Volume Ii Part 6 (2/2)

Whis.h.!.+ the phantom wisps away, Owns him smoke to c.o.c.ks of day.

In your breast the light must burn Fed of you, like corn in quern Ever plumping while the wheel Speeds the mill and drains the meal.

Light to light sees little strange, Only features heavenly new; Then you touch the nerve of Change, Then of Earth you have the clue; Then her two-s.e.xed meanings melt Through you, wed the thought and felt.

Sameness locks no scurfy pond Here for Custom, crazy-fond: Change is on the wing to bud Rose in brain from rose in blood.

Wisdom throbbing shall you see Central in complexity; From her pasture 'mid the beasts Rise to her ethereal feasts, Not, though lightnings track your wit Starward, scorning them you quit: For be sure the bravest wing Preens it in our common spring, Thence along the vault to soar, You with others, gathering more, Glad of more, till you reject Your proud t.i.tle of elect, Perilous even here while few Roam the arched greenwood with you.

Heed that snare.

m.u.f.fled by his cavern-cowl Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl, Who was lord ere light you drank, And lest blood of knightly rank Stream, let not your fair princess Stray: he holds the leagues in stress, Watches keenly there.

Oft has he been riven; slain Is no force in Westermain.

Wait, and we shall forge him curbs, Put his fangs to uses, tame, Teach him, quick as cunning herbs, How to cure him sick and lame.

Much restricted, much enringed, Much he frets, the hooked and winged, Never known to spare.

'Tis enough: the name of Sage Hits no thing in nature, nought; Man the least, save when grave Age From yon Dragon guards his thought.

Eye him when you hearken dumb To what words from Wisdom come.

When she says how few are by Listening to her, eye his eye.

Self, his name declare.

Him shall Change, transforming late, Wonderously renovate.

Hug himself the creature may: What he hugs is loathed decay.

Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!

Change will strip his armour off; Make of him who was all maw, Inly only thrilling-shrewd, Such a servant as none saw Through his days of dragonhood.

Days when growling o'er his bone, Sharpened he for mine and thine; Sensitive within alone; Scaly as the bark of pine.

Change, the strongest son of Life, Has the Spirit here to wife.

Lo, their young of vivid breed, Bear the lights that onward speed, Threading thickets, mounting glades, Up the verdurous colonnades, Round the fluttered curves, and down, Out of sight of Earth's blue crown, Whither, in her central s.p.a.ce, Spouts the Fount and Lure o' the chase.

Fount unresting, Lure divine!

There meet all: too late look most.

Fire in water hued as wine, Springs amid a shadowy host, Circled: one close-headed mob, Breathless, scanning divers heaps, Where a Heart begins to throb, Where it ceases, slow, with leaps.

And 'tis very strange, 'tis said, How you spy in each of them Semblance of that Dragon red, As the oak in bracken-stem.

And, 'tis said, how each and each: Which commences, which subsides: First my Dragon! doth beseech Her who food for all provides.

And she answers with no sign; Utters neither yea nor nay; Fires the water hued as wine; Kneads another spark in clay.

Terror is about her hid; Silence of the thunders locked; Lightnings lining the shut lid; Fixity on quaking rocked.

Lo, you look at Flow and Drought Interflashed and interwrought: Ended is begun, begun Ended, quick as torrents run.

Young Impulsion spouts to sink; Luridness and l.u.s.tre link; 'Tis your come and go of breath; Mirrored pants the Life, the Death; Each of either reaped and sown: Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.

See you so? your senses drift; 'Tis a shuttle weaving swift.

Look with spirit past the sense, Spirit s.h.i.+nes in permanence.

That is She, the view of whom Is the dust within the tomb, Is the inner blush above, Look to loathe, or look to love; Think her Lump, or know her Flame; Dread her scourge, or read her aim; Shoot your hungers from their nerve; Or, in her example, serve.

Some have found her sitting grave; Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat, Hurling dust of fool and knave In a hissing smithy's jet.

More it were not well to speak; Burn to see, you need but seek.

Once beheld she gives the key Airing every doorway, she.

Little can you stop or steer Ere of her you are the seer.

On the surface she will witch, Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze Under, and the soul is rich Past computing, past amaze.

Then is courage that endures Even her awful tremble yours.

Then, the reflex of that Fount Spied below, will Reason mount Lordly and a quenchless force, Lighting Pain to its mad source, Scaring Fear till Fear escapes, Shot through all its phantom shapes.

Then your spirit will perceive Fleshly seed of fleshly sins; Where the pa.s.sions interweave, How the serpent tangle spins Of the sense of Earth misprised, Brainlessly unrecognized; She being Spirit in her clods, Footway to the G.o.d of G.o.ds.

Then for you are pleasures pure, Sureties as the stars are sure: Not the wanton beckoning flags Which, of flattery and delight, Wax to the grim Habit-Hags Riding souls of men to night: Pleasures that through blood run sane, Quickening spirit from the brain.

Each of each in sequent birth, Blood and brain and spirit, three, (Say the deepest gnomes of Earth), Join for true felicity.

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