Impermanence

“ I need not point out to you the contrast here between the tranquillity of the city which has for its central Inhabitant and Governor the omnipotent God, and the tumult of all that turbulent earth. The waves of the troubled waters break everywhere,—they run over the flat plains and sweep over the mountains of secular strength and outward might, and worldly kingdoms, and human polities and earthly institutions, acting on them all either by slow corrosive action at the base, or by the tossing floods swirling against them, until they shall be lost in the ocean of time. ”

“ Or she springs a leak: the water gains upon her; only do nothing, and she will soon sink to the bottom of the sea, and carry with her to destruction her rich freight of souls. So, sinner, is it with you. Do nothing, and your ruin is as certain as it is fearful. Hell gapes for you, and if you turn not, you are lost! ”

“ Before their eyes in sudden view appear The secrets of the hoary Deep—a dark Illimitable ocean, without bound, Without dimension; where length, breadth, and height, And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. ”

“ That is why, powerless as is the sea to foresee its agitations, this nation which can only be saved from destruction by its plasticity, shows everywhere, like Nature itself, an antique and provisory aspect,—unstable, full of hazards, possibilities, and deficiencies. ”

“ Though he can stay the flood and bind the waters,
His hand he shall not stay
That bids him sack and slay
And turn the waving fields to fields of slaughters;
And, as he reaps War's harvest grim and gory,
Commits a thousand crimes and calls it glory.
Vast empires fall and rise,
As when in sunset skies
The monumental clouds lift flashing towers
With turrets, spires, and bars
Lit by confederate stars
Till the bright rack dissolves in flying showers:
Kingdoms on kingdoms have their fleeting day,
Dazzle the conquered world, and pass away. ”

“ Art may by mighty dams keep out the tide, Check the strong current, and its streams divide; Pen up the rising waters, and deny The easy waves to glide in silence by: But if the river is restrain'd too long, It swells in silence to resent the wrong; With fearful force breaks opposition down, And claims its native freedom for its own. So Tyranny may govern for a time, Till Nature drowns the tyrants with their crime! ”

“ Thither noble scions, criminals, priests, soldiers of fortune have drifted. Some have prospered and some in the wild surge of these seas have been wrecked and sunk.
The flotsam of humanity, like the drift of rivers, like the derelicts of the sea, is but wreckage of some sort hurried along in those irresistible currents that we call Fate. Each village has its little eddy where, round and round in quiet whirl, the neighbouring drift collects. Each country has its maelstrom, a black whirlpool where is collected the debris of human kind. ”

“ Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin—his control Stops with the shore;—upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. ”

“ From time to time there pass on that surface, like squalls over the water, catastrophes,—a war, a pestilence, a royal favourite, a famine. That causes a disturbance which lasts a short time, the depth of sorrow being immovable as the depth of the ocean. ”

“ Vast rents open at their very feet, licking with huge, flaming tongues the terrified people into their yawning mouths. And then the inundations. Mighty waves sweep over the land. The fierce enemies, Fire and Water, join hands to effect the destruction of a mighty nation. ”

“ If one has watched a river in spate, red as with blood, rushing triumphantly over all resistance, smashing down the trees that baulk it, sweeping away each poor, helpless thing, brute or human, that it encounters, dealing out ruin and death, and proceeding superbly on to carry its trophies of disaster to the bosom of the Ocean Mother, very easy is it to see from whence came those old tales of cruelty, of irresistible strength, of desire. ”

“ Shall our children ever have it in their power to say, ‘There was a time when our mean-spirited forefathers might have easily stopped the leak that caused the flood by which we are now borne irresistibly downward?’ I repeat, let us rather perish! Let us go armed to the Springs and tell the King that he—equally with ourselves—is subject to the laws of the land! ”

“ Woe to him whose edifice is not built of true asbest, and on the everlasting rock, but on the false sand and the drift-wood of accident, and the paper and parchment of antiquated habit! For the power or powers exist not on our earth that can say to that sea—roll back, or bid its proud waves be still. ”

“ Gentlemen, when the seas are lashed into a rage, no matter who are the mad spirits of the storm, they cannot say to their tumultuous waters, 'thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, and here shalt thy proud waves be stayed.' There are other powers in motion beneath its surface, which they wist not of, and whose might they can neither direct or control. ”

“ No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. ”

“ Great cracks yawn everywhere, and the light, penetrating to the lower world, strikes terror into the infernal king and his consort. Even the sea shrinks up, and what was but now a great, watery expanse is a dry plain of sand. ”

“ For his soul had once been rebellious, like a storm-lashed sea dashing itself against the iron cliffs that bounded its waves, and impetuous like a tempest rushing through the empty air, seeking to attain the unattainable, and spending its force vainly in vacancy. ”

“ Wide o'er the fields a waste of ruin laid,—
'O Heaven!' he cried, 'my bleeding country save!—
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains,
Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains! ”

“ It was as true of the men before the Revolution as of those before the Flood, that "they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded," heedless of the rising tide of divine and human wrath, until the torrent overflowed its bounds and swept them all away. ”

“ Again, since battle so fiercely one with other The four most mighty members the world, Aroused in an all unholy war, Seest not that there may be for them an end Of the long strife?—Or when the skiey sun And all the heat have won dominion o'er The sucked-up waters all?—And this they try Still to accomplish, though as yet they fail,— For so aboundingly the streams supply New store of waters that 'tis rather they Who menace the world with inundations vast From forth the unplumbed chasms of the sea. ”

“ Bleeding in the feet, for example, so rarely practised in better times, is now among the fashionable follies of the day. That gentle, civilized system of evacuation, which prevailed under my auspices, is subverted by the reign of anarchy and emetics, of quackery and poison. In short, chaos is come again! Every one orders what seems good in his own eyes; there is no deference to the authority of ancient wisdom; our masters are laid upon the shelf, and their axioms not one tittle the more regarded for being delivered in languages as defunct as the subjects of their application. ”

“ Unflinching laws embrace all men and worlds,
And all must pay their debts upon this earth.
A river seeks its end in the distant rolling sea,
The flames leap high, the heavens to embrace,
Whatever the earth creates by earth destroyed shall be,
But nought shall go to waste or lose its finite place. ”

“ Chaos thrust forth his fingers o'er the land,
And as when seas encroach upon a strand,
Moved, an immeasurable flood of Night,
Across the spring, while men and beasts in flight
Avoided the dark terror close at hand ”

“ By his pledge he should, in contrast with man's wreck active upon shore, have given man's wreck passive upon the flood,—the earth strewn with ruin by man's hand, the sea strewn with ruin of man himself,—magnis excidit ausis. ”

“ It is more than rashness for any mortal to say to the strong, treacherous ocean, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther;” it is trenching on the privilege of Omnipotence. The dikes may be wisely planned and skillfully built; but one night a wilder wind arises than any that they have withstood; the legions of the besieging army are mustering to storm. ”

“ In the time when thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths of the waters, thy merchandise and all thy company in the midst of thee shall fall.—When thou shalt be broken and engulfed in the roaring waves of anarchy, thy doctrines shall cease and all thy supporters shall fall. ”

“ Their prestige is lost for ever. The last barrier is thrown down between the upper and the lower classes—the breakwater is swept away: and when the day of storm and tempest shall come, when the angry waters shall rise, when the inundation shall sweep on and on in tumultuous tide, what shall there be now to oppose it? ”

“ Its very power, indeed, gives fatal force to its aberrations; even as the waters of the calmest river, when dammed up or forced from their bed, flood and ruin the country: but the gentle flow and fertilizing influence of the stream are the fit emblems of the instinct, when suffered, undisturbed by force or passion, to follow its own quiet channel. ”

“ Then there seemed no security in existence; civilization was no longer an achievement, but a fluid stream flowing over a varied bed—rock, pebbles, mud, sand; society was no establishment, but a precarious, tottering thing, a tower of silted sands with an oozy base, blocking the river, squeezing it into a narrow and unpleasant channel. ”

“ For centuries their hoisted spears send back the burnished glitter of the sun, and then—the light dies out; down rushing from the North-land again the tide of vigor pours, and the health and strength of barbarism conquers the weakness of a tottering civilization! Far away—away over the miles of sparkling sea, in the darkness and the silence a continent lies waiting; waiting for the coming of the light, waiting for the swelling of the tide. ”

“ Each wave that breaks in seeming impotence has inflicted an irreparable injury upon it, and prepared the way for its successor; each tide that gently murmurs at its feet is weakening its foundations. And the days will come when its worn and enfeebled structure will yield, and the fairest lands become a prey to the devouring waves. ”

“ Suddenly the rock upon which we stood began to crumble; huge fragments broke away at our very feet and went whirling down into the yawning gulf.
Hope!
The word was but mockery!
Chaos would have been more befitting, for chaos had surely come! ”

“ The country had been literally submerged by a silver flood which had poured its argent waves into every nook and cranny of the Republic, stimulating human endeavor to most unnatural and harmful vigor. ”

“ They were utterly powerless, indeed, to stop the ultimate flow of the tide, but they had the terrible power to turn, what might otherwise have been a steady and peaceful stream, into a turbulent and devastating flood. They had the terrible power, and they used it, of involving their own and ten succeeding generations in the turmoils of revolution. ”

“ Meanwhile, the tempest rages, the lightnings flash upon the rock, the sands are torn up by whirlwinds, the seas are dashed against the sky, and all the artillery of heaven is leveled against his bosom, while he proudly defies the vengeance of his tyrant, and sinks into the earth to the lower regions, calling on the Powers of Justice to avenge his wrongs. ”

“ All customs were forgotten or disregarded, all rules broken—nothing mechanical—no imitation—spontaneous, running and winding like a river, multitudinous in its thoughts as the waves of the sea—nothing mathematical or measured. In everything a touch of chaos—lacking what is called form as clouds lack form, but not lacking the splendor of sunrise or the glory of sunset. ”

“ And we may be quite sure of this, that, in spite of our pride of place and power, in spite of our vast possessions and enormous resources, in spite of our boasted force by land and sea, if we come into conflict with that Power we shall be crushed like an egg-shell against the granite rock. ”

“ Even in a land of peace we have all had alarms, perturbations, and defeats enough, and our security has been at the mercy of marauders so often that if we are wise, and take due heed of what experience has to say to us of our reserve of force, we shall not be hopeful of keeping our footing in the whirling currents of a river in full flood. ”

“ If Matter, mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of Nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation after it has paid a brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay? ”

“ Though our path be set with danger Nothing shall our spirits shake, Winds may rage and roar and whistle, Storms from North and East may break, Waves may roll and leap and thunder On a dark and threatening sea, Thou dost ever watch Thy children, And their strength and peace wilt be. ”

“ To him who strives in vain with the giant forces of evil, what calm in the thought of an overpowering will, so that will be crowned by goodness! However grim, to the distrusting, looks this fortress of sovereignty in times of flowery ease, yet in times when "the waters roar and are troubled, and the mountains shake with the swelling thereof," it has been always the refuge of God's people. ”

“ Elevated, as we now are, upon a high tide of general interest and zeal—a tide which may either go on increasing its flood till it has washed clean the very mountain tops, and drowned intemperance in its last den; or else subside, and leave the land infected with a plague, the more malignant and incurable from the dead remains of a partial inundation—it has become a question of universal application, which those who are now at the outset of their influence in society should especially consider: “What can we do, and what ought we to do in this cause?” ”