Sunday, August 12, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
The Meaning of Man
The Meaning of Man |
By Clifford Bax (b. 1886-1962) |
Take courage; for the race of man is divine.
The Golden Verses. DEAR and fair as Earth may be | |
Not from out her womb are we,— | |
Like an elder sister only, like a foster-mother, she, | |
For we come of heavenly lineage, of a pure undying race, | |
We who took the poppied potion of our life, and quaffing deep | 5 |
Move enchanted now forever in the shadow world of sleep, | |
In the vast and lovely vision that is wrought of time and space. | |
Overhead the sun and moon | |
Shining at the gates of birth | |
Give to each a common boon,— | 10 |
All the joy of earth; | |
Mountains lit with moving light, | |
Forest, cavern, cloud and river, | |
Ebb and flow of day and night | |
Around the world forever. | 15 |
These and all the works of man may he who will behold, | |
Mighty shapes of bygone beauty, songs of beaten gold, | |
Starlike thoughts that once, in ages gone, were found by seër-sages, | |
All the throng’d and murmuring Past, the life men loved of old. | |
Yet sometimes at the birth of night when hours of heat and splendour | 20 |
Melt away in darkness, and the flaming sun has set | |
Across the brooding soul will sweep, like music sad and tender, | |
Sudden waves of almost passionate regret, | |
For then the hills and meadowlands, the trees and flowerful grasses, | |
All the world of wonder that our eyes have gazed upon, | 25 |
Seems remote and mournful, as a rainbow when it passes | |
Leaves the heart lamenting for the beauty come and gone, | |
And in the deep that is the soul there surges up a cry | |
‘Whence are all the starry legions traversing the sky? | |
Whence the olden planets and the sun and moon and earth? | 30 |
Out of what came all of these and out of what came I?’ | |
And far away within the same unfathomable deep | |
Comes an answer rolling ‘Earth and moon and sun, | |
All that is, that has been, or that ever time shall reap, | |
Is but moving home again, with mighty labours done, | 35 |
The Many to the Everlasting One.’ | |
And this is the meaning of man, | |
The task of the soul, | |
The labour of worlds, and the plan | |
That is set for the whole, | 40 |
For the spark of the spirit imprisoned within it, | |
In all things one and the same, | |
Aeon by aeon and minute by minute, | |
Is longing to leap into flame, | |
To shatter the limits of life and be lost in a glory intense and profound | 45 |
As the soul with a cry goes out into music and seeks to be one with the sound. | |
For as those that are sunken deep | |
In the green dim ocean of sleep, | |
In a thousand shapes for a thousand ages the one great Spirit is bound. | |
The air we inhale and the sea, | 50 |
The warm brown earth and the sun, | |
Came forth at the Word of the One | |
From the same First Mother as we, | |
And now, as of old when the world began | |
The stars of the night are the kindred of man, | 55 |
For all things move to a single goal, | |
The giant sun or the thinking soul. | |
Ah what though the Tree whose rise and fall | |
Of sap is fed from the Spirit of All, | |
With suns for blossoms and planets for leaves, | 60 |
Be vaster yet than the mind conceives? | |
Earth is a leaf on the boundless Tree, | |
And the unborn soul of the earth are we. | |
O man is a hungering exiled people, a host in an unknown land, | |
A wandering mass in the vast with only a black horizon to face, | 65 |
Yet still, though we toil for a time in the heat over measureless deserts of sand | |
The longing for beauty that shines in the soul is the guiding-star of the race. | |
It is this that alone may redeem | |
A world ignoble with strife, | |
This only bring all that we dream | 70 |
From the shattered chaos of life. | |
And this that forever shall spur us and lead us from peak unto peak on the way | |
Till body and spirit be welded in one and the long Night fall on the Day, | |
And all the sonorous music of time, the hills and the woods and the wind and the sea, | |
The one great song of the whole creation, of all that is and that yet shall be, | 75 |
Chanted aloud as a paean of joy by the Being whose home is the vast | |
Shall tremble away in silence, and all be gone at the last, | |
Save only afar in the Heart of the Singer of whom it was chanted and heard | |
Remembrance left of the music as a sunset-fire in the west, | |
Remembrance left of the mighty Enchanted Palace that rose at His Word, | 80 |
This, and a joy everlasting, an immense inviolate rest. |
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
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