FullReads

“Admiration’s speaking’st tongue,”

as their pleased companion. All is “calm and free,” and “full of life,” it is a “Holy Time.” What a picture!–what simplicity of means! what largeness and perfectness of effect!–what knowledge and love of nature! what supreme art!–what modesty and submission! what self-possession!–what plainness, what selectness of speech! “As is the height, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and equal. As the liberty, so the reverence for law. As the independence, so must be the seeing and the service, and the submission to the Supreme Will. As the ideal genius and the originality, so must be the resignation to the real world, the sympathy and the intercommunion with Nature.”–Coleridge’s Posthumous Tract “The Idea of Life.”

* * * * *

Since writing the above, our friend “E. V. K.” has shown himself curiously unaffected by “that last infirmity of noble minds,”–his “clear spirit” heeds all too little its urgent “spur.” The following sonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They are worth the stealing:–

AN ARGUMENT IN RHYME.

I.

“Things that now are beget the things to be,
As they themselves were gotten by things past;
Thou art a sire, who yesterday but wast
A child like him now prattling on thy knee;
And he in turn ere long shall offspring see.
Effects at first, seem causes at the last,
Yet only seem; when off their veil is cast,
All speak alike of mightier energy,
Received and pass’d along. The life that flows
Through space and time, bursts in a loftier source.
What’s spaced and timed is bounded, therefore shows
A power beyond, a timeless, spaceless force,
Templed in that infinitude, before
Whose light-veil’d porch men wonder and adore.

II.

“Wonder! but–for we cannot comprehend,
Dare not to doubt. Man, know thyself! and know
That, being what thou art, it must be so.
We creatures are, and it were to transcend
The limits of our being, and ascend
Above the Infinite, if we could show
All that He is and how things from Him flow.
Things and their laws by Man are grasp’d and kenn’d,
But creatures must no more; and Nature’s must
Is Reason’s choice; for could we all reveal
Of God and acts creative, doubt were just.
Were these conceivable, they were not real.
Here, ignorance man’s sphere of being suits,
‘Tis knowledge self, or of her richest fruits.

III.

“Then rest here, brother! and within the veil
Boldly thine anchor cast. What though thy boat
No shoreland sees, but undulates afloat
On soundless depths; securely fold thy sail.
Ah! not by daring prow and favoring gale
Man threads the gulfs of doubting and despond,
And gains a rest in being unbeyond,
Who roams the furthest, surest is to fail;
Knowing nor what to seek, nor how to find.
Not far but near, about us, yea within,
Lieth the infinite life. The pure in mind
Dwell in the Presence, to themselves akin;
And lo! thou sick and health-imploring soul,
He stands beside thee–touch, and thou art whole.”