If I had never thought of it before, and some one were to come around to my study tomorrow morning and tell me that I was immortal, I am not at all sure that I would be attracted by it. The first thing that I should do, probably, would be to argue a little--ask him what it was for. I might take some pains not to commit myself (one does not want to settle a million years in a few minutes), but I cannot help being conscious, on the inside of my own mind, at least, that the first thought on immortality that would come to me, would be that perhaps it might be overdoing things a little.
I can speak only for myself. I am not unaware that a great many men and women are talking to-day about immortality and writing about it. I know many people too, who, in a faithful, worried way seem to be lugging about with them, while they live, what they call a faith in immortality. I would not mean to say a word against immortality, if I were asked suddenly and had never thought of it before. If by putting out my hand I could get some of it, for other people,--people that wanted it or thought they did--I would probably. They would be happier and easier to live with. I could watch them enjoying the idea of how long they were going to last. There would be a certain social pleasure in it. But, speaking strictly for myself, if I were asked suddenly and had never heard of it before, I would not have the slightest preference on the subject. It may be true, as some say, that a man is only half alive if he does not long to live forever, but while I have the best wishes and intentions with regard to my hope for immortality I cannot get interested. I feel as if I were living forever now, this very moment, right here on the premises--Universe, Earth, United States of America, Hampshire County, Northampton, Ma.s.sachusetts. I feel infinitely related every day and hour and minute of my life, to an infinite number of things. As for joggling G.o.d"s elbow or praying to Him or any such thing as that, under the circ.u.mstances, and begging Him to let me live forever, it always seems to me (I have done it sometimes when I was very tired) as if it were a way of denying Him to His face. How a man who is literally standing up to his soul"s eyes, and to the tops of the stars in the infinite, who can feel the eternal throbbing through the very pores of his body, can so far lose his sense of humor in a prayer, or his reverence in it, as to put up a pet.i.tion to G.o.d to live forever, I entirely fail to see. I always feel as if I had stopped living forever--to ask Him.
I have traveled in the blaze of a trolley car when all the world was asleep, and have been shot through still country fields in the great blackness. All things that were--it seemed to my soul, were snuffed out. It was as if all the earth had become a whir and a bit of light--had dwindled away to a long plunge, or roll and roar through Nothing. Slowly as I came to myself I said, "Now I will try to realize Motion. I will see if I can know. I spread my soul about me...." Ties flying under my feet, black poles picked out with lights, flapping ghostlike past the windows.... Voices of wheels over and under.... The long, dreary waver of the something that sounds when the car stops (and which feels like taking gas) ... the semi-confidential, semi-public talk of the pa.s.sengers, the sudden collision with silence, they come to, when the car halts--all these. Finally when I look up every one has slipped away. Then I find my soul spreading further and further. The great night, silent and splendid, builds itself over me.
The night is the crowded time to travel--car almost to one"s self, nothing but a few whirls of light and a conductor for company--the long monotone of miles--miles--flying beside me and above and around and beneath--all this shadowed world to belong to, to dwell in, to pick out with one"s soul from Darkness. "Here am I," I said as the roar tightened once more, and gripped on its awful wire and glowed through the blackness. "Here I am in infinite s.p.a.ce, I and my bit of glimmer.... Worlds fall about me. The very one I am on, and stamp my feet on to know it is there, falls and plunges with me out through deserts of s.p.a.ce, and stars I cannot see have their hand upon me and hold me."
No one would deny that the idea of immortality is a well-meaning idea and pleasantly inclined and intended to be appreciative of a G.o.d, but it does seem to me that it is one of the most absent-minded ways of appreciating Him that could be conceived. I am infinite at 88 High Street. I have all the immortality I can use, without going through my own front gate. I have but to look out of a window. There is no denying that Mount Tom is convenient, and as a kind of soul-stepping-stone, or horse-block to the infinite, the immeasurable and immortal, a mountain may be an advantage, perhaps, and make some difference; but I must confess that it seems to me that in all times and in all places a man"s immortality is absolutely in his own hands. His immortality consists in his being in an immortally related state of mind. His immortality is his sense of having infinite relations with all the time there is, and his infinity consists in his having infinite relations with all the s.p.a.ce there is. Wherever, as a matter of form, a man may say he is living or staying, the universe is his real address.
I have been at sea--lain with a board over me out in the wide night and looked at the infinite through a port-hole. Over the edge of the swash of a wave I have gathered in oceans and possessed them. Under my board in the night I have lain still with the whole earth and mastered it in my heart, shared it until I could not sleep with the joy of it--the great ship with all its souls throbbing a planet through me and chanting it to me. I thought to my soul, "Where art thou?" I looked down upon myself as if I were a G.o.d looking down on myself and upon the others, and upon the ship and upon the waters.
A thousand breaths we lie Shrouded limbs and faces Horizontal Packed in cases In our named and numbered places, Catalogued for sleep, Trembling through the G.o.dlight Below, above, Deep to Deep.
How a church-going man in a world like this can possibly contrive to have time to cry out or worry on it, or to be troubled about another--how he can demand another, the way he does sometimes, as if it were the only thing left a G.o.d could do to straighten matters out for having put him on this one, and how he can call this religion--is a problem that leaves my mind like an exhausted receiver. It is a grave question whether any immortality they are likely to get in another world would ever really pay some people for the time they have wasted in this one, worrying about it.
Does any science in the world suppose or dare to suppose that I am as unimportant in it as I look--or that I could be if I tried? that I am a parasite rolled up in a drop of dew, down under a shimmering mist of worlds that do not serve me nor care for me? I swear daily that I am not living and that I will not and cannot live underneath a universe ... with a little horizon or teacup of s.p.a.ce set down over me. The whole sky is the tool of my daily life. It belongs to me and I to it.
I have said to the heavens that they shall hourly minister to me--to the uses of my spirit and the needs of my body. When I, or my spirit, would move a little I swing out on stars. In the watches of the night they reach under my eyelids and serve my sleep and wait on me with dreams, I know I am immortal because I know I am infinite. A man is at least as long as he is wide. There is no need to quibble with words. I care little enough whether I am supposed to say it is forever across my soul or everywhere across it. Whichever it is, I make it the other when I am ready. If a man is infinite and lives an infinitely related life, why should it matter whether he is eternal as he calls it or not,--takes his immortality sideways here, now, and in the terms of s.p.a.ce or later with some kind of time-arrangement stretched out and petering along over a long, narrow row of years?
Thousands of things are happening that are mine--out, around, and through the great darkness--being born and killed and ticked and printed while I sleep. When I have stilled myself with sleep, do I not know that the lightning is waiting on me? When I see a cloud of steam I say, "There is my omnipresence." My being is busy out in the universe having its way somewhere. The days on the other side of the world are my days. I get what I want out of them without having to keep awake for them. In the middle of the night and without trying I lay my hand on the moon. It is my moon, wherever it may be, or whether I so much as look upon it, and when I do look upon it it is no roof for me, and the stars behind it flow in my veins.
II
I have been reading lately a book on Immortality, the leading idea of which seems to be a sort of astral body for people--people who are worthy of it. The author does not believe after the old-fashioned method that we are going to the stars. He intimates (for all practical purposes) that we do not need to. The stars are coming to us,--are already being woven in us. The author does not say it in so many words, but the general idea seems to be that the more spiritual or subtle body we are going to have, is already started in us--if we live as we should--growing like a kind of lining for this one.
I can only speak for one, but I find that when I am willing to take the time from reading books on immortality to enjoy a few infinite experiences, I am not apt to be troubled very much about another world.
It is daily obvious to me that I belong and that I am living in an infinite and eternal world, inconceivably better planned and managed than one of mine would be, and the only logical thing that I can do, is to take it for granted that the next one is even better than this.
If the main feature of the next world consists in there not being one, then so much the better. I would not have thought so. It seems a little abrupt at this moment, perhaps, but it is a mere detail and why not leave it to G.o.d to work it out? He doesn"t have to neglect anything to do it--which is what we do--and He is going to do it anyway.
I have refused to take time from my infinity now for a theory of a theory about some new kind by and by. I have but to stand perfectly still. There is an infinite opening and shutting of doors for me, through all the heavens and the earth. I lie with my head in the deep gra.s.s. A square yard is forever across. I listen to a great city in the gra.s.s--millions of insects. Microscopes have threaded it for me. I know their city--all its mighty little highways. I possess it. And when I walk away I rebuild their city softly in my heart. Winds, tides, and vapors are for me everywhere, that my soul may possess them. I reach down to the silent metals under my feet that millions of ages have worked on, and fire and wonder and darkness. I feel the sun and the lives of nations flowing around to me, from under the sea. Who can shut me out from anybody"s sunrise?
"Oh, tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven And one in my desire."
I play with the Seasons, with all the weathers on earth. I can telegraph for them. I go to the weather I want. The sky--to me--is no longer a great, serious, foreign-looking sh.o.r.e, conducting a big foolish cloud-business, sending down decrees of weather on helpless cities. With a whistle and a roar I defy it--move any strip of it out from over me--for any other strip. I order the time of year. It is my sky. I bend it a little--just a little. The sky no longer has a monopoly of wonder. With the hands of my hands, my brother and I have made an earth that can answer a sky back, that can commune with a sky.
The soul at last guesses at its real self. It reaches out and dares.
Men go about singing with telescopes. I do not always need to lift my hands to a sky and pray to it now. I am related to it. With the hands of my hands I work with it. I say "I and the sky." I say "I and the Earth." We are immortal because we are infinite. We have reached over with the hands of our hands. They are praying a stupendous prayer--a kind of G.o.d"s prayer. G.o.d"s hand has been grasped--vaguely--wonderfully out in the Dark. No longer is the joy of the universe to a man, one of his great, solemn, solitary joys. The sublime itself is a neighborly thought. G.o.d"s machine--up--There--and the machines of the man have signaled each other.
V
THE IDEA OF G.o.d
My study (not the place where I get my knowledge but the place where I put it together) is a great meadow--ten square splendid level miles of it--as fenceless and as open as a sky--merely two mountains to stand guard. If H---- the scientist who lives nearest to me (that is; nearest to my mind,) were to come down to me to-morrow morning, down in my meadow, with its huge triangle of trolleys and railways humming gently around the edges and tell me that he had found a G.o.d, I would not believe it. "Where?" I would say, "in which Bottle?" I have groped for one all these years. Ever since I was a child I have been groping for a G.o.d. I thought one had to. I have turned over the pages of ancient books and hunted in morning papers and rummaged in the events of the great world and looked on the under sides of leaves and guessed on the other sides of the stars and all in vain. I never could make out to find a G.o.d in that way. I wonder if anyone can.
I know it is not the right spirit to have, but I must confess that when the scientist (the smaller sort of scientist around the corner in my mind and everybody"s mind) with all his retorts and things, pottering with his argument of design, comes down to me in my meadow and reminds me that he has been looking for a G.o.d and tells me cautiously and with all his kind, conscientious hems and haws that he has found Him, I wonder if he has.
The very necessity a man is under of seeking a G.o.d at all, in a world alive all over like this, of feeling obliged to go on a long journey to search one out makes one doubt if the kind of G.o.d he would find would be worth while. I have never caught a man yet who has found his G.o.d in this way, enjoying Him or getting anyone else to.
It does seem to me that the idea of a G.o.d is an absolutely plain, rudimentary, fundamental, universal human instinct, that the very essence of finding a G.o.d consists in His not having to be looked for, in giving one"s self up to one"s plain every-day infinite experiences.
I suppose if it could be a.n.a.lyzed, the poet"s real quarrel with the scientist is not that he is material, but that he is not material enough,--he does not conceive matter enough to find a G.o.d. I cannot believe for instance that any man on earth to whom the great spectacle of matter going on every day before his eyes is a scarcely noticed thing--any man who is willing to turn aside from this spectacle--this spectacle as a whole--and who looks for a G.o.d like a chemist in a bottle for instance--a bottle which he places absolutely by itself, would be able to find one if he tried. It seems to me that it is by letting one"s self have one"s infinite--one"s infinitely related experiences, and not by cutting them off that one comes to know a G.o.d.
To find a G.o.d who is everywhere one must at least spend a part of one"s time in being everywhere one"s self--in relating one"s knowledge to all knowledge.
There are various undergirding arguments and reasons, but the only way that I really know there is an infinite G.o.d is because I am infinite--in a small way--myself. Even the matter that has come into the world connected with me, and that belongs to me, is infinite. If my soul, like some dim pale light left burning within me, were merely to creep to the boundaries of its own body, it would know there was a G.o.d. The very flesh I live with every day is infinite flesh. From the furthest rumors of men and women, the furthest edge of time and s.p.a.ce my soul has gathered dust to itself. I carry a temple about with me.
If I could do no better, and if there were need, I am my own cathedral. I worship when I breathe. I bow down before the tick of my pulse. I chant to the palm of my hand. The lines in the tips of my fingers could not be duplicated in a million years. Shall any man ask me to prove there are miracles or to put my finger on G.o.d? or to go out into some great breath of emptiness or argument to be sure there is a G.o.d? I am infinite. Therefore there is a G.o.d. I feel daily the G.o.d within me. Has He not kindled the fire in my bones and out of the burning dust warmed me before the stars--made a hearth for my soul before them? I am at home with them. I sit daily before worlds as at my own fireside.
I suppose there is something intolerant and impatient and a little heartless about an optimist--especially the kind of optimism that is based upon a simple everyday rudimentary joy in the structure of the world. There is such a thing, I suppose, with some of us, as having a kind of devilish pride in faith, as one would say to ordinary mortals and creepers and considerers and arguers "Oh now just see me believe!"
We are like boys taking turns jumping in the Great Vacant Lot, seeing which can believe the furthest. We need to be reminded that a man cannot simply bring a little brag to G.o.d, about His world, and make a religion out of it. I do not doubt in the least, as a matter of theory, that I have the wrong spirit--sometimes--toward the scientific man who lives around the corner of my mind. It seems to me he is always suggesting important-looking unimportant things. I have days of sympathizing with him, of rolling his great useless heavy-empty pack up upon my shoulders and strapping it there. But before I know it I"m off. I throw it away or melt it down into a tablet or something--put it in my pocket. I walk jauntily before G.o.d.
And the worst of it is, I think He intended me to. I think He intended me to know and to keep knowing daily what He has done for me and is doing now, out in the universe, and what He has made me to do. I also am a G.o.d. From the first time I saw the sun I have been one daily. I have performed daily all the homelier miracles and all the common functions of a G.o.d. I have breathed the Invisible into my being. Out of the air of heaven I have made flesh. I have taken earth from the earth and burned it within me and made it into prayers and into songs.
I have said to my soul "To eat is to sing." I worship all over. I am my own sacrament. I lay before G.o.d nights of sleep, and the delight and wonder of the flesh I render back to Him again, daily, as an offering in His sight.
And what is true of my literal body--of the joy of my hands and my feet, is still more true of the hands of my hands.
When I wake in the night and send forth my thought upon the darkness, track out my own infinity in it, feel my vast body of earth and sky reaching around me, all telegraphed through with thought, and floored with steel, I may have to grope for a G.o.d a little (I do sometimes), but I do it with loud cheers. I sing before the door of heaven if there is a heaven or needs to be a heaven. When I look upon the glory of the other worlds, has not science itself told me that they are a part of me and I a part of them? Nothing is that would not be different without something else. My thoughts are ticking through the clouds, and the great sun itself is creeping through me daily down in my bones. The steam cloud hurries for me on a hundred seas. I turn over in my sleep at midnight and lay my hand on the noon. And when I have slept and walk forth in the morning, the stars flow in my veins.
Why should a man dare to whine? "Whine not at me!" I have said to man my brother. If you cannot sing to me do not interrupt me.
Let him sing to me Who sees the watching of the stars above the day, Who hears the singing of the sunrise On its way Through all the night.
Who outfaces skies, outsings the storms, Whose soul has roamed Infinite-homed Through tents of s.p.a.ce, His hand in the dim Great Hand that forms All wonder.
Let him sing to me Who is The Sky Voice, The Thunder Lover Who hears above the wind"s fast-flying shrouds The drifted darkness, the heavenly strife, The singing on the sunny sides of all the clouds, Of His Own Life.
VI
THE IDEA OF THE UNSEEN AND INTANGIBLE
_AN ODE TO THE UNSEEN_
Poets of flowers, singers of nooks in s.p.a.ce, Petal-mongers, embroiderers of words In the music-haunted houses of the birds, Singers with the thrushes and pewees In the glimmer-lighted roofs Of the trees-- Unhand my soul!
Buds with singing in their hearts, Birds with blooms upon their wings, All the wandering whispers of delight, The near familiar things; Voice of pine trees, winds of daisies, Sounds of going in the grain Shall not bind me to thy singing When the sky with G.o.d is ringing For the Joy of the Rain.
Sea and star and hill and thunder, Dawn and sunset, noon and night, All the vast processional of the wonder Where the worlds are, Where my soul is, Where the shining tracks are For the spirit"s flight-- Lift thine eyes to these From the haunts of dewdrops, Hollows of the flowers, Caves of bees That sing like thee, Only in their bowers; From the stately growing cities Of the little blowing leaves, To the infinite windless eaves Of the stars; From the dainty music of the ground, The dim innumerable sound Of the Mighty Sun Creeping in the gra.s.s, Softest stir of His feet (Where they go Far and slow On their immemorial beat Of buds and seeds And all the gentle and holy needs Of flowers), To the old eternal round Of the Going of His Might, Above the confines of the dark, Odors and winds and showers, Day and night, Above the dream of death and birth Flickering East and West, Boundaries of a Shadow of an Earth-- Where He wheels And soars And plays In illimitable light, Sends the singing stars upon their ways And on each and every world When The Little Shadow for its Little Sleep Is furled-- Pours the Days.
The first time I gazed in the great town upon a solid mile of electric cars--threaded with Nothing--mesmerism hauling a whole city home to supper, it seemed to me as if the central power of all things, The Thing that floats and breathes through the universe, must have been found by someone--gathered up from between stars, and turned on--poured down gently on the planet--falling on a thousand wheels, and run on the tops of cars--the secret thrill that softly and out in the darkness and through all ages had done all things. I felt as if I had seen the infinite in some near familiar, humdrum place. I walked on in a dazed fashion. I do not suppose I could really have been more surprised if I had met a star walking in the street.
In my deepest dream I heard the Song Running in my sleep Through the lowest caves of Being Down below Where no sound is, sun is, Hearing, seeing That men know.
There was something about it, about that sense of the mile of cars moving, that made it all seem very old.
_An Ode to the Lightning._