Chapter VIII: Part II: Children of Freedom (4)

The middle-aged man sleeps, with his little girl huddled wide-eyed against his side; the young mason with clear eyes and stubbly unshaven chin looks round at the vast columns and carven capitals;

And the sleepy old canon stumbles on through the service, while the choir-boys wink at the tenors and basses.

* * * * *

In the morning, in the thick January morning, rows of dirty tawny brick houses stretch all around through the fogs of London—here and there a light yet lingers in a window.

On the pavements are hurrying mortals with tall hats, bags, overcoats—depressed;

White-faced girls going to work, city men anxiously glancing at the papers as they go;

The postman with bag over his shoulders and bunch of letters in his hand, untidy servants sweeping the doorsteps, the butcher’s boy in his cart, the governess going to her lessons;

The milk-carts, brewers’ drays, hansom-cabs, the hurried self-absorbed crowd at the underground station, the skim downstairs, dash for the carriage doors, and train disappearing forthwith into the tunnel.

XVIII

O great city of millions scrambling backwards and forwards!—O toiling careworn millions of the earth!

Pursuing ever shadows shadows, laboring for that which seems to give so little return:

With tears tears, and short-lived laughter, and the black toad sitting ever in the heart.

* * * * *

O wanderers returning ever on your tracks—innumerable paths from darkness to darkness! O specks across the pathway of the moon!

You by the mouth of the Kolima regarding with pale face the great star-spangled sky—the glory all crossed and blotched with pain;

You hurrying on in the foggy yellow dawn to the dressmaker’s gas-reeking den—or in the filthy back slum dreaming of your childhood and the banks of primroses;

You lying anxious at night, weary and broken with business cares ever closing upon you—you prowling by day the crowded footways:

Come, sit down now at your ease and forget all. Sleep, weary children, and dream of peace and quiet.

Far have you yet to go, but there is no need to hurry;

What seems the end of your journey now, may-be it is only the beginning; what terrifies you so in prospect perhaps after all you will pass and hardly be aware.

You with black bag hastening to catch the train, hasten no more: the deed which you want—which shall declare you free—you will find not at your office;

Train disappearing into the tunnel, delude the passengers no more with the promise of reaching their destinations;

Cease prowling the streets, old man! I have seen what you are searching for: it is safe, and the reward is great—but now rest for a moment.

And you, tight-gloved and booted and with penciled eyes, be not so choice about your gloves and boots and where you will be seated—for while you are busy with all these things your lover waits solitary for you.

Lone mother in the dreary little shop, tired child on the way to paradise—now to thy boy lying dead upstairs.

Does the path seem long?—rest here and let us beguile a few moments:

Rest here in mortal form thou that I see enveloped:

Child of sin and sorrow and suffering rest close here.

XIX

The hills stand out in line against the yellow sunset, with snow in the hollows of their sides: in front stretch green undulating meadows, with trees and the sound of water, and smoke from cottage chimneys.

O cry aloud over the earth for the children of men, of immortal destinies!

* * * * *

The young farmer in gaiters and thick boots walks miles over the hills to see his sister at the lunatic asylum. In the visitor’s room calm in neat attire she meets him; they are near the same age. Thankful, with tears, suffused, reading each other’s eyes they sit together hand in hand.

Strange cobwebs cross and cross and cloud her face and mind, yet within her star-like burns her changeless love for him.

Praying, talking continually of the visions before them, pacing silent and mechanical up and down the ward, with disheveled hair, with narrow oblique eyes of suspicion, with animal postures and cries and chatterings and heavy stunned looks, the poor broken images and wasters of Humanity wait their time.

* * * * *

Now at evening from the meadows and the cottages and the familiar water-sides exhale tender regrets and memories—compunctions of partings long past, and faces seen and voices heard no more.

With the odors of evening they arise—from the breast of mortal men and women exhaled.

By the door thou standest wondering tenderly of him or her who is gone; presently the doorway shall be empty of thy form, and another shall stand there wondering of thee.

As thou after thy mother, so she wondered to know of hers, and her mother again of her who gave her birth;

By chains of tender memory and love encircling the earth are the children bound to each other—there is not one that escapes.

Whither is the resort of them that pass, and where do the uncounted generations abide?

In what hollow do they dwell and what valley do they inhabit?—where do they sleep their invisible sleep, and does the light of the sun awaken them?

Of what they meditated on earth do they dream, and on us do they look with eyes innumerable as the stars?

XX

O cry aloud over the Earth!

Great ragged clouds wild over the sky careering, pass changing shifting through my poems!

Blow O breezes, mingle O winds with these words—whose purpose is the same as yours!

Ye dark ploughed fields and grassy hills, and gorses where the yoldring warbles—write ye your myriad parallel gossamers among my lines!

Lie out O leaves to the sun and moon, to bleach in their quiet gaze—whirl them O winds—float them away O sea, to drift in bays with the sea-smell and with odors of tar among the nets of fishermen!

Open O pages in all lands! Let them be free to all to pass in and out, let them lie like the streets of a great city!

Let them listen and say what the feet of the passengers say, and what the soughings of the fir trees say. Let them be equal—no more, no less—writing the words which are written as long as the universe endures.

XXI

O cry aloud over the Earth for the children of men, of immortal destinies!

* * * * *

The great orator stands upon the platform,

Careless of approval and careless of opposition he speaks from himself alone.

He is determined and will not abate one tittle of his determination.

The arguments, the pros and cons, he treats lightly—after a time he dismisses them;

Traditions of science and literature he discusses for a while, and then—somehow—quietly puts them aside;

Flowers and figures of rhetoric he uses, but presently they fail and fall away.

* * * * *

From the great rock-bases of his own humanity, of his own imperious instinct and determination, he appeals with uplifted arm to God and eternal Justice—

And from a thousand eyes flash the lightnings of tears and joy, from that vast sea of faces breaks a roar of terrible and deep-throated accord.

The arguments, the pros and cons, fly high in the air like leaves in a gale;

The tradition of centuries loses its form and outline—like melting ice in water.

From her deep-implanted seat in the human breast, from behind all reasoning and science and arguments,

Humanity speaks her Will, and writes a page of History.

XXII

As a meteor glides silent for a moment among the fixed stars and is gone—so among the words of this book glides eluding that other Word which reveals their significance;

Wonderful, eternal—when these words perish and fall apart from each other that word shall not perish but return thither whence it sprang.

To see the old sight—and to dream the old dream—the theatre is crowded.

The stout matron comes from behind the bar, the clerk slips down from his half-furnished fireless garret, the lady and gentleman lounge in from their five-course dinner:

The joiner’s apprentice slips off his apron and hurries over his tea and bread and butter; the dressmaker’s girl and the private soldier and the blasé from the club are all there—

Amid the blaze of light and color, between the music and the jokes, the strange haunting clinging dream is there.

The young buck with coat-sleeves turned up with fur cannot but wait for it outside the stage door;

The improver goes back next morning to her work, but she cannot rightly see the box-plaits (as she runs them previous to putting them in the machine); when she hurries home through the streets at evening she keeps looking to see if what she caught sight of is there.

* * * * *

On the pavement in the flare of gas the motley crowd goes by; the policeman stands backed against the gin-shop at the corner, marshaling the buses or quietly gossiping with cronies.

Off the curb, by her tray of cork and felt socks, weary-eyed, wrapping her thin shawl close, the elderly woman stands, or tramps to and fro to keep her feet warm.

Under the great roof in the dockyard slip, amid incessant din, deep in the bowels of the iron ship, the riveters hammer day by day their red-hot iron rivets.

Brown-backed partridges fly across the ploughed land; far above them motionless the quick-eyed hawk discerns their moving shadows.

White-tunicked Albanian soldiers march across the hills above the beautiful city and lake of Janina.

Down beside a rippling stream over-shadowed by trees, at midnight the rapt watcher stands motionless. The stars in slow procession glide westward. They pass behind the dark tree-boles and emerge again; but he moves not—his thoughts move not.

Absorbed, the world circles round him, the shackles of existence fall off, he passes into supreme joy and mastery.

Lo! the rippling stream and the stars and the naked tree-branches deliver themselves up to him. They come close; they are his body, and his spirit is rapt among them: without thought he hears what they and all things would say.

XXIII

Ah! the good news so long sought—the ancient indestructible Gospel!

The little boat sways on the great calm deep, the clouds hang in haze on the edges—faint and far is the land.

Faint and far are the mountains, and the forests where the sun sleeps at midnoon.

Ah! the good news desired of men—the dreams of so many ages!

* * * * *

Who has seen that land? who has floated on that ocean?

For the earth is round and many ships sail its seas and innumerable feet traverse its lands, and great are its thunderclouds piled in the air:

But who yet has truly walked its lands and who has floated on its seas and who has been the worthy companion of those its clouds piled so magnificent in the air?

* * * * *

The ships lie in the harbor, behind them stretches the far sea-horizon and the round ocean curving into other latitudes;

The breeze floats gently off shore bearing the clouds on its bosom, and feeling among the folds of the flags;

The chrysanthemums stand crowded in the cottage garden, and the promontories rear their heads mute over the sea—not one moment before their due time do they speak.

Being transformed, being transformed into Thy likeness—passing the boundaries;

Passing the boundaries of evil, being delivered, being filled with joy;

Drinking out of the great lake that can never be emptied—having come to its shores—of the great inland ocean of joy that laves all mortal things;

Sitting down there under the trees, watching the birds that fly a little way out over it, watching the wild creatures that come down to drink also of it;

Sitting on the quay among the bales and spars, and taking stock of the ships that are waiting to sail, and the travelers that leave and arrive, seeing the breeze also floating gently the folds of the flags;

Content, overjoyed, knowing that I have yet far to go; but that all is open and free, and that Thou wilt provide—

Gladly O gladly I surrender myself to Thee.

XXIV

Lo! the stress, the immortal passion, the dashing against the barriers of self, the ever-widening of the bounds;

The endless contest, the melancholy haughty Titanic and lonely struggle of the soul;

The ecstatic deliverance, the bursting of the sac, the outrush and innumerable progeny!

* * * * *

Lo! the healing power descending from within, calming the confused mind, spreading peace among the quivering nerves;

Lo! the eternal Savior, the sought after of all the world, dwelling hidden (yet to be disclosed) within each;

The haunting clinging dream, the theme and long refrain of ages, O joy insuperable!

Casting out types through all creation, tentative, loose notes and motifs,

Sleeping in the bosom of the hills before ever the naked foot of man trod among them,

Dwelling in mighty fir and oak, giants of the forest, and in the tiny life which springs about their roots,

Time out of mind immeasurable, standing behind the night and stars—inhabiting the wheeling earth—

Lo, all as at random, thrown forth!

* * * * *

[The old Red Indian walks the silent-wooded wildernesses—hundreds and scores of hundreds of miles are familiar to him;

Like an ancient rock full of lines, weatherworn impassive is his face—the stars are his well-known friends.

The young Zulu with feathers on his head and wildcat tails around his loins, and carriage erect and proud as an emu, joins the gathering of warriors—he seems to push the earth from beneath him as he walks.]

XXV

I behold the broad expanse of life over the earth—

I see the stalwart aborigines straying naked through the primal woods, light-footed amid the grass; I hear their powerful cries and calls to each other, resounding from cliffs and gullies;

I see the civilised man in his study among his books, or driving with his lady along the boulevards; I see the well-dressed crowds of Paris and New York; I see the famished and raging mobs of incendiaries;

The long vain fight of man against Nature I see, not traveling hand in hand with but setting himself in opposition to her: the necessary prologue and apprenticeship—as of a wayward boy against his mother—yet vanquished, finally and surely vanquished;

All well; and I see there is no need to hurry.

* * * * *

I behold well-pleased the broad expanse of life over the earth; I see the great factories, with smoke in the early morning—the hands coming in to work; the lines of shops along the principal streets of cities—the piers and wharves with those who toil on them;

I see the great broad pleasure of life among the millions, the energy, the scheming, planning, and the solid execution of plans;

The ties of marriage, friendship, heroic actions, dreams, adventures;

I see also the sufferings, the hardships, the hatred, the sin and misery, the clenched teeth, the evil of everything that is established and exists, and the need that it should be overthrown;

I take part in these too—they are well. I see the incessant change in society, the gaunt desperate problems which attend it in every stage,

And the great problem which for each man stands behind these problems—the open secret which unlooses them, dissolves them at a touch, as a drop of water dissolves a flake of snow.

XXVI

I behold well-pleased the broad expanse of life over the earth—nor is there anything in it which is not good.

All results in the great constitution of things are provided for, nor is it possible in all the fantastic freaks of Nature and of Man for anything to surpass its proper boundary or to fail of its due fruition.

Water does not lie level by a more inevitable law; into this great ocean (of the soul) all things at length return.

Free, free is the going and coming of so many feet; the kid-gloved fur-mantled lady sitting bible in hand among the poor is free to come and go;

So is the young thief—with his heavy burden of concealment, his weary eluding eyes yet not eluding, his face unlighted with laughter—free to come and go; (I do not scorn, I do not blame you—you are the same to me as the others are, and what you can take of me that you are free to;)

The selfish, the brave, the vain, the foolish, may come and go, but whether they come or whether they go the results are secured to them of all they do.

For a long time walking the earth, threading an immense and seemingly endless labyrinth, returning on our own tracks as in dreams and sleep-walking, with eyes open but seeing not, following some mirage, something ever receding and eluding—always about to clutch it;

Occupied in business, with affairs—thinking this important and that important, vexed to compass this or that end—caught by the leg in the trap which we ourselves have laid;

Caught by ambition, envy, greed; owners of wealth and lying awake at night with anxiety over it, driving herds of cattle and swallowing the dust thereof, planning houses and building us our own prisons—

We go.

There is no bar. The paths are all open, the sign-posts few—each must find the clue for himself, the exit from the labyrinth.

* * * * *

For a long time walking the earth as in a dream there is no clue, only bewilderment,

Then presently also as in a dream it all clears up; the insoluble and varied problems which constitute ordinary life disappear entirely leaving no traces—and Life in every direction is navigable as space to the rays of the sun.

XXVII

O come with me, my soul—follow the inevitable call, follow the call of the great sky overarching you.

Disentangling the cobwebs of all custom and supposed necessity—the ancient cocoon in which humanity has lain so long concealed—

Pass forth, Thou, into the serene light: along the hills, by the clumps of overhanging trees, through the doorways of all mortal life, pass thou redeemed, enfranchised.

XXVIII

So after many wanderings, after long ages resuming the broken thread,

After wandering over the earth for many years—with the Red Indian from mountain to mountain, from river to river;

With the Tartar and Malaysian, the Teuton and the Celt; with the emigrant and the exile and the settler wandering; with the Norsemen in their ships to the shores of Iceland and America;

Embracing new climates, customs, times—being constrained by none, hindered by none;

After many times lying down to sleep and rising again—after many times entering into the mother’s womb;

The Sleeper says to him that awakens him:—

“Ah! beautiful one—ah! prince of love, so many times with thy fingers touching in vain my closed lids!

Now at last thy love pouring in upon me has found an entrance, and filling my body breaks the bounds of it and bursts forth back again into the regions whence thou comest.

Ah! prince of love, lord of heaven, most beautiful one, of thee I am enamored and overcome with love;

Here amid the grass once more a child sitting—watching the trembling stamens sway against the distant landscape;

Beholding all life and finding it good—being satisfied;

Pouring out the wine of my life to Thee—being transformed into thy likeness;

I depart—never again thus and thus to return.

* * * * *

Henceforth when summer burns on the high ground where the breezes play—where Thou passest as a flame, transforming the trees yet not consuming them, I will follow thee.

When night hangs crowded with stars I will ascend with Thee the unknown gulfs and abysses.

* * * * *

Spread, O earth, with blue lines of distant hills—stretch for the feet of men and all creatures!

Sing, chant your hymns, O trees and winds and grass and immeasurable blue!

Being transformed being transformed into Thy likeness—lord of heaven and earth!

Being filled with love, having completed our pilgrimage,

We also pass into peace and joy eternal.”