The Adventure of the Apocalypse

"O Moslem Men..."

"O moslem men, keep all your gazes down!"

Cries the firm law to the fire-heart of love:

The dusky earth shall ease the crimson ache

And pull the outflung arms to a limp rest.

But ever the dawn-break of woman's smile

Calls us to pink horizons of delight,

And vain the stern will of the moralist

Who, chaining thought to the soil's reticence,

Would curb the flame within from leaping far!

How shall such fetter soothe life's huge desire?

No cure is here for those wide open wounds,

The eyes smitten with wonder and witchery.

Alone the mystic comes with healing hands.

Uplifting them, he shows the true release.

Dawn-break of woman's smile is a prelude thrown

Over time's edge by hidden eternity

And colour makes a vast crescendoed day

Of the Divine. Beyond all human gleam

Light largens to a nakedness of noon,

One omnipresence of apocalypse,

Intensest love poised on a peak of trance!

Slowly the rhythm of golden amplitude

Draws then the eyes lower with cadences

Of orange and of carmine and of rose

Till a mauve mood's magic and mystery

Shimmering with unknown raptures plunges all

Our mind in a deathless deep whose veil is earth.

Now too the sight falls, but no rigid chain

Holds it: a free surrender's worshipping

Humility before high heaven calms

The fire-heart, gathering its whole outblaze

To a houseful point of self-discovery

By whose rapt knowledge every truth is known.

Oblivioned is the smile whose lure was fought

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With fear's loud cry to keep all gazes down.

If down must drop man's beauty-drunken eyes

Without revolt for loss of ecstasy,

Up first from face of woman must we burn:

"Above! Above!" must ever be the call.

O Moslem men, cast all your gazes high!

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