{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_5772/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_5772","id":"gutenberg_5772","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5772","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Poetry","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Theosophy"],"text":"Transcription by M.R.J.\n\n\n\n\nAE In The Irish Theosophist\n        --By \"AE\" (George William Russell)\n\n\nContents:\n\n1--A Word Upon the Objects of the Theosophical Society\n2--The Twilight Hour\n3--The Mask of Apollo\n4--The Secret of Power\n5--The Priestess of the Woods\n6--A Tragedy in the Temple\n7--Jagrata, Svapna and Sushupti\n8--Concentration\n9--Verse by AE in \"The Irish Theosophist\" (39 verses)\n10--The Element Language\n11--At the Dawn of the Kali Yuga\n12--The Meditation of Parvati\n13--A Talk by the Euphrates\n14--The Cave of Lilith\n15--A Strange Awakening\n16--The Midnight Blossom\n17--The Story of a Star\n18--How Theosophy Affects One's View of Life\n19--Comfort\n20--The Ascending Cycle\n21--The Mystic Night's Entertainment\n22--On the Spur of the Moment\n23--The Legends of Ancient Eire\n24--Review:  Lyrics of Fitzpatrick\n25--\"Yes, And Hope\"\n26--Content\n27--The Enchantment of Cuchullain\n28--Shadow and Substance\n29--On the Passing of W.Q. Judge\n30--Self-Reliance\n31--The Mountains\n32--Works and Days\n33--The Childhood of Apollo\n34--The Awakening of the Fires\n35--Our Secret Ties\n36--Priest or Hero?\n37--The Age of the Spirit\n38--A Thought Along the Road\n39--The Fountains of Youth\n\n\n\n\n\nA Word Upon the Objects of the Theosophical Society\n\n\n\n\n1st:--To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity,\nwithout distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color.\n\n2nd:---To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures,\nreligions, philosophies and sciences, and demonstrate the importance\nof that study.\n\n3rd:---To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychic\npowers latent in man.\n\nStarted a little under a quarter of a century ago, in an age\ngrown cold with unbelief and deadened by inexplicable dogmas, the\nTheosophical Society has found adherents numerous enough to make\nit widely known, and enthusiastic enough to give it momentum and\nmake it a living force.  The proclamation of its triple objects--\nbrotherhood, wisdom and power, acted like a trumpet call, and many\ncame forth to join it, emerging from other conflicts;  and out of\nsilence and retirement came many who had grown hopeless but who\nhad still the old feeling at heart.\n\nFor the first object no explanation is necessary;  but a word or\ntwo of comment upon the second and third may help to show how they\ndo not weaken, by turning into other channels, the intellectual\nenergies and will, which might serve to carry out the first.  In\nthese old philosophies of the East we find the stimulus to brotherly\naction which might not be needed in an ideal state, but which is\na help to the many, who, born into the world with a coldness of\nheart as their heritage, still wish to do their duty.  Now out duty\nalters according to our conception of nature, and in the East there\nhas been put forward, by men whom we believe to be the wise and\ngreat of the earth, a noble philosophy, a science of life itself,\nand this, not as a hypothesis, but as truth which is certain, truth\nwhich has been verified by eyes which see deeper than ours, and\nproclaimed by the voices of those who have become the truth they\nspeak of;  for as Krishna teaches Arjuna in the Dayanishvari:\n\"on this Path to whatever place one would go that place one's self\nbecomes!\"  The last word of this wisdom is unity.  Underneath all\nphenomena and surviving all changes, a great principle endures\nfor ever.  At the great white dawn of existence, from this principle\nstream spirit and primordial matter;  as they flow away further\nfrom their divine source, they become broken up, the one life into\ncountless lives, matter into countless forms, which enshrine these\nlives;  spirit involves itself into matter and matter evolves,\nacted upon by this informing fire.\n\nThese lives wander on through many a cycle's ebb and flow, in\nseparation and sorrow, with sometimes the joy of a momentary meeting.\nOnly by the recognition of that unity, which spiritually is theirs,\ncan they obtain freedom.\n\nIt is true in the experience of the race that devotion of any life\nto universal ends brings to that life a strange subtle richness and\nstrength;  by our mood we fasten ourselves into the Eternal;  hence\nthese historic utterances, declarations of permanence and a spiritual\nstate of consciousness, which have been the foundation of all great\nreligious movements.  Christ says, \"I and my Father are one.\"\n\"Before Abraham was I am.\"  Paul says, \"In him we live and move\nand have our being.\"\n\nIn the sacred books of India it is the claim of many sages that\nthey have recognised \"the ancient constant and eternal which perishes\nnot through the body be slain,\" and there are not wanting to-day\nmen who speak of a similar expansion of their consciousness, out\nof the gross and material, into more tender, wise and beautiful\nstates of thought and being.  Tennyson, in a famous letter published\nsome time ago, mentioned that he had at different times experienced\nsuch a mood;  the idea of death was laughable;  it was not thought,\nbut a state;  \"the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest.\"\nIt would be easy to do on multiplying instances.\n\nNow in a nature where unity underlies all differences, where soul\nis bound to soul more than star to star;  where if one falters or\nfails the order of all the rest is changed;  the duty of any man\nwho perceives this unity is clear, the call for brotherly action\nis imperative, selfishness cannot any longer wear the mask of wisdom,\nfor isolation is folly and shuts us out from the eternal verities.\n\nThe third object of the society defined as \"the study of the psychic\npowers latent in man\" is pursued only by a portion of the members;\nthose who wish to understand more clearly the working of certain\nlaws of nature and who wish to give themselves up more completely\nto that life in which they live and move and have their being;\nand the outward expression of the occult life is also brotherhood.\n\n--Nov. 15, 1892\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Hour of Twilight\n\n\n\n\nFor the future we intend that at this hour the Mystic shall be at home,\nless metaphysical and scientific than is his wont, but more really\nhimself.  It is customary at this hour, before the lamps are brought in,\nto give way a little and dream, letting all the tender fancies day\nsuppresses rise up in out minds.  Wherever it is spent, whether in\nthe dusky room or walking home through the blue evening, all things\ngrow strangely softened and united;  the magic of the old world\nreappears.  The commonplace streets take on something of the grandeur\nand solemnity of starlit avenues of Egyptian temples the public\nsquares in the mingled glow and gloom grow beautiful as the Indian\ngrove where Sakuntala wandered with her maidens;  the children chase\neach other through the dusky shrubberies, as they flee past they\nlook at us with long remembered glances:  lulled by the silence,\nwe forget a little while the hard edges of the material and remember\nthat we are spirits.\n\nNow is the hour for memory, the time to call in and make more securely\nour own all stray and beautiful ideas that visited us during the day,\nand which might otherwise be forgotten.  We should draw them in from\nthe region of things felt to the region of things understood;  in\na focus burning with beauty and pure with truth we should bind them,\nfor from the thoughts thus gathered in something accrues to the\nconsciousness;  on the morrow a change impalpable but real has taken\nplace in our being, we see beauty and truth through everything.\n\nIt is in like manner in Devachan, between the darkness of earth\nand the light of spiritual self-consciousness, that the Master in\neach of us draws in and absorbs the rarest and best of experiences,\nlove, self-forgetfulness, aspiration, and out of these distils the\nsubtle essence of wisdom, so that he who struggles in pain for his\nfellows, when he wakens again on earth is endowed with the tradition\nof that which we call self-sacrifice, but which is in reality the\nproclamation of our own universal nature.  There are yet vaster\ncorrespondences, for so also we are told, when the seven worlds\nare withdrawn, the great calm Shepherd of the Ages draws his misty\nhordes together in the glimmering twilights of eternity, and as\nthey are penned within the awful Fold, the rays long separate are\nbound into one, and life, and joy, and beauty disappear, to emerge\nagain after rest unspeakable on the morning of a New Day.\n\nNow if the aim of the mystic be to fuse into one all moods made\nseparate by time, would not the daily harvesting of wisdom render\nunnecessary the long Devachanic years?  No second harvest could be\nreaped from fields where the sheaves are already garnered.  Thus\ndisregarding the fruits of action, we could work like those who\nhave made the Great Sacrifice, for whom even Nirvana is no resting\nplace.  Worlds may awaken in nebulous glory, pass through their\nphases of self-conscious existence and sink again to sleep, but\nthese tireless workers continue their age-long task of help.  Their\nmotive we do not know, but in some secret depth of our being we\nfeel that there could be nothing nobler, and thinking this we have\ndevoted the twilight hour to the understanding of their nature.\n\n--February 15, 1893\n\n\n\nThere are dreams which may be history or may be allegory.  There\nis in them nothing grotesque, nothing which could mar the feeling\nof authenticity, the sense of the actual occurence of the dream\nincident.  The faces and figures perceived have the light shade\nand expression which seems quite proper to the wonderworld in\nwhich the eye of the inner man has vision;  and yet the story may\nbe read as a parable of spiritual truth like some myth of ancient\nscripture.  Long ago I had may such dreams, and having lately\nbecome a student of such things, I have felt an interest in recalling\nthe more curious and memorable of these early vision.\n\nThe nebulous mid-region between waking and unconsciousness was the\nhaunt of many strange figures, reflections perhaps from that true\nlife led during sleep by the immortal man.  Among these figures\ntwo awoke the strangest feelings of interest.  One was an old man\nwith long grey hair and beard, whose grey-blue eyes had an expression\nof secret and inscrutable wisdom;  I felt an instinctive reverence\nfor this figure, so expressive of spiritual nobility, and it became\nassociated in my mind with all aspiration and mystical thought.\nThe other figure was that of a young girl.  These two appeared again\nand again in my visions;  the old man always as instructor, the\ngirl always as companion.  I have here written down one of these\nadventures, leaving it to the reader to judge whether it is purely\nsymbolical, or whether the incidents related actually took place,\nand were out-realized from latency by the power of the Master within.\n\nWith the girl as my companion I left an inland valley and walked\ntowards the sea.  It was evening when we reached it and the tide\nwas far out.  The sands glimmered away for miles on each side of us;\nwe walked outwards through the dim coloured twilight, I was silent;\na strange ecstacy slowly took possession of me, as if drop by drop\nan unutterable life was falling within;  the fever grew intense,\nthen unbearable as it communicated itself to the body;  with a wild\ncry I began to spin about, whirling round and round in ever increasing\ndelirium;  Some secretness was in the air;  I was called forth by\nthe powers of invisible nature and in a swoon I fell.  I rose again\nwith sudden memory, but my body was lying upon the sands;  with a\ncurious indifference I saw that the tide was on the turn and the\nchild was unable to remove the insensible form beyond its reach;\nI saw her sit down beside it and place the head upon her lap;\nshe sat there quietly waiting, while all about her little by little\nthe wave of the Indian sea began to ripple inwards, and overhead\nthe early stars began softly to glow.\n\nAfter this I forgot completely the child and the peril of the waters,\nI began to be conscious of the presence of a new world.  All around\nme currents were flowing, in whose waves dance innumerable lives;\ndiaphanous forms glided about, a nebulous sparkle was everywhere\napparent;  faces as of men in dreams glimmered on me, or unconsciously\ntheir forms drifted past, and now and then a face looked sternly\nupon me with a questioning glance.  I was not to remain long in\nthis misty region, again I felt the internal impulse and internally\nI was translated into a sphere of more pervading beauty and light;\nand here with more majesty and clearness than I had observed before\nwas the old man of my dreams.\n\nI had though of him as old but there was an indescribable youth\npervading the face with its ancient beauty, and then I knew it was\nneither age nor youth, it was eternalness.  The calm light of thought\nplayed over features clear cut as a statue's, and an inner luminousness\nshone through the rose of his face and his silver hair.\n\nThere were others about but of them I had no distinct vision.\n\nHe said, \"You who have lived and wandered through our own peculiar\nvalleys look backwards now and learn the alchemy of thought.\"  He\ntouched me with his hand and I became aware of the power of these\nstrange beings.  I felt how they had waited in patience, how they\nhad worked and willed in silence;  from them as from a fountain\nwent forth peace;  to them as to the stars rose up unconsciously\nthe aspirations of men, the dumb animal cravings, the tendrils of\nthe flowers.  I saw how in the valley where I lived, where naught\nhad hindered, their presence had drawn forth in luxuriance all dim\nand hidden beauty, a rarer and pure atmosphere recalled the radiant\nlife of men in the golden dawn of the earth.\n\nWith wider vision I saw how far withdrawn from strife they had\nstilled the tumults of nations;  I saw how hearing far within the\nvoices, spiritual, remote, which called, the mighty princes of the\nearth descended from their thrones becoming greater than princes;\nunder this silent influence the terrible chieftains flung open the\ndoors of their dungeons that they themselves might become free,\nand all these joined in that hymn which the quietude of earth makes\nto sound in the ears of the gods.--Overpowered I turned round, the\neyes of light were fixed upon me.\n\n\"Do you now understand?\"\n\n\"I do not understand,\" I replied.  I see that the light and the\nbeauty and the power that enters the darkness of the world comes\nfrom these high regions;  but I do not know how the light enters,\nno how beauty is born, I do not know the secret of power.\"\n\n\"You must become as one of us,\" he answered.\n\nI bowed my head until it touched his breast;  I felt my life was\nbeing drawn from me, but before consciousness utterly departed and\nwas swallowed up in that larger life, I learned something of the\nsecret of their being;  I lived within the minds of men, but their\nthoughts were not my thoughts;  I hung like a crown over everything,\nyet age was no nearer than childhood to the grasp of my sceptre\nand sorrow was far away when it wept for my going, and very far\nwas joy when it woke at my light;  yet I was the lure that led\nthem on;  I was at the end of all ways, and I was also in the sweet\nvoice that cried \"return;\" and I had learned how spiritual life\nis one in all things, when infinite vistas and greater depths\nreceived me, and I went into that darkness out of which no memory\ncan ever return.\n\n--March 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Mask of Apollo\n\n\n\n\nA tradition rises up within me of quiet, unrumoured years, ages\nbefore the demigods and heroes toiled at the making of Greece,\nlong ages before the building of the temples and sparkling palaces\nof her day of glory.  The land was pastoral, all over its woods\nhung a stillness as of dawn and of unawakened beauty deep-breathing\nin rest.  Here and there little villages sent up their smoke and\na dreamy people moved about;  they grew up, toiled a little at\ntheir fields, followed their sheep and goats, they wedded and grey\nage overtook them, but they never ceased to be children.  They\nworshiped the gods with ancient rites in little wooden temples and\nknew many things which were forgotten in later years.\n\nNear one of these shrines lived a priest, an old man whose simple\nand reverend nature made him loved by all around.  To him, sitting\none summer evening before his hut, came a stranger whom he invited\nto share his meal.  The stranger sat down and began to tell him\nmany wonderful things, stories of the magic of the sun and of the\nbright beings who moved at the gates of the day.  The old priest\ngrew drowsy in the warm sunlight and fell asleep.  Then the stranger\nwho was Apollo arose and in the guise of the old priest entered\nthe little temple, and the people came in unto him one after the other.\n\nAgathon, the husbandman.  \"Father, as I bend over the fields or\nfasten up the vines, I sometimes remember how you said that the\ngods can be worshiped by doing these things as by sacrifice.  How\nis it, father, that the pouring of cool water over roots, or training\nup the branches can nourish Zeus?  How can the sacrifice appear\nbefore his throne when it is not carried up in the fire and vapour.\"\n\nApollo.  \"Agathon, the father omnipotent does not live only in the\naether.  He runs invisibly within the sun and stars, and as they\nwhirl round and round, they break out into woods and flowers and\nstreams, and the winds are shaken away from them like leaves from\noff the roses.  Great, strange and bright, he busies himself within,\nand at the end of time his light shall shine through and men shall\nsee it, moving in a world of flame.\n\nThink then, as you bend over your fields, of what you nourish and\nwhat rises up within them.  Know that every flower as it droops in\nthe quiet of the woodland feels within and far away the approach\nof an unutterable life and is glad, they reflect that life even\nas the little pools take up the light of the stars.  Agathon, Agathon,\nZeus is no greater in the aether than he is in the leaf of grass,\nand the hymns of men are no sweeter to him than a little water\npoured over one of his flowers.\"\n\nAgathon the husbandman went away and bent tenderly over his fruits\nand vines, and he loved each one of them more than before, and he\ngrew wise in many things as he watched them and he was happy working\nfor the gods.\n\nThen spake Damon the shepherd, \"Father, while the flocks are browsing\ndreams rise up within me;  they make the heart sick with longing;\nthe forests vanish, I hear no more the lamb's bleat or the rustling\nof the fleeces;  voices from a thousand depths call me, they whisper,\nthey beseech me, shadows lovelier than earth's children utter music,\nnot for me though I faint while I listen.  Father, why do I hear\nthe things others hear not, voices calling to unknown hunters of\nwide fields, or to herdsmen, shepherds of the starry flocks\"?\n\nApollo answered, \"Damon, a song stole from the silence while the\ngods were not yet, and a thousand ages passed ere they came, called\nforth by the music, and a thousand ages they listened then joined\nin the song;  then began the worlds to glimmer shadowy about them\nand bright beings to bow before them.  These, their children, began\nin their turn to sing the song that calls forth and awakens life.\nHe is master of all things who has learned their music.  Damon,\nheed not the shadows, but the voices, the voices have a message\nto thee from beyond the gods.  Learn their song and sing it over\nagain to the people until their hearts too are sick with longing\nand they can hear the song within themselves.  Oh, my son, I see\nfar off how the nations shall join in it as in a chorus, and hearing\nit the rushing planets shall cease from their speed and be steadfast;\nmen shall hold starry sway.\"  The face of the god shone through\nthe face of the old man, and filled with awe, it was so full of\nsecretness.  Damon the herdsman passed from his presence and a\nstrange fire was kindled in his heart.  Then the two lovers, Dion\nand Neaera, came in and stood before Apollo.\n\nDion spake, \"Father, you who are so wise can tell us what love is,\nso that we shall never miss it.  Old Tithonius nods his grey head\nat us as we pass;  he says, 'only with the changeless gods has\nlove endurance, for men the loving time is short and its sweetness\nis soon over.'\"\n\nNeaera added.  \"But it is not true, father, for his drowsy eyes\nlight when he remembers the old days, when he was happy and proud\nin love as we are.\"\n\nApollo.  \"My children, I will tell you the legend how love came\ninto the world and how it may endure.  It was on high Olympus the\ngods held council at the making of man;  each had brought a gift,\nthey gave to man something of their own nature.  Aphrodite, the\nloveliest and sweetest, paused and was about to add a new grace\nto his person, but Eros cried, \"let them not be so lovely without,\nlet them be lovelier within.  Put you own soul in, O mother.\"\nThe mighty mother smiled, and so it was;  and now whenever love\nis like hers, which asks not return but shines on all because it\nmust, within that love Aphrodite dwells and it becomes immortal\nby her presence.\"\n\nThen Dion and Neaera went out, and as they walked homewards through\nthe forest, purple and vaporous in the evening light, they drew\ncloser together;  and Dion looking into her eyes saw there a new gleam,\nviolet, magical, shining, there was the presence of Aphrodite, there\nwas her shrine.\n\nThen came in unto Apollo the two grandchildren of old Thithonius\nand they cried, \"See the flowers we have brought you, we gathered\nthem for you down in the valley where they grow best.\"  Then Apollo\nsaid, \"What wisdom shall we give to children that they may remember?\nOur most beautiful for them!\"  As he stood and looked at them the\nmask of age and secretness vanished, he stood before them radiant\nin light;  they laughed in joy at his beauty;  he bent down and\nkissed them each upon the forehead then faded away into the light\nwhich was his home.  As the sun sank down amid the blue hills the\nold priest awoke with a sigh and cried out, \"Oh that we could talk\nwisely as we do in our dreams.\"\n\n--April 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Secret of Power\n\n\n\n\nIt is not merely because it is extraordinary that I wish to tell\nyou this story.  I think mere weirdness, grotesque or unusual character,\nare not sufficient reasons for making public incidents in which\nthere is an element of the superhuman.  The world, in spite of its\ndesire to understand the nature of the occult is sick of and refuses\nto listen to stories of apparitions which betray no spiritual\ncharacter or reveal no spiritual law.  The incident here related is\nburned into my mind and life, not because of its dramatic intensity\nor personal character, but because it was a revelation of the secret\nof power, a secret which the wise in good and the wise in evil alike\nhave knowledge of.\n\nMy friend Felix was strangely disturbed;  not only were his material\naffairs unsettled, but he was also passing through a crisis in his\nspiritual life.  Two paths were open before him;  On one side lay\nthe dazzling mystery of passion;  on the other \"the small old path\"\nheld out its secret and spiritual allurements.  I had hope that\nhe would choose the latter, and as I was keenly interested in his\ndecision.  I invested the struggle going on in his mind with something\nof universal significance, seeing in it a symbol of the strife between\n\"light and darkness which are the world's eternal ways.\"  He came\nin late one evening.  I saw at once by the dim light that there\nwas something strange in his manner.  I spoke to him in enquiry;\nhe answered me in a harsh dry voice quite foreign to his usual manner.\n\"Oh, I am not going to trouble myself any more, I will let things\ntake their course.\"  This seemed the one idea in his mind, the one\nthing he understood clearly was that things were to take their own\ncourse;  he failed to grasp the significance of any other idea or\nits relative importance.  He answered \"Aye, indeed,\" with every\nappearance of interest and eagerness to some trivial remark about\nthe weather, and was quite unconcerned about another and most\nimportant matter which should have interested him deeply.  I soon\nsaw what had happened;  his mind, in which forces so evenly balanced\nhad fought so strenuously, had become utterly wearied out and could\nwork no longer.  A flash of old intuition illumined it at last,--\nit was not wise to strive with such bitterness over life,--therefore\nhe said to me in memory of this intuition, \"I am going to let things\ntake their course.\"  A larger tribunal would decide;  he had appealed\nunto Caesar.  I sent him up to his room and tried to quiet his fever\nby magnetization with some success.  He fell asleep, and as I was\nrather weary myself I retired soon after.\n\nThis was the vision of the night.  It was surely in the room I was\nlying and on my bed, and yet space opened on every side with pale,\nclear light.  A slight wavering figure caught my eye, a figure that\nswayed to and fro;  I was struck with its utter feebleness, yet I\nunderstood it was its own will or some quality of its nature which\ndetermined that palpitating movement towards the poles between which\nit swung.  What were they?  I became silent as night and thought\nno more.\n\nTwo figures awful in their power opposed each other;  the frail\nbeing wavering between them could by putting out its arms have\ntouched them both.  It alone wavered, for they were silent, resolute\nand knit in the conflict of will;  they stirred not a hand nor a foot;\nthere was only a still quivering now and then as of intense effort,\nbut they made no other movement.  Their heads were bent forward\nslightly, their arms folded, their bodies straight, rigid, and\ninclined slightly backwards from each other like two spokes of a\ngigantic wheel.  What were they, these figures?  I knew not, and\nyet gazing upon them, thought which took no words to clothe itself\nmutely read their meaning.  Here were the culminations of the human,\ntowering images of the good and evil man may aspire to.  I looked\nat the face of the evil adept.  His bright red-brown eyes burned\nwith a strange radiance of power;  I felt an answering emotion of pride,\nof personal intoxication, of psychic richness rise up within me gazing\nupon him.  His face was archetypal;  the abstract passion which\neluded me in the features of many people I knew, was here declared,\nexultant, defiant, giantesque;  it seem to leap like fire, to be free.\nIn this face I was close to the legendary past, to the hopeless\nworlds where men were martyred by stony kings, where prayer was\nhopeless, where pity was none.  I traced a resemblance to many of\nthe great Destroyers in history whose features have been preserved,\nNapoleon, Ramses and a hundred others, named and nameless, the long\nline of those who were crowned and sceptered in cruelty.  His strength\nwas in human weakness, I saw this, for space and the hearts of men\nwere bare before me.  Out of space there flowed to him a stream\nhalf invisible of red;  it nourished that rich radiant energy of\npassion;  it flowed from men as they walked and brooded in loneliness,\nor as they tossed in sleep.  I withdrew my gaze from this face which\nawoke in me a lurid sense accompaniment, and turned it on the other.\nAn aura of pale soft blue was around this figure through which gleamed\nan underlight as of universal gold.  The vision was already dim and\ndeparting, but I caught a glimpse of a face godlike in its calm,\nterrible in the beauty of a life we know only in dreams, with strength\nwhich is the end of the hero's toil, which belongs to the many times\nmartyred soul;  yet not far away not in the past was its power, it\nwas the might of life which exists eternally.  I understood how\neasy it would have been for this one to have ended the conflict,\nto have gained a material victory by its power, but this would not\nhave touched on or furthered its spiritual ends.  Only its real\nbeing had force to attract that real being which was shrouded in\nthe wavering figure.  This truth the adept of darkness knew also\nand therefore he intensified within the sense of pride and passionate\npersonality.  Therefore they stirred not a hand nor a foot while\nunder the stimulus of their presence culminated the good and evil\nin the life which had appealed to a higher tribunal to decide.\nThen this figure wavering between the two moved forward and touched\nwith its hand the Son of Light.  All at once the scene and actors\nvanished, and the eye that saw them was closed, I was alone with\ndarkness and a hurricane of thoughts.\n\nStrange and powerful figures!  I knew your secret of strength, it\nis only to be, nature quickened by your presence leaps up in response.\nI knew no less the freedom of that human soul, for your power only\nrevealed its unmanifest nature, it but precipitated experience.\nI knew that although the gods and cosmic powers may war over us\nfor ever, it is we alone declare them victors or vanquished.\n\nFor the rest the vision of that night was prophetic, and the feet\nof my friend are now set on that way which was the innermost impulse\nof his soul.\n\n--May 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Priestess of the Woods\n\n\n\n\n\nHere is a legend whispered to me, the land or time I cannot tell,\nit may have been in the old Atlantean days.  There were vast woods\nand a young priestess ruled them;  she presided at the festivals\nand sacrificed at the altar for the people, interceding with the\nspirits of fire, water air and earth, that the harvest might not\nbe burned up, nor drenched with the floods, nor town by storms and\nthat the blight might not fall upon it, which things the elemental\nspirits sometimes brought about.  This woodland sovereignty was\nher heritage from her father who was a mighty magician before her.\nAround her young days floated the faery presences;  she knew them\nas other children know the flowers having neither fear nor wonder\nfor them.  She saw deeper things also;  as a little child, wrapped\nup in her bearskin, she watched with awe her father engaged in mystic\nrites;  when around him the airy legions gathered from the populous\nelements, the spirits he ruled and the spirits he bowed down before:\nfleeting nebulous things white as foam coming forth from the great\ndeep who fled away at the waving of his hand;  and rarer the great\nsons of fire, bright and transparent as glass, who though near\nseemed yet far away and were still and swift as the figures that\nglance in a crystal.  So the child grew up full of mystery;  her\nthoughts were not the thoughts of the people about her, nor their\naffections her affections.  It seemed as if the elf-things or beings\ncarved by the thought of the magician, pushed aside by his strong\nwill and falling away from him, entering into the child became\npart of her, linking her to the elemental beings who live in the\nstar-soul that glows within the earth.  Her father told her such\nthings as she asked, but he died while she was yet young and she\nknew not his aim, what man is, or what is his destiny;  but she\nknew the ways of every order of spirit that goes about clad in a\nform, how some were to be dreaded and some to be loved;  By reason\nof this knowledge she succeeded as priestess to the shrine, and\nheld the sway of beauty and youth, of wisdom and mystery over the\npeople dwelling in the woods.\n\nIt was the evening of the autumn festival, the open grassy space\nbefore the altar was crowded with figures, hunters with their\nfeathered heads;  shepherds, those who toil in the fields, the old\nand hoary were gathered around.\n\nThe young priestess stood up before them;  she was pale from vigil,\nand the sunlight coming through the misty evening air fell upon her\nswaying arms and her dress with its curious embroidery of peacock's\nfeathers;  the dark hollows of her eyes were alight and as she spoke\ninspiration came to her;  her voice rose and fell, commanding, warning,\nwhispering, beseeching;  its strange rich music flooded the woods\nand pierced through and through with awe the hearts of those who\nlistened.  She spoke of the mysteries of that unseen nature;  how\nman is watched and ringed round with hosts who war upon him, who\nwither up his joys by their breath;  she spoke of the gnomes who\nrise up in the woodland paths with damp arms grasping from their\nearthy bed.\n\n\"Dreadful\" she said \"are the elementals who live in the hidden waters:\nthey rule the dreaming heart:  their curse is forgetfulness;  they\nlull man to fatal rest, with drowsy fingers feeling to put out his\nfire of life.  But the most of all, dread the powers that move in air;\ntheir nature is desire unquenchable;  their destiny is--never to\nbe fulfilled--never to be at peace:  they roam hither and thither\nlike the winds they guide;  they usurp dominion over the passionate\nand tender soul, but they love not in our way;  where they dwell\nthe heart is a madness and the feet are filled with a hurrying fever,\nand night has no sleep and day holds no joy in its sunlit cup.\nListen not to their whisper;  they wither and burn up the body with\ntheir fire;  the beauty they offer is smitten through and through\nwith unappeasable anguish.\"  She paused for a moment;  here terrible\nbreath had hardly ceased to thrill them, when another voice was\nheard singing;  its note was gay and triumphant, it broke the spell\nof fear upon the people,\n\n\"I never heed by waste or wood\n        The cry of fay or faery thing\nWho tell of their own solitude;\n        Above them all my soul is king.\n\nThe royal robe as king I wear\n        Trails all along the fields of light;\nIts silent blue and silver bear\n        For gems the starry dust of night.\n\nThe breath of joy unceasingly\n        Waves to and fro its fold star-lit,\nAnd far beyond earth's misery\n        I live and breathe the joy of it.\"\n\nThe priestess advanced from the altar, her eyes sought for the singer;\nwhen she came to the centre of the opening she paused and waited\nsilently.  Almost immediately a young man carrying a small lyre\nstepped out of the crowd and stood before her;  he did not seem\nolder than the priestess;  he stood unconcerned though her dark\neyes blazed at the intrusion;  he met her gaze fearlessly;  his\neyes looked into hers--in this way all proud spirits do battle.\nHer eyes were black with almost a purple tinge, eyes that had looked\ninto the dark ways of nature;  his were bronze, and a golden tinge,\na mystic opulence of vitality seemed to dance in their depths;\nthey dazzled the young priestess with the secrecy of joy;  her eyes\nfell for a moment.  He turned round and cried out, \"Your priestess\nspeaks but half truths, her eyes have seen but her heart does not know.\nLife is not terrible but is full of joy.  Listen to me.  I passed\nby while she spake, and I saw that a fear lay upon every man, and\nyou shivered thinking of your homeward path, fearful as rabbits of\nthe unseen things, and forgetful how you have laughed at death facing\nthe monsters who crush down the forests.   Do you not know that you\nare greater than all these spirits before who you bow in dread;\nyour life springs from a deeper source.  Answer me, priestess, where\ngo the fire-spirits when winter seizes the world?\"\n\n\"Into the Fire-King they go, they dream in his heart.\"  She half\nchanted, the passion of her speech not yet fallen away from her.\n\"And where go the fires of men when they despair\"?  She was silent;\nthen he continued half in scorn,  \"Your priestess is the priestess\nof ghouls and fays rather than a priestess of men;  her wisdom is\nnot for you;  the spirits that haunt the elements are hostile because\nthey see you full of fear;  do not dread them and their hatred will\nvanish.  The great heart of the earth is full of laughter;  do not\nput yourselves apart from its joy, for its soul is your soul and\nits joy is your true being.\"\n\nHe turned and passed through the crowd;  the priestess made a motion\nas if she would have stayed him, then she drew herself up proudly\nand refrained.  They heard his voice again singing as he passed into\nthe darkening woods,\n\n\"The spirits to the fire-king throng\n        Each in the winter of his day:\nAnd all who listen to their song\n        Follow them after in that way.\n\nThey seek the heart-hold of the king,\n        They build within his halls of fire,\nTheir dreams flash like the peacock's wing,\n        They glow with sun-hues of desire.\n\nI follow in no faery ways;\n        I heed no voice of fay or elf;\nI in the winter of my days\n        Rest in the high ancestral self.\"\n\nThe rites interrupted by the stranger did not continue much longer;\nthe priestess concluded her words of warning;  she did not try to\nremove the impression created by the poet's song, she only said,\n\"His wisdom may be truer.  It is more beautiful than the knowledge\nwe inherit.\"\n\nThe days passed on;  autumn died into winter, spring came again\nand summer, and the seasons which brought change to the earth\nbrought change to the young priestess.  She sought no longer to\nhold sway over the elemental tribes, and her empire over them\ndeparted:  the song of the poet rang for ever in her ears;  its\nproud assertion of kingship and joy in the radiance of a deeper\nlife haunted her like truth;  but such a life seemed unattainable\nby her and a deep sadness rested in her heart.  The wood-people\noften saw her sitting in the evening where the sunlight fell along\nthe pool, waving slowly its azure and amethyst, sparkling and\nflashing in crystal and gold, melting as if a phantom Bird of\nParadise were fading away;  her dark head was bowed in melancholy\nand all the great beauty flamed and died away unheeded.  After a\ntime she rose up and moved about, she spoke more frequently to the\npeople who had not dared to question her, she grew into a more\nhuman softness, they feared her less and loved her more;  but she\nceased not from her passionate vigils and her step faltered and\nher cheek paled, and her eager spirit took flight when the diamond\nglow of winter broke out over the world.  The poet came again in\nthe summer;  they told him of the change they could not understand,\nbut he fathomed the depths of this wild nature, and half in gladness,\nhalf in sorrow, he carved an epitaph over her tomb near the altar,\n\nWhere is the priestess of this shrine,\n        And by what place does she adore?\nThe woodland haunt below the pine\n        Now hears her whisper nevermore.\n\nAh, wrapped in her own beauty now\n        She dreams a dream that shall not cease;\nPriestess, to her own soul to bow\n        Is hers in everlasting peace.\n\n--July 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nA Tragedy in the Temple\n\n\n\n\nI have often thought with sadness over the fate of that comrade.\nThat so ardent and heroic a spirit, so much chivalry and generosity\nshould meet such a horrible fate, has often made me wonder if there\nis any purpose in this tangled being of ours;  I have hated life\nand the gods as I thought of it.  What brought him out of those\ngreat deserts where his youth was spent, where his soul grew vast\nknowing only of two changes, the blaze of day and night the purifier,\nblue, mysterious, ecstatic with starry being?  Were not these enough\nfor him?  Could the fire of the altar inspire more?  Could he be\ninitiated deeper in the chambers of the temple than in those great\nand lonely places where God and man are alone together?  This was\nmy doing;  resting in his tent when I crossed the desert, I had\nspoken to him of that old wisdom which the priests of the inner\ntemple keep and hand down from one to the other;  I blew to flame\nthe mystic fire which already smouldered within him, and filled\nwith the vast ambition of God, he left his tribe and entered the\npriesthood as neophyte in the Temple of Isthar, below Ninevah.\n\nI had sometimes to journey thither bearing messages from our high\npriest, and so as time passed my friendship with Asur grew deep.\nThat last evening when I sat with him on the terrace that roofed\nthe temple, he was more silent than I had known him before to be;\nwe had generally so many things to speak of;  for he told me all\nhis dreams, such vague titanic impulses as the soul has in the\nfresh first years of its awakening, when no experience hinders\nwith memory its flights of aspiration, and no anguish has made\nit wise.  But that evening there was, I thought, something missing;\na curious feverishness seemed to have replaced the cool and hardy\npurity of manner which was natural to him;  his eyes had a strange\nglow, fitful and eager;  I saw by the starlight how restless his\nfingers were, they intertwined, twisted, and writhed in and out.\n\nWe sat long in the rich night together;  then he drew nearer to me\nand leaned his head near my shoulder;  he began to whisper incoherently\na wild and passionate tale;  the man's soul was being tempted.\n\n\"Brother\" he said, \"I am haunted by a vision, by a child of the\nstars as lovely as Isthar's self;  she visits my dreaming hours,\nshe dazzles me with strange graces, she bewilders with unspeakable\nlonging.  Sometime, I know, I must go to her, though I perish.\nWhen I see her I forget all else and I have will to resist no longer.\nThe vast and lonely inspiration of the desert departs from my thought,\nshe and the jewel-light she lives in blot it out.  The thought of\nher thrills me like fire.  Brother give me help, ere I go mad or die;\nshe draws me away from earth and I shall end my days amid strange\nthings, a starry destiny amid starry races.\"\n\nI was not then wise in these things, I did not know the terrible\ndangers that lurk in the hidden ways in which the soul travels.\n\"This\" I said \" is some delusion.  You have brooded over a fancy\nuntil it has become living;  you have filled your creation with\nyour own passion and it lingers and tempts you;  even if it were\nreal, it is folly to think of it, we must close our hearts to passion\nif we would attain the power and wisdom of Gods.\"\n\nHe shook his head, I could not realize or understand him.  Perhaps\nif I had known all and could have warned him, it would have been\nin vain;  perhaps the soul must work out its own purification in\nexperience and learn truth and wisdom through being.  Once more he\nbecame silent and restless.  I had to bid him farewell as I was to\ndepart on the morrow, but he was present in my thoughts and I could\nnot sleep because of him;  I felt oppressed with the weight of some\ndoom about to fall.  To escape from this feeling I rose in adoration\nto Hea;  I tried to enter into the light of that Wisdom;  a sudden\nheart-throb of warning drew me back;  I thought of Asur instinctively,\nand thinking of him his image flashed on me.  He moved as if in\ntrance through the glassy waves of those cosmic waters which\neverywhere lave and permeate the worlds, and in which our earth\nis but a subaqueous mound.  His head was bowed, his form dilated\nto heroic stature, as if he conceived of himself as some great\nthing or as moving to some high destiny;  and this shadow which\nwas the house of his dreaming soul grew brilliant with the passionate\nhues of his thought;  some power beyond him drew him forth.  I felt\nthe fever and heat of this inner sphere like a delirious breath\nblow fiercely about me;  there was a phosphorescence of hot and\nlurid colours.  The form of Asur moved towards a light streaming\nfrom a grotto, I could see within it burning gigantic flowers.\nOn one, as on a throne, a figure of weird and wonderful beauty was\nseated.  I was thrilled with a dreadful horror, I thought of the\nrace of Liliths, and some long forgotten and tragic legends rose\nup in my memory of these beings whose soul is but a single and\nterrible passion;  whose love too fierce for feebler lives to endure,\nbrings death or madness to men.  I tried to warn, to awaken him\nfrom the spell;  my will-call aroused him; he turned, recognized\nme and hesitated;  then this figure that lured him rose to her\nfull height;  I saw her in all her plume of a peacock, it was\nspotted with gold and green and citron dyes, she raised her arms\nupwards, her robe, semi-transparent, purple and starred over with\na jewel lustre, fell in vaporous folds to her feet like the drift\nover a waterfall.  She turned her head with a sudden bird-like\nmovement, her strange eyes looked into mine with a prolonged and\nsnaky glance;  I saw her move her arms hither and thither, and the\nwaves of this inner ocean began to darken and gather about me, to\nripple through me with feverish motion.  I fell into a swoon and\nremembered nothing more.\n\nI was awakened before dawn, those with whom I was to cross the\ndesert were about to start and I could remain no longer.  I wrote\nhurriedly to Asur a message full of warning and entreaty and set\nout on my return journey full of evil forebodings.  Some months\nafter I had again to visit the temple;  it was evening when I arrived;\nafter I had delivered the message with which I was charged, I asked\nfor Asur.  The priest to whom I spoke did not answer me.  He led\nme in silence up to the terrace that overlooked the desolate eastern\ndesert.  The moon was looming white upon the verge, the world was\ntrembling with heat, the winged bulls along the walls shone with\na dull glow through the sultry air.  The priest pointed to the far\nend of the terrace.  A figure was seated looking out over the desert,\nhis robes were motionless as if their wrinkles were carved of stone,\nhis hands lay on his knees, I walked up to him;  I called his name;\nhe did not stir.  I came nearer and put my face close to his, it\nwas as white as the moon, his eyes only reflected the light.  I\nturned away from him sick to the very heart.\n\n--September 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nJagrata, Svapna and Sushupti\n\n\n\n\nWhile the philosophical concepts of ancient India, concerning\nreligion and cosmogony, are to some extent familiar and appreciated\nin these countries, its psychology, intimately related with its\nreligion and metaphysics, is comparatively unknown.  In Europe the\ngreatest intellects have been occupied by speculations upon the\nlaws and aspects of physical nature, while the more spiritual Hindus\nwere absorbed in investigations as to the nature of life itself;\nby continual aspiration, devotion, introspection and self-analysis,\nthey had acquired vast knowledge of the states of consciousness\npossible for man to enter upon;  they had laid bare the anatomy\nof the mind, and described the many states that lay between the\nnormal waking condition of man, and the final state of spiritual\nfreedom and unity with BRAHMA, which it was the aim alike of religion\nand science to bring about.  Most interesting among their ideas,\nwas their analysis of the states of consciousness upon which we\nenter during sleep.  Roughly speaking, they may be divided into two,\nwhich together with the waking state, make a trinity of states\nthrough which every person passes, whether he be aware of it or not.\nThese states are known as:---Jagrata, waking;  Svapna, dreaming;\nand Sushupti, deep sleep.  The English equivalents of these words\ngive no idea of the states.  Passing our of Jagrata, the Indians\nheld that, beyond the chaotic borderland, we entered, in Svapna\nand Sushupti, upon real states of being.  Sushupti, the highest,\nwas accounted a spiritual state;  here the soul touches vaster\ncentres in the great life and has communion with celestial\nintelligences.  The unification of these states into one is one\nof the results of Raj-Yoga;  in this state the chela keeps memory\nof what occurred while his consciousness was in the planes of Svapna\nand Sushupti.  Entrance upon these states should not I think be\nunderstood as meaning that the mind has deserted its fleshly\ntabernacle in search of such experience.  Departure from the\nphysical form is no more necessary for this than for clairvoyence,\nbut a transfer of the consciousness in us from one plane to another\nis necessary.\n\nNow as we generate Karma in the dreaming and deep sleep states\nwhich may either help or hinder the soul in its evolution, it is\na matter of importance that we should take steps to promote the\nunification of these states, so that the knowledge and wisdom of\nany one state may be used to perfect the others.  Our thoughts and\nactions in the waking state react upon the dreaming and deep sleep,\nand our experiences in the latter influence us in the waking state\nby suggestion and other means.  The reason we do not remember what\noccurs in Svapna and Sushupti is because the astral matter which\nnormally surrounds the thinking principle is not subtle enough to\nregister in its fullness the experience of any one upon the more\nspiritual planes of consciousness.  To increase the responsiveness\nupon the more spiritual planes of consciousness.  To increase the\nresponsiveness of this subtle matter we have to practise concentration,\nand so heighten the vibrations, or in other words to evolve or perfect\nthe astral principle.  Modern science is rapidly coming to the\nconclusion that the differences perceived in objects around us, are\nnot differences in substance, but differences of vibration in one\nsubstance.  Take a copper wire;  pass electrical currents through it,\ngradually increasing their intensity, and phenomena of sound, heat\nand light will be manifest, the prismatic colours appearing one\nafter the other.  Similarly by an increased intensity in the\nperformance of every action, the consciousness is gradually\ntransferred from the lower to the higher planes.  In order to give\na point, or to direct the evolving faculties into their proper channel,\ncontinual aspiration is necessary.  Take some idea--the spiritual\nunity of all things, for example--something which can only be\nrealized by our complete absorption in spiritual nature;  let every\naction be performed in the light of this idea, let it be the subject\nof reverent thought.  If this is persisted in, we will gradually\nbegin to become conscious upon the higher planes, the force of\nconcentration carrying the mind beyond the waking into Svapna and\nSushupti.  The period between retiring to rest and awakening,\nformerly a blank, will begin to be spotted with bright lights of\nconsciousness, or, as we walk about during the day such knowledge\nwill visit us.  \"He who is perfected in devotion findeth spiritual\nknowledge springing up spontaneously in himself\" say Krishna.\nPatanjali recommends dwelling on the knowledge that presents itself\nin dreams;  if we think over any such experience, many things\nconnected with it will be revealed, and so gradually the whole\nshadowy region will become familiar and attractive, and we will\ngain a knowledge of our own nature which will be invaluable and\nwhich cannot otherwise be acquired.\n\n--January 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nConcentration\n\n\n\n\nBeyond waking, dreaming and deep sleep is Turya.  Here there is a\ncomplete change of condition;  the knowledge formerly sought in\nthe external world is now present within the consciousness;  the\nideations of universal mind are manifest in spiritual intuitions.\nThe entrance to this state is through Jagrata, Svapna, and Sushupti,\nand here that spiritual unity is realized, the longing for which\ndraws the soul upwards through the shadowy worlds of dreaming and\ndeep sleep.  I have thought it necessary to supplement the brief\nstatement made in the previous number by some further remarks upon\nconcentration, for the term applied without reference to the Turya\nstate is liable to be misunderstood and a false impression might\narise that the spiritual is something to be sought for outside\nourselves.  The waking, dreaming and deep sleep states correspond\nto objective worlds, while Turya is subjective, including in itself\nall ideals.  If this is so, we can never seek for the true beyond\nourselves;  the things we suppose we shall come sometime realize\nin spiritual consciousness must be present in it now, for to spirit\nall things are eternally present.  Advance to this state is measured\nby the realization of moods:  we are on the path when there surges\nup in the innermost recesses of our being the cry of the long\nimprisoned souls of men;  we are then on our way to unity.\n\nThe Bhagavad-Gita which is a treatise on Raj Yoga, gives prominence\nto three aspects of concentration.  Liberation is attained by means\nof action, by devotion, by spiritual discernment;  these aspects\ncorrespond respectively to three qualities in man and nature, known\nas Tamas, Rajas and Satva.  The Tamas is the gross, material or\ndark quality;  Rajas is active and passional;  the attributes of\nSatva are light, peace, happiness, wisdom.  No one while in the\nbody can escape from the action of the three qualities, for they\nare brought about by nature which is compounded of them.  We have\nto recognize this, and to continue action, aspiration and thought,\nimpersonally or with some universal motive, in the manner nature\naccomplishes these things.  Not one of these methods can be laid\naside or ignored, for the Spirit moveth within all, these are its\nworks, and we have to learn to identify ourselves with the moving\nforces of nature.\n\nHaving always this idea of brotherhood or unity in mind, by action--\nwhich we may interpret as service in some humanitarian movement--\nwe purify the Tamas.\n\nBy a pure motive, which is the Philosopher's Stone, a potent force\nin the alchemy of nature, we change the gross into the subtle, we\ninitiate that evolution which shall finally make the vesture of\nthe soul of the rare, long-sought-for, primordial substance.\nDevotion is the highest possibility for the Rajas;  that quality\nwhich is ever attracted and seduced by the beautiful mayas of fame,\nwealth and power, should be directed to that which it really seeks\nfor, the eternal universal life;  the channels through which it\nmust flow outwards are the souls of other men, it reaches the One\nLife through the many.  Spiritual discernment should be the aim of\nthe Satva, \"there is not anything, whether animate or inanimate\nwhich is without me,\" says Krishna, and we should seek for the\ntraces of THAT in all things, looking upon it as the cause of the\nalchemical changes in the Tamas, as that which widens the outflowing\nlove of the Rajas.  By a continued persistence of this subtle\nanalytic faculty, we begin gradually to perceive that those things\nwhich we formerly thought were causes, are in reality not causes\nat all;  that there is but one cause for everything, \"The Atma by\nwhich this universe is pervaded.  By reason of its proximity alone\nthe body, the organs, Manas and Buddhi apply themselves to their\nproper objects as if applied (by some one else).\"  (The Crest Jewel\nof Wisdom).  By uniting these three moods, action, devotion and\nspiritual discernment, into one mood, and keeping it continuously\nalight, we are accompanying the movements of spirit to some extent.\nThis harmonious action of all the qualities of our nature, for\nuniversal purposes without personal motive, is in synchronous\nvibration with that higher state spoken of at the beginning of the\npaper;  therefore we are at one with it.  \"When the wise man\nperceiveth that the only agents of action are these qualities,\nand comprehends that which is superior to the qualities of goodness,\naction and indifference--which are co-existent with the body, it\nis released from rebirth and death, old age and pain, and drinketh\nof the water of immortality.\"\n\n--February 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nVerse by AE in the \"Irish Theosophist\"\n\n\n\n\nContents:\n\n1--\"While the yellow constellations....\" (untitled)\n2--Om\n3--Krishna\n4--Pain\n5--Three Councelors\n6--Dusk\n7--Dawn\n8--Desire\n9--Deep Sleep\n10--Day\n11--To A Poet\n12--The Place of Rest\n13--Comfort\n14--H.P.B. (In Memoriam.)\n15--By the Margin of the Great Deep\n16--The Secret\n17--Dust\n18--Magic\n19--Immortality\n20--The Man to the Angel\n21--The Robing of the King\n22--Brotherhood\n23--In the Womb\n24--In the Garden of God\n25--The Breath of Light\n26--The Free\n27--The Magi\n28--W.Q.J. (?)\n29--From the Book of the Eagle\n30--The Protest of Love\n31--The King Initiate\n32--The Dream of the Children\n33--The Chiefs of the Air\n34--The Palaces of the Sidhe\n35--The Voice of the Wise\n36--A Dawn Song\n37--The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty\n38--A New Earth\n39--Duality\n\n\n\n\n\nWhile the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory,\nIn the lilac-scented stillness, let us listen to Earth's story.\nAll the flow'rs like moths a-flutter glimmer rich with dusky hues,\nEverywhere around us seem to fall from nowhere the sweet dews.\nThrough the drowsy lull, the murmur, stir of leaf and sleep hum\nWe can feel a gay heart beating, hear a magic singing come.\nAh, I think that as we linger lighting at Earth's olden fire\nFitful gleams in clay that perish, little sparks that soon expire,\nSo the mother brims her gladness from a life beyond her own,\nFrom whose darkness as a fountain up the fiery days are thrown\nStarry worlds which wheel in splendour, sunny systems, histories,\nVast and nebulous traditions told in the eternities:\nAnd our list'ning mother whispers through her children all the story:\nCome, the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory!\n\n--October 15, 1892\n\n\n\n\n\nOm\n\n\nFaint grew the yellow buds of light\n        Far flickering beyond the snows,\nAs leaning o'er the shadowy white\n        Morn glimmered like a pale primrose.\n\nWithin an Indian vale below\n        A child said \"Om\" with tender heart,\nWatching with loving eyes the glow\n        In dayshine fade and night depart.\n\nThe word which Brahma at his dawn\n        Outbreathes and endeth at his night;\nWhose tide of sound so rolling on\n        Gives birth to orbs of golden light;\n\nAnd beauty, wisdom, love, and youth,\n        By its enchantment, gathered grow\nIn age-long wandering to the truth,\n        Through many a cycle's ebb and flow.\n\nAnd here all lower life was stilled,\n        The child was lifted to the Wise:\nA strange delight his spirit filled,\n        And Brahm looked from his shining eyes.\n\n--December 15, 1892\n\n\n\n\n\nKrishna\n\n\nThe East was crowned with snow-cold bloom\n        And hung with veils of pearly fleece;\nThey died away into the gloom,\n        Vistas of peace, and deeper peace.\n\nAnd earth and air and wave and fire\n        In awe and breathless silence stood,\nFor One who passed into their choir\n        Linked them in mystic brotherhood.\n\nTwilight of amethyst, amid\n        The few strange stars that lit the heights,\nWhere was the secret spirit hid,\n        Where was Thy place, O Light of Lights?\n\nThe flame of Beauty far in space--\n        When rose the fire, in Thee? in Me?\nWhich bowed the elemental race\n        To adoration silently.\n\n--February 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nPain\n\n\nMen have made them gods of love,\nSun gods, givers of the rain,\nDeities of hill and grove,\nI have made a god of Pain.\n\nOf my god I know this much,\nAnd in singing I repeat,\nThough there's anguish in his touch\nYet his soul within is sweet.\n\n--March 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nThree Counselors\n\n\nIt was the fairy of the place\n        Moving within a little light,\nWho touched with dim and shadowy grace\n        The conflict at its fever height.\n\nIt seemed to whisper \"quietness,\"\n        Then quietly itself was gone;\nYet echoes of its mute caress\n        Still rippled as the years flowed on.\n\nIt was the Warrior within\n        Who called \"Awake! prepare for fight,\n\"Yet lose not memory in the din;\n        \"Make of thy gentleness thy might.\n\n\"Make of thy silence words to shake\n        \"The long-enthroned kings of earth;\n\"Make of thy will the force to break\n        \"Their towers of wantonness and mirth.\"\n\nIt was the wise all-seeing soul\n        Who counseled neither war nor peace\n\"Only be thou thyself that goal\n        \"In which the wars of time shall cease.\"\n\n--April 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nDusk\n\n\nDusk wraps the village in its dim caress;\nEach chimney's vapour, like a thin grey rod,\nMounting aloft through miles of quietness,\n        Pillars the skies of God.\n\nFar up they break or seem to break their line,\nMingling their nebulous crests that bow and nod\nUnder the light of those fierce stars that shine\n        Out of the house of God.\n\nOnly in clouds and dreams I felt those souls\nIn the abyss, each fire hid in its clod,\nFrom which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls\n        Into the vast of God.\n\n--May 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nDawn\n\n\nStill as the holy of holies breathes the vast,\nWithin its crystal depths the stars grow dim,\nFire on the altar of the hills at last\n        Burns on the shadowy rim.\n\nMoment that holds all moments, white upon\nThe verge it trembles;  then like mists of flowers\nBreak from the fairy fountain of the dawn\n        The hues of many hours.\n\nThrown downward from that high companionship\nOf dreaming inmost heart with inmost heart,\nInto the common daily ways I slip\n        My fire from theirs apart.\n\n--June 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nDesire\n\n\nWith Thee a moment! then what dreams have play!\nTraditions of eternal toil arise,\nSearch for the high, austere and lonely way,\nWhere Brahma treads through the eternities.\nAh, in the soul what memories arise!\n\nAnd with what yearning inexpressible,\nRising from long forgetfulness I turn\nTo Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still:\nWhite for Thy whiteness all desires burn!\nAh, with what longing once again I turn!\n\n--August 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nDeep Sleep\n\n\nHeart-hidden from the outer things I rose,\nThe spirit woke anew in nightly birth\nInto the vastness where forever glows\n        The star-soul of the earth.\n\nThere all alone in primal ecstasy,\nWithin her depths where revels never tire,\nThe olden Beauty shines;  each thought of me\n        Is veined through with its fire.\n\nAnd all my thoughts are throngs of living souls;\nThey breath in me, heart unto heart allied\nWith joy undimmed, though when the morning tolls\n        The planets may divide.\n\n--September 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nDay\n\n\nIn day from some titanic past it seems\nAs if a thread divine of memory runs;\nBorn ere the Mighty One began his dreams,\n        Or yet were stars and suns.\n\nBut here an iron will has fixed the bars;\nForgetfulness falls on earth's myriad races,\nNo image of the proud and morning stars\n        Looks at us from their faces.\n\nYet yearning still to reach to those dim heights,\nEach dream remembered is a burning-glass,\nWhere through to darkness from the light of lights\n        Its rays in splendour pass.\n\n--September 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nTo A Poet\n\n\n        Oh, be not led away.\nLured by the colour of the sun-rich day.\n        The gay romances of song\nUnto the spirit-life doth not belong.\n        Though far-between the hours\nIn which the Master of Angelic Powers\n        Lightens the dusk within\nThe Holy of Holies;  be it thine to win\n        Rare vistas of white light,\nHalf-parted lips, through which the Infinite\n        Murmurs her ancient story;\nHearkening to whom the wandering planets hoary\n        Waken primeval fires,\nWith deeper rapture in celestial choirs\n        Breathe, and with fleeter motion\nWheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean.\n        So, hearken thou like these,\nIntent on her, mounting by slow degrees,\n        Until thy song's elation\nEchoes her multitudinous meditation.\n\n--November 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Place of Rest\n\n\n--The soul is its own witness and its own refuge.\n\nUnto the deep the deep heart goes.\n        It lays its sadness nigh the breast:\nOnly the mighty mother knows\n        The wounds that quiver unconfessed.\n\nIt seeks a deeper silence still;\n        It folds itself around with peace,\nWhere thoughts alike of good or ill\n        In quietness unfostered, cease.\n\nIt feels in the unwounding vast\n        For comfort for its hopes and fears:\nThe mighty mother bows at last;\n        She listens to her children's tears.\n\nWhere the last anguish deepens--there--\n        The fire of beauty smites through pain,\nA glory moves amid despair,\n        The Mother takes her child again.\n\n--December 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nComfort\n\n\nDark head by the fireside brooding,\n        Sad upon your ears\nWhirlwinds of the earth intruding\n        Sound in wrath and tears:\n\nTender-hearted, in your lonely\n        Sorrow I would fain\nComfort you, and say that only\n        Gods could feel such pain.\n\nOnly spirits know such longing\n        For the far away;\nAnd the fiery fancies thronging\n        Rise not out of clay.\n\nKeep the secret sense celestial\n        Of the starry birth;\nThough about you call the bestial\n        Voices of the earth.\n\nIf a thousand ages since\n        Hurled us from the throne:\nThen a thousand ages wins\n        Back again our own.\n\nSad one, dry away your tears:\n        Sceptred you shall rise,\nEqual mid the crystal spheres\n        With seraphs kingly wise.\n\n--February, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nH. P. B.\n(In Memoriam.)\n\n\nThough swift the days flow from her day,\n        No one has left her day unnamed:\nWe know what light broke from her ray\n        On us, who in the truth proclaimed\n\nGrew brother with the stars and powers\n        That stretch away--away to light,\nAnd fade within the primal hours,\n        And in the wondrous First unite.\n\nWe lose with her the right to scorn\n        The voices scornful of her truth:\nWith her a deeper love was born\n        For those who filled her days with ruth.\n\nTo her they were not sordid things:\n        In them sometimes--her wisdom said--\nThe Bird of Paradise had wings;\n        It only dreams, it is not dead.\n\nWe cannot for forgetfulness\n        Forego the reverence due to them,\nWho wear at times they do not guess\n        The sceptre and the diadem.\n\nWith wisdom of the olden time\n        She made the hearts of dust to flame;\nAnd fired us with the hope sublime\n        Our ancient heritage to claim;\n\nThat turning from the visible,\n        By vastness unappalled nor stayed,\nOur wills might rule beside that Will\n        By which the tribal stars are swayed;\n\nAnd entering the heroic strife,\n        Tread in the way their feet have trod\nWho move within a vaster life,\n        Sparks in the Fire--Gods amid God.\n\n--August 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nBy the Margin of the Great Deep\n\n\nWhen the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,\n        All its vapourous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam\nWith their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;\n        I am one with the twilight's dream.\n\nWhen the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky mood,\n        Every heart of man is rapt within the mother's breast:\nFull of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude,\n        I am one with their hearts at rest.\n\nFrom our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love,\n        Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide,\nAll its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above\n        Word or touch from the lips beside.\n\nAye, and deep, and deep, and deeper let me drink and draw\n        From the olden Fountain more than light or peace or dream,\nSuch primeval being as o'erfills the heart with awe,\n        Growing one with its silent stream.\n\n--March 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Secret\n\n\nOne thing in all things have I seen:\n        One thought has haunted earth and air;\nClangour and silence both have been\n        Its palace chambers.  Everywhere\n\nI saw the mystic vision flow,\n        And live in men, and woods, and streams,\nUntil I could no longer know\n        The dream of life from my own dreams.\n\nSometimes it rose like fire in me,\n        Within the depths of my own mind,\nAnd spreading to infinity,\n        It took the voices of the wind.\n\nIt scrawled the human mystery,\n        Dim heraldry--on light and air;\nWavering along the starry sea,\n        I saw the flying vision there.\n\nEach fire that in God's temple lit\n        Burns fierce before the inner shrine,\nDimmed as my fire grew near to it,\n        And darkened at the light of mine.\n\nAt last, at last, the meaning caught:\n        When spirit wears its diadem,\nIt shakes its wondrous plumes of thought,\n        And trails the stars along with them.\n\n--April 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nDust\n\n\nI heard them in their sadness say,\n        \"The earth rebukes the thought of God:\nWe are but embers wrapt in clay\n        A little nobler than the sod.\"\n\nBut I have touched the lips of clay--\n        Mother, thy rudest sod to me\nIs thrilled with fire of hidden day,\n        And haunted by all mystery.\n\n--May 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nMagic\n--After reading the Upanishads\n\n\nOut of the dusky chamber of the brain\nFlows the imperial will through dream on dream;\nThe fires of life around it tempt and gleam;\nThe lights of earth behind it fade and wane.\n\nPassed beyond beauty tempting dream on dream,\nThe pure will seeks the hearthold of the light;\nSounds the deep \"OM,\" the mystic word of might;\nForth from the hearthold breaks the living stream.\n\nPassed out beyond the deep heart music-filled,\nThe kingly Will sits on the ancient throne,\nWielding the sceptre, fearless, free, alone,\nKnowing in Brahma all it dared and willed.\n\n--June 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nImmortality\n\n\nWe must pass like smoke, or live within the spirits' fire;\n        For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return.\nIf our thought has changed to dream, or will into desire,\n        As smoke we vanish o'er the fires that burn.\n\nLights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days;\n        Surely here is soul;  with it we have eternal breath;\nIn the fire of love we live or pass by many ways,\n        By unnumbered ways of dream to death.\n\n\n--July 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Man to the Angel\n\n\nI have wept a million tears;\n        Pure and proud one, where are thine?\nWhat the gain of all your years\n        That undimmed in beauty shine?\n\nAll your beauty cannot win\n        Truth we learn in pain and sighs;\nYou can never enter in\n        To the Circle of the Wise.\n\nThey are but the slaves of light\n        Who have never known the gloom,\nAnd between the dark and bright\n        Willed in freedom their own doom.\n\nThink not in your pureness there\n        That our pain but follows sin;\nThere are fires for those who dare\n        Seek the Throne of Might to win.\n\nPure one, from your pride refrain;\n        Dark and lost amid the strife,\nI am myriad years of pain\n        Nearer to the fount of life.\n\nWhen defiance fierce is thrown\n        At the God to whom you bow,\nRest the lips of the Unknown\n        Tenderest upon the brow.\n\n--September 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nSongs of Olden Magic--II.\n\n\nThe Robing of the King\n--\"His candle shined upon my head, and by his light I walked\nthrough darkness.\"--Job, xxix. 3\n\n\nOn the bird of air blue-breasted\n        glint the rays of gold,\nAnd a shadowy fleece above us\n        waves the forest old,\nFar through rumorous leagues of midnight\n        stirred by breezes warm.\nSee the old ascetic yonder,\n        Ah, poor withered form!\nWhere he crouches wrinkled over\n        by unnumbered years\nThrough the leaves the flakes of moonfire\n        fall like phantom tears.\nAt the dawn a kingly hunter\n        passed proud disdain,\nLike a rainbow-torrent scattered\n        flashed his royal train.\nNow the lonely one unheeded\n        seeks earth's caverns dim,\nNever king or princes will robe them\n        radiantly as him.\nMid the deep enfolding darkness,\n        follow him, oh seer,\nWhile the arrow will is piercing\n        fiery sphere on sphere.\nThrough the blackness leaps and sparkles\n        gold and amethyst,\nCurling, jetting and dissolving\n        in a rainbow mist.\nIn the jewel glow and lunar\n        radiance rise there\nOne, a morning star in beauty,\n        young, immortal, fair.\nSealed in heavy sleep, the spirit\n        leaves its faded dress,\nUnto fiery youth returning\n        out of weariness.\nMusic as for one departing,\n        joy as for a king,\nSound and swell, and hark! above him\n        cymbals triumphing.\nFire an aureole encircling\n        suns his brow with gold\nLike to one who hails the morning\n        on the mountains old.\nOpen mightier vistas changing\n        human loves to scorns,\nAnd the spears of glory pierce him\n        like a Crown of Thorns.\nAs the sparry rays dilating\n        o'er his forehead climb\nOnce again he knows the Dragon\n        Wisdom of the prime.\nHigh and yet more high to freedom\n        as a bird he springs,\nAnd the aureole outbreathing,\n        gold and silver wings\nPlume the brow and crown the seraph.\n        Soon his journey done\nHe will pass our eyes that follow,\n        sped beyond the sun.\nNone may know the darker radiance,\n        King, will there be thine.\nRapt above the Light and hidden\n        in the Dark Divine.\n\n--September 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nBrotherhood\n\n\nTwilight a blossom grey in shadowy valleys dwells:\nUnder the radiant dark the deep blue-tinted bells\nIn quietness reimage heaven within their blooms,\nSapphire and gold and mystery.  What strange perfumes,\nOut of what deeps arising, all the flower-bells fling,\nUnknowing the enchanted odorous song they sing!\nOh, never was an eve so living yet:  the wood\nStirs not but breathes enraptured quietude.\nHere in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul,\nAnd out of slumber waking starts unto the goal.\nWhat bright companions nod and go along with it!\nOut of the teeming dark what dusky creatures flit,\nThat through the long leagues of the island night above\nCome wandering by me, whispering and beseeching love,--\nAs in the twilight children gather close and press\nNigh and more nigh with shadowy tenderness,\nFeeling they know not what, with noiseless footsteps glide\nSeeking familiar lips or hearts to dream beside.\nOh, voices, I would go with you, with you, away,\nFacing once more the radiant gateways of the day;\nWith you, with you, what memories arise, and nigh\nTrampling the crowded figures of the dawn go by;\nDread deities, the giant powers that warred on men\nGrow tender brothers and gay children once again;\nFades every hate away before the Mother's breast\nWhere all the exiles of the heart return to rest.\n\n--July 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\nIn the Womb\n\nStill rests the heavy share on the dark soil:\n        Upon the dull black mould the dew-damp lies:\nThe horse waits patient:  from his lonely toil\n        The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes.\n\nThe unbudding hedgerows, dark against day's fires,\n        Glitter with gold-lit crystals:  on the rim\nOver the unregarding city's spires\n        The lonely beauty shines alone for him.\n\nAnd day by day the dawn or dark enfolds,\n        And feeds with beauty eyes that cannot see\nHow in her womb the Mighty Mother moulds\n        The infant spirit for Eternity.\n\n--January 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nIn the Garden of God\n\n\nWithin the iron cities\n        One walked unknown for years,\nIn his heart the pity of pities\n        That grew for human tears\n\nWhen love and grief were ended\n        The flower of pity grew;\nBy unseen hands 'twas tended\n        And fed with holy dew.\n\nThough in his heart were barred in\n        The blooms of beauty blown;\nYet he who grew the garden\n        Could call no flower his own.\n\nFor by the hands that watered,\n        The blooms that opened fair\nThrough frost and pain were scattered\n        To sweeten the dull air.\n\n--February 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Breath of Light\n\n\nFrom the cool and dark-lipped furrows\n        breathes a dim delight\nAureoles of joy encircle\n        every blade of grass\nWhere the dew-fed creatures silent\n        and enraptured pass:\nAnd the restless ploughman pauses,\n        turns, and wondering\nDeep beneath his rustic habit\n        finds himself a king;\nFor a fiery moment looking\n        with the eyes of God\nOver fields a slave at morning\n        bowed him to the sod.\nBlind and dense with revelation\n        every moment flies,\nAnd unto the Mighty Mother\n        gay, eternal, rise\nAll the hopes we hold, the gladness,\n        dreams of things to be.\nOne of all they generations,\n        Mother, hails to thee!\nHail! and hail! and hail for ever:\n        though I turn again\nFor they joy unto the human\n        vestures of pain.\nI, thy child, who went forth radiant\n        in the golden prime\nFind thee still the mother-hearted\n        through my night in time;\nFind in thee the old enchantment,\n        there behind the veil\nWhere the Gods my brothers linger,\n        Hail! for ever, Hail!\n\n--May 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Free\n\n\nThey bathed in the fire-flooded fountains;\n        Life girdled them round and about;\nThey slept in the clefts of the mountains:\n        The stars called them forth with a shout.\n\nThey prayed, but their worship was only\n        The wonder at nights and at days,\nAs still as the lips of the lonely\n        Though burning with dumbness of praise.\n\nNo sadness of earth ever captured\n        Their spirits who bowed at the shrine;\nThey fled to the Lonely enraptured\n        And hid in the Darkness Divine.\n\nAt twilight as children may gather\n        They met at the doorway of death,\nThe smile of the dark hidden Father\n        The Mother with magical breath.\n\nUntold of in song or in story,\n        In days long forgotten of men,\nTheir eyes were yet blind with a glory\n        Time will not remember again.\n\n--November 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nSongs of Olden Magic--IV\n\n\n\nThe Magi\n\n\"The mountain was filled with the hosts of the Tuatha de Dannan.\"\n--Old Celtic Poem\n\n\nSee where the auras from the olden fountain\n        Starward aspire;\nThe sacred sign upon the holy mountain\n        Shines in white fire:\nWaving and flaming yonder o'er the snows\n        The diamond light\nMelts into silver or to sapphire glows\n        Night beyond night;\nAnd from the heaven of heavens descends on earth\n        A dew divine.\nCome, let us mingle in the starry mirth\n        Around the shrine!\nEnchantress, mighty mother, to our home\n        In thee we press,\nThrilled by the fiery breath and wrapt in some\n        Vast tenderness\nThe homeward birds uncertain o'er their nest\n        Wheel in the dome,\nFraught with dim dreams of more enraptured rest,\n        Wheel in the dome,\nBut gather ye to whose undarkened eyes\n        The night is day:\nLeap forth, Immortals, Birds of Paradise,\n        In bright array\nRobed like the shining tresses of the sun;\n        And by his name\nCall from his haunt divine the ancient one\n        Our Father Flame.\nAye, from the wonder-light that wraps the star,\n        Come now, come now;\nSun-breathing Dragon, ray thy lights afar,\n        Thy children bow;\nHush with more awe the breath;  the bright-browed races\n        Are nothing worth\nBy those dread gods from out whose awful faces\n        The earth looks forth\nInfinite pity, set in calm;  their vision cast\n        Adown the years\nBeholds how beauty burns away at last\n        Their children's tears.\nNow while our hearts the ancient quietness\n        Floods with its tide,\nThe things of air and fire and height no less\n        In it abide;\nAnd from their wanderings over sea and shore\n        They rise as one\nUnto the vastness and with us adore\n        The midnight sun;\nAnd enter the innumerable All,\n        And shine like gold,\nAnd starlike gleam in the immortals' hall,\n        The heavenly fold,\nAnd drink the sun-breaths from the mother's lips\n        Awhile--and then\nFail from the light and drop in dark eclipse\n        To earth again,\nRoaming along by heaven-hid promontory\n        And valley dim.\nWeaving a phantom image of the glory\n        They knew in Him.\nOut of the fulness flow the winds, their son\n        Is heard no more,\nOr hardly breathes a mystic sound along\n        The dreamy shore:\nBlindly they move unknowing as in trance,\n        Their wandering\nIs half with us, and half an inner dance\n        Led by the King.\n\n--January 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nW. Q. J.  *\n\n\nO hero of the iron age,\nUpon thy grave we will not weep,\nNor yet consume away in rage\nFor thee and thy untimely sleep.\nOur hearts a burning silence keep.\n\nO martyr, in these iron days\nOne fate was sure for soul like thine:\nWell you foreknew but went your ways.\nThe crucifixion is the sign,\nThe meed of all the kingly line.\n\nWe may not mourn--though such a night\nHas fallen on our earthly spheres\nBereft of love and truth and light\nAs never since the dawn of years;--\nFor tears give birth alone to tears.\n\nOne wreath upon they grave we lay\n(The silence of our bitter thought,\nWords that would scorch their hearts of clay),\nAnd turn to learn what thou has taught,\nTo shape our lives as thine was wrought.\n\n--April 15, 1896\n\n[* This is unsigned but is very possibly G.W. Russell's.  It was a\nmemoriam to William Quan Judge (W.Q.J), the leader of the American\nand European Theosophical Societies at the time, one of the original\nfounders of the Theosophical Society,  and close co-worker with\nH.P. Blavatsky.]\n\n\n\n\n\nFron the Book of the Eagle\n--[St. John, i. 1-33]\n\n\nIn the mighty Mother's bosom was the Wise\nWith the mystic Father in aeonian night;\nAye, for ever one with them though it arise\n        Going forth to sound its hymn of light.\n\nAt its incantation rose the starry fane;\nAt its magic thronged the myriad race of men;\nLife awoke that in the womb so long had lain\n        To its cyclic labours once again.\n\n'Tis the soul of fire within the heart of life;\nFrom its fiery fountain spring the will and thought;\nAll the strength of man for deeds of love or strife,\n        Though the darkness comprehend it not.\n\nIn the mystery written here\nJohn is but the life, the seer;\nOutcast from the life of light,\nInly with reverted sight\nStill he scans with eager eyes\nThe celestial mysteries.\nPoet of all far-seen things\nAt his word the soul has wings,\nRevelations, symbols, dreams\nOf the inmost light which gleams.\n\nThe winds, the stars, and the skies though wrought\nBy the one Fire-Self still know it not;\nAnd man who moves in the twilight dim\nFeels not the love that encircles him,\nThough in heart, on bosom, and eyelids press\nLips of an infinite tenderness,\nHe turns away through the dark to roam\nNor heeds the fire in his hearth and home.\n\nThey whose wisdom everywhere\nSees as through a crystal air\nThe lamp by which the world is lit,\nAnd themselves as one with it;\nIn whom the eye of vision swells,\nWho have in entranced hours\nCaught the word whose might compels\nAll the elemental powers;\nThey arise as Gods from men\nLike the morning stars again.\nThey who seek the place of rest\nQuench the blood-heat of the breast,\nGrow ascetic, inward turning\nTrample down the lust from burning,\nSilence in the self the will\nFor a power diviner still;\nTo the fire-born Self alone\nThe ancestral spheres are known.\n\nUnto the poor dead shadows came\nWisdom mantled about with flame;\nWe had eyes that could see the light\nBorn of the mystic Father's might.\nGlory radiant with powers untold\nAnd the breath of God around it rolled.\n\nLife that moved in the deeps below\nFelt the fire in its bosom glow;\nLife awoke with the Light allied,\nGrew divinely stirred, and cried:\n\"This is the Ancient of Days within,\nLight that is ere our days begin.\n\n\"Every power in the spirit's ken\nSprings anew in our lives again.\nWe had but dreams of the heart's desire\nBeauty thrilled with the mystic fire.\nThe white-fire breath whence springs the power\nFlows alone in the spirit's hour.\"\n\nMan arose the earth he trod,\nGrew divine as he gazed on God:\nLight in a fiery whirlwind broke\nOut of the dark divine and spoke:\nMan went forth through the vast to tread\nBy the spirit of wisdom charioted.\n\nThere came the learned of the schools\nWho measure heavenly things by rules,\nThe sceptic, doubter, the logician,\nWho in all sacred things precision,\nWould mark the limit, fix the scope,\n\"Art thou the Christ for whom we hope?\nArt thou a magian, or in thee\nHas the divine eye power to see?\"\nHe answered low to those who came,\n\"Not this, nor this, nor this I claim.\nMore than the yearning of the heart\nI have no wisdom to impart.\nI am the voice that cries in him\nWhose heart is dead, whose eyes are dim,\n'Make pure the paths where through may run\nThe light-streams from that golden one,\nThe Self who lives within the sun.'\nAs spake the seer of ancient days.\"\nThe voices from the earthly ways\nQuestioned him still:  \"What dost thou here,\nIf neither prophet, king nor seer?\nWhat power is kindled by they might?\"\n\"I flow before the feet of Light:\nI am the purifying stream.\nBut One of whom ye have no dream,\nWhose footsteps move among you still,\nThough dark, divine, invisible.\nImpelled by Him, before His ways\nI journey, though I dare not raise\nEven from the ground these eyes so dim\nOr look upon the feet of Him.\"\n\nWhen the dead or dreamy hours\n        Like a mantle fall away,\nWakes the eye of gnostic powers\n        To the light of hidden day,\n\nAnd the yearning heart within\n        Seeks the true, the only friend,\nHe who burdened with our sin\n        Loves and loves unto the end.\n\nAh, the martyr of the world,\n        With a face of steadfast peace\nRound whose brow the light is curled:\n        'Tis the Lamb with golden fleece.\n\nSo they called of old the shining,\n        Such a face the sons of men\nSee, and all its life divining\n        Wake primeval fires again.\n\nSuch a face and such a glory\n        Passed before the eyes of John,\nWith a breath of olden story\n        Blown from ages long agone\n\nWho would know the God in man.\nDeeper still must be his glance.\nVeil on veil his eye must scan\nFor the mystic signs which tell\nIf the fire electric fell\nOn the seer in his trance:\nAs his way he upward wings\nFrom all time-encircled things,\nFlames the glory round his head\nLike a bird with wings outspread.\nGold and silver plumes at rest:\nSuch a shadowy shining crest\nRound the hero's head reveals him\nTo the soul that would adore,\nAs the master-power that heals him\nAnd the fount of secret lore.\nNature such a diadem\nPlaces on her royal line,\nEvery eye that looks on them\nKnows the Sons of the Divine.\n\n--April 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Protest of Love\n        \"Those who there take refuge nevermore return.\"--Bhagavad Gita\n\n\nEre I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the peace,\nWhile I gaze on the light and beauty afar from the dim homes of men,\nMay I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would\n        not release,\nMay the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to their succour again.\n\nEre I storm with the tempest of power the thrones and dominions\n        of old,\nEre the ancient enchantment allures me to roam through the star-\n        misty skies,\nI would go forth as one who has reaped well what harvest the earth\n        may unfold:\nMay my heart be o'erbrimmed with compassion, on my brow be the\n        crown of the wise.\n\nI would go as the dove from the ark sent forth with wishes and prayers\nTo return with the paradise-blossoms that bloom in the eden of light:\nWhen the deep star-chant of the seraphs I hear in the mystical airs\nMay I capture one tone of their joy for the sad ones discrowned\n        in the night.\n\nNot alone, not alone would I go to my rest in the Heart of the Love:\nWere I tranced in the innermost beauty, the flame of its tenderest breath,\nI would still hear the plaint of the fallen recalling me back from above\nTo go down to the side of the mourners who weep in the shadow of death.\n\n--May 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe King Initiate\n        \"They took Iesous and scourged him.\"--St. John\n\nAge after age the world has wept\n        A joy supreme--I saw the hands\nWhose fiery radiations swept\n        And burned away his earthly bands:\nAnd where they smote the living dyes\nFlashed like the plumes of paradise.\n\nTheir joys the heavy nations hush--\n        A form of purple glory rose\nCrowned with such rays of light as flush\n        The white peaks on their towering snows:\nIt held the magic wand that gave\nRule over earth, air, fire and wave.\n\nWhat sorrow makes the white cheeks wet:\n        The mystic cross looms shadowy dim--\nThere where the fourfold powers have met\n        And poured their living tides through him,\nThe Son who hides his radiant crest\nTo the dark Father's bosom pressed.\n\n--June 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Dream of the Children\n\n\nThe children awoke in their dreaming\n        While earth lay dewy and still:\nThey followed the rill in its gleaming\n        To the heart-light of the hill.\n\nIts sounds and sights were forsaking\n        The world as they faded in sleep,\nWhen they heard a music breaking\n        Out from the heart-light deep.\n\nIt ran where the rill in its flowing\n        Under the star-light gay\nWith wonderful colour was glowing\n        Like the bubbles they blew in their play.\n\nFrom the misty mountain under\n        Shot gleams of an opal star:\nIts pathways of rainbow wonder\n        Rayed to their feet from afar.\n\nFrom their feet as they strayed in the meadow\n        It led through caverned aisles,\nFilled with purple and green light and shadow\n        For mystic miles on miles.\n\nThe children were glad;  it was lonely\n        To play on the hill-side by day.\n\"But now,\" they said, \"we have only\n        To go where the good people stray.\"\n\nFor all the hill-side was haunted\n        By the faery folk come again;\nAnd down in the heart-light enchanted\n        Were opal-coloured men.\n\nThey moved like kings unattended\n        Without a squire or dame,\nBut they wore tiaras splendid\n        With feathers of starlight flame.\n\nThey laughed at the children over\n        And called them into the heart:\n\"Come down here, each sleepless rover:\n        We will show you some of our art.\"\n\nAnd down through the cool of the mountain\n        The children sank at the call,\nAnd stood in a blazing fountain\n        And never a mountain at all.\n\nThe lights were coming and going\n        In many a shining strand,\nFor the opal fire-kings were blowing\n        The darkness out of the land.\n\nThis golden breath was a madness\n        To set a poet on fire,\nAnd this was a cure for sadness,\n        And that the ease of desire.\n\nAnd all night long over Eri\n        They fought with the wand of light\nAnd love that never grew weary\n        The evil things of night.\n\nThey said, as dawn glimmered hoary,\n        \"We will show yourselves for an hour;\"\nAnd the children were changed to a glory\n        By the beautiful magic of power.\n\nThe fire-kings smiled on their faces\n        And called them by olden names,\nTill they towered like the starry races\n        All plumed with the twilight flames.\n\nThey talked for a while together,\n        How the toil of ages oppressed;\nAnd of how they best could weather\n        The ship of the world to its rest.\n\nThe dawn in the room was straying:\n        The children began to blink,\nWhen they heard a far voice saying,\n        \"You can grow like that if you think!\"\n\nThe sun came in yellow and gay light:\n        They tumbled out of the cot,\nAnd half of the dream went with daylight\n        And half was never forgot.\n\n--July 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Chiefs of the Air\n\n\nTheir wise little heads with scorning\n        They laid the covers between:\n\"Do they think we stay here till morning?\"\n        Said Rory and Aileen.\n\nWhen out their bright eyes came peeping\n        The room was no longer there,\nAnd they fled from the dark world creeping\n        Up a twilight cave of air.\n\nThey wore each one a gay dress,\n        In sleep, if you understand,\nWhen earth puts off its grey dress\n        To robe it in faeryland.\n\nThen loud o'erhead was a humming\n        As clear as the wood wind rings;\nAnd here were the air-boats coming\n        And here the airy kings.\n\nThe magic barks were gleaming\n        And swift as the feathered throng:\nWith wonder-lights out-streaming\n        They blew themselves along.\n\nAnd up on the night-wind swimming,\n        With pose and dart and rise,\nAway went the air fleet skimming\n        Through a haze of jewel skies.\n\nOne boat above them drifted\n        Apart from the flying bands,\nAnd an air-chief bent and lifted\n        The children with mighty hands.\n\nThe children wondered greatly,\n        Three air-chiefs met them there,\nThey were tall and grave and stately\n        With bodies of purple air.\n\nA pearl light with misty shimmer\n        Went dancing about them all,\nAs the dyes of the moonbow glimmer\n        On a trembling waterfall.\n\nThe trail of the fleet to the far lands\n        Was wavy along the night,\nAnd on through the sapphire starlands\n        They followed the wake of light.\n\n\"Look down, Aileen,\" said Rory,\n        \"The earth's as thin as a dream.\"\nIt was lit by a sun-fire glory\n        Outraying gleam on gleam.\n\nThey saw through the dream-world under\n        Its heart of rainbow flame\nWhere the starry people wander;\n        Like gods they went and came.\n\nThe children looked without talking\n        Till Roray spoke again,\n\"Are those our folk who are walking\n        Like little shadow men?\n\n\"They don't see what is about them,\n        They look like pigmies small,\nThe world would be full without them\n        And they think themselves so tall!\"\n\nThe magic bark went fleeting\n        Like an eagle on and on;\nTill over its prow came beating\n        The foam-light of the dawn.\n\nThe children's dream grew fainter,\n        Three air-chiefs still were there,\nBut the sun the shadow painter\n        Drew five on the misty air.\n\nThe dream-light whirled bewild'ring,\n        An air-chief said, \"You know.\nYou are living now, my children,\n        Ten thousand years ago.\"\n\nThey looked at themselves in the old light,\n        And mourned the days of the new\nWhere naught is but darkness or cold light,\n        Till a bell came striking through.\n\n\"We must go,\" said the wise young sages:\n        It was five at dawn by the chimes,\nAnd they ran through a thousand ages\n        From the old De Danaan Times.\n\n--August 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Palaces of the Sidhe\n\n\nTwo small sweet lives together\n        From dawn till the dew falls down,\nThey danced over rock and heather\n        Away from the dusty town.\n\nDark eyes like stars set in pansies,\n        Blue eyes like a hero's bold--\nTheir thoughts were all pearl-light fancies,\n        Their hearts in the age of gold.\n\nThey crooned o'er many a fable\n        And longed for the bright-capped elves,\nThe faery folk who are able\n        To make us faery ourselves.\n\nA hush on the children stealing\n        They stood there hand in hand,\nFor the elfin chimes were pealing\n        Aloud in the underland.\n\nAnd over the grey rock sliding,\n        A fiery colour ran,\nAnd out of its thickness gliding\n        The twinkling mist of a man--\n\nTo-day for the children had fled to\n        An ancient yesterday,\nAnd the rill from its tunnelled bed too\n        Had turned another way.\n\nThen down through an open hollow\n        The old man led with a smile:\n\"Come, star-hearts, my children, follow\n        To the elfin land awhile.\"\n\nThe bells above them were hanging,\n        Whenever the earth-breath blew\nIt made them go clanging, clanging,\n        The vasty mountain through.\n\nBut louder yet than the ringing\n        Came the chant of the elfin choir,\nTill the mountain was mad with singing\n        And dense with the forms of fire.\n\nThe kings of the faery races\n        Sat high on the thrones of might,\nAnd infinite years from their faces\n        Looked out through eyes of light.\n\nAnd one in a diamond splendour\n        Shone brightest of all that hour,\nMore lofty and pure and tender,\n        They called him the Flower of Power.\n\nThe palace walls were glowing\n        Like stars together drawn,\nAnd a fountain of air was flowing\n        The primrose colour of dawn.\n\n\"Ah, see!\" said Aileen sighing,\n        With a bend of her saddened head\nWhere a mighty hero was lying,\n        He looked like one who was dead.\n\n\"He will wake,\" said their guide, \"'tis but seeming,\n        And, oh, what his eyes shall see\nI will know of only in dreaming\n        Till I lie there still as he.\"\n\nThey chanted the song of waking,\n        They breathed on him with fire,\nTill the hero-spirit outbreaking,\n        Shot radiant above the choir.\n\nLike a pillar of opal glory\n        Lit through with many a gem--\n\"Why, look at him now,\" said Rory,\n        \"He has turned to a faery like them!\"\n\nThe elfin kings ascending\n        Leaped up from the thrones of might,\nAnd one with another blending\n        They vanished in air and light.\n\nThe rill to its bed came splashing\n        With rocks on the top of that:\nThe children awoke with a flashing\n        Of wonder, \"What were we at?\"\n\nThey groped through the reeds and clover--\n        \"What funny old markings:  look here,\nThey have scrawled the rocks all over:\n        It's just where the door was:  how queer!\"\n\n--September 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Voice of the Wise\n\n\nThey sat with hearts untroubled,\n        The clear sky sparkled above,\nAnd an ancient wisdom bubbled\n        From the lips of a youthful love.\n\nThey read in a coloured history\n        Of Egypt and of the Nile,\nAnd half it seemed a mystery,\n        Familiar, half, the while.\n\nTill living out of the story\n        Grew old Egyptian men,\nAnd a shadow looked forth Rory\n        And said, \"We meet again!\"\n\nAnd over Aileen a maiden\n        Looked back through the ages dim:\nShe laughed, and her eyes were laden\n        With an old-time love for him.\n\nIn a mist came temples thronging\n        With sphinxes seen in a row,\nAnd the rest of the day was a longing\n        For their homes of long ago.\n\n\"We'd go there if they'd let us,\"\n        They said with wounded pride:\n\"They never think when they pet us\n        We are old like that inside.\"\n\nThere was some one round them straying\n        The whole of the long day through,\nWho seemed to say, \"I am playing\n        At hide-and-seek with you.\"\n\nAnd one thing after another\n        Was whispered out of the air,\nHow God was a big kind brother\n        Whose home was in everywhere.\n\nHis light like a smile come glancing\n        From the cool, cool winds as they pass;\nFrom the flowers in heaven dancing\n        And the stars that shine in the grass,\n\nAnd the clouds in deep blue wreathing,\n        And most from the mountains tall,\nBut God like a wind goes breathing\n        A heart-light of gold in all.\n\nIt grows like a tree and pushes\n        Its way through the inner gloom,\nAnd flowers in quick little rushes\n        Of love to a magic bloom.\n\nAnd no one need sigh now or sorrow\n        Whenever the heart-light flies,\nFor it comes again on some morrow\n        And nobody ever dies.\n\nThe heart of the Wise was beating\n        In the children's heart that day,\nAnd many a thought came fleeting,\n        And fancies solemn and gay.\n\nThey were grave in a way divining\n        How childhood was taking wings,\nAnd the wonder world was shining\n        With vast eternal things.\n\nThe solemn twilight fluttered\n        Like the plumes of seraphim,\nAnd they felt what things were uttered\n        In the sunset voice of Him.\n\nThey lingered long, for dearer\n        Than home were the mountain places\nWhere God from the stars dropt nearer\n        Their pale, dreamy faces.\n\nTheir very hearts from beating\n        They stilled in awed delight.\nFor Spirit and children were meeting\n        In the purple, ample night.\n\nDusk its ash-grey blossoms sheds on violet skies\nOver twilight mountains where the heart-songs rise,\nRise and fall and fade again from earth to air:\nEarth renews the music sweeter.  Oh, come there.\nCome, ma cushla, come, as in ancient times\nRings aloud and the underland with faery chimes.\nDown the unseen ways as strays each tinkling fleece\nWinding ever onward to a fold of peace,\nSo my dreams go straying in a land more fair;\nHalf I tread the dew-wet grasses, half wander there.\nFade your glimmering eyes in a world grown cold:\nCome, ma cushla, with me to the mountain's fold,\nWhere the bright ones call us waving to and fro:\nCome, my children, with me to the Ancient go.\n\n--October 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nA Dawn Song\n\n\nWhile the earth is dark and grey\n        How I laugh within:  I know\nIn my breast what ardours gay\n        From the morning overflow.\n\nThough the cheek be white and wet\n        In my heart no fear may fall:\nThere my chieftain leads, and yet\n        Ancient battle-trumpets call.\n\nBend on me no hasty frown\n        If my spirit slight your cares:\nSunlike still my joy looks down\n        Changing tears to beamy airs.\n\nThink me not of fickle heart\n        If with joy my bosom swells\nThough your ways from mine depart:\n        In the true are no farewells.\n\nWhat I love in you I find\n        Everywhere.  A friend I greet\nIn each flower and tree and wind--\n        Oh, but life is sweet, is sweet.\n\nWhat to you are bolts and bars\n        Are to me the hands that guide\nTo the freedom of the stars\n        Where my golden kinsmen bide.\n\nFrom my mountain top I view:\n        Twilight's purple flower is gone,\nAnd I send my song to you\n        On the level light of dawn.\n\n--November 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\n--An Ancient Eden\n\nOur legends tell of aery fountains upspringing in Eri, and\nhow the people of long ago saw them not but only the Tuatha de Danaan.\nSome deem it was the natural outflow of water at these places which\nwas held to be sacred;  but above fountain, rill and river rose up\nthe enchanted froth and foam of invisible rills and rivers breaking\nforth from Tir-na-noge, the soul of the island, and glittering in\nthe sunlight of its mystic day.  What we see here is imaged forth\nfrom that invisible soul and is a path thereto.  In the heroic\nEpic of Cuculain Standish O'Grady writes of such a fountain, and\nprefixes his chapter with the verse from Genesis, \"And four rivers\nwent forth from Eden to water the garden,\" and what follows in\nreference thereto.\n\n\nThe Fountain of Shadowy Beauty\n--A Dream\n\nI would I could weave in\n        The colour, the wonder,\nThe song I conceive in\n        My heart while I ponder,\n\nAnd show how it came like\n        The magi of old\nWhose chant was a flame like\n        The dawn's voice of gold;\n\nWho dreams followed near them\n        A murmur of birds,\nAnd ear still could hear them\n        Unchanted in words.\n\nIn words I can only\n        Reveal thee my heart,\nOh, Light of the Lonely,\n        The shining impart.\n\nBetween the twilight and the dark\nThe lights danced up before my eyes:\nI found no sleep or peace or rest,\nBut dreams of stars and burning skies.\n\nI knew the faces of the day--\nDream faces, pale, with cloudy hair,\nI know you not nor yet your home,\nThe Fount of Shadowy Beauty, where?\n\nI passed a dream of gloomy ways\nWhere ne'er did human feet intrude:\nIt was the border of a wood,\nA dreadful forest solitude.\n\nWith wondrous red and fairy gold\nThe clouds were woven o'er the ocean;\nThe stars in fiery aether swung\nAnd danced with gay and glittering motion.\n\nA fire leaped up within my heart\nWhen first I saw the old sea shine;\nAs if a god were there revealed\nI bowed my head in awe divine;\n\nAnd long beside the dim sea marge\nI mused until the gathering haze\nVeiled from me where the silver tide\nRan in its thousand shadowy ways.\n\nThe black night dropped upon the sea:\nThe silent awe came down with it:\nI saw fantastic vapours flit\nAs o'er the darkness of the pit.\n\nWhen, lo! from out the furthest night\nA speck of rose and silver light\nAbove a boat shaped wondrously\nCame floating swiftly o'er the sea.\n\nIt was no human will that bore\nThe boat so fleetly to the shore\nWithout a sail spread or an oar.\n\nThe Pilot stood erect thereon\nAnd lifted up his ancient face,\n(Ancient with glad eternal youth\nLike one who was of starry race.)\n\nHis face was rich with dusky bloom;\nHis eyes a bronze and golden fire;\nHis hair in streams of silver light\nHung flamelike on his strange attire\n\nWhich starred with many a mystic sign,\nFell as o'er sunlit ruby glowing:\nHis light flew o'er the waves afar\nIn ruddy ripples on each bar\nAlong the spiral pathways flowing.\n\nIt was a crystal boat that chased\nThe light along the watery waste,\nTill caught amid the surges hoary\nThe Pilot stayed its jewelled glory.\n\nOh, never such a glory was:\nThe pale moon shot it through and through\nWith light of lilac, white and blue:\nAnd there mid many a fairy hue\nOf pearl and pink and amethyst,\nLike lightning ran the rainbow gleams\nAnd wove around a wonder-mist.\n\nThe Pilot lifted beckoning hands;\nSilent I went with deep amaze\nTo know why came this Beam of Light\nSo far along the ocean ways\nOut of the vast and shadowy night.\n\n\"Make haste, make haste!\" he cried. \"Away!\nA thousand ages now are gone.\nYet thou and I ere night be sped\nWill reck no more of eve or dawn.\"\n\nSwift as the swallow to its nest\nI leaped:  my body dropt right down:\nA silver star I rose and flew.\nA flame burned golden at his breast:\nI entered at the heart and knew\nMy Brother-Self who roams the deep,\nBird of the wonder-world of sleep.\n\nThe ruby body wrapped us round\nAs twain in one:  we left behind\nThe league-long murmur of the shore\nAnd fleeted swifter than the wind.\n\nThe distance rushed upon the bark:\nWe neared unto the mystic isles:\nThe heavenly city we could mark,\nIts mountain light, its jewel dark,\nIts pinnacles and starry piles.\n\nThe glory brightened:  \"Do not fear;\nFor we are real, though what seems\nSo proudly built above the waves\nIs but one mighty spirit's dreams.\n\n\"Our Father's house hath many fanes;\nYet enter not and worship not,\nFor thought but follows after thought\nTill last consuming self it wanes.\n\n\"The Fount of Shadowy Beauty flings\nIts glamour o'er the light of day:\nA music in the sunlight sings\nTo call the dreamy hearts away\nTheir mighty hopes to ease awhile:\nWe will not go the way of them:\nThe chant makes drowsy those who seek\nThe sceptre and the diadem.\n\n\"The Fount of Shadowy Beauty throws\nIts magic round us all the night;\nWhat things the heart would be, it sees\nAnd chases them in endless flight.\nOr coiled in phantom visions there\nIt builds within the halls of fire;\nIts dreams flash like the peacock's wing\nAnd glow with sun-hues of desire.\nWe will not follow in their ways\nNor heed the lure of fay or elf,\nBut in the ending of our days\nRest in the high Ancestral Self.\"\n\nThe boat of crystal touched the shore,\nThen melted flamelike from our eyes,\nAs in the twilight drops the sun\nWithdrawing rays of paradise.\n\nWe hurried under arched aisles\nThat far above in heaven withdrawn\nWith cloudy pillars stormed the night,\nRich as the opal shafts of dawn.\n\nI would have lingered then--but he--\n\"Oh, let us haste:  the dream grows dim,\nAnother night, another day,\nA thousand years will part from him\n\n\"Who is that Ancient One divine\nFrom whom our phantom being born\nRolled with the wonder-light around\nHad started in the fairy morn.\n\n\"A thousand of our years to him\nAre but the night, are but the day,\nWherein he rests from cyclic toil\nOr chants the song of starry sway.\n\n\"He falls asleep:  the Shadowy Fount\nFills all our heart with dreams of light:\nHe wakes to ancient spheres, and we\nThrough iron ages mourn the night.\nWe will not wander in the night\nBut in a darkness more divine\nShall join the Father Light of Lights\nAnd rule the long-descended line.\"\n\nEven then a vasty twilight fell:\nWavered in air the shadowy towers:\nThe city like a gleaming shell,\nIts azures, opals, silvers, blues,\nWere melting in more dreamy hues.\nWe feared the falling of the night\nAnd hurried more our headlong flight.\nIn one long line the towers went by;\nThe trembling radiance dropt behind,\nAs when some swift and radiant one\nFlits by and flings upon the wind\nThe rainbow tresses of the sun.\n\nAnd then they vanished from our gaze\nFaded the magic lights, and all\nInto a Starry Radiance fell\nAs waters in their fountain fall.\n\nWe knew our time-long journey o'er\nAnd knew the end of all desire,\nAnd saw within the emerald glow\nOur Father like the white sun-fire.\n\nWe could not say if age or youth\nWere on his face:  we only burned\nTo pass the gateways of the Day,\nThe exiles to the heart returned.\n\nHe rose to greet us and his breath,\nThe tempest music of the spheres,\nDissolved the memory of earth,\nThe cyclic labour and our tears.\nIn him our dream of sorrow passed,\nThe spirit once again was free\nAnd heard the song the Morning-Stars\nChant in eternal revelry.\n\nThis was the close of human story;\nWe saw the deep unmeasured shine,\nAnd sank within the mystic glory\nThey called of old the Dark Divine.\n\nWell it is gone now,\n        The dream that I chanted:\nOn this side the dawn now\n        I sit fate-implanted.\n\nBut though of my dreaming\n        The dawn has bereft me,\nIt all was not seeming\n        For something has left me.\n\nI fell in some other\n        World far from this cold light\nThe Dream Bird, my brother,\n        Is rayed with the gold light.\n\nI too in the Father\n        Would hide me, and so,\nBright Bird, to foregather\n        With thee now I go.\n\n--December 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nA New Earth\n\n\n        \"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies\n        When a new planet swims within his ken.\"\n\nI who had sought afar from earth\n        The faery land to greet,\nNow find content within its girth,\n        And wonder nigh my feet.\n\nTo-day a nearer love I choose\n        And seek no distant sphere,\nFor aureoled by faery dews\n        The dear brown breasts appear.\n\nWith rainbow radiance come and go\n        The airy breaths of day,\nAnd eve is all a pearly glow\n        With moonlit winds a-play.\n\nThe lips of twilight burn my brow,\n        The arms of night caress:\nGlimmer her white eyes drooping now\n        With grave old tenderness.\n\nI close mine eyes from dream to be\n        The diamond-rayed again,\nAs in the ancient hours ere we\n        Forgot ourselves to men.\n\nAnd all I thought of heaven before\n        I find in earth below,\nA sunlight in the hidden core\n        To dim the noon-day glow.\n\nAnd with the Earth my heart is glad,\n        I move as one of old,\nWith mists of silver I am clad\n        And bright with burning gold.\n\n--February 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nDuality\n\n\n        \"From me spring good and evil.\"\nWho gave thee such a ruby flaming heart,\nAnd such a pure cold spirit?   Side by side\nI know these must eternally abide\nIn intimate war, and each to each impart\nLife from their pain, with every joy a dart\nTo wound with grief or death the self-allied.\nRed life within the spirit crucified,\nThe eyes eternal pity thee, thou art\nFated with deathless powers at war to be,\nNot less the martyr of the world than he\nWhose thorn-crowned brow usurps the due of tears\nWe would pay to thee, ever ruddy life,\nWhose passionate peace is still to be at strife,\nO'erthrown but in the unconflicting spheres.\n\n--March 15, 1896  (This is unsigned, but in AE's \"Collected Poems\")\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Element Language\n\n\n\n\nIn a chapter in the Secret Doctrine dealing with the origin of\nlanguage, H.P. Blavatsky makes some statements which are quoted\nhere and which should be borne well in mind in considering what\nfollows.  \"The Second Race had a 'Sound Language,' to wit, chant-like\nsounds composed of vowels alone.\"  From this developed \"monosyllabic\nspeech which was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic\nlanguages mixed with hard consonants still in use among the yellow\nraces which are known to the anthropologist.  The linguistic\ncharacteristics developed into the agglutinative languages....\nThe inflectional speech, the root of the Sanskrit, was the first\nlanguage (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates) of the Fifth Race.\"\n\nThe nature of that language has not been disclosed along with other\nteaching concerning the evolution of the race, but like many other\nsecrets the details of which are still preserved by the Initiates,\nit is implied in what has already been revealed.  The application\nto speech of the abstract formula of evolution which they have put\nforward should result in its discovery, for the clue lies in\ncorrespondences;  know the nature of any one thing perfectly, learn\nits genesis, development and consummation, and you have the key to\nall the mysteries of nature.  The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm.\nBut, before applying this key, it is well to glean whatever hints\nhave been given, so that there may be less chance of going astray\nin our application.  First, we gather from the Secret Doctrine that\nthe sounds of the human voice are correlated with the forces, colours,\nnumbers and forms.  \"Every letter has its occult meaning, the vowels\nespecially contain the most occult and formidable potencies.\"\n(S.D., I, 94) and again it is said \"The magic of the ancient priests\nconsisted in those days in addressing their gods in their own language.\nThe speech of the men of earth cannot reach the Lords, each must\nbe addressed in the language of his respective element\"---is a\nsentence which will be shown pregnant with meaning.  \"The book of\nrules\" cited adds as an explanation of the nature of that element-\nlanguage:  \"It is composed of Sounds, not words;  of sounds, numbers\nand figures.  He who knows how to blend the three, will call forth\nthe response of the superintending Power\"  (the regent-god of the\nspecific element needed).  Thus this \"language is that of incantations\nor of Mantras, as they are called in India, sound being the most\npotent and effectual magic agent, and the first of the keys which\nopens the door of communication between mortals and immortals.\"\n(S.D. I, 464)\n\nFrom these quotations it will be seen that the occult teachings\nas to speech are directly at variance with the theories of many\nphilologists and evolutionists.  A first speech which was like song--\nanother and more developed speech which is held sacred--an esoteric\nside to speech in which the elements of our conventional languages\n(i.e. the letters) are so arranged that speech becomes potent enough\nto guide the elements, and human speech becomes the speech of the\ngods--there is no kinship between this ideal language and the\nejaculations and mimicry which so many hold to be the root and\nbeginning of it.  Yet those who wish to defend their right to hold\nthe occult teaching have little to fear from the champions of these\ntheories;  they need not at all possess any deep scholarship or\nlinguistic attainment;  the most cursory view of the roots of\nprimitive speech, so far as they have been collected, will show\nthat they contain few or no sounds of a character which would bear\nout either the onomatopoetic or interjectional theories.  The vast\nmajority of the roots of the Aryan language express abstract ideas,\nthey rarely indicate the particular actions which would be capable\nof being suggested by any mimicry possible to the human voice.\nI have selected at random from a list of roots their English\nequivalents, in order to show the character of the roots and to\nmake clearer the difficulty of holding such views.  The abstract\nnature of the ideas, relating to actions and things which often\nhave no attendant sound in nature, will indicate what I mean.\nWhat possible sounds could mimic the sense of \"to move, to shine,\nto gain, to flow, to burn, to blow, to live, to possess, to cover,\nto fall, to praise, to think\"?  In fact the most abstract of all\nseem the most primitive for we find them most fruitful in combination\nto for other words.  I hope to show this clearly later on.  It is\nunnecessary to discuss the claims of the interjectional theory,\nas it is only a theory, and there are few roots for which we could\ninfer even a remote origin of this nature.  The great objection\nto the theory that speech was originally a matter of convention\nand mutual agreement, is the scarcity of words among the roots\nwhich express the wants of primitive man.  As it is, a wisdom\nwithin or beyond the Aryan led him to construct in these roots\nwith their abstract significance an ideal foundation from which a\ngreat language could be developed.  However as the exponents of\nrival theories have demolished each other's arguments, without\nanyone having established a clear case for himself, it is not\nnecessary here to do more than indicate these theories and how\nthey may be met.\n\nIn putting forward a hypothesis more in accord with the doctrine\nof the spiritual origin of man, and in harmony with those occult\nideas concerning speech already quoted, I stand in a rather unusual\nposition, as I have to confess my ignorance of any of these primitive\nlanguages.  I am rather inclined however, to regard this on the\nwhole as an advantage for the following reasons.  I think primitive\nman (the early Aryan) chose his words by a certain intuition which\nrecognised an innate correspondence between the thought and the symbol.\nPara passu with the growing complexity of civilization language lost\nit spiritual character, \"it fell into matter,\" to use H.P. Blavatsky's\nexpression;  as the conventional words necessary to define artificial\nproducts grew in number, in the memory of these words the spontaneity\nof speech was lost, and that faculty became atrophied which enable\nman to arrange with psychic rapidity ever new combinations of sounds\nto express emotion and thought.  Believing then that speech was\noriginally intuitive, and that it only need introspection and a\ncareful analysis of the sounds of the human voice, to recover the\nfaculty and correspondences between these sounds and forces, colours,\nforms, etc., it will be seen why I do not regard my ignorance of\nthese languages as altogether a drawback.  The correspondences\nnecessarily had to be evolved out of my inner consciousness, and\nin doing this no aid could be derived from the Aryan roots as they\nnow stand.  In the meaning attached to each letter is to be found\nthe key to the meaning and origin of roots;  but the value of each\nsound separately could never be discovered by an examination of\nthem in their combinations, though their value and purpose in\ncombination to form words might be evident enough once the\nsignificance of the letters is shewn.  Any lack of knowledge then\nis only a disadvantage in this, that it limits the area from which\nto choose illustrations.  I have felt it necessary to preface what\nI have to say with this confession, to show exactly the position\nin which I stand.  The correspondences between sounds and forces\nwere first evolved, and an examination of the Aryan roots proved\nthe key capable of application.\n\n--------\nNote:--In an article which appeared in the Theosophist, Dec. 1887,\nI had attempted, with the assistance of my friend Mr. Chas. Johnston,\nto put forward some of the ideas which form the subject matter of\nthis paper.  Owing to the numerous misprints which rendered it\nunintelligible I have felt it necessary to altogether re-write it.\n---G.W.R.\n--------\n\nIt is advisable at this point to consider how correspondences arose\nbetween things seeming so diverse as sounds, forms, colors and forces.\nIt is evident that they could only come about through the existence\nof a common and primal cause reflecting itself everywhere in different\nelements and various forms of life.  This primal unity lies at the\nroot of all occult philosophy and science;  the One becomes Many;  the\nideas latent in Universal Mind are thrown outwards into manifestation.\nIn the Bhagavad-Gita (chap. IV) Krishna declares:  \"even though myself\nunborn, of changeless essence, and the lord of all existence, yet\nin presiding over nature--which is mine--I am born but through my\nown maya, the mystic power of self-ideation, the eternal thought\nin the eternal mind.\"  \"I establish the universe with a single\nportion of myself and remain separate;\"  he says later on, and in\nso presiding he becomes the cause of the appearance of the different\nqualities.  \"I am in the taste in water, the light in the sun and moon,\nthe mystic syllable OM in all the Vedas, sound in space, the masculine\nessence in men, the sweet smell in the earth, the brightness in the\nfire\" etc.  Pouring forth then from one fountain we should expect\nto find correspondences running everywhere throughout nature;  we\nshould expect to find all these things capable of correlation.\nCoexistent with manifestation arise the ideas of time and space,\nand these qualities, attributes or forces, which are latent and\nunified in the germinal thought, undergo a dual transformation;\nthey appear successively in time, and what we call evolution\nprogresses through Kalpa after Kalpa and Manvantara after Manvantara:\nthe moods which dominate these periods incarnate in matter, which\nundergoes endless transformations and takes upon itself all forms\nin embodying these sates of consciousness.\n\nThe order in which these powers manifest is declared in the Puranas,\nUpanishads and Tantric works.  It is that abstract formula of\nevolution which we can apply alike to the great and little things\nin nature.  This may be stated in many ways, but to put it briefly,\nthere is at first one divine Substance-Principle, Flame, Motion or\nthe Great Breath;  from this emanate the elements Akasa, ether, fire,\nair, water and earth;  the spiritual quality becoming gradually\nlessened in these as they are further removed from their divine\nsource;  this is the descent into matter, the lowest rung of\nmanifestation.  \"Having consolidated itself in its last principle\nas gross matter, it revolves around itself and informs with the\nseventh emanation of the last, the first and lowest element.\"\n(S.D. I, p. 297)  This involution of the higher into the lower\nurges life upwards through the mineral, vegetable, animal and human\nkingdoms, until it culminates in spiritually and self consciousness.\nIt is not necessary here to go more into detail, it is enough to\nsay that the elements in nature begin as passive qualities, their\nethereal nature becomes gross, then positive and finally spiritual,\nand this abstract formula holds good for everything in nature.\nThese changes which take place in the universe are repeated in man\nits microcosm, the cosmic force which acts upon matter and builds\nup systems of suns and planets, working in him repeats itself and\nbuilds up a complex organism which corresponds and is correlated\nwith its cosmic counterpart.  The individual spirit Purusha dwells\nin the heart of every creature, its powers ray forth everywhere;\nthey pervade the different principles or vehicles;  they act through\nthe organs of sense;  they play upon the different plexuses;\nevery principle and organ being specialised as the vehicle for a\nparticular force or state of consciousness.  All the sounds we can\nutter have their significance;  they express moods;  they create forms;\nthey arouse to active life within ourselves spiritual and psychic\nforces which are centered in various parts of the body.  Hence the\nwhole organism of man is woven through and through with such\ncorrespondences;  our thoughts, emotions, sensations, the forces\nwe use, colours and sounds acting on different planes are all\ncorrelated among themselves, and are also connected with the forces\nevolving present about us, in which we live and move.  We find\nsuch correspondences form the subject matter of many Upanishads\nand other occult treatises;  for example in Yajnavalkyasamhita,\na treatise on Yoga philosophy, we find the sound \"Ra\" associated\nwith the element of fire, Tejas Tatwa, with the God Rudra, with a\ncentre in the body just below the heart.  Other books add, as\ncorrespondences of Tejas Tatwa, that its colour is red, its taste\nis hot, its form is a triangle and its force is expansion.  The\ncorrespondences given in different treatises often vary;  but what\nwe can gather with certainty is that there must have existed a\ncomplete science of the subject;  the correlation of sound with\nsuch things, once understood, is the key which explains, not only\nthe magic potency of sound, but also the constuction of those roots\nwhich remain as relics of the primitive Aryan speech.\n\nThe thinking principle in man, having experiences of nature through\nits vehicles, the subtle, astral and gross physical bodies, translates\nthese sensations into its own set of correspondences:  this principle\nin man, called the Manas, is associated with the element of akasa,\nwhose property is sound;  the Manas moves about in akasa, and so\nall ideas which enter into the mind awaken their correspondences\nand are immediately mirrored in sound.  Let us take as an instance\nthe perception of the colour red;  this communicated to the mind\nwould set up a vibration, causing a sound to be thrown outwards in\nmental manifestation, and in this way the impulse would arise to\nutter the letter R, the correspondence of this colour.  This Manasic\nprinciple in man, the real Ego, is eternal in its nature;  it exists\nbefore and after the body, something accruing to it from each\nincarnation;  and so, because there is present in the body of man\nthis long-traveled soul, bearing with it traces of its eternal past,\nthese letters which are the elements of its speech have impressed\non them a correspondence, not only with the forces natural to its\ntransitory surroundings, but also with that vaster evolution of\nnature in which it has taken part.  These correspondences next\nclaim our attention.\n\nThe correspondences here suggested do not I think at all exhaust\nthe possible significance of any of the letters.  Every sound ought\nto have a septenary relation to the planes of consciousness, and\nthe differentiations of life, force and matter on each.  Complete\nmastery of these would enable the knower to guide the various\ncurrents of force, and to control the elemental knower to guide\nthe various currents of force, and to control the elemental beings\nwho live on the astral planes, for these respond, we are told,\n\"when the exact scale of being to which they belong is vibrated,\nwhether it be that of colour, form, sound or whatever else,\"\n(Path, May, 1886)  These higher interpretations I am unable to give;\nit requires the deeper being to know the deeper meaning.  Those\nhere appended may prove suggestive;  I do not claim any finality\nor authority for them, but they may be interesting to students of\nthe occult Upanishads where the mystic power of sound is continually\ndwelt upon.\n\nThe best method of arranging the letters is to begin with A and\nconclude with M or OO:  between these lie all the other letters,\nand their successive order is determined by their spiritual or\nmaterial quality.  Following A we get letters with an ethereal or\nliquid sound, such as R, H, L or Y;  they become gradually harsher\nas they pass from the A, following the order of nature in this.\nHalf way we get letters like K, J, TCHAY, S, or ISH;  then they\nbecome softer, and the labials, like F, B and M, have something\nof the musical quality of the earlier sounds.  If we arrange them\nin this manner, it will be found to approximate very closely to the\nactual order in which the sounds arise in the process of formation.\nWe begin then with\n\nA--This represents God, creative force, the Self, the I, the\nbeginning or first cause.  \"Among letters I am the vowel A,\" says\nKrishna in the Bagavad.  It is without colour, number or form.\n\nR--This is motion, air, breath or spirit;  it is also abstract desire,\nand here we find the teaching of the Rig-Veda in harmony.  \"Desire\nfirst arose in It which was the primal germ of mind, and which sages,\nsearching with their intellect, have discovered in their hearts to\nbe the bond which connects Entity with non-Entity.\"  The corresponding\ncolour of this letter is Red.\n\nH (hay) and L--Motion awakens Heat and Light which correspond\nrespectively to H and L.  That primordial ocean of being, says the\nbook of Dzyan, was \"fire and heat and motion:\"  which are explained\nas the noumenal essences of these material manifestations.  The\ncolour of H is Orange, of L yellow.  L also conveys the sense\nof radiation.\n\nY (yea)--This letter signifies condensation, drawing together, the\nforce of attraction, affinity.  Matter at the stage of evolution\nto which this refers is gaseous, nebulous, or ethereal:  the fire-\nmists in space gather together to become worlds.  The colour Y\nis green.\n\nW (way)--Water is the next element in manifestation:  in cosmic\nevolution it is spoken of as chaos, the great Deep;  its colour,\nI think, is indigo.  After this stage the elements no longer manifest\nsingly, but in pairs, or with a dual aspect.\n\nG (gay) and K--Reflection and Hardness;  matter becomes crystalline\nor metalic:  the corresponding colour is blue.\n\nS and Z--A further differentiation;  matter is atomic:  the abstract\nsignificance of number or seed is attached to these letters:  their\ncolour is violet.\n\nJ and Tchay--Earth and gross Substance:  this is the lowest point\nin evolution;  the worlds have now condensed into solid matter.\nThe colour of these letters is orange.\n\nN and Ng--Some new forces begin to work here;  the corresponding\nsounds have, I think, the meaning of continuation and transformation\nor change:  these new forces propel evolution in the upward or\nascending arc:  their colour is yellow.\n\nD and T--The colour of these letters is red.  The involution of\nthe higher forces into the lower forms alluded to before now begins.\nD represents this infusion of life into matter;  it is descent and\ninvolution, death or forgetfulness, perhaps, for a time to the\nincarnating power.  T is evolution, the upward movement generating\nlife;  the imprisoned energies surge outwards and vegetation begins.\n\nIth and Ish--These correspond respectively to growth or expansion\nand vegetation;  the earth, as Genesis puts it, \"puts forth grass\nand herbs and trees yielding fruit.\"  The colour of these letters\nis green.\n\nB and P--After the flora the fauna.  B is Life or Being, animal and\nhuman.  Humanity appears;  B is masculine, P feminine.  P has also\na meaning of division, differentiation or production, which may\nrefer to maternity.  The colour here is blue.\n\nF and V--The colour is violet.  Evolution moves still upwards,\nentering the ethereal planes once more.  Lightness and vastness\nare the characteristics of this stage:  we begin to permeate with\npart of our nature the higher spheres of being and reach the\nconsummation in the last stage, represented by\n\nM--which has many meanings;  it is thought, it is the end or death\nto the personality, it is the Receiver into which all flows, it\nis also the Symbol of maternity in a universal sense, it has this\nmeaning when the life impulse (which is always represented by a\nvowel) follows it, as in \"ma.\"  It is the Pralaya of the worlds;\nthe lips close as it is uttered.  Its colour is indigo.\n\nO--The last vowel sound symbolizes abstract space, the spirit\nassumes once more the garment of primordial matter;  it is the\nNirvana of eastern philosophy.\n\nI will now try to show how the abstract significance of these sound\nreveals a deeper meaning in the roots of Aryan language than\nphilologists generally allow.  Prof. Max Muller says in the\nintroduction to Biographies of Words.  \"Of ultimates in the sense\nof primary elements of language, we can never hope to know anything,\"\nand he also asserts that the roots are incapable of further analysis.\nI will endeavour now to show that this further analysis can be made.\n\nI should not be understood to say that all the so-called roots can\nbe made to yield a secret meaning when analysed.  Philologists are\nnot all agreed as to what constitutes a root, or what words are roots,\nand in this general uncertainty it should not be expected that these\ncorrespondences, which as I have said are not complete, will apply\nin every instance.  There are many other things which add to the\ndifficulty;  a root is often found to have very many different meanings;\nsome of these may have arisen in the manner I suggest, and many\nmore are derived from the primary meanings and are therefore not\nintuitive at all.  The intuition will have to be exercised to discover\nwhat sensations would likely be awakened by the perception of an\naction or object;  or if the root has an abstract significance,\nthe thought must be analysed in order to discover its essential\nelements.  I described previously the manner in which I thought a\nsingle sensation, the perception of the colour Red, would suggest\nits correspondence in sound, the letter R.  Where the idea is more\ncomplex, a combination of two, tree or four sounds are necessary\nto express it, but they all originate in the same way.  The reader\nwho desires to prove the truth of the theory here put forward can\nadopt either of two methods;  he can apply the correspondences to\nthe roots, or he may try for himself to create words expressing\nsimple, elemental ideas by combining the necessary letters;  and\nthen, if he turns to the roots, he will probably find that many\nof the words he has created in this way were actually used long ago,\nand this pratice will enable him more easily to understand in what\nsense, or on what plane, any particular letter should be taken.\nI think it probably that in the Sacred Language before mentioned,\nthis could at once have been recognized by a difference in the\nintonation of the voice.  This may have been a survival to some\nextent of the chanting which was the distinguishing characteristic\nof the speech of the Second Race.  (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 198)\nIn the written language it is not easily possible to discover this\nwithout much thought, unless endeavour has previously been made to\nre-awaken the faculty of intuitive speech, which we formerly possessed\nand which became atrophied.\n\nIt is not possible here to go into the analysis of the roots at\nmuch length:  I can only illustrate the method which will be found to\napply more surely where the roots express most elemental conceptions.\nLet us take as example the root, Wal, to boil.  Boiling is brought\nabout by the action of fire upon water, and here we find the letters W,\nwater, and L, light or fire, united.  In War, to well up as a spring,\nthe sounds for water and motion are combined.  A similar idea is\nexpressed in Wat, to well out;  the abstract significance of T,\nwhich is to evolve, come forth or appear, being here applied to a\nspecial action.  A good method to follow in order to understand\nhow the pure abstract meaning of a letter may be applied in many\ndifferent ways, is to take some of the roots in which any one letter\nis prominent and then compare them.  Let us take D.  It has an\nabstract relation to involution or infusion;  it may be view in\ntwo ways, either as positive or negative;  as the exertion of force\nor the reception of force.  Now I think if we compare the following\nroots a similarity of action will be found to underlie them all.\nId, to swell;  Ad, to eat;  Dhu, to put;  Da, to bind;  Ad, to smell;\nDu, to enter;  Da, to suck.\n\nI am not here going exhaustively to analyse the roots, as this is\nnot an essay upon philology, but an attempt to make clear some of\nthe mysteries of sound;  those who wish to study this side of the\nsubject more fully can study with this light the primitive languages.\nA few more examples must suffice.  The root, Mar, to die, may be\nvariously interpreted as the end of motion, the cessation of breath,\nor the withdrawal of spirit, R being expressive of what on various\nplanes is motion, spirit, air and breath.  In Bur, to be active,\nlife and movement are combined,:  in Gla, to glow, reflection and\nlight;  the same idea is in Gol, a lake.  We find combined in Kar,\nto grind, hardness and motion:  in Thah, to generate, expansion\nand heat;  in Pak, to comb, division and hardness, the suggestion\nbeing division with some hard object;  the same idea is in Pik,\nto cut.  In Pis, to pound, the letters for division and matter in\nits molecular state are combined:  in Fath, to fly, lightness and\nexpansion:  in Yas, to gird, drawing together and number;  in Rab,\nto be vehement, energy and life;  in Rip, to break, energy and\ndivision.  In Yudh, to fight, the meaning suggested may be, coming\ntogether to destroy.  Without further analysis the reader will be\nable to detect the relation which the abstractions corresponding\nto each letter bear to the defined application in the following words.\nAk, to be sharp;  Ank, to bend;  Idh, to kindle;  Ar, to move;\nAl, to burn;  Ka, to sharpen;  Har, to burn;  Ku, to hew;  Sa, to\nproduce;  Gal, to be yellow or green;  Ghar, to be yellow or green;\nThak, to thaw;  Tar, to go through;  Thu, to swell;  Dak, to bite;\nNak, to perish;  Pa, to nourish, to feed;  Par, to spare;  Pi, to\nswell, to be fat;  Pu, to purify;  Pu, to beget;  pau, little;\nPut, to swell out;  Flu, to fly, to float;  Bar, to carry;  Bhu,\nto be, to become;  Bla, to blow as a flower;  Ma, to think;  Mak,\nto pound;  Mi, to diminish;  Mu, to shut up, to enclose;  Yas, to\nseethe, to ferment;  Ys, to bind together, to mix;  Yuk, to yoke,\nto join;  Ra, to love;  Rik, to furrow;  Luh, to shine;  Rud, to\nredden, to be red;  Lub, to lust [?];  Lu, to cast off from;  Wag,\nto be moist;  Wam, to spit out;  So, to sow, to scatter;  Sak, to\ncut, to cleave;  Su, to generate;  Swa, to toss;  Swal, to boil up;\nSka, to cut;  Skap, to hew;  Sniw, to snow;  Spew, to spit out;\nSwid, to sweat;  etc.  An analysis of some sacred words and the\nnames of Deities may now prove interesting.\n\nIt has been said that before we can properly understand the character\nof any deity we would have to know the meaning and the numbers\nattached to each letter in the name, for in this way the powers\nand functons of the various gods were indicated.  If we take as\nexamples names familiar to everyone, Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra,\nthe three aspects of Parabrahm in manifestation, and analyse them\nin the same way as the roots, they will be found to yield up their\nessential meaning.  Form the union of B, life, R, breath, and Ma,\nthe producer, I would translate Brahma as \"the creative breath of life.\"\nVishnu similarly analysed is the power that \"pervades, expands, and\npreserves;\"  I infer this from the union of V, whose force is pervasion,\nSh, expansion, and N, continuation.  Rudra is \"the breath that absorbs\nthe breath.\"  Aum is the most sacred name of all names;  it is held\nto symbolize the action of the Great breath from its dawn to its close:\nit is the beginning, A, the middle, U, and the close M.  It is also\nan affirmation of the relation of our spiritual nature to the universal\nDeity whose aspects are Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra.  I shall have\nmore to say of the occult power of this word later on.  Taken in\nconjunction with two other words, it is \"the threefold designation\nof the Supreme Being.\"  Om Tat Sat has a significance referable to\na still higher aspect of Deity than that other Trinity;  the Om\nhere signifies that it is the All;  Tat that it is self-existent\nor self-evolved;  I think the repetition of the T in Tat gives it\nthis meaning:  Sat would signify that in it are contained the seeds\nof all manifestation.   H.P. Blavatsky translates this word as Be-ness,\nwhich seems to be another way of expressing the same idea.  The\nmystic incantation familiar to all students of the Upanishads, Om,\nbhur, Om, Bhwar, Om, Svar,\" is an assertion of the existence of\nthe Divine Self in all the three worlds or Lokas.  Loka is generally\ntranslated as a place;  the letters suggest to me that a place or\nworld is only a hardening or crystalization of Fire or Light.\nIn Bhur Loka the crystalization of the primordial element of Fire\nleaves only one principle active, the life principle generally called\nPrana.  Bhur Loka then is the place where life is active;  we have\nB, life, and R, movement, to suggest this.  In the word Bhuvar a\nnew letter, V, is inserted:  this letter, as I have said, corresponds\nto the Astral world, so the Bhuvar Loka is the place where both\nthe Astral and Life principles are active.  It is more difficult\nto translate Svar Loka:  there is some significance attached here\nto the letter S, which I cannot grasp.  It might mean that this\nworld contains the germs of Astral life;  but this does not appear\nsufficiently distinctive, Svar Loka is generally known as Devachan,\nand the whole incantation would mean that the Deity is present\nthroughout the Pranic, Astral and Devachanic worlds.  It is\ninteresting to note what is said in the Glossary by H.P.B., about\nthese three words (p. 367):  they are said to be \"lit by and born\nof fire,\"  and to possess creative powers.  The repetition of them\nwith the proper accent should awaken in the occultist the powers\nwhich correspond to the three worlds.  I think by these examples\nthat the student will be able to get closer to the true significance\nof incantation;  those who understand the occult meaning of the\ncolours attached to the letters will be able to penetrate deeper\nthan others into these mysteries.\n\nI may here say something about the general philosophy of incantation.\nThere is said to be in nature a homogenous sound or tone which\neverywhere stirs up the molecules into activity.  This is the \"Word\"\nwhich St. John says was in the beginning (the plane of causation);\nin another sense it is the Akasa of occult science, the element\nof sound, it is the Pythagorean \"music of the spheres.\"  The\nuniverse is built up, moulded and sustained by this element which\nis everywhere present, though inaudible by most men at this stage\nof evolution.  It is not sound by the physical ears, but deep in\nthe heart sometimes may be heard \"the mystic sounds of the Akasic\nheights.\"  The word Aum represents this homogeneous sound, it stirs\nup a power which is latent in it called the Yajna.  The Glossary\nsays that this \"is one of the forms of Akasa within which the mystic\nword calls it into existence:\"  it is a bridge by means of which\nthe soul can cross over to the world of the Immortals.  It is this\nwhich is alluded to in the Nada-Bindu Upanishad.  \"The mind becoming\ninsensible to the external impressions, becomes one with the sound,\nas milk with water, and then becomes rapidly absorbed in chidakas\n(the Akasa where consciousness pervades).  The sound..... serves\nthe purpose of a lure to the ocean waves of Chitta (mind), ...the\nserpent Chitta through listening to the Nada is entirely absorbed\nin it, and becoming unconscious of everything concentrates itself\non the sound.\"   We may quote further from another Upanishad.\n\"Having left behind the body, the organs and objects of sense, and\nhaving seized the bow whose stick is fortitude and whose string\nis asceticism, and having killed with the arrow of freedom from\negoism the first guardian, ....he crosses by means of the boat Om\nto the other side of the ether within the heart, and when the ether\nis revealed he enters slowly, as a miner seeking minerals enters\na mine, into the hall of Brahman.  ...Thenceforth, pure, clean,\ntranquil, breathless, endless, imperishable, firm, unborn, and\nindependent, he stands in his own greatness, and having seen the\nSelf standing in his own greatness, he looks at the wheel of\nthe world.\"\n\nLet no one think that this is all, and that the mere repetition of\nwords will do anything except injure those who attempt the use of\nthese methods without further knowledge.  It has been said (Path,\nApril, 1887) that Charity, Devotion, and the like virtues are\nstructural necessities in the nature of the man who would make this\nattempt.  We cannot, unless the whole nature has been purified by\nlong services and sacrifice, and elevated into mood at once full\nof reverence and intense will, become sensitive to the subtle powers\npossessed by the spiritual soul.\n\nWhat is here said about the Aum which is the name of our own God,\nand the way in which it draws forth the hidden power will serve to\nillustrate the method in using other words.  The Thara-Sara Upanishad\nof Sukla-Yajur Veda says \"Through Om is Brahm produced:  through Na\nis Vishnu produced;  through Ma is Rudra produced, etc.\"  All these\nare names of gods;  they correspond to forces in man and nature,\nin their use the two are united, and the man mounts upwards to\nthe Immortals.\n\nI have been forced to compress what I had to say in these articles,\nI have only been able to suggest rather than put forward ideas,\nfor my own knowledge of these correspondences is very incomplete.\nAs far as I know the subject has been untouched hitherto, and this\nmust be my excuse for the meagre nature of the information given.\nI hope later on to treat of the relation of sound and colour to\nform and to show how these correspondences will enable us to\nunderstand the language which the gods speak to us through flowers,\ntrees, and natural forms.  I hope also to be able to show that it\nwas a knowledge of the relation of sound to form which dictated\nthe form of the letters in many primaeval alphabets.\n\n--5/15, 6/15, 7/15, 8/15, 9/15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nAt the Dawn of the Kaliyuga *\n\n\n\n\nWhere we sat on the hillside together that evening the winds were\nlow and the air was misty with light.  The huge sunbrowned slope\non which we were sitting was sprinkled over with rare spokes of grass;\nit ran down into the vagueness underneath where dimly the village\ncould be seen veiled by its tresses of lazy smoke.  Beyond was a\nbluer shade and a deeper depth, out of which, mountain beyond mountain,\nthe sacred heights of Himalay rose up through star-sprinkled zones\nof silver and sapphire air.  How gay were our hearts!  The silent\njoy of the earth quickened their beating.  What fairy fancies\nalternating with the sweetest laughter came from childish lips!\nIn us the Golden Age whispered her last, and departed.  Up came\nthe white moon, her rays of dusty pearl slanting across the darkness\nfrom the old mountain to our feet.  \"A bridge!\" we cried, \"Primaveeta,\nwho long to be a sky-walker, here is a bridge for you!\"\n\nPrimaveeta only smiled;  he was always silent;  he looked along\nthe gay leagues of pulsating light that lead out to the radiant\nmystery.  We went on laughing and talking;  then Primaveeta broke\nhis silence.\n\n\"Vyassa,\" he said, \"I went out in thought, I went into the light,\nbut it was not that light.  I felt like a fay;  I sparkled with\nazure and lilac;  I went on, and my heart beat with longing for I\nknew not what, and out and outward I sped till desire stayed and I\npaused, and the light looked into me full of meaning.  I felt like\na spark, and the dancing of the sea of joy bore me up, up, up!\"\n\n\"Primaveeta, who can understand you?\"  said his little sister Vina,\n\"you always talk of the things no one can see;  Vyassa, sing for us.\"\n\n\"Yes! yes! let Vyassa sing!\" they all cried;  and they shouted and\nshouted until I began:--\n\n\"Shadowy petalled, like the lotus, loom the mountains with their snows:\nThrough the sapphire Soma rising, such a flood of glory throws\nAs when the first in yellow splendour Brahma from the lotus rose.\n\n\"High above the darkening mounds where fade the fairy lights of day,\nAll the tiny planet folk are waving us from far away;\nThrilled by Brahma's breath they sparkle with the magic of the gay.\n\n\"Brahma, all alone in gladness, dreams the joys that throng in space,\nShepherds all the whirling splendours onward to their resting place,\nWhere at last in wondrous silence fade in One the starry race.\"\n\n\"Vyassa is just like Primaveeta, he is full of dreams to-night,\"\nsaid Vina.  And indeed I was full of dreams;  my laughter had all\ndied away;  a vague and indescribable unrest came over me;  the\nuniversal air around seemed thrilled by the stirring of unknown powers.\nWe sat silent awhile;  then Primaveeta cried out:  \"Oh, look, look,\nlook, the Devas! the bright persons! they fill the air with\ntheir shining.\"\n\nWe saw them pass by and we were saddened, for they were full of\nsolemn majesty;  overhead a chant came from celestial singers full\nof the agony of farewell and departure, and we knew from their\nsong that the gods were about to leave the earth which would\nnevermore or for ages witness their coming.  The earth and the air\naround it seemed to tingle with anguish.  Shuddering we drew closer\ntogether on the hillside while the brightness of the Devas passed\nonward and away;  and clear cold and bright as ever, the eternal\nconstellations, which change or weep not, shone out, and we were\nalone with our sorrow.  To awed we were to speak, but we clung closer\ntogether and felt a comfort in each other;  and so, crouched in\nsilence;  within me I heard as from far away a note of deeper anguish,\nlike a horn blown out of the heart of the ancient Mother over a\nperished hero:  in a dread moment I saw the death and the torment;\nhe was her soul-point, the light she wished to shine among men.\nWhat would follow in the dark ages to come, rose up before me in\nshadowy, over-crowding pictures;  like the surf of a giant ocean\nthey fluctuated against the heavens, crested with dim, giantesque\nand warring figures.  I saw stony warriors rushing on to battle;\nI heard their fierce hard laughter as they rode over the trampled foe;\nI saw smoke arise from a horrible burning, and thicker and blacker\ngrew the vistas, with here and there a glow from some hero-heart\nthat kept the true light shining within.  I turned to Primaveeta\nwho was crouched beside me:  he saw with me vision for vision, but,\nbeyond the thick black ages that shut me out from hope, he saw the\nresurrection of the True, and the homecoming of the gods.  All this\nhe told me later, but now our tears were shed together.  Then\nPrimaveeta rose up and said, \"Vyasa, where the lights were shining,\nwhere they fought for the True, there you and I must fight;  for,\nfrom them spreads out the light of a new day that shall dawn behind\nthe darkness.\"  I saw that he was no longer a dreamer;  his face\nwas firm with a great resolve.  I could not understand him, but I\ndetermined to follow him, to fight for the things he fought for,\nto work with him, to live with him, to die with him;  and so,\nthinking and trying to understand, my thought drifted back to that\nsadness of the mother which I had first felt.  I saw how we share\njoy or grief with her, and, seized with the inspiration of her sorrow,\nI sang about her loved one:--\n\n\"Does the earth grow grey with grief\nFor her hero darling fled?\nThough her vales let fall no leaf,\nIn our hearts her tears are shed.\n\n\"Still the stars laugh on above,\nNot to them her grief is said;\nMourning for her hero love\nIn our hearts her tears are shed.\n\n\"We her children mourn for him,\nMourn the elder hero dead;\nIn the twilight grey and dim\nIn our hearts the tears are shed.\"\n\n\"Vyassa,\" they said, \"you will break our hearts.\"  And we sat in\nsilence and sorrow more complete till we heard weary voices calling\nup to us from the darkness below:  \"Primaveeta!  Vyassa!  Chandra!\nParvati!  Vina!  Vasudeva!\" calling all our names.  We went down\nto our homes in the valley;  the breadth of glory had passed away\nfrom the world, and our hearts were full of the big grief that\nchildren hold.\n\n--October 15, 1893\n\n--------------\n* Note--Kaliyuga.  The fourth, the black or iron age, our present\nperiod, the duration of which is 432,000 years.  It began 3,102\nyears B.C. at the moment of Krishna's death, and the first cycle\nof 5,000 years will end between the years 1897 and 1898.\n--------------\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Meditation of Parvati\n\n\n\n\nParvata rose up from his seat under the banyan tree.  He passed\nhis hand unsteadily over his brow.  Throughout the day the young\nascetic had been plunged in profound meditation, and now, returning\nfrom heaven to earth, he was dazed like one who awakens in darkness\nand knows not where he is.  All day long before his inner eye burned\nthe light of the Lokas, until he was wearied and exhausted with\ntheir splendours;  space glowed like a diamond with intolerable\nlustre, and there was no end to the dazzling processions of figures.\nHe had seen the fiery dreams of the dead in Swargam.  He had been\ntormented by the sweet singing of the Gandharvas, whose choral song\nreflected in its ripples the rhythmic pulse of Being.  He saw how\nthe orbs, which held them, were set within luminous orbs still of\nwider circuit, and vaster and vaster grew the vistas, and smaller\nseemed the soul at gaze, until at last, a mere speck of life, he\nbore the burden of innumerable worlds.  Seeking for Brahma, he\nfound only the great illusion as infinite as Brahma's being.\n\nIf these things were shadows, the earth and the forests he returned\nto, viewed at evening, seemed still more unreal, the mere dusky\nflutter of a moth's wings in space.  Filmy and evanescent, if he\nhad sunk down as through a transparency into the void, it would not\nhave been wonderful.  Parvati turned homeward, still half in trance:\nas he threaded the dim alleys he noticed not the flaming eyes that\nregarded him from the gloom;  the serpents rustling amid the\nundergrowths;  the lizards, fire-flies, insects, the innumerable\nlives of which the Indian forest was rumourous;  they also were\nbut shadows.  He paused half unconsciously at the village, hearing\nthe sound of human voices, of children at play.  He felt a throb\nof pity for these tiny being who struggled and shouted, rolling\nover each other in ecstasies of joy;  the great illusion had indeed\ndevoured them before whom the Devas once were worshipers.  Then\nclose beside him he heard a voice;  its low tones, its reverence\nsoothed him:  there was something akin to his own nature in it;\nit awakened him fully.  A little crowd of five or six people were\nlistening silently to an old man who read from a palm-leaf manuscript.\nParvati knew his order by the orange-coloured robes he wore;  a\nBhikshu of the new faith.  What was his delusion?\n\nThe old man lifted his head for a moment as the ascetic came closer,\nand then he continued as before.  He was reading the \"Legend of\nthe Great King of Glory.\"  Parvati listened to it, comprehending\nwith the swift intuition and subtlety of a mystic the inner meaning\nof the Wonderful Wheel, the elephant Treasure, the Lake and palace\nof Righteousness.   He followed the speaker, understanding all\nuntil he came to the meditation of the King:  then he heard with\nvibrating heart, how \"the Great King of Glory entered the golden\nchamber, and set himself down on the silver couch.  And he let his\nmind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of Love: and\nso the second quarter, and so the third, and so the fourth.  And\nthus the whole wide world, above below, around and everywhere,\ndid he continue to pervade with heart of Love, far-reaching, grown\ngreat, and beyond measure.\"  When the old Bhikshu had ended, Parvati\nrose up, and went back again into the forest.  He had found the\nsecret of the True--to leave behind the vistas, and enter into the\nBeing.  Another legend rose up in his mind, a fairy legend of\nrighteousness, expanding and filling the universe, a vision beautiful\nand full of old enchantment;  his heart sang within him.  He seated\nhimself again under the banyan tree;  he rose up in soul;  he saw\nbefore him images, long-forgotten, of those who suffer in the\nsorrowful old earth;  he saw the desolation and loneliness of old age,\nthe insults to the captive, the misery of the leper and outcast,\nthe chill horror and darkness of life in a dungeon.  He drank in\nall their sorrow.  For his heart he went out to them.  Love, a\nfierce and tender flame arose;  pity, a breath from the vast;\nsympathy, born of unity.  This triple fire sent forth its rays;\nthey surrounded those dark souls;  they pervaded them;  they beat\ndown oppression.\n\n\nWhile Parvati, with spiritual magic, sent forth the healing powers,\nfar away at that moment, in his hall, a king sat enthroned.  A\ncaptive was bound before him;  bound, but proud, defiant, unconquerable\nof soul.  There was silence in the hall until the king spake the doom,\nthe torture, for this ancient enemy.  The king spake:  \"I had thought\nto do some fierce thing to thee, and so end thy days, my enemy.\nBut, I remember with sorrow, the great wrongs we have done to each\nother, and the hearts made sore by our hatred.  I shall do no more\nwrong to thee.  Thou art free to depart.  Do what thou wilt.  I will\nmake restitution to thee as far as may be for thy ruined state.\"\nThen the soul no might could conquer was conquered, and the knees\nwere bowed;  his pride was overcome.  \"My brother!\"  he said, and\ncould say no more.\n\n\nTo watch for years a little narrow slit high up in the dark cell,\nso high that he could not reach up and look out;  and there to see\ndaily a little change from blue to dark in the sky had withered\nthat prisoner's soul.  The bitter tears came no more;  hardly even\nsorrow;  only a dull, dead feeling.  But that day a great groan\nburst from him:  he heard outside the laugh of a child who was playing\nand gathering flowers under the high, grey walls:  then it all came\nover him, the divine things missed, the light, the glory, and the\nbeauty that the earth puts forth for her children.  The narrow slit\nwas darkened:  half of a little bronze face appeared.\n\n\"Who are you down there in the darkness who sigh so?  Are you all\nalone there?  For so many years!   Ah, poor man!  I would come down\nto you if I could, but I will sit here and talk to you for a while.\nHere are flowers for you,\" and a little arm showered them in handfuls;\nthe room was full of the intoxicating fragrance of summer.  Day\nafter day the child came, and the dull heart entered into human\nlove once more.\n\n\nAt twilight, by a deep and wide river, sat an old woman alone, dreamy,\nand full of memories.  The lights of the swift passing boats, and\nthe lights of the stars, were just as in childhood and the old\nlove-time.  Old, feeble, it was time for  her to hurry away from\nthe place which changed not with her sorrow.\n\n\"Do you see our old neighbour there?\" said Ayesha to her lover.\n\"They say she once was as beautiful as you would make me think I\nam now.  How lonely she must be!  Let us come near and speak to her\";\nand the lover went gladly.  Though they spoke to each other rather\nthan to her, yet something of the past--which never dies when love,\nthe immortal, has pervaded it--rose up again as she heard their voices.\nShe smiled, thinking of years of burning beauty.\n\n\nA teacher, accompanied by his chelas, was passing by the wayside\nwhere a leper was sitting.  The teacher said, \"Here is our brother\nwhom we may not touch.  But he need not be shut out from truth.\nWe may sit down where he can listen.\"  He sat down on the wayside\nbeside the leper, and his chelas stood around him.  He spoke words\nfull of love, kindliness, and pity, the eternal truths which make\nthe soul grow full of sweetness and youth.  A small old spot began\nto glow in the heart of the leper, and the tears ran down his\nwithered cheeks.\n\nAll these were the deeds of Parvati, the ascetic;  and the Watcher\nwho was over him from all eternity made a great stride towards\nthat soul.\n\n--November 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nA Talk by the Euphrates\n\n\n\n\nPriest Merodach walked with me at evening along the banks of the\ngreat river.\n\n\"You feel despondent now,\" he said, \"but this was inevitable.  You\nlooked for a result equal to your inspiration.  You must learn to\nbe content with that alone.  Finally an inspiration will come for\nevery moment, and in every action a divine fire reveal itself.\"\n\n\"I feel hopeless now.  Why is this?  Wish and will are not less\nstrong than before.\"\n\n\"Because you looked for a result beyond yourself, and, attached\nto external things, your mind drew to itself subtle essences of\nearth which clouded it.  But there is more in it than that.  Nature\nhas a rhythm, and that part of us which is compounded of her elements\nshares in it.  You were taught that nature is for ever becoming:\nthe first emanation in the great deep is wisdom:  wisdom changes\ninto desire, and an unutterable yearning to go outward darkens the\nprimeval beauty.  Lastly, the elements arise, blind, dark, troubled.\nNature in them imagines herself into forgetfulness.  This rhythm\nrepeats itself in man:  a moment of inspiration--wise and clear,\nwe determine;  then we are seized with a great desire which impels\nus to action;  the hero, the poet, the lover, all alike listen to\nthe music of life, and then endeavour to express its meaning in\nword or deed;  coming in contact with nature, its lethal influence\ndrowses them;  so baffled and forgetful, they wonder where the God is.\nTo these in some moment the old inspiration returns, the universe is\nas magical and sweet as ever, a new impulse is given, and so they\nrevolve, perverting and using, each one in his own way, the\ncosmic rhythm.\"\n\n\"Merodach, what you say seems truth, and leaving aside the cosmic\nrhythm, which I do not comprehend, define again for me the three states.\"\n\n\"You cannot really understand the little apart from the great;  but,\napplying this to your own case, you remember you had a strange\nexperience, a God seemed to awaken within you.  This passed away;\nyou halted a little while, full of strange longing, eager for the\ngreat;  yet you looked without on the hither side of that first moment,\nand in this second period, which is interchange and transition, your\nlonging drew to you those subtle material essences I spoke of, which,\nlike vapour surround, dull and bewilder the mind with strange\nphantasies of form and sensation.  Every time we think with longing\nof any object, these essences flow to us out of the invisible spheres\nand steep us with the dew of matter:  then we forget the great, we\nsleep, we are dead or despondent as you are despondent.\"\n\nI sighed as I listened.  A watchfulness over momentary desires was\nthe first step;  I had thought of the tasks of the hero as leading\nupwards to the Gods, but this sleepless intensity of will working\nwithin itself demanded a still greater endurance.  I neared my\ndestination;  I paused and looked round;  a sudden temptation\nassailed me;  the world was fair enough to live in.  Why should I\ntoil after the far-off glory?  Babylon seemed full of mystery, its\ntemples and palaces steeped in the jewel glow and gloom of evening.\nIn far-up heights of misty magnificence the plates of gold on the\ntemples rayed back the dying light:  in the deepening vault a starry\nsparkle began:  an immense hum arose from leagues of populous streets:\nthe scents of many gardens by the river came over me:  I was lulled\nby the splash of fountains.  Closer I heard voices and a voice I\nloved:  I listened as a song came\n\n\"Tell me, youthful lover, whether\n        Love is joy or woe?\nAre they gay or sad together\n        On that way who go?\"\n\nA voice answered back\n\n\"Radiant as a sunlit feather,\n        Pure and proud they go;\nWith the lion look together\n        Glad their faces show.\"\n\nMy sadness departed;  I would be among them shortly, and would walk\nand whisper amid those rich gardens where beautiful idleness was\nalways dreaming.  Merodach looked at me.\n\n\"You will find these thoughts will hinder you much,\" he said.\n\n\"You mean--\"  I hesitated, half-bewildered, half-amazed.  \"I say\nthat a thought such as that which flamed about you just now, driving\nyour sadness away, will recur again when next you are despondent,\nand so you will accustom yourself to find relief on the great quest\nby returning to an old habit of the heart, renewing what should be\nlaid aside.  This desire of men and women for each other is the\nstrongest tie among the many which bind us:  it is the most difficult\nof all to overcome.  The great ones of the earth have passed that\nway themselves with tears.\"\n\n\"But surely, Merodach, you cannot condemn what I may say is so much\na part of our nature--of all nature.\"\n\n\"I did not condemn it, when I said it is the strongest tie that\nbinds us here:  it is sin only for those who seek for freedom.\"\n\n\"Merodach, must we then give up love?\"\n\n\"There are two kinds of love men know of.  There is one which begins\nwith a sudden sharp delight--it dies away into infinite tones of\nsorrow.  There is a love which wakes up amid dead things:  it is\na chill at first, but it takes root, it warms, it expands, it lays\nhold of universal joys.  So the man loves:  so the God loves.\nThose who know this divine love are wise indeed.  They love not\none or another:  they are love itself.  Think well over this:\npower alone is not the attribute of the Gods;  there are no such\nfearful spectres in that great companionship.  And now, farewell,\nwe shall meet again.\"\n\nI watched his departing figure, and then I went on my own way.  I\nlonged for that wisdom, which they only acquire who toil, and strive,\nand suffer;  but I was full of a rich life which longed for excitement\nand fulfilment, and in that great Babylon sin did not declare itself\nin its true nature, but was still clouded over by the mantle of\nprimeval beauty.\n\n--December 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Cave of Lilith\n\n\n\n\nOut of her cave came the ancient Lilith;  Lilith the wise;  Lilith\nthe enchantress.  There ran a little path outside her dwelling;\nit wound away among the mountains and glittering peaks, and before\nthe door, one of the Wise Ones walked to and fro. Out of her cave\ncame Lilith, scornful of his solitude, exultant in her wisdom,\nflaunting her shining and magical beauty.\n\n\"Still alone, star gazer!  Is thy wisdom of no avail?  Thou hast\nyet to learn that I am more powerful knowing the ways of error than\nyou who know the ways of truth.\"\n\nThe Wise One heeded her not, but walked to and fro.  His eyes were\nturned to the distant peaks, the abode of his brothers.   The\nstarlight fell about him;  a sweet air came down the mountain path,\nfluttering his white robe;  he did not cease from his steady musing.\nLike a mist rising between rocks wavered  Lilith in her cave.\nViolet, with silvery gleams her raiment;  her face was dim;  over\nher head rayed a shadowy diadem, the something a man imagines over\nthe head of his beloved---looking closer at her face he would have\nseen that this was the crown he reached out to, that the eyes burnt\nwith his own longing, that the lips were parted to yield to the\nsecret wishes of his heart.\n\n\"Tell me, for I would know, why do you wait so long?  I, here in\nmy cave between the valley and the height blind the eyes of all\nwho would pass.  Those who by chance go forth to you come back to\nme again, and but one in ten thousand passes on.  My delusions are\nsweeter to them than truth.  I offer every soul its own shadow;\nI pay them their own price.  I have grown rich, though the simple\nshepards of old gave me birth.  Men have made me;  the mortals have\nmade me immortal.  I rose up like a vapour from their first dreams,\nand every sigh since then and every laugh remains with me.  I am\nmade up of hopes and fears.  The subtle princes lay out their plans\nof conquest in my cave, and there the hero dreams, and there the\nlovers of all time write in flame their history.  I am wise, holding\nall experience, to tempt, to blind, to terrify.  None shall pass by.\nWhy, therefore, dost thou wait?\"\n\nThe Wise One looked at her and she shrank back a little, and a\nlittle her silver and violet faded, but out of her cave her voice\nstill sounded:\n\n\"The stars and the starry crown are not yours alone to offer, and\nevery promise you make, I make also.  I offer the good and the bad\nindifferently.  The lover, the poet, the mystic, and all who would\ndrink of the first Fountain, I delude with my mirage.  I was the\nBeatrice who led Dante upward:  the gloom was in me, and the glory\nwas mine also, and he went not out of my cave.  The stars and the\nshining of heaven were delusions of the infinite I wove about him.\nI captured his soul with the shadow of space;  a nutshell would\nhave contained the film.  I smote on the dim heart-chords the\nmanifold music of being.  God is sweeter in the human than the\nhuman in God:  therefore he rested in me.\"\n\nShe paused a little, and then went on.\n\n\"There is that fantastic fellow who slipped by me--could your wisdom\nnot keep him?  He returned to me full of anguish, and I wound my\narms round him like a fair melancholy, and now his sadness is as\nsweet to him as hope was before his fall.  Listen to his song.\"\nShe paused again.  A voice came up from the depths chanting a\nsad knowledge--\n\n\"What of all the will to do?\n        It has vanished long ago,\nFor a dream shaft pierced it through\n        From the unknown Archer's bow.\n\nWhat of all the soul to think?\n        Some one offered it a cup\nFilled with a diviner drink,\n        And the flame has burned it up.\n\nWhat of all the hope to climb?\n        Only in the self we grope\nTo the misty end of time;\n        Truth has put an end to hope.\n\nWhat of all the heart to love?\n        Sadder than for will or soul,\nNo light lured it on above;\n        Love has found itself the whole.\"\n\n \"Is it not pitiful?  I pity only those who pity themselves.  Yet\nhe is mine more surely than ever.  This is the end of human wisdom.\nHow shall he now escape?  What shall draw him up?\"\n\n\"His will shall awaken,\" said the Wise One.  \"I do not sorrow over\nhim, for long is the darkness before the spirit is born.  He learns\nin your caves not to see, not to hear, not to think, for very anguish\nflying your delusions.\"\n\n\"Sorrow is a great bond,\" Lilith said.\n\n\"It is a bond to the object of sorrow.  He weeps what thou can never\ngive him, a life never breathed in thee.  He shall come forth, and\nthou shalt not see him at the time of passing.  When desire dies,\nwill awakens, the swift, the invisible.    He shall go forth, and\none by one the dwellers in your caves will awaken and pass onwards;\nthis small old path will be trodden by generation after generation.\nYou, too, oh, shining Lilith, will follow, not as mistress, but\nas hand-maiden.\"\n\n\"I shall weave spells,\" Lilith cried.  \"They shall never pass me.\nWith the sweetest poison I will drug them.  They will rest drowsily\nand content as of old.  Were they not giants long ago, mighty men\nand heroes?  I overcame them with young enchantment.  Will they\npass by feeble and longing for bygone joys, for the sins of their\nproud exultant youth, while I have grown into a myriad wisdom?\"\n\nThe Wise One walked to and fro as before, and there was silence,\nand I thought I saw that with steady will he pierced the tumultuous\ngloom of the cave, and a heart was touched here and there in its\nblindness.  And I thought I saw that Sad Singer become filled with\na new longing to be, and that the delusions of good and evil fell\nfrom him, and that he came at last to the knees of the Wise One\nto learn the supreme truth.  In the misty midnight I hear these\nthree voices, the Sad Singer, the Enchantress Lilith, and the Wise\nOne.  From the Sad Singer I learned that thought of itself leads\nnowhere, but blows the perfume from every flower, and cuts the\nflower from every tree, and hews down every tree from the valley,\nand in the end goes to and fro in waste places gnawing itself in\na last hunger.  I learned from Lilith that we weave our own\nenchantment, and bind ourselves with out own imagination; to think\nof the true as beyond us, or to love the symbol of being, is to\ndarken the path to wisdom, and to debar us from eternal beauty.\nFrom the Wise One I learned that the truest wisdom is to wait, to\nwork, and to will in secret; those who are voiceless today, tomorrow\nshall be eloquent, and the earth shall hear them, and her children\nsalute them.  Of these three truths the hardest to learn is the\nsilent will.  Let us seek for the highest truth.\n\n--February 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nA Strange Awakening\n\n\n\n\nChapter I.\n\n\nThat we are living in the Dark Age we all know, yet we do not realise\nhalf its darkness.  We endure physical and moral suffering;  but,\nfortunately or unfortunately, we are oblivious of the sorrow of\nall sorrows--the Spiritual Tragedy.  Such a rust has come over the\npure and ancient spirit of life, that the sceptre and the diadem\nand the starry sway we held are unremembered;  and if anyone speaks\nof these things he is looked at strangely with blank eyes, or with\neyes that suspect madness.  I do not know whether to call him great,\nor pity him, who feels such anguish;  for although it is the true\nagony of the crucifixion, it is only gods who are so martyred.\nWith these rare souls memory is not born:  life flows on, and they\nwith it go on in dreams:  they are lulled by lights, flowers, stars,\ncolours, and sweet odours, and are sheltered awhile from heaven\nand hell;  then in some moment the bubble bursts, and the god\nawakens and knows himself, and he rises again with giant strength\nto conquer;  or else he succumbs, and the waves of Lethe, perhaps\nin mercy, blot out his brief knowledge.\n\nI knew such an one many years ago, and I tell of him because I know\nof no deeper proof of the existence of a diviner nature than that\nman's story.  Arthur Harvey, as I have heard people describe him,\nin his early years was gentle, shy, and given to much dreaming.\nHe was taken from school early, came up from the country to the city,\nand was put to business.  He possessed the apathy and unresisting\nnature characteristic of so many spiritual people, and which is\nfound notably among the natives of India;  so he took his daily\nconfinement at first as a matter of course, though glad enough when\nit was over, and the keen sweet air blew about him in spring or\nsummer evenings, and the earth looked visionary, steeped in dew\nand lovely colour, and his soul grew rich with strange memories\nand psychic sensations.  And so day-by-day he might have gone on\nwith the alternation of work and dream, and the soul in its\nimaginings might never have known of the labours of the mind, each\nworking by habit in its accustomed hour, but for an incident which\ntook place about two years after his going to business.\n\nOne morning his manager said:  \"Harvey, take this letter;  deliver\nit, and wait for an answer.\"  He started up eagerly, glad for the\nunwonted freedom from his desk.  At the door, as he went out, the\nwhole blinding glory of the sunlight was dashed on him.  He looked\nup.  Ah! what spaces illimitable of lustrous blue.  How far off!\nHow mighty!  He felt suddenly faint, small, mean, and feeble.\nHis limbs trembled under him:  he shrank from the notice of men\nas he went on his way.  Vastness, such as this, breaking in upon\nthe eye that had followed the point of the pen, unnerved him:  he\nfelt a bitter self-contempt.  What place had he amid these huge\nenergies?  The city deafened him as with one shout:  the tread of\nthe multitude;  the mob of vehicles;  glitter and shadow;  rattle,\nroar, and dust;  the black smoke curled in the air;  higher up the\nsnowy and brilliant clouds, which the tall winds bore along;  all\nwere but the intricate and wondrous workings of a single monstrous\npersonality;  a rival in the universe who had absorbed and wrested\nfrom him his own divine dower.  Out of him;  out of him, the power--\nthe free, the fearless--whirled in play, and drove the suns and\nstars in their orbits, and sped the earth through light and shadow.\nOut of him;  out of him;  never to be reconquered;  never to be\nregained.  The exultant laugh of the day;  the flame of summer;\nthe gigantic winds careering over the city;  the far-off divine\nthings filled him with unutterable despair.  What was he amid it all?\nA spark decaying in its socket;  a little hot dust clinging together.\n\nHe found himself in a small square;  he sat down on a bench;  his\nbrain burning, his eyes unseeing.\n\n\"Oh! my, what's he piping over?\" jeered a grotesque voice, and a\nsmall figure disappeared, turning somersaults among the bushes.\n\n\"Poor young man!  Perhaps he is ill.  Are you not well, sir?\" asked\na sympathetic nurse.\n\nHe started up, brought to himself, and muttering something\nunintelligible, continued his journey through the city.  The\nterrible influence departed, and a new change came over him.  The\nlaugh of the urchin rankled in his mind:  he hated notice:  there\nmust be something absurd or out of the common in his appearance\nto invoke it.  He knew suddenly that there was a gulf between him\nand the people he lived among.  They were vivid, actual, suited\nto their places.  How he envied them!  Then the whole superficies\nof his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference.\nHe recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along\nwith him.  One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases;  another\naffected a smartness in dress;  a third discussed theatres with\nsemi-professional knowledge.  Harvey, however, could never have\nentered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through\nthe portals of such ideas!  He delivered his letter;  he was wearied\nout, and as he returned he noticed neither sky nor sunlight, and\nthe hurrying multitudes were indifferent and without character.\nHe passed through them;  his mind dull like theirs;  a mere machine\nto guide rapid footsteps.\n\nThat evening, a clerk named Whittaker, a little his senior in the\noffice, was struck by Harvey's curious and delicate face.\n\n\"I say, Harvey,\" he said, \"how do you spend your evenings?\"\n\nHarvey flushed a little at the unwonted interest.\n\n\"I take long walks,\" he said.\n\n\"Do you read much?\"\n\n\"A little.\"\n\n\"Do you go to the theatre?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Never?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Whew! what a queer fellow!  No clubs, classes, music-halls--\nanything of the sort, eh?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Harvey, a little bitterly, \"I know nothing, nobody;  I\nam always alone.\"\n\n\"What an extraordinary life!  Why, you are out of the universe\ncompletely.  I say,\"  he added, \"come along with me this evening.\nI will initiate you a little.  You know you must learn your profession\nas a human being.\"\n\nHis manner was very kindly;  still Harvey was so shy that he would\nhave found some excuse, but for that chance expression, \"out of\nthe universe.\"  Was not this apartness the very thing he had just\nbeen bitterly feeling?  While he hesitated and stammered in his\nawkwardness, the other said:  \"There, no excuses!  You need not go\nto your lodgings for tea.  Come along with me.\"\n\nThey went off together through the darkening streets.  One cheerful\nand irreverent, brimful of remark or criticism;  the other silent,\nhis usual dreaminess was modified, but had not departed, and once,\ngazing up through the clear, dark blue, where the stars were shining,\nhe had a momentary sense as if he were suspended from them by a fine\ninvisible thread, as a spider hung from her roof;  suspended from\non high, where the pure and ancient aether flamed around the\nhabituations of eternity;  and below and about him, the thoughts\nof demons, the smoke, darkness, horror and anguish of the pit.\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter II.\n\n\n\n\nI Cannot tell all the steps by which the young soul came forth from\nits clouds and dreams, but must hurry over the years.  This single\nincident of his boyhood I have told to mark the character and\ntendency of his development;  spirituality made self-conscious\nonly in departing;  life, a falling from ideals which grew greater,\nmore beautiful and luminous as the possibility of realizing them\ndied away.  But this ebbtide of inner life was not regular and\nincessant, but rather after the fashion of waves which retreat\nsurely indeed, but returning again and again, seem for moments to\nregain almost more than their past altitude.  His life was a series\nof such falls and such awakenings.  Every new experience which drew\nhis soul from its quietude brought with it a revelation of a spiritual\npast, in which, as it now seemed, he had been living unconsciously.\nEvery new experience which enriched his mind seemed to leave his\nsoul more barren.  The pathetic anguish of these moments had little\nof the moral element, which was dormant and uncultivated rather\nthan perverted.  He did not ponder over their moral aspect, for he\nshared the superficial dislike to the ethical, which we often see\nin purely artistic natures, who cannot endure the entrance of\nrestraint or pain upon their beauty.  His greatest lack was the\ncompanionship of fine men or noble women.  He had shot up far beyond\nthe reach of those whom he knew, and wanting this companionship\nhe grew into a cynical or sensuous way of regarding them.  He began\nto write:  he had acquired the faculty of vigourous expression by\nmeans of such emotions as were tinged with a mystical voluptuousness\nwhich was the other pole to his inner, secret and spiritual being.\nThe double strain upon his energies, which daily work and nightly\nstudy with mental productiveness involved, acted injuriously upon\nhis health, and after a year he became so delicate that he could\ncarry on neither one nor other of his avocations without an interval\nof complete rest.  Obtaining leave from his employers, he went\nback for a period of six weeks to the village where he had been born.\nHere in the early summer and sunshine his health rapidly improved;\nhis mind even more than his body drank deep draughts of life;  and\nhere, more than at any period in his life, did his imagination begin\nto deal with mighty things, and probe into the secret mysteries of\nlife, and here passed into the long descended line by which the\nhuman spirit passed from empire;  he began to comprehend dimly by\nwhat decadence from starry state the soul of man is ushered into\nthe great visible life.  These things came to him not clearly as\nideas, but rather as shadowy and shining vision thrown across the\nair of dawn of twilight as he moved about.\n\nNot alone did this opulence of spiritual life make him happy, another\ncause conspired with it to this end.  He had met a nature somewhat\nakin to his own:  Olive Rayne, the woman of his life.\n\nAs the days passed over he grew eager not to lose any chance of\nspeech with her, and but two days before his departure he walked\nto the village hoping to see her.  Down the quiet English lane in\nthe evening he passed with the rapid feet that bear onward unquiet\nor feverish thought.  The clear fresh air communicated delight to him;\nthe fields grown dim, the voice of the cuckoo, the moon like a yellow\nglobe cut in the blue, the cattle like great red shadows driven\nhomeward with much unnecessary clamour by the children;  all these\nflashed in upon him and became part of him:  ready made accessories\nand backgrounds to his dreams, their quietness stilled and soothed\nthe troubled beauty of passion.  His pace lessened as he came near\nthe village, half wondering what would serve as excuse for visits\nfollowing one so soon upon the other.  Chance served as excuse.\nHe saw her grey dress, her firm upright figure coming out from among\nthe lilac brushes at the gate of her father's house.  She saw Harvey\ncoming towards her and waited for him with a pleasant smile.  Harvey,\naccustomed to introspect and ideal imaginings, here encountered no\nshock gazing upon the external.  Some last light of day reflected\nupward from the white gate-post, irradiated her face, and touched\nwith gold the delicate brown hair, the nosrtils, lips, chin, and\nthe lilac of her throat.  Her features were clear-cut, flawless;\nthe expression exquisitely grave and pure;  the large grey eyes\nhad that steady glow which shows a firm and undisturbed will.  In\nsome undefinable way he found himself thinking of the vague objects\nof his dreams, delicate and subtle things, dew, starlight, and\ntransparencies rose up by some affinity.  He rejected them--not\nthose--then a strong warrior with a look of pity on his face appeared\nand disappeared:  all this quick as a flash before she spoke.\n\n\"I am going doctoring,\" she said.  \"Old nurse Winder is ill, and my\nfather will not be back until late.\"  Mr. Rayne was the country doctor.\n\n\"May I go with you?\" he asked.\n\n\"Oh, yes, why not?  But I have first to call at two or three places\non the way.\"\n\nHe went with her.  He was full of wonder at her.  How could she\ncome out of her own world of aspiration and mystic religion and\nshow such perfect familiarity, ease and interest in dealing with\nthese sordid village complaints, moral and physical?  Harvey was\na man who disliked things like these which did not touch his sense\nof beauty.  He could not speak to these people as she did:  he could\nnot sympathize with them.  The pain of the old woman made him shrink\ninto himself almost with more disgust than pity.  While Olive was\nbending over her tenderly and compassionately, he tried to imagine\nwhat it was inspired such actions and such self-forgetfulness.\nAlmost it seemed for a moment to him as if some hidden will in the\nuniverse would not let beauty rest in its own sphere, but bowed it\ndown among sorrows continually.  He felt a feeling of relief as\nthey came out agin into the night.\n\nIt was a night of miracle and wonder.  Withdrawn far aloft into\nfairy altitudes, the stars danced with a gaiety which was more\ntremendous and solemn than any repose.  The night was wrought out\nof a profusion of delicate fires.  The grass, trees, and fields\nglowed with the dusky colours of rich pottery.  Everywhere silence;\neverywhere the exultant breathing of life, subtle, universal,\npenetrating.  Into the charmed heart fell the enchantment we call\nancient, though the days have no fellows, nor will ever have any.\nHarvey, filled up with this wonder, turned to his companion.\n\n\"See how the Magician of the Beautiful blows with his mystic breath\nupon the world!  How tremulous the lights are;  what still ness!\nHow it banishes the memory of pain!\"\n\n\"Can you forget pain so easily?  I hardly noticed the night--it is\nwonderful indeed.  But the anguish it covers and enfolds everywhere\nI cannot forget.\"\n\n\"I could not bear to think of pain at any time, still less while\nthese miracles are over and around us.  You seem to me almost to\nseek pain like a lover.  I cannot understand you.  How can you bear\nthe ugly, the mean, the sordid--the anguish which you meet.  You--\nso beautiful?\"\n\n\"Can you not understand?\" she said, almost impetuously.  \"Have you\nnever felt pity as universal as the light that floods the world?\nTo me a pity seems to come dropping, dropping, dropping from that\nold sky, upon the earth and its anguish.  God is not indifferent.\nLove eternal encircles us.  Its wishes are for our redemption.\nIts movements are like the ripples starting from the rim of a pond\nthat overcome the outgoing ripples and restore all to peace.\n\n\"But what is pain if there is this love?\" asked Harvey.\n\n\"Ah, how can I answer you?  Yet I think it is the triumph of love\npushing back sin and rebellion.  The cry of this old nature being\novercome is pain.  And this is universal, and goes on everywhere,\nthrough we cannot comprehend it;  and so, when we yield to this\ndivine love, and accept the change, we find in pain a secret\nsweetness.  It is the first thrill that heralds an immense dawn.\"\n\n\"But why do you say it is universal?  Is not that a frightful thought?\"\n\n\"If God is the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, then the life\nof Christ on earth was a symbol--must be a symbol--of what endures\nfor ever:  the Light and Darkness for ever in conflict:  a crucifixion\nin eternity.\"\n\nThis belief, so terrible, so pathetic, so strange, coming from this\nyoung girl affected Harvey profoundly.  He did not reject it.  The\nfirmness and surety of her utterance, the moral purity of her\ncharacter, appealed to him who felt his own lack of clear belief\nand heroic purpose.  Like all spiritual people, he assimilated\neasily the spiritual moods of those whom he came into contact with.\nComing from her, the moral, pathetic, and Christian doctrine had\nthat element of beauty which made it blend with his ideal paganism.\nAs he went homewards he pondered over her words, her life, her\nthoughts.  He began to find an inexpressible beauty in her pity,\nas a feeling welling up from unknown depths, out of the ancient\nheart of things.  Filled with this pity he could overcome his dislike\nof pain and go forth as the strong warrior of his momentary vision.\nHe found himself repeating again and again her words:  \"We find in\npain a secret sweetness--a secret sweetness--a secret sweetness.\"\nIf he could only find it, what might he not dare, to what might he\nnot attain?  And revolving all these things upon his restless pillow,\nthere came over him one of those mystic moods I have spoken of:\nwandering among dim originals, half in dream and half in trance,\nthere was unfolded within him this ancient legend of the soul:--\n\n\nThere was a great Gloom and a great Glory in nature, and the legions\nof darkness and the glorious hosts were at war perpetually with one\nanother.  Then the Ancient of Days, who holds all this within himself,\nmoved the Gloom and the Glory together:  the Sons of the Bright Fire\nhe sent into the darkness, and the children of Darkness he brought\nunto the gates of the day.  And in the new life formed out of the\nunion of these two, pain, self-conscious, became touched with a\nspiritual beauty, and those who were of the Hosts of Beauty wore\neach one a Crown of Thorns upon the brow.\n\n\n\n\nChapter III.\n\nHarvey rose up early;  as he walked to and fro in the white dawn,\nhe found the answers to every question in his mind:  they rose up\nwith a sweet and joyful spontaneity.  Life became filled with\nhappiest meaning:  a light from behind the veil fell upon the things\nhe had before disliked, and in this new light, pain, sorrow, and\nthe old moralities were invested with a significance undreamt of\nbefore.  In admitting into his own mind Olive Rayne's ideas, he\nremoved something of their austerity:  what he himself rejected,\nseen in her, added another and peculiar interest to the saintly\nideal of her which he had formed.  She had once said, peace and\nrest were inconceivable while there existed strife and suffering\nin nature.  Nowhere could there be found refuge;  drawing near unto\nthe divine, this pain only became wider, more intense, almost\ninsufferable, feeling and assimilating the vastness of divine sorrow\nbrooding over the unreclaimed deep.  This pity, this consciousness\nof pain, not her own, filling her own, filling her life, marked\nher out from everyone he knew.  She seemed to him as one consecrated.\nThen this lover in his mystic passion passed in the contemplation\nof his well-beloved from the earthly to the invisible soul.  He\nsaw behind and around her a form unseen by others;  a form, spiritual,\npathetic, of unimaginable beauty, on which the eternal powers kept\nwatch, which they nourished with their own life, and on which they\ninflicted their own pain.  This form was crowned, but with a keen-\npointed radiance from which there fell a shadowy dropping.  As he\nwalked to and fro in the white dawn he made for her a song, and\ninscribed it.\n\nTo One Consecrated\n\nYour paths were all unknown to us:\nWe were so far away from you,\nWe mixed in thought your spirit thus--\nWith whiteness, stars of gold, and dew.\n\nThe mighty mother nourished you:\nHer breath blew from her mystic bowers:\nTheir elfin glimmer floated through\nThe pureness of your shadowy hours.\n\nThe mighty mother made you wise;\nGave love that clears the hidden ways:\nHer glooms were glory to your eyes;\nHer darkness but the Fount of Days.\n\nShe made all gentleness in you,\nAnd beauty radiant as the morn's:\nShe made our joy in yours, then threw\nUpon your head a crown of thorns.\n\nYour eyes are filled with tender light,\nFor those whose eyes are dim with tears;\nThey see your brow is crowned and bright,\nBut not its ring of wounding spears.\n\nWe can imagine no discomfiture while the heavenly light shines\nthrough us.  Harvey, though he thought with humility of his past\nas impotent and ignoble in respect of action, felt with his rich\nvivid consciousness that he was capable of entering into her subtlest\nemotions.  He could not think of the future without her;  he could\nnot give up the hope of drawing nigh with her to those mysteries\nof life which haunted them both.  His thought, companioned by her,\nwent ranging down many a mystic year.  He began to see strange\npossibilities, flashes as of old power, divine magic to which all\nthe world responded, and so on till the thought trembled in vistas\nending in a haze of flame.  Meanwhile, around him was summer:\ngladness and youth were in his heart, and so he went on dreaming--\nforecasting for the earth and its people a future which belongs\nonly to the spiritual soul--dreaming of happy years even as a\nchild dreams.\n\nLater on that evening, while Olive was sitting in her garden, Dr.\nRayne came out and handed her a bundle of magazines.\n\n\"There are some things in these which may interest you, Olive,\" he\nsaid:  \"Young Harvey writes for them, I understand.  I looked over\none or two. They are too mystical for me.  You will hardly find them\nmystical enough.\"\n\nShe took the papers from him without much interest, and laid them\nbeside her on the seat.  After a time she took them up.  As she\nread her brows began to knit, and her face grew cold.  These verses\nwere full of that mystical voluptuousness which I said characterised\nHarvey's earlier productions;  all his rich imagination was employed\nto centre interest upon moments of half-sensual sensations;  the\nimagery was used in such a way that nature seemed to aid and abet\nthe emotion;  out of the heart of things, out of wild enchantment\nand eternal revelry shot forth into the lives of men the fires of\npassion.  Nothing could be more unlike the Christ-soul which she\nworshiped as underlying the universe and on which she had reliance.\n\n\"He does not feel pity;  he does not understand love,\"  she murmured.\nShe felt a cold anger arise;  she who had pity for most things felt\nthat a lie had been uttered defiling the most sacred things in the\nHoly of Holies, the things upon which her life depended.  She could\nnever understand Harvey, although he had been included in the general\nkindliness with which she treated all who came near her;  but here\nhe seemed revealed, almost vaunting an inspiration from the\npassionate powers who carry on their ancient war against the Most High.\n\nThe lights were now beginning to fade about her in the quiet garden\nwhen the gate opened, and someone came down the path.  It was Harvey.\nIn the gloom he did not notice that her usual smile was lacking,\nand besides he was too rapt in his own purpose.  He hesitated for\na moment, then spoke.\n\n\"Olive,\" he said tremulously, \"as I came down the lanes to say good-bye\nto you my heart rebelled.  I could not bear the thought:  Olive, I\nhave learned so many things from you;  your words have meant so much\nto me that I have taken them as the words of God.  Before I knew\nyou I shrank from pain;  I wandered in search of a false beauty.\nI see now the purpose of life--to carry on the old heroic battle\nfor the true;  to give the consolation of beauty to suffering;\nto become so pure that through us may pass that divine pity which\nI never knew until you spoke, and I then saw it was the root of\nall life, and there was nothing behind it--such magic your words\nhave.  My heart was glad this morning for you at this truth, and\nI saw in it the power which would transfigure the earth.  Yet all\nthis hope has come to me through you;  I half hold it still through\nyou.  To part from you now--it seems to me would be like turning\naway from the guardian of the heavenly gateway.  I know I have but\nlittle to bring you.  I must make all my plea how much you are to\nme when I ask can you love me.\"\n\nShe had hardly heard a word of all he said.  She was only conscious\nthat he was speaking of love.  What love?  Had he not written of it?\nIt would have emptied Heaven into the pit.  She turned and faced him,\nspeaking coldly and deliberately:\n\n\"You could speak of love to me, and write and think of it like this!\"\nShe placed her hand on the unfortunate magazines.  Harvey followed\nthe movement of her arm.  He took the papers up, then suddenly saw\nall as she turned and walked away,--what the passion of these poems\nmust have seemed to her.  What had he been in her presence that\ncould teach her otherwise?  Only a doubter and questioner.  In a\ndreadful moment his past rose up before him, dreamy, weak, sensual.\nHis conscience smote him through and through.  He could find no\nword to say.  Self-condemned, he moved blindly to the gate and went\nout.  He hardly knew what he was doing.  Before him the pale dry\nroad wound its way into the twilight amid the hedges and cottages.\nPhantasmal children came and went.  There seemed some madness in\nall they were doing.  Why did he not hear their voices?  They ran\nround and round;  there should have been cries or laughter or some\nsuch thing.  Then suddenly something seemed to push him forward,\nand he went on blankly and walked down the lane.  In that tragic\nmoment his soul seemed to have deserted him, leaving only a half-\nanimal consciousness.  With dull attention he wondered at the muffled\nsound of his feet upon the dusty road, and the little puffs of smoke\nthat shot out before them.  Every now and then something would throb\nfiercely for an instant and be subdued.  He went on and on.  His\npath lay across some fields.  He stopped by force of habit and\nturned aside from the road.  Again the same fierce throb.  In a\nwild instant he struggled for recollection and self-mastery, and\nthen the smothered soul rushed out of the clouds that oppressed it.\nMemories of hope and shame:  the morning gladness of his heart:\nthe brilliant and spiritual imaginations that inspired him:  their\nsudden ending:  the degradation and drudgery of the life he was\nto return to on the morrow:  all rose up in tumultuous conflict.\nA feeling of anguish that was elemental and not of the moment\nfilled him.  Drifting and vacillating nature--he saw himself as\nin a boat borne along by currents that carried him, now near isles\nof beauty, and then whirled him away from their vanishing glory\ninto gloomy gulfs and cataracts that went down into blackness.\nHe was master neither of joy nor sorrow.  Without will:  unpractical;\nwith sensitiveness which made joy a delirium and gloom a very hell;\nthe days he went forward to stretched out iron hands to bind him\nto the deadly dull and commonplace.  These vistas, intolerable and\nhopeless, overcame him.  He threw himself down in his despair.\nAround his head pressed the cool grasses wet with dew.  Strange\nand narrow, the boundary between heaven and hell!  All around him\nprimeval life innocent and unconscious was at play.  All around him,\nstricken with the fever of life, that Power which made both light\nand darkness, inscrutable in its workings, was singing silently\nthe lovely carol of the flowers.\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV.\n\n\n\n\nLittle heaps of paper activities piled themselves up, were added to,\ndiminished, and added to again, all the day long before Harvey at\nhis desk.  He had returned to his work:  there was an unusual press\nof business, and night after night he was detained long beyond the\nusual hours.  The iron hand which he had foreseen was laid upon him:\nit robbed him even of his right to sorrow, the time to grieve.\nBut within him at moments stirred memories of the past, poignant\nanguish and fierce rebellion.  With him everything transformed\nitself finally into ideal images and aspects, and it was not so\nmuch the memory of an incident which stung him as the elemental\nsense of pain in life itself.  He felt that he was debarred from\na heritage of spiritual life which he could not define even to himself.\nThe rare rays of light that slanted through the dusty air of the\noffice, mystic gold fallen through inconceivable distances from the\npure primeval places, wakened in him an unutterable longing:  he\nfelt a choking in his throat as he looked.  Often, at night, too,\nlifting his tired eyes from the pages flaring beneath the bright\ngas jet, he could see the blueness deepen rich with its ancient\nclouds of starry dust.  What pain it was to him, immemorial quiet,\npassivity and peace, though over it a million tremors fled and\nchased each other throughout the shadowy night!  What pain it was\nto let the eyes fall low and see about him the pale and feverish faces\nlooking ghostly through the hot, fetid, animal, and flickering air!\n\nHis work over, out into the night he would drag himself wearily--\nout into the night anywhere;  but there no more than within could\nhe escape from that power which haunted him with mighty memories,\nthe scourge which the Infinite wields.  Nature has no refuge for\nthose in whom the fire of spirit has been kindled:  earth has no\nglory for which it does not know a greater glory.  As Harvey passed\ndown the long streets, twinkling with their myriad lights fading\ninto blue and misty distances, there rose up before him in the\nvisionary air solemn rows of sphinxes in serried array, and starlit\npyramids and temples--greatness long dead, a dream that mocked the\nlives around him, hoarding the sad small generations of humanity\ndwindling away from beauty.  Gone was the pure and pale splendour\nof the primeval skies and the lustre of the first-born of stars.\nBut even this memory, which linked him in imagination to the ideal\npast, was not always his:  he was weighted, like all his race, with\nan animal consciousness which cried out fiercely for its proper life,\nwhich thirsted for sensation, and was full of lust and anger.  The\ndarkness was not only about him, but in him, and struggled there\nfor mastery.  It threw up forms of meanness and horrible temptations\nwhich clouded over his soul;  their promise was forgetfulness;\nthey seemed to say:  \"Satisfy us, and your infinite longing shall\ndie away:  to be of clay is very dull and comfortable;  it is the\ncommon lot.\"\n\nOne night, filled with this intolerable pain, as he passed through\nthe streets he yielded to the temptation to kill out this torturing\nconsciousness:  he accosted one of the women of the streets and\nwalked away with her.  She was full of light prattle, and chattered\non and on.  Harvey answered her not a word;  he was set on his\nstony purpose.  Child of the Stars! what had he to do with these\nthings?  He sought only his soul's annihilation.  Something in\nthis terrible silence communicated itself to his companion.  She\nlooked at his face in the light of a lamp;  it was white, locked,\nand rigid.  Child of the Stars, no less, though long forgetful,\nshe shuddered at this association.  She recoiled from him crying\nout \"You brute--you brute!\" and then fled away.  The unhappy man\nturned homeward and sat in his lonely room with stupid, staring\neyes, fixed on darkness and vacancy until the pale green light of\ndawn began to creep in upon him.\n\nInto this fevered and anguished existence no light had yet come.\nDrunken with wretchedness, Harvey could not or would not think;\nand the implacable spirit which followed him deepened and quickened\nstill more the current of his being, and the GLOOM and the GLORY\nof his dream moved still nearer to each other.  Mighty and mysterious\nspirit, thou who crownest pain with beauty, and by whom the mighty\nare bowed down from their seats, under they guidance, for such a\ncrowning and for such agony, were coiled together the living streams\nof evil and good, so that at last the man might know himself--the\nsoul--not as other than Thee!\n\nThe ways by which he was brought to that moment were unremembered;\nthe sensations and thoughts and moods which culminated in the fire\nof self-consciousness could be retraced but vaguely.  He had gone\nout of the city one Sunday, and lying down in the fields under the\ntrees, for a time he grew forgetful of misery.  He went once more\ninto the world of dreams.  He, or the creature of his imagination,\nsome shadow of himself, lived in and roamed through antique forests\nwhere the wonderful days were unbroken by sense of sorrow.  Childhood\nshared in an all-pervading exultation;  through the pulses of youth\nran the fiery energy that quickened the world;  and this shadow\nof the dreamer dwelling amid the forests grew gradually into a\nconsciousness of a fiery life upon which the surface forms were\nbut films:  he entered this kingdom of fire;  its life became his\nlife;  he knew the secret ways to the sun, and the sunny secrets\nliving in the golden world.  \"It was I, myself,\" rushed into Harvey's\nmind:  \"It was I.  Ah, how long ago!\"  Then for the first time,\nhis visions, dreams and imaginations became real to him, as memories\nof a spirit traveling through time and space.  Looking backwards,\nhe could nowhere find in the small and commonplace surroundings of\nhis life anything which could have suggested or given birth to\nthese vivid pictures and ideas.  They began to move about swiftly\nin his mind and arrange themselves in order.  He seemed to himself\nto have fallen downwards through a long series of lines of ever-\nlessening beauty--fallen downwards from the mansions of eternity\ninto this truckling and hideous life.  As Harvey walked homewards\nthrough the streets, some power must have guided his steps, for\nhe saw or knew nothing of what was about him.  With the sense of\nthe reality of his imaginations came an energy he had never before\nfelt:  his soul took complete possession of him:  he knew, though\ndegraded, that he was a spirit.  Then, in that supreme moment,\ngathered about him the memories of light and darkness, and they\nbecame the lips through which eternal powers spake to him in a\ntongue unlike the speech of men.  The spirit of light was behind\nthe visions of mystical beauty:  the spirit of darkness arrayed\nitself in the desires of clay.  These powers began to war within\nhim:  he heard voices as of Titans talking.\n\nThe spirit of light spake within him and said--\"Arouse now, and be\nthou my voice in this dead land.  There are many things to be spoken\nand sung--of dead language the music and significance, old world\nphilosophies;  you will be the singer of the sweetest songs;\nstories wilder and stranger than any yet will I tell you--deeds\nforgotten of the vaporous and dreamy prime.\n\nThe voice came yet again closer, full of sweet promise, with magical\nutterance floating around him.  He became old--inconceivably old\nand young together.  He was astonished in the wonders of the primal\nworld.  Chaos with tremendous agencies, serpentine powers, strange\nmen-beasts and men-birds, the crude first thought of awakening\nnature was before him;  from inconceivable heights of starlike\npurity he surveyed it;  he went forth from glory;  he descended\nand did battle;  he warred with behemeths, with the flying serpents\nand the monstrous creeping things.  With the Lords of Air he descended\nand conquered;  he dwelt in a new land, a world of light, where all\nthings were of light, where the trees put forth leaves of living\ngreen, where the rose would blossom into a rose of light and lily\ninto a white radiance, and over the vast of gleaming plains and\nthrough the depths of luminous forests, the dreaming rivers would\nroll in liquid and silver flame.  Often he joined in the mad dance\nupon the highlands, whirling round and round until the dark grass\nawoke fiery with rings of green under the feet.  And so, on and\non through endless transformations he passed, and he saw how the\nfirst world of dark elements crept in upon the world of beauty,\nclothing it around with grossness and veiling its fires;  and the\ndark spirits entered by subtle ways into the spheres of the spirits\nof light, and became as a mist over memory and a chain upon speed;\nthe earth groaned with the anguish.  Then this voice cried within\nhim--\"Come forth; come out of it;  come out, oh king, to the\nancestral spheres, to the untroubled spiritual life.  Out of the\nfurnace, for it leaves you dust.  Come away, oh king, to old dominion\nand celestial sway;  come out to the antique glory!\"\n\nThen another voice from below laughed at the madness.  Full of scorn\nit spake, \"You, born of clay, a ruler of stars?  Pitiful toiler with\nthe pen, feeble and weary body, what shall make of you a spirit?\"\nHarvey thrust away this hateful voice.  From his soul came the\nimpulse to go to other lands, to wander for ever and ever under\nthe star-rich skies, to be a watcher of the dawn and eve, to live\nin forest places or on sun-nurtured plains, to merge himself once\nmore in the fiery soul hidden within.  But the mocking voice would\nnot be stifled, showing him how absurd and ridiculous it was \"to\nbecome a vagabond,\" so the voice said, and finally to die in the\nworkhouse.  So the eternal spirit in him, God's essence, conscious\nof its past brotherhood, with the morning stars, the White Aeons,\nin its prisonhouse writhed with the meanness, till at last he cried,\n\"I will struggle no longer;  it is only agony of spirit to aspire\nhere at all;  I will sit and wait till the deep darkness has vanished.\"\n\nBut the instruction was not yet complete;  he had learned the primal\nplace of spirit;  he had yet to learn its nature.  He began to think\nwith strange sadness over the hopes of the world, the young children.\nHe saw them in his vision grow up, bear the burden in silence or\nignorance;  he saw how they joined in dragging onward that huge\nsphinx which men call civilization;  there was no time for loitering\namid the beautiful, for if one paused it was but to be trampled by\nthe feet of the many who could not stay or rest, and the wheels\nof the image ground that soul into nothingness.  He felt every pain\nalmost in an anguish of sympathy.  Helpless to aid, to his lips\ncame the cry to another which immemorial usage has made intuitive\nin men.  But It is high and calm above all appeal;  to It the cries\nfrom all the sorrowing stars sound but as one great music;  lying\nin the infinite fields of heaven, from the united feelings of many\nuniverses It draws only a vast and passionless knowledge, without\ndistinction of pleasure or pain.  From the universal which moves\nnot and aids not, Harvey in his agony turned away.  He himself\ncould fly from the struggle;  thinking of what far place or state\nto find peace, he found it true in his own being that nowhere could\nthe soul find rest while there was still pain or misery in the world.\nHe could imagine no place or state where these cries of pain would\nnot reach him:  he could imagine no heaven where the sad memory\nwould not haunt him and burn him.  He knew then that the nature\nof the soul was love eternal;  he knew that if he fled away a\ndivine compassion would compel him to renew his brotherhood with\nthe stricken and suffering;  and what was best forever to do was\nto fight out the fight in the darkness.  There was a long silence\nin Harvey's soul;  then with almost a solemn joy he grew to realize\nat last the truth of he himself--the soul.  The fight was over;\nthe Gloom and the Glory were linked together, and one inseparably.\nHarvey was full of a sense of quietness, as if a dew fell from\nunseen places on him with soothing and healing power.  He looked\naround.  He was at the door of his lodgings.  The tall narrow\nhouses with their dull red hues rose up about him;  from their\nchimneys went up still higher the dark smoke;  but behind its\nnebulous wavering the stars were yet;  they broke through the smoke\nwith white lustre.  Harvey looked at them for a moment, and went\nin strangely comforted.\n\nThe End\n\n--March 15-June 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Midnight Blossom\n\n--\"Arhans are born at midnight hour..... together with the holy\nflower that opes and blooms in darkness.\"--The Voice of the Silence\n\n\n\n\n\nWe stood together at the door of our hut:  we could see through the\ngathering gloom where our sheep and goats were cropping the sweet\ngrass on the side of the hill:  we were full of drowsy content as\nthey were.  We had naught to mar our own happiness--neither memory\nnor unrest for the future.  We lingered on while the vast twilight\nencircled us;  we were one with its dewy stillness.  The lustre\nof the early stars first broke in upon our dreaming:  we looked up\nand around:  the yellow constellations began to sing their choral\nhymn together.  As the night deepened they came out swiftly from\ntheir hiding places in depths of still and unfathomable blue;\nthey hung in burning clusters;  they advanced in multitudes that\ndazzled:  the shadowy shining of night was strewn all over with\nnebulous dust of silver, with long mists of gold with jewels of\nglittering green.  We felt how fit a place the earth was to live on,\nwith these nightly glories over us, with silence and coolness upon\nits lawns and lakes after the consuming day.  Valmika, Kedar, I\nand Ananda watched together;  through the rich gloom we could see\nfar distant forests and lights--the lights of village and city in\nKing Suddhodana's realm.\n\n\"Brothers,\" said Valmika, \"How good it is to be here, and not yonder\nin the city where they know not peace, even in sleep.\"\n\n\"Yonder and yonder,\" said Kedar, \"I saw the inner air full of a\nred glow where they were busy in toiling and strife.  It seemed to\nreach up to me;  I could not breathe.  I climbed the hills at dawn\nto laugh where the snows were, and the sun is as white as they\nare white.\"\n\n\"But, brothers, if we went down among them and told them how happy\nwe were, and how the flowers grow on the hillside, and all about\nthe flocks, they would surely come up and leave all sorrow.  They\ncannot know or they would come.\"  Ananda was a mere child though\nso tall for his years.\n\n\"They would not come,\" said Kedar.  \"All their joy is to haggle\nand hoard.  When Siva blows upon them with his angry breath they\nwill lament, or when the Prets in fierce hunger devour them.\"\n\n\"It is good to be here,\" repeated Valmika drowsily, \"to mind the\nflocks and be at rest, and to hear the wise Varunna speak when he\ncomes among us.\"\n\nI was silent.  I knew better than they that busy city which glowed\nbeyond the dark forests.  I had lived there until, grown sick and\nweary, I had gone back to my brothers on the hillside.  I wondered\nwould life, indeed, go on ceaselessly until it ended in the pain\nof the world.  I said within myself--Oh, mighty Brahma, on the\noutermost verges of they dream are our lives;  thou old invisible,\nhow faintly through our hearts comes the sound of thy song, the\nlight of thy glory!  Full of yearning to rise and return, I strove\nto hear in the heart the music Anahata had spoken of in our sacred\nscrolls.  There was silence, and then I thought I heard sounds,\nnot glad, a myriad murmur.  As I listen it deepened, it grew into\npassionate prayer and appeal and tears, as if the cry of the long-\nforgotten souls of men went echoing through empty chambers.  My\neyes filled with tears, for it seemed world-wide, and to sigh from\nout many ages, long agone, to be and yet to be.\n\n\"Ananda!  Ananda! where is the boy running to?\" cried Valmika.\nAnanda had vanished into the gloom.  We heard his glad laugh below\nand then another voice speaking.  Presently up loomed the tall\nfigure of Varunna.  Ananda held his hand and danced beside him.\nWe could see by the starlight his simple robe of white.  I could\ntrace clearly every feature of the grave and beautiful face, the\nradiant eyes;  not by the starlight I saw, but because a silvery\nshining rayed a little way into the blackness around the dark hair\nand face.  Valmika, as elder, first spake.\n\n\"Holy sir, be welcome.  Will you come in and rest?\"\n\n\"I cannot stay now.  I must pass over the mountain ere dawn;  but\nyou may come a little way with me--such of you as will.\"\n\nWe assented gladly--Kedar and I;  Valmika remained.  Then Ananda\nprayed to go.  We bade him stay, fearing for him the labour of\nclimbing and the chill of the snows, but Varunna said:  \"Let the\nchild come;  he is hardy;  he will not tire if he holds my hands.\"\n\nSo we set out together and faced the highlands that rose and rose\nabove us;  we knew well the way even at night.  We waited in silence\nfor Varunna to speak, but for nigh two hours we mounted without\nwords, save for Ananda's shouts of delight and wonder at the heavens\nspread above us.  But I was hungry for an answer to my thoughts,\nso I spake.\n\n\"Master, Valmika was saying, ere you came, how good it was to be\nhere rather than in the city where they are full of strife, and\nKedar thought their lives would flow on into fiery pain and no\nspeech would avail.  Ananda, speaking as a child indeed, said if\none went down among them they would listen to his story of the\nhappy life.  But, Master, do not many speak and interpret the\nsacred writings, and how few they are who lay to heart the words\nof the gods!  They seem, indeed, to go on through desire into pain,\nand even here upon our hills we are not free, for Kedar felt the\nhot glow of their passion and I heard in my heart their sobs of\ndespair.  Master, it was terrible, for they seemed to come from\nthe wide earth over, and out of ages far away.\"\n\n\"There is more of the true in the child's hope than in your despair,\nfor it is of much avail to speak though but a few listen.  Better\nis the life which aids, though in sorrow, than the life which\nwithdraws from pain unto solitude.  Yet it is not well to speak\nwithout power, for only the knower of Brahma can interpret the\nsacred writings truly.  It is well to be free ere we speak of freedom;\nthen we have power and many hearken.\"\n\n\"But who would leave joy for sorrow, and who being one with Brahma\nmay return to give council?\"\n\n\"Brother,\" said Varunna, \"here is the hope of the world.  Though\nmany seek only for the eternal joy, yet the cry you heard has been\nheard by great ones who have turned backwards, called by these\nbeseeching voices.  The small old path stretching far away leads\nthrough many wonderful beings to the place of Brahma;  there is\nthe first fountain, the world of beautiful silence, the light that\nhas been undimmed since the beginning of time--the joy where life\nfades into being;  but turning backwards, the small old path winds\naway into the world of men, it enters every sorrowful heart, and\nthe way of him who would tread therethro' is stayed by its pain\nand barred by its delusion.  This is the way the great ones go;\nthey turn with the path from the door of Brahma the warriors and\nthe strong ones:  they move along its myriad ways;  they overcome\ndarkness with wisdom and pain with compassion.  After many conquered\nworlds, after many races of men, purified and uplifted they go to\ngreater than Brahma.  In these, though few, is the hope of the world;\nthese are the heroes for whom, returning, the earth puts forth her\nsignal fires, and the Devas sing their hymns of welcome.\"\n\nWe paused where the plateau widened out;  there was scarce a ripple\nin the chill air;  in quietness the snows glistened, a light\nreflected from the crores of stars that swung with gay and\nglittering motion above us.  We could hear the immense heart-beat\nof the world in the stillness;  we had thoughts that went ranging\nthrough the heavens, not sad, but full of solemn hope.\n\n\"Brothers!  Master!  Look, the wonderful thing! and another, and\nyet another!\"  We heard Ananda calling;  we looked and saw the holy\nblossom--the midnight flower--oh, may the earth again put forth\nsuch beauty--it grew up from the snows with leaves of delicate crystal,\na nimbus encircled each radiant bloom, a halo pale yet lustrous.\nI bowed down before it lost in awe.  I heard Varunna say:--\"The earth,\nindeed puts forth her signal fires, and the Devas sing their hymn;\nlisten!\"  We heard a music as of beautiful thought moving along the\nhigh places of the earth, full of infinite love and hope and yearning.\n\n\"Brothers, be glad, for One is born who has chosen the greater way.\nNow I must pass onwards.  Kedar, Narayan, Ananda, farewell!  Nay,\nno further;  it is long way to return, and the child will tire.\"\n\nHe went on and passed from our sight.  But we did not return;  we\nremained long, long in silence, looking at the sacred flower.\n\n\nVow, taken long ago, be strong in our hearts to-day.  Here where\nthe pain is fiercer, to rest is more sweet.  Here where beauty\ndies away, it is more joy to be lulled in dreams.  Here the good,\nthe true, our hope, seem but a madness born of ancient pain.\nOut of rest, dream, or despair, let us arise.  Let us go the way\nthe Great Ones go.\n\n--July, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Story of a Star\n\n\n\n\nThe emotion that haunted me in that little cathedral town would be\nmost difficult to describe.  After the hurry, rattle, and fever of\nthe city, the rare weeks spent here were infinitely peaceful.  They\nwere full of a quaint sense of childhood, with sometimes a deeper\nchord touched--the giant and spiritual things childhood has dreams of.\nThe little room I slept in had opposite its window the great grey\ncathedral wall;  it was only in the evening that the sunlight crept\nround it and appeared in the room strained through the faded green\nblind.  It must have been this silvery quietness of colour which\nin some subtle way affected me with the feeling of a continual Sabbath;\nand this was strengthened by the bells chiming hour after hour:\nthe pathos, penitence, and hope expressed by the flying notes\ncoloured the intervals with faint and delicate memories.  They\nhaunted my dreams, and I heard with unutterable longing the astral\nchimes pealing from some dim and vast cathedral of the cosmic memory,\nuntil the peace they tolled became almost a nightmare, and I longed\nfor utter oblivion or forgetfulness of their reverberations.\n\nMore remarkable were the strange lapses into other worlds and times.\nAlmost as frequent as the changing of the bells were the changes from\nstate to state.  I realised what is meant by the Indian philosophy\nof Maya.  Truly my days were full of Mayas, and my work-a-day city\nlife was no more real to me than one of those bright, brief glimpses\nof things long past.  I talk of the past, and yet these moments\ntaught me how false our ideas of time are.  In the ever-living\nyesterday, to-day, and to-morrow are words of no meaning.  I know\nI fell into what we call the past and the things I counted as dead\nfor ever were the things I had yet to endure.  Out of the old age\nof earth I stepped into its childhood, and received once more the\nprimal blessing of youth, ecstasy, and beauty.  But these things\nare too vast and vague to speak of; the words we use to-day cannot\ntell their story.  Nearer to our time is the legend that follows.\n\nI was, I thought, one of the Magi of old Persia, inheritor of its\nunforgotten lore, and using some of its powers.  I tried to pierce\nthrough the great veil of nature, and feel the life that quickened\nit within.  I tried to comprehend the birth and growth of planets,\nand to do this I rose spiritually and passed beyond earth's confines\ninto that seeming void which is the matrix where they germinate.\nOn one of these journeys I was struck by the phantasm, so it seemed,\nof a planet I had not observed before.  I could not then observe\ncloser, and coming again on another occasion it had disappeared.\nAfter the lapse of many months I saw it once more, brilliant with\nfiery beauty--its motion was slow, rotating around some invisible\ncentre.  I pondered over it, and seemed to know that the invisible\ncentre was its primordial spiritual state, from which it emerged\na little while and into which it then withdrew.  Short was its day;\nits shining faded into a glimmer, and then into darkness in a few\nmonths.  I learned its time and cycles;  I made preparations and\ndetermined to await its coming.\n\n\nThe Birth of a Planet\n\n\nAt first silence and then an inner music, and then the sounds of\nsong throughout the vastness of its orbit grew as many in number\nas there were stars at gaze.  Avenues and vistas of sound!  They\nreeled to and fro.  They poured from a universal stillness quick\nwith unheard things.  They rushed forth and broke into a myriad\nvoices gay with childhood.  From age and the eternal they rushed\nforth into youth.  They filled the void with reveling and exultation.\nIn rebellion they then returned and entered the dreadful Fountain.\nAgain they came forth, and the sounds faded into whispers;  they\nrejoiced once again, and again died into silence.\n\nAnd now all around glowed a vast twilight;  it filled the cradle\nof the planet with colourless fire.  I felt a rippling motion which\nimpelled me away from the centre to the circumference.  At that\ncentre a still flame began to lighten;  a new change took place,\nand space began to curdle, a milky and nebulous substance rocked\nto and fro.  At every motion the pulsation of its rhythm carried\nit farther and farther away from the centre,  it grew darker, and\na great purple shadow covered it so that I could see it no longer.\nI was now on the outer verge, where the twilight still continued\nto encircle the planet with zones of clear transparent light.\n\nAs night after night I rose up to visit it they grew many-coloured\nand brighter.  I saw the imagination of nature visibly at work.\nI wandered through shadowy immaterial forests, a titanic vegetation\nbuilt up of light and colour;  I saw it growing denser, hung with\nfestoons and trailers of fire, and spotted with the light of myriad\nflowers such as earth never knew.  Coincident with the appearance\nof these things I felt within myself, as if in harmonious movement,\na sense of joyousness, an increase of self-consciousness;  I felt\nfull of gladness, youth, and the mystery of the new.  I felt that\ngreater powers were about to appear, those who had thrown outwards\nthis world and erected it as a place in space.\n\nI could not tell half the wonder of this strange race.  I could\nnot myself comprehend more than a little of the mystery of their\nbeing.  They recognised my presence there, and communicated with\nme in such a way that I can only describe it by saying that they\nseemed to enter into my soul breathing a fiery life;  yet I knew\nthat the highest I could reach to was but the outer verge of their\nspiritual nature, and to tell you but a little I have many times\nto translate it, for in the first unity with their thought I touched\non an almost universal sphere of life, I peered into the ancient\nheart that beats throughout time;  and this knowledge became change\nin me, first, into a vast and nebulous symbology, and so down through\nmany degrees of human thought into words which hold not at all the\npristine and magical beauty.\n\nI stood before one of this race, and I thought, \"What is the meaning\nand end of life here?\"  Within me I felt the answering ecstasy that\nilluminated with vistas of dawn and rest, it seemed to say:\n\n\"Our spring and our summer are unfolding into light and form, and\nour autumn and winter are a fading into the infinite soul.\"\n\nI thought, \"To what end is this life poured forth and withdrawn?\"\n\nHe came nearer and touched me;  once more I felt the thrill of being\nthat changed itself into vision.\n\n\"The end is creation, and creation is joy: the One awakens out of\nquiescence as we come forth, and knows itself in us;  as we return\nwe enter it in gladness, knowing ourselves.  After long cycles the\nworld you live in will become like ours;  it will be poured forth\nand withdrawn;  a mystic breath, a mirror to glass your being.\"\n\nHe disappeared while I wondered what cyclic changes would transmute\nour ball of mud into the subtle substance of thought.\n\nIn that world I dared not stay during its period of withdrawal;\nhaving entered a little into its life, I became subject to its laws:\nthe Power on its return would have dissolved my being utterly.  I\nfelt with a wild terror its clutch upon me, and I withdrew from the\ndeparting glory, from the greatness that was my destiny--but not yet.\n\nFrom such dreams I would be aroused, perhaps by a gentle knock at\nmy door, and my little cousin Margaret's quaint face would peep in\nwith a \"Cousin Robert, are you not coming down to supper?\"\n\nOf these visions in the light of after thought I would speak a\nlittle.  All this was but symbol, requiring to be thrice sublimed\nin interpretation ere its true meaning can be grasped.  I do not\nknow whether worlds are heralded by such glad songs, or whether\nany have such a fleeting existence, for the mind that reflects\ntruth is deluded with strange phantasies of time and place in\nwhich seconds are rolled out into centuries and long cycles are\nreflected in an instant of time.  There is within us a little space\nthrough which all the threads of the universe are drawn;  and,\nsurrounding that incomprehensible centre the mind of man sometimes\ncatches glimpses of things which are true only in those glimpses;\nwhen we record them the true has vanished, and a shadowy story--\nsuch as this--alone remains.  Yet, perhaps, the time is not altogether\nwasted in considering legends like these, for they reveal, though\nbut in phantasy and symbol, a greatness we are heirs to, a destiny\nwhich is ours, though it be yet far away.\n\n--August 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Theosophy Affects One's View of Life\n\n--A Paper Read Before the Dublin Lodge.\n\n\n\n\nIn asking you to consider with me the influence of the system of\nthought called Theosophy upon one's view of all the things which\nare included in the term Life, I have to preface my remarks by the\nconfession that I have not extracted my ideas from portly volumes,\nor indeed, engaged in any great research;  and I have further to\nask you to believe that what you will hear is the most unbiased\nstatement, as far as possible, on the subjects which will necessarily\ncome under notice.\n\nThe outlook of any individual mind is not a constant quantity;  it\nis to some extent determined by education, environment, and the\ninnate tendencies;  but it is always subject to alteration;  it is\nconstantly feeling the influence of subtle forces and circumstances,\nand it changes with every fresh experience and every new sensation.\nStill these influences seldom evince their presence by a great\nreversal of the mental attitude, and we are best able to sense them\nby seeing how the actions of the individual, which are very largely\nthe voluntary or involuntary expression of his standpoint, represent\nat different times changes in that standpoint.  Indeed, one's own\nexperience will supply plenty of material to work upon;  for, I\ndaresay no one will insist that his present attitude towards the\nrest of the universe is identical with that of ten or five years ago,\nor even one year.  A little examination will show that the mental\nprocesses which precede some definite action are altered in some\nimportant manner from those of 1890.  The question which is of\nimportance is to find out how the change has come about, and whether\none is to allow extraneous events to mast his mental conclusions,\nor one is to become, through wisdom acquired by effort, the conscious\nmaster of his destiny.\n\nTheosophy has for its leading tenet the absolute unity in essence\nand correlation of all life, whether visible, invisible, material,\nintellectual, spiritual, and this affords at once a clue to the\nconsideration of the present subject;  for, according to the view\nwhich the individual thinker takes of the powers and relations of\nthe mind itself will be his view of the duties and responsibilities\nwhich these powers and relations involve;  in other words, Ethics\nor moral philosophy must be based upon metaphysics.  Now, I wish\nto be as brief as possible in pointing out the theosophic view of\nthe mind, and soul, and their powers and relations;  and were it\nnot that it is necessary for the unity of my remarks, I would take\nrefuge in referring to the numerous able, intellectual, and forcible\nexpositions of this matter which you have heard in this room.\n\nTheosophy, to put it as concisely as possible, accepts the universe\nas \"the unfolding of a Divine life, functioning in every form of\nliving and nonliving thing.\"  Man is viewed as a compound being,\na spark of this divine universal spirit being clothed with the body.\nThe immortal indestructible part of man consists of this spark of\nuniversal spirit, its vehicle the human spirit, and the mind or\nintellectual faculties.  It uses as a dwelling the body, with its\nanimal life, its passions and appetites, to which mankind is so\nprone to attach tremendous importance.  The connecting link is the\nmind, which, being full of agitation, strong, and obstinate, senses\nall the material existence, is moved by the hopes and fears, and\nthe storm of existence.  The lesson, ever insisted on as having to\nbe learnt, is that the lower part of man, the body, and its attachments,\nhave to be conquered and purified;  and the only way to teach it\nits true functions is by suffering;  and when this is done, we shall\nhave got somewhere nearer the goal, when we shall identify our\nconsciousness with our true self, not with the illusion.  The powers\nof the mind to sense all existence, and its relations towards the\nrest of our being as the connecting link, bearing the contact with\nexternal things towards the soul, and at times being the vehicle\nof the Wisdom which is one of the attributes of that which has no\nattribute:  I say, then, these powers and relations of the mind,\nwhich one finds everywhere treated of in Theosophical literature,\nare the determining factors in the formation of our Ethics.  And\nsince, from Socrates down, we are taught that self-knowledge is\nnecessary for guidance of one's conduct, the knowledge of the mind\nand its capacities is at once shadowed forth as of immense value.\nIt has at least three elementary powers--viz., the power of knowing,\nthe power of feeling, and the power of acting.  These powers, though\ndistinguishable, are not separable;  but rather when we distinguish\nknowledge, feeling, and action, what we call by these names will\nbe found, when accurately examined, to be combinations of the three\nelements, differing only in respect to the element which preponderates.\nLocke would have us suppose that when I say \"I know,\" it means that\nan object is inserted into my consciousness as into a bag.  But no\nbag could produce the phenomenon of knowledge.  To produce it\nrequires the putting forth of an active power, which we call\nintelligence.  The knowledge of an object always produces in the\nmind some emotion with regard to it:  this emotion is normally\npleasure.  Sometimes the difficulties which beset the acquisition\nof knowledge are so great and cause such dissatisfaction and pain\nthat the mind is tempted to banish them, together with the object\nwhich excites them, from its consciousness.  Knowledge and the\nemotions to which it gives rise induce those actions which are the\nresult of the inherent activity of the mind stimulated by them.\nThus we see that the antecedents of all action include intelligence\nas an active power:  and Ethics, more particularly Theosophical\nEthics, are seen to have practical value, and not merely a\nspeculative interest.\n\nHaving digressed thus far from my subject, the point to which I\nproceed to address myself is, the working out on the individual of\nthe system of which I have tried to shadow forth the greater truths.\nThe first class I will deal with are the indifferent.  To them,\nTheosophy presents the widest possible field of, and reasons for,\nactivity that can be desired.  It shows that no action is without\nits direct permanent result, and that consequently the position of\nthe indifferent is absolutely untenable.  No one who has studied\nTheosophical literature can ever find there a justification for\nmere laissez-faire.  It points out the enormous value of what we\ncall trifles, and the comparatively trifling value of what the\nindifferent would take most note.  Theosophy always insists on\naction in some direction, preferably conscious, well-directed action,\nwith pure motive.\n\nThe Agnostic is, as it were, Theosophy's special care--It shows\nhim at once the directions in which further, fuller, and greater\nknowledge of every branch of science or philosophy can be gained.\nIt says to him \"pursue your previous method of inquiry, and remember,\ntaking nothing for granted, do not accept other's authority.  Seek\nfor knowledge:  we can only point the way we have ourselves gone.\nInvestigate every nook and corner of your mind, and learn how to\ncontrol it and your sense perceptions.  Then you will no longer\nmistrust your results as possibly imperfect, but you will have\nattained to some closer contact with Truth.\"  To both the Agnostic\nand the indifferent, the study of Theosophy will bring a consciousness\nof the responsibility towards others, which is the basis of our\nuniversal brotherhood.  It will tend to remove the personal element\nwhich has hitherto done so much to cloud and obscure one's\ninvestigations;  and it will gradually lead to the elimination of\nthe anxiety as to results, which will bring us (by the removal of\nremorse or approval) to calmness of mind, in which condition great\nwork can be achieved.\n\nThe appeal of theosophy to the scientific investigator is practically\nidentical with the last.  It will show him what so many of his\nconfreres are more or less tacitly recognizing, that the hopeless\nand soul-deadening belief of the Materialist (that all the growth\nof the race, the struggling towards a higher life, the aspirations\ntowards virtue shall absolutely vanish, and leave no trace), is a\ncrushing mental burden which leads to absolute negation;  it will\nshow the spiritual nature of man in perfect consistence with the\ntrue theories, and as dependent on fundamental laws and causes.\n\nComing from the region of unbelief to belief, to use these words in\ntheir narrowest sense, let us consider what way Theosophy will\naffect a believer in doctrines of some system of religious thought.\nTo take the ordinary Protestant first;  Theosophy is apparently\nlikely to fail on account of its taking away the personality of the\nDeity, and the habit of prayer:  for to both of these doctrines the\nearnest churchman is attached.  But if it does do so, what does it\nsubstitute?  It puts forward an atonement, not an atonement of 1,861\nyears ago, but a daily atonement to be carried out in each one's life,\nand having as great an influence on one's fellows;  it suggests the\npossibilities are within each one of us, if we but seek the true path.\nAlso, and this is a small point, it removes the horrible canker of\nchurch government, which ministers so powerfully to the idea of\nseparateness and personality:  and lastly, it offers, in place of\nmouthing prayers to a God whom one is taught to fear ten times to\nthe once that love is insisted on, a union with that higher self\nwhich, if pursued, brings peace, wisdom, an infinite compassion,\nand an infinite love.\n\nWhat has Theosophy to offer to the Roman Catholic?  All that it\noffers to the Protestant;  with this addition, that not merely one\nwoman is exalted, but all womankind as being of the same essence\nand spirit of all nature.  It shows that there is no superiority,\nbut that by effort, by training, by aspiration, everyone, both man\nand woman, shall be found worthy of being taken into heaven, and\njoined again to the one source of life and being.  It shows the\nwhole doctrine of saintliness and blessedness to have a source in\nTruth, though overlaid and altered.\n\nAnd what of the other sheep?  What of that soul which, feeling\ncompelled by its intuitions to recognise the essential divinity of\nman, yet find no expression in the churches which will fit into\nits emotional nature?  What of him whom, for want of a better word,\nI shall call a Symbolist, who is always striving to express in some\nform of art or thought, that divine energy which is wisdom,\nconsciousness, and energy all in one?  Does not Theosoophy afford\nthe very best outlet for his soul force?  Are not its ideas on a\nlevel with, if not higher than, what his most sublime moments of\nfeeling can bring before him?  Surely if anyone can find peace in\nits bosom, the symbolist, ever struggling to express his sense of\nthe True, the Beautiful, which are, after all, but a second\nreflection of the Higher mind, with its knowledge of the essence\nof all life, can therein do his noblest work for Humanity in company\nwith those who, having previously done all they could for the race\nthrough a sense of duty arising from intuitions they declined to\nrecognise, have found in the doctrines of Theosophy the broadest\npossible field for such work, and the purest motive.\n\nAnd now, changing from particular types, how do we look upon Theosophy\nas a power in Ethics?  We find the elimination of the selfish instinct\ninsisted upon as necessary for the progress of the Ego through its\nmaterial envelope to a full and complete knowledge of its higher self;\nwe find the doctrine of Brotherhood put forward in its noblest aspects;\nwe find as a necessary corollary that responsibility is increased\nand widened with an accompanying sense of power to accept and carry\non that responsibility;  with the growth of higher feeling within\nus comes a sense of added strength;  we learn gradually to work\nwithout consideration or anxiety for results;  we grow more tolerant\nof our neighbor's shortcomings, and less so of our own;  we find\nthat by disengaging ourselves from the objects of the senses, we\nbecome indifferent to small troubles, and more free to assist our\nneighbor when they press on him;  with the knowledge of the causes\nof present conditions lying in past action, and our present actions\ngoing to be the causes of future conditions, we place ourselves in\na position to work to the full extent of our powers to set in motion\nsuch causes as will bring about the happiest results for Humanity\nas a whole;  we learn to look upon death, not as the opening of the\nspiritual life, but as a release from a weight which keeps under\nthe spiritual life, which is always with us, now as well as before\nbirth and after death;  we learn to sense the methods by which the\nuniverse works out its destiny;  we find every day growing stronger\nthat sense of immortality, of absolute union with the universal soul,\nwhich at first merely manifested itself in strange feelings and\nemotions;  we find the clues to the control of our physical and\nmental faculties, and are not surprised to discover the ten-thousand-\nfold increase in value these faculties then bear;  we put ourselves\nmore and more in harmony with what we feel to be the source of all\nTruth;  we find ourselves gradually able to give expression to\nthose dumb feelings which we could not find words for, of its\ngrandeur and greatness;  until finally we come, after many incarnations,\nafter suffering, after despair sometimes, to a knowledge which\ntranscends all human knowledge, to a bliss which is above our\npresent ideas, to a peace which the world cannot give, which\nsurpasseth all understanding, and are then ready to give up that\nbliss and peace, and to use that knowledge for the divine compassion\ntowards our fellows who are following.\n\nBut how are we to hope for this progress?  What are we to do to\nrealize these ideas?  Is it by wishing for it that this state will\ncome about?  Is there no everyday way of getting forward?  These\nare some of the questions which will rise naturally to the lips of\nany here who are not thoroughly acquainted with Theosophical ideas:\nand what have we to say in reply?  Are we to confess Theosophy is\na doctrine only for the learned, the cultured, the wealthy?  Are\nwe to acknowledge that Christianity or Agnosticism is more practical,\neasier for the men in the street to grasp?  Are we to say that\nTheosophy is not a gospel for to-day?  No:  a thousand times no!\nIf there is one result of a study of Theosophy, it is the gaining\nof Hope, a sure and certain Hope, which soon becomes Trust, and later,\nknowledge.  I affirm most strongly that there is no one to whom\nTheosophy in some of its myriad aspects does not appeal, and appeal\nstrongly enough to cause it to be the ruling passion of his existence;\nbut I do also affirm as strongly, that in Theosophy, as in all other\nthings, what are necessary are, pure motive and perseverance.  It\ncosts no one anything to spend an hour a day in meditation on some\naspect of life;  in thinking of our eternal nature and striving to\nplace ourselves en rapport with our highest ideals of purity, nobility,\nTruth.  Then cannot we get the idea of universal brotherhood firmly\nfixed in our consciousness as an actual reality to be attained, and\nalways act upon that basis.  To me, the thought of the absolute\nunity of all life, affords as high an ideal for putting into\npractical shape as my deficient development allows me.  Cannot we\nget this ideal or some other ideal so essential a part of our\nthought that it colours all our feelings, emotions and actions?\nWe will then be doing our part in the struggle.  We will not be of\nthe Laodiceans, who were neither hot nor cold.  Let us try this:\nlet us see whether it will have such an effect, and if we, by our\npersonal experience, have convinced ourselves of the reality of this,\nlet us progress further, and by further trial find out the greater\ntruths beyond.  Reincarnation and Karma are essentially doctrines\nfor the poor and needy;  mental and physical.  Intellectual subtleties\nare not needed in Theosophy:  it is spiritual perception, and who will\ndare say to the poor that they have less of this than their fellows?\n\nThe only region where the \"exclusiveness\" argument can have even a\nmomentary hold is with regard to Occultism.  There is in most people's\nmind a distrust of anything secret.  But remember, believe only in\nwhat your own test has shown you to be true:  and learn not to\ncondemn those who have found some irresistible impulse urging them\nforward to seek further.  Besides, anyone who is not clear in his\nmotive in studying Occultism had better pause before he pledges\nhimself to anything, or undertakes that the result of which he does\nnot know even dimly.\n\nAnd before passing from this digression, let me insist strongly\nonce again on the fact that true progress will come only to those\nwho seek to attain it.\n\nThey who would be something more\nThan those who feast and laugh and die, will hear\nThe voice of duty, as the note of war,\nNerving their spirit to great enterprise,\nAnd knitting every sinew for the charge.\n\n\nAgain, get rid of indolence, or its synonym, indifference.  The\nreal hereditary sin of human nature is indolence.  Conquer that,\nand you will conquer the rest.  We cannot afford to rest with what\nwe have done;  we must keep moving on.  In this, indeed, to stand\nstill is to go back--worse still, to keep others back.\n\nIn conclusion I may, perhaps, be permitted to give you a few remarks\nas to the influence Theosophy has had upon myself.  It has furnished\nme with satisfactory reasons for living and working;  it has infused\nan earnestness in that work which I prize as one of the valuable\nthings of my life's experience.  It has ministered to that inmost\nsense of worship and aspiration which all of us possess;  it has\nshown me that by expanding one's consciousness in that of the universe,\none gains more knowledge and opportunity for helping on humanity;\nand it has pointed out where the materials for a scientific basis\nof ethics can be found, and also what will be the outlines of the\nfuture building;  and finally it has shown that if the objects of\nour desires be changed, and many things we held dear are no longer\nprized, it is owning simply to the acquirement of larger and\nfuller interests.\n\n--September 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nComfort\n\n\n\n\nWe are continually called upon to give comfort, and it is a problem\nto many what to say.  For there are people who can see no outlet\nfrom their pain other than this, that they shall obtain that which\nthey desire.  The lover longs for the one who is absent or cold;\nthe poor demand wealth; the tortured cry out for relief from suffering;\nand so on through all phases of human life we continually meet such\npeople.  We, perhaps free from such afflictions, have schooled\nourselves into a heroic mood.  These are not things to sorrow over,\nwe think;  therefore, we are in a dilemma.  We cannot aid them,\nfor their ideals often seem ignoble to us--their wish accomplished\nwould only bring on the renewal of old pain, and bind them closer\nto the weary wheel.  Yet we cannot be cold, we who would identify\nourselves with all life, for the soul must \"lend its ear to every\ncry of pain, like as the lotus bares its heart to drink the morning\nsun.\"  In the many cases where the suffering is unavoidable, and\ncannot be otherwise received, what are we to do?  Some, a little\nabove the ignoble view that the only relief is in the satisfaction\nof desire, say reverently to those in pain:  \"It is God's will,\"\nand some accept it as such with dull resignation.  But with some\nthe iron has entered the soul--the words are empty.  \"What have I\nto do with God, or He with me?\"  they demand in their hearts.\nThey join in the immemorial appeal and fierce revolt which at all\ntimes the soul of man makes against any external restraint.  We\nwho are disciples of old wisdom may touch some chord in them which\nmay awaken eternal endurance.\n\nIt is not, we say, a pain imposed upon us by any eternal power;\nbut the path we tread is one which we ourselves very long ago determined.\nTo the question, \"What have we to do with God?\" we make answer that\nwe are the children of Deity--bright sparks born in the Divine flame,\nthe spirit in its primal ecstacy reflected in itself the multitudinous\npowers that throng in space.  It was nourished by divine love, and\nall that great beauty thrilled through it and quickened it.  But\nfrom this vision which the spirit had, it passed to climb to still\ngreater heights--it was spiritual, it might attain divinity.  The\nchange from the original transcendental state of vision to that\nother state of being, of all-pervading consciousness, could only\nbe accomplished by what is known as the descent into matter where\nspirit identifies itself with every form of life, and assimilates\ntheir essences.  This cyclic pilgrimage it undertook, foreseeing pain,\nbut \"preferring free will to passive slavery, intellectual, self-\nconscious pain, and even torture, 'while myriad time shall flow,'\nto inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude,\" foreseeing pain, but\nknowing that out of it all would come a nobler state of life, a\ndivinity capable of rule, a power to assist in the general evolution\nof nature.  It is true in the experience of many that going deep\nwithin themselves, an elemental consciousness whispers comfort;\nit says all will be well with us;  it is our primal will which so\norders.  And so we justify the pain and hearts that break;  and\nthat old appeal and fierce revolt we make dies out in the inner\nlight which shines from \"the Goal, the Comforter, the Lord, the\nWitness, the resting-place, the Asylum, the Friend.\"  We can then\nonce more go forth with the old, heroic, Titan will for mastery,\nseeking not to escape, but rather to meet, endure, and assimilate\nsorrow and joy alike;  for so we can permeate all life--life which\nis in its essence one.  This is the true centre on which all\nendurance must rest;  this is the comfort the soul may take to\nitself;  and beyond and after this we may say we struggle in a\nchaos indeed, but in a chaos whose very disorder is the result of law.\nThat law is justice that cannot err.  Out of confidence in this\njustice may spring up immortal hopes;  our motives, our faith shall\nsave us.  We may dare more, give ourselves away more completely,\nfor is not the root of this law declared to be beauty, harmony,\ncompassion.  We may trust that our acts shall have full fruition,\nand remain careless of the manner, nor seek for such results.  We\nmay look upon it if we will as the sweetest of the sweetest, the\ntenderest of the tenderest;  and this is true, though still it is\nmaster of the fiery pain.  Above all it is the law of our own being;\nit is at one with our ancestral self.  In all this lies, I think,\nsuch consolation as we may take and offer for pain.  Those who\ncomprehend, in their resignation, shall become one with themselves;\nand out of this resignation shall arise will to go forth and fulfil\nour lofty destiny.\n\n--May 15, 1894\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Ascending Cycle\n\n\n\n\nThe teaching of the Secret Doctrine divides the period during which\nhuman evolution proceeds upon this globe into seven periods.  During\nthe first three-and-a-half of these, the ethereal humanity who\nappeared in the First Race gradually become material in form, and\nthe psychic spirituality of the inner man is transformed into\nintellectuality.  During the remaining three-and-a-half periods,\nthere is a gradual dematerialization of form;  the inner man by\nslow degrees rises from mere brain intellection to a more perfected\nspiritual consciousness.  We are told that there are correspondences\nbetween the early and later periods of evolution;  the old conditions\nare repeated, but upon higher planes;  we re-achieve the old\nspirituality with added wisdom and intellectual power.  Looked at\nin this way we shall find that the Seventh Race corresponds to the\nfirst;  the Sixth to the Second;  and the Fifth Race (which is ours)\ncorresponds with the Third.  \"We are now approaching a time,\" says\nthe Secret Doctrine, \"when the pendulum of evolution will direct\nits swing decidedly upward, bringing humanity back on a parallel\nline with the primitive Third Root Race in spirituality.\"  That is,\nthere will be existing on the earth, about the close of Fifth Race,\nconditions in some way corresponding with those prevailing when\nthe Third Race men began their evolution.  Through this period may\nbe yet distant hundreds of thousands of years, still it is of\ninterest to forecast that future as far as may be, for the future\nis concealed in the present, and is the outcome of forces working\nto-day.  We may find out from this enquiry the true nature of\nmovements like the Theosophical Society.\n\nOne of the most interesting passages in the Secret Doctrine is that\nwhich describes the early Third Race.  \"It was not a Race, this progeny.\nIt was at first a wondrous Being, called the 'Initiator,\" and after\nhim a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings.\"  Without at all\nattempting to explain the real nature of this mysterious Being or\nRace, we may assume that one of the things hinted at is the\nconsciousness of united being possessed by these ancient Adepts.\nWalking abroad over the earth as instructors of a less progressed\nhumanity, their wisdom and power had a common root.  They taught\ntruth from a heart-perception of life, ever fresh and eternal,\neverywhere pervading nature and welling up in themselves.  This\nheart-perception is the consciousness of unity of inner being.\nThe pendulum of evolution which in its upward swing will bring\nhumanity backwards on a parallel line with the primitive Third\nRoot Race, should bring back something corresponding to this\nprimeval hierarchy of divine sages.  We should see at the end of\nthe Kaliyuga a new brotherhood formed from those who have risen\nout of material life and aims, who have conquered self, who have\nbeen purified by suffering, who have acquired strength and wisdom,\nand who have wakened up to the old magical perception of their\nunity in true Being.  \"At the end of the Kali, our present age,\nVishnu, or the \"Everlasting King,' will appear as Kalki, and\nestablish righteousness upon earth.  The minds of those who live\nat that time shall be awakened and become pellucid as crystal.\"\n--(Secret Doctrine, II, 483)\n\nPassing beyond the turning point of evolution, where the delusion\nof separateness is complete, and moving on the that future awaiting\nus in infinite distances, when the Great Breath shall cease its\noutward motion and we shall merge into the One--on this uphill\njourney in groups and clusters men will first draw closer together,\nentering in spirit their own parent rays before being united in\nthe source of all light and life.  Such a brotherhood of men and\nwomen we may expect will arise, conscious in unity, thinking from\none mind and acting from one soul.  All such great achievements\nof the race are heralded long before by signs which those who study\nthe lives of men may know.  There is a gestation in the darkness\nof the womb before the living being appears.  Ideals first exist\nin thought, and from thought they are outrealized into objective\nexistence.   The Theosophical Society was started to form the\nnucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity, and its trend is\ntowards this ideal.  May we not justifiably suppose that we are\nwitnessing to-day in this movement the birth of a new race\ncorresponding to the divine Initiators of the Third;  a race which\nshall in its inner life be truly a \"Wondrous Being.\"  I think we\nwill perform our truest service to the Society by regarding it in\nthis way as an actual entity whose baby years and mystical childhood\nwe should foster.  There are many people who know that it is possible\nby certain methods to participate in the soul-life of a co-worker,\nand if it is possible to do this even momentarily with one comrade,\nit is possible so to participate in the vaster life of great\nmovements.  There will come a time to all who have devoted themselves\nto this idea, as H.P. Blavatsky and some others have done, when\nthey will enter into the inner life of this great Being, and share\nthe hopes, the aspirations, the heroism, and the failures which\nmust be brought about when so many men and women are working together.\nTo achieve this we should continually keep in mind this sense of\nunity;  striving also to rise in meditation until we sense in the\nvastness the beating of these innumerable hearts glowing with heroic\npurpose:  we should try to humanize our mysticism;  \"We can only\nreach the Universal Mind through the minds of humanity,\" and we\ncan penetrate into their minds by continual concentration,\nendeavouring to realise their thoughts and feelings, until we\ncarry always about with us in imagination, as [wrote] Walt Whitman,\n\"those delicious burdens, men and women.\"\n\n--November 15, 1893\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Mystic Nights' Entertainment\n\n\n\n\nWe went forth gay in the twilight's cover;\nThe dragon Day with his ruddy crest\nBlazed on the shadowy hills hung over\nThe still grey fields in their dewy rest.\n\nWe went forth gay, for all ancient stories\nWere told again in our hearts as we trod;\nAbove were the mountain's dawn-white glories;\nWe climbed to it as the throne of God.\n\n\nWe pitched our tents in a sheltered nook on the mountain side.  We\nwere great with glee during the day, forecasting happy holidays\nremote from the crowded city.  But now as we sat round the camp\nfire at dusk silence fell upon us.  What were we to do in the long\nevenings?  I could see Willie's jolly face on the other side of\nthe fire trying to smother a yawn as he refilled his pipe.  Bryan\nwas watching the stars dropping into their places one by one.  I\nturned to Robert and directed the general attention to him as a\nproper object for scorn.  He had drawn a pamphlet on some scientific\nsubject from his breast-pocket and was trying to read it by the\nflickering light.\n\n\"Did you come up to the mountains for this,\" I asked, \"to increase\nyour knowledge of the Eocene age?  Put it by, or--we will send it\nup as a burnt offering to the stars.\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said, looking rather ashamed, \"one must do something,\nyou know.  Willie has his pipe, Bryan is holding some mysterious\nintercourse with the planets, and you have the fire to take care of.\nWhat is one to do?\"\n\nThis went to the root of the matter.  I pondered over it awhile,\nuntil an idea struck me.\n\n\"There is Bryan.  Let him tell us a story.  He was flung into life\nwith a bundle of old legends.  He knows all mystery and enchantment\nsince the days of the Rishees, and has imagined more behind them.\nHe has tales of a thousand incarnations hidden away in secretness.\nHe believes that everything that happened lives still in the memory\nof Nature, and that he can call up out of the cycles of the past\nheroic figures and forgotten history, simply by his will, as a\nmagician draws the elemental hordes together.\"\n\n\"Have a dragon and a princess in it,\" said Willie, settling himself\ninto an attitude of listening.\n\n\"Or authentic information about Eocene man,\" suggested Robert.\n\n\"I could not tell a story that way,\" said Bryan simply.  \"I could\nnever invent a story, though all the characters, heroes and princess,\nwere to come and sit beside me so that I could describe them as\nthey really were.  My stories come like living creatures into my mind;\nand I can only tell them as they tell themselves to me.  Today,\nas I lay in the sunlight with closed eyes, I saw a haze of golden\nlight, then twilight trees appeared and moving figures and voices\nspeaking;  it shaped itself into what is hardly a story, but only\nan evening in some legendary existence.\"\n\nWe waited while Bryan tried to recall his misty figures.  We were\nalready in sympathy with his phantasmal world, for the valleys\nbelow us were dim-coloured and quiet, and we heard but rarely and\nfar away the noises of the village;  the creatures of the mountain\nmoved about in secretness, seeking their own peculiar joys in\nstillness amid dews and darkness.  After a little Bryan began.\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Gardens of Twilight\n\n\n\n\nI saw in my vision one of the heroes of the antique world.  He\nrode for many, many days, yet saw no kindly human face.  After\nlong wanderings and toils he came to the Gardens of Twilight, the\nrich and rare gardens of the primeval world, known by rumour to\nthe ancient Greeks as the Hesperides.  He looked around with wonder;\nthe place was all a misty dazzle with light, a level light as of\nevening that flowed everywhere about;  the air was rich with the\nscent of many blossoms;  from each flower rose an odour that hovered\nabout it as a delicate vapour.  While he gazed, one of the spirits\nof the garden came nigh him in the guise of a beautiful human child.\n\n\"How came you here?\"\n\n\"I wandered for many years,\" he said, \"I fought with the dragons\nthat lie coiled in citron scales on the highways;  I warred against\noppression;  I made justice to prevail, and now that peace is on\nthe land I might have rested with peace in mine own heart, but I\ncould not yet.  So I left behind the happy hearths and homes of\nmen and rode onward, a secret fire burning ceaselessly within me;\nI know not in what strange home it will be still.  But what gardens\nare these?\"\n\n\"They are the Gardens of Twilight,\" answered the child.\n\n\"How beautiful then must be the Gardens of Day!  How like a faint\nfine dust of amethyst and gold the mist arises from the enchanted\nodorous flowers!  Surely some spirit things must dwell within the\nair that breaks so perpetually into hues of pearl and shell!\"\n\n\"They are the servants of Zeus,\" the child said.  \"They live within\nthese wandering airs;  they go forth into the world and make mystery\nin the hearts of men.\"\n\n\"Was it one such guided me thither?\"\n\n\"I do not know;  but this I know, whether led by the wandering\nspirits or guided by their own hearts, none can remain here safely\nand look upon the flowers save those who understand their mystery\nor those who can create an equal beauty.  For all others deadly\nis the scent of the blossoms;  stricken with madness, they are\nwhirled away into the outer world in fever, passion and unending\nhunger and torment.\"\n\n\"I do not care if I pass from them,\" said the wanderer.  \"It is\nnot here my heart could be still and its desire cease, but in the\nfirst Fount.\"\n\nThey passed on and went deeper into the Gardens of Twilight, which\nwere ever-changing, opalescent, ever-blushing with new and momentary\nbeauty, ever-vanishing before the steady gaze to reveal beneath\nmore silent worlds of mystic being.  Like vapour, now gorgeous and\nnow delicate, they wavered, or as the giant weeds are shadowing\naround the diver in the Indian wave sun-drenched through all its\ndeeps of green.  Sometimes a path would unfold, with a million\nshining flowers of blue, twinkling like stars in the Wilky Way,\nbeneath their feet, and would wind away delicately into the\nfaery distances.\n\n\"Let us rest,\" said the child, leaning against a tree.  She began\nswaying a hand to and fro among the flowers;  as her fingers touched\nthe bell-like blooms of burning amethyst they became stained with\nthe rich colour;  she seemed to lose herself in dreams as one who\ntoils not for delight, living ever amid rich joys.  He wondered\nif she was as unreal as the gardens, and remembering her words,\nthey seemed familiar as if they were but echoes of the unuttered\nthoughts that welled up as he moved about.  While he watched the\nflitting phantasmagoria with a sense expectant of music which never\ncame, phantasmagoria with a sense expectant of music which never\ncame, there arose before him images of peace, vanishing faster\nthan passion, and forms of steadfast purity came nigh, attired,\npriestess-like, in white and gold;  they laid their heads against\nhis breast;  as he looked down, their eyes, eager and flamelike,\ngrew passionate and full of desire.  He stretched out his hand to\npluck blossoms and twine wreaths for their beautiful heads.\n\n\"Do not!  Do not!\" cried the child.  \"See how every blossom has\nits guardian!\"\n\nThere were serpents coiling about the roots of every flower, or\namid the leaves, waiting with undulating head and forked tongue to\nstrike the uncautious hand.  He shook off the drowsy influence of\nthe scents and o'er-burdened air;  the forms vanished.  He remembered\nthe child's words:  \"None can remain in safety an equal beauty.\"\nHe began to ponder over the meaning of the gardens.\n\n\"While we sit here, late lingerers in the glory of twilight, I will\ntell you a story which my fancy brings me,\" he said.  \"I thought\none came here long ago and built himself a mighty world in a dream\nof many hundred years.\"\n\n\n\"He had lived with kings and counselors;  he had wrought in magical\narts, and the great and wise of the earth were his fellows.  When\na time came for him to depart he turned away sadly from the towers\nof men.  He passed, without knowing it, through the strange defiles\nwhich lead to these gardens;  but the light did not break upon him\nin iridescent waves foamy with flowers and sparkling with vanishing\nforms;  the light was hidden in the bosom of the twilight;  it was\nall-pervading but invisible;  the essence of the light bathed his soul;\nthe light was living;  the light was exhaustless;  by it everything\nwas born;  touched by it everything went forth in ecstasy, blind,\nseeking for realization.\n\n\"The magician brought with him the seeds of human desire and wisdom\nand aspiration.  The light broke into his moody forgetfulness and\nkindled long-forgotten fires.  He awoke from his darkness and saw\nbefore him in happiest vistas the island city of his lounging.\nAround him were the men and women he knew;  acting on his secret\nwishes the multitudes hailed him as king, they bowed before him\nas wise, they worshiped him as all-powerful.. It was not strange\nto him, and rapt in royal imaginations for countless years he held\nsway over the island city.  He dreamed of it as a poet, and there\nwas no more beautiful city than this city of his dream.  There\nwere places that shot up, pinnacle upon pinnacle, amid the jewel-\nlight of the stars;  there were courts and porticoes full of\nmysterious glory and gloom, magnificence and darkness;  there were\nfountains that jetted their pearly mists into the light;  around\nthem with summer in their hearts lay the island inhabitants, each\none an angel for beauty.  As the dream of the magician deepened\nin rapture, the city wavered and changed more continually;  its\ntowers pierced more daringly into the way of the stars;  for the\ndarkness below he summoned birds of fire from the aerial deeps;\nthey circled the palaces with flaming wings;  they stained the air\nwith richest dyes and rained forth emerald and blue and gold on\nthe streets and sculptured walls and the inhabitants in their\nstrange joys.\n\n\"His dream changed;  he went forth no more but shut himself up in\nhis palace with his wisest princes, and as he took counsel with them,\nthe phantasmal and brilliant towers without faded and fell away\nas a butterfly droops its wings.  For countless years he lived in\nthe intoxication of thought;  around him were sages who propounded\nwisest laws, and poets who sang of love, humanity and destiny.  As\nhis dream deepened still more in its rapture, they sang of mightier\nthemes;  there was continual music and light;  there was no limit\nof glory or dominion which the human soul might not aspire to;\nhis warriors stepped from star to star in dreams of conquest, and\nwould have stayed the seraph princess of the wind and wave and fire,\nto make more radiant the retinue of this magician of the Beautiful.\n\n\"Again his desire changed.  He sought to hold no further sway over\nthese wide realms beyond him;  he shut himself up in an inner chamber\nin lonely meditation, and as he entered into a deeper being the\nsages and poets, who were with him at his royal feasts, vanished\nand were no more.  He, the wise mind, pondered within himself,\nfinding joy in the continual inward birth of thought following\nthought, as in lonely seas wave rolls upon wave.  From all things\nhe had known or experienced he drew forth their essence and hidden\nmeaning, and he found that he had been no less a king in his old\nunconsciousness than he now was, and that at all times nature had\nbeen obeisant and whatever had happened had still been by his own\nwill.  Through the light, thin fretted by the fire of his aspirations,\nhe sometimes seemed to see the shining Law in all things and the\nmovement through the thought-swept fields of heaven of the universal\nimagination.  He saw that this, too, had been a minister to him.\nHe drew nigh to himself--divinity.  The last rapture of his soul\nwas his radiant self-conception.  Save for this vesture the light\nof illusion fell from him.  He was now in a circle of whitest fire,\nthat girdled and looked in upon the movements of worlds within its\nbreast.  He tried to expand and enter this flaming circle;  myriads\nof beings on its verges watched him with pity;  I felt their thought\nthrilling within me.\n\n\"He will never attain it!\"\n\n\"Ah, the Beautiful Bird, his plumage is stained!\"\n\n\"His glory will drag him down!\"\n\n\"Only in invisible whiteness can he pass!\"\n\n\"How he floats upwards, the Beautiful Bird!\"\n\n\"These voices of universal compassion did not reach him, rapt in\naspiration and imperious will.   For an instant--an eternity--the\ninfinitudes thrilled him, those infinitudes which in that instant\nhe knew he could never enter but as one with all on the days of\nthe great return.  All that longed, all that aspired and dared,\nall but the immortal were in that movement destroyed, and hurled\ndownwards from the highest heaven of life, the pilgrim spark began\nonce more as a child to live over again the round of human days.\"\n\n\"The spirit of the place o'ermastered you,\" said the child.  \"Here\nmay come and dream;  and their dream of joy ended, out of each\ndreaming sphere comes forth again in pain the infant spirit of man.\"\n\n\"But beyond this illusive light and these ever-changing vistas--\nwhat lies?  I am weary of their vanishing glories.  I would not\nwish to mount up through dreams to behold the true and fall away\npowerlessly, but would rather return to earth, though in pain,\nstill eager to take up and renew the cyclic labours.\"\n\n\"I belong to the gardens,\" said the child;  \"I do not know what\nlies beyond.  But there are many paths leading far away.\"\n\nBefore them where they stood branched out paths of rich flowers.\nHere a region of pinks lured on to vistas of delicate glory;\nthere ideal violet hues led to a more solemn beauty;  here the\neyes were dazzled by avenues of rich, radiant, and sunny green;\nanother in beautiful golden colours seemed to invite to the land\nof the sun, and yet another winded away through soft and shadowy\nblues to remote spiritual distances.  There was one, a path of\nwhite flowers ending in light no eye could pierce.\n\n\"I will choose this--the path of white flower,\" he said, waving\nfarewell to the child.  I watched the antique hero in my vision as\nhe passed into the light;  he seemed to shine, to grow larger;  as\nhe vanished from my eyes he was transfigured, entering as a god the\nregion of gods.\"\n\n\n\"Did you really dream all that?\" said Willie.  \"How jolly it must be!\nIt is like stepping from sphere to sphere.  Before the night of one\nday you are in the morning of another.  I suppose you have some\ntheory about it all--as wonderful as your gardens?\"\n\n\"Yes!\" said our sceptic, \"I had an uneasy consciousness it was not\nall pure story.  I felt an allegory hiding its leanness somewhere\nbeneath the glow and colour.\"\n\n\"What I want to know is how these things enter the imagination at all!\"\n\n\"With what a dreadfully scientific spirit you dissect a fantasy!\nPerhaps you might understand if you recall what sometimes happens\nbefore sleep.  At first you see pictures of things, landscapes,\npeople you know;  after a time people and places unknown before\nbegin to mingle with them in an ever-widening circle of visions;\nthe light on which these things are pictured is universal, though\neveryone has around himself his own special sphere of light;\nthis is the mirror of himself--his memory; but as we go deeper\ninto ourselves in introspection we see beyond our special sphere\ninto the great of universal light, the memorial tablet of nature;\nthere lie hidden the secrets of the past;  and so, as Felix said\na little while ago, we can call up and renew the life of legend\nand tradition.  This is the Astral Light of the mystics.  Its\ndeeper and more living aspect seems to inflame the principle of\ndesire in us.  All the sweet, seductive, bewitching temptations\nof sense are inspired by it.  After death the soul passing into\nthis living light goes on thinking, thinking, goes on aspiring,\naspiring, creating unconsciously around itself its own circumstance\nin which all sweetest desires are self-fulfilled.  When this dream-\npower is exhausted the soul returns again to earth.  With some\nthis return is due to the thirst for existence;  with some to a\nperception of the real needs of soul.\"\n\n\"Do you really believe all that?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes!  But that is only a general statement.\"\n\n\"I wonder at your capacity for believing in these invisible spheres.\nAs for me I cannot go beyond the world I live in.  When I think of\nthese things some dreadful necessity seems heaped upon me to continue\nhere--or, as you might put it, an angel with a flaming sword keeps\neverywhere the avenues to the Tree of Life.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Willie, \"it seems to me a most reasonable theory.  After\nall, what else could the soul do after death but think itself out?\nIt has no body to move about in.  I am going to dream over it now.\nGood-night!\"\n\nHe turned into the tent and Robert followed him.  \"Well, I cannot\nrest yet,\" said Bryan, \"I am going up for a little to the top of\nthe hill.  Come, Felix, these drowsy fellows are going to hide\nthemselves from the face of night.\"  We went up, and leaning on a\nboulder of rock looked out together.  Away upon the dream-built\nmargin of space a thousand tremors fled and chased each other all\nalong the shadowy night.  The human traditions, memories of pain,\nstruggle, hope and desire floated away and melted in the quietude\nuntil at last only the elemental consciousness remained at gaze.\nI felt chilled by the vacancies.  I wondered what this void was\nto Bryan.  I wished to see with his eyes.  His arm was around my\nshoulder.  How I loved him--my nearest--my brother!  The fierce\nand tender flame, comrade to his spirit, glowed in my heart.  I\nfelt a commingling of nature, something moved before my eyes.\n\"Look, Bryan!\" I whispered, \"this is faery!\"  A slight upright\nfigure, a child, stood a little apart shedding a delicate radiance\nupon the dusky air.  Curiously innocent, primeval, she moved,\nwithdrawn in a world only half-perceived of gorgeous blossoms and\nmystic shadows.  Through her hair of feathery brown drifting about\nher the gleam of dust of gold and of rich colour seemed to come\nfrom her dress.  She raised her finger-tips from the flowers and\ndashed the bright dew aside.  I felt something vaguely familiar\nabout the gesture.  Then Bryan said, \"It is one of the Children\nof Twilight.\"  It was a revelation of his mind.  I had entered\ninto the forms of his imagination.\n\n\"This is wonderful Bryan!  If I can thus share in the thought of one,\nthere can be no limit to the extension of this faculty.  It seems\nat the moment as if I could hope to finally enter the mind of\nhumanity and gaze upon soul, not substance.\"\n\n\"It would be a great but terrible power.  As often as not we imagine\nourselves into demons.  Space is thronged with these dragon-like\nforms, chimaeras of the fearful mind.  Every thought is an entity.\nSome time or other I think we will have to slay this brood we have\nbrought forth.\"\n\nBut as we turned backwards I had no dread or thought of this future\ncontest.  I felt only gay hopes, saw only ever-widening vistas.\nThe dreams of the Golden Age, of far-off happy times grew full of\nmeaning.  I people all the future with their splendour.  The air\nwas thronged with bright supernatural beings, they moved in air,\nin light;  and they and we and all together were sustained and\nthrilled by the breath of the Unknown God.\n\nAs we drew nigh to the tent, the light of the fire still flickering\nrevealed Robert's face within.  He was sleeping.  the warmth of the\nsun had not yet charmed away the signs of study and anxious thought.\n\n\"Do you know the old tradition that in the deepest sleep of the\nbody the soul goes into itself.  I believe he now knows the truth\nhe feared to face.  A little while ago he was here;  he was in doubt;\nnow he is gone unto all ancient things.  He was in prison;  now\nthe Bird of Paradise has wings.  We cannot call him by any name,\nfor we do not know what he is.  We might indeed cry aloud to his\nglory, as of old the Indian sage cried to a sleeper, 'Thou great one,\nclad in raiment;  Soma:  King!\"  But who thinking what he is would\ncall back the titan to this strange and pitiful dream of life?\nLet us breath softly to do him reverence.  It is now the Hour of\nthe King,\n\n\"Who would think this quite breather\n        From the world had taken flight?\nYet within the form we see there\n        Wakes the Golden King to-night.\n\n\"Out upon the face of faces\n        He looked forth before his sleep;\nNow he knows the starry races\n        Haunters of the ancient deep;\n\n\"On the Bird of Diamond Glory\n        Floats in mystic floods of song;\nAs he lists, Time's triple story\n        Seems but as a day is long.\n\n\"When he wakes--the dreamy-hearted--\n        He will know not whence he came,\nAnd the light from which he parted\n        Be the seraph's sword of flame;\n\n\"And behind its host supernal\n        Guarding the lost Paradise,\nAnd the Tree of Life eternal\n        From the weeping human eyes.\"\n\n\"You are an enchanter, Bryan.  As you speak I half imagine the\ndarkness sparkles with images, with heroes and ancient kings who\npass, and jeweled seraphs who move in flame.  I feel mad.  The\ndistance rushes at me.  The night and stars are living, and--speak\nunknown things!  You have made me so restless I will never sleep.\"\n\nI lay down.  The burden of the wonder and mystery of existence was\nupon me.  Through the opening of the tent the warm night air flowed in;\nthe stars seemed to come near--nearer--full of kindly intent--with\nfamiliar whispering;  until at last I sank back into the great deep\nof sleep with a mysterious radiance of dream showering all about me.\n\n\n\n\n\nNight The Second\n\n\n\n\nThe skies were dim and vast and deep\n        Above the vales of rest;\nThey seemed to rock the stars asleep\n        Beyond the mountain's crest.\n\nOh, vale and stars and rocks and trees,\n        He gives to you his rest,\nBut holds afar from you the peace\n        Whose home is in His breast!\n\nThe massy night, brilliant with golden lights enfolded us.  All\nthings were at rest.  After a long day's ramble among the hills,\nwe sat down again before our fire.  I felt, perhaps we all felt,\na mystic unquiet rebelling against the slumbrous mood of nature\nrolled round her hills and valleys.\n\n\"You must explain to us, Bryan, why it is we can never attain a\nreal quiet, even here where all things seem at peace.\"\n\n\"We are aliens here, and do not know ourselves.  We are always\ndreaming of some other life.  These dreams, if we could only rightly\ninterpret them, would be the doors through which we might pass into\na real knowledge of ourselves.\"\n\n\"I don't think I would get much wisdom out of my dreams,\" said Willie.\n\"I had a dream last night;  a lot of little goblin fellows dancing a\njig on the plains of twilight.  Perhaps you could tell us a real dream?\"\n\n\"I remember one dream of a kind I mean, which I will tell you.  It\nleft a deep impression upon me.  I will call it a dream of\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Northern Lights\n\n\n\n\nI awoke from sleep with a cry.  I was hurled up from the great\ndeep and rejected of the darkness.  But out of the clouds and\ndreams I built up a symbol of the going forth of the spirit--a\nsymbol, not a memory--for if I could remember, I could return\nagain at will and be free of the unknown land.  But in slumber I\nwas free.  I sped forth like an arrow.  I followed a secret hope,\nbreasting the currents of life flowing all about me.  I tracked\nthese streams winding in secretness far away.  I said, \"I am going\nto myself.  I will bathe in the Fountain of Life;\"  and so on and\non I sped northwards, with dark waters flowing beneath me and stars\ncompanioning my flight.  Then a radiance illumined the heavens,\nthe icy peaks and caves, and I saw the Northern Lights.  Out of\nthe diamond breast of the air I looked forth.  Below the dim world\nshone all with pale and wintry green;  the icy crests flickered\nwith a light reflect from the shadowy auras streaming over the\nhorizon.  Then these auras broke out in fire, and the plains of\nice were illumined.  The light flashed through the goblin caves,\nand lit up their frosty hearts and the fantastic minarets drooping\nabove them.  Light above in solemn array went forth and conquered\nthe night.  Light below with a myriad flashing spears pursued the\ngloom.  Its dazzling lances shivered in the heart of the ice:\nthey sped along the ghostly hollows;  the hues of the orient seemed\nto laugh through winter;  the peaks blossomed with starry and\ncrystalline flowers, lilac and white and blue;  they faded away,\npearl, opal and pink in shimmering evanescence;  then gleams of\nrose and amethyst traveled slowly from spar to spar, lightened\nand departed;  there was silence before my eyes;  the world once\nmore was all a pale and wintry green.  I thought of them no more,\nbut of the mighty and unseen tides going by me with billowy motion.\n\"Oh, Fountain I seek, thy waters are all about me, but where shall\nI find a path to Thee?\"  Something answered my cry,  \"Look in thy\nheart!\" and, obeying the voice, the seer in me looked forth no\nmore through the eyes of the shadowy form, but sank deep within\nitself.   I knew then the nature of these mystic streams;  they\nwere life, joy, love, ardour, light. From these came the breath\nof life which the heart drew in with every beat, and from thence\nit was flashed up in illumination through the cloudy hollows of\nthe brain.  They poured forth unceasingly;  they were life in\neveryone;  they were joy in everyone;  they stirred an incommunicable\nlove which was fulfilled only in yielding to and adoration of the\nvast.  But the Fountain I could not draw nigh unto;  I was borne\nbackwards from its unimaginable centre, then an arm seized me, and\nI was stayed.  I could see no one, but I grew quiet, full of deep\nquiet, out of which memory breathes only shadowiest symbols, images\nof power and Holy Sages, their grand faces turned to the world,\nas if in the benediction of universal love, pity, sympathy, and peace,\nordained by Buddha;  the faces of the Fathers, ancient with eternal\nyouth, looking forth as in the imagination of the mystic Blake,\nthe Morning Stars looked forth and sang together.  A sound as of\nan \"OM\" unceasing welled up and made an auriole of peace around them.\nI would have joined in the song, but could not attain to them.\nI knew if I had a deeper love I could have entered with them into\nunending labours amid peace;  but I could only stand and gaze;\nin my heart a longing that was worship, in my thought a wonder\nthat was praise. \"Who are these?\" I murmured?  The Voice answered,\n\"They are the servants of the Nameless One.  They do his bidding\namong men.  They awaken the old heroic fire of sacrifice in forgetful\nhearts.\"  Then the forms of elder life appeared in my vision.  I\nsaw the old earth, a fairy shadow ere it yet had hardened, peopled\nwith ethereal races unknowing of themselves or their destinies and\nlulled with inward dreams;  above and far away I saw how many\nglittering hosts, their struggle ended, moved onward to the Sabbath\nof Eternity.  Out of these hosts, one dropped as a star from their\nheart, and overshadowed the olden earth with its love.  Where ever\nit rested I saw each man awakening from his dreams turned away with\nthe thought of sacrifice in his heart, a fire that might be forgotten,\nbut could never die.  This was the continual secret whisper of the\nFathers in the inmost being of humanity.  \"Why do they not listen?\"\nI marveled.  Then I heard another cry from the lower pole, the pit;\na voice of old despair and protest, the appeal of passion seeking\nits own fulfilment.  Alternate with the dawn of Light was the breath\nof the expanding Dark where powers of evil were gathered together.\n\"It is the strife between light and darkness which are the world's\neternal ways,\"  said the Voice, \"but the light shall overcome and\nthe fire in the heart be rekindled;  men shall regain their old\nangelic being, and though the dark powers may war upon them, the\nangels with their love shall slay them.  Be thou ready for the battle,\nand see thou use only love in the fight.  Then I was hurried backward\nwith swift speed, and awoke.  All I knew was but a symbol, but I\nhad the peace of the mystic Fathers in my heart, and the jeweled\nglory of the Northern Lights all dazzling about my eyes.\n\n\"Well, after a dream like that,\" said Willie, \"the only thing one\ncan do is to try and dream another like it.\"\n\n--Oct. 15, 1894-Jan. 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nOn the Spur of the Moment\n\n\n\n\nI am minded to put down some intuitions about brotherhood and trust\nin persons.  A witty friend writes, \"Now that I have made up my mind,\nI intend looking at the evidence.\"  A position like that is not so\nabsurd as at first it seems.  It is folly only to those who regard\nreason alone and deny the value of a deep-seated intuition.  The\nintuitive trust which so many members of the T.S. have in William\nQ. Judge, to my mind shows that he is a real teacher.  In their\ndeepest being they know him as such, and what is knowledge there\nbecomes the intuition of waking hours.  When a clamour of many\nvoices arises making accusations, pointing to time, place and\ncircumstance;  to things which we cannot personally investigate,\nit is only the spirit within us can speak and decide.  Others with\nmore knowledge may give answering circumstances of time, place\nand act;  but, with or without these, I back up my intuition with\nthe reason--where the light breaks through, there the soul is pure.\nSays a brother truly:\n\n\"The list of his works is endless, monumental;  it shows us an\nuntiring soul, an immense and indomitable will, a total ignoring\nof himself for the benefit of his fellow-members.  This is not the\nconduct of the charlatan, not of the self-seeker.  It is that of\none of those brave and long-tried souls who have fought their way\ndown through the vistas of time so that they might have strength\nto battle now for those who may be weaker.\"\n\nOthers may have been more eloquent and learned, but who has been\nso wise?  Others may have written more beautifully, but who with\nsuch intimations of the Secret Spirit breathing within?  Others\nhave explained intellectually tattvas, principles and what not,\nbut who like him has touched the heart of a hidden nobility?  Has\nhe not done it over and over again, as here?\n\n\"Do what you find to do.  Desire ardently to do it, and even when\nyou shall not have succeeded in carrying out anything but some\nsmall duties, some words of warning, your strong desire will strike\nlike Vulcan upon some other hearts in the world, and suddenly you\nwill find that done which you had longed to be the doer of.  Then\nrejoice that another has been so fortunate as to make such a\nmeritorious Karma.\"\n\nOr he speaks as a hero:\n\n\"To fail would be nothing, but to stop working for Humanity and\nBrotherhood would be awful.\"\n\nOr as one who loves and justifies it to the end:\n\n\"We are not Karma, we are not the law, and it is a species of that\nhypocrisy so deeply condemned by it for us to condemn any man.\nThat the law lets a man live is proof that he is not yet judged\nby that higher power.\"\n\nTo know of these laws is to be them to some extent.  \"What a man\nthinks, that he is, that is the old secret.\"  The temple of Spirit\nis inviolate.  It is not grasped by speech or by action.  \"Whom\nthe Spirit chooses, by him it is gained.  The Self chooses his body\nas its own.\"  When the personal tumult is silence, then arises the\nmeditation of the Wise within.  Whoever speaks out of that life\nhas earned the right to be there.  No cunning can stimulate its\naccents.  No hypocrisy can voice its wisdom.  Whose mind gives out\nlight--it is the haunt of the Gods.  Does this seem to slight a\nguarantee for sincerity, for trust reposed?  I know of none weightier.\nLook back in memory;  of the martyrdom of opposing passions, out of\nthe last anguish came forth the light.  It was no cheap accomplishment.\nIf some one meets us and speaks knowing of that law, we say inwardly,\n\"I know you have suffered, brother!\"  But here is one with a larger\nwisdom than ours.  Here is one whose words today have the same clear\nring.  \"The world knows him not.\"   His own disciples hardly know\nhim:  he has fallen like Lucifer.  But I would take such teaching\nas he gives from Lucifer himself, and say, \"His old divinity remains\nwith him still.\"\n\n\"After all you may be mistaken,\" someone says.  \"The feet of no\none are set infallibly on the path.\"  It may be so.  Let us take\nthat alternative.  Can we reject him or any other as comrades while\nthey offer?  Never.  Were we not taught to show to those on whom\ncame the reaction from fierce effort, not cold faces, but the face\nof friendship, waiting for the wave of sure return?  If this was\na right attitude for us in our lesser groups, it is then right\nfor the whole body to adopt.  The Theosophical Society as a whole\nshould not have less than the generous spirit of its units.  It\nmust exercise the same brotherly spirit alike to those of good\nor evil fame.  Alike on the just and the unjust shines the Light\nof It, the Father-Spirit.  Deep down in our hearts have we not\nall longed, longed, for that divine love which rejects none?  You\nwho think he has erred, it is yours to give it now.  There is an\noccult law that all things return to their source, their cycles\naccomplished.  The forces we expend in love and anger come back\nagain to us thrilled with the thought which accepted or rejected\nthem.  I tell you, if worse things were true of him than what are\nsaid, if we did our duty simply, giving back in gratitude and\nfearlessness the help we had received from him, his own past would\novercome the darkness of the moment, would strengthen and bear him\non to the light.\n\n\"But,\" some push it further;  \"it is not of ourselves, but of this\nSociety and its good name, we think.  How can it accomplish its\nhigh mission in the world if we seem to ignore in our ranks the\npresence of the insincere person or fraud?\"\n\nI wish, my brothers, we could get rid of these old fears.  Show,\nform, appearance and seeming, what force have they?  A faulty face\nmatters nothing.  The deep inner attitude alone has power.  The\nworld's opinion implicates none of us with the Law.  Our action\nmany precipitate Karma, may inconvenience us for an hour;  but the\nend of life is not comfort but celestial being;  it is not in the\ngood voice of the world today we can have any hope:  its evil voice\nmay seem to break us for a little;  but love, faith and gratitude\nshall write our history in flame on the shadowy aura of the world,\nand the Watchers shall record it.  We can lose nothing;  the\nSociety can lose nothing.  Our only right is in the action, and\nhalf the sweetness of life consists in loving much.\n\nWhile I wrote, I thought I felt for a moment the true spirit of\nthis pioneer body we belong to.  Like a diver too long under seas,\nemerging I inhaled the purer air and saw the yellow sunlight.  To\nthink of it! what freedom! what freshness! to sail away from old\nreport and fear and custom, the daring of the adventurer in our\nhearts, having a reliance only upon the laws of life to justify\nand sustain us.\n\n--February 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Legends of Ancient Eire\n\n\n\n\nA Reverend and learned professor in Trinity College, Dublin, a\ncynic and a humorist, is reported once to have wondered \"why the\nold Irish, having a good religion of their own, did not stick to it?\"\nLiving in the \"Celtic twilight,\" and striving to pierce backward\ninto the dawn, reading romance, tradition and history, I have\nendeavoured to solve something of the mystery of the vast \"Celtic\nphantasmagoria,\" I can but echoe the professor.  In these legends,\nprodical of enchantment, where Gods, heroes and bright supernatural\nbeings mingle, are at league or war together, I have found not misty\nbut clear traces of that old wisdom-religion once universal.  There\nare indeed no ancient Irish Scriptures I am aware of, but they were\nnot needed.  To those who read in the Book of Life, philosophy and\nscripture are but as blinds over the spiritual vision.  But we today--\nlost children of the stars--but painfully and indirectly catch\nglimpses of the bright spheres once our habitations, where we freely\ncame and went.  So I will try to tell over again some of these old\nstories in the light of philosophy spoken later.  What was this\nold wisdom-religion?  It was the belief that life is one;  that\nnature is not dead but living;  the surface but a veil tremulous\nwith light--lifting that veil hero and sage of old time went outwards\ninto the vast and looked on the original.  All that they beheld\nthey once were, and it was again their heritage, for in essence\nthey were one with it--children of Deity.  The One gave birth to\nthe many, imagining within itself the heaven of heavens, and the\nheavens, and spheres more shadowy and dim, growing distant from\nthe light.  Through these the Rays ran outward, falling down through\nmany a starry dynasty to dwell in clay.  Yet--once God or Angel--\nthat past remains, and the Ray, returning on itself, may reassume\nits old vesture, remains, entering as a God into the Ancestral Self.\nEvery real scripture and every ancient myth, to be understood truly,\nmust be understood in this light.  God, the angelic hierarchies,\nthe powers divine and infernal, are but names for the mightier Adam\nin whose image man was made and who is the forgotten Self in humanity.\nMystic symbolism is the same the world over, and applying it to\nthe old Celtic romances, phantasy and faeryland are transformed\ninto history and we are reading about the ancient Irish Adepts.\n\nIreland was known long ago as the Sacred Island.  The Gods lived\nthere:  for the Tuatha De Dannans who settled in Eire after conquering\nthe gigantic races of Firbolgs and Fomorians (Atlanteans) were called\nGods, differing in this respect from the Gods of ancient Greece and\nIndia, that they were men who had made themselves Gods by magical\nor Druidical power.  They were preeminently magi become immortal\nby strength of will and knowledge.  Superhuman in power and beauty,\nthey raised themselves above nature;  they played with the elements;\nthey moved with ease in the air.  We read of one Angus Oge, the\nmaster magician of all, sailing invisibly \"on the wings of the cool\neast wind\";  the palace of that Angus remains to this day at New\nGrange, wrought over with symbols of the Astral Fire and the great\nSerpentine Power.  The De Dannans lived in the heart of mountains\n(crypts for initiation), and today the peasant sometimes sees the\nenchanted glow from the green hills he believes they still inhabit.\nPerhaps he believes not foolishly, for, once truly occult, a place\nis preserved from pollution until the cycle returns, bringing back\nwith it the ancient Gods again.\n\nThe cycles of the Gods is followed in Irish tradition by the cycle\nof the heroes.  The Gods still mingled with them and presumably\ntaught them, for many of these heroes are Druids.  Fin, the hero\nof a hundred legends, Cuchullin, Dairmud, Oisin and others are\nwielders of magical powers.  One of the most beautiful of these\nstories tells of Oisin in Tir-na-noge.  Oisin with his companions\njourneys along by the water's edge.  He is singled out by Niam,\ndaughter of Mannanan, king of Tir-na-noge, the land of the Gods.\nShe comes on a white horse across the seas, and mounting with her\nOisin travels across the ocean;  after warring with a giant Fomor\nhe passes into Tir-na-noge, where for a hundred years he lives\nwith Niam and has all that heart could wish for.  But desire for\nEire arises within him and returning, he falls off the magic steed,\nand becomes an old man weary with years.  It is purely occult.\nOisin, Niam, her white steed, Tir-na-noge, the waters they pass over,\nare but names which define a little our forgotten being.  Within\nOisin, the magician, kindles the Ray, the hidden Beauty.  Let us\ncall it by what name we will, so that we spare the terms of academic\nmysticism or psychology.  It is the Golden Bird of the Upanishads;\nthe Light that lighteth every man;  it is that which the old\nHermetists knew as the Fair or the Beautiful--for Niam means beauty;\nit is the Presence, and when it is upon a man every other tie breaks;\nhe goes alone with It, he is a dying regret, an ever-increasing joy.\nAnd so with Oisin, whose weeping companions behold him no more.\nHe mounts the white horse with Niam.  It is the same as the white\nhorse of the Apocalypse, whereon one sits called Faithful and True.\nIt is the power on which the Spirit rides.  Who is there, thinking,\nhas felt freed for a moment from his prison-house, and looking\nforth has been blinded by the foam of great seas, or has felt his\nimagination grow kingly in contemplation--he has known its impelling\npower;  the white horse is impatient of restraint.\n\nAs they pass over the waters \"they saw many wonderful things on\ntheir journey--islands and cities, lime-white mansions, bright\ngreenans and lofty palaces.\"  It is the mirror of heaven and earth,\nthe astral light, in whose glass a myriad illusions arise and fleet\nbefore the mystic adventures.  Haunt of a false beauty--or rather\na veil hung dazzling before the true beauty, only the odour or\nincense of her breath is blown through these alluring forms.  The\ntransition from this to a subtler sphere is indicated.  A hornless\ndeer, chased by a white hound with red ears, and a maiden tossing\na golden lure, vanishes for ever before a phantom lover.  The poet\nwhose imagination has renewed for us the legend has caught the true\nsignificance of these hurrying forms:\n\n\"The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their eyes and sighed.\"\n\n\"Do not heed these forms!\" cried Niam.  Compare with this from\nanother source:  \"Flee from the Hall of Learning, it is dangerous\nin its perfidious beauty. .... Beware, lest dazzled by illusive\nradiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light.\n.... It shines from the jewel of the Great Ensnarer.\"  There are\ncentres in man corresponding to these appearances.  They give vision\nand entrance into a red and dreadful world, where unappeasable\ndesire smites the soul--a dangerous clairvoyence.  But in the\nsphere beyond their power has to be conquered, and here Oisin wars\nwith the giant Fomor.  De Dannan and Romorian passed from Eire\nwrestle still in the invisible world, say the legends.  We, too--\nwould-be mystics--are met on the threshold of diviner spheres by\nterrible forms embodying the sins of a living past when we misused\nour spiritual powers in old Atlantean days.  These forms must be\nconquered and so Oisin battles with Fomor and releases the power--\na princess in the story.  This fight with the demon must be fought\nby everyone who would enter the land of the Gods, whether in\nconscious occult adventure or half-consciously after death, when\nthe strange alchemist Nature separates the subtile from the gross\nin the soul in this region which Oisin passes through.  Tir-na-noge,\nthe land of Niam, is that region the soul lives in when its grosser\nenergies and desires have been subdued, dominated and brought under\nthe control of light;  where the Ray of Beauty kindles and illuminates\nevery form which the imagination conceives, and where every form\ntends to its archetype.  It is a real region which has been approached\nand described by the poets and sages who, at all times, have\nendeavoured to express something of the higher realities.  It is\nnot distant, but exists in earth as the soul within the body, and\nmay be perceived through and along with the surface forms.  In a\nsense it corresponds with the Tibetan Devachan, and in this region\nOisin lives for a hundred years, until desire to see Eire once more\narises and he parts from Niam.  Nor the details of his return, the\ndrowsy land in which he slumbers;  how he fell off the white horse\nand became an old man with the weariness of his hundreds of years\nupon him--I must refer the reader to the legends.  He will read\nnot alone of Oisin, but of many an old hero, who, hailed by the\nfaery (divine) voice, went away to live in the heart of green hills\n(to be initiated) or to these strange worlds.\n\nDear children of Eire, not alone to the past but to today belong\nsuch destinies.  For if we will we can enter the enchanted land.\nThe Golden Age is all about us, and heroic forms and imperishable\nlove.  In that mystic light rolled round our hills and valleys hang\ndeed and memories which yet live and inspire.  The Gods have not\ndeserted us.  Hearing our call they will return.  A new cycle is\ndawning and the sweetness of the morning twilight is in the air.\nWe can breathe it if we will but awaken from our slumber.\n\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\n\n\nIn the recently published Story of Early Gaelic Literature, attention\nis directed to the curious eastern and pantheistic character of some\narchaic verse.  Critics are for ever trying to show how some one\nparticular antique race was the first begetter of religion and mystic\nsymbolism.  Perplexed by the identity between the myths and traditions\nof different countries, they look now here, now there, for the original.\nBut it was not in any land but out of the Christ-Soul of the universe\nthat true wisdom at all times was begotten.  Some ignorant peasant,\nsome Jacob Boehme, is pure and aspires, and lo! the God stirs within\nhim and he knows the things that were taught in elder days and by\nunknown people.  Our own land, long ago, had its Initiates in whom\nthe eye of the seer was open.  This eye, concealed in the hollow\nof the brain, is the straight gate and the narrow way through which\nalone the mortal may pass and behold the immortal.  It is now\nclosed in most men.  Materialism, sensuality and dogmatic belief\nhave so taken the crown and sceptre from their souls that they enter\nthe golden world no more knowingly--they are outcast of Eden.  But\nthe Tuatha De Dannans were more than seers or visionaries.  They\nwere magicians--God and man in one.  Not alone their thought went\nout into the vast, but the Power went along with it.  This mystic\nPower is called the Serpentine Fire.  It is spiritual, electric,\ncreative.  It develops spirally in the ascetic, mounting from centre\nto centre, from the navel to the heart;*  [* \"He that believeth\non me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters.  This\nspake he of the Spirit.\"--John, vii, 38]  from thence it rises to\nthe head.  He is then no more a man but a God;  his vision embraces\ninfinitude.\n\nThe action of this Power was symbolized in many ways, notably by\nthe passage of the sun through the zodiacal signs * (centres in\nthe psychic body)  [* \"The twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden\nin his body.\"---Secret Doctrine, II, 619]  A stone serpent was\nfound a little while ago in Ireland marked with twelve divisions.\nThe archaic verses alluded to have the same meaning:\n\n\"I am the point of the lance of battle. [The spinal cord, the\n        Sushumna nadi of Indian Psychology.]\nI am the God who creates in the head of man the fire of the thought.\nWho is it throws light into the meeting on the mountain?  [The\n        meeting of the mortal and the immortal on Mount Meru, the\n        pineal gland.]\nWho announces the ages of the moon?  [The activity of the inner\n        astral man.]\nWho teaches the place where courses the sun?\"  [Spirit.]\n\n\nThe Serpentine Power is the couch of the sun, the casket of spirit.\nHence the Druids or Magi who had mastered this power were called\nSerpents.  Though St. Patrick is said to have driven the serpents\nout of Ireland, traces still remain of the serpent wisdom.  Lest\nthe interpretation given should seem arbitrary I will trace further\nexplicit references to the third eye.  Diarmuid, the hero and\ndarling of so many story-tellers, whose flight with Grania forms\none of the most mystic episodes in Celtic romance, is described\nas having a spot in the centre of his forehead which fascinated\nwhoever gazed.  He is called the \"Son of the Monarch of Light.\"\nHe is the Initiate, the twice-born.  This divine parentage has\nthe sense in which the words were spoken.  \"Marvel not that I said\nunto thee, ye must be born again.\"  In the same sense a Druid is\ndescribed as \"full of his God.\"  From the mystic Father descends\nthe Ray, the Child of Light.  It is born in man as mind, not\nreasoning:  earthly not sensual, but as the heaven-aspiring,\nthinking mind.  In itself it is of the nature of fire.  The man\nwho knows it becomes filled with light, aye, he moves about in\nlight within himself.\n\nThe following description of a giant, taken from the story of\nDiarmuid, refers to still another aspect of our occult nature.\n\n\"He has, but one eye only in the fair middle of his black forehead.\n.... He is, moreover, so skilled in magic that fire could not burn\nhim, water could not drown him, and weapons would not wound him.\n...... He is fated not to die until there be struck upon him three\nblows of the iron club he has.  He sleeps in the top of that Quicken\ntree by night, and he remains at its foot by day to watch it. ....\nThe berries of the tree have the virtues of the trees of faeryland.\"\n\nThe Quicken tree is the network of nerves in the magnetic astral body.\nReaders of the Upanishads will remember the description of the arteries,\nthin as a hair split a thousand times, which proceed from the heart,\nand in which the Ego rests during deep sleep.  It has just the same\nsignificance in the legend.  The meaning will be still better\nunderstood by a comparison of the youthful Finn in his encounter\nwith a similar one-eye Titan.  There is a most interesting version\nof this in Curtin's Irish Myths and Folk-Tales.  Too long to quote\nin its entirety, the story runs as follows.  Finn meets a giant\nwho carries a salmon in his hand.  This Titan has \"but one eye as\nlarge as the sun in the heavens.\"  He gives the fish to Finn to\ncook.  The moment the giant closed his eye he began to breathe\nheavily.  \"Every time he drew breath he dragged Finn, the spit,\nthe salmon, and all the goats to his mouth, and every time drove\na breath out of himself he threw them back to the places they were\nin before.\"  While Finn is cooking the salmon he burns it, and in\ntrying to hide the blister he burns his thumb.  To ease the pain\nhe put his thumb between his teeth, and chewed it through to the\nbone and marrow.  He then received the knowledge of all things.\nHe was drawn up the next minute to the giant's eye, and plunged\nthe hot spit (a bar of red-hot iron, says another account) into\nthe eye of the giant.  He passes the infuriate giant at the door\nof the cave something after the fashion of Ulysses, by bringing\nthe flocks out and himself escaping under the fleece of the largest\ngoat or ram.\n\nThe meaning of this story, with all its quaint imagery, is not\ndifficult.  It is an allegory describing the loss of the third eye.\nThe cave is the body.  The fish is a phallic symbol, and the cooking\nof it refers to the fall of the early ethereal races into generation\nand eventually into gross sensuality.  The synthetic action of the\nhighest spiritual faculty, in which all the powers of man are present,\nis shown by the manner in which everything in the cave is dragged\nup to the giant's head.  When Finn destroys the eye by plunging\ninto it a bar of red-hot iron, it simply means that the currents\nstarted in the generative organs rose up through the spinal cord\nto the brain, and, acting upon the pineal gland, atrophied or\npetrified it.  The principle of desire is literally the spirit of\nthe metal iron, and a clairvoyent could see these red fires mounting\nup by the way of the spinal canal to the brain and there smothering\nany higher feelings.  The escape of Finn under the fleece of the\nram means that, having destroyed the spiritual eye, he could only\nuse the organ of psychic clairvoyance, which is symbolized here,\nas in the mysticism of other countries, by the ram.\n\nThis symbolism, so grotesque and unmeaning today, was once perfectly\nlucid and was justified in its application.  A clairvoyant could\nsee in the aura of man around every centre the glow, colour and\nform which gave rise to the antique symbol.  One of the Gods is\ndescribed as \"surrounded by a rainbow and fiery dews.\"  Cuchullin,\nwhose hair, dark (blue?) close to the skin, red beyond, and ending\nin brilliant gold, makes Professor Rhys elaborate him into a solar\nmyth, is an adept who has assimilated the substance of the three\nworlds, the physical, the psychic and the heavenworld;  therefore\nhis hair (aura) shows the three colours.  He has the sevenfold\nvision also, indicated by the seven pupils in his eyes.  Volumes\nof unutterably dreary research, full of a false learning, have\nbeen written about these legends.  Some try to show that much of\nthe imagery arose from observation of the heavenly bodies and the\nprocession of the seasons.  But who of the old bards would have\ndescribed nature other than as she is?  The morning notes of Celtic\nsong breathe the freshness of spring and are full of joy in nature.\nThey could communicate this much better than most of their critics\ncould do.  It is only the world within which could not be rendered\notherwise than by myth and symbol.  We do not need scholarship so\nmuch as a little imagination to interpret them.  We shall understand\nthe divine initiators of our race by believing in our own divinity.\nAs we nourish the mystic fire, we shall find many things of the\nearly world, which now seem grotesque and unlovely to our eyes,\ngrowing full of shadowy and magnificent suggestion.  Things that\nwere distant and strange, things abhorrent, the blazing dragons,\nwinged serpents and oceans of fire which affrighted us, are seen\nas the portals through which the imagination enters a more beautiful,\nradiant world.  The powers we dared not raise our eyes to--heroes,\ndread deities and awful kings--grow as brothers and gay children\naround the spirit in its resurrection and ascension.  For there\nis no pathway in the universe which does not pass through man,\nand no life which is not brother to our life.\n\n--March-April, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nReview:  \"Lyrics\" by R.H. Fitzpatrick [London: W. Stewart and Co.]\n\n\n\n\nWhile one race sinks into night another renews its dawn.  The Celtic\nTwilight is the morning-time and the singing of birds is prophetic\nof the new day.  We have had to welcome of late years one sweet\nsinger after another, and now comes a volume of lyrics which has\nthat transcendental note which is peculiar to our younger writers.\nIt is full of the mystery and commingling of the human and the\ndivine soul:\n\n\"Hail, thou living spirit!\n        Whose deep organ blown\nBy lips that more inherit\n        Than all music known;\nArt is but the echo of thy mysterious tone.\"\n\nThese lyrics, I imagine, have been wrought in solitary wanderings,\nin which the forms and shows of things and human hopes and fears\nhave been brooded upon until the intensity of contemplation has\nallied them with that soul of Nature in which the poet finds the\nfulfilment of all dreams and ideals.  And in this refining back\nto an Over-Soul there is no suggestion of the student of academic\nphilosophy, no over-wrought intellectualism.  Such references\narise naturally out of his thought and illuminate it.  One can\nimagine how such lyrics were engendered:\n\n\"I stood and twirled a feathered stalk,\nOr drank the clover's honey sap,\n        Happiest without talk.\n\n\"The summer tidal waves of night\nSlowly in silence rippled in:\nThey steeped the feet of blazing light,\n        And hushed day's harsher din.\"\n\nThis aloofness from conflict, it if has hindered him from fully\naccepting and justifying life, the highest wisdom of the poet, has\nstill its compensations.  He has felt the manifold meaning of the\nvoices through whose unconsciousness Nature speaks, the songs of\nbirds, the aerial romance and intermingling of light and shadow,\nand has vision of the true proportion of things in that conflict\nhe has turned his back on:\n\n        \"All things sip,\nAnd sip at life;  but Time for ever drains\n        The ever-filing cup in rivalship,\n        And wipes the generations from his lip,\nWhile Art looks down from his serene domains.\"\n\n--June 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\n--\"YES, AND HOPE.\"\n\n\n\n\nThey bring none to his or to her terminus or to be content and full,\nWhom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars,\nto learn one of the meanings. To launch off with absolute faith,\nto sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again.\n--Whitman\n\nHere is inspiration--the voice of the soul.  And we, who professed\nto bring such wisdom, what have we to say?  Have we uttered with\nequal confidence such hopes, or with such daring and amplitude of\nillustration?  Let us confess we have not.  There are one or two\nexceptions which will occur to everyone.  Now, as we adventure afresh,\nlet us see what it is has brought despondency and failure in our work\nupon us in the past.  I think it is because we have been saying\nthings we have never realized;  we have been repeating without\nimagination the words of those few leaders.  We have lowered their\nheroic tone because we thought we were speaking to a fallen people\nwho could not respond to our highest.  But it was not the way, it\nwas not the way.  It is not with the dust we have brotherhood, but\nwith the ancient spirit it clouds over.  To this spirit we must\nspeak heart to heart as we know how.  I would not willingly recognize\naught in anyone but the divine.  Often indeed the form or surface\nfar removed from beauty makes us falter, and we speak to that form\nand so the soul is not stirred;  it will not respond.  But an equal\ntemper arouses it.  To whoever hails in it the lover, the hero,\nthe magician, it will answer, but not to him who accosts it as Mr.\nSo-and-So.  Every word which really inspires is spoken as if the\nGolden Age had never passed.  The great teachers ignore the personal\nidentity and speak to the eternal pilgrim.  Do we not treasure\nmost their words which remind us of our divine origin?  So we must\nin our turn speak.  How often do we not long to break through the\nveils which divide us from some one, but custom, convention, or a\nfear of being misunderstood prevent us, and so the moment departs\nwhose heat might have burned through every barrier.  Out with it--\nout with it, the hidden heart, the love that is voiceless, the\nsecret tender germ of an infinite forgiveness.  That speaks to\nthe heart.  That pierces through many a vesture of the Soul.\nOur companion struggles in some labyrinth of passion.  We help him,\nwe think with ethics, with the moralities.  Ah, very well they are;\nwell to know and to keep, but wherefore?  For their own sake?  No,\nbut that the King may arise in his beauty.  We write that in letters,\nin books, but to the face of the fallen who brings back remembrance?\nWho calls him by his secret name?  Let a man but feel for that is\nhis battle, for that his cyclic labor, and a warrior who is invincible\nfights for him and he draws upon divine powers.  Let us but get that\nway of looking at things which we call imaginative, and how everything\nalters.  For our attitude to man and to nature, expressed or not,\nhas something of the effect of ritual, of evocation.  As our\naspiration so is our inspiration.  We believe in life universal,\nin a brotherhood which links the elements to man, and makes the\nglow-worm feel far off something of the rapture of the seraph hosts.\nThen we go out into the living world, and what influences pour\nthrough us!  We are \"at league with the stones of the field.\"  The\nwinds of the world blow radiantly upon us as in the early time.\nWe feel wrapt about with love, with an infinite tenderness that\ncaresses us.  Alone in our rooms as we ponder, what sudden abysses\nof light open within us!  The Gods are so much nearer than we dreamed.\nWe rise up intoxicated with the thought, and reel out seeking an\nequal companionship under the great night and the stars.\n\nLet us get near to realities.  We read too much.  We think of that\nwhich is \"the goal, the Comforter, the Lord, the Witness, the resting-\nplace, the asylum and the Friend.\"  Is it by any of these dear and\nfamiliar names?  Alas, our souls are becoming mere bundles of theories.\nWe follow the trail of the Monad, but often it is only in the pages\nof The Secret Doctrine.  And we talk much of Atma, Buddhi, and Manas.\nCould we not speak of them in our own tongue and the language of\ntoday will be as sacred as any of the past.  No wonder that the\nManasa do not incarnate.  We cannot say we do pay reverence to\nthese awful powers.  We repulse the living truth by our doubts and\nreasonings.  We would compel the Gods to fall in with our philosophy\nrather than trust in the heavenly guidance.  We make diagrams of them.\nAh, to think of it, those dread deities, the divine Fires, to be\nso enslaved!  We have not comprehended the meaning of the voice\nwhich cried, \"Prepare ye the way of the Lord,\"  or this, \"Lift up\nyour heads O y gates.  Be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and\nthe King of Glory shall come in.\"  Nothing that we read is useful\nunless it calls up living things in the soul.  To read a mystic\nbook truly is to invoke the powers.  If they do not rise up plumed\nand radiant, the apparitions of spiritual things, then is our labor\nbarren.  We only encumber the mind with useless symbols.  They\nknew better ways long ago.  \"Master of the Green-waving Planisphere,\n..... Lord of the Azure Expanse, .... it is thus we invoke,\"  cried\nthe magicians of old.\n\nAnd us, let us invoke them with joy, let us call upon them with love,\nthe Light we hail, or the Divine Darkness we worship with silent\nbreath, hymning it in our hearts with quietude and more enraptured\nawe.  That silence cries aloud to the Gods.  Then they will approach\nus.  Then we may learn that speech of many colors, for they will\nnot speak in our mortal tongue;  they will not answer to the names\nof men.  Their names are rainbow glories.  Yet these are mysteries\nand they cannot be reasoned out or argued over.  We cannot speak\ntruly of them from report, or description, or from what another\nhas written.  A relation to the thing in itself alone is our warrant,\nand this means we must set aside our intellectual self-sufficiency\nand await guidance.  It will surely come to those who wait in trust,\na glow, a heat in the heart announcing the awakening of the Fire.\nAnd, as it blows with its mystic breath into the brain, there is\na hurtling of visions, a brilliance of lights, a sound as of great\nwaters vibrant and musical in their flowing, and murmurs from a\nsingle yet multitudinous being.  In such a mood, when the far\nbecomes near, the strange familiar, and the infinite possible, he\nwrote from whose words we get the inspiration:\n\n\"To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless\nrings and never be quiet again.\"\n\nSuch a faith and such an unrest be ours:  faith which is mistrust\nof the visible;  unrest which is full of a hidden surety and radiance.\nWe, when we fall into pleasant places, rest and dream our strength\naway.  Before every enterprise and adventure of the soul we calculate\nin fear our power to do.  But remember, \"Oh, disciple, in thy work\nfor thy brother thou has many allies;  in the winds, in the air,\nin all the voices of the silent shore.\"  These are the far-wandered\npowers of our own nature and they turn again home at our need.\nWe came out of the Great Mother-Life for the purposes of soul.\nAre her darlings forgotten where they darkly wander and strive?\nNever.  Are not the lives of all her heroes proof?  Though they\nseem to stand alone the eternal Mother keeps watch on them, and\nvoices far away and unknown to them before arise in passionate\ndefence, and hearts beat warm to help them.  Aye, if we could look\nwithin we would see vast nature stirred on their behalf, and\ninstitutions shaken, until the truth they fight for triumphs, and\nthey pass, and a wake of glory ever widening behind them trails\ndown the ocean of the years.\n\nThus the warrior within us works, or, if we choose to phrase it so,\nit is the action of the spiritual will.  Shall we not, then, trust\nin it and face the unknown defiant and fearless of its dangers.\nThough we seem to go alone to the high, the lonely, the pure, we\nneed not despair.  Let no one bring to this task the mood of the\nmartyr or of one who thinks he sacrifices something.  Yet let all\nwho will come.  Let them enter the path, \"Yes, and hope,\" facing\nall things in life and death with a mood at once gay and reverent,\nas beseems those who are immortal--who are children today, but\nwhose hands tomorrow may grasp the sceptre, sitting down with the\nGods as equal and companions.\n\n--August 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nContent\n\n\n\n\nWho are exiles? as for me\n        Where beneath the diamond dome\nLies the light on hill or tree\n        There my palace is and home.\n\nWe are outcasts from Deity;  therefore we defame the place of our\nexile.  But who is there may set apart his destiny from the earth\nwhich bore him?  I am one of those who would bring back the old\nreverence for the Mother, the magic, the love.  I think, metaphysician,\nyou have gone astray.  You would seek within yourself for the fountain\nof life.  Yes, there is the true, the only light.  But do not dream\nit will lead you further away from the earth, but rather deeper into\nits heart.  By it you are nourished with those living waters you\nwould drink.  You are yet in the womb and unborn, and the Mother\nbreathes for thee the diviner airs.  Dart out thy furthest ray of\nthought to the original, and yet thou has not found a new path of\nthine own.  Thy ray is still enclosed in the parent ray, and only\non the sidereal streams are you borne to the freedom of the deep,\nto the sacred stars whose distance maddens, and to the lonely Light\nof Lights.\n\nLet us, therefore, accept the conditions and address ourselves with\nwonder, with awe, with love, as we well may, to that being in whom\nwe move.  I abate no jot of those vaster hopes, yet I would pursue\nthat ardent aspiration, content as to here and today.  I do not\nbelieve in a nature red with tooth and claw.  If indeed she appears\nso terrible to any it is because they themselves have armed her.\nAgain, behind the anger of the Gods there is a love.  Are the rocks\nbarren?  Lay thy brow against them and learn what memories they keep.\nIs the brown earth unbeautiful?  Yet lie on the breast of the Mother\nand thou shalt be aureoled with the dews of faery.  The earth is\nthe entrance to the Halls of Twilight.  What emanations are those\nthat make radiant the dark woods of pine!  Round every leaf and\ntree and over all the mountains wave the fiery tresses of that\nhidden sun which is the soul of the earth and parent of they soul.\nBut we think of these things no longer.  Like the prodigal we have\nwandered far from our home, but no more return.  We idly pass or\nwait as strangers in the halls our spirit built.\n\nSad or fain no more to live?\n        I have pressed the lips of pain:\nWith the kisses lovers give\n        Ransomed ancient powers again.\n\nI would raise this shrinking soul to a more universal acceptance.\nWhat! does it aspire to the All, and yet deny by its revolt and\ninner protest the justice of Law.  From sorrow we shall take no\nless and no more than from our joys.  For if the one reveals to\nthe soul the mode by which the power overflows and fills it here,\nthe other indicates to it the unalterable will which checks excess\nand leads it on to true proportion and its own ancestral ideal.\nYet men seem for ever to fly from their destiny of inevitable beauty;\nbecause of delay the power invites and lures no longer but goes out\ninto the highways with a hand of iron.  We look back cheerfully\nenough upon those old trials out of which we have passed;  but we\nhave gleaned only an aftermath of wisdom and missed the full harvest\nif the will has not risen royally at the moment in unison with the\nwill of the Immortal, even though it comes rolled round with terror\nand suffering and strikes at the heart of clay.\n\nThrough all these things, in doubt, despair, poverty, sick feeble\nor baffled, we have yet to learn reliance.  \"I will not leave thee\nor forsake thee,\"  are the words of the most ancient spirit to the\nspark wandering in the immensity of its own being.  This high\ncourage brings with it a vision.  It sees the true intent in all\ncircumstance out of which its own emerges to meet it.  Before it\nthe blackness melts into forms of beauty, and back of all illusions\nis seen the old enchanter tenderly smiling, the dark, hidden Father\nenveloping his children.\n\nAll things have their compensations.  For what is absent here there\nis always, if we seek, a nobler presence about us.\n\nCaptive, see what stars give light\n        In the hidden heart of clay:\nAt their radiance dark and bright\n        Fades the dreamy King of Day.\n\nWe complain of conditions, but this very imperfection it is which\nurges us to arise and seek for the Isles of the Immortals.  What\nwe lack recalls the fulness.  The soul has seen a brighter day\nthan this and a sun which never sets.  Hence the retrospect:  \"Thou\nhas been in Eden the garden of God;  every precious stone was thy\ncovering, the sardius, topaz and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx,\nthe jasper, the sapphire, emerald .... Thou was upon the holy\nmountain of God;  thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the\nstones of fire.\"  We would point out these radiant avenues of return;\nbut sometimes we feel in our hearts that we sound but cockney\nchoices, as guides amid the ancient temples, the cyclopean crypts\nsanctified by the mysteries.  To be intelligible we replace the\nopalescent shining by the terms of the anatomist, and we speak of\nthe pineal gland and the pituitary body in the same breath with\nthe Most High.  Yet when the soul has the vision divine it knows\nnot it has a body.  Let it remember, and the breath of glory kindles\nit no more;  it is once again a captive.  After all, it does not\nmake the mysteries clearer to speak in physical terms and do violence\nto our intuitions.  If we ever use these centres, as fires we shall\nsee them, or they shall well up within us as fountains of potent\nsound.  We may satisfy people's minds with a sense correspondence,\nand their souls may yet hold aloof.  We shall only inspire by the\nmagic of a superior beauty.  Yet this too has its dangers.  \"Thou\nhas corrupted thy wisdom by reason of they brightness,\" continues\nthe seer.  If we follow too much the elusive beauty of form we\nwill miss the spirit.  The last secrets are for those who translate\nvision into being.  Does the glory fade away before thee?  Say\ntruly in they heart, \"I care not.  I will wear the robes I am\nendowed with today.\"  Thou are already become beautiful, being\nbeyond desire and free.\n\nNight and day no more eclipse\n        Friendly eyes that on us shine,\nSpeech from old familiar lips,\n        Playmates of a youth divine.\n\nTo childhood once again.  We must regain the lost state.  But it\nis to the giant and spiritual childhood of the young immortals we\nmust return, when into their clear and translucent souls first fell\nthe rays of the father-beings.  The men of old were intimates of\nwind and wave and playmates of many a brightness long since forgotten.\nThe rapture of the fire was their rest;  their outgoing was still\nconsciously through universal being.  By darkened images we may\nfigure something vaguely akin, as when in rare moments under the\nstars the big dreamy heart of childhood is pervaded with quiet and\nbrimmed full with love.  Dear children of the world so tired today--\nso weary seeking after the light.  Would you recover strength and\nimmortal vigor?  Not one star alone, your star, shall shed its happy\nlight upon you, but the All you must adore.  Something intimate,\nsecret, unspeakable, akin to thee will emerge silently, insensibly,\nand ally itself with thee as thou gatherest thyself from the four\nquarters of the earth.  We shall go back to the world of the dawn,\nbut to a brighter light than that which opened up this wondrous\nstory of the cycles.  The forms of elder years will reappear in\nour vision, the father-beings once again.  So we shall grow at\nhome amid these grandeurs, and with that All-Presence about us\nmay cry in our hearts, \"At last is our meeting, Immortal.  Oh,\nstarry one, now is our rest!\"\n\nBrothers weary, come away;\n        We will quench the heart's desire\nPast the gateways of the day\n        In the rapture of the fire.\n\n--October 15, 1895\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Enchantment of Cuchullain\n--By AE and Aretas (G.W. Russell and James M. Pryse)\n\n\n\n\nWhile our vision, backward cast,\nRanged the everliving past,\nThrough a haze of misty things--\nLuminous with quiverings\nMusical as starry chimes--\nRose a hero of old times,\nIn whose breast the magic powers\nSlumbering from primeval hours,\nWoke at the enchantment wild\nOf Aed Abrait's lovely child;\nStill for all her Druid learning\nWith the wild-bird heart, whose yearning\nBlinded at his strength and beauty,\nClung to love and laughed at duty.\nWarrior chief, and mystic maid,\nThrough your stumbling footsteps strayed,\nThis at least in part atones--\nJewels were your stumbling-stones!\n\n\n\n\n\nI. The Birds of Angus\n\n\n\n\nThe birds were a winging rapture in the twilight.  White wings,\ngrey wings, brown wings, fluttered around and over the pine trees\nthat crowned the grassy dun.  The highest wings flashed with a\ngolden light.  At the sound of voices they vanished.\n\n\"How then shall we go to the plains of Murthemney?  We ought not\nto be known.  Shall we go invisibly, or in other forms?  We must\nalso fly as swiftly as the birds go.\"\n\n\"Fly! yes, yes, we shall--fly as the birds.  But we shall choose\nfairer forms than these.  I know where the Birds of Angus flock.\nCome, Liban, come!\"\n\n\nThe crypt beneath the dun was flooded with light, silvery and golden,\na light which came not from the sun nor from the moon;  a light not\nborn from any parent luminary, and which knew nothing opaque.  More\nfree than the birds of the air were the shadowy forms of the two\ndaughters of Aed Abrait, as they gazed out from that rock-built\ndun upon a place their mortal feet had never trod.  Yet timidly\nLiban looked at her more adventurous sister.  Fand floated to the\ncentre of the cavern, erect and radiant.  Her eyes followed the\nwavy tremulous motion of the light as it rolled by.  They seemed\nto pierce through earth and rock, and search out the secret hollows\nof the star, to know the vastness, and to dominate and compel the\nmotion of the light.  Her sister watched her half curiously and\nhalf in admiration and wonder.  As the floating form grew more\nintense the arms swayed about and the lips murmured.  A sheen as\nof many jewels played beneath the pearly mist which enrobed her;\nover her head rose the crest of the Dragon;  she seemed to become\none with the shining, to draw it backwards into herself.  Then\nfrom far away came a wondrous melody, a sound as of the ancient\nchiming of the stars.  The sidereal rivers flowed by with more\ndazzling light, and the Birds of Angus were about them.\n\n\"Look, Liban, look!\" cried the Enchantress.  \"These of old were\nthe chariots of the children of men.  On these the baby offspring\nof the Gods raced through the nights of diamond and sapphire.  We\nare not less than they though a hundred ages set us apart.  We\nwill go forth royally as they did.  Let us choose forms from among\nthese.  If the Hound should see us he will know we have power.\"\n\nWith arms around each other they watched the starry flocks hurtling\nabout them.  The birds wheeled around, fled away, and again returned.\nThere were winged serpents;  might which would put to flight the\ndegenerate eagle;  plumage before which the birds of paradise would\nshow dull as clay.  These wings dipt in the dawn flashed ceaselessly.\nAh, what plumage of white fire rayed out with pinions of opalescent\nglory!  What feathered sprays of burning amethyst!  What crests of\nscarlet and gold, of citron and wavy green!  They floated by in\ncountless multitudes;  they swayed in starry clusters dripping with\nlight, singing a melody caught from the spheres of the Gods, the\nsong which of old called forth the earth from its slumber.  The\nsound was entrancing.  Oh, fiery birds who float in the purple\nrivers of the Twilight, ye who rest in the great caverns of the world,\nwhoever listens to your song shall grow faint with longing, for he\nshall hear the great, deep call in his heart and his spirit shall\nyearn to go afar;  whatever eyes see you shall grow suddenly blinded\nwith tears for a glory that has passed away from the world, for an\nempire we no longer range.\n\n\"They bring back the air of the ancient days.  Ah! now I have the\nheart of the child once again.  Time has not known me.  Let us away\nwith them.  We will sweep over Eri and lead the starry flocks as\nthe queen birds.\"\n\n\"If we only dared.  But think, Fand, we shall have every wizard\neye spying upon us, and every body who can use his freedom will\nfollow and thwart us.  Not these forms, but others let us take.\nAh, look at those who come in grey and white and brown!  Send home\nthe radiant ones.  We will adventure with these.\"\n\n\"Be it so.  Back to your fountains, O purple rivers!  King-Bird,\nQueen-Bird, to your home in the hollows lead your flock!\"  So she\nspoke, but her words were shining and her waving arms compelled\nthe feathered monarchs with radiations of outstretched flame.  To\nthe others:  \"Rest here awhile, sweet singers.  We shall not detain\nyou captive for long.\"  So she spoke, but her hands that caressed\nlaid to sleep the restless pulsations of the wings and lulled the\necstatic song.\n\n\nNight, which to the eye of the magian shows more clearly all that\nthe bright day conceals, overspread with a wizard twilight the vast\nhollow of the heavens.  Numberless airy rivulets, each with its\nown peculiar shining, ran hither and thither like the iridescent\ncurrents streaming over a bubble.  Out of still duskier, more\ndarkly glowing and phantasmal depths stared the great eyes of space,\nrimmed about with rainbow-dyes.  As night moved on to dawn two\nbirds shot forth from the dun, linked together by a cord of golden\nfire.  They fled southwards and eastwards.  As they went they sang\na song which tingled the pulses of the air.  In the dark fields\nthe aureoles around the flowers grew momentarily brighter.  Over\nthe mountain homes of the Tuatha de Danaans rose up shadowy forms\nwho watched, listened, and pondered awhile.  The strayed wanderers\namid the woods heard the enraptured notes and forgot their sorrows\nand life itself in a hurricane of divine remembrance.  Where the\nlate feast was breaking up the melody suddenly floated in and\nenwreathed the pillared halls, and revellers became silent where\nthey stood, the mighty warriors in their hands bowed low their faces.\nStill on and on swept the strange birds flying southwards and eastwards.\n\n\nStill in many a peasant cot\nLives the story unforgot,\nWhile the faded parchments old\nStill their rhyming tale unfold.\nThere is yet another book\nWhere thine eager eyes may look.\nThere within its shining pages\nLives the long romance of ages,\nLiban, Fand, their glowing dreams,\nAngus's birds, the magic streams\nFlooding all the twilight crypt,\nRunes and spells in starry script;\nSecrets never whispered here\nIn the light are chanted clear.\nRead in the tales of Eri\nIf the written word be weary.\n\n\nNever is there day so gleaming\n        But the dusk o'ertakes it;\nNever night so dark and dreaming\n        But the dawn awakes it:\nAnd the soul has nights and days\nIn its own eternal ways.\n\n\n\n\n\nII. Cuchullain's Dream\n\n\n\n\nThe air was cool with the coming of winter;  but with the outer\ncold came the inner warmth of the sun, full of subtile vitality\nand strength.  And the Ultonians had assembled to light the yearly\nfire in honor of the Sun-God, at the seven-days' feast of Samhain.\nThere the warriors of Ulster rested by the sacred fire, gazing\nwith closed eyes upon the changing colors of the sun-breath,\ncatching glimpses of visions, or anon performing feats of magic\nwhen they felt the power stirring within their breasts.  They sang\nthe songs of old times, of the lands of the West, where their\nforefathers live ere the earth-fires slew those lands, and the\nsea-waves buried them, leaving only the Eri, the isle where dwelt\nmen so holy that the earth-fires dared not to assail it, and the\nocean stood at bay.  Lightly the warriors juggled with their great\nweapons of glittering bronze;  and each told of his deeds in battle\nand in the chase;  but woe to him who boasted or spoke falsely,\nmagnifying his prowess, for then would his sword angrily turn of\nitself in its scabbard, convicting him of untruth.\n\nCuchullain, youngest but mightiest of all the warriors, sat moodily\napart, his beardless chin resting in the palms of his hands, his\neyes staring fixedly at the mirror-like surface of the lake upon\nwhose sloping bank he rested.  Laeg, his charioteer, lying at full\nlength upon the greensward near by, watched him intently, a gloomy\nshadow darkening his unusually cheerful face.\n\n\"It's a woman's trick, that,\" he muttered to himself, \"staring into\nthe water when trying to see the country of the Sidhe, and unworthy\nof a warrior.  And to think of him doing it, who used to have the\nclearest sight, and had more power for wonder-working than anyone\nelse in the lands of the West!  Besides, he isn't seeing anything\nnow, for all the help of the water.  When last I went to the dun\nsome women of the Sidhe told me they had looked up Cuchullain and\nfound he was getting too dim-eyed to see anything clearly now, even\nin his sleep.  Its true enough, but to hear it said even by women!\"\n\nAnd the discontented charioteer glanced back contemptuously at a\ngroup of women a short distance away, who were following with their\neyes a flock of wild birds circling over the plain.\n\n\"I suppose they want those birds,\" he continued, conversing familiarly\nwith himself.  \"Its the way of women to want everything they see,\nespecially if its something hard to catch, like those wild birds.\"\n\nBut Laeg's cynicism was not so deep as to keep his glance from\nlingering upon the bevy of graceful maidens and stately matrons.\nTheir soft laughter reached his ear through the still evening air;\nand watching their animated gestures he idly speculated upon the\nplane he felt sure they were arranging.\n\n\"Yes;  they want the birds.  They wish to fasten the wings to their\nshoulders, to make themselves look like the women of the Sidhe.\nThey know Cuchullain is the only man who can get the birds for them,\nbut even Emer, his wife, is afraid to ask him.  Of course they will\ncoax that patient Ethne to do it.  If she succeeds, she'll get no\nthanks;  and if she fails, she'll have all the blame, and go off\nby herself to cry over the harsh words spoken by Cuchullain in his\nbad temper.  That's the way of Ethne, poor girl.\"\n\nHe was right in his conjecture, for presently Ethne left the group\nand hesitatingly approached the giant warrior, who was still gazing\nvacantly at the glassy surface of the water.  She touched him timidly\non the shoulder.  Slowly he raised his head, and still half dazed\nby his long staring, listened while she made her request.  He rose\nto his feet sleepily, throwing out his brawny arms and expanding\nhis chest as he cast a keen glance at the birds slowly circling\nnear the ground.\n\n\"Those birds are not fit to eat,\" he said, turning to her with a\ngood-natured smile.\n\n\"But we want the wings to put on our shoulders.  It would be so\ngood of you to get them for us,\" said Ethne in persuasive tones.\n\n\"If it's flying you wish to try,\" he said, with a laugh, \"you'll\nneed better wings than those.  However, you shall have them if I\ncan get within throwing distance of them.\"\n\nHe glanced around for Laeg.  That far-seeing individual was already\nyoking the horses to the chariot.  A moment later, Cuchullain and\nthe charioteer were dashing across the plain behind the galloping\nsteeds.  As they neared the birds, Cuchullain sent missiles at\nthem from his sling with such incredible rapidity and certainty\nof aim that not one of the flock escaped.  Each of the women was\ngiven two of the birds;  but when Ethne, who had modestly held\nback when the others hurried forward to meet the returning chariot,\ncame to receive her share, not one remained.\n\n\"As usual,\" said Laeg stolidly, \"if anyone fails to get her portion\nof anything, its sure to be Ethne.\"\n\n\"Too sure,\" said Cuchullain, a look of compassion softening his\nstern features.  He strode over to Ethne, and placing his hand\ngently on her head said:  \"Don't take your disappointment to heart,\nlittle woman;  when any more birds come to the plains of Murthemney,\nI promise to get for you the most beautiful of them all.\"\n\n\"There's a fine brace of them now, flying towards us,\" exclaimed\nLaeg, pointing across the lake.  \"And I think I hear them singing.\nQueer birds, those;  for I see a cord as of red gold between them.\"\n\nNearer and nearer swept the strange beings of the air, and as their\nweird melody reached the many Ultonians at the Samhain fire, the\nstalwart warriors, slender maidens, the youthful and the time-worn,\nall felt the spell and became as statues, silent, motionless,\nentranced.  Alone the three at the chariot felt not the binding\ninfluences of the spell.  Cuchullain quietly fitted a smooth pebble\ninto his sling.  Ethne looked appealingly at Laeg, in whose sagacity\nshe greatly trusted.  A faint twinkle of the eye was the only sign\nthat betrayed the thought of the charioteer as he tried to return\nher glance with a look of quiet unconcern.  She hastened after\nCuchullain, who had taken his stand behind a great rock on the\nlake shore which concealed him from the approaching birds.\n\n\"Do not try to take them,\"  she entreated;  \"there is some strange\npower about them which your eyes do not see;  I feel it, and my\nheart is filled with dread.\"\n\nThe young warrior made no reply, but whirling his sling above his\nhead sent the missile with terrific force at the two swan-like\nvoyagers of the air.  It went far astray, and splashed harmlessly\ninto the lake, throwing up a fountain of spray.  Cuchullain's face\ngrew dark.  Never before in war or the chase had he missed so easy\na mark.  Angrily he caught a javelin from his belt and hurled it\nat the birds, which had swerved from their course and were now\nflying swiftly away.  It was a mighty cast, even for the strong\narm of the mightiest warrior of Eri;  and the javelin, glittering\nin the sun, was well on the downward curve of its long flight, its\nforce spent, when its point touched the wing of the nearest bird.\nA sphere of golden flame seemed to glitter about them as they turned\ndownward and disappeared beneath the deep waters of the lake.\n\nCuchullain threw himself upon the ground, leaning his broad shoulders\nagainst the rock.\n\n\"Leave me,\" he said in sullen tones to Ethne;  \"my senses are dull\nwith sleep from long watching at the Samhain fire.  For the first\ntime since I slew the hound of Culain my right arm has failed me.\nMy eyes are clouded, and strange music murmurs in my heart.\"\n\nHis eyes closed, his heavy breathing was broken by sighs, and\nanguish distorted his features.  Ethne watched him awhile, and\nthen stole quietly back to where the warriors were and said to them:\n\n\"Cuchullain lies slumbering by yonder rock, and he moans in his\nsleep as if the people of the Sidhe were reproaching his soul for\nsome misdeed.  I fear those birds that had the power behind them.\nShould we not waken him?\"\n\nBut while they held council, and some were about to go and awaken him.\nFergus mac Roy, foster-father of Cuchullain, arose, and all drew back\nin awe, for they saw the light of the Sun-God shining from his eyes,\nand his voice had the Druid ring as he said in stern tones of command:\n\n\"Touch him not, for he sees a vision;  the people of the Sidhe are\nwith him;  and from the far distant past, even from the days of the\nsunken lands of the West, I see the hand of Fate reach out and\ngrasp the warrior of Eri, to place him on a throne where he shall\nrule the souls of men.\"\n\n\nTo Cuchullain it did not seem that he slept;  for though his eyelids\nfell, his sight still rested on the calm surface of the lake, the\nshining sand on the shore, and the great brown rock against which\nhe reclined.  But whence came the two maidens who were walking\ntoward him along the glistening sand?  He gazed at them in speechless\nwonder;  surely only in dreamland could so fair a vision be seen.\nIn dreamland, yes;  for a dim memory awoke in his breast that he\nhad seen them before in the world of slumber.  One wore a mantle\nof soft green, and her flaxen hair, strangely white but with a\nglint of gold, fell about her shoulders so thickly it seemed like\na silken hood out of which looked a white face with gleaming violet\neyes.  The other maiden had dark brown eyes, very large, very luminous;\nher cheeks were rosy, with just a hint of bronzing by the sunshine,\na dimple in her chin added to the effect of her pouting red lips;\nher dark brown hair was unbound and falling loosely over her deep\ncrimson mantle, which reached from her waist in five heavy folds.\nThe recumbent warrior felt a weird spell upon him.  Powerless to\nmove or speak, he saw the two maidens advance and stand beside him,\nthe sunlight gleaming upon their bare arms and bosoms.  They smiled\nupon him and uplifted their arms, and then from their fingers there\nrained down upon him blinding lightnings, filaments of flame that\nstung like whipcords, a hail of rainbow sparks that benumbed him,\ndarting flames that pierced him like javelins;  and as he gazed\nupward through that storm of fire, writhing in his agony, he saw\nstill their white arms waving to and from, weaving a network of\nlightnings about him, their faces smiling upon him, serene and kindly;\nand in the eyes of her with the crimson mantle he read a tenderness\nall too human.  Eyes that shone with tenderness;  white arms that\nwove a rainbow-mesh of torturing fires about him;  his anguish\never increasing, until he saw the arms stop waving, held for an\ninstant aloft, and then swept downward with a torrent of flame\nand a mighty crash of sound like the spears of ten thousand warriors\nmeeting in battle, and then--he was alone, staring with wide-open\neyes at the blue, cloud-mirroring surface of the lakes and the\nwhite sand gleaming on the shore.\n\n\n\"Trouble me not with questions,\" said Cuchullain to the warriors\ngathered about him.  \"My limbs are benumbed and refuse to obey me.\nBear me to my sick-bed at Tete Brece.\"\n\n\"Shall we not take you to Dun Imrish, or to Dun Delca, where you\nmay be with Emer?\" said they.\n\n\"No,\" he replied, a shudder convulsing his strong frame;  \"bear me\nto Tete Brece.\n\nAnd when they had done so, he dwelt there for a year, and on his\nface was always the look of a slumberer who is dreaming;  not once\ndid he smile, nor did he speak one word during that year.\n\n\nWhen the soul has many lives\n        Fettered by Forgetfulness,\nHands that burst its long-worn gyves\n        Cruel seem and pitiless.\nYet they come all tenderly,\n        Loved companions of the past;\nAnd the sword that sets us free\n        Turns our pain to peace at last.\n\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\n\n\nWhat shadows turn his eyes away\n        Who fain would scale the heavenly heights;\nThere shines the beauty of a day,\n        And there the ancient Light of Lights.\n\nAnd while he broods on visions dim\n        And grows forgetful of his fate,\nThe chariot of the Sun for him\n        And all the tribal stars await.\n\n\nThe Slumber of Cuchullain, and the Message of Angus\n\nWithin the door at Tete Brece, under the shadow of the thatch, the\ncouch of Cuchullain was placed, so that if he willed he could gaze\nover the rich green fields to the distant rim of blue hills.  Yet\nrarely opened he his eyes or gazed with outward understanding during\nthat weary year.  Often the watchers round his bed, looking on the\nwhite rigid face, wondered if he were indeed living.  But they\ndared not awaken him, for the seers had found that his slumber was\nfilled with mystic life, and that it was not lawful to call him forth.\nWas the gloom of the great warrior because he was but the shadow\nof his former self, or was that pale form indeed empty?  So pondered\nFergus, Conail, Lugard and Ethne, faithful companions.  But he in\nhimself was wrapped in a mist of visions appearing fast and vanishing\nfaster.  The fiery hands that smote him had done their work well,\nand his darkness had become bright with remembrance.  The majesty\nof elder years swept by him with reproachful glance, and the hero\ncowered before the greatness of his own past.  Born out of the womb\nof the earth long ago in the fulness of power--what shadow had dimmed\nhis beauty?  He tracked and retraced countless steps.  Once more he\nheld sceptred sway over races long since in oblivion.  He passed\nbeyond the common way until the powers of the vast knew and obeyed\nhim.  As he looked back there was one always with him.  Lu, the\nSun-God, who in the bright days of childhood had appeared to him\nas his little feet ran from home in search for adventures.  Remote\nand dim, nigh and radiant, he was always there.  In solemn initiations\nin crypts beneath the giant hills he rose up, gemmed and starred\nwith living fires, and grew one with the God, and away, away with\nhim he passed into the lands of the immortals, or waged wars more\nthan human, when from the buried lands of the past first came the\nheroes eastward to Eri and found the terrible Fomorian enchanters\ndwelling in the sacred isle.  In dream Cuchullain saw the earth-\nscorning warriors rise up and wage their battle in the bright aether,\nand the great Sun-Chieftain, shining like gold, lead his glittering\nhosts.  In mountainous multitudes the giantesque phantoms reeled to\nand from, their mighty forms wreathed in streams of flame, while\nthe stars paled and shuddered as they fought.\n\nThere was yet another face, another form, often beside him;\nwhispering, luring, calling him away to he knew not what wild\nfreedom.  It was the phantom form of the child of Aed Abrait, with\ndark flowing tresses, mystic eyes, her face breathing the sweetness\nof the sun, with all the old nobility of earth, but elate and apart,\nas one who had been in the crystal spheres of the unseen and bathed\nin its immortalizing rivers and drunk the starry dews.\n\nCome, Cu.  Come, O hero,\" she whispered.  \"There are fiery fountains\nof life which will renew thee.  We will go where the Sidhe dwell,\nwhere the golden life-breath flows up from the mountains in a\ndazzling radiance to the ever-shining regions of azure and pearl\nunder the stars.  Glad is everything that lives in that place.\nCome, Cu, come away.\"  And she passed from beside him with face\nhalf turned, calling, beckoning, till in his madness he forgot the\nbright Sun-God and the warriors of Eri awaiting his guidance.\n\n\nIt was again the feast of Samhain.  About twilight in the evening\na shadow darkened the door.  A man in blue mantle stood outside;\nhe did not enter but looked around him a little while and then sat\ndown, laughing softly to himself.  Fergus, Conail and Lugard rose\nsimultaneously, glad of the pretence of warning off the intruder\nas a relief from their monotonous watch.\n\n\"Do you not know,\" said Conail sternly, \"that one lies ill here\nwho must not be disturbed?\"\n\nThe stranger arose.\n\n\"I will tell you a tale,\" he said.  \"As I was strolling through\nthe trees I saw a radiance shining around the dun, and I saw one\nfloating in that light like a mighty pillar of fire, or bronze\nruddy and golden:  a child of the Sun he seemed;  the living fires\ncurled about him and rayed from his head.  He looked to the north\nand to the west, to the south and to the east, and over all Eri he\nshot his fiery breaths rainbow-colored, and the dark grew light\nbefore him where he gazed.  Indeed if he who lies here were well\nhe would be mightiest among your warriors.  But I think that now\nhe clasps hands with the heroes of the Sidhe as well, and with\nDruid power protects the Ultonians.  I feel happy to be beside him.\"\n\n\"It is Lu Lamfada guarding the hero.  Now his destiny will draw\nnigh to him again,\" thought Cu's companions, and they welcomed\nthe stranger.\n\n\"I see why he lies here so still,\" he continued, his voice strange\nlike one who is inspired while he speaks.  \"The Sidhe looked out\nfrom their mountains.  They saw a hero asleep.  They saw a God\nforgetful.  They stirred him to shame by the hands of women.  They\nshowed him the past.  They said to Fand and Libau, 'Awake him.\nBring him to us.  Let him come on the night of Samhain.'  They\nshowed the chosen one from afar, in a vision while hid in their\nmountains.  The Tuatha de Danaans, the immortals, wish for Cuchullain\nto aid them.  The daughters of Aed Abrait are their messengers.\nIf Fand and Liban were here they would restore the hero.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\" asked Laeg, who had joined them.\n\n\"I am Angus, son of Aed Abrait.\"  While he spoke his form quivered\nlike a smoke, twinkling in misty indistinctness in the blue twilight,\nand then vanished before their eyes.\n\n\"I wonder now,\" muttered Laeg to himself, \"if he was sent by the\nSidhe, or by Liban and Fand only.  When one has to deal with women\neverything is uncertain.  Fand trusts more in her beauty to arouse\nhim than in her message.  I have seen her shadow twenty times cooing\nabout him.  It is all an excuse for love-making with her.  It is\njust like a woman.  Anything, however, would be better for him than\nto lie in bed.\"  He went off to join the others.  Cuchullain was\nsitting up and was telling the story of what happened last Samhain.\n\n\"What should I do?\" he asked.\n\n\"Go to the wise King,\" said Laeg, and so they all advised, for ever\nsince the day when he was crowned, and the Druids had touched him\nwith fire, a light of wisdom shone about Concobar the King.\n\n\"I think you should go to the rock where the women of the Sidhe\nappeared to you,\" said Concobar when appealed to.\n\nSo Laeg made ready the chariot and drove to the tarn.  Night came\nere they reached it, but the moon showed full and brilliant.  Laeg\nwaited a little way apart, while Cuchullain sat himself in the\nblack shadow of the rock.  As the warrior gazed into the dark,\nstar-speckled surface of the waters, a brightness and a mist\ngathered over them, and there, standing with her robe of green\ndown--dropping to her feet and trailing on the wave, her pale\nflaxen hair blown around her head, was Liban.  She smiled strangely\nas before, looking through him with her subtle eyes.\n\n\"I am one of the Sidhe,\" she said, and her voice sounded like a\nmurmur of the water.  \"You also, O warrior, though forgetful, are\none of us.  We did not indeed come to injure you, but to awaken\nremembrance.  For now the wild clouds of demons gathered from the\nneighboring isles and we wish your aid.  Your strength will come\nback to you exultant as of old.  Come with me, warrior.  You will\nhave great companions.  Labraid, who wields the rapid fires as you\nthe sword, and Fand, who has laid aside her Druid wisdom longing\nfor you.\"\n\n\"Whither must I go with you, strange woman?\" asked Cuchullain.\n\n\"To Mag-Mell.\"\n\n\"I will send Laeg with you,\" said Cuchullain.  I do not care to go\nto an unknown place while I have my duties here.\"  He then went to\nLaeg, asking him to go with Liban.\n\n\"He is longing to go,\" thought Laeg, \"but he mistrusts his power\nto get away.  He has forgotten all he knew and did not wish to\nappear nothing before a woman.  However, it can do no harm if I\ngo and see what they do.\"\n\n\nOh, marvel not if in our tale\n        The gleaming figures come and go,\nMore mystic splendors shine and pale\n        Than in an age outworn we know.\n\nTheir ignorance to us were wise:\n        Their sins our virtue would outshine:\nA glory passed before their eyes:\n        We hardly dream of the divine.\n\nIn world may come romance,\n        With all the lures of love and glamour;\nAnd woesome tragedy will chance\n        To him whom fairy forms enamour.\n\nThere slain illusions live anew\n        To stay the soul with coy caresses;\nBut he who only loves the True\n        Slays them again, and onward presses.\n\nFor golden chains are yet but chains,\n        Enchanted dreams are yet but dreaming;\nAnd ere the soul its freedom gains\n        It bursts all bonds, destroys all seeming.\n\n\n\n\n\nIV. The Maidens of the Sidhe\n\n\n\n\n\"Yes, I'll go with the maid in the green mantle,\" muttered Laeg to\nhimself;  \"but I'll don the crimson mantle of five folds which it\nis my right to wear in the land of the Sidhe, even though my earthly\noccupation is only the driving of a war-chariot.\"\n\nHe began chanting softly;  a golden gleam as of sunshine swept\ncircling about him;  then as the chant ceased a look of wild\nexultation came to his face, and he threw up his arms, so that\nfor an instant he had the aspect he wore when guiding the great\nwar-chariot of Cuchullain into the thick of battle.  His swaying\nform fell softly upon the greensward, and above it floated a\nluminous figure clad in a crimson mantle, but whose face and bare\narms were of the color of burnished bronze.  So impassive and\ncommanding was his face that even Liban faltered a little as she\nstole to his side.  Cuchullain watched the two figures as they\nfloated slowly over the dark expanse of the lake, till they suddenly\ndisappeared, seemingly into its quiet surface.  Then with his face\nburied in his hands he sat motionless, absorbed in deep thought,\nwhile he waited until the return of Laeg.\n\nThe recumbent form of Liban rose from the crouch where it had lain\nentranced.  Before her stood the phantom figure of Laeg.  All in\nthe house save herself were asleep, but with the conscious sleep\nof the Sidhe, and their shades spoke welcome to Laeg, each saying\nto him in liquid tones such as come never from lips of clay:\n\n\"Welcome to you, Laeg;  welcome because of her who brings you, of\nhim who sent you, and of yourself.\"\n\nHe saw about him only women of the Sidhe, and knew that he was in\none of the schools established by the wise men of Eri for maidens\nwho would devote their lives to holiness and Druid learning;\nmaidens who should know no earthly love but fix their eyes ever\non the light of the Sun-god.  But not seeing Fand among them, he\nturned with an impatient gesture to Liban.  She read his gesture\naright, and said:\n\n\"My sister dwells apart;  she has more knowledge, and presides over\nall of us.\"\n\nLeaving the room, she walked down a corridor, noiselessly save for\nthe rustle of her long robe of green, which she drew closely about\nher, for the night was chill.  An unaccustomed awe rested upon her,\nand to Laeg she whispered:\n\n\"The evil enchanters have power tonight, so that your life would\nbe in danger if you had not the protection of a maiden of the Sun.\"\n\nBut a smile wreathed for an instant the bronze-hue face of the\nshadowy charioteer, as he murmured in tones of kindness near to pity,\nsoftening his rude words:\n\n\"Till now nor Cuchullain nor I have ever felt the need of a woman's\nprotection, and I would much rather he were here now than I.\"\n\nDrawing aside a heavy curtain, Liban entered her sister's room.\nThey saw Fand seated at a little table.  A scroll lay on it open\nbefore her, but her eyes were not fixed on it.  With hands clasped\nunder her chin she gazed into the vacancies with eyes of far-away\nreflection and longing.  There was something pathetic in the\nintensity and wistfulness of the lonely figures.  She turned and\nrose to meet them, a smile of rare tenderness lighting up her face\nas she saw Liban.  The dim glow of a single lamp but half revealed\nthe youthful figure, the pale, beautiful face, out of which the\nsun-colours had faded.  Her hair of raven hue was gathered in massy\ncoils over her head and fastened there by a spiral torque of gleaming\ngold.  Her mantle, entirely black, which fell to her feet, made her\nfeatures seem more strangely young, more startlingly in contrast\nwith the monastic severity of the room.  It was draped round with\nsome dark unfigured hangings.  A couch with a coverlet of furs,\nsingle chair of carved oak, the little table, and a bronze censer\nfrom which a faint aromatic odor escaping filled the air and stole\non the sense, completed the furniture of the room, which might\nrather have been the cell of some aged Druid than the chamber of\none of the young maidens of Eri, who were not overgiven to ascetic\nhabits.  She welcomed Laeg with the same terms of triple welcome\nas did the mystic children of the sun who had first gathered round him.\nHer brilliant eyes seemed to read deep the soul of the charioteer.\n\nThen Liban came softly up to her, saying:\n\n\"Oh, Fand, my soul is sad this night.  The dark powers are gathering\ntheir strength to assail us, and we shall need to be pure and strong.\nYet you have said that you feel no longer the Presence with you;\nthat Mannanan, the Self of the Sun, shines not in your heart!\"\n\nFan placed her hand upon her sister's flaxen head, saying with a\nvoice mingled joy and pathos:\n\n\"Peace, child;  you, of us all, have least to fear, for though I,\nalas! am forsaken, yet He who is your Father and Yourself is even\nnow here with you.\"\n\nLiban fell on her knees, with her hands clasped and her eyes uplifted\nin a rapture of adoration, for above her floated one whom she well\nknew.  Yet unheeding her and stern of glance, with his right arm\noutstretched, from which leaped long tongues of flame, swordlike,\ninto space, Labraid towered above gazing upon foes unseen by them.\nSlowly the arm fell and the stern look departed from the face.\nAncient with the youth of the Gods, it was such a face and form\nthe toilers in the shadowy world, mindful of their starry dynasties,\nsought to carve in images of upright and immovable calm amid the\nsphinxes of the Nile or the sculptured Gods of Chaldaea.  So upright\nand immovable in such sculptured repose appeared Labraid, his body\nlike a bright ruby flame, sunlit from its golden heart.  Beneath\nhis brows his eyes looked full of secrecy.  The air pulsing and\nheaving about him drove Laeg backward from the centre of the room.\nHe appeared but a child before this potent spirit.  Liban broke\nout into a wild chant of welcome:\n\n\"Oh see now how burning,\n        How radiant in might,\nFrom battle returning\n        The Dragon of Light!\nWhere wert thou, unsleeping\n        Exile from the throne,\nIn watch o'er the weeping,\n        The sad and the lone.\nThe sun-fires of Eri\n        Burned low on the steep;\nThe watchers were weary\n        Or sunken in sleep;\nAnd dread were the legions\n        Of demons who rose\nFrom the uttermost regions\n        Of ice and of snows;\nAnd on the red wind borne,\n        Unspeakable things\nFrom wizard's dark mind borne\n        On shadowy wings.\nThe darkness was lighted\n        With whirlwinds of flame;\nThe demons affrighted\n        Fled back whence they came.\nFor thou wert unto them\n        The vision that slays:\nThy fires quivered through them\n        In arrowy rays.\nOh, light amethystine,\n        Thy shadow inspire,\nAnd fill with the pristine\n        Vigor of fire.\nThough thought like a fountain\n        Pours dream upon dream,\nUnscaled is the mountain\n        Where thou still dost gleam,\nAnd shinest afar like\n        The dawning of day,\nImmortal and starlike\n        In rainbow array.\"\n\nBut he, the shining one, answered, and his voice had that melody\nwhich only those know whom the Sun-breath has wafted into worlds divine:\n\n\"Vaunt not, poor mortal one, nor claim knowledge when the Gods know\nnot.  He who is greatest among all the sons of evil now waits for\nthe hour to strike when he may assail us and have with him all the\nhosts of the foes of light.  What may be the issue of the combat\ncannot be foreseen by us.  Yet mortals, unwise, ever claim to know\nwhen even the Gods confess ignorance;  for pride blinds all mortals,\nand arrogance is born of their feebleness.\"\n\nUnabashed she cried out:\n\n\"Then rejoice, for we have awakened Cu, the warrior-magician of\nold times, and his messenger is her.\"\n\nThen he answered gently, pityingly:\n\n\"We need the help of each strong soul, and you have done well to\narouse that slumbering giant.  If through his added strength we\nconquer, then will he be the saviour of Eri;  beloved by the Gods,\nhe will cease to be a wild warrior on earth, and become a leader\nof mortals, aiding them on the way to the immortals.  Wisely have\nyou awakened him, and yet--\"\n\nHe smiled, and such was the pity in his smiling glance that Liban\nbowed her head in humiliation.  When she raised it he was gone,\nand Laeg also had vanished.  She arose, and with a half-sob threw\nherself into the arms of her sister.  So they stood, silent, with\ntearless eyes;  for they were too divine for tears, although,\nalas! too human.\n\n\nSlowly the chariot rolled on its homeward way, for Laeg, seeing\nthe weakness and weariness of Cuchullain, held the great steeds\nin check;  their arched necks and snorting breath resenting the\nrestraint, while the impatient stamping of their hoofs struck fire\nfrom the pebbly road.\n\n\"Well,\" said Cuchullain moodily, \"tell me what happened after you\nwent away with that woman of the Sidhe.\"\n\nBriefly and without comment of his own Laeg stated what he had seen.\nThen long Cuchullain pondered;  neither spoke, and the silence was\nbroken only by the stamping of the steeds and the rumble of the\nchariot wheels.  Dark clouds drifted athwart the moon, and the\ndarkness gave more freedom of speech, for Cuchullain said in measured,\nexpressionless tones:\n\n\"And what do you think of all this?\"\n\n\"What do I think?\" burst forth Laeg with sudden fire;  \"I think\nyou had better be leaving those women of the Sidhe alone, and they\nyou.  That Fand would lose her soul for love, and the spell they've\ncast over you is evil, or it wouldn't make a warrior like you as\nhelpless as a toddling babe.\"\n\nIn letting loose his pent-up wrath Laeg had unconsciously loosened\nas well the reined-in steeds, who sprang forward impetuously, and\nthe jolting of the car was all that Cuchullain could bear in his\nenfeebled state.  Recovering himself, the charioteer drew them in\ncheck again, inwardly upbraiding himself for carelessness.\n\nSorrowful and broken was the voice of the warrior as he said:\n\n\"On the morrow, Laeg, you shall bear a message to Emer.  Tell her\nthe Sidhe have thrown a spell of helplessness upon me while deceiving\nme with false visions of my aiding them in their war with the evil\nenchanters.  Ask Emer to come to me, for her presence may help to\nrouse me from this spell that benumbs my body and clouds my mind.\"\n\nThen Laeg sought to console him, saying:\n\n\"No, no;  the Sidhe wrong no one.  Their message to you was true;\nbut their messengers were women, and you were a warrior.  That is\nwhy the mischance came, for it is ever the way with a woman to\nbecome foolish over a warrior, and then there is always a muddle.\nAnd when Emer comes--,\" he checked his indiscreet utterance by\npretending to have a difficulty in restraining the horses, and\nthen added confusedly:  \"Besides, I'd rather be in your plight\nthan in Fand's.\"\n\n\n\"Has Emer come?\" asked Cuchullain, drawing himself up on his couch\nand resting on his elbow.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Laeg dejectedly;  \"I have brought her.  She has been\ntalking to me most of the journey.  Now she'll be after talking\nto you, but you needn't mind;  it isn't her ususal way, and she\nisn't as unreasonable as might be expected.  She puts most of the\nblame of your illness on me, though perhaps that is because it was\nme she was talking to.  Insists that as I can go to the Plain of\nFire where the Sidhe live I ought to be able to find a way of curing\nyou.  She has expressed that idea to me many times, with a fluency\nand wealth of illustration that would make a bard envious.  Here\nshe comes now.  I'll just slip out and see if the horses are being\nproperly cared for.\"\n\nHe had not overstated the case, for the sweet face of Emer was\nclouded with wrath as she approached the sick-bed of her husband.\nBitterly she reproached him for what she claimed was only a feigned\nillness, and expressed her conviction that no theory would account\nfor his conduct save that, faithless to her his wife, he had fallen\nin love.  But Cuchullain made no answer, for not only was he\ninvincible in battle, but also wise in the matter of holding his\ntongue when a woman warred against him with words.\n\n\"You are looking stronger,\" said Laeg, when next he saw him alone.\n\n\"Yes,\" he returned, \"the speech of Emer has roused me a little\nfrom my torpor.  I have been thinking that possibly we were wrong\nin disregarding the message brought by the women of the Sidhe.\nThey surely have power to break this spell, and doubtless would\nhave done so had you not fled from them so inconsiderately.\"\n\n\"I was thinking the same when Emer was coming here with me,\" observed\nLaeg.  \"Her speech roused me a little too.\"\n\nCuchullain was silent awhile and then said reflectively:\n\n\"Do you think we could find Liban again?\"\n\n\"There would be no difficulty about that,\" Laeg replied drily.\n\n\"Then,\" said Cuchullain with sudden energy, \"let us go once more\nto the rock of the visions.\"\n\n\nOur souls give battle when the host\n        Of lurid lives that lurk in Air,\nAnd Ocean's regions nethermost,\n        Come forth from every loathsome lair:\nFor then are cloudland battles fought\n        With spears of lightning, swords of flame,\nNo quarter given, none besought,\n        Till to the darkness whence they came\nThe Sons of Night are hurled again.\n        Yet while the reddened skies resound\nThe wizard souls of evil men\n        Within the demon ranks are found,\nWhile pure and strong the heroes go\n        To join the strife, and reck no odds,\nFor they who face the wizard foe\n        Clasp hands heroic with the gods.\n\n\nWhat is the love of shadowy lips\n        That know not what they seek or press,\nFrom whom the lure for ever slips\n        And fails their phantom tenderness?\n\nThe mystery and light of eyes\n        That near to mine grow dim and cold;\nThey move afar in ancient skies\n        Mid flame and mystic darkness rolled.\n\nOh, hero, as thy heart o'erflows\n        In tender yielding unto me,\nA vast desire awakes and grows\n        Unto forgetfulness of thee.\n\n\n\n\n\nV. The Mantle of Mannanan\n\n\n\n\nAgain Liban stood before them, and her eyes were full of reproach.\n\n\"You doubt the truth of my message,\" she said.  \"Come, then, to the\nPlain of Fire, and you shall see the one who sent me.\"\n\n\"I doubt you not,\" said Cuchullain quietly;  \"but it is not fitting\nthat I should go when the message is brought by a woman, for such\nis the warning I have had in vision from Lu Lamfada.  Laeg shall\ngo with you, and if he brings back the same message, then I shall\ndo the bidding of the Sidhe, and wage war against the evil enchanters,\neven as when a lad I vanquished the brook of wizards at Dun-mic-Nectan.\"\n\n\n\"Where did Liban take you this time, Laeg?  Have you brought back\na message from the Sidhe?\"\n\n\"I have seen the Chief,\" said Laeg, whose doubts had vanished and\nwhose whole manner had changed.  \"Cuchullain, you must go.  You\nremember how we went together to Brusna by the Boyne, and what\nwonders they showed us in the sacred crypt.  Yet this is a place\nmore marvelous--thrice.  Well indeed did Liban call it the Plain\nof Fire, for a breath of fire is in the air for leagues and leagues\naround.  On the lake where the Sidhe dwell the fishers row by and\nsee nothing, or, mayhap, a flicker of phantasmal trees around the dun.\nThese trees are rooted in a buried star beneath the earth;  when its\nheart pulsates they shine like gold, aye, and are fruited with ruby\nlights.  Indeed this Labraid is one of the Gods.  I saw him come\nthrough the flaming rivers of the underworld.  He was filled with\nthe radiance.  I am not given to dread the Sidhe, but there was\nthat in him which compelled awe:  for oh, he came from the homes\nthat were anciently ours--ours who are fallen, and whose garments\nonce bright are stained by the lees of time.  He greeted me kindly.\nHe knew me by my crimson mantle with five folds.  He asked for you;\nindeed they all wish to have you there.\"\n\n\"Did he say aught further?\"\n\n\"No, he spoke but little;  but as I returned by Mag Luada I had a\nvision.  I saw you standing under the sacred Tree of Victory.\nThere were two mighty ones, one on each side of you, but they seemed\nno greater than you.\"\n\n\"Was Fand there?\" asked Cuchullain.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Laeg reluctantly;  \"I saw her and spoke to her, although\nI did not wish to.  I feared for myself.  Ethne and Emer are beautiful\nwomen, but this woman is not like them.  She is half divine.  The\nholiest Druids might lose his reason over her.\"\n\n\"Let us go thither,\" said Cuchullain.\n\n\nThe night was clear, breathless, pure as diamond.  The giant lights\nfar above floated quietly in the streams of space.  Below slept\nthe lake mirroring the shadowy blue of the mountains.  The great\nmounds, the homes of the Sidhe, were empty;  but over them floated\na watchful company, grave, majestic, silent, waiting.  In stately\nprocession their rich, gleaming figures moved to and fro in groups\nof twos and threes, emblazoning the dusky air with warm colors.\nA little apart, beyond the headland at the island's edge, two more\ncommanding than the rest communed together.  The wavering water\nreflected head-long their shining figures in its dark depths;\nabove them the ancient blue of the night rose as a crown.  These\ntwo were Labraid and the warrior of Murthemney restored to all his\nDruid power.  Terrible indeed in its beauty, its power, its calm,\nwas this fiery phantasmal form beside the king of the Sidhe.\n\n\"We came to Eri many, many ages ago,\" said Labraid;  \"from a land\nthe people of today hold no memory of.  Mighty for good and for\nevil were the dwellers in that land, but its hour struck and the\nwaters of the ocean entomb it.  In this island, which the mighty\nGods of Fire kept apart and sacred, we made our home.  But after\nlong years a day came when the wise ones must needs depart from\nthis also.  They went eastward.  A few only remained to keep alive\nthe tradition of what was, the hope of what will be again.  For in\nthis island, it is foretold, in future ages will arise a light\nwhich will renew the children of time.  But now the world's great\ndarkness has come.  See what exhalations arise!  What demons would\nmake Eri their home!\"\n\nAway at the eastern verge a thick darkness was gathering;  a pitchy\nblackness out of which a blood--red aerial river rolled and shot\nits tides through the arteries of the night.  It came nigher.  It\nwas dense with living creatures, larvae, horrible shapes with waving\ntendrils, white withered things restless and famished, hoglike faces,\nmonstrosities.  As it rolled along there was a shadowy dropping\nover hamlet and village and field.\n\n\"Can they not be stayed?  Can they not be stayed?\" rang the cry of Fand.\n\nThe stern look on Cuchullain's face deepened.\n\n\"Is it these pitiful spectres we must wage war against?  Labraid,\nit is enough.  I will go--alone.  Nay, my brother, one is enough\nfor victory.\"\n\nAlready he was oblivious of the Sidhe, the voices of Fand and Laeg\ncalling him.  A light like a wonder-mist broke dazzling about him.\nThrough a mist of fire, an excess of light, they saw a transcendent\nform of intensest gold treading the air.  Over the head of the god\na lightning thread like a serpent undulated and darted.  It shed\na thousand dazzling rays;  it chanted in a myriad tones as it went\nforward.  Wider grew the radiant sphere and more triumphant the\nchant as he sped onward and encountered the overflow of hell.  Afar\noff the watchers saw and heard the tumult, cries of a horrible\nconflict, agonies of writhing and burning demons scorched and\nannihilated, reeling away before the onset of light.  On and still\non he sped, now darkened and again blazing like the sun.\n\n\"Look!  look!\" cried Laeg, breathless with exultation as the dazzling\nphantom towered and waved its arms on the horizon.\n\n\"They lied who said he was powerless,\" said Fand, no less exultant.\n\n\"Cu, my darling,\" murmured the charioteer;  \"I know now why I loved\nyou, what burned within you.\"\n\n\"Shall we not go and welcome him when he returns?\" said Liban.\n\n\"I should not advise it,\" Laeg answered.  \"Is it to meet that fury\nof fire when he sinks back blind and oblivious?  He would slay his\ndearest friend.  I am going away from here as fast as I can.\"\n\nThrough the dark forests at dawn the smoke began to curl up from\ndun and hamlet, and, all unconscious of the war waged over their\ndestinies, children awoke to laugh and men and women went forth\nto breathe the sweet air of morning.\n\n\nCuchullain started from a dream of more ancient battles, of wars\nin heaven.  Through the darkness of the room he saw the shadowy\nforms of the two daughters of Aed Abrait;  not as before, the\nmystic maidens armed with Druid power, but women, melting, tender,\ncaressing.  Violet eyes shining with gratitude;  darker eyes burning\nwith love, looked into his.  Misty tresses fell over him.\n\n\"I know not how the battle went,\" he sighed.  \"I remember the fire\nawoke.  .... Lu was with me. .... I fell back in a blinding mist\nof flame and forgot everything.\"\n\n\"Doubt it not.  Victory went with thee, warrior,\" said Liban.  \"We\nsaw thee:  it was wonderful.  How the seven splendors flashed and\nthe fiery stars roved around you and scattered the demons!\"\n\n\"Oh, do not let your powers sink in sleep again,\" broke forth Fand.\n\"What are the triumphs of earthly battles to victories like these?\nWhat is rule over a thousand warriors to kingship over the skyey\nhosts?  Of what power are spear and arrow beside the radiant sling\nof Lu?  Do the war-songs of the Ultonians inspire thee ever like\nthe terrible chant of fire?  After freedom can you dwell in these\ngloomy duns?  What are the princeliest of them beside the fiery\nhalls of Tir-na-noge and the flame-built cities of the Gods?  As\nfor me, I would dwell where the great ones of ancient days have\ngone, and worship at the shrine of the silent and unutterable Awe.\"\n\n\"I would go indeed,\" said Cuchullain;  \"but still--but still--:\nit is hard to leave the green plains of Murthemney, and the Ultonians\nwho have fought by my side, and Laeg, and--\"\n\n\"Laeg can come with us.  Nor need Conchobar, or Fergus or Conail\nbe forgotten.  Far better can you aid them with Druid power than\nwith the right arm a blow may make powerless in battle.  Go with\nLaeg to Iban-Cind-Trachta.  Beside the yew-tree there is a dun.\nThere you can live hidden from all.  It is a place kept sacred by\nthe might of the Sidhe.  I will join you there.\"\n\nA month passed.  In a chamber of the Dun the Yew-tree, Fand,\nCuchullain and Laeg were at night.  The two latter sat by an oaken\ntable and tried by divination to peer into the future.  Fand,\nwithdrawn in the dark shadow of a recess, lay on a couch and looked on.\nMany thoughts went passing through her mind.  Now the old passion of\nlove would rise in her heart to be quenched by a weary feeling of\nfutility, and then a half-contempt would curl her lips as she saw\nthe eagerness of her associates.  Other memories surged up.  \"Oh,\nMannanan, Father-Self, if thou hadst not left me and my heart had\nnot turned away!  It was not a dream when I met thee and we entered\nthe Ocean of Fire together.  Our beauty encompassed the world.\nRadiant as Lu thy brother of the Sun we were.  Far away as the dawn\nseems the time.  How beautiful, too, was that other whose image in\nthe hero enslaves my heart.  Oh, that he would but know himself,\nand learn that on this path the greatest is the only risk worth\ntaking!  And now he holds back the charioteer also and does him\nwrong.\"  Just then something caused her to look up.  She cried out,\n\"Laeg, Laeg, do you see anything?\"\n\n\"What is it?\" said Laeg.  Then he also looked and started.  \"Gods!\" he\nmurmured.  \"Emer!  I would rather face a tempest of Formorian enchanters.\"\n\n\"Do you not see?\"  repeated Fand scornfully.  \"It is Emer the\ndaughter of Forgall.  Has she also become one of the Sidhe that\nshe journeys thus?\"\n\n\"She comes in dream,\" said Laeg.\n\n\"Why do you intrude upon our seclusion here?  You know my anger is\nno slight thing,\" broke out Cuchullain, in ready wrath hiding his\nconfusion.  The shadow of Emer turned, throwing back the long, fair\nhair from her face the better to see him.  There was no dread on it,\nbut only outraged womanly dignity.  She spake and her voice seemed to\nflow from a passionate heart far away brooding in sorrowful loneliness.\n\n\"Why do I come?  Has thou not degraded me before all the maidens\nof Eri by forsaking me for a woman of the Sidhe without a cause?\nYou ask why I come when every one of the Ultonians looks at me in\nquestioning doubt and wonder!  But I see you have found a more\nbeautiful partner.\"\n\n\"We came hither, Laeg and I, to learn the lore of the Sidhe.  Why\nshould you not leave me here for a time, Emer?  This maiden is of\nwondrous magical power:  she is a princess in her own land, and is\nas pure and chaste to this hour as you.\"\n\n\"I see indeed she is more beautiful than I am.  That is why you\nare drawn away.  Her face has not grown familiar.  Everything that\nis new or strange you follow.  The passing cheeks are ruddier than\nthe pale face which has shared your troubles.  What you know is\nweariness, and you leave it to learn what you do not know.  The\nUltonians falter while you are absent from duty in battle and\ncouncil, and I, whom you brought with sweet words when half a\nchild from my home, am left alone.  Oh, Cuchullain, beloved, I\nwas once dear to thee, and if today or tomorrow were our first\nmeeting I should be so again.\"\n\nA torrent of self-reproach and returning love overwhelmed him.\n\"I swear to you,\" he said brokenly, through fast-flowing tears,\n\"you are immortally dear to me, Emer.\"\n\n\"Then you leave me,\" burst forth Fand, rising to her full height,\nher dark, bright eyes filled with a sudden fire, an image of mystic\nindignation and shame.\n\n\"If indeed,\" said Emer softly, \"joy and love and beauty are more\namong the Sidhe than where we dwell in Eri, then it were better\nfor thee to remain.\"\n\n\"No, he shall not now,\" said Fand passionately.  \"It is I whom he\nshall leave.  I long foresaw this moment, but ran against fate like\na child.  Go, warrior, Cu;  tear this love out of thy heart as I\nout of mine.  Go, Laeg, I will not forget thee.  Thou alone hast\nthought about these things truly.  But now--I cannot speak.\"  She\nflung herself upon the couch in the dark shadow and hid her face\naway from them.\n\nThe pale phantom wavered and faded away, going to one who awoke\nfrom sleep with a happiness she could not understand.  Cuchullain\nand Laeg passed out silently into the night.  At the door of the\ndun a voice they knew not spake:\n\n\"So, warrior, you return.  It is well.  Not yet for thee is the\nbrotherhood of the Sidhe, and thy destiny and Fand's lie far apart.\nThine is not so great but it will be greater, in ages yet to come,\nin other lands, among other peoples, when the battle fury in thee\nshall have turned to wisdom and anger to compassion.  Nations that\nlie hidden in the womb of time shall hail thee as friend, deliverer\nand saviour.  Go and forget what has passed.  This also thou shalt\nforget.  It will not linger in thy mind;  but in thy heart shall\nremain the memory and it will urge thee to nobler deeds.  Farewell,\nwarrior, saviour that is to be!\"\n\nAs the two went along the moon lit shore mighty forms followed,\nand there was a waving of awful hands over them to blot out memory.\n\n\nIn the room where Fand lay with mad beating heart tearing itself\nin remorse, there was one watching with divine pity.  Mannanan,\nthe Golden Glory, the Self of the Sun.  \"Weep not, O shadow;  thy\ndays of passion and pain are over.\" breathed the Pity in her breast.\n\"Rise up, O Ray, from thy sepulchre of forgetfulness.  Spirit come\nforth to they ancient and immemorial home.\"  She rose up and stood\nerect.  As the Mantle of Mannanan enfolded her, no human words\ncould tell the love, the exultation, the pathos, the wild passion\nof surrender, the music of divine and human life interblending.\nFaintly we echo--like this spake the Shadow and like this the Glory.\n\n\nThe Shadow\n\nWho art thou, O Glory,\n        In flame from the deep,\nWhere stars chant their story,\n        Why trouble my sleep?\n\nI hardly had rested,\n        My dreams wither now:\nWhy comest thou crested\n        And gemmed on they brow?\n\n\nThe Glory\n\nUp, Shadow, and follow\n        The way I will show;\nThe blue gleaming hollow\n        To-night we will know,\n\nAnd rise mid the vast to\n        The fountain of days;\nFrom whence we had pass to\n        The parting of ways.\n\n\nThe Shadow\n\nI know thee, O Glory:\n        Thine eyes and thy brow\nWith white fire all hoary\n        Come back to me now.\n\nTogether we wandered\n        In ages agone;\nOur thoughts as we pondered\n        Were stars at the dawn.\n\nThe glory has dwindled,\n        My azure and gold:\nYet you keep enkindled\n        The Sun-fire of old.\n\nMy footsteps are tied to\n        The heath and the stone;\nMy thoughts earth-allied-to--\n        Ah! leave me alone.\n\nGo back, thou of gladness,\n        Nor wound me with pain,\nNor spite me with madness,\n        Nor come nigh again.\n\n\nThe Glory\n\nWhy tremble and weep now,\n        Whom stars once obeyed?\nCome forth to the deep now\n        And be not afraid.\n\nThe Dark One is calling,\n        I know, for his dreams\nAround me are falling\n        In musical streams.\n\nA diamond is burning\n        In depths of the Lone\nThy spirit returning\n        May claim for its throne.\n\nIn flame-fringed islands\n        Its sorrows shall cease,\nAbsorbed in the silence\n        And quenched in the peace.\n\nCome lay thy poor head on\n        My breast where it glows\nWith love ruby-red on\n        Thy heart for its woes.\n\nMy power I surrender:\n        To thee it is due:\nCome forth, for the splendor\n        Is waiting for you.\n\n\n--The End\n\n\n--November 15, 1895-March 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nShadow and Substance\n\n\n\n\nMany are the voices that entreat and warn those who would live the\nlife of the Magi.  It is well they should speak.  They are voices\nof the wise.  But after having listened and pondered, oh, that\nsomeone would arise and shout into our souls how much more fatal\nit is to refrain.  For we miss to hear the fairy tale of time,\nthe aeonian chant radiant with light and color which the spirit\nprolongs.  The warnings are not for those who stay at home, but\nfor those who adventure abroad.  They constitute an invitation to\nenter the mysteries.  We study and think these things were well\nin the happy prime and will be again the years to come.  But not\nyesterday only or tomorrow--today, today burns in the heart the\nfire which made mighty the heroes of old.  And in what future will\nbe born the powers which are not quick in the present?  It will\nnever be a matter of greater ease to enter the path, though we may\nwell have the stimulus of greater despair.  For this and that there\nare times and seasons, but for the highest it is always the hour.\nThe eternal beauty does not pale because its shadow trails over\nslime and corruption.  It is always present beneath the faded mould\nwhereon our lives are spent.  Still the old mysterious glimmer\nfrom mountain and cave allures, and the golden gleams divide and\ndescend on us from the haunts of the Gods.\n\nThe dark age is our darkness and not the darkness of life.  It is\nnot well for us who in the beginning came forth with the wonder-light\nabout us, that it should have turned in us to darkness, the song of\nlife be dumb.  We close our eyes from the many-coloured mirage of\nday, and are alone soundless and sightless in the unillumined cell\nof the brain.  But there are thoughts that shine, impulses born of\nfire.  Still there are moments when the prison world reels away a\ndistant shadow, and the inner chamber of clay fills full with fiery\nvisions.  We choose from the traditions of the past some symbol of\nour greatness, and seem again the Titans or Morning Stars of the prime.\nIn this self-conception lies the secret of life, the way of escape\nand return.  We have imagined ourselves into forgetfulness, into\ndarkness, into feebleness.  From this strange and pitiful dream of\nlife, oh, that we may awaken and know ourselves once again.\n\nBut the student too often turns to books, to the words sent back\nto him, forgetful that the best of scriptures do no more than stand\nas symbols.  We hear too much of study, as if the wisdom of life\nand ethics could be learned like ritual, and of their application\nto this and that ephemeral pursuit.  But from the Golden One, the\nchild of the divine, comes a voice to its shadow.  It is stranger\nto our world, aloof from our ambitions, with a destiny not here to\nbe fulfilled.  It says:  \"You are of dust while I am robed in\nopalescent airs.  You dwell in houses of clay, I in a temple not\nmade by hands.  I will not go with thee, but thou must come with me.\"\nAnd not alone is the form of the divine aloof but the spirit behind\nthe form.  It is called the Goal truly, but it has no ending.  It\nis the Comforter, but it waves away our joys and hopes like the\nangel with the flaming sword.  Though it is the Resting-place, it\nstirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to conquest.  It is the\nFriend indeed, but it will not yield to our desires.  Is it this\nstrange, unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by\nwhat is written, or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness.\nBut in vain we store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint\nfurniture of thought.  No archangel makes his abode therein.  They\nabide only in the shining.  How different from academic psychology\nof the past, with its dry enumeration of faculties, reason,\ncognition and so forth, is the burning thing we know.   We revolted\nfrom that, but we must take care lest we teach in another way a\ncatalogue of things equally unliving to us.  The plain truth is,\nthat after having learned what is taught about the hierarchies and\nvarious spheres, many of us are still in this world exactly where\nwe were before.   If we speak our laboriously-acquired information we\nare listened to in amazement.  It sounds so learned, so intellectual,\nthere must need be applause.  But by-and-by someone comes with quiet\nvoice, who without pretence speaks of the \"soul\" and uses familiar\nwords, and the listeners drink deep, and pay the applause of silence\nand long remembrance and sustained after-endeavor.  Our failure\nlies in this, we would use the powers of soul and we have not yet\nbecome the soul.  None but the wise one himself could bend the bow\nof Ulysses.  We cannot communicate more of the true than we ourselves\nknow.  It is better to have a little knowledge and know that little\nthan to have only hearsay of myriads of Gods.  So I say, lay down\nyour books for a while and try the magic of thought.  \"What a man\nthinks, that he is;  that is the old secret.\"  I utter, I know,\nbut a partial voice of the soul with many needs.  But I say, forget\nfor a while that you are student, forget your name and time.  Think\nof yourself within as the titan, the Demi-god, the flaming hero\nwith the form of beauty, the heart of love.  And of those divine\nspheres forget the nomenclature;  think rather of them as the\nplaces of a great childhood you now return to, these homes no\nlonger ours.  In some moment of more complete imagination the\nthought-born may go forth and look on the olden Beauty.  So it\nwas in the mysteries long ago and may well be today.  The poor\ndead shadow was laid to sleep in forgotten darkness, as the fiery\npower, mounting from heart to head, went forth in radiance.  Not\nthen did it rest, nor ought we.  The dim worlds dropped behind it,\nthe lights of earth disappeared as it neared the heights of the\nImmortals.  There was One seated on a throne, One dark and bright\nwith ethereal glory.  I arose in greeting.  The radiant figure\nlaid its head against the breast which grew suddenly golden, and\nfather and son vanished in that which has no place nor name.\n\n--January 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nOn W. Q. Judge's Passing\n\n\n\n\nIt is with no feeling of sadness that I think of this withdrawal.\nHe would not have wished for that.  But with a faltering hand I try\nto express one of many incommunicable thoughts about the hero who\nhas departed.  Long before I met him, before even written words of\nhis had been read, his name like an incantation stirred and summoned\nforth some secret spiritual impulse in my heart.  It was no surface\ntie which bound us to him.  No one ever tried less than he to gain\nfrom men that adherence which comes from impressive manner.  I hardly\nthought what he was while he spoke;  but on departing I found my\nheart, wiser than my brain, had given itself away to him;  an inner\nexaltation lasting for months witnessed his power.  It was in that\nmemorable convention in London two years ago that I first glimpsed\nhis real greatness.   As he sat there quietly, one among many, not\nspeaking a word, I was overcome by a sense of spiritual dilation,\nof unconquerable will about him, and that one figure with the grey\nhead became all the room to me.  Shall I not say the truth I think?\nHere was a hero out of the remote, antique, giant ages come among us,\nwearing but on the surface the vesture of our little day.  We, too,\ncame out of that past, but in forgetfulness;  he with memory and\npower soon regained.  To him and to one other we owe an unspeakable\ngratitude for faith and hope and knowledge born again.  We may say\nnow, using words of his early years:  \"Even in hell I lift up my\neyes to those who are beyond me and do not deny them.\"  Ah, hero,\nwe know you would have stayed with us if it were possible;  but\nfires have been kindled that shall not soon fade, fires that shall\nbe bright when you again return.  I feel no sadness, knowing there\nare no farewells in the True:  to whosoever has touched on that\nreal being there is comradeship with all the great and wise of time.\nThat he will again return we need not doubt.  His ideals were those\nwhich are attained only by the Saviours and Deliverers of nations.\nWhen or where he may appear I know not, but I foresee the coming\nwhen our need invokes him.  Light of the future aeons, I hail, I\nhail to thee!\n\n--April 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nSelf-Reliance\n\n\n\n\nPerhaps it is now while we are in a state of transition, when old\nleaders have gone out of sight and the new ones have not yet taken\ntheir place in the van, that we ought to consider what we are in\nourselves.  Some questions we ought to ask ourselves about this\nmovement:  where its foundations were laid? what the links are?\nwhere is the fountain of force? what are the doors?  You answer\nthe first and you say \"America,\" or you say \"India.\"  But if that\nold doctrine of emanations be true it was not on earth but in the\nheavenworld where our minds immortal are linked together.  There\nit was born and well born, and grew downwards into earth, and all\nour hopes and efforts and achievements here but vaguely reflect\nwhat was true and perfect in intent above, a compact of many hearts\nto save the generations wandering to their doom.  Wiser, stronger,\nmightier than we were those who shielded us in the first years;\nwho went about among us renewing memory, whispering in our hearts\nthe message of the meaning of life, recalling the immemorial endeavor\nof the spirit for freedom, knowledge, mastery.  But it is our\nmovement and not the movement of the Masters only.  It is our own\nwork we are carrying on;  our own primal will we are trying to give\neffect to.  Well may the kingly sages depart from bodies which were\ntorment and pain to them.  They took them on for our sakes, and we\nmay wave them a grateful farewell below and think of the spheres\ninvisible as so much richer by their presence, more to be longed for,\nmore to be attained.  I think indeed they are nearer heart and mind\nthere than here.  What is real in us can lose no brotherhood with\nsuch as they through death.  Still flash the lights from soul to\nsoul in ceaseless radiance, in endless begetting of energy, thought\nand will, in endless return of joy and love and hope.  I would\nrather hear one word of theirs in my heart than a thousand in my ears.\nI would rather think of my guide and captain as embodied in the flame\nthan in the clay.  Although we may gaze on the grave, kindly face\nliving no more, there can be no cessation of the magic influence,\nthe breath of fire, which flowed aforetime from the soul to us.\nWe feel in our profoundest hearts that he whom they call dead is\nliving, is alive for evermore.\n\nHe has earned his rest, a deep rest, if indeed such as he cease\nfrom labor.  As for us, we may go our ways assured that the links\nare unbroken.  What did you think the links were?  That you knew\nsome one who knew the Masters?  Such a presence and such a Companion\nwould indeed be an aid, a link.  But I think where ever there is\nbelief in our transcendent being, in justice, our spiritual unity\nand destiny, wherever there is brotherhood, there are unseen ties,\nlinks, shining cords, influx from and unbroken communication with\nthe divine.  So much we have in our own natures, not enough to\nperfect us in the mysteries, but always enough to light our path,\nto show us our next step, to give us strength for duty.  We should\nnot always look outside for aid, remembering that some time we must\nbe able to stand alone.  Let us not deny our own deeper being, our\nobscured glory.  That we accepted these truths, even as intuitions\nwhich we were unable intellectually to justify, is proof that there\nis that within us which has been initiate in the past, which lives\nin and knows well what in the shadowy world is but a hope.  There\nis part of ourselves whose progress we do not comprehend.  There\nare deeds done in unremembered dream, and a deeper meditation in\nthe further unrecorded silences of slumber.  Downward from sphere\nto sphere the Immortal works its way into the flesh, and the soul\nhas adventures in dream whose resultant wisdom is not lost because\nmemory is lacking here.  Yet enough has been said to give us the hint,\nthe clue to trace backwards the streams of force to their fount.\nWe wake in some dawn and there is morning also in our hearts, a love,\na fiery vigor, a magnetic sweetness in the blood.  Could we track\nto its source this invigorating power, we might perhaps find that\nas we fell asleep some olden memory had awakened in the soul, or\nthe Master had called it forth, or it was transformed by the wizard\npower of Self and went forth to seek the Holy Place.  Whether we\nhave here a guide, or whether we have not, one thing is certain,\nthat behind and within the \"Father worketh hitherto.\"  A warrior\nfights for us.  Our thoughts tip the arrows of his quiver.  He wings\nthem with flame and impels them with the Holy Breath.  They will\nnot fail if we think clear.  What matters it if in the mist we do\nnot see where they strike.  Still they are of avail.  After a time\nthe mists will arise and show a clear field;  the shining powers\nwill salute us as victors.\n\nI have no doubt about our future;  no doubt but that we will have\na guide and an unbroken succession of guides.  But I think their\ntask would be easier, our way be less clouded with dejection and\ndoubt, if we placed our trust in no hierarchy of beings, however\naugust, but in the Law of which they are ministers.  Their power,\nthough mighty, ebbs and flows with contracting and expanding nature.\nThey, like us, are but children in the dense infinitudes.  Something\nlike this, I think, the Wise Ones would wish each one of us to speak:\n\"O Brotherhood of Light, though I long to be with you, though it\nsustains me to think you are behind me, though your aid made sure\nmy path, still, if the Law does not permit you to act for me today,\nI trust in the One whose love a fiery breath never ceases;  I fall\nback on it with exultation:  I rely upon it joyfully.\"  Was it not\nto point to that greater life that the elder brothers sent forth\ntheir messengers, to tell us that it is on this we ought to rely,\nto point us to grander thrones than they are seated on?  It is\nwell to be prepared to face any chance with equal mind;  to meet\nthe darkness with gay and defiant thought as to salute the Light\nwith reverence and love and joy.  But I have it in my heart that\nwe are not deserted.  As the cycles went their upward way the\nheroic figures of the dawn reappear.  Some have passed before us;\nothers in the same spirit and power will follow:  for the new day\na rearisen sun and morning stars to herald it.  When it comes let\nit find us, not drowsy after our night in time, but awake, prepared\nand ready to go forth from the house of sleep, to stretch hands\nto the light, to live and labor in joy, having the Gods for our\nguides and friends.\n\n--May 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Mountains\n\n\n\n\nWhile we live within four walls we half insensibly lose something\nof our naturalness and comport ourselves as creatures of the\ncivilization we belong to.  But we never really feel at home there,\nthough childhood may have wreathed round with tender memories old\nrooms and the quaint garden-places of happy unthinking hours.\nThere is a house, a temple not built with hands;  perhaps we thought\nit a mere cabin when we first formed it, and laid aside humbly many\nof our royal possessions as we entered, for the heavens and the\nheaven of heavens could not contain all of our glory.  But now it\nseems vast enough, and we feel more at home there, and we find\nplaces which seem nearer of access to our first life.  Such are\nthe mountains.  As I lie here on the monstrous mould of the hillside\ncovered with such delicate fringes of tiny green leaves, I understand\nsomething of his longing who said:  \"I lift up mine eyes to the hills,\nfrom whence cometh my aid.\"  Oh, but the air is sweet, is sweet.\nEarth-breath, what is it you whisper?  As I listen, listen, I know\nit is no whisper but a chant from profoundest deeps, a voice hailing\nits great companions in the aether spaces, but whose innumerable\ntones in their infinite modulations speak clear to us also in our\nlittleness.  Our lips are stilled with awe;  we dare not repeat\nwhat here we think.  These mountains are sacred in our Celtic\ntraditions.  Haunt of the mysteries, here the Tuatha de Danaans\nonce had their home.  We sigh, thinking of the vanished glory, but\nlook with hope for the fulfilment of the prophecy which the seer\nof another line left on record, that once more the Druid fires\nshould blaze on these mountains.  As the purple amplitude of night\nenfold them, already the dark mounds seem to throw up their sheeny\nilluminations;  great shadowy forms, the shepherds of our race,\nto throng and gather;  the many-coloured winds to roll their aerial\ntides hither and thither.  Eri, hearth and home of so many mystic\nraces, Isle of Destiny, there shall yet return to thee the spiritual\nmagic that thrilled thee long ago.  As we descend and go back to\na life, not the life we would will, not the life we will have, we\nthink with sorrow of the pain, the passion, the partings, through\nwhich our race will once more return to nature, spirit and freedom.\n\nWe turned back mad from the mystic mountains\n        All foamed with red and with faery gold;\nUp from the heart of the twilight's fountains\n        The fires enchanted were starward rolled.\n\nWe turned back mad--we thought of the morrow,\n        The iron clang of the far-away town:\nWe could not weep in our bitter sorrow\n        But joy as an arctic sun went down.\n\n--May 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nWorks and Days\n\n\n\n\nWhen we were boys with what anxiety we watched for the rare smile\non the master's face ere we preferred a request for some favor, a\nholiday or early release.  There was wisdom in that.  As we grow\nup we act more or less consciously upon intuitions as to time and\nplace.  My companion, I shall not invite you to a merrymaking when\na bitter moment befalls you and the flame of life sinks into ashes\nin your heart;  nor yet, however true and trusted, will I confide\nto you what inward revelations of the mysteries I may have while\nI sense in you a momentary outwardness.  The gifts of the heart\nare too sacred to be laid before a closed door.  Your mood, I know,\nwill pass, and tomorrow we shall have this bond between us.  I wait,\nfor it can be said but once:  I cannot commune magically twice on\nthe same theme with you.  I do not propose we should be opportunists,\nnor lay down a formula;  but to be skillful in action we must work\nwith and comprehend the ebb and flow of power.  Mystery and gloom,\ndark blue and starshine, doubt and feebleness alternate with the\nclear and shining, opal skies and sunglow, heroic ardor and the\nexultation of power.  Ever varying, prismatic and fleeting, the\ndays go by and the secret of change eludes us here.  I bend the\nbow of thought at a mark and it is already gone.  I lay the shaft\naside and while unprepared the quarry again fleets by.  We have\nto seek elsewhere for the source of that power which momentarily\noverflows into our world and transforms it with its enchantment.\n\nOn the motions of an inner sphere, we are told, all things here depend;\non spheres of the less evanescent which, in their turn, are enclosed\nin spheres of the real, whose solemn chariot movements again are\nguided by the inflexible will of Fire.  In all of these we have part.\nThis dim consciousness which burns in my brain is not all of myself.\nBehind me it widens out and upward into God.  I feel in some other\nworld it shines with purer light:  in some sphere more divine than\nthis it has a larger day and a deeper rest.  That day of the inner\nself illuminates many of our mortal days;  its night leaves many\nof them dark.  And so the One Ray expanding lives in many vestures.\nIt is last of all the King-Self who wakes at the dawn of ages,\nwhose day is the day of Brahma, whose rest is his rest.  Here is\nthe clue to cyclic change, to the individual feebleness and power,\nthe gloom of one epoch and the glory of another.  The Bright Fortnight,\nthe Northern Sun, Light and Flame name the days of other spheres,\nand wandering on from day to day man may at last reach the end of\nhis journey.  You would pass from rapidly revolving day and night\nto where the mystical sunlight streams.  The way lies through\nyourself and the portals open as the inner day expands.  Who is\nthere who has not felt in some way or other the rhythmic recurrence\nof light within?  We were weary of life, baffled, ready to forswear\nendeavor, when half insensibly a change comes over us;  we doubt\nno more but do joyfully our work;  we renew the sweet magical\naffinities with nature:  out of a heart more laden with love we\nthink and act;  our meditations prolong themselves into the shining\nwonderful life of soul;  we tremble on the verge of the vast halls\nof the gods where their mighty speech may be heard, their message\nof radiant will be seen.  They speak a universal language not for\nthemselves only but for all.  What is poetry but a mingling of\nsome tone of theirs with the sounds that below we utter?  What is\nlove but a breath of their very being?  Their every mood has colors\nbeyond the rainbow;  every thought rings in far-heard melody.  So\nthe gods speak to each other across the expanses of ethereal light,\nbreaking the divine silences with words which are deeds.  So, too,\nthey speak to the soul.  Mystics of all time have tried to express\nit, likening it to peals of faery bells, the singing of enchanted\nbirds, the clanging of silver cymbals, the organ voices of wind\nand water bent together--but in vain, in vain.  Perhaps in this\nthere is a danger, for the true is realized in being and not in\nperception.  The gods are ourselves beyond the changes of time\nwhich harass and vex us here.  They do not demand adoration but an\nequal will to bind us consciously in unity with themselves.  The\nheresy of separateness cuts us asunder in these enraptured moments;\nbut when thrilled by the deepest breath, when the silent, unseen,\nuncomprehended takes possession of thee, think \"Thou art That,\"\nand something of thee will abide for ever in It.  All thought not\nbased on this is a weaving of new bonds, of illusions more difficult\nto break;  it begets only more passionate longing and pain.\n\nStill we must learn to know the hidden ways, to use the luminous\nrivers for the commerce of thought.  Our Druid forefathers began\ntheir magical operations on the sixth day of the new moon, taking\nthe Bright Fortnight at its flood-time.  In these hours of expansion\nwhat we think has more force, more freedom, more electric and\npenetrating power.  We find too, if we have co-workers, that we\ndraw from a common fountain, the same impulse visits us and them.\nWhat one possess all become possessed of;  and something of the\nsame unity and harmony arises between us here as exists for all\ntime between us in the worlds above.  While the currents circulate\nwe are to see to it that they part from us no less pure than they came.\nTo this dawn of an inner day may in some measure be traced the sudden\ninspirations of movements, such as we lately feel, not all due to\nthe abrupt descent into our midst of a new messenger, for the elder\nBrothers work with law and foresee when nature, time, and the\nawakening souls of men will aid them.  Much may now be done.  On\nwhosoever accepts, acknowledges and does the will of the Light in\nthese awakenings the die and image of divinity is more firmly set,\nhis thought grows more consciously into the being of the presiding\ngod.  Yet not while seeking for ourselves can we lay hold of final\ntruths, for then what we perceive we retain but in thought and memory.\nThe Highest is a motion, a breath.  We become it only in the imparting.\nIt is in all, for all and goes out to all.  It will not be restrained\nin a narrow basin, but through the free-giver it freely flows.\nThere are throngs innumerable who await this gift.  Can we let this\nmost ancient light which again returns to us be felt by them only\nas a vague emotion, a little peace of uncertain duration, a passing\nsweetness of the heart?  Can we not do something to allay the sorrow\nof the world?  My brothers, the time of opportunity has come.  One\nday in the long-marshaled line of endless days has dawned for our\nrace, and the buried treasure-houses in the bosom of the deep have\nbeen opened to endow it with more light, to fill it with more power.\nThe divine ascetics stand with torches lit before the temple of wisdom.\nThose who are nigh them have caught the fire and offer to us in turn\nto light the torch, the blazing torch of soul.  Let us accept the\ngift and pass it on, pointing out the prime givers.  We shall see\nin time the eager races of men starting on their pilgrimage of\nreturn and facing the light.  So in the mystical past the call of\nlight was seen on the sacred hills;  the rays were spread and gathered;\nand returning with them the initiate-children were buried in the\nFather-Flame.\n\n--June 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Childhood of Apollo\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was long ago, so long that only the spirit of earth remembers\ntruly.  The old shepherd Tithonius sat before the door of his hut\nwaiting for his grandson to return.  He watched with drowsy eyes\nthe eve gather, and the woods and mountains grow dark over the isles--\nthe isles of ancient Greece.  It was Greece before its day of beauty,\nand day was never lovelier.  The cloudy blossoms of smoke curling\nupward from the valley sparkled a while high up in the sunlit air,\na vague memorial of the world of men below.  From that too the\ncolour vanished, and those other lights began to shine which to\nsome are the only lights of day.  The skies dropped close upon the\nmountains and the silver seas, like a vast face brooding with\nintentness;  there was enchantment, mystery, and a living motion\nin its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus enfolding his\nstarry children with the dark radiance of aether.\n\n\"Ah!\" murmured the old man, looking upward, \"once it was living;\nonce it spoke to me.  It speaks not now, but it speaks to others\nI know--to the child who looks and longs and trembles in the dewy\nnight.  Why does he linger now?  He is beyond his hour.  Ah, there\nnow are his footsteps!\"\n\nA boy came up the valley driving the grey flocks which tumbled\nbefore him in the darkness.  He lifted his young face for the\nshepherd to kiss.  It was alight with ecstasy.  Tithonius looked\nat him with wonder.  A light golden and silvery rayed all about\nthe him so that his delicate ethereal beauty seemed set in a star\nwhich followed his dancing footsteps.\n\n\"How bright your eyes!\" the old man said, faltering with sudden awe.\n\"Why do your white limbs shine with moonfire light?\"\n\n\"Oh, father,\" said the boy Apollo, \"I am glad, for everything is\nliving tonight.  The evening is all a voice and many voices.  While\nthe flocks were browsing night gathered about me:  I saw within it\nand it was living everywhere; and all together, the wind with dim-\nblown tresses, odour, incense and secret-falling dew, mingled in\none warm breath.  They whispered to me and called me 'Child of the\nStars,' 'Dew Heart,' and 'Soul of Fire.'  Oh, father, as I came up\nthe valley the voices followed me with song;  everything murmured\nlove;  even the daffodils, nodding in the olive gloom, grew golden\nat my feet, and a flower within my heart knew of the still sweet\nsecret of the flowers.  Listen, listen!\"\n\nThere were voices in the night, voices as of star-rays descending.\n\n\"Now the roof-tree of the midnight spreading\nBuds in citron, green, and blue:\nFrom afar its mystic odors shedding,\n        Child, on you.\"\n\nThen other sweet speakers from beneath the earth, and from the\ndistant waters and air followed in benediction, and a last voice\nlike a murmur from universal Nature:\n\n\"Now the buried stars beneath the mountains\nAnd the vales their life renew,\nJetting rainbow blooms from tiny fountains,\n        Child, for you.\n\n\"As within our quiet waters passing\nSun and moon and stars we view,\nSo the loveliness of life is glassing,\n        Child, in you.\n\n\"In the diamond air the sun-star glowing\nUp its feathered radiance threw;\nAll the jewel glory there was flowing,\n        Child, for you.\n\n\"And the fire divine in all things burning\nYearns for home and rest anew,\nFrom its wanderings far again returning,\n        Child, to you.\"\n\n\"Oh, voices, voices,\" cried the child, \"what you say I know not,\nbut I ray back love for love.  Father, what is it they tell me?\nThey embosom me in light and I am far away even though I hold\nyour hand.\"\n\n\"The gods are about us.  Heaven mingles with the earth,\" said\nTithonius trembling.  \"Let us go to Diotima.  She has grown wise\nbrooding for many a year where the great caves lead to the underworld.\nShe sees the bright ones as they pass by where she sits with shut\neyes, her drowsy lips murmuring as nature's self.\"\n\nThat night the island seemed no more earth set in sea, but a music\nencircled by the silence.  The trees long rooted in antique slumber\nwere throbbing with rich life;  through glimmering bark and drooping\nleaf a light fell on the old man and boy as they passed, and vague\nfigures nodded at them.  These were the hamadryad souls of the wood.\nThey were bathed in tender colours and shimmering lights draping\nthem from root to leaf.  A murmur came from the heart of every one,\na low enchantment breathing joy and peace.  It grew and swelled\nuntil at last it seemed as if through a myriad pipes that Pan the\nearth spirit was fluting his magical creative song.\n\nThey found the cave of Diotima covered by vines and tangled strailers\nat the end of the island where the dark-green woodland rose up from\nthe waters.  Tithonius paused, for he dreaded this mystic prophetess;\nbut a voice from within called them:  \"Come in, child of light;\ncome in, old shepherd, I know why you seek me!\"  They entered,\nTithonius trembling with more fear than before.  A fire was blazing\nin a recess of the cavern and by it sat a majestic figure robed\nin purple.  She was bent forward, her hand supporting her face,\nher burning eyes turned on the intruders.\n\n\"Come hither, child,\" she said, taking the boy by the hands and\ngazing into his face.  \"So this frail form is to be the home of\nthe god.  The gods choose wisely.  They take no warrior wild, no\nmighty hero to be their messenger to men, but crown this gentle\nhead.  Tell me--you dream--have you ever seen a light from the sun\nfalling upon you in your slumber?  No, but look now;  look upward.\"\nAs she spoke she waved her hands over him, and the cavern with its\ndusky roof seemed to melt away, and beyond the heavens the heaven\nof heavens lay dark in pure tranquillity, a quiet which was the\nvery hush of being.  In an instant it vanished and over the zenith\nbroke a wonderful light.  \"See now,\" cried Diotima, \"the Ancient\nBeauty!  Look how its petals expand and what comes forth from its\nheart!\"  A vast and glowing breath, mutable and opalescent, spread\nitself between heaven and earth, and out of it slowly descended a\nradiant form like a god's.  It drew nigh radiating lights, pure,\nbeautiful, and starlike.  It stood for a moment by the child and\nplaced its hand on his head, and then it was gone.  The old shepherd\nfell upon his face in awe, while the boy stood breathless and entranced.\n\n\"Go now,\" said the Sybil, \"I can teach thee naught.  Nature herself\nwill adore you and sing through you her loveliest song.  But, ah,\nthe light you hail in joy you shall impart in tears.  So from age\nto age the eternal Beauty bows itself down amid sorrows that the\nchildren of men may not forget it, that their anguish may be\ntransformed smitten through by its fire.\"\n\n--November 15, 1896\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Awakening of the Fires\n\n\n\n\nWhen twilight flutters the mountains over\nThe faery lights from the earth unfold,\nAnd over the hills enchanted hover\nThe giant heroes and gods of old:\nThe bird of aether its flaming pinions\nWaves over earth the whole night long:\nThe stars drop down in their blue dominions\nTo hymn together their choral song:\nThe child of earth in his heart grows burning\nMad for the night and the deep unknown;\nHis alien flame in a dream returning\nSeats itself on the ancient throne.\nWhen twilight over the mountains fluttered\nAnd night with its starry millions came,\nI too had dreams;  the thoughts I have uttered.\nCome from my heart that was touched by the flame\n\nI thought over the attempts made time after time to gain our freedom;\nhow failure had followed failure until at last it seemed that we must\nwrite over hero and chieftain of our cause the memorial spoken of\nthe warriors of old, \"They went forth to the battle but they always\nfell;\" and it seemed to me that these efforts resulted in failure\nbecause the ideals put forward were not in the plan of nature for us;\nthat it was not in our destiny that we should attempt a civilization\nlike that of other lands.  Though the cry of nationality rings for\never in our ears, the word here has embodied to most no other hope\nthan this, that we should when free be able to enter with more\nenergy upon pursuits already adopted by the people of other countries.\nOur leaders have erected no nobler standard than theirs, and we who,\nas a race, are the forlorn hope of idealism in Europe, sink day by\nday into apathy and forget what a past was ours and what a destiny\nawaits us if we will but rise responsive to it.  Though so old in\ntradition this Ireland of today is a child among the nations of\nthe world;  and what a child, and with what a strain of genius in\nit!  There is all the superstition, the timidity and lack of judgment,\nthe unthought recklessness of childhood, but combined with what\ngenerosity and devotion, and what an unfathomable love for its heroes.\nWho can forget that memorable day when its last great chief was\nlaid to rest?  He was not the prophet of our spiritual future;\nhe was not the hero of our highest ideals;  but he was the only\nhero we knew.  The very air was penetrated with the sobbing and\npassion of unutterable regret.  Ah, Eri, in other lands there is\nstrength and mind and the massive culmination of ordered power,\nbut in thee alone is there such love as the big heart of childhood\ncan feel.  It is this which maketh all thy exiles turn with longing\nthoughts to thee.\n\nBefore trying her to indicate a direction for the future, guessed\nfrom brooding on the far past and by touching on the secret springs\nin the heart of the present, it may make that future seem easier\nof access if I point out what we have escaped and also show that\nwe have already a freedom which, though but half recognized, is\nyet our most precious heritage.  We are not yet involved in a social\nknot which only red revolution can sever:  our humanity, the ancient\ngift of nature to us, is still fresh in our veins:  our force is\nnot merely the reverberation of a past, an inevitable momentum\nstarted in the long ago, but is free for newer life to do what we\nwill with in the coming time.\n\nI know there are some who regret this, who associate national\ngreatness with the whirr and buzz of many wheels, the smoke of\nfactories and with large dividends;  and others, again, who wish\nthat our simple minds were illuminated by the culture and wisdom\nof our neighbours.  But I raise the standard of idealism, to try\neverything by it, every custom, every thought before we make it\nour own, and every sentiment before it finds a place in our hearts.\nAre these conditions, social and mental, which some would have us\nstrive for really so admirable as we are assured they are?  Are\nthey worth having at all?  What of the heroic best of man;  how\ndoes that show?  His spirituality, beauty and tenderness, are\nthese fostered in the civilizations of today?  I say if questions\nlike these bearing upon that inner life wherein is the real greatness\nof nations cannot be answered satisfactorily, that it is our duty\nto maintain our struggle, to remain aloof, lest by accepting a\ndelusive prosperity we shut ourselves from our primitive sources\nof power.  For this spirit of the modern, with which we are so\nlittle in touch, is one which tends to lead man further and further\nfrom nature.  She is no more to him the Great Mother so reverently\nnamed long ago, but merely an adjunct to his life, the distant\nsupplier of his needs.  What to the average dweller in cities are\nstars and skies and mountains?  They pay no dividends to him, no\nwages.  Why should he care about them indeed.  And no longer\nconcerning himself about nature what wonder is it that nature\nebbs out of him.  She has her revenge, for from whatever standpoint\nof idealism considered the average man shows but of pigmy stature.\nFor him there is no before or after.  In his material life he has\nforgotten or never heard of the heroic traditions of his race,\ntheir aspirations to godlike state.  One wonders what will happen\nto him when death ushers him out from the great visible life to\nthe loneliness amid the stars.  To what hearth or home shall he\nflee who never raised the veil of nature while living, nor saw it\nwaver tremulous with the hidden glory before his eyes?  The Holy\nBreath from the past communes no more with him, and if he is\noblivious of these things, though a thousand workman call him\nmaster, within he is bankrupt, his effects sequestered, a poor\nshadow, an outcast from the Kingdom of Light.\n\nWe see too, that as age after age passes and teems only with the\ncommonplace, that those who are the poets and teachers falter and\nlose faith:  they utter no more of man the divine things the poets\nsaid of old.  Perhaps the sheer respectability of the people they\naddress deters them from making statements which in some respects\nmight be considered libelous.  But from whatever cause, from lack\nof heart or lack of faith, they have no real inspiration.  The\nliterature of Europe has had but little influence on the Celt in\nthis isle.  Its philosophies and revolutionary ideas have stayed\ntheir waves at his coast:  they had no message of interpretation\nfor him, no potent electric thought to light up the mystery of his\nnature.  For the mystery of the Celt is the mystery of Amergin the\nDruid.  All nature speaks through him.  He is her darling, the\nconfidant of her secrets.  Her mountains have been more to him\nthan a feeling.  She has revealed them to him as the home of her\nbrighter children, her heroes become immortal.  For him her streams\nripple with magical life and the light of day was once filled with\nmore aerial rainbow wonder.  Though thousands of years have passed\nsince this mysterious Druid land was at its noonday, and long\ncenturies have rolled by since the weeping seers saw the lights\nvanish from mountain and valley, still this alliance of the soul\nof man and the soul of nature more or less manifestly characterizes\nthe people of this isle.  The thought produced in and for complex\ncivilizations is not pregnant enough with the vast for them, is\nnot enough thrilled through by that impalpable breathing from\nanother nature.  We have had but little native literature here\nworth the name until of late years, and that not yet popularized,\nbut during all these centuries the Celt has kept in his heart some\naffinity with the mighty beings ruling in the unseen, once so\nevident to the heroic races who preceded him.  His legends and\nfaery tales have connected his soul with the inner lives of air\nand water and earth, and they in turn have kept his heart sweet\nwith hidden influence.  It would make one feel sad to think that\nall that beautiful folklore is fading slowly from the memory that\nheld it so long, were it not for the belief that the watchful\npowers who fostered its continuance relax their care because the\nnight with beautiful dreams and deeds done only in fancy is passing:\nthe day is coming with the beautiful real, with heroes and heroic deeds.\n\n\nIt may not be well to prophecy, but it is always permissible to\nspeak of our hopes.  If day but copies day may we not hope for\nIreland, after its long cycle of night, such another glory as\nlightened it of old, which tradition paints in such mystic colours?\nWhat was the mysterious glamour of the Druid age?  What meant the\nfires on the mountains, the rainbow glow of air, the magic life in\nwater and earth, but that the Radiance of Deity was shining through\nour shadowy world, that it mingled with and was perceived along\nwith the forms we know.  There it threw up its fountains of life-\ngiving fire, the faery fountains of story, and the children of\nearth breathing that rich life felt the flush of an immortal vigour\nwithin them;  and so nourished sprang into being the Danaan races,\nmen who made themselves gods by will and that magical breath.\nRulers of earth and air and fire, their memory looms titanic in\nthe cloud stories of our dawn, and as we think of that splendid\nstrength of the past something leaps up in the heart to confirm\nit true for all the wonder of it.\n\nThis idea of man's expansion into divinity, which is in the highest\nteaching of every race, is one which shone like a star at the dawn\nof our Celtic history also.  Hero after hero is called away by a\nvoice ringing out of the land of eternal youth, which is but a\nname for the soul of earth, the enchantress and mother of all.\nThere as guardians of the race they shed their influence on the isle;\nfrom them sprang all that was best and noblest in our past, and\nlet no one think but that it was noble.  Leaving aside that mystic\nsense of union with another world and looking only at the tales of\nbattle, when we read of heroes whose knightly vows forbade the use\nof stratagem in war, and all but the equal strife with equals in\nopportunity;  when we hear of the reverence for truth among the\nFianna, \"We the Fianna of Erin never lied, falsehood was never\nattributed to us\"--a reverence for truth carried so far that they\ncould not believe their foemen even could speak falsely--I say\nthat in these days when our public life is filled with slander\nand unworthy imputation, we might do worse than turn back to that\nideal Paganism of the past, and learn some lessons of noble trust,\nand this truth that greatness of soul alone insures final victory\nto us who live and move and have our being in the life of God.\n\nIn hoping for such another day I do not of course mean the renewal\nof the ancient order, but rather look for the return of the same\nlight which was manifest in the past.  For so the eternal Beauty\nbrings itself to the memory of man from time to time brooding over\nnations, as in the early Aryan heart, suffusing life and thought\nwith the sun-sense of pervading Deity, or as in Greece where its\nmyriad rays, each an intuition of loveliness, descended and dwelt\nnot only in poet, sage and sculptor, but in the general being of\nthe people.  What has been called the Celtic renaissance in\nliterature is one of the least of the signs.  Of far more\nsignificance is the number of strange, dreamy children one meets,\nwhose hearts are in the elsewhere, and young people who love to\nbrood on the past, I speak of which is all the world to them.\nThe present has no voice to interpret their dreams and visions,\nthe enraptured solitude by mountain or shore, or what they feel\nwhen they lie close pressed to the bosom of the earth, mad with\nthe longing for old joys, the fiery communion of spirit with spirit,\nwhich was once the privilege of man.  These some voice, not\nproclaiming an arid political propaganda, may recall into the\nactual:  some ideal of heroic life may bring them to the service\nof their kind, and none can serve the world better than those who\nfrom mighty dreams turn exultant to their realisation:  who bring\nto labour the love, the courage, the unfailing hope, which they\nonly possess who have gone into the hidden nature and found it\nsweet at heart.\n\nSo this Isle, once called the Sacred Isle and also the Isle of\nDestiny, may find a destiny worthy of fulfilment:  not to be a\npetty peasant republic, nor a miniature duplicate in life and aims\nof great material empires, but that its children out of their faith,\nwhich has never failed may realise this imemorial truth of man's\ninmost divinity, and in expressing it may ray the light over every\nland.  Now, although a great literature and great thought may be\npart of our future, it ought not to be the essential part of our\nideal.  As in our past the bards gave way before the heroes, so\nin any national ideal worthy the name, all must give way in its\nhopes, wealth, literature, art, everything before manhood itself.\nIf our humanity fails us or become degraded, of what value are\nthe rest?  What use would it be to you or to me if our ships\nsailed on every sea and our wealth rivaled the antique Ind, if\nwe ourselves were unchanged, had no more kingly consciousness of\nlife, nor that overtopping grandeur of soul indifferent whether\nit dwells in a palace or a cottage?\n\nIf this be not clear to the intuition, there is the experience of\nthe world and the example of many nations.  Let us take the highest,\nand consider what have a thousand years of empire brought to England.\nWealth without parallel, but at what expense!  The lover of his\nkind must feel as if a knife were entering his heart when he looks\nat those black centres of boasted prosperity, at factory, smoke\nand mine, the arid life and spiritual death.  Do you call those\nmiserable myriads a humanity?  We look at those people in despair\nand pity.  Where is the ancient image of divinity in man's face:\nwhere in man's heart the prompting of the divine?  There is nothing\nbut a ceaseless energy without;  a night terrible as hell within.\nIs this the only way for us as a people?  Is nature to be lost;\nbeauty to be swallowed up?  The crown and sceptre were taken from\nus in the past, our path has been strewn with sorrows, but the\nspirit shall not be taken until it becomes as clay, and man forgets\nthat he was born in the divine, and hears no more the call of the\ngreat deep in his heart as he bows himself to the dust in his bitter\nlabours.  It maddens to think it should be for ever thus, with us\nand with them, and that man the immortal, man the divine, should\nsink deeper and deeper into night and ignorance, and know no more\nof himself than glimmers upon him in the wearied intervals of\nlong routine.\n\nHere we have this hope that nature appeals with her old glamour\nto many, and there is still the ancient love for the hero.  In a\nland where so many well nigh hopeless causes have found faithful\nadherents, where there has been so much devotion and sacrifice,\nwhere poverty has made itself poorer still for the sake of leader\nand cause, may we not hope that when an appeal is made to the\npeople to follow still higher ideals, that they will set aside\nthe lower for the higher, that they will not relegate idealism\nto the poets only, but that it will dwell in the public as the\nprivate heart and make impossible any nations' undertaking\ninconsistent with the dignity and beauty of life?  To me it seems\nthat here the task of teacher and writer is above all to present\nimages and ideals of divine manhood to the people whose real gods\nhave always been their heroes.  These titan figures, Cuculain,\nFinn, Oscar, Oisin, Caolte, all a mixed gentleness and fire, have\ncommanded for generations that spontaneous love which is the only\ntrue worship paid by men.  It is because of this profound and long-\nenduring love for the heroes, which must be considered as forecasting\nthe future, that I declare the true ideal and destiny of the Celt\nin this island to be the begetting of humanity whose desires and\nvisions shall rise above earth illimitable into godlike nature,\nwho shall renew for the world the hope, the beauty, the magic,\nthe wonder which will draw the buried stars which are the souls of\nmen to their native firmament of spiritual light and elemental power.\n\nFor the hero with us there is ample scope and need.  There are the\nspectres of ignoble hopes, the lethal influences of a huge material\ncivilisation wafted to us from over seas, which must be laid.  Oh,\nthat a protest might be made ere it becomes more difficult, ere\nthis wild, beautiful land of ours be viewed only as a lure to draw\nmoney from the cockney tourist, and the immemorial traditions around\nour sacred hills be of value only to advertise the last hotel.  Yet\nto avert the perils arising from external causes is but a slight\ntask compared with the overcoming of obstacles already existent within.\nThere is one which must be removed at whatever cost, though the hero\nmay well become the martyr in the attempt.  It is a difficulty which\nhas its strength from one of the very virtues of the people, their\nreverence for religion.  This in itself is altogether well.  But\nit is not well when the nature of that religion enables its priests\nto sway men from their natural choice of hero and cause by the threat\nof spiritual terrors.  I say that where this takes place to any\ngreat extent, as it has with us, it is not a land a freeman can\nthink of with pride.  It is not a place where the lover of freedom\ncan rest, but he must spend sleepless nights, must brood, must scheme,\nmust wait to strike a blow.  To the thought of freedom it must be\nsaid to our shame none of the nobler meaning attaches here.  Freedom\nto speak what hopes and ideals we may have;  to act openly for what\ncause we will;  to allow that freedom to others--that liberty is\ndenied.  There are but too many places where to differ openly from\nthe priest in politics is to provoke a brawl, where to speak as\nhere with the fearlessness of print would be to endanger life.\nWith what scorn one hears the aspiration from public freedom from\nlips that are closed with the dread by their own hearthside!  Let\nfreedom arise where first it is possible in the hearts of men, in\ntheir thoughts, in speech between one and another, and then the\ngods may not deem us unworthy of the further sway of our national\nlife.  I would that some of the defiant spirit of the old warrior\nbrood were here, not indeed to provoke strife between man and man,\nor race and race, but rather that we might be fearless in the\nspirit of one who said \"I do not war against flesh and blood, but\nagainst principalities and powers\"--and against influences which\nfetter progress, against an iron materialism where the beauty of\nlife perishes, let us revolt, let us war for ever.\n\nBut with all this I, like others who have narrowly watched the signs\nof awakening life, do not doubt but that these things will pass as\ngreater potencies throng in and impel to action.  Already the rush\nof the earth-breath begins to fill with elation our island race and\nuplift them with the sense of power;  and through the power sometimes\nflashes the glory, the spiritual radiance which will be ours hereafter,\nif old prophecy can be trusted and our hearts prompt us true.  Here\nand there some rapt dreamer more inward than the rest sees that\nTir-na-noge was no fable, but is still around him with all its mystic\nbeauty for ever.  The green hills grow alive with the star-children\nfleeting, flashing on their twilight errands from gods to men.\nWhen the heart opens to receive them and the ties which bind us to\nunseen nature are felt our day will begin and the fires awaken,\nour isle will be the Sacred Island once again and our great ones\nthe light-givers to humanity, not voicing new things, but only of\nthe old, old truths one more affirmation;  for what is all wisdom,\nwherever uttered, whether in time past or today, but the One Life,\nthe One Breath, chanting its innumerable tones of thought and joy\nand love in the heart of man, one voice throughout myriad years\nwhose message eterne is this--you are by your nature immortal,\nand you may be, if you will it, divine.\n\n--Jan. 15, Feb. 15, 1897\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Secret Ties\n\n\n\n\nOur deepest life is when we are alone.  We think most truly, love\nbest, when isolated from the outer world in that mystic abyss we\ncall soul.  Nothing external can equal the fulness of these moments.\nWe may sit in the blue twilight with a friend, or bend together by\nthe hearth, half whispering, or in a silence populous with loving\nthoughts mutually understood;  then we may feel happy and at peace,\nbut it is only because we are lulled by a semblance to deeper\nintimacies.  When we think of a friend, and the loved one draws nigh,\nwe sometimes feel half-pained, for we touched something in our\nsolitude which the living presence shut out;  we seem more apart,\nand would fain cry out--\"Only in my deep heart I love you, sweetest\nheart;  call me not forth from this;  I am no more a spirit if I\nleave my throne.\"  But these moods, though lit up by intuitions\nof the true, are too partial, they belong too much to the twilight\nof the heart, they have too dreamy a temper to serve us well in life.\nWe should wish rather for our thoughts a directness such as belongs\nto the messengers of the gods, swift, beautiful, flashing presences\nbent on purposes well understood.\n\nWhat we need is that this interior tenderness shall be elevated\ninto seership, that what in most is only yearning or blind love\nshall see clearly its way and hope and aim.  To this end we have\nto observe more intently the nature of the interior life.  We find,\nindeed, that it is not a solitude at all, but dense with multitudinous\nbeing:  instead of being alone we are in the thronged highways of\nexistence.  For our guidance when entering here many words of warning\nhave been uttered, laws have been outlined, and beings full of wonder,\nterror, and beauty described.  Yet there is a spirit in us deeper\nthan our intellectual being which I think of as the Hero in man,\nwho feels the nobility of its place in the midst of all this, and\nwho would fain equal the greatness of perception with deeds as great.\nThe weariness and sense of futility which often falls upon the mystic\nafter much thought is due, I think, to this, that here he has duties\ndemanding a more sustained endurance just as the inner life is so\nmuch vaster and more intense than the life he has left behind.\n\nNow, the duties which can be taken up by the soul are exactly those\nwhich it feels most inadequate to perform when acting as an embodied\nbeing.  What shall be done to quiet the heart-cry of the world:\nhow answer the dumb appeal for help we so often divine below eyes\nthat laugh?  It is sadder than sorrow to think that pity with no\nhands to heal, that love without a voice to speak, should helplessly\nheap their pain upon pain while earth shall endure.  But there is\na truth about sorrow which I think may make it seem not so hopeless.\nThere are fewer barriers than we think:  there is, in fact, an inner\nalliance between the soul who would fain give and the soul who is\nin need.  Nature has well provided that not one golden ray of all\nour thoughts is sped ineffective through the dark;  not one drop\nof the magical elixirs love distills is wasted.  Let us consider\nhow this may be.  There is a habit we nearly all have indulged in:\nwe often weave little stories in our minds expending love and pity\nupon the imaginary beings we have created.  But I have been led to\nthink that many of these are not imaginary, that somewhere in the\nworld beings are thinking, loving, suffering just in that way, and\nwe merely reform and live over again in our life the story of\nanother life.  Sometimes these faraway intimates assume so vivid\na shape, they come so near with their appeal for sympathy that the\npictures are unforgettable, and the more I ponder over them the\nmore it seems to me that they often convey the actual need of some\nsoul whose cry for comfort has gone out into the vast, perhaps to\nmeet with an answer, perhaps to hear only silence.  I will supply\nan instance.  I see a child, a curious, delicate little thing,\nseated on the doorstep of a house.  It is an alley in some great\ncity;  there is a gloom of evening and vapour over the sky;  I see\nthe child is bending over the path;  he is picking cinders and\narranging them, and, growing closer, as I ponder, I become aware\nthat he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a house, the\nmansion of his dream.  Here spread along the pavement are large\nrooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that\nis his own.  So his thought plays.  Just then I catch a glimpse\nof the corduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot\ncrushes through the cinders.  I feel the pain in the child's heart\nas he shrinks back, his little love-lit house of dreams all rudely\nshattered.  Ah, poor child, building the City Beautiful out of a\nfew cinders, yet nigher, truer in intent than many a stately, gold-\nrich palace reared by princes, thou wert not forgotten by that\nmighty spirit who lives through the falling of empires, whose home\nhas been in many a ruined heart.  Surely it was to bring comfort\nto hearts like thine that that most noble of all meditations was\nordained by the Buddha.  \"He lets his mind pervade one quarter of\nthe world with thoughts of Love, and so the second, and so the\nthird, and so the fourth.  And thus the whole wide world, above,\nbelow, around, and everywhere, does he continue to pervade with\nheart of Love far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure.\"\n\nThe love, though the very fairy breath of life, should by itself\nand so imparted have a sustaining power some may question, not those\nwho have felt the sunlight fall from distant fiends who think of them;\nbut, to make clearer how it seems to me to act, I say that love,\nEros, is a being.  It is more than a power of the soul, though it\nis that also;  it has a universal life of its own,  and just as the\ndark heaving waters do not know what jewel lights they reflect with\nblinding radiance, so the soul, partially absorbing and feeling the\nray of Eros within it, does not know that often a part of its nature\nnearer to the sun of love shines with a brilliant light to other\neyes than its own.  Many people move unconscious of their won charm,\nunknowing of the beauty and power they seem to others to impart.\nIt is some past attainment of the soul, a jewel won in some old\nbattle which it may have forgotten, but none the less this gleams\non its tiara and the star-flame inspires others to hope and victory.\n\nIf is true here than many exert a spiritual influence they are\nunconscious of, it is still truer of the spheres within.  Once the\nsoul has attained to any possession like love, or persistent will,\nor faith, or a power of thought, it comes into psychic contact with\nothers who are struggling for these very powers.  The attainment\nof any of these means that the soul is able to absorb and radiate\nsome of the diviner elements of being.  The soul may or may not be\naware of the position it is placed in and its new duties, but yet\nthat Living Light, having found a way into the being of any one\nperson, does not rest there, but sends its rays and extends its\ninfluence on and on to illumine the darkness of another nature.\nSo it comes that there are ties which bind us to people other than\nthose whom we meet in our everyday life.  I think they are more\nreal ties, more important to understand, for if we let our lamp go\nout some far away who had reached out in the dark and felt a steady\nwill, a persistent hope, a compassionate love, may reach out once\nagain in an hour of need, and finding no support may give way and\nfold the hands in despair.  Often indeed we allow gloom to overcome\nus and so hinder the bright rays in their passage;  but would we\ndo it so often if we thought that perhaps a sadness which besets us,\nwe do not know why, was caused by some heart drawing nigh to ours\nfor comfort, that our lethargy might make it feel still more its\nhelplessness, while our courage, our faith, might cause \"our light\nto shine in some other heart which as yet has no light of its own.\"\n\n--March 15, 1897\n\n\n\n\n\nPriest or Hero?\n\n\n\n\n\"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and\n        self-contained\nI stand and look at them long and long.\nThey do not sweat and whine about their condition,\nThey do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,\nNo one kneels to another, nor to one of his kind that lived thousands\nof years ago.\" ---Walt Whitman\n\n\nI have prefixed some ideas about spiritual freedom addressed to\nthe people of Ireland with these lines from the poet of another\nland, because national sentiment seems out of date here, the old\nheroism slumbers, alien thought and an exotic religion have\nsupplanted our true ideals and our natural spirituality.  I hope\nthat the scornful words of one who breathed a freer air might\nsting to shame those who have not lost altogether the sentiment\nof human dignity, who have still some intuitions as to how far\nand how wisely a man may abase himself before another, whether\nthat other claim divine authority or not.  For this is the true\nproblem which confronts us as a nation, and all else is insignificant\nbeside.  We have found out who are the real rulers here, who dictate\npolitics and public action with no less authority than they speak\nupon religion and morals,  It was only the other day that a priest,\none of our rulers, declared that he would not permit a political\nmeeting to be held in his diocese and this fiat was received with\na submission which showed how accurately the politician gauged\nthe strength opposed to him.  And this has not been the only\noccasion when this power has been exerted:  we all know how many\nnational movements have been interfered with or thwarted;  we know\nthe shameful revelations connected with the elections a few years\nback;  we know how a great leader fell;  and those who are idealists,\nGod's warriors battling for freedom of thought, whose hope for the\nworld is that the intuitions of the true and good divinely implanted\nin each man's breast shall supersede tradition and old authority,\ncannot but feel that their opinions, so much more dangerous to\nthat authority than any political ideal, must, if advocated, bring\nthem at last to clash with the priestly power.  It is not a war\nwith religion we would fain enter upon;  but when those who claim\nthat heaven and hell shut and open at their bidding for the spirit\nof man, use the influence which belief in that claim confers, as\nit has been here, to fetter free-will in action, it is time that\nthe manhood of the nation awoke to sternly question that authority,\nto assert its immemorial right to freedom.\n\nThere live of old in Eri a heroic race whom the bards sang as\nfearless.  There was then no craven dread of the hereafter, for\nthe land of the immortals glimmered about them in dream and vision,\nand already before the decaying of the form the spirit of the hero\nhad crossed the threshold and clasped hands with the gods.  No demon\nnature affrighted them:  from them wielding the flaming sword of\nwill the demons fled away as before Cuculain vanished in terror\nshadowy embattled hosts.  What, I wonder, would these antique\nheroes say coming back to a land which preserves indeed their\nmemory but emulates their spirit no more?  We know what the bards\nthought when heroic Ireland became only a tradition;  when to\ndarkened eyes the elf-lights ceased to gleam, luring no more to\nthe rich radiant world within, the Druidic mysteries, and the\nsecret of the ages.  In the bardic tales their comrade Ossian\nvoices to Patrick their scorn of the new.  Ah, from the light and\njoy of the faery region, from that great companionship with a race\nhalf divine, come back to find that but one divine man had walked\nthe earth, and as for the rest it was at prayer and fasting they\nought to be!  And why?  Because, as Patrick explained to Ossian,\nif they did not they would go to hell.  And this is the very thing\nthe Patricks ever since have been persuading the Irish people to\nbelieve, adding an alien grief unto their many sorrows, foisting\nupon them a vulgar interpretation of the noble idea of divine justice\nto cow them to submission with the threat of flame.  Ossian, chafing\nand fuming under the priestly restriction, declared his preference\nfor hell with the Finians to paradise with Patrick.  His simple\nheroic mind found it impossible to believe that the pure, gentle\nbut indomitable spirits of his comrades could be anywhere quenched\nor quelled, but they must at last arise exultant even from torment.\nWhen Ossian rejects the bribe of paradise to share the darker world\nand the fate of his companions, there spake the true spirit of man;\nspark of illimitable deity;  shrouded in form, yet radiating\nceaselessly heroic thoughts, aspirations, deathless love;  not to\nbe daunted, rising again and again from sorrow with indestructible\nhope;  emerging ever from defeat, its glooms smitten through and\nthrough with the light of visions vast and splendid as the heavens.\nOld bard, old bard, from Tir-na-noge where thou, perchance wrapt\nby that beauty which called thee from earth, singest immortal songs,\nwould that one lightning of they spirit could pierce the hearts\nnow thronged with dread, might issue from lips which dare not speak.\n\nI do not question but that the heroic age had its imperfections,\nor that it was not well that its too warlike ardour was tempered\nby the beautiful, pathetic and ennobling teaching of Christ.  The\nseed of new doctrines bore indeed many lovely but exotic blossoms\nin the saintly times, and also many a noxious weed.  For religion\nmust always be an exotic which makes a far-off land sacred rather\nthan the earth underfoot:  where the Great Spirit whose home is\nthe vast seems no more a moving glamour in the heavens, a dropping\ntenderness at twilight, a visionary light on the hills, a voice in\nman's heart;  when the way of life is sought in scrolls or is heard\nfrom another's lips.  The noxious weed, the unendurable bitter which\nmingled with the sweet and true in this exotic religion was the\nterrible power it put into the hands of men somewhat more learned\nin their ignorance of God than those whom they taught:  the power\nto inflict a deadly wrong upon the soul, to coerce the will by\nterror from the course conscience had marked out as true and good.\nThat power has been used unsparingly and at times with unspeakable\ncruelty whenever those who had it thought their influence was being\nassailed, for power is sweet and its use is not lightly laid aside.\n\nAs we read our island history there seems a ruddy emblazonry on\nevery page, a hue shed from behind the visible, the soul dropping\nits red tears of fire over hopes for ever dissolving, noble ambitions\nfor ever foiled.  Always on the eve of success starts up some fatal\nfigure weaponed with the keys of the hereafter, brandishing more\nespecially the key of the place of torment, warning most particularly\nthose who regard that that key shall not get rusty from want of\nturning if they disobey.  It has been so from the beginning, from\nthe time of the cursing of Tara, where the growing unity of the\nnations was split into fractions, down to the present time.  I\noften doubt if the barbarities in eastern lands which we shudder\nat are in reality half so cruel, if they mean so much anguish as\nthis threat of after-torture does to those who believe in the power\nof another to inflict it.  It wounds the spirit to the heart:  its\nconsciousness of its own immortality becomes entwined with the\nterror of as long enduring pain.  It is a lie which the all-\ncompassionate Father-Spirit never breathed into the ears of his\nchildren, a lie which has been told here century after century with\nsuch insistence that half the nation has the manhood cowed out of it.\nThe offence of the dead chief whose followers were recently assailed\nweighed light as a feather in the balance when compared with the\nsin of these men and their shameful misuse of religious authority\nin Meath a little while ago.  The scenes which took place there,\ntestified and sworn to by witness in the after trials, were only\na copy of what generally took place.  They will take place again\nif the necessity arises.  That is a bitter fact.\n\nA dim consciousness that their servitude is not to God's law but\nto man's ambition is creeping over the people here.  That is a very\nhopeful sign.  When a man first feels he is a slave he begins to\ngrow grey inside, to get moody and irritable.  The sore spot becomes\nmore sensitive the more he broods.  At last to touch it becomes\ndangerous.  For, from such pent-up musing and wrath have sprung\nrebellions, revolutions, the overthrow of dynasties and the fall\nof religions, aye, thrice as mighty as this.  That Thought of freedom\nlets loose the flood-gates of an illimitable fire into the soul;\nit emerges from its narrow prison-cell of thought and fear as the\nsky-reaching genie from the little copper vessel in the tale of\nArabian enchantment;  it lays hand on the powers of storm and\ncommotion like a god.  It would be politic not to press the\ndespotism more;  but it would be a pity perhaps if some further\nact did not take place, just to see a nation flinging aside the\nshackles of superstition;  disdainful of threats, determined to\nseek its own good, resolutely to put aside all external tradition\nand rule;  adhering to its own judgment, though priests falsely\nsay the hosts of the everlasting are arrayed in battle against it,\nthough they threaten the spirit with obscure torment for ever and\never:  still to persist, still to defy, still to obey the orders\nof another captain, that Unknown Deity within whose trumpet-call\nsounds louder than all the cries of men.  There is great comfort,\nmy fellows, in flinging fear aside;  an exultation and delight\nspring up welling from inexhaustible deeps, and a tranquil sweetness\nalso ensues which shows that the powers ever watchful of human\nprogress approve and applaud the act.\n\nIn all this I do not aim at individuals.  It is not with them I\nwould war but with tyranny.  They who enslave are as much or more\nto be pitied than those whom they enslave.  They too are wronged\nby being placed and accepted in a position of false authority.\nThey too enshrine a ray of the divine spirit, which to liberate\nand express is the purpose of life.  Whatever movement ignores the\nneeds of a single unity, or breeds hate against it rather than\ncompassion, is so far imperfect.  But if we give these men, as we\nmust, the credit of sincerity, still opposition is none the less\na duty.  The spirit of man must work out its own destiny, learning\ntruth out of error and pain.  It cannot be moral by proxy.  A\nvirtuous course into which it is whipt by fear will avail it nothing,\nand in that dread hour when it comes before the Mighty who sent it\nforth, neither will the plea avail it that its conscience was in\nanother's keeping.\n\n\nThe choice here lies between Priest and Hero as ideal, and I say\nthat whatever is not heroic is not Irish, has not been nourished\nat the true fountain wherefrom our race and isle derive their mystic\nfame.  There is a life behind the veil, another Eri which the bards\nknew, singing it as the Land of Immortal Youth.  It is not hidden\nfrom us, though we have hidden ourselves from it, so that it has\nbecome only a fading memory in our hearts and a faery fable upon\nour lips.  Yet there are still places in this isle, remote from\nthe crowded cities where men and women eat and drink and wear out\ntheir lives and are lost in the lust for gold, where the shy peasant\nsees the enchanted lights in mountain and woody dell, and hears\nthe faery bells pealing away, away, into that wondrous underland\nwhither, as legends relate, the Danann gods withdrew.  These things\nare not to be heard for the asking;  but some, more reverent than\nthe rest, more intuitive, who understand that the pure eyes of a\npeasant may see the things kings and princes, aye, and priests,\nhave desired to see and have not seen;  that for him may have been\nsomewhat lifted the veil which hides from men the starry spheres\nwhere the Eternal Beauty abides in the shining--these have heard\nand have been filled with the hope that, if ever the mystic truths\nof life could be spoken here, there would be enough of the old\nCeltic fire remaining to bring back the magic into the isle.  That\ndirect relation, that vision, comes fully with spiritual freedom,\nwhen men no longer peer through another's eyes into the mysteries,\nwhen they will not endure that the light shall be darkened by\ntransmission, but spirit speaks with spirit, drawing light from\nthe boundless Light alone.\n\nLeaving aside the question of interference with national movements,\nanother charge, one of the weightiest which can be brought against\nthe priestly influence in this island, is that it has hampered the\nexpression of native genius in literature and thought.  Now the\ncountry is alive with genius, flashing out everywhere, in the\nconversation even of the lowest;  but we cannot point to imaginative\nwork of any importance produced in Ireland which has owed its\ninspiration to the priestly teaching.  The genius of the Gael could\nnot find itself in their doctrines;  though above all things mystical\nit could not pierce its way into the departments of super-nature\nwhere their theology pigeon-holes the souls of the damned and the\nblessed.  It knew of the Eri behind the veil which I spoke of, the\nTir-na-noge which as a lamp lights up our grassy plains, our haunted\nhills and valleys.  The faery tales have ever lain nearer to the\nhearts of the people, and whatever there is of worth in song or\nstory has woven into it the imagery handed down from the dim druidic\nages.  This is more especially true today, when our literature is\nbeginning to manifest preeminent qualities of imagination, not the\ngrey pieties of the cloister, but natural magic, beauty, and heroism.\nOur poets sing Ossian wandering the land of the immortals;  or we\nread in vivid romance of the giant chivalry of the Ultonians, their\nuntamable manhood, the exploits of Cuculain and the children of Rury,\nmore admirable as types, more noble and inspiring than the hierarchy\nof little saints who came later on and cursed their memories.\n\nThe genius of the Gael is awakening after a night of troubled dreams.\nI returns instinctively to the beliefs of its former day and finds\nagain the old inspiration.  It seeks the gods on the mountains,\nstill enfolded by their mantle of multitudinous traditions, or\nsees them flash by in the sunlit diamond airs.  How strange, but\nhow natural is all this!  It seems as if Ossian's was a premature\nreturn.  Today he might find comrades come back from Tir-na-noge\nfor the uplifting of their race.  Perhaps to many a young spirit\nstarting up among us Caolte might speak as to Mongan, saying:  \"I\nwas with thee, with Finn.\"  Hence, it may be, the delight with\nwhich we hear Standish O'Grady declaring that the bardic divinities\nwill remain:  \"Nor, after centuries of obscuration, is their power\nto quicken, purify, and exalt, yet dead.  Still they live and reign,\nand shall reign.\"  After long centuries--the voice of a spirit ever\nyouthful, yet older than all the gods, who with its breath of sunrise-\ncoloured flame jewels with richest lights the visions of earth's\ndreamy-hearted children.  Once more out of the Heart of the Mystery\nis heard the call of \"Come away,\" and after that no other voice\nhas power to lure:  there remain only the long heroic labours which\nend in companionship with the gods.\n\nThese voices do not stand for themselves alone.  They are heralds\nbefore a host.  No man has ever spoken with potent utterance who\ndid not feel the secret urging of dumb, longing multitudes, whose\naspirations and wishes converge on and pour themselves into fearless\nheart.  The thunder of the waves is deeper because the tide is rising.\nThose who are behind do not come only with song and tale, but with\nstern hearts bent on great issues, among which, not least, is the\nintellectual liberation of Ireland.  That is an aim at which some\nof our rulers may well grow uneasy.  Soon shall young men, fiery-\nhearted, children of Eri, a new race, roll our their thoughts on\nthe hillsides, before your very doors, O priests, calling your\nflocks from your dark chapels and twilight sanctuaries to a temple\nnot built with hands, sunlit, starlit, sweet with the odour and\nincense of earth, from your altars call them to the altars of the\nhills, soon to be lit up as of old, soon to be the blazing torches\nof God over the land.  These heroes I see emerging.  Have they not\ncome forth in every land and race when there was need?  Here, too,\nthey will arise.  Ah, may darlings, you will have to fight and suffer:\nyou must endure loneliness, the coldness of friends, the alienation\nof love;  warmed only by the bright interior hope of a future you\nmust toil for but may never see, letting the deed be its own reward;\nlaying in dark places the foundations of that high and holy Eri\nof prophecy, the isle of enchantment, burning with druidic splendours,\nbright with immortal presences, with the face of the everlasting\nBeauty looking in upon all its ways, divine with terrestrial mingling\ntill God and the world are one.\n\nThere waits brooding in this isle a great destiny, and to accomplish\nit we must have freedom of thought.  That is the greatest of our\nneeds, for thought is the lightning-conductor between the heaven-\nworld and earth.  We want fearless advocates who will not be turned\naside from their course by laughter or by threats.  Why is it that\nthe spirit of daring, imaginative enquiry is so dead here?  An\nincubus of spiritual fear seems to beset men women so that they\nthink, if they turn from the beaten track seeking the true, they\nshall meet, not the divine with outstretched hands, but a demon;\nthat the reward for their search will not be joy or power but\nenduring pain.  How the old bard swept away such fears!  \"If thy\nGod were good,\" said Ossian, \"he would call Finn into his dun.\"\nYes, the heroic heart is dear to the heroic heart.  I would back\nthe intuition of an honest soul for truth against piled-up centuries\nof theology.  But this high spirit is stifled everywhere by a dull\ninfallibility which is yet unsuccessful, on its own part, in awakening\ninspiration; and, in the absence of original though, we pick over\nthe bones of dead movements, we discuss the personalities of the\npast, but no one asks the secrets of life or of death.  There are\ndespotic hands in politics, in religion, in education, strangling\nany attempt at freedom.  Of the one institution which might naturally\nbe supposed to be the home of great ideas we can only say, reversing\nthe famous eulogy on Oxford, it has never given itself to any\nnational hero or cause, but always to the Philistine.\n\nWith the young men who throng the literary societies the intellectual\nfuture of Ireland rests.  In them are our future leaders.  Out of\nthese as from a fountain will spring--what?  Will we have another\ngeneration of Irishmen at the same level as today, with everything\nin a state of childhood, boyish patriotism, boyish ideals, boyish\nhumour?  Or will they assimilate the aged thought of the world and\napply it to the needs of their own land?  I remember reading somewhere\na description by Turgenieff of his contemporaries as a young man;\nhow they sat in garrets, drinking execrably bad coffee or tea.  But\nwhat thoughts!  They talked of God, of humanity, of Holy Russia;\nand out of such groups of young men, out of their discussions,\nemanated that vast unrest which has troubled Europe and will trouble\nit still more.  Here no questions are asked and no answers are\nreceived.  There is a pitiful, blind struggle for a nationality\nwhose ideas are not definitely conceived.  What is the ideal of\nIreland as a nation?  It drifts from mind to mind, a phantom thought\nlacking a spirit, but a spirit which will surely incarnate.  Perhaps\nsome of our old heroes may return.  Already it seems as if one had\nbeen here;  a sombre Titan earlier awakened than the rest who passed\nbefore us, and sounded the rallying note of our race before he\nstaggered to his tragic close.  Others of brighter thought will\nfollow to awaken the fires which Brigid in her vision saw gleaming\nbeyond dark centuries of night, and confessed between hope and\ntears to Patrick.  Meanwhile we must fight for intellectual freedom;\nwe must strive to formulate to ourselves what it is we really wish\nfor here, until at last the ideal becomes no more phantasmal but\nliving;  until our voices in aspiration are heard in every land,\nand the nations become aware of a new presence amid their councils,\na last and most beautiful figure, as one after the cross of pain,\nafter the shadowy terrors, with thorn-marks on the brow from a\ncrown flung aside, but now radiant, ennobled after suffering, Eri,\nthe love of so many dreamers, priestess of the mysteries, with the\nchant of beauty on her lips and the heart of nature beating in\nher heart.\n\n--April 15-May 15, 1897\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Age of the Spirit\n\n\n\n\nI am a part of all that I have met:\nYet all experience is an arch wherethro'\nGleams that untraveled world .....\n....... Come, my friends,\n'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.\n--Ulysses\n\nWe are no longer children as we were in the beginning.  The spirit\nwhich, prompted by some divine intent, flung itself long ago into\na vague, nebulous, drifting nature, though it has endured through\nmany periods of youth, maturity, and age, has yet had its own\ntransformations.  Its gay, wonderful childhood gave way, as cycle\nafter cycle coiled itself into slumber, to more definite purposes,\nand now it is old and burdened with experiences.  It is not an age\nthat quenches its fire, but it will not renew again the activities\nwhich gave it wisdom.  And so it comes that men pause with a feeling\nwhich they translate into weariness of life before the accustomed\njoys and purposes of their race.  They wonder at the spell which\ninduced their fathers to plot and execute deeds which seem to them\nto have no more meaning than a whirl of dust.  But their fathers\nhad this weariness also and concealed it from each other in fear,\nfor it meant the laying aside of the sceptre, the toppling over\nempires, the chilling of the household warmth, and all for a voice\nwhose inner significance revealed itself but to one or two\namong myriads.\n\nThe spirit has hardly emerged from the childhood with which nature\nclothes it afresh at every new birth, when the disparity between\nthe garment and the wearer becomes manifest:  the little tissue\nof joys and dreams woven about it found inadequate for shelter:\nit trembles exposed to the winds blowing out of the unknown.  We\nlinger at twilight with some companion, still glad, contented, and\nin tune with the nature which fills the orchards with blossom and\nsprays the hedges with dewy blooms.  The laughing lips give utterance\nto wishes--ours until that moment.  Then the spirit, without warning,\nsuddenly falls into immeasurable age:  a sphynx-like regard is upon\nus:  our lips answer, but far from the region of elemental being we\ninhabit, they syllable in shadowy sound, out of old usage, the\nresponse, speaking of a love and a hope which we know have vanished\nfrom us for evermore.  So hour by hour the scourge of the infinite\ndrives us out of every nook and corner of life we find pleasant.\nAnd this always takes place when all is fashioned to our liking:\nthen into our dream strides the wielder of the lightning:  we get\nglimpse of the great beyond thronged with mighty, exultant, radiant\nbeings:  our own deeds become infinitesimal to us:  the colours\nof our imagination, once so shining, grow pale as the living lights\nof God glow upon them.  We find a little honey in the heart which\nwe make sweeter for some one, and then another lover, whose forms\nare legion, sighs to us out of its multitudinous being:  we know\nthat the old love is gone.  There is a sweetness in song or in the\ncunning reimaging of the beauty we see;  but the Magician of the\nBeautiful whispers to us of his art, how we were with him when he\nlaid the foundations of the world, and the song is unfinished,\nthe fingers grow listless.  As we receive these intimations of\nage our very sins become negative:  we are still pleased if a voice\npraises us, but we grow lethargic in enterprises where the spur\nto activity is fame or the acclamation of men.  At some point in\nthe past we struggled mightily for the sweet incense which men\noffer to a towering personality:  but the infinite is for ever\nwithin man:  we sighed for other worlds and found that to be saluted\nas victor by men did not mean acceptance by the gods.\n\nBut the placing of an invisible finger upon our lips when we would\nspeak, the heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we\ngrow contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the\nspirit has ceased from its labours, that the high-built beauty of\nthe spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple\nin the desert sinks into the sand, watched only by a few barbarians\ntoo feeble to renew its ancient pomp and the ritual of its once\nshining congregations.  Before we, who were the bright children\nof the dawn, may return as the twilight race into the silence,\nour purpose must be achieved, we have to assume mastery over that\nnature which now overwhelms us, driving into the Fire-fold the\nflocks of stars and wandering fires.  Does it seem very vast and\nfar away?  Do you sigh at the long, long time?  Or does it appear\nhopeless to you who perhaps return with trembling feet evening\nafter evening from a little labour?  But it is back of all these\nthings that the renewal takes place, when love and grief are dead;\nwhen they loosen their hold on the spirit and its sinks back into\nitself, looking out on the pitiful plight of those who, like it,\nare the weary inheritors of so great destinies:  then a tenderness\nwhich is the most profound quality of its being springs up like\nthe outraying of the dawn, and if in that mood it would plan or\nexecute it knows no weariness, for it is nourished from the First\nFountain.  As for these feeble children of the once glorious spirits\nof the dawn, only a vast hope can arouse them from so vast a despair,\nfor the fire will not invigorate them for the repetition of petty\ndeeds but only for the eternal enterprise, the purpose of the\nimmemorial battle waged through all the ages, the wars in heaven,\nthe conflict between Titan and Divinity, which were part of the\nnever-ending struggle of the human spirit to assert its supremacy\nover nature.  Brotherhood, the declaration of ideals and philosophies,\nare but calls to the hosts, who lie crushed by this mountain nature\npiled above them, to arise again, to unite, to storm the heavens\nand sit on the seats of the mighty.\n\nAs the titan in man ponders on this old, old purpose wherefor all\nits experience was garnered, the lightnings will once more begin\nto play through him and animate his will.  So like the archangel\nruined let us arise from despair and weariness with inflexible\nresolution, pealing once more the old heroic shout to our fallen\ncomrades, until those great powers who enfold us feel the stirring\nand the renewal, and the murmur runs along the spheres, \"The buried\nTitan moves once again to tear the throne from Him.\"\n\n--June 1897\n\n\n\n\n\nA Thought Along the Road\n\nThey torture me also.--Krishna\n\n\n\n\nThe night was wet:  and, as I was moving down the streets, my mind\nwas also journeying on a way of its own, and the things which were\nbodily present before me were no less with me in my unseen traveling.\nEvery now and then a transfer would take place, and some of the\nmoving shadows in the street would begin walking about in the clear\ninterior light.  The children of the city, crouched in the doorways,\nor racing through the hurrying multitude and flashing lights, began\ntheir elfin play again in my heart;  and that was because I had\nheard these tiny outcasts shouting with glee.  I wondered if the\nglitter and shadow of such sordid things were thronged with\nmagnificence and mystery for those who were unaware of a greater\nlight and deeper shade which made up the romance and fascination\nof my own life.  In imagination I narrowed myself to their ignorance,\nlittleness, and youth, and seemed for a moment to flit amid great\nuncomprehended beings and a dim wonderful city of palaces.\n\nThen another transfer took place and I was pondering anew, for a\nface I had seen flickering through the warm wet mist haunted me;\nit entered into the realm of the interpreter, and I was made aware\nby the pale cheeks, and by the close-shut lips of pain, and by\nsome inward knowledge, that there the Tree of Life was beginning\nto grow, and I wondered why it is that it always springs up through\na heart in ashes:  I wondered also if that which springs up, which\nin itself is an immortal joy, has knowledge that its shoots are\npiercing through such anguish;  or again, if it was the piercing\nof the shoots which caused the pain, and if every throb of the\nbeautiful flame darting upward to blossom meant the perishing of\nsome more earthly growth which had kept the heart in shadow.\n\nSeeing to how so many thoughts spring up from such a simple thing,\nI questioned whether that which started the impulse had any share\nin the outcome, and if these musing of mine in any way affected\ntheir subject.  I then began thinking about those secret ties on\nwhich I have speculated before, and in the darkness my heart grew\nsuddenly warm and glowing, for I had chanced upon one of those\nshining imaginations which are the wealth of those who travel upon\nthe hidden ways.  In describing that which comes to us all at once,\nthere is a difficulty in choosing between what is first and what\nis last to say:  but, interpreting as best I can, I seemed to\nbehold the onward movement of a Light, one among many Lights, all\nliving, throbbing, now dim with perturbations, and now again clear,\nand all subtly woven together, outwardly in some more shadowy shining,\nand inwardly in a greater fire, which, though it was invisible,\nI knew to be the Lamp of the World.  This Light which I beheld I\nfelt to be a human soul, and these perturbations which dimmed it\nwere its struggles and passionate longings for something, and that\nwas for a more brilliant shining of the light within itself:  it\nwas in love with its own beauty, enraptured by its own lucidity;\nand I saw that as these things were more beloved they grew paler,\nfor this light is the love which the Mighty Mother has in her heart\nfor her children, and she means that it shall go through each one\nunto all, and whoever restrains it in himself is himself shut out;\nnot that the great heart has ceased in its love for that soul, but\nthat the soul has shut itself off from influx, for ever imagination\nof man is the opening or the closing of a door to the divine world:\nnow he is solitary, cut off, and, seemingly to himself, on the\ndesert and distant verge of things:  and then his thought throws\nopen the swift portals;  he hears the chant of the seraphs in his\nheart, and he is made luminous by the lighting of a sudden aureole.\nThis soul which I watched seemed to have learned at last the secret\nlove:  for, in the anguish begotten by its loss, it followed the\ndeparting glory in penitence to the inmost shrine where it ceased\naltogether;  and because it seemed utterly lost and hopeless of\nattainment and capriciously denied to the seeker, a profound pit\narose in the soul for those who, like it were seeking, but still\nin hope, for they had not come to the vain end of their endeavors.\nI understood that such pity is the last of the precious essences\nwhich make up the elixir of immortality, and when it is poured\ninto the cup it is ready for drinking.  And so it was with this\nsoul which drew brilliant with the passage of eternal light through\nits new purity of self-oblivion, and joyful in the comprehension\nof the mystery of the secret love, which, though it has been declared\nmany times by the greatest of teachers among men, is yet never known\ntruly unless the Mighty Mother has herself breathed it in the heart.\n\nAnd now that the soul had divined this secret, the shadowy shining\nwhich was woven in bonds of union between it and its fellow-lights\ngrew clearer;  and a multitude of these strands were, so it seemed,\nstrengthened and placed in its keeping:  along these it was to send\nthe message of the wisdom and the love which were the secret sweetness\nof its own being.  Then a spiritual tragedy began, infinitely more\npathetic than the old desolation, because it was brought about by\nthe very nobility of the spirit.  This soul, shedding its love like\nrays of glory, seemed itself the centre of a ring of wounding spears:\nit sent forth love and the arrowy response came hate-impelled:  it\nwhispered peace and was answered by the clash of rebellion:  and\nto all this for defence it could only bare more openly its heart\nthat a profounder love from the Mother Nature might pass through\nupon the rest.  I knew this was what a teacher, who wrote long ago,\nmeant when he said:  \"Put on the whole armour of god,\"  which is\nlove and endurance, for the truly divine children of the Flame are\nnot armed otherwise:  and of those protests, sent up in ignorance\nor rebellion against the whisper of the wisdom, I saw that some\nmelted in the fierce and tender heat of the heart, and there came\nin their stead a golden response which made closer the ties, and\ndrew these souls upward to an understanding and to share in the\novershadowing nature:  and this is part of the plan of the Great\nAlchemist, whereby the red ruby of the heart is transmuted into\nthe tenderer light of the opal;  for the beholding of love made\nbare acts like the flame of the furnace, and the dissolving passions,\nthrough an anguish of remorse, the lightnings of pain, and through\nan adoring pity, are changed into the image they contemplate and\nmelt in the ecstasy of self-forgetful love, the spirit which lit\nthe thorn-crowned brows, which perceived only in its last agony\nthe retribution due to its tormentors, and cried out, \"Father,\nforgive them, for they know not what they do.\"\n\nNow although the love of the few may alleviate the hurt due to the\nignorance of the mass, it is not in the power of anyone to withstand\nfor ever this warfare;  for by the perpetual wounding of the inner\nnature it is so wearied that the spirit must withdraw from a\ntabernacle grown too frail to support the increase of light within\nand the jarring of the demoniac nature without:  and at length\ncomes the call which means, for a while, release, and a deep rest\nin regions beyond the paradise of lesser souls.  So, withdrawn\ninto the Divine Darkness, vanished the Light of my dream.  And\nnow it seemed as if this wonderful weft of souls intertwining as\none being must come to naught;  and all those who through the gloom\nhad nourished a longing for the light would stretch out hands in\nvain for guidance:  but that I did not understand the love of the\nMother, and that although few, there is no decaying of her heroic\nbrood;  for, as the seer of old caught at the mantle of him who\nwent up in the fiery chariot, so another took up the burden and\ngathered the shining strands together:  and to this sequence of\nspiritual guides there is no ending.\n\nHere I may say that the love of the Mother, which, acting through\nthe burnished will of the hero, is wrought to highest uses, is in\nreality everywhere, and pervades with profoundest tenderness the\nhomeliest circumstance of daily life;  and there is not lacking,\neven among the humblest, an understanding of the spiritual tragedy\nwhich follows upon every effort of the divine nature bowing itself\ndown in pity to our shadowy sphere;  an understanding in which the\nnature of the love is gauged through the extent of the sacrifice\nand pain which is overcome.  I recall the instance of an old Irish\npeasant, who, as he lay in hospital wakeful from a grinding pain\nin his leg, forgot himself in making drawings, rude yet reverently\ndone, of incidents in the life of the Galilean teacher.  One of\nthese which he showed me was a crucifixion, where, amidst much\ngrotesque symbolism, were some tracings which indicated a purely\nbeautiful intuition;  the heart of this crucified figure, no less\nthan the brow, was wreathed about with thorns and radiant with light:\n\"For that,\" said he, was where he really suffered.\"  When I think\nof this old man, bringing forgetfulness of his own bodily pain\nthrough contemplation of the spiritual suffering of his own, nobly\nundergone, had given him understanding, and he had laid his heart\nin love against the Heart of Many Sorrows, seeing it wounded by\nunnumbered spears yet burning with undying love.\n\nThough much may be learned by observance of the superficial life\nand actions of a spiritual teacher, it is only in the deeper life\nof meditation and imagination that it can be truly realized;  for\nthe soul is a midnight blossom which opens its leaves in dream,\nand its perfect bloom is unfolded only where another sun shines\nin another heaven:  there it feels what celestial dews descend on it,\nand what influences draw it up to its divine archetype:  here in\nthe shadow of earth root intercoils with root and the finer\ndistinctions of the blossom are not perceived.  If we knew also\nwho they really are, who sometimes in silence, and sometimes with\nthe eyes of the world at gaze, take upon them the mantle of teacher,\nan unutterable awe would prevail;  for underneath a bodily presence\nnot in any sense beautiful may burn the glory of some ancient\ndivinity, some hero who laid aside his sceptre in the enchanted\nland to rescue old-time comrades fallen into oblivion:  or again,\nif we had the insight of the simple old peasant into the nature\nof this enduring love, out of the exquisite and poignant emotions\nkindled would arise the flame of a passionate love which would\nendure long aeons of anguish that it might shield, though but for\na little, the kingly hearts who may not shield themselves.\n\nBut I too, who write, have launched the rebellious spear, or in\nlethargy have ofttimes gone down the great drift numbering myself\namong those who not being with must needs be against:  therefor I\nmake no appeal;  they only may call who stand upon the lofty\nmountains;  but I reveal the thought which arose like a star in\nmy soul with such bright and pathetic meaning, leaving it to you\nwho read to approve and apply it.\n\n--July 15, 1897\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Fountains of Youth\n\n\n\n\nI heard that a strange woman, dwelling on the western coast, who\nhad the repute of healing by faery power, said a little before she\ndied, \"There's a cure for all things in the well at Ballykeele\":\nand I know not why at first, but her words lingered with me and\nrepeated themselves again and again, and by degrees to keep\nfellowship with the thought they enshrined came more antique\nmemories, all I had heard or dreamed of the Fountains of Youth;\nfor I could not doubt, having heard these fountains spoken of by\npeople like herself, that her idea had a druid ancestry.  Perhaps\nshe had bent over the pool until its darkness grew wan and bright\nand troubled with the movements of a world within and the\nagitations of a tempestuous joy;  or she had heard, as many still\nhear, the wild call to \"Come away,\" from entreating lips and flame-\nencircled faces, or was touched by the star-tipped fingers, and\nher heart from the faery world came never back again to dwell as\nbefore at ease in this isle of grey mists and misty sunlight.\nThese things are not fable only, for Ireland is still a land of\nthe gods, and in out of the way places we often happen on wonderlands\nof romance and mystic beauty.  I have spoken to people who have\nhalf parted from their love for the world in a longing for the\npagan paradise of Tir-na-nog, and many who are outwardly obeisant\nto another religion are altogether pagan in their hearts, and Meave\nthe Queen of the Western Host is more to them than Mary Queen of\nHeaven.  I was told of this Meave that lately she was seen in\nvision by a peasant, who made a poem on her, calling her \"The\nBeauty of all Beauty\":  and the man who told me this of his friend\nhad himself seen the jetted fountains of fire-mist winding up in\nspiral whirls to the sky, and he too had heard of the Fountains\nof Youth.\n\nThe natural longing in every heart that its youth shall not perish\nmakes one ponder and sigh over this magical past when youth, ecstasy,\nand beauty welled from a bountiful nature at the sung appeal of her\ndruid children holding hand in hand around the sacred cairn.  Our\nhearts remember:\n\nA wind blows by us fleeting\n        Along the reedy strand:\nAnd sudden our hearts are beating\n        Again in the druid-land.\n\nAll silver-pale, enchanted,\n        The air-world lies on the hills,\nAnd the fields of light are planted\n        With the dawn-frail daffodils.\n\nThe yellow leaves are blowing\n        The hour when the wind-god weaves,\nAnd hides the stars and their glowing\n        In a mist of daffodil leaves.\n\nWe stand in glimmering whiteness,\n        Each face like the day-star fair,\nAnd rayed about in its brightness\n        With a dawn of daffodil air.\n\nAnd through each white robe gleaming,\n        And under each snow-white breast,\nIs a golden dream-light streaming\n        Like eve through an opal west.\n\nOne hand to the heart, another\n        We raise to the dawn on high;\nFor the sun in the heart is brother\n        To the sun-heart of the sky.\n\nA light comes rising and falling,\n        As ringed in the druid choir\nWe sing to the sun-god, calling\n        By his name of yellow fire.\n\nThe touch of the dew-wet grasses,\n        The breath of the dawn-cool wind,\nWith the dawn of the god-light passes\n        And the world is left behind.\n\nWe drink of a fountain giving\n        The joy of the gods, and then--\nThe Land of the Ever-living\n        Has passed from us again.\n\nPassed far beyond all saying,\n        For memory only weaves\nOn a silver dawn outraying\n        A cloud of daffodil leaves.\n\nAnd not indirectly through remembrance only, but when touched\nfrom within by the living beauty, the soul, the ancient druid in\nman, renews its league with the elements;  and sometimes as the\ntwilight vanishes and night lays on the earth her tender brow, the\nwoods, the mountains, the clouds that tinted like seraphim float\nin the vast, and the murmur of water, wind and trees, melt from\nthe gaze and depart from the outward ear and become internal\nreveries and contemplations of the spirit, and are no more separate\nbut are part of us.  Yet these vanishings from us and movements in\nworlds not realized, leave us only more thirsty to drink of a\ndeeper nature where all things are dissolved in ecstasy, and heaven\nand earth are lost in God.  So we turn seeking for the traces of\nthat earlier wisdom which guided man into the Land of Immortal Youth,\nand assuaged his thirst at a more brimming flood of the Feast of Age,\nthe banquet which Manannan the Danann king instituted in the haunt\nof the Fire-god, and whoever partook knew thereafter neither\nweariness, decay, not death.\n\nThese mysteries, all that they led to, all that they promised for\nthe spirit of man, are opening today for us in clear light, their\nfabulous distance lessens, and we hail these kingly ideals with\nas intense a trust and with more joy, perhaps, than they did who\nwere born in those purple hours, because we are emerging from\ncenturies indescribably meagre and squalid in their thought, and\nevery new revelation has for us the sweetness of sunlight to one\nafter the tears and sorrow of a prison-house.  The well at Ballykeele\nis, perhaps, a humble starting-point for the contemplation of such\nmighty mysteries;  but here where the enchanted world lies so close\nit is never safe to say what narrow path may not lead through a\nvisionary door into Moy Argatnel, the silver Cloudland of Manannan,\nwhere\n\n\"Feet of white bronze\nGlitter through beautiful ages.\"\n\nThe Danann king with a quaint particularity tells Bran in the poem\nfrom which these lines are quoted, that\n\n\"There is a wood of beautiful fruit\nUnder the prow of thy little skiff.\"\n\nWhat to Bran was a space of pale light was to the eye of the god\na land of pure glory, Ildathach the Many-coloured Land, rolling\nwith rivers of golden light and dropping with dews of silver flame.\nIn another poem the Brugh by the Boyne, outwardly a little hillock,\nis thus described:\n\n\"Look, and you will see it is the palace of a god.\"\n\nPerhaps the mystic warriors of the Red Branch saw supernatural\npillars blazoned like the sunset, and entered through great doors\nand walked in lofty halls with sunset-tinted beings speaking a\nmore beautiful wisdom than earth's.  And they there may have seen\nthose famous gods who had withdrawn generations before from visible\nEire:  Manannan the dark blue king, Lu Lamfada with the sunrise on\nhis brow and his sling, a wreath of rainbow flame, coiled around him,\nthe Goddess Dana in ruby brilliance, Nuada silver-handed, the Dagda\nwith floating locks of light shaking from him radiance and song,\nAngus Oge, around whose head the ever-winging birds made music,\nand others in whose company these antique heroes must have felt\nthe deep joy of old companionship renewed, for were not the Danann\nhosts men of more primeval cycles become divine and movers in a\ndivine world.  In the Brugh too was a fountain, to what uses\napplied the mystical imagination working on other legends may\nmake clearer.\n\nThe Well of Connla, the parent fountain of many streams visible and\ninvisible, was the most sacred well known in ancient Ireland.  It\nlay itself below deep waters at the source of the Shannon, and\nthese waters which hid it were also mystical, for they lay between\nearth and the Land of the Gods.  Here, when stricken suddenly by\nan internal fire, the sacred hazels of wisdom and inspiration\nunfolded at once their leaves and blossoms and their scarlet fruit,\nwhich falling upon the waters dyed them of a royal purple;  the\nnuts were then devoured by Fintann the Salmon of Knowledge, and\nthe wisest of the druids partook also.  This was perhaps the greatest\nof the mysteries known to the ancient Gael, and in the bright\nphantasmagoria conjured up there is a wild beauty which belongs to\nall their tales.  The suddenly arising dreams of a remote divinity,\nthe scarlet nuts tossing on the purple flood, the bright immortals\nglancing hither and thither, are pictures left of some mystery we\nmay not now uncover, thought tomorrow may reveal it, for the dawn-\nlights are glittering everywhere in Ireland.  Perhaps the strange\nwoman who spoke of the well at Ballykeele, and the others like her,\nmay know more about these fountains than the legend-seekers who so\nlearnedly annoted their tales.  They may have drunken in dreams of\nthe waters at Connla's well, for many go to the Tir-na-nog in sleep,\nand some are said to have remained there, and only a vacant form\nis left behind without the light in the eyes which marks the presence\nof a soul.  I make no pretence of knowledge concerning the things\nwhich underlie their simple speech, but to me there seems to be\nfor ever escaping from legend and folk-tale, from word and custom,\nsome breath of a world of beauty I sigh for but am not nigh to as\nthese are.  I think if that strange woman could have found a voice\nfor what was in her heart she would have completed her vague oracle\nsomewhat as I have done:\n\nThere's a cure for all things in the well at Ballykeele,\nWhere the scarlet cressets o'erhang from the rowan trees;\nThere's a joy-breath blowing from the Land of Youth I feel,\n        And earth with its heart at ease.\n\nMany and many a sun-bright maiden saw the enchanted land\nWith star-faces glimmer up from the druid wave:\nMany and many a pain of love was soothed by a faery hand\n        Or lost in the love it gave.\n\nWhen the quiet with a ring of pearl shall wed the earth\nAnd the scarlet berries burn dark by the stars in the pool,\nOh, its lost and deep I'll be in the joy-breath and the mirth,\n        My heart in the star-heart cool.\n\n--September 15, 1897","title":"AE in the Irish Theosophist","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":87309}