Mysticism -- Fiction; Supernatural -- Fiction; Virginia -- Fiction
"Yes. It is part of the same truth. It all rests on the oneness of
Being. That is why you must in some wise grasp that Oneness first. A
time will come where there will be no saying 'My brother Dick,' or 'Bob
in England,' because they and Wilmot Hereward and all others will have
advanced beyond all such divisions. But on the road there you will meet
many a fair power!"
The old man went the next morning back to Oakwood in his battered car.
He went alone and not alone, with a peaceful face.
In the afternoon Anna and Curtin, Drew and the two Danes, walked down
the river, in among the partly forested, partly grassy hills that here
closed the valley. Indian summer had now stolen over the land. The air
hung smoky amethyst, and still as still! No motion was in the fallen
leaves, the birds sailed stilly by, the stubble fields dreamed, the
river sang low. Wood smoke clung in the nostril. Turning, coming
homeward, the brick house and yellowed pillars stood pictured. They
passed through the orchard and by a small cider mill. Zinia, on the back
porch, poured for each out of an amber pitcher an amber glassful.
"_Was-hael!_" said Drew, and lifted the glass. Curtin caught from memory
the answering phrase, "_Drink-hael!_" A shaft of wonder, like a gleam
of light, touched them all with strange fingers. Something trembled in
the air. If it said aught it said, "So Earth begins to _live_ Poetry!"
Drew set down the cup with a sharp, clear sound. "Life, everlasting
life!" he said. "I see it now! We have always lived!"
Again evening in the old parlor, the fire and music, Tam lying beside
Linden, Marget seated by Anna Darcy. Robert Dane spoke. "This finding
ourselves in all and all in us, this lifting the all into a mighty I,
this is it behind the slowly accelerating movements of the ages, behind
all efforts for freedom, for knowledge, for interchange and intercourse,
swifter and swifter, subtler and subtler intercourse--this is it?"
"Yes. Behind a hundred shapes of dawn."
"Effort does not cease?"
"No. But effort, too, is finer and far more powerful. You act now from
within upon the within."
"To touch through and through that we are one! Hercules's labor isn't in
it!"
"Yet it is done and to be done. Find me if you can an individual to-day
who has not some dim perception of it, or who is not in some wise acting
toward it! Even the most unpromising--look and you will see! It is so
tremendous, that finding, it runs through every fiber. We can cut out no
pattern, but we move from light to light, from love to love!"
In her room that night, when she had put out the lamp, Anna Darcy,
lying in bed, watched the firelight on wall and ceiling. A cricket
chirped, she could hear the river. Her visit to Sweet Rocket was ending.
"Only it will never end; it is immortal within me!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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