Henry Abbey: Verses about Work

As thoughts possess the fashion of the mood
That gave them birth, so every deed we do,
Partakes of our inborn disquietude
That spurns the old and reaches toward the new.
The noblest works of human art and pride
Show that their makers were not satisfied.

For, looking down the ladder of our deeds,
The rounds seem slender. All past work appears
Unto the doer faulty. The heart bleeds,
And pale Regret turns weltering in tears,
To think how poor our best has been, how vain,
Beside the excellence we would attain.

To G. W. C.
We journey up the storied Nile;
The timeless water seems to smile;
The slow and swarthy boatman sings;
The dahabëah spreads her wings;
We catch the breeze and sail away,
Along the dawning of the day,
Along the East, wherein the morn
Of life and truth was gladly born.

We sail along the past, and see
Great Thebes with Karnak at her knee.
To Isis and Osiris rise
The prayers and smoke of sacrifice.
'Mid rites of priests and pomp of kings
Again the seated Memnon sings.
We watch the palms along the shore,
And dream of what is here no more.

The gliding Cleopatran Nile,
With glossy windings, mile on mile,
Suggests the asp: in coils compact
It hisses-at the cataract.
Thence on again we sail, and strand
Upon the yellow Nubian sand,
Near Aboo Simbel's rock-hewn fane,
Which smiles at time with calm disdain.

Who cut the stone joy none can tell;
He did his work, like Nature, well.
At one with Nature, godlike, these
Bland faces of great Rameses.
'T is seemly that the noble mind
Somewhat of permanence may find,
Whereon with patience, may be wrought
A clear expression of its thought.

The artist labors while he may,
But finds at best too brief the day;
And, tho' his works outlast the time
And nation that they make sublime,
He feels and sees that Nature knows
Nothing of time in what she does,
But has a leisure infinite
Wherein to do her work aright.

The Nile of virtue overflows
The fruitful lands through which it goes.
It little cares for smile or slight,
But in its deeds takes sole delight,
And in them puts its highest sense,
Unmindful of the recompense;
Contented calmly to pursue
Whatever work it finds to do.

Howadji, with sweet dreams full fraught,
We trace this Nile through human thought.
Remains of ancient grandeur stand
Along the shores on either hand.
Like pyramids, against the skies
Loom up the old philosophies,
And the Greek king, who wandered long,
Smiles from uncrumbling rock of song.

The sun-bronzed Arabs, living at the base
Of Karnak's mighty ruin, see in it
The work of no man's hand. They cannot think
Its lofty beauty and majestic form,
So awe-begetting, even in decay,
Are the unaided deed of their own kind.
But, as most men are wont, when sharply faced
By problems that they do not understand,
The squalid Arabs, quite too ignorant
To seek in natural causes for a key,
Exalt their case to the miraculous
And supernatural, and so believe
That monstrous genii, in antiquity,
To please the holder of some magic ring,
Built Karnak in a night!

All governments,
Books, customs, buildings, railways, ships, and all
The stark realities that men have made,
Are but imagination's utterances.
The invisible speaks in the visible,
And over all, the high, far-reaching thoughts
Of great imaginations domineer.
First of the Magi, Zoroaster yet
Colors the Western theosophic mind,
Besides the minds of Asian myriads.
Nor have his genii lost hold on men;
But are an explanation, in the East,
Of architectural victories, which appear
Beyond the power of human hands to win.

But we, of higher credence, think not so.
Of larger literature and ampler range,
We know the same full-browed intelligence,
The same Masonic wisdom, that upreared
High-girdled Babylon and purple Tyre
And built the Temple of King Solomon,
Built also the sepulchral Pyramids,
Build Philæ, hundred-gated Thebes, and all
Those works stupendous, whose calm grandeur yet
Shows the departed glory of the Nile.

It scarce seems longer past than yesterday
That men undid the brazen clamps which held
Upon its pedestal the Obelisk-
That ray-like shaft, which Thutmes raised at On
To grace the Temple of the Setting Sun-
And found Masonic emblems there bestowed.
Such useful emblems have been found withal
In prehistoric ruins Mexican.
If other clue were needed to connect
Our modern Craft with builders of the past,
We have the evidence of what we know,-
That nothing can be operative long
And not be speculative too; for Use
Is more than manual. Intelligence
Must see the ideal in the real, and clothe
Upon the impalpable and naked truth
The palpable resemblance; it must needs
Behold in all that is material,
External, the express embodiment,
Or signature, of far more lasting things,
Which are internal, spiritual.

Swedenborg,
Upon the other worlds of heaven and hell,
His ideality imposed, and strove
To picture them, the universe and God,
Using the splendid words of holy writ
As signs and tokens of the mysteries
That, in imagination, he beheld.
But not so far the wise Freemason dares.
In square and compasses, in setting-maul,
And in the other stated working-tools
Used by the Craft, he sees an ideal use.
To him they are the emblems of such things
As have been found alike in every soul
And make the world fraternal.

Symbolism
Is the rich blood and life of Masonry.
A symbol is the solid link between
The real and the ideal. It must be
That man himself, the crown of earthly things,
Made in his Maker's image, is the true,
The only symbol of the Power Divine.
It follows that sublime Freemasonry
And heaven-born, strong-pinioned Poetry
Are one at heart; for, whatsoever be
Sincere, commensurate, symbolical,
Is native of the Muse-her work. To think
In symbols is imagination's house.
So the fast hold which Masonry has kept
Upon the minds of men for centuries-
For long millenniums-is, in truth, the same
As that of Poetry. For Poetry
Drank from the fountain of immortal youth,
Then rose in beauty, like the Morning Star,
And lit the holy, intellectual fire,
Guide of our faith and practice, that is laid
Upon Masonic altars.

When expressed
In buildings she is seen, as in the tree
The hamadryad, we but change her name,
And Architecture nominate the Muse.
But the broad tenets, on whose soil is based
Our Ancient Order, are a fertile land,
And all the arts and sciences alike
Find in it healthful sustenance, and, nursed
In genial sunshine and condensate dew,
Burst into bloom and yield abundant fruits.