Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/563

Rh with all the glory and the light thereof. It is, indeed, in your own spirit, and tallying the loftiest teachings of it, that we aim these poor utterances. For you, too, mighty ministers! know that there is something greater than you, namely, the fresh, eternal qualities of Being. From them, and by them, as you, at your best, we, too, after our fashion, when art and conventions fail, evoke the last, the needed help, to vitalize our country and our days.

Thus, after all, we pronounce not so much against the principle of Culture; we only supervise it, and promulge as deep, perhaps a deeper, principle. As we have shown, the New World, including in itself, and, indeed, founded upon, the all-levelling aggregate of Democracy, we show it also including the all-varied, all-permitting, all-free theorem of Individuality, and erecting therefor a lofty and hitherto unoccupied framework or platform of Personalism, broad enough for all, eligible to every farmer and mechanic—to the female equally with the male—a towering Selfhood, not physically perfect only—not satisfied with the mere mind's and learning's stores, but Religious, possessing the idea of the Infinite (rudder and compass sure amid this troublous voyage, o'er darkest, wildest wave, through stormiest wind, of man's or nation's progress)—realizing, above the rest, that known humanity, in deepest sense, is fair adhesion to Itself, for purposes beyond—and that, finally, the theme, great as it is, of the Personality of mortal life is most important with reference to the immortal, the Unknown, the Spiritual, the only permanently real, which, as the ocean waits for and receives the rivers, waits for us each and all.


 * With lofty arching doors;
 * There is carving on the ceilings high,
 * And velvet on the floors;
 * A rich and costly building.
 * Where noiseless servants wait,
 * And 'neath the escutcheon's gilding,
 * None enter but the great.

But a happier home is near it, a humble cottage small. And I envy its sweet mistress the shadows on her wall.


 * My pictures are the pride of Art,
 * And drawn by cunning hands
 * But the painted figures never move,
 * Nor change, the painted lands;
 * Before the poorest window
 * More gorgeous pageants glide,
 * Within the lowliest household.
 * More lifelike groups abide;

And I turn from soulless symbols, that crowd my gloomy hall, To watch the shifting shadows upon the cottage wall.


 * My stately husband never bends
 * To kiss me on the lips;