Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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THE CRY OF THE SOUL. The tree stands full of ripened seeds, The tempest smites it hareg Tha! tempest pzgf is juxl enough To root lhwn every-zvhere J The night that settles on the clay, And lills with gloom and douht, lVha! is il, pray, bu! heawnhv 'wise 'zvaj' Ta make the .rlrzrx .thine out .9 O heart, take heart! In nights of soul, In every loss of good, Reach outward hands of faith and touch The mothering Vastitude! 'Tis not a mindless, pulseless void, A senseless, lifeless Allg It is a Fulness thrice deployed, A Presence Personal. The bosom in which all things lie, The nest of all that lives, It is not space, nor air, nor sky, God's living heart it is! O Heart of God, thou wert too wide For my small creaturehood, But that, all worlds and souls beside, Thou dost Thyself include. O Heart of God, thrice wondrous love And life in Thee are found, A Love that Speaks, and Breathes, and loves, In one eternal round. O Heart of God, wherein all wings Arc still which highest soar, In Thee my poised heart, soaring, sings- It can be tossed no more.

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28 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. Finally, far out beyond the limitations of our individual life, far out beyond the boundary lines of all academic knowledge, there stands another mount of vision. Thither this hour takes us for its closing lesson. It points out to us the boundless universe, and cries, Take it, O soul of man l Take it-its Orion, and Pleiades, and Algol-all its worlds and galaxies, its living creatures, creep- ing and angelic, its beauty, its order, its history and mystery, its God and thy God. Naught less can ever satisfy thee. With this alone thou art thyself. At first we are bewildered by so staggering a summons. It is not easy to obey. We are afraid of powers so strange, so over- mastering. We are perplexed to see world-processes in which deliberate purposes seem perpetually, and with like deliberation, thwarted. We feel lost in the empty spaces of infinity. But by and by, as our eyes begin slowly to focalize themselves to univer- sal distances, to map out the immensity, to follow the rhythmic integration and disintegration of the zeons, to see in all apparent discord hidden harmony, in all perfectings mediation, in all ap- parent emptiness most real and personal Pleroma- the soul within suddenly upleaps and cries in exultation, Oh World, World-life, World-heart, in thee and of thee and through thee I am that I am. Without me thou, too, wert other than thou art. For me thou hast thy being. Let me close by reading an utterance which possibly may help some soul to recognize its place in the Home of souls, and cause it to hear more than spheral music in the punctual stars. Through ceaseless cycles whirled and whirled, The worlds have come to be: . But in their swirling play is furlecl A finer mystery. The towering seas the cloucllands lash With billows tall and grim, Yet, all the while, they nc'er o'erda:h T heir qfingiv level brim. Earth-bursting mines beneath detone, Fair lands to desolate, Bu! ne'cr onejlash has fume loo soon, And rze'cr one crash loo lale.

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'W' ' x-, THE GATES OF SUNRISE IN THE OLDEST MYTHOLOGIES. In a noteworthy contribution to Vol. III. of the American journal of Archaeology, Dr. William Hayes Ward, of New York, advances convincing considerations in favor of interpreting a cer- tain representation often recurring in the ancient Babylonian cylinders, as referring to the Gates of Sunrise and to the coming forth of Shamash, the Sun-god, from them. No competent student of the subject can well doubt that the explanation is at once strikingly original and correct. But where in ancient Babylonian thought were these Gates of Sunrise located? Not above the Median mountains, to the East of Babylonia, as Dr. Ward inadvertently implies, and as any one unmindful of the peculiarities of ancient cosmology would inevitably suppose. Not on the Eastern but zmricr the Nor-lhem horizon stood the twin mountains and the Sacred Gate. The Egyptians had a similar Gate of their Sun-god Ra. As Maspero says: La Porte Sacree est representee dans les vig- nettes du Livre des Morts, tantot ouverte et laissant paraitre entre ses deux montants le disque solaire ou le dieu Toumou a forme humaine, tantot fermee et verrouillee. 1 And where was this Sacred Portal? Under the Northern horizon of Egypt, reached by the sun six hours after his apparent setting, and left by him six hours before his apparent rising? More precisely it was 'fau point ou Shou souleve le ciel fp. 2745 5 consequently, though below the horizon of Egypt, it was at the true summit of the Earth, the Northern Pole? The twin mountains represented in the Shamash cylinders are doubtless the twin Qmasij mountains referred to in the second 1A'wne de !'1lix!oixe der Rflzlgialzs. Paris, 1887, p. 274 n. 210511 p. 275. 3See the six theses in Egyptian cosmology in Harlan U1zizfw'.fz'5f YL-ar Book, Vol. x, p. 33: or in 1'arzm'1'.re f21unaQ p. 173.