VII

Man hath no Soul, a state of things,
a no-thing still, a sound, a word
Which so begets substantial thing
that eye shall see what ear hath heard.
Where was his Soul the savage beast
which in primeval forests strayed,
What shape had it, what dwelling-place,
what part in nature’s plan it played?
This Soul to ree a riddle made;
who wants the vain duality?
Is not myself enough for me?
what need of “I” within an “I”?
Words, words that gender things! The soul
is a new-comer on the scene;
Sufficeth not the breath of Life
to work the matter-born machine?
We know the Gen’esis of the Soul;
we trace the Soul to hour of birth;
We mark its growth as grew mankind
to boast himself sole Lord of Earth:
The race of Be’ing from dawn of Life
in an unbroken course was run;
What men are pleased to call their Souls
was in the hog and dog begun:
Life is a ladder infinite-stepped,
that hides its rungs from human eyes;
Planted its foot in chaos-gloom,
its head soars high above the skies:
No break the chain of Being bears;
all things began in unity;
And lie the links in regular line
though haply none the sequence see.
The Ghost, embodied natural Dread
of dreary death and foul decay,
Begat the Spirit, Soul and Shade
with Hades’ pale and wan array.
The Soul required a greater Soul,
a Soul of Souls, to rule the host;
Hence spirit-powers and hierarchies,
all gendered by the savage Ghost.
Not yours, ye Peoples of the Book,
these fairy visions fair and fond,
Got by the gods of Khemi-land*
and faring far the seas beyond!
* Egypt; Kam, Kem, Khem (hierogl.), in the Demotic Khemi.
“Th’ immortal mind of mortal man!”
we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry;
Whose mind but means his sum of thought,
an essence of atomic “I.”
Thought is the work of brain and nerve,
in small-skulled idiot poor and mean;
In sickness sick, in sleep asleep,
and dead when Death lets drop the scene.
“Tush!” quoth the Zâhid, “well we ken
the teaching of the school abhorr’d
“That maketh man automaton,
mind a secretion, soul a word.”
“Of molecules and protoplasm
you matter-mongers prompt to prate;
“Of jelly-speck development
and apes that grew to man’s estate.”
Vain cavil! all that is hath come
either by Mir’acle or by Law;—
Why waste on this your hate and fear,
why waste on that your love and awe?
Why heap such hatred on a word,
why “Prototype” to type assign,
Why upon matter spirit mass?
wants an appendix your design?
Is not the highest honour his
who from the worst hath drawn the best;
May not your Maker make the world
from matter, an it suit His hest?
Nay more, the sordider the stuff
the cunninger the workman’s hand:
Cease, then, your own Almighty Power
to bind, to bound, to understand.
“Reason and Instinct!” How we love
to play with words that please our pride;
Our noble race’s mean descent
by false forged titles seek to hide!
For “gift divine” I bid you read
the better work of higher brain,
From Instinct diff’ering in degree
as golden mine from leaden vein.
Reason is Life’s sole arbiter,
the magic Laby’rinth’s single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken;
what crosses it can ne’er be true.
“Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!”
Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do,
sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!

VIII

There is no Heav’en, there is no Hell;
these be the dreams of baby minds;
Tools of the wily Fetisheer,
to ’fright the fools his cunning blinds.
Learn from the mighty Spi’rits of old
to set thy foot on Heav’en and Hell;
In Life to find thy hell and heav’en
as thou abuse or use it well.
So deemed the doughty Jew who dared
by studied silence low to lay
Orcus and Hades, lands of shades,
the gloomy night of human day.
Hard to the heart is final death:
fain would an Ens not end in Nil;
Love made the senti’ment kindly good:
the Priest perverted all to ill.
While Reason sternly bids us die,
Love longs for life beyond the grave:
Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears
for Life-to-be shall ever crave.
Hence came the despot’s darling dream,
a Church to rule and sway the State;
Hence sprang the train of countless griefs
in priestly sway and rule innate.
For future Life who dares reply?
No witness at the bar have we;
Save what the brother Potsherd tells,—
old tales and novel jugglery.
Who e’er return’d to teach the Truth,
the things of Heaven and Hell to limn?
And all we hear is only fit
for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn.
“Have mercy, man!” the Zâhid cries,
“of our best visions rob us not!
“Mankind a future life must have
to balance life’s unequal lot.”
“Nay,” quoth the Magian, “’tis not so;
I draw my wine for one and all,
“A cup for this, a score for that,
e’en as his measure’s great or small:
“Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight;
to poorest passion he was born;
“Who drains the score must e’er expect
to rue the headache of the morn.”
Safely he jogs along the way
which ‘Golden Mean’ the sages call;
Who scales the brow of frowning Alp
must face full many a slip and fall.
Here èxtremes meet, anointed Kings
whose crownèd heads uneasy lie,
Whose cup of joy contains no more
than tramps that on the dunghill die.
To fate-doomed Sinner born and bred
for dangling from the gallows-tree;
To Saint who spends his holy days
in rapt’urous hope his God to see;
To all that breathe our upper air
the hands of Dest’iny ever deal,
In fixed and equal parts, their shares
of joy and sorrow, woe and weal.
“How comes it, then, our span of days
in hunting wealth and fame we spend
“Why strive we (and all humans strive)
for vain and visionary end?”
Reply: mankind obeys a law
that bids him labour, struggle, strain;
The Sage well knowing its unworth,
the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain.
And who, ’mid e’en the Fools, but feels
that half the joy is in the race
For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs
when comes success to crown the chase?
Again: in Hind, Chîn, Franguestân
that accident of birth befell,
Without our choice, our will, our voice:
Faith is an accident as well.
What to the Hindu saith the Frank:
“Denier of the Laws divine!
“However godly-good thy Life,
Hell is the home for thee and thine.”
“Go strain the draught before ’tis drunk,
and learn that breathing every breath,
“With every step, with every gest,
something of life thou do’est to death.”
Replies the Hindu: “Wend thy way
for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit;
“Your Pariah-par’adise woo and win;
at such dog-Heav’en I laugh and spit.”
“Cannibals of the Holy Cow!
who make your rav’ening maws the grave
“Of Things with self-same right to live;—
what Fiend the filthy license gave?”
What to the Moslem cries the Frank?
“A polygamic Theist thou!
“From an imposter-Prophet turn;
Thy stubborn head to Jesus bow.”
Rejoins the Moslem: “Allah’s one
tho’ with four Moslemahs I wive,
“One-wife-men ye and (damnèd race!)
you split your God to Three and Five.”
The Buddhist to Confucians thus:
“Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die;
“Content ye rest with wretched earth;
God, Judgment, Hell ye fain defy.”
Retorts the Tartar: “Shall I lend
mine only ready-money ‘now,’
“For vain usurious ‘Then’ like thine,
avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!”
“With this poor life, with this mean world
I fain complete what in me lies;
“I strive to perfect this my me;
my sole ambition’s to be wise.”
When doctors differ who decides
amid the milliard-headed throng?
Who save the madman dares to cry:
“’Tis I am right, you all are wrong?”
“You all are right, you all are wrong,”
we hear the careless Soofi say,
“For each believes his glimm’ering lamp
to be the gorgeous light of day.”
“Thy faith why false, my faith why true?
’tis all the work of Thine and Mine,
“The fond and foolish love of self
that makes the Mine excel the Thine.”
Cease then to mumble rotten bones;
and strive to clothe with flesh and blood
The skel’eton; and to shape a Form
that all shall hail as fair and good.
“For gen’erous youth,” an Arab saith,
“Jahim’s* the only genial state;
“Give us the fire but not the shame
with the sad, sorry blest to mate.”
* Jehannum, Gehenna, Hell.
And if your Heav’en and Hell be true,
and Fate that forced me to be born
Force me to Heav’en or Hell—I go,
and hold Fate’s insolence in scorn.
I want not this, I want not that,
already sick of Me and Thee;
And if we’re both transform’d and changed,
what then becomes of Thee and Me?
Enough to think such things may be:
to say they are not or they are
Were folly: leave them all to Fate,
nor wage on shadows useless war.
Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies
who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
All other Life is living Death,
a world where none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice,
a tinkling of the camel-bell.

IX

How then shall man so order life
that when his tale of years is told,
Like sated guest he wend his way;
how shall his even tenour hold?
Despite the Writ that stores the skull;
despite the Table and the Pen;*
Maugre the Fate that plays us down,
her board the world, her pieces men?
* Emblems of Kismet, or Destiny.
How when the light and glow of life
wax dim in thickly gath’ering gloom,
Shall mortal scoff at sting of Death,
shall scorn the victory of the Tomb?
One way, two paths, one end the grave.
This runs athwart the flow’ery plain,
That breasts the bush, the steep, the crag,
in sun and wind and snow and rain:
Who treads the first must look adown,
must deem his life an all in all;
Must see no heights where man may rise,
must sight no depths where man may fall.
Allah in Adam form must view;
adore the Maker in the made.
Content to bask in Mâyâ’s smile,*
in joys of pain, in lights of shade.
* Illusion.
He breaks the Law, he burns the Book,
he sends the Moolah back to school;
Laughs at the beards of Saintly men;
and dubs the Prophet dolt and fool,
Embraces Cypress’ taper-waist;
cools feet on wavy breast of rill;
Smiles in the Nargis’ love-lorn eyes,
and ’joys the dance of Daffodil;
Melts in the saffron light of Dawn
to hear the moaning of the Dove;
Delights in Sundown’s purpling hues
when Bulbul woos the Rose’s love.
Finds mirth and joy in Jamshid-bowl;
toys with the Daughter of the vine;
And bids the beauteous cup-boy say,
“Master I bring thee ruby wine!”*
* That all the senses, even the ear, may enjoy.
Sips from the maiden’s lips the dew;
brushes the bloom from virgin brow:—
Such is his fleshly bliss that strives
the Maker through the Made to know.
I’ve tried them all, I find them all
so same and tame, so drear, so dry;
My gorge ariseth at the thought;
I commune with myself and cry:—
Better the myriad toils and pains
that make the man to manhood true,
This be the rule that guideth life;
these be the laws for me and you:
With Ignor’ance wage eternal war,
to know thy self forever strain,
Thine ignorance of thine ignorance is
thy fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane;
That blunts thy sense, and dulls thy taste;
that deafs thine ears, and blinds thine eyes;
Creates the thing that never was,
the Thing that ever is defies.
The finite Atom infinite
that forms thy circle’s centre-dot,
So full-sufficient for itself,
for other selves existing not,
Finds the world mighty as ’tis small;
yet must be fought the unequal fray;
A myriad giants here; and there
a pinch of dust, a clod of clay.
Yes! maugre all thy dreams of peace
still must the fight unfair be fought;
Where thou mayst learn the noblest lore,
to know that all we know is nought.
True to thy Nature, to Thy self,
Fame and Disfame nor hope nor fear:
Enough to thee the small still voice
aye thund’ering in thine inner ear.
From self-approval seek applause:
What ken not men thou kennest, thou!
Spurn ev’ry idol others raise:
Before thine own Ideal bow:
Be thine own Deus: Make self free,
liberal as the circling air:
Thy Thought to thee an Empire be;
break every prison’ing lock and bar:
Do thou the Ought to self aye owed;
here all the duties meet and blend,
In widest sense, withouten care
of what began, for what shall end.
Thus, as thou view the Phantom-forms
which in the misty Past were thine,
To be again the thing thou wast
with honest pride thou may’st decline;
And, glancing down the range of years,
fear not thy future self to see;
Resign’d to life, to death resign’d,
as though the choice were nought to thee.
On Thought itself feed not thy thought;
nor turn from Sun and Light to gaze,
At darkling cloisters paved with tombs,
where rot the bones of bygone days:
“Eat not thy heart,” the Sages said;
“nor mourn the Past, the buried Past;”
Do what thou dost, be strong, be brave;
and, like the Star, nor rest nor haste.
Pluck the old woman from thy breast:
Be stout in woe, be stark in weal;
Do good for Good is good to do:
Spurn bribe of Heav’en and threat of Hell.
To seek the True, to glad the heart,
such is of life the HIGHER LAW,
Whose differ’ence is the Man’s degree,
the Man of gold, the Man of straw.
See not that something in Mankind
that rouses hate or scorn or strife,
Better the worm of Izrâil*
than Death that walks in form of life.
* The Angel of Death.
Survey thy kind as One whose wants
in the great Human Whole unite;*
The Homo rising high from earth
to seek the Heav’ens of Life-in-Light;
* The “Great Man” of the Enochites and the Mormons.
And hold Humanity one man,
whose universal agony
Still strains and strives to gain the goal,
where agonies shall cease to be.
Believe in all things; none believe;
judge not nor warp by “Facts” the thought;
See clear, hear clear, tho’ life may seem
Mâyâ and Mirage, Dream and Naught.
Abjure the Why and seek the How:
the God and gods enthroned on high,
Are silent all, are silent still;
nor hear thy voice, nor deign reply.
The Now, that indivis’ible point
which studs the length of inf’inite line
Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all,
the puny all thou callest thine.
Perchance the law some Giver hath:
Let be! let be! what canst thou know?
A myriad races came and went;
this Sphinx hath seen them come and go.
Haply the Law that rules the world
allows to man the widest range;
And haply Fate’s a Theist-word,
subject to human chance and change.
This “I” may find a future Life,
a nobler copy of our own,
Where every riddle shall be ree’d,
where every knowledge shall be known;
Where ’twill be man’s to see the whole
of what on Earth he sees in part;
Where change shall ne’er surcharge the thought;
nor hope defer’d shall hurt the heart.
But!—faded flow’er and fallen leaf
no more shall deck the parent tree;
And man once dropt by Tree of Life
what hope of other life has he?
The shatter’d bowl shall know repair;
the riven lute shall sound once more;
But who shall mend the clay of man,
the stolen breath to man restore?
The shiver’d clock again shall strike;
the broken reed shall pipe again:
But we, we die, and Death is one,
the doom of brutes, the doom of men.
Then, if Nirwânâ* round our life
with nothingness, ’tis haply best;
Thy toils and troubles, want and woe
at length have won their guerdon—Rest.
* Comparative annihilation.
Cease, Abdû, cease! Thy song is sung,
nor think the gain the singer’s prize;
Till men hold Ignor’ance deadly sin,
till man deserves his title “Wise:”*
* “Homo sapiens.”
In Days to come, Days slow to dawn,
when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men,
These echoes of a voice long stilled
haply shall wake responsive strain:
Wend now thy way with brow serene,
fear not thy humble tale to tell:—
The whispers of the Desert-wind;
the tinkling of the camel’s bell.
{Hebrew: ShLM}

NOTES