
And wove a wreath of withered lily buds,
And gathered daisies that the sun had scorched,
And plucked a rose the riotous wind had torn,
And stolen clover flowers, down-trodden by the kine,
And fashioned into ropes and tied with yellow reed,
An offering unto Him: and lo, the dust
Of crumbling blossoms fell to bloom again,
And smiled like sickened children,
Wistfully, but strong of faith that mother-stalk
Would send fresh blossoms in the spring.
So it is she sings, presenting the symbolisms of nature to illustrate
the renewal or the continuance of life; or again, she likens life to the
seasons (as did Shakespeare and Keats, and many another poet) in this
manner:
My youth is promising as spring,
And verdant as young weeds,
Whose very impudence taketh them
Where bloom the garden’s treasures.
My midlife, like the summer, who blazeth
As a fire of blasting heat, fed by withered
Crumbling weeds of my spring.
My sunset, like the fall who ripeneth
The season’s offerings. And hoar frost
Is my winter night, fraught with borrowed warmth,
And flowers, and filled with weeds,
Which spring e’en ’neath the frozen waste?
Ah, is the winter then my season’s close?
Or will I pin a faith to hope and look
Again for spring, who lives eternal in my soul?
Faith is the keynote of many of her songs, the faith that grows out of
that profound love which is the essential principle of the religion she
presents. The triumph of faith she expresses in the poem which follows:
O sea! The panting bosom of the Earth;
The sighing, singing carol of her heart!
I watch thee and I dream a dream
Whose fruit doth sicken me.
White sails do fleck thy sheen, and yonder moon
Doth seem to dip thy depths
And sail the silver mirror, high above.
Unharbored do I rove. Along the shore behind,
The shadow of Tomorrow creepeth on.
A seething silvered path doth stretch thy length,
To meet the curving cheek of Lady Moon.
I dream the flutt’ring waves to fanning wings
And fain would follow in their course. But stay!
My barque doth plow anew, and set the wings to flight;
For though I watch their tremorous mass, my craft
But saileth harbor-loosed, and ever stretcheth far
Beyond the moon’s own phantom path—
And I but dream a dream whose fruit doth sicken me.
Ah, Sea! who planted thee, and cast
A silver purse, unloosed, upon thy breast?
My barque, who then did harbor it,
And who unfurled its sail?
And yonder moon, from whence her silver coaxed?
Methinks my dream doth wax her wroth,
Else why the pallor o’er her cast?
Dare I to sail, to steer me at the wheel?
Shall I then hide my face and cease my murmuring,
O’erfearful lest I find the port?
Nay, I do know thee, Lord, and fearless sail me on,
To harbor then at dawning of new day.
I stand unfearful at the prow.
At anchor rests my barque. Away, thou phantom Moon,
And restless, seething path!
My chart I cast unto the sea,
For I do know Thee, Lord!
This triumph of faith is also the theme of the weird allegory which
follows. It is, perhaps, the most mystical of Patience’s productions.
THE PHANTOM AND THE DREAMER
_Phantom:_
Thick stands the hill in garb of fir,
And winter-stripped the branching shrub.
Cold gray the sky, and glistered o’er
With star-dust pulsing tremorously.
Snow, the lady of the Winter Knight,
Hath danced her weary and fallen to her rest.
She lieth stretched in purity
And dimpled ’neath the trees.
A trackless waste doth lie from hill
To valley ’neath, and Winter’s Knight
Doth sing a wooing lay unto his love.
Cot on cot doth stand deserted,
And thro’ the purpled dark they show
Like phantoms of a life long passed
To nothingness. Hear thou the hollowness
Of the sea’s coughing beat against
The cliff beneath, and harken ye
To the silence of the valley there.
Doth chafe ye of thy loneliness?
Then sleep and let me put a dream to thee.
See ye the cot—
A speck o’ dark adown the hillside,
And sheltered o’er with fir-bows,
Heavy-laden with the kiss of Lady Snow?
Come hither then. Let’s bruise this snowy breast,
And fetch us there unto its door.
See! Here a twig
Hath battled with the wind, and lost.
We then may cast it ’mid its brothers
Of the bush and plow us on.
Look ye to the thick thatch
O’er the gable of the roof,
Piled higher with a blanketing of snow;
And shutters hang agape, to rattle
Like the cackle of a crone.
The blackness of a pit within,
And filled with sounds that tho’ they be
But seasoning of the log, doth freeze
Thy marrowmeat. I feel the quake
And shake thee for thy fear.
Stride thou within and set a flint to brush
Within the chimney-place. We then shall rouse
The memory of the tenant here—
A night, my friend, thee’lt often call to mind.
The flame hath sprung and lappeth at the twigs.
Thee’lt watch the burning of thy hastiness,
And wait thee long
Until the embers slip away to smoke.
Then strain ye to its weaving
And spell to me the reading of its folds.
_Dreamer:_
I see thin, threading lines that writhe them
To a shape—a visage ever changeful,
Or mine eyes do play me false,
For it doth smile to twist it to a leer,
And sadden but to laugh in mockery.
I see a lad whose face
Doth shine illumed, and he doth bear
The kiss of wisdom on his brow.
I see him travail ’neath a weary load,
And close beside him Wisdom follows on.
Burdened not is he. Do I see aright?
For still the light of wisdom shineth o’er.
But stay! What! Do mine eyes then cheat?
This twisting smoke-wreath
Filleth all too much my sight!
_Phantom:_
Nay, friend, strain thee now anew.
The lad! Now canst thou see?
Nay, for like to him
Thou hast looked thee at the face of Doubt.
_Dreamer:_
Who art thou, shape or phantom, then,
That thou canst set my dream to flight?
I doubt me that the lad could stand
Beneath the load!
_Phantom:_
Nay, thee canst ravel well, my friend.
The lad was thee, and Doubt
O’ertook with Wisdom on thy way.
Come, bury Doubt aneath the ash.
We travel us anew.
Seest thou, a rimming moon doth show
From ’neath the world’s beshadowed side.
A night bird chatteth to its mate,
And lazily the fir-boughs wave.
We track us to the cot whose roof
Doth sag—and why thy shambling tread?
I bid ye on!
_Dreamer:_
Who art thou—again I that demand—
That I shall follow at thy bidding?
Who set me then this task?
_Phantom:_
Step thou within!
Stand thee on the thresh of this roofless void!
Look thou! Dost see the maid
Who coyly stretcheth forth her hand
To welcome thee? She biddeth thee
To sit and sup. I bid thee speak.
Awaken thee unto her welcoming.
_Dreamer:_
Enough! This fancy-breeding sickeneth
My very soul! A skeleton of murdered trees,
Ribbed with pine and shanked of birch!
And thee wouldst bid me then
Embrace the emptiness.
I see naught, and believe but what I see.
_Phantom:_
Look thou again, and strain.
What seest thou?
_Dreamer:_
I see a newly kindled fire,
And watch its burning glow until
The embers die and send their ghosts aloft.
But ash remaineth—and I chill!
For rising there, a shape
Whose visage twisteth drunkenly,
And from her garments falls a dust of ash.
_Phantom:_
Doubt! Unburied, friende! We journey on,
And mark ye well each plodding footfall
Singing like to golden metal with the frost.
The night a scroll of white, and lined
With blackish script—
The lines of His own putting!
Read thee there! Thou seest naught,
And believe but what ye see!
Stark nakedness and waste—but hearken ye!
The frost skirt traileth o’er the crusted snow
And singeth young leaves’ songs of Spring.
Still art thou blind!
But at His touching shall the darkness bud
And bloom to rosy morn. And even now,
Were I to snap a twig ’twould bleed and die.
See ye; ’tis done! Look ye!
Ye believe but what ye see:
Here within thy very hand
Thou holdest Doubt’s undoing.
I bid ye look upon the bud
Already gathered ’neath the tender bark.
The sun’s set and rise hath coaxed it forth.
Thee canst see the rogue hath stolen red
And put it to its heart. And here
Aneath the snow the grass doth love the earth
And nestles to her breast.
I stand me here, and lo, the Spring hath broke!
The dark doth slip away to hide,
And flowering, singing, sighing, loving Spring
Is here!
_Dreamer:_
Aye, thou art indeed
A wonder-worker in the night!
A black pall, a freezing blast,
An unbroken path—and thou
Wouldst have me then to prate o’ Spring,
And pluck a bud where dark doth hide the bush!
Who cometh from the thicket higher there?
_Phantom:_
’Tis Doubt to meet thee, friend!
_Dreamer:_
Who art thou? I fain would flee,
And yet I fear to leave lest I be lost.
I hate thee and thy weary task!
_Phantom:_
Nay, brother, thy lips do spell,
But couldst thee read their words aright
Thee wouldst meet again with Doubt.
Come! We journey on unto the cot
Beloved the most by me. I bid thee
Let thy heart to warm within thy breast.
A thawing melteth frozen Hope.
See how, below, the sea hath veiled
Her secret held so close,
And murmured only to the winds
Who woo her ever and anon.
The waves do lap them, hungry for the sands.
Careful! Lest the sun’s pale rise
Should blind thee with its light.
A shaft to put it through
The darkness of thy soul must needs
But be a glimmering to blind.
Step ye to the hearthstone then,
And set thee there a flame anew.
I bid ye read again
The folding of the smoke.
_Dreamer:_
’Tis done, thou fiend!
A pretty play for fools, indeed.
I swear me that ’tis not
For loving of the task I builded it,
But for the warming of its glow.
_Phantom:_
In truth ye speak. But read!
_Dreamer:_
I see a hag whose brow
Doth wrinkle like a summer sea.
For do I look unto the sea
At Beauty’s own fair form,
It writheth to a twisted shape,
And I do doubt me of her loveliness.
The haggard visage of the crone
I now behold, doth set me doubting
Of mine eye, for dimples seem
To flutter ’neath the wrinkled cheek.
_Phantom:_
So, then, thee believest
But what thine eyes behold!
Thee findest then
Thy seeing in a sorry plight.
I marvel at thy wisdom, lad.
Look ye anew. Mayhap thee then
Canst coax the crone away.
_Dreamer:_
Enough! The morn hath kissed the night adieu,
And even while I prate
A redwing crimsoneth the snow in flight.
Kindled tinder smoldereth away,
And I do strain me to its fold.
I glut me of the loveliness I there behold,
For from the writhing stream a sprite is born
Whose beauteous form bedazzles me,
And she doth point me
To the golding gray of morn. The sea
Is singing, singing her unto my soul.
I dreamed she sighed, but waked to hear her sing.
I hear thee, Phantom, bidding me on, on!
But morn hath stolen dreams away.
I strain me to the hills to trace our path,
And lo, unbroken is the snow,
And cots have melted with the light,
And yet, methinks a murmuring doth come
From out the echoes of the night,
That hid them ’neath the crannies of the hills.
Life! Life! I lead thee on!
And faith doth spring from seedlings of thy doubt!
EPILOGUE.
Thick stands the hill in garb of fir and snow.
The Lady of the Winter’s Knight hath danced
Her weary, and stretched her in her purity,
To cover aching wounds of Winter’s overloving woo.
* * * * *
“And faith doth spring from seedlings of thy doubt!” plainly meaning an
active doubt that searches for the truth and finds it. But she
personifies Doubt in another and more forbidding form in this:
Like to a thief who wrappeth him
Within the night-tide’s robe,
So standeth the specter o’ the Earth;
Yea, he doth robe him o’ the Earth’s fair store.
Yea, he decketh in the star-hung purple o’ the eve,
And reacheth from out the night unto the morn,
And wringeth from her waking all her gold,
And at his touching, lo, the stars are dust,
And morn’s gold but heat’s glow, and ne’er
The golden blush of His own metal store.
Yea, he strideth then
Upon the flower-hung couches of the field,
And traileth him thereon his robe,
And lo, the flowers do die of thirst
And parch of scoarching of his breath.
Yea, and ’mid the musics of the earth he strideth him,
And full-songed throats are mute.
Yea, music dieth of his luring glance.
And e’en the love of earth he seeketh out
And turneth it unto a folly-play.
Yea, beneath his glance, the fairy frost
Upon the love sprite’s wing
Doth flutter, as a dust, and drop, and leave
But bruised and broken bearers for His store.
Yea, and ’mid man’s day he ever strideth him
And layeth low man’s reasoning. His robes
Are hung of all the earth’s most loved.
From off the flowers their fresh; from off the day
The fairness of her hours. For dark, and hid
Beneath his cloak, he steppeth ever,
And doth hiss his name to thee—
Doubt.
I have said that the message of Patience Worth contained a revelation, a
religion and a promise. The revelation is too obvious to need a pointer.
In the preceding chapter were presented the elements of the religion
that she reveals, with which should be included the unfaltering faith
expressed in these poems. Love and Faith—these are the two Graces upon
whom, to personify them, all her work is rested, and from them spring
the promise she conveys. That promise has to do with the hereafter, and
Patience knows the human attitude in relation to that universal problem,
and she gives courage to the shrinking heart in this poem on the fear of
death:
I stride abroad before my brothers like a roaring lion,
Yet at even’s close from whence cometh the icy hand
That clutcheth at my heart and maketh me afraid—
The slipping of myself away, I know not whither?
And lo, I fall atremble.
When I would grasp a straw, ’tis then I find it not.
Can I then trust me on this journey lone
To country I deem peopled, but know not?
My very heart declareth faith, yet hath not thine
Been touched and chilled by this same phantom?
Ah, through the granite sips the lichen—
And hast thou not a long dark journey made?
Why fear? As cloud wreaths fade
From spring’s warm smile, so shall fear
Be put to flight by faith.
I pluck me buds of varied hue and choose the violet
To weave a garland for my loved and best.
I search for bloom among the rocks
And find but feathery plume.
I weave, and lo, the blossoms fade
Before I reach the end,
And faded lie amid my tears—
And yet I weave and weave.
I search for jewels ’neath the earth,
And find them at the dawn,
Besprinkled o’er the rose and leaf,
And showered by the sparrow’s wing,
Who seeketh ’mid the dew-wet vine
A harbor for her home.
I search for truth along the way
And find but dust and web,
And in the smile of infant lips
I know myself betrayed.
I watch the swallow skim across the blue
To homelands of the South,
And ah, the gnawing at my heart doth cease;
For how he wings and wings
To lands he deemeth peopled by his brothers,
Whose song he hears in flight!
Not skimming on the lake’s fair breast is he,
But winging on and on,
And dim against the feathery cloud
He fades into the blue.
I stand with withered blossoms crushed,
And weave and weave and weave.
This is Patience’s answer to the eternal question:
Can I then trust me on this journey lone
To country I deem peopled, but know not?
It is the cry of him who believes and yet doubts, and Patience points to
the swallow winging across the blue “to lands he deemeth peopled with
his brothers” who have gone on before. In imagination he can hear their
song in the home lands of the South, and though he cannot see them, and
cannot have had word from them, he knows they are there, and he does not
skim uncertainly about the lake, but with unfaltering faith “wings him
on and on” until—
Dim against the feathery cloud
He fades into the blue.
But Patience does not content herself with appeals to faith, eloquent as
they may be. While her communications are always clothed in figures of
speech, they are sometimes more definite in statement than in the lines
which have been thus far presented. In the prose poem which follows, she
asks and answers the question in a way that can leave no doubt of her
meaning:
“Shall I arise and know thee, brother, when like a bubble I am blown
into Eternity from this pipe of clay? Or shall I burst and float my
atoms in a joyous spray at the first beholding of this home prepared
for thee and me, and shall we together mingle our joys in one
supreme joy in Him? It matters not, beloved, so comfort thee. For
should the blowing be the end, what then? Hath not thy pack been
full, and mine? We are o’erweary with the work of living, and
sinking to oblivion would be rest. Yet sure as sun shall rise, my
dust shall be unloosed, and blow into new fields of new days. I see
full fields yet to be harvested, and I am weary. I see fresh
business of living, work yet to be done, and I am weary. Oh, let me
fold these tired hands and sleep. Beloved, I trust, and expect my
trust, for ne’er yet did He fail.”
She puts this into the mouth of one who lives, but it is not merely an
expression of faith; it is a positive assertion. “Yet sure as sun shall
rise, my dust shall be unloosed, and blow into new fields of new days.”
--------------
And again she sings:
What carest, dear, should sorrow trace
Where dimples sat, and should
Her dove-gray cloud to settle ’neath thine eye?
The withering of thy curving cheek
Bespeaks the spending of thy heart.
Lips once full are bruised
By biting of restraint. Wax wiser, dear.
To wane is but to rest and rise once more.
Or she puts the thought in another form in this assurance:
Weary not, O brother!
’Tis apaled, the sun’s gold sink.
Then weary not, but set thy path to end,
E’en as the light doth fade and leave
Nay trace to mar the night’s dark tide.
Sink thou, then, as doth the sun,
Assured that thou shalt rise!
--------------
All these, however, are but preparatory to the communication in which
she asserts not only the actuality of the future life but something of
the nature of it. One might say that the preceding poems and
prose-poems, taken alone and without regard to the mystery of their
source, were merely expressions of belief, but in this communication she
seems to speak with knowledge, seems even to have overstepped the bounds
within which, she has often asserted, she is held. “My lips be
astopped,” she has said in answer to a request for information of this
forbidden character, but here she appears to have been permitted to give
a glimpse of the unknown, and to present a promise of universal
application. This poem, from the spiritual standpoint, is the most
remarkable of all her productions.
How have I caught at fleeting joys
And swifter fleeting sorrows!
And days and nights, and morns and eves,
And seasons, too, aslipping thro’ the years, afleet.
And whither hath their trend then led?
Ah, whither!
How do I to stop amid the very pulse o’ life.
Afeared! Yea, fear clutcheth at my very heart!
For what? The night? Nay, night doth shimmer
And flash the jewels I did count
E’er fear had stricken me.
The morn? Nay, I waked with morn atremor,
And know the day-tide’s every hour.
How do I then to clutch me
At my heart, afeared?
The morrow? Nay,
The morrow but bringeth old loves
And hopes anew.
Ah, woe is me, ’tis emptiness, aye, naught—
The bottomlessness o’ the pit that doth afright!
Afeared? Aye, but driven fearless on!
What! Promise ye ’tis to mart I plod?
What! Promise ye new joys?
Ah, but should I sleep, to waken me
To joys I ne’er had supped!
I see me stand abashed and timid,
As a child who cast a toy beloved,
For bauble that but caught the eye
And left the heart ahungered.