Again I stood in the Temple of Art; again I found myself in the Poet’s Chamber, but no longer an outcast and an alien. Indeed, I was greeted as one whose coming was expected, and welcomed with a warm cordiality and royal fervor that was very refreshing to my soul.
The same kingly company was assembled, but augmented by a number of other souls, rich with their freight of poetic imagery. The assembly was not composed entirely of my own countrymen and women, as heretofore; for among that mighty throng could be seen the smiling, open, intelligent faces of Thomas Moore, the sweet singer of the Emerald Isle, and Robert Burns, he who found his best inspiration amid the rugged heights and heather-crowned hills of Scotia’s land. Many others were present, whom I failed to recognize, clad in the flowing robes and purple vestments of the Roman period, or in the classic garments of ancient Greece.
But England’s delegation was a large one, numbering those of every century and age: Pope and Spenser, Johnson, Cowley, and Butler, Dryden, Gay, Thomson, and Young,—not the sad, melancholy, pensive Edward Young of earth, but the radiant, calm, contented Edward Young of spirit life; gentle Henry Kirke White, liberty-loving Thomas Campbell, and stouthearted, staunch, and true Walter Scott, who, though not English born, yet seemed very near to me.
Addison, whom I had mentioned as occupying the seat of honor before, now sat low at the feet of him who occupied the position of the Master of Ceremonies, and whom I recognized as the true, loyal, long-suffering, yet monarch-crowned soul, Milton. At his right was to be seen the lofty brow, and bold, fearless, speaking countenance of William Shakespeare; while, at the left, Dryden seemed to be acting as assistant or secretary.
In my experience of spirit power and possibilities, I had learned to understand and interpret the waves of thought flowing from soul to soul; therefore I was at no loss to understand the purport and purposes of this convention. It was a gathering of kindred souls, met to communicate the loftiest thoughts and sweetest aspirations to each other, thus dispensing the bountiful gifts of the spirit to all who would partake.
I cannot describe to you the rich, ennobling thoughts, clothed in their draperies of sweetest imagery, which flowed from the soul of him who presided, into ours, the recipients’; nor the grandeur and sublimity of the ideas with which he threaded, like brands of shimmering pearls, the network of his discourse. But all was grand and glorious, beyond the power of mortals to conceive. At the close of his remarks, the company clustered into knots, discussing the discourse, comparing experiences, or revealing to each other the secret depths of their poetic souls, from which were to be drawn lines, glowing with the beauty and fragrance of harmonious lives.
It was then I discovered that every soul that is attuned into harmony with the inner life, that dwells in sympathy with the Divine Mind, as manifested in his outer creations of will, in his natural expressions of love and beauty, is in itself a poem of rare delicacy and power; a living, breathing, animated poem, thrilled with the magic power of thought, and stamped with the eternal glory of individualized liberty; that every poetic soul is itself the production of the Infinite Mind, that must make itself heard in lines of glowing, inspiring thought along the pathway of human toil and suffering, and cannot fail to arouse the hidden energies and sleeping possibilities of power of those it comes in rapport with.
It was then I was made supremely blest by being taken by the hand by such souls as Cowper, Byron,—my boyhood’s ideal,—Burns, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Mrs. Browning, Felicia Hemans, and others, and welcomed to this haunt of the beautiful and the good. And I cannot convey to you my exquisite sense of pleasures when my hand was again grasped by that of my helper and friend, Robert B. Brough, and I was enabled to bless him for the avenues of tranquility and peace he had opened out to me. But I must not linger here, although sweet and pleasant to me are these reminiscences of actual life in the spheres.
Leaving the Poets’ Chamber, I visited in turn the Musicians’ Gallery, the Sculptors’ Hall, and the Artists’ Studio. It is impossible for mortal hands to pen a description of what is to be seen and heard in them. Words fail, and language grows cold and unmeaning before the splendid achievements of the upper world.
Imagine, if you can, all the sweetest sounds your soul has ever heard or dreamed of, blended into one harmonious whole, swelling louder, clearer, and sweeter, or melting away into the far-off distance, like the gentle fading of a glorious sunset, absorbed by a finer and more ethereal beauty of azure brightness, and you will have a faint conception of the music and the singing of the spheres.