Part 2

Yes, one flash of the true light is better than all the creeds and dogmas. It is better, even though these hold out the fairest prospects and the brightest dreams, and the flash of true light is only the blackest midnight.

Not only would Omar take away the hope of Heaven, but he leaves us with little to boast while we live upon the earth. Our short, obscure existence is not felt or noticed in the great sweep of time and the resistless movement of the years. Along the pathway of the world we leave scarce a footprint, and our loudest voice and bravest words are as completely lost as if spoken in the presence of Niagara’s roar.

And fear not lest Existence closing your Account and mine, should know the like no more; The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour’d Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

The weakness and littleness of man has been the subject of endless words before and since, but never has poet put it more strongly than here. The Eternal Saki—the great wine pourer, tips his pitcher and turns out millions of bubbles, and still they come forever, and each of us is one.

But however brave and stoical Omar seems to be, still he feels sad when witnessing the flight of years and the ravages of time. It is, of course, useless to fight the inevitable, and the strongest will must bend and break before the weakening touch of age. Whether it is good or bad, all cling to existence, and sadly and reluctantly let go the tendrils that hold to pulsing life. The fading of Spring and youth, and the coming of Autumn with its suggestions of the approaching end, is most beautiful and touching in this marvelous book:

Yet, Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close! The Nightingale that in the branches sang, Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!

This strain of sadness is sincere and true. To recognize the inevitable and not pretend to deceive one’s self is one thing, but to think that all is just and wise and best may be quite another. Omar felt that fate was inexorable, relentless and hard.

The moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on; nor all your piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

He would have tempered her hardness with a little human love and tender pity, and bade the great Recorder leave much untold. He recognized the fact that the scheme could not be changed, and that even our brief existence depended upon our subservience to the great will that would neither break nor bend; but he still regretted that it was not better and kinder and more forgiving than it is. There is almost a wail in the strain of sadness in which he laments the rigor of unyielding fate.

Would that some winged Angel ere too late Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of fate, And make the stern Recorder otherwise Enregister, or quite obliterate!

Ah Love! could you and I with him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits—and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire?

It is impossible to live to a moderate age without forming some idea of the conduct of life; this may be practical or theoretical, or both. But either with or without consciousness we construct some plan of life and its purpose, and our daily conduct conforms more or less closely to the theory that we accept. The religionist teaches that the hope of future rewards and punishments must be kept before the mind, or man would give himself completely to indulgence, and the race would die. This theory loses sight of the fact that Nature herself is constantly wiping out those who defy her laws, and preserving longest those who conform to the conditions she has imposed. Excesses of all kinds destroy and weaken existence, and bring the natural penalty, which leaves only the more rational and temperate to perpetuate life upon the earth. Of course these observations apply, not to the fashions and forms and conventions of man, except so far as these conform to the unbending laws of nature, which must ever be supreme.

From Omar Khayyam’s views of life, he could not but think that it was the duty of every pilgrim to get the most he could in his journey through the world. But, really, all accept this obvious fact. The Religionist says merely that man should be less happy here,—that his enjoyment may be the greater in the world to come. It is not in the theory as to life’s purpose that men have differed, but as to the conduct that really brings the greatest happiness when the last balance has been struck, and the book is forever closed. Our poet could not see the days and years go by and life’s sands swiftly running out, and still postpone all enjoyment to some far off, misty time. He believed in the reality of to-day, and that beyond the present all was but a vision and a dream. In his day, as in ours, the priests held out the hope of heaven and fear of hell, to keep the wanderer in the narrow path. But Omar was a philosopher and astronomer. He peered into the infinite depths of endless space, and could see only moving, whirling worlds like ours, and could find no place for heaven or hell. What the mysteries of astronomy could not reveal, the theories of life left equally in the dark. While he refused to be moved by a literal heaven and hell, he yet felt a deep meaning attached to these old religious views. The humane, progressive thinkers of to-day have scarcely gone beyond this old seer, who lived eight centuries ago and pondered the same problems over which our theologians wrangle now. The following stanza gives an interpretation of these religious dogmas, which for beauty and breadth and insight seems to be the latest product of ethical, religious thought, instead of the musty musings of an old pagan, who has been dust almost eight hundred years:

I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-Life to spell; And by and by my Soul returned to me, And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell.”

If these places are but states of consciousness, it of course must follow that we make our own heaven and hell, and it is, therefore, the right and duty of each, not to wait for some dreamy mirage born of old superstition, unmanly fear, and unfounded faith, but to take the present, fleeting moment, and with it do the best we can. This stanza may seem painfully sad and hopeless, but it contains the true philosophy of life:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust unto Dust, and under Dust, to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!

Not only is the present the all important time, but the realities know nothing except the present. There is no moment but the one that’s here,—the past is gone, the next one has not come, and he that misses the present loses all there is.

Some for the Glories of This World, and some Sigh for the Prophet’s paradise to come; Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

As to how the pleasures of life are to be found, men never have agreed and never can. Our view of pleasure, like our feelings and emotions, grows from the condition of our being, and is the result of causes that we did not create and cannot control. Some there are who look at all the strife and suffering of the world, and feel no kinship to the great, surging mass that moves and feels and thinks. These walk silently along the path alone, oblivious alike to the pleasures and the sufferings of the world around. Others there are whose souls are so sensitive that they feel the joys and sorrows of the world, and who cannot separate their lives from all the sentient, moving things that teem and swarm upon the earth. Both can and must feel those appetites and desires that are ever incident to being. Without these, nature could neither bring life upon the earth nor sustain it when it came. It is in the balancing of these feelings that nature almost necessarily makes the imperfect man. Unless the emotions and desires are sufficiently developed, the creature is cold, impassive, pulseless clay. If too much developed, it runs the risk of sacrificing the higher emotions and more lasting enjoyments to the fleeting, sensual pleasures of the hour. Almost every person must stand upon one side or the other of this shadowy line, which no man can see, and which he would have no power to cross, even if he knew where it ran.

Perhaps the Rubaiyat shows too much leaning toward the sensual; too great fondness for the vine. Some of the allusions were perhaps symbolical, but still, Omar doubtless was very fond of wine and found in its use one of the chief purposes of life. Philosophy and theology could not satisfy his mind. These furnished only visionary, inconsistent theories of existence, utterly barren and futile,—wholly purposeless and wrong. After studying and wrangling and disputing, he threw them to the winds and reached out for the realities,—however transitory and unsatisfactory these realities seemed to be. His exchange of theories and mysticisms for wine may be symbolical or not, but whether literal or figurative, he could hardly be cheated by the trade. This is the way he relates the story of his change of heart:

You know, My Friends, with what a brave Carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house; Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed, And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.

After throwing the theoretical philosophy to the winds, he turned to the vine to learn what life really meant. No doubt, the vessel here is figuratively used. It might mean a wine cup, it might mean feeding a beggar, it might mean a warm room and comfortable dress. It meant something besides the intangible, barren theories, which have ever furnished theologians and professors with the pleasing occupation of splitting hairs and quibbling about the meaning of terms.

Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn I lean’d, the secret of my Life to learn; And Lip to Lip it murmur’d—“While you live, Drink!—for, once dead, you never shall return.”

Neither would it do to postpone the pleasures of the wine,—time is fleeting, and every hour may be the last. Life has no space for resolutions or regrets. These only rob existence of a portion of the poor prizes that she stingily scatters into the ring to be fought and scrambled after by the crowd.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling; The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.

It is not the dainty sipping of the wine that our poet commends for the peace of the soul, but the giving up of self to the enjoyment of the hour,—the complete abandonment that forgets time and space and eternity, and knows only the moment that is.

Perplext no more with Human or Divine, To-morrow’s tangle to the winds resign, And lose your fingers in the tresses of The Cypress-slender Minister of Wine.

This stanza may mean wine,—it may mean any strong purpose, or intense emotion that takes possession of our life,—that makes us its devoted slave, anxious to dare or suffer for the privilege of enlisting in a cause. That Omar knew something of life’s pleasures and realities, besides the wine he lauded, is apparent from his work. His insight was so deep that he could not be deceived by the tinsel and glitter and trappings that make up the vain show with which men deceive others, and attempt to beguile themselves. In Persia eight hundred years ago, there were probably no twenty-story buildings, no railroads, nor street cars, nor telegraph wires; perhaps no chambers of commerce, nor banks; but no doubt these old Mohammedans had much as useless and vain and artificial as these inventions of a later day. There was then, as now, the master with all the false luxury that idleness could create in that land and time; there was also, as to-day, the hopeless slave, whose only purpose on the earth was to minister to the parasite and knave; and both of these, master and man alike, were helpless prisoners in the schemes and devices, the machinery and inventions, the worthless appendages and appliances that bound and enslaved them, and that have held the world with ever increasing strength to the present day.

But Omar knew that all of this was a delusion and a snare;—that it failed of the purpose that it meant to serve. He turned from these vanities to a simpler, saner life, and found the sweetest and most lasting pleasures close to the heart of that great nature, to which man must return from all his devious wanderings, like the lost child that comes back to its mother’s breast. What simpler and higher happiness has all the artificial civilization of the world been able to create than this:

A Book of Verses underneath the bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow.

It is these bright spots in life’s desert that make us long to stay. These hours of friendship and close companionship of congenial souls that seem the only pleasures that are real, and from which no regrets can come. It is away from the bustle and glare of the world, above its petty strifes, and its cruel taunts, in the quiet and trust of true comradeship, that we forget the evil and fall in love with life. And our old philosopher, with all his pessimism, with all his doubts and disappointments, knew that here was the greatest peace and happiness that weary, mortal man could know. In the presence of the friends he loved, and the comradeship of congenial lives, he could not but regret the march of time and the flight of years, which heralded the coming of the end. Poor Omar was like all the rest that ever lived—he looked forward into the dark, unknown sea, and shuddered as he felt the rising water on his feet.

All of us know how small and worthless are our lives when measured by the infinite bubbles poured out by the great creative power. All know that we shall quickly sink into the great dark sea and the waves will close above us as if we had not been. And yet we do not really think of the world as moving on the same when we have spoken our last lines and retired behind the scenes. To the world we are little,—to ourselves we are all. We almost hope that for a time at least we shall be missed,—that some souls shall sorrow and some lives feel pain. We hope that here and there some pilgrim will tell of a burden that we helped him bear, or a road we tried to smooth. That sometime when the merry feast is on, a former friend shall feel a momentary shadow rest upon his heart at the thought of the face he used to know and the voice that now is still. Thus Omar and FitzGerald mused and hoped and told in beautiful, pathetic lines:

Yon rising Moon that looks for us again— How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter rising look for us Through this same Garden—and for one in vain!

And when like her, O Saki, you shall pass Among the Guests Star-scatter’d on the Grass, And in your blissful errand reach the spot Where I made one—turn down an empty Glass!

WALT WHITMAN

WALT WHITMAN

The work of Whitman stands alone in the literature of the world. Both in substance and construction he ignored all precedents and dared to be himself. All the rules of form and taste must be unlearned before the world can accept his style as true literary art. Still it may be that Walt Whitman was a poet, and that sometime the world will look back and marvel at the mechanical precision and glittering polish that confines and emasculates for the sake of a purely artificial form.

Measured by the common rules, Whitman’s work is neither poetry nor prose; it is remotely allied to the wild chanting of the primitive bards, who looked about at the fresh new marvels of earth and sky and sea, and unhampered by forms and rules and customs, sang of the miracles of the universe and the mysteries of life. Whitman seems one of those old bards, fresh from the hand of nature, young with the first creation, the newest handwork of the great Master, untaught in any schools, unfettered by any of the myriad chords, which time is ever weaving about the brains and hearts and consciences of men as the world grows gray; a primitive bard of nature, born by some chance or accident in this old, tired, worn-out world, dropped into this Nineteenth century with its machines and conventions, its artificial life, its unnatural morals and its fettered limbs. He alone in all the ages seems to have been specially given to the world, still fresh with the imprint of the Creator’s hand, and standing amid all our false conventions, natural, simple, true, “naked and not ashamed.” To the world with its crowded cities, its diseased bodies, its unnatural desires, its narrow religion, and its false morals, he comes like a breeze of the morning, from the mountains or the sea. Aye, like a breath of that great, creative life, which touched the fresh world and brought forth the green grass, the sparkling waters and the growing, beauteous, natural earth.

No one ever fell in love with Whitman’s work for its literary art, but his work must live or die because of his philosophy of life and the material he chose from which to weave his songs. It is in his whole point of view that Walt Whitman stands so much alone. No one else has ever looked on the universe and life as this man did. If religion means devotion to that great unseen power that is ever manifest in all of nature’s works, then Walt Whitman was the most reverent soul that ever lived. This man alone of all the world dared defend the Creator in every part and parcel of his work. The high mountains, the deep valleys, the broad plains and the wide seas; the feelings, the desires, and the passions of man; all forms of life and being that exist upon the earth, were to him but several manifestations of a great creative power that formed them all alike, made each one needful to the whole, and every portion sacred through its Master’s stamp.

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present and can be none in the future, And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn’d to beautiful results, And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any. I will not make poems with reference to parts. But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble, And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days.

Whitman’s philosophy knew no evil and no wrong. The fact of existence proved the right of existence; in the great workshop of nature every tool had its special use and its rightful place.

The imperfections of the world come from the narrow visions of men. If the perspective is right, the universe is right. From the narrow valley the house may look old and worn, the fences decayed, the fields barren, the woods scraggy and the cliff ragged and bare; but climb to the only place where either life or landscape can be rightly seen, the mountain top, and look once more. The hills, the valley, the stream, the woods, and the farms have melted and blended into one harmonious whole, and every imperfection has been swept away. The universe is filled with myriad worlds as important as our own, each one a tiny floating speck in an endless sea of space—each whirling, turning, moving on and on and on, through the countless ages, past and yet to come. No one can tell the purpose of their tireless, endless flight through space; but still we know that each has an orbit of its own, and every world is related to the rest, and every grain of sand and the weakest, feeblest spark of power has its needful place in the balance of the whole. So all of good, and all of bad, and all of life, and all of death, and all of all, has the right to be and must needs be. Walt Whitman did not even know how to divide the evil from the good, but he sang them both alike.

I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also. What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent.

The universe can make no mistakes, every particle of energy that has permeated the world since time began, has been working toward a completer system and a more harmonious whole. There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil. From the trials and sorrows and disappointments of life, even from its bitterness and doubt and sin, are often born the holiest desires, the sincerest endeavors and the most righteous deeds.

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love, But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d, Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

This is the old, old philosophy, ever forgotten, yet ever present. It is sure in the world of mechanics, it is equally true in the world of morals and of life. Nothing is lost; the force that once was heat is transformed to light; the flood that destroyed the grain, comes at last to turn the miller’s wheel. What we call sin and evil make the experiences of life and go to the upbuilding of character and the development of man. We can know only what we have felt, and however much we try to deceive others, we can tell only of the experiences we ourselves have had. The poorest life is the one that has no tale to tell. In the doubts and darkness of life, in the turbulence of mind and the anguish of the soul, it is most consoling to feel that resignation and confidence which comes from a realization that all is right and that you are master of yourself and at peace with God and man. This calm, optimistic, self-reliant philosophy is ever present with its consoling power in all Walt Whitman’s work.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,

And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe, And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, For I who am curious about each, am not curious about God, (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death).

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.