The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
may be true enow An it can add to Life a light:—only remains to show us how. E'en if I could I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite, Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dullèd ear of drowsy wight. With God's foreknowledge man's free will! what monster-growth of human brain, What pow'ers of light shall ever pierce this puzzle dense with words inane? Vainly the heart on Providence calls, such aid to seek were hardly wise For man must own the pitiless Law that sways the globe and sevenfold skies. "Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav'en, come pay the priest that holds the key;" So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak the last to enter Heaven—he. Are these the words for men to hear? yet such the Church's general tongue, The horseleech-cry so strong so high her heav'enward Psalms and Hymns among. What? Faith a merit and a claim, when with the brain 'tis born and bred? Go, fool, thy foolish way and dip in holy water burièd dead!29 Yet follow not th' unwisdom-path, cleave not to this and that disclaim; Believe in all that man believes; here all and naught are both the same. But is it so? How may we know? Happily this Fate, this Law may be A word, a sound, a breath; at most the Zâhid's moonstruck theory. Yes Truth may be, but 'tis not Here; mankind must seek and find it There, But Where nor I nor you can tell, nor aught earth-mother ever bare. Enough to think that Truth can be: come sit we where the roses glow, Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to 'unknow. * * * * * Man hath no Soul, a state of things, a no-thing still, a sound, a word Which so begets substantial thing that eye shall see what ear hath heard. Where was his Soul the savage beast which in primeval forests strayed, What shape had it, what dwelling-place, what part in nature's plan it played? This Soul to ree a riddle made; who wants the vain duality? Is not myself enough for me? what need of "I" within an "I"? Words, words that gender things! The soul is a new-comer on the scene; Sufficeth not the breath of Life to work the matter-born machine? We know the Gen'esis of the Soul; we trace the Soul to hour of birth; We mark its growth as grew mankind to boast himself sole Lord of Earth: The race of Be'ing from dawn of Life in an unbroken course was run; What men are pleased to call their Souls was in the hog and dog begun: Life is a ladder infinite-stepped, that hides its rungs from human eyes; Planted its foot in chaos-gloom, its head soars high above the skies: No break the chain of Being bears; all things began in unity; And lie the links in regular line though haply none the sequence see. The Ghost, embodied natural Dread of dreary death and foul decay, Begat the Spirit, Soul and Shade with Hades' pale and wan array. The Soul required a greater Soul, a Soul of Souls, to rule the host: Hence spirit-powers and hierarchies, all gendered by the savage Ghost. Not yours, ye Peoples of the Book, these fairy visions fair and fond, Got by the gods of Khemi-land30 and faring far the seas beyond! "Th' immortal mind of mortal man"! we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic "I." Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean; In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets drop the scene. "Tush!" quoth the Zâhid, "well we ken the teaching of the school abhorr'd "That maketh man automaton, mind a secretion, soul a word." "Of molecules and protoplasm you matter-mongers prompt to prate; "Of jelly-speck, development and apes that grew to man's estate." Vain cavil! all that is hath come either by Mir'acle or by Law;— Why waste on this your hate and fear, why waste on that your love and awe? Why heap such hatred on a word, why "Prototype" to type assign, Why upon matter spirit mass? wants an appendix your design? Is not the highest honour his who from the worst hath drawn the best; May not your Maker make the world from matter, an it suit His best? Nay more, the sordider the stuff the cunninger the workman's hand: Cease, then, your own Almighty Power to bind, to bound, to understand. "Reason and Instinct!" How we love to play with words that please our pride; Our noble race's mean descent by false forged titles seek to hide! For "gift divine" I bid you read the better work of higher brain, From Instinct diff'ering in degree as golden mine from leaden vein. Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue: Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true. "Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame! * * * * * There is no Heav'en, there is no Hell; these be the dreams of baby minds; Tools of the wily Fetisheer, to 'fright the fools his cunning blinds. Learn from the mighty Spi'rits of old to set thy foot on Heav'en and Hell; In life to find thy hell and heav'en as thou abuse or use it well. So deemed the doughty Jew who dared by studied silence low to lay Orcus and Hades, lands of shades, the gloomy night of human day. Hard to the heart is final death: fain would an Ens not end in Nil; made the senti'ment kindly good: the Priest perverted all to ill. While Reason sternly bids us die, Love longs for life beyond the grave: Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears for Life-to-be shall ever crave. Hence came the despot's darling dream, a Church to rule and sway the State; Hence sprang the train of countless griefs in priestly sway and rule innate. For future Life who dares reply? No witness at the bar have we; Save what the brother Potsherd tells—old tales and novel jugglery. Who e'er return'd to teach the Truth, the things of Heaven and Hell to limn? And all we hear is only fit for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn. "Have mercy, man?" the Zâhid cries, "of our best visions rob us not! "Mankind a future life must have to balance life's unequal lot." "Nay," quoth the Magian, "'tis not so; I draw my wine for one for all. "A cup for this, a score for that, e'en as his measure's great or small: "Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight; to poorest passion he was born; "Who drains the score must e'er expect to rue the headache of the morn." Safely he jogs along the way which "Golden Mean" the sages call; Who scales the brow of frowning Alp must face full many a slip and fall. Here èxtremes meet, anointed Kings whose crowned heads uneasy lie, Whose cup of joy contains no more than tramps that on the dunghill die. To fate-doomed Sinner born and bred for dangling from the gallows-tree; To Saint who spends his holy days in rapturous hope his God to see; To all that breathe our upper air the hands of Dest'iny ever deal, In fixed and equal parts, their shares of joy and sorrow, woe and weal. "How comes it, then, our span of days in hunting wealth and fame we spend? "Why strive we (and all humans strive) for vain and visionary end?" Reply; mankind obeys a law that bids him labour, struggle, strain; The Sage well knowing its unworth, the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain. And who, 'mid e'en the Fools, but feels that half the joy is in the race For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs when comes success to crown the chase? Again: In Hind, Chin, Franguestân that accident of birth befell, Without our choice, our will, our voice: Faith is an accident as well. What to the Hindu saith the Frank: "Denier of the Laws divine! However godly-good thy Life, Hell is the home for thee and thine." "Go strain the draught before 'tis drunk, and learn that breathing every breath, "With every step, with every gest, some thing of life thou do'est to death." Replies the Hindu: "Wend thy way for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit; "Your Pariah-par'adise woo and win; at such dog-Heav'en I laugh and spit. "Cannibals of the Holy Cow! who make your rav'ening maws the grave "Of Things with self-same right to live;—what Fiend the filthy license gave?" What to the Moslem cries the Frank? "A polygamic Theist thou! "From an impostor-Prophet turn; thy stubborn head to Jesus bow." Rejoins the Moslem: "Allah's one tho' with four Moslemahs I wive, "One-wife-men ye and (damnèd race!) you split your God to Three and Five." The Buddhist to Confucians thus: "Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die; "Content ye rest with wretched earth; God, judgment, Hell ye fain defy." Retorts the Tartar: "Shall I lend mine only ready-money 'now,' For vain usurious 'Then' like thine, avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!" "With this poor life, with this mean world I fain complete what in me lies; I strive to perfect this my me; my sole ambition's to be wise." When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng? Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"? "You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say, "For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day." "Thy faith why false, my faith why true? 'tis all the work of Thine and Mine, fond and foolish love of self that makes the Mine excel the Thine." Cease then to mumble rotten bones; and strive to clothe with flesh and blood The skel'eton; and to shape a Form that all shall hail as fair and good. "For gen'erous youth," an Arab saith. "Jahim's31 the only genial state; "Give us the fire but not the shame with the sad, sorry blest to mate." And if your Heav'en and Hell be true, and Fate that forced me to be born Force me to Heav'en