Immortals

“ Thus far, nor farther; new restraints obey.”
Earth’s disembowell’d! measured are the skies!
Stars are detected in their deep recess!
Creation widens! vanquish’d Nature yields!
Her secrets are extorted! Art prevails! 800
What monument of genius, spirit, power!
And now, Lorenzo! raptured at this scene,
Whose glories render heaven superfluous! say,
Whose footsteps these?—Immortals have been here.
Could less than souls immortal this have done?
Earth’s cover’d o’er with proofs of souls immortal;
And proofs of immortality forgot. ”

“ Immortals become mortals, mortals become immortals; they live in each other's death and die in each other's life. ”

“ Saddest of all is the fate of the immortals: goddesses of the hearth and gods of the heaven are alike swept into the museum-limbo. They are shrunk to mythology, they who once charioted the constellations. ”

“ And just as we believe that our God descended into Hell and vanquished Sin and Death, so did these simple people gain strength to face Eternity from the thought that they had been preceded in the dark journey by the Immortals. ”

“ And, confessedly, he asserts that what is immortal is mortal, [4] and that what is mortal is immortal, in the following expressions: “Immortals are mortal, and mortals are immortal, that is, when the one derive life from death, and the other death from life.” ”

“ When I hear the Greek poets, the Italian painters, the English novelists, and the German masters disposed of at a symposium in a single afternoon, as I did not long ago, I wonder if the rare quality of mental distinction which made the glory of the Immortals will exist at all in the future ”

“ They may, for all I or any man can say, have been themselves immortals: immortal demons, come to put an untrue story into my mind for some purpose I do not understand. Whatever they were, I have turned into a pathway which will [177] lead me from them and from the Order of the Alchemical Rose. ”

“ Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life. ”

“ The name so employed is not to be understood as implying a separate class of immortals, an intermediate class of beings between gods and men, as later speculation used the word.35 These later beings of an intermediate class were thought of as possessing an originally immortal nature like the gods, and as dwelling in an intermediate region of their own. ”

“ And Nature was bountiful too. Melissa could see the happy and gracious face of a divinity in everything she looked upon. The immortals who had afflicted her, and whom she had often bitterly accused, could be kind and merciful too. The sea, on whose shining surface the blue vault of heaven with the moon and stars rocked and twinkled, the soft breeze which fanned her brow, the new delicious longing which filled her heart-all she felt and was conscious of, was a divinity or an emanation of the divine. ”

“ But, as they touched the first flowers of earth, and flung only rays of light, and cast no shadows, then the earnest Queen of gods and men, Fate, raised her eternal sceptre, and said: "The immortal becomes mortal upon the earth, and every spirit becomes a human being!" ”

“ Death! mysterious, ill-visaged friend of weak humanity! Why alone of all mortals have you cast me from your sheltering fold? O, for the peace of the grave! the deep silence of the iron-bound tomb! that thought would cease to work in my brain, and my heart beat no more with emotions varied only by new forms of sadness!
Am I immortal? I return to my first question. In the first place, is it not more probable that the beverage of the alchymist was fraught rather with longevity than eternal life? ”

“ And in the same way, he says, admittedly the immortal is mortal and the mortal immortal, in such words as these: “Deathless are mortals, and mortals are deathless, when the living take death from these, and the dead life from those.” ”

“ Your bodies are mortal, and subject to fate; but they receive a sort of immortality, by the remembrance of what actions they have done. And I would have you so in love with this immortality, that you may pursue after glory, and that, when you have undergone the greatest difficulties, you may not scruple, for such things, to lose your lives. ”

“ This evergreen, which once marked the temporary resting-place of the illustrious dead, is an emblem of our faith in the immortality of the soul. By it we are reminded that we have an immortal part within us, that shall survive the grave, and which shall never, never, never die. By it we are admonished that, though, like our brother whose remains lie before us, we shall soon be clothed in the habiliments of death, and deposited in the silent tomb, yet, through our belief in the mercy of God, we may confidently hope that our souls will bloom in eternal spring. ”

“ When this stiffened body goes down to the tomb, sad, silent, and remorseless, I feel there is no death for the man. That clod which yonder dust shall cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its place; man to his own. It is then I feel my immortality. I look through the grave into heaven. I ask no miracle, no proof, no reasoning for me; I ask no risen dust to teach me immortality. I am conscious of eternal life. ”

“ Strong as the death it masters, is the hope
That onward looks to immortality:
Let the frame perish, so the soul survive,
Pure, spiritual, and loving. I believe
The grave exalts, not separates, the ties
That hold us in affection to our kind. ”

“ Thy glorious immortality in man:
A theme for ever, and for all, of weight,
Of moment infinite! but relish’d most
By those who love Thee most, who most adore. 670
Nature, thy daughter, ever-changing birth
Of Thee the Great Immutable, to man
Speaks wisdom, is his oracle supreme;
And he who most consults her, is most wise.
Lorenzo, to this heavenly Delphos haste;
And come back all-immortal, all-divine:
Look nature through, ’tis revolution all;
All change; no death. Day follows night; and night
The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes th’ example. ”

“ I would not reason with you, but that I know there is something truly great and noble in you, and there have been hours when the immortal in you secured your immortality in literature, when you ceased to see life with that hard cinematograph eye of yours, and saw with the eyes of the spirit, and power and tenderness and insight were mixed in magical tales. ”

“ Once more, in the haunts of earth, thy soul charms me to thy side. Wiser now, in the moment when thou comprehendest Death, than when thy unfettered spirit learned the solemn mystery of Life; the human affections that thralled and humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in these last hours of thy mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy race,—the eternity that commences from the grave. ”

“ To struggle to the last against the new and vulgar superstitions of a rotting age, for the faith of my forefathers, for the old gods, the old heroes, the old sages who gauged the mysteries of heaven and earth—and perhaps to conquer—at least to have my reward! To be welcomed into the celestial ranks of the heroic—to rise to the immortal gods, to the ineffable powers, onward, upward ever, through ages and through eternities, till I find my home at last, and vanish in the glory of the Nameless and the Absolute One! ”

“ You, who are to stand a wonder to all Years and Ages; and, who have built yourselves an Immortal Monument on your own Ruins. You are now a Phœnix in her ashes, and, as far as Humanity can approach, a great Emblem of the suffering Deity. ”

“ It is the language of reason, of sacred truth, of honor bound by higher than human bonds; of fondness that even the tomb will render only more ardent and sublime. Here, in the sight of Heaven, I pledge an immortal to an immortal. ”

“ I thought what myriads of the wise, the beautiful, and the brave, had sunk into dust since earth first beheld those wonders; and, in the sadness of my soul, I exclaimed,—“Must man alone, then, perish? must [pg 38] minds and hearts be annihilated, while pyramids endure? Death, Death, even on these everlasting tablets,—the only approach to immortality that kings themselves could purchase,—thou hast written our doom, saying, awfully and intelligibly, ‘There is, for man, no eternal mansion, but the tomb!’ ”
My heart sunk at the thought ”

“ Hovering over the poet, again the thrilling words burst forth, and fraught with such mighty meanings every heart responded, as to the voice of the Immortal; folding his azure pinion round the panting soul of the philosopher, the shrouding cloud dispersed, and science, deep, stern, lasting, took the place of the mere lovely dream; and on the page of the historian, light from the brow of Amête so flashed as to make him a gifted reader of the Future, by the wondrous record his spirit-thought unfolded of the Past. Wherever the Spirits lingered, man worked for immortality ”

“ But dead in his harness the Green Knight lay.
STEPHEN PHILLIPS
LURES IMMORTAL
Sadly, apparently frustrate, life hangs above us,
Cruel, dark unexplained;
Yet still the immortal through mortal incessantly pierces
With calls, with appeals, and with lures.
Lure of the sinking sun, into undreamed islands,
Fortunate, far in the West;
Lure of the star, with speechless news o'er brimming,
With language of darted light ”

“ Then I thought that it might be a bold attempt to portray the possible results of practical immortality, informing the substance of a mortal who yet drew her strength from Earth, and in whose human bosom passions yet rose and fell and beat as in the undying world around her the winds and the tides rise and fall and beat unceasingly. ”

“ With these facts before you, that man is mortal, and that the soul and spirit of man are never spoken in the Scriptures as immortal, we may now ask you to listen to the use of the word immortal, so that you may more fully see that immortality is in no sense man's present possession, and that therefore "immortal soul" and "immortal spirit" are invented phrases--not scriptural. ”

“ And how much more grand, how much more sublime, becomes the prospect of gain, if we reflect that, to each life thus called forth, there is a soul, a destiny beyond the grave, multiplied immortalities! ”

“ IMMORTALITY.
Immortality! We bow before the very term. Immortality! Before it reason staggers, calculation reclines her tired head, and imagination folds her weary pinions. Immortality! It throws open the portals of the vast forever; it puts the crown of deathless destiny upon every human brow; it cries to every uncrowned king of men, "Live forever, crowned for the empire of a deathless destiny!" ”

“ Can it be? to live for ever! I have heard of enchantments, in which the victims were plunged into a deep sleep, to wake, after a hundred years, as fresh as ever: I have heard of the Seven Sleepers--thus to be immortal would not be so burthensome: but, oh! ”

“ The grave is their house, and so must be till the trumpet shall sound, and the heavens pass away like a scroll. Now, I say, the immortality of the soul shows the greatness of it, as the eternity of God shows the greatness of God. It cannot be said of any angel but that he is immortal, and so it is, and ought to be said of the soul. ”

“ How can the spirit of man, deprived of virtue, cognition, will, personality and life, remain immortal? Still more, how can he enjoy such immortality? The dim feeling of such eternal rest we all can understand, who have gone suddenly from a lighted room into the vast night, and have felt our souls suddenly invaded and possessed by a sense of mystery and silence. We have felt this; but in his final beatitude the Mystic must not feel: “He must be as one dead.” ”

“ But over and above these secular motives, the belief in immortality extends its powerful influence through life, and culminates at the last hour, when, setting aside the very evidence of their senses, the mourners smile through their tears, and say it is not death but life. ”

“ And first let me define what the world and myself understand as the true definition of the term Immortality:—
The body is supposed to contain within itself an electrical form just like itself—head, eyes, brain, tongue, arms, legs, sex-organs; that at death this Æreal form escapes the body, and goes to spend its eternal years in heaven or in hell; that it can die no more, but lives, loves, suffers, thinks, enjoys, in that other life; and that it is in all respects a human being still. ”

“ Still, again, there is immortality, and an infinitely hospitable immortality, which the hand and the whole body and the soul, be it yours or be it mine, all have a place and a part in. There is immortality, and, besides those things that were just named, divinity is also immortal. But even a God dies, this being just one of the things that make him God. Any man, then, or any being, or any thing, may say, "I am immortal." ”

“ Then my heart comprehended that immortality dwelled in the spaces between the worlds, and death only amongst the worlds. Upon all the suns there walked upright shadows in the form of men: but they were glorified when they quitted these perishable worlds, and when they sank into the sea of light: and the murky planets, I perceived, were but cradles for the infant spirits of the universe of light. In the Zaarahs of the creation I saw—I heard—I felt—the glittering—the echoing—the breathing of life and creative power. ”

“ But God bestowed upon us an immortal soul, to watch as a guardian angel over the body, and placed it in the loftiest part of our frame, to teach us to look upward, and remember our birth,—that men are not creatures of clay but children of God and heirs of immortality. ”

“ And when he came to die, he gave this reason of his belief of immortality; "I cannot," said he, "persuade myself to think that the soul of man, after having sustained itself in a mortal body, should perish when delivered out of it, for want of it;" ”

“ The election is immediate; he chooses Immortality, and is re-endowed with youth. The song of this deity, however, does not lead to the immortality of the spirit, but of the material part of man, and it is that he receives. The image of death is invested with melancholy beauty ”