Evensong

“ I exclaimed, “in the path to the promised mystery? and shall the great secret of Eternal Life indeed be mine?”
“Yes!” seemed to answer, out of the air, that spirit-voice, which still was heard crowning the choir with its single sweetness. I hailed the omen with transport. Love and Immortality, both beckoning me onward—who could give a thought to fear, with two such bright hopes in view? Having invoked and blessed that unknown enchantress, whose steps had led me to this abode of mystery and knowledge, I plunged into the chasm. ”

“ Fate, the ineffable Word of an Eternal Will.
All things that are or seem,
Whether we wake who see or do but dream,
Are of that Primal Will phantasms, if no more;
He who sees these sees God, and seeing doth adore.
Joy, suffering, evil, good,
Whatever our daily food,
Whate'er the mystery and paradox of things,
Low creeping thoughts and high imaginings.
The laughters of the world, the age-long groan,
Bring to his mind one name, one thought alone;
All beauty, right, deformity, or wrong,
Sing to his ear one high unchanging song ”

“ While some dread presence, all the darkness filling,
Crept round my heart, its healthy pulses chilling;
Making the night, so awful unto me,
More fearful with that word Eternity.
So that my spirit, trembling and afraid,
Bowed down itself before its God, and prayed
For His strong arm of terror to be stayed;
⁠And sighed Eternity
From its white lips, as the dark sea, subsiding,
Sank into broken murmurs ”

“ Immeasurably exalted is the celestial Melody above the strivings of human ear to hear or mind to grasp its mystery! How can the helpless ant step into the court of the All-Glorious? And yet, feeble souls, through lack of understanding, reject these abstruse utterances, and question the truth of such traditions. Nay, none can comprehend them save those that are possessed of an understanding heart. Say, He is that End for Whom no end in all the universe can be imagined, and for Whom no beginning in the world of creation can be conceived. ”

“ But note, the moment he neglects a single need, or misdirects the energies of his being, there is not only a strain which is not represented in the choral anthem of God, but it is caused to vibrate discordantly with those strains which are represented, and instead of a soul pulsating with the divinest melody and joy, you have it harshly jarring to the discordant notes of antagonism and death. ”

“ Smile in its joys—in its mock sorrows weep.
When comes the waking hour of thought, to give
My spirit back to reason, and dispel
The phantoms frail its folly could believe?
Ah! not in poesy alone doth dwell
That charm fantastic! but whate’er may seem
Truth in this being vain—or hope or rest,
Is falsehood all—life is a fevered dream!
A pageant wild, where none are truly blest. ”

“ So soft and so stanch is the ring of Fate. Neither brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius, can get rid of this limp band. For if we give it the high sense in which the poets use it, even thought itself is not above Fate: that too must act according to eternal laws, and all that is wilful and fantastic in it is in opposition to its fundamental essence. ”

“ One moment you drop into an abyss and the next you are back in the world that you would think too deep for any noise but the trumpet of the Last Judgment. And then off you go again. Your very soul seems to slip down into a bottomless black pit. ”

“ Surge upon surge from the opening phrase, presaging a yearning that is not all bliss and a torment that is not all pain, so long as mortals may die; surge upon surge of aching passion, sweet oblivion, mortal disappointment, infinite desire, a love that only the immortals could satisfy and only death can quench. The imagination reels along with this appalling betrayal of mortal love. ”

“ Ere visions have been chilled to truth,
And hopes are washed away in tears.
Go,—for I will not bid thee weep,—
Too soon my sorrows will be thine,
And evening's troubled air shall sweep
The incense from the broken shrine.
If Heaven can hear the dying tone
Of chords that soon will cease to thrill,
The prayer that Heaven has heard alone
May bless thee when those chords are still. ”

“ The Anæsthetic Revelation is the Initiation of Man into the Immemorial Mystery of the Open Secret of Being, revealed as the Inevitable Vortex of Continuity. Inevitable is the word. Its motive is inherent—it is what has to be. It is not for any love or hate, nor for joy nor sorrow, nor good nor ill. ”

“ But what after all is the character of these pleasures upon which there is such a high estimate placed? They are all vain and empty as a bubble on the wave. They are like a dream which assumes all the appearance of reality, till we awake from our slumber and discover the deception. ”

“ The life which was to most of their contemporaries a tragedy without dignity, or a comedy without humour, was to them a gift sweet and sacred, a race to be bravely run under that lucent cloud which shone with the faces of angel witnesses,—a mystery indeed, yet a mystery luminous with a ray which streamed to them out of God’s Eternity from the Glory of their Risen Lord. ”

“ Would the sin-stained soul pass into the shadowy land of the hereafter in silence and darkness, without one moment for preparation—perhaps for repentance? Would some slight gleam of consciousness be granted? ”

“ Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For Eloquence the Soul, Song charms the Sense) Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate— Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. ”

“ Nature, who lost, cannot remake him; Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him; Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain. And whither now, my truant wise and sweet, O, whither tend thy feet? I had the right, few days ago, Thy steps to watch, thy place to know: How have I forfeited the right? Hast thou forgot me in a new delight? I hearken for thy household cheer, O eloquent child! ”

“ We know that a false step, a stumble, and we are gone, plunged into Eternity in a moment. We say that sometime this path must come to an end, as we but follow it to our extermination, and when we see before us the black doors of death, then will we lay aside our flowers, and still our songs and laughter. ”

“ The angels left them as they entered the primeval night of chaos, the shoreless ocean between the sensuous and spiritual life. For alone with God through chaos do we arrive at the sensuous body; alone with God in chaos do we leave this body of corruption, from which is evolved the Body of the Spirit, 'glorious and unchangeable.' And again is clasped the thread of Identity, on which are strung the pearls of memory, and the Past and Future of Time become the Eternal Present! ”

“ Without a movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor of the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with unsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness—whispered into the ear of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips ever have spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. ”

“ But from that ant-hill, not only the talk of the streets, the sounds of music and revelling, the stir and tread of a multitude, the shout of joy and the shriek of agony go up into the silent and all-surrounding Infinitude; but also, amidst the stir and noise of visible life, from the inmost bosom of the visible man, there goes up an imploring call, a beseeching cry, an asking, unuttered, and unutterable, for revelation, wailingly and in almost speechless agony praying the dread arch of mystery to break, and the stars that roll above the waves of mortal trouble, to speak ”

“ Were there not, after earth,
Eternity?{180}
God gives us life to keep.—
And what hath life?—
Love, faith, and care, and sleep,
Where dreams are rife.
Death’s sleep! whose shadows start
The tears in eyes
Of Love, who breaks his heart,
Despairs and dies. ”

“ Subject to the sudden revelations, the breaks in habitual existence caused by the aspect of death, the touch of love, the flood of music, I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. ”

“ Infinite is the fall,—the Atonement infinite likewise. See! behind me, as far as the old man remembers, and forward, Far as Hope in her flight can reach with her wearied pinions, Sin and Atonement incessant go through the lifetime of mortals. Sin is brought forth full-grown; but Atonement sleeps in our bosoms Still as the cradled babe; and dreams of heaven and of angels, Cannot awake to sensation; is like the tones in the harp's strings, Spirits imprisoned, that wait evermore the deliverer's finger. ”

“ Does any human soul, driven by dissatisfaction and heartache, seek to lift the veil and penetrate to the secret shrine of the universe, or to pierce the “rose mesh” of mystery that surrounds us and ascend to the divine Spirit above and beyond it, how quickly is the fascinating smile of the world turned to bitter scorn, and its smooth flattery to remorseless persecution! ”

“ But I repeated, now with fixed determination and in a loud voice: "There is no death!" and behold! the eyes of the being before me faded, the whole apparition vanished - and I felt it was by my will. Then I gained full consciousness, the complete remembrance of my day-life and waking sensibilities, and blithely and thoroughly conscious I rose into the sphere of knowledge and joy. ”

“ The feeling of this contrast, this alternation, is really what the song as a whole expresses and what principally constitutes the lyrical state of mind. In it pure knowing comes to us as it were to deliver us from desire and the stress thereof: we follow, but only for an instant; for desire, the remembrance of our personal ends, tears us anew from peaceful contemplation; yet ever again the next beautiful surrounding in which the pure will-less knowledge presents itself to us, allures us away from desire. ”

“ Was he professing to her in any degree the possession of an aftersense that wasn't real? How in the world could he, when his aftersense, day by day, was his greatest reality? That was at bottom all that there was between them, and two or three times over it made the hour pass. ”

“ THIS type of enkindling will explain to us certain of the delectable effects which this dark night of contemplation works in the soul. For at certain times, as we have just said, the soul becomes enlightened in the midst of all this darkness, and the light shines in the darkness; [194] this mystical intelligence flows down into the understanding and the will remains in dryness—I mean, without actual union of love, with a serenity and simplicity which are so delicate and delectable to the sense of the soul that no name can be given to them. ”

“ But the instinct, old as mankind, that prompts the two whom Fate has thrown together to avoid the intrusion of a third, the unacknowledged dread of being caught in an equivocal position, the half-formed wish to protect that gleaming, iridescent wonder that is called Romance from the sacrilegious touch of the outside world, all of these impulses had conspired to bring about this absurd concealment which the man found both gratifying and exasperating. ”

“ Their faces were pale and thoughtful, and a shadow had fallen on their spirits—the shadow that always fell when they were reminded of the Varians.
Memory was poison to their hearts.
“My heart hath but one passion
To forget.
Ah, is there nothing in the world then
To take away the soul’s divine regret?” ”

“ Fate slaps your face midway in a pretty romance. All right. But when I make a record of the matter I pick, choose, sort, re-assort my box of words, and when things are going too rapidly I wink at Fate with my tongue in my cheek and round up everybody so amiably that nobody knows exactly what did happen—and nobody even stops to think because everybody has already finished the matter in their own minds to their own satisfaction. ”

“ In reality, such remembrances are rather unpleasant: every sin, every evil thought, may, like a clock with alarm or chimes, be repeated at pleasure; then the question is if we can trust ourselves to give an account of every unbecoming word in our heart and on our lips. ”

“ As he reaches the top a faint streak of light seems to tinge the distant cloud—his heart beats with deep emotion—an instant more, and a flush of light suffuses the whole heavens. He could scream in the intensity of his feelings. He thinks he hears a sound—he pauses to listen—it is—it is—the fiendish plot is accomplished, and the villains are returning with the spoil. ”

“ They give the feeling of vastness, the feeling not of a scene or particular place, but of a world; or, to speak more accurately, of a particular place which is also a world. This world is dim to us, partly from its immensity, and partly because it is filled with gloom; and in the gloom shapes approach and recede, whose half-seen faces and motions touch us with dread, horror, or the most painful pity,—sympathies and antipathies which we seem to be feeling not only for them but for the whole race. ”

“ If sorrow, joy, yearning, and so forth are to find adequate reflection in melody, the soul that is actual and concrete only comes by such emotions in the downright reality of the same as involved in a veritable content, that is, in particular situations, events, actions, and so on. If, for example, a song arouses the emotion of mourning, the lament at a loss, we inevitably ask ourselves, what is the nature of that loss. ”

“ The summons cannot be resisted and going up, trusting to the murky night, mounting the steps to the first gate as in a somnambulistic trance, the seeker of enlightenment discerns the path, guided by his quickened perception when the voice dies of its own sweetness, the fragrant stillness appeasing the mind and extending promise of pity for passion and fleshly desire, the garment of sin left behind. ”

“ We cry, like children, to be left behind. Our human speech is dim. Yet, latest born Of God's Eternity, there came to me, In saddened streets last week, from lips forlorn A sound more solemn than the sleepless sea! ”