Orson F. Whitney
Elias: An Epic of the Ages
FOREWORD
"Elias" was begun in the spring of 1900, and was first published in the autumn of 1904, when an edition de luxe, limited to one hundred and fifty copies, and two less pretentious editions, were subscribed for by friends of the author. He was hardly a party to the project, the initial step being taken without his knowledge. Prior to that time he had read the poem to select gatherings in private homes and in two of the leading church schools, but had no thought of printing it so early, until solicited by a committee of prominent citizens to allow them to undertake, in his behalf, its publication.
That committee consisted of Governor Heber M. Wells, Senator George Sutherland, President Anthon H. Lund, Major Richard W. Young, and Mr. H. L. A. Culmer. These gentlemen, out of pure public spirit and a friendly feeling for the author, had associated themselves together for this purpose. Though aware of many defects in his work, and anxious to mend them before facing the public and the critics, he nevertheless accepted gratefully the very generous offer. All the members of the committee gave to the enterprise their hearty support, and two of them, Major Young and Mr. Culmer, conducted most of the business necessary to putting the book through the press.
Since the original issuance the author has endeavored to bring the work into a more finished state, and the results are now before the reader. The poem is in twelve parts—a prelude, ten cantos, and an epilogue. Following these are explanatory notes, for the benefit of students; the introduction of the epic as a text book into the schools being one of the purposes for which it was written.
The character and scope of the work are partly indicated by the title, "Elias—An Epic Of The Ages." It is an attempt to present, in verse form, historically, doctrinally, and prophetically, the vast theme comprehended in what the world terms "Mormonism."
THE AUTHOR.
DEDICATION
(SEE NOTE.)
This song to thee, friend, chieftain, sixth to rise
From him, the foremost of a seeric line,
Mock of the worldly, marvel of the wise,—
His martyred brother's son! May light divine,
Which 'lumined them, forever on thee shine,
Flooding with splendors new thy lineal fame;
And ancient rays with modern beams combine
To glorify a brow whose stalwart aim,
To merit heaven's high praise, nor fear a world's false blame!
THEME
(SEE NOTE.)
"And if you will receive it, this is Elias, which was to come to gather together the tribes of Israel and restore all things."
ARGUMENT
The aim of this poem is to point out those manifestations of the Divine Mind and those impulsions from human enterprise which have contributed in all ages to the progress of the race toward perfection.
Thus it deals not only with man's origin and destiny, with earth's creation, redemption, and ultimate glorification, but with events and epochs leading up to and having those greater ends as their decreed consummation. The Christ theme, in its heavenly and earthly phases, is supplemented by the sacred and secular history of man upon both hemispheres. God's direct dealings through prophets, apostles, and other inspired agents, and His indirect dealings through poets, painters, philosophers, inventors, discoverers, statesmen, kings, conquerors and the like, are indicated, and the experiences of the Church of Christ in various dispensations portrayed.
The title "Elias," signifying restoration and preparation,—the lesser going before the greater with those objects in view,—is used to denote and personify the Genius of Progress, whose beneficent workings, under the guidance of the Infinite Spirit, through the aeons and the ages, behind the scenes and upon the stage of human action, are the warp and woof of the entire poem. The medial point is the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, the era of restitution, when the House of God is to be set in order, and all things in Christ are to be gathered into one.
PRELUDE
(SEE NOTE.)
The work for Him I asked and aimed to do,
Ere death should claim my dust, my spirit free,—
That, looking down from where the wise and true
Inherit glory, gracious eyes might see
A spark I kindled beaming endlessly,
And lighting other wanderers to the goal
Where blends the life that is with life to be;—
Now done, or well or ill, the lettered scroll
Of what is writ on heart and mind I here unroll.
CANTO ONE
As From a Dream
Youth's morn was breaking, when I dreamed a dream,
Splendid as springtime's weft of wonders rare;
Idyllic vision, beauteous, bright romance,
Glory of love and glamor of renown.
I dreamed that fame held all of happiness,
Save the sweet charm that lurked in woman's smile.
Wealth wooed I not, nor power—to wear the sign
And wave the symbol of authority;
To speak, and have hosts tremble; or to frown,
And find all pale and prostrate at my feet. 10
But oh! to sway, like swinging forest boughs
In summer breeze, men's yearning hearts and minds,—
Sway them in duty's name, in virtue's cause,
By tongue of thunder or by pen of flame,
Leaving some wise, sublime, benefic deed,
Some word or work of merit and of might,
To fix the fleeting gaze of centuries!
Glory and love—these were my guides divine,
The planet passions of my destiny,
The Baal and Astoreth to whom I bowed, 20
At human shrines a worldly worshiper,
Adoring beauteous dust, my fellow clay,
And coveting an earthly immortality.
And at the feet of these dear deities,
Careless of great Jehovah's smile or frown,
In the fresh morning of my youth's fair might,
Slumbering I dreamed, till golden grew the dawn.
A strange and stern awakening—a sky,
Pearl, gold, and sapphire, clear and calm till then,
Cloud-curtained, grim, with anger audible, 30
Tortured and torn with swift-flung darts of fire;
Booming and crashing, bolt on bolt descends;
Earth, air, and heaven are wrapt in roaring flame.
And when the rifted storm has rolled away,
And stillness reascends her solemn throne,
Ruin looks forth from retrospection's tower,
And memory weeps where desolation reigns.
It was the end. Dispelled illusion's dream.
Youth's fond ideals, thunder-stricken, strewn,
Lay level with the dust. But light had come! 40
My soul had cast its fetters and was free.
I slept and dreamed no more; I was awake!
And saw and heard with other eyes and ears,
Which taught me things unseen, unheard, before;
Things new yet old—old as eternity,
Old e'en to time, though new and strange to me.
I talked with Truth on solemn mountain tops;
I soared with winged thought the sunlit dome;
Studied the midnight stars; and when anon
The hurrying, far-flung legions of the storm 50
In supermortal might went forth to war,
Would fain have charioted the charging plain,
Or spurred the tempest as a battle steed,
Grasping the volted lightnings as they flew,
And thundering through the mists on things below.
Rejoicing in my new-found strength, I gave
Glory to Him, the Source and Sire of all;
That God whom I had neither loved nor feared,
That God whom now I worshipt and adored.
Who girdled me with Light, truth's triple key, 60
Unlocking what hath been, what yet shall be,
Probing death's gloom, life's three-fold mystery,
Solving the secret—Whither, Whence and Why.
Oh, wondrous transformation! when with wand
Of wakening might, that all-uplifting power
Waved o'er the cross where hung fond hopes impaled,
Waved o'er the tomb where loved ambitions lay,
Touched the strewn fragments of my shattered dream,
Bidding the dead arise in bodies new,
Building, on ruined hope, faith's battlement, 70
Love's palace, peace-domed, pinnacled in light,
In glory greater than earth's grandest dream,
Than glittering fame's most splendid spectacle;
Ideal transcending ideality,
Ideal made real past all reality!
Whose earth-dimmed eye could see what then I saw?
Whose earth-dulled ear such harmonies could hear?
When the all-searching Spirit tore the veil
Of things that seem, and showed me things that are.
Beauty, both good and evil—lamp to heaven 80
Or lure-light o'er the marshes of despair.
Beauty, divine—but not divinity;
Not parent—child of purity and truth;
Nor fount, nor stream, but bubble lost in air,
Nor tree, nor fruit—only a fragrant flower,
Flung from ambrosial gardens, here to grow
That life might be the less a wilderness.
But lo! a loveliness that blooms for aye,
That, withering here, is there revivified,
A loveliness made lovelier evermore; 90
The beauty of the restful and the risen,
Of Paradise and Glory's higher home.
Pure as the mountain monarch's ice-crowned crest,
Pure as the snow-king's mantle, diamond-strewn,
Pure as the cascade's limpid crystalline,
Leaping from cliff to chasm, the breeze-flung flood
Blown into spirit spray of dazzling sheen;
So pure the love that warmed my boyish breast,
And lit the yearning of my youthful eye.
But pure love, e'en the purest, may be blind. 100
Truth spake—then fell the blindness from Love's eyes,
Revealing life in hues of hopefulness;
Love's rainbow dream, that only time's vale spans
To human vision, widening now till lost
Beyond the pale peaks of eternity.
Heaven's gold love is, though mixt with earth's alloy—
Dross, that betimes a needful part doth play
In nature's wise and true economy.
Love dies not—'t is love's seeming that dissolves,
Low to its serpent level, native dust, 110
A grave unmemoried in lethean ground.
The while see heaven-born, heaven-aspiring love,
Immortal spirit of the universe,
Soaring past sun and stars to worlds unknown!
Heir to herself, a self-succeeding queen,
Still regnant on life's throne when life is o'er.
O thou, of beauty, loveliest form and phase!
Kindler and keeper of the quenchless flame!
Partner and peer of human majesty!
Sharing with him life's dual sovereignty, 120
Well canst thou wait for thrones and diadems.
Queen of the future, Eve of coming worlds,
Mother of spirits that shall people stars,
And hail thee empress of a universe!
No more I deemed of crowning consequence,
That mortal clay to mortal eye should shine;
That human mites should shout and sing in praise
Each of the other's midget mightiness—
A molecule, by atoms glorified!
Apple of ashes to the longing lip! 130
Brine to the burning throat and thirsting soul!
Phantom, delusion, misty ghost of fame!
Voidest and vainest of all vanities!
"Be not beguiled!" A vibrant thunder note,
Pealing from clouds that canopied my life,
The warning, lightning-winged to purify,
Up-kindling all the summits of the soul.
"Be not beguiled; not what men think and say,
But what God sees and knows, is what avails.
"Who knoweth aught, unknowing of the all? 140
Unknowing all, who knoweth perfectly
'Twixt small and great, 'twixt failure and success,
'Twixt heights of glory and the gulfs of shame?
What cares eternity for time's decrees?
Defeat hath oft deserved the conqueror's crown;
Dishonor worn the wreath of victory.
"Greatness—is it to loom 'mid glittering show?
Goes power but hand in hand with prominence?
Largeness or littleness, or high or low,
Has but to breathe, and straightway he is known. 150
What speech conceals, the spirit manifests.
"Fame, place, and title find a fitting use,
And rightfully demand all reverence due.
But envy not the empty lot of him
Who, winning without merit, wins in vain.
"Greatness, true greatness, mightiness of mind,
And greater greatness, grandeur of the soul,
Tell but one tale—capacity, not place;
Capacity, whose sire, experience,
Whose ancestors, innate intelligence, 160
Original, inborn nobility,
As oft in hut as mansion have their home.
"'Tis not the crowning that creates the king.
Man's proper place where God hath need of him.
"Naught can be vain that leadeth unto light;
Struggle and stress, not plaudit, maketh strong;
Victor and vanquished equally may win,
Climbing far heights, where fame, eternal fame,
White as the gleaming cloak of Arctic hills,
Rests as a mantle, fadeless, faultless, pure, 170
On loftiest lives, whose snowy peaks, sun-crowned,
Receive but to dispense their blessedness.
"Eternal life demands a selfless love.
Hampered by pride, greed, hate, what soul can grow?
Conceive a selfish God! Thou canst not, man!
Then let it shame thee unto higher things.
Who strives for self hates other men's success;
Who seeks God's glory welcomes rivalry.
Seeking, not gift, but Giver, thou shalt find
No sacrifice but changes part for whole. 180
"Fare on, full sure that greatest glory comes,
And swiftest growth, from serving humankind.
Toil on, for toil is treasure, thine for aye;
A pauper he who boasts an empty name."
So spake the Spirit of the Infinite.
The Messenger and Mind of Holy Twain.
Some men I found embodiments of all
The goodness, all the greatness, I had dreamed;
Men seeming gods, bestowing benefits
As suns their beams, as seas and skies their showers. 190
Others as dwarfs, as despots, by compare,
Devoured with greed, consumed with jealousy.
But truth taught charity, gave me to see,
As face to face one sees familiar friend,
Why men are not alike in magnitude.
Some souls, than others, have more summits climbed,
More light absorbed, more moral might evolved.
Dowered are they with wealth from earlier spheres;
Hence wiser, worthier, than those they lead
Through precept's vale, up steep example's height, 200
To where love, beauty, wealth, power, glory, reign.
While some, innately noble, are borne down
By weight of weaknesses inherited,
By passions fierce, propensities depraved,
Malific legacy of centuries,
That much of their true worthiness obscures,
While spirit strives with flesh for mastery,
For higher culture and for added might.
And yet anon such souls effulgent shine—
As bursts the April beam through banks of cloud— 210
In glory from which envy shades its eyes,
While stands detraction staring, stricken dumb;
The glory of a great intelligence,
Which mortal mists can dim but for a time.
Spirits, like stars, still differ in degree,
And cannot show an even excellence,
Unequal in their first nobility.
Great tells of greater—littleness of less;
Time's hills and vales but type eternity.
Truth taught me more, but bade me silent be; 220
And I had teachers else—toil, prayer, and pain,
With days and nights of misery's martyrdom,
Alone and lorn in grief's Gethsemane:
Till storm above, and earthquake underneath,
Shook down thought's prison house, broke bolt and bar,
And agony set inspiration free.
'Tis thus the Great Musician tunes the harp
That He would strike—strikes thus the harp in tune;
Sweeping with sorrow's hand the quivering strings,
That they may cry aloud, and haply sound 230
A loftier and more enduring lay.
CANTO TWO
The Soul of Song
Alone my soul upon a mighty hill,
Ancient with lingering snows of vanished years,
Where towering forms the templed azure fill,
Wooed by the breath of woodland atmospheres;
Where Nature, throned in solitude, reveres
The God whose glory she doth symbolize,
And on these altars, watered by her tears,
Spreads far around the fragrant sacrifice
Whose incense wafts her sweet memorial to the skies. 240
Here will I rest, where I have loved to roam,
From childhood's rose-hued, scarce-remembered day,
And found my pensive soul's congenial home
Far from the depths where human passions play.
Born at their feet, my own have learned to stray
Familiar o'er these pathless heights, and feel,
As now, the mind assume a loftier sway,
Soaring for themes that o'er its summits steal,
Beyond all thought to reach, all utterance to reveal.
Here let me linger. O my native hills! 250
Solemn and watchful o'er the silent waste!
How great the joy his bounding bosom thrills,
Whose steps, aspiring, mar your summits chaste!
Language! thy richest robe, thy rarest taste,
How clothe description in befitting dress,
When halts imagination's wingéd haste,
Awe-spelled in wonder's conscious littleness,
Where loom the cloud-crowned monarchs of the wilderness?
Grim, storm-plumed guardians! Warriors tempest-mailed,
Federal with freedom, fortressing her land! 260
Had primal man the sacred garden tilled,
'Ere earthly scenes your early vision scanned?
In spirit form took ye your titan stand,
Ere rolled a world-creating fiat forth?
Or came ye at convulsion's fierce command,
'Mid loud-tongued thunders bursting from the earth,
The martial music that proclaimed your war-like birth?
Vast, voiceless oracles, whose intelligence
Sleeps in the caverns of each stony heart,
Yet breathes o'er all a boundless eloquence, 270
What wealth historic might your words impart!
Lone, looming, hermit of the hills, apart
From where thy banded mates in union dwell!
A master lyrist seemingly thou art,
Chief harper of a host that round thee swell;
And thine the Orphean boon, what could withstand thy spell?
E'en now it whispers from the graven rock,
Scribed with the lightning's pen, in sculpture bold,
Defying time and tide and tempest shock,
Frowning where seas and centuries have rolled. 280
"Oh were my words thus writ!" That sage of old,
Knew he not well, ye mighty tomes of clay,
How firm the trust your flinty page might hold?
Have ye not scorned the fiats of decay?
Are ye not standing now where nations passed away?
Thrice wondrous things, once thine to wisely scan,
Fast as thy frozen snow-crown, still in store,
Hadst thou the melting gift—of sovereign man
The sunlike glory—mightest thou restore,
Till learning's tide o'erwhelmed the shining shore, 290
With rich revealings of lost realms that rose
And fell like frost-hewn flowers thy face before;
Blightings which brought them an untimely close—
Perchance, of spirit lore, some mystic mine disclose.
But like the laboring brain that burns to speak
Mind's inmost thought, in deepest dungeon pent;
Or liker still to inward boiling peak
Of fires volcanic, vainly seeking vent
Where adamantine bolts and bars prevent;—
Thou'rt doomed to utter stillness, and shalt keep 300
The burden of thy bearing till is rent
Yon heavenly veil, and earth and air and deep
Tell secrets that shall rouse the dead from solemn sleep.
And must I be as mute, O silent mount!
Muse of all Melody, shall I not sing?—
Burst these dumb bars, when e'en yon babbling fount
May find in every breeze a wafting wing,
Afar its lightest murmured word to fling?
Where art thou, ancient Soul of Solemn Song?
Asleep? Then wake! Wherefore art slumbering? 310
The world hath need of thee, and waiteth long.
Strike, strike again thy harp, and thrill the listening throng!
Thus musing, lone upon a beetling brow,
Quaffing from unseen fount, those wilds among,
The spirit of the sun-kissed torrent flow,
Methought some lofty, caverned cliff had rung
With echoings of a more than mortal tongue;
Though softly clear the mournful cadence broke,
As notes from off the weird-toned viol flung.
Or was it yon lone cloud that muttering spoke, 320
Heralding the storm king's wrathful shout and shivering stroke?
Amazed I listened. Did I more than dream?
Had random word aroused unhoped reply?
Or was it sound whose import did but seem?
Hark!—for again it rolls along the sky:
"Then question hast thou none? Or none wouldst ply,
Save to thy soul in meditative strain,
Or heedless winds that wander idly by?
So be it; still to me thy purpose plain,
Thy hidden wish revealed, nor thus revealed in vain." 330
While freshening waves of woodland-scented air
Widened the spell of that immortal tone;
While, as on threshold of a lion's lair,
Speechless I stood, as stricken into stone;
Methought the sun with lessening splendor shone,
As if that wandering cloud obscured his gaze.
Then burst the glory from his midday throne!
Turning, mine eye beheld, in rapt amaze,
What memory ne'er would lose were life of endless days.
A stately form, of giant stature tall; 340
Of hoary aspect, venerable and grave;
Whose curling locks and beard of copious fall
Vied the white foam of ocean's storm-whipt wave.
The firm-fixt eye flashed lightnings from its cave;
Far-darting penetration's gaze combined
With wisdom's milder light. Of study gave
Deep evidence that brow by learning lined,
Thought's towering throne, where ruled his realm a monarch
mind.
The spirit's garb—for spirit so he seemed— 350
Fell radiant in many a flowing fold;
A robe antique, by modern limners deemed
Befitting monk or eremite of old.
Head, hands, and feet were bare; the presence bold
With majesty, e'en as a god might wear,
While condescending to a mortal mould.
He spake—the voice no longer thrilled with fear;
Like some vast organ swell, it charmed, enchained, the ear.
"Long have I watched and waited, but no sound
Broke the wild stillness of this stern abode, 360
Save thunder's fiery foot-print smote the ground,
Or far beneath some torrent's fury flowed;
Anon the screaming eagle past me rode;
The seeker after gold, with toilsome stride,
And eager eye to fix the shining lode,
Hath paused and panted on the hill's steep side;
But none, for greater things, till now have hither hied.
"And thou, O pensive crier in the waste,
Invoker of the Voice now visible!
Prepared art thou a mystery to taste, 370
Whose fruit is joy or woe ineffable?
Pluck not of wisdom's branches bending full,
Drink not of that divine philosophy,
Save thou canst bravely suffer wrong's misrule,
Thy best intent thought ill; save thou canst be
What men deem "fool," real fools despising, pitying thee.
"Not all my ministry to lift the gloom
Yet hovering o'er this mystic hemisphere.
List while I tell, for I am one by whom
Future and past as present shall appear. 380
In me behold Messiah's Minister,
Ancient of time and of eternity,
Spirit of song that moved the Hebrew seer,
Voice of the stars ere earth's nativity;
Exile, for ages gone, of mortal minstrelsy.
"See now my sacred heritage, the prey
Of ribald rhymesters, sensuous, half obscene;
Of gloating censors, glad o'er my decay,
And deeming all but best I ne'er had been!
The body's bard throned, sceptering the scene, 390
A groveling worshiper of earth and time.
Arise! and with thy soul's celestial sheen,
Shame these false meteors, change the ruling chime;
My minstrel, I thy muse, sing thou the song sublime!
"Sing, poet, sing! but not of new—of old,
Of old and new—eternal truth thy theme,
That holdeth past and future in her fold,
That maketh present but a passing dream,
While time and earth and man as trifles seem;
That knoweth not of new, or old, or strange; 400
Whose everduring, all-redemptive scheme,
Fixt and immutable 'mid worlds of change,
On, on, from universe to universe doth range.
"Faint not, nor fear, for all shall fare thy way—
My way, His way, the Master's, evermore.
East shall seem West, rethrown the rising ray,
Shining afar from this most ancient shore,
And man shall rise e'en where man fell before.
Fools may deride, may jeer at destiny;
They mock to mourn, oblivion earths them o'er; 410
While they that champion truth, by truth shall be
Exalted, e'en in time, to live eternally."
The ancient paused, and, unperceived till then,
A wondrous harp his bosom swung before,
Such harp as played the shepherd psalmist when
A maddening rage his monarch seized and tore,
And music's magic quelled satanic power.
Seated, his form against the crag reclined,
He waved me to his feet, and forth did pour,
As pours Niagara on the plaintive wind, 420
Floods of majestic song, falling from mind to mind.
Full tale of wonders told, I may not tell,
Though mind be heir to all of mystery;
With milk of truth the breasts of wisdom swell,
Sufficing past and present infancy.
But matching all the modern eye may see
With marvels promised to the future sight,
'Twas as the shrub unto the sheltering tree,
The floating swan unto the eagle's flight,
The hillock to the snow-crowned summit, lost in light. 430
Silent he towered above me, harp in hand,—
Was it a dream? Could dream so vivid be?—
And with his mantle's fold my forehead fanned.