University of Virginia Library

As city-ward my steps were bent,
Amid the crowds that came and went
On mercenary cares intent,
I heard a Voice behind me;
And on my brain this ditty
Broke with insistent din,
That like a spell did bind me:
“Come with me to the City!
Of thine own soul have pity!
Come with me to the City
That is within!”
Now, as with awe-struck air,
And with arrested step that made men stare,
I marvelled of that utterance, came a change
In its monotonous range,
And this great word,
As from the deep, I heard:
“There is a river, there is a river,
The streams whereof make glad for ever
The City of God, the Holy Place,
The Tabernacle of the Most High”—
Then silence—and again,
Still in prophetic strain—
“That river is Life, and not of time or space
That City; nor sun and moon illume her sky;
Whose light the Lord, whose every gate a grace,
And whose foundation Immortality!
Come seek till we have found it!
Though seas of sense have drowned it,
At thy pure heart's desire it will arise,
And o'er the waters' face,
The while they shrink apace,
Flash in eternal splendour on thine eyes.
E'en now thou may'st behold,
Through lessening film and fold,
Dim adumbrations of her walls and towers,
Her sun-bright Citadel,
Where the Most High doth dwell,
Her pearl-paved streets and paradisal bowers.
There thy late Sorrows walk in white array—
O happy they!—
Pain and disease they know not,
For death's dark seed they sow not;
All tears are from their memory wiped away.”

Then to the Voice I said:
“For all its goodlihead,
Methinks this City is not what it seems,
But built of dreams;
And shall a man with dreams be satisfied?”
But it replied:
“And is not thine own soul
A dream-birth of the Eternal, in such guise
Veiled elemental-wise
That from part seen thou may'st divine the whole,
Lest the sheer splendour of its naked light
Should blind thy sight?
Nay, therefore too
Immortal art thou, for the truth stands true,
Howe'er belittled, or howso-oft belied,
Man's dreams may perish, but God's dreams abide.
Mark but this Universe, from sun to sod
One mystic vision of the Mind of God,
For thee translated by each several sense
To terms intelligible, that thou at last
May'st win to know through that sublime translation
The dream's interpretation,
And, childhood past,
And youth
Wherein thou hast learned the rudiments of truth,
Now by that Wisdom, which the world deems naught,
Intuitively taught
And hourly fed,
May'st on that Living Bread
Grow to the height of Man's magnificence,
Born of pure Being, in Its likeness cast—
Knowledge thy birth-right, Deity thy dower,
Sign, seal, and crown of the Creative Power!

“Lo! now the waters ebb, and like a wraith
The Gate of Faith,
Seen through the shallowing flood thou may'st discern.
Who enter there
Have done with doubt and care,
Gaze on Truth's substance, nor for shadows yearn.
This is that mode of all-creating Mind
That out of Chaos blind
Made leap to life the universal heart,
Sped worlds upon their way;
Whence too upon thine own diviner part
Elder than night or day—
That ere the ages 'gan to ebb and flow,
Or thou thyself to know,
Within the bosom of the Eternal lay—
Dawned out of darkness that which now thou art.
What, then! this Power that brought thy soul to birth—
In life's extremity will it faint and fail,
Or Truth Itself belie?
Nay, shut thy heart's door on the shows of earth,
Get thee within the Veil!
Thy Help is nigh,
Housed in the secret haunt of the Most High.

Couldst thou but come to know
That this is so—
Feel what thou art—and not the thing thou seemest—
In substance one
With Him who wheels the planet, poised the sun,
Who breathed thee into being, and broods behind
The unimagined marvel of thy mind—
So, from sense-bondage freed,
Herein to rest,
That God is the Expressor, thou the exprest—
This were indeed
The very dawn of Truth, whereof thou dreamest,
Ending of error and surcease of strife—
This were Eternal Life!
“But lo! not far aloof
Yon sister-gate behold,
And over it
Beneath a beetling roof,
Graven in shining gold,
This legend writ!
‘I am the Gate of Meekness: my low door
Opens to rich or poor:
Enter and bow the knee,
And win the white robe of humility!’
Yea, for no fairer garment could'st thou see:
Who walks arrayed therein
Shall hardly sin,
So great a Guest-Friend at his board shall be:
For ‘I am meek and lowly of heart,’ He saith,
‘And whoso hears My voice and openeth,
I will come in and sup with him,’ saith He,
‘And he with Me.’”

“But, Master,” I replied,—
“For with authority thou wordest it—
Of old 'twas writ
‘Who may abide
His coming, or who shall stand when He appears?’
And say'st thou sit at meat?
Should this betide,
My very human-ness
Would so distress—
So fill with doubts and fears—
I could but cast me at His sacred feet,
And bathe them with my tears.”
But swift the answer came,
And like a rod:
“Thou know'st not, then, thy glory or thy shame:
Yet know
Thou art not of terrestrial race or age,
Howe'er degenerate, but, of nobler claim,
(So high to be exalted from so low!)
An heir of God
For ages without end,
When thou shalt blend
Thine earthly with thy heavenly heritage.

“But now
Look where the Gate of Wisdom, loftier none,
Faces the rising sun!
Who wins therethrough
Certès shall know what never mortal knew
By toil of brow—
No brackish out-pour of those earthy wells
And sense-polluted cells,
Whereof who drinketh hath but for his pain
To thirst again,
But such high commerce with eternal things
As in the Silence springs
From Spirit-whisperings,
When the rapt soul up-breathes them to the brain.
On this low sphere
Of things that but appear,
In all that human wit or wisdom can,
How wonderful is Man!
How little and how great!
Who bends the unseen elements to his will—
Storm-tossed or still,
Skims ocean o'er and under, blind to fate,
Or sifts the cloud with air-flown winnowing-fan!—
Who plants æonian trees,
Builds cities that out-last him, as if these,
Not he, were in the Almighty's image made,
And knew the laws
That tether all things to the Eternal Cause!—
Who, ere his steps be stayed,
Wrings every secret from the blank abyss,
Save only this—
How not to thwart that Power behind the soul,
Which built his body, and still can keep it whole—
Nay, can etherealise and cause to shine,
As 'twere a thing immortal and divine,
Secure of evil, careless of decay,
The bright ephemeral of an endless day!
“Now on the Gate of Health let fall thine eyes,
How lovely it doth rise
Of living stone
With healing herbs and balmy flowers o'ergrown!
If here thy feet find entrance, thou shalt feel
Through mortal limbs such sense immortal steal,
As on Olympus' hushed and haunted sod
Men fabled erst of goddess or of god.
When the birds sing
On the high boughs
Of their branchy house
Sweet in the Spring,
How the blood leapeth to hear the woods ring!—
Then falls a silence, a cold cloud has come,
Hearts droop, the silvan choristers are dumb—
Even so fleeting and so frail as this,
The song of health that lilts along thy veins
And for an hour remains;
But I can point thee to a surer bliss,
If all thy mind
Turn inward to the Source from whence up-springs,
With low sweet murmurings,
Health's fount perennial, which who seek shall find.
Men of this latter age, how is't with you?
Stand ye for Death or for his Vanquisher?
Seems the One Truth too glorious to be true?
Then take this sharper spur:—
Who leaves the last great enemy undefied,
He fighteth on his side.
Know ye who said
‘Your fathers did eat manna, and are dead,
Feed but on Me, and ye no more shall die?’
But still ye cry
‘All flesh is grass!
We perish, and we pass
Into the grave where all things are forgot!’
Go to! ye know Him not!
Else would ye know indeed
How health and sickness in the heart do breed,
As out of it, for blessing or for ban,
Comes that which cleanses or defiles a man.
Thoughts, dipped in feeling—every thought a thread—
Weave of their kind, as they ply to and fro,
Framing a garment for man's soul: enough!
How fares your fabric, if the shuttle go
Packed from the spool with perishable stuff?
There need no more be said.
“Yet one last gate, the Gate of Mercy hight,
Must now arrest thy gaze:
Of all this City's wide-flung entrance-ways
Sweeter is none to sight;
And blest are they
Who know not ever from her path to stray,
Being so tempered and to love attuned,
And of such happy strain,
They count it as pure gain
To serve the sufferer, and bind up the wound:
And yet
'Tis but part-payment of an age-long debt
To all
The poor dumb lives that perished with thy fall:
For that thou seest on Nature's moving scroll
Is but the reflex of those changeful moods—
Rapture of life,
Love, hate and strife—
That war within thy soul.
Fair Peace fell shuddering
And all the plumes of ecstasy 'gan droop,
When thou did'st stoop
To deem and feel thyself a sensuous thing.
So that earth's children in their multitudes,
All cattle, and creatures in the woodland nurs'd,
That wing the air, or burrow 'neath the sod,
Are for thy sake accurs'd.
Cleave then to Mercy—Mercy one with Love—
For He that beats thy heart is made thereof,
Till soon or late
Comes that for which the groaning earth doth wait—
The manifestation of the sons of God.

This is that Kingdom where all lives have centre,
And all are one, yet each alone must enter.
Ah! thither might I win thee
Now by the words I speak!
It is not far to seek,
It is within thee.”

Here ceased the Voice, and, as at first it rose,
Sank to a sudden close:
Yet in my heart it rings,
And back to memory brings
The burden of that ditty—
‘Come with me to the City!
Come with me to the City!’
O the glory of it! the glory of it!
If one might hymn the story of it!—
Unravel the false weaving
Of sense and self-deceiving,
Fine webs of fond believing,
That from our heart would hide it!
For all that gleams within
The tinsel-gauded pleasances of sin,
Nay, the pure minted gold of heaven—
Sun, stars, the sister-planets seven—
If once thou hast but from afar descried it,
Are dross beside it!