Reincarnation

Front matter

Reading edition

Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

REINCARNATION

iiThe weary pilgrim oft doth seek to know

How far he’s come, how far he has to go.

Quarles.

Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million of them walking the earth openly at noontide; some half hundred have vanished from it, some half hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch tick one.

Carlyle.

Truth dwells in gulphs, whose deeps hide shades so rich

That Night sits muffled there in clouds of pitch,

More darke than Nature made her: and requires

(To cleare her tough mists) heaven’s great fire of fires

To wrestle with those heaven-strong mysteries.

George Chapman.

I am: how little more I know!

Whence came I? Whither do I go?

A central self which feels and is;

A cry between the silences;

A shadow-birth of clouds at strife

With sunshine on the hills of life;

A shaft from Nature’s quiver cast

Into the future from the past.

Whittier.

Where wert thou, Soul, ere yet my body born

Became thy dwelling-place? Didst thou on earth

Or in the clouds, await this body’s birth,

Or by what chance upon that winter’s morn

Didst thou this body find, a babe forlorn?

Didst thou in sorrow enter, or in mirth?

Or for a jest, perchance, to try its worth

Thou tookest flesh, ne’er from it to be torn.

Waddington.

REINCARNATION A STUDY OF FORGOTTEN TRUTH

E. D. WALKER

“Ex oriente lux”

[Logo]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1888

By E. D. WALKER.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge:

Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH

AND TO

THAT EMBODIMENT OF TRUTH, NAMED

ARIEL,

THIS LITTLE VOLUME PROMPTED BY THEM

Is Dedicated,

WITH THE HOPE THAT THEY ARE NOT HERE DISHONORED

BY THEIR DISCIPLE,

THE AUTHOR.

viSoul, dwelling oft in God’s infinitude

And sometimes seeming no more part of me—

This me, worms’ heritage—than that sun can be

Part of the earth he has with warmth imbued,—

Whence camest thou? Whither goest thou? I, subdued

With awe of mine own being thus sit still,

Dumb, on the summit of this lonely hill,

Whose dry November grasses dew-bestrewed

Mirror a million suns. That sun so bright,

Passes as thou must pass, Soul, into night.

Art thou afraid who solitary hast trod

A path I know not, from a source to a bourn

Both which I know not? Fearest thou to return

Alone, even as thou camest alone, to God?

D. M. Mulock.

Insect and reptile, fish and bird and beast,

Cast their worn robes aside, fresh robes to don;

Tree, flower, and moss, put new year’s raiments on;

Each natural type, the greatest as the least,

Renews its vesture when its use hath ceased.

How should man’s spirit keep in unison

With the world’s law of outgrowth, save it won

New robes and ampler as its girth increased?

Quit shrunken creed, and dwarfed philosophy!

Let gently die an art’s decaying fire!

Work on the ancient lines, but yet be free

To leave and frame anew, if God inspire!

The planets change their surface as they roll:

The force that binds the spheres must bind the soul.

Henry G. Hewlett.

vii