Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

“ To me, so lately from a lower life, and still so choked with its errors, this loving obedience of the soul to a great central Force which I felt on every hand, but comprehended not, as yet, affected me like the discovery of a truth in science. It was as if I had found a new law of gravitation, to be mastered only by infinite attention. I fell to thinking more quietly after my father had left me alone. There came a subsidence to my tempestuous impulse, which astonished myself. I felt myself drawn and shaped, even like a wave by the tide, by something mightier far than my own wish. ”

“ Colored suns, of which astronomers had indeed taught us, poured undreamed-of light upon unknown planets. I passed worlds whose luminaries gave them scarlet, green, and purple days. “These too,” I thought, “I shall one day visit.” I flashed through currents of awful color, and measures of awful night. I felt more than I perceived, and wondered more than I feared. It was some moments before I realized, by these few astronomical details, that I was adrift, alone upon the mystery and mightiness of Space. ”

“ Tom was a great athlete—took the prizes at the gymnasium. No weaker man could have supported me for fifteen minutes in the strained position by which he found that he could give me comfort and so gratify my whim. Tom held me a long time; I think it must have been an hour; but I began to suffer again, and could not judge of time. I wondered how that big boy got such infinite tenderness into those iron muscles. I felt a great respect for human flesh and bone and blood, and for the power and preciousness of the living human body. It seemed much more real to me, then, than the spirit. ”

“ A chorus of angel voices, trained since the time when morning stars sang together with the sons of God, take up the words:
“Holy, holy, HOLY is the Lord.”
. . . . . . . . .
When the oratorio has ended, and we glide out, each hushed as a hidden thought, to his own ways, I stay beneath a linden-tree to gather breath. A fine sound, faint as the music of a dream, strikes my ringing ears, and, looking up, I see that the leaf above my head is singing. Has it, too, been one of the great chorus yonder? Did he command the forces of nature, as he did the seraphs of Heaven, or the powers of earth? ”

“ It is impossible to describe this sight in any earthly tongue, to any dwellers of the earth. I stood beneath it, as a drop stands beneath the ocean. For a time I could only feel the surge of beauty—mere beauty—roll above me. Then, I think, as the dew had fallen from the leaf, so I sunk upon my knees. I prayed because it was natural to pray, and felt God in my soul as the prism feels the primary color, while I thanked Him that I was immortally alive. ”

“ To be dead was to be dead to danger, dead to fear. To be dead was to be alive to a sense of assured good chance that nothing in the universe could shake.
So I felt no dread, believe me, though much awe and amazement, as I took my first journey from Heaven to earth. I have elsewhere said that the distance, by astronomical calculation, was in itself perhaps not enormous. I had an impression that I was crossing a great sphere or penumbra, belonging to the earth itself, and having a certain relation to it, like the soul to the body of a man. ”

“ Might youth and maturity succeed each other exquisitely? Might individual life reproduce itself from seed, to flower, to fruit, like a plant, through the cycles? Would childhood or age be a matter of personal choice? Would the affectional or the intellectual temperaments at will succeed each other? Might one try the domestic or the public career in different existences? Try the bliss of love in one age, the culture of solitude in another? Be oneself yet be all selves? ”

“ All which I had known of human love; all that I had missed; the dreams from which I had been startled; the hopes that had evaded me; the patience which comes from knowing that one may not even try not to be misunderstood; the struggle to keep a solitary heart sweet; the anticipation of desolate age which casts its shadow backward upon the dial of middle life; the paralysis of feeling which creeps on with its disuse; the distrust of one’s own atrophied faculties of loving; the sluggish wonder if one is ceasing to be lovable ”

“ I must admit that in experiencing the immortality of being, I found that I experienced no less the immortality of love.
Had I to meet that old conflict here? I never asked for everlasting life. Will He impose it, and not free me from that? God forgive me! Have I evil in my heart still? Can one sin in Heaven? Nay, be merciful, be merciful! I will be patient. I will have trust. But the old nerves are not dead. The old ache has survived the grave. ”

“ The next thing, which in a different mood might have been the first that impressed me was the remarkable expression of the faces that I met or passed. No thoughtful person can have failed to observe, in any throng, the preponderant look of unrest and dissatisfaction in the human eye. Nothing, to a fine vision, so emphasizes the isolation of being, as the faces of people in a crowd. In this new community to which I had been brought, that old effect was replaced by a delightful change. ”

“ There he is, one listening nerve from head to foot, he who used to stand deaf in the middle of his own orchestra—desolate no more, denied no more forever, all the heavenly senses possible to Beethoven awake to the last delicate response; all the solemn faith in the invisible, in the holy, which he had made his own, triumphant now; all the powers of his mighty nature in action like a rising storm—there stands Beethoven immortally alive. ”

“ Vague visions of gaseous or meteoric angelic forms have their place in the imaginations of most of us below; we picture our future selves as a kind of nebulosity. When I felt the spiritual flesh, when I used the strange muscle, when I heard the new heart-beat of my heavenly identity, I remembered certain words, with a sting of mortification that I had known them all my life, and paid so cool a heed to them: “There is a terrestrial body, and there is a celestial body.” ”

“ She gazed at it with the tenderness which death itself could not affright. Mother was not crying. She did not look as if she had shed tears for a long time. But her wanness and the drawn lines about her mouth were hard to see. Her aged hands trembled as she cut the locks of hair from the neck of the dead. She was growing to be an old woman. ”

“ When the discourse was over, there followed an anthem sung by a choir of child-angels hovering in mid-air above the preacher, and beautiful exceedingly to the sight and to the ear. “God,” they sang, “is Love—is Love—is Love.” In the refrain we joined with our own awed voices.
The chant died away. All the air of all the worlds was still. The beloved Disciple raised his hand in solemn signal. A majestic Form glided to his side. To whom should the fisherman of Galilee turn with a look like that? Oh, grace of God! what a smile was there! The Master and Disciple stand together; they rise above us. ”

“ I wished that I had sought some of these out, and taken them with me to the Symphony.
It was a rare evening, even in the blessed land. I enjoyed the change of scene as I used to do in traveling, below. It was delightful to look abroad and see everywhere prosperity and peace. The children were shouting and tumbling in the fields. Young people strolled laughing by twos or in groups. The vigorous men and women busied themselves or rested at the doors of cosy homes. The ineffable landscape of hill and water stretched on behind the human foreground. ”

“ Rose—the living rose—blushed upon us, and faltered under—over—yonder, till we were shut into a world of it, palpitating. It was as if we had gone{164} behind the soul of a woman’s blush, or the meaning of a sunrise. Whoever has known the passion for that color will understand why some of the spectators were with difficulty restrained from flinging themselves down into it, as into a sea of rapture. ”

“ Being in harmony with the Soul of all delights—dare to indulge thine own soul to the brim therein. Having acquired holiness—thou hast no longer any broken law to fear. Dare to be happy. This was the spirit of daily life among us. “Nothing was required of us but to be natural,” as I have said before. And it “was natural to be right,” thank God, at last.{163}
Being a new-comer, and still so unlearned, I could not understand the Color Symphony as many of the spectators did, while yet I enjoyed it intensely, as an untaught musical organization may enjoy the most complicated composition. ”

“ The trained eye received it, as the trained ear receives orchestra or oratory. The senses melted, but the intellect was astir. A perfect composition of color unto color was before us, exquisite in detail, magnificent in mass. Now it seemed as if we ourselves, sitting there ensphered in color, flew around the globe with the quivering rays. ”

“ Now here, a spirit saved, shining as the air of Heaven, “without spot or any such thing”—here, wiser in heavenly lore than I, longer with Him than I, nearer to Him than I, dearer to Him, perhaps, than I—here was Marie Sauvée. ”

“ And for her, too, the bitterness is passed, the blessedness begun. Oh, my dear mother! My dear mother! I thank God I was the child appointed to give you welcome—thus....
“And how is it with Tom,—poor Tom!”
“He has grown such a fine fellow; you cannot think. I leaned upon him. He was the comfort of my old age.”
“Poor Tom!”
“And promises to make such a man, dear! A good boy. No bad habits, yet. Your father is so pleased that he makes a scholar.”
“Dear Tom! And Alice?”
“It was hard to leave Alice. But she is young. Life is before her. God is good.” ”

“ I enjoyed being down there again after all those weeks up-stairs, and was happy in looking at the familiar things, the afghan on the sofa, and the magazines on the table, uncut because of my illness; Mother’s work-basket, and Alice’s music folded away.
“It was always a dear old room,” said Father, seating himself in his own chair, which we had kept for twenty years in its old place. He put his head back, and gazed peacefully about.
When I felt rested, and better, I asked him if we should start now.
“Just as you please,” he said quietly. “There is no hurry. We are never hurried.” ”

“ More wearied than I had thought by the effort, I was glad to sink down beneath the trees in a nook my father showed me, and yield to the drowsiness that stole upon me after the great excitement of the day. It was not yet dark, but I was indeed tired. A singular subsidence, not like our twilight, but still reminding one of it, had fallen upon the vivid color of the air. No one was passing; the spot was secluded; my father bade me farewell for the present, saying that he should return again; and I was left alone.{64}
The grass was softer than eider of the lower world ”

“ I may say, that if I found it lawful to utter the impulse of my soul, I should cry throughout the breadth of the earth a warning to the lightness, or the haste, or the presumption, or the mistake that chose to love for one world, when it might have loved for two. ”

“ With a mighty cry, I fling myself against her heart, and sob my soul out, there.
“You are better, child,” she says. “Be quiet. You will live.”
Upon the edge of the sick-bed, sitting strained and weary, she leans to comfort me. The night-lamp burns dimly on the floor behind the door. The great red chair stands with my white woollen wrapper thrown across the arm. In the window the magenta geranium droops{196} freezing. Mignonette is on the table, and its breath pervades the air. Upon the wall, the cross, the Christ, and the picture of my father look down. ”

“ Indeed, he did grow calm, and calmer, as if he yielded to my touch; and presently he lifted his wet face, and looked about the room, half ashamed, half defiant, as if to ask who saw that.
“Come, Tom,” I tried again. “It really isn’t so bad as you think. And there is Mother catching cold in that room. Go and get her away from the body. It is no place for her. She’ll get sick. Nobody can manage her as well as you.”
As if he heard me, he arose. As if he knew me, he looked for the flashing of an instant into my eyes. ”