A duet with Omar / by Albert J. Edmunds online

spire.

I saw, saith Swedenborg, no earthly hand
Scribe on Life's temple, for high futures

planned :

The things of faith were heretofore believed :
Now is it lawful that we understand.

But he of Stockholm passed, and one year more
Saw the storms rise of Change in world-wide

war:

Strange figures in the Bay of Boston danced
Like Northern lights upon a cloudy shore.



The planet reeled convulsed; not Brandy wine
Nor Lexington alone was made divine,

But Dogger Bank, Azores, Conjevaram,
Till rainbowed Stars and Stripes rolled forth
benign.

In wilder tempests, though, was Darwin born

To show Man's soul the meanings of the morn.

Max Miiller followed, with long-hidden

scrolls
To save Religion from an age of scorn.

We saw the wrecks of fast-dissolving Rome
And Alexandria grayed round with foam

Dashed from green waves of Oriental faith;
We clewed one live enigma to its home.

Known through Benares, Balkh and Samar-
kand,

The word went round that all might under-
stand:
How one sad hermit, through the noonday's

glare,
Saw Heaven yawn wide with its angelic band;

The white forms as in grave celestial dance
Move in strange ecstasy ; pass round, b advance



33



To their unearthly lutings, meanwhile he
Heard icily in his revealing trance:

THE BUDDHA WHO SHALL BE, THE PEARL UNPRICED,
IS BORN WITH MEN TO BE THE HlNDU CHRIST,

IN SAKYA TOWN AND REALM OF LUMBINI:
THEREFORE WE GLORY WITH A JOY SUFFICED.

Our own eyes saw the spectral caravan
Of thought: from Balkh to Antioch it ran,
Where Luke learned, pondering in a

Hebrew school,
The Gospel soon re-wrought and given to Man.

In the deep waters of the ancient dark
We dived to find thy lost finale, Mark!

How Christ appeared to Peter all alone,
Gave him the power and left him true and
stark.

Neanderthal and Java brought us, skulls
From ape-humanity's abandoned hulls

Dry on the waste sands of Eternity . . .
One f act ... entire theologies. .. .annuls.

Sometime, anon through thought's confused,
blind whirl,



34



The voice of Ruskin, blither than a girl,

Soothed us with music, oe'r the undertone
Boomed from the thunderbolts Carlyle would
hurl.



Where shall we turn? Religion we have traced
With Tylor, Frazer, from that frozen waste
Of Man's primeval dreams. What seer of

dawn
The nightmares of the night away hath chased?

Lo, MYERS stands forth to wrestle with the

dark,
And fire Truth's tinder with one -imminent

spark,
Proving that Man, the million-summered

fruit,
Dies not the death of saurian and shark.

The youth of Myers ends the Middle age;
When Science thrust him, in ignoble rage,

Forth from the heavenly cathedral-porch,
Back through the screened apse-window
climbed the sage.



35



*Mr. Richardson mistakes my meaning here.

Var:

a But now we raise cathedrals out of fact,

b "pass round"; substitute phrase of equal

quantitative value. This used only for

phonetic sufficiency.



INDEX OF PERSONS

BY VERSES

Anando (flor. B.C. 500), 24, 25.

Anathapi^iko (flor. B.C. 500), 24.

Augustine (354-430), 20.

Banier (flor. 1812), 48, 49.

Bryant, William Cullen (1794-1878), 32.

Bucke, Richard Maurice (1837-1902), 59-68.

Buddha (circa B.C. 560-480) 24, 68.

Bunyan, John (1628-1688), 5.

Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881), 15.

Darwin, Charles (1809-1882), 7.

De Wolf, Oscar C. (1835-19?), 33-44.

Frazer, James G., 16.

Gurney, Edmund (1847-1888), 26.

Gurwood, John (1790-1845), 45-52.

Hodgson, Richard (1855-1905), 26, 30.

Hyslop, James, 22.

James, William (1842-1910), 26.

Jesus Christ, 13, 68.

Luke (Saec.I.),12.

M'Guire, Kate (died 1872), 32-44.

Mark (Saec. I.), 13.

Max Miiller, F. (1823-1900), 7.

Myers, Frederic W. H. (1843-1901), 17, 18, 26, 27.



Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662), 68.

Paul (Saec. L), 68.

Peter (Saec. L), 13, 23.

Plotinus (Saec. III.), 68.

Ruskin, John (1819-1900), 15.

Sariputto (flor. B.C. 500), 24.

Sidgwick, Henry (1838-1900), 26.

Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688-1772), 3, 4.

Theophylact (Saec. XL), 20.

Tylor, Edward B., 16.

Victoria, Queen (1819-1901), 27.

Wedgwood, Hensleigh (1803-1891), 45-52.

Wellington, Arthur, Duke of (1769-1852), 49, 51.

Whitman, Walt (1819-1892), 59.

Whittier, John Greenleaf (1807-1892), 32.

Wilkie, John E., 33-44.



COMPANION BOOKS



1 HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS SUR-

VIVAL OF BODILY DEATH. By FREDERIC
W. H. MYERS. London, New York and Bombay:
Longmans, 1903, 2 vols, 8vo.

Contains the narratives in Canto II

2 COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: a Study in the

Evolution of the Human Mind. Edited by
RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE, [M. D.] Philadelphia:
Innes & Sons, 1901, 410. (With portrait, 1905.)
Contains the narrative in Canto III

3 BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN GOSPELS,

Now First Compared from the Originals. By
ALBERT J. EDMUNDS, M. A. Edited, with English
notes on Chinese versions, by M. Anesaki, Professor of
Religious Science in the Imperial University of Tokyo.
Fourth edition; being the Tokyo edition revised and
enlarged. Philadelphia: Innes & Sons; London: Luzac
& Co., 1908-1909. 2 vols, 8vo. (Postscript, 1912.)
Contains sacred texts (which are here versified) literally translated

The same in Italian (No. 21 in Sandron's International Sci-
entific Series: Milan, Palermo and Naples, 1913.)



Printed by Innes & Sons, Philadelphia, for Arthur H. Thomas, Morris
E. Leeds, Arthur N. Leeds, J. Stogdell Stokes and the author



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