Part 2

Full oft my feelings make me start, Like foot prints on a desert shore, As if the chambers of my heart Had heard their shadowy step before. So looking into thy fond eyes, Strange memories come to me, as though Somewhere--perchance in Paradise-- I had adored thee long ago.

_Thomas W. Parsons._

THE METEMPSYCHOSIS

I know my own creation was divine. Strewn on the breezy continents I see The veined shells and burnished scales which once Enclosed my being,--husks that had their use; I brood on all the shapes I must attain Before I reach the Perfect, which is God, And dream my dreams and let the rabble go; For I am of the mountains and the sea The deserts, and the caverns in the earth The catacombs and fragments of old worlds.

* * * * *

I was ere Romulus and Remus were; I was ere Nineveh and Babylon; I was and am, and evermore shall be, Progressing, never reaching to the end. A hundred years I trembled in the grass;

* * * * *

Under the earth in fragrant glooms I dwelt, There in the veins and sinews of a pine On a lone isle, where ... ... to and fro I swayed, Drawing the sunlight from the stooping clouds. Suns came and went, and many a mystic moon;

* * * * *

Wild music, and strange shadows floated by Some moaning and some singing. So the years Clustered about me till the hand of God Let down the lightning from a sultry sky, Splintered the pine and split the iron rock; And from my odorous prison house a bird, I in its bosom, darted; so we flew, Turning the brittle edge of one high wave Island and tree and sea-gods left behind!

* * * * *

A century was a single day. What is a day to an immortal soul? A breath, no more. And yet I hold one hour Beyond all price--that hour when from the sky I circled near and nearer to the earth, Nearer and nearer, till I brushed my wings Against the pointed chestnut trees,... ... and there, Gathering wild flowers in a cool ravine, Wandered a woman more divinely shaped Than any of the creatures of the air, Or river-goddesses, or restless shades Of noble matrons marvellous in their time For beauty and great suffering; and I sung, I charmed her thought, I gave her dreams, and then Down from the dewy atmosphere I stole And nestled in her bosom. There I slept From moon to moon, while in her eyes a thought Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn-- A mystical forewarning! When the stream, Breaking through leafless brambles and dead leaves, Piped shriller treble and from chestnut-boughs The fruit dropt noiseless through the autumn night, I gave a low, quick cry as infants do: We weep when we are born, not when we die! So was it destined; and thus came I here, To walk the earth and wear the form of Man, To suffer bravely as becomes my state, One step, one grade, one cycle nearer God.

_Thomas Bailey Aldrich._

From THE FINAL THOUGHT

Which way are my feet set? Through infinite changes yet Shall I go on, Nearer and nearer drawn To thee, God of Eternity. How shall the human grow, By changes fine and slow, To thy perfection from the life-dawn sought: What is the highest thought?

* * * * *

Love! Faith is born of it! Death is the scorn of it! It fills the earth and thrills the heavens above: And God is love, And life is love and though we heed it not, Love is the final thought.

_Maurice Thompson._

NOTES TO “EVOLUTION”

Stanza I. The Paleozoic period, the oldest division of the geological series, is separated into two great divisions, the later of which is distinguished by the number and variety of its fishes and amphibious animals. The Cambrian is the lowest of the primary strata exhibiting unmistakable organic remains. Darwin states that the progenitors of mankind must have been aquatic in their habit since morphology shows that our lungs consist of a modified swim-bladder which once served as a float.

Stanza II. The Caradoc sandstone, which takes its name from a mountain in Shropshire, consists of shelly sandstone of great thickness containing trilobites and many other fossils.

Stanza IV. Neocomian is the name given the lower division of the cretaceous system partly, at least, formed by the wearing down of the pre-existing oolitic rocks. The fresh-water formations of this period exhibit remains of terrestrial reptiles and the trunks and leaves of land plants. With this stanza the author ceases to trace the developments of life through the early geological formations and lays the scene of the next stanza in the comparatively recent Tertiary period.

Stanza VI. Huxley expresses his belief that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect began to germinate in lower forms of life and it is now quite generally conceded that the human soul is just as much a product of evolution as is the body.

Stanza VII. The Cave Dwellers of the stone age succeed in point of time an even earlier group of prehistoric man, both so ancient that no attempt can be made to fix the date of their existence except in geological terms. At the coming of the Glacial period prehistoric man was compelled to seek the shelter and warmth of caverns, holding to these abodes during the centuries which elapsed before the dawn of a warmer geological epoch. The Auroch is the European bison. The great Cave Bear was extinct at the dawn of historic time and is known only from fossils and a single engraving on stone in the prehistoric museum at Faux.

Stanza VIII. The earliest manifestations of human art consisted of the chipping of flint implements. The mammoth, the last survivor of the three species of elephants inhabiting Europe, flourished before and during the Glacial period. Larger than the modern elephant, it had large, curved tusks and a thick coat of hair.

Stanza IX. The gregarious instinct, while of the greatest social importance in its simplest form, implies none of the higher qualities of mind, neither sympathy nor capacity for mutual aid. It seems generally called in play in connection with some other instinct, rendering complete satisfaction of its impulse impossible until we are surrounded by others who share our emotions. Here the man of the stone age calls his kith and kin more from an instinct of self-assertion and elation than from any more developed social sympathy.

Stanza X. The engravings of animals upon bone or ivory by prehistoric man mark the earliest human expression of the beautiful in art for art’s sake, and appear to be the first step in evolution from savagery.

Stanza XII. Kimmeridge clay, the lowest series of the Upper Oolitic, is dark bluish gray, shaly clay which is sometimes bituminous and occasionally, as at Kimmeridge in the Isle of Purbeck, is so rich in bituminous matter as to be used as fuel.

Beneath the cretaceous rocks in Southeast England a fresh-water formation called the Wealden is found interlaced between two marine formations. It is composed of three minor groups: Weald clay, Hastings sand and Purbeck beds, or flags of limestone and marl. The Wealden formation is rich in fossils, containing also what appear to be the oldest examples of bird fossils in Great Britain.

The Bagshot sands, or stones, consist of a series of strata of the Eocene period, overlying the London clay, the name being derived from Bagshot Heath in Surrey where they were first examined. At some places, as near Oxford, England, the Coraline crag is exposed at the surface, running to a depth of more than fifty feet. It belongs to the older Pliocene period and indicates a temperate climate.

Stanza XIII. The Tremadoc slate is the uppermost of the three strata comprised in the Cambrian period in Europe, covering the earliest portion of the Paleozoic or primary era.

NOTES TO “SIMILAR CASES”

Tertiary Rocks. It is in the rocks of this period that the fossils of the various extinct primitive quadrupeds are found.

Eohippus. An Eocene perissodactyl with four anterior and three posterior digits apparently allied to the Hyracotherium ancestors of horse-like animals.

Dinoceras. A gigantic mammal of elephantine form, having three pairs of protuberances on the upper surface of his head.

Coryphodon. A fossil mammal somewhat resembling the hippopotamus.

Loxolophodon. An extinct mammal with obliquely crested molars.

Mastodon. An extinct elephant larger but similar in form to existing species.

Neolithic. Belonging to the later stone age, when first indication of polished stone weapons and implements of agriculture began to appear.

Mammoths. A very large extinct Pleistocene elephant with coarse outer hair and close woolly under hair and enormous tusks usually much curved.

NOTES TO “AVE POST SAECULA”

Stanza I. The idea of a Peruvian captive at the court of an early Egyptian king will not seem incongruous to those who are familiar with the apparent evidences of a common origin of the races of ancient Egypt and of South and Central America, or of the occult traditions of a land connection between the old world and the new world before the submerging of Atlantis.

Stanza II. _Kemi_ (_Black_) was the ancient Egyptians’ name for their own country. _Aahlu_ was the paradise of the ancient Egyptian religion where the souls of those who were admitted by Osiris might dwell for three thousand years after which they must return to earth, for another incarnation.

Stanza VI. Roman Mars is, of course, a poetic figure for Cleopatra’s warrior lover, Mark Antony.

Stanza VII. Believers in reincarnation teach that in earth lives we gain experience and in the intervening lives on the higher planes we rest and transmute that experience into power for the next earth life.

Transcriber’s Note:

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Words in bold are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=. Partially printed letters and punctuation were completed. Unprinted word “as” added to “Then as we linger ...”

The following were changed:

“slai” changed to “slain.” ... the bones of the slain.... Extended elipses changed to three dots preceding “... and there,”