FRAGMENTS:
FROM "THE STORY OF A SOUL," AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
BY H. W. PARKER.
A TOUR DE FORCE.
I felt myself alone—alone as one
Who leapt in joy from starry rock to rock
Across creations stream, and joyed to know
Himself alone in starry solitudes,
Communing with his soul and God; and clomb
The heights of glory, there amazed to see
The wilderness of worlds, and feel the want
Of other hearts to share excess of bliss.
Alone!—it startled me with such a fear—
A daring fear, as only spirits can have.
At once I would be every where—on all
The peopled globes where'er myself had been;
My lonely being would I spread through all.
I thought, with the velocity of thought
Which disembodied souls alone may know—
I thought, I willed, myself in thousand places
In quick and successive instants, quick as one;
And so around again, and still around,
Without an interval. Soon as a flash,
A thousand selves were scattered o'er the deep
Of distant space; and, urging on my soul,
Around and on, with energy immortal,
And swifter still, at last I seemed to grow
Ubiquitous—a multipresence dread,
A loneliness enlarged, more awful yet—
Until, in thought's extreme rapidity,
The distant selves were blended into one,
And space was gone! The universe was lost
In me—in nothingness.
Soon it returned
And stood resplendent; space again became
A mode of thought, as thought resumed its calm,
And motion ceased with will. I found myself
Far off in outer coasts of light....
MEMORY.
.... The vision changed; for still
The cherub Fancy sports beyond the grave,
Led by the hand of Reason. Once again,
My memory rose, a painted canvas, framed
In golden mouldings of immortal joy.
But now the perfect copy of a life,
With all the colors glorified, began
To melt in slow dissolving views of truth.
From out the crowded scene of mortal deeds,
A group enraged, colossal in its shapes:
Self—a dead giant, hideous and deformed,
Lay, slain with lightning, while, upon his head,
Stood holy Love, her eyes upturned to Heaven,
Her hands extended o'er the kneeling forms
Of Faith and Hope....
MUSIC.
Nor were the splendors silent all. To spirits
'Tis ever one to see, to hear, to feel—
The music of the spheres is therefore truth,
And, now, no more I heard the noise confused
Of humming stars and murmuring moons, in tones
Discordant; but as in the focal point
Of whispering rooms, so here I found at last
The centre where the perfect chords combine—
Where the full harmonies of rolling worlds
Are poring evermore in billowy seas
Of sounds, that break in thundered syllables
Unutterable to men. A naked soul
Within the central court of space, to me
The trill of myriad stars, the heavy boom
Of giant suns that slowly came and went,
The whistlings, sweet and far, of lesser orbs,
And the low thunder of more distant deeps,
Ever commingling, grew to eloquence
No mortal brain may bear. The universe
Had found a voice....