Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: Albemarle Street London

Page 72

WHO Believes IN KARMA AND REBIRTH? And Tennyson, later in the sonnet above quoted :
So friend, when first I looked upon your face, Our thoughts gave answer each to each, so true Opposed mirrors cach reflecting each, Although I knew not in what time or place Methought that I had often met with you,
And each had lived in others' mind and speech. Rossetti remembered places :
I have been here before,
But where or how I cannot tell ; I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet, keen smell, The sighing sound ; the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know ; But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall—I knew it all of yore. In Lalla Rookh, Thomas Moore likened the spirit passing from body to body to a lighted brand passing from hand to hand until it reached the goal, a remarkable echo of the Eastern analogy of the candle-flame or the wave to describe the reincarnating entity that moves from life to life on the long road to perfection.
But it has been left to John Masefield, the present Poet Laureate, himself a student of Buddhism, to proclaim his personal creed for all to hear :
I hold that when a person dies
His soul returns again to earth ; Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise,
Another mother gives him birth. With sturdier limbs and brighter brain The old soul takes the road again ...
K.R.