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 love-lit 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 fairy 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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