MORTAL Prudence, handmaid of divine Providence, hath inscrutable reckoning with Fate and Fortune: We sail a changeful sea through halcyon days and storm, and when the ship laboureth, our stedfast purpose trembles like as the compass in a binnacle. Our stability is but balance, and wisdom lies in masterful administration of the unforeseen.
'Twas late in my long journey, when I had clomb to where the path was narrowing and the company few, 10a glow of childlike wonder enthral'd me, as if my sense had come to a new birth purified, my mind enrapt re-awakening to a fresh initiation of life; with like surprise of joy as any man may know who rambling wide hath turn'd, resting on some hill-top to view the plain he has left, and see'th it now out-spredd mapp'd at his feet, a landscape so by beauty estranged he scarce wil ken familiar haunts, nor his own home, maybe, where far it lieth, small as a faded thought. Or as I well remember one highday in June 20bright on the seaward South-downs, where I had come afar on a wild garden planted years agone, and fenced thickly within live-beechen walls: the season it was of prodigal gay blossom, and man's skill had made a fair-order'd husbandry of that nativ pleasaunce: But had ther been no more than earth's wild loveliness, the blue sky and soft air and the unmown flowersprent lawns, I would hav lain me down and long'd, as then I did, to lie there ever indolently undisturb'd, and watch the common flowers that starr'd the fine grass of the wold, 30waving in gay display their gold-heads to the sun, each telling of its own inconscient happiness, each type a faultless essence of God's will, such gems as magic master-minds in painting or music threw aside once for man's regard or disregard; things supreme in themselves, eternal, unnumber'd in the unexplored necessities of Life and Love.
To such a mood I had come, by what charm I know not, where on thatt upland path I was pacing alone; and yet was nothing new to me, only all was vivid 40and significant that had been dormant or dead: as if in a museum the fossils on their shelves should come to life suddenly, or a winter rose-bed burst into crowded holiday of scent and bloom. I felt the domination of Nature's secret urge, and happy escape therein; as when in boyhood once from the rattling workshops of a great factory conducted into the engine-room I stood in face of the quiet driving power, that fast in nether cave seated, set all the floors a-quiver, a thousand looms 50throbbing and jennies dancing; and I felt at heart a kinship with it and sympathy, as children wil with amicable monsters: for in truth the mind is indissociable from what it contemplates, as thirst and generous wine are to a man that drinketh nor kenneth whether his pleasur is more in his desire or in the savor of the rich grape that allays it.
Man's Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense, that tho' she guide his highest flight heav'nward, and teach him dignity morals manners and human comfort, 60she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell. Nor without alliance of the animal senses hath she any miracle: Lov'st thou in the blithe hour of April dawns—nay marvelest thou not—to hear the ravishing music that the small birdës make in garden or woodland, rapturously heralding the break of day; when the first lark on high hath warn'd the vigilant robin already of the sun's approach, and he on slender pipe calleth the nesting tribes 70to awake and fill and thrill their myriad-warbling throats praising life's God, untill the blisful revel grow in wild profusion unfeign'd to such a hymn as man hath never in temple or grove pour'd to the Lord of heav'n? Hast thou then thought that all this ravishing music, that stirreth so thy heart, making thee dream of things illimitable unsearchable and of heavenly import, is but a light disturbance of the atoms of air, whose jostling ripples, gather'd within the ear, are tuned to resonant scale, and thence by the enthron'd mind received 80on the spiral stairway of her audience chamber as heralds of high spiritual significance? and that without thine ear, sound would hav no report, Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for thee any better melody in the April woods at dawn than what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awake o' night in his comfortless attic, might perchance be aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch? Now since the thoughtless birds not only act and enjoy this music, but to their offspring teach it with care, 90handing on those small folk-songs from father to son in such faithful tradition that they are familiar unchanging to the changeful generations of men— and year by year, listening to himself the nightingale as amorous of his art as of his brooding mate practiseth every phrase of his espousal lay, and still provoketh envy of the lesser songsters with the same notes that woke poetic eloquence alike in Sophocles and the sick heart of Keats— see then how deeply seated is the urgence whereto 100Bach and Mozart obey'd, or those other minstrels who pioneer'd for us on the marches of heav'n and paid no heed to wars that swept the world around, nor in their homes were more troubled by cannon-roar than late the small birds wer, that nested and carol'd upon the devastated battlefields of France. Birds are of all animals the nearest to men for that they take delight in both music and dance, and gracefully schooling leisure to enliven life wer the earlier artists: moreover in their airy flight 110(which in its swiftness symboleth man's soaring thought) they hav no rival but man, and easily surpass in their free voyaging his most desperate daring, altho' he hath fed and sped his ocean-ships with fire; and now, disturbing me as I write, I hear on high his roaring airplanes, and idly raising my head see them there; like a migratory flock of birds that rustle southward from the cold fall of the year in order'd phalanx—so the thin-rankt squadrons ply, till sound and sight failing me they are lost in the clouds.
120Man's happiness, his flaunting honey'd flower of soul, is his loving response to the wealth of Nature. Beauty is the prime motiv of all his excellence, his aim and peaceful purpose; whereby he himself becoming a creator hath often a thought to ask why Nature, being so inexhaustible of beauty, should not be all-beauteous; why, from infinit resource, produce more ugliness than human artistry with any spiritual intention can allow? Wisdom wil repudiate thee, if thou think to enquire 130why things are as they are or whence they came: thy task is first to learn what is, and in pursuant knowledge pure intellect wil find pure pleasur and the only ground for a philosophy conformable to truth. And wouldst thou play Creator and Ordinator of things, be Nature then thy Chaos and be thou her God! Whereafter if in spirit dishearten'd and distress'd to find evil with good, ugly with beautiful proffer'd by Nature indifferently without shame, thou wilt proceed to judge, but in conning thy brief 140suspect the prejudice of human self-regard distinguishing moralities where never is none— thou art come round wrongfully again to question Nature, who by her own faculty in thee judgeth herself: to impugn thy verdict is to unseat thatt judge. And science vindicateth the appeal to Reason which is no less Nature's prescriptiv oracle for being in all her plan so small and tickle a thing: How small a thing! if things immeasurable allow a greater and less (and thought wil reckon some thoughts great, 150prolific, everlasting; other some again small and contemptible) say then, How small a part of Universal Mind can conscient Reason claim! 'Tis to the unconscious mind as the habitable crust is to the mass of the earth; this crust whereon we dwell whereon our loves and shames are begotten and buried, our first slime and ancestral dust: 'Tis, to compare, thinner than o'er a luscious peach the velvet skin that we rip off to engorge the rich succulent pulp: Wer but our planet's sphere so peel'd, flay'd of the rind 160that wraps its lava and rock, the solar satellite would keep its motions in God's orrery undisturb'd. Yea: and how delicat! Life's mighty mystery sprang from eternal seeds in the elemental fire, self-animat in forms that fire annihilates: all its selfpropagating organisms exist only within a few degrees of the long scale rangeing from measured zero to unimagin'd heat, a little oasis of Life in Nature's desert; and ev'n therein are our soft bodies vext and harm'd 170by their own small distemperature, nor could they endure wer't not that by a secret miracle of chemistry they hold internal poise upon a razor-edge that may not ev'n be blunted, lest we sicken and die.
This Intellect, whereby above the other species Mankind assumeth genus in a rank apart, is nascent also in brutes, and of their bloodkinship as fair a warranty as our common passions are, our common bones and muscles, skin and nerves of sense. But because human sorrow springeth of man's thought, 180some men hav fal'n unhappily to envy the brutes who for mere lack of reason, love life and enjoy existence without care: and in some sort doubtless happier are they than many a miserable man, whether in disease or misfortune outclass'd from life or thru' the disillusion of Lust wreck'd in remorse: Corruption of best is ever the worst corruption.
'Tis true ther is no balance to weigh these goods and ills nor any measur of them, like as of colour and heat in their degrees; they are incommensurable in kind. 190'Tis with mere pleasur and pain as if they, being so light, coud not this way or thatt deflect Life's monarch-beam; for howso deliberatly a man may wish for death still wil he instinctivly fight to the last for life. Vet with the burden of thought pains are of great moment, and sickening thought itself engendereth corporal pain: But likewise also of pleasure—here too Reason again, whether in prospect or memory, is the greater part; our hope is ever livelier than despair, our joy livelier and more abiding than our sorrows are, 200which leak away untill no taint remain; their seeds shriveling too thin to lodge in Memory's hustled sieve. Wherefore I assert:—if Reason's only function wer to heighten our pleasure, that wer vindication enough; For what wer pleasur if never contemplation gave a spiritual significance to objects of sense, nor in thought's atmosphere poetic vision arose? Brutes hav their keener senses far outrangeing ours nor without here and there some adumbration of soul: But the sensuous intuition in them is steril, 210'tis the bare cloth whereon our rich banquet is spredd; and so the sorrowful sufferer who envied their state, wer he but granted his blind wish to liv as they —whether 'twer lark or lion, or some high-antler'd stag in startled pose of his fantastic majesty gazing adown the glade—he would draw blank, nor taste the human satisfaction of his release from care: as well be a sloven toad in his dark hole: Unlike those damn'd souls by the Harpies tantalized in Hell whose tortur it was to see their ostentatious feast 220snatch'd from their reach—but he sitting with the dainties out-spredd before him would see them, nor ever feel any desire nor memory of their old relish.
This quarrel and dissatisfaction of man with Nature springeth of a vision which beareth assurance of the diviner principle implicit in Life: And mystic Vision may so wholly absorb a man that he wil loathe ev'n pleasure, mortifying the flesh by disciplin of discomfort so to strengthen his faith. Thus tho' 'twas otherwise than on Plato's ladder 230that Francis climb'd—rather his gentle soul had learn'd from taste of vanity and by malease of the flesh— he abjured as worthless ev'n what good men will call good, and standing forth, as chivalrous knight and champion of holiness, in his devotion of heart to God, all earthly sun-joys seem'd so transitory and vain that soon the unseen took shape to common eyes; the folk cumber'd him with servility, and his memory is beatified in the admiration of all mankind. Now his following in life and his fame thereafter 240confute the lower school of Ethick, which would teach that spiritual ideas are but dream-stuff in men: For Francis admitted no compromise nor gloss whereby the Church had thought to ease the easy yoke which he reshoulder'd as his Master had offer'd it, and espousing Poverty as the outcast widow of Christ would walk in Umbria as He walk'd in Galilee founding the kingdom of God among those angry Jews who made earthly rebellion against Caesar's empire: and in imitation and compassion of Jesus 250would touch nothing but what had been bless'd at his lips: For the morrow hav no more care than a lily hath— for his head less shelter than a beast of the field— no purse nor scrip for his journey and but one garment— and scorning intellect and pursuit of knowledge liv'd as a bare spirit in its low prison of flesh, until thru' tribulation he should win to peace, quam mundus nobis dare non potest pacem, in those eternal mansions where Dante found him among the Just. Yet ev'n Francis coud praise Nature, 260tho' from such altitude whatever pictur is drawn must be out of focus of our terrestrial senses. 'Twas thus he made, when he lay sick in Damian, his hymn in honour of God and praise of his creatures; All-first and specially of the Sun whom he calleth his honourable brother and symbol of Very God; and then the Moon his sister, and all the stars of heav'n the clouds and winds his kindred; and of the Earth he saith— Praisèd be thou, my Lord, for my sister, Mother Earth, who doth sustain and govern us and bringeth forth 270all manner of fruit and herb and flowers of myriad hue. In direst pain of body and despond of soul he ask'd but for this Bencitè to be sung by his bed, fleeing for sanctuary to the bond of Nature— "the inconceivable high works unfathomable whose aspect giveth the Angels strength, and men revere the gentle changes of the day."—
The sky's unresting cloudland, that with varying play sifteth the sunlight thru' its figured shades, that now stand in massiv range, cumulated stupendous 280mountainous snowbillowy up-piled in dazzling sheen, Now like sailing ships on a calm ocean drifting, Now scatter'd wispy waifs, that neath the eager blaze disperse in air; Or now parcelling the icy inane highspredd in fine diaper of silver and mother-of-pearl freaking the intense azure;Now scurrying close o'erhead, wild ink-hued random racers that fling sheeted rain gustily, and with garish bows laughing o'erarch the land: Or, if the spirit of storm be abroad, huge molten glooms 289mount on the horizon stealthily, and gathering as they climb deep-freighted with live lightning, thunder and drenching flood rebuff the winds, and with black-purpling terror impend til they be driven away, when grave Night peacefully clearing her heavenly rondure of its turbid veils layeth bare the playthings of Creation's babyhood; and the immortal fireballs of her uttermost space twinkle like friendly rushlights on the countryside. Them soon the jealous Day o'errideth to display Earth's green robe, which the sun fostereth for shelter and shower The dance of young trees that in a wild birch-spinney 300toss to and fro the cluster of their flickering crests, as rye curtseying in array to the breeze of May; The ancestral trunks that mightily in the forest choirs rear stedfast colonnade, or imperceptibly sway in tall pinewoods to their whispering spires; The woodland's alternating hues, the vaporous bloom of the first blushings and tender flushings of spring; The slumbrous foliage of high midsummer's wealth; Rich Autumn's golden quittance, to the bankruptcy of the black shapely skeletons standing in snow: 310Or, in gay months of swelling pomp, the luxury of leisur'd gardens teeming with affection'd thought; the heartfelt secrecy of rustic nooks, and valleys vocal with angelic rilling of rocky streams, by rambling country-lanes, with hazel and thorn embower'd woodbine, bryony and wild roses; the landscape lure of rural England, that held glory in native art untill our painters took their new fashion from France.
This spiritual elation and response to Nature is Man's generic mark. A wolf that all his life 320had hunted after nightfall neath the starlit skies should he suddenly attain the first inklings of thought would feel this Wonder: and by some kindred stir of mind the ruminants can plead approach—the look of it is born already of fear and gentleness in the eyes of the wild antelope, and hence by fable assign'd to the unseen unicorn reposed in burning lair— a symbol of majestic sadness and lonely pride: but the true intellectual wonder is first reveal'd in children and savages and 'tis there the footing 330of all our temples and of all science and art. Thus Rafaël once venturing to show God in Man gave a child's eyes of wonder to his baby Christ; and his Mantuan brother coud he hav seen that picture would more truly hav foreshadow'd the incarnation of God. 'Tis divinest childhood's incomparable bloom, the loss whereof leaveth the man's face shabby and dull.
SEEKING unceasingly for the First Cause of All, in question for what special Purpose he was made, Man, in the unsearchable darkness, knoweth one thing 340that as he is, so was he made: and if the Essence and characteristic faculty of humanity is our conscient Reason and our desire of knowledge, thatt was Nature's Purpose in the making of man.
But can there be any Will or Purpose in Nature? thatt Universe external to our percipient sense, which when we examin itself we think only to find a structur of blind atoms to their habits enslaved, or else, examining our senses, suspect to be a dream of empty appearance and vain imagery.— 350As a man thru' a window into a darken'd house peering vainly wil see, always and easily, the glass surface and his own face mirror'd thereon, tho' looking from another angle, or hooding his eyes he may discern some real objects within the room— some say 'tis so with us, and also affirm that they by study of their reflection hav discover'd in truth ther is nothing but thatt same reflection inside the house. See how they hav made o' the window an impermeable wall partitioning man off from the rest of nature 360with stronger impertinence than Science can allow. Man's mind, Nature's entrusted gem, her own mirror cannot bë isolated from her other works by self-abstraction of its unique fecundity in the new realm of his transcendent life;— Not emotion or imagination ethic or art logic of science nor dialectic discourse, not even thatt supersensuous sublimation of thought, the euristic vision of mathematical trance, hath any other foundation than the common base 370of Nature's building:—not even his independence of will, his range of knowledge, and spiritual aim, can separate him off from the impercipient: Altho' his mind be such that it might seem as if true Individuality within the species were peculiar to man: So foolish is he, and wise,— despondent and hopeful, patient and complaining, courageous and cowardly, diffident and vain, cringing and commanding, industrious and idle, cruel and tenderhearted, truthful and perfidious, 380imaginativ or dull—one man how loveable another how hateful, alike man, brutal or divine. Whereamong hath the sceptic honourable place, thatt old iconoclast who coud destroy the gods soon as men made them, vain imagery and unworthy, low symbols of the Eternal that standeth unchanged. Like some medicinal root in pharmacy, whose juice is wholesom for purgation,—so is he—and if Truth be thatt which Omniscience would assert of all things, we may grant him his motto "Truth is not for man". 390But from his sleepy castle he wil be tempted forth if ever a hunting hom echo in the woods around, for he loveth the chase, and, like a good sportsman, his hounds and his weapons as he loveth the prey.
So musing all my days with unceasing wonder and encountering many phases of many minds, thru' kindly environment of my disposition I grew, as all things grow, in the pattern of Self; til stumbling early upon the mystic words, whereby —in the Semitic matrix of my father's creed— 400Jahveh reveal'd his secret Being to the Jews, and conning those large letters I AM THAT I AM I wonder'd finding only my own thought of myself, and reading there that man was made in God's image knew not yet that God was made in the image of man; nor the profounder truth that both these truths are one, no quibbling scoff—for surely as mind in man groweth so with his manhood groweth his idea of God, wider ever and worthier, untill it may contain 409and reconcile in reason all wisdom passion and love, and bring at last (may God so grant) Christ's Peace on Earth. Nor coud it ever dwell in my possible thought that whatsoever grew and groweth can be unlike in cause and substance to the thing it groweth on: Thus I saw Conscience as a natural flower-bud on its vigorous plant specialized to a function marvelously, a blossom first unique in design of beauty, in colour and form, thickening therefrom to a fruit productiv to infinit regeneration; and yet this bud—as any primer of botany can teach— 420is but a differentiation of the infertile leaf, which held all this miracle in intrinsic potence. Thus science would teach, and Heraclitus, I say, was not the least among the sages of Hellas, Nor those fire-worshippers foolish who, seeing the Sun to be the efficient cause of all life upon earth, welcomed his full effulgence for their symbol of God. And since we observe in all existence four stages— Atomic, Organic, Sensuous, and Selfconscient— and must conceive these in gradation, it was no flaw 430in Leibnitz to endow his monad-atoms with Mind tho' in our schools of thought "unconscious mind" is call'd a contradiction in terms; as if the embranglements of logic wer the prime condition of all Being, the essence of things; and man in the toilsom journey from conscience of nothing to conscient ignorance mistook his tottery crutch for the main organ of life.
'Tis laughable that man should fondle such surprise at animal behaviour, seeing some beetle or fly —whose very existence is so negligible and brief— 440act more intelligently than he might himself had he been there to advise with all his pros and cons, his cause, effect and means: Such conduct he wil style "Marvels of Instinct", but what sort of wisdom is this that mistaketh the exception for the general rule and the rule for the exception? Since the animal world immeasurably outnumbereth the species of man, and wholly is ruled by Instinct: 'Tis the Reason of man that is the exception and marvel; nay, 'tis plain to see how, as our Life is animal so also our conduct 450is mainly instinctiv, while pure Reason left to herself relieth on axioms and essential premises which she can neither question nor resolve, things far beyond her, holding her anchor in eternal Mind, characteristic universals, the firm rock whereon her lofty watch-towers are planted, and all her star-gazing observatories built.
Wise thinkers do homage to good fellow-thinkers, nor disregard the general commonsense of man —that untouch'd photograph of external Nature 460self-pictur'd for us nakedly on her own mirror:— and tho' common opinion may be assent in error ther is little or none accord in philosophic thought: this picklock Reason is still a-fumbling at the wards, bragging to unlock the door of stern Reality. Ask what is reasonable! See how time and clime conform mind more than body in their environment; what then and there was Reason, is here and now absurd; what I now chance to approve, may be or become to others strange and unpalatable as now appear to me 470the weighty sentences of the angelic Doctor: For I rank it among the unimaginables how Saint Thomas, with all his honesty and keen thought, toiling to found an irrefragable system of metaphysic, ethic and theologic truth, should with open eyes have accepted for main premiss the myth of a divine fiasco, on which to assure the wisdom of God; leading to a foregon conclusion of illachrymable logic, a monstrous scheme horrendum informe ingens cui Lumen ademptum. 480Some would say that the Saint himself held not the faith which universal credit compell'd him to assume if he would lead and teach the Church: But so to think (as tho' 'twas but the best gambit to open his game) wer to his acumen and his honesty alike unjust. I am happier in surmising that his vision at Mass —in Naples it was when he fell suddenly in trance— was some disenthralment of his humanity; for thereafter, whether 'twer Aristotle or Christ that had appear'd to him then, he nevermore wrote word 490neither dictated but laid by inkhorn and pen; and was as a man out of hearing on thatt day when Reynaldus, with all the importunity of zeal and intimacy of friendship, would hav recall'd him to his incompleted summa; and sighing he reply'd I wil tell thee a secret, my son, constraining thee lest thou dare impart it to any man while I liv. My writing is at end. I hav seen such things reveal'd that what I hav wriiten and taught seemeth to me of small worth. And hence I hope in my God, that, as of doctrin 500ther wil be speedily also an end of Life!
THER is no tradition among the lemmings of Norway how their progenitors, when their offspring increased, bravely forsook their crowded nestes in the snow, swarming upon the plains to ravage field and farm, and in unswerving course ate their way to the coast, where plunging down the rocks they swam in the salt sea to drowning death; nor hav they in acting thus today any plan for their journey or prospect in the event. But clerks and chroniclers wer many in Christendom, 510when France and Germany pour'd out the rabblement of the second Crusade, and its record is writ; its leaders' titles, kings and knights of fair renown, their resolve and'design: and yet for all their vows, their consecrating crosses and embroider'd flags, the eloquent preaching of Saint Bernard, and the wiles of thatt young amorous amazon, Queen Eleanor, they wer impell'd as madly, journey'd as blindly and perish'd as miserably as the thoughtless voles, by disease starvation and massacre, ot enslaved by wrath of the folk whose homes they had wreckt and ravaged; 521til of the unnumber'd rout a poor remnant fled back, the shame of humanity for their folly and crimes. Reason, shamefast at heart and vain above measure, would look to find the firstfruits of intelligence showing some provident correction of man's estate to'ard social order, a wise discriminat purpose in clear contrast against the blind habits of brutes: And when our honest hope turneth away repell'd by the terror and superstition of savagery —wherein nascent Reason seemeth to hav hoodwink'd Mind,— 531if we read but of Europe since the birth of Christ, 'tis still incompetent disorder, all a lecture of irredeemable shame; the wrongs and sufferings alike of kings and clowns are a pitiful tale. Follow the path of those fair warriors, the tall Goths, from the day when they led their blue-eyed families off Vistula's cold pasture-lands, their murky home by the amber-strewen foreshore of the Baltic sea, and in the incontaminat vigor of manliness 540feeling their rumour'd way to an unknown promised land, tore at the ravel'd fringes of the purple power, and trampling its wide skirts, defeating its armies, slaying its Emperor, and burning his cities, sack'd Athens and Rome; untill supplanting Caesar they ruled the world where Romans reign'd before:— Yet from those three long centuries of rapin and blood, inhumanity of heart and wanton cruelty of hand, ther is little left, save the broken relic of one good bishop, and the record of one noble king, —who both had suck'd their virtue from the wither'd dugs 551of learning, where she lay sickening within the walls of rich Byzance:—Those Goths wer strong but to destroy; they neither wrote nor wrought, thought not nor created; but since the field was rank with tares and mildew'd wheat, their scything won some praise: Else have they left no trace, save for their share in that rich mingled character of Hebrew, Roman, Vandal, Mussulman and Kelt, that spoke the pride of Spain, to stand for ever alive in one grandesque effigy of ennobled folly, 560among fair Beauty's fairest offspring unreproved. Yet for this intellectual laughter—deem it not true Wisdom's panoply. The wise will live by Faith, faith in the order of Nature and that her order is good. 'Twer scepticism in them to cherish make-believe, creeds and precise focusings of the unsearchable: at such things they may smile; yet for man's ignorance and frailty the only saving consolation is faith, the which theologians tell us is the gift of God, as other good things are, and laughter is one of them; 570and sharing of man's Essence 'twil be at height in him when 'tis the laughter of Reason—enjoyable; and 'tis fit that he should show Nature this courtesy, and kindly make light of all the troubles that compel no tears: —Cervantes in misfortune when a galley-slave wept not—but where sorrow is sacred humour is dumb, and in full calamity it is madness: wherefore Hamlet himself would never hav been aught to us, or we to Hamlet, wer't not for the artful balance whereby Shakespeare so gingerly put his sanity in doubt 580without the while confounding his Reason.
And tho' desire of perfection is Nature's promise we should not in the field of Reason look to find less vary and veer than elsewhere in the flux of Life: We may rather rejoice in the great abundance, the indigenous fruitage of our gay Paradise, that Persia, China and Babylon put forth their bloom, that India and Egypt wer seedplots of wisdom. The best part of our lives we are wanderers in Romance: Our fathers travel'd Eastward to revel in wonders 590where pyramid pagoda and picturesque attire glow in the fading sunset of antiquity; and now wil the Orientals make hither in return outlandish pilgrimage: their wiseacres hav seen the electric light i' the West, and come to worship; tasting romance in our unsightly novelties and scientific tricks; for all things in their day may hav opinion of glory: Glory is opinion, the vain doxology wherewith man would praise God.
Time eateth away at many an old delusion, 600yet with civilization delusions make head; the thicket of the people wil take furtiv fire from irresponsible catchwords of live ideas, sudden as a gorse-bush from the smouldering end of any loiterer's match-splint, which, unless trodden out afore it spredd, or quell'd with wieldy threshing-rods wil burn ten years of planting with all last year's ricks and blacken a countryside. 'Tis like enough that men ignorant of fire and poison should be precondemn'd to sudden deaths and burnings, but 'tis mightily 610to the reproach of Reason that she cannot save nor guide the herd; that minds who else wer fit to rule must win to power by flattery and pretence, and so by spiritual dishonesty in their flurried reign confirm the disrepute of all authority— but only in sackcloth can the Muse speak of such things.
WISDOM hat hewed her house: She that dwelleth alway with God in the Evermore, afore any world was, fashion'd the nascent Earth that the energy of its life might come to evolution in the becoming of Man, 620who, as her subject, should subjéct all to her rule and bring God's latest work to be a realm of delight. So she herself, the essential Beauty of Holiness, pass'd her creativ joy into the creature's heart, to take back from his hand her Adoration robes and royal crown of his Imagination and Love. And when she had made of men lovers and worshippers, these vied to enshrine her godhead in enduring fanes and architectur of stone, that high her pensiv towers might hallow their throng'd cities and, transfeaturing 630Nature's wild landscape to the sovranty of Mind, comfort his mortality with immortal grace. Yet not to those colossal temples where old Nile guideth a ribbon oasis thru' the Libyan sands, depositing a kingdom from his fabled fount —like thatt twin-sister stream of slothful thought, whose flood fertilized the rude mind of Egypt—not to these, nor those Cyclopean tombs, which hieroglyphic kings uprear'd to hide their mummies from the common death, whereto their folk dragging the slow burdensome stones 640wer driven and fed like beasts, untill the pyramid in geometrical enormity peak'd true— 'Tis not to these—nay nor in Gizeh to thatt Sphinx, grand solitary symbol of man's double nature, with lion body couchant and with human head gazing out vainly upon the desert—not to these look we with grateful pleasur or satisfaction of soul, wonderfine tho' they be, and indestructible against sandblast of time and spoliation of man— nor tho' with sixty centuries of knowledge pass'd 650still those primeval sculptors shame our paltry style:— Nay ev'n so, not to these look we to find comfort; Not yet was Wisdom justified of her children.
Long had the homing bees plunder'd the thymy flanks of famed Hymettus harvesting their sweet honey: agelong the dancing waves had lapp'd the Ægean isles and promontories of the blue Ionian shore —where in her Mediterranean mirror gazing old Asia's dreamy face wrinkleth to a westward smile— and the wild olive, cleft-rooted in Attica, 660wreath'd but the rocks, afore the wandering Aryan tribes, whose Goddess was Athena, met, and in her right knew themselves lords of Hellas and the Achean land whereto they had come fighting, for their children to win heritage of Earth's empire. 'Twas their youthful tongue that Wisdom sought when her Egyptian kingdom fail'd, and choosing to be call'd Athena daughter of Zeus motion'd the marble to her living grace, and took her dwelling in the high-templed Acropolis of the fair city that still hath her name.
670As some perfected flower, Iris or Lily, is born patterning heavenly beauty, a pictur'd idea that hath no other expression for us, nor coud hav: for thatt which Lily or Iris tell cannot be told by poetry or by music in their secret tongues, nor is discerptible in logic, but is itself an absolute piece of Being, and we know not, nay, nor search not by what creativ miracle the soul's language is writ in perishable forms— yet are we aware of such existences crowding, 680mysterious beauties unexpanded, unreveal'd, phantasies intangible investing us closely, hid only from our eyes by skies that will not clear; activ presences, striving to force an entrance, like bodiless exiled souls in dumb urgence pleading to be brought to birth in our conscient existence, as if our troubled lot wer the life they long'd for; even as poor mortals thirst for immortality:— And every divination of Natur or reach of Art is nearer attainment to the divine plenitude 690of understanding, and in moments of Vision their unseen company is the breath of Life:—
By such happy influence of their chosen goddess the mind of Hellas blossom'd with a wondrous flow'r, flaming in summer season, and in its autumn fall ripening an everlasting fruit, that in dying scatter'd its pregnant seeds into all the winds of heav'n: nor ever again hath like bloom appear'd among men.
Knowledge accumulateth slowly and not in vain; with new attainment new orders of beauty arise, 700in thought and art new values; but man's faculties were gifted once for all and stand, 'twould seem, at stay: Ther is now no higher intellect to brighten the world than little Hellas own'd; nay scarcely here and there liveth a man among us to rival their seers. So might we fear that such implicit unity, so friendly a passionat love for nature beauty and truth, such dignity of body tender of pride and shame, such lively accord of Sense, Instinct, Reason and Spirit as gazeth down on us with alien sovranty 710from all their statuesque literature and art, wer a grace (so might we fear) like the grace of childhood lost in growth, a glory of the past, not to return. Such 'twer vain to deplore; since true beauty of manhood outfeatureth childish charm, and whether in men or things Best is mature; tho' Beauty is neither growth nor strength; for ugliness also groweth proudly and is strong. Well might we ask what Beauty ever coud liv or thrive in our crowded democracy under governance of such politic fancy as a farmer would show 720who cultivated weeds in hope of good harvest: and yet hath modern cultur enrich'd a wasting soil; Science comforting man's animal poverty and leisuring his toil, hath humanized manners and social temper, and now above her globe-spredd net of speeded intercourse hath outrun all magic, and disclosing the secrecy of the reticent air hath woven a seamless web of invisible strands spiriting the dumb inane with the quick matter of life: Now music's prison'd raptur and the drown'd voice of truth 730mantled in light's velocity, over land and sea are omnipresent, speaking aloud to every ear, into every heart and home their unhinder'd message, the body and soul of Universal Brotherhood; whereby war faln from savagery to fratricide, from a trumpeting vainglory to a crying shame, stalketh now with blasting curse branded on its brow. And if the Greek Muses wer a graceful company yet hav we two, that in maturity transcend the promise of their baby-prattle in Time's cradle, 740Musick and Mathematick: coud their wet-nurses but see these foster-children upgrown in full stature, Pythagoras would marvel and Athena rejoice. And ev'n to Apollo's choir was a rich voice lacking in the great symphonies of the poetic throng who beneath Homer's crown enroll'd immortal names; for without later names the full compass of song had been unknown to man—nay and some English names, whose younger voices in the imagination of love swell'd to spiritual ecstasy, and emotion'd life 750with mystic inspiration of new lyric rapture: and 'twas the first alluring gleam of thatt vision that stole by virtue of novelty the world away from the philosophic concinnity of Greek art, to abjure the severe ordering of its antique folds. In love of fleshly prowess Hellas overesteem'd the nobility of passion and of animal strength, and the acclamation of their Olympic games outfaced spiritual combat;—as their forefathers wer they, those old seapirates, who with roving robbery 760built up their island lordships on the ruin of Crete, when the unforbearing rivalry of their free cities wreck'd their confederacy within the sevenscore years 'twixt Marathon and Issus; untill from the pride of routing Xerxes and his fabulous host, they fell to make that most memorable of all invasions less memorable in the glory of Alexander, under whose alien kingship they conspired to outreach their own ambition, winning dominions too wide for domination; and wer, with their virtue, dispersed 770and molten into the great stiffening alloy of Rome.
So it was when Jesus came in his gentleness with his divine compassion and great Gospel of Peace, men hail'd him Word of God, and in the title of Christ crown'd him with love beyond all earth-names of renown. For He, wandering unarm'd save by the Spirit's flame, in few years with few friends founded a world-empire wider than Alexander's and more enduring; since from his death it took its everlasting life. HIS kingdom is God's kingdom, and his holy temple 780not in Athens or Rome but in the heart of man. They who understand not cannot forget, and they who keep not his commandment call him Master and Lord. He preach'd once to the herd, but now calleth the wise, and shall in his second Advent, that tarried long, be glorified by the Greeks that come to the feast: But the great Light shineth in great darkness, the seed that fell by the wayside hath been trodden under foot, that which fell on the Rock is nigh wither'd away; While loud and louder thro' the dazed head of the Sphinx 790the old lion's voice roareth o'er all the lands.
