Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson
Page 196
Disgusted and abashed, now held its peace.
A little time passed by; then was the night
Rent with the screamings of a frightened soul:
“O, Jesu, in the hour of death, I pray
To Thee, O Tender One, in my distress Save
Thou my frightened soul from this cold grasp!
Receive me, O my Christ, in Thine embrace.
“I cannot face these loathly terrors felt;
I shrink from THIS! My Jesu, hear my prayer;
Turn not away; O Christ, turn not away!
The fiend has me! - Jesu, my Christ, assist’.
Thou wouldst not leave me, Christ - No! Jesu, No!
Think of the PIT, my Christ! Think of the PIT!
The gaping, hideous PIT! - God save my soul
From this Vast Foulness! Spare me, O my God!
Thou canst not fail me, God above! I weep
In misery most abject, God of Love;
Yes, love me, SAVE ME! - God, Thou canst not fail!
In Jesu’s name I ask it - Thou S-H-A-L-T hear!
God! - O God!! - THE PJT!!! ’Tis opening wide
For me, Father, My God! - Jesu, My C-H-R-I-S-T -!
Jesu! - Jesu! I’m — Oh! My God! —
G —— O — D ——
— fit
The voice died in one shriek. And silence reigned,
As though the very night, with pity, held
Its breath in sympathy for that poor soul
Deeming itself already doomed, ere death
Could prove to it that joy was not at end.
Then, in soliloquy, the Sea’s low voice
Sounded most solemnly across the dark
Rising, wailing, strange, solemn,
Sad, inhuman - yet all loving,
Trailing upward from the deep,
Singing from a cold abyss,
Crying from a clouded gloom:
“O, that such fear exists doth sorrow me!
How dreadful is religion that doth teach
Such terror to an erring soul!
“E’en now
That soul, whose agony ye heard, has waked
To further life - to greater wisdom, and
To hope renewed!
“Dost think ye are condemned
Or ever ye have felt sweet wisdom’s touch?
O, nay! nay! God worketh not thuswise
“True! ye shall not escape your wrongful deeds;
But He doth mean ye shall have had fair chance
To win to joy, ere ye reach the Last Life.
“How think ye, born in ignorance as this,
God (Justice) would allow ye to be doomed
To joyless aeons of actual agony,
Without good chance to win to aeons of joy?
“O, nay! though your wrong deeds shall punish ye,
I tell ye, once again, ye shall have chance
To win from grief in newer, greater lives,
With wisdom in your brains, peace in your hearts,
Growing from present seed to magnitude
Beyond belief in this first stage of life
Where ignorance doth flourish for a time.”
A further space passed by, and then there came
A voice exalted with the wine of sin,
A woman’s voice it was; thuswise it ran:
“Not even Thou, O God, canst rob
From me this hour of earthly joy,
And afterwards, Thou may’st destroy
My very soul - I care no jot
If in Thy Hell I lie and rot!
O’er sin itself I ride above
Upon the splendour of my love -!”
It ended suddenly as if ‘twere checked
By retributive Right. Then spake the Sea
In a sad, thoughtful voice which seemed to pierce
To Reason’s very deep, and echo there
From its cold bottom to the topmost skies
“Poor child! Hast thou e’er thought upon thy death
As a cessation from the joys of earth?
Then know that every death thou diest leads on
To a much fuller life, including all
That thou has thought and lived in those before.
And as a fuller life implies more power
To live, to understand, to suffer pain,
So may’st thou comprehend that on each life
Shall stand thy cause to suffer pain or joy
When the Last Life be reached, and thou shalt live
In culmination of all joy and grief
That thou hast ever known in all thy lives.
“Pass on, pass on. I would not chide at all;
But warn thee and direct, so that thou shalt,
In the Last Life, have no sad cause to wail
O’er wanton moments birthing aeons of pain.”
Then from the rounding spirits one spoke out
In the thin tone of age - an old man’s voice:
“Ah! would I could attain back to my youth
When but to live was to be praising God!
Odd times I get some whiff of that old joy;
Within the scent of roses it steals back
The old delicious smell of happy youth,
And then it drifts away, and I am left
Older, by contrast, than I was before.
“So when church bells come pealing softly past
Over some grassy hill, within the dusk,
Doth the low pastoral sound fill me with peace
Brimming with echoes of my childhood’s days.
“And then the dark road ahead, that draweth near,
Comes down upon me like a blank dismay,
And I am filled with fears, and scarcely can
Believe in life past death; for faith comes hard
When the tremendous moment is at hand.”
Thus spake the Sea:
“Be of good cheer, old man,
When thou art dead, time’s space shall be thy road;
Thou shalt pass back or forward as thou wilt.
To happiest moments of past lives, thy soul
May dart along time’s road to old delights
Living long ages in one pang of joy:
Thus thou shalt reach the days of childhood’s joys.
And live there till thy soul hath grown at last
To a desire to taste the fuller zest
That waits on manhood to a greater life.”
Scarce had the Sea grown silent when I heard
A voice come shrilly laughing o’er the sea:
“Ha! Ha! - Ha! Ha!
Get Thee to Thy kingdom, God!
I laugh at Thee!
Thou threatenest with a rod
That doth not frighten me;
What indeed’s Thy Hell to me?
God, I have no fear of Thee!
Heaven and Hell have never been,
Save within men’s bewildered minds,
Dazed by light which only blinds,
Nor art Thou, I truly ween!
Here I live as pleases me
When I’ve lived as likes me best
I shall die and be at rest.
Hark! O Phantom Deity!
Ha! Ha! - Ha! Ha!
The Sea’s voice came in quietly.
Such contempt
I ne’er had dreamed existed.
Thus it spake
“Dost know, poor thing, that, somewhere on time’s plain,
Ten-thousand aeons hence thy cackling laugh
Shall sound to thy distress?
“O, Ignorance!
No deed shall die, nor has, nor ever can!
The voice of the ocean
Each moment that has been, forever lives;
Thou art now being born somewhere in time;
Thy mother’s pangs are still existent. Thou
Art still essaying thy first breath on earth;
So each deed thou has wrought still lives. Thou art
E’en now (and for a
ll time) most horribly
Intent upon the lowest deed that e’er
Thy brains and hands have worked to thy dishonour,
For God and all Immortals who may care
To watch thee.
“Ah! poor thing! When thou hast died
Thou shalt stand above that plain, and watch,
Among the past, but living, hours, thyself
Doing such things as shall break thee with shame.
Ah! then shalt surely learn that heaven and hell
Are made up of thy deeds of good and harm;
For in the Last Life thou shalt greatly live
Amid all good and evil thou hast wrought!
“E’en now thy life I see - a tiny track
Smudging time’s plain with filth a little way,
And little scenes show clearly that do grieve
Most utterly my heart; for thou hast filled
This life unto its brim with future griefs.
“O, if thou could’st but understand this thing,
That back within time’s space eternally,
Before and after death, and all the while,
Thy deeds are still enacted - good and bad!
“Do thou but wander back along time’s road
Thou shalt come to the years of bygone lives,
And see thyself in sickly ignorance
Working the woeful deeds thou now dost work.
“Poor soul! Spite of contempt, I feel within,
For thee, more pity than thou can’st conceive,
Thou hast laid up such sorrow for thyself!”
Now, from above, there crept a moaning sound,
As though one spoke among the distant stars;
Awhile I waited till the words were clear,
And thus:
“Quiet, O ye heavens while we speak!
God of all gods, through the eternal night,
Loaded with dead, we march enwrapped in gloom;
Ten-thousand ages gone we rode in life,
Strong with the germ that lives where’er is light,
And bearing on a myriad life, where death
Played its sad havoc to exterminate
But all in vain; for from our mighty hearts
Pulsed a life-stream which death could not subdue.
Yet, by Thy will, because of length of days,
Our time drew near for death. Our blazing suns
Gave but a saddening light which dwindled on
From red to deeper red, until in gloom
We sank into vast graves of all that had
Lived on our bosoms in the days of light.
“This we have borne, O God, but in the hope
That Thou would’st succour us to further life;
Else if we thus must die with all our souls,
What use hath been our life? ‘Twere better far
We had not lived at all, than come to this
Dark, hideous bulks of death within the void!
“O God, if Thou art, as we believed,
Almighty past our power to understand,
Then shalt Thou give us further life, or Thou
Art but abusing Thine Almighty Strength!”
Then spake the Sea:
“Patience, thou deathly worlds!
God’s Might is right, because that self-same Might
Is governed and directed by a Mind
Born of the awful strength which lives in God.
And as a Mind so born and so sustained
Must be of breadth and height beyond finite,
So doth God justice where the finite mind
Would fail contemptibly to mete out right;
Using its puny mind and puny strength
Unwittingly to forward some abuse,
Because of insufficient might to reach
To heights where justice may be dealt out pure.
“Now have thou patience, for no mind can guess
What the vast womb of time may hold concealed;
Yet of one thing thou may’st well be assured,
That all development is worked through change;
So dies the corn ere born to further life,
One ear to life an hundred times as great;
So may’st thou live again, for bear in mind
That in the furthest limit of all space
A lonely universe of silent worlds,
Dead aeons before thou had’st been nebula,
May on some orbit vast be nearing thee,
Thou half eternity should pass ere they
Meet thee in full career. Ah! then the skies
Shall witness thy new birth, as in one bound
Dead world shall leap unto dead world, and each
Shall flash from death to life within one breath
To life for some long age of mightier life,
Tremendous in one flame as new as love.
“Bear this in mind to help thee through the aeons,
And know thou all the while within thy soul
That the last sorrows of ten-thousand worlds
Are stored within the tender heart of God.”
The Sea then ceased speaking, and a voice,
Of one who would talk boastful, sounded loud:
“Wondrous is God. But, surely, as all good
Springeth from His deep heart, so none may doubt
(If He be the Creator of all things)
Likewise, that from His breast all evil floats,
Pervading this whole world. For He is proud,
And when He stumbles none may put Him right,
Nor whisper in His winds reproveful words,
Wherefore should He condemn us when we fall?”
The question now propounded, did the voice
Stop with a foolish triumph in its tone,
At which the Sea grew angry, and fierce words
Leapt through the mad white welter of quick waves,
As its abysmal voice cried out with rage
Throughout the reeking sky, while over all
Flashed fitfully the cold, stern light of storms
“O trenchant fool! And if thou provest this
What step hast thou advanced along the road
To further peace? Thou hast no aim it seems,
But to teach lessons in an art of eggs,
Which, truth! thou teachest badly. Dost thou think
To judge God by such standard as thou would’st
Apply to beings finite? Get thee hence!
And know that thy whole genius is but one spark
Blown from the shining suns which stud God’s ring!
Would’st thou with thy one spark put God to rights?”
Thus spake the Sea, and calming from its rage,
Listened as some fresh soul cried out in doubt
“My soul is filled with doubt; I do not know
How to tell right from wrong; I am confused!
To all religions have I turned for help.
“Apart from creed, they tell me that I have
A sense called “Conscience”, which shall surely lead
My soul apart from harm, do I but try
To follow out its warnings through my life.
“Now this is strange to me; I have found men
‘Mong savage tribes who thought no wrong to slay,
But rather counted it as doing good,
Depending on some teaching of their creed.
“Yet, did I mention this, I soon was told
That “Conscience” lacked development in such
On some points ’twas developed; not on all;
’Twas this accounted for their going wrong.
“On learning this, my mind (too logical)
Grew much affrighted of this Conscience-sense;
If through such lack the savage went astray,
Then might not I? Who was to say I had
Such sense developed fully? If not, then
I might be daily erring in God’s sight,
Though Mankind -
part developed - knew it not.
“And now, great Sea, can’st thou put me to rest?
For I am so wearied with my doubts,
And more in earnest than the world might think.”
Thus spake the Sea in answer to the soul:
“All knowledge is an ocean, and the drop
Gained by your wisest minds is small indeed;
For ye are bound by bonds too visible,
Which blind ye to the path for gaining more.
“Ye prate of right and wrong, and are but fools;
Ye weep o’er things ye cannot understand,
And miss wisdom cast on every side,
Searching for that which never was nor is.
“A thousand years ye have done wrong in vain,
And doing it ye hoped ye did some right:
Reason in your religions had no place,
Or if it had the place was out of sight.
“I know that to do right is hard enough;
But harder far when there are diff’rent views,
Holding that this is right, or that is wrong,
Without the intervention of hard sense.
“They tell ye that to steal is wrong - and why?
Because some ancient tablets said the same;
Thus logic has small part in all their talk;
’Tis logic that ye want to tell ye ‘why’.
“If someone said to some: - “Tis wrong to breathe’,
I wonder if that some would hold their breaths!
Yet ’tis the logic of most holy creeds;
I do not wonder that ye pant for sense.
“One stands upon a ladder, and he peers
Owlwise at stars ten-billion leagues away;
Looks down with scorn from his small altitude,
And prates of things none at his feet can see!
“He talks of many things in a sage voice;
But cannot see past death to where life leaps,
Nor, on his drop of learning, sail beyond
The bar of death, which holds this life at bay.
“The wise man with his ladder cannot pierce
Death’s mystery; nor anything but guess’.
In Matters so obscure he cannot see
One whit more deeply than his brothers do.
“This being so, we must depend on Sense,
That strange and wondrous things, so common called,
Possessed in some degree by every soul;
But used so little that it might not be.
“Now turn your thoughts about awhile, and think,
Perchance ye may find wisdom unawares;
Ye want to know what’s ‘Right’ and what is ‘Wrong’,
Methinks ’tis all the same as ‘Good’ and ‘Harm’.
“For if ye work some ‘Good’ to any soul
Ye may well claim to have done active ‘Right’;
While if, on any, e’en small ‘Harm’ ye work
’Tis just as certain you’ve done active ‘Wrong’.