My Lyrical Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

The marvel of it is that when you have
Your Protoplasm perfect, Life is there
Already with its spontaneities,
Its secret primal powers all at work;
Currents of force unfollowably swift;
Unceasing gleams of glory ungraspable;
Pulses of pleasure and sharp stings of pain;
Flashes of lightning fastened up in knots,
And passion-fires bound down in prison cells.
All's there, when we can say 'tis Protoplasm.

Lymph, serum, semen, blood, or nettle-juice,
Are worlds of life, and glassy seas of life,
That heave with life, and spawn and swarm with life;
A universe of life that lurks behind
The infinitely little as the large;
Life-giving and life-taking; fierce with life
As though the hive of life rushed forth on wings,
Or some life-furnace shed its fire in sparks;
Moving to harmonies unutterable
Through the surrounding dark, and beautiful
As planetary wheelings in the heavens.

Nor can you have your Matter unmixed with Mind;
The Consciousness it comes from, with the intent
That is fulfilled in Consciousness to be!
For there's no particle of Protoplasm
Panting with life, like a bird newly caught,
As with a heart-beat out of the Unseen,
But comes with all its secret orders sealed
Within it, safe as crumpled fronds of fern,
To be unfolded in due season; all
Potentialities of tendency,
Initial forces of diversity
And modes of motion which are forms of thought;
Likings, dislikings, all are there at work
When we can say life is in Protoplasm.
And that's creation seen; caught in the act,
Although the Actor be invisible.

'Tis no use thrusting in the earth one's head
To be annihilated from behind.
Here is the fact that must be faced in front.
'Tis no use varnishing the face of things
Merely to see one's own reflected there!
This Matter of life will not make Life itself,
No more than Matter of thought will make the Thinker.
We have more Matter of thought than Shakspeare had,
But no more Shakspeares in our mental world.

Life is the unfathomable miracle
That mocks us mutely, while we prate of Law,
At just that distance from the surface where
Its features loom the largest as it lurks.

Form is but fossil: life's the running spring.
We see the rhythmic thrills that come and go,
But Life itself is always just beyond—
Is not precipitated, as the pearl,
Within our grasp, however deep we dive.
'Tis like the first star in the twilight heaven
You lie in wait for, never see it coming,
Catch the first twinkle; suddenly 'tis there,
As though it watched you while you winked, and was
There, had been, busy, from eternity.

In vain you look for life beginning; 'tis
But known to us in its becoming! 'tis
Illimitable continuity!
In vain you try to untwist it to the end
That snaps off like the Periwinkle's tail.

We feel through all the universe to touch
The physical, and find it all alike,
Here underfoot the same as overhead,
Dust of the earth or glory of the star,
The Matter yields no closer clasp of Life.

We build our Babels higher than of old
Firmer, but get no nearer Heaven that way:
On the outside of things we stand to rear
Our scaffolding, while Life works from within.

Life haunts me like a Ghost that's never laid,
Yet wavering ever as a face in water.
I shift my ground, I quit my premises,
I seek an undisturbed abiding-place,
As the poor Peasant left his haunted house
To flee from its old ghostly visitant

For peace of mind; and mid-way on the road
To his new dwelling heard the Ghost's wee voice,
From out the middle of a feather-bed,
Or God knows where, cry, “And I'm flitting too!”

No sooner do I set my world on wheels,
Atom revolving round its fellow mite,
The universe in little grasped by Law,
Than there's a living face within the wheels,
As in the Prophet's vision. I'm no prophet,
And had no wish to see a spirit; wheels
Were made to run and carry, not to dazzle
And dizzy us until our eyes strike spirits—
That puts a new face on the matter, or
The Soul of things must make a face at me!

I get a good grip-hold of things themselves,
And then am lost in their relationships.
No sooner have I pitched my tent in Matter,
And feel it firm to rest on, palpable,
Tangible as a tombstone underfoot,
Than 'tis a sieve that lets the quick life through;
There is a general rising from the Dead,
And rending of the veil; the grave's astir
As though each atom were the womb of Life;
Twixt each two atoms there's a gulf of God;
My atom is afloat, adrift with me;
It rocks and quakes like any modern throne;
No anchorage in all Immensity!

O'erhead I draw the cloud of darkness round
About me, proof against the common light,
When lo! the gloom begins to laugh at me;
The life breaks in and out, darts through and through,

Like Lightning playing at hide-and-seek with me;
Darkness is freaked and shattered with that laugh
Zig-zagged upon the face of the Unknown.

This light within, that will break through the seen,
Cannot be phosphorescence from the dead
And luminosity of mere decay,
A corpse-light of the Grave, or else the Soul
Of all were but a gleam through a dead skull,
Lit up to show the eyeless emptiness,
And Death would be sole quickener of Life.

'Tis in the shadow of the Sepulchre
Perchance I sit to watch and wait in vain
For that which must arise within myself
To lighten through me and illuminate
My seeing; touch mine ear to hear the voice—
“I am the resurrection and the life;
Presence that lives in light and looks through form;”
And he who hides without must bring to light
The meaning by his presence in the soul.
Perchance God speaks to us in parable,
And Matter is but symbol used by Mind,
The visible show that needs interpreting
By second-sight to read the eternal thought;
And I am as a blind man, one who feels
The letters raised, shaped to the sense of touch,
But have not learned to read what they reveal,
So miss the letter-link from soul to soul.

He breathed the breath of life and man became
A living soul—with power to propagate
The spark His breath yet kindles into soul?
And is He breathing yet, as at the first,

This breath of life through all things? Is his breath
Our motion—wave of the Eternal Will
In Evolution welling, warm with love?
Are laws that fold us arms of His embrace?
And is life visible breathing of His being?
Matter but so much breath made visible—
The cloud-mask shifting on the Protean face;
And is it need of Him that makes us breathe?
And so we live and have our life in Him
Who is the life indeed for evermore;
The heart of Life whose throbs are visible worlds
Of men and women and immortal souls?

So the voice murmurs when I shut my eyes
And lean and listen on some crumbling verge,
And hear the waters in the well of life
Sing, as they bubble with an eye to heaven,
And might know more could I but drink, but have
Nothing to draw with, and the well's so deep!