subject of your meeting of to-morrow is so suggestive that I would gladly join you all, and write an essay on it, if I had health and time. I have neither, and, perhaps, better so. My essay, I candidly avow, would tend to prove that no essay ought to be written on the subject. It has no reality. A sort of intuitive instinct led you to couple “Ghosts and Rest” together.
There is, here down, and there ought to be, no Rest. Life is an aim; an aim which can be approached, not reached, here down. There is, therefore, no rest. Rest is immoral.
It is not mine now to give a definition of the aim; whatever it is, there is one, there must be one. Without it, Life has no sense. It is atheistical; and, moreover, an irony and a deception.
I entertain all possible respect for the members of your Club; but I venture to say that any contribution on Rest which will not exhibit at the top a definition of Life will wander sadly between wild arbitrary intellectual display and commonplaces.
Life is no sinecure, no “recherche du bonheur” to be secured, as the promulgators of the theory had it, by guillotine, or, as their less energetic followers have it, by railway shares, selfishness, or contemplation. Life is, as Schiller said, “a battle and a march;” a battle for Good against Evil, for Justice against arbitrary privileges, for Liberty against Oppression, for associated Love against Individualism; a march onwards to Self, through collective Perfecting, to the progressive realization of an Ideal, which is only dawning to our mind and soul. Shall the battle be finally won during life-time? Shall it on Earth? are we believing in a Millennium? Don’t we feel that the spiral curve through which we ascend had its beginning elsewhere, and has its end, if any, beyond this terrestrial world of ours? Where is then a possible foundation for your essays and sketches?
Goethe’s “Contemplation” has created a multitude of little sects aiming at Rest, where is no Rest, falsifying art, the element of which is evolution, not re-production, transformation, not contemplation, and enervating the soul in self-abdicating Brahmanic attempts. For God’s sake let not your Club add one little sect to the fatally existing hundreds!
There is nothing to be looked for in life except the uninterrupted fulfilment of Duty, and, not Rest, but consolation and strengthening from Love. There is, not rest, but a promise, a shadowing forth of Rest in Love. Only there must be in Love absolute trust; and it is very seldom that this blessing depends on us. The child goes to sleep, a dreamless sleep, with unbounded trust, on the mother’s bosom; but our sleep is a restless one, agitated by sad dreams and alarms.
You will smile at my lugubrious turn of mind; but if I was one of your Artists, I would sketch a man on the scaffold going to die for a great Idea, for the cause of Truth, with his eye looking trustfully on a loving woman, whose finger would trustfully and smilingly point out to him the unbounded. Under the sketch I would write, not Rest, but “a Promise of Rest.” Addio: tell me one word about the point of view of your contributors.
REST
Poor restless heart! still thy lament,
Crave not for rest, refusèd still,
There is some struggle, – discontent,
That stays thy will.
Be brave to meet unrest,
Nor seek from work release,
Clasp struggle close unto thy breast,
Until it brings thee peace.
Seek not in creed a resting-place
From problems that around thee surge,
But look doubt bravely in the face,
Till truth emerge.
Work out the problem of thy life,
To no convention chainèd be,
Against self-love wage ceaseless strife,
And thus be free.
Then, if in harmony thou livest,
With all that’s in thy nature best,
Who “Sleep to his beloved giveth,”
Will give thee rest.
REST
His Mother was a Prince’s child,
His Father was a King;
There wanted not to that proud lot
What power or wealth could bring;
Great nobles served him, bending low,
Strong captains wrought his will;
Fair fortune! – but it wearied him,
His spirit thirsted still!
For him the glorious music roll’d
Of singers, silent long;
Grave histories told, in scrolls of old,
The strife of right and wrong;
For him Philosophy unveil’d
Athenian Plato’s lore,
Might these not serve to fill a life?
Not this! he sigh’d for more!
He loved! – the truest, newest lip
That ever lover pressed,
The queenliest mouth of all the south
Long love for him confess’d:
Round him his children’s joyousness
Rang silverly and shrill;
Thrice blessed! save that blessedness
Lack’d something – something still!
To battle all his spears he led,
In streams of winding steel;
On breast and head of foeman dead
His war-horse set its heel;
The jewell’d housings of its flank
Swung wet with blood of kings;
Yet the rich victory seem’d rank
With the blood taint it brings!
The splendid passion seized his soul
To heal, by statutes sage,
The ills that bind our hapless kind.
And chafe to crime and rage;
And dear the people’s blessing was,
The praising of the poor;
But evil stronger is than thrones,
And hate no laws can cure!
He laid aside the sword and pen,
And lit the lamp, to wrest
From nature’s range the secrets strange,
The treasures of her breast;
And wisdom deep his guerdon was,
And wondrous things he knew;
Yet from each vanquish’d mystery
Some harder marvel grew!
No pause! no respite! no sure ground,
To stay the spirit’s quest!
In all around not one thing found
So good as to be “best;”
Not even love proved quite divine;
