The Great 
 Companions 
 
 Henry Bryan Binns 
 
/.? <-/i?J 
 
 
 „ ^ ^3 :V •^ ' 
 
The Great Companions 
 
By the Same Writer, 
 
 Moods and Outdoor Verses {out of print). 1902. 
 
 A Life of Walt Whitman. 1905. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. 1907. 
 
 Botticelli. 1907. 
 
 For the Fellowship. Parts I and IL 1905, 1906. 
 
The Great 
 Companions 
 
 Henry Bryan Binns 
 
 New York 
 
 B. W. Huebsch 
 
 1911 
 
All rights reserved 
 
 Us /OS" 
 
Contents 
 
 
 Introductory .... 
 
 page 
 7 
 
 The Fellowship of the Earth 
 
 8 
 
 The Voice of Humanity 
 
 i6 
 
 Tree-Life 
 
 22 
 
 The Coming of Man 
 
 . 31 
 
 The City 
 
 • ^1 
 
 One of London's Lovers 
 
 . 45 
 
 Pioneers 
 
 • 51 
 
 Love's Body 
 
 . 58 
 
 For Comrades and Lovers . 
 
 . 68 
 
 Liberty 
 
 . 8o 
 
 Vista 
 
 . %^ 
 
 Envoi 
 
 . . 96 
 
Bibliographical Note. — Several of the paragraphs 
 and verses printed below have already appeared in an 
 earlier form, viz., I. v., II. i. iii. III. viii. xi., IV. iii., VIII. 
 vii. viii., IX. ii. xvi. xxi, X. iii., XI. iii. vii. ix. in Parts I 
 and II oiFor the Fellowship, published respectively in 1905 
 and 1906 by Headley Bros., and C. W. Daniel, and 
 VIII. xviii., X.'viii., XL ii., in Friends' Fellowship Papers. 
 
 Nos. III. iii., IV. viii., VIII. v., appeared respectively 
 in the British Friend, New Age and Academy, and to the 
 proprietors of those journals I hereby beg to offer thanks 
 for permission to reprint them. Also, to my friend 
 Horace Traubel, who first published earlier versions of 
 VII. ii. iii. vi., VUI. i. and IX. i., in the Conservator. 
 
Introductory 
 
 THE verse-makers contrive how they may pair 
 together most admirably, as they were lovers, 
 certain words whose chime is pleasant to the ear : they 
 set between them the due intervals : they weave them 
 thus into their theme. 
 
 But every poet hears, flowing amid the silence, the 
 living intricate rhythm of the immortal song ; its words 
 progress together in a cosmic fellowship, inseparable, 
 moving forward in the liberty of a living thing. 
 
I. The Fellowship of the Earth 
 
 All beauty dwells in the Earth's heart for Her children : 
 They are the poets and lovers : they are the rich ; 
 Nothing they own hut Her. 
 
 COME out among the bracken and the birches, and 
 share in their dehght ! Sprung out of the earth 
 into the hberty of the wind and sunshine, the joy that 
 gives them grace, the wonder of their undeniable Hfe, 
 is not for them alone. 
 
 If they green and glimmer in the sun, if they shiver 
 and leap in the wind and sing and play in it, if they 
 rejoice in the Earth and in Her fellowship, — they beckon 
 also to us, though we be strangers, they welcome us de- 
 claring, out of the same earth are we sprung, kissed by 
 the same great breezes, cherished by the sun, and in the 
 same joy born. 
 
 IT is a last morning in May : alight air moves : already 
 the hot sun is half-way up the sky: his breath 
 steals in upon us. 
 
 Ah, to lean upon the fence and feel his breath steal in : 
 to feel the dewy meadows all ashimmer with light: to 
 let the feet of our fancy wander through the deUcious 
 grass into the shadow of the great oaks that stand up 
 in the hedges, while overhead all heaven is as full of 
 song as sunshine ! 
 
 8 
 
The Fellowship of the Earth 9 
 
 But whither, ah, whither away upon this whiff of 
 summer out of the high thorns ? 
 
 On, on ! For here the passers-by bring errands with 
 them and will not let us forget. On ! till the good 
 road gives out upon a rough wild common of furze and 
 brakes and bushes, and the scrub sallow dreamily 
 flying her cotton -seeds upon the soft breeze, and, thick 
 as blown spray, the scent from foaming hills of haw- 
 thorn. 
 
 On, on ! Till out of reach of the road babbles a brook 
 among its alders : birches, too, lean over it : it is bright 
 and dark in their shadows : ready it runs to wash 
 away the dulness of mere thoughts and of importances, 
 baptizing one anew into the vivid life of Earth. 
 
 IS it so difficult, even here among the birches, to 
 become a Child again ? 
 
 How good it were to lay the pride and stiffness of this 
 manhood down ; to relinquish it all, to lie back into the 
 arms of the divine reality, onto the breast of the Great 
 Mother, and be embosomed again, if it might be, in 
 Life, — a child, a little babe, sufficed in Her ! 
 
 In Her bosom are the sources of joy: upon Her breast, 
 if we might win thither, is rest and refreshing for our 
 need. 
 
 My heart tells me She hath pity for Her babes, because 
 they have forgotten Her touch ; because they have grown 
 so busy and dry and stiff they cannot any more believe 
 that their bodies were made on purpose to absorb joy and 
 health and power, to receive and to communicate these, 
 and their spirits the same ; because, while She is offering, 
 they are for ever closing themselves up and up and up 
 
lo The Great Companions 
 
 into their pride and striving, till now they can accept 
 of Her next to nothing at all. 
 
 AND why should we be choking up our minds with 
 the thoughts of books ? Indeed, they are very 
 well, but there are others better than they: thoughts 
 that spring up in the heart of a man without his summons, 
 as hfe springs up in the earth at the coming of Spring. 
 
 Book thoughts are well enough, but besides there are 
 thoughts of the earth and sky : thoughts that are clouds 
 in the west, and bees on the moor, and stars in the 
 grass : — of quietness and of the Soul of All. 
 
 ONCE, long ago, a messenger came calHng to me, 
 " Put all the rest away, and live with me : I am 
 the keeper of eternal hfe ! " But I could not go with 
 him, though 't was Hfe that I was seeking, for I did not 
 know his voice. 
 
 Anon came another and another with hke words, but 
 " No ! " said my heart, " you are not the one I wait 
 for, you are not he that shall carry me home." 
 
 Lonely then I lay and waited long. 
 
 Till, presently, one summer morning, I saw the trees 
 and bracken beckoning to me, that I should make me 
 ready : and I understood and was quiet, and prepared 
 my heart for joy. 
 
 Like the morning breeze out of a primrose coppice 
 the wonder caught me. 
 
 I heard One saying, " He awakes." 
 
 I saw above me the immortal face of Nature full of 
 love: and I knew, and cried with a quick glad cry, 
 *' Mother, my Mother ! " 
 
The Fellowship of the Earth 
 
 1 1 
 
 The leaves of the grass touched me with loving wel- 
 come : " Brother," they said, " you are come home at 
 last ! " 
 
 AND now, in this fragrant heather, I lie back and 
 breathe-in peace. 
 
 For I am become once more a babe upon the Mother's 
 breast, and the Giver of bread is the Giver of that also 
 without which Hfe flags. 
 
 Out here in the quiet, come thoughts that are full of 
 peace, for they grow up out of the earth : they are not 
 weary to me as are my own struggling thoughts : nay, 
 they are Hers, and feed me. 
 
 And nearer, nearer, nearer, — ah, though I see Her not, 
 how near draws She. 
 
 IF we could but understand for a moment what it is 
 She is saying, and what is She that gives us life, 
 out of whose body, as out of an infinite treasury, wonders 
 spring up for ever : — if we could but hear, if we could but 
 understand, we too perhaps might speak Her words and 
 give life to immortal things ! 
 
 But chatter, chatter ! O busy brain, if you would but 
 be still ! There is Something here, even now, making 
 divine creative chords, the music of life that I am long- 
 ing to hear, while j^ou must chatter, chatter. 
 
 Though you are in the presence of God Himself, you 
 must go on prinking yourself before your glass, playing 
 your clever little pranks, laughing at your quips and 
 salhes, eager for the rattle of that foohsh voice, O busy 
 wandering, childish wit ! 
 
12 The Great Companions 
 
 BUT who are you, tall friend, with winged and hairy 
 body and slow-uncurling tip ? 
 
 Who are you, tall friend at my knee, springing up 
 out of the mould, eager for soaring, lithe beautiful child 
 of the Earth ? 
 
 They call you bracken, and you are a multitude, dear 
 and delightful to me, ever inviting me with your wel- 
 come : but, though I lie among you gratefully, I do not 
 know you: not though by touch you seem my kin, 
 reminding me of mysteries, mysteries of my own I 
 cannot guess — I do not know who you are, tall friend. 
 
 But I hold you to be some spirit angelical, clad, as 
 for me, in green raiment, and for my questionings em- 
 bodied in fair form. 
 
 For you, too, methinks, I must be a mysterious 
 presence that lingers and passes you even as the wind 
 passes. 
 
 And to myself this day I am strange : I am not what 
 my senses ghbly declare : what I am I know not. 
 
 But something in you leans to me and discovers it- 
 self, and in me, something leaning to you, gives my soul 
 hints beyond thought. 
 
 Perhaps, in this soft evening air, something utters 
 itself through the flesh of us both, and is said out of 
 hearing, — that Something within us which our senses 
 can neither tell to one another nor understand, but which 
 yet desires speech and hearing. 
 
 Perhaps it is You, perhaps it is Me : perhaps it is heard 
 in the ear of the Earth. 
 
 Perhaps our Mother, from whom we are sprung, the 
 dear and wise One to Whom in a httle we shall return, 
 will presently tell us our names together, weaving them 
 
The Fellowship of the Earth 1 3 
 
 into Her song that men call death, and in Her telling 
 them thus we shall understand. 
 
 IT is under the sky one rests, lying among the leaves 
 at evening upon the breast of the Earth, drinking 
 in at every pore the peace of Her vast life. 
 
 But in my lair among the leaves, with the evening 
 joy about me hke embracing arms, I hear a word of 
 those afar, those who are born into another world of 
 streets, who never even breathe the sweet free air. 
 
 It asks if I am doing aught for them, and whether I 
 have any fellowship with them at all. 
 
 Then I hear a word within me, a word out of the Earth 
 upon whose breast I He : " Loving me," it says, " you 
 love them also, all My children, however far estranged : 
 if you would truly love them, any and all, first must you 
 learn to love by loving Me." 
 
 AND again She says : "To give, but to give Hfe. 
 " To give, but as I give, not that which is good for 
 some desire, but that which is good for hfe. 
 
 " Many a hunger will look out upon you from their 
 eyes, but it is for life's longing you are come : to give them, 
 if you may, what is enough for that : to say to them, in 
 your way, the word that I am saying, answering together 
 all the needs of all My children." 
 
 WHEN first I realized how far we all are straying 
 from the common hfe of the Earth, I was afraid : 
 but I heard Her voice within my heart cry, ** Come unto 
 Me! " 
 Then though many another heard it not, I knew 
 
14 The Great Companions 
 
 that it was calling every one, and that each in his hour 
 would answer, though it should be but unwilHngly, as 
 when men render back their bodies to the clay. 
 
 And now that I have discovered that You love me. 
 Mother, and are feeding me with joy, so that my hfe 
 may wholly be a child of Yours, I begin to feel the love 
 that is in Your heart calling back into Your bosom all 
 Your children, eagerly calling them again into Your 
 fields that are lonely for men. 
 
 And it seems to me that all who love You cannot cease 
 to call them back. 
 
 WHEREFORE to you that are poor and have 
 nothing to give, to you that are crushed under 
 your nothingness, to you, reverently, I bring news good 
 to carry, in one word, brief to say, from the Mother of 
 men. 
 
 It is the word a woman says, the word of a mother to 
 her little one, nay, it is no word at all, it is herself, her 
 motherhood. 
 
 Little ones, it is no word I am bringing you when I 
 bring you to the breast of the Mother that aches with 
 inexpressible love for you. 
 
 AND to many a greater one, I can hear, as it were, 
 Her words: " Who are you that claim Me for 
 your Mother seeking the essential life, but would fain 
 keep you separate, shrinking from this, spurning at that, 
 desiring the other ? 
 
 "You do as a child, childishly. 
 " My life is bigger than this, it accepts, and understands, 
 and is whole. 
 
The Fellowship of the Earth 1 5 
 
 " When you are come into it and all things begin to be 
 yours, you will not be dismayed to find the ugly and the 
 sick, the bad and sad and mad are yours among the 
 rest ; for there will be that in you so antiseptic, vital and 
 sound you will know that nothing can neutralize or 
 extinguish it. 
 
 "Touching the body of corruption with your own flesh, 
 you will be neither disgusted nor afraid : you will not need 
 any longer to companion only with the beautiful and 
 pure, for now you are in My hfe you are become a 
 quickener of the dead and must seek whom you may 
 quicken, a purifier of the foul and must go down into the 
 mire that you may create beauty out of it. 
 
 " The life of man is a seed that must have the Earth to 
 die into, if ever it is to arise miraculously and come rejoic- 
 ing up into the sunlight. 
 
 " And when you are at last alive, you will accept all 
 with confidence : and Death too, will be acceptable to 
 you, and Love, which is as Death is: when you have 
 learnt how to accept, you will not be anxious any more 
 about Love and Death. 
 
 "Then, being anxious no more, you will stretch out 
 your hand over disorder, disease and fear ; you will 
 reach out your hand to those that dwell in them : you 
 will become one with them, hand in hand, and pour your 
 life into their veins and take their life to run in yours : 
 and you will be glad because of them, till your joy and 
 singing become theirs. 
 
 " Because you have life, they also shall live ; for you 
 are no longer afraid of the fear that holds them captive, 
 nor of the love that gives release." 
 
II. The Voice of Humanity 
 
 I HEARD the voice of Humanity saying : " When 
 you turn aside from cities and all the ways of 
 men — from their gardens, their orchards, their fields and 
 their thoughts — ^flinging yourself at last upon some 
 woodland floor to gaze into the drowsing movement of 
 the boughs and listen to the birds after the rain ; when 
 you turn away from cities to the wild, what is it you 
 are seeking ? 
 
 "My child, it is not solitude, it is fellowship that you 
 seek, to escape from men into the hfe of Man, whereof 
 the woods ever retain a part." 
 
 — The voice of Humanity saying : *' Look deep, O 
 child, into the eyes of the creatures ; seek through all 
 their tissues the soul of the green leaves ; through 
 their thick-hurrying notes the life of the birds, and 
 through Her answer to thy feet the meaning of the 
 Earth. 
 
 " Gaze, listen and search long, and thou shalt know at 
 last My face from all things answering to thine eyes. 
 My heart making reply to thine. 
 
 "And in that hour not alone shalt thou perceive Me 
 in wildernesses afar from men, out of their eyes also will 
 I answer thee, and thou shalt know My voice among 
 their words. 
 
 "Nay, out of thine own body, hidden from thee so 
 
 16 
 
The Voice of Humanity 17 
 
 long, shall the glory of My joy shine forth. With blank 
 face no more will thy skin greet thee, nor will thy mem- 
 bers any longer wantonly rebel or stupidly obey, but 
 all rejoicing together will endow thee with the mystery 
 that now thou seekest in the woods." 
 
 And I heard the voice of Humanity saying : " My 
 child, hast thou given thyself to Me ? Henceforward 
 thou shalt have no satisfaction but in Me. 
 
 " Henceforward there is that in thee that will not give 
 thee peace until thou give it back to Me. 
 
 " I do beset thee with desire of Me, for thee have I 
 desired and chosen. 
 
 " Whether among the bracken or among men, I will 
 come calling thee, and needs must thou make answer. 
 
 " I have given a new sweetness to thy life and a new 
 meaning, for I have made thee Mine. 
 
 "I have set a mark upon thee that all creatures know, 
 to love thee or to hate thee for My sake." 
 
 IT was a Sunday of a wild October storm, the trees 
 were swept, the rain streamed on the windows, 
 the smoke puffed baffled from the chimney throat. 
 
 But sitting by my fireside, turning away from words 
 and plans to seek the sources of life, quietness overtook 
 me : quietness wherein, after a long perplexity, I rested 
 and drew breath, over and over again, filling my spirit 
 with it, feeling the breadth of hfe, feeUng its mighty 
 principle within me. 
 
 And it was all about me as a divine fellowship, showing 
 me in a flash the need in the hearts of men, the hunger 
 
1 8 The Great Companions 
 
 that is their unrest ; hunger and need for something 
 necessary whereof as yet, I thought, they have no word 
 to tell its form, even unto themselves. 
 
 No word, only the dumb bewildered longing, groping, 
 clutching of bhnd hands for something they have not, 
 only pain, striving, wrath of unbelief, — the life in them 
 mere life's perplexity : every one offering to other this 
 or that thing for solace, but none, not one uttering 
 the word of quietness ! 
 
 And yet, if none were uttering it, how then should I 
 have heard ? 
 
 IT is as though, on wanderers' quests, over all the 
 wide face of the world and through every country 
 of thought, we had travelled and toiled, till we are 
 become well-versed in the various knowledge of things : 
 and now, here at home, there waits for us the best of 
 all : a knowledge that is not found in going to and fro, 
 such knowledge as a tree has of the Earth. 
 
 Now after much thinking and wide-searching, we may 
 find it here, and by a very narrow way : in a moment 
 of faith, gathering the life of all the soul up into single- 
 ness, and with that point piercing the shell of things, 
 breaking the surface to spread out and grow within the 
 Earth. 
 
 AND who shall sHght that knowledge ? 
 To live deep, where thought and sense do 
 not disturb, is to become master of them, to pass beyond 
 the pale of death, the questioning of immortaHty. 
 
 To gain that vantage-ground, to enter into that 
 place, is, in so far, to realize the victory towards which 
 
The Voice of Humanity ig 
 
 all strivings and desires reach forward ; to win some- 
 thing imperishable, inalienable henceforward from 
 humanity ; and what prize is better worth the quest ? 
 
 OTHERS, indeed, are pressing forward to claim 
 from the wilderness and the bog, now this, now 
 that new field for the service of Man : others are winning 
 back this criminal or that bUnd self-satisfied fool to 
 the full hfe of Humanity. 
 
 But we, we also, are we not pressing forward, winning 
 out of the unknown, fields for the feet of Man, fields for 
 his spiritual food ? 
 
 Into the darkness, perilously adventuring, are we 
 not catching ghmpses of Him who keeps the secret of 
 our soul ? 
 
 THINK how life -long the labourers toil, till broken 
 at last they are flung back into the earth where - 
 into went their toil, for you and me ! 
 
 Think of London, and how, street upon street for 
 leagues, without a wood or field, children are born for 
 labour and to die in shame, for you and me ! 
 
 How narrow, grey, meaningless seem their lives, 
 unless in your life and in mine the breadth and colour 
 and meaning be for them ! 
 
 Unless out of each day we dedicate, if only one stern 
 hour, to the toil of the soul, the conquest of thought, 
 the deepening of our consciousness for them who toil 
 for us ; that we who call us men may have our part 
 among the people. 
 
2 The Great Companions 
 
 BE not anxious about the body your love shall take : 
 but know that, when your Hfe is indeed become 
 love, it will take the body proper to its power, and 
 coming and going among mortals, it will make itself 
 known. 
 
 Let your mind and body be truly dedicate to Love, 
 so that all other motives may be dying out and being 
 forgotten, but Love ever increasing : till all your pur- 
 poses and thoughts and deeds find issue, as they had 
 their source, in the abiding life that men call " Love " 
 but God only, in whom it is perfect, knoweth its true 
 compass and is its name. 
 
 Choose nothing for yourself, but abide the choice of 
 Love : say nothing for an answer nor to fill up the 
 measures of silence, save as Love impels : so will your 
 life have judgment and much space in it ; its thoughts 
 and deeds will be sure. 
 
 Keep the feasts of the soul, lest you be ingulfed in 
 occupations and forget. 
 
 And though you may not turn aside out of the ways 
 of men, yet by weariless patience shall you find, even in 
 the midst of the press, spaces for solitude. Nay, and if 
 these be absent, yet, if you are ever seeking Love, He 
 will find you out in the midst ; He will not pass you by. 
 
 It is better to seek Him in the press, than going 
 aside into a solitude, to forget His signs and so mistake 
 His presence. Yea, even in your sohtude He will not 
 separate you from any, but will bring you into com- 
 munion with All. 
 
 Learn to wait upon Love in all matters of your life, 
 so that at last it be not you — the " you " you were — 
 but He — the you that is now come up into being — who 
 
The Voice of Humanity 2 i 
 
 acts and lives : for only so can you come into full 
 reality. 
 
 And being come thither, then all the old Hfe will live 
 again transfigured, whole, its meaning plain before you : 
 not one part only, surviving the destruction of the rest, 
 but the soul holding all in possession to use and to fulfil, 
 moving through life in the liberty of one that has its 
 secret, of one whose deeds are large and sure. 
 
III. Tree Life 
 
 THAT clump of aconites in the border — tight yellow 
 globes under the cloud, golden honeyed goblets 
 under the sun! 
 
 This hillside too — there is something here that opens 
 out its heart when the sun finds it, to hide it again in 
 the shadow. 
 
 No blossoms yet, nor leaves upon the birches : the 
 brakes are but the remnants of the year gone by, yet 
 when the sun is on them, already they rejoice ! 
 
 The doors of the cells stand wide, the pores of the 
 earth are open : everything forgets its past rejoicing 
 in the present. 
 
 Our hearts no longer can enfold and hide whatever 
 is within them : they open, yet timidly — for either they 
 were covering up some sorrow or some shame — but 
 " Rejoice ! " cries the sun and " Behold ! " he cries, 
 and they forget and look out. 
 
 Then he enters those chambers ; he covers up their 
 dead with life, and fills them with its fragrance. 
 
 He goes ; the cloud draws down again ; the petals 
 close themselves : but in the chamber is a change ; 
 its occupant is never quite so sad again once she has 
 
Tree Life 23 
 
 forgotten her sadness, opening her door to the February 
 sun. 
 
 EMBRACING Spirit ! Even as the springing plant 
 unto the air of summer, so would my heart 
 abandon itself to Thee ! 
 
 Yet would I be none other than myself, giving my- 
 self to Thee : from Thee I claim the fulness of my being. 
 
 Sometimes indeed, I deceive myself, demanding that 
 I be wholly converted out of this my self, and into Thee : 
 that I may altogether be quit of and abandon this 
 little me, and become the measureless wind I love, or 
 the all-flooding Light. " Poor Thing," say I, "it were 
 better for you to perish into that glory of air and sun ! 
 
 *' Little foolish nothing of a leaf, cease your bewil- 
 dered flutterings of effort, and sink again into the 
 universal earth : give up your being of an hour into the 
 immortal air." 
 
 Often, as may perchance a leaf on some great tree, I 
 become weary of my leafhood : and when the sap begins 
 to rise in the old trunk, flowing out along the branches, 
 invading my veins, I sigh, *' O Sap, divine hfe of me, 
 surely I myself am no separate leaf at all, surely I am 
 only what Thou art ! 
 
 "It is Thou art really I, for Thou art my very life. 
 
 " Let me know nothing but Thee : let all my hfe be 
 purely Thine ! " 
 
 Then for a moment I know nothing but the flowing 
 Sap, and it is I : but the wind comes a-calhng, and I 
 remember I am a leaf, without whom he could not 
 communicate his message to my tree. 
 
 Sometimes also, in my folly, I speak in this wise — 
 
24 The Great Companions 
 
 (and again I am as a leaf upon a tree whose flowers are 
 far apart and splendid, of whose rare blossoming we 
 speak together. We call the flowers by name, each 
 one as it were a god ; but for this branch of leaves or 
 that, there is one special flower which is its own) — 
 when the Sap, in its flowing, reaches me, I say, " Flower, 
 Flower, Flower ! though I see thee not now, yet am I 
 sure thou growest somewhere upon my tree, and art the 
 meaning and the glory of my tree ! 
 
 " Nothing am I unless I be joined to Thee, Heavenly 
 One ! Mere leaf that I am, I worship Thee. 
 
 ** There is a hfe in me that is for Thee : I would all 
 else of me might perish, and this alone might hve, that 
 wholly I might hve for Thee ! " 
 
 And again I cry : " O Flower ! I also might have 
 been as Thou — I that am stunted and thwarted and 
 become but a leaf, in whom the passion is bitter that in 
 thy nectaries is sweet, and bHnd the senses that look out 
 of thy bright face : — how long must I vainly cry for 
 this my leafhood to be changed to fulness such as 
 Thine ?/' 
 
 But sometimes — whether out of the morning-dews 
 or out of the heart of the Tree or of my own essential 
 leafhood, I know not — sometimes there come to me 
 sure pulsings of Earth-wisdom to content me with my 
 lot. 
 
 And the sap in my veins murmurs peace that is better 
 than promise, and I know it is good to be a leaf. 
 
 I know the tree is not for the flower, not yet the leaf 
 for the flower, but leaf and flower have their hfe, and 
 both together are for the tree. 
 
Tree Life 25 
 
 flUR God is like a Tree 
 
 Upon whose twigs we grew. 
 Knowing not it was He 
 The leafy summer through : 
 But now the Autumn gales 
 Blow, and our leafhood fails — 
 Our leafhood yet not We — 
 Soon shall it shrivelling fall: 
 Yet Winter slays not all — 
 Something lives on the Winter through. 
 Something upon whose twigs we grew : 
 While from its leafhood free 
 Our life withdraweth deep 
 Into the Earth to sleep : 
 — Oitr God is like a Tree. 
 
 UPON this world-old Tree, we are as leaves that in 
 the gales of Time flutter upon the branches that 
 endure, and share and feed the tree-Hfe. 
 
 In the season of Faith breaks the Tree into flower, 
 and aU the nurture treasured of old within the stock 
 into one blossom goes. 
 
 Surely such a blossom was Jesus the Christ, renewer 
 of Humanity, teller of the secret of Man — the secret 
 hidden save in His face of love. His life. His death, that 
 faUing of the impregnate seed back into earth for Man's 
 new birth of consciousness. 
 
 The season of Faith draws on again ; the old Tree 
 is about to bloom even as of old : the virtue in the sap 
 is moving, desire grows potent, and divine love flows 
 along the branches, stirring behind the leaves. 
 
2 6 The Great Companions 
 
 AND on this wise murmurs the Life within me : — 
 "Be not content with any experience or dis- 
 covery of yours until it bear fruit in the Tree, for 
 otherwise it is not yet your own. 
 
 '* Beware of praise, which is the same as misunder- 
 standing : but love is of the fellowship, even the love 
 of the foolish, and it is your life. 
 
 "Live in the midst where life is. 
 
 " Keep close as may be to the common lot, strong in 
 the stock of the great Tree : then in your season 
 shall you bear fruit therein, and renew its life in you. 
 
 " You are not for ever to remain a bearer only of leaves 
 that fall and decay ; but a bearer of fruit shall you be, 
 that after it is fallen springs up anew with increase." 
 
 FOR awhile I supposed it was this and this, but I 
 know now what it was I wanted, and I shall be 
 a fool if I give not all for That. 
 
 In That all else roots and forms, becomes alive and 
 has permanence : in That, Humanity has His being, 
 and we in Him : He is as a great Tree securely set in 
 That. 
 
 When I am aware of That then I live : between 
 whiles it is as though I only dreamed. 
 
 For That is much more than you or I : and its life 
 is more than ours. 
 
 When I fall out of That, and live only as of old, 
 then am I weary and desolate, as an exile far from 
 home. 
 
 But to awake in That, is to be come up anew into life : 
 to be doubly born. 
 
 By the mortal birth we begin to live, putting forth 
 
Tree Life 27 
 
 out of unconsciousness, as it were blossoms upon a tree, 
 craving they know not what of the sunshine. 
 
 But when their Hfe is fertihzed it forms anew within 
 them and thenceforward is secure, continuing though 
 the flowers perish, drawing nourishment awhile from 
 the tree, and at last, when it is fallen, out of the Earth 
 itself. 
 
 AS the seed-spirit grows, choosing from earth and 
 air its nourishment, taking of air and earth all 
 that it can embody, — so every soul, by faith. 
 
 Tiny and solitary, the soul is as a dead grain of dust, 
 till through the dumb world-walls that close it round, 
 its kindred call it in the awakening rain. 
 
 Then it discovers all about it kindly substances, and 
 feeds and feeds on them. 
 
 So, as it feeds, come all things : with perplexing 
 faces new and strange, they offer it themselves. 
 
 Slowly, and one by one, the master-soul greets all, 
 refusing none for ever, but taking each in season : till, 
 like the mustard seed, it builds a Tree whose roots clasp 
 round the Earth while all the stars twinkle between its 
 branches. 
 
 MARK how lithe are the trees, adventuring in the 
 gale that will perhaps reave presently a limb 
 away. 
 
 Mark the sea-men too, how free and noble a race, 
 or the mothers of many child-births. 
 
2 8 The Great Companions 
 
 And beware how you ensure yourself and those you 
 love against life and its perils ! 
 
 My heart, it is the heart of some good timber tree 
 
 That loves its place in the -fields or by the wayside set ; 
 
 Rain and sunshine it loves, but most the dear earth under. 
 
 MY heart is as the heart of the tree when the sea- 
 wind fills it with boding cries, rending its 
 branches, tugging up its roots, the very earth yielding 
 to let it go ; and the storm to a hurricane rising, with 
 deafening shout and roar as of an overwhelming ocean, 
 crashing comes to claim it. 
 
 My heart is as the tree's heart then, confused and 
 desolate, hating the sea, to its hold in the dear earth 
 chnging with innumerable torn and bleeding rootlets. 
 
 " My God ! My God ! " it cries, " Nourisher and 
 sustainer of my life, I will not yield my living hold on 
 Thee-! Let not the stormy fiend tear me away from 
 Thee ! " 
 
 I feel a still voice thrill among my chattering boughs 
 down even to my writhing roots, that says : " The 
 Sea, wherein there seems nor rest nor root is Mine : 
 there shalt thou swim and bathe thyself in Me ! " 
 
 My heart is as the tree's heart fain to grow securely 
 in ^ny place : but now the wind bids me prepare for 
 wandering and the new uses of strange adventure : 
 I must take the sea-ways: last of all I must be the 
 food of fire, ashes and smoke and flame. 
 
 And I rebel : I cry to Earth my God : till, chiding 
 
Tree Life 29 
 
 at my fears, a voice will say : " God is the living 
 Earth, the living Air : God is the living Sea : God 
 is the living Fire. 
 
 "As Earth thou trustest Him : trust thyself to the 
 Sea, as do all wanderers bidden forth of Him : yea, 
 to the fire, that would not hunger for thee did it not 
 love thee well ! 
 
 " Till, letting go thy flickering ashes and soft smoke 
 to blow into the wilds of space, thy spirit breathe the 
 breath of God again ! " 
 
 CAST loose unto the deep if you would know what 
 life is, life that consists in taking perils, not 
 eluding them, of mastering wind and wave, not riding 
 at an anchor. 
 
 You were not made for safe and silent waters : your 
 sails and sheets and timbers are for the shouting winds 
 and rhythmic billows. 
 
 Cast loose then, every inch of you was framed for 
 bold sea-faring ! 
 
 Ah, why now would you dally any longer ? Why 
 cling now any more — as though you were no ship, 
 but only some dead log — ^haunting these wharves and 
 jetties ? 
 
 I think you are still dreaming of your fields and 
 forests : still turning wistfully to them, still longing 
 for the dear earth in which so long you rooted. 
 
 Ha ! Ha ! Do you not hear the wind laugh ? Do 
 you not hear the waves a-calling you ? 
 
 They have a secret for you, if you will but go : out 
 beyond the breakwater they will tell you wonderful 
 things. 
 
30 The Great Companions 
 
 For now you belong out there : out there everything 
 will be telling you the new creature that you are. 
 
 NOW I will launch out into the sea, voyaging with 
 my sails, and going forth in faith from these 
 safe shores, these inland waters I have known. 
 
 I carry an Unknown Voyager whose errand I know 
 not, save that He crieth to me continually as I go, 
 " Have faith, httle brother ! Have faith ! " 
 
IV. The Coming of Man 
 
 I HEARD the wind blow out of the West, singing 
 the song of Democracy, crying to men over-sea 
 the challenge of Man. 
 
 O wind, crying deliverance, carrying the young 
 moon like a sickle of steel in your hand, I hear in your 
 breath the name that is in my heart, the name of Him 
 that is sure ! 
 
 Indifferent, across the innumerable years, and now 
 across the hurrying, quarrelling nations, you cry His 
 advent : and out of the eyes of men, with glancings 
 surer than steel, comes the answer of Him that 
 awakes. 
 
 Painfully, with bewilderment, out of long patience 
 and labour, in one and one, even now He awakes. 
 
 SoHtary and far-sundered are they, with unsatisfied 
 groping hands seeking about the world for their com- 
 rades : but when they hear you calling out of the West, 
 and see that white sickle of harvesting in your hand, 
 then know they one another. 
 
 You call, and at the touching of hands, the flashing 
 of eyes together, runs the thrill of some great life through- 
 out their being, shattering their separation into one 
 enorbing joy. 
 
 Beyond one another now they behold Man, the awful 
 One that was to be, who is at last awaking : and in 
 
 31 
 
32 The Great Companions 
 
 their hearts from West to East they hear you crying 
 defiance, death, and the loyalty of comrades. 
 
 SOMETIMES I am a man very busy with tasks, urged 
 on by duty or ambition, by this goad or by that, 
 or whole or sick, eager or weary : and sometimes, no 
 man at all : only and wholly, in my consciousness, 
 substance of the Body Divine, all that I do and am a 
 mystery. 
 
 WHEREFORE, it is not serving on committees 
 that I Hve my life, but going thither of an 
 evening, alone upon the road, under the full white 
 moon who walks among the clouds beyond the bowing 
 tree-tops, while all the little houses disappear into the 
 light she floods toward the West, filling the high- arched 
 heaven brim-full up to the stars : for then I remember 
 what I was forgetting : I come back face to face with 
 life again, and what we are. 
 
 Looking outward through mine eyes into that flood 
 of hght, I see my soul as in a glass reflected, infinite 
 as the stellar height, full as that river running toward 
 the West. 
 
 Gazing into the mystery there throbs within my 
 body the pulse of the unseen almighty Son of Man, 
 filling my world with worship. 
 
 WE are a band of comrades scattered over the 
 world, hardly seeing from so far one another's 
 faces, hardly reaching one another's hands : — 
 
 Yet are we inseparable, hvingly co-ordinate, one 
 Body, the Body of Thy^fellowship, O Thou, nameless, 
 
The Coming of Man 3 3 
 
 divine Companion, in Whom alone, we, scattered, 
 apart and each one separated to some task the others 
 cannot share, find our unfaiHng strength and our abiding 
 home. 
 
 Nay, Friend, Thou art not without a name among 
 those that meet in Thee, for each by some name pas- 
 sionately invokes Thee, Thou answering each. 
 
 Yet when we speak of Thee with one another, name- 
 less art Thou ; or if we name Thee, then is the name 
 but as our fancy's finger pointing at Thee. 
 
 But Thou no shadow art, no fancy ; Blood of our 
 Body, Soul of our Fellowship, so near so sure we need 
 no name for Thee ! 
 
 THUS sayest thou, Lord of Life : "I also, am as 
 a man, into the deep of things jetting mine 
 own electric will, begetting children. 
 
 " I also, am as a man : in every age, some have I taken 
 into solitudes — loving, and yet apart from men — chosen 
 to be my members of begetting, vehicles of my passion. 
 
 "Not children for themselves do they beget: but 
 through them, I, sowing effectual seed amid her clay, 
 cause the Earth to conceive of Me anew. 
 
 "Of old, prophets were they, and still they shall be 
 prophets : immortally their words bear life to them 
 that wait them. 
 
 " I also, am as a man, terrible fierce with life : like a 
 fiery sword, my chosen pierces the Unknown to procreate 
 sons of Mine. 
 
 " Unashamed shall he be, for he is Mine: undismayed 
 though seized by mad possession ; cruelly plunged 
 into the body of Fellowship with cleaving power to 
 
34 The Great Companions 
 
 break it, yea, to slay it by the birth of that which I 
 beget. 
 
 I also, am as a man ! O man, lonely, unsatisfied, 
 seeking still your place, dare you to find your mystic 
 place in Me ? " 
 
 " T, MAN, wanderer, stranger among the creatures — 
 
 A most among men a wanderer and a stranger — 
 out of your dreams awake. 
 
 " You were dreaming the old dreams that prove them- 
 selves true, that are true till I awake — dreams of use- 
 fulness, dreams of attainment to this end or that ; 
 selfish, unselfish dreams ; of days gone-by, of days 
 to-be — to you they were not dreams, they proved 
 themselves real — but I awake in you, I, Man. 
 
 '* At the turning of a page, at the coming of a woman 
 or a man, stranger or comrade seeming, but no more 
 a stranger or a comrade, suddenly, after so profound 
 a slumber that you knew not I was there asleep within 
 you, — I awake. 
 
 " I take your eyes, and look out through them on a 
 world you never saw, and laugh for joy. 
 
 " I take your eyes and look out upon your dreams, 
 and tell you they are dreams ; and give you, for a 
 moment, vision, taste, hearing, smell and touch of 
 verity. 
 
 " Yes, I awake — Man, ultimate verity, whose life 
 is not the dreamy life men live the while I sleep : whose 
 life wakes in the passionate love of comrades, men 
 and women, dying not when they die. 
 
 " I take your body, prepared of love ; and now. 
 
The Coming of Man 3 5 
 
 at the turning of a page, at the glancing of a lover— 
 now, for a moment only, I fill it with Myself. 
 
 " I wanderer, stranger, searching the worlds for ever 
 for My mate, now, for a moment only, dismissmg fear 
 from you, and heed of aught (they will return again 
 when you forget Me, though for a time, as unrest and 
 perplexity I haunt you, to return)— wakenmg you 
 from the memories, cares and hopes that are your 
 (li-eam— I, through your eyes behold Her. 
 
 "^Her, for a moment of eternal rapture, through you, 
 I love." 
 
 THE voice of the creatures that waken and cry : 
 " Who is there that will lead us into the way ? 
 —will bring us into the way that leads home ? " 
 
 The voice of one that crieth bidding them into the 
 way, the way of fellowship that is for their feet, the 
 way of fellowship that leads home :— 
 
 " /If AN is my name, and my spirit is free ; 
 ^^ Mine are the laws, and behold, I am free of 
 them. 
 Garments are they that I doff or I don. 
 Mine for my service or else I have done with them. 
 
 ''Are they my body ? Are they my breath ? 
 
 Are they my purpose that now they should hinder me ? 
 
 I am the maker and master of laws, 
 
 Man is my name, and my spirit is Liberty. 
 
 " Gods I beheld in my passionate dreams, 
 Gods I created, aspiring to deity/ 
 
36 The Great Companions 
 
 Let you go by or let you abide, 
 
 Man is my name, and the ages go over me. 
 
 " Past that is gone. Future to be, 
 
 Present of mine that transcends and embraces them, 
 
 Here in my flesh is the wonder divine. 
 
 Here in this body the spring of eternity. 
 
 " I am come up out of fear and desire, 
 Quick in my nostrils the breath of the Fellowship, 
 Out from mine eyes flash the forms that endure. 
 Throbs through my pulses the music that marshals 
 them. 
 
 " For I was meek, for I was 
 For I was penitent, hiimble and patient, 
 Therefore my heart is the heart of the Lord, 
 And I accomplish the joy of creation.'' 
 
V. The City 
 
 AS though they had never been young — dull-eyed, 
 disappointed, dreary — men and women go by 
 along the path before me. 
 
 But blithe and all adventure, their sons and their 
 daughters, eager-eyed, lovely-faced, woo one another, 
 as though they could never grow old. 
 
 THE Sunday crowds, this summer evening, fill 
 the streets with strange adventures for the 
 heart of a youth : after the restricted hours, a hundred 
 new companion faces, with beckoning glee and merry 
 eyes, and secrets in them to discover. 
 
 Laughing he passes, he guesses, he questions them : 
 laughing as they pass him by, they answer. 
 
 Till of a sudden, one, moving in a mystery ! her 
 eyes are bright with meaning, her lurking life through 
 all her dress bewilders him — she did not touch him, 
 but he felt her close : she did not speak, but she was 
 saying something — ah, now she is gone by ! 
 
 Going, she glances backward, and at the sign of her 
 he leaves himself to follow, follow into new seas 
 uncharted yet. 
 
 But she — she has not guessed her own Hfe's secret : 
 she does not know what is it that shines out through 
 all her flesh upon him. 
 
 37 
 
38 The Great Companions 
 
 The Sunday streets are grown adventurous to the 
 venturing heart of youth. 
 
 AS I went along the streets, I was bewildered by 
 the myriad faces. 
 
 There were many that passed by without a sign ; 
 but first one stranger, then another, would seem to 
 beckon or to challenge me, and I must needs turn 
 back to answer, till I was bewildered. 
 
 I was distraught because of the passers-by : why 
 should they so catch at me ? 
 
 The fierce and caressing glances were perhaps as 
 nothings ; but all that whispering of the innumerable 
 crowd bewildered me and shook my heart. 
 
 As I went through the thick of the faces I became 
 afraid of life itself, so multitudinous, vast and hostile, 
 so hard to be resisted. 
 
 That stohd stony London was all ahve ; on every 
 side I felt it touch and thrill me. 
 
 In the country there is room to be alone, and quiet 
 to consider in ; but in the city I was always beset by the 
 eyes and breath of them that toy with caged wild passions. 
 
 I grew afraid of the whirling, eddying currents, 
 sweeping along the narrow streets ; for through them 
 gleamed a wrath, thwarted, confined, shut in from 
 wide horizons, from the trees and the blowing of the 
 free night-winds. 
 
 As I walked I was aware of sinister dark shapes 
 lurking in byways, and horrible things haunting the 
 shadows ; in my own heart also, in its byways and 
 among its shadows, I could feel the same forms lurking, 
 haunting, so that I was bewildered and afraid. . . , 
 
The City 39 
 
 But now I am no longer to be dismayed because of 
 that river of faces, because of the signals and sugges- 
 tions of the passers-by. 
 
 Though they challenge and awaken in me a multitude 
 that is not I, I walk among them undismayed. 
 
 Vainly now they call me, idly frown and beckon ; 
 I am indifferent though they catch at me with wanton 
 fingers, for myself I am awake ; it is myself that makes 
 reply. 
 
 Now it is I that go forth with signal and with chal- 
 lenge, saying my word to all, confronting each to-day 
 with a glance from which now he in his turn, she in 
 hers, cannot escape. 
 
 WHEN I go up out of my sunny fields to the grey 
 City, wearily to inhale its heavy air, I cry to 
 myself, " 'Twas the devil that made London ! Here 
 are the gates of Hell, devourers of men ! " For very 
 lonely seem her iron streets to me, separating me from 
 my heart's desire. 
 
 In my cottage love abides ; thither from day to 
 day, to quicken my slow pulses, from comrades out of 
 every land and age, some message finds me. 
 
 Also, the sun is my companion on the hills, and the 
 winds of heaven : the woods speak with me, and the 
 little creatures in the fields, and I am free of the illimit- 
 able sky. 
 
 Yet sometimes, even to one whom the Earth has 
 blessed, and for whom the Great Fellowship stands 
 open, to him, also, comes the desire of London, grey- 
 robed, belov'd of men, sitting at her misty window 
 with words to speed and welcome. 
 
40 The Great Companions 
 
 Then I understand the loneliness of the fields ; I 
 long for the thick press of faces, the electric contact 
 of the crowd, the pregnant meeting of some stranger 
 in the streets, and all the stirring intercourse of men. 
 
 I grow deaf to the dear God of the fields : mine eyes 
 are dull : my soul shrivels away : though the sun 
 and wind are calHng me, passionately I cry " Give me 
 the life of men ! " 
 
 Eagerly, then, I come to you, grey-robed Lady ; 
 even health and assurance of heart are become less to 
 me than your gift. 
 
 And for that I must be where men and women gather, 
 in the streets, the shops, the clubs and taverns, the 
 theatres and parks and churches ; I must go with the 
 torrent of my kind, must be mixed with men, laughing, 
 despairing, lost in that resistless river. 
 
 In such hours, O grey City, I remember, wondering, 
 who made you long ago, impassioning you with fateful 
 love. 
 
 It was Man who begat you, his daughter, to be be- 
 loved for your high heart, for your imperious will, your 
 intense eyes, and quick drawn breath. 
 
 But now are you fallen sick, and there comes a sick- 
 ness into my heart with the love of you, and to dwell 
 with you is become an evil thing. 
 
 Wherefore, our Lady, we that love you, pray you 
 come away now and walk the fields ; you have kept 
 watch too long at your river window ; your bridal 
 gown is faded and grey ; is it not time you went on 
 holiday ? 
 
 Behold England, your garden ! how pleasantly it 
 lies, and for the sake of you how it lies lonely ! 
 
The City 41 
 
 Does not your heart hunger again for its remembered 
 brooks, its dewy meadows, its golden wide champaign, 
 its purple moors and mountains where once you were 
 a child ? Does not your body weary of its robe, and 
 long for flowers ? 
 
 Let your feet carry you out to the sweet places of 
 the grass where Mother Earth awaits you. 
 
 IT is good to the soul to walk on Hampstead Heath ! 
 I climb the ridge to the wide prospect, the 
 woody basin and far hills : then, through the living 
 wonder of a green world, by sandy trodden paths 
 descending, I put the high ridge between London and 
 my heart. 
 
 Here the bracken and the birches make me a welcome 
 as for some wanderer returned : and the breath of 
 the soil restores my troubled soul : underfoot, I feel 
 the dear earth soft with leaves, and the little dead 
 sheathings of leaves : my heart rejoices in the fine fili- 
 gree work of the tormentil, the bright drops on the 
 grasses, the bramble flowers, the defiant heather, the 
 sorrel and the sage, the mystical hints in the pale of 
 the birch boughs against the dark shades. 
 
 The glass -shards and the scattered papers seem a 
 very little thing, the boughs broken and the shouting 
 boys but little — for I breathe the eternal, the ineffable 
 subtlety of the blossoming hmes. 
 
 London, over yonder, is it your banks and ware- 
 houses, your slums and factories that you truly prize ? 
 Or is it perhaps this unforgettable grass, this smell of 
 the earth, these songs among the leaves ? 
 
42 The Great Companions 
 
 O after all, the skylark nests within your heart ; 
 and though you may be speaking falsehoods, yet 
 do you love the truth : though to-day, even here in 
 these free groves, trampling, slaying and destroying, 
 you blaspheme the eternal, yet are you come of the 
 Earth, and even here, out of the Earth shall you re- 
 member and learn worship, O daughter of the Earth. 
 
 She has patience, and her children fail her not at 
 last. 
 
 The grasshoppers will return to their ancient play- 
 grounds, with joy and love, laughter of children and 
 desire of youth, daring of manhood and divine assurance 
 of old age. 
 
 Then why should I lament you, fir-trees on the 
 knoll, though to-day the smoke is slaying you ? To 
 your places, when the smoke is passed you shall return, 
 lifting your wonderful heads against the windy sky! 
 Already I can almost hear the squirrels and the rabbits 
 coming back, with fine sallies of tree-laughter and 
 moonlight mirth bringing the good days in, the evil 
 days forgot. 
 
 A promise fills my heart when I walk on Hampstead 
 Heath, with this divine tree-quiet, this immortal wind- 
 murmur, this abiding Earth-peace, beyond and under 
 all. 
 
 I SEEM to see the gentlemen of England white upon 
 the field of their national game : but alas, it is 
 not now, in my sight, a wicket against which they 
 play : I see a Cross — or is it three set up together — 
 a Son of Man still hanging in the midst. 
 The others do not see : it stands far enough from 
 
The City 43 
 
 the bowler to make him a fair mark ; the batsman's 
 back is turned ; the eyes of the wicket-keeper are 
 upon the game ; he is well-gloved, and though he 
 stump the batsman he will never notice there is blood 
 upon the bails, or I think he must cry out unmannerly 
 and interrupt the game. 
 
 That red thing they are bowling with and buffeting, 
 I can see now well enough why it is such a sullen red : 
 but the players do not see : as of old, they have chosen 
 a mark, how should they perceive that the times are 
 altered, or recognize for Golgotha the place in which 
 they stand ? 
 
 Yesterday, indeed, good humour and poUteness 
 and the playing of the game seemed excellent things : 
 but to-day, the great words are being spoken, to be a 
 man, a woman, is what they demand. 
 
 The day is come, but they go on playing : for yonder 
 mark will serve : they cannot feel in their white hands 
 while they bandy it, the throb of that fierce human 
 heart, eager to be buffeted and broken if needs be, 
 for the making of liberty and justice — is it not indeed 
 the heart of a god ? — but they use it merely to make 
 runs ! 
 
 Let them play on ! but the day is come, and with 
 it work to be doing that our hands ache for : to-day 
 at last, we shall spend our blood ! 
 
 For the red flag is flying, the pass-words are chosen, 
 the revolution has commenced : but, since it is no 
 game of battles, the gentlemen-warriors do not notice 
 it : no, no ! this is no game of battles ! 
 
 It is a new creation, the living labour of true men 
 and women, comrades ; who are disentangled from 
 
44 The Great Companions 
 
 the fabric of good society, and are not beholden to its 
 lords : comrades, for whom the others are become as 
 pitiful shadows of the Past, playing their fooHsh shadowy 
 game amid the morning breezes and the awakened 
 grass. 
 
 OUT from our labour, from the narrow streets, 
 laughing and singing, we troop into the free 
 fields, we, the people. 
 
 It is May month : here in the dusk, breathes for us 
 the world's forgotten wonder, that our hearts, kindling 
 together as they meet, again discover. 
 
 Other meetings are in the town, their windows closed 
 against the noisy street, brimful of words : praising 
 some sage and changeless Past, telling over again some 
 cherished legend of ventures well-approved and hopes 
 secure now, with loud congratulations. 
 
 But here, in the sweet Spring air, under the haw- 
 thorns there is another Voice abroad : " Forward ! " 
 the wonder bids, to ever-new adventures, perilous 
 hopes : strange eyes are kindling here, strange hands 
 grasping each other for the future. 
 
 Nor strangers only, nor only here under the fragrant 
 boughs : but ever3rwhere to-night. Faith moves among 
 the people ; hands, reaching out, find a new comrade- 
 ship ; old memories bud with promise ; into our circle 
 out of all the ages come the Great Companions. 
 
VII. One of London's Lovers 
 
 To Ben Kirkman Gray. 
 
 E was knotty timber, intricate of fibre, and stern 
 
 H 
 
 made ; good for the fire once he was kindled. 
 
 I can see him still as on some winter's night, against 
 the friendly blaze ; now this way and now that, be- 
 wilderingly he thrusts the searching point of his swift 
 thought, with mischievous delight. 
 
 I see him in the fields, the light about him, surrounded 
 by the flowers in the deep grass, worshipping as a 
 lover before the daily beauty of the Earth. 
 
 Again, alone in the wet gale, grapphng his task, 
 hatless, determined, chin stubbornly set, eyes big and 
 deep under his brow ; short, compact, I see him stride, 
 with clenching fists, enduring in the fight. 
 
 SUCH a man, I suppose, walked once the Athenian 
 ways, fierce of brain, vehement, relentless, kind : 
 ever-young questioner of all ; lover of men ; cherishing 
 in his breast a late-maturing passion, an age-enkindling 
 flame. 
 
 Old Questioner ! how many questions are we not 
 fain to ask you ! Could we but catch, O Socrates, 
 even to-day, the secret of that passion that glows so 
 red among your words ! 
 
 And he, my friend, knotty and slow of growth, con- 
 
 45 
 
46 The Great Companions 
 
 tinuing yet to grow, sprang from the root of you, im- 
 passioned still as by some primal prophecy out of the 
 constant Earth. 
 
 SEE him, and guess what word it is that hangs upon 
 his lips, shoots from his eyes and throbs within 
 his brow ! 
 
 What is it that he sees behind those pages : whose 
 is the face that from the ranked statistics, looks out 
 and answers with unspeakable gaze ? 
 
 Walking the hills beside him, guess what is 't the 
 trees are telling him, and what the wind declares, 
 what truth it is the Earth is certifying to him, lover of 
 Her and truth. 
 
 IF you were to go down into the Dorset village where 
 he was born, now, after five and forty years, per- 
 haps the little manse might say over again for you the 
 secret spoken in it then, but though you heard it, would 
 you understand what even he was long in understanding? 
 
 For he was knotty timber of the Earth and slow of 
 growth. 
 
 It was not indeed for nothing he was bred a country 
 lad, learning the gloom and the clear of the sky, adven- 
 turing in green fields where run bright brooks among 
 the king-cups ; crouching under the twisted thorn 
 with all the gale about him, becoming at night familiar 
 with the stars. 
 
 At home with the earth-creatures, a child of the 
 Earth, never was he to wander out of Her wisdom, 
 though he should walk the streets, noisy and deep and 
 hard. 
 
One of London's Lovers 47 
 
 HE received Her secret and was nourished of the 
 Earth, but could not understand. 
 
 No, when he came to London, to take up his lonely 
 life, his uncongenial task, plodding thither and back 
 and forcing his brain to plod while there awakened in 
 him the fierce thirst for knowledge — he might not 
 understand the word that hid within his breast. 
 
 Bitterly, but not vainly then he fought for knowledge, 
 and for self-knowledge, pacing the noisy streets, through 
 those long years before he understood, or any understood 
 him. 
 
 Lonely, hungry and proud, the heart of the young 
 man cried, " Very well, you world ! you shall never 
 understand me ! " 
 
 He would have hidden himself afar, like a sick wild 
 creature, perishing solitary, unseen, in his dark rage. 
 
 BUT when he went into the fields, the eternal love- 
 liness of Nature wooed him ; and Love, wounded 
 by his fierce pride, bade, all night long the stars reprove 
 him, till, with new eyes, he should discern the sympathy 
 of those that shared perplexed, the struggle of his being, 
 inseparable from his life. 
 
 So, coming up to manhood, he began to love now one 
 and now another, and presently, the people. 
 
 THEN not for nothing he recalled his childish fear, 
 nightmare of dreadful flight from an inexorable 
 hunter — the bland doors of the workhouse waiting, 
 waiting. 
 
 But now for other than himself he dreaded them, 
 that loomed up ever blander, ever vaster, before their 
 
48 The Great Companions 
 
 hopeless quarry, lording it over the foolish city, doors 
 of the huge hold of that werewolf, infidelity. 
 
 Confronting them, his fear gave place to wrath against 
 the barren industry, the stupid satisfactions, ineffectual 
 discontents of men. 
 
 A fire was kindling in him : as on a hearth, with 
 sacred care, he nursed its smoke-encumbered flame 
 
 WRATH deepened into passion. 
 Year after year, brooding within his heart 
 and pent behind his hps, the purpose gathered, waiting 
 its time for speech. 
 
 He sought in the churches whether there were some 
 place, whence, ringing through the rafters of the past, 
 its challenge might arouse the warrior, Faith. 
 
 No place for it he found, but seeking there, if he 
 found pious foes, he won brave comrades — labourers, 
 artisans, young men and women questioning life, who, 
 if they scarcely savoured the too subtle substance of 
 his thought, caught from his face the promise of a task 
 full worthy manhood. 
 
 Also, a wanderer emerging from his loneliness, he 
 found a mate to match his eager heart, assure him 
 through impatience, quicken the fire and bring that 
 great word forth. 
 
 REBEL against the callow loves and easy moods 
 of men, his sudden-blazing manhood flashed 
 its truth out at a look, a word, stabbing the false thing 
 through with the white scorn of its relentless Hght : 
 his rough prophetic wrath fed by the passionate tender- 
 ness that filled his soul. 
 
One of London's Lovers 4 9 
 
 For now, whole-hearted, his manhood was become 
 the lover of a City, and she in bonds, in the toils of the 
 great hunter. 
 
 London, that has forgotten her hope, sad, beautiful 
 daughter of Earth — to Her he had given his heart. 
 
 He knew what joy was lost among the trodden human 
 grasses of her fields, and what ineffable fruit should 
 hang on her bare ominous tree : for the wise Earth 
 had told him. 
 
 LONDON, a hving soul ! 
 It was not for her past nor for her shows he 
 loved her — save as they shone in the eyes of her gutter- 
 brood a-dance about the organ-man ; or of her sweated 
 seamstress, wrapped in some poor linen and the glory 
 ai her first motherhood ; or of some hungry dreamer 
 of great dreams, — in such he saw her face, her tragic 
 face, all dim with evil things, London, the passion of 
 his life. 
 
 Ever more royally, for love of her, he entertained 
 that god-Hke guest, mocker of meanness and rebuker 
 of kings, wrath that is also laughter. 
 
 Ever henceforward was he at labour for her ; by 
 day and night devising how he might rouse up Faith, 
 and waken her, sad Titaness, with words of Liberty 
 sprung out of her own fair desolate long-unvisited 
 fields, and they might welcome her, returning. 
 
 SHE shall return ! yes, though the bonds thicken 
 about her, and his voice cry out no more. 
 Was it for nothing he was born a country lad to 
 
 D 
 
50 The Great Companions 
 
 know the gloom and the clear of the sky ? For nothing 
 he won knowledge, for nothing he learned love ? 
 
 Was it in vain he saw her face, and knew in that 
 sad face the beauty men may die for and not die — the 
 purpose of the ages ? 
 
 But his was timber for the undying fire. 
 
 His passion made him one with the sure will of Life : 
 grown potent by his love, he died amid creative hopes, 
 imperishable and triumphant. 
 
 Sadly I came out of his vacant house, when lo, a 
 red flag flying : a wrathful, challenging flag of flame 
 that flaunted in the breeze and cried, blithe but defiant, 
 as it were he, my friend. 
 
 FRIEND, friend ! You would not let us be content 
 with any aims of ours : you kept before us, your 
 keen eyes saw it well, an aim that was better than 
 they. 
 
 You would not be satisfied : and because of you, we 
 were ashamed to find our satisfaction in achievements 
 still unreal, achievements that accomphsh nothing of 
 the Task that Man was made for — Liberty — the carrying 
 captivity captive, and letting the oppressed go free. 
 
 That Task always before you, near and vociferous 
 as the London street, but ultimate and endless as 
 creation — proving it yours to do, you loved it, friend, 
 and now shall death prevent you ? 
 
 No, for I feel you call us comradely that we relinquish 
 other aims, tackHng the task subhme reserved for manly 
 comrades, winning our life and death together with 
 you. 
 
VII. Pioneers 
 A Mechanic. 
 
 A MECHANIC, wearing a muffler and dirty white 
 jersey, with round boy's face full of the pleasure 
 of life, he sat opposite me in the railway carriage eager 
 to talk. 
 
 He told with relish all the details of his stories, the 
 names of his favourite pubs, where he called on his 
 long Sunday tramps — " Walking is a hobby of mine," 
 says he : — and just how it was he paid out the officer 
 who had bulHed him in the ranks, his blue eyes shone 
 with glee as he told me. 
 
 He lives two hours from work, but no sooner is he 
 home at night and washed and cleaned up after supper, 
 than off he sets again to meet some friend. 
 
 He spoke well, his thoughts finding the right words 
 and enjoying them ; and when we shook hands at my 
 station, I knew him for a good friend at need, and I 
 can still see his boy's face, and feel the great pleasure 
 his life was giving him, yes, even the telling it to a 
 stranger. 
 
 Honest Robin. 
 
 HE is so frank a fellow he thinks shame of hiding 
 up his heart. Glad in his youth, he vests in 
 green. 
 
 61 
 
52 The Great Companions 
 
 Thoughtful and red as a berry is his mouth, his grey 
 Scots eyes quiet and comradely. 
 
 Brown-legged, Hght-shod, carrying his spade, heroic 
 through the sunshine, he swings along our open street 
 indifferent to the jeering lads. 
 
 When Robin loves, open and downrightly he proffers 
 all his manhood and proclaims it : with divine gesture, 
 he defies the lords and commonalty : " Faith," says 
 he, " is bond for honest comrades ; other, means 
 treachery and misdoubting : what for is Liberty if not 
 for Love ? " 
 
 A Woman. 
 
 GENEROUS is she and wise : unmarried she has 
 made her home in life with the well- married 
 women, mothers of many children. 
 
 Out of her broad, deep breast comes the sea-wind 
 of great laughter : her eyes look keenly, kindly, they 
 search and turn not aside. 
 
 Women and men are equally her comrades, the 
 younger call her Mother, for she loves all that lives. 
 
 Music she makes, she writes, of every art she is a 
 craftsman, but chiefly of the highest that rounds all, 
 fellowship ; which, as the sun when he is risen does 
 outshine the moon his fair vice-regent, so outshines 
 pale white religion. 
 
 A Preacher. 
 
 AFTER the singing was done, he stood up silent, 
 looking upon the people. Rank upon rank, as 
 type upon a page he conned them, All the faces 
 
Pioneers 5 3 
 
 were as words, but as he ran his eyes over the page, it 
 was not them he heeded, but again, again as so often 
 before, a single mystic question that leapt to greet him 
 from among them all. 
 
 Then to his lips, that let them pass as though with 
 careful choice, the words responding came ; strange 
 simple words, gathered in many fields, following one 
 another in a solemn dance, sure-footed rhythmical 
 and sacred all ; yet all, as it were unheeded of his brain, 
 from his lips issuing to their purpose, obedient to their 
 choice. 
 
 Under his deep-enkindled eyes the people sat ; they 
 heard but did not understand him, and he, he heeded 
 not whether they understood or heard his voice. 
 
 Intent upon his answer, straight he stood, slender 
 in his black coat buttoned across his breast, stretching 
 his long arms out as if to them, yet as if not to them, 
 but to some One among their many that he knew, with 
 Whom alone he spoke. 
 
 He spoke as to a friend who understands, but simply ; 
 he spoke as looking into his child-friend's face sure of 
 response there ; he stretched his arms to meet the 
 child's embrace. 
 
 The people made no answer ; they shuffled in their 
 chairs ; they smiled at his tight-buttoned coat, at the 
 freckles upon his nose, at his stiffly stretched out arms, 
 and his quaint careful words that sang as they came 
 slowly from his Hps ; the people smiled, they did not 
 understand, not one of them stretched out his arms in 
 answer. 
 
 Looking upon them all what did he see ? 
 
 From behind their faces looking out, from behind 
 
54 The Great Companions 
 
 those quizzically smiling lips and eyes, the divine dear 
 infant face, the still-unconscious Soul watching him 
 with its truth-compelhng gaze. 
 
 So, as a mother to her little babe, yea, as Madonna 
 to the Blessed One, he spoke his sweet strange crooning 
 mystic words. 
 
 The Waif. 
 
 THOUGH I be but a helpless little soul on whom 
 the world frowns, pursing up its lips and whis- 
 pering serpent words, yet hath God given me joy, even 
 with this my body. 
 
 And he hath given me childish words of praise to 
 Him, because He filled you so with love you opened 
 wide your hearts to me, fatherless, motherless, bodiless 
 waif of the night, and made me sharer in His joy and 
 yours. 
 
 A Child. 
 
 HE is not four years old, but out of his clear eyes — 
 as from far sunset heights where the blue rises 
 to meet the stars — out of his clear child's eyes the 
 Timeless One looks love upon his world. 
 
 Very wise are his eyes, candid and pure, because for 
 his begetting Love took up in His creative hands two 
 living souls, tearing them from the places where they 
 stood, and in the world's sight wedding them together. 
 
 Him, august, the world saw not, but the woman 
 and the man it saw. 
 
 It saw their empty places, their broken pledges, the 
 
Pioneers 5 5 
 
 marred forsaken hearths that they had left : it saw 
 and cursed them. 
 
 But Love amid their wonder said, " World, you 
 shall misunderstand no longer ! Behold, I wrought this 
 handiwork for you." 
 
 Then from the bodies of those two came forth a Child 
 that seemed none other now than Love Himself ; to 
 whom the old world — ashamed of its poor cursing — holds 
 longingly out its foolish eager hands. 
 
 And the child smiling comes. 
 
 The Alchemist. 
 
 BEHOLD this man ; beset in boyhood by ineffectual 
 passions, rathe, unripe and bitter-sweet, loves 
 whose appeal was only to be met by mocking laughter, 
 rude rebuffs : haunted in manhood by a dull red heat 
 that gave no light but instead the smoking darkness 
 of a passionate uncertainty : a stirring of dread loves, 
 wild hopes too near to madness, too hardly captured 
 from the impossible regions of sin or death or dream, 
 wantonly to be pursued any more, waywardly now to 
 be cherished, or continued as by the fond extravagance 
 of young folly out of hfe's sacred store. 
 
 Now, gathering together at last all the smoking 
 brands and blind coals of his being, and withdrawing 
 them into the innermost chambers, covering them 
 there close as in a furnace, containing there, within, the 
 fierceness of their heat and quickening it with his 
 breath ; he — the only alchemist, the creator of some 
 final and most precious substance — out of the dross of 
 sin and acid of pain, out of the ashes and cinders of 
 
56 The Great Companions 
 
 dead abandoned pleasures, out of the complex con- 
 glomerate of his experience concentrated here by the 
 fire in this closed still chamber, educes at the last 
 enduring joy. 
 
 The Begetter. 
 
 THE will and urge of Love divine enough — the 
 passion of manhood sure and ripe enough — he 
 knows who thrusts his prayer so deep into the secret 
 place as there to awaken the dreaming potency, the 
 uncreated life, and bid it forth, out of its blind recesses 
 in the unconscious woman-womb of chaos, into the 
 world of men. 
 
 Dark, dread that passage and adventure : he commits 
 himself wholly to it, perishing save for its issue. 
 
 Taking the protest of institutions, breasting the laws 
 of accompHshed order, single he stands, naked, alone, 
 unblushing, conscious that from his loins leaps the new 
 impulse — springs the new Humanity. 
 
 The secrets of the future, that wait darkling in the 
 abysmal treasury of the Earth until some soul dares 
 claim them, only for him come forth. 
 
 To Edward Carpenter. 
 
 TO you, comrade, my heart goes with its greeting, 
 because while others were perplexing me, bidding 
 me here or there with passionate importunity, you with 
 those wise deep quiet eyes I feel upon me ever as from 
 the eternal places watching me — say to me only " Life, 
 life, Ufe, Hfe, life ! " 
 
 Running hither and thither, searching and eager, I 
 
Pioneers 5 7 
 
 heard your voice and remembered : pausing and finding 
 its place, my heart brings you its greeting. 
 
 A Face. 
 
 " ^TT^HERE is that in me I do not understand, — is 
 X there not that in you, striving to utter itself ? 
 
 It has made a perplexity of my life from its beginning ; 
 it has taken me into dark paths, seeking now this way 
 and now that for its expression, overburdening body 
 and mind with its desire. 
 
 Till to-day it is a great passion, a god, that holding 
 me like a reed between his fingers breathes into me sweet 
 notes, that I vibrate from head to foot and feel my body 
 changing at each breath. 
 
 For this one, now for that, stranger or comrade, 
 present or to come, he plays, taking me up and setting 
 me aside at his good pleasure. 
 
 But O, his breath is Hke a flame ! 
 
 Nameless One ! this way and that from Thine in- 
 expressible burden have I besought deliverance, but 
 in vain. 
 
 Perhaps after all, I am destined silently to endure, 
 till I myself, through all my flesh, through every thought 
 and deed, through all I am, utter at last and be that 
 measureless vast life which, like a flame, within my 
 body at Thy presence kindles, O immortal Thou ! " 
 
VIII. Love's Body 
 
 I SEE one in whom Love dwells. 
 His body is as the Hght that shines : his body is 
 swift and clear. 
 
 Perfectly wrought is it of bone and ligament, of fibres 
 subtle as silk and quintessential blood and wise firm 
 flesh, all like a tempered bell unto his purpose sounding. 
 
 Disease, lust, tyranny, have no dwelling in him, nor 
 discontent ; but as life bids, he acts ; and life in him is 
 godhood, knowing its will and that its fruit is good, and 
 well content awaiting it. 
 
 And I saw the Great Fellowship — the fellowship of 
 the Divine People — how it impassions those strong shining 
 ones, coals of pure fierceness burning together, one white 
 undying flame. 
 
 Then I remembered how Walt Whitman, when his 
 people was responding to war's wild challenge, his soul 
 responding also, made oath and answer for himself in 
 solemn words, to build his body up into an altar that 
 should sustain that changeless fire. 
 
 And now — his outer body broken, shattered, dead, — 
 the inner, one and constant — I see him stand, holding 
 his beacon high above the clouds of Time, not for 
 America alone, but as a sign to every nation : — a man 
 responsive to Love's lightest breath, a man for Love's 
 most fierce demand, patient, enduring. 
 
 58 
 
Love's Body 59 
 
 HE heralds the new days when comradeship shall be 
 established among men, and Man the Divine 
 Being, shall awake in them and rule. 
 
 When, beholding Love no longer as though bound and 
 blinded amid the jealousies and lusts of lovers, but as 
 He truly is, we shall misunderstand our passion no more, 
 but to us it will be sacred, reverent, immortal, not to be 
 refused. 
 
 Nor shall we miss any longer the wondrous uses of 
 the bodies of His dwelling, the symbols of His mystery, 
 but enter through them into His dehght. 
 
 AND even now that day begins to break : wherefore, 
 do you, dear body, my companion, remain no 
 more without the Fellowship, keeping my soul divided ; 
 but when my heart runs forward, praising and acclaiming 
 as its own that free life of Love, do you consent thereto 
 making one voice with mine. 
 
 Hold me not back any more out of that life which I 
 would share : retain me no more within the clinging web 
 of your sensations. 
 
 For you yourself declare it is not your own pleasure 
 that will satisfy you, nor even your renewal again and 
 yet again : but that in the mystery of our companionship, 
 and its obscure necessities. Humanity should find an 
 answer to the ancient riddle of the Earth, and there- 
 with our enfranchisement. 
 
 ON my side also, I will be faithful, for wherever I 
 have arrived it is in you, my body ; it is you that 
 have brought me hither to all I know, and I have hardly 
 yet begun to understand your worth. 
 
6o The Great Companions 
 
 You, body, were from the beginning, and are until the 
 end, responsive to every need : — reHgion, politics and 
 whatever men discuss, arose in you to be settled there : 
 the more profound and sacred, the more deeply involved. 
 
 The reaUties of God and Man and the fragrant passion 
 of Love, are flowers that could not bloom for us unless 
 they were securely rooted in your flesh : art, worship 
 and philanthropy are vain notions, mere pastimes for 
 the polite, unless they arise out of the impulse of that 
 passion which you alone can harbour and communicate. 
 
 You are the vehicle of the soul, and not until the body 
 of a man is become as sacred and as beautiful to us as 
 the body of a woman, his loins as significant of religion 
 as her womb and breasts, and the junction of their bodies 
 the very sacrament of the mysteries, not until then can 
 life become again for us potent and clean and sweet. 
 
 For passion is the gift of God, and the seed of the 
 divine Hfe is sown by it in you : you are the place of Love's 
 indwelling, the vessel of Love's communion, the meeting- 
 house for worshippers, the soul's companion from whom 
 she must not part until you have unlocked the gates of 
 hberty, and breathed the spirit of aeonian life. 
 
 WHEREFORE I made this song for my body : 
 " Body, I cannot think that yon were horn 
 Merely to he my raiment, till, outworn, 
 I fling you down to perish i7i the mire ; 
 Rather you seem the flesh of some desire 
 Elder than I, and mystical to me : 
 You were not wrought so wondrous well to he 
 The creature of my fancy ; you are part 
 Of that Eternal Being at whose heart 
 
Love's Body 6i 
 
 The infinite pure 'purpose of the Earth 
 Waits, until Man himself shall come to birth." 
 
 THEN answering me, my body said : " Brother, I 
 am not separate, as may appear, a being com- 
 plete in myself, but one of many and a member of all. 
 
 "Wherefore, cause me not to live apart and soHtary, 
 but give me to the dear contact of Earth and of my 
 fellows, and to the Hving air and sun, that so I may 
 come to utter all I know. 
 
 " Apart I cannot tell it, but I am capable of things you 
 do not dream of. 
 
 " When you shall give me to my proper task and labour, 
 toiling, rejoicing, suffering in the hfe of all my kind, I 
 will communicate my secret to you. 
 
 " For then I shall be as a leaf of the Great Tree to whom 
 the blowing winds give speech, and in my words the 
 wisdom of the commerce between earth and sky. 
 
 " As yet I am but dumb : for you are still with- 
 holding me, for purposes that are but as ignorance 
 and folly, from the labours that endure." 
 
 IN no book is it written, but deep within the body if 
 one might read, in each heart's longing of un- 
 uttered prayer is hid hfe's secret. 
 
 Creator, Who, in the purpose of my life dwellest as 
 in a temple — Almighty God, Who boldest each life's 
 destiny hidden and safe from it, safe, safe within it — very 
 self of itself, spiritual core of flesh — O, sacred, universal 
 and ineffable Me, source of each life and most for me of 
 
62 The Great Companions 
 
 mine, purpose and guide of all — here, now, seeking my 
 self, my work, my destiny, hungering for the soul's 
 bread of fellowship, O God, I come to Thee ! 
 
 Within, I feel Thy purpose moulding me still, as in all 
 the immeasurable past, patiently, sternly, surely, to 
 mine unconscious thought. Fearless, I yield my body 
 and mind to Thee for Thy creating : I take Thy will : I 
 have no other being. 
 
 I AM grateful, O wise Love, for my path before me, 
 for the task that opens ever to my hand, for the 
 kindhng of the eternal flame : but I pray Thee give me 
 yet another gift : that I go not sohtary on my way, 
 labouring alone ! 
 
 Give me, O my God, my share in Thee ! 
 
 Let me sometimes feel about me the enkindling power 
 of Thy creating ! Let me sometimes lose my self and 
 my task in Thine : let me find my home in all that is 
 not me ! 
 
 AGAIN, these are the words of a mortal, longing for 
 the immortal Lover : 
 " Behold now, and look upon me. Thou that loves t 
 me : for O I am weary of my virginity : what is this my 
 maidenhood but a barren field. 
 
 " It bringeth forth, it bringeth forth, but it is not 
 fruit : O I am weary of my virginity. 
 
 " I have no beauty that Thou shouldst desire me, O 
 
Love's Body 63 
 
 Lord of Life, but I long after Thee : surely when I was 
 being conceived I beheld Thy face, wherefore I am un- 
 satisfied because of Thee : O whither have I strayed 
 that I behold thee now no more ? 
 
 " I am lost : I walk among dreams : my soul sleepeth 
 till thou awake her : — Lord, O my Lord, how long ? " 
 
 " TJELOVED, I praise Thee for the love with which 
 
 J3 Thou dost encompass me ! O wise lover, thou 
 art very patient with the slow maturing of my love. 
 
 "Thou knowest the ways of life and why I am not ready 
 yet for Thy avowal : I know not, only I know I am not 
 ready — eager to-day for Thee, to-morrow barren of 
 desire, indifferent to Thee — again utterly perplexed by 
 mine inconstant girlish heart ! 
 
 " Thou knowest, O patient and wise Lover, thou 
 knowest, and my poor heart blesses thee. 
 
 " I too, impatient though I be, am I not patient ? " 
 
 " /^ LOVE, my God, that I might give body to Thee, 
 
 V^ substance tangible to the hearts of men ! 
 
 " Long enough have I played at personation, now that 
 I might be He whom I worship, yea for I shall be He ! 
 
 "Not merely to some belov'd one offering, but enter- 
 taining the Divine Life within, that burns and blazes forth 
 on all, a lover in whom Love abides. 
 
 " Come Love ! Thou art not my God, abiding not in 
 me ! 
 
 " This conscious being of mine is all too good for him 
 that dwells therein, is capable and worthy even of Thee. 
 
 " Abandoning my claim on it and all, I am come 
 at last to Thee, 
 
64 The Great Companions 
 
 "I am come at last to the door I cannot pass, so narrow 
 it is and low ; I behold, on the farther side, my proper 
 life, and pass I will. 
 
 " If I am very patient, humble and eager, then shall I 
 pass through, even as a child that passes the door of 
 birth, even as one that passes through death's door." 
 
 " TJ ELOVED, who art nearer me than aught, mysteri- 
 
 J3 ous invisible Being, whom with deep breaths 
 and worship I perceive, as an infant feels the mother- 
 presence near, — Beloved, do I wrong Thee saying 
 ' God ' ? 
 
 " Behold, I long, ah foohshly I long, to know thy name, 
 to see thy face, to hear thy voice : yet when I know Thee 
 near, I have no care even for these, only my thought, 
 my brain, cries out if it might serve Thee. 
 
 " See, yonder is a man whose words are all afire with 
 love ; like burning coals out of the engine-draught 
 they fall, enkindling the dry ground, blown recklessly 
 up aloft, outbreathed from a fierce furnace of inspired 
 dehght that heeds them not, fierily whirling on its 
 way. 
 
 "Yea, and such urging fire even in me. Thou art, that 
 with deep breaths and wondering gusts of prayer I feed 
 and fan. 
 
 " And these poor words I scatter are the rattHng hail 
 thou sowest as I go, urged ever on by Thee. 
 
 " O Love, I call Thee by this name or that, and it 
 grows false to Thee, but Thou remainest. 
 
 " By human or celestial names I call Thee — they cannot 
 hold Thee always — but always Thou, in my heart and 
 the great heart of the world, kindlest and burnest." 
 
Love's Body 65 
 
 IT is easy to undress the body, and good to stand out 
 naked in the immortal freshness of the wind ; but 
 to undress the soul, to put off bodily consciousness, 
 cares and the raiments of thought, to stand out naked 
 in the winds of the Spirit, — though it is better, it is not 
 easy. 
 
 To know the beloved is sweet, and to become one to- 
 gether in the body is a mystery : so also is it mystically 
 sweeter to know the invading presence of the soul's Lover, 
 and to become one body in Him. 
 
 It is not easy to unwrap the soul, embuttoned and 
 enwrapped in things and thought, but it is sweet to he 
 down and rest in the Beloved's arms. 
 
 HE came to me in the fields, the Divine Lover. 
 I had no name upon my lips to greet Him 
 when He came, but all my being welcomed Him with 
 lover's joy. 
 
 And now I had rather He came to them I love as unto 
 me He came — yea, I had rather that than I should come 
 to them. 
 
 I had rather he should satisfy their longing for a lover : 
 nay, unless it were He, not I, that came in me, how could 
 I ever satisfy their longing ? 
 
 I SEE the wanderer. Love, showing himself to them 
 that believe on him, abiding with them, though he 
 passes, to gather together by twos and by threes and by 
 handfuls the myriad folk, out of their human passion 
 to shape him a body for fulfilling the heavens and earth. 
 Who is faithful to Him and fears nothing, but gives up 
 himself full of failings, weak, foolish, treacherous, cun- 
 
66 The Great Companions 
 
 ning, into the hands creative, of him in His unrelenting 
 patience, Love fashions a part of that Body Immortal, 
 that Beauty Eternal, that Changeless Glory. 
 
 ONCE, before Love transformed them, these sought 
 only wealth and power, that men might applaud 
 and that women might give them their love ; but now 
 they are content, having become a part of His body. 
 
 For Deity became the word of their longing : to 
 know themselves in the Absolute, that alone was to find 
 their place : it was to have no longer any need for praise 
 or for success, it was to forget anxiety and fierce desire. 
 
 Weak they might be, fooHsh they might be, they might 
 fail to effect their purposes, but behold they loved ! 
 therefore they were in the fellowship wherein is God : 
 their Hfe is not weak, nor fooHsh, nor vain in That : in 
 That it is immortal, the Principle of the Ages. 
 
 FOR ever, through all the years. Love the trans- 
 cendent is finding a Body for himself in the pas- 
 sionate desire of the creatures : his Hfe, hidden within their 
 flesh, awakes at some magical glance or touch or breath. 
 Flower-Hke becomes the body that understands, the 
 flesh wherein He awakens. 
 
 It shines within : its dulness dies away. 
 The heavy fragrance passes from desire : it opens and 
 emits a mystic virtue. 
 
 OUT of this human flesh, so subtly wrought and 
 curiously fashioned with all the wisdom of the 
 ages, pure white and wonderful I see thy blossom 
 break, Lily of World's Desire. 
 
Love's Body 67 
 
 Mystic the soil thou hast chosen, precious and fit for 
 thee : and though the body I love should crumble for 
 thy sake into its clayey stuff, yet was it for thy flame, O 
 Lily, that it was filled so full of wonder and made so in- 
 tricately rich with exquisite thought. 
 
 O passionate Lily ! I know thou art not Love's 
 sole blossoming, but in these meadows of Life's grass, 
 its unintelligible multitude, thou standest up and takest 
 mine ignorant heart with joy. 
 
 For thee, not for thy fruit, I offer praise, divine white 
 fragrant flower ! — yet thou too bearest wholesome 
 rounded fruit. 
 
 Thy fruit is a new world, a world all-conscious of itself 
 as a man, a woman, is self-conscious : a radiant singing 
 world that is a God. 
 
 Ah, passionate Love, without the men and women fit 
 for thy fierce patient ultimate comradeship, and for its 
 sake indifferent to the old-world standards of stationary 
 and restricted love, that new world is not — nay, the un- 
 folding of thy fiery flower delays! 
 
IX. For Comrades and Lovers 
 
 /] S I go adown the lane that glimmers through the copse 
 With the high elms reaching to the sky. 
 As I go adown the lane in the November dusk. 
 Trudging through the mire, under the first pale stars. 
 Heavy-footed, stupid-hearted as I go 
 Clothed in cares, a prey to pain — 
 / am thinking of a letter from my friend across the sea, 
 A word or two of love I had not hoped for — 
 When out above me looking, oiit towards me reaching. 
 With wonderful immortal gaze and strong uplifting arms, 
 I see One stand before me, nameless, near. 
 Mayhap it is my friend, mayhap it is Another ; 
 But my heart leaps quick with singing now, 
 Now with open lips I cry, " Brother I Brother ! Brother ! " 
 Across the sea and round the whole great Earth 
 Into his arms I run. 
 
 BY what name can I call you ? what word that will 
 be faithful to us who are together spite of part- 
 ings, to us who dare accept what Love shall bring — for 
 He is greater than it all, and wise to choose and He hath 
 made us fearless of its fear. Ah, He embraces all things, 
 and the All speaks to my heart of you ! — by what name 
 can I call you ? 
 
 Comrade I 'Tis the word of the wind that carries the 
 
For Comrades and Lovers 6g 
 
 awakening rain, and of the thrushes answering : the word 
 that is the grip of a man's hand, the secret of a woman's 
 face, heart-worship pouring its treasure out : the word 
 of Love creative, whose very saying hf ts the lowest : 
 the word your self has taught and teaches me, Comrade. 
 
 COMRADE, we are but one another's for Love's 
 high uses. 
 Do we not stand at the beginning of one of God's 
 adventures, and He eager to commence in us the creation 
 of some new thing ? 
 
 Alone I can do nothing, and without you, I am, as 
 to this wonder, but alone — what do I say ? it is not I 
 but He that stands delaying. 
 
 WHEN I begin to guess at the issue of our Fellow- 
 ship, saying, '* Do you not see ? It leads to 
 this and this good thing, to this splendid achievement 
 for us all ? " when I begin to find justifications and re- 
 sults, then I lose hold ; our Fellowship supports me then 
 no longer with everlasting arms and perfect counsel. 
 
 But when once more I hear Its pure voice calling, 
 when on mine eyes again I feel the light that frees their 
 gaze from lingering on results ; I know it is not to accom- 
 plish this or that that we are come together, but to abide 
 in the Fellowship as members of Its body, letting Its 
 joy course through our passion to accomplish Its high 
 will. 
 
 I know that to the soul, among all justifications, the 
 Fellowship endures and satisfies until the end. 
 
70 The Great Companions 
 
 IF it were not for my comrades how should I have 
 found my way into the Fellowship ? for it was they 
 that took my hands and drew me on to enter. 
 
 And if I had not come into the Fellowship, never 
 could I have won to knowledge of myself. 
 
 "^^TOW why are you holding back?" said Love. 
 xNI " Because," said the man, " there is no way." 
 
 " What, httle bhnd fool," quoth Love, " are you our 
 guide." 
 
 So they proceed a little further till now 'tis the man 
 that cries, " Why are you holding back, Companion ? see 
 the way is clear ! " 
 
 But Love rejoins again, " You know not whither you 
 should go, were it not better to rely on him who knows ? " 
 
 OLOVE ! Thou that perplexest us with double 
 counsels, how shall we obey thee ? 
 
 To-day, 'did I not hear thee saying, " Give thyself, 
 body and soul, to this one that thou lovest : pledge thy 
 whole self to him, to her ! " 
 
 To-morrow thou tearest me away, thou refusest 
 that I remain : thou breakest my vows, thou mockest me. 
 
 " Come away out of thy cage," thou criest, " Come 
 away ! " 
 
 To-day, I pledge my soul because thou biddest me ; 
 to-morrow I tear out my heart from the body where it 
 dwells, because thou dost command, — ^Thou, for I am 
 thy servant ! 
 
 Haply I have misunderstood thee, didst thou, per- 
 
For Comrades and Lovers 71 
 
 chance, say to me yesterday, " Do this and this to-day, 
 promise not for to-morrow ? " 
 
 To-day I think thou sayest, " Tease not thyself with 
 yesterday, enough thy task ! " 
 
 Ah, Love, I know thou art no wayward, no capricious 
 wanton ! keep me within the compass of thine infinite 
 words. 
 
 JOIN not yourself with those that say, " I will not begin 
 to love, for I see what Love involves, and am not 
 able to ensue it." 
 
 Say rather, ** O Love, I only know that thou hast 
 bidden me do this little thing, and I care not now to 
 what greater matter it may lead me ! " 
 
 Fear Love, but rather be afraid that you may of your 
 poor prudence and blind wisdom hinder Him in his 
 creation. 
 
 Nay, be not afraid, but behold, out of the bitter stress 
 of your perplexity, Him Who of all the great Companions 
 is most terrible, holy and pure. Maker and Breaker of 
 every institution, even the institution of the mind of 
 man. 
 
 Whose fear is as the shuddering of the firmament, the 
 faUing of the stars, the bowing of the pillars of the earth. 
 
 Who is Love, Prime -mover, Reality, Upholder unto 
 the end, the life of your soul. 
 
 Who alone knoweth Hfe, and can show you, for His 
 eyes see, and all things are present before Him for ever. 
 
 Who alone can create in you that which is new, 
 redeeming you from dismay and death-in-Hfe unto your 
 place among the sons of God. 
 
72 The Great Companions 
 
 Be not afraid : with omnipotent will and deft wonderful 
 fingers He controls the wild caprices of desire. 
 
 THEY had come nearer and more near, till they 
 became afraid together, lest they shut out from 
 one another all the stars. 
 
 Her face, her hands, her presence sang to him, and he 
 made answer like an instrument of strings, all glad, all 
 sorrowful, passionate, unsatisfied as music, until he was 
 afraid, afraid to feel the music of her presence. 
 
 Then Love, the merciful One, the Almighty, the 
 Terrible, made Himself seen standing beside them. 
 
 The stars were in His windy hair that filled the 
 Heavens and He was singing, — singing His master-song, 
 Creation, that thrills in all things. 
 
 Then in His presence they could bear the music. 
 
 They were no more afraid, near though she stood 
 beside him. 
 
 PERPLEXED with eager hopes and v/anton fancies 
 that say they are Love's sending, but, being 
 come, are other than of Love, the lover prays that in the 
 place of these he may behold the sacred Thing ; behold, 
 as in Love's mirror, his beloved. 
 
 That gazing, rapt and single, his longings may be 
 changed to worship, all, all her spirit's food. 
 
For Comrades and Lovers 73 
 
 I SAT in my porch way, with the odours of the night 
 and of the body of the earth fragrant anew from the 
 warm rain, steahng thro' all my senses to let loose 
 the soul within me ; and all about, the windy sound 
 of the dark trees. 
 
 And as I sat there, listening to the divine bird, the hazel- 
 haunting nightingale, whose song bubbled up in quick 
 jets out of the joyous earth, my soul at large, I knew it 
 was not only to his mate upon the nest in the thick 
 leaves and dark he sang, pouring that music forth, but 
 yet without his mate there close beside him he would 
 not sing at all. 
 
 O bird and brother, so possessed by song that spasm 
 on spasm break the brave notes forth, — the untameable 
 demonic passion of you and of the trees and of the earth's 
 wild heart breaking up through your little pulsing throat, 
 — again, again, until exhausted at last you are fallen 
 silent ; yet once again after a pause to sing, the passion 
 seizing you, and at intervals through all the night — 
 because you love your mate, the Heart of the Earth 
 has sung again through you the birth-song of creation ! 
 
 Something possesses you, brown little brother, now 
 for a few weeks in this our English May, seizes your 
 body and makes you warble out its life into the ear of 
 night, wherefore you know not, you nor I, sitting here 
 in my porchway, sharing your song with you. 
 
 But sure am I, Httle brother, this passion, that has 
 turned your love to rapture and the flowers to perfume, 
 wasting them with its ecstasy, is Life's own mystic 
 meaning. 
 
74 The Great Companions 
 
 WHAT can I say to my beloved for my heart is 
 full ? O give me a word for her I love ! 
 
 I have no word to bring but only her name, her name 
 that she knoweth not until I speak it. 
 
 I will carry the word that she hath not spoken, the 
 syllables of her secret to her I love. 
 
 For Love hath shown me, yea He hath told me what 
 she knoweth not nor might ever guess. 
 
 Because I love her He hath given me the word none 
 knoweth but only I. 
 
 I WOULD not ask, beloved, that the darkness pass 
 thee by, that agony may forget thee, and the grief 
 that breaketh the heart. 
 
 I would not ask joy for thee only — joy and strength 
 and delight — but that I too may share in the darkness, 
 grief and pain ; may henceforward share for thy sake 
 with all that, suffering, lives ; and that in thee our life 
 may be fulfilled. 
 
 WITH ruthless hand my lover comes. 
 I have spread out before him all my gifts, I 
 have clothed myself in graces. 
 
 He glances through them, he stretches out his hand 
 demanding what I have not. 
 
 My clothing nor my body can hide me from my lover. 
 
 With stern demand he comes : his word cuts to my 
 
 heart and numbs my brain : he asks the impossible. 
 
 I will not answer, no, I will keep silence biting my lips. 
 
For Comrades and Lovers 75 
 
 (O treacherous heart, why will you cry so loud leaping to 
 him?) 
 
 With a knife my lover comes, through every barrier 
 he cuts his way, to where within, in an enchanted slumber, 
 I await his lips. 
 
 He comes. 
 
 All, all of mine he asks and takes and crushes under 
 his feet, my lover. 
 
 All, all, till there is nought. 
 
 Hast thou not yet enough ? No, he has not enough, 
 my lover ! 
 
 He sees some hidden treasure that I know not, for its 
 sake he will slay me. 
 
 Barest thou, ha ! darest thou that, my lover ? 
 
 Nay, if thou art my lover thou wilt not dare refuse it. 
 
 It is thy part, and there is none but thee to take it, 
 not God Himself, but thee. 
 
 Ah, if thou slay me not, thou lovest not Me, the Me 
 that can have birth only when this me dies — 
 
 Thou lovest not the unborn ineffable Thing that only 
 thou hast seen in me, that I have caught beckoning me 
 from thine eyes — 
 
 Thou lovest me not if thou refusest me ! 
 
 THE cry of a soul unsatisfied : — 
 " Was it only that near kiss thou asked of me, 
 only that night together : only that embrace, only 
 beloved, the begetting of our babe ? 
 
 " Perhaps they were not a Httle, my love, but O they 
 are not all ! " 
 
76 The Great Companions 
 
 '' "VJOT to this lover or to that," I heard Love saying, 
 XN " Not to this lover or that canst thou give all." 
 But I, out of the faintness of a heart longing to spend 
 
 itself, cried out, " Unless I can give all, O Love, I die ! " 
 Love smiled and said, '* Little Heart, in sooth thou 
 
 shalt give all, thou shalt give all ! 
 
 " Yet to this lover or to that, nay, though they ask 
 
 thy all, thou canst not give." 
 
 OLOVE, what is this sharp thing that in my hands I 
 carry since that I was with Thee ? 
 
 I am afraid because of it, for it is power. 
 
 Before, I was an impotent man needing on bonds, 
 but now that Thou hast given me might to create and 
 to destroy, I am afraid of hberty. 
 
 Then guide me, give me wisdom ! 
 
 I am in peril of slaying them I love, since Thou, O 
 Love, wast with me : for Thou hast set me, mere creature 
 that I am, here at the Gates of Paradise, and put into 
 my hands this flaming sword. 
 
 AWFUL, mysterious Love, why dost thou seal my 
 Hps against him saying " No ! " so that if I 
 should give, it would verily destroy me ; but he, if I 
 give not, may perish of embittered hope. 
 
 O, this way madness lies, madness or death, for to be 
 near together, he demanding, I refusing, is too fierce for 
 me to bear. 
 
 Surely of such conjunction are phantom births, hatreds, 
 horrors and unspeakable things, knots in the brain that 
 life tugs ever tighter until the frayed thread breaks. 
 
For Comrades and Lovers 77 
 
 Love, only thy fingers can untie the threads thy 
 fingers tangled ! 
 
 But if thou wilt not ? 
 
 O, I will endure while thou endurest, terrible one, my 
 Hfe. 
 
 Who knows, who guesses what he can endure in Thee, 
 obeying Thee ? 
 
 WHEN I am sad, because there comes some heavy 
 veil between us, because thou turn'st away from 
 me the face I love, my words bring from thy lips no 
 answer, my hands stretch out to thee and find thee not, 
 — shall I reproach thee then ? Shall I rebel and beat 
 myself against our parting ? Shall I, maddened with 
 pain, turn on our love with bitter cursing wrath ? 
 
 Nay, for thou turnest, hidest away from me for Love's 
 own sake, and it is Love that holds my love aside and 
 will not let me reach thee, — Love who enkindled me and 
 thee together, and still is all the fire that warms our 
 shrinking hearts. 
 
 Nay, I will turn me then to Love himself, and he down 
 in His purpose and await His will, shutting these eyes 
 that strain so after thee, shutting these eyes in sleep, 
 having given to Him thy name in keeping, — having with 
 joyful anguish given thee back to Him who gave me thee, 
 who loves thee alway. 
 
 AND now when I am glad again, and hardly need 
 reach out my hand to touch thee, — now when I 
 am too near thee to need words, — fain am I to remember 
 that high lesson learnt when thou seemed afar and I 
 was sad. 
 
78 The Great Companions 
 
 So that my hand may only touch thine for support 
 and courage as a comrade's should ; that thou mayest 
 never falter for my kiss, nor I for thine, upon these 
 paths we tread ; that every word of thine may make me 
 braver and more resolute to endure, and every thought 
 of mine may arm thee more for battle. 
 
 For further, further yet into the strife we'll press, 
 aye heartening one another, giving each other scope and 
 daring, urging each other forward fearless, coveting 
 now for one another life and death. 
 
 IT is the mystery of Lovers that they are to one 
 another as the Gates of Paradise. 
 By her, and by her only, can he enter, by him alone 
 can she become enfranchised and find peace. 
 
 Each to the other is the holy Gate that opens on 
 Life's garden, yet is it not the Garden. 
 
 Resting in their delight, content in one another, they 
 stand but at the Gate, enjoying from afar where enter- 
 ing, they should dwell. 
 
 UNLESS the body of their Love were ever changing — 
 changing into some vaster consciousness — I think 
 that lovers could not long sustain their joy. 
 
 Nor, if they were alone together, could the joy that 
 pulses through them at the merest touch, be filled so 
 rapturously full of universal meaning. 
 
 The meeting of two lovers joins again some separated 
 strand in the world circuit of electric hfe. 
 
For Comrades and Lovers 79 
 
 I hear as it were the shout of innumerable comrades 
 breaking across the barriers of division, to join together 
 at the clasping of their hands. 
 
 MY being rises from beneath the threshold of my 
 consciousness, and overfloods its sill, filling 
 full body and mind of me with passionate love of you, — 
 a love too large for you and me, vast as the space in 
 which the stars are floating and potent as the light. 
 
 Then, comrade, what are we, that in us this godhead 
 should thus be dwelling ? 
 
 What are these bodies that, transmitting love to one 
 another, become at last not ours, nor now for one another 
 as before impassioned cravingly, but body of a tran- 
 scending life that glows within their tissues, Ultimate 
 Love, though as a Babe, indwelHng them ? 
 
 WHEN we are come so near that we 'can see into 
 each other's eyes, that we can feel life in one 
 thrill together, and life has become worship, being one ; 
 when out from these our selves we slip and lose them — 
 comrade, it is not you I find, nor you do not clasp me : 
 but you and I forgotten in that eternal moment, through 
 one another's eyes beholding, through one another's 
 flesh aware, and yet of one another heeding naught, 
 being so wed together, — when we are come so near, our 
 life is God. 
 
X. Liberty 
 
 OUT of the mountain-rock perdurable there springs 
 the ever-fleeting water of the rills ; and from the 
 abiding earth, the stable trees rooted therein, are hewn 
 the timbers of adventure. 
 
 Even so, out of the mystical body wrought of the 
 uttermost pledges of passion to continue undivided 
 through eternity — out of a love perdurable as the rock, 
 abiding as the earth, is hewn with agony, springs burst- 
 ing up at last, that fleet adventurer, the sole free-footed 
 and enfranchised one. Love's child. 
 
 THEY two, voyagers, seated to-night perhaps for 
 the last time before the old home fire. 
 
 Change already about them — a new face — a new haunt- 
 ing of mysterious presences — a great uncertainty stretch- 
 ing before them like the sea, 
 
 Whether of hfe or death or separation they know not. 
 
 But here to-night, one heart together in the mystery, 
 one true indissoluble heart. 
 
 In the old home, by the fire — whither some new stran- 
 ger comes to lead them now away together or apart, 
 
 As once, a stranger, to take her hence, he came, — 
 
 Before the old home fire, they two, voyagers. 
 
Liberty 8 1 
 
 /IS fir si it said, still saith the soul, "/ dare;" 
 Virtue and Prudence and Religion, yea 
 Love, Friendship, Wisdom, all together say 
 " Beware ! " 
 But unto all the soul replies, " / dare.'' 
 
 " Draw back ! Repent ! " they cry ; " Learn to obey ! 
 
 Rebel not, venture not ! Thy foolish way 
 
 Forswear.'' 
 
 Humbly answers the soul and says, " I dare." 
 
 " Yonder lies all disaster and dismay 
 
 Dar'st thou to summon Madness and dim grey 
 
 Despair ? " 
 
 Solemnly, proudly saith the soul, " / dare. 
 
 *' A spark of God is mixed into my clay. 
 Destined I know not whither nor the way ; 
 I dare 
 Only to be mine own self everywhere." 
 
8 2 The Great Companions 
 
 FEAR not, unless ye fear the inarticulate things, 
 the love that claims no kisses, the wrath that 
 strikes no blows ; for, since they have no body of their 
 own, needs must they be the foes of life. 
 
 The love that claims no kisses for itself can only leer 
 and laugh at other kisses ; the wrath that strikes no 
 blow, takes the good zest from other deeds : so these, 
 that should have been birth-bringers, truth-compellers, 
 are become cheats and body-snatchers, shadows that 
 mock at things. 
 
 They steal away love's confidence ; they hinder truth 
 from counsel ; instead of comradeship they make a 
 poor complacent caution, confident of success in still 
 eluding Love's avowal. 
 
 Fear them ! 
 
 They fill the night air with insistent syllables of 
 terror ; chant of the rebel atoms, the things unborn, 
 that yet must be begotten of men or slay them — wild, 
 dark deliria that pursue and mad impotent solitaries, and 
 childless women struggling to refuse them birth ! — 
 
 Fear them ! 
 
 Against the barriers ye set up athwart their courses, 
 they beat and break hosts of bewildered hearts. 
 
 Fear them, or give them speech, these inarticulate 
 things : fear them or give them being ! 
 
 THEY said, " Beware lest you commit some crime or 
 other." 
 But I heard the sunshine saying : " O ye of Httle 
 faith ! Beware how you refuse the chances of life m 
 your fond worship of the devil ye call prudence ! " 
 
Liberty 8 3 
 
 WHILE you harbour any of the fears, you have 
 not come into the faith : whether it be of Hell- 
 fire or of the workhouse, or of the loss of your beloved, 
 or of your mental faculties, or of your reputation for 
 being different from the rest, of disease or doubt or 
 failure, — whichever grips you nighest : — while you har- 
 bour any fear you have not found deliverance yet. 
 
 Faith is not sure this body of its present dwelling will 
 escape the peril : let it perish, there are plenty more in 
 keeping ! 
 
 Faith has a welcome for all comers : it makes good use 
 of each encounter : it knows the secret of acceptance, 
 keeping the attitude of the Soul in the midst of life. 
 
 Faith is not anxious about rules and precedents : 
 Give me Life, says Faith, and I will make you churches 
 and worlds to the end of time, it was I who made all 
 there are now ! 
 
 Faith is not afraid of sins, devils and outlawed things, 
 but walks its own way amid the wilds of temptation, 
 untamed itself and fearless, making its own laws. 
 
 It entertains those untamed things, and enjoys their 
 hospitahty, moving in free fellowship among them, 
 heedful of their indigenous knowledge, nourishing its 
 soul upon their unspoiled beauty. 
 
 For Faith, revelation is for ever beginning : the air 
 is full of divine words, of new individual meanings for 
 men and for every creature : 
 
 It beholds the advent of the beginners, age after age, 
 comet-like, flashing through the orderly systems, no 
 less orderly than they, but of a vaster circle, struck 
 through space from a more central centre, — carrying 
 dismay as they come, unheralded, unwelcome, but with 
 the joy of more heroic life full in their faces. 
 
84 The Great Companions 
 
 ARE you impatient ? 0, I should be too. 
 For I am very far from the place where I would 
 be, the days go over and over, and I find myself again 
 there where I was so long ago. 
 
 For weeks together I lose sight of the landmarks of 
 my journey : I am overtaken day after day by indiffer- 
 ence and lassitude: I wander off into indignations and 
 side-errands : I forget. 
 
 Then presently, I remember again : the low hills break, 
 and the peaks come into view : the fog clears away from 
 my heart : I come into my way and confidence once 
 again : 
 
 For a moment I am impatient with my soul for 
 allowing all that waste and wickedness, but in the 
 back of my heart I know it is God's way with me, it is my 
 way, the way that is sure and for me the quickest of 
 all. 
 
 I remember what I have seen and how Life takes its 
 time — being born of Eternity — seeking its goal : and how 
 when for a moment I have caught the vision of that 
 goal, I have seen surely what a folly is impatience. 
 
 BEWARE of me whiles I am seeking, for I am irrit- 
 able and difficult in my solitude, and woe to the 
 intruder ! 
 
 But when I have found my joy, then eagerly I greet 
 
 each comer if I may but share my wonder with him : 
 
 — is it not his joy I have found equally with my own ? 
 
 It is a fire, my wonder, and I am but a single piece of 
 
 coal : I fear it will die out quickly if I do not gather 
 
Liberty 8 5 
 
 other pieces together, communicating my delight to 
 all — ah, then would it be royally replenished and fed ! 
 Before I am enkindled, what can I have for fellow- 
 ship ? it is better that I sit alone : but joy runs abroad 
 with greetings till it has welcomed all. 
 
 ONCE I was a man, and as a man I strove and 
 doubted and boasted me ; but now I am become 
 of God, I have put away my cares, and merrily I live 
 as a particle of Deity. 
 
 What He singeth I know not, but I feel in my pulses 
 that He singeth : what He createth I know not, but in 
 my flesh is the joy of His Creating : what He awaiteth 
 I do not know, but in Him I endure. 
 
 How should I tell His purpose ? Only in my body 
 I know that His will, flowing through me for ever, is 
 the tide and passion of Eternal Love. 
 
 I WAS seeking a rare flower, and ever dissatisfied ; 
 but now the mere grass itself — the mere wonderful 
 innumerable living blades, the tall jointed stems and 
 flowery spears, the grass of the field — is my joy all the day 
 long. 
 
 I was dazzled by some one divine possession, some 
 sacred hope, some memory, task, comradeship, some 
 brilliant single lily that I saw or sought, dimming all 
 else into a trivial unimportance. 
 
 But now my joy is in the myriad circumstances, the 
 infinite commonplaces, the plentiful inimitable grass 
 that is always full of flowers. 
 
 It seemed then so very urgent that I should realize this 
 or that, that I acknowledge the first value of some 
 
86 The Great Companions 
 
 special thing, or man, or act, that I should be sure of 
 some central point and pivoted on that : but to-day I 
 move and live in worship : every atom of me is become 
 articulate, and everywhere God is. 
 
 I have awaked to find the meadows full of grass, the 
 air of spirit, the hours of immortality. 
 
 I perceive that to live is to be continually uttered of 
 Love to all or any, to become all life, all joy ! 
 
XI. Vista 
 
 ALOW, bleak sky — no cloud, no sun — and drawing 
 down to night: a grey stubble-field that offers 
 nothing but the blossoms of stunted ineffective feverfew : 
 one idly watching the smoke of field-trash, piled together, 
 burning : no light of sunset in the dull west, only out of 
 the heavier east a damp uncertain wind. 
 
 Whence art thou, blessed laughter, like a fire of bright 
 flames consuming the cumbering grey stubble ? 
 
 O blessed laughter, out of cares and questionings, 
 and the miserable hfeless husks of us, what glee, what 
 glee thou makest ! 
 
 Some wind gathers our weary trash, our precious 
 useless nothings, tossing them together : the spark breaks, 
 and in the heap those separate nothings melt into white 
 smoke and crackle together in flames, and give themselves 
 to laughter ! 
 
 Surely thou dwellest in God's breast, as fire in the 
 heart of the Earth. 
 
 Come then, divine destroyer of care, brother of tears 
 and song ! 
 
 Come shake our hearts together in thine irresistible 
 chorus ! 
 
 Come Holy Laughter ! 
 
 87 
 
88 The Great Companions 
 
 OUR road, straight and plain enough while it lasted, 
 comes out presently upon the mountain-side, and 
 of a sudden is at its end. 
 
 Whither were we going so confidently that now we 
 should be so much dismayed ? 
 
 Here there is no one to advise with : we must make 
 our own track across the heather : maybe, later on we 
 shall take up again with the road, maybe never again. 
 
 (Or you sit by the fire and the year dies out : you discard 
 your former motives, you see they will not carry you 
 into the new. 
 
 You see that henceforward you can do nothing for 
 the sake of money — that road ends here — neither can 
 you do anything whose end is other men's approval, nor 
 seek any justification whatsoever of those that you have 
 heeded in the year gone by.) 
 
 We have come out onto the mountain-side, we are 
 loosened from motives and from tasks : for an hour — or 
 for ever — the road has disappeared and the old claims 
 have suddenly let us go : whither then shall we journey ? 
 
 Do you not know, in your heart and across the heather, 
 the beckoning of the fellowship, the bidding of your Soul ? 
 
 UP from the road sweeps a wide field to the wood : 
 through its stubble and over its rich soil a great 
 wind blows into the night, a great wind shouting in the 
 wood and hastening the low-hung tawny clouds. 
 
 Great words it shouts unto the fields, the woods and the 
 tempestuous sky, and to me taking the cart-track up 
 the hill : I hear not only the clamour of dusky woods, but 
 mingled with their rooky call, great words. 
 
Vista 89 
 
 Brother blowing towards the night, what are the words 
 of your challenge ? 
 
 'Tis " Death ! " you shout and sing unto the woods 
 and me : out of the unfathomed spaces the unknowable 
 impulsion of your birth, " Death ! death ! " exulting, 
 warning, to me, flying into the night you cry this word. 
 
 Green among the dead stubble springs the three-foiled 
 clover, already in the harrowed ground sleeps the new 
 seed ; and in the tossing wood, darkening to the night, 
 blithe answer make the birds among the branches : 
 ** Welcome to Death ! " they chirp and sing and quail 
 not. 
 
 Sometimes to us out of the untold deeps and spaces 
 of our being, across our life, on toward these flying skies 
 that are the skirts of dark mysterious night, — towards 
 the unknown out of the deep unknown, the great wind 
 shouts its message, fierce, exultant, strong, *' Death ! 
 Death ! " it cries. 
 
 Like branches in the gale, hke branches heavy with 
 frail and fluttering leaves, bow all our thoughts before it. 
 
 But even then, to that exultant storm, to that dark 
 tyrannous, overwhelming storm, something in us — (some 
 bird in the tossed branches, some three-foiled clover 
 in the stubble-rows, some sleeping, waiting seed beneath 
 the soil) — hearing the shout of Death awakes rejoicing 
 and answers song with song. 
 
 THAT pain should be, catching and closing fast the 
 soul within its net ; that pain should be, instead 
 of Hfe with its great outlook, its windy heights and vast 
 
90 The Great Companions 
 
 horizons : that these black hours should be, sin, madness 
 and decay, this irremediable twist of body and mind : 
 this separateness, this injustice, this isolated satisfaction 
 and contentment : — is there not here a menace ? 
 
 Does this not shake our happiness, pointing at it as 
 with ironic finger ? 
 
 Can honest joy endure in a world where evil dwells ? 
 
 Ay, can It ! 
 
 Joy looks this dark thing in the eyes, this untamed 
 thing it faces, and gazing in those wild dark eyes, joy 
 sings ! 
 
 Joy sings, and from Death's clutch leaps life at liberty : 
 out to meet pain goes Love with hfe's enlargement : 
 and over all disaster and injustice, sin, madness, separa- 
 tion and complacence, joy ascends : — joy of some Life in 
 whom all beings are, in whom all beings do themselves 
 discover, — joy of some life in whom all life is joy. 
 
 PETER, that wert the same age as my sorrow that 
 is for ever young, twin playful brother of my 
 bitter pain, would they had taken her and left thee, my 
 comfort, my joy ! 
 
 Kitten that thou wert, thou wast small enough for 
 grief to let thee lie in my poor heart, and, since thy grey 
 eyes saw not there its sickness, but saw there only love, 
 thou wast its medicine. 
 
 But thou art gone : only thy sad too conscious sister 
 Sorrow remains to me, unfortunate. 
 
 Nay then, I will not rebel : I will not unworthily be- 
 moan me ! 
 
Vista 9 1 
 
 Hadst thou stayed, thou hadst outgrown Her, and 
 been playmate of Hers no longer, Puss Peter ! 
 
 Ah now, if it were She indeed was gone from me, stolen 
 away, and thou left in Her stead, then were I impover- 
 ished ! then were I bereft ! 
 
 For She is mine inalienable possession that Love 
 has given me : I had rather lose thee, little playful joy, 
 than my most sacred Sorrow. 
 
 IF you say I must live for ever, show me then the 
 immortal being that I am : for I am sure this dim 
 body, these weary thoughts and tasks, this flickering 
 self that is now one thing now another, cannot endure, 
 savouring too much of mere mortahty. 
 
 I would not go following on with these for ever, but 
 if I might haply ascend into the great spaces of being, 
 then would I Hve. 
 
 When I remember some immortal fancy, beholding 
 its divine abiding face, I would be such as it in beauty 
 and in joy, for I can see that these must be immortal. 
 
 THE barriers break, life opens all about us ; the 
 faces grown so long familiar are become as words, 
 each one with infinite meaning. 
 
 The barriers break : respectability and the dull order 
 of hfe grows suddenly thin, as a veil through which the 
 eyes of Love are looking upon us ; intense as a wild 
 
92 The Great Companions 
 
 dream they shine, but they are Love's eyes, not the 
 eyes of Fear. 
 
 The barriers break : the round of work and of doing 
 important things gives way before me ; I see it is only a 
 Hne attempting to enclose in its mere circle some stu- 
 pendous thing, and now it is the Thing I see, no more the 
 circle which has given way. 
 
 Death intervenes : into the midst of our talking and 
 our argument comes Death : the barriers break and let 
 him in. 
 
 He has been looking on us from among the stars and 
 from between the leaves : he has been watching with 
 eternal eyes amid the moments of our waking and our 
 dreams. 
 
 Now at last we behold him, and stars and leaves and 
 ticking moments are as though they were not, for he is 
 here. Death, who was always here. 
 
 The barriers break, barriers that we clung to as our- 
 selves : they break, the forms of thought, the bodies of 
 of our beloved break, break : Hke dust in the rain they 
 are dissolved and broken and lost. 
 
 The barriers break to let loose that which they with- 
 held ; break to let loose what they have kept so faithfully. 
 
 The box is broken, and the fragrance of the nard 
 spreads through the house like worship. 
 
 The bond is broken : in his agony Love slowly rises 
 up, a man bewildered. 
 
 The body is broken — O body belov'd you are broken ! 
 the beautiful hfe I know perishes and is done. 
 
 But behold, as out of a seed that dies and breaks 
 asunder, under the eyes of Love comes forth the new 
 Hfe we call death, more beautiful and winged and free. 
 
Vista 9 3 
 
 AH, what was that upon my face ? 
 It was the wind blowing — -the wind blowing ! — 
 but the wind, the wind is on the other side of the house. 
 I do not think it was the wind. 
 
 fooHsh me ! it was so like his breath here on my 
 aching empty brow — his breath, half kiss, half laughter ! 
 
 It must have been the wind, for he is dead — oh, oh, 
 he could not come ! 
 
 Bleak, horrible, mocking Life ! and you, lying wind 
 with your caresses, I do not want you, you ! 
 
 But him — how I want him ! 
 
 He looks so Httle there, I could up-gather him into my 
 arms and away, away ! 
 
 Fire and earth shall not have thee, httle one — away» 
 away ! 
 
 But whither ? whither ? 
 
 No, he is gone already, he might not wait me, he left 
 me only this. . . . 
 
 Gone — is he gone ? 
 
 It does not seem to me that he is gone. 
 
 Was he not here but now ? Did he not touch my 
 hair, my cheek, my brow ? 
 
 Who says it was the wind ? the wind is on the other 
 side of the house ! . . . 
 
 He loved the wind: perhaps it was the wind. 
 
 Yes, yes ! the trees are moving there against the sky, 
 and I am sure he moves them. 
 
 1 know the sign, know what it is they mean, as though 
 he speaks, as though he beckons with his hand to me. 
 
 W^hat do I care on which side of the house the wind 
 blows ? for he loved the blowing wind — Brother Wind, 
 messenger ! . . , 
 
94 The Great Companions 
 
 Dear, forgive me my denying ! 
 
 At the first I knew it was you : but I was very tired 
 and almost blind with unwept pain and I could not dare 
 believe, for fear, for fear ! 
 
 But now that you have kissed me in the wind, and 
 made me your own sign against the edge of the sky, 
 there where I could see it from my window, now they 
 shall take away that Little Thing (Brother Wind says it 
 to me) ; I will give my treasure up to pure fire and 
 the enduring Earth, loving for ever Earth and Fire in 
 you. . . . 
 
 Oh, you are in the grass, a little yellow flower ; and 
 you are in the sky where the winds blow ; and you are 
 in the earth my feet kiss and the trees abide in ; in every- 
 thing that comes and looks, in each I can see you. 
 
 O my love, do not let me doubt ! 
 
 Do not leave me to forget anything of this, forgetting 
 all things else, — save only your breathing in the wind, 
 your love, your look in all the welcome creatures ! 
 
 Yes, and in the great vast lonely Night that broods 
 over the trees, your presence, leaving no loneliness in 
 the night for me, because your soul, that now goes free, 
 is vaster, vaster, vaster ! 
 
 NOW Time returns upon itself. 
 I am grown small, smaller almost than when in 
 embryo hidden I dwelled. 
 
 I that had care of babes, myself now but a dim un- 
 conscious babe, into the womb-Hfe of unconsciousness 
 return, my Mother I return to Thee ! 
 
Vista 95 
 
 No fear comes nigh me ; for about me close, Thy warm 
 life presses, and it cherishes something that seems Thy 
 very life in me, 
 
 I am so little now, I am all Thee. 
 
 Thy life is all about me. Thine immortal life : it is 
 the love of these that cherish me, children of mine, 
 helpers and presences, the dear sun at the window and 
 the breeze : I love them all : I know them all as Thine : 
 now all my life reveals they all are Thee. 
 
 I am so small, I pass quite into dim forgetf ulness, into 
 Thy love, my Mother, into Thee. 
 
 THEY fade before me, faces and things and thoughts, 
 blown and scattered along the morning gale of 
 Death, dissipated and absorbed by the rising sun of 
 Life : I see them flying and returning whence they came. 
 
 With them goes all my world of thought, my body, 
 whither I know not, save that it goes to Thee, Reality, 
 immortal changeless, vital, the real Earth, whose thought 
 am I, whose changeless thought am I. 
 
 O to Thee, gale of the morning I give myself joyfully 
 to be scattered : I die into thy beams, O rising Sun : O 
 Earth I was born of Thee to return bearing messages to 
 Thee! 
 
 Forth didst thou send me to return. 
 
 Deep under all my volatile changing thoughts I have 
 known Thee solid serene, O Earth, O ultimate, abidine 
 Me. 
 
 Into Thee I return, I am ! 
 
96 The Great Companions 
 
 Envoi. 
 
 TJ/ORDS were worth nothing if words could say all : 
 ever behind our singing is the silence out of which 
 it broke. 
 
 So too, behind this little book with its words of franchise, 
 my enfranchisement remains untold. 
 
 The trees swing in the gale and make music in it ; but 
 in the Earth abiding they keep silence. 
 
 So for you, beloved, abiding in your love, my heart 
 keeps silence while I sing. 
 
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