Stillness

“ Truly we do but grope here in the dark, Near the partition-wall of Life and Death, At every moment dreading or desiring To lay our hands upon the unseen door! Let us, then, labor for an inward stillness,— An inward stillness and an inward healing; That perfect silence where the lips and heart Are still, and we no longer entertain Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions, But God alone speaks in us, and we wait In singleness of heart, that we may know His will, and in the silence of our spirits, That we may do His will, and do that only! ”

“ We feel, when we meditate on the subject, that stillness and silence must have fled before the Almighty Voice, and the earth itself have trembled in its new existence, when the gloomy pall of darkness was rolled as a curtain from the face of nature. ”

“ The world was a strange world of deep, concealing shadows and strong, revealing glares, and a mist of smoke, and hurrying, shouting, excited multitudes. Sometimes I found myself in queer little temporary eddies of stillness, where a certain calm and leisure seemed to have been insulated. ”

“ From silence one can plunge into noise, from stillness one can hasten to movement, from the strangeness and the wonder of the antique past one can step into the brilliance, the gaiety, the vivid animation of the present. ”

“ The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that He was [pg 067] there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two. ”

“ What are those dream like and inscrutable thoughts which start up in moments of stillness, apparently as from the deeps, like the movement of the leaves during a silent night, in prognostic of the breeze that has yet scarce come, if not the rustlings of schemes and orders of existence near though unseen? ”

“ Always the instinct was to pause in order that the row might die away, that the man might shrink to his accustomed unobtrusiveness. And instantaneously, without the grace of even a little transitional echo, the stillness fell, crowding so closely on the heels of the man's presence that almost he could feel the breath of whatever it represented. ”

“ That will live forever, when the stillness of death rests upon the pulses. That is the great connecting link between time and eternity, and doomed, by the order of nature, to live forever, and the boundless ages of eternity alone can fully develop its faculties, or define its station. ”

“ And in the stillness and the coolness and the peace you can dwell with confidence upon the thought of all the Unknown that is moving onward towards you, as the glow which is fading renews itself day by day in the East, bringing the daily task with it. ”

“ But to be still, and to ignore the false fine frenzy of the seething world. To turn away, now, each one into the stillness and solitude of his own soul. And there to remain in the quiet with the Holy Ghost which is to each man his own true soul. ”

“ Many questions vex us: all others lead to one: when man vanishes, does he pass into the stillness of the earth's atmosphere and sink toward the stillness of its rocks like every other species? He answers with his faith: that his spirit is here he knows not why, but takes flight from it he knows not how or whither. ”

“ In every deed may we live always in the silence of the age with thee, for thou art in the stillness, and the stillness is with beauty, and beauty is with God. Thine arms are raised in constant longing ”

“ The stillness—broken only by the measured breathing of the patient and the distant snoring of the banished nurse—the deep, solemn stillness of a country house at night, becomes painfully oppressive to the overwrought senses of the watcher. ”

“ When we slowly recover from the tumult and passion of some violent distress, a peculiar stillness falls upon the Mind, and the atmosphere around it becomes in that stillness appallingly clear. We knew not, while wrestling with our woe, the extent of its ravages. ”

“ There is a stillness, which is rather of the mind than of the bodily senses. Rapid changes and sudden revelations of scenery, even when they are soundless, have something in them analogous to a movement of music, to a crash or a cry. ”

“ The stillness that reigns around, the solemn repose of the scene, not broken in upon by human associations, nor interrupted by the voice of human intercourse, enhance the impression of grandeur produced by the sight of objects which cannot fail to elevate the soul to pious adoration of the great and illimitable God of the universe. ”

“ The steady stillness, and dusky habit of all nature in those hours, enforce, encourage, and support that settled gloom, which rises from fixt thought; and sinks the body to the grave; even while it carries up the mind to heaven. ”

“ It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness—that hush in which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the spring of a beast. ”

“ And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark. ”

“ An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear. ”

“ No thunder, no wind, no sound; not a flicker of lightning. Then in the tenebrous immensity a livid arch appears; a swell or two like undulations of the very darkness run past, and suddenly, wind and rain strike together with a peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through something solid. Such a cloud had come up while they weren’t looking. They had just noticed it, and were perfectly justified in surmising that if in absolute stillness there was some chance for the ship to keep afloat a few minutes longer, the least disturbance of the sea would make an end of her instantly. ”

“ The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one’s mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and headlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness in which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. ”

“ I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver—over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. ”

“ But even as men do not see the reality of God's workings from the superficial noise of the world and its passing events, for they are hidden beneath that cover, so also shall they fail to understand the action of the Yogin, for he is different within from what he is outside. The strength of noise and activity is, doubtless, great,—did not the walls of Jericho fall by the force of noise? But infinite is the strength of the stillness and the silence, in which great forces prepare for action. ”

“ A century seems a long, long time
For thee to lie in gloom.
How didst thou know when to arise?
And thy new garment don;
Thou mightst have slept thy life away
Whilst time was going on.
Was there a power within thy soul?
A wish within thy heart?
To soar above all other flowers,
And with the birds take part
In singing songs of grateful joy
That thou hast waked from sleep,
That thou again dost see the light,
[Pg 209] Hast risen from the deep;
The grave where thou so long hast lain.
To raise thy head on high,
And looking up to Deity
Once more; then droop and die. ”

“ The spirit of meditation and retrospection seems to hover over those solemn effigies resting in their eternal sleep, guarding in inimitable and awful silence secrets of the historic past that can never be solved. ”

“ It does need rest most of the time in this age of pressure, Heaven knows, and comfort and amusement are necessary. But may we not, even while we rest and are comfortable, under the blue sky or on the peaceful river, if you will, lift up our spirits to the mystery of the ages, and reach out once more toward the eternal truths? ”

“ Hushed are their voices in the eternal silence of the grave, but the grand principles they taught, the great truths they told, still live. Amid the silence and solitude of the earth they sleep the sleep that knows no awakening. ”

“ It will depend also on the steady continuance--often perhaps through long periods of darkness and boredom--of that poise to which you have been trained: the stretching-out of the loving and surrendered will into the dimness and silence, the continued trustful habitation of the soul in the atmosphere of the Essential World. You are like a traveller arrived in a new country. The journey has been a long one; and the hardships and obstacles involved in it, the effort, the perpetual conscious pressing forward, have at last come to seem the chief features of your inner life. ”

“ The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. How easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature. ”

“ Then there was a space of silence,—one of those silences in which we seem to be caught up into the heart of things, when hidden meanings are revealed, when the soul stretches itself and grows a little. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How short a span there is between life and eternity! There they stood, both in high health and strength, full of the world, and the world's spirit, and yet in how brief a space was one of them to appear before the judgment-seat of God! ”

“ His to-morrows are as seeds which shall germinate, bursting into beauty and potency of life, and no doubt shall shake his trust, no uncertainty rob him of repose. The Present is his, only in the immortal Present does he live, and it is as the eternal vault of blue above which looks down silently and calmly, yet radiant with purity and light, upon the upturned and tear-stained faces of the centuries. ”

“ And so the past becomes a mountain-cell,
Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell
In consecrated calm, forgotten yet
Of the keen heart that hastens to forget
Old longings in fulfilling new desires. ”

“ Until you are called to follow them into that 'world of light,' or it may be of darkness and oblivion, you are immortal. Think then of to-day, humbly putting away the rebellion and despondency corroding your life, and it will be with you as it has been; you shall know again the peace which passes understanding, the old ineffable happiness in the sights and sounds of earth. Common things shall seem rare and beautiful to you. ”

“ At all events, it reminds us, if there he any materials for reflection within us, of the brevity of our span of life, and of the littleness of its aims; a visible Eternity seeming to lie before us, in the presence of which we are humbled. ”

“ When the pain is hardest to bear, when the past, oh, the past—with all its immeasurable losses, begins to crush my very soul, I turn my dim eyes upward and repeat to myself, 'There is a Heaven of eternal rest and joy,' and so I grow serene in my waiting. ”

“ They are like the history of the past sublimated by the eloquence of immutable truth, and are sanctified by a sleep that has eternal life within its closed lids. They have, too, a sympathy in retort with us. ”

“ Might there some more gladdening dream from out the Infinite Silence at times refresh the slumberer in the cradle of Eternity!—might there, from time to time, prophetic whispers fall upon his ear, that there is a Light and a Day! ”

“ I mean the moral and spiritual, reaching beyond the visible—although suggested by, and continually arising out of it—a region in which “the mind that can wander through eternity” may roam at large, calling up historical personages and events long ago forgotten; revelling and luxuriating undisturbed amidst thoughts, feelings, and speculation of other days—holding converse with one’s own heart, and rehearsing scenes long since covered over with the mental dust of our working everyday life. ”

“ By brooding ardently, intensely, before I retired to rest, over any especial train of thought, over any ideal creations; by keeping the body utterly still and quiescent during the whole day; by shutting out all living adventure, the memory of which might perplex and interfere with the stream of events that I desired to pour forth into the wilds of sleep, I discovered at last that I could lead in dreams a life solely their own, and utterly distinct from the life of day. ”

“ Before him was the mystery of timeless nature, of forbidden spaces, of the great innocent body of the world which each night returns to its maidenly solitude and waits serene the moment when the transient horde of men shall pass, and the day again shall wrap her in silence and in solitude, even as the unconquered night. ”