[Read before the Ethical Society of Keene Valley. N.Y., August
1888]
reprinted from “Theosophical
Siftings” Volume 1 -
"In him who
knows that all spiritual beings are the same in kind with
the Supreme Spirit, what room can there be for delusion
of mind, and what room for sorrow, when he reflects on
the identity of spirit ? "
VAJUR VEDA
" The soul is the assemblage of the Gods. The universe
rests in the Supreme Soul. It is the soul that accomplishes
the series of acts emanating from animate beings. So the
man who recognises the Supreme Soul as present in his own
soul, understands that it is his duty to be kind and true
to all."
MANU, 5, 12
IT has been rather
the habit of those who have made ethics a special study,
to speak of it as an exact science, and to put it on the
same plane as physics, and in contradistinction to theology.
It is impossible to know the things of God, if, indeed,
there be a God, and reasoners say, therefore, let us confine
ourself to the things of man. Let us study and conform
to the laws of right action, and not waste precious time
in idle speculation about what always must be, as it always
has been — the Unknowable. We can have no proof
of a future life, therefore let us not raise our eyes above
the present one, content to do the best we can, without hope
of any reward, even that of another existence with prolonged
opportunities of growth. But, unfortunately, there seems
to be an element in human nature that demands sustenance,
that asks whence are we to derive the motive power of this
virtue ? to which the Positivists answer, in the worship
of humanity, and the students of ethics, in devotion to the
Ideal Good. But the question itself seems to give us the
clue to the weak point in their system. While denying the
necessity of something outside of ethics, they tacitly acknowledge
its existence. No matter how strong our desire to confine
ourselves to the realm of realities, to argue only about
things that can be proved, to deal only with the facts of
life, there seems to be one stubborn factor in the case that
we cannot get rid of — the demand of human nature for
something above human nature — the cry of the soul
for [Page 15] something to satisfy
that hunger within it which cannot be fed by the things that
fulfil the demands of the intellect and the senses. We may
call the Ideal Good if we choose, but, after all, what is
the Ideal Good but another name for the Divine ?
"Light
intellectual replete with love,
Love of true good replete with ecstasy."
Dante
The final basis
of action, to give us even intellectual satisfaction, must
surely be an immovable one. We must have for our starting-point
something that cannot change with the point of view of
the observer; something that we can call the Absolute.
But can ethics alone furnish us with such a standpoint,
being in themselves so very uncertain a quantity, and so
dependant upon the general characteristics of the age and
race to which they belong? The ethics of the Hebrews were
not the ethics of the Greeks, nor are the ethics of the
Corsican peasant of today, for instance, with his relentless
vendetta — the unceasing obligation in a family to
avenge by murder, through endless, generations, the murder
of an ancestor — our ethics. That vindictive Corsican
would be as secure in his sense of right as we are in the
conviction that he is wrong. Nor can we take refuge in an
assurance that his intellectual inferiority is the sole cause
of his perverted morals, for we cannot deny that great intellectual
development may co-exist with great wickedness, and the purest
morality with a very low range of intellect. The Borgias
were monsters of wickedness, but they were never accused
of a lack of intelligence. The village priest, brought up
in the bosom of superstition, half-nourished, half-educated,
all-unconscious of any other world than the narrow circle
of his own duties, and quite incapable of formulating a theory
of ethics, may yet lead the most heroic and Christ-like of
lives. Nor is the intellectual assent to a moral law sufficient;
it must take a deeper hold upon our being than intellectual
assent before it can pass into action. For, after all, every
theory of ethics ever formulated must come back in the last
analysis to that final court of appeal that we are in the
habit of calling the moral consciousness, that Christians
would speak of as the voice of God in the soul, that the
Theosophists call the higher Self, that something within
which we recognise as ourselves and yet higher than ourselves,
and from whose dread decisions there is no escape. When,
in the great crises of our inward life, we are brought face
to face with this Power, I think we realize that it is no
mere intellectual abstraction, and that to call it the Ideal
Good is like describing the tempest-tossed ocean in all the
majesty of its rage as "a body of water encompassing
the principal divisions of the earth".
If then we feel that even the science of ethics has its
foundation in the spiritual consciousness of man, if we are
forced to recognise the existence of another part of our
being than the body and the mind, if we are driven [Page
16] by the study of self to conclude that within the
depths of that self lies a greater power than the intellect,
that can apprehend where the intellect can only grope, and
know where the intellect can only reason, and which, by its
very demand for satisfaction, proves that there is that by
which it can be satisfied. Why not begin at the other end,
and found our system of ethics upon a spiritual rather than
an intellectual basis ? To a certain class of minds, I am
aware, this would not appeal; beyond the intellectual faculties
they recognise nothing, but because there are also those
who can get nothing from music beyond a more or less agreeable
noise, are we therefore to conclude that Beethoven and Bach
were the victims of delusion, as well as all those whom their
harmonies have lifted to celestial heights ? Certainly, as
the history of the world's religions will attest, to a large
portion of mankind the spiritual nature is the most real
thing they know, the inner self the one thing of whose existence
they are certain, and therefore it has occurred to me that
it would be interesting to oppose to the ethics formulated
upon a virtual denial of that spiritual nature a system of
ethics which, on the contrary, takes the spiritual nature
as its basis. But I would premise that the ethics of Theosophy
make no pretensions to novelty, nor do they assert to themselves
any superiority over Christianity or any other creed. Indeed,
Theosophists maintain that the teachings of Christ, rightly
interpreted, contain the purest system of morality possible.
The Brahmin Mohini Chatterji, in his translation of the " Bhagavad
Gîtâ", continually points out the identity
of its teachings with those of the Bible, and says, indeed,
that it is not possible to doubt that the Brahmin and the
Christian are fellow-voyagers. " The Brahmanical
sages have taught with great emphasis that the easiest road
to perfect purity is love of God and love of His creatures.
Does Christianity teach anything else?" he asks. Unfortunately
the teachings of the New Testament have been misunderstood
and corrupted by transcribers and translators, and hopelessly
perverted by prejudiced commentators, while a third impediment
to their comprehension arises from the constant iteration
of their words in our childish or careless ears, so that
here indeed, familiarity has bred contempt. As Dr. Holmes
has so forcibly said, we need to have the words of sacred
books depolarised. This is why new formulas have such a hold
upon the popular mind, and why men so eagerly follow an old
truth in a new dress. It is useless to say " there is
nothing new in that statement, the same idea has been expressed
hundreds of times", — the jaded thought feels
itself spurred by the fresh form into which that old truth
has been cast, and answers to the touch of a novel stimulus.
The Theosophists
then, disclaim all pretensions to novelty. In fact they
claim as their basis the eternal verities underlying all
religions, and they necessarily begin their system from
within instead of from without. In the " Life of Madame
Guion", written by herself, she tells us that having
[Page 17] found it impossible
to derive any benefit from prayer, she applied to a very
religious Franciscan, who instantly removed all her difficulties
by saying to her: " It
is, Madam, because you seek without what you have
within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and
you will there find Him". It was the same thought that
was expressed in the Laws of Manu so many centuries before,
at the beginning of this paper: "The man who recognises
the Supreme Soul as present in his own soul understands that
it is his duty to be kind and true to all."
"To him who
is conscious of the True Self (within himself)",
says the Mundaka Upanishad, "all desires vanish
even here on earth. That Self cannot be gained by the Veda,
nor by understanding, nor by much learning. . . But if
a wise man strives after it by strength, earnestness, and
right meditation . . . his deeds and his self, with all
his knowledge, become all one in the highest Imperishable".
In an article
in the Dublin University Review for May, 1886, Mohini sums
up "the teachings of Theosophy from the
standpoint of common-sense" in these words :
1. " That
there is a principle of consciousness in man which is immortal.
2. "That this principle is manifested in successive
incarnations on earth.
3. "That the experiences of the different incarnations
are strictly governed by the law of causation.
4. "That as each individual man is the result of a
distinct causal necessity in nature, it is not wise for one
man to dominate the life and action of another, no matter
what their relative development may be. On the other hand,
it is of paramount importance that each individual should
ceaselessly work for the attainment of the highest ideal
that he is capable of conceiving. . . .
5. "That for the above reasons it is wise and just
to practise the most ungrudging toleration towards all our
fellow-creatures.
6. "That as absolute unity of all nature exists for
ever, all self-centred actions are bound to end in pain to
the actor on account of their opposition to this fact.
The foundation of morals must therefore lie in the feeling
of the Universal Brotherhood of Man.
7. " That the harmony of the unit with the whole is
the only condition which can remove all pain, and as each
individual represents a distinct causal operation of nature,
this harmony is attainable only through the individual's
own exertions."
Theosophy believes
that truth is the result of real experience, and does not
consist in the transfer of intellectual symbols from one
person to another. To speak about truth is one thing, and
to perceive it is quite a different process. As Emerson
says: "We know truth when we see it, [Page
18] from
opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake". " Hence,
individual consciousness", says Mohini, "is consistently
upheld as the only criterion of truth, but this consciousness
derives material help in its development and expansion by
the study of the experiences of others. Thus, Theosophy teaches
that personal exertion is the only means by which progress
can be achieved. But in the effort for growth, the ultimate
unity of consciousness must not be ignored. Individuals are
not distinct crystals, placed side by side, but the varied
manifestations of one unchanging universal consciousness.
As light from one single source produces the appearance of
different lights by reflection from a number of surfaces,
so this universal consciousness, remaining itself unchanged,
produces endless individualities, which in the course of
their evolution reach perfection by recognising this essential
unity. According to Theosophical thinkers, this doctrine
forms the fundamental truth upon which all religions are
based; it is the final consummation of all philosophical
thought, and the crowning experience of all practical mysticism.
The search for this truth, and the practical realisation
of it, are not considered as mere gratification of intellectual
curiosity, but as the very summum bonum of evolutionary
progress. It is the Nirvâna of the Buddhists, the Moksha
of the Brahmins, and not very different from the Beatific
Vision of the Christians. Nirvana is by no means the annihilation
of consciousness, but its rest in the infinite plenitude
of being".
Theosophy recognises,
in the various systems of religion, the various attempts,
modified by special causes, to embody spiritual truth,
but it also recognises that the different symbologies of
words and emblems that are used to represent that truth,
being "inwardly digested" and assimilated
by different organisms, partake of the differences of the
individual, and as no two individuals can be absolutely identical,
neither can their beliefs be the same, therefore it is an
uncompromising supporter of the freedom of the individual
conscience. The fundamental ideas of Theosophy, as expounded
by some of their principal writers, are briefly these: That
the existence of matter without relation to a conscious Knower
has never been experienced. Therefore matter and consciousness
are both eternal, or neither. That there is in nature a principle
of consciousness whose units are not atoms but individualities,
and as the principle is eternal its units must be so also.
For the ocean cannot be salt unless the quality of saltness
inhere in every one of its drops. Theosophy, for these, among
other reasons, holds against Materialism that the individuality
in man is immortal. And it must be conceded that a scheme
of the universe which considers the existence of the individual
as prepared and led up to for thousands of years, to endure
only for the paltry span of human life and then be extinguished,
is as revolting to common-sense as one which holds that a
man's status for all [Page 19] eternity
may be determined by his religious attitude during his last
moments, or still worse, by that "Divine caprice" which
is embodied in the doctrine of predestination.
From the indestructibility of individual consciousness,
and its relations to matter, two important deductions follow.
First, that this relation, which is perpetually changing,
changes according to a definite law. ... What is now is not
wholly unrelated to what was before. By the application of
this law of causation to our being, it follows that the experience
of pleasure and pain in the present must be the necessary
consequences of causes generated in the past. . . . Whatever
you sow the same you reap, whether you are conscious of the
sowing or not. The little child who strays unawares into
an atmosphere of typhus, and breathes in its deadly germs,
is not protected by its unconsciousness of evil from the
fatal results of that contact, nor can the fact of forgetfulness
of the cause interfere with the necessary effect. Because
we have forgotten the sins against the laws of health that
we committed in our youth, we do not, therefore, go scot-free
of their results in after years, and what is true of one
personality should be equally true of many. This law of causation
thus applied to personal experience of suffering and enjoyment
is called the Law of Karma.
If the individual consciousness is immortal, and its experiences
are governed by the Law of Karma, then it follows that so
long as all causes capable of producing effects on the present
plane of life are not exhausted, and the generation of similar
causes is not stopped, the individual consciousness will
remain connected with the experience of earthly existence. "The
will to live", as Schopenhauer calls it (an idea identical
with the Buddhist tanha, or unsatisfied desire for existence),
continually brings back the ego to the shifting phantasmagoria
of earthly life, the individuality or higher self, persisting,
though the personality in which it is embodied, continually
changes, until its physical tendencies and inclinations being
entirely purged away, it is no longer under the necessity
of re-incarnation. And moreover, the idea of a future spiritual state, in which our good and evil deeds shall be rewarded
and punished, is held by Theosophists to be founded on an
injustice, for the sins done in the body can only be properly
expiated in the body, and therefore absolute justice demands
that the entity should return to physical life, in order
that it may work out its salvation by climbing step by step
the long ladder of existence.
But we must take
note of the distinction between individuality and personality.
The unit of consciousness, the individuality, persists,
the personality changes. The larva of the dragon-fly crawls,
behind a hideous mask, at the bottom of the brook; its
element is water; its dry husk hangs upon a twig motionless
and inert as the earth to which it belongs, until, in [Page
20] the fulness of time, "an inner impulse rends
the veil", and it emerges a winged creature of the air —
"Through
crofts and pastures wet with dew,
A living flash of light he flew."
In one sense each
personality is a new being, in another it is not. "During
this life",
says the Buddhist Catechism, "the personality constantly
changes, and while the man A. B. of forty is identical
as regards individuality with the youth A. B. of eighteen,
yet by the continual waste of his body, and change of mind
and character, he is a different being. Nevertheless the
man in his old age justly reaps the reward or suffering
consequent upon his thoughts and actions at every previous
stage of his life. So the new being of a re-birth, being
the same individuality as before, but with a changed form
or new personality, justly reaps the consequences of his
actions and thoughts in the previous existence".
And this doctrine of re-incarnation has been taught by all
the religions of the world, Christianity not excepted. In
the 11th chapter of Matthew, Jesus, in speaking to his disciples
of John the Baptist, says: "If ye will receive it,
this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to
hear, let him hear". And in the I7th chapter he says: "Elias
is come already, and they knew him not . . . Then his disciples
understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist".
And in the 9th chapter of Mark, the disciples ask about a
man born blind, " Did this man sin, or his parents,
that he was born blind ? " And in the Wisdom of Solomon,
viii., 20, we read, " Being good, I came into a body
undefiled".
From these leading ideas of the unity of spirit, the working
of the law of Karma, and the gradual progress of the individual
to complete re-union with the Divine, it is easy to see that
the ethics of Theosophy demand not only moral but spiritual
cultivation as our duty to ourselves, and the strictest altruism
as regards our brother man.
And in the first
place, as regards duty to ourselves, the utmost purity
of motive is required. "Desire to sow
no seed for your own harvesting", we are told, "desire
only to sow that seed, the fruit of which shall feed the
world."
"Enough
if something from our hand have power
To live and move, and serve the future hour."
WORDSWORTH.
Not even the desire for personal purity is allowed as a
motive for right action, as it has its root in self-regard,
and tends to set one apart from his fellows. Hence asceticism
in every form is most strenuously discouraged. The good must
be done solely for its own sake, not that our own virtue
may be increased, the result to ourselves must not be thought
of, only the doing of the right thing; beyond that we are
not to look. Ambition, the desire to rise above one's fellows,
is the first sin to be rooted out of the soul. It is the
simplest form of looking for reward.[Page 21]
"Grow
as the flower grows", says Light
on the Path, "unconsciously, but eagerly anxious
to open its soul to the air. So must you press forward to
open your soul to the eternal. But it must be the eternal
that draws forth your strength and beauty, not desire of
growth. For, in the one case, you develop in the luxuriance
of purity; in the other, you harden by the forcible passion
for personal stature."
As to the process of spiritual development, Theosophy teaches that in order
to secure the supremacy of the spiritual element in our
nature, it must be cultivated as our other faculties are
cultivated, for though potentially existing in all, it
may become atrophied for want of exercise, as a limb shrinks
that is not used, or a faculty of the mind decays if not
employed. It tells us that this process "is entirely
within the individual himself, the motive, the effort, the
result, being strictly personal. That, however personal and
interior, this process is not unaided, being possible, in
fact, only through close communion with the Supreme Source
of all strength". That it consists "in the eradication
of selfishness in all forms, and the cultivation of broad,
generous sympathy in, and effort for, the good of others;
in the cultivation of the inner spiritual man by meditation,
and communion with the Divine; in the control and subordination
of the physical nature and desires; and in the careful performance
of every duty belonging to one's station in life, without
desire for reward, leaving the results to Divine law. That
while the above is incumbent on, and practicable by, all
religiously-disposed men, a yet higher plane of spiritual
attainment is conditioned upon a specific course of training,
physical, intellectual, and spiritual, by which the internal
faculties are first aroused and then developed".
It will be seen
that Theosophy, like Christianity, does not consider prayer
as "a waste of time", that
is, of course, prayer not in the limited and concrete sense
of a petition to a personal Deity for some personal advantage,
but in the sense of abstraction from the things of sense
in contemplation of the things that are divine, the unfolding
of those wings of the soul that enable it to soar into the
heavens — those heavens, be it remembered, that are
not above us, but within.
But we are also
warned that spiritual development cannot be sought by any
one path. "To each temperament there
is one road which seems the most desirable. But the way is
not found by devotion alone, by religious contemplation alone,
by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labour, by studious
observation of life. . . . All steps are necessary to make
up the ladder. The whole nature of man must be used wisely
by the one who desires to enter the way".
We are shown then that our duty to ourself consists in self-purification,
and in the cultivation of our spiritual nature. And in the
purification of our being from sin, it is not enough, as
Jesus also taught, to repress the [Page
22] outward act,
we must purge ourselves first from the inward desire; To
refrain from striking a blow while the whole soul is seething
with anger, is of no use, except to the object of our rage — we
must learn not to feel anger. Nor does it profit us to deny
ourselves the gratification of any passion, if we are all
the while hungering and thirsting for that gratification — it
is the spirit that must be made pure. So, too, a morbid sense
of remorse for past sins is discouraged; true repentance
lies in doing better, but the soul that dwells upon the thought
of evil insensibly absorbs something of its atmosphere. Nor
is it enough to deny ourselves indulgence in sorrow; we
must learn that nothing in this illusory life is worthy of
regret. We must strive for that attitude of mind described
in the verse I have quoted from the "Yajur Veda": — "In
him who knows that all spiritual beings are the same in kind
with the Supreme Spirit, what room can there be for delusion
of mind, and what room for sorrow when he reflects upon the
identity of spirit."
To a system of
ethics, founded upon the conception of all spirit as part
of one great whole, of each individuality as one drop in
the ocean of Infinite Being, the idea of the Universal
Brotherhood of Man becomes a living truth, and with the
duty of right action towards one's neighbour, the
duties of right speech and right thought are also strenuously
insisted upon. Not only are we warned against ambition,
or the desire to be better than our fellows, as a sin against
ourselves, but we are next enjoined to "kill out all
sense of separateness", not to fancy that we can stand
aside from the bad man or the foolish man, but to realize
that the sin and shame of the world are our sin and shame,
that the soiled garments we shrink from touching may have
been ours yesterday, and may be ours tomorrow". It
was an echo of the same thought that prompted John Bunyan
to say, when he saw a notorious criminal led to execution, " But
for the grace of God, there goes John Bunyan". The
same authority just quoted, The
Light on the Path, says: — "Let
the darkness within you help you to understand the helplessness
of those who have seen no light — whose souls are in
profound gloom. Blame them not. Shrink not from them, but
try to lift a little of the heavy Karma of the world; give
your aid to the few strong hands that hold back the powers
of darkness from obtaining complete victory. Then, do you
enter into a partnership of joy, which brings, indeed, terrible
toil and profound sadness, but also a great and ever-increasing
delight. . . . Underneath all life is the strong current
that cannot be checked: the great waters are there in reality.
Find them, and you will perceive that none, not the most
wretched of creatures but is a part of that life, however
he blinds himself to the fact, and build up for himself a
phantasmal outer form of horror. In that sense it is that
I say to you: All those beings among whom you struggle on
are fragments of the Divine".
" He who
does not feel irresistibly impelled to serve the race", says [Page
23] another
authority, "whether
he himself fail or not (in his own aim) is bound fast by
his own personality, and cannot progress until he has learned
that the race is himself, and not that body that he
now occupies. . . ." And again, " in our view,
the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity become
tainted with selfishness, if in the mind of the philanthropist
there lurk the shadow of a desire for self-benefit or a tendency
to do injustice, even when these exist unconsciously to himself". And
once more, " He who does not practise altruism ; he
who is not prepared to share his last morsel with a weaker
or poorer than himself; he who neglects to help his brother
man, of whatever race, nation or creed, whenever and wherever
he meets suffering, and who turns a deaf ear to the cry of
human misery; he who hears an innocent person slandered,
whether a brother Theosophist or not, and does not undertake
his defence as he would undertake his own — is no Theosophist."
Of course, in
this brief sketch of the ethics of Theosophy, I have tried
to confine myself to the broadest general statements, and
to present as far as possible those ideas most closely
connected with morality. The metaphysical basis upon which
we found our right action is of comparatively little consequence
to that right action itself, but when a system of ethics
is based upon a portion of our nature that is utterly ignored
by many students of the subject, it becomes worth while to
examine the grounds upon which such a system is founded.
To the race, as far as the practical workings of the two
systems are concerned, the result in material improvement
might be the same, but it is to the individual that Theosophy
presents, it seems to me, an advantage over ethical culture. " What
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose
his own soul ?" It satisfied a demand of many natures
that mere morality can never satisfy, for, while denying
the existence of a personal God, by recognizing the spiritual
element that makes man one with the Unknown Source of all
life, it satisfies the religious instinct, and opens wide
the windows of the soul to admit the Light of the World.
By making the individual reason the test of truth, and refusing
to recognize as such anything that does not appeal to the
individual's own consciousness, no matter by whom the dogma
may be formulated, it leaves the soul free as any absolute
negation can make it, and by taking for its standard a rigorous
self-denial, in the widest sense of the word, it enforces
the purest morality as regards others. In a paper dealing
professedly with the ethics of the Theosophists, there is
no need to touch upon their more metaphysical, religious,
and scientific ideas, but I would simply say that it is upon
the ethics of the system that the great stress is laid by
all the leading members of their body, and that such a book
as Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric
Buddhism, for instance, is considered
to be a sort of symbolic treatment of subjects too abstract
for the ordinary mind to grasp, and devised for the express
purpose (which it has admirably served) [Page
24] of awaking a general interest in the Oriental
wisdom, Few of us are equal, without a good deal of preliminary
training in philosophy, to the keen subtleties, the Upanishads,
that "fine
flower" of Oriental thought, nor has our less metaphysical
race ever evolved a language capable of expressing those
delicate shades of meaning for which the Hindoos have such
a very rich and precise vocabulary. But we can appreciate
the value of a religion without other dogma than that taught
by Jesus when he said, "The kingdom of heaven is within
you", and certainly that one spiritual truth is the
basis alike of Oriental wisdom, Christian mysticism, and
Sufi poetry. This Divine is one with our own souls, and in
him who knows and feels that, what room indeed can there
be "for delusion of mind, and what room for sorrow
?"
Faridud-din Attar,
a Sufi poet, who described the seven stages in the road
leading to union with the Divine Essence, concluded thus: "Last
stage of all is the Valley of Annihilation of self, the
seventh and supreme degree which no human words can describe.
There is the great ocean of Divine Love. The world present
and the world to come are but as figures reflected in it,
and as it rises and falls, how can they remain ? He who
plunges in that sea and is lost in it, finds perfect peace."
This intimate
union with the Divine is the constant theme of Oriental
writers, and was beautifully suggested by Jellaluddin,
another of the Sufi poets, in a parable that may be rendered
into English verse thus: — [Published in the “Path”,
July 1887]
" At the
Beloved's door a timid knock was heard :
And a voice came from within, sweeter than morning bird,
Softer than silver drops that from plashing fountains fall,
' Who is there ?' — and the stillness stirred
For a moment, and that was all.
“And the lover who stood without, eager and full of
fear,
Answered the Silver Voice — ' It is I who am waiting
here,
Open then, my Beloved, open the door to me I'
But he heard the response ring clear —
' This House will not hold Me and Thee !'
" And the door remained fast shut, and the lover went
away
Far into the desert's depths, to wait, and fast, and pray;
To dwell in the tents of Sorrow, and drink of the cup of
Grief:
And Solitude taught him each day,
And Silence brought him relief.
" And after a year he returned, and knocked at the close-shut
door,
And he heard the Beloved's voice as it answered him once
more;
Who is there ?' — and softer than dew, or the velvety
rose-leaf's fall,
And low as when angels adore,
He said — 'Tis Thyself that doth call!’
" And his heart stood still with fear, and his eager
eyes were dim;
Then tho' the silent night rang the sound of a marriage hymn;
And the bots and bars flew back, and the door was opened
wide,
And fair on the threshold's rim
Stood his Beloved, his Bride ! "