Atma - A Romance

Now they paused where sat a mendicant who besought charity. Atma

bestowed a gift, saying, "Our great teacher said: 'The beggar's face a mirror is, in it

We best learn how our zeal in heaven appears.

Pause then and look--nor pious alms omit,

Lest on its brightness fall an angel's tears.'"

Then Bertram, pleased with this, asked more regarding the founder of the

Sikh faith, and Atma related what things the teacher had accounted holy.

"This," he said, "did he instruct: 'The hearts that justice and soft pity shrine

Are the true Mecca, loved of the Divine.

Who doth in good deeds duteous hours engage,

Performs for God an holy pilgrimage.

Who to his own hurt speaks the truth, he tells

The Mystic Speech that pious rite excels.

Rude orisons of alien He will bless

If they are offered but in faithfulness.'"

"It is good," said Bertram, "modes of worship are many, faiths are

nearly as various as the temperaments of mankind, but virtue is one. No

universal intuition prompts to a form of ritual as acceptable to God,

but the moral sense of all the race points unswervingly to the pole-star

of the soul--Truth, another name for Purity.

"Many," he continued, "have been the self-ordained guides of the human

conscience, blind leaders of the blind, would-be saviours of the world!

Why should a mazed wandering soul be so eager to summon followers, so

ready to point the way? What strange prompting of love or daring is

here? It surely is not from desire of applause that men seek the

leadership on the road to heaven, for what man so decried in the history

of the world as he who arrogates to himself the place and name of

Priest? And yet priest and poet are akin. The man who seeks the place of

mediator and interpreter betwixt his fellows and the Unknowable must

needs be an idealist, and if he deal with illusion who so unfortunate as

he?"

They halted that night where two streams met. Bathed in moonlight it was

a scene of great beauty and repose, a confluence of the beatitudes of

earth and air. Peace filled their souls so that they perceived the

unexpressive adoration of the river, and the trees, and the solemn

moonlight. It was such an hour as makes poets of men, and Atma raised

his head and spoke: "At tranquil eve is proper time for prayer,

When winds are fair,

And gracious shadows 'mong the myrtles move.

The list'ning eve it was ordained for prayer.

By the soft murmur of thy cooing dove

Teach me to love;

Grant that thy starry front fill my death's night

With joyful light;

And hushed as on this bank the violet's close

Be my repose.