"Listen, I will be honest with you:
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches;
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd—you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an
irresistible call to depart;
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
remain behind you;
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting;
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands
toward you....
'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"
The thing had come around by India—a quotation from Walt, in a little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after clearance—opened far out on the white water.
They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out of them.... Romance means Not to stay.... Bit by bit, the story unfolds that the Plan is good—that the Plan is unutterably good, that one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until the petty things of life, in no arrangements or combinations, can hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all.
One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay—don't stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind—the next step of the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there—not to take our mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects—by no means to take our card-indexes and letter files—to travel light, to pick up the brighter shells by the way—every glimpse ahead showing higher light—a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper tropics? ... To become as little children—to be open hearted and free handed—to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent separateness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs.
Weigh up your external possessions—weigh them carefully—for their amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God....
To become as a little child—to know that the forests are filled with other than things to eat—to love the mysteries awake, to love the fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings—to be fearless and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as it comes:
... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for High Flight. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait—that is the old song of Earth—young waiting—big waiting—holy waiting. I love it. I love the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music.
Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together—touched great white things—talked and laughed and loved until long after three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, openarmed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel—and in others. I dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so glad this morning!