Part 39

And again she sings:

What carest, dear, should sorrow trace Where dimples sat, and should Her dove-gray cloud to settle ’neath thine eye? The withering of thy curving cheek Bespeaks the spending of thy heart. Lips once full are bruised By biting of restraint. Wax wiser, dear. To wane is but to rest and rise once more.

Or she puts the thought in another form in this assurance:

Weary not, O brother! ’Tis apaled, the sun’s gold sink. Then weary not, but set thy path to end, E’en as the light doth fade and leave Nay trace to mar the night’s dark tide. Sink thou, then, as doth the sun, Assured that thou shalt rise!

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All these, however, are but preparatory to the communication in which she asserts not only the actuality of the future life but something of the nature of it. One might say that the preceding poems and prose-poems, taken alone and without regard to the mystery of their source, were merely expressions of belief, but in this communication she seems to speak with knowledge, seems even to have overstepped the bounds within which, she has often asserted, she is held. “My lips be astopped,” she has said in answer to a request for information of this forbidden character, but here she appears to have been permitted to give a glimpse of the unknown, and to present a promise of universal application. This poem, from the spiritual standpoint, is the most remarkable of all her productions.

How have I caught at fleeting joys And swifter fleeting sorrows! And days and nights, and morns and eves, And seasons, too, aslipping thro’ the years, afleet. And whither hath their trend then led? Ah, whither!

How do I to stop amid the very pulse o’ life. Afeared! Yea, fear clutcheth at my very heart! For what? The night? Nay, night doth shimmer And flash the jewels I did count E’er fear had stricken me.

The morn? Nay, I waked with morn atremor, And know the day-tide’s every hour. How do I then to clutch me At my heart, afeared? The morrow? Nay, The morrow but bringeth old loves And hopes anew.

Ah, woe is me, ’tis emptiness, aye, naught— The bottomlessness o’ the pit that doth afright! Afeared? Aye, but driven fearless on!

What! Promise ye ’tis to mart I plod? What! Promise ye new joys? Ah, but should I sleep, to waken me To joys I ne’er had supped!

I see me stand abashed and timid, As a child who cast a toy beloved, For bauble that but caught the eye And left the heart ahungered.

What! Should I search in vain To find a sorrow that had fleeted hence Afore my coming and found it not? Ah, me, the emptiness!

And what! should joys that but a prick Of gladness dealt, and teased my hours To happiness, be lost amid this promised bliss? Nay, I clutch me to my heart In fear, in truth!

Do harken Ye! And cast afearing To the wiles of beating gales and wooing breeze. I find me throat aswell and voice attuned. Ah, let me then to sing, for joy consumeth me! I’ve builded me a land, my mart, And fear hath slipped away to leave me sing.

I sleep, and feel afloating. Whither! Whither! To wake,— And wonder warmeth at my heart, I’ve waked in yester-year!

What! Ye? And what! I’st thou? Ah, have I then slept, to dream? Come, Ne’er a dream-wraith looked me such a welcoming! ’Twas yesterday this hand wert then afold, And now,—ah, do I dream? ’Tis warm-pressed within mine own! Dreams! Dreams! And yet, we’ve met afore!

I see me flitting thro’ this vale, And tho’ I strive to spell The mountain’s height and valley’s depth, I do but fall afail. Wouldst thou then drink a potion Were I to offer thee an empty cup? Couldst thou to pluck the rainbow from the sky? As well, then, might I spell to thee.

But I do promise at the waking, Old joys, and sorrows ripened to a mellow heart. And e’en the crime-stained wretch, abasked in light, Shall cast his seed and spring afruit!

Then do I cease to clutch the emptiness And sleep, and sleep me unafeared!

What is it that affrights, she asks, when we think of death? It is the emptiness, she answers, the utter lack of knowledge of what lies beyond. And if we waken to “joys we ne’er have supped”—using the word sup in the sense of to taste or to know—what is there to attract us in the prospect? It is an illustration she presents of our attitude toward promises of joys with which we are unfamiliar; and which therefore do not greatly interest us—the child who casts aside a well beloved toy “for bauble that but caught the eye and left the heart ahungered.” Shall the joys, she makes us exclaim, which we have known here but barely tasted in this fleeting life, “be lost amid this promised bliss!” and shall we “search in vain to find a sorrow that had fleeted hence before our coming?”—meaning, apparently, shall we look there in vain for a loved one who has gone before? She answers these questions of the heart. Personality persists beyond the grave, she gives us plainly to understand. We take with us all of ourselves but the material elements. “Thou art ye,” she has said, “and I be me and ye be ye, aye, ever so.” The transition is but a change from the material to the spiritual. We “wake in yesteryear,” she says,—amid the friends and associations of the past; and the joys of that life, one must infer, are the spiritual joys of this one, the joy that comes from love, from good deeds, from work accomplished. For it is quite evident that she would have us believe that there is a continuous advancement in that other life.

And e’en the crime-stained wretch, abasked in light, Shall cast his seed and spring afruit.

This can mean nothing else than that the hardened sinner, amid supernal influences, shall develop into something higher, and as no one can be supposed to be perfect when leaving earth, it follows that progress is common to all. Progress implies effort, and this indicates that there will be something for everyone to do—a view quite different from the monotony of eternal idleness.

But this I promise at the waking, Old joys, and sorrows ripened to a mellow heart.

To those who would peer into the other land these are perhaps the most important lines she has given. But what does she mean by “sorrows ripened to a mellow heart?” She was asked to make that plainer and she said:

“That that hath flitted hence be sorrows of earth, and ahere be ripened and thine. Love alost be sorrow of earth and dwell ahere.”

She thus makes these lines an answer to the question put before:

What! Should I search in vain To find a sorrow that had fleeted hence Afore my coming and found it not?