THE BUILDER OCTOBER 1917

ALBERT PIKE: A MASTER GENIUS OF MASONRY
BY BRO. J. FORT NEWTON, ENGLAND

MR. TOASTMASTER:--It is the privilege of the living to strive, as
occasion may of offer, to preserve the image of the great and good
men of former times. Not less is it our duty to do so, that as
little as possible may be lost of the precious heritage of our
race. Fewer names would fade from their rightful place in human
memory if we, who enter into their labors and reap what they have
sown, were duly mindful of our obligation to the dead and to the
advancing generation.

In this the centennial year of his birth it is doubly fitting that
we recall the name of Albert Pike--the master genius of Masonry,
its most accomplished scholar, its noblest orator, and by far the
greatest artist who has adorned its temple in these latter days. No
more beautiful spirit than Albert Pike ever lived with us or died
among us, and tonight his words are fulfilled before our eyes, when
he said: "I wish my monument to be builded only in the hearts and
memories of my brethren of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite."
He himself fulfilled those words by the beauty of his genius, the
splendor of his character, and the high quality of his service to
our order;

"For naught endures unless it stands
Linked with a deathless poet's name."

Almost twenty years have now come and gone since the great figure
of Albert Pike disappeared from the walks of men. Other men and
other scenes have come upon the stage and many changes have been
wrought upon the earth. Even in the city where he was for so long
a chief ornament and distinction a generation has arisen to whom it
is necessary to describe Albert Pike. And that no one may ever hope
to do. One may recall the majestic figure, the noble head, the
great and beautiful eyes that were the homes of genius and power,
the face so full of benign wisdom, and the fine spirit that forever
animated and refined a form at once colossal and symbolic. But no
one can reproduce the personal and intellectual charm, the stately
grace and rich humanity of that wonderful man.

Albert Pike has long been known to me as a poet of daring and
eloquent melodies. In days that come not back it was my joy to read
"Hymns to the Gods," in which as a youth he visited the altars of
Greece, the holy land of the artist, and learned the holiness of
beauty. We of the south recall his poems of "The Mocking Bird," the
mystic queen of southern woodland song, along with his ringing
lines proposing "The Magnolia" as the emblem of the south. Nor can
any one forget those tender verses which set to music the
loneliness and pathos of old age, as colors grew dimmer and the
life grows heavier "Every Year." But more melting than all is his
little song to "A Dead Child," which brought a ray of light into
one of the darkest days of my life.

But this week (*) it has been given me to see another Albert Pike--
a great artist of spiritual truth, a magician of form and color and
words--the Michael Angelo of moral architecture. It is beautiful
beyond all words. No one can imagine a more magnificent portrayal
of the meaning of life and of what it is to be a man and a Mason.
In token of this honor let me ask you indulge me in a recital of
the story of Albert Pike, his personal history and his career as a
Mason, with a brief sketch of his achievements as a scholar, his
character as a man, and his genius as a poet.

I.

Albert Pike was born in Boston, Mass., December 29th, 1809--the
same day that brought Gladstone into the world, and like Gladstone
he came of a stock noted for its strength and longevity. The Pikes
came to this country from Devonshire, England, as early as 1635,
and the family has given us many poets, patriots, scholars,
ministers and jurists. Such was Nicholas Pike, author of the first
arithmetic in America, the friend of Washington, and the planter of
the liberty tree in front of his house in 1775, the branches of
which arch State street to this day. Such was Zebulon Pike, the
explorer, who gave his name to Pike's Peak, and died in battle in
the war of 1812.

The father of Albert Pike, so he tells us, was a journeyman
shoemaker, "who worked hard, paid his taxes, and gave all his
children the benefit of an education." His mother was a woman of
great beauty, though somewhat austere in her ideas of training a
boy. As a child he saw the festivities at the close of the war with
Great Britain, in 1815. His father removed to Newburyport, in the
same state, when Albert was four years of age, and remained there
until his death; and it was there that the boy was reared. He
attended the schools of the town, and also an academy at
Farmingham, and at fourteen was ready for the freshman class at
Harvard. Being informed that he must pay the tuition fees for two
years in advance, he declined to do so, and proceeded to educate
himself, following the junior and senior classes while teaching
school. He taught at Fairhaven and later in his home town, first as
assistant, then as principal, and afterwards in a private school
until March, 1831.

By nature Pike was a thinker and by genius a poet --large-minded,
sensitive, high-strung; conscious of his power, yet diffident;
easily depressed by unkind words, but resolved to be a force in the
world. When life with its nameless hopes began to stir within him,
he felt the

(*)The address was delivered at a banquet following the reunion of
Iowa Consistory, No. 2, at which the speaker received the degrees
of the Scottish Rite, in 1909.


austere restraint of his Puritan environment where poetry was
scorned as "flowery talk," and where all wings were clipped. He
began to long for freer air and a wider life, and in 1831 set out
for the west, by way of Niagara, thence to Cincinnati and down the
Ohio, much of the way on foot, to St. Louis. He went as far as
Santa Fe, the scenery of the country giving color to the poems he
wrote along the way. At Taos he joined a trapping party, and after
going down the Pecos, he traveled around the head waters of the
Brazos to the sources of Red river. This took him across the Staked
Plains, and he was so worn by hunger and hardships that he was glad
to turn east. After walking five hundred miles he reached Fort
Smith, Arkansas, "without a rag of clothing, a dollar of money, or
a single friend in the territory."

In Arkansas Pike cast his lot, teaching school in a tiny log cabin
near Van Buren. While thus engaged he wrote some verses for the
Little Rock "Advocate," and they captured attention at once. These
were followed by a series of articles on political topics, under
the pen name of "Casa," which attracted so much notice that Greeley
used them in his paper. The editor of the "Advocate" sent for Pike,
offering him a place on his paper. This offer was gladly accepted
and in 1833 he crossed the river and landed-in Little Rock, paying
his last cent for the ferriage of an old man who had known his
father in New England. Here began a new day in the life of Albert
Pike. He learned to set type and to edit a paper, reading
Blackstone at night, and never sleeping more than five hours a day.
By 1835 he owned the "Advocate," but soon sold it, and after trying
for a year to collect what was due him, he one day settled his
accounts by putting his books in the stove. His own teacher in law,
he delved deep into the volumes of Duranton, Pothier and Marcade,
translating the Pandects of Justinian with the comments upon them
of the French courts. After such studies, once admitted to the bar
his path to success was an open road.

A tender little poem "To Mary" about this time told of other
thoughts busy in his mind. He was married in 1834, and the same
year appeared his "Prose Sketches and Poems," followed by "Ariel,"-
-a longer poem, bold, spirited, scholarly, though marred somewhat
by double rhymes. In 1830 he revised his "Hymns to the Gods"--
written when he was a boy-- and sent them to "Blackwood's
Magazine." The editor, "Christopher North," not only accepted the
hymns, but wrote a letter to Pike saying that his songs gave him
first place among the singers of the day and that his genius marked
him out to be a poet of the Titans. And yet Pike cared little for
fame as a poet. His poet-soul was a well-spring of delight, and he
seems to have cared only for the joy, and sometimes the pain, of
writing. Most of his poems were printed privately for his friends,
as though he were deaf to the tormenting whispers of the siren of
ambition. Outside his inner circle he is known only by fugitive
pieces which escaped from the cage and flew into the upper air.

In the war with Mexico, Pike won fame for his valor on the field of
Buena Vista, and he has enshrined that awful scene in a stirring
poem. After the war he took up the cause of the Indians, whose
language he knew, and whom he felt were being robbed of their
rights. He carried his case to the supreme court, to whose bar he
was admitted in 1849, along with Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal
Hamlin. His speech in the case of the Senate Award to the Choctaws
is famous in our annals, the supreme court adjourning to hear it,
one of his auditors being Daniel Webster, who passed high eulogy
upon his effort. Judged by any test, Albert Pike was a great
orator--massive as Hercules, graceful as Apollo, a lawyer ranking
with Grimes, Prentiss and Pettigrew, at once a poet and a man of
action, uniting the learning of a scholar with the practicalness
and bright eyed sagacity of a man of affairs, and above all gifted
with the imperious magnetism which only genius may wear. By mistake
he was reported dead in 1859, to the great distress of his friends,
and he had the opportunity, not often enjoyed by any one, of
reading the eulogies and laments written in his memory. When he was
known to be in life and good heart, his friends celebrated his
return from Hades by a social festival entitled, "The Life-Wake of
the Fine Arkansaw Gentleman Who Died Before His Time." This event
was duly recorded in an exquisite volume printed in August, 1859.

And then came blood and fire and the measureless woe of civil war.
Albert Pike, though a lover of peace and a hater of slavery, cast
his lot with the South and was a great soldier on its red fields.
His lines written and sung to the tune of "Dixie" kindled all
Southern hearts with fiery and passionate enthusiasm. He became
brigadier general and was placed in command of the Indian
Territory. Against his protest, the Indian regiments were ordered
from the territory into Arkansas, and took part in the battle of
Elkhorn under his command. This battle, fought against his advice,
was a disaster, and he resigned from the army and returned to the
law. To the end he regretted the war, so terrible in its human
harvest, the result of an immemorial misunderstanding, and which
stained with blood and tears a land where heroes sleep together.

II.

It was in 1850 that Albert Pike entered the Masonic order, and
rapidly advanced to its highest honors. Some have expressed wonder
that a man of such rich and beautiful genius should have devoted so
much of his life to a secret order. But those who thus speak know
as little of the man as they know of the great order which he loved
and honored. Happy the day when this master artist entered our
temple, for it was as a great artist that he conceived of Masonry,
even as it was as a great artist that he conceived of God, of man,
of the kingdom of heaven, and of our pathetic human life.

One may almost say that Pike found Masonry in a log cabin and left
it in a temple. In his life as a pioneer he saw the Masonic lodge
as a silent partner of the home, the church, and the school,
toiling in behalf of law, society and good order among men, and he
perceived its possibilities as a field in which to use his varied
gifts for the good of his fellow man. No one ever discerned the
mission of Masonry more clearly, no one ever toiled for its
advancement more tirelessly. If he had done nothing more than write
"Morals and Dogma," his name would be entitled to our lasting and
grateful remembrance. That is an amazing book-- amazing alike for
the wealth of its learning, the breadth and sanity of its
teachings, and the lucidity and beauty of its style which not even
Ruskin could excel. Its style, indeed, cast in the mold of classic
simplicity, rivals in its grace and ease the noblest pages of man.
No one can lay aside that book without feeling that he has visited
the high places of wisdom and of truth, led by a master of those
who know.

But "Morals and Dogma," noble as it is, was only a small part of
the service of Albert Pike to our order. When he came to his throne
in 1859 he found the Scottish Rite little more than a series of
crude, incoherent, disconnected degrees, and six or seven of them
consisted of the words and signs alone. At once he set about to
recast the Rite and put it upon a higher level, writing those
rituals and lectures which are so much admired, and which have been
translated into so many tongues. Such a task gave free play to the
artist-soul within him, from which his life and thought took form
and color--his poetic genius, his sense of the fitness of things,
his mastery of language, his faith, his hope and his dream. So he
wrought, as Angelo wrought in the Sistine Chapel, giving to moral
truth a form worthy of its beauty and meaning, and the imprint of
his genius will never fade from the temples of this order. Nature,
genius and culture had fitted Pike for such a labor. The note of
his intellect was beauty; its depths were the depths of beauty; and
to the soul of an artist he joined a rich and warm humanity, which
made him an ideal priest in the temple of fraternity. To his skill
as an architect he added a parallel genius as a scholar, and to the
altar of his rite he brought the lore of all the ages, the myth and
legend, the sacrificial rites and sacred ceremonials of all the
races. He was of those who believe in the utility of the ideal, in
the spiritual meaning of life, in the moral influence of beauty,
and in the efficacy of art to surprise and embody the elusive
Spirit of Truth which visits this earth with inconstant wing and
fleeting shape--

"Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, 
Like memory of music fled.
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, yet dearer for its mystery."

Such an artist, poet, Mason was Albert Pike. As Grand Commander he
ruled not less by the divine right of genius and character than by
the love of the bodies of his obedience--ruled with a stately and
affable grace, wise in council, skilled in healing schism, fertile
of inspiration, his one passion aside from the good of the craft
being that he should never work injustice. Unforgettable are alike
his dignity and his humility, the unpretentiousness of his mental
and moral bigness, and the kindness that softened even the
sternness of his discipline, when that sternness seemed like to
vent itself upon the wrong doer rather than upon the wrong.
Memorable were his encyclicals and allocutions, and his tributes to
his friends--such as those to Robert Toombs and James A. Garfield--
written with the lucidity of Thucydides and the charm of Cicero.
Urbane always, he was, at times, a master of invective and satire,
as witness his papers and letters in the "Cerneau" debate, and his
famous reply to the bull of Pope Leo against Masonry.

Companionable he was supremely, abounding in friendship, glorious
in conversation, simple, frank, and lovable. His laughter, rich and
ringing, none might resist, and his humor gave an added grace to
his intellectual magnificence. For the frills and fritiniances of
life he had a fine, a copious, yet withal, an amused scorn, and
every form of pretense or meanness shriveled in his presence. He
kept ever, until toward the end, his youthful verve, and there was
a freshness of sympathy in him that was essential democracy.

III.

As a poet Albert Pike had the authentic fire, the vision and the
dream, and he would be more widely known had not he-had such scorn
of fame. In "Fantasma," a poem in which he shadows forth his life
history, he speaks of one who was young and did not know his soul,
until the mighty spell of Coleridge woke his hidden powers.
Coleridge was his master, as Shelley was his ideal, and while we
may not say that he was of equal genius with those masters, it is
to that order of singers that he rightly belongs. In later life
heavy cares and sorrows muffled his song and his harp lay idle for
many years. Near the end he took up his harp once more and sought
relief from loneliness, in a poem entitled "Every Year," which for
a blend of a pathos that is almost bitter and a hope that is
undefeated has none to surpass it in our speech.

"Life is a count of losses, Every year;
For the weak are heavier crosses, Every year;
Lost Springs with sobs replying
Unto weary Autumns sighing,
While those we love are dying, Every year.

"To the past go more dead faces, Every year;
As the loved leave vacant places, Every year;
Everywhere the sad eyes meet us,
In the evening's dusk they greet us,
And to come to them entreat us, Every year.

In his lonesome later years Pike betook himself more and more to
"that city of the mind, built against outward distraction for
inward consolation and shelter." Then it was that he mastered many
languages-- Sanskrit, Hebrew, old Samaritan, Chaldean and Persian
--in quest of what each had to tell of beauty and of truth. By
these he was led on to a study of Parsee and Hindoo beliefs and
traditions, and he left, in the Temple Library, his fifteen large
manuscript volumes, translations of the Rig-Veda and the
Zend-Avesta--a feat to rival Max Muller. And there it may be seen
to this day, all written with an old fashioned quill, in a tiny
flowing hand, without blot or erasure. In the House of the Temple
he lived attended by his daughter, and it was here that he held his
court and received his friends, amid the birds and flowers that he
loved so well. Old age came on with many infirmities, but he was
ever the courtly and gracious man until April, 1891, when death
touched him and he fell asleep without fear and without regret.

So passed Albert Pike. No purer, nobler man has stood at our altar
or left his story in our traditions. He was the most eminent Mason
in the world, not only by virtue of his high rank, but by the
qualities of his genius, the richness of his culture, and the
enduring glory of his service. Nor will our order ever permit to
grow dim the memory of that stately, grave and gentle soul--a Mason
to whom the world was a temple, a poet to whom the world was a
song.

INTERPRETERS

There are some thoughts too sad to put in words.
There are some joys too deep for accents gay.
I think that that is why God makes the birds,
Such things to say.

There are some moments full of melodies
Too sweet fol harps or any human thing.
I think that that is why God makes the trees,
Such songs to sing.

There are some souls that down life's highway pass
Too fair to last in hope's bright diadem.
I think that that is why God makes the grass,
To shelter them.

There are some hours too lonely for the light,
When shining rays but rude intruders seem.
I think that that is why God makes the night,
To sleep, and dream.
--American Lumberman.


SHAKESPEARE

Others abide our question. Thou art free. 
We ask and ask--thou smilest and art still, 
Out topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill, 
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty, 
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea, 
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, 
Spares but the cloudy border of his base 
To the foiled searching of mortality; 
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, 
Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honored, self-secure, 
Didst tread on earth unguessed at--Better so! 
All pains the immortal spirit must endure, 
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, 
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.
--Matthew Arnold.



A LAST FAREWELL

Albert Pike's Letter to a Dying Friend

(From the Fort Smith, Arkansas, Tribune)
(This letter of Albert Pike to a dying friend is worthy of
preservation and forms a beautiful companion piece to his poem,
"Every Hour.")

We gladly give place to the following beautifully worded letter
from Gen. Albert Pike to Dr. Thurston, of Van Buren, and received
by the latter the day before he died

Washington, September 3, 1885.
My Dearest and Best and Truest Old Friend:--

I have just received your loving message sent to me by Mr. Sandels.
I had already two days ago learned from our old friend Cush, who
had the information from James Stewart, that you were about to go
away from us. In a little while I shall follow you; and it will be
well for me if I can look forward to the departure, inevitable for
all, with the same patience and equanimity with which you are
waiting for it.

I do not believe that our intellect and individuality cease to be
when the vitality of the body ends. I have a profound conviction,
the only real revelation, which to me makes absolute certainty,
that there is a Supreme Deity, the Intelligence and Soul of the
Universe, to Whom it is not folly to pray; that our convictions
come from Him, and in them He does not lie to, nor deceive us; and
that there is to be for my very self another, a continued life, in
which this life will not be as if it had never been, but I shall
see and know again those whom I have loved and lost here.

You have led an upright, harmless, and blameless life, always doing
good, and not wrong and evil. You have enjoyed the harmless
pleasures of life, and have never wearied of it, nor thought it had
not been a life worth living. Therefore you need not fear to meet
whatever lies beyond the veil.

Either there is no God, or there is a just and merciful God, who
will deal gently and tenderly with the human creatures whom He has
made so weak and so imperfect.

There is nothing in the future for you to fear, as there is nothing
in the past to be ashamed of. Since I have been compelled by the
lengthening of the evening shadows to look forward to my own near
approaching departure, I do not feel that I lose the friends who go
before me. It is as if they had set sail across the Atlantic Sea to
land in an unknown country beyond, hither I soon shall follow to
meet them again.

But, dear old friend, I shall feel very lonely after you are gone.
We have been friends so long, without a moment's intermission,
without even one little cloud or shadow of unkindness or suspicion
coming between us that I shall miss you terribly. I shall never
have the heart to visit Van Buren again. There are others whom I
like there but none so dear to me as you--none there or anywhere
else. As long as I live I shall remember with loving affection your
ways and looks and words, our glad days passed together in the
woods, your many acts of kindness, the old home and the shade of
the mulberries, and our intimate communion and intercourse during
more than forty-five years.

I hoped to be with you once more in the woods, but now I shall
never be in camp in the woods again. The old friends are nearly all
gone; you are going sooner than I to meet them. I shall live a
little longer, with little left to live for, loving your memory,
and loving the wife and daughter who have been so dear to you.
Dear, dear old friend, good bye! May our Father who is in heaven
have you in His holy keeping and give you eternal rest!

Devotedly your friend,
Albert Pike.

To make knowledge valuable you must have the cheerfulness of
wisdom.--Emerson.

We are born to search for Truth; to possess it belongs to a Higher
Power.--Montaigne.
