University of Virginia Library

previous section Ranolf and Amohia
no next section
305

Canto the Seventh. After-Experiences.

1. Ranolf will learn that all Life is unsatisfying; and deem it a plan devised to win Man from over-regard for its beauty. 2. And that the Earth is a school for development of Soul, and the greatest works of Mind only students' essays. 3. Will not value Life too much. 4. Yet get his soul harmonized with it. 5. May conclude that ‘Science’ even may find a Law, in ‘Circumstance’ moulding individual lives and fortunes. 6–11. Will feel more and more the importance of the ‘Probable’; and of all creeds and philosophies (Buddhism, Hegelism, Christianity, etc.) pointing to the same great Truth or system of Truths—such, for instance, as the intelligent government of the Universe and the final welfare of spiritualized Humanity. 12. Anyhow the sanguine one will still hold to Truth— an ineffable Good Spirit, and a boundless Hope.

I.

Of Ranolf's feelings in the after-day,
His special findings by Life's varied way,
But little further—little fuller—may
This realistic record sing or say.
In that first greatest grief his youth had felt,
'Tis true his unformed Spirit had escaped
The threatened doom, the shattering blow that might
By his Soul-Sculptor's hammer have been dealt.
306

Perhaps—who knows? there was no need to smite:
Perhaps the marble could with blow more slight
Or shadow of that heavy one, be shaped:
For he was of a nature that delight
Could sooner than despair, refine and melt.
Yet—never doubt it—Life and Time must teach
Him too what they enforce on all and each;
That for all Souls, however richly dowered,
With amplest gifts by fate or fortune showered,
Something, where to the full they seem possest,
Will surely seem deficient in the best;
Or those that seem complete will flit or fade
Long ere the thirst they cause can be allayed.
Their sure effect, designed or not, 'tis clear,
Is to make one, old, world-wide Truth appear—
Man ne'er shall find full satisfaction here;
Must learn while bound upon this earthly ball,
The power and practice to renounce them all.
Yes! doubt it not; he too in time will glean
A glimpse so far into the mighty Plan,
Into the working of this strange Machine
The Universe; and what mysterious ways
The Wonder-worker takes to solve
The problem he has set himself; to make
His glorious World in one rich round revolve
Of beauty and attractiveness; yet wean
By Good disguised as Evil—helpless Man
Her nursling, from her lovely breast
And bid him from the sleep awake
Wherein contented else he would for ever rest.
307

II.

Then—for the tasks of Life;—whate'er the sphere
Wherein his fleeting forces may be spent
Will he not learn, herein too, Life was lent
But as one stage for our development?—
God's studio is this Earth,
And we, His pupils, for instruction sent,
Are pottering at our work of little worth
But to attain to faculties that here
Reach no perfection, or at least complete
No works that seem for such perfection meet.
How oft does mastery, even the most assured,
Moral or mental, seem in vain secured!
Our poets—artists—heroes—those
Whose ripening powers or ripened could not fail,
Their transient tools and organs lose,
Oft when their Souls seem fittest to prevail—
Most apt for thoughts or deeds sublime!
As if their lives were but a blossoming time;
They students—and the works they leave,
So far beneath what they conceive,
But tyros' crude essays to what in vain
Their fond imaginations long indeed
In this life—but in this life are in train
Only in larger—loftier to achieve;
Essaying here, but elsewhere to succeed;
(Thy favourite faith, my Poet many-souled—
All Intellect alight with Argus-eyes untold!)
Till not alone the buds of beauty left
By Nature's younger darlings soon bereft
308

Of life and lyre—too soon!—a Shelley made
All spirit—nay—frail spirit-tortured flesh
Self-fevering through false theories, griefs and heats
And phantasms, to pure Spirit; or a Keats,
In senses for a human Soul too fresh
And keen and fine, too dangerously arrayed;
Our young-eyed Cherubim, who like poor bees
Over a citron-blossom lifeless curled,
Not half their honey gathered for the world,
Died at their sweet vocation;—O not these—
Nor the rathe buds of amaranth they seize—
But roses fully blown; the gorgeous train
Of bright humanities a Shakespeare's brain
Bids into being, deathless and intense,
Reflecting God's own Life-crowd—hue for hue
And gleam for gleam—so varied—vivid—true—
The double Rainbow's second Arch, in stripe
And stain scarce dimmer than its archetype!—
Even these, to his great Spirit taken hence,
Seem left but like the drooping coronet
Of threaded anthers hanging still around
Some tiny nectarine-fruit, green, newly-set;
The poor triumphant relic that once crowned
Its flowering-time incipient, immature;
Just dropping from the fruit that must expand
To golden richness in the radiance pure
Of wider Skies and some diviner Land!

III.

And as the Will Supreme intends
Life's highest work as means, not ends:
Its joys and pleasures, coarse—refined—
Alike to be renounced—resigned;
309

Will he not feel at last, and see
The more for every misery,
The rolling seasons as they flee,
To him too, as to all mankind
Full surely will dispense—decree,—
That Life itself is meant to be
Held loosely—lightly?—as one day
When he with Amohia gay
Roamed in that earliest bliss of love,
He held upon his open palm
A slender beetle silver-bright
Beneath, all pure grass-green above;
And bade her come and look how fair
The dainty creature, 'lighted there
And running to his finger-tip
To gain a vantage-ground to slip
Off into air, its native balm;
“So should we hold this Life” he thought,
“So watch with interest, deep delight,
The flitting thing with beauty fraught,
Long as it lingers in our sight;—
So let it take, nor e'er repine,
When go it must, its mystic flight,
Into the limitless Divine!”

IV.

And he will feel—for such as he,
Of healthy frame and reason free,
Are more than most, secure to feel,
As straight he steers through rocks and shoals,
What haven rests for noble souls!
Yes, he will feel through woe and weal,
310

The power of Time to soothe and heal;
And tune the Soul to full concent
With its surrounding element.
The wear and tear of right and wrong
Less injure than befriend, the strong;
And cheerful heart and chastened will
Uplift them; and Experience still
Maturing, lends a master's skill,
Life's rich Harmonium-reeds to sound,
Once dumb, or so discordant found;
With easy stop some pain prevent;
With facile touches, lightly thrown,
Give simpler pleasures fuller tone;
And from the ebon-ivory range
Of chequered days and chance and change,
Draw symphonies serene and strange,
Melodious Music of Content.
They gain, like fruits, as ripe they grow,
More sweetness, with a sunnier glow;
Till, mellowing ever, they begin
The faith as very truth to hold—
The best of worlds is that wherein
Is much of Evil, so-called ‘Sin’;
With active wish and earnestness
To make that ‘Sin’ and Evil less.
So by degrees to Fate they mould
The Will that seemed so uncontrolled;
And patience comes—and passions cool;
And where they once were ruled, they rule;
Love's wing grows wider—Thought's more bold
The iron bonds are turned to gold;
The chafing and restraint are past;
And what were chains at first, are ornaments at last.
311

V.

And what if he one day shall see, nor dream—
Though from the Soul's own intimate emotions
It be conceded the profoundest notions
Of the unfathomable unison
Between it and the Universe be won—
What if it grow with gathering years more plain,
That the divine Developer's Life-Scheme
Might yet by Science in her own domain,
The Positive—that euphrasy and rhue,
The mental vision from the mists to purge
Of Speculation beyond Reason's verge—
Be caught a glimpse of; with no logic-strain,
Transcendent or empiric, or the twain
United, over-subtle for sound brain;
But patient observation, record true
Of all the agencies clear sight may trace
Of Circumstance, beyond its own control
That make and mould each individual Soul
Of myriad myriads of the human race;—
Of all the hints and seeming accidents,
Felicitous and opportune events,
Though slight, so often from without supplied,
The balanced Will that seems so free, to guide;
And be the fountains of a cataract wide
Involving the whole being in its tide!
All that strange Loom of Life that round us plays,
That made the grand old Greek, beyond all praise,
The wisest, bravest, best, of Ancient Days,
Paint it a guardian Angel by his side—
His prescient Diotima piteous-eyed.
312

All this shall make at last a Science grand
Of Circumstance—no sceptic shall withstand,
Wherein shall be perceived a law and laws,
Not to be gathered from a single mind,
But myriad inner histories combined;
And in the laws, clear purpose, conscious Cause.
What! shall the very Winds of heaven that rise
And sink and run their seeming reckless round,
Like Tartar cavalry scouring the wide skies
Intractable and trackless! shall all these
And every Storm that tears the limitless seas,
Ranging the Ocean's amplitude—be found
Obedient to fixed Law—to Order bound?—
Shall all that shifting swift Aurora-dance,
Those phantom revels round the secret Poles,
Be set to God-made music that controls
And bids each brilliant spasm up-leap and glance
By happy rule—harmonious governance?
Yet this—Humanity's abounding Mould,
The ever-active matrix manifold
Of Spirit, restless round Earth's millions rolled,
This vast Machinery for making Souls,
Be but chaotic Force—the child of Chance?—
A vain surmise!—but as that Law of Storms
Cannot be gathered from a single breeze
Or local gale; so must a myriad forms
Of lives and their environments be learned
And disentangled ere can be discerned
The law that flows round each, unguessed, unseen,
Like fluid wool that through the ribbed machine
Which looks so bare, so finely runs and fast
313

O'er whirling cylinders, a viewless stream,
Till in a visible flue scraped off at last:—
Even so, the presence of a Power supreme
Shall be detected as its subtle way
It works throughout the infinite whirl and play
Of ever-rolling restless Circumstance;
So from a million inmost beings scanned
With cool and scrutinizing vigilance
That marks each motive whencesoever brought,
Each faintest impulse from without them caught;
So may at last material pure be won
Whence ductile threads of reasoning may be spun,
Which all the strain of logic shall withstand;
And such a radiant raiment woven alone
By Intellect, as—warmly, widely thrown
About the shivering Soul—shall make it feel
Aglow with full assurance of eternal weal!

VI.

But in Life's starry twilight obscure, O be sure such a Wanderer as he
Will the worth of the ‘probable,’ nay, of the ‘possible’ more and more see,
As the limited rays of the gas-lamps of knowledge demonstrative press
With their narrowness more on his soul, evermore to its nobler distress!

VII.

“But to me,” he would muse, “it seems ever more possible, probable too,
314

That all Faiths and Philosophies, higher and lower, the old as the new
Are but parts of one System sublime,—have Ideas universally true!
Each that seemed an Aldebaran, Sirius once—but a fixed Sun or Star
That must pant in its lordly seclusion, alone, independent, afar,
Was or is—though by handbreadths in ages, approaching or moving around
Some vast undefinable centre, some Truth through them all to abound!
Of one Mystery all revelations, though outlets so varied they try;
Sheet-lightnings that glimmer responsive from opposite points of the Sky!
All but tones of one measureless Music revolving in symphony sweet,
Where the deep rich Eternity's bass must the chimes of Existence complete!

VIII.

“Thus more rational ever it seems that the vague transcendentalist's cloud
Of the ‘Absolute’ must, to be real, as with orient hues, be endowed
With the qualities (since without any 'twere quite inconceivable still)
Of Intelligence Infinite ever—no less than Omnipotent Will,
Whose manifold manifest tokens the visible Universe fill!
315

The identical ‘Mind’ then 'twould be, whose Idea Divine like a gleam
From itself, could for Plato illumine his shadowy groves Academe;
And anew,—by the sandy hot glare where those time-eaten monoliths brown
On the solemn inscrutable Sphinx, as the sunshine eternal, look down,
Or the date-palms of Nile, ruddy-golden, its cacao-dark overflow crown,—
Vary-starred the Mosaics of Philo,—in Christian Theosophy soared
Of Tertullians and Plato-fed Clements, who welcomed it, loved and adored
(Since their Infinite must be defined!) as their ‘Reason’—their ‘Logos,’ their Lord,
Self-existent ere all things began—ere it spoke itself forth as their ‘Word’!—
How these lofty Ideas—so essential to Man—ever shoot up and shine
O'er the dim Sea of Ages unchanged—like the spouts of the Whale o'er the brine
Far apart, yet, as true as from shots ricochetting, unswerved from one line!
Lo, the Mind over-ruling Platonic—the Logos Patristic—itself
Long before more than crudely conceived in the creed of that mystical Elf—
Hoary-headed and sixty years old at his birth—the ‘Old Boy’—Lao-tse!—
316

Philosophical rattle the reverend Babe in oracular play
O'er his senior-juniors shook, as he lisped them in long-tailed Cathay
Of the ‘Absolute’ all he could guess—as the ‘Taou’—the ‘Method’—the ‘Way’
Of the Mystery when from its lake of primordial stillness it steals
Down the Universe-River serene, and its intimate presence reveals
As a simple ‘Becoming,’—spontaneous—effortless—void of all aim,—
Yet attaining—evolving—resulting in harmonized Nature the same!—
Once again, lo! that “Method’—‘Mind’—‘Logos’;—thinly masked by a scholarly name,—
From the subtle mild East meditative—the fervid fanatical South—
Irrepressible notion! upsprings in the Northern cold sceptical drouth;—
Reappears like a vanished revolving Sea-Light slow-reviving aflame,—
As your ‘Immanent Reason’!—for this too, a Will all-püissant must claim
Like the rest; since though leaving the Good, while the Ages the issue await,
Through the Cosmos we ken of to wrestle with Evil and ravin and hate,
'Tis invested with might to o'errule the mystic and multiform fray—
Can coerce the two foes internecine—the duel æonian sway
317

Till the higher as Victor come forth in some new indescribable Day!
But the Day! what should it be and when?—when the ‘Absolute’, might we not say—
Shall flood the new skies with pure gold—shall its perfect predominance prove
In the triumph of Light without limit—the reign of unlimited Love!—
What if this were the high ‘reconciling Idea’ which all others transcends;
‘And to realize, organize which the whole Universe struggles and tends’—
If this ‘Absolute’ were but the Love which with Reason eternally blends!—
Then Philosophy were—an ally—in Religion's best colours attired;
Then the Unity Hegel the Thinker less clearly conceived than desired,
Were the ‘Notion’ the Nazarene taught, by his heart's simple grandeur inspired!

IX.

“And that other Idea Immortality (surely 'twere truthlike to say),
Should it e'er seem extinct, will survive,—take what fashion soever it may!
Will array itself yet in new robes of acceptance; new warranty find
For the favour—caresses more coy—more fastidious faith of Mankind!
318

O the grand old Belief they will keep, that the Soul to best reasoning still—
In Matter's despite—but a drop from the Ocean of Infinite Will—
But a Sun-ray from Infinite Energy—ever fate-driven to yearn
By its restlessness under the Finite, with longings that quenchlessly burn
For the Infinite—is to that Infinite destined at last to return!
How Religions reflect one another! how vital that notion was found
In the East reappearing of old as the natural human rebound
Of Cathayan and Thibetan millions Gautama's illusions unsound
Had revolted, when first on Mankind a practical trial was made
Of the Nihilist dream; and the saintly and sated Beguiler essayed,
From his half-view of Life as all Evil, to tempt men by æons of pain
Still renewed (so immortal by Nature this Life was!) to gain
Stone-stupidity—blockish no-being! to highest Morality strain
Suicidally mad to grow mortal; buy Death with all Life has of best;
Be divinest in worth to be worthy destruction! and mockingly blest,
For a million sad years' self-denial be marred with one moment of Rest!—
319

And surely our modern negation that smothers in Positive smoke
Of the senses that primal pure flame will a kindred reaction provoke!
Bid the Future repicture the ancient persuasion—some fresh way unfold
How—emerging at first from the Absolute—trailing its glory and gold,—
As the current electric, a Hermes outwinging that swift one of old,
From magnetic Abysses emerges,—the soul too, though hurried amain—
Borne along on its wire of Life, to the Absolute dipping again,
On its own individual circuit a mystical hold can retain!
Can its special electrical thread of conscious identity keep;
Or should conscious identity vanish, no less through the Infinite Deep,
In channels of new isolation, itself with new Self could array;
Never lost 'mid the myriad millions of like Life-currents that stray
In the Absolute realm multitudinous weaving their wonderful way
To what Pole—but the Highest Perfection! why, say to the Jewel sublime
In the Lotus!—though truly all figures as fastened in Space and in Time
Fail to picture the Absolute out of them,—still, as in Dantean rhyme,
320

All the Blest billion-throned make a snowy-white Rose far-horizoned, world-wide,
In its amphitheatral immensity mirrored serene in the crystal light-tide
Fed brimful from that Fount of Perfection; while bee-swarms of Angels flame-bright
Up and down ever flitting and dipping in splendours that veil It from sight,
With their golden soft-winnowing wings fetch and fan them new peace and delight,—
Why, if Nature makes Orient millions those happy foreshadowings share,
Why discard the fine witness in favour of Hope the wise heretics bear,
When they image what none can imagine—the Absolute Presence compare
To the Lotus that crowns the still waters of Infinite Life with its bloom;
And around its pure Essence of light-killing Light will assemble—illume—
All the boundlessly clustering petals, to circle its glorious Orb—
All the Spirits its Love will inform—so in bliss of its Being absorb!—
Then the future forlorn of the Soul which the saturnine Sakyan wooed
Were rekindled to harmony bright with convictions the healthier mood
Of a consciousness still more majestic, a sympathy ampler, indued;
So were peasant-meek Prince with yet princelier Peasant—Gautama the Good
With the grand Galilean at one; so the Aryan Lotus would shine
321

The Semitic high ‘House of the Father’—the home ‘many-mansioned’—divine!

X.

Nay, that Positive Science methinks (why should Truth that expectancy bar?)
Through its prison-grate peering may hail the high-peaks sky-developed afar;
Not alone, by keen insight of all that the springs of Life-streams may affect,
Like the mighty Athenian Martyr, within its own realm unsuspect,
Some unguessed under-guidance discern—a supreme Diotima detect;
But the realm may enlarge till its laws—so consummate to deal with that ‘wire’
May the Soul-current's self apprehend, and show to our dearest desire
How its circuits invisible must through the Cosmos eternally range,
Or its negative Finite recharged to an Infinite positive change!—
Then its ‘God’—that ‘Humanity’ too, no prairie on fire would be,
Ever-dying,—but rather the world-wide unwithering Igdrasil Tree
The old Norseman conceived it; therein could its nobler divinity see!
From its furthermost fibre of root to the leaf on its uttermost spray
Still informed with the sap of true being—the sunshine of shadowless Day!
322

So were worth adoration perhaps—amaranthine—transplanted on high!—
Or, advancing from system to system star-peopling the mystical Sky,
Say its myriad forms never-resting, in purer Valhallas might vie,
Of ever-new excellence emulous,—spirits that ceaselessly prove
Their prowess in rivalry finer of loftier, luminous Love!—

XI.

“How, but ends of broad rays, all these Faiths, under cloud-skirts too vast to dispel,
Though they slant up at angles opposed, to one centre yet pointing so well,
Of the great hidden Splendour—the Soul's happy destiny—solemnly tell!”—

XII.

But whatsoever he may dream or see
Of Facts acceptable in each degree
Of requisite assuredness;
Those lowlier, Logic proves yet must confess
Ne'er to be wholly fathomed—known;
Those loftier, best Emotions bid us own;
One feeling never will he cease to share,—
The cheery faith that all things, foul or fair,
For some wise purpose must be as they are;
The Evil but a scheme, half understood,
For better evolution of the Good!—
—Not cease; though ever will the sanguine-hearted,
323

With greater zeal by Time and Life imparted,
Swear fearless fealty in age as youth,
To highest Reason and all-questioning Truth!—
And ever will exclaim,
With thought as daring, earnestness the same:
“O heat of loving Heart! O light of chainless Mind!
When will conviction flash on dull mankind,
That you are One and True; to doubt you, false and blind!
And O, thou Great First Cause ineffable! O Being
In infinite ubiquitous persistence
By our conceptions inconceivable—to all our seeing
Invisible! yet forced upon us as unknown Existence
By all Existence known! O Thou
The source of Soul and Nature, Man and Brute
Whom in this sensuous deep thou dost immerse—
Thou hast ordained that deep shall still avow
Thyself—some shadow of Thyself reveal—
Potent o'er inmost consciousness to steal;
A conscious brooding Presence—through thy Universe
For ever everywhere intrusive—
For ever everywhere elusive—
Resistlessly suggestive, yet inexorably mute!—
Aye! strange the Mystery, and fathomable never,
Of everything that is—this actual Here and Now—
Impenetrable still—yet interpenetrated ever
With a divineness beaming through the dark,
Ubiquitous—unceasing!—from the highest cope
Of heaven with Astral Systems flung along its slope
To the minutest microscopic spark
Or speck of life obscure in air or earth or sea—
Some viewless animalcule—such a vivid shield
324

Of trembling rings of iridescent splendour
The very Rainbow by its side would yield
The palm—has no such glory to attend her
As we are startled to find there, unseen
By unassisted sense!—so manifest a glow
Of Beauty and Power transcendent from below
Rises to meet the Power and Beauty above
That through those star-worlds limitless expand—
And stealing through our Finite's dimmest screen,
Leavens the Universe with Light and Love!
Until we feel, we darkling men—
So darkling in our nook of narrow days
And cramping thoughts and creeping ways—
As in the midst, longing for light, between
That Infinitesimal and Infinite we stand—
Feel that the Finite's evil and its haze
Are destined to be lost, transfigured in the blaze
Of the abounding Presence, eloquent then,
Of that life-giving Beauty and Power divine—
Say rather, O Unnameable, of Thine!—
Thou—in this Mystery, starry-dark as night,
Yet beautiful and wonderful beyond the scope
Of utmost admiration—yet a pure delight,
A joy exhaustless by all thirst
For joy Thyself didst plant within us first,—
Thou hast ensured that we may rest
In one conviction not to be supprest—
For us whatever destiny
Thou dost ordain, must be the fittest—best!
Thou hast therein writ thy decree
It shall for Man for ever be
Inevitable to conclude Thee good and just;
Most rational to hold a boundless Hope;
325

Most inwardly ennobling utterly to trust
In the firm stronghold of the True and Right,
And widest Love's unconquerable might,
As best sustainment of his being's height—
Best revelation of Thy Will and Thee!—
Therefore we blench not! therefore boldly say:
‘O Man! thou momentary ray
Shot from the hidden Splendour far away—
Sheet-lightning gleam of a perceptive power
Taking wide Nature's surface for its dower;
O phantom-puppet of miraculous clay!
Thou that art launched into the infinite void
Upon thy sparkling bubble-world upbuoyed;
And—as an Insect on a floating leaf
Runs to and fro incapable of flight,
And works and waves in air its horns so slight,—
Dost ever, on thy voyage brief,
Keep stretching towards some unimagined goal
Hid in the blank abyss of Light
The feeble feelers of thy Soul!
Poor Atom on the Ocean of the All—
Hold bravely onward! faint not yet nor fall—
Some day shall come full answer to thy call!’”
Enough—the homely reel of Life we hold—
Of Amo's life and Ranolf's is unrolled;
She and her thoughtful thoughtless Wanderer bold,
Slight subjects of a lingering theme.
Faint visions of a too protracted dream,
Sink down—and like the ghosts of every-day,
The solid real flesh-phantoms—fade away!
previous section Ranolf and Amohia
no next section