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RECIPROCITY
By Walter Scott Haskell
In alchemy—great Bhrama's plan,
Too subtle for the eyes of man—
The mind that Bhrama did invoke,
Was, as the acorn to the oak;
And, as the oak sheds myriad seed to grow
And thrive in useful mead,
So Bhrama scattered seed below,
Where darkness was, that light should grow.
On Time and Growth depended He,
To make the acorn as the tree.
No seed in Bhrama's garden
Knew it had been sown,
No mirror threw reflection of a rising dawn
—To sightless eyes, a sense unborn.
But Bhrama gave the seed His love,
And blessed it from His realm above,
Endowed it with all potency,
The hope of all eternity.
Great Bhrama's seed as bird of wing
—To bring Him manna, love and spring.
The golden seed of Bhrama's thought,
Though planted in the realm of naught,
Where nothing grew, not even strife;
Began the upward climb of life
By starting a primeval root
That quickly formed into a shoot,
Then grew a stalk, a bud and frond
—The petaled lily of the pond.
No god in paradisiacal ease
Was ere arrayed like one of these.
But back of petal's modest mien,
The lily's heart's desire unseen,
Was struggling in its pod of clay,
And tried to raise its head and say:
"My feet are stuck in this black ooze,
I'd set them free, if I could choose."
Thus Bhrama's seed, His pride and hope,
Was tugging, lugging at life's rope
—A God-sent flower, unsatisfied.
Her petals drooped, the lily died.
Though dead of form—a bagatelle—
The lily's life was strong and well.
And with its soul-fed lust for earth,
Did grope and reach for a new birth;
Aspired to be above its kind,
This lily with a higher mind.
Then from the astral atoms drew,
And clothed its naked Soul anew
—An erstwhile lily of the bog,
And now a wiggling polliwog.
This tadpole grew to be a frog,
And every day sat on a log
And croaked his dismal serenade
To bugs and worms that God had made
To feed his ever hungry maw
—And he would catch all that he saw.
But something in him, something deep,
Would o'er his senses often creep
—Ambition of a froggie's soul,
Ambition for a higher goal.
He lived his day, then went the way
Of other frogs who'd had their say.
But the eternal spark still dwelt within his soul,
And froggie felt the lure of life, the call of earth,
The call to an exalted birth.
And Bhrama gave him power
To draw the atoms, and to use the law
To grow himself a pair of wings
To soar above the creeping things.
A Pterodactyl fierce and strong,
Who had no moral sense of wrong,
But tore the flesh from weaker prey
That did by chance come in his way.
Both earth and air was his to strive
For things that kept his hope alive.
Though Ichthyosaurians roamed the space,
This winged lizard kept his place,
And won in battle's bloody strife,
The trophies of a primal life.
So grew in consciousness
The germ that Bhrama planted in the worm.
Through evolution step by step,
The harvest that the soul had rept.
From plane to plane, from shape to shape,
Till ego glared through eyes of ape;
While its crude brain in torture racked,
For something that the creature lacked.
Still on, from dweller in the tree,
To the first aborigine.
And still no stop, forever on,
To the long-wished-for brighter dawn,
To the apex of Wisdom's mount,
To drink at the eternal fount
—From primal essence ...to the Lord,
From aborigine to God.
At home at last, to rest, to rest,
To Bhrama's bosom to be pressed
—Another cycle is complete,
The chair awaits, the king his seat.
Oh God!
What gulfs Thy seed hath crossed!
And yet no atom hath been lost.
The worm, the ape, the primal man,
All links in Thy eternal plan.
To individualize Thy thought,
Through evolution Thou hast wrought.
Thy seed hath earned, and paid the price
—A home with Thee in paradise.
What Thou didst give, came back to Thee,
And this is Reciprocity.