THE SUN SEES EVERYTHINGXII. GOING WEST
THE SUN SEES EVERYTHING
Welove inspirational phrases such as to “go West” which sprang on to men’s lips in the Great War, and was a way of saying “to die,” which was startlingly poetic, seeing that it came from the soul of those masses usually admitted to be so vulgar. “He’s gone West,” men said with a hushed voice, meaning that like so many who had passed before, he had gone—to another world, to beyond the setting sun. The phrase was not current among theAmerican soldiers, but I have heard of an equally wonderful expression used by the mountaineers, who said: “He has crossed the Great Divide.”
My mind is inevitably drawn to these thoughts as we face so often the setting sun, as we cross the pinnacles of our momentary aspirations, the passes, the divides which separate sky from sky and valley from valley.
Lindsay is also constantly enwrapped by the romance of Going West—the historic and poetic Western movement which has pulsated humanity since the hordes and their caravans stampeded across Asia in the days which are almost before history. What was it, what is it that hypnotises us—is it not the sun which, rising in the morning, calls all his children after him all day and bids them follow when at last he plunges into night and nothingness?
“Havecourage,” says the sun in the evening. “Have faith,” say the stars all the night long. “You see, I rise again; you will rise,” says the sun in the morning. “This way, this way,” he says till noon, and “Follow, follow,” all theafternoon, and then once more, “Behold! I go. Have courage!” he says in the evening again. And that sets young hearts a-beating, that kindles the poet’s flame and enlarges the spirit and makes the way of the world.
That makes us all nomads, all gypsies, all pilgrims. That draws the steps of the willing, and even the unwilling find themselves borne along by a human tide and a sliding sand of time—away to the west and the night and the other country. No one can stay, even if he will. In time all must go, all must follow the sun and cross the Divide and go down the slopes of the unimaginable other side and be with the stars in the long, hungry night, the myriads of stars that never do anything else but look down on human souls and ask of us and stare at us and dream of us. The night of stars for all of us, and then with our Father and guide, far o’er these mountains, wan and tired, but gleaming and then resplendent, we lift our eyes to the other country, the dreamed-of, hoped-for country—and it is morning and we are still with the light that we followed yesterday.
“Theold prairie-schooners,” says Lindsay, “blundered forward on the western way, day after day, season after season, sometimes for years, for the pioneers often worked their way to the Virgin Land which they had taken for goal. Often, indeed, they died on the way, they broke down on the way. Each yearned to the West even as they failed and threw their spirits westward, like Douglases carrying the heart of Bruce to the Promised Land. The primitive instinct for moving was awakened by the road and many a pioneer found happiness in the going as much as in the attainment.”
We ourselves are going westward now, rather than north-west, and the sun beckons us. For the mountain we are now setting out to reach has been called by the Indians “Going-to-the-Sun.” It stands over and beyond St. Mary’s Lake and climbs heavenward in gigantic steps of stone. It steps from the forest to the rocks, from the rocks to the snow, from the snow to the sky. It is a mighty cathedral, standing in the midst of prosaic mountains, surely one of the most beautiful and majestic of these mountains, symbolic in its shape and its ancient name. We have slept on the mossy earth at the foot of the pines. We will arise and go to the sun.
There’s some one calling you:Arise, sleepy-head,Arise from your bed!A messenger is peeping,There where you’re sleeping:For the day’s been begunBy your master the sun,And you surely will follow.
There’s some one calling you:Arise, sleepy-head,Arise from your bed!A messenger is peeping,There where you’re sleeping:For the day’s been begunBy your master the sun,And you surely will follow.
There’s some one calling you:
Arise, sleepy-head,
Arise from your bed!
A messenger is peeping,
There where you’re sleeping:
For the day’s been begun
By your master the sun,
And you surely will follow.