Life Immovable Part 6

Thus without detracting from the charm and power of the day-star, he ensouls it with a higher meaning and transforms a fiery globe into a light-clad Olympian divinity, a giver of life and death, a healer and a slayer. In "The Tower of the Sun," we find mighty princes, sons of kings, who had gone thither in their desire to hunt for the light, turned into stones by the "giant merciless." Motionless they stand, a world of voiceless statues while

From their deep and smothered eyes, Something like living glance Struggles to peep through its stone-veil!

Then the fair redeemer, a princess beautiful, comes from far away--the light, it seems, of inner knowledge and inspiration--and the Sun's tower

Gleamed forth as if the light Of a new dawn embraced its walls!

She knows where the fountain of life flows and with its waters wakes up the sons of kings, shining

... with transcending gleam Like a far greater Sun.

This is, then, the sun whom Palamas worships as a G.o.d. It is a sun who possesses all the beauty and power of the actual source of light, but who, at the same time, by the spell of mystic symbolism rises to the splendor of a thrice-fair and almighty divinity containing all that is beautiful and n.o.ble and powerful in the world. Upon such a sun he seeks to find a light-flooded palace for his child in the "Mourning Song." To such a sun he offers his hymns and prayers; and such a sun he conceives as a vengeful blood-fed Moloch or a muse of light. He is a fair Phoebus, who rises from pure Olympus' heights to play as a fountain of flowing harmonies or to smite as "an archer of fiery arrows" all living things.

4. VERSES OF A FAMILIAR TUNE

In the "Verses of a Familiar Tune" the poet conceives of himself as of a wedding guest who travels far away to join the festival. The bride, "thrice-beautiful" seems to be Earth; and the bridegroom, the Sun. The journey to the festival is the span of mortal life. The poet, who must travel over this path, endeavors to brighten it with dreams and shorten his way's weary length

With sounds that like sweet longings wake in him Old sounds familiar, low whisperings Of women's beauties and of home-born shadows ...

The flames that burn within the heart, the kisses That the waves squander on the sandy beach, And the sweet birds that sing on children's lips!

The second poem of this group, "The Paralytic on the River's Bank,"

recalls the notes verging on despair which we have found in "The Return." Again the gleaming past, appearing here as the other bank of the river, revels

In l.u.s.tful growth and endless mirth With leafy slopes and forests glistening.

At the sight of such splendor, the poet lies palsy-stricken on this bank of the river, the "graceless, barren, and desert bank" unable to rise and sing. Then Life, like a merciful Fairy, takes him into the humble hut of the present and makes him forget the other bank and nourishes him until, at last, waking into the new world, he weaves the whole day long with master hand all kinds of laurel crowns and pours into the unaccustomed air a flute's soft-flown complaint. But again from his bed he raises his eyes and sees once more the world beyond the river, nodding luringly at him; and even there, in the midst of the new life, he falls palsy-stricken, "the paralytic of the river bank."

This note of hopelessness is immediately counteracted by the "Simple Song," in which Life opens again her gorgeous gardens of the past to pluck the fairest of flowers; and when he weeps over the newly reaped blossoms that fill his basket, Life rebukes him by facing them unmoved "a life agleam!" With like wholesomeness he greets the early dawn that brings him "thought, light, and sound, his sacred Trinity," and enters the chapel's garden

To see the children beautiful, Children that make the gra.s.sy beds a heaven And rise like miracles among the flowers.

But on the whole, man, the wedding guest, must travel on while the winds of uncertainty blow about him. Riddles face him everywhere; questions stern and unanswerable spring before him; and the life of the whole human race seems to be that of Thought likened to "an angel ever wrestling with a strong giant flinging his hundred hands about the angel's neck to strangle him." For who knows if a good act unknown shines more than the most splendid monuments of marble or verse? Who knows if vice is wiser than virtue? Is Fair Art, War's Triumphs, and great Thoughts expressed costlier in the Temple of the Universe than the mute Thought and Glory of the flower,

... at whose birth The dawn rejoices and whose early death The saddened evening silently laments?

The thoughtful sage high-rising smites the gates Of the Infinite and questions every Sphinx; Yet who knows if the soldier with no will, Obeying blindly, is not nearer Truth?

O struggle vast! Who knows what power measures The measureless and creates the great?

Is it the matchless thought of the endowed, Or the dim soul of the mult.i.tude that bursts, Thoughtless of reason, into life? Who knows?

We know not "whether the holy man's blessing" is the best, nor whether there is more light of Truth in the Law, "that is all eyes," or in some blind love. Thus entangled in the meshes of life's sphinx-like wonders, we spend our day, little particles of the great world-struggle, wedding guests at Life's strange festival!

5. THE PALM TREE

In tenderness and delicacy of thought and expression, no part of _Life Immovable_ can be compared with the smoothly flowing stanzas of "The Palm Tree." There is no ruggedness in the meter, no violence in the stream of images. We are led without knowing it into a modest garden. A few flowers, a palm tree, some bushes, and the sky make our world, a world, it seems, of things small and common and trivial. But the poet pa.s.ses by, listens to the humble flowers of dark and light blue, and puts their talk into rhythms.

At once, the flowers become a world of beauty, life, and thought. They are our kin, sons of the same parent Earth, and dreamers of strangely similar dreams. The Palm tree over them becomes a great mystery of power and grace lifting it to the realm of G.o.ds. The flowers, like little mortals, wonder at the things they see about them. Their own existence beneath the palm tree's shade is full of riddles, and they face the world with questionings. In the very midst of a clear sky's festival that succeeds a rain, the little flowers suffer the first blows of pain, dealt by the last drops that fall from the palm leaves, and they feel the agony of sorrow until they come to realize that even pain brings its reward, knowledge, which makes them glory, like victors, over death. Their being expands and they sing a song which is the essence of the world's humanity:

Though small we are, a great world hides in us; And in us clouds of care and dales of grief You may descry: the sky's tranquility; The heaving of the sea about the ships At evenings; tears that roll not down the cheeks; And something else inexplicable. Oh, What prison's kin are we? Who would believe it?

One, d.a.m.ned and G.o.dlike, dwells in us; and she is Thought!

Thus their song continues carrying them from thought to thought, from dream to dream, from joy to joy, and from sorrow to sorrow. Swept away by the charms of life, they raise to their strange G.o.d a hymn of exultation. At the sight of the thrice-fair rose, they sing a song of love and admiration. Their experiences stimulate their minds, and they seek to solve the dark problems that teem about them. With the eagerness of living beings they listen to the tales of new worlds and miracles brought to them by bees and lizards. Illness and night frighten them with fearful images; and, at last, they pa.s.s away with a song of hope and regret:

We shall die, Nor will there be a monument for us That might retain the phantom of our pa.s.sing!

Only about thee will a robe of light Adorn thee with a new and deathless gleam: And it shall be our thought, and word, and rime!

And in the eyes of an astonished world, Thou wilt appear like a gold-green new star; Yet neither thou nor others will know of us!

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, June 3, 1917.

TRANSLATIONS

LIFE IMMOVABLE

INTRODUCTORY POEM

_And now the columns stand a forest speechless And motionless; and among them, the rhythms And thoughts move in slow measures constantly; And in their depths, light-written images Show Love that leads and Soul that follows him._

From the "Thoughts of Early Dawn."

_I labored long to create the statue for the Temple On stone that I had found And set it up in nakedness; and then to pa.s.s; To pa.s.s but not to die.

And I created it. But narrow men who bow To worship shapeless wooden images, ill-clad, With hostile glances and with shudderings of fear, Looked down upon us, work and worker, angrily.

My statue in the rubbish thrown! And I, an exile!

To foreign lands, I led my restless wanderings.

But ere I left, a sacrifice unheard I offered: I dug a pit; and in the pit I laid my statue.

And then I whispered: "Here lie low unseen and live With things deep-rooted and among the ancient ruins Until thine hour comes. Immortal flower thou art!

A Temple waits to clothe thy nakedness divine!"

And with a mouth thrice-wide, and with the voice of prophets, The pit spoke: "Temple, none! Nor pedestal! Nor light!

In vain! For nowhere is thy flower fit, O Maker!

Better forever lost in the unlighted depths!

"Its hour may never come! and if it come, and if Thy work be raised, the Temple will be radiant With a great host of statues, statues of no blemish, And works of thrice-great makers unapproachable!

"Today, was soon for thee; tomorrow will be late!

Thy dream is vain! The dawn thou longest will not dawn; Thus burning for eternities thou mayest not reach, Remain cloud-hunter and Praxiteles of shadows!