LAMENTATIONS - Max Ehrmann O THAT I could sing a song that would soften the heart of the world! O that I had the art to put emotion into words, and make the pages of my book a living thing! Impatient I grow at the lethargy of words. I would beat them, prick them with spears, whip them with iron whips, to make them cry out the passion of my soul! I would let out all the penned-up tumult that tortures me within. I would deliver the world from the gods of stone and the gods of gold; I would deliver the world from the page: 90[View Page 90] dead gods of old superstition, more cruel than prisons, and blind--a thousand years blind! I would open the doors and uncivilize mankind. I would counsel that most things called learning be unlearned, and that most traditions be forgotten. I would proclaim the new wisdom--older than the old--which in the process of civilizing ourselves we have forgotten. Ten thousand years before great cities stood on this continent, brown men sat peacefully together with women and children, and looked at the stars at night and wondered at the beauty and mystery of trees, and sang love songs to the great God, and believed! I would abolish the universal mad-house called large cities, turning the giddy inmates into green fields by running waters, teaching them lessons in stillness and placidity. Natures laws would I make the rules of virtue. Perversion and unkindness only would I call sin. O that I could sing a song that would soften the heart of the world, that brother would not stand armed against brother, and sister against sister! For I myself am weary of battle, and the tenderness I stifle in me may not come to life again. I would have all men rich in spirit and comfortable in body, for I despise poverty. I would make love free among men and women, without barter in houses and lands, that no man should page: 91[View Page 91] buy what he could not win, and no woman should sell herself--one man for one woman, distinguishing love from lust. It is the same whether a woman sell herself in or out of the law; or whether a man buy a woman in or out of the law. I would awaken the sleepers to the glory of the world, the harps that play in every wind-swept forest, the living colors of every nightfalls western sky, the sapphire dome of the days of summer, and the still stars creeping through the ebony of night. Never in the wild witchery of dream have I seen a world comparable in beauty to this: The red gold of the west at twilight often with beauty pains my heart, speaking a language like the lure of far-reaching sea waves, or the call of sweet-singing birds at dawn on inland meads. What more revelation does the world demand? Here is revelation upon revelation! The book of day and the book of night burst with wonder, testifying that there is more in the world than we, and that we shall yet be other than we are. O that I could sing a song that would soften the heart of the world! But I cannot; and my wild cries are a picture that is faded, a harp with loosened chords, a reed that is broken. The fires of my soul turn to ashes upon the page.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:44:16 +0000
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