Tablets Part 13

Thou neither great at court, nor in the war, Nor at th' exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar, Content thyself with the small barren praise, That neglected verse does raise.'

She spake, and all my years to come Took their determined doom: Their several ways of life, let others choose, Their several pleasures let them use, But I was born for love and for a muse.

With fate what boots it to contend?

Such I began, such am, and so shall end: The star that did my being frame Was but a lambent flame; Some light indeed it did dispense, But less of heat and influence.

No matter, poet, let proud fortune see That thou canst her despise no less than she does thee; Why grieve thyself or blush to be As all the inspired tuneful seers, And all thy great forefathers were from Shakspeare to thy peers."

Yet, bia.s.sed by temperament as we may be, whether for good or for evil, such measure of freedom is ours, nevertheless, as enables us to free ourselves from its tendencies and temptations. In the breast of each is a liberating angel, at whose touch, when we will it persistently, the doors of our dungeon fly open and loose their prisoner.

IV.

METAMORPHOSES.

"Generation is not a creation of life, but a production of things to sense, and making them manifest. Neither is change death, but a hiding of that which was."--HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative banner of two birds among leaves and flowers]

METAMORPHOSES.

I.--SLEEP.

Life is a current of spiritual forces. In perpetual tides, the stream traverses its vessels to vary its pulsations and perspectives of things, receding from forehead and face into cerebellum and spine, to be replenished night by night from these springs of vigor. The Genius trims our lamps while we sleep. It plumbs us by day and levels us by night.

Here rec.u.mbent as at nature's navel, her energies flood the spirits with puissance, restoring tone and tension for the coming day's occupations.

Then what varying scenes rise to fancy's eye, while the mind lapses out of the globe of thought, the house of the senses, into the palaces of memory through the gate of dreams! Under the sway of occult forces we partake of preternatural insights, having access to sources of information unopened to us in our wakeful hours. Vast systems of sympathies, antedating and extending beyond our mundane experiences, absorb us within their sphere, relating us to other worlds of life and light; as if stirred by the nocturnal impulse we climbed the empyrean, still crediting the superst.i.tion of our affinities with the starry orbs--

"Eternal fathers of whate'er exists below."

Or, pursuing our peregrinations, we plunge suddenly into the abyss of origins, transformed for the moment into slumbering umbilici, skirting the sh.o.r.es of our nativity; or, ascending spine-wise, traverse the hierarchy of gifts. How we grope strangely! Seeking the One amidst the many, we lose ourselves in finding the One we lost. We enter bodies of our bodies, souls of our soul, successively; each organ our prisoner, we in turn the prisoner of each, till by chance the bewildered occupant recover the key to the wards of his apartments, and forth issues into the haunts of his consciousness, the world of natural things. For never is the sleep so profound, the dream so distracting, as to obliterate all sense of the personality,--despite these vagaries of the night, these opiates of the senses, memory sometime dispels the oblivious slumber, and recovers for the mind recollections of its descent and destiny. Some reliques of the ancient consciousness survive, recalling our previous history and experiences.[N]

[Footnote N: "'Tis well known that according to the sense of antiquity, these two considerations were always included in that one opinion of the soul's immortality--namely; its pre-existence as well as its post existence. Neither were there ever any of the ancients before christianity, that held the soul's future permanency after death, who did not likewise a.s.sert its pre-existence,--they clearly perceiving that if it was once granted that the soul was generated, it could never be proved but that it might be also corrupted.

And therefore the a.s.serters of its immortality commonly began here--first, to prove its pre-existence, proceeding thence afterwards to establish its permanency after death."--CUDWORTH.]

II.--REMINISCENCE.

"Heaven's exile straying from the orb of light."

And but for our surface and distracted lives,--lived here for the most part in the senses,--we should have never lost the consciousness of our descent into mortality, nor have questioned our resurrection and longevity. But as in descending, all drink of oblivion--some more, some less--it happens that while all are conscious of life, by defect of memory, our recollections are various concerning it; those discerning most vividly who have drank least of oblivion, they more easily recalling the memory of their past existence. Ancients of days, we hardly are persuaded to believe that our souls are no older than our bodies, and to date our nativity from our family registers, as if time and s.p.a.ce could chronicle the periods of the immortal mind by its advent into the flesh and decease out of it.

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, Nor yet in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From G.o.d who is our home."

None of us remember when we did not remember, when memory was nought, and ourselves were unborn. Memory is the premise of our sensations, it dates our immortality. Nestling ever in the twilight of our earliest recollections, it cradles our nativity, canopies our hopes, and bears us babes, out of our bodies as into them; opening vistas alike into our past and coming existence. The thread of our experiences, it cannot be severed by any accidents of our mortality; time and s.p.a.ce, earliest found and last to leave us, fading and falling away as we pa.s.s into recollections which these can neither date nor confine--the smiles that welcomed, the tears that dismiss us, being of no age, nor place nor time.

"O love! thou makest all things even In earth and heaven: Finding thy way through prison bars Up to the stars: That out of dust created man, Thou lookest in a grave, to see Thine immortality."

III.--IMMORTALITY.

If immortality inhere in objects known by us, these surely are persons; the ties of kindred being the liveliest, most abiding of any; our faith in the impossibility of being sundered forever, remaining unshaken to the last, and surviving all changes that our bodies may undergo.

"Deep love, the G.o.dlike in us, still believes Its objects are immortal as itself."

'Tis not our bodies that contain us but our souls. None beholds with bodily eyes the apparition of his person, sees and survives the ghost he provokes. The perturbed spirits alone linger about the tombs--dead before they die, dead burying their dead--comfortless because these are bereft of bodies, flesh being all of them they ever knew.[O]

[Footnote O: Let us remember that immortality signifies a negative, or not having of mortality, and that a positive term is required by which to express a change, since nature teaches that whatever is, will abide with the being it is, unless forced out of it by something positive. And as it appears that man's soul has these grounds in her which make all visible things to be perishable, it is obvious that his soul is immortal and the cause of mortality itself.--SIR KENELM DIGBY.]

Moreover, the insatiableness of our desires a.s.serts our personal imperishableness. Yearning for full satisfactions while balked of these perpetually, we still prosecute our search for them, our faith in their attainment remaining unshaken under every disappointment. Our hope is eternal as ourselves--a never ending, still beginning quest of our divinity. Infinite in essence, we crave it in potence. The boundlessness and elasticity of the mind, its power of self-recovery, uprise from temporary obstructions self-imposed, or from temperament, are a.s.surances made doubly sure of our soul's infinitude and longevity. So the lives of empires, of men of genius and sanct.i.ty, are grand ill.u.s.trations of its heroic strife for the largest freedom, the widest sway,--of instincts striving within, which these pent confines of time and s.p.a.ce can neither subjugate nor appease.

"Take this, my child," the father said, "This globe I give thy mind for bread;"

Eager we seize the proffered store, The bait devour--then ask for more.

"Everything aspires to its own perfection and is restless till it attain it, as the trembling needle till it find its beloved north. And the knowledge of this is innate as is the desire, else the last had been a torment and needless importunity. Nature shoots not at rovers. Even inanimate things, while ignorant of their perfection, are carried towards it by a blind impulse. But that which conducts them knows. The next order of beings have some sight of it, and man most perfectly till he touch the apple." Our delights suckle us life long, our desires being memories of past satisfactions, and we here but sip pleasures once tasted to satiety. The more exquisite our enjoyments, the more transient; the more eagerly sought, the more elusive. We cannot come out of our paradise, nor stay in it contentedly, the gates of bliss closing on opening.

"E'en as the amorous needle joys to bend To her magnetic friend, Or as the greedy lover's eyeb.a.l.l.s fly At his fair mistress' eye, Eager we kindle life's illumined stuff, Can tire, nor tease, nor kindle it enough."

Still heaven is, our hearts affirm against every disappointment; and whether behind or before us, as memory or as hope, 'tis to be ours,--our port and resting place sometime in the stream of ages.

"All before us lies the way; Give the past unto the wind; All before us is the day, Night and darkness are behind.

Eden with its angels bold, Love and flowers and coolest sea, Is less an ancient story told Than a glowing prophecy.

In the spirit's perfect air, In the pa.s.sions tame and kind, Innocence from selfish care, The real Eden we shall find.

When the soul to sin hath died, True and beautiful and sound, Then all earth is sanctified, Upsprings paradise around.

From the spirit-land, afar All disturbing force shall flee; Stir, nor toil, nor hope shall mar Its immortal unity."