He is not blind who seeth nought;
Or dumb, who nothing can express;
And sight and sound are something less
Than what is inwardly inwrought.
So seems it foremost of my joys,—
Not ranking those that from above
Assume on earth the name of Love,
The feast which never ends or cloys.
Nor is it less a feast to me
If he, my neighbor, cannot break
The bread with me, or with me take
The wine of all my mystery.
Not less a feast, if so well off
He deems himself in worldly goods,
That at unseen beatitudes
He blindly flings an aimless scoff.
Not theirs the blame who thus disown
The wealth they see not as they walk,
Nor mingle in their household talk
What all to them is all unknown.
Mine be the greater joys that tend
To give me what I cannot give,
And what in living makes me live,
And what I best can comprehend.
And though, amid the daily dust
Of moving men, I move a moat
Within the sunbeam where we float,
With mutual needs and mutual trust,—
Though outward unto outward shows
The kindred claims of sympathy,
And hand to hand and eye to eye
The generous meed of Faith bestows,—
Yet am I conscious that I bear
A something in me dumb and blind
To all the rest of human kind,
And which but one can partly share.
Though in the turbulent stream of change,
The pressing wants of flesh and sense
Conceal my inward opulence,
And clog the life that else would range;
Yet am I conscious that below
The turbid tide, as through the straits
Of Bab-el-Mandeb's tearful gates,
Strong counter currents constant flow.
Nor do I love that man the less,
Because, in our companionship
There lieth behind the eye and lip,
That something, neither can express.
For inasmuch as mortal love,
Being mortal, cannot fill our need,
I feel the Goodness that can feed
With droppings from the feast above.
Whereby, in Heaven's perfected plan,
Which saves from spoil of worldly flaw,
I read the inevitable law
Of compensation unto man.
Thus, though I grope in darkest night,
Of what men call a world of ills,
The closer concentration fills
My inmost with benignant light.
And though I sit in dull routine
Schooled to the scholarship of books,
My truant spirit outward looks
And Fancy fills the village green!
Yet not in pride, oh, understand,
Not pride of merit do I boast,
Of that, which at its uttermost,
Is of me part, like eye or hand.
In awe, not pride, doth Fancy wield
The sceptre of her gorgeous realm,
Whose revelations overwhelm
With sense of greatness unrevealed.
Thus, whatsoever good is gained
In fantasies of fresh delights,
But wings us to diviner flights
Unto the ever unattained.
Nor need I more than this to show
All proof of that astounding bliss,
Which from the world of worlds to this,
Through lowliest mind, sends conscious glow.
Not clearer through the density
Of darkling woods, do I behold
The intervening flecks of gold
Reveal unseen intensity.
In this deep truth I hold the key
That locks me from a world of pain,
And opens unto boundless gain
Of sweet ideal mystery.
And though I may not hope to climb
Above the level commonplace,
Or touch that vital growth of grace
Which shapes the fruit of deathless rhyme,
Yet, will I bless the Gracious Power
Which giveth strength to walk the mead,
And catch the sometime wafted seed
That ripens to the quiet flower.
Or, when, foot-weary with the day,
My longing spirit only feels
The tremor of the distant wheels
That bear some poet on his way;
I'll deem it very kindly chance
That gives the apprehension clear
To feel the pageant, far or near,
That moves to other's utterance.
And if I can but feebly keep
With reverent grace my share of good,
And kneeling, gather daily food
By gleaning, where my betters reap,
Yet will I bless the Hand Divine
That with the appetite for least,
Transforms into perpetual feast
The homely bread, the household wine;
And place it foremost of my joys,—
Not ranking those that from above
Assume on earth the name of Love,—
That feast, which never ends or cloys.
THE ASH TREE.
'The Ash for nothing ill.'—Spenser.
'The Ash asks not a depth of fruitful mould
But, like frugality, on little means
It thrives; and high o'er creviced ruins spreads
Its ample shade, or on the naked rock,
That nods in air, with graceful limbs depends.'—Bidlake's Year.
'Nature seems t' ordain
The rocky cliff for the wild Ash's reign.'—Dryden's Virgil.
Those who would seek the primitive signification of all objects in Nature, unroll their symbolism, and thereby attain the first historical groundwork of poetry, must bear in mind that this system was formed, and, indeed, ripely developed, in an age anterior to all written records of humanity. By ascertaining what words are common to the Indo-Germanic languages, we may easily find how far in civilization those had progressed who spoke the old Aryan, the common mother of the languages of Europe, India, and Persia, ere they parted to form new tribes, with new tongues. So, by comparing the mythologic legends of these later races, we may, with strictest accuracy, determine what was the parent stem. That the religion of the British Celts had striking points of resemblance with that of the Ph[oe]nicians and the Baal-worshipping Shemitic races, with India and Scandinavia and the Greek and Roman systems, is apparent enough to any one who will compare the names, customs, and legends common to all. It was something more than a mere coincidence which gave to Bal of the East and Bal-der of the West the same significant syllable.
Yet it must be remembered that the further back we go to the primæval age of one language and one religion, the more obscure becomes our medium of vision. We see that tribes intermingled, exchanging and distorting traditions of their gods; that migrations disturbed the local force of legends; that the time for celebrating the birth of Spring in the far South or East became sadly misplaced when transplanted to the North; and that, finally, the deep reverence and strange tales attached to trees, flowers, and minerals, being too deeply seated to perish, were fed by being transferred to other objects more or less similar. Thus Christmas, derived from the old heathen Yule or Wheel feast of the Seasons and of Time, and which, like all feasts, was founded in the celebration of the revival of Spring, was actually held at last in mid-winter. So the holly and ivy, expressive of the male and female principles of generation, and of the great mystery of reproduction and revival most in force during the Spring, were substitutes for other symbols—possibly the fig leaves, lettuce, and roses which in milder climes had at that season been employed to set forth the loves of Venus and Adonis—of reviving and of receptive nature.
The most striking illustration of this transfer of earnest religious devotion to such objects is furnished by the Ash Tree. In the far East, men had, during the course of ages, learned to attach extraordinary significance to trees, which, growing, decaying, and dying like man, yet outliving him by centuries, seemed, like animals, to be both far below and yet far above him in many of the conditions of life. In those glowing climes the Banyan was regarded as the tree of trees, and the mighty centre of vegetating life. Hence it was worshipped with such deep reverence that even in modern botany we find it named the ficus religiosa; and it was called by the earlier Christians the Devil's Tree, in accordance with their belief that all heathen rites were offered to Satan. For it was beneath the Banyan that Vishnu was born, and under it that Buddha taught his sacred lore; it is in it that Brahmins love to dwell; it is the living, green cathedral of God—the leafy cloister of sacred learning, ever holy, ever beautiful, never dying. Like God and Nature, it is ever re-born; it falls drooping to earth to take fresh root, and is, on that account, as well as from its immense size, a wonderfully apt symbol of God renewing himself—of revival and of eternity. It is named from some saint, whose soul is believed to flit through its solemn shades, nay, to animate the tree itself: no wonder that in the laws of Menu it was made the sacred, never-to-be-injured monument of a boundary.[1]
Time rolled on—for the world was old then, though thousands of years have since faded—and from the East there was a mighty emigration to lands far away. What were the causes of this mighty movement—what was it which transplanted the seeds of new nations and new races into the distant Norway and Sweden? As yet, only dim, very dim conjecture can be made. The Mahabharata tells us of a mighty battle which sent forth hero-sages with their armies into the wide world; others have traditions of divisions between the worshippers of the Lingam and Yoni, who alternately contended for the supremacy of the male or female principle in creation. Whatever the causes may have been—priest warring with soldier for power, or a newer and a milder code casting off the older and more aristocratic rulers into outer darkness—one thing is certain, that they went forth strong in faith, fearless of destiny; for the religion of primeval times was terrible and tremendous. It was such religion, such absolute, undoubting slavery to faith, which wore away millions on millions of lives in carrying out in dim, old, barbarous days the rock sculptures of the temples of Ellora—which dug Sibyls' grots, and piled together Cyclopean walls, and pierced Cimmerian caves of awful depth and solid gloom, in the fair isles of the Mediterranean; and which, it may have been at the same time, it may have been at a later day, massed together the miracles of Stonehenge, the enormous dragon rows of Brittany, and the almost indentically similar serpent mounds of our own West. They are all of one faith.