"We know not what we shall be." Each of us at the close of life lies down without realizing our relation to the Infinite, without realizing that we are children and heirs. Blessed is he who feels that his hymn is also "True in some sense or other," that life is true and that each one performs some work and it is not for us to say whether it is great or small. They who wrought but one hour received the same wages as they who wrought the whole day.
Deeply symbolical, allegorical, and typical in the poetic sense of human life is Pippa's closing thought as she lies down to sleep.
"Oh what a drear dark close to my poor day!
How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?
Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away,
Dispensed with, never more to be allowed!
Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's.
Oh, lark, be day's apostle
To mavis, merle and throstle,
Bid them their betters jostle
From day and its delights!
But at night, brother howlet, over the woods,
Toll the world to thy chantry;
Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods
Full complines with gallantry;
Then, owls and bats,
Cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!
Now, one thing I should like to really know:
How near I ever might approach all these
I only fancied being, this long day:
—Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so
As to ... in some way ... move them—if you please,
Do good or evil to them some slight way.
For instance, if I wind
Silk to-morrow, my silk may bind
And border Ottima's cloak's hem.
Ah, me, and my important part with them,
This morning's hymn half promised when I rose!
True in some sense or other, I suppose.
God bless me! I can pray no more to-night.
No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right.
All service ranks the same with God,
With God, whose puppets, best and worst:
Are we; there is no last nor first." [She sleeps]
The Morning League of the School of Expression
is a band of the students, graduates and friends of the School of Expression who are trying to keep their faces toward the morning.
If you wish to join, when you wake GET UP OUT OF THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BED, that is, stretch, expand, breathe deeply and laugh. Fill with joyous thoughts and their active expressions the first minutes of the day.