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72

Canto the Fifth. Cloud-blowing.

1. Talk about the ‘Soul’—and ‘Immortality.’ 2. Ideal result of the work of an Ideally Divine Power—ultimate bliss for all. 3. Does ‘Evolution’ preclude Immortality? 4. Spirit-Life not excluded by the Material Universe, as (5) There may be an Unseen Universe beyond; or after; or (6) within this One—since Matter may refine to Spirit.

7. Is not ‘Cosmical Energy’ the outcome of Omnipotent Will? and (8) akin to Thought and Will in Man; both, emanations of Infinite Will? 9. This Will the Power that informs all Nature—‘Personality’ its clearest display. The union of this last with Matter being utterly inexplicable—what do we know of it when separated? how be sure it may not still exist? Want of sensuous experience of it no disproof. May not new organs await it even in the Atomic Universe?

10. Soul-truths perhaps only to be found and proved by Emotions. 11. That Man should rise by the False—a discord in Nature. 12. What makes the scheme of Existence rational, it is rational to hold true. 13. What if Immortality should have to be proved by a practical ‘reductio ad absurdum’ of its denial? 14. Hope.

I.

“The silvery dews on the meadows are blending
Like gauze with the gold of the buttercups' gleam;
The hawthorn is scenting the hollow green ways;
Its masses all snowy with blossom depending
Are sunlit emerging from faintly blue haze
Like a delicate dream!
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O the leaflets—how innocent, frank, their unfolding;
What a sweet hidden twitter—the birds' callow speech!
Two loud muffled notes like a flute's—how they stray!
'Tis the Cuckoo—his weariless plaint still upholding—
Still calling for something still further away—
For a joy out of reach!
See the framework of traceried jet overshingled
With emerald scales, jewel-roofing of Spring!
Over canopy canopy brilliantly spread,
Made of gems, the transparent and shadowy mingled!—
—Just the Elm—with new leaves, and the Sun overhead;
'Tis a tent for a King!”
So Ranolf; beckoning to a settle rude
His Tutor, as their musings they pursued.
The youngster, drinking into heart and brain
Elastic freshness from the fragrant Morn,
Could not but launch out in a cheery strain,
As on the ‘Soul’ they touched—‘Immortal Life,’
(O noblest themes with direst discords rife!)
Treating Despair almost with joyous scorn.—
Sanguine, say you, his temper!—If his blood
Coloured his reasoning, haply 'twas as good
As props the atrabiliar doctrines dyed
So darkly on the melancholic side.
We ground on those mudbanks of Doubt alone
In the ebb of the world's heart or our own;
Tangled in shallows of Despondence dark
Only when life is at low-water mark.
Not in Man's healthiest, his completest state
Do such misgivings his wise joys abate:
For Confidence is Life—and Hope is health:
And youth's glad trust is worth most mental wealth!
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II.

“What! will they say our hopeful trust is blind!
That the Heart's sunshine needs the clouded Mind!
Must Reason then be spurned from her high seat,
Or that most natural passion held a cheat?
That thirst for deathless life, that high desire
With which all wakened Intellects aspire,
As the dread Serpent of Eternity
Had bitten them with fangs like those accurst
Once fabled of the Dipsas—causing thirst
That quenchless burnt for ever! must this be
Held a mere lure to lead the human race
Through the long ages to some loftier place,
And from the myriad generations spent
And wasted in the wearisome ascent,
Evolve some sample of consummate skill
Whom powers with instincts harmonized should fill—
The clearest Reason and the purest Will?
That perfect race—must it, too, have its day,
Rise, growth, and culmination, and decay,
Then, like its predecessors, pass away?
Say, does ‘Supreme Intelligence’ contrive
A million shifts this vast machine to drive,
Only at such a failure to arrive?
Can neither check illusive Hope's uprise,
Nor make the illusion's fathomless disguise
At least impervious to poor human eyes?
What ‘Mind Divine’ would show for one short hour
Such want, yet waste, of Goodness and of Power?
If such the Universe, at once declare
Some Demon-Bungler has been busy there;
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Willing and yet too clumsy to deceive,
Creating spirits to aspire and grieve
And die without redemption or reprieve!
And not this World's,—this human race alone—
But all the Soul-drifts—countless throngs unknown
In many an unimaginable Star
Whirled round unnumbered Suns that shine afar!
Myriads on myriads fleeting like a breath,
Endless vicissitude of Life and Death;
The swarming star-shoals coming—going—whence
Or whither? without object in the dense
Infinitude of futile impotence!
“Nor boots it that the central Primal Cause
Itself might boast of permanence or pause,
Be an ‘Eternal Now’—a ‘Boundless Here,’
If all his emanations gone and spent
And every fleeting vain development,
Though after million Æons disappear
Left neither in a Seen or Unseen Sphere!
No! any ‘Mind’ I would believe or teach
As Power Supreme, Divine, Eternal, One,
Should be at lowest competent to reach,
And to eternise ere his work were done,
The good of All through happiness of Each!
Each life progressive and the last result
In bliss unqualified should all exult;
Perfect as well as permanent should be
Creation's glorious Crown and every glad degree!
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III.

“But does that beauteous Evolution scheme
Prove Man's great Hope a too ambitious dream?”
“Why think,” the Elder said, “it should or can?
Prove if you will the human race began
Far off in Manlike Ape or Apelike Man;
Detect or fancy links that would annul
Diversities in shape of bone or skull;
Prove Conscience, Sense of Duty, Right and Wrong,
From self-preserving instincts, weak or strong,
Tribal or Individual, slowly came;
Are not Man's soaring spirit and its claim,
Its maker, mystery, miracle, the same
As if in that more vulgar conjuring way
He sprang at one great leap from ruddy clay?—
'Tis not what height he rose from, but the height
He reaches—makes Man need the Infinite;
'Tis not his birthright—but the Soul he sways
When born—such need into a Hope must raise!”—

IV.

Said Ranolf, “What about the notion
With which some potent Pundits batter
Their foes, in obstinate devotion
To one absorbing hobby—Matter—
That in the Universe around
No ‘room for Spirit’ can be found?”
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The Old Man from his poke outdrew
His pipe and tapped the ashes out,
Filled it from twisted pouch anew,
For ‘Lucifers’ then felt about,
And lit it with the third-struck match,
As half-delayed by lurking doubt;
Then from his pursed lips slowly blew
A whiff of smoke, and seemed to watch
How from its centre it would curl
Outward in circles, then o'erhead
In dainty spirals float and spread:
“Just like their wondrous vortex-whirl
Of Atom-rings”—he smiling said;
Then gently, taking circuit wide,
Yet half impatiently replied:

V.

“What! no room for your ‘Soul-Life’ they say? so with Atoms and Vortices packed
Is your Ether, no Space is there left for your ‘Ghosts’ to exist in or act?
Might a dullard presume but to ask, while on this side or that side they brawl,
Can their utmost sagacity prove that the Universe Seen is the All?
Think of ‘Energy’—mystical wonder! an Infinite Ocean of Force
Through the visible Universe flying—of Heat, Light and Motion the Source!
Though to active or latent it change, in amount undiminished it flows;
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Indestructible then and Eternal?—but who can its wellspring disclose?
From the Sun ever effluent—true: but to Him from what fountain effused?
What becomes of it all? but a part in the visible Universe used,
While the bulk of it rushes at speed inconceivable—whither away?—
Nay the part—must it quench in this Cosmos its Æons on Æons of play?
The conditions it works in, for ever be just what you find them to-day?
Must the whirl of the planets wax fainter and fainter till into the Sun
They are plunged, and the Suns on their mightier centres be dashed one by one,
At each crash upward-flinging a billion-years' flicker of quickening heat
Efflorescent in Worlds ever fewer, the whirl and the waste to repeat
Till the last on a measureless cinder-heap sink and—the Farce be complete?
Must the Universe-Fire—enormous—æonian—burn itself out,
And the Energy cease when it dies? Shall a failure so infinite flout
At the last this ineffable wonderful outflow of purposeless Might?—
Better think it may well from and wend to some Universe hidden from sight!
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VI.

“Need we ask if that Universe elsewhere in Space—this familiar one—be?
Or a new kind of Space to be measured more ways than our hampering ‘Three?’
Or belike in a kind of Existence by Space and by Time unconfined,
In the thoroughly ‘Absolute?’ both of them blanks to our limited Mind?
Why, the Cosmos whose surface we see, what behind it may lurk or within?—
Up from solids to liquids, from liquids to gases, still subtler, more thin,
Look how Matter refines; then as fluid Electric, as Light or as Heat,
Or their medium Ether, half loses its nature; and lastly its height
Of pure subtilty—rather the point where it possibly vanishes quite—
Gravitation—Attraction, attains: while the finer of every grade
Can the grosser, it seems, interpenetrate, permeate, freely pervade!
Who shall say then, where ‘Spirit’ begins, where the merely Material ends?
Must that process refining be stopped where our limited ken it transcends?
To Existences pure, immaterial, rather believe it pursued,
Which the presence of Matter nowise from the place that it filled would exclude!—
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So may thousands of Worlds all of Spirit no twinkle or flame would betray
Through the starry expanses (if Spirit need any locality) stray,
Or each other pervade intermingling, in rest unimpeded or flight,
Unperceived, undetected, unknown,—a Universe hidden from sight!”

VII.

A cliff-top lone and high;
A noon-day soft and calm;
Sea melting into sky;
Sky into liquid balm;
Horizon lost!—
The vast expanse how bare!
Unmoving, here and there,
Clouds floating on the Sea,
Ships white-sailed, hung in Air,
Four—five at most:
How tiny each—a toy
Upon the pale blue, fair,
Silent Immensity!
—So better to enjoy
Their dreamy talk,
Our Student and his Guide,
He of the shaggy hair
Snow-white—the weary-eyed,
Now on the cliff-top bare
Together walk.
81

“But for Power?” the latter was saying, “Can we who are forced to believe
That the First Cause of All is Intelligence greater than Man can conceive—
Guess the mode of its Power?—Just think of the Force in this Cosmos we trace:
This Earth flying miles as we speak it, a thousand a minute through Space!
In a second from Pole to Equator Auroral effulgences leap!
Then the billion-leagued shudders of Light, how they speed through the Infinite Deep!
Yet beside Gravitation—Attraction, all these may but linger and creep!
Ever swifter, more subtile, intense grows the Power that recedes and ascends;
To Omnipotence still and Ubiquity nearer and nearer it tends!
What should stay its progression—that Power expanding, intensified still,
At the point where we cease to perceive?—But confess, to Omnipotent ‘Will,’
As of Force the sole fountain our reason can reach, ere the quest must be stanched,
We may follow, and fairly, the Might that across the Immensities launched
Wafts a million of Worlds on its breath in a sprinkle of galaxy-spray,
And can weave the gold meshes of Life our Earth-speck is webbed with to-day!—
So this Cosmos itself of that Will were the outcome, expression and sign,
Were its infinite-spreading and endlessly-ramified Instrument, Shrine,
And myriad-organed Embodiment ever and wholly divine!
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Worked from some inconceivable Source, say, of mental or physical Light—
Inconceivable truly, but real,—in the Universe hid or in sight!

VIII.

“Two Mysteries freely confest by the sages of Science we find:—
Through the visible Universe clearly an ‘Energy’ works like a Mind;
For the grasp of the Senses too fine: never known but with Atoms combined;
Never caused by these Atoms—for how can dead Matter originate Force?
And how linked with the Universe ever a Mystery dark as its source.—
Through the brain of Mankind works an ‘Energy’—Thought call it—Consciousness—Will;
Never known but when joined with brain-atoms; itself imperceptible still;
Never caused by these Atoms,—for how can mere Matter, though living—be Thought?
And how linked with the Brain such a secret, in vain is the clue to it sought.—
Are they kindred these ‘Energies’ then? and the last, what if simply 'twere true
'Tis a drop of its Ocean, the first, and as such indestructible too!
Why—of Matter one mightiest Mystagogue—vaunted of Theists a rod—
A candid and fearless fine creature whose only one bugbear was—‘God,’—
83

Whose disgust with dead Ghosts in the Sky made him blot out the sky for the sod—
Has recorded of this very ‘Thought’—in its Essence who deepliest delves
Must acknowledge it one and the same with the Essence of Things-in-Themselves—
Of this Universe then! and 'tis clear that the happy result undesigned
Of his proving them both to be Matter—is proving them both to be Mind!
Soul-Energy then and the Cosmical—are they not both of one kind?—
Of ‘Omnipotent Will,’ say, but streamlets or filaments, ample or slight?
The immediate Effluence then of that Essence Divine, which aright
To reveal—though divinely bedimmed lest its naked transcendency smite
On perception too finite and feeble with splendour unbearably bright—
Is the use of this Garment of God—this Universe ever in sight?

IX.

“Aye indeed, 'tis Intelligent Power—Omnipotent Will, as it seems,
Feeds the ‘Energy’ mystic which through this molecular Universe streams,
And can guide or unite with—inform—all its Forces in all their degrees,
And impart just so much of itself as its purpose or wisdom may please;
84

From its lowest display—Gravitation—your Newton and Locke call ‘divine,’
Up through sensuous impress and impulse instinctive till clearest it shine
In the Conscience and Will of Mankind. Surely this, well may Reason maintain
Is the ‘Soul’ in the Atoms the fancy or faith of that German would feign—
Is the ‘Mind-Stuff’ to molecules joined—in the rock—in the plant—in the brain!—
But the union of Body with Thought, if Man has no faculties fit,
Says Science, its Nature to tell; on the truth can he possibly hit
Of what follows their severance? hidden the link—and not knowing a whit
Of the Essence of either when linked—are we hopelessly forced to admit
That Man's Personality—peerless on lofty-willed Conscience its throne—
Of that Energy ever divine the divinest Investiture known—
Could not live though the link should be broken—its vassal and vehicle gone?—
O we never have known it—forsooth! with Experience inch-deep at best!—
Why, the truth of what lies beyond Sense, say how should the Senses attest!
The invisible has not been seen, the inaudible heard! 'tis confest:
But o'erdone by the surface of things as we helplessly dabble and glower,
In such Infinite Mystery plunged—in the hands of such Infinite Power,
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Can we tell, do you think, all that Power may do to combine and to change
Even Atoms through millions of Worlds that from solar to nebular range,
Though a thread of its working in them with its work on our Earth-speck may blend?
While between what our microscopes show and the bounds to which Atoms extend,
Even here, are such structural wonders—complexities,—change without end,
As the keenest sagacity stagger—the finest conceptions transcend.
Can we tell what is possible, then, or impossible either, to Might
Such as that, with such Essence as Mind—in a realm imperceptible quite,
Though within their molecular bounds—in the Universe plainly in sight?—”

X.

“Yet after all”—and here the wary old
Campaigner in the war against Despair
Fell back upon a fortress he would hold
When Reason's forces seemed too hardly prest,
Rearing a broader banner in brighter air
And sounding notes that like a bugle's blare
Triumphant echoes woke in Ranolf's breast:
“Whate'er that Unknown Realm—of Spirit whole
Or matter wholly past perception—be,
That hiding-place and homestead of the Soul;
Its nature and mysterious destiny;
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If entrance 'tis impossible to gain
For Science to that royal-rich domain,
And Intellect alone be found too poor
A tool to burst the Imperial Palace-door,
(Though I must think the expanding range allowed
To Man's Experience will supply some day
A basis, starting-point or link whereby
Science Demonstrative will pierce the cloud
And back with glittering spoil come laden gloriously!)
But if this may not be, why fear to say
The Soul, its sphere and nature must be such—
For Intellect thereon to logicise
Is just to try rich colours with the touch,
Or test melodious sounds with keen bright eyes;
As Dante's heard the sculptured Widow's speech—.
On that white frieze-like Purgatorial bank
Whose end each way his eyesight could not reach—
Ask death for her son's murderer as she sank
At Trajan's feet, and ceased not to beseech
Till his roused virtue had vouchsafed her prayer;
Then saw the sound of visible replies
The marble Emperor made her voiceless cries.
That feat we would not ape, but rather dare
Confess that in an atmosphere so rare
The leaden wing of Logic cannot rise;
That by Emotion, not Reflection, best
The Soul is borne aloft in that fine air—
Feeling, not Thought, her fiery chariot there!
The highest Sentiment were then confest
The base whereon the highest Truth must rest;
The highest Truth itself, not such—about
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Whose sureness 'twere impossible to doubt;
But as to sureness, in the next degree,
Such as, not proved, most probable might be:
True till a higher Truth were felt or found
And by the beating hearts of men around
As such accepted—welcomed—honoured—crowned;
Still raised, refined, as Science purged away
What Error in her reach obscured its ray;
Aught from that lower realm that might alloy
Its gold, would Logic fasten on—destroy;
And everything she honestly disproved,
Must be relinquished—howsoe'er beloved:
With one proviso, proved default of proof
Is from disproof a million leagues aloof.
“Let us cling then, my lad, to that glimpse of a Truth about Truth we have caught,
That Emotions may teach it as well as Sensations. Aye! perish the thought
‘What we feel with the fingers is all—what we feel with the heart shall be nought!’
That the heart and the soul reach beyond all the senses is ever confest;
Then for what lies beyond all the senses, their evidence must be the best.
And if many, the best and the deepest to feel and to think, can arrive
By emotions most pure to that grandest conviction—the Soul shall survive,
Such a theorem rightly they prove, do they not? from premises read
Not in reasons but feelings alone—Q.E.D. of the heart, not the head?—
88

XI.

“There's a ‘Tendency making for Righteousness:’ True! which abundantly proves
A ‘Supreme Moral Power’ exists; all the more that so slowly it moves,
So accords with the gradual processes physical Nature so loves.
If to physical Harmony—Order, the Universe wins as a whole,
May not Order and Harmony Moral be fixed for its loftier goal?—
Now the thinkers and feelers—those best and profoundest, sincerely declare
With such Power—of Reason all perfect and Will the divinest—to share
Inexpressible inner communion, purifies, elevates most
The Spirit that yearns to be like it. We know too, the pride and the boast
Of their race—the magnificent Souls who have loftiest towered through Time,
By the depth of their love of that Power have been stirred up and strengthened to climb—
And through faith in Immortal Existence, have soared to that climax sublime!
What! did Man o'er those animal cycles to royal pre-eminence rise
But by stimulants—impulses true—true outer and inner supplies,
Yet by means that are false and illusive to moral perfection must tower—
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True Sun and true Air make the plant, mock Sun and sham Air make its flower!
Are not forces through Nature the nobler, to nobler productions that tend?
And shall Man by the false and deceptive, most truly the lower—ascend?
Can His upward be really Her downward? one refluent wave can he be—
Flowing back 'mid the millions that run right-ahead in the Universe-Sea?
Is he placed topsy-turvy, as 'twere, with harmonious Nature at strife—
Like a slide set by chance upside-down in the rich Magic-Lantern of Life?

XII.

“Look! here's an arrangement for Being—half-finished; a scheme incomplete;
By itself, full of outrage on Justice and Love; a remorseless deceit
For the high aspirations it rouses; a jargon, a nightmare, a cheat!
Like a Nineveh fragment of tile, nicked all over with arrow-head lines,
Broken off through the middle of each—a farrago of meaningless signs.
Comes a cuneate Linguist profound, fills the lines up with words he has guessed,
With ‘Survival of Soul,’ ‘Probation by Evil,’ ‘Reward’ and the rest,
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Till it seems all consistent and rational, beautiful, wisest and best!
Were it sensible then, or wild whim, to believe the lost half of the tile
Was o'ernicked by the Ancient Clay-writer with words in a similar style,
To be found, when they dig up the whole of the mighty Assyrian pile?

XIII.

“'Tis my faith—should this Soul-Life, my lad, in the Intellect's hotter attacks
Melt away like a counterfeit flower Superstition has modelled in wax,
And the Heart could not rear the live blossom,—yet Nature and Fate would be heard—
Would ‘reduce’ its denial at last to a crushing, terrific ‘absurd;’
Let Mankind down a withering process of practical Logic be hurled;
Prove by vivid Experience how,—mortal-soulled—a mere animal World
To a Bedlam and Chaos must come—universal putridity—rot!
So be forced to assume Immortality—hold it Humanity's lot—
Whether ‘Logic’ the truth of the Fact could directly demonstrate or not!
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XIV.

“Life's the green Cone-cap hiding for its hour
That golden Californian poppy-bud;
Death pulls it off—outbursts the Soul—the flower!”—
(So mused that time-worn Sage)—“The Soul when freed
From its environment of flesh and blood
Will flush into full-blooming power
The riddle of its folded fate to read.—
See the dilating Sun
Down to the mountains sunk!
An awful human Eye
Beneath such sable brows—
Cloud-stripes like Cedar-boughs
Soft-floated off some giant trunk
Of ancient Lebanon.
Why are you watching there,
O great red Mystery—why?—
Just as—with ominous glare
Yet grandly—solemnly sublime,
O'er mortal Life and fleeting Time,
Watches Eternity!
—Watches; and yet can throw
A magic mellowed glow
Of Hope o'er Life's mysterious doom,
As balmy Evening's soothing gloom
You sanctify—illume!—
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The sandbank of the Sea-lagoon
You glorify to gold;
Crimson the jet-white sandbirds—soon
To cease their restless run, and fold
Their wings on sea-roost cold.
I saw you rise this Morn.
On the black Mountain's rim there came
Some little tongues of shifting flame;
They linked—a dome grew slow in sight,
Then throbbed—a sphere of blinding light!
Low down, right opposite,—
The wan full Moon, dead-white,
Disconsolate—forlorn,
Lingered in shy retreat
To see what glad reception might
Her dazzling rival greet.
—So looks poor Faith at Science. Yet
Why should she at the splendour fret,
(I thought) the glory shun?
Her turn will come; that rival bright
Will fill—or own her full of light
Ere all be done!”
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