Orson Whitney - Elias - An Epic of the Ages

Oh, wondrous transformation! when with wand
Of wakening might, that all-uplifting power
Waved o'er the cross where hung fond hopes impaled,
Waved o'er the tomb where loved ambitions lay,
Touched the strewn fragments of my shattered dream,
Bidding the dead arise in bodies new,
Building, on ruined hope, faith's battlement, 70
Love's palace, peace-domed, pinnacled in light,
In glory greater than earth's grandest dream,
Than glittering fame's most splendid spectacle;
Ideal transcending ideality,
Ideal made real past all reality!

Whose earth-dimmed eye could see what then I saw?
Whose earth-dulled ear such harmonies could hear?
When the all-searching Spirit tore the veil
Of things that seem, and showed me things that are.

Beauty, both good and evil—lamp to heaven 80
Or lure-light o'er the marshes of despair.
Beauty, divine—but not divinity;
Not parent—child of purity and truth;
Nor fount, nor stream, but bubble lost in air,
Nor tree, nor fruit—only a fragrant flower,
Flung from ambrosial gardens[4], here to grow
That life might be the less a wilderness.

But lo! a loveliness that blooms for aye,
That, withering here, is there revivified,
A loveliness made lovelier evermore; 90
The beauty of the restful and the risen,
Of Paradise[5] and Glory's higher home.

Pure as the mountain monarch's ice-crowned crest,
Pure as the snow-king's mantle, diamond-strewn,
Pure as the cascade's limpid crystalline,
Leaping from cliff to chasm, the breeze-flung flood
Blown into spirit spray of dazzling sheen;
So pure the love that warmed my boyish breast,
And lit the yearning of my youthful eye.

But pure love, e'en the purest, may be blind. 100
Truth spake—then fell the blindness from Love's eyes[6],
Revealing life in hues of hopefulness;
Love's rainbow dream, that only time's vale spans
To human vision, widening now till lost
Beyond the pale peaks of eternity.

Heaven's gold love is, though mixt with earth's alloy—
Dross, that betimes a needful part doth play
In nature's wise and true economy.

Love dies not—'t is love's seeming that dissolves,
Low to its serpent level, native dust, 110
A grave unmemoried in lethean ground[7].
The while see heaven-born, heaven-aspiring love,
Immortal spirit of the universe,
Soaring past sun and stars to worlds unknown!
Heir to herself, a self-succeeding queen,
Still regnant on life's throne when life is o'er.

O thou, of beauty[8], loveliest form and phase!
Kindler and keeper of the quenchless flame!
Partner and peer of human majesty!
Sharing with him life's dual sovereignty, 120
Well canst thou wait for thrones and diadems.
Queen of the future, Eve of coming worlds,
Mother of spirits that shall people stars,
And hail thee empress of a universe!

No more I deemed of crowning consequence,
That mortal clay to mortal eye should shine;
That human mites should shout and sing in praise
Each of the other's midget mightiness—
A molecule, by atoms glorified!

Apple of ashes[9] to the longing lip! 130
Brine to the burning throat and thirsting soul!
Phantom, delusion, misty ghost of fame!
Voidest and vainest of all vanities!

"Be not beguiled!" A vibrant thunder note,
Pealing from clouds that canopied my life,
The warning, lightning-winged to purify,
Up-kindling all the summits of the soul.
"Be not beguiled; not what men think and say,
But what God sees and knows, is what avails.

"Who knoweth aught, unknowing of the all? 140
Unknowing all, who knoweth perfectly
'Twixt small and great, 'twixt failure and success,
'Twixt heights of glory and the gulfs of shame?
What cares eternity for time's decrees?
Defeat hath oft deserved the conqueror's crown;
Dishonor worn the wreath of victory.

"Greatness—is it to loom 'mid glittering show?
Goes power but hand in hand with prominence?
Largeness or littleness, or high or low,
Has but to breathe, and straightway he is known. 150
What speech conceals, the spirit manifests.

"Fame, place, and title find a fitting use,
And rightfully demand all reverence due.
But envy not the empty lot of him
Who, winning without merit, wins in vain.

"Greatness, true greatness, mightiness of mind,
And greater greatness, grandeur of the soul,
Tell but one tale—capacity, not place;
Capacity, whose sire, experience,
Whose ancestors, innate intelligence, 160
Original, inborn nobility,
As oft in hut as mansion have their home.

"'Tis not the crowning that creates the king.
Man's proper place where God hath need of him.

"Naught can be vain that leadeth unto light;
Struggle and stress, not plaudit, maketh strong;
Victor and vanquished equally may win[10],
Climbing far heights, where fame, eternal fame,
White as the gleaming cloak of Arctic hills,
Rests as a mantle, fadeless, faultless, pure, 170
On loftiest lives, whose snowy peaks, sun-crowned,
Receive but to dispense their blessedness.

"Eternal life demands a selfless love.
Hampered by pride, greed, hate, what soul can grow[11]?
Conceive a selfish God! Thou canst not, man!
Then let it shame thee unto higher things.
Who strives for self hates other men's success;
Who seeks God's glory welcomes rivalry.
Seeking, not gift, but Giver, thou shalt find
No sacrifice but changes part for whole. 180

"Fare on, full sure that greatest glory comes,
And swiftest growth, from serving humankind.
Toil on, for toil is treasure, thine for aye;
A pauper he who boasts an empty name."

So spake the Spirit of the Infinite[12].
The Messenger and Mind of Holy Twain.

Some men I found embodiments of all
The goodness, all the greatness, I had dreamed;
Men seeming gods, bestowing benefits
As suns their beams, as seas and skies their showers. 190
Others as dwarfs, as despots, by compare,
Devoured with greed, consumed with jealousy.

But truth taught charity, gave me to see,
As face to face one sees familiar friend,
Why men are not alike in magnitude.

Some souls, than others, have more summits climbed,
More light absorbed, more moral might evolved.
Dowered are they with wealth from earlier spheres;
Hence wiser, worthier, than those they lead
Through precept's vale, up steep example's height, 200
To where love, beauty, wealth, power, glory, reign.

While some, innately noble, are borne down
By weight of weaknesses inherited,
By passions fierce, propensities depraved,
Malific legacy of centuries,
That much of their true worthiness obscures,
While spirit strives with flesh for mastery,
For higher culture and for added might.

And yet anon such souls effulgent shine—
As bursts the April beam through banks of cloud— 210
In glory from which envy shades its eyes,
While stands detraction staring, stricken dumb;
The glory of a great intelligence,
Which mortal mists can dim but for a time.

Spirits, like stars, still differ in degree,
And cannot show an even excellence,
Unequal in their first nobility.
Great tells of greater—littleness of less;
Time's hills and vales[13] but type eternity.