University of Virginia Library

In Frankfort, at the crowded table-d'hôte,
Amid the steam of dishes and the sound
Of chattering voices, I beheld at last
The face I sought: a toothless lion's face,
Grey, livid, sprinkled o'er with dust of dream,
With two dim eyes that (as the lion's orbs
Gaze through and past the groups around the cage
Upon the sands of Afric far away)
Met mine and saw me not, but mark'd beyond
That melancholy desert of the Mind
Where in his lonely splendour he had reign'd.
But when he rose without a word, and stepped
Across the threshold out into the street,
I follow'd reverently, and touch'd his arm.
Frowning he turn'd. ‘Your pardon,’ I exclaimed,
Standing bareheaded in the summer sun—
‘To the new Buddha, Arthur Schopenhauer,
I've come with letters from your sometime friend,
Hestmann of Hamburg. Bliss it were, indeed,
If for a space you suffered me to gaze
On the one fountain of philosophy
Still sparkling to refresh an arid world!’
He took the letters, glanced them grimly through,
Then his face brighten'd and he smiled well pleased;
Then nodding, said: ‘You come in season, sir!
I lack an arm to lean on as I walk,
And now, if you are willing, yours will serve.
For, as you see, your Buddha (so men please
To style me; and if zeal to make men wise,
To free them from their yoke of misery,
Constitute godship, I deserve the name!)
Your Buddha groweth old, is well-nigh spent,
And soon must pass away.’ ‘Nay,’ I replied,
‘For many a summer and a winter more
Your living force must flow to gladden man:
Philosophy is still too halt and blind
To spare you yet!’ More brightly still his face
Flash'd answer to the flattery of my words.
‘Right, right!’ he murmur'd. ‘After all, they are wise
Who flout the Bible's three-score years and ten;
A strong man's season is a hundred years,
Nor less nor more; and I, though grey and bent,
May see another generation yet!’

I had reach'd his heart at once, as courtiers gain
The hearts of kings. So, resting on mine arm,
Smiling and nodding gently, as we went,
He passed with me along the sunny street;
And on our way I spake with youthful warmth
Of that new gospel which the lonely man
Had offered all in vain for two-score years
To every passer-by in this dull world;
And what himself had said a thousand times
I said with zeal—that in the sun there stood
Temples and towers, but only Memnon's sang,
And his was Memnon's to a listening world.
Still more complacent grew his deity,
Finding so passionate a worshipper!
And presently he questioned of myself,
My birthplace, and my business in the city.
English by name and accent, as he guessed?
Was his name known in England? he inquired,
With quick solicitous glance; and when I said
His name was known and reverenced through the land,
His pale cheek flush'd with pleasure once again.

Then, as we passed along the populous streets,
With houses, shops, and marts on either side,
And folk as thick as bees that throng i' the hive,
He, finding I was apt, grew garrulous:
Told of his weary years of martyrdom,
Through which, neglected and despised, he framed
His creed of grand negation and despair;
How, bitter at the baseness of the world,
Yet never faltering as his hand set down
In philosophic rhythm the weary sound
Made by the ocean of the Will which beats
For ever on these wrinkled sands of Time,
He had waited, till the pigmies wrought his crown;
How every man-made god, or god-made man,
Had lied, until he spake the ‘Sesame’
Which opened the great cavern of the truth
To every soul that yearn'd to creep therein;
And how, now all was said that thought could say,
He rested, while the nations one by one
Approved—Nirwâna!

As he spake, he paused
Before a great cathedral whose tall spire
Pointed a fiery finger up at Heaven.
Then, smiling, ‘Still the pagan temples stand,
And from the heart of each a bleeding god,
Not Buddha or a greater, spins his web
To entangle insects of Humanity.
Henceforth the battle is between us twain,—
I who have scaled the Heavens and found them bare,
I who have cast the Heavenly Father down,
And Christ that cries, “He reigns!”’

He rose erect,
Nostrils dilated, eyes grown fiercely bright,
With possible conquest.

‘'Tis the Christ or I,
And face to face we stand before the age!
All other of the intellectual gods,
Save I alone, were frail or timorous,
Mad or god-drunken; I alone have set
My finger on the canker of the world,
Saying 'Tis fatal—'Tis incurable—
And I defy the Christ to find a cure!
The Titans, headed by Prometheus
(Whom we in Deutschland call Immanuel Kant),
Marshal'd their hosts against the Olympian throne,
And one by one before its shadowy seat
Fell, mumbling “God;” the tempests of the mind
Enwrapt and overpowered them, and they fell;
Last of the race, their Epimetheus,
Our moonstruck Hegel, gibbering like an ape,
Follow'd the phantom God whom he denied
Garrulously up and down! My turn was next.
I stood alone upon the eternal shore,
And heard the thunder of the waves of Will
Upmounting to destroy me, till I spake
The mystic word “Nirwâna,” and behold!
They heard me and obeyed me, and were hush'd.
A Spirit stood beside me, even Death,
And in his clammy palm I placed my hand,
And still together, masters of the hour,
We stand triumphant, waiting the event!’

Again he took my arm and on we walk'd
Towards Sachsenhausen. Passing o'er the bridge,
'Mid crowds of pleasure-seeking citizens,
We came among the parks and flowery ways
And heard among the sunbeam-laden trees
The fluttering and the singing of the birds.
From neighbouring gardens came the fiddle's sound,
The flute's soft whistle, and the eager shouts
Of merry-making folk. Then, sitting down,
Upon a bench o'erhung with whispering leaves,
We watched the stream of festal men and maids
That overflowed the roads and garden walks.
Loud in the summer sunshine sang the birds,
Answered by human voices, while the sage
Looked sadly on, and mused:

‘The stress of pain
Dwells on the heartstrings of the feather'd choir,
Who, prompted by the goad of fiery love
(Veneris ictus, as Lucretius sings),
Toil restlessly, build nests, uprear their young,
With eager palpitations, ever fearing
The shadow of the cruel kestrel, Death,
Hovering above them. Sounds their summer cry
So merry, say you? 'Tis the o'erburdened heart
Spilling itself in waves of agony,
Which only to the sense of babes can seem
Sweet and ecstatic! Walk abroad; and mark
The cony struggling in the foumart's fangs,
The deer and hare that fly the sharp-tooth'd hound,
The raven that with flap of murderous wing
Hangs on the woolly forehead of the sheep
And blinds its harmless eyes; nor these alone,
But every flying, every creeping thing,
Anguishes in the fierce blind fight for life!
Sharp hunger gnaws the lion's entrails, tears
The carrion-seeking vulture, films with cold
The orbs of snake and dove. For these, for all,
Remains but one dark Friend and Comforter,
The husher of the weary waves of Will,
Whom men name Peace or Death.’

‘A piteous creed!’
I answer'd. ‘Surely yonder thrush's song
Is not all sadness? Hark how joyfully
He, clinging to the laden apple-bough,
Trills out his “lover-lover! kiss-kiss sweet!”
And yonder youth and maiden listening
Sit hand in hand as if in Paradise,
And seeing heaven in each other's eyes,
Forget for once that love can die or change
Or youth's gay music turn to jangling bells
Or funeral discord!’

On my Buddha's face
A dark smile gather'd like a sulphurous flash
Upon a lonely cloud, and died away.
‘Behold,’ he said, ‘the woman close at hand
Suckling her sickly babe: poor soul, she smiles
To feel the famished lips that draw her milk
And drink her feeble life! Call you that smile
The light of living joy? To me it seems
Rapture of misery ineffable,
Such as the birds and beasts bear in their breasts
Starving to feed their young! Then mark again
That other, like a ripe and rich-hued fruit
Pit-speck'd and rotten to the very core!
She flaunts her painted beauty in the sun
And hangs upon the arm of yonder Jew
Whose little eyes are shrivell'd in his head
With Nature's light of lust. Priapus still
Is god o' the garden! Not a stone's-throw hence,
Temples obscene as those Vesuvius once
Smother'd with fiery lava, still attest
The infamous worship! Wheresoe'er we gaze,
On quiet field or busy haunts of men,
Among the creeping or the upright beasts,
Comes Nature, grinning like a procuress,
Bringing her innocent victims to assuage
The fire herself hath sown in the quick veins
Of all that live. Call you that quenchless fire
Peaceful or joyful?—yet by that alone
We move and have our being!’

‘Nay,’ I cried.
‘For surely there is Love which conquers it,
And Passion pallid as the passion-flower
Rooted in earth but showering up to heaven
Its wealth of stainless blooms!’

‘Love conquers it,’
He answer'd with a weary inward smile,
‘If e'er it conquers, by the privilege
Of some supremer pain. The ascending scale,
From lower up to higher, only marks
The clearing of the flame until its light
Grows wholly sacrificial. Beasts and birds
Struggle and agonise to increase their kind,
Obeying blind pulsations which began
Deep in the burning breast of yonder Sun
Whose corporal beams we are! Creation ever
Obeys the blind vibration which arose
Ere yet the timorous nebulæ cohered
To fashion fiery worlds; but we who stand
Supreme, the apex and the crown of things,
Have gained supremacy of suffering
And sovereignty of limitless despair!’

How merrily the festal music rose,
While men and women 'neath the lindentrees
Join'd in the dance, and happy children cried,
And birds with quick precipitous rapture shower'd
Their answer from the blossom-laden boughs!
Sunny as Eden seemed the earth that day;
And yet, methought, I saw the sunlight shrink
And all creation darken suddenly,
As if from out the umbrage there had peer'd
The agate-eyes o' the Snake! Then, as I gazed
Into the pallid dreamer's filmy orbs,
Methought the flesh and hair were shrivell'd up,
And in their places skin and scale appeared,
Till on his belly crawling serpent-wise
My Buddha slipt into the undergrass
And disappear'd. The fancy vanishing,
I heard his voice intoning at my side.

‘Supremacy of sorrow gained at last,
Agony upon agony multiplied
And crystallised in knowledge, He, your Christ,
Rose and confronted Nature, as a dove
Might face eternal Deluge. “Comfort yet,”
He murmur'd, “while I set, upon the brows
Of all who suffer, this red crown of thorns,
And speak the promise of eternal life.”
Eternal Life! Eternal strife and sorrow!
Man's privilege of misery ascending
Scale after scale, until at last it gains
An immortality of suffering!
What marvel if the tortured victim shrinks
From infinite possibilities of pain,
And casting down that crown, calling a curse
On Nature, dwindling down the scale which once
He eagerly ascended, gains the beast,
Holds hideous orgy, or like Niobe
Weeps—and is fix'd in stone! Helpless and frail,
Sharing the desolation he surveys,
Christ crawleth back into His sepulchre
And sleeps again. . . . Meantime, out of the womb
Of sorrow springs another Comforter,
Your Buddha, even I, the lonely man
Who walks the waves of Will as long ago
The Galilean seem'd to walk the sea.
“Patience!” I whisper; “take the gift I bring—
No crown of thorns, no promise of more life,
But this black poppy, pluck'd upon a grave!
The Ocean, though its waters wash as far
As the remotest sphere, as the last sun
Just crackling, shrivelling, like a leaf i' the fire,
The Ocean wide as Life, hath still—a shore!
On those dark sands each troublous wave is still'd,
Breaks, falls, and stirs no more, though other waves,
Pain following pain, identity that crowds
Fast on identity, shall still succeed.
Ye are weary—sleep; ye are weeping— weep no more;
As ye have come, depart; as ye have risen
To the supremest crest of suffering,
Break, overflow, subside, and cease for ever.”
Man hears. He feels, though all the rest be false,
One thing is certain—sleep: more precious far
Than any weary walkings in the sun.
Shall not the leafy world even as a flower
Be wither'd in its season; or, grown cold,
Even like a snowflake melting in the light,
Fade very silently, and pass away
As it had never been? Shall Man, predoom'd,
Cling to his sinking straw of consciousness,
Fight with the choking waters in his throat,
And gasp aloud, “More life, O God, more life!
More pain, O God”? . . . Nay, let him silently,
Bowing his head like some spent swimmer, sink
Without a sigh into the blest Abyss
Dark with the shipwreck of the nations, strewn
With bones of generations—lime of shells
That once were quick and lived. Even at this hour
He pauses, doubting, with the old fond cry,
Dreaming that some miraculous Hand may snatch
His spirit from the waters! Let him raise
His vision upward, and with one last look,
Ere all is o'er, behold “Nirwâna” writ
Across the cruel Heavens above his head
In fiery letters, fading characters
Of dying planets, faintly flickering suns,
Foredoom'd like him to waste away and fade,
Extinguish'd in the long eternal Night.’

As one who walks in gardens of the feast,
When the last guests flit down the lamphung walks
To music sadly ceasing on the air,
And sees a dark arm pass from lamp to lamp,
Quenching them one by one, so did I seem
Hearkening that voice of cheerless prophecy.
I rose, walked on, he leaning on mine arm,
I listening; and where'er we went methought
Sorrow and sunlessness preceded us;
So that the people dancing 'neath the trees,
The birds that fluted on the blossoming boughs,
The music and the murmur, made more sharp
My sense of desolation. Everywhere
I saw the hovering ernes, Despair and Death,
Watching their victim, Man.

A space we walked
In silence, then I murmur'd: ‘Can it be
That Death and Death's Despair are paramount?
That, even as suns and systems are consumed,
The mind of man, which apprehends or dreams
It apprehends them, shares their destiny?
Is there not something deathless, which denies
The victory to Death?’

‘Their Christ says “Yea,”’
Answer'd the Buddha; ‘and with that lure and lie
Hath led the world for eighteen hundred years.
The mind of Man is as the rest—a flash
Of sunfire, nothing more; a quality
Pertaining only to the perishable.
Thought is a struggle with the Unconscious; soon
The struggle ceases, and the Unconscious drinks
The thinker and the thought for evermore.
Blessèd is he who, having wildly watch'd
The beauteous mirage of a heavenly Home,
Knoweth 'tis mirage only, and sinks down
To slumber on the arid stretch of sand
Whereon his weary feet have trod so long:
The sun shall shine upon him, and the stars
Fulfil their ministrations; he shall hear
No more the wailings of the flocks and herds
Slain to assuage the appetite for life;
No thing that suffers and no thing that slays
Shall mar his peace with pain or sympathy;
Dust, he returns to dust; life, he resolves
To life unconscious, such as quickeneth
In even trees and stones; his dream is o'er
For ever; and he hath become a part
Of elemental dumb Eternity.’

‘If this be so, dear Master,’ I returned,
‘What then remains for us who walk i' the sun?
For surely Love is curst, if Love must die
Like breath upon a mirror, like the dew
Clothing the Hûleh lily; and alas!
Since Love goes, what abides of heavenly hope
To abate our weary heart-beats?’ With a smile
He answered: ‘Fold thine arms upon thy breast
And face thy destiny Prometheus-like,
Not flattering even to its face the Power
That makes and shall unmake thee! Give the ear
To Jesus and his gaunt attendant gods,
Jove or Jehovah, and remain—a slave;
Shut up thine ears, and give those gods the lie,
And stand erect in fearless sovereignty
Of limitless despair! Grand even in Death,
Yea, grand because of Death, the mind of Man
Can front the issue of the Inevitable,
Despising and appraising and defying
The anarchy and tyranny that spare
No shape that lives. Nature is pitiless;
Then be thou pitiful. Cruel is the world;
Then be thou kind, even to the creeping thing
That crawls and agonises in its place
As thou in thine. Fever and Pestilence
Make and keep open one long-festering wound;
Anoint it with the balm of charity,
The oil of leechcraft. Thus, and thus alone,
Shalt thou in sheer defeat find victory,
And 'midst the very blast of that strong Voice
Which crieth “Love is not,” shall thy last word
Attest Love's triumph, and thy soul remain
Immortal even in Death!’

In proud revolt
He paused, and pointed at the pallid heavens
As if arraigning Nature, while his hand
Trembled with palsy, and his eye was film'd,
And in his feeble frame the undaunted heart
Plunged, like a prison'd bird worn out and dying.
Then cunningly, to change the cheerless chord
He struck so strenuously, I spake again
Of his great labour, ever-increasing fame,
The homage of the world, and the long reach
Of honour, opening for his feet to tread;
And soon the Lion saw, not desert sands,
But gentle worshippers that led him on
With chains of flowers, tamely to crouch beside
The footstools of anointed crownèd kings.
Bright'ning he spake of labours yet to do,
Fair fields of fame unreapt, glad days and merry,
Of taking gifts and yielding oracles!
So cheerfully, like one that loved his life,
He prattled on, beneath the blossoming boughs,
In answer to the carol of the birds,
The shouting of the children, the glad sound
Of festal fife and flute.

At evenfall
We parted, he to seek his lonely house,
I to the city hostel where I lodged;
But as he faded from me in the street
Touch'd by the bright beams of the rising moon,
Surely I saw the Shadow men name Death
Creeping behind him. Turning with a sigh,
I left him in the graveyard of his creed.