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IMMORTELLES 
 
 — OF- 
 
 LOVE 
 
 By J. O. BARRETT. 9'?r5~^ 
 
 " What cannot be trusted is not worth having. * * * We cannot love 
 apart, nor live except in each other's love." — Soul Seer. 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. : ^ 
 COLBY AND RICH, 
 
 No. 9. Montgomery Place. 
 1874. 
 
-^6\ 
 
 cA^ 
 
 ^t:^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in 11^^ year 1873, by 
 
 J. O. BAERETT, 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
iUebicatulJ to 
 
 WHO HAS TAUGHT ME THE LAW OF LOVE. 
 
Dear Reader: 
 
 Herein you find radical sentiment in beautiful dress — axio- 
 maiic thought, with argument implied. It is the product of 
 calm inspiration, and offered without a misgiving, for I ask not 
 praise or blame, but simply to awaken candid inquiry into the 
 natural laws of our being. 
 
 The incidents herein related are actual experiences, and belong 
 therefore to our great human wealth. A multum in parvOy hav- 
 ing a sunny philosophy, comprising our social life aa it is and 
 as it should be, the sweet and hopeful prophecy buds in my soul, 
 that it will be a little moral giant in reform. 
 
 It is for all — men, women and children. It breathes in its 
 moral intelligence the hope that those who have suffered, and 
 find hero a balm for their wounds, may be encouraged, and 
 remember — 
 
 "There is rain in the sweet heavens 
 
 To wash us white as snow;" 
 
 a,nd that those who are inexperienced and welcome life as a 
 mellenial dawn — as young folks in their innocence oft 
 imagine — may discover here lessons of warning and of aspi- 
 ration, and early learn that nobility of character accrues 
 from a just and righteous life. 
 
 The present actors in the drama of human history are 
 entering a social revolution, pregnant with higher civiliza- 
 tions, paving the way as with a "bleeding sacrifice" that 
 shall try all our souls. 
 
 That my souvenir of .loving faith in these principles may 
 add speed to the agitation and blossom the very crown of thorns 
 that the faithful shall wear, is the sincere and devout heart- 
 wish of the author. 
 
 J. O. B. 
 "Mount Olive," Glen Betjlah, Wis., 
 Summer, 1873. 
 
IMMORTELLES OF LOYE. 
 
 ~^/rOENINGS of Heaven have dawned on the world ! 
 ■^-^ Justice is principle in action; her heart-beat is 
 sounding down the centuries. 
 
 Freedom the most possible to the individual; mo- 
 nopoly the least possible. 
 
 Equal rights the limit of freedom; and this the 
 duty of government. 
 
 The activity of all the forces of human being to 
 secure the highest and best in life. 
 
 Mar not the casket of the immortal spirit by starva- 
 tion; but summer-bloom all natural affections and 
 aspirations. 
 
 Carry the balm of love to the thirsty, and purify 
 the Social Heart, clear as a crystal with a drop of 
 water in it. 
 
 TT thunders! it lightens down the rain-chains! 
 -*- The great deep is opened up ! 
 The battle of souls is on us ! 
 
 a) 
 
IMMORTELLES OF LO\TE. 
 
 The State is sold for messes of pottage! 
 Legislation presumes to undo God — 
 Manufacturing human rights ! 
 It worships mammon! has no conscience! 
 
 The church is rotten clear to the heart! 
 Gloom is in the pulpits and pews! 
 The holy water on the altars is frozen! 
 The incense is the breath of fashion! 
 It hath no spirit of prophecy! 
 No seership! no gift of tongues! 
 'No healing balm ! For a pretence 
 It would deaden God in a Constitution! 
 But Divine wrath stabs it 
 From roof to corner-stone! 
 
 Get out from under the church's rafters, 
 
 And rest under the stars! 
 
 Oh, this courtship of God's groves 
 
 With mossy rocks for shrines ! 
 
 Oh, this freedom of the soul 
 
 Under the dome of nature's temple! 
 
 Oh, this heart-beat of the Infinite, 
 
 Trembling in my soul! 
 
 Oh, this faith in love and goodness, 
 
 Though planets run lawless thro' the sky! 
 
 Breakers ahead! volcanic valves! 
 
 The electric blood of revolutions ! 
 
 Social divorces to alarm the soul-sleepers! 
 
 Passion's Iconoclast, 
 
 And the rustle of an angel's wing! 
 
EEVOLrTION. 9 
 
 The sweat pours from the great brows ! 
 The crown of thorns is blossoming! 
 Whole nations are rotting down! 
 Plough them under a thousand feet! 
 Give the farmers of Heaven a chance! 
 
 O tillers of the soil ! 
 
 O miners of the valleys and mountains! 
 
 O sailors on the seas ! 
 
 O mechanics, inventors, teachers, artists! 
 
 O clam-diggers, boot-blackers, hod-carriers! 
 
 O railroad builders, river drivers, lumber sawyers! 
 
 O house carpenters and chimney sweepers! 
 
 O street scavengers and rag pickers! 
 
 ■^ * "^ Know ye not 
 
 That God has come down to see 
 
 "Where your bloody sweat stains red 
 
 The lintels of the capitols ? 
 
 O prisoners, petting squirrels and birds in your cells! 
 
 O insane, wild for the wine of inspiration! 
 
 O inebriates, mad for the iire-springs that damn the 
 
 gods! 
 O orphan minstrels of the city's streets, 
 Sleeping on the door-steps of the mansions! 
 O blasted souls, adrift on life's dead sea! 
 O sorrowful women whom the lords of lust have 
 
 ruined ! 
 O bruised and broken-hearted in a million -homes! 
 '^ ^ ^ Lo ! the dissolving views 
 Are out- waves from angels' breathing, 
 
10 IMMOKrELLES OF L(WE. 
 
 In hot haste to redeem us ! 
 See that banner woven in the factories 
 Of the spirit country, covered o'er 
 With emblazonry of hope to mortals! 
 How the words fire-flash and burn! 
 Eead them, O prisoners of earth-lands- 
 Kead the order of the Kew Kepnblie! 
 
 T IFE inalienable! 
 ^ Self-governments ! 
 
 International unions ! 
 
 Courts of equity without statutes! 
 
 Eeform, not punishment! 
 
 Peace congresses of nations! 
 
 Free trade! 
 
 Labor and fraternity! 
 
 Sexual equality! 
 
 Eegeneration by holy generation! 
 
 IVTAN is soul of woman's soul, 
 ■^■^ And love is its completeness; 
 And never will it lose control, 
 
 If it is full of sweetness. 
 Home is rest with happy care. 
 
 And many^re its pleasures. 
 If all the children living there 
 
 Are ever welcomed treasures. 
 Life is all one honey moon, 
 
 "When free from empty fashion, 
 If husbands keep their wives in tune 
 
 By chastity of passion. 
 
ECLIPSES BUDS. 11 
 
 pCLIPSES of soul!— Oh, what revelations! 
 
 •^ What enfolding within itself and trembling rest! 
 
 What great thought thence cometh with hope, 
 
 And deejD communion with the Infinite^ 
 
 As night for stars, so outer gloom for inner glory. 
 
 Saddest hours are soul-recuperations, — 
 
 The time to see the faces of the gone before! 
 
 Doth darkness hinder the morning of day? 
 
 Doth the storm prevent the return of sunshine? 
 
 O darkness and the storm, fold me in your arms! 
 
 Ye reveal me to myself where my love is! 
 
 O eclipse of Faith, hiding the sun-face of Truth! 
 
 O world of doubt, crossing the path of progression! 
 
 O shadow-isle of uncertainty. 
 
 Yelling in the vision of immortality! 
 
 O night of error, when we sleep for*the morning! 
 
 O angel of death! O life in the darkness of rest! 
 
 O horoscope of the Divine Government! 
 
 O key of spiritual mysteries. 
 
 Turning in the locks of science! 
 
 "DUDS that were frozen all winter in snow, 
 -*-^ Have risen again from the dead, 
 And early this June they are all in the blow 
 Of a delicate blue, white and red. 
 
 Alas! comes a frost with a cold chilling breath, 
 That touches them close to the ground, 
 
 And over half of them, just gone to their death. 
 Are lying all scattered around. 
 
12 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 And buds on the trees, swinging np in the air, 
 In winds of a clond-cnrtained morn. 
 
 Are dropping off fast, till they're almost bare, 
 And only a remnant is born. 
 
 Most precious of buds are the angelic norms, 
 
 Our human affection would hold, 
 That fell untimely by the internal storms 
 
 That blight with the crudest mold. 
 
 Oh, where have they gone in so brief a time? 
 
 Did angels attract them above. 
 To grow on the tree of life, safe in the clime 
 
 Of frostless, sweet Edens of Love? 
 
 Shall w^e be forgiven the foeticide act 
 By which they^were wilted and chilled. 
 
 And sorrow, up there, o'er the painfulest fact, 
 That buds in the budding were killed? 
 
 Shall we know tliem there, in that heavenly land, 
 
 With joy or repentance of heart. 
 When thinking that ever a humanly hand, 
 
 Could thrust with a murderous dart? 
 
 Will angels report ev'ry mischievous thing, 
 • Once done in our ignorant years? 
 Will mem'ry thereof give an edge to the sting 
 That opened the fountain of tears? 
 
 O motherly Love! canst thou heal all the wounds 
 
 That famish life's tree to the root, 
 Until the new law in our marriage abounds. 
 
 That buds shall enllow'r to the fruit? 
 
PEOPLE. 13 
 
 pEOPLE — I love them; they me; 
 -*- But cannot aflbrd too closely. 
 This hugging one to death 
 By the anaconda of Flattery — 
 Too much by half ! 
 A shining distance, sir, 
 Makes one patriotic. 
 
 I cannot entertain all the beggars ! 
 
 They will suck me up. 
 
 As sponge the water! 
 
 I brunt the world by force; 
 
 Put on the don't-care 
 
 To gain a place: 
 
 Then touch me voraciously 
 
 If 3^ou dare! 
 
 In my soul is another soul 
 
 To make a large soul ; 
 
 And I swear by the Eternal, 
 
 Ye shall not destroy that. 
 
 Stand off ! I will bless some of you, 
 
 And dot the deserts in you with green isles. 
 
 You say you touched me? Why, I did not even 
 feel your elbows- in such a crowd. 
 
 So intent in my business, my nerves are taut, like 
 cables in the wire bridge, indifferent alike to patrician 
 or plebian, saint or sinner. 
 
 Tlie feeling is down in my pocket, sir, when I am 
 traveling. 
 
 That crowd in my way? I shall pass it, if I have 
 
14 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 to walk on men's shoulders. You may be in the 
 front, and you, and you; and so we all will make 
 progress, when each tries to get ahead. 
 
 Miss you ? 
 Ask the shadowed light 
 Of the pensive night, 
 If it misses its stars, 
 "When a vail is ON^er their silver bars. 
 
 Miss you ? 
 Ask the mystic dulse 
 Of the constant pulse. 
 If it misses a heart. 
 When a distance divides its counterpart. 
 
 Miss you ? 
 Ask the tears of eyes. 
 Or the soul of sighs. 
 If a something is missed, 
 When in dreams the sweetest of lips are kissed. 
 
 Miss you ? 
 Ask the loving breast 
 Of its faith and rest, 
 If it misses a calm. 
 When it thirsts so strong for its healing balm. 
 
MUKDERENG WARS. 1 5 
 
 "M"UKDEKIFG is the business of the people! 
 
 -^ Beasts, birds, fish, all are mardered! 
 
 The pelted ox is in the car; he is crazy at the mad 
 
 rush ; 
 How wild and big his eyes ! 
 He snuffs murder ahead! 
 A man knocks him down, and stabs him! 
 Dead so quick? 
 
 His carcass is decently cut into slices, 
 And eaten by civilized cannibals! 
 
 Is there no other way to live? 
 
 Angels! are there any slaughter houses in your 
 
 country? 
 O chemists, psychologists, ethnologists! 
 Try your skill at extracting vital pabulum from all 
 
 things, 
 Without destruction of life. 
 Save us the universal crime of murdering 
 And devouring the innocent! 
 
 TTTAKS! wars! whence come they? How long is 
 their reigning? 
 
 Ask your national law that demands human butchery 
 
 To keep up a majesty over its enemies! 
 
 Ask the priests of the pulpits who are teaching atone- 
 ments 
 
 To appease the wrath of an implacable Deity! 
 
 Ask the schools that are curdling the blood of the 
 pupils 
 
16 IMMORTELI^S OF LOVE. 
 
 With accounts of battles tliat disgrace all our 
 
 histories! 
 Ask the Sunday schools that instruct little Christians 
 To reverence Avhat's written in the old Hebrew 
 
 Scriptures, 
 Of the plagues and the battles that Jehovah once 
 
 ordered ! 
 Ask the mothers who warred against husbands' 
 
 oppressions, 
 When children were forced into life without welcome! 
 Ask the milk of the mothers that is poisoned bj 
 
 passion, 
 So building the battle in the blood of the infants! 
 Ask the fashions that raid upon honor and virtue, 
 And the cannibal diet on which we are living! 
 Ask the drink of the still, full of misery's anger, 
 How the brains grow mad for the onslaught of 
 
 murder! 
 O Grod,what a farce! what a damnable error! — 
 This worship of blood in the hells of Saint Custom! 
 What a tax! what a sorrow! what a hellish maneuver! 
 What a horrible sight — this supporting vast armies 
 To maim, to destroy, and make orphans and widows! 
 What a culpable mischief this bounding of nations 
 With guns to provoke them and murder invaders! 
 
 It is cowards that war, and fear prompts them to 
 
 fighting. 
 And to haste of the battle for a life-preservation! 
 We act in our anger what we conspired in secret. 
 ,But genius is never a bearer of armor; 
 
WAES. 17 
 
 No magnet is liere to attract its provoMng; 
 
 The Eepublic of Man is a manhood self-governed I 
 
 Oh, the glory! Oh, the glory! 
 That shall come to onr dear mother world, 
 When the lightning of truth brightening 
 
 With the ages as they roll, 
 Pulsing, pulsing 
 
 Tides of love from soul to soul, 
 Shall dissever all oT')pressions, 
 And destroy all false concessions 
 
 To a party, sect or clan; 
 Shall abolish all relations 
 Of the boundaries of nations 
 
 That enslave our brother man ! 
 
 Oh, the glory! Oh, the glory! 
 That shall come to our dear mother world, 
 When the spirit we inherit. 
 
 Striking valiant 'gainst the wrong, 
 
 Shouting, shouting 
 Equal rights to all belong! 
 Shall emancipate the races. 
 And shall consecrate all places 
 
 Holy in a common cause, 
 Till there is a heart communion 
 Of humanity in union, 
 
 Ruled at last by higher laws! 
 2 
 
18 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 T IBEETT! God's generosity; man's chief abuse 
 -^ of himself — as if stealing and murdering would 
 gain it! 
 
 Is it mine — ^all riches, all dominions? See here, 
 how by self, liberty turns to oppression! 
 
 Sovereign, do you say? l^ay, a function in the 
 social body; related and therefore responsible. 
 
 Free is air, water, soil, wealth of mines and forests; 
 and the best legislation is every one's privilege of use, 
 as possession without monopoly. 
 
 Beware of Theocracy that presumes to define by 
 stern rule the way we all must walk in! 
 
 Tastes and attractions are diverse as organizations; 
 and the beauty of living is freedom to live out our 
 highest aspiration with the same respect for others' 
 rights. 
 
 Some are polygamous by birth, — ^the ante-natal 
 psychologies of races and associations made them so; 
 some, monogamic; some, celibates. 
 
 It is the greatest victory of self-hood to allow what 
 suits the ruling genius of each and all; and the best 
 law of the land is to prevent the raid of the oppres- 
 sor and the free luster. 
 
 Take, then, the responsibility of your own deeds, 
 and, remember, that society too, has claims here for 
 the security of its virtue through your nobility, that 
 the liberty the angels have may be ours at last in the 
 subordinate administration of the passional to the 
 spiritual; which is the glory of self-government. 
 
COURTS OF lAW. 19 
 
 /COURTS of law — ^what of their justice? I was iu 
 ^ the spirit in the business hours: 
 
 I saw a man in the prisoner's box, tried for stealing 
 corn, when hungry. 
 
 The scowl on the forehead of the judge sealed the 
 severity of his honor; and the jurors cast the same 
 in their teeth, as the lawyers applied the penalty of 
 the law in the decency of gentlemen! 
 
 Even Ms lawyer knew he had stolen the corn, but 
 sought to clear him, not for mercy's sake, but to prove 
 his own smartness. 
 
 The poor man was condemned and thrust into 
 prison to satisfy the majesty of law; and the muling 
 church said: Better that his family starve than one 
 jot or tittle of the statute be unfulfilled! 
 
 And I saw the magnetic threads outward going 
 from the souls of these honorables, and lo, they were 
 forged into knots of chains, bound upon defenseless 
 men and women. And I heard voices ask: Who 
 have robbed health and beauty from the wives of the 
 administrators of law and order? Who have stolen 
 strength from the nerves, thought from the brains, 
 love from the affections ? 
 
 And an accusing spirit answered : The courts are 
 mockeries! The greater sin of soul-stealing goes un- 
 punished in human codes! But justice doth not tany 
 for our night, and her legislation is — The freedom of 
 the soul to possess a righteous citizenship. 
 
20 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 "P TILES do not apply to all cases: Sometimes the 
 -^^ golden, sometimes the iron, as the wisdom of cir- 
 cumstances requires. 
 
 Lo! these are the commandments of the Spirit: 
 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor better than thyself. 
 
 Thou shalt give to him only when his necessity 
 demands it. 
 
 Thou shalt deny him when he would abuse thy 
 charity. 
 
 Thou shalt enlighten him till he shall no longer 
 ask of thee. 
 
 Thou shalt economize all the forces of thy being. 
 
 Thou shalt subordinate all thy possessions to the 
 uses of human happiness. 
 
 Thou shalt neither receive nor give what will injure 
 the affections of the soul. 
 
 Thou shalt preserve in purity all the functions of 
 thy body. 
 
 Thou shalt not murder a soul by slander or lying. 
 
 Thou shalt deny thyself for the good of life, and 
 develop thyself in perfectibility of character. 
 
 EELIGIOK — has it specialties? One Christ only; 
 one Sabbath day? 
 My child is my Savior, saving me by example of 
 innocence. 
 
 And God is so divine everywhere! all days are sacred! 
 And all places the Palestine of angel visitants ! 
 Come, heathen philosophers, into the free temple of 
 religion ! 
 
 What think ye of our new Mary and Jesus? 
 
FArrH. 21 
 
 T^AITII — a force, a function, a magnetism, the pulse 
 -*- of the soul and the will of the spirit. 
 
 Sun-faith, arrowing beams through space, kissing 
 all the planets at once; night-faith in the stars; floral- 
 faith in the summer rains; child-faith in mother to 
 soothe all aches. 
 
 Faith! O Spring of Immortality! O Angel of 
 Freshness! Come to me! 
 
 1 am a boj again on the green banks of a river. 
 
 Mystic hands upon the church's walls, spirit voices, 
 spirit bodies materialized, raps on the tables and 
 hearts, photographs of immortals, nations in revolt 
 against their governments ! 
 
 And I am an equal miracle, and can mold matter 
 easy as the beetle rolling up its miniature mountain 
 to lay its eggs in. 
 
 ISTinety and nine thousand years hence, I shall have 
 completed my study of chemistry ; then a few of us 
 intend to make a world of our own, somewhere. 
 
 Faith that works by knowledge laid the solar- walks ; 
 and why not add another planet to produce human 
 beings after our kind ? 
 
 My hand now on the Bible of IN^ature, I swear by 
 the gods of the ineffable, that I will rule the earth 
 with its millions of instinctive creatures in me. 
 
 I will be master of self, of appetite, of passion, of 
 doubt, of envy, of fear, of emulation, of the elements, 
 of circumstances. 
 
 I glory in the strong sea- wave that rolls and rolls, 
 
22 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 mad for the wind, lashing the rocks, driving the fleet 
 of ships into port. 
 
 Eide me so, O Fate, but I shall be the General in 
 this battle. 
 
 Blow, tempests ! burn, fire ! freeze, ice ! kill, O devil 
 of suicide! I am immortal overall your deaths, and. 
 will put you all in prison for service! 
 
 rpiIOUGIITS are ourselves in emigration from the 
 
 -*- isle of self: 
 
 Mind-waves from the life-boat's ploughing on the still 
 
 deep. 
 Do not filthy dreamings report affection's lure; 
 And miserly thinking, oppressive rule? 
 From tlie corridors of heaven they echo — 
 Hail pattering on the home-roof ! 
 Accusing spirits whisper them in their councils, 
 And station sentinels on the high towers of faith 
 To ward oiF their embodied demoniacs. 
 
 I study my relations to habit, as the philosopher the 
 
 sun — 
 By the vaporous colors in the analysis of the solar 
 
 spectrum. 
 My thoughts weigh me; write my biography. 
 Let us build a stairway with thoughts for rounds 
 Up the pillars of Truth. 
 
SLANDER — CRrnc. 23 
 
 GLANDEE hurting yon? Then yon may deserve 
 ^ it! If giving not its occasion, why disturbed? 
 Is it yonr venom that needs vent? 
 
 Sit nnder the gnarled oaks in the cold, and see how 
 they stand up against the wind. Thence cometh their 
 fine solidity. 
 
 There is philosophy even in slander: It takes its 
 liydra-head in, like a turtle when you touch it, and 
 will snap at you if you plague the monster. 
 
 Let it alone and it will let you alone: E"obody will 
 meddle with you when you are known as independent 
 of abuse: Why hinder your journey by stopping to 
 whip so feeble an enemy? 
 
 You are not fit for liberty if you do not pay its 
 price: Out of tribulation cometh heaven: High 
 commissions, among the gods, too, depend on honor- 
 able scars. 
 
 pRITIC I was for a beautiful woman, 
 
 ^ And spared not a shred of her patient endeavor; 
 
 But coldly I said — 'tis not fit for the printers! 
 
 Reviewing at length my precipitate folly — 
 
 For she wept and declared, ne'er again will I try it — 
 
 An angel appeared in the calm of the evening 
 
 And lovingly talked to my heart in its sorrow: 
 
 My brother, the least of the artists above you 
 Is higher by far than you are to this pupiL 
 What if her art bathe ugliest daubing? 
 What if her song be a dissonant music? 
 
24 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 What if her poem be an ideal jumble? 
 
 I'm ffrowino: her so to a loftier effort! 
 
 And in the hereafter you'll be honored to know her. 
 
 Not skill for the market is what I am after, 
 
 But opening up her long-slumbering genius. 
 
 So chill not my flow'rets in their earliest sprouting, 
 
 But tenderly touch them witli hopeful persuasion; 
 
 And lo ! on the morrow I'll show you a beauty 
 
 That earth will be proud of to love and to worship. 
 
 TEALOUSY-green-eyed-leer of self! Oh, the sick- 
 ^ ening distrust! Oh, the slow suicides! 
 
 The dagger in the heart freezes there! Injured in- 
 nocence cries, I wish I were dead! 
 
 Oh, tlie dead in the grave-yard of jealousy! Doubt 
 is the supervisor, locking and unlocking the iron 
 door of hell! 
 
 Oh, the deeps of hell! 
 
 Jealousy is the madness of selfishness, the image of 
 its hideousness mirrored in another, the reflex action 
 of its own lust, the mood of insubordinate passion on 
 fire of envy. 
 
 Mistake it not for love. 
 
 Call not prudence jealous, when refusing the peril 
 of false alliance. 
 
 Protection to virtue is heaven's sentinel at the gate 
 of angels' faitli. 
 
 Jealousy's eyes are very sore: She sees you in self- 
 reflectiveness: She says, O miserable sinner! 
 
 She has owl's eyes: Light daz^es them so she is 
 blind, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. 
 
SOCIAL COMMON SENSE. 25 
 
 Wliat shall we do for our sister? Have you any 
 love-salve to loosen the films? 
 
 Suspicion of one's honesty engenders the evil 
 feared. 
 
 Will you call a man a thief until he is proved 
 otherwise ? 
 
 The accusing mistrust suggests the temptation. 
 
 Put a man on his honor, and all the good in him is 
 active to keep your confidence. 
 
 I love you means I trust you in love's purity to use. 
 
 GOCIAL common sense is the best part of religion. 
 ^ I detest this heartless preaching — this pious 
 daub! this hot-bed civility, put on for effect! 
 
 Do you not know that the common fashions of virtue 
 breed the promiscuities that alarm you so? 
 
 Why do you court my society when you feel I pre- 
 fer a genial distance? 
 
 Why are you jealous, complaining I do not give 
 you extra attention? 
 
 Do you think I am so easily caught? Your suspi- 
 cion neutralizes my admiration. 
 
 We shall both be more agreeable to each other 
 apart. We can rid ourselves so of a magnetic poison. 
 
 Do not make a brew of your soul ; it sours us all. 
 
 "\riCES of life react — a ghost of repentance from the 
 ^ tombs ! 
 
 God has two methods — moral heroism and misery: 
 
26 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 The first is the angel of ministration from an im- 
 mortal continent: 
 
 The last is a mourning warner — God's dark wing of 
 safety ! 
 
 Is vice then equal to virtue, one and inseparable? 
 
 Is evil a lesser good? is truth to-day false to-morrow? 
 
 Principles do not change; relations may. 
 
 Have I a right to perjure right? to disease myself? 
 
 To circumscribe my neighbor's sphere of usefulness? 
 
 How justly nature reacts against departure from her 
 order! 
 
 Eight side up! says the tree; roots down, limbs up! 
 
 Wise as this? The lover of righteousness 
 
 Cannot favorably affirm to the good of evils. 
 
 No violating God's law, my moralist? 
 
 But the law breaks us! grinds us fine! 
 
 Cheat not thy soul with over-actions, nor under- 
 actions. 
 
 The rule of wisdom is the golden mean. 
 
 The pure in heart are vigilant watchers over all its 
 impulses. 
 
 The holiest angels pain the most over defects of char- 
 acter. 
 
 Our business is to perfect the human race, 
 
 ITot to perpetuate its miseries 
 
 By an apology for their causes; by self-indulgence. 
 
 There are two roads to a social hell: 
 
 Soul-starvation and sensuous gluttony. 
 
 There is one road to a social heaven: 
 
 Temperance in all things. 
 
PKOFIT AXD LOSS PliAYER TEUTH. 27 
 
 pEOFIT and loss! 
 -■- Hast trampled on others' rights? 
 Seduced the innocent? 
 Outraged justice? 
 " * ■^" Be honest once; 
 "What is the pro tit? 
 
 T)EAY now the prayer of a tried soul : 
 
 -■- Sufficiently wise and morally courageous to 
 
 to be true 
 To nature in every relation of life. 
 
 * * '-^ Honestly willing 
 To give to another 
 What by natural right is justly due. 
 
 rpEUTH is soul-conviction, straight-forward speaks 
 -■- without an oath; walks with firm step; the confi- 
 dence in the heart makes the face sunny. 
 
 The voice is round to fullness ; cuts clean, with 
 music in its ring. 
 
 Let me look into your eyes; I can tell the rest — 
 whether you can be trusted. 
 
 Why worry for truth? It goes fast as the world 
 round its axis. Can it be injured? can it not take 
 care of itself? Trying to steady it, O minister? Let 
 the ark steady you! 
 
 Why so much expenditure to born a soul before it 
 is gestated? What can you do with your spiritual 
 abortion? Why belabor the people who cannot un- 
 derstand you? 
 
 I tell you the world is just as good as it can be, 
 
28 IMMOETELT^S OF LOVE. 
 
 down under tlie freezing fogs from the pits of Doubt. 
 Out with you — this trying to do God's work! The 
 trees are never anxious about growing; why should 
 you be? Give vent to upward feeling! 
 
 Truth will have birth in due season, 
 
 If you let it grow in the light of reason. 
 
 There are three ways by which to grow the world 
 higher: By iconoclasm — ^legislation — beauty of ex- 
 ample. Which of these is best? 
 
 Oh, it is grand — this personality of yourself, com- 
 ing and going at will — all the universe in you epito- 
 mized ! 
 
 T>LASPHEMEE of the laws of life, 
 
 -■^ What is that stomach cloud? that slime? 
 
 Tliat rotten phosphorescence? 
 
 Askest thou -for God's light to enter, 
 
 Whilst eaten with worms of the still? 
 
 The mental mirror fouled, hell is close! 
 
 So builds the castle of death! 
 
 Behold the prisoner of scorn — 
 
 In the cell of despair! 
 
 But love never dies; she is so kind! 
 
 The prodigal son hath his home in reserve. 
 
 Beturn by the straight route: 
 
 First pure! * * * 
 
 O Temperance! we will build an altar to thee, 
 
 And girt it round about 
 
 With cherubim of Fidelity. 
 
GOD-DOTIBTEK ANTECEDENTS. 29 
 
 r< OD-doubter, presuming to improve divine forma- 
 ^ tions! If this passion-wheel is so large and that 
 moral- wheel so small, what is the best policy for 
 safety? Cut down the large wheel to the small one, 
 or bigger the small till it is big as the bigger? 
 
 If the steam is great, strengthen the engine for 
 swifter power. 
 
 Is passion heavy? Load up the dome-brain with 
 high thoughts; and the world will hail its Hercules 
 who destroys all enemies of man. 
 
 The mind-faculties are all lovers: orb them by fel- 
 lowship: The all-over soul cometh of balance. 
 
 Level up, not down; round out, not in. 
 
 The line of waves of sound and light, and thought, 
 too, and love, is from soul-centers circling wider, 
 swashing the shores of eternity. 
 
 Then the freest love is compatible with the purest 
 morality. 
 
 A NTECEDENTS, the data of Christian judgment? 
 -^ It is so nice to belong to honorable stock! 
 
 Did you ever study the genealogy of your Jesus — 
 how the voluptuous Judah by a harlot became a 
 lineal father? How the polygamous David stole 
 descent by slaying the husband of a fair woman? 
 How Mary, without the Jewish law permitting, was 
 found with child of the Holy Spirit? How the manger 
 cradled him? How the trade of a carpenter schooled 
 him? How the cross was honored by his martyrdom? 
 
 Did you ever think when your foot crushed a cater- 
 
30 IMMOETEU.ES OF LOVE. 
 
 pillar, that it might, with jour mercy, have been a 
 beautiful butterfly ? 
 
 Did you ever read about the log huts of your 
 ancestors, and their sheepskin garments; and the 
 origin of the red pimples just under your eyelids? 
 
 Alas! I am all mixed up by the blood of all races, 
 ignoble and royal, bond and free, legitimate and ille- 
 gitimate! 
 
 My dear Christian friend, lend me some of your 
 family virtue; for I am a sinner; and am so busy at 
 reform I have no time to think of bloody atonements 
 to make me a saint! 
 
 riOMPElSrSATIOlSr has traveled long enongh on 
 ^ stilts ; board the cars ! 
 
 Some there are who think they honor you by enjoy- 
 ing your speech or book without paying for it. 
 
 It is mercy to pull out the rotten teeth; and the 
 ministration of Divine Providence to let mean souls 
 starve till they learn good manners. 
 
 The greed -mongers of money are also social leeches, 
 sipping dry the fountains of friendship. 
 
 Cast them out as unprofitable servants; blast the 
 barren fig tree ; lop off all dead branches from the Tree 
 of Industry. 
 
 Every one must be a worker or die; for speculation 
 is disreputable; labor is capital, and compensation to 
 pocket and to heart is ratioed to what we give. 
 
 I tell you, too, that Love never found herself in so 
 bad a scrape as when she married a stingy man! 
 
COMPENSATION. 31 
 
 I was sleeping on a sofa, 
 
 Dreaming of my recent trophy, 
 
 How by faith in right so cheery, 
 
 I had blest the sad and weary — 
 
 How my soul with patient labor 
 
 Had revived my dying neighbor — 
 
 How to hearts all sore and riven 
 
 Better views of life had given, 
 
 Eising by the mystic lever 
 
 Of a loftier endeavor; — 
 
 "WTien, inditing my decision, 
 
 I was rapt in blissful vision, 
 
 Till it seemed I'd reached the margins 
 
 Of immortal Eden gardens, 
 
 And were under the reposes 
 
 Of the angels' loving roses, 
 
 Where I heard a gentle breathing 
 
 As if hands were noiseless wreathing 
 
 Something sweet for very beauty 
 
 Which was styled the Crown of Duty. 
 
 Then as sunbeams ope the daisies, 
 
 Or the morn night's curtain raises, 
 
 I awoke in rest nnbroken. 
 
 Too celestial to be spoken, 
 
 Mnsic in my senses trilling, 
 
 All my soul with rapture tilling. 
 
 And I rose a bold defiant. 
 
 In the right a moral giant. 
 
 Guided by the holy angel 
 
 Who had named me her Evangel! 
 
32 IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Our compensation to love; 
 
 The wronged are benefactors. 
 
 A brother fell! * * 
 
 Temptation sealed him! 
 
 A proud man scorned him: 
 
 The proud man's wife was sick: 
 
 The fallen man was the physician of her choice. 
 
 She was healed in body ; 
 
 He was healed of proud flesh ! 
 
 Love's justice is ever repeating itself. 
 
 If Josephine is forsaken, 
 
 Even for a nation's heir, 
 
 Napoleon's star will set! 
 
 O gods of temptation, try us ! 
 
 O knowledge of our weakness, humble us! 
 
 O tears of moral pride! O hot tears of remorse. 
 
 Drop on the granite of our nature till it crumbles! 
 
 O love- vine! climb over the ruined walls, 
 
 And bloom on the other side! 
 
 O love! our hearts were not strong enough 
 
 To hold the anguish any longer! 
 
 Here they are, pleading for the balm 
 
 Of the spring-buds on the tree of Forgiving Love! 
 
 TT ABIT!— is it your master? 
 
 -^-*- The silken thread of a kite drew over the little 
 
 wire, 
 And this the strong cable of Niagara's bridge. 
 Repeating falsehoods in jest? 
 
THEORY. 33 
 
 /lie spceeli organs will be slimj! 
 N"eglect is the law of weeds, 
 And truthfulness of words the law of integrity. 
 Sincerity is modest; how frank is her face! 
 
 T^HEORY is so easy, and so many of us get fooled! 
 -*- Owing to misplacements in the social uteri, we 
 liave apes preaching the gospel, monkeys practicing 
 law, physicians playing possom when caught killing 
 their ]3atients, and the delectable pleasure of tyranical 
 reformers at home! 
 
 It is only the reaction of nature from the universal 
 custom of marrying and begetting children, regardless 
 of the popular idiocy of health and conscience. 
 
 Angular folks are extra zealous in reform, outside 
 of themselves; and have a special sympathy for the 
 heathen. 
 
 When socially paralyzed from the over-strain, they 
 suddenly petrify as fossii for the next century cabi- 
 nets. 
 
 The farthest oif from harmony preach the most, 
 pray the most, swear the most. 
 
 It is one of the methods hnman nature has to 
 <^xpress personal defect and right itself by experiment. 
 
 Let me tell you a strange thing: By accident a 
 loving woman married one of these unreformed 
 reformers! She was poetical and warmed-sonled. He 
 was a theorist, scolding her vehemently for want of 
 zeal in Woman's Rights! 
 
34: IMMORTELLES OF LO . E. 
 
 TTEAlir to the democratic head, woman will pro- 
 
 -*-^ voke us 
 
 To loftier manhood by her example: 
 
 More a lover, because freer loved ; 
 
 More a mother, because a stateswoman; 
 
 More a wife, because of independence ; 
 
 More an angel, because a human student. 
 
 uhe harvest home of ages, 
 
 Eipe with beauty, 
 3ft foretold by ancient sages. 
 
 Charged with duty, 
 "When the sexes, in election, 
 Shall in each find safe protection, 
 
 Charged with duty! 
 
 Never more to soul untruthful, 
 
 For the beastial. 
 But developing the youthful, 
 
 So celestial. 
 Till the love that they inherit 
 Shall materialize in spirit. 
 
 So celestial ! 
 
 Death destroyed by living hoiyi 
 
 So related, 
 That earth's children, now so lowly, 
 
 Are translated; 
 Changed unconscious at life's portal 
 Into forms of the immortal — 
 
 Then translated ! 
 
FLOWERS ROBIN. 3 5 
 
 T71L0WEES liave souls; thej will errow in the winterj 
 -^ Wlien loving hands shut off the cold. 
 How dean and sweet beside the outside snows! 
 Give human nature freedom, room and love, 
 And how beautiful! * ^ 
 The lilies open upward to drink of sun-fonts; 
 The tarry leaves are turned down; the pure white 
 With its golden heart is queen of the lake. 
 O passion-lilj of my soul ! 
 
 T30BIJS" red-breast in the niche of a tree; a nest in 
 ■^^ the hollow of it for two squirrels; flies laying 
 their eggs under the whites of the leaves; a school 
 pic-nic under its shadow: what a world of love here! 
 
 O birds! O squirrels! O flies! O boys and girls! 
 O the singing, chirping, buzzing, playing! 
 
 My ears close to the grass, I hear music in its 
 growing. 
 
 Up through the branches far away I am looking, 
 and the green embosses the green of the immortal 
 world beyond, where are lakes, and rivers, and seas, 
 and islands, and happy people. 
 
 Let us cure diseases of spirit and body by music. 
 angels, baptize us in the Bethesda of music! 
 
 Ye insane, intemperate, prodigal, weary-hearted, 
 soul-weepers, come to the omni-healing asylum of 
 music! 
 
J 6 ' IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 "pEOPIIECY is ingrained in the tissues of life — in 
 -^ tlie very blood and nerve root. 
 
 The seer knows the end from the beginning: Is 
 not eifect aforesight discerned as easy as its working 
 cause? 
 
 I know a Horticulturist who laid his face close to 
 a sprouting apple tree, and clairvoyantly saw it in 
 full size, six years in advance, and tasted its fruit! 
 His are all extra qualities, because he is a prophet. 
 
 See that spider — how it weaves out its thread ahead, 
 as a feeler for a bridge: Is it a prophet, too? 
 
 My soul is all eye, seeing in a circle, as far future 
 as past, when opened by spiritual light. 
 
 The angels live in the realm of causation, and are 
 all prophets: When we counsel yvl'\ them in pure 
 fidelity to spirit laws, they will tell us v/herein is the 
 path of danger and of success. 
 
 "T^AKK! no hand to withold you? 
 ^ Dark! no eye to behold you? 
 The pavilion of shadow is the tent 
 Of angels on their vigils bent! 
 
 young man! in your covert hiding, 
 
 1 see your mother ! she is gliding 
 Thither ! there she is ! She appears 
 With a mantle on ; * * 
 And her face is wet with tears ! 
 
ELEC'ITVE AFFINIITES. 37 
 
 TTILECTIVE affinities! I think them the righteous- 
 ^ ness of nature; that God is building so a body 
 to live in. 
 
 All the gases courting each other, forming beauty 
 in the womb of chaos: How splendid — the chem- 
 istries! 
 
 Wonder if our world's great heart ever makes a 
 mistake, or promiscuizes her lovers ? 
 
 Sweeter is the nectar of the maples for the frost on 
 the roots. 
 
 Do you like the black specks on the gold of the 
 lily's petals? and the inimitable pink on the sea 
 shells? 
 
 I think it was all elective; and the plaint, too, of 
 the- cuckoo, so lonely searching for a mate in the spring. 
 
 Mature knows no divorces; so I feel confident our 
 'Mother and Father will never orphanize me, their 
 great baby. 
 
 If you pretty 23lease, have no more non-elects in 
 society, that you may damn somebody. 
 
 The soul elects, not the body; this is only its crys- 
 taline home to live in — the most beautiful thing in 
 the universe. 
 
 The soul is eternal, maker and lord; hence needs 
 not the care of its incidents. The enduring part has 
 not the claim for our sympathy equal with the tran- 
 sient. 
 
 What may be good for the soul may be injury to 
 the body. You must not gaze long at the sun with 
 the naked eye: You can safely devote your soul to 
 light. 
 
38 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Were all the loves of the soul focalized outwardly 
 to the body, — what think you, would it not burn? 
 
 I tell you the spiritual life has to be toned very 
 delicately through media, in adaptation to our needs, 
 else the inspiration will destroy us as lightning the 
 roof it strikes. 
 
 So there is quite a difterence in degree between the 
 functional freedom of the soul and the functional 
 freedom of its body. 
 
 The bee may cull its honey anywhere; but the hive 
 must be stationary and sound to treasure it up. 
 
 The soul draws what belongs to it for conservation 
 of needs; extracts the elements of health from the 
 bosom of all so,uls and is content, ]^ow it is qualified 
 to bless the hungry, as it feeds itself; shed its fra- 
 grance, as it is gathered with holy economy into the 
 secret chambers of its orderly house. 
 
 To grow the immortal angel — this is the mission of 
 earth-living; and all the essences of life are God's 
 mechanics here, as dew and sunbeams are to the 
 plants. 
 
 ]^ature is so wise! She denies for the sake of gain- 
 ing the most. She prohibits by the unwished-for 
 peril of motherhood; by unsexing you, O virgin 
 woman, if you offer the casket so ; by gathering dis- 
 eases from the diverse alkali to warn you, O man, 
 against departure from the economy of chastity of 
 habit. 
 
 And if we follow attractions always, where w^ere 
 the virtue of self-denial and the glory of the greatest 
 victory in earth or heaven — that of passion disciplined 
 
ELECTIVE AEnNITIES. 39 
 
 to a delightful ministration to the gods of physical 
 beauty and moral intellect? 
 
 What! free, my friend, to appropriate the sphere 
 that attracts? 
 
 Is the beauty my neighbor hath bloomed by care 
 mine to pluck because I admire? I would not so do 
 were I pure in heart. 
 
 The most loving are most sought; and so the greater 
 peril, if freedom is license. 
 
 These are the questions of Love at the bar of Jus- 
 tice: What will protect your innocency? What will 
 ennoble your life with sweetest graces ? 
 
 Here she loveth as bird its song, as dew its prismatic 
 hues. 
 
 Doth she graft incongruities — unlikes — as roses to 
 thistles? 
 
 Pure water to pure water, and it is pure still; and 
 love to love grows cleaner, brighter as gold in the 
 using. 
 
 These are the signs of adultery that have no marital 
 forgiveness: 
 
 When the body is offered a sacrifice to courtesy; 
 when woman revolts against her ensnarement; when 
 the seed of lust is planted which she abhorreth; when 
 the alliance bringeth disease. 
 
 O Unsexologists ! garnishing the hells to make them 
 respectable! 
 
 The libertine a gentleman, and the woman — what? 
 
 A hand for him, and a dagger for his victim! 
 
 With my daughters in the parlor, and she in a mad 
 house! 
 
40 ijymoRTEiJ.ES of love. 
 
 I am sad to-day, because of human vampires ; they 
 were burn starved! The habitual thought of the man, 
 that all women are his to use whom he can control, 
 his wife hating no prerogative over the rest, impreg- 
 nates illicit commerce in the very germ ! And if she, 
 poor woman, loves him not fully — as she cannot under 
 liis usurpations — but has her heart in another bosom, 
 behold, a vampire is born, sexually insane! 
 
 What sex? It makes no difference. It is a para- 
 site! I cannot afford the magnetic depletion. Stand 
 off ! you would eat up my very heart, were I to offer 
 my services so. Off ! I tell you. The hells made you, 
 O heir of angelhood ! You I will save, but not by 
 indulgence. Enter the generative heaven of augel 
 ministry, and be spirit born anew. So shall your hells 
 be quenched by the pure river of the water of life. 
 
 Out! ye damnations! — ye false marriages! — ye 
 nightly prostitutions ! We are to have a Paradise 
 right where the damned gods have reigned a thousand 
 Christian years! 
 
 Woman cannot appropriate what is unwelcome; 
 cannot factorize it into generative reciprocity. The 
 seed lies there dead, breeding poison; instinctively he 
 hates it and her with loathing, and she has lost, too, 
 her own self-respect. 
 
 Have I told you a secret of marital sorrows? and 
 will you learn wisdom, O social prisoners, that regener- 
 ation begins in freedom and is molded in love? 
 
 Is every impulse of feeling a moral aspiration ? 
 every whim of a child encourageable? 
 
 For my happiness, says the inebriate, sipping the 
 
FTiF-OTlVJi; AFFINrnES. 43 
 
 cuj); for mine, says the gambler, wittingly stealing 
 money; for mine, says the libertine, poisoning tho 
 fountains of life! 
 
 Benevolence in motive is not always wise in deed. 
 
 Pleasure may not be profit; nor policy, gain. 
 
 True love never asks. What may I have therefor? 
 never thinks. What may I enjoy? If you seek the 
 sweets of love to reserve it, so much of it is lost to 
 you! 
 
 Self-denial is self gained. 
 
 Married in moral love, each lives for the other. 
 
 Any personal neglect to myself injures you: I am 
 impelled to fidelity. What can I do to make you 
 healthful, useful, peaceful? 
 
 The living sacrifice is reciprocal: your ambition of 
 love to confer its blessing, awakens my loftiest ideal 
 of manhood. 
 
 Competitors in this nobility, we court the hours, 
 and sun all tasks with good cheer. 
 
 Responsibility is involved in every impulse of our 
 being. 
 
 Each step hath its ring of solemn judgment; each 
 breath its woe or joy. 
 
 Tlie man who plants a tree owes it his care; who 
 enters a circle owes it respect; who assumes a social 
 relation owes it his protection. 
 
 There is a beautiful rule that covers many ways: 
 The privilege of health with odor of example. 
 
 So if the parties consent and there is no trespass on 
 others' rights? 
 
4:Z IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Do you ask me? Well, I must first look into your 
 souls — both yours and hers. 
 
 I see — harmless in purposes, with self-denial plead- 
 ing at the altar of virtue. 
 
 This is the law of spheres, remember: No alikes 
 in all respects. Two cannot be loved with the same 
 emotions. Is the sensuous magnet the stronger? 
 Think, now! Yielding, you will follow it away from 
 the weaker. 
 
 Bring to bear your honor; your sense of righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 And ask yourselves: Will it contribute to health- 
 ful beauty of mind and body, moral content to the 
 aifections, serenity of conscience in the after-reviews? 
 
 Is there strength of protection, fidelity of friend- 
 ship to guard against the coming peril, and save the 
 feebler spirit from the cold? 
 
 There are watching stars, and the sweet silence hath 
 ears! Yes, and the pulses of angels' hearts touch 
 yours, inquiring if each physical pleasure arrays the 
 character with a whiter vesture; will the reaction jar, 
 or tune, the melody of the years of eternity? 
 
 And here I leave you both alone, under human 
 light that shadows heaven, under the claims of our 
 dear humanity, under the eyes of angels that w^eep so 
 much over our strange world, to prove to us that 
 purity with liberty is the bud of love in their happy 
 land. 
 
 See it — that snake's head peering in the tree? The 
 long creature is coiled up in that niche! Tlie bird 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINrrrES. 43 
 
 above it, on the top branch singing, is in a tremble, — 
 drawing nearer to the charming reptile! 
 
 Shoot a bullet into the monster's head! What 
 business has he there? But the bird falls with it, so 
 strono^ is the lure! Dead? I^o, but it wdll never sins: 
 SO sweet again! 
 
 Ho! rescue that minstrel maiden from the Serpent 
 of Lust! The daring brings the world's reward of 
 lilthj names stewed in the vats of scandal! But no 
 matter; the right is sure to win at last. 
 
 JN'ow loosen the magnetic power that she may be 
 free to dare all sin with the meltins: fires of sono^. 
 
 Ah, ha! you were precipitate, trusted too strong; 
 unsupported, she lied in peril into the rear fort of 
 Matrimony! The consecrated water there is fresh 
 from Lethean springs: You will be forgotten now, 
 and gratitude will change to scorn, for her husband 
 demands an animal's right, to swallow body, soul and 
 song! 
 
 It is so, my brother, and you must expect it — th-it 
 friendship will sour in the sloughs of selfishness ; be 
 just and merciful, for the soul is holy still, though 
 slimed in its misfortune. 
 
 What an insult is this to heaven — that our incidents 
 shall supplant our virtues ! — that the happy freedom 
 of young life shall lose its genius of hope in a rela- 
 tion naturally divine, but artificially enslaved by the 
 iron-masked goddess of St. Custom! 
 
 O angel of Freedom! sun-god of a E'ew Day, 
 purpling the clouds till the night of our social death 
 laughs at its dreamings! O angel, starred all over, 
 
44 IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 with great liglit blazing from thy forehead, ride on in 
 thy chariot of conquest! 
 
 We shall hear thy spirit rap at the outer gate of 
 our guarded life! see the trailing beauty of thy tread 
 in the black aisles of marital bastiles ! hear thy voice 
 that commandeth — Emancipation 1 
 
 Hark! hies are sawing on the chains! sighs are 
 turning to whistles and groans to songs! 
 
 'Tis coming up the grades of the great highways, 
 orient, golden, eternal in glory — the Morn of 
 Freedom ! 
 
 HTEALIKG virtue? There is no law for it! If 
 ^ forced to yield, the purpose of the heart remains: 
 It is no prostitution of soul, but the calamity of our 
 social life. 
 
 A poor wife in bonds, hating her immolation, io 
 holy still: A woman in poverty, driven to this sui- 
 cide of passion, weeping over the pollution of the 
 casket, has an angel side left, kept fresh by tears. 
 
 Oh, these precious diamonds, trodden under profane 
 feet! Oh, these martyrs of love unrequited, crncified 
 in the Social Golgothas to show onr criminality before 
 the pitying angels, and how true is woman's aifection 
 to purity in darkness and filth, in woe and death! 
 
 Oh, the stormy hours of wrath to come, that shall 
 reveal the keepers of the prisons! 
 
 Oh, the beautiful doors in heaven, opening soon to 
 let the truest angels of earth come in! 
 
 Oh, the Liberty, hastening to bloom the lilies in 
 the mud! 
 
EELATIVES MAGDALENE. 45 
 
 OELATIVES in a quarrel about legacies and bound- 
 -^^ ary lines, with envy of each other's success! 
 
 Try to amend by a religious revival, confessing you 
 are incorrigible sinners, and you will be believed this 
 time! 
 
 Kindreds by blood degenerate by mixing into fools; 
 and magnetisms chemically morose themselves that 
 have no electric fire of contrast. 
 
 Let me out beyond the old homestead to grow: 
 West, South, anywhere, but the ruts where our little 
 go-carts snailed along when we were boys and girls. 
 
 Strangers are often nearer kin in soul than a whole 
 family of cousins. 
 
 Ask the swarming bees if it is not so; and the 
 parent eagles that drive their young out of their ter- 
 ritory to build on other cliffs among the storms. 
 ' i^ature's changes and crossings lose no love ; they 
 conserve it, as diverse currents the health of the sea. 
 
 This clan-life of family and nationality — how it 
 dwindles and fades as we sail away out toward the 
 farther-continents of the Universal! 
 
 ■jtr AGDALEKE ! O my sister, Magdalene ! 
 lU. yfijQii a child all the people loved you much! 
 You were beautiful then, and happy all day! 
 'Twas but yesterday when you wandered from home! 
 We all hunted and found you sleeping in the woods! 
 l^ot a soul had a harsh word, darling, not a word ! 
 Those tired feet were so sweet to rub in our warm 
 hands! 
 
46 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Your soiled garments all torn disgraced not the least! 
 We all kissed jour hot cheeks so fevered with jour 
 tears ! 
 
 You are a woman now, and a want has led jou to 
 
 wrong! 
 Yon have sold jour virtue for bread — all for the 
 
 bread 1 
 IS'ot a person seeks jou for love; thej saj jou are 
 
 lost! 
 Ever J door is shut against jou — mj Magdalene! 
 Oh, the judgment coming soon, with its recompense! 
 All the lost ones required then at our hands and 
 
 hearts ! 
 
 mj Magdalene! I found jou in the busj street! 
 Let us talk right here, — this curb-stone is friendlj to 
 
 us! 
 
 "We are watched; the crowd do call us guilt j as them- 
 selves ! 
 
 Take mj arm; no place allowed in all the markets 
 round 
 
 For a righteous deed; a house jonder that opes its 
 door t 
 
 It is mine; come in; I love jou, O mj Magdalene! 
 
 1 was tempted, but have overcome at last; 
 So rest here safe! 
 
 Tlie elixir of life 
 Is not found in experiment with love 
 In affinities, incongruous and mixed! 
 I will show JOU the primal of a good life: 
 
MAGDALENE. 47 
 
 You must carry up the earthly as sun the dews 
 To rainbows in the cloud for a fresher shower. 
 There is j)romise in the flame of your freest love, 
 When its heat doth enflower the intellect 
 And exhale its healing balm in the Edens 
 Of morality; and when two souls, with heads 
 Bowing to the blast, are locked arm in arm, 
 Closer entwined for the trial of it. 
 Know now what a betrothal is, in truth, 
 And the preciousness of its righteous care. 
 
 O Mao^dalene! come to the landins:! 
 Come from life's merciless stranding! 
 Come from the waves of heart-sadness. 
 From the breakers of Jealousy's madness, 
 And And how divinely related 
 Are souls that in freedom are mated. 
 
 Did I once condemn you, as pilot. 
 
 And call you a miserable harlot, 
 
 "^hen you were drowned in the brine 
 
 Of a deeper temptation than mine? 
 
 Did I repulse you when trying 
 
 To get your unlawful supplying 
 
 Of love that refuse you a living 
 
 In a world of our Father's great giving? 
 
 Wlien you loved in a more righteous passion 
 
 Than is known in the houses of fashion? 
 
 Here's my hand — 'mong the breakers, my sister, 
 More honorable far for its blister. 
 
48 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Up, strong on my bosom reposing, 
 Your arms round my neck fast closing. 
 Your clieek to my cheek, coMly dripping, 
 Your lips to my lips for life-sipping. 
 Attracted from passion's unresting, 
 Keturn as a dove to her nesting, 
 And live to encircle the lowly 
 In love of the free and. the holy. 
 
 II/TAD souls — so many of them! crazy as a herd of 
 ^'-*- bellowing cows before the fresh blood of the 
 culinary ox. 
 
 Feel damn, full of cursing, relapsing into abandon? 
 Your soul says thus — I am starving! 
 
 She is lashing you with the scorpions of spiritual 
 hunger which you have breeded in her bosom; and 
 you wonder at adulterous excesses, as the famished 
 eagle gorging on the flesh of its victim. 
 
 O famines! O gluttonies! O insanities! O riot- 
 ings of lust, the wild dance and scream! O custoixis 
 that transfix us on these rocks of ruin! 
 
 Go to God's All-Cure of Love; feast the eyes with 
 beauty; drink down to the pure of soul! and ask. 
 How deep? 
 
 AVliat is this misgiving in my soul? this doubt of 
 all things? this paled night of slumberless despair? 
 
 The city is a wilderness to me: men are trees dead 
 in the heart, and women are petrified mosses. 
 
 The clouds look cold; the sun, angry in their 
 
MAD SOULS. 49 
 
 chinks; the ground sullen, as if rocking above vol- 
 canoes. 
 
 You better keep away from me! 
 
 It is good for me — this hating of things out of 
 joint — myself sent by express. 
 
 Your social torrid breeds too much; ice is palatable 
 in sultry weather. 
 
 Am I cold? It is only in body: the soul is cleaner 
 for it. 
 
 Does not the motherly earth bare her bosom to the 
 freezing wind, to extract the cold? Lo! in the morn- 
 ing the beautiful frost, and then the pleasant day of 
 autumnal summer. 
 
 What is this philosophy that pains me so? Souls 
 in love are mutual mirrors : Do I see unfaith's quality 
 of myself reflected in you? 
 
 Ah, I have found it — the scalpel that cuts out the 
 spiritual cancer in my naughty heart: 
 
 My mistrust engenders its occasion. My fear brings 
 the result I dread. My suspicious thinking creates 
 by you the action that hurts me so. The fevered 
 imaginations of my burning love, not yet in poise of 
 self-control, recoils to its wintry counterpoise of fierce 
 discontent, so cold you are driven for safety into the 
 sunlight of another soul. 
 
 The soul-starved are soul-starvers ! 
 
 Open me to heavenly love, that I may let out the 
 cold that so freezes us! Put your hand into my heart 
 and take out its polished bars of ice! 
 4 
 
50 iivoiokteli.es of love. 
 
 TriEGIN" in purity, her heart was full of beautiful 
 * 2:)ictures of life: 
 She did not dare to open it. 
 
 Did you break the seals by the throbbing of her hand, 
 As you held it, till its palm trembled in yours. 
 And a blush on her cheeks reported the sunbeam in 
 
 her soul? 
 (3 man ! bethink in the silence of honor, as she trills 
 
 to love: 
 Would you for worlds stain such chastity? 
 If you feel a passion to foul that fountain, 
 If you ask it by word, or look, or thought, 
 You are the serpent in Eden! 
 
 Her instincts read you; she loves you less for that; 
 And that night, even if she escape your coil, 
 She weeps— for you first and then for herself — 
 Poor girl, whom the angels know so well! 
 
 ^ ^ When the habit is pure to health, 
 A maiden's instinct is clean as the white of the sky 
 Embossed with rainbows in the cloud: 
 The trust of your words fortifies her integrity. 
 
 The rill is not harmed for the filtering sands ; 
 
 Nor is her soul tarnished for contact 
 
 In life's battle against temptation. 
 
 She acquaints herself with young men from very love^ 
 
 And her presence awes them to worship of her 
 
 virtues. 
 So shall she select whom her heart entwineth — 
 The immaculate soul of manliness. 
 Upon your peril, forbid not the banns! 
 
jViakried. 51 
 
 MAEKIED? AVliat for? a wife to brew and lust 
 with? 
 A husband to lean upon? O starved souls! 
 O bodj-lumps of muscles with spiritual gout in the 
 
 nerves! 
 O rotten stumps of early beauty! 
 O wrinkles on the face of despairing hopes, 
 Plowed much deejDer on the soul! 
 
 When first married, demanding, 
 
 Excessive in aifection: 
 
 What the products, O parents, 
 
 Mourning o'er the waywardness of your children? 
 
 This sin-tempting to marry so! 
 O Saharas in our parlors! 
 Living for self destroys it! 
 
 What if an angel visit that home, and one is saved 
 from slavery to rejoice in the free love of spiritual 
 purity; does not the demon of Suspicion plat a 
 crown of thorns upon that brow — jealous even of the 
 ministering angel? 
 
 And Fashion is shocked; 
 But Nature's not mocked! 
 She frees her strong souls 
 As morn the niglit ghouls ! 
 
 Under the roofs, under the darks. 
 Under the hoofs of human sharks. 
 
62 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 A woman is immolated 
 
 In the death that's never dead ! 
 
 O horrors and fears! 
 
 O sorrows and tears! 
 Lest a child may be born of such lusts 
 
 On her bridal bed! 
 O shams of pretension! 
 O arts of prevention! 
 O crime unrepenting! 
 O hell unrelenting! 
 Living despite the stabs beguiled, 
 And the after plagues of a murderous child I 
 O these miscarriages 
 Of our false marriages! 
 O these pollutions 
 Of home prostitutions ! 
 O these spell-bounds 
 Of these hell-hounds! 
 O this heart-riven 
 That's never forgiven! 
 
 Whence the drunkard? 
 Passional forces exhausted by excess: 
 Artificial stimulus to supply the waste: 
 I thirst! cries the foetal child! 
 
 Whence the hypocrite? 
 From a loveless conception 
 With deceptive modesty! 
 From a churchal recluse 
 That hides the secret! 
 
MARKDED. 63 
 
 Wlience tlie tyrant? 
 From masculine antliority 
 With a forced maternity! 
 
 Whence the human vampire? 
 From hist's command 
 In insatiate demand! 
 
 Is such a union 
 
 The safeguard of the innocent? 
 
 The fire of one passion 
 
 Inflames its neighbor's fury! 
 Lust is a mother and her harlots 
 Are jealousy, revenge and malice! 
 Shall these be kept in the same fold 
 
 A lamb with Vv^olves 
 
 All torn and cold? 
 
 By being a brute he has lost his privilege! 
 Test his love now by stern denial, 
 And feel how bitter is his rebuke! 
 Learn thus what is yours to save, 
 Wliat is his, when the prize is gone! 
 
 A beautiful woman is weeping! 
 
 She is pale and haggard! 
 
 She has even staggered, 
 Wliile frightful dreaming in her sleeping! 
 
 What is your history, also? — 
 
54 IMMOETELLIS OF LOVE. 
 
 Wlien weary and lonely, I would be caressed, my 
 hnsband mistakes my love, overwhelms me with 
 passion, and I react into fighting disgust. Was it my 
 mother's mistake? I came unasked, and therefore 
 ask nothing he would give ! May be I am the fruit 
 of marital prostitution in parentage, unsexing by 
 transmission, for my child is also defective! 
 
 O sister of fate! 
 ISTecessity's fate! 
 Mismated and maiityred in birth, 
 Your soul is still precions in worth! 
 
 If this suicide inherited 
 
 Is never well merited. 
 
 It may be a wise plan 
 
 To be untied from that man, 
 
 And be married in love 
 
 To an angel above! 
 
 When we grow, it is either apart or together: 
 If apart, why bridge from hell over hither? 
 The chasm knows no foreclosing 
 While self in free lust is reposing! 
 
 The world is constantlj^ making its subjects 
 For polygamous Abraham 
 To damn! 
 What a mourning of the Pharasee Scribes 
 Over the sweet Ilagars of the slave-tribes 
 Tliat are nearer kin to the angels of virginity: 
 Ishmaels are born of a tri partite consent, 
 
JklAEEOED. 55 
 
 Begotten outside of the days of Lent, — 
 Wild men of moonlight nativity! 
 
 Is this our social win 
 
 That bubbles up from within? 
 It is nature seeking equilibrium — by regrets ! 
 The concubinage which our false marrying begets! 
 
 Our passional fits 
 
 By such haphazard hits 
 Bollick down the muddy rivers of generations, 
 To freshen and. cleanse the respectability of nations! 
 
 When the healthful Plebeians, 
 Singing the peans, 
 Of a conjugal insanity — 
 
 The whites, blacks and yellows, 
 
 Half-civilized, out-lawed, free fellows, — 
 Bound in to regain a dr^omed humanity! 
 
 O horrors of these secret leases ! 
 
 O horrors of this descent of species! 
 Cities of assignation where all the ^^irtues rot, 
 Where the fire is not quenched and the worm di eth not! 
 
 Mad with the wrath of jealousy ! 
 
 Insane for the syphilis of damnation! 
 
 Sprinkled red on the pillars of legislation! 
 
 Mingle therewith the lire- water of intoxication, 
 And meet with revengeful satisfaction 
 What money will buy to save from starvation ! 
 
 Congressmen, business men, old men with gray and 
 silver locks, 
 
56 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Young men witli spotted faces, dressed in gay and 
 
 seedj frocks. 
 Men cliurclied in hjq^ocritic sin, their faith in Christ 
 
 confiding, 
 And pious bigots saying prayers, as to this hell they're 
 
 sliding, 
 And many a genteel father of a fashionable daughter, 
 Are patron travelers thither to this den of moral 
 
 slaughter! 
 
 Thrust in thy sickle, O angel of the Just! 
 Reap quick the harvest of the seed of social lust! 
 Heap the marital fruiting that was nurtured by our 
 
 sighs ! 
 Reap the masculine tresjiass and monopolizing lies! 
 Reap the battle impending on the land and on the 
 
 sea! 
 Reap the revolutionizing of our nation's liberty! 
 
 Mother-Nature is weeping; her heart is bleeding; 
 she is clothed in dyed garments ; she has reached the 
 red gates of the fountains of life; and this is her 
 commandment : 
 
 'No more children by unwelcome! 
 l^J'o destruction of germs! 
 No fruit that is not loved! 
 ISTo imion that is not holy! 
 
FOCI TO AN ORBIT. 67 
 
 TTIOCI to an orbit, two of them, else no motherhood 
 -^ to planets, no motion, no growth! 
 
 Nature abhors perfect circles; she loves angles, too, 
 blended wdtli them. 
 
 Hate legitimate as love: Moses was the minister- 
 ing angel of Jesus, 
 
 The lightning loves the cloud, out of which to drive 
 down to us the rain of blessing. 
 
 Compromising for a peace? Sin and unsin in 
 coition? 
 
 Gods of sedition, jar the harmony! 
 
 Oh, for the sublime morality of righteous indigna- 
 tion, sending daylight through a black-mailed heart! 
 
 This is the rotating process, rounding off excrescences 
 to the ellipses of character. 
 
 Patience, then, my soul, patience! The thorns will 
 not hurt when the roses shed odors to their tips. 
 
 Yonder lake is still; the bending heaven embosses 
 it with pearl. 
 
 Too long so and the water sours, and is full of 
 vermin. 
 
 It needs wind and cold rain to preserve it. 
 
 JSTature abhors a long equilibrium ; she acts by the 
 unbalance of electric forces; and so is growth. 
 
 Wlien the air is a dead harmony, look out for a fall 
 in the mercury. 
 
 The soul will contract a moral scurvy, if it cannot 
 relax from satieties. 
 
 When you feel monotonous, an all-over surfeiting, 
 go right away ! 
 
58 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 To the woods, lio ! to tlie birds, to new scenes, new 
 society, new experiences. 
 
 Fearful of the results, O coward? l^ot trust your 
 companion, or yourself, in the art of growing young? 
 
 What is the market value of such love? 
 
 Give length of wire in the helix of affection, and 
 its magnetic j^ower is increased. 
 
 Free to shed its perfume, if such love could visit 
 the sun, every ray of light would report its constancy. 
 
 TKTUITIOlSr knows the secrets 
 -*- Of the hidden souls of nature: 
 Finds the threads that lead to fortune: 
 Reads tlie histories of nations 
 On the dust of ancient battle: 
 Traces thought from love to motive, 
 Weighs it in the scale of Justice. 
 
 Tlie immortal dweller in us 
 Fashions all the plastic substance 
 Of the house in which we're living, 
 Like the bird its nest in summer. 
 Oh, how beautiful I'll make it! 
 Says the faithful spirit artist. 
 But the dolting crowd derides it. 
 Daubs upon it filthy mortar. 
 Till the artist in a passion 
 Scowls as angry cloud of thunder, 
 Crystalized upon the features. 
 So we are not what we're seeming; 
 
INTUITION. 59 
 
 We are better than our seeming. 
 Look ye then with ejes of mercy, 
 O ye builders of the human, — 
 Look with Intuition's vision 
 Down into the soul of Beauty! 
 
 Sad I pondered on my love-life 
 And my right of its possession. 
 For 1 saw that others claimed her. 
 Passioned with an equal ardor. 
 Loved she this man for his music; 
 This for goodness; that for honor. 
 This for bravery; that for w^isdom. 
 So I asked, Where's my advantage? 
 Am I only just a lover — 
 Ranking with your other lovers, 
 Estimated as I must be, 
 Lacking in the things you worship? 
 
 In the sorrow of my question. 
 Fast asleeiD I sunk in vision, 
 And I heard an angel saying: 
 Much below par, my dear brother? 
 If so, and art still her loved one. 
 All her love is pure, unselfish. 
 And thy union is eternal! 
 Were her love but for thy person, 
 For thy beauty or thy manner. 
 It might savor some of envy. 
 Or a lustful idol-worship; 
 If art loved without a reason, 
 
60 1MM0RTELI.ES OF LOVE. 
 
 Loved despite thy human weakness, 
 Oft deplored in heart-misgiving 
 Thou art hers in soul relation. 
 Love ineffable in nature 
 Cannot classify affection. 
 As the billows grow in water, 
 As the breeze is in the blowing. 
 As the heat is in the sunlight. 
 As the heart is in the bosom. 
 As the faith is in the trusting. 
 As the life is in the body, 
 As the soul is in the spirit. 
 So her love is thine forever! 
 Not for character she loves thee, 
 I^ot for price of man's position — 
 I^ay, the riddle thou art solving 
 Is the life of love in loving! 
 
 Stiffly circumspect and moral! 
 Any soul here to feel after? 
 Any weakness for our mercy? 
 Any sin to be forgiven? 
 Any love that's worth the loving? 
 Passioned in his erring brother — 
 Goods and evils in a compound! 
 Prodigal of time and money! 
 Did you notice, too, his weeping 
 At the news of the misfortune 
 That befell the passing stranger, 
 "When his pocket-book was stolen, 
 And his life was next the forfeit? 
 
INTUmON. 61 
 
 He's a poet — j)layful, sunny. 
 I have seen him in his sorrow, 
 The sublimest of repentance. 
 What's the matter with our brother? 
 Wants a criticism, think jou? 
 Living free, he oft encounters 
 Barricades of meanest customs; 
 So he is a fevered swimmer, 
 Into Melancholy's Ocean! 
 His is madness of the lion, 
 Biting bars of his dark prison! 
 His Archimedes' strong lever 
 Lifting up the world to freedom! 
 All the pure and modest women 
 Love so much this sinless sinner! 
 All the lynxes of the churches, 
 All the hollow stumps of churches, 
 All the fashionable ladies. 
 All the men of creedal honor. 
 All the ministers of pulpits 
 Are so savage to this brother! 
 But the angels trust him, weeping. 
 Trust in love the soul-exchanges, 
 Trust the good that yet will triumph: 
 So there is another party — 
 Angels of forgiving mercy — 
 To rebuke, O pious Christians! 
 
 There are minds that see the flower 
 In the stalk before 'tis budded; 
 But accusers see it only 
 
62 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 When it's open in the blooming: 
 Then thej pay for tirst neglecting 
 Bj a jostling 'gainst the gard'ners! 
 But nobility's fair flower 
 Bows and opens all its petals, 
 Shedding perfume without measure, 
 For the world's eternal blessing! 
 
 See the grape\dnes dipping rootlets 
 
 Into soil beyond the fences: 
 
 See the grasses peeping greenly 
 
 Out between the chinks of granite: 
 
 See the flocks of sheep and cattle 
 
 Lying close beside the river: 
 
 See the starved-soul nestling nearest 
 
 That strong soul of faith in goodness! 
 
 See the wives and husbands freely 
 
 Following the spiritual magnets, 
 
 I^ot regarding e'en their pledges! 
 
 Whither is this social drifting? 
 
 What will come from this strange mixing? 
 
 What's the meaning of this battle? 
 
 What are spirits doing with us? 
 
 I am prompted in my honor 
 
 To install the best example: 
 
 I'm resolved to beat my brothers 
 
 In the privileged test of duty, 
 
 In the ownership of freedom. 
 
 In the mutual love of giving. 
 
 In the trust of faith's reviving, 
 
 In the life of souls uniting. 
 
iNTcmoN. 63 
 
 In the ano:els liolv unions. 
 In tlie innocence of virtue. 
 
 Once I saw a ^vife so weaiy, 
 Sad and pale and often sighing; 
 But her husband was all vigor, 
 Roughly strong and coarse in fibre. 
 Did he live at the expenses 
 Of her vital forces, think you? 
 When she met that noble stranger 
 Of large soul and generous feeling, 
 Who had suffered by oppression. 
 And had gained a higher freedom, 
 Loving virtue for the trial; — 
 When she met the noble stranger — 
 I will tell you all the story! — 
 'Twas not lawful, I remember, 
 But she did rest in his presence. 
 Best her head upon his bosom, 
 Best upon that great-s.ouled bosom, 
 Best a moment, leaning gently. 
 Sighing so and weeping strangely! 
 Can you tell me now the meaning 
 Of that clinging and that resting. 
 Of that sighing and that weeping? 
 
 Love hath polarized its center 
 Inspirational in freedom. 
 With its tangent of ambition 
 For the circuit-faith of motion. 
 Let her dance in swift cotillions 
 
6a IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 With tlie planets in their orbits, 
 Holding safe the central magnet 
 Bj the freest revolutions. 
 Let her bathe in sunny fountains, 
 In the bloom of angel-summers, 
 In the fragrance of their roses, 
 In the healthful balm of Eden. 
 All the deeps of distant spaces. 
 All the charms of starry bowers. 
 All the glory of the heavens, 
 All the hearts in angel bosoms, 
 Only blend in closer union, 
 Trusting souls that love each other. 
 Dearest when the love is freest. 
 Fairest when it scatters blessings, 
 Strongest when the love of freedom 
 Keeps the purity of passion, — 
 [N'earest when progressing highest, 
 Like the lark that sings the sweetest 
 When the dew is on her ^^inions. 
 Back she comes with inspiration. 
 Laden with a light magnetic, 
 With the health of beauteous girlhood. 
 With a heart of sweet attraction, 
 Kesting on a throbbing bosom. 
 Calm as star on crest of evening. 
 In the loves of soul-responses, 
 Every touch a trill of rapture. 
 Only known and felt by lovers 
 Who are free, and pure, and holy. 
 
HUMAN SIGHS. 65 
 
 TTTT IVTA'N " sighs ! south, winds from Paradise, fanning 
 
 -^-^ our savage wills. 
 
 Woman's impassioned breath melts the snow-flakes 
 in us — neutralizes the acids; her tears trouble us so, 
 we return home to the warm fireside of our lost affec- 
 tions ! 
 
 She has nothing to saj: is still as Venus in the 
 evening sky: her bosom heaves in tidal emotion in 
 that night of confidence; and we rise to a splendid 
 daring. 
 
 Enchantress of our ambitions, she makes society 
 as the floral soul doth its ministering petals. 
 
 What stings the cup down so deep, flowing in 
 purple courses? What wounds it so every lunar 
 month? What has red-stained these Sybilline Leaves 
 in Hymen's bower to give the oracle of warning — 
 My maternity must not be stolen? 
 
 Weep freely, scarlet angel! — the red rain is so wel- 
 come in marital anxiety! precious pain, prismic ere 
 the daylight hath revealed it. 
 
 In honor keep her secret, O husband with a soul: 
 Cover her in your bosom safe as the bleeding red- 
 breast in her nest under mated wings: She will be 
 healed so. 
 
 Heaven hath ordained you the Gabriel of Eighteous- 
 ness to guard these mystic gates against all trespass, 
 yourself the fiercest enemy! Open and shut lovingly, 
 lest the hinges fail in the swinging, to your everlast- 
 ing shame and sorrow! 
 
 Have you such a husband, O trembling child? 
 Trust him I the batteries are locked secure, even when 
 5 
 
66 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 the storm is abating: The steam under the j)assional 
 valves where the fire burns is under wise governance: 
 Be calm — -no evil lurketh where the Conjugal Angel 
 of moral courage keeps the key. 
 
 She will be so beautiful afterwards — covering jou 
 almost from sight in her gratitude, like the boughs ol 
 the balsam hiding its support under the firry green, 
 heavy with weeping showers. 
 
 How that angel with noiseless tread unlocks the 
 consecrated chamber! and the Bride descends to meet 
 the Bridegroom! 
 
 There is divine right of commerce when sacred to 
 health and purity; and the child of love is our new 
 Christna! 
 
 ¥ 
 
 OMAN loves but one in fullness of soul-confi- 
 dence. She is so obstinate in her love; demands 
 comj)lete and solid possession, capturing you all over, 
 if you advance so! She draws you stronger than you 
 calculated. 
 
 Do you apologize to escape by saying, I am not 
 worthy? She hates that and storms it out of you. 
 Why, she takes you for a perfect jewel;, sees no lack 
 in you, feels none; gives her whole self to you. Be a 
 hero now, and you have won a queen! 
 
 Can you help loving her, so free, so earnest, so con- 
 fident, so beautiful? 
 
 Have you, O man, measured a wife as you did your 
 harlequin, and thought her no more to you than a 
 convenience at night? It is puite difierent, sir, and 
 
yonr reserve is a sure revelation of bad odor. Slie 
 may discover it! What will you do ? my dear unfor- 
 tunate! 
 
 Go wasli thyself in thef Jordan of Eepentance; 
 secrete thyself for a season among the balsams of 
 Temperance; sprinkle thy whole person with the 
 dews of Prayer; thence come, clothed in chaste gar- 
 ments, and offer, brave in conscious worth, an unstained 
 hand with a star in it, and she will overwhelm thee 
 \\dth gratitude, kaleidoscopic in beauty and prolific in 
 affections as the bosom of the floral valley among the 
 mountains. 
 
 She will be to thee ever the same in soul; bat 
 changing by emotions in eye-flashes and cheek-tinges, 
 in attire and manners, in kisses and w^eepings over 
 you — my bonny bird! 
 
 Do you not see that dream playing on her face as 
 
 on J 
 
 she' lies beside you, left to faith's sweet aband 
 What is she dreaming of? Why, you have waked 
 her by looking inquisitive so; and you have no more 
 surprise, for she locks her arms around your neck, 
 saying, O my darling, all I can do is to love you ! 
 
 Mistress of the household, the little things are so 
 large in importance now; never before so beautiful a 
 home, however humble, so kind, so economical! 
 
 Ah, do you see the wrinkles' coming to that brow 
 once as clear as the azure of morning? Care for you, 
 for money, for the dear children, is also busy plow- 
 ing there; but the rifts are full of gold dust which 
 Love dusted freely, and a new light haloes the head 
 
68 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 and face, such as angels have in the autumns of their 
 country. 
 
 Il^ot changed: Only in riches of soul that draw 
 forth a lofty ideal. She has not forgotten to say 
 at evening, Do not stay out late, my dear. She has 
 not ceased to fold herself in your bosom, reaching up 
 her hand to your beard, and drawing you down to her 
 lips with the familiar whisper of betrothal — I love 
 you, oh, so much! 
 
 I told you you had won a queen; and you have 
 found her so, yea, the angel God gave to you; and 
 have you returned her fidelity, and kept your heart 
 close to hers all the time, responsive to each as delicate 
 harp strings to the music of the zephyr? 
 
 "IXriFE, O my wife! I am sad and weary: See 
 ' * where I have been stabbed by him I sought to 
 bless ! 
 
 Would that I were known as you know me. 
 
 Let m.e hide just one night in the center of your 
 heart where the pulses are. 
 
 The Satan of Envy cannot find me there! 
 
 There I nestled so safe, and heard the angel of 
 music sing: 
 
 In your heart of hearts you'll find me, 
 Where the tendrils, pulsing, bind me, 
 
 Sweet as flower that hugs the dew: 
 In your mind I'm always thinking, 
 All my being closely linking — 
 
 Closely linking life with you. 
 
^VIFE. 69 
 
 In your grief of soul-emotion, 
 When tlie storm is on life's ocean. 
 
 And you drink its bitter bane, — 
 Wlieir the waves of trial, beating, 
 Come with Slander's hollow cheating, 
 
 I am guai'ding 'gainst the pain. 
 
 In the hours of silent sleej)ing. 
 As the stars are o'er you weeping. 
 
 Every beam a vigil dart, — 
 When you then in dreams have started, 
 Searching for the dear departed. 
 
 Close beside you is my heart. 
 
 In the labors for a living, 
 In the charity of giving 
 
 Mutual competence and cheer, 
 I am there with constant caring, 
 In the sweat and conquest sharing, 
 
 Sharing, too, the hope and fear. 
 
 In your sicknesses and sorrows. 
 In the shadows of the morrows, 
 
 Dark'ning o'er your busy life, — 
 In ambition's lofty trying, 
 Eising by a self-denying, 
 
 I am still your loving wife. 
 
IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 TriKTUE! what so anticipates tlie joy of marriage? 
 * O virgins, known in heaven! already are you 
 plighted by the fatality of love's providence, ere your 
 eyes felt the glow of the soul's reflection. 
 
 The blooms of the cheeks, the thonght-sprays upon 
 the brow, the gurgles of healthful laughter, are 
 splendid recommendations. 
 
 When mated by outward seals, the recollections of 
 pure habits are the securities of mutual faith. 
 
 The calm of integrity is so beautiful; the gleams 
 of faces so respondent; the high purpose so laconic! 
 
 Your wife clings closer to you, O man of heroism. 
 
 Your husband is proud of you, O wife of purity. 
 
 Attraction is so strong in this court of love, that 
 bands of Hymen's angels cluster there to see if earth 
 can not yet equal heaven! 
 
 The first and after reposes in each other's arms are 
 all hallowed to happy memories. 
 
 "l/TAEEIAGE — all things sexed — organics, forces, 
 -^^ thoughts, affections — polygamous or mono- 
 gamic. 
 
 Unconscious elements selecting and rejecting with- 
 out revised statutes, in continuous potency of com- 
 merce. 
 
 Minerals jumbled into promiscuities. 
 
 Grasses and grains in communes; forests in Chris- 
 tian fellowship; many stamens for one pistil; many 
 planets for one positive sun; many flocks for one 
 master sire. 
 
MAEEIAGE. 71 
 
 All life risen in the human — here is male and 
 female, the mold and pattern; the heterogeneous and 
 polygamous coronated. 
 
 Man and woman in lordship; the animal subordi- 
 nate to the rational; sex-commerce focalized to dual 
 unity; variety in singleness of power; scattered enjoy- 
 ments intensified to oneness for concentrated perfec- 
 tion — the marital crown of life: 
 
 Relative but not interrelative ; contrastive subordi- 
 nation of temperament; forces reciprocal; duality in 
 unity: progressive in ascending circles — physical, 
 intellectual, industrial, economical, sentimental, moral, 
 spiritual: the two consorts one angel, with eternities 
 of love ever before them. 
 
 The tapi^ed maples begin to decay; the young 
 apple trees, stirred at the roots too often, are blighting! 
 
 The blooming girl is married! A loss of rosy 
 cheeks, a satiety of companionship, and — I want to 
 go and see my mother! 
 
 Weeping early in the morning, a walk alone among 
 the trees in the evening, and — what if I should die? 
 
 The poet has lost the muse; the artist, his skill of 
 soul-engraving; the minstrel, that strain of divine 
 cadence: dreams of the beautiful are all dead! 
 
 I asked my experienced sister. What is fashionable 
 marriage? and she said, A choice of spiders! 
 
 The white marble and the lie engraved on it: the 
 consumption, infanticide, death of bodies and morals 
 
 Oh, choice of spiders ! 
 
72 IMMORTELLES OF LO^^E. 
 
 Married according to statute, before fashion's shrine 
 —for what? 
 
 Caste, money and lust? 
 
 The church said. Amen! 
 
 They lived in pollution; their first born died, their 
 second, their third, their fourth wronged also, bearing 
 through life the psychometric brand of hate. 
 
 And the church said. Continue! 
 
 Married without priest or magistrate, themselves 
 the seal in. defiance of courts, their souls the record 
 in trust. 
 
 Both humble, serious, weighing responsibilities, 
 faithful, pure minded and free: their children loving, 
 beautiful, noble. 
 
 Wliich of these, O philosopher, is approved in the 
 judgment of angels and of all good men and women? 
 
 Wherefore this challenge to the State? 
 
 Because it j3resumes to equal the soul's necessities 
 and compel reverence to the idolatry of law which 
 sensuous men have enacted as the full measure of 
 human circumstances and conditions. 
 
 What! debauched men at the sacred altars of soul- 
 affections, pronouncing fate over what angels have 
 sealed and forging legislative chains to bind the free- 
 will offering of love? 
 
 Out of the sunshine, O prostitutes of Higher Law! 
 
 First, last and ever, the soul's rights are holy to 
 love whom it must. 
 
 Change your law to supply this demand, and it will 
 be res]3ected: Presume nothing, protect everything 
 
MAEEIAGE. 73 
 
 divinely human, and virtue mil thus be fortified as 
 the sun-orb in walls of light. 
 
 Be patient for this little span of life whose disci- 
 plines temper to higher trust. 
 
 The spiritual, like the century plant, is long in 
 quickening and growing, and therefore the more beau- 
 tiful and enduring. 
 
 It is hidden deep — precious — all there is of life — 
 worth all trial to develop it. 
 
 Suiter rather than inllict suffering: Such martyrs 
 are the crowned of God. 
 
 Concede, then, but jeopardize no principle. 
 
 The bending reed does not break for the wind, nor 
 is the obliging soul a loser for its trial. 
 
 Talk over the grievances dispassionately; forbear 
 and wait; guard words and their accent, for the tones 
 of the voice are diverse as soul-emotions. 
 
 Essential defect is not in act, but condition. 
 
 Life ill circumstance is the woven thread of the soul 
 from the loom of affection to the ij:arment of use — 
 all there is of the liberty of fate. 
 
 If pilfer is in my desire, and scandal, and lust, and 
 Propriety curbs them, be I any less a spiritual idiot? 
 
 Tell me why this longing of soul^ this unwelcome 
 gulf, not yet passed, over which we look so wistfully? 
 this pleading — Do you love me? 
 
 Oh, ho! the soul's keys are not all touched; they 
 need the free breath of love to make music in the 
 home of faith. 
 
74 1MM0ETELJ.ES OF LOVE. 
 
 Look there! my friend, see that courting self-hood, 
 that reserve which checkmates its companion! 
 
 You have not found in his soul the thither shore; 
 why then attempt to bridge the gulf yet? 
 
 The demons of Jealousy that haunt the stream of 
 passion must first be conquered. 
 
 The springs thereof yet change with the using: 
 Did you note the content of his spirit when solaced 
 by others? 
 
 He that looketh abroad for his loves is a wanderer 
 still in the desert ; the sexual variety but aggravates 
 the thirst: It points back, an index, to something 
 that divides you. 
 
 The dove of affection cannot rest except in the ark 
 of its own construction: AVhen met in fulhiess, the 
 going forth is never in hunger, but carrying the 
 peace-branch to the starving. 
 
 So I will give you a rule of conduct: 
 
 In your soul prefer the presence of your companion 
 in witness of your acts rather than absence. 
 
 Forgive me — said with earnest love — always heals 
 some wound. 
 
 Study causes, too, whether you are marital in con- 
 ditions of organism : There may be selfishness at the 
 root. 
 
 Divorce, also, reports its cause, but not the full 
 measure of marriage: Greater is the harvest than the 
 seed-sowing. 
 
 Is there a child between you — a dear unfortunate' 
 
MARRIAGE. 7C 
 
 And it is not responsible for this calamity! It has a 
 right to parentage and its protection, to sunshine ir 
 the morning of life. 
 
 Add not sorrow to this misfortune: Its right first^ 
 then yours. 
 
 Parental love is the next out- wave of the conjugal: 
 keep its center secure! 
 
 But the Angel of Divorce is righteous, too: Wher 
 justic*e is outraged and life is perilled and the gooc 
 of life is imprisoned, this is her gospel: 
 
 Separate hands that are clammy with love's death. 
 
 Separate brains that naturally think apart, and 
 hearts whose touch is poison to each other. 
 
 Separate the innocent from the beast of legal 
 adultery. 
 
 Se^^arate the pair whose best productions are 
 demented. 
 
 Obey God and live! 
 
 Keep the commandments of Love! 
 
 Whom man hath joined together, God will put 
 asunder; and the promise is theirs: 
 
 Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after right 
 eousness; for they shall be hlled. 
 
 And the Angel of Soul-mating hath a gospel, and 
 this is the chain of pearls by which she links them in 
 one: 
 
 As God hath united you by the higher law of love, 
 I charge you both to watch and pray lest ye enter into 
 temptation. 
 
76 IMMOETELLI^S OF LOVE. 
 
 For if you cease to love and protect, God liatli 
 divorced you! 
 
 As tliis woman is your wife she is your equal in all 
 the rights and blessings of life. 
 
 Have no secrets which are not hers ; keep her confi- 
 dence. 
 
 Eeverence her virtue. 
 
 Preserve her health. 
 
 Defend her equality. 
 
 Appeal to her wisdom. 
 
 Study her needs and be generous. 
 
 Worship her with all your heart, mind, might and 
 strength ! 
 
 As this man is your husband, you both are one 
 social body. 
 
 Consider his care. 
 
 Ennoble his fidelity. 
 
 Embosom his trust. 
 
 And the good he calls out in you return in fullness. 
 
 Make the honeymoons perpetual! 
 
 I pronounce you wife and husband, married accord- 
 ing to' the law of God. 
 
 Whom Love hath joined together, let no man put 
 asunder. 
 
 O OCTAL Life puzzles me; all my philosophy is gone! 
 '^ She was pale and sick, — the angels' oracle in the 
 iiigh tower of Inspiration: The doctor said, It is 
 consumption, she will not live! 
 
 Wandering lonely and forlorn, she met a stranger; 
 
SOCIAL LIFE. 77 
 
 he was strong; thej were as the panting hare and the 
 laughing brook. Three months so, and she was well, 
 robust and happy; and then they repelled with the 
 vigor that they attracted; being in magnetic equilib- 
 rium. 
 
 And I had another lesson: A poor Sybil was 
 social, but wilting in the desert of passion's barren- 
 ness. O horrors of those meetings! the heat burned 
 up the oasis in her soul. 
 
 Mutual wisdom said, Depart from each other! So 
 he found response in another, keyed to cooler intellect 
 that schooled him to self-control and moral grandeur. 
 Tlie Sybil wept and sighed till a modest stranger of 
 reserve, sphered as the Balm of Gilead with healing, 
 entered her home — protectorate, brother and soul-com- 
 panion. 
 
 Love mounted her throne now, vined with roses; 
 and under her mild scepter they lived in the bloom of 
 beautiful unity. 
 
 Her soul, enlarged and free, embosomed itself in 
 sweeter friendship with her lirst husband, and they 
 loved as sister and brother, as mother' and father of 
 their own dear children. 
 
 Then I said in my heart, What o-ight have I of 
 social dictation? I cannot tell the ways of the wind, 
 nor of the water-arteries down in the deep earth. I 
 will cease to tear myself over the proprieties of 
 Custom, and rest in the divinity of God's laws, pray- 
 ing for wisdom with charity to institute a Social Life 
 whose offices of instruction shall balance our trans- 
 mitted and acquired vacuums of soul, each the chooser 
 
78 IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 or refuser of what is personally good or ill, and gov- 
 ernment demanding it, that the demons of divorce 
 may find no place in our fair world to devonr the 
 innocent, and the angels of liberty to the forces of 
 love may arch our manhood and womanhood in moral 
 excellence clear and deep as the wondrous sky. 
 
 Amiable, modest, friendly; they married; but they 
 loved not! 
 
 Each soul famished and turned to bitter hate, and 
 the furies held carnival on the bridal bed ! 
 
 As I wondered, there was given me another riddle: 
 
 She was beautiful and sweet as an angel; he was 
 acrid, firm, licentious. They loved and were happy, 
 for his soul purified itself in this fountain of Adapta- 
 tion. 
 
 So I said, Philosophy is folly ; Love has eyes to see 
 witliout spectacles ; and it is none of my business to 
 prevent a social regeneration ! 
 
 Chained by law to one he did not .love, he grew 
 cold and sour,'saying. There is no God, no hereafter; 
 life is a burden ; and he planned his own death by 
 poison. 
 
 One more night, he said, just to make the measure 
 of a full grief ! 
 
 But the night was daylight in his soul; for his 
 sister angel was before him, starred on her forehead, 
 and in her hand a bud which she placed upon his sad 
 heart, where it bloomed. 
 
 He is a dear old man now; calm as sunset, and his 
 
SOCIAL UFE. 79 
 
 sleep is a child's; for his sister conies to him to open 
 his vision; and he sees through the veil a sweet home 
 for him, when deemed worthy of departing for it. 
 
 Wlierefore so wilted, O womanly child? Even this 
 reveals jonr secret? 
 
 She opened the chamber of sorrow to her spiritual 
 sister — the chamber of soul, where she married a 
 home ! 
 
 Thej wept together! 
 
 Love's sympathy Avas not enough; the pale one 
 needed man's positive will in the calm of honor. 
 
 Could 3^ou have heard the voice of that sister as she 
 called her husband ! It had the mellow undertone of 
 trust. 
 
 A whisper, a look, a kiss, was her commandment to 
 breathe his strong love upon her sinking spirit. 
 
 Two faces met upon that manly bosom, both grate- 
 ful — a triune circle, as two buds on one stalk, nurtured 
 for the bloom of innocence. 
 
 The commingling tears that felf there! the prayer 
 of faith! the good of goodness in that hallow^ed 
 hour! 
 
 An angel's voice was heard then; and it said, 
 Behold, my brother, for this I will give thee a green 
 flower that shall spring Qut of thy bosom ! 
 
80 nVTMORTELUS OF LOVE. 
 
 T OYE is equal to all things! 
 
 -■^ Slie opens rocky hearts with the wand of faith; 
 
 Perennial springs flow out, 
 And melancholy is green with hope. 
 She brings her summer solstice of truth 
 Far into the arctic zone of doubt; 
 And bergs of ice melt into happy isles. 
 
 He was self-willed, impulsive, but tender-souled. 
 That is mine, she said, mine to develop and love — 
 My century cactus, so beautiful at last! 
 
 Impatient, weary, acrid, all day long, 
 He brooded over imaginary inconstancy, 
 Till the fever of mistrust turned to freezing! 
 At night she encircled him in her love; 
 Bathed him with her warm tears; 
 Kissed away confessional sorrow; 
 Placed her head upon his bosom, 
 And dipped out all the cold ! 
 
 Measure the sunbeams, the star-spaces, the ocean- 
 springs where the fishes drink, the cycles of eternity 
 and the relations of love! 
 
 I will tell you something to think of : 
 
 I love you because I cannot help it ! 
 
 Hear it in this silence which the sunlight might 
 envy. 
 
 My hand in your hand, my lips printing hearts on 
 your lips, and our hearts side by side. 
 
 I am covered with liquid pearls, under the spray oi 
 
I.OVE. 81 
 
 immortal fountains: I am so near to you I forget I 
 have a body: I looked to see if I were clothed, and 
 lo, myself imaged in you as whiteness to the light! 
 
 Is love selfish, then, because it clings to its own? 
 Selfish when thus developing the best sj)ecimen of 
 angelhood ? 
 
 Is she not just, when refusing the greed of self ? 
 most worshipful in the council of w^ar, wlien buckling 
 moral armor on the breasts of young men and maidens ? 
 
 Does love say, I am willing he should go if another 
 can make him happier? 
 
 The consent with candor and sympathy may win 
 back the wayward heart. 
 
 But touch the consenting heart and see if there is 
 no tremble. 
 
 It is the voice of woman's nobility with instinct 
 sensing a widening gulf between her and her husband ! 
 
 Perfect love implies no fear, suggests no contingency, 
 thinks of no departure, argues no conditions that will 
 delight a separation. 
 
 When these come unsought, she mournfully accepts 
 the terms and is kind. 
 
 Love's conjugal circle is primal to all circles; even 
 an angel must stand outside of it, else the harmony is 
 jarred. 
 
 Let me fold you in my arms, beautiful girl. I will 
 give you strength of will, and you will revive my 
 boyhood romance. 
 
 By this look you will not forget me. 
 6 
 
82 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Wlien I am Uncle Silver Graj, and jou are a woman, 
 I will come to your house and rest — a pilgrim then 
 and your angel afterwards. 
 
 Oh, a child's love of a child's love! As a child is, 
 my purposes are holiest when I love the freest. 
 
 Touch a single petal of love's affections impurely, 
 and paradise is lost! 
 
 I will tread reverently amid the beds of beauty: 
 Tliough my feet be dusted with the incense thereof, 
 not a color shall be marred. 
 
 The bower where I repose shall ever after know me, 
 and the clusters of vines will bow to me, for I have 
 ke2)t my integrity. 
 
 Love and obey him! is this the order? War to 
 the hilt where rights are unequal! 
 
 What! masculine superiority at the home circle? 
 It will sour its very incense! 
 
 Man obeys woman without knowing it, when Love 
 and Justice clasp hands. 
 
 Woman obeys man in laughter, as she denies; she 
 loves him so. 
 
 Where love is is no statute, no sheriif, no prison. 
 It is all the divine obedience of liberty, just as the 
 green of the earth obeys the sun and rain. 
 
 Is that love which has to be watched lest it die out? 
 when the hand-touch wakens anxiety, and the eye has 
 an unsteady gaze? 
 
 Is it art? the option of will? a mathematical calcu- 
 lation? a bough table quality of character? 
 
LOVE. 83 
 
 Has it grievances to report and self-excuses for its 
 follies? 
 
 Doth it cunningly test tlie fidelity of its friend by 
 the coquetry of experiment? 
 
 Has it a pledge to keep itself safe, with durability 
 dependent on a fair promise? 
 
 Is intense ardor of attention the treasury of its 
 constancy ? 
 
 As the hazle in the hands of the water- witch finds 
 the living spring, so soul finds the depth of love by 
 its signs. 
 
 Children walking in the dark feel stronger if mother 
 or father speaks encouraging words. 
 
 By some miracle. Love descended from lieaven into 
 our world, and she finds it so cold betimes, so gloomy, 
 she asks for a hand to hold hers, and never tii-es of 
 hearing — 
 
 I love you ! 
 
 It should be said often with its own eloquent 
 cadence. 
 
 There is a fire-touch of soul to letters that are cov- 
 ered all over with kisses. If intelligent, too, and 
 magnanimous in spirit, how healthful! Placed in the 
 bosom, where no thievish, spotted hand dares to go, 
 the very lungs breathe deeper and freer. 
 
 Send me long love-letters, bristling with brave and 
 lofty thought. 
 
 I dare all things when the trill of your voice keep? 
 repeating — 
 
 I love you! 
 
84 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Advice will not lielp you miicli in tlie art of win- 
 ning. 
 
 If repellant to whom you proffer attention, your 
 effort only intensifies suspicion. 
 
 Itecede to a focal distance, as the earth does in sum- 
 mer, about three millions of miles; you may win so 
 if you belong to that solar system. 
 
 You must study the law of social attraction planet- 
 arily — by the inverse squares of distances. 
 
 Space is anniliLated after all, for the room makes a 
 place to fill up and show how vast is the power of love, 
 mdening out as sun- waves. 
 
 Who shall separate us? Try your skill, O Hate! O 
 Persecution! O Envy! 
 
 You can frost the body of my beloved, O Death, 
 but I tell you her love under the snow is just as 
 Varm! 
 
 If you hide her among the green leaves of the 
 shrubbery in heaven, and many lovers sue there for 
 her hand, she will coo to me with the whistle of an 
 Indian maid; and I shall go there, and she will wait 
 for me, even if it be a thousand years, my own 
 Columbia! 
 
 Wind from the lungs of the South, and all last 
 year's seeds are in bloom. 
 
 How easy to the eye is the green specked with vary- 
 ing colors of floral republics! 
 
 How the young hearts beat in the sun of such inspi- 
 ration! 
 
 The physiologist who wrote that the human breath 
 
LOVE. 85 
 
 is poisonous, being the gas of carbon, must have been 
 badlj married! 
 
 When an apostle breathed on the spiritual inquirers, 
 they received the Holy Spirit. 
 
 That could not have been from rotten teeth or a 
 stomach diseased with theological dyspepsia. 
 
 My whole philosophy is nullihed. Your breath is 
 healing to me: I am fresher for a bath in it. 
 
 Is this the fragrance of the soul's flowers, and your 
 lips their petals ? 
 
 Breathe on me again: So close all day with you 
 and a life with angels. 
 
 Oh, this spiritual breathing! 
 
 Dam the water pool and it sours; choke the soul's 
 intuitions to love what is lovely and it grows morose 
 and dies mourning. 
 
 Will you iron -case the spring of love lest another 
 thirsty soul may drink and be refreshed? 
 
 The effort to monopolize it changes its (channel, and 
 it is soon lost to you! 
 
 Oh, the suicide of souls under the name of law and 
 order ! 
 
 We are so selfishly afraid that we shall not have 
 any honey, we dare not trust the industrious bee in 
 culling it from all the free flowers! 
 
 Nobility of character, congenial surroundings, the 
 luxury of comfort — these the tests of love 3 
 
 Love enters the lowly cottage where is not a green 
 thing, aud sings a song. 
 
86 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Love finds the rougli diamond in tlie drunkard and 
 washes it all bright with her tears. 
 
 The prodigal son is imaged in a mother's soul. 
 
 That is love which kisses all sin away into everlast- 
 ing forgetfulness. 
 
 Love is the privilege of purity. 
 
 It and the lily! — both are born through waves 
 of trial: They are so clean with beauty! 
 
 Oh, how good is the human soul! how holy to feel 
 it growing within me! 
 
 There 's a pure white lily 
 
 Tliat is blooming in the earth, 
 A beautiful lily — 
 
 And it hath immortal worth — 
 The lily of the soul. 
 
 There 's a pure white lily 
 
 That is drinking heavenly rain, 
 
 A beautiful lily. 
 
 That 's without a scar or stain — 
 The lily of the soul. 
 
 There 's a pure white lily, 
 
 And its petals are unfurled, 
 A beautiful lily, 
 
 For the glory of the world — 
 The lily of the soul. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 87 
 
 There 's a pure white lily 
 
 That is fresh with Eden's dew, 
 
 A beautiful lily, 
 
 Of a freshness ever new — 
 Tlie lily of the soul. 
 
 Tliere 's a pure white lily 
 
 That wdll blossom best above, 
 
 A beautiful lily 
 
 In the angels' home of love — 
 The lily of the soul. 
 
 TTUMAX life hath so many mysteries ! 
 -■-*- 1 thought I was wise, when manufacturing poli- 
 cies for other people. Let me tell you what I have 
 seen, and you will not wonder at my conversion from 
 a ministerial respectability to a disreputable decency. 
 
 I have seen a man of iron will, blue as December's 
 sky, when too cold for snow, revive at the hand-touch 
 of his frail wife; and that is a mystery worth ex- 
 periencing. 
 
 I have seen a woman, soul-starving amid a ]3rofu- 
 sion of luxuries and kindnesses; and that is my riddle 
 for you to guess. 
 
 I have seen a maiden trustingly love her indiiferent 
 seducer; what was it she found so precious? 
 
 I have seen a poor and sickly woman, destitute of 
 means, contented and happy; do you know the cause? 
 She loved her husband. 
 
 I have seen an old lady, mismarried a whole life- 
 
88 IMMORTEIJ.ES (3F LOVE. 
 
 time, sunny and hopeful; if you wisli to understand 
 tlie mystery, ask her spirit-mate who sijigs in her 
 dreams ! 
 
 I have seen a prostitute of "greater philanthropy 
 than her Christian scorners; is she not our sister? 
 
 I have seen a reformer who visits the prisoner, 
 clothes the poor, feeds the hungry. 
 
 He told me his history; was disappointed in love; 
 married unhappily; and I knew then why he became 
 a Shaker. 
 
 I have seen him weep, and heard his deep sigh. 
 
 Lover as he is of humanity, so good and generous, 
 there is a blank in his soul; but he is patient; and 
 he has told me about a Spirit Bride! 
 
 A spiritual brother was in a foreign land, disap- 
 pointed in ambition, sad, forsaken, sick. 
 
 A sister of mercy cared for him tenderly. 
 
 Tlie physician said. He will die! 
 
 Tlie hour of midnight so heavy! but she is by his 
 side watching. 
 
 He had been in a dream far away. AVaking he said, 
 Tell my wife and child that I died in their love! 
 
 His head drooped so gratefully on that woman's 
 neck in free, weepings and confessions. 
 
 Their souls met. Love's sweeter breathings neutral- 
 ized the fevers. He grew stronger and rose rejuvi- 
 nated. 
 
 So I learned that love is the medicine of health. 
 
 Another brother was brain- weary, lonely and 
 
TTTi MATC LIFE. 8& 
 
 despondent: A gloom hung over him: He thought 
 of suicide! 
 
 O terrible hour of smothered hopes! Was he in- 
 sane ? 
 
 A sister of free loving soul found him so; placed 
 her hand in his; laid her unstained bosom upon his 
 in purity of heart. 
 
 AVhat! not forsaken — in this cold world? he said. 
 
 She refreshed his parched lips with kisses, as rain 
 the wilted grass; and the cloud of melancholy broke 
 into shivers of light. 
 
 He was saved! 
 
 So I learned that love is the antidote of insanity. 
 
 A husband drooped and departed; she, faithful 
 wife, was still there w^atching the pale form. 
 
 Tliere was a funeral; the body was coffined; prayers 
 were said, but she heard them not. 
 
 An angel mantled her in the trance-light of Christ's 
 power. 
 
 She rose from her revery; at her command they left 
 her alone with the angels. 
 
 Her tears were electric with sympathy; they fell 
 upon the white face; she took that hand again in 
 hers, and called on her departed; it was love calling! 
 
 Her beloved heard and glided back upon the life- 
 cord scarcely severed, and lived again! 
 
 So I learned that love is the resurrection of the 
 dead and the key of immortality. 
 
90 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Oh, the mysteries of human life! 
 
 A man in love with a modest girl of an obscnre 
 family. Pride of position forbids the banns, lie 
 calls her his lost Pleiad. 
 
 Was his love? 
 
 She drooped, and died of a heart fever. 
 
 AVas not hers love? 
 
 Then he came to himself and was sad. People 
 asked, AVhat is the matter with him? 
 
 He could not sleep, for he was thinking of that 
 pensive angel guarding over him. 
 
 A war broke out: He wanted to drown his grief. 
 
 For my country! he exclaimed. AVas that so? Ask 
 that pensive girl in spirit life! 
 
 Reckless and brave, he won laurels, — first as Colo- 
 nel, then a General. 
 
 AVas he happy now? Could you have looked under 
 that brass-buttoned vest, and heard the reveille of that 
 heart ! 
 
 In a great battle he was mortally wounded at the 
 front. They carried him to a shading tree in the 
 rear. 
 
 As the red blood throbbed from its artery, he caught 
 some in his hand, and threw it skyward, shouting, I 
 come! 
 
 From his bosom he took a miniature, and looked at 
 it till his eyes glazed in death; and never was a smile 
 so magniiicent on a soldier's face. 
 
 But for that modest girl of obscure family, who 
 would have led a nation to victory and glory? 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 91 
 
 Oh, the mysteries of human life! 
 
 A beautiful woman, married to an aristocratic, 
 walking corpse! 
 
 Money and society made steel of the iron chain! 
 
 The church said, What an exemplary woman! The 
 angels wept! 
 
 I sell my soul for daily bread ! was her confessional. 
 
 But a loving soul must have some avenue to express 
 its goodness: She devoted herself to benevolence; 
 gave food and clothing to the destitute, and educated 
 the prodigal children. 
 
 Thousands blessed her name, and reverenced the 
 dust she trod upon. 
 
 But for that marital sorrow, who would have cared 
 for the poor and ignorant^ 
 
 Her loving friend, so faithful, slipped the coil and 
 was a ministering spirit, visiting my lady's chamber! 
 
 She saw him, heard his voice, touched his hand, and 
 was welcome in her heart. 
 
 Her husband, ever jealous, did not know it, but 
 thought that beautiful man was dead! 
 
 But for that departure in manhood's prime, where 
 were the spiritual devotion and freer communion of 
 souls ? 
 
 Oh, the mysteries of human life! 
 
 He was a young man of genius, dissipative in habit, 
 persuasive in manner; a libertine, he enticed the 
 sylph of goodness. 
 
 They were legally married. 
 
92 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 He forgot lie had a wife when in the presence of his 
 paramours. 
 
 Those hours of revelation! — Oh, the fright of her 
 soul as it pondered upon his infidelities! 
 
 She was the mother of a demented child — product 
 of his vices and her sorrows! 
 
 Pity mingling acids in the wormwood! 
 
 The tears that Vv^et the pillows! the air that was 
 heavy with sighs! O my God! 
 
 What will not a wife and mother endure when she 
 feels her high responsibility? 
 
 The world looked on indifferently; it was so com- 
 mon ! 
 
 From the fashionable saloon to the black sea dun- 
 geons of sots; — this is the way — the usual way. The 
 brothel shunned him as he w^ent down into hell's 
 putridities and sores. 
 
 In that blank moral night, as she sat brooding and 
 cold, a light burned upon the stained wall — a rosy 
 light that glanced thence upon her forehead — a blaz- 
 ing star! 
 
 An SLug-el was in her room, clothed with a white 
 vesture, telling her of the great world-love beyond 
 these vales of marital miseries. 
 
 The very throbs of her heart were heard there! 
 One hour of such communion was her eternity. 
 
 A new appointment! said the angel: The price of 
 trial is usefulness: I consecrate your brain to free 
 thought, your soul to free inquiry and love, your hand 
 to social revolution! 
 
 TliJ angel vanished as the spirit light was absorbed 
 
HUMAN IJFE. 93 
 
 into her inner life — henceforth the shrine of Purity's 
 offering. 
 
 Faithful to the order of the heavenly guide, slie 
 severed the iron chain that bound her married to tlie 
 body of this death! 
 
 At its recoil, the shock awaked liim to thought and 
 thence to conscience's pain that preludes repentance. 
 
 Even the broken links seemed precious in her 
 hands. Ko longer his wife, married soul-full to 
 another, she stooped to save the wretch of her agonies. 
 She was his sister, and he her brother; so they lived 
 in the same house. 
 
 Then the sin-sick man died; she administered the 
 balm of tender sympathy; she and her husband were 
 the mourners, paying a tribute of genuine respect 
 even to the debased casket whence the thankful angel 
 had escaped to begin a better life. 
 
 Did you know that, even for these deeds of good- 
 ness, the world scorned and rebuked her with crimina- 
 tions? 
 
 Slie dared do right in mercy to the last. 
 
 That beauteous queen of bravery, persecuted, im- 
 prisoned, scarred and healed, is known among her 
 angelic associates. 
 
 Her sisters follow her from death to life, from ruin 
 to hope, from hate to love; and her mantle will be 
 wide enough to cover them all, when she passes the 
 crystal gate of immortality! 
 
94 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 GHE does not love me now! Alia! jDOor Mercurius? 
 ^ Here is a glass to see hearts in! What's there? 
 Ho! a dark spot — cancerous Sellishness, incurable by 
 the doctors! 
 
 Had joii loved even onr dear humanity — the out- 
 cast, the sorrowing, the good of the weary ones, the 
 beauty of intellect wrecked by your neglect, — she 
 would have held to you pendant as the green wood- 
 bine close to the water spouts of the cottage. 
 
 You have starved her, and whine over the famine, 
 O mendacious husband! 
 
 What! you advanced so high and worthy in the 
 mai'ket, fit for the company of angels; and she so low 
 and dead, delving in the kitchen, your waiter of lion- 
 orables, your former slave to his j)assions now trans- 
 ferred to new recruits? 
 
 The meanness of your motive defeats your project! 
 
 By her example of fortitude and the heroism of her 
 purity preserved, she will sometime awe you into 
 silence. You can never rid yourself of her! There is 
 an indissoluble cord that links her and you together, 
 and Justice weaves it! Yet a few years of estrange- 
 ment in experience with affinities and you burn into 
 penitence and weep into tenderness ; but she will for- 
 give you all the time! 
 
 Bring her forth early, prom23tly! She is your wife, 
 mother of your children, tlie plighted of first vows, a 
 paragon of charity in heart. She asks equality — 
 science, books, paintings, songs, a purse — and your 
 full worship. 
 
 How she will bloom before you ! how precious the 
 
SPKING BIEDS. 95 
 
 memories of your fidelity when she sits enthroned in 
 queenly excellence, the love and pride also of the 
 people! 
 
 OPIilj^G birds with amorous singing just as the 
 ^ trees are budding: why so silent afterwards? 
 
 Because of those eggs, waiting for the inside melody. 
 You have wondered why married people change so: 
 The birdies will tell you why. 
 
 The great gulf of the maiden courted and the 
 woman married, is the same as the difference between 
 dreams and their •i-eali ties. 
 
 Exactly so, sir — what we dream of ? 
 
 Tliat depends on magnets. 
 
 Eevelling in single blessedness? "Well, you know 
 the rest from observation, soon to be experienced un- 
 less you repent, that the value of the revelry is ratioed 
 to the money you have. You can be courted till late 
 in the afternoon; the evening is engaged for fresh re- 
 cruits. Pitiable life at last — all alone! 
 
 Is it not something worth all tasks to repeat in our 
 children the prowess of other times? Love them in 
 their growing, and the silk of industry will be cables 
 of aifection holding them around us at the sunsets of 
 life, under the falling leaves of the trees we planted on 
 our day of marriage. 
 
 A green old age, like the evergreen moss covering 
 all the gray of the solid granite, is patriarchal. 
 
d6 BLMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 /^OKSTANCY is as precious oil pressed from olive 
 ^ trees tliat grow in the Gethsemanes of Prayer. 
 
 The fragrance thereof is the righteousness of Faith. 
 
 It hath consecrated me to the worship of the virgin 
 mother whose name is Love. 
 
 I have found the guardian of mj eternal years; and 
 my song is dedicated to thee, O Sacred Heart: 
 
 Tlie morning, impearled in the dew drops of night, 
 Baptizes the world in her roseate light. 
 And prints on the undulate lips of the sea 
 Tlie kisses that dance from the main to the lea; 
 But sweeter in love is the soft cooing dove 
 That brings with her kisses the Olive of Love. 
 
 From Purity's bosom is blossoming now 
 
 The buds of a wreath for an innocent brow, 
 
 "Whose odorous sphere is an echoing bell 
 
 Entrancing the soul in a magical spell; 
 
 But sweeter in love from the Eden above 
 
 Is the bloom in my heart of the Olive of Love. 
 
 Iveposing in beauty beneath the watch-stars 
 That lift us aloft in their hery cars. 
 Are islands celestial by sainted ones trod, 
 Arrayed in the peace of the glory of God ; 
 But the islands above are not equal, my dove. 
 To the beautiful leaves of the Olive of Love. 
 
 To Heaven I gaze thro' thy soul-speaking eyes. 
 And see where the holiest paradise lies; 
 
ILLEGITIMATE CHILDEEN. 97 
 
 I feel thj heart beat as in musical rills, 
 
 Till my own with a holy divinity trills, 
 
 "While the play of its love, like the fountain above, 
 
 Refreshes the branch of the Olive of Love. 
 
 TLLEGITIMATE children! nearly all of us— born 
 J- so! 
 
 Does the bond of un-wedlock nullify the law of 
 maternity, wlien the seed is planted? does nature re- 
 fuse to mold the illegal germ, O Prudes and Lusto- 
 crats 1 
 
 Abortions have depleted the soil; tlie mother re- 
 volts; the father acts the tyrant: The child is sickly, 
 shaded with suicidal bias ; for they stabbed the embryo 
 with murderous thought. 
 
 The other child made its involuntary advent with- 
 out permit of priest or magistrate: It was souled in 
 passion's phlegm; muscular; saved from lust's slime 
 in gestation's sacred months; resolute to surmount all 
 difficulties. 
 
 Which of these is leo^itimate in the Jud2:ment of 
 Generations ? 
 
 If within wedlock's enclosure is the death-damp of 
 fear and of foeticide — if without, is moral abandonment 
 with alarm of the world's scorn — there cometh thence 
 no angels whom heaven appoints. 
 
 The abandon of passion maketh the charlatan; the 
 alarm of passion, the coward. 
 
 Love that protects the trusts of the fature hath a 
 7 
 
yO IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 calm of soul, a strength of embrace, an assurance of 
 fidelity whicli the eye speaketh. 
 
 There is a stern divinity in nature. This is the 
 heirship she confers and the generation she demands 
 for the world's rejuvination : 
 
 Children of health, muscled and brained and rterved 
 in beautiful solidity, athletic in hope, sunny sphered, 
 brave with power of character. 
 
 Tliat fear may not shadow them under the veil of 
 the most holy place, that recklessness of purpose may 
 not becloud the moral crowning, that doubt may not 
 mold them in restless uncertainty, theirs is the right 
 of nature's dowry to the sweet recognition of parent- 
 age in soul, and law, and custom — the nurtured fruit 
 of spiritual and civic marriage — the welcome children 
 of love in the inner and outer courts of life. 
 
 Love sanctifies all things to hallowed uses. 
 
 Nature hugs with force the seed when it is ripe by 
 the potency of every organ of mind and body. 
 
 This planted, the child of accident may be heaven's 
 opportunity. 
 
 The intensity of intent may exclude the flash-light 
 of the ministering angel. 
 
 Tlie instinct of motive is also transmissible; so the 
 perpetual habit of temj)erance is the health of genera- 
 tion. 
 
 Three things are necessary in this gospel of the 
 gods — ^yea, four: a natural marriage, a conception of 
 every faculty, circumstances to arouse resisting hero- 
 ism and an unfaltering faith. 
 
GENERA-nON. 99 
 
 That act, O man, reports jou a husband and a 
 father. 
 
 For this privilege of woman's choice, you owe her 
 eternal worship and all your property proffered her 
 and the beautiful one of your mutual pledge. 
 
 ]^o guilt is so rank as indifference after immortality 
 hath set its seal! 
 
 Conceptive immortality — O startling truth! O pre- 
 cious reminder of virtue! 
 
 All the heavens are watching! all the earth is wait- 
 ing! 
 
 Those umbilical cords pulse also in the wombs of 
 the mother-angels! , 
 
 Beware how you stir those roots! 
 
 Beware ! Shall the cry of murder go up to heaven ? 
 murder of the innocent! the bud torn out to die, and 
 a matron spirit from very mercy to nurture it up 
 there in her own bosom? 
 
 What is sown must be fostered with the tenderness 
 of the Over-Soul of wisdom and love. 
 
 O Life-builders! bring suitable material to the little 
 angel — protection, affection, attention ; and blessed art 
 thou among men! blessed art thou among women! 
 
 rtENERATION!— Study its laws— the laws of life 
 ^ and duty. 
 
 Is there no better way than the accident of experi- 
 ence? 
 
 Oh, the lessons of the past! 
 
 Who sliall be my father? asks the spirit of Love. 
 Who my mother? 
 
100 immokteli.es of love. 
 
 The richest crops from good seed in good soil; the 
 fairest flower from the select rose-bush tended with 
 care ; the soundest fruit from the matured tree which 
 no worm hath eaten; the sprightliest animal from the 
 healthiest, swiftest blood; the sweetest song from the 
 egg of a loving bird. 
 
 These are nature's nobilities whom the Lord of 
 Improvement hath crowned as the perfect standards 
 of generation. 
 
 Select with care, O maiden of purity. 
 
 Consult your heart; yea, your intellect, your hope, 
 your ambition for maternity, your afiection, your 
 virtue. 
 
 Pray without ceasing; reflect, consider — not only 
 what is agreeable, but prudent; beautiful, but phy- 
 sical; genial, but healthful. 
 
 Kough diamonds wear well; rude muscles are strong; 
 steady nerves are safe; broad chests have deep lungs 
 and vigorous heai'ts are nestling in them. 
 
 The symmetry of the shoulders, the elasticity of the 
 limbs, the resolution of the lips, the curvature of the 
 cheeks, the whiteness of the teeth, the aquilinity of the 
 nose, the eye-color and lashes, the brow, and its breadth 
 and height, the fibre and gloss of the hair, the tower- 
 ing of the coronal brain, the habits of life, the tone 
 of the voice, the electrics of the hand ! 
 
 What a life-book to read, waiting for the second 
 edition! What a prayer of intellect at the altar of 
 Love! 
 
 Mingle the light and dark, the orange and brown, 
 and note the temperamental coloring for the rainbow 
 
GENERATION. 101 
 
 of future life' and yet, O child of Hope, nature's chem- 
 istry no art can equal. 
 
 linow that the glow of crimson and bright green of 
 the sea-shells were limned by the pangs of emotion as 
 their tenants gloried in the splendor of conquest. 
 
 How beautiful the dyes of the dying dolphin ! This 
 is the temperament of soul-emotion. 
 
 As you think, as you love, as you seek, as you act, 
 so the characteristic coloring in the child of promise. 
 
 What so sacred as the secret springs of generation? 
 what so holy as the purity of their health? what so 
 God-like as to obey the highest wisdom ? 
 
 Love, but check its affection until the sober angel 
 of science has measured the inner and outer courts of 
 marital worship. 
 
 One alone among the sinewying youths is to be 
 thine; be wise, therefore, and trust. 
 
 It is for you to ofier the heart, and him his heart in 
 his hand. 
 
 The seal of wisdom to the warranty deed of Love is 
 marriage. 
 
 The hour is hallowed to prayer; the law of temper- 
 ance in all things has been obeyed; the purpose is 
 holy ; a welcome child is conceived in spirit ; the bend- 
 ins: heavens of ansjels are silent as the stars. 
 
 The power of the highest shall overshadow thee, 
 and that which shall be born of thee shall be the Beauty 
 of Holiness! 
 
 Guard the sweet bud from chill wind and frost. 
 
102 IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 There is gestative gospels in food and drink ; instinct 
 selects as bee tlie blossom's nectar. 
 
 Savior-making is your privileged art, O bappy 
 mother. 
 
 Be heroic; positive to harmful influences. 
 
 Walk where crawls no reptile; ride where reels no 
 drunkard; visit where no disorder can mar the soul's 
 serenity. 
 
 Be negative to the good, calm and free to angel light 
 as open flowers at noon-day. 
 
 It is possible to born the beauty of heaven in our 
 world ; and what a maternal glory ! 
 
 What cannot the angels of this life and the next do 
 for our race, when fathers and mothers are mediumized 
 to the spiritual of all the laws of their being? 
 
 Entrance the eyes with the beautiful, the ears with 
 the musical, the intellect with the rational, all the 
 senses with the affectional. 
 
 Place your hands, if need be, upon the active organs 
 of great brains and sip life for the new soul as the rose 
 does honey from the bountiful dews. 
 
 Love the dear one in its holy of holies; it will print 
 a dimple on the cheeks and arch the brows so splen- 
 didly. 
 
 O young mother of prayer, enfolded so safely in the 
 arms of a true-souled husband, bring up all the forces 
 of your being to the mount of spiritual transflgura- 
 tion, thence to furnish life-supply in the develo23ment 
 of practical character, and you shall hear the angels 
 say,— ^ 
 
 This is my beloved child! 
 
SPEING-BLOOM. 103 
 
 ■DEAUTIFUL is the spring-bloom of cliildliood ; 
 •^ what so responsible as to preserve its native nobil- 
 ity for the battle of life? 
 
 Be select in food, and. drink, and raiment, and 
 shelter. 
 
 Songs, too, and toys, and smiles, and kisses are psy- 
 chologizers of character. 
 
 Would you wean your child aw^ay from vicious asso- 
 ciations ? 
 
 Be yourself its playmate; a fellow-student and 
 exampler. 
 
 Would you teach it to love its home ? Make it lov- 
 ing in your soul: guard little words and looks. 
 
 Turn its nascent mind out to the soul of things. 
 
 Use God's medicine of pure air, and water, and 
 sunlight. 
 
 All life a school; all of us pupils; and intuition, 
 inspiration, conversation, our lessons; and the practice 
 of knowledge our religion. 
 
 What the discipline? The commandment of confi- 
 dence, kiss for a blow, love-look for a frown, frolics in 
 water, sunbaths, gymnastics, amusements, concerts with 
 the birds, plays with the child-angels! 
 
 I think, when we practice so the new life, there will 
 be no more crying of children when they are born. 
 
 Let us love on — the world will yet find its Holy of 
 Holies! 
 
 TvAUGlITEIiS kept in ignorance of the most im- 
 ■^ portant functions of their being; learned after- 
 wards by just the sufierings their mothers endured! 
 
104 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Trying to preserve the virtue of a child's wonder- 
 ment, that it was bought at a store and brought home 
 in a band box! 
 
 The secrecy you install generates a vicious curiosity 
 to pain over the dreaded mischief. 
 
 A hidden experiment asks, What are these strange 
 avenues that attract me so? In the heyday of a romp- 
 ish daring, the syren of temptation stabs the innocent; 
 the'girl comes home weeping; the youngster braves it 
 out, familiar at last with the street of ill fame, where 
 he riots and rots before the scarlet goddess of Syphilis ! 
 
 Early and late, O parents, instruct your daughters 
 and sons to reverence all that God hath made. 
 
 Let us endow a new professorship in the schools — an 
 Esoteric Anthropology — that marriage may be a holy 
 sacrament of all the soul's aifections. 
 
 Bloom of affection, sweet June-life, kisses quicken 
 ing germinal passion, as bees carrying pollen from 
 flower to flower. 
 
 The frost chills, and the cold night hugs the petals. 
 
 The curculio stings the embryo fruit, the mill-dew 
 rots it, the spider-webs throttle it, millions of tiny 
 apples fall before the luckless wind. 
 
 Is this the fate of lovers? 
 
 Lo! October's apples, large and luscious, one to a 
 thousand blossoms! 
 
 And this the philosophy of life? the fruit of the 
 orchard unfulfilling the promise of its summer? 
 
 But is nature defeated? Can an apple grow from 
 a tree not first sweetened in bloom 1 
 
COJklMEKCE. 105 
 
 There is never a STinny old age without an early free 
 heartedness. 
 
 /COMMERCE — of suns with planets, of primaries with 
 ^ satellites, of comets with magnetic atmospheres. 
 
 Ships whitening all seas, as lilies the lakes, for 
 exchange. 
 
 Nations holding industrial exhibitions and peace 
 jubilees; the wild tribes supplying healthful electrics, 
 as mountain streams to the thirsty city. 
 
 Day lying on the bosom of Night; Summer asleep 
 in the arms of Winter. 
 
 The flowering anthers dusting the stigmas for 
 impregnation: Love's floral art of making beauty, 
 fragrance and fruit. 
 
 All circles of being risen in the human, prophetic 
 of angelhood; Spirit with Soul married; body the 
 child of their constant commerce and polarity of 
 attraction; thoughts, motives, ho^^es, ambitions, the 
 products of their industry — keepers of the seals of 
 immortal identities! 
 
 Hand touching hand, heart to heart in pulsation, eye 
 to eye that glances love again, poetry of graceful man- 
 ners; honor sound as a merry bell! 
 
 So happy all, the social feast gladdens every spring 
 of health. 
 
 This is the sex-commerce of the angel-minded; the 
 magnetic freedom that rescues from Love's starvation. 
 
 Let us build temples for social worship, as they do 
 in heaven, where the pure can be purer still for the 
 interchange of souls. 
 
106 1MM0RTELI.ES OF LOVE. 
 
 T3EF0RMER he was. A few streaks of gray were 
 -'-^ in his beard; his garments were dusty and worn. 
 
 Care-rifts were plowed into his forehead; his step 
 was firm with a slight tremble from weariness. 
 
 I saw him gaze up, as if beckoning the angels, and 
 tears swam in his eyes till he could not see for very 
 glory. 
 
 I asked him. Have you a home? He bowed his 
 head, and those tears fell on some wilted grass, and lo, 
 in an hour it was all green again! 
 
 Then I asked again, Have you money? and he was 
 silent. 
 
 So I entreated him — ^What is the hidden spring of so 
 much fortitude? 
 
 From a secret pocket over his heart he drew forth 
 this letter, and its touch was electric, for it was fresh 
 from a loving hand: 
 
 !N"ew Years, 1ST3. 
 
 My Dear ; 
 
 A happy JSTew Year! I am so glad to learn of the 
 good you are doing. Whilst so happy in our love, I 
 sadden to know that so many are deprived of its bless- 
 edness. Be calm and not anxious, and you will have 
 good inspirations. My heart goes out to you in your 
 travels, working so hard for us all. I have faitli in 
 you, and love you with all my mind and strength. 
 Could you see down deep in my soul, how I love you! 
 More to me than all else, I love you better than myself. 
 Twenty years — almost twenty — we have been married, 
 and our love is fresh as the morning. Be happy! 
 think not of the past — that, too, is beautiful — ^let us 
 
coNFESsma. 107 
 
 live in the present, I can be happy only as you are 
 so. Though poor in purse, we are rich in love. When 
 yonr sweet heart beats against mine, all is calm. I can 
 go no where without your rest of soul with me. My 
 arms around your neck and I am with you in spirit. 
 Do you feel my heart? We cannot love apart, nor 
 live except in each other's love. 
 
 Ever your . 
 
 CONFESSING to the wise and prudent, 
 ^ Brings sunshine out of the storm. 
 
 Let the soul out of its prison quickly! 
 
 Keep not back a single secret thought! 
 
 Duplicity is the soul's detective! 
 
 The fear even of hurting one's friendship 
 By confessing our weakness, wounds it deep. 
 
 Out with it, my dear! 
 Tell all, said a beautiful wife, 
 
 Locked fast in his arms, 
 Both sad for the strange alienation. 
 
 All was told in truth ; 
 Hearts wept, but they budded again. 
 
 Be watchful, for words 
 May wound in the tender of heart. 
 
 Be instant in prayer, 
 Lest mistrust may slay thy beloved! 
 
 O weeper of soul. 
 Confess and forgive in thy love! 
 
108 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 The spring-fonts must flow, 
 Or lost is its channel to you. 
 
 Afraid you'll not last, 
 Unless you reserve in your strength? 
 
 So small as all that, 
 O man, with a heart and a will? 
 
 Try vivants tableaux 
 Of love in all ways of your art; 
 
 Enchant eyes and ears, 
 Tastes, feelings, and cheerfulness, too. 
 
 The fear of a loss 
 Enfeebles the holiest trust. 
 
 Pour out your strong soul. 
 As sunbeams to green every thing. 
 
 The deeper the pulse 
 Tlie larger the blood courses round. 
 
 The well doth fill up 
 With freshness as water is drawn. 
 
 "PURITY is the heart of wisdom, the standard of 
 -^ value in the angel-markets. 
 
 Think you this precious diamond is purchasable in 
 a social Golgotha, where every merry feeling is cruci- 
 fied? where piety is disease? 
 
 Let me read to you from the Book of Life : 
 
 Every human organ, from the crown of the head to 
 the sole of the foot, is centripetal in the sexual. 
 
 Tlie heart's pulsation, the lungs' magnetic breathing, 
 the intellect's thoughtfulness, the senses' emotions, all 
 
YOUNG FOKEVER. 109 
 
 the functions are representative angels of ministration 
 within the sacred chamber of sexual commerce. 
 
 If this is falsified, in instinct or habit, all the body 
 is infested with robbers — obsessed — prostituted! 
 
 If true to the watch-light of reason, it is the Con- 
 gress of Affections assembled, legislating on this order 
 — Kepeat us in perfectness of beauty! 
 
 This is the heaven of eternity; the millennium 
 of two mated souls; the beginning of a new human 
 race. 
 
 Would you have right to this tree of Paradise, whose 
 leaves are for the healing of the nations'^ 
 
 Install the court of Perpetual Chastity by reverent 
 obedience to the laws of your bein 
 
 & • 
 
 TTOIING forever! — this is immortality! 
 
 JN'ever think of growing old ! 
 O Innocence, that keeps us fresh! O Confidence, 
 That hangs rainbow dews on the weeping w^illows! 
 
 Over all crosses love spreads mosses; 
 
 Tho' the snow falls where the rocks are bare, 
 
 The crystal spray hath a rollicking way; 
 
 And the mosses are green 'neath the silver sheen! 
 
 What restraint of want ever made one younger? 
 AYhat gluttonous life ever satisfied hunger: 
 What interference can correct soul-election? 
 What yielding to fraud can embosom affection? 
 What possible hope for th' immortal and real, 
 That buds not in freshness from the new ideal? 
 
110 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 Love is the blood of the spirit that is horning 
 Her angel body in this wasting temple, 
 ^ '^ * Early in the morning; 
 And if through its heart-valves a few pnlses creep, 
 Death will lie down with us in love's dreaminess fast 
 asleep ! 
 
 A E^GEL of my pilgrimage — she speaks : 
 ■^ O mated sonl! the sun is not nearer to summer 
 than you to me. 
 
 As your love-life is so am I manifest. 
 
 Your sphere is the loom by which I weave a body- 
 guard familiar to your eyes. 
 
 Your moral self is reflected in me; you see me dark 
 or light, as you are dark or light within. 
 
 When you were fearful and unbelieving, you thought 
 me inconstant; now you lov6 me better, trust me 
 more, and call me your heavenly guardian. 
 
 The change is in you; the trance of mind to brighter 
 vision clears it of the mists of self. 
 
 "KTIGHT! the stars are out watching, the dews falling. 
 In the inner chamber resting; the mantle of 
 dreams around me; I am a child again, playing as in 
 other days. 
 
 By my side, O beloved ; ^^our rest in mine and mine 
 in yours. 
 
 I dreamed we w^ere under that maple tree again, 
 wiser grown, the silver in our locks! 
 
lEON-SINKSVED FACE. Ill 
 
 Our hands clasped; our heads dipped towards each 
 other's; we relived those early hours w^hen there we 
 plighted the vows we have kept. 
 
 No words were spoken; but our souls said, We will 
 wed in the spirit life! 
 
 We w^oke together, and a sunburst of morning 
 ponred its sweetness npon ns. 
 
 All day our faces were lit up with the glory that 
 fell on ns tliat ni^ht we were re2:istered for union in 
 our new home with the angels! 
 
 TRO]!^-sinewed-face, drooping brow of wrath, voiced 
 -*- to harshness, ice-incased, the touch of his sphere 
 was clammy. 
 
 The demon of slander w^ent forth from his heart; 
 she stood on his forehead, and tlie reaction of her 
 spring upon her victim indented her hideous claws 
 deep into his flesh. 
 
 The cup he drank turned to mold upon his lips. 
 
 The anger he harbored set the visual angle to his 
 hardness of nature. 
 
 Jealousy daubed its slime upon his cheeks. 
 
 Affections chilled, the childred fled from him, and 
 pnre w^omen shuddered j^assiug him in the street. 
 
 Why did I ask the question. So ugly, man of vices? 
 
 One night he died, and was roughly buried; the 
 years waned, and he was forgotten. Sad and heart- 
 sick over the evils of life, I sought my room and prayed 
 for the angel of Patience to economize all the virtue 
 of my tears falling upon my heart. 
 
112 IMMOETELLES OF LOYE. 
 
 And I was in the deep sleep of the niglit-visions. 
 
 An angel came; he was genial as the morning; 
 beanty sat on his foreliead; on liis lips were the dews 
 of innocence; the palms of his hands bore the imprints 
 of hearts; love's flower of faith bloomed from ont his 
 bosom; he was vestured in white; his voice was mel- 
 lowed to tenderness, speaking great truths. 
 
 He came nearer, and lo, that man of evils once, the 
 ano^el of e^races now! 
 
 What has wrought this change? I asked. 
 
 Love! said the angel weeping. 
 
 When cold, starved and dead, I took the hand of a 
 departed sister; she led me to a fountain which is 
 Purity; she bathed my forehead with her hands and 
 washed away the prints of sin ; she spoke sweet words 
 to my soul, and I felt a rising purpose ; she kissed my 
 black lips, and I loved again ; she touched my heart 
 with hers, and a new life was mine ! 
 
 I heard your prayer for the angel of Patience. De- 
 spair not: Love is the savior of the world. 
 
 Keep her eternal trust! 
 
 "nEPPJVATION is the basis of hope. 
 
 -^ When a loved one departs, there is an inquiry for 
 
 a hereafter. 
 
 We pass the dream-vales of death. 
 
 AYe meet an ano^el returnino^ with the elixir of im- 
 mortality. 
 
 Sweet faces with tear-pearled eyes beam on us. 
 
 O zephyrs from the spirit-groves! O freshness from 
 the rivers of God! O love from the loves of angels! 
 
DEPEIVATION. 113 
 
 On the green earth I lie, so soft, eo stilL I am in a 
 great deep of tlioiight. 
 
 Whisper to me, sweet grass ! Sing to me, babbling 
 brook! Kiss me, clustering vine, hugging the rock's 
 solid breast! 
 
 Delay not, for you bless me only for an hour, and 
 are gone! 
 
 Tlie water dries up, the mountain crumbles, the sea 
 recedes — and I? 
 
 JS'ature clothes herself so beautiful, then dies — and I? 
 
 ]S'ever the same stream flows, nor the same flower 
 blossoms, nor the same w^ave undulates on the lake. 
 This comes; then that; then what? 
 
 I am living in a vast sepulchre — on the decay of 
 buried cities, once populous, now silent; walking with 
 death that ever lives to die! And what is my late? 
 
 I was an infant once, a youth of age now, and grow- 
 ing old! Wilt thou approach nearer, O Death, that 
 I may know thee better? 
 
 I slay death every day, but every conquest hardens 
 the shield of this body, to break the easier. 
 
 Is there no spot outside this ruin wdiere I may stand 
 — the master? 
 
 Who owns me to divide me so — this inheritance of 
 myself ? 
 
 O unseen world, you seem to love me best! Ye 
 weave me up, and unweave! 
 
 The summers fade, the stars set, the pearly dews van- 
 ish; is this my destiny also — dissolved? 
 
 Let me change places with this broken rock; is not 
 8 
 
114 imm()ktelle:s of love. 
 
 this the order? A thousand years old? a million? an 
 eternity? Tlien why not I? Am I not yonr equal? 
 
 But why a past or future where I can know nothing? 
 Why coniine me to the last half of the nineteenth 
 century? Where is thy justice, O Divine Justice, in 
 instituting a blank where I never was, or can be? 
 
 Waking this morning I was conscious of yesterday, 
 and, thence another yesterday, and so on, days, weeks, 
 months, years; and is there any end to the life-circle? 
 
 The form of my friend is dead — cold. — pulseless! 
 The eye is glazed, the brain is still, and a sweet smile 
 plays on the pale face ! 
 
 I came down from heaven, says Jesus. So did a 
 sunbeam. And w^hy not my friend? wdiy .not I? and 
 ascend in the upward arc of life? We brotJiers, Jesus, 
 the sunbeam and I! 
 
 Grave of my friend! let me rest here! — what mem- 
 ories return! 
 
 Though but the old garment riven and rotting, which 
 the green clover is weaving up for its beauty, it is a 
 tie to my own soul unstringing — a cable of love, with 
 two hearts pulsing in it — carriers of the news between 
 the world where he lives and mine but half lived out. 
 
 'No hope is buried with the sacred dust; death's 
 touch quickened all its springs. 
 
 Have I ever wounded the dear departed? I know 
 my tears have a healing in their flow. 
 
 The incision in the bark of yonder tree is grown 
 over, like the kiss of lips bridging the mistake with 
 that loving souvenir — Forgive me! 
 
CONTENT. 115 
 
 The mark is left; but dearer is the trust for tlie 
 healing of the wound. 
 
 Will I know my friend by the scars? Will not 
 these bind me closer to him for the sake of justice? 
 
 Weary ones, tired of earth, do you wish also to die? 
 
 Cut off hands, feet, head — have you got rid of self? 
 
 O this finding ourself stranded, tempest-tost in the 
 transit of worlds, on the rocks of discontent, wrecked 
 by rashness! 
 
 The safe way thither is obedience to the laws of life. 
 Will you break the shell of the egg to aid the process 
 of incubation, open the buds to help the flowering, or 
 harvest the grain in the milk for an earlier crop? 
 
 Haste out of the body is spirit-abortion! Our earth- 
 life is for angel-gestation: When patiently endured 
 and finished, pass higher — plump, full, golden! 
 
 All things grow beautiful as they leave us. 
 There is so much love above us, we must go. 
 Call us in the eventides, O angels! 
 We shall wake from sleep at the whispers of your 
 love! 
 
 riOXTENT thyself, O my soul, with a littltj. 
 ^ The ground sparrow asks only for a shelving sod, 
 and the flower cup a tiny space; but how full the songs 
 in the air and fragrant the aromas! 
 
 Wliy so many acres to support my little self? 
 
 A spot as big as the periphery of my body, from the 
 tips of my hands and feet round to my head, is all I 
 need of tillage land. 
 
116 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 When I drop this earth-garment that encases mj 
 spirit, let some loving friend gratefully plant it under- 
 neath my own dear spot, and see if do not show you 
 what is beautiful ! 
 
 Embalm no dust ; make the most of the transition ; 
 and, if you have spirit eyes you w^ill see me imaged 
 in the fruit tree you must plant upon my grave. I 
 Bhall be there with you! I, the risen angel, tuning 
 the wind to the merry whistle of my boyhood ! 
 
 T^NTEANCED ? Everything is familiar, yet strange, 
 -*^ old, yet new! There is a great glory in all I see — 
 light everywhere! 
 
 Wliat are those sunbeams, falling like a golden veil 
 with silver stars in it over all your person? What is 
 that transparent body I see through it, so beautiful an 
 Angelo wo aid forget he is a painter, for rapture of 
 the vision ? What that heart descending to me, now on 
 my bosom pulsing, absorbed into my heart till all my 
 beinof is ano^elized? 
 
 Have I indeed beheld you, companion of immortal 
 years? Death will be the minister, pronouncing us 
 married according to the laws and usages of the spirit 
 world ! 
 
 TTAEYEST-home!— The boughs are jeweled with 
 -*-■- fruit; the migrating birds are in concert of de- 
 parture; the grains bow their golden crowns to the 
 
HAR^TEST-HOIVIE. 117 
 
 monarchs of the soil; gray is the beard of the moun- 
 tains; the leaves of the purpled forest are sailing 
 in the rivers. 
 
 Is nature dying? 
 
 Tliere is life under the husks, under the whitening 
 sods, under the icj shims of the dark coves. 
 
 Let sunlight in next Spring, and see how nature 
 repeats her infinite goodness. 
 
 The frost of years trails over our foreheads; it snows 
 upon our locks; dim are our eyes from beauteous vis- 
 ions; our ears are dulled to earth's sounds for the rap- 
 ture of heavenly music; there is a sacred tremble in 
 our frames, so great is the rash of light. 
 
 Is the shadow creeping on — the shadow of our 
 guardian angel forecast in our journey together ? 
 
 Growing old at the fireside? Nay, younger; we are 
 the youngest children ! 
 
 Beautiful was our morning of love. Hope dropped 
 her tears on the lips of the roses then. 
 
 A happy wedlock; how loving was the coo of our 
 doves ! They were in the nest, enfolding wings upon 
 their mother's heart. 
 
 But the doves have fled; the nest is vacant; we are 
 alone again, as when first we plighted our vows; how 
 dreamy all the hours! 
 
 Hand in hand we sit under the same maple, old and 
 wide spreading; and we are courting each other as 
 before, with promise this time to marry up there! 
 
 Our hearts are full; when will tlie accoucheur enter 
 to loose the vital cords? 
 
 O resplendent sunset, all the sky a liquid gold! The 
 
118 
 
 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 
 
 hill-cloud is a cradle; wliicli of us sliall first be rocked 
 to sleep? 
 
 We are both in it — tenderly! tenderly! 
 
 Tlie sun-god pauses to feast his eyes on the happy 
 mates at the door of heaven! 
 
 There is a sons: in the still air! 
 
INDEX TO SUBJECTS. 
 
 Angel of Pilgrimage, .110 
 
 Antecedents, 29 
 
 Adultery, 39 
 
 Angel Sister, 78 
 
 Beautiful Spring Bloom,.. .103 
 
 Blasphemer, 28 
 
 Breath of Inspiration, 85 
 
 Buds, ...11 
 
 Church, 8 
 
 Challenge, 13 
 
 Cooing Doves, .117 
 
 Commerce, 105 
 
 Compensation. 30 
 
 , Confessing, 107 
 
 Content, 115 
 
 Constancy, 98 
 
 Critic,. 23 
 
 Crown, .- 31 
 
 Daughters in Ignorance,... 103 
 Dark — Weeping Mother, ... 36 
 
 Death, 113 
 
 Deprivation, ..112 
 
 Divorce, 74 
 
 Drunkard, 52 
 
 Eclipses, 11 
 
 Elective Affinities, 37 
 
 Entranced, 116 
 
 Faith, 21 
 
 Flowers, 35 
 
 Foci, - 57 
 
 Fountain of Adaptation,... 78 
 Free Love Reformer, 92 
 
 Generation, 99 
 
 Gestation, 102 
 
 GodDouhter, 29 
 
 Grave of My Friend, .114 
 
 Habit, 32 
 
 Harvest Home, 116 
 
 Higher Law, 72 
 
 Human Life, Mysteries of. . 87 
 
 Human Sighs, 65 
 
 Hypocrite, 52 
 
 Illegitimate Children, 97 
 
 Insanity, Cure of 89 
 
 Intuition, 58 
 
 Iron-Sinewed Face Ill 
 
 Jealousy, 24 
 
 June Life, .104 
 
 Life — Principles, 10 
 
 Liberty, 18 
 
 Lily,. 86 
 
 Love, - 80 
 
 " in Distances, 84 
 
 " '" Fidelity, 81 
 
 " " Benevolence, 91 
 
 " Of a Mother, 86 
 
 » " A Girl, 81 
 
 " Unrequited, 94 
 
 " By Signs, 82 
 
INDEX TO SUBJECTS. 
 
 Love Unselfish, 60 
 
 Love Letters, 83 
 
 Loving Trust of Wife, 106 
 
 Mad Souls, 48 
 
 Magdaline, 45 
 
 Man, ..^,.. ....._ 10 
 
 Marriage, 70 
 
 Married, 51 
 
 Marrying a Home, 79 
 
 Medicine of Love, 88 
 
 Minstrel, _.. 43 
 
 Mornings of Love, 7 
 
 Murdering, 15 
 
 Music, 35 
 
 Nature's Worship, 8 
 
 Night— Spirit Marriage,. . .110 
 
 Olive of Love, 96 
 
 Patience, 73 
 
 Peace, 17 
 
 People, 13 
 
 Prayer, ._ 27 
 
 Pre-existence, _ 1 14 
 
 Profit and Loss, 27 
 
 Prophecy, 36 
 
 Prostitution, 56 
 
 Purity, ...108 
 
 Reformer, ..106 
 
 Relatives,. _ 45 
 
 Religion, 20 
 
 Resurrection, 89 
 
 Responsibility, 41 
 
 Revolution, _ 9 
 
 Revery, .113 
 
 Robin Red Breast, 35 
 
 Rules, 20 
 
 Satiety, 57 
 
 Self Denial, 41 
 
 Sexual Brute, 53 
 
 Sexual Variety, 74 
 
 Shaker, 88 
 
 Sinless Sinner, 60 
 
 Single Blessedness, 95 
 
 Slander, 23 
 
 Soul Commerce, 64 
 
 Soul Mating, 75 
 
 Soul Starvers, 49 
 
 SocialLife,. 76 
 
 Social Magnetism, 62 
 
 Social Monopoly, 85 
 
 Soldier in Love,. _ 90 
 
 Starving a Wife, 94 
 
 Stealing Virtue,. 44 
 
 Sybil,. 77 
 
 Temptation, 32 
 
 Theory,.... 33 
 
 Thoughts, 22 
 
 Truth, 27 
 
 Transmission, 54 
 
 Tyrant, 53 
 
 Unsexologists, 39 
 
 Vampire, 53 
 
 Vices and Virtues, 25 
 
 Virgin, _ 50 
 
 Virtue, 70 
 
 Wars, 15 
 
 Whispers of Angels, 115 
 
 Wife, 68 
 
 Woman's Love, GQ 
 
 Young Forever, 109 
 
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