Chapter XII: Part IV: Who Shall Command the Heart (1)

_Because the starry lightnings and the life
Of all this Universe which is our Home
Weave round each soul a web of mortal strife,
Hard is its speech to hear and slow to come,_

_As to one waking from a lonely dream
The friendly taper dwindles to a star,
So to each man men’s faces distant seem—
Their dearest words sound faint and very far._

_Daily we pass, like shadows in dreamland,
And careless answer in the old curt tone,
Till Death breaks suddenly between us, and
With a great cry we know we have not known._

_Ah! surely, to have known and to behold
The beauty that within the soul abides,
For this Earth blossoms and the skies unfold,
For this the Moon makes music in the tides;_

_For this Man rises from his mould of dust,
Ranges his life and looks upon the Sun,
For this he turns and with adventurous trust
Forsakes this world and seeks a fairer one._

WHO SHALL COMMAND THE HEART

Who shall command the heart, that wondrous Thing,

That wild love-creature, roaming the wilderness,

That none can tame?

Roaming the world, devouring with eyes of flame, eyes of desire,

All forms of heavenly Beauty?

* * * * *

Say, little heart, that beatest pulsest here beneath the ribs,

Who chained thee in this body?—what Titan ages agone?—

Who muzzled thee to drive this crank machine,

Thou wanderer of the woods, thou crimson leopard,

No better than a turnspit?

* * * * *

Nay, but thy ’prenticeship long enough surely thou hast served;

The time has come, and thy full age and strength;

The cage-bars hold no longer, and the body-machine breaks down;

But thou art young and beautiful as ever.

Wild pard who lovest thus to hunt with Man,

I bid thee loose.

Say, wilt thou come with me, and shall we ride,

Companions of the Chase, the universe over?

FROM CAVERNS DARK

Behold, a hundred and a thousand lives, And thousands more, in caverns dark within thee. No secret wish that flits along thy fancy, But lo! far back in some ancestral form It dwelt, had eyes and feet, and ranged its life; No thought, no dream, but long-dead men and women Live in the quiet murmur of its wings Far down, far down, and move about thy brain And look on the Sun again.

Ah, silence! hearest not the whispering In darkness, of those countless multitudes?— That maiden fair who languished out her soul, Long generations back, and spake no word; That father whose young daughter to the grave Bore down his heart with hers; that sturdy soldier Who hacked and hewed in fervent piety All who opposed him; that untiring mother Who wore her life out for her children; aye, And all the throngs that passed thro’ city streets, Centuries gone, ’neath overhanging gables, Or toiled on rustic leas—the cleric youth Who dreamed romance in manuscript and missal, Gurth herding pigs and whittling bow and arrows In beechen forests; haughty baron, and serf, And vain and timid and night-mare-ridden souls, And trustful, proud, ambitious—all are there! Hearest the whispering of multitudes?— All dead—yet all are there.

And ages farther, born of the time before man walked the earth, Wild forms behold! and roaming spirits of animals, Hungering, thirsting, loving—beautiful beings That saw and wondered worshiping each other, And found their mates and fought their enemies, And sang and danced and hoarded, skulked and scolded, In passion’s every mood; yet never once Turned eyes of consciousness upon themselves. Unwieldy beasts that bellowed through the tree-ferns for their young, And flying dragons and the roaring lion, And bats and moths just glimmering thro’ the dark Like faintest memories—aye, all are there! Hearest the whispering of multitudes?— All dead—yet all are there.

And in the ages yet to come the same: A hundred and a thousand lives within thee! And thousands more—which yet shall walk the Earth. Dreams, faint desires, scarce conscious of themselves, Shall take swift shape and people the lands with forms Of thy conceiving, strange similitudes Even of thyself. And, hungering thirsting loving, beautiful beings Sprung from thy heart and brain and sexual part, Half animal, half angel, Shall see and wonder worshiping each other; And find their mates and front their enemies Onward through long processions of the Suns, By shores of other continents than now, In unimagined haunts and cities fair, To where they fade from view and take at last Their flight from Earth to homes beyond the Earth.

This mighty Life—past present and to come— Enfolds thee. This thou art. This thou upgatherest; And this Thou, tiny creature, pourest forth— Where now thou standest— Lord of the world, from caverns dark within thee.

THE LAKE OF BEAUTY

Let your mind be quiet, realising the beauty of the world, and the immense the boundless treasures that it holds in store.

All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, all that your Nature so specially fits you for—that or the counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for you. It will surely come to you.

Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of hands will make no difference.

* * * * *

Therefore do not begin that game at all.

Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind in this direction and in that, lest you become like a spring lost and dissipated in the desert.

But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them still, so still;

And let them become clear, so clear—so limpid, so mirror-like;

At last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves in peaceful beauty,

And the antelope shall descend to drink, and to gaze at his reflected image, and the lion to quench his thirst,

And Love himself shall come and bend over, and catch his own likeness in you.

THE WANDERING PSYCHE

You, who un-united to yourself roam about the world,

Seeking some person or some thing to which to be united—

Seeking to ease that way the pain at your heart—

Deceive not yourself, deceive not others.

* * * * *

For united to that which you really are you are indeed beautiful, united to Yourself you are strong, united to yourself you are already in the hearts of those you love;

But disunited you are none of these things

And how shall men desire a mere shell, or how will you offer them a husk saying, There is fruit within, when there is no fruit—but only vacancy?

* * * * *

And these are the Gods that seek ever to come in the forms of men—the ageless immortal Gods—to make of earth that Paradise by their presence;

But while you bar the way and weave your own little plans and purposes like a tangle of cobwebs across the inner door,

How shall they make their entrance and habitation with you?

How shall you indeed know what it is to be Yourself?

I HEAR THY CALL, MYSTERIOUS BEING

I hear thy call, Mysterious Being;

In the dead of night, when the stars float grey overhead, and the Northern lights flicker faintly,

In the blazing noon when the sunlight rims with a luminous ring the wide horizon,

Flooding, enfolding all—

I hear thy call.

In the hollow depths below—I hear thee, Mysterious Being.

* * * * *

[I am swept out, as the tide to the call of the Moon is swept out from the shores it knows—to wonderful other shores;

I am carried away, away, in a swoon to the ends of Creation.]

* * * * *

Deep, deep is Thy heart. As I sink in it, lo! there is nothing, nothing which is not held by thy love.

On the surface there is rejection and discrimination, but in the depth lo! everything is held by it.

Swift, swift is Thy flight. In an instant now here, now there—it is all the same to Thee.

As the lambent fire of sex within the body, as the Northern lights with luminous fingers over the sky—

So Thou through all creation.

As the great Sun blazing down at noon on the Himálayan forests, and bathing each leaf the same for hundreds, thousands, of miles—

So Thou through all creation.

* * * * *

[Flutter on little leaves—ye that break the light into a million beautiful forms!

Flutter on little worlds, that float in the æther of space!

Flutter on little hearts, whom the great Heart feeds and encloses!]

* * * * *

And thou, O stranger who dwellest perchance in yonder star, or globe that circles dark about yon star,

Or thou, dear lover that on this earth of ours holdest my heart in thine,

Can Death, I say, or Space or Time or Worlds avail in the end against us?

* * * * *

Take me, great Life—O take me, long-delaying,

Unloose these chains, unbind these clogs and fetters;

I hear thy call—so strange—Mysterious Being,

I hear thy call—I come.

SO THIN A VEIL

So thin a veil divides

Us from such joy, past words.

Walking in daily life—the business of the hour, each detail seen to;

Yet carried, rapt away, on what sweet floods of other Being:

Swift streams of music flowing, light far back through all Creation shining,

Loved faces looking—

Ah! from the true, the mortal self

So thin a veil divides!

THE OPEN SECRET

Sweet secret of the open air—

That waits so long, and always there, unheeded.

* * * * *

Something uncaught, so free, so calm large confident—

The floating breeze, the far hills and broad sky,

And every little bird and tiny fly or flower

_At home_ in the great whole, nor feeling lost at all or forsaken,

Save man—slight man!

* * * * *

He, Cain-like from the calm eyes of the Angels,

In houses hiding, in huge gas-lighted offices and dens, in ponderous churches,

Beset with darkness, cowers;

And like some hunted criminal torments his brain

For fresh means of escape, continually;

Builds thicker higher walls, ramparts of stone and gold, piles flesh and skins of slaughtered beasts,

’Twixt him and that he fears;

Fevers himself with plans, works harder and harder,

And wanders far and farther from the goal.

* * * * *

And still the great World waits by the door as ever,

The great World stretching endlessly on every hand, in deep on deep of fathomless content—

Where sing the Morning-stars in joy together,

And all things are at home.

THE SONGS OF THE BIRDS, WHO HEARS

The songs of the birds, who hears? in the high trees calling,

All the long noon high calling?—

In the meadows below them the wind runs over the grass, the shadows lengthen.

Who sees, who hears?—

In the wonderful height of heaven the clouds are flocked like sails,

Slow moving, floating, rounding from deep to deep.

The light swims slowly, changing over the world,

The distant peaks are touched; and the hills lie silent.

Who sees, who hears?

* * * * *

The fox-gloves tall out of the earth arise;

They stand up out of green shadow;

Out of night, out of seeds dim in the earth arising,

They look forth on the blue and green wilderness, and are changed as it changes—

Changed out of all recognition.

Who sees, who hears?—

* * * * *

For all things melt and run—if you only watch them long enough!

And you cannot emprison anything in one shape—it will surely give you the slip.

Nothing in essence dies, and nothing in mortal form remains. All is in movement, long calculated, long determined on, with regard to another kind of Form.

The diamond that you wear in your hair, the gold piece you hold so solid in your hand—they are no more solid than a swarm of bees is solid, of which the units are in constant motion to and fro, some leaving and some joining the swarm.

They have other business than yours to attend to—they have other spheres beside the market and the drawing-room—and they will surely give you the slip.

* * * * *

The rocks flow and the mountain shapes flow,

And the forests swim over the lands like cloud-shadows;

The lines of the seeming-everlasting sea are changed,

And its waves beat on unmapped phantom shores:

‘Not here, not here!’

All creatures fade from the embraces of their names,

[And you and I, slow, slowly disentangling,]

The delicate hairbells quivering in the light,

The gorse, the heather, and the fox-gloves tall,

The meadows, and the river, rolling, fade:

Fade from their likenesses: fade crying ‘Follow! Follow, for ever follow!’

* * * * *

Who hears, who sees?

Who hears the word of Nature?

The word of her eternal breathing, whispered wherever one shall listen,

The word of the birds in the high trees calling,

Of the wind running over the grass,

The word of the glad prisoners, the tender footless creatures, the plants of the earth,

Rising too, bright-eyed, out of their momentary masks?

‘Not here! not here!’

* * * * *

But over all the world, shadowing, shadowing:

The dream! the vast and ever present miracle of all time!

The long-forgotten never-forgotten goal!

Over your own heart, out of its secretest depths:

In crystalline beauty!

Out of all creatures, cloud and mountain and river:

Exhaling, ascending!

From plant and bird and man and planet up-pouring:

Thousand-formed, One,

The ever-present only present reality, source of all illusion,

The Self, the disclosure, the transfiguration of each creature,

And goal of its agelong pilgrimage.

A CHILD AT A WINDOW

I sat in the dark, at night, outside a little cottage door,

And the light from within streamed through the casement and broke in spray upon the climbing ivy-leaves.

And presently, overhead, a chamber-window opened, and a child peeped silently forth,

And looked up into the vast night and at the all-trembling stars.

* * * * *

And at the same moment, in a far far globe wheeling unseen round a certain star, a child-face peeped forth from its habitation, and looked out into the night, even in the direction of the first child;

And in other globes other faces looked forth;

But they all shrank back and trembled, seeing nothing but vacancy, and saying, How dark, how vast, how awful is the Night!

* * * * *

Yet all the while it was the great Day of the universe into which they looked,

Lit by a million suns.

NIGHT

Darkness o’erhead, around,

A curtain closing down upon the earth,

Drowning the woodland tree-tops.

Stretching of hands, straining of eyes—to feel, to see,

To catch the faint faint glamor here and there amid the branches,

The wavering dubious forms and presences.

No floor, no sky, no sound. Only a soft warm moisture in the nostrils,

Folding and brooding all the land in silence.

APRIL

O April, month of Nymphs and Fauns and Cupids,

Month of the Sungod’s kisses, Earth’s sweet passion,

Of fanciful winds and showers;

Apollo, glorious over hill and dale

Ethereally striding; grasses springing

Rapt to his feet, buds bursting, flowers out-breathing

Their liberated hearts in love to him.

* * * * *

[The little black-cap garrulous on the willow

Perching so prim, the crested chaffinch warbling,

And primrose and celandine, anemone and daisy,

Starring the tender herb which lambs already nibble.]

* * * * *

Month of all-gathering warmth,

Of breathless moments, hotter and hotter growing—

Smiles turned to fire, kisses to fierce earnest—

Of sultry swoons, pauses, and strange suspense

(Clouds and dæmonic thunder through the blue vault threateningly rolling);

Then the delirious up-break—the great fountains of the deep, in Sex,

Loosened to pouring falling rushing waters;

Shafts of wild light; and Sky and Earth in one another’s arms

Melted, and all of Heaven spent in streams of love

Towards the Loved one.

LUCIFER

Seest thou me pass—swift with my angels out of heaven propelled—

All stars and lightning in a fluid train?

Seest thou me pass, I say?

* * * * *

His brows, the Lord’s, in heaven are glorious;

His eyes give light there, fashioning and beholding rapt all forms divine;

His mighty loins are plunged in night and shadow.

And I—

I am the lightning of the generations through them,

Seed of the worlds to be.

* * * * *

He is the Lord, in moment of creation, fixed everlasting,

The Universe entire—or little flower starred in ecstasy;

And I, orgasmic, fierce, His swift deliverance.

* * * * *

[Seest thou me pass—all stars and lightning in a fluid train?

From heaven down into chaos seest thou me pass, I say?]

THE OCEAN OF SEX

To hold in continence the great sea, the great ocean of Sex, within one,

With flux and reflux pressing on the bounds of the body, the beloved genitals,

Vibrating, swaying emotional to the star-glint of the eyes of all human beings,

Reflecting Heaven and all Creatures,

How wonderful!

* * * * *

Scarcely a figure, male or female, approaches, but a tremor travels across it.

As when on the cliff which bounds the edge of a pond someone moves, then in the bowels of the water also there is a mirrored movement,

So on the edge of this Ocean.

The glory of the human form, even faintly outlined under the trees or by the shore, convulses it with far reminiscences;

(Yet strong and solid the sea-banks, not lightly to be overpassed;)

Till may-be to the touch, to the approach, to the incantation of the eyes of one,

It burst forth, uncontrollable.

* * * * *

O wonderful Ocean of Sex,

Ocean of millions and millions of tiny seed-like human forms contained (if they be truly contained) within each person,

Mirror of the very universe,

Sacred temple and innermost shrine of each body,

Ocean-river flowing ever on through the great trunk and branches of Humanity,

From which after all the individual only springs like a leaf-bud!

Ocean which we so wonderfully contain (if indeed we do contain thee), and yet who containest us!

Sometimes when I feel and know thee within, and identify myself with thee,

Do I understand that I also am of the dateless brood of Heaven and Eternity.

AS THE GREEKS DREAMED

On the loose hot sands at foot of the cliffs—

The cloudless blue burning above in furious mid day heats—

As I bask,

Bathing my brown-tanned body in the warm dry clean grit, or cooling it in the sea;

And the sea creeps up, spacious, in curves along the shore,

With fringes of tawny lacework, and green and blue, deepening into the loveliest violet,

And Aphrodite herself out of this marvellously beautiful robe, this liquid cincture, swiftly gliding, for a moment stands,

(Her feet on the watery plain, her head in the great height against the Sun,)

Vast, glorious, white-armed, visible and invisible;

* * * * *

As the sea stretches miles and miles, and the grey chalk cliffs and capes, fainter and fainter, run forward into it, looking on,

And the fisherman slumbers in the shade of his boat, impervious,

And fainter still and more slumbrous on the horizon, in haze and silence the far ships go by;

* * * * *

Through it all, meseems, I see

How the human body bathed in the sheen and wet, steeped in sun and air,

Moving near and nude among the elements,

Matches somehow and interprets the whole of Nature;

How from shoulder to foot of mountain and man alike the lines of grace run on;

How, as the Greeks dreamed, in rock and rill divinest human forms lie shrined, or in the wild woods lurk embosomed;

And how at length and only in the loving union and uncoveredness of Man with Nature may either know or understand the other.

IN A SCOTCH-FIR WOOD

In a Scotch-fir wood—

Where the great rays of the low sun glanced through the trees, in open beauty under the shaggy green,

Lighting stem behind stem in lofty strength interminable;

And the wild sweet air ran lightly by, with warm scent of pine-needles—

I heard a voice saying:

* * * * *

O Man, when wilt thou come fit comrade of such trees, fair mate and crown of such a scene?

Poor pigmy, botched in clothes, feet coffined in boots, braced, stitched and starched,

Too feeble, alas! too mean, undignified, to be endured—

Go hence, and in the centuries come again!

THE DREAM GOES BY

The dream goes by, touches men’s hearts, and floats and fades again—

Far on the hills away from this nightmare of modern cheap-jack life:

The finished free Society.

* * * * *

Finished and done with so much that clogs to-day the weary spirit, weary body;

Finished and done with all the old cumbersome apparatus of Law and Authority, with the endless meanness of ‘business’ and money-making, with the silly paraphernalia of distinction and respectability, with the terrible struggle of each against all, and the trampling of the weak underfoot by the strong;

Done with the endless joyless labors for the bread that perisheth, for clothing which keeps not the heart warm, for possessions which only weigh their owners to the ground;

With envies, greeds, jealousies—loads and burdens of life too great to be borne—Sisyphus toils that bring no nearer to the goal.

* * * * *

The grown man hand in hand with his little girl, walking the woodland path,

With brown uncovered bodies, both of them, so glad, content, unconscious;

And all the wealth and beauty of the world is theirs;

The Sun shining on their limbs; and in their minds the long results of human culture.

The simple dresses of the public thoroughfare, used or not used with quiet sense of fitness;

The simple diet so easily won, so gladly shared;

The stores of human science, human knowledge, accessible to all—for all to use.

And Death no longer terrible, but full

Of poignant strange Expansion; Labor too

(Which is our daily death

And resurrection in the thing created)

An ever-abiding joy.—

A life so near to Nature, all at one with bird and plant and beast and swimming thing,

So near to all its fellows in sweet love—

In joy unbounded and undying love.

* * * * *

The dream goes by, touches and stirs men’s hearts, And floats, and waits, again.

SURELY THE TIME WILL COME

Surely the time will come when humanity will refuse to be diseased any longer.

This list of filthy and hideous complaints,—too filthy to be calmly spoken of: these small-poxes, typhoids, choleras, cancers, tumors, tubercles,—dropsy, diabetes, uræmia—all preventible, and easy enough to prevent;

And yet—incredible though it seems—men and women still tolerating and condoning them;

Men and women who pride themselves on their culture, refinement, punctiliousness of nose, and so forth—and who would turn up the latter at the sight of a pig and a few fowls in an Irishman’s cabin—actually tolerating in their own persons the perpetual presence of the most disgusting organisms;

And other men and women, through sheer ignorance, believing such a state of affairs to be necessary.

Surely the time will come when to be diseased, to spread disease around one, or transmit it to descendants,

To live willingly in the conditions that produce disease, or not strenuously to fight against such conditions,

Will be looked on as a crime—both of the individual and of society.

For since a little self-control, since a clean and elementary diet, pure water, openness of the body to sun and air, a share of honest work, and some degree of mental peace and largesse, are the perfectly simple conditions of health, and are, or ought to be, accessible to everybody—

To neglect these is sheer treason;

While to surrender them out of fear (should one stick to them) of being robbed of other things far less precious, is to be a fool, as well as a coward.

Surely the time will come when people, seeing how obvious and simple is the problem of human life,

Will refuse (even at the bidding of the Parson, the Policeman, Mrs. Grundy, and the commercial Slave-drivers and Tax-collectors) to live the lives of idiots;

Will refuse to do other work than that which they like, and which they feel to be really needed;

Will cease to believe that their own well-being can only be maintained at the cost of the Fear, Torment, and Slaughter of the animals, and the Hanging and Imprisonment of men;

And will waste the hours no more in elaborately preparing food which, when prepared, does but rot the vitals of those who consume it, and in schemes of money-making and ‘business’ which but destroy their souls.

The time will come surely when we shall cease to burden our limbs and becloud our skins with garments, the major part of which are useless, unless as a breeding ground of ill-health, deformity, and indecency;

Shall cease to build walls and fortifications of property and possession each round ourselves as against the others—deliberately confining so and crucifying the great god of love within us—

And shall at last liberate our minds and bodies from that funny old lazar-house of the centuries, of which none but ourselves, after all, are the warders and gaolers.

THE ONE FOUNDATION

Only that people can thrive that loves its land and swears to make it beautiful;

For the land (the Demos) is the foundation-element of human life, and if the public relation to that is false, all else is of need false and inverted.

How can a flower deny its own roots, or a tree the soil from which it springs?

And how can a people stand firmly planted under the sun, except as mediators between Earth and Heaven—

To dedicate the gracious fruits of the ground to all divine uses?

* * * * *

Think of it—

To grow rich and beautiful crops for human food, and flowers and fruits to rejoice the eye and heart,

What a privilege!

Yet this to-day is a burden and a degradation, thrust upon the poor and despised.

The Scotch farm-lad strides across the ploughed leas, scattering with princely hand the bread of thousands;

The Italian peasant ties his vines to the trellised canes with twigs of broom, and the spring sunlight glances and twinkles on him from the cistern just below;

The Danish boy drives the herds home from the low-lying pasture-lands in the sweet clear air of evening;

And the world which is built upon the labor of these disowns them, and they themselves sink earthward worn out with unheeded toil;

While the Politician and the Merchant who flourish on lies and fill the people’s ears and mouths with chaff are publicly seated in the highest places.

* * * * *

And the Earth rolls on, with all her burden of love unheeded,

And sadness falls on the peoples divorced from the breasts that fain would suckle them.

* * * * *

Think of it—

To place a nation squarely on its own base, spreading out its people far and wide in honored usefulness upon the soil,

Building up all uses and capacities of the land into the life of the masses,

So that the riches of the Earth may go first and foremost to those who produce them, and so onward into the whole structure of society;

To render the life of the people clean and gracious, vital from base to summit, and self-determining,

Dependent simply on itself and not on cliques and coteries of speculators anywhere; and springing thus inevitably up into wild free forms of love and fellowship;

To make the wild places of the lands sacred, keeping the streams pure, and planting fresh blooms along their edges; to preserve the air crystalline and without taint—tempting the sun to shine where before was gloom;

To adorn the woodlands and the high tops with new trees and shrubs and winged and footed things,

Sparing all living creatures as far as possible rather than destroying them;

What a pleasure!

To do all this in singleness of heart were indeed to open up riches for mankind of which few dream—

So much, so infinitely more than what is now called Wealth.

* * * * *

But to-day the lands are slimed and fenced over with denials; and those who would cannot get to them, and those who own have no joy in them—except such joy as a dog may have in a fodderam.

And so, even to-day, while riches untold are wrung from the Earth, it is rather as a robbery that they are produced—without gladness or gratitude, but in grief and sadness and lying and greed and despair and unbelief.

Say, say, what would those riches be, if the Earth and her love were free?

* * * * *

But all waits. And the thunderclouds brood in silence over the lands, meditating the unlipped words of destiny; and the sky rains light upon the myriad leaves and grass, searching inevitably into every minutest thing;

And Ignorance breeds Fear, and Fear breeds Greed, and Greed that Wealth whose converse is Poverty—and these again breed Strife and Fear in endless circles;

* * * * *

But Experience (which in time to all must come) breeds Sympathy, and Sympathy Understanding, and Understanding Love;

And Love leads Helpfulness by the hand, to open the gates of Power unlimited—even for that new race which now appears.

* * * * *

And the blue sea waits below the girdle of the sun-fringed shores, and lips and laps through the millenniums, syllabling the unformed words which man alone can pronounce entire;

And the sunlight wraps the globe of the Earth, and dances and twinkles in the æther of the human heart,

Which is indeed a great and boundless ocean, in which all things float suspended.

A MIGHTIER THAN MAMMON

At last, after centuries, when the tension and strain of the old society can go no further, and ruin on every side seems impending,

Behold! behind and beneath it all, in dim prefigurement, yet clear and not to be mistaken—the Outline and Draft of a new order.

* * * * *

When Machinery has made affluence possible for everybody, and yet the scramble for Wealth is keener than ever, the line between rich and poor as sharp;

When locomotion and intercommunication practically make the whole World one, and yet the Nations stand round armed tooth and claw, and glaring at each other;

When it is recognised that culture and manual labor are not only compatible but necessary in combination with each other, and yet society remains divided into brutalised workers and cultivated nincompoops;

When men and women everywhere are hungering for community of life, to pass freely, to love and be loved; and yet they remain frozen up, starched, starved, coffined, each in their own little cells of propriety, respectability, dirty property, and dismal poverty;

When the cells are alive and in pain, because the body is lifeless;

When thousands of pulpits preach religion, and there is not a word of religion in it;

When the great web and framework of the old order, Law, is collapsing with its own weight—myriads and myriads of statutes, overlapping, overlying, precedents, principles, instances, tumbled buried one behind another in inextricable confusion—and yet never before in the history of the world was there such a rigid brute-pharisaical apparatus of police, military and prisons to enforce the ‘heads or tails’ of the Courts, and the cant of the ‘superior’ classes;

When the Millionaire appears on the scene—a new type of human being—as the Dinosaur may have appeared ages ago upon the Earth, gigantic, lumbering, fateful and dangerous; yet destined perhaps finally to break down the ancient jungle of ‘Government,’ and the barriers of the old Nationalities; and to be a link in the evolution of the future;

When Art is divorced from Life, Science from human feeling, Marriage from Love, Education from Affection;

When to work freely at one’s own chosen trade and to interchange freely the products with others is what almost everybody really desires—and is obviously the indicated social form of the future; and yet when nearly everyone is a wage-slave or works at work which he detests!

When the longing for the life of Nature, for the Air and the Sun, for the freedom of the Earth and the waters, for liberation, wildness, spontaneity, is upon folk as perhaps it never was before; and yet they are mewed up more than ever in houses clothes, ‘business,’ and general asphyxia and futility;

When similarly the longing for freedom of Sex is upon people, for purity of love, unashamed, unshackled, creating its own law—and yet love is everywhere shamed and shackled and impure;

When the Electric Tension in every direction, owing to this separation of polarities, is becoming so great that the luminous spark, the lightning, the vital flash, has become inevitable;

Then at last, not to be mistaken, the outline and draft of the new creature appears—

The soul that soon shall knit the growing limbs glides in.

* * * * *

A new conception of Life—yet ancient as creation (since indeed, properly speaking, there is no other)—

The life of the Heart, the life of friendship and attachment:

Society forming freely everywhere round this—knit together by this, rather than by the old Cash-nexus:

The love and pride of race, of clan, of family, the free sacrifice of life for these, the commemoration of these in grand works and deeds;

The dedication of Humanity, the wider embrace that passes all barriers of class and race;

And the innumerable personal affection in all its forms—

These, and a proud beautiful sane utterance and enduring expression of them, first; and the other things to follow.

* * * * *

The love of men for each other—so tender, heroic, constant;

That has come all down the ages, in every clime, in every nation,

Always so true, so well assured of itself, overleaping barriers of age, of rank, of distance,

Flag of the camp of Freedom;

The love of women for each other—so rapt, intense, so confiding-close, so burning-passionate,

To unheard deeds of sacrifice, of daring and devotion, prompting;

And (not less) the love of men for women, and of women for men—on a newer greater scale than it has hitherto been conceived;

Grand, free and equal—gracious yet ever incommensurable—

The soul of Comradeship glides in.

* * * * *

The young heir goes to inspect the works of one of his tenants;

[Once more the king’s son loves the shepherd lad;]

In the shed the fireman is shovelling coal into the boiler furnace. He is neither specially handsome nor specially intelligent, yet when he turns, from under his dark lids rimmed with coal-dust shoots something so human, so loving near, it makes the other tremble.

They only speak a few words, and lo! underneath all the differences of class and speech, of muscle and manhood, their souls are knit together.

* * * * *

The Cinghalese cooly comes on board a merchant vessel at Colombo, every day for a week or more, to do some bits of cleaning.

He is a sweet-natured bright intelligent fellow of 21 or so. One of the engineers is decently kind and friendly with him—gives him a knife and one or two little presents;

But the Cinghalese gives his very soul to the engineer; and worships his white jacket and overalls as though they were the shining garment of a god.

He cannot rest; but implores to be taken on the voyage; and weeps bitterly when he learns that the ship must sail without him.

* * * * *

[Ah! weep not, brown-bodied youth wandering lonely by the surf-ridden shore—as you watch your white friend’s vessel gliding into the offing, under the sun and the sun-fringed clouds;

Out, far out to sea, with your friend whom you will never see again;

Weep not so heart-brokenly, for even your tears, gentle boy, poured now upon the barren sand are the prophecy of amity that shall be one day between all the races of the earth.]

* * * * *

And here are two women, both doctors and mature in their profession, whose souls are knit in a curiously deep affection.

They share a practice in a large town, and live in the same house together, exchanging all that they command, of life and affection and experience;

And this continues for twenty years—till the death of the elder one—after which the other ceases not to visit her grave, twice every week, till the time of her own last illness.

* * * * *

And this is of a poor lad born in the slums, who with aching lonely heart once walked the streets of London.

Many spoke to him because he was fair—asked him to come and have a drink, and so forth; but still it was no satisfaction to him; for they did not give him that which he needed.

Then one day he saw a face in which love dwelt. It was a man twice his own age, captain of a sailing vessel—a large free man, well acquainted with the world, capable and kindly.

And the moment the lad saw him his heart was given to him, and he could not rest but must needs follow the man up and down—yet daring not to speak to him, and the other knowing nothing of it all.

And this continued—till the time came for the man to go another voyage. Then he disappeared; and the youth, still not knowing who or whence he was, fell into worse misery and loneliness than ever, for a whole year.

Till at last one day—or one evening rather—to his great joy he saw his friend going into a public house. It was in a little street off Mile-end Road. He slipped in and sat beside him.

And the man spoke to him, and was kind, but nothing more. And presently, as the hour was getting late, got up and said Goodnight, and went out at the door.

And the lad, suddenly seized with a panic fear that he might never see his friend again, hurried after him, and when they came to a quiet spot, ran up and seized him by the hand, and hardly knowing what he was doing fell on his knees on the pavement, and held him.

And the man at first thought this was a ruse or a mere conspiracy, but when he lifted the lad and looked in his face he understood, for he saw love written there. And he straightway loved and received him.

* * * * *

And this is of a boy who sat in school.

The masters talked about Greek accidence and quadratic equations, and the boys talked about lobs and byes and bases and goals; but of that which was nearest to his heart no one said a word.

It was laughed at—or left unspoken.

Yet when the boy stood near some of his comrades in the cricket-field or sat next them in school, he stocked and stammered, because of some winged glorious thing which stood or sat between him and them.

And again the laughter came, because he had forgotten what he was doing; and he shrank into himself, and the walls round him grew, so that he was pent and lonely like a prisoner.

Till one day to him weeping, Love full-grown, all-glorious, pure, unashamed, unshackled, came like a god into his little cell, and swore to break the barriers.

And when the boy through his tears asked him how he would do that, Love answered not, but turning drew with his finger on the walls of the cell.

And as he drew, lo! beneath his finger sprang all forms of beauty, an endless host—outlines and colors of all that is, transfigured;

And, as he drew, the cell-walls widened—a new world rose—and folk came trooping in to gaze,

And the barriers had vanished.

* * * * *

Wonderful, beautiful, the Soul that knits the Body’s life passed in,

And the barriers had vanished.

* * * * *

Everywhere under the surface the streamers shoot, auroral,

Strands and tissues of a new life forming.

Already the monstrous accumulations of private wealth seem useless and a burden—

At best to be absorbed in new formations.

The young woman from an upper class of society builds up her girls’ club; the young man organises his boys from the slums. Untiring is their care; but something more, more personal and close, than philanthropy inspires them.

The little guilds of workers are animated by a new spirit; to have pleasure in good work seems something worth living for; the home-colonists turn their backs on civilisation if only they may realise a friendly life with Nature and each other; the girls in the dress-making shop stand in a new relation to their mistress, and work so gladly for her and with her; the employer of labor begins to doubt whether he gets any satisfaction by grinding the faces of his men—a new idea is germinating in his mind; even to the landlord it occurs that to create a glad and free village life upon his estate would be more pleasure than to shoot over it.

As to the millionaire, having spent his life in scheming for Wealth, he cannot but continue in the web which himself has woven; yet is heartily sick of it, and longs in a kind of vague way for something simple and unembarrassed. He is pestered to death by sharks, parasites, poor relations, politicians, adventurers, lawyers, company-promoters, begging letters and business correspondence, society functions, charitable and philanthropic schemes, town and country houses, stewards, bailiffs, flunkeys, and the care of endless possessions; and sees that to cast all these aside and devote his wealth if possible to the realisation of a grand life for the mass-peoples of the Earth were indeed his best hope and happiness.

The graduate from Cambridge is a warm-hearted impulsive little woman, genuine and human to the core. Having escaped from high and dry home-circles, she found curiously the answer of her heart in a wage-worker of an East London workshop—a calm broad-browed woman, strong, clearheaded, somewhat sad in expression, and a bit of a leader among her trade-mates.

Having got into touch with each other, the two came at last to live together; and immediately on doing so found themselves a focus and centre of activities—like opposite poles of a battery through which when in contact the electricity streams.

So the news and interests of the two classes of society streamed through them. Through them too, folk from either side, especially women, came into touch with each other, and discovered a common cause and sympathy amid many surface differences.

Thus by a thousand needs beside their own compelled, was their love assured, their little home made sacred.

* * * * *

Everywhere a new motive of life dawns.

With the liberation of Love, and with it of Sex, with the sense that these are things—and the joy of them—not to be dreaded or barred, but to be made use of, wisely and freely, as a man makes use of his most honored possession,

Comes a new gladness:

The liberation of a Motive greater than Money,

And the only motive perhaps that can finally take precedence of Money.

* * * * *

Men and women mate freely again;

The sacredness of sex in freedom is taught in schools and churches; the ulcer of prostitution slowly disappears; the wasted love that flows in a morbid stream through the streets, or desiccates in grand mansions, runs once more into the channels of free devotion and life.

One by one, here and there, in silence perhaps, unremarked, or perhaps the centre of a little cyclone of excited abuse, a couple, offstanding, exempt, determined, assert their right to the highest and best that life can give.

[Fear not, gentle girl, the sneers of the womenkind, nor thou, young man, the pointed fingers of who can credit not the truth of love.]

To lead their own lives, irrespective of all criticism and custom, and graft into the great Heart of the world and each other.

* * * * *

Wild as a raven, and a free lover of Nature, is the Irish squire’s daughter. She hates all the conventions and proprieties with an instinctive hatred—she hardly knows why. She is loved by a man whom the family consider beneath them. He is not without his faults certainly. But when her parents turn fiercely on her and him, she determines at all costs to stick to him. Her sister, the dove, approved and admired by everybody, marries a young Earl just come into the title; and she on the same day goes off with her friend, and is forbidden to cross, and in fact never crosses, the threshold of her home again.

The newly-made wife, wedded to an army officer, finds almost immediately after marriage that their temperaments are wholly incompatible. Instead of sacrificing herself to ‘duty’ or propriety, she has the good sense to insist on leaving him: on leaving him his freedom, and herself the same, as far as may be, for the future.

And this is of a young man, a man about town and the clubs, and well up in the finesse of society, but of real affectionate nature—who was truly bored with his own pursuits and surroundings, and so for him too the barriers vanished.

He fell in with a girl of quite rustic birth and life, but bright-looking, and of sturdy almost stubborn common-sense and wit; and was charmed—partly by her contrast to all that he was accustomed to.

Ultimately—and after some obstinate and exasperating refusals on her part—he made her his wife; much to the disgust of his relatives—whose only consolation was to find he did not intend to bring her among them!

She in fact felt (and he knew) that she could not cope with ‘society’ ways and customs, and her true instinct was to spare herself the vulgarity.

They took a little house near London, and lived quietly and happily, allowing any of their friends, who had good sense enough, to come and see them—she meanwhile learning much about the great world, and he learning much which he had never known before about practical work and the needs of the people.

Then, later on, when he came into his estate, and they went down into the country, instead of living in the ancestral wigwam they agreed it better to build a decent-sized cottage in the grounds for their own use;

And the Hall and outbuildings they fitted up as Workshops; and gradually getting the village lads and girls together found them employment at various small trades and crafts;

Till with the output of good and artistic work, their market became assured, and the affair grew rapidly in extent and solidity.

And the larger rooms they adorned in every way for library and reading purposes, and music and entertainments of all kinds; and the grounds were partly for recreation and partly for the cultivation of produce;

So that before long the place became much known and sought after, and the employees (who all had a share in the concern) were mighty proud of it.

Certainly the old county society felt somewhat shocked and uncomfortable, and even the tenant-farmers thought things were being carried too far;

But the young couple stuck to their programme, and as years went on, and after various obstacles and opposition lived down, their lives became the centre of the love and affection of the whole neighborhood, great and small, but especially the small;

And they achieved a real distinction, and the finest kind of aristocracy.

_O little sister Heart, without thy big brother the rude Brain what
wouldst thou do?_

_So I see thee sitting in thy solitary chamber, poring over a figure in a cameo—_

_So yearning lost desirous, faint forgetful,_

_Failing almost thy daily service of the body._

_Then comes thy brother and snatches thee by the hand, saying, “Come out here into the world:_

_See all these wonderful things, and all there is to do;”_

_And talks so eloquent, so persuasively,_

_Soon thou art busy with him and his affairs, and the great world outside there in the sun;_

_Till presently he rests or sleeps awhile—and thou returning_

_Gazest again on the cameo in thy chamber._

FORMS ETERNAL AS THE MOUNTAINS

So, when for an instant my friends (and I myself) appeared like insubstantial forms whirled to and fro in the world, now jostled against each other, now carried apart—the sport of the winds and the waves, and puppets moved by the tangled threads of chance:

All at once the heavens opened, and I beheld, magnificent, serene—

Like mountains in the morning towering over the earth, changeless, or changing only as the mountains change,

[And Time and all the years were but a mist which rolled against them,

Hiding, revealing, here an outline, there an outline,

Here a ledge of blooming flowers, there a black and lowering crag]—

That other world where the Sun shines for ever,

Those other Forms that move not from their place.

SPENDING THE NIGHT ALONE

To lie all night beside the loved one—how lovely!

To hold in one’s arms something so precious, so beautiful,

Dear head and hair and lips and limbs that shrine eternity,

Through scent and sense and breath and touch and love—

Forgetting all but this one—all but this one.

* * * * *

And then again to spend the night alone, to resume oneself—

To sail out in the silent watches over the sleeping world, and drink of the intoxication of space,

Calm, self-centred, to the great first One united;

Over-looking the wide sleeping-grounds of Time—forms of the past, the future—comrades innumerable,

Lovers possible, all safely eternally embosomed;

Kissing them lightly on the lips, the forehead,

Leaving them sleeping,

Spending the night alone.

O JOY DIVINE OF FRIENDS

O joy divine of friends!

To hold within the circle of one’s arms

More than the universe holds:

So sweet, so rare, so precious beyond words,

The god so tenderly mortal!

* * * * *

Not kisses only or embraces,

Nor the sweet pain and passion of the flesh alone;

But more, far more,

To feel (ah joy!) the creature deep within

Touch on its mate, unite, and lie entranced

There, ages down, and ages long, in light,

Suffused, divine—where all these other pleasures

Fade but to symbols of that perfect union!

O CHILD OF URANUS

O child of Uranus, wanderer down all times,

Darkling, from farthest ages of the Earth the same

Strange tender figure, full of grace and pity,

Yet outcast and misunderstood of men—

* * * * *

Thy Woman-soul within a Man’s form dwelling,

[Was Adam perchance like this, ere Eve from his side was drawn?]

So gentle, gracious, dignified, complete,

With man’s strength to perform, and pride to suffer without sign,

And feminine sensitiveness to the last fibre of being;

Strange twice-born, having entrance to both worlds—

Loved, loved by either sex,

And free of all their lore!

* * * * *

I see thee where down all of Time thou comest;

And women break their alabaster caskets, kiss and anoint thy feet, and bless the womb that bare thee,

While in thy bosom with thee, lip to lip,

Thy younger comrade lies.

* * * * *

Lord of the love which rules this changing world,

Passing all partial loves, this one complete—the Mother love and sex-emotion blended—

I see thee where for centuries thou hast walked,

Lonely, the world of men,

Saving, redeeming, drawing all to thee,

Yet outcast, slandered, pointed of the mob,

Misjudged and crucified.

* * * * *

Dear Son of heaven—long suffering wanderer through the wildernesses of civilisation—

The day draws nigh when from these mists of ages

Thy form in glory clad shall reappear.

ONE AT A TIME

A million faces, loves, bodies, lives—a million souls,

Pouring down Time—

As in a dream I see, and know my own.

All nations, classes, trades, ranks, temperaments,

[The soldier’s cap, the felon’s crop, the bishop’s mitre,

Under the eyelids of the peasant woman, beneath the burnous of the Arab chieftain,]

A million souls, yet from the rest at once distinguished—by the first glance revealed—

I see, and know my own.

* * * * *

[Nay through the ages, loved ones, true to you,

Inseparable at heart I still remain,

Nor doubt you for an instant, nor myself.]

* * * * *

But here, to-day, may-be of all One only

The hour, the strict Eternity of Time,

Presents—and I accept.

May-be the least, unworthiest as the world would say,

Yet even so sufficient—for blest the hour

Which brings what, else, Eternity would miss!

Another day the worthiest may claim me;

To-day we two alone will be the world:

And Love, the Lord of all, shall dwell between us.

THE DEAD COMRADE

There among the woods, after the battle returning,

In a little open spot—how well I remember it—

Where the ground was red with the blood of my lover, my dead comrade,

[Him whom to save I would have died so gladly, O so gladly,

Whom I could not at any time bear to see suffer even a little hurt,

So tenderly we loved, so tenderly,]

There on the stained red ground, in the midst of the clotted precious blood, not even yet dry, stood a small yellow flower—