Reverberations Revised with a chapter from my autobiography. By W. M. W. Call |
I. |
THE NOBLE LESSON.
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II. |
Reverberations | ||
THE NOBLE LESSON.
In this poem, as in the ode at the end of the volume, is an admiring and reverential estimate of the character of the Founder of Christianity, which harmonises with that of Strauss, Shelley, and other repudiators of Christian dogmatics. Mr J. S. Mill's appreciation is too unqualified, but he has, in my judgment, touched truly on some of the beautiful human attributes of the great Prophet of Nazareth. Jesus is to me, as to Mr Mill, “probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth.” In the section on “Religion,” by the “one mind, the sovereign will,” I mean the collective spirit of the human race, conceived as one continuous whole, including the Past, the Present, and the Future. “On all sides,” says Mr Lewes, “it appears that Nature embodies the transfigured desires of man, and the idealising spirit of man. It is the work, the emotion, and the thought of Humanity.”
“In rights are all men equal” (p. 80).—The Justinian Code declares the natural equality of men. Social equality is an ideal to be realised by peaceful approximations, by reforms in manners, opinions, and sentiments; by education, community of work, and constant personal intercourse. Absolute equality is a chimera. The equality which I consider possible is based on the general recognition of human worth. Such an equality is not incompatible with veneration for superior gifts, with the subordination essential to the prosecution of common enterprise, with an appreciation of the sanctities of antiquity, or even the claims of gentle birth, if the merit of the living descendant serve to recall the debt of gratitude which we owe to the nobler ancestor.
I. INDUCTION.
For right and duty I uphold,
Great truths and mighty mysteries teach,
Taught by the wise of old.
Freely he sends his thoughts abroad,
Hoping that good may be increased,
And evil overawed.
Are evermore in his control,
The future sleeps, with folded wings,
In his prophetic soul.
Freedom in city and in glen;
Buy freedom, buy and sell it not;
Be free, and free—be men.
The souls that feel, the heads that plan,
And guard as holy ground the grave
Of every noble man.
The poet's faith unlocks the skies:
Hope through the shadowy gates of death,
Showed Dante Paradise.
Love lights the worm beneath the sod,
Love crowns the king upon the throne,
Love, only love is God.
Do what ye can, not what ye would;
And often be content to spare
Some evil for much good.
For moon and rainbow never fret;
This world, believe me, is not heaven,
Nor are we angels yet.
We may exalt it day by day,
May make it worthier of the skies,
And give it lordlier sway.
Truth and religion may be ours,
And joy and love shall spring unsought,
Like birds from wayside bowers.
But take this awful truth with thee—
Thou must be brave, and good and wise,
Before thou can'st be free.
II. EDUCATION.
Is nourished both by sun and shower,
Yet self-unfolds its leaves anew,
And self-creates each flower.
Shall pass into thy human mind,
And thoughts and feelings of high birth
Thou in deep heavens shalt find.
Till it give oracles to thee;
And be not fractional, but whole,
Brave, frank, and simple be.
Unveil thy leaves, unfurl thy flowers,
Draw glory from the sunrise, win
Strength from the sunset bowers.
A merry, graceful child of health;
Scatter thy quips and quirks about,
And they shall be thy wealth.
And she shall give thee tears and kisses,
The frolic love of her wild heart,
Praise, blame, and grief, and blisses.
Language and music she shall teach,
All simple motion, regal state,
All song, all rhythm speech.
Shall in thy templed spirit dwell;
Music shall make thee swift and strong,
And so shalt thou excel.
A beautiful well-doing robe
Thy pure white soul, as light divine
Apparels the round globe.
His fulness thy heroic stature;
The life of Jesus shall grow real,
And be allied to Nature.
His love and his self-immolation,
His calm, brave soul, in pain and need,
Were meant for imitation.
Tread earth as great king Adam trod;
And if a brother call thee worm,
Tell him thou art a god.
III. CITIZENSHIP.
Thou as a citizen shalt keep;
Uphold thy mother's royal plan,
With counsel true and deep.
When she is mute no answer seek;
To equal use and wont defer,
Until she learn to speak.
Wisely to rule the realm of Being,
In speech, in action, and in thought,
Far-reaching and far-seeing.
Thine own true words shalt thou obey;
They shall have worship in thine eyes
That cannot pass away.
“Give me matter,” says Kant, “and I will build the world;” and deducing from simple data a doctrine similar to the well-known “Nebular Hypothesis” of Laplace, he accounts for the relations of the masses and the densities of the planets to their distances from the sun, for the eccentricities of their orbits, for their rotations, for their satellites, for the general agreement in the direction of rotation among the celestial bodies, for Saturn's ring and for the zodiacal light. The nebular hypothesis shows that prior to the earth being in a fluid state it existed, dissolved in a vast nebula, the parent of the solar system; that this nebula gradually contracted and condensed, throwing off the planets one by one; that the central portion of the nebula, condensed perhaps to the fluid state, exists at present as the sun. See Huxley's “Lay Sermons,” p. 241, and Lockyer's “Lessons in Astronomy,” p. 88.
“That far planet.”—Neptune. Mr Adams of the University of Cambridge, a native of Cornwall, and M. Leverrier of Paris, independently and almost simultaneously discovered the theoretical place of this planet, which was found very near the position thus assigned it by Dr Galle, September 23, 1846.
The existence of an unknown planet was inferred by Kant from scientific data. In 1771 Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschell, justifying the inference of the philosopher.
The “kingly orb” of the poem is Jupiter; the “world of wild romance,” Saturn; the “daughter of the sun,” Venus; the “eldest born of light,” Mercury; the “mysterious radiance” from the sun, the zodiacal light, an appendage of the sun which extends beyond the earth. The stanzas describing the biological evolution have been recently inserted, as the poem when composed, in 1849, dealt only with the idea of planetary evolution. I have endeavoured to give a poetical expression to recent speculations, in particular, to Mr Herbert Spencer's doctrine of transmitted experiences, in the new verses. As regards what is said of the eye, Mr Spencer writes:—
“As soon as there exists a rudimentary eye capable of receiving an impression from a moving object about to strike the organism, and so rendering it possible for the organism to make some adapted movement, there is shown the dawn of actions which we distinguish as intelligent. As soon as the organism, fully sensitive to a jar or vibration propagated through its medium, contracts itself so as to be in less danger from the adjacent source of disturbance, we perceive a nascent form of the life classed as psychical. That is to say, whenever the correspondence exhibits some extension in space or time, some increase of speciality or complexity, we find we have crossed the boundary between physical life and psychical life.” —Principles of Psychology, p. 392.
In reason and in conscience peers,—
All kings, whom Nature's purple pall
Clothes as the air the spheres.
Think more of duties than of dues;
Govern the better to obey;
Be loth the sword to use.
Live in the light of coming hours;
Nor tremble at the passionate blast
That rocks the world's grey towers.
Behold a happier future rise,
And gaze as with the joy sublime
Of one that sees and dies.
A Phœbus with resplendent locks,
Man's friendship for entailed estate,
True heart for ballot-box.
Love all the brothers of thy blood,
For others live, for others die,
Not great, but nobly good.
Open to all the human race,
Unchain the sunlight, loose the breeze,
Make free all time and space.
Self-balanced, central as the sun;
Each nation hath its Fatherland,
Yet are all nations one.
IV. SOCIAL BEING.
A cloistered virtue wins small praise;
Glad shalt thou dwell among thine own,
And lead ambrosial days.
With a deep worship in thy heart,
Impassioned yet ascetic too,
Thy love a church, not mart.
With pictured face and speechful eyes,
With thoughts like calm ere break of storm,
Feelings like sunset skies.
Shall sanctify thy dwelling lowly,
All needs and cares by thy sweet wife
Shall be transfigured wholly.
Treat thou thy children like young gods,
Incarnate of the eternal prime,
To dwell in man's abodes.
Fine apprehensions, shadowy feelings,
Above them like the heavens shall rest,
With eloquent revealings.
In action and in thought like thee,
In temper gay if thou art grave,
If gay, he grave should be.
Go up into thy mountain high;
Look not for the familiar nod,
Nor always ask reply.
Truth's sweet low singing night and day;
But if they seek no starry sphere,
Still hold thy heavenward way.
In soul and body bid him thrive;
With gentle Coleridge, deem a mother
The holiest thing alive.
And glorify the humblest lot
With songs in praise of sacred labour,
And see thou idle not.
So shalt thou bear, where'er thou be,
The blessings of the evening skies
And morning stars with thee.
V. RELIGION.
Must lay the great foundation-stone
In piety, for he shall dwell
Secure in that alone.
As on a diamond rock be built,
And so thy house shall never fall
Like homes of ancient guilt.
The magic moon, the orb divine
From which the kindred orbs had birth
That round their father shine.
The world's glad life, the heart's great law,
The Mystery never understood,
The great primeval Awe.
Humanity, In this poem, as in the ode at the end of the volume, is an admiring and reverential estimate of the character of the Founder of Christianity, which harmonises with that of Strauss, Shelley, and other repudiators of Christian dogmatics. Mr J. S. Mill's appreciation is too unqualified, but he has, in my judgment, touched truly on some of the beautiful human attributes of the great Prophet of Nazareth. Jesus is to me, as to Mr Mill, “probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth.” In the section on “Religion,” by the “one mind, the sovereign will,” I mean the collective spirit of the human race, conceived as one continuous whole, including the Past, the Present, and the Future. “On all sides,” says Mr Lewes, “it appears that Nature embodies the transfigured desires of man, and the idealising spirit of man. It is the work, the emotion, and the thought of Humanity.”
“In rights are all men equal” (p. 80).—The Justinian Code declares the natural equality of men. Social equality is an ideal to be realised by peaceful approximations, by reforms in manners, opinions, and sentiments; by education, community of work, and constant personal intercourse. Absolute equality is a chimera. The equality which I consider possible is based on the general recognition of human worth. Such an equality is not incompatible with veneration for superior gifts, with the subordination essential to the prosecution of common enterprise, with an appreciation of the sanctities of antiquity, or even the claims of gentle birth, if the merit of the living descendant serve to recall the debt of gratitude which we owe to the nobler ancestor.
The Soul to which all souls aspire,
The Presence felt by stream and hill,
In cloud and sunset fire:
That wakes high thought to noble deed,
That still discrowns the ancient Wrong,
Crowns Right where patriots bleed:
That dwells, a mind in every mind,
That lives, learns, praises, disapproves,
The Soul of humankind.
In this poem, as in the ode at the end of the volume, is an admiring and reverential estimate of the character of the Founder of Christianity, which harmonises with that of Strauss, Shelley, and other repudiators of Christian dogmatics. Mr J. S. Mill's appreciation is too unqualified, but he has, in my judgment, touched truly on some of the beautiful human attributes of the great Prophet of Nazareth. Jesus is to me, as to Mr Mill, “probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth.” In the section on “Religion,” by the “one mind, the sovereign will,” I mean the collective spirit of the human race, conceived as one continuous whole, including the Past, the Present, and the Future. “On all sides,” says Mr Lewes, “it appears that Nature embodies the transfigured desires of man, and the idealising spirit of man. It is the work, the emotion, and the thought of Humanity.”
“In rights are all men equal” (p. 80).—The Justinian Code declares the natural equality of men. Social equality is an ideal to be realised by peaceful approximations, by reforms in manners, opinions, and sentiments; by education, community of work, and constant personal intercourse. Absolute equality is a chimera. The equality which I consider possible is based on the general recognition of human worth. Such an equality is not incompatible with veneration for superior gifts, with the subordination essential to the prosecution of common enterprise, with an appreciation of the sanctities of antiquity, or even the claims of gentle birth, if the merit of the living descendant serve to recall the debt of gratitude which we owe to the nobler ancestor.
That links the present to the past,
That with the world's first child began,
To end but with its last:
The mother-life of thought and act,
Thy sacred Fair-ideal be,
And omnipresent fact.
Cloud, rainbow, sunset-heavens, shall be
Cathedral, temple, colonnade,
And house of God to thee.
There once man's highest lore was taught;
That blossomed stone, that pictured pane,
Was once a poet's thought.
To men; to man with golden bands:
This is religion—thus shall rise
The House not made with hands.
Reverberations | ||