A GARDEN PARTY

Invitation brought by the wind, and sent by the rose and the oak. I sat on the steps—warm summer noon—in a garden, and half cloudy with low clouds, sun hot, rich mocking bird singing, bee brushing down a big raindrop from a flower, where it hung tremulous. The bird's music is echoed from the breasts of roses, and reflex sound comes doubly back with grace of odor.—First came the lizard, dandiest of reptiles; then the bee, then small strange insects that wear flap-wings and spider-web legs, and crawl up the slim green stalks of grass; the catbirds, the flowers, with each a soul—this is the company I like; the talk, the gossip anent the last news of the spirit, the marriage of man and nature, the betrothal of Science and Art, the failure of the great house of Buy and Sell (see following note^[1]), a rumor out of the sun, and many messages concerning the stars.

82Oh, man falls into this wide sea of life

Like a pebble dropped by idle bands in water.

The little circle of the stir he makes

Does lessen as it widens, until Death

Comes on, and straightway the round ripple is gone out.

83The grave is a cup

Wherewith I dip up

My draughts from the lake of life.

(Death, loquitor.)

Death is the cup-bearer of Heaven,

God's Ganymede, and his cup is the

grave, and life is the wine that

fills it.

84Birth is but a folding of our wings.

85When bees, in honey-frenzies, rage and rage,

And their hot dainty wars with flowers wage,

Foraying in the woods for sweet rapine

And spreading odorous havoc o'er the green.

86All men are pearl-divers, and we have but plunged down into this straggling salt-sea of Life—to find a pearl. This Pearl, like all others, comes from a wound: it is the Pearl of Love after Grief.

87It is always sunrise and always sunset somewhere on the earth. And so, with a silver sunrise before him and a golden sunset behind him, the Royal Sun fares through Heaven, like a king with a herald and a retinue.

88Night's a black-haired poet, and he's in love with Day. But he never meets her save at early morn and late eve, when they fall into each other's arms and draw out a lingering kiss: so folded together at such times that we cannot distinguish bright maid from dark lover; and so we call it Dawn and Twilight—it being

Not light, but lustrous dark;

Not dark, but secret light.

89These green and swelling hills, crowned with white tents,

Like vast green waves, white-foaming at the top.

90Hunger and a whip: with these we tame wild beasts. So, to tame us, God continually keeps our hearts hungry for love, and continually lashes our souls with the thongs of relentless circumstance.

91Star-drops lingering after sunlight's rain.

92The earth, a grain of pollen dropped in the vast calyx of Heaven.

93Our beliefs needed pruning, that they might bring forth more fruit: and so Science came.

94I, the artist, fought with a Knight that was cased in a mail of gold; and my weapon, with all my art, would not penetrate his armor. Gold is a soft metal, but makes the hardest hauberk of all. What shall I do to pierce this covering? For I am hungry for this man, this business man of stocks and drygoods, and now it seems as if there were no pleasure nor hope nor life for me until I win him to my side.

95My Desire is round,

It is a great globe.

If my desire were no bigger than this world

It were no bigger than a pin's head.

But this world is to the world I want

As a cinder to Sirius.

96I am startled at the gigantic suggestions in this old story of the Serpent who introduces knowledge to man in Eden. How could the Jew who wrote Genesis have known the sadness that ever comes with learning—as if wisdom were still the protégé of the Devil.

97On the advantage of reducing facts—like fractions—to a common denominator.

We explain: but only in terms of x and y, which are themselves symbols of we know not what, graphs of mystery. We establish relations betwixt this and that mystery. We reduce x and y to a common denominator, so that we can add them together, and make a scientific generalization, or subtract them, and make a scientific analysis: but more we can not do. The mystery is still a mystery, and this is all the material out of which we must weave our life.

98I had a dog,

And his name was not Fido, but Credo.

(In America they shorten his name to "Creed.")

My child fell into the water:

Then in plunged Credo, and brought me out my child,

My beloved One,

Brought him out, truly,

But lo, in my Child's throat and in his limbs,

In the throat and the limbs of the child of man,

Credo's teeth had bitten deep.

(A good dog but a stern one was Credo)

And my child, though sound,

Was scarred in his beautiful face

And was maimed in his manful limbs

For life, alas, for life.

Thus Credo saved and scarred and maimed

The Son of Man, my Child.

99There was a flower called Faith:

Man plucked it, and kept it in a vase of water.

This was long ago, mark you.

And the flower is now faint,

For the water with time and dust is foul.

Come let us pour out the old water,

And put in new,

That the flower of faith be red again.

100Ten Lilies and ten Virgins,

And, mild marvel to mine eyes,

Five of the Virgins were foolish,

But all of the lilies were wise.

101Look out, Death, I am coming.

Art thou not glad? What talks we'll have, what memories

Of old battles.

Come, bring the bowl, Death; I am thirsty.

102Cut the Cord, Doctor! quoth the baby, man, in the nineteenth century. I am ready to draw my own breath.

103Whether one is an optimist or an orthodox religionist or what not, it would seem that faith must centre upon Christ.

104The Church is too hot, and Nothing is too cold. I find my proper Temperature in Art. Art offers to me a method of adoring the sweet master Jesus Christ, the beautiful souled One, without the straitness of a Creed which confines my genuflexions, a Church which confines my limbs, and without the vacuity of the doubt which numbs them. An unspeakable gain has come to me in simply turning a certain phrase the other way: the beauty of holiness becomes a new and wonderful saying to me when I figure it to myself in reverse as the holiness of beauty. This is like opening a window of dark stained glass, and letting in a flood of white light. I thus keep upon the walls of my soul a church-wall rubric which has been somewhat clouded by the expiring breaths of creeds dying their natural death. For in art there is no doubt. My heart beat all last night without my supervision: for I was asleep; my heart did not doubt a throb; I left it beating when I slept, I found it beating when I woke; it is thus with art: it beats in my sleep. A holy tune was in my soul when I fell asleep: it was going when I awoke. This melody is always moving along in the background of my spirit. 105If I wish to compose, I abstract my attention from the thoughts which occupy the front of the stage, the dramatis personæ of the moment, and fix myself upon the deeper scene in the rear.

106It is now time that one should arise in the world and cry out that Art is made for man and not man for art: that government is made for man and not man for government: that religion is made for man and not man for religion: that trade is made for man and not man for trade. This is essentially the utterance of Christ in declaring that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.

107Like the forest whose edges near man's dwellings are embroidered with birds, while its inner recesses are the unbroken solid color of solitude.

108To him that humbly here will look

I'll ope the heavens wide,

But ne'er a blessing brings a book

To him that reads in pride.

Whoe'er shall search me but to see

Some fact he hath foretold,

Making my gospel but his prophecy.

My New his little Old.

To him that opens his hands upwards to me like a thirsty plant

I am Rain,

But to him that merely stands as a patron by to see me perform

I am Zero and a Drought.

109Then three tall lilies floated white along

To these woods: we come from Nature,

Ambassadors, for thou gavest us consideration,

For thou said'st, Consider the lilies,

And who considers them will soon consider

And how that they did exceed the glory of Solomon.

110How in the Age gone by

Thou took'st the Time upon thy knee

As a child,

A Time that smote thee in the face

Even whilst thou did kiss it,

And how it tore out thy loving eyes

Even while thou didst teach it.

111The monstrous things the mighty world hath kept

In reverence 'gainst the law of reverence:

The lies of Judith, Brutus' treachery,

Damon's deceit, all wiles of war.

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