Behind the Arras Part 8

Feast my eyes on some old Indian fabric, Centuries of culture went to weave, And I grow the fine fastidious artist, No mere shop-made textile can deceive.

Red the ba.s.s and violet the treble, Soul may pa.s.s out where all color ends.

Ends? So we say, meaning where the eyesight With some yet unborn perception blends.

You, Amati, never saw a sunset,-- Hear tornadoes in a spider's loom; I, at my wits' end, may still develop Unknown senses in life's larger room.

Superhuman is not supernatural.

How shall half-way judge of journey done?

Shall this germ and protoplast of being Rest mid-life and say his race is run?

Softly there, my Niccolo, a moment!

Shall I then discard my simpler joys?

No, for look you, every sense's impulse Is a means the master soul employs.

Test and use of all things, lowest, highest, Are alone of import to the soul; Joys of earth are journey-aids to heaven, Garb of the new sainthood sane and whole.

Earth one habitat of spirit merely, I must use as richly as I may,-- Touch environment with every sense-tip, Drink the well and pa.s.s my wander way.

Ah, drink deep and let the parching morrow Quench what thirst its newer need may bring!

Slake the senses now, that soul hereafter Go not forth a starved defrauded thing.

Not for sense sake only, but for soul sake; That when soul must shed the leaves of sense, Sun and sap may solace and support her, Stored in those green hours for her defence.

Shall the grub deny himself the rose-leaf That he may be moth before his time?

Shall the gra.s.shopper repress his drumbeats For small envy of the kingbird's chime?

Certain half-men, never touched by worship, Soil the goodly feast they cannot use; Others, maimed too, holding flesh a hindrance, Vilify the bounty they refuse.

He's most man who loves the purple shadows, Yet must love the flaring autumn too,-- Follow when the skrieling pipes bid forward, Lie and gaze for hours into the blue.

He would have gone down with Alexander, Quelling unknown lands beneath the sun; Watched where Buddha in the Bo tree shadows Saw this life's web woven and undone;

Freed his stifled heart in Shakespeare's people, Sweet and elemental and serene; Dared the unknown with Blake and Galileo; Fronted death with Daulac's seventeen.

So shall mighty peace possess his spirit Whom the noonday leads alone apart, Through the wind-clear early Indian summer, Where no yearning more shall move his heart.

Wise and foot-free, of the tranquil tenor, He shall wayfare with the homeless tides; Time enough, when life allures no longer, To frequent the tavern death provides.

Life be neither hermitage nor revel; Lent or carnival alone were vain; Sin and sainthood--Help me, little brother, With your largo finder-thought again!

Lift, uplift me, higher still and higher!

Climb and pause and tremble and plunge on, Till I, toiling after you, come breathless Where the mountain tops are touched with dawn!

Dark this valley world; and drenched with slumber We have kept the centuries of night.

Cry, Amati, pierce the waiting stillness Tremulous with forecast of the light!

Cry, Amati! Melt the twilight dirges In "Te Deums" fit for marching men!

"Good," the days are chorusing, "shall triumph;"

Though the far-off morrows whisper, "When?"

What is good? I hear your soft string answer, "I am that whereon the round world leans, I am every man's poor guess at wisdom; Evil is the soul's misuse of means.

"Up through me, with melody and meaning, Well the floods of being or subside, The first dim desire of self for selfhood, The last smile that puts all self aside.

"Hate is discord lessening through the ages; Anger a false note, fear a slackened string.

Key thy soul up to the wiser manhood, Gentler lovelier joy from spring to spring!"

Here in turn I help you, little brother, Half surmise what you have half explained.

Store it by to ripen, and repeat it Long hereafter as a glimpse you gained,

When the nineteenth century was dying, From a strolling hand that held you dear,--.

Appanage of time put in your keeping For my far-off heritor to hear.

I imagine how his eye will kindle When he fondles you as I do now,-- Bends above you wooing like a lover, While you yield him all your heart knows how.

I shall have been dust a thousand summers, But my dear unprofitable dreams Shall be part of all the good that thrills you In the oversoul's orchestral themes.

What is good? While G.o.d's unfinished opus Mult.i.tudinous harmony obeys, Evil is a dissonance not a discord, Soon to be resolved to happier phrase,--

From time immemorial permitted, Lest the too sweet melody grow tame, And, untouched of pathos or of daring, Hearts should never know what hearts proclaim:

The unstained unconquerable valor, The unflinching loyalties of love.

Or if evil be at worst a blunder No musician ever could approve,

The mere bungling of a hand that faltered,-- Mine or his who bade the planets poise,-- What a thing unthinkable for smallness Is your frayed E string one touch destroys.

How that sea-gull out across the bay there Rows himself at leisure up the blue!

Evil the mere eddy from his wing-sweep, Good the morning path he must pursue.

Good, you think, and evil live together, Both persisting on from change to change Through interminable conservation,-- Primal powers no ruin can derange?

Deed and accident alike unending By eternal consequence of cause?

No. For good is impetus to G.o.dward; Evil, but our ignorance of laws.

Say I let you, spite of all endeavor, Mar some nocturne by a single note; Is there immortality of discord In your failure to preserve the rote?

When the sound shall pa.s.s my sense's confines, Melt away to color or thin flame, Does it still malinger in the prism, Falsify the crucible with shame?

Hardly. For the melody and marring, When they put the dear oblivion on, Are become as fresh clay for the potter, Neither good nor bad, for use anon.

Blighted rose and perfect shall commingle In one excellence of garden mould.

Soul transfusing comeliness or blemish Can alone lend beauty to the old.

While the streams go down among the mountains, Gathering rills and leaving sand behind, Till at last the ocean sea receives them, And they lose themselves among their kind,

Man, the joy-born and the sorrow-nurtured, (One with nothingness though all things be,-- Great lord Sirius and the moving planets Fleet as fire-germs in the torn-up sea,--)

Linked to all his half-accomplished fellows, Through unfrontiered provinces to range, Man is but the morning dream of nature Roused by some wild cadence weird and strange.