Things New and Old :: :: University of Virginia Library

Yes, the long strife is o'er;
At last I reach the shore;
The waves and billows all are overpast;
Each step I upward gained,
Each conflict I sustained,
Has its due meed of blessing at the last.

Vigil and fast were right;
They raised me out of night;
Each came with power to purify and bless;

But now, as crown of all,
The cold, dark shadows fall;
I sink and fail in utter Nothingness.

Oh, bliss beyond compare!
With neither joy nor care;
Hushed every sound of harmony or strife;
The consciousness intense
Of losing every sense,
Not-being with the memory of life.

Just as in haschisch dreams
The rapture highest seems,
When visions glorious yield to slumbers deep,
So, through all time's expanse,
The soul's ecstatic trance
Finds its full joy in everlasting sleep.

Just as when music floats,
Its softest, sweetest notes,
Half hushed to silence, thrill through ear and brain,
So the intensest bliss
Is when we know but this,
Know we are not, and feel nor joy nor pain.

All good deeds done to man,
Since first our work began,
These lie behind, and memory tells of none;
In calm Nirvana's day
They melt and pass away;
Who counts the milestones when the goal is won?

As, when in ocean's wave
The raindrop finds a grave,
It fears no more the storm-winds and the heat,
So shall each separate soul
Plunge in the boundless Whole,
And find a peace eternal and complete.

For dreary were the range
Through Being's boundless change,
Base forms of brute, or lower births of man;
What profit is there found
In all that varying round,
To end at last as poor as we began?

Of what avail to wage
Our war with weary age,
Bent limbs, dim eyes, weak brain, and failing breath,

Through each new form of life
To know the same vain strife,
And taste a thousand times the bitterness of death?

But oh, the rapture deep
Of that entrancèd sleep,
When Wisdom numbs the still disturbing sense;
When every voice is hushed,
And o'er the soul has rushed
Nirvana's flood of Nothingness intense.

Far better to be nought
Than live thus overwrought,
Deceived, and mocked, and captive led, and blind;
Far better Nothingness
Than all this sore distress,
Where sense and matter crush the aspiring mind.

And is this then the end?
And does our bliss depend
On knowing that we are not what we seem?
Is there no purer joy
That nothing shall destroy,
A sleep in which we dream not that we dream?

Is this for all who live
The best boon Heaven can give,—
To enter on the drear and shadowy Night?
To feel the boundless void,
Where Being lies destroyed,
And self is lost in Nothing infinite?

Were it not better far
To know not that we are,
To lose the very sense of Being's pain,
Than still to watch the spark
Of life through all the dark,
And tremble lest it kindle once again?

Yes, the true Wisdom's way,
The only perfect day,
Is pure Not-being, Nothing absolute,
The dark abyss profound,
Where comes nor light nor sound,
And all that was lies motionless and mute.

II. POSSIBILITIES.

So spake I, and the shadows fell;
The darkness brooded overhead,
I dreamt that I to all was dead,
And then—that Nothing proved a Hell.

That spark rekindled and became
The one vast world in which I dwelt;
And through long æons still I felt
The darkness and the scorching flame.

The whole great past of life unrolled,
And with the loss of pleasant sense,
The spirit's pain grew more intense,
And not one power had waxen old.

From out the long-forgotten days,
They thronged around me, deeds unjust,
Each word untrue, each thought of lust,
Each craving after man's poor praise.

I dared not turn to where the cloud
Was flushed with glory from the Throne:
Had I not willed to die alone,
And take the darkness as my shroud?

Self-centred all my life had been;
I turned from acts of self-less love,
And now was impotent to move
One step towards the Love unseen.

And men, from whom, in pride of heart,
The apathy of cold disdain,
Lest I should share their weary pain,
I, seeking wisdom, dwelt apart—

Men now, through all that æon vast,
Had vanished, and no answer gave,
When I with groans and tears would crave
Their pardon for the self-bound past.

I heard no word from human lip;
I met no glance from human eye;
And hope died out with bitter cry,
In self's accurs'd companionship.

Nor sun, nor moon, nor stars were there,
To break the silence of the night;
Throughout that dread, dark Infinite,
There came no breath of morning air.

Birds sang no songs of matin cheer;
No flowers oped bells of varied hue;
No sky spread wide its depth of blue,
To make the gloom of death less drear.

It was not night, it was not day;
No summer came on heels of spring;
The chance and change the seasons bring,
All this with life had passed away.

Thick mists o'erspreading swamp and fen,
And tainted air from marsh and bog,
The cold chill damp of sunless fog,
The darkness of a robber's den;—

All these are distant types and poor
Of that drear blank of changeless mood,
Where, through the eternal solitude,
The spirit waits at closèd door.

To feel the stagnant life grow cold,
Weak pulse of good wax feebler still,
To lose the primal power of will,
The vision clear we knew of old;—

To feel all this, and know we reap
The bitter fruit of evil seed,
While none is there to intercede,
And still their watch the avengers keep.

And sleep brings neither peace nor rest,
No freshening for an after-strife;
The one bare negative of life,
Which leaves us to our dreams unblest,—

Dreams of the time when yet we kept
The freshness of our earlier youth,
When yet the love of God and Truth
Was with us as we woke and slept;

Dreams of kind smiles that welcome gave,
And prayers we spake with claspèd hands,
And wanderings over far-off lands,
And true tears shed o'er grass-grown grave;

Dreams of all good we might have done,
Of all the evil that we did;
The memories full of pain, that bid
The long-dead past its course re-run;

And this great blank, this haunting fear,
This strong, unsatisfied desire,—
What is it but the ETERNAL FIRE,
The OUTER DARKNESS, dread and drear?