Chapter 3
There must be lonely moments when God feels The need of prayer— Such lonely moments, knowing not anywhere, In any spot or place, In all the far recesses of vast space, Dwells any one to whom His prayers may rise, And then, methinks—so urgent is His need— God bids His prayers descend. He that has ears to hear, let him take heed, For much God’s prayers portend.
God flings His solar system forth to be Finished by beings who befit each sphere. Not ours to pry the secrets out of Mars; Our work lies here. To star-folk leave the stars. There must be many worlds that give God care: Young worlds that glow and burn, Old worlds that freeze and fade. This world is man’s concern. Methinks God must be very much dismayed, Seeing the use we make of earth to-day, While loud we pray.
_Last night_, _in sleep_, _beyond the earth’s small zone_, _Adventurously my spirit went alone_, _Past lesser hells and heavens_, _where souls may pause_ _To learn the meaning of death’s larger laws_, _Past astral shapes and bodies of desire_, _Past angels and archangels_, _high and higher_, _Until the pinnacles of space it trod_, _Then_, _awestruck_, _paused_, _hearing the voice of God_.
‘Mortals of earth, for whom I shaped a sphere (So spake the Voice), ‘there rises to Mine ear Eternal praises and eternal pleas. Now, after centuries, I tire of these. Have ye no knowledge of the Maker’s needs, Ye who ask favours and who praise by creeds?
Why has it not sufficed That unto this small earth I sent great Christ, Divine expression of the mortal man, To aid my plan?
‘Why ask for more when all has been refused? Why praise My name Who hourly am abused? Why seek for Me or heaven, when in you dwells Hate’s lurid hells?
‘Persistent praises and persuasive pleas— I tire, I tire of these; But I, the Maker of a billion suns, Ask men to stop the blasphemy of guns.’ This is God’s prayer.
(_There must be many worlds that give God care_.)
THE CRIMES OF PEACE
Musing upon the tragedies of earth, Of each new horror which each hour gives birth, Of sins that scar and cruelties that blight Life’s little season, meant for man’s delight, Methought those monstrous and repellent crimes Which hate engenders in war-heated times, To God’s great heart bring not so much despair As other sins which flourish everywhere And in all times—bold sins, bare-faced and proud, Unchecked by college, and by Church allowed, Lifting their lusty heads like ugly weeds Above wise precepts and religious creeds, And growing rank in prosperous days of peace. Think you the evils of this world would cease With war’s cessation? If God’s eyes know tears, Methinks He weeps more for the wasted years And the lost meaning of this earthly life— This big, brief life—than over bloody strife. Yea; there are mean, lean sins God must abhor More than the fatted, blood-drunk monster, War. Looking from His place, looking from His high place among the stars, God saw a peaceful land— A land of fertile fields and golden harvests—and great cities whose innumerable spires pierced the vault of heaven, like bayonets of an invading army. And God said, speaking unto Himself aloud, God said: ‘Peace and power and plenty have I given unto this land; and those tall steeples are monuments to Me. Now let My people reveal themselves, that I may see their works, done in My name in a fertile land of peace. I will withdraw Mine eyes from other worlds that I may behold them, that I may behold these people to whom I sent Christ—they whose innumerable spires pierce My blue vault like bayonets.’ God saw the restless, idle rich in club and cabaret, Meat-gorged, wine-filled, they played and preened and danced till dawn o’ day; They played at sports; they played at love; they played at being gay. They were but empty, silk-clad shells; their souls had leaked away. He saw the sweat-shop and the mill where little children toiled, The sunless rooms where mothers slaved and unborn souls were spoiled; While those whose greedy, selfish lives had thrust the toilers there, He saw whirled down broad avenues, clothed all with raiment fair.
He saw in homes made beautiful with all that gold can give Unhappy souls at odds with life, not knowing how to live. He saw fair, pampered women turn from motherhood’s sweet joy, Obsessed with methods to prevent or mania to destroy. He saw men sell their souls to vice and avarice and greed; He heard race quarrelling with race and creed decrying creed; And shameful wealth and waste He saw, and shameful want and need.
He saw bold little children come from church and schoolroom, blind To suffering of lesser things, unfeeling and unkind; He heard them taunt the poor, and tease their furred and feathered kin; And no voice spake from home or church to tell them this was sin. He heard the cry of wounded things, the wasteful gun’s report; He saw the morbid craze to kill, which Christian men called sport.
And then God hid His grieving face behind a wall of cloud, On earth they said, ‘A thunder-storm’—but God had wept aloud.
IT MAY BE
_Let us be silent for a little while_; _Let us be still and listen_. _We may hear_ _Echoes from other worlds not far a way_.
City on city rising, steeple out-topping steeple, Gaining and hoarding and spending, and armies on battle bent, People and people and people, and ever more human people— This is not all of creation, this is not all that was meant! Earth on its orbit spinning, This is not end or beginning; That is but one of a trillion spheres out into the ether hurled: We move in a zone of wonder, And over our planet and under Are infinite orders of beings and marvels of world on world.
There may be moving among us curious people and races, Folk of the fourth dimension, folk of the vast star spaces. They may be trying to reach us, They may be longing to teach us Things we are longing to know. If it is so, Voices like these are not heard in earth’s riot, Let us be quiet.
Classes with classes disputing, nation warring with nation, Building and owning and seeking to lead—this is not all! Endless the works of creation, There may be waiting our call Beings in numberless legions, Dwellers in rarefied regions, Journeying Godward like us, Alist for a word to be spoken, Awatch for a sign or a token. If it be thus, How they must grieve at our riotous noise And the things we call duties and joys!
_Let us be silent for a little while_; _Let us be still and listen_. _We may hear_ _Echoes from other worlds not far away_.
THEN AND NOW
A little time agone, a few brief years, And there was peace within our beauteous borders; Peace, and a prosperous people, and no fears Of war and its disorders. Pleasure was ruling goddess of our land; with her attendant Mirth She led a jubilant, joy-seeking band about the riant earth.
Do you recall those laughing days, my Brothers, And those long nights that trespassed on the dawn? Those throngs of idle dancing maids and mothers Who lilted on and on— Card mad, wine flushed, bejewelled and half stripped, Yet women whose sweet mouth had never sipped From sin’s black chalice—women good at heart Who, in the winding maze of pleasure’s mart, Had lost the sun-kissed way to wholesome pleasures of an earlier day.
Oh! You remember them! You filled their glasses; You ‘cut in’ at their games of bridge; you left Your work to drop in on their dancing classes Before the day was cleft In twain by noontide. When the night waxed late You led your partner forth to demonstrate The newest steps before a cheering throng, And Time and Peace danced by your side along.
Peace is a lovely word, and we abhor that red word ‘War’; But look ye, Brothers, what this war has done for daughters and for son, For manhood and for womanhood, whose trend Seemed year on year toward weakness to descend. Upon this woof of darkness and of terror, woven by human error, Behold the pattern of a new race-soul, And it shall last while countless ages roll.
At the loud call of drums, out of the idler and the weakling comes The hero valiant with self-sacrifice, ready to pay the price War asks of men, to help a suffering world. And out of the arms of pleasure, where they whirled In wild unreasoning mirth, behold the splendid women of the earth Living new selfless lives—the toiling mothers, sister, daughters, wives Of men gone forth as target for the foe.
Ah, now we know Man is divine; we see the heavenly spark Shining above the smoke and gloom and dark Which was not visible in peaceful days. God! wondrous are Thy ways, For out of chaos comes construction; out of darkness and of doubt And the black pit of death comes glorious faith; From want and waste comes thrift, from weakness strength and power And to the summits men and women lift Their souls from self-indulgence in this hour, This crucial hour of life: So shines the golden side of this black shield of strife.
WIDOWS
_The world was widowed by the death of Christ_: _Vainly its suffering soul for peace has sought_ _And found it not_. _For nothing_, _nothing_, _nothing has sufficed_ _To bring back comfort to the stricken house_ _From whence has gone the Master and the Spouse_.
In its long widowhood the world has striven To find diversion. It has turned away From the vast aweful silences of Heaven (Which answer but with silence when we pray) And sought for something to assuage its grief. Some surcease and relief From sorrow, in pursuit of mortal joys. It drowned God’s stillness in a sea of noise; It lost God’s presence in a blur of forms; Till, bruised and bleeding with life’s brutal storms, Unto immutable and speechless space The World lifts up its face, Its haggard, tear-drenched face, And cries aloud for faith’s supreme reward, The promised Second Coming of its Lord.
So many widows, widows everywhere, The whole earth teems with widows. Guns that blare— Winged monsters of the air— And deep-sea monsters leaping through the water, Hell bent on slaughter, All these plough paths for widows. Maids at dawn, And brides at noon, ere eventide pass on Into the ranks of widows: but to weep Just for a little space; then will grief sleep In their young bosoms, where sweet hope belongs, New love will sing once more its age-old songs, And life bloom as a rose-tree blooms again After a night of rain. There are complacent widows clothed in crêpe Who simulate a grief that is not real. Through paths of seeming sorrow they escape From disappointed hopes to some ideal, Or, from the penury of unloved wives Walk forth to opulent lives. And there are widows who shed all their tears Just at the first In one wild burst, And then go lilting lightly down the years: Black butterflies, they flit from flower to flower And live in the thin pleasures of the hour; Merging their tender memories of the dead In tenderer dreams of being once more wed.
But there are others: women who have proved That loving greatly means so being loved. Women who through full beauteous years have grown Into the very body, souls, and heart Of their dear comrades. When death tears apart Such close-knit bonds as these, and one alone Out to the larger freer life is called, And one is left— Then God in heaven must sometimes be appalled At the wild anguish of the soul bereft, And unto His Son must say, ‘I did not know Mortals could suffer so.’
But Christ, remembering Gethsemane, Will answer softly, ‘It was known to Me.’ God’s alchemist, old Time, will merge to calm That bitter anguish; but there is no balm Save the sweet certitude that each long day Is one step in a stair That circles up to where freed spirits stay.
Widows, so many widows everywhere.
_The world was widowed by the death of Christ_, _And nothing_, _nothing_, _nothing has sufficed_ _To bring back comfort to the stricken house_ _From whence has gone the Master and the Spouse_. _Hasten_, _dear Lord_, _with Thy Millennium_, _Hasten and come_.
CONVERSATION
We were a baker’s dozen in the house—six women and six men Besides myself; and all of us had known Those benefits supposed to come from school and church and brush and pen, And opportunities of being thrown In contact with the cultured and the gifted people of the day. Being the thirteenth one among six pairs I deemed it wise to keep apart and let the others have their say: And from my vantage-place upon the stairs, Or in a corner, where I seemed to read, I listened for some word That would make life seem sweeter, or cast light Upon the goal toward which all footsteps wend: and this was what I heard Throughout each day and half of every night. The men talked business, politics, and trade; They told of safe investments, and great chances For speculation. (One man who had made Pleasure his art, described the newest dances And dwelt upon each chassé, glide, and whirl As lovers dwell upon the charms of some fair girl.)
They talked of war, and tried to find its cause, And quite deplored the fact that wars must come. But since this desperate condition was, They carefully computed what the sum Of profit might be to a land of peace, And wondered if times would be harder should war cease.
They spoke of games and sports; told many a story That made the listeners laugh; then back from these Always they harked to money, or the gory And savage drama playing overseas. Then there were tales from club and smoking-room— The submarines of gossip, bringing some name doom.
The women talked of fashions and of plays, But more of players and their private lives; Related tittle-tattle of their words and ways, Their lightning change of husbands and of wives. And there was chat of garments and their price, Of operas and balls and all that gives life spice.
Some talk there was of music, pictures, books, But of musicians, painters, authors, more. The way they lived—their methods and their looks— The colour of their eyes—the clothes they wore; And whether it was true, as had been stated, That gifted people were quite sure to be mis-mated.
They talked of servants, menus, and disease, And operations. Each one came in line With some astounding tale to tell of these, And of her surgeon’s skill, which seemed divine. _But of that vast Domain where live our dead_ _And where we all are hurrying_, _no word was said_.
_When we know that goal awaits each one of us a little farther on_, _When we know how an ever-increasing company of friends is gathered there_, _Why do we not speak of it in our daily conversation_? _Why do we not familiarise our minds with thoughts of worlds unseen_? _There are many beautiful things to be learned of that country_. _There are sacred books of great travellers_, _whose souls have cried_, ‘_Hail across the border_’;
_There are truths which have been learned in visions and by revelations_: _All the revelations were not given to St. John alone_, _All the wise men of the world did not die two thousand years ago_! _Why do we not talk of these eternal truths_, _Instead of wasting all our words on the evanesent_, _the ever-changing_, _the trivial_, _and the unimportant_? _There is but one important theme_, _and that is Life Immortal_.
I, TOO
I saw fond lovers in that glow That oft-times fades away too soon: I saw and said, ‘Their joy I know— I, too, have had my honeymoon.’
A young expectant mother’s gaze Held earth and heaven within its scope: My thoughts went back to holy days— I said, ‘I, too, have known that hope.’
I saw a stricken mother swayed By sorrow’s storm, like wind-blown grass: I said, ‘I, too, dismayed Have seen the little white hearse pass.’
I saw a matron rich with years Walk radiantly beside her mate: I blessed them, and said through my tears, ‘I, too, have known that high estate.’
I saw a woman swathed in black So blind with grief she could not see: I said, ‘Not far need I look back— I, too, have known Gethsemane.’
I saw a face so full of light, It seemed with all God’s truths to shine: I said, ‘I, too, have found my sight, I, too, have touched the Fact Divine.’
HE THAT HATH EARS
‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.’—_St. John the Divine_.
The Spirit says unto the churches, ‘Ere ever the churches began I lived in the centre of Being— The life of the Purpose and Plan; I flowed from the mind of the Maker Through nature to man.
‘I sleep in the glow of the jewel, I wake in the sap of the tree, I stir in the beast of the forest, I reason in man, and am free To turn on the path of Ascension To the god yet to be.
‘I was, and I am, and I will be; I live in each church and each faith But yield to no bond and no fetter, I animate all with my breath; I speak through the voice of the living And I speak after death.’
The Spirit says unto the churches, ‘The dead are not gone, they are near And my voice, when I will it, speaks through them, Speaks through them in messages clear. And he that hath ears, in the silence May listen and hear.’
The Spirit says unto the churches, ‘So many the feet that have trod The road leading up into knowledge, The steep narrow path has grown broad; And the curtain held down by old dogmas Is lifted by God.’
ANSWERS
What is the end of each man’s toil, Brother, O Brother? A handful of dust in a bit of soil— His name forgotten as centuries roll, Though blazoned to-day on Glory’s scroll; For the lordliest work of brain or hand Is only an imprint made on sand; When the tidal wave sweeps over the shore It is there no more, Brother, my Brother.
Then what is the use of striving at all, Brother, O Brother? Because each effort or great or small Is a step on the long, long road that leads To the Kingdom of Growth on the River of Deeds: And that is the kingdom no man can gain Till he uses his hand and his mind and brain, And when he has used them and learned control He finds his soul, Brother, my Brother.
And after he finds it, what is the end, Brother, O Brother? Upward ever its course and trend; For this is the purpose and aim and plan To seek in the soul for the Super-man— The man who is conscious that Heaven is near— A bulletin bearer from There to Here, Finding God dwells in the spirit within Where He ever has been, Brother, my Brother.
And what will the God-man do when He comes, Brother, O Brother? He will better the world or in courts or slums, He will do in gladness his nearest duty: He will teach the religion of love and beauty In field or factory, mine or mart, While He tells the world of the larger part And the wider life that is yet to be When spirit is free, Brother, my Brother.
When spirit is free, then where will it go, Brother, O Brother? Its uttermost summit no man may know, For it goes up to God in His holy Tower To gather more knowledge and force and power; Like a ray of the sun it shall shine again To brighten new planets and races of men. Life had no beginning, life has no end, Brother and friend— Brother, my Brother.
HOW IS IT?
_You who are loudly crying out for peace_, _You who are wanting love to vanquish hate_, _How is it in the four walls of your home_ _The while you wait_?
Do those who form your household welcome your approach in the morning As the earth welcomes the presence of dawn, Or do they dread your coming lest you censure and complain? Do you begin the day with praise to God for each blessing you possess, and do you speak frequent words of commendation to those about you? Do those you claim to love often hear you talking in love’s language, Or is your softest tone and your sweetest speech saved for the sometime guest, While the harsh voice and the sharp retort are used with those you love the best?
_You who are praying for the Christ’s return_ _And for the coming of the Promised Day_, _How is it in the four walls of your home_ _The while you pray_?
Are you trying to make your home a reflection of what you believe heaven will be? Unless you are you will never find heaven anywhere; The foundations of our heavenly mansions must first be built on earth. Unless you are striving to put in use some of the angelic virtues here and now, No angelhood will be accorded you hereafter.
Unless you are illustrating your desire for peace by a peaceful, love-ruled home, You have no right to clamour for a cessation of hostilities among nations; Nations are only chains of individuals. When each individual expresses nothing but love and peace in his daily life, there will be no more war.
_You who are loudly crying out for peace_, _You who are wanting love to vanquish hate_, _How is it in the four walls of your home_ _The while you wait_?
‘LET US GIVE THANKS’
For the courage which comes when we call, While troubles like hailstones fall; For the help that is somehow nigh, In the deepest night when we cry; For the path that is certainly shown When we pray in the dark alone, Let us give thanks.
For the knowledge we gain if we wait And bear all the buffets of fate; For the vision that beautifies sight If we look under wrong for the right; For the gleam of the ultimate goal That shines on each reverent soul: Let us give thanks.
For the consciousness stirring in creeds That love is the thing the world needs; For the cry of the travailing earth That is giving a new faith birth; For the God we are learning to find In the heart and the soul and the mind: Let us give thanks.
For the growth of the spirit through pain, Like a plant in the soil and the rain; For the dropping of needless things Which the sword of a sorrow brings; For the meaning and purpose of life Which dawns on us out of the strife: Let us give thanks.
For the solace that comes to our grief In knowing earth’s season is brief; For the certitude given by faith Of the continents out beyond death; For the glorious thought that each day Is speeding us the reward away: Let us give thanks.
THE BLACK SHEEP
‘_Black sheep_, _black sheep_, _have you any wool_?’ _Yes_, _sir_—_yes_, _sir_: _three bags full_.’