the path; he is picking cinders and arranging them, and as I ponder
I become aware that he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a
house, the mansion of his dream. Here spread along the pavement are
large rooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that
is his own. So his thought plays. Just then I catch a glimpse of the
corduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot crushes through
the cinders. I feel the pain in the child's heart as he shrinks back,
his little lovelit house of dreams all rudely shattered. Ah, poor child,
building the City Beautiful out of a few cinders, yet nigher, truer in
intent than many a stately, gold-rich palace reared by princes, thou
wert not forgotten by that mighty spirit who lives through the falling
of empires, whose home has been in many a ruined heart. Surely it was
to bring comfort to hearts like thine that that most noble of all
meditations was ordained by the Buddha. "He lets his mind pervade one
quarter of the world with thoughts of Love, and so the second, and so
the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above,
below, around, and everywhere does he continue to pervade with heart of
Love far-reaching, grown great and beyond measure."
That love, though the very faery breath of life, should by itself, and
so imparted have a sustaining power some may question, not those who
have felt the sunlight fall from distant friends who think of them; but,
to make clearer how it seems to me to act, I say that love, Eros, is a
being. It is more than a power of the soul, though it is that also; it
has a universal life of its own, and just as the dark heaving waters do
not know what jewel lights they reflect with blinding radiance, so the
soul, partially absorbing and feeling the ray of Eros within it, does
not know that often a part of its nature nearer to the sun of love
shines with a brilliant light to other eyes than its own. Many people
move unconscious of their own charm, unknowing of the beauty and power
they seem to others to impart. It is some past attainment of the soul,
a jewel won in some old battle which it may have forgotten, but none
the less this gleams on its tiara, and the star-flame inspires others to
hope and victory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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