Classic Poem

PART I.—THE DOOR

Again the mystic East, from her dark tent
Unloosed the fastening and pushed back the fold,
And peering from her eyes with wisdom old,
Beheld a rainbow arch of promise bent,
And lo! beneath that irised Orient,
A luminous door through whose wide portal rolled
A flood, joy-palpitant, of liquid gold—
A tide that reached to every continent.

In massive chord, the heavens sang aloud:
“Lift up your heads, the King of Glory waits!”
In reverence the ancient hills were bowed—
“Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates!
“Let all the sons of God, with feet unshod,
“March on into the splendid dream of God.”

“In the beginning, God!” What loftier thought
Was ever sounded from the bells of time?
What meaning into words was ever wrought
More sweet and solemn, sacred and sublime?

Was it some zealot, from his soma bowl
Pouring libations on the Ganges sod,
Invoking Indra to enrich his soul,
Who gave to us the first faint gleam of God?

Or was it at an ancient Theban shrine
Some poet in imagination caught
A dim conception of the Love divine
And gave the ages the stupendous thought?

Perchance some pilgrim by Euphrates' shore
Discerned within, a strange inspiring force,
And knew himself to be the virtual door
Through which his soul might find its highest Source.

The words were written in the long ago
By one who near some eastern river trod;
Though we their fountain head may never know,
We cherish them: “In the beginning, God!”

With glad surprise, the traveller looking down
Upon Shiraz, that ancient Persian town,
Cries: “God is great in beauty as in power;
The senses in this sea of splendour drown!”

From that far land the Zend Avesta came
When Zarathustra spoke the glorious name;
Now through another door, a gleam of Light
Burst forth in fires of sin-consuming flame.

O'er all the world, from that Iranian shore,
The fragrances of heaven were breathed once more;
The lands were lighted by the golden lamp
Of truth bright-shining through its living door.

The herald, he, of that intenser ray
By which the earth was flooded with the day;
The bearer of a clear, far-gleaming light,
Revealer of the love-illumined way.

'Twas as in other days when Moses first
Received the Law, the tide-gates strained and burst;
Then fell the radiance of the gentle Light
Of peace on tribes by bigotry long cursed.

He told them of the dawning that should be,
The end of prejudice, the victory
That lives all old oppressions bravely down
With timeless healing of eternity.

“Ye weary souls, rest where the shadows are;
On roads of wrong your feet have wandered far;
Your hearts are burdened by the wildering throng
Of faiths in wild conflicting words at war.

“Your sins with all humility confest,
Cast ye the load of sorrow from your breast,
And look within, for I will meet you there
In quiet dream-pavilions of my rest.

“Bow not beneath the pharasaic rite,
Nor let the formalist your freedom blight.
Within your hearts find rest in lowliness—
Make heavy burdens with contentment light.

“Lay creeds aside; from ceremonial cease;
In humble service give your powers release,
To love is to obey the highest law
And open roads to everlasting peace.

“God is the Truth, the Universal Sun,
The great, the glorious and the changeless One
From whom the streams of justice, love, and right
Through all the spirits of the races run.

“He is the Everlasting and the Real;
He holds the stars that in their orbits wheel;
The Fount of wisdom and the Source of life;
The power to love and do, to think and feel.”

Thus spake El Bab: “There cometh one in might
And splendour of the Universal Light,
Shall show the beauty of a brighter day
To every soul that has the inner sight.”

Then, in the spirit of a juster age,
The Light of God shot through earth's battle rage
Like some rare meteor flaming through the dark,—
A fiery cross on history's latest page.

The hurt and blight of hate, the gnawing tooth
Of blind intolerance and blows uncouth,
Were branded on that rood, till mankind knew
The life of love is heaven, and love is truth.

With frowning front, yet jealous and afraid,
Their craft in danger, him the priests betrayed—
Those bulwarks of a chronic self-regard
The cause to ravage and destroy essayed.

In filthy dungeons left in rags to lie;
In loneliness of exile forced to fly;
In old Tabriz, 'twixt heaven and earth he passed—
To such as he, 'tis fuller life to die.

With that great light went out ten thousand stars;
The wounded earth was quivering with their scars;
So narrow bigotry was crowned as king,
And sat upon the crimson throne of Mars.

But love divine was never vanquished quite,
Even on the earth, the ever-present might
Of God, Jehovah, Allah, Brahm, or Christ,
Is Love, the urge of universal Light.

And our humanity is also one—
A sea whose billows rise and roll and run
Into the channels of the restive lands,
Until its mists are folded in the Sun.

When some wild conflagration sweeps the earth
And with relentless fury curbs our mirth;
We stand and stare into the silent blue
And feel that all is vanity and dearth.

Then strange new light comes flaming up the sea—
A sense of being strong and greatly free;
And through the clear apocalyptic air,
We hear new songs of ages yet to be.

And like the gray sails of a thousand ships
That rise like phantoms from the ocean's lips,
Or snow-white fleeces in an azure sky,
That young Eolus drives with shepherd whips,

A heavenly presence o'er the silence broods;
And sweeps away our soul-depressing moods;
Then all reality to sight appears,
And earth the sense of earth and time eludes.

Through that deep hush, a clear melodious strain
Runs like a wild-bird's song when, after rain,
From field and forest, Nature calls the soul
To play with June in some green, flowered lane.

The song is in ourselves. Its tones we find
Like a sweet carol floating on the wind—
A murmurous vibrancy of love and truth,
The music of the Universal Mind.
A shout breaks o'er the mountains
And up the sun's bright way;
The dream of God is rising
To fullness in our day.
Behold His herald cometh;
Let not our voices cease
To tell the gentle story
Of universal peace.