Each morning anew the mist rests on the hills; the sun rises on fresh clouds to be dispersed;

It splinters its shafts against the great rock face, and brings out in bold relief the figure of the quarryman in his loose blue-checked shirt;

Where on a projecting angle he stands, with mighty hammer-stroke driving the brods and wedges;

Now he splits off a great mass and displaces it with the crowbar,

While overhead among the tree-roots, in a sunny niche of the barings,

A sparrow chirps cheerfully to him.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the scythe-smith goes to see what he can do for his brother in prison;

He takes the train and finds out the public-house to which the turnkey goes, and gives him half-a-sovereign to get his brother something to eat.

The turnkey is a mild old man and would not willingly harm anybody;

He says nothing to the prisoner, but when he leaves his cell each day he quietly drops a good-sized tommy behind him.

* * * * *

And this is the Hogarthian interior of the Lincolnshire dancing chamber: the gas, the smoke, the fiddle-scrape, the slopped drink;

The great projecting bay-window with seats in it, the twilight fading on the groups in the market-place without;

The Dutch-looking ramshackle rooms lighting into one another—farmers’ men and girls tumbling and sitting on each other’s knees;

Fat women gyrating together; the young man pressing his comrade to him in the dance;

The middle-aged farmer slipping off into a barn at the back with a great wench: she cries, “How good, how good it is, O come again!”

IN THE CHAMBER OF BIRTH

In the chamber of birth,

Calm and joyful the exhausted mother, with disheveled hair, lies obliquely across the bed—the little primitive conical-skulled god rests snug on the pillow in front of her:

The baffling infant face, with closed eyes and flexible upper lip, and storms and sunshine sweeping across its tiny orb, and filmy clouds of expression!

* * * * *

But for her O the rest, the rest and the peace now it is all over—no desire to move, only to lie and rest for joy!

While the bustling cheerful midwife is full of praises and congratulations, and the good anxious husband comes to the door smiling again at last.

A COTTAGE AMONG THE HILLS

Outside, the winter moonlight shines so peacefully upon the little cottage far away among the hills—

Where within the old human drama repeats itself.

The aged grandmother sits in the ruddy glow by the chimney-corner—her little grandson leans against her knee;

The other children (for some have come in from a neighboring cottage, and Christmas is now approaching) sing hymn after hymn in tireless trebles, and the old grand-dad tones the bass in now and then with still melodious voice;

While silent, with tired and suffering face (thinking of the week’s work, and of her runaway drunken husband) the mother strips her youngest naked in the firelight.

* * * * *

Ah! the tender dreams, the griefs, the passions, and the shattered hopes!

The long culminating experience!

The slow change of the words the children sing—to meanings unimagined!

* * * * *

The flickering light on joists and rafters of the low ceiling;

The old man bent with toil (road-mending now these fifty years);

The rosy children with wide open mouths; the dear god whom they sing of—ever-coming, ever-expected;

The rose-bud black-eyed boy against his granny’s knee;

And she—her white white hair, high brows, and pale transparent face—so sacred, calm,

Most like the moonlight shining there without.

ALICE

With little red frock in the fire-light, in the lingering April evening—

(The moonlight over the tree-tops just beginning to shine in at the cottage door)—

Her big brown eyes and comical big mouth for very gladness unresting, like a small brown fairy—

She stands, the five-year-old child.

* * * * *

Then, so gentle, with tiny tripping speech, and with a little wave of the hand—

“Good-night” she says to the fire and to the moon,

And kissing the elder wearier faces,

Runs off to bed and to sleep in the lap of heaven.

BABY SONG

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, up and down,

Sing song, all day long—

Father’s gone away for many a day, but he’ll come back again,

Over the waters, before long.

* * * * *

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, up and down,

Sun shine, winds blow—far behind baby the waters flow;

Winds and sun round him run, peep in his eyes and off they go—

All in fun.

* * * * *

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, O what tears!

Little heart break, little breast shake—fie such tears!

Mother’s arms so tired with dancing,

All day long;

Baby baby—always baby—fretting crying all day long.

* * * * *

Baby baby, come to Mammy,

Stifle sobs upon her breast—

Little blunt gums on the nipple,

That’s the feel we both love best;

Sleep will soon come after titty,

Sobs will cease and baby rest.

* * * * *

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, sleeping sound:

By the door we stand a moment—moonlight dappled on the ground:

Winds are sleeping, waters calm,

Keep our little babe from harm.

* * * * *

The great Earth shall be his cradle,

Rocking rocking day by day;

Star-bespangled curtains spread

Every night above his head;

Suns on suns shall gild his brow:

Baby baby, What art Thou?

EARLY MORNING

The thrush sings meditative high in the bare oak-boughs—while the still April morning just drops with faint rain, and the honeysuckle climbs snakelike with green wings among the underwood;

The voice of the ploughman sounds across the valley, and the cackle of the farmyard mingles with the rumble of a distant train on its way to the great city:

* * * * *

Where, in her boudoir, by the light of the dying fire—the shutters yet closed and the candles guttered and gone out—she lies, the Paris beauty, naked on her low tiger-skin couch;

And he, her lover, naked too, on the floor beside her has slipped—his head bent forward, and asleep—with her hand in his dark short hair.

THE GOLDEN WEDDING

Now fifty years through wind and sun and rain,

Through the sweet heyday of youth, through life’s maturity and age,

We’ve bloomed and withered, dearest, side by side,

Two trees upon one root.

* * * * *

Rememberest thou

How hand in hand schoolwards we ran, we two,

With tiny feet? Yes, we two, is it not strange?

Or later how the merry pealing bells rang us to Church (no music I thought like them);

Then we reared five children, fell on troublous times, and toiled and suffered till we tired of life.

And they went one by one, and launched upon the world and sailed away,

Proud, with all canvas set, while we are left,

Old battered wrecks—here in this cottage of the hills—and wondering

Which the great waves of time will first wash down.

* * * * *

And now dearest one, through all this lapse of years I look into your eyes,

And see them deep as ever;

Their beauty is to me a passion just as ever,

Voiceless, unfathomable, that no time can touch.

* * * * *

If the great gulf should come and swallow me in sheer oblivion—still it is good to have known thee;

But that thou should’st die,

That thou should’st perish from thyself and cease to be,

I cannot credit. Somewhere nearer God,

When this thick mortal slumber has gone by,

We shall perchance awaken.

THE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTER

Beautiful child that launchest out on the great sea of life,

Soon I, thy Mother, must leave thee: soon the dark shall close me in, and leave thee alone in the bright sunshine.

And thy lovers shall come and make love to thee: they shall lay their fortunes at thy feet, and their strength and the glory of their manhood;

They shall desire thee, for thou art beautiful as the silver sickle moon arising in heaven before the dawn.

Yet when they come forget not me, O my child: be not deceived by their words;

For none ever again shall love thee as I love thee, none ever again shall know, as I know, thy hidden thoughts—none shall read the light that plays upon thy face as I can read it.

These shall love thee for themselves: they shall seek thee in order to possess thee; but I have given all that I have to thee.

All the years that we have been together since thou first pressed thy tiny palm upon my breast to look into my face, until now;

I have given myself to thee.

Before thy feet, or ever thou couldst walk, my love has walked, my thoughts have circled thee, my desire has made thee very beautiful.

If I might pray, I pray that when thou hast known the love of man

Thou, too, may’st become a mother, and so even through travail and suffering may’st know the greater love.

Then far away down the years thou shalt remember me;

As when one ascends a mountain the opposite mountain lifts itself higher and higher, so as thou goest farther from me I will grow upon thee clearer and closer even than now.

A SPRIG OF ARISTOCRACY

Browned by the sun, with face elate and joyous,

Pitching hay all day in the wide and fragrant hayfields,

Frank and free, careless of wealth (preferring to do something useful, and to champion the poor and aged)—

O splendid boy, with many more like thee,

England might from her unclean wallowing rise again and live.

A SCENE IN LONDON

Both of them deaf, and close on eighty years old;

She stone blind, and he nearly so;

Side by side crouching over the fire in a little London hovel—six shillings a week—

Their joints knotted with rheumatism, their faces all day long mute like statues of all passing expression (no cloud flying by, no gleam of sunshine there)—lips closed and silent:

* * * * *

But for that now and then taking his pipe out of his mouth,

He puts his face close to her ear and yells just a word into it,

And she nods her blind head and gives a raucous screech in answer,

S. JAMES’ PARK

An island ringed with surf—

A cool green shade and tiny enchanted spot of trees and flowers and fountains—

The ocean raging round it.

* * * * *

The roar of London interminably stretching, interminably sounding,

Great waves of human life breaking, millions of drops together, torrents of vehicles pouring, business men marching, gangs of workmen, soldiers, loafers, street hawkers;

Shopkeepers running out of their shops to look at their own windows, a woman seized with birth-pangs on a doorstep, ragamuffins and children swirling by eddies and rapids of fashion;

The everlasting tide, ebbing a little at night rising again in the day—with fierce continuous roaring—

Yet infringing not on the little island.

* * * * *

Here only a little spray, a dull and distant reverberation;

In the soft shade a pleasant drowsy air, the willows hanging their branches to the water;

The drake preening his feathers in the sun, or swimming among the flags by the pond side, regardless of Nelson peering over the tree-tops from his column, taking no note of the great clock-face of Westminster.

* * * * *

Only a little spray, broken water.

Drop by drop, one by one, or here and there in twos,

Specimens, items out of the deep.

The baker’s man, working 15 hours a day, leaves his handcart in a convenient spot outside and puts in a quiet quarter of an hour here with a novel;

The old woman—her thumb gathered and disabled by incessant work on crape—now as a matter of course thrown out of employ—goes along moaning and muttering to herself;

The pursy old gentleman who has made his money out of the mourning warehouse also goes along;

The footman on an errand walks leisurely by, the French nurse plays with the little English children;

The rather elegant young lady meets her man by appointment at one of the garden seats; they study Bradshaw together in an undertone, revolving plans;

The middle-aged widower comes along—thin, so thin, dressed all in black, seeing nothing, hearing nothing—sitting down for a moment, then up again—resting only in constant movement;

The tramp, with dead expressionless face—the man who is not wanted, to whom every one says No—comes along, and throws himself listlessly down under the trees.

* * * * *

Only a little spray, broken water.

The summer sun falls peaceful on the grass,

The tide of traffic rises a little during the day and ebbs again at night,

But the great roaring bates not—breaks the surf

Of human life forever on this shore.

THE TWIN STATUES OF AMENOPHIS III AT THEBES

Thousands of years—

As now with the light of evening on their heads and featureless faces, their bases wrapt in gloom—

All the hours before dawn or after sunset, in the clear circling of the moon and stars, or through the long cloudless day, braving the terrific heat,

While the caravans of camels go by below, and the peasant ploughs with his ancient plough, or reaps his clover and lupins—century after century;

And the flood-waters of the Nile wash up and recede again, and the sun darkens in the occasional sandstorm or rarer shower of rain—

Thousands of years:

* * * * *

Like great rocks, human, colossal, part of the Earth itself,

Cosmic, wondrous, far-back allegories of the human soul,

They sit looking out over the world while the generations pass.

* * * * *

And the travelers come and gaze—and go away again, wondering what they meant who made such things;

The philosophers of Greece come, and Alexander comes, and the Roman Emperors come; and the Christian fathers and monks (fit successors of the Egyptian), and the Mahomedan conquerors, and Napoleon, and the scientific men, come—and go away again;

And the wandering Arabs come and light their camp-fires—and go away again; and the Cook’s tourist comes and goes away again;

And the river changes its course, and the mountains crumble in the heat of the sun, and the sandhills shift, and villages are built and are buried;

But of him who placed the figures there these words do survive:—

“I, Amenhotep, have made the name of the king immortal, and no one has ever done as I have in my works;

I made these two statues of the king—wondrous huge and high, forty cubits, dwarfing the Temple front—

In the great sandstone mountains I made them, one on each side, east and west;

And I caused eight ships to be built, whereon they were floated up the river;

And placed them here—to last as long as heaven.”

‘ARTEMIDORUS, FAREWELL’

(_inscribed on a mummy case in the British Museum_)

Artemidorus, farewell. No more no more thy dear lips shall I touch, Nor kiss thy hands—those clinging hands in mine; Thy gentle eyes—ah! shall we never gaze Again upon each other? Artemidorus, dearest, dearest one, Leave me, O leave me not.

All the sweet hours that by the Nile we sat In palm-tree shade, and watched the swallows dip; Or when we first met at the sacred tank Deep in the garden grounds of Arsaphes, And told our secrets (heed’st thou?) to the fishes! The lotus filling all the air with scent, The pigeons wheeling, hundreds, overhead— By our sweet love and laughter, then and since, A thousand times, and all thy quips and pranks, Leave me O leave me not.

Where shall I go? what do? why live? O why Remain when thou art gone? There’s nothing left. The nights so long, with pain pain at my heart; The days, the staring Sun, and every sight Shooting an arrow at me. Could I but see thee once, or hope to see— One hair of thy head, one finger of thy hand, To hear one little word more from thy lips— ’Twere more than all the world. But now the priests Have got thee in their clutches; and already They wrap the sacred linen o’er thy head, Thy features and thy hair they cover up, And round thy arms thy fingers and thy hands They wind and wind and wind and wind the bands, And I shall see thee nevermore, my own. And then they’ll paint Thy likeness on the outer mummy case, And stand it by the wall, as if to mock me, Throwing my arms around a lifeless shell, Breaking my heart against it.

And in a hundred years stray folk will come And ask, “Who was Artemidorus pray?” Nor listen for an answer—if in sooth There’s any that can give one. And in time Strangers perhaps will overrun our land And violate thy coffin, and unbind With sacrilegious hands the rags, and find Only a little dust—Ah! nothing else.... And I shall be a little dust too then.... And whether lord Osiris, the good God, Will hold our twin souls safely in his hand Three thousand years through internatal forms Of bird or beast or serpent, in reserve For that new day they say has yet to dawn; Or whether He too will chance fade to dust Forgetting and forgotten of all men— Behold I know not.... Only this I know Of all the words we said in joke or earnest, And vows we vowed, and solemn troth we plighted, And all the multitudinous chatter and idle tales And laughter that we got through, like two streams That babble for mere gladness down the lands, Artemidorus dear, Dearest of all things either in earth or heaven, For the long silence but one word remains, Remains but this—“Farewell.”

FROM TURIN TO PARIS

Tireless, hour after hour, over mountains plains and rivers,

The express train rushes on

* * * * *

The shadows change, the sun and moon rise and set;

Day fades into night, and night into day,

The great cities appear and disappear over the horizon.

* * * * *

On through the hot vineyards of Piedmont the express train rushes;

The great-limbed Ligurian peasant sprawls asleep in the third-class carriage which has been put on for a portion of the course;

The calm grave country girls droop their lids to slumber;

The huge unwieldy friar with elephantine limbs, small eyes, and snout like an ant-eater—not a particle of religion in his whole body—gazes blankly out of the window;

And the young mother with black lace on her head looks after her little brood.

* * * * *

On through the hot vineyards in the fierce afternoon the express train rushes—the villages on the hill-tops twinkle through the blaze—the fireman opens the furnace-door of the engine and stokes up again and again.

The first-class passengers dispose themselves as best they may, with blinds down, on the hot and dusty cushions;

The respectable and cold-mutton-faced English gentleman and his wife and daughters, the blasé Chinaman with yellow fan, the little Persian boy so brown, lying asleep against the side of his instructor,

The deeply-lined large-faced shaven old Frenchman, the Italian artist, bearded, nearing forty years old, with expressive mouth and clear discerning eyes,

Dispose themselves as best they may.

* * * * *

The sides of the carriages lie open, like glass.

The young priest fresh from College recites his evensong, then addresses himself to the conversion of his Protestant fellow-traveler—I see his winning manners at first, and then his intimidatory frowns followed by threats of hell-fire;

The group of laughing girls in one compartment are talking three or four languages;

In another an Italian officer leans close in conversation to a yellow-haired young woman, and touches her lightly every now and then on the arm;

In a third sits a bedizened old hag, purveyor of human flesh—with great greedy clever eyes (once beautiful under their still long lashes), deep wrinkles (yet not one of wisdom or of sorrow), and thin cruel lips;

On a frequent errand from London to Italy she travels;

I hear her pious expressions as she talks to the lady sitting opposite to her—I note her habit of turning up her eyes as of one shocked;

And still the train rushes on, and the fields fly past and the vineyards.

2

Dusk closes down, and the train rushes on and on;

The mountains stand rank behind rank, and valley beyond valley,

Towering up and up over the clouds even into broad day again.

* * * * *

Lo! the great measureless slopes with receding dwindling perspective of trees and habitations;

Here at their foot the trellised gardens, and rivers roaring under the stone bridges of towns,

And there the far ledges where the tumbled roofs of tiny hamlets are perched—the terrace after terrace of vine and wheat, the meadows with grass and flowers;

The zigzag path, the lonely chalet, the patches of cultivation almost inaccessible,

The chestnut woods, and again the pinewoods, and beyond again, where no trees are, the solitary pasturages;

[The hidden upper valleys bare of all but rocks and grass—they too with their churches and villages;]

And beyond the pasturages, aye beyond the bare rocks, through the great girdle of the clouds—high high in air—

The inaccessible world of ice, scarce trodden of men.

3

There the rich sunlight dwells, calm like an aureole of glory, over a thousand forms of snow and rock clear-cut delaying.

But below in the dusk along the mountain-bases the train climbs painfully,

Crossing the putty-colored ice-cold streams again and again with tardy wheel;

Till the great summit tunnel is reached, then tilting forward,

With many a roar and rush and whistle and scream from gallery to gallery

It flies—rolls like a terror-stricken thing down the great slopes into the darkness—and night falls in the valleys.

4

Here too then also, and without fail, as everywhere else,

The same old human face looking forth—

Whether in the high secluded valleys where all winter comes no sound from the outer world, or whether by the side of the great iron road where the plate-layer runs to bring a passenger a cup of cold water, or whether loafing in the market-place of the fourth-rate country town—the same.

Here too from the door of her little wooden tenement the worn face looking forth—fringed with grey hair and cap—the old woman peering anxiously down the road for her old man;

[Saw you not how when he left her in the morning, how anxiously, how lovingly, with what strange transformation of countenance—Death close behind her—she prayed him early to return?]

The little boy with big straw hat and short blouse bringing the goats home at evening, the gape-mouthed shortpetticoated squaw that accompanies him;

The peasant lying in the field face downwards and asleep, while his wife and children finish the remainder of his meal; the bullock-faced workers on the roads or over the lands;

Ever the same human face, ever the same brute men and women—poignant with what divine obscure attractions!

* * * * *

And the dainty-handed Chinaman in the first-class carriage surveys them as he passes, with mental comparisons;

And the string of mules waits at the railroad crossing in the last dusk as the train thunders by, and the navvy with great shady hat and grey flannel shirt, and scarf round his waist, waits;

And the inhabitants of opposite hemispheres exchange glances with one another for a moment.

5

The night wears on—and yet the same steady onward speed—the draw of the great cities, Paris and London, beginning already to be felt;

The pause for a few minutes at a junction—the good coffee and milk, the warm peaceful air, the late moon just rising, the few poplars near, the mountains now faint in the distance behind;

The faces seen within the cars, hour after hour, with closed eyes, the changed equalised expression of them, the overshadowing humanity—

(The great unconscious humanity in each one!)

The old bedizened hag overshadowed,

The young priest and his recalcitrant opponent both equally overshadowed—their arguments so merely nothing at all; the beautiful artist-face overshadowed;

The unsafe tunnel passed in the dead of the night, the slow tentative movement of the train, the forms and faces of men within—visible by the light of their own lanterns, anxious with open mouths looking upward at the roof—all overshadowed;

The little traveler asleep with his head on the lap of his instructor—the Persian boy—traveling he too on a long journey, farther than London or Paris;

The westward swing of the great planets through the night, the faint early dawn, the farms and fields flying past once more;

The great sad plains of Central France, the few trees, the innumerable cultivation, the peasants going out so early to work,

The rising of the sun, for a new day—the great red ball so bold rising unblemished on all the heart-ache and suffering, the plans, the schemes, the hopes, the desires, the despairs of millions—

And the glitter and the roar already, and the rush of the life of Paris.

TO THE END OF TIME

Know that to the end of Time and the remotest corner of Space there is nothing that you cannot take for your own—nothing without personal relation to yourself, body and soul: to this body, sweet, bitter, painful, pleasurable, fatal—to that, equal. Not the most fatal drug but feeds that one, not years of slow exile or of illness.

Through this life, that life—the two always conjoined; through failure, stedfastness; through the sight of the change and flow of things, immortality; through the magnificence and splendor of nature (I speak to you now seated on some wooded slope or hill—the birds, the buds, the sky after rain), yourself equal in magnificence and splendor.

ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE

Always on the eve of departure,

Thy goods all packed, thy testament signed and witnessed,

Touching with lightest touch all offerings life lays at thy feet:

This is thy fate, O blest one!

* * * * *

After the day’s work leaving the papers behind on the desk, the tools on the bench,

Letting the garden-line remain in the garden, leaving the newly sharpened pick in the hardening trough,

Leaving the scissors and the sleeve-board on the floor where they fell, and the waistcoat-lining unfinished on the machine,

Letting go all the plans and purposes of the day, forgetting about them as if they had never been:

Lo! this is thy fate, O blest one!

* * * * *

The chains of office round your neck, yet to uncoil and lay them quietly aside,

The cares of state that have held you since morning holding you no longer, the axe-handle relaxing its grasp on you;

Out of the old ever-passing, free as air,

For the acceptance of all, and the praise and blame of men, alike without prejudice:

Lo! this is thy fate, O blest one!

ARENZANO

In the great Church over the little fishing-village,

In the gloom of evening and of the spacious interior—only a few candles lighted over a side altar—

[The great doors wide open to the twilight over the bay, with silhouettes of figures entering, and continual tread of feet upon the stone floor]—

There in the dusk the fisher-wives kneel and pray:

_Ave Maria, ave, ave._

A great throng, hardly visible, with shawls thrown over their heads—and men and children:

_Ave Maria, ave, ave._

* * * * *

The long monotonous semi-savage refrain and wash of voices,

Unending, like the rhythm of the sea itself,

The untrained choir, the rise suspense and breaking of the wave of trebles, the answer of the basses in passionate iteration—the mesmeric influence—

The great Christ over the main altar, half lost in gloom, with arms outstretched, and crucified,

The faint sweet smell of incense,

The long Past:

* * * * *

The long Past from which it all comes—

Strange voices and refrains,

As from the coasts of Tyre, and the worship of Ashtoreth,

Or this is Isis the ever-virgin Madonna and her infant Horus—one with the Virgin of the stars—

Or this the antiphonal music of the psalms

Within the Jewish Temple.

* * * * *

The same great needs of human life all down the ages—

Each tiny drop to feel the living wave it forms a part of;

Dear Love; and Death; the narrow clear-cut bounded present, the dread Unknown, the children clinging to each other—

Not one that dies, not one the waves engulf,

But tears and agony to those remaining.

* * * * *

Ah! who can tell and who can see the end?

Man that art God yet perishest as grass!

I sit here in a corner of thy world-old temple—

(Here in this old fishing-village just as much as anywhere else)—

In the dark unknown unnoticed I sit,

And hear the ceaseless sounding of Thy Sea,

And join the _Ave Maria, ave, ave_.

O TENDER HEART

O tender heart of our humanity,

O bleeding sacred heart, with tears of ages.

* * * * *

Dear Mother, once on earth, now glorified—

Thy arms outstretched in love o’er all creation—

Thy husk lies by the sea-shore, which Thou once

Didst thus and thus inhabit (parted now,

For it could ne’er contain Thee).

* * * * *

O buds and blooms of Spring once more returning,

Bright waters flowing, O heavenly blue still shining,

And Thou still spreading over all and changeless,

O tender heart of our humanity,

O bleeding sacred heart, with tears of ages.

* * * * *

Arise Thou glorified,

Year after year—leaving thy mortal days behind—

Dear mother in the great unseen impending,

Slowly creation orbs about thy form.

I follow where thou walkedst. I behold

Where ages back on earth Thou still didst pass;

I see thee in the streets to-day disguised;

Thy spirit glides eternal—and I follow,

Kissing the sacred foot-prints as I go.

* * * * *

All suffering for thy dear sake is holy—

(O thorn-crowned brow, O bleeding sacred heart)—

Thou that didst bear me and thy children all

With bitter pangs and sorrow for thy cup

(Thy thin hands laid at last within the grave),

All suffering for thy dear sake is holy.

THE CARTER

So in the dirt, amid the filthy smoke and insensate din of the great city,

Into my attic came my friend the carter and sat with me for a while.

* * * * *

Young and worn, these are the words he said:

“Never before could I have believed it, but I see it all now;

There is nothing like it—no happiness—when you have clean dropped thinking about yourself.

But you must not do it by halves—while ever there is the least grain of self left it will spoil all;

You must just leave it all behind—and yourself be the same as others;

If they want anything, and you want it, well it is the same who gets it;

You cannot be disappointed then.

I do not say it is not hard, but I know there is nothing—no happiness—like it;

It is a new life, and them that has never tasted it, they have no idea what it is.”

* * * * *

Thus in the din and dirt of the city, as over the mountain tops and in the far forests alone with Nature,

I saw the unimaginable form dwelling, whom no mortal eye may see,

The unimaginable form of Man, tenant of the Earth from far ages, seen of the wise in all times—

Dwelling also in the youthful carter.

THE STONE-CUTTER

“And men to-day—are they not always running about to do something?

But He says: _I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do._”

* * * * *

Thus to me the stone-cutter, with chisel and mallet in hand all the while dishing out a sump-cover,

Standing out there in the Sun, in the light July breeze so cool,

Spoke the words of Christ—the old indestructible words—which all down the ages,

Whether in the mouth of stone-cutter or carpenter,

Emerge time after time from the heart of the people.

THE VOICE OF ONE BLIND

Blind, ah! blind—it has come upon me now—

A veil thickening between the world and me.

[I saw them move through it—saw the dear faces and figures as in a fluid haze,

And then they blurred, and then I saw them not.]

* * * * *

Alone? Ah no! who shall describe the joy that has come upon me?

The blow that should have crushed me broke my chains,

And I, that was the prisoner, am free.

* * * * *

Sweet—all of fever fled—all calm now and peaceful,

To feel the warm sun on my hands, or traveling along my forehead,

To hear the sounds—the rustling of the breeze or chirrup of the birds, the kettle singing or the turned page of the book my loved one reads—

The touches and the hands, the voices and the sweet caresses;

How they come nearer, now!

I go no more to seek, I stay at home, and let them come to me.

* * * * *

And sweet sweet visions—

Ah! forms I saw not when my eyes were clear—

Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mortal friends,

What gods are come about me?

* * * * *

And Thou above all:

Thou, gracious presence, sweet enfolding me

Far far within, touching me nearest of all,

As through so many ages men and women Thou with the sweetness of thy love hast ravished:

So I touch them through Thee—through Thee to all

I am come nearer now.

A SONG OF ONE IN OLD AGE

Weary and broken, old age, art thou now come upon me?

My faculties drying up like pools of water in summer,

My body dying, my brain rusting, my heart-beat dull and torpid—

Falling off like a dead leaf from the tree, unheeded, useless—

Is this old age then? lonely, ah! how lonely!

* * * * *

The world hurries by so light and glad and joyous—each man following his call: but I without any;

The spring returns with the budding leaves on the beech so fresh, and the virgin grass, and the foals and young calves in the fields: as it has returned so oft before; but I am old and must die—there is no place for me any longer;

At night in dreams the faces return to me—the faces that I loved, ah! dearest faces!—but when I wake the world is changed, all changed: there is no place for them any longer, but strangers are around me.

How should love come to me—what is there that any one should seek me? Who will pause for the empty husk of a man, and shall I be a supplicant for pity?

How could I ever have guessed when I was young that this would come upon me—and yet it has come upon me, as it has come upon so many millions before?

To die—that is it. This at last is what I have so often counted on—to die, to be effaced, to be made of no account—and now it is forced upon me whether I will or no.

* * * * *

O Death, I shall conquer thee yet.

Didst thou think to terrify me?—but lo! was I not dead before thou camest?

Long long years ago did I not abandon this frail tenement, all but in name?—was not my last furniture packed up and ready to be transported?

The virgin grass received me, and the beech trees so tenderly green in spring, and the bodies of my lovers that I loved:

They became my dwelling, and I forgot that I existed.

I passed freely and floated on the ocean of which before I had only been part of the shore,

I took up my refuge beyond the limits where thou couldst come.

* * * * *

Yet now once more confined,

Here in this prison cell while the walls grow thicker—of all I was a little spark waits yet its liberation.

Come quickly, Death, and loose this last remainder of me—shatter the walls,

Break down this body of mine, and let me go.

Or else,

In patience let me wait seeing fulfilled

That which I sought so long—to be effaced.

Hidden I wait—this old husk suits me well—for who will guess the likeness of me through it?

This is my invisible cap wherein I’ll ramble yet through many byways of sweet human life.

And thou too, stranger, shalt pity me if thou wilt, and I will accept thy pity gratefully—

Yet after all perhaps the best gift of the two

I’ll give to thee.

* * * * *

Old age, old age?—No! only there outside.

Here where I am ’tis everlasting youth.

This is where the virgin grass springs from, I see, and the loves that clothe the frame of humanity.

Out of this old shell passing I begin again—there is no death here, there can be no death,

Only perpetual joy.

IN EXTREME AGE

Unto Thee, O Nature, I abandon myself:

Accept me, thou beautiful,

Marred and deformed and stunted take me from myself

Unto thy own great uses.

* * * * *

Lo, I outgrow this body! painfully

My life ebbs yet and flows again within it.

These hands and feet, these eyes and brain, these senses, faculties, have served their turn—

The dinted tools I render back to Thee.

* * * * *

As when a boy I sat upon the beach in the sun, and watched the sparkling waves,

So now in extreme age sitting here

I trace no change—scarce any change at all.

Some little work done, some formal knowledge gained, some passages of sweet or sad experience;

But all these only outworks, falling off,

Leave me the same that I have been through life.

(So little one life—so brief, slight, a thing.)

* * * * *

Till now at length, feeling Thee gather round me close,

Close, closer, closer yet,

At last the bounds dissolve which kept us twain,

And I and Thou are one, and I alone am not.

AFTER THE DAY’S WORK

Passing by, passing by all exteriors,

Swimming floating on the Ocean that has innumerable bays—

I too at length nestle down in thy breast, O humanity;

Tired I abandon myself to thee, to be washed from the dust of life in thy waves.

I SAW A VISION

I saw a vision of Earth’s multitudes going up and down over the Earth—and I saw the great earth itself wheeling and careering onward through space.

And behold! here and there to one among the multitude a change came;

And to whomsoever it came continued onward apparently as before—yet as from the larva springs the perfect image,

So (as it appeared to me) from that mortal form a new being, long long long in preparation, glided silently up unobserved into the breathless pure height of the sky.

AH! BLESSED IS HE

Ah! blessed is he that hath escaped—

Whom love hath opened the doors of his cage:

No more returning

Shall he be subject again to sin and sorrow.

THE GREAT LEADER

I use my name and powers, I use my great prestige,

As a joiner uses a tool: they serve my purpose well.

Nevertheless think not that I regard them

Except as things to be destroyed in using.

I ACCEPT YOU

I accept you altogether—as the sea accepts the fish that swim in it.

It is no good apologising for anything you have done, for you have never been anywhere yet but what I have sustained you—

And beyond my boundaries you cannot go.

SOL

Coruscating flame I behold the soul,

Mine, yours, whoever it may be—

Darting great tongues of flame thousands of miles long,

Thousands of years.

A GLIMPSE

Here at last having arrived I take my rest, my long long fill of rest, no more to move;

The roaring subsides, the wheels cease to go round, a calm falls on all—the stars and the daisies shine out visibly from the bosom of God.

* * * * *

You cannot baulk me of my true life.

Climbing over the barriers of pain—of my own weaknesses and sins—I escape.

Where will you hold me? by the feet, hands? by my personal vanity? would you shut me in the mirror-lined prison of self-consciousness?

* * * * *

Behold! I acknowledge all my defects—you cannot snap the handcuffs faster on me than I snap them myself: I am vain, deceitful, cowardly—yet I escape.

The handcuffs hold me not, out of my own hands I draw myself as out of a glove; from behind the empty mask of my reputed qualities I depart, and am gone my way,

Unconcerned what I leave behind me.

* * * * *

Into the high air which surrounds and sustains the world,

Breathing life, intoxicating, with joy unutterable, radiant,

As the wind of Spring when the dead leaves fly before it—

I depart and am gone my way.

THE LONG DAY IN THE OPEN

Hour after hour passes by, the Sun wheels on, the clouds disperse and re-form;

On all I have to do thou lookest O Nature, I have nothing to conceal from thee; O Moon traveling so close over the hills,

Dost thou not say what I have to say, are not our purposes one?

THE IDLER

I am he that beholds and praises the universe,

Singing all day like a bird among the branches,

And the leaves put forth and the young buds burst asunder—yet I myself do nothing at all,

But dwell in the midst of them, singing.

IN THE DEEP CAVE OF THE HEART

In the deep cave of the heart, far down,

Running under the outward shows of the world and of people,

Running under geographies, continents, under the fields and the roots of the grasses and trees, under the little thoughts and dreams of men, and the history of races,

Deep, far down,

I see feel and hear wondrous and divine things.

Voices and faces are there; arms of lovers, known and unknown, reach forward and fold me;

Words float, and fragrance of Time ascends, and Life ever circling.

_Fly messenger! through the streets of the cities ancle-plumed Mercury fly!_

_Swift sinewy runner with arm held up on high!_

_Naked along the wind, thy beautiful feet_

_Glancing over the mountains, under the sun,_

_By meadows and water-sides,—into the great towns like a devouring flame,_

_Through slums and vapors and dismal suburban streets,_

_With startling of innumerable eyes—fly, messenger, fly!_

* * * * *

_Joy joy, the glad news!_

_For he whom we wait is risen!_

_He is descended among his children—_

_He is come to dwell on the Earth!_

THE COMING OF THE LORD

I heard a voice saying:

Son of Man stretch forth thy hand over the earth—and over the sea-coasts and seas and cities of the earth:

I, the King, am come to dwell in my own lands—I am descended among the children of men.

[Blessed art thou whosoever from whose eyes the veil is lifted to see Me;

Blessed are thy mornings and evenings—blessed the hour when thou risest up, and again when thou liest down to sleep.]

* * * * *

Here on this rock in the sun, where the waves obedient wash at my feet, where the fisherman passing spreads his net on the sands,

I the King sit waiting.

This mountain is my throne—I breathe the incense of the myriad-laden meadows;

The little white-washed cottages lie below me, and there my dwelling is also.

2

See you not Me? though I stand in the height of heaven,

Glorious in all forms, am I become as a nothing before you?

Though I walk through the street with a basket on my arm, or leaning on a stick—or loiter in many disguises?

See you not Me,

Who have looked in your eyes so long for that glance of recognition?

Yet when you see me no form of maid or boy, or one mature or aged,

Or the truth of anything shall escape you.

* * * * *

In the streets of the cities, where the horses’ hoofs sound hollow upon the asphalte, and the old woman sits by her tray,

And the babble of voices goes by as you stand at the corner,

I will pass with the rest—you shall see me and not mistake me.

The woods no more shall be merely a cover for wild animals, or so much value in timber, nor the fields for their crops alone,

For I have trodden them—they are holy—and my foot-prints are over all the land.

* * * * *

Who walks in singleness of heart shall be my companion—I will reveal myself to him by ways that the learned understand not.

Though he be poor and ignorant I will be his friend—I will swear faithfulness to him, passing my lips to his, and my hand to betwixt his thighs.

3

Where I pass, all my children know me;

My feet tread naked the grass of the valleys, the trees know me by name—they hear my voice—the brook with heaped up waters rushes past me.

[O voices breaking out over the earth, O singing singing singing!]

My sun shines glorious in heaven, and my moon to adorn the night;

They are my right hand and my left hand—see you not Me between?

[Hark! my children sing—all day and night they are singing!]

4

O child—you whom I touch now, having watched over you so long, so long—

Are you worthy to follow and behold me?

* * * * *

Leaving all, leaving all behind,

Caring no more for the world, for all your projects and purposes, than if you had been stunned by a blow on the head,

Leaving all to me, absolutely all to me,

Then may-be you shall see me.

* * * * *

For though you shall carry on where you are placed, and shall not forsake your post, though you shall be unwearied, giving all that you have out of love to the least capable of making a return, though you shall be active before the world,

Yet shall you not act at all, not one single thing shall you do—but I will do it for you.

* * * * *

After that the arrows shall not pierce you, nor the heavy rain wet you, the shafts of malice shall not penetrate to you, nor the fire though it consume your body shall consume you;

But the sun shall shine, and the faces glance each morning afresh upon you,

For joy, for joy—and joy.

I the Lord Demos have spoken it: and the mountains are my throne.

THE CURSE OF PROPERTY

Are they not mine, saith the Lord, the everlasting hills?

(Where over the fir-tree tops I glance to the valleys.)

The rich meads with brown and white cattle, and streams with weirs and water-mills,

And the tender-growing crops, and hollows of shining apple-blossom—

From my mountain terraces as from a throne beholding my lands—

Are they not mine, where I dwell, and for my children?

* * * * *

How long, you, will you trail your slime over them, and your talk of rights and of property?

How long will you build your houses to hide yourselves in, and your baggage? to shut yourselves off from your brothers and sisters—and Me?

* * * * *

Beware! for I am the storm; I care nought for your rights of property.

In lightning and thunder, in floods and fire, I will ruin and ravage your fields;

Your first-born will I slay within your house, and I will make your riches a mockery.

* * * * *

Fools! that know not from day to day, from hour to hour, if ye shall live,

And yet will snatch from each other the things that I have showered among you.

For I will have none that will not open his door to all, treating others as I have treated him.

The trees that spread their boughs against the evening sky, the marble that I have prepared beforehand these millions of years in the earth; the cattle that roam over the myriad hills—they are Mine, for all my children—

If thou lay hands on them for thyself alone, thou art accursed.

* * * * *

The curse of property shall cling to thee;

With burdened brow and heavy heart, weary, incapable of joy, without gaiety,

Thou shalt crawl a stranger in the land that I made for thy enjoyment.

The smallest bird on thy estate shall sing in freedom in the branches, the plough-boy shall whistle in the furrow,

But thou shalt be weary and lonely—forsaken and an alien among men:

For just inasmuch as thou hast shut thyself off from one of the least of these my children, thou hast shut thyself off from Me.

* * * * *

I the Lord Demos have spoken it—and the mountains are my throne.

OVER THE GREAT CITY

Over the great city,

Where the wind rustles through the parks and gardens,

In the air, the high clouds brooding,

In the lines of street perspective, the lamps, the traffic,

The pavements and the innumerable feet upon them,

I Am: make no mistake—do not be deluded.

* * * * *

Think not because I do not appear at the first glance—because the centuries have gone by and there is no assured tidings of me—that therefore I am not there.

Think not because all goes its own way that therefore I do not go my own way through all.

The fixed bent of hurrying faces in the street—each turned towards its own light, seeing no other—yet I am the Light towards which they all look.

The toil of so many hands to such multifarious ends, yet my hand knows the touch and twining of them all.

* * * * *

All come to me at last.

There is no love like mine;

For all other love takes one and not another;

And other love is pain, but this is joy eternal.

UNDERNEATH AND AFTER ALL

There is no peace except where I am, saith the Lord.

Though you have health—that which is called health—yet without me it is only the fair covering of disease;

Though you have love, yet if I be not between and around the lovers, is their love only torment and unrest;

Though you have wealth and friends and home—all these shall come and go—there is nothing stable or secure, which shall not be taken away;

But I alone remain—I do not change.

As space spreads everywhere, and all things move and change within it, but it moves not nor changes,

So I am the space within the soul, of which the space without is but the similitude and mental image;

Comest thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to all life—death shall no longer divide thee from whom thou lovest.

I am the sun that shines upon all creatures from within—gazest thou upon me thou shalt be filled with joy eternal.

Be not deceived. Soon this outer world shall drop off—thou shalt slough it away as a man sloughs his mortal body.

Learn even now to spread thy wings in that other world—the world of Equality—to swim in the ocean, my child, of Me and my love.

[Ah! have I not taught thee by the semblances of this outer world, by its alienations and deaths and mortal sufferings—all for this?

For joy, ah! joy unutterable!]

* * * * *

Him who is not detained by mortal adhesions, who walks in this world yet not of it,

Taking part in everything with equal mind, with free limbs and senses unentangled—

Giving all, accepting all, using all, enjoying all, asking nothing, shocked at nothing—

Whom love follows everywhere, but he follows not it—

Him all creatures worship, all men and women bless.

* * * * *

It is for this that the body exercises its tremendous attraction—that mortal love torments and tears asunder the successive generations of mankind—

That underneath and after all the true men and women may appear, by long experience emancipated.

A HARD SAYING

Who loves the mortal creature, ending there, is no more free—he has given himself away to Death—

For him the slimy black Form lies in wait at every turn, befouling the universe;

Yet he who loves must love the mortal, and he who would love perfectly must be free:

[Love—glorious though it be—is a disease as long as it destroys or even impairs the freedom of the soul.]

* * * * *

Therefore if thou wouldst love, withdraw thyself from love:

Make it thy slave, and all the miracles of nature shall lie in the palm of thy hand.

NOT FOR A FEW MONTHS OR YEARS

Think not that that which is growing inside you as you battle with these words is for a few months or years,

Or that it will find its rest and satisfaction in the things for which the world is so busy striving.

Food ease lust knowledge fame—’twill pasture up as nonchalantly as a dog, and look in your face for more.

They shall not satisfy it. The list of all the things that can be named shall not satisfy it.

DISENTANGLEMENT

Be not torn by desire:

When burning clinging love assails thee—like a red-hot thing which sticks to the flesh it scorches—

Beware!

For love is good and lust is good—but not to tear and rend thee.

* * * * *

Slowly and resolutely—as a fly cleans its legs of the honey in which it has been caught—

So remove thou, if it only be for a time, every particle which sullies the brightness of thy mind;

Return into thyself—content to give, but asking no one, asking nothing;

In the calm light of His splendor who fills all the universe, the imperishable indestructible of ages,

Dwell thou—as thou canst dwell—contented.

2

Now understand me well:

There is no desire or indulgence that is forbidden; there is not one good and another evil—all are alike in that respect;

In place all are to be used.

Yet in using be not entangled in them; for then already they are bad, and will cause thee suffering.

* * * * *

When thy body—as needs must happen at times—is carried along on the wind of passion, say not thou, “I desire this or that”;

For the “I” neither desires nor fears anything, but is free and in everlasting glory, dwelling in heaven and pouring out joy like the sun on all sides.

Let not that precious thing by any confusion be drawn down and entangled in the world of opposites, and of Death and suffering.

For as a light-house beam sweeps with incredible speed over sea and land, yet the lamp itself moves not at all,

So while thy body of desire is (and must be by the law of its nature) incessantly in motion in the world of suffering, the “I” high up above is fixed in heaven.

* * * * *

Therefore I say let no confusion cloud thy mind about this matter;

But ever when desire knocks at thy door,

Though thou grant it admission and entreat it hospitably, as in duty bound,

Fence it yet gently off from thy true self,

Lest it should tear and rend thee.

3

And him thou lovest or her thou lovest—

If without confusion thou beholdest such one fixed like a star in heaven, and ever in thy most clinging burning passion rememberest Whom thou lovest,

Then art thou blessed beyond words, and thy love is surely eternal;

But if by confusion thou knowest not whom thou lovest—but seest only the receptacle of desire which inhabits the world of change and suffering—

Then shalt thou be whirled and gulfed in a sea of torment, and shalt travel far and be many times lost upon that ocean before thou shalt know what is the true end of thy voyage.

THE MORTAL LOVER

This is the little mortal lover in whose heart the low scorching flame of rejected love burns night and day, withering all his life.

In vain the great mountains and the sea, in vain the sun in heaven, in vain all faces offer themselves;

There is no rest: only death and annihilation for everything that is born;

Only a corpse swinging up-river with the tide among the mud-banks, and swinging down again with the ebb;

And the tide ebbing and flowing aimlessly for ever in a land where all are dead.

* * * * *

He lies awake all night and strains his eyes for a glimmer of light, but there is none;

Every pursuit, every hope, all of life, is a mockery—he has been gulled into existence.

We have been brought here (he says), a mass of sensitive capacities, to behold a possible satisfaction—then to be trampled underfoot like worms, without redemption, never again to know each other or ourselves.

The heart aches and burns in slow torture, the sounds of daily life are a mockery, the pursuits of men are like the laughter of maniacs playing on the brink of a precipice.

* * * * *

Millions and millions approach the edge—a vast body always moving on from behind;

The gulf is measureless in depth, but the young and those who are in the rear know not of it—they only feel the vast onward movement, and with loud chants and rollicking songs march gaily confidently on;

Then suddenly those who are older and nearing the edge behold the horrible and naked truth—they see the avalanche of human beings for ever going over into the abyss;

With shouts and cries of warning they turn upon those that are behind: but it is useless, they too are pushed on relentlessly;

Behind is a babel of sounds, cries of Forward, Progress, God, Immortality, and the like; around are shrieks and despairing threats, curses and plaintive unheeded warnings; before is the abyss of oblivion,

Into which countless generations before have gone, and we must go;

And this is the hell of existence.

* * * * *

He lies awake all night with pain gnawing at his heart, and strains his eyes for a glimmer of light, but there is none.

THE END OF LOVE

Seek not the end of love in this act or in that act—lest indeed it become the end;

But seek this act and that act and thousands of acts whose end is love—

So shalt thou at last create that which thou now desirest;

And then when these are all past and gone there shall remain to thee a great and immortal possession, which no man can take away.

A NEW LIFE

Henceforth I propound a new life for you—that you should bring the peace and grace of Nature into all your daily life—being freed from vain striving:

The freed soul, passing disengaged into the upper air, forgetful of self,

Rising again in others, ever knowing itself again in others.

* * * * *

The villa stands with its picturesque gables and garden, its rhododendrons all in flower, and exotic firs, with clumps of tulips;

The ploughman to his horses clicks and calls all day in the midst of the vocal landscape;

The rivers wind lazily about the land; the slow air floats on from the West and South, bringing on its bosom long-promised gifts.

Out of houses and closed rooms, out of the closed prison of self which you have inhabited so long;

Into the high air which circles round the world, the region of human equality,

With outspread wings balanced, resting on that which is not self,

Floating high up as a condor over the mountains in aerial suspense,

Or as an eagle flying screaming over the cities of the earth, with joy delirious—

So passing enfranchised shall you regain after long captivity

Your own your native abode.

THE LAW OF EQUALITY

You cannot violate the law of Equality for long.

Whatever you appropriate to yourself now from others, by that you will be poorer in the end;

What you give now, the same will surely come back to you.

If you think yourself superior to the rest, in that instant you have proclaimed your own inferiority;

And he that will be servant of all, helper of most, by that very fact becomes their lord and master.

* * * * *

Seek not your own life—for that is death;

But seek how you can best and most joyfully give your own life away—and every morning for ever fresh life shall come to you from over the hills.

* * * * *

Man has to learn to die—quite simply and naturally—as the child has to learn to walk.

The life of Equality the grave cannot swallow—any more than the finger can hold back running water—it flows easily round and over all obstacles.

A little while snatching to yourself the goods of the earth, jealous of your own credit, and of the admiration and applause of men,

Then to learn that you cannot defeat Nature so—that water will not run up hill for all your labors and lying awake at night over it:

The claims of others as good as yours, their excellence in their own line equal to your best in yours, their life as near and dear to you as your own can be.

So letting go all the chains which bound you, all the anxieties and cares,

The wearisome burden, the artificial unyielding armor wherewith you would secure yourself, but which only weighs you down a more helpless mark for the enemy—

Having learned the necessary lesson of your own identity—

To pass out, free, O joy!—free, to flow down, to swim in the sea of Equality—

To endue the bodies of the divine Companions,

And the life which is eternal.

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

Not by running out of yourself after it comes the love which lasts a thousand years.

If to gain another’s love you are untrue to yourself then are you also untrue to the person whose love you would gain.

Him or her whom you seek will you never find that way—and what pleasure you have with them will haply only end in pain.

Remain stedfast, knowing that each prisoner has to endure in patience till the season of his liberation; when the love comes which is for you it will turn the lock easily and loose your chains—

Being no longer whirled about nor tormented by winds of uncertainty, but part of the organic growth of God himself in Time—

Another column in the temple of immensity,

Two voices added to the eternal choir.

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE THAT ENTER HERE

To die—for this into the world you came.

Yes, to abandon more than you ever conceived as possible:

All ideals, plans—even the very best and most unselfish—all hopes and desires,

All formulas of morality, all reputation for virtue or consistency or good sense; all cherished theories, doctrines, systems of knowledge,

Modes of life, habits, predilections, preferences, superiorities, weaknesses, indulgences,

Good health, wholeness of limb and brain, youth, manhood, age—nay life itself—in one word: To die—

For this into the world you came.

* * * * *

All to be abandoned, and when they have been finally abandoned,

Then to return to be used—and then only to be rightly used, to be free and open for ever.

TO ONE DEAD

You must look at your own body lying dead there quite calmly—

[If you have ever loved and quietly surrendered that love you will understand what I mean]—

The dear fingers and feet, the eyes you have looked in so often—they are yours no longer;

You are not bound to them, you are something else than you thought.

Now you see that these things are only a similitude:

A new and wonderful life opens out—so wonderful, O so wonderful!

* * * * *

Those eyes whose answer once you forebore to ask for—do you remember how after all, how wide and wonderful at last they opened upon you, shining up for you (yes for you) from depths you saw not in them before?

And that body which now you have forsaken, so now for the first time do you understand it and its life (all the old passages in it so clear, so real, so wonderful, so transparent);

Now it radiates back upon you what you are—of whom it is only the similitude;

And even so it is only one of your similitudes.

OF ALL THE SUFFERING

Of all the suffering—

(Think think of it, and learn what Freedom is)—

All the weary disappointed faces,

The lives narrowed down, the dark and joyless prospect,

Capacities stunted that might have been developed, hope gone, the cross of anguish on the forehead;

* * * * *

Of the fair might-have-been, the lips so loved that Death has hid from view,

The dread inexorable past, the nothing left to live for,

Age empty purposeless—a mere cold husk—

Death coming slow, with pain and foul disease;

* * * * *

Of all the cruelty of one to another,

Slights that cut the heart’s tenderest chords, words said that can never be unsaid;

Of the deliberate cruelty of savages and half-formed people, gloating in revenge, or amused by others’ pain;

The victim staked out horizontally on the ground, the little fires built beside or under his arms and legs, or upon his breast,

The careful ingenious torture lasting for hours, the jeers, the diabolic laughter—the moaning of the deserted and half-charred remnant through the long night—the stars looking on;

Of the thousands languishing in prisons, slowly succumbing through all mental tortures into madness;

Of the millions over whom the dread night-mares hang—deaths, partings, exiles, illness, pain and persecution—the brief respite in sleep, the waking to despair:

Think think of these, and learn what Freedom is.

* * * * *

Of all the delusion of thinking oneself apart from others—and all the needless torment that springs from it;

Of the fear that one might somehow tumble out of the world of Existence—dying oneself while others lived on;

Of the lightning-flashes of love which fitfully and for a moment to dazed wanderers reveal the truth;

Of after pain endured the immense and widened outlook;

* * * * *

Of the poor little thing that shuts itself in its own cell, and then looks forth with anxious eyes upon the world—as though there were no escape—tossed by winds of Chance, subject to Death and Dissolution:

The little primitive cell that grows and differentiates and grows till that which was in it attains at last to Manhood and Deliverance;

Of all the beating about in the dark round the walls of one’s prison, yet never hitting the secret door of exit;

Of all the sorrow and blindness that inveil for a time the unformed embryonic creature—

Inveil fatally and forethoughtfully for ends glorious beyond all mortal imagination:

Think think of these and learn what Freedom is.

A LONG JOURNEY

The long insatiable yearning of the mortal creature, for absolute union—never accomplished;

Each mortal love the symbol, the promise, and the part-fulfilment of that for which all life exists.

* * * * *

Not this year or next, not this life or perhaps the next,

But day by day and day by day as long as thou art, pass thou nearer to that great joy.

* * * * *

Here too (as so often said before) it is no matter of chance:

It is not that these are lucky having found their mates, and thou art unfortunate standing alone (for they have not found their mates, and thou standest not alone);

But every day and every day (for thee as well as for them and all) the way lies on before—to be slowly accomplished—

To make thyself fit for the perfect love which awaits and which alone can satisfy thee.

* * * * *

Lo! that divine body which dwells within thy mortal body, slowly preparing its own deliverance—

What is all suffering before that? to surrender this is but to open the way for that—’tis but the law of Equality.

Begin to-day to walk the path which alone is gain;

In the sunshine, as the sunshine, calm contented and blessed, envying no one, railing not, repining not;

Receiving the message of the patient trees and herbs, and of the creatures of the earth, and of the stars above;

Possessing all within thyself, with showers of beauties and blessings every moment—to scatter again to others with free hand;

Neither hurrying nor slackening, but sure of thy great and glorious destiny, walk thou—

And presently all around thee shalt thou see the similitude of him whom thou seekest:

He shall send a multitude of messengers in advance to cheer thee on thy way.

THE SECRET OF TIME AND SATAN

Is there one in all the world who does not desire to be divinely beautiful?

To have the most perfect body—unerring skill, strength, limpid clearness of mind, as of the sunlight over the hills,

To radiate love wherever he goes, to move in and out, accepted?

The secret lies close to you, so close.

* * * * *

You are that person; it lies close to you, so close—deep down within—

But in Time it shall come forth and be revealed.

* * * * *

Not by accumulating riches, but by giving away what you have,

Shall you become beautiful;

You must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in fresh ones;

Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound and healthy, but rather by discarding them;

Not by multiplying knowledge shall you beautify your mind;

It is not the food that you eat that has to vivify you, but you that have to vivify the food.

* * * * *

Always emergence, and the parting of veils for the hidden to appear;

The child emerges from its mother’s body, and out of that body again in time another child.

When the body which thou now hast falls away, another body shall be already prepared beneath,

And beneath that again another.

Always that which appears last in time is first, and the cause of all—and not that which appears first.

2

Freedom has to be won afresh every morning,

Every morning thou must put forth thy strength afresh upon the world, to create out of chaos the garden in which thou walkest.

(Behold! I love thee—I wait for thee in thine own garden, lingering till eventide among the bushes;

I tune the lute for thee; I prepare my body for thee, bathing unseen in the limpid waters.)

3

Wondrous is Man—the human body: to understand and possess this, to create it every day afresh, is to possess all things.

The tongue and all that proceeds from it: spoken and written words, languages, commands, controls, the electric telegraph girdling the earth;

The eyes ordaining, directing; the feet and all that they indicate—the path they travel for years and years;

The passions of the body, the belly and the cry for food, the heaving breasts of love, the phallus, the fleshy thighs,

The erect proud head and neck, the sturdy back, and knees well-knit or wavering;

All the interminable attitudes and what they indicate;

Every relation of one man to another, every cringing, bullying, lustful, obscene, pure, honorable, chaste, just and merciful;

The fingers differently shaped according as they handle money for gain or for gift;

All the different ramifications and institutions of society which proceed from such one difference in the crook of a finger;

All that proceed from an arrogant or a slavish contour of the neck;

All the evil that goes forth from any part of a man’s body which is not possessed by himself, all the devils let loose—from a twist of the tongue or a leer of the eye, or the unmanly act of any member—and swirling into society; all the good which gathers round a man who is clean and strong—the threads drawing from afar to the tips of his fingers, the interpretations in his eyes, all the love which passes through his limbs into heaven:

What it is to command and be Master of this wondrous body with all its passions and powers, to truly possess it—_that_ it is to command and possess all things, that it is to create.

4

The art of creation, like every other art, has to be learnt:

Slowly slowly, through many years, thou buildest up thy body,

And the power that thou now hast (such as it is) to build up this present body, thou hast acquired in the past in other bodies;

So in the future shalt thou use again the power that thou now acquirest.

But the power to build up the body includes all powers.

* * * * *

Do not be dismayed because thou art yet a child of chance, and at the mercy greatly both of Nature and fate;

Because if thou wert not subject to chance, then wouldst thou be Master of thyself; but since thou art not yet Master of thine own passions and powers, in that degree must thou needs be at the mercy of some other power.

And if thou choosest to call that power ‘Chance,’ well and good. It is the angel with whom thou hast to wrestle.

5

Beware how thou seekest this for thyself and that for thyself. I do not say Seek not; but Beware how thou seekest.

For a soldier who is going a campaign does not seek what fresh furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he can leave behind;

Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot freely use and handle is an impediment to him.

So if thou seekest fame or ease or pleasure or aught for thyself, the image of that thing which thou seekest will come and cling to thee—and thou wilt have to carry it about;

And the images and powers which thou hast thus evoked will gather round and form for thee a new body—clamoring for sustenance and satisfaction;

And if thou art not able to discard this image now, thou wilt not be able to discard that body then: but wilt have to carry it about.

Beware then lest it become thy grave and thy prison—instead of thy winged abode, and palace of joy.

* * * * *

For (over and over again) there is nothing that is evil except because a man has not mastery over it; and there is no good thing that is not evil if it have mastery over a man;

And there is no passion or power, or pleasure or pain, or created thing whatsoever, which is not ultimately for man and for his use—or which he need be afraid of, or ashamed at.

The ascetics and the self-indulgent divide things into good and evil—as it were to throw away the evil;

But things cannot be divided into good and evil, but all are good so soon as they are brought into subjection.

And seest thou not that except for Death thou couldst never overcome Death—

For since by being a slave to things of sense thou hast clothed thyself with a body which thou art not master of, thou wert condemned to a living tomb were that body not to be destroyed.

But now through pain and suffering out of this tomb shalt thou come; and through the experience thou hast acquired shalt build thyself a new and better body;

And so on many times, till thou spreadest wings and hast all powers diabolic and angelic concentred in thy flesh.

6

And so at last I saw Satan appear before me—magnificent, fully formed.

Feet first, with shining limbs, he glanced down from above among the bushes,

And stood there erect, dark-skinned, with nostrils dilated with passion;

(In the burning intolerable sunlight he stood, and I in the shade of the bushes);

Fierce and scathing the effluence of his eyes, and scornful of dreams and dreamers (he touched a rock hard by and it split with a sound like thunder);

Fierce the magnetic influence of his dusky flesh; his great foot, well-formed, was planted firm in the sand—with spreading toes;

“Come out” he said with a taunt, “Art thou afraid to meet me?”

And I answered not, but sprang upon him and smote him.

And he smote me a thousand times, and brashed and scorched and slew me as with hands of flame;

And I was glad, for my body lay there dead; and I sprang upon him again with another body;

And he turned upon me, and smote me a thousand times and slew that body;

And I was glad and sprang upon him again with another body—

And with another and another and again another;

And the bodies which I took on yielded before him, and were like cinctures of flame upon me, but I flung them aside;

And the pains which I endured in one body were powers which I wielded in the next; and I grew in strength, till at last I stood before him complete, with a body like his own and equal in might—exultant in pride and joy.

Then he ceased, and said, “I love thee.”

And lo! his form changed, and he leaned backwards and drew me upon him,

And bore me up into the air, and floated me over the topmost trees and the ocean, and round the curve of the earth under the moon—

Till we stood again in Paradise.

BRIEF IS PAIN

(“_Kurz ist der Schmerz, und ewig ist die Freude._”)

Slowly, out of all life unfolded, the supreme joy;

Over all storms, above the clouds, beyond Night and the shadow of the Earth,

The Sun in the blue æther changeless shining.

* * * * *

Grief passes, sorrow endures for a moment;

To a certain stage belonging it dogs the footsteps of the individual;

Then fading and passing it leaves him free, a new creature, transfigured to more than mortal.

The myriad spindles of the grass reflecting the light, the long and level meadows waving to the breeze,

The faint haze of summer, blue in deep shadows of the foliage,

The toilers toiling in the fields, the bathers to the water descending or standing on the banks in the sunlight,

The secret that lies wrapt in the summer noon and the slow evolution of races,

The which what voice can utter, what words avail to frame it?

* * * * *

Not pleasure alone is good, but pain also; not joy alone but sorrow;

Freed must the psyche be from the pupa, and pain is there to free it.

Throes and struggles and clenchings of teeth—but pain is there to free it.

* * * * *

Lo! the prison walls must fall—even though the prisoner tremble.

Long the strain, sometimes seeming past endurance—then the dead shell gives way, and a new landscape discloses.

Curtain behind curtain, wall behind wall, life behind life;

Dying here, to be born there, passing and passing and passing,

At last a new creature behold, transfigured to more than mortal!

* * * * *

For brief after all is pain, but joy ah! joy is eternal!

And thin the veil that divides, the subtle film of illusion—

The prison-wall so slight, at a touch it parts and crumbles,

And opens at length on the sunlit world and the winds of heaven.

THE BODY AND THE BOOK

The chambers are all in order, all the doors stand open.

Enter Thou—this is the house that I have stored for thee among the rest:

To all that is here thou art welcome.

* * * * *

But for me ask not.

Once when the house was closed I dwelt here—a prisoner;

But now that it is open—all open—I have passed out,

Into the beautiful air, over the fields, over the world, through a thousand homes—journeying with the wind—O so light and joyous,

Light and invisible,

I have passed, and my house is behind me.

* * * * *

Ask not for the prisoner, for he is not here;

Ask not for the free, for thou canst not find him.

Go back thou too and set thy house in order,

Open thy doors, let them stand wide for all to enter—thy treasures, let the poorest take of them;

Then come thou forth to where I wait for thee.