Memoir of John Veitch...W. Blackwood and sons, 1896 - 197 pages |
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Page 72 - The Future hides in it Gladness and sorrow ; We press still thorow, Nought that abides in it Daunting us, — onward. And solemn before us, Veiled, the dark Portal ; Goal of all mortal : — Stars silent rest o'er us, Graves under us silent. While earnest thou gazest, Comes boding of terror, Comes phantasm and error ; Perplexes the bravest With doubt and misgiving. But heard are the Voices, Heard are the Sages, The Worlds and the Ages : " Choose well, your choice is Brief, and yet endless.
Page 68 - Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused A spirit of activity and life, That knows no term, cessation, or decay...
Page 72 - The Mason's ways are A type of Existence, And his persistence Is as the days are Of men in this world.
Page 72 - Comes phantasm and error; Perplexes the bravest With doubt and misgiving. But heard are the Voices, Heard are the Sages, The Worlds and the Ages: " Choose well ; your choice is Brief, and yet endless. " Here eyes do regard you, In Eternity's stillness ; Here is all fulness, Ye brave, to reward you ; Work, and despair not.
Page 69 - ... this Whole Of suns and worlds and men and beasts and flowers, With all the silent or tempestuous workings By which they have been, are, or cease to be, Is but a vision; — all that it inherits Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams: Thought is its cradle and its grave; nor less The future and the past are idle shadows Of thought's eternal flight — they have no being ; Nought is but that which feels itself to be.
Page 69 - Spirit of Nature ! all-sufficing Power ! Necessity, thou mother of the world ! Unlike the God of human error, thou Requir'st no prayers or praises. The caprice Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee Than do the changeful passions of his breast To thy unvarying harmony.
Page 83 - Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the ;world, and the glory of them, in a moment of time.
Page 101 - Heroically fashioned — to infuse Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse, While the whole world seems adverse to desert. And, oh ! when Nature sinks, as oft she may, Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress, Still to be strenuous for the bright reward, And in the soul admit of no decay, Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness — Great is the glory, for the strife is hard ! XLIII.
Page 81 - I dare not guess; but in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem. And we the shadows of the dream, It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.