The Philosophy of Despair

The Philosophy of Despair

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Philosophy of Despair, by David
Starr Jordan (#1 in our series by David Starr Jordan)
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Title: The Philosophy of Despair
Author: David Starr Jordan
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
PHILOSOPHY OF DESPAIR ***

This etext was produced by David A. Schwan, [email protected].

The Philosophy of Despair

by David Starr Jordan

To John Maxson Stillman
In Token of Good Cheer

A darkening sky and a whitening sea, 
And the wind in the palm trees
tall; 
Soon or late comes a call for me, 
Down from the mountain or
up from the sea, 
Then let me lie where I fall.
And a friend may write - for friends there be, 
On a stone from the
gray sea wall,
"Jungle and town and reef and sea - I loved God's
Earth and His Earth loved me,
Taken for all in all."

Today is your day and mine, the only day we have, the day in which we
play our part. What our part may signify in the great whole, we may not
understand, but we are here to play it, and now is our time. This we
know, it is a part of action, not of whining. It is a part of love, not
cynicism. It is for us to express love in terms of human helpfulness.
This we know, for we have learned from sad experience that any other
course of life leads toward decay and waste.

The Philosophy of Despair

The Bubbles of Sáki.

From Fitzgerald's exquisite version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám,
I take the following quatrains which may serve as a text for what I have
to say:
So when the angel of the darker
Drink At last shall find you by the
river-brink,
And offering you his cup, invite your Soul
Forth to
your lips to quaff, you shall not shrink.
Why, if the soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the air of
Heaven ride,
Wert not a shame - wert not a shame for him
In this
clay carcase crippled to abide?
'Tis but a tent where takes his one-day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of
Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrásh
Strikes, and
prepares it for another guest.
And fear not lest Existence, closing your Account,
and mine, shall
know the like no more;
The Eternal Sáki from that bowl hath pour'd

Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour.
When you and I behind the veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while

the world shall last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds
As
the Sev'n Seas shall heed a pebble-cast.
A moment's halt - a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid
the waste,
And lo! - the phantom caravan has reach'd
The Nothing
it set out from - O, make haste!
* * *
There was the door to which I found no key;
There was the veil
through which I could not see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and
Thee
There was - and then no more of Thee and Me.
* * *
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the two worlds so
learnedly are thrust
Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn

Are scatter'd and their mouths are stopt with dust.
With them the seed of wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand
wrought to make it grow
And this was all the harvest that I reap'd -

"I come like water, and like wind I go."
* * *
Ah Love, could thou and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry
scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits - and then

Re-mould it nearer to the heart's desire!
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again -
How oft hereafter will she
wax and