Chapter IV: Part I: Towards Democracy (3)

After eighty years, having been once like the rest a little vacant-eyed child in his mother’s arms; having thence lived and toiled and enjoyed much hither and thither over the earth; Now being very weary, and day after day and week after week growing more and more weary; all all old interests refusing, for death longing—the old lawyer lies down to sleep.

It is but for an hour or two. Death comes not yet. The leaves still tremble in the evening wind, the clouds in solemn transformation float on, voices of children call in the garden below.

The last few miles, the old familiar country—the well-known roads and garden-lands—yet no glance thereon.

The strange immortal instinct pressing—the veiled figure always in front, beckoning.

* * * * *

Now at this time the creatures of the forest to their lairs retiring await the approach of night; the great mountains stand in awe amid the hush of their own waters; twilight fades and the stars once more appear.

Deep under dead leaves in the wood or buried in the earth, the baby fly, white and unformed—the two dark specks which will be its eyes just appearing—in its oakspangle cradle sleeps. With their mother plaited in a ball of dry grass, warm and soft, the young fieldmice lie quiet, or chirrup nosing for their food. The pools of water are full of creatures that cannot rest; to the starlit surface rising they spread wings and fly forth into the fields of air. In heaven whirled by resistless tradition and necessity descending from God knows when, Jupiter the great planet swims—and swathes itself wondrous in clouds—prophetic.

Heaven bends above, the Earth opens disclosing innumerable births beneath. He lies weary, slumbering for a moment. The pen, the desk, the half-finished letter, are there; the gas makes a slight singing noise overhead.

* * * * *

Solid walls and stones grow transparent and penetrable: the earth and all that is in it fade and recede to make way for the Traveler.

LI

I arise and pass.

* * * * *

An unfinished house standing at the edge of a field is burning—and the roof has caught first.

One vast sheet of flame ascends spiral in the night, and casts its glare upon thousands of faces in the street and fields below.

* * * * *

Lo! the wonderful colors of the flame! The pitchy night above; the dazzling white and red mixed with the greens and blue-greens of the burning metals; and the great twisted column of tawny smoke, with red sparkles flying on the wind.

Lo! the strange light cast upon the wall of full-foliaged elms; and far more wonderful than all, at their feet, the crowd of living faces—

The mad pushing sweating crowd, the flushed eager faces—dominated all, controlled and riveted by that flaming sign.

* * * * *

Holy! holy! holy!

Night and flame, night and flame, entering in! entering (O arched wonder of many eyes!) through the visible into the invisible—

* * * * *

Holy! holy! holy!

Night and flame entering in (and one with you, treading softly through the myriad marvelous chambers)—

* * * * *

To dwell; to dwell for months, years; to transfuse, enlarge, to touch with wonder, ardor, exultation; to be remembered afterwards, years and years perhaps, upon his bed, by that child there: the jets of flame through the roof, the strange wreathing smoke, the solemn dark of the sky, the bravery of the firemen, the thrill of the falling timbers; to mix with the yearnings of the growing lonely boy, to be a strange symbol burning in his heart; to fire the slumbering train (in some compressed girl-soul) of adventurous resolve; to mingle with the fears of motherhood;

At last to merge and become indistinguishable—in each one of these to merge, night and flame!—leaving out not one.

* * * * *

Holy! holy! holy!

And lo! the crowd still standing.

* * * * *

And now out of all two alone.

By the curbstone, in the forefront of the crowd, a man—a navvy—with his hands clasped in front of him on the breast of his little son!

The boy, timid, standing between his father’s feet, pressing back against his legs, with his own little hands the great hands clasping;

The two, equal childlike, with parallel upward eyes by the flame riveted,

Their rapt unconscious demeanor, the strong likeness between them,

And the meanings, apart, which the wonderful roaring gesticulating flame in the night signifies secretly to each.

LII

I arise and pass.

* * * * *

With struggles and strange exhausting birth-leapings, with long intervals of sleep,

[When it is all over, with long long sweet sleep;]

With the unwashed wet of birth, of love, still upon me;

With the clinging of the love of men and women, with the sweat of night-long companions, with the bruised sweetness of love;

With sleep, sleep, with the wine of life and death, with kisses given and received, with the reaching of arms round neck and shoulder, and the answer of quiet eyes;

With nakedness unashamed, with divine comradeship, and laughter; with the enclosing shadow of Death, far lost in daring outposts on the verge of the Unknown; with soldiership and armor unremitted, exultant;

With childhood and the least trifle content; with eternal Nowness; with perfected Carelessness; with night, day, rain, sun, winter, summer, morning, evening, solitude, pain, pleasure, and the looking forth of innumerable faces;

With Chastity and Ascendancy; with invulnerability and superhuman power; with Unchastity and Effusion; with live clinging threads of love reaching down to the remotest time;

With the endless journey begun; with trades by sea and land; simple food, coarse clothing, common features; with the breath of the common air, and the freemasonry of the old crafts all over the world;

Shaggy coat-shakings, revolts, rejections of accepted things, travels, disappearances, re-appearances, swoonings away, oblivions; arising again on earth, irresistible, to supreme mastery,

To Savagery and the wild woods, with unfettered step; to rocks and hanging branches; to the dens of the animals, to wind and sun, blowing shining through, and I through them, to evade and arise;

With joy over the world, Democracy, born again, into heaven, over the mountain-peaks and the seas in the unfathomable air, screaming, with shouts of joy, whirling the nations with her breath, into heaven arising and passing,

I arise and pass—dreaming the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.

LIII

Where you are:

Where the firelight flickers about your room, and the wind moans in the window, and the railway whistle over suburban roofs sounds hollow through the night;

Where you sit alone, and your thoughts spread making a great space about you;

Where you go forth at early morning with your bass of trusty tools, and your shadow shoots long before you down the frosty sparkling road—where you return at evening weary and out of humor with your life,

I dream the dream.

* * * * *

Where you open your eyes upon the world, and the beauty of it is upon you like the touch of beloved fingers;

Where the still flame burns in your soul, hidden away from the lightest breath of curious man; where the fire of consecration burns;

Yet the world closes in at last, and the lamp grows dim, and you lie like one half dead—of the bitter wounds of the faces of men and the taunts of existence;

I dream the dream: I dream the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.

* * * * *

Where you bend ankle-deep in mud all day in the rice plantations for a few half-pence; and the sun sails on—slow, slow—over the steamy land;

Where you walk following the old employ, shepherding sheep in the sweet crisp air of the high lands;

Where you stand pale and worn-eyed in the gloomy North amid the hot smell of machinery and the wicked scream of wheels; where you stand adjusting the threads, making the same answering movement of the hand for the millionth time;

Where you lie wedged in under a coal seam, working by the light of a tallow dip stuck in clay; or grind scythes all day, bending over, or race your wheel with the racing steel;

Where you sit high up on the fragrant mountains of Ceylon, with a great flood of moonlight at your feet, leaning your soul out from the verandah to the slow lifting and floating of palm-fronds in the exquisite breeze; and memories come trooping back upon you like the clouds of small yellow butterflies that along your coasts—between the sand and the sea—beat annually up against the wind;

Where you recline by your camp-fire in the African wild, watching the moonlight dances of the natives—the fantastic leaps of the dancer, the rhythmical hand-clapping of the spectators;

Where you drop down the river in the sun, past the dreaded mud-banks and wildernesses of mangroves;

I dream the dream.

LIV

Where you sit in your armchair by the hearth, sleeping long and long; where you wake to look back upon your life lying hushed below you—like one who looks back from the summit of a mountain;

And the children that came to you in the morning have gone from you at evening dusk,

And the lesson of unfulfilled longing is yours, and of the inflow of immortality;

Where they go out over the earth, where the children of the universal mother go; and the wind carries them over the sea, blowing them into all lands; where they flow through the straits and narrows and over the great oceans of the earth, dwelling for nights together among the white leaping crests under the stars;

Where strange faces meet, under other-slanting suns, amid new scenes and colors;

Where light encounters dark, and in their meeting glance lie new social ideals and civilisations slumbering;

Where the mother of them all sits dreaming;

* * * * *

Where the young poet peers in by moonlight through the bars of the tomb of Dante, and turns away with a silent prayer;

Where the artist with easel and palette sits swathed in coats upon a hillside watching the untroubled dawn;

Where the old Hindu feeling the approach of death leaves his family and retires to a hut in the jungle, there to spend his last days in prayer and solitude;

Where royalty dwells lonely in spacious chambers, or moves along corridors past scarlet-coated footmen;

Where young and old at eventide in the dreamy flicker of firelight sit silent, or go away wandering in thought after the brother, the son, and lover of their dreams, following quickly softly with each and kissing the sacred footsteps through the dark;

Where the young mother prays for hours bending over the face of her sleeping child; where the young man dreams all night of the face of his new-found friend and the kisses of his lips;

Where the river glides down by night past the great city broadening to the sea;

I dream the dream.

* * * * *

The wind blows up fresh and cold where the waves are slapping against the jetty; red and green lights skim rapidly over the water;

The cold light of the half moon stands overhead, breaking its way through combed fleece clouds, the horizon stretches misty white like the edge of an ice-bound sea;

The moon pushes her way for a moment through the clouds, to look down upon the stilled scene of human toil and suffering; the wind blows up keen against those who still linger on the jetty;

Keenly it blows away over the waste sea, and wraps itself round a thousand solitary watchers of the deep.

On the wind I ride,

And dream the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement;

LV

I have passed away and entered the gate of heaven. I am absolved from all torment. All is well to me.

A tiny infant am I once more, leaning out from my mother’s arms as one leans from a balcony. But the world hangs flat before me like a painted curtain: the sun and the moon and men’s faces are all alike. This is my dream. The sound of music comes calling to me, calling, calling. Listening I lean forward with open mouth and far-distant gaze, and am profoundly still. [Let who looks upon me see with his own eyes my dark soul’s myriad re-awakening.]

I am a wild cat crouching at night in the angle of a bough. I am Arjuna reasoning on the battle-field with Krishna—learning the lessons of divine knowledge. I am a teacher scanning the faces of those who sit opposite to me. All is well.

I labor all day in the drizzle with pick and shovel; the smell of fire I strike from the rock pleases me; I return home tired and wet in the early dusk to my tea.

I am one of a rustic party of actors; in the old farm-parlor we rehearse our parts, with shouts of laughter. I go into the cowshed last thing at night with my lantern to see that all is well.

I am a shepherd on the breezy hills; the wholesome aromatic odors of the grass transfuse me; my sheep graze on and on through the noonday; I lie in the sun and think and speak of little beside ewes and tups.

I stand in the chamber of Death and gaze upon the swathed larval form—the solid world recedes around it; through the just open window come the cries of hawkers and the creak of cart-wheels.

I laugh and chat with the other girls and women in the edge-tool warehouse; I run home in the evening to my old mother and to prepare the dinners for next day.

The din of the riveting shop goes on round me; I hate the bully red-faced master coming on his rounds—with his insulting voice—and answer him not: murderous thoughts haunt my mind.

I plot with others to murder the captain on board ship. I am satisfied with the deed and experience no remorse. It is off the coast of China. I go ashore afterwards and spend the night at a sing-song shop.

* * * * *

All is well. The least action as well as the greatest. The beautiful and the deformed are alike beautiful. I am happy now and not to-morrow, and am absolved from motives.

* * * * *

On the northern-most point of Australia, decent in my single cowry-shell, I stand. The white man comes ashore in his boat from the great ship, and gives me some old hoop-iron, and I give him a few wooden lances in return.

I am a long-eyed Japanee. In the shadow of the sacred thicket I lie—where the great seated image of Buddha (hollow within for a shrine) breaks above me against the blue sky. The sharp shadows lie under his sleepy lids and soft mouth smiling inwardly. I see on his forehead the sacred spot, and from between his feet the emblematic lotus springing.

[All is well.]

In the shadow of the thicket I lie spreading my fevered limbs to the cool breeze, bruising their unslaked passion against the stony earth—in the cool shadow I lie and gaze at his face I know so well, and through the immortal calm of it the spirit of the Holy One steals upon me; the fever of life departs.

I stand near the door of my cottage, busy with the week’s washing, thinking of my husband; in the doorway to and fro my baby swings in the little seat he has made; petulant soft wafts of spring air steal in, this warm February morning. I am very happy.

* * * * *

I am very happy. By the door of my own little house at last I stand entranced. I look out upon the world and know not which way to go.

O world you have been very gentle to me! Strangely as to the dead your beauty comes to me now. Little house where I have lived so long, I thank you too: I know well that you are different from what you appear.

Disembodied I cry, I cry, over the earth—I shake the sleepers in their tombs with unutterable joy:

O arise! O air and elements break forth into singing! Great sea washing the shores of earth! O earth of countless tombs! the hour of your disclosure is at hand; the bounds of mortality at length are past!

* * * * *

I arise and pass once more: I travel forth into all lands: nothing detains me any longer. By the ever beautiful coast-line of human life, in all climates and countries, wandering on, a stranger, unwearied, I meet the old faces: I come never away from home.

I lift the latch of the cottage door, and the place I love is laid for me for supper; I depart, yet never to depart again.

Laws and limitations fade, time and distance are no more, no bars can hold me, no chamber shut me in: on those that bear me to the grave I descend in peace.

The arched doors of the eyebrows of innumerable multitudes open around me: new heavens I see, and the earth made new because of them.

* * * * *

I will stop here then. I will not leave the earth after all. I am content and need go no farther.

* * * * *

And was this, O love, the cause of your so long aching?

That you might have the adit, that you might enter in at last and be at rest?

LVI

Slowly on You, too, the meanings: the light-sparkles on water, tufts of weed in winter—the least things—dandelion and groundsel.

Have you seen the wild bees’ nest in the field, the cells, the grubs, the transparent white baby-bees, turning brown, hairy, the young bees beginning to fly, raking the moss down over the disturbed cells? the parasites?

Have you seen the face of your brother or sister? have you seen the little robin hopping and peering under the bushes? have you seen the sun rise, or set? I do not know—I do not think that I have.

When your unquiet brain has ceased to spin its cobwebs over the calm and miraculous beauty of the world;

When the Air and the Sunlight shall have penetrated your body through and through; and the Earth and Sea have become part of it;

When at last, like a sheath long concealing the swelling green shoot, the love of learning and the regard for elaborate art, wit, manners, dress, or anything rare or costly whatever, shall drop clean off from you;

When your Body—for to this it must inevitably return—is become shining and transparent before you in every part (however deformed);

Then (O blessed One!) these things also transparent possibly shall surrender themselves—the least thing shall speak to you words of deliverance.

* * * * *

The stones are anywhere and everywhere: the temple roof is the sky.

The materials are the kettle boiling on the fire, the bread in the oven, the washing dolly, the axe, the gavelock—the product is God;

And the little kitchen where you live, the shelves, the pewter, the nightly lamp, the fingers and faces of your children—a finished and beautiful Transparency of your own Body.

LVII

I saw the cow give birth to her first-born calf; I saw the beautiful helpless creature laid under her nose; I saw the calm woman who sprinkled the young thing with meal and tended the exhausted mother.

I see the many women who manage cattle well, and gardens, and understand the breeding of sheep;

I see the noble and natural women of all the Earth; I see their well-formed feet and fearless ample stride, their supple strong frames, and attitudes well-braced and beautiful;

On those that are with them long Love and Wisdom descend; everything that is near them seems to be in its place; they do not pass by little things nor are afraid of big things; but they love the open air and the sight of the sky in the early morning.

Blessed of such women are the children: and blessed are they in childbirth. The open air and the sun and the moon and the running streams they love all the more passionately for the sake of that which lies sleeping within them.

LVIII

Recurved and close lie the little feet and hands, close as in the attitude of sleep folds the head, the little lips are hardly parted;

The living mother-flesh folds round in darkness, the mother’s life is an unspoken prayer, her body a temple of the Holy One.

* * * * *

I am amazed and troubled, my child, she whispers—at the thought of you; I hardly dare to speak of it, you are so sacred;

When I feel you leap I do not know myself any more—I am filled with wonder and joy—Ah! if any injury should happen to you!

I will keep my body pure, very pure; the sweet air will I breathe and pure water drink; I will stay out in the open, hours together, that my flesh may become pure and fragrant for your sake;

Holy thoughts will I think; I will brood in the thought of mother-love. I will fill myself with beauty: trees and running brooks shall be my companions;

And I will pray that I may become transparent—that the sun may shine and the moon, my beloved, upon you,

Even before you are born.

LIX

Out of Night and Nothingness a Body appears.

The threads of a thousand past ages run together in it; out of its loins and the look of its eyes a thousand ages part their way into the future.

* * * * *

Eyes out of which I see, Ears through which I hear—formed in my mother’s womb in silence;

Mother of mine, walking the earth no more (to me closer than ever), out of all tears, suffusing light over the world, equal with God—for whose sake Night and Day evermore are sacred;

Body, by which I ascend and know Myself—Mysteries of life and death slowly parting and transforming around me:

O glad, not for one year or two but for how many thousands, I out of deep and infinite Peace salute you.

* * * * *

The doctor does not give Health, but the winds of heaven;

Happiness does not proceed by chance, nor is got by supplication, but is inevitable wherever the Master is.

Doubt parts aside. I hear grown and bearded men shouting in the woods for joy, shouting singing with the birds; I hear the immense chorus over all the world, of the Return to Joy.

* * * * *

Come, my friend, in the still autumn morning, while the sun is yet low upon the hills, among the dead leaves come walk with me.

Those and the like of those that have been my companions are with You also, and shall be to all time. I give you but a hint and a word of commendation. I open a door outwards.

The gentle and stormy winds, the clouds sailing in heaven; the plough-stilts, the boat-tiller; sitting at dinner with the winter sun looking in at the open door, natural men and women (common as unquarried rock) around you; love, granted or not granted; the companionship of the dead;

The savage eternal peaks, the solitary signals—Walt Whitman, Jesus of Nazareth, your own Self distantly deriding you—

These are always with you.

* * * * *

Have you doubted?—It is well. But now you shall forget your doubts.

Have you suffered?—It is good to suffer; but soon you shall suffer no longer.

Have you looked at the sky and the earth and the long busy streets and thought them dead of all poetry and beauty?—It is you have been ill, nigh to death; but be at peace: life shall surely return to you.

I have seen your struggles, your long wakeful nights; I have sat by you. I have heard the voice which calls you. Come with me. Here is Rest, here is Peace I give you. A little while by the edge of this wood sitting, I with You; then to depart; yet never to depart again.

Words unspoken, yet wafted over all lands, through all times, eternal; no more mine than yours—I give them again to the wide embracing Air.

Haply a little breath for you to breathe—to enter, scarcely perceived, into your body—a little time to dwell, transforming, within you.

Haply mementos, indications, broken halves of ancient changeless Symbols, eternal possessions, treasures incorruptible,

Of Love which changes not—to be duly presented again—the broken halves to be joined.

* * * * *

I a child sitting at your feet, content—the odor of dead leaves all around; or walking with you, your comrade, through the night (often we lean and touch each other’s lips as we go); or very old, and near and dear to Death:

Are you sure you know me when you look upon me?

Behold a mystery!—these eyes, these lips, this hair, these loins—see you me in them, you shall see me where they are not.

Long looking, the face of the world shall change—surely by the edge of the little wood I will come and sit with you.

* * * * *

All riches promised, and far more, I give to you.

Have you used the Summer well, then the Winter shall be beautiful to you. Have you made good use of Life, then Death shall be exceeding glorious.

* * * * *

All this day we will go together; the sun shall circle overhead; our shadows swing round us on the road; the winter sunshine shall float wonderful promises to us from the hills; the evening see us in another land;

The night ever insatiate of love we will sleep together, and rise early and go forward again in the morning;

Wherever the road shall lead us, in solitary places or among the crowd, it shall be well; we shall not desire to come to the end of the journey, nor consider what the end may be: the end of all things shall be with Us.

LX

This is my trade; teach me yours and I will teach you mine.

Are you a carpenter, a mason, a grower of herbs and flowers, a breaker of horses? a wheel-wright, boat-builder, engine-tenter, dockyard-laborer? do you take in washing or sewing, do you rock the youngest in the cradle with your foot while you knit stockings for the elder ones? It is well—Weaning yourself from external results learn the true purposes of things.

Wherever the sea and the land are, is my trade, and it has been known since the eldest Time: the ancient Mysteries and Oracles hinted at it, the venerable sages of India knew it, and men and women who walked this earth before all history; in the remotest stars it is exactly the same as here, and in all the circles of intelligences whether they dwell in fire or water or in the midst of what is solid, or in the thinnest vacuum.

Many an old woman sitting by her cottage door is far more profoundly versed in it than I am. Many a fisherman pouncing on crabs along the shores of the Mediterranean has in it long ago served his apprenticeship. If you think or desire by coming with me to know more or be better than these, you mistake me and what I have to tell you.

Learning and superiority are of no use in the face of all this: they depart much as they came. But to come near to understanding the use of materials is divine, and he that has never despised a weaker or more ignorant than himself is nearest to this.

Many are the roads, but there is one end to which they all lead; there are many profitable trades, but there is one whose profits are past all reckoning.

LXI

Hand in hand for an hour I sit with you in the Great Garden of Time

Equals We, possessors and enjoyers, ask no more than simply to be. This hour, equal of all others that were or shall be, itself perfect: the other hours as they come or go, perfect.

Meeting once, to meet often and often again (is not the whole garden ours?), we shall not forget, we will not hasten or delay.

* * * * *

From this day it is not so much we that change, as the hours that glide past us; each bends low as it passes with a gift.

Earth-kings on their thrones faintly fore-shadowed this; the old myths and legends of heaven were the indistinct dreams of the everlasting peace of the soul.

LXII

And you too, ye hours of suffering and warfare, grim unrest, we confront, each perfect; we contain you; storms and darkness surging around, we have seen round you.

Hours of pain and darkness within, evil conscience and heavy burdens of concealment! hours of black and obstinate desire, eyes turning aswerve, trembling guilty tongue—hungry mortal hours! caught in the cleave of your jaws, I deny you not.

Far from it: I welcome you. You are my friends as good as any, I give you equal places with the rest, if not better—for what indeed should I understand if you had not taught me?

* * * * *

Each beautiful, countless myriads to be known,

Over the hills and green plains of Eternity pasturing, for ever widening—mortal, immortal, swift-footed, slow-footed—O ye Hours and Desires, you are all mine!

My herd, my beauties! my glossy, supple, with arched necks, my gentle and caressing, my wild, fierce, passionate—divine, satanic—there is room, and plenty, for you all!

O beautiful creatures! not because sometimes you show your teeth at each other will I disown you; not if you should all turn upon one to rend him, will I cast that one out—never so black or ungainly be he.

Avaunt! Over the hills with lightning speed fly, tossing your nostrils: but know that I easily outspeed you all—you cannot delude or escape Me.

Wild herd! begetting and begetting innumerable progeny (all mine),

See if to my chariot at length harnessed I will not drive you, irresistible and triumphant, through all the kingdoms of Space.

LXIII

Beautiful is the winter by the sea; the gray waves come rolling with locks tossed back by the North wind.

In his hut on the beach the fisherman cooks his dinner; the clock that belongs in the herring-boat ticks against the wall; the drift-nets are mended; the boat is overhauled and repaired, the boat-lanterns and the pump are painted.

Out on the great deep the balance and plunge goes on; the sail steadies in the wind; the land and well-known points fade; the circle of water completes itself.

* * * * *

Beautiful is the winter inland; the wind and wild clouds with rain rush over the world; the valleys are full of the sound of streams.

The farmer cleans out his ditches and drains, and mends the foot-paths across his fields; the turnip-pit is completed; and the apples and potatos are picked over in the store-room.

The snow descends upon the young blade of corn; the soft-fingered flakes wrap all the world in white; frost seals the earth in silence.

He stands by the door of the house-place at night; the moon leans out, and the stars and the great planets from heaven; Orion hunts with his dogs. In the morning the field-fares and starlings go by in flights.

* * * * *

Do I ask of you perfections? do you think that Winter is perhaps less perfect than Summer? or that there is not perfection everywhere, where the soul casts its light?

Be not careful about perfections: I declare to you the day shall come when everything shall be perfect to you.

To be ungainly or deformed shall after all be no hindrance, your ignorance and rags shall not avail for a disguise;

Past your own futility and vanity you shall walk unfettered, and just gaze upon them as you go by; if learning and skill admit you to wonders, ignorance and awkwardness shall give you entrances equally or more desirable.

Take care (I have warned you before) how you touch these words: with curious intellect come not near, lest I utterly destroy you; but come with bold heart and true and careless, and they shall bless you beyond imagination.

I do not turn you back from self-seeking; on the contrary I know that you shall never rest till you have found your Self;

If you seek it in money, fame, and the idle gratification of inordinate organs and bumps—that is all very well for a time; but you will have to do better than that.

If you seek it in Duty, Goodness, Renunciation, they also are very well for a time; but you will do better.

LXIV

Beautiful is the figure of the lusty full-grown groom on his superb horse: the skin of the animal is saturated with love.

* * * * *

Radiant health!

O kisses of sun and wind, tall fir-trees and moss-covered rocks! O boundless joy of Nature on the mountain tops—coming back at last to you!

Wild songs in sight of the sea, wild dances along the sands, glances of the risen moon, echoes of old old refrains coming down from unimagined times!

O rolling through the air superb prophetic spirit of Man, pulse of divine health equalising the universe, vast over all the world expanding spirit!

O joy of the liberated soul (finished purpose and acquittal of civilisation), daring all things—light step, life held in the palm of the hand! O swift and eager delight of battle, fierce passion of love destroying and destroying the body!

Eternal and glorious War! Liberation! the soul like an eagle—from gaping wounds and death—rushing forth screaming into its vast and eternal heaven.

See! the divine mother goes forth with her babe (all creation circles round)—God dwells once more in a woman’s womb; friend goes with friend, flesh cleaves to flesh, the path that rounds the universe.

O every day sweet and delicious food! Kisses to the lips of sweet-smelling fruit and bread, milk and green herbs. Strong well-knit muscles, quick-healing glossy skin, body for kisses all over!

Radiant health! to breathe, O joy! to sleep, ah! never enough to be expressed!

For the taste of fruit ripening warm in the sun, for the distant sight of the deep liquid sea!

For the sight of the naked bodies of the bathers, bathing by the hot sea-banks, the pleasant consciousness of those who are unashamed, the glance of their eyes, the beautiful proud step of the human animal on the sand;

For the touch of the air on my face or creeping over my unclothed body, for the rustling sound of it in the trees, and the appearance of their tall stems springing so lightly from the earth!

Joy, joy and thanks for ever.

LXV

For the face of the farm-lad who came and sat beside me, the handfuls of pease that he offered me—for the taste of their juicy sweet pods;

The pressure of the Earth against me as I lay on it, the light sense riding on it of tremendous forces charioting me onward; for the like sense in my will and actions, of being borne along!

O the splendid wind careering over earth and ocean, the sun darting between the great white clouds! O the lifting of arms to Nature—heaven wrapped around one’s body!

The unflagging pleasure of food, the crisp and toothsome growths of the soil! draughts of running water in summer;

The evenings by the fire in winter, the ease after labor, the steady sleepy heat, the sleepy flicker on the wall, the presence of others in the room; for the voices of children;

For the beautiful faces—and ever more beautiful appearing—of those I meet in the doorway or at meals, the mortal father mother sister brother faces;

For the glorified face of him I love: the long days out alone together in the woods, the nights superb of comradeship and love.

O joy returning morn noon and night! day-long as in a dream walking over earth enchanted, waking deep midnight out of sleep in the ocean of joy! [Lo! the beautiful surface, the rippling of waves, the moon shining down.]

Deep deep draughts of all that life can give, drawn in to feed the flame—

Joy, joy and thanks for ever.

[O burning behind all worlds, immortal Essences, Flames of this ever-consuming universe, never-consumed—to laugh and laugh with you, and of our laughter

Shake forth creation!]

* * * * *

Wonderful! wave after wave; clouds, rain, wind, day and night;

The sea by night in storms, and the morning over the hills, for grief and joy, for solitude and companionship; for the birth of babes and the putting away of the husks of the feeble and aged in the ground;

For the great processions of the seasons over the Earth, and the dead lying below; and the dead rising again in the pure translucent air to begin a new existence, with unutterable joy bursting outwards from them beyond all mortal bounds—

With shouts and pæans into the blue æther of God—

Joy, joy and thanks for ever.

* * * * *

And for the strange individual decree of each one,

The daily hunger and thirst after sympathy, ever-new, for the pleasant putting-forth of affection, and for the excess—for prostrate unspeakable love!

For the pleasant moods of the soul, for the finite masterly enjoyment of the world; and for the painful moods, for the vicious agony and the vast dark after-death of desire—for the transcendent pouring and pouring of the soul out into other worlds!

For the tragic moments of life, and for the long same stretches of the commonplace;

For the wonderful looming rise upon one of the great Arch of Death as one approaches it, for the dim perception of the infinite stretches beyond!

For the final deep abiding sense of rest—in Thee;

For the touch of Thyself growing continually out of everything more actual, starlike, perfect;

And for all experience;

Joy, joy and thanks for ever.

LXVI

O the sound of trumpets, the wild clangor of wings! forging aloft into the air! O Freedom for men!

Sounds of innumerable voices singing! Starry lamps twinkling to each other across the huge concave of Time!

Dread Creators of the flying earth through space! Travelers yourselves upon it! Fliers through all forms! Enduers of all disguises!

In your hut by the sea shore looking back upon the myriad constellations whence you descended! In the eyes of her you love, in the faithful face of your enemy in battle, aware at last of the drift of Creation!

O joy! joy! inextinguishable joy and laughter!

Lo! the Conscience, the tender green shoot in each one, growing, arising, Ygdrasil casting its leaves, elements and nations, over the universe!

Lo! the Moral laws so long swathing the soul, loosing, parting at last for the liberation of that which they prepared.

Lo! Death in majesty appearing, tender and beautiful, walking on earth the floor of heaven, through the night, through the long transparent night singing singing—

In her arms the children of all creation, all creatures of the field and the children of men, nursing,

In their ears singing low, singing soft, the song—the interpreting song—that the darting sun sings, and the maiden by her window, the song of the leaping waters and of love—

And of joy, of inconceivable joy, O ecstasy! thrilling every object of thought.

LXVII

I hear the electric thunderbolt strike the earth. It shivers and it staggers in its orbit.

Leap, children of men, arise! Set your faces dead as flint. For great is the prize before you.

The hour has struck! the Masters appear! Back, O elements and destiny!

From this hour, War! ever more splendid and glorious War! the long tradition of the Earth!

The flame of the Soul, burning through all materials!

* * * * *

Long the battle, clouds of dust hiding heaven. Earth trembles like a startled horse.

They that fight descend, radiant with eternal lightnings. The gods blaze forth upon each other.

The flags fly of all nations up and down. The long result of history, and penetrating and preceding all history, completes itself.

Lo, Freedom! haughty, magnificent, moving like a dream before the half-awakened eyes of men—never faithless to her, never at last one faithless.

LXVIII

And so I heard a voice say What is Freedom?

* * * * *

I have heard (it said) the lions roaring in their dens; I have seen the polyp stretching its arms upward from the floor of the deep;

I have heard the cries of slaves and the rattling of their chains, and the hoarse shout of victims rising against their oppressors; I have seen the deliverers dying calmly on the scaffold.

I have heard of the centuries-long struggle of nations for constitutional liberty—the step-by-step slowly-won approaches as to some inner and impregnable fastness;

I know the wars that have been waged, the flags flying to and fro over the earth; I know that one tyranny has been substituted for another, and that the forms of oppression have changed:

But what is Freedom?

* * * * *

Villeins and thralls become piece-men and day-tal men, and the bondsmen of the land become the bondsmen of Machinery and Capital; the escaped convicts of Labor fit admiringly the bracelets of Wealth round their own wrists.

I have seen the slaves of Opinion and Fashion, of Ignorance and of Learning, of Drink and Lust, of Chastity and Unchastity:

One skin cast leaves another behind, and that another, and that yet another;

I have seen over the world the daily fear of Death and Hell, of Pain and momentary overhanging Chance;

I have seen recluses craning their lives up into impossible heavens, thinkers hopelessly meditating after philosophic Truth, incurables lying covered with bed-sores, household drudges running from the hearth to the slopstone and from the slopstone to the hearth all their lives;

Something of all these slaveries I know—they are very well in their way—

But what is Freedom?

* * * * *

And I heard (in the height) another voice say:

I AM.

In the recluse, the thinker, the incurable and the drudge, I AM. I am the giver of Life, I am Happiness.

I am in the good and evil, in the fortunate and the unfortunate, in the gifted and the incapable, alike; I am not one more than the other.

The lion roaring in its den, and the polyp on the floor of the deep, the great deep itself, know ME.

The long advances of history, the lives of men and women —the men that scratched the reindeer and mammoth on bits of bone, the Bushmen painting their rude rock-paintings, the mud-hovels clustering round mediæval castles, the wise and kindly Arab with his loving boy-attendants, the Swiss mountain-herdsman, the Russian patriot, the English mechanic,

Know ME. I am Happiness in them, in all—underlying. I am the Master, showing myself from time to time as occasion serves.

I am not nearer to one than the other; they do not seek me so much as I advance through them.

* * * * *

Out of all would YOU emerge?

Would you at last, O child of mine, after many toils and endless warfare (for without such all is in vain) emerge and become MY EQUAL?

[Wonderful, wonderful is this that I tell you! Would you too become a Master—when you have seen and known all slaveries, and have ceased to put one before the other?]

Would you, whom I have often silently been with, to whom in the early morning I have come kissing you on the lips to leave Happiness for your waking, whom I have taught long and long my own ways, even for this—become my Equal? would you look me at last in the face?

* * * * *

It shall be then. The way is long but the centuries are long. Faint not. Does my voice sound distant? Faint not.

Even now for a moment round your neck, advancing, I stretch my arms; to my lips I draw you, I press upon your lips the seal of a covenant that cannot be forgotten.

LXIX

I—who write—translate for you these thoughts: I wipe a mirror and place it in your hands [look long, O friend, look long, satiate yourself]—

I bring you to your own, to take, or leave for a while, as pleases you best. I have perfect faith in you.

And can wait: the whole of Time is before me.

LXX

The little red stars appear once more shining among the hazel catkins; the pewit tumbles and cries as at the first day, the year begins again,

The wind blows east, the wind blows west, the old circle of days and nights completes itself;

But henceforth the least thing shall speak to you words of deliverance; the commonest shall please you best;

And the fall of a leaf through the air and the greeting of one that passes on the road shall be more to you than the wisdom of all the books ever written—and of this book.