A Vision of Life; Semblance and Reality (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CANTO III Invocation of Dante The beginnings of Life, with only individual differentiation, under the form of atoms tending to a farther goal My guide explains their nature and progress, and how they arrive at actual personality by entering on the Life of Sense The Gate of the Life of Sense and Personality, through which the Spirit Life must pass I wonder at their willingness: till I see the potential life in every atom, tending towards fulfilment The beginnings of Life. O Poet, and more than poet, with glory crowned Not by thy Florence only, thou whose head The triplicate laurels of three worlds surround, Thou through all mortal, all immortal led By her whom the third circle claims, till past Each height, thou saw'st heaven's self beneath thee spread In love made one with the Highest, hear the last The meanest of thy kindred; be thy fire Within me, be thy mantle o'er me cast Thou know'st how rough the upward road, and higher Than unassisted my weak steps can climb Rise the steep summits of my song's desire. The path by thee first marked in happier time, Untrod since then, be it mine again to trace Led by the echo of the Master's rhyme. Now to my task. Around I looked, the place Changed from its luminous stillness, as a dream Changes, when busier shapes the first efface. The air was thick as with an eddying stream In countless circles drawn; till earth and sky Flickered uncertain through the vaporous gleam. Nor what that vapour's self could I descry, So dense, so swift it rolled, till watchful heed With knowledge more exact informed my eya Close-herded crows that to warm roof-tops speed Thwart the pale wintry eve, when other home, Forest and field snow-whelmed, deny their need; Motes in a ray cross-slanted through the gloom Of some oak-...