CHAPTER XXIV.

POETIC TESTIMONY.

"Sounding through the dreamy dimness

Where I faint and weary lay,

Spake a poet: I will lead thee

To the land of songs to-day.'"

Sweet and heavenly sings the Poet Laureate of England:

How pure at heart and sound in head,

With what divine affections bold

Should be the man whose thought would hold

An hour's communion with the dead.

In vain shalt thou, or any, call

The spirits from their golden day,

Except, like them, thou too canst say

My spirit is at peace with all."

Exalted minds dwell in the element of the spiritual. The spiritual is the real. Poets are the soul's prophets. Unlike metaphysicians, they give us the product of their spiritual life and intuitive insight, and appeal to the consciousness and deep sympathies of humanity for the verification. Poets are divinity-appointed interpreters, employing the shadows of the outer world to reveal the substance of the world within. From the Vedic hymns of the Hindoos their glory gleams all along the pages of thought and culture. Brain, sunned from heaven, pen afire with truth, their lines ever tender, glow with the fadeless radiance of immortal

love. Divest God of the attribute of love-disrobe literature of its ideal-strip poetry of its Spiritualism, and the residuum is shells-nothing but shells. The nature-poet of Galilee, Jesus, walked under Syrian skies a Spiritualist, guarded by a legion of angels.

Want of space warrants but a few quotations from the rich poesy fields of Spiritualism. Grand this apostrophe of Coleridge:

"Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o'er
With untried gaze the immeasurable fount
Ebullient with creative Deity!

And ye of plastic power, that interfused
Roll through the grosser and material mass
In organizing surge! Holies of God!"

LONGFELLOW's testimony:

"Some men there are, I have known such, who think

That the two worlds-the seen and the unseen,
The world of matter and the world of spirit-

Are like the hemispheres upon our maps,

And touch each other only at a point.

But these two worlds are not divided thus,

Save for the purpose of common speech.

They form one globe, in which the parted seas
All flow together and are intermingled,
While the great continents remain distinct."

"The spiritual world

Lies all about us, and its avenues

Are open to the unseen feet of phantoms
That come and go, and we perceive them not
Save by their influence, or when at times
A most mysterious Providence permits them
To manifest themselves to mortal eyes."

"A drowsiness is stealing over me

Which is not sleep; for, though I close mine eyes,

I am awake, and in another world.

Dim faces of the dead and of the absent

Come floating up before me."

*

"When the hours of day are numbered,

And the voices of the night

Wake the better soul that slumber'd,

-"As the moon from some dark gate or cloud

Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light
Across whose trembling planks our mem'ries crowd
Into the realm of mystery and light-

So from the world of spirits there descends

A bridge of light, connecting it with this,

O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss."

PHOEBE CARY's testimony:

That influential weekly, the New York Independent, relating the spiritual experiences of Cowper, subjoins some lines from Miss Cary's pen, at once poetic and appropriate :

"The most important events of Cowper's latter years were audibly announced to him before they occurred. We find him writing of Mrs. Urwin's approaching death,' when her health, although feeble, was not such as to occasion alarm. His lucid intervals, and the return of his disorder, were announced to him in the same remarkable manner.

"The pillow by his tear-drops wet,

The stoniest couch that heard his cries,
Had near a golden ladder set

That touched the skies.

And at the morning on his bed,

And in sweet visions of the night,
Angels, descending, comforted

His soul with light.

*

And, as the glory thus discerned

His heart desired, with strong desire ;
By seraphs touched, his lips have burned
With sacred fire.

As ravens to Elijah bare,

At morn and eve, the promised bread;
So by the spirits of the air

His soul was fed."

MRS. M. A. LIVERMORE's testimony:

The glory of genuine poets trails all along the eras of art and culture. Their inspirations are comparable to dewdrops dripping from the leaves of the "Tree of Life." The gifted Mrs. Livermore, wife of Rev. D. P. Livermore, and assistant editor of the New Covenant, sings the principles of Spiritualism in these lines:

"List thee, father: 'twas last evening as I lay upon my bed,

Thinking of my sainted mother, whom they hid among the dead,
Till my tears bedewed the pillow, as though wet with dropping rain,
And I prayed aloud in anguish that she might come back again—

'Twas just then, as I lay weeping, that the beautiful angel came,
And her voice was fraught with music as she called me by my name;
And her robe seemed woven sunbeams, 'twas so soft and clear and bright,
And her fair, high brow was circled by a diadem of light.”

Describing the brightness of the shining angel mother, the imprinted kiss and her own calm, happy sensations, she thus continues:

"And she spoke-I cannot tell thee all the blessed angel said
As she bent above my pillow and kept watch beside my bed;
But of heavenly things she told me-of a light and lovely land,
Where there dwelleth angel-children many a fair and spotless band.

And she said such flowers bloom there as we never see below,
Rosier than the hues of sunset, brighter than the rain's fair brow;
And such gushing strains of music swell along the fragrant air,
As will soothe the ransomed spirit when released from earthly care."

MILTON's testimony:

"Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth unseen,

Both when we wake and when we sleep."

TENNYSON'S testimony:

In that spiritual biography, "In Memoriam," is mirrored the various changes of a poet's love and tenderness upon the earthly loss of a friend. Death he considers an upward flight-the leaving of a mortal garment, a ruined chrysalis, a shattered temple.

The poems of this gifted son of song present a type of Spiritualism, as beautiful as philosophical:

"God's finger touch'd him, and he slept !

The great Intelligences fair

That range above our mortal state,

In circle round the blessed gate,
Received and gave him welcome there;

And led him through the blissful climes,

And show'd him in the fountain fresh
All knowledge that the sons of flesh
Shall gather in the cycled times.

And he the much-beloved again,
A lord of large experience, train
To riper growth the mind and will:
And what delights can equal those

That stir the spirit's inner deeps,

When one that loves but knows not, reaps

A truth from one that loves and knows?

If such a dreamy touch should fall,

Oh, turn thee round, resolve the doubt,
My guardian angel will speak out

In that high place, and tell thee all.