The Adventure of the Apocalypse

Lament and rhapsody

Lost are the ancient mournings, the old mirths

Of Gods grown men, holding the world in their hearts

And breaking with its beauty and its bale

And washing with blood of roses every limb!

The epic's hurricane, the lyric's gurgle,

The pastoral's tremolo of bending reeds,

The drama's splendoured hells and darkling heavens—

And through them all the Voice without a name,

Crying beyond power, passion, pleasure, pang,

Hushing to an ecstasy that has blind eyes

And sees but through a hole suddenly shining

In the magic centre of the marbled brow!

Then were the Angels afloat, the Devils wore wings,

And even the tiny squeaks of insect lives

Came past the antennae's pitiable prayer

Like the Soul of all creation sobbing to the Blue.

Now the deep song sputters on a glutton's lip,

And the azure hungers drown in a drunken orb;

Only some glances parted by lids that quiver

Catch the Soul pinking through the world-vast sleep,

The Spirit Golding the streaks a-dream in the haze.

But the Gods are never dead; their flame is frozen

Till from the locked Inferno of their hearts

They burst to Purgatory and Paradise

And lick up earth with a tongue that sears with bliss.

One waits like a Sun eclipsed by His own Moon,

Soft face coronaed with infinitude,

Counting the hours till, thundering with light,

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His chant shall chariot through the universe.

O He shall nebula the body's night

And He shall darken the little day of the mind,

Quenching the cosmos in a nectar sea

One moment without shore, one moment strewn

With archipelagos of apocalypse!

The ancient ages looming like an eagle

Will seem a sparrow twittering the infancy

Of pygmy stars, twinkle on twinkle tossed

From eternity to eternity in a trice.

The Alchemic Touch what human heart can bear?

Prophets with burning beards cling round His feet;

They view all heaven's roses in a kingly nail

That with one touch can shatter the Winged Rock

Brooding upon the broken breast of Time.

O Master of Dragon and of Hippogriff,

Saviour of the luminous Toad's barbaric bass,

Planter of the Column that is all life's cry

From stone to utmost opal of ether's hush!

O diamond telescope into the Inane,

Deep after deep of crystal untorn by the suns,

And Thou that gemmest through ruby microscope

The pin-point universe with red chaoses!

Reach out to us that spraying fount of beams,

Thy palm of five great fires that burn as one.

Bless us true children of Thy Golden Self,

Crown us pure children of Thy Silvery Wife!

13-5-48

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