The Kingdom is within us, we are told; And when I say to you that we possess it In such a measure as faith makes it ours, I say it with a sinner's privilege Of having seen and heard, and seen again, After a darkness; and if I affirm To the last hour that faith affords alone The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment, I do not see myself as one who says To man that he shall sit with folded hands Against the Coming. If I be anything, I move a driven agent among my kind, Establishing by the faith of Abraham, And by the grace of their necessities, The clamoring word that is the word of life Nearer than heretofore to the solution Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed A shaft of language that has flown sometimes A little higher than the hearts and heads Of nature's minions, it will yet be heard, Like a new song that waits for distant ears. I cannot be the man that I am not; And while I own that earth is my affliction, I am a man of earth, who says not all To all alike. That were impossible, Even as it were so that He should plant A larger garden first. But you today Are for the larger sowing; and your seed, A little mixed, will have, as He foresaw, The foreign harvest of a wider growth, And one without an end. Many there are, And are to be, that shall partake of it, Though none may share it with anunderstanding That is not his alone. We are all alone; And yet we are all parcelled of one order -- Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark Of wildernesses that are not so much As names yet in a book. And there are many, Finding at last that words are not the Word, And finding only that, will flourish aloft, Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes, Our contradictions and discrepancies; And there are many more will hang themselves Upon the letter, seeing not in the Word The friend of all who fail, and in their faith A sword of excellence to cut them down.
As long as there are glasses that are dark -- And there are many -- we see darkly through them; All which have I conceded and set down In words that have no shadow. What is dark Is dark, and we may not say otherwise; Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire For one of us, may still be for another A coming gleam across the gulf of ages, And a way home from shipwreck to the shore; And so, through pangs and ills and desperations, There may be light for all. There shall be light. As much as that, you know. You cannot say This woman or that man will be the next On whom it falls; you are not here for that. Your ministration is to be for others The firing of a rush that may for them Be soon the fire itself. The few at first Are fighting for the multitude at last; Therefore remember what Gamaliel said Before you, when the sick were lying down In streets all night for Peter's passing shadow. Fight, and say what you feel; say more than words. Give men to know that even their days of earth To come are more than ages that are gone. Say what you feel, while you have time to say it. Eternity will answer for itself, Without your intercession; yet the way For many is a long one, and as dark, Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil Too much, and if I be away from you, Think of me as a brother to yourselves, Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics, And give your left hand to grammarians; And when you seem, as many a time you may, To have no other friend than hope, remember That you are not the first, or yet the last.
The best of life, until we see beyond The shadows of ourselves (and they are less Than even the blindest of indignant eyes Would have them) is in what we do not know. Make, then, for all your fears a place to sleep With all your faded sins; nor think yourselves Egregious and alone foryour defects Of youth and yesterday. I was young once; And there's a question if you played the fool With a more fervid and inherent zeal Than I have in my story to remember, Or gave your necks to folly's conquering foot, Or flung yourselves with an unstudied aim, Less frequently than I. Never mind that. Man's little house of days will hold enough, Sometimes, to make him wish it were not his, But it will not hold all. Things that are dead Are best without it, and they own their death By virtue of their dying. Let them go, -- But think you not the world is ashes yet, And you have all the fire. The world is here Today, and it may not be gone tomorrow; For there are millions, and there may be more, To make in turn a various estimation Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them, And then they shall hear strangely. Many with eyes That are incredulous of the Mystery Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read Where language has an end and is a veil, Not woven of our words. Many that hate Their kind are soon to know that without love Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing. I that have done some hating in my time See now no time for hate; I that have left, Fading behind me like familiar lights That are to shine no more for my returning, Home, friends, and honors, -- I that have lost all else For wisdom, and the wealth of it, say now To you that out of wisdom has come love, That measures and is of itself the measure Of works and hope and faith. Your longest hours Are not so long that you may torture them And harass not yourselves; and the last days Are on the way that you prepare for them, And was prepared for you, here in a world Where you have sinned and suffered, striven and seen. If you be not so hot for counting them Before they come that you consume yourselves, Peace may attend you all in these last days -- And me, as well as you. Yes, even in Rome. Well, I have talked and rested, though I fear My rest has not been yours; in which event, Forgive one who is only seven leagues From Caesar. When I told you I should come, I did not see myself the criminal You contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law That which the Law saw not. But this, indeed, Was good of you, and I shall not forget; No, I shall not forget you came so far To meet a man so dangerous. Well, farewell. They come to tell me I am going now -- With them. I hope that we shall meetagain, But none may say what he shall find in Rome.