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1、The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays 1 The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays 2 THE RHYTHM OF LIFE If life is not always poetical it is at least metrical Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts Distances a
2、re not gauged ellipses not measured velocities not ascertained times not known Nevertheless the recurrence is sure What the mind suffered last week or last year it does not suffer now but it will suffer again next week or next year Happiness is not a matter of events it depends upon the tides of the
3、 mind Disease is metrical closing in at shorter and shorter periods towards death sweeping abroad at longer and longer intervals towards recovery Sorrow for one cause was intolerable yesterday and will be intolerable tomorrow today it is easy to bear but the cause has not passed Even the burden of a
4、 spiritual distress unsolved is bound to leave the heart to a temporary peace and remorse itself does not remain it returns Gaiety takes us by a dear surprise If we had made a course of notes of its visits we might have been on the watch and would have had an expectation instead of a discovery No on
5、e makes such observations in all the diaries of students of the interior world there have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such cycles But Thomas e Kempis knew of the recurrences if he did not measure them In his cell alone with the elements What wouldst thou more than these for out
6、of these were all things made he learnt the stay to be found in the depth of the hour of bitterness and the remembrance that restrains the soul at the coming of the moment of delight giving it a more conscious welcome but presaging for it an inexorable flight And rarely rarely comest thou sighed She
7、lley not to Delight merely but to the Spirit of Delight Delight can be compelled beforehand called and constrained to our service Ariel can be bound to a daily task but such artificial violence throws life out of metre and it is not the spirit that is thus compelled THAT flits upon an orbit elliptic
8、ally or parabolically or hyperbolically curved keeping no man knows what trysts with Time It seems fit that Shelley and the author of the IMITATION should both have been keen and simple enough to perceive these flights and to guess The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays 3 at the order of this periodici
9、ty Both souls were in close touch with the spirits of their several worlds and no deliberate human rules no infractions of the liberty and law of the universal movement kept from them the knowledge of recurrences Eppur si muove They knew that presence does not exist without absence they knew that wh
10、at is just upon its flight of farewell is already on its long path of return They knew that what is approaching to the very touch is hastening towards departure O wind cried Shelley in autumn O wind If winter comes can spring be far behind They knew that the flux is equal to the reflux that to inter
11、rupt with unlawful recurrences out of time is to weaken the impulse of onset and retreat the sweep and impetus of movement To live in constant efforts after an equal life whether the equality be sought in mental production or in spiritual sweetness or in the joy of the senses is to live without eith
12、er rest or full activity The souls of certain of the saints being singularly simple and single have been in the most complete subjection to the law of periodicity Ecstasy and desolation visited them by seasons They endured during spaces of vacant time the interior loss of all for which they had sacr
13、ificed the world They rejoiced in the uncovenanted beatitude of sweetness alighting in their hearts Like them are the poets whom three times or ten times in the course of a long life the Muse has approached touched and forsaken And yet hardly like them not always so docile nor so wholly prepared for
14、 the departure the brevity of the golden and irrevocable hour Few poets have fully recognised the metrical absence of their Muse For full recognition is expressed in one only way silence It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America worship the moon and not the sun a great number wo
15、rship both but no tribes are known to adore the sun and not the moon For the periodicity of the sun is still in part a secret but that of the moon is modestly apparent perpetually influential On her depend the tides and she is Selene mother of Herse bringer of the dews that recurrently irrigate land
16、s where rain is rare More than any other companion of earth is she the Measurer Early Indo Germanic languages knew her by that name Her metrical The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays 4 phases are the symbol of the order of recurrence Constancy in approach and in departure is the reason of her inconstancies Juliet will not receive a vow spoken in invocation of the moon but Juliet did not live to know that love itself has tidal times lapses and ebbs which are due to the metrical rule of the interior
