Memories and Studies Part 14

[8] I subjoin a poetic apostrophe of Mr. Blood's to freedom:

"Let it ne'er be known.

If in some book of the Inevitable, Dog-eared and stale, the future stands engrossed E'en as the past. There shall be news in heaven, And question in the courts thereof; and chance Shall have its fling, e'en at the [ermined] bench.

Ah, long ago, above the Indian ocean, Where wan stars brood over the dreaming East, I saw, white, liquid, palpitant, the Cross; And faint and far came bells of Calvary As planets pa.s.sed, singing that they were saved, Saved from themselves: but ever low Orion-- For hunter too was I, born of the wild, And the game flavor of the infinite Tainted me to the bone--he waved me on, On to the tangent field beyond all orbs, Where form nor order nor continuance Hath thought nor name; there unity exhales In want of confine, and the protoplasm May beat and beat, in aimless vehemence, Through vagrant s.p.a.ces, homeless and unknown.

There ends One's empire!--but so ends not all; One knows not all; my griefs at least are mine-- By me their measure, and to me their lesson; E'en I am one--(poor deuce to call the Ace!) And to the open bears my gonfalon, Mine aegis, Freedom!--Let me ne'er look back Accusing, for the withered leaves and lives The sated past hath strewn, the shears of fate, But forth to braver days.

O, Liberty, Burthen of every sigh!--thou gold of gold, Beauty of the beautiful, strength of the strong!

My soul for ever turns agaze for thee.

There is no purpose of eternity For faith or patience; but thy buoyant torch Still lighted from the Islands of the Blest, O'erbears all present for potential heavens Which are not--ah, so more than all that are!

Whose chance postpones the ennui of the skies!

Be thou my genius--be my hope in thee!

For this were heaven: to be, and to be free."

[9] In another letter Mr. Blood writes:--"I think we are through with 'the Whole,' and with '_causa sui_,' and with the 'negative unity'

which a.s.sumes to identify each thing as being what it lacks of everything else. You can, of course, build out a chip by modelling the sphere it was chipped from;--but if it was n't a sphere? What a weariness it is to look back over the twenty odd volumes of the 'Journal of Speculative Philosophy' and see Harris's mind wholly filled by that one conception of self-determination--everything to be thought as 'part of a system'--a 'whole' and '_causa sui_.'--I should like to see such an idea get into the head of Edison or George Westinghouse."