Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
full peal of its organ.
After I had recovered from my first surprise, I became acquainted with
the flower, and found all its life in harmony. Its fragrance, less
enchanting than that of the rose, excited a pleasure more full of life,
and which could longer be enjoyed without satiety. Its blossoms, if
plucked from their home, refused to retain their dazzling hue, but
drooped and grew sallow, like princesses captive in the prison of a
barbarous foe.
But there was something quite peculiar in the fragrance of this tree; so
much so, that I had not at first recognized the magnolia. Thinking it
must be of a species I had never yet seen, I alighted, and leaving my
horse, drew near to question it with eyes of reverent love.
"Be not surprised," replied those lips of untouched purity, "stranger,
who alone hast known to hear in my voice a tone more deep and full than
that of my beautiful sisters. Sit down, and listen to my tale, nor fear
that I will overpower thee by too much sweetness. I am, indeed, of the
race you love, but in it I stand alone. In my family I have no sister of
the heart, and though my root is the same as that of the other virgins
of our royal house, I bear not the same blossom, nor can I unite my
voice with theirs in the forest choir. Therefore I dwell here alone, nor
did I ever expect to tell the secret of my loneliness. But to all that
ask there is an answer, and I speak to thee.
"Indeed, we have met before, as that secret feeling of home, which makes
delight so tender, must inform thee. The spirit that I utter once
inhabited the glory of the most glorious climates. I dwelt once in the
orange tree."
"Ah?" said I; "then I did not mistake. It is the same voice I heard in
the saddest season of my youth. I stood one evening on a high terrace in
another land, the land where 'the plant man has grown to greatest size.'
It was an evening whose unrivalled splendor demanded perfection in
man--answering to that he found in nature--a sky 'black-blue' deep as
eternity, stars of holiest hope, a breeze promising rapture in every
breath. I could not longer endure this discord between myself and such
beauty; I retired within my window, and lit the lamp. Its rays fell on
an orange tree, full clad in its golden fruit and bridal blossoms. How
did we talk together then, fairest friend! Thou didst tell me all; and
yet thou knowest, that even then, had I asked any part of thy dower, it
would have been to bear the sweet fruit, rather than the sweeter
blossoms. My wish had been expressed by another.
'O, that I were an orange tree,
That busy plant!
Then should I ever laden he,
And never want
Some fruit for him that dresseth me.'
Thou didst seem to me the happiest of all spirits in wealth of nature,
in fulness of utterance. How is it that I find thee now in another
habitation?"
"How is it, man, that thou art now content that thy life bears no golden
fruit?"
"It is," I replied, "that I have at last, through privation, been
initiated into the secret of peace. Blighted without, unable to find
myself in other forms of nature, I was driven back upon the centre of my
being, and there found all being. For the wise, the obedient child from
one point can draw all lines, and in one germ read all the possible
disclosures of successive life."
"Even so," replied the flower, "and ever for that reason am I trying to
simplify my being. How happy I was in the 'spirit's dower when first it
was wed,' I told thee in that earlier day. But after a while I grew
weary of that fulness of speech; I felt a shame at telling all I knew,
and challenging all sympathies; I was never silent, I was never alone;
I had a voice for every season, for day and night; on me the merchant
counted, the bride looked to me for her garland, the nobleman for the
chief ornament of his princely hair, and the poor man for his wealth;
all sang my praises, all extolled my beauty, all blessed my beneficence;
and, for a while, my heart swelled with pride and pleasure. But, as
years passed, my mood changed. The lonely moon rebuked me, as she hid
from the wishes of man, nor would return till her due change was passed.
The inaccessible sun looked on me with the same ray as on all others; my
endless profusion could not bribe him to one smile sacred to me alone.
The mysterious wind passed me by to tell its secret to the solemn pine,
and the nightingale sang to the rose rather than me, though she was
often silent, and buried herself yearly in the dark earth.
"I knew no mine or thine: I belonged to all. I could never rest: I was
never at one. Painfully I felt this want, and from every blossom sighed
entreaties for some being to come and satisfy it. With every bud I
implored an answer, but each bud only produced an orange.
"At last this feeling grew more painful, and thrilled my very root. The
earth trembled at the touch with a pulse so sympathetic that ever and
anon it seemed, could I but retire and hide in that silent bosom for one
calm winter, all would be told me, and tranquillity, deep as my desire,
be mine. But the law of my being was on me, and man and nature seconded
it. Ceaselessly they called on me for my beautiful gifts; they decked
themselves with them, nor cared to know the saddened heart of the giver.
O, how cruel they seemed at last, as they visited and despoiled me, yet
never sought to aid me, or even paused to think that I might need their
aid! yet I would not hate them. I saw it was my seeming riches that
bereft me of sympathy. I saw they could not know what was hid beneath
the perpetual veil of glowing life. I ceased to expect aught from them,
and turned my eyes to the distant stars. I thought, could I but hoard
from the daily expenditure of my juices till I grew tall enough, I might
reach those distant spheres, which looked so silent and consecrated,
and there pause a while from these weary joys of endless life, and in
the lap of winter find my spring.
"But not so was my hope to be fulfilled. One starlight night I was
looking, hoping, when a sudden breeze came up. It touched me, I thought,
as if it were a cold, white beam from those stranger worlds. The cold
gained upon my heart; every blossom trembled, every leaf grew brittle,
and the fruit began to seem unconnected with the stem; soon I lost all
feeling; and morning found the pride of the garden black, stiff, and
powerless.
"As the rays of the morning sun touched me, consciousness returned, and
I strove to speak, but in vain. Sealed were my fountains, and all my
heartbeats still. I felt that I had been that beauteous tree, but now
only was--what--I knew not; yet I was, and the voices of men said, It is
dead; cast it forth, and plant another in the costly vase. A mystic
shudder of pale joy then separated me wholly from my former abode.
"A moment more, and I was before the queen and guardian of the flowers.
Of this being I cannot speak to thee in any language now possible
betwixt us; for this is a being of another order from thee, an order
whose presence thou mayst feel, nay, approach step by step, but which
cannot be known till thou art of it, nor seen nor spoken of till thou
hast passed through it.
"Suffice it to say, that it is not such a being as men love to paint; a
fairy, like them, only lesser and more exquisite than they; a goddess,
larger and of statelier proportion; an angel, like still, only with an
added power. Man never creates; he only recombines the lines and colors
of his own existence: only a deific fancy could evolve from the elements
the form that took me home.
"Secret, radiant, profound ever, and never to be known, was she; many
forms indicate, and none declare her. Like all such beings, she was
feminine. All the secret powers are "mothers." There is but one paternal
power.
"She had heard my wish while I looked at the stars, and in the silence
of fate prepared its fulfilment. 'Child of my most communicative hour,'
said she, 'the full pause must not follow such a burst of melody. Obey
the gradations of nature, nor seek to retire at once into her utmost
purity of silence. The vehemence of thy desire at once promises and
forbids its gratification. Thou wert the keystone of the arch, and bound
together the circling year: thou canst not at once become the base of
the arch, the centre of the circle. Take a step inward, forget a voice,
lose a power; no longer a bounteous sovereign, become a vestal
priestess, and bide thy time in the magnolia.'
"Such is my history, friend of my earlier day. Others of my family, that
you have met, were formerly the religious lily, the lonely dahlia,
fearless decking the cold autumn, and answering the shortest visits of
the sun with the brightest hues; the narcissus, so rapt in
self-contemplation that it could not abide the usual changes of a life.
Some of these have perfume, others not, according to the habit of their
earlier state; for, as spirits change, they still bear some trace, a
faint reminder, of their latest step upwards or inwards. I still speak
with somewhat of my former exuberance and over-ready tenderness to the
dwellers on this shore; but each star sees me purer, of deeper thought,
and more capable of retirement into my own heart. Nor shall I again
detain a wanderer, luring him from afar; nor shall I again subject
myself to be questioned by an alien spirit, to tell the tale of my being
in words that divide it from itself. Farewell, stranger! and believe
that nothing strange can meet me more. I have atoned by confession;
further penance needs not; and I feel the Infinite possess me more and
more. Farewell! to meet again in prayer, in destiny, in harmony, in
elemental power."
The magnolia left me; I left not her, but must abide forever in the
thought to which the clew was found in the margin of that lake of the
South.
CONSECRATION OF GRACE CHURCH.
Whoever passes up Broadway finds his attention arrested by three fine
structures--Trinity Church, that of the Messiah, and Grace Church.
His impressions are, probably, at first, of a pleasant character. He
looks upon these edifices as expressions, which, however inferior in
grandeur to the poems in stone which adorn the older world, surely
indicate that man cannot rest content with his short earthly span, but
prizes relations to eternity. The house in which he pays deference to
claims which death will not cancel seems to be no less important in his
eyes than those in which the affairs which press nearest are attended
to.
So far, so good! That is expressed which gives man his superiority over
the other orders of the natural world, that consciousness of spiritual
affinities of which we see no unequivocal signs elsewhere.
But, if this be something great when compared with the rest of the
animal creation, yet how little seems it when compared with the ideal
that has been offered to him, as to the means of signifying such
feelings! These temples! how far do they correspond with the idea of
that religious sentiment from which they originally sprung? In the old
world the history of such edifices, though not without its shadow, had
many bright lines. Kings and emperors paid oftentimes for the materials
and labor a price of blood and plunder, and many a wretched sinner
sought by contributions of stone for their walls to roll off the burden
he had laid on his conscience. Still the community amid which they rose
knew little of these drawbacks. Pious legends attest the purity of
feeling associated with each circumstance of their building. Mysterious
orders, of which we know only that they were consecrated to brotherly
love and the development of mind, produced the genius which animated the
architecture; but the casting of the bells and suspending them in the