Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.
James Rhoades (1841–1923)176. O Soul of Mine!
A
Falls like star-music filtering through the spheres:
‘Know this, O Man, sole root of sin in thee
Is not to know thine own divinity!’
‘Awake, thou drunken and yet not with wine!
Arise and shine!
Uplift thee from the dead!
Cast off the clinging cerements of sin
Fool-sense hath swathed thee in!
Though drugged and dulled
With every evil anodyne
From the rank soil of the world’s waste-heap culled,
Thou crown and pattern of the eternal Plan,
Awake, O Soul of Man!
O Soul of Mine,
Awake, I say, and know thyself divine!
Thou art not that thou deemest,
Or to thy fellows seemest
In death-bound body hearsed:
But, like a silver summit
Enshrouded
And o’er-clouded
With earth-born vapour vainest,
So gross no eye may plumb it,
E’en as of old
From out My Heart all-seeing—
Ere yet in body dressed,
Best of the best,
And of most holy holiest—
Thou soared’st into being,
So, godlike as at first
I made thee, thou remainest.
O soul of Mine?
Hast utterly forgot from whence art risen?
That essence rare can walls of space imprison,
Or time with dull decrepitude surprise?
Nay now
From every chain thy self hath forged for thee
Thy Self can set thee free:
Let the sea burn,
Let fire to water turn,
But thou
Cleave to thy birthright and thy Royal Line!
This haunting hell
Of error-teemèd night
That hides thy height,
And the dread rumour and malefic breath
Of thy doomed enemy, Death,
Whose birth-lair, ignorance, like a stagnant pool,
Of its accursèd kind
Breeds ague of unfaith, and terrors blind
Hatched in the darkened hollows of the mind;
Whence too arise
Hallucinations, lurid phantasies,
And gross desires, with every vice that springs
From false imaginings,
And vain reliance upon visible things—
The mad misrule
Of creeds and deeds idolatrous, whereof
Love were sworn hater, an she were not Love.
Behoves thee with pure thoughts to cleave or cleanse,
Aye, and unmask those counterfeits of bliss,
Which to believe thy deep undoing is—
Joys which but lure to leave thee,
And leave to grieve thee,
Not of the fine-spun stuff
That from the eternal spool
My Hands would weave thee!
Enough, enough!
How long shall they deceive thee,
And thou still dote
Importuning high Heaven
That more be given
With cries monotonous as the wry-neck’s note?
Alike are vain.
Not while the chords of thought are keyed to these
Shalt thou find rest or ease,
Seeing that thyself art tuned eternally
To That which only is without alloy
Pure Life and Joy.
Ah! would thy throbbing shell
Awake the Spirit’s whispered harmonies,
Bethink thee well
That every trembling hidden string must be
Vibrant of Me
Who am the Truth, and at thy centre dwell—
The very Breath of God made visible!
For know the myriad miseries of mankind,
And the long reign of sin,
Came but of questing outward, for to find
That which abides within.
O Soul of Mine,
Or what with dying,
Sorrow and sighing,
Who hast nor ending nor beginning,
Nor power from thy perfection to decline?—
Who canst not guess
From the gaunt shadow cast
On folly’s fog-belt, but shalt learn at last,
Thine own inalienable loveliness;
Whom sinless, deathless, I created
Of elements so fine,
That with my Being sated,
In glorious garments dight
Of Life and Light,
Lowly, yet unafraid,
With an eternity of joy sufficed,
The Spirit’s Self might love thee
And brood above thee,
Pure Maid
And Mother of the indwelling Christ!
The Heaven of Heaven!
Self-wittingly at one
With Him who hath the Universe for throne,
Who wieldeth the stars seven;
Who only is
The Mystery of Mysteries
Ineffable, My Son,
My sole-begotten ere the worlds began,
Made manifest as Man.
With all his shadowy peers—
Angers, and lusts, and fears—
The which so long against thy peace did plot,
Shall be remembered not,
Or, shrivelling at a breath,
Be known as naught;
Yea, that they never were
Save in the realm of things that but appear,
Creations of thine unillumined thought.
As though ’twere measurable in terms of sense—
Length, breadth, circumference,
Or spread throughout illimitable space.
It is the enthronization of the soul
Upon the heights of Being; it is to know;
It is the rapture that I AM is so,
Whatever clouds of ignorance up-roll.
It is the joy of joys,
To thrill co-operant with the primal cause
Of the unswerving laws
Which hold in everlasting equipoise
Those balances of God,
The visible and invisible Universe;
Wherein, couldst thou but measure with His rod—
With undistorted sight
Couldst read aright—
Nor better is, nor worse,
But only best;
’Tis from thy centre to thine utmost bound
To feel that thou hast found—
That thou too art
From all to all eternity a part
Of that which never was in speech expressed,
The unresting Order which is more than rest.
I am thine Origin,
And I thy Kingdom waiting thee within!
Seek Me, and thou hast found it,
My seas of Life surround it,
My Love’s o’er-arching splendour
For canopy hath crowned it.
All that nor eye nor ear
Can hear or see
Lies stored within its boundless empery.
Not there, O Soul of Mine,
Shalt thou surrender,
Torn from thy tortured breast,
Those whom thou heldest here
In bonds so tender.
Death cannot quell
Their residue divine.
Seek, then, within, but spurn the unhallowed spell:
In light unutterable alive they shine,
Leave thou to Me the rest!
Have I not said?
And shall not they that mourn be comforted?
Thy dearest and divinest,
Are but rills from out the river
Of the all-and-only Giver:
Why tarry, then, thy thirst in Him to slake
Who flowed through earthen channels for thy sake,
From death-drought to deliver?
Hadst thou but eyes for seeing
The wells of thine own being,
What draughts of living water wouldst thou take!
For That I AM is thine,—
Think Oneness, and think Worship, and think Love;
The which, translated to thine outward need
(Sith every thought must still creative prove),
Shall limn their likeness with invisible hand—
As the sea-ripples write them on the sand—
In bodily form and deed.
So shalt thou make for thine eternal Meed;
So shalt thou fashion thee, O Soul of Mine,
A glorious shrine
Wherein to house thee, and wherethrough to shine—
Or here, or in My Mansions crystalline—
Serenely changeless, dazzlingly divine!’