The Philosophy of Despair   By: David Starr Jordan (1851-1931)

by

David Starr Jordan

To John Maxson Stillman In Token of Good Cheer

A darkening sky and a whitening sea, And the wind in the palm trees tall; Soon or late comes a call for me, Down from the mountain or up from the sea, Then let me lie where I fall.

And a friend may write for friends there be, On a stone from the gray sea wall, "Jungle and town and reef and sea I loved God's Earth and His Earth loved me, Taken for all in all."

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

The Philosophy of Despair

The Bubbles of Sáki.

From Fitzgerald's exquisite version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, I take the following quatrains which may serve as a text for what I have to say:

So when the angel of the darker Drink At last shall find you by the river brink, And offering you his cup, invite your Soul Forth to your lips to quaff, you shall not shrink.

Why, if the soul can fling the Dust aside, And naked on the air of Heaven ride, Wert not a shame wert not a shame for him In this clay carcase crippled to abide?

'Tis but a tent where takes his one day's rest A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrásh Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.

And fear not lest Existence, closing your Account, and mine, shall know the like no more; The Eternal Sáki from that bowl hath pour'd Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour.

When you and I behind the veil are past, Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last, Which of our coming and departure heeds As the Sev'n Seas shall heed a pebble cast.

A moment's halt a momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the waste, And lo! the phantom caravan has reach'd The Nothing it set out from O, make haste!

There was the door to which I found no key; There was the veil through which I could not see: Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was and then no more of Thee and Me.

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn Are scatter'd and their mouths are stopt with dust.

With them the seed of wisdom did I sow, And with my own hand wrought to make it grow And this was all the harvest that I reap'd "I come like water, and like wind I go."

Ah Love, could thou and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits and then Re mould it nearer to the heart's desire!

Yon rising Moon that looks for us again How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter rising look for us Through this same garden and for one in vain!

And when like her, O Sáki, you shall pass Among the guests, star scattered on the grass, And in your blissful errand reach the spot Where I made one turn down an empty glass!

And, again, in another poem from Carmen Silva's Roumanian folk songs:

Hopeless.

Into the mist I gazed, and fear came on me, Then said the mist: "I weep for the lost sun."