Title: Quartz from the Uplands
Author: Turner, Lewis McKenzie
Language: English
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QUARTZ
FROM THE
UPLANDS


Published by the
Anti-Pessimist
Society     1905
Piermont, N. Y.



DEDICATED
TO THE
AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY



Copyrighted 1905
by Anti-Pessimist Society



                        _QUARTZ from the UPLANDS_


  Who Say? “All songs have been sung;
            All tales have been told;
            Live tongues are still’d--
            Worn smooth by precedent!”

        In the fullness of the soul
        There lives--strong bound--
        Only to be unloos’d by greater deed and action;
        An unfathomable wealth
        From which to draw forever--
        Never to be wholly used.

          Is it for you
          To stand at the bier of the dead past
          Mute--to consent, that:
          “All! has been sung and writ”?

    No! Insistingly, Persistently beat loud upon the temple
        door--steeled well to hear the mock and din and laughter
        and deriding, doubting shouts of those within,
      That you may full awake the throng without--
      Those who sleep, work, hope and pray.
      You must proclaim again, again,
      This Truth!
      The multitude at last will stand aghast, amazed, ashamed;
      Thy liberty deny,
      Yea, crucify.

    To them:--What is, is; and what is, is to remain unchanged forever.

      To learn the lesson, to equip and grade thy purging fire;
      Go forth to some unfrequented spot
      And reason with thyself, comparing notes with Nature.

      See it. Feel it. Hear it.
    The all-prevailing, pervading, constant, ever changing. From
        Winter’s silence, breathing, sighing, sleeping, creeping
        on to Spring with sap, with shoot, with bud and flower,
        hour on hour playing, plying gentleness and power for Summer’s
        rest to temper strength for birth in Autumn, with crowning
        brilliancy and rich rewards untaxed to bird, to beast, to
        insect and to man, gift on gift for full contentment,
        sustenance and labor.

      From this you will accumulate a store so full,
      That every thought’s a prayer;
      The simplest acts of things are miracles--
      The whole a revelation,
      To guide thy way and being.

    Kill not, dissect not, nor rend or tear,
    But see and feel and hear.

        The earth, the air and sea abound
        With righteous living creatures,
        Intent upon some full purpose;--
        Aside from man’s estate,
        Aside from his designing selfishness, intensely useless
          graspings, destruction, purposeless desire,
        For his good use and keeping,
        The forest, field and sea
        And all that lies beneath.

      But if to be a “Bard Sublime?”--
      A prater,
      Aspiring to soar ’midst lofty peaks on painted scenes; to
        catch with musty mystery; with empty schemes of praise;
        with sheens of artificial light, spread o’er this prolonged
        night and sleep of letters; or with palsied moonbeams that
        miniature the day and blight tart speech and full-ripe reason;
      To buoy vanity;
      To bid for foolish charlatan’s esteem,
      To live apart at ease and shirk,
      Good hard holy healthy work;
      To mingle not with clean magnetic dirt,
      With healing, building sunshine, air and rain.--
    Then be a heralder of “New Thought”
      Cite from thy store:
      Great Deeds
      And haughty interminglings;
      Praise, to have a share;
      Valor, in which words win;
      Chastisement, which you do not feel;
      Abnegation, with no self-denial.

        Whatever thy saying,
        Mark you full well
        That all such machinations
        Must and will be counted less
        Than Brawn-Studies in great Nature’s realm.

    If swept away from Nature’s gentle sway
    Too weak to rise and understand
    Thy full purpose, and the coming day:--
    Then feed, feed on thy kind and kith and kin
    Plunge in, into the maelstrom;
    Amidst the deaf’ning roar,
    Swim ’midst molten masses,
    Breast cataracts of seething, living action,
    Tell of harnessing of power,
    Of screech and scream,
    Of whirr of wheels;
    Of lightning’s use and speed;
    Of clank and bang and whisp and twirl of rasp and
      plane and drill on rock and wood and metal.
    For therein lies a ripe, rich, unwrit story;
    And place the credit where the credit’s due.
    Use freely, and without fear thy caustic pen,
    Ruffle, ruthlessly pursue, dog and undo
    Proud spirited, designing men.

  Spur the laggard.

        Jeer at that part of press which teems with
          misstatements, lies, inuendos--
        Those who prod and sting;
        Excite the very life they claim to be,
        For gain,
        For great and greater power, circulation.

    A song or story to go on, up, through distant ages
    Must be full told and strong with facts:--

      Tell of myriads of human beings,
      Crushed, dwarfed, poisoned and devoured,
      By the arts and manufactures;
      Voices drown’d, subdued, smothered amid the din.

    Tell of the march of industry’s deafening roar
      affecting a nation’s reasoning and sealing its
      store of finest instincts.

        Tell of designing kings of trade
        Who, on a _free man’s_ soil!
        So multiplied their wealth
        That all their fellow-beings
        Were their _willing_ slave--
        Slaves living lives in imputrid bodies--
        Souls seasoned with sorrows and blasted hopes;
        Of endless yesterdays,
        Long looking and longing and looking
        For happiness, to come on some to-morrow.

        Tell of serfs, dumb,
        Blind and starved by greed;
        Ground ’twixt its own mill-stones;
        Prating prayers to God
        While God looks on amazed
        At supine strength
        Behind these wills and souls inactive.

    Bound to an unjust cause;
    Held firm by statute and multiplying laws.

        Tell how they bound themselves:
          For paltry bits of food--
          For half-made clothes--
          And shacks for shelter
      For which they gave full rights to use Man’s Acre,
      And all the treasures that lie beneath.

        Tell of rampant selfishness run riot;
        Of countless serfs--
        The earth’s scum;
        Floating to this _free_ land
        To climb upon it and gorge on gold _galore_;
        With inspirations only of eternal happiness in idleness;
        Playing wanton parts;
        Dragging in their brazened gods and images;
        Feeding on rotten greed;
        Loaded with besotted vices
        Practising stupid customs,
        These, all these--
        With voice and vote,--
        To sweep aside the well devised purpose,
        Built by patriarchs for _equal_ rights and honors.

    They came, to make a Nation of all nations--
    But after all, no nation,
    No man’s land.

    Tell of poisoned, delayed and decayed food in transit.

        Tell of the settlement of nations’ differences
        By “good offices” for peace,
        With long--drawn--out, decrepit, verbose, empty ceremony.

    Of International Law--
    The Will of Power.

      Of nations, swearing by the “Prince of Peace”
      Continuing to fortify with great and greater guns,
      Mobilizing husbands to defeat husbandry;
      Bedecking them with gilt without,
      Stuffing vanity and pompousness within.

        But, if you see through the roseate glass,
        Of swaggering optimism
        Proclaim, that:--
          “‘God is working out His will’--
          Too slow perhaps
          For challengers of spotted vice;
          For those who seek for the world’s and the Nation’s
            failings, inhuman sloth, stubbornness and sin.”

      Whatever thy chronicle,
      Let it not savor of a full stomach’s satisfaction
      That feels content with ill-got gain derived from tricks of trade.

        Live amidst conditions on both sides;
        Experience the chill and pinch of poverty;
        Feel the cold steel bands about an undeveloped soul;
        Want for tools and an opportunity to do some useful chosen work,
        Then will you write full well,
        Write strong thy story,
        Chronicling on golden pages;
        Infinite views,
        To march to triumph with the Truth of Truths;
        ’Twill live on and up and through
        The distant ages.



      *      *      *      *      *      *



Transcriber’s note:

[Text enclosed by plus signs is in bold face.)

  “kind +and and+ kith and kin” changed to “kind +and+ kith and kin” on
    page 8.

  “+Amid’st+ the deaf’ning roar” changed to “+Amidst+ the deaf’ning
    roar” on page 8.

  “for +equil+ rights and honors” changed to “for +equal+ rights and
    honors” on page 12.

  “of +nations+ differences” changed to “of +nations’+ differences” on
    page 12.





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