Post by Mitch on Aug 24, 2004 10:44:44 GMT
‘The Law of Equality’,
in ‘Towards Democracy’ (1912) by Edward Carpenter
You cannot violate the law of Equality for long.
Whatever you appropriate to yourself now from
Others, by that you will be poorer in the end ;
What you give now, the same will surely come back
To you.
If you think yourself superior to the rest, in that instant
You have proclaimed your own inferiority ;
And he that will be servant of all, helper of most, by
That very fact becomes their lord and master.
Seek not your own life – for that is death ;
But seek how you can best and most joyfully give
Your own life away – and every morning for ever fresh life
Shall come to you from over the hills.
Man has to learn to die – quite simply and naturally –
As the child has to learn to walk.
The life of Equality the grave cannot swallow – any
More than the finger can hold back running water – it flows
Easily round and over all obstacles.
A little while snatching to yourself the goods of the
Earth, jealous of your own credit, and of the admiration
And applause of men,
Then to learn that you cannot defeat Nature so – that
Water will not run up hill for all your labours and lying
Awake at night over it:
The claims of others as good as yours, their excellence
In their own line equal to your best in yours, their life as
Near and dear to you as your own can be.
So letting go all the chains which bound you, all the
Anxieties and cares,
The wearisome burden, the artificial unyielding armour
Wherewith you would secure yourself, but which only weighs
You down a more helpless mark for the enemy-
Having learned the necessary lesson of your own
Identity –
To pass out, free, O joy ! – free, to flow down, to swim
In the sea of Equality –
To endue the bodies of the divine Companions,
And the life which is eternal”.
in ‘Towards Democracy’ (1912) by Edward Carpenter
You cannot violate the law of Equality for long.
Whatever you appropriate to yourself now from
Others, by that you will be poorer in the end ;
What you give now, the same will surely come back
To you.
If you think yourself superior to the rest, in that instant
You have proclaimed your own inferiority ;
And he that will be servant of all, helper of most, by
That very fact becomes their lord and master.
Seek not your own life – for that is death ;
But seek how you can best and most joyfully give
Your own life away – and every morning for ever fresh life
Shall come to you from over the hills.
Man has to learn to die – quite simply and naturally –
As the child has to learn to walk.
The life of Equality the grave cannot swallow – any
More than the finger can hold back running water – it flows
Easily round and over all obstacles.
A little while snatching to yourself the goods of the
Earth, jealous of your own credit, and of the admiration
And applause of men,
Then to learn that you cannot defeat Nature so – that
Water will not run up hill for all your labours and lying
Awake at night over it:
The claims of others as good as yours, their excellence
In their own line equal to your best in yours, their life as
Near and dear to you as your own can be.
So letting go all the chains which bound you, all the
Anxieties and cares,
The wearisome burden, the artificial unyielding armour
Wherewith you would secure yourself, but which only weighs
You down a more helpless mark for the enemy-
Having learned the necessary lesson of your own
Identity –
To pass out, free, O joy ! – free, to flow down, to swim
In the sea of Equality –
To endue the bodies of the divine Companions,
And the life which is eternal”.
