Chapter III: Part I: Towards Democracy (2)

The bride attiring herself in her white veil, the brilliant and admired wit of the salons, the mathematician in his study, cannot go beyond these,

Any more than the earth can go beyond and fly out of space. It is impossible; it is unthinkable.

* * * * *

Far around and beyond whatever is exceptional and illustrious in human life stretches that which is average and unperceived;

All distinctions, all attainments, all signal beauty, skill, wit, and whatever a man can exhibit in himself, swim and are lost in that great ocean.

The subtle learning of the learned, the beauty of the exceptionally beautiful, the wit of the witty, the fine manners and customs of the courtly—all these things proceed immediately out of the common and undistinguished people and those who stand in direct contact with Nature, and return into them again.

The course of all is the same; they are tossed up thinner and thinner, into mere spray at last—like a wave from the breast of the Ocean—and fall back again.

You try to set yourself apart from the vulgar. It is in vain. In that instant vulgarity attaches itself to you.

If it did not, you would cease to exist.

XXIX

Gold is not finer than lead, nor lead than gold (every atom of each has its own life movement intelligence, and ridicules epithets);

The stars are not more human to the soul than is the deep background of Night behind them. And what would the shoal of merry leaping children playing there in the sun be without the mother-love in which they swim all the while as in an ocean?

To be Yourself, to have measureless Trust; to enjoy all, to possess nothing.

That which you have, your skill, your strength, your knack of pleasant thoughts—they belong to all. It is a fact, and the others looking on you know it.

That which you have not, your scornful defects, your dumbnesses, your aches and pains and silent hours of suffering, to understand that you can give of them too, inexhaustible store—as the old brown earth gives out of her heart, to men; and she knows it, but they do not know it.

* * * * *

To walk along the path which has an equal good on either hand; to give the sign of equality;

To entertain no possible fear or doubt about the upshot of things—to be Yourself, to have measureless Trust:

Perhaps that is best of all.

XXX

Curious how much—and the disentangling of self—depends upon Ideals!

Who is this, for instance, easy with open shirt, and brown neck and face—the whites of his eyes just seen in the sultry twilight—through the city garden swinging?

The fountain plashes cool in its basin, and mixes its murmur with the sound of feet going to and fro upon graveled walks;

The massed foliage above catches the evening light, catches the rising wind, and sways like the sea on a calm day; the voices of children are heard—but who is this?

[Who anyhow is he that is simple and free and without afterthought? who passes among his fellows without constraint and without encroachment, without embarrassment and without grimaces, and does not act from motives?

Who is ignorant or careless of what is termed politeness, who makes life wherever he goes desirable, and removes stumbling-blocks instead of creating them?]

* * * * *

Grave and strong and untamed,

This is the clear-browed unconstrained tender face, with full lips and bearded chin, this is the regardless defiant face I love and trust;

Which I came out to see, and having seen do not forget.

* * * * *

And not I alone.

See! on the little public round the fountain scattered—on the seats lounging, or walking to and fro—the strange effect!

The dressed-up man of the world eyes him curiously—and does not forget;

The pale student eyes him: he envies his healthy face and unembarrassed manner;

The delicate lady sees him well, though she does not seem to; secretly now she loathes her bejeweled lord and desires piteously the touch of this man’s muscular lithe sun-embrowned body;

The common people salute him as their equal and call him by his name; the children know him: they run after him and catch him by the hand.

Curious! how all the poetry, the formative life, of the scene—the rushing scent of the lime trees, the evening light, the swaying of the foliage, the rustle of feet below,

The yearning threads of the fine lady’s life—how the sympathy of the little public by the fountain—all gathers round this figure.

There was a time when the sympathy and the ideals of men gathered round other figures;

When the crowned king, or the priest in procession, or the knight errant, or the man of letters in his study, were the imaginative forms to which men clung;

But now before the easy homely garb and appearance of this man as he swings past in the evening, all these others fade and grow dim. They come back after all and cling to him.

And this is one of the slowly unfolded meanings of Democracy.

XXXI

The world travels on—and shall travel on.

A few centuries shall not exhaust the meanings of it. In you and me too, inevitably, its meanings wait their unfolding.

No old laws, precedents, combinations of men or weapons, can retard it; no new laws, schemes, combinations, discoveries, can hasten it; but only the new births within the Soul, you and me.

Sacred for this is the Day and sacred is the Night, sacred are Life and Death because, O wonderful, of this!

* * * * *

When Yes has once been pronounced in that region then the No of millions is nothing at all; then fire, the stake, death, ridicule, and bitter extermination, are of no avail whatever;

When the Ideal has once alighted, when it has looked forth from the windows with ever so passing a glance upon the Earth, then we may go in to supper, you and I, and take our ease—the rest will be seen to;

When a new desire has declared itself within the human heart, when a fresh plexus is forming among the nerves—then the revolutions of nations are already decided, and histories unwritten are written.

XXXII

I charge you, O traveler, that you disbelieve not—a voice comes in the cool of the evening:

I charge you that in the secret unspoken word you disbelieve not, sacred, and the first almighty Thing,

Moving among cities and over the open sea—advancing to deliverance in us;

Night and day, youth and old age, willing and unwilling—advancing to deliverance in us.

Dumb and of no account, her beauty now and then only (or at night when no one is near) before the glass disrobing, trembling, lonely, unresponded—yet mightier than all the array and splendor of the Earth—I charge you that you do not disbelieve!

* * * * *

Outwards all proceeds: Brahma from himself sheds and shreds the universes; I from myself, you from yourself.

To-day the slave goes first, in his chains, and the voiceless, and those that are without arguments and always in the wrong;

And the prisoner with slouched head, and the suspected and insulted in rags, and those whose hearts bleed silently because of what they see;

And the old forsaken mother, and the cast-aside woman, and the child, and the favorless and the drunkard shall go first;

The mechanic to-day shall go before his master, the bricklayer shall be saluted in the street before the architect, the navvy shall be accounted more than the politician, and I will give the illiterate the advantage of those that read and write.

The scouted and the exiled and the unheard-of, laborers in the fields and in mines, quarrymen and limekilners and brickburners and makers and cleaners of drains and household drudges, shall be nearest in honor: the burdened of every day, and the sufferers, the over-worked and hope-forlorn, and the concealers of sin and sorrow and despair, shall head the procession.

And with them One (of whom I have spoken) moving unseen hither and thither—side by side first with one and then with another—shall resume and make all plain, shall be himself the beginning and ending of it all.

XXXIII

When He descends, when He comes to take dominion—

Do you think that anything else will do? do you think that he will perhaps be put off by offers sufficiently liberal, and arguments?

Do you think that he will be deeply impressed by your grave How, how? and It cannot be?—or that he will ascend into your high houses and take his ease with you, and lounge smoking and looking wearily at the sky till he forgets what he has come for?

Do you think he will pay great attention to your hat and boots, or to what they write before or after your name, or to what they say of you next door—or will ask what church you go to, or what conventicle or schism-shop, or enquire into the soundness of your investments?

Do you think he will drive about with you in your carriages dispensing charities like an Oriental prince—and occasionally even say a few words to the coachman—or that it will be pretence or mere kindly patronage if he prefers the coachman’s company to yours?

Do you think that perhaps he will be very bland and gentle, and never be rude or coarsely dressed, and that he will be highly interested in what you tell him, and that he won’t at a single look know all that ever you did?

Do you suppose that he will not know which is the top and which is the bottom of things, or that he will be impressed by your cleverness and smart repartees, or that he will reckon you up by the number of books you have read?

Do not deceive yourself—for it is yourself that you are trying to deceive—not Him.

XXXIV

The magistrate sits on the bench, but he does not exercise judgment; the doctor dispenses medicine but has heard no tidings of what health is; the parson opens his mouth, but no intelligible sound comes forth; the merchant distributes evils just the same as goods.

* * * * *

Do you suppose it is all for nothing that disbelief has gone out over the world; that weariness has taken possession of the souls of the rich, and that fatal darkness enfolds the head of wealth and education;

That men disbelieve in the human heart and think that the source of power is set otherwhere than in its burning glowing depths: that the powers which they worship are but so many withered emblems of power—dead scoriæ nodding and jostling over the living lava-stream?

Do you suppose it is all for nothing that the eyes of brothers avoid in the street, and none sees what is before him; that the heel is upon the head, and Earth alone regards the faces of them that are oppressed—that the stones in the wintry fields are become confidants, and the ground is sown with compressed thought, like seeds?

[When yet there is peace over the world, as of the Sea swooning away into its hollows; and differences are sullen like rocks at ebb-tide, and brackish dismal mudflats lie between, and the sun stands motionless overhead, and Contempt trickles malarious, and Avoidance and Negation and Fear loom up against the sky, and men cling like rotting weeds about their bases, and the soul stifles for the swingeing life of the waves and the breath of the wind that blows from one end of the world to the other.]

* * * * *

Do you suppose it means nothing that that which satisfied once satisfies now no more (not till the whole round has been made), but unrest and hunger are eating through men’s souls?

That a new need gone up is more than all precedent, and History shrivels before the will, even if it be only of one man; that the pilgrimage has begun, and men are leaving their long-loved homes by thousands—and the tenderest-hearted are the first to sever the old ties?

That centuries of suffering have compressed thought and purpose into one—till they are harder than rock; so that you shall remove mountains, but you shall not remove the word which has gone forth?

That expediency and logic expostulate in vain, and man has become wholly unreasonable, and is calm to drop utility into the bottomless pit; and the wise cover their lights, but the fools flash theirs and are whirled away—like fireflies in a thunderstorm?

* * * * *

Do you suppose it means nothing when the godlike Hand comes forth—the awful hand, sacred with the kisses of the generations of men?

When the hand of Necessity comes forth from the cloud and covers dark the faces of them who have never known it, turning them back from their ruin—but stands in the clear sky, beckoning bright, like a pillar of fire for weary fugitives?

When the awful vision moves across the sky, and the earth is electric under it—and the grass stands stiffly, and the blue thistle in the hedge is erect with meaning,

And men are amorous for the naked stinging touch of the world, and to wrestle limb to limb with the wind and the waves;

When poverty and hardship smile for their espousal, and fierce endurance is fused in one passion with love, and the glitter of concealment is torn away, and the loins are compressed and the eyes aflame with lust,

Towards that which shall surely be born?

* * * * *

When Wealth is slowly and visibly putrefying and putrefying the old order of things;

When the surface test is final—the rainbow-colored scum—and society rotting down beneath it; a trick of clothing or speech, metallic chink in the pocket, white skin, soft hands, fawning and lying looks—everywhere the thrust of rejection, the bond of redemption nowhere; the sacred gifts all violated stale and profaned—men and women falling off from them listless, like satiated leeches;

When Labor is not loyal and true, nor the Laborers loyal and true to each other; when a man has no pride in the creation of his hands, nor rejoices to make it perfect; when machinery is perfectly organised and human souls are hopelessly disorganised;

Do you think all these things mean nothing?

XXXV

Ah, England! Ah, beating beating heart!

No wonder you are weary! weary of talk!

Weary seeking amid the scramble, amid the scramble of words and the scramble of wealth,

Amid the fashionable, the scientific, the artistic, the commercial, the political, the learned and literary scramble—weary,

Seeking, seeking, seeking for a God!

* * * * *

As it ever was and will be—

As a thief in the night, silently and where you least expect,

Unlearned perhaps, without words, without arguments, without influential friends or money—leaning on himself alone—

Without accomplishments and graces, without any liniments for your old doubts, or recipes for constructing new theological or philosophical systems—

With just the whole look of himself in his eyes—

The Son of Man shall—yes, shall—appear in your midst. O beating heart, your lover and your judge shall appear.

* * * * *

He will not bring a new revelation; he will not at first make any reply to the eager questions about death and immortality; he will present no stainless perfection;

But he will do better: he will present something absolute, primal—the living rock—something necessary and at first hand, and men will cling to him therefor;

He will restore the true balance; he will not condemn, but he will be absolute in himself;

He will be the terrible judge to whom every one will run;

He will be the lover and the judge in one.

* * * * *

The Son of Man—

Ponder well these words.

After all I cannot explain them: it is impossible to explain that which is itself initial and elementary.

You will look a thousand times before you see that which you are looking for—it is so simple—

Not science, O beating heart, nor theology, nor rappings, nor philanthropy, nor high acrobatic philosophy,

But the Son—and so equally the Daughter—of Man.

XXXVI

I hear the sound of the whetting of scythes.

The beautiful grass stands tall in the meadows, mixed with sorrel and buttercups; the steamships move on across the sea, leaving trails of distant smoke. I see the tall white cliffs of Albion.

I smell the smell of the newmown grass, the waft of the thought of Death; the white fleeces of the clouds move on in the everlasting blue, with the dashing and the spray of waves below.

It comes and recedes again, and comes nearer—out of the waves and the tall white cliffs and the clouds and the grass.

XXXVII

The towers of Westminster stand up by the river, and, within, the supposed rulers contend and argue, but they hear nothing. It comes to them last.

The long lines of princely mansions stretch through Belgravia and Kensington—closelipped, deaf, plaguestricken.

Lines of carriages crowd the Park; tier above tier at the Opera are faces and flowers; there are clubs and literary cliques and entertainments, but of the voice of human joy, native once more in the world, there is scarcely a note.

Over all the towns and villages of the land the fingers of the spires point dumb to the driving clouds.

York Minster stands up like a watchtower in the rising sun, and from the midst of its Roman walls looks out over leagues of meadows and cornfields; Salisbury stands up, and Ely lonesome among its old-world fens; but they report nothing seen.

From the Hoe at Plymouth the promenade loafers look down upon the decks of passing vessels; the line of the breakwater stretches, and the wild sea beyond;

The convicts, thousands, motionless-faced, in yellow-dressed gangs dot the thinly-grassed rocks and fortress walls of the Isle of Portland.

Victoria, the Queen, peers from the high windows of Osborne back upon Portsmouth crowded with shipping, and the grass downs of the Island that lies behind it.

The mail-steamers go to and fro, of Dover and Folkestone, the passengers arrive from the Continent, idlers are watching the arrivals, and police officers in disguise—but they report nothing;

Winchelsea and Rye stand forgotten by the water, on rocks beaten now only by the waving meadows; the old martello towers dot the long low shores.

Down the Thames with the tide the great vessels come swinging; St. Paul’s looks out upon them, white, in far glimpses over the great city; the sea-gulls dip and hover where the waters meet. The cutters of Yarmouth leave the river and make between the long sands for the open sea and the banks.

XXXVIII

England spreads like a map below me. I see the mud-flats of the Wash striped with water at low tide, the embankments grown with mugwort and sea-asters, and Boston Stump and King’s Lynn, and the squaresail brigs in the offing.

Beachy Head stands up beautiful, with white walls and pinnacles, from its slopes of yellow poppy and bugloss; the sea below creeps with a grey fog, the vessels pass and are folded out of sight within it. I hear their foghorns sounding.

Flamborough Head stands up, dividing the waves. Up its steep gullies the fishermen haul their boats; in its caves the waters make perpetual music.

I see the rockbound coast of Anglesey with projecting ribs of wrecks; the hills of Wicklow are faintly outlined across the water. I ascend the mountains of Wales; the tarns and streams lie silver below me, the valleys are dark. Moel Siabod stands up beautiful, and Trifan and Cader Idris in the morning air.

I descend the Wye, and pass through the ancient streets of Monmouth and of Bristol. I thread the feathery birch-haunted coombs of Somerset.

I ascend the high points of the Cotswolds, and look out over the rich vale of Gloucester to the Malvern hills, and see the old city clustering round its Church, and the broad waters of the Severn, and the distant towers of Berkeley Castle.

* * * * *

The river-streams run on below me. The broad deep-bosomed Trent through rich meadows full of cattle, under tall shady trees runs on. I trace it to its birthplace in the hills. I see the Derbyshire Derwent darting in trout-haunted shallows over its stones. I taste and bathe in the clear brown moor-fed water.

I see the sweet-breathed cottage homes and homesteads dotted for miles and miles and miles. It comes near to them. I enter the wheelwright’s cottage by the angle of the river. The door stands open against the water, and catches its changing syllables all day long; roses twine, and the smell of the woodyard comes in wafts.

The Castle rock of Nottingham stands up bold over the Trent valley, the tall flagstaff waves its flag, the old market-place is full of town and country folk. The river goes on broadening seaward. I see where it runs beneath the great iron swing-bridges of railroads, there are canals connecting with it, and the sails of the canal-boats gliding on a level with the meadows.

The great sad colorless flood of the Humber stretches before me, the low-lying banks, the fog, the solitary vessels, the brackish marshes and the water-birds; Hull stretches with its docks, vessels are unlading—bags of shell-fish, cargoes of oranges, timber, fish; I see the flat lands beyond Hull, and the enormous flights of pewits.

The Thames runs down—with the sound of many voices. I hear the sound of the saw-mills and flour-mills of the Cotswolds, I can see racing boats and hear the shouts of partisans, villages bask in the sun below me; Sonning and Maidenhead; anglers and artists are hid in nooks among tall willow-herbs; I glide with tub and outrigger past flower-gardens, meadows, parks; parties of laughing girls handle the oars and tiller ropes; Teddington, Twickenham, Richmond, Brentford glide past; I hear the songs, I hear Elizabethan echoes; I come within sound of the roar of London.

I see the woodland and rocky banks of the Tavy and the Tamar, and of the arrowy Dart. The Yorkshire Ouse winds sluggish below me; afar off I catch the Sussex Ouse and the Arun, breaking seaward through their gaps in the Downs; I look down from the Cheshire moors upon the Dee.

In their pride the beautiful cities of England stand up before me; from the midst of her antique elms and lilac and laburnum haunted gardens the grey gateways and towers of Cambridge stand up; ivy-grown Warwick peeps out of thick foliage; I see Canterbury and Winchester and Chester, and Worcester proud by her river-side, and the ancient castles—York and Lancaster looking out seaward, and Carlisle; I see the glistening of carriage wheels and the sumptuous shine of miles of sea frontage at Brighton and Hastings and Scarborough; Clifton climbs to her heights over the Avon; the ruins of Whitby Abbey are crusted with spray.

I hear the ring of hammers in the ship-yards of Chatham and Portsmouth and Keyham, and look down upon wildernesses of masts and dock-basins. I see the observatory at Greenwich and catch the pulses of star-taken time spreading in waves over the land. I see the delicate spider-web of the telegraphs, and the rush of the traffic of the great main lines, North, West, and South. I see the solid flow of business men northward across London Bridge in the morning, and the ebb at evening. I see the eternal systole and diastole of exports and imports through the United Kingdom, and the armies of those who assist in the processes of secretion and assimilation—and the great markets.

I explore the palaces of dukes—the parks and picture galleries—Chatsworth, Hardwicke, Arundel; and the numberless old Abbeys. I walk through the tall-windowed hospitals and asylums of the great cities and hear chants caught up and wandering from ward to ward.

I see all over the land the beautiful centuries-grown villages and farmhouses nestling down among their trees; the dear old lanes and footpaths and the great clean highways connecting; the fields, every one to the people known by its own name, and hedgerows and little straggling copses, and village greens; I see the great sweeps of country, the rich wealds of Sussex and Kent, the orchards and deep lanes of Devon, the willow-haunted flats of Huntingdon, Cambridge and South Lincolnshire; Sherwood Forest and the New Forest, and the light pastures of the North and South Downs; the South and Midland and Eastern agricultural districts, the wild moorlands of the North and West, and the intermediate districts of coal and iron.

The oval-shaped manufacturing heart of England lies below me; at night the clouds flicker in the lurid glare; I hear the sob and gasp of pumps and the solid beat of steam and tilt-hammers; I see streams of pale lilac and saffron-tinted fire. I see the swarthy Vulcan-reeking towns, the belching chimneys, the slums, the liquor-shops, chapels, dancing saloons, running grounds, and blameless remote villa residences.

I see the huge warehouses of Manchester, the many-storied mills, the machinery, the great bale-laden drays, the magnificent horses; I walk through the Liverpool Exchange; the brokers stand in knots; the greetings, the frock-coats, the rosebuds; the handling and comparing of cotton samples.

Leeds lies below me; I hear the great bell; I see the rush along Boar Lane and Briggate. I enter the hot machine shops, smelling of oil and wooldust. I see Sheffield among her hills, and the white dashing of her many water-wheels, and the sulphurous black cloud going up to heaven in her midst.

Newcastle I recognise, and her lofty bridge; and I look out over the river gates of the Mersey.

XXXIX

I see a great land poised as in a dream—waiting for the word by which it may live again.

I see the stretched sleeping figure—waiting for the kiss and the re-awakening.

I hear the bells pealing, and the crash of hammers, and see beautiful parks spread—as in toy show.

* * * * *

I see a great land waiting for its own people to come and take possession of it.

XL

The clouds fly overhead still, and the waves curdle in the blue beneath; the smell of the newmown grass comes, and the tall white cliffs stand up.

All depends upon a Word spoken.

Do you think perhaps that there is no answer? do you think that the high lighthouses looking out over the water, the sea itself careering beyond them, that the ploughed lands, and the rocks that are hewn into great cities, are indifferent to who own, to who trespass upon them? that they are dumb, dead, and of no account?

Do you think that they have nothing to say to all this, that they will not deliver themselves upon whom they choose, that they have it not in their power to bless and to curse, ah! that they cannot repay love a hundredfold?

Do you not know that the streets, houses, public buildings of the city where you live, have tongues, arms, eyes? that they are on the watch? that the trees and streams around you are alive with answers, and that the common clay knows the tread of its true owner?

Do you think that England or any land will rise into life, will display her surpassing beauty, will pour out her love, to the touch of false owners—to people who finger banknotes, who make traffic, buying and selling her, who own by force of titledeeds, laws, police—who yet deny her, turning their backs upon her winds and her waves, and ashamed to touch her soil with their hands?

Do you think that she will arise to the call of these? O do you not know how she yearns for the mastery of her true owners, how she leans herself backward, displaying her charms, inviting—breathing courage even into faint souls to know their manhood—to come upon her boldly, to let none stand between?

O know well that it shall be. That the land they dwell on, that the Earth, for whatsoever people is worthy, shall become impossible to be separated from them—even in thought.

* * * * *

Of those who are truly the People, they are jealous of their land; the woods and the fields and the open sea are covered with their love—inseparable from life.

Every hedgerow, every old lumb and coppice, the nature of the soils in every field and part of a field, the suffs, the bedrock, pastures, ploughlands and fallows; the quarries and places of the best stone for roadmending, building, walling, roofing, draining; the best stuff for mending footpaths; the best water for miles round, and the taste and quality of the various wells and springs; the clays for puddling and for brickburning, the basseting out and dips of the beds; the cattle and livestock up and down, their various breeds, treatment and condition; the moors, forests, streams, rivers, seacoasts, familiar by sunlight, moonlight, starlight, and on dark nights—every nook and corner of them; the old trees and their histories, the waterside trees, and where pheasants frequently roost, and the places for netting rabbits and hares, or for spearing trout by lantern-light; or where the crab-apple and cluster-berry and mountain-flax and agrimony grow;

The haunts of the wild duck and snipe, the decoy of the corncrake, the nests of the storm-cock and the water-hen and the pewit; the legends told of old hollows and caves and crags; the bold and beautiful headlands, the taste of the air upon them; the old streets in the towns, and their histories, and the histories of the houses in them, and of those who lived in the houses; the old villages and their traditions, customs, specialties, notorious characters, feasts and frolics;

The knowledge of the arts of sea and river fishing, oyster and scallop dredging, the trawl, the seine and the drift-net, farming, fruit-growing, timbergrowing pilling and dressing, canal-making, sea-walling, ship-building, irrigation; the great crafts in stone, wood, iron—of the mason’s, the smith’s, the joiner’s, the tool-maker’s work; of the clean use of tools, of all faithful and perfect work, and the joy and majesty that comes of it—

Everything that the land has—calls an answer in the breasts of the people, and quickly grows love for the use of those that live on it.

Without this love no People can exist; this is the creation nourishment and defence of Nations. It is this that shall save England (as it has saved Ireland); which ultimately—of the very Earth—shall become the nurse of Humanity.

* * * * *

Between a great people and the earth springs a passionate attachment, lifelong—and the earth loves indeed her children, broad-breasted, broad-browed, and talks with them night and day, storm and sunshine, summer and winter alike.

[Here indeed is the key to the whole secret of education.]

Owners and occupiers then fall into their places; the trees wave proud and free upon the headlands; the little brooks run with a wonderful new music under the brambles and the grass.

[Determined—is the word henceforth—to worship nothing, no ownership, which is unreal; no title-deeds, money-smells, respectabilities, authorities;

To be arrogant, unpersuadable, faithful, free—not unworthy of the trees waving upon the high tops and of the earth rolling through the starlit night.]

Government and laws and police then fall into their places—the earth gives her own laws; Democracy just begins to open her eyes and peep! and the rabble of unfaithful bishops, priests, generals, landlords, capitalists, lawyers, kings, queens, patronisers and polite idlers goes scuttling down into general oblivion.

Faithfulness emerges, self-reliance, self-help, passionate comradeship.

* * * * *

Freedom emerges, the love of the land—the broad waters, the air, the undulating fields, the flow of cities and the people therein, their faces and the looks of them no less than the rush of the tides and the slow hardy growth of the oak and the tender herbage of spring and stiff clay and storms and transparent air.

* * * * *

All depends upon a word spoken or unspoken.

The clouds fly overhead still, and the smell of the new-mown grass is wafted by. It comes and recedes again.

I hear the awful syllable Change, and see all things, qualities, impersonations, gliding from the embraces of their own names; but I hear beyond;

I hear beyond the sound of the hone and strickle, and look in the eyes of the Mower, under the shade of his broad straw hat.

* * * * *

It comes and recedes again, and comes nearer.

The little waves lip up against the great black ship as she glides down river—

O sailor sitting on a plank over the side, beware!

The ship itself, the rigging, the tidal river, the docks, the wharves, and long busy streets, and country beyond—the shows of life and death—

Who makes and who unmakes them?

* * * * *

I touch you lightly. I am the spray.

I touch you that you remember, and forget not who you are.

XLI

I look upon him who makes all things.

I sit at his feet in silence as he lights his pipe, and feel the careless resting of his fingers upon my neck.

I see the fire leaping in the grate; I see the nodding of grasses and blackberry sprays in the hedges; I hear the long surge and hush of the wind;

I hear his voice speaking to me.

* * * * *

O rivers and hills of Albion, O clouds that sail from the Atlantic to the North Sea, and wrinkled old Abbeys and modern towers and streets of heavily laden drays,

Behind your masks I am aware of an imperceptible change: surely it must be the appearance of a Face.

XLII

The word travels on.

I have been on tramp, and my boots are dusty and hobnailed, and my clothes are torn: do not ask me into your house; (God knows; I might spoon my food with a knife!)

Give me a penny on the doorstep and let me pass on. I have sat with you long, and loved you well, unknown to you, but now I go otherwhere.

XLIII

The word travels on.

Out of the mists of time, out of innumerable births, of endless journeys, transfigurements, lives, deaths, sorrows, emerging, my voice sounds to myself, to you, nearer than all thought: tentatively trying the first notes, wonderingly at its beauty, of the Song—strange word!—of Joy.

To spread abroad over the earth, to be realised in time: Freedom to be realised in time, for which the whole of History has been a struggle and a preparation:

The dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.

* * * * *

[O Blessed is he that has passed away!

Blessed, alive or dead, whom the bitter taunts of existence reach not—nor betrayals protruded from dear faces, nor weariness nor cold nor pain—dwelling in heaven, and looking forth in peace upon the world.

Blessed, thrice blessed, by day, by night! Blessed who sleeps with him, blessed who eats walks talks, blessed who labors in the field beside him; blessed whoever, though he be dead, shall know him to be eternally near.]

* * * * *

I am the poet of hitherto unuttered joy.

A little bird told me the secret in the night, and henceforth I go about seeking to whom to whisper it.

I see the heavens laughing, I discern the half-hidden faces of the gods wherever I go, I see the transparent-opaque veil in which they hide themselves; yet I dare not say what I see—lest I should be locked up!

Children go with me, and rude people are my companions. I trust them and they me. Day and night we are together and are content.

To them what I would say is near; yet is it in nothing that can be named, or in the giving or taking of any one thing; but rather in all things.

Laughter, O laughter! O endless journey! O soul exhaled through suffering, arising free! Little bird petrel through the stormy seas diving darting—thy boundless home—O clouds and sunshine shattering! Elf in thine own dark eyes gazing! O beckoner of companions, hastening onward—winged spirit divine, girt round with laughter, laughter, laughter.

XLIV

I am come to be the interpreter of yourself to yourself;

[Do I not stand behind the sun and moon, do I not wait behind the air that you breathe, for this!]

Born beyond Maya I now descend into materials.

* * * * *

The dandelion by the path, and the pink buds of the sycamore, and the face of the sweep who comes to sweep your chimney, shall henceforth have a new meaning to you, (how do you know that I am not the chimney-sweep?)

The nettles growing against the gate post, and the dry log on the grass where you stop and sit, the faithful tool that is in your hand and the sweat on your forehead, the sound of the dear old village band across far fields—

These shall be for memorials between us, and I in them will surely draw towards you.

* * * * *

And to you, when I am dead, they shall deliver the words which still I had not sense and courage to speak. Hear them.

Where I was not faithful these shall be faithful to you; where I was vain and silly these shall look you clear of all vanity and silliness; where I was afraid to utter my thoughts dumb things shall utter for you words impossible to be misunderstood.

The sun shall shine, the clouds draw across the sky, the fire leap in the grate, the kettle boil—to purposes which you cannot fathom; the simplest shall look you in the face to meanings ever profounder and profounder than all Thought.

Behind them, behind the woven veil—accepting, not rejecting, my own vanities, cowardices, giving them also their due place—I too wait in silence, till the full-armed shall come to give me birth again.

XLV

In silence I wait and accept all—the glare of misapprehension I accept—I sit at the fashionable dinner-table and accept what is brought to me.

I am a painter on the house-side, the sight of the distant landscape pleases me, and the scraps of conversation caught from the street below. My back aches singling turnips through the long hot day; my fingers freeze getting potatoes.

I help the farmer drive his scared cattle home at midnight by the fitful flicker of lightning. I go mowing at early morning while the twilight creeps in the North East—I sleep in the hot hours—and mow again on into the night.

I am a seeing unseen atom traveling with others through space or remaining centuries in one place; again I resume a body and disclose myself.

I am one of the people who spend their lives sitting on their haunches in drawing-rooms and studies; I grow gradually feebler and fretfuler. I am a boy once more in tall hat and gloves walking wearily among crowds of well-dressed (hopelessly well-dressed) people, up and down a certain promenade.

I enter the young prostitute’s chamber, where he is arranging the photographs of fashionable beauties and favorite companions, and stay with him; we are at ease and understand each other.

I dance at the village feast in the upper room of a public; my partner shows me the steps and figures. The elderly harper, so noble and dignified, accompanies his son’s fiddle—or goes round to collect the pence—but all the while his thoughts are with his only daughter in Australia.

The wheel turns, but whatever it brings uppermost is well.

XLVI

I lie abed in illness, and experience strange extensions of spirit. I am close to those afar off, and the present and near at hand are discounted. I spend nights of pain and loneliness.

I dream of the beautiful life. I go down to the sea with fisher folk, and spend chill nights on the great deep under the stars; the sun rises on faces round me of freedom and experience. I see everywhere the old simple occupations—the making and mending of nets, the growing of flax and hemp, the tending of gardens, cattle—the old sweet excuses for existence, their meaning now partly understood—the faith that grows in the open air and out of all honest work till it surrounds and redeems the soul.

The blacksmith blows up his fire; he listens for the sound of the great heat. He taps the glowing iron in advance of the blows of the striker, and turns it deftly with the tongs.

The budder of roses bends among the low bushes; with a quick motion he flirts out the wood and binds the bud on the wild stock. The wire-weaver stands at his loom, working the treadles with his foot and throwing the shuttle with alternate hand.

The old coach-body maker stands at his bench, grey-haired, worn, thoughtful—the young apprentice comes down whistling from the trimming shop to ask him a question.

The sunlight streams in broad shafts through the chinks of the blinds into the carpenter’s shop; with grizzled beard and hair, and something of a stoop in his shoulders, the governor stands penciling out a fresh job; a tall young fellow sits astride of a door-style, cutting a mortise, and a dab of light on the floor sends a reflection up in his arch-humored face.

The bathers in the late twilight, almost dark, advance naked under the trees by the waterside, five or six together, superb, unashamed, scarcely touching the ground.

The budding pens of love scorch all over me—my skin is too tight, I am ready to burst through it—a flaming girdle is round my middle. Eyes, hair, lips, hands, waist, thighs—O naked mad tremors; in the dark feeding pasturing flames!

* * * * *

O soul, spreading, spreading—impalpable sunlight behind the sunlight!

The tall thin grey-bearded man I meet daily in the street—with lined brow, silent, full of experience;

The stout matron in the greengrocer’s shop, loquacious, clear-eyed, with clear indubitable voice;

The thick-thighed hot coarse-fleshed young bricklayer with the strap round his waist;

The young printer (but he has a wife and family at home) with large dreamy projecting eyes, going absent, miles away, over his work—thinking of Swedenborg and the dance of atoms and angels;

The young woman at the refreshment bar, her thick light-colored hair, her well-formed features, and the bored look in her eyes as she returns the chaff of the carefully-dressed young man across the counter;

The military-looking official at the door of the hotel—the despondency of drink which he conceals beneath his loud-voiced smart exterior;

The ragged boy with rare intense eyes not to be misunderstood—in the midst of much dirt and ignorance the soul through suffering enfranchised, exhaled—here too shining like the sunlight, redeeming justifying all it lights on;

The slut of a girl who has become a mother, the ready doubt among her neighbors who was the father; the stupid loving way in which she crams the child to her breast—sitting on a stone by the fire-side utterly oblivious of opinion;

The good-natured fair-haired Titan at work in the fields; the little woman with large dark eyes who is so clever and managing among the poor, and with their children;

The thin close-lipped friz-haired commercial traveler, unwearied, walking long distances to save railway or coach fare, well posted in all local information for fifty miles round;

His wife, so comfortable and fore-thoughtful at home, so evil-tongued abroad, and the bevy of red-haired red-cheeked girls, well drilled in scrubbing and cooking, and not without a veneer of accomplishments;

The railway lamp-foreman, tall, strong, fleet of foot, with gentle voice—lover of the fields and flowers, going long walks Sundays or late evenings by moonlight—sending the balance of his earnings to support his aged father and mother;

The bright sunny girl-child with long beautiful hair (envied of the other children) and poignant blossoming lips and eyes;

The girl in the tobacconist’s shop, her drooping lashes, her taper fingers, and provocative inimitable composure—and all the time her mother is incurably dying;

The hunch-backed cobbler, young, thwarted, thinking incessantly of Jesus—praying night and day for the gift of preaching;

The drunken father reeling home in the rain across country—he has more than a mile to go—singing, cursing, tumbling hands and knees in the mire; his son following unbeknown at a little distance (he had been watching a long time for his father outside the beershop); the late moon rising on the strange scene, the hiccuped oaths of the old man through the silence of the night.

XLVII

Lo! I touch you.

Softly yearningly I touch you, and pass on—dreaming the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.

* * * * *

Sharp-cut, thin-lipped, sad, scholastic; plain-featured, unembarrassed, affectionate; and you, beautiful careless boy! and you, strange eternal anxious mother-face!

* * * * *

How shall I say what I have to say? How shall I speak the word which sums up all words that are spoken? How shall I speak that for which the moon and the stars and running waters and the universe itself subsist, to speak it?—which if it could be uttered in a word there were no need of all these things.

* * * * *

O Death, take me away.

Take me away, kindly Death; lead me forth, lead me through the entire universe.

Let me pass; hold me back, I say, no longer; for I am tired, I am sick, of talking—and I forebode other ways.

* * * * *

For I would be the dust;

And I would be the silver rays of the moon and the stars, and the washing sound of the midnight sea;

And nourishing sweet air and running water, for the lips of them that I choose;

To pass, to put on the invisible cap, to run round about the world, unseen.

And I will be the plain ungarnished facts of life, with continual nearnesses;

The train arriving at the station shall not be nearer or more solid; nor the lifting and transporting of boxes and goods, nor the grasp of the handles to them that open and shut the doors.

I will be the ground underfoot and the common clay;

The ploughman shall turn me up with his ploughshare among the roots of the twitch in the sweet-smelling furrow;

The potter shall mould me, running his finger along my whirling edge (we will be faithful to one another, he and I);

The bricklayer shall lay me: he shall tap me into place with the handle of his trowel;

And to him I will utter the word which with my lips I have not spoken.

XLVIII

I arise and pass.

* * * * *

I am a spirit passing by, a light air on the hills saying unto you: In death there is peace.

Out of all mortal suffering, out of the bruised and broken heart, out of tears, tears—falling seen, falling inward and unseen—out of the withering flame of desire, and out of all illusion,

My spirit exhaled—floats free—my brother and sister—for you—over the world eternally.

[Joy, O joy!]

* * * * *

For you, too, beyond this visible—through the gates of mortal passion and suffering—for the exhaled spirit,

For you, too, beyond this broken dream, this bitter waking in tears,

Something—how can I tell it?—which I have seen, which I might perhaps give you: and yet which I cannot give you, but in me waits also for you—O how long?

Something that I have promised. I give you the token. Faithfully when you recognise and return it shall you have that you desire.

* * * * *

I am the light air on the hills—deny me not; my desire which was not satisfied is satisfied, and yet can never be satisfied.

I pass and pass and pass.

From the hills I creep down into the great city—fresh and pervading through all the streets I pass;

Him I touch, and her I touch, and you I touch—I can never be satisfied.

I who desired one give myself to all. I who would be the companion of one become the companion of all companions.

The lowest and who knows me not, him I know best and love best;

The child of the suffering heart I take; my arms pass under his shoulders and under the hollow of his thighs; his arm lies around my neck, my lips yearn close to his—on my breast at length he slumbers peacefully and long.

The blind and aged woman descends the steps leading to the basement of the tall London house; the east wind blows bitter with dust along the street; she feels along the wall, and for the door, and timidly knocks. I cannot see who opens the door, but it is slammed immediately in her face. I take her by the hand and speak words to her, and her sightless eyes are as though they saw once more.

Once I walked the world of rocks and grass, of space and time, of ambition and action, and could imagine no other—for I was in that one; now I roam through other fields and have the freedom of worlds innumerable, and am familiar where before was darkness and silence.

XLIX

I arise and pass.

* * * * *

In her tall-windowed sitting room—alone—

[The setting sun casts long shafts of light across the path and beneath the trees where knee-deep in grass a milkwhite calf is browsing,]

In her tall-windowed sitting room, with its antique pierglasses and profuse handsome ornaments—alone—

The old dowager sits.

Her silver-grey hair lies smooth under a lace cap; lace and silk are her dress, her thin fingers are well stocked with rings.

Lonely is the great house; her old life and the voices of children have long passed away. She goes to the window to pass the time and through the glass looks out upon the still landscape; after a while she turns and rings a bell—a tall young footman appears.

Her voice is quiet and gentle as she gives her order, and flexible still with intelligence; very taking with their old-fashioned refinement are her manners;

But in a moment what she requires is there, and she is alone again—everything is done for her.

Into her chair once more she resigns herself, to knit an antimacassar.

* * * * *

Without, how peaceful the scene!

The crisp sound of browsing, the liquid blue-violet eyes of the white calf, her budding horns, her sweet breath, her muscular tongue encircling the tufts of grass, the impatient sideway thrust of the head with which she tears them,

The fearlessness with which she gives her head to be caressed and hugged by the little girl just come down from the farm.

* * * * *

The sun withdraws his rays; the many shadows are merged in one;

The sweet odor of the white campion comes floating, and of the wild roses in neighboring hedgerows, and of the distant bean-fields;

Twilight comes, and dusk comes, and the height of the sky lifts and lifts;

The last of the long daylight fades:

Over the fields and by the hedgerows and along the sprawling suburban streets of London the last of the long daylight fades:

Over the roof of the high opera-house—late grey and ghostly in contrast with the myriad twinkling lamps below—by those within unthought of, it fades:

Where—amid a blaze of light and color, elate, to her full height drawn, tier upon tier of faces, thousands of eyes confronting, and saturated with the excitement of the moment, every vein in her beautiful body bounding—

The prima donna lifts clear and unfaltering in the finale her splendid voice,

And retires amid a storm of flowers.

* * * * *

The sower goes out to sow, alone in the morning, the early October morning so beautiful and calm.

The flanks of the clods are creeping with thin vapor, and the little copse alongside the field is full of white trailing veils of it;

While now like a flood the rising yellow sunlight pours in, among the brambles and under the square oak-boughs, and splashes through in great streaks of light over the ploughed land.

* * * * *

Beautiful is the morning. Alone over the field, to and fro, to and fro, with ample alternate hand-sweep he goes. At every step, right and left, the grain broadcast flies in a glittering shower.

With the Sun and the Earth for companions, with browned arms and face and dazzle-lidded eyes, thick-booted, untiring, all day the sower goes sowing—

What in due time shall become daily bread in the mouths of thousands.

* * * * *

The caravan has halted: it is the hour of prayer, the tents are already pitched;

On his carpet the old Sheikh kneels upright—his arms and eyes uplifted; above, the living blue breathless miracle bends—the sky!

The others are round him with their faces buried in the sand; the camels are tethered a few paces off.

His voice ascends. By the doors of the tents from the scanty fires just lighted three columns of smoke, perfectly straight, also ascend.

* * * * *

That is all. The smoke creeps upward and is lost continually in the blue; his voice who prays creeps upward and is lost.

Around spreads, silent, with loose stones and a few weeds, the desert; above, the sky.

The Sky!

L

I arise and pass.