Perpetual Light | Page 8

North And has permeated
the South with its elusive fragrance.
Auroral over East and West it
dances.
You are a crystal goblet of such wine
Set in a niche of night
That
when Death quaffs you he must glow to life
Flushed with eternity.
O proud Love, so humble and human,
Yet beyond the gods to exalt--

O quiet Love, couching with the curled might and majesty
Of
tawny leopards!
O tamed tiger, Love, whose golden eyes
Weep for
the thrift of angels!
Thou pinnacled pain of the midnight,

Rose-strewer of daylit mire,
Transfiguration of our futile lives,

Dazzler into the secret courts of heaven--
Thou whose passion is
written in all men's blood and tears
And in silver letters upon the
books of God--
Make me to stand erect, and walk with danger,
And
strive like a flame!
For Thou and I are struck as cymbals of God's
exultation
In Life, His song!
TO PURITY
God knows that you are beautiful as Death
Chanced on in some hot,
sunlit forest-clearing
Where--burst from tangled thickets, with
desperate breath-- My outlawed heart might gasp at him appearing
So
sudden and dazzling upon my rage and fearing,--
Such pale
announcement, such quietude should endue
Tall, proud, grave Death,
with noble footsteps nearing!
Immortal goddess, thus beautiful are

you!
God knows that you are passionate as Life,
On rhythmic curves of
bosom and limb attending,--
Sweet as clear water, and acid as a knife

Thrust through fresh fruit wherewith the bough is bending,-- Yet rule
the riotous blood to Man's befriending,--
Yea, hush his ghastly tears
the midnight through,
To flesh of flesh your ageless mystery lending.

Ah, holy goddess, thus terrible are you!
God knows that you are hated as men hate
Only the highest and the
uttermost presence,
For in your eyes is anger to break fate
And
life's too blissful sweet is all your essence.
Your glory seethed the
suns to incandescence,
You are flame--flame! Our creeds your orb
unto
Are but thin shadowy demilunes and crescents,--
Immortal
goddess, so infinite are you!
Infinite in range of life, the worm you quicken
From crashing suns....
"Let there be light!" you said.
Light was, and life,--Man rose, and
Man fell stricken
By your relentless power that through him sped;

And again Man rose, halt like the walking dead,
Dragging these
heavy laws you never knew
Till you recoiled from him astonishèd,--

Ah, holy goddess, so wonderful were you!
So now Man hath smeared filth upon your altar,
And, slant-eyed and
slime-lipped, wrought sins apart.
His tongue intones an abominable
psalter
Hoarsely, and on his brows cold sweat-drops start,--
Nor
through your oracles speaks he from his heart,
Hearing you in the
porches of his ears;
His eyes are blind of you, where only smart
The
sick revulsions of his ignorant tears.
No! He intones by rote a coded praise,
Unto a leering two-faced god
falls prone,
And smears with lust and fear his alternate days
For
monstrous imaginations to atone;
For you, most instant, most
ardent,--you are flown
Like fumes to his clownish brain, and in his

fear
He dreams you a eunuch carved of pallid stone
Warning,
"Beware all ye who enter here!"
TO PURITY
God knows you are as clean as the sea-gust
Uproarious round those
poppied headlands high
Where huge green seas beneath, in billows
upthrust,
Scatter snow-amethysts to the bright sapphire sky,--
Or
music on which fusillade the hoof-beats by
Of screaming
valkyr-steeds, to exalted strife!
You are love's seal and love's nobility,

And the burning flame, the aching flame of Life!
Therefore, transfigurer of the flesh,--clear-shining
Redeemer of the
coinage passed for base,--
Strong flawless column, round which all
vipers twining
Hiss out their venom and die on their disgrace,--
Oh
radiant form, oh rapt victorious face
Of our dreams of love, toward
whom all brave and true
Strain upward, seeking out your holiest
place,--
This praise I raise, this praise I raise to you!
ATONEMENT
Through flamelit Hades
To win a realm,
I rode with my lady's

Sleeve on my helm.
With fiends around me
And fiends before,
I
rode, and found me
At an iron door.
My pulses hammered.
I clubbed my spear
And knocked. Fiends
clamored.
I felt Man's fear
When mysteries awe him.
The door,
with din,
Swung wide. I saw him
Who sat therein.
Oh, amaranthine
Are Love's estates,
But Rhadamanthine
The
Judge awaits.
My blazon and banner
He stared them through
And
said, _"What manner
Of man are you?"_
I stood stripped naked,

Stark to atone.
My body achèd
Through
every bone.
A blast blew through me.
I drank black gall.
I saw he

knew me.
I told him all.
"The heart I stare in
Is black as night,"
He said, "but therein
There
burns a light.
White hands encore it
To guard its grace,
And
strangely o'er it
Bends a still face.
"Small light--great wonder!
Through all my hall
You flash asunder

The murky pall.
Walls grow unreal--
All Hell a wraith,--
Oh
white, ideal
Flame of her faith!"
"Here I surrender,
White flame of trust!
Knave, strike some
splendor
From this your dust.
Oh gross, weak, dumb thing,

Rise--dare a part!
For here--is something
That breaks my heart!"
THE ADORATION
Now, like withdrawing music
Where pillared aisles implore,
You
are a vanished choir,
A soft-closed door.
Victorious voices blended
Fade, and I kneel still-hearted.
Sudden
my life is ended.
We have parted.
Lost in the vault's vast splendor
My ghost goes rising, thinning.
Can
heartbreak be an end, or
Some strange beginning?
TALISMAN
Each cup shall be broken,
Each tower shall fall,
All drink