Edward William Thomson (1849–1924)

MY friend conceived the soul hereafter dwells

In any heaven the inmost heart desires,

The heart, which craves delight, at pain rebels,

And balks, or obeys the soul till life expires.

He deem’d that all the eternal Force contrives

Is wrought to revigorate its own control,

And that its alchemy some strength derives

From every tested and unflagging soul.

He deem’d a spirit which avails to guide

A human heart, gives proof of energy

To be received in That which never bides,

But ever toils for what can never be—

A perfect All—toward which the Eternal strives

To urge for ever every atom’s range,

The Ideal, which never unto Form arrives,

Because new concept emanates from change.

He deem’d the inmost heart is what aligns

Man’s aspiration, noble or impure,

And that immortal Tolerance assigns

Each soul what Aspiration would secure.

And if it choose what highest souls would rue—

Some endless round of mortal joys inane—

Such fate befits what souls could not subdue

The heart’s poor shrinking from the chrism of pain.

*****

My friend review’d, nigh death, how staunch the soul

Had waged in him a conflict, never done,

To rule the dual self that fought control,

Spirit and flesh inextricably one.

His passionless judgement ponder’d well the past,

Patient, relentless, ere he spoke sincere,—

‘Through all the strife my soul prevail’d at last,

It rules my inmost heart’s desire here;

‘My Will craves not some paradise of zest

Where mortal joys eternally renew,

Nor blank nirvana, nor elysian rest,

Nor palaced pomp to bombast fancy true;

‘It yearns no whit to swell some choiring strain

In endless amplitudes of useless praise;

It dares to aspire to share the immortal pain

Of toil in moulding Form from phase to phase.

‘To me, of old, such fate some terror bore,

But now great gladness in my spirit glows,

While death clings round me friendlier than before,

To loose the soul that mounts beyond repose.’

*****

Yet, at the end, from seeming death he stirr’d

As one whose sleep is broke by sudden shine,

And whisper’d Christ, as if the soul had heard

Tidings of some exceeding sweet design.

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