Chapter I: Front Matter

REINCARNATION

The weary pilgrim oft doth seek to know
How far he’s come, how far he has to go.
QUARLES.

Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million of them walking the earth
openly at noontide; some half hundred have vanished from it, some half
hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch tick one.

CARLYLE.

Truth dwells in gulphs, whose deeps hide shades so rich
That Night sits muffled there in clouds of pitch,
More darke than Nature made her: and requires
(To cleare her tough mists) heaven’s great fire of fires
To wrestle with those heaven-strong mysteries.
GEORGE CHAPMAN.

I am: how little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A central self which feels and is;
A cry between the silences;
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
With sunshine on the hills of life;
A shaft from Nature’s quiver cast
Into the future from the past.
WHITTIER.

Where wert thou, Soul, ere yet my body born
Became thy dwelling-place? Didst thou on earth
Or in the clouds, await this body’s birth,
Or by what chance upon that winter’s morn
Didst thou this body find, a babe forlorn?
Didst thou in sorrow enter, or in mirth?
Or for a jest, perchance, to try its worth
Thou tookest flesh, ne’er from it to be torn.
WADDINGTON.

REINCARNATION
A STUDY OF FORGOTTEN TRUTH

BY

E. D. WALKER

“_Ex oriente lux_”

]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
=The Riverside Press, Cambridge=
1888

Copyright, 1888,
BY E. D. WALKER.

_All rights reserved._

_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

To

THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH

AND TO

THAT EMBODIMENT OF TRUTH, NAMED

ARIEL,

THIS LITTLE VOLUME PROMPTED BY THEM

=Is Dedicated,=

WITH THE HOPE THAT THEY ARE NOT HERE DISHONORED

BY THEIR DISCIPLE,

THE AUTHOR.

Soul, dwelling oft in God’s infinitude
And sometimes seeming no more part of me—
This me, worms’ heritage—than that sun can be
Part of the earth he has with warmth imbued,—
Whence camest thou? Whither goest thou? I, subdued
With awe of mine own being thus sit still,
Dumb, on the summit of this lonely hill,
Whose dry November grasses dew-bestrewed
Mirror a million suns. That sun so bright,
Passes as thou must pass, Soul, into night.
Art thou afraid who solitary hast trod
A path I know not, from a source to a bourn
Both which I know not? Fearest thou to return
Alone, even as thou camest alone, to God?

D. M. MULOCK.

Insect and reptile, fish and bird and beast,
Cast their worn robes aside, fresh robes to don;
Tree, flower, and moss, put new year’s raiments on;
Each natural type, the greatest as the least,
Renews its vesture when its use hath ceased.
How should man’s spirit keep in unison
With the world’s law of outgrowth, save it won
New robes and ampler as its girth increased?
Quit shrunken creed, and dwarfed philosophy!
Let gently die an art’s decaying fire!
Work on the ancient lines, but yet be free
To leave and frame anew, if God inspire!
The planets change their surface as they roll:
The force that binds the spheres must bind the soul.

HENRY G. HEWLETT.