Atama Singha -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Sikhs -- India -- Punjab -- History -- Fiction
"Watcher unseeing! what of the night!
'Tis past and gone.
I know th' advance and joy of light!
Look how for it all things put on
Such hues as in comparison
The earth and sky to darkness turn,
Hues of the sard, and chrysolite
And sapphire herald in the morn."
_Atma:_
"Ah! woe is me for day so quickly past,
For morning fled, and noontide unexpressed."
_Bertram:_
"The subtly-quickening breath of morn
my inmost being is borne,
And I behold th' unearthly train
Of solemn splendours that pertain
To seraph state,
Such as our glories symbolize.
They sweep in countless bright convoys
Athwart my blissful view, they seem
Completion of all pleasure known
Or loved, and of our fairest dream
End and interpretation."
_Atma:_
"Let be, my friend; so it be morn to thee
I make no moan, though thy day's dawn shall be
Night of desertion and lament to me."
CHAPTER XX.
Death, whether it be day or night, overtook Bertram in the mountain
fastness, and Atma knew once more that the human soul is lonely, which
he had been fain to doubt or deny in the pleasant delusion of
friendship. He lived alone, and, after a while, with returning mental
health, he sometimes gave way to bitter reflection on these, his wasted
days, though knowing himself unable still to take up the broken thread
of active existence. But, growing stronger, he was at last able to
perceive that this apparently barren season was the best harvest time of
his life, for, adrift from human ties and from religions, he was at last
alone with God. His battles were sore to fight, the solid earth seemed
gone from beneath his feet, and the heavens were become an illusion.
There was a time when he cried out that "all men are liars," as we have
all cried, but the instinct of the soul happily arrested him then.
Happily, for it is strangely true that he who loses faith in man will
soon lose faith in God. It is as if the great heart of the Race,
recoiling from suicidal impulse, warned the individual from treason
against his kind--a suggestion of the unity underlying all created
things. This the best religions have known, and have founded on it a law
that he who loves God must love his brother also. Apprehending this,
Atma grew again in heart to forgive his fellowmen who had so sorely
sinned against him, and, musing on their ways he pitied them, and knew
that the true attitude towards humanity is one of pity. He pitied men in
their crimes, in their unbeliefs, and in their faiths, and presently he
saw in these faiths which he had decried a spiritual beauty. His own
creed, grown hateful to him as the vainest of delusions, reasserted its
claims to reverence, and the voice that had cried to his childhood out
of the desert of silence and mystery that surrounds every human soul
spoke to him again as a voice of inspiration. Every man's faith is the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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