"Thou wouldst seek after and know the truth!" she said, "Truth Celestial,—Truth Unchangeable, . . Truth that permeates and underlies all the mystic inward workings of the Universe, . . workings and secret laws unguessed by Man! Vast as Eternity is this Truth,—ungraspable in all its manifestations by the merely mortal intelligence, … nevertheless thy spirit, being chastened to noble humility and repentance, hath risen to new heights of comprehension, whence thou canst partly penetrate into the wonders of worlds unseen. Did I not tell thee to 'LEARN FROM THE PERILS OF THE PAST, THE PERILS OF THE FUTURE'—and understandest thou not the lesson of the Vision of Al-Kyris? Thou hast seen the Dream-reflection of thy former Poet-fame and glory in old time,—THOU WERT SAH-LUMA!"
An agony of shame possessed him as he heard. His soul at once seized the solution of the mystery, . . his quickened thought plunged plummet-like straight through the depths of the bewildering phantasmagoria, in which mere reason had been of no practical avail, and straightway sounded its whole seemingly complex, but actually simple meaning! HE WAS SAH-LUMA! … or rather, he HAD BEEN Sah-luma in some far stretch of long-receded time, … and in his Dream of a single night, he had loved the brilliant Phantom of his Former Self more than his own present Identity! Not less remarkable was the fact that, in this strange Sleep-Mirage, he had imagined himself to be perfectly UNselfish, whereas all the while he had honored, flattered, and admired the more Appearance of Himself more than anything or everything in the world! Ay!—even his occasional reluctant reproaches to Himself in the ghostly impersonation of Sah-luma had been far more tender than severe!
O deep and bitter ingloriousness! … O speechless degradation of all the higher capabilities of Man! to love one's own ephemeral Shadow-Existence so utterly as to exclude from thought and sympathy all other things whether human or divine! And was it not possible that this Spectre of Self might still be clinging to him? Was it dead with the Dream of Sah-luma? … or had Sah-luma never truly died at all? … and was the fine, fire-spun Essence that had formed the Spirit of the Laureate of Al-Kyris yet part of the living Substance of his present nature, … he, a world-unrecognized English poet of the nineteenth century? Did all Sah-luma's light follies, idle passions, and careless cruelties remain inherent in him? Had he the same pride of intellect, the same vain-glory, the same indifference to God and Man? Oh, no, no! … he shuddered at the thought! … and his head sank lower and lower beneath the benediction touch of Her whose tenderness revived his noblest energies, and lit anew in his heart the pure, bright fire of heaven-encompassing Aspiration.
"THOU WERT SAH-LUMA!" went on the mildly earnest voice, "And all the wide, ungrudging fame given to Earth's great poets in ancient days, was thine! Thy name was on all men's mouths, … thou wert honored by kings, … thou wert the chief glory of a great people, … great though misled by their own false opinions, … and the City of Al-Kyris, of which thou wert the enshrined jewel, was mightier far than any now built upon the earth! Christ had not come to thee, save by dim types and vague prefigurements which only praying prophets could discern, … but God had spoken to thy soul in quiet moments, and thou wouldst neither hear Him nor believe in Him! I had called thee, but thou wouldst not listen, … thou didst foolishly prefer to hearken to the clamorous tempting of thine own beguiling human passions, and wert altogether deaf to an Angel's whisper! Things of the earth earthly gained dominion over thee … by them thou wert led astray, deceived, and at last forsaken, … the genius God gave thee thou didst misuse and indolently waste, … thy brief life came, as thou hast seen, to sudden-piteous end,—and the proud City of thy dwelling was destroyed by fire! Not a trace of it was left to mark the spot where once it stood. The foundations of Babylon were laid above it, and no man guessed that it had ever been. And thy poems, … the fruit of thy heaven-sent but carelessly accepted inspiration,—who is there that remembers them? … No one! … save THOU! THOU hast recovered them like sunken pearls from the profound ocean of limitless Memory, … and to the world of To-day thou dost repeat the SELF-SAME MUSIC to which Al-Kyris listened entranced so many thousands of generations ago!"
A deep sigh, that was half a groan, broke from his lips, … he could now take the measurement of his own utter littleness and incompetency! HE COULD CREATE NOTHING NEW! Everything he had written, as he fancied only just lately, had been written by himself before! The problem of the poem "Nourhalma" … was explained, … he had designed it when he had played his part on the stage of life as Sah-luma,—and perhaps not even then for the first time! In this pride-crushing knowledge there was only one consolation, … namely, that if his Dream was a true reflection of his Past, and exact in details as he felt it must be, then "Nourhalma," had not been given to Al-Kyris, … it had been composed, but not made public. Hence, so far, it was new to the world, though not new to himself. Yet he had considered it wondrously new! a "perfectly original" idea! … Ah! who dares to boast of any idea as humanly "original" … seeing that all ideas whatsoever must be referred back to God and admitted as His and His only! What is the wisest man that ever lived, but a small, pale, ill-reflecting mirror of the Eternal Thought that controls and dominates all things! … He remembered with conscience-stricken confusion what pleasure he had felt, what placid satisfaction, what unqualified admiration, when listening to his own works recited by the ghost-presentment of his Former Self! … pleasure that had certainly exceeded whatever pain he had suffered by the then enigmatical and perplexing nature of the incident. O what a foolish Atom he now seemed, viewed by the standard of his newly aroused higher consciousness! … how poor and passive a slave to the glittering, beckoning Phantasm of his own perishable Fame!
Thus on the Field of Ardath he drained the cup of humility to the dregs,—the cup which like that offered to the Prophet of Holy Writ was "full as it were with water, but the color of it was like fire"—the water of tears.. the fire of faith, . . and with that prophet he might have said.. "When I had drunk of it, my heart uttered understanding, and wisdom grew in my breast, for my spirit strengthened my memory."
Meanwhile Edris, still keeping her gentle hands on his bent head, went on:
"In such wise didst thou, my Beloved, as the famous Sah-luma, mournfully perish.. and the nations remembered thee no more! But thy spiritual, indestructible Essence lived on, and wandered dismayed and forlorn through a myriad forms of existence in the depths of Perpetual Darkness which MUST be, even as the Everlasting Light IS. Thy immortal but perverted Will bore thee always further from God, . . further from Him, and so far from me, that thou wert at times beyond even an Angel's ken! Ages upon ages rolled away, . . the centuries between Earth and Earths purposed redemption passed, … and, . . though in Heaven these measured spaces of time that appear so great to men are as a mere world's month of summer, . . still, to me, for once God's golden days seemed long! I had lost THEE! Thou wert my soul's other soul, my king!—my immortality's completion! … and though thou wert, alas! a fallen brightness, yet I held fast to my one hope, . . the hope in thy diviner nature, which, though sorely overcome, WAS NOT, and COULD NOT BE wholly destroyed. I knew the fate in store for thee, . . I knew that thou with other erring spirits wert bound to live again on earth when Christ had built His Holy Way therefrom to Heaven,—and never did I cease for thy dear sake to wait and watch and pray! At last I found thee, … but ah! how I trembled for thy destiny! To thee had been delivered, as to all the children of men, the final message of salvation.. the Message of Love and Pardon which made all the angels wonder! … but thou didst utterly reject it—and with the same willful arrogance of thy former self, Sah-luma, thou wert blindly and desperately turning anew into darkness! O my Beloved, that darkness might have been eternal! … and crowded with memories dating from the very beginning of life! … Nay, let me not speak of that Supernal Agony, since Christ hath died to quench its terrors! … Enough!—by happy chance, through my desire, thine own roused better will, and the strength of one who hath many friends in Heaven, thy spirit was released to temporary liberty, . . and in thy vision at Dariel, which was NO vision, but a Truth, I bade thee meet me here. And why? … SOLELY TO TEST THY POWER OF OBEDIENCE TO A DIVINE IMPULSE UNEXPLAINABLE BY HUMAN REASON,—and I rejoiced as only angels can rejoice, when of thine own Free-Will thou didst keep the tryst I made with thee! Yet thou knewest me not! … or rather thou WOULDST NOT KNOW ME, . . till I left thee! … 'Tis ever the way of mortals, to doubt their angels in disguise!"
Her sweet accents shook with a liquid thrill suggestive of tears,—but he was silent. It seemed to him that he would be well content to hold his place forever, if forever he might hear her thus melodiously speak on! Had she not called him her "other soul, her king, her immortality's completion!"—and on those wondrous words of hers his spirit hung, impassioned, dazzled, and entranced beyond all Time and Space and Nature and Experience!
After a brief pause, during which his ravished mind floated among the thousand images and vague feelings of a whole Past and Future merged in one splendid and celestial Present, she resumed, always softly and with the same exquisite tenderness of tone: