THE BLIND LAMA
At earliest sunlight,
Ocean and City glitter’d broadly bright!
With ringing song the lark,
The sky with radiant blue,
The air with shining, and
The grass with dancing dew,
Rejoiced at the defeating of the dark,—
Till, listening, looking, with rejoicing too,
“Light! Light!” I eried, “What dearer gift than you?”
———Straightway, on the spread page
Of Hedin’s brave and morning-hearted book
The finger of a sunbeam bade me look,
And read how strange a story!
Of a Thibetan sage,
Who steadfastly the light of day abjured,
And dwelt from youth to age
In dark immured,
Striving to see the super-sensual Glory.
Through sixty-and-nine years he so endured,
Then, life’s last measure being all but run,
Ask’d to be once more brought into the sun,
And to it show’d his eyes grown wholly blind—
So well the dreadful discipline was done!
Sixty-nine years of voluntary night?
O dire delusion! senseless sacrifice!
Back to the lovely, reassuring light
For refuge rush’d my eyes....
But, thro’ all differences of race and creed,
My spirit with that kinsman spirit, lo,
Strongly agreed!
Applauded the design, if not the deed;
The purpose understood, echo’d the need
All lanthorns of the flesh down, out, to turn,
If so the Inner Light may brightlier burn.
Nay, as I mused, those sixty years and nine,
Dark for Light’s sake, began to glitter and sparkle,
Into my heart that dismal state to shine!
That strong renouncing did my will great good,
And lit my mind to such a morning-mood,
That now its whole interior landscape glow’d,
And, as in Nature’s glory erst I gloried,
So could I joy now in that fortitude
How dazzlingly that show’d
The truth of humanhood!—
For if, when soul demands,
The body must so utterly obey
As to put off, and steadfastly abide,
Sixty-nine years denied, till self-denied,
Even the light of day —
Why, then, how much of man the soul must be,
How little, clay!
O Brother in the Dark! ’twas forth, not out,
The light of thine intrepid young eyes went!
Forth, as a starry ray
Upon our darkling way,
A shining, burning testimony, still sent
Our groping life about,
Its Inner Light to reinforce, and slay
Its Dark, of sloth and doubt.
The glitter of this outer morning-glee
How hast thou inly re-illumed for me!—
Thou, who for love of Light,
Could’st even light abhor,
And whose firm soul, for us who press through night,
Has lit one lanthorn more!