Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942)

247. At the End of Things

THE WORLD uprose as a man to find Him—

Ten thousand methods, ten thousand ends—

Some bent on treasure; the more on pleasure;

And some on the chaplet which fame attends:

But the great deep’s voice in the distance dim

Said: Peace, it is well; they are seeking Him.

When I heard that all the world was questing,

I look’d for a palmer’s staff and found,

By a reed-fringed pond, a fork’d hazel-wand

On a twisted tree, in a bann’d waste-ground;

But I knew not then what the sounding strings

Of the sea-harps say at the end of things.

They told me, world, you were keen on seeking;

I cast around for a scrip to hold

Such meagre needs as the roots of weeds—

All weeds, but one with a root of gold;

Yet I knew not then how the clangs ascend

When the sea-horns peal and the searchings end.

An old worn wallet was that they gave me,

With twelve old signs on its seven old skins;

And a star I stole for the good of my soul,

Lest the darkness came down on my sins;

For I knew not who in their life had heard

Of the sea-pipes shrilling a secret word.

I join’d the quest that the world was making,

Which follow’d the false ways far and wide,

While a thousand cheats in the lanes and streets

Offer’d that wavering crowd to guide;

But what did they know of the sea-reed’s speech

When the peace-words breathe at the end for each?

The fools fell down in the swamps and marshes;

The fools died hard on the crags and hills;

The lies which cheated, so long repeated,

Deceived, in spite of their evil wills,

Some knaves themselves at the end of all—

Though how should they hearken when sea-flutes call?

But me the scrip and the staff had strengthen’d;

I carried the star; that star led me:

The paths I’ve taken, of most forsaken,

Do surely lead to an open sea:

As a clamour of voices heard in sleep,

Come shouts through the dark on the shrouded deep.

Now it is noon; in the hush prevailing

Pipes, harps and horns into flute-notes fall;

The sea, conceding my star’s true leading,

In tongues sublime at the end of all

Gives resonant utterance far and near:—

‘Cast away fear;

Be of good cheer;

He is here,

Is here!’

And now I know that I sought Him only

Even as child, when for flowers I sought;

In the sins of youth, as in search for truth.

To find Him, hold Him alone I wrought.

The knaves too seek Him, and fools beguiled—

So speak to them also, sea-voices mild!

Which then was wisdom and which was folly?

Did my star more than the cozening guide?

The fool, as I think, at the chasm’s brink,

Prone by the swamp or the marsh’s side,

Did, even as I, in the end rejoice,

Since the voice of death must be His true voice.