THE IDEAS ON IMMORTALITY
“Earth! Earth, the mother of us all! Aye, the mother of us all! How loth, how loth, like to a child we be, to leave and seek ’mid dark!”—Patience Worth.
If the personality of Patience Worth and the nature and quality of her literary productions are worthy of consideration as evidences of the truth of her claim to a spiritual existence, then in the sufficiency of the proof may be found an answer to the world-old question: Is there a life after death? To what extent the facts that have been presented in this narrative may be accepted as proof, is for the reader to determine. But Patience has not been content to reveal a strange personality and a unique literature; she has had much to say upon this question of immortality. There is more or less spiritual significance in nearly all of her poetry and in some of her prose, and while her references to the after life are usually veiled under figures of speech, they nevertheless give assurances of its existence. She makes it clear, however, that she is not permitted to reveal the nature of that life beyond the veil, but she goes as far apparently as she dares, in the repeated assertion, through metaphor and illustration, of its reality.
“My days,” she cries, “I have scattered like autumn leaves, whirled by raging winds, and they have fallen in various crannies ’long the way. Blown to rest are the sunny spring-kissed mornings of my youth, and with many a sigh did I blow the sobbing eves that melted into tear-washed night. Blow on, thou zephyr of this life, and let me throw the value of each day to thee. Blow, and spend thyself, till, tired, thou wilt croon thyself to sleep. Perchance this casting of my day may cease, and thou wilt turn anew unto thy blowing and reap the casting of the world.
“What then is a sigh? Ah, man may breathe a sorrow. Doth then the dumbness of his brother bar his sighing? Nay—and hark! The sea doth sigh, and yonder starry jasmine stirreth with a tremorous sigh; and morning’s birth is greeted with the sighing of the world. For what? Ah, for that coming that shall fulfill the promise, and change the sighing to a singing, and loose the tongue of him whom God doth know and, fearful lest he tell His hidden mysteries, hath locked his lips.”
And again she asks: “Needest thou see what God himself sealeth thine eyes to make thee know?” Meaning, undoubtedly, that only through the process of death can the soul be brought to an understanding of that other life; and she declares that even if we were shown, we could not comprehend. “If thou should’st see His face on morrow’s break,” she says, “’twould but start a wagging,” a discussion. And she continues: “Ah, ope the tabernacle, but look thou not on high, for when the filmy veil shall fade away—ah, could’st thou but know that He who waits hath looked, aye looked, on thee, and thou hast looked on Him since time began!” This enigmatical utterance is in itself sufficient to start a “wagging,” but Patience evidently feels that the solution is beyond our powers: for she repeatedly asserts that the key to the mystery is within our reach if we could but grasp it. “Fleet as down blown from its moorings, seeking the linnet who dropped her seed, so drift ye,” she says, “ever seeking, when at the root still rests the seed pod.” And again: “Knowest thou that fair land to which the traveler is loath to go, but loath, so loath, to leave? Ah, the mystery of the snail’s shell is far deeper than this.”
Yet she tells us again and again that Nature itself is the proof of another life. “Why live,” she asks, “the paltry span of years allotted thee, in desolation, while all about thee are His promises? Thou art, indeed, like a withered hand that holds a new-blown rose.” The truth, she says, is not to be found in “books of wordy filling,” but in the infant’s smile and in the myriad creations and resurrections that are ever within our cognizance. “I pipe of learning,” she cries, “and fall silent before the fool who singeth his folly lay.”
The natural evidences she points out are visible to all and within the comprehension of the feeblest intelligence, but he whose vision is obscured by book knowledge “is like unto the monk who prays within his cell, unheedful of the timid sunbeam who would light the page his wisdom so befogs.” “Ah!” she exclaims, “the labor set thee to unlearn thine inborn fancies!” meaning, apparently, the suppression of the intuitions of immortality; and in the same line of thought she cries: “Am I then drunkened on the chaff of knowledge supped by mine elderborn? Nay, my forefolk drank not truth, but sent through my veins acoursing, chaff, chaff, naught by chaff.” Plainly, then, Patience has no great respect for learning, and it is the book of Nature rather than the book of words that she would have us read.
I made a song from the dead notes of His birds,
And wove a wreath of withered lily buds,
And gathered daisies that the sun had scorched,
And plucked a rose the riotous wind had torn,
And stolen clover flowers, down-trodden by the kine,
And fashioned into ropes and tied with yellow reed,
An offering unto Him: and lo, the dust
Of crumbling blossoms fell to bloom again,
And smiled like sickened children,
Wistfully, but strong of faith that mother-stalk
Would send fresh blossoms in the spring.
So it is she sings, presenting the symbolisms of nature to illustrate the renewal or the continuance of life; or again, she likens life to the seasons (as did Shakespeare and Keats, and many another poet) in this manner:
My youth is promising as spring,
And verdant as young weeds,
Whose very impudence taketh them
Where bloom the garden’s treasures.
My midlife, like the summer, who blazeth
As a fire of blasting heat, fed by withered
Crumbling weeds of my spring.
My sunset, like the fall who ripeneth
The season’s offerings. And hoar frost
Is my winter night, fraught with borrowed warmth,
And flowers, and filled with weeds,
Which spring e’en ’neath the frozen waste?
Ah, is the winter then my season’s close?
Or will I pin a faith to hope and look
Again for spring, who lives eternal in my soul?
Faith is the keynote of many of her songs, the faith that grows out of that profound love which is the essential principle of the religion she presents. The triumph of faith she expresses in the poem which follows:
O sea! The panting bosom of the Earth;
The sighing, singing carol of her heart!
I watch thee and I dream a dream
Whose fruit doth sicken me.
White sails do fleck thy sheen, and yonder moon
Doth seem to dip thy depths
And sail the silver mirror, high above.
Unharbored do I rove. Along the shore behind,
The shadow of Tomorrow creepeth on.
A seething silvered path doth stretch thy length,
To meet the curving cheek of Lady Moon.
I dream the flutt’ring waves to fanning wings
And fain would follow in their course. But stay!
My barque doth plow anew, and set the wings to flight;
For though I watch their tremorous mass, my craft
But saileth harbor-loosed, and ever stretcheth far
Beyond the moon’s own phantom path—
And I but dream a dream whose fruit doth sicken me.
Ah, Sea! who planted thee, and cast
A silver purse, unloosed, upon thy breast?
My barque, who then did harbor it,
And who unfurled its sail?
And yonder moon, from whence her silver coaxed?
Methinks my dream doth wax her wroth,
Else why the pallor o’er her cast?
Dare I to sail, to steer me at the wheel?
Shall I then hide my face and cease my murmuring,
O’erfearful lest I find the port?
Nay, I do know thee, Lord, and fearless sail me on,
To harbor then at dawning of new day.
I stand unfearful at the prow.
At anchor rests my barque. Away, thou phantom Moon,
And restless, seething path!
My chart I cast unto the sea,
For I do know Thee, Lord!
This triumph of faith is also the theme of the weird allegory which follows. It is, perhaps, the most mystical of Patience’s productions.