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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: James Edward Fitzgerald Volume

VI

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VI.

vignette

53.
It may be, then, the whole economy
Of this wide universe, reveal'd by sense,
Some inner universe may overlie,
Of which 'tis but the outward evidence:
That all things seen are but the husk or skin
Of things unknown to sense, a world concealed within.

54.
As now, in this thought-teeming age of ours,
All-searching science to our wond'ring gaze
Reveals fresh secrets of the subtle powers
Which darkly work in Nature's mystic maze,
Sustaining by their hidden agency
Life's infinitely intricate machinery—

55.
May it not be that keener observation,
A wider range of thought, and deeper seeing
May open to mankind a revelation
Of infinitely subtler laws of being
Than those within our known philosophy—
Entwined with life, and yet not dying when we die?

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56.
As when we close our eyelids, and exclude
The light-borne missives of the world around,
The mind still peoples its own solitude
With beings real as those of sight or sound;
And, the wide bounds of time and space o'er sped,
Holds mystic commune with the absent or the dead.

57.
Is this strange power of seeing the unseen,
Feeling the unfelt, and hearing the unheard,—
Calling up spectres of what long has been
In the still caverns of the past inter'd;—
Striving with prescient skill to penetrate
The destinies concealed within the womb of fate;—

58.
Or that creative power, at whose command
All matter becomes plastic to the will,
Which rules the waving of the artist's wand,
Or moulds the marble with the sculptor's skill,
Or from the sound-producing air's vibrations
Evolves the mystery of music's rich creations;—

59.
The thought which guides the student's speculations,
Unfolding Nature's secrets to his ken;—
The statesman's wisdom wisely ruling nations,—
The genius which inspires the poet's pen—
Flashing thro' space and time the waves of mind
Upon whose stream are borne the destinies of mankind;—

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60.
Or, chief of all the attributes of man,
The sense of right and wrong, the homage paid
To that high court where Conscience sits to scan
His inmost motives, and, tho' sometimes sway'd
By rule of lower law, yet by that light,
However dim, still owns some rule of wrong and right;—

61.
Are these inherent powers of the soul,
Calm reason, moral sense, and fancy's play,
But parts of the dull matter they control,
Some finer essence of our native clay,
Ruled by the same inexorable laws
Which nerve the insect's wing, or guide the planet's course?

62.
All matter is immortal; the wide range
Of our inspection of Earth's mysteries
Proclaims that death is but a name for change
In forms of being, whose being never dies;
A shifting of the scenes,—a transmutation
Of Earth's dissolving views—decay, and renovation.

63.
Is then the soul more mortal than the home
In which it liv'd on Earth? Or shall we say
That as the silent alchemy of the tomb
Resolves the body into primal clay,
The spirit too is merg'd into the whole
Pervading ocean of th' universal soul?

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64.
"Dust unto dust returns, th' immortal spirit
Returns to God who gave it "*—so of old
The sacred oracle which we inherit
Did some dim vision of the truth unfold;
As in the deep its coarser atoms lie,
The purer are exhal'd, sun-wafted to the sky.

65.
We vaguely speak of immortality,
And yet our thoughts can hardly realise
A soul's existence, free from every tie
Of human semblance: we can but devise
Phrases which material sense express,
But, in a state where sense is not, are meaningless.

66.
We speak of voice and sound, of fire and light,
Agents of joy in heav'n, in hell of pain,
As if these such emotions could excite
Where sensuous attributes have ceas'd to reign:
Angels in feather'd pinions we portray,
And demons in grotesque and hideous forms array.

67.
But if 'tis by the mind that we conceive
Th' impressions through material sense convey'd,
And if, when sense has vanish'd, we believe
The soul still lives, its powers undecayed,
Some objects in the Spirit-land must lie
Th' emotions of the soul t' excite and satisfy.

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68.
The physical phenomena of life,
To which th' emotions of the soul respond,
Some immaterial representative
Must have, the sphere of earth and sense beyond;
Something whose spiritual influence
May wake the pain or pleasure once evoked by sense,

69.
Man thirsts for immortality: the same
Self-consciousness of his identity
Lives through all changes of his outward frame,
And whispers to his anxious reason—Why,
When comes the last great change which we call death,
Should the self-conscious spirit end with the mortal breath?

70.
Since first the God-like powers of mind had birth,
Stirr'd in the creature and proclaim'd him man,
And crown'd him with the lordship of the earth,
The yearning for an after life began—
Scal'd Titan-like the ramparts of the sky,
And claim'd the heritage of immortality,

71.
Is this instinctive craving of the soul
In men of many an age and race and clime,
Revolting 'gainst the tyrant death's control,
And bursting thro' the prison bars of time,
No more than cheating fancy's vain desire,
Pursu'd as men benighted pursue the pale marsh-fire?

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72.
Oh Lord of Life and Death! may we not crave
Some further light to dissipate the gloom;—
Some voice from those who have outlived the grave
To solve the awful problem of the tomb?
In vain we cry; no heav'nly light appears,
From the dark silent land no voices reach our ears.

73.
Oh for a faith by which to satisfy
The calm truth-seeking reason's stern behest,
Whilst the soul's intuitions might descry
The true fulfilment of their anxious quest,
And kindred faith and reason might unite
In the divine fruition of unclouded light.

* Eccles, XII 8.