To the Protecting Spirits

Higher, higher still! Such is your flight, O my soul, Toward this pure ideal which God has revealed to you! Far beyond the heavens, and those worlds without calm, Toward its divine end, I feel myself called. Of Jacob I shall climb, asleep, the ladder, I shall ever ascend it without ever descending; For, kindly and gentle, with a fraternizing hand, A good Spirit guides my steps in peace. He shows me the end, and with love he consoles me; He is there, I feel it, and his voice I hear Resound within my heart, like Aeolus that wafts away In breaths over the mountain and the woods that I search out. What does his name matter! If he is no longer of the Earth; A mysterious angel and of celestial loves, He has of the unknown a charm all alone that encloses him; He dwells far away, in worlds incontestable! There!… His body which a ray transfigures in glory, In the subtilization of the pure impalpable ether He does not see the ills that exist in frail nature, And therefore he is good, because affable in sorrow. In the silence you ever speak to me, I see you in the darkness;

You make me foretaste, you cradle me Well within the glories of eternity. You do not blame me if I do some wrong: If in waking I spend my dreams, You complete for me things that I embrace; Torch that, in a shadow, lights, The courage you sustain for me, My ship securely you steer, Preserving me amid the storms, And your radiance lessens the night. You say: love; prayer;

Hope; you say: virtue, And you well give the name of brother To the most humble and rude child;

Strong, you seek out my weakness, So much do you desire my lowliness And, joyful, my poverty.

You are a sacred, angelic being, Your fluid purified into grace This mortal carcass of mine, And the air of your wings enfolds for me The soul wrapped in peace and pleasure. Whoever you may be, soul of hope, Thank you, brother there from beyond; Young woman, old man or child, What matters it to me! Are you not the good? You soar above my head, In racing thus, in your haste A comet then crosses through, Some other star in formation;

Do you dwell in that atmosphere, Mars or in the sphere of Saturn, Or from the great Bear do you come waiting, From Aldebaran, from Orion, then?

And what does it matter to me where you dwell! And what matters to me whence you come! What unheard-of heavens and what dawns, At feeling them, are mine but thickets? Hail, O my so sweet star;

Guide my undecided sail, Upon the sea that the mist effaces, Far at last from reefs, however, Be a beacon in the storm, Rising from the foaming wave, And that light which, friendly, gladdens, The exile ended, comes to seek me.

Jules-Stany Doinel. (of Aurillac.) n [1]

[See in the August Review the comments of Allan Kardec regarding the novella Fernanda by Mr. Jules Doinel.]