“You are right, Féraz,” he said, as he sipped his coffee.—“Life can be made enjoyable after a fashion, no doubt. But the best way to get enjoyment out of it is to be always at work—always putting a brick in to help the universal architecture.”
Féraz was silent. El-Râmi looked at him inquisitively.
“Don’t you agree with me?” he asked.
“No—not entirely”—and Féraz pushed the clustering hair off his brow with a slightly troubled gesture.—“Work may become as monotonous and wearisome as anything else if we have too much of it. If we are always working—that is, if we are always obtruding ourselves into affairs and thinking they cannot get on without us, we make an obstruction in the way, I think—we are not a help. Besides, we leave ourselves no time to absorb suggestions, and I fancy a great deal is learned by simply keeping the brain quiet and absorbing light.”
“‘Absorbing light’?” queried his brother perplexedly—“What do you mean?”
“Well, it is difficult to explain my meaning,” said Féraz with hesitation—“but yet I feel there is truth in what I try to express. You see, everything absorbs something, and you will assuredly admit that the brain absorbs certain impressions?”
“Of course,—but impressions are not ‘light’?”
“Are they not? Not even the effects of light? Then what is the art of photography? However, I do not speak of the impressions received from our merely external surroundings. If you can relieve the brain from conscious thought,—if you have the power to shake off outward suggestions and be willing to think of nothing personal, your brain will receive impressions which are to some extent new, and with which you actually have very little connection. It is strange,—but it is so;—you become obediently receptive, and perhaps wonder where your ideas come from. I say they are the result of light. Light can use up immense periods of time in travelling from a far distant star into our area of vision, and yet at last we see it,—shall not God’s inspiration travel at a far swifter pace than star-beams, and reach the human brain as surely? This thought has often startled me,—it has filled me with an almost apprehensive awe,—the capabilities it opens up are so immense and wonderful. Even a man can suggest ideas to his fellow-man and cause them to germinate in the mind and blossom into action,—how can we deny to God the power to do the same? And so,—imagine it!—the first strain of the glorious Tannhäuser may have been played on the harps of Heaven, and rolling sweetly through infinite space may have touched in fine far echoes the brain of the musician who afterwards gave it form and utterance—ah yes!—I would love to think it were so!—I would love to think that nothing,—nothing is truly ours; but that all the marvels of poetry, of song, of art, of colour, of beauty, were only the echoes and distant impressions of that eternal grandeur which comes hereafter!”
His eyes flashed with all a poet’s enthusiasm,—he rose from the table and paced the room excitedly, while his brother, sitting silent, watched him meditatively.
“El-Râmi, you have no idea,” he continued—“of the wonders and delights of the land I call my Star! You think it is a dream—an unexplained portion of a splendid trance,—and I am now fully aware of what I owe to your magnetic influence,—your forceful spell that rests upon my life;—but see you!—when I am alone—quite, quite alone, when you are absent from me, when you are not influencing me, it is then I see the landscapes best,—it is then I hear my people sing! I let my brain rest;—as far as it is possible, I think of nothing,—then suddenly upon me falls the ravishment and ecstasy,—this world rolls up as it were in a whirling cloud and vanishes, and lo! I find myself at home. There is a stretch of forest-land in this Star of mine,—a place all dusky green with shadows, and musical with the fall of silvery waters,—that is my favourite haunt when I am there, for it leads me on and on through grasses and tangles of wild flowers to what I know and feel must be my own abode, where I should rest and sleep if sleep were needful; but this abode I never reach; I am debarred from entering in, and I do not know the reason why. The other day, when wandering there, I met two maidens bearing flowers,—they stopped, regarding me with pleased yet doubting eyes, and one said—‘Look you, our lord is now returned!’ And the other sighed and answered—‘Nay! he is still an exile and may not stay with us.’ Whereupon they bent their heads, and, shrinking past me, disappeared. When I would have called them back I woke!—to find that this dull earth was once again my house of bondage.”