Essays and phantasies/In our Forest of the Past
IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST.
January 1877.
A Mild pleasant day after weeks of wind and rain, a clear moonlit night heralding storm and flood; the last day of the Old Year and the eve of the New. About ten the bells began ringing for the "watch-night" services, wherein the few still faithful and the many merely curious solemnise the annual death and birth with confessions and litanies and chanting. And while the air rang with the bells, I thought: I have seen so many old years die, so many new years born; but when has the new proved better than the old? and where is omen or hope that the year yet unborn shall prove better than the year now dying? Have I any tender grief for the departure? Have I any joyous welcome for the advent? Let me pass in sleep that narrowest moment of midnight wherein ere a man can cry Now! the one has given place to the other. So I lay down and slept. But though St. Sylvester rules no more, and the weird ghostly masquerades are abolished, the night which was his remains for us mortals potent with sleeping visions as with waking reveries; a night that looks back to the past and forward to the future, a night pregnant with phantasy. Wherefore though I slept, my mind was not at peace, but carried me in sad dream to a forest immense and obscure, even the forest of the past which is dead; and it was full of moanings and wailings, vague yet more articulate than the moaning of winds or waters; and One moved beside me who was tall and stately and muffled in darkness. And when we had walked long, silent, under the thick leafage, among the massy boles, the wailings grew keener and more piteous; and we came upon an open space where was gathered a vast multitude of infants and young children, whose desolate cries and pining faces made my heart sore. And he my companion and leader murmured softly: Scarcely had they blossomed into the world of life than they withered away out of it; and for too early death they have no rest: they wail their frustrate lives. We left the poor little ones and walked on silent; and as their wailing sank, a sound of saddest moaning grew upon our ears; and in a broad glade we discerned a multitude of youths and maidens, wan or fever-flushed; all restless, though drooping with weakness and languor; and their tears were as tears of the very heart's blood, and all hope of comfort expired in their sighs. And when we had gazed long, my companion murmured: Young Love tendered them the apple of his Mother, golden and rose-red from her divine warm hand, but it turned to dust and ashes on their hps; for the bitterness of death they can never find peace: they moan their frustrate lives. We went onward through the gloom from moaning unto moaning; and beheld a multitude of men and women, halt, maimed, twisted, bent, blind, dumb, convulsed, leprous; hoarsely groaning or gesturing anguish; dreadful to hear and to see. And my guide murmured: The wine of existence was brought to them in goblets broken or leaking; for the full sweet draught they had but a scanty sip: they lament their frustrate lives. And as we walked on we heard wild shrieks and gibbering laughter; and we came to a rugged ravine, on whose banks clustered cowering idiots, many with a large tumour at the throat, and whose floor was full of a restless multitude, haggard and dishevelled, swift and abrupt in movement, furious in gesticulation; horrible to hearing and to sight. And my companion murmured as I turned away shuddering: The wine of existence passed to them was drugged or poisoned, and they drank stupor or madness; death has no nepenthe for these whose wine of love was as a philter of hate: they curse and mock their frustrate lives. Then we crossed a space of upland heath, and I saw the stars shining, cold and supreme in the deep dark heavens, and I said to him at my side: Nature is very cruel to man. And he answered calmly: But how kind to all other creatures! and how kind is man to his brother, and to himself! Then we plunged again into the thick forest, as into a moaning midnight sea, and came upon an immense multitude, many shivering in thin rags, many nearly naked, all gaunt and haggard, with hollow eyes and famished faces; and some huddled together as for warmth, and some moved restlessly hither and thither, and in their moaning was eternal hunger. And my leader said: Rich men grew richer with their toil; kings and priests and great lords were fed fat with the flesh that fell away from their bones; they starved in body and in mind; their existence was a long need: they moan their frustrate lives. And we went forward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we came upon a multitude of whom some were chained together in long files, some were fettered or manacled singly; many nearly naked were scored livid or blood-red with the lash; others lay helpless or writhing on the ground as broken on the wheel or dislocated by the rack; others were clothed in garments of flames as ready for their own burning; others glared wildly bewildered through tangled locks as stupefied or maddened by years of the dungeon; and their moanings were lamentable with the bitterness or sullenness of despair. And my guide said: They were imprisoned and chained and lashed for their crimes by the rich who had kept them wretched and ignorant and vile; they were dungeoned or tortured by kings because they dared try to be free; they were tortured and burned alive by priests because they dared to think for themselves: they moan their frustrate lives. And we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we reached an enormous multitude, the soldiery of all nations, and many were mangled and mutilated, gashed and bleeding, torn and shattered; others lay as starving, others as in fever, others as devoured by frost; and those who seemed unhurt paced erect with a stolid misery in the forthright regard. And my leader said: They were torn from their kindred, they were cut off from the sweet life of home; for love they were given lust, for the ploughshare that produces, the sword that destroys; from men they were drilled into machines: for the pride of kings and nobles, for the enmities of priests, they went forth to kill or be killed by their fellows whom they knew not, against whom they had no cause of hatred, who had no cause of hatred against them; to ravage and burn and massacre; the cries of the homeless, the widows, the fatherless, are ever in their ears: they moan their worse than frustrate Hves. And we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we came to a vast multitude; cowled monks and veiled nuns moaning for ever a hopeless Miserere; cadaverous ascetics, self-starved, self-lashed, self-tortured, grovelling on the earth, staring spell-bound on skulls, sobbing and weeping, supplicating with desperate despairing supplications the image of a wretched human figure nailed to a cross. And my guide said: For religion they renounced the sweetness of home, the healthful brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, freedom and self-reliance; they renounced all the goodness and sweetness of the world, to gain the Heaven in which you see them here: they moan their frustrate lives. And we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we came to a multitude, of whom some frail and languid were reclining on the earth, and others paced to and fro, while all were in profound dejection. And my guide said: Here are the dreamers who made no earnest effort to realise their dreams of goodness, or beauty, or truth; and here are the strong and strenuous minds baffled and vanquished by feeble bodies or adverse fate: they moan their frustrate lives. And we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we came to an innumerable multitude of men and women, dull-eyed, bloated, sluggish, bewildered, moaning uneasily in their semi-torpor. And my guide said: Their lives were narrowed to their homes, they worshipped wealth, they cringed to the dust before rank, they aspired but to comfort and good repute, they were shut in and walled up from Nature and art and thought: they moan their frustrate lives. And we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we came upon a multitude; great lords in rich furred robes, great prelates in purple and crimson; and they were drooping and broken and crushed down as if robed with lead, and coronet and mitre seemed of lead on their brain. And my guide said: They lived superb and luxurious as a race apart and above their kind, trampling on the necks of their fellows; they were fat with the insolence of unearned wealth; their choice wines were the blood of the poor, their choice meats were the flesh of those who toiled for them; they scorned and denied human brotherhood: they moan their worse than frustrate lives. And we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And in the deepest depth of gloom of the forest we passed among figures each wandering alone, and they were crowned monarchs, and the crowns seemed of fire burning ever through the brain; and in the regard of each I read the anguish and despair of a horrible isolation, and each pressed his right hand to his heart as if it were bursting with agony. And my guide said: They counted themselves as gods, looking down upon their kind, contemptuous, impassible, unbeneficent; moving them hither and thither at will, sacrificing thousands to a lust or a caprice, sending them forth by myriads to slay and be slain; before them was terror, and behind them death and desolation; for their glory and their sumptuousness millions toiled in want and misery: they moan their worse than frustrate lives. Then I paused and spoke to my leader: My heart is sick and sorrowful to death with this vision of the past of my kind; have all human lives, then, been frustrate, and not any fulfilled? And he answered: Come and see. And we turned to the right and went down through the wood, leaving the moanings behind us; and we came to a broad valley through which a calm stream rippled toward the moon, now risen on our left hand large and golden in a dim emerald sky, dim with transfusion of splendour; and her light fell and overflowed a level underledge of softest yellow cloud, and filled all the valley with a luminous mist warm as mild sunshine, and quivered golden on the far river-reaches; and elsewhere above us the immense sweep of pale azure sky throbbed with golden stars; and a wonderful mystical peace as of trance and enchantment possessed all the place. And in the meadows of deep grass where the perfume of violets mingled with themagical moonlight, by the river whose slow sway and lapse might lull their repose, we found tranquil sleepers, all with a light on their faces, all with a smile on their lips. And my leader said: Their wine was pure, and the goblet full; they drank it and were content: their day was serene,[1] every hour filled with work that was pleasure, or with equable pleasure itself; so when night came they lay down content: they had health and strength, they were simple, truthful and just, they were free-hearted and could give bountifully, they were free-minded and lived free, they were warm-hearted and had many friends, they loved and were beloved, they had no fear of life or death; wherefore when life was fulfilled they died content: and therefore they now sleep placidly the sleep that is eternal; and the smile upon their Hps, and the light in shadow from beneath their eyelids, tell that they dream for ever some calm happy dream: they enjoy unremembering the fruit of their perfect lives. And as w^e lingered along the valley, side by side with the river, and the moon from above the southern wooded slope gazed down as in trance on that entranced Elysium, the thought of the sombre and baleful forest through which we had come weighed heavily upon my heart, and I said: How few are these in their quiet bliss to all the countless moaning multitudes we have seen on our way! And my companion answered: They are very few. And I sighed: Must it be always so? And he responded: Did Nature destroy all those infants? did Nature breed all those defects and deformities? did Nature bring forth all those idiocies and lunacies? or, was not rather their chief destroyer and producer the ignorance of Man outraging Nature? And the poor, the prisoners, the soldiery, the ascetics, the priests, the nobles, the kings; were these the work of Nature, or of the perversity of Man? And I asked: Were not the very ignorance and perversity of Man also from Nature? And he replied: Yea; yet perchance, putting himself child-like to school, he may gradually learn from Nature herself to enlighten the one and control the other.—Then the dolorous moanings again filled my ears, even in the moon-lit valley of peace; and I awoke in the moonlight and, heard the moaning of the gale swelling to a storm.
THE END.
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