Collected Works (Vol. III)

IMAGES OF LIFE 89 XV. Thereis no soul. See yonder gleams the starry shoal Of orbs incalculably vast. They are not present: they are past, Since the long march of shuddering light Made years the servants of its might. There is no soul. A. These stars thou seest Are but the figuring of thy brain. NV. Then of all things the soul were freest. 4. Move then the centre of thy pain ! NV. ’Tis done, A, A trick to cheat a child. NV. Itis the truth that I am nought. Hear what I have gatheredin the wild, Flowers of imperishable thought With glory and with rapture clothed. This being, thinking, loved or loathed, Hath attributes. This sand is gold :— Deem’st thou a gilder lurks within The atom ? What should Nature hold Of aureate save a mind begin Colour-conception? Then we win To think our thought itselfa chance Grafted upon the circumstance Of cerebrin and lethicin. A. Ill fares the rifleman that holds The muzzle to his eye. Yon gold’s Mental : enough ! the mind is all. NV. No: this is but a slave in thrall To matter’s motion. We deny A causeless cause, an entity Beyond experience, that tricks Our folly with its idle claim To be because we feel it. a. Sticks The reason there? iV. We choose a name To cover all the host of facts Comprised in thought. A. (astde) The elixir acts. Then backward work ; the name becomes With pomp of metaphysic drums A causa causans—God, soul, truth. So raves the riot, age and youth, The cart before the horse. Revered And reverend master, is your beard Darwin’s survival of some tail? Who rants of soul were best to saddle His face, his arms the ass to straddle, Since for his voice the part thus bare Would serve as well to scent the air. A. Where reverence ceases, ribald jest Breaks forth, the wise allow the rest. The perfect master stands confessed. iV. Why! I supposed your wrath would burst ; My name and number stand accurst In the great Order of the West ! A. Nay: Buddha smiles; ’twas Jesus wept ! Arise, O brother and adept! MN. Master ! A. The torture-hqurs are past. 4. The peace of pain is mine at last. A, Ere the moon rise, the brethren meet. Come, let us turn toward the South. N. Lord, I embrace thy holy feet. al. Nay, let me kiss thee on the mouth. Desunt cetera. THE STUMBLING-BLOCK., I ALMOST wonder if I ought To hymn this height of human pain : To enter into Jones’s thought I’d have to work with Jones’s brain. Terrestrial speech is wholly vain To carry meaning as it ought :— To enter into Jones’s thought I’d have to work with Jones’s brain. This is the High God’s cruel sport : To enter into Jones’s thought And make its inner meaning plain, I'd have to work with Jones’s brain. WOODCRAFT. THE poet slept. In his wife’s hair. His dream ! His fingers twine He dreams. Divine Nay then, I’ll tell you it. He wandered in a forest dim. A woodcutter encountered him Where a felled oak required his wil.