The Adventure of the Apocalypse

The blind bellow

O the blind bellow in the pit of sleep!

galloping strength lifts a huge neck of night

To utter some lost luminosity

But breaks into a blank of raptureless roar.

Eyes that are suns covered with lids that are rock

Yearn for a lightning-stroke from thunderous heavens

Where power is one self-lustered harmony.

No answer flashes down to the vague cry.

The burning heart is beating ecstasy's rhythm

Yet the broad tongue is a grey bitterness;

The ears are deaf to the bright truth within.

The wild breath seeks rose-pastured paradise—

All that it wins are grasses without sap,

Rare tufts fringing relentless crooked stones.

Far is each thought; fool feet run round and round. . .

Eternal seems the doom burying in the brute

A god's soul, but the bellow never ends.

Fallen lover of the glimmering herds on the hill,

Beast of immortal beauty that is blocked

From bursting back into beatitude

By a dense body built of gross desire,

Shall he not struggle with the enfolding deep

That ever would oblivion the gold grace

Lingering a thin white memory in his gloom?

O some great noon will blaze to draw him high.

He shall be plucked up if he keeps his dream

Aloft—pale arms of prayer from the abyss,

Horns of a crescent on a black bull's head!

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