Cranch CP - Inworld and Outworld

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Inworld and Outworld

Christopher Pearse Cranch

(English: Christopher Pearse Cranch, "Inworld" and "Outworld", The Dial, January 1842)

(January 1842)

Publications:

• The Dial, vol. II, no. 3, January 1842 (unsigned, "C.")
• reprinted in The Path, vol. I, no. 2, May 1886, pp. 56-57

Read:

• Electronic journal edition in Teopedia

DATA

Title for references: Cranch CP - Inworld and Outworld
Short description:

Christopher Pearse Cranch

Inworld and Outworld

Not a Theosophical or Judge work: a pair of poems by the Transcendentalist poet Christopher Pearse Cranch, first published anonymously (signed "C.") in The Dial, the Transcendentalists' journal edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson, in January 1842, and reprinted — with the editorial note reproduced below — in The Path in May 1886. In the original printing, each poem's verse is set in two parallel columns; this transcription follows the left column to its end and then the right column, as the clearest linear reading of the page, but the columns may have been intended to be read as a paired call-and-response.

56

Inworld.

[A poem taken from the January number of "The Dial," 1842, the organ of the Transcendentalists, edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson.]

Amid the watches of the windy night A poet sat, and listened to the flow Of his own changeful thoughts, until there passed A vision by him, murmuring as it moved, A wild and mystic lay—to which his thoughts And pen kept time—and thus the measure ran:

All is but as it seems, The round, green earth, With river and glen; The din and the mirth Of the busy, busy men; The world's great fever Throbbing forever; The creed of the sage, The hope of the age, All things we cherish, All that live and all that perish, These are but inner dreams. The great world goeth on To thy dreaming; To thee alone Hearts are making their moan, Eyes are streaming, Thine is the white moon turning night to day, Thine is the dark wood sleeping in her ray, Thee the winter chills, Thee the spring-time thrills, All things nod to thee— All things come to see If thou art dreaming on, If thy dream should break, And thou should'st awake, All things would be gone. Nothing is, if thou art not, From thee as from a root The blossoming stars upshoot, The flower cups drink the rain. Joy and grief and weary pain Spring aloft from thee, And toss their branches free Thou art under, over all; Thou dost hold and cover all; Thou art Atlas—thou art Jove:— The mightiest truth Hath all its youth From thy enveloping thought. Thy thought itself lay in thy earliest love. Nature keeps time to thee With voice unbroken: Still doth she rhyme to thee When thou hast spoken, When the sun shines to thee, 'Tis thy own joy, Opening mines to thee, Nought can destroy, When the blast moans to thee Still doth the wind Echo the tones to thee Of thy own mind. Laughter but saddens thee When thou art sad, Life is not life to thee, But as thou livest, Labor is strife to thee When thou least strivest:—

More did the spirit sing, and made the night, Most musical with inward melodies, But vanished soon, and left the listening bard Wrapt in unearthly silence—till the morn Reared up the screen that shuts the spirit world From loftiest poet and from wisest sage.

Outworld.

The sun was shining on the busy earth, All men and things were moving on their way— The old, old way which we call life. The soul Shrank from the giant grasp of Space and Time, Yet, for it was, her dreamy hour half yielded

57

To the omnipotent delusion—and looked out On the broad glare of things, and felt itself Dwindling before the universe: Then came unto the bard Another spirit with another voice, And sang:—

Said he, that all but seems? Said he, the world is void and lonely, A strange vast crowd of dreams Coming to thee only? And that thy feeble soul Hath such a strong control O'er sovereign Space and sovereign Time And all their train sublime? Said he, thou art the eye Reflecting all that is— The ear that hears, while it creates All sounds and harmonies? The central sense that bides amid All shows and tunes and realities? Listen mortal while the sound Of this life intense is flowing! Dost thou find all things around Go as thou art going? Dost thou dream that thou art free, Making, destroying all that thou dost see In the unfettered might of thy soul's liberty? Lo, an atom troubles thee. One bodily fibre crushes thee, One nerve tortures and maddens thee, One drop of blood is death to thee. Art thou but a withering leaf, For a summer season brief Clinging to the tree, 'Till the winds of circumstance, Whirling in their hourly dance, Prove too much for thee? Art thou but a speck, a mote In the system universal? Art thou but a passing note Woven in the great rehearsal? Canst thou roll back the tide of Thought And unmake the creed of the age, By the prophet and the sage? Art thou but a shadow Chasing o'er a meadow? The great world goes on Spite of thy dreaming; Not to be alone Hearts are making their moan And tear-drops streaming, And the mighty voice of Nature Is thy parent, not thy creature, Is no pupil but thy teacher: And the world would still move on Were thy soul forever flown.— For while thou dreamest unfolded In nature's wide embrace, All thy life is daily moulded By her informing grace, And Time and Space must reign And rule o'er thee forever, And the Outworld lifts its chain From off thy spirit never: But in the dream of thy half-waking fever Thou shalt be mocked with gleam and show Of truths thou pinest for, and yet canst never know.

And then the Spirit fled and left the bard Still wondering—for he felt that voices twain Had come from different spheres with different truths That seemed at war and yet agreed in one.

C.

Footnotes

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