The little things of life, that men accountWithout a moral value, may be doneWith reference to Self; but oftenest,The mind regards the act, not its effectUpon the Self. The code of Etiquette,The small amenities of social life,The converse, and the articles of dress,May all belong to Self; but moral acts,Those known as right or wrong, have higher sourceThan Self in any mode.Within Man’s breastThere’s something, apprehending good and bad,Called conscience, or the moral sense; it views,Impartially, each act of his, decidesIts quality by rule of right and wrong;All trust its judgments most implicitly.—The good is found, yields greatest happiness;Yet seek it for the sake of happiness,And good is evil, with its misery!The good must be pursued, because a good,The evil shunned, because an evil. Thus,The moral sense discerns these qualitiesIn others, and directs our love.A blowThe deadliest to our love, would be a blowAimed at the principle of good. A love,Existing through the injuries done to Self,May meet the public’s praise, and feel its own;But love would merit self-contempt, that lovedWhate’er opposed the good. The son may treatThe mother with unkindness, yet her loveBe undiminished; if he lie, or steal,Her love is less; she cannot love his deed,And cannot love the heart from which they flowSo with the youth who gives his chair to Age,He does not so resent that Self’s deniedIts meed of thanks, as that ingratitudeShould thus be manifest, in little things.A comrade, served the same, would anger cause.But him who would give up the highest Self,The soul, for others’ good, you deem a fool;And ask why sacrifice ne’er claimed a soul?Because the soul cannot be sacrificed;No harm to that can others benefit.But if it could, how truly grand the manWho’d take eternal woe for fellow-men!But God, who makes the soul the care of life,Makes every soul stand for itself alone,And in His wisdom hath ordained this law:The greater good man gets for his own soul,The greater good on others’ he confers,While evil to himself, an evil gives.Then comes the question of this abstract good,That moral sense declares the end of life.What is its nature? whence does it arise?And whence does man derive the half-formed thought?You have compared the systems that define,Each in its way, the hidden theory.None satisfy, though each some elementSets forth in clear distinctness. Take them all,Select the true of each, as Cousin does,And will eclecticism satisfy?And does the soul not cry for something more?For something that it feels ’twill never reach,The good, as known to minds unclogged with flesh?Man takes the dim outlines of abstract thought,And seeking to evolve their perfect form,The very outlines grow more indistinct;As gazing at a star will make it fade.Man’s only forms of good are blent with flesh,And when he seeks to take the flesh away,And leave the abstract, he is thus confused,As if he should withdraw the wick and oil,And seek to find the flame still in the lamp.To learn the source of ideas of the Good,Trace Man collective, to his babyhood;For ’mid the prejudice of full-grown thought,The truth would be effectually concealed.Through every people scattered o’er the globe,There does prevail some idea of a God;Though rude and barbarous this idea be,It still, in some form, does exist. The good,With all, bears reference to this thought;And what this Deity approves is good,And what He disapproves is bad. Men learnWhat He approves, and what He disapproves,By revelation, inference, and instinct.God’s sanction then is origin of Good,Though afterwards men learn the sweet effects,And practise it for its own sake; and callTheir little effort, grandest abstract truth.Developing in intellectual strength,They plaster up this good in various forms,Until, refined beyond all subtilty,It seems to them a self-existent good.The good is then a certain quality,In actions, or existence, that assuresDivine approval. This vast idea, God,Creation sows in every human heart;All Nature’s grand designs demand a God,A God intelligent. The same instinctThat tells His being, teaches what He loves;And what He loves with every people’s good.But different nations entertain ideasDiverse in reference to a Deity,And different notions of what pleases Him.One deems the care of God’s child-gift her good;Another tears the heart-strings from her babe,And feeds, for good, the sacred crocodile.The good lies in the thought of pleasing God:The consciousness that God is pleased with us,A pleasure yields, and good might there be soughtFor pleasure’s sake, and prove a selfish aim;But moral selfishness a pain imparts,And good, for pleasure sought, defeats the search.The good is sought, because it pleases God,Not with the doer, but with what is done.Good has its origin in th’ idea God,And what He loves; but to continue goodIt must retain approval in the act,And not transfer it to the agent’s self.The consciousness that God approves a deed,Makes Man approve, and thus his mind is broughtIn correlation with the Mind Divine.The man who does an alms, if done to gainGod’s favor for himself, feels selfish pain;But if because the act, not he, will please,He finds the pleasure. Man, as time rolls on,Finds general laws that please or displease God,And ranging, under these, subordinatesAmenable to them and not to God,The moral quality of lesser deedsHe reckons by these laws, nor does ascendTo God, that gives their moral quality.Jouffroy, in Order, placed the Abstract Good,And paused a step below the real truth,The idea God, whence Order emanates.Thus Man, progressing, good withdraws from GodAnd seems an independent entity,And man denominates it, Abstract Good.He can attain the Abstract but in part;When mind is freed from flesh, he may attainTo its full grandeur. Here, at most, he graspsA faint outline, and fits it on concrete.No concept occupies one act of mind,But opening the lettered label, heMay count the attributes, and by an actComplex, of memory and cognition, gainSome idea of his Abstract. Thus of “Man,”One act can only cognize M-A-N,But opening, he finds the attributes,As “mammal,” “biped,” “vertebrate.” This actIs complex, and he cannot unitize,Save by the bundle of a word. You’ve saidIt answers all the purposes of life,Then why seek more? lest speculation vainPoint out dim realms, where Man can never tread,These baffling thoughts are given, as peacocks’ feet,To Man’s fond pride. The simplest avenueOf thought, pursued, will reach absurdity,To comprehension finite.Even the truthOf numbers you presume to doubt. Two balls,You claim, can ne’er be two unless alike.You mingle quantity and number, foolishly,As if a ball the size of Earth, and one,A tiny mustard-seed, would not be two!You deem all Mathematics wide at fault,Because Man’s powers to illustrate are weak.Earth has oft seen a pure right angle drawn,Because Man’s sight could not detect a flaw;And if to his discernment perfect made,He must admit its perfect form. If life,In every intricate demand, finds truth,Why seek to overturn by sophistry?You see and know Achilles far beyondThe tortoise, yet the super-wise must proveThat he can never pass the creeping thing,Although his speed a hundred times as swift!When Man commences, he may find a doubtIn everything; his life, his neighbor’s life,The outside world, may all be but a myth;Then let him so believe, but let him actConsistently; but does the skeptic so?He crams all Nature in his little mind,Yet how he cringes to her slightest law!He flees the rain, and wards the cold, or fearsThe lightning’s glittering blow. He doubts his frameCan work by mechanism so absurd,Yet will not for a day refrain from food!When Man compares his body and his mind,And tries the power of each, he magnifiesThe mind to Deity, and yet how smallCompared with what it has to learn! The moreMan knows, the more he finds he does not know;And as a traveller toiling up the hill,Each upward step reveals a wider viewOf fields of thought sublime he dares not hopeTo ever reach in life; and wearily he sitsHim down upon the mountain-side, so farBeneath its untrod top, and recklesslyDoubts everything, because beyond his grasp.All skeptic reasoning ends, as did your own,No fruit but blind bewilderment of thought!And none but fools will e’er believe sincereThe faith that doubts alone by theory,And yet approves by practice. Such is yours;The stern necessities of life demandA practical belief, and such is given;And still, forsooth, because your narrow mindCannot contain the Truth in perfect form,You dare deny it does exist. But fewOf skeptic minds are let to live on Earth,And even these made instruments of good,In calling forth defenders of the Truth,Who add their strength to its Eternal Walls.Then here behold God’s wisdom manifest!Amid the care of countless greater orbs,He watches Earth, and knows its smallest thing.While Man, as individual, is free,Collective Man is being surely ledTowards an end, but when it will be reached,God knows alone. Then Man will be removedInto a higher or a lower sphere,As he has worthy proved. With Man ’twill beA great event; his awful Judgment-day!When from those far-off realms, the Son shall comeWith Angel retinue, and through the worlds,Shall lead their solemn flight, to where we stand;And as the trump shall peal its clarion tones,And beat away Earth’s gauze of atmosphere,The millions living, and the billions dead,Will leave the sod, and “caught up in the air,”Shall stand before the Throne, to hear their doom.Then, faces pale with fear, and trembling limbs,Will be on every side, as on the airThey rest, with nothing solid ’neath their feet;And see dismantled Earth burst into flames,And reel along its track, a globe of fire,The volumed smoke, a dusky envelope;Its revolutions wrapping pliant flames,In scarlet girdles, round its bulging waist,And hurling streams of centrifugal sparks,In broad red tangents, from the burning orb.Upon the conflagration Man will gaze,With shuddering horror; ’tis his only home,The scene of all his fame, the source of wealth,For which he toiled so wearily. All gone!He would not touch a mountain of pure gold,For ’twould be useless now! Poor, pauper Man,Without his money, chiefest aim of life,Stands homeless ’mid a Universe, to learnIf God will be his Father, or his Foe!And from the blackness underneath, the swarmsOf Evil ones are thronged, their hideous formsHalf shown in lurid light, as here and thereThey flit, like sharks, expectant of their prey.Then comes the closing scene. The sentence passed,The righteous breaking forth to joyous praise,Shall thread Creation’s wondrous maze of life,And with their Leader, sweep towards yon Heaven;While down the black abyss, with cries of woeThat make the darkness tremble, the condemnedAre dragged, into its gloom,—and all is o’er—Earth’s ashes float in scattered clouds through space—To Man the grandest era of all Time,To God, completion of Salvation’s scheme!But Man deems Judgment too far off for thought,Nor will prepare for such a distant fate;Yet there is something, far more sure than aughtUncertain life can offer; its decision, too,Is just as final as the Judgment doom;And still ’tis oftenest farthest from the thought.’Tis Death, the welcome or unwelcome guestOf every man, and yet how few prepareFor its approach! They give all else a care;Wealth, honor, fame, get all their time,While certain Death’s forgotten, till diseaseGives warning; then with hasty penitence,The knees are worn, the heart’s thick rubbish cleared;But oft too late; the heart will not be cleared,The stubborn knees will not consent to bend,The house is set in order, while the guest,In sable robes, stands at the throbbing door.And now to close thy lesson, look through this!He gave to me a strangely fashioned glass,Through which, when I had looked to Earth, I sawA long black wall, that towered immensely high,So none might see beyond. Before its length,Mankind were ranged, all weaving busily;The young and old, the maiden and the man;The infant hands unconscious plied the thread,The aged with a feeble, listless move.They wove the warp of Life, and drew its threadFrom o’er the wall; none knew how far its endWas off, nor when ’twould reach the busy hand,Nor did they care, in aught by action shown,But bending o’er their work, without a glanceTowards the thread, that still so smoothly ran,They threw the shuttle back and forth again,Till suddenly the ravelled end appeared,Fell from the wall, and to the shuttle crept;And then the weaver laid his work aside,With folded hands, was wrapped within his warp,To wait the Master’s sentence on his task.I saw the thread, in passing through their hands,Received the various colors, from their touch,And tinged the different patterns that they wove.And oh! how different in design! Some woveA spotless fabric, whose pure simple planWas always ready for the ending thread;Come when it would, no part was incomplete;But what was done, could bear th’ Inspector’s eye.And others wove a dark and dingy rag,That bore no pattern, save its filthiness;Fit garment for the fool who weaves for flames!Some wove the great red woof of war,With clashing swords, and crossing bayonets,With ghastly bones, and famished widows’ homes,With all the grim machinery of Death,To gain a paltry crown, or curule chair;Perchance, before the crown or chair is reached,The thread gives out, the work is incomplete,And in the gory cloak his hands have wrought,With all its stains unwashed, the hero sleeps.Some shuttles shape the gilded temple, Fame,And count on thread to weave its topmost dome;But ere the lowest pinnacle is touched,The brittle filament is snapped. Some weaveThe bema, with its loud applause; and someThe gaudy chaplet of the bacchanal,And others sweated bays of honest toil.But all the fabrics bear the yellow stainOf gold, o’er which the sinner and the saintUnseemly strive, and he seems happiestWhose work is yellowest.Along the wall,“A fountain filled with blood,” plays constantly,Where man may cleanse the fabric as he weaves;Yet few avail themselves; the waters flow,While Man works on, without regard to stains,Till thread worn thin arouses him to fear,Or breaks before the damning dyes are cleansed.And down the line I ran my anxious eyes,To find a weaver I might recognize,And saw, at last, a form by mirrors known.Oh! ’twas a shameful texture that I wove,So dark its hue, so little saving white,Such seldom bathing in the fountain stream,I could not look, but bowed my blushing face,And like the publican of old, cried out,“Be merciful to me a sinner!”“Rise!”The Angel said, “And worship God alone,Return to Earth, enjoy an humble faith,Whose simple trust shall make thee happierThan all the grandeur of philosophy.Should doubts arise, remember, God’s designsAbove a finite comprehension stand,And finite doubts, about the Infinite,Assume absurdity’s intensest form.Man, from the stand-point of the Present, looks,And disappointed, bitterly complainsOf what would move his deepest gratitude,Could he the issue of the morrow know.God sees the future, and in kindness dealsTo every man his complement of good.Remember then the weakness of thy mind,Nor doubt because thou canst not understand.To gather scattered jewels thou must kneel;So on thy knees seek truth, and thou shalt find;The nearer Earth thy face, the nearer HeavenThy heart. And now farewell!”I sprang to claspHis hand in gratitude, but with a waveOf parting benediction, he was gone!Then in an instant, like an aerolite,With naught to bear me up, I fell to Earth,Swifter and swifter, with increasing speed!Now bursting through a sunlit bank of cloud,And clutching, vainly, at the yielding mist,Or through a cradling storm, with thunder charged,Down through the open air, whose parted breathHissed death into my ears, while all belowSeemed rushing up to meet and mangle me.I shrieked aloud, “Oh save me!”—And awoke.The day was o’er, and night had drawn her shades;The twinkling eyes of Heaven shone through the leaves,And lit the tiny rain-globes on the grass;The cloud had passed, and on th’ horizon’s verge,A monster firefly, with shimmering flash,It slowly crawled behind the curve of death.And evening’s silence deeper seemed than noon’s,For not a sound disturbed the hush of night,Save katydids, with quavering monotones,Returning contradictions from the trees.All drenched and chilled, with trembling limbs I rose,And homeward bent my steps; and ponderingUpon my dream, this moral from it drew:Man cannot judge the Eternal Mind by his,But must accept the mysteries of Life,As purposes Divine, with perfect ends.And in our darkest clouds, God’s Angels stand,To work Man’s present and eternal good.
The little things of life, that men accountWithout a moral value, may be doneWith reference to Self; but oftenest,The mind regards the act, not its effectUpon the Self. The code of Etiquette,The small amenities of social life,The converse, and the articles of dress,May all belong to Self; but moral acts,Those known as right or wrong, have higher sourceThan Self in any mode.Within Man’s breastThere’s something, apprehending good and bad,Called conscience, or the moral sense; it views,Impartially, each act of his, decidesIts quality by rule of right and wrong;All trust its judgments most implicitly.—The good is found, yields greatest happiness;Yet seek it for the sake of happiness,And good is evil, with its misery!The good must be pursued, because a good,The evil shunned, because an evil. Thus,The moral sense discerns these qualitiesIn others, and directs our love.A blowThe deadliest to our love, would be a blowAimed at the principle of good. A love,Existing through the injuries done to Self,May meet the public’s praise, and feel its own;But love would merit self-contempt, that lovedWhate’er opposed the good. The son may treatThe mother with unkindness, yet her loveBe undiminished; if he lie, or steal,Her love is less; she cannot love his deed,And cannot love the heart from which they flowSo with the youth who gives his chair to Age,He does not so resent that Self’s deniedIts meed of thanks, as that ingratitudeShould thus be manifest, in little things.A comrade, served the same, would anger cause.But him who would give up the highest Self,The soul, for others’ good, you deem a fool;And ask why sacrifice ne’er claimed a soul?Because the soul cannot be sacrificed;No harm to that can others benefit.But if it could, how truly grand the manWho’d take eternal woe for fellow-men!But God, who makes the soul the care of life,Makes every soul stand for itself alone,And in His wisdom hath ordained this law:The greater good man gets for his own soul,The greater good on others’ he confers,While evil to himself, an evil gives.Then comes the question of this abstract good,That moral sense declares the end of life.What is its nature? whence does it arise?And whence does man derive the half-formed thought?You have compared the systems that define,Each in its way, the hidden theory.None satisfy, though each some elementSets forth in clear distinctness. Take them all,Select the true of each, as Cousin does,And will eclecticism satisfy?And does the soul not cry for something more?For something that it feels ’twill never reach,The good, as known to minds unclogged with flesh?Man takes the dim outlines of abstract thought,And seeking to evolve their perfect form,The very outlines grow more indistinct;As gazing at a star will make it fade.Man’s only forms of good are blent with flesh,And when he seeks to take the flesh away,And leave the abstract, he is thus confused,As if he should withdraw the wick and oil,And seek to find the flame still in the lamp.To learn the source of ideas of the Good,Trace Man collective, to his babyhood;For ’mid the prejudice of full-grown thought,The truth would be effectually concealed.Through every people scattered o’er the globe,There does prevail some idea of a God;Though rude and barbarous this idea be,It still, in some form, does exist. The good,With all, bears reference to this thought;And what this Deity approves is good,And what He disapproves is bad. Men learnWhat He approves, and what He disapproves,By revelation, inference, and instinct.God’s sanction then is origin of Good,Though afterwards men learn the sweet effects,And practise it for its own sake; and callTheir little effort, grandest abstract truth.Developing in intellectual strength,They plaster up this good in various forms,Until, refined beyond all subtilty,It seems to them a self-existent good.The good is then a certain quality,In actions, or existence, that assuresDivine approval. This vast idea, God,Creation sows in every human heart;All Nature’s grand designs demand a God,A God intelligent. The same instinctThat tells His being, teaches what He loves;And what He loves with every people’s good.But different nations entertain ideasDiverse in reference to a Deity,And different notions of what pleases Him.One deems the care of God’s child-gift her good;Another tears the heart-strings from her babe,And feeds, for good, the sacred crocodile.The good lies in the thought of pleasing God:The consciousness that God is pleased with us,A pleasure yields, and good might there be soughtFor pleasure’s sake, and prove a selfish aim;But moral selfishness a pain imparts,And good, for pleasure sought, defeats the search.The good is sought, because it pleases God,Not with the doer, but with what is done.Good has its origin in th’ idea God,And what He loves; but to continue goodIt must retain approval in the act,And not transfer it to the agent’s self.The consciousness that God approves a deed,Makes Man approve, and thus his mind is broughtIn correlation with the Mind Divine.The man who does an alms, if done to gainGod’s favor for himself, feels selfish pain;But if because the act, not he, will please,He finds the pleasure. Man, as time rolls on,Finds general laws that please or displease God,And ranging, under these, subordinatesAmenable to them and not to God,The moral quality of lesser deedsHe reckons by these laws, nor does ascendTo God, that gives their moral quality.Jouffroy, in Order, placed the Abstract Good,And paused a step below the real truth,The idea God, whence Order emanates.Thus Man, progressing, good withdraws from GodAnd seems an independent entity,And man denominates it, Abstract Good.He can attain the Abstract but in part;When mind is freed from flesh, he may attainTo its full grandeur. Here, at most, he graspsA faint outline, and fits it on concrete.No concept occupies one act of mind,But opening the lettered label, heMay count the attributes, and by an actComplex, of memory and cognition, gainSome idea of his Abstract. Thus of “Man,”One act can only cognize M-A-N,But opening, he finds the attributes,As “mammal,” “biped,” “vertebrate.” This actIs complex, and he cannot unitize,Save by the bundle of a word. You’ve saidIt answers all the purposes of life,Then why seek more? lest speculation vainPoint out dim realms, where Man can never tread,These baffling thoughts are given, as peacocks’ feet,To Man’s fond pride. The simplest avenueOf thought, pursued, will reach absurdity,To comprehension finite.Even the truthOf numbers you presume to doubt. Two balls,You claim, can ne’er be two unless alike.You mingle quantity and number, foolishly,As if a ball the size of Earth, and one,A tiny mustard-seed, would not be two!You deem all Mathematics wide at fault,Because Man’s powers to illustrate are weak.Earth has oft seen a pure right angle drawn,Because Man’s sight could not detect a flaw;And if to his discernment perfect made,He must admit its perfect form. If life,In every intricate demand, finds truth,Why seek to overturn by sophistry?You see and know Achilles far beyondThe tortoise, yet the super-wise must proveThat he can never pass the creeping thing,Although his speed a hundred times as swift!When Man commences, he may find a doubtIn everything; his life, his neighbor’s life,The outside world, may all be but a myth;Then let him so believe, but let him actConsistently; but does the skeptic so?He crams all Nature in his little mind,Yet how he cringes to her slightest law!He flees the rain, and wards the cold, or fearsThe lightning’s glittering blow. He doubts his frameCan work by mechanism so absurd,Yet will not for a day refrain from food!When Man compares his body and his mind,And tries the power of each, he magnifiesThe mind to Deity, and yet how smallCompared with what it has to learn! The moreMan knows, the more he finds he does not know;And as a traveller toiling up the hill,Each upward step reveals a wider viewOf fields of thought sublime he dares not hopeTo ever reach in life; and wearily he sitsHim down upon the mountain-side, so farBeneath its untrod top, and recklesslyDoubts everything, because beyond his grasp.All skeptic reasoning ends, as did your own,No fruit but blind bewilderment of thought!And none but fools will e’er believe sincereThe faith that doubts alone by theory,And yet approves by practice. Such is yours;The stern necessities of life demandA practical belief, and such is given;And still, forsooth, because your narrow mindCannot contain the Truth in perfect form,You dare deny it does exist. But fewOf skeptic minds are let to live on Earth,And even these made instruments of good,In calling forth defenders of the Truth,Who add their strength to its Eternal Walls.Then here behold God’s wisdom manifest!Amid the care of countless greater orbs,He watches Earth, and knows its smallest thing.While Man, as individual, is free,Collective Man is being surely ledTowards an end, but when it will be reached,God knows alone. Then Man will be removedInto a higher or a lower sphere,As he has worthy proved. With Man ’twill beA great event; his awful Judgment-day!When from those far-off realms, the Son shall comeWith Angel retinue, and through the worlds,Shall lead their solemn flight, to where we stand;And as the trump shall peal its clarion tones,And beat away Earth’s gauze of atmosphere,The millions living, and the billions dead,Will leave the sod, and “caught up in the air,”Shall stand before the Throne, to hear their doom.Then, faces pale with fear, and trembling limbs,Will be on every side, as on the airThey rest, with nothing solid ’neath their feet;And see dismantled Earth burst into flames,And reel along its track, a globe of fire,The volumed smoke, a dusky envelope;Its revolutions wrapping pliant flames,In scarlet girdles, round its bulging waist,And hurling streams of centrifugal sparks,In broad red tangents, from the burning orb.Upon the conflagration Man will gaze,With shuddering horror; ’tis his only home,The scene of all his fame, the source of wealth,For which he toiled so wearily. All gone!He would not touch a mountain of pure gold,For ’twould be useless now! Poor, pauper Man,Without his money, chiefest aim of life,Stands homeless ’mid a Universe, to learnIf God will be his Father, or his Foe!And from the blackness underneath, the swarmsOf Evil ones are thronged, their hideous formsHalf shown in lurid light, as here and thereThey flit, like sharks, expectant of their prey.Then comes the closing scene. The sentence passed,The righteous breaking forth to joyous praise,Shall thread Creation’s wondrous maze of life,And with their Leader, sweep towards yon Heaven;While down the black abyss, with cries of woeThat make the darkness tremble, the condemnedAre dragged, into its gloom,—and all is o’er—Earth’s ashes float in scattered clouds through space—To Man the grandest era of all Time,To God, completion of Salvation’s scheme!But Man deems Judgment too far off for thought,Nor will prepare for such a distant fate;Yet there is something, far more sure than aughtUncertain life can offer; its decision, too,Is just as final as the Judgment doom;And still ’tis oftenest farthest from the thought.’Tis Death, the welcome or unwelcome guestOf every man, and yet how few prepareFor its approach! They give all else a care;Wealth, honor, fame, get all their time,While certain Death’s forgotten, till diseaseGives warning; then with hasty penitence,The knees are worn, the heart’s thick rubbish cleared;But oft too late; the heart will not be cleared,The stubborn knees will not consent to bend,The house is set in order, while the guest,In sable robes, stands at the throbbing door.And now to close thy lesson, look through this!He gave to me a strangely fashioned glass,Through which, when I had looked to Earth, I sawA long black wall, that towered immensely high,So none might see beyond. Before its length,Mankind were ranged, all weaving busily;The young and old, the maiden and the man;The infant hands unconscious plied the thread,The aged with a feeble, listless move.They wove the warp of Life, and drew its threadFrom o’er the wall; none knew how far its endWas off, nor when ’twould reach the busy hand,Nor did they care, in aught by action shown,But bending o’er their work, without a glanceTowards the thread, that still so smoothly ran,They threw the shuttle back and forth again,Till suddenly the ravelled end appeared,Fell from the wall, and to the shuttle crept;And then the weaver laid his work aside,With folded hands, was wrapped within his warp,To wait the Master’s sentence on his task.I saw the thread, in passing through their hands,Received the various colors, from their touch,And tinged the different patterns that they wove.And oh! how different in design! Some woveA spotless fabric, whose pure simple planWas always ready for the ending thread;Come when it would, no part was incomplete;But what was done, could bear th’ Inspector’s eye.And others wove a dark and dingy rag,That bore no pattern, save its filthiness;Fit garment for the fool who weaves for flames!Some wove the great red woof of war,With clashing swords, and crossing bayonets,With ghastly bones, and famished widows’ homes,With all the grim machinery of Death,To gain a paltry crown, or curule chair;Perchance, before the crown or chair is reached,The thread gives out, the work is incomplete,And in the gory cloak his hands have wrought,With all its stains unwashed, the hero sleeps.Some shuttles shape the gilded temple, Fame,And count on thread to weave its topmost dome;But ere the lowest pinnacle is touched,The brittle filament is snapped. Some weaveThe bema, with its loud applause; and someThe gaudy chaplet of the bacchanal,And others sweated bays of honest toil.But all the fabrics bear the yellow stainOf gold, o’er which the sinner and the saintUnseemly strive, and he seems happiestWhose work is yellowest.Along the wall,“A fountain filled with blood,” plays constantly,Where man may cleanse the fabric as he weaves;Yet few avail themselves; the waters flow,While Man works on, without regard to stains,Till thread worn thin arouses him to fear,Or breaks before the damning dyes are cleansed.And down the line I ran my anxious eyes,To find a weaver I might recognize,And saw, at last, a form by mirrors known.Oh! ’twas a shameful texture that I wove,So dark its hue, so little saving white,Such seldom bathing in the fountain stream,I could not look, but bowed my blushing face,And like the publican of old, cried out,“Be merciful to me a sinner!”“Rise!”The Angel said, “And worship God alone,Return to Earth, enjoy an humble faith,Whose simple trust shall make thee happierThan all the grandeur of philosophy.Should doubts arise, remember, God’s designsAbove a finite comprehension stand,And finite doubts, about the Infinite,Assume absurdity’s intensest form.Man, from the stand-point of the Present, looks,And disappointed, bitterly complainsOf what would move his deepest gratitude,Could he the issue of the morrow know.God sees the future, and in kindness dealsTo every man his complement of good.Remember then the weakness of thy mind,Nor doubt because thou canst not understand.To gather scattered jewels thou must kneel;So on thy knees seek truth, and thou shalt find;The nearer Earth thy face, the nearer HeavenThy heart. And now farewell!”I sprang to claspHis hand in gratitude, but with a waveOf parting benediction, he was gone!Then in an instant, like an aerolite,With naught to bear me up, I fell to Earth,Swifter and swifter, with increasing speed!Now bursting through a sunlit bank of cloud,And clutching, vainly, at the yielding mist,Or through a cradling storm, with thunder charged,Down through the open air, whose parted breathHissed death into my ears, while all belowSeemed rushing up to meet and mangle me.I shrieked aloud, “Oh save me!”—And awoke.The day was o’er, and night had drawn her shades;The twinkling eyes of Heaven shone through the leaves,And lit the tiny rain-globes on the grass;The cloud had passed, and on th’ horizon’s verge,A monster firefly, with shimmering flash,It slowly crawled behind the curve of death.And evening’s silence deeper seemed than noon’s,For not a sound disturbed the hush of night,Save katydids, with quavering monotones,Returning contradictions from the trees.All drenched and chilled, with trembling limbs I rose,And homeward bent my steps; and ponderingUpon my dream, this moral from it drew:Man cannot judge the Eternal Mind by his,But must accept the mysteries of Life,As purposes Divine, with perfect ends.And in our darkest clouds, God’s Angels stand,To work Man’s present and eternal good.
The little things of life, that men accountWithout a moral value, may be doneWith reference to Self; but oftenest,The mind regards the act, not its effectUpon the Self. The code of Etiquette,The small amenities of social life,The converse, and the articles of dress,May all belong to Self; but moral acts,Those known as right or wrong, have higher sourceThan Self in any mode.Within Man’s breastThere’s something, apprehending good and bad,Called conscience, or the moral sense; it views,Impartially, each act of his, decidesIts quality by rule of right and wrong;All trust its judgments most implicitly.—The good is found, yields greatest happiness;Yet seek it for the sake of happiness,And good is evil, with its misery!The good must be pursued, because a good,The evil shunned, because an evil. Thus,The moral sense discerns these qualitiesIn others, and directs our love.A blowThe deadliest to our love, would be a blowAimed at the principle of good. A love,Existing through the injuries done to Self,May meet the public’s praise, and feel its own;But love would merit self-contempt, that lovedWhate’er opposed the good. The son may treatThe mother with unkindness, yet her loveBe undiminished; if he lie, or steal,Her love is less; she cannot love his deed,And cannot love the heart from which they flowSo with the youth who gives his chair to Age,He does not so resent that Self’s deniedIts meed of thanks, as that ingratitudeShould thus be manifest, in little things.A comrade, served the same, would anger cause.
But him who would give up the highest Self,The soul, for others’ good, you deem a fool;And ask why sacrifice ne’er claimed a soul?Because the soul cannot be sacrificed;No harm to that can others benefit.But if it could, how truly grand the manWho’d take eternal woe for fellow-men!But God, who makes the soul the care of life,Makes every soul stand for itself alone,And in His wisdom hath ordained this law:The greater good man gets for his own soul,The greater good on others’ he confers,While evil to himself, an evil gives.
Then comes the question of this abstract good,That moral sense declares the end of life.What is its nature? whence does it arise?And whence does man derive the half-formed thought?You have compared the systems that define,Each in its way, the hidden theory.None satisfy, though each some elementSets forth in clear distinctness. Take them all,Select the true of each, as Cousin does,And will eclecticism satisfy?And does the soul not cry for something more?For something that it feels ’twill never reach,The good, as known to minds unclogged with flesh?Man takes the dim outlines of abstract thought,And seeking to evolve their perfect form,The very outlines grow more indistinct;As gazing at a star will make it fade.Man’s only forms of good are blent with flesh,And when he seeks to take the flesh away,And leave the abstract, he is thus confused,As if he should withdraw the wick and oil,And seek to find the flame still in the lamp.
To learn the source of ideas of the Good,Trace Man collective, to his babyhood;For ’mid the prejudice of full-grown thought,The truth would be effectually concealed.Through every people scattered o’er the globe,There does prevail some idea of a God;Though rude and barbarous this idea be,It still, in some form, does exist. The good,With all, bears reference to this thought;And what this Deity approves is good,And what He disapproves is bad. Men learnWhat He approves, and what He disapproves,By revelation, inference, and instinct.God’s sanction then is origin of Good,Though afterwards men learn the sweet effects,And practise it for its own sake; and callTheir little effort, grandest abstract truth.Developing in intellectual strength,They plaster up this good in various forms,Until, refined beyond all subtilty,It seems to them a self-existent good.
The good is then a certain quality,In actions, or existence, that assuresDivine approval. This vast idea, God,Creation sows in every human heart;All Nature’s grand designs demand a God,A God intelligent. The same instinctThat tells His being, teaches what He loves;And what He loves with every people’s good.But different nations entertain ideasDiverse in reference to a Deity,And different notions of what pleases Him.One deems the care of God’s child-gift her good;Another tears the heart-strings from her babe,And feeds, for good, the sacred crocodile.
The good lies in the thought of pleasing God:The consciousness that God is pleased with us,A pleasure yields, and good might there be soughtFor pleasure’s sake, and prove a selfish aim;But moral selfishness a pain imparts,And good, for pleasure sought, defeats the search.
The good is sought, because it pleases God,Not with the doer, but with what is done.Good has its origin in th’ idea God,And what He loves; but to continue goodIt must retain approval in the act,And not transfer it to the agent’s self.The consciousness that God approves a deed,Makes Man approve, and thus his mind is broughtIn correlation with the Mind Divine.The man who does an alms, if done to gainGod’s favor for himself, feels selfish pain;But if because the act, not he, will please,He finds the pleasure. Man, as time rolls on,Finds general laws that please or displease God,And ranging, under these, subordinatesAmenable to them and not to God,The moral quality of lesser deedsHe reckons by these laws, nor does ascendTo God, that gives their moral quality.Jouffroy, in Order, placed the Abstract Good,And paused a step below the real truth,The idea God, whence Order emanates.
Thus Man, progressing, good withdraws from GodAnd seems an independent entity,And man denominates it, Abstract Good.He can attain the Abstract but in part;When mind is freed from flesh, he may attainTo its full grandeur. Here, at most, he graspsA faint outline, and fits it on concrete.No concept occupies one act of mind,But opening the lettered label, heMay count the attributes, and by an actComplex, of memory and cognition, gainSome idea of his Abstract. Thus of “Man,”One act can only cognize M-A-N,But opening, he finds the attributes,As “mammal,” “biped,” “vertebrate.” This actIs complex, and he cannot unitize,Save by the bundle of a word. You’ve saidIt answers all the purposes of life,Then why seek more? lest speculation vainPoint out dim realms, where Man can never tread,These baffling thoughts are given, as peacocks’ feet,To Man’s fond pride. The simplest avenueOf thought, pursued, will reach absurdity,To comprehension finite.Even the truthOf numbers you presume to doubt. Two balls,You claim, can ne’er be two unless alike.You mingle quantity and number, foolishly,As if a ball the size of Earth, and one,A tiny mustard-seed, would not be two!You deem all Mathematics wide at fault,Because Man’s powers to illustrate are weak.Earth has oft seen a pure right angle drawn,Because Man’s sight could not detect a flaw;And if to his discernment perfect made,He must admit its perfect form. If life,In every intricate demand, finds truth,Why seek to overturn by sophistry?You see and know Achilles far beyondThe tortoise, yet the super-wise must proveThat he can never pass the creeping thing,Although his speed a hundred times as swift!When Man commences, he may find a doubtIn everything; his life, his neighbor’s life,The outside world, may all be but a myth;Then let him so believe, but let him actConsistently; but does the skeptic so?He crams all Nature in his little mind,Yet how he cringes to her slightest law!He flees the rain, and wards the cold, or fearsThe lightning’s glittering blow. He doubts his frameCan work by mechanism so absurd,Yet will not for a day refrain from food!
When Man compares his body and his mind,And tries the power of each, he magnifiesThe mind to Deity, and yet how smallCompared with what it has to learn! The moreMan knows, the more he finds he does not know;And as a traveller toiling up the hill,Each upward step reveals a wider viewOf fields of thought sublime he dares not hopeTo ever reach in life; and wearily he sitsHim down upon the mountain-side, so farBeneath its untrod top, and recklesslyDoubts everything, because beyond his grasp.
All skeptic reasoning ends, as did your own,No fruit but blind bewilderment of thought!And none but fools will e’er believe sincereThe faith that doubts alone by theory,And yet approves by practice. Such is yours;The stern necessities of life demandA practical belief, and such is given;And still, forsooth, because your narrow mindCannot contain the Truth in perfect form,You dare deny it does exist. But fewOf skeptic minds are let to live on Earth,And even these made instruments of good,In calling forth defenders of the Truth,Who add their strength to its Eternal Walls.Then here behold God’s wisdom manifest!Amid the care of countless greater orbs,He watches Earth, and knows its smallest thing.While Man, as individual, is free,Collective Man is being surely ledTowards an end, but when it will be reached,God knows alone. Then Man will be removedInto a higher or a lower sphere,As he has worthy proved. With Man ’twill beA great event; his awful Judgment-day!When from those far-off realms, the Son shall comeWith Angel retinue, and through the worlds,Shall lead their solemn flight, to where we stand;And as the trump shall peal its clarion tones,And beat away Earth’s gauze of atmosphere,The millions living, and the billions dead,Will leave the sod, and “caught up in the air,”Shall stand before the Throne, to hear their doom.Then, faces pale with fear, and trembling limbs,Will be on every side, as on the airThey rest, with nothing solid ’neath their feet;And see dismantled Earth burst into flames,And reel along its track, a globe of fire,The volumed smoke, a dusky envelope;Its revolutions wrapping pliant flames,In scarlet girdles, round its bulging waist,And hurling streams of centrifugal sparks,In broad red tangents, from the burning orb.Upon the conflagration Man will gaze,With shuddering horror; ’tis his only home,The scene of all his fame, the source of wealth,For which he toiled so wearily. All gone!He would not touch a mountain of pure gold,For ’twould be useless now! Poor, pauper Man,Without his money, chiefest aim of life,Stands homeless ’mid a Universe, to learnIf God will be his Father, or his Foe!And from the blackness underneath, the swarmsOf Evil ones are thronged, their hideous formsHalf shown in lurid light, as here and thereThey flit, like sharks, expectant of their prey.Then comes the closing scene. The sentence passed,The righteous breaking forth to joyous praise,Shall thread Creation’s wondrous maze of life,And with their Leader, sweep towards yon Heaven;While down the black abyss, with cries of woeThat make the darkness tremble, the condemnedAre dragged, into its gloom,—and all is o’er—Earth’s ashes float in scattered clouds through space—To Man the grandest era of all Time,To God, completion of Salvation’s scheme!
But Man deems Judgment too far off for thought,Nor will prepare for such a distant fate;Yet there is something, far more sure than aughtUncertain life can offer; its decision, too,Is just as final as the Judgment doom;And still ’tis oftenest farthest from the thought.’Tis Death, the welcome or unwelcome guestOf every man, and yet how few prepareFor its approach! They give all else a care;Wealth, honor, fame, get all their time,While certain Death’s forgotten, till diseaseGives warning; then with hasty penitence,The knees are worn, the heart’s thick rubbish cleared;But oft too late; the heart will not be cleared,The stubborn knees will not consent to bend,The house is set in order, while the guest,In sable robes, stands at the throbbing door.
And now to close thy lesson, look through this!He gave to me a strangely fashioned glass,Through which, when I had looked to Earth, I sawA long black wall, that towered immensely high,So none might see beyond. Before its length,Mankind were ranged, all weaving busily;The young and old, the maiden and the man;The infant hands unconscious plied the thread,The aged with a feeble, listless move.They wove the warp of Life, and drew its threadFrom o’er the wall; none knew how far its endWas off, nor when ’twould reach the busy hand,Nor did they care, in aught by action shown,But bending o’er their work, without a glanceTowards the thread, that still so smoothly ran,They threw the shuttle back and forth again,Till suddenly the ravelled end appeared,Fell from the wall, and to the shuttle crept;And then the weaver laid his work aside,With folded hands, was wrapped within his warp,To wait the Master’s sentence on his task.I saw the thread, in passing through their hands,Received the various colors, from their touch,And tinged the different patterns that they wove.And oh! how different in design! Some woveA spotless fabric, whose pure simple planWas always ready for the ending thread;Come when it would, no part was incomplete;But what was done, could bear th’ Inspector’s eye.And others wove a dark and dingy rag,That bore no pattern, save its filthiness;Fit garment for the fool who weaves for flames!Some wove the great red woof of war,With clashing swords, and crossing bayonets,With ghastly bones, and famished widows’ homes,With all the grim machinery of Death,To gain a paltry crown, or curule chair;Perchance, before the crown or chair is reached,The thread gives out, the work is incomplete,And in the gory cloak his hands have wrought,With all its stains unwashed, the hero sleeps.Some shuttles shape the gilded temple, Fame,And count on thread to weave its topmost dome;But ere the lowest pinnacle is touched,The brittle filament is snapped. Some weaveThe bema, with its loud applause; and someThe gaudy chaplet of the bacchanal,And others sweated bays of honest toil.But all the fabrics bear the yellow stainOf gold, o’er which the sinner and the saintUnseemly strive, and he seems happiestWhose work is yellowest.Along the wall,“A fountain filled with blood,” plays constantly,Where man may cleanse the fabric as he weaves;Yet few avail themselves; the waters flow,While Man works on, without regard to stains,Till thread worn thin arouses him to fear,Or breaks before the damning dyes are cleansed.
And down the line I ran my anxious eyes,To find a weaver I might recognize,And saw, at last, a form by mirrors known.Oh! ’twas a shameful texture that I wove,So dark its hue, so little saving white,Such seldom bathing in the fountain stream,I could not look, but bowed my blushing face,And like the publican of old, cried out,“Be merciful to me a sinner!”“Rise!”The Angel said, “And worship God alone,Return to Earth, enjoy an humble faith,Whose simple trust shall make thee happierThan all the grandeur of philosophy.Should doubts arise, remember, God’s designsAbove a finite comprehension stand,And finite doubts, about the Infinite,Assume absurdity’s intensest form.Man, from the stand-point of the Present, looks,And disappointed, bitterly complainsOf what would move his deepest gratitude,Could he the issue of the morrow know.God sees the future, and in kindness dealsTo every man his complement of good.Remember then the weakness of thy mind,Nor doubt because thou canst not understand.To gather scattered jewels thou must kneel;So on thy knees seek truth, and thou shalt find;The nearer Earth thy face, the nearer HeavenThy heart. And now farewell!”I sprang to claspHis hand in gratitude, but with a waveOf parting benediction, he was gone!Then in an instant, like an aerolite,With naught to bear me up, I fell to Earth,Swifter and swifter, with increasing speed!Now bursting through a sunlit bank of cloud,And clutching, vainly, at the yielding mist,Or through a cradling storm, with thunder charged,Down through the open air, whose parted breathHissed death into my ears, while all belowSeemed rushing up to meet and mangle me.I shrieked aloud, “Oh save me!”—And awoke.The day was o’er, and night had drawn her shades;The twinkling eyes of Heaven shone through the leaves,And lit the tiny rain-globes on the grass;The cloud had passed, and on th’ horizon’s verge,A monster firefly, with shimmering flash,It slowly crawled behind the curve of death.And evening’s silence deeper seemed than noon’s,For not a sound disturbed the hush of night,Save katydids, with quavering monotones,Returning contradictions from the trees.All drenched and chilled, with trembling limbs I rose,And homeward bent my steps; and ponderingUpon my dream, this moral from it drew:Man cannot judge the Eternal Mind by his,But must accept the mysteries of Life,As purposes Divine, with perfect ends.And in our darkest clouds, God’s Angels stand,To work Man’s present and eternal good.