THE SONG OF THE LIBERATED SOUL

I am the pœt of hithierto nnuttered joy.

A little bird told me the secret in tfae mght, and henceforth I go about seeking to whom to whisper it.

I see the heavens laughing, I discem the half-hidden ^ces of the gods wherever I go, I see the transparent opaque veil in which they hide themselves ; yet I dare not say what I see — lest I should be locked up ! ^

It is the laughter of the man who has the secret, and yet so whimsy is the world that he cannot give it away as he would. Then in the next breath he rings it out :

Laughter, O laughter I O soûl exhaled through suffering, arising free ! *

The really whimsy thing is not that he cannot tell the secret, but that we cannot receive it from him second-hand as it were. He can tell it right enough. He cornes to you, and takes your hand, and says:

Ail this day we will go together ; the sun shall circle overhead ; our shadows swing round us on the road ; the winter sunshine shall âoat wonderful promises to us from the hills ; the evening see us in another land ;

The night ever insatiate of love we will sleep together, and rise early and go f orward again in the moming ;

Wherever the road shall lead us, in solitary places or among the crowd, it shall be well ; we shall not désire to corne to the end of the joumey, nor consider what the end may be ; the end of aU things shall be with Us.*

Yes, there it is ! That is the secret. There is the well-spring of Joy. You may feel it while

1 r. Z?., p. 6s. » Jbid., p. 6s. /Wrf., p. 96.

252 COSMIC EMOTIONALISM

you hold his hand ; but the secret will only be your own, your inaliénable possession, when your Soûl, too, is liberated within. That is Joy.

O joy of the liberated soûl (ûnished purpose and acquittai of dvilization) daring ail things — light step, life held in the palm of the hand I O swift and eager delight of batUe, passion of love destioying and destroying the body f

Etemal and glonous War ! Liberation ! the soûl like an eagle — hom gaping wounds and death — nishing forih screaming into its vast and etemal heaven.^

Passages might be multiplied almost indefinitdy ; the thème has many variations. Joy is the birth-cry of the soûl. With the expansion of life from this deep centre, more joy. It is the dominant of the soûl' s own harmony ; and is the diapason that booms in those world-harmonies which the soûl discovers rather than créâtes. It is the Sound which hovers over the waters of the soul-life poured forth. It is the consdousness which accompanies ail créative work; so God is said to " renew His andent rapture " ; so a woman is said to joy because a man-child is bom into the world. It gives the peculiar quality to the frenzy of the poet, the rapture of the lover, the ecstasy of the saint. It is the récognition of the God within. Cosmic emotionaUsm, if you Uke ; but at this level, as at ail others, émotion cannot be divorced from thought and will ; in

1 r. />., p. loi.

THE WIDER CmCUMSTANCE 958

Joy there is both Vision and Power ; résurrection is ascension ; the soûl' s awakening is the ascent of the life; tfaat which from the soul's-side is growth and expansion, is from the world-side rédemption ; at the heart of the universe there is Joy evermore, a blossoming Tree of Life. He knows it who is " bom of the Spirit."