From: The Dial, Vol. II, No. I (July 1841).
Author:
Published: E. P. Peabody 1841 Boston
SAINTS and Heroes! Alas! even so. Good people tell us we must try, try, TRY to be Saints and Heroes. So we cease to be men. We trim our native shrubs and trees into stiff ornaments for the convent garden, till the tassels hang no more upon their sprays, and the birds, who love to tilt upon elastic boughs, forsake us. In other words, to read the riddle, we destroy all naturalness, by seeking to be more than human, until every free and joyous impulse dies. Oh! kind heaven! Break in some tempest one twig away, and bear it to a shady nook, to grow as thou lovest.
Spirit of the Age! Buzz, buzz! thou biggest humbug in the web of cant; buzz away, and free thyself, and carry off the web. Why cannot our hearts, as in the good old time, open like flowers to drink in the noon of present existence? The root lies brown and shapeless beneath the soil; the blossom will wilt and crumble into dust; the sun of the hour will ripen the seed; some seasonable wind will shake it to the ground. Meanwhile, why not live? Oh! could we get these cobwebs of cant, which catch all the dews of refreshment that heaven sends, but fairly brushed from the calix.
The soul lies buried in a ruined city, struggling to be free, and calling for aid. The worldly trafficker in life’s caravan hears its cries, and says, it is a prisoned maniac. But one true man stops, and with painful toil lifts aside the crumbling fragments; till at last, he finds beneath the choking mass a mangled form of exceeding beauty. Dazzling is the light to eyes long blind; weak are the limbs long prisoned; faint is the breath long pent. But oh! that mantling blush, that liquid eye, that elastic spring of renovated strength. The deliverer is folded to the breast of an angel.
What are another’s faults to me? I am no vulture, feeding on carrion. Let me seek only the good in others evermore, and be a bird of paradise, fed on fresh fruits and crystal waters.
Disappointment, like a hammer, breaks the rough coating of custom to show the hidden pearl.
Oh Radical! why pull at the corner-stone of that old tower, where thy fathers lived, and which now, tottering to its fall, is only upheld by the vines which entwine it, like grateful memories. Leave it for the tempest to level. Oh Conservative! Seest thou not that my darling boy loves to hide in its galleries, and hunt the bat from his hiding place? Will he not be crushed one day by the falling ruin?
It is the day of burying the corpse, and “the mourners go about the streets.” Let the friends of the family undisturbed perform the funeral rites. Gardens of seclusion are there, where the Young Band, who stand ready to welcome the Prince of a New Day, may twine their brows with budding garlands.
How grandly simple was the faith of the Patriarchs. God was their Friend. Why should he not at even-tide sit at the tent-door? Had we but their unabashed confidence! Great is the buoyant joy of him, whom fear does not cripple. Yet higher, grander is the disinterestedness of the children of our day, who seek no peculiar friendship, who in simple self-forgetfulness would be One with the Eternal, by ceasing to be anything.
How ridiculous, to agitate these controversies. Oh debater! that meteor burst long ago, and already grass grows over the scattered splinters.
We long for obscurity, for shade not from Nature’s sun, but from Vanity’s torches. Welcome the former! for in its warmth gladly, and ever fresh, expands the oak and sensitive plant alike; but far from us be the latter! for it blackens the boughs, and sickens the flowers with falling soot.
Psalmist still thy bursting liturgies! Chorister, hush thy chant! Take not in vain the name of Jehovah. Longing heart! whisper not even “Father.” Wonder in silent awe! Let the sands ever sparkle bright in the fountain of thy heart, through which well up the waters of life; be its brink ever sweet with fresh flowers.
There is no Past; there is no Future. Now alone is. The Past is the circulating sap; the Future is the folded petal. Now is the Life; and God is now; and now is God. And what meanest thou, O irreverent one, by this? Why ruffle with this sand of sophistry the calm depth of All? Believe only in that Being of beings! Wonder still!
Fierce, intellectual enthusiasm, like Phæton, burns dry the flowery earth of common affections. Bathe in the twilight of earlier thought, and in the flooding lustres of the coming day; drink in the warmth and glory of experience’s noon. But mount not the sun, in thy wild philosophy. The day, as it passes, gives light enough.
Hard is it to avoid uttering Cant. It is a sort of rag currency, once a sign of bullion; but giving promises to pay now from empty coffers. Not that one wishes to be false; but it is so much easier to utter common places, which pass in the market, than to melt and stamp with clear values the ore of our experience.
Marvellous is the power of all that is vitally true. Its influence is so large, and deep, and still, that we cannot put it into thoughts. We can no more break up into distinct ideas the abiding impression of a friend’s mind upon us, than we can parcel out and bottle up and label the sunlight.
The passion for notoriety sows itself like the misletoe on lofty trees, and with its hardy greenness saps their strength. Then Enthusiasm changes into Fanaticism. A mind grandly simple is a miracle. No wonder that a star hung over Bethlehem.
Religion is Philosophy expressed in a synthetic form. Philosophy is Religion expressed in an analytic form. The former is a cavern in a quarry; the latter is a mass of blocks ready for the mason. Happy will be the age when an Orpheus comes to rear these mighty masses into a temple beneath the sunlight, more beautiful than the sacred cave.
The burden of the Past makes us skeptics. Fear clings to us, like a drowning man, to drag us beneath the flood. Our own meannesses, like wet garments, check the free stroke of the swimmer’s arm. Worse still! the precious coin of past creeds, which we dare not cast from us, sinks us to the bottom.
We are such poor specimens of men, that we dare not be pious. No wonder the Persian climbed the mountain, in the early morning, to worship the sun. Only in lonely thought, in simplicity as of youth, can we see God’s brightness. How mysterious, that we know him as God best, when we think of him as God least. Amen. Hush and worship in the constant sacrifice of a grateful alacrity, a humble willingness, a trust turning ever towards his beams, as flowers seek the sun.
Oh man of many thoughts and a dusty heart. Talk not, preach not! Thy crop is scarcely large enough to give seed-corn for a coming spring; grind it not into meal. Bury thy thoughts in the soil of common life; and may the soft rains and gentle dews of daily kindness quicken them to a richer harvest.
All Sub-Works of The Dial, Vol. II, No. I (July 1841).:
PDF Sub-Works open in a new tab. Close the tab when done viewing to return here.
