If so then we, the shadows dream,
And know not true reality,
Unable to assimilate eternal essences.
But death, imperfect nature, both may be a mockery:
If they reveal behind the veil the truth of what should be,
If that which is contingent can result in permanence,
And like eternal virtues, we transcend to the divine.
I thought that in this modest creed,
There lay an inward tendency,
To seek a new existence,
far beyond this earthly realm.
Until the poet,
known by name,
Began to sing a sweet refrain,
Of the beauty in our nature,
And the beauty of the stars:
Beauty, light and heavenly love,
Though pleasant are but nought for us,
If we are blind to nature’s treasures,
throughout this universe.
The buried root,
The budding leaf,
Black starlit laden night,
Each part baptised in harmony,
With the effulgent, radiant light.
The comet with its plumes of fire,
Doth decorate and yet impart,
A fierce magnetic energy,
Upon the raging solar hearth.
The vistas of the galaxies,
Reveal with awe and majesty,
The One’s noetic qualities,
Betrothed to time and space.
And in the twilight of the morn,
As crimson mantled dawn ascends,
And we aspire to lift our heads,
To witness such perfection,
Do not forget that at our feet are wonders still as great as this.
We too may hold within our hand cosmic infinity.
Within the stamen of the flower a galaxy may be perceived,
Within the song of morning break the music of the spheres,
And with the dying embers as our breath sinks with the sun,
Be of good cheer,
Fear not the night,
For death is not the end.
I realised the poet’s creed expressed more than the simple theme,
that true meaning, love and beauty must deride impermanence:
For though in death we yet may rest in higher spheres refined,
Our existence on this mundane plane holds great significance.
In all there is a duty born to love this world we see,
And value nature’s works of art
as priceless rarities.
In doing this we might protect,
fragile humanity.
I wondered on the cosmos great and its vast immensity,
And noted to my inner self the evident true fact,
That all of life which we observe is in a state of flux,
Yet does within perimeters abide by certain laws.
Within this regulated scheme, which science hath revealed,
Are shown in part the numerous laws and natural processes,
Which may from our conclusions instigate hypotheses,
To forge new steps towards the path of hope and industry.
Oh science great do not berate the mind that still believes,
In the spiritual power and the glory of good nature’s boundaries.
I wondered then if human beings which clearly pass away,
May not into some other organism thus evolve,
I did in contemplation deep consider furthermore,
If God could not be thus conceived extraneous to this plan.
At this the poet nodded, at these thoughts he had inferred,
Arising from my inner self, the blackening doubts conferred,
A piteous melancholia which there in me did fester,
To strangle all the pious hope of faith’s sincerity.
(The Voyager raises many questions):
If the good and great complexity,
Of all that grows and moves and breathes,
Is not designed by God’s good grace,
but came to be by chance,
Is there no principle or plan?
Is what I see just what I am?
Is to live and die the fate of man?
To live and die,
and then decay?
Should good men then to fear submit,
or seek to heap displeasures,
Upon the hearts of cheerful souls for their own false beliefs?,
Should they endure in silent trials and fear their cynicism,
Lest they invoke the angry lash or flatter to deceive?
(The Poet):
Heaping hearts with scornful doubt at faith’s simplicity,
Should not the heavy burden be consigned upon your brother,
Who finds life hard and troublesome enough, yet finds in succor,
The milk of human kindness and the trust to still believe,
That human beings are more that just the sum of what is measured,
“Not natural laws but miracles
Through Christ they shall receive,
A portion of their paradise,
and immortality.”
Such is the Christian dogma which cruel priests would have us bound,
To keep our minds and thought and words free from all blasphemies,
And keep our tongues free only for the speech of holy sounds,
Although I do profess that I despair in such beliefs.
For how can God who loves all things condemn his son to die?
If he be just and love is pure?
He looked up to the sky,
As if he was addressing an irrational deity.
We found ourselves refuting then a theme so oft debated,
That a personal God makes rules and laws and is the cause creative,
And dutifully exerts a power upon our destinies.
Through miracles the Bible claims God’s powers may thus be shown,
And through such acts doth God use men,
So that his will be known,
Communicated it is claimed,
For it is His plan to save,
The wretched sinners on this Earth from the perils of the grave.
Yet if it be forbidden that men break the natural laws,
Conferred by God and discerned by men through their experience,
Should God desist from miracles that also break His laws?
God’s acts should not trespass beyond His self made boundaries.
Yet cosmos is an order and within its sanctity,
Replete with life and measure lie more timeless mysteries,
For all contained within its sphere embodies harmony.
If this be ‘God’ is science just the process of its Mind,
Or is it just a dream of men’s creative influence?
Or is the truth that God is just the product of men’s dreams,
And cosmos is in fact by chance,
Absurd coincidence?
The poet then continued strong in offering some faith,
When witnessing the grave concern which spread across my face:
Fear not
For in the deepest valley, cave or mountain peak,
Upon the crowded city streets or alone within your room,
There resides a piece of heaven’s light,
A spark of the eternal,
There lives a spirit immanent,
Which exists beyond the tomb.
I asked the poet earnestly with all polite sincerity,
To tell me how we could believe in this dichotomy?
I asked the poet once again with patient
hope to justify,
And clarify the problems of the mortal and divine.
(The Voyager):
Are bodies sacred temples where immortal souls reside,
To be appraised as holy, sacred dwellings of the mind?
Or are we born into this life still struggling from the womb,
yet destined but to occupy a prison house of gloom?
If these elements in truth house not an eternal spark divine,
Is God as Soul a lie?
And should we then deny,
the wicked pleasures of our time?
Or break the bread and drink the wine?
(The Poet):
Such myriad problems I confide,
have often weighed upon my mind,
And to live and love and not deny,
Would be the measure of most lives,
For those who cannot find in God a reason to believe.
So that when death at last awaits,
They can with conscience clear accept,
Their transient humanity,
and die with equanimity.
But I believe with all my heart that in this universe,
There exists a Cosmic Spirit,
Which pervading through the whole,
Doth live and move and breath and cause,
all things that are to be.
And I believe with all my heart to this we shall return,
Beyond this mortal passage for our spirits surely yearn,
To be united with lost Love, as lovers long to be.
I mused upon the poet’s words but found no consolation,
Within my heart and mind his claim no parity resolved,
I wondered if the claims he made were simply affectations,
Until he with a voice assured,
a synthesis invoked.
(The Poet):
The Good which is the template of all matter manifested,
Revealed as perfect order and reflected as the law,
Made visible as cosmos doth commune as perfect virtue,
with the physical reflected as an icon of the cause.
The Good is one in aspect when unpolarized by matter,
Therefore within its essence it is singular and whole,
It is through this that nature’s emanation as quintessence,
Is condensed as light and thus is seen and intuitively known.
And every living creature in its goodness doth reflect this,
And exists in common unity in communion with the light,
And in this scheme a personal God must surely be negated,
And cosmic light and soul from form must now be instigated.
I reflected on the Poet’s words that sought to swift decry,
The existence of a personal God whilst admitting in his mind,
and heart he felt that Form made Soul,
and in this view he gave,
the atoms of the physical,
A secondary place.
As if from spiritual essences all matter had evolved.
(The Voyager):
Does soul then make the body or does body make the soul?
If soul is mind and consciousness,
Is the universal whole,
Of amalgamated atoms caused by cosmic consciousness?
Or is the soul as mind in truth a production of the matter,
Which coalesced organic life have from their brains evolved?
As human beings born to die it is our destiny,
To live within the shadow of our own mortality,
But when our bodies are no more, the consciousness extinguished,
Could not the atoms of our form in other life exist?
This might define provisionally such immortality.
For we are stellar matter as we evolve upon the earth.
We cannot live apart for every atom is our mother.
Each creature, rock and stone which we reshape for our creations,
Contain fragmented essence of the universal whole.
The Poet shook his head as if such matters were unknown,
Or as if my past experiences had previously shown,
That spirit should hold primacy within the cosmic scheme,
And thoughts of matter causing soul were just a foolish dream.
I reflected too the Poet’s claim that in the final hours,
Our life force joins The Great Good Soul and not one soul shall be,
Punished by a personal God, a wrathful Judge of Judges,
Or drown,
lost in the unfathomable depths,
of burning fiery seas.
And in these claims I found his thoughts to be ambiguous.
For if this world,
the countless planets, meteors and stars,
By virtuous emanation are born exactly as they are,
To admit within the cosmos good a place where sin exists,
Appears to be in rational terms a strange hypothesis,
For how can something evil thus derive from something good?
And how can that which causes this be viewed beneficent?
(The Voyager):
Goodness’ emanation should not yield the fruit of sin,
Yet evil imperfections born by nature do exist,
And with such imperfection value judgements must be made,
And were by men,
who tortured and appealed to God to save,
Their soul’s from Hell’s damnation,
whilst flogging bodies to the grave.
Such ridiculous assumptions for dead souls cannot be saved.
Dead souls cannot be saved,
If life and human consciousness exist not beyond the grave.
For souls are life and consciousness that exist within the form,
Which is the human body,
with which emotions it adorns,
And impels the inert matter to its actions, dreams and thoughts,
within the chambers of its heart and mind throughout the course,
Of this journey called the dance of life.
’til death life must withdraw.
The process of this chemistry must be when life expires,
the factor which shall terminate the personality.
For death denotes the end of that brief physical formation,
Which caused the sorrows and the joys of mental peturbations.
Thus due to this our mortal minds which are of Nature born,
May have no need to thus berate great Goodness as the source,
And every fault and error small has natural consequence,
From genesis or nurture which exerts its influence.
Yet if great evil in the world exists without a name,
Then that which caused all things to be must surely take the blame,
Accepting this the Primal Cause cannot be wholly Good,
And God as Good who acts to judge,
has marred beneficence.
(The Poet):
An angry God controls through fear,
turns free men into slaves,
curtails the happy spirit and kills the courage of the brave,
Which are two noble virtues which within good men inspire,
To act in due accordance with their higher faculties.
Yet sinful and immoral acts by men must be contrived,
As a lack of understanding of virtue’s presence in the mind,
Whilst a wrathful God arose from fear that humans once devised,
To control the ignorant masses and avert the primitives’ eyes.
(The Voyager):
And a loving God did serve men’s cause seducing with a lie,
To appease the creeping fear of death,
Dreadful mortality,
With the promise of eternal life, whilst those that were despised,
were punished in eternal Hell for failing to revise,
Their actions and for lacking love and refusing to believe.
But retributive punishments for immoral acts contrived,
Are punishments inflicted and unworthy of the crime,
They are no more of benefit than is ignorance in the mind,
and should a human be condemned for showing ignorance?
Punishment of sinful acts in attempted retribution,
To exact a sense of justice and a timely recompense,
Cannot but yield more blood from blood in any constitution,
Educative reformation then must conquer ignorance.
And as the love of God itself must measure laws and norms,
then that which should be good and true,
deriving every form,
Would be a mere negation of God’s virtuous influence:
There is no good or mercy in such wrathful punishments.
(The Poet):
Imperfection is a measure based on human calculation,
And limited perceptions of the good and noble Forms,
But all of these perceptions held which are of conscience born,
Are dreams which cannot catch the truth of changing substances.
For men cannot presume to know the whole if they be men,
And if they know the part they can but measure partially,
A fragment which is bad may be a blessing for the whole,
And in its imperfection yield the equilibrium.
Then the Spirit metamorphosised,
into a man I recognised,
And there within her depthless eyes,
there gazed a noble Florentine,
Of forty five or more I guessed,
and laurel kissed his brow.
But I could not my conscience keep,
The Dance Macabre Page 2