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 Third. From Wisp to Morass.

1. Schelling's ‘Absolute’—a blind power working in Nature, conscious only in Man. 2. Panatheistic and Buddhist. 3. Hegel makes the ‘Absolute,’ a Unity being evolved from contradictory principles existing as the ‘Conditioned.’ 4. A glimpse of his alleged meaning.

5. Result of Metaphysics based on Abstract Thought alone. Behind the ‘Apparent’ must be a ‘Real,’ and (6) as wondrous. The Universe—why to be limited to or by our perceptions of it? 7. The transcendentalists throw no light on this ‘Real;’ only prove it exists; and that we cannot fathom it. 8. So to Comte and Positivism. Denial of all Immaterial Existence. 9. Comte's new Religion.

I.

Then Schelling plies the metaphysic ball,
Which Reason's racket still will strike aloft
To overfly Sensation's bounding wall,
Though to the ground a thousand times it fall.
Those two Ideas we prate about so oft,
The Soul—the Universe—are really two,
And are identified—O, not in you,

Nor any finite Consciousness so small,
But only in the Absolute—the All.
Spirit is Matter that itself surveys;
And Matter, Spirit's undiscerning phase;
They are the magnet's two opposing poles,
And each the other balances—controls:
Both in a centre of indifference rest,
Which their essential being is confest:
As in the magnet's every point—we see
In all the works of Nature just these three;
But that which bounds them all and each degree,
The Absolute—the Magnet's self—must be,
Except at Being's most exalted height—
Impersonal—unconscious—infinite;
For God—that Absolute—still strives in vain,
In Nature's blind inferior works; nor can
In any form Self-Consciousness attain,
Save in the highest reasoning power of Man,
That central point, which Soul and Nature gain;—
Unconscious else the Universal Pan.

II.

Short comment made that old Idoloclast:
“Behold, then, three-and-twenty centuries passed,
The stately Ship of Western Thought at last,
Striking and stranded on the barren shore
Where struck that Buddhist bark so long before,
Left high and dry with all its phantom freight;
Thither impelled by that satiric fate
That dogs our intellectual pride, and brings
Shipwreck with its conviction shallow and vain,
That 'tis a storm-proof Cruiser, this poor brain,

Built, rigged, and manned to circumnavigate
The rondure vast of all existing things.
So Schelling digs where Kas-yapá had dug;
Magniloquent, yet microscopic elf,
So makes all Nature but the high-plumed hearse
Of God gone dead; so, whipping out his cord,
O metaphysical and monstrous Thug!
Strangles Creation's soul out; in a word,
Makes, while he feigns to flout Man's pride of Self,
That Self sole Mind-Life in the Universe.

“Alas! my Ranolf, were it wrong to call
This the most drear of metaphysic dreams—
The most revolting, mean result of all?
The Being, then, of highest worth it seems,
Which that World-ghost, that blind and senseless force
Evolves in its uncaused unconscious course,
Is but this inefficient soul of ours—
The one God, Man! for all his boasted powers,
Dubbed truly by that wanton wittiest Greek,
‘Clay-puppet, poor—ephemeral—wingless—weak!’
Is He the sole Intelligence? can he
The crown and climax of all Being be
Throughout that million-starred immensity?
Prove it by demonstration flawless, strong;
The wild conclusion proves some premiss wrong;
Absurd, as if those dwellers by old Nile
Had, in unsymbolled Scarab-worship vile,
Crowned with a beetle their great Pyramid—
The Monarch Builder out of sight and hid.”

III.

To mystic depths and mistier. Hegel shrouds
Himself and Truth in denselier-rolling clouds,
Like Arab genie sore opprest in fight;
His splendour flashes through redoubled night.
Thoughts are the same as Things; and what is true
Of one must be so of the other too.
No base but Thought the Mind's conceptions claim,
And your ‘external Objects’ have the same;
In Thought what proves consistent, rational, sound,
Must then in Things be Real and Actual found.
But Reason says: Your Absolute enfolds
All Actuals; cannot be at all, or holds
Good—Evil—utter contraries in one—
Mutual destructives in Its union.
Therein encounter, coexist, embrace,
Flat contradictions which whene'er you trace
The bounds of Being, stare you in the face!
Nay, Being's self therein, a balance lies
Of yoked yet suicidal contraries:
For Non-Existence, as a Thought, must be
Like pure Existence, a Reality:
While of pure abstract Being, uncombined
With qualities of any form or kind,
Nought can we know or predicate aright:
So Being falls into Non-Being's plight;
Each dies—revives—becomes its opposite.—
The positive and negative descried
In all things are such discords so allied.
For each Idea or Object (which you please,
Both are the same) evolves itself like these;

But these destroy and shut each other out;
A negative is all they bring about;
Still as the Idea is there and must remain,
That negative must be denied again.
As Abstract Space, for instance, cannot be
Conceived as bounded or as boundless either;
Yet must be one to be at all, you see,
Then cannot be at all, because 'tis neither;
A negative which meets denial clear,
For Space is something after all—and here.
That last negation, then, the Idea revives,
And subtler complex Being to it gives
In the ‘Conditioned’ where alone it lives.
Those magnet-poles, the two extremes, are gone,
And in the central point survive alone;
Object and Subject, Universe and Soul,
Are in that centre, one and real, and whole;
Each in itself a nothing we may call,
But their relation to each other—all.
Like alkali and acid, they attract
Each other, meet, and perish in the act—
The effervescence rests the only fact.
So the ‘Becoming’—the immediate spring
From Nought to Somewhat, is the vital thing;—
“Well, well!” broke out our student here, “at least
It cannot be denied this great High Priest
Of metaphysic Mysteries, has the wit,
The ant-lion boasts who scoops his cone-shaped pit
In subtlest sand, and there securely hides;
And when into the trap the victim slides,
And strives in vain to climb the slipping sides,
Down, deeper down, the crafty digger goes,
And o'er his prey such blinding dust-showers throws,

He triumphs quickly, and the intruder draws
Bewildered into those remorseless jaws.”
But when unflinching Hegel flatly laid
The axiom down he would not have gainsaid,
Disdaining compromise—dispute—or flout
(Settling so coolly Hamlet's staggering doubt)
“To Be is Not-to-be—and Not-to-be
To Be—agree to that, or disagree,
'Tis Logic's first great axiom, and most true!”
What could a youth with risible organs do,
At this, Philosophy's last grand exploit,
But ‘ding the book the distance of a quoit’
Away—and with a shout of laughter loud,
Light a cigar, and blow—as clear a cloud?—

IV.

“Bide a wee!” cried his Tutor, “my lad!”—with his cautious, sarcastic old tongue—
“There's a question I'd have you to ask, as you hirple these mystics among,
When certain, quite certain you're right, ‘But suppose after all I am wrong?’—
Say that Matter is nothing but Spirit, as Berkeley has best of all taught,
All the ‘Things’ we call ‘outward’—Ideas; why, the Universe then is all Thought;
And its Laws are but forms of our Thinking; then surely Itself may be nought
But the image and reflex of Mind; and the Two may be held to keep pace

In their manifestations and march—all their movements in Time and in Space—
And as One run together their changeful, developing, infinite race!
Say the Universe still is in growth; still for Æons on Æons must beat
Its great wings towards an Eyrie afar; that a Cosmos as yet incomplete,
Towards a Perfect as yet unconceived must the whirling Infinitude fleet!
Then the Mind that conception would reach when the Universe reaches the fact.—
Now through Being, organic, unorganised,—mark how one Law may be tracked:
In its innermost depths internecine two absolute contraries act—
Two principles, neither allowing the other alone to exist,
Into either the other still shifting, alternately sighted and missed,
(Like the eyes at once open and shut in that trick-begot face of the Christ)
But for ever evolving a third—a Unity yet unattained.—

Well, this ‘Notion’ of Being's high working, a Thought by abstraction though gained
From Actual Things, was the Thought from the first that causatively reigned
In the Absolute Essence; compelled their concretion; still sways them all through;
Nay, by Hegel on high dialectic is throned in such royalty true,
All progressions of Nature and Mind must precisely accord with it too!
'Tis the mystical tune they must dance to; like sunny-haired rows

Of Hamelin children must follow wherever its melody flows,
And our Hegel—our Piper sublime, transcendentally capering goes!

Then, as one vast Idea there may be which our present conception transcends,
And to realise, organise which the whole Universe struggles and tends;
Of Ideas that are swarming subordinate, each its own contraries blends
In the group it forms round it as central true type and Ideal designed
To be reached by their organisation when perfect, each after its kind:
Which type through their points the most opposite, not the most like, we must find.
And as Life-groups from balancing discords must physical concords contrive,
So may Moral antagonist Forces be destined to struggle and strive,
Till exalted, transfigured at last in a higher new nature they thrive!
Do not Passion and Principle, Impulse and Duty, so act in the soul?—
May not Matter and Spirit, Good—Ill, so be working—all parts as the whole—
Nay, our Infinite-Finite at war have some Peace unimagined for goal?—
—What! the Actual then, the ‘perceived,’ will not to accordance be brought
With what Hegel conceives! nor the Universe show itself working or wrought
On a ‘Notion’ so subtle, you say!—Well, 'tis some consolation—it ought!

For with ‘Thought’ for First Cause, 'tis a bolder and grander conception at least
Than the harmony clashed out by Atoms, that gift from the primitive East;
The Concordia discors, how mystic! which haply the sadness increased
Of the cheeriness forced and forlorn so cherished by Horace of old,
As—his head early grey—the sleek sensitive Poet, close-wrapping the fold
Of his toga with sunset blood-stained, down the Appian dreamily strolled.
And though Hegel affirm contradictions in terms that each other repel,
Since their high reconciling Idea no Reason at present can tell,
When the last is discovered, why—Logic and Language may reach it as well.
And suppose, in his ‘Immanent Reason,’ as Cause all these wonders behind,
But ‘Intelligent Infinite Will,’—may not Hegel and . . . much he opined
Ages hence be a Lord and a Law to maturer and mightier Mind?

V.

“But now consider. What at last remains
From all that toil of transcendental brains?
If, like the bristled monster-minims seen
To jerk and writhe and wriggle goggle-eyed

Within the lighted circle on the wall
Thrown from the water-drop compressed between
Glass plates by microscopic lantern-sheen,
These crabbed and cribbed philosophers go near
To craze, because the Apparent's magic sphere
So hems them in; and Hegel above all
Seemed, like the fabled Scorpion girt with fire,
With his own logic-nippers to inflict
A bite that killed himself, in mad desire
And effort to escape from bonds so strict—
That radiant round of the ‘Phenomenal,’
And dive into the depths that lie beyond;—
What then?—that grand mysterious Outside,
That Ocean of their soundings frantic, fond,
Is there—there still, and cannot be denied:
Howe'er the Thing we may define or name,
Whatever dim solutions we disclaim,
The ‘Unapparent’ still exists the same!

“For granting it be made by reasoning plain
That all the fair impressions on the brain
Are not mere pictures of such things around
Where no real types precisely like are found,
But from those decorating Senses gain,
In passing through them, all the dædal dress
Of qualities we fancy they possess,—
‘Not in the rose the red—nor in light-rays
Its texture splits, but in the eyes that gaze;
Not in the thunder—honey—fire, the roar,
The heat or sweetness we perceive; all these
Lie in the Sense that hears, tastes, feels or sees;
Well, it remains as certain as before
The causes of these feelings lie without,

Beyond us still; for who pretends to doubt
We do not, cannot of ourselves excite
All these sensations? and still less the play
Of keen impressions that by night and day
In selfsame order, sequence, and array
Reach other minds by millions? There must be
A something causing all we feel and see.
What Things are in Themselves, though none can say,
They still have in themselves—for base and stay,
Some pure, essential, true Reality.”

VI.

“But tell me now,” said Ranolf, “by what right
Can they assert that unimagined sphere
Of Causes is not varied, powerful, bright
And beautiful as aught we see or hear
Or any way perceive within the Mind?
‘Nature in her insentient solitude
Must as eternal Darkness be defined,
Eternal Silence.’ Wherefore thus conclude?
The Light and Sound are in ourselves, say you;
The Darkness—Silence then should be so too!
The last should our alternatives alone
Be held—not Nature's—when the first are gone.
Say Sound and Light are hers, but only heard
Or seen by us when certain nerves are stirred.
'Tis hard to think, were all Mankind destroyed,
This glorious World would be a dumb black void!—
But those mysterious Agents that can start
Sensations thus in human consciousness,

Would still, if that had vanished, be no less
Active, impulsive, wonderful, divine;
And might at least convey, somehow impart
To other Souls whom other organs bless,
Say (for their nature none of course can guess)
Lights gorgeous, jewel-tinted, more than shine
For us—for our beholding all too fine;
And melodies of such entrancing tone
As would outravish all to mortal music known!

“Surely no sober reason would pretend
To make the wondrous Universe depend
On our perceptions—there begin and end?
Must Senses like our own exhaust its powers?
May there not be more Senses too than ours?
Does the Sun cease to be a Sun, and die,
Hurled from his throne in yon majestic Sky,
Whene'er the Worm that grooves the flowery fret
Of pulpit-work—or Spider at his net
On some rose-knotted oak-carved canopy
Within a great Cathedral's gloom and grace—
May lose the few faint rays it feels through panes
That serve to bound, e'en while they brighten, all
Its tiny being's scant-accorded space;
Dim rays half quenched in that transparent pall,
Yet rainbow-rich with saintly blazonry
And dusky with a wealth of Angel-stains?”

VII.

Said that old hoary Candour, “Haply true
Your notion there! Yet what have we to do
With possible Souls you guess at, not our own,

Or powers of Nature wholly hid from view?
Who can assent to or deny what you
May dream of in the Utterly Unknown?—
But do they open—these Idealists—
Any grand oriel, loop or sight-hole new,
That Unapparent Realm may shine into;
Through which the Eternal Radiance may be seen
Behind the glory-dusked Phantasmal Screen,
Our heavenly-stained Cathedral Universe?—
Well, I must hold their chance thereof the worse
From their inveterate resolve to find
That Universe—all Being that exists—
Wrapt in and rounded by the human Mind.

“Yet at lowest their gossamer frail filligree
Of Abstractions but half comprehensible serves
To prove—though this visible Universe be
But ‘sensations,’—mere pictures impressed on the nerves
Through the Consciousness flitting in shadow and sheen;
Yet beyond or behind it must still be implied
A Something, more real and as wondrous, Unseen,
Where the Causes that call up the pictures abide:
And to prove, by their failure, a limited brain
Like the human—the Finite—can never expound
That Reality fully, but struggles in vain
Either Infinite Nature or Being to sound;
Either Matter or Spirit to reach through—to round,
Or their Essence or Origin fathom—explain!”

VIII.

So Ranolf leaves the crew who strive to rear
Truth's Palace on the clouds of Abstract Thought;

Tries those who on the concrete base have wrought
Of solid Fact we see and feel and hear:

“Come France the fine-idealled! a Wanderer aid!
Surely in any faith in France essayed
For Man's high wants provision will be made!
Did not, to God's great glory—or his own—
Pious Voltaire erect a church of stone?
Pious Rousseau foredamn or save his soul
As he might hit or miss a cork-tree's bole?
Pious pure tiger-monkey, Robespierre,
Most tender-conscienced bloodhound, slavering there,
Find soulless Man no workable machine,
And bay for ‘God’ to back his guillotine?
Elijah-mantled in silk-coat sky-blue,
The powdered Prophet ostrich-plumed anew,
Upholding to his sanctimonious nose,
So keen to scent out blood, a fullblown rose,
Proclaimed his condescending cool decree
Which deigned to bid his ‘Supreme Being’ be!—
Surely this novel nostrum, all the rage,
Of Comte, sleek-hatted and sleek-coated Mage,
Cherry-cheeked, dapper-souled, most dainty Sage,
The human heart's deep yearnings will assuage,
And steep in light and truth a woeworn Age!

“But O, what champion for the eternal fray
Is this, whose tactics are to run away,
Ignore the fight or yield without a blow!
Is this ‘Philosophy’—to shirk—forego
All—best worth knowing—men most burn to know—
This all we gain, O dapper One—from thee?
‘Appearances—the facts we feel and see—

Sensuous impressions—these we know alone;
Know even of these but the relations shown
Between them; where they are alike, indeed,
And in what settled order they proceed.
Such sequences—resemblances—we call,
When constant,—Laws of Things Phenomenal.
As for the Cause directing each event,
'Tis but the one that next before it went;
Like antecedent brings like consequent;
And nothing supernatural ever breaks
The natural course the ordered current takes;
The endless train of pictures backward goes.
But their essential nature—whence they rose—
How first were caused or wherefore—no one knows,
Has means or powers for knowing. Hence we deem
All supersensuous notions a mere dream!
And all religious dogmas, darkly bred
From mumbo-jumbo worship—Fetish dread;
And all Theologies that thence were spun
From Gods the Many up to God the One;
Expanding by the creature's natural law
Of growth, still checked by less and less of awe,
To subtler metaphysical conceits,
(The grown-up Child's still self-deluding cheats)—
All these are shadows of the cruder brain,
Fancies the fullgrown Man must needs disdain;
Gods—God—or Spirit—Nature's Abstract Whole—
Her Plastic Force, or Vegetative Soul,
All but ingenious whims of minds half-taught;
All First or Final Causes—simply nought;
To seek them, wanton waste of time and thought

IX.

“Nay, but”—drily hints his Mentor here, “What faults are you imputing!
'Tis a devotee, this dapper One! most reverent while uprooting!
‘Man must have a Faith,’ he cries, ‘some fine Ideal loved and followed!
Hear then Heavens, O Earth give ear! Mankind and you shall still be hallowed
With a spick-and-span new Creed, complete from Paradise to Tophet!
Soft now! . . . There's no God but Abstract Man, and Comte's his Concrete Prophet!
And to keep this compound Allah through his myriad parts progressing,
There's in Fame a Life Immortal for each hero's goal and blessing;
Blest or curst a Life Eternal for each soul of lowlier breeding,
In the good effects or evil of each life on lives succeeding!’
Then he flaunts you his fantastic God—great—sad—perplexed Humanity!
And, O sanguine sweet simplicity, most amiable Insanity!
Thinks devotion to a Deity so wayward, weak and airy
(Dying out behind for ever like a fire that scours a prairie)
Will seduce poor Man to fling away his one brief chance of pleasure—
Turn mere steel to ecstasies of sense, in Stoic over-measure;
Spurn the Syren Vice for Virtue's pale and perishable treasure!
All his joy the joy of healing by his pain the pain of others;

Pebble vile for Self to smile the Pearl of price for Self-like brothers;
Altar-flame when blown for them the hell-fire spark in Self he smothers!
So his bubble-doom he shall sky-tinge; dog-futured—dog-like dutiful,
Slave to make his firefly flash of life look solemn, grand and beautiful!
So his brother dim Automatons of like ephemeral quality,
Shall enshrine him, as in mockery of his wormy grave's reality,
Crowned in catacombs of Memory with most mortal Immortality!
Nay, for feigning Life so farcical,—grand, beautiful, and solemn,
Soothe his dust, his dry bones tickle, with a statue, bust or column!
‘Were not this,’ the sleek one simpers, ‘guerdon great and prospect glorious?
We are rotten, not forgotten! O the prize for pangs notorious!
Nothingness our doom, no less we'll make believe 'tis tempting—winning;
Life a skeleton—what then?—we'll pull a string and set it grinning!’”