A Philosophical
Poem On
The Fire of Self-Enlightenment
E. Nesbit
Each a torch we bear
Dark is the night:
and through its haunted shadows,
We blindly
grope and stumble - sometimes fall;
No star is near enough to light the darkness,
And
priest-lit tapers cast no light at all,
Save such a feeble and delusive glimmer
As
night-lights cast upon a sick-room wall.
Yet, each a torch we bear - lit or unlighted -
Burning for
self it is a march-light’s gleam;
Kindled for others it’s the child of sunlight,
And darkness
shrinks through twilight at its beam.
Were each torch duly lit, O world long darkened,
How would
you bear the sudden light supreme?
Were each torch lit? See, thou who vaguely dreamest
Of what would
be if every torch were lit,
See where thine own torch smoulders a wasted ember,
Thy torch -
for noblest use framed and fit.
Light thine own torch - and hold it to thy brother.
And his
will kindle at the flame of it.
(E. Nesbit, in the
Link.)
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The above poem was
first published at the theosophical magazine “Lucifer”, in London, in its March
1890 edition, p. 29. The word “Lucifer” is the ancient wisdom term for the
planet Venus. Since the Middle Ages its meaning has been distorted by misinformed
theologians.
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