Meditations on the future.

Observation. – Although we are not in the habit of publishing poems that are not already verified mediumistic products, our readers will surely be grateful to us for making an exception for the following piece of inspiration, one might say spontaneous, from a person who, until quite recently, still relegated Spiritist beliefs as utopian. When, in former times, the hand of death, multiplying its blows, Sowing mourning all around us, Only thus consoled us as it wounded our ear: “If in the tomb a much-loved being sleeps “It is that the soul has freed itself from the prison of the body, “From the heavy envelope to another, ethereal and sweet; “Returning at last to its primitive origin, “It then enjoys God’s strength and most living light; “In Him you will find again, one day, and with fervor “Instead of earthly love an immortal love!” Now, it is no longer so distant a hope That casts upon our ills an uncertain gleam; The future is no longer for the dead to forget: Near us they are, unseen, beholding us, Feeling our faith and our sufferings; Messengers bringing to us holy comforts, Answering from on High to what here we ponder; Their hands press ours if we aspire To kisses from their lips; while from another sphere They hearten our love amid the mystery of waiting. When we evoke them, like hidden swarms, Brightness and warmth they breathe upon us in floods; They come! And for us all changes and takes on color; Of unknown worlds we sense the dawn;

A sidereal radiance illumines our mind, And we adore, then, in total silence All the power of God revealed by them. Answer! O eternal Wisdom, is it given to us To do You offense! in rending, holily, The veil that limited the gaze of human kind? Faithful followers, shall we, with tenacious soul, Tear apart the divine texts of the Gospel? Of convinced men, no! Hearts of valor, We do after him what the Lord did:

We believe: – To work miracles we can, Cenacles of light of our homes we shall make, The Spirit to invoke whose tongues of fire May soon set the simple in the service of God. From the far confines of heaven, blow, celestial winds! Far from us drive the wild shadows;

Spread your light, O candelabra of gold, And from the sacred ark illumine the treasure! O rays of Sinai! Burning bush of Horeb! Spirits of good, hold the power in your mind, Spirit, like the breath that Job felt pass Over his skin, bristling his hairs;

O you who, destroying the exalted souls, Martyring at last the mutinous throngs, In the Medieval Age, a tormentor Begot the bloodthirsty inquisitorial executioner; Come! For there is in us a thirst for more orderly teachings; Long since we have cast off the swaddling clothes of infancy; For now we lack the names and the truths That in the old sermons had no clarity. Of inert multitudes we march, today, at the front, If the Truth, blazing in incandescent light, Devours us and wishes to make martyrs of us, We shall die smiling and without unsaying it. We precede the time; expressing like the Magi Homage to God with caressing prayers. And well we know that of us they will thus say: “Those poets, after all, are mad dreamers!” So be it! for thus also, with a tarnishing image, They said of Jesus, in the hour when the servants With cudgels lashed his face and his garments, Casting upon him, a sublime emblem, the white toga. Paul said: “It is folly, then, wisdom!” Courage without cease, let us seek in harmony; Let us inquire of the dead their mighty secrets; Let us cast from us certain treacherous senses; This world in which God proves His rules to us, Like the eagles changes us and ever renews us! Firm in their Right, and strong in power, We shall open to the world the founts of knowledge. The day will come, – and I believe the dawn is quite near, – When the human multitude, weary, weeps no more, For knowing how to appease the thirst of hearts With the wave that quenches and stays the burning weeping, Will come to repeat to us in an immense lament: “Give us of the light the faith and of hope the comfort; “Give us with your hand all the unction of virtue “That lifts our brow from the earth in weariness. “Our eyes without light before the filthy dust, “Make them behold a fruitful brightness. “Pronounce the mysterious Ephphatha of the Christ! “Transfigure the flesh of the Being held in bondage! “Place us, then, alive, among the cohort “Of those who come to show themselves after the action of death! “The sepulchers, ah, no! are no longer tombs, “But wicked hearts, and whitewashed, then. “The dead will teach us how to live “So that we may obtain from God to live again!” And we, who in the Lord feel ourselves accepted To dwell on Earth in more perfect places, We embrace our brother without any formalism, In the name of the Gospel! In the light of Spiritism! Raoul de Navery. n [1]

[see Raoul de Navery.]