TERMS STARTING WITH
Mother, Ancient
Mother and call back the true conditions and aspire for a clear and undisturbed discrimination showing you from within your- self the cause of the thing that needs to 1^ set right.
Mother and her Force that are the true means of recovery ; other things can only be minor aids and devices.
Mother and ofTeriog to her and the other doing the work. When this happens, then to work with the true consciousness becomes more and easy.
Mother ; Mother of all and Destroyer of all.
Mother-Father. See LOGOS; SVABHAVAT
Mother, four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this Universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embo&es her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact per- fection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it Is these powers that they bring with them into the world. To the four we give the four great names, Maheshvari, Mahakali, Mabalakshmi, Mahasarasvati.
Mother-goddess: A goddess appearing in every primitive religion or nature cult where the maintenance of fertility is a central interest; the representation of the deification of the female principle in the life and nature of the human race.
Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme.
Mother Nature The productive and generative powers of cosmic spirit, considered from the human standpoint as a feminine agent in universal nature, and hence often called the Great Mother, the Immaculate Virgin, space, the cosmic deep, mula-maya or root-maya, etc. The first stage of manifestation is the representation of the plain or empty disk, cosmic infinitude; the second stage is the First Logos or the disk with the central point; and the third stage, to which Mother Nature refers, is the disk with the horizontal diameter, or the Second or Manifest-Unmanifest Logos.
Mother of all godheads
Mother of Ananda \ There are other great Personalities of the
Mother of God, governments is an order of angels
Mother of the seven sorrows
Mother of the worlds
Mother or of my name and the Mother’s.
Mother Space, Mother Water Names for Deva-matri, the cosmic matrix, Aditi, the Boundless, the Great Sea, the watery or feminine principle as contrasted with the fiery or masculine.
Mother’s will, you can call in the Mother’s Force to make the change.
Mother take its place. C^st from the mind all insistence on your personal ideas and judgment, then you will have the wisdom to understand her. Let there be no obsession of self-will, ego- drive in the action, love of persona! authority, attachment to personal preference, then the Mother's force will be able to act eJeariy in you and you ivifl get the inexhaustible energy for which you ask and your service will be perfect.
Mother (the Divine Mother) ::: the consciousness and force of the Divine; the Divine in its consciousness-force. The Mother is the divine conscious Force that dominates all existence, upholding us and the universe.
Mother ::: “The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother
Mother, The ::: ...the Mother is One but she comes before us with differing aspects, many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe. The whom who we adore as the Mother is the Divine Consciousness Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freeest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the Conciousness and Force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments and the more seizable because more defined and limited temperament and action of the godess forms in who she consents to be manifest to her creatures. ::: There are three ways of being of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of Oneness with the Consciousness Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original Supreme shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the Divine Nature....
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 111
Mother, universal
moth-eat ::: v. t. --> To eat or prey upon, as a moth eats a garment.
mothen ::: a. --> Full of moths.
mother, Achamoth! Origen, who also refers to
motherboard "hardware" (mobo) The main {printed circuit board} in an electronic device, particularly a computer, which may contain sockets that accept additional boards ("daughter-boards"). In a {personal computer}, the motherboard contains the {bus}, the {microprocessor}, and {integrated circuits} used for controlling any built-in {peripherals} such as the {keyboard}, text and graphics display, {serial ports} and {parallel ports}, {joystick}, and {mouse} {interfaces}. (2000-08-10)
motherboard ::: (hardware) (mobo) The main printed circuit board in an electronic device, particularly a computer, which may contain sockets that accept additional boards (daughter-boards).In a personal computer, the motherboard contains the bus, the microprocessor, and integrated circuits used for controlling any built-in peripherals such as the keyboard, text and graphics display, serial ports and parallel ports, joystick, and mouse interfaces.(2000-08-10)
mother, Divine ::: see **Divine Mother.**
mothered ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Mother ::: a. --> Thick, like mother; viscid.
motherhood ::: n. --> The state of being a mother; the character or office of a mother.
mothering ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Mother ::: n. --> A rural custom in England, of visiting one&
mother-in-law ::: n. --> The mother of one&
motherland ::: n. --> The country of one&
motherless ::: a. --> Destitute of a mother; having lost a mother; as, motherless children.
motherliness ::: n. --> The state or quality of being motherly.
motherly ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a mother; like, or suitable for, a mother; tender; maternal; as, motherly authority, love, or care. ::: adv. --> In a manner of a mother.
mother ::: n. --> A female parent; especially, one of the human race; a woman who has borne a child.
That which has produced or nurtured anything; source of birth or origin; generatrix.
An old woman or matron.
The female superior or head of a religious house, as an abbess, etc.
Hysterical passion; hysteria.
mother-naked ::: a. --> Naked as when born.
mother of demons, and Rabbi Hiya believed she
mother-of-pearl ::: n. --> The hard pearly internal layer of several kinds of shells, esp. of pearl oysters, river mussels, and the abalone shells; nacre. See Pearl.
mother of the universe.” [Rf Glasson, Greek
mother of the universe ::: see **Mother of the Worlds.**
mother of the worlds ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Aditi, the infinite Consciousness, Mother of the worlds.” *The Secret of the Veda
" She is the first Radiance, Aditi, the infinite Consciousness of the infinite conscious Being which is the mother of the worlds.” The Secret of the Veda*
mother-of-thyme ::: n. --> An aromatic plant (Thymus Serphyllum); -- called also wild thyme.
mother {parent}
mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother ::: "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.
"That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother"s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” *The Mother
: "The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.” *Letters on the Mother
"When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother.” Letters on Yoga ::: **mighty Mother, World-Mother, World-Mother"s.**
mothers, wives, or daughters of the Hebrew patri¬
mother tantra. See MĀTṚTANTRA.
mother tantra
mother, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "What people mean by the formless svarûpa of the Mother, — they means usually her universal aspect. It is when she is experienced as a universal Existence and Power spread through the universe in which and by which all live. When one feels that Presence one begins to feel a universal peace, light, power, bliss without limits — that is her svarûpa.” *The Mother
"The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist.” The Mother
mother-Wisdom ::: the wisdom of the Mother, the Divine Creatrix.
motherwort ::: n. --> A labiate herb (Leonurus Cardiaca), of a bitter taste, used popularly in medicine; lion&
mothery ::: a. --> Consisting of, containing, or resembling, mother (in vinegar).
moth ::: n. --> A mote.
Any nocturnal lepidopterous insect, or any not included among the butterflies; as, the luna moth; Io moth; hawk moth.
Any lepidopterous insect that feeds upon garments, grain, etc.; as, the clothes moth; grain moth; bee moth. See these terms under Clothes, Grain, etc.
Any one of various other insects that destroy woolen and fur goods, etc., esp. the larvae of several species of beetles of the
moths ::: pl. --> of Moth
mothy ::: a. --> Infested with moths; moth-eaten.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. Again an equivoque on the double sense of svadhiti, an axe or other cleaving instrument and the self-ordering power of Nature, Swadha. The image is of the progress of the divine Force through the forests of the material existence as with an axe. But the axe is the natural self-arranging progression of Nature, the World-Energy, the Mother from whom this divine Force, son of Energy, is born.
27 November 1959 page 235, Some Answers from the Mother—Vol -16
abalone ::: n. --> A univalve mollusk of the genus Haliotis. The shell is lined with mother-of-pearl, and used for ornamental purposes; the sea-ear. Several large species are found on the coast of California, clinging closely to the rocks.
ACTION. ::: If a man is spiritual and has gone beyond the vital and mind, he does not need to be always “doing” something. The self or spirit has the joy of its own existence. It is free to do nothing and free to do everything - but not because it is bound to action and unable to exist without it.
To be able to work with full energy is necessary, but to be able not to work is also necessary.
Action in sādhanā ::: The feeling that all one does is from the Divine, that all action is the Mother’s is a necessary step in experience but one cannot remain in it ; one has to go further. Those can remain in it who do not want to change the nature, but only to have the experience of the Truth behind it. Your action is according to universal Nature and in that again it is according to your individual nature, and all Nature is a force put out by the Divine Mother for the action of the universe. But as things are it is an action of the Ignorance and the ego; while what we want is an action of the divine Truth unveiled and undeformed by the Ignorance and the ego.
The aim of the sadhana is to become a conscious and perfect instrument instead of one that is unconscious and therefore imperfect. One can be a conscious and perfect instrument only when one is no longer acting in obedience to the ignorant push of the lower nature but in surrender to the Mother and aware of her higher Force acting within oneself.
ADITI. ::: Infinite Consciousness; Mother of the worlds.
“Aditi, the infinite Consciousness, Mother of the worlds.” The Secret of the Veda
ADYA SAKTI. ::: The original Sakti, therefore, the highest form of the Mother. Only she manifests in a different way according to the plane on which one sees her.
africander ::: n. --> One born in Africa, the offspring of a white father and a "colored" mother. Also, and now commonly in Southern Africa, a native born of European settlers.
Again an equivoque on the double sense of svadhiti, an axe or other cleaving instrument and the self-ordering power of Nature, Swadha. The image is of the progress of the divine Force through the forests of the material existence as with an axe. But the axe is the natural self-arranging progression of Nature, the World-Energy, the Mother from whom this divine Force, son of Energy, is born.
Again, in In Book III Canto ii, The Adoration of the Divine Mother
All the lights arc put out by the Mother from herself.
“All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement.
Amal: “In occult vision the colour of the mind is either yellow or blue. The yellow intensifies into the gold of the Supramental and the blue into the Divine Mother’s compassionate infinity.”
Amal: “Since there is in the passage a reference to the rocking of the cosmic Child, the being who does this is the Divine Mother. The cosmic child is obviously the cosmos in which all the planes exist.”
Amal: “This strikes me as a reference by Sri Aurobindo to himself and the Mother. The Mother may not have arrived in Pondicherry when this line was written but Sri Aurobindo must have known that the Divine Shakti incarnate was needed to be on earth for the fullness of his work.”
amethyst ::: a purple or violet quartz; having the clear colour as of the precious stone. Sri Aurobindo uses the word as an adj."for Amethyst (the Mother)she has revealed that it has a power of protection” Huta
amma ::: n. --> An abbes or spiritual mother.
Ananke ::: “In Greek mythology, personification of compelling necessity or ultimate fate to which even the gods must yield.” (Mother India) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
ancestor ::: n. --> One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father&
And again, in Book II, Canto VIII, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,
And do you want to know why he is always represented as a child? It is because he is in constant progression. To the extent that the world is perfected, his play is also perfected — what was the play of yesterday will no longer be the play of tomorrow; his play will become more and more harmonious, benign and joyful to the extent that the world becomes capable of responding to it and enjoying it with the Divine.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
And do you want to know why he is always represented as a child? It is because he is in constant progression. To the extent that the world is perfected, his play is also perfected—what was the play of yesterday will no longer be the play of tomorrow; his play will become more and more harmonious, benign and joyful to the extent that the world becomes capable of responding to it and enjoying it with the Divine.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
And it is the repeated and constant descent of the Divine Cons- ciousness and its Force that is the means for the transformation of the whole being and (he whole nature. Once this descent becomes habitual, the Divine Force, the Power of the Mother, begins to work, no longer from above only or from behind the veil, but consciously in the udhara itself, and deals with its diffi- culties and possibilities and carries the Yoga
angoumois moth ::: --> A small moth (Gelechia cerealella) which is very destructive to wheat and other grain. The larva eats out the interior of the grain, leaving only the shell.
anthrenus ::: n. --> A genus of small beetles, several of which, in the larval state, are very destructive to woolen goods, fur, etc. The common "museum pest" is A. varius; the carpet beetle is A. scrophulariae. The larvae are commonly confounded with moths.
As Sri Aurobindo once wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy, (I paraphrase) ‘ The earth is a conscious being and the world is only the form it takes to manifest.’ This statement of the Avatar, predating the GAIA theory by many years and far surpassing it in its infinite scope, promises an earth returned to beauty to manifest, unknown to man, an inconceivable perfection. I once wrote to Mother with a question about what would happen to plants and flowers in the New Creation. Her reply filled me with joy and gratitude for She said that the flowers would be among the first to change (be transformed) because their entire life is an aspiration for light. Imagine the beauty to come with flowers brilliant with the Divine Light, colours such as never seen before, fragrances that can transofrm suffering and sorrow into a life free of pain and filled with joy.
At times he calls himself the ‘Lord of Nations." It is he who sets all wars in motion and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won . . . This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation not the supramental world, for that would spell his end. The Mother"s talk of 26 March 1959.
At times he calls himself the ‘Lord of Nations.’ It is he who sets all wars in motion and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won . . . This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation not the supramental world, for that would spell his end. The Mother’s talk of 26 March 1959.
aunt ::: n. --> The sister of one&
Aunt or mother ::: Usually indicates the ordinary ph>sical natorc-
aurelian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the aurelia. ::: n. --> An amateur collector and breeder of insects, esp. of butterflies and moths; a lepidopterist.
ave mary ::: --> A salutation and prayer to the Virgin Mary, as mother of God; -- used in the Roman Catholic church.
A particular time (as in Italy, at the ringing of the bells about half an hour after sunset, and also at early dawn), when the people repeat the Ave Maria.
behemoth ::: n. --> An animal, probably the hippopotamus, described in Job xl. 15-24.
beldame ::: n. --> Grandmother; -- corresponding to belsire.
An old woman in general; especially, an ugly old woman; a hag.
belief ::: 1. Confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. 2. Trust or confidence, faith. 3. Something believed; an opinion or conviction. beliefs.
Question: "Sweet Mother, l don"t understand very clearly the difference between faith, belief and confidence.”
Mother: "But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here. If you don"t understand, then. . . He has written ‘Faith is a feeling in the whole being." The whole being, yes. Faith, that"s the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence, one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one"s own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do. Faith is a certitude without any proof. Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 6.
blindfish ::: n. --> A small fish (Amblyopsis spelaeus) destitute of eyes, found in the waters of the Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky. Related fishes from other caves take the same name.
Mother, Ancient
Mother and call back the true conditions and aspire for a clear and undisturbed discrimination showing you from within your- self the cause of the thing that needs to 1^ set right.
Mother and her Force that are the true means of recovery ; other things can only be minor aids and devices.
Mother and ofTeriog to her and the other doing the work. When this happens, then to work with the true consciousness becomes more and easy.
Mother ; Mother of all and Destroyer of all.
Mother, four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this Universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embo&es her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact per- fection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it Is these powers that they bring with them into the world. To the four we give the four great names, Maheshvari, Mahakali, Mabalakshmi, Mahasarasvati.
Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme.
Mother of all godheads
Mother of Ananda \ There are other great Personalities of the
Mother of the seven sorrows
Mother of the worlds
Mother or of my name and the Mother’s.
Mother"s Agenda, Volume 10, 1969.
Mother’s will, you can call in the Mother’s Force to make the change.
Mother take its place. C^st from the mind all insistence on your personal ideas and judgment, then you will have the wisdom to understand her. Let there be no obsession of self-will, ego- drive in the action, love of persona! authority, attachment to personal preference, then the Mother's force will be able to act eJeariy in you and you ivifl get the inexhaustible energy for which you ask and your service will be perfect.
Mother ::: “The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother
Mother, universal
bollworm ::: n. --> The larva of a moth (Heliothis armigera) which devours the bolls or unripe pods of the cotton plant, often doing great damage to the crops.
bombyx ::: n. --> A genus of moths, which includes the silkworm moth. See Silkworm.
bookworm ::: n. --> Any larva of a beetle or moth, which is injurious to books. Many species are known.
A student closely attached to books or addicted to study; a reader without appreciation.
bride ::: Madhav: “The Bride is God as manifest in the world.” The Book of the Divine Mother
brine ::: n. --> Water saturated or strongly impregnated with salt; pickle; hence, any strong saline solution; also, the saline residue or strong mother liquor resulting from the evaporation of natural or artificial waters.
The ocean; the water of an ocean, sea, or salt lake.
Tears; -- so called from their saltness. ::: v. t.
brood ::: v. t. --> The young birds hatched at one time; a hatch; as, a brood of chickens.
The young from the same dam, whether produced at the same time or not; young children of the same mother, especially if nearly of the same age; offspring; progeny; as, a woman with a brood of children.
That which is bred or produced; breed; species.
Heavy waste in tin and copper ores.
To sit over, cover, and cherish; as, a hen broods her
brother german ::: --> A brother by both the father&
brother ::: n. --> A male person who has the same father and mother with another person, or who has one of them only. In the latter case he is more definitely called a half brother, or brother of the half blood.
One related or closely united to another by some common tie or interest, as of rank, profession, membership in a society, toil, suffering, etc.; -- used among judges, clergymen, monks, physicians, lawyers, professors of religion, etc.
One who, or that which, resembles another in distinctive
burke ::: v. t. --> To murder by suffocation, or so as to produce few marks of violence, for the purpose of obtaining a body to be sold for dissection.
To dispose of quietly or indirectly; to suppress; to smother; to shelve; as, to burke a parliamentary question.
burnished ::: Madhav: “Burnished—repeatedly polished so that it shines by itself; it looks a blue seal of summer.” The Book of the Divine Mother
But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to con- centrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or impulse, the sure indi- cation of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you wfil realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works ; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be
but the Mother’s. There will be a sort of transfer, a taking up of the forces at work in the personal Adhar — a transfer not suddenly complete but progressive. But the psychic poise is necessary ::: the discrimination must develop which sees accurately
cabbiri ::: n. pl. --> Certain deities originally worshiped with mystical rites by the Pelasgians in Lemnos and Samothrace and afterwards throughout Greece; -- also called sons of Hephaestus (or Vulcan), as being masters of the art of working metals.
calliope ::: n. --> The Muse that presides over eloquence and heroic poetry; mother of Orpheus, and chief of the nine Muses.
One of the asteroids. See Solar.
A musical instrument consisting of a series of steam whistles, toned to the notes of the scale, and played by keys arranged like those of an organ. It is sometimes attached to steamboat boilers.
A beautiful species of humming bird (Stellula Calliope) of California and adjacent regions.
calm ::: n. 1. Serenity; tranquillity; peace. 2. Nearly or completely motionless as a condition of no wind. Calm, Calm"s, calms, calmness. adj. 3. Not excited or agitated; composed; tranquil; 4. Without rough motion; still or nearly still. calmer, calm-lipped, stone-calm. *adv. calmly.
Sri Aurobindo: "Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect — it is a less negative condition than quiet.” Letters on Yoga*
"Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superficial disturbances.” *Letters on Yoga
"Calm is a strong and positive quietude, firm and solid — ordinary quietude is mere negation, simply the absence of disturbance.” *Letters on Yoga
"But more powerful still is the giving up of the fruit of one"s works, because that immediately destroys all causes of disturbance and brings and preserves automatically an inner calm and peace, and calm and peace are the foundation on which all else becomes perfect and secure in possession by the tranquil spirit.” Essays on the Gita
The Mother: "Calm is self-possessed strength, quiet and conscious energy, mastery of the impulses, control over the unconscious reflexes.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14*.
caned ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Cane ::: a. --> Filled with white flakes; mothery; -- said vinegar when containing mother.
cankerworm ::: n. --> The larva of two species of geometrid moths which are very injurious to fruit and shade trees by eating, and often entirely destroying, the foliage. Other similar larvae are also called cankerworms.
chartreuse ::: n. --> A Carthusian monastery; esp. La Grande Chartreuse, mother house of the order, in the mountains near Grenoble, France.
An alcoholic cordial, distilled from aromatic herbs; -- made at La Grande Chartreuse.
choked ::: interfered with the respiration of by compression or obstruction of the larynx or trachea by strangling, smothering; stifling.
close Of drawing near \shtch is not jet there, c.g. the closeness of the Mother or some other preparing experience.
cognate ::: a. --> Allied by blood; kindred by birth; specifically (Law), related on the mother&
cognati ::: n. pl. --> Relatives by the mother&
cognation ::: n. --> Relationship by blood; descent from the same original; kindred.
Participation of the same nature.
That tie of consanguinity which exists between persons descended from the same mother; -- used in distinction from agnation.
colony ::: n. --> A company of people transplanted from their mother country to a remote province or country, and remaining subject to the jurisdiction of the parent state; as, the British colonies in America.
The district or country colonized; a settlement.
A company of persons from the same country sojourning in a foreign city or land; as, the American colony in Paris.
A number of animals or plants living or growing together, beyond their usual range.
CONCENTRATION ::: Fixing the consciousness in one place or on one object and in a single condition.
A gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g. the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point.
Concentration is necessary, first to turn the whole will and mind from the discursive divagation natural to them, following a dispersed movement of the thoughts, running after many-branching desires, led away in the track of the senses and the outward mental response to phenomena; we have to fix the will and the thought on the eternal and real behind all, and this demands an immense effort, a one-pointed concentration. Secondly, it is necessary in order to break down the veil which is erected by our ordinary mentality between ourselves and the truth; for outer knowledge can be picked up by the way, by ordinary attention and reception, but the inner, hidden and higher truth can only be seized by an absolute concentration of the mind on its object, an absolute concentration of the will to attain it and, once attained, to hold it habitually and securely unite oneself with it.
Centre of Concentration: The two main places where one can centre the consciousness for yoga are in the head and in the heart - the mind-centre and the soul-centre.
Brain concentration is always a tapasyā and necessarily brings a strain. It is only if one is lifted out of the brain mind altogether that the strain of mental concentration disappears.
At the top of the head or above it is the right place for yogic concentration in reading or thinking.
In whatever centre the concentration takes place, the yoga force generated extends to the others and produces concentration or workings there.
Modes of Concentration: There is no harm in concentrating sometimes in the heart and sometimes above the head. But concentration in either place does not mean keeping the attention fixed on a particular spot; you have to take your station of consciousness in either place and concentrate there not on the place, but on the Divine. This can be done with eyes shut or with eyes open, according as it best suits.
If one concentrates on a thought or a word, one has to dwell on the essential idea contained in the word with the aspiration to feel the thing which it expresses.
There is no method in this yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force to transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be.
Powers (three) of Concentration ::: By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, but the one Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself we can become whatever we choose ; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fears, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love ; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object.
Stages in Concentration (Rajayogic) ::: that in which the object is seized, that in which it is held, that in which the mind is lost in the status which the object represents or to which the concentration leads.
Concentration and Meditation ::: Concentration means fixing the consciousness in one place or one object and in a single condition Meditation can be diffusive,e.g. thinking about the Divine, receiving impressions and discriminating, watching what goes on in the nature and acting upon it etc. Meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.
vide Dhyāna.
conditioD, without reservation so that all in you shall belong to the Divine Mother and nothing be left to the ego or given to any other power.
Conditions of Transformafirm ::: If you desire this transforma- tion, put yourself in the hands of the Mother and her Powers without cavil or resistance and let her do unhindered her work within you. Three things you roust have, consciousness, plasti- city, unreserved surrender. For you must be conscious in your mind and soul and heart and life and the very cells of your body, aware of the Mother and her Powers and their working ; for although she can and does work in yt)u even in your obscurity and your unconscious parts and moments, it is not the same thing as when you are in an awakened and living communion with her. All your nature must be plasUc to her touch, — • not questioning as the self-sufficient ignorant mind questions and doubts and disputes and is the enemy of its enlightenment and change ; not insisting on its own movements as the vital In man insists and persistently opposes its rcfractoiy desires and ill-wilt to every divine influence ; not obstructing and entrenched m
Consciousness in Kannayoga ::: The calm consciousness from above supporting and the strength from above doing the work, with that the ilhakti which feels it to be the Mother’s conscious- ness present and working,
cosmotheism ::: n. --> Same as Pantheism.
cosmothetic ::: a. --> Assuming or positing the actual existence or reality of the physical or external world.
crayfish ::: n. --> Any crustacean of the family Astacidae, resembling the lobster, but smaller, and found in fresh waters. Crawfishes are esteemed very delicate food both in Europe and America. The North American species are numerous and mostly belong to the genus Cambarus. The blind crawfish of the Mammoth Cave is Cambarus pellucidus. The common European species is Astacus fluviatilis.
See Crawfish.
creatrix ::: “O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Creatrix ::: The Divine Mother, the creatress. creatrix. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
creatrix ::: the Divine Mother, the creatress. creatrix. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
cross-birth ::: n. --> Any preternatural labor, in which the body of the child lies across the pelvis of the mother, so that the shoulder, arm, or trunk is the part first presented at the mouth of the uterus.
Day ::: Madhav: “Day is luminous consciousness and night is obscure consciousness.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Definitions by Sri Aurobindo and Mother
detached ::: 1. Impartial or objective; disinterested; unbiased. 2. Not involved or concerned; aloof. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Detachment means that one stands back from [imperfections and weakness of the nature, etc.] , does not identify oneself with them or get upset or troubled because they are there, but rather looks on them as something foreign to one"s true consciousness and true self, rejects them and calls in the Mother"s Force into these movements to eliminate them and bring the true consciousness and its movements there.” Letters on Yoga
detached ::: “Detachment means that one stands back from [imperfections and weakness of the nature, etc.] , does not identify oneself with them or get upset or troubled because they are there, but rather looks on them as something foreign to one’s true consciousness and true self, rejects them and calls in the Mother’s Force into these movements to eliminate them and bring the true consciousness and its movements there.” Letters on Yoga
DEVI. ::: The Divine Saktiy the Consciousness and Power of the Divine, the Mother and Energy of the worlds.
Diamond ::: Mother’s Light at its iaiensest.
Dionysion ::: Madhav: “Dionysian, belonging to the god of wine, the wine that is intoxicating joy; as if one had drunk from the cup of the god of wine.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Divine ; (2) All personal (psychic-spiritual) relations to proceed from the Divine Mother, determined by her to be part of this single relation with the Divine Mother,
Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences p indispensable for the Supramental realisation, — most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine lx>ve, the
Divine Mother,
Divine Mother
divine Mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” *The Mother
Divine Mother supporting the life and put everything info her hands.
Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Sakt! ; in their cosmic action they are Powers and
Divine Shakli, the Mother.
DOUBLE FOUNDATION OF YOGA. ::: If you Leep the wide- ness and calm and also the love for the Mother in the heart, then all is safe for it means the double foundation of the Yoga ::: the descent of the higher consciousness with its peace, freedom and serenity from above and the openness of the psychic which keeps all the effort or all the spontaneous movement turned towards the true goal.
dragon of the dark foundation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.” The Secret of the Veda
drown ::: fig. To overwhelm or smother; to immerse, inundate, flood. drowned.
Durga ::: “In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works.
durga ::: "In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br.)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
::: "Durga is the Mother"s power of Protection.” The Mother*
“Durga is the Mother’s power of Protection.” The Mother
Durga ::: Sri Aurobindo: “… Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother.” Letters on Yoga
DURGA. ::: The conquering and protecting aspect of the Uni- versal Mother.
earth-Mother ::: 1. A female spirit or deity serving as a symbol of earth or of life and fertility. 2. The earth conceived of as the female principle of fertility and the source of all life. earth-mother"s.
ego ::: [Madhav: “Ego is the point of concentration that involves us in the rounds of life.” The Book of the Divine Mother]
EMANATION. ::: An emanation of the Mother is something of her consciousness and power put forth from her which, so long as it is in play, is held in close connection with her and, when its play is no longer required, is withdrawn back into its source, but can always be put out and brought into play once more. But also the detaining thread of connection can be severed and loosened and that came iorth as am tTnanation can
"Emptiness is not in itself a bad condition, only if it is a sad and restless emptiness of the dissatisfied vital. In sadhana emptiness is very usually a necessary transition from one state to another. When mind and vital fall quiet and their restless movements, thoughts and desires cease, then one feels empty. This is at first often a neutral emptiness with nothing in it, nothing in it either good or bad, happy or unhappy, no impulse or movement. This neutral state is often or even usually followed by the opening to inner experience. There is also an emptiness made of peace and silence, when the peace and silence come out from the psychic within or descend from the higher consciousness above. This is not neutral, for in it there is the sense of peace, often also of wideness and freedom. There is also a happy emptiness with the sense of something close or drawing near which is not yet there, e.g. the closeness of the Mother or some other preparing experience.” Letters on Yoga*
“Emptiness is not in itself a bad condition, only if it is a sad and restless emptiness of the dissatisfied vital. In sadhana emptiness is very usually a necessary transition from one state to another. When mind and vital fall quiet and their restless movements, thoughts and desires cease, then one feels empty. This is at first often a neutral emptiness with nothing in it, nothing in it either good or bad, happy or unhappy, no impulse or movement. This neutral state is often or even usually followed by the opening to inner experience. There is also an emptiness made of peace and silence, when the peace and silence come out from the psychic within or descend from the higher consciousness above. This is not neutral, for in it there is the sense of peace, often also of wideness and freedom. There is also a happy emptiness with the sense of something close or drawing near which is not yet there, e.g. the closeness of the Mother or some other preparing experience.” Letters on Yoga
enshrine ::: Madhav: “To enshrine—to give a sanctified home to …” The Book of the Divine Mother
epiphanies ::: Madhav: “Epiphanies are new manifestations, new revelations.” The Book of the Divine Mother
eudaemonised ::: Madhav: “To eudaemonise is to bestow happiness or felicity through an informal internal action on the spirit of a thing.” The Book of the Divine Mother
FATIGUE. ::: In the ordinary condition of the body if you oblige the body to do too much work, it can do with the support of the vital force. But as soon as the work is done, the vital force withdraws and then the body feels fatigue. If this is done too much and for too long a time, there may be a breakdown of health and strength under the oveisOafn. Rest is then needed for recovery. If, however, the mind and the vital get the habit of opening to the Mother’s Force, they are then supported by the Force and may even be fully filled with it — the Force does the work and the body feels no strain or fatigue before or after.
Force can work In you without anything refusing or obstructing her action. If the min d is shut up in its own ideas and refuses to allow her to bring in the Eight and the Truth, if the vital clings to its desires and does not admit the true initiative and impulsions* that the Mother's power brings, if the physical is shut up In its desire habits and inertia and does not allow the Light and Force to enter in it and work, then one is not open. It is not possible to be entirely open all at once in all the mo^’emeots, but there must be a central opening in each part.
force ::: n. 1. Strength; energy; power; intensity. 2. Fig. An agency, influence, or source of power likened to a physical force. Force, force"s, forces, Force-compelled, Conscious-Force, earth-force, God-Force, lion-forces, Mother-Force, Nature-force, Nature-Force, serpent-force, soul-force, Soul-Forces, world-force, World-Force, world-forces. *v. 3. To compel or cause (a person, group, etc.) to do something through effort, superior strength, etc.; coerce. 4. To propel or drive despite resistance. 5. To break open (a gate, door, etc.) *forces, forced, forcing.
“For the gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the infinite Mother; the way to immortality is the upward way of the gods, the way of the Truth, a journey, an ascent by which there is a growth into the law of the Truth, rtasya panthâh.” The Renaissance in India
For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Sup- reme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
For the soul released from the grip of death and ignorance after travelling in”far-off eternities” , where, we cannot even hazard a guess, returning to earth a joyous captive of the Divine Mother, the earth appears to be nothing more than a green hillock, and yet, Satyavan lives”glad” in the moments of a sun that is transient,”among the busy works of men.”
Four Aspects of the Mother ::: Four great aspects of the
golden Child ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
Grace ::: Madhav: “Grace is that special movement of the Divine Consciousness, which enables us to live, to move.” The Book of the Divine Mother
great Mother
Here, the living divine person in Aswapathy, finding earth too trifling, exceeds it and grows larger and larger, higher and higher, to encompass the unconquered worlds above.” The Book of the Divine Mother
hJOTHER. ::: The One whom we adore as the Mother is the
HOLOCAUST OF THE DIVINE. ::: The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser tnple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nafure-b^y and Nature-force, and they exist because moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was fbere «i the possibilities of The Infinite she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow assimilate it ; avoid self-dispersion and all externalising of the consciousness.
holocaust ::: “The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
How these magnificent lines from Savitri continue to reverberate in the mind and heart and soul I do not know. I know only this, that Savitri, as Mother has said, is”a mantra for the transformation of the world.” As understanding grows within, not in the mind but in the inner cathedral which is always drenched in light, certain lines repeat themselves as mantra and I share what comes to me in a spirit of wonder and hushed elation.
Huta “for Amethyst (the Mother) she has revealed that it has a power of protection”
I£ light, strength, the Mother’s consciousness is brought into the body it can penetrate the subconsclent also and convert its obscurity and resistance.
If j’ou disperse yourself constantly, go out of the inner circle, you will constantly move about in the pettinesses of the ordinary outer nature and under the loffuences to which it is open. Learn to live within, to act always from within, from a constant com- munion with the Mother.
If you disperse yourself constantly, go out of the inner circle, you will constantly move about in the pettinesses of the ordinary outer nature and under the influences to which it is open. Learn to live within, to act always from within, from a constant com- munion with the Mother. It may be difficult at first to do it always and completely, but it can be done if one sticks to it
If you open to it in your work, yon will begin to feel this guidance more and more until behind all your activities you will be aware of the Force of the Mother.
“Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth,—truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
Inane ::: Madhav: “Inane is a vast, nebulous something, which has no character.” The Book of the Divine Mother
"Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences — for to us they are more than merely ideas, — it has carried to its extreme possibilities.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences—for to us they are more than merely ideas,—it has carried to its extreme possibilities.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
inly ::: The child remembering inly a far home Madhav: “The child remembers inly, not in outer memory; mark the word inly, a typically Sri Aurobindo expression. The child remembers somewhere deep inside, its ‘far home’, her home is there far above.” The Book of the Divine Mother
INSTRUMENT. ::: To be able to receive the Divine Power and let it act through you in the things of the outward life, there are three necessary conditions ::: (I) Quietude, equality — not to be disturbed by anything that happens, to keep the mind still and firm, seeing the play of forces, but itself tranquil. (2) Absolute faith — faith that what is for the best will happen, but also that if one can make oneself a true instrument, the fruit will be that which one's will guided by the Divine Light sees as the thing to be done. (3) Receptivity — the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one’s sight and will and action.
If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action, — but plasticity to the Divine Force alone without bringing in any foreign clement, — the eventual result is sure.
Conditions to become an instrument of the Divine ::: A receptive silence of the mind, an effacemenl of the mental ego and the reduction of the mental being to the position of a witness, a close find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity ; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasya needed too constant and intense.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
"In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning — it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one"s being, one"s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of ‘making sacred" and is used as an equivalent of the word yajna. When the Gita speaks of the ‘sacrifice of knowledge", it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works. The Mother has written somewhere that the spiritual sacrifice is joyful and not painful in its nature. On the spiritual path, very commonly, if a seeker still feels the old ties and responsibilities strongly he is not asked to sever or leave them, but to let the call in him grow till all within is ready. Many, indeed, come away earlier because they feel that to cut loose is their only chance, and these have to go sometimes through a struggle. But the pain, the struggle, is not the essential character of this spiritual self-offering.” Letters on Yoga
“In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning—it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one’s being, one’s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of ‘making sacred’ and is used as an equivalent of the word yajna. When the Gita speaks of the ‘sacrifice of knowledge’, it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works. The Mother has written somewhere that the spiritual sacrifice is joyful and not painful in its nature. On the spiritual path, very commonly, if a seeker still feels the old ties and responsibilities strongly he is not asked to sever or leave them, but to let the call in him grow till all within is ready. Many, indeed, come away earlier because they feel that to cut loose is their only chance, and these have to go sometimes through a struggle. But the pain, the struggle, is not the essential character of this spiritual self-offering.” Letters on Yoga
In your personal use of money look on all you have or get or bring as the Mother's. Make no demand but accept what you receive from her and use it for the purposes for which it is given to you. Be entirely selfless, entirely scrupulous, exact, careful in detail, a good trustee always consider that U is her posses- sions and not your own that you are handling. On the other hand, what you receive for her lay religiously before her ; turn nothing to your own or anybody else’s purpose.
“I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
It is only when you have turned entirely in every part of your being to tiie Divine Mother and to her alone that the Divine will do all actions through you.
::: "It may be said that perfection is attained, though it remains progressive, when the receptivity from below is equal to the force from above which wants to manifest.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
“It may be said that perfection is attained, though it remains progressive, when the receptivity from below is equal to the force from above which wants to manifest.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
I was awestruck by this line many times even though Mother writes: “At every moment we must shake off the past like fading dust, that it may not soil the virgin path which, at every moment also, is opening before us.” Prayers and Meditations
Jhumur: “Awe inspiring fear. It is through fear that these forces rule, not through love, not through grace, not through compassion but through terror. There is a very strong tendency in man to regard these dark forces as superior beings. There has long been a vital attraction for them, devil worship, etc. because they give you power, they seem to give you power, power to the ego and Mother says that power will be one of the last things to accept the change. Man’s lust for power is not easily relinquished– he doesn’t feel like giving that up.”
Jhumur: “Mother speaks of the four great asuras who seem to have taken over the world. The earth becomes the fulcrum or territory of these forces. The Kaliyuga is exactly the world that has been taken over by the dark forces. And iron is that which doesn’t like to change or to reflect light. It is not transparent so there is a sense of resistance, of hardness, of darkness. The Indian word Kala, which is ‘time’ is also one of the names of death. From that you have also Kali. It is darkness, associated with blackness and yet it is also time, mortality.”
Jhumur: “Mother spoke of these straight lines, the forces that came out from the divine creatrix, and then something went across the ray or the ray was perverted.”
Jhumur: “She (Savitri) has gone into this world of light not having really left her body. It is not an experience that is beyond the body. It is in the physical life that she has attained this plane, so topaz, a yellow colour, is the colour of the mind, stone is the consciousness in matter, so physical life, body, life, mind. Mother had told us I remember that a precious stone symbolises consciousness that is lodged in matter. It shows how blazing light is present even in the hardest matter. So you have the image of the physical light, like a kind of a wall, a barrier.”
Jhumur: “The Book of bliss is really the ultimate Satchitananda, the everlasting day when one has moved out of all contact with the unconscious and lives no longer in between sunlight and darkness but wholly in the light, wholly in the Divine. There was once a question that somebody asked Mother when She used to take our classes. She (the person) said that in our world there is a change from lesser to greater if one tries to progress. It is a constant change. When one enters the higher plane, the upper hemisphere as you call it, will there be no change, will it always be the same? Mother said,”No, it is not that. One perfection can then be manifested later in another kind of perfection.” There is a variety of different laws of perfection, hence the myriad volumes of the Book of Bliss. Delight has so many modes of expression, perfection or delight, they are all the same and there is not just one way of manifesting the Divine. There are infinite modes of expression of that delight.”
Jhumur: “The snake on which the Lord is sleeping. Mother and Sri Aurobindo often use the snake as a symbol of the evolutionary force in matter.
Jhumur: “Throughout Savitri I have noticed all the different times of the day and the position of the sun in relation to the earth. It runs through the book, the symbol dawn, night, not only that but there are different states of illumination, awakening of the consciousness progressively. Sometimes it falls into the darkness, sometimes twilight when one is caught between two states, and at the end it is the everlasting day. So the kingdoms of the rising sun represent states of being where the light is the most important. Mother always says that the sun is the symbol of the supreme truth, the supreme, the supreme wisdom. It is the world where the supreme truth and supreme wisdom rule, govern. Whereas In many other worlds this light gets covered, it gets clouded over but here there are the kingdoms of the rising sun because they are the godheads of the mind and the mind is an instrument of light. But it is a small early instrument, little mind, so it is just rising, it hasn’t come to its full glory. The kingdoms are the planes of consciousness where you have a little light, a little clarity, a little illumination. That is how I understand the main function of the mind, to seek for light. It is an instrument for seeking light although it often dodges light where the perversity comes in.”
Kali ::: Hinduism. One of the manifestations and titles of the wife of Shiva and mother goddess Devi, especially in her role as a goddess of death and destruction. Kali’s
kali ::: hinduism. One of the manifestations and titles of the wife of Shiva and mother goddess Devi, especially in her role as a goddess of death and destruction. **Kali"s.
Kali ::: Sri Aurobindo: “… the terrible Kali is also the loving and beneficent Mother; …” Essays on the Gita
::: "Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity. . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity….” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Krishna’s light or Sri Aurobindo’s light ; it is the blue light modi- fied by the while light of the Mother.
“Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
light ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” *The Life Divine
"Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.” *The Hour of God
"Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
The Mother: "The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Light, light"s, lights, light-petalled, light-tasselled, half-light.
Location: E Library—Works Of The Mother—English—Cwmce—Questions And Answers Volume 03—Supermind And Overmind …
Lotus ; Symbol of the opectng of the centres to the light ; indicates the open consciousness. Lotus of twelve petals ::: com- plete Truth-Consdousness of the Divine Mother.
lutely necessary. Otherwise* although the body may go on for a very long time, yet in the end there can be a danger of a collapse. The body can be sustained for a long time when there is the full influence and there is a single-minded faith and call in the mind and the vital ; but if the mind or the vital is dis- turbed by other influences or opens itself to forces which are not the Mother’s, then there will be a mixed condition and there will be sometimes strength, sometimes fatigue, exhaustion or illness or a mixture of the two at the same time. Finally, If not only the mind and the vital, but the body also is open and can absorb the Force, it can do extraordinary things in the way of work without breaking down. Still even then rest is necessary.
Madhav: “A Demiurge is a secondary creator. If God is the creator, then he has many assistants, the various gods; they are the Demiurges.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aeonic field, a field that has been there, cultivated and trodden across ages and ages, cycles of time, and Aswapathy represents the eternal seeker.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “A kakemono is a Japanese painting which is hung on the wall. It is a print in many colours, many designs. And this world picture is compared to a kakemono of significant forms. Each form is significant, each line is meaningful.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Alchemy is changing base metal into gold. So heaven experiments in changing this creature called man into a godhead. And this experiment is done on the base of nature, earth.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “All around is space, infinite space and in it is the Divine consciousness, the Divine concentration of consciousness, which is the ‘mystic heart’ of the world. The earth [She] is in communion with that ‘mystic heart’.” The Book of the Divine Mother`
Madhav: “Ambassadors, because they bring a message from the unseen empire of God.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Ancient Mother is the earth-mother.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “An oracle, as you know, is the speech of prophecy, usually by an inspired priest. It is a supernatural prophecy made through any agent. But this oracle will be tongueless to broadcast it, everybody will know this oracle without its being uttered through a tongue.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy in the epic is the representative of the aspiring humanity who prepares and lays the path to the Divine Glory.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy in the epic is the—representative of the aspiring humanity who prepares and—lays the path to the Divine Glory.”—The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy is in the mid-world. He is neither in the nether realms of struggle and obscurity nor in the brighter worlds above of power and rapture. He is in realms of Beauty that point to still happier altitudes. The Birds of Wonder are the marvellous beings of that region, the angels, who call upon the higher worlds of Light to manifest in their world.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy: Life is symbolised by Horse, aswa in the old tradition of the Vedas. The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy participates in the luminous manifestation of Inspiration, Revelation and Intuition on his way to the heights of the Overmind.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy steps into a veritable wonderland of the Glory of God. The Glory is pictured as a huge Bird whose wings are brooding over the new creation to come. Just as a hen broods over its egg, these Wings enfold and incubate the new truth in the offing.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Dissident—one who does not accept the discipline, the order of things that is being imposed. Some part or some element may be there, however minute, however small and thin which may not conform and it might escape.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Each of the seven worlds—the earths—were seen in their innate immortal nature. The principle of Sat-Chit-Ananda is embedded in each of them.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Eidolon is an unsubstantial figure. The name we give is only such an unsubstantial label. The secret is not touched. Gold is to indicate that though the name as such may appear to be unsubstantial, there is some truth in it.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Flood of thoughts, they are asking answers to their questions.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Gropes means moves without direction, searching for direction; our desires, our passions, our intensities search for this fulfilment in her [the Mother].” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Here is the Mother of all the Gods and all the Powers; she is the mediatrix, standing between the Supreme above and the earth below and firmly linking the earth to the Supreme.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Her [Savitri’s] hair is imaged as a cloud-net, net of clouds, in which delight shall sleep, …” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “He uses the word moon as a verb here. That is, the whole being, her entire body looks like a moon responding to the waves and seas of bliss.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “In the tantric symbology all the centres are represented as lotuses hanging downwards; as the kundalini [‘the yogic force asleep in the Muladhara and covered up in the other centres by the ordinary consciousness’—Sri Aurobindo] touches them they bloom upwards.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “It is what is described in the Upanishads as prajna-chakshu, the eye of Wisdom. And in the very act of regarding, the very act of the look, it supports. That regard itself is the sanction without which the movement would come to a standstill.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Mark the expression ‘formless Form’. It is a form and yet it is formless; one can feel that there is something, but there is no outline that we associate with form.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Mark the words—‘actor Will’. We think our will is our own, but actually our will is only playing out something which has been determined for it by someone or somebody else. This is true not only of our individual will but also of the Cosmic Will. This will now becomes ineffective and comes to a halt.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Moment is the sequence of Time. Each moment records what is happening at that point. It relates to the present. The Ray of the Eternal interrupts the movement of Time for a while and lights up things that are not yet manifest. It gives a peep into the future. The Ray of the Eternal is able to do it because the future is already present in the vision of the Eternal.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Morning star, the star before the morning of new creation.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Note the capital E. The Event to be is the manifestation to come, the next cycle in creation, symbolised by the Dawn.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Now here is a reference to the Vedic imagery where the Rishi speaks of the child being suckled by two mothers. He refers to two mothers, one dark and the other rosy—Night and Dawn or Day signifying movement of obscurity and movement of light. This divine soul, soul that is given to the Divine is nursed by both the mothers. He needs the succour of night and the nourishment of the day. To rest for a while he needs to be in the lap of Mother Night. To be active he is in the lap of Mother Dawn.” Sat-Sang Vol. IX
Madhav: “Parent-sun, her spirit is always conscious of its source above, the sun of truth, the sun of divine joy.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Pen means to constrict. Do not limit thy force to earthly boundaries. There are regions beyond the earth. So extend that.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Pronunciamento is a proclamation issued by the revolutionaries; whenever there is a revolution, they declare their objectives and these are called pronunciamentos. They then fill the sky with their noise.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Purple rim is the border of the sun. So around the red border, the earth moves in ceaseless, uninterrupted motion.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Red Wolf is the hungry devourer, Killer-Desire, waiting for its prey on the banks of the river of life at a spot where the traveller cannot cross over, the waters being too deep.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Rose, here, signifies Divine Love. It is deathless because it is immortal. They are realms of pure Love. Read Sri Aurobindo in his sonnet, Light: . . . in my heart where blooms deathless rose.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Seed-self is the divine consciousness….” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: Serpent signifies seething energy with a consciousness proper to its order. There is the serpent of the material zone, serpent of the vital and so on. And this consciousness is the Power of Evolution. This Power of Evolution combines with the force that has emerged from below. It lends to it its character of consciousness, step by step. The Force that was hitherto un-conscious, insensible is taken up and given a direction by Nature’s conscious, dynamic Power.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Seven are the planes of existence that are embodied, in principle, in each grade of this creation. The stabs are the wounds inflicted by the Darkness and Falsehood of the Adversary on these seven formulations. The seven sorrows are the result of these seven stabs.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Space which is normally occupied by movements in the world is now occupied by the spiritual silence of the Self. Mark, it is not physical silence but spiritual silence. Spiritual silence permits activity, even speech, unlike physical silence which shuts off speech. Spiritual silence is silence of the whole being, whereas physical silence, mauna as we call it, is only abstention from speech, vocal activity, which makes the mind, very often, more active than before.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: Substance here is not something opposed to or foreign to the self, but a kind of harp created by the self; resonant i.e. always answering to the promptings of the self.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “… Symbolically it is matter. From it this man has come up, a product highly irrational.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The allusion is to the Vedic legend which narrates how the dark powers of the nether regions, i.e. the subconscient—and the still below—steal and hide the riches of the Gods in their subterranean chambers. They are called the Panis, thieves.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The Animal represents the lower rajasic nature; the sacred fence is the human being with all its scaffolding.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The arisen beast is man who has emerged from the animal state and though Aswapathy wears that form, he is a god.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The brilliant courtyard is the realm of the subtle-physical Matter that Aswapathy is leaving behind in his upward climb. He sees that with all its brilliant glow, this region is limited on all sides and it is only a courtyard—not yet the entrance proper—of the Mansion of Light, where the Light of God is ever manifest. Day in the spiritual symbolism signifies the reign of Light. Aswapathy seeks to enter the Order (symbolised by House) where the Light shines uninterrupted.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The common word of human speech diminishes an experience, weakens it, but here the Word with a capital W, is a mantric word which ‘ushers divine experience’ it brings out into the field a divine experience.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The curtain of ignorance has been lifted.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The Golden Child is the Divine Soul that is evolving in the universe; it has arrived at a stage where, as a result of the ingressions of the Light from the planes of Mind, the growing Soul is able to think and see.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The guardians of eternity, the gods, the higher gods, …” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The House of Flame is the plenary manifestation of Agni, the Mystic Fire of which the Seers of the Veda speak. Here blazes the Divine Consciousness in its incandescent purity.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The immense, massive base of Inconscience from which the world proceeds.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The law that compels evolution is diamond hard, it cannot be broken.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The manifestation of the One as the Individual, the Universal and the Transcendent: it is triple act of self-revelation.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The mind is pictured in terms of a seat with three legs: the physical mind (sense mentality); vital mind (desire mind, dynamic mentality); reason (thought mentality). The normal human mind has these three layers.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The red Wolf is the hungry Desire and the Snake the force of Treachery in the vital regions of this creation.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The reference is to Savitri, a companion of the Ray of Truth, Mist of the Ineffable and Flame of Will (Divine).” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The reference is to the flaming aspiration in the heart of the ascending Soul. This flame is immortal in its source and builds kingdoms at each step of its climb.” The Book of the Divine Mother.
Madhav: “There is an eternal light in every one of us. But it is as if guarded, protected from the profane, vulgar sight by a cave of darkness. Cave signifies a narrowing, dimming enclosure. This blanket of darkness guards that Light. Where there is such a concentration of thick darkness in yourself, you can be sure that deep inside there is the ‘Light Eternal’. This is the light of the Self of which the Rishi’s speak. It stands veiled by layers and layers of the darkness of Ignorance.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “There is another veil. First there is the veil of darkness, a veil of ignorance. Then there is a veil of light, a dazzling light. It acts as a curtain. If you look only at that light you get blinded.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “There is in this creation of God an everlasting No. ‘NO’ is negation of the fleeting pleasures of life, unsubstantial movements of life, the attraction of the senses, the hold of ego, ignorance. For that the answer is no. This is not it, this is not it, neti, neti, thou hast only neared this everlasting No.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The Scripture Wonderful refers to the Supreme Knowledge. The Spirit-mate of Life hopes to divine the Supreme Knowledge in the transcript made by Life of God’s intention; but that script, however bright and attractive is a product of her fancy. The true Word lies covered under her fanciful rendering. The Supreme Knowledge that holds the key to the celestial beatitudes escapes him.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “These are adjectives that apply to Aswapathy himself. He is a vehicle carrying the wonders of paradise, the wonders of heaven, which he has seen and experienced.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The seat occupied by the oracle in the mysteries had three supports; it was a tripod. Here the true oracular seat is deceptively covered by the false Idol.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The Serpent is the guardian Power of the interior.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The triple cord refers to the physical, the vital and the thought strands of the mind which constrict and narrow the range of human vision. As they are loosened, the gaze widens and larger horizons come into view.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The triple heavens are the heavens of Sat, Chit and Ananda.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The triple world is the world of higher thought: the lower reaches are close to the thinking human mind; the next pertains to a knowledge that knows the truth of things from within; the highest, bordering on the planes of eternity is where knowledge as such—with the triad of knower, known and knowledge—ceases and it is one with the truth of all. Three successive steps of ascent lead to this triple realm of higher thought.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The universe is always seen and experienced as concealed by a coloured veil. The veil is a deceptive veil.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The whole world is a play and God is the cosmic Player.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The Word from above is not uttered as the human word is. It is not articulated by the tongue. Unuttered Word—the silent Word. But the hushed heart—the heart in which all the emotive movements have been hushed, silent for the time being—hears the Word from above though it is not spelt out.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “This is another key idea in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, that Nature, what is called Prakriti in Indian philosophy, is not different, not alien to the Purusha. Nature is not foreign to the soul, to God. It is a conscious front of God. Scratch Nature, look behind the exterior of Nature and you will find God. The apparent difference, distinction between Nature and God is only a superficial appearance. Nature is really a power of God. It is devatma shakti, the self-power of God—svagunair nigudham lost in its qualitative workings. She is not separate; conscious, not something unconscious. Nature is aware that it is only a front of God behind.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “This is a very important line. Name, secret name, name of a God, name of a Deity, name of the Divine, is a key to the Power, the qualities that are embodied in that Form. So, when that Name is uttered, all that Power, all that consciousness, is evoked. That is why the Seers keep this Name secret, give it only to those who are ready, who have been initiated, who have purified themselves.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Thy heart of flame—intense aspiration, . . . The Book of the Divine Mother.
Madhav: “Triple-plated gloom is the darkness with three successive layers: the material-physical, the vital and the mental. This is the Shadow that infests the three lower orders of existence.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Triune ecstasies are the rapturous delights of Sat, Chit, Ananda, each with its distinct flavour.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “When Aswapathy lifts the curtain of the flesh i.e. when he gets through the barrier of his physical existence, he comes to the threshold of another domain, subtle and occult. He sees a serpent watching, guarding the entrance. In all traditions, especially the ancient, at the doors of every subtle kingdom there is a sentinel and that sentinel is imaged as a serpent. In spiritual symbolism the serpent stands for Energy. Depending on the colour of the serpent, it is physical energy or vital energy, mental energy, spiritual energy. Unless this serpent allows one to pass one cannot enter. The serpent, in this context, is the guard whose consent is necessary before one can pass. The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Winged marvel is the soul.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Word here is expression, manifestation. Inevitable in the sense that it has to precede the manifestation.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Zero does not stand for nothing. Zero does not signify emptiness, but has behind it the face of the immortal.” The Book of the Divine Mother
maternal ::: of, pertaining to, having the qualities of, or befitting a mother.
Mind and the Divine Sakti ::: Be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that arc beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and com- plexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehen- sion ; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth.
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
mother, Divine ::: see **Divine Mother.**
mother of the universe ::: see **Mother of the Worlds.**
mother of the worlds ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Aditi, the infinite Consciousness, Mother of the worlds.” *The Secret of the Veda
" She is the first Radiance, Aditi, the infinite Consciousness of the infinite conscious Being which is the mother of the worlds.” The Secret of the Veda*
mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother ::: "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.
"That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother"s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” *The Mother
: "The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.” *Letters on the Mother
"When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother.” Letters on Yoga ::: **mighty Mother, World-Mother, World-Mother"s.**
mother, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "What people mean by the formless svarûpa of the Mother, — they means usually her universal aspect. It is when she is experienced as a universal Existence and Power spread through the universe in which and by which all live. When one feels that Presence one begins to feel a universal peace, light, power, bliss without limits — that is her svarûpa.” *The Mother
"The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist.” The Mother
mother-Wisdom ::: the wisdom of the Mother, the Divine Creatrix.
Name ::: Jhumur: “Hold onto the Name. That is the only power. I remember Mother once told me—because there was a moment when I was attacked by a certain person. She was mad and so had a certain number of people she chose to attack with her vibrations, with her words. If she could she would throw stones. I was very, very young, about 17 or 18. I said, ‘Every time I see her, Mother, I really start to tremble. It has become something so physically terrifying. Once she (the mad person) had thrown a big paperweight, a cement paperweight in the library. It went just past my head, it could have killed me. After that I became really frightened. So Mother told me ‘Nothing will happen to you. Each time you see her just say ‘Ma, Ma, Ma.’ But it was so difficult. Each time I saw her from far I would think, ‘I have to say Ma.’ But when she came close enough I could not say the Name, for a long time, for a very long time. I was so frightened the fear would take the Name away. I knew very well I had to say the Name That is what Mother told me. And one day I could, finally I could and the mad person lost interest in me!”
“New birth: birth of the true consciousness, that of the Divine Presence in us.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
new birth ::: the Mother: "New birth: birth of the true consciousness, that of the Divine Presence in us.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
Nolini: “Amber colour representing a particular plane of consciousness. Yellow + red + touch of brown—physico-vital or even subtle physical plane—the New Creation come down on that plane. Mother India—Nolini’s reply to a question from Huta.
Nolini: “Griffin-Golden Hawk + Winged Lion—The piercing eye of soaring aspiration + Upsurging energy of the pure vital—Remember Vishnu’s Garuda + Durga’s lion—With these twin powers you cross safely the borderland between the lower and the upper hemisphere—the twilight world (Night and Day)—Griffin is the guardian God of this passage—dvarapalaka. Mother India—Nolini’s reply to a question from Huta.
Nolini: “Morning star—Venus, Goddess of Love—embodying new Creation. Mother India—Nolini’s reply to a question from Huta.
Note, a unit is a summation of sub-units—even the ultimate units are composites (masses, in case of bigger units)—e.g., molecule, atom, particle (nucleon), point. Mother India—Nolini’s reply to a letter from Huta.
Oh, a tremendous power—tremendous. The first time I heard it … The first time I heard it … There was a certain Bernard who had spent a year in India, in the Himalayas, and he was visited by yogis whom he didn’t know (he lived in a hut in the Himalayas, all alone). One yogi came to see him; he didn’t say anything, he just sat by his side and then left. And that yogi simply told him,”Om …” Then he came back to France, recounted his experiences in India, and he said that. Me, I knew absolutely nothing of India at the time, and when he uttered the word OM … (Mother brings her arms down), it came: a Force like this, my whole, entire body, everything vibrated in an extraordinary way! It was like a revelation—everything, but everything started vibrating. Then I said,”At last, here’s the true sound!” Yet I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, neither what it meant nor anything. Mother’s Agenda, Volume 10, 1969.
Oh, a tremendous power—tremendous. The first time I heard it … The first time I heard it … There was a certain Bernard who had spent a year in India, in the Himalayas, and he was visited by yogis whom he didn"t know (he lived in a hut in the Himalayas, all alone). One yogi came to see him; he didn"t say anything, he just sat by his side and then left. And that yogi simply told him, "Om …” Then he came back to France, recounted his experiences in India, and he said that. Me, I knew absolutely nothing of India at the time, and when he uttered the word OM … (Mother brings her arms down), it came: a Force like this, my whole, entire body, everything vibrated in an extraordinary way! It was like a revelation—everything, but everything started vibrating. Then I said, "At last, here"s the true sound!” Yet I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, neither what it meant nor anything.
“One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
opening ::: The Mother: “Opening is the release of the consciousness by which it begins to admit into itself the working of the Divine Light and Power.”Words of the Mother”, MCW Vol. 14.
opening ::: the Mother: "Opening is the release of the consciousness by which it begins to admit into itself the working of the Divine Light and Power.” *Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
parent ::: n. 1. A father or mother. 2. Fig. A source or cause; an origin. parent"s, parents, parents". adj. 3. Being the original source.
PATH. ::: Rising to a station above the mind and opening out of the cosmic consciousness ; psychic opening ; descent of a higher consciousness with its peace, light, force, knowledge, Ananda etc. into all the planes of the being down to the most physical. All this has to be done by the working of the Mother’s force aided by your aspiration, devotion and surrender.
"Perfection is eternal; it is only the resistance of the world that makes it progressive.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
“Perfection is eternal; it is only the resistance of the world that makes it progressive.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
persevered ::: The Mother: “Perseverance is patience in action.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol.
physical. The Mother’s force caa work through both together.
physical ::: The Mother: “The physical is the concrete domain that crystallises and defines the thoughts, the movements of the vital, etc. It is a solid foundation for action.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
physical ::: the Mother: "The physical is the concrete domain that crystallises and defines the thoughts, the movements of the vital, etc. It is a solid foundation for action.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
Powers undivine in their nature present themselves as the Sup- reme Lord or as the Divine Mother and claim the being’s service and surrender. 1C these (hiags are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sSdhaka to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a rejection of all egoistic force or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego are innumerable, the ilfusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasi Maya, are e.ttraordinariIy skilful ; the reason is an insulBdent guide and often turns traitor; vital desire is ahvays with us tempting to follow any alluring call. This is the reason why in this Yoga we insist so much on what we call samarpana — rather inade- quately rendered by the Engikh word surrender. If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question ; all fe Safe. But the psychic can at any moment be veiled by a lower upsurge. It is only a few who arc exempt from these dangers and it is precisely those to whom surrender is easily possible. The guidance of one who is himself
Preface ::: This supplement to the Lexicon of an Infinite Mind, A Dictionary of Words and Terms in Savitri, is a selection of answers to our numerous questions posed to disciples and devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is a rare treasure for generations to come for it provides a profound insight into the understanding of various terms and phrases in Savitri by those who knew Sri Aurobindo and had His darshan many times and a few others with a deep knowledge of specific terms in Savitri.
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
::: "Progress: to be ready, at every minute, to give up all one is and all one has in order to advance on the way.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
“Progress: to be ready, at every minute, to give up all one is and all one has in order to advance on the way.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
Psychic awakening means the conscious action of the psychic from behind. When it comes to the front, it invades the mind and vital and body and psychidscs their movement. It comes best by aspiration and an unquestioning and entire turning and surrender to the Mother. But also it sometimes comes of itself when the ddhara is ready.
Psychic contribution ::: The contribution of the psychic being to the sadhana is ; love and bhakti, a love not vital, demanding and egoistic but unconditioned and without claims, self-existent ; the contact or the presence of the Mother within ; the unerring guidance from within ; a quieting and purification of the mind, vital and physical consciousness by their subjection to the psychic influence and guidance ; the opening up of all this lower cons- ciousness to the higher spiritual consciousness above for its des- cent into a nature prepared to receive it with a complete recepti- vity and right attitude — for the psychic brings in everything, right thought, right perception, right feeling, right attitude.
PSYCHICISATION. ::: Change of the lower nature bringing right vision into the mind, right impulse and feeling into the vital, ri^t movement and habit into the physical — all turned towards the Divine, all based on love, adoration, bhakti — finally the vision and sense of the Mother everywhere in all as w’ell as in the heart, her Force working in the being, faith, con- secration, surrender.
"Pure indeed is he for whom as for the eater of things there is the flowing progression by Nature,(1) as by an axe, and with a happy travail she, his Mother, brought him forth that he may accomplish her works and taste of the enjoyment.(2)
“Pure indeed is he for whom as for the eater of things there is the flowing progression by Nature, (1) as by an axe, and with a happy travail she, his Mother, brought him forth that he may accomplish her works and taste of the enjoyment.(2)
purpose ::: “Purpose means the intention, the object in view towards which the Divine is working.” The Mother
purpose ::: the object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal. Purpose, purposes. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Purpose means the intention, the object in view towards which the Divine is working.” *The Mother
quagmire ::: Madhav: “Quagmire is almost the same as a bog, it is a little deeper, a little larger, where if you once get caught you can only move round and round, you cannot get out.” The Book of the Divine Mother
"Radha is the symbol of loving consecration to the Divine.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 16.*
“Radha is the symbol of loving consecration to the Divine.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 16.
Red ::: Colour of the physical. Red diamond is the Mother’s consciousness in the physical.
red ::: Jhumur: “In general it is the play of the vital forces. Mother always uses red as a symbol of the physical, the colour of blood, the early stage of the developing
Relatives in dreams ; Figures of the physical mother and father and relatives are very often symbolical of the physical or the hereditary nature or generally of the ordinary nature in which we arc born.
Satyavan, as Sri Aurobindo writes,”…is the soul carrying the truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance;”. Descended into the grip of death and ignorance, the divine realized soul, does not become ignorance but descends into death and then is saved by Savitri, the Divine Mother. After leaving his body”this house of clay” and wandering”in far-off eternities”, all the while a captive in Savitri’s “golden hands” he returns and replies to his father,
savitri ::: "In the Mahabharata, the heroine of the tale of Satyavan and Savitri; . . . . She was the daughter of King Ashwapati, and lover of Satyavan, whom she married although she was warned by Narada that he had only one year to live. On the fatal day, when Yama carried off Satyavan"s spirit, she followed him with unswerving devotion. Ultimately Yama was constrained to restore her husband to life.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
Sri Aurobindo: "Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; . . . .” (Author"s note at beginning of Savitri.)
"Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother . . . .” Letters on Savitri
The Mother: "Savitri [the poem] is a mantra for the transformation of the world.” Spoken to Udar
“Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother ….” Letters on Savitri
see **Mother, universal.**
— self-surrender to her means that our nature must be an instru- ment in her hands, the soul a child in the arms of the Mother.
Self-surrender to the divine and infinite Mother, however dilD- cult, remains our only effective means and our sole abiding refuge,
“ She is the first Radiance, Aditi, the infinite Consciousness of the infinite conscious Being which is the mother of the worlds.” The Secret of the Veda
"Silence means freedom from thoughts and vital movements —- when the whole consciousness is quite still.” The Mother - Flowers and Their Messages, Glossary Of Philosophical And Psychological Terms.
“Silence means freedom from thoughts and vital movements—when the whole consciousness is quite still.” The Mother—Flowers and Their Messages, Glossary Of Philosophical And Psychological Terms.
"Sincerity exacts from each one that in his thoughts, his feelings, his sensations and his actions he should express nothing but the central truth of his being.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
“Sincerity exacts from each one that in his thoughts, his feelings, his sensations and his actions he should express nothing but the central truth of his being.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
"Sincerity means more than mere honesty. It means that you mean what you say, feel what you profess, are earnest in your will.” The Mother - The Spiritual Significance of Flowers
“Sincerity means more than mere honesty. It means that you mean what you say, feel what you profess, are earnest in your will.” The Mother—The Spiritual Significance of Flowers
"Sincerity means to lift all the movements of the being to the level of the highest consciousness and realisation already attained.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
“Sincerity means to lift all the movements of the being to the level of the highest consciousness and realisation already attained.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
smothered ::: completely covered; stifled; suffocated.
smothering ::: concealing; suppressing; covering. Also fig.
::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “… Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ::: "O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Sri Aurobindo: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the terrible Kali is also the loving and beneficent Mother; . . . .” Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: “… the terrible Kali is also the loving and beneficent Mother; …” Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: "To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life.” Bases of Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: “To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life.” Bases of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Visions come under the head of experiences, unless they fix themselves and are accompanied by a realisation of which they are as it were the support.” The Mother*
Sri Aurobindo: "Vitality means life-force — wherever there is life, in plant or animal or man, there is life-force — without the vital there can be no life in matter and no living action. The vital is a necessary force and nothing can be done or created in the bodily existence, if the vital is not there as an instrument.” *Letters on Yoga
"The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, desires, ambitions, etc., having as their highest centre what we may call the outer heart of emotion, while there is an inner heart where are the higher or psychic feelings and sensibilities, the emotions or intuitive yearnings and impulses of the soul. The vital part of us is, of course, necessary to our completeness, but it is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . the vital is the Life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul in man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of the nature. Letters on Yoga
The Mother: "The vital is the dynamism of action. It is the seat of the will, of impulses, desires, revolts, etc.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15*.
Sri Aurobindo: "What the "void" feels as a clutch is felt by the Mother only as a reminding finger laid on her cheek. It is one advantage of the expression ‘as if" that it leaves the field open for such variation. It is intended to suggest without saying it that behind the sombre void is the face of a mother. The two other ‘as if"s have the same motive and I do not find them jarring upon me. The second is at a sufficient distance from the first and it is not obtrusive enough to prejudice the third which more nearly follows. . . .” Letters on Savitri
stifled ::: smothered; suppressed; suffocated.
stifle ::: to smother or suppress; keep from manifesting. stifles.
strangling ::: 1. Killing by squeezing the throat so as to choke or suffocate; or throttling by a cord, etc. around the neck. 2. Cutting off the oxygen supply of; smothering. Also fig. **strangled.**
SUNLIT PATH ::: There Is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy one and It Is the better of the two — a path In which one goes forward In absolute reliaoce on the Mother, fearing ootWng, sorrowing over nothing. Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and confidence and joy.
Supreme Lord, as the Divine Mother and claim the being’s ser- vice and surrender. If these things are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sadhaka to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a rejection of all egoistic forces or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego arc innumerable, the illusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasl,
Sweet Mother,
Take it in the right quantity (neither too much nor too little), without greed or repulsion, as the means given you by the Mother for the maintenance of the body, in the right spirit, offering it to the Divine in you.
Tantras the Kundalini Shakti. But it is also above us, above our head as the Divine Force — not there coiled up, involved, asleep, but awake, sclent, potent, extended and wide ; it is there waiting for manifestation and to this force we have to open ourselves — ■ to the power of the Mother.
Tehmi: “The Divine Mother is the Eternal Goddess—in a description of the New Creation.”
Tehmi: “The earth is the goddess, Mother-Earth.”
“That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother’s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” The Mother
The Mother: "All sincere prayers are granted, but it may take some time to realise materially.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “All sincere prayers are granted, but it may take some time to realise materially.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.**
The Mother : "An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.” Works of the Mother, "On Thoughts and Aphorisms” Vol.10
The Mother : “An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.” Works of the Mother,”On Thoughts and Aphorisms” Vol.10.
The Mother: "And this Vibration (which I feel and see) gives the feeling of a fire. That"s probably what the Vedic Rishis translated as the "Flame” – in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter. They always spoke of a "Flame.” It is indeed a vibration with the intensity of a higher fire. Mother"s Agenda 25 March 1964.
The Mother: “And this Vibration (which I feel and see) gives the feeling of a fire. That’s probably what the Vedic Rishis translated as the”Flame”—in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter. They always spoke of a”Flame.” It is indeed a vibration with the intensity of a higher fire. Mother’s Agenda 25 March 1964.
*The Mother: "And ultimately, all form is a symbol. All forms: our form is a symbol — not a very brilliant one, I admit!
The Mother: “And ultimately, all form is a symbol. All forms: our form is a symbol—not a very brilliant one, I admit!
The Mother: "An ‘entity" is a personality or an individuality.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.**
The Mother: " A total self-giving to the Divine is the true purpose of existence.” On Thoughts and Aphorisms, MCW Vol. 10.*
The Mother: “ A total self-giving to the Divine is the true purpose of existence.” On Thoughts and Aphorisms, MCW Vol. 10.
The Mother: “Calm is self-possessed strength, quiet and conscious energy, mastery of the impulses, control over the unconscious reflexes.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
“The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.” Letters on the Mother
The Mother: "Consciousness is indeed the creatrix of the universe, but love is its saviour. . . .” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: “Consciousness is indeed the creatrix of the universe, but love is its saviour….” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
::: The Mother: "Consciousness is the faculty of becoming aware of anything through identification. The Divine Consciousness is not only aware but knows and effects.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol.15*. Consciousness.
The Mother: “Consciousness is the faculty of becoming aware of anything through identification. The Divine Consciousness is not only aware but knows and effects.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol.15.
The Mother: “For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart—not in the physical heart but the psychic centre—of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
The Mother: "For me poetry is beyond all philosophy and beyond all explanation.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: “For me poetry is beyond all philosophy and beyond all explanation.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: "Immortality is not a goal, it is not even a means. It will proceed naturally from the fact of living the Truth.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Immortality, immortalities, immortality"s.
The Mother: “Immortality is not a goal, it is not even a means. It will proceed naturally from the fact of living the Truth.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: "In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. the physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher. On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: “In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. the physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher. On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother is dealing with the Ignorance in the fields of the
"The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine — or, it may be said, she is the Divine in its consciousness-force.” *The Mother
“The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine—or, it may be said, she is the Divine in its consciousness-force.” The Mother
The Mother: “Krishna represents both the universal Godhead and the immanent Godhead, he whom one can meet within one’s being and in all that constitutes the manifested world. And do you want to know why he is always represented as a child? It is because he is in constant progression. To the extent that the world is perfected, his play is also perfected—what was the play of yesterday will no longer be the play of tomorrow; his play will become more and more harmonious, benign and joyful to the extent that the world becomes capable of responding to it and enjoying it with the Divine.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
::: The Mother: "Krishna represents both the universal Godhead and the immanent Godhead, he whom one can meet within one"s being and in all that constitutes the manifested world.
The Mother: “Krishna represents both the universal Godhead and the immanent Godhead, he whom one can meet within one’s being and in all that constitutes the manifested world.
The Mother: "Man is the intermediary being between what is and what is to be realised.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *man"s
The Mother: “Man is the intermediary being between what is and what is to be realised.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
::: The Mother: "Of all the aspects of the Mother, Kali most powerfully expresses vibrant and active love, and despite her sometimes terrible aspect, she carries in herself the golden splendour of an all-powerful love.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15*.
The Mother: “Of all the aspects of the Mother, Kali most powerfully expresses vibrant and active love, and despite her sometimes terrible aspect, she carries in herself the golden splendour of an all-powerful love.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: "OM is the signature of the Lord.” *Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “OM is the signature of the Lord.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother or myself send a force. If there is no openness, the force may be thrown back or returned (unless we put a great force which it is not always adwsablc to do) as from an obstruc- tion or resistance ::: if there is some openness, the result may be partial or slow ; if there is the full openness or receptivity, then the result may be immediate. Of course there are things that cannot be removed all at once, being an old part of the nature, but with receptivity these also can be more effectively and rapidly dealt with. Some people are so open that even by writing they get free before the book or letter reaches us.
::: The Mother: "Perfection is not a maximum or an extreme. It is an equilibrium and a harmonisation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “Perfection is not a maximum or an extreme. It is an equilibrium and a harmonisation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: "Perseverance is patience in action.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
::: The Mother: "Progress is the sign of the divine influence in creation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “Progress is the sign of the divine influence in creation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.**
The Mother: "Radha"s consciousness symbolises perfect attachment to the Divine.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “Radha’s consciousness symbolises perfect attachment to the Divine.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “Savitri [the poem] is a mantra for the transformation of the world.” Spoken to Udar. Savitri’s.
The Mother: “Savitri [the poem] is a mantra for the transformation of the world.” Spoken to Udar
The Mother: "Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3.
The Mother: “Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3.
The Mother: "That which can easily change its form is ‘plastic". Figuratively, it is suppleness, a capacity of adaptation to circumstances and necessities.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 4.
The Mother: "The Avatar: the supreme Divine manifested in an earthly form — generally a human form — for a definite purpose.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
The Mother: “The Avatar: the supreme Divine manifested in an earthly form—generally a human form—for a definite purpose.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: "The certitude of the Victory gives an infinite patience with the maximum of energy.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
The Mother: “The certitude of the Victory gives an infinite patience with the maximum of energy.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: ‘There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical body – they have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount. . . the Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I don"t know what has become of him. As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted but he found it disgusting!
The Mother: ‘There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical body—they have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount. . . the Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I don’t know what has become of him. As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted but he found it disgusting!
The Mother: "The snake is not the symbol of power but of energy, and just as there are obscure and perverted energies, so too the snake can be the symbol of unregenerate and anti-divine forces.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
The Mother: “The snake is not the symbol of power but of energy, and just as there are obscure and perverted energies, so too the snake can be the symbol of unregenerate and anti-divine forces.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother "The sun is the symbol of the Divine in the physical nature” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3
The Mother”The sun is the symbol of the Divine in the physical nature” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3
The Mother: “The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations—whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul—and simply formulating the plan of action—in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations—it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.
The Mother: "The Truth is something living, moving, expressing itself at each second, and it is one way of approaching the Supreme.” Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 15.*
The Mother: “The Truth is something living, moving, expressing itself at each second, and it is one way of approaching the Supreme.” Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 15.
The Mother: "The universe is a finite whole, but its content is infinite; the changes which occur in this infinity result from the action of Essence on substance, from the penetration, the permeation of quantity by quality, which brings about a constant and progressive organisation and reorganisation of the content of the universe.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
The Mother: “The universe is a finite whole, but its content is infinite; the changes which occur in this infinity result from the action of Essence on substance, from the penetration, the permeation of quantity by quality, which brings about a constant and progressive organisation and reorganisation of the content of the universe.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “The vital is the dynamism of action. It is the seat of the will, of impulses, desires, revolts, etc.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother (to a young person): "It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” Some Answers from the Mother, MCW *Vol. 16.
The Mother (to a young person): “It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” Some Answers from the Mother, MCW Vol. 16.
The Mother (to a young person): “It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” The Mother—Collected Works, Centenary Ed., Vol. 16—Some Answers from the Mother
::: The Mother (to a young person): "It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” The Mother - Collected Works, Centenary Ed., Vol. 16 - Some Answers from the Mother*
The Mother: "To be humble means for the mind, the vital and the body never to forget that without the Divine they know nothing, are noting and can do nothing; with the Divine they are nothing but ignorance, chaos and impotence. The Divine alone is Truth, Life, Power, Love, Felicity.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
*The Mother: "To conquer the Adversary is not a small thing. One must have a greater power than his to vanquish him. But one can liberate oneself totally from his influence. And from the minute one is completely free from his influence, one"s self-giving can be total. And with the self-giving comes joy, long before the Adversary is truly vanquished and disappears.”
The Mother: “To conquer the Adversary is not a small thing. One must have a greater power than his to vanquish him. But one can liberate oneself totally from his influence. And from the minute one is completely free from his influence, one’s self-giving can be total. And with the self-giving comes joy, long before the Adversary is truly vanquished and disappears.”
The Mother: “Transformation. The change by which all the elements and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth.”
::: The Mother: "True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: “True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.**
The Mother: "True humility consists in knowing that the Supreme Consciousness, the Supreme Will alone exists and that the I is not.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
The Mother: “True humility consists in knowing that the Supreme Consciousness, the Supreme Will alone exists and that the I is not.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
The Mother: Unity does not come from any exterior disposition, but by becoming conscious of the eternal Oneness.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: Unity does not come from any exterior disposition, but by becoming conscious of the eternal Oneness.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: "Will: power of consciousness turned towards effectuation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.*
The Mother: “Will: power of consciousness turned towards effectuation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
The Mother: "Wisdom cannot be acquired except through union with the Divine Consciousness.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
The Mother: “Wisdom cannot be acquired except through union with the Divine Consciousness.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
::: The Mother: "With the Divine"s Love is the power of Transformation. It has this power because it is for the sake of Transformation that it has given itself to the world and manifested everywhere. Not only into man but into all the atoms of Matter it has infused itself in order to bring the world back to the original Truth. The moment you open to it, you also receive its power of Transformation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother: “With the Divine’s Love is the power of Transformation. It has this power because it is for the sake of Transformation that it has given itself to the world and manifested everywhere. Not only into man but into all the atoms of Matter it has infused itself in order to bring the world back to the original Truth. The moment you open to it, you also receive its power of Transformation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
"The Devi is the Divine Shakti — the Consciousness and Power of the Divine, the Mother and Energy of the worlds. All powers are hers. Sometimes Devi-power may mean the power of the universal World-Force; but this is only one side of the Shakti.” Letters on Yoga
“The Devi is the Divine Shakti—the Consciousness and Power of the Divine, the Mother and Energy of the worlds. All powers are hers. Sometimes Devi-power may mean the power of the universal World-Force; but this is only one side of the Shakti.” Letters on Yoga
The direct opening of the psychic centre is easy only when the ego-centricity is greatly diminished and also if there is a strong bhakti for the Mother. A spiritual humility and a sense of submission and dependence is necessary.
::: "The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine — which is the Mother of all things.” *The Mother
“The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine—which is the Mother of all things.” The Mother
The feeling (not merely the idea or tbe aspiration) that all the life and the work are the Mother’s and a strong joy of the vital nature in this consecration and surrender. A consequent calm content and disappearance of egoistic attachment to the work and its personal results, but at the same time a peat joy in the work and in the use of the capacities for the divine purpose. , .
::: "The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga
“The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga
— the Grace of the Divine Mother and on your side an inner state made up of faith, sincerity and surrender. Let your faith be pure, cancfid and perfect. An egoistic faith in the mental and vital being tainted by arabidoo, pride, vanity, mental arrogance, vital self-will, personal demand, desire for petty satisfaction of the lower nature is a low and smokc-obscurcd flame that cannot bum upwards to heaven. Regard your life as given you only for the divine work and to help in the dirine manifestation.
“The Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies which she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the universe, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing substance; on the other, by the reascending current of the same energies she leads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its evolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there or here put on its divine character.” The Synthesis of Yoga
The last stage of this perfection will come when you are com* pletely identified with the Divine Mother and feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being, hstwmeM, sen'ani or worker but truly a child and eternal portion of her conscious- ness and force. Always she will be in you and you in her ; it will be your constant, simple and natural experience that all your thought and seeing and action, your very breathing or moving come from her and are here. You will know and see and feel that you are a person and power formed by her out of herself, put out from her for the play and yet always safe in her, being of her being, consciousness of her consciousness, force of her force, ananda of her Ananda. When this condition is entire and her supramental energies can freely move you then you will be perfect in divine works; knowledge, will, action will become sure, simple, luminous, spontaneous, flawless, an outflow from the Supreme, a divine movement of the Eternal.
“The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist.”“The Mother
The more complete y-our faith, sincerity and surrender, the more will grace and protection be with you. And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother arc with you, what is there lliat can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all diiliculties, obstacles and dangers ; surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible. Its touch can turn difficulties into oppor- tunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaltering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its ciTect is sure, a thing decreed. Inevitable and irresistible.
The more complete your faith, sincerity and surrender, the mote will grace and protection be with you. And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother are with you, what is there that can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all difficulties, obstacles and dangers ; surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible. Its touch can turn difficulties into oppor- tunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaltering strength.
::: "The most usual form of power is control over things, person, events, forces.” The Mother
“The most usual form of power is control over things, person, events, forces.” The Mother
"The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe.” The Mother
“The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe.” The Mother
“The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.
“The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother
The power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guid- ing one’s sight and will and action;
"There is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy one and it is the better of the two — a path in which one goes forward in absolute reliance on the Mother, fearing nothing, sorrowing over nothing. Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and confidence and joy. If difficulty comes, even that can be faced with a smile.” Letters on Yoga
“There is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy one and it is the better of the two—a path in which one goes forward in absolute reliance on the Mother, fearing nothing, sorrowing over nothing. Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and confidence and joy. If difficulty comes, even that can be faced with a smile.” Letters on Yoga
The true love for the Divine is a self-giving, free of demand, full of submission and surrender ; it makes no claim, imposes no condition, strikes no bargain, indulges in no violences of jealousy or pride or anger — for these things arc not in its composition. In return the Divine Mother also gives herself, but freely — and this represents itself in an inner giving — hei presence in your mind, your vital, your physical consciousness, her power recreating you in the divine nature, taking up aU the move'ments of your being and Erecting them towards perfection and fulfilment, her love enveloping you and carrying you in its arms Godwards.
"The Truth is not linear but global: it is not successive but simultaneous. Therefore it cannot be expressed in words: it has to be lived.” Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 15.
“The Truth is not linear but global: it is not successive but simultaneous. Therefore it cannot be expressed in words: it has to be lived.” Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 15.
thirst ::: Madhav: “… all the power, all the knowledge that the world can give us are products of time, products of the movements of time. Truly they cannot satisfy the sacred thirst of the spirit. Mark the words ‘sacred thirst’ (III. 1. 305.). Mother uses the word ‘thirst’ so often; it is an intense aspiration that cannot be satisfied, cannot be fulfilled by the gifts of time; it can be fulfilled only by the gifts of what is beyond time, of what is eternal. The hunger of the soul in us can be satisfied only by a response from the Eternal.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Three ways of the Mothers bring ; There arc three ways of being of the Mother of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of oneness with the Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original supreme
To be open is simply to be so turned to the Mother that her
to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspira- tion, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life.
TRANSCENDENT MOTHER. ::: This is what is termed the
transformation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body — and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended — they can only be mended by transformation.” *Letters on Yoga
"‘Transformation" is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind") to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change — the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” *Letters on Yoga
"It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
The Mother: "Transformation. The change by which all the elements and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth.”
"One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
Trinity ::: Madhav: “The Trinity is Sat-Chit-Ananda, the triple formulation of the Reality as Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.” The Book of the Divine Mother
"True sincerity consists in following the way because you cannot do otherwise, in consecrating yourself to the divine life because you cannot do otherwise, in endeavouring to transform your being and emerge into the Light because you cannot do otherwise, because it is the very reason for which you live.” *Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
“True sincerity consists in following the way because you cannot do otherwise, in consecrating yourself to the divine life because you cannot do otherwise, in endeavouring to transform your being and emerge into the Light because you cannot do otherwise, because it is the very reason for which you live.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
"Truth is a difficult and strenuous conquest. One must be a real warrior to make this conquest, a warrior who fears nothing, neither enemies nor death, for with or against everybody, with or without a body, the struggle continues and will end by Victory.” Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 15.*
“Truth is a difficult and strenuous conquest. One must be a real warrior to make this conquest, a warrior who fears nothing, neither enemies nor death, for with or against everybody, with or without a body, the struggle continues and will end by Victory.” Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 15.
Two transformations ::: The first is when the psychic being comes forward and controls and changes the nature. The second is the descent of the Mother’s consciousness from above the head and its transformation of the whole being and nature.
universal Mother :::
Until you are capable of this complete dynamic identification, you have to regard yourself as a soul and body created for her service, one who does all for her sake. Even if the idea of the separate worker Is strong in you and you feel that it is you who do the act, yet it must be done for her. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankeriog after personal profit, all stipulation of self- regarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward ; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the ful- filment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness and calm and strength and bliss. The joy of service and the joy of inner groxvth through works is the suffi- cient recompense of the sefless worker.
vision ::: “Visions come under the head of experiences, unless they fix themselves and are accompanied by a realisation of which they are as it were the support.” Sri Aurobindo ‘The Mother’
way, the upward ::: Sri Aurobindo: "For the gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the infinite Mother; the way to immortality is the upward way of the gods, the way of the Truth, a journey, an ascent by which there is a growth into the law of the Truth, rtasya panthâh.” The Renaissance in India
“What people mean by the formless svarûpa of the Mother,—they means usually her universal aspect. It is when she is experienced as a universal Existence and Power spread through the universe in which and by which all live. When one feels that Presence one begins to feel a universal peace, light, power, bliss without limits—that is her svarûpa.” The Mother
“What the ’void’ feels as a clutch is felt by the Mother only as a reminding finger laid on her cheek. It is one advantage of the expression ‘as if’ that it leaves the field open for such variation. It is intended to suggest without saying it that behind the sombre void is the face of a mother. The two other ‘as if’s have the same motive and I do not find them jarring upon me. The second is at a sufficient distance from the first and it is not obtrusive enough to prejudice the third which more nearly follows….” Letters on Savitri
“When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother.” Letters on Yoga
When you ask for the Mother, you roust feel that it is she who is demanding through you a very little of what belongs to her and the man from whom you ask will be judged by his response.
White light IS the Mother s lighL Wherever Jt descends or enters, it brings peace, puniy, silence and the openness to the higher forces It is her own characteristic power, that of the
White light IS the light of the Mother (the Divine Cons ciQusness) in which all others are contained and from which the) can be manifested
winged ::: Madhav: “Winged marvel is the soul.” The Book of the Divine Mother
wing ::: n. **1. Either of the two forelimbs of most birds and of bats, corresponding to the human arms, that are specialized for flight. 2. Something likened to a bird"s wing. 3. Theatr. The space offstage to the right or left of the acting area in a theatre. 4. In one"s care or tutelage. wings, god-wings, moth-wings, soul-wings. v. 5. To travel on or as if on wings, fly; soar. 6. Fig. To enable to fly, move rapidly, etc.; lend speed or celerity to. wings, winged, far-winging.**
wisdom ::: 1. The quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgement as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight. 2. Accumulated knowledge or erudition or enlightenment. Wisdom, wisdom"s, Wisdom"s, wisdom-cry, wisdom-self, Wisdom-Splendour, wisdom-works, All-Wisdom, Mother-wisdom, Mother-Wisdom, Mother-Wisdom"s.
Work and consciousness ; The rememberance and conscious- ness in work have to come by degrees, you must not expect to have it all at once ; nobody can get it all at once. It comes in two ways ::: first, if one practises remembering the Mother and oUcring the work to her each time one docs something (not all the time one is doing, but at the beginning or whenever one can remember), then that slowly becomes easy and habitual to the nature. Secondly, by the meditation an inner consciousness begins to develop which, after a time, not at once or suddenly, becomes more and more auloraatically permanent. One feels this as a separate consciousness from that outer which works. At first this separate consciousness is not felt when one is not work- ing, but as soon as the work stops one feels it was there all the time watching from behind ; afterwards it begins to be felt during the work itself, as if there tverc'two parts of oneself ■— one watching and supporting from behind and remembering the
Work for the Mother done with the right concentration on her is as much a sadhana as meditation and inner experiences.
World-Mother
world-Mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies which she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the universe, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing substance; on the other, by the reascending current of the same energies she leads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its evolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there or here put on its divine character.” The Synthesis of Yoga
**World-Mother"s.**
You must neither turn with an ascetic shrinking from the money power, the means it gives and the objects it brings, nor cherish a rHjasic attachment to them or a spirit of enslaving self-indulgence in their gratifications. Regard wealth simply as a power to be won back for the Mother and placed at her service.
KEYS (10k)
2 The Mother?
1 Marcus Aurelius
1 J R R Tolkien
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
78 Timothy Ferriss
67 Mother Teresa
31 The Mother
16 Timothy Snyder
16 Timothy Leary
8 Timothy J Keller
4 Rumi
4 Mother Jones
4 Louisa May Alcott
4 Anonymous
3 Kristen Ashley
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2 Tony Robbins
2 Toba Beta
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2 Timothy Keller
2 Thomas Hobbes
2 The Mother?
1:Does the moth seek darkness once it has seen the light? ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
2:Life is like a moth which in summer at nightfall turns about a lamp; there it finds at first a fugitive joy, but afterwards death. ~ Zeisho Aishako, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
3:I am Prometheus under the vulture's beak,
Man the discoverer of the undying fire,
In the flame he kindled burning like a moth ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
4:Apotheosised, transfigured by wisdom's touch,
Her days became a luminous sacrifice;
An immortal moth in happy and endless fire,
She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.
A captive Life wedded her conqueror.
In his wide sky she built her world anew;
She gave to mind's calm pace the motor's speed,
To thinking a need to live what the soul saw,
To living an impetus to know and see.
His splendour grasped her, her puissance to him clung;
She crowned the Idea a king in purple robes,
Put her magic serpent sceptre in Thought's grip,
Made forms his inward vision's rhythmic shapes
And her acts the living body of his will.
A flaming thunder, a creator flash,
His victor Light rode on her deathless Force;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth wings, like rose-petals. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 2:Kill not the moth nor butterfly, For the Last Judgement draweth nigh. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 3:I can't smell moth balls, I find it too difficult to get their tiny legs apart ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 4:But the good deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 5:Those giants of old, the ancient Rishis, who never walked but strode, of whom if you were to think but for a moment you would shrivel up into a moth, they sir, had time-and you have no time! ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 6:The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee! ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 7:The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr. McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon& 8:The bats live in a world of echoes. Just as in the human world every object has a characteristic shape and colour, so in the bat world every object has its echo-pattern. A bat can tell the difference between a tasty moth species and a poisonous moth species by the different echoes returning from their slender wings. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 9:Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 10:It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are as significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less a moth eaten man who grinds an organ - and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 11:Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 12:If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:painted moth-eyebrows, ~ Guy Gavriel Kay, #NFDB
2:Oops, the moth woman mumbles ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
3:Be the flame, not the moth. ~ Giacomo Casanova, #NFDB
4:Moth to a flame I follow. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
5:Judge the moth by the beauty of the candle ~ Rumi, #NFDB
6:atreasures in heaven, where neither moth ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
7:...like a moth lost in dawn's light. ~ Gis le Pineau, #NFDB
8:The white moth to the closing vine, ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
9:The moth don't care when he sees the flame ~ Aimee Mann, #NFDB
10:The desire of the moth for the star ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
11:What the Man-Moth fears most he must do. ~ Elizabeth Bishop, #NFDB
12:Grandma sent you an angel moth from outer space? ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
13:Her lips were drawn to his like a moth to a flame. ~ Anya Seton, #NFDB
14:...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do.. ~ Elizabeth Bishop, #NFDB
15:her heart fluttered like a moth at a porch light. ~ Robyn Harding, #NFDB
16:I like the Moth podcast a lot. I listen to that. ~ Gillian Jacobs, #NFDB
17:The white moth of hope fluttered before her face. ~ Cornell Woolrich, #NFDB
18:Like a moth, Rene was attracted to the flame of fame ~ James D Bradley, #NFDB
19:Micah.” Collapsing, Moth Flight pressed her cheek to his. ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
20:together—“like a moth to a flame, there’d be nothing left. ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB
21:Fear can make a moth seem the size of a bull elephant. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
22:I was less a social butterfly than a social death’s-head moth. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
23:The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole. ~ A R Ammons, #NFDB
24:How, like a moth, the simple maid Still plays around the flame! ~ John Gay, #NFDB
25:As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a [person]. ~ John Chrysostom, #NFDB
26:loud laughter mixed with the chirp of crickets. A moth hit ~ Angela M Sanders, #NFDB
27:As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #NFDB
28:Moth: I gave you my life. Flame: I allowed you to kiss me. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
29:Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
30:Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth wings, like rose-petals. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
31:As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a [person]. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #NFDB
32:I am the moth and he is the flame, and I’m going to get burned. I know. ~ E L James, #NFDB
33:The candle burned the moth:
But soon it will vanish in its own fat. ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
34:Kill not the moth nor butterfly, For the Last Judgement draweth nigh. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
35:Thus hath the candle sing'd the moth. O these deliberate fools! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
36:We may hate each other, but we’re a part of each other. Moth to flame. ~ Lauren Layne, #NFDB
37:A receipt blown crazily across the parking lot, was, perhaps, a moth. ~ Rae Armantrout, #NFDB
38:Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgment draweth nigh. ~ William Blake,#NFDB
39:Moth: I gave you my life.
Flame: I allowed you to kiss me. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,#NFDB
40:And when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flickering out ~ W B Yeats, #NFDB
41:I was a moth to his flame. And that always worked out so well for the moth. ~ Deborah Wilde, #NFDB
42:And when white moths were on the wing
And moth-like stars were flickering out ~ W B Yeats,#NFDB
43:Being kissed on the back
of the knee is a moth
at the windowscreen.... ~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
44:have been at a great feast of languages,” says Moth, “and stolen the scraps.”) ~ Clive James, #NFDB
45:The atoms become like a moth, seeking out the region of higher laser intensity. ~ Steven Chu, #NFDB
46:Battered at my dreams like a moth trying to destroy itself in a lantern’s flame. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
47:Hurt no living thing: Ladybird, nor butterfly, Nor moth with dusty wing. ~ Christina Rossetti, #NFDB
48:I can't smell moth balls, I find it too difficult to get their tiny legs apart ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
49:Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where y moth and rust [5] destroy ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
50:into the moth that haunts my memories: black wings, blue body—the size of a bird. ~ A G Howard, #NFDB
51:And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out... ~ W B Yeats,#NFDB
52:Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; Each to his passion; what's in a name? ~ Helen Hunt Jackson, #NFDB
53:moth·er·craft n. ARCHAIC skill in or knowledge of looking after children as a mother. ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
54:What a moth might see from birth to death if black were white and white were black. ~ Stan Brakhage, #NFDB
55:28 Man [3] wastes away like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
56:An idea was knocking about in the back of her head, like a moth at a dimly lit window. ~ Sarah Hilary, #NFDB
57:Like a moth to a flame we become helpless to the beautiful ghosts that true love sheds. ~ Ryan O Neal, #NFDB
58:Ben, why should anybody want that much power?"
"Why does a moth fly toward light? ~ Robert A Heinlein,#NFDB
59:I don't mind being a moth. I would probably start eating silk if it meant that I could fly. ~ Marie Rutkoski, #NFDB
60:I don’t mind being a moth. I would probably start eating silk if it meant that I could fly. ~ Marie Rutkoski, #NFDB
61:Man, I've missed you," Moth purred, like the low note on a cello. "But you gotta fuck off. ~ Greg Van Eekhout, #NFDB
62:Are you sure?” Moth Flight ran her paws over the kit’s white-and-yellow pelt, feeling for injuries. ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
63:Between our birth and death we may touch understanding, As a moth brushes a window with its wing ~ Christopher Fry, #NFDB
64:I am sorry to shock you," she said. "But the moth eats the garment somewhat in five-and thirty years. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
65:It occurred to me that, given the life span of a moth, one kid’s twitch must take a year to complete. ~ Karen Russell, #NFDB
66:it wasn’t just any shout, it was only shouts of distress or pain that brought him like a moth to fire. ~ Wendy C Fries, #NFDB
67:Moth to candle,straw to flame,you are nothing butmaterials for burning. ~ Dorothy Walters#PoetryTime #poetrycommunity 🙏, #NFDB
68:On Rahel's heart Pappachi's moth snapped open its somber wings. Out. In. And lifted its legs. Up. Down. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
69:a sparrow-size moth with a blue body and black wings, splayed on a flower between a slant of sun and shade. ~ A G Howard, #NFDB
70:The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing now but mask and ghost. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
71:The problem with cats is that they get the same exact look whether they see a moth or an ax-murderer. ~ Paula Poundstone, #NFDB
72:...photographs of girl-children; some gaudy moth or butterfly, still alive, safely pinned to the wall. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
73:Lucia was flirtatious and a little outrageous and the nerd in me was drawn to that like a moth to a flame. ~ Kathryn Nolan, #NFDB
74:I feel like a moth drawn to the flame.” Contact would hurt, might be fatal, and yet she couldn’t stop herself. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
75:Everything is strange the first time you do it, Moth.
Second time makes it normal. Third time it's boring. ~ Mike Carey,#NFDB
76:I have a little brown cocoon of an idea that may possibly expand into a magnificent moth of fulfilment. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, #NFDB
77:My sister don't talk much. When she does, it's only to me, in moth-winged whispers, and only when we're alone. ~ Emily Murdoch, #NFDB
78:Why does a moth fly toward a light? The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
79:A pearl in the shell does not touch the ocean.Be a pearl without a shell,a mindful flooding,candle turned moth,love lived. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
80:Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl. ~ Mary Oliver,#NFDB
81:Like the moth whose feet are caught in the molten wax of a candle, Rouget rapidly used up his remaining energy. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
82:She had been a carefree, independent, irreverent girl, and Spencer had been drawn to her like a moth to a flame. ~ Natasha Anders, #NFDB
83:Your silence furnishes a dark house.
But even at the risk of burning,
the moth always seeks the light. ~ Elizabeth Acevedo,#NFDB
84:He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
85:This web of lies was growing so convoluted, so branching, and so delicate that a moth’s fart might knock it to pieces— ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
86:In daylight and up close, he was merciless, all smiles and freckles, the brightest, boldest flame a moth could wish for. ~ Alexis Hall, #NFDB
87:The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an axe-murderer. ~ Paula Poundstone, #NFDB
88:A moth is just a butterfly in love with the moon... So sad that their love can never be that he forgot how to be BEAUTIFUL. ~ John Allison, #NFDB
89:Talk about insanity. Being attracted to deVries was like a moth saying, "Hey, let's go check out that awesome bonfire". ~ Cherise Sinclair, #NFDB
90:Despite her love of pineapple on pizza, Lark was perfection. I felt like a love starved moth drawn to the light of her smile. ~ Bijou Hunter, #NFDB
91:The moth on Rahel’s heart lifted a downy leg. Then put it back. Its little leg was cold. A little less her mother loved her. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
92:How little he knew about the rules of this world which he had crashed against so casually, like a moth bumping against a light! ~ L P Hartley, #NFDB
93:My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all. ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
94:Announcing your death should be like announcing that you are a lunar moth: It must be done quietly or it will not be believed. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
95:I was hopelessly drawn to him like a moth to a flame... I had a feeling I would get burned by Carter Morgan, but I didn't care. ~ Adriane Leigh, #NFDB
96:I know not by what power I am drawn to you, but it is as a moth is drawn to the flame, and I cannot fight it, I must be consumed. ~ Andrea Zuvich, #NFDB
97:Life is like a moth which in summer at nightfall turns about a lamp; there it finds at first a fugitive joy, but afterwards death. ~ Zeisho Aishako, #NFDB
98:representation is vital otherwise the butterfly surrounded by a group of moths unable to see itself will keep trying to become the moth ~ Rupi Kaur, #NFDB
99:no life is a line, and hers was an uneven orbit around a dark star, a moth circling a dead bulb, searching for the light it once held. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
100:The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
101:I have no news
of my coming
or passing away--
the whole thing
happened quicker
than a breath;
ask no questions
of the moth. ~,#NFDB
102:Look to your heart that flutters in and out like a moth. God is not indifferent to your need. You have a thousand prayers but God has one. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
103:She had big, vague eyes and a big, vague smile, and was always very busy in the way that a moth crashing about in a lampshade is busy. ~ Frances Hardinge, #NFDB
104:But the good deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
105:I love women. I love all the bright and attractive people and things of this world, the flame and also the moth, the dancer and the dance. ~ Yves Saint Laurent, #NFDB
106:Pleasure's a Moth, that sleeps by day And dances by false glare at night; But Joy's a Butterfly, that loves To spread its wings in Nature's light. ~ W H Davies, #NFDB
107:He was wearing a T-shirt that said “Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle.” He was my candle, but I was not his. I decided I was okay with that. ~ Sarah Black, #NFDB
108:Ordinarily, her love affairs are entered into skittishly, sometimes reluctantly. She doesn't dive into bed but flutters in like a wayward moth. ~ Maggie Shipstead, #NFDB
109:And I had wings fluttering away inside me all right. Big fat moth wings. You trapped me easily, drew me toward you like I was already in the net. ~ Lucy Christopher, #NFDB
110:Look to your heart
that flutters in and out like a moth.
God is not indifferent to your need.
You have a thousand prayers
but God has one. ~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
111:representation is vital otherwise the butterfly surrounded by a group of moths unable to see itself will keep trying to become the moth - representation ~ Rupi Kaur, #NFDB
112:Do you feel drawn to me too?” His smile faded and he looked straight at me. An electric energy passed between us. “Like a moth to a flame,” he said. I ~ Sarra Cannon, #NFDB
113:[Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.] ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
114:Maybe I didn't try as hard as I ought when he started calling you
names. Serves him right, the nasty old turd. Punch him again, Moth" - Peaseblossom ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
115:The male ghost looked God-awful old and starved and moth-eaten. The female ghost looked young enough to be his daughter, sleek, bouncy, and full of hell ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
116:I came home one night, some month ago, and I went to the closet in my bedroom...and a moth ate my sports jacket. He was laying on the floor, nauseous, y'know. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
117:She's under duress," Peaseblossom said.
"I don't care if she's under duress, over it, or alongside it," Moth said. "Nothing in this world supersedes cake. ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
118:She tilts her head back, exposing her neck. Like a moth to a flame, I bring my mouth to that golden skin. She lets a moan escape as I explore the feel of her. ~ Heidi Acosta, #NFDB
119:Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him. ~ Vikram Seth, #NFDB
120:I came home one night, some month ago, and I went to the closet in my bedroom...and a moth ate my sports jacket.
He was laying on the floor, nauseous, y'know. ~ Woody Allen,#NFDB
121:She had dreamed of a separated man, a sad austere secluded man, a man with a great sorrow, an ascetic. She was a moth that wanted to be burnt by a cold cold flame. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
122:The moth unwitting rushes on the fire, Through ignorance the fish devours the bait, We men know well the foes that lie in wait, Yet cannot shun the meshes of desire. ~ Bhartrhari, #NFDB
123:All the while he's been moving towards her, both stoat to rabbit and moth to flame. And she's staring at him, flame-bright and rabbit-scared, too brave to look away. ~ Ellen Kushner, #NFDB
124:I am Prometheus under the vulture’s beak,
Man the discoverer of the undying fire,
In the flame he kindled burning like a moth ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
125:representation
is vital
otherwise the butterfly
surrounded by a group of moths
unable to see itself
will keep trying to become the moth
- representation ~ Rupi Kaur,#NFDB
126:When she opened the window, a giant moth blew in. It beat a hasty path to the ceiling light and landed against it with a thunk. “I know the feeling,” Stevie said to it. ~ Maureen Johnson, #NFDB
127:I need you like - like light. You're light, all right - like a flame to a moth. I told you once that you shouldn't mess with forbidden things - I should have taken my own advice. ~ L J Smith, #NFDB
128:There was a moth in there, and it still had its wings crumpled up, and it was just starting to pump its wings up. Life continues in lots of places, and life is a magical thing. ~ Laurel Clark, #NFDB
129:By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
130:The wall is silence, the grass is sleep, Tall trees of peace their vigil keep, And the Fairy of Dreams with moth-wings furled. Plays soft on her flute to the drowsy world. ~ Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, #NFDB
131:The door opened. The guard had brought two bigger friends with him. They loomed at Moth, but Moth was simply the best loomer Daniel had ever met, and he made them look ridiculous. ~ Greg Van Eekhout, #NFDB
132:Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both. ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
133:I leave the psychiatric hospital a whole moth after arriving and it is strange: although I have been looking forward to this day the whole time I have been here, I am suddenly afraid. ~ Tabitha Suzuma, #NFDB
134:Over the years, the kitchens I grew up in and around continued to draw me in, like a moth to a flame, as though I might recapture whatever innocence I’d lost in that warm, fragrant space. ~ Sasha Martin, #NFDB
135:What was the power that turned the worm into a moth? It was greater than any power the Builders had had, he was sure of that. The power that ran the city of Ember was feeble by comparison... ~ Jeanne DuPrau, #NFDB
136:A day will come when men will discover an alphabet in the eyes of chalcedonies, in the markings of the moth, and will learn in astonishment that every spotted snail has always been a poem. ~ Alejo Carpentier, #NFDB
137:I’m a moth to his flame and it frightens me how willingly I’d burn my wings off for him. Destroy the world. Follow him to Hell. It’s scary to feel like you can’t breathe without someone. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
138:Into the mercy seat I climb My head is shaved, my head is wired And like a moth that tries To enter the bright eye I go shuffling out of life Just to hide in death awhile And anyway I never lied. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
139:We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day. ~ Leif Enger, #NFDB
140:I try to make very careful decisions about what I choose to do, and it's - I know that unfortunately one of the misperceptions about me, I think, is that I'm sort of a moth to the limelight. ~ Monica Lewinsky, #NFDB
141:A day will come when man will discover an alphabet in the eyes of the chalcedonies, in the marking of the moth, and will learn in astonishment that every spotted snail has always been a poem. ~ Alejo Carpentier, #NFDB
142:INTO HER DARKNESS, a churning synaesthesia, where her pain was the taste of old iron, scent of melon, wings of a moth brushing her cheek. She was unconscious, and he was barred from her dreams. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
143:There’s a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears,” he offered. “That’s all they eat or drink.” “What kind of tears? Whose tears?” “The tears of large land mammals, about our size. ~ Thomas Harris, #NFDB
144:Those giants of old, the ancient Rishis, who never walked but strode, of whom if you were to think but for a moment you would shrivel up into a moth, they sir, had time-and you have no time! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
145:I spotted a small toad and concentrated on it, willing it to turn to a moth. It started to swell like a tiny green balloon, but suddenly burst, spewing entrails that reached the hem of my dress. ~ Melissa Wright, #NFDB
146:You're a little tall to play Ariel." said Moth.
"And you have way too many muscles," said Mustardseed.
"But you might be able to pull it off," Cobweb said, "if you can look really constipated. ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
147:What did moths bump into before the electric light bulb was invented? Boy, the lightbulb really screwed the moth up didn't it? Are there moths on their way to the sun now going, It's gonna be worth it!. ~ Bill Hicks, #NFDB
148:There are the dirtstreaked glass panes of the bay windows, there are the heavy, moth-eaten drapes, and there, half hidden by the curtains, pointed face peeking out with that familiar worried look, is Elsie. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
149:There was a noise like a whip-crack. Snape stumbled; he was wearing a long, lace-trimmed dress and a towering hat topped with a moth-eaten vulture, and swinging a huge crimson handbag from his hand. There ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
150:When I unwrapped the moth from its funeral shroud, it was the same startlingly lovely creature as on the day I had entombed it. Everything about it seemed beautiful and perfect, and so utterly unchanged. ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
151:But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” —MATTHEW 6:20–21 ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
152:The winter passes and the warm winds of May made me long to wander again. The whistling of a locomotive on a still night had a lure, unexplainable, yet strong, like the light which leads a moth to destruction. ~ Jim Tully, #NFDB
153:The world knows caterpillar becomes butterfly but they don’t care that it also becomes a moth. One is diurnal another nocturnal.Human once awakened can change the view to change self from Angulimala to a Buddha ~ Milarepa, #NFDB
154:I am but as the spark that gleams for a moment,
His burning candle consumed me - the moth;
His wine overwhelmed my goblet,
The master of Rum transmuted my earth to gold
And set my ashes aflame. ~ Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
155:There are few things more tragic than the desire of the moth for the star; and it is a curious fact that the spectacle of a star almost invariably fills the most sensible moth with thoughts above his station. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
156:The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
157:No ties; no duty; no relief. Three filaments gone in the life-thread, fragile as the thread of the silk-moth, which has no organs by which it can nourish itself, but instead is born, and loves once, and then dies. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
158:The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death. ~ Richard Bachman, #NFDB
159:A singular moth flutters in through the wind baffles to the naked bulb above the kettle, cuspid, a drifting piece of loose ash on the white filament, paper burnt up, caught in the rising current from some fire unseen, unfelt. ~ Cynan Jones, #NFDB
160:A Moth The Hue Of This
841
A Moth the hue of this
Haunts Candles in Brazil.
Nature's Experience would make
Our Reddest Second pale.
Nature is fond, I sometimes think,
Of Trinkets, as a Girl.
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
161:We were passing the city cemetery. Adjoining it was a field occupied only by a couple of amiable and moth-eaten horses, and a grey tower. I asked what the tower was for. My grandfather answered that it held a giant’s arm. ~ Isobelle Carmody, #NFDB
162:I sure wasn't going to ask Aunt Sally, because if she told me once that getting your period was like a moth becoming a butterfly, she'd probably say that sexual intercourse was like a deer getting antlers or something. ~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, #NFDB
163:The sheer delight of peering through a magnifying glass at a mouse bite, a moth hole or the zigzag channel carved by a woodworm, while breathing in the acerbic fragrance of the mould. It has here he came alive; here in the past. ~ Dezs Kosztol nyi, #NFDB
164:No.” I’ve fallen asleep praying for you to look at me like this. To touch me like this. “Don’t break my heart.” Moth shadows glide above him in the mirrored ceiling, distracting me from the fierceness of his frown. “I’d cut mine out first. ~ A G Howard, #NFDB
165:he has not been false to me. He has always meant what he has said, when he was saying it. But he is weak and blind, and flies like a moth to the candle; one pities the poor moth, and would save him a stump of his wing if it be possible. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
166:Being young is like
being a moth, or alive I
bet-possibly:
I am burning, if I am learning any-
thing these days, it is that
The flames you keep touching when you're young,
you keep right ahead on touching when you're older. ~ Will Walton,#NFDB
167:She was clean": no piercings, tattoos, or scarifications. All the kids were now. And who could blame them, Alex thought, after watching three generations of flaccid tattoos droop like moth-eaten upholstery over poorly stuffed biceps and saggy asses? ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
168:No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wings. - Garraty's thoughts on death and dying, The Long walk ~ Richard Bachman, #NFDB
169:Her voice would die before she ran out of rage. She could scream a hole in her throat and come unraveled, fall to pieces like moth-chewed silk, and still, from the leftover shreds of her, the little pile of tatters, would pour forth this unending scream. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
170:PEASEBLOSSOM
A gloaming peace this evening with it brings
In the countryside where we lay our scene
Toad-ballad accompan'd, crickets sing,
and cupcake crumbs make fairy hands unclean.
An indignant Moth squeaked, "There were cupcakes?! ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
171:The moth prefers the moon and detests the sun, while the butterfly loves the sun and hides from the moon. Every living creature responds to light. But depending on the amount of light you have inside, determines which lamp in the sky your heart will swoon. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
172:There was a time when she had indulged in the hypothetical for hours a day, plotting the map that had led her here. But no life is a line, and hers was an uneven orbit around a dark star, a moth circling a dead bulb, searching for the light it once held. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
173:She and Harriet Warner were worlds apart not only in looks, but also their place on earth–a monarch butterfly and a luna moth. Each had been dropped into lives that were polar opposites, traveling along different longitudes lines destined never to intersect. ~ Karen White, #NFDB
174:The winged word. The mercurial word. The word that is both moth and lamp. The word that is itself and more. the associative word light with meanings. The word not netted by meaning. The exact word wide. The word not whore nor cenobite. The word unlied. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
175:Whenever I smelled the same perfume on other women, no matter where I was, I was instantly transported back to that feeling of discovery. The sensation of fingertips against old paper, whose surface was powdery and fragile, like the membrane of a moth’s wing. ~ Reif Larsen, #NFDB
176:Don't pretend to be a candle, be a moth. Know the power hidden in serving. We seem to have got stuck with external forms of politics and mistaking them to be nation-building. It is sacrifices, toil and valour that are seldom seen that truly make a nation. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
177:He just stared at me, his gaze intense. I couldn’t look away any more than I could move my arm. Energy crackled between us, and I felt a strange pull to him. Moth to flame. Magnet to magnet. Stupid girl to impossible, slightly mean witch boy. Wizard. Whatever. ~ Danielle Paige, #NFDB
178:The dusk had arrived on the wings of a night moth, silent and soft. The sky above me darkened to a deep, beautiful purple. Stars glowed high above, and below them, as if inspired by their light, tiny fireflies awoke and crawled from their shelter in the leaves. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
179:Uhhh, hey, Ma,” he says nervously. “What’re you doing out here?”
She puts her hands on her hips, her open sleeveless down jacket flying up on both sides like moth wings. “Apparently I’m bearing witness to an assault and battery on our house guest by a savage moron ~ Elle Casey,#NFDB
180:The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee! ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
181:Don’t pretend to be a candle, be a moth. Know the power hidden in serving. We seem to have got stuck with external forms of politics and mistaking them to be nation-building. It is sacrifices, toil and valour that is seldom shown or seen that truly makes a nation. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
182:Hurt No Living Thing
Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,#NFDB
183:She wondered what an unreleased soul, a soul-shaped stone on a funeral pyre, might look like. Like a starfish maybe. Or a millipede. Or a dappled moth with a living body and stone wings—poor moth—betrayed, held down by the very things that were meant to help it to fly. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
184:There was a grand piano, too, and Charles was playing, a glass of whiskey on the seat beside him. He was a little drunk; the Chopin was slurred and fluid, the notes melting sleepily into one another. A breeze stirred the heavy, moth-eaten velvet curtains, ruffling his hair. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
185:Don’t pretend to be a candle, be a moth. Know the power hidden in serving. We seem to have got stuck with external forms of politics and mistaking them to be nation-building. It is the sacrifices, toil and valour that and seldom shown or seen that truly makes a nation. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
186:By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
187:I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not:
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow? ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
188:The fluorescent light overhead hums and has a flicker that I sense more than see. There’s a constellation of dead bugs in the fixture’s plastic covering. The Bug Dipper. I squint my eyes and try to decide which one is the North Moth, the moth by which I could find my way home. ~ Melissa DeCarlo, #NFDB
189:Poetry is like an unexpected noise in the night: the creak of a door, a footstep on the porch, the soft scuffle of a moth against the screen, which rouses every sense to an instant alert. So comes poetry to the drowsy mind, which startles a moment, wonders, and returns to sleep. ~ Christopher Morley, #NFDB
190:There's something about Twitch.
He's just...raw.
Everything about him is raw. And gritty. And unbound.
He's a raging fire. And I'm a fragile moth fluttering into the flame. Sooner or later, I'm going to get burned. I know this.
Will I even survive the heat? ~ Belle Aurora,#NFDB
191:Consider the stars. Among them are no passions, no wars. They know neither love nor hatred. Did man but emulate the stars, would not his soul become clear and radiant as they are? But man's spirit draws him like a moth to the ephemera of this world, and in their heat he is consumed entire. ~ Sarah Monette, #NFDB
192:From the first time I saw you. You were beautiful and… you had this light to you. It drew me like a moth. I thought, This is a man powerful enough to let me protect him and strong enough to take me. I thought, with you, maybe sometimes I could let my guard down at last. Except you hated me. ~ Kim Fielding, #NFDB
193:Goldwing Moth
A goldwing moth is between the scissors and the ink bottle
on the desk.
Last night it flew hundreds of circles around a glass bulb
and a flame wire.
The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated
initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks.
~ Carl Sandburg,#NFDB
194:collect for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don't break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
195:Their sudden intimacy was like the explosive combustion that engulfs and consumes a moth that has fluttered too close to a candle flame; a completely unexpected turn of events that took both of them unawares and swept them irresistibly up and out of themselves as it hurled them into each other’s arms. ~ Jack Whyte, #NFDB
196:Riddle
A moth, I thogh, munching a word.
How marvellously weird! a worm
Digesting a mans sayings A sneakthief nibbling in the shadows
At the shape of a poet`s thunderous phrases How unutterably strange!
And the pilfering parasite none the wiser
For the words he has swallowed.
~ Anonymous,#NFDB
197:I’m a moth to his flame and it frightens me how willingly I’d burn my wings off for him. Destroy the world. Follow him to Hell. It’s scary to feel like you can’t breathe without someone. That a man has so much power over you because you love him as much as, if not more than, you care for yourself. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
198:The Lady made a few gestures around Bomanz—who looked pretty moth-eaten—and said a few words in a language I did not understand. Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin and One-Eye do it. Each has confided that he cannot follow the tongue the other uses. Maybe they make it up? ~ Glen Cook, #NFDB
199:The Sky A Silver"
the sky a silver
dissonance by the correct
fingers of April
resolved
into a
clutter of trite jewels
now like a moth with stumbling
wings flutters and flops along the
grass collides with trees and
houses and finally,
butts into the river ~ E E Cummings,#NFDB
200:I detest my past, and anyone else's. I detest resignation, patience, professional heroism and obligatory beautiful feelings. I also detest the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, voices making announcements, aerodynamism, boy scouts, the smell of moth balls, events of the moment, and drunken people. ~ Rene Magritte, #NFDB
201:The Nice Bloke The Glass Virgin The Invitation The Dwelling Place Feathers in the Fire Pure as the Lily The Invisible Cord The Gambling Man The Tide of Life The Girl The Cinder Path The Man Who Cried The Whip The Black Velvet Gown A Dinner of Herbs The Moth The Parson’s Daughter The Harrogate Secret ~ Catherine Cookson, #NFDB
202:19“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
203:The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr. McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon--Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already--lounged across the table, pushing a fourpenny packet of Player's Weights open and shut with his thumb. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
204:Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.51 ~ Tom Sedl ek, #NFDB
205:Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
206:19“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust [5] destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
207:Riddle
A moth, I thogh, munching a word.
How marvellously weird! a worm
Digesting a mans sayings A sneakthief nibbling in the shadows
At the shape of a poet`s thunderous phrases How unutterably strange!
And the pilfering parasite none the wiser
For the words he has swallowed.
~ Anonymous Americas,#NFDB
208:What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith, #NFDB
209:If my life were a book, I would have masking tape holding my hinges together. My pages would be loose, my edges tattered and my boards exposed, the front flyleaf torn and the leather mottled and moth-eaten. I'd have to take myself apart and put myself back together, as any good book restoration expert would do. ~ Kate Carlisle, #NFDB
210:19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust [24] destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
211:Beloved reader, set not your affections upon things of earth: but seek those things which are above, for here the moth devoureth, and the thief breaketh through, but there all joys are perpetual and eternal. The path of trouble is the way home. Lord, make this thought a pillow for many a weary head! ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
212:Not that food which entereth into the moth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
213:Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt. 6:19–21) ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
214:I went out to the hazel wood
because a fire was in my head
cut and peeled a hazel wand
and hooked a berry to a thread
and when white moths were on the wing
and moth-like stars were flickering out
I dropped the berry in a stream,
and caught a little silver trout....
(Song of Wandering Aengus) ~ W B Yeats,#NFDB
215:WHISPERS OF LOVE
Lover whispers to my ear,
"Better to be a prey than a hunter.
Make yourself My fool.
Stop trying to be the sun and become a speck!
Dwell at My door and be homeless.
Don't pretend to be a candle, be a moth,
so you may taste the savor of Life
and know the power hidden in serving. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
216:From 'the lesson of the moth': and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself ~ Don Marquis, #NFDB
217:I think all the songs [at Moth] are about different things, but if we were to speak about it as a whole, it's really about, it's about joy, and about sensuality and vulnerability and also fun, energy, living in New York in 2015, being out of control, wanting to be in control, failing! It's a sort of story of our lives. ~ Caroline Polachek, #NFDB
218:The Bookworm
A moth, I thought, munching a word.
How marvellously weird! a worm
Digesting a man's sayings -A sneakthief nibbling in the shadows
At the shape of a poet's thunderous phrases -How unutterably strange!
And the pilfering parasite none the wiser
For the words he has swallowed.
~ Anonymous Olde English,#NFDB
219:Maybe Hayli was a Moth, but for me she was the candle. I didn’t know why. I could never make sense of the way the world tipped sideways when she came into the room, or the way her smile put the sun to shame. She was just Hayli—lost but confident, unsure but dazzling. A wild-eyed girl with the joy of the stars in her veins. ~ J Leigh Bralick, #NFDB
220:And in my night confusion it is as if I can hear the leaves being gnawed, the forest being eaten alive, shred by shred. I cannot bear it. They are not mild, these moths. Their appetites are blindingly voracious, obsessive. An acquaintance has told me that the Navahos refer to someone with an emotional illness as “moth crazy. ~ Charles Baxter, #NFDB
221:Concerning Treasures 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust o consume and where thieves break in and steal, 20but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust o consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
222:I went to heaven, -
'Twas a small town,
Lit with a ruby,
Lathed with down.
Stiller than the fields
At the full dew,
Beautiful as pictures
No man drew.
People like the moth,
Of mechlin, frames,
Duties of gossamer,
And eider names.
Almost contented
I could be
'Mong such unique
Society. ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
223:Many people have a patchy, moth-eaten sense of how Indian writing in English developed: Dean Mahomet begat Raja Rao who begat Mulk Raj Anand, then there came G.V. Desani who begat Salman Rushdie, who begat Arundhati Roy and (each age gets the writers it deserves) so on, to the best-selling pulp fiction novelist Chetan Bhagat. But ~ Nilanjana Roy, #NFDB
224:Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
225:/Farsi Though burning has become an old habit for this heart, I dare not think of Your company. What would a moth mean to the fire that burns worlds? [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, Though burning has become an old habit for this heart
,#NFDB
226:In Hollywood, maybe only ten percent will make it and the other ninety percent try. This elusive dream of making it and being on top is the same story as the moth being drawn to the flame. The flame and it's attractiveness is something you'll never eliminate. Some will learn how to live in that environment and others will burn in it. ~ Conrad Hall, #NFDB
227:Remember Killer Moth, the most ingenuous rogue ever to defy the dynamic duo, Batman and Robin ?Perhaps you recall how the weird beam from the Moth Signal summoned the Gangland Guardian to the aid of desperate criminals ?And who can forget the eerie Moth Cave where new and startling implements of crime were produced by this evil genius ! ~ Bob Kane, #NFDB
228:He read aloud to me as I curled next to him, both of our bodies in a warm arc of light. For nearly ten years I’d wanted this…this exactly. Is he really here? I thought. Am I? Denys read on, his voice rising and falling, while a leopard moth that had got caught in the curtains stopped struggling for a moment, and realized it was free. ~ Paula McLain, #NFDB
229:We are a material-mad race of people. Build, increase, expand, pile up, hoard! More and more and more. "If we can just make enough money to-to- !" Jesus said: "Sell what ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth." ~ Eugenia Price, #NFDB
230:His eyes darted over the surface of my face. Like a moth to a blaze he was hesitant, seeming to crave my warmth but not its inevitable burn. He explored me from a distance with his unspoken desire, with the fear that touching me would set him to flame. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to prove very much the opposite. ~ Shawn Kirsten Maravel, #NFDB
231:While he slipped in and out of consciousness, the position of the planets, the music the spheres, the flap of a tiger moth's diaphanous wings in Central Africa, and a whole bunch of other stuff that Makes Shit Happen had decided it was second-chance time for Archie. Somewhere, somehow, by somebody it had been decided that he would live. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
232:Ariel contributed nothing to the speculation, instead crossing his arms one over the other. The action recalled his butterfly familiars from the skies, and they flocked to him with eager wing beats.
"Bats!" Moth flailed at the air. "Vampire bats!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Peaseblossom said with a sniff. "Vampire bats don't sparkle. ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
233:You didn't just write the play, Bertie," Peaseblossom said suddenly. "You ordered the Players about, shouted, and threw an artistic hissy fit. Do you know what that makes you?"
"A temperamental fusspot?" Mustardseed guessed.
"Crazier than a bag full of crazy?" Moth said.
"Close," Peaseblossom said. "It makes her a Director. ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
234:She swore she loved and her love fulfilled itself in death and many a mysterious way. Yet it was hard to believe that this passion of hers was more than a spoken part, for how can the star seek the moth although the moth may seek the star? Though the man may worship the goddess, for all her smiles divine, how can the goddess love the man? ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
235:The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
236:Young Bingo was too busy introducing the mob to take much notice. They were a very C3 collection. Comrade Butt looked like one of those things that come out of dead trees after the rain; moth-eaten was the word I should have used to described old Rowbotham; and as for Charlotte, she seemed to take me straight into another and a dreadful world. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
237:/Farsi The day Love was illumined, Lovers learned from You how to burn, Beloved. The flame was set by the Friend to give the moth a gate to enter. Love is a gift from the Beloved to the Lover. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, The day Love was illumined
,#NFDB
238:I stare at the photo. It’s an image of a huge black-winged moth from one of Alison’s old albums. The shot is amazing, the way the wings are splayed on a flower between a slant of sun and shade, teetering between two worlds. Alison used to capture things most people wouldn’t notice—moments in time when opposites collide, then merge seamlessly together. ~ A G Howard, #NFDB
239:You shouldn't do this — you shouldn't!" was all she found breath to say.
He laughed softly, deeply. "I'm doing it, though. Want me to stop?"
"Yes"
"Little liar!" He took her lips then and Fay was lost. Like a small moth she fluttered in the dark flame of him and it mattered not that destruction might lie beyond the ecstasy he offered now. ~ Violet Winspear,#NFDB
240:Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
241:Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people r in whose heart is my law; s fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their revilings. 8 t For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; p but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
242:All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light. ~ Eowyn Ivey, #NFDB
243:Julian could spin a web of shadows around you, with touches like the brush of moth's wings and kisses soft as twilight. He could turn your own senses against you until the kisses left you dizzy and breathless and the moth's-wing touches put you on slow burn. And by the time you realized what was underneath the softness, you were shivering and melting and lost. ~ L J Smith, #NFDB
244:We are all naturally seekers of wonders. We travel far to see the majesty of old ruins, the venerable forms of the hoary mountains, great waterfalls, and galleries of art. And yet the world's wonder is all around us; the wonder of setting suns, and evening stars, of the magic spring-time, the blossoming of the trees, the strange transformations of the moth... ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
245:Where are we bound? Is it any different, in fact, from where we were going in the first place? Perhaps all of creation from the coddling moth to the elephant was just a grandly detailed thought that God was engrossed in elaborating upon, when suddenly God fell asleep. We are an idea, then. Maybe God has decided that we are not an idea worth thinking anymore. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
246:I feel it, I feel my thin morals dissolving. I feel my flimsy, moth-eaten skin of humanity begin to come apart, and with it, the veil keeping me from complete darkness. There are no lines I won't cross. No illusions of mercy.
I wanted to be better for her. For her happiness. For her future.
But if she's gone, what good is goodness?
- Warner ~ Tahereh Mafi,#NFDB
247:I Went To Heaven,-I went to heaven,-'T was a small town,
Lit with a ruby,
Lathed with down.
Stiller than the fields
At the full dew,
Beautiful as pictures
No man drew.
People like the moth,
Of mechlin, frames,
Duties of gossamer,
And eider names.
Almost contented
I could be
'Mong such unique
Society.
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
248:All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light. Mabel ~ Eowyn Ivey, #NFDB
249:From 'the lesson of the moth':
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself ~ Don Marquis,#NFDB
250:The Oil In The Lamp Dwindled
The oil in the lamp dwindled;
the wick was a flicker
and
the light too dwindled.
A moth danced into the dying flame;
the half-burnt hope
fell into a niche.
When the flame died
darkness gave a hysterical laugh.
Why trust laughter!
Weeping knows no end.
Who lost
and
who won?
~ Dina Nath Nadim,#NFDB
251:not, little s flock, for t it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you u the kingdom. 33 v Sell your possessions, and w give to the needy. x Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with y a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 z For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
252:Eros
The flowerlike
animal perfume
in the god’s curly
hair —
don’t assume
that like a flower
his attributes
are there to tempt
you or
direct the moth’s
hunger —
simply he is
the temple of himself,
hair and hide
a sacrifice of blood and flowers
on his altar
if any worshipper
kneel or not.
~ Denise Levertov,#NFDB
253:Young people," she said solemnly, "if your studying science and the elements has ever led you to feel that things just happen, kind of evolve by chance, as it were, this sight will be good for you. Maybe earth and air accumulate, but it takes the wisdom of the Almighty God to devise the wing of a moth. If there ever was a miracle, this whole process is one. ~ Gene Stratton Porter, #NFDB
254:The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman's coal buttons. No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world. ~ Barbara Kingsolver, #NFDB
255:The pace of evolution was not something to be frightened by. For while nature doesn’t have a stake in whether the wings of a peppered moth are black or white, it genuinely hopes that the peppered moth will persist. And that is why nature designed the forces of evolution to play out over generations rather than eons—to ensure that moths and men have a chance to adapt. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
256:He was right. Love enfeebled a man. She saw this with Marcus and Drusus. It could possess, enrage, and overcome reason. It could drive vengeance and inspire passion and courage. She smiled as she lit another lamp and set up her handloom. For, unlike a man, love gave a woman power. A night moth had become a patrician’s mistress. The impossible had been made possible. ~ Elisabeth Storrs, #NFDB
257:Total waste of a kidney," he said.
"You'll grow an even better one," Daniel soothed.
They turned and walked away leaving the leeches behind.
"How're you feeling?"
"Enh," Moth said. "Hurts like a meanie, but I'm healing pretty good. New one should be ripe in a few hours."
"I meant the bullets."
Moth grinned like a maniac. "Little bullets," he said. ~ Greg Van Eekhout,#NFDB
258:But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
259:My dear sister, you can’t escape God, and you can’t escape your skeletons in the closet. They will always be there until you take them out from behind those dusty old moth-eaten coats. Your exterior facade of ‘everything is alright’ only works for a little while, and then the cracks begin to show. You can only hide behind yourself for so long. You can’t keep running! ~ Corallie Buchanan, #NFDB
260:For A Poet
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found the earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.
~ Countee Cullen,#NFDB
261:Members of the 1860 Burke and Wills expedition to cross Australia fell prey to scurvy or starved in part because they refused to eat what the indigenous Australians ate. Bugong-moth abdomen and witchetty grub may sound revolting, but they have as much scurvy-battling vitamin C as the same size serving of cooked spinach, with the additional benefits of potassium, calcium, and zinc. ~ Mary Roach, #NFDB
262:Then your fingers moved down to my chin. You pushed it up with your thumb to look at me, almost like you were studying me in the artificial lights above my head. And, I mean, you really looked at me … with eyes like two stars. [...] And I had wings fluttering away inside me all right. Big fat moth wings. You trapped me easily, drew me toward you like I was already in the net. ~ Lucy Christopher, #NFDB
263:The equivalent of the moth’s light-compass reaction is the apparently irrational but useful habit of falling in love with one, and only one, member of the opposite sex. The misfiring by-product—equivalent to flying into the candle flame—is falling in love with Yahweh (or with the Virgin Mary, or with a wafer, or with Allah) and performing irrational acts motivated by such love. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
264:The photos on her page had not done justice to the arresting, wide-eyed symmetry of her face, the radiant shine of her hair. She was 'clean': no piercings, tattoos or scarifications. All the kids were now. And who could blame them, Alex thought, after watching three generations of flaccid tattoos drop like moth-eaten upholstery over poorly stuffed biceps and saggy asses?" (p. 314) ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
265:Aw, can't we have breakfast, at least?" Moth moaned as Daniel rushed them past Roscoe's House of Chicken N Waffles.
Cassandra made a face. "I fine the combination dubious."
"The waffles are substandard," Moth allowed, "but the chicken is delectable. They elevate each other."
Cassandra would not be convinced. "I don't believe chicken and waffles can have viable offspring. ~ Greg Van Eekhout,#NFDB
266:One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to disdain it. One hope too like dispair For prudence to smother, I can give not what men call love: But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And heaven rejects not: The desire of the moth for the star, The devotion of something afar From the sphere of our sorrow? ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
267:It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us – but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
268:These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now. I can't say that I ever feel what it felt like then, when I was happy. But sometimes something will touch the place where that feeling was, a touch as slight and swift as the brush of a moth's wing in the dark. ~ Geraldine Brooks, #NFDB
269:When we make up rules because we are afraid people will sin, we end up doing an end run around faith. It’s not fear that saves us—it’s faith. Fear of failure has a sneaky way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. We focus so much on what we don’t want to do that we are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Or like a mosquito to a bug zapper, since we’re in the twenty-first century now. ~ Judah Smith, #NFDB
270:Dappled Leaf nodded. “They can share the spare nest.” As River Ripple disappeared inside his den, Moth Flight glanced shyly at Micah. She’d only shared a nest with her brother before. Dust Muzzle had always teased her that it was like sleeping next to a badger. “I’m afraid I snore.” “Good.” He took another bite of fish. “I snore too.” Dappled Pelt rolled her eyes. “Great,” she muttered. ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
271:When I sleep, which isn't very often—even with the tablets—I get right down under the sheets, pulling them over my head. The air gets a bit stale but I feel safer, more secure, doing that. It's my white cocoon where I can be a caterpillar, a grub, never to turn into a butterfly or even a moth. It's the safest place I know. It's the only time and the only place where I can feel some peace. ~ John Marsden, #NFDB
272:I Promise," Shane said.
"You'd better, jerkface," Eve said. "How's the head?"
"Taped. It's fine, chicks dig scars. Wait, did you just call me jerkface? Are we back in grade school?"
"I love you," Eve said.
He closed his moth, fast, because obviously that was not what he'd expected. "I, uh, okay, love you too. Can we stop that? It's uncomfortable."
"Jerkface."
"Much better. ~ Rachel Caine,#NFDB
273:Now, as they were all looking at the new moth, she, too, went to look at it. It was of a creamy yellow color, like the yellow of the lemon called Buddha's Hand, and it had long black antennae. These quivered as it felt itself impaled. The wide wings fluttered and dark spots upon them showed green and gold for a moment. Then the moth was still. "How quickly they die!" Ch'iuming said suddenly. ~ Pearl S Buck, #NFDB
274:At first we raced through space, like shadows and light; her rants, my raves; her dark hair, my blonde; black dresses, white. She's a purple-black African-violet-dark butterfly and I a white moth. We were two wild ponies, Dawn and Midnight, the wind electrifying our manes and our hooves quaking the city; we were photo negatives of each other, together making the perfect image of a girl. ~ Francesca Lia Block, #NFDB
275:I'd take cyanide no problem if it was that or throwing a cat out in the street, even a moth-eaten, mangy, caterwauling pain in the ass! I'd rather have the thing in bed with me than see it suffer on my account...though when it comes to human beings, I'm only interested in the sick...the ones who can stand up are nothing but mounds of vice and spite...I don't get mixed up in their schemes... ~ Louis Ferdinand C line, #NFDB
276:Gray Wing narrowed his eyes, unnerved by the empty slopes. Surely the thaw should have brought the prey from their burrows by now? Had the early snowfall killed this year’s young? He shifted his paws anxiously. If it had, leaf-bare would be long and hungry. He saw Gorse Fur freeze, and stiffened. Had the gray tom spotted prey? He followed Gorse Fur’s gaze, disappointed as he saw it fall on Moth Flight. ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
277:As a very young man, Frank Gresham found the life to which he was thus introduced agreeable enough. He consoled himself as best he might for the blue looks with which he was greeted by his own party, and took his revenge by consorting more thoroughly than ever with his political adversaries. Foolishly, like a foolish moth, he flew to the bright light, and, like the moths, of course he burnt his wings. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
278:How can she create with all your negative energy?"
"Yeah, man. You're bringing us down."
"This is about as low as it gets," Ariel said. "Where did you get those ridiculous black berets?"
Moth adjusted his recently donned beatnik attire. "This is what the hip cats wear , daddy-o."
"Can you dig it?" Cobweb stroked a few wisps of fake chin hair, while the others nodded and snapped their fingers. ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
279:Cowabunga," said Cassandra, impressed.
Daniel grinned. He liked impressing her.
"'All my being,'" Emma whispered, "'like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw into a dew with poison, is dissolved, sinking through its foundations.'
"That's from a poem," she said with some despair to the crew's stupefied expressions.
"Yeah, Shelley," said Moth. "It's just we don't usually do poetry during jobs. ~ Greg Van Eekhout,#NFDB
280:The lights were out, there, and it was illuminated only by starlight. The air was quite cold. A nightblooming flower from some unimaginable world had opened among the dark leaves, and was sending out its perfume with patient, unavailing sweetness to attract some unimaginable moth trillions of miles away, in a garden on a world circling another star. The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
281:Mustardseed grinned at Bertie. "I was never any good at geometry, but you’re stuck in a love triangle, aren’t you?"
"Shut up," she ordered even as Moth asked, "But what if there were four of them?"
"That’s a love rectangle, and five people would be a love pentagon."
"And what are six people in love?" Cobweb demanded.
Mustardseed thought it over a moment. "Manslaughter, I suppose. ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
282:Hannah grabbed the scoop and exhumed the item that Moishe had buried. It wasn’t a mouse, or a part of a mouse. It wasn’t even a cricket, or a moth. It was a pristine nugget of his new senior cat food. Suddenly suspicious, she dug around a bit in the litter box, uncovering more evidence of Moishe’s distaste. By his choice of burial spot, her cat was making a graphic comment about the palatability of his dinner. ~ Joanne Fluke, #NFDB
283:She breathed an enormous sigh, looked at Poirot, Looked away, and suddenly blurted out, "You're too old. Nobody told me you were so old. I really don't want to be rude but - there it is. You're too old. I'm really sorry." She turned abruptly and blundered out of the room, rather like a desperate moth in lamplight. Poirot, his mouth open, heard the bang of the front door. He ejaculated: "Non d'un nom d'un nom... ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
284:Sitting on Rosa's moth-littered bed, he felt a resurgence of all the aches and inspirations of those days when his life had revolved around nothing but Art, when snow fell like the opening piano notes of the Emperor Concerto, and feeling horny reminded him of a passage from Nietzsche, and a thick red-streaked dollop of crimson paint in an otherwise uninteresting Velazquez made him hungry for a piece of rare meat. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
285:I hate mourning,” she said. “It always smells of moth balls because it’s been laid up somewhere.” “You don’t need to go on wearing mourning. It’s only to go to the funeral in,” said Tommy. “Oh no, I know that. In a minute or two I’m going to go up and put on a scarlet jersey just to cheer things up. You can make me another White Lady.” “Really, Tuppence, I had no idea that funerals would bring out this party feeling. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
286:One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdain'd
For thee to disdain it.
One hope too like dispair
For prudence to smother,
I can give not what men call love:
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And heaven rejects not:
The desire of the moth for the star,
The devotion of something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow? ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
287:I’m not your type,” she again insisted.
He didn’t deny it, since it would only insult her intelligence. “And yet, I want nothing more than to strip you naked and have my wicked way with you.” She said nothing. “You want me as much as I? want you, Roni … Admit it. I dare you.”
…
“When she didn’t answer, Marcus persisted. “Roni?”
“Sorry, I was just imagining putting a moth in your mouth. I saw it in a movie once. ~ Suzanne Wright,#NFDB
288:All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light. Mabel could not remember the last time she caught such a flicker. She ~ Eowyn Ivey, #NFDB
289:Start with this: not all pain matters. There are people whose attention is consistently drawn away from their purpose and toward their pain, like a moth to a light. Such people, who pay attention to every annoyance and obstacle in their way, are usually unsuccessful in their endeavors. In extreme cases they are mentally ill. A healthy person, a flourishing person, learns to move past a lot of annoyance and a good deal of pain. ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
290:But seek his kingdom,† and these things will be given to you as well.† 32“Do not be afraid,† little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.† 33 ‡ Sell your possessions and give to the poor.† Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven† that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.† 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.† Watchfulness ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
291:Remove Your affliction from me; I am devastated by the attack of Your hand. In reproach for sin You chastened man; like a moth, You wore away that which is precious to him. All mankind is nothing but futility, forever. Hear my prayer, O Lord, listen to my cry; do not be silent to my tears, for I am a stranger with You, a sojourner like all my forefathers. Turn from me, that I may recover my strength, before I depart and I am no more. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
292:The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
293:About the time he threatened her nose with his finger, Peaseblossom lost her grip on the situation with the boys. The door crashed open, and three irate fairies launched themselves at the Stage Manager. Cobweb and Moth pelted him with sequins while Mustardseed rammed beads into his ears.
"Dance!" they commanded, and dance he did, hopping with impotent anger and pain from one foot to the other as he batted his meaty hands at them. ~ Lisa Mantchev,#NFDB
294:The moral of the story, of course, is that if you cuss out an adult, you have to stay in during computer class and answer questions out of the science book. Just like with the “shout the fouk up” incident, I had Marvin write down what he had said and why. Here is Marvin’s scribbling: I said this helo assohle . I don’t know what I was thinking. It just poped out my moth. And really, don’t you hate it when things just pope out your moth? ~ John Pearson, #NFDB
295:Love? The word streaked across the path of his thoughts like lightning across a stormy sky. He watched her now, watching Lulu, watching a moth flutter under the porch light, looking anywhere but at him, and sudden warmth flooded through him, making his knees weak. Yes, he loved her. He’d tried not to. But now here he was. On her porch, watching her watching a moth, and realizing he was the moth and she the light. It would always be this way. ~ Denise Hunter, #NFDB
296:Once he had finished writing ‘The Life of a Stupid Man’, he happened to see a stuffed swan in a secondhand shop. It stood with its head held high, but its wings were yellowed and moth-eaten. As he thought about his life, he felt both tears and mockery welling up inside him. All that lay before him was madness or suicide. He walked down the darkening street alone, determined now to wait for the destiny that would come to annihilate him. ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa, #NFDB
297:Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic and dishonest pseudo-literature—these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
298:Knee Song
Being kissed on the back
of the knee is a moth
at the windowscreen and
yes my darling a dot
on the fathometer is
tinkerbelle with her cough
and twice I will give up my
honor and stars will stick
like tacks in the night
yes oh yes yes yes two
little snails at the back
of the knee building bonfires something like eyelashes something two zippos
striking yes yes yes small
and me maker.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
299:but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed. 7[†] q “Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people r in whose heart is my law; s fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their revilings. 8 t For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; p but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
300:It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are as significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less a moth eaten man who grinds an organ - and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
301:The delicate muses lose their head if their attention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were successful abroad in talking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your bookshelf and your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish some commandment, it makes you odious to men and men odious to you, and you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the lamp, and you must solve those questions though you die. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
302:It is curious, isn’t it, that things you know well never look dirty and dilapidated—other people’s old furniture looks shabby and moth-eaten. “I would never have that horrible old couch in my room,” you say. But your own old couch is every bit as bad and you are not disgusted with its appearance; it is your friend, you see, and you remember it when it was new and smart. Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old. ~ D E Stevenson, #NFDB
303:WHAT woman hugs her infant there?
Another star has shot an ear.
What made the drapery glisten so?
Not a man but Delacroix.
What made the ceiling waterproof?
Landor's tarpaulin on the roof
What brushes fly and moth aside?
Irving and his plume of pride.
What hurries out the knaye and dolt?
Talma and his thunderbolt.
Why is the woman terror-struck?
Can there be mercy in that look?
~ William Butler Yeats, A Nativity
,#NFDB
304:All of the dissatisfactions he had felt in his practice of the art form he had stumbled across within a week of his arrival in America, the cheap conventions, the low expectations among publishers, readers, parents, and educators, the spatial constraints that he had been struggling against in the pages of Luna Moth, seemed capable of being completely overcome, exceeded, and escaped. The Amazing Cavalieri was going to break free, forever, of the nine little boxes. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
305:Deke met them on the porch and led the way into the house. Taller than the Dawson brothers, he was every bit as handsome with thick brown hair that he wore long enough to be sexy, hazel eyes, and broad shoulders. Women tended to flock to him like a moth to a burning candle. But taming Deke would be harder than training a Dawson cowboy to the halter. He was full of tough cowboy charm, and it would take a special woman to rope him and get him aimed toward the altar. ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
306:In that moment, I was suddenly grateful to Violet. Compassion burned in her like a beacon, and I couldn’t help but be attracted to it like a moth to a flame. Since my wife had died, I had cut off almost everyone I had known. It was easier that way— easier not to feel. How misguided I was: The feelings didn’t go away. I had just buried them under a veneer of calm. I had become so distanced from humanity, so apart from it, that I had forgotten that life was precious. ~ Bella Forrest, #NFDB
307:To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge must always be right. Yet wherever pride has any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and if we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
308:You should have put it on my shelf in the fridge. And guessing from Catrina’s spiel this morning before you guys got here, she’s this close to labeling the damn shelf. So hey, pretty soon you won’t even have to guess which one is mine.”
Gio chuckled at Dante’s left. “She’s just like Mom.”
Dante scowled. “Don’t say that shit. It really screws with my head. There’s nothing sexy about that thought.”
“What, like you married your moth—”
“I said don’t fucking say it! ~ Bethany Kris,#NFDB
309:And then it dropped lower, and her eyes caught it in all its pale majesty. It was a moth, no more, no less, but as it circled down towards them she saw that its furry body was larger than that of a horse, its wingspan awesome, each wing as long as six men laid end to end. It had a small head, eyes glittering amongst the glossy fur behind frond-like antennae that extended forward in delicate furls. As it landed, the sweep of its wings extinguished most of their little fires. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
310:He’s unshaven, so he looks a little older than twenty-five, his actual age. And his brows do this thing where they furrow hard, like he’s in a bad mood. But really, he’s just brooding. It’s his normal expression, one that’s insanely attractive in this possessive—I will protect you even if it fucking kills me—quality that I didn’t think I would like until I met him. And it drew me in like this magnetic pull or a moth to a flame. All those cheesy things people say about attraction. ~ Krista Ritchie, #NFDB
311:The interior looked like I expected. Two rooms--a main one and a tiny bedroom. Dusty stuffed fish and moth-eaten elk heads on bare walls. A wood plank floor that seemed as if it hadn’t been swept in years. Cobwebs decorating the ceiling. Furniture that would have been rejected by Goodwill. Mouse droppings everywhere. A few dark furry bat forms hung from the upper eaves. In the city, the place would have been condemned as a public health hazard. Here, it was just a typical hunting shack. ~ Kelley Armstrong, #NFDB
312:What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
313:You’re too arrogant for your own good,” Galien accused him defensively. “The man is an imperial wizard. What he is capable of is beyond your comprehension. For all we know, he may have been visiting her in the form of a butterfly in the garden or a moth that entered her bedroom window each night. We had to be sure.”
“A butterfly?” Saldur said, genuinely amazed.
“He’s a wizard. Damn you. That’s what they do.”
“I highly doubt—”
“The point is we didn’t know for sure. ~ Michael J Sullivan,#NFDB
314:Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
315:You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices'
The visitors again considered it a point of politeness to look at Sloppy, who, looking at them, suddenly threw back his head, extended his moth to the utmost width, and laughed loud and long. At this the two innocents, with their brains in that apparent danger, laughed, and Mrs. Higden laughed, and the orphan laughed, and then the visitors laughed. Which was more cheerful than intelligible. ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
316:Like threads of old spider webs, still sticky and hovering, the past waits for us to submit, or depart. When I least expect it, a memory comes skittering out of the dark, spinning and netting the air, ready to snap me up and ensnare me in old and complex puzzles. Just a glimpse of a worn-out patchwork quilt and the old question comes thudding out of the night again like a great moth. Why did my mother not return? After all these years, I find myself wondering, but with the dullness of expecting no response. ~ Joy Kogawa, #NFDB
317:The Release
In those last moments before
the platter of salt and dirt
lay on his stomach, wax-light
had waved across a mute heart,
his son waited by the bed.
Raised to believe the soul left
the body with its last breath,
he listened for death's rattle,
then pressed his lips like a kiss
to his father's lips, and took
into his mouth the breath that
had given him breath, a life
distilled to one stir of air
soft as moth wings against palms,
held a moment, then let go. ~ Ron Rash,#NFDB
318:She remembered her letter confessing every thing to Arin. I am the Moth. I am your country’s spy, she’d written. I have wanted to tell you this for so long. She’d scrawled the emperor’s secret plans. It didn’t matter that this was treason. It didn’t matter that she was supposed to marry the emperor’s son on First-summer’s day, or that her father was the emperor’s most trusted friend. Kestrel ignored that she’d been born Valorian. She’d written what she felt. I love you. I miss you. I would do anything for you. ~ Marie Rutkoski, #NFDB
319:He bent to lay his mouth on hers, thrusting his tongue lazily past her lips until she sucked on the thick length. “Are they any different?” he whispered against her mouth, “my kisses? Have they changed so much with my name?” She cracked her eyelids to look at him and murmur into the humid heat between them, “I can’t tell. Perhaps you should demonstrate again.” He licked at the corner of her mouth. “A scientific study, you mean?” His mouth trailed up her cheek, soft as a moth. “Quite,” she breathed. “As you wish. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt, #NFDB
320:October
Beauty has a tarnished dress,
And a patchwork cloak of cloth
Dipped deep in mournfulness,
Striped like a moth.
Wet grass where it trails
Dyes it green along the hem;
She has seven silver veils
With cracked bells on them.
She is tired of all these-Grey gauze, translucent lawn;
The broad cloak of Herakles.
Is tangled flame and fawn.
Water and light are wearing thin:
She has drawn above her head
The warm enormous lion skin
Rough red and gold.
~ Elinor Morton Wylie,#NFDB
321:Our fascination with feminine beauty is elemental. It is said that men wish to possess the princess and women wish to be the princess, but I believe that is only part of the truth. We are drawn to extraordinary beauty mindlessly and purposelessly; we flutter on dusty moth wings toward the effulgence with no understanding of why we do it. Perhaps when we see a woman with the aspect of an angel, our souls are tricked into following her, mistaking her for a guide to paradise.
The opposite, of course, is also true. ~ Danielle Teller,#NFDB
322:When somebody is a little bit wrong - say, when a waited puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk - it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surprisingly wrong - say, when a waiter bites your nose instead of taking your order - you can often be so surprised that you are unable to say anything at all. Paralyzed by how wrong the waiter is, your moth would hang slightly open and your eyes would blink over and over, but you would be unable to say a word. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
323:I am no god: I feel it all too deeply. I am the worm that writhes in dust: see, As in the dust it lives, and seeks to eat, It’s crushed and buried by the passing feet. [655] Is this not dust, what these vaults hold, These hundred shelves that cramp me: This junk, and all the thousand-fold Shapes, of a moth-ridden world, around me? Will I find here what I’m lacking else, [660] Shall I read, perhaps, as a thousand books insist, That Mankind everywhere torments itself, So, here and there, some happy man exists? ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
324:And here is the thing about them men they was Australians they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of UNFAIRNESS were in their blood and a man might be a bank clerk or an overseer he might never have been lagged for nothing but still he knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye and even a posh fellow like the Moth had breathed that air so the knowledge of unfairness were deep in his bone and marrow. ~ Peter Carey, #NFDB
325:He gave her hand a little squeeze, and she drew in a gasp. Color flooded her cheeks.
There, that was better.
To be truthful, Logan needed a moment to locate his own composure. She'd knocked the breath from him, too.
He'd spent a great deal of time wondering how she looked. Too much time over the years. Of course she'd sent him sketches of every blessed mushroom, moth, and blossom in existence- but never any likenesses of herself.
By the gods, she was bonny. Far prettier than her letters had led him to imagine. Also smaller, more delicate. ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB
326:Losers are wealthy with excuses, moth-eaten, empty wallets, heads full of excuses. This is not an enviable wealth. An abundance of excuses guarantees a paucity of money. If excuses roll willingly from a person’s tongue, it’s certain money does not flow easily into his pockets. I’ve often said I can estimate a person’s bank balance if he’ll tell me about the books he reads and the people he hangs out with. But it’s even easier to accurately estimate his bank balance if I hear the excuses he makes. The habit of excuse making is the worst of all habits. ~ Dan S Kennedy, #NFDB
327:Birds arrived. Gulls landed within weeks of the island’s emergence, depositing the guano that built a richer soil. Fulmars and guillemots were the first to nest. Snow buntings and graylag geese came, almost ninety bird species in all, and twenty-one species of butterfly and moth. The first bush—a willow—came fifteen years after creation, and five years after the willows, seals were breeding on the young island. The descriptions make Surtsey sound like an orchestra, one instrument after another joining until there was the symphony that is an ecosystem. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
328:short piece of sacred choral music, typically polyphonic and unaccompanied. late Middle English: from Old French, diminutive of mot 'word'. moth n. (pl. moths ) a chiefly nocturnal insect related to the butterflies. It lacks the clubbed antennae of butterflies and typically has a stout body, drab coloration, and wings that fold flat when resting. Most superfamilies of the order Lepidoptera. Formerly placed in a grouping known as the Heterocera. INFORMAL short for CLOTHES MOTH. like a moth to the flame with an irresistible attraction for someone or something: ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
329:So good to see you again, little luv. How I've missed you."
Gasping, I fall to my knees. The Caterpillar and the moth and the winged guy. They are all one and the same. They have been all along...
"I've seen that bug," Jeb says. "In your car. On the mirror." He drops the backpack and grips my shoulders, trying to drag me to my feet. My legs won't cooperate.
"Tut-tut. You are never to bow to me, lovely Alyssa." The voice drifts from the moth's proboscis on gray puffs of smoke. His attention shifts to Jeb. "You, on the other hand, will bow to her. ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
330:My cats Timmy & Tyke
will always be at my side
- They wont be jealous
but make friends
with Bootsie, Kewpie
and Davey, and Beauty
and Bob - even
the little dry moth
with the beady black eyes
can sit on my arm
forever,
till we all see God
when that which we love
solves & melts in one
Glow
See?
And the little mouse
that I killed will devour
me into its golden belly.
That little mouse was God.
Dante and Beatrice will
be married.
Please, that's enough,
huh? ~ Jack Kerouac,#NFDB
331:Each of them had done their best. Matt was still his friend. For Meredith, maybe the day would come when she could look at him and not think “inhuman” — or at least not think it immediately and constantly. Maybe Bonnie, the moth, would be able to stay away from the unholy flame. Now, there was something to worry about. He could all too easily see Bonnie taking a walk on the very wild side with Damon. His brother had a soft spot for her already, she knew. But if either of them had a problem, he already knew what he had to do to find a plan for a solution.
Just look up. ~ L J Smith,#NFDB
332:I can give not what men call love
but wilt thou accept not
the worship the heart lifts above
and the heavens reject not-
the desire of the moth for the star
Of the night for the morrow
the devotion of something afar
from the sphere of our sorrow?
ലോകര് പേര് പറയുന്ന പ്രേമമെന്നത് നിന/ ക്കേകുവാന് ഞാനെന്നിരിക്കിലും ഭദ്രേ!/സ്വീകരിക്കുകയില്ലേയെന് ഹൃദ്യോത്സര്പ്പണം / സ്വര്ഗ്ഗവും നിരാകരിക്കാത്തതാമാരാധനം/ പാറ്റക്ക് വിന്താരയോടുള്ളതാമഭിലാഷം/ രാത്രിക്ക് പിറ്റെന്നാളോടുള്ളതാമത്യാസക്തി/ ഹാ വിദൂരതയിലോന്നിനു വേണ്ടി ശോക / ഭൂവില് നിന്നുയരുന്ന ഭക്തിനിര്ഭരമോഹം ~ S K Pottekkatt,#NFDB
333:Garraty wondered how it would be, to lie in the biggest, dustiest library silence of all, dreaming endless, thoughtless dreams behind your gummed-down eyelids, dressed forever in your Sunday suit. No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death.
How would that be? Just how would that be? ~ Stephen King,#NFDB
334:One night, a group of moths gathered on a shelf watching a burning candle. Puzzled by the nature of the light, they sent one of their members to go and check on it. The scouting moth circled the candle several times and came back with a description: The light was bright. Then a second moth went to examine it. He, too, came back with an observation: The light was hot. Finally a third moth volunteered to go. When he approached the candle he didn't stop like his friends had done, but flew straight into the flame. He was consumed there and then, and only he understood the nature of the light. ~ Elif Safak, #NFDB
335:If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
336:So I lay there awhile longer wondering if there was anything at all I could do to persuade her not to talk. There was a very small chance that I could reason with her, I suppose. I had managed it once, in Club Fang’s refrigerator, and reached soaring heights of emotive rhetoric I had never touched before. Could I do it again, and would it work on her a second time? I was not sure—and as I mulled my chances that moth-eaten line about “the tongues of men and of angels” popped into my head. I couldn’t remember how it ended, but I didn’t think it was happy. I wished I’d never read Shakespeare. I ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
337:I.
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
II.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,--
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, To-- One word is too often profaned
,#NFDB
338:Some girls are pretty, and it’s like they were destined for it.
They were meant to be pretty, and as for the rest of us, well, we get to exist
on the outer edges of life. It’s like moths. They’re the same as butterflies,
aren’t they? They’re just gray. They can’t help being gray, they just are. But
butterflies, they’re a million different colors, yellow and emerald and cerulean
blue. They’re pretty. Who’d dare kill a butterfly? I don’t know of a single soul
who’d lift a finger against a butterfly. But most anybody would swat at a
moth like it was nothing, and all because it isn’t pretty. ~ Jenny Han,#NFDB
339:The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame
[...]
The moth takes off again, and we both step back, because he's circling at eye level now and seems to have lost rudder control, smacking into the wall on each round. He circles lower and lower, spinning around the candle in tighter revolutions, like a soap sud over an open drain. A few times he seems to touch the flame, but dances off unhurt.
Then he ignites like a ball of hair, curling into an oily puff of fumes with a hiss. The candle flame flickers and dims for a moment, then burns as bright as before.
Moth Smoke Lingers. ~ Mohsin Hamid,#NFDB
340:Isn't that strange? To be able to feel so much tenderness for a person, and I did, and powerful attraction, sometimes, and yet feel no love. It seems cruel, almost monstrous. I mean I can love a bug. I have watched a spider weaving her web in the evening, in the young alder branches along the river, and I have loved her. Truly. Or a small moth trying to beat her way off the water of a dark pool, her soaked wings stuck to the surface as if by glue. And gently slid a leaf beneath her and lifted her to the ground, praying that her wings would dry without damage. I've done that. And yet I could not love my wife. ~ Peter Heller, #NFDB
341:But these things now belonged to the past, and he was flying toward the future. As they banked, Dr. Floyd could see below him a maze of buildings, then a great airstrip, then a broad, dead-straight scar across the flat Florida landscape—the multiple rails of a giant launching track. At its end, surrounded by vehicles and gantries, a spaceplane lay gleaming in a pool of light, being prepared for its leap to the stars. In a sudden failure of perspective, brought on by his swift changes of speed and height, it seemed to Floyd that he was looking down on a small silver moth, caught in the beam of a flashlight. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
342:Walking into the library, I took in my breath sharply and stopped: glass fronted bookcases and Gothic panels, stretching fifteen feet to a frescoed and plaster-medallioned ceiling. In the back of the room was a marble fireplace, big as a sepulchre, and a globed gasolier--dripping with prisms and strings of crystal beading--sparkled in the dim.
There was a piano, too, and Charles was playing, a glass of whiskey on the seat beside him. He was a little drunk; the Chopin was slurred and fluid, the notes melting sleepily into one another. A breeze stirred the heavy, moth-eaten velvet curtains, ruffling his hair. ~ Donna Tartt,#NFDB
343:Some girls are pretty, and it’s like they were destined for it. They were meant to be pretty, and as for the rest of us, well, we get to exist on the outer edges of life. It’s like moths. They’re the same as butterflies, aren’t they? They’re just gray. They can’t help being gray, they just are. But butterflies, they’re a million different colors, yellow and emerald and cerulean blue. They’re pretty. Who’d dare kill a butterfly? I don’t know of a single soul who’d lift a finger against a butterfly. But most anybody would swat at a moth like it was nothing, and all because it isn’t pretty. Doesn’t seem fair, not at all. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
344:Beautiful, fragile, fleeting, the sunrise shell; but not, for all that, illusory. Because it is not lasting, let us not fall into the cynic's trap and call it an illusion. Duration is not a test of true or false. The day of the dragon-fly or the night of the Saturnid moth is not invalid simply because that phase in its life cycle is brief. Validity need have no relation to time, to duration, to continuity. It is on another plane, judged by other standards. "And what is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place." The sunrise shell has the eternal validity of all beautiful and fleeting things. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, #NFDB
345:Some girls are pretty, and it's like they were destined for it. They were meant to be pretty, and as for the rest of us, well, we get to exist on the outer edges of life. It's like moths. They're the same as butterflies, aren't they? They're just grey. They can't help being grey, they just are. But butterflies, they're a million different colours, yellow and emerald and cerulean blue. They're pretty. Who'd dare kill a butterfly? I don't know of a single soul who'd life a finger against a butterfly. But most anybody would swat at a moth like it was nothing, and all because it isn't pretty. Doesn't seem fair, not at all. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
346:They waited for the elevator. " Most people love butterflies and hate moth," he said. "But moths are more interesting - more engaging."
"They're destructive."
"Some are, a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do." Silence for one floor.
"There's a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears," he offered. "That's all they eat or drink."
"What kind of tears? Whose tears?"
"The tears of large land mammals, about our size.
The old definition of moth was, 'anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wages any other thing.'
It was a verb for destruction too. . . . ~ Thomas Harris,#NFDB
347:By the by …” He glances at Jeb’s back and leans closer, murmuring low. “Tumtum juice alters a person’s inhibitions, magnifies their hunger. But it’s not hunger for food. It’s experiences they crave. Had it been me instead of your toy soldier, I would’ve found a means to slake your ravenous hunger without resorting to berries.” His arrogance simmers my blood. “You don’t have the equipment to satisfy anything. Moth. Remember?” He laughs, dark and soft, under his breath. “I am a man in every way that counts. Just like you are a woman, even if some people believe you’re nothing more than a scared little girl in constant need of saving. ~ A G Howard, #NFDB
348:He pulls free before we make contact. “A moment, please. Allow me to bask in your devotion.” He’s referring to my ankle tattoo.
I blush. “I’ve told you a hundred times. It’s only a set of wings.”
“Nonsense.” Morpheus grins. “I know a moth when I see one.”
I groan in frustration, and he surrenders, letting me press our markings together. A spark rushes between them, expanding to a firestorm through my veins. His gaze locks on mine, and the bottomless depths flicker—like black clouds alive with lightning. For that instant, I’m bared to the bone. He looks inside my heart; I look inside his. And the similarities there terrify me. ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
349:Face In The Window
I am a modest house, a house solely
notable for the fact I lived here once.
Its brass plaque depicts an oxygen eye
in which two pupils of hydrogen dance.
Downstairs is where I lit fires whose insights
with approach-velocity froze me, then
singed off into flame. This always happened when
I came close to a truth. Months passed. Years. Nights.
Shall I accommodate myself again,
a humble aquarium of lordly
thumbs, some fin de species? Of course each word
the blackout-moth mutters to my keyboard
shows the snowiest letter on this page is “I”—
must I now plumb its one remaining pane?
~ Bill Knott,#NFDB
350:Towards dawn he awoke. O what sweet music! His soul was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweet music. His mind was waking slowly to a tremulous morning knowledge, a morning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water, sweet as dew, moving as music. But how faintly it was inbreathed, how passionlessly, as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him! His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly. It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes and strange plants open to the light and the moth flies forth silently. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
351:English version by Robert Bly The Dark One threw me a glance like a dagger today. Since that moment, I am insane; I can't find my body. The pain has gone through my arms and legs, and I can't find my mind. At least three of my friends are completely mad. I know the thrower of daggers well; he enjoys roving the woods. The partridge loves the moon; and the lamplight pulls in the moth. You know, for the fish, water is precious; without it, the fish dies. If he is gone, how shall I live? I can't live without him. Go and speak to the dagger-thrower: Say, Mira belongs to you. [1689.jpg] -- from Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems, Translated by Robert Bly
~ Mirabai, The Dagger
,#NFDB
352:Focus your attention upon yourselves. Do not focus your attention upon other things—that is, what you have cast away from yourselves. Do not return to eat what you have vomited. Do not be moth-eaten, do not be worm-eaten, for you have already gotten rid of that. Do not be a place for the devil, for you have already destroyed him. Do not strengthen what stands in your way, what is collapsing, to support it. One who is lawless is nothing. Treat the lawless one more harshly than the just one, for the lawless does what he does because he is lawless, but the just does what he does with people because he is righteous. Do the Father’s will, then, for you are from him. ~ Marvin W Meyer, #NFDB
353:This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
354:Old age is, it occurs to Busner as he lies stranded on his side staring at the clock radio, a form of institutionalisation -- it deprives you of your identity and supplies another, simpler one, it takes away your clothing and issues you with a uniform of slack-waisted trousers, threadbare jackets and moth-eaten cardigans, togs that are either coming from or going to charity shops. This done, it commits you to a realm at once confined and unbounded, an atrophying circuit of corridors that connect strip-lit and overheating rooms where you fade away your days reading day-old newspapers and specialist magazines -- albeit not ones relating to the specialty that awaits you. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
355:Amaryllis
A flower needs to be this size
to conceal the winter window,
and this color, the red
of a Fiat with the top down,
to impress us, dull as we've grown.
Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb
half above the soil
stuck out its green tongue
and slowly, day by day,
the flower itself entered our world,
closed, like hands that captured a moth,
then open, as eyes open,
and the amaryllis, seeing us,
was somehow undiscouraged.
It stands before us now
as we eat our soup;
you pour a little of your drinking water
into its saucer, and a few crumbs
of fragrant earth fall
onto the tabletop.
~ Connie Wanek,#NFDB
356:His kisses fade to nuzzle along my face and neck, soft and poignant. "Al," he whispers. "You taste so sweet...like honeysuckle."
"Don't," I murmur, in a daze.
He draws back, eyes heavy and dark. "You want me to stop?"
"No." I've fallen asleep praying for you to look at me like this. To touch me like this. "Don't break my heart."
Moth shadows glide above him in the mirrored ceiling, distracting me from the fierceness of his frown. "I'd cut mine out first."
I believe he would. Stretching to tiptoe, I clasp his ponytail. This time, I kiss him. He responds with a spine-tingling growl, fingers digging into my hips. ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
357:Sonnets Of The Blood Viii
Not power nor the casual hand of God
Shall keep us whole in our dissevering air,
It is a stink upon this pleasant sod
So foul, the hovering buzzard sees it fair;
I ask you will it end therefore tonight
And the moth tease again the windy flame,
Or spiders, eating their loves, hide in the night
At last, drowsy with self-devouring shame?
Call it the house of Atreus where we liveWhich one of us the Greek perplexed with crime
Questions the future: bring that lucid sieve
To strain the appointed particles of time!
Whether by Corinth or by Thebes we go
The way is brief, but the fixed doom, not so.
~ Allen Tate,#NFDB
358:Dawn On The Night-Journey
TILL dawn the wind drove round me. It is past
And still, and leaves the air to lisp of bird,
And to the quiet that is almost heard
Of the new-risen day, as yet bound fast
In the first warmth of sunrise. When the last
Of the sun's hours to-day shall be fulfilled,
There shall another breath of time be stilled
For me, which now is to my senses cast
As much beyond me as eternity,
Unknown, kept secret. On the newborn air
The moth quivers in silence. It is vast,
Yea, even beyond the hills upon the sea,
The day whose end shall give this hour as sheer
As chaos to the irrevocable Past.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
359:Conner raised an eyebrow. 'Who told you that?'
'Well,' she said, not knowing how to describe what she experienced. 'Um . . . a moth did.'
Conner squinted at her and his mouth fell open. He was expecting a much better answer than that. 'A moth told you?'
'Yes -- but it wasn't a regular moth, it was more like an angel.'
'An angel moth?'
'Well, it came from somewhere in the stars. I think Grandma sent it.'
'Grandma sent you an angel moth from outer space?'
'Kind of! Anyway, the moth took me to a forest and then turned into a bunch of orbs that re-created a memory -- stop looking at me like that, Conner! ~ Chris Colfer,#NFDB
360:To contend against Omnipotence is insanity. For any man, I care not who he may be, to put himself in opposition to God is utter folly. I have often watched, as doubtless you have done, the foolish moth attracted by the glare of the candle or the gas. Plunge he makes at it, as though he would put it out, and he drops, full of exquisite pain, upon the table. He has enough wing left to make another dash at the flame, and again he is filled with another pain, and unless you mercifully kill him outright he will continue as long as he has any strength to fight with the fire which destroys him. That is an apt picture of the sinner’s life, and such will be the sinner’s death. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
361:My entire cooking life has been about memory. It's my moth indispensable ingredient, so wherever I find it, I hoard it. I tell stories about people using food, I swap memories with people and create out of that conversation mnemonic feasts with this fallible, subjective mental evidence. Sometimes they are people long gone, whose immortality is expressed in the pulp of trees also long gone and in our electronic ether. Other times they are people who converse with me as I cook as the enslaved once cooked, testifying to people and places that only come alive again when they are remembered. In memory there is resurrection, and thus the end goal of my cooking is just that - resurrection. ~ Michael W Twitty, #NFDB
362:What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate and bifocals?Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped,, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come to bad ends, blot-on-the town-thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the town and bums,, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
363:The last thing I remember ia an exquisitely beautiful green and silver moth landing on the curve of my wrist. The sound of rain on the roof of our house gently pulls me toward consciousness. I fight to return to sleep though, wrapped in a warm cocoon of blankets, safe at home. I'm vaguely aware that my head aches. Possibly I have the flu and this is why I'm allowed to stay in bed, even though I can tell I've been asleep a long time. My mother's hand strokes my cheek and I don't push is away as I would in wakefulness, never wanting her to know how much I crave that gentle touch. How much I miss her even though I still don't trust her. Then there's a voice, the wrong voice, not my mother's and i'm scared. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
364:It takes years for the moth to evolve from an egg into an adult," he said. "In its final stage the caterpillar spins a cocoon and then it dissolves completely until it's just liquid, then it transforms. It becomes something else entirely. A huge emperor moth. But it's not that easy. Before it can live as a moth it has to fight it's way out of the cocoon. Not all make it."
"They would if I was there," said Ruth, taking another gulp.
Gabriel was uncharacteristically silent.
"What? What is it?" demanded Ruth.
"They need to fight their way out of the cocoon. It builds their wings and muscles. It's the struggle that saves them. Without it they're crippled. If you help an emperor moth, you kill it. ~ Louise Penny,#NFDB
365:Love Encompasses All
Love encompasses all
The eternal end of our closeness
Metaphor of our being,
Your beauty beacons,
Inevitable inflictions,
How sweetly befall,
Love encompasses all.
With the break of dawn,
Dewdrops shine on rose petals,
A moth hovers around around the tree branch,
The flower, moth, turbulent oceans
Serenity, rise and fall,
Love encompasses all.
For the dreams we shared?
For the plans we carved?
But the waves do not stop,
On the threshold of time
In the dance of dust,
Colours fade away fast,
Impressions do not last
Clouds vanish on horizon,
Shrinking distances enthrall,
Love encompasses all.
~ Amjad Islam Amjad,#NFDB
366:During the school holidays he would approach the bookcase in the pink room and stand before it, his hand alighting on this or that volume with the arbitrariness of a moth, half deciding on something before sliding it back in place and moving on, as though experimenting with the keys of a piano, all briefly opened books eager to engage his eye, each flickeringly glimpsed paragraph enticing him hurriedly with its secret, and having made his choice he would drift through the house in search of the coolest spot to read through the long summer afternoons that had a touch of eternity to them, altering the arrangement of his limbs as much for comfort as for fear that his undisturbed shadows would leave a stain on the wall. ~ Nadeem Aslam, #NFDB
367:Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
368:Sonnet Lviii. The Glow-Worm
WHEN on some balmy-breathing night of Spring
The happy child, to whom the world is new,
Pursues the evening moth, of mealy wing,
Or from the heath-bell beats the sparkling dew;
He sees before his inexperienced eyes
The brilliant Glow-worm, like a meteor, shine
On the turf-bank;--amazed, and pleased, he cries,
'Star of the dewy grass!--I make thee mine!'-Then, ere he sleep, collects 'the moisten'd' flower,
And bids soft leaves his glittering prize enfold,
And dreams that Fairy-lamps illume his bower:
Yet with the morning shudders to behold
His lucid treasure, rayless as the dust!
--So turn the world's bright joys to cold and blank disgust.
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
369:This is the Death’s-head Moth,” he said. “That’s nightshade she’s sitting on—we’re hoping she’ll lay.” The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes. “Acherontia styx,” Pilcher said. “It’s named for two rivers in Hell. Your man, he drops the bodies in a river every time—did I read that?” “Yes,” Starling said. “Is it rare?” “In this part of the world it is. There aren’t any at all in nature. ~ Thomas Harris, #NFDB
370:It struck me that we-that moth and I-were two opposite extremes. My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every
way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all. While thinking this thought, I reached out a finger to feel the moth’s velvety surface; but when I brushed it with my fingertip, it turned all at once into a pile of ash without even a sound, without even a moment in which I could see it crumbling. I was so astonished I let out a cry. The swirling in my mind stopped; I felt as if I had stepped into the eye of a storm. I let the tiny shroud and its pile of ashes flutter to the ground; and now I understood the thing that had puzzled me all morning. The stale air had washed away. The past was gone. ~ Arthur Golden,#NFDB
371:We have still a thirst unquenchable... It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us — but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. And thus... we find ourselves melted into tears — we weep then... through a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
372:English version by Jane Hirshfield O my friends, What can you tell me of Love, Whose pathways are filled with strangeness? When you offer the Great One your love, At the first step your body is crushed. Next be ready to offer your head as his seat. Be ready to orbit his lamp like a moth giving in to the light, To live in the deer as she runs toward the hunter's call, In the partridge that swallows hot coals for love of the moon, In the fish that, kept from the sea, happily dies. Like a bee trapped for life in the closing of the sweet flower, Mira has offered herself to her Lord. She says, the single Lotus will swallow you whole. [1527.jpg] -- from The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, by Stephen Mitchell
~ Mirabai, O my friends
,#NFDB
373:Lullaby
It is a summer evening.
The yellow moths sag
against the locked screens
and the faded curtains
suck over the window sills
and from another building
a goat calls in his dreams.
This is the TV parlor
in the best ward at Bedlam.
The night nurse is passing
out the evening pills.
She walks on two erasers,
padding by us one by one.
My sleeping pill is white.
It is a splendid pearl;
it floats me out of myself,
my stung skin as alien
as a loose bolt of cloth.
I will ignore the bed.
I am linen on a shelf.
Let the others moan in secret;
let each lost butterfly
go home. Old woolen head,
take me like a yellow moth
while the goat calls hush-a-bye.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
374:19-21 “Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or — worse! — stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being. 22-23 “Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have! 24 “You can’t worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you’ll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can’t worship God and Money both. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
375:A Mystic And A Drunk
The Universe turns on an axis.
Let my soul circle around a table
like a beggar, like a planet
rolling in the vast, totally helpless and free.
The knight and the castle move jaggedly
about the chessboard, but they're actually
centered on the king. They circle.
If love is your center, a ring
gets put on your finger.
Something inside the moth
is made of fire.
A mystic touches the annihilating tip
of pure nothing.
A drunkard thinks peeing is absolution.
Lord, take these impurities from me.
The lord replies, First, understand
the nature of impurity. If your key is bent,
the lock will not open.
I fall silent.
King Shams has come.
Always when I close, he opens. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
376:Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry. ~ Alfred Tennyson,#NFDB
377:Apotheosised, transfigured by wisdom's touch,
Her days became a luminous sacrifice;
An immortal moth in happy and endless fire,
She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.
A captive Life wedded her conqueror.
In his wide sky she built her world anew;
She gave to mind's calm pace the motor's speed,
To thinking a need to live what the soul saw,
To living an impetus to know and see.
His splendour grasped her, her puissance to him clung;
She crowned the Idea a king in purple robes,
Put her magic serpent sceptre in Thought's grip,
Made forms his inward vision's rhythmic shapes
And her acts the living body of his will.
A flaming thunder, a creator flash,
His victor Light rode on her deathless Force;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#NFDB
378:THE MOTH AND THE BUTTERFLY
When the sun rises over the horizon,
the butterfly emerges to dance in its brilliant light.
It flickers its colorful wings with euphoria,
To celebrate all the beauty found
in the majestic garden of life.
When the moon arrives in the darkness,
The moth appears at the disappearance of sunlight.
It flickers its pale wings as it shakes from its deep slumber,
To go search for food
To carry it through the night.
The moth prefers the moon and detests the sun,
while the butterfly loves the sun and hides from the moon.
Every living creature responds to light,
But depending on the amount of light you have inside,
Determines which lamp in the sky
Your heart will swoon.
Poetry by Suzy Kassem ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
379:L'An Trentiesme De Mon Eage
And I have come upon this place
By lost ways, by a nod, by words,
By faces, by an old man's face
At Morlaix lifted to the birds,
By hands upon the tablecloth
At Aldebori's, by the thin
Child's hands that opened to the moth
And let the flutter of the moonlight in,
By hands, by voices, by the voice
Of Mrs. Whitman on the stair,
By Margaret's 'If we had the choice
To choose or not - 'through her thick hair,
By voices, by the creak and fall
Of footsteps on the upper floor,
By silence waiting in the hall
Between the doorbell and the door,
By words, by voices, a lost way - ,
And here above the chimney stack
The unknown constellations sway And by what way shall I go back?
~ Archibald MacLeish,#NFDB
380:All the expressions that are possible crossed its face, as if its thoughts were wise and limitless one moment, daft and animal the next. And Liga too was pulled towards awe, that this little girl-thing gave off such an air of being entitled, and then towards pity at its abjectness and its frailty and-how soft it was, the surface of it, and so warm! She could not believe the tiny makings of its mouth, or its perfected eyelashes, its ears like uncrumpling buds, all down and tenderness. She was full of the joy of her father being gone-that she could sit like this all night if she wanted, not bothered or harangued, without a remark from any other person, and watch this creature busy with its morsel of life, its scrap of sleep, its breaths light as moth-wings lifting its narrow red chest. ~ Margo Lanagan, #NFDB
381:Tadas was sent to the principal today," announced Jonas at dinner. He wedged a huge piece of sausage into his small mouth.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because he talked about hell," sputtered Jonas, juice from the plump sausage dribbling down his chin.
"Jonas, don't speak with your mouth full. Take smaller pieces," scolded Mother.
"Sorry," said Jonas with his moth stuffed. "It's good." He finished chewing. I took a bite of sausage. It was warm and the skin was deliciously salty.
"Tadas told one of the girls that hell is the worst place ever and there's no escape for all eternity."
"Now why would Tadas be talking of hell?" asked Papa, reaching for the vegetables.
"Because his father told him that if Stalin comes to Lithuania, we'll all end up there. ~ Ruta Sepetys,#NFDB
382:She opened her eyes slowly and saw that a pale lavender moth had come to a rest on the back of her hand. She watched it from her pillow, wondering if it was real. It reminded her of her husband Matt's favorite T-shirt, which she'd hidden in a bag of sewing, unable to throw it away. It had a large faded moth on the front, the logo of a cover band out of Athens called the Mothballs.
That T-shirt, that moth, always brought back a strange memory of when she was a child. She used to draw tattoos of butterflies on her arms with Magic Markers. She would give them names, talk to them, carefully fill in their colors when they started to fade. When the time came that they wanted to be set free, she would blow on them and they would come to life, peeling away from her skin and flying away. ~ Sarah Addison Allen,#NFDB
383:The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.
Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.
I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.
But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own—but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.
The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious. ~ Czes aw Mi osz,#NFDB
384:I read somewhere that spiders can spin silk strong enough to hold the weight of a thousand trucks. I tried to imagine those lines of silver, thinner than air, stronger than steel. Sometimes I think that a hundred webs, invisible gossamers, connect Gracie and me. They coat our bodies, tie our limbs together, link our hearts. They can stretch across cities, countries – even anger. Unbreakable. I felt them that first time I watched her play soccer.
She needed to win so badly. I watched a new Gracie crack out of her cocoon that day. Grey, moth-like, she seemed covered in a dust that let her take to the air. Fly. They’re beautiful things, moths, with their dark patterned wings hooking on wind to push them forward. You have to be careful with them, though. Brush them just lightly, and they can’t fly anymore. ~ Cath Crowley,#NFDB
385:I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun. ~ W B Yeats, #NFDB
386:i am dead but i know the dead are not like this."
the dead can sleep
they don’t get up and rage
they don’t have a wife.
her white face
like a flower in a closed window lifts up and
looks at me.
the curtain smokes a cigarette
and a moth dies in a
freeway cash
as I examine the shadows of my
hands.
an owl, the size of a baby clock
rings for me, come on come on
it says as Jerusalem is hustled
down crotch-stained halls.
the 5 a.m. grass is nasal now
in hums of battleships and valleys
in the raped light that brings on
the fascist birds.
I put out the lamp and get in bed
beside her, she thinks I’m there
mumbles a rosy gratitude
as I stretch my legs
to coffin length
get in and swim away
from frogs and fortunes. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
387:It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to who as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ - and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth every grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romance laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing - oh, that eternal hand! - a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
388:It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ — and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing — oh, that eternal hand!— a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
389:It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ – and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing – oh, that eternal hand! – a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
390:I slept and I woke. She gave me a ring made from a leaf, a cluster of golden berries, a flower that opened and closed at the stroking of a finger....
And once, when I startled awake with my face wet and my chest aching, she reached out to lay her hand on top of mine. The gesture was so tentative, her expression so anxious, you would think she had never touched a man before. As if she was worried I might break or burn or bite. Her cool hand lay on mine for a moment, gentle as a moth. She squeezed my hand softly, waited, then pulled away.
It struck me as odd at the time. But I was too clouded with confusion and grief to think clearly. Only now, looking back, do I realize the truth of things. With all the awkwardness of a young lover, she was trying to comfort me, and she didn't have the slightest idea how. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,#NFDB
391:A naked woman was amazing.
He'd never seen it this way, in full light, without half-off clothes or a beach blanket across the lap or sex in a dark car. This was her whole body naked in light, standing and lying and front and back and open and showing and then different when she walked, surer than he was, unclunky and smooth-moving, with parts that didn't bounce. She knew how to be naked. She looked like she'd been raised naked in this room, a skinny girl when she was a girl, probably, and skinny in a certain way, with a little bulgy belly and ashamed of her feet, but grown out of shyness and wrong proportions now, and being married of course, used to being seen, and she didn't have curves and swerves but was good looking naked and stuck to him when they fucked like a thing fighting for light, a great wet papery moth. ~ Don DeLillo,#NFDB
392:In Memoriam A. H. H.: 54. Oh, Yet We Trust That
Somehow Goo
Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final end of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
I shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
393:/Farsi 'Why was Adam driven from the garden?' The pupil asked his master. 'His heart was hardened With images, a hundred bonds that clutter the earth Chained Adam to the cycle of death following birth. He was blind to this equation, living for something other Than God and so out of paradise he was driven With his mortal body's cover his soul was shriven. Noblest of God's creatures, Adam fell with blame, Like a moth shriveled by the candle's flame, Into history which taught mankind shame. Since Adam had not given up his heart To God's attachment, there was no part For Adam in paradise where the only friend Is God; His will is not for Adam to imagine and bend.' [1490.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds: The Selected Sufi Poetry of Farid ud-Din Attar, Translated by Raficq Abdulla
~ Farid ud-Din Attar, The Pupil asks- the Master answers
,#NFDB
394:Modern Beauty
I am the torch, she saith, and what to me
If the moth die of me? I am the flame
Of Beauty, and I burn that all may see
Beauty, and I have neither joy nor shame.
But live with that clear light of perfect fire
Which is to men the death of their desire.
I am Yseult and Helen, I have seen
Troy burn, and the most loving knight lies dead.
The world has been my mirror, time has been
My breath upon the glass; and men have said,
Age after age, in rapture and despair,
Love's poor few words, before my image there.
I live, and am immortal; in my eyes
The sorrow of the world, and on my lips
The joy of life, mingle to make me wise;
Yet now the day is darkened with eclipse:
Who is there lives for beauty? Still am I
The torch, but where's the moth that still dares die?
~ Arthur Symons,#NFDB
395:Is the soul solid, like iron? Or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl? Who has it, and who doesn’t? I keep looking around me. The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus. The swan opens her white wings slowly. In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness. One question leads to another. Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg? Like the eye of a hummingbird? Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop? Why should I have it, and not the anteater who loves her children? Why should I have it, and not the camel? Come to think of it, what about the maple trees? What about the blue iris? What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight? What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves? What about the grass? —Mary Oliver, “Some Questions You Might Ask ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, #NFDB
396:The Candle And The Moth
O Candle! Why does the moth love you?
Why is this restless soul devoted to you?
Your charm keeps it restless like mercury
Did you teach it the etiquette of Love?
It circumambulates the site of your manifestation
Is it inspired with the fire of your lightning?
Do the woes of death give it the peace of life?
Does your flame possess the quality of eternal life?
If you do not brighten this sorrowful world
This burning heart's tree of Longing may not green up
Falling before you is the prayer of this little heart
The taste for impassioned Love knows this little heart
It has some zeal of the Primeval Beauty's Lover
You are a small ñër, it is a small Kalam
The moth and the taste for the Sight of the Light!
This small insect and the Longing for the Light!
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
397:Say I Am You
I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of a stone, a flickering in metal.
Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,
and the falling away. What is, and what isn't.
You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all,
say who I am. Say I am You. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
398:Jeff opened blue eyes, grinned at me. “If you’re feeling left out . . .” I almost threw out an instinctive no, but I decided to throw him a bone. “Oh, Jeff. It’d be too good—you and me. Too powerful, too much emotion, too much heat. We’d come together and boom”—I clapped my hands together—“like a moth to a flame, there’d be nothing left.” His eyes glazed over. “Combustion?” “Totally.” He was quiet for a moment, his index finger tracing a pattern on the knee of his jeans. Then he nodded. “Too powerful. It’d destroy us both.” I nodded solemnly. “Probably so.” But I leaned over, pressed my lips to his forehead. “We’ll always have Chicago.” “Chicago,” he dreamily repeated. “Yeah. Definitely.” He cleared his throat, seemed to regain a little composure. “When I tell this story later, you kissed me on the mouth. With tongue. And you were handsy.” I chuckled. “Fair enough. ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB
399:Account
The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle's flame.
Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.
I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.
But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own -- but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.
The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it's late. And the truth is laborious.
Berkeley, 1980.
Trans. Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky
~ Czeslaw Milosz,#NFDB
400:I.
Hast thou not seen, officious with delight,
Move through the illumined air about the flower
The Bee, that fears to drink its purple light,
Lest danger lurk within that Rose's bower?
Hast thou not marked the moth's enamoured flight
About the Taper's flame at evening hour;
Till kindle in that monumental fire
His sunflower wings their own funereal pyre?
II.
My heart, its wishes trembling to unfold.
Thus round the Rose and Taper hovering came,
'And Passions slave, Distrust, in ashes cold.
Smothered awhile, but could not quench the flame,'--
Till Love, that grows by disappointment bold,
And Opportunity, had conquered Shame;
And like the Bee and Moth, in act to close,
'I burned my wings, and settled on the Rose.'
TRANSLATED BY MEDWIN AND CORRECTED BY SHELLEY.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Stanzas From Calderons Cisma De Inglaterra
,#NFDB
401:the reeds opened up and Moth Flight saw a clearing ahead. Fish scent washed her muzzle as two kits bounded across the sandy soil and bundled into Dawn Mist. “Dawn Mist!” The gray-and-white she-kit bounced around the orange queen. “Pine Needle ate more of the trout than me! It’s not fair.” The black tom-kit dug his paws into the earth. “I did not! She’s just being greedy!” “Poor Drizzle.” Dawn Mist licked the gray she-kit’s head. “I’ll catch another fish soon,” she promised. “Can we have one each?” Pine Needle asked. Drizzle blinked eagerly. “I want the biggest one!” “You two are greedier than foxes,” Dawn Mist purred. She nosed the kits away. “Go and play. I’m helping Night show our guests to Dappled Pelt’s den.” Drizzle’s eyes opened wide as she spotted Moth Flight and Micah. “What are they doing here?” “Invasion!” Pine Needle fluffed out his fur. “Should I warn River Ripple? ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
402:MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS FORGOTTEN BEAUTY When my arms wrap you round I press My heart upon the loveliness That has long faded from the world; The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled In shadowy pools, when armies fled; The love-tales wove with silken thread By dreaming ladies upon cloth That has made fat the murderous moth; The roses that of old time were Woven by ladies in their hair, The dew-cold lilies ladies bore Through many a sacred corridor Where such gray clouds of incense rose That only the gods’ eyes did not close: For that pale breast and lingering hand Come from a more dream-heavy land, A more dream-heavy hour than this; And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew But flame on flame, deep under deep, Throne over throne, where in half sleep Their swords upon their iron knees Brood her high lonely mysteries. ~ W B Yeats, #NFDB
403:A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
404:Rushing outside, she carries long, sharp scissors and snips at flower petals while screaming, "Off with your head!" When I realize what she's really after, a strange discomfort stirs inside. I've seen how the petals tatter beneath the blades. I don't want her to ruin my moth's pretty wings. I throw my hands over the scissors to stop her. The moth escapes unscathed. But I'm not so lucky...
Coming out of the trance, I drop to the ground and clutch aching palms to my chest. The scars throb as if freshly cut. Morpheus bows over me, smoothing my hair. "I told you that you were special, Alyssa," he murmurs, the weight of his palm strangely comforting on the top of my head. "No one else has ever bled for me. The loyalty of one child for another is immeasurable. You believed in me, shared new experiences with me, grew with me. That has earned you my sincerest devotion." ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
405:/Farsi Lost in myself I reappeared I know not where a drop that rose from the sea and fell and dissolved again; a shadow that stretched itself out at dawn, when the sun reached noon I disappeared. I have no news of my coming or passing away-- the whole thing happened quicker than a breath; ask no questions of the moth. In the candle flame of his face I have forgotten all the answers. In the way of love there must be knowledge and ignorance so I have become both a dullard and a sage; one must be an eye and yet not see so I am blind and yet I still perceive, Dust be on my head if I can say where I in bewilderment have wandered: Attar watched his heart transcend both worlds and under its shadow now is gone mad with love. [1501.jpg] -- from The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, Translated by Peter Lamborn Wilson / Translated by Nasrollah Pourjavady
~ Farid ud-Din Attar, The Dullard Sage
,#NFDB
406:Hadrian dismounted and began unloading Dancer. "How long were we on the road?" He paused to look up at the moon.
"What? Five, six hours? Not a damn word. Getting chilly out, don't you think, Hadrian? The moon looks like a fingernail, ain't that right, Hadrian? The tree looks like a goddamn bear, don't it, Hadrian? Nothing. By the way, in case you haven't noticed, I was attacked by a goshawk and a pig-riding dwarf that shot eggs at me with a sling. I was knocked from my horse and wrestled with the dwarf, the hawk, and the pig for what had to be half an hour. The dwarf kept smashing eggs in my face, and the ruddy pig pinned me down, licking them off. I only got away because the dwarf ran out of eggs. Then the hawk turned into a moth that became distracted by the light of the moon."
Royce shifted to his side, hood up.
"Yeah, well...thank Maribor and Novron I didn't need your help THAT time. ~ Michael J Sullivan,#NFDB
407:O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!
We thank Thee for the light that we have kindled,
The light of altar and of sanctuary;
Small lights of those who meditate at midnight
And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows
And light reflected from the polished stone,
The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.
Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward
And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee! ~ T S Eliot,#NFDB
408:It's time for us to join the line of your madmen all chained together.
Time to be totally free, and estranged.
Time to give up our souls, to set fire to structures and run out in the street.
Time to ferment.
How else can we leave the world-vat and go to the lip?
We must die to become true human beings.
We must turn completely upside down
like a comb in the top of a beautiful woman's hair.
Spread out your wings as a tree lifts in the orchard.
As seed scattered on the road,
as a stone melts to wax,
as a candle becomes the moth.
On a chessboard the king is blessed again with his queen.
With our faces so close to the love mirror, we must not breathe, but change to a cleared place where a building was and feel the treasure hiding inside us.
With no beginning or end,
we live in lovers as a story they know.
If you will be the key, we'll be tumblers in the lock. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
409:Aubade with a Broken Neck"
The first night you don’t come home
summer rains shake the clematis.
I bury the dead moth 1 found in our bed,
scratch up a rutabaga and eat it rough
with dirt. The dog finds me and presents
between his gentle teeth a twitching
nightjar. In her panic, she sings
in his mouth. He gives me her pain
like a gift, and I take it. I hear
the cries of her young, greedy with need,
expecting her return, but I don’t let her go
until I get into the house. I read
the auspices the way she flutters against
the wallpaper’s moldy roses means
all can be lost. How she skims the ceiling
means a storm approaches. You should see
her in the beginnings of her fear, rushing
at the starless window, her body a dart,
her body the arrow of longing, aimed,
as all desperate things are, to crash
not into the object of desire,
but into the darkness behind it. ~ Traci Brimhall,#NFDB
410:God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turned out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up "Amazing Grace. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
411: I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands.
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
~ William Butler Yeats, The Song Of Wandering Aengus
,#NFDB
412:Trust
Oh we've got to trust
one another again
in some essentials.
Not the narrow little
bargaining trust
that says: I'm for you
if you'll be for me. But a bigger trust,
a trust of the sun
that does not bother
about moth and rust,
and we see it shining
in one another.
Oh don't you trust me,
don't burden me
with your life and affairs; don't
thrust me
into your cares.
But I think you may trust
the sun in me
that glows with just
as much glow as you see
in me, and no more.
But if it warms
your heart's quick core
why then trust it, it forms
one faithfulness more.
And be, oh be
a sun to me,
not a weary, insistent
personality
but a sun that shines
175
and goes dark, but shines
again and entwines
with the sunshine in me
till we both of us
are more glorious
and more sunny.
~ David Herbert Lawrence,#NFDB
413:A moth flying into the flame says with its wingfire, 'Try this.'
The wick with its knotted neck broken, tells you the same.
A candle as it diminishes explains, 'Gathering more and more is not the way. Burn, become light and heat and help. Melt.'
The ocean sits in the sand letting its lap fill with pearls and shells, then empty.
A bittersalt taste hums, 'This.'
The phoenix gives up on good-and-bad, flies to rest on Mt. Qaf, no more burning and rising from ash. It sends out one message.
The rose purifies its face, drops the soft petals, shows its thorn, and points.
Wine abandons thousands of famous names, the vintage years and delightful bouquets, to run wild and anonymous through your brain.
The flute closes its eyes and gives its lips to Hamza’s emptiness.
Everything begs with the silent rocks for you to be flung out like light
over this plain, the presence of Shams. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
414:It's a child's world, full of separate places. Give me a paper and pencil now and ask me to draw a map of the fields I roamed when I was small, and I cannot do it. But change the question, and ask me to list what was there and I can fill pages. The wood ant's nest. The newt pond. The oak covered in marble galls. The birches by the motorway fence with fly agarics at their feet. These things were the waypoints of my world. And other places became magic through happenstance. When I found a huge red underwing moth behind the electricity junction box at the end of my road, that box became a magic place. I needed to check behind it every time I walked past, though nothing was ever there. I'd run to check the place where once I'd caught a grass snake, look up at the tree that one afternoon had held a roosting owl. These places had a magical importance, a pull on me that other places did not, however devoid of life they were in all the visits since. ~ Helen Macdonald, #NFDB
415:The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun. ~ W B Yeats,#NFDB
416:«He grins and straightens, wings high and regal behind him. I glare at his costume. It’s so typical him. A mix of medieval and rock star: brown leather forearm guards with studs over a ruffle-cuffed white shirt, and a cavalier doublet in burgundy with a gold lace overlay. The hem hits above his muscled thighs, so the skintight burgundy hose taper smoothly into knee-high brown boots, leaving nothing to the imagination. Worst of all, he has a crown.
He dressed as a fairy king. The irony doesn’t escape me.
I scowl.
“Problem, luv?” He looks down on me from behind a gold lace half mask while adjusting the ruby-jeweled crown over his blue hair with velvet-clad hands. Tiny moth corpses are suspended in the rubies, like stained-glass fossils.
I shake my head. “I’m pretty sure you’ll be the only one wearing anything tight enough to need a codpiece. Always have to be the showstopper, don’t you?”
“Oh, I assure you, what I chose to show is only the start.» ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
417:When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such grey clouds of incense rose
That only God's eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Come from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew.
But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.
~ William Butler Yeats, He Remembers Forgotten Beauty
,#NFDB
418:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you—daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
419:So, Logan thought. This is the girl.
At last he had her in his grasp. Madeline Eloise Gracechurch. In her own words, the greatest ninny to ever draw breath in England.
The lass wasn't in England now. And pale as she'd grown in the past few seconds, he suspected she might not be breathing, either.
He gave her hand a little squeeze, and she drew in a gasp. Color flooded her cheeks.
There, that was better.
To be truthful, Logan needed a moment to locate his own composure. She'd knocked the breath from him, too.
He'd spent a great deal of time wondering how she looked. Too much time over the years. Of course she'd sent him sketches of every blessed mushroom, moth, and blossom in existence-but never any likeness of herself.
By the gods, she was bonny. Far prettier than her letters had led him to imagine. Also smaller, more delicate.
"So..." she said, "this means...you...I...gack."
Much less articulate, too.
-Logan's thoughts & Maddie ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB
420:She held the moth to the light. It was nearer brown than yellow,and she remembered having seen some like it in the boxes that afternoon.It was not the one needed to complete the collection,but Elnora might want it,so Mrs. Comstock held on. Then the Almighty was kind,or nature was sufficient,as you look at it,for following the law of its being when disturbed,the moth again threw the spray by which some suppose it attracts its kind,and liberally sprinkled Mrs. Comstock's dress front and arms. From that instant,she became the best moth bait ever invented. Every Polyphemus in range hastened to her,and other fluttering creatures of night followed. The influx came her way. She snatched wildly here and there until she had one in each hand and no place to put them. She could see more coming,and her aching heart,swollen with the strain of long excitement,hurt pitifully.She prayed in broken exclamations that did not always sound reverent,but never was a human soul more intense earnest. ~ Gene Stratton Porter, #NFDB
421:Liaison
A big bud of moon hangs out of the twilight,
Star-spiders spinning their thread
Hang high suspended, withouten respite
Watching us overhead.
Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths
Curtain us in so dark
That here we’re safe from even the ermin-moth’s
Flitting remark.
Here in this swarthy, secret tent,
Where black boughs flap the ground,
You shall draw the thorn from my discontent,
Surgeon me sound.
This rare, rich night! For in here
Under the yew-tree tent
The darkness is loveliest where I could sear
You like frankincense into scent.
Here not even the stars can spy us,
Not even the white moths write
With their little pale signs on the wall, to try us
And set us affright.
Kiss but then the dust from off my lips,
But draw the turgid pain
From my breast to your bosom, eclipse
My soul again.
Waste me not, I beg you, waste
Not the inner night:
Taste, oh taste and let me taste
The core of delight.
~ David Herbert Lawrence,#NFDB
422:My mind blurs to a ripple of pleasure when his soft, full lips at last make contact with mine. He starts to deepen the kiss, but pauses, intent on the glass behind me. “You gotta be kidding.”
I glance over my shoulder. Outside, Morpheus hangs on the glass in moth form, level with my head, glaring at us with his bulbous gaze. Even without a face, his smugness is apparent. His favorite pastime is interrupting Jeb’s romantic moments. I try not to laugh, but can’t help myself.
“Cocky son of a bug.” Jeb sets me on the floor and draws the dropcloth tighter around me.
A barn owl swoops from the sky and skims the glass. Morpheus launches off in a tizzy, trying to outrun the bird. Now Jeb’s the one laughing.
I slap his shoulder. “Hey, that’s not funny.”
“Ah, he’ll be okay.” Jeb raises an eyebrow, watching the aerial pursuit taking place outside the glass. “It’s a new genus of vegetarian owls. They’re only in it for the chase. Besides, Morphie-boy can change to his other form anytime he wants.” ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
423:Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses. For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival, child brains need to trust parents, and elders whom parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot know that ‘Don’t paddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo’ is good advice but ‘You must sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rains will fail’ is at best a waste of time and goats. Both admonitions sound equally trustworthy. Both come from a respected source and are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience. The same goes for propositions about the world, about the cosmos, about morality and about human nature. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
424:The subject dropped, and we sat on in the dusk that was rapidly deepening into night. The door into the hall was open at our backs, and a panel of light from the lamps within was cast out to the terrace. Wandering moths, invisible in the darkness, suddenly became manifest as they fluttered into this illumination, and vanished again as they passed out of it. One moment they were there, living things with life and motion of their own, the next they quite disappeared. How inexplicable that would be, I thought, if one did not know from long familiarity, that light of the appropriate sort and strength is needed to make material objects visible.
Philip must have been following precisely the same train of thought, for his voice broke in, carrying it a little further.
'Look at that moth,' he said, 'and even while you look it has gone like a ghost, even as like a ghost it appeared. Light made it visible. And there are other sorts of light, interior psychical light which similarly makes visible the beings which people the darkness of our blindness.' ("Expiation") ~ E F Benson,#NFDB
425:Can I make you happier with powder on my chest? Do you need a thousand movie shows? Sixteen million people to ride the bus with, hit the stop—I shoulda never let you go away from home—“ Rich lips brooded in my deaf ear. “The fog’ll fall all over you, Jacky, you’ll wait in fields—You’ll let me die—you wont come save me—I wont even know where your grave is—remember what you were like, where your house, what your life—you’ll die without knowing what happened to my face—my love—my youth—You’ll burn yourself out like a moth jumping in a locomotive boiler looking for light—Jacky—and you’ll be dead—and lose yourself from yourself—and forget—and sink—and me too—and what is all this then?”
“I dont know—“
“Then come back to our porch of the river the night time the trees and you love stars—I hear the bus on the corner—where you’re getting off—no more, boy, no more—I saw, had visions and idees of you handsome my husband walking across the top of the America with your lantern...
Out of her eyes I saw smoldering I’d like to rip this damn dress off and never see it again! ~ Jack Kerouac,#NFDB
426:Poem [song birds take a bath in our elephant pool]
song birds take a bath in our elephant pool
turtles don't come to our turtle yet
sunflower cytology apprehend the weeds in our garden
cytologies you mean & well there's poison ivy
as in drew barrymore or
dream creatures knocking at the window
threatening to kill you on a snowy road
and now the luna moth creeps along as creeks bring
blue herons flying into flower
watches like herons nesting oh! what mayhem
we behold, so many Gnostic beings landing at our
doorstep ready to start something or else
there'll be a rainbow or parhelion or fire or
with the party to put an end to hunger as they say
in the old days and should we have a rent strike
à la hoag's corners? what wilt thou?
frogs and bugs and little dead farm animals in the
hay, oh hell i've lived in new york city
i know about dead beings like all get out
of the sidewalks and burning buildings along with
the living tho the living usually stay unless they're
the living dead
~ Bernadette Mayer,#NFDB
427:She made a hungry, eager sound, parted her lips and took the tip of his cock in her moth. Belatedly her mind caught up with what she had done.
Um, maybe she should have asked first. If somebody had grabbed her crotch and helped himself without so much as checking in with the rest of her, you can bet your ass she would react with a strategically aimed knee to the privates.
Just because he had an erection didn't mean he was willing or prepared to act on it....
Her face flooded with heat. Pulling back, she muttered, "Sorry."
Incredulity sharpened his gaze, "You're sorry?"
Her shoulders crept up to her ears. "I just grabbed hold and started sucking. Then I thought maybe I should have asked first."
Amusement bolted over his hard features, completely banishing his moody isolation.
Then, sobering -- or at least appearing to -- he said, "Melly, please suck me off. Fasten your sexy mouth around my cock and pull on me until I don't have anything left to give. My God, just looking at the erotic shape of your lips makes me want to spill all over your gorgeous face. ~ Thea Harrison,#NFDB
428:/Farsi There is great joy in darkness. Deepen it. Blushing embarrassments in the half-light confuse, but a scorched, blackened, face can laugh like an Ethiopian, or a candled moth, coming closer to God. Brighter than any moon, Bilal, Muhammed's Black Friend, shadowed him on the night journey. Keep your deepest secret hidden in the dark beneath daylight's uncovering and night's spreading veil. Whatever's given you by those two is for your desires. They poison, eventually. Deeper down, where your face gets erased, where life-water runs silently, there's a prison with no food and drink, and no moral instruction, that opens on a garden where there's only God. No self, only the creation-word, BE. You, listening to me, roll up the carpet of time and space. Step beyond, into the one word. In blindness, receive what I say. Take "There is no good..." for your wealth and your strength. Let "There is nothing..." be a love-wisdom in your wine. [1841.jpg] -- from The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks
~ Hakim Sanai, The Good Darkness
,#NFDB
429:Waterloo Day
THIS is the day of our glory; this is our day to weep.
Under her dusty laurels England stirs in her sleep;
Dreams of her days of honour, terrible days that are dead,
Days of the making of story, days when the sword was red,
When all her fate and her future hung on the naked blade,
When by the sword of her children her place in the world was made,
When Honour sounded the trumpet and Valour leapt to obey,
And Heroes bought us the Empire that statesmen would sell to-day.
England, wanton and weary, sunk in a slothful ease,
Has slain in her wars her thousands, but her tens of thousands in peace:
And the cowards grieve for her glory; their glory is in their shame;
They are glad of the moth in her banners, and the rust on her shining name.
Oh, if the gods would send us a balm for our sick, sad years,
Let them send us a sight of the scarlet, and the sound of the guns in our ears!
For valour and faith and honour--these grow where the red flower grows,
And the leaves for the Nation's healing must spring from the blood of her foes.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
430:The Exorcists
And I solemnly swear
on the chill of secrecy
that I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover.
For all these present,
before that wandering ghost,
that yellow moth of my summer bed,
I say: this small event
is not. So I prepare, am dosed
in ether and will not cry what stays unsaid.
I was brown with August,
the clapping waves at my thighs
and a storm riding into the cove. We swam
while the others beached and burst
for their boarded huts, their hale cries
shouting back to us and the hollow slam
of the dory against the float.
Black arms of thunder strapped
upon us, squalled out, we breathed in rain
and stroked past the boat.
We thrashed for shore as if we were trapped
in green and that suddenly inadequate stain
of lightning belling around
our skin. Bodies in air
we raced for the empty lobsterman-shack.
It was yellow inside, the sound
of the underwing of the sun. I swear,
I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-a-brac
of summer loves, I know
you not.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
431:One of the sturdiest precepts of the study of human delusion is that every golden age is either past or in the passing. During 1941, in the wake of that outburst of gaudy hopefulness, the World’s Fair, a sizable portion of the citizens of New York City had the odd experience of feeling for the time in which they were living, at the very moment they were living in it, that strange blend of optimism and nostalgia which is the usual hallmark of the aetataureate delusion. The rest of the world was busy feeding itself, country by country, to the furnace, but while the city’s newspapers and newsreels at the Trans-Lux were filled with ill portents, defeats, atrocities, and alarms, the general mentality of the New Yorker was not one of siege, panic, or grim resignation to fate but rather the toe-wiggling, tea-sipping contentment of a woman curled on a sofa, reading in front of a fire with cold rain rattling against the windows. The economy was experiencing a renewal not only of sensation but of perceptible movement in its limbs, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in fifty-six straight games, and the great big bands reached their suave and ecstatic acme in the hotel ballrooms and moth-lit summer pavilions of America. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
432:When you, sweet sleeper, wake in the morning, one arm thrown over your golden-sticky eyes, sheets a-mangle, your dreams still flit through you, ragged, full of holes. You can remember the man with the yellow eyes, but not why he chased you. You can remember the hawk footed woman on your roof, but not what she whispered.
That is my fault. I could not help it. I tromped though you in the night and ate up your dreams, a moth through wool. I didn't want them all, only the sweetest veins, like fat marbling a slab of ruby meat, the marrowy slick of what she whispered, why he ran.
I am a rowling thing--my snout raises up toward the moon to catch the scent of your sweat. I show my flat teeth to the night wind. I beg permission of your bed clothes to curl up in the curve of your stomach, to gnaw on your shoulders, your breasts, your eyelids. I must open up a hole in you, to crawl through to the red place where your dreams spool out.
You put your arm around me in the night. Do you remember? My belly was taut and black, a tapir's belly, a tapir's snout snuffling for your breath as a pig for truffles. You were my truffle, my thick, earthy mushroom. You were delicious, and I thank you for my supper. ~ Catherynne M Valente,#NFDB
433:Unlike the God whose name begins with a capital letter, our gods are not all-powerful, Louis. Can you imagine that? Any one of them can be vanquished by a flamethrower or a bulldozer or a bomb—silenced, driven away, enfeebled. Sit in the middle of a shopping mall at midnight, surrounded by half a mile of concrete in all directions, and there the god that was once as strong as a buffalo or a rhinoceros is as feeble as a moth sprayed with pyrethrin. Feeble—but not dead, not wholly extinguished. Tear down the mall and rip up the concrete, and within days that place will be pulsing with life again. Nothing needs to be done, beyond carting away the poisons. The god knows how to take care of that place. It will never be what it was before—but nothing is ever what it was before. It doesn’t need to be what it was before. You’ll hear people talk about turning the plains of North America back into what they were before the Takers arrived. This is nonsense. What the plains were five hundred years ago was not their final form, was not the final, sacrosanct form ordained for them from the beginning of time. There is no such form and never will be any such form. Everything here is on the way. Everything here is in process. ~ Daniel Quinn, #NFDB
434:The most-studied evidence, by the greatest number of economists, concerns what is called short-term dependence. This refers to the way price levels or price changes at one moment can influence those shortly afterwards-an hour, a day, or a few years, depending on what you consider "short." A "momentum" effect is at work, some economists theorize: Once a stock price starts climbing, the odds are slightly in favor of it continuing to climb for a while longer. For instance, in 1991 Campbell Harvey of Duke- he of the CFO study mentioned earlier-studied stock exchanges in sixteen of the world's largest economies. He found that if an index fell in one month, it had slightly greater odds of falling again in the next moth, or, if it had risen, greater odds of continuing to rise. Indeed, the data show, the sharper the move in the first, the more likely is is that the price trend will continue into the next month, although at a slower rate. Several other studies have found similar short-term trending in stock prices. When major news about a company hits the wires, the stock will react promptly-but it may keep on moving for the next few days as the news spreads, analysts study it, and more investors start to act upon it. ~ Beno t B Mandelbrot, #NFDB
435:Passing Away, Saith The World
Passing away, saith the World, passing away:
Chances, beauty and youth, sapp'd day by day:
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answer'd: Yea.
Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away:
With its burden of fear and hope, of labour and play,
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cockcrow, at morning, one certain day
Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answer'd: Yea.
Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after the long delay:
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray.
Arise, come away, night is past and lo it is day,
My love, My sister, My spouse, thou shalt hear Me say.
Then I answer'd: Yea.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,#NFDB
436:I didn’t ask you the right questions,” Arin said. “I want to start again. You said that the prisoner reached through the bars of the wagon to give you the moth.”
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t really see her.”
“That’s right.”
“But you said she was Herrani. Why would you say that if you couldn’t see her?”
“Because she spoke in Herrani.”
“Perfectly.”
“Yes.”
“No accent.”
“No.”
“Describe the hand.”
“I’m not sure…”
“Start with the skin. You said it was paler than yours, than mine.”
“Yes, like a house slave’s.”
Which wasn’t very different from a Valorian’s. “Could you see her wrist, her arm?”
“The wrist, yes, now that you mention it. She was in chains. I saw the manacle.”
“Did you see the sleeve of a dress?”
“Maybe. Blue?”
Dread churned inside Arin. “You think or you know?”
“I don’t know. Things happened too fast.”
“Please. This is important.”
“I don’t want to say something I’m not sure is true.”
“All right, all right. Was this her right hand or her left?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you tell me anything about it? Did she wear a seal ring?”
“Not that I saw, but--”
“Yes?”
“She had a birthmark. On the hand, near the thumb. It looked like a little black star. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
437:An Ode To Himself
Where dost thou careless lie,
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps doth die;
And this security,
It is the common moth
That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.
Are all th' Aonian springs
Dried up? lies Thespia waste?
Doth Clarius' harp want strings,
That not a nymph now sings?
Or droop they as disgrac'd,
To see their seats and bowers by chatt'ring pies defac'd?
If hence thy silence be,
As 'tis too just a cause,
Let this thought quicken thee:
Minds that are great and free
Should not on fortune pause;
'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.
What though the greedy fry
Be taken with false baites
Of worded balladry,
And think it poesy?
They die with their conceits,
And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.
Then take in hand thy lyre,
Strike in thy proper strain,
With Japhet's line aspire
Sol's chariot for new fire,
To give the world again;
Who aided him will thee, the issue of Jove's brain.
And since our dainty age
Cannot endure reproof,
Make not thyself a page
To that strumpet, the stage,
29
But sing high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof.
~ Ben Jonson,#NFDB
438:I pretend to reach for them, but before he can guess my intentions, I catch one of his wings instead. He flutters, trying to break loose, his one free wing batting my hand.
I draw out the decanter and stuff him into it, careful to fold his wings. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want to better him.
Once he’s settled inside, I shove a paper towel into the bottle’s neck. No need to worry that he’ll smother. After all, he spent that night in a bug trap last year and survived.
“Looks like you’re going to have some turbulence on your flight,” I tell him through the glass.
His voice fills my head, an angry, scolding growl. When I don’t respond, he yells Chessie’s name. Chessie flits over to the car and sits on the side mirror, licking his paw, amused and uninterested in taking sides.
I hold the decanter up to get a closer look at Morpheus. “Game, set, match, luv. You do realize that my human side defeated you, right? No magic required.”
Unlike a real moth that would beat itself against the glass walls until exhausted, he hangs under the curved neck, dignified, glaring with his bulbous eyes. If he had a mouth instead of a proboscis, I’d be able to tell if he’s snarling or beaming with pride. Knowing him, it could be either. Most likely, it’s both. ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
439:Japan
Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.
And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.
When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
27
And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
~ Billy Collins,#NFDB
440:Mack and the boys, too, spinning in their orbits. They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everthing lovable about them. Mack and the boys are the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces. In a world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
441:The word for teardrinkers is lachryphagous, and for the eaters of human flesh it is anthropophagous, and the rest of us feed on sorrow all the time. It is the essence of many of the most beautiful ballads and pop songs, and why sorrow and heartbreak are so delicious might have to do with the emotions it stirs in us, the empathy for others' suffering, and the small comfort of not being alone with our own. With a sad song we feel a delicate grief, as though we mourn for three minutes a loss we can't remember but taste again, sorrow like salt tears, and then close it up like a letter in the final notes. Sadness the blue like dusk, the reminder that all things are emphemeral, and that because there is time there is change and that is another name for change, if you look back toward what is vanishing in the distance, is loss.
But sadness is also beautiful, maybe because it rings so true and goes so deep, because it is about the distances in our lives, the things we lose, the abyss between what the lover and the beloved want and imagine and understand that may widen to become unbridgeable any moment, the distance between the hope at the onset and the eventual outcome, the journeys we have to travel, including the last one out of being and on past becoming into the unimaginable: the moth flown into the pure dark. ~ Rebecca Solnit,#NFDB
442:When he'd woken this morning, her soft limbs entangled with his, he had spent long minutes simply gazing at her in wonder. Her lips were a dark pink and parted softly, and her eyelashes lay against her cheeks like moth wings. She was beautiful and she was determined and he hadn't thought that marriage to her would result in this intimacy. He'd wanted her near, true, for he was a selfish, wicked man, and he didn't particularly like the dark that he lived in. She was to be company- nothing more. But it seemed he'd deceived himself, both about the power of her lure and about his own savage desires.
The last thought made him uneasy.
Had he frightened her? Had his lovemaking over the last two nights been too... carnal? Too crude for her?
He grimaced, looking away from her. He hadn't much experience with gentle ladies, truth be told. Not with a face like his.
Not with a past like his.
When his baser instincts could no longer be put off, he bought his relief.
But if he had shocked or repulsed Iris, perhaps that was for the best. She wouldn't be so quick to seek him again, which should make his own resistance easier.
Except that even now he found himself leaning infinitesimally toward her as if his body, having once tasted of her fruit, now not only understood hunger, but could be satiated by her and her alone. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,#NFDB
443:Frost Magic
Now, in the moonrise, from a wintry sky,
The frost has come to charm with elfin might
This quiet room; to draw with symbols bright
Faces and forms in fairest charactery
Upon the casement; all the thoughts that lie
Deep hidden in my heart's core he would tell,
How the red shoots of fancy strike and swell,
How they are watered, what soil nourished by.
With eerie power he piles his atomies,
Incrusted gems, star-glances overborne
With lids of sleep pulled from the moth's bright eyes,
And forests of frail ferns, blanched and forlorn,
Where Oberon of unimagined size
Might in the silver silence wind his horn.
II
With these alone he draws in magic lines,
Faces that people dreams, and chiefly one
Happy and brilliant as the northern sun,
And by its darling side there gleams and shines
One of God's children with the laughing signs
Of dimples, and glad accents, and sweet cries,
That angels are and heaven's memories:
The wizard thus my soul's estate divines;
All it holds dear he sets alone apart,
Etches the past in likeness of dim groves
Silvered in quiet rime and with rare art,
In crystal spoils and fairy treasure-troves,
He draws the picture of the happy heart,
By those who love it most, whom most it loves.
~ Duncan Campbell Scott,#NFDB
444:Storm Catechism"
The gods are rinsing their just-boiled pasta
in a colander, which is why
it is humid and fitfully raining
down here in the steel sink of mortal life.
Sometimes you can smell the truffle oil
and hear the ambrosia being knocked back,
sometimes you catch a drift
of laughter in that thunder crack: Zeus
knocking over his glass, spilling lightning
into a tree. The tree shears away from itself
and falls on a car, killing a high school girl.
Or maybe it just crashes down
on a few trash cans, and the next day
gets cut up and hauled away by the city.
Either way, hilarity. The gods are infinitely perfect
as is their divine mac and cheese.
Where does macaroni come from? Where does matter?
Why does the cat act autistic when you call her,
then bat a moth around for an hour, watching intently
as it drags its wings over the area rug?
The gods were here first, and they're bigger.
They always were, and always will be
living it up in their father's mansion.
You only crawled from the drain
a few millennia ago,
after inventing legs for yourself
so you could stand, inventing fists
in order to raise them and curse the heavens.
Do the gods see us?
Will the waters be rising soon?
The waters will be rising soon.
Find someone or something to cling to. ~ Kim Addonizio,#NFDB
445:He did not wish to get into a scrape about Mrs Lupex. He was by no means anxious to encounter her husband in one of his fits of jealousy. But he did like the idea of being talked of as the admirer of a married woman, and he did like the brightness of the lady’s eyes. When the unfortunate moth in his semi-blindness whisks himself and his wings within the flame of the candle, and finds himself mutilated and tortured, he even then will not take the lesson, but returns again and again till he is destroyed. Such a moth was poor Cradell. There was no warmth to be got by him from that flame. There was no beauty in the light, — not even the false brilliance of unhallowed love. Injury might come to him, — a pernicious clipping of the wings, which might destroy all power of future flight; injury, and not improbably destruction, if he should persevere. But one may say that no single hour of happiness could accrue to him from his intimacy with Mrs Lupex. He felt for her no love. He was afraid of her, and, in many respects, disliked her. But to him, in his moth-like weakness, ignorance, and blindness, it seemed to be a great thing that he should be allowed to fly near the candle. Oh! my friends, if you will but think of it, how many of you have been moths, and are now going about ungracefully with wings more or less burnt off, and with bodies sadly scorched! ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
446:/Farsi When you begin the Valley of the Quest Misfortunes will deprive you of all rest, Each moment some new trouble terrifies, And parrots there are panic-stricken flies. There years must vanish while you strive and grieve; There is the heart of all you will achieve -- Renounce the world, your power and all you own, And in your heart's blood journey on alone. When once your hands are empty, then your heart Must purify itself and move apart From everything that is -- when this is done, The Lord's light blazes brighter than the sun, Your heart is bathed in splendour and the quest Expands a thousandfold within your breast. Though fire flares up across the path, and though A hundred monsters peer out from its glow, The pilgrim driven on by his desire Will like a moth rush gladly on the fire. When love inspires his heart he begs for win, One drop to be vouchsafed him as a sign -- And when he drinks this drop both worlds are gone; Dry-lipped he founders in oblivion. His zeal to know faith's mysteries will make Him fight with dragons for salvation's sake -- Though blasphemy and curses crowd the gate, Until it opens he will calmly wait, And then where is this faith? this blasphemy? Both vanish into strenghless vacancy. [2178.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis
~ Farid ud-Din Attar, The Valley of the Quest
,#NFDB
447:The Fairy Goldsmith
Here's a wonderful thing,
A humming-bird's wing
In hammered gold,
And store well chosen
Of snowflakes frozen
In crystal cold.
Black onyx cherries
And mistletoe berries
Of chrysoprase,
Jade buds, tight shut,
All carven and cut
In intricate ways.
Here, if you please
Are little gilt bees
In amber drops
Which look like honey,
Translucent and sunny,
From clover-tops.
Here's an elfin girl
Of mother-of-pearl
And moonshine made,
With tortise-shell hair
Both dusky and fair
In its light and shade.
Here's lacquer laid thin,
Like a scarlet skin
On an ivory fruit;
And a filigree frost
Of frail notes lost
From a fairy lute.
Here's a turquoise chain
Of sun-shower rain
To wear if you wish;
And glittering green
45
With aquamarine,
A silvery fish.
Here are pearls all strung
On a thread among
Pretty pink shells;
And bubbles blown
From the opal stone
Which ring like bells.
Touch them and take them,
But do not break them!
Beneath your hand
They will wither like foam
If you carry them home
Out of fairy-lannd.
O, they never can last
Though you hide them fast
From moth and from rust;
In your monstrous day
They will crumble away
Into quicksilver dust.
~ Elinor Morton Wylie,#NFDB
448:A Dead Baby
LITTLE soul, for such brief space that entered
In this little body straight and chilly,
Little life that fluttered and departed,
Like a moth from an unopened lily,
Little being, without name or nation,
Where is now thy place among creation?
Little dark-lashed eyes, unclosèd never,
Little mouth, by earthly food ne'er tainted,
Little breast, that just once heaved, and settled
In eternal slumber, white and sainted,-Child, shall I in future children's faces
See some pretty look that thine retraces?
Is this thrill that strikes across my heart-strings
And in dew beneath my eyelid gathers,
Token of the bliss thou mightst have brought me,
Dawning of the love they call a father's?
Do I hear through this still room a sighing
Like thy spirit to me its author crying?
Whence didst come and whither take thy journey,
Little soul, of me and mine created?
Must thou lose us, and we thee, forever,
O strange life, by minutes only dated?
Or new flesh assuming, just to prove us,
In some other babe return and love us?
Idle questions all: yet our beginning
Like our ending, rests with the Life-sender,
With whom naught is lost, and naught spent vainly:
Unto Him this little one I render.
Hide the face--the tiny coffin cover:
So, our first dream, our first hope--is over.
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,#NFDB
449:When today Oskar, lying or sitting in his hospital bed but in either case drumming, revisits Arsenal Passage and the Stockturm with the scribbles on its dungeon walls and its well-oiled instruments of torture, when once again he looks down on those three windows outside the lobby of the Stadt-Theater and thereafter returns to Arsenal Passage and Sigismund Markus' store, searching for the particulars of a day in September, he cannot help looking for Poland at the same time. How does he look for it? With his drumsticks. Does he also look for Poland with his soul? He looks for it with every organ of his being, but the soul is not an organ.
I look for the land of the Poles that is lost to the Germans, for the moment at least. Nowadays the Germans have started searching for Poland with credits, Leicas, and compasses, with radar, divining rods, delegations, and moth-eaten provincial students' associations in costume. Some carry Chopin in their hearts, others thoughts of revenge. Condemning the first four partitions of Poland, they are busily planning a fifth; in the meantime flying to Warsaw via Air France in order to deposit, with appropriate remorse, a wreath on the spot that was once the ghetto. One of these days they will go searching for Poland with rockets. I, meanwhile, conjure up Poland on my drum. And this is what I drum: Poland's lost, but not forever, all's lost, but not forever, Poland's not lost forever. ~ G nter Grass,#NFDB
450:The Wedding Ring Dance
I dance in circles holding
the moth of the marriage,
thin, sticky, fluttering
its skirts, its webs.
The moth oozing a tear,
or is it a drop of urine?
The moth, grinning like a pear,
or is it teeth
clamping the iron maiden shut?
The moth,
who is my mother,
who is my father,
who was my lover,
floats airily out of my hands
and I dance slower,
pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring,
pulling off the elopement wedding ring,
and holding them, clicking them
in thumb and forefinger,
the indent of twenty-five years,
like a tiny rip of a tiny earthquake.
Underneath the soil lies the violence,
the shift, the crack of continents,
the anger,
and above only a cut,
a half-inch space to stick a pencil in.
The finger is scared
but it keeps its long numb place.
And I keep dancing,
a sort of waltz,
clicking the two rings,
all of a life at its last cough,
as I swim through the air of the kitchen,
and the same radio plays its songs
and I make a small path through them
with my bare finger and my funny feet,
doing the undoing dance,
327
on April 14th, 1973,
letting my history rip itself off me
and stepping into
something unknown
and transparent,
but all ten fingers stretched outward,
flesh extended as metal
waiting for a magnet.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
451:Memory's Mansion
In Memory's Mansion are wonderful rooms,
And I wander about them at will;
And I pause at the casements, where boxes of blooms
Are sending sweet scents o'er the sill.
I lean from a window that looks on a lawn;
From a turret that looks on the wave.
But I draw down the shade when I see on some glade
A stone standing guard by a grave.
To Memory's attic I clambered one day
When the roof was resounding with rain,
And there, among relics long hidden away,
I rummaged with heart ache and pain.
A hope long surrendered and covered with dust,
A pastime, out-grown and forgot,
And a fragment of love all corroded with rust,
Were lying heaped up in one spot.
And there on the floor of that garret was tossed
A friendship too fragile to last,
With pieces of dearly bought pleasures that cost
Vast fortunes of pain in the past,
A fabric of passion, once vivid and bright,
As the breast of a robin in Spring,
Was spread out before me-a terrible sightA moth-eaten rag of a thing.
Then down the deep stairway I hurriedly went,
And into fair chambers below;
But the mansion seemed filled with the old attic scent
Wherever my footsteps would go.
Though in Memory's House I still wander full oft,
No more to the garret I climb;
And I leave all the rubbish heaped there in the loft
To the hands of the Housekeeper, Time.
389
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
452:I want my children to embrace doing nothing, to embrace the slowing of an afternoon to a near standstill, when all you can hear is the laborious ticking of the clock and the dog snoring on the sofa, the rain’s patter at the window, the occasional swoosh of a slowly passing car. Remember those days? The exasperation, the excruciating itchiness of them? My kids would have to dive in, live through the agony, and come out the other side. They’d have to learn to lie on the lawn watching ants scale the grass blades; they’d have to linger, digits pruning, in the bathtub; they’d have to stop, to be still, and then to wait, and wait, and wait, allowing time to fatten around them like a dewdrop on the tip of a leaf. And then, only then, who knows what they might imagine or invent?
How can I teach them, when they’re not of an age to listen, and when, more problematically, I too often live in the world just as they do? In practice, I set a poor example, never idling or ambling or reading in bed. I’d like to figure out how to be the kind of parent who holds at bay all demands and exhortations, all fripperies and nonsense. I’d like to show the wisdom of restraint. A different version of washing out Ziplock bags and mending moth holes, it arises from the same impulse: from the understanding that if you attend thoughtfully to what you already have, you need nothing more. It’s all here, inside and in the room – not on the screen – before us. - Essay “In Praise of Boredom” Harpers Magazine, August 2015 ~ Claire Messud,#NFDB
453:I told you everything I know", said the messenger. Arin had gone to his childhood suite, feeling anxiety verging on panic at the thought of not finding the man there, of having to track him down, of time lost…but the man had opened the outermost door almost immediately after Arin’s pounding knock.
"I didn’t ask you the right questions,“ Arin said. "I want to start again. You said that the prisoner reached trough the bars of the wagon to give you the moth.”
“Yes”
“And you couldn’t really see her.”
“That’s right.”
“But you said she was Herrani. Why would you say that if you couldn’t see her?”
“Because she spoke in Herrani.”
“Perfectly.”
“Yes.”
“No accent.”
“No.”
“Describe the hand.”
“I’m not sure…”
“Start with the skin. You said it was paler than yours, than mine.”
“Yes, like a house slave’s.”
Which wasn’t very different from a Valorian’s. “Could you see her wrist, her arm?”
“The wrist, yes, now that you mention it. She was in chains. I saw the manacle.”
“Did you see the sleeve of a dress?”
“Maybe. Blue?”
Dread churned inside Arin. “You think or you know?”
“I don’t know. Things happened too fast.”
“Please. This is important.”
“I don’t want to say something I’m not sure is true.”
“All right, all right. Was this her right hand or her left?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you tell me anything about it? Did she wear a seal ring?”
“Not that I saw, but –”
“Yes?"
"She had a birthmark. On the hand, near the thumb. It looked like a little black star. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
454:She’s drawn to me just as I’m drawn to her. She can’t keep away. She circles, forced to keep her distance, afraid of abandoning her husband and, even more, her son for too long. But she keeps coming, like a moth to my candle, staying longer than she should, leaving late for dinners and birthday parties, singeing her wings. She’s risking her marriage for me, her family, her reputation.
And I, the moth circling her candle, realize that she’s not just a candle. She’s a moth as well, circling me. I look at her and see myself reflected, my feelings, my desires. And she, looking at me, must see herself. And which of us is moth and which is candle hardly seems to matter. We’re both the same.
That’s the secret.
What moths never tell us as they whirl in their dances.
What Manucci learned at Pak Tea House.
What sufis veil in verse.
I turn her around and look into her eyes and see the wonder in them that must be in mine as well, the wonder I first saw on our night of ecstasy, and I feel myself explode, expand, fill the universe, then collapse, implode like a detonation under water, become tiny, disappear.
I’m hardly aware of myself, of her, when I open my mouth. There is just us, and I speak for us when I speak, and I must be trembling and crying, but I don’t even know if I am or what I’m doing.
I just say it.
“I love you.”
And I lose myself in her eyes and we kiss and I feel myself becoming part of something new, something larger, something I never knew could be.
Union.
There are no words. ~ Mohsin Hamid,#NFDB
455:I can hear myself whining again 'Why does God torture me?' - But anybody who's never had a delirium tremens even in their early stages may not understand that it's not so much a physical pain but a mental anguish indescribable to those ignorant people who don't drink and accuse drinkers of irresponsibility - The mental anguish is so intense that you feel you have betrayed your very birth, the efforts nay the birth pangs of your mother when she bore you and delivered you to the world, you've betrayed every effort your father ever made to feed you and raise you and make you strong and my God even 'educate' you for life, you feel a guilt so deep you identify yourself with the devil and God seems far away abandoning you to your sick silliness - You feel sick in the greatest sense of the world, breathing without believing it, sicksicksick, your soul groans, you look at your helpless hands as tho they were on fire and you can't move to help, you look at the world with dead eyes, there's on your face an expression of incalculable repining like a constipated angel on a cloud - In fact it's actually a cancerous look you throw on the world, through browngray wool fuds over your eyes - Your tongue is white and disgusting, your teeth are stained, your hair seems to have dried out overnight, there are huge mucks in the corners of your eyes, greases on your nose, froth at the sides of your moth: in short that very disgusting and well-known hideousness everybody knows who's walked past a city street drunk in the Boweries of the world ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
456:A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office, and the podiatrist’s office says, “What seems to be the problem, moth?”
The moth says “What’s the problem? Where do I begin, man? I go to work for Gregory Illinivich, and all day long I work. Honestly doc, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know if Gregory Illinivich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. But I don’t know, I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there… at night I…I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that’s on my arm. A lady that I once loved, doc. I don’t know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexendria, she fell in the…in the cold of last year. The cold took her down, as it did many of us. And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc. My other boy, Gregarro Ivinalititavitch… I no longer love him. As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice that I… that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. If only I wasn’t such a coward, then perhaps…perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and end this hellish facade once and for all…Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I’m a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I’m not feeling good. And so the doctor says, “Moth, man, you’re troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on earth did you come here?”
And the moth says, “‘Cause the light was on. ~ Norm Macdonald,#NFDB
457:It seems to me just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to the office on Monday,' said Jonathan, 'as it always has done and always will do. To spend all the best years of one's life sitting on a stool from nine to five, scratching in somebody's ledger! It's a queer use to make of one's...one and only life, isn't it? Or do I fondly dream?' He rolled over on the grass and looked up at Linda. 'Tell me, what is the difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner? The only difference I can see is that I put myself in jail and nobody's ever going to let me out. That's a more intolerable situation than the other. For if I'd been--pushed in, against my will--kicking, even--once the door was locked, or at any rate in five years or so, I might have accepted the fact and begun to take an interest in the flight of flies or counting the warder's steps along the passage with particular attention to variations of tread and so on. But as it is, I'm like an insect that's flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, "The shortness of life! The shortness of life!" I've only one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, undiscovered, unexplored. [...] I'm exactly like that insect again. For some reason, it's not allowed, it's forbidden, it's against the insect law, to stop banging and flopping and crawling up the pane even for an instant. ~ Katherine Mansfield, #NFDB
458:Royce saw to his horse’s needs; then, finding a suitable place, he unrolled his blanket and lay down.
“I take it we’re camping here, then?”
Royce said nothing, still refusing to acknowledge his existence.
“You could have said, ‘We’re going to bed down here for the rest of the night.’ No, wait, you’re right, too much. How about ‘sleeping here’? Two words. Even you could manage that, right? I mean, I know you can talk. You had plenty to say back in Arcadius’s office. Couldn’t keep the words from coming out then, but no, utterly impossible to indicate in any way that we’ll be stopping here for the night.”
Hadrian dismounted and began unloading Dancer. “How long were we on the road?” He paused to look up at the moon. “What? Five, six hours? Not a damn word. Getting chilly out, don’t you think, Hadrian? Moon looks like a fingernail, ain’t that right, Hadrian? That tree looks like a goddamn bear, don’t it, Hadrian? Nothing. By the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, I was attacked by a goshawk and a pig-riding dwarf that shot eggs at me with a sling. I was knocked from my horse and wrestled with the dwarf, the hawk, and the pig for what had to be half an hour. The dwarf kept smashing eggs in my face, and that ruddy pig pinned me down, licking them off. I only got away because the dwarf ran out of eggs. Then the hawk turned into a moth that became distracted by the light of the moon.”
Royce shifted to his side, hood up.
“Yeah, well … thank Maribor and Novron I didn’t need your help that time.”
“Didn’t care for my help too much in the stable,” Royce said.
“It speaks! ~ Michael J Sullivan,#NFDB
459:A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with. ~ Douglas Adams,#NFDB
460:/Farsi Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night To learn the truth about the candle light, And they decided one of them should go To gather news of the elusive glow. One flew till in the distance he discerned A palace window where a candle burned -- And went no nearer: back again he flew To tell the others what he thought he knew. The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim, Remarking: "He knows nothing of the flame." A moth more eager than the one before Set out and passed beyond the palace door. He hovered in the aura of the fire, A trembling blur of timorous desire, Then headed back to say how far he'd been, And how much he had undergone and seen. The mentor said: "You do not bear the signs Of one who's fathomed how the candle shines." Another moth flew out -- his dizzy flight Turned to an ardent wooing of the light; He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance Both self and fire were mingled by his dance -- The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head, His being glowed a fierce translucent red; And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze, The moth's form lost within the glowing rays, He said: "He knows, he knows the truth we seek, That hidden truth of which we cannot speak." To go beyond all knowledge is to find That comprehension which eludes the mind, And you can never gain the longed-for goal Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul; But should one part remain, a single hair Will drag you back and plunge you in despair -- No creature's self can be admitted here, Where all identity must disappear. [2178.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis
~ Farid ud-Din Attar, The moths and the flame
,#NFDB
461:NOT one is filled with madness like to mine
In all the taverns! my soiled robe lies here,
There my neglected book, both pledged for wine.
With dust my heart is thick, that should be clear,
A glass to mirror forth the Great King's face;
One ray of light from out Thy dwelling-place
To pierce my night, oh God! and draw me near.
From out mine eyes unto my garment's hem
A river flows; perchance my cypress-tree
Beside that stream may rear her lofty stem,
Watering her roots with tears. Ah, bring to me
The wine vessel! since my Love's cheek is hid,
A flood of grief comes from my heart unbid,
And turns mine eyes into a bitter sea!
Nay, by the hand that sells me wine, I vow
No more the brimming cup shall touch my lips,
Until my mistress with her radiant brow
Adorns my feast-until Love's secret slips
From her, as from the candle's tongue of flame,
Though I, the singd moth, for very shame,
Dare not extol Love's light without eclipse.
Red wine I worship, and I worship her--
Speak not to me of anything beside,
For nought but these on earth or heaven I care.
What though the proud narcissus flowers defied
Thy shining eyes to prove themselves more bright,
Yet heed them not! those that are clear of sight
Follow not them to whom all light's denied.
Before the tavern door a Christian sang
To sound of pipe and drum, what time the earth
Awaited the white dawn, and gaily rang
Upon mine ear those harbingers of mirth:
'If the True Faith be such as thou dost say,
Alas! my Hafiz, that this sweet To-day
Should bring unknown To-morrow to the birth!'
~ Hafiz, With Madness Like To Mine
,#NFDB
462:Mirza Ghalib
Through you the secret was revealed to the human intellect
That innumerable enigmas are solved by human intellect
You were the complete soul, literary assembly was your body
You adorned as well as remained veiled from the assembly
Your eye is longing to witness that veiled Beauty
Which is veiled in everything as the pathos of life
The assemblage of existence is rich with your harp
As mountain's silence by the brook's melodious harp
The garden of your imagination bestows glory on the universe
From the field of your thought worlds grow like meadows
Life is concealed in the humor of your verse
Picture's lips move with your command of language
Speech is very proud of the elegance of your miraculous lips
Thurayyah is astonished at your style's elegance
Beloved of literature itself loves your style
Delhi's bud is mocking at the rose of Shiraz
Ah! You are resting in the midst of Delhi's ruins
Your counterpart is resting in the Weimar's garden
Matching you in literary elegance is not possible
Till maturity of thought and imagination are combined
Ah! What has befallen the land of India!
Ah! The inspirer of the super-critical eye!
The lock of Urdu's hair still craves for combing
This candle still craves for moth's heart-felt pathos
O Jahanabad! O cradle of learning and art
Your entire super-structure is a silent lament
29
The sun and the moon are asleep in every speck of your dust
Though innumerable other gems are also hidden in your dust
Does another world-famous person like him also lie buried in you?
Does another gem like him also lie concealed in you?
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
463:The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day
For half his flock were in their beds
Or under green sods lay.
Once, while he nodded in a chair
At the moth-hour of the eve
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.
'I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
For people die and die;
And after cried he, 'God forgive!
My body spake not I!'
He knelt, and leaning on the chair
He prayed and fell asleep;
And the moth-hour went from the fields,
And stars began to peep.
They slowly into millions grew,
And leaves shook in the wind
And God covered the world with shade
And whispered to mankind.
Upon the time of sparrow chirp
When the moths came once more,
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Stood upright on the floor.
'Mavrone, mavrone! The man has died
While I slept in the chair.'
He roused his horse out of its sleep
And rode with little care.
He rode now as he never rode,
By rocky lane and fen;
The sick man's wife opened the door,
'Father! you come again!'
'And is the poor man dead?' he cried
'He died an hour ago.'
The old priest Peter Gilligan
In grief swayed to and fro.
'When you were gone, he turned and died,
As merry as a bird.'
The old priest Peter Gilligan
He knelt him at that word.
'He Who hath made the night of stars
For souls who tire and bleed,
Sent one of this great angels down,
To help me in my need.
'He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care
Had pity on the least of things
Asleep upon a chair.'
~ William Butler Yeats, The Ballad Of Father Gilligan
,#NFDB
464:Learn
Learn, learn, learn,—
Our beautiful world is not a field for sheep;
Not just a place wherein to laugh and weep,
To eat and drink, to dance and sigh and sleep,
And then to moulder into senseless dust.
Learn, learn, learn,—
Look up and learn—you cannot look too high!
Not for the earthly wealth which brains can buy,
Not for the sake of gold and luxury—
Treasures corrupted by the moth and rust.
Learn, learn, learn,—
As one in whom the Lord has breathed His breath,
And aye redeemèd from the power of death—
Not as the dumb brute-beast that perisheth,
Not as a soulless, thoughtless, thankless clod.
Learn, learn, learn,—
With love and awe and patience—not in haste;
Drink deeply,—do not pass by with a taste;
O make your land a garden, not a waste!—
Your mind bright, to reflect the face of God.
Learn, learn, learn,—
The mystic beauty and the truth of life;
Search out the treasures whereof earth is rife,
Search on all sides, with pain and prayer and strife;
Search even into darkness. Do not fear.
Learn, learn, learn,—
With a true, steadfast heart, lay up your hoard;
God will sort out the treasures you have stored,
And set them in His bright light, afterward.
He will make all your difficulties clear.
Learn, learn, learn,—
Death is no breaking at a certain place;
We only pause there for a little space.
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And then—you would not shame Him to His face?—
You, in His Image and own Likeness made!
Learn, learn, learn,—
Walk with wide-open eyes and reverent heart.
Worship as God the beautiful in art.
Though you see now but dimly, and in part,
All shall be clear in time. Be not afraid.
~ Ada Cambridge,#NFDB
465:The time has come for us to become madmen in your chain, to
burst our bonds and become estranged from all;
To yield up our souls, no more to bear the disgrace of such a
soul, to set fire to our house, and run like fire to the tavern.
Until we ferment, we shall not escape from this vat of the
world- how then shall we become intimate with the lip of that
flagon and bowl?
Listen to the words from a madman: do not suppose that we
become true men until we die.
It is necessary that we should become more inverted than the
tip of a comb in the top of the twisted tress of felicity;
Spread our wings and pinions like a tree in the orchard, if like
a seed we are to be scattered on this road of annihilation.
Though we are of stone, we shall become like wax for you
seal; though we be candles, we shall become a moth in the track
of your light.
Though we are kings, we shall travel straight as rocks for your
sake, that we may become blessed through your queen on this
chessboard.
In the face of the mirror of love we must not breathe a word of
ourselves; we must become intimate with your treasure when
we are changed to waste.
Like the tale of the heart we must be without bread or ending,
that we may become dwellers in the heart of lovers like a tale.
If he acts like the seeker, we shall attain to being sought; if he acts
the key, we shall become all the wards of the lock.
If Mostafa does not make his way and couch in our hearts, it is
meet that we should lament and become like the Wailing
Column.
No, be silent; for one must observe silence towards the watch-
man when we go towards the pavilion by night.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, The Time Has Come For Us To Become Madmen In Your Chain
,#NFDB
466:All of us have a right to our lives. But what if, for lack of guidance, we take the wrong paths? Take Wintrow for instance. What if he was meant to lead a different life? What if, because of something I failed to do or say, he became King of the Pirate Isles when he was meant to be a man leading a life of scholarly contemplation? A man whose destiny was to experience a cloistered, contemplative life becomes a king instead. His deep spiritual meditations never occur and are never shared with the world.”
Paragon shook his head. “You worry too much.” His eyes tracked a moth. It fluttered earnestly by, intent on battering itself to death against the lantern. “Humans live such short lives. I believe they have little impact on the world. So Wintrow will not be a priest. It is probably no more significant than if a man who was meant to be a king became a philosophical recluse instead.”
He felt a shiver run over her body. “Oh, ship,” she rebuked him softly. “Was that meant to be comforting?”
Carefully, he patted her as a father might soothe an infant. “Take comfort in this Amber. You are only one small, short-lived creature. You’d have to be a fool to think you could change the course of the whole world.”
She was silent until she broke out in a shaky laugh. Oh, Paragon, in that you are more right than you know, my friend.”
“Be content with your own life, my friend, and live it well. Let others decide for themselves what path they will follow.”
She frowned up at him. “Even when you see, with absolute clarity, that it is wrong for them? That they hurt themselves?”
“Perhaps people have a right to their own pain,” he hazarded. Reluctantly he added, “Perhaps they even need it.”
“Perhaps,” she concluded unhappily."
p. 781: Amber and Paragon: ~ Robin Hobb,#NFDB
467:am with you always." Matthew 28:20 It is well there is One who is ever the same, and who is ever with us. It is well there is one stable rock amidst the billows of the sea of life. O my soul, set not thine affections upon rusting, moth-eaten, decaying treasures, but set thine heart upon him who abides forever faithful to thee. Build not thine house upon the moving quicksands of a deceitful world, but found thy hopes upon this rock, which, amid descending rain and roaring floods, shall stand immovably secure. My soul, I charge thee, lay up thy treasure in the only secure cabinet; store thy jewels where thou canst never lose them. Put thine all in Christ; set all thine affections on his person, all thy hope in his merit, all thy trust in his efficacious blood, all thy joy in his presence, and so thou mayest laugh at loss, and defy destruction. Remember that all the flowers in the world's garden fade by turns, and the day cometh when nothing will be left but the black, cold earth. Death's black extinguisher must soon put out thy candle. Oh! how sweet to have sunlight when the candle is gone! The dark flood must soon roll between thee and all thou hast; then wed thine heart to him who will never leave thee; trust thyself with him who will go with thee through the black and surging current of death's stream, and who will land thee safely on the celestial shore, and make thee sit with him in heavenly places forever. Go, sorrowing son of affliction, tell thy secrets to the Friend who sticketh closer than a brother. Trust all thy concerns with him who never can be taken from thee, who will never leave thee, and who will never let thee leave him, even "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever." "Lo, I am with you alway," is enough for my soul to live upon, let who will forsake me. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
468:Ephemeris
The household sells in a morning, but when
they cannot let the house itself go for
the near-nothing it brings at auction,
the children, all beyond their middle years,
carry her back to it, the mortgage now
a dead pledge of patience. Almost emptied,
there is little evidence that she ever
lived in it: a rented hospital bed
in the kitchen where the breakfast table
stood, a borrowed coffee pot, chair,
a cot for the daughter she knows, and then does not.
But the world seems almost right, the nearfamiliar curtainless windows, the room
neat, shadow-severed, her body’s thinness,
like her gown’s, a comfort now. Perhaps
she thinks it death and the place a lesser
heaven, the hereafter a bed, the night
to herself, rain percussive in the gutters—
enough. But like hers, the light sleep of spring
has worsened—forsythia blooming
11
in what should be deep winter outside
the window—until it resembles the shallow
sleep of a house with a newborn in it,
a middle child she never saw, a boy
who lived not one whole day (an afternoon?
an evening?) sixty years ago in late
August. And as though born without a mouth,
like a summer moth, he never suckled
and was buried without a name. She had waked to that—
that cusp of summer, crape myrtles’ clotted
blooms languishing, anemic, the cicadas
exuberant as they have always been
in their clumsy dying.
This middle-born
is now the nearer, no, the only child.
The undertaker’s wife has not bathed
and dressed him; the first day’s night instead
has passed, quickening into another
day, and another, and he is again awake,
his fist gripping a spindle of turned light,
12
and he is ravenous in his cradle of air.
~ Claudia Emerson,#NFDB
469:I am with you always." Matthew 28:20 It is well there is One who is ever the same, and who is ever with us. It is well there is one stable rock amidst the billows of the sea of life. O my soul, set not thine affections upon rusting, moth-eaten, decaying treasures, but set thine heart upon him who abides forever faithful to thee. Build not thine house upon the moving quicksands of a deceitful world, but found thy hopes upon this rock, which, amid descending rain and roaring floods, shall stand immovably secure. My soul, I charge thee, lay up thy treasure in the only secure cabinet; store thy jewels where thou canst never lose them. Put thine all in Christ; set all thine affections on his person, all thy hope in his merit, all thy trust in his efficacious blood, all thy joy in his presence, and so thou mayest laugh at loss, and defy destruction. Remember that all the flowers in the world's garden fade by turns, and the day cometh when nothing will be left but the black, cold earth. Death's black extinguisher must soon put out thy candle. Oh! how sweet to have sunlight when the candle is gone! The dark flood must soon roll between thee and all thou hast; then wed thine heart to him who will never leave thee; trust thyself with him who will go with thee through the black and surging current of death's stream, and who will land thee safely on the celestial shore, and make thee sit with him in heavenly places forever. Go, sorrowing son of affliction, tell thy secrets to the Friend who sticketh closer than a brother. Trust all thy concerns with him who never can be taken from thee, who will never leave thee, and who will never let thee leave him, even "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever." "Lo, I am with you alway," is enough for my soul to live upon, let who will forsake me. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
470:Ručník je skutečně kolosálně užitečná součást výbavy hvězdného stopaře. Především má značnou praktickou cenu — můžete se například do něj zabalit, aby vám nebylo zima, když poskakujete napříč chladnými měsíci planety Jaglan Beta. Můžete na něm ležet na zářivých, mramorovým pískem vystlaných plážích Santraginu V a vdechovat opojné výpary z jeho moří. Můžete na něm spát pod hvězdami, jež tak rudě září na planetě pouští, Karkrafúnu. Můžete ho použít jako plachtu, až poplujete na maličkém voru po proudu drsné řeky Moth, můžete ho namočit pro boj zblízka, nebo si jím zahalit hlavu, abyste necítili jedovaté pachy žravé obludy Blátotlačky z Traalu a nestřetli se s jejím pohledem (je to nepředstavitelně tupé zvíře, myslí si, že když ji nevidíte, nevidí ani ona vás — blbá jak tágo, ale zato značně žravá). Když jste v úzkých, můžete jím signalizovat o pomoc. No, a samozřejmě se jím také můžete utřít, pokud vám po tom všem ještě připadá dost čistý. Co je však ještě důležitější, je obrovský psychologický význam ručníku. Tak například když nějaký paďour (paďour = ten, kdo není stopař) zjistí, že stopař má ručník, automaticky předpokládá, že vlastní rovněž kartáček na zuby, žínku, mýdlo, krabici sušenek, čutoru, kompas, mapu, klubko provázku, sprej proti mravencům, výbavu do deště, skafandr atd. ap. A nejen to. Rád stopaři půjčí kterýkoli ze jmenovaných předmětů nebo cokoliv jiného, co stopař nešťastnou náhodou „ztratil. Onen paďour si totiž pomyslí, že ten, kdo dokázal stopovat napříč a našíř celou Galaxií, žít v drsných podmínkách a za pár šupů, porvat se s osudem a přeprat ho, a kdo přesto vždycky ví, kde má ručník, je zřejmě člověk, s nímž je nutno počítat. Tento obrat ostatně pronikl i do stopařského slengu. Lze například říct: „Hele, sasuješ toho húpyho Forda Prefecta? To ti je teda frúd, kterej fakticky ví, kde má ručník. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
471:I.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
II.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone,
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
III.
And from its head as from one body grow,
As grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
And their long tangles in each other lock,
And with unending involutions show
Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
IV.
And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft
Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
V.
'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
Kindled by that inextricable error,
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become a and ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there--
A womans countenance, with serpent-locks,
Gazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks.
Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, On The Medusa Of Leonardo da Vinci In The Florentine Gallery
,#NFDB
472:After Sunset
REST--rest--four little letters, one short word,
Enfolding an infinitude of bliss-Rest is upon the earth. The heavy clouds
Hang poised in silent ether, motionless,
Seeking nor sun nor breeze. No restless star
Thrills the sky's gray-robed breast with pulsing rays,
The night's heart has throbbed out.
No grass blade stirs,
No downy-wingèd moth comes flittering by
Caught by the light--Thank God, there is no light,
No open-eyed, loud-voiced, quick motioned light,
Nothing but gloom and rest.
A row of trees
Along the hill horizon, westward, stands
All black and still, as if it were a rank
Of fallen angels, melancholy met
Before the amber gate of Paradise-The bright shut gate, whose everlasting smile
Deadens despair to calm.
O, better far
Better than bliss is rest! If suddenly
Those burnished doors of molten gold, steel-barred,
Which the sun closed behind him as he went
Into his bridal chamber--were to burst
Asunder with a clang, and in a breath
God's mysteries were revealed--His kingdom came-The multitudes of heavenly messengers
Hastening throughout all space--the thunder quire
Of praise--the obedient lightnings' lambent gleam
Around the unseen Throne--should I not sink
Crushed by the weight of such beatitudes,
Crying, 'Rest, only rest, thou merciful God!
Hide me within the hollow of Thy hand
In some dark corner of the universe,
Thy bright, full, busy universe, that blinds,
Deafens, and tortures--Give me only rest!'
O for a soul-sleep, long and deep and still!
To lie down quiet after the weary day,
43
Dropping all pleasant flowers from the numbed hands,
Bidding good-night to all companions dear,
Drawing the curtains on this darkened world,
Closing the eyes, and with a patient sigh
Murmuring 'Our Father'--fall on sleep, till dawn!
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,#NFDB
473:Gifts
'O World-God, give me Wealth!' the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold
Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold.
Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet,
World-circling traffic roared through mart and street,
His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined,
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaoh's race to-day and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.
'O World-God, give me beauty!' cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became
Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame,
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might
Of the immortal marble, his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sun-shine race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.
'O World-God, give me Power!' the Roman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride.
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions and with close-meshed Code,
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home,
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
'O Godhead, give me Truth!' the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
85
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land.
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.
~ Emma Lazarus,#NFDB
474:Sic Vos Non Vobis
Ye, that the untrod paths have braved,
With heart and brain unbound;
Who ask not that your souls be saved,
But that the Truth be found;
Whose fiery cross is borne unseen,
Whose meek brows, bleeding but serene
With only thorns are crowned;
Who, still and steadfast, stand for Right,
Though none acclaim and none requite:
Who learn how little is the sum
Of all that Truth can teach,
And where the serried boundaries come
That bar your utmost reach;
For whom so sage, no saint, can find
A clue to aught that lies behind;
For whom the preachers preach
Only to leave ye at the door
That opens to their knock no more:
Who, listening in the trackless night,
Hearing no bugle-call,
Still fight, undaunted, the good fight,
And never fail or fall;
Who, standing on an inch of ground,
Feel the Infinities around,
Yet dare to face it all,
And keep the life ye hold in trust
Safe from besetting moth and rust.
Life - tragic mystery of Man Strange tale of joy and grief!
Chaff for the errant winds to fan,
A bubble bright and brief,
That floats and shines and bursts unseen,
And leaves no trace where it has been;
Like thistle-down and leaf,
That in soft airs of autumn dance,
The helpless sport of Fate and Chance.
174
Ye, who can see the case so clear,
And scorn to cringe and moan,
Who follow humbly, without fear,
The soul's behest alone;
Content to suffer for the sake
Of faithful manhood, and to make
A loftier stepping-stone,
A straighter way, a smoother street,
For tread of unborn children's feet.
Ye, whom the children's sorrows rend,
And who despise the smart,
Who walk uprightly to the end
With an undoubting heart,
To take the guerdon of your pain Death, with no hope to live again Ye have the better part,
Salt of the world, that keeps it sound!
Kings that shall yet be throned and crowned.
~ Ada Cambridge,#NFDB
475:A Basket Of Summer Fruit
First see those ample melons-brindled o'er
With mingled green and brown is all the rind;
For they are ripe, and mealy at the core,
And saturate with the nectar of their kind.
And here their fellows of the marsh are set,
Covering their sweetness with a crumpled skin;
Pomegranates next, flame-red without, and yet
With vegetable crystals stored within.
Then mark these brilliant oranges, of which
A by-gone Poet fancifully said,
Their unplucked globes the orchard did enrich
Like Lolden lamps in a green nilht of shade.
With these are lemons that are even more
Golden than they, and which adorn our Rhyme,
As did rough pendants of barbaric ore
Some pillared temple of the olden time.
And here are peaches with their ruddy cheeks
And ripe transparency. Here nectarines bloom,
All mottled as with discontinuous streaks.
And spread a fruity fragrance through the room.
With these are cherries mellow to the stone;
Into such ripeness bath the summer nursed them,
The velvet pressure of the tongue alone
Against the palate were enough to burst them.
Here too are plums, like edible rubies glowing The language of lush summer's Eden theme:
Even through the skin how temptingly keeps showing
Their juicy comfort, a rich-clouded gleam!
Here too are figs, pears, apples (plucked in haste
Our summer treat judiciously to vary)
With apricots, so exquisite in taste,
And yellow as the breast of a canary.
And luscious strawberries all faceted
With glittering lobes-and all the lovelier seen
In contrast with the loquat's duller red,
And vulgar gooseberry's unlustrous green.
And lastly, bunches of rich blooded grapes
Whose vineyard bloom even yet about them clings.
Though ever in the handling it escapes
Like the fine down upon a moth's bright wings.
Each kind is piled in order in the Basket,
Which we might well imagine now to be
Transmuted into a great golden casket
Entreasuring Pomona's jewelry.
~ Charles Harpur,#NFDB
476:Mist And Frost
Veil-like and beautiful
Gathered the dutiful
Mist in the night,
True to the messaging,
Dreamful and presaging
Vapour and light.
Ghostly and chill it is,
Pallid and still it is,
Sudden uprist;
What is there tragical,
Moving or magical,
Hid in the mist?
Millions of essences,
Fairy-like presences
Formless as yet;
Light-riven spangles,
Crystalline tangles
Floating unset.
Frost will come shepherding
Nowise enjeoparding
Frondage or flower;
Just a degree of it,
Nought can we see of it
Only its power.
Earth like a Swimmer
Plunged into the dimmer
Wave of the night,
Now is uprisen,
An Elysian vision
Of spray and of light.
'Tis the intangible
Delicate frangible
Secret of mist,
Breathing may banish it,
65
Thought may evanish it,-Ponder and whist!
Passionless purity,
Calmness in surety
Dwells everywhere,
A winnowed whiteness,
A lunar lightness
Glows in the air.
But in the heart of it
Every least part of it
Blooms with the charm,
Star-shape and frondage
Broken from bondage
Forged into form.
Crystals encrusted,
Diamonds dusted
Line everything,
Tiny the stencillings
Are as the pencillings
On a moth's wing.
And O, what a wonder!
No farther asunder
Than atoms are laid,
The arches and angles
Of star-froth and spangles
Cast their own shade.
Out from the chalices,
The pigmy palaces
Where the tint hides,
Opal and sapphire
Half-pearl and half-fire
The colour slides;
Till the frail miracle
Rapturous lyrical
Flushes and glows
With a wraith of florescence
66
That tempers or lessens
The light of the snows.
Held all aquiver,-But now with a shiver
The power of the sun
Dissolves the laces
Of the tender mazes,
All is undone.
But the old Earth brooding,
All wisdom including,
Affirms and assures
That above the material,
Triumphal imperial
Beauty endures.
~ Duncan Campbell Scott,#NFDB
477:The Errand
I've been going right on, page by page,
since we last kissed, two long dolls in a cage,
two hunger-mongers throwing a myth in and out,
double-crossing out lives with doubt,
leaving us separate now, fogy with rage.
But then I've told my readers what I think
and scrubbed out the remainder with my shrink,
have placed my bones in a jar as if possessed,
have pasted a black wing over my left breast,
have washed the white out of the moon at my sink,
have eaten The Cross, have digested its lore,
indeed, have loved that eggless man once more,
have placed my own head in the kettle because
in the end death won't settle for my hypochondrias,
because this errand we're on goes to one store.
That shopkeeper may put up barricades,
and he may advertise cognac and razor blades,
he may let you dally at Nice or the Tuileries,
he may let the state of our bowels have ascendancy,
he may let such as we flaunt our escapades,
swallow down our portion of whisky and dex,
salvage the day with some soup or some sex,
juggle our teabags as we inch down the hall,
let the blood out of our fires with phenobarbital,
lick the headlines for Starkweathers and Specks,
let us be folk of the literary set,
let us deceive with words the critics regret,
let us dog down the streets for each invitation,
typing out our lives like a Singer sewing sublimation,
letting our delicate bottoms settle and yet
they were spanked alive by some doctor of folly,
given a horn or a dish to get by with, by golly,
exploding with blood in this errand called life,
251
dumb with snow and elbows, rubber man, a mother wife,
tongues to waggle out of the words, mistletoe and holly,
tables to place our stones on, decades of disguises,
wntil the shopkeeper plants his boot in our eyes,
and unties our bone and is finished with the case,
and turns to the next customer, forgetting our face
or how we knelt at the yellow bulb with sighs
like moth wings for a short while in a small place.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
478:Poshlust,” or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature—these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as “America is no better than Russia” or “We all share in Germany’s guilt.” The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as “the moment of truth,” “charisma,” “existential” (used seriously), “dialogue” (as applied to political talks between nations), and “vocabulary” (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name—that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost’s favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers, building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene stinkbirds, objects trouvés in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls. There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots—all of it as corny in its own right as the academic “September Morns” and “Florentine Flowergirls” of half a century ago. The list is long, and, of course, everybody has his bête noire, his black pet, in the series. Mine is that airline ad: the snack served by an obsequious wench to a young couple—she eyeing ecstatically the cucumber canapé, he admiring wistfully the hostess. And, of course, Death in Venice. You see the range. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
479:I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
- Aubade ~ Philip Larkin,#NFDB
480:I guess when I first started hearing Céline Dion songs I did not realize that she was almost always singing about someone she is sooooo desperately in love with ! She has such longing and such agony as she is away from her lover . I tried to see a lesson in this : I think the way Celine Din feels about her lover is the way God feels must feel about the church ,which in some ways seems to have strayed so far from Him . I think God allowed me to REALLY MISS my boyfriend so I could catch a tiny glimpse of what his hear must feel as the church strays into religion and away from things that are so important to Him like helping the impoverished, unwanted people of the world . I got a tiny glimpse of how he longs and desires for my heart each and every minute of each and every day .
God so deeply ,passionately , desperately loves us . He intensely longs for his lover ,the church, to come back to his teachings of giving(surrendering) all we a have to lovingly serve Him ,our beloved , who lives in the hearts of the suffering poor people of this world and unite as a community in an effort to serve HIM in Them . It deeply moves me HIM KNOWING that he is singing to me even more longingly and passionately than Celine Dion wanting to adopt me into his family. That is pretty WONDERFUL !!!
Satan is not a fan of God winning our hearts (souls). He is battling every day . I am becoming more keenly aware of this spiritual battle between God and the devil for my heart (soul) than ever before. The devil tricks us into being materialistically selfish wanting more and more for ourselves this depriving us of the infinite eternal treasure of LOVE God wants to shower on us which no money or processions can buy . No where in the bible does it say I deserve a reward here on this earth
Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever work you do do ity with all your heart (it does not say “and after this work you deserve a long hot bath “ it does say “since you KNOW that ypu will receive an in hertiance in heaven from the lord as a reward “
And we know in our hearts that God is ALL we need (matthew 19-21 says Do not lay up for your selves treasures in this world where moth and rust doth corrupt …..but lay up for yourselves treasure (Love for God )in eternity “
page 174 Kisses from Katie ~ Katie Davis,#NFDB
481:I lift the lid of the chest. Inside, the air is musty and stale, held hostage for years in its three-foot-by-four-foot tomb. I lean in to survey the contents cautiously, then pull out a stack of old photos tied with twine. On top is a photo of a couple on their wedding day. She's a young bride, wearing one of those 1950's netted veils. He looks older, distinguished- sort of like Cary Grant or Gregory Peck in the old black-and-white movies I used to watch with my grandmother. I set the stack down and turn back to the chest, where I find a notebook, filled with handwritten recipes. The page for Cinnamon Rolls is labeled "Dex's Favorite." 'Dex.' I wonder if he's the man in the photo.
There are two ticket stubs from 1959, one to a Frank Sinatra concert, another to the movie 'An Affair to Remember.' A single shriveled rosebud rests on a white handkerchief. A corsage? When I lift it into my hand, it disintegrates; the petals crinkle into tiny pieces that fall onto the living room carpet. At the bottom of the chest is what looks like a wedding dress. It's yellowed and moth-eaten, but I imagine it was once stark white and beautiful. As I lift it, I can hear the lace swishing as if to say, "Ahh." Whoever wore it was very petite. The waist circumference is tiny. A pair of long white gloves falls to the floor. They must have been tucked inside the dress. I refold the finery and set the ensemble back inside.
Whose things are these? And why have they been left here? I thumb through the recipe book. All cookies, cakes, desserts. She must have loved to bake. I tuck the book back inside the chest, along with the photographs after I've retied the twine, which is when I notice a book tucked into the corner. It's an old paperback copy of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises.' I've read a little of Hemingway over the years- 'A Moveable Feast' and some of his later work- but not this one. I flip through the book and notice that one page is dog-eared. I open to it and see a line that has been underscored. "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."
I look out to the lake, letting the words sink in. 'Is that what I'm trying to do? Get away from myself?' I stare at the line in the book again and wonder if it resonated with the woman who underlined it so many years ago. Did she have her own secret pain? 'Was she trying to escape it just like me? ~ Sarah Jio,#NFDB
482:Then there is the butterfly-or is it a moth? Humbert's inability to differentiate between the two,his indifference, implies a moral carelessness. This blind indifference echoes his callous attitude towards Lolita's nightly sobs. Those who tell us Lolita is a little vixen who deserved what she got should remember her nightly sobs in the arms of her rapist and jailer, because you see, as Humbert reminds us with a mixture of relish and pathos,
"she had absolutely nowhere else to go."
This came to mind when we were discussing in our class Humbert's confiscation of Lolita's life.
The first thing that struck us in reading Lolita-in fact it was on the very first page-was how Lolita
was given to us as Humbert's creature. We only see her in passing glimpses. "What I had madly
possessed," he informs us, "was not she, but my own creation, another fanciful Lolita-perhaps,
more real than Lolita . . . having no will, no consciousness-indeed no real life of her own."
Humbert pins Lolita by first naming her, a name that becomes the echo of his desires.
To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own,
turning Lolita into a reincarnation of his lost, unfulfilled young love.
Humbert's solipsization of Lolita.
Yet she does have a past. Despite Humbert's attempts to orphan Lolita by robbing her of her
history. Lolita has a tragic past, with a dead father and a dead two-year-old brother. And now also a dead mother. Like my students, Lolita's past comes to her not so much as a loss but as a lack, and like my students, she becomes a figment in someone else's dream.
When I think of Lolita, I think of that half-alive butterfly pinned to the wall. The butterfly is not
an obvious symbol, but it does suggest that Humbert fixes Lolita in the same manner that the
butterfly is fixed; he wants her, a living breathing human being, to become stationary, to give up
her life for the still life he offers her in return. Lolita's image is forever associated in the minds of her readers with that of her jailer. Lolita on her own has no meaning; she can only come to life
through her prison bars.
This is how I read Lolita. Again and again as we discussed Lolita in that class. And more and more I thought of that butterfly; what linked us so closely was this perverse intimacy of victim
and jailer. ~ Azar Nafisi,#NFDB
483:The guard locks the gates of the turbeh, letting the heavy sound of the lock fall into the dark interior, as though leaving the name of the key inside. Dispirited, like me, he sits down on the stone beside me and closes his eyes. Just when I think he has dozed off in his part of the shade, the guard lifts his hand and points to a moth fluttering above the entrance to the tomb, having come out of our clothes or the Persian carpets in the turbeh.
"You see," he says to me casually, "the moth is way up there by the white wall of the doorway, and it is visible only because it moves. From here it almost looks like a bird in the sky. That's probably how the moth sees the wall, and only we know it is wrong. But it doesn't know that we know. It doesn't even know we exist. You try to communicate with it if you can. Can you tell it anything in a way it understands; can you be sure it understood you completely?"
"I don't know," I replied. "Can You?"
"Yes," the old man said quietly, and with a clap of his hands he killed the moth, then profered its crushed body on the palm of his hand.
"Do you think it didn't understand what I told it?"
"You can do the same thing with a candle, extinguish it with your two fingers to prove you exist," I commented.
"Certainly, if a candle is capable of dying... Now, imagine," he went on, "that there is somebody who knows about us what we know about the moth. Somebody who knows how, with what, and why this space that we call the sky and assume to be boundless, is bounded-- somebody who cannot approach us to let us know that he exists except in one way-- by killing us. Somebody, on whose garments we are nourished, somebody who carries our death in his hand like a tongue, as a means of communicating with us. By killing us, this anonymous being informs us about himself. And we, through our deaths, which may be no more than a warning to some wayfarer sitting alongside the assassin, we, I say, can at the last moment perceive, as through an opened door, new fields and other boundaries. This sixth and highest degree of deathly fear (where there is no memory) is what holds and links us anonymous participants in the game. The hierarchy of death is, in fact, the only thing that makes possible a system of contacts between the various levels of reality in an otherwise vast space where deaths endlessly repeat themselves like echoes within echoes... ~ Milorad Pavi,#NFDB
484:Dirge
'Dr. Birch's young friends will reassemble to-day, Feb. 1st.'
White is the wold, and ghostly
The dank and leafless trees;
And 'M's and 'N's are mostly
Pronounced like 'B's and 'D's:
'Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted,
The sheep stands, mute and stolid:
And ducks find out, disgusted,
That all the ponds are solid.
Many a stout steer's work is
(At least in this world) finished;
The gross amount of turkies
Is sensibly diminished:
The holly-boughs are faded,
The painted crackers gone;
Would I could write, as Gray did,
An Elegy thereon!
For Christmas-time is ended:
Now is 'our youth' regaining
Those sweet spots where are 'blended
Home-comforts and school-training.'
Now they're, I dare say, venting
Their grief in transient sobs,
And I am 'left lamenting'
At home, with Mrs. Dobbs.
O Posthumus! 'Fugaces
Labuntur anni' still;
Time robs us of our graces,
Evade him as we will.
We were the twins of Siam:
Now SHE thinks ME a bore,
And I admit that _I_ am
Inclined at times to snore.
I was her own Nathaniel;
20
With her I took sweet counsel,
Brought seed-cake for her spaniel,
And kept her bird in groundsel:
We've murmured, 'How delightful
A landscape, seen by night, is,' And woke next day in frightful
Pain from acute bronchitis.
***
But ah! for them, whose laughter
We heard last New Year's Day, (They reeked not of Hereafter,
Or what the Doctor'd say,) For those small forms that fluttered
Moth-like around the plate,
When Sally brought the buttered
Buns in at half-past eight!
Ah for the altered visage
Of her, our tiny Belle,
Whom my boy Gus (at his age!)
Said was a 'deuced swell!'
P'raps now Miss Tickler's tocsin
Has caged that pert young linnet;
Old Birch perhaps is boxing
My Gus's ears this minute.
Yet, though your young ears be as
Red as mamma's geraniums,
Yet grieve not! Thus ideas
Pass into infant craniums.
Use not complaints unseemly;
Tho' you must work like bricks;
And it IS cold, extremely,
Rising at half-past six.
Soon sunnier will the day grow,
And the east wind not blow so;
Soon, as of yore, L'Allegro
Succeed Il Penseroso:
Stick to your Magnall's Questions
21
And Long Division sums;
And come--with good digestions Home when next Christmas comes.
~ Charles Stuart Calverley,#NFDB
485:By The Window
STILL deep into the West I gazed; the light
Clear, spiritual, tranquil as a bird
Wide-winged that soars on the smooth gale and sleeps,
Was it from sun far-set or moon unrisen?
Whether from moon, or sun, or angel’s face
It held my heart from motion, stayed my blood,
Betrayed each rising thought to quiet death
Along the blind charm’d way to nothingness,
Lull’d the last nerve that ached. It was a sky
Made for a man to waste his will upon,
To be received as wiser than all toil,
And much more fair. And what was strife of men?
And what was time?
Then came a certain thing.
Are intimations for the elected soul
Dubious, obscure, of unauthentic power
Since ghostly to the intellectual eye,
Shapeless to thinking? Nay, but are not we
Servile to words and an usurping brain,
Infidels of our own high mysteries,
Until the senses thicken and lose the world,
Until the imprisoned soul forgets to see,
And spreads blind fingers forth to reach the day,
Which once drank light, and fed on angels’ food?
It happened swiftly, came and straight was gone.
One standing on some aery balcony
And looking down upon a swarming crowd
Sees one man beckon to him with finger-tip
While eyes meet eyes; he turns and looks again—
The man is lost, and the crowd sways and swarms.
Shall such an one say, ‘Thus ’tis proved a dream,
And no hand beckoned, no eyes met my own?’
Neither can I say this. There was a hint,
A thrill, a summons faint yet absolute,
Which ran across the West; the sky was touch’d,
And failed not to respond. Does a hand pass
Lightly across your hair? you feel it pass
Not half so heavy as a cobweb’s weight,
Although you never stir; so felt the sky
Not unaware of the Presence, so my soul
Scarce less aware. And if I cannot say
The meaning and monition, words are weak
Which will not paint the small wing of a moth,
Nor bear a subtile odour to the brain,
And much less serve the soul in her large needs.
I cannot tell the meaning, but a change
Was wrought in me; it was not the one man
Who came to the luminous window to gaze forth,
And who moved back into the darkened room
With awe upon his heart and tender hope;
From some deep well of life tears rose; the throng
Of dusty cares, hopes, pleasures, prides fell off,
And from a sacred solitude I gazed
Deep, deep into the liquid eyes of Life.
~ Edward Dowden,#NFDB
486:1.
No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
2.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
3.
She dwells with Beauty Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips;
Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous
tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
'Lord Houghton gives the following stanza as the intended opening of the Ode, from the original manuscript:
Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones,
And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,
Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans
To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast;
Although your rudder be a dragon's tail
Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony,
Your cordage large uprootings from the skull
Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail
To find the Melancholy -- whether she
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull.
His Lordship adds -- "But no sooner was this written, than the poet became conscious that the coarseness of the contrast would destroy the general effect of luxurious tenderness which it was the object of the poem to produce, and he confined the gross notion of Melancholy to less violent images,..."'
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Ode On Melancholy
,#NFDB
487:Ruins Of A Great House
though our longest sun sets at right declensions and
makes but winter arches,
it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and
have our light in ashes. . .
Browne, Urn Burial
Stones only, the disjecta membra of this Great House,
Whose moth-like girls are mixed with candledust,
Remain to file the lizard's dragonish claws.
The mouths of those gate cherubs shriek with stain;
Axle and coach wheel silted under the muck
Of cattle droppings.
Three crows flap for the trees
And settle, creaking the eucalyptus boughs.
A smell of dead limes quickens in the nose
The leprosy of empire.
‘Farewell, green fields,
Farewell, ye happy groves!'
Marble like Greece, like Faulkner's South in stone,
Deciduous beauty prospered and is gone,
But where the lawn breaks in a rash of trees
A spade below dead leaves will ring the bone
Of some dead animal or human thing
Fallen from evil days, from evil times.
It seems that the original crops were limes
Grown in that silt that clogs the river's skirt;
The imperious rakes are gone, their bright girls gone,
The river flows, obliterating hurt.
I climbed a wall with the grille ironwork
Of exiled craftsmen protecting that great house
From guilt, perhaps, but not from the worm's rent
Nor from the padded calvary of the mouse.
And when a wind shook in the limes I heard
What Kipling heard, the death of a great empire, the
abuse
Of ignorance by Bible and by sword.
A green lawn, broken by low walls of stone,
Dipped to the rivulet, and pacing, I thought next
Of men like Hawkins, Walter Raleigh, Drake,
Ancestral murderers and poets, more perplex4ed
53
In memory now by every ulcerous crime.
The world's green age then was rotting lime
Whose stench became the charnel galleon's text.
The rot remains with us, the men are gone.
But, as dead ash is lifted in a wind
That fans the blackening ember of the mind,
My eyes burned from the ashen prose of Donne.
Ablaze with rage I thought,
Some slave is rotting in this manorial lake,
But still the coal of my compassion fought
That Albion too was once
A colony like ours, ‘part of the continent, piece of the
main',
Nook-shotten, rook o'erblown, deranged
By foaming channels and the vain expense
Of bitter faction.
All in compassion ends
So differently from what the heart arranged:
‘as well as if a manor of thy friend's. . . ‘
~ Derek Walcott,#NFDB
488:Old And New Year Ditties
New Year met me somewhat sad:
Old Year leaves me tired,
Stripped of favourite things I had
Baulked of much desired:
Yet farther on my road to-day
God willing, farther on my way.
New Year coming on apace
What have you to give me?
Bring you scathe, or bring you grace,
Face me with an honest face;
You shall not deceive me:
Be it good or ill, be it what you will,
It needs shall help me on my road,
My rugged way to heaven, please God.
Watch with me, men, women, and children dear,
You whom I love, for whom I hope and fear,
Watch with me this last vigil of the year.
Some hug their business, some their pleasure-scheme;
Some seize the vacant hour to sleep or dream;
Heart locked in heart some kneel and watch apart.
Watch with me blessed spirits, who delight
All through the holy night to walk in white,
Or take your ease after the long-drawn fight.
I know not if they watch with me: I know
They count this eve of resurrection slow,
And cry, 'How long?' with urgent utterance strong.
Watch with me Jesus, in my loneliness:
Though others say me nay, yet say Thou yes;
Though others pass me by, stop Thou to bless.
Yea, Thou dost stop with me this vigil night;
To-night of pain, to-morrow of delight:
I, Love, am Thine; Thou, Lord my God, art mine.
Passing away, saith the World, passing away:
Chances, beauty and youth sapped day by day:
304
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answered: Yea.
Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away:
With its burden of fear and hope, of labour and play;
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cockcrow, at morning, one certain day
Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answered: Yea.
Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after the long delay:
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May.
Though I tarry wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray:
Arise, come away, night is past and lo it is day,
My love, My sister, My spouse, thou shalt hear Me say.
Then I answered: Yea.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,#NFDB
489:A Masque Of Venice
(A Dream.)
Not a stain,
In the sun-brimmed sapphire cup that is the skyNot a ripple on the black translucent lane
Of the palace-walled lagoon.
Not a cry
As the gondoliers with velvet oar glide by,
Through the golden afternoon.
From this height
Where the carved, age-yellowed balcony o'erjuts
Yonder liquid, marble pavement, see the light
Shimmer soft beneath the bridge,
That abuts
On a labyrinth of water-ways and shuts
Half their sky off with its ridge.
We shall mark
All the pageant from this ivory porch of ours,
Masques and jesters, mimes and minstrels, while we hark
To their music as they fare.
Scent their flowers
Flung from boat to boat in rainbow radiant showers
Through the laughter-ringing air.
See! they come,
Like a flock of serpent-throated black-plumed swans,
With the mandoline, viol, and the drum,
Gems afire on arms ungloved,
Fluttering fans,
Floating mantles like a great moth's streaky vans
Such as Veronese loved.
But behold
In their midst a white unruffled swan appear.
One strange barge that snowy tapestries enfold,
White its tasseled, silver prow.
Who is here?
Prince of Love in masquerade or Prince of Fear,
Clad in glittering silken snow?
Cheek and chin
Where the mask's edge stops are of the hoar-frosts hue,
And no eyebeams seem to sparkle from within
Where the hollow rings have place.
Yon gay crew
Seem to fly him, he seems ever to pursue.
'T is our sport to watch the race.
At his side
Stands the goldenest of beauties; from her glance,
From her forehead, shines the splendor of a bride,
And her feet seem shod with wings,
To entrance,
For she leaps into a wild and rhythmic dance,
Like Salome at the King's.
'T is his aim
Just to hold, to clasp her once against his breast,
Hers to flee him, to elude him in the game.
Ah, she fears him overmuch!
Is it jest,Is it earnest? a strange riddle lurks half-guessed
In her horror of his touch.
For each time
That his snow-white fingers reach her, fades some ray
From the glory of her beauty in its prime;
And the knowledge grows upon us that the dance
Is no play
'Twixt the pale, mysterious lover and the fayBut the whirl of fate and chance.
Where the tide
Of the broad lagoon sinks plumb into the sea,
There the mystic gondolier hath won his bride.
Hark, one helpless, stifled scream!
Must it be?
Mimes and minstrels, flowers and music, where are ye?
Was all Venice such a dream?
~ Emma Lazarus,#NFDB
490:The Interrogatio
The bright sun is hidden, the night shows its face
The night's hair is spread on shoulders of the earth
This black dress is preparation for some one's mourning
Perhaps the Nature's assemblage for the sun is mourning
The sky is casting a spell over the talking lip
The night's magician is watching the awakened eye
The wind current is submerged in the river of silence
However, the tolling bell's sound comes from the distance
Heart which in love's turmoil is evading the world
Has dragged me here far from the maddening crowd
I am the spectator of the spectacle of disappointments
I am the associate of those sleeping in solitude's corner
O My restlessness! Wait and let me rest awhile
And let me shed a few tears at this habitation
O those steeped in a swoon, 'Where are you?
Tell me something of the land where you live
Is that world also one of prevarication?
Is that world also one of denizens' struggle?
Is Man engulfed by sorrow in that land also?
Is Man's heart suppressed and helpless in that land also?
Does the moth burn itself in candle's love in that land also?
Does the tale of flower and nightingale exist in that garden also?
In this world a single hemistich perturbs the heart
Does there also the warmth of verse soften the heart?
This world's relations and alliances life's woes are
Are similar sharp thorns present in that garden also?
52
The daily bread and a million calamities this world has
Does the soul freedom from anxieties in that world has?
Are the thunder, the farmer, the harvest there also?
Are the caravan and the robber's fear there also?
Do birds collect bits of straw for nests there also?
Is the search for bricks and clay for house there also?
Are the humans unaware of their reality there also? 1
Are they after nations' and customs' discrimination there also
Does garden not cry at the nightingale's wail there also?
Like this world is there no sympathy in that world also?
Does the Paradise a garden or a restful mansion constitute?
Or does the Eternal Beauty's Unveiled Face it constitute? 2
Does hell a method of burning away sins constitute?
Or it in flames of fire a way of discipline constitute?
Has walking given way to speedy flying in that world?
What is the secret of what is called death by denizens of this world?
Life eases the heart's restlessness in this world
Is human knowledge also restricted in that world?
Does the separated heart get satisfaction by sight there also?
Are 'Lan Tar
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
491:The Man-Moth
Here,
above,
cracks in the buldings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to records in thermometers.
But when
the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.
Up the
façades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer's cloth behind him
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.
Then he
returns
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.
112
Each night
he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.
If you
catch him,
hold up a flashlight to his eye. It's all dark pupil,
an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids
one tear, his only possession, like the bee's sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you're not paying attention
he'll swallow it. However, if you watch, he'll hand it over,
cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.
~ Elizabeth Bishop,#NFDB
492:Hi again !
My fav quote from "Kisses from Katie " By Katie J Davis frm page 174
As an 8 year old ,when I first started hearing Céline Dion’s songs, I did not realize that she was almost always singing about someone she is sooooo desperately in love with ! She has such longing and such agony as she is away from her lover .But now a I feel so much longing for my boyfriend whom Im losing .I see a lesson in this : I think the way Celine Dion feels about her lover is the way God must feel about the church ,which in some ways seems to have strayed so far from Him .
I think God allowed me to REALLY MISS my boyfriend so I could catch a tiny glimpse of what God’s heart must feel as the church strays into religion and away from things that are so important to Him like helping the impoverished, unwanted people of the world . He longs and desires for my heart to come back to Him each and every minute of each and every day .
God so deeply ,passionately , desperately loves us . He intensely longs for his lover to come back to his teachings of giving all we a have to Him ,our beloved , who lives in the hearts of the suffering poor people of this world and unite as a community in an effort to serve HIM in Them and I am so awed by his love for me .I feel so precious and dear to him that He is singing to me even more longingly and passionately than Celine Dion sings to her lover. That is pretty WONDERFUL !!!
Satan is not a fan of God our love affair with God and so Satan is battling every day to keep us from giving our hearts to God. I am becoming more keenly aware than ever before of this battle between God and Satan to claim my heart . The devil tricks us into giving our hearts to materialistically selfish desires: wanting more and more for ourselves so we forget Love for God and our neighbor. So that we trade our noble inheritance : the precious treasure of LOVE God wants to shower on us which no money or processions can buy for more ME ME ME . No where in the bible does it say I deserve a reward (boy friend and material abundance ) here on this earth but it does say that I will have a joy so great that it is greater than all good things of this world combined .
Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever work you do do it with all your heart (it does not say “and after this work you deserve a long hot bath and some me time “ it does say “Serve with all your heart since you KNOW that you will receive an in heritance in heaven from the Lord as a reward “
…And we KNOW in our hearts that God is ALL we need to overflow with joy ….
(Matthew 19-21 says Do not lay up for your selves treasures in this world where moth and rust doth corrupt …..but lay up for yourselves treasure (Love for God )which will be yours for eternity “
Bless you ,
Dari ~ Katie Davis,#NFDB
493:Avis
With a golden rolling sound
Booming came a bell,
From the aery in the tower
Eagles fell;
So with regal wings
Hurled, and gleaming sound and power,
Sprang the fatal spell.
Ten a storm of burnished doves
Gleaming from the cote
Flurried by the almonry
O'er the moat,-Fell and soared and fell
With the arc and iris eye
Burning breast and throat.
Avis heard the beaten bell
Break the quiet space,
Gathering softly in the room
Round her face;
And the sound of wings
From the deeps of rosy gloom
Rustled in the place.
Nothing moved along the wall,
Weltered on the floor;
Only in the purple deep,
Streaming o'er,
Came the dream of sound
Silent as the dale of sleep,
Where the dreams are four.
(One of love without a word,
Wan to look upon,
One of fear without a cry,
Cowering stone,
And the dower of life,
Grief without a single sigh,
Pain without a moan.)
26
"Avis-Avis!" Cried a voice;
Then the voice was mute.
"Avis!" Soft the echo lay
As the lute.
Where she was she fell,
Drowsy as mandragora,
Trancèd to the root.
Then she heard her mother's voice,
Tender as a dove;
Then her lover plain and sigh,
"Avis--Love!"
Like the mavis bird
Calling, calling lonelily
From the eerie grove.
Then she heard within the vast
Closure of the spell,
Rolled and moulded into one
Rounded swell,
All the sounds that ever were
Uttered underneath the sun,
Heard in heaven or hell.
In the arras moved the wind,
And the window cloth
Rippled like a serpent barred,
Gray with wrath;
In the brazier gold
The wan ghost of a rose charred
Fluttered like a moth.
Tranquil lay her darkened eyes
As the pools that keep
Auras dim of fern and frond
Dappled, deep,
Dreamy as the map of Nod;
Moveless was she as a wand
In the wind of sleep.
Then the birds began to cry
27
From the crannied wall,
Piping as the morning rose
Mystical,
Gray with whistling rain,
Silver with the light that flows
In the interval.
Pallid poplars cast a shade,
Twinkling gray and dun,
Where the wind and water wove
Into one
All the linnet leaves,
Greening from the mere and grove
In the undern sun.
Night fell with the ferny dusk,
Planets paled and grew,
Up, with lily and clarid turns
Throbbing through,
Rose the robin's song,
Heart of home and love that burns beating in the dew.
But she neither moved nor heard,
Trancèd was her breath;
Lip on charmèd lip was laid
(One who saith
"Love-Undone" and falls).
Silent was she as a shade
In the dells of death.
~ Duncan Campbell Scott,#NFDB
494:Excerpts From The Diary Of Damocles
I don't dare speak too loudly,
some timbres could be fatal-that string is not too strong
I think: and at times I have
to breathe. Or maybe I fear
my paraphrastic exhalations
will spoil the oiled perfection
of its sleekness, will mist
over that brightness whose
needle sharp point compasses
my every stray. I am as
edgy in my way as it-as little-rippled, as subtle.
Prey to vapors, to sudden
icecap thaws, seismic
dicethrows, the world wires me,
I hex myself up to a pitch
of infinite finicky sensitiveness,
alert to every window opening
down in my castle's bowels,
every mousehole emergence.
A simple housefly--a moth
murders my rest when it
mistakes for light that glittering
blade in which every passing
glint is glassed--barometer
17
of my highest apprehension.
I know my fear is only a ploy,
a sticking point in the old
hairsplitting debate of the winds . . .
I the first split personality
divide into a Dam/an Ocles,
a mother and her myopic
son. Or, since everything
is reversed in its mirroring
shaft, a Selcomad, mad and sulky.
Language does this to me.
It inverts my position: King
I am, but await my crown,
unmanned until it come down;
my kingdom lies in twain
to each, I am in half to all.
If only I could reach up, up,
and take it in my teeth,
suckle that penile projection,
cloister its unremitting hardness
in the sheath of my throat-swordswallower who exalts
his posture with this adjunct
second spine, aligning gut with
palate, my groin with my height.
18
*
Male means to be in the crime
of things here, this frail planet
killed wide, maimed down.
Male means murder, rape and war.
Its indomitable will will not allow
approach. All broach will fail.
It must fall on you or not at all.
Insane, isn't it? History hangs
impregnable to the mind, eager
to halve your brain with rift,
intrusion and strife, the warrior's
dissonance. No whole is hallowed,
no peace. Don't let the humor of
this scene (when the phallus
falls the fears recede) attend
you away from its cruelty.
I stand here exposed to whose
justice, my crime my Y
chromosome. That Y aims
his prick point down at me.
A dowsing wand that seeks
my artesian quench, my depths
of death. His insistence
19
sustains me in steel, his encased
incursion covers my melt,
my metal. Each day he rights me:
his richterscaled tremors are
my weather, my wherefore:
his gloss his gleam condemns
my fortunes, his ore loads my gold
with schist. His soliloquy
interrupts mine at every word.
Linebreaks enforced by sword,
his poem sunders my rhythm.
All mine at last is made him.
His blade remembers my name . . .
~ Bill Knott,#NFDB
495:You Are What You Eat
Take food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting.
Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertising hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup.
Think it's rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc - three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don't talk about bugs' disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year.
An Italian professor recently published Ecological Implications of Mini-livestock: Potential of Insects, Rodents, Frogs and Snails. (Minicowpokes sold separately.) Writing in Slate.com, William Saletan tells us about a company by the name of Sunrise Land Shrimp. The company's logo: "Mmm. That's good Land Shrimp!" Three guesses what Land Shrimp is. (20-21) ~ Christopher Ryan,#NFDB
496:Although I am still far from this kind of interior understanding of myself, with profound respect for its significance I have sought to preserve my individuality―worshipped the unknown God. With a premature anxiety I have tried to avoid coming in close contact with those things whose force of attraction might be too powerful for me. I have sought to appropriate much from them, studied their distinctive characteristics and meaning in human life, but at the same time guarded against coming, like the moth, too close to the flame. I have had little to win or to lose in association with the ordinary run of men, partly because what they do―so-called practical life―does not interest me much, partly because their coldness and indifference to the spiritual and deeper currents in man alienate me even more from them. With few exceptions my companions have had no special influence upon me. A life that has not arrived at clarity about itself must necessarily exhibit an uneven side-surface; confronted by certain facts [*Facta*] and their apparent disharmony, they simply halted there, for, as I see it, they did not have sufficient interest to seek a resolution in a higher harmony or to recognize the necessity of it. Their opinion of me was always one-sided, and I have vacillated between putting too much or too little weight on what they said. I have now withdrawn from their influence and the potential variations of my life's compass resulting from it. Thus I am again standing at the point where I must begin again in another way. I shall now calmly attempt to look at myself and begin to initiate inner action; for only thus will I be able, like a child calling itself "I" in its first consciously undertaken act, be able to call myself "I" in a profounder sense.
But that takes stamina, and it is not possible to harvest immediately what one has sown. I will remember that philosopher's method of having his disciples keep silent for three years; then I dare say it will come. Just as one does not begin a feast at sunrise but at sundown, just so in the spiritual world one must first work forward for some time before the sun really shines for us and rises in all its glory; for although it is true as it says that God lets his sun shine upon the good and the evil and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, it is not so in the spiritual world. So let the die be cast―I am crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes me into battle, but I will not renounce it. I will not lament the past―why lament? I will work energetically and not waste time in regrets, like the person stuck in a bog and first calculating how far he has sunk without recognizing that during the time he spends on that he is sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet: Do not look back as Lot's wife did, but remember that we are struggling up a hill."
―from Journals , (The Search for Personal Meaning) ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
497:Cruelty And Love
What large, dark hands are those at the window
Lifted, grasping in the yellow light
Which makes its way through the curtain web
At my heart to-night?
Ah, only the leaves! So leave me at rest,
In the west I see a redness come
Over the evening's burning breast -For now the pain is numb.
The woodbine creeps abroad
Calling low to her lover:
The sunlit flirt who all the day
Has poised above her lips in play
And stolen kisses, shallow and gay
Of dalliance, now has gone away
-- She woos the moth with her sweet, low word,
And when above her his broad wings hover
Then her bright breast she will uncover
And yeild her honey-drop to her lover.
Into the yellow, evening glow
Saunters a man from the farm below,
Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed
Where hangs the swallow's marriage bed.
The bird lies warm against the wall.
She glances quick her startled eyes
Towards him, then she turns away
Her small head, making warm display
Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway
Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball,
Whose plaintive cries start up as she flies
In one blue stoop from out the sties
Into the evening's empty hall.
Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes
Hide your quaint, unfading blushes,
Still your quick tail, and lie as dead,
Till the distance covers his dangerous tread.
40
The rabbit presses back her ears,
Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes
And crouches low: then with wild spring
Spurts from the terror of the oncoming
To be choked back, the wire ring
Her frantic effort throttling:
Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!
Ah soon in his large, hard hands she dies,
And swings all loose to the swing of his walk.
Yet calm and kindly are his eyes
And ready to open in brown surprise
Should I not answer to his talk
Or should he my tears surmise.
I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from my chair
Watching the door open: he flashes bare
His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes
In a smile like triumph upon me; then careless-wise
He flihgs the rabbit soft on the table board
And comes towards me: ah, the uplifted sword
Of his hand against my bosom, and oh, the broad
Blade of his hand that raises my face to applaud
His coming: he raises up my face to him
And caresses my mouth with his fingers, smelling grim
Of the rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare!
I know not what fine wire is round my throat,
I only know I let him finger there
My pulse of life, letting him nose like a stoat
Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood:
And down his mouth comes to my mouth, and down
His dark bright eyes descend like a fiery hood
Upon my mind: his mouth meets mine, and a flood
Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown
Within him, die, and find death good.
~ David Herbert Lawrence,#NFDB
498:A Testimony
I said of laughter: it is vain.
Of mirth I said: what profits it?
Therefore I found a book, and writ
Therein how ease and also pain,
How health and sickness, every one
Is vanity beneath the sun.
Man walks in a vain shadow; he
Disquieteth himself in vain.
The things that were shall be again;
The rivers do not fill the sea,
But turn back to their secret source;
The winds too turn upon their course.
Our treasures moth and rust corrupt,
Or thieves break through and steal, or they
Make themselves wings and fly away.
One man made merry as he supped,
Nor guessed how when that night grew dim,
His soul would be required of him.
We build our houses on the sand
Comely withoutside and within;
But when the winds and rains begin
To beat on them, they cannot stand;
They perish, quickly overthrown,
Loose from the very basement stone.
All things are vanity, I said:
Yea vanity of vanities.
The rich man dies; and the poor dies:
The worm feeds sweetly on the dead.
Whate'er thou lackest, keep this trust:
All in the end shall have but dust.
The one inheritance, which best
And worst alike shall find and share:
The wicked cease from troubling there,
And there the weary are at rest;
55
There all the wisdom of the wise
Is vanity of vanities.
Man flourishes as a green leaf,
And as a leaf doth pass away;
Or as a shade that cannot stay,
And leaves no track, his course is brief:
Yet doth man hope and fear and plan
Till he is dead:—oh foolish man!
Our eyes cannot be satisfied
With seeing, nor our ears be filled
With hearing: yet we plant and build
And buy and make our borders wide;
We gather wealth, we gather care,
But know not who shall be our heir.
Why should we hasten to arise
So early, and so late take rest?
Our labour is not good; our best
Hopes fade; our heart is stayed on lies:
Verily, we sow wind; and we
Shall reap the whirlwind, verily.
He who hath little shall not lack;
He who hath plenty shall decay:
Our fathers went; we pass away;
Our children follow on our track:
So generations fail, and so
They are renewed, and come and go.
The earth is fattened with our dead;
She swallows more and doth not cease:
Therefore her wine and oil increase
And her sheaves are not numbered;
Therefore her plants are green, and all
Her pleasant trees lusty and tall.
Therefore the maidens cease to sing,
And the young men are very sad;
Therefore the sowing is not glad,
And mournful is the harvesting.
56
Of high and low, of great and small,
Vanity is the lot of all.
A King dwelt in Jerusalem;
He was the wisest man on earth;
He had all riches from his birth,
And pleasures till he tired of them;
Then, having tested all things, he
Witnessed that all are vanity.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,#NFDB
499:Dog Talk
…
I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously
into the shallow dampness of a deer’s hoofprint and shut his eyes
as if listening. But it is smell he is listening to. The wild, high
music of smell, that we know so little about.
Tonight Ben charges up the yard; Bear follows. They run into the
field and are gone. A soft wind, like a belt of silk, wraps the house.
I follow them to the end of the field where I hear the long-eared
owl, at wood’s edge, in one of the tall pines. All night the owl will
sit there inventing his catty racket, except when he opens pale
wings and drifts moth-like over the grass. I have seen both dogs
look up as the bird floats by, and I suppose the field mouse hears
it too, in the pebble of his tiny heart. Though I hear nothing.
Bear is small and white with a curly tail. He was meant to be idle
and pretty but learned instead to love the world, and to romp
roughly with the big dogs. The brotherliness of the two, Ben and
Bear, increases with each year. They have their separate habits,
their own favorite sleeping places, for example, yet each worries
without letup if the other is missing. They both bark rapturously
and in support of each other. They both sneeze to express plea-
sure, and yawn in humorous admittance of embarrassment. In the
car, when we are getting close to home and the smell of the ocean
begins to surround them, they both sit bolt upright and hum.
With what vigor
and intention to please himself
the little white dog
flings himself into every puddle
on the muddy road.
Somethings are unchangeably wild, others are stolid tame. The
tiger is wild, the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are
tame. The wild things that have been altered, but only into
a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in
both worlds. Ben is devoted, he hates the door between us, is
afraid of separation. But he had, for a number of years, a dog
friend to whom he was also loyal. Every day they and a few others
gathered into a noisy gang, and some of their games were bloody.
Dog is docile, and then forgets. Dog promises then forgets. Voices
call him. Wolf faces appear in dreams. He finds himself running
over incredible lush or barren stretches of land, nothing any of us
has ever seen. Deep in the dream, his paws twitch, his lip lifts.
The dreaming dog leaps through the underbrush, enters the earth
through a narrow tunnel, and is home. The dog wakes and the
disturbance in his eyes when you say his name is a recognizable
cloud. How glad he is to see you, and he sneezes a little to tell
you so.
But ah! the falling-back, fading dream where he was almost
there again, in the pure, rocky weather-ruled beginning. Where
he was almost wild again, and knew nothing else but that life, no
other possibility. A world of trees and dogs and the white moon,
the nest, the breast, the heart-warming milk! The thick-mantled
ferocity at the end of the tunnel, known as father, a warrior he
himself would grow to be.
… ~ Mary Oliver,#NFDB
500:Don Rafael
'I would not have,' he said,
'Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave,
Grief's hideous panoply I would not have
Round me when I am dead.
'Music and flowers and light,
And choric dances to guitar and flute,
Be these around me when my lips are mute,
Mine eyes are sealed from sight.
'So let me lie one day,
One long, eternal day, in sunshine bathed,
In cerements of silken tissue swathed,
Smothered 'neath flowers of May.
'One perfect day of peace,
Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil,
My life-a gilded vapor-shall exhale,
Brief as a sigh-and cease.
'But ere the torch be laid
To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand,
Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land,
Bring many a dark-eyed maid
'From the bright, sea-kissed town;
My beautiful, beloved enemies,
Gemmed as the dew, voluptuous as the breeze,
Each in her festal gown.
'All those through whom I learned
The sweet of folly and the pains of love,
My Rose, my Star, my Comforter, my Dove,
For whom, poor moth, I burned.
'Loves of a day, and hour,
Or passions (vowed eternal) of a year,
Though each be strange to each, to me all dear
As to the bee the flower.
58
'Around me they shall move
In languid contra dances, and shall shed
Their smiling eyebeams as I were not dead,
But quick to flash back love.
'Something not alien quite
To tender ruth, perchance their breast shall fill,
Seeing him that was so mobile grown so still,
The fiery-veined so white.
'And when the dance is o'er,
The pinched guitar, the smitten tambourine,
Have ceased their rhythmic beat,-oh, friends of mine,
On my rich bier, then pour
'The garlands that ye wear,
The happy rose that on your bosom breathes,
The fresh-culled clusters and the dewy wreaths
That crown your fragrant hair.
'Though blind, I still shall see,
Though dead, shall feel your presence and shall know,
I who was beauty's life-long slave, shall so
Win her in death to me.
'Thanks, sisters, and farewell!
Back to your joys. My brother shall make room
For my tried sword upon the high-piled bloom,
And fire the pinnacle.
'My soul, pure flame, shall leap
To meet its parent essence once again
My body dust and ashes shall remain,
Tired heart and brain shall sleep.
'Life has one gate alone,
Obscure, beset with peril and fierce pain.
Large death has many portals to his fane,
Why choose we to make moan?
'Why dwell with worms and clay
59
When we may soar through air on wings of flame,
Dissolve to small, white dust our perfect frame,
And never know decay?
'A brother's pious hand
The pure, fire-winnowed ashes shall inurn,
And lay them in the orange grove where burn
Globed suns that scent the land.
'The leaf shall be more green,
Even for my dust-more snowy-soft the flower,
More juicy-sweet the fruit's live pulp-the bower
Richer that I have been.
'For I would not,' he said,
'Tears and the black pall and the wormy grave,
Grief's hideous panoply I would not have
Round me when I am dead.'
~ Emma Lazarus,#NFDB
501:A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;--
And as a vale is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darknessas a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters,every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradleever from below
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,
Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish!and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.
...
And so this man returned with axe and saw
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Natures gentle law
Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene
With jagged leaves,and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleepor weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops
Into their mothers bosom, sweet and soft,
Natures pure tears which have no bitterness;--
Around the cradles of the birds aloft
They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds:or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religionand the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.
...
The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Loves gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Woodman And The Nightingale
,#NFDB
502:The tornadic bundle of legs and arms and feet and hands push farther into the kitchen until only the occasional flailing limb is visible from the living room, where I can’t believe I’m still standing.
A spectator in my own life, I watch the supernova of my two worlds colliding: Mom and Galen. Human and Syrena. Poseidon and Triton. But what can I do? Who should I help? Mom, who lied to me for eighteen years, then tried to shank my boyfriend? Galen, who forgot this little thing called “tact” when he accused my mom of being a runaway fish-princess? Toraf, who…what the heck is Toraf doing, anyway? And did he really just sack my mom like an opposing quarterback?
The urgency level for a quick decision elevates to right-freaking-now. I decide that screaming is still best for everyone-it’s nonviolent, distracting, and one of the things I’m very, very good at.
I open my mouth, but Rayna beats me to it-only, her scream is much more valuable than mine would have been, because she includes words with it. “Stop it right now, or I’ll kill you all!” She pushed past me with a decrepit, rusty harpoon from God-knows-what century, probably pillaged from one of her shipwreck excursions. She waves it at the three of them like a crazed fisherman in a Jaws movie. I hope they don’t notice she’s got it pointed backward and that if she fires it, she’ll skewer our couch and Grandma’s first attempt at quilting.
It works. The bare feet and tennis shoes stop scuffling-out of fear or shock, I’m not sure-and Toraf’s head appears at the top of the counter. “Princess,” he says, breathless. “I told you to stay outside.”
“Emma, run!” Mom yells.
Toraf disappears again, followed by a symphony of scraping and knocking and thumping and cussing.
Rayna rolls her eyes at me, grumbling to herself as she stomps into the kitchen. She adjusts the harpoon to a more deadly position, scraping the popcorn ceiling and sending rust and Sheetrock and tetanus flaking onto the floor like dirty snow. Aiming it at the mound of struggling limbs, she says, “One of you is about to die, and right now I don’t really care who it is.”
Thank God for Rayna. People like Rayna get things done. People like me watch people like Rayna get things done. Then people like me round the corner of the counter as if they helped, as if they didn’t stand there and let everyone they love beat the shizzle out of one another.
I peer down at the three of them all tangled up. Crossing my arms, I try to mimic Rayna’s impressive rage, but I’m pretty sure my face is only capable of what-the-crap-was-that.
Mom looks up at me, nostrils flaring like moth wings. “Emma, I told you to run,” she grinds out before elbowing Toraf in the mouth so hard I think he might swallow a tooth. Then she kicks Galen in the ribs.
He groans, but catches her foot before she can re-up. Toraf spits blood on the linoleum beside him and grabs Mom’s arms. She writhes and wriggles, bristling like a trapped badger and cussing like sailor on crack.
Mom has never been girlie.
Finally she stops, her arms and legs slumping to the floor in defeat. Tears puddle in her eyes. “Let her go,” she sobs. “She’s got nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even know about us. Take me and leave her out of this. I’ll do anything.”
Which reinforces, right here and now, that my mom is Nalia. Nalia is my mom. Also, holy crap. ~ Anna Banks,#NFDB
503:A Vision Of Twilight
By a void and soundless river
On the outer edge of space,
Where the body comes not ever,
But the absent dream hath place,
Stands a city, tall and quiet,
And its air is sweet and dim;
Never sound of grief or riot
Makes it mad, or makes it grim.
And the tender skies thereover
Neither sun, nor star, behold-Only dusk it hath for cover,-But a glamour soft with gold,
Through a mist of dreamier essence
Than the dew of twilight, smiles
On strange shafts and domes and crescents,
Lifting into eerie piles.
In its courts and hallowed places
Dreams of distant worlds arise,
Shadows of transfigured faces,
Glimpses of immortal eyes,
Echoes of serenest pleasure,
Notes of perfect speech that fall,
Through an air of endless leisure,
Marvellously musical.
And I wander there at even,
Sometimes when my heart is clear,
When a wider round of heaven
And a vaster world are near,
When from many a shadow steeple
Sounds of dreamy bells begin,
And I love the gentle people
That my spirit finds therein.
Men of a diviner making
Than the sons of pride and strife,
Quick with love and pity, breaking
17
From a knowledge old as life;
Women of a spiritual rareness,
Whom old passion and old woe
Moulded to a slenderer fairness
Than the dearest shapes we know.
In its domed and towered centre
Lies a garden wide and fair,
Open for the soul to enter,
And the watchful townsmen there
Greet the stranger gloomed and fretting
From this world of stormy hands,
With a look that deals forgetting
And a touch that understands.
For they see with power, not borrowed
From a record taught or told,
But they loved and laughed and sorrowed
In a thousand worlds of old;
Now they rest and dream for ever,
And with hearts serene and whole
See the struggle, the old fever,
Clear as on a painted scroll.
Wandering by that grey and solemn
Water, with its ghostly quays-Vistas of vast arch and column,
Shadowed by unearthly trees-Biddings of sweet power compel me,
And I go with bated breath,
Listening to the tales they tell me,
Parables of Life and Death.
In a tongue that once was spoken,
Ere the world was cooled by Time,
When the spirit flowed unbroken
Through the flesh, and the Sublime
Made the eyes of men far-seeing,
And their souls as pure as rain,
They declare the ends of being,
And the sacred need of pain.
18
For they know the sweetest reasons
For the products most malign-They can tell the paths and seasons
Of the farthest suns that shine.
How the moth-wing's iridescence
By an inward plan was wrought,
And they read me curious lessons
In the secret ways of thought.
When day turns, and over heaven
To the balmy western verge
Sail the victor fleets of even,
And the pilot stars emerge,
Then my city rounds and rises,
Like a vapour formed afar,
And its sudden girth surprises,
And its shadowy gates unbar.
Dreamy crowds are moving yonder
In a faint and phantom blue;
Through the dusk I lean, and wonder
If their winsome shapes are true;
But in veiling indecision
Come my questions back again-Which is real? The fleeting vision?
Or the fleeting world of men?
~ Archibald Lampman,#NFDB
504:In the Village
I came up out of the subway and there were
people standing on the steps as if they knew
something I didn't. This was in the Cold War,
and nuclear fallout. I looked and the whole avenue
was empty, I mean utterly, and I thought,
The birds have abandoned our cities and the plague
of silence multiplies through their arteries, they fought
the war and they lost and there's nothing subtle or vague
in this horrifying vacuum that is New York. I caught
the blare of a loudspeaker repeatedly warning
the last few people, maybe strolling lovers in their walk,
that the world was about to end that morning
on Sixth or Seventh Avenue with no people going to work
in that uncontradicted, horrifying perspective.
It was no way to die, but it's also no way to live.
Well, if we burnt, it was at least New York.
II
Everybody in New York is in a sitcom.
I'm in a Latin American novel, one
in which an egret-haired viejo shakes with some
invisible sorrow, some obscene affliction,
and chronicles it secretly, till it shows in his face,
the parenthetical wrinkles confirming his fiction
to his deep embarrassment. Look, it's
just the old story of a heart that won't call it quits
whatever the odds, quixotic. It's just one that'll
break nobody's heart, even if the grizzled colonel
pitches from his steed in a cavalry charge, in a battle
that won't make him a statue. It is the hell
of ordinary, unrequited love. Watch these egrets
trudging the lawn in a dishevelled troop, white banners
trailing forlornly; they are the bleached regrets
of an old man's memoirs, printed stanzas.
showing their hinged wings like wide open secrets.
38
III
Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.
IV
The Sweet Life Café
If I fall into a grizzled stillness
sometimes, over the red-chequered tablecloth
outdoors of the Sweet Life Café, when the noise
of Sunday traffic in the Village is soft as a moth
working in storage, it is because of age
which I rarely admit to, or, honestly, even think of.
I have kept the same furies, though my domestic rage
is illogical, diabetic, with no lessening of love
though my hand trembles wildly, but not over this page.
My lust is in great health, but, if it happens
that all my towers shrivel to dribbling sand,
joy will still bend the cane-reeds with my pen's
elation on the road to Vieuxfort with fever-grass
white in the sun, and, as for the sea breaking
in the gap at Praslin, they add up to the grace
39
I have known and which death will be taking
from my hand on this chequered tablecloth in this good place.
~ Derek Walcott,#NFDB
505:The Comrade
WILD winged thing, O brought I know not whence
To beat your life out in my life's low cage;
You strange familiar, nearer than my flesh
Yet distant as a star, that were at first
A child with me a child, yet elfin-far,
And visibly of some unearthly breed;
Mirthfullest mate of all my mortal games,
Yet shedding on them some evasive gleam
Of Latmian loneliness -- O seven then
Expert to lift the latch of our low door
And profit by the hours when, dusked about
By human misintelligence, our first
Weak fledgling flights were safeliest essayed;
Divine accomplice of those perilous-sweet
Low moth-flights of the unadventured soul
Above the world's dim garden! -- now we sit,
After what stretch of years, what stretch of wings,
In the same cage together -- still as near
And still as strange!
Only I know at last
That we are fellows till the last night falls,
And that I shall not miss your comrade hands
Till they have closed my lids, and by them set
A taper that -- who knows! -- may yet shine through.
Sister, my comrade, I have ached for you,
Sometimes, to see you curb your pace to mine,
And bow your Maenad crest to the dull forms
Of human usage; I have loosed your hand
And whispered: 'Go! Since I am tethered here;'
And you have turned, and breathing for reply,
'I too am pinioned, as you too are free,'
Have caught me to such undreamed distances
As the last planets see, when they look forth,
To the sentinel pacings of the outmost stars -Nor these alone,
Comrade, my sister, were your gifts. More oft
Has your impalpable wing-brush bared for me
67
The heart of wonder in familiar things,
Unroofed dull rooms, and hung above my head
The cloudy glimpses of a vernal moon,
Or all the autumn heaven ripe with stars.
And you have made a secret pact with Sleep,
And when she comes not, or her feet delay,
Toiled in low meadows of gray asphodel
Under a pale sky where no shadows fall,
Then, hooded like her, to my side you steal,
And the night grows like a great rumouring sea,
And you a boat, and I your passenger,
And the tide lifts us with an indrawn breath
Out, out upon the murmurs and the scents,
Through spray of splintered star-beams, or white rage
Of desperate moon-drawn waters -- on and on
To some blue ocean immarcescible
That ever like a slow-swung mirror rocks
The balanced breasts of sea-birds motionless.
Yet other nights, my sister, you have been
The storm, and I the leaf that fled on it
Terrifically down voids that never knew
The pity of creation -- or have felt
The immitigable anguish of a soul
Left last in a long-ruined world alone;
And then your touch has drawn me back to earth,
As in the night, upon an unknown road,
A scent of lilac breathing from the hedge
Bespeaks the hidden farm, the bedded cows,
And safety, and the sense of human kind . . .
And I have climbed with you by hidden ways
To meet the dews of morning, and have seen
The shy gods like retreating shadows fade,
Or on the thymy reaches have surprised
Old Chiron sleeping, and have waked him not . . .
Yet farther have I fared with you, and known
Love and his sacred tremors, and the rites
Of his most inward temple; and beyond
His temple lights, have seen the long gray waste
68
Where lonely thoughts, like creatures of the night,
Listen and wander where a city stood.
And creeping down by waterless defiles
Under an iron midnight, have I kept
My vigil in the waste till dawn began
To move among the ruins, and I saw
A sapling rooted in a fissured plinth,
And a wren's nest in the thunder-threatening hand
Of some old god of granite in the dust . . .
~ Edith Wharton,#NFDB
506:Amusing Trial, In Which A Yankee Lawyer Rendered A
Just Verdict.
A Slave sold at Auction.
A time there was, when no one thought
It sin, to hold a slave he'd bought,
And of his strength have the command,
As much as of his house and land.
A Yankee Lawyer long had kept
A negro-man with whom he slept.
And ate, and Sabbath day,
He half the time from church would stay;
When Cuff his master's garments wore.—
'Twas strange you say, but he was poor;
And though he cared not for Cuff's soul,
Yet such the times, that on the whole,
'Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught.'—Sterne.
His slave must to the meeting go,
If 'twas for nothing but a show.
They lived on thus for several years—
One would not think, that many tears
Would fall from off that shining face,
So sleek and smooth, or he would trace
Note.—In some parts of the country, slaves are scantily fed, while their masters
live in luxury.
Note.—In some parts of the country, slaves are scantily fed, while their masters
live in luxury.
The chain which bound, or wish to break,
But choose to stay for his own sake,
Where he so well was clothed and fed,
And shared the lawyer's food and bed,
So well contented he might be,
He'd hardly know but he was free,
Fetters formerly used by the slave traders, to confine the ankles of their victims.
33
The editor has seen some that were actually used by Rhode Island traders.
Fetters formerly used by the slave traders, to confine the ankles of their victims.
The editor has seen some that were actually used by Rhode Island traders.
But make the fetters of pure gold.
They're hateful still, they gall, they hold,
And if the pill is sugared o'er,
'Tis still as bitter as before.
Cuff ponder'd much, but did not know,
If he his master left to go,
And seek his fortune, he could find
Another master half so kind,
And who would give so large a share
Of the small pittance he could spare,
And every privilege could grant,
Which he could need or ever want;
Emblem of Freedom.—A moth just changed from its chrysalis state, deserting its
shell.
Emblem of Freedom.—A moth just changed from its chrysalis state, deserting its
shell.
But then of freedom he had heard,
And ere the dawning light appeared.
Early one morning Cuff arose,
And quickly putting on his clothes,
Stole softly out; lest he should wake
His master, who would rouse and shake
The slumbers from his drowsy eyes,
And think that it was time to rise.
So Cuff went off. His master woke,
And Cuff was gone! It was no joke.
The Lawyer's work must now be done,
All by himself; and till the sun
A man escaping from slavery.
A man escaping from slavery.
Is slowly sinking in the west,
He'll scarcely have a minute's rest.
He felt his temper quickly rise,
Thinking his slave too rich a prize,
34
To be allowed to slip away,
Without a trial for 'fair play;'
A slave-catcher is worse than a beast of prey.
A slave-catcher is worse than a beast of prey.
Said he, 'My course is plain enough,
I'll take my horse and go for Cuff,
For he's my slave, and he shall give
To me, his service if he live.'
Saddling his horse he mounts him quick,
Drives after Cuff with spur and stick:
But soon he paused his cause to try,
And thus he said, Why should not I
Be slave instead of Cuff, and he
As well be running after me
As I for him?—I'll let him go,
Whether he's free by law or no.
Justice freeing the slave.
Justice freeing the slave.
For God who fashioned him and me,
No doubt made all his children free.
So justice o'er his mind held sway,
And Cuff in freedom, went his way.
~ Anonymous Americas,#NFDB
507:The Escape Of The Old Grey Squirrel
Old Grey Squirrel might have been
Almost anything Might have been a soldier, sailor,
Tinker, tailor
(Never a beggar-man, though, nor thief).
Might have been, perhaps, a king,
Or an Indian chief.
He remained a City clerk
Doubled on a great high stool,
Totting up, from dawn to dark,
Figures, figures, figures, figures,
Red ink, black ink, double rule,
Tot-tot-totting with his pen,
Up and down and round again Curious Old Grey Squirrel.
No one ever really knew
What he did at night,
In his room so near the roof,
Up those steep and narrow stairs.
Old Grey Squirrel wasn't quite
The same as other men.
What he said was always true;
He was like a little child
In a thousand things.
Something shy and delicate,
Cold and grave and undefiled,
Seemed to keep him quite aloof.
You could never call him lonely,
Though he lived with memory there.
When he knelt beside his bed
He had nothing much to say
But the simplest little prayer
Learned in childhood, long ago,
And he didn't know or care
Whether Calvinists might call it
Praying for the dead.
112
Father, mother, sister, brother Memories clear as evening bells;
Yes, the very sort of thing
All your clever little scribblers
Love to satirize and sting,
So let's talk of something else.
He collected stamps, you know,
Commonplace Old Squirrel.
Ah, but could you see him there,
When the day's grey work was done,
Poring over his new stamps
With that wise old air;
Looking up the curious places
In his tattered atlas, too
Lands of jungle and of sun,
Ivory tusks and dusky faces,
Whence his latest treasure flew
Like a tropic moth, he thought,
To flutter round his dying lamp. . . .
Visions are not bought and sold;
But, when the foreign mail came in
Bringing his employers news
Of copper, sulphide, zinc and tin
(And the red resultant gold),
Envelopes were thrown away,
So, of course, one clearly sees
He could pick, and he could choose,
Having, as he used to say,
'Very great advantages.'
Rarities could not be bought.
Bus fares don't leave much for spending
On a flight to Zipangu.
All the same, one never knew.
All things come to those who wait Isles of palm in rose and blue,
India, China and Peru,
And the Golden Gate.
113
So he'd turn his treasures over Mauve and crimson, buff and cream Every stamp an elfin window
Opening on a boy's lost dream.
'Curious, curious, that's Jamaica,
That's Hong Kong (the twopenny red),
I've no doubt they are well worth seeing,
Well worth seeing,' Old Squirrel said.
'Curious' - curious was his word Old Grey Squirrel remembered a day
Sitting alone in a whispering fir-wood
(This was in boyhood before they caught him)
Writing a story of far Cathay,
A tale that his friends would think absurd
But would make him famous when he was dead.
'Curious' - thinking of all those years,
All those dreams that had drifted away Once, he had thought - but the years had taught him,
Taught him better, and bowed his head.
'Curious' - memory clings and lingers Clings - the smell of the fir wood - clings . . .
Through his wrinkled ink-stained fingers,
'Curious, curious,' trickled the tears,
Curious Old Grey Squirrel.
No, you'd hardly call it weeping.
Old Grey Squirrel could not weep.
Head on arm, he might have been
Sleeping; but he did not know.
Most of us are sound asleep;
And, that Christmas Eve, it seems,
He awoke, at last, from dreams.
Gently, as a woman's hand
Something touched him on the brow,
And he woke, in that strange land Where he lives for ever now.
All things come to those who wait Palms against a deeper blue,
Far Cathay and Zipangu,
114
And the Golden Gate.
~ Alfred Noyes,#NFDB
508:Doors, Doors, Doors
1. Old Man
Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin tail and the wornout tread.
The room will do. All that's left of the old life
is jampacked on shelves from floor to ceiling
like a supermarket: your books, your dead wife
generously fat in her polished frame, the congealing
bowl of cornflakes sagging in their instant milk,
your hot plate and your one luxury, a telephone.
You leave your door open, lounging in maroon silk
and smiling at the other roomers who live alone.
Well, almost alone. Through the old-fashioned wall
the fellow next door has a girl who comes to call.
Twice a week at noon during their lunch hour
they puase by your door to peer into your world.
They speak sadly as if the wine they carry would sour
or as if the mattress would not keep them curled
together, extravagantly young in their tight lock.
Old man, you are their father holding court
in the dingy hall until their alarm clock
rings and unwinds them. You unstopper the quart
of brandy you've saved, examining the small print
in the telephone book. The phone in your lap is all
that's left of your family name. Like a Romanoff prince
you stay the same in your small alcove off the hall.
Castaway, your time is a flat sea that doesn't stop,
with no new land to make for and no new stories to swap.
2. Seamstress
I'm at pains to know what else I could have done
63
but move him out of his parish, him being my son;
him being the only one at home since his Pa
left us to beat the Japs at Okinawa.
I put the gold star up in the front window
beside the flag. Alterations is what I know
and what I did: hems, gussets and seams.
When my boy had the fever and the bad dreams
I paid for the clinic exam and a pack of lies.
As a youngster his private parts were undersize.
I thought of his Pa, that muscly old laugh he had
and the boy was thin as a moth, but never once bad,
as smart as a rooster! To hear some neighbors tell,
Your kid! He'll go far. He'll marry well.
So when he talked of taking the cloth, I thought
I'd talk him out of it. You're all I got,
I told him. For six years he studied up. I prayed
against God Himself for my boy. But he stayed.
Christ was a hornet inside his head. I guess
I'd better stitch the zipper in this dress.
I guess I'll get along. I always did.
Across the hall from me's an old invalid,
aside of him, a young one - he carries on
with a girl who pretends she comes to use the john.
The old one with the bad breath and his bed all mussed,
he smiles and talks to them. He's got some crust.
Sure as hell, what else could I have done
but pack up and move in here, him being my son?
3. Young Girl
64
Dear love, as simple as some distant evil
we walk a little drunk up these three flughts
where you tacked a Dufy print above your army cot.
The thin apartment doors on the way up will
not tell us. We are saying, we have our rights
and let them see the sandwiches and wine we bought
for we do not explain my husband's insane abuse
and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled
or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead.
Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use.
Both a little drunk in the afternoon
with the forgotten smart of August on our skin
we hold hands as if we were still children who trudge
up the wooden tower, on up past that close platoon
of doors, past the dear old man who always asks us in
and the one who sews like a wasp and will not budge.
Climbing the dark halls, I ignore their papers and pails,
the twelve coats of rubbish of someone else's dim life.
Tell them need is an excuse for love. Tell them need prevails.
Tell them I remake and smooth your bed and am your wife.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
509:Gnothi Seauton
I
If thou canst bear
Strong meat of simple truth
If thou durst my words compare
With what thou thinkest in my souls free youth,
Then take this fact unto thy soul,-----
God dwells in thee.
It is no metaphor nor parable,
It is unknown to thousands, and to thee;
Yet there is God.
II
He is in thy world,
But thy world knows him not.
He is the mighty Heart
From which lifes varied pulses part.
Clouded and shrouded there doth sit
The Infinite
Embosomed in a man;
And thou art stranger to thy guest
And knowst not what thou doth invest.
The clouds that veil his life within
Are thy thick woven webs of sin,
Which his glory struggling through
Darkens to thine evil hue.
III
Then bear thyself, O man!
Up to the scale and compass of thy guest;
Soul of thy soul.
Be great as doth beseem
The ambassador who bears
The royal presence where he goes.
IV
Give up to thy soul-----
Let it have its way-----
It is, I tell thee, God himself,
The selfsame One that rules the Whole,
Tho he speaks thro thee with a stifled voice,
And looks through thee, shorn of his beams.
But if thou listen to his voice,
If thou obey the royal thought,
It will grow clearer to thine ear,
More glorious to thine eye.
The clouds will burst that veil him now
And thou shalt see the Lord.
V
Therefore be great,
Not proud,-----too great to be proud.
Let not thine eyes rove,
Peep not in corners; let thine eyes
Look straight before thee, as befits
The simplicity of Power.
And in thy closet carry state;
Filled with light, walk therein;
And, as a king
Would do no treason to his own empire,
So do not thou to thine.
VI
This is the reason why thou dost recognize
Things now first revealed,
Because in thee resides
The Spirit that lives in all;
And thou canst learn the laws of nature
Because its author is latent in thy breast.
VII
Therefore, O happy youth,
Happy if thou dost know and love this truth,
Thou art unto thyself a law,
And since the soul of things is in thee,
Thou needest nothing out of thee.
The law, the gospel, and the Providence,
Heaven, Hell, the Judgement, and the stores
Immeasurable of Truth and Good,
All these thou must find
Within thy single mind,
Or never find.
VIII
Thou art the law;
The gospel has no revelation
Of peace and hope until there is response
From the deep chambers of thy mind thereto,-----
The rest is straw.
It can reveal no truth unknown before.
The Providence
Thou art thyself that doth dispense
Wealth to thy work, want to thy sloth,
Glory to goodness, to neglect, the moth.
Thou sowst the wind, the whirlwind reapest,
Thou payest the wages
Of thy own work, through all ages.
The almighty energy within
Crowneth virtue, curseth sin.
Virtue sees by its own light;
Stumbleth sin in self-made night.
IX
Who approves thee doing right?
God in thee.
Who condemns thee doing wrong?
God in thee.
Who punishes thine evil deed?
God in thee.
What is thine evil meed?
Thy worse mind, with error blind
And more prone to evil
That is, the greater hiding of the God within:
The loss of peace
The terrible displeasure of this inmate
And next the consequence
More faintly as more distant wrot
Upon our outward fortunes
Which decay with vice
With Virtue rise.
X
The selfsame God
By the same law
Makes the souls of angels glad
And the souls of devils sad
See
There is nothing else but God
Where e'er I look
All things hasten back to him
Light is but his shadow dim.
XI
Shall I ask wealth or power of God, who gave
An image of himself to be my soul?
As well might swilling ocean ask a wave,
Or the starred firmament a dying coal,-----
For that which is in me lives in the whole.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gnothi Seauton
,#NFDB
510:Love Motives
To You.
SO you have come at last!
And we nestle, each in each,
As leans the pliant sea in the clean-curved limbs of her lover the beach;
Merged in each other quite,
Clinging, as in the tresses of trees dallies the troubadour night;
Faint as a perfume, soft as wine,
Yielding as moonlight—mine, all mine—
So I have found you at last!
I dreamed; we dare not meet:
The time is yet too soon;
Swept with the tumult of perfect love, our souls from this life would swoon—
For the fusion of our lives
Is the sole great goal to which the vast creation vaguely drives;
And only when I kiss your face
Shall the last great trumpet shatter Space—
I dreamed; we dare not meet!
Yet somewhere, hungry-eyed,
You lie and listen with tears,
Clogged with the flesh, and dulled with the sodden heritage of the years.
And I am alien, lone,
Hedged with the palisades of self, shut in—a soul unknown.
You, fashioned for me from Time's first day,
I, moulded for you ere that dawn was grey,
Wait hidden, hungry-eyed!
I lie in the lonely night;
And you?—perhaps so near
That if I should whisper your sweet soul-name you would joyously leap and hear!
And yet perhaps so far,
Drowned in the cosmic mist beyond the swirl of the farthest star;
But over the universe yawning between,
With wistful eyes you listen and lean,
Alone in the lonely night!
Perhaps your thirsty arms
Some stranger youth entwine,
And you will yield him thin, faint kisses, thinking his lips are mine;
He thinking that unawares
46
He has caught, as once in a dream he caught, that miracle-glance of hers.
The pathos of the thing that seems!
Each clasping memories, kissing dreams.
In passionate-thirsty arms!
So you will yearn through life,
Or maybe you did not wait:
You married him, and his neutral smile you learnt to sullenly hate;
Or you have lived a lie,
And drank the mockery of his lips, believing that he was I.
You dreamed, content that you loved him true,
But the soul of your soul was dead to you—
So I must yearn through life!
Or, starving and passionate still,
To your dreams you were bravely true;
You told the Night your secrets drear, and he laughed back at you;
And even when you dreamed
You heard his merciless laughter ring, and you sprang awake and screamed;
Till Age kissed you with a kiss that sears,
And you faded and withered with the years,
Starving and passionate still!
But, hush! I had almost heard:
Last night I dreamed your name;
Like the soft, white tread of a faint, cool cloud to my desolate sky it came;
Like a moth it drifted away,
And into the flame of the dawn it fluttered, dying into the day.
Yet the wind in the whispering leaves
The moan of your sobbing weaves—
Hush! I had almost heard.
Yet I should know your face!
As mine, all mine, I claim
That coil of hair that over your bosom smoulders— a yellow flame;
And the cool, dim-curtained eyes,
The crescent of your imperious chin, and the little moist mouth that cries.
I have heard through the din of the years
Your voice, with its tincture of tears—
Yes, I remember your face!
Once in the drifting crowd
I thought I had found a clue—
A pale face pealed like an organ-note, and yet— oh! my heart—not you!
She had your look, the same
47
Ineffable sorrow of glad young eyes; but all the rest was shame.
Perhaps she saw—for her eyes were wet—
In me the soul she had one time met
In eternity's drifting crowd!
Perhaps 't is the desert of years
That severs each from each,
And out of the cavernous centuries to each other we blindly reach.
You blossomed so long ago
That only the Dawn and the Spring remember, and little, so little, they know!
You wait on the hill of the first white morn,
Straining dead eyes to me, unborn,
Across the desert of years.
Or when I am dead at last,
And my sovereignty have won,
As merged in the dust of the gradual Past, unliving, I live on,
You will rise with some far-off Spring,
And back to the drear, dead days that were mine your piteous glance will fling.
But, hush! I shall come in the rain-kissed night
And whisper the words of our marriage-rite—
So I shall find you at last!
Yet if we met.…
I dreamed; we dare not meet.
~ Arthur Henry Adams,#NFDB
511:To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage. A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons Shudders hell through all its regions. A dog starved at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state. A horse misused upon the road Calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain does tear. A skylark wounded in the wing, A cherubim does cease to sing. The game-cock clipped and armed for fight Does the rising sun affright. Every wolf's and lion's howl Raises from hell a human soul. The wild deer wandering here and there Keeps the human soul from care. The lamb misused breeds public strife, And yet forgives the butcher's knife. The bat that flits at close of eve Has left the brain that won't believe. The owl that calls upon the night Speaks the unbeliever's fright. He who shall hurt the little wren Shall never be beloved by men. He who the ox to wrath has moved Shall never be by woman loved. The wanton boy that kills the fly Shall feel the spider's enmity. He who torments the chafer's sprite Weaves a bower in endless night. The caterpillar on the leaf Repeats to thee thy mother's grief. Kill not the moth nor butterfly, For the Last Judgment draweth nigh. He who shall train the horse to war Shall never pass the polar bar. The beggar's dog and widow's cat, Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat. The gnat that sings his summer's song Poison gets from Slander's tongue. The poison of the snake and newt Is the sweat of Envy's foot. The poison of the honey-bee Is the artist's jealousy. The prince's robes and beggar's rags Are toadstools on the miser's bags. A truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent. It is right it should be so: Man was made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine. The babe is more than swaddling bands, Throughout all these human lands; Tools were made and born were hands, Every farmer understands. Every tear from every eye Becomes a babe in eternity; This is caught by females bright And returned to its own delight. The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar Are waves that beat on heaven's shore. The babe that weeps the rod beneath Writes Revenge! in realms of death. The beggar's rags fluttering in air Does to rags the heavens tear. The soldier armed with sword and gun Palsied strikes the summer's sun. The poor man's farthing is worth more Than all the gold on Afric's shore. One mite wrung from the labourer's hands Shall buy and sell the miser's lands, Or if protected from on high Does that whole nation sell and buy. He who mocks the infant's faith Shall be mocked in age and death. He who shall teach the child to doubt The rotting grave shall ne'er get out. He who respects the infant's faith Triumphs over hell and death. The child's toys and the old man's reasons Are the fruits of the two seasons. The questioner who sits so sly Shall never know how to reply. He who replies to words of doubt Doth put the light of knowledge out. The strongest poison ever known Came from Caesar's laurel crown. Nought can deform the human race Like to the armour's iron brace. When gold and gems adorn the plough To peaceful arts shall Envy bow. A riddle or the cricket's cry Is to doubt a fit reply. The emmet's inch and eagle's mile Make lame philosophy to smile. He who doubts from what he sees Will ne'er believe, do what you please. If the sun and moon should doubt, They'd immediately go out. To be in a passion you good may do, But no good if a passion is in you. The whore and gambler, by the state Licensed, build that nation's fate. The harlot's cry from street to street Shall weave old England's winding sheet. The winner's shout, the loser's curse, Dance before dead England's hearse. Every night and every morn Some to misery are born. Every morn and every night Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night. We are led to believe a lie When we see not through the eye Which was born in a night to perish in a night, When the soul slept in beams of light. God appears, and God is light To those poor souls who dwell in night, But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day. [1991.jpg] -- from William Blake: The Complete Poems, by William Blake
~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
,#NFDB
512:The Frog Prince
Frau Doktor,
Mama Brundig,
take out your contacts,
remove your wig.
I write for you.
I entertain.
But frogs come out
of the sky like rain.
Frogs arrive
With an ugly fury.
You are my judge.
You are my jury.
My guilts are what
we catalogue.
I’ll take a knife
and chop up frog.
Frog
Frog
Frog
Frog
Frog
has not nerves.
is as old as a cockroach.
is my father’s genitals.
is a malformed doorknob.
is a soft bag of green.
The moon will not have him.
The sun wants to shut off
like a light bulb.
At the sight of him
the stone washes itself in a tub.
The crow thinks he’s an apple
and drops a worm in.
At the feel of frog
the touch-me-nots explode
like electric slugs.
Slime will have him.
Slime has made him a house.
Mr. Poison
263
is at my bed.
He wants my sausage.
He wants my bread.
Mama Brundig,
he wants my beer.
He wants my Christ
for a souvenir.
Frog has boil disease
and a bellyful of parasites.
He says: Kiss me. Kiss me.
And the ground soils itself.
Why
should a certain
quite adorable princess
be walking in her garden
at such a time
and toss her golden ball
up like a bubble
and drop it into the well?
It was ordained.
Just as the fates deal out
the plague with a tarot card.
Just as the Supreme Being drills
holes in our skulls to let
the Boston Symphony through.
But I digress.
A loss has taken place.
The ball has sunk like a cast-iron pot
into the bottom of the well.
Lost, she said,
my moon, my butter calf,
my yellow moth, my Hindu hare.
Obviously it was more than a ball.
Balls such as these are not
for sale in Au Bon Marché.
I took the moon, she said,
between my teeth
264
and now it is gone
and I am lost forever.
A thief had robbed by day.
Suddenly the well grew
thick and boiling
and a frog appeared.
His eyes bulged like two peas
and his body was trussed into place.
Do not be afraid, Princess,
he said, I am not a vagabond,
a cattle farmer, a shepherd,
a doorkeeper, a postman
or a laborer.
I come to you as a tradesman.
I have something to sell.
Your ball, he said,
for just three things.
Let me eat from your plate.
Let me drink from your cup.
Let me sleep in your bed.
She thought, Old Waddler,
those three you will never do,
but she made the promises
with hopes for her ball once more.
He brought it up in his mouth
like a tricky old dog
and she ran back to the castle
leaving the frog quite alone.
That evening at dinner time
a knock was heard on the castle door
and a voice demanded:
King’s youngest daughter,
let me in. You promised;
now open to me.
I have left the skunk cabbage
and the eels to live with you.
The kind then heard her promise
and forced her to comply.
The frog first sat on her lap.
265
He was as awful as an undertaker.
Next he was at her plate
looking over her bacon
and calves’ liver.
We will eat in tandem,
he said gleefully.
Her fork trembled
as if a small machine
had entered her.
He sat upon the liver
and partook like a gourmet.
The princess choked
as if she were eating a puppy.
From her cup he drank.
It wasn’t exactly hygienic.
From her cup she drank
as if it were Socrates’ hemlock.
Next came the bed.
The silky royal bed.
Ah! The penultimate hour!
There was the pillow
with the princess breathing
and there was the sinuous frog
riding up and down beside her.
I have been lost in a river
of shut doors, he said,
and I have made my way over
the wet stones to live with you.
She woke up aghast.
I suffer for birds and fireflies
but not frogs, she said,
and threw him across the room.
Kaboom!
Like a genie coming out of a samovar,
a handsome prince arose in the
corner of her bedroom.
He had kind eyes and hands
and was a friend of sorrow.
Thus they were married.
After all he had compromised her.
266
He hired a night watchman
so that no one could enter the chamber
and he had the well
boarded over so that
never again would she lose her ball,
that moon, that Krishna hair,
that blind poppy, that innocent globe,
that madonna womb.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
513:Glasgow
SING, poet, 'tis a merry world;
That cottage smoke is rolled and curled
In sport, that every moss
Is happy, every inch of soil: Before me runs a road of toil
With my grave cut across.
Sing, trailing showers and breezy downs I know the tragic hearts of towns.
City! I am true son of thine;
Ne'er dwelt I where great mornings shine
Around the bleating pens;
Ne'er by the rivulets I strayed,
And ne'er upon my childhood weighed
The silence of the glens.
Instead of shores where ocean beats
I hear the ebb and flow of streets.
Black Labor draws his weary waves
Into their secret moaning caves;
But, with the morning light,
That sea again will overflow
With a long, weary sound of woe,
Again to faint in night.
Wave am I in that sea of woes,
Which, night and morning, ebbs and flows.
I dwelt within a gloomy court,
Wherein did never sunbeam sport;
Yet there my heart was stirred My very blood did dance and thrill,
When on my narrow window-sill
Spring lighted like a bird.
Poor flowers! I watched them pine for weeks,
With leaves as pale as human cheeks.
Afar, one summer, I was borne;
Through golden vapors of the morn
I heard the hills of sheep:
10
I trod with a wild ecstasy
The bright fringe of the living sea:
And on a ruined keep
I sat, and watched an endless plain
Blacken beneath the gloom of rain.
Oh, fair the lightly-sprinkled waste,
O'er which a laughing shower has raced!
Oh, fair the April shoots!
Oh, fair the woods on summer days,
While a blue hyacinthine haze
Is dreaming round the roots!
In thee, O city! I discern
Another beaity, sad and strern.
Draw thy fierce streams of blinding ore,
Smite on a thousand anvils, roar
Down the harbor-bars;
Smoulder in smoky sunsets, flare
On rainy nights; with street and square
Lie empty to the stars.
From terrace proud to alley base
I know thee as my mother's face.
When sunset bathes thee in his gold,
In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled,
They smoke is dusky fire;
And, from the glory round thee poured,
A sunbeam like an angel's sword
Shivers upon a spire.
Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream!
While the blue night crept up the stream.
The wild train plunges in the hills,
He shrieks across the midnight rills;
Streams through the shifting glare,
The roar and flap of foundry fires,
That shake with light the sleeping shires;
And on the moorlands bare
He sees afar a crown of light
Hang o'er thee in the hollow night.
11
And through thy heart as through a dream,
Flows on that black disdainful stream;
All scornfully it flows,
Between the huddled gloom of masts,
Silent as pines unvexed by blasts 'Tween lamps in streaming rows,
O wondrous sight! O stream of dread!
O long, dark river of the dead!
Afar, the banner of the year
Unfurls: but dimly prisoned here,
Tis only when I greet
A dropt rose lying in my way,
A butterfly that flutters gay
Athwart the noisy street,
I know the happy Summer smiles
Around thy suburbs, miles on miles.
'Twere neither pæan now, nor dirge,
The flash and thunder of the surge
On flat sands wide and bare;
No haunting joy or anguish dwells
In the green light of sunny dells,
Or in the starry air.
Alike to me the desert flower,
The rainbow laughing o'er the shower
While o'er thy walls the darkness sails,
I lean against the churchyard rails;
Up in the midnight towers
The belfried spire, the street is dead,
I hear in silence overhead
The clang of iron hours:
It moves me not - I know her tomb
Is yonder in the shapeless gloom.
All raptures of this mortal breath,
Solemnities of life and death,
Dwell in thy noise alone:
Of me thou hast become a part Some kindred with my human heart
Lives in thy streets of stone;
12
For we have been familiar more
Than galley-slave and weary oar.
The beech is dipped in wine; the shower
Is burnished; on the swinging flower
The latest bee doth sit.
The low sun stares through dust of gold.
And o'er the darkened heath and wold
The large ghost-moth doth flit.
In every orchard Autumn stands,
With apples in his golden hands.
But all these sights and sounds are strange;
Then wherefore from thee shoud I range?
Thou hast my kith and kin;
My childhood, youth, and manhood brave;
Thou hast that unforgotten grave
Within thy central din.
A sacredness of love and death
Dwells in thy noise and smoky breath.
~ Alexander Smith,#NFDB
514:I. THE FLOWER'S NAME
Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.
II.
Down this side of the gravel-walk
She went while her rope's edge brushed the box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know;
But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!
III.
This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name:
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake.
IV.
Roses, if I live and do well,
I may bring her, one of these days,
To fix you fast with as fine a spell,
Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;
But do not detain me now; for she lingers
There, like sunshine over the ground,
And ever I see her soft white fingers
Searching after the bud she found.
V.
Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
Stay as you are and be loved for ever!
Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not:
Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn and down they nestle-
Is not the dear mark still to be seen?
VI.
Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow ber, beauties flee;
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
June's twice June since she breathed it with me?
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,
Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!
-Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces-
Roses, you are not so fair after all!
II. SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS.
Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,
Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,
Printed on paper and bound in leather,
Last month in the white of a matin-prime
Just when the birds sang all together.
II.
Into the garden I brought it to read,
And under the arbute and laurustine
Read it, so help me grace in my need,
From title-page to closing line.
Chapter on chapter did I count,
As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;
Added up the mortal amount;
And then proceeded to my revenge.
III.
Yonder's a plum-tree with a crevice
An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
In a castle of the Middle Age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;
When he'd be private, there might he spend
Hours alone in his lady's chamber:
Into this crevice I dropped our friend.
IV.
Splash, went he, as under he ducked,
-At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate:
Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked
To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;
Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;
Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.
V.
Now, this morning, betwixt the moss
And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,
And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,
And, de profundis, accentibus ltis,
Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake;
And up I fished his delectable treatise.
VI.
Here you have it, dry in the sun,
With all the binding all of a blister,
And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And reddish streaks that wink and glister
O'er the page so beautifully yellow:
Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!
Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?
Here's one stuck in his chapter six!
VII.
How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,
Came in, each one, for his right of trover?
-When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face
Made of her eggs the stately deposit,
And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface
As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?
VIII.
All that life and fun and romping,
All that frisking and twisting and coupling,
While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping
And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!
As if you bad carried sour John Knox
To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich,
Fastened him into a front-row box,
And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.
IX.
Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?
Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.
Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, sufficit!
See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!
A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,
Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,
And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,
Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!
~ Robert Browning, Garden Francies
,#NFDB
515:Hymne À La Beauté (Hymn To Beauty)
Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'abîme,
O Beauté? ton regard, infernal et divin,
Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime,
Et l'on peut pour cela te comparer au vin.
Tu contiens dans ton oeil le couchant et l'aurore;
Tu répands des parfums comme un soir orageux;
Tes baisers sont un philtre et ta bouche une amphore
Qui font le héros lâche et l'enfant courageux.
Sors-tu du gouffre noir ou descends-tu des astres?
Le Destin charmé suit tes jupons comme un chien;
Tu sèmes au hasard la joie et les désastres,
Et tu gouvernes tout et ne réponds de rien.
Tu marches sur des morts, Beauté, dont tu te moques;
De tes bijoux l'Horreur n'est pas le moins charmant,
Et le Meurtre, parmi tes plus chères breloques,
Sur ton ventre orgueilleux danse amoureusement.
L'éphémère ébloui vole vers toi, chandelle,
Crépite, flambe et dit: Bénissons ce flambeau!
L'amoureux pantelant incliné sur sa belle
A l'air d'un moribond caressant son tombeau.
Que tu viennes du ciel ou de l'enfer, qu'importe,
Ô Beauté! monstre énorme, effrayant, ingénu!
Si ton oeil, ton souris, ton pied, m'ouvrent la porte
D'un Infini que j'aime et n'ai jamais connu?
De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,
Qu'importe, si tu rends, — fée aux yeux de velours,
Rythme, parfum, lueur, ô mon unique reine! —
L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?
Hymn to Beauty
Do you come from Heaven or rise from the abyss,
Beauty? Your gaze, divine and infernal,
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Pours out confusedly benevolence and crime,
And one may for that, compare you to wine.
You contain in your eyes the sunset and the dawn;
You scatter perfumes like a stormy night;
Your kisses are a philtre, your mouth an amphora,
Which make the hero weak and the child courageous.
Do you come from the stars or rise from the black pit?
Destiny, bewitched, follows your skirts like a dog;
You sow at random joy and disaster,
And you govern all things but answer for nothing.
You walk upon corpses which you mock, O Beauty!
Of your jewels Horror is not the least charming,
And Murder, among your dearest trinkets,
Dances amorously upon your proud belly.
The dazzled moth flies toward you, O candle!
Crepitates, flames and says: 'Blessed be this flambeau!'
The panting lover bending o'er his fair one
Looks like a dying man caressing his own tomb,
Whether you come from heaven or from hell, who cares,
O Beauty! Huge, fearful, ingenuous monster!
If your regard, your smile, your foot, open for me
An Infinite I love but have not ever known?
From God or Satan, who cares? Angel or Siren,
Who cares, if you make, — fay with the velvet eyes,
Rhythm, perfume, glimmer; my one and only queen!
The world less hideous, the minutes less leaden?
— Translated by William Aggeler
Hymn to Beauty
Did you spring out of heaven or the abyss,
Beauty? Your gaze infernal, yet divine,
Spreads infamy and glory, grief and bliss,
And therefore you can be compared to wine.
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Your eyes contain both sunset and aurora:
You give off scents, like evenings storm-deflowered:
Your kisses are a philtre: an amphora
Your mouth, that cows the brave, and spurs the coward.
Climb you from gulfs, or from the stars descend?
Fate, like a fawning hound, to heel you've brought;
You scatter joy and ruin without end,
Ruling all things, yet answering for naught.
You trample men to death, and mock their clamour.
Amongst your gauds pale Horror gleams and glances,
And Murder, not the least of them in glamour,
On your proud belly amorously dances.
The dazzled insect seeks your candle-rays,
Crackles, and burns, and seems to bless his doom.
The groom bent o'er his bride as in a daze,
Seems, like a dying man, to stroke his tomb.
What matter if from hell or heaven born,
Tremendous monster, terrible to view?
Your eyes and smile reveal to me, like morn,
The Infinite I love but never knew.
From God or Fiend? Siren or Sylph ? Invidious
The answer — Fay with eyes of velvet, ray,
Rhythm, and perfume! — if you make less hideous
Our universe, less tedious leave our day.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
Hymn to Beauty
Did you fall from high heaven or surge from the abyss,
O Beauty? Your bright gaze, infernal and divine,
Confusedly pours out courage and cowardice,
Or love and crime. Therefore men liken you to wine.
Your eyes hold all the sunset and the dawn, you are
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As rich in fragrances as a tempestuous night,
Your kisses are a philtre and your mouth a jar
Filling the child with valor and the man with fright.
Did the stars mould you or the pit's obscurity?
You bring at random Paradise or Juggernaut.
Fate sniffs your skirts with a charmed dog's servility,
You govern all and yet are answerable for naught.
Beauty, you walk on corpses of dead men you mock.
Among your store of gems, Horror is not the least;
Murder, amid the dearest trinkets of your stock,
Dances on your proud belly like a ruttish beast.
Candle, the transient moth flies dazzled to your light,
Crackles and flames and says: 'Blessèd this fiery doom!'
The panting lover with his mistress in the night
Looks like a dying man caressing his own tomb.
Are you from heaven or hell, Beauty that we adore?
Who cares? A dreadful, huge, ingenuous monster, you!
So but your glance, your smile, your foot open a door
Upon an Infinite I love but never knew.
From Satan or from God? Who cares? Fierce or serene,
Who cares? Sister to sirens or to seraphim?
So but, dark fey, you shed your perfume, rhythm and sheen
To make the world less hideous and Time less grim.
— Translated by Jacques LeClercq
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
516:Amelia
Whene'er mine eyes do my Amelia greet
It is with such emotion
As when, in childhood, turning a dim street,
I first beheld the ocean.
There, where the little, bright, surf-breathing town,
That shew'd me first her beauty and the sea,
Gathers its skirts against the gorse-lit down
And scatters gardens o'er the southern lea,
Abides this Maid
Within a kind, yet sombre Mother's shade,
Who of her daughter's graces seems almost afraid,
Viewing them ofttimes with a scared forecast,
Caught, haply, from obscure love-peril past.
Howe'er that be,
She scants me of my right,
Is cunning careful evermore to balk
Sweet separate talk,
And fevers my delight
By frets, if, on Amelia's cheek of peach,
I touch the notes which music cannot reach,
Bidding ‘Good-night!’
Wherefore it came that, till to-day's dear date,
I curs'd the weary months which yet I have to wait
Ere I find heaven, one-nested with my mate.
To-day, the Mother gave,
To urgent pleas and promise to behave
As she were there, her long-besought consent
To trust Amelia with me to the grave
Where lay my once-betrothed, Millicent:
‘For,’ said she, hiding ill a moistening eye,
‘Though, Sir, the word sounds hard,
God makes as if He least knew how to guard
The treasure He loves best, simplicity.’
And there Amelia stood, for fairness shewn
Like a young apple-tree, in flush'd array
Of white and ruddy flow'r, auroral, gay,
11
With chilly blue the maiden branch between;
And yet to look on her moved less the mind
To say ‘How beauteous!’ than ‘How good and kind!’
And so we went alone
By walls o'er which the lilac's numerous plume
Shook down perfume;
Trim plots close blown
With daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen,
Engross'd each one
With single ardour for her spouse, the sun;
Garths in their glad array
Of white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay,
With azure chill the maiden flow'r between;
Meadows of fervid green,
With sometime sudden prospect of untold
Cowslips, like chance-found gold;
And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze,
Rending the air with praise,
Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shout
Of Jacob camp'd in Midian put to rout;
Then through the Park,
Where Spring to livelier gloom
Quicken'd the cedars dark,
And, 'gainst the clear sky cold,
Which shone afar
Crowded with sunny alps oracular,
Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom;
And everywhere,
Amid the ceaseless rapture of the lark,
With wonder new
We caught the solemn voice of single air,
‘Cuckoo!’
And when Amelia, 'bolden'd, saw and heard
How bravely sang the bird,
And all things in God's bounty did rejoice,
She who, her Mother by, spake seldom word,
Did her charm'd silence doff,
And, to my happy marvel, her dear voice
Went as a clock does, when the pendulum's off.
Ill Monarch of man's heart the Maiden who
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Does not aspire to be High-Pontiff too!
So she repeated soft her Poet's line,
‘By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature, are we thine!’
And I, up the bright steep she led me, trod,
And the like thought pursued
With, ‘What is gladness without gratitude,
And where is gratitude without a God?’
And of delight, the guerdon of His laws,
She spake, in learned mood;
And I, of Him loved reverently, as Cause,
Her sweetly, as Occasion of all good.
Nor were we shy,
For souls in heaven that be
May talk of heaven without hypocrisy.
And now, when we drew near
The low, gray Church, in its sequester'd dell,
A shade upon me fell.
Dead Millicent indeed had been most sweet,
But I how little meet
To call such graces in a Maiden mine!
A boy's proud passion free affection blunts;
His well-meant flatteries oft are blind affronts;
And many a tear
Was Millicent's before I, manlier, knew
That maidens shine
As diamonds do,
Which, though most clear,
Are not to be seen through;
And, if she put her virgin self aside
And sate her, crownless, at my conquering feet,
It should have bred in me humility, not pride.
Amelia had more luck than Millicent:
Secure she smiled and warm from all mischance
Or from my knowledge or my ignorance,
And glow'd content
With my—some might have thought too much—superior age,
Which seem'd the gage
Of steady kindness all on her intent.
Thus nought forbade us to be fully blent.
13
While, therefore, now
Her pensive footstep stirr'd
The darnell'd garden of unheedful death,
She ask'd what Millicent was like, and heard
Of eyes like her's, and honeysuckle breath,
And of a wiser than a woman's brow,
Yet fill'd with only woman's love, and how
An incidental greatness character'd
Her unconsider'd ways.
But all my praise
Amelia thought too slight for Millicent,
And on my lovelier-freighted arm she leant,
For more attent;
And the tea-rose I gave,
To deck her breast, she dropp'd upon the grave.
‘And this was her's,’ said I, decoring with a band
Of mildest pearls Amelia's milder hand.
‘Nay, I will wear it for her sake,’ she said:
For dear to maidens are their rivals dead.
And so,
She seated on the black yew's tortured root,
I on the carpet of sere shreds below,
And nigh the little mound where lay that other,
I kiss'd her lips three times without dispute,
And, with bold worship suddenly aglow,
I lifted to my lips a sandall'd foot,
And kiss'd it three times thrice without dispute.
Upon my head her fingers fell like snow,
Her lamb-like hands about my neck she wreathed.
Her arms like slumber o'er my shoulders crept,
And with her bosom, whence the azalea breathed,
She did my face full favourably smother,
To hide the heaving secret that she wept!
Now would I keep my promise to her Mother;
Now I arose, and raised her to her feet,
My best Amelia, fresh-born from a kiss,
Moth-like, full-blown in birthdew shuddering sweet,
With great, kind eyes, in whose brown shade
Bright Venus and her Baby play'd!
14
At inmost heart well pleased with one another,
What time the slant sun low
Through the plough'd field does each clod sharply shew,
And softly fills
With shade the dimples of our homeward hills,
With little said,
We left the 'wilder'd garden of the dead,
And gain'd the gorse-lit shoulder of the down
That keeps the north-wind from the nestling town,
And caught, once more, the vision of the wave,
Where, on the horizon's dip,
A many-sailed ship
Pursued alone her distant purpose grave;
And, by steep steps rock-hewn, to the dim street
I led her sacred feet;
And so the Daughter gave,
Soft, moth-like, sweet,
Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk,
Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk.
And now ‘Good-night!’
Me shall the phantom months no more affright
For heaven's gates to open well waits he
Who keeps himself the key.
~ Coventry Patmore,#NFDB
517:ON APOSTATES
I
Alas, all lies withered and gray that but recently
stood green and colorful on this meadow. And how
much honey of hope I carried from here to my beehivesl
These young hearts have all become old already-and
not even old; only weary, ordinary, and comfortable.
They put it, "We have become pious again."
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Only recently I saw them run out in the morning on
bold feet: but the feet of their thirst for knowledge have
grown weary, and now they even slander the courage
they had in the morning. Verily, many among them
once lifted their legs like dancers, cheered by the
laughter in my wisdom; then they thought better of it.
Just now I saw one groveling-crawling back to the
cross. Around light and freedom they once fluttered like
mosquitoes and young poets. A little older, a little
colder-and already they are musty mystifiers and
hearth-squatters.
Did their hearts perhaps grow faint because solitude
swallowed me like a whale? Did their ears perhaps
listen longingly long, in vain, for me and my trumpet
and herald's calls? Alas, there are always only a few
whose hearts long retain their courageous bearing and
overbearing prankishness, and whose spirits also remain
patient. The rest, however, are cowards. The restthose are always by far the most, the commonplace, the
superfluous, the all-too-many: all these are cowards.
Whoever is of my kind will also encounter the experiences of my kind: so his first companions will have
to be corpses and jesters. His second companions, however, will call themselves his believers: a living swarm,
much love, much folly, much beardless veneration. To
these believers, whoever is of my kind among men
should not tie his heart; those who know the changeful,
cowardly nature of mankind should not believe in these
springtimes and colorful meadows.
Were their ability different, their will would be different too. Those who are half-and-half spoil all that is
whole. That leaves wilt-what is there to wail about?
Let them fly and fall, 0 Zarathustra, and do not wall
It is better to blow among them with rustling winds-
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blow among these leaves, 0 Zarathustra, that everything
wilted may run away from you even faster
2
"We have become pious again"-so these apostates
confess; and some among them are even too cowardly to
confess it.
Those I look in the eye, and then I say it to their
faces and to their blushing cheeks: you are such as pray
again.
But it is a disgrace to prayl Not for everybody, but
for you and me and whoever else has a conscience in
his head too. For you it is a disgrace to prayl
You know it well: your cowardly devil within you,
who would like to fold his hands and rest his hands in
his lap and be more comfortable-this cowardly devil
urges you, "There is a God." With this, however, you
belong to the light-shunning kind who cannot rest where
there is light; now you must daily bury your head
deeper in night and haze.
And verily, you chose the hour well, for just now the
nocturnal birds are flying again. The hour has come for
all light-shunning folk, the hour of evening and rest,
when they do not rest. I hear and smell it: their hour
for chase and procession has come-not indeed for a
wild chase, but for a tame, lame, snooping, pussyfooting, prayer-muttering chase-for a chase after soulful
sneaks: all the heart's mousetraps have now been set
again. And wherever I lift a curtain a little night moth
rushes out. Did it perhaps squat there together with
another little night moth? For everywhere I smell little
hidden communities; and wherever there are closets,
there are new canters praying inside and the fog of
canters.
They sit together long evenings and say, "Let us be-
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come as little children again and say 'dear Godl' "-their
mouths and stomachs upset by pious confectioners.
Or they spend long evenings watching a cunning,
ambushing, cross-marked spider, which preaches cleverness to the other spiders and teaches thus: "Under
crosses one can spin well."
Or they spend the day sitting at swamps with fishing
rods, thinking themselves profound; but whoever fishes
where there are no fish, I would not even call superficial.
Or they learn to play the harp with pious pleasurefrom a composer of songs who would like to harp himself right into the hearts of young females; for he has
grown weary of old females and their praise.
Or they learn to shudder from a scholarly half-madman who waits in dark rooms for the spirits to come to
him-so his spirit will flee completely.
Or they listen to an old traveling, caviling zany who
has learned the sadness of tones from sad winds; now he
whistles after the wind and preaches sadness in sad
tones.
And some of them have even become night watchmen: now they know how to blow horns and to walk
about at night and to awaken old things that had long
gone to sleep. I heard five sayings about old things last
night at the garden wall: they came from such old,
saddened, dried-up night watchmen.
"For a father, he does not care enough about his
children: human fathers do this better."
"He is too old. He does not care about his children
at all any more"-thus the other night watchman replied.
"But does he have any children? Nobody can prove
it, if he does not prove it himself. I have long wished
he would for once prove it thoroughly."
"Prove? As if he had ever proved anything! Proof is
difficult for him; he considers it terribly important that
one should have faith in him."
"Sure! Surely Faith makes him blessed, faith in him.
That is the way of old people. We are no different ourselves."
Thus the two old night watchmen and scarelights
spoke to each other and then tooted sadly on their
horns: so it happened last night at the garden wall. In
me, however, my heart twisted with laughter and
wanted to break and did not know whither, and sank
into my diaphragm. Verily, this will yet be my death,
that I shall suffocate with laughter when I see asses
drunk and hear night watchmen thus doubting God. Is
not the time long past for all such doubts too? Who may
still awaken such old sleeping, light-shunning things?
For the old gods, after all, things came to an end long
ago; and verily, they had a good gay godlike end. They
did not end in a "twilight," though this lie is told. Instead: one day they laughed themselves to death. That
happened when the most godless word issued from one
of the gods themselves-the word: "There is one god.
Thou shalt have no other god before me!" An old grimbeard of a god, a jealous one, thus forgot himself. And
then all the gods laughed and rocked on their chairs and
cried, "Is not just this godlike that there are gods but
no God?"
He that has ears to hear, let him hear
Thus Zarathustra discoursed in the town which he
loved and which is also called The Motley Cow. For
from here he had only two more days to go to reach
his cave and his animals again; but his soul jubilated
continually because of the nearness of his return home.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ON APOSTATES
,#NFDB
518:Le Flacon (The Perfume Flask)
II est de forts parfums pour qui toute matière
Est poreuse. On dirait qu'ils pénètrent le verre.
En ouvrant un coffret venu de l'Orient
Dont la serrure grince et rechigne en criant,
Ou dans une maison déserte quelque armoire
Pleine de l'âcre odeur des temps, poudreuse et noire,
Parfois on trouve un vieux flacon qui se souvient,
D'où jaillit toute vive une âme qui revient.
Mille pensers dormaient, chrysalides funèbres,
Frémissant doucement dans les lourdes ténèbres,
Qui dégagent leur aile et prennent leur essor,
Teintés d'azur, glacés de rose, lamés d'or.
Voilà le souvenir enivrant qui voltige
Dans l'air troublé; les yeux se ferment; le Vertige
Saisit l'âme vaincue et la pousse à deux mains
Vers un gouffre obscurci de miasmes humains;
II la terrasse au bord d'un gouffre séculaire,
Où, Lazare odorant déchirant son suaire,
Se meut dans son réveil le cadavre spectral
D'un vieil amour ranci, charmant et sépulcral.
Ainsi, quand je serai perdu dans la mémoire
Des hommes, dans le coin d'une sinistre armoire
Quand on m'aura jeté, vieux flacon désolé,
Décrépit, poudreux, sale, abject, visqueux, fêlé,
Je serai ton cercueil, aimable pestilence!
Le témoin de ta force et de ta virulence,
Cher poison préparé par les anges! liqueur
Qui me ronge, ô la vie et la mort de mon coeur!
The Perfume Flask
There are strong perfumes for which all matter
Is porous. One would say they go through glass.
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On opening a coffer that has come from the East,
Whose creaking lock resists and grates,
Or in a deserted house, some cabinet
Full of the Past's acrid odor, dusty and black,
Sometimes one finds an antique phial which remembers,
Whence gushes forth a living soul returned to life.
Many thoughts were sleeping, death-like chrysalides,
Quivering softly in the heavy shadows,
That free their wings and rise in flight,
Tinged with azure, glazed with rose, spangled with gold.
That is the bewitching souvenir which flutters
In the troubled air; the eyes close; Dizziness
Seizes the vanquished soul, pushes it with both hands
Toward a darkened abyss of human pollution:
He throws it down at the edge of an ancient abyss,
Where, like stinking Lazarus tearing wide his shroud,
There moves as it wakes up, the ghostly cadaver
Of a rancid old love, charming and sepulchral.
Thus, when I'll be lost to the memory
Of men, when I shall be tossed into the corner
Of a dismal wardrobe, a desolate old phial,
Decrepit, cracked, slimy, dirty, dusty, abject,
Delightful pestilence! I shall be your coffin,
The witness of your strength and of your virulence,
Beloved poison prepared by the angels! Liqueur
That consumes me, O the life and death of my heart!
— Translated by William Aggeler
The Flask
Perfumes there are which through all things can pass
And make all matter porous, even glass;
Old coffers from the Orient brought, whose locks
Grind sullenly when opening the box,
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Or, in an empty house, some ancient chest,
Where time and dust and gloom were long compressed,
May yield a flask where memory survives,
And a soul flashes into future lives.
A thousand thoughts, funereal larvae, laid
Shuddering softly under palls of shade,
May suddenly their soaring wings unfold,
Stained azure, glazed with rose, or filmed with gold.
Intoxicating memory now flies
Into the dusk, and makes us close our eyes:
Vertigo draws the spirit which it grips
Towards some dark miasma of eclipse:
Beside an ancient pit he makes her fall,
Where Lazarus, sweet-scented, tears his pall
And wakes the spectral corpse of some now-cold,
Rancid, sepulchral love he knew of old.
So when I'm lost to human memory, thrown
In some old gloomy chest to fie alone,
A poor decrepit flask, cracked, abject, crusty
With dirt, opaque and sticky, damp and dusty,
I'll be your pall and shroud, beloved pest!
The witness of your venom, and its test,
Dear poison, angel-brewed with deadly art —
Life, death, and dear corrosion of my heart.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
The Perfume Flask
All matter becomes porous to certain scents; they pass
Through everything; it seems they even go through glass.
When opening some old trunk brought home from the far east,
That scolds, feeling the key turned and the lid released —
Some wardrobe, in a house long uninhabited,
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Full of the powdery odors of moments that are dead —
At times, distinct as ever, an old flask will emit
Its perfume; and a soul comes back to live in it.
Dormant as chrysalides, a thousand thoughts that lie
In the thick shadows, pulsing imperceptibly,
Now stir, now struggle forth; now their cramped wings unfold,
Tinted with azure, lustred with rose, sheeted with gold!
Oh, memories, how you rise and soar, and hover there!
The eyes close; dizziness, in the moth-darkened air,
Seizes the drunken soul, and thrusts it toward the verge —
Where mistily all human miasmas float and merge —
Of a primeval gulf; and drops it to the ground,
There, where, like Lazarus rising, his grave-clothes half unwound,
And odorous, a cadaver from its sleep has stirred:
An old and rancid love, charming and long-interred.
Thus, when I shall be lost from sight, thus when all men
Forget me, in the dark and dusty corner then
Of that most sinister cupboard where the living pile
The dead — when, an old flask, cracked, sticky, abject, vile,
I lie at length — still, still, sweet pestilence of my heart,
As to what power thou hast, how virulent thou art,
I shall bear witness; safe shall thy dear poison be!
Thou vitriol of the gods I thou death and life of me!
— Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Le Flacon
so keen some fragrances, they freely pass
all barriers. they would pierce a wall of glass.
unlatch a coffer from the Orient
whose creaking hinge will scarcely grant consent,
or cupboard in an empty house, where murk,
sharp smells and cobwebs of a century lurk,
thou'lt find perhaps a flask that holds a host
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of memories, free perchance a living ghost.
crushed in the gloom a thousand keepsakes lay
like coffined larvae there, which, quivering, grey,
released at last arise on soaring wing,
rose-flushed or azure, golden, glittering,
and swirling memories mount, to thrill and tease
our closing eyes; we reel in murk, as these
grapple amain and hurl the quailing soul
down to a Pit where human odours roll
and fell it on the brink that waits for all,
where, bursting, Lazarus-like, its rotted pall,
stirs and awakes the spectral visage of
a charming, fusty, weird, forgotten love.
so when Oblivion blots my memory dim,
and in a corner of a cupboard grim
I like cast off, a sorry flask and old,
crackled and dusty, viscous, green with mould,
I'll be thy coffin, lovely pestilence!
I'll prove thy power and thy virulence,
dear poison brewed by angels! dulcet fire
I've drunk, my life, my death, my heart's desire!
— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
519:Song Of Unending Sorrow.
China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,
Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,
But with graces granted by heaven and not to be concealed,
At last one day was chosen for the imperial household.
If she but turned her head and smiled, there were cast a hundred spells,
And the powder and paint of the Six Palaces faded into nothing.
...It was early spring. They bathed her in the FlowerPure Pool,
Which warmed and smoothed the creamy-tinted crystal of her skin,
And, because of her languor, a maid was lifting her
When first the Emperor noticed her and chose her for his bride.
The cloud of her hair, petal of her cheek, gold ripples of her crown when she
moved,
Were sheltered on spring evenings by warm hibiscus curtains;
But nights of spring were short and the sun arose too soon,
And the Emperor, from that time forth, forsook his early hearings
And lavished all his time on her with feasts and revelry,
His mistress of the spring, his despot of the night.
There were other ladies in his court, three thousand of rare beauty,
But his favours to three thousand were concentered in one body.
By the time she was dressed in her Golden Chamber, it would be almost evening;
And when tables were cleared in the Tower of Jade, she would loiter, slow with
wine.
Her sisters and her brothers all were given titles;
And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.
...High rose Li Palace, entering blue clouds,
And far and wide the breezes carried magical notes
Of soft song and slow dance, of string and bamboo music.
The Emperor's eyes could never gaze on her enoughTill war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth
And broke the tunes of The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
The Forbidden City, the nine-tiered palace, loomed in the dust
From thousands of horses and chariots headed southwest.
The imperial flag opened the way, now moving and now pausing- But thirty miles from the capital, beyond the western gate,
65
The men of the army stopped, not one of them would stir
Till under their horses' hoofs they might trample those moth- eyebrows....
Flowery hairpins fell to the ground, no one picked them up,
And a green and white jade hair-tassel and a yellowgold hair- bird.
The Emperor could not save her, he could only cover his face.
And later when he turned to look, the place of blood and tears
Was hidden in a yellow dust blown by a cold wind.
... At the cleft of the Dagger-Tower Trail they crisscrossed through a cloud-line
Under Omei Mountain. The last few came.
Flags and banners lost their colour in the fading sunlight....
But as waters of Shu are always green and its mountains always blue,
So changeless was His Majesty's love and deeper than the days.
He stared at the desolate moon from his temporary palace.
He heard bell-notes in the evening rain, cutting at his breast.
And when heaven and earth resumed their round and the dragon car faced
home,
The Emperor clung to the spot and would not turn away
From the soil along the Mawei slope, under which was buried
That memory, that anguish. Where was her jade-white face?
Ruler and lords, when eyes would meet, wept upon their coats
As they rode, with loose rein, slowly eastward, back to the capital.
...The pools, the gardens, the palace, all were just as before,
The Lake Taiye hibiscus, the Weiyang Palace willows;
But a petal was like her face and a willow-leaf her eyebrow -And what could he do but cry whenever he looked at them?
...Peach-trees and plum-trees blossomed, in the winds of spring;
Lakka-foliage fell to the ground, after autumn rains;
The Western and Southern Palaces were littered with late grasses,
And the steps were mounded with red leaves that no one swept away.
Her Pear-Garden Players became white-haired
And the eunuchs thin-eyebrowed in her Court of PepperTrees;
Over the throne flew fire-flies, while he brooded in the twilight.
He would lengthen the lamp-wick to its end and still could never sleep.
Bell and drum would slowly toll the dragging nighthours
And the River of Stars grow sharp in the sky, just before dawn,
And the porcelain mandarin-ducks on the roof grow thick with morning frost
And his covers of kingfisher-blue feel lonelier and colder
With the distance between life and death year after year;
And yet no beloved spirit ever visited his dreams.
...At Lingqiong lived a Taoist priest who was a guest of heaven,
Able to summon spirits by his concentrated mind.
And people were so moved by the Emperor's constant brooding
66
That they besought the Taoist priest to see if he could find her.
He opened his way in space and clove the ether like lightning,
Up to heaven, under the earth, looking everywhere.
Above, he searched the Green Void, below, the Yellow Spring;
But he failed, in either place, to find the one he looked for.
And then he heard accounts of an enchanted isle at sea,
A part of the intangible and incorporeal world,
With pavilions and fine towers in the five-coloured air,
And of exquisite immortals moving to and fro,
And of one among them-whom they called The Ever TrueWith a face of snow and flowers resembling hers he sought.
So he went to the West Hall's gate of gold and knocked at the jasper door
And asked a girl, called Morsel-of-Jade, to tell The Doubly- Perfect.
And the lady, at news of an envoy from the Emperor of China,
Was startled out of dreams in her nine-flowered, canopy.
She pushed aside her pillow, dressed, shook away sleep,
And opened the pearly shade and then the silver screen.
Her cloudy hair-dress hung on one side because of her great haste,
And her flower-cap was loose when she came along the terrace,
While a light wind filled her cloak and fluttered with her motion
As though she danced The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
And the tear-drops drifting down her sad white face
Were like a rain in spring on the blossom of the pear.
But love glowed deep within her eyes when she bade him thank her liege,
Whose form and voice had been strange to her ever since their parting -Since happiness had ended at the Court of the Bright Sun,
And moons and dawns had become long in Fairy-Mountain Palace.
But when she turned her face and looked down toward the earth
And tried to see the capital, there were only fog and dust.
So she took out, with emotion, the pledges he had given
And, through his envoy, sent him back a shell box and gold hairpin,
But kept one branch of the hairpin and one side of the box,
Breaking the gold of the hairpin, breaking the shell of the box;
"Our souls belong together," she said, " like this gold and this shell -Somewhere, sometime, on earth or in heaven, we shall surely
And she sent him, by his messenger, a sentence reminding him
Of vows which had been known only to their two hearts:
"On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,
We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
67
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.
~ Bai Juyi,#NFDB
520:Forsaking All Others Part 5
TRAINED nurses, trained nurses everywhere
Trained nurses by night, trained nurses by day In the corridors, on the stair,
Looking for towels, carrying a tray;
Saying, 'you mustn't,' 'you must,' 'you may.'
Smooth as to hair, stiff as to skirt,
Kind in a cool, impersonal way,
Angels of mercy, bright-eyed, alert,
Hard young angels, sent to avert
That older angel of dark despair
Stiff starched angels, a trifle curt
Trained nurses, trained nurses everywhere.
II
A WHITE figure spoke from the doorway
In a tone deliberately bright:
'Would you like to see the patient
For a moment, and say goodnight?'
Shepherded in like a stranger
He stood beside her bed,
Gazed at those pale, blank eyelids
In that carven ivory head.
Took her hand and heard her
Murmur: 'Is that you, Jim?'
But he knew she was very tired
Tired even of him.
Too much spent with the struggle
Of drawing breath to afford
A brief smile - utterly weary,
And more than utterly bored.
III
42
NEVER before had Ruth been out of reach:
Barriers had been - but only of his making.
Now she had passed beyond the power of speech,
Quite, quite indifferent that his heart was breaking.
Here in the bedroom that he used to share
She lived day after day, averse to living,
Indifferent, unforgiving, unaware
That he had any need of her forgiving.
IV
AT first Lee wrote to him every day
Tactful letters, that let him see
She knew very well he would rather be
With her - but it wasn't the thing to say.
Tactful letters at first, and then
Letters less tactful and more sincere,
Ending: 'Why don't you write to me, dear?'
Write to me . . . over and over again.
But he could not answer her piteous call;
Not exactly that he forgot
Their love, but only that she had not
Any reality for him at all.
She seemed like a pleasant book he had read Read and enjoyed; but the printed page
Cannot compete with the heritage
Of Nature. . . the living, and Oh, the dead!
At last he sent her a brief reply:
'I cannot write - or eat or sleep
Just now. I am going through the deep
Waters. Forgive me, dear Lee. Good-bye.'
THEN a night came
When in sleep broken
43
He heard his name
Suddenly spoken.
Into his dream
Horrors flocked thickly
Was that a scream?
'Better come quicklyl'
Cold was his room
And his hands shaking;
Out of the gloom
Dawn was just breaking
Dawn cool and green
Over the ocean,
Never more seen
Without emotion
Of death - agony
Somebody crying
All dawns that dawn, when he
Knew Ruth was dying.
VI
WHAT can you do with a woman's things
After a woman is dead?
Not the bracelets and rings and strings
Of pearls, but the small unvalued things
What can I do, Wayne said.
What can you do with a woman's dresses,
After a woman is dead?
Hanging limp in the cedar presses,
They are part of herself, her pretty dresses
What can I do, Wayne said.
What can you do with a woman's shoes,
After a woman is dead?
Shoes that perhaps you helped her choose,
Poor little empty half-worn shoes
What can I do, Wayne said.
What can you do with her brush and comb,
44
After a woman is dead?
What in God's name can you do with her home
And her loss and her love and her brush and comb
What can I do, Wayne said.
VII
UP a little river
Where salmon used to play,
Not twenty miles distant
A little village lay -
Ruth's native village,
Where Wayne used to go
To see his mother's mother
Many years ago.
Here in a churchyard
With pines along the wall
And a wooden church steeple
Almost too tall,
Here in September,
On a bright clear day
Among the graves of sailors,
They laid Ruth away.
In this same churchyard,
Sitting on the stones,
He had first said he loved her
In young shaken tones.
That had been September,
But not this bright light.
Between the pine-needles
The stars shone white,
Such a little maiden,
Such a young man
'I love you.' - And she answered:
'I don't see how you can.'
They had been so happy
They had not cared at all
That the place was a churchyard
With pines along the wall.
VIII
45
WAYNE stood bareheaded on the churchyard sward
By the open grave under the open sky:
'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,
He who believeth in Me shall never die.'
Beautiful, terrible service! He heard a word
Here and there, and then he would drift away
To other memories and things not heard
Ruth's laugh when she used to laugh, so little and gay.
'When thou with rebukes dost chasten a man from sin..'
Was it sin that had parted him from Ruth?
Was sin the secret corrosion that entered in
Likea moth fretting the garment of love in youth?
Too late, too late! He heard the parson say:
'Before I go hence and be no more seen. . .
A thousand years in thy sight is but as yesterday. . .
Too late, too late! 'As grass in the morning green...'
'Was it Ruth he was leaving here in the churchyard plot
Could it be Ruth who had gone, not saying good-bye?
'What advantageth it me, if the dead rise not?
Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die.'
How can a man help eating and drinking?
Die to-morrow! To-day, if he had his will.
How many years must he spend in thinking, thinking
Of the thing which someone has said that all men kill?
Well, he could bear what he must bear - even the sound
Of earth on a coffin falling. What must be must.
'We therefore commit her body to the ground,
Ashes to ashes, earth to earth, dust to dust.'
Prayers! Would they never be done, these killing
Rites for the dead! Ah, there was the organ's roll
From the little church, and children's shrilling,
Piping Ruth's favourite hymn, 'Hark, hark, my soul...'
'Hark, hark, my soul! Angelic songs are swelling
46
O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore;
How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling
Of that new life where sin shall be no morel
Angels of Jesus,
Angels of light,
Singing to welcome
The pilgrims of the night.'
IX
'Dear Lee:
I've tried so many times to write,
And now I must write, for I sail next week
For Italy - Sardinia - I might
Go on to Egypt later, and the Greek Islands.
I may be several years away.
'I loved you, Lee. I wonder if I can
Explain at all what's happened? From your wealth
You gave me freely - more than any man
Has ever had - beauty, wit, youth and health
I loved you passionately; and now my wife
Is dead. One might expect a mild distress,
A briefly pensive mood. . . Instead, my life
Is shattered. . . is dissolved. . . is meaningless. . .
She whom of late I thought so little of
And saw so little, was, I find, the spring
Of all I did and felt - even of my love
Of you. . . What an insane, incredible thingl
But there it is.
'Dear Lee, this is the truth:
That any marriage founded on devotion
Though that devotion die, as mine for Ruth,
Is not a state, but a unique emotion,
Potent, unalterable - not romantic
Love, though romantic love is where it starts
Marriage begins only when those hot, frantic
Fires have finished welding human hearts.
It is not love, friendship, or partnership,
But this emotion-marriage, of a force
47
That when it once has held you in its grip
Nothing will free you wholly - not divorce,
Or death, for these destroy not it, but you,
As I am now destroyed.
'Beware, dear Lee,
Of a true marriage, if you are not true
Yourself - or you will be destroyed - like me.'
~ Alice Duer Miller,#NFDB
521:The Red Lacquer Music-Stand
A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals and apples in high relief, and where the seams
Are worn with handling, through the polished crimson sheen,
Long streaks of black, the under lacquer, shine out clean.
Four desks, adjustable, to suit the heights of players
Sitting to viols or standing up to sing, four layers
Of music to serve every instrument, are there,
And on the apex a large flat-topped golden pear.
It burns in red and yellow, dusty, smouldering lights,
When the sun flares the old barn-chamber with its flights
And skips upon the crystal knobs of dim sideboards,
Legless and mouldy, and hops, glint to glint, on hoards
Of scythes, and spades, and dinner-horns, so the old tools
Are little candles throwing brightness round in pools.
With Oriental splendour, red and gold, the dust
Covering its flames like smoke and thinning as a gust
Of brighter sunshine makes the colours leap and range,
The strange old music-stand seems to strike out and change;
To stroke and tear the darkness with sharp golden claws;
To dart a forked, vermilion tongue from open jaws;
To puff out bitter smoke which chokes the sun; and fade
Back to a still, faint outline obliterate in shade.
Creeping up the ladder into the loft, the Boy
Stands watching, very still, prickly and hot with joy.
He sees the dusty sun-mote slit by streaks of red,
He sees it split and stream, and all about his head
Spikes and spears of gold are licking, pricking, flicking,
Scratching against the walls and furniture, and nicking
The darkness into sparks, chipping away the gloom.
The Boy's nose smarts with the pungence in the room.
The wind pushes an elm branch from before the door
And the sun widens out all along the floor,
Filling the barn-chamber with white, straightforward light,
389
So not one blurred outline can tease the mind to fright.
'O All ye Works of the Lord, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him
for ever.
O let the Earth Bless the Lord; Yea, let it Praise Him, and Magnify Him
for ever.
O ye Mountains and Hills, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him
for ever.
O All ye Green Things upon the Earth, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him,
and Magnify Him for ever.'
The Boy will praise his God on an altar builded fair,
Will heap it with the Works of the Lord. In the morning air,
Spices shall burn on it, and by their pale smoke curled,
Like shoots of all the Green Things, the God of this bright World
Shall see the Boy's desire to pay his debt of praise.
The Boy turns round about, seeking with careful gaze
An altar meet and worthy, but each table and chair
Has some defect, each piece is needing some repair
To perfect it; the chairs have broken legs and backs,
The tables are uneven, and every highboy lacks
A handle or a drawer, the desks are bruised and worn,
And even a wide sofa has its cane seat torn.
Only in the gloom far in the corner there
The lacquer music-stand is elegant and rare,
Clear and slim of line, with its four wings outspread,
The sound of old quartets, a tenuous, faint thread,
Hanging and floating over it, it stands supreme Black, and gold, and crimson, in one twisted scheme!
A candle on the bookcase feels a draught and wavers,
Stippling the white-washed walls with dancing shades and quavers.
A bed-post, grown colossal, jigs about the ceiling,
And shadows, strangely altered, stain the walls, revealing
Eagles, and rabbits, and weird faces pulled awry,
And hands which fetch and carry things incessantly.
Under the Eastern window, where the morning sun
Must touch it, stands the music-stand, and on each one
Of its broad platforms is a pyramid of stones,
And metals, and dried flowers, and pine and hemlock cones,
An oriole's nest with the four eggs neatly blown,
The rattle of a rattlesnake, and three large brown
390
Butternuts uncracked, six butterflies impaled
With a green luna moth, a snake-skin freshly scaled,
Some sunflower seeds, wampum, and a bloody-tooth shell,
A blue jay feather, all together piled pell-mell
The stand will hold no more. The Boy with humming head
Looks once again, blows out the light, and creeps to bed.
The Boy keeps solemn vigil, while outside the wind
Blows gustily and clear, and slaps against the blind.
He hardly tries to sleep, so sharp his ecstasy
It burns his soul to emptiness, and sets it free
For adoration only, for worship. Dedicate,
His unsheathed soul is naked in its novitiate.
The hours strike below from the clock on the stair.
The Boy is a white flame suspiring in prayer.
Morning will bring the sun, the Golden Eye of Him
Whose splendour must be veiled by starry cherubim,
Whose Feet shimmer like crystal in the streets of Heaven.
Like an open rose the sun will stand up even,
Fronting the window-sill, and when the casement glows
Rose-red with the new-blown morning, then the fire which flows
From the sun will fall upon the altar and ignite
The spices, and his sacrifice will burn in perfumed light.
Over the music-stand the ghosts of sounds will swim,
`Viols d'amore' and `hautbois' accorded to a hymn.
The Boy will see the faintest breath of angels' wings
Fanning the smoke, and voices will flower through the strings.
He dares no farther vision, and with scalding eyes
Waits upon the daylight and his great emprise.
The cold, grey light of dawn was whitening the wall
When the Boy, fine-drawn by sleeplessness, started his ritual.
He washed, all shivering and pointed like a flame.
He threw the shutters open, and in the window-frame
The morning glimmered like a tarnished Venice glass.
He took his Chinese pastilles and put them in a mass
Upon the mantelpiece till he could seek a plate
Worthy to hold them burning. Alas! He had been late
In thinking of this need, and now he could not find
Platter or saucer rare enough to ease his mind.
The house was not astir, and he dared not go down
Into the barn-chamber, lest some door should be blown
391
And slam before the draught he made as he went out.
The light was growing yellower, and still he looked about.
A flash of almost crimson from the gilded pear
Upon the music-stand, startled him waiting there.
The sun would rise and he would meet it unprepared,
Labelled a fool in having missed what he had dared.
He ran across the room, took his pastilles and laid
Them on the flat-topped pear, most carefully displayed
To light with ease, then stood a little to one side,
Focussed a burning-glass and painstakingly tried
To hold it angled so the bunched and prismed rays
Should leap upon each other and spring into a blaze.
Sharp as a wheeling edge of disked, carnation flame,
Gem-hard and cutting upward, slowly the round sun came.
The arrowed fire caught the burning-glass and glanced,
Split to a multitude of pointed spears, and lanced,
A deeper, hotter flame, it took the incense pile
Which welcomed it and broke into a little smile
Of yellow flamelets, creeping, crackling, thrusting up,
A golden, red-slashed lily in a lacquer cup.
'O ye Fire and Heat, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him
for ever.
O ye Winter and Summer, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him
for ever.
O ye Nights and Days, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him
for ever.
O ye Lightnings and Clouds, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him
for ever.'
A moment so it hung, wide-curved, bright-petalled, seeming
A chalice foamed with sunrise. The Boy woke from his dreaming.
A spike of flame had caught the card of butterflies,
The oriole's nest took fire, soon all four galleries
Where he had spread his treasures were become one tongue
Of gleaming, brutal fire. The Boy instantly swung
His pitcher off the wash-stand and turned it upside down.
The flames drooped back and sizzled, and all his senses grown
Acute by fear, the Boy grabbed the quilt from his bed
And flung it over all, and then with aching head
He watched the early sunshine glint on the remains
Of his holy offering. The lacquer stand had stains
392
Ugly and charred all over, and where the golden pear
Had been, a deep, black hole gaped miserably. His dear
Treasures were puffs of ashes; only the stones were there,
Winking in the brightness.
The clock upon the stair
Struck five, and in the kitchen someone shook a grate.
The Boy began to dress, for it was getting late.
~ Amy Lowell,#NFDB
522:He sings.
I send my heart up to thee, all my heart
In this my singing.
For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space
Above me, whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.
She speaks.
Say after me, and try to say
My very words, as if each word
Came from you of your own accord,
In your own voice, in your own way:
``This woman's heart and soul and brain
``Are mine as much as this gold chain
``She bids me wear; which'' (say again)
``I choose to make by cherishing
``A precious thing, or choose to fling
``Over the boat-side, ring by ring.''
And yet once more say no word more!
Since words are only words. Give o'er!
Unless you call me, all the same,
Familiarly by my pet name,
Which if the Three should hear you call,
And me reply to, would proclaim
At once our secret to them all.
Ask of me, too, command me, blame-
Do, break down the partition-wall
'Twixt us, the daylight world beholds
Curtained in dusk and splendid folds!
What's left but-all of me to take?
I am the Three's: prevent them, slake
Your thirst! 'Tis said, the Arab sage,
In practising with gems, can loose
Their subtle spirit in his cruce
And leave but ashes: so, sweet mage,
Leave them my ashes when thy use
Sucks out my soul, thy heritage!
He sings.
I.
Past we glide, and past, and past!
What's that poor Agnese doing
Where they make the shutters fast?
Grey Zanobi's just a-wooing
To his couch the purchased bride:
Past we glide!
II.
Past we glide, and past, and past!
Why's the Pucci Palace flaring
Like a beacon to the blast?
Guests by hundreds, not one caring
If the dear host's neck were wried:
Past we glide!
She sings.
I.
The moth's kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up; so, here and there
You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.
II.
The bee's kiss, now!
Kiss me as if you entered gay
My heart at some noonday,
A bud that dares not disallow
The claim, so all is rendered up,
And passively its shattered cup
Over your head to sleep I bow.
He sings.
I.
What are we two?
I am a Jew,
And carry thee, farther than friends can pursue,
To a feast of our tribe;
Where they need thee to bribe
The devil that blasts them unless he imbibe
Thy Scatter the vision for ever! And now,
As of old, I am I, thou art thou!
II.
Say again, what we are?
The sprite of a star,
I lure thee above where the destinies bar
My plumes their full play
Till a ruddier ray
Than my pale one announce there is withering away
Some Scatter the vision for ever! And now,
As of old, I am I, thou art thou!
He muses.
Oh, which were best, to roam or rest?
The land's lap or the water's breast?
To sleep on yellow millet-sheaves,
Or swim in lucid shallows just
Eluding water-lily leaves,
An inch from Death's black fingers, thrust
To lock you, whom release he must;
Which life were best on Summer eves?
He speaks, musing.
Lie back; could thought of mine improve you?
From this shoulder let there spring
A wing; from this, another wing;
Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you!
Snow-white must they spring, to blend
With your flesh, but I intend
They shall deepen to the end,
Broader, into burning gold,
Till both wings crescent-wise enfold
Your perfect self, from 'neath your feet
To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet
As if a million sword-blades hurled
Defiance from you to the world!
Rescue me thou, the only real!
And scare away this mad ideal
That came, nor motions to depart!
Thanks! Now, stay ever as thou art!
Still he muses.
I.
What if the Three should catch at last
Thy serenader? While there's cast
Paul's cloak about my head, and fast
Gian pinions me, himself has past
His stylet thro' my back; I reel;
And is it thou I feel?
II.
They trail me, these three godless knaves,
Past every church that saints and saves,
Nor stop till, where the cold sea raves
By Lido's wet accursed graves,
They scoop mine, roll me to its brink,
And on thy breast I sink
She replies, musing.
Dip your arm o'er the boat-side, elbow-deep,
As I do: thus: were death so unlike sleep,
Caught this way? Death's to fear from flame or steel,
Or poison doubtless; but from water-feel!
Go find the bottom! Would you stay me? There!
Now pluck a great blade of that ribbon-grass
To plait in where the foolish jewel was,
I flung away: since you have praised my hair,
'Tis proper to be choice in what I wear.
He speaks.
Row home? must we row home? Too surely
Know I where its front's demurely
Over the Giudecca piled;
Window just with window mating,
Door on door exactly waiting,
All's the set face of a child:
But behind it, where's a trace
Of the staidness and reserve,
And formal lines without a curve,
In the same child's playing-face?
No two windows look one way
O'er the small sea-water thread
Below them. Ah, the autumn day
I, passing, saw you overhead!
First, out a cloud of curtain blew,
Then a sweet cry, and last came you-
To catch your lory that must needs
Escape just then, of all times then,
To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds,
And make me happiest of men.
I scarce could breathe to see you reach
So far back o'er the balcony
To catch him ere he climbed too high
Above you in the Smyrna peach
That quick the round smooth cord of gold,
This coiled hair on your head, unrolled,
Fell down you like a gorgeous snake
The Roman girls were wont, of old,
When Rome there was, for coolness' sake
To let lie curling o'er their bosoms.
Dear lory,*
may his beak retain
Ever its delicate rose stain
As if the wounded lotus-blossoms
Had marked their thief to know again!
Stay longer yet, for others' sake
Than mine! What should your chamber do?
-With all its rarities that ache
In silence while day lasts, but wake
At night-time and their life renew,
Suspended just to pleasure you
Who brought against their will together
These objects, and, while day lasts, weave
Around them such a magic tether
That dumb they look: your harp, believe,
With all the sensitive tight strings
Which dare not speak, now to itself
Breathes slumberously, as if some elf
Went in and out the chords, his wings
Make murmur wheresoe'er they graze,
As an angel may, between the maze
Of midnight palace-pillars, on
And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone
Through guilty glorious Babylon.
And while such murmurs flow, the nymph
Bends o'er the harp-top from her shell
As the dry limpet for the lymph
Come with a tune be knows so well.
And how your statues' hearts must swell!
And how your pictures must descend
To see each other, friend with friend!
Oh, could you take them by surprise,
You'd find Schidone's eager Duke
Doing the quaintest courtesies
To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke!
And, deeper into her rock den,
Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen
You'd find retreated from the ken
Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser-
As if the Tizian thinks of her,
And is not, rather, gravely bent
On seeing for himself what toys
Are these, his progeny invent,
What litter now the board employs
Whereon he signed a document
That got him murdered! Each enjoys
Its night so well, you cannot break
The sport up, so, indeed must make
More stay with me, for others' sake.
She speaks.
I.
To-morrow, if a harp-string, say,
Is used to tie the jasmine back
That overfloods my room with sweets,
Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets
My Zanze! If the ribbon's black,
The Three are watching: keep away!
II.
Your gondola-let Zorzi wreathe
A mesh of water-weeds about
its prow, as if he unaware
Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair!
That I may throw a paper out
As you and he go underneath.
There's Zanze's vigilant taper; safe are we.
Only one minute more to-night with me?
Resume your past self of a month ago!
Be you the bashful gallant, I will be
The lady with the colder breast than snow.
Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand
More than I touch yours when I step to land,
And say, ``All thanks, Siora!''-
Heart to heart
And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part,
Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art!
[He is surprised, and stabbed.
It was ordained to be so, sweet!-and best
Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast.
Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care
Only to put aside thy beauteous hair
My blood will hurt! The Three, I do not scorn
To death, because they never lived: but I
Have lived indeed, and so-(yet one more kiss)-can die!
~ Robert Browning, In A Gondola
,#NFDB
523:A Farmhouse Dirge
Will you walk with me to the brow of the hill, to visit the farmer's wife,
Whose daughter lies in the churchyard now, eased of the ache of life?
Half a mile by the winding lane, another half to the top:
There you may lean o'er the gate and rest; she will want me awhile to stop,
Stop and talk of her girl that is gone and no more will wake or weep,
Or to listen rather, for sorrow loves to babble its pain to sleep.
How thick with acorns the ground is strewn, rent from their cups and brown!
How the golden leaves of the windless elms come singly fluttering down!
The briony hangs in the thinning hedge, as russet as harvest corn,
The straggling blackberries glisten jet, the haws are red on the thorn;
The clematis smells no more but lifts its gossamer weight on high;If you only gazed on the year, you would think how beautiful 'tis to die.
The stream scarce flows underneath the bridge; they have dropped the sluice of
the mill;
The roach bask deep in the pool above, and the water-wheel is still.
The meal lies quiet on bin and floor; and here where the deep banks wind,
The water-mosses nor sway nor bend, so nothing seems left behind.
If the wheels of life would but sometimes stop, and the grinding awhile would
cease,
'Twere so sweet to have, without dying quite, just a spell of autumn peace.
Cottages four, two new, two old, each with its clambering rose:
Lath and plaster and weather tiles these, brick faced with stone are those.
Two crouch low from the wind and the rain, and tell of the humbler days,
Whilst the other pair stand up and stare with a self-asserting gaze;
But I warrant you'd find the old as snug as the new did you lift the latch,
For the human heart keeps no whit more warm under slate than beneath the
thatch.
Tenants of two of them work for me, punctual, sober, true;
I often wish that I did as well the work I have got to do.
Think not to pity their lowly lot, nor wish that their thoughts soared higher;
The canker comes on the garden rose, and not on the wilding brier.
Doubt and gloom are not theirs and so they but work and love, they live
Rich in the only valid boons that life can withhold or give.
46
Here is the railway bridge, and see how straight do the bright lines keep,
With pheasant copses on either side, or pastures of quiet sheep.
The big loud city lies far away, far too is the cliffbound shore,
But the trains that travel betwixt them seem as if burdened with their roar.
Yet, quickly they pass, and leave no trace, not the echo e'en of their noise:
Don't you think that silence and stillness are the sweetest of all our joys?
Lo! yonder the Farm, and these the ruts that the broad-wheeled wains have
worn,
As they bore up the hill the faggots sere, or the mellow shocks of corn.
The hops are gathered, the twisted bines now brown on the brown clods lie,
And nothing of all man sowed to reap is seen betwixt earth and sky.
Year after year doth the harvest come, though at summer's and beauty's cost:
One can only hope, when our lives grow bare, some reap what our hearts have
lost.
And this is the orchard, small and rude, and uncaredfor, but oh! in spring,
How white is the slope with cherry bloom, and the nightingales sit and sing!
You would think that the world had grown young once more, had forgotten death
and fear,
That the nearest thing unto woe on earth was the smile of an April tear;
That goodness and gladness were twin, were one:- The robin is chorister now:
The russet fruit on the ground is piled, and the lichen cleaves to the bough.
Will you lean o'er the gate, whilst I go on? You can watch the farmyard life,
The beeves, the farmer's hope, and the poults, that gladden his thrifty wife;
Or, turning, look on the hazy weald,-you will not be seen from here,Till your thoughts, like it, grow blurred and vague, and mingle the far and near.
Grief is a flood, and not a spring, whatever in grief we say;
And perhaps her woe, should she see me alone, will run more quickly away.
`I thought you would come this morning, ma'am. Yes, Edith at last has gone;
To-morrow's a week, ay, just as the sun right into her window shone;
Went with the night, the vicar says, where endeth never the day;
But she's left a darkness behind her here I wish she had taken away.
She is no longer with us, but we seem to be always with her,
In the lonely bed where we laid her last, and can't get her to speak or stir.
``Yes, I'm at work; 'tis time I was. I should have begun before;
But this is the room where she lay so still, ere they carried her past the door.
I thought I never could let her go where it seems so lonely of nights;
But now I am scrubbing and dusting down, and seting the place to rights.
47
All I have kept are the flowers there, the last that stood by her bed.
I suppose I must throw them away. She looked much fairer when she was dead.
``Thank you, for thinking of her so much. Kind thought is the truest friend.
I wish you had seen how pleased she was with the peaches you used to send.
She tired of them too ere the end, so she did with all we tried;
But she liked to look at them all the same, so we set them down by her side.
Their bloom and the flush upon her cheek were alike, I used to say;
Both were so smooth, and soft, and round, and both have faded away.
``I never could tell you how kind too were the ladies up at the hall;
Every noon, or fair or wet, one of them used to call.
Worry and work seems ours, but yours pleasant and easy days,
And when all goes smooth, the rich and poor have different lives and ways.
Sorrow and death bring men more close, 'tis joy that puts us apart;
'Tis a comfort to think, though we're severed so, we're all of us one at heart.
``She never wished to be smart and rich, as so many in these days do,
Nor cared to go in on market days to stare at the gay and new.
She liked to remain at home and pluck the white violets down in the wood;
She said to her sisters before she died, `'Tis so easy to be good.'
She must have found it so, I think, and that was the reason why
God deemed it needless to leave her here, so took her up to the sky.
``The vicar says that he knows she is there, and surely she ought to be;
But though I repeat the words, 'tis hard to believe what one does not see.
They did not want me to go to the grave, but I could not have kept away,
And whatever I do I can only see a coffin and church-yard clay.
Yes, I know it's wrong to keep lingering there, and wicked and weak to fret;
And that's why I'm hard at work again, for it helps one to forget.
``The young ones don't seem to take to work as their mothers and fathers did.
We never were asked if we liked or no, but had to obey when bid.
There's Bessie won't swill the dairy now, nor Richard call home the cows,
And all of them cry, `How can you, mother?' when I carry the wash to the sows.
Edith would drudge, for Death one's hearth of the helpful one always robs.
But she was so pretty I could not bear to set her on dirty jobs.
``I don't know how it'll be with them when sorrow and loss are theirs,
For it isn't likely that they'll escape their pack of worrits and cares.
They say it's an age of progress this, and a sight of things improves,
But sickness, and age, and bereavement seem to work in the same old grooves.
48
Fine they may grow, and that, but Death as lief takes the moth as the grub.
When their dear ones die, I suspect they'll wish they'd a floor of their own to
scrub.
``Some day they'll have a home of their own, much grander than this, no doubt,
But polish the porch as you will you can't keep doctors and coffins out.
I've done very well with my fowls this year, but what are pullets and eggs,
When the heart in vain at the door of the grave the return of the lost one begs?
The rich have leisure to wail and weep, the poor haven't time to be sad:
If the cream hadn't been so contrairy this week, I think grief would have driven
me mad.
``How does my husband bear up, you ask? Well, thank you, ma'am, fairly well;
For he too is busy just now, you see, with the wheat and the hops to sell:
It's when the work of the day is done, and he comes indoors at night,
While the twilight hangs round the window-panes before I bring in the light,
And takes down his pipe, and says not a word, but watches the faggots roarAnd then I know he is thinking of her who will sit on his knee no more.
``Must you be going? It seems so short. But thank you for thinking to come;
It does me good to talk of it all, and grief feels doubled when dumb.
An the butter's not quite so good this week, if you please, ma'am, you must not
mind,
And I'll not forget to send the ducks and all the eggs we can find;
I've scarcely had time to look round me yet, work gets into such arrears,
With only one pair of hands, and those fast wiping away one's tears.
``You've got some flowers, yet, haven't you, ma'am? though they now must be
going fast;
We never have any to speak of here, and I placed on her coffin the last.
Could you spare me a few for Sunday next? I should like to go all alone,
And lay them down on the little mound where there isn't as yet a stone.
Thank you kindly, I'm sure they'll do, and I promise to heed what you say;
I'll only just go and lay them there, and then I will come away.''
Come, let us go. Yes, down the hill, and home by the winding lane.
The low-lying fields are suffused with haze, as life is suffused with pain.
The noon mists gain on the morning sun, so despondency gains on youth;
We grope, and wrangle, and boast, but Death is the only certain truth.
O love of life! what a foolish love! we should weary of life did it last.
While it lingers, it is but a little thing; 'tis nothing at all when past.
49
The acorns thicker and thicker lie, the briony limper grows,
There are mildewing beads on the leafless brier where once smiled the sweet
dog-rose.
You may see the leaves of the primrose push through the litter of sodden
ground;
Their pale stars dream in the wintry womb, and the pimpernel sleepeth sound.
They will awake; shall we awake? Are we more than imprisoned breath?
When the heart grows weak, then hope grows strong, but stronger than hope is
Death.
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
524:A Treatise On Poetry: Iv Natura
Pennsylvania, 1948-1949
The garden of Nature opens.
The grass at the threshold is green.
And an almond tree begins to bloom.
Sunt mihi Dei Acherontis propitii!
Valeat numen triplex Jehovae!
Ignis, aeris, aquae, terrae spiritus,
Salvete!—says the entering guest.
Ariel lives in the palace of an apple tree,
But will not appear, vibrating like a wasp’s wing,
And Mephistopheles, disguised as an abbot
Of the Dominicans or the Franciscans,
Will not descend from a mulberry bush
Onto a pentagram drawn in the black loam of the path.
But a rhododendron walks among the rocks
Shod in leathery leaves and ringing a pink bell.
A hummingbird, a child’s top in the air,
Hovers in one spot, the beating heart of motion.
Impaled on the nail of a black thorn, a grasshopper
Leaks brown fluid from its twitching snout.
And what can he do, the phantom-in-chief,
As he’s been called, more than a magician,
The Socrates of snails, as he’s been called,
Musician of pears, arbiter of orioles, man?
In sculptures and canvases our individuality
Manages to survive. In Nature it perishes.
Let him accompany the coffin of the woodsman
Pushed from a cliff by a mountain demon,
The he-goat with its jutting curl of horn.
Let him visit the graveyard of the whalers
Who drove spears into the flesh of leviathan
And looked for the secret in guts and blubber.
The thrashing subsided, quieted to waves.
Let him unroll the textbooks of alchemists
14
Who almost found the cipher, thus the scepter.
Then passed away without hands, eyes, or elixir.
Here there is sun. And whoever, as a child,
Believed he could break the repeatable pattern
Of things, if only he understood the pattern,
Is cast down, rots in the skin of others,
Looks with wonder at the colors of the butterfly,
Inexpressible wonder, formless, hostile to art.
To keep the oars from squeaking in their locks,
He binds them with a handkerchief. The dark
Had rushed east from the Rocky Mountains
And settled in the forests of the continent:
Sky full of embers reflected in a cloud,
Flight of herons, trees above a marsh,
The dry stalks in water, livid, black. My boat
Divides the aerial utopias of the mosquitoes
Which rebuild their glowing castles instantly.
A water lily sinks, fizzing, under the boat’s bow.
Now it is night only. The water is ash-gray.
Play, music, but inaudibly! I wait an hour
In the silence, senses tuned to a beaver’s lodge.
Then suddenly, a crease in the water, a beast’s
black moon, rounded, ploughing up quickly
from the pond-dark, from the bubbling methanes.
I am not immaterial and never will be.
My scent in the air, my animal smell,
Spreads, rainbow-like, scares the beaver:
A sudden splat.
I remained where I was
In the high, soft coffer of the night’s velvet,
Mastering what had come to my senses:
How the four-toed paws worked, how the hair
Shook off water in the muddy tunnel.
It does not know time, hasn’t heard of death,
Is submitted to me because I know I’ll die.
15
I remember everything. That wedding in Basel,
A touch to the strings of a viola and fruit
In silver bowls. As was the custom in Savoy,
An overturned cup for three pairs of lips,
And the wine spilled. The flames of the candles
Wavery and frail in a breeze from the Rhine.
Her fingers, bones shining through the skin,
Felt out the hooks and clasps of the silk
And the dress opened like a nutshell,
Fell from the turned graininess of the belly.
A chain for the neck rustled without epoch,
In pits where the arms of various creeds
Mingle with bird cries and the red hair of caesars.
Perhaps this is only my own love speaking
Beyond the seventh river. Grit of subjectivity,
Obsession, bar the way to it.
Until a window shutter, dogs in the cold garden,
The whistle of a train, an owl in the firs
Are spared the distortions of memory.
And the grass says: how it was I don’t know.
Splash of a beaver in the American night.
The memory grows larger than my life.
A tin plate, dropped on the irregular red bricks
Of a floor, rattles tinnily forever.
Belinda of the big foot, Julia, Thaïs,
The tufts of their sex shadowed by ribbon.
Peace to the princesses under the tamarisks.
Desert winds beat against their painted eyelids.
Before the body was wrapped in bandelettes,
Before wheat fell asleep in the tomb,
Before stone fell silent, and there was only pity.
Yesterday a snake crossed the road at dusk.
Crushed by a tire, it writhed on the asphalt.
16
We are both the snake and the wheel.
There are two dimensions. Here is the unattainable
Truth of being, here, at the edge of lasting
and not lasting. Where the parallel lines intersect,
Time lifted above time by time.
Before the butterfly and its color, he, numb,
Formless, feels his fear, he, unattainable.
For what is a butterfly without Julia and Thaïs?
And what is Julia without a butterfly’s down
In her eyes, her hair, the smooth grain of her belly?
The kingdom, you say. We do not belong to it,
And still, in the same instant, we belong.
For how long will a nonsensical Poland
Where poets write of their emotions as if
They had a contract of limited liability
Suffice? I want not poetry, but a new diction,
Because only it might allow us to express
A new tenderness and save us from a law
That is not our law, from necessity
Which is not ours, even if we take its name.
From broken armor, from eyes stricken
By the command of time and taken back
Into the jurisdiction of mold and fermentation,
We draw our hope. Yes, to gather in an image
The furriness of the beaver, the smell of rushes,
And the wrinkles of a hand holding a pitcher
From which wine trickles. Why cry out
That a sense of history destroys our substance
If it, precisely, is offered to our powers,
A muse of our gray-haired father, Herodotus,
As our arm and our instrument, though
It is not easy to use it, to strengthen it
So that, like a plumb with a pure gold center,
It will serve again to rescue human beings.
With such reflections I pushed a rowboat,
In the middle of the continent, through tangled stalks,
17
In my mind an image of the waves of two oceans
And the slow rocking of a guard-ship’s lantern.
Aware that at this moment I—and not only I—
Keep, as in a seed, the unnamed future.
And then a rhythmic appeal composed itself,
Alien to the moth with its whirring of silk:
O City, O Society, O Capital,
We have seen your steaming entrails.
You will no longer be what you have been.
Your songs no longer gratify our hearts.
Steel, cement, lime, law, ordinance,
We have worshipped you too long,
You were for us a goal and a defense,
Ours was your glory and your shame.
And where was the covenant broken?
Was it in the fires of war, the incandescent sky?
Or at twilight, as the towers fly past, when one looked
From the train across a desert of tracks
To a window out past the maneuvering locomotives
Where a girl examines her narrow, moody face
In a mirror and ties a ribbon to her hair
Pierced by the sparks of curling papers?
Those walls of yours are shadows of walls,
And your light disappeared forever.
Not the world's monument anymore, an oeuvre of your own
Stands beneath the sun in an altered space.
From stucco and mirrors, glass and paintings,
Tearing aside curtains of silver and cotton,
Comes man, naked and mortal,
Ready for truth, for speech, for wings.
18
Lament, Republic! Fall to your knees!
The loudspeaker’s spell is discontinued.
Listen! You can hear the clocks ticking.
Your death approaches by his hand.
An oar over my shoulder, I walked from the woods.
A porcupine scolded from the fork of a tree,
A horned owl, not changed by the century,
Not changed by place or time, looked down.
Bubo maximus, from the work of Linnaeus.
America for me has the pelt of a raccoon,
Its eyes are a raccoon’s black binoculars.
A chipmunk flickers in a litter of dry bark
Where ivy and vines tangle in the red soil
At the roots of an arcade of tulip trees.
America’s wings are the color of a cardinal,
Its beak is half-open and a mockingbird trills
From a leafy bush in the sweat-bath of the air.
Its line is the wavy body of a water moccasin
Crossing a river with a grass-like motion,
A rattlesnake, a rubble of dots and speckles,
Coiling under the bloom of a yucca plant.
America is for me the illustrated version
Of childhood tales about the heart of tanglewood,
Told in the evening to the spinning wheel’s hum.
And a violin, shivvying up a square dance,
Plays the fiddles of Lithuania or Flanders.
My dancing partner’s name is Birute Swenson.
She married a Swede, but was born in Kaunas.
Then from the night window a moth flies in
As big as the joined palms of the hands,
With a hue like the transparency of emeralds.
Why not establish a home in the neon heat
Of Nature? Is it not enough, the labor of autumn,
19
Of winter and spring and withering summer?
You will hear not one word spoken of the court
of Sigismund Augustus on the banks of the Delaware River.
The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys is not needed.
Herodotus will repose on his shelf, uncut.
And the rose only, a sexual symbol,
Symbol of love and superterrestrial beauty,
Will open a chasm deeper than your knowledge.
About it we find a song in a dream:
Inside the rose
Are houses of gold,
black isobars, streams of cold.
Dawn touches her finger to the edge of the Alps
And evening streams down to the bays of the sea.
If anyone dies inside the rose,
They carry him down the purple-red road
In a procession of clocks all wrapped in folds.
They light up the petals of grottoes with torches.
They bury him there where color begins,
At the source of the sighing,
Inside the rose.
Let names of months mean only what they mean.
Let the Aurora’s cannons be heard in none
Of them, or the tread of young rebels marching.
We might, at best, keep some kind of souvenir,
Preserved like a fan in a garret. Why not
Sit down at a rough country table and compose
An ode in the old manner, as in the old times
Chasing a beetle with the nib of our pen?
~ Czeslaw Milosz,#NFDB
525:I.
How well I know what I mean to do
When the long dark autumn-evenings come:
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
With the music of all thy voices, dumb
In life's November too!
II.
I shall be found by the fire, suppose,
O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age,
While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows
And I turn the page, and I turn the page,
Not verse now, only prose!
III.
Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip,
``There he is at it, deep in Greek:
``Now then, or never, out we slip
``To cut from the hazels by the creek
``A mainmast for our ship!''
IV.
I shall be at it indeed, my friends:
Greek puts already on either side
Such a branch-work forth as soon extends
To a vista opening far and wide,
And I pass out where it ends.
V.
The outside-frame, like your hazel-trees:
But the inside-archway widens fast,
And a rarer sort succeeds to these,
And we slope to Italy at last
And youth, by green degrees.
VI.
I follow wherever I am led,
Knowing so well the leader's hand:
Oh woman-country, wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male-lands,
Laid to their hearts instead!
VII.
Look at the ruined chapel again
Half-way up in the Alpine gorge!
Is that a tower, I point you plain,
Or is it a mill, or an iron-forge
Breaks solitude in vain?
VIII.
A turn, and we stand in the heart of things:
The woods are round us, heaped and dim;
From slab to slab how it slips and springs,
The thread of water single and slim,
Through the ravage some torrent brings!
IX.
Does it feed the little lake below?
That speck of white just on its marge
Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow,
How sharp the silver spear-heads charge
When Alp meets heaven in snow!
X.
On our other side is the straight-up rock;
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
By boulder-stones where lichens mock
The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
Their teeth to the polished block.
XI.
Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers ,
And thorny balls, each three in one,
The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!
For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,
These early November hours,
XII.
That crimson the creeper's leaf across
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
Elf-needled mat of moss,
XIII.
By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged
Last evening-nay, in to-day's first dew
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,
Where a freaked fawn-coloured flaky crew
Of toadstools peep indulged.
XIV.
And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge
That takes the turn to a range beyond,
Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge
Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond
Danced over by the midge.
XV.
The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,
Blackish-grey and mostly wet;
Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dyke.
See here again, how the lichens fret
And the roots of the ivy strike!
XVI.
Poor little place, where its one priest comes
On a festa-day, if he comes at all,
To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,
Gathered within that precinct small
By the dozen ways one roams-
XVII.
To drop from the charcoal-burners ' huts,
Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed,
Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts,
Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread
Their gear on the rock's bare juts.
XVIII.
It has some pretension too, this front,
With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise
Set over the porch, Art's early wont:
'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,
But has borne the weather's brunt-
XIX.
Not from the fault of the builder, though,
For a pent-house properly projects
Where three carved beams make a certain show,
Dating-good thought of our architect's-
'Five, six, nine, he lets you know.
XX.
And all day long a bird sings there,
And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times;
The place is silent and aware;
It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,
But that is its own affair.
XXI.
My perfect wife, my Leonor,
Oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too,
Whom else could I dare look backward for,
With whom beside should I dare pursue
The path grey heads abhor?
XXII.
For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;
Youth, flowery all the way, there stops-
Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
One inch from life's safe hem!
XXIII.
With me, youth led I will speak now,
No longer watch you as you sit
Reading by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it,
Mutely, my heart knows how-
XXIV.
When, if I think but deep enough,
You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;
And you, too, find without rebuff
Response your soul seeks many a time
Piercing its fine flesh-stuff.
XXV.
My own, confirm me! If I tread
This path back, is it not in pride
To think how little I dreamed it led
To an age so blest that, by its side,
Youth seems the waste instead?
XXVI.
My own, see where the years conduct!
At first, 'twas something our two souls
Should mix as mists do; each is sucked
In each now: on, the new stream rolls,
Whatever rocks obstruct.
XXVII.
Think, when our one soul understands
The great Word which makes all things new,
When earth breaks up and heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you
ln the house not made with hands?
XXVIII.
Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart,
You must be just before, in fine,
See and make me see, for your part,
New depths of the divine!
XXIX.
But who could have expected this
When we two drew together first
Just for the obvious human bliss,
To satisfy life's daily thirst
With a thing men seldom miss?
XXX.
Come back with me to the first of all,
Let us lean and love it over again,
Let us now forget and now recall,
Break the rosary in a pearly rain,
And gather what we let fall!
XXXI.
What did I say?-that a small bird sings
All day long, save when a brown pair
Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings
Strained to a bell: 'gainst noon-day glare
You count the streaks and rings.
XXXII.
But at afternoon or almost eve
'Tis better; then the silence grows
To that degree, you half believe
It must get rid of what it knows,
Its bosom does so heave.
XXXIII.
Hither we walked then, side by side,
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,
And still I questioned or replied,
While my heart, convulsed to really speak,
Lay choking in its pride.
XXXIV.
Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,
And pity and praise the chapel sweet,
And care about the fresco's loss,
And wish for our souls a like retreat,
And wonder at the moss.
XXXV.
Stoop and kneel on the settle under,
Look through the window's grated square:
Nothing to see! For fear of plunder,
The cross is down and the altar bare,
As if thieves don't fear thunder.
XXXVI.
We stoop and look in through the grate,
See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder's date;
Then cross the bridge that we crossed before,
Take the path again-but wait!
XXXVII.
Oh moment, one and infinite!
The water slips o'er stock and stone;
The West is tender, hardly bright:
How grey at once is the evening grown-
One star, its chrysolite!
XXXVIII.
We two stood there with never a third,
But each by each, as each knew well:
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,
The lights and the shades made up a spell
Till the trouble grew and stirred.
XXXIX.
Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!
How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,
Or a breath suspend the blood's best play,
And life be a proof of this!
XL.
Had she willed it, still had stood the screen
So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her:
I could fix her face with a guard between,
And find her soul as when friends confer,
Friends-lovers that might have been.
XLI.
For my heart had a touch of the woodland-time,
Wanting to sleep now over its best.
Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime,
But bring to the Iast leaf no such test!
``Hold the last fast!'' runs the rhyme.
XLII.
For a chance to make your little much,
To gain a lover and lose a friend,
Venture the tree and a myriad such,
When nothing you mar but the year can mend:
But a last leaf-fear to touch!
XLIII.
Yet should it unfasten itself and fall
Eddying down till it find your face
At some slight wind-best chance of all!
Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place
You trembled to forestall!
XLIV.
Worth how well, those dark grey eyes,
That hair so dark and dear, how worth
That a man should strive and agonize,
And taste a veriest hell on earth
For the hope of such a prize!
XIIV.
You might have turned and tried a man,
Set him a space to weary and wear,
And prove which suited more your plan,
His best of hope or his worst despair,
Yet end as he began.
XLVI.
But you spared me this, like the heart you are,
And filled my empty heart at a word.
If two lives join, there is oft a scar,
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.
XLVII.
A moment after, and hands unseen
Were hanging the night around us fast
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life: we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen.
XLVIII.
The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a moment the powers at play:
They had mingled us so, for once and good,
Their work was done-we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood.
XLIX.
How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product thus,
When a soul declares itself-to wit,
By its fruit, the thing it does
L.
Be hate that fruit or love that fruit,
It forwards the general deed of man,
And each of the Many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan;
Each living his own, to boot.
LI.
I am named and known by that moment's feat;
There took my station and degree;
So grew my own small life complete,
As nature obtained her best of me-
One born to love you, sweet!
LII.
And to watch you sink by the fire-side now
Back again, as you mutely sit
Musing by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it,
Yonder, my heart knows how!
LIII.
So, earth has gained by one man the more,
And the gain of earth must be heaven's gain too;
And the whole is well worth thinking o'er
When autumn comes: which I mean to do
One day, as I said before.
~ Robert Browning, By The Fire-Side
,#NFDB
526:Now, man of croziers, shadows called our names
And then away, away, like whirling flames;
And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound,
The youth and lady and the deer and hound;
'Gaze no more on the phantoms,' Niamh said,
And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright head
And her bright body, sang of faery and man
Before God was or my old line began;
Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of old
Who wedded men with rings of Druid gold;
And how those lovers never turn their eyes
Upon the life that fades and flickers and dies,
Yet love and kiss on dim shores far away
Rolled round with music of the sighing spray:
Yet sang no more as when, like a brown bee
That has drunk full, she crossed the misty sea
With me in her white arms a hundred years
Before this day; for now the fall of tears
Troubled her song.
I do not know if days
Or hours passed by, yet hold the morning rays
Shone many times among the glimmering flowers
Woven into her hair, before dark towers
Rose in the darkness, and the white surf gleamed
About them; and the horse of Faery screamed
And shivered, knowing the Isle of Many Fears,
Nor ceased until white Niamh stroked his ears
And named him by sweet names.
A foaming tide
Whitened afar with surge, fan-formed and wide,
Burst from a great door matred by many a blow
From mace and sword and pole-axe, long ago
When gods and giants warred. We rode between
The seaweed-covered pillars; and the green
And surging phosphorus alone gave light
On our dark pathway, till a countless flight
Of moonlit steps glimmered; and left and right
Dark statues glimmered over the pale tide
Upon dark thrones. Between the lids of one
The imaged meteors had flashed and run
And had disported in the stilly jet,
And the fixed stars had dawned and shone and set,
Since God made Time and Death and Sleep: the other
Stretched his long arm to where, a misty smother,
The stream churned, churned, and churned - his lips apart,
As though he told his never-slumbering heart
Of every foamdrop on its misty way.
Tying the horse to his vast foot that lay
Half in the unvesselled sea, we climbed the stair
And climbed so long, I thought the last steps were
Hung from the morning star; when these mild words
Fanned the delighted air like wings of birds:
'My brothers spring out of their beds at morn,
A-murmur like young partridge: with loud horn
They chase the noontide deer;
And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the air
Look to long fishing-lines, or point and pare
An ashen hunting spear.
O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me;
Flutter along the froth lips of the sea,
And shores the froth lips wet:
And stay a little while, and bid them weep:
Ah, touch their blue-veined eyelids if they sleep,
And shake their coverlet.
When you have told how I weep endlessly,
Flutter along the froth lips of the sea
And home to me again,
And in the shadow of my hair lie hid,
And tell me that you found a man unbid,
The saddest of all men.'
A lady with soft eyes like funeral tapers,
And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours,
And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous
As any ruddy moth, looked down on us;
And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied
To two old eagles, full of ancient pride,
That with dim eyeballs stood on either side.
Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings,
For their dim minds were with the ancient things.
'I bring deliverance,' pearl-pale Niamh said.
'Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead,
Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight
My enemy and hope; demons for fright
Jabber and scream about him in the night;
For he is strong and crafty as the seas
That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees,
And I must needs endure and hate and weep,
Until the gods and demons drop asleep,
Hearing Aed touch the mournful strings of gold.'
'Is he so dreadful?'
'Be not over-bold,
But fly while still you may.'
And thereon I:
'This demon shall be battered till he die,
And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.'
'Flee from him,' pearl-pale Niamh weeping cried,
'For all men flee the demons'; but moved not
My angry king-remembering soul one jot.
There was no mightier soul of Heber's line;
Now it is old and mouse-like. For a sign
I burst the chain: still earless, nerveless, blind,
Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind,
In some dim memory or ancient mood,
Still earless, nerveless, blind, the eagles stood.
And then we climbed the stair to a high door;
A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor
Beneath had paced content: we held our way
And stood within: clothed in a misty ray
I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float
Under the roof, and with a straining throat
Shouted, and hailed him: he hung there a star,
For no man's cry shall ever mount so far;
Not even your God could have thrown down that hall;
Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall,
He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart,
As though His hour were come.
We sought the part
That was most distant from the door; green slime
Made the way slippery, and time on time
Showed prints of sea-born scales, while down through it
The captive's journeys to and fro were writ
Like a small river, and where feet touched came
A momentary gleam of phosphorus flame.
Under the deepest shadows of the hall
That woman found a ring hung on the wall,
And in the ring a torch, and with its flare
Making a world about her in the air,
Passed under the dim doorway, out of sight,
And came again, holding a second light
Burning between her fingers, and in mine
Laid it and sighed: I held a sword whose shine
No centuries could dim, and a word ran
Thereon in Ogham letters, 'Manannan';
That sea-god's name, who in a deep content
Sprang dripping, and, with captive demons sent
Out of the sevenfold seas, built the dark hall
Rooted in foam and clouds, and cried to all
The mightier masters of a mightier race;
And at his cry there came no milk-pale face
Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood,
But only exultant faces.
Niamh stood
With bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone,
But she whose hours of tenderness were gone
Had neither hope nor fear. I bade them hide
Under the shadowS till the tumults died
Of the loud-crashing and earth-shaking fight,
Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight;
And thrust the torch between the slimy flags.
A dome made out of endless carven jags,
Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face,
Looked down on me; and in the self-same place
I waited hour by hour, and the high dome,
Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home
Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze
Was loaded with the memory of days
Buried and mighty. When through the great door
The dawn came in, and glimmered on the floor
With a pale light, I journeyed round the hall
And found a door deep sunken in the wall,
The least of doors; beyond on a dim plain
A little runnel made a bubbling strain,
And on the runnel's stony and bare edge
A dusky demon dry as a withered sedge
Swayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue:
In a sad revelry he sang and swung
Bacchant and mournful, passing to and fro
His hand along the runnel's side, as though
The flowers still grew there: far on the sea's waste
Shaking and waving, vapour vapour chased,
While high frail cloudlets, fed with a green light,
Like drifts of leaves, immovable and bright,
Hung in the passionate dawn. He slowly turned:
A demon's leisure: eyes, first white, now burned
Like wings of kingfishers; and he arose
Barking. We trampled up and down with blows
Of sword and brazen battle-axe, while day
Gave to high noon and noon to night gave way;
And when he knew the sword of Manannan
Amid the shades of night, he changed and ran
Through many shapes; I lunged at the smooth throat
Of a great eel; it changed, and I but smote
A fir-tree roaring in its leafless top;
And thereupon I drew the livid chop
Of a drowned dripping body to my breast;
Horror from horror grew; but when the west
Had surged up in a plumy fire, I drave
Through heart and spine; and cast him in the wave
Lest Niamh shudder.
Full of hope and dread
Those two came carrying wine and meat and bread,
And healed my wounds with unguents out of flowers
That feed white moths by some De Danaan shrine;
Then in that hall, lit by the dim sea-shine,
We lay on skins of otters, and drank wine,
Brewed by the sea-gods, from huge cups that lay
Upon the lips of sea-gods in their day;
And then on heaped-up skins of otters slept.
And when the sun once more in saffron stept,
Rolling his flagrant wheel out of the deep,
We sang the loves and angers without sleep,
And all the exultant labours of the strong.
But now the lying clerics murder song
With barren words and flatteries of the weak.
In what land do the powerless turn the beak
Of ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath?
For all your croziers, they have left the path
And wander in the storms and clinging snows,
Hopeless for ever: ancient Oisin knows,
For he is weak and poor and blind, and lies
On the anvil of the world.
S. Patrick. Be still: the skies
Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind,
For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind;
Go cast your body on the stones and pray,
For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day.
Oisin. Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder
The Fenian horses; atmour torn asunder;
Laughter and cries. The armies clash and shock,
And now the daylight-darkening ravens flock.
Cease, cease, O mournful, laughing Fenian horn!
We feasted for three days. On the fourth morn
I found, dropping sea-foam on the wide stair,
And hung with slime, and whispering in his hair,
That demon dull and unsubduable;
And once more to a day-long battle fell,
And at the sundown threw him in the surge,
To lie until the fourth morn saw emerge
His new-healed shape; and for a hundred years
So watred, so feasted, with nor dreams nor fears,
Nor languor nor fatigue: an endless feast,
An endless war.
The hundred years had ceased;
I stood upon the stair: the surges bore
A beech-bough to me, and my heart grew sore,
Remembering how I had stood by white-haired Finn
Under a beech at Almhuin and heard the thin
Outcry of bats.
And then young Niamh came
Holding that horse, and sadly called my name;
I mounted, and we passed over the lone
And drifting greyness, while this monotone,
Surly and distant, mixed inseparably
Into the clangour of the wind and sea.
'I hear my soul drop down into decay,
And Mananna's dark tower, stone after stone.
Gather sea-slime and fall the seaward way,
And the moon goad the waters night and day,
That all be overthrown.
'But till the moon has taken all, I wage
War on the mightiest men under the skies,
And they have fallen or fled, age after age.
Light is man's love, and lighter is man's rage;
His purpose drifts and dies.'
And then lost Niamh murmured, 'Love, we go
To the Island of Forgetfulness, for lo!
The Islands of Dancing and of Victories
Are empty of all power.'
'And which of these
Is the Island of Content?'
'None know,' she said;
And on my bosom laid her weeping head.
~ William Butler Yeats, The Wanderings Of Oisin - Book II
,#NFDB
527:Jubilate Agno: Fragment A
Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb.
Nations, and languages, and every Creature, in which is the breath of Life.
Let man and beast appear before him, and magnify his name together.
Let Noah and his company approach the throne of Grace, and do homage to the
Ark of their Salvation.
Let Abraham present a Ram, and worship the God of his Redemption.
Let Isaac, the Bridegroom, kneel with his Camels, and bless the hope of his
pilgrimage.
Let Jacob, and his speckled Drove adore the good Shepherd of Israel.
Let Esau offer a scape Goat for his seed, and rejoice in the blessing of God his
father.
Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter, bind a Leopard to the altar, and consecrate his
spear to the Lord.
Let Ishmael dedicate a Tyger, and give praise for the liberty, in which the Lord
has let him at large.
Let Balaam appear with an Ass, and bless the Lord his people and his creatures
for a reward eternal.
Let Anah, the son of Zibion, lead a Mule to the temple, and bless God, who
amerces the consolation of the creature for the service of Man.
Let Daniel come forth with a Lion, and praise God with all his might through faith
in Christ Jesus.
Let Naphthali with an Hind give glory in the goodly words of Thanksgiving.
Let Aaron, the high priest, sanctify a Bull, and let him go free to the Lord and
Giver of Life.
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Let the Levites of the Lord take the Beavers of the brook alive into the Ark of the
Testimony.
Let Eleazar with the Ermine serve the Lord decently and in purity.
Let Ithamar minister with a Chamois, and bless the name of Him, which
cloatheth the naked.
Let Gershom with an Pygarg Hart bless the name of Him, who feedeth the
hungry.
Let Merari praise the wisdom and power of God with the Coney, who scoopeth
the rock, and archeth in the sand.
Let Kohath serve with the Sable, and bless God in the ornaments of the Temple.
Let Jehoida bless God with an Hare, whose mazes are determined for the health
of the body and to parry the adversary.
Let Ahitub humble himself with an Ape before Almighty God, who is the maker of
variety and pleasantry.
Let Abiathar with a Fox praise the name of the Lord, who ballances craft against
strength and skill against number.
Let Moses, the Man of God, bless with a Lizard, in the sweet majesty of goodnature, and the magnanimity of meekness.
Let Joshua praise God with an Unicorn -- the swiftness of the Lord, and the
strength of the Lord, and the spear of the Lord mighty in battle.
Let Caleb with an Ounce praise the Lord of the Land of beauty and rejoice in the
blessing of his good Report.
Let Othniel praise God with the Rhinoceros, who put on his armour for the reward
of beauty in the Lord.
Let Tola bless with the Toad, which is the good creature of God, tho' his virtue is
in the secret, and his mention is not made.
Let Barak praise with the Pard -- and great is the might of the faithful and great
is the Lord in the nail of Jael and in the sword of the Son of Abinoam.
33
Let Gideon bless with the Panther -- the Word of the Lord is invincible by him
that lappeth from the brook.
Let Jotham praise with the Urchin, who took up his parable and provided himself
for the adversary to kick against the pricks.
Let Boaz, the Builder of Judah, bless with the Rat, which dwelleth in hardship and
peril, that they may look to themselves and keep their houses in order.
Let Obed-Edom with a Dormouse praise the Name of the Lord God his Guest for
increase of his store and for peace.
Let Abishai bless with the Hyaena -- the terror of the Lord, and the fierceness, of
his wrath against the foes of the King and of Israel.
Let Ethan praise with the Flea, his coat of mail, his piercer, and his vigour, which
wisdom and providence have contrived to attract observation and to escape it.
Let Heman bless with the Spider, his warp and his woof, his subtlety and
industry, which are good.
Let Chalcol praise with the Beetle, whose life is precious in the sight of God, tho
his appearance is against him.
Let Darda with a Leech bless the Name of the Physician of body and soul.
Let Mahol praise the Maker of Earth and Sea with the Otter, whom God has given
to dive and to burrow for his preservation.
Let David bless with the Bear -- The beginning of victory to the Lord -- to the
Lord the perfection of excellence -- Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from
the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in
sweetness magnifical and mighty.
Let Solomon praise with the Ant, and give the glory to the Fountain of all
Wisdom.
Let Romamti-ezer bless with the Ferret -- The Lord is a rewarder of them, that
diligently seek him.
Let Samuel, the Minister from a child, without ceasing praise with the Porcupine,
34
which is the creature of defence and stands upon his arms continually.
Let Nathan with the Badger bless God for his retired fame, and privacy
inaccessible to slander.
Let Joseph, who from the abundance of his blessing may spare to him, that
lacketh, praise with the Crocodile, which is pleasant and pure, when he is
interpreted, tho' his look is of terror and offence.
Let Esdras bless Christ Jesus with the Rose and his people, which is a nation of
living sweetness.
Let Mephibosheth with the Cricket praise the God of chearfulness, hospitality,
and gratitude.
Let Shallum with the Frog bless God for the meadows of Canaan, the fleece, the
milk and the honey.
Let Hilkiah praise with the Weasel, which sneaks for his prey in craft, and
dwelleth at ambush.
Let Job bless with the Worm -- the life of the Lord is in Humiliation, the Spirit
also and the truth.
Let Elihu bless with the Tortoise, which is food for praise and thanksgiving.
Let Hezekiah praise with the Dromedary -- the zeal for the glory of God is
excellence, and to bear his burden is grace.
Let Zadoc worship with the Mole -- before honour is humility, and he that looketh
low shall learn.
Let Gad with the Adder bless in the simplicity of the preacher and the wisdom of
the creature.
Let Tobias bless Charity with his Dog, who is faithful, vigilant, and a friend in
poverty.
Let Anna bless God with the Cat, who is worthy to be presented before the
throne of grace, when he has trampled upon the idol in his prank.
Let Benaiah praise with the Asp -- to conquer malice is nobler, than to slay the
35
lion.
Let Barzillai bless with the Snail -- a friend in need is as the balm of Gilead, or as
the slime to the wounded bark.
Let Joab with the Horse worship the Lord God of Hosts.
Let Shemaiah bless God with the Caterpiller -- the minister of vengeance is the
harbinger of mercy.
Let Ahimelech with the Locust bless God from the tyranny of numbers.
Let Cornelius with the Swine bless God, which purifyeth all things for the poor.
Let Araunah bless with the Squirrel, which is a gift of homage from the poor man
to the wealthy and increaseth good will.
Let Bakbakkar bless with the Salamander, which feedeth upon ashes as bread,
and whose joy is at the mouth of the furnace.
Let Jabez bless with Tarantula, who maketh his bed in the moss, which he
feedeth, that the pilgrim may take heed to his way.
Let Jakim with the Satyr bless God in the dance. -Let Iddo praise the Lord with the Moth -- the writings of man perish as the
garment, but the Book of God endureth for ever.
Let Nebuchadnezzar bless with the Grashopper -- the pomp and vanities of the
world are as the herb of the field, but the glory of the Lord increaseth for ever.
Let Naboth bless with the Canker-worm -- envy is cruel and killeth and preyeth
upon that which God has given to aspire and bear fruit.
Let Lud bless with the Elk, the strenuous asserter of his liberty, and the
maintainer of his ground.
Let Obadiah with the Palmer-worm bless God for the remnant that is left.
Let Agur bless with the Cockatrice -- The consolation of the world is deceitful,
and temporal honour the crown of him that creepeth.
36
Let Ithiel bless with the Baboon, whose motions are regular in the wilderness,
and who defendeth himself with a staff against the assailant.
Let Ucal bless with the Cameleon, which feedeth on the Flowers and washeth
himself in the dew.
Let Lemuel bless with the Wolf, which is a dog without a master, but the Lord
hears his cries and feeds him in the desert.
Let Hananiah bless with the Civet, which is pure from benevolence.
Let Azarias bless with the Reindeer, who runneth upon the waters, and wadeth
thro the land in snow.
Let Mishael bless with the Stoat -- the praise of the Lord gives propriety to all
things.
Let Savaran bless with the Elephant, who gave his life for his country that he
might put on immortality.
Let Nehemiah, the imitator of God, bless with the Monkey, who is work'd down
from Man.
Let Manasses bless with the Wild-Ass -- liberty begetteth insolence, but necessity
is the mother of prayer.
Let Jebus bless with the Camelopard, which is good to carry and to parry and to
kneel.
Let Huz bless with the Polypus -- lively subtlety is acceptable to the Lord.
Let Buz bless with the Jackall -- but the Lord is the Lion's provider.
Let Meshullam bless with the Dragon, who maketh his den in desolation and
rejoiceth amongst the ruins.
Let Enoch bless with the Rackoon, who walked with God as by the instinct.
Let Hashbadana bless with the Catamountain, who stood by the Pulpit of God
against the dissensions of the Heathen.
Let Ebed-Melech bless with the Mantiger, the blood of the Lord is sufficient to do
37
away the offence of Cain, and reinstate the creature which is amerced.
Let A Little Child with a Serpent bless Him, who ordaineth strength in babes to
the confusion of the Adversary.
Let Huldah bless with the Silkworm -- the ornaments of the Proud are from the
bowells of their Betters.
Let Susanna bless with the Butterfly -- beauty hath wings, but chastity is the
Cherub.
Let Sampson bless with the Bee, to whom the Lord hath given strength to annoy
the assailant and wisdom to his strength.
Let Amasiah bless with the Chaffer -- the top of the tree is for the brow of the
champion, who has given the glory to God.
Let Hashum bless with the Fly, whose health is the honey of the air, but he feeds
upon the thing strangled, and perisheth.
Let Malchiah bless with the Gnat -- it is good for man and beast to mend their
pace.
Let Pedaiah bless with the Humble-Bee, who loves himself in solitude and makes
his honey alone.
Let Maaseiah bless with the Drone, who with the appearance of a Bee is neither a
soldier nor an artist, neither a swordsman nor smith.
Let Urijah bless with the Scorpion, which is a scourge against the murmurers -the Lord keep it from our coasts.
Let Anaiah bless with the Dragon-fly, who sails over the pond by the wood-side
and feedeth on the cressies.
Let Zorobabel bless with the Wasp, who is the Lord's architect, and buildeth his
edifice in armour.
Let Jehu bless with the Hornet, who is the soldier of the Lord to extirpate
abomination and to prepare the way of peace.
Let Mattithiah bless with the Bat, who inhabiteth the desolations of pride and
38
flieth amongst the tombs.
Let Elias which is the innocency of the Lord rejoice with the Dove.
Let Asaph rejoice with the Nightingale -- The musician of the Lord! and the
watchman of the Lord!
Let Shema rejoice with the Glowworm, who is the lamp of the traveller and mead
of the musician.
Let Jeduthun rejoice with the Woodlark, who is sweet and various.
Let Chenaniah rejoice with Chloris, in the vivacity of his powers and the beauty of
his person.
Let Gideoni rejoice with the Goldfinch, who is shrill and loud, and full withal.
Let Giddalti rejoice with the Mocking-bird, who takes off the notes of the Aviary
and reserves his own.
Let Jogli rejoice with the Linnet, who is distinct and of mild delight.
Let Benjamin bless and rejoice with the Redbird, who is soft and soothing.
Let Dan rejoice with the Blackbird, who praises God with all his heart, and
biddeth to be of good cheer.
~ Christopher Smart,#NFDB
528:Ii. The Quest Of Silence
Secreta Silvarum: Prelude
Oh yon, when Holda leaves her hill
of winter, on the quest of June,
black oaks with emerald lamplets thrill
that flicker forth to her magic tune.
At dawn the forest shivers whist
and all the hidden glades awake;
then sunshine gems the milk-white mist
and the soft-swaying branches make
along its edge a woven sound
of legends that allure and flit
and horns wound towards the enchanted ground
where, in the light moon-vapours lit,
all night, while the black woods in mass,
serried, forbid with goblin fear,
fay-revels gleam o'er the pale grass
till shrill-throats ring the matins near.
Oh there, oh there in the sweet o' the year,
adventurous in the witching green,
last feal of the errant spear,
to seek the eyes of lost Undine
clear blue above the blue cold stream
that lingers till her plaint be done,
oh, and perchance from that sad dream
to woo her, laughing, to the sun
and that glad blue that seems to flow
far up, where dipping branches lift
sidelong their soft-throng'd frondage slow
and slow the thin cloud-fleecelets drift.
Oh, there to drowse the summer thro'
deep in some odorous twilit lair,
swoon'd in delight of golden dew
within the sylvan witches hair;
the while on half-veil'd eyes to feel
the yellow sunshafts broken dim,
and seldom waftures moth-like steal
and settle, on the bare-flung limb:
or under royal autumn, pall'd
27
in smouldering magnificence,
to feel the olden heart enthrall'd
in wisdoms of forgotten sense,
and mad desire and pain that fill'd
red August's heart of throbbing bloom
in one grave hour of knowledge still'd
where glory ponders o'er its doom:
and, when the boughs are sombre lace
and silence chisels silver rime,
o'er some old hearth, with dim-lit face,
to dream the vanish'd forest prime,
the springtime's sweet and June's delight,
more precious now that hard winds chill
the dews that made their mornings bright,
and Holda sleeps beneath her hill.
What tho' the outer day be brazen rude
not here the innocence of morn is fled:
this green unbroken dusk attests it wed
with freshness, where the shadowy breasts are nude,
hers guess'd, whose looks, felt dewy-cool, elude —
save this reproach that smiles on foolish dread:
wood-word, grave gladness in its heart, unsaid,
knoweth the guarded name of Quietude.
Nor start, if satyr-shapes across the path
tumble; it is but children: lo, the wrath
couchant, heraldic, of her beasts that pierce
with ivory single horn whate'er misplaced
outrageous nears, or whinny of the fierce
Centaur, or mailed miscreant unchaste.
II
O friendly shades, where anciently I grew!
me entering at dawn a child ye knew,
all little welcoming leaves, and jealous wove
your roof of lucid emerald above,
that scarce therethro' the envious sun might stray,
save smiling dusk or, lure for idle play,
such glancing finger your chance whim allows,
all that long forenoon of the tuneful boughs;
which growing on, the myriad small noise
28
and flitting of the wood-life's busy joys,
thro' tenuous weft of sound, had left, divined,
the impending threat of silence, clear, behind:
and, noon now past, that hush descended large
in the wood's heart, and caught me in its marge
of luminous foreboding widely flung;
so hourlong I have stray'd, and tho' among
the glimpsing lures of all green aisles delays
that revelation of its wondrous gaze,
yet am I glad to wander, glad to seek
and find not, so the gather'd tufts bespeak,
naked, reclined, its friendly neighbourhood —
as in this hollow of the rarer wood
where, listening, in the cool glen-shade, with me,
white-bloom'd and quiet, stands a single tree;
rich spilth of gold is on the eastward rise;
westward the violet gloom eludes mine eyes.
This is the house of Pan, not whom blind craze
and babbling wood-wits tell, where bare flints blaze,
noon-tide terrific with the single shout,
but whom behind each bole sly-peering out
the traveller knows, but turning, disappear'd
with chuckle of laughter in his thicket-beard,
and rustle of scurrying faun-feet where the ground
each autumn deeper feels its yellow mound.
Onward: and lo, at length, the secret glade,
soft-gleaming grey, what time the grey trunks fade
in the white vapours o'er its further rim.
'Tis no more time to linger: now more dim
the woods are throng'd to ward the haunted spot
where, as I turn my homeward face, I wot
the nymphs of twilight have resumed, unheard,
their glimmering dance upon the glimmering sward.
III
The point of noon is past, outside: light is asleep;
brooding upon its perfect hour: the woods are deep
and solemn, fill'd with unseen presences of light
that glint, allure, and hide them; ever yet more bright
(it seems) the turn of a path will show them: nay, but rest;
seek not, and think not; dream, and know not; this is best:
the hour is full; be lost: whispering, the woods are bent,
29
This is the only revelation; be content.
IIII
The forest has its horrors, as the sea:
and ye that enter from the staling lea
into the early freshness kept around
the waiting trunks that watch its rarer bound,
after the glistening song that, sprinkled, leaves
an innocence upon the glancing leaves;
O ye that dream to find the morning yet
secret and chaste, beside her mirror set,
some glimmering source o'ershadow'd, where the light
is coolness felt, whom filter'd glints invite
thro' the slow-shifting green transparency;
O ye that hearken towards pale mystery
a rustle of hidden pinions, and obey
the beckoning of each little leaf asway:
return, return, or e'er to warn you back
the shadow bend along your rearward track
longer and longer from the brooding west;
return, and evening shall bosom your rest
in the warm gloom that wraps the blazing hearth:
there hear from wither'd lips long wean'd of mirth
the tale that lulls old watches; — How they rode,
brave-glittering once, where the brave morning glow'd
along the forest-edges, and were lost
for ever, where the crossing trunks are most;
and, far beyond the dim arcades of song,
where moon-mist weaves a dancing elfin throng,
and far beyond the luring glades that brood
around a maiden thought of Quietude,
the savage realm begins, of lonely dread,
black branches from the fetid marish bred
that lurks to trap the loyal careless foot,
and gaping trunks protrude a snaky root
o'er slinking paths that centre, where beneath
a sudden rock on the short blasted heath,
bare-set, a cavern lurks and holds within
its womb, obscene with some corroding sin,
coil'd on itself and stirring, a squat shade
before the entrance rusts a broken blade.
The forest hides its horrors, as the sea.
30
V
No emerald spring, no royal autumn-red,
no glint of morn or sullen vanquish'd day
might venture against this obscene horror's sway
blackly from the witch-blasted branches shed.
No silver bells around the bridle-head
ripple, and on no quest the pennons play:
the path's romance is shuddering disarray,
or eaten by the marsh: the knights are dead.
The Lady of the Forest was a tale:
of the white unicorns that round her sleep
gamboll'd, no turf retains a print; and man,
rare traveller, feels, athwart the knitted bale
watching, now lord of loathly deaths that creep,
maliciously the senile leer of Pan.
Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills,
and fire made solid in the flinty stone,
thick-mass'd or scatter'd pebble, fire that fills
the breathless hour that lives in fire alone.
This valley, long ago the patient bed
of floods that carv'd its antient amplitude,
in stillness of the Egyptian crypt outspread,
endures to drown in noon-days tyrant mood.
Behind the veil of burning silence bound,
vast life's innumerous busy littleness
is hush'd in vague-conjectured blur of sound
that dulls the brain with slumbrous weight, unless
some dazzling puncture let the stridence throng
in the cicada's torture-point of song.
Peace dwells in blessing o'er a place
folded within the hills to keep
and under dark boughs seawind-frayd:
and the kind slopes where soothings creep,
in the gold light or the green shade,
wear evermore the ancient face
of silence, and the eyes of sleep;
because they are listening evermore
unto the seawinds what they tell
to the wise, nodding, indifferent trees
high on the ridge that guard the dell,
31
of wars on many a far grey shore
and how the shores decay and fade
before the obstinate old seas:
and all their triumphing is made
a tale that dwindles with the eves,
while the soft dusk lingers, delay'd,
and drifts between the indolent leaves.
A gray and dusty daylight flows
athwart the shatter'd traceries,
pale absence of the ruin'd rose.
Here once, on labour-harden'd knees,
beneath the kindly vaulted gloom
that gather'd them in quickening ease,
they saw the rose of heaven bloom,
alone, in heights of musky air,
with many an angel's painted plume.
So, shadowing forth their dim-felt prayer,
the daedal glass compell'd to grace
the outer days indifferent stare,
where now its disenhallow'd face
beholds the petal-ribs enclose
nought, in their web of shatter'd lace,
save this pale absence of the rose.
Breaking the desert's tawny level ring
three columns, an oasis; but no shade
falls from the curl'd acanthus-leaves; no spring
bubbles soft laughter for its leaning maid.
The cell is waste: where once the god abode
a burning desolation furls its wing:
enter, and lo! once more, the hopeless road
world-wide, the tawny desert's level ring.
Before she pass'd behind the glacier wall
that hides her white eternal sorceries
the northern witch, in clinging ermine pall,
cast one last look along the shallow seas,
a look that held them in its numbing thrall
and melted onward to the sandy leas
where our lorn city lives its lingering fall
and wistful summer shrinks in scant-clad trees.
32
Hence came one greyness over grass and stone:
the silent-lapping waters fade and tone
into the air and into them the land;
and all along our stagnant waterways
a drown'd and dusky gleaming sleeps, unbann'd,
the lurking twilight of her vanish'd gaze.
Out of no quarter of the charted sky
flung in the bitter wind intolerably,
abrupt, the trump that sings behind the end
exults alone. Here grass is none to bend:
the stony plain blackens with rapid night
that best reveals the land's inflicted blight
since in the smitten hero-hand the sword
broke, and the hope the long-dumb folk adored,
and over all the north a tragic flare
told Valhall perish'd and the void's despair
to dwell as erst, all disinhabited,
a vault above the heart its hungering led.
The strident clangour cuts; but space is whole,
inert, absorb'd in dead regret. Here, sole,
on the bare uplands, stands, vast thro' the gloom
staring, to mark an irretrievable doom,
the stranger stone, sphinx-couchant, thunder-hurl'd
from red star-ruin o'er the elder world.
This night is not of gentle draperies
or cluster'd banners where the star-breaths roam,
nor hangs above the torch a lurching dome
of purple shade that slips with phantom ease;
but, on our apathy encroaching, these,
stable, whose smooth defiance none hath clomb,
basalt and jade, a patience of the gnome,
polish'd and shadow-brimm'd transparencies.
Far, where our oubliette is shut, above,
we guess the ample lids that never move
beneath her brows, each massive arch inert
hung high-contemptuous o'er the blatant wars
we deem'd well waged for her, who may avert
some Janus-face that smiles on hidden stars.
Lightning: and, momently, the silhouette,
33
flat on the far horizon, comes and goes
of that night-haunting city; minaret,
dome, spire, all sharp while yet the levin glows.
Day knows it not; whether fierce noon-tide fuse
earth's rim with sky in throbbing haze, or clear
gray softness tinge afresh the enamell'd hues
of mead and stream, it shows no tipping spear.
Night builds it: now upon the marbled plain
a blur, discern'd lurking, ever more nigh;
now close against the walls that hem my reign
a leaguer-town, threatening my scope of sky.
So late I saw it; in a misty moon
it bulk'd, all dusky and transparent, dumb
as ever, fast in some prodigious swoon:
its battlements deserted — who might come?
— ay, one! his eyes, 'neath the high turban's plume,
watch'd mine, intent, behind the breast-high stone:
his face drew mine across the milky gloom:
a sudden moonbeam show'd it me, my own!
ONE! an iron core, shock'd and dispers'd
in throbs of sound that ebb across the bay:
I shudder: the one clang smites disarray
thro' all my sense, that starts awake, inhears'd
in the whole lifeless world: and some accurs'd
miasma steals, resumed from all decay,
where the dead tide lies flat round the green quay,
hinting what self-fordone despairs it nurs'd.
The corpse of time is stark upon the night:
my soul is coffin'd, staring, grave-bedight,
upon some dance of death that reels and feasts
around its living tomb, with vampire grin,
inverted sacraments of Satan's priests —
and, mask'd no more, the maniac face of sin.
There is a far-off thrill that troubles me:
a faint thin ripple of shadow, momently,
dies out across my lucid icy cell.
I am betrayed by winter to the spell
of morbid sleep, that somewhere rolls its waves
insidiously, gather'd from unblest graves,
to creep above each distant crumbled mole.
34
When that assault is full against my soul,
I must go down, thro' chapels black with mould,
past ruin'd doors, whose arches, ridged with gold,
catch, in their grooves, a gloom more blackly dript,
some stairway winding hours-long towards the crypt
where panic night lies stricken 'neath the curse
exuding from the dense enormous hearse
of some old vampire-god, whose bulk, within,
lies gross and festering in his shroud of sin.
~ Christopher John Brennan,#NFDB
529:A JOURNAL.
DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW-TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858.
Wise and polite,--and if I drew
Their several portraits, you would own
Chaucer had no such worthy crew,
Nor Boccace in Decameron.
We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,
Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks
Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach
The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach
We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,--
Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.
Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,
With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,
Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,
Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead,
And other Titans without muse or name.
Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,
Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills,
And made our distance wider, boat from boat,
As each would hear the oracle alone.
By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid
Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,
Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,
Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,
Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,
On through the Upper Saranac, and up
Pere Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass
Winding through grassy shallows in and out,
Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge,
To Follansbee Water, and the Lake of Loons.
Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,
Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge
Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.
A pause and council: then, where near the head
On the east a bay makes inward to the land
Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,
And in the twilight of the forest noon
Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.
We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,
Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,
Then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire.
The wood was sovran with centennial trees,--
Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,
Linden and spruce. In strict society
Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine,
Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew thereby.
Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,
The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.
'Welcome!' the wood god murmured through the leaves,--
'Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.'
Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs,
Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.
Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,
Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.
Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft
In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,
Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,
And greet unanimous the joyful change.
So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,
Though late returning to her pristine ways.
Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold;
And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,
Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.
Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air
That circled freshly in their forest dress
Made them to boys again. Happier that they
Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,
At the first mounting of the giant stairs.
No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,
No door-bell heralded a visitor,
No courier waits, no letter came or went,
Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold;
The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,
The falling rain will spoil no holiday.
We were made freemen of the forest laws,
All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,
Essaying nothing she cannot perform.
In Adirondac lakes,
At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded:
Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make
His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain,
He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn:
A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,
And in the left, a gun, his needful arms.
By turns we praised the stature of our guides,
Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill
To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,
To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs
Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down:
Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,
And wit to track or take him in his lair.
Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,
In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides;
Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired
Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.
Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!
No city airs or arts pass current here.
Your rank is all reversed: let men of cloth
Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:
They are the doctors of the wilderness,
And we the low-prized laymen.
In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test
Which few can put on with impunity.
What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?
Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here.
The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb;
The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks
He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,
Tell the sun's time, determine the true north,
Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods
To thread by night the nearest way to camp?
Ask you, how went the hours?
All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,
North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,
Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer,
Or whipping its rough surface for a trout;
Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon;
Challenging Echo by our guns and cries;
Or listening to the laughter of the loon;
Or, in the evening twilight's latest red,
Beholding the procession of the pines;
Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,
In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter
Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds
Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist.
Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods
Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck
Who stands astonished at the meteor light,
Then turns to bound away,--is it too late?
Sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark,
Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five;
Sometimes our wits at sally and retort,
With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle;
Or parties scaled the near acclivities
Competing seekers of a rumoured lake,
Whose unauthenticated waves we named
Lake Probability,--our carbuncle,
Long sought, not found.
Two Doctors in the camp
Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain,
Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew,
Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth;
Insatiate skill in water or in air
Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss;
The while, one leaden pot of alcohol
Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds.
Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants,
Orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus,
Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride,
Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss,
Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.
Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed,
The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker
Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp.
As water poured through the hollows of the hills
To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets,
So Nature shed all beauty lavishly
From her redundant horn.
Lords of this realm,
Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day
Rounded by hours where each outdid the last
In miracles of pomp, we must be proud,
As if associates of the sylvan gods.
We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac,
So pure the Alpine element we breathed,
So light, so lofty pictures came and went.
We trode on air, contemned the distant town,
Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned
That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge,
And how we should come hither with our sons,
Hereafter,--willing they, and more adroit.
Hard fare, hard bed, and comic misery,--
The midge, the blue-fly, and the mosquito
Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands:
But, on the second day, we heed them not,
Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries,
Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.
For who defends our leafy tabernacle
From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,--
Who but the midge, mosquito, and the fly,
Which past endurance sting the tender cit,
But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,
Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?
Our foaming ale we drunk from hunters' pans,
Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave
Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread;
All ate like abbots, and, if any missed
Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss
With hunters' appetite and peals of mirth.
And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore,
Crusoe, Crusader, Pius AEneas, said aloud,
"Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating
Food indigestible":--then murmured some,
Others applauded him who spoke the truth.
Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought
Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday
'Mid all the hints and glories of the home.
For who can tell what sudden privacies
Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry
Of scholars furloughed from their tasks, and let
Into this Oreads' fended Paradise,
As chapels in the city's thoroughfares,
Whither gaunt Labour slips to wipe his brow,
And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest.
Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke
To each apart, lifting her lovely shows
To spiritual lessons pointed home.
And as through dreams in watches of the night,
So through all creatures in their form and ways
Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,
Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense
Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.
Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler?
Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.
Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,
Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light,
Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?
And presently the sky is changed; O world!
What pictures and what harmonies are thine!
The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,
So like the soul of me, what if't were me?
A melancholy better than all mirth.
Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,
Or at the foresight of obscurer years?
Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory,
Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty
Superior to all its gaudy skirts.
And, that no day of life may lack romance,
The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down
A private beam into each several heart.
Daily the bending skies solicit man,
The seasons chariot him from this exile,
The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,
The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights
Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.
With a vermilion pencil mark the day
When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs
Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls
Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront
Two of our mates returning with swift oars.
One held a printed journal waving high
Caught from a late-arriving traveller,
Big with great news, and shouted the report
For which the world had waited, now firm fact,
Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,
And landed on our coast, and pulsating
With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries
From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,
Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path
Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,
Match God's equator with a zone of art,
And lift man's public action to a height
Worthy the enormous clouds of witnesses,
When linked hemispheres attest his deed.
We have few moments in the longest life
Of such delight and wonder as there grew,--
Nor yet unsuited to that solitude:
A burst of joy, as if we told the fact
To ears intelligent; as if gray rock
And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know
This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind;
As if we men were talking in a vein
Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs,
And a prime end of the most subtle element
Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves!
Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops,
Let them hear well! 't is theirs as much as ours.
A spasm throbbing through the pedestals
Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,
Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill
To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.
The lightning has run masterless too long;
He must to school, and learn his verb and noun,
And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage,
Spelling with guided tongue man's messages
Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.
And yet I marked, even in the manly joy
Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat,
(Perchance I erred,) a shade of discontent;
Or was it for mankind a generous shame,
As of a luck not quite legitimate,
Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part?
Was it a college pique of town and gown,
As one within whose memory it burned
That not academicians, but some lout,
Found ten years since the Californian gold?
And now, again, a hungry company
Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade,
Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools
Of science, not from the philosophers,
Had won the brightest laurel of all time.
'Twas always thus, and will be; hand and head
Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift,
The other slow,--this the Prometheus,
And that the Jove,--yet, howsoever hid,
It was from Jove the other stole his fire,
And, without Jove, the good had never been.
It is not Iroquois or cannibals,
But ever the free race with front sublime,
And these instructed by their wisest too,
Who do the feat, and lift humanity.
Let not him mourn who best entitled was,
Nay, mourn not one: let him exult,
Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant,
And water it with wine, nor watch askance
Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit:
Enough that mankind eat, and are refreshed.
We flee away from cities, but we bring
The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers,
Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.
We praise the guide, we praise the forest life;
But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore
Of books and arts and trained experiment,
Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz?
O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook
Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail
The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge
Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears
From a log-cabin stream Beethoven's notes
On the piano, played with master's hand.
'Well done!' he cries; 'the bear is kept at bay,
The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire;
All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold,
This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall,
This wild plantation will suffice to chase.
Now speed the gay celerities of art,
What in the desert was impossible
Within four walls is possible again,--
Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill,
Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife
Of keen competing youths, joined or alone
To outdo each other, and extort applause.
Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep.
Twirl the old wheels? Time takes fresh start again
On for a thousand years of genius more.'
The holidays were fruitful, but must end;
One August evening had a cooler breath;
Into each mind intruding duties crept;
Under the cinders burned the fires of home;
Nay, letters found us in our paradise;
So in the gladness of the new event
We struck our camp, and left the happy hills.
The fortunate star that rose on us sank not;
The prodigal sunshine rested on the land,
The rivers gambolled onward to the sea,
And Nature, the inscrutable and mute,
Permitted on her infinite repose
Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons,
As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Adirondacs
,#NFDB
530:Epilogue
(THE GRAVEYARD OF SPOON RIVER. TWO VOICES ARE HEARD BEHIND A
SCREEN DECORATED WITH DIABOLICAL AND ANGELIC FIGURES IN VARIOUS
ALLEGORICAL RELATIONS. A FAINT LIGHT SHOWS DIMLY THROUGH THE
SCREEN AS IF IT WERE WOVEN OF LEAVES, BRANCHES AND SHADOWS.)
FIRST VOICE
A game of checkers?
SECOND VOICE
Well, I don't mind.
FIRST VOICE
I move the Will.
SECOND VOICE
You're playing it blind.
FIRST VOICE
Then here's the Soul.
SECOND VOICE
Checked by the Will.
FIRST VOICE
Eternal Good!
SECOND VOICE
And Eternal Ill.
FIRST VOICE
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I haste for the King row.
SECOND VOICE
Save your breath.
FIRST VOICE
I was moving Life.
SECOND VOICE
You're checked by Death.
FIRST VOICE
Very good, here's Moses.
SECOND VOICE
And here's the Jew.
FIRST VOICE
My next move is Jesus.
SECOND VOICE
St. Paul for you!
FIRST VOICE
Yes, but St. Peter –
SECOND VOICE
You might have foreseen –
FIRST VOICE
You're in the King row --
101
SECOND VOICE
With Constantine!
FIRST VOICE
I'll go back to Athens.
SECOND VOICE
Well, here's the Persian.
FIRST VOICE
All right, the Bible.
SECOND VOICE
Pray now, what version?
FIRST VOICE
I take up Buddha.
SECOND VOICE
It never will work.
FIRST VOICE
From the corner Mahomet.
SECOND VOICE
I move the Turk.
FIRST VOICE
The game is tangled; where are we now?
SECOND VOICE
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You're dreaming worlds. I'm in the King row.
Move as you will, if I can't wreck you
I'll thwart you, harry you, rout you, check you.
FIRST VOICE
I'm tired. I'll send for my Son to play.
I think he can beat you finally -SECOND VOICE
Eh?
FIRST VOICE
I must preside at the stars' convention.
SECOND VOICE
Very well, my lord, but I beg to mention
I'll give this game my direct attention.
FIRST VOICE
A game indeed! But Truth is my quest.
SECOND VOICE
Beaten, you walk away with a jest.
I strike the table, I scatter the checkers.
(A rattle of a falling table and checkers
flying over a floor.)
Aha! You armies and iron deckers,
Races and states in a cataclysm -Now for a day of atheism!
(The screen vanishes and BEELZEBUB steps forward carrying a trumpet, which
he blows faintly. Immediately LOKI and YOGARINDRA start up from the shadows
of night.)
103
BEELZEBUB
Good evening, Loki!
LOKI
The same to you!
BEELZEBUB
And Yogarindra!
YOGARINDRA
My greetings, too.
LOKI
Whence came you, comrade?
BEELZEBUB
From yonder screen.
YOGARINDRA
And what were you doing?
BEELZEBUB
Stirring His spleen.
LOKI
How did you do it?
BEELZEBUB
I made it rough
In a game of checkers.
LOKI
104
Good enough!
YOGARINDRA
I thought I heard the sounds of a battle.
BEELZEBUB
No doubt! I made the checkers rattle,
Turning the table over and strewing
The bits of wood like an army pursuing.
YOGARINDRA
I have a game! Let us make a man.
LOKI
My net is waiting him, if you can.
YOGARINDRA
And here's my mirror to fool him with -BEELZEBUB
Mystery, falsehood, creed and myth.
LOKI
But no one can mold him, friend, but you.
BEELZEBUB
Then to the sport without more ado.
YOGARINDRA
Hurry the work ere it grow to day.
BEELZEBUB
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I set me to it. Where is the clay?
(He scrapes the earth with his hands and begins to model.)
BEELZEBUB
Out of the dust,
Out of the slime,
A little rust,
And a little lime.
Muscle and gristle,
Mucin, stone
Brayed with a pestle,
Fat and bone.
Out of the marshes,
Out of the vaults,
Matter crushes
Gas and salts.
What is this you call a mind,
Flitting, drifting, pale and blind,
Soul of the swamp that rides the wind?
Jack-o'-lantern, here you are!
Dream of heaven, pine for a star,
Chase your brothers to and fro,
Back to the swamp at last you'll go.
Hilloo! Hilloo!
THE VALLEY
Hilloo! Hilloo!
(Beelzebub in scraping up the earth turns out a skull.)
BEELZEBUB
Old one, old one.
Now ere I break you
Crush you and make you
Clay for my use,
Let me observe you:
You were a bold one
106
Flat at the dome of you,
Heavy the base of you,
False to the home of you,
Strong was the face of you,
Strange to all fears.
Yet did the hair of you
Hide what you were.
Now to re-nerve you -(He crushes the skull between his hands and mixes it with the clay.)
Now you are dust,
Limestone and rust.
I mold and I stir
And make you again.
THE VALLEY
Again? Again?
(In the same manner BEELZEBUB has fashioned several figures, standing them
against the trees.)
LOKI
Now for the breath of life. As I remember
You have done right to mold your creatures first,
And stand them up.
BEELZEBUB
From gravitation
I make the will.
YOGARINDRA
Out of sensation
Comes his ill. Out of my mirror
Springs his error.
Who was so cruel
To make him the slave
Of me the sorceress, you the knave,
And you the plotter to catch his thought,
Whatever he did, whatever he sought?
107
With a nature dual
Of will and mind,
A thing that sees, and a thing that's blind.
Come! to our dance! Something hated him
Made us over him, therefore fated him.
(They join hands and dance.)
LOKI
Passion, reason, custom, ruels,
Creeds of the churches, lore of the schools,
Taint in the blood and strength of soul.
Flesh too weak for the will's control;
Poverty, riches, pride of birth,
Wailing, laughter, over the earth,
Here I have you caught again,
Enter my web, ye sons of men.
YOGARINDRA
Look in my mirror! Isn't it real?
What do you think now, what do you feel?
Here is treasure of gold heaped up;
Here is wine in the festal cup.
Tendrils blossoming, turned to whips,
Love with her breasts and scarlet lips.
Breathe in their nostrils.
BEELZEBUB
Falsehood's breath,
Out of nothingness into death.
Out of the mold, out of the rocks,
Wonder, mockery, paradox!
Soaring spirit, groveling flesh,
Bait the trap, and spread the mesh.
Give him hunger, lure him with truth,
Give him the iris hopes of Youth.
Starve him, shame him, fling him down,
Whirled in the vortex of the town.
Break him, age him, till he curse
The idiot face of the universe.
108
Over and over we mix the clay, –
What was dust is alive to-day.
THE THREE
Thus is the hell-born tangle wound
Swiftly, swiftly round and round.
BEELEZEBUB
(Waving his trumpet.)
You live! Away!
ONE OF THE FIGURES
How strange and new!
I am I, and another, too.
ANOTHER FIGURE
I was a sun-dew's leaf, but now
What is this longing? -ANOTHER FIGURE
Earth below
I was a seedling magnet-tipped
Drawn down earth -ANOTHER FIGURE
And I was gripped
Electrons in a granite stone,
Now I think.
ANOTHER FIGURE
Oh, how alone!
ANOTHER FIGURE
109
My lips to thine. Through thee I find
Something alone by love divined!
BEELZEBUB
Begone! No, wait. I have bethought me, friends;
Let's give a play.
(He waves his trumpet.)
To yonder green rooms go.
(The figures disappear.)
YOGARINDRA
Oh, yes, a play! That's very well, I think,
But who will be the audience? I must throw
Illusion over all.
LOKI
And I must shift
The scenery, and tangle up the plot.
BEELZEBUB
Well, so you shall! Our audience shall some
From yonder graves.
(He blows his trumpet slightly louder than before. The scene changes. A stage
arises among the graves. The curtain is down, concealing the creatures just
created, illuminated halfway up by spectral lights. BEELZEBUB stands before the
curtain.)
BEELZEBUB
(A terrific blast of the trumpet.)
Who-o-o-o-o-o!
(Immediately there is a rustling as of the shells of grasshoppers stirred by a
wind; and hundreds of the dead, including those who have appeared in the
Anthology, hurry to the sound of the trumpet.)
110
A VOICE
Gabriel! Gabriel!
MANY VOICES
The Judgment day!
BEELZEBUB
Be quiet, if you please
At least until the stars fall and the moon.
MANY VOICES
Save us! Save us!
(Beelzebub extends his hands over the audience with a benedictory motion and
restores order.)
BEELZEBUB
Ladies and gentlemen, your kind attention
To my interpretation of the scene.
I rise to give your fancy comprehension,
And analyze the parts of the machine.
My mood is such that I would not deceive you,
Though still a liar and the father of it,
From judgment's frailty I would retrieve you,
Though falsehood is my art and though I love it.
Down in the habitations whence I rise,
The roots of human sorrow boundless spread.
Long have I watched them draw the strength that lies
In clay made richer by the rotting dead.
Here is a blossom, here a twisted stalk,
Here fruit that sourly withers ere its prime;
And here a growth that sprawls across the walk,
Food for the green worm, which it turns to slime.
The ruddy apple with a core of cork
Springs from a root which in a hollow dangles,
Not skillful husbandry nor laborious work
111
Can save the tree which lightning breaks and tangles.
Why does the bright nasturtium scarcely flower
But that those insects multiply and grow,
Which make it food, and in the very hour
In which the veined leaves and blossoms blow?
Why does a goodly tree, while fast maturing,
Turn crooked branches covered o'er with scale?
Why does the tree whose youth was not assuring
Prosper and bear while all its fellows fail?
I under earth see much. I know the soil.
I know where mold is heavy and where thin.
I see the stones that thwart the plowman's toil,
The crooked roots of what the priests call sin.
I know all secrets, even to the core,
What seedlings will be upas, pine or laurel;
It cannot change howe'er the field's worked o'er.
Man's what he is and that's the devil's moral.
So with the souls of the ensuing drama
They sprang from certain seed in certain earth.
Behold them in the devil's cyclorama,
Shown in their proper light for all they're worth.
Now to my task: I'll give an exhibition
Of mixing the ingredients of spirit.
(He waves his hand.)
Come, crucible, perform your magic mission,
Come, recreative fire, and hover near it!
I'll make a soul, or show how one is made.
(He waves his wand again. Parti-colored flames appear.)
This is the woman you shall see anon!
(A red flame appears.)
This hectic flame makes all the world afraid:
It was a soldier's scourge which ate the bone.
His daughter bore the lady of the action,
And died at thirty-nine of scrofula.
She-was a creature of a sweet attraction,
Whose sex-obsession no one ever saw.
(A purple flame appears.)
Lo! this denotes aristocratic strains
112
Back in the centuries of France's glory.
(A blue flame appears.)
And this the will that pulls against the chains
Her father strove until his hair was hoary.
Sorrow and failure made his nature cold,
He never loved the child whose woe is shown,
And hence her passion for the things which gold
Brings in this world of pride, and brings alone.
The human heart that's famished from its birth
Turns to the grosser treasures, that is plain.
Thus aspiration fallen fills the earth
With jungle growths of bitterness and pain.
Of Celtic, Gallic fire our heroine!
Courageous, cruel, passionate and proud.
False, vengeful, cunning, without fear o' sin.
A head that oft is bloody, but not bowed.
Now if she meet a man -- suppose our hero,
With whom her chemistry shall war yet mix,
As if she were her Borgia to his Nero,
'Twill look like one of Satan's little tricks!
However, it must be. The world's great garden
Is not all mine. I only sow the tares.
Wheat should be made immune, or else the Warden
Should stop their coming in the world's affairs.
But to our hero! Long ere he was born
I knew what would repel him and attract.
Such spirit mathematics, fig or thorn,
I can prognosticate before the fact.
(A yellow flame appears.)
This is a grandsire's treason in an orchard
Against a maid whose nature with his mated.
(Lurid flames appear.)
And this his memory distrait and tortured,
Which marked the child with hate because she hated.
Our heroine's grand dame was that maid's own cousin -But never this our man and woman knew.
The child, in time, of lovers had a dozen,
Then wed a gentleman upright and true.
And thus our hero had a double nature:
113
One half of him was bad, the other good.
The devil must exhaust his nomenclature
To make this puzzle rightly understood.
But when our hero and our heroine met
They were at once attracted, the repulsion
Was hidden under Passion, with her net
Which must enmesh you ere you feel revulsion.
The virus coursing in the soldier's blood,
The orchard's ghost, the unknown kinship 'twixt them,
Our hero's mother's lovers round them stood,
Shadows that smiled to see how Fate had fixed them.
This twain pledge vows and marry, that's the play.
And then the tragic features rise and deepen.
He is a tender husband. When away
The serpents from the orchard slyly creep in.
Our heroine, born of spirit none too loyal,
Picks fruit of knowledge -- leaves the tree of life.
Her fancy turns to France corrupt and royal,
Soon she forgets her duty as a wife.
You know the rest, so far as that's concerned,
She met exposure and her husband slew her.
He lost his reason, for the love she spurned.
He prized her as his own -- how slight he knew her.
(He waves a wand, showing a man in a prison cell.)
Now here he sits condemned to mount the gallows -He could not tell his story -- he is dumb.
Love, says your poets, is a grace that hallows,
I call it suffering and martyrdom.
The judge with pointed finger says, "You killed her."
Well, so he did -- but here's the explanation;
He could not give it. I, the drama-builder,
Show you the various truths and their relation.
(He waves his wand.)
Now, to begin. The curtain is ascending,
They meet at tea upon a flowery lawn.
Fair, is it not? How sweet their souls are blending -The author calls the play "Laocoon."
A VOICE
114
Only an earth dream.
ANOTHER VOICE
With which we are done.
A flash of a comet
Upon the earth stream.
ANOTHER VOICE
A dream twice removed,
A spectral confusion
Of earth's dread illusion.
A FAR VOICE
These are the ghosts
From the desolate coasts.
Would you go to them?
Only pursue them.
Whatever enshrined is
Within you is you.
In a place where no wind is,
Out of the damps,
Be ye as lamps.
Flame-like aspire,
To me alone true,
The Life and the Fire.
(BEELZEBUB, LOKI and YOGARINDRA vanish. The phantasmagoria fades out.
Where the dead seemed to have assembled, only heaps of leaves appear. There
is the light as of dawn. Voices of Spring.)
FIRST VOICE
The springtime is come, the winter departed,
She wakens from slumber and dances light-hearted.
The sun is returning,
We are done with alarms,
Earth lifts her face burning,
Held close in his arms.
The sun is an eagle
115
Who broods o'er his young,
The earth is his nursling
In whom he has flung
The life-flame in seed,
In blossom desire,
Till fire become life,
And life become fire.
SECOND VOICE
I slip and I vanish,
I baffle your eye;
I dive and I climb,
I change and I fly.
You have me, you lose me,
Who have me too well,
Now find me and use me -I am here in a cell.
THIRD VOICE
You are there in a cell?
Oh, now for a rod
With which to divine you -SECOND VOICE
Nay, child, I am God.
FOURTH VOICE
When the waking waters rise from their beds of snow, under the hill,
In little rooms of stone where they sleep when icicles reign,
The April breezes scurry through woodlands, saying
Awaken roots under cover of soil -- it is Spring again."
Then the sun exults, the moon is at peace, and voices
Call to the silver shadows to lift the flowers from their dreams.
And a longing, longing enters my heart of sorrow, my heart that rejoices
In the fleeting glimpse of a shining face, and her hair that gleams.
I arise and follow alone for hours the winding way by the river,
116
Hunting a vanishing light, and a solace for joy too deep.
Where do you lead me, wild one, on and on forever?
Over the hill, over the hill, and down to the meadows of sleep.
THE SUN
Over the soundless depths of space for a hundred million miles
Speeds the soul of me, silent thunder, struck from a harp of fire.
Before my eyes the planets wheel and a universe defiles,
I but a ruminant speck of dust upborne in a vast desire.
What is my universe that obeys me -- myself compelled to obey
A power that holds me and whirls me over a path that has no end?
And there are my children who call me great, the giver of life and day,
Myself a child who cry for life and know not whither I tend.
A million million suns above me, as if the curtain of night
Were hung before creation's flame, that shone through the weave of the cloth,
Each with its worlds and worlds and worlds crying upward for light,
For each is drawn in its course to what? -- as the candle draws the moth.
THE MILKY WAY
Orbits unending,
Life never ending,
Power without end.
A VOICE
Wouldst thou be lord,
Not peace but a sword.
Not heart's desire -Ever aspire.
Worship thy power,
Conquer thy hour,
Sleep not but strive,
So shalt thou live.
INFINITE DEPTHS
Infinite Law,
Infinite Life.
117
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB
531:Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon's bright diadem,
Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem,
Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns
From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns,
The ever-smitten Hermes empty left
His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:
From high Olympus had he stolen light,
On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight
Of his great summoner, and made retreat
Into a forest on the shores of Crete.
For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt
A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;
At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured
Pearls, while on land they witherd and adored.
Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont,
And in those meads where sometime she might haunt,
Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,
Though Fancys casket were unlockd to choose.
Ah, what a world of love was at her feet!
So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat
Burnt from his winged heels to either ear,
That from a whiteness, as the lily clear,
Blushd into roses mid his golden hair,
Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare.
From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew,
Breathing upon the flowers his passion new,
And wound with many a river to its head,
To find where this sweet nymph prepard her secret bed:
In vain; the sweet nymph might nowhere be found,
And so he rested, on the lonely ground,
Pensive, and full of painful jealousies
Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees.
There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice,
Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys
All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake:
When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!
When move in a sweet body fit for life,
And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife
Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!
The God, dove-footed, glided silently
Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed,
The taller grasses and full-flowering weed,
Until he found a palpitating snake,
Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake.
She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barrd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolvd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries
So rainbow-sided, touchd with miseries,
She seemd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demons mistress, or the demons self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadnes tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a womans mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.
Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
Came, as through bubbling honey, for Loves sake,
And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay,
Like a stoopd falcon ere he takes his prey.
Fair Hermes, crownd with feathers, fluttering light,
I had a splendid dream of thee last night:
I saw thee sitting, on a throne of gold,
Among the Gods, upon Olympus old,
The only sad one; for thou didst not hear
The soft, lute-fingerd Muses chaunting clear,
Nor even Apollo when he sang alone,
Deaf to his throbbing throats long, long melodious moan.
I dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes,
Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks,
And, swiftly as a bright Phoebean dart,
Strike for the Cretan isle; and here thou art!
Too gentle Hermes, hast thou found the maid?
Whereat the star of Lethe not delayd
His rosy eloquence, and thus inquired:
Thou smooth-lippd serpent, surely high inspired!
Thou beauteous wreath, with melancholy eyes,
Possess whatever bliss thou canst devise,
Telling me only where my nymph is fled,
Where she doth breathe! Bright planet, thou hast said,
Returnd the snake, but seal with oaths, fair God!
I swear, said Hermes, by my serpent rod,
And by thine eyes, and by thy starry crown!
Light flew his earnest words, among the blossoms blown.
Then thus again the brilliance feminine:
Too frail of heart! for this lost nymph of thine,
Free as the air, invisibly, she strays
About these thornless wilds; her pleasant days
She tastes unseen; unseen her nimble feet
Leave traces in the grass and flowers sweet;
From weary tendrils, and bowd branches green,
She plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen:
And by my power is her beauty veild
To keep it unaffronted, unassaild
By the love-glances of unlovely eyes,
Of Satyrs, Fauns, and bleard Silenus sighs.
Pale grew her immortality, for woe
Of all these lovers, and she grieved so
I took compassion on her, bade her steep
Her hair in weird syrops, that would keep
Her loveliness invisible, yet free
To wander as she loves, in liberty.
Thou shalt behold her, Hermes, thou alone,
If thou wilt, as thou swearest, grant my boon!
Then, once again, the charmed God began
An oath, and through the serpents ears it ran
Warm, tremulous, devout, psalterian.
Ravishd, she lifted her Circean head,
Blushd a live damask, and swift-lisping said,
I was a woman, let me have once more
A womans shape, and charming as before.
I love a youth of CorinthO the bliss!
Give me my womans form, and place me where he is.
Stoop, Hermes, let me breathe upon thy brow,
And thou shalt see thy sweet nymph even now.
The God on half-shut feathers sank serene,
She breathd upon his eyes, and swift was seen
Of both the guarded nymph near-smiling on the green.
It was no dream; or say a dream it was,
Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass
Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.
One warm, flushd moment, hovering, it might seem
Dashd by the wood-nymphs beauty, so he burnd;
Then, lighting on the printless verdure, turnd
To the swoond serpent, and with languid arm,
Delicate, put to proof the lythe Caducean charm.
So done, upon the nymph his eyes he bent,
Full of adoring tears and blandishment,
And towards her stept: she, like a moon in wane,
Faded before him, cowerd, nor could restrain
Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower
That faints into itself at evening hour:
But the God fostering her chilled hand,
She felt the warmth, her eyelids opend bland,
And, like new flowers at morning song of bees,
Bloomd, and gave up her honey to the lees.
Into the green-recessed woods they flew;
Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do.
Left to herself, the serpent now began
To change; her elfin blood in madness ran,
Her mouth foamd, and the grass, therewith besprent,
Witherd at dew so sweet and virulent;
Her eyes in torture fixd, and anguish drear,
Hot, glazd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear,
Flashd phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear.
The colours all inflamd throughout her train,
She writhd about, convulsd with scarlet pain:
A deep volcanian yellow took the place
Of all her milder-mooned bodys grace;
And, as the lava ravishes the mead,
Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede;
Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars,
Eclipsd her crescents, and lickd up her stars:
So that, in moments few, she was undrest
Of all her sapphires, greens, and amethyst,
And rubious-argent: of all these bereft,
Nothing but pain and ugliness were left.
Still shone her crown; that vanishd, also she
Melted and disappeard as suddenly;
And in the air, her new voice luting soft,
Cried, Lycius! gentle Lycius!Borne aloft
With the bright mists about the mountains hoar
These words dissolvd: Cretes forests heard no more.
Whither fled Lamia, now a lady bright,
A full-born beauty new and exquisite?
She fled into that valley they pass oer
Who go to Corinth from Cenchreas shore;
And rested at the foot of those wild hills,
The rugged founts of the Peraean rills,
And of that other ridge whose barren back
Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack,
South-westward to Cleone. There she stood
About a young birds flutter from a wood,
Fair, on a sloping green of mossy tread,
By a clear pool, wherein she passioned
To see herself escapd from so sore ills,
While her robes flaunted with the daffodils.
Ah, happy Lycius!for she was a maid
More beautiful than ever twisted braid,
Or sighd, or blushd, or on spring-flowered lea
Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy:
A virgin purest lippd, yet in the lore
Of love deep learned to the red hearts core:
Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain
To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain;
Define their pettish limits, and estrange
Their points of contact, and swift counterchange;
Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart
Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art;
As though in Cupids college she had spent
Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent,
And kept his rosy terms in idle languishment.
Why this fair creature chose so fairily
By the wayside to linger, we shall see;
But first tis fit to tell how she could muse
And dream, when in the serpent prison-house,
Of all she list, strange or magnificent:
How, ever, where she willd, her spirit went;
Whether to faint Elysium, or where
Down through tress-lifting waves the Nereids fair
Wind into Thetis bower by many a pearly stair;
Or where God Bacchus drains his cups divine,
Stretchd out, at ease, beneath a glutinous pine;
Or where in Plutos gardens palatine
Mulcibers columns gleam in far piazzian line.
And sometimes into cities she would send
Her dream, with feast and rioting to blend;
And once, while among mortals dreaming thus,
She saw the young Corinthian Lycius
Charioting foremost in the envious race,
Like a young Jove with calm uneager face,
And fell into a swooning love of him.
Now on the moth-time of that evening dim
He would return that way, as well she knew,
To Corinth from the shore; for freshly blew
The eastern soft wind, and his galley now
Grated the quaystones with her brazen prow
In port Cenchreas, from Egina isle
Fresh anchord; whither he had been awhile
To sacrifice to Jove, whose temple there
Waits with high marble doors for blood and incense rare.
Jove heard his vows, and betterd his desire;
For by some freakful chance he made retire
From his companions, and set forth to walk,
Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk:
Over the solitary hills he fared,
Thoughtless at first, but ere eves star appeared
His phantasy was lost, where reason fades,
In the calmd twilight of Platonic shades.
Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near
Close to her passing, in indifference drear,
His silent sandals swept the mossy green;
So neighbourd to him, and yet so unseen
She stood: he passd, shut up in mysteries,
His mind wrappd like his mantle, while her eyes
Followd his steps, and her neck regal white
Turndsyllabling thus, Ah, Lycius bright,
And will you leave me on the hills alone?
Lycius, look back! and be some pity shown.
He did; not with cold wonder fearingly,
But Orpheus-like at an Eurydice;
For so delicious were the words she sung,
It seemd he had lovd them a whole summer long:
And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up,
Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup,
And still the cup was full,while he afraid
Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid
Due adoration, thus began to adore;
Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure:
Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, Goddess, see
Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee!
For pity do not this sad heart belie
Even as thou vanishest so I shall die.
Stay! though a Naiad of the rivers, stay!
To thy far wishes will thy streams obey:
Stay! though the greenest woods be thy domain,
Alone they can drink up the morning rain:
Though a descended Pleiad, will not one
Of thine harmonious sisters keep in tune
Thy spheres, and as thy silver proxy shine?
So sweetly to these ravishd ears of mine
Came thy sweet greeting, that if thou shouldst fade
Thy memory will waste me to a shade:
For pity do not melt!If I should stay,
Said Lamia, here, upon this floor of clay,
And pain my steps upon these flowers too rough,
What canst thou say or do of charm enough
To dull the nice remembrance of my home?
Thou canst not ask me with thee here to roam
Over these hills and vales, where no joy is,
Empty of immortality and bliss!
Thou art a scholar, Lycius, and must know
That finer spirits cannot breathe below
In human climes, and live: Alas! poor youth,
What taste of purer air hast thou to soothe
My essence? What serener palaces,
Where I may all my many senses please,
And by mysterious sleights a hundred thirsts appease?
It cannot beAdieu! So said, she rose
Tiptoe with white arms spread. He, sick to lose
The amorous promise of her lone complain,
Swoond, murmuring of love, and pale with pain.
The cruel lady, without any show
Of sorrow for her tender favourites woe,
But rather, if her eyes could brighter be,
With brighter eyes and slow amenity,
Put her new lips to his, and gave afresh
The life she had so tangled in her mesh:
And as he from one trance was wakening
Into another, she began to sing,
Happy in beauty, life, and love, and every thing,
A song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres,
While, like held breath, the stars drew in their panting fires
And then she whisperd in such trembling tone,
As those who, safe together met alone
For the first time through many anguishd days,
Use other speech than looks; bidding him raise
His drooping head, and clear his soul of doubt,
For that she was a woman, and without
Any more subtle fluid in her veins
Than throbbing blood, and that the self-same pains
Inhabited her frail-strung heart as his.
And next she wonderd how his eyes could miss
Her face so long in Corinth, where, she said,
She dwelt but half retird, and there had led
Days happy as the gold coin could invent
Without the aid of love; yet in content
Till she saw him, as once she passd him by,
Where gainst a column he leant thoughtfully
At Venus temple porch, mid baskets heapd
Of amorous herbs and flowers, newly reapd
Late on that eve, as twas the night before
The Adonian feast; whereof she saw no more,
But wept alone those days, for why should she adore?
Lycius from death awoke into amaze,
To see her still, and singing so sweet lays;
Then from amaze into delight he fell
To hear her whisper womans lore so well;
And every word she spake enticd him on
To unperplexd delight and pleasure known.
Let the mad poets say whateer they please
Of the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses,
There is not such a treat among them all,
Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall,
As a real woman, lineal indeed
From Pyrrhas pebbles or old Adams seed.
Thus gentle Lamia judgd, and judgd aright,
That Lycius could not love in half a fright,
So threw the goddess off, and won his heart
More pleasantly by playing womans part,
With no more awe than what her beauty gave,
That, while it smote, still guaranteed to save.
Lycius to all made eloquent reply,
Marrying to every word a twinborn sigh;
And last, pointing to Corinth, askd her sweet,
If twas too far that night for her soft feet.
The way was short, for Lamias eagerness
Made, by a spell, the triple league decrease
To a few paces; not at all surmised
By blinded Lycius, so in her comprized.
They passd the city gates, he knew not how
So noiseless, and he never thought to know.
As men talk in a dream, so Corinth all,
Throughout her palaces imperial,
And all her populous streets and temples lewd,
Mutterd, like tempest in the distance brewd,
To the wide-spreaded night above her towers.
Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours,
Shuffled their sandals oer the pavement white,
Companiond or alone; while many a light
Flared, here and there, from wealthy festivals,
And threw their moving shadows on the walls,
Or found them clusterd in the corniced shade
Of some archd temple door, or dusky colonnade.
Muffling his face, of greeting friends in fear,
Her fingers he pressd hard, as one came near
With curld gray beard, sharp eyes, and smooth bald crown,
Slow-steppd, and robed in philosophic gown:
Lycius shrank closer, as they met and past,
Into his mantle, adding wings to haste,
While hurried Lamia trembled: Ah, said he,
Why do you shudder, love, so ruefully?
Why does your tender palm dissolve in dew?
Im wearied, said fair Lamia: tell me who
Is that old man? I cannot bring to mind
His features:Lycius! wherefore did you blind
Yourself from his quick eyes? Lycius replied,
Tis Apollonius sage, my trusty guide
And good instructor; but to-night he seems
The ghost of folly haunting my sweet dreams.
While yet he spake they had arrived before
A pillar'd porch, with lofty portal door,
Where hung a silver lamp, whose phosphor glow
Reflected in the slabbed steps below,
Mild as a star in water; for so new,
And so unsullied was the marble hue,
So through the crystal polish, liquid fine,
Ran the dark veins, that none but feet divine
Could e'er have touch'd there. Sounds Aeolian
Breath'd from the hinges, as the ample span
Of the wide doors disclos'd a place unknown
Some time to any, but those two alone,
And a few Persian mutes, who that same year
Were seen about the markets: none knew where
They could inhabit; the most curious
Were foil'd, who watch'd to trace them to their house:
And but the flitter-winged verse must tell,
For truth's sake, what woe afterwards befel,
'Twould humour many a heart to leave them thus,
Shut from the busy world of more incredulous.
(line 48): Originally, "Cerulean-spotted." Leigh Hunt says of this passage, "The admiration, pity, and horror, to be excited by humanity in a brute shape, were never perhaps called upon by a greater mixture of beauty and deformity than in the picture of this creature. Our pity and suspicions are begged by the first word: the profuse and vital beauties with which she is covered seem proportioned to her misery and natural rights; and lest we should lose sight of them in this gorgeousness, the 'woman's mouth' fills us at once with shuddering and compassion."
(line 158): The manuscript reads "vulcanian," the first edition "volcanian." It seems to me more likely that the manuscript accords with the poet's intention than that printed text does, for this old orthography is the more characteristic of the vocabulary of this particular poem, as introducing the more conspicuously the mythic personal origin of the common noun "volcano" or "vulcano."
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Lamia. Part I
,#NFDB
532:In An Almshouse
Oh the dear summer evening! How the air
is mellow with the delicate breath of flowers
and wafts of hay scent from the sunburnt swathes:
how the glad song of life comes everywhence,
from thousand harmless voices, from blithe birds
that twitter on incessant sweet good-nights,
from homeward bees that, through the clover tufts,
stray booming, pilfering treasures to the last,
from sleepless crickets clamouring in the grass.
to tell the world they're happy day and night,
from the persistent rooks in their high town,
from sheep in far off meadows: life, life, life,
it is the song they sing, and to my mind
the song is very happy, very good.
My God, I thank thee I have known this life,
although, I doubt not, dying I shall learn
how greater and how happier is death.
Oh beautiful and various earth of ours,
how good God made thee. Ah, I have lost much,
mine is a very grey and dim earth now,
but I can feel and hear and take in so
the joy of present beauty to my soul,
and then I see it there. O strange blurred mists,
that mean the sky to me, my twilight eyes
discern no more than you, but I see more;
I see this gold and glowing sunset spread,
and break the pale blue sky with flashing clouds,
I see the shadows soften on the hills,
and the green summits brighten one by one
and purple in the nightfall one by one.
Oh, seeing can be done without the eyes.
Are those St Mary's church-bells in the town?
How far sound spreads to-night! St Mary's bells,
chiming for evensong. I would the way
were not so over long for feeble limbs,
and that the pathway and the still canal
had not so like a glimmer in the dusk;
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for I could gladly feel the peace of prayer
among the others in the quiet church,
with silent graves seen through the open door,
and rustling heard of slowly stirring leaves.
And then 'tis pleasant too to hear the rhythm
of scholars' English and of words in books:
'tis like the voice of some rare foreign tongue
familiar once and loved, that, howso heard,
takes the glad ear with sweetness of old wont.
Oh, there's no sermon now so trite and crude
but makes for me a sort of literature:
'tis my one echo now from that far world
where books are read and written, my world once;
I listen as one listens, note by note,
to some great symphony one knows by heart,
played powerlessly, uncertainly, with change
and thinner chords to suit a learner's hand,
listening with pleasure part for what there is
and more for what there should be and what was
when long ago one used to hear the strain:
I seem to love words now because they are words.
Not that I'll call our Vicar's sermon words:
no, no; he loves his God and loves his poor;
he makes his life one task of doing good;
can such a man speak idly? What he does
is proof to what he urges, his week's life
soul to his Sunday preachings, his shown faith
the key to his expoundings; one may learn
from such a man more things than he can teach:
Alas, the busy patience of his life,
eager and resolute for little things,
strenuous on petty labours, which no voice
shall ever herald past the parish bounds,
which maybe those who see them do not see,
and those whose gain they are know not for gain,
does it not twit me with my languid years
drifted along expectant of a day
when all my world should thank me I had waked?
My world--ah, after all, a lesser one
than I discerned when I was of it still,
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my world of men who learn and teach and learn,
and then have only learned and taught and learned-my world that has forgotten me, a waif
floated away from it on too rough tides,
left spoiled and stranded to drop piece by piece.
Ah me, the difference: I have not known
what envy means unless I know it now
when, in my helplessness, sick, blind, and poor,
past all fulfilling now, with nought fulfilled,
I see our Vicar, with his cheery look,
hurried and overladen with small cares,
glad in his work because it is his work.
And he'll not envy me my garnered lore,
stored up for moth and mildew; what to him
is any wisdom but to work and pray?
the denizens of our rustic market town,
which ignorant strangers take, and break our hearts,
or just a village, know no Tübingen,
have never heard of varying codices,
love, or love not, the Christ of Luke and John,
and have no guess of Renan's; to their minds
belief and unbelief are simplest things,
mere Yes and No, and God must side with Yes,
as kings must with the loyal. But the love
that comes of faith and faith that comes of love;
they can learn those of him and he can teach,
that plain man, ignorant of philosophies
but wise enough to do good all the day.
Ah, why was I too weak for such a life,
which once I might have chosen? A high life,
full of most blessed service.
But I thought
it was not my life meant for me by God:
and now I know not what I should have done,
only I mourn that I have lived in vain,
still daily dreaming some completed task
that never was begun, still waiting force
of impulse more than mine to waken mine,
still dimly pondering "Shall I? Can I? How?"
and waiting to be ready to begin.
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Ah tardy useless labourer in the fields,
who waits to think what weed he shall rout first;
ah laggard sailor, who will not put out
till the direct fair wind sets for his port.
And time will never linger, and the world
can wait for no man, must have its wants fed
at the want's birth-cry--soldiers to the gap
on the hot instant, else no need of you,
no space for you to stand in. Long long since
I thought to have been somewhat, to perhaps
set some regardful honour round my name,
but surely to receive a destined place,
a part among the workers: for it seemed
to have so far uptrodden, half alone,
from peasant lowliness should prelude me
a future as of one of whom they say
"so low he was" to show how high he is.
Dreams, dreams! I never had the pith, the sap,
the strong aspiring pulses; I was one
to think, and shiver, by the study fire
"outside is the cold boisterous sea of life
where I will plunge to-morrow and snatch pearls,"
to wait like a late sleeper in the morn,
that with a drowsy logic lulls himself,
and chides his tardiness on their delay
who will not come to tell him it is time.
And yet I did not sleep; no, to my thought
I always was at school for work to come:
but these days leave us little schooling time.
Long since, and when the wisdom of the wise
was to accept to live one with to learn,
and men might find their work for half a life
in thinking silent, and the other half
in thinking out aloud, those were my days
I should have lived in: I came out of date:
like a reprinted tome of theories
made reasonably ere the science shaped,
which, all uncut, stands on the library shelf
amid new essays on the daily art
born long since of the science, and men say
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"'Tis learned, curious, looks well on the shelf"
and take its slighter useful neighbour down,
so I showed wise and useless to the world.
Wise with the oldworld wisdom grown unapt
to this changed morrow, for the lesson now
is to accept to live one with to do-the wisest wisdom plainly in this stir,
this over crowding, this hot hurrying on,
that make a tempest of our modern days.
This anxious age is driven half mad with work,
it bids us all work, world no need, no room,
for contemplating sages counting life
a time allowed for solving problems in
and its own self a problem to be solved;
on in the rush, or be swept out of sight,
on in the rush, and find your place, and work.
'Tis right, 'tis very right; not only ours
to fit what state God gives us but what times;
and he who is thrown out in a fierce race
can hardly chide, "the others ran too fast."
And, as for me, if I grow old alone,
hid out of memory of springtime peers,
and have my roof and food by dead men's alms,
it is that I have been an alien son,
a dronish servant careful of his ease,
to the master-Present, the strong century
that gave our lives and will have use of them.
I knew it always, but still while I thought.
"To-morrow I go forth," the sudden Now
had gone before I judged it had been there:
I knew it always, but the stealthy years
slid on while I was busy at my books,
and when I, startled, waked and saw it time,
lo the "Too late" which God has spoken me
in blindness and in sickness.
A strange life;
fair bud, fair blossom, never perfect fruit;
the river that seemed destined to push on
long eager miles among its busy mills,
90
among its teeming meadows and its towns,
hemmed stagnant by some little feeble dykes,
some trivial sand-mounds barred against its way,
and rounding to an issueless dull pool.
And yet, but for that wondering vague remorse
not to have been one stronger than myself,
I look back very kindly on my life
so changeful yet so still, not sorrowless
and yet not sad; I love to think of it
and tell it to myself like an old tale
dear for its homely long-familiar turns.
Oh, often I, the grey-haired palsied man,
am yet again the child beneath the hedge,
the village urchin, truant to his task,
of scaring crows, to con a dog's-eared book,
stealing his indolent scholar's luxury
by naughty half-hours through the lonely day.
Oh happy child, I never saw my guilt
nor dreamed of trust betrayed and pence ill-earned,
and it was such a joy to learn and pore
and read great words and wonder what they meant,
and sometimes see, as if a faint new star
dawned on one through a dusky gap at night,
a sudden meaning breaking on the doubt:
poor as I was, ill cared for, with no kin
but the sharp stepmother who, good at heart,
for widow's duty called me hers, not love,
and little Grace, the toddling sister thing
she'd not let love me and not let me touch,
who learned to scold me in her sweet babe's lisp
and would not kiss me even when we played,
no friends, no playmates, every way alone,
yet 'twas a happy boyhood; not forlorn
with the thumbed book for gossip, not forlorn
with all the outdoor world for company.
Oh, many and many a balmy eve like this,
beside my pollard willows by the brook,
I sat and watched the greyness creeping on,
thinking 'twas pity days must end in nights
and one must sleep away so many hours,
losing such sweetness of the summer time.
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Dulled wistful eyes, you cannot show me now
the brown-ribbed hill behind whose rounded slope
my village stands among its fields of flax;
last year I still could find it, where to me
it seemed a smooth dusk cloud against the sky,
could say "there lies my home," and fancy out
the well known landmarks, and go step by step
mind-pilgrimage among the dear old haunts;
but now the hill and sky are both one haze,
the dusk cloud's place is lost in larger dusk.
Well, well, 'tis present to me none the less,
and I am glad to feel it near in sight
with its white winding road that, from the top,
looks on my home, and sudden slants to it.
My home! and now 'tis twenty years and odd
since I have journeyed down the slanting road
and seen our envied boasts, the bridge and spire;
yes, twenty years and odd since the last time,
and then they called me stranger; yet I feel
my true home there. Not in my happy town,
my placid scholar's town of colleges,
where the smooth river, lagging by its elms,
bears on its painted breast oriels and towers
and grey monastic courts made reverend
with elder learning and historic lives;
not in my Cornish schoolhouse near the rocks,
where from the granite headland, with its crown
of glossy sward and wee white heather bloom
and rare and southern wildflowers of the moors,
one looked on the illimitable plain,
the vague mysterious ocean stretching forth
into the space and silence of the sky;
not in the city of the million homes,
the throbbing heart of England--No, not there,
how could I find home there? those pent black streets,
that skyless prison room, where day by day
my heart and head grew number, day by day
I and my schoolboys seemed to grow less apt,
that whirr and whirl of traffic, ceaseless change
of unknown faces thronging to and fro!
92
my life went shrivelling there as if one brought
some thirsty field plant maimed of half its root
amid a ball-night glare of flashing lamps.
And if I, even in this haven nook,
sheltered out of the cold winds of the world,
if here on the free hill-side, with the sounds
of woodland quiet soothing in my ears,
here where the dear home breezes blow to me
over the well known meadows, yet have longed,
like a sick schoolboy for his mother's face,
to look on my remembered trees and fields,
to touch them, to feel kin with them again,
how else could it be with me in the din
the blackness and the crowding?
Oh my heart,
how faint it grew long ere I grew all faint;
long ere there came this swift decrepitude
of too usurping age forestalling time;
how desolate I felt, like a man wrecked
on some far island in a burning clime
where every voice clangs strangely, and all thoughts
come to him yet more foreign than the words,
and very kindness wears unhomeliness;
how in my weariness I grew to loathe
those prison bars of roofs across the sky.
Well, when He pleased, God gave me the release,
gave His good way not mine, I thank Him for it.
Yes, it is well with me: life grows mere rest-I sit apart and am done with the world,
no hopes, no fears, no changes; I have lost
all part in aims and duties, like a tool
blunted with little use I am laid by
never to serve again; I sit apart
useless, forgotten, a lone purblind man
hid in an almshouse--but the rest is good,
is very peaceful, and I feel God near,
near as I never knew Him in old days
when yet I thought I loved Him.
Did I not?
Was it because I did not love Him then
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I could not choose His service? It seems strange:
they all said I was fit, they urged me to it:
and there on one hand was my worldly ease
and (if I were fit) service to my God,
on the other, chance and my poor single strength
to wrest a pittance from the world's clenched hand:
yes one might say it had been granted me
to choose both God and Mammon virtuously:
and yet I could not--never might my lips
have spoken the great answers "Christ has called,"
"The Holy Ghost has moved me." Day by day
I urged myself, I prayed to hear the call,
and the call came not. Was it want of love?
and would my warmer heart have been more brave,
and known a summons where I did not know?
Ah no, there was no need for such as I,
who have no ministering gift, no rule on minds.
Oh, the poor souls had perished which must lean
on such a pastor; I, who never found
the teacher's common secret how to write
the accurate human lore on willing minds,
how could I teach God's mysteries of love?
how could I force rebellious hearts to know?
I, who must reason with myself an hour
to cross a room and give a friend good-day,
where were my ready words to greet the poor,
my instant tact, my sympathy, command?
Oh, rather was I one to be content,
to be most happy, cloistered in the peace
of some grey convent where the even hours
go measured out by prayers and each still day
melts stealthily to night and has but seen
change between chapel and the studious cell.
Had such a life been granted by my creed
I could have snatched at it ...... yes, even then
before the silent too delusive hope
died at her careless bidding.
Susan Lee,
you never guessed, I but half knew myself,
how close a part you had of all my life
94
from the first time my schoolboy heart grew proud
to feel itself beat quicker at a smile.
I loved you patiently, content to dream
what happy fireside future should be ours
if you should ever love me; afterwards
I sorrowed patiently; and in both whiles
lived in my peace as if you had not been:
but yet you always have been part of me,
I cannot think upon my earlier self
and not remember you. It was but chance
that you were near me, following up the brook
for water-cresses, on that birthday morn
of my new life, when, as I basked and read,
the young squire's tutor came and saw my book,
and sat with me beneath my willow tree;
it was but chance that, for your good-girl treat,
you went a twelve miles' journey to your aunt's
and saw the prize-day splendours of our school
where I stood in my class-boy eminence
(a shamefaced hero, conscious of renown,
and bearing such a greatness bashfully),
and that your face, set in a window frame,
was still the one I saw when I looked up;
it was but chance that made your merry voice
the one to greet me first when, all elate
with budding freshman honours of first term,
I came back to our village ... where, good lack,
I found small reverence for my dignities,
and no one turned to watch me as I walked;
it was but chance that I could see you lead
a romping battle, armed with pelts of hay,
against my Gracie and her rival band
the time I got the germ and ringingest lines
of the Greek ode which gained my earliest prize;
it was but chance made Grace's letter come,
talking of only you, the selfsame day
I heard my name sound in the topmost list,
the very roll of fame as I thought then-maybe I thought it too long afterwards,
poor lad, who fancied I had won a race
because I gained a vantage post to start;
yes, chance and only chance so mingles you
95
with the young promise halos, but you stand
always a star behind them, shining through,
and, though I once was sad because of you,
I have my happy memories of you now.
They said you were not pretty, owed your charm
to choice of ribbons from your father's shop,
but, as for me, I saw not if you wore
too many ribbons or too few, nor sought
what charms you had beyond that one I knew,
the kind and honest look in your grey eyes.
Well, you chose fitlier; and you prosper well,
and I can fancy you in your content,
a busy prudent farmwife all the week
and wearing silk on Sundays when you go
to church among your children, proud to take
your husband's arm ... a man who holds his own
and rents a few more acres every year.
And Grace chose wisely too, the wilful girl
I would have made a lady of--not she,
she would not stay at school, she would not learn
your monkey French, she would not chirp words small
like twittering birds, she would not crotchet lace;
and she would marry sturdy William Ford;
so found some rainy days at first, 'tis true,
but they both took them with a cheery heart,
and now she writes from their far western home
that all goes well with them, and, as for her,
she's happier than a queen the whole day through,
and all the bairns as fresh as buttercups.
'Tis far away, my Gracie, far from me:
I'd like to feel your hand in mine at last,
for I have only you, and, as I think,
you bear a kind heart to me; but that's vain,
there'll be no meeting for us in this world.
But bye and bye, my Gracie, bye and bye.
Aye, there's the answer to one's every want,
one's every doubt, that promise bye and bye;
96
it gives this life a beauty, as the glimpse
between near hills of the great open sea
gives to some inland nook among the woods;
it is the full completed melody
the shifting prelude hints at. Life is good,
but most because, in its best perfectness,
it comes like memory of that other life
we have not known, but shall.
What, little one,
my truant playmate, "Mother gives you leave
to come and say good night for half an hour":
well; on my knee--so. Stories must it be?
"The story about Jesus"? Yes, my child,
that is the best one ...... story of our peace;
you'll know that someday, maybe. Now begins...
~ Augusta Davies Webster,#NFDB
533:I.
St. Agnes' Eve--Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
II.
His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;
Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,
Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:
The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails:
Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries,
He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails
To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.
III.
Northward he turneth through a little door,
And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue
Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor;
But no--already had his deathbell rung
The joys of all his life were said and sung:
His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve:
Another way he went, and soon among
Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve,
And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve.
IV.
That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;
And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide,
From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft,
The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide:
The level chambers, ready with their pride,
Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:
The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,
Star'd, where upon their heads the cornice rests,
With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts.
V.
At length burst in the argent revelry,
With plume, tiara, and all rich array,
Numerous as shadows haunting fairily
The brain, new-stuff'd, in youth, with triumphs gay
Of old romance. These let us wish away,
And turn, sole-thoughted, to one lady there,
Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,
On love, and wing'd St Agnes' saintly care,
As she had heard old dames full rnany times declare.
VI.
They told her how, upon St Agnes' Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey'd middle of the night,
If ceremonies due they did aright;
As, supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.
VII.
Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline:
The music, yearning like a God in pain,
She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine,
Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train
Pass by--she heeded not at all: in vain
Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,
And back retir'd; not cool'd by high disdain,
But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere;
She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year.
VIII.
She danc'd along with vague, regardless eyes,
Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:
The hallow'd hour was near at hand: she sighs
Amid the timbrels, and the throng'd resort
Of whisperers in anger, or in sport;
'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn,
Hoodwink'd with faery fancy; all amort,
Save to St Agnes and her lambs unshorn,
And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.
IX.
So, purposing each moment to retire,
She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors,
Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire
For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,
Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores
All saints to give him sight of Madeline,
But for one moment in the tedious hours,
That he might gaze and worship all unseen;
Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss-in sooth such things have been.
X.
He ventures in: let no buzz'd whisper tell:
All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords
Will storm his heart, Love's fev'rous citadel:
For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes,
Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords,
Whose very dogs would execrations howl
Against his lineage: not one breast affords
Him any mercy, in that mansion foul,
Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul.
XI.
Ah, happy chance! the aged creature came,
Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,
To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame,
Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyond
The sound of merriment and chorus bland.
He startled her; but soon she knew his face,
And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand,
Saying, "Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place;
"They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!
XII.
"Get hence! get hence! there's dwarfish Hildebrand;
He had a fever late, and in the fit
He cursed thee and thine, both house and land:
Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit
More tame for his gray hairs--Alas me! flit!
Flit like a ghost away."--Ah, gossip dear,
We're safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit,
And tell me how"--"Good saints! not here, not here;
Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier."
XIII.
He follow'd through a lowly arched way,
Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume,
And as she mutter'd "Well-a-well-a-day!"
He found him in a little moonlight room,
Pale, lattic'd, chill, and silent as a tomb.
"Now tell me where is Madeline", said he,
"O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom
Which none but secret sisterhood may see,
"When they St Agnes' wool are weaving piously."
XIV.
"St Agnes! Ah! it is St Agnes' Eve--
Yet men will murder upon holy days:
Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve,
And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays
To venture so: it fills me with amaze
To see thee, Porphyro!--St Agnes' Eve!
God's help! my lady fair the conjuror plays
This very night: good angels her deceive!
But let me laugh awhile, I've mickle time to grieve."
XV.
Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon,
While Porphyro upon her face doth look,
Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone
Who keepeth clos'd a wondrous riddle-book,
As spectacled she sits in chimney nook.
But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told
His lady's purpose; and he scarce could brook
Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold
And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.
XVI.
Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart
Made purple riot: then doth he propose
A stratagem, that makes the beldame start:
"A cruel man and impious thou art:
Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream
Alone with her good angels, far apart
From wicked men like thee. Go, go!--I deem
Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem."
XVII.
"I will not harm her, by all saints I swear,"
Quoth Porphyro: "O may I ne'er find grace
When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer,
If one of her soft ringlets I displace,
Or look with ruffian passion in her face:
Good Angela, believe me by these tears;
Or I will, even in a moment's space,
Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen's ears,
And beard them, though they be more fang'd than wolves and bears."
XVIII.
"Ah! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul?
A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing,
Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll;
Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening,
Were never miss'd." Thus plaining, doth she bring
A gentler speech from burning Porphyro;
So woeful, and of such deep sorrowing,
That Angela gives promise she will do
Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe.
XIX.
Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy,
Even to Madeline's chamber, and there hide
Him in a closet, of such privacy
That he might see her beauty unespied,
And win perhaps that night a peerless bride,
While legion'd fairies pac'd the coverlet,
And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed.
Never on such a night have lovers met,
Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt.
XX.
"It shall be as thou wishest," said the Dame:
"All cates and dainties shall be stored there
Quickly on this feast-night: by the tambour frame
Her own lute thou wilt see: no time to spare,
For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare
On such a catering trust my dizzy head.
Wait here, my child, with patience; kneel in prayer
The while: Ah! thou must needs the lady wed,
Or may I never leave my grave among the dead."
XXI.
So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear.
The lover's endless minutes slowly pass'd;
The Dame return'd, and whisper'd in his ear
To follow her; with aged eyes aghast
From fright of dim espial. Safe at last
Through many a dusky gallery, they gain
The maiden's chamber, silken, hush'd and chaste;
Where Porphyro took covert, pleas'd amain.
His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain.
XXII.
Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade,
Old Angela was feeling for the stair,
When Madeline, St Agnes' charmed maid,
Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware:
With silver taper's light, and pious care,
She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led
To a safe level matting. Now prepare,
Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;
She comes, she comes again, like dove fray'd and fled.
XXIII.
Out went the taper as she hurried in;
Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:
She closed the door, she panted, all akin
To spirits of the air, and visions wide:
No utter'd syllable, or, woe betide!
But to her heart, her heart was voluble,
Paining with eloquence her balmy side;
As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.
XXIV.
A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,
All garlanded with carven imag'ries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.
XXV.
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
XXVI.
Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
In fancy, fair St Agnes in her bed,
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
XXVII.
Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay,
Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd
Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;
Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain;
Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.
XXVIII.
Stol'n to this paradise, and so entranced,
Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress,
And listen'd to her breathing, if it chanced
To wake into a slumbrous tenderness;
Which when he heard, that minute did he bless,
And breath'd himself: then from the closet crept,
Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness,
And over the hush'd carpet, silent, stept,
And 'tween the curtains peep'd, where, lo!--how fast she slept!
XXIX.
Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon
Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set
A table, and, half anguish'd, threw thereon
A doth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:--
O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!
The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,
The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarinet,
Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:--
The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone.
XXX.
And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender'd,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon.
XXXI.
These delicates he heap'd with glowing hand
On golden dishes and in baskets bright
Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand
In the retired quiet of the night,
Filling the chilly room with perfume light.--
"And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!
Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite:
Open thine eyes, for meek St Agnes' sake,
Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache."
XXXII.
Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm
Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream
By the dusk curtains:--'twas a midnight charm
Impossible to melt as iced stream:
The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam;
Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies:
It seem'd he never, never could redeem
From such a stedfast spell his lady's eyes;
So mus'd awhile, entoil'd in woofed phantasies.
XXXIII.
Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,--
Tumultuous,--and, in chords that tenderest be,
He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute,
In Provence call'd, "La belle dame sans mercy:"
Close to her ear touching the melody:--
Wherewith disturb'd, she utter'd a soft moan:
He ceased--she panted quick--and suddenly
Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone:
Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone.
XXXIV.
Her eyes were open, but she still beheld,
Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep:
There was a painful change, that nigh expell'd
The blisses of her dream so pure and deep,
At which fair Madeline began to weep,
And moan forth witless words with many a sigh;
While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep;
Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye,
Fearing to move or speak, she look'd so dreamingly.
XXXV.
"Ah, Porphyro!" said she, "but even now
Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear,
Made tuneable with every sweetest vow;
And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear:
How chang'd thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!
Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,
Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!
Oh leave me not in this eternal woe,
For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go."
XXXVI.
Beyond a mortal man impassion'd far
At these voluptuous accents, he arose,
Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose
Into her dream he melted, as the rose
Blendeth its odour with the violet,--
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window-panes; St Agnes' moon hath set.
XXXVII.
Tis dark: quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet:
"This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!"
'Tis dark: the iced gusts still rave and beat:
"No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine!
Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.--
Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring?
I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine
Though thou forsakest a deceived thing;--
A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing."
XXXVIII.
"My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride!
Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?
Thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dyed?
Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest
After so many hours of toil and quest,
A famish'd pilgrim,--saved by miracle.
Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest
Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well
To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.
XXXIX.
"Hark! 'tis an elfin-storm from faery land,
Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:
Arise--arise! the morning is at hand;--
The bloated wassailers will never heed:--
Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,--
Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:
Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,
For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee."
XL.
She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears--
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.--
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.
XLI.
They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;
Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;
Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,
With a huge empty flagon by his side:
The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:
By one, and one, the bolts fill easy slide:--
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones,--
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.
XLII.
And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old
Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform;
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.
In a letter to George Keats and his wife dated the 14th of February [1819], Keats says that he took with him to Chichester, where he had been staying in January, "some of the thin paper, and wrote on it a little poem called 'St. Agnes' Eve,' which you will have as it is, when I have finished the blank part of the rest for you." Lord Houghton says the poem "was begun on a visit in Hampshire, at the commencement of this year [1819], and finished on his return to Hampstead."
(stanza II.): Leigh Hunt says "The germ of the thought, or something like it, is in Dante, where he speaks of the figures that perform the part of sustaining columns in architecture. Keats had read Dante in Mr. Carey's translation, for which he had a great respect. He began to read him afterwards in Italian, which language he was mastering with surprising quickness.
(stanza XV): Hunt's comment is as follows: "He almost shed tears - of sympathy, to think how his treasure is exposed to the cold - and of delight and pride to think of her sleeping beauty, and her love for himself. THis passage 'asleep in lap of legends old' is in the highest imaginative taste, fusing together the imaginative and the spiritual, the remote and the near."
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, The Eve Of St. Agnes
,#NFDB
534:Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 1
Let Elizur rejoice with the Partridge, who is a prisoner of state and is proud of his
keepers.
Let Shedeur rejoice with Pyrausta, who dwelleth in a medium of fire, which God
hath adapted for him.
Let Shelumiel rejoice with Olor, who is of a goodly savour, and the very look of
him harmonizes the mind.
Let Jael rejoice with the Plover, who whistles for his live, and foils the marksmen
and their guns.
Let Raguel rejoice with the Cock of Portugal -- God send good Angels to the allies
of England!
Let Hobab rejoice with Necydalus, who is the Greek of a Grub.
Let Zurishaddai with the Polish Cock rejoice -- The Lord restore peace to Europe.
Let Zuar rejoice with the Guinea Hen -- The Lord add to his mercies in the WEST!
Let Chesed rejoice with Strepsiceros, whose weapons are the ornaments of his
peace.
Let Hagar rejoice with Gnesion, who is the right sort of eagle, and towers the
highest.
Let Libni rejoice with the Redshank, who migrates not but is translated to the
upper regions.
Let Nahshon rejoice with the Seabreese, the Lord give the sailors of his Spirit.
Let Helon rejoice with the Woodpecker -- the Lord encourage the propagation of
trees!
Let Amos rejoice with the Coote -- prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.
Let Ephah rejoice with Buprestis, the Lord endue us with temperance and
40
humanity, till every cow have her mate!
Let Sarah rejoice with the Redwing, whose harvest is in the frost and snow.
Let Rebekah rejoice with Iynx, who holds his head on one side to deceive the
adversary.
Let Shuah rejoice with Boa, which is the vocal serpent.
Let Ehud rejoice with Onocrotalus, whose braying is for the glory of God, because
he makes the best musick in his power.
Let Shamgar rejoice with Otis, who looks about him for the glory of God, and
sees the horizon compleat at once.
Let Bohan rejoice with the Scythian Stag -- he is beef and breeches against want
and nakedness.
Let Achsah rejoice with the Pigeon who is an antidote to malignity and will carry
a letter.
Let Tohu rejoice with the Grouse -- the Lord further the cultivating of heaths and
the peopling of deserts.
Let Hillel rejoice with Ammodytes, whose colour is deceitful and he plots against
the pilgrim's feet.
Let Eli rejoice with Leucon -- he is an honest fellow, which is a rarity.
Let Jemuel rejoice with Charadrius, who is from the HEIGHT and the sight of him
is good for the jaundice.
Let Pharaoh rejoice with Anataria, whom God permits to prey upon the ducks to
check their increase.
Let Lotan rejoice with Sauterelle. Blessed be the name of the Lord from the Lotetree to the Palm.
Let Dishon rejoice with the Landrail, God give his grace to the society for
preserving the game.
Let Hushim rejoice with the King's Fisher, who is of royal beauty, tho' plebeian
41
size.
Let Machir rejoice with Convolvulus, from him to the ring of Saturn, which is the
girth of Job; to the signet of God -- from Job and his daughters BLESSED BE
JESUS.
Let Atad bless with Eleos, the nightly Memorialist
ελεησον
κυριε .
Let Jamim rejoice with the Bittern -- blessed be the name of Jesus for Denver
Sluice, Ruston, and the draining of the fens.
Let Ohad rejoice with Byturos who eateth the vine and is a minister of
temperance.
Let Zohar rejoice with Cychramus who cometh with the quails on a particular
affair.
Let Serah, the daughter of Asher, rejoice with Ceyx, who maketh his cabin in the
Halcyon's hold.
Let Magdiel rejoice with Ascarides, which is the life of the bowels -- the worm
hath a part in our frame.
Let Becher rejoice with Oscen who terrifies the wicked, as trumpet and alarm the
coward.
Let Shaul rejoice with Circos, who hath clumsy legs, but he can wheel it the
better with his wings. -Let Hamul rejoice with the Crystal, who is pure and translucent.
Let Ziphion rejoice with the Tit-Lark who is a groundling, but he raises the spirits.
Let Mibzar rejoice with the Cadess, as is their number, so are their names,
blessed be the Lord Jesus for them all.
Let Jubal rejoice with Cascilia, the woman and the slow-worm praise the name of
the Lord.
42
Let Arodi rejoice with the Royston Crow, there is a society of them at
Trumpington and Cambridge.
Let Areli rejoice with the Criel, who is a dwarf that towereth above others.
Let Phuvah rejoice with Platycerotes, whose weapons of defence keep them
innocent.
Let Shimron rejoice with the Kite, who is of more value than many sparrows.
Let Sered rejoice with the Wittal -- a silly bird is wise unto his own preservation.
Let Elon rejoice with Attelabus, who is the Locust without wings.
Let Jahleel rejoice with the Woodcock, who liveth upon suction and is pure from
his diet.
Let Shuni rejoice with the Gull, who is happy in not being good for food.
Let Ezbon rejoice with Musimon, who is from the ram and she-goat.
Let Barkos rejoice with the Black Eagle, which is the least of his species and the
best-natured.
Let Bedan rejoice with Ossifrage -- the bird of prey and the man of prayer.
Let Naomi rejoice with Pseudosphece who is between a wasp and a hornet.
Let Ruth rejoice with the Tumbler -- it is a pleasant thing to feed him and be
thankful.
Let Ram rejoice with the Fieldfare, who is a good gift from God in the season of
scarcity.
Let Manoah rejoice with Cerastes, who is a Dragon with horns.
Let Talmai rejoice with Alcedo, who makes a cradle for it's young, which is rock'd
by the winds.
Let Bukki rejoice with the Buzzard, who is clever, with the reputation of a silly
fellow.
43
Let Michal rejoice with Leucocruta who is a mixture of beauty and magnanimity.
Let Abiah rejoice with Morphnus who is a bird of passage to the Heavens.
Let Hur rejoice with the Water-wag-tail, who is a neighbour, and loves to be
looked at.
Let Dodo rejoice with the purple Worm, who is cloathed sumptuously, tho he
fares meanly.
Let Ahio rejoice with the Merlin who is a cousin german of the hawk.
Let Joram rejoice with the Water-Rail, who takes his delight in the river.
Let Chileab rejoice with Ophion who is clean made, less than an hart, and a
Sardinian.
Let Shephatiah rejoice with the little Owl, which is the wingged Cat.
Let Ithream rejoice with the great Owl, who understandeth that which he
professes.
Let Abigail rejoice with Lethophagus -- God be gracious to the widows indeed.
Let Anathoth bless with Saurix, who is a bird of melancholy.
Let Shammua rejoice with the Vultur who is strength and fierceness.
Let Shobab rejoice with Evech who is of the goat kind which is meditation and
pleasantry.
Let Ittai the Gittite rejoice with the Gerfalcon amicus certus in re incertâ cernitur.
Let Ibhar rejoice with the Pochard -- a child born in prosperity is the chiefest
blessing of peace.
Let Elishua rejoice with Cantharis -- God send bread and milk to the children.
Let Chimham bless with Drepanis who is a passenger from the sea to heaven.
Let Toi rejoice with Percnopteros which haunteth the sugar-fens.
44
Let Nepheg rejoice with Cenchris which is the spotted serpent.
Let Japhia rejoice with Buteo who hath three testicles.
Let Gibeon rejoice with the Puttock, who will shift for himself to the last
extremity.
Let Elishama rejoice with Mylæcos Ισχετε
χειρα
μυλαιον
αλιτριδες .
ευδετε
μακρα .
Let Elimelech rejoice with the Horn-Owl who is of gravity and amongst my friends
in the tower.
Let Eliada rejoice with the Gier-eagle who is swift and of great penetration.
Let Eliphalet rejoice with Erodius who is God's good creature, which is sufficient
for him.
Let Jonathan, David's nephew, rejoice with Oripelargus who is noble by his
ascent.
Let Sheva rejoice with the Hobby, who is the service of the great.
Let Ahimaaz rejoice with the Silver-Worm who is a living mineral.
Let Shobi rejoice with the Kastrel -- blessed be the name JESUS in falconry and
in the MALL
Let Elkanah rejoice with Cymindis -- the Lord illuminate us against the powers of
darkness.
Let Ziba rejoice with Glottis whose tongue is wreathed in his throat.
Let Micah rejoice with the spotted Spider, who counterfeits death to effect his
purposes.
Let Rizpah rejoice with the Eyed Moth who is beautiful in corruption.
45
Let Naharai, Joab's armour-bearer rejoice with Rock who is a bird of stupendous
magnitude.
Let Abiezer, the Anethothite, rejoice with Phrynos who is the scaled frog.
Let Nachon rejoice with Parcas who is a serpent more innocent than others.
Let Lapidoth with Percnos -- the Lord is the builder of the wall of CHINA -REJOICE.
Let Ahinoam rejoice with Prester -- The seed of the woman hath bruised the
serpents head.
Let Phurah rejoice with Penelopes, the servant of Gideon with the fowl of the
brook.
Let Jether, the son of Gideon, rejoice with Ecchetae which are musical
grashoppers.
Let Hushai rejoice with the Ospray who is able to parry the eagle.
Let Eglah rejoice with Phalaris who is a pleasant object upon the water.
Let Haggith rejoice with the white Weasel who devoureth the honey and it's
maker.
Let Abital rejoice with Ptyas who is arrayed in green and gold.
Let Maacah rejoice with Dryophyte who was blessed of the Lord in the valley.
Let Zabud Solomon's friend rejoice with Oryx who is a frolicksome mountaineer.
Let Adoniram the receiver general of the excise rejoice with Hypnale the sleepy
adder.
Let Pedahel rejoice with Pityocampa who eateth his house in the pine.
Let Ibzam rejoice with the Brandling -- the Lord further the building of bridges
and making rivers navigable.
Let Gilead rejoice with Gentle -- the Lord make me a fisher of men.
46
Let Zelophehad rejoice with Ascalabotes who casteth not his coat till a new one is
prepared for him.
Let Mahlah rejoice with Pellos who is a tall bird and stately.
Let Tirzah rejoice with Tylus which is the Cheeslip and food for the chicken.
Let Hoglah rejoice with Leontophonos who will kill the lion, if he is eaten.
Let Milcah rejoice with the Horned Beetle who will strike a man in the face.
Let Noah rejoice with Hibris who is from a wild boar and a tame sow.
Let Abdon rejoice with the Glede who is very voracious and may not himself be
eaten.
Let Zuph rejoice with Dipsas, whose bite causeth thirst.
Let Schechem of Manasseh rejoice with the Green Worm whose livery is of the
field.
Let Gera rejoice with the Night Hawk -- blessed are those who watch when
others sleep.
Let Anath rejoice with Rauca who inhabiteth the root of the oak.
Let Cherub rejoice with the Cherub who is a bird and a blessed Angel.
***
For I am not without authority in my jeopardy, which I derive inevitably from the
glory of the name of the Lord.
For I bless God whose name is Jealous -- and there is a zeal to deliver us from
everlasting burnings.
For my existimation is good even amongst the slanderers and my memory shall
arise for a sweet savour unto the Lord.
For I bless the PRINCE of PEACE and pray that all the guns may be nail'd up,
save such are for the rejoicing days.
47
For I have abstained from the blood of the grape and that even at the Lord's
table.
For I have glorified God in GREEK and LATIN, the consecrated languages spoken
by the Lord on earth.
For I meditate the peace of Europe amongst family bickerings and domestic jars.
For the HOST is in the WEST -- the Lord make us thankful unto salvation.
For I preach the very GOSPEL of CHRIST without comment and with this weapon
shall I slay envy.
For I bless God in the rising generation, which is on my side.
For I have translated in the charity, which makes things better and I shall be
translated myself at the last.
For he that walked upon the sea, hath prepared the floods with the Gospel of
peace.
For the merciful man is merciful to his beast, and to the trees that give them
shelter.
For he hath turned the shadow of death into the morning,the Lord is his name.
For I am come home again, but there is nobody to kill the calf or to pay the
musick.
For the hour of my felicity, like the womb of Sarah, shall come at the latter end.
For I shou'd have avail'd myself of waggery, had not malice been multitudinous.
For there are still serpents that can speak -- God bless my head, my heart and
my heel.
For I bless God that I am of the same seed as Ehud, Mutius Scævola, and Colonel
Draper.
For the word of God is a sword on my side -- no matter what other weapon a
stick or a straw.
48
For I have adventured myself in the name of the Lord, and he hath marked me
for his own.
For I bless God for the Postmaster general and all conveyancers of letters under
his care especially Allen and Shelvock.
For my grounds in New Canaan shall infinitely compensate for the flats and
maynes of Staindrop Moor.
For the praise of God can give to a mute fish the notes of a nightingale.
For I have seen the White Raven and Thomas Hall of Willingham and am my self
a greater curiosity than both.
For I look up to heaven which is my prospect to escape envy by surmounting it.
For if Pharaoh had known Joseph, he woud have blessed God and me for the
illumination of the people.
For I pray God to bless improvements in gardening till London be a city of palmtrees.
For I pray to give his grace to the poor of England, that Charity be not offended
and that benevolence may increase.
For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God, God hath sent me to sea for
pearls.
For there is a blessing from the STONE of JESUS which is founded upon hell to
the precious jewell on the right hand of God.
For the nightly Visitor is at the window of the impenitent, while I sing a psalm of
my own composing.
For there is a note added to the scale, which the Lord hath made fuller, stronger
and more glorious.
For I offer my goat as he browses the vine, bless the Lord from chambering and
drunkeness.
For there is a traveling for the glory of God without going to Italy or France.
49
For I bless the children of Asher for the evil I did them and the good I might have
received at their hands.
For I rejoice like a worm in the rain in him that cherishes and from him that
tramples.
For I am ready for the trumpet and alarm to fight, to die and to rise again.
For the banish'd of the Lord shall come about again, for so he hath prepared for
them.
For sincerity is a jewel which is pure and transparent, eternal and inestimable.
For my hands and my feet are perfect as the sublimity of Naphtali and the felicity
of Asher.
For the names and number of animals are as the name and number of the stars.
-For I pray the Lord Jesus to translate my MAGNIFICAT into verse and represent
it.
For I bless the Lord Jesus from the bottom of Royston Cave to the top of King's
Chapel.
For I am a little fellow, which is intitled to the great mess by the benevolence of
God my father.
For I this day made over my inheritance to my mother in consideration of her
infirmities.
For I this day made over my inheritance to my mother in consideration of her
age.
For I this day made over my inheritance to my mother in consideration of her
poverty.
For I bless the thirteenth of August, in which I had the grace to obey the voice of
Christ in my conscience.
For I bless the thirteenth of August, in which I was willing to run all hazards for
50
the sake of the name of the Lord.
For I bless the thirteenth of August, in which I was willing to be called a fool for
the sake of Christ.
For I lent my flocks and my herds and my lands at once unto the Lord.
For nature is more various than observation tho' observers be innumerable.
For Agricola is Γηουργος .
For I pray God to bless POLLY in the blessing of Naomi and assign her to the
house of DAVID.
For I am in charity with the French who are my foes and Moabites because of the
Moabitish woman.
For my Angel is always ready at a pinch to help me out and to keep me up.
For CHRISTOPHER must slay the Dragon with a PHEON's head.
For they have seperated me and my bosom, whereas the right comes by setting
us together.
For silly fellow! silly fellow! is against me and belongeth neither to me nor my
family.
For he that scorneth the scorner hath condescended to my low estate.
For Abiah is the father of Joab and Joab of all Romans and English Men.
For they pass by me in their tour, and the good Samaritan is not yet come. -For I bless God in the behalf of TRINITY COLLEGE in CAMBRIDGE and the society
of PURPLES in LONDON. -For I have a nephew CHRISTOPHER to whom I implore the grace of God.
For I pray God bless the CAM -- Mr HIGGS and Mr and Mrs WASHBOURNE as the
drops of the dew.
For I pray God bless the king of Sardinia and make him an instrument of his
51
peace.
For I am possessed of a cat, surpassing in beauty, from whom I take occasion to
bless Almighty God.
For I pray God for the professors of the University of Cambridge to attend and to
amend.
For the Fatherless Children and widows are never deserted of the Lord.
For I pray God be gracious to the house of Stuart and consider their afflictions.
For I pray God be gracious to the seed of Virgil to Mr GOODMAN SMITH of King's
and Joseph STUD.
For I give God the glory that I am a son of ABRAHAM a PRINCE of the house of
my fathers.
For my brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks
that pass away.
For I bless God for my retreat at CANBURY, as it was the place of the nativity of
my children.
For I pray God to give them the food which I cannot earn for them any otherwise
than by prayer.
For I pray God bless the Chinese which are of ABRAHAM and the Gospel grew
with them at the first.
For I bless God in the honey of the sugar-cane and the milk of the cocoa.
For I bless God in the libraries of the learned and for all the booksellers in the
world.
For I bless God in the strength of my loins and for the voice which he hath made
sonorous.
For tis no more a merit to provide for oneself, but to quit all for the sake of the
Lord.
For there is no invention but the gift of God, and no grace like the grace of
52
gratitude.
For grey hairs are honourable and tell every one of them to the glory of God.
For I bless the Lord Jesus for the memory of GAY, POPE and SWIFT.
For all good words are from GOD, and all others are cant.
For I am enabled by my ascent and the Lord haith raised me above my Peers.
For I pray God bless my lord CLARENDON and his seed for ever.
For there is silver in my mines and I bless God that it is rather there then in my
coffers.
For I blessed God in St James's Park till I routed all the company.
For the officers of the peace are at variance with me, and the watchman smites
me with his staff.
For I am the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart.
For they lay wagers touching my life. -- God be gracious to the winners.
For the piety of Rizpah is imitable in the Lord -- wherefore I pray for the dead.
For the Lord is my ROCK and I am the bearer of his CROSS.
For I am like a frog in the brambles, but the Lord hath put his whole armour
upon me.
For I was a Viper-catcher in my youth and the Lord delivered me from his
venom.
For I rejoice that I attribute to God, what others vainly ascribe to feeble man.
For I am ready to die for his sake -- who lay down his life for all mankind.
For the son of JOSHUA shall prevail against the servant of Gideon -- Good men
have their betters,
For my seed shall worship the Lord JESUS as numerous and musical as the
53
grashoppers of Paradise.
For I pray God to turn the council of Ahitophel into foolishness.
For the learning of the Lord increases daily, as the sun is an improving angel.
For I pray God for a reformation amonst the women and the restoration of the
veil.
For beauty is better to look upon than to meddle with and tis good for a man not
to know a woman.
For the Lord Jesus made him a nosegay and blessed it and he blessed the
inhabitants of flowers.
For a faithful friend is the medicine of life, but a neighbour in the Lord is better
than he.
For I stood up betimes in behalf of LIBERTY, PROPERTY and NO EXCISE.
For they began with grubbing up my trees and now they have excluded the
planter.
For I am the Lord's builder and free and accepted MASON in CHRIST JESUS.
For I bless God in all gums and balsams and every thing that ministers relief to
the sick.
For the Sun's at work to make me a garment and the Moon is at work for my
wife.
For tall and stately are against me, but humiliation on humiliation is on my side.
For I have a providential acquaintance with men who bear the names of animals.
For I bless God to Mr Lion Mr Cock Mr Cat Mr Talbot Mr Hart Mrs Fysh Mr Grub,
and Miss Lamb.
For they throw my horns in my face and reptiles make themselves wings against
me.
For I bless God for the immortal soul of Mr Pigg of DOWNHAM in NORFOLK.
54
For I fast this day even the 31st of August N.S. to prepare for the SABBATH of
the Lord.
For the bite of an Adder is cured by its greese and the malice of my enemies by
their stupidity.
For I bless God in SHIPBOURNE FAIRLAWN the meadows the brooks and the
hills.
For th adversary hath exasperated the very birds against me, but the Lord
sustain'd me.
For I bless God for my Newcastle friends the voice of the raven and heart of the
oak.
For I bless God for every feather from the wren in the sedge to the CHERUBS and
their MATES.
~ Christopher Smart,#NFDB
535:CANTO I.
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect; the savage, too,
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at heaven; pity these have not
Trac'd upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
The shadows of melodious utterance,
But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die;
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,--
With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable chain
And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say,
"Thou art no Poet -- may'st not tell thy dreams?"
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions and would speak, if he had loved,
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
Whether the dream now purpos'd to rehearse
Be poet's or fanatic's will be known
When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.
Methought I stood where trees of every clime,
Palm, myrtle, oak, and sycamore, and beech,
With plantane and spice-blossoms, made a screen,
In neighbourhood of fountains (by the noise
Soft-showering in mine ears), and (by the touch
Of scent) not far from roses. Twining round
I saw an arbour with a drooping roof
Of trellis vines, and bells, and larger blooms,
Like floral censers, swinging light in air;
Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound
Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits,
Which, nearer seen, seem'd refuse of a meal
By angel tasted or our Mother Eve;
For empty shells were scatter'd on the grass,
And grapestalks but half-bare, and remnants more
Sweet-smelling, whose pure kinds I could not know.
Still was more plenty than the fabled horn
Thrice emptied could pour forth at banqueting,
For Prosperine return'd to her own fields,
Where the white heifers low. And appetite,
More yearning than on earth I ever felt,
Growing within, I ate deliciously,--
And, after not long, thirsted; for thereby
Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice
Sipp'd by the wander'd bee, the which I took,
And pledging all the mortals of the world,
And all the dead whose names are in our lips,
Drank. That full draught is parent of my theme.
No Asian poppy nor elixir fine
Of the soon-fading, jealous, Caliphat,
No poison gender'd in close monkish cell,
To thin the scarlet conclave of old men,
Could so have rapt unwilling life away.
Among the fragment husks and berries crush'd
Upon the grass, I struggled hard against
The domineering potion, but in vain.
The cloudy swoon came on, and down I sank,
Like a Silenus on an antique vase.
How long I slumber'd 'tis a chance to guess.
When sense of life return'd, I started up
As if with wings, but the fair trees were gone,
The mossy mound and arbour were no more;
I look'd around upon the curved sides
Of an old sanctuary, with roof august,
Builded so high, it seem'd that filmed clouds
Might spread beneath as o'er the stars of heaven.
So old the place was, I remember'd none
The like upon the earth: what I had seen
Of grey cathedrals, buttress'd walls, rent towers,
The superannuations of sunk realms,
Or Nature's rocks toil'd hard in waves and winds,
Seem'd but the faulture of decrepit things
To that eternal domed monument.
Upon the marble at my feet there lay
Store of strange vessels and large draperies,
Which needs have been of dyed asbestos wove,
Or in that place the moth could not corrupt,
So white the linen, so, in some, distinct
Ran imageries from a sombre loom.
All in a mingled heap confus'd there lay
Robes, golden tongs, censer and chafing-dish,
Girdles, and chains, and holy jewelries.
Turning from these with awe, once more I raised
My eyes to fathom the space every way:
The embossed roof, the silent massy range
Of columns north and south, ending in mist
Of nothing; then to eastward, where black gates
Were shut against the sunrise evermore;
Then to the west I look'd, and saw far off
An image, huge of feature as a cloud,
At level of whose feet an altar slept,
To be approach'd on either side by steps
And marble balustrade, and patient travail
To count with toil the innumerable degrees.
Towards the altar sober-pac'd I went,
Repressing haste as too unholy there;
And, coming nearer, saw beside the shrine
One ministering; and there arose a flame
When in mid-day the sickening east-wind
Shifts sudden to the south, the small warm rain
Melts out of the frozen incense from all flowers,
And fills the air with so much pleasant health
That even the dying man forgets his shroud;--
Even so that lofty sacrificial fire,
Sending forth Maian incense, spread around
Forgetfulness of everything but bliss,
And clouded all the altar with soft smoke;
From whose white fragrant curtains thus I heard
Language pronounc'd: "If thou canst not ascend
These steps, die on that marble where thou art.
Thy flesh, near cousin to the common dust,
Will parch for lack of nutriment; thy bones
Will wither in few years, and vanish so
That not the quickest eye could find a grain
Of what thou now art on that pavement cold.
The sands of thy short life are spent this hour,
And no hand in the universe can turn
Thy hourglass, if these gummed leaves be burnt
Ere thou canst mount up these immortal steps."
I heard, I look'd: two senses both at once,
So fine, so subtle, felt the tyranny
Of that fierce threat and the hard task proposed.
Prodigious seem'd the toil; the leaves were yet
Burning, when suddenly a palsied chill
Struck from the paved level up my limbs.
And was ascending quick to put cold grasp
Upon those streams that pulse beside the throat.
I shriek'd, and the sharp anguish of my shriek
Stung my own ears; I strove hard to escape
The numbness, strove to gain the lowest step.
Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace: the cold
Grew stifling, suffocating at the heart;
And when I clasp'd my hands I felt them not.
One minute before death my ic'd foot touch'd
The lowest stair; and, as it touch'd, life seem'd
To pour in at the toes; I mounted up
As once fair angels on a ladder flew
From the green turf to heaven. "Holy Power,"
Cry'd I, approaching near the horned shrine,
"What am I that another death come not
To choke my utterance, sacrilegious, here?"
Then said the veiled shadow: "Thou hast felt
What 'tis to die and live again before
Thy fated hour; that thou hadst power to do so
Is thine own safety; thou hast dated on
Thy doom." "High Prophetess," said I, "purge off,
Benign, if so it please thee, my mind's film."
"None can usurp this height," return'd that shade,
"But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest.
All else who find a haven in the world,
Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days,
If by a chance into this fane they come,
Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half."
"Are there not thousands in the world," said I,
Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade,
"Who love their fellows even to the death,
Who feel the giant agony of the world,
And more, like slaves to poor humanity,
Labour for mortal good? I sure should see
Other men here, but I am here alone."
"Those whom thou spakest of are no visionaries,"
Rejoin'd that voice; "they are no dreamers weak;
They seek no wonder but the human face,
No music but a happy-noted voice:
They come not here, they have no thought to come;
And thou art here, for thou art less than they.
What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe,
To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing,
A fever of thyself: think of the earth;
What bliss, even in hope, is there for thee?
What haven? every creature hath its home,
Every sole man hath days of joy and pain,
Whether his labours be sublime or low --
The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct:
Only the dreamer venoms all his days,
Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve.
Therefore, that happiness be somewhat shared,
Such things as thou art are admitted oft
Into like gardens thou didst pass erewhile,
And suffer'd in these temples: for that cause
Thou standest safe beneath this statue's knees."
"That I am favour'd for unworthiness,
But such propitious parley medicined
In sickness not ignoble, I rejoice,
Aye, and could weep for love of such award."
So answer'd I, continuing, "If it please,
Majestic shadow, tell me where I am,
Whose altar this, for whom this incense curls;
What image this whose face I cannot see
For the broad marble knees; and who thou art,
Of accent feminine so courteous?"
Then the tall shade, in drooping linen veil'd,
Spoke out, so much more earnest, that her breath
Stirr'd the thin folds of gauze that drooping hung
About a golden censer from her hand
Pendent; and by her voice I knew she shed
Long-treasured tears. "This temple, sad and lone,
Is all spar'd from the thunder of a war
Foughten long since by giant hierarchy
Against rebellion: this old image here,
Whose carved features wrinkled as he fell,
Is Saturn's; I, Moneta, left supreme,
Sole goddess of this desolation."
I had no words to answer, for my tongue,
Useless, could find about its roofed home
No syllable of a fit majesty
To make rejoinder of Moneta's mourn:
There was a silence, while the altar's blaze
Was fainting for sweet food. I look'd thereon,
And on the paved floor, where nigh were piled
****s of cinnamon, and many heaps
Of other crisped spicewood: then again
I look'd upon the altar, and its horns
Whiten'd with ashes, and its languorous flame,
And then upon the offerings again;
And so, by turns, till sad Moneta cry'd:
"The sacrifice is done, but not the less
Will I be kind to thee for thy good will.
My power, which to me is still a curse,
Shall be to thee a wonder; for the scenes
Still swooning vivid through my globbed brain,
With an electral changing misery,
Thou shalt with these dull mortal eyes behold
Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not."
As near as an immortal's sphered words
Could to a mother's soften were these last:
And yet I had a terror of her robes,
And chiefly of the veils that from her brow
Hung pale, and curtain'd her in mysteries,
That made my heart too small to hold its blood.
This saw that Goddess, and with sacred hand
Parted the veils. Then saw I a wan face,
Not pin'd by human sorrows, but bright-blanch'd
By an immortal sickness which kills not;
It works a constant change, which happy death
Can put no end to; deathwards progressing
To no death was that visage; it had past
The lilly and the snow; and beyond these
I must not think now, though I saw that face.
But for her eyes I should have fled away;
They held me back with a benignant light,
Soft, mitigated by divinest lids
Half-clos'd, and visionless entire they seem'd
Of all external things; they saw me not,
But in blank splendour beam'd, like the mild moon,
Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not
What eyes are upward cast. As I had found
A grain of gold upon a mountain's side,
And, twing'd with avarice, strain'd out my eyes
To search its sullen entrails rich with ore,
So, at the sad view of Moneta's brow,
I ask'd to see what things the hollow brow
Behind environ'd: what high tragedy
In the dark secret chambers of her skull
Was acting, that could give so dread a stress
To her cold lips, and fill with such a light
Her planetary eyes, and touch her voice
With such a sorrow? "Shade of Memory!"
Cried I, with act adorant at her feet,
"By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house,
By this last temple, by the golden age,
By Great Apollo, thy dear Foster-child,
And by thyself, forlorn divinity,
The pale Omega of a wither'd race,
Let me behold, according as thou saidst,
What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!"
No sooner had this conjuration past
My devout lips, than side by side we stood
(Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine)
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star.
Onward I look'd beneath the gloomy boughs,
And saw what first I thought an image huge,
Like to the image pedestall'd so high
In Saturn's temple; then Moneta's voice
Came brief upon mine ear. "So Saturn sat
When he had lost his realms;" whereon there grew
A power within me of enormous ken
To see as a god sees, and take the depth
Of things as nimbly as the outward eye
Can size and shape pervade. The lofty theme
Of those few words hung vast before my mind
With half-unravell'd web. I sat myself
Upon an eagle's watch, that I might see,
And seeing ne'er forget. No stir of life
Was in this shrouded vale, -- not so much air
As in the zoning of a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass;
But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest.
A stream went noiseless by, still deaden'd more
By reason of the fallen divinity
Spreading more shade; the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Prest her cold finger closer to her lips.
Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went
No further than to where old Saturn's feet
Had rested, and there slept how long a sleep!
Degraded, cold, upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred, and his realmless eyes were closed;
While his bow'd head seem'd listening to the Earth,
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.
It seem'd no force could wake him from his place;
But there came one who, with a kindred hand,
Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low
With reverence, though to one who knew it not.
Then came the griev'd voice of Mnemosyne,
And griev'd I hearken'd. "That divinity
Whom thou saw'st step from yon forlornest wood,
And with slow pace approach our fallen king,
Is Thea, softest-natured of our brood."
I mark'd the Goddess, in fair statuary
Surpassing wan Moneta by the head,
And in her sorrow nearer woman's tears.
There was a list'ning fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the venom'd clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up,
One hand she press'd upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain;
The other upon Saturn's bended neck
She laid, and to the level of his ear
Leaning, with parted lips some words she spoke
In solemn tenour and deep organ-tone;
Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in this like accenting; how frail
To that large utterance of the early gods!
"Saturn, look up! and for what, poor lost king?
I have no comfort for thee; no, not one;
I cannot say, wherefore thus sleepest thou?
For Heaven is parted from thee, and the Earth
Knows thee not, so afflicted, for a god.
The Ocean, too, with all its solemn noise,
Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air
Is emptied of thy hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, captious at the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
And thy sharp lightning, in unpractis'd hands,
Scourges and burns our once serene domain.
"With such remorseless speed still come new woes,
That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
Saturn! sleep on: me thoughtless, why should I
Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?
Saturn! sleep on, while at thy feet I weep."
As when upon a tranced summer-night
Forests, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a noise,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Swelling upon the silence, dying off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave,
So came these words and went; the while in tears
She prest her fair large forehead to the earth,
Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls,
A soft and silken net for Saturn's feet.
Long, long these two were postured motionless,
Like sculpture builded-up upon the grave
Or their own power. A long awful time
I look'd upon them: still they were the same;
The frozen God still bending to the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet;
Moneta silent. Without stay or prop
But my own weak mortality, I bore
The load of this eternal quietude,
The unchanging gloom and the three fixed shapes
Ponderous upon my senses, a whole moon;
For by my burning brain I measured sure
Her silver seasons shedded on the night.
And every day by day methought I grew
More gaunt and ghostly. Oftentimes I pray'd
Intense, that death would take me from the vale
And all its burthens; gasping with despair
Of change, hour after hour I curs'd myself,
Until old Saturn rais'd his faded eyes,
And look'd around and saw his kingdom gone,
And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,
And that fair kneeling Goddess at his feet.
As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves,
Fills forest-dells with a pervading air,
Known to the woodland nostril, so the words
Of Saturn fill'd the mossy glooms around,
Even to the hollows of time-eaten oaks,
And to the windings of the foxes' hole,
With sad, low tones, while thus he spoke, and sent
Strange moanings to the solitary Pan.
"Moan, brethren, moan, for we are swallow'd up
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,
And peaceful sway upon man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in. Moan and wail;
Moan, brethren, moan; for lo, the rebel spheres
Spin round; the stars their ancient courses keep;
Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth,
Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon;
Still buds the tree, and still the seashores murmur;
There is no death in all the universe,
No smell of death. -- There shall be death. Moan, moan,
Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious babes
Weak as the reed, weak, feeble as my voice.
Oh! Oh! the pain, the pain of feebleness;
Moan, moan, for still I thaw; or give me help;
Throw down those imps, and give me victory.
Let me hear other groans, and trumpets blown
Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival,
From the gold peaks of heaven's high-piled clouds;
Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir
Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be
Beautiful things made new, for the surprise
Of the sky-children." So he feebly ceased,
With such a poor and sickly-sounding pause,
Methought I heard some old man of the earth
Bewailing earthly loss; nor could my eyes
And ears act with that unison of sense
Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form,
And dolorous accent from a tragic harp
With large-limb'd visions. More I scrutinized.
Still fixt he sat beneath the sable trees,
Whose arms spread straggling in wild serpent forms
With leaves all hush'd; his awful presence there
(Now all was silent) gave a deadly lie
To what I erewhile heard: only his lips
Trembled amid the white curls of his beard;
They told the truth, though round the snowy locks
Hung nobly, as upon the face of heaven
A mid-day fleece of clouds. Thea arose,
And stretcht her white arm through the hollow dark,
Pointing some whither: whereat he too rose,
Like a vast giant, seen by men at sea
To grow pale from the waves at dull midnight.
They melted from my sight into the woods;
Ere I could turn, Moneta cry'd, "These twain
Are speeding to the families of grief,
Where, rooft in by black rocks, they waste in pain
And darkness, for no hope." And she spake on,
As ye may read who can unwearied pass
Onward from the antechamber of this dream,
Where, even at the open doors, awhile
I must delay, and glean my memory
Of her high phrase -- perhaps no further dare.
CANTO II.
"Mortal, that thou may'st understand aright,
I humanize my sayings to thine ear,
Making comparisons of earthly things;
Or thou might'st better listen to the wind,
Whose language is to thee a barren noise,
Though it blows legend-laden thro' the trees.
In melancholy realms big tears are shed,
More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,
Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe.
The Titans fierce, self-hid or prison-bound,
Groan for the old allegiance once more,
Listening in their doom for Saturn's voice.
But one of the whole eagle-brood still keeps
His sovereignty, and rule, and majesty:
Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire
Still sits, still snuffs the incense teeming up
From Man to the Sun's God -- yet insecure.
For as upon the earth dire prodigies
Fright and perplex, so also shudders he;
Not at dog's howl or gloom-bird's hated screech,
Or the familiar visiting of one
Upon the first toll of his passing bell,
Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp;
But horrors, portioned to a giant nerve,
Make great Hyperion ache. His palace bright,
Bastion'd with pyramids of shining gold,
And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks,
Glares a blood-red thro' all the thousand courts,
Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries;
And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds
Flash angerly; when he would taste the wreaths
Of incense, breath'd aloft from sacred hills,
Instead of sweets, his ample palate takes
Savour of poisonous brass and metals sick;
Wherefore when harbour'd in the sleepy West,
After the full completion of fair day,
For rest divine upon exalted couch,
And slumber in the arms of melody,
He paces through the pleasant hours of ease,
With strides colossal, on from hall to hall,
While far within each aisle and deep recess
His winged minions in close clusters stand
Amaz'd, and full of fear; like anxious men,
Who on a wide plain gather in sad troops,
When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.
Even now where Saturn, rous'd from icy trance,
Goes step for step with Thea from yon woods,
Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,
Is sloping to the threshold of the West.
Thither we tend." Now in the clear light I stood,
Reliev'd from the dusk vale. Mnemosyne
Was sitting on a square-edg'd polish'd stone,
That in its lucid depth reflected pure
Her priestess' garments. My quick eyes ran on
From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,
Through bow'rs of fragrant and enwreathed light,
And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades.
Anon rush'd by the bright Hyperion;
His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar as if of earthy fire,
That scar'd away the meek ethereal hours,
And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Hyperion, A Vision - Attempted Reconstruction Of The Poem
,#NFDB
536:Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Maketh all things softly smile,
Painteth pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
Girls are peeling the sweet willow,
Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,
And troops of boys
Shouting with whoop and hilloa,
And hip, hip three times three.
The air is full of whistlings bland;
What was that I heard
Out of the hazy land?
Harp of the wind, or song of bird,
Or clapping of shepherd's hands,
Or vagrant booming of the air,
Voice of a meteor lost in day?
Such tidings of the starry sphere
Can this elastic air convey.
Or haply 't was the cannonade
Of the pent and darkened lake,
Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,
Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,
Afflicted moan, and latest hold
Even unto May the iceberg cold.
Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,
Or clarionet of jay? or hark,
Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,
Steering north with raucous cry
Through tracts and provinces of sky,
Every night alighting down
In new landscapes of romance,
Where darkling feed the clamorous clans
By lonely lakes to men unknown.
Come the tumult whence it will,
Voice of sport, or rush of wings,
It is a sound, it is a token
That the marble sleep is broken,
And a change has passed on things.
Beneath the calm, within the light,
A hid unruly appetite
Of swifter life, a surer hope,
Strains every sense to larger scope,
Impatient to anticipate
The halting steps of aged Fate.
Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl:
When Nature falters, fain would zeal
Grasp the felloes of her wheel,
And grasping give the orbs another whirl.
Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball!
And sun this frozen side,
Bring hither back the robin's call,
Bring back the tulip's pride.
Why chidest thou the tardy Spring?
The hardy bunting does not chide;
The blackbirds make the maples ring
With social cheer and jubilee;
The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee,
The robins know the melting snow;
The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,
Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,
Secure the osier yet will hide
Her callow brood in mantling leaves;
And thou, by science all undone,
Why only must thy reason fail
To see the southing of the sun?
As we thaw frozen flesh with snow,
So Spring will not, foolish fond,
Mix polar night with tropic glow,
Nor cloy us with unshaded sun,
Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance,
But she has the temperance
Of the gods, whereof she is one,--
Masks her treasury of heat
Under east-winds crossed with sleet.
Plants and birds and humble creatures
Well accept her rule austere;
Titan-born, to hardy natures
Cold is genial and dear.
As Southern wrath to Northern right
Is but straw to anthracite;
As in the day of sacrifice,
When heroes piled the pyre,
The dismal Massachusetts ice
Burned more than others' fire,
So Spring guards with surface cold
The garnered heat of ages old:
Hers to sow the seed of bread,
That man and all the kinds be fed;
And, when the sunlight fills the hours,
Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.
The world rolls round,--mistrust it not,--
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird's note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell.
When late I walked, in earlier days,
All was stiff and stark;
Knee-deep snows choked all the ways,
In the sky no spark;
Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,
Struggling through the drifted roads;
The whited desert knew me not,
Snow-ridges masked each darling spot;
The summer dells, by genius haunted,
One arctic moon had disenchanted.
All the sweet secrets therein hid
By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.
Eldest mason, Frost, had piled,
With wicked ingenuity,
Swift cathedrals in the wild;
The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts
In the star-lit minster aisled.
I found no joy: the icy wind
Might rule the forest to his mind.
Who would freeze in frozen brakes?
Back to books and sheltered home,
And wood-fire flickering on the walls,
To hear, when, 'mid our talk and games,
Without the baffled north-wind calls.
But soft! a sultry morning breaks;
The cowslips make the brown brook gay;
A happier hour, a longer day.
Now the sun leads in the May,
Now desire of action wakes,
And the wish to roam.
The caged linnet in the Spring
Hearkens for the choral glee,
When his fellows on the wing
Migrate from the Southern Sea;
When trellised grapes their flowers unmask,
And the new-born tendrils twine,
The old wine darkling in the cask
Feels the bloom on the living vine,
And bursts the hoops at hint of Spring:
And so, perchance, in Adam's race,
Of Eden's bower some dream-like trace
Survived the Flight, and swam the Flood,
And wakes the wish in youngest blood
To tread the forfeit Paradise,
And feed once more the exile's eyes;
And ever when the happy child
In May beholds the blooming wild,
And hears in heaven the bluebird sing,
"Onward," he cries, "your baskets bring,--
In the next field is air more mild,
And o'er yon hazy crest is Eden's balmier Spring."
Not for a regiment's parade,
Nor evil laws or rulers made,
Blue Walden rolls its cannonade,
But for a lofty sign
Which the Zodiac threw,
That the bondage-days are told,
And waters free as winds shall flow.
Lo! how all the tribes combine
To rout the flying foe.
See, every patriot oak-leaf throws
His elfin length upon the snows,
Not idle, since the leaf all day
Draws to the spot the solar ray,
Ere sunset quarrying inches down,
And half-way to the mosses brown;
While the grass beneath the rime
Has hints of the propitious time,
And upward pries and perforates
Through the cold slab a thousand gates,
Till green lances peering through
Bend happy in the welkin blue.
April cold with dropping rain
Willows and lilacs brings again,
The whistle of returning birds,
And trumpet-lowing of the herds.
The scarlet maple-keys betray
What potent blood hath modest May;
What fiery force the earth renews,
The wealth of forms, the flush of hues;
Joy shed in rosy waves abroad
Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.
Hither rolls the storm of heat;
I feel its finer billows beat
Like a sea which me infolds;
Heat with viewless fingers moulds,
Swells, and mellows, and matures,
Paints, and flavours, and allures,
Bird and brier inly warms,
Still enriches and transforms,
Gives the reed and lily length,
Adds to oak and oxen strength,
Boils the world in tepid lakes,
Burns the world, yet burnt remakes;
Enveloping heat, enchanted robe,
Wraps the daisy and the globe,
Transforming what it doth infold,
Life out of death, new out of old,
Painting fawns' and leopards' fells,
Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells,
Fires garden with a joyful blaze
Of tulips in the morning's rays.
The dead log touched bursts into leaf,
The wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf.
What god is this imperial Heat,
Earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat?
Doth it bear hidden in its heart
Water-line patterns of all art,
All figures, organs, hues, and graces?
Is it Daedalus? is it Love?
Or walks in mask almighty Jove,
And drops from Power's redundant horn
All seeds of beauty to be born?
Where shall we keep the holiday,
And duly greet the entering May?
Too strait and low our cottage doors,
And all unmeet our carpet floors;
Nor spacious court, nor monarch's hall,
Suffice to hold the festival.
Up and away! where haughty woods
Front the liberated floods:
We will climb the broad-backed hills,
Hear the uproar of their joy;
We will mark the leaps and gleams
Of the new-delivered streams,
And the murmuring rivers of sap
Mount in the pipes of the trees,
Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,
Which for a spike of tender green
Bartered its powdery cap;
And the colours of joy in the bird,
And the love in its carol heard,
Frog and lizard in holiday coats,
And turtle brave in his golden spots;
We will hear the tiny roar
Of the insects evermore,
While cheerful cries of crag and plain
Reply to the thunder of river and main.
As poured the flood of the ancient sea
Spilling over mountain chains,
Bending forests as bends the sedge,
Faster flowing o'er the plains,--
A world-wide wave with a foaming edge
That rims the running silver sheet,--
So pours the deluge of the heat
Broad northward o'er the land,
Painting artless paradises,
Drugging herbs with Syrian spices,
Fanning secret fires which glow
In columbine and clover-blow,
Climbing the northern zones,
Where a thousand pallid towns
Lie like cockles by the main,
Or tented armies on a plain.
The million-handed sculptor moulds
Quaintest bud and blossom folds,
The million-handed painter pours
Opal hues and purple dye;
Azaleas flush the island floors,
And the tints of heaven reply.
Wreaths for the May! for happy Spring
To-day shall all her dowry bring,
The love of kind, the joy, the grace,
Hymen of element and race,
Knowing well to celebrate
With song and hue and star and state,
With tender light and youthful cheer,
The spousals of the new-born year.
Lo Love's inundation poured
Over space and race abroad!
Spring is strong and virtuous,
Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,
Quickening underneath the mould
Grains beyond the price of gold.
So deep and large her bounties are,
That one broad, long midsummer day
Shall to the planet overpay
The ravage of a year of war.
Drug the cup, thou butler sweet,
And send the nectar round;
The feet that slid so long on sleet
Are glad to feel the ground.
Fill and saturate each kind
With good according to its mind,
Fill each kind and saturate
With good agreeing with its fate,
Willow and violet, maiden and man.
The bitter-sweet, the haunting air,
Creepeth, bloweth everywhere;
It preys on all, all prey on it,
Blooms in beauty, thinks in wit,
Stings the strong with enterprise,
Makes travellers long for Indian skies,
And where it comes this courier fleet
Fans in all hearts expectance sweet,
As if to-morrow should redeem
The vanished rose of evening's dream.
By houses lies a fresher green,
On men and maids a ruddier mien,
As if time brought a new relay
Of shining virgins every May,
And Summer came to ripen maids
To a beauty that not fades.
The ground-pines wash their rusty green,
The maple-tops their crimson tint,
On the soft path each track is seen,
The girl's foot leaves its neater print.
The pebble loosened from the frost
Asks of the urchin to be tost.
In flint and marble beats a heart,
The kind Earth takes her children's part,
The green lane is the school-boy's friend,
Low leaves his quarrel apprehend,
The fresh ground loves his top and ball,
The air rings jocund to his call,
The brimming brook invites a leap,
He dives the hollow, climbs the steep.
The youth reads omens where he goes,
And speaks all languages the rose.
The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise
The far halloo of human voice;
The perfumed berry on the spray
Smacks of faint memories far away.
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings,
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,
Stepping daily onward north
To greet staid ancient cavaliers
Filing single in stately train.
And who, and who are the travellers?
They were Night and Day, and Day and Night,
Pilgrims wight with step forthright.
I saw the Days deformed and low,
Short and bent by cold and snow;
The merry Spring threw wreaths on them,
Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell;
Many a flower and many a gem,
They were refreshed by the smell,
They shook the snow from hats and shoon,
They put their April raiment on;
And those eternal forms,
Unhurt by a thousand storms,
Shot up to the height of the sky again,
And danced as merrily as young men.
I saw them mask their awful glance
Sidewise meek in gossamer lids;
And to speak my thought if none forbids.
It was as if the eternal gods,
Tired of their starry periods,
Hid their majesty in cloth
Woven of tulips and painted moth.
On carpets green the maskers march
Below May's well-appointed arch,
Each star, each god, each grace amain,
Every joy and virtue speed,
Marching duly in her train,
And fainting Nature at her need
Is made whole again.
'T was the vintage-day of field and wood,
When magic wine for bards is brewed;
Every tree and stem and chink
Gushed with syrup to the brink.
The air stole into the streets of towns,
And betrayed the fund of joy
To the high-school and medalled boy:
On from hall to chamber ran,
From youth to maid, from boy to man,
To babes, and to old eyes as well.
'Once more,' the old man cried, 'ye clouds,
Airy turrets purple-piled,
Which once my infancy beguiled,
Beguile me with the wonted spell.
I know ye skilful to convoy
The total freight of hope and joy
Into rude and homely nooks,
Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books,
On farmer's byre, on meadow-pipes,
Or on a pool of dancing chips.
I care not if the pomps you show
Be what they soothfast appear,
Or if yon realms in sunset glow
Be bubbles of the atmosphere.
And if it be to you allowed
To fool me with a shining cloud,
So only new griefs are consoled
By new delights, as old by old,
Frankly I will be your guest,
Count your change and cheer the best.
The world hath overmuch of pain,--
If Nature give me joy again,
Of such deceit I'll not complain.'
Ah! well I mind the calendar,
Faithful through a thousand years,
Of the painted race of flowers,
Exact to days, exact to hours,
Counted on the spacious dial
Yon broidered zodiac girds.
I know the pretty almanac
Of the punctual coming-back,
On their due days, of the birds.
I marked them yestermorn,
A flock of finches darting
Beneath the crystal arch,
Piping, as they flew, a march,--
Belike the one they used in parting
Last year from yon oak or larch;
Dusky sparrows in a crowd,
Diving, darting northward free,
Suddenly betook them all,
Every one to his hole in the wall,
Or to his niche in the apple-tree.
I greet with joy the choral trains
Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes.
Best gems of Nature's cabinet,
With dews of tropic morning wet,
Beloved of children, bards, and Spring,
O birds, your perfect virtues bring,
Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,
Your manners for the heart's delight,
Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof,
Here weave your chamber weather-proof,
Forgive our harms, and condescend
To man, as to a lubber friend,
And, generous, teach his awkward race
Courage, and probity, and grace!
Poets praise that hidden wine
Hid in milk we drew
At the barrier of Time,
When our life was new.
We had eaten fairy fruit,
We were quick from head to foot,
All the forms we look on shone
As with diamond dews thereon.
What cared we for costly joys,
The Museum's far-fetched toys?
Gleam of sunshine on the wall
Poured a deeper cheer than all
The revels of the Carnival.
We a pine-grove did prefer
To a marble theatre,
Could with gods on mallows dine,
Nor cared for spices or for wine.
Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned,
Arch on arch, the grimmest land;
Whistle of a woodland bird
Made the pulses dance,
Note of horn in valleys heard
Filled the region with romance.
None can tell how sweet,
How virtuous, the morning air;
Every accent vibrates well;
Not alone the wood-bird's call,
Or shouting boys that chase their ball,
Pass the height of minstrel skill,
But the ploughman's thoughtless cry,
Lowing oxen, sheep that bleat,
And the joiner's hammer-beat,
Softened are above their will.
All grating discords melt,
No dissonant note is dealt,
And though thy voice be shrill
Like rasping file on steel,
Such is the temper of the air,
Echo waits with art and care,
And will the faults of song repair.
So by remote Superior Lake,
And by resounding Mackinac,
When northern storms and forests shake,
And billows on the long beach break,
The artful Air doth separate
Note by note all sounds that grate,
Smothering in her ample breast
All but godlike words,
Reporting to the happy ear
Only purified accords.
Strangely wrought from barking waves,
Soft music daunts the Indian braves,--
Convent-chanting which the child
Hears pealing from the panther's cave
And the impenetrable wild.
One musician is sure,
His wisdom will not fail,
He has not tasted wine impure,
Nor bent to passion frail.
Age cannot cloud his memory,
Nor grief untune his voice,
Ranging down the ruled scale
From tone of joy to inward wail,
Tempering the pitch of all
In his windy cave.
He all the fables knows,
And in their causes tells,--
Knows Nature's rarest moods,
Ever on her secret broods.
The Muse of men is coy,
Oft courted will not come;
In palaces and market squares
Entreated, she is dumb;
But my minstrel knows and tells
The counsel of the gods,
Knows of Holy Book the spells,
Knows the law of Night and Day,
And the heart of girl and boy,
The tragic and the gay,
And what is writ on Table Round
Of Arthur and his peers,
What sea and land discoursing say
In sidereal years.
He renders all his lore
In numbers wild as dreams,
Modulating all extremes,--
What the spangled meadow saith
To the children who have faith;
Only to children children sing,
Only to youth will spring be spring.
Who is the Bard thus magnified?
When did he sing, and where abide?
Chief of song where poets feast
Is the wind-harp which thou seest
In the casement at my side.
AEolian harp,
How strangely wise thy strain!
Gay for youth, gay for youth,
(Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)
In the hall at summer eve
Fate and Beauty skilled to weave.
From the eager opening strings
Rung loud and bold the song.
Who but loved the wind-harp's note?
How should not the poet doat
On its mystic tongue,
With its primeval memory,
Reporting what old minstrels said
Of Merlin locked the harp within,--
Merlin paying the pain of sin,
Pent in a dungeon made of air,--
And some attain his voice to hear,
Words of pain and cries of fear,
But pillowed all on melody,
As fits the griefs of bards to be.
And what if that all-echoing shell,
Which thus the buried Past can tell,
Should rive the Future, and reveal
What his dread folds would fain conceal?
It shares the secret of the earth,
And of the kinds that owe her birth.
Speaks not of self that mystic tone,
But of the Overgods alone:
It trembles to the cosmic breath,--
As it heareth, so it saith;
Obeying meek the primal Cause,
It is the tongue of mundane laws:
And this, at least, I dare affirm,
Since genius too has bound and term,
There is no bard in all the choir,
Not Homer's self, the poet sire,
Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,
Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,
Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,
Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
Scott, the delight of generous boys,
Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,--
Not one of all can put in verse,
Or to this presence could rehearse,
The sights and voices ravishing
The boy knew on the hills in Spring,
When pacing through the oaks he heard
Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,
The heavy grouse's sudden whirr,
The rattle of the kingfisher;
Saw bonfires of the harlot flies
In the lowland, when day dies;
Or marked, benighted and forlorn,
The first far signal-fire of morn.
These syllables that Nature spoke,
And the thoughts that in him woke,
Can adequately utter none
Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.
And best can teach its Delphian chord
How Nature to the soul is moored,
If once again that silent string,
As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.
Not long ago, at eventide,
It seemed, so listening, at my side
A window rose, and, to say sooth,
I looked forth on the fields of youth:
I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,
I knew their forms in fancy weeds,
Long, long concealed by sundering fates,
Mates of my youth,--yet not my mates,
Stronger and bolder far than I,
With grace, with genius, well attired,
And then as now from far admired,
Followed with love
They knew not of,
With passion cold and shy.
O joy, for what recoveries rare!
Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,
See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,--
Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!
Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil
Of life resurgent from the soil
Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.
Soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze!
So on thy broad mystic van
Lie the opal-coloured days,
And waft the miracle to man.
Soothsayer of the eldest gods,
Repairer of what harms betide,
Revealer of the inmost powers
Prometheus proffered, Jove denied;
Disclosing treasures more than true,
Or in what far to-morrow due;
Speaking by the tongues of flowers,
By the ten-tongued laurel speaking,
Singing by the oriole songs,
Heart of bird the man's heart seeking;
Whispering hints of treasure hid
Under Morn's unlifted lid,
Islands looming just beyond
The dim horizon's utmost bound;--
Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid,
Or taunt us with our hope decayed?
Or who like thee persuade,
Making the splendour of the air,
The morn and sparkling dew, a snare?
Or who resent
Thy genius, wiles, and blandishment?
There is no orator prevails
To beckon or persuade
Like thee the youth or maid:
Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales,
Thy blooms, thy kinds,
Thy echoes in the wilderness,
Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress,
Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds.
For thou, O Spring! canst renovate
All that high God did first create.
Be still his arm and architect,
Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;
Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,
Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,
New-tint the plumage of the birds,
And slough decay from grazing herds,
Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,
Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,
Purge alpine air by towns defiled,
Bring to fair mother fairer child,
Not less renew the heart and brain,
Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,
Make the aged eye sun-clear,
To parting soul bring grandeur near.
Under gentle types, my Spring
Masks the might of Nature's king,
An energy that searches thorough
From Chaos to the dawning morrow;
Into all our human plight,
The soul's pilgrimage and flight;
In city or in solitude,
Step by step, lifts bad to good,
Without halting, without rest,
Lifting Better up to Best;
Planting seeds of knowledge pure,
Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, May-Day
,#NFDB
537:A Tale Of True Love
Not in the mist of legendary ages,
Which in sad moments men call long ago,
And people with bards, heroes, saints, and sages,
And virtues vanished, since we do not know,
But here to-day wherein we all grow old,
But only we, this Tale of True Love will be told.
For Earth to tender wisdom grows not older,
But to young hearts remains for ever young,
Spring no less winsome, Winter winds no colder,
Than when tales first were told, songs first were sung.
And all things always still remain the same,
That touch the human heart, and feed Love's vestal flame.
And, if you have ears to hear and eyes for seeing,
Maidens there be, as were there in your youth,
That round you breathe, and move, and have their being,
Fair as Greek Helen, pure as Hebrew Ruth;
With Heaven-appointed poets, quick to sing
Of blameless warrior brave, and wisdom-counselled king.
And, tho' in this our day, youth, love, and beauty,
Are far too often glorified as slave
Of every sense except the sense of Duty,
In fables that dishonour and deprave,
The old-world Creeds still linger, taught us by
The pious lips that mute now in the churchyard lie.
And this true simple tale in verse as simple
Will from its prelude to its close be told,
As free from artifice as is the dimple
In childhood's cheek, whereby is age consoled.
And haply it may soothe some sufferer's lot,
When noisier notes are husht, and newer ones forgot.
And think not, of your graciousness, I pray you,
Who tells the tale is one of those who deem
That love will beckon only to betray you,
Life an illusion, happiness a dream;
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Only that noble grief is happier far
Than transitory lusts and feverish raptures are.
It was the season when aggressive Winter,
That had so long invested the sealed world,
With frosts that starve and hurricanes that splinter,
And rain, hail, blizzard, mercilessly hurled,
Made one forlorn last effort to assail
Ere Spring's relieving spears came riding on the gale.
For Amazonian March with breast uncovered
Blew loud her clarion, and the wintry host
Took courage fresh and lingeringly hovered
Round vale and hill, wherever needed most;
And ever and anon the raging weather
And wolfish winds re-formed, and onward swept together,
Loud-bellowing to the thunder-clouds to follow:
But all in vain, for here, there, everywhere,
Primrose battalions, seizing ridge and hollow,
Dingle, and covert, wind-flowers wild that dare
Beyond their seeming, bluebells without sound,
And scentless violets peeped, to spring up from the ground.
And, covering their advance, swift-scouring showers,
Gathering, dispersing, skirmished through the sky,
Till squadrons of innumerable flowers
Thronged through the land far as you could descry.
Then Winter, smitten with despair and dread,
Folded his fluttering tents, sounded retreat, and fled.
Whereat the land, so long beleaguered, seeing
The peril past, and Winter's iron ring
Broken, and all his cohorts norward fleeing,
Came forth to welcome and embrace the Spring,
Spring the Deliverer, and from sea and shore
Rose the rejoicing shout, ``See, April dawns once more!''
Radiant she came, attended by her zephyrs,
And forth from dusky stall and hurdled fold
Poured lowing kine and sleeky-coated heifers,
To roam at will through pastures green and gold,
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Where unweaned lambs from morning until night
Raced round their nibbling dams, and frolicked with delight.
High up, on larch and cypress, merle and mavis
Vociferated love-lays sweet as strong,
And the bird dear to Homer and to Hafiz
Proclaimed the joy of sadness all night long;
Vowed each new Spring more Spring-like than the last,
And triumphed over Time, futile iconoclast.
Then imperceptibly and slowly rounded
Slim girlish April into maiden May,
Whereat still louder everywhere resounded
The cuckoo's call and throstle's roundelay.
It was as though in meadow, chase, and wood,
God made the world anew, and saw that it was good.
Then feudal Avoncourt, the stern and stately,
Whose dawn deep hidden in undated days,
Not like those palaces erected lately
Whose feet swift crumble, and whose face decays,
Defieth Time's insatiable tooth,
Relaxed grave gaze and wore the countenance of youth.
It had beheld kings and proud empires vanish,
Male sceptres shattered, princedoms pass away,
Norman, Plantagenet, Lombard, Swabian, Spanish,
Rise, rule, then totter, and topple from their sway;
York and Lancastrian Rose unfold and bloom,
Then canker and decay, and vanish in the tomb.
It faces the four winds with like demeanour
Norward as Southernward, as though to say,
``Blow from some other, stronger and still keener,
Wherefrom you will, and I will face that way.''
And round it as you roam, to gaze perplexed
Each side seems loveliest till you look upon the next.
Its present seeming unto ages Tudor
It owes, by unnamed, unknown hands designed,
Who planned and worked amid a folk deemed ruder,
But who with grace enduring strength combined.
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Like sturdy oak with all its leaves still on,
When foliage from elm and sycamore have gone.
Upon its delicate, lofty-jutting portal
Imaginative minds and hands have wrought
Of dead artificers once deemed immortal,
From Southern climes by kings and magnates brought,
When architects and sculptors smiled in scorn
On plain defensive days and called the world reborn.
But time hath mellowed mullion, roof, and gable,
Stone-work without, and wainscotting within;
And nigh them oaken-timbered barn and stable,
Lowlier, withal of countenance akin,
Cluster, for in times olden, meek, and proud,
Being nearer much than now, their kinship was avowed.
From it slope woodlands and long alleys shaded,
Saving that all around it and more near
Stretches wild chase by ploughshare uninvaded,
Where roam rough cattle and unherded deer,
That look up as you pass from brackened sod,
Then flee with step as fleet as that whereon they trod.
Through vale below from many a source unfailing
A river flows where deft hands cast the line,
Well stocked with wary trout and bolder grayling.
Through smooth, fat pastures dotted o'er with kine
League after league the water winds away,
Oft turning as though loth from Avoncourt to stray.
It was in the sweet season that hath ravished
The virgin heart since ever love began,
A maiden, upon whom had Nature lavished
Each fair gift given to maiden or to man,
Roamed all alone through windings of its wood,
Seeking the way to where Avoncourt haply stood.
Onward in search of it she went, but slowly,
For who could hasten through so fresh a scene,
With violets paved, the lovelier because lowly,
And pallid primroses on ground of green;
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While overhead each bird that hath a voice
Seemed in its own blithe notes to revel and rejoice.
And ever and anon she gazed around her,
Or knelt to gather some appealing flower,
And to dear God, the Father and the Founder
Of all things good, the all-protecting Power,
Breathed a brief prayer of thanks within her breast,
Feeling she roamed in Heaven on earth made manifest.
Sometimes she broke into spontaneous singing,
Such as fond nurse to fretful babe might sing,
Whose close as sudden is as its beginning.
Herself she seemed a portion of the Spring
Which, if she went, would lose the chiefest part
Of that which charms the gaze and captivates the heart.
At length she passed from out these paths embowered
To where meek does, young fawns, and shaggy beeves
Ranged amid bracken; but the House, that towered
Full nigh at hand, for intercepting leaves
She still descried not, so, advancing under
An arch of hornbeam, stood in husht, astonied wonder.
For there it rose as silent and abstracted
As though it nothing shared or had to say
With those that shadow-like have lived and acted
Upon the stage we call our later day;
From passing passions thoughtfully aloof,
Through age, not pride, without lamenting or reproof.
Then slowly timid, tentative explorer,
Longing to see yet dreading to be seen,
Asudden living figure rose before her
Of manly mould and meditative mien;
Modern, withal with air of ancient port,
As if the same blood flowed through him and Avoncourt.
``Forgive,'' she said, ``an overbold intruder!''
``I doubt if anywhere you would intrude;
But sooth none do on this survival Tudor,
Who visit its old age in reverent mood.''
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``And that indeed I do. I never saw
Aught that I so admired, or felt for so much awe.''
``Will you, I round it willingly can guide you,
Unless-and, told, shall fully understand,Wander you rather would with none beside you
To mar the silence of the windless land,
Saving Spring's choristers, whose constant trills
One hears or doth not hear, according as one wills.''
``You know it well?'' she asked. ``I ought to know it.
Here was I born, here grew to boy's estate,
Pored o'er the page of storier and poet,
All that is big, magnanimous, and great,
Hardened my own, tried my dear Mother's nerves,
Robbed the home orchard, poached my Father's own preserves.''
``And are you now its occupant and possessor?''
``So called, alas! whose ancestors have paid
The final tax, by Death the stern assessor
On all poor mortals equitably laid.
I have a leasehold; no one can have more,
This side at least the vague, still-undiscovered shore.''
Thereat there fell a silence on their speaking,
And on they moved, he follower more than guide;
Oblivious she what 'twas that she was seeking,
Since conscious now of manhood at her side.
Withal, so much there was to lure her gaze,
That his on her could rest, nor stint its look of praise.
Then when they reached the Jacobean portal,
Back rolled its doors of iron brace and stay,
On grooves that seemed more cut for feet immortal
Than for a feeble transitory day,
And mounted oaken stair axe-hewn, unplaned,
With lion-headed piers unpolished and unstained.
From coffered ceiling hung down tattered banners,
And weapons warlike deadly deemed no more
Were parked on landing; grants of ancient manors,
With charts and parchments of black-letter lore,
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Stacked spears and dinted armour; ebon presses
With jealous bolts stood locked in embrasured recesses.
Chamber on chamber wainscotted and spacious
Was lined with effigies of warriors wise,
Reticent rulers, dames revered and gracious,
Whose fingers wove the silken tapestries,
Time-toned but faded not, that draped the wall
Of gallery long and straight, and square-set banquet-hall.
About lay obsolete instruments, wheel and spindle,
When women read much less and knew much more,
Huge logs for early-rising maids to kindle
On deep-set hearths, mottoes of lasting lore
In ancient tongues, Norman, or Saxon stave,
Bidding man live and die, meek, pious, steadfast, brave.
And many a question asked she, always getting
The answer craved for, given prompt and plain.
``But look,'' she said, ``the sun will soon be setting,
And that old dial-hand that doth nor gain
Nor lose, I am sure, in its diurnal pace,
Reproves me I still lag in this enthralling place.''
``Then come again,'' he answered, ``at your leisure,''
And led her outward where the ancient pile
Looked as though dwelt within no special treasure,
And owned no spell nor charm save sunset's smile;
Like one of those large natures that betray
No sign that they are made of more than common clay.
``And may I ask, your homeward footsteps, whither?
What! there! it is on Avoncourt estate,
And I by shorter path can guide you thither
Than that you came by, fear you to be late.
You lodge with much-loved tenants, for the wife
My foster-parent was in rosy-dawning life.''
``She did not tell me that; but sooth our meeting
Was but two days back, though I quickly saw
That she for you would evermore be bleating
With voice of blent solicitude and awe.''
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``'Tis so: on Sundays with a spirit meek
She worships God, then me the rest of all the week.''
Wending and winding under curved ways shaded,
Wider than heretofore, they farmward trod,
While twilight incense all the air pervaded
Round flower-decked altar at the shrine of God,
This sacred Earth, and for approaching night
One star kept watch, as yet Heaven's only lamp alight.
To her it seemed the Real and Ideal
At last were one, and every bird that sings
Joined prayerfully in chorus hymeneal,
Ere folding music underneath its wings.
How little did she guess that ambushed grief
Watched all her thoughts and lurked 'neath every dewy leaf!
``Are both your parents at the farmstead staying?''
``Alas!'' she said, ``like yours, they both abide
My coming further off, and in my praying
Alone survive; my guardian and my guide
My Mother's sister, whom we there shall find,
Most loving and most loved of living womankind.''
Where buttressed Church with crenellated Tower
Over the village still kept watch and ward;
``For these,'' he said, ``inherited have that power,
The pious citadels of peace that guard
The sin-beleaguered soul, and still repel
From humble homes and hearts the ravening hosts of hell.''
Within were monuments of home-delved marble,
Whereon lay figures of his race and name,
Crusaders whose dead deeds no time can garble,
Learning destroy, malignity defame:
Legs crossed, feet resting against faithful hound,
And, at their side, their dames and children kneeling round.
Then would they wend them valeward to the river,
And he cast line that neither curled nor sank.
Round ran the reel, then the lithe rod would quiver,
And May-fly trout lie gasping on the bank,
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Or, like a flying shadow through the stream,
Startled, would pass to pool sheltered from noonday gleam.
Which pleased her most, for sooth she thought sport cruel,
Yet watched it for the sake of his rare skill,
But happiest when asudden wingèd jewel,
The king-fisher, disturbed near rustic mill,
Darted, and deep into its nest withdrew,
Shortly to issue forth, and, flickering, raid anew.
So passed the days unnoticed and uncounted,
As louder, longer, later, piped the merle,
And cuckoo oftener called, if harsher throated,
And hawthorn decked itself with loops of pearl.
It seemed a world reborn without its woes:
Woodbine was in the lanes, and everywhere the rose.
All things that are in that seductive season
In them struck root and with them got entwined;
Looking before or after had seemed treason
To the free heart and unconditioned mind,
As daily tightened beyond time's control
That strongest of all ties, the kinship of the soul.
And deeper into bliss they wandered blindly,
While woe and wet winds kept from them aloof,
As from screened homestead visitings unkindly,
Where old-world windows under gabled roof
Seem gazing at the present from the past,
And wondering how long such happiness will last.
Ah me! the days of Summer, not of Winter,
The shortest are and swiftest glide away,
And leaves of Autumn, sober mezzotinter,
Linger far longer than the blooms of May.
Time that, when fledged by joy, finds wings to fly,
With sorrow for its load limps slowly, wearily.
One evening, as they watched the sunset fading,
``To strangers Avoncourt must never pass,
For that would be dishonouring and degrading,''
Thinking aloud he said: ``withal, alas!
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Sit by its hearth they must, and much I fear
That there they must abide for many a coming year.
``No fault of mine nor yet of those now sleeping
In tombs ancestral. Unrelenting time,
That hath the future in its unseen keeping,
Hath lowered the lofty, let the lowly climb,
And swept away the sustenance of my home.
What is there that endures? Go ask of Greece or Rome.
``Mullion from sill, transom from beam, is cracking,
Beauty and majesty their only stay;
And, save new wealth supply what now is lacking,
These too in turn will slowly pass away.
And I must save and strive in duteous ways,
So irksome felt by most in these luxurious days.''
``There is another way, some deem a duty,
None call unworthy,'' slowly she replied.
``Women there be, gifted with charm and beauty,
On whom hath Fortune lavished wealth beside.''
``I am not made like that,'' he firmly said;
``I but for love alone should ever woo or wed.''
And, as he said it, on her face he centred
Strong tender gaze, as though to search her soul,
Which straight so deep into her being entered,
She felt a current beyond will's control.
Crimsoning she turned aside, and thus confessed
The secret she had thought to hide within her breast.
Out of a cloud long gathering burst a flashing,
Followed by thunder's discontented sound;
And straight they heard slow big round raindrops plashing
On the green leaves o'erhead and emerald ground.
``Hark! I must hasten home,'' she said, ``before
The storm-wrack breaks.''-``And I will see you to your door.''
All through the morrow much he seemed to ponder,
And oft would halt and gaze upon the ground,
Or look out fixedly on something yonder,
Unseen by others, which at last he found,
105
And then strode quickly on, since he had solved
The doubt that would die out oftener the years revolved.
``Yes, for she hath that higher understanding
That routs Life's phantoms with a fearless face,
And knows, when spectral enemies throng banding,
The good from bad, the noble from the base.
To-morrow will I offer, ask for, all,
Love, Faith, and Hope can give, whatever else befall.''
But on the morrow came she not. More lonely,
Wandering, he felt than ever heretofore;
Nor on the morrow's morrow, and he only
Could wait her will, nor wend unto their door
Till wearily some doubtful days crept on,
And then the farmstead sought, to find its guests had gone!
Gone three days back, and none knew why or whither.
Then he with promptitude unleashed his mind,
In search for trace, now hither and now thither,
But trace or tidings nowhere could he find.
Still unremittingly he sought: in vain
Was search within our shore, was search beyond the main.
Slowly the glory from the Summer faded,
And ominously leaves began to fall;
And ever and anon harsh gusts invaded
Avoncourt, moaning through deserted hall,
And roaring woefully up chimney wide;
And mute the deerhound clung unto her master's side,
Or gazed at him with sad look sympathetic,
As though it too missed what its master missed.
``Ah, Lufra!'' said he in a voice prophetic,
``She is gone, and we shall never see her more.
Cling you to me, and I will take you where
Wander awhile I must, wherever I may fare.
``No more than you can I unmask the meaning
Of hapless things that baffle mortal vows.''
Then, sighing, saw he white-haired Winter gleaning,
Amid the crackling drift and fallen boughs
106
That lay on avenue, chase, and garden garth,
Fuel to feed faint flame upon her widowed hearth.
He was not one of those who love to wrangle
Before the populace for place and power,
Or fight for wealth with weapons that but strangle
The nobler passions, manhood's richest dower.
``I will return when wound shall less be felt,
And work among my folk, dwelling where once she dwelt.''
Farewell he took of wood-reeve, keeper, ranger,
And tenants grave with grief, and some in tears,
And order gave that Avoncourt to stranger
Be leased for maybe many coming years;
Then crossed the vigilant, unsleeping sea
That ranges round our Isle, to keep it great and free.
He lingered not in that vain-glorious city,
Whose Rulers pass the sceptre to the crowd,
But wended to the Land where amorous ditty
By swain at work to maid is sung aloud;
Where life is simple, and unchanging ways
Of tillage still recall loved Virgil's rustic lays:
Where on majestic pedestals the mighty
Marble imaginings of Art august,
Thought-wrinkled Zeus and dimpled Aphrodité,
Exact our homage and command our trust;
Immortal gods whose never-ending sway
Rebellion cannot shake nor scoffing sweep away.
And in that high companionship he slowly
Stifled his sighs and cicatrised his wound,
And, with the griefs the lofty and the lowly
Alike must feel, his share of pain attuned;
More willingly, it may be, since he knew
He unto love and loss would evermore keep true.
Ofttimes he stood by shrines where peasants kneeling
Told of their sorrows to the Mother-Maid,
Unto celestial sympathy appealing
From the world's pitiless splendour and parade;
107
And in that sight he resignation found,
With sun, and sea, and sky, and mountain-peaks around.
So that when nigh upon a year had vanished
Homeward his longing and his looks were cast,
Feeling 'twere base to longer stay self-banished,
Grafting his future on a fruitless past.
And soon his steadfast journeying came to close,
Where Avoncourt amid its unchanged woodlands rose.
It had meanwhile been leased to lately wedded
Tenants, unknown to Fame, but well endowed
With what could rescue it from fate so dreaded
Of slow decay and ruin-mantling shroud,
And who already had done much to win
Its walls from storm without, and worm and moth within.
So, as in duty bound, he promptly started
From home prepared for him on his estate,
With cheerful step if somewhat heavy-hearted,
To visit those who lived within his gate;
Ascending through the woodland's winding ways,
That wore more careful mien than in the bygone days.
It was the dawn of Autumn, very season
When he from further search for her forbore,
Whom to forget had seemed to him a treason,
Though well he knew he ne'er should see her more.
Sound, sight, scent, yellowing elm, and conecrowned fir,
Sunshine and shade alike, reminded him of her.
But, resolute to curb regret, he entered,
And, led through hall and corridor, he wound
To long ancestral gallery, and centred
His curious gaze on what he saw around.
It seemed to have lost no look of days gone by,
Withal to blend young smile with ancient majesty.
Still on the walls the effigies ancestral,
In armour or in ermine, hung unchanged,
With the device of wild boar, wolf, or kestrel,
That once in English forests freely ranged;
108
With later draperies that seemed to bring
Distance more near and shed a grace round everything.
While gazing out on well-remembered garden,
Where old yew hedges screened new-planted rose,
Against whose beauty none his heart could harden,
He heard a door soft open and then close.
And, turning, saw Egeria, with a face
Pale as a moon that moves alone through lonely space!
``Are you a guest,'' he said, ``in my poor dwelling?''
``I am,'' she answered, ``your-your tenant's wife.
Hear me in patience, dear, while I am telling
What tell I must, but tell this once for life.''
Whereat they towards each other drew more near:
One spoke, one listened, both without a sob or tear.
``I loved, I love you. Noble since I know you,
Here I confess that I shall love you still;
Since you will never show me nor I show you
More tenderness than now, for such God's will.
Knowing I should, love once avowed, rejoice,
Should not refuse your love, could not resist your voice,
``From you I fled, and steadfast left behind me
No word to weaken you, no sign, no trace,
Whereby your manliness could following find me.
For well I knew, that day your face my face
Scanned in strong silence, probing to my heart,
Love once confessed, no power could keep our lives apart.
``And well, too well I knew, for all things told me,
Men's tongues, the air, I thus should wreck your life,
And Avoncourt reproachfully behold me
A selfish bride and paralysing wife;
That duty had decreed a harder fate
For you, for me. If wrong, I know the right too late.
``In innocency's life there comes an hour
When stands revealed what it could never guess:
That there is magical and mystic power
To make love strong or leave it powerless;
109
If felt, if given without one selfish thought,
That Love is Wisdom's self, and all beside is nought.
``Ask me no more, I beg, than what I tell you:
I am your tenant, at another's will.
How, wherefore, when, on that which then befell, you,
Though I be mute, will understand me still.
Forgive, but ne'er forget me. Now depart,
Till to endurance Time shall mellowed have the smart.''
Her hand she stretched towards him, and, low bending,
On it his lips he reverently laid,
As on some sacred relic pilgrims wending
From far-off land with faith still undecayed.
Then he went forth, and she remained, alone,
Stern Duty unassailed upon its sovran throne.
But with the morrow's dawn there came the tidings
How that a crafty, freedom-loathing race,
Its schemes unmasked, had come from out its hidings,
And flung defiance in its Suzerain's face,
Then on his open territories burst,
Proclaiming these annexed unto its rule accursed.
Then England said, ``I must endure no longer
This long-conspiring, now presumptuous brood,
But must assert the Sceptre of the stronger
Against their vapourings vain and challenge rude,
Who have against me their false flag unfurled,
Urged to their ruin by an Empire-envying world.''
Nor England only, nor main-moated Britain,
But their brave offspring homed beyond the sea,
In righteous wrath arose, and, duty-smitten,
Vowed that their Afric brethren should be free
To think and speak the thing they would, and dwell
Equal and safe around Law's peaceful citadel.
Then said Sir Alured, ``Against such foemen
I too will ride and strike,'' and round him drew
All Avoncourt's hard-knit, well-mounted yeomen,
And to his lands ancestral bade adieu.
110
Beneath him seethed the waters no one barred,
Over the wave-wide track our steel-shod sentries guard.
And day by day Egeria scans and watches
The ebb and flow of fluctuating war,
And ofttimes sees his name in terse dispatches
Shine among those that most distinguished are.
Then pride and terror in her heart contend,
And low she prays anew, ``Dear God! his life befriend!''
And when she reads of some fresh deed of daring
That decorates his breast and crowns his brow,
Sparing of others, of himself unsparing,
She weeps apart where no one sees. But now
This Tale of True Love hath been truly told.
May it by some be read, and by it some consoled!
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
538:VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V---,
NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ---
L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. ~Her own words.
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do),
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.
EPIPSYCHIDION.
Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.
Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The ruggd hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
High, spirit-wingd Heart! who dost for ever
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed
It over-soared this low and worldly shade,
Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!
I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,
Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.
Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song
All of its much mortality and wrong,
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
Then smile on it, so that it may not die.
I never thought before my death to see
Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily,
I love thee; though the world by no thin name
Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.
Would we two had been twins of the same mother!
Or, that the name my heart lent to another
Could be a sister's bond for her and thee,
Blending two beams of one eternity!
Yet were one lawful and the other true,
These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due,
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!
I am not thine: I am a part of thee.
Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings
Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style,
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,
A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star
Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone?
A Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? a belovd light?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
And lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?I measure
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,
And findalas! mine own infirmity.
She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,
And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,
Led into light, life, peace. An antelope,
In the suspended impulse of its lightness,
Were less aethereally light: the brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
Embodied in the windless heaven of June
Amid the splendour-wingd stars, the Moon
Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:
And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops
Of planetary music heard in trance.
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap
Under the lightnings of the soultoo deep
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.
The glory of her being, issuing thence,
Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade
Of unentangled intermixture, made
By Love, of light and motion: one intense
Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence,
Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,
Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing
With the unintermitted blood, which there
Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air
The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,)
Continuously prolonged, and ending never,
Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled
Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world;
Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.
Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress
And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress
The air of her own speed has disentwined,
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;
And in the soul a wild odour is felt,
Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt
Into the bosom of a frozen bud.
See where she stands! a mortal shape indued
With love and life and light and deity,
And motion which may change but cannot die;
An image of some bright Eternity;
A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour
Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender
Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love
Under whose motions life's dull billows move;
A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning;
A Vision like incarnate April, warning,
With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy
Into his summer grave.
Ah, woe is me!
What have I dared? where am I lifted? how
Shall I descend, and perish not? I know
That Love makes all things equal: I have heard
By mine own heart this joyous truth averred:
The spirit of the worm beneath the sod
In love and worship, blends itself with God.
Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate
Whose course has been so starless! O too late
Belovd! O too soon adored, by me!
For in the fields of Immortality
My spirit should at first have worshipped thine,
A divine presence in a place divine;
Or should have moved beside it on this earth,
A shadow of that substance, from its birth;
But not as now:I love thee; yes, I feel
That on the fountain of my heart a seal
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright
For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight.
Weare we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar;
Such difference without discord, as can make
Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake
As trembling leaves in a continuous air?
Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human fantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object, and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity.
Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness;
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law
By which those live, to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.
There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
Paved her light steps;on an imagined shore,
Under the gray beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not. In solitudes
Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,
And from the fountains, and the odours deep
Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep
Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,
Breathed but of her to the enamoured air;
And from the breezes whether low or loud,
And from the rain of every passing cloud,
And from the singing of the summer-birds,
And from all sounds, all silence. In the words
Of antique verse and high romance, -- in form,
Sound, colour -- in whatever checks that Storm
Which with the shattered present chokes the past;
And in that best philosophy, whose taste
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom;
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.--
Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth
I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,
And towards the lodestar of my one desire,
I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight
Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,
When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere
A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.
But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame,
Passed, like a God throned on a wingd planet,
Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,
Into the dreary cone of our life's shade;
And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,
I would have followed, though the grave between
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:
When a voice said:--'O thou of hearts the weakest,
The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.'
Then I'Where?'--the world's echo answered 'where?'
And in that silence, and in my despair,
I questioned every tongueless wind that flew
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;
And murmured names and spells which have control
Over the sightless tyrants of our fate;
But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate
The night which closed on her; nor uncreate
That world within this Chaos, mine and me,
Of which she was the veiled Divinity,
The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:
And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear
And every gentle passion sick to death,
Feeding my course with expectation's breath,
Into the wintry forest of our life;
And struggling through its error with vain strife,
And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,
And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,
Seeking among those untaught foresters
If I could find one form resembling hers,
In which she might have masked herself from me.
There,One, whose voice was venomed melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers;
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison,flame
Out of her looks into my vitals came,
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime
With ruins of unseasonable time.
In many mortal forms I rashly sought
The shadow of that idol of my thought.
And some were fairbut beauty dies away:
Others were wisebut honeyed words betray:
And One was trueoh! why not true to me?
Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,
I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,
Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day
Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain.
When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again
Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed
As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed
As is the Moon, whose changes ever run
Into themselves, to the eternal Sun;
The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,
And warms not but illumines. Young and fair
As the descended Spirit of that sphere,
She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night
From its own darkness, until all was bright
Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,
And, as a cloud charioted by the wind,
She led me to a cave in that wild place,
And sate beside me, with her downward face
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion.
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,
And all my being became bright or dim
As the Moon's image in a summer sea,
According as she smiled or frowned on me;
And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:
Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:
For at her silver voice came Death and Life,
Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,
Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,
The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,
And through the cavern without wings they flew,
And cried 'Away, he is not of our crew.'
I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.
What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,
Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips
Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;
And how my soul was as a lampless sea,
And who was then its Tempest; and when She,
The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost
Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast
The moving billows of my being fell
Into a death of ice, immovable;
And thenwhat earthquakes made it gape and split,
The white Moon smiling all the while on it,
These words conceal:If not, each word would be
The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me!
At length, into the obscure Forest came
The Vision I had sought through grief and shame.
Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns
Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's,
And from her presence life was radiated
Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead;
So that her way was paved, and roofed above
With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;
And music from her respiration spread
Like light,all other sounds were penetrated
By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,
So that the savage winds hung mute around;
And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair
Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,
When light is changed to love, this glorious One
Floated into the cavern where I lay,
And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay
Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night
Was penetrating me with living light:
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me
So many years -- that it was Emily.
Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth,
This world of love, this me; and into birth
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart
Magnetic might into its central heart;
And lift its billows and its mists, and guide
By everlasting laws, each wind and tide
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;
And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave
Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers
The armies of the rainbow-wingd showers;
And, as those married lights, which from the towers
Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe
In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;
And all their many-mingled influence blend,
If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;
So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway
Govern my sphere of being, night and day!
Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;
Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;
And, through the shadow of the seasons three,
From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity,
Light it into the Winter of the tomb,
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.
Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe
Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion,
Alternating attraction and repulsion,
Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;
Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
Be there Love's folding-star at thy return;
The living Sun will feed thee from its urn
Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn
In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn
Will worship thee with incense of calm breath
And lights and shadows; as the star of Death
And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild
Called Hope and Fearupon the heart are piled
Their offerings,of this sacrifice divine
A World shall be the altar.
Lady mine,
Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth
Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth
Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,
Will be as of the trees of Paradise.
The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality
Is mine, remain a vestal sister still;
To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,
Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united
Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.
The hour is come:the destined Star has risen
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.
The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set
The sentinelsbut true Love never yet
Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:
Like lightning, with invisible violence
Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath,
Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array
Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they;
For it can burst his charnel, and make free
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,
The soul in dust and chaos.
Emily,
A ship is floating in the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails
Accompany the noonday nightingales;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soulthey seem
Like echoes of an antenatal dream.
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,
Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
The wingd storms, chanting their thunder-psalm
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of th'Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices.
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know:
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learnd imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
Or fragments of the day's intense serene;
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.
This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed
Thee to be lady of the solitude.
And I have fitted up some chambers there
Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
And level with the living winds, which flow
Like waves above the living waves below.
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high Spirits call
The future from its cradle, and the past
Out of its grave, and make the present last
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
Folded within their own eternity.
Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit
Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.
Be this our home in life, and when years heap
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,
The living soul of this Elysian isle,
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
And wander in the meadows, or ascend
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one:or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awakened day can never peep;
A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together; and our lips
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in Passion's golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
In one another's substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The wingd words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love's rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,
And say:'We are the masters of thy slave;
What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?"
Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave,
All singing loud: 'Love's very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.'
So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste
Over the hearts of men, until ye meet
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,
And bid them love each other and be blessed:
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest,for I am Love's.
Epipsychidion was composed at Pisa, Jan., Feb., 1821, and published without the author's name, in the following summer, by C. & J. Ollier, London. The poem was included by Mrs. Shelley in the Poetical Works, 1839, both edd.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion
,#NFDB
539:The Botanic Garden (Part Iv)
The Economy Of Vegetation
Canto IV
As when at noon in Hybla's fragrant bowers
CACALIA opens all her honey'd flowers;
Contending swarms on bending branches cling,
And nations hover on aurelian wing;
So round the GODDESS, ere she speaks, on high
Impatient SYLPHS in gawdy circlets fly;
Quivering in air their painted plumes expand,
And coloured shadows dance upon the land.
I. 'SYLPHS! YOUR light troops the tropic Winds confine,
And guide their streaming arrows to the Line;
While in warm floods ecliptic breezes rise,
And sink with wings benumb'd in colder skies.
You bid Monsoons on Indian seas reside,
And veer, as moves the sun, their airy tide;
While southern gales o'er western oceans roll,
And Eurus steals his ice-winds from the Pole.
Your playful trains, on sultry islands born,
Turn on fantastic toe at eve and morn;
With soft susurrant voice alternate sweep
Earth's green pavilions and encircling deep.
OR in itinerant cohorts, borne sublime
On tides of ether, float from clime to clime;
O'er waving Autumn bend your airy ring,
Or waft the fragrant bosom of the Spring.
II. 'When Morn, escorted by the dancing Hours,
O'er the bright plains her dewy lustre showers;
Till from her sable chariot Eve serene
Drops the dark curtain o'er the brilliant scene;
You form with chemic hands the airy surge,
Mix with broad vans, with shadowy tridents urge.
SYLPHS! from each sun-bright leaf, that twinkling shakes
O'er Earth's green lap, or shoots amid her lakes,
Your playful bands with simpering lips invite,
10
And wed the enamour'd OXYGENE to LIGHT.Round their white necks with fingers interwove,
Cling the fond Pair with unabating love;
Hand link'd in hand on buoyant step they rise,
And soar and glisten in unclouded skies.
Whence in bright floods the VITAL AIR expands,
And with concentric spheres involves the lands;
Pervades the swarming seas, and heaving earths,
Where teeming Nature broods her myriad births;
Fills the fine lungs of all that
breathe
or
bud
Warms the new heart, and dyes the gushing blood;
With Life's first spark inspires the organic frame,
And, as it wastes, renews the subtile flame.
'So pure, so soft, with sweet attraction shone
Fair PSYCHE, kneeling at the ethereal throne;
Won with coy smiles the admiring court of Jove,
And warm'd the bosom of unconquer'd LOVE.Beneath a moving shade of fruits and flowers
Onward they march to HYMEN'S sacred bowers;
With lifted torch he lights the festive train,
Sublime, and leads them in his golden chain;
Joins the fond pair, indulgent to their vows,
And hides with mystic veil their blushing brows.
Round their fair forms their mingling arms they fling,
Meet with warm lip, and clasp with rustling wing.-Hence plastic Nature, as Oblivion whelms
Her fading forms, repeoples all her realms;
Soft Joys disport on purple plumes unfurl'd,
And Love and Beauty rule the willing world.
III. 1. 'SYLPHS! Your bold myriads on the withering heath
Stay the fell SYROC'S suffocative breath;
Arrest SIMOOM in his realms of sand,
The poisoned javelin balanced in his hand;Fierce on blue streams he rides the tainted air,
Points his keen eye, and waves his whistling hair;
While, as he turns, the undulating soil
Rolls in red waves, and billowy deserts boil.
11
You seize TORNADO by his locks of mist,
Burst his dense clouds, his wheeling spires untwist;
Wide o'er the West when borne on headlong gales,
Dark as meridian night, the Monster sails,
Howls high in air, and shakes his curled brow,
Lashing with serpent-train the waves below,
Whirls his black arm, the forked lightning flings,
And showers a deluge from his demon-wings.
2. 'SYLPHS! with light shafts YOU pierce the drowsy FOG,
That lingering slumbers on the sedge-wove bog,
With webbed feet o'er midnight meadows creeps,
Or flings his hairy limbs on stagnant deeps.
YOU meet CONTAGION issuing from afar,
And dash the baleful conqueror from his car;
When, Guest of DEATH! from charnel vaults he steals,
And bathes in human gore his armed wheels.
'Thus when the PLAGUE, upborne on Belgian air,
Look'd through the mist and shook his clotted hair,
O'er shrinking nations steer'd malignant clouds,
And rain'd destruction on the gasping crouds.
The beauteous AEGLE felt the venom'd dart,
Slow roll'd her eye, and feebly throbb'd her heart;
Each fervid sigh seem'd shorter than the last,
And starting Friendship shunn'd her, as she pass'd.
-With weak unsteady step the fainting Maid
Seeks the cold garden's solitary shade,
Sinks on the pillowy moss her drooping head,
And prints with lifeless limbs her leafy bed.
-On wings of Love her plighted Swain pursues,
Shades her from winds, and shelters her from dews,
Extends on tapering poles the canvas roof,
Spreads o'er the straw-wove matt the flaxen woof,
Sweet buds and blossoms on her bolster strows,
And binds his kerchief round her aching brows;
Sooths with soft kiss, with tender accents charms,
And clasps the bright Infection in his arms.With pale and languid smiles the grateful Fair
Applauds his virtues, and rewards his care;
Mourns with wet cheek her fair companions fled
On timorous step, or number'd with the dead;
Calls to its bosom all its scatter'd rays,
And pours on THYRSIS the collected blaze;
12
Braves the chill night, caressing and caress'd,
And folds her Hero-lover to her breast.Less bold, LEANDER at the dusky hour
Eyed, as he swam, the far love-lighted tower;
Breasted with struggling arms the tossing wave,
And sunk benighted in the watery grave.
Less bold, TOBIAS claim'd the nuptial bed,
Where seven fond Lovers by a Fiend had bled;
And drove, instructed by his Angel-Guide,
The enamour'd Demon from the fatal bride.-SYLPHS! while your winnowing pinions fan'd the air,
And shed gay visions o'er the sleeping pair;
LOVE round their couch effused his rosy breath,
And with his keener arrows conquer'd DEATH.
IV. 1. 'You charm'd, indulgent SYLPHS! their learned toil,
And crown'd with fame your TORRICELL, and BOYLE;
Taught with sweet smiles, responsive to their prayer,
The spring and pressure of the viewless air.
-How up exhausted tubes bright currents flow
Of liquid silver from the lake below,
Weigh the long column of the incumbent skies,
And with the changeful moment fall and rise.
-How, as in brazen pumps the pistons move,
The membrane-valve sustains the weight above;
Stroke follows stroke, the gelid vapour falls,
And misty dew-drops dim the crystal walls;
Rare and more rare expands the fluid thin,
And Silence dwells with Vacancy within.So in the mighty Void with grim delight
Primeval Silence reign'd with ancient Night.
2. 'SYLPHS! your soft voices, whispering from the skies,
Bade from low earth the bold MONGULFIER rise;
Outstretch'd his buoyant ball with airy spring,
And bore the Sage on levity of wing;Where were ye, SYLPHS! when on the ethereal main
Young ROSIERE launch'd, and call'd your aid in vain?
Fair mounts the light balloon, by Zephyr driven,
Parts the thin clouds, and sails along the heaven;
Higher and yet higher the expanding bubble flies,
Lights with quick flash, and bursts amid the skies.Headlong He rushes through the affrighted air
13
With limbs distorted, and dishevel'd hair,
Whirls round and round, the flying croud alarms,
And DEATH receives him in his sable arms!So erst with melting wax and loosen'd strings
Sunk hapless ICARUS on unfaithful wings;
His scatter'd plumage danced upon the wave,
And sorrowing Mermaids deck'd his watery grave;
O'er his pale corse their pearly sea-flowers shed,
And strew'd with crimson moss his marble bed;
Struck in their coral towers the pausing bell,
And wide in ocean toll'd his echoing knell.
V. 'SYLPHS! YOU, retiring to sequester'd bowers,
Where oft your PRIESTLEY woos your airy powers,
On noiseless step or quivering pinion glide,
As sits the Sage with Science by his side;
To his charm'd eye in gay undress appear,
Or pour your secrets on his raptured ear.
How nitrous Gas from iron ingots driven
Drinks with red lips the purest breath of heaven;
How, while Conferva from its tender hair
Gives in bright bubbles empyrean air;
The crystal floods phlogistic ores calcine,
And the pure ETHER marries with the MINE.
'So in Sicilia's ever-blooming shade
When playful PROSERPINE from CERES stray'd,
Led with unwary step her virgin trains
O'er Etna's steeps, and Enna's golden plains;
Pluck'd with fair hand the silver-blossom'd bower,
And purpled mead,-herself a fairer flower;
Sudden, unseen amid the twilight glade,
Rush'd gloomy DIS, and seized the trembling maid.Her starting damsels sprung from mossy seats,
Dropp'd from their gauzy laps the gather'd sweets,
Clung round the struggling Nymph, with piercing cries,
Pursued the chariot, and invoked the skies;Pleased as he grasps her in his iron arms,
Frights with soft sighs, with tender words alarms,
The wheels descending roll'd in smoky rings,
Infernal Cupids flapp'd their demon wings;
Earth with deep yawn received the Fair, amaz'd,
And far in Night celestial Beauty blaz'd.
14
VI. 'Led by the Sage, Lo! Britain's sons shall guide
Huge SEA-BALLOONS beneath the tossing tide;
The diving castles, roof'd with spheric glass,
Ribb'd with strong oak, and barr'd with bolts of brass,
Buoy'd with pure air shall endless tracks pursue,
And PRIESTLEY'S hand the vital flood renew.Then shall BRITANNIA rule the wealthy realms,
Which Ocean's wide insatiate wave o'erwhelms;
Confine in netted bowers his scaly flocks,
Part his blue plains, and people all his rocks.
Deep, in warm waves beneath the Line that roll,
Beneath the shadowy ice-isles of the Pole,
Onward, through bright meandering vales, afar,
Obedient Sharks shall trail her sceptred car,
With harness'd necks the pearly flood disturb,
Stretch the silk rein, and champ the silver curb;
Pleased round her triumph wondering Tritons play,
And Seamaids hail her on the watery way.
-Oft shall she weep beneath the crystal waves
O'er shipwreck'd lovers weltering in their graves;
Mingling in death the Brave and Good behold
With slaves to glory, and with slaves to gold;
Shrin'd in the deep shall DAY and SPALDING mourn,
Each in his treacherous bell, sepulchral urn!Oft o'er thy lovely daughters, hapless PIERCE!
Her sighs shall breathe, her sorrows dew their hearse.With brow upturn'd to Heaven, 'WE WILL NOT PART!'
He cried, and clasp'd them to his aching heart,-Dash'd in dread conflict on the rocky grounds,
Crash the mock'd masts, the staggering wreck rebounds;
Through gaping seams the rushing deluge swims,
Chills their pale bosoms, bathes their shuddering limbs,
Climbs their white shoulders, buoys their streaming hair,
And the last sea-shriek bellows in the air.Each with loud sobs her tender sire caress'd,
And gasping strain'd him closer to her breast!-Stretch'd on one bier they sleep beneath the brine,
And their white bones with ivory arms intwine!
'VII. SYLPHS OF NICE EAR! with beating wings you guide
The fine vibrations of the aerial tide;
15
Join in sweet cadences the measured words,
Or stretch and modulate the trembling cords.
You strung to melody the Grecian lyre,
Breathed the rapt song, and fan'd the thought of fire,
Or brought in combinations, deep and clear,
Immortal harmony to HANDEL'S ear.YOU with soft breath attune the vernal gale,
When breezy evening broods the listening vale;
Or wake the loud tumultuous sounds, that dwell
In Echo's many-toned diurnal shell.
YOU melt in dulcet chords, when Zephyr rings
The Eolian Harp, and mingle all its strings;
Or trill in air the soft symphonious chime,
When rapt CECILIA lifts her eye sublime,
Swell, as she breathes, her bosoms rising snow,
O'er her white teeth in tuneful accents slow,
Through her fair lips on whispering pinions move,
And form the tender sighs, that kindle love!
'So playful LOVE on Ida's flowery sides
With ribbon-rein the indignant Lion guides;
Pleased on his brinded back the lyre he rings,
And shakes delirious rapture from the strings;
Slow as the pausing Monarch stalks along,
Sheaths his retractile claws, and drinks the song;
Soft Nymphs on timid step the triumph view,
And listening Fawns with beating hoofs pursue;
With pointed ears the alarmed forest starts,
And Love and Music soften savage hearts.
VIII. 'SYLPHS! YOUR bold hosts, when Heaven with justice dread
Calls the red tempest round the guilty head,
Fierce at his nod assume vindictive forms,
And launch from airy cars the vollied storms.From Ashur's vales when proud SENACHERIB trod,
Pour'd his swoln heart, defied the living GOD,
Urged with incessant shouts his glittering powers;
And JUDAH shook through all her massy towers;
Round her sad altars press'd the prostrate crowd,
Hosts beat their breasts, and suppliant chieftains bow'd;
Loud shrieks of matrons thrill'd the troubled air,
And trembling virgins rent their scatter'd hair;
High in the midst the kneeling King adored,
16
Spread the blaspheming scroll before the Lord,
Raised his pale hands, and breathed his pausing sighs,
And fixed on Heaven his dim imploring eyes,'Oh! MIGHTY GOD! amidst thy Seraph-throng
'Who sit'st sublime, the Judge of Right and Wrong;
'Thine the wide earth, bright sun, and starry zone,
'That twinkling journey round thy golden throne;
'Thine is the crystal source of life and light,
'And thine the realms of Death's eternal night.
'Oh, bend thine ear, thy gracious eye incline,
'Lo! Ashur's King blasphemes thy holy shrine,
'Insults our offerings, and derides our vows,-'Oh! strike the diadem from his impious brows,
'Tear from his murderous hand the bloody rod,
'And teach the trembling nations, 'THOU ART GOD!'-SYLPHS! in what dread array with pennons broad
Onward ye floated o'er the ethereal road,
Call'd each dank steam the reeking marsh exhales,
Contagious vapours, and volcanic gales,
Gave the soft South with poisonous breath to blow,
And rolled the dreadful whirlwind on the foe!Hark! o'er the camp the venom'd tempest sings,
Man falls on Man, on buckler buckler rings;
Groan answers groan, to anguish anguish yields,
And DEATH'S loud accents shake the tented fields!
-High rears the Fiend his grinning jaws, and wide
Spans the pale nations with colossal stride,
Waves his broad falchion with uplifted hand,
And his vast shadow darkens all the land.
IX. 1. 'Ethereal cohorts! Essences of Air!
Make the green children of the Spring your care!
Oh, SYLPHS! disclose in this inquiring age
One GOLDEN SECRET to some favour'd sage;
Grant the charm'd talisman, the chain, that binds,
Or guides the changeful pinions of the winds!
-No more shall hoary Boreas, issuing forth
With Eurus, lead the tempests of the North;
Rime the pale Dawn, or veil'd in flaky showers
Chill the sweet bosoms of the smiling Hours.
By whispering Auster waked shall Zephyr rise,
Meet with soft kiss, and mingle in the skies,
17
Fan the gay floret, bend the yellow ear,
And rock the uncurtain'd cradle of the year;
Autumn and Spring in lively union blend,
And from the skies the Golden Age descend.
2. 'Castled on ice, beneath the circling Bear,
A vast CAMELION spits and swallows air;
O'er twelve degrees his ribs gigantic bend,
And many a league his leathern jaws extend;
Half-fish, beneath, his scaly volutes spread,
And vegetable plumage crests his head;
Huge fields of air his wrinkled skin receives,
From panting gills, wide lungs, and waving leaves;
Then with dread throes subsides his bloated form,
His shriek the thunder, and his sigh the storm.
Oft high in heaven the hissing Demon wins
His towering course, upborne on winnowing fins;
Steers with expanded eye and gaping mouth,
His mass enormous to the affrighted South;
Spreads o'er the shuddering Line his shadowy limbs,
And Frost and Famine follow as he swims.SYLPHS! round his cloud-built couch your bands array,
And mould the Monster to your gentle sway;
Charm with soft tones, with tender touches check,
Bend to your golden yoke his willing neck,
With silver curb his yielding teeth restrain,
And give to KIRWAN'S hand the silken rein.
-Pleased shall the Sage, the dragon-wings between,
Bend o'er discordant climes his eye serene,
With Lapland breezes cool Arabian vales,
And call to Hindostan antarctic gales,
Adorn with wreathed ears Kampschatca's brows,
And scatter roses on Zealandic snows,
Earth's wondering Zones the genial seasons share,
And nations hail him 'MONARCH OF THE AIR.'
X. 1. 'SYLPHS! as you hover on ethereal wing,
Brood the green children of parturient Spring!Where in their bursting cells my Embryons rest,
I charge you guard the vegetable nest;
Count with nice eye the myriad SEEDS, that swell
Each vaulted womb of husk, or pod, or shell;
Feed with sweet juices, clothe with downy hair,
18
Or hang, inshrined, their little orbs in air.
'So, late descry'd by HERSCHEL'S piercing sight,
Hang the bright squadrons of the twinkling Night;
Ten thousand marshall'd stars, a silver zone,
Effuse their blended lustres round her throne;
Suns call to suns, in lucid clouds conspire,
And light exterior skies with golden fire;
Resistless rolls the illimitable sphere,
And one great circle forms the unmeasured year.
-Roll on, YE STARS! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach;Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
-Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.
2. 'Lo! on each SEED within its slender rind
Life's golden threads in endless circles wind;
Maze within maze the lucid webs are roll'd,
And, as they burst, the living flame unfold.
The pulpy acorn, ere it swells, contains
The Oak's vast branches in its milky veins;
Each ravel'd bud, fine film, and fibre-line
Traced with nice pencil on the small design.
The young Narcissus, in it's bulb compress'd,
Cradles a second nestling on its breast;
In whose fine arms a younger embryon lies,
Folds its thin leaves, and shuts its floret-eyes;
Grain within grain successive harvests dwell,
And boundless forests slumber in a shell.
-So yon grey precipice, and ivy'd towers,
Long winding meads, and intermingled bowers,
Green files of poplars, o'er the lake that bow,
And glimmering wheel, which rolls and foams below,
In one bright point with nice distinction lie
19
Plan'd on the moving tablet of the eye.
-So, fold on fold, Earth's wavy plains extend,
And, sphere in sphere, its hidden strata bend;Incumbent Spring her beamy plumes expands
O'er restless oceans, and impatient lands,
With genial lustres warms the mighty ball,
And the GREAT SEED evolves, disclosing ALL;
LIFE
buds
or
breathes
from Indus to the Poles,
And the vast surface kindles, as it rolls!
3. 'Come, YE SOFT SYLPHS! who sport on Latian land,
Come, sweet-lip'd Zephyr, and Favonius bland!
Teach the fine SEED, instinct with life, to shoot
On Earth's cold bosom its descending root;
With Pith elastic stretch its rising stem,
Part the twin Lobes, expand the throbbing Gem;
Clasp in your airy arms the aspiring Plume,
Fan with your balmy breath its kindling bloom,
Each widening scale and bursting film unfold,
Swell the green cup, and tint the flower with gold;
While in bright veins the silvery Sap ascends,
And refluent blood in milky eddies bends;
While, spread in air, the leaves respiring play,
Or drink the golden quintessence of day.
-So from his shell on Delta's shower-less isle
Bursts into life the Monster of the Nile;
First in translucent lymph with cobweb-threads
The Brain's fine floating tissue swells, and spreads;
Nerve after nerve the glistening spine descends,
The red Heart dances, the Aorta bends;
Through each new gland the purple current glides,
New veins meandering drink the refluent tides;
Edge over edge expands the hardening scale,
And sheaths his slimy skin in silver mail.
-Erewhile, emerging from the brooding sand,
With Tyger-paw He prints the brineless strand,
High on the flood with speckled bosom swims,
Helm'd with broad tail, and oar'd with giant limbs;
Rolls his fierce eye-balls, clasps his iron claws,
20
And champs with gnashing teeth his massy jaws;
Old Nilus sighs along his cane-crown'd shores,
And swarthy Memphis trembles and adores.
XI. 'Come, YE SOFT SYLPHS! who fan the Paphian groves,
And bear on sportive wings the callow Loves;
Call with sweet whisper, in each gale that blows,
The slumbering Snow-drop from her long repose;
Charm the pale Primrose from her clay-cold bed,
Unveil the bashful Violet's tremulous head;
While from her bud the playful Tulip breaks,
And young Carnations peep with blushing cheeks;
Bid the closed
Petals
from nocturnal cold
The virgin
Style
in silken curtains fold,
Shake into viewless air the morning dews,
And wave in light their iridescent hues;
While from on high the bursting
Anthers
trust
To the mild breezes their prolific dust;
Or bend in rapture o'er the central Fair,
Love out their hour, and leave their lives in air.
So in his silken sepulchre the Worm,
Warm'd with new life, unfolds his larva-form;
Erewhile aloft in wanton circles moves,
And woos on Hymen-wings his velvet loves.
XII. 1. 'If prouder branches with exuberance rude
Point their green gems, their barren shoots protrude;
Wound them, ye SYLPHS! with little knives, or bind
A wiry ringlet round the swelling rind;
Bisect with chissel fine the root below,
Or bend to earth the inhospitable bough.
So shall each germ with new prolific power
Delay the leaf-bud, and expand the flower;
Closed in the
Style
the tender pith shall end,
21
The lengthening Wood in circling
Stamens
bend;
The smoother Rind its soft embroidery spread
In vaulted
Petals
o'er their fertile bed;
While the rough Bark, in circling mazes roll'd,
Forms the green
Cup
with many a wrinkled fold;
And each small bud-scale spreads its foliage hard,
Firm round the callow germ, a
Floral Guard
2. 'Where cruder juices swell the leafy vein,
Stint the young germ, the tender blossom stain;
On each lop'd shoot a softer scion bind,
Pith press'd to pith, and rind applied to rind,
So shall the trunk with loftier crest ascend,
And wide in air its happier arms extend;
Nurse the new buds, admire the leaves unknown,
And blushing bend with fruitage not its own.
'Thus when in holy triumph Aaron trod,
And offer'd on the shrine his mystic rod;
First a new bark its silken tissue weaves,
New buds emerging widen into leaves;
Fair fruits protrude, enascent flowers expand,
And blush and tremble round the living wand.
XIII. 1. 'SYLPHS! on each Oak-bud wound the wormy galls,
With pigmy spears, or crush the venom'd balls;
Fright the green Locust from his foamy bed,
Unweave the Caterpillar's gluey thread;
Chase the fierce Earwig, scare the bloated Toad,
Arrest the snail upon his slimy road;
Arm with sharp thorns the Sweet-brier's tender wood,
And dash the Cynips from her damask bud;
Steep in ambrosial dews the Woodbine's bells,
And drive the Night-moth from her honey'd cells.
So where the Humming-bird in Chili's bowers
On murmuring pinions robs the pendent flowers;
22
Seeks, where fine pores their dulcet balm distill,
And sucks the treasure with proboscis-bill;
Fair CYPREPEDIA with successful guile
Knits her smooth brow, extinguishes her smile;
A Spiders bloated paunch and jointed arms
Hide her fine form, and mask her blushing charms;
In ambush sly the mimic warrior lies,
And on quick wing the panting plunderer flies.
2. 'Shield the young Harvest from devouring blight,
The Smut's dark poison, and the Mildew white;
Deep-rooted Mould, and Ergot's horn uncouth,
And break the Canker's desolating tooth.
First in one point the festering wound confin'd
Mines unperceived beneath the shrivel'd rin'd;
Then climbs the branches with increasing strength,
Spreads as they spread, and lengthens with their length;
-Thus the slight wound ingraved on glass unneal'd
Runs in white lines along the lucid field;
Crack follows crack, to laws elastic just,
And the frail fabric shivers into dust.
XIV. 1. 'SYLPHS! if with morn destructive Eurus springs,
O, clasp the Harebel with your velvet wings;
Screen with thick leaves the Jasmine as it blows,
And shake the white rime from the shuddering Rose;
Whilst Amaryllis turns with graceful ease
Her blushing beauties, and eludes the breeze.SYLPHS! if at noon the Fritillary droops,
With drops nectareous hang her nodding cups;
Thin clouds of Gossamer in air display,
And hide the vale's chaste Lily from the ray;
Whilst Erythrina o'er her tender flower
Bends all her leaves, and braves the sultry hour;Shield, when cold Hesper sheds his dewy light,
Mimosa's soft sensations from the night;
Fold her thin foilage, close her timid flowers,
And with ambrosial slumbers guard her bowers;
O'er each warm wall while Cerea flings her arms,
And wastes on night's dull eye a blaze of charms.
2. Round her tall Elm with dewy fingers twine
The gadding tendrils of the adventurous Vine;
From arm to arm in gay festoons suspend
23
Her fragrant flowers, her graceful foliage bend;
Swell with sweet juice her vermil orbs, and feed
Shrined in transparent pulp her pearly seed;
Hang round the Orange all her silver bells,
And guard her fragrance with Hesperian spells;
Bud after bud her polish'd leaves unfold,
And load her branches with successive gold.
So the learn'd Alchemist exulting sees
Rise in his bright matrass DIANA'S trees;
Drop after drop, with just delay he pours
The red-fumed acid on Potosi's ores;
With sudden flash the fierce bullitions rise,
And wide in air the gas phlogistic flies;
Slow shoot, at length, in many a brilliant mass
Metallic roots across the netted glass;
Branch after branch extend their silver stems,
Bud into gold, and blossoms into gems.
So sits enthron'd in vegetable pride
Imperial KEW by Thames's glittering side;
Obedient sails from realms unfurrow'd bring
For her the unnam'd progeny of spring;
Attendant Nymphs her dulcet mandates hear,
And nurse in fostering arms the tender year,
Plant the young bulb, inhume the living seed,
Prop the weak stem, the erring tendril lead;
Or fan in glass-built fanes the stranger flowers
With milder gales, and steep with warmer showers.
Delighted Thames through tropic umbrage glides,
And flowers antarctic, bending o'er his tides;
Drinks the new tints, the sweets unknown inhales,
And calls the sons of science to his vales.
In one bright point admiring Nature eyes
The fruits and foliage of discordant skies,
Twines the gay floret with the fragrant bough,
And bends the wreath round GEORGE'S royal brow.
-Sometimes retiring, from the public weal
One tranquil hour the ROYAL PARTNERS steal;
Through glades exotic pass with step sublime,
Or mark the growths of Britain's happier clime;
With beauty blossom'd, and with virtue blaz'd,
Mark the fair Scions, that themselves have rais'd;
Sweet blooms the Rose, the towering Oak expands,
24
The Grace and Guard of Britain's golden lands.
XV. SYLPHS! who, round earth on purple pinions borne,
Attend the radiant chariot of the morn;
Lead the gay hours along the ethereal hight,
And on each dun meridian shower the light;
SYLPHS! who from realms of equatorial day
To climes, that shudder in the polar ray,
From zone to zone pursue on shifting wing,
The bright perennial journey of the spring;
Bring my rich Balms from Mecca's hallow'd glades,
Sweet flowers, that glitter in Arabia's shades;
Fruits, whose fair forms in bright succession glow
Gilding the Banks of Arno, or of Po;
Each leaf, whose fragrant steam with ruby lip
Gay China's nymphs from pictur'd vases sip;
Each spicy rind, which sultry India boasts,
Scenting the night-air round her breezy coasts;
Roots whose bold stems in bleak Siberia blow,
And gem with many a tint the eternal snow;
Barks, whose broad umbrage high in ether waves
O'er Ande's steeps, and hides his golden caves;
-And, where yon oak extends his dusky shoots
Wide o'er the rill, that bubbles from his roots;
Beneath whose arms, protected from the storm
A turf-built altar rears it's rustic form;
SYLPHS! with religious hands fresh garlands twine,
And deck with lavish pomp HYGEIA'S shrine.
'Call with loud voice the Sisterhood, that dwell
On floating cloud, wide wave, or bubbling well;
Stamp with charm'd foot, convoke the alarmed Gnomes
From golden beds, and adamantine domes;
Each from her sphere with beckoning arm invite,
Curl'd with red flame, the Vestal Forms of light.
Close all your spotted wings, in lucid ranks
Press with your bending knees the crowded banks,
Cross your meek arms, incline your wreathed brows,
And win the Goddess with unwearied vows.
'Oh, wave, HYGEIA! o'er BRITANNIA'S throne
Thy serpent-wand, and mark it for thy own;
Lead round her breezy coasts thy guardian trains,
Her nodding forests, and her waving plains;
25
Shed o'er her peopled realms thy beamy smile,
And with thy airy temple crown her isle!'
The GODDESS ceased,-and calling from afar
The wandering Zephyrs, joins them to her car;
Mounts with light bound, and graceful, as she bends,
Whirls the long lash, the flexile rein extends;
On whispering wheels the silver axle slides,
Climbs into air, and cleaves the crystal tides;
Burst from its pearly chains, her amber hair
Streams o'er her ivory shoulders, buoy'd in air;
Swells her white veil, with ruby clasp confined
Round her fair brow, and undulates behind;
The lessening coursers rise in spiral rings,
Pierce the slow-sailing clouds, and stretch their shadowy wings.
~ Erasmus Darwin,#NFDB
540:I.
In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool,
There stood, or hover'd, tremulous in the air,
A faery city 'neath the potent rule
Of Emperor Elfinan; fam'd ev'rywhere
For love of mortal women, maidens fair,
Whose lips were solid, whose soft hands were made
Of a fit mould and beauty, ripe and rare,
To tamper his slight wooing, warm yet staid:
He lov'd girls smooth as shades, but hated a mere shade.
II.
This was a crime forbidden by the law;
And all the priesthood of his city wept,
For ruin and dismay they well foresaw,
If impious prince no bound or limit kept,
And faery Zendervester overstept;
They wept, he sin'd, and still he would sin on,
They dreamt of sin, and he sin'd while they slept;
In vain the pulpit thunder'd at the throne,
Caricature was vain, and vain the tart lampoon.
III.
Which seeing, his high court of parliament
Laid a remonstrance at his Highness' feet,
Praying his royal senses to content
Themselves with what in faery land was sweet,
Befitting best that shade with shade should meet:
Whereat, to calm their fears, he promis'd soon
From mortal tempters all to make retreat,--
Aye, even on the first of the new moon,
An immaterial wife to espouse as heaven's boon.
IV.
Meantime he sent a fluttering embassy
To Pigmio, of Imaus sovereign,
To half beg, and half demand, respectfully,
The hand of his fair daughter Bellanaine;
An audience had, and speeching done, they gain
Their point, and bring the weeping bride away;
Whom, with but one attendant, safely lain
Upon their wings, they bore in bright array,
While little harps were touch'd by many a lyric fay.
V.
As in old pictures tender cherubim
A child's soul thro' the sapphir'd canvas bear,
So, thro' a real heaven, on they swim
With the sweet princess on her plumag'd lair,
Speed giving to the winds her lustrous hair;
And so she journey'd, sleeping or awake,
Save when, for healthful exercise and air,
She chose to "promener l'aile," or take
A pigeon's somerset, for sport or change's sake.
VI.
"Dear Princess, do not whisper me so loud,"
Quoth Corallina, nurse and confidant,
"Do not you see there, lurking in a cloud,
Close at your back, that sly old Crafticant?
He hears a whisper plainer than a rant:
Dry up your tears, and do not look so blue;
He's Elfinan's great state-spy militant,
His running, lying, flying foot-man too,--
Dear mistress, let him have no handle against you!
VII.
"Show him a mouse's tail, and he will guess,
With metaphysic swiftness, at the mouse;
Show him a garden, and with speed no less,
He'll surmise sagely of a dwelling house,
And plot, in the same minute, how to chouse
The owner out of it; show him a" --- "Peace!
Peace! nor contrive thy mistress' ire to rouse!"
Return'd the Princess, "my tongue shall not cease
Till from this hated match I get a free release.
VIII.
"Ah, beauteous mortal!" "Hush!" quoth Coralline,
"Really you must not talk of him, indeed."
"You hush!" reply'd the mistress, with a shinee
Of anger in her eyes, enough to breed
In stouter hearts than nurse's fear and dread:
'Twas not the glance itself made nursey flinch,
But of its threat she took the utmost heed;
Not liking in her heart an hour-long pinch,
Or a sharp needle run into her back an inch.
IX.
So she was silenc'd, and fair Bellanaine,
Writhing her little body with ennui,
Continued to lament and to complain,
That Fate, cross-purposing, should let her be
Ravish'd away far from her dear countree;
That all her feelings should be set at nought,
In trumping up this match so hastily,
With lowland blood; and lowland blood she thought
Poison, as every staunch true-born Imaian ought.
X.
Sorely she griev'd, and wetted three or four
White Provence rose-leaves with her faery tears,
But not for this cause; -- alas! she had more
Bad reasons for her sorrow, as appears
In the fam'd memoirs of a thousand years,
Written by Crafticant, and published
By Parpaglion and Co., (those sly compeers
Who rak'd up ev'ry fact against the dead,)
In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal's Head.
XI.
Where, after a long hypercritic howl
Against the vicious manners of the age,
He goes on to expose, with heart and soul,
What vice in this or that year was the rage,
Backbiting all the world in every page;
With special strictures on the horrid crime,
(Section'd and subsection'd with learning sage,)
Of faeries stooping on their wings sublime
To kiss a mortal's lips, when such were in their prime.
XII.
Turn to the copious index, you will find
Somewhere in the column, headed letter B,
The name of Bellanaine, if you're not blind;
Then pray refer to the text, and you will see
An article made up of calumny
Against this highland princess, rating her
For giving way, so over fashionably,
To this new-fangled vice, which seems a burr
Stuck in his moral throat, no coughing e'er could stir.
XIII.
There he says plainly that she lov'd a man!
That she around him flutter'd, flirted, toy'd,
Before her marriage with great Elfinan;
That after marriage too, she never joy'd
In husband's company, but still employ'd
Her wits to 'scape away to Angle-land;
Where liv'd the youth, who worried and annoy'd
Her tender heart, and its warm ardours fann'd
To such a dreadful blaze, her side would scorch her hand.
XIV.
But let us leave this idle tittle-tattle
To waiting-maids, and bed-room coteries,
Nor till fit time against her fame wage battle.
Poor Elfinan is very ill at ease,
Let us resume his subject if you please:
For it may comfort and console him much,
To rhyme and syllable his miseries;
Poor Elfinan! whose cruel fate was such,
He sat and curs'd a bride he knew he could not touch.
XV.
Soon as (according to his promises)
The bridal embassy had taken wing,
And vanish'd, bird-like, o'er the suburb trees,
The Emperor, empierc'd with the sharp sting
Of love, retired, vex'd and murmuring
Like any drone shut from the fair bee-queen,
Into his cabinet, and there did fling
His limbs upon a sofa, full of spleen,
And damn'd his House of Commons, in complete chagrin.
XVI.
"I'll trounce some of the members," cry'd the Prince,
"I'll put a mark against some rebel names,
I'll make the Opposition-benches wince,
I'll show them very soon, to all their shames,
What 'tis to smother up a Prince's flames;
That ministers should join in it, I own,
Surprises me! -- they too at these high games!
Am I an Emperor? Do I wear a crown?
Imperial Elfinan, go hang thyself or drown!
XVII.
"I'll trounce 'em! -- there's the square-cut chancellor,
His son shall never touch that bishopric;
And for the nephew of old Palfior,
I'll show him that his speeches made me sick,
And give the colonelcy to Phalaric;
The tiptoe marquis, mortal and gallant,
Shall lodge in shabby taverns upon tick;
And for the Speaker's second cousin's aunt,
She sha'n't be maid of honour,-- by heaven that she sha'n't!
XVIII.
"I'll shirk the Duke of A.; I'll cut his brother;
I'll give no garter to his eldest son;
I won't speak to his sister or his mother!
The Viscount B. shall live at cut-and-run;
But how in the world can I contrive to stun
That fellow's voice, which plagues me worse than any,
That stubborn fool, that impudent state-dun,
Who sets down ev'ry sovereign as a zany,--
That vulgar commoner, Esquire Biancopany?
XIX.
"Monstrous affair! Pshaw! pah! what ugly minx
Will they fetch from Imaus for my bride?
Alas! my wearied heart within me sinks,
To think that I must be so near ally'd
To a cold dullard fay,--ah, woe betide!
Ah, fairest of all human loveliness!
Sweet Bertha! what crime can it be to glide
About the fragrant plaintings of thy dress,
Or kiss thine eyes, or count thy locks, tress after tress?"
XX.
So said, one minute's while his eyes remaind'
Half lidded, piteous, languid, innocent;
But, in a wink, their splendour they regain'd,
Sparkling revenge with amorous fury blent.
Love thwarted in bad temper oft has vent:
He rose, he stampt his foot, he rang the bell,
And order'd some death-warrants to be sent
For signature: -- somewhere the tempest fell,
As many a poor fellow does not live to tell.
XXI.
"At the same time, Eban," -- (this was his page,
A fay of colour, slave from top to toe,
Sent as a present, while yet under age,
From the Viceroy of Zanguebar, -- wise, slow,
His speech, his only words were "yes" and "no,"
But swift of look, and foot, and wing was he,--)
"At the same time, Eban, this instant go
To Hum the soothsayer, whose name I see
Among the fresh arrivals in our empery.
XXII.
"Bring Hum to me! But stay -- here, take my ring,
The pledge of favour, that he not suspect
Any foul play, or awkward murdering,
Tho' I have bowstrung many of his sect;
Throw in a hint, that if he should neglect
One hour, the next shall see him in my grasp,
And the next after that shall see him neck'd,
Or swallow'd by my hunger-starved asp,--
And mention ('tis as well) the torture of the wasp."
XXIII.
These orders given, the Prince, in half a pet,
Let o'er the silk his propping elbow slide,
Caught up his little legs, and, in a fret,
Fell on the sofa on his royal side.
The slave retreated backwards, humble-ey'd,
And with a slave-like silence clos'd the door,
And to old Hun thro' street and alley hied;
He "knew the city," as we say, of yore,
And for short cuts and turns, was nobody knew more.
XXIV.
It was the time when wholesale dealers close
Their shutters with a moody sense of wealth,
But retail dealers, diligent, let loose
The gas (objected to on score of health),
Convey'd in little solder'd pipes by stealth,
And make it flare in many a brilliant form,
That all the powers of darkness it repell'th,
Which to the oil-trade doth great scaith and harm,
And superseded quite the use of the glow-worm.
XXV.
Eban, untempted by the pastry-cooks,
(Of pastry he got store within the palace,)
With hasty steps, wrapp'd cloak, and solemn looks,
Incognito upon his errand sallies,
His smelling-bottle ready for the allies;
He pass'd the Hurdy-gurdies with disdain,
Vowing he'd have them sent on board the gallies;
Just as he made his vow; it 'gan to rain,
Therefore he call'd a coach, and bade it drive amain.
XXVI.
"I'll pull the string," said he, and further said,
"Polluted Jarvey! Ah, thou filthy hack!
Whose springs of life are all dry'd up and dead,
Whose linsey-woolsey lining hangs all slack,
Whose rug is straw, whose wholeness is a crack;
And evermore thy steps go clatter-clitter;
Whose glass once up can never be got back,
Who prov'st, with jolting arguments and bitter,
That 'tis of modern use to travel in a litter.
XXVII.
"Thou inconvenience! thou hungry crop
For all corn! thou snail-creeper to and fro,
Who while thou goest ever seem'st to stop,
And fiddle-faddle standest while you go;
I' the morning, freighted with a weight of woe,
Unto some lazar-house thou journeyest,
And in the evening tak'st a double row
Of dowdies, for some dance or party drest,
Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west.
XXVIII.
"By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien,
An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge;
Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign,
Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge,
School'd in a beckon, learned in a nudge,
A dull-ey'd Argus watching for a fare;
Quiet and plodding, thou dost bear no grudge
To whisking Tilburies, or Phaetons rare,
Curricles, or Mail-coaches, swift beyond compare."
XXIX.
Philosophizing thus, he pull'd the check,
And bade the Coachman wheel to such a street,
Who, turning much his body, more his neck,
Louted full low, and hoarsely did him greet:
"Certes, Monsieur were best take to his feet,
Seeing his servant can no further drive
For press of coaches, that to-night here meet,
Many as bees about a straw-capp'd hive,
When first for April honey into faint flowers they dive."
XXX.
Eban then paid his fare, and tiptoe went
To Hum's hotel; and, as he on did pass
With head inclin'd, each dusky lineament
Show'd in the pearl-pav'd street, as in a glass;
His purple vest, that ever peeping was
Rich from the fluttering crimson of his cloak,
His silvery trowsers, and his silken sash
Tied in a burnish'd knot, their semblance took
Upon the mirror'd walls, wherever he might look.
XXXI.
He smil'd at self, and, smiling, show'd his teeth,
And seeing his white teeth, he smil'd the more;
Lifted his eye-brows, spurn'd the path beneath,
Show'd teeth again, and smil'd as heretofore,
Until he knock'd at the magician's door;
Where, till the porter answer'd, might be seen,
In the clear panel more he could adore,--
His turban wreath'd of gold, and white, and green,
Mustachios, ear-ring, nose-ring, and his sabre keen.
XXXII.
"Does not your master give a rout to-night?"
Quoth the dark page. "Oh, no!" return'd the Swiss,
"Next door but one to us, upon the right,
The Magazin des Modes now open is
Against the Emperor's wedding;--and, sir, this
My master finds a monstrous horrid bore;
As he retir'd, an hour ago I wis,
With his best beard and brimstone, to explore
And cast a quiet figure in his second floor.
XXXIII.
"Gad! he's oblig'd to stick to business!
For chalk, I hear, stands at a pretty price;
And as for aqua vitae -- there's a mess!
The dentes sapientiae of mice,
Our barber tells me too, are on the rise,--
Tinder's a lighter article, -- nitre pure
Goes off like lightning, -- grains of Paradise
At an enormous figure! -- stars not sure! --
Zodiac will not move without a slight douceur!
XXXIV.
"Venus won't stir a peg without a fee,
And master is too partial, entre nous,
To" -- "Hush -- hush!" cried Eban, "sure that is he
Coming down stairs, -- by St. Bartholomew!
As backwards as he can, -- is't something new?
Or is't his custom, in the name of fun?"
"He always comes down backward, with one shoe"--
Return'd the porter -- "off, and one shoe on,
Like, saving shoe for sock or stocking, my man John!"
XXXV.
It was indeed the great Magician,
Feeling, with careful toe, for every stair,
And retrograding careful as he can,
Backwards and downwards from his own two pair:
"Salpietro!" exclaim'd Hum, "is the dog there?
He's always in my way upon the mat!"
"He's in the kitchen, or the Lord knows where,"--
Reply'd the Swiss, -- "the nasty, yelping brat!"
"Don't beat him!" return'd Hum, and on the floor came pat.
XXXVI.
Then facing right about, he saw the Page,
And said: "Don't tell me what you want, Eban;
The Emperor is now in a huge rage,--
'Tis nine to one he'll give you the rattan!
Let us away!" Away together ran
The plain-dress'd sage and spangled blackamoor,
Nor rested till they stood to cool, and fan,
And breathe themselves at th' Emperor's chamber door,
When Eban thought he heard a soft imperial snore.
XXXVII.
"I thought you guess'd, foretold, or prophesy'd,
That's Majesty was in a raving fit?"
"He dreams," said Hum, "or I have ever lied,
That he is tearing you, sir, bit by bit."
"He's not asleep, and you have little wit,"
Reply'd the page; "that little buzzing noise,
Whate'er your palmistry may make of it,
Comes from a play-thing of the Emperor's choice,
From a Man-Tiger-Organ, prettiest of his toys."
XXXVIII.
Eban then usher'd in the learned Seer:
Elfinan's back was turn'd, but, ne'ertheless,
Both, prostrate on the carpet, ear by ear,
Crept silently, and waited in distress,
Knowing the Emperor's moody bitterness;
Eban especially, who on the floor 'gan
Tremble and quake to death,-- he feared less
A dose of senna-tea or nightmare Gorgon
Than the Emperor when he play'd on his Man-Tiger-Organ.
XXXIX.
They kiss'd nine times the carpet's velvet face
Of glossy silk, soft, smooth, and meadow-green,
Where the close eye in deep rich fur might trace
A silver tissue, scantly to be seen,
As daisies lurk'd in June-grass, buds in green;
Sudden the music ceased, sudden the hand
Of majesty, by dint of passion keen,
Doubled into a common fist, went grand,
And knock'd down three cut glasses, and his best ink-stand.
XL.
Then turning round, he saw those trembling two:
"Eban," said he, "as slaves should taste the fruits
Of diligence, I shall remember you
To-morrow, or next day, as time suits,
In a finger conversation with my mutes,--
Begone! -- for you, Chaldean! here remain!
Fear not, quake not, and as good wine recruits
A conjurer's spirits, what cup will you drain?
Sherry in silver, hock in gold, or glass'd champagne?"
XLI.
"Commander of the faithful!" answer'd Hum,
"In preference to these, I'll merely taste
A thimble-full of old Jamaica rum."
"A simple boon!" said Elfinan; "thou may'st
Have Nantz, with which my morning-coffee's lac'd."
"I'll have a glass of Nantz, then," -- said the Seer,--
"Made racy -- (sure my boldness is misplac'd!)--
With the third part -- (yet that is drinking dear!)--
Of the least drop of crme de citron, crystal clear."
XLII.
"I pledge you, Hum! and pledge my dearest love,
My Bertha!" "Bertha! Bertha!" cry'd the sage,
"I know a many Berthas!" "Mine's above
All Berthas!" sighed the Emperor. "I engage,"
Said Hum, "in duty, and in vassalage,
To mention all the Berthas in the earth;--
There's Bertha Watson, -- and Miss Bertha Page,--
This fam'd for languid eyes, and that for mirth,--
There's Bertha Blount of York, -- and Bertha Knox of Perth."
XLIII.
"You seem to know" -- "I do know," answer'd Hum,
"Your Majesty's in love with some fine girl
Named Bertha; but her surname will not come,
Without a little conjuring." "'Tis Pearl,
'Tis Bertha Pearl! What makes my brain so whirl?
And she is softer, fairer than her name!"
"Where does she live?" ask'd Hum. "Her fair locks curl
So brightly, they put all our fays to shame!--
Live? -- O! at Canterbury, with her old grand-dame."
XLIV.
"Good! good!" cried Hum, "I've known her from a child!
She is a changeling of my management;
She was born at midnight in an Indian wild;
Her mother's screams with the striped tiger's blent,
While the torch-bearing slaves a halloo sent
Into the jungles; and her palanquin,
Rested amid the desert's dreariment,
Shook with her agony, till fair were seen
The little Bertha's eyes ope on the stars serene."
XLV.
"I can't say," said the monarch; "that may be
Just as it happen'd, true or else a bam!
Drink up your brandy, and sit down by me,
Feel, feel my pulse, how much in love I am;
And if your science is not all a sham.
Tell me some means to get the lady here."
"Upon my honour!" said the son of Cham,
"She is my dainty changeling, near and dear,
Although her story sounds at first a little queer."
XLVI.
"Convey her to me, Hum, or by my crown,
My sceptre, and my cross-surmounted globe,
I'll knock you" -- "Does your majesty mean -- down?
No, no, you never could my feelings probe
To such a depth!" The Emperor took his robe,
And wept upon its purple palatine,
While Hum continued, shamming half a sob,--
"In Canterbury doth your lady shine?
But let me cool your brandy with a little wine."
XLVII.
Whereat a narrow Flemish glass he took,
That since belong'd to Admiral De Witt,
Admir'd it with a connoisseuring look,
And with the ripest claret crowned it,
And, ere the lively bead could burst and flit,
He turn'd it quickly, nimbly upside down,
His mouth being held conveniently fit
To catch the treasure: "Best in all the town!"
He said, smack'd his moist lips, and gave a pleasant frown.
XLVIII.
"Ah! good my Prince, weep not!" And then again
He filled a bumper. "Great Sire, do not weep!
Your pulse is shocking, but I'll ease your pain."
"Fetch me that Ottoman, and prithee keep
Your voice low," said the Emperor; "and steep
Some lady's-fingers nice in Candy wine;
And prithee, Hum, behind the screen do peep
For the rose-water vase, magician mine!
And sponge my forehead, -- so my love doth make me pine.
XLIX.
"Ah, cursed Bellanaine!" "Don't think of her,"
Rejoin'd the Mago, "but on Bertha muse;
For, by my choicest best barometer,
You shall not throttled be in marriage noose;
I've said it, Sire; you only have to choose
Bertha or Bellanaine." So saying, he drew
From the left pocket of his threadbare hose,
A sampler hoarded slyly, good as new,
Holding it by his thumb and finger full in view.
L.
"Sire, this is Bertha Pearl's neat handy-work,
Her name, see here, Midsummer, ninety-one."
Elfinan snatch'd it with a sudden jerk,
And wept as if he never would have done,
Honouring with royal tears the poor homespun;
Whereon were broider'd tigers with black eyes,
And long-tail'd pheasants, and a rising sun,
Plenty of posies, great stags, butterflies
Bigger than stags,-- a moon,-- with other mysteries.
LI.
The monarch handled o'er and o'er again
Those day-school hieroglyphics with a sigh;
Somewhat in sadness, but pleas'd in the main,
Till this oracular couplet met his eye
Astounded -- Cupid, I do thee defy!
It was too much. He shrunk back in his chair,
Grew pale as death, and fainted -- very nigh!
"Pho! nonsense!" exclaim'd Hum, "now don't despair;
She does not mean it really. Cheer up, hearty -- there!
LII.
"And listen to my words. You say you won't,
On any terms, marry Miss Bellanaine;
It goes against your conscience -- good! Well, don't.
You say you love a mortal. I would fain
Persuade your honour's highness to refrain
From peccadilloes. But, Sire, as I say,
What good would that do? And, to be more plain,
You would do me a mischief some odd day,
Cut off my ears and limbs, or head too, by my fay!
LIII.
"Besides, manners forbid that I should pass any
Vile strictures on the conduct of a prince
Who should indulge his genius, if he has any,
Not, like a subject, foolish matters mince.
Now I think on't, perhaps I could convince
Your Majesty there is no crime at all
In loving pretty little Bertha, since
She's very delicate,-- not over tall, --
A fairy's hand, and in the waist why -- very small."
LIV.
"Ring the repeater, gentle Hum!" "'Tis five,"
Said the gentle Hum; "the nights draw in apace;
The little birds I hear are all alive;
I see the dawning touch'd upon your face;
Shall I put out the candles, please your Grace?"
"Do put them out, and, without more ado,
Tell me how I may that sweet girl embrace,--
How you can bring her to me." "That's for you,
Great Emperor! to adventure, like a lover true."
LV.
"I fetch her!" -- "Yes, an't like your Majesty;
And as she would be frighten'd wide awake
To travel such a distance through the sky,
Use of some soft manoeuvre you must make,
For your convenience, and her dear nerves' sake;
Nice way would be to bring her in a swoon,
Anon, I'll tell what course were best to take;
You must away this morning." "Hum! so soon?"
"Sire, you must be in Kent by twelve o'clock at noon."
LVI.
At this great Caesar started on his feet,
Lifted his wings, and stood attentive-wise.
"Those wings to Canterbury you must beat,
If you hold Bertha as a worthy prize.
Look in the Almanack -- Moore never lies --
April the twenty- fourth, -- this coming day,
Now breathing its new bloom upon the skies,
Will end in St. Mark's Eve; -- you must away,
For on that eve alone can you the maid convey."
LVII.
Then the magician solemnly 'gan to frown,
So that his frost-white eyebrows, beetling low,
Shaded his deep green eyes, and wrinkles brown
Plaited upon his furnace-scorched brow:
Forth from his hood that hung his neck below,
He lifted a bright casket of pure gold,
Touch'd a spring-lock, and there in wool or snow,
Charm'd into ever freezing, lay an old
And legend-leaved book, mysterious to behold.
LVIII.
"Take this same book,-- it will not bite you, Sire;
There, put it underneath your royal arm;
Though it's a pretty weight it will not tire,
But rather on your journey keep you warm:
This is the magic, this the potent charm,
That shall drive Bertha to a fainting fit!
When the time comes, don't feel the least alarm,
But lift her from the ground, and swiftly flit
Back to your palace. * * * * * * * * * *
LIX.
"What shall I do with that same book?" "Why merely
Lay it on Bertha's table, close beside
Her work-box, and 'twill help your purpose dearly;
I say no more." "Or good or ill betide,
Through the wide air to Kent this morn I glide!"
Exclaim'd the Emperor. "When I return,
Ask what you will, -- I'll give you my new bride!
And take some more wine, Hum; -- O Heavens! I burn
To be upon the wing! Now, now, that minx I spurn!"
LX.
"Leave her to me," rejoin'd the magian:
"But how shall I account, illustrious fay!
For thine imperial absence? Pho! I can
Say you are very sick, and bar the way
To your so loving courtiers for one day;
If either of their two archbishops' graces
Should talk of extreme unction, I shall say
You do not like cold pig with Latin phrases,
Which never should be used but in alarming cases."
LXI.
"Open the window, Hum; I'm ready now!"
Zooks!" exclaim'd Hum, as up the sash he drew.
"Behold, your Majesty, upon the brow
Of yonder hill, what crowds of people!" "Whew!
The monster's always after something new,"
Return'd his Highness, "they are piping hot
To see my pigsney Bellanaine. Hum! do
Tighten my belt a little, -- so, so, -- not
Too tight, -- the book! -- my wand! -- so, nothing is forgot."
LXII.
"Wounds! how they shout!" said Hum, "and there, -- see, see!
Th' ambassador's return'd from Pigmio!
The morning's very fine, -- uncommonly!
See, past the skirts of yon white cloud they go,
Tinging it with soft crimsons! Now below
The sable-pointed heads of firs and pines
They dip, move on, and with them moves a glow
Along the forest side! Now amber lines
Reach the hill top, and now throughout the valley shines."
LXIII.
"Why, Hum, you're getting quite poetical!
Those 'nows' you managed in a special style."
"If ever you have leisure, Sire, you shall
See scraps of mine will make it worth your while,
Tid-bits for Phoebus! -- yes, you well may smile.
Hark! hark! the bells!" "A little further yet,
Good Hum, and let me view this mighty coil."
Then the great Emperor full graceful set
His elbow for a prop, and snuff'd his mignonnette.
LXIV.
The morn is full of holiday; loud bells
With rival clamours ring from every spire;
Cunningly-station'd music dies and swells
In echoing places; when the winds respire,
Light flags stream out like gauzy tongues of fire;
A metropolitan murmur, lifeful, warm,
Comes from the northern suburbs; rich attire
Freckles with red and gold the moving swarm;
While here and there clear trumpets blow a keen alarm.
LXV.
And now the fairy escort was seen clear,
Like the old pageant of Aurora's train,
Above a pearl-built minister, hovering near;
First wily Crafticant, the chamberlain,
Balanc'd upon his grey-grown pinions twain,
His slender wand officially reveal'd;
Then black gnomes scattering sixpences like rain;
Then pages three and three; and next, slave-held,
The Imaian 'scutcheon bright, -- one mouse in argent field.
LXVI.
Gentlemen pensioners next; and after them,
A troop of winged Janizaries flew;
Then slaves, as presents bearing many a gem;
Then twelve physicians fluttering two and two;
And next a chaplain in a cassock new;
Then Lords in waiting; then (what head not reels
For pleasure?) -- the fair Princess in full view,
Borne upon wings, -- and very pleas'd she feels
To have such splendour dance attendance at her heels.
LXVII.
For there was more magnificence behind:
She wav'd her handkerchief. "Ah, very grand!"
Cry'd Elfinan, and clos'd the window-blind;
"And, Hum, we must not shilly-shally stand,--
Adieu! adieu! I'm off for Angle-land!
I say, old Hocus, have you such a thing
About you, -- feel your pockets, I command,--
I want, this instant, an invisible ring,--
Thank you, old mummy! -- now securely I take wing."
LXVIII.
Then Elfinan swift vaulted from the floor,
And lighted graceful on the window-sill;
Under one arm the magic book he bore,
The other he could wave about at will;
Pale was his face, he still look'd very ill;
He bow'd at Bellanaine, and said -- "Poor Bell!
Farewell! farewell! and if for ever! still
For ever fare thee well!" -- and then he fell
A laughing! -- snapp'd his fingers! -- shame it is to tell!
LXIX.
"By'r Lady! he is gone!" cries Hum, "and I --
(I own it) -- have made too free with his wine;
Old Crafticant will smoke me. By-the-bye!
This room is full of jewels as a mine,--
Dear valuable creatures, how ye shine!
Sometime to-day I must contrive a minute,
If Mercury propitiously incline,
To examine his scutoire, and see what's in i,
For of superfluous diamonds I as well may thin it.
LXX.
"The Emperor's horrid bad; yes, that's my cue!"
Some histories say that this was Hum's last speech;
That, being fuddled, he went reeling through
The corridor, and scarce upright could reach
The stair-head; that being glutted as a leech,
And us'd, as we ourselves have just now said,
To manage stairs reversely, like a peach
Too ripe, he fell, being puzzled in his head
With liquor and the staircase: verdict -- found stone dead.
LXXI.
This as a falsehood Crafticanto treats;
And as his style is of strange elegance,
Gentle and tender, full of soft conceits,
(Much like our Boswell's,) we will take a glance
At his sweet prose, and, if we can, make dance
His woven periods into careless rhyme;
O, little faery Pegasus! rear -- prance --
Trot round the quarto -- ordinary time!
March, little Pegasus, with pawing hoof sublime!
LXXII.
Well, let us see, -- tenth book and chapter nine,--
Thus Crafticant pursues his diary:--
"'Twas twelve o'clock at night, the weather fine,
Latitude thirty-six; our scouts descry
A flight of starlings making rapidly
Towards Thibet. Mem.: -- birds fly in the night;
From twelve to half-past -- wings not fit to fly
For a thick fog -- the Princess sulky quite;
Call'd for an extra shawl, and gave her nurse a bite.
LXXIII.
"Five minutes before one -- brought down a moth
With my new double-barrel -- stew'd the thighs
And made a very tolerable broth --
Princess turn'd dainty, to our great surprise,
Alter'd her mind, and thought it very nice;
Seeing her pleasant, try'd her with a pun,
She frown'd; a monstrous owl across us flies
About this time, -- a sad old figure of fun;
Bad omen -- this new match can't be a happy one.
LXXIV.
"From two to half-past, dusky way we made,
Above the plains of Gobi, -- desert, bleak;
Beheld afar off, in the hooded shade
Of darkness, a great mountain (strange to speak),
Spitting, from forth its sulphur-baken peak,
A fan-shap'd burst of blood-red, arrowy fire,
Turban'd with smoke, which still away did reek,
Solid and black from that eternal pyre,
Upon the laden winds that scantly could respire.
LXXV.
"Just upon three o'clock a falling star
Created an alarm among our troop,
Kill'd a man-cook, a page, and broke a jar,
A tureen, and three dishes, at one swoop,
Then passing by the princess, singed her hoop:
Could not conceive what Coralline was at,
She clapp'd her hands three times and cry'd out 'Whoop!'
Some strange Imaian custom. A large bat
Came sudden 'fore my face, and brush'd against my hat.
LXXVI.
"Five minutes thirteen seconds after three,
Far in the west a mighty fire broke out,
Conjectur'd, on the instant, it might be,
The city of Balk -- 'twas Balk beyond all doubt:
A griffin, wheeling here and there about,
Kept reconnoitring us -- doubled our guard --
Lighted our torches, and kept up a shout,
Till he sheer'd off -- the Princess very scar'd --
And many on their marrow-bones for death prepar'd.
LXXVII.
"At half-past three arose the cheerful moon--
Bivouack'd for four minutes on a cloud --
Where from the earth we heard a lively tune
Of tambourines and pipes, serene and loud,
While on a flowery lawn a brilliant crowd
Cinque-parted danc'd, some half asleep reposed
Beneath the green-fan'd cedars, some did shroud
In silken tents, and 'mid light fragrance dozed,
Or on the opera turf their soothed eyelids closed.
LXXVIII.
"Dropp'd my gold watch, and kill'd a kettledrum--
It went for apoplexy -- foolish folks! --
Left it to pay the piper -- a good sum --
(I've got a conscience, maugre people's jokes,)
To scrape a little favour; 'gan to coax
Her Highness' pug-dog -- got a sharp rebuff --
She wish'd a game at whist -- made three revokes --
Turn'd from myself, her partner, in a huff;
His majesty will know her temper time enough.
LXXIX.
"She cry'd for chess -- I play'd a game with her --
Castled her king with such a vixen look,
It bodes ill to his Majesty -- (refer
To the second chapter of my fortieth book,
And see what hoity-toity airs she took).
At half-past four the morn essay'd to beam --
Saluted, as we pass'd, an early rook --
The Princess fell asleep, and, in her dream,
Talk'd of one Master Hubert, deep in her esteem.
LXXX.
"About this time, -- making delightful way,--
Shed a quill-feather from my larboard wing --
Wish'd, trusted, hop'd 'twas no sign of decay --
Thank heaven, I'm hearty yet! -- 'twas no such thing:--
At five the golden light began to spring,
With fiery shudder through the bloomed east;
At six we heard Panthea's churches ring --
The city wall his unhiv'd swarms had cast,
To watch our grand approach, and hail us as we pass'd.
LXXXI.
"As flowers turn their faces to the sun,
So on our flight with hungry eyes they gaze,
And, as we shap'd our course, this, that way run,
With mad-cap pleasure, or hand-clasp'd amaze;
Sweet in the air a mild-ton'd music plays,
And progresses through its own labyrinth;
Buds gather'd from the green spring's middle-days,
They scatter'd, -- daisy, primrose, hyacinth,--
Or round white columns wreath'd from capital to plinth.
LXXXII.
"Onward we floated o'er the panting streets,
That seem'd throughout with upheld faces paved;
Look where we will, our bird's-eye vision meets
Legions of holiday; bright standards waved,
And fluttering ensigns emulously craved
Our minute's glance; a busy thunderous roar,
From square to square, among the buildings raved,
As when the sea, at flow, gluts up once more
The craggy hollowness of a wild reefed shore.
LXXXIII.
"And 'Bellanaine for ever!' shouted they,
While that fair Princess, from her winged chair,
Bow'd low with high demeanour, and, to pay
Their new-blown loyalty with guerdon fair,
Still emptied at meet distance, here and there,
A plenty horn of jewels. And here I
(Who wish to give the devil her due) declare
Against that ugly piece of calumny,
Which calls them Highland pebble-stones not worth a fly.
LXXXIV.
"Still 'Bellanaine!' they shouted, while we glide
'Slant to a light Ionic portico,
The city's delicacy, and the pride
Of our Imperial Basilic; a row
Of lords and ladies, on each hand, make show
Submissive of knee-bent obeisance,
All down the steps; and, as we enter'd, lo!
The strangest sight -- the most unlook'd for chance --
All things turn'd topsy-turvy in a devil's dance.
LXXXV.
"'Stead of his anxious Majesty and court
At the open doors, with wide saluting eyes,
Conges and scrape-graces of every sort,
And all the smooth routine of gallantries,
Was seen, to our immoderate surprise,
A motley crowd thick gather'd in the hall,
Lords, scullions, deputy-scullions, with wild cries
Stunning the vestibule from wall to wall,
Where the Chief Justice on his knees and hands doth crawl.
LXXXVI.
"Counts of the palace, and the state purveyor
Of moth's-down, to make soft the royal beds,
The Common Council and my fool Lord Mayor
Marching a-row, each other slipshod treads;
Powder'd bag-wigs and ruffy-tuffy heads
Of cinder wenches meet and soil each other;
Toe crush'd with heel ill-natur'd fighting breeds,
Frill-rumpling elbows brew up many a bother,
And fists in the short ribs keep up the yell and pother.
LXXXVII.
"A Poet, mounted on the Court-Clown's back,
Rode to the Princess swift with spurring heels,
And close into her face, with rhyming clack,
Began a Prothalamion; -- she reels,
She falls, she faints! while laughter peels
Over her woman's weakness. 'Where!' cry'd I,
'Where is his Majesty?' No person feels
Inclin'd to answer; wherefore instantly
I plung'd into the crowd to find him or die.
LXXXVIII.
"Jostling my way I gain'd the stairs, and ran
To the first landing, where, incredible!
I met, far gone in liquor, that old man,
That vile impostor Hum. ----"
So far so well,--
For we have prov'd the Mago never fell
Down stairs on Crafticanto's evidence;
And therefore duly shall proceed to tell,
Plain in our own original mood and tense,
The sequel of this day, though labour 'tis immense!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
'Lord Houghton first gave this composition in the Life, Letters &c. (1848), and in Volume II, page 51, refers to it as "the last of Keats's literary labours." The poet says in a letter to Brown, written after the first attack of blood-spitting,
"I shall soon begin upon 'Lucy Vaughan Lloyd.' I do not begin composition yet, being willing, in case of a relapse, to have nothing to reproach myself with."
I presume, therefore, that the composition may be assigned to the Spring or Summer of 1820. In August of that year, Leigh Hunt seems to have had the manuscript in his hands, for, in the first part of his article on Coaches, which fills The Indicator for the 23rd of August 1820, he quotes four stanzas and four lines from the poem, as by "a very good poetess, of the name of Lucy V---- L----, who has favoured us with a sight of a manuscript poem," &c. The stanzas quoted are XXV to XXIX. Lord Houghton gives, in the Aldine Edition of 1876, the following note by Brown: --
"This Poem was written subject to future amendments and omissions: it was begun without a plan, and without any prescribed laws for the supernatural machinery."
His Lordship adds an interesting passage from a letter written to him by Lord Jeffrey: --
"There are beautiful passages and lines of ineffable sweetness in these minor pieces, and strange outbursts of individual fancy and felicitous expressions in the 'Cap and Bells,' though the general extravagance of the poetry is more suited to an Italian than to an English taste."
The late Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote to me of this poem as "the only unworthy stuff Keats ever wrote except an early trifle or two," and again as "the to me hateful Cap and Bells." I confess that it seems to me entirely unworthy of Keats, though certainly a proof, if proof were needed, of his versatility. It has the character of a mere intellectual and mechanical exercise, performed at a time when those higher forces constituting the mainspring of poetry were exhausted; but even so I find it difficult to figure Keats as doing anything so aimless as this appears when regarded solely as an effort of the fancy. He probably had a satirical under-current of meaning; and it needs no great stretch of the imagination to see the illicit passion of Emperor Elfinan, and his detestation for his authorized bride-elect, an oblique glance at the martial relations of George IV.
It is not difficult to suggest prototypes for many of the faery-land statesmen against whom Elfinan vows vengeance; and there are many particulars in which earthly incidents are too thickly strewn to leave one in the settled belief that the poet's programme was wholly unearthly.--- H. B. F.'
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, The Cap And Bells; Or, The Jealousies - A Faery Tale .. Unfinished
,#NFDB
541:Pauline, A Fragment of a Question
Plus ne suis ce que j'ai t,
Et ne le saurois jamais tre.
Marot.
Non dubito, quin titulus libri nostri raritate sua quamplurimos alliciat ad legendum: inter quos nonnulli obliqu opinionis, mente languidi, multi etiam maligni, et in ingenium nostrum ingrati accedent, qui temeraria sua ignorantia, vix conspecto titulo clamabunt Nos vetita docere, hresium semina jacere: piis auribus offendiculo, prclaris ingeniis scandalo esse: . . . . adeo conscienti su consulentes, ut nec Apollo, nec Mus omnes, neque Angelus de coelo me ab illorum execratione vindicare queant: quibus et ego nunc consulo, ne scripta nostra legant, nec intelligant, nec meminerint: nam noxia sunt, venenosa sunt: Acherontis ostium est in hoc libro, lapides loquitur, caveant, ne cerebrum illis excutiat. Vos autem, qui qua mente ad legendum venitis, si tantam prudenti discretionem adhibueritis, quantam in melle legendo apes, jam securi legite. Puto namque vos et utilitatis haud parum et voluptatis plurimum accepturos. Quod si qua repereritis, qu vobis non placeant, mittite illa, nec utimini. Nam et ego vobis illa non Probo, sed Narro. Ctera tamen propterea non respuite . . . . . Ideo, si quid liberius dictum sit, ignoscite adolescenti nostr, qui minor quam adolescens hoc opus composui.
Hen. Corn. Agrippa, De Occult. Philosoph. in Prfat.
London: January 1833.V. A. XX .
1833.
Pauline, mine own, bend o'er methy soft breast
Shall pant to minebend o'er methy sweet eyes,
And loosened hair and breathing lips, and arms
Drawing me to theethese build up a screen
To shut me in with thee, and from all fear;
So that I might unlock the sleepless brood
Of fancies from my soul, their lurking-place,
Nor doubt that each would pass, ne'er to return
To one so watched, so loved and so secured.
But what can guard thee but thy naked love?
Ah dearest, whoso sucks a poisoned wound
Envenoms his own veins! Thou art so good,
So calmif thou shouldst wear a brow less light
For some wild thought which, but for me, were kept
From out thy soul as from a sacred star!
Yet till I have unlocked them it were vain
To hope to sing; some woe would light on me;
Nature would point at one whose quivering lip
Was bathed in her enchantments, whose brow burned
Beneath the crown to which her secrets knelt,
Who learned the spell which can call up the dead,
And then departed smiling like a fiend
Who has deceived God,if such one should seek
Again her altars and stand robed and crowned
Amid the faithful! Sad confession first,
Remorse and pardon and old claims renewed,
Ere I can beas I shall be no more.
I had been spared this shame if I had sat
By thee for ever from the first, in place
Of my wild dreams of beauty and of good,
Or with them, as an earnest of their truth:
No thought nor hope having been shut from thee,
No vague wish unexplained, no wandering aim
Sent back to bind on fancy's wings and seek
Some strange fair world where it might be a law;
But, doubting nothing, had been led by thee,
Thro' youth, and saved, as one at length awaked
Who has slept through a peril. Ah vain, vain!
Thou lovest me; the past is in its grave
Tho' its ghost haunts us; still this much is ours,
To cast away restraint, lest a worse thing
Wait for us in the dark. Thou lovest me;
And thou art to receive not love but faith,
For which thou wilt be mine, and smile and take
All shapes and shames, and veil without a fear
That form which music follows like a slave:
And I look to thee and I trust in thee,
As in a Northern night one looks alway
Unto the East for morn and spring and joy.
Thou seest then my aimless, hopeless state,
And, resting on some few old feelings won
Back by thy beauty, wouldst that I essay
The task which was to me what now thou art:
And why should I conceal one weakness more?
Thou wilt remember one warm morn when winter
Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills; the black-thorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes.
I walked with thee who knew'st not a deep shame
Lurked beneath smiles and careless words which sought
To hide it till they wandered and were mute,
As we stood listening on a sunny mound
To the wind murmuring in the damp copse,
Like heavy breathings of some hidden thing
Betrayed by sleep; until the feeling rushed
That I was low indeed, yet not so low
As to endure the calmness of thine eyes.
And so I told thee all, while the cool breast
I leaned on altered not its quiet beating:
And long ere words like a hurt bird's complaint
Bade me look up and be what I had been,
I felt despair could never live by thee:
Thou wilt remember. Thou art not more dear
Than song was once to me; and I ne'er sung
But as one entering bright halls where all
Will rise and shout for him: sure I must own
That I am fallen, having chosen gifts
Distinct from theirsthat I am sad and fain
Would give up all to be but where I was,
Not high as I had been if faithful found,
But low and weak yet full of hope, and sure
Of goodness as of lifethat I would lose
All this gay mastery of mind, to sit
Once more with them, trusting in truth and love
And with an aimnot being what I am.
Oh Pauline, I am ruined who believed
That though my soul had floated from its sphere
Of wild dominion into the dim orb
Of selfthat it was strong and free as ever!
It has conformed itself to that dim orb,
Reflecting all its shades and shapes, and now
Must stay where it alone can be adored.
I have felt this in dreamsin dreams in which
I seemed the fate from which I fled; I felt
A strange delight in causing my decay.
I was a fiend in darkness chained for ever
Within some ocean-cave; and ages rolled,
Till through the cleft rock, like a moonbeam, came
A white swan to remain with me; and ages
Rolled, yet I tired not of my first free joy
In gazing on the peace of its pure wings:
And then I said "It is most fair to me,
"Yet its soft wings must sure have suffered change
"From the thick darkness, sure its eyes are dim,
"Its silver pinions must be cramped and numbed
"With sleeping ages here; it cannot leave me,
"For it would seem, in light beside its kind,
"Withered, tho' here to me most beautiful."
And then I was a young witch whose blue eyes,
As she stood naked by the river springs,
Drew down a god: I watched his radiant form
Growing less radiant, and it gladdened me;
Till one morn, as he sat in the sunshine
Upon my knees, singing to me of heaven,
He turned to look at me, ere I could lose
The grin with which I viewed his perishing:
And he shrieked and departed and sat long
By his deserted throne, but sunk at last
Murmuring, as I kissed his lips and curled
Around him, "I am still a godto thee."
Still I can lay my soul bare in its fall,
Since all the wandering and all the weakness
Will be a saddest comment on the song:
And if, that done, I can be young again,
I will give up all gained, as willingly
As one gives up a charm which shuts him out
From hope or part or care in human kind.
As life wanes, all its care and strife and toil
Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees
Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass
Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew,
The morning swallows with their songs like words,
All these seem clear and only worth our thoughts:
So, aught connected with my early life,
My rude songs or my wild imaginings,
How I look on themmost distinct amid
The fever and the stir of after years!
I ne'er had ventured e'en to hope for this,
Had not the glow I felt at His award,
Assured me all was not extinct within:
His whom all honour, whose renown springs up
Like sunlight which will visit all the world,
So that e'en they who sneered at him at first,
Come out to it, as some dark spider crawls
From his foul nets which some lit torch invades,
Yet spinning still new films for his retreat.
Thou didst smile, poet, but can we forgive?
Sun-treader, life and light be thine for ever!
Thou art gone from us; years go by and spring
Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful,
Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise,
But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties,
Like mighty works which tell some spirit there
Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,
Till, its long task completed, it hath risen
And left us, never to return, and all
Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.
The air seems bright with thy past presence yet,
But thou art still for me as thou hast been
When I have stood with thee as on a throne
With all thy dim creations gathered round
Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them,
And with them creatures of my own were mixed,
Like things half-lived, catching and giving life.
But thou art still for me who have adored
Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name
Which I believed a spell to me alone,
Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men!
As one should worship long a sacred spring
Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross,
And one small tree embowers droopingly
Joying to see some wandering insect won
To live in its few rushes, or some locust
To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird
Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air:
And then should find it but the fountain-head,
Long lost, of some great river washing towns
And towers, and seeing old woods which will live
But by its banks untrod of human foot,
Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering
In light as some thing lieth half of life
Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change;
Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay
Its course in vain, for it does ever spread
Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on,
Being the pulse of some great countryso
Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world!
And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret
That I am not what I have been to thee:
Like a girl one has silently loved long
In her first loneliness in some retreat,
When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view
Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom
Like a mountain berry: doubtless it is sweet
To see her thus adored, but there have been
Moments when all the world was in our praise,
Sweeter than any pride of after hours.
Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart
I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams,
I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust
The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me,
To see thee for a moment as thou art.
And if thou livest, if thou lovest, spirit!
Remember me who set this final seal
To wandering thoughtthat one so pure as thou
Could never die. Remember me who flung
All honour from my soul, yet paused and said
"There is one spark of love remaining yet,
"For I have nought in common with him, shapes
"Which followed him avoid me, and foul forms
"Seek me, which ne'er could fasten on his mind;
"And though I feel how low I am to him,
"Yet I aim not even to catch a tone
"Of harmonies he called profusely up;
"So, one gleam still remains, although the last."
Remember me who praise thee e'en with tears,
For never more shall I walk calm with thee;
Thy sweet imaginings are as an air,
A melody some wondrous singer sings,
Which, though it haunt men oft in the still eve,
They dream not to essay; yet it no less
But more is honoured. I was thine in shame,
And now when all thy proud renown is out,
I am a watcher whose eyes have grown dim
With looking for some star which breaks on him
Altered and worn and weak and full of tears.
Autumn has come like spring returned to us,
Won from her girlishness; like one returned
A friend that was a lover, nor forgets
The first warm love, but full of sober thoughts
Of fading years; whose soft mouth quivers yet
With the old smile, but yet so changed and still!
And here am I the scoffer, who have probed
Life's vanity, won by a word again
Into my own lifeby one little word
Of this sweet friend who lives in loving me,
Lives strangely on my thoughts and looks and words,
As fathoms down some nameless ocean thing
Its silent course of quietness and joy.
O dearest, if indeed I tell the past,
May'st thou forget it as a sad sick dream!
Or if it lingermy lost soul too soon
Sinks to itself and whispers we shall be
But closer linked, two creatures whom the earth
Bears singly, with strange feelings unrevealed
Save to each other; or two lonely things
Created by some power whose reign is done,
Having no part in God or his bright world.
I am to sing whilst ebbing day dies soft,
As a lean scholar dies worn o'er his book,
And in the heaven stars steal out one by one
As hunted men steal to their mountain watch.
I must not think, lest this new impulse die
In which I trust; I have no confidence:
So, I will sing on fast as fancies come;
Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints
I strip my mind bare, whose first elements
I shall unveilnot as they struggled forth
In infancy, nor as they now exist,
When I am grown above them and can rule
But in that middle stage when they were full
Yet ere I had disposed them to my will;
And then I shall show how these elements
Produced my present state, and what it is.
I am made up of an intensest life,
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;
And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:
But linked, in me, to self-supremacy,
Existing as a centre to all things,
Most potent to create and rule and call
Upon all things to minister to it;
And to a principle of restlessness
Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all
This is myself; and I should thus have been
Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.
And of my powers, one springs up to save
From utter death a soul with such desire
Confined to clayof powers the only one
Which marks mean imagination which
Has been a very angel, coming not
In fitful visions but beside me ever
And never failing me; so, though my mind
Forgets not, not a shred of life forgets,
Yet I can take a secret pride in calling
The dark past up to quell it regally.
A mind like this must dissipate itself,
But I have always had one lode-star; now,
As I look back, I see that I have halted
Or hastened as I looked towards that star
A need, a trust, a yearning after God:
A feeling I have analysed but late,
But it existed, and was reconciled
With a neglect of all I deemed his laws,
Which yet, when seen in others, I abhorred.
I felt as one beloved, and so shut in
From fear: and thence I date my trust in signs
And omens, for I saw God everywhere;
And I can only lay it to the fruit
Of a sad after-time that I could doubt
Even his beinge'en the while I felt
His presence, never acted from myself,
Still trusted in a hand to lead me through
All danger; and this feeling ever fought
Against my weakest reason and resolve.
And I can love nothingand this dull truth
Has come the last: but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.
These make myself: I have long sought in vain
To trace how they were formed by circumstance,
Yet ever found them mould my wildest youth
Where they alone displayed themselves, converted
All objects to their use: now see their course!
They came to me in my first dawn of life
Which passed alone with wisest ancient books
All halo-girt with fancies of my own;
And I myself went with the talea god
Wandering after beauty, or a giant
Standing vast in the sunsetan old hunter
Talking with gods, or a high-crested chief
Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos.
I tell you, nought has ever been so clear
As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives:
I had not seen a work of lofty art,
Nor woman's beauty nor sweet nature's face,
Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those
On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea,
The deep groves and white temples and wet caves
And nothing ever will surprise me now
Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed,
Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair.
And strange it is that I who could so dream
Should e'er have stooped to aim at aught beneath
Aught low or painful; but I never doubted:
So, as I grew. I rudely shaped my life
To my immediate wants; yet strong beneath
Was a vague sense of power though folded up
A sense that, though those shades and times were past,
Their spirit dwelt in me, with them should rule.
Then came a pause, and long restraint chained down
My soul till it was changed. I lost myself,
And were it not that I so loathe that loss,
I could recall how first I learned to turn
My mind against itself; and the effects
In deeds for which remorse were vain as for
The wanderings of delirious dream; yet thence
Came cunning, envy, falsehood, all world's wrong
That spotted me: at length I cleansed my soul.
Yet long world's influence remained; and nought
But the still life I led, apart once more,
Which left me free to seek soul's old delights,
Could e'er have brought me thus far back to peace.
As peace returned, I sought out some pursuit;
And song rose, no new impulse but the one
With which all others best could be combined.
My life has not been that of those whose heaven
Was lampless save where poesy shone out;
But as a clime where glittering mountain-tops
And glancing sea and forests steeped in light
Give back reflected the far-flashing sun;
For music (which is earnest of a heaven,
Seeing we know emotions strange by it,
Not else to be revealed,) is like a voice,
A low voice calling fancy, as a friend,
To the green woods in the gay summer time:
And she fills all the way with dancing shapes
Which have made painters pale, and they go on
Till stars look at them and winds call to them
As they leave life's path for the twilight world
Where the dead gather. This was not at first,
For I scarce knew what I would do. I had
An impulse but no yearningonly sang.
And first I sang as I in dream have seen
Music wait on a lyrist for some thought,
Yet singing to herself until it came.
I turned to those old times and scenes where all
That's beautiful had birth for me, and made
Rude verses on them all; and then I paused
I had done nothing, so I sought to know
What other minds achieved. No fear outbroke
As on the works of mighty bards I gazed,
In the first joy at finding my own thoughts
Recorded, my own fancies justified,
And their aspirings but my very own.
With them I first explored passion and mind,
All to begin afresh! I rather sought
To rival what I wondered at than form
Creations of my own; if much was light
Lent by the others, much was yet my own.
I paused again: a change was comingcame:
I was no more a boy, the past was breaking
Before the future and like fever worked.
I thought on my new self, and all my powers
Burst out. I dreamed not of restraint, but gazed
On all things: schemes and systems went and came,
And I was proud (being vainest of the weak)
In wandering o'er thought's world to seek some one
To be my prize, as if you wandered o'er
The White Way for a star.
And my choice fell
Not so much on a system as a man
On one, whom praise of mine shall not offend,
Who was as calm as beauty, being such
Unto mankind as thou to me, Pauline,
Believing in them and devoting all
His soul's strength to their winning back to peace;
Who sent forth hopes and longings for their sake,
Clothed in all passion's melodies: such first
Caught me and set me, slave of a sweet task,
To disentangle, gather sense from song:
Since, song-inwoven, lurked there words which seemed
A key to a new world, the muttering
Of angels, something yet unguessed by man.
How my heart leapt as still I sought and found
Much there, I felt my own soul had conceived,
But there living and burning! Soon the orb
Of his conceptions dawned on me; its praise
Lives in the tongues of men, men's brows are high
When his name means a triumph and a pride,
So, my weak voice may well forbear to shame
What seemed decreed my fate: I threw myself
To meet it, I was vowed to liberty,
Men were to be as gods and earth as heaven,
And Iah, what a life was mine to prove!
My whole soul rose to meet it. Now, Pauline,
I shall go mad, if I recall that time!
Oh let me look back ere I leave for ever
The time which was an hour one fondly waits
For a fair girl that comes a withered hag!
And I was lonely, far from woods and fields,
And amid dullest sights, who should be loose
As a stag; yet I was full of bliss, who lived
With Plato and who had the key to life;
And I had dimly shaped my first attempt,
And many a thought did I build up on thought,
As the wild bee hangs cell to cell; in vain,
For I must still advance, no rest for mind.
'Twas in my plan to look on real life,
The life all new to me; my theories
Were firm, so them I left, to look and learn
Mankind, its cares, hopes, fears, its woes and joys;
And, as I pondered on their ways, I sought
How best life's end might be attainedan end
Comprising every joy. I deeply mused.
And suddenly without heart-wreck I awoke
As from a dream: I said "'Twas beautiful,
"Yet but a dream, and so adieu to it!"
As some world-wanderer sees in a far meadow
Strange towers and high-walled gardens thick with trees,
Where song takes shelter and delicious mirth
From laughing fairy creatures peeping over,
And on the morrow when he comes to lie
For ever 'neath those garden-trees fruit-flushed
Sung round by fairies, all his search is vain.
First went my hopes of perfecting mankind,
Nextfaith in them, and then in freedom's self
And virtue's self, then my own motives, ends
And aims and loves, and human love went last.
I felt this no decay, because new powers
Rose as old feelings leftwit, mockery,
Light-heartedness; for I had oft been sad,
Mistrusting my resolves, but now I cast
Hope joyously away: I laughed and said
"No more of this!" I must not think: at length
I looked again to see if all went well.
My powers were greater: as some temple seemed
My soul, where nought is changed and incense rolls
Around the altar, only God is gone
And some dark spirit sitteth in his seat.
So, I passed through the temple and to me
Knelt troops of shadows, and they cried "Hail, king!
"We serve thee now and thou shalt serve no more!
"Call on us, prove us, let us worship thee!"
And I said "Are ye strong? Let fancy bear me
"Far from the past!" And I was borne away,
As Arab birds float sleeping in the wind,
O'er deserts, towers and forests, I being calm.
And I said "I have nursed up energies,
"They will prey on me." And a band knelt low
And cried "Lord, we are here and we will make
"Safe way for thee in thine appointed life!
"But look on us!" And I said "Ye will worship
"Me; should my heart not worship too?" They shouted
"Thyself, thou art our king!" So, I stood there
Smilingoh, vanity of vanities!
For buoyant and rejoicing was the spirit
With which I looked out how to end my course;
I felt once more myself, my powersall mine;
I knew while youth and health so lifted me
That, spite of all life's nothingness, no grief
Came nigh me, I must ever be light-hearted;
And that this knowledge was the only veil
Betwixt joy and despair: so, if age came,
I should be lefta wreck linked to a soul
Yet fluttering, or mind-broken and aware
Of my decay. So a long summer morn
Found me; and ere noon came, I had resolved
No age should come on me ere youth was spent,
For I would wear myself out, like that morn
Which wasted not a sunbeam; every hour
I would make mine, and die.
And thus I sought
To chain my spirit down which erst I freed
For flights to fame: I said "The troubled life
"Of genius, seen so gay when working forth
"Some trusted end, grows sad when all proves vain
"How sad when men have parted with truth's peace
"For falsest fancy's sake, which waited first
"As an obedient spirit when delight
"Came without fancy's call: but alters soon,
"Comes darkened, seldom, hastens to depart,
"Leaving a heavy darkness and warm tears.
"But I shall never lose her; she will live
"Dearer for such seclusion. I but catch
"A hue, a glance of what I sing: so, pain
"Is linked with pleasure, for I ne'er may tell
"Half the bright sights which dazzle me; but now
"Mine shall be all the radiance: let them fade
"Untoldothers shall rise as fair, as fast!
"And when all's done, the few dim gleams transferred,"
(For a new thought sprang up how well it were,
Discarding shadowy hope, to weave such lays
As straight encircle men with praise and love,
So, I should not die utterly,should bring
One branch from the gold forest, like the knight
Of old tales, witnessing I had been there)
"And when all's done, how vain seems e'en success
"The vaunted influence poets have o'er men!
"'T is a fine thing that one weak as myself
"Should sit in his lone room, knowing the words
"He utters in his solitude shall move
"Men like a swift windthat tho' dead and gone,
"New eyes shall glisten when his beauteous dreams
"Of love come true in happier frames than his.
"Ay, the still night brings thoughts like these, but morn
"Comes and the mockery again laughs out
"At hollow praises, smiles allied to sneers;
"And my soul's idol ever whispers me
"To dwell with him and his unhonoured song:
"And I foreknow my spirit, that would press
"First in the struggle, fail again to make
"All bow enslaved, and I again should sink.
"And then know that this curse will come on us,
"To see our idols perish; we may wither,
"No marvel, we are clay, but our low fate
"Should not extend to those whom trustingly
"We sent before into time's yawning gulf
"To face what dread may lurk in darkness there.
"To find the painter's glory pass, and feel
"Music can move us not as once, or, worst,
"To weep decaying wits ere the frail body
"Decays! Nought makes me trust some love is true,
"But the delight of the contented lowness
"With which I gaze on him I keep for ever
"Above me; I to rise and rival him?
"Feed his fame rather from my heart's best blood,
"Wither unseen that he may flourish still."
Pauline, my soul's friend, thou dost pity yet
How this mood swayed me when that soul found thine,
When I had set myself to live this life,
Defying all past glory. Ere thou camest
I seemed defiant, sweet, for old delights
Had flocked like birds again; music, my life,
Nourished me more than ever; then the lore
Loved for itself and all it showsthat king
Treading the purple calmly to his death,
While round him, like the clouds of eve, all dusk,
The giant shades of fate, silently flitting,
Pile the dim outline of the coming doom;
And him sitting alone in blood while friends
Are hunting far in the sunshine; and the boy
With his white breast and brow and clustering curls
Streaked with his mother's blood, but striving hard
To tell his story ere his reason goes.
And when I loved thee as love seemed so oft,
Thou lovedst me indeed: I wondering searched
My heart to find some feeling like such love,
Believing I was still much I had been.
Too soon I found all faith had gone from me,
And the late glow of life, like change on clouds,
Proved not the morn-blush widening into day,
But eve faint-coloured by the dying sun
While darkness hastens quickly. I will tell
My state as though 'twere none of minedespair
Cannot come near usthis it is, my state.
Souls alter not, and mine must still advance;
Strange that I knew not, when I flung away
My youth's chief aims, their loss might lead to loss
Of what few I retained, and no resource
Be left me: for behold how changed is all!
I cannot chain my soul: it will not rest
In its clay prison, this most narrow sphere:
It has strange impulse, tendency, desire,
Which nowise I account for nor explain,
But cannot stifle, being bound to trust
All feelings equally, to hear all sides:
How can my life indulge them? yet they live,
Referring to some state of life unknown.
My selfishness is satiated not,
It wears me like a flame; my hunger for
All pleasure, howsoe'er minute, grows pain;
I envyhow I envy him whose soul
Turns its whole energies to some one end,
To elevate an aim, pursue success
However mean! So, my still baffled hope
Seeks out abstractions; I would have one joy,
But one in life, so it were wholly mine,
One rapture all my soul could fill: and this
Wild feeling places me in dream afar
In some vast country where the eye can see
No end to the far hills and dales bestrewn
With shining towers and towns, till I grow mad
Well-nigh, to know not one abode but holds
Some pleasure, while my soul could grasp the world,
But must remain this vile form's slave. I look
With hope to age at last, which quenching much,
May let me concentrate what sparks it spares.
This restlessness of passion meets in me
A craving after knowledge: the sole proof
Of yet commanding will is in that power
Repressed; for I beheld it in its dawn,
The sleepless harpy with just-budding wings,
And I considered whether to forego
All happy ignorant hopes and fears, to live,
Finding a recompense in its wild eyes.
And when I found that I should perish so,
I bade its wild eyes close from me for ever,
And I am left alone with old delights;
See! it lies in me a chained thing, still prompt
To serve me if I loose its slightest bond:
I cannot but be proud of my bright slave.
How should this earth's life prove my only sphere?
Can I so narrow sense but that in life
Soul still exceeds it? In their elements
My love outsoars my reason; but since love
Perforce receives its object from this earth
While reason wanders chainless, the few truths.
Caught from its wanderings have sufficed to quell
Love chained below; then what were love, set free,
Which, with the object it demands, would pass
Reason companioning the seraphim?
No, what I feel may pass all human love
Yet fall far short of what my love should be.
And yet I seem more warped in this than aught,
Myself stands out more hideously: of old
I could forget myself in friendship, fame,
Liberty, nay, in love of mightier souls;
But I begin to know what thing hate is
To sicken and to quiver and grow white
And I myself have furnished its first prey.
Hate of the weak and ever-wavering will,
The selfishness, the still-decaying frame . . .
But I must never grieve whom wing can waft
Far from such thoughtsas now. Andromeda!
And she is with me: years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her notso beautiful
With her fixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair
Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze,
And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven,
Resting upon her eyes and hair, such hair,
As she awaits the snake on the wet beach
By the dark rock and the white wave just breaking
At her feet; quite naked and alone; a thing
I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some god
To save will come in thunder from the stars.
Let it pass! Soul requires another change.
I will be gifted with a wondrous mind,
Yet sunk by error to men's sympathy,
And in the wane of life, yet only so
As to call up their fears; and there shall come
A time requiring youth's best energies;
And lo, I fling age, sorrow, sickness off,
And rise triumphant, triumph through decay.
And thus it is that I supply the chasm
'Twixt what I am and all I fain would be:
But then to know nothing, to hope for nothing,
To seize on life's dull joys from a strange fear
Lest, losing them, all 's lost and nought remains!
There 's some vile juggle with my reason here;
I feel I but explain to my own loss
These impulses: they live no less the same.
Liberty! what though I despair? my blood
Rose never at a slave's name proud as now.
Oh sympathies, obscured by sophistries!
Why else have I sought refuge in myself,
But from the woes I saw and could not stay?
Love! is not this to love thee, my Pauline?
I cherish prejudice, lest I be left
Utterly loveless? witness my belief
In poets, though sad change has come there too;
No more I leave myself to follow them
Unconsciously I measure me by them
Let me forget it: and I cherish most
My love of Englandhow her name, a word
Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!
Pauline, could I but break the spell! Not now
All's feverbut when calm shall come again,
I am prepared: I have made life my own.
I would not be content with all the change
One frame should feel, but I have gone in thought
Thro' all conjuncture, I have lived all life
When it is most alive, where strangest fate
New-shapes it past surmisethe throes of men
Bit by some curse or in the grasps of doom
Half-visible and still-increasing round,
Or crowning their wide being's general aim.
These are wild fancies, but I feel, sweet friend,
As one breathing his weakness to the ear
Of pitying angeldear as a winter flower,
A slight flower growing alone, and offering
Its frail cup of three leaves to the cold sun,
Yet joyous and confiding like the triumph
Of a child: and why am I not worthy thee?
I can live all the life of plants, and gaze
Drowsily on the bees that flit and play,
Or bare my breast for sunbeams which will kill,
Or open in the night of sounds, to look
For the dim stars; I can mount with the bird
Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves
And twisted boughs of some tall mountain tree,
Or rise cheerfully springing to the heavens;
Or like a fish breathe deep the morning air
In the misty sun-warm water; or with flower
And tree can smile in light at the sinking sun
Just as the storm comes, as a girl would look
On a departing lovermost serene.
Pauline, come with me, see how I could build
A home for us, out of the world, in thought!
I am uplifted: fly with me, Pauline!
Night, and one single ridge of narrow path
Between the sullen river and the woods
Waving and muttering, for the moonless night
Has shaped them into images of life,
Like the uprising of the giant-ghosts,
Looking on earth to know how their sons fare:
Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell
Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting
Of thy soft breasts. No, we will pass to morning
Morning, the rocks and valleys and old woods.
How the sun brightens in the mist, and here,
Half in the air, like creatures of the place,
Trusting the element, living on high boughs
That swing in the windlook at the silver spray
Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract
Amid the broken rocks! Shall we stay here
With the wild hawks? No, ere the hot noon come,
Dive we downsafe! See this our new retreat
Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs,
Dark, tangled, old and green, still sloping down
To a small pool whose waters lie asleep
Amid the trailing boughs turned water-plants:
And tall trees overarch to keep us in,
Breaking the sunbeams into emerald shafts,
And in the dreamy water one small group
Of two or three strange trees are got together
Wondering at all around, as strange beasts herd
Together far from their own land: all wildness,
No turf nor moss, for boughs and plants pave all,
And tongues of bank go shelving in the lymph,
Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head,
And old grey stones lie making eddies there,
The wild-mice cross them dry-shod. Deeper in!
Shut thy soft eyesnow lookstill deeper in!
This is the very heart of the woods all round
Mountain-like heaped above us; yet even here
One pond of water gleams; far off the river
Sweeps like a sea, barred out from land; but one
One thin clear sheet has overleaped and wound
Into this silent depth, which gained, it lies
Still, as but let by sufferance; the trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl,
And through their roots long creeping plants out-stretch
Their twined hair, steeped and sparkling; farther on,
Tall rushes and thick flag-knots have combined
To narrow it; so, at length, a silver thread,
It winds, all noiselessly through the deep wood
Till thro' a cleft-way, thro' the moss and stone,
It joins its parent-river with a shout.
Up for the glowing day, leave the old woods!
See, they part, like a ruined arch: the sky!
Nothing but sky appears, so close the roots
And grass of the hill-top level with the air
Blue sunny air, where a great cloud floats laden
With light, like a dead whale that white birds pick,
Floating away in the sun in some north sea.
Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air,
The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us,
Where small birds reel and winds take their delight!
Water is beautiful, but not like air:
See, where the solid azure waters lie
Made as of thickened air, and down below,
The fern-ranks like a forest spread themselves
As though each pore could feel the element;
Where the quick glancing serpent winds his way,
Float with me there, Pauline!but not like air.
Down the hill! Stopa clump of trees, see, set
On a heap of rock, which look o'er the far plain:
So, envious climbing shrubs would mount to rest
And peer from their spread boughs; wide they wave, looking
At the muleteers who whistle on their way,
To the merry chime of morning bells, past all
The little smoking cots, mid fields and banks
And copses bright in the sun. My spirit wanders:
Hedgerows for methose living hedgerows where
The bushes close and clasp above and keep
Thought inI am concentratedI feel;
But my soul saddens when it looks beyond:
I cannot be immortal, taste all joy.
O God, where do they tendthese struggling aims?
What would I have? What is this "sleep" which seems
To bound all? can there be a "waking" point
Of crowning life? The soul would never rule;
It would be first in all things, it would have
Its utmost pleasure filled, but, that complete,
Commanding, for commanding, sickens it.
The last point I can trace isrest beneath
Some better essence than itself, in weakness;
This is "myself," not what I think should be:
And what is that I hunger for but God?
My God, my God, let me for once look on thee
As though nought else existed, we alone!
And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark
Expands till I can say,Even from myself
I need thee and I feel thee and I love thee.
I do not plead my rapture in thy works
For love of thee, nor that I feel as one
Who cannot die: but there is that in me
Which turns to thee, which loves or which should love.
Why have I girt myself with this hell-dress?
Why have I laboured to put out my life?
Is it not in my nature to adore,
And e'en for all my reason do I not
Feel him, and thank him, and pray to himnow?
Can I forego the trust that he loves me?
Do I not feel a love which only one . . .
O thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed!
I have denied thee calmlydo I not
Pant when I read of thy consummate power,
And burn to see thy calm pure truths out-flash
The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy?
Do I not shake to hear aught question thee?
If I am erring save me, madden me,
Take from me powers and pleasures, let me die
Ages, so I see thee! I am knit round
As with a charm by sin and lust and pride,
Yet though my wandering dreams have seen all shapes
Of strange delight, oft have I stood by thee
Have I been keeping lonely watch with thee
In the damp night by weeping Olivet,
Or leaning on thy bosom, proudly less,
Or dying with thee on the lonely cross,
Or witnessing thine outburst from the tomb.
A mortal, sin's familiar friend, doth here
Avow that he will give all earth's reward,
But to believe and humbly teach the faith,
In suffering and poverty and shame,
Only believing he is not unloved.
And now, my Pauline, I am thine for ever!
I feel the spirit which has buoyed me up
Desert me, and old shades are gathering fast;
Yet while the last light waits, I would say much,
This chiefly, it is gain that I have said
Somewhat of love I ever felt for thee
But seldom told; our hearts so beat together
That speech seemed mockery; but when dark hours come,
And joy departs, and thou, sweet, deem'st it strange
A sorrow moves me, thou canst not remove,
Look on this lay I dedicate to thee,
Which through thee I began, which thus I end,
Collecting the last gleams to strive to tell
How I am thine, and more than ever now
That I sink fast: yet though I deeplier sink,
No less song proves one word has brought me bliss,
Another still may win bliss surely back.
Thou knowest, dear, I could not think all calm,
For fancies followed thought and bore me off,
And left all indistinct; ere one was caught
Another glanced; so, dazzled by my wealth,
I knew not which to leave nor which to choose,
For all so floated, nought was fixed and firm.
And then thou said'st a perfect bard was one
Who chronicled the stages of all life,
And so thou bad'st me shadow this first stage.
'T is done, and even now I recognize
The shift, the change from last to pastdiscern
Faintly how life is truth and truth is good.
And why thou must be mine is, that e'en now
In the dim hush of night, that I have done,
Despite the sad forebodings, love looks through
Whispers,E'en at the last I have her still,
With her delicious eyes as clear as heaven
When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist,
And clouds float white above like broods of swans.
How the blood lies upon her cheek, outspread
As thinned by kisses! only in her lips
It wells and pulses like a living thing,
And her neck looks like marble misted o'er
With love-breath,a Pauline from heights above,
Stooping beneath me, looking upone look
As I might kill her and be loved the more.
So, love meme, Pauline, and nought but me,
Never leave loving! Words are wild and weak,
Believe them not, Pauline! I stained myself
But to behold thee purer by my side,
To show thou art my breath, my life, a last
Resource, an extreme want: never believe
Aught better could so look on thee; nor seek
Again the world of good thoughts left for mine!
There were bright troops of undiscovered suns,
Each equal in their radiant course; there were
Clusters of far fair isles which ocean kept
For his own joy, and his waves broke on them
Without a choice; and there was a dim crowd
Of visions, each a part of some grand whole:
And one star left his peers and came with peace
Upon a storm, and all eyes pined for him;
And one isle harboured a sea-beaten ship,
And the crew wandered in its bowers and plucked
Its fruits and gave up all their hopes of home;
And one dream came to a pale poet's sleep,
And he said, "I am singled out by God,
"No sin must touch me." Words are wild and weak,
But what they would express is,Leave me not,
Still sit by me with beating breast and hair
Loosened, be watching earnest by my side,
Turning my books or kissing me when I
Look uplike summer wind! Be still to me
A help to music's mystery which mind fails
To fathom, its solution, no mere clue!
O reason's pedantry, life's rule prescribed!
I hopeless, I the loveless, hope and love.
Wiser and better, know me now, not when
You loved me as I was. Smile not! I have
Much yet to dawn on you, to gladden you.
No more of the past! I'll look within no more.
I have too trusted my own lawless wants,
Too trusted my vain self, vague intuition
Draining soul's wine alone in the still night,
And seeing how, as gathering films arose,
As by an inspiration life seemed bare
And grinning in its vanity, while ends
Foul to be dreamed of, smiled at me as fixed
And fair, while others changed from fair to foul
As a young witch turns an old hag at night.
No more of this! We will go hand in hand,
I with thee, even as a childlove's slave,
Looking no farther than his liege commands.
And thou hast chosen where this life shall be:
The land which gave me thee shall be our home,
Where nature lies all wild amid her lakes
And snow-swathed mountains and vast pines begirt
With ropes of snowwhere nature lies all bare,
Suffering none to view her but a race
Or stinted or deformed, like the mute dwarfs
Which wait upon a naked Indian queen.
And there (the time being when the heavens are thick
With storm) I'll sit with thee while thou dost sing
Thy native songs, gay as a desert bird
Which crieth as it flies for perfect joy,
Or telling me old stories of dead knights;
Or I will read great lays to theehow she,
The fair pale sister, went to her chill grave
With power to love and to be loved and live:
Or we will go together, like twin gods
Of the infernal world, with scented lamp
Over the dead, to call and to awake,
Over the unshaped images which lie
Within my mind's cave: only leaving all,
That tells of the past doubt. So, when spring comes
With sunshine back again like an old smile,
And the fresh waters and awakened birds
And budding woods await us, I shall be
Prepared, and we will question life once more,
Till its old sense shall come renewed by change,
Like some clear thought which harsh words veiled before;
Feeling God loves us, and that all which errs
Is but a dream which death will dissipate.
And then what need of longer exile? Seek
My England, and, again there, calm approach
All I once fled from, calmly look on those
The works of my past weakness, as one views
Some scene where danger met him long before.
Ah that such pleasant life should be but dreamed!
But whate'er come of it, and though it fade,
And though ere the cold morning all be gone,
As it may be;tho' music wait to wile,
And strange eyes and bright wine lure, laugh like sin
Which steals back softly on a soul half saved,
And I the first deny, decry, despise,
With this avowal, these intents so fair,
Still be it all my own, this moment's pride!
No less I make an end in perfect joy.
E'en in my brightest time, a lurking fear
Possessed me: I well knew my weak resolves,
I felt the witchery that makes mind sleep
Over its treasure, as one half afraid
To make his riches definite: but now
These feelings shall not utterly be lost,
I shall not know again that nameless care
Lest, leaving all undone in youth, some new
And undreamed end reveal itself too late:
For this song shall remain to tell for ever
That when I lost all hope of such a change,
Suddenly beauty rose on me again.
No less I make an end in perfect joy,
For I, who thus again was visited,
Shall doubt not many another bliss awaits,
And, though this weak soul sink and darkness whelm,
Some little word shall light it, raise aloft,
To where I clearlier see and better love,
As I again go o'er the tracts of thought
Like one who has a right, and I shall live
With poets, calmer, purer still each time,
And beauteous shapes will come for me to seize,
And unknown secrets will be trusted me
Which were denied the waverer once; but now
I shall be priest and prophet as of old.
Sun-treader, I believe in God and truth
And love; and as one just escaped from death
Would bind himself in bands of friends to feel
He lives indeed, so, I would lean on thee!
Thou must be ever with me, most in gloom
If such must come, but chiefly when I die,
For I seem, dying, as one going in the dark
To fight a giant: but live thou for ever,
And be to all what thou hast been to me!
All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me
Know my last state is happy, free from doubt
Or touch of fear. Love me and wish me well.
Richmond: October 22, 1832.
~ Robert Browning, Pauline, A Fragment of a Question
,#NFDB
542:The Ghost - Book Iv
Coxcombs, who vainly make pretence
To something of exalted sense
'Bove other men, and, gravely wise,
Affect those pleasures to despise,
Which, merely to the eye confined,
Bring no improvement to the mind,
Rail at all pomp; they would not go
For millions to a puppet-show,
Nor can forgive the mighty crime
Of countenancing pantomime;
No, not at Covent Garden, where,
Without a head for play or player,
Or, could a head be found most fit,
Without one player to second it,
They must, obeying Folly's call,
Thrive by mere show, or not at all
With these grave fops, who, (bless their brains!)
Most cruel to themselves, take pains
For wretchedness, and would be thought
Much wiser than a wise man ought,
For his own happiness, to be;
Who what they hear, and what they see,
And what they smell, and taste, and feel,
Distrust, till Reason sets her seal,
And, by long trains of consequences
Insured, gives sanction to the senses;
Who would not (Heaven forbid it!) waste
One hour in what the world calls Taste,
Nor fondly deign to laugh or cry,
Unless they know some reason why;
With these grave fops, whose system seems
To give up certainty for dreams,
The eye of man is understood
As for no other purpose good
Than as a door, through which, of course,
Their passage crowding, objects force,
A downright usher, to admit
New-comers to the court of Wit:
(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen;
190
When I say Wit, I Wisdom mean)
Where (such the practice of the court,
Which legal precedents support)
Not one idea is allow'd
To pass unquestion'd in the crowd,
But ere it can obtain the grace
Of holding in the brain a place,
Before the chief in congregation
Must stand a strict examination.
Not such as those, who physic twirl,
Full fraught with death, from every curl;
Who prove, with all becoming state,
Their voice to be the voice of Fate;
Prepared with essence, drop, and pill,
To be another Ward or Hill,
Before they can obtain their ends,
To sign death-warrants for their friends,
And talents vast as theirs employ,
_Secundum artem_ to destroy,
Must pass (or laws their rage restrain)
Before the chiefs of Warwick Lane:
Thrice happy Lane! where, uncontroll'd,
In power and lethargy grown old,
Most fit to take, in this bless'd land,
The reins--which fell from Wyndham's hand,
Her lawful throne great Dulness rears,
Still more herself, as more in years;
Where she, (and who shall dare deny
Her right, when Reeves and Chauncy's by?)
Calling to mind, in ancient time,
One Garth, who err'd in wit and rhyme,
Ordains, from henceforth, to admit
None of the rebel sons of Wit,
And makes it her peculiar care
That Schomberg never shall be there.
Not such as those, whom Polly trains
To letters, though unbless'd with brains,
Who, destitute of power and will
To learn, are kept to learning still;
Whose heads, when other methods fail,
Receive instruction from the tail,
Because their sires,--a common case
191
Which brings the children to disgrace,-Imagine it a certain rule
They never could beget a fool,
Must pass, or must compound for, ere
The chaplain, full of beef and prayer,
Will give his reverend permit,
Announcing them for orders fit;
So that the prelate (what's a name?
All prelates now are much the same)
May, with a conscience safe and quiet,
With holy hands lay on that fiat
Which doth all faculties dispense,
All sanctity, all faith, all sense;
Makes Madan quite a saint appear,
And makes an oracle of Cheere.
Not such as in that solemn seat,
Where the Nine Ladies hold retreat,-The Ladies Nine, who, as we're told,
Scorning those haunts they loved of old,
The banks of Isis now prefer,
Nor will one hour from Oxford stir,-Are held for form, which Balaam's ass
As well as Balaam's self might pass,
And with his master take degrees,
Could he contrive to pay the fees.
Men of sound parts, who, deeply read,
O'erload the storehouse of the head
With furniture they ne'er can use,
Cannot forgive our rambling Muse
This wild excursion; cannot see
Why Physic and Divinity,
To the surprise of all beholders,
Are lugg'd in by the head and shoulders;
Or how, in any point of view,
Oxford hath any thing to do.
But men of nice and subtle learning,
Remarkable for quick discerning,
Through spectacles of critic mould,
Without instruction, will behold
That we a method here have got
To show what is, by what is not;
And that our drift (parenthesis
192
For once apart) is briefly this:
Within the brain's most secret cells
A certain Lord Chief-Justice dwells,
Of sovereign power, whom, one and all,
With common voice, we Reason call;
Though, for the purposes of satire,
A name, in truth, is no great matter;
Jefferies or Mansfield, which you will-It means a Lord Chief-Justice still.
Here, so our great projectors say,
The Senses all must homage pay;
Hither they all must tribute bring,
And prostrate fall before their king;
Whatever unto them is brought,
Is carried on the wings of Thought
Before his throne, where, in full state,
He on their merits holds debate,
Examines, cross-examines, weighs
Their right to censure or to praise:
Nor doth his equal voice depend
On narrow views of foe and friend,
Nor can, or flattery, or force
Divert him from his steady course;
The channel of Inquiry's clear,
No sham examination's here.
He, upright justicer, no doubt,
_Ad libitum_ puts in and out,
Adjusts and settles in a trice
What virtue is, and what is vice;
What is perfection, what defect;
What we must choose, and what reject;
He takes upon him to explain
What pleasure is, and what is pain;
Whilst we, obedient to the whim,
And resting all our faith on him,
True members of the Stoic Weal,
Must learn to think, and cease to feel.
This glorious system, form'd for man
To practise when and how he can,
If the five Senses, in alliance,
To Reason hurl a proud defiance,
And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke,
193
Endeavour to throw off that yoke,
Which they a greater slavery hold
Than Jewish bondage was of old;
Or if they, something touch'd with shame,
Allow him to retain the name
Of Royalty, and, as in sport,
To hold a mimic formal court;
Permitted--no uncommon thing-To be a kind of puppet king,
And suffer'd, by the way of toy,
To hold a globe, but not employ;
Our system-mongers, struck with fear,
Prognosticate destruction near;
All things to anarchy must run;
The little world of man's undone.
Nay, should the Eye, that nicest sense,
Neglect to send intelligence
Unto the Brain, distinct and clear,
Of all that passes in her sphere;
Should she, presumptuous, joy receive
Without the Understanding's leave,
They deem it rank and daring treason
Against the monarchy of Reason,
Not thinking, though they're wondrous wise,
That few have reason, most have eyes;
So that the pleasures of the mind
To a small circle are confined,
Whilst those which to the senses fall
Become the property of all.
Besides, (and this is sure a case
Not much at present out of place)
Where Nature reason doth deny,
No art can that defect supply;
But if (for it is our intent
Fairly to state the argument)
A man should want an eye or two,
The remedy is sure, though new:
The cure's at hand--no need of fear-For proof--behold the Chevalier!-As well prepared, beyond all doubt,
To put eyes in, as put them out.
But, argument apart, which tends
194
To embitter foes and separate friends,
(Nor, turn'd apostate from the Nine,
Would I, though bred up a divine,
And foe, of course, to Reason's Weal,
Widen that breach I cannot heal)
By his own sense and feelings taught,
In speech as liberal as in thought,
Let every man enjoy his whim;
What's he to me, or I to him?
Might I, though never robed in ermine,
A matter of this weight determine,
No penalties should settled be
To force men to hypocrisy,
To make them ape an awkward zeal,
And, feeling not, pretend to feel.
I would not have, might sentence rest
Finally fix'd within my breast,
E'en Annet censured and confined,
Because we're of a different mind.
Nature, who, in her act most free,
Herself delights in liberty,
Profuse in love, and without bound,
Pours joy on every creature round;
Whom yet, was every bounty shed
In double portions on our head,
We could not truly bounteous call,
If Freedom did not crown them all.
By Providence forbid to stray,
Brutes never can mistake their way;
Determined still, they plod along
By instinct, neither right nor wrong;
But man, had he the heart to use
His freedom, hath a right to choose;
Whether he acts, or well, or ill,
Depends entirely on his will.
To her last work, her favourite Man,
Is given, on Nature's better plan,
A privilege in power to err.
Nor let this phrase resentment stir
Amongst the grave ones, since indeed
The little merit man can plead
In doing well, dependeth still
195
Upon his power of doing ill.
Opinions should be free as air;
No man, whate'er his rank, whate'er
His qualities, a claim can found
That my opinion must be bound,
And square with his; such slavish chains
From foes the liberal soul disdains;
Nor can, though true to friendship, bend
To wear them even from a friend.
Let those, who rigid judgment own,
Submissive bow at Judgment's throne,
And if they of no value hold
Pleasure, till pleasure is grown cold,
Pall'd and insipid, forced to wait
For Judgment's regular debate
To give it warrant, let them find
Dull subjects suited to their mind.
Theirs be slow wisdom; be my plan,
To live as merry as I can,
Regardless, as the fashions go,
Whether there's reason for't or no:
Be my employment here on earth
To give a liberal scope to mirth,
Life's barren vale with flowers to adorn,
And pluck a rose from every thorn.
But if, by Error led astray,
I chance to wander from my way,
Let no blind guide observe, in spite,
I'm wrong, who cannot set me right.
That doctor could I ne'er endure
Who found disease, and not a cure;
Nor can I hold that man a friend
Whose zeal a helping hand shall lend
To open happy Folly's eyes,
And, making wretched, make me wise:
For next (a truth which can't admit
Reproof from Wisdom or from Wit)
To being happy here below,
Is to believe that we are so.
Some few in knowledge find relief;
I place my comfort in belief.
Some for reality may call;
196
Fancy to me is all in all.
Imagination, through the trick
Of doctors, often makes us sick;
And why, let any sophist tell,
May it not likewise make us well?
This I am sure, whate'er our view,
Whatever shadows we pursue,
For our pursuits, be what they will,
Are little more than shadows still;
Too swift they fly, too swift and strong,
For man to catch or hold them long;
But joys which in the fancy live,
Each moment to each man may give:
True to himself, and true to ease,
He softens Fate's severe decrees,
And (can a mortal wish for more?)
Creates, and makes himself new o'er,
Mocks boasted vain reality,
And is, whate'er he wants to be.
Hail, Fancy!--to thy power I owe
Deliverance from the gripe of Woe;
To thee I owe a mighty debt,
Which Gratitude shall ne'er forget,
Whilst Memory can her force employ,
A large increase of every joy.
When at my doors, too strongly barr'd,
Authority had placed a guard,
A knavish guard, ordain'd by law
To keep poor Honesty in awe;
Authority, severe and stern,
To intercept my wish'd return;
When foes grew proud, and friends grew cool,
And laughter seized each sober fool;
When Candour started in amaze,
And, meaning censure, hinted praise;
When Prudence, lifting up her eyes
And hands, thank'd Heaven that she was wise;
When all around me, with an air
Of hopeless sorrow, look'd despair;
When they, or said, or seem'd to say,
There is but one, one only way
Better, and be advised by us,
197
Not be at all, than to be thus;
When Virtue shunn'd the shock, and Pride,
Disabled, lay by Virtue's side,
Too weak my ruffled soul to cheer,
Which could not hope, yet would not fear;
Health in her motion, the wild grace
Of pleasure speaking in her face,
Dull regularity thrown by,
And comfort beaming from her eye,
Fancy, in richest robes array'd,
Came smiling forth, and brought me aid;
Came smiling o'er that dreadful time,
And, more to bless me, came in rhyme.
Nor is her power to me confined;
It spreads, it comprehends mankind.
When (to the spirit-stirring sound
Of trumpets breathing courage round,
And fifes well-mingled, to restrain
And bring that courage down again;
Or to the melancholy knell
Of the dull, deep, and doleful bell,
Such as of late the good Saint Bride
Muffled, to mortify the pride
Of those who, England quite forgot,
Paid their vile homage to the Scot;
Where Asgill held the foremost place,
Whilst my lord figured at a race)
Processions ('tis not worth debate
Whether they are of stage or state)
Move on, so very, very slow,
Tis doubtful if they move, or no;
When the performers all the while
Mechanically frown or smile,
Or, with a dull and stupid stare,
A vacancy of sense declare,
Or, with down-bending eye, seem wrought
Into a labyrinth of thought,
Where Reason wanders still in doubt,
And, once got in, cannot get out;
What cause sufficient can we find,
To satisfy a thinking mind,
Why, duped by such vain farces, man
198
Descends to act on such a plan?
Why they, who hold themselves divine,
Can in such wretched follies join,
Strutting like peacocks, or like crows,
Themselves and Nature to expose?
What cause, but that (you'll understand
We have our remedy at hand,
That if perchance we start a doubt,
Ere it is fix'd, we wipe it out;
As surgeons, when they lop a limb,
Whether for profit, fame, or whim,
Or mere experiment to try,
Must always have a styptic by)
Fancy steps in, and stamps that real,
Which, _ipso facto_, is ideal.
Can none remember?--yes, I know,
All must remember that rare show
When to the country Sense went down,
And fools came flocking up to town;
When knights (a work which all admit
To be for knighthood much unfit)
Built booths for hire; when parsons play'd,
In robes canonical array'd,
And, fiddling, join'd the Smithfield dance,
The price of tickets to advance:
Or, unto tapsters turn'd, dealt out,
Running from booth to booth about,
To every scoundrel, by retail,
True pennyworths of beef and ale,
Then first prepared, by bringing beer in,
For present grand electioneering;
When heralds, running all about
To bring in Order, turn'd it out;
When, by the prudent Marshal's care,
Lest the rude populace should stare,
And with unhallow'd eyes profane
Gay puppets of Patrician strain,
The whole procession, as in spite,
Unheard, unseen, stole off by night;
When our loved monarch, nothing both,
Solemnly took that sacred oath,
Whence mutual firm agreements spring
199
Betwixt the subject and the king,
By which, in usual manner crown'd,
His head, his heart, his hands, he bound,
Against himself, should passion stir
The least propensity to err,
Against all slaves, who might prepare,
Or open force, or hidden snare,
That glorious Charter to maintain,
By which we serve, and he must reign;
Then Fancy, with unbounded sway,
Revell'd sole mistress of the day,
And wrought such wonders, as might make
Egyptian sorcerers forsake
Their baffled mockeries, and own
The palm of magic hers alone.
A knight, (who, in the silken lap
Of lazy Peace, had lived on pap;
Who never yet had dared to roam
'Bove ten or twenty miles from home,
Nor even that, unless a guide
Was placed to amble by his side,
And troops of slaves were spread around
To keep his Honour safe and sound;
Who could not suffer, for his life,
A point to sword, or edge to knife;
And always fainted at the sight
Of blood, though 'twas not shed in fight;
Who disinherited one son
For firing off an alder gun,
And whipt another, six years old,
Because the boy, presumptuous, bold
To madness, likely to become
A very Swiss, had beat a drum,
Though it appear'd an instrument
Most peaceable and innocent,
Having, from first, been in the hands
And service of the City bands)
Graced with those ensigns, which were meant
To further Honour's dread intent,
The minds of warriors to inflame,
And spur them on to deeds of fame;
With little sword, large spurs, high feather,
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Fearless of every thing but weather,
(And all must own, who pay regard
To charity, it had been hard
That in his very first campaign
His honours should be soil'd with rain)
A hero all at once became,
And (seeing others much the same
In point of valour as himself,
Who leave their courage on a shelf
From year to year, till some such rout
In proper season calls it out)
Strutted, look'd big, and swagger'd more
Than ever hero did before;
Look'd up, look'd down, look'd all around,
Like Mavors, grimly smiled and frown'd;
Seem'd Heaven, and Earth, and Hell to call
To fight, that he might rout them all,
And personated Valour's style
So long, spectators to beguile,
That, passing strange, and wondrous true,
Himself at last believed it too;
Nor for a time could he discern,
Till Truth and Darkness took their turn,
So well did Fancy play her part,
That coward still was at the heart.
Whiffle (who knows not Whiffle's name,
By the impartial voice of Fame
Recorded first through all this land
In Vanity's illustrious band?)
Who, by all-bounteous Nature meant
For offices of hardiment,
A modern Hercules at least,
To rid the world of each wild beast,
Of each wild beast which came in view,
Whether on four legs or on two,
Degenerate, delights to prove
His force on the parade of Love,
Disclaims the joys which camps afford,
And for the distaff quits the sword;
Who fond of women would appear
To public eye and public ear,
But, when in private, lets them know
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How little they can trust to show;
Who sports a woman, as of course,
Just as a jockey shows a horse,
And then returns her to the stable,
Or vainly plants her at his table,
Where he would rather Venus find
(So pall'd, and so depraved his mind)
Than, by some great occasion led,
To seize her panting in her bed,
Burning with more than mortal fires,
And melting in her own desires;
Who, ripe in years, is yet a child,
Through fashion, not through feeling, wild;
Whate'er in others, who proceed
As Sense and Nature have decreed,
From real passion flows, in him
Is mere effect of mode and whim;
Who laughs, a very common way,
Because he nothing has to say,
As your choice spirits oaths dispense
To fill up vacancies of sense;
Who, having some small sense, defies it,
Or, using, always misapplies it;
Who now and then brings something forth
Which seems indeed of sterling worth;
Something, by sudden start and fit,
Which at a distance looks like wit,
But, on examination near,
To his confusion will appear,
By Truth's fair glass, to be at best
A threadbare jester's threadbare jest;
Who frisks and dances through the street,
Sings without voice, rides without seat,
Plays o'er his tricks, like Aesop's ass,
A gratis fool to all who pass;
Who riots, though he loves not waste,
Whores without lust, drinks without taste,
Acts without sense, talks without thought,
Does every thing but what he ought;
Who, led by forms, without the power
Of vice, is vicious; who one hour,
Proud without pride, the next will be
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Humble without humility:
Whose vanity we all discern,
The spring on which his actions turn;
Whose aim in erring, is to err,
So that he may be singular,
And all his utmost wishes mean
Is, though he's laugh'd at, to be seen:
Such, (for when Flattery's soothing strain
Had robb'd the Muse of her disdain,
And found a method to persuade
Her art to soften every shade,
Justice, enraged, the pencil snatch'd
From her degenerate hand, and scratch'd
Out every trace; then, quick as thought,
From life this striking likeness caught)
In mind, in manners, and in mien,
Such Whiffle came, and such was seen
In the world's eye; but (strange to tell!)
Misled by Fancy's magic spell,
Deceived, not dreaming of deceit,
Cheated, but happy in the cheat,
Was more than human in his own.
Oh, bow, bow all at Fancy's throne,
Whose power could make so vile an elf
With patience bear that thing, himself.
But, mistress of each art to please,
Creative Fancy, what are these,
These pageants of a trifler's pen,
To what thy power effected then?
Familiar with the human mind,
And swift and subtle as the wind,
Which we all feel, yet no one knows,
Or whence it comes, or where it goes,
Fancy at once in every part
Possess'd the eye, the head, the heart,
And in a thousand forms array'd,
A thousand various gambols play'd.
Here, in a face which well might ask
The privilege to wear a mask
In spite of law, and Justice teach
For public good to excuse the breach,
Within the furrow of a wrinkle
203
'Twixt eyes, which could not shine but twinkle,
Like sentinels i' th' starry way,
Who wait for the return of day,
Almost burnt out, and seem to keep
Their watch, like soldiers, in their sleep;
Or like those lamps, which, by the power
Of law, must burn from hour to hour,
(Else they, without redemption, fall
Under the terrors of that Hall,
Which, once notorious for a hop,
Is now become a justice shop)
Which are so managed, to go out
Just when the time comes round about,
Which yet, through emulation, strive
To keep their dying light alive,
And (not uncommon, as we find,
Amongst the children of mankind)
As they grow weaker, would seem stronger,
And burn a little, little longer:
Fancy, betwixt such eyes enshrined,
No brush to daub, no mill to grind,
Thrice waved her wand around, whose force
Changed in an instant Nature's course,
And, hardly credible in rhyme,
Not only stopp'd, but call'd back Time;
The face of every wrinkle clear'd,
Smooth as the floating stream appear'd,
Down the neck ringlets spread their flame,
The neck admiring whence they came;
On the arch'd brow the Graces play'd;
On the full bosom Cupid laid;
Suns, from their proper orbits sent,
Became for eyes a supplement;
Teeth, white as ever teeth were seen,
Deliver'd from the hand of Green,
Started, in regular array,
Like train-bands on a grand field day,
Into the gums, which would have fled,
But, wondering, turn'd from white to red;
Quite alter'd was the whole machine,
And Lady ---- ---- was fifteen.
Here she made lordly temples rise
204
Before the pious Dashwood's eyes,
Temples which, built aloft in air,
May serve for show, if not for prayer;
In solemn form herself, before,
Array'd like Faith, the Bible bore.
There over Melcombe's feather'd head-Who, quite a man of gingerbread,
Savour'd in talk, in dress, and phiz,
More of another world than this,
To a dwarf Muse a giant page,
The last grave fop of the last age-In a superb and feather'd hearse,
Bescutcheon'd and betagg'd with verse,
Which, to beholders from afar,
Appear'd like a triumphal car,
She rode, in a cast rainbow clad;
There, throwing off the hallow'd plaid,
Naked, as when (in those drear cells
Where, self-bless'd, self-cursed, Madness dwells)
Pleasure, on whom, in Laughter's shape,
Frenzy had perfected a rape,
First brought her forth, before her time,
Wild witness of her shame and crime,
Driving before an idol band
Of drivelling Stuarts, hand in hand;
Some who, to curse mankind, had wore
A crown they ne'er must think of more;
Others, whose baby brows were graced
With paper crowns, and toys of paste,
She jigg'd, and, playing on the flute,
Spread raptures o'er the soul of Bute.
Big with vast hopes, some mighty plan,
Which wrought the busy soul of man
To her full bent; the Civil Law,
Fit code to keep a world in awe,
Bound o'er his brows, fair to behold,
As Jewish frontlets were of old;
The famous Charter of our land
Defaced, and mangled in his hand;
As one whom deepest thoughts employ,
But deepest thoughts of truest joy,
Serious and slow he strode, he stalk'd;
205
Before him troops of heroes walk'd,
Whom best he loved, of heroes crown'd,
By Tories guarded all around;
Dull solemn pleasure in his face,
He saw the honours of his race,
He saw their lineal glories rise,
And touch'd, or seem'd to touch, the skies:
Not the most distant mark of fear,
No sign of axe or scaffold near,
Not one cursed thought to cross his will
Of such a place as Tower Hill.
Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade,
A shrew, like every other maid
Who turns the corner of nineteen,
Devour'd with peevishness and spleen;
Her tongue (for as, when bound for life,
The husband suffers for the wife,
So if in any works of rhyme
Perchance there blunders out a crime,
Poor culprit bards must always rue it,
Although 'tis plain the Muses do it)
Sooner or later cannot fail
To send me headlong to a jail.
Whate'er my theme, (our themes we choose,
In modern days, without a Muse;
Just as a father will provide
To join a bridegroom and a bride,
As if, though they must be the players,
The game was wholly his, not theirs)
Whate'er my theme, the Muse, who still
Owns no direction but her will,
Plies off, and ere I could expect,
By ways oblique and indirect,
At once quite over head and ears
In fatal politics appears.
Time was, and, if I aught discern
Of fate, that time shall soon return,
When, decent and demure at least,
As grave and dull as any priest,
I could see Vice in robes array'd,
Could see the game of Folly play'd
Successfully in Fortune's school,
206
Without exclaiming rogue or fool.
Time was, when, nothing both or proud,
I lackey'd with the fawning crowd,
Scoundrels in office, and would bow
To cyphers great in place; but now
Upright I stand, as if wise Fate,
To compliment a shatter'd state,
Had me, like Atlas, hither sent
To shoulder up the firmament,
And if I stoop'd, with general crack,
The heavens would tumble from my back.
Time was, when rank and situation
Secured the great ones of the nation
From all control; satire and law
Kept only little knaves in awe;
But now, Decorum lost, I stand
Bemused, a pencil in my hand,
And, dead to every sense of shame,
Careless of safety and of fame,
The names of scoundrels minute down,
And libel more than half the town.
How can a statesman be secure
In all his villanies, if poor
And dirty authors thus shall dare
To lay his rotten bosom bare?
Muses should pass away their time
In dressing out the poet's rhyme
With bills, and ribands, and array
Each line in harmless taste, though gay;
When the hot burning fit is on,
They should regale their restless son
With something to allay his rage,
Some cool Castalian beverage,
Or some such draught (though they, 'tis plain,
Taking the Muse's name in vain,
Know nothing of their real court,
And only fable from report)
As makes a Whitehead's Ode go down,
Or slakes the Feverette of Brown:
But who would in his senses think,
Of Muses giving gall to drink,
Or that their folly should afford
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To raving poets gun or sword?
Poets were ne'er designed by Fate
To meddle with affairs of state,
Nor should (if we may speak our thought
Truly as men of honour ought)
Sound policy their rage admit,
To launch the thunderbolts of Wit
About those heads, which, when they're shot,
Can't tell if 'twas by Wit or not.
These things well known, what devil, in spite,
Can have seduced me thus to write
Out of that road, which must have led
To riches, without heart or head,
Into that road, which, had I more
Than ever poet had before
Of wit and virtue, in disgrace
Would keep me still, and out of place;
Which, if some judge (you'll understand
One famous, famous through the land
For making law) should stand my friend,
At last may in a pillory end;
And all this, I myself admit,
Without one cause to lead to it?
For instance, now--this book--the Ghost-Methinks I hear some critic Post
Remark most gravely--'The first word
Which we about the Ghost have heard.'
Peace, my good sir!--not quite so fast-What is the first, may be the last,
Which is a point, all must agree,
Cannot depend on you or me.
Fanny, no ghost of common mould,
Is not by forms to be controll'd;
To keep her state, and show her skill,
She never comes but when she will.
I wrote and wrote, (perhaps you doubt,
And shrewdly, what I wrote about;
Believe me, much to my disgrace,
I, too, am in the self-same case
But still I wrote, till Fanny came
Impatient, nor could any shame
On me with equal justice fall
208
If she had never come at all.
An underling, I could not stir
Without the cue thrown out by her,
Nor from the subject aid receive
Until she came and gave me leave.
So that, (ye sons of Erudition
Mark, this is but a supposition,
Nor would I to so wise a nation
Suggest it as a revelation)
If henceforth, dully turning o'er
Page after page, ye read no more
Of Fanny, who, in sea or air,
May be departed God knows where,
Rail at jilt Fortune; but agree
No censure can be laid on me;
For sure (the cause let Mansfield try)
Fanny is in the fault, not I.
But, to return--and this I hold
A secret worth its weight in gold
To those who write, as I write now,
Not to mind where they go, or how,
Through ditch, through bog, o'er hedge and stile,
Make it but worth the reader's while,
And keep a passage fair and plain
Always to bring him back again.
Through dirt, who scruples to approach,
At Pleasure's call, to take a coach?
But we should think the man a clown,
Who in the dirt should set us down.
But to return--if Wit, who ne'er
The shackles of restraint could bear,
In wayward humour should refuse
Her timely succour to the Muse,
And, to no rules and orders tied,
Roughly deny to be her guide,
She must renounce Decorum's plan,
And get back when, and how she can;
As parsons, who, without pretext,
As soon as mention'd, quit their text,
And, to promote sleep's genial power,
Grope in the dark for half an hour,
Give no more reason (for we know
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Reason is vulgar, mean, and low)
Why they come back (should it befall
That ever they come back at all)
Into the road, to end their rout,
Than they can give why they went out.
But to return--this book--the Ghost-A mere amusement at the most;
A trifle, fit to wear away
The horrors of a rainy day;
A slight shot-silk, for summer wear,
Just as our modern statesmen are,
If rigid honesty permit
That I for once purloin the wit
Of him, who, were we all to steal,
Is much too rich the theft to feel:
Yet in this book, where Base should join
With Mirth to sugar every line;
Where it should all be mere chit-chat,
Lively, good-humour'd, and all that;
Where honest Satire, in disgrace,
Should not so much as show her face,
The shrew, o'erleaping all due bounds,
Breaks into Laughter's sacred grounds,
And, in contempt, plays o'er her tricks
In science, trade, and politics.
By why should the distemper'd scold
Attempt to blacken men enroll'd
In Power's dread book, whose mighty skill
Can twist an empire to their will;
Whose voice is fate, and on their tongue
Law, liberty, and life are hung;
Whom, on inquiry, Truth shall find
With Stuarts link'd, time out of mind,
Superior to their country's laws,
Defenders of a tyrant's cause;
Men, who the same damn'd maxims hold
Darkly, which they avow'd of old;
Who, though by different means, pursue
The end which they had first in view,
And, force found vain, now play their part
With much less honour, much more art?
Why, at the corners of the streets,
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To every patriot drudge she meets,
Known or unknown, with furious cry
Should she wild clamours vent? or why,
The minds of groundlings to inflame,
A Dashwood, Bute, and Wyndham name?
Why, having not, to our surprise,
The fear of death before her eyes,
Bearing, and that but now and then,
No other weapon but her pen,
Should she an argument afford
For blood to men who wear a sword?
Men, who can nicely trim and pare
A point of honour to a hair-(Honour!--a word of nice import,
A pretty trinket in a court,
Which my lord, quite in rapture, feels
Dangling and rattling with his seals-Honour!--a word which all the Nine
Would be much puzzled to define-Honour!--a word which torture mocks,
And might confound a thousand Lockes-Which--for I leave to wiser heads,
Who fields of death prefer to beds
Of down, to find out, if they can,
What honour is, on their wild plan-Is not, to take it in their way,
And this we sure may dare to say
Without incurring an offence,
Courage, law, honesty, or sense):
Men, who, all spirit, life, and soul
Neat butchers of a button-hole,
Having more skill, believe it true
That they must have more courage too:
Men who, without a place or name,
Their fortunes speechless as their fame,
Would by the sword new fortunes carve,
And rather die in fight than starve
At coronations, a vast field,
Which food of every kind might yield;
Of good sound food, at once most fit
For purposes of health and wit,
Could not ambitious Satire rest,
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Content with what she might digest?
Could she not feast on things of course,
A champion, or a champion's horse?
A champion's horse--no, better say,
Though better figured on that day,
A horse, which might appear to us,
Who deal in rhyme, a Pegasus;
A rider, who, when once got on,
Might pass for a Bellerophon,
Dropt on a sudden from the skies,
To catch and fix our wondering eyes,
To witch, with wand instead of whip,
The world with noble horsemanship,
To twist and twine, both horse and man,
On such a well-concerted plan,
That, Centaur-like, when all was done,
We scarce could think they were not one?
Could she not to our itching ears
Bring the new names of new-coin'd peers,
Who walk'd, nobility forgot,
With shoulders fitter for a knot
Than robes of honour; for whose sake
Heralds in form were forced to make,
To make, because they could not find,
Great predecessors to their mind?
Could she not (though 'tis doubtful since
Whether he plumber is, or prince)
Tell of a simple knight's advance
To be a doughty peer of France?
Tell how he did a dukedom gain,
And Robinson was Aquitain?
Tell how her city chiefs, disgraced,
Were at an empty table placed,-A gross neglect, which, whilst they live,
They can't forget, and won't forgive;
A gross neglect of all those rights
Which march with city appetites,
Of all those canons, which we find
By Gluttony, time out of mind,
Established, which they ever hold
Dearer than any thing but gold?
Thanks to my stars--I now see shore--
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Of courtiers, and of courts no more-Thus stumbling on my city friends,
Blind Chance my guide, my purpose bends
In line direct, and shall pursue
The point which I had first in view,
Nor more shall with the reader sport
Till I have seen him safe in port.
Hush'd be each fear--no more I bear
Through the wide regions of the air
The reader terrified, no more
Wild ocean's horrid paths explore.
Be the plain track from henceforth mine-Cross roads to Allen I resign;
Allen, the honor of this nation;
Allen, himself a corporation;
Allen, of late notorious grown
For writings, none, or all, his own;
Allen, the first of letter'd men,
Since the good Bishop holds his pen,
And at his elbow takes his stand,
To mend his head, and guide his hand.
But hold--once more, Digression hence-Let us return to Common Sense;
The car of Phoebus I discharge,
My carriage now a Lord Mayor's barge.
Suppose we now--we may suppose
In verse, what would be sin in prose-The sky with darkness overspread,
And every star retired to bed;
The gewgaw robes of Pomp and Pride
In some dark corner thrown aside;
Great lords and ladies giving way
To what they seem to scorn by day,
The real feelings of the heart,
And Nature taking place of Art;
Desire triumphant through the night,
And Beauty panting with delight;
Chastity, woman's fairest crown,
Till the return of morn laid down.
Then to be worn again as bright
As if not sullied in the night;
Dull Ceremony, business o'er,
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Dreaming in form at Cottrell's door;
Precaution trudging all about
To see the candles safely out,
Bearing a mighty master-key,
Habited like Economy,
Stamping each lock with triple seals;
Mean Avarice creeping at her heels.
Suppose we too, like sheep in pen,
The Mayor and Court of Aldermen
Within their barge, which through the deep,
The rowers more than half asleep,
Moved slow, as overcharged with state;
Thames groan'd beneath the mighty weight,
And felt that bauble heavier far
Than a whole fleet of men of war.
Sleep o'er each well-known faithful head
With liberal hand his poppies shed;
Each head, by Dulness render'd fit
Sleep and his empire to admit.
Through the whole passage not a word,
Not one faint, weak half-sound was heard;
Sleep had prevail'd to overwhelm
The steersman nodding o'er the helm;
The rowers, without force or skill,
Left the dull barge to drive at will;
The sluggish oars suspended hung,
And even Beardmore held his tongue.
Commerce, regardful of a freight
On which depended half her state,
Stepp'd to the helm; with ready hand
She safely clear'd that bank of sand,
Where, stranded, our west-country fleet
Delay and danger often meet,
Till Neptune, anxious for the trade,
Comes in full tides, and brings them aid.
Next (for the Muses can survey
Objects by night as well as day;
Nothing prevents their taking aim,
Darkness and light to them the same)
They pass'd that building which of old
Queen-mothers was design'd to hold;
At present a mere lodging-pen,
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A palace turn'd into a den;
To barracks turn'd, and soldiers tread
Where dowagers have laid their head.
Why should we mention Surrey Street,
Where every week grave judges meet
All fitted out with hum and ha,
In proper form to drawl out law,
To see all causes duly tried
'Twixt knaves who drive, and fools who ride?
Why at the Temple should we stay?
What of the Temple dare we say?
A dangerous ground we tread on there,
And words perhaps may actions bear;
Where, as the brethren of the seas
For fares, the lawyers ply for fees.
What of that Bridge, most wisely made
To serve the purposes of trade,
In the great mart of all this nation,
By stopping up the navigation,
And to that sand bank adding weight,
Which is already much too great?
What of that Bridge, which, void of sense
But well supplied with impudence,
Englishmen, knowing not the Guild,
Thought they might have a claim to build,
Till Paterson, as white as milk,
As smooth as oil, as soft as silk,
In solemn manner had decreed
That on the other side the Tweed
Art, born and bred, and fully grown,
Was with one Mylne, a man unknown,
But grace, preferment, and renown
Deserving, just arrived in town:
One Mylne, an artist perfect quite
Both in his own and country's right,
As fit to make a bridge as he,
With glorious Patavinity,
To build inscriptions worthy found
To lie for ever under ground.
Much more worth observation too,
Was this a season to pursue
The theme, our Muse might tell in rhyme:
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The will she hath, but not the time;
For, swift as shaft from Indian bow,
(And when a goddess comes, we know,
Surpassing Nature acts prevail.
And boats want neither oar nor sail)
The vessel pass'd, and reach'd the shore
So quick, that Thought was scarce before.
Suppose we now our City court
Safely delivered at the port.
And, of their state regardless quite,
Landed, like smuggled goods, by night,
The solemn magistrate laid down,
The dignity of robe and gown,
With every other ensign gone,
Suppose the woollen nightcap on;
The flesh-brush used, with decent state,
To make the spirits circulate,
(A form which, to the senses true,
The lickerish chaplain uses too,
Though, something to improve the plan,
He takes the maid instead of man)
Swathed, and with flannel cover'd o'er,
To show the vigour of threescore,
The vigour of threescore and ten,
Above the proof of younger men,
Suppose, the mighty Dulman led
Betwixt two slaves, and put to bed;
Suppose, the moment he lies down,
No miracle in this great town,
The drone as fast asleep as he
Must in the course of nature be,
Who, truth for our foundation take,
When up, is never half awake.
There let him sleep, whilst we survey
The preparations for the day;
That day on which was to be shown
Court pride by City pride outdone.
The jealous mother sends away,
As only fit for childish play,
That daughter who, to gall her pride,
Shoots up too forward by her side.
The wretch, of God and man accursed,
216
Of all Hell's instruments the worst,
Draws forth his pawns, and for the day
Struts in some spendthrift's vain array;
Around his awkward doxy shine
The treasures of Golconda's mine;
Each neighbour, with a jealous glare,
Beholds her folly publish'd there.
Garments well saved, (an anecdote
Which we can prove, or would not quote)
Garments well saved, which first were made
When tailors, to promote their trade,
Against the Picts in arms arose,
And drove them out, or made them clothes;
Garments immortal, without end,
Like names and titles, which descend
Successively from sire to son;
Garments, unless some work is done
Of note, not suffer'd to appear
'Bove once at most in every year,
Were now, in solemn form, laid bare,
To take the benefit of air,
And, ere they came to be employ'd
On this solemnity, to void
That scent which Russia's leather gave,
From vile and impious moth to save.
Each head was busy, and each heart
In preparation bore a part;
Running together all about
The servants put each other out,
Till the grave master had decreed,
The more haste ever the worse speed.
Miss, with her little eyes half-closed,
Over a smuggled toilette dosed;
The waiting-maid, whom story notes
A very Scrub in petticoats,
Hired for one work, but doing all,
In slumbers lean'd against the wall.
Milliners, summon'd from afar,
Arrived in shoals at Temple Bar,
Strictly commanded to import
Cart loads of foppery from Court;
With labour'd visible design,
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Art strove to be superbly fine;
Nature, more pleasing, though more wild,
Taught otherwise her darling child,
And cried, with spirited disdain,
Be Hunter elegant and plain!
Lo! from the chambers of the East,
A welcome prelude to the feast,
In saffron-colour'd robe array'd,
High in a car, by Vulcan made,
Who work'd for Jove himself, each steed,
High-mettled, of celestial breed,
Pawing and pacing all the way,
Aurora brought the wish'd-for day,
And held her empire, till out-run
By that brave jolly groom, the Sun.
The trumpet--hark! it speaks--it swells
The loud full harmony; it tells
The time at hand when Dulman, led
By Form, his citizens must head,
And march those troops, which at his call
Were now assembled, to Guildhall,
On matters of importance great,
To court and city, church and state.
From end to end the sound makes way,
All hear the signal and obey;
But Dulman, who, his charge forgot,
By Morpheus fetter'd, heard it not;
Nor could, so sound he slept and fast,
Hear any trumpet, but the last.
Crape, ever true and trusty known,
Stole from the maid's bed to his own,
Then in the spirituals of pride,
Planted himself at Dulman's side.
Thrice did the ever-faithful slave,
With voice which might have reach'd the grave,
And broke Death's adamantine chain,
On Dulman call, but call'd in vain.
Thrice with an arm, which might have made
The Theban boxer curse his trade,
The drone he shook, who rear'd the head,
And thrice fell backward on his bed.
What could be done? Where force hath fail'd,
218
Policy often hath prevail'd;
And what--an inference most plain-Had been, Crape thought might be again.
Under his pillow (still in mind
The proverb kept, 'fast bind, fast find')
Each blessed night the keys were laid,
Which Crape to draw away assay'd.
What not the power of voice or arm
Could do, this did, and broke the charm;
Quick started he with stupid stare,
For all his little soul was there.
Behold him, taken up, rubb'd down,
In elbow-chair, and morning-gown;
Behold him, in his latter bloom,
Stripp'd, wash'd, and sprinkled with perfume;
Behold him bending with the weight
Of robes, and trumpery of state;
Behold him (for the maxim's true,
Whate'er we by another do,
We do ourselves; and chaplain paid,
Like slaves in every other trade,
Had mutter'd over God knows what,
Something which he by heart had got)
Having, as usual, said his prayers,
Go titter, totter to the stairs:
Behold him for descent prepare,
With one foot trembling in the air;
He starts, he pauses on the brink,
And, hard to credit, seems to think;
Through his whole train (the chaplain gave
The proper cue to every slave)
At once, as with infection caught,
Each started, paused, and aim'd at thought;
He turns, and they turn; big with care,
He waddles to his elbow-chair,
Squats down, and, silent for a season,
At last with Crape begins to reason:
But first of all he made a sign,
That every soul, but the divine,
Should quit the room; in him, he knows,
He may all confidence repose.
'Crape--though I'm yet not quite awake--
219
Before this awful step I take,
On which my future all depends,
I ought to know my foes and friends.
My foes and friends--observe me still-I mean not those who well or ill
Perhaps may wish me, but those who
Have't in their power to do it too.
Now if, attentive to the state,
In too much hurry to be great,
Or through much zeal,--a motive, Crape,
Deserving praise,--into a scrape
I, like a fool, am got, no doubt
I, like a wise man, should get out:
Note that remark without replies;
I say that to get out is wise,
Or, by the very self-same rule,
That to get in was like a fool.
The marrow of this argument
Must wholly rest on the event,
And therefore, which is really hard,
Against events too I must guard.
Should things continue as they stand,
And Bute prevail through all the land
Without a rival, by his aid
My fortunes in a trice are made;
Nay, honours on my zeal may smile,
And stamp me Earl of some great Isle:
But if, a matter of much doubt,
The present minister goes out,
Fain would I know on what pretext
I can stand fairly with the next?
For as my aim, at every hour,
Is to be well with those in power,
And my material point of view,
Whoever's in, to be in too,
I should not, like a blockhead, choose
To gain these, so as those to lose:
'Tis good in every case, you know,
To have two strings unto our bow.'
As one in wonder lost, Crape view'd
His lord, who thus his speech pursued:
'This, my good Crape, is my grand point;
220
And as the times are out of joint,
The greater caution is required
To bring about the point desired.
What I would wish to bring about
Cannot admit a moment's doubt;
The matter in dispute, you know,
Is what we call the _Quomodo_.
That be thy task.'--The reverend slave,
Becoming in a moment grave,
Fix'd to the ground and rooted stood,
Just like a man cut out out of wood,
Such as we see (without the least
Reflection glancing on the priest)
One or more, planted up and down,
Almost in every church in town;
He stood some minutes, then, like one
Who wish'd the matter might be done,
But could not do it, shook his head,
And thus the man of sorrow said:
'Hard is this task, too hard I swear,
By much too hard for me to bear;
Beyond expression hard my part,
Could mighty Dulman see my heart,
When he, alas! makes known a will
Which Crape's not able to fulfil.
Was ever my obedience barr'd
By any trifling nice regard
To sense and honour? Could I reach
Thy meaning without help of speech,
At the first motion of thy eye
Did not thy faithful creature fly?
Have I not said, not what I ought,
But what my earthly master taught?
Did I e'er weigh, through duty strong,
In thy great biddings, right and wrong?
Did ever Interest, to whom thou
Canst not with more devotion bow,
Warp my sound faith, or will of mine
In contradiction run to thine?
Have I not, at thy table placed,
When business call'd aloud for haste,
Torn myself thence, yet never heard
221
To utter one complaining word,
And had, till thy great work was done,
All appetites, as having none?
Hard is it, this great plan pursued
Of voluntary servitude;
Pursued without or shame, or fear,
Through the great circle of the year,
Now to receive, in this grand hour,
Commands which lie beyond my power,
Commands which baffle all my skill,
And leave me nothing but my will:
Be that accepted; let my lord
Indulgence to his slave afford:
This task, for my poor strength unfit,
Will yield to none but Dulman's wit.'
With such gross incense gratified,
And turning up the lip of pride,
'Poor Crape'--and shook his empty head-'Poor puzzled Crape!' wise Dulman said,
'Of judgment weak, of sense confined,
For things of lower note design'd;
For things within the vulgar reach,
To run of errands, and to preach;
Well hast thou judged, that heads like mine
Cannot want help from heads like thine;
Well hast thou judged thyself unmeet
Of such high argument to treat;
Twas but to try thee that I spoke,
And all I said was but a joke.
Nor think a joke, Crape, a disgrace,
Or to my person, or my place;
The wisest of the sons of men
Have deign'd to use them now and then.
The only caution, do you see,
Demanded by our dignity,
From common use and men exempt,
Is that they may not breed contempt.
Great use they have, when in the hands
Of one like me, who understands,
Who understands the time and place,
The person, manner, and the grace,
Which fools neglect; so that we find,
222
If all the requisites are join'd,
From whence a perfect joke must spring,
A joke's a very serious thing.
But to our business--my design,
Which gave so rough a shock to thine,
To my capacity is made
As ready as a fraud in trade;
Which, like broad-cloth, I can, with ease,
Cut out in any shape I please.
Some, in my circumstance, some few,
Aye, and those men of genius too,
Good men, who, without love or hate,
Whether they early rise or late,
With names uncrack'd, and credit sound,
Rise worth a hundred thousand pound,
By threadbare ways and means would try
To bear their point--so will not I.
New methods shall my wisdom find
To suit these matters to my mind;
So that the infidels at court,
Who make our city wits their sport,
Shall hail the honours of my reign,
And own that Dulman bears a brain.
Some, in my place, to gain their ends,
Would give relations up, and friends;
Would lend a wife, who, they might swear
Safely, was none the worse for wear;
Would see a daughter, yet a maid,
Into a statesman's arms betray'd;
Nay, should the girl prove coy, nor know
What daughters to a father owe,
Sooner than schemes so nobly plann'd
Should fail, themselves would lend a hand;
Would vote on one side, whilst a brother,
Properly taught, would vote on t'other;
Would every petty band forget;
To public eye be with one set,
In private with a second herd,
And be by proxy with a third;
Would, (like a queen, of whom I read,
The other day--her name is fled-In a book,--where, together bound,
223
'Whittington and his Cat' I found-A tale most true, and free from art,
Which all Lord Mayors should have by heart;
A queen oh!--might those days begin
Afresh, when queens would learn to spin-Who wrought, and wrought, but for some plot,
The cause of which I've now forgot,
During the absence of the sun
Undid what she by day had done)
Whilst they a double visage wear,
What's sworn by day, by night unswear.
Such be their arts, and such, perchance,
May happily their ends advance;
Prom a new system mine shall spring,
A _locum tenens_ is the thing.
That's your true plan. To obligate
The present ministers of state,
My shadow shall our court approach,
And bear my power, and have my coach;
My fine state-coach, superb to view,
A fine state-coach, and paid for too.
To curry favour, and the grace
Obtain of those who're out of place;
In the mean time I--that's to say,
I proper, I myself--here stay.
But hold--perhaps unto the nation,
Who hate the Scot's administration,
To lend my coach may seem to be
Declaring for the ministry,
For where the city-coach is, there
Is the true essence of the Mayor:
Therefore (for wise men are intent
Evils at distance to prevent,
Whilst fools the evils first endure,
And then are plagued to seek a cure)
No coach--a horse--and free from fear,
To make our Deputy appear,
Fast on his back shall he be tied,
With two grooms marching by his side;
Then for a horse--through all the land,
To head our solemn city-band,
Can any one so fit be found
224
As he who in Artillery-ground,
Without a rider, (noble sight!)
Led on our bravest troops to fight?
But first, Crape, for my honour's sake-A tender point--inquiry make
About that horse, if the dispute
Is ended, or is still in suit:
For whilst a cause, (observe this plan
Of justice) whether horse or man
The parties be, remains in doubt,
Till 'tis determined out and out,
That power must tyranny appear
Which should, prejudging, interfere,
And weak, faint judges overawe,
To bias the free course of law.
You have my will--now quickly run,
And take care that my will be done.
In public, Crape, you must appear,
Whilst I in privacy sit here;
Here shall great Dulman sit alone,
Making this elbow-chair my throne,
And you, performing what I bid,
Do all, as if I nothing did.'
Crape heard, and speeded on his way;
With him to hear was to obey;
Not without trouble, be assured,
A proper proxy was procured
To serve such infamous intent,
And such a lord to represent;
Nor could one have been found at all
On t'other side of London Wall.
The trumpet sounds--solemn and slow
Behold the grand procession go,
All moving on, cat after kind,
As if for motion ne'er design'd.
Constables, whom the laws admit
To keep the peace by breaking it;
Beadles, who hold the second place
By virtue of a silver mace,
Which every Saturday is drawn,
For use of Sunday, out of pawn;
Treasurers, who with empty key
225
Secure an empty treasury;
Churchwardens, who their course pursue
In the same state, as to their pew
Churchwardens of St Margaret's go,
Since Peirson taught them pride and show,
Who in short transient pomp appear,
Like almanacs changed every year;
Behind whom, with unbroken locks,
Charity carries the poor's box,
Not knowing that with private keys
They ope and shut it when they please:
Overseers, who by frauds ensure
The heavy curses of the poor;
Unclean came flocking, bulls and bears,
Like beasts into the ark, by pairs.
Portentous, flaming in the van,
Stalk'd the professor, Sheridan,
A man of wire, a mere pantine,
A downright animal machine;
He knows alone, in proper mode,
How to take vengeance on an ode,
And how to butcher Ammon's son
And poor Jack Dryden both in one:
On all occasions next the chair
He stands, for service of the Mayor,
And to instruct him how to use
His A's and B's, and P's and Q's:
O'er letters, into tatters worn,
O'er syllables, defaced and torn,
O'er words disjointed, and o'er sense,
Left destitute of all defence,
He strides, and all the way he goes
Wades, deep in blood, o'er Criss-cross-rows:
Before him every consonant
In agonies is seen to pant;
Behind, in forms not to be known,
The ghosts of tortured vowels groan.
Next Hart and Duke, well worthy grace
And city favour, came in place;
No children can their toils engage,
Their toils are turn'd to reverend age;
When a court dame, to grace his brows
226
Resolved, is wed to city-spouse,
Their aid with madam's aid must join,
The awkward dotard to refine,
And teach, whence truest glory flows,
Grave sixty to turn out his toes.
Each bore in hand a kit; and each
To show how fit he was to teach
A cit, an alderman, a mayor,
Led in a string a dancing bear.
Since the revival of Fingal,
Custom, and custom's all in all,
Commands that we should have regard,
On all high seasons, to the bard.
Great acts like these, by vulgar tongue
Profaned, should not be said, but sung.
This place to fill, renown'd in fame,
The high and mighty Lockman came,
And, ne'er forgot in Dulman's reign,
With proper order to maintain
The uniformity of pride,
Brought Brother Whitehead by his side.
On horse, who proudly paw'd the ground,
And cast his fiery eyeballs round,
Snorting, and champing the rude bit,
As if, for warlike purpose fit,
His high and generous blood disdain'd,
To be for sports and pastimes rein'd,
Great Dymock, in his glorious station,
Paraded at the coronation.
Not so our city Dymock came,
Heavy, dispirited, and tame;
No mark of sense, his eyes half-closed,
He on a mighty dray-horse dozed:
Fate never could a horse provide
So fit for such a man to ride,
Nor find a man with strictest care,
So fit for such a horse to bear.
Hung round with instruments of death,
The sight of him would stop the breath
Of braggart Cowardice, and make
The very court Drawcansir quake;
With dirks, which, in the hands of Spite,
227
Do their damn'd business in the night,
From Scotland sent, but here display'd
Only to fill up the parade;
With swords, unflesh'd, of maiden hue,
Which rage or valour never drew;
With blunderbusses, taught to ride
Like pocket-pistols, by his side,
In girdle stuck, he seem'd to be
A little moving armoury.
One thing much wanting to complete
The sight, and make a perfect treat,
Was, that the horse, (a courtesy
In horses found of high degree)
Instead of going forward on,
All the way backward should have gone.
Horses, unless they breeding lack,
Some scruple make to turn their back,
Though riders, which plain truth declares,
No scruple make of turning theirs.
Far, far apart from all the rest,
Fit only for a standing jest,
The independent, (can you get
A better suited epithet?)
The independent Amyand came,
All burning with the sacred flame
Of Liberty, which well he knows
On the great stock of Slavery grows;
Like sparrow, who, deprived of mate,
Snatch'd by the cruel hand of Fate,
From spray to spray no more will hop,
But sits alone on the house-top;
Or like himself, when all alone
At Croydon he was heard to groan,
Lifting both hands in the defence
Of interest, and common sense;
Both hands, for as no other man
Adopted and pursued his plan,
The left hand had been lonesome quite,
If he had not held up the right;
Apart he came, and fix'd his eyes
With rapture on a distant prize,
On which, in letters worthy note,
228
There 'twenty thousand pounds' was wrote.
False trap, for credit sapp'd is found
By getting twenty thousand pound:
Nay, look not thus on me, and stare,
Doubting the certainty--to swear
In such a case I should be loth-But Perry Cust may take his oath.
In plain and decent garb array'd,
With the prim Quaker, Fraud, came Trade;
Connivance, to improve the plan,
Habited like a juryman,
Judging as interest prevails,
Came next, with measures, weights, and scales;
Extortion next, of hellish race
A cub most damn'd, to show his face
Forbid by fear, but not by shame,
Turn'd to a Jew, like Gideon came;
Corruption, Midas-like, behold
Turning whate'er she touch'd to gold;
Impotence, led by Lust, and Pride,
Strutting with Ponton by her side;
Hypocrisy, demure and sad,
In garments of the priesthood clad,
So well disguised, that you might swear,
Deceived, a very priest was there;
Bankruptcy, full of ease and health,
And wallowing in well-saved wealth,
Came sneering through a ruin'd band,
And bringing B---- in her hand;
Victory, hanging down her head,
Was by a Highland stallion led;
Peace, clothed in sables, with a face
Which witness'd sense of huge disgrace,
Which spake a deep and rooted shame
Both of herself and of her name,
Mourning creeps on, and, blushing, feels
War, grim War, treading on her heels;
Pale Credit, shaken by the arts
Of men with bad heads and worse hearts,
Taking no notice of a band
Which near her were ordain'd to stand,
Well-nigh destroyed by sickly fit,
229
Look'd wistful all around for Pitt;
Freedom--at that most hallow'd name
My spirits mount into a flame,
Each pulse beats high, and each nerve strains,
Even to the cracking; through my veins
The tides of life more rapid run,
And tell me I am Freedom's son-Freedom came next, but scarce was seen,
When the sky, which appear'd serene
And gay before, was overcast;
Horror bestrode a foreign blast,
And from the prison of the North,
To Freedom deadly, storms burst forth.
A car like those, in which, we're told,
Our wild forefathers warr'd of old,
Loaded with death, six horses bear
Through the blank region of the air.
Too fierce for time or art to tame,
They pour'd forth mingled smoke and flame
From their wide nostrils; every steed
Was of that ancient savage breed
Which fell Geryon nursed; their food
The flesh of man, their drink his blood.
On the first horses, ill-match'd pair,
This fat and sleek, that lean and bare,
Came ill-match'd riders side by side,
And Poverty was yoked with Pride;
Union most strange it must appear,
Till other unions make it clear.
Next, in the gall of bitterness,
With rage which words can ill express,
With unforgiving rage, which springs
From a false zeal for holy things,
Wearing such robes as prophets wear,
False prophets placed in Peter's chair,
On which, in characters of fire,
Shapes antic, horrible, and dire
Inwoven flamed, where, to the view,
In groups appear'd a rabble crew
Of sainted devils; where, all round,
Vile relics of vile men were found,
Who, worse than devils, from the birth
230
Perform'd the work of hell on earth,
Jugglers, Inquisitors, and Popes,
Pointing at axes, wheels, and ropes,
And engines, framed on horrid plan,
Which none but the destroyer, Man,
Could, to promote his selfish views,
Have head to make or heart to use,
Bearing, to consecrate her tricks,
In her left hand a crucifix,
'Remembrance of our dying Lord,'
And in her right a two-edged sword,
Having her brows, in impious sport,
Adorn'd with words of high import,
'On earth peace, amongst men good will,
Love bearing and forbearing still,'
All wrote in the hearts' blood of those
Who rather death than falsehood chose:
On her breast, (where, in days of yore,
When God loved Jews, the High Priest wore
Those oracles which were decreed
To instruct and guide the chosen seed)
Having with glory clad and strength,
The Virgin pictured at full length,
Whilst at her feet, in small pourtray'd,
As scarce worth notice, Christ was laid,-Came Superstition, fierce and fell,
An imp detested, e'en in hell;
Her eye inflamed, her face all o'er
Foully besmear'd with human gore,
O'er heaps of mangled saints she rode;
Fast at her heels Death proudly strode,
And grimly smiled, well pleased to see
Such havoc of mortality;
Close by her side, on mischief bent,
And urging on each bad intent
To its full bearing, savage, wild,
The mother fit of such a child,
Striving the empire to advance
Of Sin and Death, came Ignorance.
With looks, where dread command was placed,
And sovereign power by pride disgraced,
Where, loudly witnessing a mind
231
Of savage, more than human kind,
Not choosing to be loved, but fear'd,
Mocking at right, Misrule appear'd.
With eyeballs glaring fiery red,
Enough to strike beholders dead,
Gnashing his teeth, and in a flood
Pouring corruption forth and blood
From his chafed jaws; without remorse
Whipping and spurring on his horse,
Whose sides, in their own blood embay'd,
E'en to the bone were open laid,
Came Tyranny, disdaining awe,
And trampling over Sense and Law;
One thing, and only one, he knew,
One object only would pursue;
Though less (so low doth passion bring)
Than man, he would be more than king.
With every argument and art
Which might corrupt the head and heart,
Soothing the frenzy of his mind,
Companion meet, was Flattery join'd;
Winning his carriage, every look
Employed, whilst it conceal'd a hook;
When simple most, most to be fear'd;
Most crafty, when no craft appear'd;
His tales, no man like him could tell;
His words, which melted as they fell,
Might even a hypocrite deceive,
And make an infidel believe,
Wantonly cheating o'er and o'er
Those who had cheated been before:-Such Flattery came, in evil hour,
Poisoning the royal ear of Power,
And, grown by prostitution great,
Would be first minister of state.
Within the chariot, all alone,
High seated on a kind of throne,
With pebbles graced, a figure came,
Whom Justice would, but dare not name.
Hard times when Justice, without fear,
Dare not bring forth to public ear
The names of those who dare offend
232
'Gainst Justice, and pervert her end!
But, if the Muse afford me grace,
Description shall supply the place.
In foreign garments he was clad;
Sage ermine o'er the glossy plaid
Cast reverend honour; on his heart,
Wrought by the curious hand of Art,
In silver wrought, and brighter far
Than heavenly or than earthly star,
Shone a White Rose, the emblem dear
Of him he ever must revere;
Of that dread lord, who, with his host
Of faithful native rebels lost,
Like those black spirits doom'd to hell,
At once from power and virtue fell:
Around his clouded brows was placed
A bonnet, most superbly graced
With mighty thistles, nor forgot
The sacred motto--'Touch me not.'
In the right hand a sword he bore
Harder than adamant, and more
Fatal than winds, which from the mouth
Of the rough North invade the South;
The reeking blade to view presents
The blood of helpless innocents,
And on the hilt, as meek become
As lamb before the shearers dumb,
With downcast eye, and solemn show
Of deep, unutterable woe,
Mourning the time when Freedom reign'd,
Fast to a rock was Justice chain'd.
In his left hand, in wax impress'd,
With bells and gewgaws idly dress'd,
An image, cast in baby mould,
He held, and seem'd o'erjoy'd to hold
On this he fix'd his eyes; to this,
Bowing, he gave the loyal kiss,
And, for rebellion fully ripe,
Seem'd to desire the antitype.
What if to that Pretender's foes
His greatness, nay, his life, he owes;
Shall common obligations bind,
233
And shake his constancy of mind?
Scorning such weak and petty chains,
Faithful to James he still remains,
Though he the friend of George appear:
Dissimulation's virtue here.
Jealous and mean, he with a frown
Would awe, and keep all merit down,
Nor would to Truth and Justice bend,
Unless out-bullied by his friend:
Brave with the coward, with the brave
He is himself a coward slave:
Awed by his fears, he has no heart
To take a great and open part:
Mines in a subtle train he springs,
And, secret, saps the ears of kings;
But not e'en there continues firm
'Gainst the resistance of a worm:
Born in a country, where the will
Of one is law to all, he still
Retain'd the infection, with full aim
To spread it wheresoe'er he came;
Freedom he hated, Law defied,
The prostitute of Power and Pride;
Law he with ease explains away,
And leads bewilder'd Sense astray;
Much to the credit of his brain,
Puzzles the cause he can't maintain;
Proceeds on most familiar grounds,
And where he can't convince, confounds;
Talents of rarest stamp and size,
To Nature false, he misapplies,
And turns to poison what was sent
For purposes of nourishment.
Paleness, not such as on his wings
The messenger of Sickness brings,
But such as takes its coward rise
From conscious baseness, conscious vice,
O'erspread his cheeks; Disdain and Pride,
To upstart fortunes ever tied,
Scowl'd on his brow; within his eye,
Insidious, lurking like a spy,
To Caution principled by Fear,
234
Not daring open to appear,
Lodged covert Mischief; Passion hung
On his lip quivering; on his tongue
Fraud dwelt at large; within his breast
All that makes villain found a nest;
All that, on Hell's completest plan,
E'er join'd to damn the heart of man.
Soon as the car reach'd land, he rose,
And, with a look which might have froze
The heart's best blood, which was enough
Had hearts been made of sterner stuff
In cities than elsewhere, to make
The very stoutest quail and quake,
He cast his baleful eyes around:
Fix'd without motion to the ground,
Fear waiting on Surprise, all stood,
And horror chill'd their curdled blood;
No more they thought of pomp, no more
(For they had seen his face before)
Of law they thought; the cause forgot,
Whether it was or ghost, or plot,
Which drew them there: they all stood more
Like statues than they were before.
What could be done? Could Art, could Force.
Or both, direct a proper course
To make this savage monster tame,
Or send him back the way he came?
What neither art, nor force, nor both,
Could do, a Lord of foreign growth,
A Lord to that base wretch allied
In country, not in vice and pride,
Effected; from the self-same land,
(Bad news for our blaspheming band
Of scribblers, but deserving note)
The poison came and antidote.
Abash'd, the monster hung his head,
And like an empty vision fled;
His train, like virgin snows, which run,
Kiss'd by the burning bawdy sun,
To love-sick streams, dissolved in air;
Joy, who from absence seem'd more fair,
Came smiling, freed from slavish Awe;
235
Loyalty, Liberty, and Law,
Impatient of the galling chain,
And yoke of Power, resumed their reign;
And, burning with the glorious flame
Of public virtue, Mansfield came.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
543:Obiit Mdcccxxxiii (Entire)
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
414
Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
What seem’d my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
I.
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
‘Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.’
II.
415
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.
O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom:
And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.
III.
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
‘The stars,’ she whispers, ‘blindly run;
A web is wov’n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
‘And all the phantom, Nature, stands–
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,–
A hollow form with empty hands.’
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
416
IV.
To Sleep I give my powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:
O heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou should’st fail from thy desire,
Who scarcely darest to inquire,
‘What is it makes me beat so low?’
Something it is which thou hast lost,
Some pleasure from thine early years.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost!
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
All night below the darken’d eyes;
With morning wakes the will, and cries,
‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’
V.
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
417
VI.
One writes, that ‘Other friends remain,’
That ‘Loss is common to the race’–
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
O father, wheresoe’er thou be,
Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath still’d the life that beat from thee.
O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor,–while thy head is bow’d,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought;
Expecting still his advent home;
And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, ‘here to-day,’
Or ‘here to-morrow will he come.’
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father’s chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking ‘this will please him best,’
She takes a riband or a rose;
418
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turn’d, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown’d in passing thro’ the ford,
Or kill’d in falling from his horse.
O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.
VII.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp’d no more–
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
VIII.
A happy lover who has come
To look on her that loves him well,
Who ’lights and rings the gateway bell,
And learns her gone and far from home;
419
He saddens, all the magic light
Dies off at once from bower and hall,
And all the place is dark, and all
The chambers emptied of delight:
So find I every pleasant spot
In which we two were wont to meet,
The field, the chamber and the street,
For all is dark where thou art not.
Yet as that other, wandering there
In those deserted walks, may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;
So seems it in my deep regret,
O my forsaken heart, with thee
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.
But since it pleased a vanish’d eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die.
IX.
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur’s loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er.
So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead
Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.
All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
As our pure love, thro’ early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
420
Sphere all your lights around, above;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
My friend, the brother of my love;
My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.
X.
I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night:
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
Thou bring’st the sailor to his wife,
And travell’d men from foreign lands;
And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish’d life.
So bring him: we have idle dreams:
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God;
Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
And hands so often clasp’d in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells.
XI.
421
Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro’ the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:
Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:
Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
XII.
Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro’ Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;
Like her I go; I cannot stay;
I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind,
And leave the cliffs, and haste away
O’er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
And reach the glow of southern skies,
And see the sails at distance rise,
And linger weeping on the marge,
422
And saying; ‘Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?’
And circle moaning in the air:
‘Is this the end? Is this the end?’
And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.
XIII.
Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;
Which weep a loss for ever new,
A void where heart on heart reposed;
And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
Silence, till I be silent too.
Which weeps the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
My fancies time to rise on wing,
And glance about the approaching sails,
As tho’ they brought but merchants’ bales,
And not the burthen that they bring.
XIV.
423
If one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touch’d the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;
And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the plank,
And beckoning unto those they know;
And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;
And
And
And
And
I should tell him all my pain,
how my life had droop’d of late,
he should sorrow o’er my state
marvel what possess’d my brain;
And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.
XV.
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl’d away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash’d on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
424
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
XVI.
What words are these have fall’n from me?
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
Or doth she only seem to take
The touch of change in calm or storm;
But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake
That holds the shadow of a lark
Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark
That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
And staggers blindly ere she sink?
And stunn’d me from my power to think
And all my knowledge of myself;
And made me that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan?
XVII.
425
Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
Compell’d thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.
For I in spirit saw thee move
Thro’ circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
Henceforth, wherever thou may’st roam,
My blessing, like a line of light,
Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.
So may whatever tempest mars
Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the bosom of the stars.
So kind an office hath been done,
Such precious relics brought by thee;
The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run.
XVIII.
’Tis well; ’tis something; we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
’Tis little; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest
And in the places of his youth.
Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.
426
Ah yet, ev’n yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart,
Would breathing thro’ his lips impart
The life that almost dies in me;
That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the the firmer mind,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.
XIX.
The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken’d heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills;
That salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush’d nor moved along,
And hush’d my deepest grief of all,
When fill’d with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
XX.
The lesser griefs that may be said,
That breathe a thousand tender vows,
Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead;
427
Who speak their feeling as it is,
And weep the fulness from the mind:
‘It will be hard,’ they say, ‘to find
Another service such as this.’
My lighter moods are like to these,
That out of words a comfort win;
But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;
For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:
But open converse is there none,
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think,
‘How good! how kind! and he is gone.’
XXI.
I sing to him that rests below,
And, since the grasses round me wave,
I take the grasses of the grave,
And make them pipes whereon to blow.
The traveller hears me now and then,
And sometimes harshly will he speak:
‘This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men.’
Another answers, ‘Let him be,
He loves to make parade of pain,
That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.’
A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour
For private sorrow’s barren song,
When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?
428
‘A time to sicken and to swoon,
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?’
Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust:
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:
And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol’n away.
XXII.
The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
And we with singing cheer’d the way,
And, crown’d with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
But where the path we walk’d began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear’d of man;
Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dull’d the murmur on thy lip,
And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, tho’ I walk in haste,
And think, that somewhere in the waste
429
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
XXIII.
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits,
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot,
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often falling lame,
And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;
And crying, How changed from where it ran
Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb;
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan:
When each by turns was guide to each,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;
And all we met was fair and good,
And all was good that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood;
And many an old philosophy
On Argive heights divinely sang,
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.
XXIV.
And was the day of my delight
As pure and perfect as I say?
The very source and fount of Day
430
Is dash’d with wandering isles of night.
If all was good and fair we met,
This earth had been the Paradise
It never look’d to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.
And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?
Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?
XXV.
I know that this was Life,–the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.
But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:
Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
When mighty Love would cleave in twain
The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him.
XXVI.
Still onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.
431
And if that eye which watches guilt
And goodness, and hath power to see
Within the green the moulder’d tree,
And towers fall’n as soon as built–
Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,
Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
XXVII.
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
XXVIII.
432
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish’d no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:
But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll’d me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
XXIX.
With such compelling cause to grieve
As daily vexes household peace,
And chains regret to his decease,
How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;
Which brings no more a welcome guest
To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower’d largess of delight
In dance and song and game and jest?
Yet go, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont,
That guard the portals of the house;
433
Old sisters of a day gone by,
Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
Why should they miss their yearly due
Before their time? They too will die.
XXX.
With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess’d the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
At our old pastimes in the hall
We gambol’d, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.
We paused: the winds were in the beech:
We heard them sweep the winter land;
And in a circle hand-in-hand
Sat silent, looking each at each.
Then echo-like our voices rang;
We sung, tho’ every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him
Last year: impetuously we sang:
We ceased: a gentler feeling crept
Upon us: surely rest is meet:
‘They rest,’ we said, ‘their sleep is sweet,’
And silence follow’d, and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range;
Once more we sang: ‘They do not die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change;
‘Rapt from the fickle and the frail
With gather’d power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil.’
434
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
XXXI.
When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
And home to Mary’s house return’d,
Was this demanded–if he yearn’d
To hear her weeping by his grave?
‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’
There lives no record of reply,
Which telling what it is to die
Had surely added praise to praise.
From every house the neighbours met,
The streets were fill’d with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness even crown’d
The purple brows of Olivet.
Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal’d;
He told it not; or something seal’d
The lips of that Evangelist.
XXXII.
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.
Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother’s face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.
435
All subtle thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete,
She bows, she bathes the Saviour’s feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.
Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
Whose loves in higher love endure;
What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs?
XXXIII.
O thou that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach’d a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow’d hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro’ form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev’n for want of such a type.
XXXIV.
My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;
This round of green, this orb of flame,
436
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.
What then were God to such as I?
’Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A little patience ere I die;
’Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.
XXXV.
Yet if some voice that man could trust
Should murmur from the narrow house,
‘The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:’
Might I not say? ‘Yet even here,
But for one hour, O Love, I strive
To keep so sweet a thing alive:’
But I should turn mine ears and hear
The moanings of the homeless sea,
The sound of streams that swift or slow
Draw down Æonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be;
And Love would answer with a sigh,
‘The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die.’
O me, what profits it to put
And idle case? If Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut,
437
Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
Had bruised the herb and crush’d the grape,
And bask’d and batten’d in the woods.
XXXVI.
Tho’ truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
XXXVII.
Urania speaks with darken’d brow:
‘Thou pratest here where thou art least;
This faith has many a purer priest,
And many an abler voice than thou.
‘Go down beside thy native rill,
On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
About the ledges of the hill.’
And my Melpomene replies,
438
A touch of shame upon her cheek:
‘I am not worthy ev’n to speak
Of thy prevailing mysteries;
‘For I am but an earthly Muse,
And owning but a little art
To lull with song an aching heart,
And render human love his dues;
‘But brooding on the dear one dead,
And all he said of things divine,
(And dear to me as sacred wine
To dying lips is all he said),
‘I murmur’d, as I came along,
Of comfort clasp’d in truth reveal’d;
And loiter’d in the master’s field,
And darken’d sanctities with song.’
XXXVIII.
With weary steps I loiter on,
Tho’ always under alter’d skies
The purple from the distance dies,
My prospect and horizon gone.
No joy the blowing season gives,
The herald melodies of spring,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives.
If any care for what is here
Survive in spirits render’d free,
Then are these songs I sing of thee
Not all ungrateful to thine ear.
XXXIX.
Old warder of these buried bones,
439
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But Sorrow–fixt upon the dead,
And darkening the dark graves of men,–
What whisper’d from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,
And passes into gloom again.
XL.
Could we forget the widow’d hour
And look on Spirits breathed away,
As on a maiden in the day
When first she wears her orange-flower!
When crown’d with blessing she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,
And hopes and light regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes;
And doubtful joys the father move,
And tears are on the mother’s face,
As parting with a long embrace
She enters other realms of love;
Her office there to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit
A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In those great offices that suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.
Ay me, the difference I discern!
440
How often shall her old fireside
Be cheer’d with tidings of the bride,
How often she herself return,
And tell them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss’d her most
Shall count new things as dear as old:
But thou and I have shaken hands,
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover’d lands.
XLI.
The spirit ere our fatal loss
Did ever rise from high to higher;
As mounts the heavenward altar-fire,
As flies the lighter thro’ the gross.
But thou art turn’d to something strange,
And I have lost the links that bound
Thy changes; here upon the ground,
No more partaker of thy change.
Deep folly! yet that this could be–
That I could wing my will with might
To leap the grades of life and light,
And flash at once, my friend, to thee.
For tho’ my nature rarely yields
To that vague fear implied in death;
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,
The howlings from forgotten fields;
Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor
An inner trouble I behold,
A spectral doubt which makes me cold,
That I shall be thy mate no more,
441
Tho’ following with an upward mind
The wonders that have come to thee,
Thro’ all the secular to-be,
But evermore a life behind.
XLII.
I vex my heart with fancies dim:
He still outstript me in the race;
It was but unity of place
That made me dream I rank’d with him.
And so may Place retain us still,
And he the much-beloved again,
A lord of large experience, train
To riper growth the mind and will:
And what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit’s inner deeps,
When one that loves but knows not, reaps
A truth from one that loves and knows?
XLIII.
If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit’s folded bloom
Thro’ all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber on;
Unconscious of the sliding hour,
Bare of the body, might it last,
And silent traces of the past
Be all the colour of the flower:
So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began;
And love will last as pure and whole
442
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul.
XLIV.
How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish’d, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
May some dim touch of earthly things
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.
If such a dreamy touch should fall,
O turn thee round, resolve the doubt;
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place, and tell thee all.
XLV.
The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ‘this is I:’
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of ‘I,’ and ‘me,’
And finds ‘I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.’
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
443
As thro’ the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
This use may lie in blood and breath,
Which else were fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death.
XLVI.
We ranging down this lower track,
The path we came by, thorn and flower,
Is shadow’d by the growing hour,
Lest life should fail in looking back.
So be it: there no shade can last
In that deep dawn behind the tomb,
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom
The eternal landscape of the past;
A lifelong tract of time reveal’d;
The fruitful hours of still increase;
Days order’d in a wealthy peace,
And those five years its richest field.
O Love, thy province were not large,
A bounded field, nor stretching far;
Look also, Love, a brooding star,
A rosy warmth from marge to marge.
XLVII.
That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside;
444
And I shall know him when we meet:
And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other’s good:
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth? He seeks at least
Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,
Some landing-place, to clasp and say,
‘Farewell! We lose ourselves in light.’
XLVIII.
If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,
Were taken to be such as closed
Grave doubts and answers here proposed,
Then these were such as men might scorn:
Her care is not to part and prove;
She takes, when harsher moods remit,
What slender shade of doubt may flit,
And makes it vassal unto love:
And hence, indeed, she sports with words,
But better serves a wholesome law,
And holds it sin and shame to draw
The deepest measure from the chords:
Nor dare she trust a larger lay,
But rather loosens from the lip
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.
XLIX.
From art, from nature, from the schools,
Let random influences glance,
Like light in many a shiver’d lance
445
That breaks about the dappled pools:
The lightest wave of thought shall lisp,
The fancy’s tenderest eddy wreathe,
The slightest air of song shall breathe
To make the sullen surface crisp.
And look thy look, and go thy way,
But blame not thou the winds that make
The seeming-wanton ripple break,
The tender-pencil’d shadow play.
Beneath all fancied hopes and fears
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down,
Whose muffled motions blindly drown
The bases of my life in tears.
L.
Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.
LI.
446
Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen’d in his love?
I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
The dead shall look me thro’ and thro’.
Be near us when we climb or fall:
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all.
LII.
I cannot love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.
‘Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,’
The Spirit of true love replied;
‘Thou canst not move me from thy side,
Nor human frailty do me wrong.
‘What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears?
What record? not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue:
‘So fret not, like an idle girl,
That life is dash’d with flecks of sin.
Abide: thy wealth is gather’d in,
When Time hath sunder’d shell from pearl.’
447
LIII.
How many a father have I seen,
A sober man, among his boys,
Whose youth was full of foolish noise,
Who wears his manhood hale and green:
And dare we to this fancy give,
That had the wild oat not been sown,
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown
The grain by which a man may live?
Or, if we held the doctrine sound
For life outliving heats of youth,
Yet who would preach it as a truth
To those that eddy round and round?
Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.
LIV.
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
448
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last–far off–at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
LV.
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
LVI.
449
‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.’ And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law–
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
LVII.
Peace; come away: the song of woe
Is after all an earthly song:
Peace; come away: we do him wrong
To sing so wildly: let us go.
450
Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
But half my life I leave behind:
Methinks my friend is richly shrined;
But I shall pass; my work will fail.
Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,
One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look’d with human eyes.
I hear it now, and o’er and o’er,
Eternal greetings to the dead;
And ‘Ave, Ave, Ave,’ said,
‘Adieu, adieu’ for evermore.
LVIII.
In those sad words I took farewell:
Like echoes in sepulchral halls,
As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;
And, falling, idly broke the peace
Of hearts that beat from day to day,
Half-conscious of their dying clay,
And those cold crypts where they shall cease.
The high Muse answer’d: ‘Wherefore grieve
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?
Abide a little longer here,
And thou shalt take a nobler leave.’
LIX.
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me
No casual mistress, but a wife,
My bosom-friend and half of life;
As I confess it needs must be;
O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,
451
Be sometimes lovely like a bride,
And put thy harsher moods aside,
If thou wilt have me wise and good.
My centred passion cannot move,
Nor will it lessen from to-day;
But I’ll have leave at times to play
As with the creature of my love;
And set thee forth, for thou art mine,
With so much hope for years to come,
That, howsoe’er I know thee, some
Could hardly tell what name were thine.
LX.
He past; a soul of nobler tone:
My spirit loved and loves him yet,
Like some poor girl whose heart is set
On one whose rank exceeds her own.
He mixing with his proper sphere,
She finds the baseness of her lot,
Half jealous of she knows not what,
And envying all that meet him there.
The little village looks forlorn;
She sighs amid her narrow days,
Moving about the household ways,
In that dark house where she was born.
The foolish neighbours come and go,
And tease her till the day draws by:
At night she weeps, ‘How vain am I!
How should he love a thing so low?’
LXI.
If, in thy second state sublime,
452
Thy ransom’d reason change replies
With all the circle of the wise,
The perfect flower of human time;
And if thou cast thine eyes below,
How dimly character’d and slight,
How dwarf’d a growth of cold and night,
How blanch'd with darkness must I grow!
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,
Where thy first form was made a man:
I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
The soul of Shakespeare love thee more.
LXII.
Tho’ if an eye that’s downward cast
Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,
Then be my love an idle tale,
And fading legend of the past;
And thou, as one that once declined,
When he was little more than boy,
On some unworthy heart with joy,
But lives to wed an equal mind;
And breathes a novel world, the while
His other passion wholly dies,
Or in the light of deeper eyes
Is matter for a flying smile.
LXIII.
Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven,
And love in which my hound has part,
Can hang no weight upon my heart
In its assumptions up to heaven;
And I am so much more than these,
As thou, perchance, art more than I,
And yet I spare them sympathy,
453
And I would set their pains at ease.
So mayst thou watch me where I weep,
As, unto vaster motions bound,
The circuits of thine orbit round
A higher height, a deeper deep.
LXIV.
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;
Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state’s decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope
The pillar of a people’s hope,
The centre of a world’s desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He play’d at counsellors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labour of his hands,
454
Or in the furrow musing stands;
‘Does my old friend remember me?’
LXV.
Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt;
I lull a fancy trouble-tost
With ‘Love’s too precious to be lost,
A little grain shall not be spilt.’
And in that solace can I sing,
Till out of painful phases wrought
There flutters up a happy thought,
Self-balanced on a lightsome wing:
Since we deserved the name of friends,
And thine effect so lives in me,
A part of mine may live in thee
And move thee on to noble ends.
LXVI.
You thought my heart too far diseased;
You wonder when my fancies play
To find me gay among the gay,
Like one with any trifle pleased.
The shade by which my life was crost,
Which makes a desert in the mind,
Has made me kindly with my kind,
And like to him whose sight is lost;
Whose feet are guided thro’ the land,
Whose jest among his friends is free,
Who takes the children on his knee,
And winds their curls about his hand:
He plays with threads, he beats his chair
For pastime, dreaming of the sky;
His inner day can never die,
455
His night of loss is always there.
LXVII.
When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west,
There comes a glory on the walls:
Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o’er the number of thy years.
The mystic glory swims away;
From off my bed the moonlight dies;
And closing eaves of wearied eyes
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray:
And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast,
And in the dark church like a ghost
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.
LXVIII.
When in the down I sink my head,
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, times my breath;
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, knows not Death,
Nor can I dream of thee as dead:
I walk as ere I walk’d forlorn,
When all our path was fresh with dew,
And all the bugle breezes blew
Reveillée to the breaking morn.
But what is this? I turn about,
I find a trouble in thine eye,
Which makes me sad I know not why,
Nor can my dream resolve the doubt:
456
But ere the lark hath left the lea
I wake, and I discern the truth;
It is the trouble of my youth
That foolish sleep transfers to thee.
LXIX.
I dream’d there would be Spring no more,
That Nature’s ancient power was lost:
The streets were black with smoke and frost,
They chatter’d trifles at the door:
I wander’d from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs:
I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown:
I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
They call’d me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns:
They call’d me fool, they call’d me child:
I found an angel of the night;
The voice was low, the look was bright;
He look’d upon my crown and smiled:
He reach’d the glory of a hand,
That seem’d to touch it into leaf:
The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand.
LXX.
I cannot see the features right,
When on the gloom I strive to paint
The face I know; the hues are faint
And mix with hollow masks of night;
457
Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought,
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes,
A hand that points, and palled shapes
In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;
And crowds that stream from yawning doors,
And shoals of pucker’d faces drive;
Dark bulks that tumble half alive,
And lazy lengths on boundless shores;
Till all at once beyond the will
I hear a wizard music roll,
And thro’ a lattice on the soul
Looks thy fair face and makes it still.
LXXI.
Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance
And madness, thou hast forged at last
A night-long Present of the Past
In which we went thro’ summer France.
Hadst thou such credit with the soul?
Then bring an opiate trebly strong,
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
That so my pleasure may be whole;
While now we talk as once we talk’d
Of men and minds, the dust of change,
The days that grow to something strange,
In walking as of old we walk’d
Beside the river’s wooded reach,
The fortress, and the mountain ridge,
The cataract flashing from the bridge,
The breaker breaking on the beach.
LXXII.
458
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar white,
And lash with storm the streaming pane?
Day, when my crown’d estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken’d every living bloom,
And blurr’d the splendour of the sun;
Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her crimson fringes to the shower;
Who might’st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play’d
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along the hills, yet look’d the same.
As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark’d as with some hideous crime,
When the dark hand struck down thro’ time,
And cancell’d nature’s best: but thou,
Lift as thou may’st thy burthen’d brows
Thro’ clouds that drench the morning star,
And whirl the ungarner’d sheaf afar,
And sow the sky with flying boughs,
And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
And hide thy shame beneath the ground.
LXXIII.
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be,
How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
459
The fame is quench’d that I foresaw,
The head hath miss’d an earthly wreath:
I curse not nature, no, nor death;
For nothing is that errs from law.
We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.
O hollow wraith of dying fame,
Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.
LXXIV.
As sometimes in a dead man’s face,
To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness, hardly seen before,
Comes out–to some one of his race:
So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.
But there is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee.
LXXV.
I leave thy praises unexpress’d
In verse that brings myself relief,
And by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess’d;
What practice howsoe’er expert
460
In fitting aptest words to things,
Or voice the richest-toned that sings,
Hath power to give thee as thou wert?
I care not in these fading days
To raise a cry that lasts not long,
And round thee with the breeze of song
To stir a little dust of praise.
Thy leaf has perish’d in the green,
And, while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world which credits what is done
Is cold to all that might have been.
So here shall silence guard thy fame;
But somewhere, out of human view,
Whate’er thy hands are set to do
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.
LXXVI.
Take wings of fancy, and ascend,
And in a moment set thy face
Where all the starry heavens of space
Are sharpen’d to a needle’s end;
Take wings of foresight; lighten thro’
The secular abyss to come,
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
Before the mouldering of a yew;
And if the matin songs, that woke
The darkness of our planet, last,
Thine own shall wither in the vast,
Ere half the lifetime of an oak.
Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers
With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;
And what are they when these remain
The ruin’d shells of hollow towers?
461
LXXVII.
What hope is here for modern rhyme
To him, who turns a musing eye
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie
Foreshorten’d in the tract of time?
These mortal lullabies of pain
May bind a book, may line a box,
May serve to curl a maiden’s locks;
Or when a thousand moons shall wane
A man upon a stall may find,
And, passing, turn the page that tells
A grief, then changed to something else,
Sung by a long-forgotten mind.
But what of that? My darken’d ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise.
LXXVIII.
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess’d the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture’s breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show’d a token of distress?
462
No single tear, no mark of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, regret can die!
No–mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.
LXXIX.
‘More than my brothers are to me,’–
Let this not vex thee, noble heart!
I know thee of what force thou art
To hold the costliest love in fee.
But thou and I are one in kind,
As moulded like in Nature’s mint;
And hill and wood and field did print
The same sweet forms in either mind.
For us the same cold streamlet curl’d
Thro’ all his eddying coves; the same
All winds that roam the twilight came
In whispers of the beauteous world.
At one dear knee we proffer’d vows,
One lesson from one book we learn’d,
Ere childhood’s flaxen ringlet turn’d
To black and brown on kindred brows.
And so my wealth resembles thine,
But he was rich where I was poor,
And he supplied my want the more
As his unlikeness fitted mine.
LXXX.
If any vague desire should rise,
463
That holy Death ere Arthur died
Had moved me kindly from his side,
And dropt the dust on tearless eyes;
Then fancy shapes, as fancy can,
The grief my loss in him had wrought,
A grief as deep as life or thought,
But stay’d in peace with God and man.
I make a picture in the brain;
I hear the sentence that he speaks;
He bears the burthen of the weeks
But turns his burthen into gain.
His credit thus shall set me free;
And, influence-rich to soothe and save,
Unused example from the grave
Reach out dead hands to comfort me.
LXXXI.
Could I have said while he was here,
‘My love shall now no further range;
There cannot come a mellower change,
For now is love mature in ear.’
Love, then, had hope of richer store:
What end is here to my complaint?
This haunting whisper makes me faint,
‘More years had made me love thee more.’
But Death returns an answer sweet:
‘My sudden frost was sudden gain,
And gave all ripeness to the grain,
It might have drawn from after-heat.’
LXXXII.
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
464
No lower life that earth’s embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter’d stalks,
Or ruin’d chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
LXXXIII.
Dip down upon the northern shore,
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
Delaying long, delay no more.
What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place?
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell’s darling blue,
Deep tulips dash’d with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
O thou, new-year, delaying long,
Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
That longs to burst a frozen bud
And flood a fresher throat with song.
465
LXXXIV.
When I contemplate all alone
The life that had been thine below,
And fix my thoughts on all the glow
To which thy crescent would have grown;
I see thee sitting crown’d with good,
A central warmth diffusing bliss
In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss,
On all the branches of thy blood;
Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine;
For now the day was drawing on,
When thou should’st link thy life with one
Of mine own house, and boys of thine
Had babbled ‘Uncle’ on my knee;
But that remorseless iron hour
Made cypress of her orange flower,
Despair of Hope, and earth of thee.
I seem to meet their least desire,
To clap their cheeks, to call them mine.
I see their unborn faces shine
Beside the never-lighted fire.
I see myself an honour’d guest,
Thy partner in the flowery walk
Of letters, genial table-talk,
Or deep dispute, and graceful jest;
While now thy prosperous labour fills
The lips of men with honest praise,
And sun by sun the happy days
Descend below the golden hills
With promise of a morn as fair;
And all the train of bounteous hours
Conduct by paths of growing powers,
To reverence and the silver hair;
Till slowly worn her earthly robe,
466
Her lavish mission richly wrought,
Leaving great legacies of thought,
Thy spirit should fail from off the globe;
What time mine own might also flee,
As link’d with thine in love and fate,
And, hovering o’er the dolorous strait
To the other shore, involved in thee,
Arrive at last the blessed goal,
And He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand,
And take us as a single soul.
What reed was that on which I leant?
Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake
The old bitterness again, and break
The low beginnings of content.
LXXXV.
This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrow’d most,
’Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all–
O true in word, and tried in deed,
Demanding, so to bring relief
To this which is our common grief,
What kind of life is that I lead;
And whether trust in things above
Be dimm’d of sorrow, or sustain’d;
And whether love for him have drain’d
My capabilities of love;
Your words have virtue such as draws
A faithful answer from the breast,
Thro’ light reproaches, half exprest,
And loyal unto kindly laws.
467
My blood an even tenor kept,
Till on mine ear this message falls,
That in Vienna’s fatal walls
God’s finger touch’d him, and he slept.
The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state,
In circle round the blessed gate,
Received and gave him welcome there;
And led him thro’ the blissful climes,
And show'd him in the fountain fresh
All knowledge that the sons of flesh
Shall gather in the cycled times.
But I remained, whose hopes were dim,
Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,
To wander on a darkened earth,
Where all things round me breathed of him.
friendship, equal poised control,
heart, with kindliest motion warm,
sacred essence, other form,
solemn ghost, O crowned soul!
Yet none could better know than I,
How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands
By which we dare to live or die.
Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho’ left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine;
A life that all the Muses decked
With gifts of grace, that might express
All comprehensive tenderness,
All-subtilising intellect:
And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
468
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved.
Likewise the imaginative woe,
That loved to handle spiritual strife,
Diffused the shock thro’ all my life,
But in the present broke the blow.
My pulses therefore beat again
For other friends that once I met;
Nor can it suit me to forget
The mighty hopes that make us men.
I woo your love: I count it crime
To mourn for any overmuch;
I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had master’d Time;
Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears:
The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this:
But Summer on the steaming floods,
And Spring that swells the narrow brooks,
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,
That gather in the waning woods,
And every pulse of wind and wave
Recalls, in change of light or gloom,
My old affection of the tomb,
And my prime passion in the grave:
My old affection of the tomb,
A part of stillness, yearns to speak:
‘Arise, and get thee forth and seek
A friendship for the years to come.
‘I watch thee from the quiet shore;
Thy spirit up to mine can reach;
But in dear words of human speech
We two communicate no more.’
469
And I, ‘Can clouds of nature stain
The starry clearness of the free?
How is it? Canst thou feel for me
Some painless sympathy with pain?’
And lightly does the whisper fall;
‘’Tis hard for thee to fathom this;
I triumph in conclusive bliss,
And that serene result of all.’
So hold I commerce with the dead;
Or so methinks the dead would say;
Or so shall grief with symbols play
And pining life be fancy-fed.
Now looking to some settled end,
That these things pass, and I shall prove
A meeting somewhere, love with love,
I crave your pardon, O my friend;
If not so fresh, with love as true,
I, clasping brother-hands aver
I could not, if I would, transfer
The whole I felt for him to you.
For which be they that hold apart
The promise of the golden hours?
First love, first friendship, equal powers,
That marry with the virgin heart.
Still mine, that cannot but deplore,
That beats within a lonely place,
That yet remembers his embrace,
But at his footstep leaps no more,
My heart, tho’ widow’d, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,
But seeks to beat in time with one
That warms another living breast.
Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring,
470
Knowing the primrose yet is dear,
The primrose of the later year,
As not unlike to that of Spring.
LXXXVI.
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro’ all the dewy-tassell’d wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odour streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper ‘Peace.’
LXXXVII.
I past beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown;
I roved at random thro’ the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;
And heard one more in college fanes
The storm their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophet blazon’d on the panes;
And caught one more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
471
Among the willows; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about
The same gray flats again, and felt
The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.
Another name was on the door:
I linger’d; all within was noise
Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys
That crash’d the glass and beat the floor;
Where once we held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art,
And labour, and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land;
When one would aim an arrow fair,
But send it slackly from the string;
And one would pierce an outer ring,
And one an inner, here and there;
And last the master-bowman, he,
Would cleave the mark. A willing ear
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face,
And seem to lift the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo.
LXXXVIII.
472
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro’ the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet,
Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy:
And I–my harp would prelude woe–
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.
LXXXIX.
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;
And thou, with all thy breadth and height
Of foliage, towering sycamore;
How often, hither wandering down,
My Arthur found your shadows fair,
And shook to all the liberal air
The dust and din and steam of town:
He brought an eye for all he saw;
He mixt in all our simple sports;
They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts
And dusty purlieus of the law.
O joy to him in this retreat,
Immantled in ambrosial dark,
To drink the cooler air, and mark
The landscape winking thro’ the heat:
O sound to rout the brood of cares,
The sweep of scythe in morning dew,
The gust that round the garden flew,
And tumbled half the mellowing pears!
473
O bliss, when all in circle drawn
About him, heart and ear were fed
To hear him, as he lay and read
The Tuscan poets on the lawn:
Or in the all-golden afternoon
A guest, or happy sister, sung,
Or here she brought the harp and flung
A ballad to the brightening moon:
Nor less it pleased in livelier moods,
Beyond the bounding hill to stray,
And break the livelong summer day
With banquet in the distant woods;
Whereat we glanced from theme to theme,
Discuss’d the books to love or hate,
Or touch’d the changes of the state,
Or threaded some Socratic dream;
But if I praised the busy town,
He loved to rail against it still,
For ‘ground in yonder social mill
We rub each other’s angles down,
‘And merge’ he said ‘in form and gloss
The picturesque of man and man.’
We talk’d: the stream beneath us ran,
The wine-flask lying couch’d in moss,
Or cool’d within the glooming wave;
And last, returning from afar,
Before the crimson-circled star
Had fall’n into her father’s grave,
And brushing ankle-deep in flowers,
We heard behind the woodbine veil
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And buzzings of the honied hours.
474
XC.
He tasted love with half his mind,
Nor ever drank the inviolate spring
Where nighest heaven, who first could fling
This bitter seed among mankind;
That could the dead, whose dying eyes
Were closed with wail, resume their life,
They would but find in child and wife
An iron welcome when they rise:
’Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine,
To pledge them with a kindly tear,
To talk them o’er, to wish them here,
To count their memories half divine;
But if they came who past away,
Behold their brides in other hands;
The hard heir strides about their lands,
And will not yield them for a day.
Yea, tho’ their sons were none of these,
Not less the yet-loved sire would make
Confusion worse than death, and shake
The pillars of domestic peace.
Ah dear, but come thou back to me:
Whatever change the years have wrought,
I find not yet one lonely thought
That cries against my wish for thee.
XCI.
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,
And rarely pipes the mounted thrush;
Or underneath the barren bush
Flits by the sea-blue bird of March;
Come, wear the form by which I know
Thy spirit in time among thy peers;
The hope of unaccomplish’d years
475
Be large and lucid round thy brow.
When summer’s hourly-mellowing change
May breathe, with many roses sweet,
Upon the thousand waves of wheat,
That ripple round the lonely grange;
Come: not in watches of the night,
But where the sunbeam broodeth warm,
Come, beauteous in thine after form,
And like a finer light in light.
XCII.
If any vision should reveal
Thy likeness, I might count it vain
As but the canker of the brain;
Yea, tho’ it spake and made appeal
To chances where our lots were cast
Together in the days behind,
I might but say, I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring the past.
Yea, tho’ it spake and bared to view
A fact within the coming year;
And tho’ the months, revolving near,
Should prove the phantom-warning true,
They might not seem thy prophecies,
But spiritual presentiments,
And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.
XCIII.
I shall not see thee. Dare I say
No spirit ever brake the band
That stays him from the native land
476
Where first he walk’d when claspt in clay?
No visual shade of some one lost,
But he, the Spirit himself, may come
Where all the nerve of sense is numb;
Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.
O, therefore from thy sightless range
With gods in unconjectured bliss,
O, from the distance of the abyss
Of tenfold-complicated change,
Descend, and touch, and enter; hear
The wish too strong for words to name;
That in this blindness of the frame
My Ghost may feel that thine is near.
XCIV.
How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour’s communion with the dead.
In vain shalt thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.
They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest:
But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits,
They can but listen at the gates,
And hear the household jar within.
XCV.
477
By night we linger’d on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o’er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirr’d:
The brook alone far-off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn:
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel’d or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes;
While now we sang old songs that peal’d
From knoll to knoll, where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field.
But when those others, one by one,
Withdrew themselves from me and night,
And in the house light after light
Went out, and I was all alone,
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fall’n leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead:
And strangely on the silence broke
The silent-speaking words, and strange
Was love’s dumb cry defying change
To test his worth; and strangely spoke
The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell
On doubts that drive the coward back,
And keen thro’ wordy snares to track
Suggestion to her inmost cell.
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch’d me from the past,
478
And all at once it seem’d at last
The living soul was flash’d on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirl’d
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
Æonian music measuring out
The steps of Time–the shocks of Chance–
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev’n for intellect to reach
Thro’ memory that which I became:
Till now the doubtful dusk reveal’d
The knolls once more where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field:
And suck’d from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o’er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock’d the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said
‘The dawn, the dawn,’ and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.
XCVI.
479
You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch’d a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather’d strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinaï’s peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.
XCVII.
My love has talk’d with rocks and trees;
He finds on misty mountain-ground
His own vast shadow glory-crown’d;
He sees himself in all he sees.
Two partners of a married life–
I look’d on these and thought of thee
In vastness and in mystery,
And of my spirit as of a wife.
480
These two–they dwelt with eye on eye,
Their hearts of old have beat in tune,
Their meetings made December June,
Their every parting was to die.
Their love has never past away;
The days she never can forget
Are earnest that he loves her yet,
Whate’er the faithless people say.
Her life is lone, he sits apart,
He loves her yet, she will not weep,
Tho’ rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.
He
He
He
He
thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
reads the secret of the star,
seems so near and yet so far,
looks so cold: she thinks him kind.
She keeps the gift of years before,
A wither’d violet is her bliss:
She knows not what his greatness is,
For that, for all, she loves him more.
For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things.
Her faith is fixt and cannot move,
She darkly feels him great and wise,
She dwells on him with faithful eyes,
‘I cannot understand: I love.’
XCVIII.
You leave us: you will see the Rhine,
And those fair hills I sail’d below,
When I was there with him; and go
481
By summer belts of wheat and vine
To where he breathed his latest breath,
That City. All her splendour seems
No livelier than the wisp that gleams
On Lethe in the eyes of Death.
Let her great Danube rolling fair
Enwind her isles, unmark’d of me:
I have not seen, I will not see
Vienna; rather dream that there,
A treble darkness, Evil haunts
The birth, the bridal; friend from friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend
Above more graves, a thousand wants
Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey
By each cold hearth, and sadness flings
Her shadow on the blaze of kings:
And yet myself have heard him say,
That not in any mother town
With statelier progress to and fro
The double tides of chariots flow
By park and suburb under brown
Of lustier leaves; nor more content,
He told me, lives in any crowd,
When all is gay with lamps, and loud
With sport and song, in booth and tent,
Imperial halls, or open plain;
And wheels the circled dance, and breaks
The rocket molten into flakes
Of crimson or in emerald rain.
XCIX.
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
So loud with voices of the birds,
482
So thick with lowings of the herds,
Day, when I lost the flower of men;
Who tremblest thro’ thy darkling red
On yon swoll’n brook that bubbles fast
By meadows breathing of the past,
And woodlands holy to the dead;
Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves
A song that slights the coming care,
And Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves;
Who wakenest with thy balmy breath
To myriads on the genial earth,
Memories of bridal, or of birth,
And unto myriads more, of death.
O wheresoever those may be,
Betwixt the slumber of the poles,
To-day they count as kindred souls;
They know me not, but mourn with me.
C.
I climb the hill: from end to end
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend;
No gray old grange, or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead,
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;
Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw
That hears the latest linnet trill,
Nor quarry trench’d along the hill
And haunted by the wrangling daw;
Nor runlet tinkling from the rock;
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves
483
To left and right thro’ meadowy curves,
That feed the mothers of the flock;
But each has pleased a kindred eye,
And each reflects a kindlier day;
And, leaving these, to pass away,
I think once more he seems to die.
CI.
Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away;
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;
Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
The brook shall babble down the plain,
At noon or when the lesser wain
Is twisting round the polar star;
Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove;
Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger’s child;
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.
484
CII.
We leave the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky;
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,
Will shelter one of stranger race.
We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move,
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.
One whispers, ‘Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low love-language of the bird
In native hazels tassel-hung.’
The other answers, ‘Yea, but here
Thy feet have stray’d in after hours
With thy lost friend among the bowers,
And this hath made them trebly dear.’
These two have striven half the day,
And each prefers his separate claim,
Poor rivals in a losing game,
That will not yield each other way.
I turn to go: my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and farms;
They mix in one another’s arms
To one pure image of regret.
CIII.
On that last night before we went
From out the doors where I was bred,
I dream’d a vision of the dead,
Which left my after-morn content.
Methought I dwelt within a hall,
And maidens with me: distant hills
485
From hidden summits fed with rills
A river sliding by the wall.
The hall with harp and carol rang.
They sang of what is wise and good
And graceful. In the centre stood
A statue veil’d, to which they sang;
And which, tho’ veil’d, was known to me,
The shape of him I loved, and love
For ever: then flew in a dove
And brought a summons from the sea:
And when they learnt that I must go
They wept and wail’d, but led the way
To where a little shallop lay
At anchor in the flood below;
And on by many a level mead,
And shadowing bluff that made the banks,
We glided winding under ranks
Of iris, and the golden reed;
And still as vaster grew the shore
And roll’d the floods in grander space,
The maidens gather’d strength and grace
And presence, lordlier than before;
And I myself, who sat apart
And watch’d them, wax’d in every limb;
I felt the thews of Anakim,
The pulses of a Titan’s heart;
As one would sing the death of war,
And one would chant the history
Of that great race, which is to be,
And one the shaping of a star;
Until the forward-creeping tides
Began to foam, and we to draw
From deep to deep, to where we saw
A great ship lift her shining sides.
486
The man we loved was there on deck,
But thrice as large as man he bent
To greet us. Up the side I went,
And fell in silence on his neck:
Whereat those maidens with one mind
Bewail’d their lot; I did them wrong:
‘We served thee here’ they said, ‘so long,
And wilt thou leave us now behind?’
So rapt I was, they could not win
An answer from my lips, but he
Replying, ‘Enter likewise ye
And go with us:’ they enter’d in.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer’d her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.
CIV.
The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist.
A single peal of bells below,
That wakens at this hour of rest
A single murmur in the breast,
That these are not the bells I know.
Like strangers’ voices here they sound,
In lands where not a memory strays,
Nor landmark breathes of other days,
But all is new unhallow’d ground.
CV.
487
To-night ungather’d let us leave
This laurel, let this holly stand:
We live within the stranger’s land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.
Our father’s dust is left alone
And silent under other snows:
There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.
No more shall wayward grief abuse
The genial hour with mask and mime;
For change of place, like growth of time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.
Let cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.
But let no footstep beat the floor,
Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
For who would keep an ancient form
Thro’ which the spirit breathes no more?
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown;
No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
Run out your measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good.
CVI.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
488
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring
Ring
Ring
Ring
out old shapes of foul disease;
out the narrowing lust of gold;
out the thousand wars of old,
in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
CVII.
It is the day when he was born,
A bitter day that early sank
489
Behind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.
The time admits not flowers or leaves
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen’d eaves,
And bristles all the brakes and thorns
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs
Above the wood which grides and clangs
Its leafless ribs and iron horns
Together, in the drifts that pass
To darken on the rolling brine
That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine,
Arrange the board and brim the glass;
Bring in great logs and let them lie,
To make a solid core of heat;
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
Of all things ev’n as he were by;
We keep the day. With festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate’er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.
CVIII.
I will not shut me from my kind,
And, lest I stiffen into stone,
I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:
What profit lies in barren faith,
And vacant yearning, tho’ with might
To scale the heaven’s highest height,
Or dive below the wells of Death?
What find I in the highest place,
But mine own phantom chanting hymns?
490
And on the depths of death there swims
The reflex of a human face.
I'll rather take what fruit may be
Of sorrow under human skies:
’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise,
Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.
CIX.
Heart-affluence in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry;
The critic clearness of an eye,
That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk;
Seraphic intellect and force
To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassion’d logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course;
High nature amorous of the good,
But touch’d with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Thro’ all the years of April blood;
A love of freedom rarely felt,
Of freedom in her regal seat
Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt;
And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask’d, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;
All these have been, and thee mine eyes
Have look’d on: if they look’d in vain,
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
491
CX.
Thy converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years:
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight.
On thee the loyal-hearted hung,
The proud was half disarm’d of pride,
Nor cared the serpent at thy side
To flicker with his double tongue.
The stern were mild when thou wert by,
The flippant put himself to school
And heard thee, and the brazen fool
Was soften’d, and he knew not why;
While I, thy nearest, sat apart,
And felt thy triumph was as mine;
And loved them more, that they were thine,
The graceful tact, the Christian art;
Nor mine the sweetness or the skill,
But mine the love that will not tire,
And, born of love, the vague desire
That spurs an imitative will.
CXI.
The churl in spirit, up or down
Along the scale of ranks, thro’ all,
To him who grasps a golden ball,
By blood a king, at heart a clown;
The churl in spirit, howe’er he veil
His want in forms for fashion’s sake,
Will let his coltish nature break
At seasons thro’ the gilded pale:
For who can always act? but he,
To whom a thousand memories call,
492
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seem’d to be,
Best seem’d the thing he was, and join’d
Each office of the social hour
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind;
Nor ever narrowness or spite,
Or villain fancy fleeting by,
Drew in the expression of an eye,
Where God and Nature met in light;
And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil’d with all ignoble use.
CXII.
High wisdom holds my wisdom less,
That I, who gaze with temperate eyes
On glorious insufficiencies,
Set light by narrower perfectness.
But thou, that fillest all the room
Of all my love, art reason why
I seem to cast a careless eye
On souls, the lesser lords of doom.
For what wert thou? some novel power
Sprang up for ever at a touch,
And hope could never hope too much,
In watching thee from hour to hour,
Large elements in order brought,
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world-wide fluctuation sway’d
In vassal tides that follow’d thought.
493
CXIII.
’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee
Which not alone had guided me,
But served the seasons that may rise;
For can I doubt, who knew thee keen
In intellect, with force and skill
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil–
I doubt not what thou wouldst have been:
life in civic action warm,
soul on highest mission sent,
potent voice of Parliament,
pillar steadfast in the storm,
Should licensed boldness gather force,
Becoming, when the time has birth,
A lever to uplift the earth
And roll it in another course,
With thousand shocks that come and go,
With agonies, with energies,
With overthrowings, and with cries,
And undulations to and fro.
CXIV.
Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
But on her forehead sits a fire:
She sets her forward countenance
And leaps into the future chance,
Submitting all things to desire.
Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain–
She cannot fight the fear of death.
494
What is she, cut from love and faith,
But some wild Pallas from the brain
Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst
All barriers in her onward race
For power. Let her know her place;
She is the second, not the first.
A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger child:
For she is earthly of the mind,
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.
O, friend, who camest to thy goal
So early, leaving me behind,
I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity.
CXV.
Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown’d in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;
Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
495
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives
From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.
CXVI.
Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime?
Not all: the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,
Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.
Not all regret: the face will shine
Upon me, while I muse alone;
And that dear voice, I once have known,
Still speak to me of me and mine:
Yet less of sorrow lives in me
For days of happy commune dead;
Less yearning for the friendship fled,
Than some strong bond which is to be.
CXVII.
O days and hours, your work is this
To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from his embrace
For fuller gain of after bliss:
That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet;
496
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue,
For every grain of sand that runs,
And every span of shade that steals,
And every kiss of toothed wheels,
And all the courses of the suns.
CXVIII.
Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature’s earth and lime;
But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
Who throve and branch’d from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crown’d with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly
497
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
CXIX.
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, not as one that weeps
I come once more; the city sleeps;
I smell the meadow in the street;
I hear a chirp of birds; I see
Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,
And think of early days and thee,
And bless thee, for thy lips are bland,
And bright the friendship of thine eye;
And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh
I take the pressure of thine hand.
CXX.
I trust I have not wasted breath:
I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;
Not only cunning casts in clay:
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me? I would not stay.
Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.
498
CXXI.
Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen’d from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken’d in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world’s great work is heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light:
The market boat is on the stream,
And voices hail it from the brink;
Thou hear’st the village hammer clink,
And see’st the moving of the team.
Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name
For what is one, the first, the last,
Thou, like my present and my past,
Thy place is changed; thou art the same.
CXXII.
Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then,
While I rose up against my doom,
And yearn’d to burst the folded gloom,
To bare the eternal Heavens again,
To feel once more, in placid awe,
The strong imagination roll
A sphere of stars about my soul,
In all her motion one with law;
If thou wert with me, and the grave
Divide us not, be with me now,
And enter in at breast and brow,
499
Till all my blood, a fuller wave,
Be quicken’d with a livelier breath,
And like an inconsiderate boy,
As in the former flash of joy,
I slip the thoughts of life and death;
And all the breeze of Fancy blows,
And every dew-drop paints a bow,
The wizard lightnings deeply glow,
And every thought breaks out a rose.
CXXIII.
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho’ my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
CXXIV.
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
Nor thro’ the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
500
If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,
I heard a voice ‘believe no more’
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer’d ‘I have felt.’
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.
CXXV.
Whatever I have said or sung,
Some bitter notes my harp would give,
Yea, tho’ there often seem’d to live
A contradiction on the tongue,
Yet Hope had never lost her youth;
She did but look through dimmer eyes;
Or Love but play’d with gracious lies,
Because he felt so fix’d in truth:
And if the song were full of care,
He breathed the spirit of the song;
And if the words were sweet and strong
He set his royal signet there;
Abiding with me till I sail
To seek thee on the mystic deeps,
And this electric force, that keeps
501
A thousand pulses dancing, fail.
CXXVI.
Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.
Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, tho’ as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep
Encompass’d by his faithful guard,
And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well.
CXXVII.
And all is well, tho’ faith and form
Be sunder’d in the night of fear;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm,
Proclaiming social truth shall spread,
And justice, ev’n tho’ thrice again
The red fool-fury of the Seine
Should pile her barricades with dead.
But ill for him that wears a crown,
And him, the lazar, in his rags:
They tremble, the sustaining crags;
The spires of ice are toppled down,
And molten up, and roar in flood;
The fortress crashes from on high,
The brute earth lightens to the sky,
And the great Æon sinks in blood,
502
And compass’d by the fires of Hell;
While thou, dear spirit, happy star,
O’erlook’st the tumult from afar,
And smilest, knowing all is well.
CXXVIII.
The love that rose on stronger wings,
Unpalsied when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith
That sees the course of human things.
No doubt vast eddies in the flood
Of onward time shall yet be made,
And throned races may degrade;
Yet O ye mysteries of good,
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,
If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new;
If this were all your mission here,
To
To
To
To
draw, to sheathe a useless sword,
fool the crowd with glorious lies,
cleave a creed in sects and cries,
change the bearing of a word,
To shift an arbitrary power,
To cramp the student at his desk,
To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower;
Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours. I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil coöperant to an end.
CXXIX.
503
Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;
Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;
Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.
CXXX.
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho’ I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho’ mix’d with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.
CXXXI.
504
O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure,
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer’d years
To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.
_________
O true and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than any song.
Nor have I felt so much of bliss
Since first he told me that he loved
A daughter of our house; nor proved
Since that dark day a day like this;
Tho’ I since then have number’d o’er
Some thrice three years: they went and came,
Remade the blood and changed the frame,
And yet is love not less, but more;
No longer caring to embalm
In dying songs a dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,
And moulded in colossal calm.
Regret is dead, but love is more
Than in the summers that are flown,
For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before;
Which makes appear the songs I made
505
As echoes out of weaker times,
As half but idle brawling rhymes,
The sport of random sun and shade.
But where is she, the bridal flower,
That must he made a wife ere noon?
She enters, glowing like the moon
Of Eden on its bridal bower:
On me she bends her blissful eyes
And then on thee; they meet thy look
And brighten like the star that shook
Betwixt the palms of paradise.
O when her life was yet in bud,
He too foretold the perfect rose.
For thee she grew, for thee she grows
For ever, and as fair as good.
And thou art worthy; full of power;
As gentle; liberal-minded, great,
Consistent; wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
But now set out: the noon is near,
And I must give away the bride;
She fears not, or with thee beside
And me behind her, will not fear.
For I that danced her on my knee,
That watch’d her on her nurse’s arm,
That shielded all her life from harm
At last must part with her to thee;
Now waiting to be made a wife,
Her feet, my darling, on the dead;
Their pensive tablets round her head,
And the most living words of life
Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,
The ‘wilt thou’ answer’d, and again
The ‘wilt thou’ ask’d, till out of twain
506
Her sweet ‘I will’ has made you one.
Now sign your names, which shall be read,
Mute symbols of a joyful morn,
By village eyes as yet unborn;
The names are sign’d, and overhead
Begins the clash and clang that tells
The joy to every wandering breeze;
The blind wall rocks, and on the trees
The dead leaf trembles to the bells.
O happy hour, and happier hours
Await them. Many a merry face
Salutes them–maidens of the place,
That pelt us in the porch with flowers.
O happy hour, behold the bride
With him to whom her hand I gave.
They leave the porch, they pass the grave
That has to-day its sunny side.
To-day the grave is bright for me,
For them the light of life increased,
Who stay to share the morning feast,
Who rest to-night beside the sea.
Let all my genial spirits advance
To meet and greet a whiter sun;
My drooping memory will not shun
The foaming grape of eastern France.
It circles round, and fancy plays,
And hearts are warm’d and faces bloom,
As drinking health to bride and groom
We wish them store of happy days.
Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance, perchance, among the rest,
And, tho’ in silence, wishing joy.
507
But they must go, the time draws on,
And those white-favour’d horses wait;
They rise, but linger; it is late;
Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.
A shade falls on us like the dark
From little cloudlets on the grass,
But sweeps away as out we pass
To range the woods, to roam the park,
Discussing how their courtship grew,
And talk of others that are wed,
And how she look’d, and what he said,
And back we come at fall of dew.
Again the feast, the speech, the glee,
The shade of passing thought, the wealth
Of words and wit, the double health,
The crowning cup, the three-times-three,
And last the dance;–till I retire:
Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,
And high in heaven the streaming cloud,
And on the downs a rising fire:
And rise, O moon, from yonder down,
Till over down and over dale
All night the shining vapour sail
And pass the silent-lighted town,
The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,
And catch at every mountain head,
And o’er the friths that branch and spread
Their sleeping silver thro’ the hills;
And touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the wall;
And breaking let the splendour fall
To spangle all the happy shores
By which they rest, and ocean sounds,
And, star and system rolling past,
508
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
And, moved thro’ life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;
No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer’d, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;
Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
544:A Lyrical Drama, In Four Acts.
Audisne haec amphiarae, sub terram abdite?
ACT I
Scene.A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea andIone are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.
Prometheus.
Monarch of Gods and Dmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.
Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,
O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn and despair,these are mine empire:
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains
Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
Heaven's wingd hound, polluting from thy lips
His beak in poison not his own, tears up
My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
When the rocks split and close again behind:
While from their loud abysses howling throng
The genii of the storm, urging the rage
Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
And yet to me welcome is day and night,
Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,
Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead
The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom
As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim
Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood
From these pale feet, which then might trample thee
If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.
Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin
Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!
How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
Not exultation, for I hate no more,
As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
Whose many-voicd Echoes, through the mist
Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!
Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,
Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisd wings
Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
The orbd world! If then my words had power,
Though I am changed so that aught evil wish
Is dead within; although no memory be
Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!
What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.
First Voice
(from the Mountains).
Thrice three hundred thousand years
O'er the Earthquake's couch we stood:
Oft, as men convulsed with fears,
We trembled in our multitude.
Second Voice
(from the Springs).
Thunderbolts had parched our water,
We had been stained with bitter blood,
And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter,
Thro' a city and a solitude.
Third Voice
(from the Air).
I had clothed, since Earth uprose,
Its wastes in colours not their own,
And oft had my serene repose
Been cloven by many a rending groan.
Fourth Voice
(from the Whirlwinds).
We had soared beneath these mountains
Unresting ages; nor had thunder,
Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains,
Nor any power above or under
Ever made us mute with wonder.
First Voice.
But never bowed our snowy crest
As at the voice of thine unrest.
Second Voice.
Never such a sound before
To the Indian waves we bore.
A pilot asleep on the howling sea
Leaped up from the deck in agony,
And heard, and cried, 'Ah, woe is me!'
And died as mad as the wild waves be.
Third Voice.
By such dread words from Earth to Heaven
My still realm was never riven:
When its wound was closed, there stood
Darkness o'er the day like blood.
Fourth Voice.
And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin
To frozen caves our flight pursuing
Made us keep silencethusand thus
Though silence is as hell to us.
The Earth.
The tongueless Caverns of the craggy hills
Cried, 'Misery!' then; the hollow Heaven replied,
'Misery!' And the Ocean's purple waves,
Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,
And the pale nations heard it, 'Misery!'
Prometheus.
I heard a sound of voices: not the voice
Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou
Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,
Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,
The Titan? He who made his agony
The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?
Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams,
Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,
Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once
With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, now
To commune with me? me alone, who checked,
As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:
Why answer ye not, still? Brethren!
The Earth.
They dare not.
Prometheus.
Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!
'Tis scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice
I only know that thou art moving near
And love. How cursed I him?
The Earth.
How canst thou hear
Who knowest not the language of the dead?
Prometheus.
Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.
The Earth.
I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King
Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
More torturing than the one whereon I roll.
Subtle thou art and good, and though the Gods
Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.
Prometheus.
Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,
Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel
Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
Yet 'tis not pleasure.
The Earth.
No, thou canst not hear:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
Only to those who die.
Prometheus.
And what art thou,
O, melancholy Voice?
The Earth.
I am the Earth,
Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,
And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.
Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll
Around us: their inhabitants beheld
My spherd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;
Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;
Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads
Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled:
When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,
And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds
Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained
With the contagion of a mother's hate
Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard
Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,
Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
And the inarticulate people of the dead,
Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
But dare not speak them.
Prometheus.
Venerable mother!
All else who live and suffer take from thee
Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,
And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.
But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.
The Earth.
They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know there are two worlds of life and death:
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live
Till death unite them and they part no more;
Dreams and the light imaginings of men,
And all that faith creates or love desires,
Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.
There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,
'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods
Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds,
Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;
And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne
Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter
The curse which all remember. Call at will
Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,
Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods
From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin
Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.
Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge
Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,
As rainy wind through the abandoned gate
Of a fallen palace.
Prometheus.
Mother, let not aught
Of that which may be evil, pass again
My lips, or those of aught resembling me.
Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!
Ione.
My wings are folded o'er mine ears:
My wings are crossd o'er mine eyes:
Yet through their silver shade appears,
And through their lulling plumes arise,
A Shape, a throng of sounds;
May it be no ill to thee
O thou of many wounds!
Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake,
Ever thus we watch and wake.
Panthea.
The sound is of whirlwind underground,
Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;
The shape is awful like the sound,
Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
A sceptre of pale gold
To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud
His veind hand doth hold.
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
Like one who does, not suffers wrong.
Phantasm of Jupiter.
Why have the secret powers of this strange world
Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither
On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds
Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice
With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk
In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?
Prometheus.
Tremendous Image, as thou art must be
He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,
The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,
Although no thought inform thine empty voice.
The Earth.
Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,
Gray mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,
Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,
Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak.
Phantasm.
A spirit seizes me and speaks within:
It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.
Panthea.
See, how he lifts his mighty looks, the Heaven
Darkens above.
Ione.
He speaks! O shelter me!
Prometheus.
I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,
And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,
And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,
Written as on a scroll: yet speak: Oh, speak!
Phantasm.
Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Human-kind,
One only being shalt thou not subdue.
Rain then thy plagues upon me here,
Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear;
And let alternate frost and fire
Eat into me, and be thine ire
Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.
Ay, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent.
O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,
And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent
To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.
Let thy malignant spirit move
In darkness over those I love:
On me and mine I imprecate
The utmost torture of thy hate;
And thus devote to sleepless agony,
This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.
But thou, who art the God and Lord: O, thou,
Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,
To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow
In fear and worship: all-prevailing foe!
I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse
Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;
Till thine Infinity shall be
A robe of envenomed agony;
And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,
To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.
Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,
Ill deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good;
Both infinite as is the universe,
And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude.
An awful image of calm power
Though now thou sittest, let the hour
Come, when thou must appear to be
That which thou art internally;
And after many a false and fruitless crime
Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time.
Prometheus.
Were these my words, O Parent?
The Earth.
They were thine.
Prometheus.
It doth repent me: words are quick and vain;
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
The Earth.
Misery, Oh misery to me,
That Jove at length should vanquish thee.
Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,
The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye.
Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead,
Your refuge, your defence lies fallen and vanquishd.
First Echo.
Lies fallen and vanquishd!
Second Echo.
Fallen and vanquishd!
Ione.
Fear not: 'tis but some passing spasm,
The Titan is unvanquished still.
But see, where through the azure chasm
Of yon forked and snowy hill
Trampling the slant winds on high
With golden-sandalled feet, that glow
Under plumes of purple dye,
Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
A Shape comes now,
Stretching on high from his right hand
A serpent-cinctured wand.
Panthea.
'Tis Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury.
Ione.
And who are those with hydra tresses
And iron wings that climb the wind,
Whom the frowning God represses
Like vapours steaming up behind,
Clanging loud, an endless crowd
Panthea.
These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,
Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
When charioted on sulphurous cloud
He bursts Heaven's bounds.
Ione.
Are they now led, from the thin dead
On new pangs to be fed?
Panthea.
The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud.
First Fury.
Ha! I scent life!
Second Fury.
Let me but look into his eyes!
Third Fury.
The hope of torturing him smells like a heap
Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle.
First Fury.
Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds
Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon
Should make us food and sportwho can please long
The Omnipotent?
Mercury.
Back to your towers of iron,
And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
Chimra, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine,
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate:
These shall perform your task.
First Fury.
Oh, mercy! mercy!
We die with our desire: drive us not back!
Mercury.
Crouch then in silence.
Awful Sufferer!
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
To execute a doom of new revenge.
Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
That measure and divide the weary years
From which there is no refuge, long have taught
And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
With the strange might of unimagined pains
The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
And my commission is to lead them here,
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
Be it not so! there is a secret known
To thee, and to none else of living things,
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart:
For benefits and meek submission tame
The fiercest and the mightiest.
Prometheus.
Evil minds
Change good to their own nature. I gave all
He has; and in return he chains me here
Years, ages, night and day: whether the Sun
Split my parched skin, or in the moony night
The crystal-wingd snow cling round my hair:
Whilst my belovd race is trampled down
By his thought-executing ministers.
Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis just:
He who is evil can receive no good;
And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,
He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude:
He but requites me for his own misdeed.
Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks
With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.
Submission, thou dost know I cannot try:
For what submission but that fatal word,
The death-seal of mankind's captivity,
Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword,
Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,
Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
In brief Omnipotence: secure are they:
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.
But hark, the hell-hounds clamour: fear delay:
Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.
Mercury.
Oh, that we might be spared: I to inflict
And thou to suffer! Once more answer me:
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?
Prometheus.
I know but this, that it must come.
Mercury.
Alas!
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?
Prometheus.
They last while Jove must reign: nor more, nor less
Do I desire or fear.
Mercury.
Yet pause, and plunge
Into Eternity, where recorded time,
Even all that we imagine, age on age,
Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind
Flags wearily in its unending flight,
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;
Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?
Prometheus.
Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.
Mercury.
If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while
Lapped in voluptuous joy?
Prometheus.
I would not quit
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.
Mercury.
Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.
Prometheus.
Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,
As light in the sun, throned: how vain is talk!
Call up the fiends.
Ione.
O, sister, look! White fire
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!
Mercury.
I must obey his words and thine: alas!
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!
Panthea.
See where the child of Heaven, with wingd feet,
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.
Ione.
Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
Lest thou behold and die: they come: they come
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
And hollow underneath, like death.
First Fury.
Prometheus!
Second Fury.
Immortal Titan!
Third Fury.
Champion of Heaven's slaves!
Prometheus.
He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
What and who are ye? Never yet there came
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.
First Fury.
We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue
Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
When the great King betrays them to our will.
Prometheus.
Oh! many fearful natures in one name,
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
The darkness and the clangour of your wings.
But why more hideous than your loathd selves
Gather ye up in legions from the deep?
Second Fury.
We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice, rejoice!
Prometheus.
Can aught exult in its deformity?
Second Fury.
The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
Gazing on one another: so are we.
As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
To gather for her festal crown of flowers
The areal crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
So from our victim's destined agony
The shade which is our form invests us round,
Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.
Prometheus.
I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.
First Fury.
Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?
Prometheus.
Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
Ye rend me now: I care not.
Second Fury.
Dost imagine
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?
Prometheus.
I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
You, or aught else so wretched, into light.
Third Fury.
Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,
Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude
Vexing the self-content of wisest men:
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins
Crawling like agony?
Prometheus.
Why, ye are thus now;
Yet am I king over myself, and rule
The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.
Chorus of Furies.
From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
Come, come, come!
Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track,
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
Come, come, come!
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
Fire is left for future burning:
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning:
Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery's yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer; cruel
More than ye can be with hate
Is he with fear.
Come, come, come!
We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate
And we burthen the blast of the atmosphere,
But vainly we toil till ye come here.
Ione.
Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.
Panthea.
These solid mountains quiver with the sound
Even as the tremulous air: their shadows make
The space within my plumes more black than night.
First Fury.
Your call was as a wingd car
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
It rapped us from red gulfs of war.
Second Fury.
From wide cities, famine-wasted;
Third Fury.
Groans half heard, and blood untasted;
Fourth Fury.
Kingly conclaves stern and cold,
Where blood with gold is bought and sold;
Fifth Fury.
From the furnace, white and hot,
In which
A Fury.
Speak not: whisper not:
I know all that ye would tell,
But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the Invincible,
The stern of thought;
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.
A Fury.
Tear the veil!
Another Fury.
It is torn.
Chorus.
The pale stars of the morn
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne.
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst for man?
Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran
Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever.
One came forth of gentle worth
Smiling on the sanguine earth;
His words outlived him, like swift poison
Withering up truth, peace, and pity.
Look! where round the wide horizon
Many a million-peopled city
Vomits smoke in the bright air.
Hark that outcry of despair!
'Tis his mild and gentle ghost
Wailing for the faith he kindled:
Look again, the flames almost
To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled:
The survivors round the embers
Gather in dread.
Joy, joy, joy!
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,
And the future is dark, and the present is spread
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.
Semichorus I.
Drops of bloody agony flow
From his white and quivering brow.
Grant a little respite now:
See a disenchanted nation
Springs like day from desolation;
To Truth its state is dedicate,
And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;
A legioned band of linkd brothers
Whom Love calls children
Semichorus II.
'Tis another's:
See how kindred murder kin:
'Tis the vintage-time for death and sin:
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within:
Till Despair smothers
The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.
[All the Furies vanish, except one.
Ione.
Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan
Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart
Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,
And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.
Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?
Panthea.
Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.
Ione.
What didst thou see?
Panthea.
A woful sight: a youth
With patient looks nailed to a crucifix.
Ione.
What next?
Panthea.
The heaven around, the earth below
Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,
All horrible, and wrought by human hands,
And some appeared the work of human hearts,
For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles:
And other sights too foul to speak and live
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear
By looking forth: those groans are grief enough.
Fury.
Behold an emblem: those who do endure
Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap
Thousandfold torment on themselves and him.
Prometheus.
Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;
Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow
Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!
Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
O, horrible! Thy name I will not speak,
It hath become a curse. I see, I see,
The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,
Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,
Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home,
An early-chosen, late-lamented home;
As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;
Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells:
SomeHear I not the multitude laugh loud?
Impaled in lingering fire: and mighty realms
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,
Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood
By the red light of their own burning homes.
Fury.
Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans;
Worse things, unheard, unseen, remain behind.
Prometheus.
Worse?
Fury.
In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
But live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.
Prometheus.
Thy words are like a cloud of wingd snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.
Fury.
Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
[Vanishes.
Prometheus.
Ah woe!
Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumd mind,
Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.
The grave hides all things beautiful and good:
I am a God and cannot find it there,
Nor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,
This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
With new endurance, till the hour arrives
When they shall be no types of things which are.
Panthea.
Alas! what sawest thou more?
Prometheus.
There are two woes:
To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.
Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.
This was the shadow of the truth I saw.
The Earth.
I felt thy torture, son; with such mixed joy
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,
Its world-surrounding aether: they behold
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
The future: may they speak comfort to thee!
Panthea.
Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air!
Ione.
And see! more come,
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
And, hark! is it the music of the pines?
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?
Panthea.
'Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.
Chorus of Spirits.
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought:
Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o'er by dying gleams;
Be it bright as all between
Cloudless skies and windless streams,
Silent, liquid, and serene;
As the birds within the wind,
As the fish within the wave,
As the thoughts of man's own mind
Float through all above the grave;
We make there our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element:
Thence we bear the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee!
Ione.
More yet come, one by one: the air around them
Looks radiant as the air around a star.
First Spirit.
On a battle-trumpet's blast
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
'Mid the darkness upward cast.
From the dust of creeds outworn,
From the tyrant's banner torn,
Gathering 'round me, onward borne,
There was mingled many a cry
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
Till they faded through the sky;
And one sound, above, around,
One sound beneath, around, above,
Was moving; 'twas the soul of Love;
'Twas the hope, the prophecy,
Which begins and ends in thee.
Second Spirit.
A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,
Which rocked beneath, immovably;
And the triumphant storm did flee,
Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
Between, with many a captive cloud,
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
Each by lightning riven in half:
I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh:
Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
And spread beneath a hell of death
O'er the white waters. I alit
On a great ship lightning-split,
And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy
His plank, then plunged aside to die.
Third Spirit.
I sate beside a sage's bed,
And the lamp was burning red
Near the book where he had fed,
When a Dream with plumes of flame,
To his pillow hovering came,
And I knew it was the same
Which had kindled long ago
Pity, eloquence, and woe;
And the world awhile below
Wore the shade, its lustre made.
It has borne me here as fleet
As Desire's lightning feet:
I must ride it back ere morrow,
Or the sage will wake in sorrow.
Fourth Spirit.
On a poet's lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the areal kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!
One of these awakened me,
And I sped to succour thee.
Ione.
Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west
Come, as two doves to one belovd nest,
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air
On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
And, hark! their sweet, sad voices! 'tis despair
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.
Panthea.
Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.
Ione.
Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float
On their sustaining wings of skiey grain,
Orange and azure deepening into gold:
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.
Chorus of Spirits.
Hast thou beheld the form of Love?
Fifth Spirit.
As over wide dominions
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's wildernesses,
That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:
His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading,
And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness,
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.
Sixth Spirit.
Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
But treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
Dream visions of areal joy, and call the monster, Love,
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.
Chorus.
Though Ruin now Love's shadow be,
Following him, destroyingly,
On Death's white and wingd steed,
Which the fleetest cannot flee,
Trampling down both flower and weed,
Man and beast, and foul and fair,
Like a tempest through the air;
Thou shalt quell this horseman grim,
Woundless though in heart or limb.
Prometheus.
Spirits! how know ye this shall be?
Chorus.
In the atmosphere we breathe,
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,
From Spring gathering up beneath,
Whose mild winds shake the elder brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
That the white-thorn soon will blow:
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
When they struggle to increase,
Are to us as soft winds be
To shepherd boys, the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee.
Ione.
Where are the Spirits fled?
Panthea.
Only a sense
Remains of them, like the omnipotence
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute,
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.
Prometheus.
How fair these airborn shapes! and yet I feel
Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,
Asia! who, when my being overflowed,
Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.
All things are still: alas! how heavily
This quiet morning weighs upon my heart;
Though I should dream I could even sleep with grief
If slumber were denied not. I would fain
Be what it is my destiny to be,
The saviour and the strength of suffering man,
Or sink into the original gulf of things:
There is no agony, and no solace left;
Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more.
Panthea.
Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee
The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when
The shadow of thy spirit falls on her?
Prometheus.
I said all hope was vain but love: thou lovest.
Panthea.
Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white,
And Asia waits in that far Indian vale,
The scene of her sad exile; rugged once
And desolate and frozen, like this ravine;
But now invested with fair flowers and herbs,
And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow
Among the woods and waters, from the aether
Of her transforming presence, which would fade
If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!
END OF THE FIRST ACT.
ACT II
Scene I.
Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. Asia alone.
Asia.
From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended:
Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,
And beatings haunt the desolated heart,
Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descended
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!
O child of many winds! As suddenly
Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
Like genius, or like joy which riseth up
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
The desert of our life.
This is the season, this the day, the hour;
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,
Too long desired, too long delaying, come!
How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains. through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:
'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow
The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not
The olian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn?
[Panthea enters.
I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
Belovd and most beautiful, who wearest
The shadow of that soul by which I live,
How late thou art! the spherd sun had climbed
The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before
The printless air felt thy belated plumes.
Panthea.
Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint
With the delight of a remembered dream,
As are the noontide plumes of summer winds
Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep
Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm
Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy
Unhappy love, had made, through use and pity,
Both love and woe familiar to my heart
As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept
Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean
Within dim bowers of green and purple moss,
Our young Ione's soft and milky arms
Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,
While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within
The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:
But not as now, since I am made the wind
Which fails beneath the music that I bear
Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved
Into the sense with which love talks, my rest
Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours
Too full of care and pain.
Asia.
Lift up thine eyes,
And let me read thy dream.
Panthea.
As I have said
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
From the keen ice shielding our linkd sleep.
Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
Grew radiant with the glory of that form
Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
'Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
With lovelinessmore fair than aught but her,
Whose shadow thou artlift thine eyes on me.'
I lifted them: the overpowering light
Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er
By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,
And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,
Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere
Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power,
As the warm aether of the morning sun
Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.
I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt
His presence flow and mingle through my blood
Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
And I was thus absorbed, until it passed,
And like the vapours when the sun sinks down,
Gathering again in drops upon the pines,
And tremulous as they, in the deep night
My being was condensed; and as the rays
Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
Like footsteps of weak melody: thy name
Among the many sounds alone I heard
Of what might be articulate; though still
I listened through the night when sound was none.
Ione wakened then, and said to me:
'Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night?
I always knew what I desired before,
Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.
But now I cannot tell thee what I seek;
I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet
Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;
Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,
Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept
And mingled it with thine: for when just now
We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips
The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth
Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,
Quivered between our intertwining arms.'
I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,
But fled to thee.
Asia.
Thou speakest, but thy words
Are as the air: I feel them not: Oh, lift
Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul!
Panthea.
I lift them though they droop beneath the load
Of that they would express: what canst thou see
But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?
Asia.
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
Contracted to two circles underneath
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.
Panthea.
Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed?
Asia.
There is a change: beyond their inmost depth
I see a shade, a shape: 'tis He, arrayed
In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread
Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.
Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!
Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
Within that bright pavilion which their beams
Shall build o'er the waste world? The dream is told.
What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard
Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air,
For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew
Whose stars the noon has quenched not.
Dream.
Follow! Follow!
Panthea.
It is mine other dream.
Asia.
It disappears.
Panthea.
It passes now into my mind. Methought
As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds
Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond-tree,
When swift from the white Scythian wilderness
A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost:
I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief,
O, follow, follow!
Asia.
As you speak, your words
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
With shapes. Methought among these lawns together
We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;
And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently;
And there was more which I remember not:
But on the shadows of the morning clouds,
Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written
Follow, O, follow! as they vanished by;
And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen,
The like was stamped, as with a withering fire;
A wind arose among the pines; it shook
The clinging music from their boughs, and then
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,
Were heard: O, follow, follow, follow me!
And then I said: 'Panthea, look on me.'
But in the depth of those belovd eyes
Still I saw, follow, follow!
Echo.
Follow, follow!
Panthea.
The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices
As they were spirit-tongued.
Asia.
It is some being
Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! O, list!
Echoes
(unseen).
Echoes we: listen!
We cannot stay:
As dew-stars glisten
Then fade away
Child of Ocean!
Asia.
Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses
Of their areal tongues yet sound.
Panthea.
I hear.
Echoes.
O, follow, follow,
As our voice recedeth
Through the caverns hollow,
Where the forest spreadeth; (More distant.)
O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
Where the wild bee never flew,
Through the noontide darkness deep,
By the odour-breathing sleep
Of faint night flowers, and the waves
At the fountain-lighted caves,
While our music, wild and sweet,
Mocks thy gently falling feet,
Child of Ocean!
Asia.
Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint And distant.
Panthea.
List! the strain floats nearer now.
Echoes.
In the world unknown
Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone
Can its rest be broken;
Child of Ocean!
Asia.
How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!
Echoes.
O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
By the woodland noontide dew;
By the forest, lakes, and fountains,
Through the many-folded mountains;
To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,
Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
On the day when He and thou
Parted, to commingle now;
Child of Ocean!
Asia.
Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,
And follow, ere the voices fade away.
Scene II.
A Forest, intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. Asia and Panthea pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock listening.
Semichorus I. of Spirits.
The path through which that lovely twain
Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,
And each dark tree that ever grew,
Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue;
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
Of the green laurel, blown anew;
And bends, and then fades silently,
One frail and fair anemone:
Or when some star of many a one
That climbs and wanders through steep night,
Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon
Ere it is borne away, away,
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
It scatters drops of golden light,
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite:
And the gloom divine is all around,
And underneath is the mossy ground.
Semichorus II.
There the voluptuous nightingales,
Are awake through all the broad noonday.
When one with bliss or sadness fails,
And through the windless ivy-boughs,
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
On its mate's music-panting bosom;
Another from the swinging blossom,
Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain, then lifts on high
The wings of the weak melody,
'Till some new strain of feeling bear
The song, and all the woods are mute;
When there is heard through the dim air
The rush of wings, and rising there
Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
Sounds overflow the listener's brain
So sweet, that joy is almost pain.
Semichorus I.
There those enchanted eddies play
Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,
By Demogorgon's mighty law,
With melting rapture, or sweet awe,
All spirits on that secret way;
As inland boats are driven to Ocean
Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw:
And first there comes a gentle sound
To those in talk or slumber bound,
And wakes the destined soft emotion,
Attracts, impels them; those who saw
Say from the breathing earth behind
There steams a plume-uplifting wind
Which drives them on their path, while they
Believe their own swift wings and feet
The sweet desires within obey:
And so they float upon their way,
Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,
The storm of sound is driven along,
Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet
Behind, its gathering billows meet
And to the fatal mountain bear
Like clouds amid the yielding air.
First Faun.
Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
Which make such delicate music in the woods?
We haunt within the least frequented caves
And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,
Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:
Where may they hide themselves?
Second Faun.
'Tis hard to tell:
I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,
The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float
Under the green and golden atmosphere
Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves;
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,
The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,
They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire
Under the waters of the earth again.
First Faun.
If such live thus, have others other lives,
Under pink blossoms or within the bells
Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,
Or on their dying odours, when they die,
Or in the sunlight of the spherd dew?
Second Faun.
Ay, many more which we may well divine.
But, should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,
And Love, and the chained Titan's woful doom,
And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer
Our solitary twilights, and which charm
To silence the unenvying nightingales.
Scene III.
A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains.
Asia and Panthea.
Panthea.
Hither the sound has borne usto the realm
Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,
Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm,
Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up
Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,
And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,
That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain
To deep intoxication; and uplift,
Like Mnads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
The voice which is contagion to the world.
Asia.
Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!
How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
Though evil stain its work, and it should be
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
I could fall down and worship that and thee.
Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!
Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain:
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,
As a lake, paving in the morning sky,
With azure waves which burst in silver light,
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on
Under the curdling winds, and islanding
The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,
Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,
Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumd caves,
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling
The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,
From some Atlantic islet scattered up,
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops.
The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl
Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines,
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
Panthea.
Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises
As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon
Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.
Asia.
The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;
The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;
Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain
Grows dizzy; see'st thou shapes within the mist?
Panthea.
A countenance with beckoning smiles: there burns
An azure fire within its golden locks!
Another and another: hark! they speak!
Song of Spirits.
To the deep, to the deep,
Down, down!
Through the shade of sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;
Through the veil and the bar
Of things which seem and are
Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
Down, down!
While the sound whirls around,
Down, down!
As the fawn draws the hound,
As the lightning the vapour,
As a weak moth the taper;
Death, despair; love, sorrow;
Time both; to-day, to-morrow;
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
Down, down!
Through the gray, void abysm,
Down, down!
Where the air is no prism,
And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern-crags wear not
The radiance of Heaven,
Nor the gloom to Earth given,
Where there is One pervading, One alone,
Down, down!
In the depth of the deep,
Down, down!
Like veiled lightning asleep,
Like the spark nursed in embers,
The last look Love remembers,
Like a diamond, which shines
On the dark wealth of mines,
A spell is treasured but for thee alone.
Down, down!
We have bound thee, we guide thee;
Down, down!
With the bright form beside thee;
Resist not the weakness,
Such strength is in meekness
That the Eternal, the Immortal,
Most unloose through life's portal
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne
By that alone.
Scene IV.
The Cave of Demogorgon.
Asia and Panthea.
Panthea.
What viled form sits on that ebon throne?
Asia.
The veil has fallen.
Panthea.
I see a mighty darkness
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun.
Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,
Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
A living Spirit.
Demogorgon.
Ask what thou wouldst know.
Asia.
What canst thou tell?
Demogorgon.
All things thou dar'st demand.
Asia.
Who made the living world?
Demogorgon.
God.
Asia.
Who made all
That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will, Imagination?
Demogorgon.
God: Almighty God.
Asia.
Who made that sense which, when the winds of Spring
In rarest visitation, or the voice
Of one belovd heard in youth alone,
Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim
The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
And leaves this peopled earth a solitude
When it returns no more?
Demogorgon.
Merciful God.
Asia.
And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,
Which from the links of the great chain of things,
To every thought within the mind of man
Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels
Under the load towards the pit of death;
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;
And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;
Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech
Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;
And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia.
Utter his name: a world pining in pain
Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia.
I feel, I know it: who?
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia.
Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first,
And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne
Time fell, an envious shadow: such the state
Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway,
As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves
Before the wind or sun has withered them
And semivital worms; but he refused
The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,
The skill which wields the elements, the thought
Which pierces this dim universe like light,
Self-empire, and the majesty of love;
For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus
Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
And with this law alone, 'Let man be free,'
Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.
To know nor faith, nor love, nor law; to be
Omnipotent but friendless is to reign;
And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man
First famine, and then toil, and then disease,
Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,
Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove
With alternating shafts of frost and fire,
Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves:
And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle
Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,
So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,
Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,
That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings
The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
The disunited tendrils of that vine
Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;
And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath
The frown of man; and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
And music lifted up the listening spirit
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine;
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.
He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven
Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun
Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea:
He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
The tempest-wingd chariots of the Ocean,
And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then
Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
The warm winds, and the azure aether shone,
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
Such, the alleviations of his state,
Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs
Withering in destined pain: but who rains down
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
Man looks on his creation like a God
And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,
The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,
The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
Not Jove: while yet his frown shook Heaven, ay, when
His adversary from adamantine chains
Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare
Who is his master? Is he too a slave?
Demogorgon.
All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil:
Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no.
Asia.
Whom calledst thou God?
Demogorgon.
I spoke but as ye speak,
For Jove is the supreme of living things.
Asia.
Who is the master of the slave?
Demogorgon.
If the abysm
Could vomit forth its secrets. . . But a voice
Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;
For what would it avail to bid thee gaze
On the revolving world? What to bid speak
Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these
All things are subject but eternal Love.
Asia.
So much I asked before, and my heart gave
The response thou hast given; and of such truths
Each to itself must be the oracle.
One more demand; and do thou answer me
As mine own soul would answer, did it know
That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise
Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world:
When shall the destined hour arrive?
Demogorgon.
Behold!
Asia.
The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night
I see cars drawn by rainbow-wingd steeds
Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they all
Sweep onward.
Demogorgon.
These are the immortal Hours,
Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee.
Asia.
A spirit with a dreadful countenance
Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf.
Unlike thy brethren, ghastly charioteer,
Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak!
Spirit.
I am the shadow of a destiny
More dread than is my aspect: ere yon planet
Has set, the darkness which ascends with me
Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne.
Asia.
What meanest thou?
Panthea.
That terrible shadow floats
Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke
Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea.
Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly
Terrified: watch its path among the stars
Blackening the night!
Asia.
Thus I am answered: strange!
Panthea.
See, near the verge, another chariot stays;
An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire,
Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim
Of delicate strange tracery; the young spirit
That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope;
How its soft smiles attract the soul! as light
Lures wingd insects through the lampless air.
Spirit.
My coursers are fed with the lightning,
They drink of the whirlwind's stream,
And when the red morning is bright'ning
They bathe in the fresh sunbeam;
They have strength for their swiftness I deem,
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.
I desire: and their speed makes night kindle;
I fear: they outstrip the Typhoon;
Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle
We encircle the earth and the moon:
We shall rest from long labours at noon:
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.
Scene V.
The Car pauses within a Cloud on the top of a snowy Mountain. Asia, Panthea, and the Spirit of the Hour.
Spirit.
On the brink of the night and the morning
My coursers are wont to respire;
But the Earth has just whispered a warning
That their flight must be swifter than fire:
They shall drink the hot speed of desire!
Asia.
Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath
Would give them swifter speed.
Spirit.
Alas! it could not.
Panthea.
Oh Spirit! pause, and tell whence is the light
Which fills this cloud? the sun is yet unrisen.
Spirit.
The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo
Is held in heaven by wonder; and the light
Which fills this vapour, as the areal hue
Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water,
Flows from thy mighty sister.
Panthea.
Yes, I feel
Asia.
What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale.
Panthea.
How thou art changed! I dare not look on thee;
I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure
The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change
Is working in the elements, which suffer
Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell
That on the day when the clear hyaline
Was cloven at thine uprise, and thou didst stand
Within a veind shell, which floated on
Over the calm floor of the crystal sea,
Among the gean isles, and by the shores
Which bear thy name; love, like the atmosphere
Of the sun's fire filling the living world,
Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven
And the deep ocean and the sunless caves
And all that dwells within them; till grief cast
Eclipse upon the soul from which it came:
Such art thou now; nor is it I alone,
Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one,
But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.
Hearest thou not sounds i' the air which speak the love
Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not
The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List!
[Music.
Asia.
Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his
Whose echoes they are: yet all love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
It makes the reptile equal to the God:
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still, after long sufferings,
As I shall soon become.
Panthea.
List! Spirits speak.
Voice in the Air, singing.
Life of Life! thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
Fair are others; none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour,
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!
Asia.
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:
Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music's most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.
We have passed Age's icy caves,
And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
A paradise of vaulted bowers,
Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
And watery paths that wind between
Wildernesses calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!
END OF THE SECOND ACT.
ACT III
Scene I.
Heaven. Jupiter on his Throne; Thetis and the other Deities assembled.
Jupiter.
Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share
The glory and the strength of him ye serve,
Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.
All else had been subdued to me; alone
The soul of man, like unextinguished fire,
Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,
And lamentation, and reluctant prayer,
Hurling up insurrection, which might make
Our antique empire insecure, though built
On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear;
And though my curses through the pendulous air,
Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,
And cling to it; though under my wrath's night
It climbs the crags of life, step after step,
Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet,
It yet remains supreme o'er misery,
Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall:
Even now have I begotten a strange wonder,
That fatal child, the terror of the earth,
Who waits but till the destined hour arrive,
Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne
The dreadful might of ever-living limbs
Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,
To redescend, and trample out the spark.
Pour forth heaven's wine, Idan Ganymede,
And let it fill the Ddal cups like fire,
And from the flower-inwoven soil divine
Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise,
As dew from earth under the twilight stars:
Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins
The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,
Till exultation burst in one wide voice
Like music from Elysian winds.
And thou
Ascend beside me, veild in the light
Of the desire which makes thee one with me,
Thetis, bright image of eternity!
When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might!
God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,
The penetrating presence; all my being,
Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw
Into a dew with poison, is dissolved,
Sinking through its foundations:' even then
Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third
Mightier than either, which, unbodied now,
Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld,
Waiting the incarnation, which ascends,
(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels
Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon's throne.
Victory! victory! Feel'st thou not, O world,
The earthquake of his chariot thundering up
Olympus?
[The Car of the Hour arrives. Demogorgon descends, and moves towards the Throne of Jupiter.
Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!
Demogorgon.
Eternity. Demand no direr name.
Descend, and follow me down the abyss.
I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child;
Mightier than thee: and we must dwell together
Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.
The tyranny of heaven none may retain,
Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee:
Yet if thou wilt, as 'tis the destiny
Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead,
Put forth thy might.
Jupiter.
Detested prodigy!
Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons
I trample thee! thou lingerest?
Mercy! mercy!
No pity, no release, no respite! Oh,
That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge,
Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,
On Caucasus! he would not doom me thus.
Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not
The monarch of the world? What then art thou?
No refuge! no appeal!
Sink with me then,
We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
Even as a vulture and a snake outspent
Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,
Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock
Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,
And whelm on them into the bottomless void
This desolated world, and thee, and me,
The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck
Of that for which they combated.
Ai! Ai!
The elements obey me not. I sink
Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down.
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above
Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!
Scene II.
The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis.Ocean is discovered reclining near the Shore; Apollo stands beside him.
Ocean.
He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror's frown?
Apollo.
Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim
The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,
The terrors of his eye illumined heaven
With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts
Of the victorious darkness, as he fell:
Like the last glare of day's red agony,
Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,
Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.
Ocean.
He sunk to the abyss? To the dark void?
Apollo.
An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud
On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings
Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes
Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded
By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail
Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length
Prone, and the areal ice clings over it.
Ocean.
Henceforth the fields of heaven-reflecting sea
Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn
Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow
Round many-peopled continents, and round
Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones
Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark
The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see
The floating bark of the light-laden moon
With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest,
Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea;
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,
And desolation, and the mingled voice
Of slavery and command; but by the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
And sweetest music, such as spirits love.
Apollo.
And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make
My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse
Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear
The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
That sits i' the morning star.
Ocean.
Thou must away;
Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell:
The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it
With azure calm out of the emerald urns
Which stand for ever full beside my throne.
Behold the Nereids under the green sea,
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,
Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,
Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy. [A sound of waves is heard.
It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.
Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.
Apollo.
Farewell.
Scene III.
Caucasus. Prometheus, Hercules, Ione, the Earth, Spirits, Asia, and Panthea, borne in the Car with the Spirit of the Hour. Hercules unbinds Prometheus, who descends.
Hercules.
Most glorious among Spirits, thus doth strength
To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,
And thee, who art the form they animate,
Minister like a slave.
Prometheus.
Thy gentle words
Are sweeter even than freedom long desired
And long delayed.
Asia, thou light of life,
Shadow of beauty unbeheld: and ye,
Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain
Sweet to remember, through your love and care:
Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,
All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,
Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,
And paved with veind emerald, and a fountain
Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.
From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears
Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,
Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light:
And there is heard the ever-moving air,
Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,
And bees; and all around are mossy seats,
And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;
A simple dwelling, which shall be our own;
Where we will sit and talk of time and change,
As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.
What can hide man from mutability?
And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,
Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,
Until I weep, when ye shal smile away
The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.
We will entangle buds and flowers and beams
Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make
Strange combinations out of common things,
Like human babes in their brief innocence;
And we will search, with looks and words of love,
For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,
Our unexhausted spirits; and like lutes
Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,
Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,
From difference sweet where discord cannot be;
And hither come, sped on the charmd winds,
Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees
From every flower areal Enna feeds,
At their known island-homes in Himera,
The echoes of the human world, which tell
Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,
And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music,
Itself the echo of the heart, and all
That tempers or improves man's life, now free;
And lovely apparitions,dim at first,
Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright
From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms
Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them
The gathered rays which are reality
Shall visit us, the progeny immortal
Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.
The wandering voices and the shadows these
Of all that man becomes, the mediators
Of that best worship love, by him and us
Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow
More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,
And, veil by veil, evil and error fall:
Such virtue has the cave and place around. [Turning to the Spirit of the Hour.
For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,
Give her that curvd shell, which Proteus old
Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it
A voice to be accomplished, and which thou
Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.
Ione.
Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely
Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell;
See the pale azure fading into silver
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light:
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?
Spirit.
It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:
Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.
Prometheus.
Go, borne over the cities of mankind
On whirlwind-footed coursers: once again
Outspeed the sun around the orbd world;
And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,
Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,
Loosening its mighty music; it shall be
As thunder mingled with clear echoes: then
Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.
And thou, O, Mother Earth!
The Earth.
I hear, I feel;
Thy lips are on me, and their touch runs down
Even to the adamantine central gloom
Along these marble nerves; 'tis life, 'tis joy,
And through my withered, old, and icy frame
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down
Circling. Henceforth the many children fair
Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants,
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,
And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,
Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,
Draining the poison of despair, shall take
And interchange sweet nutriment; to me
Shall they become like sister-antelopes
By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,
Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.
The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float
Under the stars like balm: night-folded flowers
Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose:
And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather
Strength for the coming day, and all its joy:
And death shall be the last embrace of her
Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother
Folding her child, says, 'Leave me not again.'
Asia.
Oh, mother! wherefore speak the name of death?
Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,
Who die?
The Earth.
It would avail not to reply:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
But to the uncommunicating dead.
Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile
In mild variety the seasons mild
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.
And thou! There is a cavern where my spirit
Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain
Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it
Became mad too, and built a temple there,
And spoke, and were oracular, and lured
The erring nations round to mutual war,
And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds
A violet's exhalation, and it fills
With a serener light and crimson air
Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;
It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,
And the dark linkd ivy tangling wild,
And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms
Which star the winds with points of coloured light,
As they rain through them, and bright golden globes
Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven,
And through their veind leaves and amber stems
The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls
Stand ever mantling with areal dew,
The drink of spirits: and it circles round,
Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,
Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,
Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.
Arise! Appear!
[A Spirit rises in the likeness of a winged child.
This is my torch-bearer;
Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing
On eyes from which he kindled it anew
With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,
For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,
And guide this company beyond the peak
Of Bacchic Nysa, Mnad-haunted mountain,
And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,
Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes
With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,
And up the green ravine, across the vale,
Beside the windless and crystalline pool,
Where ever lies, on unerasing waves,
The image of a temple, built above,
Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,
And palm-like capital, and over-wrought,
And populous with most living imagery,
Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.
It is deserted now, but once it bore
Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths
Bore to thy honour through the divine gloom
The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those
Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope
Into the grave, across the night of life,
As thou hast borne it most triumphantly
To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.
Beside that temple is the destined cave.
Scene IV.
A Forest. In the Background a Cave. Prometheus, Asia, Panthea, Ione, and the Spirit of the Earth.
Ione.
Sister, it is not earthly: how it glides
Under the leaves! how on its head there burns
A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams
Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,
The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass!
Knowest thou it?
Panthea.
It is the delicate spirit
That guides the earth through heaven. From afar
The populous constellations call that light
The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes
It floats along the spray of the salt sea,
Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud,
Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep,
Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the rivers,
Or through the green waste wilderness, as now,
Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned
It loved our sister Asia, and it came
Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light
Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted
As one bit by a dipsas, and with her
It made its childish confidence, and told her
All it had known or seen, for it saw much,
Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her
For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I
Mother, dear mother.
The Spirit of the Earth
(running to Asia).
Mother, dearest mother;
May I then talk with thee as I was wont?
May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,
After thy looks have made them tired of joy?
May I then play beside thee the long noons,
When work is none in the bright silent air?
Asia.
I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth
Can cherish thee unenvied: speak, I pray:
Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.
Spirit of the Earth.
Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;
And happier too; happier and wiser both.
Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,
And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs
That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever
An hindrance to my walks o'er the green world:
And that, among the haunts of humankind,
Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,
Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,
Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,
Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts
Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;
And women too, ugliest of all things evil,
(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,
When good and kind, free and sincere like thee),
When false or frowning made me sick at heart
To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.
Well, my path lately lay through a great city
Into the woody hills surrounding it:
A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:
When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook
The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet
Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;
A long, long sound, as it would never end:
And all the inhabitants leaped suddenly
Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,
Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet
The music pealed along. I hid myself
Within a fountain in the public square,
Where I lay like the reflex of the moon
Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon
Those ugly human shapes and visages
Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,
Passed floating through the air, and fading still
Into the winds that scattered them; and those
From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all
Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise
And greetings of delighted wonder, all
Went to their sleep again: and when the dawn
Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,
Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they were,
And that with little change of shape or hue:
All things had put their evil nature off:
I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake
Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,
With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;
So, with my thoughts full of these happy changes,
We meet again, the happiest change of all.
Asia.
And never will we part, till thy chaste sister
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon
Will look on thy more warm and equal light
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow
And love thee.
Spirit of the Earth.
What; as Asia loves Prometheus?
Asia.
Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.
Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill
With spherd fires the interlunar air?
Spirit of the Earth.
Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp
'Tis hard I should go darkling.
Asia.
Listen; look!
[The Spirit of the Hour enters.
Prometheus.
We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak.
Spirit of the Hour.
Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
There was a change: the impalpable thin air
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,
As if the sense of love dissolved in them
Had folded itself round the spherd world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
Into the mysteries of the universe:
Dizzy as with delight I floated down,
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,
My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,
Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire;
And where my moonlike car will stand within
A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,
And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel,
In memory of the tidings it has borne,
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,
And open to the bright and liquid sky.
Yoked to it by an amphisbaenic snake
The likeness of those wingd steeds will mock
The flight from which they find repose. Alas,
Whither has wandered now my partial tongue
When all remains untold which ye would hear?
As I have said, I floated to the earth:
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss
To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering went
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,
And first was disappointed not to see
Such mighty change as I had felt within
Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked
One with the other even as spirits do,
None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,
Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows
No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,
'All hope abandon ye who enter here;'
None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear
Gazed on another's eye of cold command,
Until the subject of a tyrant's will
Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,
Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.
None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart
The sparks of love and hope till there remained
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
And the wretch crept a vampire among men,
Infecting all with his own hideous ill;
None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy
With such a self-mistrust as has no name.
And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,
The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.
Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,
And beside which, by wretched men were borne
Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,
Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,
The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth
In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs
Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,
These imaged to the pride of kings and priests
A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide
As is the world it wasted, and are now
But an astonishment; even so the tools
And emblems of its last captivity,
Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,
Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,
Which, under many a name and many a form
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,
And slain amid men's unreclaiming tears,
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,
Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines:
The painted veil, by those who were, called life,
Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,
All men believed or hoped, is torn aside;
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man
Passionless?no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made or suffered them,
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
END OF THE THIRD ACT.
ACT IV
Scene.A Part of the Forest near the Cave of Prometheus.Panthea and Ione are sleeping: they awaken gradually during the first Song.
Voice of unseen Spirits.
The pale stars are gone!
For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fawns flee the leopard.
But where are ye?
A Train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly, singing.
Here, oh, here:
We bear the bier
Of the Father of many a cancelled year!
Spectres we
Of the dead Hours be,
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.
Strew, oh, strew
Hair, not yew!
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!
Be the faded flowers
Of Death's bare bowers
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours!
Haste, oh, haste!
As shades are chased,
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste.
We melt away,
Like dissolving spray,
From the children of a diviner day,
With the lullaby
Of winds that die
On the bosom of their own harmony!
Ione.
What dark forms were they?
Panthea.
The past Hours weak and gray,
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.
Ione.
Have they passed?
Panthea.
They have passed;
They outspeeded the blast,
While 'tis said, they are fled:
Ione.
Whither, oh, whither?
Panthea.
To the dark, to the past, to the dead.
Voice of unseen Spirits.
Bright clouds float in heaven,
Dew-stars gleam on earth,
Waves assemble on ocean,
They are gathered and driven
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!
They shake with emotion,
They dance in their mirth.
But where are ye?
The pine boughs are singing
Old songs with new gladness,
The billows and fountains
Fresh music are flinging,
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;
The storms mock the mountains
With the thunder of gladness.
But where are ye?
Ione.
What charioteers are these?
Panthea.
Where are their chariots?
Semichorus of Hours.
The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth
Have drawn back the figured curtain of sleep
Which covered our being and darkened our birth
In the deep.
A Voice.
In the deep?
Semichorus II.
Oh, below the deep.
Semichorus I.
An hundred ages we had been kept
Cradled in visions of hate and care,
And each one who waked as his brother slept,
Found the truth
Semichorus II.
Worse than his visions were!
Semichorus I.
We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep;
We have known the voice of Love in dreams;
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap
Semichorus II.
As the billows leap in the morning beams!
Chorus.
Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,
Pierce with song heaven's silent light,
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,
To check its flight ere the cave of Night.
Once the hungry Hours were hounds
Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,
And it limped and stumbled with many wounds
Through the nightly dells of the desert year.
But now, oh weave the mystic measure
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light,
Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite.
A Voice.
Unite!
Panthea.
See, where the Spirits of the human mind
Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.
Chorus of Spirits.
We join the throng
Of the dance and the song,
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along;
As the flying-fish leap
From the Indian deep,
And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep.
Chorus of Hours.
Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,
For sandals of lightning are on your feet,
And your wings are soft and swift as thought,
And your eyes are as love which is veild not?
Chorus of Spirits.
We come from the mind
Of human kind
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind,
Now 'tis an ocean
Of clear emotion,
A heaven of serene and mighty motion
From that deep abyss
Of wonder and bliss,
Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
From those skiey towers
Where Thought's crowned powers
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!
From the dim recesses
Of woven caresses,
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses
From the azure isles,
Where sweet Wisdom smiles,
Delaying your ships with her siren wiles.
From the temples high
Of Man's ear and eye,
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;
From the murmurings
Of the unsealed springs
Where Science bedews her Ddal wings.
Years after years,
Through blood, and tears,
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears;
We waded and flew,
And the islets were few
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.
Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm,
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm;
And, beyond our eyes,
The human love lies
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.
Chorus of Spirits and Hours.
Then weave the web of the mystic measure;
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth,
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,
Fill the dance and the music of mirth,
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by
To an ocean of splendour and harmony!
Chorus of Spirits.
Our spoil is won,
Our task is done,
We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
Beyond and around,
Or within the bound
Which clips the world with darkness round.
We'll pass the eyes
Of the starry skies
Into the hoar deep to colonize:
Death, Chaos, and Night,
From the sound of our flight,
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might.
And Earth, Air, and Light,
And the Spirit of Might,
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;
And Love, Thought, and Breath,
The powers that quell Death,
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.
And our singing shall build
In the void's loose field
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;
We will take our plan
From the new world of man,
And our work shall be called the Promethean.
Chorus of Hours.
Break the dance, and scatter the song;
Let some depart, and some remain.
Semichorus I.
We, beyond heaven, are driven along:
Semichorus II.
Us the enchantments of earth retain:
Semichorus I.
Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free,
With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,
And a heaven where yet heaven could never be.
Semichorus II.
Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,
Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night,
With the powers of a world of perfect light.
Semichorus I.
We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.
Semichorus II.
We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth,
And the happy forms of its death and birth
Change to the music of our sweet mirth.
Chorus of Hours and Spirits.
Break the dance, and scatter the song,
Let some depart, and some remain,
Wherever we fly we lead along
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,
The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.
Panthea.
Ha! they are gone!
Ione.
Yet feel you no delight
From the past sweetness?
Panthea.
As the bare green hill
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water
To the unpavilioned sky!
Ione.
Even whilst we speak
New notes arise. What is that awful sound?
Panthea.
'Tis the deep music of the rolling world
Kindling within the strings of the waved air
olian modulations.
Ione.
Listen too,
How every pause is filled with under-notes,
Clear, silver, icy, keen, awakening tones,
Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air
And gaze upon themselves within the sea.
Panthea.
But see where through two openings in the forest
Which hanging branches overcanopy,
And where two runnels of a rivulet,
Between the close moss violet-inwoven,
Have made their path of melody, like sisters
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,
Turning their dear disunion to an isle
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;
Two visions of strange radiance float upon
The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,
Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet
Under the ground and through the windless air.
Ione.
I see a chariot like that thinnest boat,
In which the Mother of the Months is borne
By ebbing light into her western cave,
When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;
O'er which is curved an orblike canopy
Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,
Distinctly seen through that dusk aery veil,
Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;
Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
Such as the genii of the thunderstorm
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
When the sun rushes under it; they roll
And move and grow as with an inward wind;
Within it sits a wingd infant, white
Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.
Its hair is white, the brightness of white light
Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens
Of liquid darkness, which the Deity
Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured
From jaggd clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,
Tempering the cold and radiant air around,
With fire that is not brightness; in its hand
It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point
A guiding power directs the chariot's prow
Over its wheeld clouds, which as they roll
Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,
Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew.
Panthea.
And from the other opening in the wood
Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,
A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,
Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass
Flow, as through empty space, music and light:
Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,
Purple and azure, white, and green, and golden,
Sphere within sphere; and every space between
Peopled with unimaginable shapes,
Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep,
Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl
Over each other with a thousand motions,
Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,
And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,
Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on,
Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,
Intelligible words and music wild.
With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb
Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist
Of elemental subtlety, like light;
And the wild odour of the forest flowers,
The music of the living grass and air,
The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams
Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed,
Seem kneaded into one areal mass
Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,
Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,
Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil,
On its own folded wings, and wavy hair,
The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,
And you can see its little lips are moving,
Amid the changing light of their own smiles,
Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.
Ione.
'Tis only mocking the orb's harmony.
Panthea.
And from a star upon its forehead, shoot,
Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
Embleming heaven and earth united now,
Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel
Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,
Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings,
And perpendicular now, and now transverse,
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,
Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;
Infinite mines of adamant and gold,
Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,
And caverns on crystalline columns poised
With vegetable silver overspread;
Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs
Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed,
Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops
With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on
And make appear the melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;
Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,
And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels
Of scythd chariots, and the emblazonry
Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,
Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems
Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!
The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
Whose population which the earth grew over
Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes
Huddled in gray annihilation, split,
Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
The anatomies of unknown wingd things,
And fishes which were isles of living scale,
And serpents, bony chains, twisted around
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
The jaggd alligator, and the might
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
Increased and multiplied like summer worms
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
Wrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God
Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,
'Be not!' And like my words they were no more.
The Earth.
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
The vaporous exultation not to be confined!
Ha! ha! the animation of delight
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.
The Moon.
Brother mine, calm wanderer,
Happy globe of land and air,
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrates my frozen frame,
And passes with the warmth of flame,
With love, and odour, and deep melody
Through me, through me!
The Earth.
Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.
The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,
And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.
They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,
Who all our green and azure universe
Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending
A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones,
And splinter and knead down my children's bones,
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending,
Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,
Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,
My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire;
My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom
Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,
Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:
How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up
By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup
Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;
And from beneath, around, within, above,
Filling thy void annihilation, love
Burst in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball.
The Moon.
The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine:
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
It clothes with unexpected birth
My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine
On mine, on mine!
Gazing on thee I feel, I know
Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,
And living shapes upon my bosom move:
Music is in the sea and air,
Wingd clouds soar here and there,
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
'Tis love, all love!
The Earth.
It interpenetrates my granite mass,
Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;
Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread,
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,
They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers.
And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison
With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being:
With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver
Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever,
Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,
Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror,
Which could distort to many a shape of error,
This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;
Which over all his kind, as the sun's heaven
Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even,
Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:
Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left,
Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft
Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured;
Then when it wanders home with rosy smile,
Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile
It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.
Man, oh, not men! a chain of linkd thought,
Of love and might to be divided not,
Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;
As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze,
The unquiet republic of the maze
Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.
Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
Familiar acts are beautiful through love;
Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!
His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
Is as a tempest-wingd ship, whose helm
Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.
All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;
Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;
Language is a perpetual Orphic song,
Which rules with Ddal harmony a throng
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.
The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!
The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.
The Moon.
The shadow of white death has passed
From my path in heaven at last,
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep.
The Earth.
As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,
And crystalline, till it becomes a wingd mist,
And wanders up the vault of the blue day,
Outlives the moon, and on the sun's last ray
Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.
The Moon.
Thou art folded, thou art lying
In the light which is undying
Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;
All suns and constellations shower
On thee a light, a life, a power
Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
On mine, on mine!
The Earth.
I spin beneath my pyramid of night,
Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.
The Moon.
As in the soft and sweet eclipse,
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,
Full, oh, too full!
Thou art speeding round the sun
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom life and light is given;
I, thy crystal paramour
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise,
Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move
Gazing, an insatiate bride,
On thy form from every side
Like a Mnad, round the cup
Which Agave lifted up
In the weird Cadman forest.
Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl and follow
Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space,
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might,
As a lover or a chameleon
Grows like what it looks upon,
As a violet's gentle eye
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds,
As a gray and watery mist
Glows like solid amethyst
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,
When the sunset sleeps
Upon its snow
The Earth.
And the weak day weeps
That it should be so.
Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,
Through isles for ever calm;
Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.
Panthea.
I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
Out of the stream of sound.
Ione.
Ah me! sweet sister,
The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
And you pretend to rise out of its wave,
Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.
Panthea.
Peace! peace! A mighty Power, which is as darkness,
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,
Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone,
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.
Ione.
There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
Panthea.
An universal sound like words: Oh, list!
Demogorgon.
Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,
Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
The love which paves thy path along the skies:
The Earth.
I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.
Demogorgon.
Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;
Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:
The Moon.
I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!
Demogorgon.
Ye Kings of suns and stars, Dmons and Gods,
Aetherial Dominations, who possess
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:
A Voice from above.
Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and bless.
Demogorgon.
Ye happy Dead, whom beams of brightest verse
Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray,
Whether your nature is that universe
Which once ye saw and suffered
A Voice from beneath.
Or as they
Whom we have left, we change and pass away.
Demogorgon.
Ye elemental Genii, who have homes
From man's high mind even to the central stone
Of sullen lead; from heaven's star-fretted domes
To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:
A confused Voice.
We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.
Demogorgon.
Spirits, whose homes are flesh: ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves and buds;
Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:
A Voice.
Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.
Demogorgon.
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day:
All.
Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.
Demogorgon.
This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
Composed at Este, Sept., Oct., 1818 (Act I); at Rome, March - April 6, 1819 (Acts II, III); at Florence, close of 1819 (Act IV). Published by C. and J. Ollier, London, summer of 1820.
Note from Mrs. Shelley: 'On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return. His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. .....Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world. ....And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in their decay, or gaed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the Prometheus which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet must feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he wrote from Rome, ''My Prometheus Unbound is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts.'''
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
,#NFDB
2745 Integral Yoga
510 Poetry
125 Occultism
93 Philosophy
89 Mysticism
88 Fiction
83 Yoga
78 Christianity
68 Psychology
23 Education
20 Mythology
20 Islam
14 Hinduism
9 Philsophy
7 Theosophy
7 Science
7 Kabbalah
6 Sufism
6 Baha i Faith
5 Integral Theory
3 Buddhism
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
2377 The Mother
1392 Satprem
336 Sri Aurobindo
220 Nolini Kanta Gupta
74 William Wordsworth
66 Walt Whitman
63 Carl Jung
57 Sri Ramakrishna
55 Percy Bysshe Shelley
45 William Butler Yeats
41 Rabindranath Tagore
40 James George Frazer
39 Aleister Crowley
37 H P Lovecraft
31 Saint Augustine of Hippo
27 Robert Browning
24 A B Purani
21 Friedrich Schiller
20 Muhammad
20 Anonymous
19 Saint John of Climacus
19 John Keats
16 Swami Vivekananda
15 Ramprasad
15 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
14 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
14 Nirodbaran
13 Ovid
12 Swami Krishnananda
12 Plotinus
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 Lucretius
9 Vyasa
9 Rudolf Steiner
9 Ralph Waldo Emerson
9 Plato
9 Friedrich Nietzsche
8 Jorge Luis Borges
8 Aldous Huxley
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
7 Joseph Campbell
7 Jordan Peterson
7 Baha u llah
6 Saint Teresa of Avila
4 Henry David Thoreau
4 Farid ud-Din Attar
3 Thubten Chodron
3 Patanjali
3 Mirabai
3 Kabir
3 Jalaluddin Rumi
3 Bokar Rinpoche
3 Alice Bailey
3 Al-Ghazali
2 William Blake
2 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
2 Saint Therese of Lisieux
2 Rainer Maria Rilke
2 Paul Richard
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Lalla
2 Hakim Sanai
2 Edgar Allan Poe
2 Aristotle
2 Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
315 Prayers And Meditations
275 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
184 Agenda Vol 01
169 Agenda Vol 13
114 Agenda Vol 12
104 Agenda Vol 08
98 Agenda Vol 09
97 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
96 Agenda Vol 10
91 Agenda Vol 06
90 Agenda Vol 11
89 Agenda Vol 03
87 Agenda Vol 07
86 Agenda Vol 04
83 Agenda Vol 05
79 Agenda Vol 02
74 Wordsworth - Poems
63 Whitman - Poems
56 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
55 Shelley - Poems
52 Questions And Answers 1956
45 Yeats - Poems
45 Letters On Yoga IV
41 Tagore - Poems
41 Questions And Answers 1953
40 The Golden Bough
40 Letters On Yoga III
38 Letters On Yoga II
37 Savitri
37 Questions And Answers 1955
37 Lovecraft - Poems
36 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
36 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
35 Questions And Answers 1954
33 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
32 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
30 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
29 Words Of Long Ago
28 Words Of The Mother II
28 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
27 Mysterium Coniunctionis
27 Browning - Poems
24 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
24 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
23 On Education
23 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
21 The Synthesis Of Yoga
21 Schiller - Poems
21 City of God
20 The Bible
20 Quran
19 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
19 Keats - Poems
18 Collected Poems
17 The Life Divine
17 Magick Without Tears
17 Liber ABA
16 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
16 Letters On Yoga I
14 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
14 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
14 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
14 Some Answers From The Mother
14 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
13 The Practice of Psycho therapy
13 Metamorphoses
13 Faust
12 The Study and Practice of Yoga
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
11 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
10 The Secret Of The Veda
10 Talks
10 Of The Nature Of Things
9 Vishnu Purana
9 Emerson - Poems
9 Aion
8 Words Of The Mother III
8 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
8 The Perennial Philosophy
8 Essays On The Gita
8 Anonymous - Poems
8 5.1.01 - Ilion
7 Words Of The Mother I
7 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
7 Maps of Meaning
7 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
7 General Principles of Kabbalah
7 Essays Divine And Human
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Record of Yoga
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
6 On the Way to Supermanhood
6 Labyrinths
6 Kena and Other Upanishads
5 The Future of Man
5 Raja-Yoga
5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
5 Letters On Poetry And Art
5 Crowley - Poems
5 Bhakti-Yoga
5 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
4 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
4 Walden
4 Vedic and Philological Studies
4 The Phenomenon of Man
4 Theosophy
4 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
4 The Divine Comedy
4 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
4 Isha Upanishad
3 The Red Book Liber Novus
3 The Book of Certitude
3 The Alchemy of Happiness
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Tara - The Feminine Divine
3 Songs of Kabir
3 Song of Myself
3 Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice
3 Rumi - Poems
3 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
3 Hymn of the Universe
3 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
3 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
2 The Way of Perfection
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Human Cycle
2 Symposium
2 Rilke - Poems
2 Poetics
2 Poe - Poems
2 Let Me Explain
2 Goethe - Poems
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 Amrita Gita
2 Agenda Vol 1
00.00 - Publishers Note A, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present volume consists of the first seven parts of the book The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo which has run into twelve parts, as it stands now; of these twelve, parts five to nine are based upon talks of the Mother (given by Her to the children of the Ashram). In this volume the later parts of the Talks (8 and 9) could not be included: they are to wait for a subsequent volume. The talks, originally in French, were spread over a number of years, ending in about 1960. We are pleased to note that the Government of India have given us a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
13 January 1972
00.00 - Publishers Note B, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present volume consists of five parts of the book Yoga of Sri Aurobindo which has now run into twelve parts. Of these five parts, eight and nine are based on talks of the Mother given by Her, in French, to the children of the Ashram.
We are pleased to note that the Government of India have given us a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
00.00 - Publishers Note, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mother has graciously permitted the use of her sketch of the author as a frontispiece to the book.
13 January 1971
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was at this point that we met Mother, at this intersection of the anthropoid rediscovered and the 'something' that had set in motion this unfinished invention momentarily ensnared in a gilded machine. For nothing was finished, and nothing had been invented, really, that would instill peace and wideness in this heart of no species at all.
And what if man were not yet invented? What if he were not yet his own species?
--
Would Matter and Spirit meet, then, in a third PHYSIOLOGICAL position that would perhaps be at last the position of Man rediscovered, the something that had for so long fought and suffered in quest of becoming its own species? She was the great Possible at the beginning of man. Mother is our fable come true. 'All is possible' was her first open sesame.
Yes, She was in the midst of a spiritual 'horde,' for the pioneer of a new species must always fight against the best of the old: the best is the obstacle, the snare that traps us in its old golden mire.
As for the worst, we know that it is the worst. But then we come to realize that the best is only the pretty muzzle of our worst, the same old beast defending itself, with all its claws out, with its sanctity or its electronic gadgets. Mother was there for something else.
'Something else' is ominous, perilous, disrupting - it is quite unbearable for all those who resemble the old beast. The story of the Pondicherry 'Ashram' is the story of an old clan ferociously clinging to its 'spiritual' privileges, as others clung to the muscles that had made them kings among the great apes. It is armed with all the piousness and all the reasonableness that had made logical man so 'infallible' among his less cerebral brothers. The spiritual brain is probably the worst obstacle to the new species, as were the muscles of the old orangutan for this fragile stranger who no longer climbed so well in the trees and sat, pensive, at the center of a little, uncertain clearing.
There is nothing more pious than the old species. There is nothing more legal. Mother was searching for the path of the new species as much against all the virtues of the old as against all its vices or laws. For, in truth, 'Something Else' ... is something else.
We landed there, one day in February 1954, having emerged from our Guianese forest and a certain number of dead-end peripluses; we had knocked upon all the doors of the old world before reaching that point of absolute impossibility where it was truly necessary to embark into something else or once and for all put a bullet through the brain of this slightly superior ape. The first thing that struck us was this exotic Notre Dame with its burning incense sticks, its effigies and its prostrations in immaculate white: a Church. We nearly jumped into the first train out that very evening, bound straight for the Himalayas, or the devil. But we remained near Mother for nineteen years. What was it, then, that could have held us there? We had not left Guiana to become a little saint in white or to enter some new religion. 'I did not come upon earth to found an ashram; that would have been a poor aim indeed,' She wrote in 1934. What did all this mean, then, this 'Ashram' that was already registered as the owner of a great spiritual business, and this fragile, little silhouette at the center of all these zealous worshippers? In truth, there is no better way to s Mother someone than to worship him: he chokes beneath the weight of worship, which moreover gives the worshipper claim to ownership. 'Why do you want to worship?' She exclaimed. 'You have but to become! It is the laziness to become that makes one worship.' She wanted so much to make them
become this 'something else,' but it was far easier to worship and quiescently remain what one was.
--
Her step by step, as one discovers a forest, or rather as one fights with it, machete in hand - and then it melts, one loves, so sublime does it become. Mother grew beneath our skin like an adventure of life and death. For seven years we fought with Her. It was fascinating, detestable, powerful and sweet; we felt like screaming and biting, fleeing and always coming back: 'Ah! You won't catch me! If you think I came here to worship you, you're wrong!' And She laughed. She always laughed.
We had our bellyful of adventure at last: if you go astray in the forest, you get delightfully lost yet still with the same old skin on your back, whereas here, there is nothing left to get lost in! It is no longer just a matter of getting lost - you have to CHANGE your skin. Or die. Yes, change species.
--
Spirit nor even an improved Matter, but ... it could be called 'nothing,' so contrary was it to all we know. For the caterpillar, a butterfly is nothing, it is not even visible and has nothing in common with caterpillar heavens nor even caterpillar matter. So there we were, trapped in an impossible adventure. One does not return from there: one must cross the bridge to the other side. Then one day in that seventh year, while we still believed in liberations and the collected Upanishads, highlighted with a few glorious visions to relieve the commonplace (which remained appallingly commonplace), while we were still considering 'the Mother of the Ashram' rather like some spiritual super-director (endowed, albeit, with a disarming yet ever so provocative smile, as though
She were making fun of us, then loving us in secret), She told us, 'I have the feeling that ALL we have lived, ALL we have known, ALL we have done is a perfect illusion ... When I had the spiritual experience that material life is an illusion, personally I found that so marvelously beautiful and happy that it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, but now it is the entire spiritual structure as we have lived it that is becoming an illusion! - Not the same illusion, but an illusion far worse. And I am no baby: I have been here for forty-seven years now!' Yes, She was eighty-three years old then. And that day, we ceased being 'the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' for this entire Divine was shattered to pieces - and we met Mother, at last. This mystery we call
Mother, for She never ceased being a mystery right to her ninety-fifth year, and to this day still, challenges us from the other side of a wall of invisibility and keeps us floundering fully in the mystery - with a smile. She always smiles. But the mystery is not solved.
--
Where, then, was 'the Mother of the Ashram' in all this? What is even 'the Ashram,' if not a spiritual museum of the resistances to Something Else. They were always - and still today - reciting their catechism beneath a little flag: they are the owners of the new truth. But the new truth is laughing in their faces and leaving them high and dry at the edge of their little stagnant pond. They are under the illusion that Mother and Sri Aurobindo, twenty-seven or four years after their respective departures, could keep on repeating themselves - but then they would not be Mother and
Sri Aurobindo! They would be fossils. The truth is always on the move. It is with those who dare, who have courage, and above all the courage to shatter all the effigies, to de-mystify, and to go
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
object:00.01 - The Mother on Savitri
alt:Savitri (the Mother to Mona)
alt:TMOS
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
Auromaa - Mothers Talk on Savitri to Mona Sarkar
On the 18th January 1960; when a young sadhak met the Mother for a personal interview, She said to him: "I shall give you something special; be prepared." The next day, when he again met Her, She spoke in French first about how to kindle the psychic Flame and then in this connection started speaking about Sri Aurobindo`s great epic Savitri and continued to speak at length.
The sadhak, after returning from the Mother, wanted to note down immediately what She had said, but he could not do so because he felt a great hesitation due to his sense of incapacity to transcribe exactly the Mother`s own words.
After nearly seven years, however, he felt a strong urge to note down what the Mother had spoken; so in 1967 he wrote down from memory a report in French. The report was seen by the Mother and a few corrections were made by her. To another sadhak who asked Her permission to read this report She wrote: "Years ago I have spoken at length about it [Savitri] to Mona Sarkar and he has noted in French what I said. Some time back I have seen what he has written and found it correct on the whole."(4.12.1967)
On a few other occasion also, the Mother had spoken to the same sadhak on the value of reading Savitri which he had noted down afterwards. These notes have been added at the end of the main report. A few members of the Ashram had privately read this report in French, but afterwards there were many requests for its English version. A translation was therefore made in November 1967. A proposal was made to the Mother in 1972 for its publication and it was submitted to Her for approval. The Mother wanted to check the translation before permitting its publication but could check only a portion of it.
Do you read Savitri?
Yes, Mother, yes.
You have read the whole poem?
Yes, Mother, I have read it twice.
Have you understood all that you have read?
--
~ The Mother Sweet Mother The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0]
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the time of Sri Aurobindo's departure (1950) until 1957, we have only a few notes and fragments or rare statements noted from memory. These are the only landmarks of this period, along with Mother's Questions and Answers from her talks at the Ashram Playground. A few of these conversations have been reproduced here insofar as they mark stages of the Supramental
Action.
From 1957, Mother received us twice a week in the office of Pavitra, the most senior of the
French disciples, on the second floor of the main Ashram building, on some pretext of work or other. She listened to our queries, spoke to us at length of yoga, occultism, her past experiences in
--
Mother would be seated in this rather medieval-looking chair with its high, carved back, her feet on a little tabouret, while we sat on the floor, on a slightly faded carpet, conquered and seduced, revolted and never satisfied - but nevertheless, very interested. Treasures, never noted down, were lost until, with the cunning of the Sioux, we succeeded in making Mother consent to the presence of a tape recorder. But even then, and for a long time thereafter, She carefully made us erase or delete in our notes all that concerned Her rather too personally - sometimes we disobeyed Her.
But finally we were able to convince Her of the value inherent in keeping a chronicle of the route.
It was only in 1958 that we began having the first tape-recorded conversations, which, properly speaking, constitute Mother's Agenda. But even then, many of these conversations were lost or only partly noted down. Or else we considered that our own words should not figure in these notes and we carefully omitted all our questions - which was absurd. At that time, no one - neither Mother, nor ourself - knew that this was 'the Agenda' and that we were out to explore the 'Great Passage.'
Only gradually did we become aware of the true nature of these meetings. Furthermore, we were constantly on the road, so much so that there are sizable gaps in the text. In fact, for seven years,
--
From 1960, the Agenda took its final shape arid grew for thirteen years, until May 1973, filling thirteen volumes in all (some six thousand pages), with a change of setting in March 1962 at the time of the Great Turning in Mother's yoga when She permanently retired to her room upstairs, as had Sri Aurobindo in 1926. The interviews then took place high up in this large room carpeted in golden wool, like a ship's stateroom, amidst the rustling of the Copper Pod tree and the cawing of crows. Mother would sit in a low rosewood chair, her face turned towards Sri Aurobindo's tomb, as though She were wearing down the distance separating that world from our own. Her voice had become like that of a child, one could hear her laughter. She always laughed, this Mother. And then her long silences. Until the day the disciples closed her door on us. It was May 19, 1973. We did not want to believe it. She was alone, just as we were suddenly alone. Slowly, painfully, we had to discover the why of this rupture. We understood nothing of the jealousies of the old species, we did not yet realize that they were becoming the 'owners' of Mother - of the Ashram, of Auroville, of
Sri Aurobindo, of everything - and that the new world was going to be denatured into a new
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Finally, this fluid is offered to the fifth Agni, the Mother or the Female, who delivers the Child.
The biological process, described in what may seem to be crude and mediaeval terms, really reflects or echoes a more subtle and psychological process. The images used form perhaps part of the current popular notion about the matter, but the esoteric sense goes beyond the outer symbols. The sky seems to be the far and tenuous region where the soul rests and awaits its next birthit is the region of Soma, the own Home of Bliss and Immortality. Now when the time or call comes, the soul stirs and journeys down that is the Rain. Next, it enters the earth atmosphere and clothes itself with the earth consciousness. Then it waits and calls for the formation of the material body, first by the contri bution of the father and then by that of the Mother; when these two unite and the material body is formed, the soul incarnates.
Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The white Mother comes reddening with the ruddy child; the dark Mother opens wide her chambers, the feeling and the expression of the beautiful raise no questioning; they are au thentic as well as evident. All will recognise at once t at we have here beautiful things said in a beautiful way. No less au thentic however is the sense of the beautiful that underlies these Upanishadic lines:
na tatra sryo bhti na candratrakam
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
About his parents Sri Ramakrishna once said: "My Mother was the personification of rectitude and gentleness. She did not know much about the ways of the world; innocent of the art of concealment, she would say what was in her mind. People loved her for her open-heartedness. My father, an orthodox brahmin, never accepted gifts from the sudras. He spent much of his time in worship and meditation, and in repeating God's name and chanting His glories. Whenever in his daily prayers he invoked the Goddess Gayatri, his chest flushed and tears rolled down his cheeks. He spent his leisure hours making garlands for the Family Deity, Raghuvir."
Khudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandra Devi, the parents of Sri Ramakrishna, were married in 1799. At that time Khudiram was living in his ancestral village of Dereypore, not far from Kamarpukur. Their first son, Ramkumar, was born in 1805, and their first daughter, Katyayani, in 1810. In 1814 Khudiram was ordered by his landlord to bear false witness in court against a neighbour. When he refused to do so, the landlord brought a false case against him and deprived him of his ancestral property. Thus dispossessed, he arrived, at the invitation of another landlord, in the quiet village of Kamarpukur, where he was given a dwelling and about an acre of fertile land. The crops from this little property were enough to meet his family's simple needs. Here he lived in simplicity, dignity, and contentment.
--
Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his Mother in the discharge of her household duties. He gave more attention to reading and hearing the religious stories recorded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of renunciation of the world and all-absorbing love of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and worship.
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In 1847 the Rani purchased twenty acres of land at Dakshineswar, a village about four miles north of Calcutta. Here she created a temple garden and constructed several temples. Her Ishta, or Chosen Ideal, was the Divine Mother, Kali.
The temple garden stands directly on the east bank of the Ganges. The northern section of the land and a portion to the east contain an orchard, flower gardens, and two small reservoirs. The southern section is paved with brick and mortar. The visitor arriving by boat ascends the steps of an imposing bathing-ghat which leads to the chandni, a roofed terrace, on either side of which stand in a row six temples of Siva. East of the terrace and the Siva temples is a large court, paved, rectangular in shape, and running north and south. Two temples stand in the centre of this court, the larger one, to the south and facing south, being dedicated to Kali, and the smaller one, facing the Ganges, to Radhakanta, that is, Krishna, the Consort of Radha. Nine domes with spires surmount the temple of Kali, and before it stands the spacious natmandir, or music hall, the terrace of which is sup- ported by stately pillars. At the northwest and southwest
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The main temple is dedicated to Kali, the Divine Mother, here worshipped as Bhavatarini, the Saviour of the Universe. The floor of this temple also is paved with marble. The basalt image of the Mother, dressed in gorgeous gold brocade, stands on a white marble image of the prostrate body of Her Divine Consort, Siva, the symbol of the Absolute. On the feet of the Goddess are, among other ornaments, anklets of gold. Her arms are decked with jewelled ornaments of gold. She wears necklaces of gold and pearls, a golden garland of human heads, and a girdle of human arms. She wears a golden crown, golden ear-rings, and a golden nose-ring with a pearl-drop. She has four arms. The lower left hand holds a severed human head and the upper grips a blood-stained sabre. One right hand offers boons to Her children; the other allays their fear. The majesty of Her posture can hardly be described. It combines the terror of destruction with the reassurance of Motherly tenderness. For She is the Cosmic Power, the totality of the universe, a glorious harmony of the pairs of opposites. She deals out death, as She creates and preserves. She has three eyes, the third being the symbol of Divine Wisdom; they strike dismay into the wicked, yet pour out affection for Her devotees.
The whole symbolic world is represented in the temple garden — the Trinity of the Nature Mother (Kali), the Absolute (Siva), and Love (Radhakanta), the Arch spanning heaven and earth. The terrific Goddess of the Tantra, the soul-enthralling Flute-Player of the Bhagavata, and the Self-absorbed Absolute of the Vedas live together, creating the greatest synthesis of religions. All aspects of Reality are represented there. But of this divine household, Kali is the pivot, the sovereign Mistress. She is Prakriti, the Procreatrix, Nature, the Destroyer, the Creator. Nay, She is something greater and deeper still for those who have eyes to see. She is the Universal Mother, "my Mother" as Ramakrishna would say, the All-powerful, who reveals Herself to Her children under different aspects and Divine Incarnations, the Visible God, who leads the elect to the Invisible Reality; and if it so pleases Her, She takes away the last trace of ego from created beings and merges it in the consciousness of the Absolute, the undifferentiated God. Through Her grace "the finite ego loses itself in the illimitable Ego — Atman — Brahman". (Romain Holland, Prophets of the New India, p. 11.)
Rani Rasmani spent a fortune for the construction of the temple garden and another fortune for its dedication ceremony, which took place on May 31, 1855.
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^Hriday's Mother was the daughter of Sri Ramakrishna's aunt (Khudiram's sister). Such a degree of relationship is termed in Bengal that of a "distant nephew".
--- SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS A PRIEST
Born in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the formalities of worship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite human mind. They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of phenomenal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms. He must use human symbols. Therefore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal Mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless, the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. The gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense-organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before That whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.
Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
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Mathur begged Sri Ramakrishna to take charge of the worship in the Kali temple. The young priest pleaded his incompetence and his ignorance of the scriptures. Mathur insisted that devotion and sincerity would more than compensate for any lack of formal knowledge and make the Divine Mother manifest Herself through the image. In the end, Sri Ramakrishna had to yield to Mathur's request. He became the priest of Kali.
In 1856 Ramkumar breathed his last. Sri Ramakrishna had already witnessed more than one death in the family. He had come to realize how impermanent is life on earth. The more he was convinced of the transitory nature of worldly things, the more eager he became to realize God, the Fountain of Immortality.
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And, indeed, he soon discovered what a strange Goddess he had chosen to serve. He became gradually enmeshed in the web of Her all-pervading presence. To the ignorant She is, to be sure, the image of destruction; but he found in Her the benign, all-loving Mother. Her neck is encircled with a garland of heads, and Her waist with a girdle of human arms, and two of Her hands hold weapons of death, and Her eyes dart a glance of fire; but, strangely enough, Ramakrishna felt in Her breath the soothing touch of tender love and saw in Her the Seed of Immortality. She stands on the bosom of Her Consort, Siva; it is because She is the Sakti, the Power, inseparable from the Absolute. She is surrounded by jackals and other unholy creatures, the denizens of the cremation ground. But is not the Ultimate Reality above holiness and unholiness? She appears to be reeling under the spell of wine. But who would create this mad world unless under the influence of a divine drunkenness? She is the highest symbol of all the forces of nature, the synthesis of their antinomies, the Ultimate Divine in the form of woman. She now became to Sri Ramakrishna the only Reality, and the world became an unsubstantial shadow. Into Her worship he poured his soul. Before him She stood as the transparent portal to the shrine of Ineffable Reality.
The worship in the temple intensified Sri Ramakrishna's yearning for a living vision of the Mother of the Universe. He began to spend in meditation the time not actually employed in the temple service; and for this purpose he selected an extremely solitary place. A deep jungle, thick with underbrush and prickly plants, lay to the north of the temples. Used at one time as a burial ground, it was shunned by people even during the day-time for fear of ghosts. There Sri Ramakrishna began to spend the whole night in meditation, returning to his room only in the morning with eyes swollen as though from much weeping. While meditating, he would lay aside his cloth and his brahminical thread. Explaining this strange conduct, he once said to Hriday: "Don't you know that when one thinks of God one should be freed from all ties? From our very birth we have the eight fetters of hatred, shame, lineage, pride of good conduct, fear, secretiveness, caste, and grief. The sacred thread reminds me that I am a brahmin and therefore superior to all. When calling on the Mother one has to set aside all such ideas." Hriday thought his uncle was becoming insane.
As his love for God deepened, he began either to forget or to drop the formalities of worship. Sitting before the image, he would spend hours singing the devotional songs of great devotees of the Mother, such as Kamalakanta and Ramprasad. Those rhapsodical songs, describing the direct vision of God, only intensified Sri Ramakrishna's longing. He felt the pangs of a child separated from its Mother. Sometimes, in agony, he would rub his face against the ground and weep so bitterly that people, thinking he had lost his earthly Mother, would sympathize with him in his grief. Sometimes, in moments of scepticism, he would cry: "Art Thou true, Mother, or is it all fiction — mere poetry without any reality? If Thou dost exist, why do I not see Thee? Is religion a mere fantasy and art Thou only a figment of man's imagination?" Sometimes he would sit on the prayer carpet for two hours like an inert object. He began to behave in an abnormal manner
, most of the time unconscious of the world. He almost gave up food; and sleep left him altogether.
But he did not have to wait very long. He has thus described his first vision of the Mother: "I felt as if my heart were being squeezed like a wet towel. I was overpowered with a great restlessness and a fear that it might not be my lot to realize Her in this life. I could not bear the separation from Her any longer. Life seemed to be not worth living. Suddenly my glance fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother's temple. I determined to put an end to my life. When I jumped up like a madman and seized it, suddenly the blessed Mother revealed Herself. The buildings with their different parts, the temple, and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with a terrific noise, to swallow me up! I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush
and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother." On his lips when he regained consciousness of the world was the word " Mother".
--- GOD-INTOXICATED STATE
Yet this was only a foretaste of the intense experiences to come. The first glimpse of the Divine Mother made him the more eager for Her uninterrupted vision. He wanted to see Her both in meditation and with eyes open. But the Mother began to play a teasing game of hide-and-seek with him, intensifying both his joy and his suffering. Weeping bitterly during the moments of separation from Her, he would pass into a trance and then find Her standing before him, smiling, talking, consoling, bidding him be of good cheer, and instructing him. During this period of spiritual practice he had many uncommon experiences. When he sat to meditate, he would hear strange clicking sounds in the joints of his legs, as if someone were locking them up, one after the other, to keep him motionless; and at the conclusion of his meditation he would again hear the same sounds, this time unlocking them and leaving him free to move about. He would see flashes like a swarm of fire-flies floating before his eyes, or a sea of deep mist around him, with luminous waves of molten silver. Again, from a sea of translucent mist he would behold the Mother rising, first Her feet, then Her waist, body, face, and head, finally Her whole person; he would feel Her breath and hear Her voice. Worshipping in the temple, sometimes he would become exalted, sometimes he would remain motionless as stone, sometimes he would almost collapse from excessive emotion. Many of his actions, contrary to all tradition, seemed sacrilegious to the people. He would take a flower and touch it to his own head, body, and feet, and then offer it to the Goddess. Or, like a drunkard, he would reel to the throne of the Mother, touch Her chin by way of showing his affection for Her, and sing, talk, joke, laugh, and dance. Or he would take a morsel of food from the plate and hold it to Her mouth, begging Her to eat it, and would not be satisfied till he was convinced that She had really eaten. After the Mother had been put to sleep at night, from his own room he would hear Her ascending to the upper storey of the temple with the light steps of a happy girl, Her anklets jingling. Then he would discover Her standing with flowing hair. Her black form silhouetted against the sky of the night, looking at the Ganges or at the distant lights of Calcutta.
Naturally the temple officials took him for an insane person. His worldly well-wishers brought him to skilled physicians; but no-medicine could cure his malady. Many a time he doubted his sanity himself. For he had been sailing across an uncharted sea, with no earthly guide to direct him. His only haven of security was the Divine Mother Herself. To Her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ignorant of mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mother, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mother never failed him in his distress or doubt. Even those who criticized his conduct were greatly impressed with his purity, guilelessness, truthfulness, integrity, and holiness. They felt an uplifting influence in his presence.
It is said that samadhi, or trance, no more than opens the portal of the spiritual realm. Sri Ramakrishna felt an unquenchable desire to enjoy God in various ways. For his meditation he built a place in the northern wooded section of the temple garden. With Hriday's help he planted there five sacred trees. The spot, known as the Panchavati, became the scene of many of his visions.
As his spiritual mood deepened he more and more felt himself to be a child of the Divine Mother. He learnt to surrender himself completely to Her will and let Her direct him.
"O Mother," he would constantly pray, "I have taken refuge in Thee. Teach me what to do and what to say. Thy will is paramount everywhere and is for the good of Thy children. Merge my will in Thy will and make me Thy instrument."
His visions became deeper and more intimate. He no longer had to meditate to behold the Divine Mother. Even while retaining consciousness of the outer world, he would see Her as tangibly as the temples, the trees, the river, and the men around him.
On a certain occasion Mathur Babu stealthily entered the temple to watch the worship. He was profoundly moved by the young priest's devotion and sincerity. He realized that Sri Ramakrishna had transformed the stone image into the living Goddess.
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Sri Ramakrishna has described the incident: "The Divine Mother revealed to me in the Kali temple that it was She who had become everything. She showed me that everything was full of Consciousness. The image was Consciousness, the altar was Consciousness, the water-vessels were Consciousness, the door-sill was Consciousness, the marble floor was Consciousness — all was Consciousness. I found everything inside the room soaked, as it were, in Bliss — the Bliss of God. I saw a wicked man in front of the Kali temple; but in him also I saw the power of the Divine Mother vibrating. That was why I fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to the Divine Mother. I clearly perceived that all this was the Divine Mother — even the cat. The manager of the temple garden wrote to Mathur Babu saying that I was feeding the cat with the offering intended for the Divine Mother. But Mathur Babu had insight into the state of my mind. He wrote back to the manager: 'Let him do whatever he likes. You must not say anything to him.'"
One of the painful ailments from which Sri Ramakrishna suffered at this time was a burning sensation in his body, and he was cured by a strange vision. During worship in the temple, following the scriptural injunctions, he would imagine the presence of the "sinner" in himself and the destruction of this "sinner". One day he was meditating in the Panchavati, when he saw come out of him a red-eyed man of black complexion, reeling like a drunkard. Soon there emerged from him another person, of serene countenance, wearing the ochre cloth of a sannyasi and carrying in his hand a trident. The second person attacked the first and killed him with the trident. Thereafter Sri Ramakrishna was free of his pain.
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Mathur had faith in the sincerity of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual zeal, but began now to doubt his sanity. He had watched him jumping about like a monkey. One day, when Rani Rasmani was listening to Sri Ramakrishna's singing in the temple, the young priest abruptly turned and slapped her. Apparently listening to his song, she had actually been thinking of a law-suit. She accepted the punishment as though the Divine Mother Herself had imposed it; but Mathur was distressed. He begged Sri Ramakrishna to keep his feelings under control and to heed the conventions of society. God Himself, he argued, follows laws. God never permitted, for instance, flowers of two colours to grow on the same stalk. The following day Sri Ramakrishna presented Mathur Babu with two hibiscus flowers growing on the same stalk, one red and one white.
Mathur and Rani Rasmani began to ascribe the mental ailment of Sri Ramakrishna in part, at least, to his observance of rigid continence. Thinking that a natural life would relax the tension of his nerves, they engineered a plan with two women of ill fame. But as soon as the women entered his room, Sri Ramakrishna beheld in them the manifestation of the Divine Mother of the Universe and went into samadhi uttering Her name.
--- HALADHARI
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One day Haladhari upset Sri Ramakrishna with the statement that God is incomprehensible to the human mind. Sri Ramakrishna has described the great moment of doubt when he wondered whether his visions had really misled him: "With sobs I prayed to the Mother, 'Canst Thou have the heart to deceive me like this because I am a fool?' A stream of tears flowed from my eyes. Shortly afterwards I saw a volume of mist rising from the floor and filling the space before me. In the midst of it there appeared a face with flowing beard, calm, highly expressive, and fair. Fixing its gaze steadily upon me, it said solemnly, 'Remain in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness.' This it repeated three times and then it gently disappeared in the mist, which itself dissolved. This vision reassured me."
A garbled report of Sri Ramakrishna's failing health, indifference to worldly life, and various abnormal activities reached Kamarpukur and filled the heart of his poor Mother with anguish. At her repeated request he returned to his village for a change of air. But his boyhood friends did not interest him any more. A divine fever was consuming him. He spent a great part of the day and night in one of the cremation grounds, in meditation. The place reminded him of the impermanence of the human body, of human hopes and achievements. It also reminded him of Kali, the Goddess of destruction.
--- MARRIAGE AND AFTER
But in a few months his health showed improvement, and he recovered to some extent his natural buoyancy of spirit. His happy Mother was encouraged to think it might be a good time to arrange his marriage. The boy was now twenty-three years old. A wife would bring him back to earth. And she was delighted when her son welcomed her suggestion. Perhaps he saw in it the finger of God.
Saradamani, a little girl of five, lived in the neighbouring village of Jayrambati. Even at this age she had been praying to God to make her character as stainless and fragrant as the white tuberose. Looking at the full moon, she would say: "O God, there are dark spots even on the moon. But make my character spotless." It was she who was selected as the bride for Sri Ramakrishna.
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Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kali temple when he found himself again in the whirlwind. His madness reappeared tenfold. The same meditation and prayer, the same ecstatic moods, the same burning sensation, the same weeping, the same sleeplessness, the same indifference to the body and the outside world, the same divine delirium. He subjected himself to fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great impediments to spiritual progress. With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two for the realization of God, and finding them equally worthless he would toss them, with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the manifestations of the Divine Mother. Never even in a dream did he feel the impulses of lust. And to root out of his mind the idea of caste superiority, he cleaned a pariahs house with his long and neglected hair. When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and peck in his hair for grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and neither would be aware of the other. Sleep left him altogether. Day and night, visions flitted before him. He saw the sannyasi who had previously killed the "sinner" in him again coming out of his body, threatening him with the trident, and ordering him to concentrate on God. Or the same sannyasi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring him reports of what was happening there. Sri Ramakrishna used to say later that in the case of an advanced devotee the mind itself becomes the guru, living and moving like an embodied being.
Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861. After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comfort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five "suppliers of stores" appointed by the Divine Mother. Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.
--- THE BRAHMANI
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Very soon a tender relationship sprang up between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmani, she looking upon him as the Baby Krishna, and he upon her as Mother. Day after day she watched his ecstasy during the kirtan and meditation, his samadhi, his mad yearning; and she recognized in him a power to transmit spirituality to others. She came to the conclusion that such things were not possible for an ordinary devotee, not even for a highly developed soul. Only an Incarnation of God was capable of such spiritual manifestations. She proclaimed openly that Sri Ramakrishna, like Sri Chaitanya, was an Incarnation of God.
When Sri Ramakrishna told Mathur what the Brahmani had said about him, Mathur shook his head in doubt. He was reluctant to accept him as an Incarnation of God, an Avatar comparable to Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Chaitanya, though he admitted Sri Ramakrishna's extraordinary spirituality. Whereupon the Brahmani asked Mathur to arrange a conference of scholars who should discuss the matter with her. He agreed to the proposal and the meeting was arranged. It was to be held in the natmandir in front of the Kali temple.
Two famous pundits of the time were invited: Vaishnavcharan, the leader of the Vaishnava society, and Gauri. The first to arrive was Vaishnavcharan, with a distinguished company of scholars and devotees. The Brahmani, like a proud Mother, proclaimed her view before him and supported it with quotations from the scriptures. As the pundits discussed the deep theological question, Sri Ramakrishna, perfectly indifferent to everything happening around him, sat in their midst like a child, immersed in his own thoughts, sometimes smiling, sometimes chewing a pinch of spices from a pouch, or again saying to Vaishnavcharan with a nudge: "Look here. Sometimes I feel like this, too." Presently Vaishnavcharan arose to declare himself in total agreement with the view of the Brahmani. He declared that Sri Ramakrishna had undoubtedly experienced mahabhava and that this was the certain sign of the rare manifestation of God in a man. The people assembled
there, especially the officers of the temple garden, were struck dumb. Sri Rama- krishna said to Mathur, like a boy: "Just fancy, he too says so! Well, I am glad to learn that after all it is not a disease."
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Thus the insane priest was by verdict of the great scholars of the day proclaimed a Divine Incarnation. His visions were not the result of an over-heated brain; they had precedent in spiritual history. And how did the proclamation affect Sri Ramakrishna himself? He remained the simple child of the Mother that he had been since the first day of his life. Years later, when two of his householder disciples openly spoke of him as a Divine Incarnation and the matter was reported to him, he said with a touch of sarcasm: "Do they think they will enhance my glory that way? One of them is an actor on the stage and the other a physician. What do they know about Incarnations? Why, years ago pundits like Gauri and Vaishnavcharan declared me to be an Avatar. They were great scholars and knew what they said. But that did not make any change in my mind."
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
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The disciplines of Tantra are graded to suit aspirants of all degrees. Exercises are prescribed for people with "animal", "heroic", and "divine" outlooks. Certain of the rites require the presence of members of the opposite sex. Here the aspirant learns to look on woman as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Mother of the Universe. The very basis of Tantra is the Motherhood of God and the glorification of woman. Every part of a woman's body is to be regarded as incarnate Divinity. But the rites are extremely dangerous. The help of a qualified guru is absolutely necessary. An unwary devotee may lose his foothold and fall into a pit of depravity.
According to the Tantra, Sakti is the active creative force in the universe. Siva, the Absolute, is a more or less passive principle. Further, Sakti is as inseparable from Siva as fire's power to burn is from fire itself. Sakti, the Creative Power, contains in Its womb the universe, and therefore is the Divine Mother. All women are Her symbols. Kali is one of Her several forms. The meditation on Kali, the Creative Power, is the central discipline of the Tantra. While meditating, the aspirant at first regards himself as one with the Absolute and then thinks that out of that Impersonal Consciousness emerge two entities, namely, his own self and the living form of the Goddess. He then projects the Goddess into the tangible image before him and worships it as the Divine Mother.
Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never more than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him. The word "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole world and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sport, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a Mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
But the most remarkable experience during this period was the awakening of the Kundalini Sakti, the "Serpent Power". He actually saw the Power, at first lying asleep at the bottom of the spinal column, then waking up and ascending along the mystic Sushumna canal and through its six centres, or lotuses, to the Sahasrara, the thousand-petalled lotus in the top of the head. He further saw that as the Kundalini went upward the different lotuses bloomed. And this phenomenon was accompanied by visions and trances. Later on he described to his disciples and devotees the various movements of the Kundalini: the fishlike, birdlike, monkeylike, and so on. The awaken- ing of the Kundalini is the beginning of spiritual consciousness, and its union with Siva in the Sahasrara, ending in samadhi, is the consummation of the Tantrik disciplines.
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To develop the devotee's love for God, Vaishnavism humanizes God. God is to be regarded as the devotee's Parent, Master, Friend, Child, Husband, or Sweetheart, each succeeding relationship representing an intensification of love. These bhavas, or attitudes toward God, are known as santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhur. The rishis of the Vedas, Hanuman, the cow-herd boys of Vrindavan, Rama's Mother Kausalya, and Radhika, Krishna's sweetheart, exhibited, respectively, the most perfect examples of these forms. In the ascending scale the-glories of God are gradually forgotten and the devotee realizes more and more the intimacy of divine communion. Finally he regards himself as the mistress of his Beloved, and no artificial barrier remains to separate him from his Ideal. No social or moral obligation can bind to the earth his soaring spirit. He experiences perfect union with the Godhead. Unlike the Vedantist, who strives to transcend all varieties of the subject-object relationship, a devotee of the Vaishnava path wishes to retain both his own individuality and the personality of God. To him God is not an intangible Absolute, but the Purushottama, the Supreme Person.
While practising the discipline of the madhur bhava, the male devotee often regards himself as a woman, in order to develop the most intense form of love for Sri Krishna, the only purusha, or man, in the universe. This assumption of the attitude of the opposite sex has a deep psychological significance. It is a matter of common experience that an idea may be cultivated to such an intense degree that every idea alien to it is driven from the mind. This peculiarity of the mind may be utilized for the subjugation of the lower desires and the development of the spiritual nature. Now, the idea which is the basis of all desires and passions in a man is the conviction of his indissoluble association with a male body. If he can inoculate himself thoroughly with the idea that he is a woman, he can get rid of the desires peculiar to his male body. Again, the idea that he is a woman may in turn be made to give way to another higher idea, namely, that he is neither man nor woman, but the Impersonal Spirit. The Impersonal Spirit alone can enjoy real communion with the Impersonal God. Hence the highest est realization of the Vaishnava draws close to the transcendental experience of the Vedantist.
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Sri Ramakrishna, as the monkey Hanuman, had already worshipped God as his Master. Through his devotion to Kali he had worshipped God as his Mother. He was now to take up the other relationships prescribed by the Vaishnava scriptures.
--- RAMLALA
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Sri Ramakrishna, much impressed with his devotion, requested Jatadhari to spend a few days at Dakshineswar. Soon Ramlala became the favourite companion of Sri Ramakrishna too. Later on he described to the devotees how the little image would dance gracefully before him, jump on his back, insist on being taken in his arms, run to the fields in the sun, pluck flowers from the bushes, and play pranks like a naughty boy. A very sweet relationship sprang up between him and Ramlala, for whom he felt the love of a Mother.
One day Jatadhari requested Sri Ramakrishna to keep the image and bade him adieu with tearful eyes. He declared that Ramlala had fulfilled his innermost prayer and that he now had no more need of formal worship. A few days later Sri Ramakrishna was blessed through Ramlala with a vision of Ramachandra, whereby he realized that the Rama of the Ramayana, the son of Dasaratha, pervades the whole universe as Spirit and Consciousness; that He is its Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer; that, in still another aspect, He is the transcendental Brahman, without form, attribute, or name.
While worshipping Ramlala as the Divine Child, Sri Ramakrishna's heart became filled with Motherly tenderness, and he began to regard himself as a woman. His speech and gestures changed. He began to move freely with the ladies of Mathur's family, who now looked upon him as one of their own sex. During this time he worshipped the Divine Mother as Her companion or handmaid.
--- IN COMMUNION WITH THE DIVINE BELOVED
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The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing cloth.
Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
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Totapuri, discovering at once that Sri Ramakrishna was prepared to be a student of Vedanta, asked to initiate him into its mysteries. With the permission of the Divine Mother, Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal. But Totapuri explained that only a sannyasi could receive the teaching of Vedanta. Sri Ramakrishna agreed to renounce the world, but with the stipulation that the ceremony of his initiation into the monastic order be performed in secret, to spare the feelings of his old Mother, who had been living with him at Dakshineswar.
On the appointed day, in the small hours of the morning, a fire was lighted in the Panchavati. Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna sat before it. The flame played on their faces. "Ramakrishna was a small brown man with a short beard and beautiful eyes, long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was open over his white teeth in a bewitching smile, at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. His temperament was high-strung, for he was supersensitive to all the winds of joy and sorrow, both moral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened before the mirror of his eyes, a two-sided mirror, turned both out and in." (Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 38-9.) Facing him, the other rose like a rock. He was very tall and robust, a sturdy and tough oak. His constitution and mind were of iron. He was the strong leader of men.
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Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative world, including the gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even for Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the Atman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the world. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of Pure Consciousness, appeared before me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
Sri Ramakrishna remained completely absorbed in samadhi for three days. "Is it really true?" Totapuri cried out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he has attained in a single day what it took me forty years of strenuous practice to achieve? Great God! It is nothing short of a miracle!" With the help of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna's mind finally came down to the relative plane.
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Sri Ramakrishna, on the other hand, though fully aware, like his guru, that the world is an illusory appearance, instead of slighting maya, like an orthodox monist, acknowledged its power in the relative life. He was all love and reverence for maya, perceiving in it a mysterious and majestic expression of Divinity. To him maya itself was God, for everything was God. It was one of the faces of Brahman. What he had realized on the heights of the transcendental plane, he also found here below, everywhere about him, under the mysterious garb of names and forms. And this garb was a perfectly transparent sheath, through which he recognized the glory of the Divine Immanence. Maya, the mighty weaver of the garb, is none other than Kali, the Divine Mother. She is the primordial Divine Energy, Sakti, and She can no more be distinguished from the Supreme Brahman than can the power of burning be distinguished from fire. She projects the world and again withdraws it. She spins it as the spider spins its web. She is the Mother of the Universe, identical with the Brahman of Vedanta, and with the Atman of Yoga. As eternal Lawgiver, She makes and unmakes laws; it is by Her imperious will that karma yields its fruit. She ensnares men with illusion and again releases them from bondage with a look of Her benign eyes. She is the supreme Mistress of the cosmic play, and all objects, animate and inanimate, dance by Her will. Even those who realize the Absolute in nirvikalpa samadhi are under Her jurisdiction as long as they still live on the relative plane.
Thus, after nirvikalpa samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna realized maya in an altogether new role. The binding aspect of Kali vanished from before his vision. She no longer obscured his understanding. The world became the glorious manifestation of the Divine Mother. Maya became Brahman. The Transcendental Itself broke through the Immanent. Sri Ramakrishna discovered that maya operates in the relative world in two ways, and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya". Avidyamaya represents the dark forces of creation: sensuous desires, evil passions, greed, lust, cruelty, and so on. It sustains the world system on the lower planes. It is responsible for the round of man's birth and death. It must be fought and vanquished. But vidyamaya is the higher force of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates man to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya the devotee rids himself of avidyamaya; he then becomes mayatita, free of maya. The two aspects of maya are the two forces of creation, the two powers of Kali; and She stands beyond them both. She is like the effulgent sun, bringing into existence and shining through and standing behind the clouds of different colours and shapes, conjuring up wonderful forms in the blue autumn heaven.
The Divine Mother asked Sri Ramakrishna not to be lost in the featureless Absolute but to remain, in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness, the border line between the Absolute and the Relative. He was to keep himself at the "sixth centre" of Tantra, from which he could see not only the glory of the seventh, but also the divine manifestations of the Kundalini in the lower centres. He gently oscillated back and forth across the dividing line. Ecstatic devotion to the Divine Mother alternated with serene absorption in the Ocean of Absolute Unity. He thus bridged the gulf between the Personal and the Impersonal, the immanent and the transcendent aspects of Reality. This is a unique experience in the recorded spiritual history of the world.
--- TOTAPURI'S LESSON
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About this time Totapuri was suddenly laid up with a severe attack of dysentery. On account of this miserable illness he found it impossible to meditate. One night the pain became excruciating. He could no longer concentrate on Brahman. The body stood in the way. He became incensed with its demands. A free soul, he did not at all care for the body. So he determined to drown it in the Ganges. Thereupon he walked into the river. But, lo! He walks to the other bank." (This version of the incident is taken from the biography of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Saradananda, one of the Master's direct disciples.) Is there not enough water in the Ganges? Standing dumbfounded on the other bank he looks back across the water. The trees, the temples, the houses, are silhouetted against the sky. Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, he sees on all sides the presence of the Divine Mother. She is in everything; She is everything. She is in the water; She is on land. She is the body; She is the mind. She is pain; She is comfort. She is knowledge; She is ignorance. She is life; She is death. She is everything that one sees, hears, or imagines. She turns "yea" into "nay", and "nay" into "yea". Without Her grace no embodied being can go beyond Her realm. Man has no free will. He is not even free to die. Yet, again, beyond the body and mind She resides in Her Transcendental, Absolute aspect. She is the Brahman that Totapuri had been worshipping all his life.
Totapuri returned to Dakshineswar and spent the remaining hours of the night meditating on the Divine Mother. In the morning he went to the Kali temple with Sri Ramakrishna and prostrated himself before the image of the Mother. He now realized why he had spent eleven months at Dakshineswar. Bidding farewell to the disciple, he continued on his way, enlightened.
Sri Ramakrishna later described the significance of Totapuri's lessons:
"When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive — neither creating nor preserving nor destroying —, I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active — creating, preserving, and destroying —, I call Him Sakti or Maya or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and the Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. It is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one."
After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained for six months in a state of absolute identity with Brahman. "For six months at a stretch", he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I was not conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils just as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust."
His body would not have survived but for the kindly attention of a monk who happened to be at Dakshineswar at that time and who somehow realized that for the good of humanity Sri Ramakrishna's body must be preserved. He tried various means, even physical violence, to recall the fleeing soul to the prison-house of the body, and during the resultant fleeting moments of consciousness he would push a few morsels of food down Sri Ramakrishna's throat. Presently Sri Ramakrishna received the command of the Divine Mother to remain on the threshold of relative consciousness. Soon there-after after he was afflicted with a serious attack of dysentery. Day and night the pain tortured him, and his mind gradually came down to the physical plane.
--- COMPANY OF HOLY MEN AND DEVOTEES
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"Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."
Sri Ramakrishna used to say that when the flower blooms the bees come to it for honey of their own accord. Now many souls began to visit Dakshineswar to satisfy their spiritual hunger. He, the devotee and aspirant, became the Master. Gauri, the great scholar who had been one of the first to proclaim Sri Ramakrishna an Incarnation of God, paid the Master a visit in 1870 and with the Master's blessings renounced the world. Narayan Shastri, another great pundit, who had mastered the six systems of Hindu philosophy and had been offered a lucrative post by the Maharaja of Jaipur, met the Master and recognized in him one who had realized in life those ideals which he himself had encountered merely in books. Sri Ramakrishna initiated Narayan Shastri, at his earnest request, into the life of sannyas. Pundit Padmalochan, the court pundit of the Maharaja of Burdwan, well known for his scholarship in both the Vedanta and the Nyaya systems of philosophy, accepted the Master as an Incarnation of God. Krishnakishore, a Vedantist scholar, became devoted to the Master. And there arrived Viswanath Upadhyaya, who was to become a favourite devotee; Sri Ramakrishna always addressed him as "Captain". He was a high officer of the King of Nepal and had received the title of Colonel in recognition of his merit. A scholar of the Gita, the Bhagavata, and the Vedanta philosophy, he daily performed the worship of his Chosen Deity with great devotion. "I have read the Vedas and the other scriptures", he said. "I have also met a good many monks and devotees in different places. But it is in Sri Ramakrishna's presence that my spiritual yearnings have been fulfilled. To me he seems to be the embodiment of the truths of the scriptures."
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Eight years later, some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings from the Bible, by Sambhu Charan Mallick, a gentleman of Calcutta and a devotee of the Master. Sri Ramakrishna became fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus. One day he was seated in the parlour of Jadu Mallick's garden house (This expression is used throughout to translate the Bengali word denoting a rich man's country house set in a garden.) at Dakshineswar, when his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered his soul. The effect of this experience was stronger than that of the vision of Mohammed. In dismay he cried out, "O Mother! What are You doing to me?" And, breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. For three days he did not set foot in the Kali temple. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the Panchavati, he saw coming toward him a person with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance, and fair skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna's soul: "Behold the Christ, who shed His heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love Incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna krishna realized his identity with Christ, as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama, Hanuman, Radha, Krishna, Brahman, and Mohammed. The Master went into samadhi and communed with the Brahman with attributes. Thus he experienced the truth that Christianity, too, was a path leading to God-Consciousness. Till the last moment of his life he believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But Christ, for him, was not the only Incarnation; there were others — Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.
--- ATTITUDE TOWARD DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
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On January 27, 1868, Mathur Babu with a party of some one hundred and twenty-five persons set out on a pilgrimage to the sacred places of northern India. At Vaidyanath in Behar, when the Master saw the inhabitants of a village reduced by poverty and starvation to mere skeletons, he requested his rich patron to feed the people and give each a piece of cloth. Mathur demurred at the added expense. The Master declared bitterly that he would not go on to Benares, but would live with the poor and share their miseries. He actually left Mathur and sat down with the villagers. Whereupon Mathur had to yield. On another occasion, two years later, Sri Ramakrishna showed a similar sentiment for the poor and needy. He accompanied Mathur on a tour to one of the latter's estates at the time of the collection of rents. For two years the harvests had failed and the tenants were in a state of extreme poverty. The Master asked Mathur to remit their rents, distribute help to them, and in addition give the hungry people a sumptuous feast. When Mathur grumbled, the Master said: "You are only the steward of the Divine Mother. They are the Mother's tenants. You must spend the Mother's money. When they are suffering, how can you refuse to help them? You must help them." Again Mathur had to give in. Sri Ramakrishna's sympathy for the poor sprang from his perception of God in all created beings. His sentiment was not that of the humanist or philanthropist. To him the service of man was the same as the worship of God.
The party entered holy Benares by boat along the Ganges. When Sri Ramakrishna's eyes fell on this city of Siva, where had accumulated for ages the devotion and piety of countless worshippers, he saw it to be made of gold, as the scriptures declare. He was visibly moved. During his stay in the city he treated every particle of its earth with utmost respect. At the Manikarnika Ghat, the great cremation ground of the city, he actually saw Siva, with ash-covered body and tawny matted hair, serenely approaching each funeral pyre and breathing into the ears of the corpses the mantra of liberation; and then the Divine Mother removing from the dead their bonds. Thus he realized the significance of the scriptural statement that anyone dying in Benares attains salvation through the grace of Siva. He paid a visit to Trailanga Swami, the celebrated monk, whom he later declared to be a real paramahamsa, a veritable image of Siva.
Sri Ramakrishna visited Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna, and then proceeded to Vrindavan and Mathura, hallowed by the legends, songs, and dramas about Krishna and the gopis. Here he had numerous visions and his heart overflowed with divine emotion. He wept and said: "O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent." He visited the great woman saint, Gangamayi, regarded by Vaishnava devotees as the reincarnation of an intimate attendant of Radha. She was sixty years old and had frequent trances. She spoke of Sri Ramakrishna as an incarnation of Radha. With great difficulty he was persuaded to leave her.
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Totapuri, coming to know of the Master's marriage, had once remarked: "What does it matter? He alone is firmly established in the Knowledge of Brahman who can adhere to his spirit of discrimination and renunciation even while living with his wife. He alone has attained the supreme illumination who can look on man and woman alike as Brahman. A man with the idea of sex may be a good aspirant, but he is still far from the goal." Sri Ramakrishna and his wife lived together at Dakshineswar, but their minds always soared above the worldly plane. A few months after Sarada Devi's arrival Sri Ramakrishna arranged, on an auspicious day, a special worship of Kali, the Divine Mother. Instead of an image of the Deity, he placed on the seat the living image, Sarada Devi herself. The worshipper and the worshipped went into deep samadhi and in the transcendental plane their souls were united. After several hours Sri Ramakrishna came down again to the relative plane, sang a hymn to the Great Goddess, and surrendered, at the feet of the living image, himself, his rosary, and the fruit of his life-long sadhana. This is known in Tantra as the Shorasi Puja, the "Adoration of Woman". Sri Ramakrishna realized the significance of the great statement of the Upanishad: "O Lord, Thou art the woman. Thou art the man; Thou art the boy. Thou art the girl; Thou art the old, tottering on their crutches. Thou pervadest the universe in its multiple forms."
By his marriage Sri Ramakrishna admitted the great value of marriage in man's spiritual evolution, and by adhering to his monastic vows he demonstrated the imperative necessity of self-control, purity, and continence, in the realization of God. By this unique spiritual relationship with his wife he proved that husband and wife can live together as spiritual companions. Thus his life is a synthesis of the ways of life of the householder and the monk.
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In the nirvikalpa samadhi Sri Ramakrishna had realized that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory. By keeping his mind six months on the plane of the non-dual Brahman, he had attained to the state of the vijnani, the knower of Truth in a special and very rich sense, who sees Brahman not only in himself and in the transcendental Absolute, but in everything of the world. In this state of vijnana, sometimes, bereft of body-consciousness, he would regard himself as one with Brahman; sometimes, conscious of the dual world, he would regard himself as God's devotee, servant, or child. In order to enable the Master to work for the welfare of humanity, the Divine Mother had kept in him a trace of ego, which he described — according to his mood — as the "ego of Knowledge", the "ego of Devotion", the "ego of a child", or the "ego of a servant". In any case this ego of the Master, consumed by the fire of the Knowledge of Brahman, was an appearance only, like a burnt string. He often referred to this ego as the "ripe ego" in contrast with the ego of the bound soul, which he described as the "unripe" or "green" ego. The ego of the bound soul identifies itself with the body, relatives, possessions, and the world; but the "ripe ego", illumined by Divine Knowledge, knows the body, relatives, possessions, and the world to be unreal and establishes a relationship of love with God alone. Through this "ripe ego" Sri Ramakrishna dealt with the world and his wife. One day, while stroking his feet, Sarada Devi asked the Master, "What do you think of me?" Quick came the answer: "The Mother who is worshipped in the temple is the Mother who has given birth to my body and is now living in the nahabat, and it is She again who is stroking my feet at this moment. Indeed, I always look on you as the personification of the Blissful Mother Kali."
Sarada Devi, in the company of her husband, had rare spiritual experiences. She said: "I have no words to describe my wonderful exaltation of spirit as I watched him in his different moods. Under the influence of divine emotion he would sometimes talk on abstruse subjects, sometimes laugh, sometimes weep, and sometimes become perfectly motionless in samadhi. This would continue throughout the night. There was such an extraordinary divine presence in him that now and then I would shake with fear and wonder how the night would pass. Months went by in this way. Then one day he discovered that I had to keep awake the whole night lest, during my sleep, he should go into samadhi — for it might happen at any moment —, and so he asked me to sleep in the nahabat."
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Third, Sri Ramakrishna realized the wish of the Divine Mother that through him She should found a new Order, consisting of those who would uphold the universal doctrines illustrated in his life.
Fourth, his spiritual insight told him that those who were having their last birth on the mortal plane of existence and those who had sincerely called on the Lord even once in their lives must come to him.
During this period Sri Ramakrishna suffered several bereavements. The first was the death of a nephew named Akshay. After the young man's death Sri Ramakrishna said: "Akshay died before my very eyes. But it did not affect me in the least. I stood by and watched a man die. It was like a sword being drawn from its scabbard. I enjoyed the scene, and laughed and sang and danced over it. They removed the body and cremated it. But the next day as I stood there (pointing to the southeast verandah of his room), I felt a racking pain for the loss of Akshay, as if somebody were squeezing my heart like a wet towel. I wondered at it and thought that the Mother was teaching me a lesson. I was not much concerned even with my own body — much less with a relative. But if such was my pain at the loss of a nephew, how much more must be the grief of the householders at the loss of their near and dear ones!" In 1871 Mathur died, and some five years later Sambhu Mallick — who, after Mathur's passing away, had taken care of the Master's comfort. In 1873 died his elder brother Rameswar, and in 1876, his beloved Mother. These bereavements left their imprint on the tender human heart of Sri Ramakrishna, albeit he had realized the immortality of the soul and the illusoriness of birth and death.
In March 1875, about a year before the death of his Mother, the Master met Keshab Chandra Sen. The meeting was a momentous event for both Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab. Here the Master for the first time came into actual, contact with a worthy representative of modern India.
--- BRAHMO SAMAJ
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In 1878 a schism divided Keshab's Samaj. Some of his influential followers accused him of infringing the Brahmo principles by marrying his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. This group seceded and established the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Keshab remaining the leader of the Navavidhan. Keshab now began to be drawn more and more toward the Christ ideal, though under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna his devotion to the Divine Mother also deepened. His mental oscillation between Christ and the Divine Mother of Hinduism found no position of rest. In Bengal and some other parts of India the Brahmo movement took the form of unitarian Christianity, scoffed at Hindu rituals, and preached a crusade against image worship. Influenced by Western culture, it declared the supremacy of reason, advocated the ideals of the French Revolution, abolished the caste-system among its own members, stood for the emancipation of women, agitated for the abolition of early marriage, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, and encouraged various educational and social-reform movements. The immediate effect of the Brahmo movement in Bengal was the checking of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries. It also raised Indian culture in the estimation of its English masters. But it was an intellectual and eclectic religious ferment born of the necessity of the time. Unlike Hinduism, it was not founded on the deep inner experiences of sages and prophets. Its influence was confined to a comparatively few educated men and women of the country, and the vast masses of the Hindus remained outside it. It sounded monotonously only one of the notes in the rich gamut of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus.
--- ARYA SAMAJ
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Keshab Chandra Sen and Sri Ramakrishna met for the first time in the garden house of Jaygopal Sen at Belgharia, a few miles from Dakshineswar, where the great Brahmo leader was staying with some of his disciples. In many respects the two were poles apart, though an irresistible inner attraction was to make them intimate friends. The Master had realized God as Pure Spirit and Consciousness, but he believed in the various forms of God as well. Keshab, on the other hand, regarded image worship as idolatry and gave allegorical explanations of the Hindu deities. Keshab was an orator and a writer of books and magazine articles; Sri Ramakrishna had a horror of lecturing and hardly knew how to write his own name, Keshab's fame spread far and wide, even reaching the distant shores of England; the Master still led a secluded life in the village of Dakshineswar. Keshab emphasized social reforms for India's regeneration; to Sri Ramakrishna God-realization was the only goal of life. Keshab considered himself a disciple of Christ and accepted in a diluted form the Christian sacraments and Trinity; Sri Ramakrishna was the simple child of Kali, the Divine Mother, though he too, in a different way, acknowledged Christ's divinity. Keshab was a householder holder and took a real interest in the welfare of his children, whereas Sri Ramakrishna was a paramahamsa and completely indifferent to the life of the world. Yet, as their acquaintance ripened into friendship, Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab held each other in great love and respect. Years later, at the news of Keshab's death, the Master felt as if half his body had become paralyzed. Keshab's concepts of the harmony of religions and the Motherhood of God were deepened and enriched by his contact with Sri Ramakrishna.
Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
--
Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the right-hand man of Keshab and an accomplished Brahmo preacher in Europe and America, bitterly criticized Sri Ramakrishna's use of uncultured language and also his austere attitude toward his wife. But he could not escape the spell of the Master's personality. In the course of an article about Sri Ramakrishna, Pratap wrote in the "Theistic Quarterly Review": "What is there in common between him and me? I, a Europeanized, civilized, self-centred, semi-sceptical, so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and a whole host of European scholars and divines? . . . And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the same. . . . He worships Siva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic doctrines. . . . He is an idolater, yet is a faithful and most devoted meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite Deity. . . . His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling. . . . So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in the love of God. . . . He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it [God as our Mother] in our minds wonderfully. . . . By associating with him we learnt to realize better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the gods of the Puranas."
The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
--
Sri Ramakrishna never taught his disciples to hate any woman, or womankind in general. This can be seen clearly by going through all his teachings under this head and judging them collectively. The Master looked on all women as so many images of the Divine Mother of the Universe. He paid the highest homage to womankind by accepting a woman as his guide while practising the very profound spiritual disciplines of Tantra. His wife, known and revered as the Holy Mother, was his constant companion and first disciple. At the end of his spiritual practice he literally worshipped his wife as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Divine Mother. After his passing away the Holy Mother became the spiritual guide not only of a large number of householders, but also of many monastic members of the Ramakrishna Order.
--- THE MASTER'S YEARNING FOR HIS OWN DEVOTEES
Contact with the Brahmos increased Sri Ramakrishna's longing to encounter aspirants who would be able to follow his teachings in their purest form. "There was no limit", he once declared, "to the longing I felt at that time. During the day-time I somehow managed to control it. The secular talk of the worldly-minded was galling to me, and I would look wistfully to the day when my own beloved companions would come. I hoped to find solace in conversing with them and relating to them my own realizations. Every little incident would remind me of them, and thoughts of them wholly engrossed me. I was already arranging in my mind what I should say to one and give to another, and so on. But when the day would come to a close I would not be able to curb my feelings. The thought that another day had gone by, and they had not come, oppressed me. When, during the evening service, the temples rang with the sound of bells and conch-shells, I would climb to the roof of the kuthi in the garden and, writhing in anguish of heart, cry at the top of my voice: 'Come, my children! Oh, where are you? I cannot bear to live without you.' A Mother never longed so intensely for the sight of her child, nor a friend for his companions, nor a lover for his sweetheart, as I longed for them. Oh, it was indescribable! Shortly after this period of yearning the devotees1 began to come."
In the year 1879 occasional writings about Sri Ramakrishna by the Brahmos, in the Brahmo magazines, began to attract his future disciples from the educated middle-class Bengalis, and they continued to come till 1884. But others, too, came, feeling the subtle power of his attraction. They were an ever shifting crowd of people of all castes and creeds: Hindus and Brahmos, Vaishnavas and Saktas, the educated with university degrees and the illiterate, old and young, maharajas and beggars, journalists and artists, pundits and devotees, philosophers and the worldly-minded, jnanis and yogis, men of action and men of faith, virtuous women and prostitutes, office-holders and vagabonds, philanthropists and self-seekers, dramatists and drunkards, builders-up and pullers-down. He gave to them all, without stint, from his illimitable store of realization. No one went away empty-handed. He taught them the lofty .knowledge of the Vedanta and the soul
--
But he remained as ever the willing instrument in the hand of God, the child of the Divine Mother, totally untouched by the idea of being a teacher. He used to say that three ideas — that he was a guru, a father, and a master — pricked his flesh like thorns. Yet he was an extraordinary teacher. He stirred his disciples' hearts more by a subtle influence than by actions or words. He never claimed to be the founder of a religion or the organizer of a sect. Yet he was a religious dynamo. He was the verifier of all religions and creeds. He was like an expert gardener, who prepares the soil and removes the weeds, knowing that the plants will grow because of the inherent power of the seeds, producing each its appropriate flowers and fruits. He never thrust his ideas on anybody. He understood people's limitations and worked on the principle that what is good for one may be bad for another. He had the unusual power of knowing the devotees' minds, even their inmost souls, at the first sight. He accepted disciples with the full knowledge of their past tendencies and future possibilities. The life of evil did not frighten him, nor did religious squeamishness raise anybody in his estimation. He saw in everything the unerring finger of the Divine Mother. Even the light that leads astray was to him the light from God.
To those who became his intimate disciples the Master was a friend, companion, and playmate. Even the chores of religious discipline would be lightened in his presence. The devotees would be so inebriated with pure joy in his company that they would have no time to ask themselves whether he was an Incarnation, a perfect soul, or a yogi. His very presence was a great teaching; words were superfluous. In later years his disciples remarked that while they were with him they would regard him as a comrade, but afterwards would tremble to think of their frivolities in the presence of such a great person. They had convincing proof that the Master could, by his mere wish, kindle in their hearts the love of God and give them His vision.
Through all this fun and frolic, this merriment and frivolity, he always kept before them the shining ideal of God-Consciousness and the path of renunciation. He prescribed ascents steep or graded according to the powers of the climber. He permitted no compromise with the basic principles of purity. An aspirant had to keep his body, mind, senses, and soul unspotted; had to have a sincere love for God and an ever mounting spirit of yearning. The rest would be done by the Mother.
His disciples were of two kinds: the householders, and the young men, some of whom were later to become monks. There was also a small group of women devotees.
--
Suresh Mitra, a beloved disciple whom the Master often addressed as Surendra, had received an English education and held an important post in an English firm. Like many other educated young men of the time, he prided himself on his atheism and led a Bohemian life. He was addicted to drinking. He cherished an exaggerated notion about man's free will. A victim of mental depression, he was brought to Sri Ramakrishna by Ramchandra chandra Dutta. When he heard the Master asking a disciple to practise the virtue of self-surrender to God, he was impressed. But though he tried thenceforth to do so, he was unable to give up his old associates and his drinking. One day the Master said in his presence, "Well, when a man goes to an undesirable place, why doesn't he take the Divine Mother with him?" And to Surendra himself Sri Ramakrishna said: "Why should you drink wine as wine? Offer it to Kali, and then take it as Her prasad, as consecrated drink
. But see that you don't become intoxicated; you must not reel and your thoughts must not wander. At first you will feel ordinary excitement, but soon you will experience spiritual exaltation." Gradually Surendra's entire life was changed. The Master designated him as one of those commissioned by the Divine Mother to defray a great part of his expenses. Surendra's purse was always open for the Master's comfort.
--- KEDAR
--
Durgacharan Nag, also known as Nag Mahashay, was the ideal householder among the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was the embodiment of the Master's ideal of life in the world, unstained by worldliness. In spite of his intense desire to become a sannyasi, Sri Ramakrishna asked him to live in the world in the spirit of a monk, and the disciple truly carried out this injunction. He was born of a poor family and even during his boyhood often sacrificed everything to lessen the sufferings of the needy. He had married at an early age and after his wife's death had married a second time to obey his father's command. But he once said to his wife: "Love on the physical level never lasts. He is indeed blessed who can give his love to God with his whole heart. Even a little attachment to the body endures for several births. So do not be attached to this cage of bone and flesh. Take shelter at the feet of the Mother and think of Her alone. Thus your life here and hereafter will be ennobled." The Master spoke of him as a "blazing light". He received every word of Sri Ramakrishna in dead earnest. One day he heard the Master saying that it was difficult for doctors, lawyers, and brokers to make much progress in spirituality. Of doctors he said, "If the mind clings to the tiny drops of medicine, how can it conceive of the Infinite?" That was the end of Durgacharan's medical practice and he threw his chest of medicines into the Ganges. Sri Ramakrishna assured him that he would not lack simple food and clothing. He bade him serve holy men. On being asked where he would find real holy men, the Master said that the sadhus themselves would seek his company. No sannyasi could have lived a more austere life than Durgacharan.
--- GIRISH GHOSH
--
Pratap Hazra, a middle-aged man, hailed from a village near Kamarpukur. He was not altogether unresponsive to religious feelings. On a moment's impulse he had left his home, aged Mother, wife, and children, and had found shelter in the temple garden at Dakshineswar, where he intended to lead a spiritual life. He loved to argue, and the Master often pointed him out as an example of barren argumentation. He was hypercritical of others and cherished an exaggerated notion of his own spiritual advancement. He was mischievous and often tried to upset the minds of the Master's young disciples, criticizing them for their happy and joyous life and asking them to devote their time to meditation. The Master teasingly compared Hazra to Jatila and Kutila, the two women who always created obstructions in Krishna's sport with the gopis, and said that Hazra lived at Dakshineswar to "thicken the plot" by adding complications.
--- SOME NOTED MEN
Sri Ramakrishna also became acquainted with a number of people whose scholarship or wealth entitled them everywhere to respect. He had met, a few years before, Devendranath Tagore, famous all over Bengal for his wealth, scholarship, saintly character, and social position. But the Master found him disappointing; for, whereas Sri Ramakrishna expected of a saint complete renunciation of the world, Devendranath combined with his saintliness a life of enjoyment. Sri Ramakrishna met the great poet Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity "for the sake of his stomach". To him the Master could not impart instruction, for the Divine Mother "pressed his tongue". In addition he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, the editor, social reformer, and patriot; Iswar Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educator; Pundit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, moralist, and leader of Indian Nationalism; and Bankim Chatterji, a deputy magistrate, novelist, and essayist, and one of the fashioners of modern Bengali prose. Sri Ramakrishna was not the man to be dazzled by outward show, glory, or eloquence. A pundit without discrimination he regarded as a mere straw. He would search people's hearts for the light of God, and if that was missing he would have nothing to do with them.
--- KRISTODAS PAL
The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to man in a spirit of worship.
--- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
--
Even before Rakhal's coming to Dakshineswar, the Master had had visions of him as his spiritual son and as a playmate of Krishna at Vrindavan. Rakhal was born of wealthy parents. During his childhood he developed wonderful spiritual traits and used to play at worshipping gods and goddesses. In his teens he was married to a sister of Manomohan Mitra, from whom he first heard of the Master. His father objected to his association with Sri Ramakrishna but afterwards was reassured to find that many celebrated people were visitors at Dakshineswar. The relationship between the Master and this beloved disciple was that of Mother and child. Sri Ramakrishna allowed Rakhal many liberties denied to others. But he would not hesitate to chastise the boy for improper actions. At one time Rakhal felt a childlike jealousy because he found that other boys were receiving the Master's affection. He soon got over it and realized his guru as the Guru of the whole universe. The Master was worried to hear of his marriage, but was relieved to find that his wife was a spiritual soul who would not be a hindrance to his progress.
--- THE ELDER GOPAL
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Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His Mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
--
During his second visit, about a month later, suddenly, at the touch of the Master, Narendra felt overwhelmed and saw the walls of the room and everything around him whirling and vanishing. "What are you doing to me?" he cried in terror. "I have my father and Mother at home." He saw his own ego and the whole universe almost swallowed in a nameless void. With a laugh the Master easily restored him. Narendra thought he might have been hypnotized, but he could not understand how a monomaniac could cast a spell over the mind of a strong person like himself. He returned home more confused than ever, resolved to be henceforth on his guard before this strange man.
But during his third visit Narendra fared no better. This time, at the Master's touch, he lost consciousness entirely. While he was still in that state, Sri Ramakrishna questioned him concerning his spiritual antecedents and whereabouts, his mission in this world, and the duration of his mortal life. The answers confirmed what the Master himself had known and inferred. Among other things, he came to know that Narendra was a sage who had already attained perfection, and that the day he learnt his real nature he would give up his body in yoga, by an act of will.
--
Sri Ramakrishna was grateful to the Divine Mother for sending him one who doubted his own realizations. Often he asked Narendra to test him as the money-changers test their coins. He laughed at Narendra's biting criticism of his spiritual experiences and samadhi. When at times Narendra's sharp words distressed him, the Divine Mother Herself would console him, saying: "Why do you listen to him? In a few days he will believe your every word." He could hardly bear Narendra's absences. Often he would weep bitterly for the sight of him. Sometimes Narendra would find the Master's love embarrassing; and one day he sharply scolded him, warning him that such infatuation would soon draw him down to the level of its object. The Master was distressed and prayed to the Divine Mother. Then he said to Narendra: "You rogue, I won't listen to you any more. Mother says that I love you because I see God in you, and the day I no longer see God in you I shall not be able to bear even the sight of you."
The Master wanted to train Narendra in the teachings of the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy. But Narendra, because of his Brahmo upbringing, considered it wholly blasphemous to look on man as one with his Creator. One day at the temple garden he laughingly said to a friend: "How silly! This jug is God! This cup is God! Whatever we see is God! And we too are God! Nothing could be more absurd." Sri Ramakrishna came out of his room and gently touched him. Spellbound, he immediately perceived that everything in the world was indeed God. A new universe opened around him. Returning home in a dazed state, he found there too that the food, the plate, the eater himself, the people around him, were all God. When he walked in the street, he saw that the cabs, the horses, the streams of people, the buildings, were all Brahman. He could hardly go about his day's business. His parents became anxious about him and thought him ill. And when the intensity of the experience abated a little, he saw the world as a dream. Walking in the public square, he would strike his head against the iron railings to know whether they were real. It took him a number of days to recover his normal self. He had a foretaste of the great experiences yet to come and realized that the words of the Vedanta were true.
--
Narendra began to talk of his doubt of the very existence of God. His friends thought he had become an atheist, and piously circulated gossip adducing unmentionable motives for his unbelief. His moral character was maligned. Even some of the Master's disciples partly believed the gossip, and Narendra told these to their faces that only a coward believed in God through fear of suffering or hell. But he was distressed to think that Sri Ramakrishna, too, might believe these false reports. His pride revolted. He said to himself: "What does it matter? If a man's good name rests on such slender foundations, I don't care." But later on he was amazed to learn that the Master had never lost faith in him. To a disciple who complained about Narendra's degradation, Sri Ramakrishna replied: "Hush, you fool! The Mother has told me it can never be so. I won't look at you if you speak that way again."
The moment came when Narendra's distress reached its climax. He had gone the whole day without food. As he was returning home in the evening he could hardly lift his tired limbs. He sat down in front of a house in sheer exhaustion, too weak even to think. His mind began to wander. Then, suddenly, a divine power lifted the veil over his soul. He found the solution of the problem of the coexistence of divine justice and misery, the presence of suffering in the creation of a blissful Providence. He felt bodily refreshed, his soul was bathed in peace, and he slept serenely.
--
One day, soon after, Narendra requested Sri Ramakrishna to pray to the Divine Mother to remove his poverty. Sri Ramakrishna bade him pray to Her himself, for She would certainly listen to his prayer. Narendra entered the shrine of Kali. As he stood before the image of the Mother, he beheld Her as a living Goddess, ready to give wisdom and liberation. Unable to ask Her for petty worldly things, he prayed only for knowledge and renunciation, love and liberation. The Master rebuked him for his failure to ask the Divine Mother to remove his poverty and sent him back to the temple. But Narendra, standing in Her presence, again forgot the purpose of his coming. Thrice he went to the temple at the bidding of the Master, and thrice he returned, having forgotten in Her presence why he had come. He was wondering about it when it suddenly flashed in his mind that this was all the work of Sri Ramakrishna; so now he asked the Master himself to remove his poverty, and was assured that his family would not lack simple food and clothing.
This was a very rich and significant experience for Narendra. It taught him that Sakti, the Divine Power, cannot be ignored in the world and that in the relative plane the need of worshipping a Personal God is imperative. Sri Ramakrishna was overjoyed with the conversion. The next day, sitting almost on Narendra's lap, he said to a devotee, pointing first to himself, then to Narendra: "I see I am this, and again that. Really I feel no difference. A stick floating in the Ganges seems to divide the water; But in reality the water is one. Do you see my point? Well, whatever is, is the Mother — isn't that so?" In later years Narendra would say: "Sri Ramakrishna was the only person who, from the time he met me, believed in me uniformly throughout. Even my Mother and brothers did not. It was his unwavering trust and love for me that bound me to him for ever. He alone knew how to love. Worldly people, only make a show of love for selfish ends.
--- TARAK
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Jogindranath came of an aristocratic brahmin family of Dakshineswar. His father and relatives shared the popular mistrust of Sri Ramakrishna's sanity. At a very early age the boy developed religious tendencies, spending two or three hours daily in meditation, and his meeting with Sri Ramakrishna deepened his desire for the realization of God. He had a perfect horror of marriage. But at the earnest request of his Mother he had had to yield, and he now believed that his spiritual future was doomed. So he kept himself away from the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna employed a ruse to bring Jogindra to him. As soon as the disciple entered the room, the Master rushed forward to meet the young man. Catching hold of the disciple's hand, he said: "What if you have married? Haven't I too married? What is there to be afraid of in that?" Touching his own chest he said: "If this [meaning himself] is propitious, then even a hundred thousand marriages cannot injure you. If you desire to lead a householder's life, then bring your wife here one day, and I shall see that she becomes a real companion in your spiritual progress. But if you want to lead a monastic life, then I shall eat up your attachment to the world." Jogin was dumbfounded at these words. He received new strength, and his spirit of renunciation was re-established.
--
Harinath had led the austere life of a brahmachari even from his early boyhood — bathing in the Ganges every day, cooking his own meals, waking before sunrise, and reciting the Gita from memory before leaving bed. He found in the Master the embodiment of the Vedanta scriptures. Aspiring to be a follower of the ascetic Sankara, he cherished a great hatred for women. One day he said to the Master that he could not allow even small girls to come near him. The Master scolded him and said: "You are talking like a fool. Why should you hate women? They are the manifestations of the Divine Mother. Regard them as your own Mother and you will never feel their evil influence. The more you hate them, the more you will fall into their snares." Hari said later that these words completely changed his attitude toward women.
The Master knew Hari's passion for Vedanta. But he did not wish any of his disciples to become a dry ascetic or a mere bookworm. So he asked Hari to practise Vedanta in life by giving up the unreal and following the Real. "But it is not so easy", Sri Ramakrishna said, "to realize the illusoriness of the world. Study alone does not help one very much. The grace of God is required. Mere personal effort is futile. A man is a tiny creature after all, with very limited powers. But he can achieve the impossible if he prays to God for His grace." Whereupon the Master sang a song in praise of grace. Hari was profoundly moved and shed tears. Later in life Hari achieved a wonderful synthesis of the ideals of the Personal God and the Impersonal Truth.
--
Subodh visited the Master in 1885. At the very first meeting Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "You will succeed. Mother says so. Those whom She sends here will certainly attain spirituality." During the second meeting the Master wrote something on Subodh's tongue, stroked his body from the navel to the throat, and said, "Awake, Mother! Awake." He asked the boy to meditate. At once Subodh's latent spirituality was awakened. He felt a current rushing along the spinal column to the brain. Joy filled his soul.
--- SARADA AND TULASI
--
Unsurpassed among the woman devotees of the Master in the richness of her devotion and spiritual experiences was Aghoremani Devi, an orthodox brahmin woman. Widowed at an early age, she had dedicated herself completely to spiritual pursuits. Gopala, the Baby Krishna, was her Ideal Deity, whom she worshipped following the vatsalya attitude of the Vaishnava religion, regarding Him as her own child. Through Him she satisfied her unassuaged maternal love, cooking for Him, feeding Him, bathing Him, and putting Him to bed. This sweet intimacy with Gopala won her the sobriquet of Gopal Ma, or Gopala's Mother. For forty years she had lived on the bank of the Ganges in a small, bare room, her only companions being a threadbare copy of the Ramayana and a bag containing her rosary. At the age of sixty, in 1884, she visited Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. During the second visit, as soon as the Master saw her, he said: "Oh, you have come! Give me something to eat." With great hesitation she gave him some ordinary sweets that she had purchased for him on the way. The Master ate them with relish and asked her to bring him simple curries or sweets prepared by her own hands. Gopal Ma thought him a queer kind of monk, for, instead of talking of God, he always asked for food. She did not want to visit him again, but an irresistible attraction brought her back to the temple garden; She carried with her some simple curries that she had cooked herself.
One early morning at three o'clock, about a year later, Gopal Ma was about to finish her daily devotions, when she was startled to find Sri Ramakrishna sitting on her left, with his right hand clenched, like the hand of the image of Gopala. She was amazed and caught hold of the hand, whereupon the figure vanished and in its place appeared the real Gopala, her Ideal Deity. She cried aloud with joy. Gopala begged her for butter. She pleaded her poverty and gave Him some dry coconut candies. Gopala, sat on her lap, snatched away her rosary, jumped on her shoulders, and moved all about the room. As soon as the day broke she hastened to Dakshineswar like an insane woman. Of course Gopala accompanied her, resting His head on her shoulder. She clearly saw His tiny ruddy feet hanging over her breast. She entered Sri Ramakrishna's room. The Master had fallen into samadhi. Like a child, he sat on her lap, and she began to feed him with butter, cream, and other delicacies. After some time he regained consciousness and returned to his bed. But the mind of Gopala's Mother was still roaming in another plane. She was steeped in bliss. She saw Gopala frequently entering the Master's body and again coming out of it. When she returned to her hut, still in a dazed condition, Gopala accompanied her.
She spent about two months in uninterrupted communion with God, the Baby Gopala never leaving her for a moment. Then the intensity of her vision was lessened; had it not been, her body would have perished. The Master spoke highly of her exalted spiritual condition and said that such vision of God was a rare thing for ordinary mortals. The fun-loving Master one day confronted the critical Narendranath with this simple-minded woman. No two could have presented a more striking contrast. The Master knew of Narendra's lofty contempt for all visions, and he asked the old lady to narrate her experiences to Narendra. With great hesitation she told him her story. Now and then she interrupted her maternal chatter to ask Narendra: "My son, I am a poor ignorant woman. I don't understand anything. You are so learned. Now tell me if these visions of Gopala are true." As Narendra listened to the story he was profoundly moved. He said, "Yes, Mother, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of love and tenderness.
--- THE MARCH OF EVENTS
In 1881 Hriday was dismissed from service in the Kali temple, for an act of indiscretion, and was ordered by the authorities never again to enter the garden. In a way the hand of the Divine Mother may be seen even in this. Having taken care of Sri Ramakrishna during the stormy days of his spiritual discipline, Hriday had come naturally to consider himself the sole guardian of his uncle. None could approach the Master without his knowledge. And he would be extremely jealous if Sri Ramakrishna paid attention to anyone else. Hriday's removal made it possible for the real devotees of the Master to approach him freely and live with him in the temple garden.
During the week-ends the householders, enjoying a respite from their office duties, visited the Master. The meetings on Sunday afternoons were of the nature of little festivals. Refreshments were often served. Professional musicians now and then sang devotional songs. The Master and the devotees sang and danced, Sri Ramakrishna frequently going into ecstatic moods. The happy memory of such a Sunday would linger long in the minds of the devotees. Those whom the Master wanted for special instruction he would ask to visit him on Tuesdays and Saturdays. These days were particularly auspicious for the worship of Kali.
--
Finally, there was a handful of fortunate disciples, householders as well as youngsters, who were privileged to spend nights with the Master in his room. They would see him get up early in the morning and walk up and down the room, singing in his sweet voice and tenderly communing with the Mother.
--- INJURY TO THE MASTER'S ARM
One day, in January 1884, the Master was going toward the pine-grove when he went into a trance. He was alone. There was no one to support him or guide his footsteps. He fell to the ground and dislocated a bone in his left arm. This accident had a significant influence on his mind, the natural inclination of which was to soar above the consciousness of the body. The acute pain in the arm forced his mind to dwell on the body and on the world outside. But he saw even in this a divine purpose; for, with his mind compelled to dwell on the physical plane, he realized more than ever that he was an instrument in the hand of the Divine Mother, who had a mission to fulfil through his human body and mind. He also distinctly found that in the phenomenal world God manifests Himself, in an inscrutable way, through diverse human beings, both good and evil. Thus he would speak of God in the guise of the wicked, God in the guise of the pious. God in the guise of the hypocrite, God in the guise of the lewd. He began to take a special delight in watching the divine play in the relative world. Sometimes the sweet human relationship with God would appear to him more appealing than the all-effacing Knowledge of Brahman. Many a time he would pray: " Mother, don't make me unconscious through the Knowledge of Brahman. Don't give me Brahmajnana, Mother. Am I not Your child, and naturally timid? I must have my Mother. A million salutations to the Knowledge of Brahman! Give it to those who want it." Again he prayed: "O Mother let me remain in contact with men! Don't make me a dried-up ascetic. I want to enjoy Your sport in the world." He was able to taste this very rich divine experience and enjoy the love of God and the company of His devotees because his mind, on account of the injury to his arm, was forced to come down to the consciousness of the body. Again, he would make fun of people who proclaimed him as a Divine Incarnation, by pointing to his broken arm. He would say, "Have you ever heard of God breaking His arm?" It took the arm about five months to heal.
--- BEGINNING OF HIS ILLNESS
In April 1885 the Master's throat became inflamed. Prolonged conversation or absorption in samadhi, making the blood flow into the throat, would aggravate the pain. Yet when the annual Vaishnava festival was celebrated at Panihati, Sri Ramakrishna attended it against the doctor's advice. With a group of disciples he spent himself in music, dance, and ecstasy. The illness took a turn for the worse and was diagnosed as "clergyman's sore throat". The patient was cautioned against conversation and ecstasies. Though he followed the physician's directions regarding medicine and diet, he could neither control his trances nor withhold from seekers the solace of his advice. Sometimes, like a sulky child, he would complain to the Mother about the crowds, who gave him no rest day or night. He was overheard to say to Her; "Why do You bring here all these worthless people, who are like milk diluted with five times its own quantity of water? My eyes are almost destroyed with blowing the fire to dry up the water. My health is gone. It is beyond my strength. Do it Yourself, if You want it done. This (pointing to his own body) is but a perforated drum, and if you go on beating it day in and day out, how long will it last?"
But his large heart never turned anyone away. He said, "Let me be condemned to be born over and over again, even in the form of a dog, if I can be of help to a single soul." And he bore the pain, singing cheerfully, "Let the body be preoccupied with illness, but, O mind, dwell for ever in God's Bliss!"
--
The Holy Mother — so Sarada Devi had come to be affectionately known by Sri Ramakrishna's devotees — was brought from Dakshineswar to look after the general cooking and to prepare the special diet of the patient. The dwelling space being extremely limited, she had to adapt herself to cramped conditions. At three o'clock in the morning she would finish her bath in the Ganges and then enter a small covered place on the roof, where she spent the whole day cooking and praying. After eleven at night, when the visitors went away, she would come down to her small bedroom on the first floor to enjoy a few hours' sleep. Thus she spent three months, working hard, sleeping little, and praying constantly for the Master's recovery.
At Syampukur the devotees led an intense life. Their attendance on the Master was in itself a form of spiritual discipline. His mind was constantly soaring to an exalted plane of consciousness. Now and then they would catch the contagion of his spiritual fervour. They sought to divine the meaning of this illness of the Master, whom most of them had accepted as an Incarnation of God. One group, headed by Girish with his robust optimism and great power of imagination, believed that the illness was a mere pretext to serve a deeper purpose. The Master had willed his illness in order to bring the devotees together and promote solidarity among them. As soon as this purpose was served, he would himself get rid of the disease. A second group thought that the Divine Mother, in whose hand the Master was an instrument, had brought about this illness to serve Her own mysterious ends. But the young rationalists, led by Narendra, refused to ascribe a
supernatural cause to a natural phenomenon. They believed that the Master's body, a material thing, was subject, like all other material things, to physical laws. Growth, development, decay, and death were laws of nature to which the Master's body could not but respond. But though holding differing views, they all believed that it was to him alone that they must look for the attainment of their spiritual goal.
--
The more the body was devastated by illness, the more it became the habitation of the Divine Spirit. Through its transparency the gods and goddesses began to shine with ever increasing luminosity. On the day of the Kali Puja the devotees clearly saw in him the manifestation of the Divine Mother.
It was noticed at this time that some of the devotees were making an unbridled display of their emotions. A number of them, particularly among the householders, began to cultivate, though at first unconsciously, the art of shedding tears, shaking the body, contorting the face, and going into trances, attempting thereby to imitate the Master. They began openly to declare Sri Ramakrishna a Divine Incarnation and to regard themselves as his chosen people, who could neglect religious disciplines with impunity. Narendra's penetrating eye soon sized up the situation. He found out that some of these external manifestations were being carefully practised at home, while some were the outcome of malnutrition, mental weakness, or nervous debility. He mercilessly exposed the devotees who were pretending to have visions, and asked all to develop a healthy religious spirit. Narendra sang inspiring songs for the younger devotees, read with them the Imitation of Christ and the Gita, and held before them the positive ideals of spirituality.
--
It took the group only a few days to become adjusted to the new environment. The Holy Mother, assisted by Sri Ramakrishna's niece, Lakshmi Devi, and a few woman devotees, took charge of the cooking for the Master and his attendants. Surendra willingly bore the major portion of the expenses, other householders contributing according to their means. Twelve disciples were constant attendants of the Master: Narendra, Rakhal, Baburam, Niranjan, Jogin, Latu, Tarak, the-elder Gopal, Kali, Sashi, Sarat, and the younger Gopal. Sarada, Harish, Hari, Gangadhar, and Tulasi visited the Master from time to time and practised sadhana at home. Narendra, preparing for his law examination, brought his books to the garden house in order to continue his studies during the infrequent spare moments. He encouraged his brother disciples to intensify their meditation, scriptural studies, and other spiritual disciplines. They all forgot their relatives and their
worldly duties.
--
Pundit Shashadhar one day suggested to the Master that the latter could remove the illness by concentrating his mind on the throat, the scriptures having declared that yogis had power to cure themselves in that way. The Master rebuked the pundit. "For a scholar like you to make such a proposal!" he said. "How can I withdraw the mind from the Lotus Feet of God and turn it to this worthless cage of flesh and blood?" "For our sake at least", begged Narendra and the other disciples. "But", replied Sri Ramakrishna, do you think I enjoy this suffering? I wish to recover, but that depends on the Mother."
NARENDRA: "Then please pray to Her. She must listen to you."
--
The words were tender and touching. Like a Mother he caressed Narendra and Rakhal, gently stroking their faces. He said in a half whisper to M., "Had this body been allowed to last a little longer, many more souls would have been illumined." He paused a moment and then said: "But Mother has ordained otherwise. She will take me away lest, finding me guileless and foolish, people should take advantage of me and persuade me to bestow on them the rare gifts of spirituality." A few minutes later he touched his chest and said: "Here are two beings. One is She and the other is Her devotee. It is the latter who broke his arm, and it is he again who is now ill. Do you understand me?" After a pause he added: "Alas! To whom shall I tell all this? Who will understand me?" "Pain", he consoled them again, 'is unavoidable as long as there is a body. The Lord takes on the body for the sake of His devotees."
Yet one is not sure whether the Master's soul actually was tortured by this agonizing disease. At least during his moments of spiritual exaltation — which became almost constant during the closing days of his life on earth — he lost all consciousness of the body, of illness and suffering. One of his attendants (Latu, later known as Swami Adbhutananda.) said later on: "While Sri Ramakrishna lay sick he never actually suffered pain. He would often say: 'O mind! Forget the body, forget the sickness, and remain merged in Bliss.' No, he did not really suffer. At times he would be in a state when the thrill of joy was clearly manifested in his body. Even when he could not speak he would let us know in some way that there was no suffering, and this fact was clearly evident to all who watched him. People who did not understand him thought that his suffering was very great. What spiritual joy he transmitted to us at that time! Could such a thing have been possible if he had 'been suffering physically? It was during this period that he taught us again these truths: 'Brahman is always unattached. The three gunas are in It, but It is unaffected by them, just as the wind carries odour yet remains odourless.' 'Brahman is Infinite Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Bliss. In It there exist no delusion, no misery, no disease, no death, no growth, no decay.' 'The Transcendental Being and the being within are one and the same. There is one indivisible Absolute Existence.'"
The Holy Mother secretly went to a Siva temple across the Ganges to intercede with the Deity for the Master's recovery. In a revelation she was told to prepare herself for the inevitable end.
One day when Narendra was on the ground floor, meditating, the Master was lying awake in his bed upstairs. In the depths of his meditation Narendra felt as though a lamp were burning at the back of his head. Suddenly he lost consciousness. It was the yearned-for, all-effacing experience of nirvikalpa samadhi, when the embodied soul realizes its unity with the Absolute. After a very long time he regained partial consciousness but was unable to find his body. He could see only his head. "Where is my body?" he cried. The elder Gopal entered the room and said, "Why, it is here, Naren!" But Narendra could not find it. Gopal, frightened, ran upstairs to the Master. Sri Ramakrishna only said: "Let him stay that way for a time. He has worried me long enough."
After another long period Narendra regained full consciousness. Bathed in peace, he went to the Master, who said: "Now the Mother has shown you everything. But this revelation will remain under lock and key, and I shall keep the key. When you have accomplished the Mother's work you will find the treasure again."
Some days later, Narendra being alone with the Master, Sri Ramakrishna looked at him and went into samadhi. Narendra felt the penetration of a subtle force and lost all outer consciousness. Regaining presently the normal mood, he found the Master weeping.
--
The Holy Mother was weeping in her room, not for her husband, but because she felt that Mother Kali had left her. As she was about to put on the marks of a Hindu widow, in a moment of revelation she heard the words of faith, "I have only passed from one room to another."
0.00 - Publishers Note C, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present volume consists of three books: Light of Lights, Eight Talks and Sweet Mother; there are also translations from Sanskrit, Pali, Bengali and French. These, along with the translations of the Dhammapada and Charyapada, have been mostly serialised in Ashram journals.
His original writings in French have also been included here. We are grateful to the Government of India for a grant towards meeting the cost of publication of this volume.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
GOD the Father and Mother is concealed in Genera-
tion.
--
The Brothers of A.'.A.'. are one with the Mother of
the Child.(4)
--
Be thou the Bride; thou shalt be the Mother here-
after.
--
the Mother in the Tetragrammaton. See Chapter 0,
"God the Father and Mother is concealed in genera-
tion".
--
Babalon; these are called Father and Mother, but
it is not so. They are called Brother and Sister,
--
Mother; we create in our own image, which is theirs.
Let us create therefore without fear; for we can
--
The number 41 is that of the Barren Mother.
NOTE
--
The desire of the Moth for the star at least saves him
satiety.
--
Mother-letter {Aleph} is an inadequate solution of the Great
Problem. {Aleph} is identified with the Yoni, for all the
--
Could but Thy Mother behold thee, O thou UNT!(37)
The Infinite Snake Ananta that surroundeth the
--
to binah, the Mother.
Paragraph 6 whispers the ultimate and dread secret of initiation into his
--
to express "the Mother" instead of Epsilon ({Epsilon}), to show that She
has been impregnated by the Spirit; it is the rough breathing and
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the Mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
--
There was an urge in M. to abandon the household life and become a Sannysin. When he communicated this idea to the Master, he forbade him saying," Mother has told me that you have to do a little of Her work you will have to teach Bhagavata, the word of God to humanity. The Mother keeps a Bhagavata Pandit with a bondage in the world!"
( Ibid P.36.)
--
After the Master's demise, M. went on pilgrimage several times. He visited Banras, Vrindvan, Ayodhy and other places. At Banras he visited the famous Trailinga Swmi and fed him with sweets, and he had long conversations with Swami Bhaskarananda, one of the noted saintly and scholarly Sannysins of the time. In 1912 he went with the Holy Mother to Banras, and spent about a year in the company of Sannysins at Banras, Vrindvan, Hardwar, Hrishikesh and Swargashram. But he returned to Calcutta, as that city offered him the unique opportunity of associating himself with the places hallowed by the Master in his lifetime. Afterwards he does not seem to have gone to any far-off place, but stayed on in his room in the Morton School carrying on his spiritual ministry, speaking on the Master and his teachings to the large number of people who flocked to him after having read his famous Kathmrita known to English readers as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
This brings us to the circumstances that led to the writing and publication of this monumental work, which has made M. one of the immortals in hagiographic literature.
--
Even as a boy of about thirteen, while he was a student in the 3rd class of the Hare School, he was in the habit of keeping a diary. "Today on rising," he wrote in his diary, "I greeted my father and Mother, prostrating on the ground before them" (Swami Nityatmananda's 'M The Apostle and the Evangelist' Part I. P 29.) At another place he wrote, "Today, while on my way to school, I visited, as usual, the temples of Kli, the Mother at Tharitharia, and of Mother Sitala, and paid my obeisance to them." About twenty-five years after, when he met the Great Master in the spring of 1882, it was the same instinct of a born diary-writer that made him begin his book, 'unique in the literature of hagiography', with the memorable words: "When hearing the name of Hari or Rma once, you shed tears and your hair stands on end, then you may know for certain that you do not have to perform devotions such as Sandhya any more."
In addition to this instinct for diary-keeping, M. had great endowments contri buting to success in this line. Writes Swami Nityatmananda who lived in close association with M., in his book entitled M - The Apostle and Evangelist: "M.'s prodigious memory combined with his extraordinary power of imagination completely annihilated the distance of time and place for him. Even after the lapse of half a century he could always visualise vividly, scenes from the life of Sri Ramakrishna. Superb too was his power to portray pictures by words."
--
During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; for the Great Master was so full of the spirit of renunciation and humility that he disliked being lionised. It must be for this reason that no one knew about this precious diary of M. for a decade until he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in 1897 with the Holy Mother's blessings and permission. The Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: "When I heard the Kathmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he, the Master, who was saying all that." ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
The two pamphlets in English entitled the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna appeared in October and November 1897. They drew the spontaneous acclamation of Swami Vivekananda, who wrote on 24th November of that year from Dehra Dun to M.:"Many many thanks for your second leaflet. It is indeed wonderful. The move is quite original, and never was the life of a Great Teacher brought before the public untarnished by the writer's mind, as you are doing. The language also is beyond all praise, so fresh, so pointed, and withal so plain and easy. I cannot express in adequate terms how I have enjoyed them. I am really in a transport when I read them. Strange, isn't it? Our Teacher and Lord was so original, and each one of us will have to be original or nothing.
--
About twenty-seven years of his life he spent in this way in the heart of the great city of Calcutta, radiating the Master's thoughts and ideals to countless devotees who flocked to him, and to still larger numbers who read his Kathmrita (English Edition : The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna), the last part of which he had completed before June 1932 and given to the press. And miraculously, as it were, his end also came immediately after he had completed his life's mission. About three months earlier he had come to stay at his home at 13/2 Gurdasprasad Chaudhuary Lane at Thakur Bari, where the Holy Mother had herself installed the Master and where His regular worship was being conducted for the previous 40 years. The night of 3rd June being the Phalahrini Kli Pooja day, M.
had sent his devotees who used to keep company with him, to attend the special worship at Belur Math at night. After attending the service at the home shrine, he went through the proof of the Kathmrita for an hour. Suddenly he got a severe attack of neuralgic pain, from which he had been suffering now and then, of late. Before 6 a.m. in the early hours of 4th June 1932 he passed away, fully conscious and chanting: 'Gurudeva-Ma, Kole tule na-o (Take me in your arms! O Master! O Mother!!)'
SWMI TAPASYNANDA
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
Letters from the Mother to Her Son
Our community is growing more and more; we are nearly thirty
--
Written in connection with a newspaper article in which it was stated that the Mother
had not slept for several months.
0.02 - II - The Home of the Guru, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The Master, the Guru, set at rest the puzzled human mind by his illuminating answers, perhaps even more by his silent consciousness, so that it might be able to pursue unhampered the path of realisation of the Truth. Those ancient discourses answer the mind of man today even across the ages. They have rightly acquired as everything of the past does a certain sanctity. But sometimes that very reverence prevents men from properly evaluating, and living in, the present. This happens when the mind instead of seeking the Spirit looks at the form. For instance, it is not necessary for such discourses that they take place in forest-groves in order to be highly spiritual. Wherever the Master is, there is Light. And guru-griha the house of the Master can be his private dwelling place. So much was this feeling a part of Sri Aurobindo's nature and so particular was he to maintain the personal character of his work that during the first few years after 1923 he did not like his house to be called an 'Ashram', as the word had acquired the sense of a public institution to the modern mind. But there was no doubt that the flower of Divinity had blossomed in him; and disciples, like bees seeking honey, came to him. It is no exaggeration to say that these Evening Talks were to the small company of disciples what the Aranyakas were to the ancient seekers. Seeking the Light, they came to the dwelling place of their Guru, the greatest seer of the age, and found it their spiritual home the home of their parents, for the Mother, his companion in the great mission, had come. And these spiritual parents bestowed upon the disciples freely of their Light, their Consciousness, their Power and their Grace. The modern reader may find that the form of these discourses differs from those of the past but it was bound to be so for the simple reason that the times have changed and the problems that puzzle the modern mind are so different. Even though the disciples may be very imperfect representations of what he aimed at in them, still they are his creations. It is in order to repay, in however infinitesimal a degree, the debt which we owe to him that the effort is made to partake of the joy of his company the Evening Talks with a larger public.
***
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
I have noticed that even in cases where Mother knows
our needs, She waits to be asked before granting them.
--
I feel a reserve while asking something from Mother.
But in fact, there should be no reserve in our dealings
with Mother; all movements should be movements of
joy, including the movement of asking. As this is lacking,
--
grey paint) A stool used by the Mother has been painted
with "gris entretien". I had informed the stores not to
--
for Mother's stool.
A rule is a rule and I do not see why my stool escaped the rule,
--
Extract from the Mother's Prayers and Meditations, 18 June 1913.
It is good sometimes to look backwards for a confirmation of
--
The sadhak's prayer is composed of extracts from several prayers of the Mother in
Prayers and Meditations,: paragraph one, 29 November 1913; two, 7 January 1914;
--
I was imagining that Mother will throw away this book
in disgust, or that Sri Aurobindo will write two pages
--
from tomorrow. Mother will say: this is the effect of
indulging himself so much in the morning! He deserves
--
O Sweet, Sweet Mother, Thy Peace is in me, Thy Peace
is in me, Thy Peace is in me.
Sleep, child, sleep, with sweet Mother in your heart!
Awake, child, awake, with sweet Mother in your heart!
21 July 1932
--
I thirst for Thy consciousness, O Sweet Mother, I become
one with Thee.
This thirst shall be quenched when this ("O Sweet Mother, I
become one with Thee") is psychologically realised.
--
This evening when Y informed me that Z was ill, I exclaimed that she must have revolted against Mother. He
asked me whether it was my belief that the cause for
--
an incident in which Mother found defects in my work,
Prayers and Meditations, 29 January 1914.
--
Beloved Mother,
As to my belief in the efficacy of prayer, I believe
in its efficacy only when it is addressed to the Mother.
I mean that Mother in that room who is there in flesh
and blood. If you refer your prayer to some unknown
--
help from an invisible and silent Mother (who never contradicts
you openly) if he likes.
--
become conscious that he was working for Mother and
feel the joy of it. After concentrating like this for about
--
A reservation: Mother said this morning that it would
take one and a half months to finish the bathroom. I
--
my mind when I said Yes: (1) When Mother says that it
will take one and a half months, naturally that should be
--
I pray to Mother that there may be no unforeseen delays.
I hope so also - but I have seen that the work takes always
--
I feel I am contradicting Mother. What should I do?
There is no contradiction in stating what you think. I am not
--
should be gone. So I replied, "Yes, Mother, the last man
has gone." And lo, there he is, arranging the polishing
--
Sweet Mother,
X told me this morning, "Do you see the plaster
--
Sweet Mother,
"One must know how to soar in an immutable confidence; in the sure flight is perfect knowledge."9 I don't
--
Sweet Mother,
I still cannot make a clear distinction between a
--
Sweet Mother said, "There is still another method." I
was a bit perplexed as to how to apply Sweet Mother's
words to the letter. I started following Her advice. I
--
Sweet Mother,
The old servant X wants a job for her young son
--
Sweet Mother,
The carpenter Y has taken ten days' leave in order to
--
him that Mother approves neither of marriage - far less
of remarriage - nor of loans to encourage marriages.
He insists on asking Sweet Mother.
Your orders please, Mother wonderful!
What can we do? He is a good and regular worker, isn't he? I
--
Sweet Mother,
The measuring tape: mere common sense shows that
--
I earnestly hope that Mother will not disgrace me by giving
me one, for it would cover me with shame and embarrassment.
--
the Mother."
12 September 1933
--
Sweet Mother,
The blacksmith: an iron shaving got into his eye. Is
--
Enlighten me, Sweet Mother.
These movements spring from desire and ignorance (X's desire
--
O Mother divine,
I have started examining the details of the work with
--
Sweet Mother,
How can people insult me so easily, I wonder. Is
--
Sweet Mother,
This morning at pranam a prayer leapt up from my
--
Sweet Mother,
Regarding the partition-cupboard in Y's room: I
--
What should I do, Sweet Mother? I call for Your help.
You must be calm and concentrated, never utter an unnecessary
--
Sweet Mother,
An exercise: If you notice that your voice is rising,
stop speaking immediately; call upon Sweet Mother to
make you aware of the hidden deformation. Is it all right,
Sweet Mother?
It is quite all right.
--
Sweet Mother,
I have had a pain in the right side of my chest and in
--
communicating with Mother. I can't find the solution.
I concentrate on Mother, ask Her to guide me and find
the solution. This is not unusual. It has happened several
--
Sadhak: No, we meditate with Mother.
Mr. Z: On what do you meditate?
--
(The Mother underlined most of the remarks above
in red pencil.)
--
Sweet Mother,
When I read a novel or anything in print I clearly understand, say, eighty per cent. But when someone speaks,
--
Sweet Mother,
A prayer: Teach me the unfailing way to receive from
Sweet Mother a healing and comforting kiss.
Why do you want an outward sign of my love? Are you not
--
Sweet Mother,
I admit that I have much to learn from X. I bow to
Sweet Mother in X. Make our relationship one through
which I may benefit and come to know you.
--
Sweet Mother,
I have a confession to make. My mind is flooded
--
Sweet Mother,
All the pain I have felt till tonight comes from my
reservations with regard to Sweet Mother. Is my diagnosis correct? If so, how can I do away with these
reservations without seeming to contradict or embarrass
Sweet Mother?
I am going to begin by telling you a very little story. Then I shall
--
O Sweet Mother,
I am thirsting, thirsting for Your love!
--
Sweet Mother,
This morning You said that when one has a feeling of
--
Sweet Mother,
While inspecting the stores I found that the principle
--
Sweet Mother,
X sent me a mason with a dismissal note this morning. Later, I learnt from X that the mason had laughed
--
Sweet Mother,
I heard that one can know all the qualities of any
--
O Sweet Mother,
I sing Your praises. I will never forget how You respond when one calls You with intensity, nor the marvel
--
I bow to You, Sweet Mother. Be present in me always
and for ever.
--
Sweet Mother,
I know that I was not obliged to give Y an explanation for my decision. In his expression, the question was
--
this weakness? O Sweet Mother, how should one act in
such cases?
--
Sweet Mother,
Listen to these two accounts of inner suggestions.
--
Sweet Mother,
Please forgive me for my ambiguous reply to Z. I
--
without getting a headache, Sweet Mother?
It may be the contradiction between these two movements which
--
Sweet Mother,
What does "listening to the voice" mean? Is it like
--
distinguished, Sweet Mother?
It was obviously an inner voice. One rarely hears the sound of
--
Sweet Mother,
I have decided to adopt the following attitude towards Z. If I have any suggestion or remark to make
--
right. We shall both submit our views to Mother and she will
decide."
--
Sweet Mother,
You have made me aware of the subconscious movements governing my action. Whenever a similar opportunity arises, will You please make me more and more
--
O Sweet Mother, I assure You, I promise You, that with
Your Grace I will be myself again within a short time.
--
use me even as You use Your feet, O Sweet Mother.
I bow to You in joyful gratitude.
--
of someone's room, and wrote to the Mother explaining
his decision.)
--
Sweet Mother,
Yesterday X asked me whether the nails in his wall
--
on this point I said, "Ask Mother." Later it was Sweet
Mother who decided not to have them removed.
--
Sweet Mother,
You wrote to me, "It is precisely because your refusal had no real cause that it did not have the power
--
not supported by Sweet Mother, and I firmly believe that
nothing whatever can hold true or be effective unless it
is supported by Sweet Mother.
When we are in the presence of hostile forces, only the purity of
--
Enlighten me, Sweet Mother.
Your argument seems right, but since its starting-point is wrong
--
When someone makes a remark, why does Sweet Mother
blame me without even asking me for an explanation?
--
O Sweet Mother,
"Penetrate all my being, transfigure it till Thou alone
--
Perhaps Sweet Mother is displeased with me about something? I have no peace.
I am not at all displeased. But what a strange idea to let yourself
--
Sweet Mother,
I don't know why I have lost my self-control and
--
Sweet Mother,
I would like to take part in all the shuttering and
--
Sweet Mother,
For the past few days, every time I meet X, he
--
O Sweet Mother,
In spite of all my efforts at friendly collaboration
--
The remedy: surrender all that to "Sweet Mother" completely and definitively.
With my loving solicitude and my blessings.
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
When Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to No. 9 Rue de la Marine in 1922 the same routine of informal evening sittings after meditation continued. I came to Pondicherry for Sadhana in the beginning of 1923. I kept notes of the important talks I had with the four or five disciples who were already there. Besides, I used to take detailed notes of the Evening Talks which we all had with the Master. They were not intended by him to be noted down. I took them down because of the importance I felt about everything connected with him, no matter how insignificant to the outer view. I also felt that everything he did would acquire for those who would come to know his mission a very great significance.
As years passed the evening sittings went on changing their time and often those disciples who came from outside for a temporary stay for Sadhana were allowed to join them. And, as the number of sadhaks practising the Yoga increased, the evening sittings also became more full, and the small verandah upstairs in the main building was found insufficient. Members of the household would gather every day at the fixed time with some sense of expectancy and start chatting in low tones. Sri Aurobindo used to come last and it was after his coming that the session would really commence.
--
From 1922 to 1926, No. 9, Rue de la Marine, where he and the Mother had shifted, was the place where the sittings were held. There, also upstairs, was a less broad verandah than at the Guest House, a little bigger table in front of the central door out of three, and a broad Japanese chair, the table covered with a better cloth than the one in the Guest House, a small flower vase, an ash-tray, a block calendar indicating the date and an ordinary time-piece, and a number of chairs in front in a line. The evening sittings used to be after meditation at 4 or 4.30 p.m. After 24 November 1926, the sittings began to get later and later, till the limit of 1 o'clock at night was reached. Then the curtain fell. Sri Aurobindo retired completely after December 1926, and the evening sittings came to a close.
On 8 February 1927, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to No. 28, Rue Franois Martin, a house on the north-east of the same block as No. 9, Rue de la Marine.
Then, on 23 November 1938, I got up at 2 o'clock to prepare hot water for the Mother's early bath because the 24th was Darshan day. Between 2.20 and 2.30 the Mother rang the bell. I ran up the staircase to be told about an accident that had happened to Sri Aurobindo's thigh and to be asked to fetch the doctor. This accident brought about a change in his complete retirement, and rendered him available to those who had to attend on him. This opened out a long period of 12 years during which his retirement was modified owing to circumstances, inner and outer, that made it possible for him to have direct physical contacts with the world outside.
The long period of the Second World War with all its vicissitudes passed through these years. It was a priceless experience to see how he devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how He comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at one time in his own words "not merely a non-co-operator but an enemy of British Imperialism" bestowed such anxious care on the health of Churchill, listening carefully to the health-bulletins! It was the work of the Divine, it was the Divine's work for the world.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
worked for many years embroidering clothes for the Mother and
later became one of her personal attendants. She began writing
to the Mother at the age of seventeen.
My dear little smile,
--
Silence: the name given by the Mother to the Wild Passion-flower (passiflora incarnata).
why and understanding the deeper cause of your happiness and
--
Dear Mother,
I am sending You this rupee. Now I no longer need
--
Dear Mother,
This subject was given for composition in our French
--
Dear Mother,
I don't want tamas. Today I worked all day.
--
Dear Mother,
I have noticed that in X's presence I dare not do certain things, such as talk in a loud voice or other impolite
--
Dear Mother,
You know that the doctor asked me to look after Y.
--
that the others were listening to the Mother playing the
organ for me, and it made me feel proud. I understood,
--
and sincere joy of a child near to its Mother.
The nature is complex, and always the true and the false,
--
My Mother, today it seems to me that my mind is not
calm enough to write anything to You. Today I worked
--
to me that I would have to write all this to Mother and
suddenly the conversation stopped.
--
won't tell Mother this or that, but rather say: I shall tell her
everything quite frankly.
--
Dear Mother,
I am never satisfied, even though You have given me
--
Dear Mother,
Nowhere do I find any progress. Even in my work I
--
Dear Mother,
I have often noticed that when I wake up from sleep,
--
Dear Mother,
... And as for X, now I think, "Why didn't I refuse
--
Dear Mother,
If You want these imaginations to remain in me, let
--
Dear Mother,
I think this is the last thing I shall write to You.
--
should never have wished to come here. Mother, I wish
You would not tell me that I am rebelling, I do not like
--
I do not know, Mother, why I have written all these
things. Mother, please do not be angry with me, I have
nobody except You.
--
Dear Mother,
"What should disappear will disappear; only what
--
Dear Mother,
This morning after nine o 'clock X came to my room.
--
Dear Mother,
Am I not Your child? Yes, I know that I am a naughty
--
Dear Mother,
It seems to me that my mind (or rather myself)
--
Dear Mother,
What is all this about psychological and physical
--
Dear Mother,
Yes, I know that You know that now I can hide
--
without You, and this is why, Mother, You like to see me
suffer as much as possible - isn't it so?
--
Dear Mother,
For the past two days I have felt a great despair and
--
Dear Mother,
You no longer call me "my child"? Am I so bad and
--
Dear Mother,
You told me to write something to You every day.
--
Dear Mother,
This morning I woke up at 5:45. I washed and
--
sleep, work and talk. Mother, do You like reading the
same thing every day?
--
Your affectionate Mother.
25 January 1933
My dear Mother,
I have noticed that X has not stopped his bad habit.
--
My dear Mother,
Today I prayed to You with my body2 for ten hours.
--
To pray with the body: to do one's work as an offering to the Divine. The Mother has
written: "To work for the Divine is to pray with the body." Words of the Mother - II,
CWM, Vol. 14, p. 299.
My dear Mother,
I worked on the sari for ten hours. I think I shall
--
Dear Mother,
Today I prayed to You with my body for nine hours.
--
My dear Mother,
"Supramental beauty in the physical"3 - what does
--
The Mother's name for a light golden-orange Hibiscus.
Series Three - To "My little smile"
--
My dear Mother,
This morning You gave me a flower which signifies "Consciousness turned towards the supramental
--
The Mother's name for a yellow-orange Sunflower (Helianthus).
My dear Mother,
Have You seen my little roses on Your gown? Are
--
My dear Mother,
Today I prayed to You with my body for nine hours.
--
My dear Mother,
No, I don't want to take a rest. Today I prayed to
--
My dear Mother,
Yes, X told me today that the frame would be completely ready this evening.
--
My dear Mother,
Not only do I work all day, but I want to work as
--
dear Mother? How will my dreams be fulfilled if I waste
my time?
--
My dear Mother,
Mother, do You know, it is I who ironed these two
--
have ironed a blouse. Mother, give me a "bravo" for
this. Tomorrow I am going to start on the other grey
--
My dear Mother,
This morning I cut a chemise for You - it is the first
--
My dear Mother,
I think all the trouble I took for X was in vain. I
--
My dear Mother,
I shall tell You how I usually spend my evenings.
--
My dear Mother,
Today, August 15th, I didn't work; I will start from
--
My dear Mother,
I have started fixing the sari on the embroidery frame
--
My dear Mother,
Today also I was busy fixing the sari on the frame,
--
My dear Mother,
I do not feel that I am working; I just play like a
child all day with the marvellous playthings my Mother
has given me to play with all day. I don't know how to
--
My dear Mother,
I am working on the grey sari. What else? What can
--
My dear Mother,
You have a lot of work; I don't want to take up Your
--
My dear Mother,
After the Darshan I was quiet and happy. At the
--
the sadhaks went before Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to receive their blessings.
Series Three - To "My little smile"
--
then he said, "You are the Mother's child, not Sri Aurobindo's." (It was just a joke, because I can read Your
handwriting but not Sri Aurobindo's.)
Don't you believe that when one is a child of the Mother,
one is at the same time a child of Sri Aurobindo, and viceversa?
--
My dear Mother,
Yesterday and today I worked all day on the "iris"
sari. I love to work for You. Mother, I don't know what
to write. I have nothing to say.
--
My dear Mother,
Today also I worked all day on the "iris" sari; I
--
My dear Mother,
The "iris" flowers are very beautiful. Mother, what
do they signify?
--
My dear Mother,
Yesterday while ironing the blouse I scorched it in a
--
I become a naughty child, don't I, Mother?
Not naughty, poor little one, only a little sad, and that distresses
--
heart. There are bad things too, as You know, Mother
- I have told You about them.
But this little heart is full of love. Mother, we are
going to burn all the bad things in this little heart. Then
--
The Mother's name for the Tiger-claw plant, Heliconia metallica.
I have seen this blouse, I find that the bird-of-paradise
--
My Mother, give me purity and constancy in my
aspiration.
--
My beloved Mother,
You are already in my heart, it is true. But I don't
--
project outward." Mother, when I feel something I feel
it in my heart (and I think everyone feels in his heart).
--
I want to lie on Your lap, Mother.
Poor little one, I very gladly take you on my lap and cradle you
--
Tender love from your Mother.
25 July 1936
--
Tender love from your Mother.
30 July 1936
--
Your Mother.
31 August 1936
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The characteristic energy of bodily Life is not so much in progress as in persistence, not so much in individual selfenlargement as in self-repetition. There is, indeed, in physical Nature a progression from type to type, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to man; for even in inanimate Matter Mind is at work. But once a type is marked off physically, the chief immediate preoccupation of the terrestrial Mother seems to be to keep it in being by a constant reproduction. For Life always seeks immortality; but since individual form is impermanent and only the idea of a form is permanent in the consciousness that creates the universe, - for there it does not perish, - such constant reproduction is the only possible material immortality.
Self-preservation, self-repetition, self-multiplication are necessarily, then, the predominant instincts of all material existence.
--
It is for man to know her meaning, no longer misunderstanding, vilifying or misusing the universal Mother and to aspire always by her mightiest means to her highest ideal.
3 Satya means Truth; Krita, effected or completed.
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
began writing to the Mother at the age of twelve.
Always do with pleasure the work you have to do.
--
My dear Mother,
Today when I went to X for my music lesson I felt
--
O Mother,
The disturbance still has not disappeared. I am in
--
Dearest Mother,
I want to feel your touch in each and every one of
--
Mother, O Mother,
Have I done any wrong? Answer me please. If I have
--
with me? Mother, make me yours.
Why this question? You have done nothing wrong and I am
--
My little Mother,
Yesterday I told you that "we" had painted an envelope. By "we" I mean that there is me and you. I feel
--
Your little Mother.
15 March 1934
My Mother,
I do not want the vulgar joy of the world. Take me
--
Love from your little Mother who is always with you.
15 March 1934
My little Mother,
Peace, peace, give me your unalloyed peace and
--
Your Mother.
16 March 1934
My little Mother,
Why does this difficulty come? Do I open myself to
it or is it something else? Mother, after having come so
close to you, why does it come?
--
Love from your Mother.
17 March 1934
My dear Mother,
My heart wants to run to your feet; it wants to lose
--
Love from your Mother.
29 March 1934
Sweet Mother,
I feel devoid of strength, will and energy. I don't
--
Your Mother.
6 April 1934
My sweet Mother,
May peace be with me always.
--
Love from your Mother.
17 April 1934
--
Sweet Mother,
Give me peace, energy and inspiration.
--
But don't you still have your Mother's friendship? And also
all her love, and her solicitude for you?
--
My sweet Mother,
Human contact has done me much harm, but I
--
My sweet Mother,
You are everywhere. Remain with me always.
--
Your Mother.
4 May 1934
--
knowing. That was my interest, even my passion. My Mother,
who loved us very much - my brother and myself - never allowed us to be ill tempered or discontented or lazy. If we went
--
My Mother was perfectly right and I have always been very
grateful to her for having taught me the discipline and the necessity of self-forgetfulness through concentration on what one
--
Your Mother who loves you.
15 May 1934
--
Love from your Mother.
22 May 1934
--
Your Mother.
2 June 1934
--
My sweet Mother,
I shall be what you want me to be. Dear Mother,
accept my childlike prayer.
--
With your Mother's blessings.
12 June 1934
--
I am your true Mother who will give birth in you to the true
being, the being who is free, peaceful, strong and happy always,
--
Love from your Mother.
25 July 1934
My dear Mother,
Give energy and force to your child. Oh, take me
--
Mother, my dear Mother,
You know everything that I need. Take me into your
--
My dear Mother,
I want to be like the lion on the envelope I am
--
Your Mother.
21 August 1934
My dear Mother,
Purify me. Dispel the shadows. I will not revolt any
--
to grieve your Mother who loves you and wants only your own
good?
--
My dear Mother,
I won't be irregular from today. You know very well
--
am going to the dining-room. My Mother, I want to be
good. Everything has gone now. I want to be your little
--
My dear Mother,
Have I done something that has displeased you?
--
Dearest Mother,
I feel so tired, and my head hurts. Mother, what shall
I do?
--
My dear Mother,
I am not unhappy. All that is a falsehood.
--
My little Mother,
Give me peace. Give me joy in work. Make me your
--
My little Mother,
I want peace. I feel that everything is unquiet.
--
My dearest Mother,
Won't you forgive me? Mother, take me into your
arms.
--
My dear little Mother,
Forgive the faults I have committed. Give me peace.
--
Dearest Mother,
Stay with me always. You know everything.
--
My dear Mother,
I want to feel you near to me always. I want peace.
--
Love from your Mother.
1 February 1935
--
My sweet Mother,
Fill my thoughts with you. Stay always with your
--
My sweet Mother,
I don't know why something in me is sad. Even
--
My dear Mother,
I don't know why I have lost all my happiness and
--
My sweet Mother, what shall I do?
My dear child,
--
Sweet Mother,
I want to be happy, but how? Sadness comes during
my work; I cannot forget it. My dear Mother, be with
me always.
--
Love from your Mother.
12 June 1935
My sweet Mother,
I feel very tired; some part in me is not happy. I don't
--
My dear Mother,
I feel very tired. I also have a slight headache.
--
Love from your Mother.
6 September 1935
My sweet Mother,
For three days I have been feeling sad in the evening.
--
Love from your Mother.
16 December 1936
Sweet Mother,
You told me that I am making progress. Did you
--
and all will be well; but you know, Mother, nothing stays
in me.
--
Love from your Mother.
26 July 1937
My dear Mother,
No, I cannot do all those things. Why did you think
--
Love from your Mother.
28 July 1937
My sweet Mother,
You told me that you saw two things while I was
--
Love from your Mother.
28 August 1937
--
Love from your Mother.
9 September 1937
--
Love from your Mother.
13 September 1937
--
Love from your Mother who never leaves you.
15 May 1938
My sweet Mother,
These last few days I felt that I was going down step
--
see whether I want this life or not? Mother, if you don't
know what my path is, then who does?
--
Love from your Mother.
29 May 1938
My sweet Mother,
I feel completely suffocated. The struggle has become fiercer. How many days must I go on like this?
--
Love from your Mother.
28 June 1938
--
Love from your Mother.
10 July 1938
My sweet Mother,
I want to ask you something concerning my poetry.
--
Your Mother.
17 July 1938
--
My sweet Mother,
Were you angry with me because I have decided to
--
Give me a chance, Mother, please.
One thing I want to ask you: Mother, will you
always be in my heart?
--
Love from your Mother.
30 August 1938
--
Your Mother who loves you.
30 March 1939
--
Your Mother.
11 January 1940
--
O my sweet Mother,
Accept my gratitude for having shown me the true
--
My sweet Mother,
I want to be closer to you in my heart and in all my
--
My sweet Mother,
The more I look into myself, the more discouraged
--
The Mother underlined the words "all will be well" and wrote beside them: "This is
the voice of truth, the one you must listen to."
--
Sweet Mother,
I feel that something is wrong and you are very
--
Sweet Mother,
I pray, please do not be vexed by my letter. I on my
--
Love from your Mother.
Your going away will not help in the least. Exterior means are
--
My little Mother,
I shall be so happy when all the clouds and shadows
--
My Mother,
It is a lack of energy that is preventing me from
--
Love from your Mother.
My dear Mother,
I don't know what to do. I want to open to you, but
--
Love from your Mother who is always there ready to help
you.
My dear Mother,
You are displeased with me, aren't you? I feel so sad.
--
Love from your Mother.
My dear sweet Mother,
Transform my whole nature. I shall be what you
--
heart. I cannot express everything in words, but, Mother,
you know everything.
--
My sweet Mother,
I want a deep peace - a very deep peace. I feel that
--
My sweet Mother,
Light, more light. Enlighten me. Now I know that
you are the greatest power. My Mother, take me into
your heart, dissolve the obstacles.
--
O my dear Mother,
Take me into your heart. No, no, I don't want these
--
With all my love. Your Mother.
My dear child,
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
Beloved Mother, every moment I feel a great transformation taking place in me. Isn't this true?
It is quite true. But it seems to me that even the outer forms,
--
I feel indignant, Mother, for I cannot find my "self", as
soon as I try to do so, I find nothing but this body, which
--
I ask You once again, Mother, what is it that divides my
being?
--
Beloved Mother, guide my steps, illumine my mind, and
do not leave, I pray, any distance between You and me.
--
Divine must be broken. O Mother, I don't know what I
ought to do.
--
My Mother, with all my will and all my effort I want to
realise that love which You have foreseen in your divine
--
My dear Mother, I do not say that I love You and belong
to You, I must prove it in my actions; without that these
--
O Mother, take me with You; I shall seat You for ever in
my heart; I could not bear to lose You.
--
My beloved Mother, if only I could convince my ignorant
being that it is possible to find You in the centre of my
--
Beloved Mother, how shall I find the source of that
Love which will make me feel that the divine Presence is
--
nestles in its Mother's arms, with a complete surrender; and of
the two the latter seems to me the easier.
My darling Mother, if the Divine shows Himself to me
in exchange for my love for Him and the giving of my
--
My beloved Mother, one day You wrote to me that I
must climb to the plane where You are, to be able to
--
to come down here. But Mother, You are so great and
remain so high up that it seems to me almost impossible
--
My beloved Mother, is it not possible to meet You on
some other plane than the physical? I don't mean by
--
Beloved Mother, I must either be transformed or cease
to be.
--
My sweet Mother, do You say that I ought to overcome
this desire to come to You physically?
--
Beloved Mother, there are twenty-four hours in a day,
but I can't remain at Your feet for more than a few
--
Do not leave my heart empty, Mother.
I am always in your heart.
--
What was this thing, Mother?
Certainly it was the psychic being, but it became active only
--
I feel, Mother, that I am a very frivolous fellow; won't
You change me?
--
Beloved Mother, how to master this lethargy that overcomes me? I do not live, Mother, I just exist in some way.
Mother, I must find something which can divert me.
--
Sweet Mother, I am happy because I love You and because I suffer a little in loving You.
I don't see the need of your suffering. Psychic love is always
--
My most beloved Mother, the idea of separation opens
between You and me like a frightening abyss. I am not
--
All will be done, Mother, but why is my heart becoming
more and more dry and hard?
--
My beloved Mother, the whole day I thought of nothing
else except that red rose which signifies "Human passions changed into love for the Divine". I want to know
--
My most beloved Mother, an introspection has revealed
to me many things. There is a jealousy in me which blinds
--
My sweet beloved Mother, I read in the Conversations:
"Concentration alone will lead you to this goal." Should
--
Be with me, Mother, without You I am weak, very weak
and fearful.
--
My adored Mother, Sri Aurobindo's last letter made me
think much. The most obvious sign of the action of an
--
My beloved Mother, can the adverse forces act effectively
against the terrestrial evolution without using a human
--
Sweet Mother, if my company is not good for others,
should I not dissociate myself from everyone?
--
Beloved Mother, do You grant that it is possible to do
without food?
--
My most beloved Mother, I think it would be better to
avoid a party of this kind.
--
My beloved Mother, I want to follow a systematic course
of metaphysics and ethics. I am also thinking of reading
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
surrender of self - oh, how difficult it is, Mother!
There are many things wrong with me, I know. But
--
it, Mother?
Nothing special to you. It is the same difficulty that exists for all
--
any real significance, Mother?
Many things have been said on the subject but, as far as my own
--
From your Mother you can always take, it is quite natural, especially when things are given to you full-heartedly - and am I
not your Mother who loves you?...
3 January 1937
--
What a letter you have written to Y, Mother! You will
turn my head some day, if it is not turned already! But,
--
Eternal Mother,
I have sunk very low in my consciousness and you
seem farther away than ever. You are the Infinite Mother
of all your creation and many are your children. But
--
Lead me to thy own home in Truth, Mother. I offer
thee my will of progressive submission and increasing
--
Love, Mother? How did you know it was the inmost
desire of my heart? You are very, very adorable and very,
--
child to you, O my beloved Mother.
Yes, you are my child and it is true that of all things it is the most
--
you meant, dear Mother. What kind of faith would you
like me to aspire for?
--
Dear, dear, dear Mother,
Every day you are growing more and more lovable
--
dear Mother, and in rare blessed moments I do sense that
we are always surrounded by your love. But as for a real
--
It is not as a Guru that I love and bless, it is as the Mother who
asks nothing in return for what she gives.
--
the love of the Mother who does not ask for anything
in return. That is all right for you, for yours is a selffulfilled life. But I have yet to achieve everything, yet to
--
But what a joy and love it is when both Mother and son are
good!
--
egoism. But if my Mother chooses to see only the good
in her child, that only speaks of the goodness of the
--
(The sadhak received a jar of pickles from the Mother.)
You overwhelm me with your love, dear Mother. I know
I do not deserve one iota of the kindness you show to
--
remember me and think, Mother loves me...
Love and blessings to my dear child.
--
Dear, dear, dear Mother,
I send you heaps and heaps of love. In the lotus of my
--
O Devi, O Mother!
In the secret recesses of my heart's chamber I have
--
Avatar of the Divine Mother whom I adore, but whom
I know not except by Her lotus-feet. That is the reason
--
Will you kindly tell me, dear Mother, if you love me
truly and genuinely in spite of my poor humanity or
--
Dear Mother,
I apologise humbly for my query yesterday and pray
--
What I offer you, my Mother, is a turbid mixture of
which I am ashamed but which you alone can purify.
--
and say to myself, "The Mother loves me." On the crest
of a great wave of love the gift came to me and I felt
--
kindness, my Mother, and grateful too.
There is no contradiction that cannot be solved and harmonised
--
My dear loving Mother,
In my birthday book Sri Aurobindo has written,
--
Why did the Mother choose this frail vessel for Her
abode? I know that so long as She chooses to make her
--
Inside, outside and everywhere is the help of the Mother...
with her love and blessings.
--
Dear Mother,
Your love for poor me is still my lodestar and I am
--
Dear Mother,
I thank you very much for all your kindness and
--
so, Mother? Perhaps you do not approve of my tone;
perhaps you are dissatisfied with my disability; possibly
--
The sadhak asked if he could accept money sent to him by relatives. The Mother
answered: "My dear child, you can be sure of my love and blessings."
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the difference between the psychic change
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one make one's psychic personality grow?
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one draw energy into oneself from outside?
--
Sweet Mother,
What are these other forms of Energy and how do
--
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by "a subtle physical prolongation
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one silence the mind, remain quiet, and
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one eliminate the will of the ego?
--
Sweet Mother,
Why has the Divine made His path so difficult? He
--
Sweet Mother,
You have written that to enter into conscious contact
--
But, Sweet Mother, I don't know how to do this. I find
it easier when I think of you, try to enter into contact
--
Sweet Mother,
Is it possible to have control over oneself during
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the role of the soul?
--
Sweet Mother,
Is there anything like good luck and bad luck, or is
--
Sweet Mother,
What do you give us in the morning at the balcony,1
--
During this period the Mother stood for a while every morning on a balcony facing
the street and gazed at the sadhaks assembled below.
--
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by the "silence of the physical consciousness"2 and how can one remain in this silence?
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one enter into the feelings of a piece of
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one distinguish between good and evil in
--
Sweet Mother,
How should we read your books and the books of Sri
--
Sweet Mother,
Why does meditation in front of different photos of
--
Sweet Mother,
Why is the photo a fragmentary and limited presence?
--
Sweet Mother,
What exactly are the subconscient and the inconscient?
--
Sweet Mother,
What should one try to do when one meditates with
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the work of the Overmind?3
--
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by "a zone corresponding to the overmind" and how can one develop it in oneself? What is
--
Sweet Mother,
What is Supernature?
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo has written in The Life Divine:
--
normal subliminal parts."4 Sweet Mother, now after the
descent of the Supermind,5 is it still like that?
--
On 29 February 1956 there took place, in the Mother's words, "the manifestation of the Supramental upon earth"; "Then the supramental Light and Force and
Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow."
--
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by the yoga of devotion and the yoga
--
Sweet Mother,
What are the "supreme faculties"?
--
Sweet Mother,
What are "the different psychological divisions of
--
Sweet Mother,
Is it possible to have a correct conception of the
--
The Mother
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
Sweet Mother,
With what attitude should I read Sri Aurobindo's
--
others, Mother? What good is life if the Divine does not
want us? I believe that in truth the Divine has chosen us
--
Sweet Mother,
You have said that I do not think well. How can one
--
Sweet Mother,
You have asked the teachers "to think with ideas
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo speaks of a "central knot of desires"
--
Sweet Mother,
One day in class you said, with your hands wide
--
Sweet Mother,
It happens that when we love You deeply and are
--
Sweet Mother,
It is much easier for me to approach You than to
approach Sri Aurobindo. Why? You are all that Sri Aurobindo is for us, as well as a divine and loving Mother. So
is it necessary to try to establish the same relation with
--
a Mother who is very close to you, who loves and understands
you; that is why it is easy for you to approach me with a loving
--
Sweet Mother,
What exactly is the soul or psychic being? And what
--
Sweet Mother,
You have said that once we have found our psychic
--
Sweet Mother,
The soul individualises itself and progressively transforms itself into a psychic being. What are the best
--
Sweet Mother,
Does an outer life of evil deeds and a base consciousness have an effect on the psychic being? Is there
--
Sweet Mother,
How does the soul influence a being who is normally
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo says that the voice of the ordinary
--
Sweet Mother,
You have said that to be allowed to sit in Sri
--
Words of the Mother - I, CWM, Vol. 13, p. 29.
Series Nine - To a Young Teacher
--
Sweet Mother,
How are the messages that You give us on Blessings
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo tells us: "First be sure of the call and
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo tells us: "God's grace is more difficult
--
Sweet Mother,
Why isn't it possible to live always on the same
--
What is it, Mother?
It is because an individual is not made up all of one piece, but
--
Sweet Mother,
Often it is possible to live moments of supreme
--
Sweet Mother,
In the last question, I expressed myself very poorly
--
So now tell me, Mother, if it is possible to have an
idea of the "Transcendent Divine".
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo tells us: "God in his perfection embraces everything; we also must become all-embracing."
--
Sweet Mother,
We are told that before the children came to the
--
Sweet Mother,
Is it possible to love You perfectly, absolutely, before
--
Sweet Mother,
In the New Year Message of 1961 You say: "This
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one most effectively call this wonderful
--
Sweet Mother,
When this delight comes down, what will the visible
--
Sweet Mother,
These days they print your symbol and Sri Aurobindo's name on all sorts of things, on all the thousand
--
And then what can we do with these things, Mother,
when we no longer need them? We can't throw them
--
Sweet Mother,
Is there a dynamic and rapid way to find one's
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The world is in the throes of a new creation and the pangs of that new birth have made Mother Earth restless. It is no longer a far-off ideal that our imagination struggles to visualise, nor a prophecy that yet remains to be fulfilled. It is Here and Now.
Although we may not know it, the New Man the divine race of humanity is already among us. It may be in our next neighbour, in our nearest brother, even in myself. Only a thin veil covers it. It marches just behind the line. It waits for an occasion to throw off the veil and place itself in the forefront. We are living in strenuous times in which age-long institutions are going down and new-forces rearing their heads, old habits are being cast off and new impulsions acquired. In every sphere of life, we see the urgent demand for a recasting, a fresh valuation of things. From the base to the summit, from the economic and political life to the artistic and spiritual, humanity is being shaken to bring out a new expression and articulation. There is the hidden surge of a Power, the secret stress of a Spirit that can no longer suffer to remain in the shade and behind the mask, but wills to come out in the broad daylight and be recognised in its plenary virtues.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The heedless Mother of the universe,
An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.
--
The universal Mother s love was hers.
2.25
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's Mother;
Thou 'hast light in darke; and shutst in little roome,
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He has drunk from the breasts of the Mother of the worlds;
A topless Supernature fills his frame:
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A playmate in the mighty Mother s game,
One came upon the dubious whirling globe
--
Of the great Mother s wide uncharted will
And the rude enigma of her terrestrial ways
--
Or what secret mission the great Mother gave.
In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
--
There is a plan in the Mother s deep world-whim,
A purpose in her vast and random game.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The dumb great Mother in her cosmic trance
Exploiting for creation's joy and pain
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, a spiritual communism embraces individualism and collectivism, fuses them in a higher truth, establishes them in an intimate and absolute harmony. The individual is the centre, the group is the circumference and the two form one whore circle. The individual by fulfilling the truth of his real individuality fulfils also the truth of a commonality. There are no different laws for the two. The individuals do not stand apart from and against one another, the dharma of one does not clash with the dharma of the other. The ripples in the bosom of the sea, however distinct and discrete in appearance, form but a single mass, all follow the same law of hydrodynamics that the Mother sea incarnates. Stars and planets and nebulae, each separate heavenly body has its characteristic form and nature and function and yet all fulfil the same law of gravitation and beat the measure of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being.
Communism takes man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside downurdhomulo' vaksakhah and establishes him upon his soul, his inner godhead. Thus established the individual soul finds and fulfils the divine law that by increasing itself it increases others and by increasing others it increases itself and thus by increasing one another they attain the supreme good. Unless man goes beyond himself and reaches this self, this godhead above, he will not find any real poise, will always swing between individualism and collectivism, he will remain always boundbound either in his freedom or in his bondage.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the Mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
It is never possible for man, weak and bound as he is, to reject the thraldom of his flesh, he can never purify himself wholly by his own unaided strength. God in his infinite mercy sent his own son, an emanation created out of his substancehis embodied loveas a human being to suffer along with men and take upon himself the burden of their sins. God the Son lived upon earth as man and died as man. Sin therefore has no longer its final or definitive hold upon mankind. Man has been made potentially free, pure and worthy of salvation. This is the mystery of Christ, of God the Son. But there is a further mystery. Christ not only lived for all men for all time, whether they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, there is a conscious acceptance on either side. This is the function of the Holy Ghost, the redeeming power of Love active in him who accepts it and who is accepted by it, the dynamic Christ-Consciousness in the true Christian.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The earliest dream of humanity is also the last fulfilment. The Vedic Rishis sang of the marriage of heaven and earthHeaven is my father and this Earth my Mother. And Blake and Nietzsche are fiery apostles of that dream and ideal in an age crippled with doubt, falsehood, smallness, crookedness, impotence, colossal ignorance.
We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition, this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across one aspirant in the line, and being a contemporary, his views and reviews in the matter will be all the more interesting to us.2 He is Gustave Thibon, a Frenchman-not a priest or even a religious man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly self-educated laque. Of late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as well as religious people, especially the Catholics, because of his remarkable conceptions which are so often unorthodox and yet so often ringing true with an old-world au thenticity.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
of Physical Education. He began writing to the Mother at the
age of nineteen.
Sweet Mother,
On the night of Friday the 8th, I had a very peculiar
--
Sweet Mother,
From time to time there is an upsurge of bad
--
Sweet Mother,
Here our activities are so varied that it is difficult to
--
Sweet Mother,
It really is a problem to know how to create interest
--
(Regarding the Mother's message of March 1961 to the
captains; in it she asks them to "be the elite") We are very
--
Sweet Mother,
I went to work only for one hour, because I had too
--
Sweet Mother,
When I came to You this evening for "Prosperity",1
--
Sweet Mother,
Today I did not have that feeling of apprehension
--
Sweet Mother,
I want an electric lamp in the corridor of my room.
--
Sweet Mother,
I have certain things to confess to You, but I cannot
--
Sweet Mother,
You told us: "All of you here are taking life very
--
Sweet Mother,
In Aphorism 95, Sri Aurobindo says that it is only
--
Sweet Mother,
We speak very often of the psychic and the soul, but
--
Sweet Mother,
I have noticed one thing: When I sit for a few minutes and make an effort to concentrate before going
--
Sweet Mother,
I read them as a relaxation. In detective stories -
--
(After seeing the Mother on Lakshmi Puja Day) I await
the day when this joy and this felicity will be established
--
Sweet Mother,
I have noticed something which applies to all of us;
--
Sweet Mother,
In Aphorism 133, Sri Aurobindo says that "the gods
--
Sweet Mother,
For a long time I have noticed that I am rather shy.
--
Sweet Mother,
You have often told us that our activities should be
--
Sweet Mother,
I pray to You, on behalf of everyone, that this
--
Sweet Mother, take our actions and guide us. You told
us You would be there - if only I had eyes to see You!
--
Sweet Mother,
I am very lazy and I lack the fervour and perseverance to continue on the chosen path. I am like a flame
--
Sweet Mother,
I was surprised to see this new ritual, "Sri Aurobindo sharanam mama",5 introduced into the cemetery
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo says that five thousand years have
--
Sweet Mother,
I can tell You this without vanity: I am much better
--
Sweet Mother,
We have had a discussion among friends about the
--
unless the Mother Herself intervenes.
It is impossible. Each one has his own taste and his own temperament. Nothing can be done without discipline - the whole of
--
Sweet Mother,
Is it bad to go to the cinema in town?
--
Sweet Mother,
There are too many tight knots in the immense organisation of this Ashram. When will the promised day
--
Sweet Mother,
I heard this morning that X was very severely beaten
--
Sweet Mother,
I had written a letter to the Mother asking why She
had not given Her darshan to Z. But now I am afraid
that Mother may be angry at my audacity in writing such
a letter. Because it is none of my business!
--
Sweet Mother,
In a discussion with a friend about our physical
--
great musician?" Sweet Mother, can you please say a
few words on the subject of this freedom?
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the difference between meditating here in
--
Sweet Mother,
I have received a certain sum of money. I want to
--
I have given You a little money. Mother, what do You
want me to do?
--
Sweet Mother,
Is it right to pray to the Mother for little things and
selfish gains?
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the true significance of marriage?
--
Sweet Mother,
We see too many films these days and I fail to see
--
Sweet Mother,
Each time I have encountered an obstacle in my
--
Sweet Mother,
Can the lines of our hands reflect our past, present
--
Sweet Mother,
I have often noticed that the work we do is done
--
Sweet Mother,
Girls are always at a disadvantage: they cannot do
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the best relationship between two human
beings? Mother and son? Brother, friend or lover, etc?
All the relationships are good in principle and each one expresses
--
Sweet Mother,
About the hero of the film Reach for the Sky, I said
--
Sweet Mother,
There are moments when I feel it would be better
--
Sweet Mother,
After a long time I had a beautiful dream in which I
saw the Mother and received Her Blessings.
It is not a dream, but the result of the preceding meditation and
--
Sweet Mother,
I have too much "grey" matter in my head, which
--
Sweet Mother,
Man is so weak that he is influenced even by the
--
Sweet Mother,
Most people here quote the Mother to suit their own
convenience.
--
Sweet Mother,
A few days ago I noticed something very odd in
--
Sweet Mother,
I caused a sensation with my new clothes! Blue
--
Sweet Mother,
There are moments when one feels a kind of emptiness within; one is dejected and lonely - it is because
--
Sweet Mother,
I sit down every day to meditate, but I am afraid
--
Sweet Mother,
This creation has a purpose - therefore is it possible
--
Sweet Mother,
I have heard that You have written somewhere that
--
Sweet Mother,
Suddenly I feel very happy, my heart is filled with an
--
The Mother underlined the phrase "in his lifetime".
Series Ten - To a Young Captain
--
Sweet Mother,
You have explained that this separation of girls and
--
Sweet Mother,
What do You mean by "an ignorant goodwill and
--
Sweet Mother,
Would it not be better to have a basic discipline here
--
Sweet Mother,
Why do I hesitate to ask You for money? What prevents me from doing so? Am I still not intimate enough
--
Sweet Mother,
I still lack confidence in my work. I am too shy.
--
Sweet Mother,
X told us the favourite story of Dr. Y, the mathematics teacher: "A sculptor was working on a block of
--
Sweet Mother,
Your remarks often amuse me.
--
Sweet Mother,
This morning I saw a man with protruding ribs,
--
Sweet Mother,
What does "Yoga" mean and how many among us
--
Sweet Mother,
I feel miserable because I asked the Mother for incense. It would be much better to buy it from the market,
for She does not like her children to beg.
--
Sweet Mother,
Our teacher Y gave us a talk in a grave and significant tone: "Be prepared to go through hard tests, we are
--
Sweet Mother,
I have again received an invitation for dinner. One
--
Sweet Mother,
If I look at my whole life and its circumstances,
--
Sweet Mother,
I often remember a poem by Francis Thompson and
--
Sweet Mother,
I am not properly prepared for the 1st December
--
Sweet Mother,
In Aphorism 172, Sri Aurobindo has said: "Law
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo writes in one of his aphorisms:
--
subjection to the will of others."13 Mother, I am one of
those. Will You take me and discipline me?
--
Sweet Mother,
I have formed the bad habit of nearly always being
--
Sweet Mother,
It seems that a list of books (English classics) was
--
the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo to be read.
You have even remarked that to read these old classics
--
(Written by the Mother at the beginning of a notebook
containing quotations from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri)
--
Sweet Mother,
I am very irregular in my studies; I don't know what
--
Sweet Mother,
The ardour of making an effort is waning. I feel
--
Sweet Mother,
You blessed me that I may be born to the true life,
--
Sweet Mother,
"Not to live for oneself" is understandable and one
--
Sweet Mother,
Would it be possible to have an electric fan? X
--
Sweet Mother,
Regarding the fan, I don't think it will help me to
--
Sweet Mother,
One is often afraid of doing what is new; the body
--
Sweet Mother,
Self-deception has a thousand faces and a thousand
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the difference between pleasure, joy, happiness, ecstasy and Ananda? Can we find one in the
--
Sweet Mother,
Your answers last week were very succinct. Isn't a
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one know the other's need and help him?
--
Sweet Mother,
Is it because we have defects in ourselves that we
--
Sweet Mother,
Just as there are tangible and concrete bodily exercises and disciplines for physical culture, is there not
--
Sweet Mother,
I thought that illness came from some impurity or
--
Sweet Mother,
I am trying to concentrate in the heart and to enter
--
Sweet Mother,
Until I am ready for a spiritual discipline, what
should I do, apart from aspiring that the Mother may
pull me out of the slumber and awaken my psychic
--
Sweet Mother,
When a stranger asks us what the Sri Aurobindo
--
Sweet Mother,
Are there really any tragedies in life, since everything
--
Sweet Mother,
People often say that our food does not contain
--
Beside this sentence, the Mother wrote: "So much as that???"
Series Ten - To a Young Captain
--
Sweet Mother,
There are times when I feel like abandoning all my
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the most effective way of overcoming desires
--
Sweet Mother,
When one is very sensitive, one easily suffers. Since
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one know whether we are progressing or
--
Sweet Mother,
I put my question badly last time. I did not mean
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the use of Japa?15 Is it a good method to
--
Sweet Mother,
I heard that an astrologer has predicted that in six
--
Sweet Mother,
Is a mistake or a bad action pardonable if one is sure
--
Sweet Mother,
There are moments when, in spite of myself, a little
--
Sweet Mother,
People often ask us this question: "What are you doing for society or even for the people of Pondicherry? You
--
Sweet Mother,
There are moments during meditation when I feel
--
Sweet Mother,
Although one part of the being aspires and wants
--
Sweet Mother,
We see many people leaving the Ashram, either to
--
Sweet Mother,
I have a habit of blaming myself, of making myself
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the meaning of one's birthday, apart from its
--
Sweet Mother,
Often when I read Sri Aurobindo's works or listen
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one empty the mind of all thought? When
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo has said somewhere that if we surrender to the Divine Grace, it will do everything for us.
--
Sweet Mother,
Often after a long meditation (an effort to meditate),
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one make use of every moment of this
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the eternal truth behind this sympathy or
--
Sweet Mother,
You have said in Your New Year message for this
--
Sweet Mother,
Does Your message for this year announce an Age
--
Sweet Mother,
What does this extraordinary Asuric attack on the
--
Sweet Mother,
Somebody asked me this question: "Is it not a great
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the best way of expressing one's gratitude
--
Sweet Mother,
When can one say with certitude that one has started
--
Sweet Mother,
I aspire to live the yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the life
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one distinguish a dream from an experience?
--
Sweet Mother,
Just as there is a methodical progression of exercises
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one increase single-mindedness and willpower? They are so necessary for doing anything.
--
Sweet Mother,
You have written: "Of all renunciations, the most
--
Sweet Mother,
You have written: "So long as you have to renounce
--
Sweet Mother,
Why is India, which has such a rich past and the
--
Sweet Mother,
Why did Sri Aurobindo advise India's leaders to accept the Cripps Proposal in 1942, when He knew fully
--
Sweet Mother,
You say that to hope to partake of the new realisation, "you must feel that this world is ugly, stupid, brutal
--
Sweet Mother,
When department heads or superiors make mistakes
--
Sweet Mother,
Being far from the Truth-Consciousness, must one
--
Sweet Mother,
The descent of the Supermind, which You announced on the 29th of February 1956, is still only
--
Sweet Mother,
The resolutions I make lose their intensity and ardour after a time. How can I keep this enthusiasm and
--
Sweet Mother,
You have written: "The force which, when absorbed
--
Sweet Mother,
You speak (in Conversations) of the plunge we must
--
Sweet Mother,
Are illnesses and accidents the result of something
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo says: "If the transformation of
--
Sweet Mother,
What do You mean by "to change the form of that
--
Sweet Mother,
Once, in one of Your Wednesday classes, You said
--
Sweet Mother,
Does every person who comes to earth have a definite goal he must achieve in this life, and does he achieve
--
Sweet Mother,
People who come to the Ashram for the first time
--
of cooperation, etc. What do You say to all this, Mother?
Sometimes it is like that, as a matter of fact, and sometimes it is
--
Sweet Mother,
I really feel that there is a great lack of harmony
--
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo writes in His Essays on the Gita: "The
--
Sweet Mother,
In spite of Your message of September 16 to the
--
Sweet Mother,
I often feel, and very concretely too, that You are
--
But I very often ask myself: "Why does Mother protect
me and keep me in such happiness, I who so little deserve
--
Sweet Mother,
One sees that the world as a whole is presently in
--
The Indo-Pakistan conflict ended in a cease-fire on September 22. The Mother's
message, sent six days prior to the cease-fire, was: "It is for the sake and the triumph
--
Sweet Mother,
We know that we should not do certain things and
--
Sweet Mother,
About individual transformation and social transformation You say: "Since the environment reacts upon
--
Sweet Mother,
Is there a hierarchicised group here in the Ashram?
--
Sweet Mother,
Why does one feel afraid? Where does fear come
--
Sweet Mother,
You write in Your Conversations: "Each time that
--
Sweet Mother,
You write: "Each one here represents an impossibility to be solved."30 Could You explain to me what this
--
Sweet Mother,
You told me to enter within, into the depths of my
heart, to find You seated there. But, Mother, I cannot
manage to enter into the heart. I feel during meditation
--
Sweet Mother,
What must we do to serve the Truth? Must it first of
--
Words of the Mother - II, CWM, Vol. 14, p. 84.
Series Ten - To a Young Captain
--
Sweet Mother,
There is a tendency among most of us here to conduct our lives and programmes according to the customs
--
Sweet Mother,
Formerly, You were very strict about permitting people to come and live in the Ashram. Now it is no longer
--
Sweet Mother,
I ask myself whether I am practising yoga! But the
--
Sweet Mother,
You say that "by the very fact that you are living
--
Sweet Mother,
When You say:
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one increase one's receptivity?
--
Sweet Mother,
There was a time when I used to see You often in my
--
Sweet Mother,
We are supposed to be attempting something that
no one has ever tried before. But, Mother, isn't it true
that we now tend to direct our lives and activities more
--
Sweet Mother,
Isn't this immense freedom we are given dangerous
--
Sweet Mother,
How should I prepare myself for the April 24th
--
Sweet Mother,
Why does anger exist?
--
Sweet Mother,
Two days ago I was with You in my dream and You
--
Sweet Mother,
Are mental indifference and lack of curiosity a sort
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one get out of this mental laziness and
--
Sweet Mother,
Are the presence and intervention of the Americans
--
Sweet Mother,
I had asked my last question from the spiritual point
of view and from Your answer I conclude that the American action is not at all justifiable. But, Mother, isn't the
world in danger of being swallowed by the Communists
--
Sweet Mother,
Some say that You have stated: "Among the 1500
--
Sweet Mother,
I feel it is most shameful on our part to waste the
--
us here. But, Mother, why do we do this? For, each one
of us has surely felt and enjoyed - at least once in his
--
Sweet Mother,
I was very happy to receive Your reply and I have
--
Sweet Mother,
May I have photographs of Sri Aurobindo and You,
--
Sweet Mother,
One final note on this famous affair of the invitation which has created a lot of misunderstandings
--
Sweet Mother,
India is supposed to be the Guru of the world in
order to establish the spiritual life on earth. But, Mother,
in order to occupy this high position she must be worthy
--
Sweet Mother,
Why this chaotic condition in our present government? Is it the sign of a change for the better, for the
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one practise yogic disciplines without believing in God or the Divine?31
--
The Mother replied to this question orally; she was speaking to someone other than
the captain.
--
Sweet Mother,
How can we know that our acts, our thoughts and
--
Sweet Mother,
In this integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo, work has a
--
Sweet Mother,
In the story You wrote, "The Virtues", You describe
--
Sweet Mother,
For several years now, we have been hearing that the
--
to time we clearly see this for ourselves. But, Mother, we
also see extravagant spending by certain individuals and
--
Sweet Mother,
Your reply explains nothing, for isn't it You who
--
Sweet Mother,
When I heard that X was drowned in a lake at Gingee during the outing, I was unable to believe it or to be
--
was: How is it possible! Mother knew we were at Gingee,
so Her protection was with us. Then how is it possible?
--
Sweet Mother,
In the Darshan message of November 24th, Sri
--
Sweet Mother,
What are the qualities needed for one to be called
--
Sweet Mother,
It is said that nothing is in us, everything comes from
--
Sweet Mother,
On the cards that You send to people on their birthdays, often You simply write: "Bonne fête to X, with
--
Sweet Mother,
The ordinary man is often guided in life by his conscience, isn't he? So what becomes of one who has no
--
Sweet Mother,
Why is it that whenever one thinks of You one feels
--
Sweet Mother,
When one goes away from here, one feels a sort of
--
Sweet Mother,
What do You mean by Your last answer? Doesn't
--
Sweet Mother,
Normally, I feel quite happy with life as it is - time
--
Sweet Mother,
People are saying many things about the 4th of
--
Sweet Mother,
It is said that the vibrations of the being develop
--
The Mother replied to this question orally; she was speaking to someone other than
the captain.
--
Sweet Mother,
You are with us always and at every moment, only
--
Sweet Mother,
Why is it that in the Ashram itself people feel the
--
Sweet Mother,
Does the Divine punish injustice? Is it possible that
--
Sweet Mother,
The other day I had a discussion with X about Sri
--
been done better, but that Mother has to do Her work
with the instruments She has at her disposal. Finally he
--
more. Was that correct? Mother, what actually is my
"business"?
--
Sweet Mother,
I have read and heard much about past and future
--
this idea comes back to my mind very often. Mother, is
this a narrowness of vision on my part, or what?
--
Sweet Mother,
When You are physically stricken, I always feel very
--
Sweet Mother, at times like this, how should we be?
What is the best attitude on our part?
--
Sweet Mother,
I have the impression that Your Force responds according to the intensity of our prayer. But my case seems
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
In 1958 the Mother said, "If things go on advancing at
this speed, it seems more than possible, almost evident,
--
By "solar plexus", the Mother is referring to the heart (not the navel) region; this is
clear from statements she has made elsewhere; see, for example, in Series Thirteen of
--
The Mother, Prayers and Meditations, 24 August 1914.
This is how I understand the Purusha:
--
of view that the Ashram was born with the Mother's
arrival?
--
Sweet Mother, what does "thou wilt be my head"
mean?
--
The Mother, Prayers and Meditations, 17 May 1914.
Series Eleven - To a Sadhak
--
way to do it, Divine Mother?
It is quite possible, by concentrating on the hands when they are
--
being it." What does the Mother say?
That is correct.
--
among us. Why is that, Mother?
If I did say this (probably not quite in these words), it could only
--
India Radio, Pondicherry, 23 September 1967. Words of the Mother - I, CWM, Vol. 13,
p. 367.
--
If the Mother could make these two men honest
(even temporarily, long enough for them to settle this
--
The fragrance of the flowers given by the Mother is often
something extraordinary.
--
When Mother says that wealth should not be a personal
property, I understand that what should come is more
--
it to the Mother.
But how can others do it? Can it be said that each
--
You, I said to a flower, "Oh, you are going to Mother!"
and it really smiled. The same thing happened again
--
While speaking about the "Transcendent Mother" (and
the upper petal of the Transformation flower), You said,
--
like a child made from the substance of its Mother and that the
formation is like a living statue made out of a material external
--
it true, Sweet Mother?
Yes, the land itself has a consciousness, even though this consciousness is not intellectualised and cannot express itself.
--
A Mother's eyes are on them and her arms
Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons."9
--
Once Mother spoke to me about total sincerity. What
does transparent sincerity mean?
--
In 1953 Mother said: "Whatever the way one follows,
whether it be the religious way, the philosophical way,
--
It seems to me, Mother, that when man does not accept the Divine, it is more out of ignorance than out of
wickedness. Isn't it so?
--
It seems to me, Mother, that the flame that calls and the
flame that responds are one and the same.
--
Can one say, Mother, that perfect receptivity comes only
with constant union with the Divine?
--
But still, Mother, doesn't the soul chosen by the
Divine go through hell in a different way than others?
--
"The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother
stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal
--
Similarly, can one say that the Supreme Divine carries the Mother in his eternal consciousness?
Beyond all question.
--
Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, p. 20.
Cannot the ego consent to its own abolition?
--
what, Mother?
All pleasure is a perversion, by egoistic limitation, of the Ananda
--
In fact, Mother, what is the yogi's attitude towards the
outward appearance?
--
Therefore, Mother, the transformation of the body is
necessary even to live in the Integral Knowledge!
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
To a student in the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education who began writing to the Mother at the age of sixteen.
Sweet Mother,
I used to have the habit of reading Savitri or one of
--
Sweet Mother,
Each time I decide to work well, I see that my effort
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one remember at every moment that whatever one does is for You? Particularly when one wants
--
Sweet Mother,
I would like to know the true meaning of birthdays,
--
Sweet Mother,
You wrote to me that it is not easy to come in contact
--
Sweet Mother,
I have seen that I am not able to force my physical
--
like to know how I can force it. But, Sweet Mother, is it
good to force one's body?
--
Sweet Mother,
Why do we believe in rebirth? What were we before
--
Sweet Mother,
When we are in the midst of Nature, what should
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one get rid of, or rather correct, jealousy
--
Sweet Mother,
At times I talk in my sleep. It is a sign that the mind
--
Sweet Mother,
When the body is asleep, is it better for the mind to
--
Sweet Mother,
What do You mean by "becoming conscious"? Is
--
Sweet Mother,
Is our vital formed solely of desires, selfish feelings,
--
Sweet Mother,
What does Sri Aurobindo mean when he speaks of
--
Sweet Mother,
Why is it better to go to bed early and to get up
--
Sweet Mother,
Do astrology and other studies always predict things
--
Sweet Mother,
What are knowledge and intelligence? Do they play
--
Sweet Mother,
In the new race, will our body change form?
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the difference between sports and physical
--
Sweet Mother,
What should our attitude be towards the captains
--
Sweet Mother,
Why has the Creator made this world and human
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
--
To a student in the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education who began writing to the Mother at the age of sixteen.
Sweet Mother,
Should one give money to beggars or not?
--
Sweet Mother,
What does it mean, really, "to realise the Divine"?
--
Sweet Mother,
When we sleep, our consciousness goes out, doesn't
--
Sweet Mother,
Why is the night darker just before dawn - from
--
Sweet Mother,
Why are the hours before midnight better for sleep
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the difference between desire and aspiration,
--
Sweet Mother,
How can one unify one's being?
--
Sweet Mother,
What will be the result of changing the vital into
--
Sweet Mother,
I have never discussed with my friends the question
--
Sweet Mother,
Why and how does one lose one's spiritual gain by
--
Sweet Mother,
Why should one take part in the sports' competitions
--
Sweet Mother,
I would like to know the second step towards unifying one's being. You told me about the first step.
--
Sweet Mother,
How should one spend the Darshan days, December
--
Sweet Mother,
What is the difference between persons who have
--
Sweet Mother,
Do you think it isn't good to visit the churches here
--
Sweet Mother,
In The Hour of God Sri Aurobindo has written:
--
Sweet Mother,
About what you told me yesterday: had the Divine
--
Sweet Mother,
"The world is preparing for a big change. Will you
--
The Mother's New Year Message of 1970.
Sweet Mother,
How should the news of death be received, especially
--
Sweet Mother,
How should we watch a film? If we identify with
--
Sweet Mother,
How would we know what is happening in other
--
Sweet Mother,
How can we know the truth of the facts when reading newspapers? What is the best way of knowing the
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
0 1951-09-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1952-08-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in French.
Note written by Mother in French
***
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
The following text is an extract from a 'Wednesday Class,' when every Wednesday Mother would answer questions raised by the disciples and children at the Ashram Playground.
( Mother reads to the disciples an excerpt from Sri Aurobindos THE MothER, in which he describes the different aspects of the Creative Powerwhat is India is called the Shakti, or the Motherwhich have presided over universal evolution.)
There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realization,most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda1 which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe.
Sri Aurobindo, The Mother
(A disciple:) Sweet Mother, what is this Personality and when will It manifest?
My answer is ready.
--
It is true that at present, her presence is more rhetorical than factual, since so far She has had no chance to manifest. Yet even so, She is a powerful instrument in the Work, for of all the Mothers aspects, She holds the greatest power to transform the body. Indeed, those cells which can vibrate at the touch of the divine Joy, receive it and bear it, are cells reborn, on their way to becoming immortal.
But the vibrations of divine Bliss and those of pleasure cannot cohabit in the same vital and physical house. We must therefore TOTALLY renounce all feelings of pleasure to be ready to receive the divine Ananda. But rare are those who can renounce pleasure without thereby renouncing all active participation in life or sinking into a stern asceticism. And among those who realize that the transformation is to be wrought in active life, some pretend that pleasure is a form of Ananda gone more or less astray and legitimize their search for self-satisfaction, thereby creating a virtually insuperable obstacle to their own transformation.
--
Mother, even if we have not previously succeeded, cant we still try?
What? (the disciple repeats his question) Oh! You can always try!
--
But Mother, if She came down, She must have seen a possibility!
She came down because there WAS a possibilitybecause things had reached such a stage that it was her hour to come down. But in truth, She came down because because I thought it was possible for her to succeed.
--
I think it was in 1946, Mother, because you told us so many things at that time.
Right.
(A child:) Sweet Mother, now that She has come, what should we do?
You dont know?
--
Mother, there is not even one single man?
I dont know.
Mother, you are wasting your time with all these Ashram people.
Oh! But you see, from an occult standpoint, it is a selection. From an external standpoint you could say that there are people in the world who are far superior to you (and I would not disagree!), but from an occult standpoint, it is a selection. There are It can be said that without a doubt the majority of young people here have come because it was promised them that they would be present at the Hour of Realization but they just dont remember it! ( Mother laughs) I have already said several times that when you come down on earth, you fall on your head, which leaves you a little dazed! (laughter) Its a pity, but after all, you dont have to remain dazed all your lives, do you? You should go deep within yourselves and there find the immortal consciousness then you can see very well, you can very clearly remember the circumstances in which you you aspired to be here for the Hour of the Works realization.
But actually, to tell you the truth, I think your lives are so easy that you dont exert yourselves very much! How many among you have truly an INTENSE need to find their psychic beings? To find out truly who they are? To find out what their roles are, why they are here? You just let yourselves drift. You even complain when things arent easy enough! You just take things as they come. And sometimes, should an aspiration arise in you and you encounter some difficulty in yourself, you say, Oh, Mother is there! Shell take care of it for me! And you think about something else.
Mother, previously things were very strict in the Ashram, but not now. Why?
Yes, I have always said that it changed when we had to take the very little children. How can you envision an ascetic life with little sprouts no bigger than that? Its impossible! But thats the little surprise package the war left on our doorstep. When it was found that Pondicherry was the safest place on earth, naturally people came wheeling in here with all their baby carriages filled and asked us if we could shelter them, so we couldnt very well turn them away, could we?! Thats how it happened, and in no other way But, in the beginning, the first condition for coming here was that you would have nothing more to do with your family! If a man was married, then he had to completely overlook the fact that he had a wife and childrencompletely sever all ties, have nothing further to do with them. And if ever a wife asked to come just because her husb and happened to be here, we told her, You have no business coming here!
--
Mother, what was the other thing you wrote?
I thought someone might ask me, Why doesnt She4 stay for your sake? Since She came here because you called Her, then why doesnt She stay for your sake?
--
Tell us, Motherwe really want to know, Sweet Mother!
For Her, this body is but one instrument among so many others in an eternity of ages to come, and for Her its only importance is that attributed to it by the Earth and mankind the extent to which it can be used as a channel to further Her manifestation. If I find myself surrounded by people who are incapable of receiving Her, then for Her, I am quite useless.
--
Mother received each disciple individually on his birthday.
The Mother of Ananda, or the Creative Power's aspect of Joy.
W.W. Pearson, a friend of Rabindranath Tagore, who had come from Tagore's Ashram in 1923; Mother had met him with Tagore in 1916 in Japan.
***
0 1955-03-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, March 26, 1955
Mother, once more I come to ask you for Mahakalis1 intervention. After a period when everything seemed much better, I again awake to impossible mornings when I live badly, very badly, far from you, incapable of calling you and, whats more, of feeling your Presence or your help.
I dont know what mud is stirring about in me, but everything is obscured, and I cannot dissociate myself from these vital waves.
Mother, without Mahakalis grace, I shall never be able to get out of this mechanical round, to shatter these old formations, ever the same, which keep coming back. Mother, I beg of you, help. me to BREAK this shell in which I am suffocating. Deliver me from myself, deliver me in spite of myself. Alone, I am helpless; sometimes I cannot even call you! May your force come and burn all my impurities, shatter my resistances.
Signed: Bernard2
Mahakali: the eternal Mother in her warrior aspect, She who severs the heads of the demons.
Such was our old, meaningless name (except for its Germanic root: 'hard bear') until a certain March 3, 1957, when Mother named us Sat-prem ('the one who loves truly').
***
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, April 4, 1955
Mother, for more than a year now I have been near you and nothing, no really significant inner experience, no sign has come that allows me to feel I have progressed or merely to show me that I am on the right path. I cannot even say I am happy.
I am not so absurdly pretentious as to blame the divine, nor yourself and I remain quite convinced that all this is my own fault. Undoubtedly I have not known how to surrender totally in some part of myself, or I do not aspire enough or know how to open myself as needed. Also, I should rely entirely upon the divine to take care of my progress and not be concerned about the absence of experiences. I have therefore asked myself why I am so far away from the true attitude, the genuine opening, and I see two main reasons: on the one hand, the difficulties inherent in my own nature, and on the other, the outer conditions of this sadhana. These conditions do not seem to be conducive to helping me overcome the difficulties in my own nature.
--
I am not now going to renounce Sri Aurobindos Yoga, Mother, for my whole life is based upon it, but I believe I should employ other meanswhich is why I am writing you this letter.
By continuing this daily little ant-like struggle and by having to confront the same desires, the same distractions every day, it seems to me I am wasting my energy in vain. Sri Aurobindos Yoga, which is meant to include life, is so difficult that one should come to it only after having already established the solid base of a concrete divine realization. That is why I want to ask you if I should not withdraw for a certain time, to Almora,3 for example, to Brewsters place,4 to live in solitude, silence, meditation, far away from people, work and temptations, until a beginning of Light and Realization is concretized in me. Once this solid base is acquired, it would be easier for me to resume my work and the struggle here for the true transformation of the outer being. But to want to transform this outer being without having fully illumined the inner being seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse, or at least condemning myself to a pitiless and endless battle in which the best of my forces are fruitlessly consumed.
--
Mother, this is not a vital desire seeking to divert me from the sadhana, for my life has no other meaning than to seek the divine, but it seems to be the only solution that could bring about some progress and get me out of this lukewarm slump in which I have been living day after day. I cannot be satisfied living merely one hour a day, when I see you.
I know that you do not like to write, Mother, but couldnt you say in a few words if you approve of my project or what I should do? In spite of all my rebellions and discouragements and resistances, I am your child. O Mother, help me!
Signed: Bernard
--
Signed: Mother
For a long time, Satprem took care of the correspondence with the outside, along with Pavitra, not to mention editing the Ashram Bulletin as well as Mother's writings and talks, translating Sri Aurobindo's works into French, and conducting classes at the Ashram's 'International Centre of Education.'
Every evening at the Playground, the disciples passed before Mother one by one to receive symbolically some food.
In the Himalayas.
0 1955-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, June 9, 1955
Mother, I cannot say that it is a nostalgia for the outside world that is drawing me backwards nor some attachment to a personal form of life, nor even some vital desire seeking its own satisfaction. That old world no longer attracts me, and I do not see at all what I would do there. Yet something is standing in my way.
If only I could see a distinct error blocking my path which I could clearly attack But I feel that I am not responsible, that it is not my personal fault if I remain without aspiration, stagnating. I feel like a battlefield of contending forces that are beyond me and against which I can do NOTHING. Oh Mother, it is not an excuse for a lack of will, or at least I dont think so I profoundly feel like a helpless toy, totally helpless.
If the divine force, if your grace, does not intervene to shatter this obscure resistance that is drawing me downwards in spite of myself, I dont know what will become of me Mother, I am not blackmailing you, I am only expressing my helplessness, my anguish.
During the day, I live more or less calmly in my little morass, but as evening and the moment to meet you draw near, then the forces pinning me to the ground begin raging beneath your pressure, and I feel at times an unbearable tearing that burns and constricts in my throat like tears that cannot be shed. Afterwards, Truth regains possession of me but the following day it all begins again.
Mother, it is an impossible, absurd, unlivable life. I feel as though I have no hand in this cruel little game. Oh Mother, why doesnt your grace trust that deep part in me which knows so well that you are the Truth? Deliver me from these evil forces since, profoundly, it is you and you alone I want. Give me the aspiration and strength I do not have. If you do not do this Yoga for me, I feel I shall never have the strength to go on.
There is something that must be SHATTERED: can it not be done once and for all without lingering on indefinitely? Mother, I am your child.
Signed: Bernard
Mother, this letter is a prayer.
***
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1955-09-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, September 3, 1955
Mother, it seems that for weeks I have been knocking against myself at every turn, as though I were in a prison, and I cannot get out of it. Mother, I need your Space, your Light, to get out of this walled-in night that is suffocating me.
No matter where I concentrate, in my heart, above my head, between my eyes, I bang everywhere into an unyielding wall; I no longer know which way to turn, what I must do, say, pray in order to be freed from all this at last. Mother, I know that I am not making all the effort I should, but help me to make this effort, I implore your grace. I need so much to find at last this solid rock upon which to lean, this space of light where finally I may seek refuge. Mother, open the psychic being in me, open me to your sole Light which I need so much. Without your grace, I can only turn in circles, hopelessly. O Mother, may I live in you.
Your child,
0 1955-09-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, September 15, 1955
Mother suddenly everything seems to have crystallizedall the little revolts, the little tensions, the ill will and petty vital demandsforming a single block of open, determined resistance. I have become conscious that from the beginning of my sadhana, the mind has led the gamewith the psychic behind and has held me in leash, helped muzzle all contrary movements, but at no time, or only rarely, has the vital submitted or opened to the higher influence. The rare times when the vital participated, I felt a great progress. But now, I find myself in front of this solid mass that says No and is not at all convinced of what the mind has been imposing upon it for almost two years now.
Mother, I am sufficiently awakened not to rebel against your Light and to understand that the vital is but one part of my being, but I have come to the conclusion that the only way of convincing this vital is not to force or stifle it, but to let it go through its own experience so it may understand by itself that it cannot be satisfied in this way. I feel the need to leave the Ashram for a while to see how I can get along away from here and to realize, no doubt, that one can really brea the only here.
I have friends in Bangalore whom I would like to join for two or three weeks, perhaps more, perhaps less, however long it may take to confront this vital with its own freedom. I need a vital activity, to move, to sail, for example, to have friends etc. The need I am feeling is exactly that which I sought to satisfy in the past through my long boat journeys along the coast of Brittany. It is a kind of thirst for space and movement.
Otherwise, Mother, there is this block before me that is obscuring all the rest and taking away my taste for everything. I would like to leave, Mother, but not in revolt; may it be an experience to go through that receives your approval. I would not like to be cut off from you by your displeasure or your condemnation, for this would seem to me terrible and leave me no other recourse but to plunge into the worst excesses in order to forget.
Mother, I would like you to forgive me, to understand me and, above all, not to deprive me of your Love. I would like you to tell me if I may leave for a few weeks and how you feel about it. It seems to me that I am profoundly your child, in spite of all this??
Signed: Bernard
0 1955-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in French.
The three images of total self-giving to the Divine:
0 1956-02-29 - First Supramental Manifestation - The Golden Hammer, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
The following text was given by Mother in both French and English.
FIRST SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION
--
Later added by Mother
***
0 1956-03-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in French. At this period, Mother's back was already bent. This straightening of her back seems to be the first physiological effect of the 'Supramental Manifestation' of February 29, which is perhaps the reason why Mother noted down the experience under the name 'Agenda of the Supramental Action on Earth.' It was the first time Mother gave a title to what would become this fabulous document of 13 volumes. The experience took place during a 'translation class' when, twice a week, Mother would translate the works of Sri Aurobindo into French before a group of disciples.
AGENDA OF THE SUPRAMENTAL ACTION ON EARTH
0 1956-03-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in French.
(Upon awakening)
--
Mother appeared on her balcony daily at about 6 a.m. to give a few moments of meditation to her disciples before the beginning of the day's work.
***
0 1956-03-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in French.
The age of Capitalism and business is drawing to a close.
0 1956-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, April 4, 1956
Mother, two months ago I had a clear mental perception of what was asked of me: to spend the rest of my life here. This is the source of my difficulties and of the inner hell I have been living through ever since. Each time I try to emerge, there is this image that rises up in me: your-whole-life and this casts me into a violent conflict. When I came here, I thought of staying for two or three years; for me the Ashram was a means of realization, not an end.
I understand now that as long as my whole being has not ACCEPTED that it must finish its life here, there is no way out nor any recovery possible. Through my mental force alone, this acceptance is impossible; I have been turning infernally in circles these past two months, and the mind is in league with the vital. Therefore, a force greater than mine must help me accept that my way is here. I need you, Mother, for without you I am lost. I need you to tell me that the Truth of my being is indeed here and that I am truly ready to follow this path. Mother, I beseech you, help me to see the truth of my being, give me some sign that my way is here and not elsewhere. I beg of you, Mother, help me to know.
I also had a very clear sensation that you were abandoning me, that you had no further interest in me and I could just as well do as I pleased. Perhaps you cannot forgive some of my inner rebellions which have been so very violent? Am I totally guilty? Is it true that you are abandoning me?
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1956-04-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, April 20, 1956
Sweet Mother,
The difficulties of the past weeks have taught me that as soon as one strays from the true consciousness, in however trifling a way, anything may happen, any excess, any aberration, any imbalance and I have felt very dangerous things prowling about me. Mother, you told me in regard to Patrick1 that the law of the manifestation was a law of freedom, even the freedom to choose wrongly. This evening, it has been my very deep perception that this freedom is virtually always a freedom to choose wrongly. I harbor a great fear of losing the true consciousness once again. I have become aware of how fragile everything in me is and that very little would be enough to carry me away.
Therefore, Sweet Mother, I come to ask a great grace of you, from the depths of my heart: take my freedom into your hands. Prevent me from falling back, far away from you. I place this freedom in your hands. Keep me safe, Mother, protect me. Grant me the grace of watching over me and of taking me in your hands completely, like a child whose steps are unsure. I no longer want this Freedom. It is you I want, the Truth of my being. Mother, as a grace, I implore you to free me from my freedom to choose wrongly.
I am your child and I love you.
--
Signed: Mother
A friend of Satprem's who died insane in a Japanese hospital in India
0 1956-04-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother takes a passage from Prayers and Meditations of September 25, 1914:
The Lord hast willed, and Thou dost execute;
0 1956-04-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Sweet Mother, you said, The Supramental has come down on earth. What does this mean, exactly? You also said, The things that were promised are fulfilled. What are these things?
Oh, really! How ignorant! It has been promised for such a very long time, it has been said for such a very long timenot only here in the Ashram, but ever since the beginning of the earth. There have been all kinds of predictions, by all kinds of prophets. It has been said, There will be a new heaven and a new earth, a new race shall be born, the world shall be transformed Prophets have spoken of this in every tradition.
--
Sweet Mother, what should be our attitude towards this New Consciousness?
That depends upon what you want to do with it.
--
Mother, when the mind came down into the earth atmosphere, the ape did not make any effort to convert himself into a man, did he? It was Nature that supplied the effort. But in our case
But its not man who is going to convert himself into a superman!
--
Mother, very recently a text has been circulating which says, What has just now happened, with this Victory, is not a descent but a manifestation. And it is no longer merely an individual event: the Supermind has sprung forth into the universal play.
Yes, yes, yes! I indeed said all that. I acknowledge it. And so?
--
Mother is referring to the darshan of April 24, 1956. Four times a year, for 'darshan,' visitors increasingly poured into the Ashram to pass one by one before Mother (and formerly, Sri Aurobindo) to receive her look.
***
0 1956-07-29, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in French.
O Thou who art always therepresent in all I do, all I amnot for repose do I aspire, but for THY INTEGRAL VICTORY.
0 1956-08-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in English.
My Lord, through me thou hast challenged the world and all the adverse forces have risen in protest.1
--
In fact, following the 'Supramental Manifestation' of February 29, 1956, all of Mother's physical difficulties increased, as though all the obscurities in the physical consciousness were surging forth beneath the pressure of the new light. The same observation applies to the disciples who were around Mother and undoubtedly to the world as a whole. A strange 'mysterious acceleration' was beginning to take hold of the world.
***
0 1956-09-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
This text was noted down by a disciple from memory. On the original manuscript submitted for her approval, Mother wrote, 'This account is quite correct,' and She signed the text. Words added or corrected by Mother are in italics.
(During the Wednesday class)
0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Hyderabad, September 14, 1956
Sweet Mother,
Scarcely has a moment gone by since I left that I have not thought of you, but I wanted to wait for things to be clear and settled in me before writing, for you obviously have other things to do than listen to platonic declarations.
--
These questions of money do not interest me. In fact, nothing interests me except this something I feel within me. The only question for me is to know whether I am truly ready for the Yoga, or if my failings are not the sign of some immaturity. Mother, you alone can tell me what is right.
I feel a bit lost, cut off from you. The idea of going to the Himalayas is absurd and I am abandoning it. My friends tell me that I may remain with them as long as I wish, but this is hardly a solution; I dont even feel like writing a book any longernothing seems to appeal to me except the trees in this garden and the music that fills a large part of my days. There is no solution other than the Ashram or Brazil. You alone can tell me what to do.
--
Sweet Mother, may I still ask for your Love, your help? For without your help, nothing is possible, and without your love, nothing has any meaning.
I feel that I am your child in spite of all my contradictions and failings. I love you.
--
Signed: Mother
A former disciple who left the Ashram, and subsequently committed suicide.
0 1956-10-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother is referring to a strike by the salaried workers of the Ashram, one of the numerous internal and external difficulties constantly assailing Her.
***
0 1956-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(At about 6 a.m., before Mother appeared on the balcony)
Be always at the height of yourself, in all circumstances.
0 1956-10-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, October 28, 1956
Sweet Mother, my birthday is the day after tomorrow, the 30th. I come to place my inner situation before you so that you may help me take a decision.
I am facing the same difficulties as before my departure to Hyderabad, and I have made the same mistakes. The main reason for this state is that, on the one hand, words and ideas seem to have lost all power over me, and on the other, the vital elan which led me thus far is dead. So upon what shall my faith rest? I still have some faith, of course, but it has become totally ABSTRACT. The vital does not cooperate, so I feel all withered, suspended in a void, nothing seems to give me direction anymore. There is no rebelliousness in me, but rather a void.
--
Mother, I implore you, in the name of whatever led me to you in the first place, give me the strength to do WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. You who see and who can, decide for me. You are my Mother. Whatever my shortcomings, my difficulties, I feel I am so deeply your child.
Signed: Bernard
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1956-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, November 22, 1956
Sweet Mother,
For weeks on end, I have been spending nearly all my nights battling with serpents. Last night, I was attacked by three different kinds of serpents, each more venomous and repugnant than the other???
0 1956-12-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, December 12, 1956
Mother, a letter from W. He is leaving Brazil and retiring from business for good.
Mother, what can I do with my life? I feel absolutely alone, in a void. What hope remains since I have not been able to integrate into the Ashram? I am goalless. I am from nowhere. I am good for nothing.
I have wanted to remain near you, and I love you, but there is something in me that does not accept an Ashram ending. There is a need in me to DO, to act. But what? What? Have I something to do in this life?
--
I dont see a thing, nothing. Oh Mother, I turn towards you in this void that is stifling me. Hear my prayer. Tell me what I must do. Give me a sign. Mother, you are my sole recourse, for who else would show me the path to be taken, who else but you would love me? Or is my fate to go off into the night?
Forgive me, Mother, for loving you so poorly, for giving myself so badly. Mother, you are my only hope, all the rest in me is utter despair.
Your child,
0 1956-12-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, December 26, 1956
Mother, perhaps it would be good if I told you what is happening within me, as sincerely as I can:
I feel that this Truth of my being, this self most intensely felt, is independent from any form or institution. As far back as I can reach in my consciousness, this thing has been there; it was what drove me at an early age to liberate myself from my family, my religion, my country, a profession, marriage or society in general. I feel this thing to be a kind of absolute freedom, and I have been feeling within me this same profound drive for more than a year. Is this need for freedom wrong? And yet is it not because of this that the best in me has blossomed?
--
Mother, this is the problem around which I have desperately been turning in circles. What is the truth of my destiny? Is it that which is urging me so strongly to leave, or that which is struggling against my freedom? For ultimately, sincerely, what I want is to fulfill my lifes truth. If I have ever had a will, then it is: LET BE WHAT MUST BE. Mother, how can one truly know? Is this drive, this very old and very CLEAR urge in me, false??
Your child,
0 1957-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1957-01-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, January 18, 1957
Sweet Mother,
The conflict that is tearing me apart is between this shadowy part of a past that does not want to die, and the new light. I wonder if, rather than escaping to some desert, it would not be wiser to resolve this conflict by objectify it, by writing this book I spoke to you about.
--
What do you see in me, Mother? Is it through writing that I shall achieve what is to be achievedor does all this still belong to a nether world? But if so, then of what use am I? If I were good at something, it would give me some air to breathe.
Your child,
0 1957-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
3.3.57
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1957-04-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, April 9, 1957
Mother,
I would like to throw myself at your feet and open my heart to you but I cannot. I cannot.
For I SEE that, were I to give in now, I would be done forthere would be no alternative but to live out the rest of my days in the Ashram. But everything in me rebels at this idea. The idea of winding up as General Secretary of the Ashram, like Pavitra, makes my skin crawl. It is absurd, and I apologize for speaking this way, Mother, for I admire Pavitra but I cant help it, I cant do it, I do not want to end up like that.
For more than a year now, I have been hypnotized by the idea that if I give in, I will be condemned to remain here. Once more, forgive me for speaking so absurdly, for of course I know it is not a condemnation; and yet a part of me feels that it would be.
Thus I am so tense that I do not even want to close my eyes to meditate for fear of yielding. And I fall into all kinds of errors that horrify me, simply because the pressure is too strong at times, and I literally suffocate. Mother, I am not cut out to be a disciple.
I realize that all the progress I was able to make during the first two years has been lost and I am just as before, worse than beforeas if all my strength were in ruin, all faith in myself undoneso much so that at times I curse myself for having come here at all.
That is the situation, Mother. I feel my unworthiness profoundly. I am the opposite of Satprem, unable to love and to give myself. Everything in me is sealed tight.
So what is to be done? I intend asking your permission to leave as soon as the book is finished (I am determined to finish it, for it will rid me of the past it represents). I expect nothing from the world, except a bit of external space, in the absence of another space.
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1957-04-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, April 22, 1957
Sweet Mother,
The book is finished.1 I would like to give it to you personally, if it would not disturb you, whenever you wish.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
It went something like this: somewhere, in the center of this enormous edifice, there was a room reservedas it seemed in the story for a Mother and her daughter. The Mother was a lady, an elderly lady, a very influential matron who had a great deal of authority and her own views concerning the entire organization. Her daughter seemed to have a power of movement and activity enabling her to be everywhere at once while at the same time remaining in her room, which was well, a bit more than a roomit was a kind of apartment which, above all, had the characteristic of being very central. But she was constantly arguing with her Mother. The Mother wanted to keep things just as they were, with their usual rhythm, which precisely meant the habit of tearing down one thing to rebuild another, then again tearing down that to build still another, thus giving the building an appearance of frightful confusion. But the daughter did not like this, and she had another plan. Most of all, she wanted to bring something completely new into the organization: a kind of super-organization that would render all this confusion unnecessary. Finally, as it was impossible for them to reach an understanding, the daughter left the room to go on a kind of general inspection She went out, looked everything over, and then wanted to return to her room to decide upon some final measures. But this is where something rather peculiar began happening.
She clearly remembered where her room was, but each time she set out to go there, either the staircase disappeared or things were so changed that she could no longer find her way! So she went here and there, up and down, searched, went in and out but it was impossible to find the way to her room! Since all of this assumed a physical appearanceas I said, a very familiar and very common appearance, as is always the case in these symbolic visions there was somewhere (how shall I put it?) the hotels administrative office and a woman who seemed to be the manager, who had all the keys and who knew where everyone was staying. So the daughter went to this person and asked her, Could you show me the way to my room?But of course! Easily! Everyone around the manager looked at her as if to say, How can you say that? However, she got up, and with authority asked for a key the key to the daughters roomsaying, I shall take you there. And off she went along all kinds of paths, but all so complicated, so bizarre! The daughter was following along behind her very attentively, you see, so as not to lose sight of her. But just as they should have come to the place where the daughters room was supposed to be, suddenly the manageress (let us call her the manageress), both the manageress and her key vanished! And the sense of this vanishing was so acute that at the same time, everything vanished!
So to help you understand this enigma, let me tell you that the Mother is physical Nature as she is, and the daughter is the new creation. The manageress is the worlds organizing mental consciousness as Nature has developed it thus far, that is, the most advanced organizing sense to have manifested in the present state of material Nature. This is the key to the vision.
Naturally, when I awoke, I immediately knew what could resolve this problem which appeared so absolutely insoluble. The vanishing of the manageress and her key was an obvious sign that she was altogether incapable of leading what could be called the creative consciousness of the new world to its true place.
0 1957-07-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, July 18, 1957
Sweet Mother,
I have just received a letter from my friends in charge of the French Archaeological Expedition to Afghanistan. They need someone to assist them on their next field excavations (August 15 December 15) and have offered to take me if I wish to join them.
0 1957-09-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(A child's question concerning a vision in which Mother had appeared to her in a luminous body)
Why have you come as we are?
0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, October 8, 1957
Mother,
I come to ask your permission to leave India. For more than a year now, I have been fighting not to leave, but this seems to be the wrong strategy.
--
Signed: Mother
Of Mother's French translation of these two books by Sri Aurobindo.
***
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1957-10-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, October 18, 1957
Sweet Mother,
This evening, you spoke of the possibility of shortening the path of realization to a few months, days or hours. And yesterday, when you talked to me about the freedom of the body, you spoke of the experience of the Kundalini, of this breaking of the lid that makes you emerge once and for all, above difficulties, into the light.
--
This unique method was to be the mantra, as Mother herself would discover.
***
0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1957-11-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1957-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, December 13, 1957
Sweet Mother, this is what is rising from my soul: I feel in me something unemployed, something seeking to express itself in life. I want to be like a knight, your knight, and go off in search of a treasure that I could bring back to you. The world has lost all sense of the wonderful, all beauty of Adventure, this quest known to the knights of the Middle Ages. It is this that calls so relentlessly within me, this need for a quest in the world and for a beautiful Adventure which at the same time would be an adventure of the soul. How I wish that the two things, inner and outer, be JOINED, that the joy of action, of the open road and the quest help the souls blossoming, that they be like a prayer of the soul expressed in life. The knights of the Middle Ages knew this. Perhaps it is all childish and absurd in the midst of this 20th century, but this is what I feel, this that is summoning me to leavenot anything base, not anything mediocre, only a need for something in me to be fulfilled. If only I could bring you back a beautiful treasure!
After that, perhaps I would be riper to accept the everyday life of the Ashram, and know how to give myself better.
Mother, I feel all this very strongly; I need your help to follow the true path of my being and fulfill this new outer cycle, should you see that it has to be fulfilled. I feel so strongly that something remains for me to DO. Guide me, Sweet Mother.
Your child,
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Note written by Mother in connection with the conversation of December 21, 1957)
At the very top, a constant vision of the Supremes will.
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
O Nature, Material Mother,
thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate
--
Sweet Mother, will you explain this years message?
There is nothing to explain. It is an experience, something that took place, and when it took place, I noted it down; and it so happens that it occurred just as I remembered that I had to write something for the new year (which at that time was the following year, that is, the year beginning today). When I remembered that I had to write somethingnot because of that, but simultaneouslythis experience came, and when I noted it down, I realized that it was the message for this year!
--
Then came these words: O Nature, Material Mother, thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate, and there is no limit to the splendor of this collaboration.
And the radiant felicity of this splendor was perceived in a perfect peace.
--
(Then Mother comments)
I have one thing to add: we must not misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that henceforth everything will take place without difficulties or always in accordance with our personal desires. It is not at this level. It does not mean that when we do not want it to rain, it will not rain! Or when we want some event to take place in the world, it will immediately take place, or that all difficulties will be abolished and everything will be like a fairy tale. It is not like that. It is something more profound. Nature has accepted into her play of forces the newly manifested Force and has included it in her movements. But as always, the movements of Nature take place on a scale infinitely surpassing the human scale and invisible to the ordinary human consciousness. It is more of an inner, psychological possibility that has been born in the world than a spectacular change in earthly events.
0 1958-01-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-01-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in English (with a touch of irony so reminiscent of Sri Aurobindo).
(Concerning Pakistan)
0 1958-02-03a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, February 3, 1958
Sweet Mother,
What you told me today at noon has left me stunned. I had decided to have my own way, but now I pray to be true.
--
Mother, I am placing all this in your hands, sincerely.
I am your child.
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Then Mother speaks to the children)
There is a continuation to all this, which is like the result in my consciousness of the experience of February 3, but it seems premature to read it now. It will appear in the April issue [of the Bulletin], as a sequel to this.
--
Indeed, one of the people near Mother had pulled Her out of the experience.
See Questions and Answers, (July 10, 1957).
0 1958-02-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-02-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Kataragama, March 7, 1958
Sweet Mother,
Since my departure, I have been feeling your Force continually, almost constantly. And I feel an infinite gratitude that you are there, and that this thread from you to me keeps me anchored to something in this world. Simply knowing that you exist, that you are there, that I have a goal, a centerfills me with infinite gratitude. On a street in Madras, the day after I left, I suddenly had a poignant experience: I felt that if that were not in me, I would fall to pieces on the sidewalk, I would crumble, nothing would be left, nothing. And this experience remains. Like a litany, something keeps repeating almost incessantly, I need you, need you, I have only you, you alone in the world. You are all my present, all my future, I have only you Mother, I am living in a state of need, like hunger.
On the way, I stopped at J and Es place. They are living like native fishermen, in loincloths, in a coconut grove by the sea. The place is exceedingly beautiful, and the sea full of rainbow-hued coral. And suddenly, within twenty-four hours, I realized an old dreamor rather, I purged myself of an old and tenacious dream: that of living on a Pacific island as a simple fisherman. And all at once, I saw, in a flash, that this kind of life totally lacks a center. You float in a nowhere. It plunges you into some kind of higher inertia, an illumined inertia, and you lose all true substance.
As for me, I am totally out of my element in this new life, as though I were uprooted from myself. I am living in the temple, in the midst of pujas,1 with white ashes on my forehead, barefoot dressed like a Hindu, sleeping on cement at night, eating impossible curries, with some good sunburns to complete the cooking. And there I am, clinging to you, for if you were not there I would collapse, so absurd would it all be. You are the only realityhow many times have I repeated this to myself, like a litany! Apart from this, I am holding up quite well physically. But inside and outside, nothing is left but you. I need you, thats all. Mother, this world is so horrifyingly empty. I really feel that I would evaporate if you werent there. Well, no doubt I had to go through this experience Perhaps I will be able to extract some book from it that will be of use to you. We are like children who need a lot of pictures in order to understand, and a few good kicks to realize our complete stupidity.
Swami must soon take to the road again, through Ceylon, towards March 20 or 25. So I shall go wandering with him until May; towards the beginning of May, he will return to India. I hope to have learned my lesson by then, and to have learned it well. Inwardly, I have understood that there is only you but its these problem children on the surface who must be made to toe the line once and for all.
Sweet Mother, I am in a hurry to work for you. Will you still want me? Mother, I need you, I need you. I would like to ask you an absurd question: Do you think of me? I have only you, you alone in the world.
Your child,
--
Signed: Mother
Puja: Hindu temple ceremony.
0 1958-04-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Kataragama, April 3, 1958
Sweet Mother,
I was waiting for things to be well established in me before writing you again. An important change has occurred: it seems that something in me has clickedwhat Sri Aurobindo calls the central will, perhapsand I am living literally in the obsession of divine realization. This is what I want, nothing else, it is the only goal in life, and at last I have understood (not with the head) that the outer realization in the world will be the consequence of the inner realization. So thousands of times a day, I repeat, Mother, I want to be your instrument, ever more conscious, I want to express your truth, your light. I want to be what you want, as you want, when you want. There is in me now a kind of need for perfection, a will to abolish this ego, a real understanding that to become your instrument means at the same time to find the perfect plenitude of ones personality. So I am living in an almost constant state of aspiration, I feel your force constantly, or nearly so, and if I am distracted a few minutes, I experience a void, an uneasiness that calls me back to you.
And at the same time, I saw that it is you who is doing everything, you who aspires in me, you who wants the progress, and that all I myself am in this affair is a screen, a resisting obstacle. O Mother, break this screen that I may be wholly transparent before you, that your transforming force may purify all the secret recesses in my being, that nothing may remain but you and you alone. O Mother, may all my being be a living expression of your light, your truth.
Mother, from the depths of my being, I offer you a sole prayer: may I become your more and more perfect instrument, a sword of light in your hands. Oh, to get out of this ego that belittles everything, diminishes everything, to emerge from it! All is falsehood in it.
And I, who understood nothing of love, am beginning to suspect who Satprem is. Mother, your grace is infinite, it has accompanied me everywhere in my life.
We are still in Kataragama, and we shall only go up to northern Ceylon, to Jaffna, around the 15th, then return to India towards the beginning of May if the visa problems are settled. Only in India, at the temple of Rameswaram, can I receive the orange robe. I am living here as a sannyasi, but dressed in white, like a Hindu. It is a stark life, nothing more. I have seen however, that truth does not lie in starkness but in a change of consciousness. (Desire always finds a means to entrench itself in very small details and in very petty and stupid, though well-rooted, avidities.)
Mother, I am seeing all the mean pettiness that obstructs your divine work. Destroy my smallness and take me unto you. May I be sincere, integrally sincere.
With infinite gratitude, I am your child.
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1958-05-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
I saw and understood very well that by concentrating, I could have given it the attitude of the absolute authority of the eternal Mother. When Sri Aurobindo told me, You are She, at the same time he bestowed upon my body this attitude of absolute authority. But as I had the inner vision of this truth, I concerned myself very little with the imperfections of the physical body I didnt bother about that, I only used it as an instrument. Sri Aurobindo did the sadhana for this body, which had only to remain constantly open to his action.1
Afterwards, when he left and I had to do the Yoga myself, to be able to take his physical place, I could have adopted the attitude of the sage, which is what I did since I was in an unparalleled state of calm when he left. As he left his body and entered into mine, he told me, You will continue, you will go right to the end of the work. It was then that I imposed a calm upon this body the calm of total detachment. And I could have remained like that.
--
This last sentence was later added by Mother in writing.
Tapasya: yogic discipline or askesis.
0 1958-05-11 - the ship that said OM, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother is referring to her 'Darshan' when four times a year She appeared on her balcony high above the assembled mass of disciples and visitors on the street below. The 'darshan days' were February 21, April 24, August 15 and November 24.
Tamas: in Indian psychology, inertia and obscurity.
0 1958-05-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-05-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-06-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note written by Mother in English.
Do not ask questions about the details of the material existence of this body: they are in themselves of no interest and must not attract attention.
0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-07-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Once someone even asked Santa Claus! A young Muslim girl who had a special liking for Father Christmas I dont know why, as it was not part of her religion! Without saying a word to me, she called on Santa Claus and told him, Mother doesnt believe in you; you should give Her a gift to prove to Her that you exist. You can give it to Her for Christmas. And it happened! She was quite proud.
But it only happened like that once. And as for Ganesh, that was the end of it. So then I asked Nature. It took her a long time to accept to collaborate. But as for the money, I shall have to ask her about it; because for me personally, it is still going on. I think, Hmm, wouldnt it be nice to have a wristwatch like that. And I get twenty of them! I say to myself, Well, if I had that and I get thirty of them! Things come in from every side, without my even uttering a word I dont even ask, they just come.
--
Ganesh: a god with the head of an elephant; the son of Parvati, the Divine Mother.
The room where, on the first of each month, Mother distributed to the disciples their needs for the month.
Asuras: the demons or dark forces of the mental plane.
0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-07-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-07-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-07-25a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-07-25b, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-08-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-08-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-08-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem, travelling)
8.12.58
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1958-08-29, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Note written by Mother after an experience She had during a playground meditation when Swami J.J. was present. It was this swami with whom Satprem journeyed in the Himalayas to receive tantric initiation.)
[Satprem would later part company with this Swami and follow a thorough tantric discipline with another guru who will henceforth be called X in the Agenda.]
The mantra written upon each of the souvenirs1 from the Himalayas has a strong power of evoking the Supreme Mother.
At the Thursday evening meditation, he appeared as the Guru of Tantric Initiation, magnified and seated upon a symbolic representation of the forces and riches of material Nature (in the middle of the playground, to my left), and he put into my hand something sufficiently material for me to feel the vibrations physically, and it had a great realizing power. It was a kind of luminous and very vibrant globe which I held in my hands during the whole meditation.
--
The Swami brought back various objects and souvenirs from the Himalayas which he presented to Mother.
***
0 1958-08-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(In the presence of Pavitra and Abhay Singh, Mother recounts a vision she had during the night)
[The disciple who managed the Ashram 'Atelier': mechanical workshop, maintenance garage, automobile service, etc.]
--
(Pavitra:) What was he holding in his hands, Mother?
Huge tires He was standing there, like that, with a very majestic air. He was wearing his white outfit, those long pyjamas
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
The physical seems to be more open to something that is repetitious for example, the music we play on Sundays, which has three series of combined mantras. The first is that of Chandi, addressed to the universal Mother:
Ya devi sarvabhuteshu matrirupena sansthita
--
Yes, they are long. And he2 has not given me any mantra of the Mother, so They exist, but he has not given me any I dont know, they dont have much effect on me. It is something very mental.
Thats why it should spring forth from you.
--
The different mantras or prayers that came to Mother and which She grouped under the heading Prayers of the Consciousness of the Cells, are included as an addendum to the Agenda of 1959.
***
0 1958-09-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-10-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Later, Mother added: 'Because I do not say everything; when I am in that state, there is a lethargy of expression!
***
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
In this vision, the d. ceased tantric guru of the guru who initiated Satprem appeared to Mother in a dark blue light and 'imposed' himself on her to tell her certain things.
The disciple's tantric guru.
We believe that Mother used the word 'qualified' in the sense of restrict, limit Or modifya limitless Power.
The vastness beyond the creation or the cosmic manifestation, the solid base upon which all the rest can unfold.
0 1958-10-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
On the one hand, there is what Sri Aurobindowho, as the Avatar, represented the supreme Consciousness and Will on earthdeclared me to be, that is, the supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing in my body through the integral sadhana.2 I could be the supreme Mother and not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one doing it, not II was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself; not only did I have to do what I was doing beforebeing a bridge between his sadhana and the world but I had to carry on the sadhana myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I dont mean successively in time, but it depends on the moment), and they are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal, ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and the consciousness of the Sadhak of the integral Yoga who strives in an ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression.
To this has been added a growing initiation into the supramental realization which is (I understand it well now) the perfect union of what comes from above and what comes from below, or in other words, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization.
Then and this becomes rather amusing like lifes play Depending upon each ones nature and position and bias, and because human beings are very limited, very partial and incapable of a global vision, there are those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mother is revealed through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mother and there are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the consciousness of a developed sadhak, and thereby have the same relationship with me as one has with what they generally call a realized soul. Such persons consider me the prototype of the Guru teaching a new way, but the others dont have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking the two extremes, but of course there are all the possibilities in between), they are only in contact with the eternal Mother and, in the simplicity of their hearts, they expect Her to do everything for them. If they were perfect in this attitude, the eternal Mother would do everything for themas a matter of fact, She does do everything, but as they arent perfect, they cannot receive it totally. But the two paths are very different, the two kinds of relationships are very different; and as we all live according to the law of external things, in a material body, there is a kind of annoyance, an almost irritated misunderstanding, between those who follow this path (not consciously and intentionally, but spontaneously), who have this relationship of the child to the Mother, and those who have this other relationship of the sadhak to the Guru. So it creates a whole play, with an infinite diversity of shades.
But all this is still in suspense, on the way to realization, moving forward progressively; therefore, unless we are able to see the outcome, we cant understand a thing. We get confused. Only when we see the outcome, the final realization, only when we have TOUCHED there, will everything be understood then it will be as clear and as simple as can be. But meanwhile, my relationships with different people are very funny, utterly amusing!
--
For example, this question of PowerTHE Powerover Matter. Those who perceive me as the eternal, universal Mother and Sri Aurobindo as the Avatar are surprised that our power is not absolute. They are surprised that we have not merely to say, Let it be thus for it to be thus. This is because, in the integral realization, the union of the two is essential: a union of the power that proceeds from the eternal position and the power that proceeds from the sadhana through evolutionary growth. Similarly, how is it that those who have reached even the summits of yogic knowledge (I was thinking of Swami) need to resort to beings like gods or demigods to be able to realize things?Because they have indeed united with certain higher forces and entities, but it was not decreed since the beginning of time that they were this particular being. They were not born as this or that, but through evolution they united with a latent possibility in themselves. Each one carries the Eternal within himself, but one can join Him only when one has realized the complete union of the latent Eternal with the eternal Eternal.
And this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it works, how it functions in the world.3 I was saying to myself, But I have no powers, I have no powers! Several days ago, I said, But after all, I KNOW WHO is there, I know, yet how is it that ? There, up to there (the level of the head), it is all-powerful, nothing can resist but here it is ineffective. So those who have faith, even an ignorant but real faith (it can be ignorant but nevertheless it is real), say, What! How can you have no powers? Because the sadhana is not yet over.
--
Mother added: 'The most beautiful part of the experience is missing... When I try to formulate something in too precise a way, all the vastness of the experience evaporates. The entire world is being revealed in all its organization down to the minutest details but everything simultaneouslyhow can that be explained? It's not possible.'
***
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-10-25 - to go out of your body, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
When X does his puja, I clearly see the particular form of the Mother he is invoking I see her descending.
Each one is in touch with the universal expression of an aspect or a will or a mode of the Supreme, and if one aspires for this, it is this that comes, with an extraordinary plasticity. And when that happens, I even become the Witness (not the witness in the way of the Purusha1: a witness far more infinite and eternal than the Purusha). I see what responds, why it responds, how it responds. This is how I know what people want (not here below, nor even in their highest aspiration). I see it even when the people themselves are no longer consciousor rather, not yet conscious (for me, its no longer, but anyway ), when they are not yet conscious of this identification somewhere. Even then I see it.
0 1958-11-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother is referring to the Ashram as a collectivity.
***
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Shortly afterwards, the disciple again brings up the topic of August 9, where Mother had said that the gods are a good deal worse than human beings)
It should be said that we are speaking of the Puranic gods, because the Christians, for example, do not understand what this can mean. They have an entirely different conception of the gods.
--
(Later, the disciple asks Mother for some clarification on the essential difference between the occult reality and mental formations)
Once you have worked in this field, you realize that when you have studied a subject, when you have mentally understood something, it gives a special tonality to the experience. The experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact of having known this subject and of having studied it gives a particular tonality; on the other hand, if you have learned nothing of the subject, if you know nothing at all, well, when the experience comes, the notation of it is entirely spontaneous and sincere. It can be more or less adequate, but it is not the result of a former mental formation.
--
In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion of the Supreme in man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a special capacity or grace of human beings on earth.
The film on August 5.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Later Mother added, 'stifling, suffocating.'
Later Mother further explained: 'When one is exteriorized, this body-spirit retains a connection with the being that has gone out, and what has gone out has a power over itwhich is precisely why one isn't completely dead! The being that has gone out also has the power to make the body move.'
Later, Mother explained: 'I don't mean an autonomous will (it is the being that has gone out which has the power to make the body move), it has only acquired, through training, the capacity to express the will of the being with which it has kept a relationship through this link of the body-spirit which is broken only at death.'
Original English.
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
( Mother arrives with a new change in her message for January 1, 1959: instead of 'an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast, generator of the new world,' Mother puts 'a formless, limitless Vast vibrating with the seeds of a new world')
The objectification of the experience came progressively, as always happens to me. When I have the experience, I am absolutely blank, like a newborn baby to whom things come just like that. I dont know what is happening, and I expect nothing. How much time it has taken me to learn this!
0 1958-11-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, November 14, 1958
Mother,
I feel disguised.1 And I detest hypocrisy I have many faults, but not that one.
--
Signed: Mother
Due to the orange robes of the sannyasi.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Concerning an experience Mother had on November 13 in regard to the disciple's difficulties)
Truly speaking, perhaps one is never rid of the hostile forces as long as one has not permanently emerged into the Light, above the lower hemisphere. There, the term hostile forces loses its meaning; they become only forces of progress, they force you to progress. But to see things in this way, you have to get out of the lower hemisphere, for below, they are very real in their opposition to the divine plan.
0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother specified: 'The subconscious memory of the past creates a kind of irresistible desire to escape from the difficulty, and you recommence the same foolishness, or an even greater foolishness.'
The disciple wanted to leave for the forest, the Congo, to do the most unlikely things there.
0 1958-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Concerning the disciple's karma and the tantric discipline that he is following to dissolve this karma, Mother wonders why She herself had not been able to dissolve it directly and why it was necessary to resort to intermediaries)
I am used to seeing the process or the working of things more from a spiritual point of view, something more universal, whereas this needs to be seen from a detailed, occult point of view.
--
A few days later, the disciple left on a journey, then Mother fell 'ill.' It was to be the first great turning in her yoga: the beginning of the yoga of the cells.
***
0 1958-11-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1958-11-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem)
Sunday morning
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1958-12-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Hyderabad, December 1958
Sweet Mother,
I had come to Hyderabad intending to prepare for a trip to Africa, but when it came to actually doing it, I simply could not. It is stronger than I; I cannot leave India, I cannot live without my soul.
--
Mother, I have made many mistakes, I have often been rebellious and fallen into many holes. Help me to pick myself up, give me nonetheless a little of your Love. This has to change.
I do not want to remain in Hyderabad. This is not the atmosphere I need, although everything is very quiet here.
--
Mother, I need you, I need you. Forgive me and tell me what I should do.
Your child,
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, Monday 12.15.58
Sweet Mother,
I have only now received your first letter which you had sent to Hyderabad. It arrived in time to do me some good, for I am living through critical moments.
--
Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain moments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these moments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these immense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuman, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the sanctuary to say my mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
I clearly see that the hour has come: either I will perish right here, or else I will emerge from this COMPLETELY changed. But something has to change. Mother, you are with me, I know, and you are protecting me, you love me I have only you, only you, you are my Mother. If these moments of utter darkness return and they are bound to return for everything to be exorcised and conqueredprotect me in spite of myself. Mother, may your Grace not abandon me. I want to be done with all these old phantoms, I want to be born anew in your Light; it has to beotherwise I can no longer go on.
Mother, I believe I understand something of all that you yourself are suffering, and the crucifixion of the Divine in Matter is a real crucifixion. In this moment of consciousness, I offer you all my trials and little sufferings. I would like to triumph so that it be your triumph, one weight less upon your heart.
Forgive me, Mother, for all the pain I may have thrown on you, but I am confident that with your Grace I will emerge from this victorious, your child unobscured, in all the fibers of my being. Oh Mother, how alone you are to bear all our suffering if only I could remember this in my moments of darkness.
I am at your feet. You are my Mother, my only support.
Signed: Satprem
Mother, may I not be swept away by one of these waves. Protect me. Love me! But EVERYTHING has to be faced NOW. I want to fight. I do not ask you to spare me, therefore, but to help me withstand the blow.
***
--
Signed: Mother
Do not be troubled about my body it is well on the way to recovery.
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, December 24, 1958
Sweet Mother,
Your last letter was a great comfort to me. If you were not there, with me, everything would be so absurd and impossible. I am again disturbing you because Swami tells me that you are worried and that I should write to you. Not much has changed, except that I am holding on and am confident. Yesterday, I again suffered an agonizing wave, in the temple, and I found just enough strength to repeat your name with each beat of my heart, like someone drowning. I remained as motionless as a pillar of stone before the sanctuary, with only your name (my mantra would not come out), then it cleared. It was brutal. I am confident that with each wave I am gaining in strength, and I know you are there. But I am aware that if the enemy is so violent it is because something in me responds, or has responded, something that has not made its surrender that is the critical point. Mother, may your grace help me to place everything in your hands, everything, without any shadow. I want so much to emerge into the Light, to be rid of all this once and for all.
I am following Swamis instructions to the letter. Sometimes it all seems to lack warmth and spontaneity, but I am holding on. I might add that we are living right next to the bazaar, amidst a great racket 20 hours a day, which does not make things easier. So I repeat my mantra as one pounds his fists against the walls of a prison. Sometimes it opens a little, you send me a little joy, and then everything becomes better again.
--
Mother, love me. I have only you, I want to belong to you alone.
I am at your feet.
--
Happy New Year, Sweet Mother.
***
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, December 28, 1958
Sweet Mother,
One sentence in your letter prompted much reflection; you write that Xs action might be useful here, too. After hesitating, I told Swami of the magic attack aimed directly against you.
--
Sweet Mother, I indeed suspect that you want to endure, to bear this struggle all alone. Oh, I think I understand a number of things about the mechanism of these attacks and their connection with me, about the Divine Love that embraces all and takes into itself the suffering and the evil of menall this overwhelms me with a sudden understanding. It seems to me that I am seeing and feeling all that you are facing, all that you are taking upon yourself for us. The suffering of the Divine in Matter has been an overwhelming revelation to meAh! I see, I want to fight, I want to be totally on your side; I am now and forever determined.
But you have enough to do with the higher beasts of prey without still having to fight the little scorpions. I beg of you, Sweet Mother, accept the help that is being offered to you, preserve your strength for the higher struggle. I quite understand that your Love can even go to the scorpions that are attacking you, but it is not forbidden to protect yourself from their venom. You have enough to do on other planes.
X is at the summit of tantric initiation, and his power is not the fruit of a simple knowledge. He holds it directly from the Divine, and these things have been in his family traditionally from ten generations. No black magic can resist his power. His action is not brutal, he does not mechanically apply formulas, he holds this Science and knows how to apply it like an expert chemist, always in Light, Love and sweetness. If you agree that he come to see you, he will immediately know the source of these attacks upon you and will even be able to make the attacking force speak. He has this power. Of course, neither X nor Swami will divulge this to anyone, and everything will be kept secret. You have only to send word, or a telegram: No objection.
--
Mother, I am fighting beside you, for you, for your Victory.
With all my Love, I am at your feet.
--
Signed: Mother
P.S. I shall propose to Swami to enter into contact with them at 8:45 p.m., if this time suits them.
0 1958 12 - Floor 1, young girl, we shall kill the young princess - black tent, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(This note was written by Mother in English. It concerns an attack of black magic that threatened her life and in the end completely changed her outer existence. A new stage begins.)
Two or three days after I retired to my room upstairs,1 early in the night I fell into a very heavy sleep and found myself out of the body much more materially than I do usually. This degree of density in which you can see the material surroundings exactly as they are. The part that was out seemed to be under a spell and only half conscious. When I found myself at the first floor where everything was absolutely black, I wanted to go up again, but then I discovered that my hand was held by a young girl whom I could not see in the darkness but whose contact was very familiar. She pulled me by the hand telling me laughingly, No, come, come down with me, we shall kill the young princess. I could not understand what she meant by this young princess and, rather unwillingly, I followed her to see what it was. Arriving in the anteroom which is at the top of the staircase leading to the ground floor, my attention was drawn in the midst of all this total obscurity to the white figure of Kamala2 standing in the middle of the passage between the hall and Sri Aurobindos room. She was as it were in full light while everything else was black. Then I saw on her face such an expression of intense anxiety that to comfort her I said, I am coming back. The sound of my voice shook off from me the semi-trance in which I was before and suddenly I thought, Where am I going? and I pushed away from me the dark figure who was pulling me and in whom, while she was running down the steps, I recognized a young girl who lived with Sri Aurobindo and me for many years and died five years back. This girl during her life was under the most diabolical influence. And then I saw very distinctly (as through the walls of the staircase) down below a small black tent which could scarcely be perceived in the surrounding darkness and standing in the middle of the tent the figure of a man, head and face shaved (like the sannyasin or the Buddhist monks) covered from head to foot with a knitted outfit following tightly the form of his body which was tall and slim. No other cloth or garment could give an indication as to who he could be. He was standing in front of a black pot placed on a dark red fire which was throwing its reddish glow on him. He had his right arm stretched over the pot, holding between two fingers a thin gold chain which looked like one of mine and was unnaturally visible and bright. Shaking gently the chain he was chanting some words which translated in my mind, She must die the young princess, she must pay for all she has done, she must die the young princess.
--
Mother withdrew on December 9. In fact, She had been unwell for already more than a month before withdrawing. On November 26, the last 'Wednesday class' took place at the playground; on November 28 the last 'Friday class', on December 6, the last 'Translation class'; on December 1, the end of Mother's tennis and the last visit to the playground. On December 9, She again went down for the meditation around the Samadhi. From December 10, Mother remained in her room for one month. A great period had come to an end. Henceforth, She would only go out of the Ashram building on rare occasions.
A disciple
0 1959-01-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, January 6, 1959
Sweet Mother,
This is to tell you that a knot has very perceptibly come undone in me, for no apparent reason; suddenly, I was breathing easily.
And it happened just as I was despairing of ever getting out of it. I seemed to be touching a kind of fundamental bedrock, so painful, so suffering, and full of revolt because of too much suffering. And I saw that all my efforts, all the meditations, aspirations, mantras, were only covering up this suffering bedrock without touching it. I saw this fundamental thing in me very clearly, a poignant knot, ever ready for an absolute negation. I saw it and I said to you, Mother, only your grace can remove this. I said this to you in the temple that morning, in total despair. And then, the knot was undone. Xs action contri buted a lot, with your grace acting through him. But truly, I have traversed a veritable hell this last while.
X continues his work on me daily; it is to last 41 days in all. He told me that he wants to undo the things of several births. When it is over, he will explain it all to me. I do not know how to tell you how luminous and good this man is, he is a very great soul. He is also giving me Sanskrit lessons, and little by little, each evening, speaks to me of the Tantra.
--
Mother, by way of expressing to you my gratitude, I want to work now to open myself totally to your Light and become truly an egoless instrument, your conscious instrument. Mother, you are the sole Reality.
With love and gratitude, I am your child.
--
Signed: Mother
The Bulletin of Physical Education, which appeared quarterly.
0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, January 14, 1959
Sweet Mother,
This morning, X told me that he would be most happy to continue his action upon you if it would help your work; he has continued it anyway, even after knowing that the malefic influence was expelled from the Ashram. By the way, X told me that this evil spirit is continuing to circle around the Ashram, but beyond its borders. Therefore, if you agree, it would be necessary for him to come to Pondicherry one of these days to come to grips directly with the evil one and finish him off in such a way that he can no longer come to disturb the sadhaks, or your work, upon the slightest pretext. Then X could force this spirit to appear before him, and thereby free the atmosphere from its influence. Anyway, this trip to Pondicherry would not take place in the near future, and it would be easy to give him an official excuse: seminars on the Tantra Shastra that will interest all the Sanskritists at the Ashram. Moreover, Xs work would be done quietly in his room when he does his daily puja. From here, from Rameswaram, it is rather difficult to attract Pondicherrys atmosphere and do the work with precision. Of course, nothing will be done without your express consent. Swami is writing you on his own to tell you of the revelation that X received from his [deceased] guru concerning your experience and the schemings of certain Ashram members.
--
As for the true tantric initiation, this is what X told me: I will give you initiation. You are fit. You belong to that line. It will come soon, some months or some years. Shortly you shall reach the junction. When the time has come, you yourself will come and open a door in me and I shall give you initiation.1 And he made me understand that an important divine work was reserved for me in the future, a work for the Mother. The important practical point is that I have rapidly to develop my knowledge of Sanskrit. The mantra given to me seems to grow in power as I repeat it.
Sweet Mother, by what Grace have you guided and protected me through all these years? There are moments when I have the vision of this Grace, bringing me to the verge of tears. I see so clearly that you are doing everything, that you are all that is good in me, my aspiration and my strength. Me is all that is bad, all that resists, me is horribly false and falsifying. If your Grace withdraws for one second, I collapse, I am helpless.2 You alone are my strength, the source of my life, the joy and fulfillment to which I aspire.
I am at your feet, your child eternally.
--
Signed: Mother
Original English.
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, January 21, 1959
Sweet Mother,
Here is what X told me: I have received a message from my guru.1 In my vision, the Mother was there, next to my guru, and she was smiling. My guru told me that your present difficulties are a period of testing, but I could already give you the first stage of tantric initiation and that for you, the three stages of initiation could be done in an accelerated way.
I will therefore give you initiation this Friday or Saturday, on the day of the full moon or the day before. This first stage will last three months during which you will have to repeat 1 lakh2 times the mantra that I will give you. At the end of three months, I will come to see you in Pondicherryor you will come here for a fortnight, and as soon as I have received the message from my guru, I will give you the second stage that will last three months as well. At the end of these three months, you will receive the full initiation. X warned me that the first stage I am to receive provokes attacks and tests but that all this disappears with the second stage. Forewarned is forearmed. For what reason I do not know, but X told me that the particular nature of my initiation should remain secret and that he will say nothing about it to Swami, and he added (in speaking of the speed of the process), But you will not be less than the Swami. (!!) There, I wanted you to knowbesides, you were present in Xs vision. All this happened at a time when I was in the most desperate crisis I have ever known. Sweet Mother, there is no end to expressing my gratitude to you, and yet with the least trial, I am reduced to nothing. Why have you so much grace for me?
I would like very much to return to Pondicherry for the February Darshan and once again begin working for you. Today I am sending a second lot to Pavitra and tomorrow I will start on the Aphorisms, for I do not want to make you wait any longer. I will send a third and final lot to Pavitra by the end of the month, in time for printing. I am very touched, sweet Mother, by your attention and the money you are sending me.
Sweet Mother, may my entire life be at your service, may my entire being belong to you. I owe you everything.
With love and gratitude, I am your child.
--
Sweet Mother, do not waste time writing to me; you have so many things to do and I feel a little awkward disturbing you so often.
***
--
Signed: Mother
X's deceased guru.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, January 27, 1959
Sweet Mother,
So X will to do a special work for you for eleven days, and if at the end of this period the suffering still persists, he will send me to Pondicherry to deliver something directly into your hands. I, too, would like very much to do something to alleviate your suffering.
--
Sweet Mother, I have a kind of fear that all these mantras are not bringing me nearer to you I mean you in your physical body, for it is not upon you physically that I was told to concentrate. Also, I almost never see you in my dreams any longer, or else only very vaguely. Last night, I dreamed that I was offering you flowers (not very pretty ones), one of which was called mantra, but I did not see you in my dream. Mother, I would like to be true, to do the right thing, to be as you want me to be.
I am your child. I belong to you alone.
--
Signed: Mother
The tantric work.
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, January 31, 1959
Sweet Mother,
I have reflected for a long time on that passage in your letter where you say that your body needs a mantra to hasten its transformation. Certainly X can do something in this realm, but I have not yet spoken to him (and I shall not speak of this to Swami).
--
Your letter, Sweet Mother, has filled me with strength and resolution. I want to be victorious and I want to serve you. I see very well that gradually I can be taught many useful things by X. The essential thing is first of all to lose this ego which falsifies everything. Finally, through your grace, I believe that I have passed a decisive turning point and that there is a beginning of real consecration and I feel your Love, your Presence. Things are opening a little.
Sweet Mother, I love you and I want to serve you truly.
Your child,
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1959-03-10 - vital dagger, vital mass, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(The disciple returned to the Ashram, but as he was very quickly seized again by his mania for the road, the Agenda of 1959, alas, is strewn with great gaps and is almost nonexistent. The following conversation is in regard to one of Mother's commentaries on the Dhammapada: 'Evil')
I spent a nighta night of battlewhen, for some reason or other, a multitude of vital formations of all kinds entered into the room: beings, things, embryos of beings, residues of beingsall kinds of things And it was a frightful assault, absolutely disgusting.
0 1959-03-26 - Lord of Death, Lord of Falsehood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
At times he calls himself the Lord of Nations. It is he who sets all wars in motion, and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation nor the supramental world, for that would spell his end. Besides, he knows We talk to each other; beyond all this, we have our relationship. For after all, you see (laughing), I am his Mother! One day he told me, I know you will destroy me, but meanwhile, I will create all the havoc possible.
This Asura of Falsehood is the one who delegated the Titan that is always near me. He chose the most powerful Titan there is on earth and sent him specially to attack this body. So even if one manages to enchain or kill this Titan, it is likely that the Lord of Falsehood will delegate another form, and still another, and still another, in order to achieve his aim.
0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, April 7, 1959
Sweet Mother,
I come to renew before you the resolution that I took this morning at the Samadhi.1
--
May you never again suffer because of me. O Mother, purify me and open my heart.
Your child,
--
Please, enlighten me, Sweet Mother.
Signed: Satprem
--
Signed: Mother
Sri Aurobindo's tomb in the Ashram courtyard.
0 1959-04-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, April 13, 1959
Sweet Mother
Here is the outline for the book on Sri Aurobindo for the ditions du Seuil.1
0 1959-04-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1959-04-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem)
4.23.59, 7 p.m.
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1959-04-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Note sent by Mother to Satprem)
24 April 1959
--
This text by Sri Aurobindo (The Human Cycle, Cent. Ed. Vol. XV p. 247) was translated into French by Mother on the occasion of writing to Satprem.
***
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender1). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forwardoh, not even a real step, just a little step!everything starts grating; its like stepping on an anthill And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for themthey have only to let it be done.
The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. Its like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You! It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. Give me the time!
--
In December 1958, when Mother stopped the Questions and Answers at the playground and thereafter left the Ashram building only rarely.
***
0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem)
Tuesday, 1 oclock
--
Signed: Mother
(Satprems reply)
--
Mother,
If it is to make me feel all my wrongs that you remind me of my solemn promise, then I am ready to acknowledge all these wrongs. I am guilty, without any extenuating circumstances, and I expect no indulgence.
--
I am not really bad, Mother, but I can no longer bear this life without love. That is all.
There is someone here who could have saved me, whom I could have loved. Oh, it has nothing to do with all those things you might imagine! My soul loves her soul. It is something very serene. We have known each other for five years, and I had never even dreamed of calling it love. But all the outer circumstances are against us. And I do not want to turn anyone away from you. Anyway, if I sink into the depths of the pit, or so I tell myself, it is no reason to drag someone else along with me. So this too is one more reason for me to leave. I cannot continue suffocating all alone in my corner. (It is useless to ask her name, I will say nothing.)
--
Signed: Mother
The disciple's tantric guru.
0 1959-05-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, May 28, 1959
Mother,
I do not want you to suffer because of me, for there is already too much suffering in this world. I shall do what you wish. I will go to Rameswaram and I will stay there as long as X wants. I have seen that there is no happy solution. So I bow before the circumstances.
--
2) There is the destiny of the writer in me. And this too is linked to the best of my soul. It is also a profound need, like adventuring upon the heaths, because when I write certain things, I brea the in a certain way. But during the five years I have been here, I have had to bow to the fact that, materially, there is no time to write what I would like (I recall how I had to wrench out this Orpailleur, which I have not even had time to revise). This is not a reproach, Mother, for you do all you can to help me. But I realize that to write, one must have leisure, and there are too many less personal and more serious things to do. So I can also sit on this and tell myself that I am going to write a Sri Aurobindo but this will not satisfy that other need in me, and periodically it awakens and sprouts up to tell me that it too needs to breathe.
3) There is also the destiny that feels human love as something divine, something that can be transfigured and become a very powerful driving force. I did not believe it possible, except in dreams, until the day I met someone here. But you do not believe in these things, so I shall not speak of it further. I can gag this also and tell myself that one day all will be filled in the inner divine love. But that does not prevent this other need in me from living and from finding that life is dry and from saying, Why this outer manifestation if all life is in the inner realms? But neither can I stifle this with reasoning.
--
Signed: Mother
I will see you tomorrow morning at ten oclock and I hope that a few small misunderstandings may be clarified.
--
(Note from Mother to Satprem)
I did not utter the words that you heard I wanted to speak to you of my experience during the night, but I was paralyzed because I clearly felt that you no longer understood me. As soon as I received your letter, I concentrated on you in an effort to help you, and when night fell, just at the hour I enter into contact with X, I called for his helpwhereupon he sent me this little Kali whom he had already sent once before. So I went to your house, I took you in my arms and pressed you tightly to my heart to keep you as sheltered as possible from blows, and I let Kali do her warrior dance against this titan who is always trying to possess you, creating this rebelliousness in you. She must have at least partially succeeded in her work, because very early in the morning the titan went away somewhat discomfited, but while leaving, he flung this at me as he went by: You will regret it, for you would have had less trouble if he had left. I flung his suggestion back in his face with a laugh and told him, Take that, along with all the rest of your ugly person! I have no need of it! And the atmosphere cleared up.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem, while travelling)
Rameswaram, June 3, 1959
Sweet Mother,
On your behalf, I told X that you had been worried about me. He, too, had felt that things were not going well and had worked on his side. He told me to write you immediately to tell you that everything is all right.
--
That is all, Sweet Mother. In spite of my anesthesia, I think of you. (I am not blocked; on the contrary, it seems to me that the bond has been renewed since our last meeting, but I feel strangely empty.) I am unable to understand how you can love me. Oh Mother, I have truly to begin living, truly loving!
Your child,
--
Signed: Mother
Yama: the god of Death in the Hindu pantheon.
0 1959-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, June 4, 1959
Sweet Mother,
Regarding Xs predictions which I mentioned in yesterdays letter, X said something untranslatable which meant, Let us see Mothers reactions for I told him that I had written it all to you. Then he said, There are several other secret matters which I shall tell you. And he added, by way of example, I shall tell WHERE the atomic bombs will be cropped. So if these things interest you, or if you see or feel anything, perhaps it would be good to express your interest in a letter to me which I would translate for X. Spontaneously, I emphasized to X that it would undoubtedly facilitate your work to have details. But it is better that these things come from you, should you see any use in it.
As for me, X said, Something will happen.
I need you, Sweet Mother.
Your child,
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1959-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, June 7, 1959
Sweet Mother,
I thought certain details from my conversations with X might interest you:
0 1959-06-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, June 8, 1959
Sweet Mother,
Even before receiving your second letter in which you say that the mantra is all right, X told me this morning that he had repeated your mantra during his puja and that it was very good, that there is nothing to be changed: The vibration is good.
--
P.S. X asked me questions about my family. I was prompted to speak to him of my Mother (seeing her photo, you had said that you knew her very well, if you recall). He immediately said, You MUST go and see your Mother. You will go in August and quickly come back by plane beginning September! Of course, I told him that all this seems like the highest fantasy to me, and that to begin with I had no money and would surely not ask you anything for that. He said, I shall ask my Mother. She will arrange everything.
***
--
If X told you to go see your Mother in August and return m early September, you must go. We shall manage. My finances are in an almost desperate state, but that cannot last. For what has to be done will be done.
You are constantly with me, and I am following all your inner movements with love and concern.
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1959-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, June 9, 1959
Sweet Mother,
Forgive me for these last letters. I was suffering.
--
Mother, lead me towards you, I am blind and without strength.
Your child,
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1959-06-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, June 11, 1959
Sweet Mother
As of yesterday evening I am a man delivered. It took only a very little word from X, and suddenly a weight seemed to have been lifted from me, and I knew at last that I would be fulfilled. All this is still so new, so improbable that I can scarcely believe it, and I wonder if by chance some evil blow is not still lurking in wait for me behind this promise of happiness; thus I shall be reassured only when I have told you everything, recounted all. But X has asked, me to wait a few more days before telling you this story, for he wants to give me certain additional details so that you may have all the elements, as accurately as possible.
0 1959-06-13a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, June 13, 1959
Sweet Mother,
I have received your last two letters of the 10th and 11th. I told X what you wrote about this trip to France and that your finances are in an almost desperate state. He replied with perfect assurance, Soon it will increase, very soon it will change. I am obviously hesitant to accept your generous offer and I do not know what I should do. I had never thought of returning to France, except in a distant future. I dont know why X told me that I should return there, except perhaps because he felt who my Mother is. I know that she is sad, that she believes me lost to her and thinks she will die without seeing me again. It would surely be a great joy to her. But other than that, I have no desire to go there, for each time I go to France, I feel like I am entering a prison. Naturally I would be happy for my Mothers joy; she is a great soul, but is this reason enough?
Sunday, 14th
0 1959-06-13b, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem)
6.13.59
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1959-06-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem)
Rameswaram, June 17, 1959
Sweet Mother,
I have received your card of the 13th. I dare not write, for everything is too confused as concerns the immediate realities.
--
Mother, I have suffered so much and prayed so much this last while that I am sure my soul cannot but arrange circumstances in such a way that somehow I may live at last that somehow EVERYTHING may truly become reconciled: not later on or one of these days, but soon for it cannot go on any longer; I am at my end.
Mother, I have prayed with so much truth in my heart that I am sure the gods will come to help me, and that you will help me, too. I think not only of Sujata, but of all these destinies that are being stifled within me.
Your child,
--
Would you please tell me whether I may really write to my Mother that I am coming to see her?
***
0 1959-06-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, June 25, 1959
Sweet Mother,
X told me to tell you what he has seen of my previous lives (but my impression is that he did not tell me everything and that there are elements about which he wants to speak to you personally).
0 1959-07-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1959-07-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem, once again in Pondicherry)
Pondicherry, July 10, 1959
Mother,
Please excuse me, but I cannot come to meet you. My heart is broken. I would not know how to speak to you.
--
Adieu, Mother.
Signed: Satprem
0 1959-07-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, July 14, 1959
--
Sweet Mother,
This is what I should have told you this morning, but I was afraid. For the last month I have been afraid of you, afraid that you might not understand. But I cannot leave with this weight on me. I beg of you to understand, Sweet Mother. I want nothing bad, nothing impure. I feel I have something to create with Sujata, I feel she is absolutely a part of something I have to achieve, that we have something to achieve together. For the five years we have known each other I have never had a single wrong thought but suddenly she opened my heart, which had been so completely walled-off, and this was like a wonder in me and at the same time a fear. A fear, perhaps because this love has been thwarted for so many lives.
Mother, I need Sujata like my very soul. It seems to me that she is a part of me, that she alone can help me break with this horrible past, that she alone can help me to love truly at last. I need peace so much, a quiet, PEACEFUL happinessa base of happiness upon which I could use my strength to build, instead of always fighting, always destroying. Mother, I am not at all sure of what must be, but I know that Sujata is part of this realization.
Thats all, Mother. Forgive me, but I am so afraid. For how is this possible in the Ashram? What would people say?
Mother, my whole soul writes you this. I swear there is in me a single great need of Love, beauty, nobility, purity. And we would work for you together in joy at last.1
Your anxious child,
0 1959-08-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem, on the road)
8.11.59
--
Signed: Mother
The color worn by sannyasis.
0 1959-08-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem)
And now, today,1 I am writing you again because it is the day of great amnesties, the day when all past errors are effaced
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1959-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, October 15, 1959
Sweet Mother,
Here are two or three things that might interest you:
--
2) X spoke to me of the Ashrams financial difficulties and said I shall tell you the secret why there are such difficulties. I think he is going to speak to me today or tomorrow. In any case, he told me that he was working (I am preparing) to change these conditions, and he asked me if there had been any improvement as yet. I replied that I did not believe the situation had changed very much. He spoke as well of certain people in the Ashram, but I will tell you about this in person. He had a rather amusing way of speaking about people, people who pretend to worship the Mother but who keep their mind as a dustbin!
7) X wants to send me back to Pondicherry this Sunday (Sunday the 18th, arriving Monday the 19th morning). He says it is useless for me now to remain here any longer since his house is not ready and he can do nothing. But, he said, I will have you come to my house for 3 months and I shall give you a training by which you can know Past, Present and Future, and have the same qualifications as me!
--
Sweet Mother, I have such a yearning for everything in my consciousness to harmonize and for the tantric discipline, the japa, etc., not to separate me from you. I want to be your child, open to you, without any contradictions. I would like so much to find your almost physical Presence within me again, as before. May all be clear, pure, one.
I would wish to be like Sujata, completely transparent, your child with her at your feet. Mother, help me. I need you. Sujata is healing something that was very painful in me, as though it were flayed or wounded, and which threw me into revolt. With this calming influence, I would like to begin a new life of self-giving. This change of residence is for me like the symbol of another change. Oh, Mother! may the painful road be over, and may all be achieved in the joy of your Will.
Your child,
0 1959-11-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
As a matter of fact, Mother had ended upon this sentence:
'It wants to live only to conquer.' Then the next day, Mother sent the following note to the disciple: 'Friday, 1.29.60yesterday, when I left you, the experience was there, but in my hurry to leave, the words did not come correctly, or rather they were incomplete (I had said, 'to live only to conquer'). What my body was experiencing was, 'Live to win the Lord's Victory.'
***
0 1960-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to the disciple concerning her former commentaries on the 'Dhammapada' at the Playground)
When I began the readings from the Dhammapada, I had hoped that my listeners would take enough interest in the practical spiritual side for me to read only one verse at a time. But quite quickly, I saw they found this very boring and were making no effort to benefit from the meditation. The only solution then was to treat the matter as an intellectual study, which is why I started reading chapter by chapter.
0 1960-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
On this first anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation, Mother distributed medals commemorating the occasion to the disciples filing past.
***
0 1960-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, March 7, 1960
Mother,
Here is the letter from the publisher. All comes from you, all is yours.
0 1960-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Hyderabad, April 7, 1960
Sweet Mother,
A few lines to tell you that I miss you. I truly realize more and more that I shall never be happy until I have disappeared in you entirely. There must be nothing left but That. I understand well enough, but Im so blocked, so thick. In any case, I think of you a lot and I really only live by this something that pulls me deep within. If that were not there, it would all be so absurd.
--
I love you, sweet Mother. You are truly my Mother, and I need you so much.
With all my love, I am at your feet.
--
Signed: Mother
As regards LOrpailleur, its good. I keep feeling that everything is going to turn out well.
0 1960-04-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Hyderabad, April 13, 1960
Sweet Mother,
My friend here gave me the book Templier et Alchimiste [Templar and Alchemist] to read; its published by the group he is going to join in France. They too speak of the transmutation of matter and proclaim the end of homo sapiens and the birth of the superman.
--
Sweet Mother, I am your child. I want to belong to you more and more completely.
With love.
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1960-04-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
What does Mother think of this?
Fraternally,
--
I read Mother the extract from the Revue des Deux Mondes. This was her comment:
It is quite possible that this is their original intention, I am aware of it. But they are wrong if they think it will turn out like that We shall see!
0 1960-04-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, April 20, 1960
Sweet Mother,
I was pained and shocked upon reaching Xs place to see him in such a horrible housea train station in miniature (and not as nice) with little pastries in garish yellow cement. Cement everywhere they even cemented the patio and uprooted the beautiful tree that was there. O Mother, its vandalism, its barbaric! You cannot imagine! Really, M has committed a terrible sin.
To compensate for that, however, I had the joy of finding your two letters. Yes, for some time I have been feeling your physical Presence more clearly. But then, why am I so blocked, where is the flaw? It constantly feels as though I am living at the outskirts of myself, or more precisely in a miniscule region of myself, and Im unable to be conscious of the resta perpetual amnesic. It is unpleasant and quite stupid. What is it that will explode this shell?
0 1960-04-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem)
It is to make you understand that whenever you are ill, something is ill in your being.
0 1960-04-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Rameswaram, April 26, 1960
Sweet Mother,
There are days when everything is so simple, when I see and feel that all one needs is to let oneself be carried and everything is light. I have really to be done with this me.
--
Mother, I am at your feet, with my love and my gratitude.
Your child,
0 1960-05-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Tamas: inertia. Later, Mother would discover that this is not tamas but something else.
***
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
During those three hours, there was nothing but the Supreme manifesting through the eternal Mother.
But there was no consciousness of being Mother, neither eternal nor whatever: it was a continuous and all-powerful flood, and so extraordinarily varied, of the Lord manifesting Himself.
It was as vast as the universe, a continuous movement the movement of manifestation of something which was EVERYTHING at once, a single whole. There was no division. And such a variety of colors, vibrations, powersextraordinary! It was one single thing, and everything was within it.
--
This experience last night also enabled me to understand what X had felt during one of our meditations. He had explained his experience by way of saying that I was this mystic tree whose roots plunge into the Supreme and whose branches spread forth over the world,3 and he said that one of these branches had entered into himand it had been a unique experience. He had said, this is the Mother.
And now I understand that what he had seen and translated by this Vedic image was that kind of perpetual flood.
0 1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the subtle physical, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Ma: Mother, in the languages of India.
It was at Tlemcen, in Algeria. While Mother was in trance, Theon caused the thread which linked Mother to her body to break through a movement of anger. He was angry because Mother, who was in a region where she saw the 'mantra of life,' refused to tell him the mantra. Faced with the enormity of the result of his anger Theon got hold of himself, and it took all Mother's force and all Theon's occult science to get Mother back into her bodywhich created a kind of very painful friction at the moment of re-entry, perhaps the type of friction that makes new born children cry out.
***
0 1960-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, June 3, 1960
Sweet Mother,
Im a bit discouraged. Every night I slip into a black abyss from which I wake up in the morning drained. Not one second of conscious sleep. It takes me an hour to recuperate from my sleep. In fact, I am constantly on edge and the least thing exhausts my body.
--
Mother, there is hardly an instant of my conscious life that I am not aspiring for more consciousness but theres still this abyss I slip into at night, as if nothing existed!
Pardon my grumblings. If only at least I knew what I could do to change all this.
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1960-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother added:
'Or any word that has a power for you, a word spontaneously springing from the heart, like a prayer which sums up your aspiration.'
Unfortunately, Mother had us cut many things from this text. We regret the fact.
***
0 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Its rather something which has no image that I call Mother.
Yes, but thats so much better! Much better. That is the very obstacle for most people: they want to see me as I am but as I am, as my body is, its stupid. Its absolutely stupid.
--
And thats really how it was Hmm, maybe thats what its like for an infant shut up in his Mothers womb, so he kicks about in every direction and for a long time. Hes had enough of being shut in.
It was a kind of rage against something that shuts you in.
--
The disciple means in meditationto imagine Mother in her physical form or to use her physical form as an 'object' of meditation. In fact, he was very afraid of getting caught.
***
0 1960-06-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-06-Undated, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry
Mother,
You sent me this flower, Vital Collaboration. I am taking this opportunity to tell you something which has been weighing on my heart for years and which, naturally, comes back up whenever things go badly.
0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
object:0_1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
It was a force with a sparkling white light at its center, the light which is the force of the Divine Mother, and as soon as it was well packed and concentrated inside, or condensed, it took on all the colorsvibrations of every color Like a materialization these colors were like a materialization of the Divine Force when it enters matter. (Just as matter is a condensation of energy, well, this seemed to be a condensation of Divine Force. Thats really the impression it gave.)
It reminded me of tantric things. I have seen tantric formations and how forces are systematically separated by themeach vibration, each color. Its very interesting. They are all one, and yet each is distinct. That is, they are separated in order to be distinguished and for each one to be used individually. Each one represents a particular action for obtaining something in particular. This is the special knowledge the tantrics have, I believe. Or its the reflection of their knowledge. And my impression is that when they do their pujas or say their mantras, what they are trying to do is recombine all that into the white light. Im not sure. I know they use each one separately for a separate purpose, but when they speak of their puja succeeding, it may mean that they have been able to recombine the light. But I say this very guardedly. For I would have to see X do his puja one day to really knowfrom afar Im not so sure. Its merely an impression.
This is what I am constantly seeing now, but along with this Divine Force or this Divine Consciousness that Sri Aurobindo speaks of when he says, Mothers Force is with you. When it comes, it is sparkling white, perfectly white and perfectly luminous. And as it accumulates inside, it makes living vibrations of every color. And it goes on and on and on. Sometimes it lasts half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hournothing goes out. And it keeps constantly entering. And it piles up. Its as if it is all being accumulated or compressed together.
So, the observing mind, the intelligence that watches, looked at all thisAh, thats what its like (an intelligence that watches without interfering in the least). Its like a spectator talking to himself.
0 1960-07-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem)
7.15.60
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1960-07-18 - triple time vision, Questions and Answers is like circling around the Garden, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
S.M came the other day Hes quite informed about events as only the government knows them. He brings me government newsnot what they feed to the public. It doesnt look good. But as he has confidence, he wanted to know (so much confidence that he goes and tells Nehru and others, Oh, Mother said this, Mother said that. And it turns out true, fortunately!). So after describing things at some length, he asked my opinion.
Logically, according to reason, war seems unavoidable. But as he asked, I looked I looked at my nights, precisely, as well as other things. And then I said, I dont feel it. I dont feel any war.
--
Mother means that the Ashramites themselves create the armor. See also X's reflections in an undated letter of May 1959.
One lakh = 100,000.
0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
object:0_1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Concerning two teachers at the Ashram's Center of Education who wrote Mother asking if 'only' Sri Aurobindo should be studied. Pavitra was present during this conversation.)
An eight page letternothing but passion.
(Pavitra:) Yes, Mother.
Its all from up here ( Mother touches her forehead).
--
And finally, Sweet Mother, what I would really like to know is the purpose of our Center of Education. Is it to teach the works of Sri Aurobindo? And only these? All the works or some only? Or is it to prepare the students to read the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? Is it to prepare them for the Ashram life or for outside occupations as well? So many opinions are floating in the air, and even the old disciples from whom we expect some knowledge make so many contradictory statements
(Laughing, to Pavitra:) I suppose thats for you!
that we no longer know what to believe nor on what to base ourselves. So what should be our foundation upon which to work in the absence of a true and certain knowledge? Please enlighten us, Mother.
I answered. The letters must have left. I wrote (in English) that its not so much a question of organization as of attitudeto begin with. Then I said, It seems to me that unless the teachers themselves get out of this ordinary intellectuality (!), they will never be able to fulfill their duty.
--
(Pavitra hands Mother a new French dictionary, the All-in-One)
Oh! French verbs!
(Pavitra:) Yes, Mother; in this dictionary each verb is shown the category it is in, how it is conjugated
The verbs
Take choyer [coddle, pamper], for example (Pavitra shows Mother), its conjugated like aboyer [snarl, bark].
What a comparison! ( Mother laughs) Oh, they have such psychological subtleties!
0 1960-08-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem regarding the first copy of his first book, L'Orpailleur)
8.16.60
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(While filing various old papers, notes, etc., Mother happens upon the plan for a film studio at the lake)
[Some five miles from Pondicherry.]
--
Oh no, sweet Mother! Fortunately they have been kept.
Oh! I have plenty of them, plenty. There must be many more boxes full.
--
(Getting up to leave, Mother holds in her hands the first copy of LOrpailleur which the disciple has just received from France and offered to Her)
Shall I take your book or ? Dont you want it?
--
(Mischievously) Did you tell them Mother was happy?They couldnt care less! ( Mother laughs)
(Unruffled) They dont exactly know who Mother is.
No, fortunately not! Fortunately, my child! Fortunately.
(Just at the doorstep, as She is leaving, Mother tells the disciple that She had seen three books, a trilogy, and the third one would be about Her. And She adds:)
Sri Aurobindo came during my japa to tell me, I will help him all through.
0 1960-08-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-09-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, September 2, 1960
Sweet Mother,
After leaving your room, X kept repeating, Very wonderful. Then he explained to me that white rays were vibrating everywherealong the whole length of the Kundalini, white, yellow and blue, but especially white (he indicated the forehead in particular).
--
In conclusion, he said, Where is the Mother and where is X? meaning, I suppose, that all separation had disappeared.
With love.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
X has spoken to me several times of his lack of esteem for most people in the Ashram: Why does Mother keep all these empty pots? he says.
If he imagines for one moment that I believe all the people here are doing sadhana, he is grossly mistaken!
--
The only way I can make him understand that I have work to do is to tell him, Mother asked me to do it; then he keeps quiet.
Yes, he doesnt dare say a thing He doesnt understand it very well. What funny ideas, eh! He must think I have funny ideas, but anyway In the end, he tells himself, Oh, its just because shes born in France that she is still carrying this burden!
--
Words of the Mother, p. 14 (January 15, 1933).
Traditional tantrism.
0 1960-09-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Signed: Mother
***
--
Text written by Mother in French and English; it became the New Year's Message for 1961.
A photograph of Mother that accompanied the 1961 New Year's Message.
***
0 1960-10-02b, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, October 2, 1960
--
Sweet Mother,
As I did not find the translation of the Message fully satisfying, I have continued pondering over it. Then another possibility, which MAY be better, presented itself. Here it is:
--
Signed: Mother
'This wonderful world of delight, at our gates, waiting for our call to come down upon earth.'
0 1960-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Concerning an old Question and Answer of July 4, 1956 at the Playground in which Mother speaks of her first realization of the Divine, in Paris)
Just as the shooting star flashed past, there sprang from my consciousness: To realize the divine union, for my body! And before twelve months were out, it was done.
--
In these Questions and Answers, for example, you had wanted to edit out the words Sweet Mother since people from the West might not understand. But then, we have just now received a letter from someone who suddenly had a very beautiful experience when he came across those words, Sweet Mother. He saw, he suddenly felt this maternal presence of love and compassion watching over the world. The moment had come and, precisely, it did its work. Its very interesting.
Mentally we say, Oh, that cant go. And even I am often inclined to say, Dont publish this, dont speak of something or other. Then I realize how silly it is! There is something that uses everything. Even what may seem useless to usor perhaps worse than useless, harmfulmight be just the thing to give someone the right shock.
0 1960-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Z's work involved seeing Mother everyday to watch over her health and her food.
***
0 1960-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(The day before 'Kali Puja,' the ritual festival devoted each year in India to the goddess Kali, the warrior aspect of the universal Mother)
She has already been here for two days and Oh, yesterday especially, she was so in such a mood!like a warrior. I said to her, But why not change them through through an excess of love?
--
And when it came to others he could remove an illness like that (gesture, as if Mother were calmly extracting an illness from the body with her fingertips). That happened to you once, didnt it? You said that I had done this for you but it wasnt me; he was the one who did it He could give you peace in the mind in the same way ( Mother brushes her hand across her forehead). You see, his actions were absolutely On others, it had all the characteristics of a total mastery Absolutely superhuman.
One day, hell tell you all this himself.1
--
Mother stopped all her activities for twelve days from December 5, 1950, the day Sri Aurobindo departed.
***
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Pavitra shows Mother a photograph of the house in which She lived in Paris, rue du Val de Grce)
Well, well! The house on Val de Grce! It looks inhabited, the windows have curtains in them. I lived therea small house, really very small, with a bedroom upstairs.
--
Im going to tell you what I sawits very interesting. First, emanating from here ( Mother indicates the chest), a florescence of every color like a peacocks tail spread wide; but it was made of light, and it was very, very delicate, very fine, like this (gesture). Then it rose up and formed what truly seemed like a luminous peacock, up above, and it remained like that. Then, from here (the chest), what looked like a sword of white light climbed straight up. It went up very high and formed a kind of expanse, a very vast expanse, which was like a callthis lasted the longest. And then, in response, a veritable rain, like (no, it was much finer than drops) a golden lightwhite and goldenwith various shades, at times more towards white, at times more golden, at times with a tinge of pink. And all this was descending, descending into you. And here (the chest), it changed into this same deep blue light, with a powdering of green light inside itemerald green. And at that moment, when it reached here (the level of the heart), a number of little divinities of living golda deep, living goldcame, like this, and then looked at you. And just as they looked at you, there was the image of the Mother right at the very center of younot as she is commonly portrayed but as she is in the Indian consciousness Very serene and pure and luminous. And then that changed into a temple, and inside the temple there seemed to be an image of Sri Aurobindo and an image of me but living images in a powdering of light. Then it grew into a magnificent edifice and settled in with an extraordinary power. And it remained motionless.
That is the representation of your japa.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
All this happened just on the day X1 was leaving. So I told S to take the photograph and letter to X and tell him the story. X consulted some book, did a very short japa for a few seconds and said, Oh, hell come back before September 26, BUT inform Mother so that She may see to ft. therefore, I concentrated a little.
About two weeks later (in other words, ten days or so before September 26), some more news the boys older brother, who lives in Ahmedabad (not Bombay), came to visit his Mother, father and grandmo ther (theres also a grandmo ther), and he asked about his brother. He had come with a friend. Your brother has disappeared, they explained, we dont know what has happened to him. So the two of them decided to search for him: Well find him .
The day before their departure, the elder brothers friend said he was going to visit the grandmo ther (she lives some hundred yards away). He went outand didnt return. Disappeared.
--
Then the police got involved. They wanted to take him back to the countryside around Poona (naturally I suppose they nursed him in the meantime), but not much came out of it. Seems that wherever he remembered seeing these people, when he said he had seen them, he fainted. Finally, I was told the story, and the poor family wrote to me saying, Who are these demons with such a great power that even it withstands Mothers force as well as that of Xand who are holding our son? So X was again informed and, knowing the story of the elder brothers friend, he said, Ah, now I know where the other one is, and I hope it wont take too long. But then September 26 passedgeneral despair in the family. They wrote to me, and I concentrated.
It was just before Durga Puja,3 or just after I cant remember (dates and I dont go together)no, it was after Durga Puja. So I went into a deep concentration and, as a matter of fact, I saw that a very powerful and dangerous rakshasic4 power was involved. And then, when I started walking for my japa upstairs in my room (I had given some thought to this story and tried asking for something to be done), I suddenly saw Durga before me raising high a lance of white light the lance of light that destroys the hostile forcesand She struck into a black swarming mass of men.
--
(Here we introduce, parenthetically, the details of the story as Mother told them two months later)
I found out the details: this boy had to go to the station, but on his way, he went into a shoe store just next to the station to buy a pair of sandals. As he entered, he saw a man there choosing a pair of womens shoes for himself! This seemed strange to him: Whats this man doing buying and he WATCHEDsuddenly, nothing more. He lost consciousness and no longer knew what happened to him. And thats how the story begana man selecting womens shoes in a shop! He must do strange thingsprobably intentionallyto attract peoples attention. Naturally, out of curiosity, the boy started watching, and that was thatall of a sudden, blank, nothing more! And long afterwards he found himself far away in a train with this man. Hes here now with his Mother they came to thank me. Its he who gave me the details. Hes a nice boy, but all this has left him with some anxiety, especially when he speaks of it. Hes trying to forget. He told me hed like to join the army and asked my permission. The boy feels a need for force and he has the idea that to be part of such a force would be good for him. (Of course, he didnt tell me all this, hes not that conscious. But thats what he feels the need to be supported by an organization of force.) So I encouraged him. I told him it was a good idea. His Mother wasnt very happy! She feared he was leaping from the frying pan into the fire!
Another curious detail is that after having taken away all his appetite and having put him in the caf as a waiter, they told him, Now you must eat, so he tried to eat, and for four days he vomited up everything he put init was completely black! After that, he was able to start eating a little. Its a fantastic story!
--
I had X informed. But I didnt tell him my difficulty (this mantra they threw on me to kill me), I didnt speak of that at all. For he had insisted, from the beginning he had said, Mother must see to it, only Mothers grace can save them. And I understood their attack came just at the time of Durga Puja, so I understood that Durga had to intervene. So thats the story.
Things are not going so well for X either; everywhere its grating. It was probably very important I am hopeful that it can bring some change.
--
(No sooner had Mother finished telling this story than, by a curious coincidence, someone brought her a portrait drawn by P.K., one of the Ashram artists. Several days earlier, at about two in the morning during an uncommonly violent lightning storm, P.K. had suddenly SEEN amidst the flashes of lightning in the sky a rather terrible, demoniacal head in front of his very eyes. Having nothing else available, he hastily drew his vision in chalk on a schoolchilds slate, which is the portrait Mother speaks of here:)
Well, well! So P.K. is clairvoyant! Its him, for surethis is the being behind those people. Thats why they had so much power. And he came here because of tha the was furious. Quite a demon!
--
(Some days later, Mother added the following:)
Merely by looking at that portrait, one child came down with fever!7
--
The yearly ritual worship in honor of Durga, the universal Mother.
The rakshas are demons of the lower vital plane.
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(After a meditation with Mother on the occasion of the disciple's birthday. At the outset of the conversation, Mother had given the disciple a small leather wallet with an Egyptian fresco depicted on it.)
Let me see the wallet ( Mother looks at it) Ah, so that has nothing to do with it!
0 1960-11-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother is referring to traditional tantrism.
Later coming back to the experience She has just described, Mother added the following: 'It's a very interesting experience. It's a very powerful lever for abolishing the moral point of view in its narrowest forms. And this is precisely what I encounter all the time in peopleyou see, all those who make a spiritual effort bring me truckloads of morality!'
Original English.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, If Divine Love were to manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst. So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easyat least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And Ive experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mothers room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, burst and be done with. But Sri Aurobindo always intervenedall three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait.
Then weeks go by, sometimes even months, between one thing and another, so that some elasticity may come into these stupid cells.
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Soon afterwards, Mother comes back to the same theme)
It all began the day I received the news of Zs arrival. All right, I thought, heres a chunk of life sent back to me for clarifying. I must work on it. But it didnt stop there Its strange how all this past had been swept clean I could no longer remember dates, I couldnt even remember when Z had been here before, I no longer knew what had happened, it had all been wiped cleanwhich means that it had all been pushed down into the subconscient. I didnt even know how I used to speak to him when I saw him, nothing, it was all gone. All that had remained alive were one or two movements or facts which were clearly connected to the psychic life, the psychic consciousness but just one or two or three such memories; all the rest was gone.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Before I fell sick, I had a peculiar dream. I was here in the corridor, and someone quite dark came to tell me that Mother wanted me to change my work. And I recall trying with all my might to ask him, But why, why? Finally you arrived. You were there at a table with some others. I was quite annoyed because all these people upset me, they were hindering me from being with you. And you said to me very clearly, Its time this gentleman goes. perhaps this gentleman represented a part of my being which had to disappear or change, but anyway you asked me to do something extremely difficultl felt a very great difficulty doing it. I even remember, in my dream, having left you for an instant, as if I wanted to leave the Ashram, then I must have walked up and down for a while. Finally, I must have made an enormous effort to come back and sit next to you on a bench which symbolically was very hard The next morning I woke up with the flu.
So, its very simple. The sickness was due to one part of your being going faster than the rest. A part of the physical consciousness probably remained behind, and that created this imbalance and triggered the sickness.
--
This interests me, for these things do not at all enter through the mind (he doesnt receive a thing there, hes closed there). So in his letter he says that this thing or that is necessary (he describes it in his own words), and he adds, This is why we must be so grateful to have among us the the great Mother7 (as he puts it), the great Mother who knows these things.Good! I said to myself. (It had to do with something specific concerning the capacity for discrimination in the outside world, the different qualities and different functions of different beings, all of which depends on ones inner construction, as it were.) So I see that even this, even these physical experiences, is received (and yet I hadnt tried, I had never tried to make him receive it); it merely works like this, you see (gesture of a widespread diffusion), and the experience is veryhow should I say?drastic, with a kind of (power of radiation). Imperative.
Original English.
0 1960-12-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Later, Mother added the following: 'In this regard I don't know where, but somewhereSri Aurobindo spoke of this physical mind, and he said that there was nothing you could do with it; it must only be destroyed.'
Mother may be alluding to the following passage from The Synthesis of Yoga: 'There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing clement.'
Cent. Ed., Vol. XX, p. 300.
The tantric guru. During his periodic visits to the Ashram, Mother used to give him almost daily meditations.
***
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-12-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-12-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1960-12-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, December 25, 1960
Sweet Mother,
I want to tell you that X completely changed my japa this morning. Instead of ten hours a day, I now have only about half an hour to do three times a day!
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
The room where Mother distributed to the disciples their needs (soap, paper, etc.) on the first of each month.
Mother later discovered that this world of complications is the symbol of the physical mind.
Mother later narrated the end of her 'dream' with X:
'It was his house, and it was rather complicated to enter. I was saying a mantra or japa when X came along; he had a ... a terribly reproachful air! Then he smelled my hands: 'It's a bad habit to wear perfume. ( Mother laughs) You cannot live a spiritual life when you wear perfume.' then I looked at him and thought, 'My God, does he have to be so backward!' But it annoyed me, so I said, 'Very well, I'm going.' When I got near the door, he started saying, 'Is it true you have been married several times, and that you've been divorced?' Then a kind of anger entered me (laughing) and I told him, 'No, not just once, but twice!' Thereupon, I left. All the old ideas...
0 1961-01-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Later, during the course of the conversation, Mother remarked:)
Understanding The Synthesis of Yoga is quite simple: I have only to be silent for a moment, and Sri Aurobindo is here.
--
Mother generally worked a little every day on the French translation of The Synthesis of Yoga.
The notebook in which a young woman disciple asked questions on Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms. Later, Mother preferred answering verbally Satprem's questions on the aphorisms. This allowed her to speak of her experiences freely without the restrictions imposed by a written reply. These 'Commentaries on the Aphorisms' were later partially published in the Bulletin under the title Propos. Here they are republished chronologically in their unabridged form.
Where Sri Aurobindo's body lies, in the Ashram courtyard.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(A little later, Mother made the following remark concerning the Agenda of December 13, 1960, where she speaks of the physical Minds. disbelief and defeatist reactions as intimately linked to the bodys illnesses.)
This defeatist Mind is still functioning and in full swing!
--
Later, Satprem asked Mother, 'Is it a single vibration that CAN REPEAT itself endlessly or that REPEATS itself endlessly?' Mother replied: 'I meant several things at once. This single vibration is in static latency everywhere but when you realize it consciously you have the power to make it active wherever you direct it; that is, one doesn't "move" something, but makes it active by the insistence of the consciousness wherever you focus it.'
Twice a week, during the period of the Playground Talks, Mother would publicly reply to questions put to her by the disciples assembled at the Ashram Playground.
World Uniona 'movement' launched through the personal initiative of a disciple.
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Even those who claim to be broad-minded, above these conventions, immediately fall right into the trap. And to ease their consciences they say, Mother wouldnt allow that. Mother wouldnt permit that. Mother wouldnt tolerate such a thing!to add a further inanity to the rest.
This state is very difficult to get out of. It is really Pharisaismthis sense of social dignity, this narrow-mindednessbecause no one with an atom of intelligence would fall into such a hole! Those who have traveled through the world, for instance, and seen for themselves that social mores depend entirely upon climatic conditions, upon races and customs and still more upon the times, the epochthey are able to look at it all with a smile. But the self-righteous oooh!
--
When asked later about the meaning of this somewhat elliptical statement, Mother said: 'There are two stages. The first involves a mental (and possibly intuitive) vision of what will be (perhaps in an immediate future), and this is what we call seeing things "as they should be." The other is an identification with the supreme Will and the perception that at each second everything is exactly as the Supreme wants it to be, that it is the precise expression of the Supreme. The first is a vision of what is coming and says, "That's how things should be." But we overlook the distance between what presently exists and what is coming. While if we go high above and become one with the Consciousness of the supreme Will, we see that at every instant, at every moment in the universe, all is exactly as it should beexactly as the Supreme wants it to be. That is Omnipotence.'
Saraswati represents the universal Mother's aspect of Knowledge and artistic creativity. On this occasion, Mother would go down to the Meditation Hall and the disciples would silently pass in front of her to receive a message. This year they would receive a folder containing five photographs of Mother.
Savitri, Vol. 29, XI.I.702.
0 1961-01-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
For Sri Aurobindo and Mother, the 'vital' represents the regions of consciousness or the centers of consciousness below the mind between the throat and the sex center, i.e. the whole region of emotions, feelings, passions, etc., which constitute the various expressions of the Life-Energy.
Throughout the Agenda, words Mother originally spoke in English are italicized.
0 1961-01-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
At last I found myself in a big place down below where there was a row of houses, all kinds of things, and it was absolutely essential that I go back upwhen suddenly a somewhat indistinct form (rather dark, unluminous) came to me and said, Oh, dont go there, its very bad, very dangerous! Theyve set it all up in a terrifying way: none can withstand it! You mustnt go there, wait a bit. And if you need something, do come, you know I have everything you need! ( Mother laughs) its a little old and dusty but youll manage! Then she led me into a huge room filled with objects piled one on top of another, and in one corner she showed me a bathtubmy child, it was a marvel! A splendid pink marble bathtub! But it was unused, dusty and old. Well just wipe it off, she said, and youll be able to use it! She showed me other areas for washing and dressing, there was everything one could possibly need. You can use it all. Dont go up there! I looked at her closely. She struck me as having a tiny face, it was oddit wasnt a form, it was it was a form and yet it wasnt! As imprecise as that. Then I clasped her in my arms and cried out, Mother, you are nice! ( Mother laughs) I knew then that she was material Mother Nature.
After that I felt quite at ease. The battle was overit was over FOR THE MOMENT, because they werent finished: they continued their uproar on the other side; but I didnt have to go there anymore.
--
Then last night I saw the symbol, the image of the thing. But what was it? It was an element in the most material Matter,3 because it was deep down below; yet despite it all, Mother Nature was in charge there: she was familiar with everything, knew everything and it was all at her disposalabsolutely the most material Nature. And she herself had no light, but was very, very she had a concealed power that was completely invisible.
Each time I set out to leave her domain and ascend above, it triggered a hurricane. I would pass this way and the storm started up, pass that way, unleash a gale. Finally she approached me and said very gently, very sweetly, in a most unassuming way, No, dont go there, dont go! Dont try to return to your home. They have set up a dreadful hurricane! And artificial: there were explosions like bombs everywhere, and even worse, like thunderbolts. One could see the artificial tricks and electrical effects they were using to create their thunder, but it was on a tremendous scale!
--
Savitri is really a condensation, a concentration of the universal Mother the eternal universal Mother, Mother of all universes from all eternityin an earthly personality for the Earths salvation. And Satyavan is the soul of the Earth, the Earths jiva. So when the Lord says, he whom you love and whom you have chosen, it means the earth. All the details are there! When she comes back down, when Death has yielded at last, when all has been settled and the Supreme tells her, Go, go with him, the one you have chosen, how does Sri Aurobindo describe it? He says that she very carefully takes the SOUL of Satyavan into her arms, like a little child, to pass through all the realms and come back down to earth. Everything is there! He hasnt forgotten a single detail to make it easy to understand for someone who knows how to understand. And it is when Savitri reaches the earth that Satyavan regains his full human stature.
These seem to be the forces ruling the subconscious mechanisms or reactions of the body: all the automatism produced by evolution and atavismwhat might be termed evolutionary habits. This is the 'descending path,' which started forty years earlier, as Mother said (or the 'physical plunge' referred to by Sri Aurobindo), leading to the pure cellular consciousness.
Japa: the continuous repetition of a mantra. Mother's mantra is a song of the cells, the sole material or physical process used by her for awakening the cells and stabilizing the Supramental Force in her body.
Later, Mother specified: 'These are elements in the material substance entirely possessed by adverse forces and opposed to the transformation.'
On the previous day, January 21, Saraswati Puja, Mother had given a message and photos to each disciple.
Later, on the 27th, Mother remarked: 'I was reading about this very thing yesterday in The Secret of the Veda, in the first hymn translated by Sri Aurobindo (the reference is to the colloquy between Indra and Agastya, Rig Veda I.170cf. The Secret of the Veda, Cent. Ed., X.241 ff.), and it helped me put my finger on the problem. In this hymn there is a dispute between Indra and the Rishi because the Rishi wants to progress too quickly without first passing through Indra [the god of the Mind], and Indra stops him; finally they reach an agreement. Sri Aurobindo's commentary is quite interesting: when one has the INDIVIDUAL power to go directly, but neglects the steps which are still necessary for the whole, for the universal movement, then one is stopped short. That is absolutely my experience.'
***
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother did her japa while walking back and forth in her room.
Satprem later asked Mother what she meant by these 'things,' and Mother replied: 'For example, there was a certain man's attitude with respect to life and to the Divine, and what he thought of himself, and so forth. You see, what came was a whole range of characters and one particular action of one man, and then something else came up.... How to explain? ... These are POINTS OF WORK which come to me, things that present themselves in the atmosphere for me to seethings I see and which have to be acted upon.'
A few days later, Mother rectified: 'I have looked at the experience again and realized that it's not Vedic but pre-Vedic. The experience put me into contact with a civilization prior to the Vedas the Rishis and the Vedas are a kind of transition between that vanished civilization and the Indian civilization which grew out of the Vedic Age. It was yesterday [January 26] that I perceived this, and it was quite interesting.'
In the Vedas, the panis and dasyus represent beings or forces hidden in subterranean caves who have stolen the 'Riches' or the 'Lights', symbolized by herds of cows. With the help of the gods, the Aryan warrior must recover these lost riches, the 'sun in the darkness,' by igniting the flame of sacrifice. It is the path of subterranean descent.
--
Later, Mother added: 'All the experiences took place one after the other, but the new experience did not cancel the preceding one. The Consciousness this supreme Unity that I hadremained all the time, to the very end, even while the other centers were awakening. And each center that awakened was a kind of addition, taking away nothing from what had come before. So at the end it was all simultaneous: a kind of global consciousness total and simultaneousof everything.... You see, while rising up (one is obliged to say "rising" and "descending" for otherwise one would never be understood), while "rising up" to reach this supreme Consciousness, all the rest was annulled, there was only That. When the supreme Consciousness was realized, it remained ALL the time, continuously, to the very end, it did not move; but meanwhile, the other centers began to awaken one after another. And each awakening center assumed its place but canceled nothing either of what had come before or of what was about to come, so that when I reached the end, all of it together was a simultaneous whole the Supreme Consciousness.' When Satprem asked if this Supreme Consciousness was the 'New Consciousness,' Mother replied, 'Not "new!" One can't say "new"Supreme Consciousness.'
This entire experience and Mother's insistence that it all happened 'without moving,' unlike the experience of the ascent of the Kundalini, suggests that it is the supramental consciousness concealed in the depths of the cells, that somehow emerges and traverses all the layers until the junction is made with the most material body-consciousness.
Later, Mother added: 'The Power that was acting was no longer the power that had been acting previously.'
Mother frequently addressed Satprem as 'mon petit' or 'petit,' terms of endearment she used for very few other people. We have unfortunately been unable to find English equivalents that capture the nuances of Mother's simple 'petit' and 'mon petit,' and so have decided to leave them in the original French wherever they appear.
***
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(After a digression, Mother gives another example of the change:)
I told you something concerning the power of the will, didnt I?
--
Balcony-darshan: up to 1962, Mother appeared every morning on the first-floor balcony to be seen by the disciples assembled on the street below.
***
0 1961-01-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Concerning the last conversation where Mother spoke of the essential Sound, or the Word of the Vedic Rishis:)
I promised Nolini I would show him this.
Yes, Mother, this is a problem. Often when you tell me things of such importance I feel I benefit from them quite egoisticallycould they be shown to Pavitra now and then? Do you want them to be kept absolutely confidential, or may I show them to Pavitra occasionally?
It depends. You can tell Sujata whatever you like.
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(A little later, concerning the Saraswati Puja photos that Mother first refused to send to X on the 21st, then decided to send on the 25th, with a kind of imperative cubic certainty.)
X has replied. He said something like this, which Amrita translated: I have received the photos. It is a I dont know whether he said illumination or flame, ascending towards the Truth, leading towards the Truth. Thats the impression it gave him: that it was leading somewhere.
--
(After the work, Mother begins speaking of her translation of The Synthesis of Yoga.)
A few days ago I had an experience related to this. For some time I had been unable to work because I was unwell and my eyes were very tired. And two or three days ago, when I resumed the translation, I suddenly realized that I was seeing it quite differently! Something had happened during those days (how to put it?) the position of the translation work in relation to the text was different. My last sentence was all I had with me, because I file my papers as I go along, so I went back to it along with the corresponding English sentence. Oh, look! I said, Thats how it goes! And I made all the corrections quite spontaneously. The position really seemed different.
--
It is striking that Mother's body-experiences very often parallel recent theories of modern physics, as if mathematical equations were the means of formulating in human language certain complex phenomena, remote from our day to day reality, which Mother was living spontaneously in her bodyperhaps 'at the speed of light.'
***
0 1961-01-Undated, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Pandanus tectorius (Keora or Screw Pine). Subsequently, Mother named this flower 'Spiritual Perfume.'
Tapasya: ascetic or yogic discipline.
--
The story doesn't seem to end here, but perhaps Mother did not wish to say anything further.
***
0 1961-02-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-02-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
For Sri Aurobindo, the important thing was always the Mother. As he explained it, the Mother has several aspects, and certain aspects are still unmanifest. So if he has represented the Mother by Kali in particular, I believe its in relation to all those gods. Because, as he wrote in The Mother, the aspects to be manifested depend upon the time, the need, the thing to be done. And he always said that unless one understands and profoundly feels the aspect of Kali, one can never really participate in the Work in the worldhe felt that a sort of timid weakness makes people recoil before this terrible aspect.
***
--
It all began with some extremely violent attacks. So if your dream is not premonitory, then it must be the result of their formation, by which they intend to disseminate the conviction everywhere, as much as possible, that this is the end. Two years ago, when I had to retire to my room, a formidable campaign was set into operation upon all the Ashram people; and all those who were a little receptive, either in dreams or through an openness to suggestions, heard it clearly announced: On the 9th of December of this year [1958], Mother will leave. Theres no doubt about it, its sure. It was said to me as well: This will be the end, you will leave. It was repeated to everybody, everybody, a great many people heard itthey were virtually awaiting it. And this is why (you know how extremely ill I was at the time, I was really ill), this is why I didnt react, but all the same I didnt go to the lake [the lake estate where Mother was to have gone on the 9th of December], because I told myself, If anything happens there, it will be awkward I had better not go. But still I knew it wasnt true, I knew it.
Now this kind of attack has stopped, it is no longer like that. But there are beings who send dreams. For example, some dreams were sent to Z (who, as you know, is quite clairvoyant), in which she was told I would be broken to pieces. She was very upset and I had to intervene. Is your dream of this nature, or are you being forewarned? I dont know, I cant say. If the doctor were asked, perhaps he would say that if it continues like this, obviously (you see, one thing after another is getting disorganized), if it continues in this way, how long can the body last?
--
The trouble is, if I were thirty or forty years old, people wouldnt be affected. But unfortunately they think about how old I am all the time and it creates a bad atmosphere. After all, they keep saying, Mother is old and. All the usual nonsense.
But I know differently and so does my bodyto me its all foolishness and has no importance. For instance, when Vinoba Bhave came to see me4 (the man who takes care of poor people), he looked at me and said, Oh, youll live a hundred years! And I simply said, Yes, it all seemed so natural. At that moment, there wasnt even (how to put it?) the least intimation of a doubt. Of course its a clich, but nevertheless, he said it; afterwards he told people that this was what he had felt. And it seems completely natural I know if my body can last till its a hundred (a little less than twenty years more), then we will be on the other side the difficulty will be over.
--
Kali symbolizes the destroying or warrior-like aspect of the universal Mother: it is she who severs all bonds ... out of love.
The 'pipe' is obviously symbolic.
--
The terminology used by Mother and Sri Aurobindo is distinct from the terminology of Western psychology. This is how Sri Aurobindo defines 'inconscient' and 'subconscient': 'All upon earth is based on the Inconscient, as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete "sub"-conscience, a suppressed or involved consciousness, in which there is everything but nothing is formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body.'
Cent. Ed., XXII, p. 354
Three years earlier, in 1958, Mother had told Satprem that February and March were 'bad months,' and she had spoken of cyclical movements in Nature like those in the individual consciousness, with alternating periods of difficulty and progress.
Four times a year, for 'darshan,' visitors poured into the Ashram to pass one by one before Mother (and formerly Sri Aurobindo as well) to receive her look.
Since 'Bohr's atom' at the beginning of the century, which with its electrons orbiting around a central nucleus like planets around a sun was to have been the mathematical model representing the ultimate constituent of matter, nuclear physicists have discovered many new elementary particles in the universe: from leptons to baryons, with neutrinos, pions, kaons, psi and khi particles in between!
--
Nevertheless, a mathematical model resulting from a recent theory that attempts to represent our material universe strangely resembles Mother's perception, for it postulates a milieu consisting entirely of electromagnetic waves of very high frequency. According to this theory, Matter itself is the 'coagulation' of these waves at the moment they exceed a certain frequency threshold; our perception of emptiness, of fullness, of the hard or the transparent, being finally due only to the differences in vibratory frequencies'vibratory modes within the same thing.'
But what is this 'same thing'?
In the end, the Agenda is simply Mother's long quest in search of the reality of Matter: what is Matter... truly? The 'transformation', perhaps, means simply to 'un-cover' what is actually there.
***
0 1961-02-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(After the work, when it is time to leave, Mother makes the following remark:)
Later on there will be a lot to say.
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(After another digression, Mother again speaks of her experience of January 24, which triggered a backlash of subconscious difficulties.)
A great deal has been brought to light since that experience. It has been the starting point for such turmoil, even physically, such strong jolts that I might have wondered, Was I dreaming or was it real?. And more and more I am coming to understand that this is the INDISPENSABLE preparation in the most material world for that experience to become definitively established, to express itself outwardly, constantlythis is obvious.
--
Oh, in that, too, there are a lot of. I myself wasnt present, so I dont know what Sri Aurobindo said, but I have a kind of feeling. Just recently they wanted to publish something similar in Mother India6Conversations with me noted by A. Luckily it was sent to me first: I Cut EVERYTHING! Such platitudes, my child! Oh, it was disgusting. I said, This is impossible. I have NEVER spoken like that, never! It was flat, flat, flat, with a superficial, word-for-word understanding! Oh, horrible, horrible. Whatever passes through people is terribly, terribly loweredpopularized, made commonplace.
Anyhow. Only Sri Aurobindo can speak of Sri Aurobindo. And as for their notes, its still Sri Aurobindo A la Z, or Sri Aurobindo A la A, and all the more so since Sri Aurobindo wrote in very different ways depending upon the person he was writing to (gesture indicating different levels).
--
Note that a few days earlier [the night of February 12], a disciple had a very symbolic dream in which she saw all the disciples gathered near the Ashram's main gate with an air of consternation, as though something had happened to Mother.
In the subconscient.
--
On the Sunday preceding each Darshan (this February 21st, Mother would be 84), Mother used to distribute saris, napkins or handkerchiefs to the disciples.
***
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
The physical disorder that had principally attacked Mother's legs.
The following is the exact text of Mother's reply to this American gentleman:
Two irrefutable signs prove that one is in relation with the Supermind:
--
Mother then made the following commentary regarding the 'impact' of circumstances, happenings, etc.:
'There is no longer this kind of opposition between what is an agreeable impact and what is a disagreeable one. There are no more "agreeable" things and "disagreeable" things: they are simply vibrations one registers. Usually when people receive a shock they do this (gesture of recoil), then they reflect, concentrate, and finally restore peace. But equality does not mean that! That's not what it is. The state must be SPONTANEOUS, constant and invariable.'
--
Here Mother gradually goes into trance and all the rest of this conversation will take place in a state of trance.
I.e., it is not through any effort or tapasya that the true change is brought about.
0 1961-02-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother added: And I am just trying to fulfill that action.
***
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
I treated it as something altogether secondary and unimportantwhen people need to gallop, I let them gallop (but I hadnt met Z). Then J. and Z left together on a speaking-tour of Africa and there things began to go sour, because Z was working in one way and J. in another. Finally, they were at odds and came back here to tell me, World Union is off to a good startwith a quarrel! ( Mother laughs) Z was saying, Nothing can be done unless we base ourselves EXCLUSIVELY on the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and they are behind us giving support. And J. said, No, no! We are not sectarian! We accept all ideas, all theories, etc. I replied, and as it happens, I said that Z was right, though with one corrective: he had been saying that people had to recognize us as their guru. No, I said, its absolutely uselessnot only useless, I refuse. I dont want to be anybodys guru. People should simply be told that things are to be done on the basis of Sri Aurobindos thought.9
So they kept pulling in opposing directions. Eventually they tried to set something up (which still didnt hold together), and finally they wrote me a little more clearly. (There is one very nice man involved, Y. He isnt particularly intellectual but has a lot of common sense and a very faithful hearta very good man.) Y asked me some direct questions, without beating around the bush, and I replied directly: World Union is an entirely superficial thing, without any depth, based on the fact that Sri Aurobindo said the masses must be helped to follow the progress of the elitewell, let them go ahead! If they enjoy it, let them go right ahead! I didnt say it exactly like that (I was a bit more polite!), but that was the gist of it.
--
For example, theres someone here, Mridou (you know her, shes as round as a barrel11), who gossips to everybody. She had quite a clientele for a long time because she used to make Indian sweets and the Europeans went to her place for snacks. She is a woman who, when there isnt any gossip, invents it! She tells all the dirt imaginable to all her visitorsa fact which was brought to my attention. I recall that a long time ago Sir Akbar from Hyderabad warned me, You know, shes the second Mother of the Ashram, be careful! Its a good test, I replied, people who dont immediately sense what it is arent worthy of coming here!
Well, with J. its the samefrom an intellectual viewpoint, its the very same thing: if people are taken in by what he says, it means theyre not ready AT ALL.
--
This is the text of Mother's reply to J.: 'I have read Z's account and your own letter on this subject. in the faith of his devotion, he must have been quite offended. The truth in what he says is that any idea, WHATEVER its degree of truth, is ineffective if it does not also carry the power acquired through realization, by a real change of consciousness. And if the proponent of this idea does not himself have the realization, he must seek the backing of those who have the power. On the other hand, what you say is true: an idea ought to be accepted on the basis of its inherent truth and not because of the personality expounding it, however great this personality may be. These two truths or aspects of the question are equally true but also equally incomplete: they are not the whole truth. Both of them must be accepted and combined with many other aspects of the question if you want to even begin to approach the dynamic power of the realization. Don't you see how ridiculous this situation is? Three people of goodwill meet in the hope of teaching men the necessity for a "World Union" and they are not even able to keep a tolerant or tolerable union among themselves, because each sees a different angle of the procedure to be followed for implementing their plan.'
Although it began as a fund-raising organization for the needs of the Ashram and Auroville, this 'strictly external thing,' which had 'nothing to do with working for an ideal,' would, after Mother's departure, coolly declare itself the 'owner' and guide of Auroville.
Sri Aurobindo's old cook.
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
But Mother, the earlier you come down, the more of your time theyll take!
Anyway.
--
Mon petit, I dont claim to be totally universal, but in any case I am open enough to receive. You see, given the quantity of material I have taken into my consciousness, its quite natural that the body bears the consequences. There is nothing, not one wrong movement, that my body doesnt feel5; generally, though, things are automatically set in order (gesture indicating that Mother automatically purifies and masters the vibrations coming to her). But there are timesespecially when it coincides with a revolt of adverse forces who dont want to give up their domain and enter into battle with all their mightwhen I must admit its hard. If I had some hours of solitude it would be easier. But particularly during the period of my Playground activities, I was badgered, harassed; I would rush from one thing to the next, one thing to the next, I had no nights to speak ofnights of two and a half or three hours rest, which isnt enough, theres no time to put things in order.
Under those conditions I could only hold the thing like this (same gesture of muzzling the illness or holding it in abeyance).
--
Until 1958, Mother went daily to the Ashram Playground, from 5 p.m. to 9 or 10 in the evening, to see people and give her direct spiritual help to some 2,000 disciples who passed before her one by one.
Mother is referring to the movements of consciousness, both good and bad, of those whom she has accepted as disciples and taken into her consciousness.
Mother was already seeking the 'new food.'
***
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Satprem puts a cushion under Mothers feet)
Its almost a luxury these days!
--
This enigmatic experience was actually very important, as Mother will later explain (on March 17): Mother was leaving behind the subjection to mental functioning, symbolized by this place where Pavitra was working.
Salmon-colored hibiscus.
--
At first, Mother had said, 'But it's impossible.' Then, laughing, she had the word deleted.
***
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother goes on to the work and listens to the reading of an old Talk of September 26, 1956, to be used in the Bulletin. In it she speaks of moments of opening in the yoga:
Then there are days when you are in contact with the divine Consciousness, with the Grace, and all is tinged, colored by this Presence, and things which usually seem dull to you become charming and pleasant all is alive, all is vibrant. At other moments you are clouded, closed, you no longer feel anything, everything loses its flavor you are like a walking block of wood.
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Satprem later asked if this 'on earth' wasn't superfluous and Mother replied: 'This precision is not superfluous; I said "on earth" meaning that man does not belong only to the earth: in his essence, man is a universal being, but he has a special manifestation on earth.'
Here, Mother had a passage deleted.
***
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Of course, there are certain symptoms which never appear with filariasis. And the doctor has been astounded at the control Ive had over it: it began in the feet, I checked it there; it went higher, I checked it there; then it went higher still and I continued to control it. Finally, the other day, it tried to get into the arms, but it couldnt hold outand last night there was a real riot! ( Mother laughs) So perhaps its the deformation or transposition of some sort of mantric effort, like last time in 58 when there was an attempt to make me throw up all my blood but only food came out! Its probably something similar. My impression (Ive had it from the start) is that they have made a try at thrombosis (you know, when something blocks the circulation). Besides, it seems that X asked the doctor if blood-poisoning might be involved, so he must have seen this possibility. There has been absolutely nothing of the kind, but there has been an effort to block the circulation in the veins, probably an adaptation of the magic attack. And along with this have come all the usual things: all the usual suggestions, all the usual prophecies [about Mothers departure]. But for me, these are the normal facts of life, thats all. I am used to it. It has no importance.
Do you really believe Z could be behind this magician you saw?
--
But Z I dont know how to explain my relationship with him. He is sheltered by a light of benediction, so. When he was here I opened the doors for him to a realization he was incapable of having, something light years beyond him; and it gave him an appalling ambition, totally spoiling everything. From this point of view, its a great blessing for him; even if he becomes a dreadful Asura, it will come to a good end! It doesnt matter, its not important. Thats why this morning, even when I heard what X said about Z, it was the same thing: this great Light of the supreme Mother going out towards Z. His magic is not important, but if he indulges in it, too bad for him. It doesnt concern me: its Xs business and X is doing whats necessary and I believe (laughing) he hits hard!5
(silence)
--
Mother means drawn by a force not his own.
The tantric guru.
--
Z was Satprem's first guru when he became a sannyasi. Then Z tried to exert his control over Satprem and predicted to Mother that he would never remain in the Ashram. Finally Satprem broke with him and Z went away furious.
Satprem has never believed for a minute that Z practiced black magic against Mother: it must have been something or someone else.
Satprem was trying to patch up some French translations of Sri Aurobindo done by well-meaning but not very gifted disciples, who of course wanted 'to publish' at all costs.
This 'massive immobility' Mother spoke of earlier.
***
0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(On the previous day, Satprem had written a letter to Mother complaining of never having any concrete experiences. After a meditation together, this is what Mother replied.)
[This letter has disappeared.]
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Yes, its as if I were living, as if the BODY were living (despite all the illnesses and attacks, all the ill will besetting it), living in a bath of the divine vibrationbathing in something immenseimmense, immense limitless, and so stable! The body lives in it like this (gesture as if Mother were floating). So even when there is what we call physical pain, even when there are blows to morale (like having a cashier ask you for money and you have none to give him5), well, despite it all, despite all the possible complications (coming all at the same time), EVERYTHING, everything that happens now, even things which seem extremely unpleasant to our mental conceptions or our mental reactions, everything is a bath, a bath of the vibration of divine Love. So much so that if I didnt control my body, I would be smiling at everything all the time like an idiot. A beatific smile for everything (I dont show it because I control myself).
(silence, the clock strikes the hour)
--
Note that N. will try to be the future 'proprietor' of Auroville. Already Mother was surrounded by lies on all sides.
On March 29, 1914.
--
The following undated note (which could date from this or any number of other times!) was found among Mother's scattered papers: Now the situation has become very critical, all the reserves have been swallowed up, there are debts, many important works remain unfinished and the daily life has become a problem. It is the subsistence of more than 1,200 people which is in question.
***
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(After the work, Mother embarks on another topic.)
I am continuing my reading of the Veda. I had to stop for some days because of a sore throat. But anyway, Im starting again.
--
Note that just a few days earlier, the Ashram coffers were completely empty. Mother had sold the last of her jewels: 'It is not for the upkeep of any [Ashram] department that I have sold my jewels; it is for food, lodging [of the sadhaks] and wages for domestic servants.'
Satprem is referring to the enormous amount of material work he had in addition to seven hours of daily japa.
0 1961-04-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Then Mother listens to a reading from the 1960 Agenda. At the end, Satprem remarks, as though to excuse himself for noting some apparently irrelevant details.)
All these things are interwoven, you seeeach time, you seem to be adding a touch. Even a detail that doesnt seem relevant by itself becomes part of a gradually emerging picture when seen with the whole.
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(The disciple asks for permission to poison some cats who have been disturbing him every night. Mother replies:)
I once had a cat with almost a childs consciousness, and someone poisoned it. And when he came back poisoned, dying, I cursed all people who poison cats. And thats serious, so you mustnt do it. It was a real curse I was with Sri Aurobindo, so it was seriousso dont do it.
--
When I moved here to the Ashram, I said, We cant bring any cats into this house, its quite impossible. This was after Big Boys death, and we had had enough of cats. I gave away the others, but the first one, the Mother of the whole line, was old and didnt want to leave, so I felt her behind. She stayed in a house over there, within the Ashram compound. And one dayshe was very old and could no longer move I saw her come dragging in and sit down on that terrace on the other side. (Now you cant see it any more the Service Tree has hidden it completely but in those days you could see it very clearly.) She came and sat down over there where she could watch me until she died. Quietly, without moving, she died watching me.
All these cat stories! If we had photographs, we could make a pretty little album of cat stories.
--
Once one of her kittens was ill. She was pretty and gray colored, clear gray like a very soft fur, very pretty. She had caught this cat sickness and was lying down. And the Mother was teaching all the little ones not to come near her; she would make them go all the way around, as if her instinct told her it was contagious. And you would see them (the sick kitten was right in their way) going all the way around, never coming near.
These cat stories went on for years and years.
0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Its all right. Dont worry. When you are a little upset, you only have to think: Oh, Mother is here, and she will do the work.
And dont have any more toothaches. I dont like you to have toothaches!
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Satprem had assumed that this state of consciousness was accessible only through a kind of trance or samadhi and that when Mother said one had to be capable of 'maintaining this state,' she meant that one should be capable of bringing it back here, into the waking consciousness. However, Mother rectified: 'It is a state with no "here" or "there". I have had this experience in the waking consciousness and both perceptions (the true and the false) were simultaneous.'
The Rishis distinguished between the 'straight' (almost in the optical sense: that which allows the ray to pass straight through) and the twisted or crooked consciousness.
--
Satprem remarked that this sentence might be interpreted in an 'illusionist' sense (i.e., that the objectification of the material world would be a falsehood), and Mother replied: 'No, it's not the objectification that is a falsehood, but our conception of the objectification as being something other than THAT. When we say that "He objectifies," well, we are thinking something that is not the truth-that is no longer the truth.'
Later, Mother clarified this sentence as follows:
We always reserve a part of ourselves for looking and observing; but if we were capable of including everything, without exception, all the relationships would remain the same I have experienced this.
--
Once again, Mother's experience coincides with modern science, which is beginning to discover that time and space are not fixed and INDEPENDENT quantitiesas, from the Greeks right up to Newton, we had been accustomed to believe but a four-dimensional system, with three coordinates of space and one of time, DEPENDENT UPON THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA DEVELOPING THEREIN. Such is 'Riemann's Space,' used by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. Thus, a trajectoryi.e., in principle, a fixed distance, a quantity of space to be traversed-is a function of the time taken to traverse it: there is no straight line between two points, or rather the I straight' line is a function of the rate of speed. There is no 'fixed' quantity of space, but rather rates of speed which determine their own space (or their own measure of space). Space-time is thus no longer a fixed quantity, but, according to science, the PRODUCT ... of what? Of a certain rate of unfolding? But what is unfolding? A rocket, a train, muscles?... Or a certain brain which has generated increasingly perfected instruments adapted to its own mode of being, like a flying fish flying farther and farther (and faster and faster) but finally failing back into its own oceanic fishbowl. Yet what would this space-time be for another kind of fishbowl, another kind of consciousness: a supramental consciousness, for example, which can be instantaneously at any point in 'space'there is no more space! And no more time. There is no more 'trajectory': the trajectory is within itself. The fishbowl is shattered, and the whole evolutionary succession of little fishbowls as well. Thus, as Mother tells it, space and time are a 'PRODUCT Of the movement of consciousness.' A variable space-time, which not only changes according to our mechanical equipment, but according to the consciousness utilizing the equipment, and which ultimately utilizes only itself; consciousness, at the end of the evolutionary curve, has become its own equipment and the sole mechanism of the universe.
***
0 1961-04-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Soon afterwards, concerning X, who had stated that the most recent attacks against Mother, and even those of two years earlier when she had been forced to withdraw to her room, were the result of black magic, and that certain members of the Ashram were DIRECTLY responsible for them, or in any case, had served as intermediariesas a switchboard, to quote himin connection with an outside magician.)
I have been racking my brains, but really, I cant hit on who, IN THE ASHRAM, could be doing magic against me! Having bad thoughts is very widespread, but that doesnt matter in the least.
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
( Mother comes in with a book by Alice Bailey, 'Discipleship in the New Age,' which had recently been sent to her. Pavitra is present and shows Mother a brochure he has received, 'World Goodwill Bulletin,' and protests against this proliferation of movements all claiming to work towards 'world union,' and proselytes making so-called 'spiritual' propaganda without having found, within and by themselves, the true spiritual foundation. Mother goes on.)
But these people just cant get out of their education! Here is a lady [A. Bailey], quite renowned, it seems (shes dead now), who became the disciple of a Tibetan lama and she still speaks of Christ as the sole Avatar! She just cant get out of it!
--
It began with this famous World Union1 and now the Sri Aurobindo Society2 is meddling in it! They have put together a brochure saying, We will facilitate your relations with the Mother!! Luckily, the draft was sent to me. I said, I do not accept this responsibility. I agreed to be President because money is involved and I wanted to be a guarantee that all these people who make propaganda dont put the money into their own pockets for their personal use; so I agreed to be Presidentto guarantee that the money would really go to work for Sri Aurobindo, thats all. But no spiritual responsibility; I have nothing to teach to anyone, thank God!
(Pavitra.) But Mother, A. has also been bitten by the propaganda bug; in the by-laws he sent, he put: The goal of the Centre dEtudes de Sri Aurobindo [Sri Aurobindo Study Center, in Paris] is to steer people towards Pondicherry and the Mother.
Ooh! OH! How dreadful. How dreadful. He too!
--
After this, I received the draft of the Sri Aurobindo Societys brochure to be distributed among all disciples, all society members, in order to encourage them. Well, that was the last straw! Oh, the most asinine propaganda! And plump in the middle of a bunch of other things (which had nothing to do with me), I come across this: We have the great fortune to have the Mother among us, and we propose to be the intermediary for all who wish to come into direct contact with her! They wanted to print this and distribute it, just like that! So I took my brightest red ink and wrote: I do not accept this responsibility, you cannot make this promise. And that was that. I cut it. And now heres A., doing the same thing!
(silence)
--
Mother gives flowers to Satprem:
Here, this is Grace.5 Here, Balance6 (how lovely!). Here, Light without Obscurity.7 And this is purity: an Integral Conversion8 (in the cup of this flower, Mother has placed two other flowers: Service9 and Sri Aurobindos Compassion10), an integral conversion, with Sri Aurobindo, with his compassionhis compassion which gives us the opportunity to serve him.
Oh, mon petit, we need to say something a bit intelligent, dont you think? Im counting on you.
--
But what can be translated is this kind of sensation that the sequence of cause and effect, of purpose, of goal, all seems to be very far below, very, very DISTANT, very humanperhaps divine, too (from the viewpoint of the gods it may be like this also, I dont know), because in the consciousness of the universal Mother it is still there, there is still this ardent love to serve: To do Your Will. That is still there, so its there with the gods also.
(silence)
--
After Mother's departure, this 'Society' would try to appropriate Auroville: 'Auroville is a project of the Sri Aurobindo Society.' (sic)
The following is the exact text referred to, an extract from one of Sri Aurobindo's letters: 'I don't believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhereor it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the "religions" and is the reason of their failure....'
--
Mother gradually goes into trance and 'follows the experience.'
It seemed to us that Mother's experience, related while in a deep trance, could be likened to that of the Rishis, who spoke of 'an eye extended in heaven.'
The creations and 'destructions' of this world or of all worlds.
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Some fragments of this conversation were originally published in Mother's 'Commentaries on the Aphorisms' of Sri Aurobindo. Considering it too personal, Mother had not wanted the unabridged text to appear even in her Agenda. However, we felt it should be kept. This conversation's starting point was the following aphorism:)
59One of the greatest comforts of religion is that you can get hold of God sometimes and give him a satisfactory beating. People mock at the folly of savages who beat their gods when their prayers are not answered; but it is the mockers who are the fools and the savages.
--
In churches, I dont know. I havent been to them very often. I have been to mosques and templesJewish temples. The Jewish temples in Paris have such beautiful music; oh, what beautiful music! I had one of my first experiences in a temple. It was at a marriage, and the music was wonderfulSaint-Saens, I later learned; organ music, the second best organ in Pariswonderful! I was 14 years old, sitting high up in the galleries with my Mother, and this music was being played. There were some leaded-glass windowswhite, with no designs. I was gazing at one of these windows, feeling uplifted by the music, when suddenly through the window came a flash like a bolt of lightning. Just like lightning. It enteredmy eyes were openit entered like this ( Mother strikes her breast violently), and then I I had the feeling of becoming vast and all-powerful. And it lasted for days.
Of course, my Mother was such an out-and-out materialist, thank God, that it was impossible to speak to her of invisible thingsshe took them as evidence of a deranged brain! Nothing counted for her but what could be touched and seen. But this was a divine grace I had no opportunity to say anything. I kept my experience to myself. But it was one of my first contacts with. I learned later that it was an entity from the past who had come back into me through the aspiration arising from the music.
But I have rarely had an experience in churches. Rather the opposite: I have very often had the painful experience of the human effort to find solace, a divine compassion falling into very bad hands.
--
Ganesh (or Ganapati): The first son of the Supreme Mother, represented with an elephant trunk and an ample belly. Ganesh is the god who presides over material realizations (over money in particular). He is also known as the scribe of divine knowledge.
Narayana: another name of Vishnu, one of the gods of the Hindu trinity. He watches over the creation, whereas Brahma is the creator and Shiva the destroyer.
0 1961-05-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-05-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
The notebook of a disciple who asks questions on the Aphorisms which Mother 'must' answer regularly.
***
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Later, Satprem wanted to read certain past conversations to Mother for her to add to her Agenda. Mother refused to listenit wasnt the first time, either and lively protestations ensued.)
You dont want to hear them?
--
Finally, what we want is (long silence) its something like an absolute in the presence, the action, the consciousness, which annuls this (here Mother makes a gesture whichperhapsexpresses a distance, a separation, or an exchange between two distinct things). It can hardly be called a duality any more, but all the same there is something which sees and which feels. And thats what is irritating.
I do sense that all, all in me is reaching for ONE thing: You, You alone, let there be only You One cannot say I(there is always a misunderstanding with that idiotic I), but it isnt You, it isnt I it is one single thing. Let THAT be, and nothing else.
--
Not at all! It seems bizarre [this atmosphere Mother is made to breathe] But no, I understand. Understand I mean I appreciate.
(silence)
--
Mother is alluding in particular to the physical mind ('this kind of mind-like activity in matter').
***
0 1961-05-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Satprem inquires about Mother's health.)
Its obviously a type of filariasis which obstinately refuses to go away, but anyway. It causes only one inconvenience now: it makes the legs very weakvery weak. I go through what seem like terrible gymnastics to climb the stairs. Other than that it doesnt matter. From time to time it pricks, it stings, it bites, it swells up but its nothing.
--
(In vain, Satprem protests, complaining that Mother always wants to delete everything.)
***
After working, as she is about to leave, Mother remarks:
The atmosphere has lifted slightly. Have you noticed? No? Not yet.
0 1961-05-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Regarding an earlier 'Questions and Answers'March 13, 1957where Mother says: 'And finally, isn't the Divine the best friend one could have? The Divine to whom one can tell all, reveal all, because here is the source of all mercy, of all power to efface error when it no longer recurs....' Surprised, Satprem blurts out.)
But theres no more problem when the error no longer recurs! Isnt it when the error recurs that it needs to be effaced?
--
But to get there, believe me, you must accept to be a total imbecile for quite some time! I am not exaggerating. I have found myself in such states: you no longer understand anything, no longer know anything, no longer think anything, no longer want anything, no longer can do anythingno more power, no more will, no more thought, no more anythingyou are like that. And when I am like that (when I WAS, because now its beginning to go away), I see the external world, people like those around me, looking at me and thinking, Ah! Mother is lapsing into her second childhood! Their vibrations come to me and unfortunately they sometimes have the power to shake me I have to make a movement to free myself from the thoughts of others.
(silence)
--
In one of the handwritten notes left by Mother, we found the following: 'Sri Aurobindo told me: Never give them the impression that they can do whatever they like, they will always be protected.'
With the exception of the second asterisked passage, which was not included in his English version of selected Prayers and Meditations, the following translations are Sri Aurobindo's.
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(After the work, Mother remains absorbed for a long time, then speaks:)
What is bewildering is the subtlety of the problem.
--
Mother is alluding to two extracts from Questions and Answers (dated June 19 and July 17, 1957) which she has just reviewed for inclusion in the Bulletin. In them she speaks of the causes of illness and of using the conscious will for physical development.
***
0 1961-06-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(At the end of the conversation, Satprem complains to Mother of the tiresome task of eating, and asks her if he couldnt cut it down drastically.)
The time has not yet come when we can stop eating. Never in my life has food interested me; there have been long periods when I ate almost nothing. One day I said to myself, Why lose so much time eating? And the reply was, Dont stop yet, wait; thats not your look-out.
0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
I have received your note1 and it didnt surprise me, because just about a month ago I received what seemed like an SOS from your Mother, telling me your father was rapidly declining. I have done what I could, mainly to bring in some tranquillity, some calm, some inner peace. But I havent done. You see, there are always two possibilities when people are so seriously ill: they can be helped to die quickly, or else made to linger on for a very long time. When I have no outer or inner indications, all I ever do is apply the consciousness for the best to happen to them (the best from the souls standpoint, of course).
Do you know whether your father has expressed any wish?
According to my Mothers letter, he says he no longer particularly cares to live, that his days are so miserable.
But he still doesnt want to pass away? Is he suffering a great deal?
--
As for your Mother, she must have been thinking of me, for otherwise she wouldnt have come in that wayshe would have come through you (its different when things come through you). But she came to me directly, so I thought that for some reason she must have remembered me. I dont know. And I looked and said to myself (it came just like that), Now that she will be left all alone, why doesnt she come here? I havent done anything about that, either, one way or the other.
Thats odd the same thought has been coming to me these last three or four days: why doesnt she come here?
--
That your Mother was pulling on you.
She had Z write to me.
--
There was an experience like that quite recently. A.s Mother was illold and seriously ill. Seeing her declining, A. wrote to me: If the time has come, make it happen quicklydont let her suffer. Then I saw very clearly that there was still something in her which didnt want to go; and when I applied the Force for the best to happen she suddenly began to recover! It must have coincided with a kind of inner aspiration in herno more fever, she was feeling well. And A. began preparing to come back here. If shes recovering, he said, theres no longer any point in my staying! The same evening she had a relapse and he sent me a telegram. Meanwhile (it was evening) I had gone upstairs to walk; suddenly The Will came (which is a very, very rare thing), The Will: Enough, now it must finishits enough as it is. Within half an hour she was dead.
These things are very interesting. They must form part of the work I have come on earth to do. Because even before encountering Theon, before knowing anything, I had experiences at night, certain types of activities looking after people who were leaving their bodiesand with a knowledge of the process; I didnt know what I was doing nor did I seek to know, yet I knew exactly what had to be done and I did it. I was around twenty.
--
There is a boy here, V., who is especially interested in what happens at the moment of death (this seems to be one reason why he has reincarnated). Hes a conscious boy, a remarkable clairvoyant, and he has a power. And we have had (how to put it?) some quite interesting correlations of experiences concerning people who pass away here. Extremely interesting and extraordinarily precise: he sends word to me, I reply, and at night when the disincarnated person comes he says, Mother has done this and says to do that, and the person does it. And we dont need to speaksuch precision!
This happens in sleep?
--
I was keeping I.B. near me because I already had the idea of putting him immediately back into another bodyhis soul was not satisfied, it had not finished its experience (there was a whole combination of circumstances) and it wanted to continue to live on earth. Then, that night, his inner being went to find V., lamenting, saying he was dead and hadnt wanted to die, that he had lost his body and wanted to continue to live. V. was very perplexed. He let me know about it in the morning: Heres what has happened. I sent word to him of what I was doing, that I was keeping I.B. in my atmosphere and that he should stay very calm and not get excited, for I was going to put him back into a body as soon as possible I already had something in view. The same evening I.B. again went to find V., with the same complaint. V. told him very clearly, Here is what Mother says, here is what she is going to do; come now, be calm and dont torment yourself. And he saw in I.B.s face that he had understood (the inner being was taking on I.B.s physical appearance, naturally); his face relaxed, he became content.
He went away and he never came back. That is, he stayed tranquilly with me, until I was able to put him into C.s child.
--
Later, as Mother is about to leave:
I have to goa high-priest is waiting for me! Yes, the man in charge of all the temples of Gujarat, thoroughly orthodoxhe has come to the Ashram for some mysterious reason and he wants to see me. Is it really necessary? I asked. He wanted an interview, he wants to speak to me (naturally hell be speaking god knows whatGujarati!). I had him told, I cant hear, Im deaf! Its very convenient Im deaf, I cant hear. If he wants to receive a flower from me (I didnt say make a pranam,8 because that would be scandalous!), he can come and Ill give him a flower. I told him eleven oclockits that time now.
--
Among Mother's papers we have found the following, which indicates that a state of dispersion after death is rather frequent (it concerns a disciple's Mother who did not herself live at the Ashram): 'She has left her body without being at all prepared for the change of condition and has found herself disoriented and rather dispersed. She will need some time to recover from this dispersion before anything useful can be done for her.'
May 17, 1959.
In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion of the Supreme in man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a capacity or grace particular to human beings on earth.
Experience of July 24, 1959.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Not a past in Mother's present existence.
***
0 1961-07-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Mother later clarified this point: 'It is impossible for anything to be missing because it is impossible for anything not to be part of the whole. Nothing can exist apart from the whole. But I am taking this now to its extreme limit of meaningnot down-to-earth, but to the heights, to the extreme limits of meaning. I will explain: everything is not necessarily contained within a given universe, because one universe is only one mode of manifestation but all possible universes exist. And so I always come back to the same thing: nothing can exist apart from the whole. If we give the whole the name of "God," for example, then we say that nothing can exist apart from Him. But words are so earthbound, aren't they?' ( Mother makes a down-to-earth gesture.)
See 'Prayers of the Consciousness of the Cells,' Agenda I, pp. 337-350.
As Mother had previously said that 'all is as it should be ... the Divine is what He is and exactly as He wants to be,' one shouldn't need to 'implore' Him to manifest his Perfection.
***
0 1961-07-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Regarding the last conversation, where Mother spoke of divine Perfection and of the series of invocations in her japa imploring the Lord to manifest his various aspects:)
But Perfection is only one side, one special way of approaching the Divine. There are innumerable sides, angles, aspectsinnumerable ways to approach the Divine. When I am walking, for example, doing japa, I have the sense of Unity (I have spoken to you of all the things I mention when I am upstairs walking: will, truth, purity, perfection, unity, immortality, eternity, infinity, silence, peace, existence, consciousness the list goes on). And when one follows a particular tack and does succeed in reaching or approaching or contacting the Divine, one realizes through experience that these many approaches differ only in their most external forms the contact itself is identical. Its like looking through a kaleidoscopeyou revolve around a center, a globe, and see it under various aspects; but as soon as the contact is established, its identical.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
That was the basic problembecause the identification of the two [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] was almost childs play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasnt difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that (there were many other things, too, but this isnt the time to speak of them) the prevailing conditions were such that I told him I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought. And he also replied to me in words: Your body is indispensable for the Work. Without your body the Work cannot be done. After that, I said no more. It was no longer my concern, and that was the end of it.
This was said in 1949, just a little more than a year before he left.
--
Since Mother began reading Sri Aurobindo's letters in On Himself, which seemed to put her into contact with all the difficulties of the Work.
Experience of November 8, 1957. Mother has commented on this experience in 'Questions and Answers' of January 1, 1958. See Agenda I, p. 131.
End of 1958.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Note that modern astronomy is divided between the theory of endless phases of contraction-explosion-expansion, and the theory of a universe in infinite expansion starting with a 'Big Bang,' which seems quite as catastrophic, since the universe is then plunging at vertiginous speed into an increasingly cold, empty, and fatal infinity, like a bullet released from all restraints of gravity, until... until what? According to astronomers, an exact measurement of the quantity of matter in a cubic meter of the present universe (one atom for every 400 liters of space) should enable us to decide between these two theories and learn which way it will be best for us to die. If there is more than one atom per 400 liters of space, this quantity of matter will create sufficient gravitation to halt the present expansion of galaxies and induce a contraction, ending with an explosion within an infinitesimal space. If there is less than one atom per 400 liters of space, the quantity of matter and thus the gravitational effect will be insufficient to retain the galaxies within their invisible net, and everything will spin off endlesslyunless we discover, with Mother, a third position, that of a 'progressive equilibrium,' in which the quantity of matter in the universe proves in fact to be a quantity of consciousness, whose contraction or expansion will be regulated by the laws of consciousness.
When the veil of falsehood has gone: the supramental consciousness.
Questioned later about the meaning of this sentence, Mother laughed, 'I said that from the other side! It was spoken from a dimension where the notion of space is no longer so concrete.'
***
0 1961-07-26, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Satprem reads several passages from the July 15th conversation where Mother says that Sri Aurobindo left before saying what he had been doing, and that it was a path through a virgin forest: 'Eyes blindfolded, knowing nothing, one plods on....')
Its still true.
--
(For an instant Mother remains pensive)
It came fleetingly: twenty years.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
There are two lines in the ancient traditions, two ways of explaining this. One says it is by the descent of what already exists in all its perfection that what is involved can be awakened to consciousness and evolution. Its like the old story: when what Sri Aurobindo calls the universal Mother or the Shakti (or Sachchidananda1) realized what had happened in Matter (that is, in what had created Matter) and that this involution had led to a state of Inconscience, total unconsciousness, the ancient lore says that at once the divine Love descended straight from the Lord into Matter and began to awaken what was involved there.
Other traditions speak of the Consciousness, the divine Consciousness, instead of Love. One even finds accounts full of imagery depicting a Being of prismatic light lying in deep sleep in the cave of the Inconscient; and this Descent awakens him to an activity which is still (how to put it?) inner, an immobile activity, an activity by radiation. Countless rays issue from his body and spread throughout the Inconscient, and little by little they awaken in each thing, in each atom, as it were, the aspiration to Consciousness and the beginning of evolution.
--
The way Theon told it, there was first the universal Mother (he didnt call her the universal Mother, but Sri Aurobindo used that name), the universal Mother in charge of creation. For creating she made four emanations: Consciousness or Light; Life; Love or Beatitude and ( Mother tries in vain to remember the fourth) I must have cerebral anemia today! In India they speak only of three: Sat-Chit-Ananda (Sat is Existence, expressed by Life; Chit is Consciousness, expressed by Power; Ananda is Bliss, synonymous with Love). But according to Theon, there were four (I knew them by heart). Well, these emanations (Theon narrated it in such a way that someone not a philosopher, someone with a childlike mind, could understand), these emanations, conscious of their own power, separated themselves from their Origin; that is, instead of being entirely surrendered to the supreme Will and expressing only. Ah, the fourth emanation is Truth! Instead of carrying out only the supreme Will, they seem to have acquired a sense of personal power. (They were personalities of sorts, universal personalities, each representing a mode of being.) Instead of remaining connected, they cut the linkeach acted on his own, to put it simply. Then, naturally, Light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of Inconscience, the Asura of Falsehood, the Asura of Suffering and the Asura of Death.
Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said ( Mother laughs): Well, heres what has happened. Whats to be done? Then from the Divine came an emanation of Love (in the first emanation it wasnt Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, the Delight of being which became Suffering), and from the Supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of Inconscience, the result of the creation of the first emanation, Consciousness Consciousness and Light had become Inconscience and Darkness. Love descended straight from the Supreme into this Inconscience; the Supreme, that is, created a new emanation, which didnt pass through the intermediate worlds (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the Supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counterbalance this fallits the old story of the Fall, this fall into the Inconscient. But that wasnt enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. Thats the story of the first Descent. But youre speaking of the descent heralded by Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Descent, arent you?
Not only that. For example, Sri Aurobindo says that when Life appeared there was a pressure from below, from evolution, to make Life emerge from Matter, and simultaneously a descent of Life from its own plane. Then, when Mind emerged out of Life, the same thing from above happened again. Why this intervention from above each time? Why dont things emerge normally, one after another, without needing a descent?
--
Take the experience of Mind, for example: Mind, in the evolution of Nature, gradually emerging from its involution; well and this is a very concrete experience these initial mentalized forms, if we can call them that, were necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because Natures evolution is slow and hesitant and complicated. Thus these forms inevitably had an aspiration towards a sort of perfection and a truly perfect mental state, and this aspiration brought the descent of already fully conscious beings from the mental world who united with terrestrial formsthis is a very, very concrete experience. What emerges from the Inconscient in this way is an almost impersonal possibility (yes, an impersonal possibility, and perhaps not altogether universal, since its connected with the history of the earth); but anyway its a general possibility, not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the gods of the overmind,4 or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more perfectmore perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in SavitriSavitri lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full powerwhen things are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality.
People cant understand! To put oneself at the level of the general public may be all very well5 (personally I have never found it so, although its probably inevitable), but to hope that they will ever understand the splendor of the Thing. They have to live it first!
--
Lets take Savitri, which is very explicit on this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is where concrete form is given to all the work to be done to bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first theres a sort of emanation representative of the universal Mother, which is always on earth to help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal Mother herself will descend upon earth to finish her work. And this She does with SatyavanSatyavan is the soul of the earth. She lives in close union with the soul of the earth and together they do the work; She has chosen the soul of the earth for her work, saying, HERE is where I will do my work. Elsewhere ( Mother indicates regions of higher Consciousness), its enough just to BE and things Simply ARE. Here on earth you have to work.
There are clearly universal repercussions and effects, of course, but the thing is WORKED OUT here, the place of work is HERE. So instead of living beatifically in Her universal state and beyond, in the extra-universal eternity outside of time, She says, No, I am going to do my work HERE, I choose to work HERE. The Supreme then tells her, What you have expressed is My Will.. I want to work HERE, and when all is ready, when the earth is ready, when humanity is ready (even if no one is aware of it), when the Great Moment comes, well I will descend to finish my work.
--
(of Mothers)
From sleep, I now emerge awakened.
--
See the addendum following this conversation for a transcription of Mother's vision as she noted it down for publication in Theon's Cosmic Review in 1906.
Cent. Ed., Vol. XVII, p. 28 ff.
--
Mother is referring to the book Satprem will write on Sri Aurobindo, which prompted the questions posed in this conversation.
'Evolutor': a word coined by Mother.
***
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
I had a VERY interesting experienceit was last year or the year before, I dont recall, but after I retired to my room upstairs.6 You know that during pujas these goddesses come all the timethey dont enter the body and tie themselves to it, but they do come and manifest. Well, this time I think it must have been for last years pujaDurga came (she always arrives a few days in advance and remains in the atmosphere; she is present, like thisgesture as if Durga were walking up and down with Mother). I was in touch with her during my meditations upstairs, and this new Power in the body was in me then as it is in me now, and (how to put it?) I made her participate in this concept of surrender. What an experience she had, mon petit! An extraordinary experience of the joy of being connected with That. And she declared, From now on, I am a bhakta of the Lord.
It was beautiful.
--
Except for Krishna. In 1926, I had begun a sort of overmental creation, that is, I had brought the Overmind down into matter, here on earth (miracles and all kinds of things were beginning to happen). I asked all these gods to incarnate, to identify themselves with a body (some of them absolutely refused). Well, with my very own eyes I saw Krishna, who had always been in rapport with Sri Aurobindo, consent to come down into his body. It was on November 24th, and it was the beginning of Mother.8
Yes, in fact I wanted to ask you what this realization of 1926 was.
--
Then I went into Sri Aurobindos room and told him, Heres what I have seen. Yes, I know! he replied ( Mother laughs) Thats fine; I have decided to retire to my room, and you will take charge of the people. You take charge. (There were about thirty people at the time.) Then he called everyone together for one last meeting. He sat down, had me sit next to him, and said, I called you here to tell you that, as of today, I am withdrawing for purposes of sadhana, and Mother will now take charge of everyone; you should address yourselves to her; she will represent me and she will do all the work. (He hadnt mentioned this to me! Mother bursts into laughter)
These people had always been very intimate with Sri Aurobindo, so they asked: Why, why, Why? He replied, It will be explained to you. I had no intention of explaining anything, and I left the room with him, but Datta began speaking. (She was an Englishwoman who had left Europe with me; she stayed here until her deatha person who received inspirations.) She said she felt Sri Aurobindo speaking through her and she explained everything: that Krishna had incarnated and that Sri Aurobindo was now going to do an intensive sadhana for the descent of the Supermind; that it meant Krishnas adherence to the Supramental Descent upon earth and that, as Sri Aurobindo would now be too occupied to deal with people, he had put me in charge and I would be doing all the work.
--
From 1926, Sri Aurobindo officially introduced Mother to the disciples as the ' Mother'; previously he often called her 'Mirra.'
Evening Talks, noted by A.B. Purani.
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
It was during this period that I used to go out of my body every night and do the work Ive spoken of in Prayers and Meditations (I only mentioned it in passing).8 Every night at the same hour, when the whole house was very quiet, I would go out of my body and have all kinds of experiences. And then my body gradually became a sleepwalker (that is, the consciousness of the form became more and more conscious, while the link remained very solidly established). I got into the habit of getting up but not like an ordinary sleepwalker: I would get up, open my desk, take out a piece of paper and write poems. Yes, poems I, who had nothing of the poet in me! I would jot things down, then very consciously put everything back into the drawer, lock everything up again very carefully and go back to bed. One night, for some reason or other, I forgot and left it open. My Mother came in (in France the windows are covered with heavy curtains and in the morning my Mother would come in and violently throw open the curtains, waking me up, brrm!, without any warning; but I was used to it and would already be prepared to wake upotherwise it would have been most unpleasant!). Anyway, my Mother came in, calling me with unquestionable authority, and then she found the open desk and the piece of paper: Whats that?! She grabbed it. What have you been up to? I dont know what I replied, but she went to the doctor: My daughter has become a sleepwalker! You have to give her a drug.
It wasnt easy.
--
Its strange. I say strange because its due to her that I took birth in this body, that it was chosen. When she was very young she had a great aspiration. She was exactly twenty years older than 1; she was twenty when I was born and I was her third child. The first was a son who died in Turkey when he was two months old, I thinkthey vaccinated him against smallpox and poisoned him, (laughing) god knows what it means! He died of convulsions. Next was my brother who was born in Egypt, at Alexandria, and then me, born in Paris when she was exactly twenty years old. At that time (especially since the death of her first child) she had a kind of GREAT aspiration in her: her children had to be the best in the world. It wasnt an ambition, I dont know what it was. And what a will she had! MY Mother had a formidable will, like an iron bar, utterly impervious to all outside influence. Once she had made up her mind, it was made up; even if someone had been dying before her eyes, she wouldnt have budged! And she decided: My children will be the best in the world.
One thing she did have was a sense of progress; she felt that the world was progressing and we had to be better than anything that had come before and that was sufficient.
--
Did I tell you what happened to my brother? No? My brother was a terribly serious boy, and frightfully studiousoh, it was awful! But he also had a very strong character, a strong will, and there was something interesting about him. When he was studying to enter the Polytechnique, I studied with himit interested me. We were very intimate (there were only eighteen months between us). He was quite violent, but with an extraordinary strength of character. He almost killed me three times,9 but when my Mother told him, Next time, you will kill her, he resolved that it wouldnt happen again and it never did. But what I wanted to tell you is that one day when he was eighteen, just before the Polytechnique exams, as he was crossing the Seine (I think it was the Pont des Arts), suddenly in the middle of the bridge he felt something descend into him with such force that he became immobilized, petrified; then, although he didnt exactly hear a voice, a very clear message came to him: If you want, you can become a godit was translated like that in his consciousness. He told me that it took hold of him entirely, immobilized hima formidable and extremely luminous power: If you want, you can become a god. Then, in the thick of the experience itself, he replied, No, I want to serve humanity. And it was gone. Of course, he took great care to say nothing to my Mother, but we were intimate enough for him to tell me about it. I told him, Well (laughing), what an idiot you are!
Thats the story.
--
She was down on her knees before my brother. My Mother scorned all religious sentiments as weakness and superstition and she absolutely denied the invisible. Its all brain disease, she would say! But she could say just as well, Oh, my Matteo is my God, he is my God. The devil knows why, but in Alexandria she gave him the Italian name Matteo! And she truly treated him like a god. She left him only when he married, because then she really couldnt continue to follow him around any longer.
But whats interesting, for instance, is that when her father died she knew it; she saw him. She thought it was a dreama stupid dream. But he came to let her know he was dead and she saw him. Its nothing, she said, a dream! ( Mother laughs)
When my grandmo ther died. My grandmo ther had the occult sense. She had made her own fortune (a sizeable fortune) and had had five children, each one more extravagant than the other. She considered me the only sensible person in the family and she shared her secrets with me. You see, she told me, these people are going to squander all my money! She had a sixty year old son (she had married in Egypt at the age of fifteen, and had had this son when she was quite young). You see this boy, he goes out and visits impossible people! And then he starts playing cards and loses all my money! I saw this boy, I was there in the house when he came to her and said very politely, Good-bye, Mother, Im going out to so-and-sos house. Ah, please dont waste all my money, and take an overcoatits getting chilly at night. Sixty years old! It was comical. But to return to my story, after my grandmo ther died (I took a lot of care over her), she came to my Mother (my Mother was with her when she died; they embalmed hershe had gotten it into her head that she wanted to be burned, and since she died at Nice they had to embalm her so she could be burned in Paris). I was in Paris. My Mother arrived with the body and told me, Just imagine, Im constantly seeing her! And whats more, she gives me advice! Dont waste your money! she tells me. Well, shes right, one must be careful, I replied. But look here, shes dead! Dead! How can she talk to me! Shes dead, I tell you, and quite dead at that! I said to her, What does it mean, to die?
It was all very funny.
There was another reason. My father was wonderfully healthy and strongwell-balanced. He wasnt very tall, but stocky. He did all his studies in Austria (at that time French was widely spoken in Austria, but he knew German, he knew English, Italian, Turkish), and there he had learned to ride horses in an extraordinary manner: he was so strong that he could bring a horse to the ground simply by pressing his knees. He could break anything at all with a blow of his fist, even one of those big silver five-franc pieces they had in those daysone blow and it was broken in two. Curiously enough, he looked Russian. I dont know why. They used to call him Barine. What an equilibriuman extraordinary physical poise! And not only did this man know all those languages, but I never saw such a brain for arithmetic. Never. He made a game of calculationsnot the slightest effortcalculations with hundreds of digits! And on top of it, he loved birds. He had a room to himself in our apartment (because my Mother could never much tolerate him), he had his separate room, and in it he kept a big cage full of canaries! During the day he would close the windows and let all the canaries loose.
And could he tell stories! I think he read every novel available, all the stories he could findextraordinary adventure stories, for he loved adventures. When we were kids he used to let us come into his room very early in the morning and, while still sitting in bed, tell us stories from the books he had read but he told them as if they were his own, as if hed had extraordinary adventures with outlaws, with wild animals. Every story he picked up he told as his own. We enjoyed it tremendously!
--
Satprem remembers that a few years earlier Mother had told him about the circumstances of this incident: during her work in trance, Mother discovered the location of the 'mantra of life'the mantra that has the power to create life (and to withdraw it, as well). Theon, an incarnation of the Asura of Death, was of course quite interested and told Mother to repeat this mantra to him. Mother refused. Theon became violently angry and the link was cut (the link that connected Mother to her body). When he realized the catastrophe his anger had caused, Theon grew afraid (for he knew who Mother was) and he then, as Mother recounts, made use of all his power to help her re-enter her body. Later, Mother gave this mantra to Sri Aurobindo... who let it quietly sink into oblivion. For it is not through a mantra that the secret of life (or death) is to be mastered, but through knowledge of the true Powerin other words, ultimately, knowledge of the reality of Matter and the mechanism of death: it is the whole cellular yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mother.
Tamas: inertia, obscurity.
--
On another occasion, Mother told Sujata more about these three times her brother almost killed her: 'One day we were playing croquet, and either because he got beaten or for some other reason, he flew into a rage and struck me hard with his Mallet; fortunately I escaped with only a slight scratch. Another time, we were sitting in a room and he threw a big chair towards me I ducked just in time and the chair passed over my head. A third time, as we were descending from a carriage, he pushed me down under it; luckily the horse didn't move.'
***
0 1961-08-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
X's astonishment raises an extremely important point, drawing the exact dividing line between all the traditional yogas and the new yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mother. To a tantric, for example, it seems unthinkable that Mother, with a consciousness so powerful as to scoff at the laws of nature and comm and the elements (if she wishes), could be subjected to absurd head colds or an eye hemorrhage or even more serious disorders. For him, it is enough to simply lift a finger and emit a vibration which instantly muzzles the disorderyes, of course, but for Mother it is not a question of 'curing' a head cold by imposing a higher POWER on Matter, but of getting down to the cellular root and curing or transforming the source of the evil (which causes death as easily as head colds, for it is the same root of disorder). It is not a question of imposing oneself on Matter through a 'power,' but of transforming Matter. Such is the yoga of the cells.
***
0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(A little later Mother begins to sign some 300 books. She remarks:)
I have a convenient signature.
0 1961-08-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
But Mother, I still have enough for at least a week!
Ah, all right. That should last until the next time I see you.
--
No, Mother.
Then everything is going all right.
--
Each time they met, Mother used to give Satprem a little bit of food: cheese, dried soups, etc.
***
0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Anyway, X has written to me (and to M. also), telling me he will be here on the 29th, but will have to leave on the 10th, so it wont be for very longall because of various ceremonies.2 He writes me that hes going to train someone to replace him for all these ceremonies so he can be freer to come here for longer periods. But to M. (the devil knows what M. wrote to him), he says something like, Yes, there is a very sorry situation in the Ashram and peoples jealousy and envy are increasing more and more. Yet nevertheless he feels so drawn by the Mothers presence that he will come.
I admit I didnt like this letter. But I dont hold him responsible because. When people tell him things, he believes them. God knows what story M. told him!
--
No, Mother, I have all I need.
Tell me if you need anything. You must take care of yourself while youre working.
--
In fact, it was not X who said this, but one of his acolytes, N., who would later throw a great confusion into X's relations with both Mother and Satprem. The hunt for tantric powers was on.
***
0 1961-09-03, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(The beginning of this conversation has unfortunately disappeared. It dealt with the book that Satprem was writing on Sri Aurobindo, and he spoke to Mother of his dream of writing automatically, without even needing to think, letting the writing flow along by itself.)
You would like to carry thought into higher domains, beyond the province of thought itself! This is something practically impossible.
0 1961-09-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-09-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(A little later, concerning Sri Aurobindos biography, Mother remarks:)
All those details have always horrified me.
--
Mother had asked Sri Aurobindo to write something for the Ashram 'Bulletin.' It was later published as The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.
The third section, 'The Yoga of Self-Perfection,' which was never completed.
0 1961-09-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Sweet Mother,
I feel completely abandoned to myself. This book is a real SUFFERING. I dont see where I am going, I am groping in all directions. Mother, do help me. Where lies the fault? I am suffering, you know. I would like to do it well, but it comes only in fits and starts, nothing coherent. Sometimes I feel quite incapable of carrying out this task properly.
What should I do?
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1961-09-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Following the letter Satprem had written to Mother the previous day regarding the book on Sri Aurobindo:)
I had a clear vision of the two kinds of opposites in nature (not only in nature but in life) which almost everyone carries within himself: one is the possibility of realization, the other is the path chosen to attain it. There is always (its probably inevitable) the stormy path of struggle, and then there is the sunlit path. After much study and observation, I have had a sort of spiritual ambition (if it can be called that) to bring to the world a sunlit path, to eliminate the necessity for struggle and suffering: something that aspires to replace this present phase of universal evolution with a less painful phase.
--
This book is self-existent and you have only to follow it along, with simplicity, the way you would follow a path that has already been blazed that is already THERE, automatically brought into being by its own necessity. (For a long while Mother gazes in front of her) Dont be alarmed, Im just looking!
You dont need to suffer; its not necessary.
--
1. This letter to Mother is, with a few others, the sole survivor of thirteen years of correspondence. All the rest, all Satprem's correspondence with Mother since 1960, was confiscated by the Ashram after the Mother's departure, for its own reasons. His letters of 1960, already published in Volume I, escaped the destruction because Mother herself had kept them. It makes a big hole in this Agenda, not only for himbecause he had poured out his heart, his questions and doubts and difficulties into these letters but also from an historical point of view, for many of these conversations with Mother were invisibly oriented by his own condition. In fact, he was intimately linked with the flow of this Agenda, which thus stands mutilated. Need we add that we had to prepare the first two volumes as fugitives, and it required Mother's miraculous help to avert even more serious mutilations than the auto-da-f of Satprem's correspondence.
***
0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Towards the end of the conversation, Satprem once again complains of his difficulties in writing his book. Mother proposes that he try to unblock the way by reading his manuscript to her.)
You know, it [ Mothers consciousness] is an immobile mirror that projects things from below upwards and receives things from above to transmit them below. This mirror is two-surfaced, and absolutely immobile, not adding any vibration to what is received or transmitted: a perfect neutrality. In this mirror, therefore, you would be able to see your book a little more impersonally, outside yourself and your own creative power.
--
(As she is leaving, Mother asks for some papers left by Pavitra for her to examine: some proposals for school reforms.)
Give me that stuff.
--
Here is the exact text of Mother's message: Truth is supreme harmony and supreme delight. All disorder, all suffering is falsehood. Thus it can be said that illnesses are the falsehoods of the body, and consequently doctors are soldiers of the great and noble army fighting in the world for the conquest of Truth.
It took Satprem fourteen years to lose the habit of correcting.
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(During the two preceding meetings, Satprem read to Mother several fragments of his manuscript on Sri Aurobindo.)
You have brought me a very strange experience.
--
No, Mother, I feel I have to do it all over. I dont have the thread. I just have scraps here and there, bits and pieces I dont have the thread.
But is this thread so very necessary? Because the last time you read (I cant pinpoint exactly where), Sri Aurobindo seemed to intervene each time any of those habitual coherences of reason intruded, things you probably inserted precisely in order to join passages together and make them comprehensible. It was at these junctures (I cant remember them exactly) where he would occasionally say, Not necessary, not necessary. That can go, that can go.
--
No, Mother, I have to catch hold of the thread.
You have to catch hold yes.
--
Mother, give me one single indication. Dont you think I should cut out what I read to you yesterday? It would be a relief if you told me.
I dont think so, mon petit! I dont think so. I cant tell you for sure because Im not the one who heard ityou know what I mean? No memory is operating. Were you to ask me to repeat a single word of what you have written, I couldnt do ityet I listened to you.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(The day before and at the beginning of this conversation, Satprem read aloud some passages of his manuscript relating to the Veda. Then Mother chose the photograph of Sri Aurobindo for the frontispiece. She speaks slowly, as though from a great distance, in a semi-trance.)
Thats how I first saw him, at the head of the staircase.
--
No, Mother, it seems very.
No danger? (Laughter)
--
(Extracts from the passage in Sri Aurobindo and the Transformation of the World read to Mother by Satprem. This unpublished manuscript would become the first rough draft of The Adventure of Consciousness)
Since the time of Adam, it seems we have been choosing to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and there can be no half-measures or regrets along this way, for if we remain prostrate in a false humility, our noses in the dust, the titans or the djinns among us will know all too well how to snatch the Power left unclaimed; this is in fact what they are doingthey would crush the god within us. It is a question of knowingyes or nowhether we want to escape once again into our various paradises, abandoning the earth to the hands of Darkness, or find and seize hold of the Power to refashion this earth into a diviner imagein the words of the Rishis, make earth and heaven equal and one.
--
Nor was it insignificant that fire, Agni, was the core of the Vedic mysteries: Agni, the inner flame, the soul within us (for who can deny that the soul is fire?), the innate aspiration drawing man towards the heights; Agni, the ardent will within us that sees, always and forever, and remembers; Agni, the priest of the sacrifice, the divine worker, the envoy between earth and heaven (Rig-veda III, 3.2) he is there in the middle of his house (I.70.2). The Fathers who have divine vision set him within as a child that is to be born (IX.83.3). He is the boy suppressed in the secret cavern (V.2.1). He is as if life and the breath of our existence, he is as if our eternal child (I.66.1). O Son of the body (III.4.2), O Fire, thou art the son of heaven by the body of the earth (III.25.1). Immortal in mortals (IV.2. 1), old and outworn he grows young again and again (II.4.5). When he is born he becomes one who voices the godhead: when as life who grows in the Mother he has been fashioned in the Mother he becomes a gallop of wind in his movement (III.29.11). O Fire, when thou art well borne by us thou becomest the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side (II.1.12). O Fire brilliant ocean of light in which is divine vision (III.22.2), the Flame with his hundred treasures O knower of all things born(I.59).
But the divine fire is not our exclusive privilegeAgni exists not only in man: He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there (I.70.2).
--
All is reconciled. The Rishi is the son of two Mothers: son of Aditi, the luminous cow, Mother of infinite Light, creatrix of the worlds; and son as well of Diti, the black cow, Mother of the tenebrous infinite and divided existence for when Diti at last reaches the end of her apparent Night, she gives us divine birth and the milk of heaven. All is fulfilled, The Rishi sets flowing in one movement human strengths and things divine (IX.70.3), he has realized the universal in the individual, become the Infinite in the finite: Then shall thy humanity become as if the workings of these gods; it is as if the visible heaven of light were founded in thee (V.66.2). Far from spurning the earth, he prays: O Godhead, guard for us the Infinite and lavish the finite(IV.2.11).
The voyage draws to its close. Agni has recovered its solar totality, its two concealed extremities. The inviolable work is fulfilled. For Agni is the place where high meets lowand in truth, there is no longer high nor low, but a single Sun everywhere: O Flame, thou goest to the ocean of Heaven, towards the gods; thou makest to meet together the godheads of the planes, the waters that are in the realm of light above the sun and the waters that abide below (III.22.3). O Fire O universal Godhead, thou art the navel-knot of the earths and their inhabitants; all men born thou controllest and supportest like a pillar (I.59.1). O Flame, thou foundest the mortal in a supreme immortality thou createst divine bliss and human joy (I.31.7). For the worlds heart is Joy, Joy dwells in the depths of all things, the well of honey covered by the rock (II.24.4).
The day before, Mother had listened to the passage of the manuscript concerning 'The Secret of the Veda.' Several extracts from it are included in the Addendum to this conversation.
The Secret of the Veda, Cent. Ed., Vol. X, p. 34.
--
In the preceding conversation, Mother was alluding particularly to this passage.
Reminiscent of Homer and the 'herds of Helios.'
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
Here in Pondicherry, those last days might have become tragic (but of course it was impossible). There was the great argument (for he was perfectly aware of who I was): But after all, he would tell me, since you are the eternal Mother, why have you chosen Aurobindo as Avatar? Choose me! You must choose meme! It was the Asura speaking through him. I would smile and not discuss it. Thats not how its done! I would tell him (laughing). Then one day he said, Ah, so you dont want to. (gesture to the throat) Well, if you dont choose me, then. He was a strong fellow with powerful hands. I kept quite calm and said inwardly, My Lord, my Lord. I called Sri Aurobindo and I saw him come, like that (gesture enveloping Mother and immobilizing everything). Then Richards hands loosened their grip.
There were marks on my neck.
--
Mother is alluding to the following aphorism of Sri Aurobindo: 'If when thou sittest alone, still and voiceless on the mountain-top, thou canst perceive the revolutions thou art conducting, then hast thou the divine vision and art freed from appearances.' This aphorism is completed by another: 'If when thou art doing great actions and moving giant results, thou canst perceive that THOU art doing nothing, then know that God has removed His seal on thy eyelids.'
Cent. Ed., Vol. XVII, p. 92
--
According to Mother's wishes, the tape was erased up to this point. But years passed and circumstances changed, and when Satprem found the transcription of this conversation among his papers, he deemed it worthwhile to preserve the major portion of it for its historical interest. Mother's difficulties are always the difficulties of the 'Terrestrial Work'; and this particular Asura, who disturbed the earth in such a particular way, could hardly be passed over in silence.
See conversation of July 28, p. 279.
0 1961-11-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
[This letter survived because Mother returned it with her reply written on the reverse.]
Sweet Mother,
When I read the Veda I thought I understood that the Rishis, finding the passage blocked above (since they would fall into ecstasy and lose their hold over the body), set out to find the Supermind by the downward path.
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Regarding Satprem's letter to Mother on the Veda:)
This has confronted me with a problem.
--
By 'standard,' Mother means a sort of model or archetype.
Pearson came to Pondicherry in April 1923.
In January 1925, Mother had an inflammation of the knee. On May 25 of the same year, Sri Aurobindo noted in a letter, 'The condition here is not very good. I am at present fighting the difficulties on the physical plane.' (Cited by A.B. Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 203.) Note that in 1925 the Nazi Party was founded.
We aren't sure, but this may refer to the experience of July 12, 1960, or to that of November 5, 1958, 'the almighty spring' (in fact, they are probably one and the same experience) which gave rise to the 1959 New Year Message: 'At the very bottom of the Inconscient, most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling, I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast, vibrating with the seeds of a new world.'
--
Mother does not reply directly to this question (although she would probably have answered in the affirmative, since the point is indeed to LIVE this supramental consciousness), but she does reply directly to what is BEHIND Satprem's question that is, this fundamental, deep-rooted assumption that physical life is the sole, concrete reality.
This conversation was interrupted before Mother could conclude.
***
0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(after the reading, Mother comments:)
With me its happening all the time: tzzt! Just like a foil-thrust. Thats the only way it comes.
--
(Laughing) Perhaps thats why you were angry with me! Because I insist! Upstairs [in Mothers room, during japa], it keeps coming all the time, all the time: Go ontake the plunge! Clear the hurdle, take the plunge, cross to the other side. Constantly, constantly.
You see, in what youve just read to me, every place where something rushes in from above is VERY good. Then suddenly something in me begins to (words are much too crude), begins to grow bored or tired (thats too crude, its only a slight uneasiness). And I invariably notice that what bothers me are the explanations Im exaggerating.
0 1961-11-16a, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-11-16b, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter from Mother to Satprem on the occasion of his manuscript being sent to Paris:)
11-16-61
--
Signed: Mother
***
0 1961-11-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
0 1961-12-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
When Mother was asked for a New Year message, the first inspiration that came to her when she began to 'look' at the coming year was this:
'If the Lord wills that a calamity befall you, why should you protest? Take it as a blessing and in fact it will become one.'
Then Mother thought that this message might not be too comforting and she put it aside (after asking the opinion of two disciples). Finally she chose the text of the experience which is the subject of this conversation. But the coming year, 1962, would be marked by the first great turning-point in Mother's yoga and a rather calamitous ordeal for the body.
***
0 1961-12-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
--
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Sweet Mother,
A long letter from the publisher.
--- Overview of noun moth
The noun moth has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (3) moth ::: (typically crepuscular or nocturnal insect having a stout body and feathery or hairlike antennae)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun moth
1 sense of moth
Sense 1
moth
=> lepidopterous insect, lepidopteron, lepidopteran
=> insect
=> arthropod
=> invertebrate
=> animal, animate being, beast, brute, creature, fauna
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun moth
1 sense of moth
Sense 1
moth
=> moth miller, miller
=> tortricid, tortricid moth
=> lymantriid, tussock moth
=> geometrid, geometrid moth
=> pyralid, pyralid moth
=> tineoid, tineoid moth
=> gelechiid, gelechiid moth
=> noctuid moth, noctuid, owlet moth
=> hawkmoth, hawk moth, sphingid, sphinx moth, hummingbird moth
=> bombycid, bombycid moth, silkworm moth
=> saturniid, saturniid moth
=> arctiid, arctiid moth
=> lasiocampid, lasiocampid moth
=> tent-caterpillar moth, Malacosoma americana
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun moth
1 sense of moth
Sense 1
moth
=> lepidopterous insect, lepidopteron, lepidopteran
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun moth
1 sense of moth
Sense 1
moth
-> lepidopterous insect, lepidopteron, lepidopteran
=> butterfly
=> moth
--- Grep of noun moth
almond moth
angoumois grain moth
angoumois moth
antler moth
arctiid moth
atlas moth
bee moth
behemoth
bombycid moth
brown-tail moth
cacao moth
carpet moth
casemaking clothes moth
cecropia moth
cinnabar moth
clothes moth
codlin moth
codling moth
columbian mammoth
corn borer moth
cynthia moth
death's-head moth
domestic silkworm moth
domesticated silkworm moth
emperor moth
european corn borer moth
fig moth
gelechiid moth
geometrid moth
giant silkworm moth
gipsy moth
gold-tail moth
gracilariid moth
grain moth
gypsy moth
hawk moth
hawkmoth
heliothis moth
hummingbird moth
imperial mammoth
imperial moth
io moth
lappet moth
lasiocampid moth
luna moth
mammoth
mediterranean flour moth
moth
moth bean
moth miller
moth mullein
moth orchid
moth plant
mothball
mother
mother's boy
mother's daughter
mother's day
mother's milk
mother's son
mother-in-law
mother-in-law's tongue
mother-in-law plant
mother-of-pearl
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