Читать книгу Freedom, Truth and Beauty - Edward Doyle - Страница 5

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My life is in deep darkness; still, I cry,

With joy to my Creator, "It is well!"

Were worlds my words, what firmaments would tell

My transport at the consciousness that I

Who was not, Am! To be—oh, that is why

The awful convex dark in which I dwell

Is tongued with joy, and chimes a temple bell.

Antiphonally to the choirs on high!

Chime cheerily, dark bell! for were no more

Than consciousness my gift, this were to know

The Giver Good—which sums up all the lore

Eternity can possibly bestow.

Chime! for thy metal is the molten ore

Of the great stars, and marks no wreck below.

I know a gifted and brilliant man in New York who is full of charm and wit in conversation, but the moment he touches a pen he becomes, as a rule, a melancholy pessimist, crying out at the injustice of the world and the uselessness of high endeavor in the field of art.

When urged to take a different mental attitude for the sake of the reading world, which needs strong tonics of hope and courage, rather than the slow poison of pessimism, however subtly sweet the brew, my friend responds that "The song and dance of literature is not my special gift." And he is obliged to "speak of the world as I find it."

He is an able-bodied man, in the prime of life, with splendid years waiting on his threshold to lead him to any height he may wish to climb. But to his mental vision, nothing is really "worth while."

What a rebuke this wonderful poem of Edward Doyle's should be to all such men and women. What an inspiration it should be to every mortal who reads it, to look within, and find the Kingdom of God as this blind poet has found it.

Mr. Doyle was in St. Francis Xavier's College when his great affliction fell upon him. He started a local paper, The Advocate, in Harlem twenty-three years ago and has in the darkness of his physical vision developed his poetical talent and given the world some great lines.