Poetry by Mrs. Raoul de Navery
Read at the Parisian Society on March 27th, 1863
OBSERVATION: Although it is not our habit to publish poetry that has not been attested as mediumistic the readers will certainly thank us for the exception given to the work below, result of the inspiration of a person that not long ago considered the Spiritist beliefs as utopias
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When the hand of death, multiplying its blows,
Sowed vacuum and sorrow around us,
The only expression to reach our ears was:
If a beloved one rests on its mortal veil
The soul freed from its bodily jail
Broke the links of the heavy shroud;
And now returning to the original cradle
Enjoys God’s light and enormous power.
Meet again you will and confuse
With the earthly love, an immortal one.
Today it is no longer the faintly hope
Illuminating pain with a vacillating glare;
It is no longer a future that brings back our dead.
No, they are around us, helping in our struggles,
Suffering with us, aware of our troubles,
Messengers bringing the sacred hope,
Responding to our secret sorrow from above,
Their hands in our hands, their lips carrying
Even more kindly kisses, so reassuring!
From the heart of another world like a dove
Adding some mystery to the greatness of love.
When evoked, invisible phalanxes overwhelm
Our chests with clarity and calm.
They come! It is all color and change to us;
From unknown worlds, we foresee the dawn;
Illuminating our heads a reflex, sidereal
Worshiping in silence, we kneel.
God’s majesty is by them revealed.
Answer me, oh eternal wisdom!
Do we offend you when
Reverently impelled we broke the veil
That has concealed heavens for such a long trail?
Are we following a restive Soul?
Are we tearing apart the divine texts of the Gospels?
No. We have conviction and courage!
We do ourselves what the Lord has done:
We believe. We can do miracles
Turning our own homes into temples.
We can call that Spirit whose tongue of fire awed
And turned simple fishermen into apostles of God.
Blow celestial winds, blow from all corners of heavens!
Keep away from us that dismal darkness;
Spread clarity, oh golden chandeliers;
From the sacred arc bring to the treasure cheers!
Light beams from the Sinai! Tree of Horeb on fire!
Powerful Spirits of the strong, prophets and women alike,
Spirit, this furtive breath that Job felt
Passing by, giving him the goose flesh;
All of you who destroyed the exalted minds,
Making martyrs out of the mutinous crowds;
When the tormented Middle Ages in its trunk
Generated the inquisitor, the bloody monk;
Come, we are thirsty of the strange teachings;
Rejecting forever the childish things;
We need another language to the new truths
Instead of old sermons, repeated speeches.
We march ahead of the indolent horde.
And if truth devours us with its burning cords
We become martyrs, gladly dying
But will never such a truth believe!
Let us move ahead of our time;
Let us seek, with the kings, the sign
The hidden God for our homage!
We know very well what they stage:
“Poets, dreamers, they are now mad!”
Be it! Because the name we proudly bear
Was given to Jesus when his servants
Of those days launching the sublime emblem
Of the whitely dress said with Paul:
“Madness, then, is wisdom”!
Let us have the courage of seeking,
Let us investigate incessantly, asking
Death about its powerful secrets;
Ridding our minds from the barriers of senses
Of this world whose rules are revealed by God
Changing us, as eagle is rejuvenated by the Lord!
Standing strong on His laws, fortified by his power
We shall open to all the doors of knowledge.
There will be a day – and its dawn is near –
When tired of crying humanity will engage
Us knowing that pain is quenched in our hearts,
Where there is a satiating wave rather than a lighting fire,
Repeating with us in a huge outcry:
“Give us light and the holy hope by
Having the unction of virtue in hand,
Raising our heads from the abated land.
To the eyes blinded by the dust, filthy,
Suddenly giving them the sacred clarity.
Pronounce the Ephpheta of Christ, a mystery!
Transfigure the flesh of the enslaved mind!
Place us, the living ones, among the cohorts
Of apparitions and dead figures alike!
The graves are not tombs but
Badly whitewashed places of bad hearts.
The dead will teach us how
We must live to follow them in God.”
And we who received the blessings of the Lord
To live on Earth in a more perfect center,
We will open our arms to the docile followers
In the name of Spiritism! In the name of the Gospel!
