Notes & Queries.

Freethought Review, Volume II, Issue 15, 1 December 1884, Page 14

Notes & Queries.

QUERIES. THE SOUL. Reading ‘ Knowledge ’ lately, I came on some interesting correspondence on the soul. One of the correspondents put the following queries, which 1 should like some of your readers to try and answer : 1. Where was the soul before the body came into existence ? 2. What did it do ? 3. Where are all the souls yet to come into bodies not yet born 1 4. Can an immortal thing be born ? 5. If a soul can have a beginning, why can it not have an end 1 6. What could the soul do without the senses ? (Science teaching us that at death all the organs of the body are destroyed, and with them the senses). Truthseeker, ANSWERS. THE AUTHOR DISCOVERED. It is more than probable that I shall be too late with my reply to the correspondent who sent you this :—“ Can you or any of your readers inform me who is the author of the following lines, and about the time they were written. — J.P. “I sent my soul through the Invisible, some letter of the after-life to spell : And by-and-bye my soul returned to me and answered : ‘ I myself am heaven and hell.’ “ Heaven, but the vision of fulfilled desire, And hell the shadow of a soul on fire ; Last on the darkness into which ourselves, So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.” A cutting from some paper (name forgotten), in my scrap book, tells us that the author was the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam (or n), and this information concerning him is given : —“ Omar lived in the latter half of our eleventh, and died within the first quarter of our twelfth century. He was a philosopher of scientific insight and ability far beyond that of the age and country in which he lived. He was one of the eight learned men whom the Sultan of Persia employed to reform the Calendar, ‘a computation of time,’ says Gibbon, ‘ which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.’ He was also the author of some astronomical tables and an Arabic treatise on algebra. Malik Shah, the Sultan, showered favors upon him, but lie was content to lead the life of a philosopher, with moderate worldly ambition and moderate wants. Like Lucretius, he failed of finding any Providence but destiny, and any world but this ; and so he set about making the most of it, and takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of sense above that of the intellect, in which he must have taken great delight, although it failed to answer the questions in which he, in common with all men, was most vitally interested.” A thirty-six page octavo volume of his versos was published by Bernard Quaritch, of London. I enclose a number of stanzas.—C. Walker, Editor ‘Lucifer’ (‘The LightBearer’), Valley Falls, Kansas. THE GAME OF LIFE. A book of verses underneath the bough, A jug of wine, a loaf of bread —and Thou Beside me singing in the wilderness— Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow ! Some for the glories of this world, and some Sigh for the prophet’s Paradise to come ; Oh, take the cash and let the credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum ! The worldly hope men set their hearts upon, Turns ashes, —or it prospers ; and anon, Like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, Lighting a little hour or two, was gone. Think, in this battered caravanserai, Whose portals arc alternate night andjday, How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp Abode his destined hour, and went his way.

Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears To-day of past regret and future fears. To-morrow ! Why, to-morrow I may be Myself with yesterday’s seven thousand years ! I* or some we loved, the loveliest and the best, That from his vintage rolling Time has pressed, Have drank their cup a round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest. Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent Doctor and saint, and heard great argument About it and about ; but evermore Came out by the same door wherein I went. With them the seed of wisdom did I sow, And with my own hand wrought to make it grow ; And this was all the harvest that I reaped—- “ I came like water, and like wind I go.” There was the door to which I found no key ; there was the veil through which I could not see ; home little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was—and then no more of Thee and Me. Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who Before us passed the door of darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road, Which to discover we must travel too ? The revelations of devout and learn’d, Who rose before us, and as prophets burn’d, Are all but stories which, awoke from sleep, They told their fellows, and to sleep returned. I sent my soul through the invisible, Some letters of that after-life to spell ; And by-and-by my soul returned to me And answered, “ I myself am heaven and hell.” Heaven, but the vision of fulfilled desire, And hell, the shadow of a soul on fire, Cast on the darkness from which we ourselves So late emerged, in which so soon expire. We are no other than a moving row Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go Round with this sun-illumined lantern held In midnight by the master of the show. Impotent pieces of the game he plays Upon the checker-board of nights and days ; Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, And one by one back in the closet lays. The ball no question makes of ayes or nocs, But right or left as strikes the player, goes ; And he that tossed you down into the field, He knows about it all —he knows—he knows ! The moving finger writes ; and, having writ, Moves on : nor all your piety or wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. And that inverted bowl we call the sky, Whereunder, crawling, cooped, we live and die ; Lift not your hands to it for helpfor it As impotently rolls as you or I. And fear not. lest existence, closing your Account and mine, should know the like no more. The eternal Saki from that bowl has poured Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour. Oh threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise ! One thing at least is certain -this life Hies ; One thing is certain and the rest is lies ; The flower that once lias blown for ever dies. With earth’s first clay Time did the last man knead, And there of the last harvest sowed the seed ; And the first morning of creation wrote What the last dawn of reckoning shall read. Yesterday this day’s madness did prepare, To-morrow’s silence, triumph, or despair. Laugh ! for you know not whence you came, nor why ; Weep ! for you know not why you go, or where. What ! out of senseless nothing to provoke A conscious something to resent the yoke Of unpermitted pleasure, under pain j Of everlasting penalties, if broke ! What! from his helpless creatures be repaid Pure gold for what he lent us drossalloyed— Sue for a debt we never did contract, And cannot answer— Oh ! the sorry trade ! Oh thou, who man of baser earth didst make, And even with Paradise devise the snake ! For all the sin wherewith the face of man Is blackened, man’s forgiveness give—and take !