The Three Taverns | Page 7

identity. You remark in me?No sort of leaping giant, though some words?Of mine to you from Corinth may have leapt?A little through your eyes into your soul.?I trust they were alive, and are alive?Today; for there be none that shall indite?So much of nothing as the man of words?Who writes in the Lord's name for his name's sake?And has not in his blood the fire of time?To warm eternity. Let such a man --?If once the light is in him and endures --?Content himself to be the general man,?Set free to sift the decencies and thereby?To learn, except he be one set aside?For sorrow, more of pleasure than of pain;?Though if his light be not the light indeed,?But a brief shine that never really was,?And fails, leaving him worse than where he was,?Then shall he be of all men destitute.?And here were not an issue for much ink,?Or much offending faction among scribes.
The Kingdom is within us, we are told;?And when I say to you that we possess it?In such a measure as faith makes it ours,?I say it with a sinner's privilege?Of having seen and heard, and seen again,?After a darkness; and if I affirm?To the last hour that faith affords alone?The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment,?I do not see myself as one who says?To man that he shall sit with folded hands?Against the Coming. If I be anything,?I move a driven agent among my kind,?Establishing by the faith of Abraham,?And by the grace of their necessities,?The clamoring word that is the word of life?Nearer than heretofore to the solution?Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed?A shaft of language that has flown sometimes?A little higher than the hearts and heads?Of nature's minions, it will yet be heard,?Like a new song that waits for distant ears.?I cannot be the man that I am not;?And while I own that earth is my affliction,?I am a man of earth, who says not all?To all alike. That were impossible,?Even as it were so that He should plant?A larger garden first. But you today?Are for the larger sowing; and your seed,?A little mixed, will have, as He foresaw,?The foreign harvest of a wider growth,?And one without an end. Many there are,?And are to be, that shall partake of it,?Though none may share it with an understanding?That is not his alone. We are all alone;?And yet we are all parcelled of one order --?Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark?Of wildernesses that are not so much?As names yet in a book. And there are many,?Finding at last that words are not the Word,?And finding only that, will flourish aloft,?Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes,?Our contradictions and discrepancies;?And there are many more will hang themselves?Upon the letter, seeing not in the Word?The friend of all who fail, and in their faith?A sword of excellence to cut them down.
As long as there are glasses that are dark --?And there are many -- we see darkly through them;?All which have I conceded and set down?In words that have no shadow. What is dark?Is dark, and we may not say otherwise;?Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire?For one of us, may still be for another?A coming gleam across the gulf of ages,?And a way home from shipwreck to the shore;?And so, through pangs and ills and desperations,?There may be light for all. There shall be light.?As much as that, you know. You cannot say?This woman or that man will be the next?On whom it falls; you are not here for that.?Your ministration is to be for others?The firing of a rush that may for them?Be soon the fire itself. The few at first?Are fighting for the multitude at last;?Therefore remember what Gamaliel said?Before you, when the sick were lying down?In streets all night for Peter's passing shadow.?Fight, and say what you feel; say more than words.?Give men to know that even their days of earth?To come are more than ages that are gone.?Say what you feel, while you have time to say it.?Eternity will answer for itself,?Without your intercession; yet the way?For many is a long one, and as dark,?Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil?Too much, and if I be away from you,?Think of me as a brother to yourselves,?Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics,?And give your left hand to grammarians;?And when you seem, as many a time you may,?To have no other friend than hope, remember?That you are not the first, or yet the last.
The best of life, until we see beyond?The shadows of ourselves (and they are less?Than even the blindest of indignant eyes?Would have them) is in what we do not know.?Make, then, for all your fears a place to sleep?With all your faded sins; nor think yourselves?Egregious and alone for your defects?Of youth and yesterday. I was