PS 3511 
 .E73 P6 
 1909 
 Copy 1 
 
 K 
 
 YALE UNIVERSITY PRIZE POEM 
 
 1909 
 
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YALE UNIVERSITY PRIZE POEM 
 
 1909 
 
 THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT 
 
 WALTER L. FERRIS 
 
 NEW HAVEN 
 
 The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Company 
 1909 
 
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PREFATORY NOTE 
 
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 This poem received the twelfth award of the prize 
 
 offered by Albert Stanburrough Cook to Yale University 
 for the best unpublished verse, the Committee of 
 Award being Professors George H. Nettleton, Stockton 
 Axson, and Edward S. Parsons. 
 
THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT 
 
 I keep strange company to-night, because 
 
 My heart is deep in question. These old saints 
 
 Are somewhat cold of cheer, for all their words 
 
 Are fire. This ancient must have traced his lines 
 
 With a live coal for pencil, while the pain 
 
 Bit to the ver}^ marrow of his soul, 
 
 And wrought this agony of speech. Each page 
 
 Is like a bed of little dancing flames, 
 
 That leap and dart and weave their fantasy 
 
 Of changing light and shadow. And their breath 
 
 Is like a restless flaming wind that beats 
 
 And sways the slender house wherein I dwell. 
 
 Buttressed and girded with what pain of thought! 
 
 Strange fire ! It is no wonder the old Greek, 
 Musing on heaven and earth and substances, 
 Saw in it God's last secret ; no, nor strange 
 That air-born fancy saw a kindly god 
 Winging his way from heaven's steep citadel 
 To place his flaming reed within the hands 
 That groped along their cheerless way ; nor strange 
 That Jove's deep wrath should light upon him, stern, 
 Immortal, at that great revealing gift. 
 
For light is born of flame, and the swift gleams 
 
 Pierced through the shrouding darkness and made plain, 
 
 Increasingly, earth's daylight mysteries. 
 
 And with the stealing, grateful warmth that crept 
 
 From hand to heart, and heart to brain, there grew 
 
 A thrilling sense of life. First, trees and rocks, 
 
 The clouds, the winds, through the baptismal fire, 
 
 Engendered souls in the new thought of man. 
 
 But now cold fear, the shadow of the flame. 
 
 Followed with stealthy tread. For wilful winds, 
 
 And seas that strike with calculated blow, 
 
 Become thrice dangerous. Then, as the light grew, 
 
 These lesser beings merged into one God 
 
 Whose heart was flame — perhaps Jove's ancient wrath 
 
 At the god's kindly gift, become eternal. 
 
 Now lighting upon man. So the flame spread 
 
 Before men's starting eyes until it grew 
 
 The half of heaven — a mighty flaming hell. 
 
 Wherein God's anger 'gainst the soul of man 
 
 Finds its most sacred vengeance ; and the cry 
 
 Of stricken hearts that rose continually 
 
 Was, 'Save my soul ; O God of fire, my soul !' 
 
 And then, because all men above the brute 
 
 Would save their neighbors from a burning house, 
 
 Or equal fate, if done at small expense, 
 
 Man cried out to his fellow, 'Save thy soul, 
 
Oh, save thy soul from hell !' And if some one, 
 Who chanced to think a little by himself. 
 Suggested that the fear was overdone, 
 And love was somewhat, he was seized upon, 
 And straightway shown, with proof satirical, 
 The force of fire. Well, it sounds barbarous ; 
 Yet he was sure to burn in the same way 
 For some few million years, and a half hour. 
 Or minutes more or less, added to these. 
 Would not mean much to him, but would indeed 
 Be proof to God that those who set the flame 
 Were worthy heaven, and prove a wholesome sight 
 To any who might chance to think. And then. 
 It would anticipate heaven's best delight 
 When those in bliss should see, across the chasm. 
 The writhings of the lost. 
 
 The proof I find, 
 In all this dreary waste where Fear is law, 
 Is this : Force lives in fire ! — witness these words 
 That burn upon this page. And the next day 
 After such writing he would stand and preach, 
 This ancient, to a crowd of wide-eyed folk, 
 And, being saint and poet too, would see 
 Before him, not a crowd, but seas of flame 
 Where wallowed writhing souls. And then, as though 
 His flesh felt the hot breath of flaming wrath. 
 
He screamed his warning to those breathless ones 
 Who yet might save their souls. It is not strange 
 He drove them all within his fold — if that 
 Could mean salvation, which, conveniently, 
 It did to him. 
 
 But now my question is, 
 Where has the fire gone ? Perhaps the god 
 Repented his rash venture, and has stolen 
 Jove's secret back again. For, since the time 
 This monk was writing, men have used the gift 
 To make dissecting knives, and drills to probe 
 The earth's dark places, and great telescopes 
 To dare heaven's very gates, and find out hell, 
 And laugh in its despite, as being born 
 In madmen's brains, too credulous and fearful. 
 Or has the fire been sucked up from the deep, 
 To roar through furnace-blasts, and forge the bands 
 That wrap the earth in harnesses of steel, 
 And bind the Pleiades? Howe'er it be, 
 The shadow, Fear, is gone, and the fierce flame 
 Has lost its sting. For men are busied so 
 With finding how God works, there is no time 
 To fear. And if a shadow should be found. 
 A thousand eyes would probe it. and gray heads 
 Would buzz about its substance, its relation. 
 And what great Kant would find its place to be 
 
In the mind's structure, and what not, until 
 The cumulative Hght would prove so keen 
 That the poor frightened shadow must needs flee 
 To the lee side o' the moon, where it might live 
 Its unobtrusive life. 
 
 Yet some faith lives, 
 Though drained of elemental force. I, too, 
 Believe in God, and in a glorious life 
 That surely, through vast love and will and thought, 
 Shall rise to Him. But yet to save my soul 
 Does not seem needful — rather find my soul, 
 Through joyous searching, not through palling fear, 
 And most among my fellows where God is. 
 And this because mankind is some way more 
 Than man; and man to find himself must link 
 His will and thought and purpose with mankind's, 
 All finding God t6gether through the best 
 That lives in each and lives in all, and thus 
 Uplifting a strong ladder to high God, 
 Whereon all men may climb. This worthy saint, 
 When he set out to share his truth with men. 
 Wrote it in blood, and screamed it from the altar, 
 And cried so potently that men flocked there. 
 And when I stand and speak and look upon 
 The sea of faces, my heart shrinks with pain 
 At deadly earthliness and stolid sin ; 
 
But yet to lift them up I cannot rave 
 
 And curse, and call heU's fire upon them. Hell 
 
 Is vanquished, and the soul is given wings, 
 
 And the broad realm of universal light 
 
 Is her dominion. She's no longer chained 
 
 To one or other, hell's deep sea of wrath 
 
 Or heavenly streets of gold. And when my soul 
 
 Goes venturing through the light, and tries to speak 
 
 Some messages of beauty, my words fall 
 
 Like quiet drops of rain upon a pool 
 
 Hid in the forest, while in the world without, 
 
 In sea and land and sky, a thundering sound 
 
 Goes up from the storm-riven earth to God, 
 
 Drowning all fainter voices. 
 
 Thus it is, 
 The mind that ventures wide gets lost in wonder. 
 And when it stays sedately down it finds 
 So much of truth in everything, the lines 
 That sunder right and wrong, the good and best, 
 So faint, that while it views this side and that 
 The fire is waning. And the harsh racking world 
 Thunders so mightily, there needs a voice 
 Speaking a truth so certain and so loud 
 That men must hear, and leave the pleasant paths 
 That lead — to what? — this preacher says to hell. 
 And I must say, at worst, to loss of being. 
 
At best, a lagging back in the great train 
 That marches very surely on to God. 
 
 And yet this question goads me. Is the force, 
 The fire, convicting power, essential truth ? 
 Or is it sealed in the deep heart of God 
 That less of certainty, and more of search 
 And groping, more of beauty, more of light 
 That chases shadows from the universe, 
 Is higher truth ? And is it destiny 
 That gradually the general heart of man, 
 Winnowed and purged thus in its wandering, 
 Shall win, by way of deeper insight, truth 
 That hides in beauty, shining, vanishing, 
 Yet always luring by gleams spiritual, 
 Until we find out God by being drawn 
 Resistlessly to Him through a great love? 
 
 Oh, who shall tell the answer ? This good man 
 Almost convicts me by his thunderous speech 
 Of cowardice, or lack of strength or sight, 
 Or undue selfishness of search, the while 
 Some one beneath my window, drunk or cold, 
 Needs present love, or warning words, or both. 
 And yet between my hour and his there yawns 
 A mighty chasm of thought, and I, like him, 
 Am one with my own age. God grant to us 
 That we are nearer Him by all this march ! 
 
How the hours pass ! This little candle-gleam 
 Will soon flare out, drowned in a pool of wax — 
 And then, what of the flame ? Will the light flit 
 To some great realm of sun beyond the dark? 
 What if my flame of life, at some deep hour 
 Before the stirring dawn, should be snuffed out 
 In a great pool of silence? Shall I then 
 Be merged once more in the vast whole of being, 
 And win, by timeless moving on and on. 
 The unutterable secret — not alone 
 In a great musing silence, set apart. 
 But as the mighty whole is interfused 
 With stealing sounds of newer mysteries ; 
 As though deep organ-tones should fill the sky, 
 First thunderous pedal-notes, then harmonies, 
 Innumerable voices, mystic, sweet. 
 Triumphant, swelling with diviner passion, 
 Flooding the sky with melody that seeks 
 Each space and cranny of the universe. 
 And fills the void of heaven ? And were I there, 
 How quickly would my sense respond, and feel 
 The meanings that are said ? And how, O God, 
 Should my soul know my soul in that vast sea? 
 
 Ah, there the veil is drawn. But this I know — 
 There is no fear in me, sweet night, no fear ! 
 
MAY 22 1912 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 015 898 134 8