Ranolf and Amohia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ranolf and Amohia

A dream of two lives. By Alfred Domett. New edition, revised

Domett, Alfred (1811-1887)

BOOK THE FIRST. THE SAILOR-STUDENT.

Canto the First. The Sea-boy.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. Will-o'-wisp-chasing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Third. From Wisp to Morass.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Terra Firma.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

Canto the Fifth. Cloud-blowing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

Canto the Sixth. Land-Life or Sea-Life?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. The Shipwreck.

II.

III.

IV.

BOOK THE SECOND. THE SOUTH-SEA VILLAGERS.

Canto the First. The Rescue.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. The ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. A Woodland Jaunt.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fifth. The Legend of Tawhaki.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Sixth. Mythical Cosmogonies.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Seventh. The Captive.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE THIRD. ALL IN A SUMMER NIGHT.

Canto the First. Miroa's Tidings.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Second. The Song-cheered Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Third. The Star-lit Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. Legends of the Spirit-Land.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Amohia at the Fountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. Silence and Moonlight.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Seventh. The Meeting.

II.

III.

IV.

II.

VOLUME II.

BOOK THE FOURTH. A LATTER-DAY EDEN.

Canto the First. Flight of the Lovers.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Canto the Second. Miroa's Story.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Third. Love and Nature luxuriant.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Trees and the Tree-God.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. The Fountain-Terraces.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. A Geyser Yoked.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. English Maidens.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE FIFTH. STILL IN EDEN.

Canto the First. The Haunted Mountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. Sports on the Lake.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Cicada.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. A loving Questioner.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. A cheery Theorist.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Sixth. Love beats Logic.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. An airy Nest.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE SIXTH WAR.

Canto the First. The Beleaguered Fortress.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. War needs Idealizing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Third. The grand Assault.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Fight between ‘Sounding Sea’ and ‘Angry Star.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Love fed by War.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. An old wrong avenged.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

[section]

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. Death of the ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE SEVENTH. SELF-SACRIFICE.

Canto the First. Weariness.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. A sad Resolve.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. Death of the Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Where is Comfort?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fifth. A Vision.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. The Departure.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Seventh. After-Experiences.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

Canto the Second. Will-o'-wisp-chasing.

1, 2. Ranolf a student. Greek tragedians. 3. The Phædo and Socrates. 4. Distaste for narrow creeds. 5. Metaphysics; Locke gets rid of the secondary qualities of Matter; Berkeley of the primary, and Abstract Matter itself; Hume of Abstract Mind. 6. All anticipated by the Hindus—Locke and Berkeley by the Brahmin, Kapila; Hume by the Buddhist, Kasyapa. 7. Kant—makes ‘God’ a necessary inference—real only in the Mind; 8. Fichte (suggesting Carlyle)—a ‘Divine Idea’—the ‘Tendency making for Righteousness.’ Duty of the soul to harmonise with it. 9. This like later Buddhism. 10. Fichte's life a triumph of Soul over Matter.

I.

To tutors now and long-left tasks restored,
Our sea-emboldened, self-reliant Boy
Soon grew enamoured of his new employ.
And many things those tutors never meant
Into a mind of such inquiring bent
His classics and his metaphysics poured.
But most he loved, could ne'er enough adore
The Godlike spirit of that grand Greek lore
That first taught Man his glorious being's height;
Taught him to stand, the Universe before,

Erect in moral, intellectual might,
And brave, in strength of Soul, the adverse infinite.
How would their strains his kindling bosom warm,
Those daring darling Poets, who enshrined
The freest Spirit in the purest Form,
In matchless Beauty such consummate Mind.
How would he triumph with the Theban Maid
Who, in no armour but instinctive sense,
The panoply of conscious right, arrayed,
Her lofty sentiment her sole defence,
Risked all the murderous rage of tyrant force
To snatch a burial for a brother's corse;
Though all the gods—all worldly wisdom's saws,
All cherished loves and all Convention's laws,
Denounced herself and spurned her holy cause.
Antigone could teach him that the test
Of right and wrong lay in his own free breast;
That right was right, despite high-seated wrong
And throned Authority by Custom strong!
That Man of all external aid bereft,
Had still himself and staunch endurance left;
Could stand above all Circumstance elate
And trust high Nature in the fight with Fate.

II.

And when he read the agonizing cries
That vulture-tortured Giant in the skies
Utters in deathless and sublime despair,
Doomed for his love to Man that woe to bear;
And all the sad majestic converse, round
The pinnacles of Caucasus snow-crowned,
Swelling like solemn Music, and again

Dying along the illimitable air,
As, one by one, supernal visitants
Come floating up to watch the ghastly pants
And writhings of the Titan, and with vain
Compassion, taunts—temptations vainer still—
Assail his grand unconquerable Will,
And bid him break his voluntary chain,
Abandon Man, scorn that vicarious pain,
And hail the gloomy Tyrant's selfish reign;
When all the student's sense of justice rose,
Stirred by the dauntless Poet's great appeal,
In wrath against the author of such woes,
And his young heart would passionately feel
For the doomed donor of the god-wrung fire;
Think you he ne'er was tempted to inquire,
Was that outworn Olympian rule of Zeus
The only tyranny men called divine?
Was there no other nature-startling use
Of absolute power—no other punishment
Of love, inflicted on the innocent,
At which instinctive Justice would repine?

III.

But most his soul was wonderstruck to see
To what a height humanity could reach
In that divinest hemlock-drinker—he
Who welcomed Death less evil than the breach
Of fealty to his country's laws, or scant
Reliance on the faith he came to teach:
The truths his nature forced him to proclaim;
The necessary outcome of his frame,
Mental and moral—by the innate law

Of evolution for its excellence
Provided—as inevitable thence
As from the sap of each peculiar plant
The special blossom earth and air must draw;
Trust absolute in the perfect Power above;
His perfect goodness; and what these must prove
(For with the ill around, what other just
Conclusion could he reach, with such a trust?)
That sole relief of every human want,
Soother and solace of the general sigh—
The Soul's unbodied Immortality!

And where was ever a sublimer page
Than that which paints the God-sent Prophet-Sage
Cheerily urging with his latest breath
This lofty creed upon his weeping band
Of friends—his very gaoler too unmanned;
Then standing forth, and with dilating eyes
That look straightforward—bold and calm—‘bull-wise’
Into the dread Eternity so nigh,
With one libation to the gods on high,
Drinking the Elixir both of Life and Death!
And as the deadly influence upward stole
And sobs broke forth he could no more console,
Lifting the mantle from his failing sight,
Just ere his soaring spirit winged its flight,
To make with accents faint his last bequest—
While haply in those eyes supreme o'er pain
A moment's humorous glimmer shone again—
That votive cock to the medicinal God
Of herbs—his soul's last evidence to be

Of joy at shaking off this mortal clod,
And his triumphant gratitude attest
To one whose potent drug had set him free.

IV.

Well, the great Sea-Life; the quick-shifting crowd
Of Sects that showed the human Spirit down-bowed
With equal faith each sect before its Lord,
While each the others' equally ignored:
Then the Greek grandeurs where that Spirit was seen
Erect and self-dependent and serene;
All made the youth still less and less incline
To cramping creeds or any partial shrine.
His heart was but one endless protestation
Against the slightest shackles on free Thought:
Rather than not attain the end he sought,
His strong intolerant love of toleration,
His towering spirit of tyrannous liberty,
Had forced all mental bondslaves to be free.—
Then all for Nature! “She alone for me!”
“What”—he would cry in his impetuous style,
Climbing, perhaps, some mountain-peak the while,

“What need of Temples! All around,
Through Earth's expanse, through Heaven's profound,
A conscious Spirit beauty-crowned,
A visible glory breathes and breaks,
And of these mountains, moors and lakes
A Holiest of the Holies makes!
Above—around—where'er you be,
A true Shekinah shining see!

With ever-fuming Incense there
An Altar burns for praise and prayer!
Whence better to your ‘Lord of Love’
Can sorrow waft its wail above
Than from some desert-waste forlorn,
Where sadly, of all splendour shorn,
Creeps in the stilly-dripping Morn?
Where best, ye broken-hearted, groan
On ‘God’ for help but all alone
Where forests make their mighty moan?
Where best exult in heart-hushed praise
If not where hills their great tops raise
Majestic in the silent blaze
Of Sunset over Ocean's haze?
What! shall the Spirit only draw
Near that unknown and nameless Awe
Where, beauteous though it be, there stands
Some puny work of human hands?
But I, O mystic Might! no less
As thy all-hallowed home will bless
Sublimest Nature's loveliness!
But I will dare, O Power Divine!
Revere One true transcendent Shrine,
This flashing Universe of Thine!”

V.

Now with uprooting Metaphysics toyed
The youth—their tangled subtleties enjoyed;
A wary old Professor was his guide,
Who welcomed every light from every side;
Yet most—such sad mistrust experience taught
Of plausibly profoundest human thought—

On common sense and mother-wit relied;
One, who—so high seemed Nature—Man so low—
Felt dwarfed to humbleness he scorned to show;
Yet, that their dwarfishness men would not feel,
Moved to fresh scorn he could not quite conceal.
He would have let the learner-lad confine
His tasks to careworn, truth-adoring Locke;
The lad would learn what ‘paying out more line’
Where Locke had cast it, led to,—solid rock,
Mud, quicksand, or the fathomless profound.
The more line ran, more depth there seemed to sound.
It took him, as you know, to that rare creed,
Etherial, beautiful—the fertile seed
Matured by Locke, our goodly Bishop sowed
Afresh, and reared into rich thought that glowed
Heavy with ears of amaranthine gold
That yet may yield their glorious hundred-fold.

Spirit was crowned when Soldier-sage Descartes
Plato's ‘Innate Ideas’ anew sustained;
But Hobbes—Gassendi—proved Ideas in part
Are through the Senses by Experience gained.
Locke to full growth their treacherous sapling trained.
“All possible ideas are mere sensations,
Or our reflections on them,” Locke insists;
“But half the first are Sense's own creations,
No faithful types of what in truth exists;
Not in the rose the red, nor in light-rays
Its texture splits, but in the eyes that gaze;
Not in the fire, but in our frames, the heat;
Not in the honey, but our tongues, the sweet;
Not in the thunder, but our ears, the roar;
These are impressions on the brain—no more:

But form, solidity, extension, power
To move or rest, are Matter's genuine dower,
Her real outside existence.” “Nay—pursue
Your doubt,” cries Berkeley; “probe them through and through,
And you will find these qualities you flatter
Yourself you prove essential in this Matter,
No more substantial than its red and blue.”

And then the mighty mitred Analyst,
Silk-aproned subtle-tongued Psychologist,
Thinker by few believed, by all beloved,
With frankest power “unanswerably proved,
What no man in his senses can admit,”
(A phrase of little truth and not much wit)
Proved that all things we hear, see, feel around,
Have no such base as Matter—nay, no base
Or being at all but Spirit—their sole ground.
Forces are they, from Infinite Mind proceeding,
Spiritually active, wheresoe'er it be,
On finite mind to print, in order due,
Sensations, not deceptive nor misleading;
But spiritual coin as spiritual Coiner, true,
And real with Spirit's sole reality.
So Berkeley said and proved his flawless case.

But Hume came sliding in with smiling face,
Veiling the grimmest strength in easy grace;
The pleasant playful Giant—gentle Chief
Of sceptics, dealing blows without a sign
Of effort—slashing with a sword so fine—
Killing with lightning-touches bright and brief;
So wise, so good; whose adversaries found

His silken glove a Cestus iron-bound,
When staggering all the gladiator press
He proved—or seemed to prove—to their distress
And ours, that Thought itself and Consciousness
Had no such base as Mind—which only meant
Trains of impressions and ideas that went
And came in nothing—neither more nor less;
For no recipient spirit could be perceived,
And Matter was already gone and shent;
And he had settled to his own content
(To such a dogma, ye who can, consent!)
No Cause did ever yet produce Effect
However Custom may the two connect.
Therefore for pictures we within us find,
No Power without—above—of any kind
Need be, or could be, as their cause assigned.
So must we Matter, Mind, God, Soul, alike—
As metaphysical abstractions scout—
Out of the ranks of real existence strike:
And yet as Mind and Matter both, without
Or spite of Reason, must be still believed—
Nature took care of that—that much achieved—
The only clear conclusion was dim Doubt.

VI.

Thus Locke by Berkeley—Berkeley thus by Hume,
Was pounced on in retributive swift doom,
Hand over hand, as children play, so pat,
Each crushing his great predecessor flat:
So swiftly hurried down the eddying tide
Of speculation which began to flow
In the far East three thousand years ago

When doubting dusky Sages threw aside
Their faith in those symbolic wheelspoke arms
And double heads of deities of Ind;
And some mild paddy-fed pale-blooded crew
Of subtle theorists argued nought was true,
Nought real but Brahma—him in whom inhere
All magic-lantern shadows that appear
As living shapes in this illusive sphere.
Then Brahma's essence, subtilised and thinned,
In Kapila's self-styled ‘Perfect Wisdom’ grew
To Absolute Spirit—Thinking Substance pure
And abstract as that pure unworldly Jew,
The spiritual Spinoza, ever drew.

But earlier still, in wild recoil more sure
From Brahmin tyranny of creed and caste,
The o'er-refining Orient fancy passed
To dreams the maddest ever Reasoning spun,
In that high-moralled faith that still has charms
(Because its founder's self, made God, replaced
And vivified so soon for vulgar taste
The No-God he had taught) to sway such swarms
Dusk Aryan and Turanian tawny-skinned;
That fullest-millioned Faith beneath the Sun,
Which Sakya Muni—princely eremite—
First saddened into—sickened with the sight
Of sorrow and pain inseparable seeming
From life—his own a pleasure-sated blight
With high desire forlornly through it gleaming;
So with a proud deliberate despair
Conceived his monstrous method of redeeming,

By guiding, souls back to their primal night
Of non-existence; which his pupil and friend
Kas-yapá teaches they already share,
Therein are based—begin—and ought to end;
Nor rests, like Hume, content in doubt to pause,
But from his metaphysic ‘Basket’ draws
Negation of all spirit—God—first cause—
Brahma or Absolute Being; all and each—
Creator and created—matter—mind—
Alike chimeras; wisdom's highest reach
To know this nothingness; the soul's true aim
To lose existence and partake the same;
Extinguished then, with consciousness consigned
To darkness—blown out like a taper's flame,
To enter so ‘Nirvana’—there to be
Absurdly blest with blank Nonentity.

VII.

Air-lording Allemannia! vast and dim
The cloud-racks next our Aeronaut must skim!
Say rather, leave, a Reaper, worn-out fields
Of Thought for golden crops thy culture yields,
Though hedged with worse than Indian orange-thorns—
Sharp subtleties for—Doubt's intrusive horns?—
As Locke's Sensation-creed, worked out, had brought
Matter and Spirit both alike to nought,
Did not those soaring Germans reinstate
Inborn ideas—and hence a Soul innate?
Did not great Kant in pedant's jargon shew
How, paramount within the human Mind—

Not from Sensation nor Experience gained—
Ideas, the fruit of the ‘Pure Reason’ reigned?
As, from this fount Truths Mathematic, so
From this—called Conscience—Moral Truths must flow
By mere necessity? while those two facts,
Conditions fixed, wherein ‘Pure Reason’ acts—
The Soul—the Universe—but presuppose
And force you to the grand Idea behind
Whence both must spring, wherein are both combined—
To God—the source of all that thinks or knows,
All Being's boundless origin and close?—
Did not poor Faith, from shift to shift doubt-prest
Find in that ‘Reason Pure’ peace—refuge—rest?
Trusting both scoff and sceptic-proof to be,
In pachydermatous Philosophy
So puzzling, panoplied? and might not she,
Man's deathless Hope, in such a tangle rude
Of prickly briars of Logic hid away,
Rest like the Beauty in the long-charmed wood,
Serene—secure—inviolable? Say,
Did no great Truth obscure and latent lie
In all that chaff of dialectics dry—
A chrysalis (like that with reeled-off floss,
Bared of its dress, all amber gleam and gloss,
The careful schoolboy hides in homely bran)
Whence a new Psyche should emerge for Man?
Like Psyche's self, say,—from blue Italy
Prepared to cross the rude rough-handling sea,
Laid up in wood and iron, sound and safe
In naked beauty from all chance of chafe;
So closely presses round her spiritual face
And limbs of tender marble and white grace,
The hard-caked sawdust of her packing case.

But, O conclusion lame and impotent!
O rage of vigorous reasoning vainly spent!
Those fixed Ideas—inseparably blent
With all the rest—Time—Space and Cause—'tis plain,
Though notions connate with the nascent brain,
Have in essential fact no solid ground—
Only within the human soul are found;
Though necessary bases of our thought
Are from no prototypes beyond us brought!
That ‘God’ is but a sort of ghost confined
To haunt the shadowy chambers of the mind!
As if within a glass-roofed palace grew
Some strange grand Tree of mystic shape and hue,
With various virtues wondrously arrayed—
With mighty fronds and majesty of shade,
And towering crest sufficiently sublime;
Within those vitreous walls compelled, no doubt,
By nature's laws luxuriantly to sprout,
But with no fellow—no resemblance known,
Or able to exist in any clime
'Mid the green glories of the world without;
A most magnificent, yet monstrous cheat,
Proud overgrowth of artificial heat,
And that peculiar edifice alone;
No shade or shelter offering when you ply
Your weary way beneath the naked sky!

“Why, if this God's a product of our own,
Which ends in us, though there perforce it breeds,
A doubtful light which but to darkness leads,”
Said Ranolf's Guide—“what waste of toil and time
These more than acrobatic feats to climb
Such crags precipitous, such slippery heights,

Where no rewarding view our toil requites;
No vision of the City long-desired,
Though brief as that in Moslem myths—perchance
Seen standing—sudden—silent—sunrise-fired
Before the desert-wanderer's awestruck glance;
Far stretching multitudinous array
Of gilded domes and snowy minarets,
And tiers of long arcades rich-roofed with frets
More delicate than frostwork! then again
Gone—vanished! and a hundred years in vain
Resought, but gladdening nevermore the day.
Not e'en such glimpse, O mighty Kant!—at most
When we have reached your height at so much cost,
In densest fog we see a finger-post
You say directs us to that City fair,
But is no proof of any City there!
Some letters on its arms obscurely seen
Your spectacles discover; what they mean
In worse than three-tongued wedge-rows sealed up fast,
We have to take from you on trust at last.”

VIII.

Whose reveries then could our vexed Student lure?
Whom sought he next?—

That lofty Spirit and pure
The march majestic and the genuine ring
Of whose high eloquence on one high theme,
How best aloft the expanded Soul may wing
Her way, and best sustain her flight supreme—
Had all the warranty a life could bring,

The faithful mirror of his faith—sublime
In self-dependent stateliness severe,
And steadfast single eminence of aim;—
Fichte—whose name recalls a dearer Fame—
A Power intenser—trenchant—towering—true;
In Custom's ocean-strata prompt and prime
Impassioned insight's dynamite-mines to spring;
Of Spirits in unspiritual days who cling
To Spirit—stanchest if the most austere;
Right sympathiser though to satire wedded;
Rich lode of gold in rugged quartz imbedded!—
He whose capacious soul's ascending Sphere
Oft looms obscure while flashing brightness through
Dull mists it kindles till they disappear;
Who, rolling back the ponderous stone of Time,
Makes the dead Past, upstarting clear in fine
Fork-lightnings of Truth's poesy, outshine
The living Present, whose loud shams—with might
And hammer like his own white-knuckled Thor's,
And scorn that pities while it most abhors,
And humour laughing at his scorn's wild flight,—
His rough right hand was ever clenched to smite!—
Fichte—great voice to rouse, great heart to cheer!
This greater could not hear it and not leap
In unison, ‘Deep calling unto Deep;’
Could not from such a credence and career
Withhold the dower of his undying praise;
Which saw therein the far-reflected gleam
Of high-endeavouring old illustrious days;
Heard solemn echoes or the etherial flow
Of Attic pacings of the Portico
And whispers from the groves of Academe,

Where Truth alone by sages world-renowned
Was sought, and made Life's rule at once when found;—
Fichte struck out once more for truths that shine
Instinctive and immediately divine.
In consciousness is all of God we know;
But consciousness proclaims Him; neither dim
Nor doubtful He; all Being's source and stream;
Nature exists in us, and we in Him.
For ‘Me’ and ‘Not-Me’—Universe and Soul
Are one—not two—and Consciousness the whole:
Nature its passive, Soul its active side;
In Consciousness are both contained—allied;
Nature—a picture by that ‘Me’ supplied—
A glorious web which from fine stuff within
Itself the Spider Consciousness can spin.
So all is Spirit—Matter there is none
But part and product of the Soul alone.

And what ideal does Consciousness proclaim
As all we know of Him whom ‘God’ we name?—
That active principle, which clearly seen
Is working out, whatever intervene,
The triumph in the Universe and Man,
Of all that's useful, beautiful, and good;
That Force which forwards its consummate plan
Of progress endless towards the perfect Day
Of moral Order's universal sway;
And to the Soul above all tumult cries
Of one high Duty still to be pursued,—
With that ‘Divine Idea’ to harmonise
The Will, and all its faculties subdued
Into devout co-operative mood,
Press forward freely to the ennobling prize.

IX.

High thoughts! yet haply Hindu still; so like
The course—nor much unlike the goal—to those
The later Buddhists for the soul propose,
Dropping the dreary nihilistic phases
Of Sakya's faith too purely insane to strike
The fancy of the myriads, else its foes;
Backsliding into healthier dreams and brighter,
In Burmah or Nepaul; or such as lie
Obscurely hidden in the mystic cry,
The shaveling in red robes and yellow mitre,
In snowy Thibetan devoutly raises
At Lama-ridden Lhassa, when he phrases
In one short shibboleth his prayers and praises:
“Gem in the Lotus-flower, Amen!” whereby
He breathes his soul's desire to wing its flight
Through Æons of blest Being—height o'er height,
Till evermore suffused with purer light
It merge—from death, disease, old age and need,
And all the griefs of gross existence freed,—
Perfect, in Buddha's Soul—its boundless meed—
Absorbed in that All-perfect Infinite!—
A heterodox ‘Nirvana,’ worthier far
By ages of vast virtue to be won;
No ‘taper-flame blown out’—a blissful star
Lost in the splendour of the noonday sun.

X.

“True,” thought our friends, “this Man was true, indeed;
A noble Teacher of a noble Creed!

Yet, to persuade us how the Soul may climb
Triumphant o'er material Space and Time,
Stronger than all that dialectic strife,
His most convincing logic was his life.
Of truths the stern Philosopher had taught
Proof most profound, perhaps, the Patriot brought,
When, finishing his last great fight for God,
And many a rapt impassioned period,
Down from his desk the mighty Master came,
Unmoved by murmur low, or plaudit loud,
Or fervent blessing from the student-crowd;
And left the loved arena of his fame
With shouldered musket in the ranks to stand,
And fall or conquer for his Father Land.”