Mansoul or The Riddle of the World :: :: University of Virginia Library

Mansoul or The Riddle of the World

Charles M. Doughty

Doughty, Charles Montagu (1843-1926)

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MANSOUL

OR THE RIDDLE OF THE WORLD

Maestro al canto
Altro io non ebbi che me stesso; e un Dio
Leggiadre istorie sempre al cor m'inspire.

Odissea xxii, 347.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

Paul the Aged.

Book 1: The Muses Garden

As chanced I sate on terrace of an house,
In summer season, after sickness past;
And fell, surprised my sense, into deep trance:
Wherein meseemed, much musing in my thought;
I cogitations heard, of many hearts;
That came and went, in MANTOWNS market-place,
Whereon I looked. And in my spirit I asked;
What were indeed right paths of a man's feet;
That lacking light, wont stumble in Worlds murk.

One called, and I beheld in looking up,
Of divine stature, Britains Foster-Muse!
With eyes of living light, as stars of God.
The same was she I saw, which erst me taught,
Mongst Colin's crew, to sound a tuneful reed,
On Alban's hills, amongst my herding feres.

Her blissful Voice, anew me bade to rise,
And follow forth.

O'er uplands wide, o'er hills'
Uneven ranks, Her divine footsteps led.
Nor tarried She, nor once looked back, nor spake.
Last almost spent my spirits, in só long course;
When Sun gan, stooping low, withdraw His light;
And shepherd's star shine out with silver crest;
Her divine Presence faded from my seeing.

Approached the Sacred Hórror of Cóvert Night,
Without Beginning. In swift-wheeled cloud-chariot;
Standing erect, stern, veiled, that Mighty Goddess;
Drawn of swift-rushing steeds, that snort forth smoke:
Returneth now from Round Steep of Sea and Earth.
Which daily race She hath, to overtake
And whelm, Suns ebbing Tide, bestowed on us;
Of golden Light. She all-shadowing now o'er-rides:
Leaving behind Her, shrouded, cold, Earths dust;
Which nourisheth us.

Waxed soon then the World dark:
Save that the Hand, which framed all things, hath set;
To shine eternally, in high ascending ranks;
Wheeling above in Heavens stupendous Bent:

Stars' infinite Watch, HIS Witness to all wights.
Had led mine Islands Muse me tó Worlds brinks;
That might likewise receive, recovered health;
My soul new strength.

Paling Heavens starry lamps:
I gazed, and saw an empty dewless coast;
That bitter only brackish herbs brings forth;
Which stiffened lies, in Summer drought, as bronze.
What rests, are lifeless dunes of drizzling sand.

And therein, blackened in the Sun, a wight;
A certain Mínimus walked, an ánchorite;
As ín high Presence of immortal Gods.

In that Sun-stricken inhuman wasteful ground;
Which no man passeth through, nor way is found;
Nor shadow is, ín days heat, of any cloud;
A son of Peace, he sought with tears, Lifes Path.
If haply, aparted from Worlds hubbub, there:
His soul might hear, still, small, Celestial Voice.
Whence purged from blind illúsion of Earths flesh:
His Spirit might attain to heavenly vision;
Before his death.

Forwandered that long night;

He, slow of limb and dull of sense, forwatched;
Beneath mute heavens, hath laid him down at last:
And on wild craig-stone, pillows now his head.
Methought I heard, whiles Minimus slumbers fast,
The Muses voice, saying, One my spirit henceforth
Should be with his.

Was later in my trance;
When Suns great eye flamed, Lamp of all the Earth,
With withering heat, o'er that sere idle dust:
I heard, hoarse murmuring tumult, as of Sea
Deeps long-maned wave-rows, beating boisterous;
And rushing billows, like to raging scour,
Of ravening wolves; wide whelming on sea-cliffs.
And creaking-winged mews' clamour, cleping loud,
O'er long fore-shore: and gazing thitherward viewed,
The uncóuth appearance óf Huge Wight, like-shaped;
But passing human nature manifold.
Whose substance was not flesh: but thence ascend,
Seemed like strange reeling steep ínfolding cloud.

Of human souls such multitude He comprised;
As clustered blebs, some greater and some less:
We see in scudding floc, in day of storm,

Of glistering spume; on some tempestuous strand.

With more than human voice, great Mansoul cried:
For This was He, and cited Heavenly Powers.
Might not winds breath, of áll the Earth suffice;
For mortals' sighs, of Worlds long ages past;
And that which now hath course.

Beat thick my heart,
And me misgave, as still I wondering gazed;
When letting down his feet, as sea-fowl doth;
He seemed to light, on brow of yonder cliff:
Where standing, whilst wind-gusts spersed his main voice;
He impleaded heaven!

Days light in wilderness ceased;
Blind Night, without dew-fall, descends anon.
Then saw I, ón last twilight ray, down slide
Star-wain to Earth, from Mánsion of the Gods.
Whence, toucht to dim now confines of the World:
Stept Hertha forth, Earth-goddess, on Worlds mould;

Returned then, from an heavenly See She hath,
On mountain top; where with sky-dwelling Gods,
She Earth-Mother useth daily to converse.
(Of pearl that chariot seemed, She left on ground.)

Though Night Earth shrouds, about Hér there is light;
Save that veils Her majestic countenance such,
Wreathed vapouring mist, as shrouds oft an hills height.

As Hertha incedes divine; from distaff pressed,
Twixt cubit and lithe venerable flank:
She outdraweth and spinneth much carded golden fleece.
And nimble-fingered, multipresent Goddess;
She eachwhére, (though úneath to be understood);
In so wide World, continually weaves thereof;
The seemly raiment, óf all living things.

Immortal words, Her august lips divided,
Tongue of the Gods! Methought the sense in part,
As thus, amidst my trance, I understood.
When I bethink me óf my former births:
Whether they go on ground, or fly amidst
The winds of heaven, or ín my waters swim;

I endowed them each one ín their several kinds,
As might serve, tó fulfilling of their lives.

Last I, child of mine age, brought forth Mans kin;
Founded, like framed as theirs, his mortal being;
But more infirm than most: nor clothed his flesh,
With fur or feathers, fróm skies' crabbéd cold:
When winds blow out and Sun forsakes the Earth,
And rain beats on wood-leaves. In recompense
Whereof; I mind and speech, to his souls health,
Him gave.

Whence then Worlds bitter cries, that cease
Not in mine ears, of human souls undone.
What, ánd thy days be pain and few, O Man!
Sufficeth thee not, thy mind the Lordship hath;
O'er all that liveth and moveth upón Earths dust?
Ceiled with the Glory of Heavens Firmament.

Hertha: Earth-Mother Goddess, of the Angles.

Come dayspring, Mansoul saw I now to hove;
As cloud before a morrows breath, removes.
I rose up, and impélled meseemed my steps;
Towards mountain-cleft, where He before had passed.
Strait which I presently have reached; whose crooked cliffs,

With legends saw I ánd with names o'erwrit:
In whose sand, prints were, óf passed thousand feet.
Great Mansoul multivoiced I heard beyond:
Bellowing, From living World, he would descend,
As was ordained, to souls beneath the Earth:
To énquire wisdom, of Worlds ages past.
And Hertha I heard, goddess grave-voiced, respond.
HERTHA

Therein hast thou, O Man, my sufferance.
And entrance shalt thou find, by my Caves mouth
Midst rocks, nigh hand; to them which once were flesh;
Whose thousand generations dead, laid up;
In thát great House of Darkness, rest beneath.

And know, before thine hour, thou shalt not pass.
Fear not: those also in my Bosom sleep.
Moreover I, before thy living steps,
Amidst those storied deeps, will send my Voice.
Guide to thy feet and Guardian of thy life:
Till thou, in hour prefixt, from thence revert.

The valley above, lies parted ín two heads.
In that, where led those footprints, Mansoul hoved.
My steps, compélled, in thís continued forth.
I reached ascending, soon, large cliff-crowned garth;
Which smiled embayéd all with greenness glad;
Where sliding water-brooks bubbled fróm white sand.

There washed and worshipped Heaven, with lifted palms:
Discharged was óf her sometime weariness,
My mortal sense; old jarrings of blind flesh,
And souls ignoble fret; and healed those harms,
Which slay Mans rest, of sélf-consuming smart.

And having slaked thereat mine eager thirst;
I slumbered till a turtles' gentle flock,
That feared not yet Mans shape; folding from flight
Their rattling wings; lighted on vermeil feet;
Jetting, with mincing pace, their iris necks;
With crooling throat-bole; voice of peace and rest;
All round abóut me, at thát their drinking-place.

Thence faring upward, towards that waters' source;
Which, full of sunbeams, gurgles from hid grot,
In ivy-emboweréd mossy steep above:
And sunk oft up, reneweth as oft her course;

In channels clear; surging from gilded sand:
I stayed, where pleasant grassy holms depart;
Those streaming waterbrooks, bórdered all along;
With daphne and wíllow-herb, loose-strife, laughing robin;
With woodbind garlanded and sweet eglantine,
And azure-hewed in creeky shallows still,
Forget-me-nóts lift our frail thoughts to heaven.

Broods o'er those thymy eyots drowsy hum;
Bourdon of glistering bees, in mails of gold.
Labouring from sweet to sweet, in the long hours
Of sunny heat; they sound their shrill small clarions.
And hurl by booming dors, gross bee-fly kin;
Broad-girdled, diverse hewed, in théir long pelts:
That solitáry, whiles eves light endúreth,
In Summer skies, each becking clover-tuft haunt.

The Sister-Muses' garden, hence begins:
Which planted fór delight have théir own hands;
With laurel-rose, the long caved brinks beside,
In purple ranks, and midst clear pebble streams.

I ascending forth, came tó a deep swart pool,
Like liquid flint; which pártly a mirror sheen,

Is else a swimming nap of gracious lilies:
Whose buds and chalice-blosms, so purely white,
Be faeries' drinking-cups: o'er whose broad leaves,
Trip dainty water-fowl, on slender feet.

For faeries' gentle Nation wont to send
Thereto, a yearly solemn embassade;
In kirtles new and sheen. (Well be those shaped;
And stitcht of their deft hands, of the Spring leaves.)

They, due obeissance to the Muses made;
With sidelong timid looks, do humbly entreat;
Embraced their divine knees: If any untaught
Or fay or heedless elf, by foot or voice;
Have, ín late Moons, únwittingly transgressed
Their sacred precincts, pardon. And renew
Their vows to observe the goddess-sisters hests.

The Muses set, of theír ambrosial fruits,
Before the little folk, náming them guests:
Ask of their wélfare and bid them rest and eat.

In bowers of roses wild, of cinnamon smell;
Whose long arms, ment with gentle eglantine;
Wounden with many a withwinds flowering trail;
Their hands have taught, to lend a sprinkled shade:

The Muses, wíth the glad-eyed Graces met;
Dight garlands and plight chaplets for their heads:
When those forwearied, wíth fond worldly wights'
Discourse; resort to this delicious place:
Where spring-tide ever smiles, and glad consent
Them greets of warbling birds, from áll green boughs:
And naught their sense offends, twixt sand and stars.

A little apart, whereas those streams run slow;
Are cabans green, shrouded in thicket place:
Of willow wands, wedded with drooping boughs
Of neighbour trees; and wattled of the wind.
And there a margent is, of whitest sand:
Whereas sequestered, ánd all veiled from view;
They bathe, whenso them lists, their gracious limbs.

Over the wandering streams, lie open lawns
And laurel grove; and trees grow there beyond,
All other than today in World be found,
Whose plenteous boughs bear, blesséd of the Gods,
Immortal fruits and blossoms at one tide:
Whence fragrant flowry breath is wafted wide
Abroad, with sweetness óf the honey-comb.

The Sisters thither, ín Sunsetting hours,

Wont to resort, whenas cool rising breath
Is whispering wide; and linked in lovely wise,
They bý those channels shire, in fere, dispace.

Where their soles tread, all flowers again unfold,
As to new Dawn; and amorous clip about
Their divine knees, whereso they hap to pass.
Pale asphodel, jacinth, goldilocks, yellow flags;
Perfect in beauty, as gems of trembling clay
And living gold.

And sith, their wont it is,
Enranged all sitting ón the flowery grass;
(Smiles gather then each moment to their lips;
And blossom ás the flowers, and fade in bliss:)
That sacred golden ríng-lóckt Choir entreat;
Of deep sweet secret things of Heaven and Earth,
And therein cómmuning with divine insight;
They deathless lofty numbers meditate,
And songs weave of the Sun; which well attuned,
To harmony of the spheres, with heavenly voice;
Lifted from Earth, they íntone all in one.

Whereto bass rumour of the waters fall;
Makes ceaseless undersong; whose cataracts poise
Shakes misty cliffs above. Whence seemeth the World

In sunny hours, as with celestial veil,
Arrayed: and heard is, of the Muses' ears,
Divine Harp, not perceived of human sense;
When pass by unseen, footsteps of the Gods.

Sisters divine! and when, gainst eve, they pause;
Those streaming wáter-brooks' hollow brinks beside.
Whére their wont is, after days heat, to rest:
They who list, reach back their gentle hands to taste;
Those dulcet clusters, óf the trellised vine;
Which hang there ruddy ripe, unto their lips.
Nor seld, they amóng them vie, in lighter mood;
Bathing therein, their gracious twínkling feet:
Who best can roundels weave ín the cool wave.

Yet otherwhiles, playing on silver wires;
Singing thereto, some mock, in quaint accord;
Seas hollow surges' fall on sullen strand;
And grave receding hum, in pebble-stone:
Or Dawns shrill medleyed babble of early birds;
And Summers breath, ín the bleak poplar leaves.

The Sisters saw I not; a rainbow path
Saw I remained, aloft their sojourning place:
Whereby they lately were passed forth, to grace;

(Presence divine!) a shepherds marriage-feast.

Whilst yet I in that Pleasance roamed and gazed:
Cool rumbling brook, sliding with liquid foot,
Twixt flowery banks; trembling like watery light:
I came to a fishpool, mirror of clear skies;
Where wont the Sisters tire their jacinth locks,
And broider in thick tress. Where feed their hands,
A finny, golden-scaléd, voiceless drove.
There angry at mine intruded stranger-foot;
Knee deep in comfrey, water-mints, flowering rush;
A ruffling swan, proud warden of that plot;
Stooped from his nest, and vehement breasts outforth.

Ascending fróm that streams glad garden-ground;
So fair to look upon, mine eyes discerned;
Neath yonder hanging óf the valleys hill;
Seven énranged, thrones shining against the Sun,
Of marble white. On them the Muses sit;
When tidings to them fróm the stars, be brought.

Reached thither, I beheld a sacred wood;
Environed round with antique únhewn stones:
Where none might enter, not initiate:
In Muses' heaven-derivéd intimate Art.

Voice called me; and hastily a myrtle grove I passed:
And under cedars' perfumed sailing boughs;
Wherein were hanging nests of sacred-doves.
Soon, ín their midst, a Sanctuary I beheld;
Not haughty, nor yet lowly; whose open front,
Embellished was with fretted marble work.

Nor laid mens hands had courses of these walls:
But each stone drawn from craig-strewn mountain-ground;
Was raised in days of thé old Golden World;
Into its place, as to us delivered is:
By the all-prevailing Sun-Gods harmonies.

Therein a glad-eyed priestess-maiden, clothed
In pure white line, on ever-burning hearth;
An hallowed flame betes, that gleaned sheaf ere was,
Of sunbeams; whiles yet ín Earth-World dwelled Gods.
Whence fuming incense doth embalm his brain;
Who, a Muses nourseling, can interpret face
Of skies, seas aspect, stars' cold influence;
And wind and woods' and floods' inanimate voice;
Lives creatures cries, in whom pulse ís and breath;

And metely endite thereof, in deathless verse.
Thereto the cónsecrated vestals hands,
In daily service, tine the golden lamps;
Pendent from gilded roof-tree óf the House:
Figuring, as stars in dark World, vates' light.

And midst the Sanctuary-court, a palm-stem rears,
Which tree-of-life is named, her peerless head.
Nor waxeth old, in Suns succeeding years,
The sacred plant; whose golden mammels bears
The maidens daily meat, ambrosial fruit.

And a broad-leaved fig flourisheth fast beside
The porch; whose wreathed wild roots, without the walls;
Drink, in their season, flinty nourishment;
Of seldom trickling torrents droughty bed:
Which flows when heavéns timely rains descend;
From eaves and dripping shelves of nígh craig-cliff.

Already I ware was of a Power divine,
Which hitherto had me led. Then like a dream,
Of Dawn with radiance crowned, the Muse of Britain;
Revealed was wholly unto my pensive vision;
In ivory stall enthroned, immortal bright,

Amidst the Temple-House.

Her pupils shone,
Neath twin bent brows, as Lydian bow conjoined;
As I upon them gazed, like living wells;
Of starry undying light and deathless gladness:
Whose subtle streams look, all-confounding forth,
That might in World offend. A fillet binds
Her bright ringed locks, with Britains pearls beset.

Her watchet vesture broidered is, high-girt;
(The bosom sheen upgathered ín large lap;
For Virgin-Mother is the foster Muse;)
With silver threads. That precious needle-work,
Figuring wind-kisst field flowers of thé White Isle;
Fell gracious stately-pleated to Her feet;
Hewed as sea-shells we see within appear.
Whereon were laced, with curious device
Of antique art, in purple leathern work;
Buskins, whose shining knops were Albans gold.

I Her reverenced, ás uplandish wight behoved.
But lest I might offend, no word I spake.
Her lips, like roses budded, I beheld;
Like gate of pearls, the pale-rows of her teeth:
When opened She Her gracious lips to speak.

THE MUSE

Being yet in life, that is so feeble spark,
Which hangeth on daily bread and mortal breath:
Durst thou, in frailty óf thy clayling flesh;
Descend with Mansoul, tó Dead Worlds beneath;
Thou an offspring of dead flesh, before thy death?
To fearful converse hold, with pulseless spirits:
That in dark Realm of souls forgotten, sleep:
Touching hid knowledge and more perfect paths?

Thereto, must thou all lively cheer forsake,
Thy trade of life, Worlds wonted fellowship:
To be sad guest of Hels tremendous House;
Where Time is not: hear rusty ádamant doors,
Of stone, clapt fearful to, behind thy back;
Bars drawn; and thou still to continue forth!

Know furthermore, is Hels Abysm unlíke,
Fantastic dream of any groundling wit.
Unhewn there sunless labyrinthine crypts,
And fearful bays, lie ever further forth:

Where, ín their thousand generations, sleep,
From all World's coasts, souls after their deserts;
Laid up, deep under deep; more than trees' leaves;
Might they be numbered, and Earths blades of grass.

With bowed head, I responded, in my trance;
Nathless I jeopardy would what few days' life,
May yet to me remain, before I pass:
And might, even darkly, O Foster, I approach;
To that Chief One, of thé eternal mysteries;
Which hidden is from foundation of the Earth.

Hel: An Anglo-Saxon word, signifying no more than the hidden or covert place.

THE MUSE

Seeing thát thy purpose deign and worthy is;
Thou hast my countenance, ín thine Enterprise:
But what soul hath returned, from Worlds beneath!

One of the precious gem-set ceiléd cups,
Laid up with vessel of the Temples service;
The priestess fetcht then, ás prescribed the Muse;
And, fróm a gold-lipped silver ewer, it filled:
And tó me from the altar, Her hand brought.

Drink! quoth the Muse: the sústenance óf this cup;
(From whence exhaled ambrosial sprinkling breath);

Shall save thy soul alive, in Pít of Death.

The Temple-maiden hád aforetime scruzed,
Nepenthe and clary and moly; herb kinds found only,
In covert place there midst, sequestered rocks;
A sovereign juice, and mingled in the cup.

When had I tasted of that dívine sap;
I, in all my being, felt spring new quickening warmth;
Of virtue to redeem Mans soul from death.
Seemed lose its former poise this fleshly dross;
And spirit increase, in strength and hardiness:
To steadfastly affront, in Worlds beneath;
Whatso might there betide.

Whilst reverent yet
I stood before the Muse, Her further speech
Attending with bowed head; and durst not gaze,
Too rashly on Stature above the human mould,
Unveiled; the vestal from the Treasury brought,
To me unwist, and hanged about my neck,
A gem-stone bright, which shining of itself,
Should light before our feet, in Únderworlds Voyage.
Nor least, She lady, in táking further thought,
Bestowed on mine unworth, the walking-staff

In Her high hand; to úphold in dread paths,
My steps.

Moreo'er, Her voice, melodious;
More dulcet thán was ever shepherds reed:
A croc of nard, set ón an aumbry shelf;
With incense ánd oil olive, for the wicks;
Me bade uptake; and tó anoint therewith,
The thrall, whereín my soul is pent, this flesh;
Come to dark ground of Hel-deeps first descent;
From living light, at dóor of dread Abyss.
And thereto do-on likewise, Her last gift;
(Which also brought the Temple-priestess forth):
Shroud-like swart Orphic garment, óf Worlds grave.

Yet, more than all, (Her divine afterthought;)
From certain ínmost secret sealed recess,
Made ín the marble walling of the House,
Unwist: the Muse committed to my trust,
With antique curious diligence, wrapped about,
With many silken cloths; that master-work,
Above all worth, which sómetime Merlin wrought;
With dwarves which served him, ín a bower of glass:

Strange mirror, which those Earth-folk burnished clear.

Therein, we might, the sacred Muse me taught:
It wrying deftly, áfter certain sort;
Shadowed discern, through mountains'-mass of rocks,
Derne image óf this Sun-kisst Upper Earth:
Our hope in Hel; to comfort of our hearts.

But sovereign virtue óf the Muses' cup:
Already a vital change I might perceive
Within me wrought: whence I the space henceforth
Of many days should need no mortal bread.

The priestess sithence, turning golden leaves;
Read from a chapter, ás prescribed the Muse;
Words of the Gods, which might not be rehearsed:
But past Hels voyage, from mind again should fade.
Of power to loose éven ádamantine bands:
And évoke forepassed spirits, which swoon in death.

The Muse yet spake, Remember ye, which seek
Hid things, with high intent, in Worlds beneath;
Must warily tread: ready aye, as ye pass forth,
To endúre, before-unknown, extremities.
Other before you, whom no fear might daunt;
With fervent great desire, the like have sought.

Of whom the most, deceived of their souls' hope;
Have perished midst blind hazard of Hel-paths;
Seeing hitherto none returned to living Earth.

From ivory see, that saying, the Muse uprose,
Bidding me sue; and Lady of heavenly birth,
She issued forth: and hastily thence we trace.

From that balsamic Paradise soon we pass:
Of harmonies full and silver trembling streams.
Whose sound breeds dreamless sleep, whose freshing brinks,
Be bordered all with amaranthine flowers
Of orient hews, so blissful to behold.
And there an orchard, whereof who shall taste,
Shall live eternally: where, (their hearts desire;)
Sounds to few chosen ears, the Muses' voice.

And there more quick is found a breathing air
Than in the world without. A garden set,
Midst wildernéss of fórlorn sliding sand.
Which chequered, wreathed and weaved, in wild cross-paths,
Of thousand-fóoted Earth-ríding Spirits of Winds.

But entered cragged place, towards Valley-of-Death;
Cumbered with shapeless quarters óf swart rocks;
Where dívine footsteps might not further pass;
She stayed and spake:

To Mansouls Underworlds voyage;
Know, (I hardly, óf the inéxorable Fates,
It yester have obtained, to whom I sought:)
Appointed is a month of the Suns days.

Whiles yonder New Moon fills Her horns, increase
Shall your souls' force beneath. What days She wanes;
They promise (so ye fail not in your faiths);
Home-coming safe, from thát dread Enterprise.

Thus saying, She deigned breathe on me: and ín that seemed
The deathless Muses dívine foster spirit;
Like wafted sunbeams fróm some primrose bank.
With her last words yet sounding ín mine ears.
Celestial, ás a voice from holy stars;
Nourseling, farewell, the Gods thee speed and save!
Her divine presence faded from my seeing.

'Gan, ás enforcedly, then my steps to trace;
Towards mountain-strait, where Mansoul lately passed:
Walled up to skies, where broods eternal Night,
O'er mournful steeps. Swart-leaved wood-shaw I pass;
Neath crumpled boughs, aye dripping baleful mist!
On sleep-compelling canker-worts beneath,
Black hellebore ánd rank-smelling déadly dwale,
Morel, with other more, I know not well:
The Furies' garden-knots; whose snaky locks
Be wrapped about my feeble knees and feet.

And must I, a mortal wight, of few days' life;
Thy glory, O Sun, High Father óf days light;
And benign warmth, whence kindly life on earth;
For shadow of deadly Underworld, now forsake!

Gaunt, hollow-eaved, with overhanging rocks,
Is that grim gap; as stiffened were blown seas
Great rampant folding wave, to sudden stone.
Ray it, of heavens wide cheerful light receives,
Uneath, when Worlds clear Summer-day it is;
And night-time only of some malignant star.

Under that vault, gapes sullen salvage cave,

To Hertha dedicate; who is Goddess both
Of líving World, ánd dread Tartarus beneath.
One of whose glooming caves, in Earths West half,
Is this den in hid cliff, which far-down reacheth;
To Underworlds.

Awhile with foot suspent;
I stood irresolúte, át that caverns mouth;
Where Mansoul I beheld, already arrived!
Not such, indeed, as had I seen him erst:
Since thousand souls, too fearful for that Quest,
Hath Mansoul shed. Nor few had fleshly death,
In the mean season, 'spersed. In him the rest,
Be flowed together, tó one Manlike being.

Calm is his port, his old complaining ceased;
As boisterous seas assuaged, late-frowning, face:
Whereon descended Angel is of Peace.
Seeing, this day, in proud humility, had Hertha Goddess;
To parley with Mansoul, Herself abased;
Gracing him, whom She taught, in this grim place;
Faith, Measure, Fortitude ánd Right-mindedness.

Tangled mongst stinking nettles, wicked herbs;

Cumbered 'midst cliffs, and briars as serpents' teeth,
My wounded feet; I them now wrested forth:
And Herthas vault, derne cave of living rock;
With Mansoul ánd with Minimus, have I passed.

Book 2: The Descent

Though lost days gladsome gleam; Worlds lingering ray,
Shows stony clustered trunks, from floor to roof,
Of Herthas cave. Nor were we without light,
Before our further steps.

Had Hertha, a torch
Bestowed on Mansoul; that gleaned sheaf erst was
Of stars' rays shed upon Her mountain-top.
And that should shine before our halting steps;
In Underwórlds dark Vóyage, now to begin.
Till tó first circuit óf those Radious Rocks,
Where sleep the faithful Dead; whose dust, men laid,
Whom comforts yet the Sun, our feet arrive.

On me and Minimus, had there charge been laid,
Unwist of us (one-twain); that from henceforth,
We on manifold Mansoul should attend; whereof,
We unwitting likewise were least several part.

Bearing forth Herthas torch, in glooming cave,
Mansoul led on before us. I held fast

In hand, as we groped forth, the Muses staff:
Whiles more and more the trode, towards dread Abyss;
Seemed sink and fall way from únder us.

Way of the dead, where all day-labours cease;
Is thís we living tread, with troubled hearts.
We go down, tó be guests of griesly Death;
In Hels tremendous House, befóre our deaths.
Seemed full of whíspers, each new horrid place:
Phantasms flit forth, before our fearful steps.

Reached tó that gallerys ending, derne and still;
That seemed iron closure, óf Eternal Tomb:
Revealed was fateful door of massy stone.
There was, my weed fell off me of itself.
Whence I, recording precept of the Muse;
Anointed wíth that Temple-chrism my flesh:
And did-on Orphic garment of Worlds Grave.

Thus shrouded, like to clay-cold corse, I knocked;
With that was in mine hand, the Muses staff,
(As Mansoul bade,) thríce, on that squalid port:
And fearful echoed, living noise in Hel!
And rumbled dread in Region derne, far off.

Reeled on its pivots, thát ports rusty mass:

And Hé who, as ít had néver been removed,
Now slowly it revolved, regardeth us!

Loath charnel-breath smóte, smother of the grave,
On our lives' sense: an horror of endless vast
Darkness of Únder-Earth, shrouded, compassed us.

A griesly fleshless hand laid on the lock;
That hollow-jowled dread Portent of a wight,
Spake; Your Intent? There enters here no flesh;
Herein no líves-way lieth. And narrowly he ús,
Grim Spectre, Porter of Hels horrid House,
Upon this part; (wherein besides, 't is said,
Be other many doors, and fearful deep
Descending paths, of spirits deceased;) hath eyed.

Might hárdly I utterance frame of faltering lips.
Responding to that Doorward, then I said:
We Wisdom seek, whereas it may be sought.
And might we, in recompense of just Heavens best gift;
Unto ús men, Speech and Understanding Mind,
As diver, groping neath gross waters' weight,
On seas dark ground, the while with-holding breath;
Bring, were it but an emmets burden up,
Of very Sooth, to day and living light!

That phantom Porter prónounced, ghostly, Pass!

Deaths iron-strong cragged Gate, our feet have passed.
We tread in, on grave-dust. Great silent weight
Is fallen on ús of an Eternal Night!
The footfall made of óur entrancéd flesh,
None echoing sound; passed now beyond Worlds noise.
Save for our torches flickering gleam; and that
Shines but as fathoms breadth before our steps;
Lightless lies all Dead Underworld from henceforth.

Opens vast covert maze of ghostly paths,
In hollow rocks, before our fearful pace.
Therein be gliding múltitude óf passed spirits;
In grave-clothes wound, descending from their deaths!

Enforced our steps, for Power is come upon us;
Like unto that, which over them prevails.
We go down, by great shelves of craggéd rock;
To deadly undigged vast Gulf: Abysmal Place
Under West half, of wíde, round-eddying, Earth.
Whose horrid walls, in dim default of Light;
Our torches gleam reveals uneath. There spirits;

Pale drooping troops, in languor of their deaths;
From hundred galleries, which do there Converge;
Arrive each moment.

Standing them amidst,
Be mighty Æons, pride-fallen from Starry Height;
Before the birth of Time, or thís World was.

Being later cóndemned tó Death-Pit of Earth:
Is there their Task, to marshal souls in flocks:
And winnowed fróm lives' dross, in balances, poise:
And ássign, áfter their deserts, in ranks;
Unto their several wards, to sleep in death.

We as fearful fugitíves, with faltering knees;
Where all unknown, before our nightmare steps;
(So dread, so dark!) have hasted thence to pass.
In crooked ways we tread, uncertain paths.
Our torches fitful gleam showed us at length;
Framed like unénding dove-cote, ín derne cliff:
Or, to compare together small and great;
Like to the formal treasure-house óf the bee:
Where innocents sleep, buds of great Tree of Life;
Whom Winters spite had withered from the root.
Ere might they, tó a kíndly Sun unfold,

Their frail first leaves. Their place of rest beneath,
Cradle to cradle, in Under-World, was this.

We, us seemed, long Night traverse of squalid paths,
Beyond. The abode, of lunatic spirits, we pass;
Some of whom waked. I viewed, with hearts dismay,
Their sad fond troubled looks!

To lower deeps,
Decline our steps: whose vaulted gloom might pierce
Our torches ray uneath. Was then, we ceased
To bé urged forth. Thus stayed, in Womb of Earth;
Not being yet manifest Herthas promised Voice;
We feared, as shut in íron unending tomb.
Till I bethóught me of thát, the Muses staff.
In darkness dread, I poised it then upright:
And as it fell forth, we addressed our face.

Within a while, contínued thus our course;
Our torch shows new inéxtricable paths:
Dire Yammer sounded ín our ears, before
Our halting steps: mistrust was in our hearts!
We would and had we might, have swerved from thence.
The image presently, ah! mirrored in our glass:

(We hastily had taken our Merlins mirror forth;)
Showed fearful gleam of Sinners' Wailing-place.
Where spirits rest not, áfter their fleshes' deaths;
But wallow and wind, in torment of their minds;
Shut out from bliss.

Self-love, their only God,
Hath them undone. Though severs them from us.
Impenetrable íron huge mountain-mass;
Appeared there souls of wights, in Merlin's glass;
Horrific spectacle! midst fire-flashing smoke;
In endless pine. A thousand flamíng mouths,
Doom-pits; as little and little we might perceive
Glowed in fire-hills of Hels unending Plain:
Where, nigher viewed, us seemed, in every Abyss;
Writhed demon-gotten monsters óf mankind.
Midst torments, they continually there upclimb:
To fall to greater bale, back from the brinks.

Other impélled by fiery-eddying Tempest;
Great multitúde, bé borne ón-forth to their Doom;
Evil-dóers. Mongst whom, now blackened is his face;
One who lived lately crowned. We marvelled seeing,
Souls, in one condemnation with him, on him,
(Become now all mens curse,) to turn their backs!

Whom vehemently théy, with loathing mouths, reproach
Their evil ending late, by tímeless death:
In wicked warfare he, crowned sot, provoked.
Now a griesly leprosy blots his werewolfs face!

From sulphur-reeking powder of Hel-Plain;
Uprise to meet them, fiends more fearful-shaped,
Than may be told. That War-monger, they, haled forth;
With glowing links, attach, of ádamant chains
Insoluble: and weld to adamant stake;
(One of mány, ímmoveable, which therein seen fixt.)
To be all Hels derision, from henceforth.
And that before Hel-forged steel looking-glass;
Wherein he evermore contemplates himself;
His coxcomb vísage and enormous deeds.
And ever sleepless, dire accusing Voice
Rings ceaseless in his ears, in a dead World:
Requiring of his impious soul, the Breath
Of Europes human Spring. He esteeming less
Than his fond self, Earths Nations; (heathen,) sought
His violent bloody rapine of the World.

Whilst yet, with bereaved thought, in Merlin's glass,

We gazed: an earthquake smote Hel-Pit. Seemed gape
And shut-to each fearful blind pathway before us:
Stagger Hel-Frame and founder underfoot;
And shatter o'er our heads. We wist not whither,
Flee forth, to save us. In that sore constraint,
Beat thick our hearts, our knees failed under us.

But Herthas divine Spirit hath succoured us.
That leading swiftly on, eách one by the hand;
Mongst crumbling craigs, saved from that peril forth.

And we ascending, whence we were miswent:
Beneath that dívine Well-Spring of Grace passed:
Which flows from Heavens long-suffering Mercy-Seat.
Down even unto the Lost. Some of whose drops;
Fell likewise luminous sprinkling upon us;
Like to a quickening dew.

Seemed from that point,
Our footsteps to wax lighter, every moment.
Neath gross compácture of thís corrúptible flesh.
Seemed, I might run in air of Upper Earth;
Hills overleap, speed on a waters' face.

Leagues'-way seemed lift me each alternate tread.
Nor more my footfall echoing rumour made.
Great Herthas Voice it is, upholds our steps,
In Underworld, and guides our forward course.

We speed in dim main thoroughfare óf Worlds Dead,
And namely of righteous souls; whose flesh men laid,
With tears of late, to moulder ín sad grave.
They are mány whích borne forth: that ghostly glide;
Like drift of orchard blossoms, falling rife;
Wafted of South winds breath; towárds their place
Appointed them, of Everlasting Rest.
Dernly aught míght we in Únderworld yet perceive:
Till tó that circuit of Hels Radious Rocks,
Where sleep Worlds Faithful Dead, our steps arrive.

And that is now! . . . Pause hath our giddy race:
And waning in the same, whiles we approach;
Is stár-bright saving light, of Herthas torch.

Ló, a numbed multitude, gáthered to Souls' Porch;
Which wedded were in World, to righteous life!
Where cease our soles to tread, a little aloof;
We a sóul viewed, thát conflicted with himself:
Which finally he, subdued; trode underfoot:

Whom then received the rest to fellowship.

Threefold stands, ín dim light, that solemn Port.
Not of óne building only, or substance like,
The several gates; but all like-radious.
Paths of the Just I read engráven on height.

Conformable tó souls-stature, of just spirits:
Those give on several Regions, quoth the Voice;
Where their eternal heritage is, of Peace.

With that was in mine hand, the Muses staff;
As Mansoul bade, I knockt on a side-port:
Nor feared; so from withinforth wafted breath
Was of hearts' rest, which all constraint dispersed.

Peace, the thrice-blesséd high Warden óf that porch:
(A Chief One He, amóngst the Sons of God;
Being multipresent, ín the Universe:)
Lookt from a lattice. Ánd taken cógnizance of us;
(His brows were ás wreathed snow; his eyes stárbright;)
Lifted the hasp: and, Pass with God! Peace quoth.

Neath covert óf His dove-like wings, outstretcht,
We assurance entering found, in House of Death:

Nay, an occult parfume seemed surprise our sense
Of heavenly places!

Led by Herthas Voice;
Recomforted, in now Radious Rocks, we course:
Where all ways shine like dímly luminous;
As some wood-bank is seen, in World above,
That gledeworms haunt. A Kosmic light this is,
Remaining, óf Heavens sovereign radiance;
Whilst Earth was ín Her making, midst the Stars;
Which evermore those shed forth, by slów degrees:
And partly a spiritual light it is.

A new and happy pang empierced our hearts;
Where suffered us the Voice suspend our steps,
At first, before a lodge in luminous cliff,
Embayed; where slumbering heroes sleep úplayed:
Britannias sons renowned, (not lightly esteemed,
Seed of the Gods; for their prowd warlike deeds:)
Which wrought deliverance, both by Land and Seas.

Here sleep then those magnanimous, whose names' praise
Lives on mens lips, and ín our grateful hearts;
War-smiths in their war-weed. Be uphanged bays,

O'er each ones generous head. Wounds théy received:
Shine with a sacred light and camphire breathe.
On them we gazed, with lingering long regard:
Through trembling místy, on our eyelids, tears.
Have they, and like defenders of our hearths;
Which beat down thé Unright, Gods endless Peace!

Sleep other, hardly a shafts-flight fróm them forth:
Nor less, (though strove those not in field,) of worth.
Were they pre-eminent ín all citizens' works;
Uphólding the hónour of their Nations House.

Further, rest certain meek ones of the Earth,
Yet militant ánd like-great in heavenly sight;
Under, lo, crowns they sleep, of living light.
Unmoveable, forcible, upright únto Death;
They little esteeming Worlds brief fleshling life;
Like to lone light-towers, founded on fast rocks;
Witnessed midst storms of malice, fór the Right!
Them nigh, in án exalted Place of Rest;
Sleep óther úpright souls, of guise diverse.
Seers were they and Prophets ín their several Ages,
Of the Worlds Nations.

Said then Herthas Voice:
The pathways óf the Just, in áll the Earth;

Shall meet together in One Holy Place:
Under the Silent Brow of Heaven supreme.

In every Age and Family of Mans kin
Rise steadfast spirits, nourished of lofty thought:
That seekers be, with singleness of heart,
Of Righteousness; and mongst their fellows, teach
The Blameless Life. Called unto that High Trust;
By an intimate whisper breathing ín their breasts;
They hear, from Heaven, as child his mothers voice.

Whence they, like rushlights, ín a dawnless Dark,
Shine, and have willingly oft jeopardied their own lives.
Nor few, despising torments of vile flesh;
Embraced, as their lives Bride, have bitter deaths.
That sovereign smile, yet blossoms ón their lips;
Wherewith they, dauntless, patient, in their Faiths;
Deceased.

We might not tárry, in Únderworlds paths.
Yet mongst souls' blessed Dead of the White Isle;
(Where we more softly now and reverent tread):
Vouchsafed the foster-Voice, whom I besought;
I linger might, befóre clear shining rock;
At my petition become visible:

Wherein appeared a little cubicle.
White was it as mine Islands cliffs; whereo'er
A gentle dove stood graven, with wings displayed.
(There I alone, a private grief might open.)

With childhood eyes, I looked upon a tomb:
I an alabaster casket gazed upon.
Peace I read, (her lifes name,) shine graven thereon;
Who numbered with the blesséd, here sleeps and waits;
That Dawn celestial, which shall not fade:
(The eyes of love, even marble-stone may pierce!)

Like to a lily ín a thorny wood;
How beautiful thou wast, ín thy few life-days,
In forest of the World; so few alas.
Death cánnot dim thy vision, ín my heart.
Dear Lodestar bright; whereby I daily set,
My shallops course, in Lifes solicitous voyage.

Long cold be those dead lips; that word ne'er spake
Unworth, unsooth; those dying lips, that kissed,
Once kisst, (thy natures painful travail past;)
This last new-bórn on thy dear breast, alas.
For death, that may not be entreated, set
Had early, on thy loved front, His seal, alas!

Mother of my lifes breath, I living lift
O'er thee, these prayer-knit hands. I durst not weep;
Lest I of Under-Earth, the canon break.

I heard a Voice saying, Spirits which in their rests,
Behold the Heavenly Vision, cannot wake,
To Worldly speech. . . . Revealed, all in that moment,
Was to mine inward vision, Herthas Voice;
Mighty, not human-membered, Protean Spirit.

Through wards and galleries óf those Radious Rocks,
Us Herthas Voice compells, with quickened steps.
As startled hare in field scuds from her form:
So our alternate feet, speed under us.
When first the Voice again restrained our course:
Twin antique river-floods, in a wide Plain,
Great Digla and Frat, (amongst the sons of men,
Of old resounding fame,) we mirrored view:
That flow from mountain-fastness óf the Gods:
Which upholds heavens wide firmament, ón that half.

Those, water Lands, where settlements founded erst;
Were of men, gathered ín communities;

Amongst whose citizens, were those seers-Chaldeans,
Which erst divined stars' occult influences.

Had the Ancient-of-Days, mídst that fair champaign;
Whence doth the mornings sacred radiance spring;
Planted a garden; where, of thé floods' loam:
He tempered with His hands, His fingers formed
First fathers of the World; and breath of life,
In their clay breasts, He breathed: and charge them gave,
To keep it, ás His divine pleasure was.

Trembled the Earth, in thát She Man brought fórth.
And came, divided fróm brute clay, on Man;
A dívine breath: whence Speech and Mind, whereby
Todáy unto Héritage of all the Earth;
Those Adamites have attained.

Tilth found Mans sons;
In Morning of the World, through handiwork:
Where each soul hath received his acre-breath,
Of the Lords Field. They, an husband-folk, it pierce
With mattocks; they it water and subdue:
And eat of thé increase, and have enough.

Their plots made plain, they seed-pans of mould fined,
Prepare; and furrows for young sets, wherein
They in-let water, fróm their rivers streams.
And sith when mens' sons taste the dulcet fruit,
Of wild palm grove, that crowns Euphrates brinks:
They its seedlings set their sluices all along.

The crooked plough-share find mens later sons;
And tame under the yoke, stiff-necked wild bulls:
By whose napes strength, they cleave the glistering clod.

As for their grain, when harvest-moon is seen;
Blithe husbands whet the sickle; ánd put in
Their teeming corn-stalks billowing in wide wind.
Then joy and shouting ín each bountiful field:
Where maiden-companies, dight their virgin locks,
With corn-flowers, carol forth from plot to plot;
With timbrels, treading roundels, ás they wend.
Some, bever bear, in sweating water-skins;
Unto the thirsting reapers.

Further forth,
The smiles I see, where dance those tó an house;
That blossom, full of laughter, ón their lips,

Like dewy roses; where on foster Earth,
Mild-eyed grave ancients, pénsive sunning sit.

Their gentle choirs, returning have I seen,
In Merlins glass. They zealous-handed now;
Bind grips of corn-ears, roaming to and fro;
That treasure which reap men: their burdens bear,
Then in their bosoms, tó the threshing-floors,
At the steads' lathes; where tread slow-footed round,
The toilful ox-teams.

Vine-rows men have learned
And orchards, ín succeeding age, to plant.
When Time of Summer fruits is comen in;
Now vintage month: they pluck, God giving thanks,
Thereof. And there is mirth when blithe young men;
Tread, stived in fats, sweet clusters óf ripe grapes.

Hark to the merry pipes! And when those cease;
Men shout, and móngst them loud hand-clapping is.
And whén run in the urns is all the must;
Glad heydeguyes begin of lads and maids,
In Spring-tide of their lives. And who look on,
Jests bandy back again. And mumming seen
Is át their bonfires, neath vast night of stars.

At erst, that antique people of Shinars Plain;
Had framed them cabans, óf the rivers reeds.
Sith they of well-trode clay, have walled them bowers.
And being to multitude grown. God's human kin:
Is mongst them traffic, ín well-peopled plain:
Where, (whích were pinfolds,) hundred villages rise:
And wrights are in their streets; and chapmen trade:
Bearing on camels' bunches, díverse wares.
And later, Mother-City, is Babylon named;
Of all that March, girt-in with walls and towers.

But ah! vicissitudes óf this World of ours.
In brief precession of eternal Stars:
That erewhile glóry of builded clay of theirs;
Temples, proud palaces, míghty édified towers:
Tasks oft of múltitude, of human hands;
Reverted long ago ís, to desert dust:
As Image in a glass; as Dream that fades.

The Courts of Kings are nettle-beds; judgment halls,
Silent, where trembled breakers of their laws
Are haunts become of owls, and dragons lairs.

Gardens wherein their princes solace sought;
In hours of Summer heat and drought to walk:
Where they delighted, at their list, to pluck

All manner there, of timely pleasant fruits;
Reverted áre to wasteful wilderness.
Where now wild asses snuff-up, East winds breath:
That hardly, of á sere wíthered herb, may find
To feed their fills. And in Worlds days that are;
Where no man, of his free will, passeth more.

Nor more is that first Family of the World named,
Men of divíne descent. Mens lips forget
These days it to pronounce.

Soon after this;
In Underworlds Deep, were stayed our forward steps;
Suspent, before great antique sepulchre.
We viewed within, One ón his elbow leaned;
(Accustomed guise of men, in those East parts;)
Whose front girds gem-dight royal diadem:
Nebo, who instituted righteous laws,
Rock of his people, prophet, priest and king.

Tigris and Euphrates.

Nebo, in the kindred tongues, Babylonish, Hebrew, and Arabic, has the signification of Prophet.

Souls! quoth that venerable Sire evoked;
Which have not your mortality yet put off:

How came ye in híther! And éntered by what Gate?
To ghostly realms, of éverlasting sleep.
I read, revert! lest suddenly overtake,
You apúnishment, thát Heavens ordinance transgress;
Descended to Worlds Dead, before your deaths.

Made réverence, Mansoul hath responded thus:
We entered hither by the gates of Peace.
Know, O righteous Lord of men, mongst living wights,
Whom comforts yet the Sun, in World above;
We have diligently sought out righteous paths.
Nor, wíthout Heavens grace, bé we descended;
In an excess of spirit, yet living flesh,
To Earth beneath, to enquíre of Ages past:
Unto whom, as nearer to immortal Gods;
Was more revealed, than is vouchsafed to us:
Concerning Wisdom and eternal Light.

Nebo.
Heaven fúlfill ríght desires of pious hearts!
But what might, where remaineth naught únto ús;
Save Silent Shadow of everlasting Death;
My children, I, long dead, to you impart?

And lifting hís two consecrated hands;
Which wont his Nations prayers and sacrifices;
(He a Prophet, herald of eternal Gods;)

To offer up: he sware his royal oath,
By Throne of the Most Highest; him liever were,
To be a thrall, one captive led in war;
A tiller of Earths dust, or to keep flocks;
Or shipman trading by the rivers flood:
And see rise dewy dayspring on Earths face,
And smell that sweetness of the morrows breath;
Than crowned and sceptered King, here swoon in death.

Mansoul.
Warden of men, beséech thee! únfold to us;
That Wisdom heavenly, whích once Saviour Gods,
Time was, infused into thy living breast.

Nebo.
Is not His Eye all-seeing overall?
Contend to please Him: so do tó all men;
As thou wouldst be done by of them. Deceased;
So mayest thou enter This eternal rest.

Whiles yet great Nebo spake; so swiftly under us,
Removed our flitting feet, I might uneath
Draw vital breath: seemed us wide realms we passed.
When little and little ralented was our course.
We a mighty Land beheld, in Merlins glass:

Of mountain-chines, plains tawny, desolate;
Wherein clay villages, and mens tillage scant;
Few cities walled, of aspect ruinous.
Thus journeying, we be come, in Worlds beneath:
Where lo, the appearance ín a radious grot;
Of One of ancient days, of lofty looks:
Whom Zarathrustra names the Foster Voice.
He chants before an everburning hearth;
Whereon are leaping, thé undying tongues
Of hallowed flames: flames figuring ín his thought,
The invísible Image óf the Most High God
Of the Whole Earth, The God of Light, he hymns.

Zoroaster.

Opened Mansoul, before the Mage, his mouth:
And bóldly, All-háil, O Light of Elam! spake.
We adjure thee, O Teacher, open thou to us,
Seekers of very Sooth and Living Light:
What is that heavenly knowledge, which enshrined
Of old was in thy breast.
In that he spake;
We laid fast hold on thé infernal rock;

Lest suddenly, at únwares, were we ravisht forth
Whilst we with him conversed. Quoth Mansoul thus:
Who launcht the Stars, on their Eternal Course;
And stablished Ordinance óf the Sun and Earth:
And mánifold seeds of Life sowed, on Earths Breast?
Deemest thou, The ALL-WEILDER óf the Universe;
Divine ALL-SEER, Uphólding all things; past
Power óf conceiving of weak human thought:
Regardeth that infinite medley of mortal haps;
Which cometh each moment, on Earths dust, to pass!
Where men find hitherto féw well-ássured paths!
From thousand years' raptures raised, the Seer regardeth us:
And whiles he seemeth yet bete the sacred flame;
He answered tardily; Unweaned from fleshly life:
What seek ye, ere days prefixt of your own deaths?
In storied Deep, of thousand ages past;
Realm only of spirits.
Mansoul.
If an angels voice,
Hath spoken in thine ear; teach us, we adjure
Thee, by this holy hearth!

Zarathrustra.
Hear! Souls, not yet
Purged from blind-born affections of Man's flesh.

Of nothing nothing can derive. The Light
And Dark be set before your living steps.

Mansoul.
Can Being, we ask, be Parent of Itself?
From whence All floweth?

Zarathrustra.

The All, the Was, the Is,
Founded in Bosom of Eternity, both
The Visible ánd Invisible; when was yet
No place. And, ín that spake the Holy Breath;
The Elements were found: (pollute them not!)
And spread His hands the heavens, and hanged them forth;
On hinges, thát they evermore might revolve.

Be clothed each soul with light! Seek to All-Light:
Walk in the ways of Truth, eschew dark paths.
Thy garden bé, O Child of Light, good thoughts.
Thy deeds, which seeth All-Seeing Eye, good works:
So shalt thou inherit, ín the Paradise.

Mansoul.
Can none unfold Dark Riddle of the World;
Which so long time confounds weak human sense?

Zarathrustra.
Death cannot sound that Ocean of the Gods.

Mansoul.
What shall we do? since more we may not know.

Zarathrustra.

Seek Oneness óf your souls, with the Highest Good,
Which all things sways; Lord of all Might, Light, Love.

Observe ye in nothing do contaminate
Earths sacred Face, the Sun-Gods daily Hearth.

So may ye inherit wíth the spirits of Light:
And tread the Power of Darkness underfoot.
He said, and slept.

Book 3: The Radious Rocks

Still urged on our swift course;
Through inéxtricable Underworlds hundred paths:
Toucht hardly to hollow floor of Radious Rocks,
Our light removing feet. Our hearts misgave us;
Lest were we all-suddenly dasht, on some derne cliff.

When first we might withhold our flitting steps;
We shadowed view, in living World above;
Whiles darkly we behold, in Merlins glass;
Great mountain mass, shrouded with snowy fleece.

That vast sky-shouldering battlement passed beneath,
Tyned immane ranks, and Winter-World above;
We forests view, and mighty Land beyond;
Hills, plains and river-floods neath Sun, that shines
O'er cities rife, of many-peopled Hind.

In certain plot, whereon our glance did light,
We looked; and sheltering saw from noontide heat,
The Enlightened One, of cheerful countenance;

As soul which blessing hath of inward feast.
Tranquil, mild-eyed, as who sequestered lead,
Their few days' life, in pious abstinence.
Thus sojourning ín his path, the Teacher sate;
Under wide bo-trees bowering hermitage:
Pavilion, whích renewed her leafy locks;
Sith that thrice-blesséd seceded from the Earth;
Hath thóusand times, vénerable tradition sayeth.

Assembled thither, many unto him are:
Young men the most, whose souls an-hungered seek;
Of the saints lips, their spiritual meat.
With whom be found some few of riper years:
That rénounced Worlds desires, their former selves
Forsake, for their souls' health; and elders, which
All else forget, to live of world's lean almes;
Following the Master's steps, whereso he goeth;
Preaching in field, and street, Mans perfect life;
From place to place.

The same wide-spread green boughs,
A little company of wife-folk shrouds apart:
Which disenamoured óf Worlds cares, embrace;
A life, from every fleshly taint released:

Widows be those most part. Following far off;
They daily Instruction seek of thé Saints lips.

Is one of them that gentle bride, time was;
Whom he, in days of hís ingenuous youth,
Espoused, with bliss of heart, as custom was.
And dured that joy, betwixt them both, till day;
Whenas him thought, him called, Celestial Voice;
And dívine ray him beckoned from the Sky.

Whereto not disobedient, his rapt spirit,
Contending long in anguish with himself:
Fleeing the joy tumultous ánd loud Voice.
Of pipes and timpans, ín his fathers court:
He, her new delivered, the same night forsook.
Dim were his eyes, whiles he gazed on them both;
Mother and babe, in her sweet bosom, sleeping.

Lifting then the door-curtain to part forth;
He loving, sighed. He, a man; áh! would have taken,
Their new-born, in his fathers arms. Nathless;
Though wrought his heart with force, not looking back;
He issued tó cold clear night-stars, those eyes
Of Gods; (confused, he wist not what he would!)

To wander, as one outcast, in wilful want;
Forgetful of his good and father's house:
Thirsting, in agony óf his inward spirit;
If haply he might not hear, in field or forest;
Yet once that heavenly Voice, to his souls rest;
And see that ray, in Worlds default of Light.

Hath many a dying year brought forth her like.
Is he to-day the Teacher, the soul-blessed.
And she, the cherished of his blameless youth:
Grey-headed now, a lowly meek recluse;
(Seceded from the World, to him unwist;)
Follows mongst them, that seek souls' Highest Good.
All gather tó the Buddha, wíth mild looks;
Preaching, beside Hinds paths, the blameless life.
Bare be they, even ás he, thé-Illumined, is;
Of áll Worlds good: they exchánge thereof have made,
For fragrant poverty, and ábstinence that he taught;
For freedom, fróm contagion of birth-flesh.

i.e., The Enlightened One.

Benign of aspect ís that pious Light,
Of hundred generations of the East;

Whom age and penury hath lóng-time now consumed,
But not subdued.
Naught hath he tó his mouth:
Save daily pittance óf lean rice, that cast
Unwilling worldly wights, in his almes dish:
And rusty weed, which laps his clayling corse;
Hewed éven as we do see Earths foster-dust,
Beneath our feet; stitcht ónly of dísused clouts.
And ín his hand, that which his feeble pace
Upholds, a staff.
Constrains so a pity the heart,
Of Hinds blind folk, which beats in Buddhas breast:
That eachwhere, albeit full-wéary he cómeth, he teacheth
All who will hear, with words of light and peace:
How may, through steadfast vertue, a man raze out;
Souls stains, ingenerate ín his mortal breast.

We stood anon, to listen tó his sooth;
And radiant beams, as of a well-of-light;
Saw issue, fróm the Buddhas sinless breast:
And shone his sérene countenance, whiles he spake:
When finally, O beloved, shall be quenched,
All malice, within your faithful hearts, rejoice .

Feeling the saint, the hour of his decease,
Approach, he spake again; Faint not your hearts,
Which weaned were from the World. This saying, soulglad,
But languishing now his venerable flesh,
He paused. Lo, and droopeth upon that sacred breast,
The Buddhas head, and sinks his feeble corse!
His spirit from that frail tenement of Worlds life,
Is parted forth.

Fowls plained, mongst the green boughs,
Shrill chiding in their several kinds. Field beasts
Deep-lowing mourned, with sons of men, that wept:
Winds wailed aloft; trees shed their crowns of leaves:
Wide-shadowing clouds, cast darkness ón low Earth.

Mother of Soul-religions, Asia, whence
Glad dawn, when night is passed, reverts to us.
'T is Thy Large Foster-Bosom, which at first,
Lent Spiritual Light, to Worlds West Parts.

Diviners, ín whom dwelleth an heavenly Breath,
Above the Wisdom of this World; (whereas,
Their lives'-long, wont mens feet in mire stick fast:)
Thy Seers, spake óf a Time-to-Come, unborn;

And witness bare of Heavens hid purposes;
Albe they oft prophecíed to thé Winds ears.

Words of their mouths, were like to raindrops falling:
Drops, full of golden light, on a waste sand;
Which issue again as well-springs, hemmed around,
With healing herbs; whereof whoso doth taste,
Shall be refreshed.

And therethrough many hearts,
In many diverse lands, be offered up
Unto heavenly Throne, and thé Great Power thereon:
Like those wild tears of sacred terebinths;
Which gather men adventurous, ín occúlt
Far-off Worlds solitudes and beyond all paths;
Stark mountain steeps, where Sun unhymned mounts forth:
Which fume sith, ón all altars of round Earth.

But in our Vision, ever hurried forth;
Being hidden fróm our sight the shipmans star:
We wiss not, under what Worlds coasts we are.
When first we might contain our flitting steps:

We inhuman Plain perceive, in Merlins glass;
Of cold and darkness, daughters of bleak Night.
Land trodden down of hoofs, cart-villages;
Of Tatar hordes, milk-nourished of their mares.
Which passed, upleaning in a calm divine;
We unknówn enránged vast mountains underran.
They, our glass shows, confine ón and compass in,
Great land-breadths green. And lo! much-peopled Region;
Which Seres our sires named, of aspect strange:
Full of fields' tilth, rife villages ánd great towns.
Much toilful husband-folk, regarding wide,
Bent under burdens, like to beasts of charge;
Men clothed in silk, we see go ín large glebe.
And presently hím, whom mirrored we have sought;
By great good hap, we eyed, in a field path;
Kung the wise-hearted, loitering nót far off:
As was his custom, on a country-side;
Mongst the Lands commons, ancient of mild mood.

Confucius.

With few in company, his scholars, Kung fares thus;
With comely gravity on, from State to State:

Seeking some Prince, which should reform the Time;
Conformably with what précepts he sets forth;
Of virtue, ingénerate in all human breasts.
Who him súe, wait on Kungs sayings, observe his looks;
Whose gaze demiss, is fastened on the ground.
And oft as Kung wends pensive, he recites,
Some Old World lays, and sáyings of antique sages.
And like as child seeks tó his fathers arms;
They of Kung, in each new hap, as aught befalls;
Enquire some new Instruction, fór their lives;
In reverent wise.
Nor seld that Wise-sayer toucheth,
The tuneful lute, he alway bare in hand.
When, ón those dreaming strings, Kung softly plays:
Them seemeth they hear, celestial harmonies.
Whereúnto should a man attúne his being.
Kung, ín his progress, stays; he on us gazed!
And, Strangers, quoth, of other Land than ours;
What seek ye? And how, not yet disbodied spirits;
Found ye éntry ínto our Mid-Kingdom here?
Mansoul.
Long-time we sought, in living World, Truth-Sayer,

Heavens oraclés. And entrance having found,
To Ages of the Earth, laid up beneath:
Wisdom and saving Knowledge, ín right paths;
We of thém likewise enquire.

Kung.

I enter not,
In things too hígh for me. Mán was born upríght.
Obey heavens hests, which written are on all hearts.
Whoso hath purged his ówn and burnished bright,
Shall read them there. Eschew all crooked paths.
In whátso Land thou comest; observe thou there
Mens customs, and obey that Countrys Laws;
Which shadows be óf things heavenly on the Earth;
And testimony of the Gods.

Watch furthermore,
To bridle all blind affections of gross flesh;
Not kill, for then the human World must cease,
Two selves war in Mans being: the high Intent;
That walketh in Truth; this sue, souls comeliness:
And that suppress, the Beast beneath the breast.
Harbour ne'er in thy spirit a baneful thought.
Measure, benevolence, grace and harmony:
These be the fruits, the wares, the ornaments;
Where Reason rules of every righteous breast.

Kung said; and wéary in going, his trembling rote,
Tempered: and tó his waked strings' áccords, quoth;
(Words partly heard, whiles wé drew further forth:)
Crumble the hills, each master-beam shall break:
And who seek after Wisdom; ás a plant,
Must likewise perish.
We, whom Herthas Voice,
Hath hithertó unnumbered leagues conveyed;
Nigh spent our spirits, wayfáre now long last stage.
Ends then, in vast blind Cirque, our outward course:
Wherein those devious paths, we lately trode;
Returning ón themselves, in spires, ascend.

Great Asias shores, Earths triple-Continent,
We view in Merlins glass; and fróm the plot
Where stand our feet, how stoops an only path;
Gallery, óf great breadth and height, neath Oceans Flood.
That hundred leagues'-way leads, quoth Herthas Voice;
Towards Island Kingdom, Pride of Earths Still Seas;
Which over-against this Mighty Mainland lies:
Green gracious Isles; whereas from ancient days,

(Long únknown tó West Nations,) a great-souled
Sequestered, úrbane, valorous People dwell:
In Arts of Peace and War, of passing skill.

But to ús was not it given, so far to pass:
Nor tó that later-found New Continent;
So great already in multitude of mankind;
In enterprises ánd all civil arts:
Ánd to be greater still, in Worlds to come.
So an aching langour háth possessed each sense.
Wherefore now Herthas Voice impósed; must this
Be Eastfórth, our wáy-bruised feets' last halting-place.
From whence, by other paths of Worlds beneath;
Should we return upon our homeward voyage.

I leaned, long lacking sleep, to a lúminous cliff;
With throbbing heart, and trembling évery limb:
All thought suspended, happy seemed their case;
That sleep, that rest, just spirits, in Underworlds Dark.
Their lives' pains ceased, their fleshly sojourn past.

Till called me tó rememberance Herthas Voice:
Bidding me rouse, be óf good cheer; and taste,
To souls refreshing, of the Muses cup;

Wherein should spring ambrosia, of itself.
I bare this in a wallet, with Merlins glass.

With aspiration then, to Stars of heaven;
I took it forth. When óf that sprinkling sap;
Ghostly not earthly, as blood is of the grape,
I had tasted: I perceived new vital warmth,
To come again, and díffuse through my being:
And faded from my limbs, their stony frost.
Sith with that chrism, anointed my bruised feet:
They too were healed, of long way-weariness.
So that when bade the Voice us to remove,
I also ready was.

With troubled hearts:
In óuter Circuit of those Radious Rocks,
Which there less luminous, néw ways now we pass.
And gleaming saw, strewed adamants, under-foot.
Tears were they of souls, that wept in ages past,
For Righteousness, which líght lent to our steps.

Yet further forth, (now Westing tends our course;)
We reached dim luminous Mansion, óf just spirits:
Cliffs' vast Recess. Where entering-in our steps,
We paused; for sounded, Daughter of the rock,

Strange manifold Echo, fróm before our pace.

Not unlike tó those latomies, ís that grot;
We sometimes find remained, in Súmmer Lands:
Whence Greeks and Romans hewed great Temple-stones;
To Eternity vowed, which even our days admire.
Moreo'er seemed vocal, thóse craggéd walls and floor;
When haply I smote thereto the Muses' staff.
Then Mansoul spake; Upholder of our steps,
Was not, Oh Voice divine, herein, the Fates;
Hanged tables of Déstiny? Ah, might, (Thou aiding us!)
We find and read the Legend therein writ!

THE VOICE

What should those prófit Mans disbódied spirits?
Mans destiny is veiled, with an eternal cloud.
The Fates' decrees, nót visible are to sight.
That occult knowledge tó themselves reserve,
Aye-living Gods.

Mansoul fell in discourse;

With certain spirits, whom men deemed Friends-of-God:
Shepherds of souls, unto whóm committed was,
Of Heaven, to feed and fold the human flocks.
Likewise with some philosophers he discoursed,
Of hidden causes; ánd with poets old;
Which, in their days, with child went of great thoughts:
Men of prowd parts; whom the Ionic rocks
Brought forth, to solace óf mens travaillous breasts.
(But of their utterance, ás nights dream that fades:
I few words only, may recall to mind.)

Mansoul.
And is there ány, amongst the sons of men;
To whose Téstimony áll Humanity might trust?
Were not they, as we be, gropers ín thick Murk!
Nor may those wéll be reconciled, mongst themselves:
Whom Mankind deemed, were Heralds of the Gods.

Voices.

Is not the World all guile? Born in Worlds wood,
Where life preys upon life; mens homicide hearts,
Dissemble sooth, to máintain their own parts.

Some dreameth, his yesternights begotten wit;

Unfolding tardily, ás Spring leaves' bud doth:
Third part of whóse life-days, night-dotage is,
Of dreams; and childhoods weakness hardly less:
Sufficeth to sound illimitable Universe!

Other Voices.

The lips of many have spoken words of Life.
In this, at least, the best agree in one:
That ín well-dóing and righteous human life;
Sure pathway lies untó immortal Gods.

In áll the haps and changes of the Time
And of their World, which those have sought to purge:
Mans Reason is his lamp and only guide.
Nor uniform is that Reason of a man;
But warped, with every variance of the World;
His time, place, partiálity ánd bríef years.

We sought, advance to that recesses end;
And shining monuments of forgotten dead;
If we some name might read; on whose grave-stone;
Sing little birds loves hymns, in living World;
And Summer-blossoms strews some kindly wind,
Breathed gently from above; their green earthmounds.

But us forbade to tarry Herthas Voice,
Which companied with us. Reverent only might
We sálute them from far; sighing, Rest in Peace!

Hundred and hundred léagues' way, after this,
We glide, we speed; much líke those hobbling leaves.
Which blustering March hurls forth: seemed our flit feet,
More rathe than swallows' flight. In headlong race;
Seemed memory daze, and swoon our feeble sense.
Whiles still, as steel to loadstone drawn, we haste.
Rise up, to meet our breasts, and neath us pass;
One after other, seemed Hels hundred paths.
Wherein no more we wot than this, That lies;
Henceforth before our steps, long homeward course.

We felt our steps restrained, where rose above us,
An upland Plain and desolate wilderness;
Far from the paths of men, in Merlins glass.
One of the great waste places of the Earth.
In Winter chill, in Summer the Suns Hearth.
Whereon there falléth seld a life-giving rain:

A weary ground, which seldom shadowed is,
Of any cloud; which stiffened lies as bronze:

A glowing grit, únder Suns fervent gaze;
Or scalding sand. The lean Inheritánce;
Of men that dwell, disherited of the World,
In wandring Tribes: sith World began, remained
Unsown; wherein the locust is brought forth.

Void silent sólitude: Líke unto a Strand,
By day and thé clear starry night alíke;
Of the éverlasting Gulf of Heavens Height.
A dewless Coast, whereas few rusty ribs;
Craigs of wild goats be seen, of shapeless rocks.

We view there, tented Children-of-the-East;
Keepers of a few camels and lean flocks;
Which all their Worldly good; and for whose need
Of pasture, they continually must remove.
Lo, as we gaze; a camp of their black booths
Is being taken up; and they dislodge.
Towards sóme well-pit, is set those tribesmens face:
Where after journeying, they anew will pitch;
Homes of a day, in empty wilderness.
Digged were their wells, of óld time: seld delve them
Now their young men of pith; in hope to find

New water: wíthout other instruments;
Than their staves only and hollow of their hands twain.

This Arab-folk, sith thousands of Suns years;
Áfter the custom of their fathers, dwell
In herdsmens tents: yond four-square flitting-booths;
Whose walls be home-spun curtains, of hair-cloth;
The women weave, of their beasts' hoarded fleece.

Stand goodly open, those black tents of theirs,
Pitcht in ínhospitáble high wílderness.
Whose poor indwellers wont is, to receive;
To shelter and surety, guestship, fellowship;
As they too ben GODS guests, HIS fugitive:
And thé forwandered wáyfarer, in théir wild paths;
HE sends, to their scant hearths, to prove their hearts.

Wherefore, beseech THEE, ALL-FATHER for this sake;
Remember them for good: and fill their mouths,
For Want their portion is, from year to year;
With daily bread!

Óne in each nomad camp,
By right of his descent, is the Tribes Sire:

Who his tribesfolk leads, upon the desert side.
First, in their common Council, mild and wise;
He rules, but none in wilderness compels.

Hinds drive the camels in, and gather herds
Their flocks: for now his tent, 'tis seen, is struck.
Housewives cast their tent-curtains and pluck up
The cords in haste. Each loads her household stuff;
And girds on her couched beast.

Be trooping out,
Now all those slow-paced scattered camel-folk.
Well-faring wíghts' wives ríde in saddle crates;
With leathern tongues and bravery of fluttering clouts,
Bedight.

Fleet dromedaries few possess:
Those hastily mount them; and are riding forth.
Bearing at shoulder their long wavering spears.
Some póssess besides mares: and those they lead,
'Long-side them, by a cord. Ready on their backs
To leap: were haply in thís their circuit seen,
Landlopers, cattle-thieves, in large desert-plain.

Slow-stálking camels, ín this wilderness-march,
Bearing all burdens; wreathe down their long necks,

To crop the sere herb or each wilderness bush,
As they breast forth.

The foremost now arrive:
They couch them stiffly, ón a sun-baked grit.
Gaunt knees push out, to settle their huge bulks;
And so remáin. House-wives dismount, unload;
And busy them, to build anew their booths.
Each one her tent-cloth spreads; beats in the pegs,
With some wild stone; stakes undersets; and stayed
With worsted cords, her new homestead uprears.

To-day this wandering herdfolks sojourning place;
Is by a square-mouthed well, unwonted great;
Men digged of yore, upbuilt of dry stone-work;
And scored by generations' twisted ropes.

Camels stand thereby, stámping ín the sludge,
Their great pad-feet, for flies. Be gathered soon,
Young men girt, wíth their tackle, tó thís task.
They busily draw now, sweating in the Sun;
From the four brinks: And that, with hardy foot,
As where no curb-stone is, hide-buckets up:
Keeping the while loud chant of manly throats;
They vary at their list.

The hour gainst Noon:

Now the more tardy sheep-flocks be led in.
To wait their turn, they in dry bed, lie down
Of seldom-falling rains' brief winter-stream,
Worn in that desert sand.

A maiden nighs,
Leading barefoot in, her lambs' little troop:
For poor she is, though of regardful House.
Shaped by the Hand Divine, her stature is like
A palm-stem by the waters; as she stays;
One comeliest, mongst the daughters of her Tribe;
Like to the desert roes, of gentle mould.

She looketh forth maídenly, confident, blithe of mood.
For this is She, that ín dark day of strife,
In wíldernéss, wíth her Tribes enemies;
In all mens', aye, and in their foemens' sight!
Stout-hearted maid, an Ornament is of Grace.

Her Tribefolks Banner; ín deckt camel-crate;
'Tis She, that prowdly seated thus on height;
Warbles shrill battle-note, éntering ínto fight;
Kindling, this hour of trial, of her Tribes
Bold sons, (her brethrén,) every manly heart;

To leap, midst flame of spears, in her loved sight;
To worthy deeds, deeds even to thé black death.

The Ateyfa.

In idle hour, as this, (a day of Peace;
Which seld-while long endures in wilderness;
Full of alárms, blood feuds, old enmities.)
In yonder booths, where tribesmen now resort;
That light down from their beasts, in the Remove;
To some chief tent, shelter from the Suns blaze;
(That beats upon all heads!) to daily chat;
And counsel take, óf the Tribes common cares:
That Daughters haply uttered name, shall wreathe;
Not only young lips, but move old stout hearts!

Housewives already are sallying from the tents;
Bearing spent water-skins, ín a land of thirst:
To fill them at the pit. How goodly is that
Full, thick, strong-sounding, in the nomads' ears;
Of poured-out water, in their leathern troughs!

A new Impulsion our forwandered feet
Bears fórth. Esáus hills wé and sandy region,
Soon pass beneath: then under Midians cliffs,
Behold a Valley of Tombs, hewn in sand-rock.

Were those the eternal sumptuous sepulchres;
Of old forgotten tradeful merchant-wights;
That gold and frank-incense fetched, from far South parts:
Dwellers themselves, in víllages óf clay walls;
Which sliding Time now utterly hath díssolved.

Those their eternal mansions, stand defaced,
In ruinous ranks, in rémote solitude;
Where passeth none ány more of hís free-choice.
Their rotten carcasses, lóng ago have poured out;
Seekers of treasures. Wild men of the waste;
Their cere-cloths rent, with laughter, on blown sand.
Loathe foul hyenas, which there lope by night;
Their strewed now pithless bones, and them defile.

Petra.

Soon, neath new éxtreme region, shows our glass,
Have reached our steps. What horror of bergs aloft!
Inhúman sílent solitude of sharp dust:
Wind-burnished stones and rocks! Eternal drought
Here reigns; and granite Horeb towers to heaven.
Gladly it we forsake, and further pass.

Then far-descended Nilus, noble Flood,
From Ethiopian heights; and great sea-lakes;
Where dwell negritic tribes, of Africs midst;
Our mirror shows: Whose fruitful stréams make glad,
In their late course; twinned Mizraims ancient sand.

Our marvelling eyes behold, in ríver-cliff;
Mens' carcasses, even now, whole and incorrupt;
(That River-Lánds antíque embalmers art!)
Which lived, ere thousands of Earths lightfoot years:
Laid-up, in gráve-shelves, many as martins' nests.
Exháling yet, to sense, strange noisome breath!
Of cassia and cinnamon, olibane, balsamum, pitch.

Cited, one wakened ín his cerements;
And seemed unfold his iron-stiff wounden corse.
So made respónse, we míght perceive uneath;
A priest he sometime was, in Pharaohs House.
Whilst Pharaohs ruled, seed of their first King-Gods.

Sinai.

PRIEST

What souls be ye, that óf yourselves remove,
Yet living flesh, in ghostly Underworld?
Which neither wafted were, o'er sacred flood;

Nor laid on sleep, with pompous funerals!
How demon-guarded precincts míght ye pass;
And seven strong circuits, óf swart Gods of Death?

What tidings bruited were, in Wórld above,
When ye descended? Shineth yet Father Sun,
And wayward Moon, from Pinnacles of high Heaven?
I do record me, whát night I slept forth:
Invading impious arms had dispossessed
Our Lord: and wás his divíne Throne, downcást;
Whereon, great Kings-of-men, had Pharaohs sate;
Through un-númbered cycles óf returníng years;
Graven ón the monuménts, of the great Sun-God.
I also at Ons high altar, fell down slain.

MANSOUL

In Mizraims river-lands, thy People dwell,
Secure. O'er all, the Right and Just prevail.
The harvests óf their fields more plenteous are,
Than ever ere.

But as for us, descended;
Yét living flesh, to Pit of Worlds Great Death:
We Seekers are; if so were, might we more

Souls understanding have, of long nightmare
Of doubt; which hitherto holds suspent mens hearts:
How erst was Aught; and óf the Divine Power.

This we óf thee require; Pronounce to us,
Those words of Life, which entering once a year
With fasting lips, Ons adyt; Pharaohs Seer
Recited; touching Riddle of the Universe.

Priest.

Unborn Eternity! Souls! in your fond quest;
Is oft-while Time grown old upon Worlds Earth:
But ye be alway children, which it seek.

Shall boast itself, the water of a croc;
Gainst mighty eternal Nilus, divine flood;
Which fills sea-Deep, and waters wide the Earth.
Twixt Man and heavenly knowledge, lies vast Gulf,
Mind cannot overferry: nór which pass,
May even the lesser Gods.

Who walketh in Truth,
And giveth almes; for the only recompense
Which cometh of Heaven: hím will Osiris save;
When tó his Hall of Judgment, he arrives.

Mansoul.
Is such your wisdom?

Priest.
More than this is vain.

Book 4: Great Underworld's Voyage

We are speeding under seas; shows now our glass,
Tumultuous wind-tosst watery wilderness,
Beneath then Cretes long-ranged white cliffs, we pass:
Isle hundred-citied, ín Old World renowned;
Where Minos ruled, estéemed son of a God;
For his great wisdom both and worthy deeds.
Who his People, statutes taught and ordinances.
Wherefore to him etérnally assigned the Gods,
A righteous judgment-seat in Underworld.

We saw him not, but rávished further forth,
Continued; tíll, with joy of heart, we raught,
Europas shore, hem of Home Continent.
Is that neath Suniums foreland; whóse proud cliff,
Crowns pillared témple óf the blue-eyed Goddess;
Which guards the Attic coast.

Eftsoon new hap!
Shone gladsome gleam athwart our Underworlds path.

Us seemed then mount, in our abysmal course!
As were towards some well-mouth of living Earth.
Come to ourselves, lifting up dazing looks:
We béheld stand famed statua of Phidias;
Athena, on age-renowned Acropolis-cliff!
Helm-clad, with spear advanced, proténding shield:
And the aegis, wherein bears that maiden Goddess,
Medusa embossed, shine on Her warlike breast.

One cometh this way, from Cecrops city forth;
Through the ágora and busy traffic óf Greeks' street:
A man whom many observe, where he doth pass.
Who is there in Athens, knows not those quaint looks,
Of Sophroníscos son, who goeth barefoot;
Wise-wayward thus, his weed a blanket-cloth?

Dwells oft-time lofty heart, in lowly cot;
So Socrates doth: nor seld is, vile wight rotteth,
Entombed already, in mánsion of the great.
Poor of Worlds good, (he lightly esteemeth thereof;)
A dívine Spirit abideth, in Socrates breast.
Who come now tó late evening of his years,
By áge is not subdued: but aye he seeketh,
If so be hé, through Reasons reach, might 'scape
From érror; ánd attaín to tread the path,

From now henceforth, of Everlasting Truth.

Erewhile of masons' craft; in marble blocks,
Hewn in Pentélic cliffs, drawn tardily forth,
On creaking ox-wains, o'er that thymy plain;
Young Socrates, wíth his father, images wrought;
Of the álleged cómpany, of Gréeks' Olympic Gods.
Now, leaving hís old art, with chisel sharp
And mallet of grave speech; he fashioneth out
The form of Virtue, in young mens minds unripe.

Is Socrates nighing ín their Potters' Street:
Approach two young men fróm the contrary part,
Criton and Cebes friends, his hearers both.
They anón with Socrates meet, in powdrous place;
Where two ways meet. And anon went apart,
Those stand now, a little company, as their wont is;
In homely-wise discourse. Is that town street,
Their street of citizens' sumptuous sepulchres;
This other is Athens' sacred-way, whereby
To-day the Elévsis Pilgrimáge shall pass.
And presently are many on-lookers, gathering near.
Begin first mystæ alreády by to fare.
In bands those march: and fróm a fellowship,
A young man steps forth, óne of upright looks,

Stranger of Elis, hearer of the sage:
Phaedon by name. Though clad in purple weed;
As longeth untó this high-days pilgrimage;
Is he of those whom Socrates most esteems;
Constant in virtue, ánd of life unstained.
He joineth himself to them, which talk with Socrates.

Hark! hów from vanward óf the sacred train;
Iacche! Iacche! Theseus citizens shout:
With whom march companies, fróm Greeks' several States.
To Elevsis-ward of all is set the face.

Phaedon.
What cry is this from midst the pilgrimage?

Cebes.
Who foremost; pass now bourne-stone ón the bridge,
Which over-rides Kephissos droughty brook.

Phaedon.
I a retinue see, of priests and novices;
And maidens, bearing canisters ón their heads.

Cebes.
Offerings those bring, of Atticas summer fruits:
These other, ínstruments bear of sacrifices.

Criton.
All wend up purified, having yestre'en washed

Their bodies ín Phalerian waves. All trust,
Come morrow; on Image óf that greatest Goddess,
And well and dolorous stone, their eyes shall gaze.

Cebes.
And mystery of thé Great Mothers burning torch,
Behold, that token of saving Light in death;
Kindled at rising star, amidst the signs;
(Which known to only few of Her chief priests:)
When suddenly óf the Arch-mystagogue shall proclaimed;
Be to áll her worshippers, fróm the Temple-porch:
Who is purified, whóso is undefiled, approach;
To enter ín the Sanctuarys inner court.

Criton.
Arcana they behold there, but may not
In ány wise, sáve to the Initiate,
Commémoráte: wherein high covenant is
Established, for each soul, with Hels swart Goddess:
Ensuring aid and favour ín dark tomb.

Cebes.
Unto whom the hierophants únsealed lips pronounce,
That occult holy Name: Which countersign given,
Of dísembodied soul, shall mitigate
The brow severe, of swárt Infernal Power:

Whereunto is shown that mystery of thé seed-corn;
Which though it dieth, sháll revive again.

Phaedon.
What néw thing doth this mány-tongued multitude shout?

Criton.
They who go by Athenas olive-trunk, ít salute:
Tree that once sprang full-grown up, fróm the root;
What time, contending with Poseidon, God;
Her gift to men, Pallas, yond high rock! smote.

Cebes.
That the ancients hold, was on the Acropolis cliff:
Nor other thán some venerable slip;
Is this, (remained of that same parent stock;)
Which stands now, all cavernous old, by the way side:
Her rind behanged with glittering offerings;
Likewise her great-grown scions, her round about.

Phaedon.
New shout; chant, rising from ten thousand throats;
Mingled with Bacchic cries, and dancing foot!
Who páss by, tríp all with ecstatic looks!

Cebes.
They a World transfigured see, hymning the Goddess.

Criton.

Sign ís, that the first pilgrims nigh now strait;
Wherein herôon stands of Orpheus;
Who went down quick to gates of Tartarus.
That wíth his gilded lyres soul-ravishing sound,
Tamed beasts and birds. Even rocks and rooted trees;
Followed, as had they ears, his wavering steps.

Where Orpheus stayed, those stood him ranged around.
And do so éven untó this day, remain.
Reported is, that even swift tumbling streams,
Their liquid foot sustained; whose rumbling floods,
Lulled had the measured melodies óf his verse.

Who in the vaward of this Pilgrimage march.
Wont in that place them, twixt twin cliffs disperse;
Each after their devotion and intent;
Chanting some Orphic canticle ás they wend
Forth, seeking hallows móngst the sacred rocks;
Friends, and companionships, visiting óratories;
Which, éach fratérnity best reputeth of.

Socrates,
(returning to himself.)
As many Gods, so many sanctuaries!

100

Criton.
Following the more part ón, from shrine to shrine;
They linger this day out. Other make haste,
To pluck them herbs, meet for the bodys health;
So those were gathered ás Demeters priests
Allege, with dew-drops hoary ón their leaves.

Cebes.
Figuring wan tears, that dívine Mother shed;
Suing far Echo, of sád Persephones voice.

Criton.
All háving thus dúly accomplished and performed;
And left their several shrines bedecked with flowers:
Will all this mingled multitude, át third morrow;
With merry jest and song, and garlands crowned,
Return inítiate.

Phaedon.
Mén, wives, thrálls and strangers;
What is it all these look for, that flow by us?

Criton.
Holiday, brave garments, humanfellowship;
'Tis better than a fair. Whereto put this:
Pilgrims return, with honour, to their hearths;
Their estimation, ín the market-place,
Increased.

Cebes.
With bodies sanctified and merit;

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Gained, gainst lives' ending and dark day of Death.

Socrates.
Can aught the beasts conceive, of human thought?
No more can fleshling wight, of few days' life;
Reach unto, imagine, reason of aright,
The hidden counsel, óf immortal Gods.
As soon a potters amphora might contain;
All billows of yond sea-plains glistering flood.

Phaedon.
How can Mans soul, that labours sore for meat;
Conversing dáily in gúileful market-place;
Attain to righteous life?

Socrates.
Reach heaven our spirits,
May with each breath; and wíth high Gods converse.

Phaedon.
Dark ís thy speech!

Criton.
Speak plainly, O Socrates, to us.

Cebes.
Divinest thou aught of death?

Criton.
'Tis that we ask!
Declare once openly thou, thy very thought.

Socrates.
Flesh born of flesh, must turn again to dust.

Criton.
Shall, quencht the lively spark, that Sélf was in us: . . .

102

Cebes.
We révert thither, whence we issued forth?

Phaedon.
Or purged thereby, the mist of mortal sense;
And memory of Lifes disease, in Worlds unrest . . .?

Cebes.
Exhale mongst echoes óf Gods Universe?

Criton.
When daweth a day, whereín we ourselves are not;
But ás one of late Winters fallen leaves:
Remaineth there aught, we dream not of, for ús?

Cebes.
Can any interpret, chant Demeters priests
Recite in their rapt mood?

Phaedon.
Shall ferry, on wings of Light,
Our spirits and tower to some celestial coast?
Stands Socrates sílent!

Cebes.
Fállen in sóme new trance.

Criton.
Stands on one sole.

Phaedon.
Like pillar, that bears up
Some noble architrave!

Cebes.
A way he hath;
An ecstasís whích him táketh, whenso the Voice,
Which harbours in his breast, speaks with his spirit.

Criton.
Thus stands wise fowl of great Athena Herself;

103

As we it, on our drachmas, see impressed.

Cebes.
When mantleth she her wing; as merrily mocks,
In that last Comedy of his; who saw it not?
Our Aristóphanes; whéreat men laughed fast.

Criton.
Clods those, on marble benches; blindborn brood;
Which that day made wise Socrates, their lewd sport!
Mongst the night-watch, so many as I have asked;
Averred, Athenas bird stands seldwise thus.
But Socrates no more minds our trivial talk.

Cebes.
I yesterday heard him cite that Orphic Verse;
Soul to the body is, wherein it doth lodge:
As dream of lyre is, to the chords and wood.
Should both consenting sound of one accord.

Socrates
(returning to himself.)
. . . And live in Faith of Thé Eternal Good .
Who dares impeach His Justice! No man knoweth;
To what intent Gods made and marred the World.
Nor whether Gods made men, or Man made Gods.

Now at mine entréaty, hath suffered us the Voice,
Revert; retrace awhile our homeward steps.

104

Have from our vísion, Athens' city and rock,
And Socrates faded ín the Muses' glass.
As weary and faint, we hold again East-course.
Once more neath flint-grey justling waves, we haste.
Nor long was, ere on our left hand, we viewed
The Cyprian Isle above.

Now plainly in view,
Comes Canaans coast and Carmels fruitful brow.
Is Libanus even reflected, from far off,
The sighings of whose parfumed sacred boughs:
Attuned seem to our souls' inquietudes.

Lo and Hermon, with His snows' exalted Crest;
Leaning to Heaven; Angels' alighting-place:
Frequented óf their wingéd heavenly Host;
An holy Mount, in old Phœnician sight;
Whereof that name He hath; shown in our glass!

We pass neath Sharon and Samarias Site.
From thence a lean Land-breadth before us lies;
For husband folk; of rolling stones and rocks.
Where deeds recorded are, to háve been wrought;
Which eversith hath perplexed Mans halting thought:

105

And too much yet divideth heart from heart.

Soil which aforetime, á tent-dwelling folk;
Of thé Arabian upland Wilderness;
Outwandered, wíth their cattle, from beyond
Euphrates flood; and Tribes of graziers sith,
In Egypts border lands: ascended thence,
Confederate tribes, (their Chronicles thus relate;)
Reaved with armed hand, from who before them dwelt;
Being Peoples of like speech and kindred blood:
As they allege, commanded of their God.

Mongst whom, become a Nation, sith, rose some;
That prophesied, of a day unborn, to come;
When a Celestial Kingdom should descend;
And dwell for ever, in chosen Israels Land.

It is with troubled hearts, in Underworlds paths;
We hold this further course. Nor far we pass;
Since little that Province is, in length and breadth;
Ere City-hill, of Jews' solemnities;
Is mirrored in our glass.

That rocky soil;
Ere had tent-dwelling Hebrew Tribes a name;
An Highway of antique Nations enemies;

106

(Great Pharaohs' namely and old Assyrian Kings':)
Was, trod down oft, of their contending armies.
Wherein yond Watch-hill, Hold of rámmed clay walls;
With rough-hewn timber gates and brazen bars:
Razed oft, arose as oft re-edified.

Hold, that in later Age, town walled with towers:
The Hill-strength was, of husbandfolk, Jebusites.
Which David, ín his day; a minor son,
Of Jesse of Judah; wíth his men at arms,
That Band which clave unto his rising Part;
Took, and a Kingdom stáblished in their blood.

Was he, One ere that kept his fathers flocks,
Among the herding hinds in Wilderness.
Valiant in minstrelsy, ás he rose in years;
A climbing spirit and founden stout in fight:
Him Saul, their King, preferred to be his squire.

From whom he estranged, within a while, became
Leader of homeless men, in févered deeps,
And not inhábited; which descend midst thorns,
And tamarisks, únto Jordans dying flood.

107

Lurkers in caves, living by nightly stealths;
After the manner of thé Arabians,
Outlaws and reavers; óf their neighbours' flocks.

Zion, interpreted Fortress.

Our eyes behold a Citys platform mount;
Of craggéd róck-sills, lacking comeliness:
Old sea-grounds sédiments, long before Man was:
Heaped to two furlongs' height.

The city-walls
We pass beneath, to a strait and stoney place:
That lies without of Hebrew sepulchres.
Was there, before a tomb, one of those hewn;
Under low sculptured eaves, of living rock:
Where great wheel-stone is seen, two cubits thick;
Hard to be rolled, which closed the sepulchre:
Were upheld our approaching reverent steps.

So it seemeth us rádiant! Was it here Jeshua,
Of Judah, a Jew according to the flesh;
From cross was, píous, bý who lóved Him, láid?

Words that He taught, were words of deathless Life:
Such being as no mans lips, before His, spake.
Words which sown ín mens hearts, lift ever sith;
Souls from Earths dust, to Heavenly Fatherhood.

108

All suddenly, ás we worshipped ín that place;
Seemed His adorable Vision ríse before us;
Like ás He appeared transfigured ín the mount.
Save that His temples wreathed now a thorny fret;
Whence sprang divine transcendent radiance forth;
Unto healing of all Nations of Round Earth.
In that He inwardly seemed to gaze upón us:
The hearts, like wax, were molten in our breasts.

When we no longer, ón that lightning countenance,
In Vision seen, durst fasten worldly gaze;
There wakened one nigh hand, mongst Strangers' tombs:
Stephen, an Hebrew Greek, and he not least
One, in first faithful Household óf Christs saints:
Who brought before Jews' Council, of chief priests
And elders, boldly affirmed; that were in Hím;
Whom, ígnorantly mén had put to death:
Fulfilled Gods promises, to the fathers made.

Kindled at their rebukes the Martyrs face;
That face seemed of an angel: when he cried,
That he beheld Gods Glory, ín the Highest!
And standing by HIS THRONE, the Son of Man;

109

Whom mén had crúcifíed.
Priests all hastily stopped
Their formal ears. Then all cry out at once:
Away with this blasphemer, to the death!
And called in certain zelots: ín fierce heat,
Those on him fall. They have him, by the throat:
They him hale, they hurl with éxecrations forth,
Without their walls: and in fell fury, all there
Take up and cast on hím their wild snatcht stones.
He meekly kneeling, whílst endured his breath;
Prayed, for his murderers. Hounds, tradition saith;
Licked Stephens góre-blood ín that sínister place.
He first thus óf the followers of the Christ,
Received the martyrs' Crown, eternal Life.
Looking on us, he Maran-atha quoth.
Peace be to áll, which ín long-suffering wait;
His new appearing, wíth the Heavenly Host:
When áll shall be accomplished.

The Lord, he cometh!

Mansoul.
We have sought;
In darkness of our souls, on living Earth,
Right paths. And, mercy of Heaven! we, ín our flesh;

110

Descended tó Abysm óf Worlds Death;
With Power to évoke spirits of former ages:
Of them, likewise, enquire the ways of Peace.

Stephen.

The Master, He who to the Heavens ascended,
Ensign of Nations, háth revealed to us,
A living way, which thóugh all else should perish,
Shall never pass. Jeshua, our great High-priest;
Maketh Intercession tó the FATHER for us:
That in the end of all things, now at hand;
Might all men be partakers of HIS Grace.

He healed the Sick, whilst yet He dwelled among us,
The Lepers cleansed, the three-days' dead, He raised;
He comforted the Sad. The birds of air,
The beasts of Field, the lilies of the Land;
Were likewise comprehended ín His Love.
The wild roes fled not forth, at His approach.

DearLord,
make no long tarrying!(Stephen sighed.)
Return soon, whén the Dead, which ín Thee sleep;
Sheep of Thy Fold, shall hear Thy Voice, and live:
Calling each sheep, by name. Whence, being raised;
Ás the glad flowers, which Spring-time lift their heads;
From Winters sod, towards Suns returning warmth:

111

They íssuing from dim pówder óf Worlds Grave;
Shall íncorrúptible be to Thee caught up;
To meet Thee in thát Thy Kingdom, in the skies.

He said; and turning him, as they that sleep;
In Únderworld, laid down agáin His head:
Mongst righteous souls, that rest in Silent Death.

We, in óur unworthiness, stood the while dismayed.
In our dark breasts remainéd little breath:
And that in speechless utterance, we breathed forth;
Towards Ínfinite Ear, that hears beyond the Stars.
Unto WHOM ascend Mans prayers.

We dazing thus;
Withdrew us to, thereby, an hollow place;
Prepared in a dim bosom of the rock:
Where given us was to méditate a space;
Of all things lately happened unto us.

In Názara, a village-town, of Galilea;
Then little, as without Jewry, of Jews esteemed:
Grew up, from his womb-birth, the child Jeshua;
Reputed son of One, a devout man,
Who wrought in wood, of Davids royal line.
Little we óf his pensive years of youth;

112

In our new Greekish scriptures, find recorded:
And of his early manhood even less.

There amidst Hebrews, dwelt a mingled kin;
From Over-Jordan, subject now to Rome;
Which, ín late generations, had received;
Through Macedonian Rulers, in those parts;
Some tíncture of Gréekish civil life and arts:
Which testify their old cities, now remote
And ruinous sites: whose walls remain and arcs,
Builded of marble and squared basalt blocks.
Men of like speech, kindred of Hebrew race:
Of Kedar, another tribal parentage.

Dwelling, the Book saith, under Josephs roof;
And dipping daily with him ín one dish;
According tó the custom óf those parts:
On Miriams son, his bréthren bélieved not.
What day, come to full age, Jeshûa rose up,
A Spirit is come upon him! And from midst
Them all: to preach glad tidings to the House
Of Jacob, (the Jews fórmer Prophets wont;)
From upland Nazaras streets, went Jéshua forth.

Is Season in, when living things of Earth;

113

The herb, green tender sucklings of Her ground;
With all things that move on Her foster Breast,
And live by breath; áfter their several kinds:
Rejoice, reviving after Winters teen.
Earth seemeth new-bórn, of Héavens glad Gólden Womb.

Is She to-day attiréd as a Bride.
Of sunny warmth and kindly rain, conceived;
Her teeming Bosom hath the timely blade:
Which, ínfinite óffspring, útters from Her side.

This Galilean soil, a garden seems:
So is purpled wíth all amiable flowers;
Heavens only Hand hath sowed, Her stony glebe.
To-day, soft blows therein attempered Wind,
A spirit of Life; and seemeth there no more Death.
In all mens villages, stand the orchard trees;
New blossomed blushing-white, wíth a sweet breath.

Tingles éven the air, with subtle silver sound;
Vague Hymn of the least creatures, of Earths Life:
Shrill flickering hum of sheen small glassy wings;
That lifelings of a day, dance in Suns beams.
Hark birds' fúll-throated song, in breasts so small!
Both far and nigh, óver this smíling Field:

114

Embowered, mongst Springs new leaves, and silken buds.
Their fervent ádoration of that POWER,
They in their kinds perceive; but wit not of.

And who is This? that cometh ín a field-path,
Afoot; which leads from village Nazareth.
And greeteth all whom he meets; and lifteth up,
Unto all men within hearing, thus his Voice?
Crying: Mercy and loving-kindness, from the God
Of Peace! The Heavenly Kingdom is at hand!

Poor husband-folk, gaze úp from their field-tasks.
And, men of Israel, marvel ín their hearts:
Saying, whilst they wipe their brows from toilful sweat;
One with another, Neighbour, might not This,
Be sóme new Prophet-Teacher, sent from GOD?

But Jéshua, passed without his homely parts,
In thé next days, no more so openly preached:
Hearing, how John his cousin was cut off.
Lest violent hands, were likewise on him layed.
Ere were his Work accomplished ín the Earth;

115

Whereunto, of the Father, was he sent.
The signs he wrought, witnessed in all mens sight;
That He, The-Anointed was.

Hunger and thirst,
Watch, wéariness, wayfaring; doing good
Unto all men, He endured: nor seldom lacked
He, weary at nightfall; where to lay his head.

The meek, the merciful, the pure in heart
And peacemakers, His lips blessed. Words that he taught,
Were full of more than Prophets' Light and Force:
Men, in whose being, was án indwelling spirit;
Which the unrighteousness of thís World wounds;
Mén of sóul-píercing lofty eloquence.
Words of whose mouths, seemed like to rushing wheels,
And a devouring flame, from Throne of Heaven.

Now after many days, His feet have passed;
In painful journeyings, through all Israels coasts.
And with those Twélve, poor cóuntrymen, Gálileans;
He had chosen, out of the hubbub of the World,
To be His wítnesses: He wáyfaring up,

116

Is to Jerusalem; there to keep the Feast,
Amongst poor Pilgrim-folk.

As they approach
He goeth, in village Bethany, on to lodge,
In the house of One a leper; which surviews
The Temple-walls, from Olivets craggéd mount.

At morrow, He having passed o'er Kidrons brook;
Jeshúa ascendeth to the Temple-courts.
But when He saw their guileful merchandise;
Which there sold cattle for the sacrifices;
And changers' tables: sharply He them rebuked
Which tráfficked thus to dishonour of GODS House.

And having twined Himself, a scourge of cords;
With thát Authority, which was in the Prophets,
Of Israel, in old days; He drave them forth.
For which cause, secretly they desire His death.

Is Passover week: have Jews in évery house,
Made ready the accustomed sacrifice;
Whích shepherds, fróm the wilderness, bear in
Their bosoms, a male lamb: that shall be slain,
At set of the days Sun. Sháll the same hour,
Each hóusehold eat the hásty roast thereof

117

Not seethed; but as who to a journey haste:
Each girt and latcht his sandals ón his feet;
And, ín his hand, a stáff.

Now sitteth Jeshúa
Among those Twelve; around the sacred dish.
They, át His bídding, which áll shall eat thereof,
With Him; stretch right hands forth, devout, with His.
And óf One Cup of Blessing, sith all drink.
Thence risen, and having sung the accustomed psalm;
He breathed on them and spake: Receive the Spirit.
And fúrthermore, He delivered to them hath;
Those living words, from the Heavens, to men sent down;
And last commandments óf His lips divine:
Which, tó Worlds latest ages, shall resound;
In human hearts.

Descended to the street;
Full óf forebóding, they with Him have passed
The City-gate. And bý that ruggéd path,
Go down, whích leads towards Bethany. And enter where

118

An olive-press wás, and open olive-grove.
Their wont being, únto that place to resort;
Dismissed the multitude, which had all day pressed,
On Him: and therein seek their evening rest.

He, knowing the hour was nigh of his decease:
Withdrawn there, from the Twelve, a little apart;
Him bows, as are men wont, in those East Parts,
To pray; three times, beneath Heavens stars, to Earth:
Submitting wholly, to the Will Divine.

Is now night time: Jews' elders and chief priests,
Fearing, by day, the Common Peoples voice:
Which following, with hosannahs, had acclaimed
Him King! have sent their arméd sergeants out:
To take Jeshúa.

Their voices harsh and rude;
Already and shoveling feet be heard without.
Jeshûa! hark! sternly importunate those require.
Who are foremost, thrusting in, lay hands on Him:
Him bind: and guarded lead lo! amongst them forth.
And tó the Hebrew City, re-ascend.
Priests there will falsely, of blasphemy, Him arraign.
And having charged, to be an evildoer:

119

Deliver Him unto the Gentile Power.

We in that Retreat, continued to converse:
From heart to heart, withholding none his thought.
A Voice.
What may we deem, in fleshly darkness born:
Of few days' life, not having heard Heavens Voice;
Besét, in Worlds unéasy Dwelling-Place,
As blindfold; of mens doctrines of right paths?

Other Voices.

What mind may, from Abysm of vast Deep,
Of Unremembrance; Ocean-ground, where lieth
It spersed: the very Sooth of long dead Age,
Retrieve; or question powder in lost grave?

What may a soul, in dáys wherein we live;
When Knowledge by só much more is increased:
As semblable tó right Image of that Sooth;
Which Heaven, at first, implanted in Mans breast;
Receive. Where is the Touchstone; whereby might,
It be examined once and throughly tried.

Mansoul.
From THINE High Infiníte Abiding-Place!

120

O, ALL-FATHER in Heaven; by WHOM all things consist:
Hear our souls'lowing, towards Thy Throne of Grace.
To Thee, we men, contínually uplift;
Weak fleshly adoring hands, from lowly dust.

Voices.
THOU, Who mádest us thús; beseech thee, succour us!
Nor if blínd we stumble, ímpute guilt to us.

Mansoul.
Like to thick mist, ascendeth wíthout cease;
Vast Sigh, of all Mans Families of the Earth.

Voices.
Which yet be gropers, ín Worlds dawnless dusk.
We be, as who would sound a soundless Deep . . .

Mansoul.
The Counsel of Heaven is hídden, from hearts of flesh.

Voice.
If there aught be, beyond Mans Reasons reach . . .?

Mansoul.
We thereto accede, by Faith, and nót by Sight.

Voices.
Who lives, hath found aught footstep óf the Gods;
Or haply heard, o'er water or by land;

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A divine Voice! This reeling Earthly Round
Whereon be we embarked, grows old with us.
And eách succeeding Age, more hapless swarms;
Offspring of human loins, to Light, brings forth:
In évery Pale of Land, from East to West;
To travail of their hands, with thirst of heart:
And death in Darkness, Lifes short sufferance past.

Other Voices.
Can it be, that thát we mortals Reason call;
A Párcel is ónly of Dívine ínfinite Truth:
Like blot, which díms all-brightness of Suns Face?

Mansoul.

There come is látely untó mens hands, a Book;
A Book of Truth, which none can contradict;
Sith Heavens High Fíngeritháth bóth wrought and writ.
The Annals of this Old Terrestrial Mass;
Wíth the affections of Her Elements:
And Knowledge of High Infinite Universe.

Now, partly unsealed, it open lies before us:
Wherein may souls, that diligently seek;
Learn daily more to read, and gather Light.

Mansoul still cávilling thus, there fell on us;

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Being yet amazed, in óur empassioned mood;
New Impulse and increased. Shows soon our glass,
Wide wind-scourged flood; Midland-Seas ancient Face,
Which laps Old Nations' Coasts. Were fewer here,
In Underworld, dim gálleries of the Dead.

Therein glide spirits, ah! drípping from sea-deaths!
Engulfed were those, in foundered gallant ships;
Neath waters' weight, where no breath is, alas!

Nor long was, ere neath Sea-Gate large, we pass:
That severs Africs, and Europas coasts;
To Ocean-Mains wide-wandering Wilderness;
Where billows wild on billows ride; before
A thousand blustering wayward blasts. Vast Brine,
That widewhere encómpasses, wíth its many Arms;
Earths Great Dry-Lands: which formless seem to us,
As all-days' tattered skies' vague drift, on loft.
We, towards Arcturus and Bootes mount;
Where díverse Nations' ships, pass and repass:
That know their guide-stars and their liquid paths;
Bearing much West Worlds tradeful merchandise;
O'er brow of North seas flood, tówards haven of land.

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Meet them storm-riding white-winged, clamorous;
Sea-mews, from nesting ledges, óf wild rocks.
Mansoul.
Whose be yond coasts that loom now in our glass?

The Voice.
They wrongfully them hold, whose criminal boast,
Is godless Wars machinal homicide arts.
Malignant fruit, of Máns malicious thought.

Mansoul.
Dimly do we discern a rumbling shore;
Whereon long-tiding wave-rows, rise and break;
And race o'er some low strand. Vast confuse sound
Affrays our ears, increasing móre and more;
To an hideous roaring noise, as we approach.

The Voice.
'Tis impious Wars tremendous bellowing Voice!
Are loost a thousand cánnon-shots every moment.
Each levelled, with inhuman bloody intent;
To quench, in their best age, much human life.

Mansoul.
Regardest not, ín Thy Righteousness, THOU LORD, this?
Red slaughter, in Earths Fold, of Mánkinds Life!

The Voice.

The guilt is in a few, presumptuous spirits:

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Black hearts, that vaunt, (their high Inheritance;)
Brief lordship, over Peoples of their States.
Which wídows long and órphans, must lament;
Yea and éven the unbórn. And parents childless left,
Forlorn, of valiant sons, in their lone age.

Hundred leagues'-long enranged, lie ópposed armies,
In their wár-trenches dígged. What agony of strife,
Is there! that never ceaseth day nor night.

Whilst numbers a man fingers of one hand;
Be thóusand sons, more, fállen in Field of fight,
Death-smitten! . . . Ah! suddenly, corses without breath!
Soon to grow cold. Or mangled with war-wounds;
Remain in life, to slowlier die war-deaths.
Or salved their hurts, and saved to live uneath:
Must live on, móngst their fellows, broken wights.
In all that griesly Field, lies every stride;
Gore-stained, with young men-soldiers', murder-blood.

Blind Hazard is abroad: Fates, wavering-winged,
Flit to and fro, in wide empoisoned Element:
(New Hell-crime, on a godless Enemys part!)

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Drives, thick as locusts' swarm, a flying sleet
Of leaden shot. Each, charged with sudden death:
May untimely pierce a valorous soldier's breast:
And snatch, (that human birthright,) his one life.

Ere this Hell-engined daily dance-of-Death,
Shall áll be done; must lie ten-thousand-thousand,
In hásty gráve-pits, war-slain carcasses:
To moulder, or in théir own, or stranger soil;
Last Womb, of all Mankinds One-Mother-Earth.

Mansoul.
Ah, ah! Worlds Light! for which we longed so sore,
In Earth beneath: where sleep just souls, and spirits
Departed, rest. Must we then, which dwell yet,
In Únderworld, this dark Voyage done, return
To a waste World! Desire dies in our hearts,
To see again Thy Glory, O Sun in Heaven;
If men all, on Earths mould, be madding thus.

The Voice.
Guilt of few hómicide Rulers, whose lewd life,
Is Nations' death. Was known, Kings of the Earth,
Of late conspired, malgré all covenants;
For lordship of the World; which being achieved
By scelerate arms; should all men be their thralls:

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And the heritage of the ages, be then theirs.

Mansoul.
Beat down, High Heavens, the bárbarous Insolence,
Of those King-churls! Their gore-stained bauble crowns,
Cast in Worlds cess-pit! Or what rests to us,
Of Hope on Earth?

The Voice.
Abhór their evil names;
Shall mány generations, to be born;
Enregistered, in the Dark Womb of Time.

Mansoul.
What Country-side, War-harried field, is this?
Our mirror shows, forsaken, ruinous!

The Voice.
Belges well-peopled, látely fruitful march;
Subvérted, rent, ploughed-up, with enemies' shot:
Are famous cities burning, like a wood!

Mansoul.
Who hath wrought this?

The Voice.
Invading impious hordes,
Of Hunnish enemies, thís Hell-horror made.
Midst fire and smoke, havoc! yelled their foul throats;
Known hardly from brute-beasts, by mankind voice.

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By scelerate heathen deeds, vowed those to make;
Vast Sigh, a sty, a sink, GODS human World.
Even Oceans Streams have, (everlasting stain;
On their degenerate ensigns!) those profaned.

Mansoul.

Perish, ye base Contrivers, wolf-hearts crowned!
That purposed but your self-aggrandisement:
Your Cóuncillors and the Executioners;
Likewise of your inhuman, wicked Wills:
Wherein men, well-nigh passing count, fell more
Than thirty million bereaved mothers' sons:
Being not much less, than numbered if all were;
Men, wives and babes, of such great Land, as ours.

Oh horror! and, past belief, was in their deaths;
A flood poured out, of murdered human gore:
And in these days of ours! And what moreo'er,
Of those, ne'er to be counted; which had else,
To comfort of dark homes, and now cold hearths;
Of them, in their appointed time, been born:
Oh, accúrsed, insáne, Héll-sprung, dire, Murder-War!

Amongst those battle-slain, in World above;
Descending rife, before our troubled gaze,

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In Underworld; thick companies pass to rest:
Known, by their comely looks, now wan in death;
To be of those our Island Empire sends,
Of Her magnanimous sons; to fight for life,
Of the whole World, gainst criminal enemies.

Hail Britains sons! The mémory of yóur prowd deaths;
For ever our ensample, shall remain;
Whilst Brítain ís a Nation of the Earth.

The Voice.
Descend, with Bléssing, tó eternal rest!

Mansoul.
Belovéd young men, flames leap up in our hearts;
Hot welling Tide of Wrath for your young deaths;
That did not only your forefathers' worth,
Match to the full; oppósing your stout breasts,
To the fond Tyrants venom, steel and shot;
In a strange soil: but added have new wealth,
Of honour íncorruptible unto us.

The Voice.
They gave, with joy, their all, for Countrys sake.

Loud Echo.
Death seemed them joy, for Mother-Countrys sake!

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The Voice.
They soul-stained foes rebutted; which divine
And human laws, trod down in gory dust.

Mansoul.
Who set them on?

The Voice.

A mountebank criminal crowned;
Regent himself esteeming, on Worlds ground:
Óf The All-Mighty UPHOLDER, of the Universe!
Frown of his Tamerlanish countenance,
Deemed he, helmed, strútting forth, should quell West World.

Worlds Crime, This long time, cherished, he hugged close;
At first, fond childhoods whisper, in false breast:
Dark fantasy, infláming his presumptuous youth;
And eversith working ín his ruffling thought.
To out-Caesar, Caesar, his self-pleasing thought.

But Caesars wás a soul magnanimous,
Clement; and ás belongeth to noble worth;
Midst greatest deeds, full álway of knightly parts.
Caesar waged war, with honour; thís fellow hath,
It dástardized.

Hé, who át no time rebuked;
The inhúman, thé Satánic outrages;

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Of brutish kerel-hordes whom he commanded:
Chief Patron is, of áll their infamies.

What dísmayed cónfused voice is that we hear?
Lo, a drooping fugitive multitude, rich and poor;
Our glass shows, thronged together, a thick Press.
All midst salt bitter reek, of homesteads burned:
Fathers, wives, maidens, babes, óld broken wights;
With desolate looks of Winter, ín their hearts.
Bearing at back, in hand-carts, hound-carts, sacks;
What little they might save of household stuff.

Sighs of wives outraged, choking wailful sobs,
Of maidens wronged, undone; bereaved souls' cries,
Lifting lean hands to Heaven! with hunger-starved looks.
Hark tó those dying groans of murdered men!
From ruinous battered streets. Whereby these pass:
Bludgeoned at their house-doors and violate hearths,
By godless enemies; fencing to their deaths,
Their womens honour, from brute hellish force;
Of outlaws, from Gods Covenant of mankind.

When we again regard, in Mérlins glass:

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On úpper path, withín that breach of Earth;
Our happier gaze is fixt. Beat thick our hearts;
That leap up in our throats and utterance choke;
Whilst cóvertly our éyelids gather scalding drops.

Descend there singly, lion-héarted spirits!
A token beams, lo, on éach magnanimous breast!
'Tis that which Britains sovereign, (Gods true knight,
Belovéd óf his People,) wíth the applause,
Of Five free generous Nations, under arms;
Confers, for singular valour, ín war-field.

How comely is their souls' stature, amongst the rest;
Where all wrought mainly, and strove in sacred arms;
To uphóld the honour óf their Nations House:
Opposing their instincted patriot breasts;
To élemental iron machínal force.

Are they, their grateful Countrys Praise, henceforth;
On whom we gaze, we stare, in part abasht;
That we, which elder rest, might bear no part;
In hazards, aches, death-horror of slaughter-field;
With those, (late, children!) thús before us passed.

The supreme smile, yet blossoms on their lips:
Wherewith those gave, great-hearts, their best, lífes bréath,

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In a Strange Land; with God, the World to save.

Who in sacred golden dream, wend by aloft,
Hold way towards Heroes' Hall, of Worlds West parts:
That ere unseen, now riseth in our view;
As we ourselves advance, in Merlins glass.
With thresholds many, and walls of burnished bronze;
With ímagery of Worlds noblest deeds embossed;
That to all quarters, face. Is thatched that House,
With shining plate, bucklers of God-like warriors;
The nombrils of pured gold. Who foremost pace,
Draw nigh now to that Halls rune-graven Porch.

House of great hero-spirits lent to Earth,
Is that prowd Hall: where hanged be by the walls;
Glaives, war-bruised harness, shields, victorious spears;
Which wrought delíverance, both by land and seas:
In many a righteóus world-renowned emprise.

Those glorious companies, that inhabit there:
Which Poets, óf ancient days, divíners; deemed,
To be an offspring of the deathless Gods,
For their great deeds; issue magnanimous,
Crowned with unfading oak leaves their prowd heads.

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They, with that Flower of Britain's youth, converse:
Which from Worlds éxtreme Western parts approach,
And adjudged Brethren, worthy of so Great Place:
Their Right hands unto theirs of féllowship,
Advance. And with glad, stern ánd lofty looks:
They them invíte, and goodly wélcome ín;
Where purged all enmity is, from human breasts.

They enter áll together; and stream seemed forth,
Radiance divine, from that proud golden Port,
Which opened of itself: and in the same,
Seemed, solemn dream of Music thence ascend.

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Book 5: From Underworld Returned. A Day of the Sun

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Meseemed I waked, from heavy Dream of Sleep;
In grave-pit, óf dead ages of the Earth;
Where souls deceased have rest.
And viewing thence,
Wars massacres, mirrored ón Worlds living face.
Methought, What bóoteth it, thíther to revert;
And see, Sun, Moon again and Stars' glad light:
But see, in every household, bleeding hearts!
Is not this Peace, of spirits already passed;
Better than Lifes-day, as viewed in Merlin's glass!
Take comfort! seemed then whisper, ín my breast,
That dívine Voice; Not yet, the World is lost.
Whence looking úp, from Underworlds Deep, tó breach
Which gaping dimly appeared, of living Earth,
Above: as fróm long Night and desolate murk;
Such as whelms úpon dwellers in North Parts;
Whose frost-bound Season, sees no Sun in heaven:
I ware was of a freshing breath, like that

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Which flows at dayspring, o'er Worlds hills and heaths.
And gleam, with fearful joy, of heavens sweet Light!
Then, ín mine heart, I thought, might I live yet;
To once more, that glad gracious smile behold,
Of Suns uprising, all with roses crowned;
From Gardens of the East: when, unsealed springs,
Anew, Great Fountain of Earths slumbering Life.
Come to myself, meseemed a quarry it was.
Wherein, with these numbed joints and sapless flanks;
And pupils' dull yet ánd uncertain seeing;
O'er ledges and sharp shelves, I upward groped,
Of cliffs rock-face.
Reached, stumbling, to cliff-brink:
Uneasy it seemed me, to climb thence. The Stars
Be fading in their courses. Hour is when
Night-Mother, in sécret Chamber of the East;
Travailleth and díeth, tó once more Day bring forth.
I darkly again see this wide Foster Earth!
Where lo, me awaiteth an arm, like crudded milk.
And, strong to save, an hand, like the snow-flake,
Stretcht forth; which deigns me úplift ón Worlds sod!
The Muse.
Thy Land this is: rouse! Waken Minimus!

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Minimus.
Is this not a Dream-Music in mine ears?
Mine Albans goddess-Muse, me succoureth.
It is Her voice!

The Muse.

And know, not far from hence;
Were, for thy homeward hasting weary steps,
To thine own hearth. Nathless, thou, hearken Minimus!
Ere to thy threshold, may thy feet arrive,
Ended this voyage; and thereo'er pass to rest;
For thine instruction, must erst view, thine eyes;
Mansouls Dream-city, builded high and wide.

Betwixt All-father Sky and Mother Earth,
Is that suspent: whither ascend dream-spirits,
In slumber of their flesh; which recreates,
Both men and Gods. Moreo'er, when time is ripe;
I shall thee teach, a deathless chant thereof.

Enter therein a thousand blameless spirits,
Each moment; that frequent Her market-place,
And cónverse in Her streets; from all Worlds parts.
Seeking, were them revealed, before their deaths;
Some token sure, touching souls' last dark Hope:
Which hidden is, fróm foundation óf the Earth.

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Minimus.
Meseems none other this, than brow of Earth;
Where yet is little light. A field yet wet
With cold night drops. Stars shining in their courses,
Part veiled with mist; and daisies under-foot.
Or is it mine eyes' dull uncertain seeing;
Returned from ghostly voyage, in Realms beneath.

Oh joy! it is days morn. Those beams are His:
Sun cometh up, the heavens 'gin gather light.
Already a man might know his fellows face.
Slowly He rears his great-maned glorious head.
A moment paused, He seemeth to stretch himself;
And take on Him vast saffron royal robe;
All bordered with bright gold. Now soars he forth,
In heavens steep!
How blissful is this Dawn;
Wherein that kindly rádiance of the Sun;
And Britains Muse divíne, I see again.
She, a goddess stands, in homely weed arrayed;
As upland maidens use on holidays,
Of their sheeps fleece. But hardly might to-day,
The like be found in hundred folds, I trow,
Being of rare golden hue.

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Broad golden broach
It fastens; shining with fair pearls beset;
Treasure of restless waves, on Albans shore.
Her camis bright, is broidered with Spring flowers.
Her wimple, súbtle is as gossamer weft:
(She it, goddess, letteth fall, before Her face;
As dreading taint of Great Dead Underworld.)
And beckoned, in the same, the Muses hand;
In that, to further pass, She now Her turned:
I should, in this dim bent, her follow forth.
Well as I might, I sued with tottering pace;
Stiff yet, from Worlds Great Pit, Her sacred steps.
Lap of Her wimple lifting the Winds breath;
Revealed locks, shining as the harvest-sheaf.
Mingled with sunbeams, falling on her nape.
Her twin bent brows, in that She turned a moment,
Her cóuntenance; were líke to that bow, conjoined,
Of Amaltheas horns; set midst the stars:
Her eyes seemed crystal wells; and their glance was
Fúll of undying light and deathless gladness.
Yet in them lurked a glance arcane, not all
Of solace, thát befits the divine state:
(Immortals, may not sigh, for mortals dead,

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Though they be sad;) of Virgin Mothers grief.
Methought I, ón Her habit, newly-shed,
Had drops seen pearling, for Her Islands slain;
Ín the Great War, which no more may return.

In whát days, ít may please the gentle Muse;
To walk unwíst, on Albans breathing hills;
Her wont is, tó affect the herding trade:
As more than most, devoid of human fraud;
Her soul abhors.

And was, for Colins sake;
Erewhile most tuneful shepherd on these wolds;
(Whose heaven-breathed chants, whose lays empassionate,
Aspiring raptures, líke pure lovers' flames;
First the rude ore refined of Britains verse:)
To me, least mongst his heirs, She favour showed.

Colin is dead, lies Hobbinol lapt in lead,
And Cuddy ís no more; and long ago
Was Rosalind laid in grave. So shall be we,
(And who in Time to come shall emule us;)
Which yet live, láte survivors of his crew.
But shall his, heaven-deríved, sweet chívalrous measures:

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Still breathing grace and happy influence;
Continue through Worlds ages, únforgot.

Nor seld is, léaving Her august estate;
The Muse repairs, in days of shearing feast;
To some blithe herding cote; whence heard is sound
Of mérry-make, and shepherds tuneful pipe.
Or else where blows proud goat-herd, wíth crisp lip;
On shrill row of bright reeds, his warbeling note:
And hinds and lasses, there together met;
All glad and fain, dance madrigals wíth deft foot.

Or, Winter nights, come days of snow and frost;
Where folk, to some nigh cattle-stead, resort:
To tidings tellen, óf their Country-side;
At bountiful warm hearth; where cheer is both
Among the guests, of flickering embers round;
And dread of dancing shadows on the wall:

Or when some handfast maiden shall be wed,
To her true love; she Pride of all the stead.
And gathered joyous to a lordlings hall;
Where newly sanded neat is all the floor;
Strewed with sweet sedge and smelling juniper;
Be come in neighbours, from the hamlets round;

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That juncates bring and gifts of clottered cream,
And honey of thyme: and lads and shamefast maids,
Bring holiday looks.

And now the Bride is crowned;
And their two happy hands, the priest hath joined:
Those holy words, they breathing after him,
Which maketh them One; vows registered now in Heaven.
Begin shrill merry bagpipes then to sound;
And there is chanting óf the rustic rhyme;
With plause of clapping palms: and lightfoot lads
And maids, joined hands, dance in and out of doors.

'Tis said, mongst beldams, that sit lookers-on,
Demure; amidst their maidens, fresh and fair,
As rose in May, with locks as the broom-flower;
All simple as primroses: the Heavenly Maid,
Is very uneath, when would not she be kenned;
(Save for Her pupils' beams, wherein light shines,
Passing my simple verse;) to be discerned.

But She, with that ambrosial glance, of hers;
Token, óf one come of Angels race, again
Hath turned benígn; and seeing me following thus,

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A languishing mortal wight, withheld Her steps,
Divine; till when I might again approach.

Then beckoned her high hand; by yond hill-ground;
Whereo'er white drift-way of cattle, I discerned;
Unto wide upland downs, I should ascend.

And therein seemed me, spake the Muses Voice;
Melodious, more than ever shepherds reed:
And seemed all words of her twinned lips to sound;
That Golden World, when men with Gods conversed;
Elect and true, wéighed in just bálances:
(But tongue should fáil me, would I thém rehearse:)

She said, to comfort óf my weariness;
This day I should taste bread, and be refreshed.
With wand in Her right hand, She Goddess bright,
Then toucht me; in me, sore bruised and lacking breath;
Reviving kindly force and hardiness.

Again She passed before me, wíth light steps;
Of ever-springing youth, grace, heavenly gladness.
Reached to that going-up; in grassy plot,
Again she stayed. And, Fosterling speed thee Gods!
She quoth: and faded, Lady immortal bright;
As morrows mist before mine eyes' dull seeing.

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Print of the golden sandals, on Her feet;
(Wherein spring healing herbs and thyme,) I kissed.

Alone I stand, 'twixt dawning skies and grass;
Dread Night no more of Underwórld, to tread:
Dim covert galleries, lacking living breath;
Full all of ghostly terrors. Well-nigh made,
New day is óf the World: Sun cometh up.

A Spring-tide nightingales last blissful note,
I hear; that waked, with his empassioned lauds,
And nocturns chant, neath stars, the dew-steeped Night:
Embayed amidst sheen flickering leaves; where shrouds
Her, cherishing their fledgeling birds, his mate.
Some, yet, lewd cuckoo calls! that doth despite,
To the Worlds restful night.

In thicket wakes,
Where shadows lurk, wet with tears of the night;
Sweet throstle, with his warbeling joyous throat.
And with him wake all birds, that sing in the morn.
Is day already unfolding, as a bud:
Which gilds Suns first-sprung beams, with cheerful warmth.

147

Is this, I see, with roses hanged, briar-bush,
Mingled with dewy flocs, of sheeps rent fleece;
A likely sign of pinfolds, on broad bent.
And hark! ah! heard I not a shrilling pipe?
Aye, and sounds some hínds loud hallo! out of the mist.

An hind nigheth hitherward, fluting ín his fist:
Loiteríng herdfolk, with browsing flocks, approach.
And with them cometh One, hipping on his staff:
I thereby know him, with his ancient looks.
'Tis Saxon Cædmon, warden of the folds:
Bond-servant tó an Abbey of holy women;
Whose belfry and réd tile-stones, tímbered amídst
Thick oaken wald, that lards the Minsters swine;
Now partly in yónder slade, from hence be seen.

Bowed with old rheums, this guardian óf the folds;
With hoary beard, low hanging ón his breast:
Likens those old saints' effigied images:
Whose antique portraitures éven now remain;
Blackened with eld and smoke and grossly limned;
On vénerable cloisters' párgetted walls.

Cædmon, for aught he goeth in servile weed,

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Rough wadmel coat and sárk of unbleached line;
With galages ón his feet: is he whom men
Master song-smith esteemed, in his lifes time,
On Englisc tongue. Whereín he a bondsman, born
Of cattle-kéepers, poor landsfolk; untaught,
Save only of Heaven, which harbours in his heart;
GODS ethling was. He canticles of the Lamb,
Maketh daily, óf heavenly Vision, his soul seeth;
Whence sungen are anthems in their Minster church.

His thousand-footed flocks, pass bleating forth;
That lingering, crop Spring-tides new sappy grass.
Follow today the weanlings, with their dams.
That butt, that underpush, the foster dugs:
And wanton, as they wend, with that new life;
Which kindles ín their blood.
That woolly drift
Of sheep, soon spersed is with his sons: and left
Is Cædmon lone, upleaning on his bat.
He, in his spirit, méditates some new chant
For Hilda, his venerable agéd Abbess.
Bond, though he be, unlettered, agéd, halt;
Towers his free spirit, as lavrock soars from clod,

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Still héavenward: that on flickering wings aloft;
With his bird-raptures, fills the sunny skies.
So lifting Cædmon, his transported looks
From lowly sod, attunes his Saxon notes;
To that celestial Choir, he him-seemeth to hear
Above, of Angels in the holy height:
Singing to golden harps resounding strings.
As for me, I found a thicket bush of broom,
Nigh hand; whereunder I might drowse a space.
On freshing herb, in that sweet morrows breath.
Though spent with fast, and crazed my bones with aches;
Half slúmbering there the while, I ever sought;
If haply I, óf that Father of mine Art;
Might not attain, through making heard of his;
To some insight, in Éngla-lánds glee-craft;
Which had sufficed to light, late heathen hearts.
Was Sun gone up, in His diurnal course,
To undern height, when I awaked from rest:
And o'er wide laund, bedight with golden knops,
And daisies ás the stars, that herding fellowship,
And fleecy multitude, lo, again approach.
The tardy ewes, troop hither with full cuds.

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That bold herd-crew, hinds tawny in wind and wet;
Go girt in long say coats and pilches rough.
And each hind bears, his sinewed bow at back;
And sheaf of well-fledged arrows ín a case;
And bag of ready sling-stones at his belt:
Their flocks to ward, against the prowler wolf.
The woolly trains, come to noons couching-place:
The herdgrooms stand, to number o'er their stock:
That gathered with drooped craigs, sheep behind sheep;
Stánd, each one, shadowing in anothers breach.
They tell them o'er, none lacketh.
A hind gone forth;
Gathered dry sticks and stover, his arms' full; casts
Them down, in the winds eye: and, kindled sparks,
The climbing flame, amidst his crackling heap,
Upblows; which all-embracing, licketh up
The turf. That soon out-blowing, bitter reek;
This herdfolk deem, should drive away the brieze.
Left then their barking curs to mind the stock;
(Those course oft out, whiles these together stoop:)
Tall grooms, with unkempt glibs, all reverent dofft
Their hoods, now 'sembled round the shepherds' sire;

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Attend their fathers giving-thanks to hear;
Before noon meat.
Lo, full of holy thought
Thrall Cædmon lifteth up anew his looks,
And horny pálms to Heavenward, whither mounts
His lowly spirit; where dwelleth All-Fatherhood.
Take on new grace, those rude-limned looks of his;
Whiles, after Saxon sort, lay-wright, his lips
Quoth:

Hérry we thé Worlds Lord,
Ín His wonder-works:
With the Everliving Word;
Which dwelleth with Him on height.
He All-Father shaped green Earth;
All birds therein and beasts;
The Sea likewise and fish:
And Man made Lord thereof.

One-fold in Three, unseen,
As ís winds-breath unseen:
He eternally doth remain;
Abóve the Sun, All-Might:
Who giveth meat tó all Breath.

Praise.

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Store have they of bárley-cakes, baked ón the hearth,
For their noon-meat, and cheese ín théir hide-scrips;
And fór their bever, wig, in goat skins tough;
Those seen me, a Stranger, not far from them, off;
There, one from thé herd-crew, ran, shouting forth:
Which bade me, in Cædmons name, (their Abbeys use;)
To turn and eat, of súch cheer as they have.
We sit at meat, on Spring-times Foster-Earth:
Our table, this lawns spread web, of new sweet grass.
All cheerful chat; and grows their most discourse,
As herdfolk use, of feed, of wool, of flocks:
Of ewes miswent, and lást years eanlings lost;
Wolves rent. They tell then o'er the Minsters stock;
Brake-lands, this foreyears tilth; last harvest-dearth.
And Cædmon quoth, I dreamed a dream thís night;
(And swevins oft betoken coming haps!)
Were North-folk, rovers, sailed into our parts.
With those wolf-sucklings' fathers, have I fought,
In days before your knowledge. Ye have seen,
In our outfield, sons, their grave-mounds o'ergrown
With brambles. For so much gave we of earth

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Them, where they fell, for Christs sake. For at first
Made God, men, of one blood, one brotherhood.
Sons.
Of them what more?

Cædmon.
Those worship Dæmon-Gods.
The Winter-long, which hard is in their parts;
Where snow lies deep and grips the ground iron frost;
Drinking sweet mead and ale, in their lords halls,
With gaming and loud songs they wont to pass:
Songs of their War-god Woden, Lord of spears,
King of the slain; and vaunting hardy deeds.
But come in month of shipfare, they make yare
Long keels, with dragon prows and gilded ensigns,
To sea: being wholly set their heathen hearts,
On rapine; that is mostly on Cristen coasts:
And turn, with booty enriched, to their own hearths.
Be ever ready, O sons, to fight for Christ;
As have your fathers fought.

Sons.
Ye met them, where?

Cædmon.

I mind it well, 'twas month then of new year,
When yean the ewes. Sounded fierce yell from shore,
Gainst cockcrow; and wé all heard it in the stalls,
Where we menservants slept. That yelling was

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Of many throats, calling on heathen Gods.
We hasted to shore up, with beams, our gates.

Snatcht arms, and left our hounds the folds to watch;
And sacred sisters, sighing in the Church,
But strong in faith; upon their prayer-worn knees.
With men roused, from next steddings and nigh cotes.
That, heard our great-bells toll, came hieing to us;
Plough-folk, men wont, from dawn to dusk to break
The stubborn clod; we sped us to moot place.

The day was making then, nor long it was;
Ere we had sight of foemen coming on
With chant of battle-rage and weapon-song.
Were we two score, with billhooks armed the most.
A few with swords and some with scythes on staves.
And were they many more than we, tall wights;
Of violent looks, clad all in stiff buff-coats;
Wielding broad híde-shields, girt with bands of bronze.
With spears in their fierce hands and swords, whereon
Those set most store, (and they have cunning smiths,)
Of tempered steel. The breasts of chief ones fenced
Were, with iron rings.

We, standing in await,

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Fell on them out, from thicket place of rocks.
We knew that fighting must be sore to death.
Our brunt, at unawares, burst their shield-burg:
And drove them back, like to a tottering wave.
Come to hand-strokes, they could not stand before us;
For know, that GOD was ín that fighting, for us.
Told every stroke of ours; but dulled the edge
Was of their blades: that could not bite our flesh,
Wrapped only in a poor weed, of wadmel stuff.
Then great sword-swathe, shedding of heathen blood:
Straining our most hands billhooks, we reaped men.

Was I in my best age; and that same year,
Had borne, on my stoopt neck, an heifer forth,
In our Lent games. Those heathen hurled on heaps.
Nathless round Bloodaxe, their tall yarl, held fast
Few ones, his nigh of kin and oathfast men;
And ship-swains, thát fought on for their Lords life,
Unto the death.

Tall Bloodaxe, raging fought;
Shining the bronze scales ón his warlike breast.
In stature he exceeded all the rest;
As in his lineage, and his former deeds.
He wielded Sun-rayed shield; whose navel-spike,

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Sharp cubit was of bronze. His high right hand,
Brandished bright heathen battle-axe renowned,
An heirloom in his House. And glowed his eyes,
In his war-fury, as the glede.

Seen that
In him the battle was: from dying foe,
I wrested long two-edgéd sword; and leapt,
With cry to Heaven, under the young earls guard:
And fetcht, with strength, Heaven to me lent, a stroke;
Off hewing his right hand.

He stumbling forth;
I dasht aside his targe. And ón his helm,
Again, assembling all my force, I smote.
And clave the iron, under his dragon-crest:
And through his hairy scalp and long ringed-locks;
The blade sank to the shoulder, with that stroke.
And headlong he fell down; and lay along,
Great lifeless corse, all on a blood-stained turf.

His axe it was, that ín his fall, me hurt
Sore ín thís foot; whereof I halt thus yet.
With his bruised helm, I it dedicated sith;
Where ye sons have them seen, in holy Church.

157

They seen his fall, and how they had the worse,
And many wounded were; gan to give ground.
Those fremlings, being amazed, dispersedly fought.
Some even, like to a troop of startled deer;
Forsaken of their War-gods, turned then their backs.
Nor long was, ere they all, a broken rout,
Confusedly fled.

Then was, our strong-shot shafts,
From mighty bows, pierced many in downward paths,
Unto the bay; where, ín the rivers mouth,
Lay riding their war-keels of many oars;
Whose rowers, gone forth, them waited in the surf.

But we, upon our part, with thankful hearts,
Pursued not forth. Of ours was no man slain.
Then gathering us together, and taken breath:
Bearing up our hurt ones, under their arms;
And leaving the dead foemen on the ground;
After this great salvation, we turned home;
To break our fasts.

Unsparred the Minster gates,
They seeing us to approach; the holy women,
Singing, in garments white, praises to Heaven;

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Came forth to meet us, bearing mead and bread.

Sith set a watch and loosed the cattle out;
We herded in the field, till evensong.
When driven the neat home lowing to their stalls,
And led the sheep to pen, we came again;
To worship sup and rest, in Ábbey walls.

Sons.
What of those pirates, father, then became?

Cædmon.

Rowers, stole privily up, from his long ship,
In wan moonlight, in reverence of his corse.
In so great hazard, for blood-brotherhood;
(Their Country's Custom,) plight to their own deaths;
Led by one Thorolf the Deads foster-sire,
And lodesman of his keel, found Bloodaxe where
He lay, in bloody dew, gaping upright;
Mongst slain men, fallen on thát down-trodden grass.

In spilth of rotten gore did slide their feet.
Silent, with snarling wolves, their hands did fight;
And ravens foul, that corses gnawed and rent.
Corses, which lay along, like wind-cast shocks,
In harvest field.

Setting the fitful Moon:
They, in haste 'gan raise him, on their cónjoined shields.

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(Those champions were;) whilst other saved the arms,
And mail-sarks, ón the breasts of fallen warriors.
They bare him then, great burden, by turns, downforth;
Cursing that fatal day, under their breaths;
And his false weirds, for his untimely death.

Sigfried, a lad, whom ye, (now old,) have seen,
A widows fisher-son, beheld their deeds:
(Had he been parted, sith day-dawn, from us;)
Gazing from covert brow, of cliff above.

Come to waves'-foot, those bearers of his corse;
Found haled to land, War-raven, the lords great ship,
Of sixty oars. There having washed his wounds;
And those gore-clottered fair ringed-locks of his:
With mourning companies, from the other keels;
They filled the wide fore-shore, with funeral yells.

Groaning they laid, in the ships waist, aboard,
Bloodaxe, in his war-weed of steel and bronze.
With Tyrfing neath his head, his fathers sword:
Whereon he wont to swear. That famous glaive,
Which in his sires strong hand, Sigurd the Old,
Mongst warriors of the North, an oak could cleave.

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And booty, of all the best, laid they him round;
His hand and theirs had gotten, in their last voyage.
Ingots of gold, with Saracen merchandise,
And vestments; taken out of storm-beat ship,
Driven from Mid-seas.

Stood bound in thé back-stem;
Swart faced and harsh-tongued, many his captive thralls.
Them, without ruth, under Night Stars they slew:
And hanged, on his keels bords, their bloody polls.
Should they, those heathen deem, dead Bloodaxe serve,
In Hels abodes, where champions of the North;
From their upheaped grave-hows, revived from death;
Received be to last banquet of the Gods.
Whom they, with the sweet mead-cup át their lips,
Should aye behold; and even with them converse.

Then daubed her beams and bords, with tallow and pitch;
And to the Night, (her rudder-bands belayed;)
They launched, with her great mainsail loost to wind.
So those with torches, casting loud outcries
To their War-gods, her kindled; and besought

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Them, to Hel-haven, her thus aflame, to guide.

Her crew, so many as remained alive,
To other ship-craft, climbed, (were seven keels:)
Whiles those made forth from land, with a full tide
And rising wind, sitting on their row-banks;
Carles thewed and bold, bowed o'er long ashen oars:
Matching their measured strokes, wherewith they smote
Swart star-lit waves, to Guldmunds lofty notes;
Their dead lords scald, in the dark North, of name:
Who a lamentable lay loud lifted up;
(Standing in forestern, neath the gilt ensign,
Of the War-wolf, Earl Knut his kinsmans keel;)
For their unburied slain.

Sons.
How steered they then?

Cædmon.
I trow, that night, sons, many supped with Woden.
This only is sure; such fell, ere dawn, fierce tempest,
(Quaked even our Minster walls!) which on Great Deep
Raised war of billows, roaring on huge heaps.
Bucklers and broken oars, and Northmens spears;
And timbers of split ship, were cast on craigs,

162

In the next days; where wild sheer cliffs, of coasts,
Which none inhabit, wall seas boisterous waves.

What goatherd hastens hitherward, over the heath?
'Tis Cuth, now Crier in the Wapentake.

Cuth.

Hark shepherd-folk, is come cry up tonight,
From cliff to craig; Sailed in, on this North wind
Be pirate keels and under Stromnæs ride:
Them Svendson leads; well-knowén he for the same,
By his énsign, the White-wolf, on his ships stem;
Who last year burned and wasted Cantware coast.
They, ascended up on land; already approach!

Thus unkempt Cuth, who caught again his breath,
Without leave taking, hies him further forth.
Cædmons stout sons, with kindled hearts, have leapt,
Upon their feet. Not less will they be found.
Today in fight, than their forefathers' worth.
They, bared long ewen bows, bows big of bent;
With stern looks, spend already them with force:
And gave each nerve a warlike hum! In thought,
Each seeth his shaft's winged flight: and heareth light

163

The stripe; which thrilleth an heathen rovers heart.
Standing on one, and now on other foot;
Casting grass up, to know how stands winds breath;
They, impatient, Cædmon wait. Who gone apart:
That godly father wrestleth, naming Christ,
With Heaven! He supplicates, for his Land and hearth;
Lifting his prayer-wont hands, in humble faith.
Is seen a radiance on that Ancients face;
Whilst he, a man, in the Aweful Presence, standeth,
Of Godhead! and with bowed down head, who asks
For víctory, o'er Héavens and théir outlandish enemies.
And that who fall, may enter in His Rest.

He comes again. Already have their eyes fixt,
Seen flames of burning homesteads, and wide reek;
And dust rise, o'er foes, marching in the plain.
They hastily gather in their woolly stock.
Blows one, on shrilling reeds, clear warlike note.
Drive that bold brood, with barking hounds, their folds,
Now át a run. Hill-brow eftsoon they pass:
And lost, with limping Cædmon, are to view.

And hearken, in the same, sounds solemn note,

164

Of the great Cloister bells bronze hollow throat;
From yonder lap resounding of these hills;
Warning all Cristen folk!

As I rose up:
Glad Venerable Cædmon to have seen;
Song-smith, as in old lífe-days of his flesh:
I saw no man. My steps amidst my dream,
Translated were to wide West-Saxon march.

Lay Spring-times golden smile, all gracious mild,
On dunes and denes there likewise, óf Gods ground.
After long Winters teen, sweet is this breath,
Of blossomed boughs and mantle of tender green,
In field and heath; whereón now softly blows,
Whitening each spire of grass, attempered wind.
And heavens loft rings, with dítty of lavrocks voice.

In a néw excess of spirit, methought I walked,
Where curlews only cried and swallows stoopt;
Quartering wild field, and hares played wíthout dread,
Of human paths.

As fór me, one of late
Returned from Shadow of former Ages' Death;

165

To Suns glad Eye and Warmth, on Earths green breast:
Fulfilled with bliss of heart, all day I went;
In sweet-breathed bent; and gathered ín mine hand;
Flowers' gentle living gems, of every kind;
Which there glad daughters of the Sun and dew,
Reborn of the dead year, did blissful blow.
Are nodding wind-flowers, party-white and red;
And blue-bells rife, at entering óf dim wood.
Pale ladies'-smocks, demurely all arrayed,
With folded head, as each had been a bride.
And key-flowers sprung, in bosom of this sod.

Pied daisies, crowned each with a silver fret;
Starring, mongst cups of gold, in thicket grass;
With eyebright, gentle, únder woodbine bush.
And meadow-sweet, whose gracious plumes aloft,
So nobly meek, our every sense doth greet;
And milk-worts tríple hewed in open lay:
Where, o'er the close-cropt-herb, wafts honied breath,
In Sún-streams; óf bee-nodding thyme and whin.
And o'er all thís, in stíll sequestered place;
Where I a móment tarried, to take breath;

166

I purple pasque-flowers in fair Sun-kisst plot,
Which blossomed from hill-sod; with joy of heart,
Beheld. Whereof a chronike old, hath taught;
How wingéd spirits, of Angels' heavenly race;
Stoop fróm these vaulted skies, what day they pass,
In Ember tide; as each year their wont is;
To pluck; and bear them ín their bosoms forth.
That lowly, in royal raiment, those prefigure;
His coming, ín heavens glory, with His saints.

Know further, thát Culdees of holy life,
Which walk apart, and dwell in desert place;
Nourished of only herbs, their mortal part;
In cabans óf wreathed boughs and builded sods,
Work of their hands; which, lowly, have renounced,
All pride, all lust and malice of Mans heart:
That heavenly Vision, with pure eyes, have seen.

Thus, putting flower to flower, my languor late
Dispersed, and come again my lively spirits;
Is goodly in thís quick air, to follow forth;
Full of a silent harmony of the Sun-god.

Daylong I went, in strength of Cædmons bread;

167

Murmuring as bee-fly doth, in Britains heath;
Souls inarticulate thanksgiving tó high Heaven.

Was that till Suns late going down; when seemed
The skies, with árras hanged and cloth of gold.
Only lone hernshaw, training after her,
Her long lean shanks, late now homeward overflies
Aloft, from fen or rushy mere, to nest.

Sun stoopeth now tó His setting, that hath filled
Days Temple of the wide Heavens, with light divine.
Fadeth thís upland, ás a golden dream;
Whereo'er now, skies their sáffrón curtains' fold:
Leaving to watches of eternal stars,
A slumbering World.

Laid is all wind, that spired
O'er holt and heath. In twilight, I approach
Huge soulless marvel, on these breathing wolds;
Which giants once reared, of antique hanging stones,
Immane, unwrought; save that them Titans brayed,
To those rude weathered shapes, with hammer-stones;
And sith set up, an hoar tradition sayeth,
Ere the World was.

Long shadows lie outstretched;
Of yond rude cirque, of pillar and transom work:

168

Huge ghostly solitude! Come then hour to rest.
I leaned to a mighty craig-stone in their midst,
A shelter in nighttimes wayward wind and wet.
So laid me down; till dáy-spring should shine forth.

Celtic hermits.

There came yet ínto mine unquiet thought;
A little tale of Galfred, ére I slept:
How once held Titan-brood this upland march;
Before the World was civil. Were these blocks,
Immane, their landmarks.

Titans, Mother-Earth,
In former age, engéndered wíthout Sire;
And might, in members huge, to them derived;
Whence shortly grown to án exceeding power
And pride; durst those defý, in truculent mood,
The very Gods; and there were any such.

Long, who should lead them, ín tremendous strife;
For lordship of this Isle, assembled brethren,
They question and consult. Such fond intént,
Was cause of envy, in théir enfeloned breasts.
Gainst the elders birthright, cónspired áll the rest,
How covertly, a Summers night, when he lay sick;
They Gorgot might supplant and dispossess;

169

The whiles he slept.

He wíst their fell intént,
So was he subtle and sly, of South-winds breath.
And divination made, by ravens' flight:
Awaited their Onset.

Was now third night;
When gathered giants immane, iníquitous:
(Without habíliments, withouten sex;
Huge-memberd, ánd on height as oaks:) with mauls
And hurlbats weaponed their rude hands.

Of stars,
Shone little covert light. With one consent,
All rose up, át Moon-rising, fróm hill-seats.
Wild was that night, with rushing weird wínd-blasts.
Those silent, as they might, hurl headlong forth.
In vain their footfall, whose vast poise seemed shake;
(As they from hill-brow únto hill-brow, strode;)
The centred Earth; muffled thick twilight sod.
Waked by his hounds, the Monster ready was:
Who issued fróm grim threshold of his lodge.
And ás smites thresher on his barn-floor, halm;
He beat them small, he felled them, one by one;
In fierce debate, with flail of iron-stone.

170

Though greatly incensed, that Titan granted life
To Mothers sons, where grovelling smitten down;
Like to great storm-cast pine-stems overthrown,
Felled by his heavy hand; they lay on ground,
Not fully dead; when those, in the next Sun,
Recovered breath, as they revived from swoon

He, táking of each rísen, infrangible Oath;
By Heavens All-Might, and Life of Mother Earth;
To yield obedience tó his elders right;
And hold of him their several fiefs henceforth.

In token whereof, he bound each one to fetch
His merestone, and it set up in this place:
As he should give commandment.

When had brought
Each grudging Lábourer ón his giant nape;
His mighty block, to Gorgots delve, and cast
The immense poise with sullen sob, to earth:
He caused them to compile this monument;
Figuring the wheeling crystal Firmament.

When giants and though long-aged, deceased at length,
Which not immortal were; I find it writ,

171

Succeeded in their room, blithe faerie-folk.

And was in this wise that it came to pass:
Had fays affrighted Moons unwonted murk,
Men call Eclipse, of Fayfolks' Seer long sith;
In whose breast wisdom of the ages dwelled,
Forecast; who of old time predicted thus,
In Faerie Land, which then was on the Main;
With other signs of dread, to then be seen.
Should fire-faxed star blaze sudden out in heaven.
Under whose long drawn dreadful dragon-train;
Conjunction should of planets trine, be seen.

Saying, Thén should be the foredetermined end,
Of Faerie Nation, in their Ancient Seats.
In which hap, only who had skill to ride,
The airs steep pathways, might be saved alive:
To Westward Isle, beyond swart wandering waves.

A panic-terror seized the little folk;
Seeing all these things, even now to come to pass.
Cry of that faerie multitude on Mainland;
Like babble was of a flock of chattering stares,
Gathered to Autumn flight, in úntilled mead.
In that great jeopardy, all whó could leap and run,
Caught up their budgets, busked them over the Foam.

172

Some on snatcht broad leaves, many on branches green:
Which, when they had put on their wishing-caps;
Turned under them to flying quilts and mats.

Ravished from Earth, they over seas sped West;
They sail the Sky, under dim Stars they pass,
Whereby they hold their course. Yet buffeting gusts
Beat some unlucky wights back 'mongst cloud-steeps;
Which lost their ways, 't is thought were such blown forth,
To other shores: that were not heard-of sith.

Nathless main elfen multitude safely o'erpassed;
As many as spied, the white Isles cliffs, from height.
On Albans Plain, the most have lighted sound.
A few mistiding bruised their crooked shanks:
Some even have crazed their crowns.

Those highflyers thus,
From riding clouds and wind, borne to fast land;
Goodfellows and Hearties, seizin take thereof;
Plucking their little hands'-full blades of grass;
They set, for badges, in their long piked caps.
Each no more with him hath of household-stuff;
Than that stived in the budget on his back.
This Land, whose white rocks guide-light to them lent,

173

In perilous ferry aloft, they Albion name.

When day is made anon, that goodly Plain,
Where faeries busy everywhere are seen.
For bonnets red and mantles blue, gay field
Seemed, many hewed, of wavering butterflies;
Mongst thousand blossoms ruffled of dawn wind.
The birds be singing, the wild woods are ringing:
'T is Time of the new leaf, when those arrive;
In Land wherein they hope anew to live.

They day rest out. Come set át length of Sun;
When evening star is seen; and flitter mice
Wing devious forth; sally elves' chief estates,
To Council. High-born wights on Albans turf;
They sit in circuit neath fair linden sweet.

The hornéd Moon, in sight appearing soon;
All Her, with laughing tears and leaping hearts,
In blithe and merry mood, salute again;
And sounds melodious chant of faerie throats.
Sith, in this Néw Land, without let or lin;
With one consent they all choose Oberon, King.

Word-wise, great-hearted and alert as bird;
A Prince is he, amongst them, óf mild mood.

174

His memory of lore likewise, a treasury was;
Of many generations of fayfolk.

Helmbright, great duke of dwarves and hammermen,
(Whose stithy is sith in chine of South-West rocks;
For workmanship renowned of gilded bronze;)
His Sisters son, first troth plights tó Dan Oberon.
The like do all the rest. Concluded was,
That should henceforth be this in Island Alban;
New Faery Plain, and fayfolks' trysting-place.
Princes strike hands, consenting all to this:
Fay People it ratify, with ten thousand throats.

Elf-king and councillors after that appoint
Wakerobin, reeve, and Horn, chief magistrate;
Elves of much worship both and blameless life;
With Melilot, recorder; and mighty-voiced
Tall Hazelwood, herald; mongst all of chief weight,
And great estate.

Their session ended thus,
And gone up Hazelwood to an hillocks height;
He, twixt his palms, cries, Signify, People of Sprites,
Your free assent, tó this High Covenant

175

In holding up your hands. With haughty looks,
Smiting his staff to ground then at each pace;
With stalking steps and crying, All Heed! Give place.
He, with grave councillors, leads King Oberon forth:
Whose royal forehead, crowned have gentle maids;
With flowers, their hands have pluckt, of Albions mead.
And faeries all drop curtseys on green grass.

Follow elf-champions, with stern martial tread;
Thickets of bended bows and gilt-head spears.
Then Helmbrights leather-aproned berg-folk pass;
With shouldered sledges, hardy of countenance;
And mighty of brawns, in battailous array.

Elves turn to celebráte then right joyous feast,
In their repairs. His woning-place each one hath;
Where he from venturous voyage did light and lodge.
And with him his housefolk, on Albions heath.
Of branches, some have bowers already made,
And many of hoarded sods. And busy are soon
Good-fay wives' hands; that all might break their fasts.

Pulse of awned barley-corns' wild stooping ears;

176

From Old Mainland, they beat small 'twixt matched stones;
And fitches cropt. And having smit forth sparks,
And kindled sticks; part baked is at their hearths:
And part is presently simmering in their pots.

Elf-kin, sate sith at banquet, eat thereof,
With sweet wood-honey. And spouses view which best,
Can pancakes toss, o'er embers of live hearths;
Which shine now glimpsing bright, as stars on loft.
Woodwives-thralls, bear to all round new-brewed mead.
Girt ben those only, in long smocks of grey moss;
With garlands blue of pervinks on their heads:
And dight, with golden collars, ben their necks,
Of butter-cups: and mails, for bracelets bright,
Have they, of lady-birds wings.

To gather meat;
Did they prevent the Dawn, in field and grove:
And ranging sith amongst the bees; which named
In Faeryland be, the Muses' little birds:
They sought the flowery sweet, and filled their crocs;
Mingled with dewdrops. And 't is this they skink.
To all fay companíes, in treen goblets;

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Wild woods diapered acorn-cups; increased,
By magic spell, to compass of elves' lips.
And every laughter-loving goblin fellowship,
Drinketh deep; until in fine their heads go round.

'Twixt mirth and ruth, elves, for late Country lost;
(No sorrow long endures in faerie breasts!)
Whose knolls grown totty already are of the must,
Gin to nod fast. Yet once, who wake, lift that
Sweet metheglyn to dry lips. Soon all drowse fast.
They rowt whose heads mislay, till risen again
Is morrows Sun; so weary is every fay.

And sith, past after dawn, they slumber out
New daylight hours, on small soft sappy grass:
And that till lateward, in New Faery Albion.
Elves yawn, when first is Star of even seen.
They stretch them, in their leafy bowers awake:
So jocund rise refreshed to merry make.

Some light-shanked spurn, flit foot-balls, where they pass.
Some shimmering glowberds gather in their caps.
To them trip faerie maidens out anon;
That dainty glide over dim twilight turf.

Wooers blow up, in crystal-wan moonlight;

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Shawms some, of green corn, some of hemlock stalks.
Grave pipes, some, fashioned of pilled hazel rods.
Some, booming trumps, of far-fetcht wentle-traps.
Another, on shíning reeds' uneven halms;
With wavering lip, plays, warbling, diverse notes:
To help the labouring Moon, that hangs oppressed
In fleecy clouds; and wades among, uneath.

'Tis merry in New Faerie Land, where lads and maids
Be taking hands, in quaint new shuttle-dance.
Hie throngs, great-eyed, to gaze on their disport.
Stand ready enranged each bevy upon their part.
And sign given, all with footing light, skip forth.
Their frolic steps and twinkling shifting feet;
Which they, in quaint alternate figures cast;
Seem to weave tappets thus, and broider flowers,
In new Spring grass.

Who supple-jointed most,
Is found; his recompense is then to be crowned,
With blossoms, which those maidens on him cast.
And he hath leave amongst their gentle crew;

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Blindfolded erst, as they flit laughing forth;
To choose him a bright make.

O'er Albions turf,
Skies' silver eaves be shining anew bright;
The Moon looks forth. See, yond, elves mumming run,
In strange disguisings of bird-kinds and beasts'.
Some sally, as hooting bogles from dim wood.

Lo, in moist meadow, by a rivers brink,
Are other gathered! where elf o'erskips elf,
His fellows bowed-down neck. All, in fond mirth,
Is their contention, whiles-oft tripping up;
To outgo that tumble-footed waters' race.
Who, or for stress of laughter, or lack of breath,
Stumbleth, or flings else flatsome, on damp grass;
With all their small palms' buffets, lies amerced.

The Moon is sailing bright, High Queen of Heaven,
Amongst clear stars, Her Face as crystal glass.
And ón a bank, neath blossomed haythorn sweet;
I an ássize see of long-robed magistrates;
Wise solemn rime-beards: with Wakerobin, Reeve,

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And Horn, Chief Magistrate. Crook-backed, seem the most;
Under grave weight of ancient precedents.

The cause they try, as I perceive, tonight;
Preferred is, gainst one Eavesdrop, found, false elf,
In precinct lurking of their Parliament-house;
(Bower of white wands, was yester seemly wrought;)
To pilfer secrets of the Commonwealth.
The Indictment heard, the Statute is rehearsed.
That Crime is grave; the Punishment thereof,
Tempered with Mercy, is the Offenders death.

The Accused, betwixt two armed elves is led in,
Trembling and pale. The judgment of the Court;
Is, that be naked bound his quivering flesh
Upon an emmets hill, from dawn till dusk.

Then Eavesdrops wife, Dame Pipit, as in this,
Accused to be his faults Suggesteress;
One known to be a baneful sorceress;
Cited: is by the Apparitor led forth.
She as testify many doth the Moonbeams ride;
And can, and oft, to common detriment doth,
Suppress. The learned Justices consult.
Then they pronounce, Dame Pipit be submersed.

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Turned thence my gaze, I a still sequestered place
Beheld on other part, nigh Oberons Court;
Fenced round with river-reeds, from common view;
Wherein were sitting ladies of the Queen.
A pageantry before them fays present.

'Tis known, mongst faerie-folk, be certain few;
Can make their little statures less at will;
Nay, and even themselves transform, by magic spell.
Some saw I ride, on napes of butterflies;
And rein them, at their pleasure, as their steeds.
Other that were dance-maidens, saw I mount,
By ladders, unto copweb cables stretcht,
Taut, and well stayed, twixt blue-spined thistle-tops.
Thereon strange tip-toed masteries they showed forth.
Sate other, ready-climbed, on neighbour-stalks;
To play, when these should cease, their mimic parts.

The first descended; climb those in their room.
The Spectacle that new valiant troop present
Tonight; is flight, o'er seas flood, to New Land:
And how, in air, they warred, with cruel beaks
Of birds of prey; and like were to be cast
Away, in hail and mist and ravishing blasts.
The whiles they played, on-lookers held their breaths:

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Till that those seemed on Albions cliffs to light.
Remembering, then they their late perils past;
Them matter felt, of mirths delightful pain,
Which lightens hearts.

That company is now dispersed;
With laughter trembling ón their gentle lips.
Some laughed so long, they laughed them out of breath.
A merry flock is parted from the rest,
Whom Lady Misselden leads: they with her trace,
The freshing air to breathe on open heath.

Each bears, in her white hand, a marguerite:
And each one seemeth, as they speed forth, a Grace.
All carolling chant, as hollow and hill they pass:
Heigh-ho! Through high and low.
Hip! Have me where the woodbinds blow.

Come to wood-side, they halted on a row;
There hang, till their return, on oaken bough;
Their tyres of faerie-gilt with pearls bedight;
The subtil gold-thread work of Helmbrights smiths;
Which girt their locks, sheen as the harvest sheaf;

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That fall down-forth, on their delicious necks.

Kissed their white palms, to clear cóld stars on loft;
And linked their sister-hands, in sweet accord;
With smiling looks, they foot the midnight sod:
To tinkling harmonies, fays can only hear;
Of serene moonbeams, woven of winds breath.
Print of their faerie soles, where rounds they tread;
May yet be seen in many a wood-side mead:
But chiefly in their fair lawns, which faeries love.

Yet much remaineth to tell of Oberon.
Whom lightly, by his countenance, ye had known,
To be his Peoples Sire. Long-agéd One,
His reverend beard hanged lowly to the ground.
His mantle was of wool, his sark of line;
All of the finest weft, hand-work, of Her,
Whom he loved best, in blissful wedlocks bond,
In all the World; his gentle Faerie Queen.

Two spans his royal person was of height;
After the measure of a human wight:
A thumb-breadth add, for his piked scarlet shoon.
But see, Great Heart in little corse, ye estéem
And rightly, Hím every whit, a faerie king.

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Years many, after these things I have told;
(Moons were then blissful years, of faerie-kin;)
In much prosperity under noble Oberon;
Fays' Kingdom hath endured, in New Found Albion:
For not less just, than loved and wise he was.
Lived fays then gladly, under Sun and Stars.
Moreo'er they multiplied, so that every bush;
The Summer Inn was of some merry elf;
And under each hearth-stone a Puck did lodge.
Dame Holda Faerie-land paced, with Mothers steps;
Causing Her benign breath, all fruits to bud;
And the wild bread-corn plenteously to spring forth.

Horn oft of the wild hunt was heard then sound.
In chace of some forshaped swart skipping elf;
Into the ferlie form of forest beast.
Wild hounds him chased, and their sharp teeth had rent:
But, when he had enough, his borrowed hide,
(That turned then to sere leaves or birchen rind,)
He sloughed; and lightly on bough, Puck skips: from whence,
He laughs him double and his yelling foes,
Derides.

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But sith ordained is all must pass,
Which neath the inconstant Moon hath breath and being;
And be, as that had never been: is come
At length his fatal day, when royal Oberon,
On hís bed-stead, breathed forth his noble spirit;
And no more was, in Faerie Nations sight:
Leaving his elfen, orphans, and fair Land
Of Albion widowed; where shall dwell his name,
Like to a Music sweet, in fays' full hearts.

Good, bountiful, and right gracious Lord he was.
Tidings from nigh and far, with joyful steps;
Brought daily his elves, to Oberons faerie court.
It pleased him, like his sons, to see them sit;
At board, in his great hall, ranged after worth:
And Speedwell, ancient steward of his House;
Set on before them, noon and evening meat.
Nor seld, would the King-fathers self converse;
With them, without proud looks, in homely sort;
Over the mead-cups, át the common hearth.
Nor parted any from him, without gifts.

Grief is in Fáery Land, góod King Oberon passed.

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Drooping along the Kings highways, in rime-dight
Tall Autumn grass; elves to his bearing forth,
Lo, now lamenting wend, in sad Moonlight.

Standing in théir wan eyes, tears' bitter drops;
Elf-maidens, websters, wrought that long death-night;
To mantles weave of grey, of wild wool-flocs:
Gainst morrows break, for all high magistrates.

Who would not rue? (Falls Winter in all hearts;)
With them that sorrowing bring the dead King forth.
Grave Princes of the Kingdom, underset,
By turns, their zealous shoulders to the bier.
That lately royal life, they bear to earth,
That never more may wake; a breathless corse.

They enter now a glooming silent hurst.
Trees bow their heads, and shed cold silver drops
On deep-strewed mould of Autumns leafy wrack.
Through pathless brake, through thicket-fern they wade:
Where many a small wood-fowl, with startled plaint;
From shrouded spray, flits out to open light.

A tardy Moon looks forth, with wimpled face.
Stand now who foremost mourn, in elves' long train;
Thick throngs, where reverend is set down His bier.

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Ordained, the place is, of the Courts Soothsayer;
Neath wide-spread branches of an antique beech,
Tree chiefest of that grove; to lay him in
Cold clay, ere rising of the morrows Sun.

Dun elves and grey, stern woodwards of those paths;
Kindred, woodwoses named, of mountain dwarves;
Hanged nigh upon a thorn, their mantles dofft;
With iron-shod spades and mattocks, toil and sweat;
Last dark death-womb, to ópen by Stars' light;
Of Life's All-Mother, Earth.

Round that death-pit,
Stand princes, sighing, of the Faerie Nation;
Which may not weep for woe, as other wights;
How sore their hearts may rue: but they avert
Their cast-down looks, deformed with mortal grief;
And hating this nights stars'-light, shroud, as doth;
Each sleep-bound fowl, their elbowed arms beneath.

Bent with old rheums, an Ancient nighs. One crazed
In all his joints. White hang his thin hair-locks,
From his uncovered grizzled pate, as frost.
'T is goblin Hazelwood, with his old chin-cough:

Lead young mens hands the Father, and stay up

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Under his elbows; whelked are his old eyes,
That gleam, from great-browed hollow pits, unglad,
In wizened visage, through his hearts distress.
Move trembling under him his agéd knees.

He, ere mighty-voiced, approached to the pits brink;
Now, ás from untoned leathern throat, recites;
Last ghostly office, for his royal dead.
And seeing, o'er Oberons corse closed, the last clod:
There from his sorrowful wintered breast brake forth,
Husk groans, that might no longer be repressed.

But Oberon, ceased from this Worlds Life; which like
Is to spark fanned by transitory breath;
And his cold clay, laid in dark mound of Earth:
Which waits all offspring gendered of Her Breast:
Fair Albions launds, wolds, hills, brown heaths and woods:
Give no more back, blithe Faerie Lands, careless voices,
Of former days.

Moreover, a new care
Befel them; which it paineth to relate:
How storm-beat many-minded alien kin;

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Of wéaponed men, séa-folk, sailed in from North Main;
Storm-driven, were cast to shore in unknown Alban:
Which seeing, a land untilled, before them, fair;
Went up with swords and spears, it to possess.
But hástily elf-fólk, those men of státure seen;
Withdrawn were to West Parts' waste hills and heaths.

Sith those sent to their kinsfolk, who sailed o'er;
Strong plough-carles part, part hewers in Albans woods:
That soon then of their bills and axes ring;
And rush, (once singing-trees of sacred bírds;)
Great stems, that lifted to the stars their heads.
To whóse lives, wédded lives were of wood-sprites.
And shelter found their agéd arms beneath
The forest beasts.

And all, that might build men
Hewen walls to dwell in; and for crooked ribs
Of their warfaring ships. A kin whose mouths,
Were full of oaths of horrible import.
And whose much clanging of their steeple-bells;
From day to day, effrayed fays' gentle ears.

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Whence, seen they, in no wise, might away with such;
Elves mostly have now forsaken Albions heaths.

But of the peerless Faerie Queen to Oberon:
Not yet I find recorded her lief name.
Howbeit some lately affirmed, it was Whitefoot.
Seeing in an old Romant, is founden writ;
Hów eachwhére She trode, there sprang up a white wort;
Crowned with its several dainty silver fret,
Sith called the daisie-flower.

And any enquire
Would more of this, I little can relate;
Save that a certain fond, unlucky wight:
Who was so hardy thát he durst avaunt
Him; hé could, for a pening, it pronounce:
Had been elf-shot. Colin wist what She hight,
But left untold. All ladies of her Court;
Had long combed out, like wáter-flags, elf-sheen locks.

Nor of that great rejoicing find I said:
Was made, when beauty-peerless, she was wed;
New Moons night, míd-time of the háythorn bloom;
(Auspicious tide, by sortilege, ascertained:)

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With many gifts; but were it only this:
That she descended was of royal line;
Being, through one bélsire, sib to noble Oberon.

Moreo'er is sungen, how in faeries flight;
She borne was, riding o'er swart waves alone:
On stoopt neck, óf white swan, to Faerie Alban.

Her woning was a delve, neath white-eaved cliff.
In hill-steep; whére a royal manor was,
Far, in West rocks. There long she held her court:
And was that warm and dry, in wind and wet.

Her chamber of paraments, wherein this Queen sate,
On the high settle, blissful like a bride;
With Sun-sheen golden diadem ón her head,
And girt with precious belt of faerie gold;
Which Helmbright forged, Her Sisters Son, for Her;
Was Moonsheen named, of elves, with Hall and Bower.
In wonder of íts fóur white radious walls;
Glittering with pearly stars: the carven squames,
One over other laid, of oyster-shales.
And flower was she of wifehood, tó lifes end;
And sovereign was her skill, wherein she excelled
All hítherto, in rémedíes of healing herbs.

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Was chiefest óf her maidens Goldilocks hight,
(This find I in story;) fór great prudence praised.
Of the Queens spense, had Goldilocks oversight:
Wherein was store laid up of the Kings mead;
With ácorn meal, woodnuts, wild mast, and heath honey.
And querns, work-instruments, looms and househood stuff.

Nor less than she, Dame Eglantine was set,
Over the vessel and great cypress chests,
Of royal apparel: and her daughter bright,
Dewdrop, stood in attendance ón the Queen;
From seven winters old.

Recorded is;
When three nights old in cradle, murmuring bees;
Brought of their treasure, to her infant lips.
She office held of Teller of blithe tales,
In the Queens household. And those new and old
Were so glad never-ending, that forgate
Fays which them heard, whilst drank their thirsting ears;
To eat and sleep. Might I record some one,
The least, though lacking grace of Dewdrops lips;

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My page, with azure limned should seem and gilt.

Of me, have only this, Was faeries' Queen,
A mirror to all ladies of her Court;
Of nurture and in every gentle art;
As to dress sod and bake-meats: that was most,
Of garnered mast, and áll nuts in wild wood.
With right conserving of the Summers fruits;
As merries, plum, wild apples, wortle-berries.
Wild briar and sloes aústere, and búllaces.

And in their spinning, weave that subtlest weft,
Fays use of wool-worts gathered in wet moss.
Were full of smiling laughter their twinned lips
Aye warbling whiles their nimble fingers wrought;
Quaint ditties learned, of thé Queens ówn white throat;
As thróstle, on wood spráy, delicious.

Elf-sheen fay-maidens, whén they ben at home,
Them chant in their sires halls; when wights have supped:
And fróm stern heroes' brows, well tears of bliss.
For elf-kin long had war, with sundry kinds
Of birds and tree and éven with great ground beasts.
Some they, in snares, gins, pitfalls, springes, took:
Other, with flint-head shafts and darts, they pierced.

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This lastly I find recorded of the Queen.
One mórrow, issúing fróm her widows bower;
To gather, as hér wont was, the daisy-flower:
The self-same swan with golden gorget dight,
And gurgling voice, alighted at her feet.

Known then, her destiny it was, from ground to pass;
Though ever-young, she seated her as erst,
On hís stoopt neck. The swan her presently aloft,
Bare fróm elves' sight; and tó that blissful lake,
In sunset hills, opinion is, conveyed:
Whereas forth-faren King Oberon her awaits.
And they, in meadows wárm with thymy breath;
Being joined their spirits, in peace eternally rest.

Fay maidens all, in réverence sith of her;
Be weavers named of Peace, at élves' home-hearths:
Power of their lays to still soon kindled hearts.

From merry dream, amidst nights solitude;
I waked of Oberon, ánd his Faerie Nation;
Huge únhewed scantling of great craig, beneath.
Crickets chirked at my feet. I looking up,
Beheld the Waggoner, now much wheeled downforth,
Amidst the Signs. Wide shines hoar Watling Street;

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That girds great Starry Frost, Heavens Infinite Coast.

Not Cynthias this light is, She casts to Earth;
Sailing through holt of heaven, whilst Earthlings sleep:
All other radiance lies on heaths night-breast;
Sheepwolds, where ploughman never clave the turf.
Where the great bustard timbers, from Mans foot,
Remote, her rough-built solitary nest.

As for me uprisen, I urged was suddenly forth.
Impelled, by the same Power as ere; I was
Soon after stayed, upon a wind-kisst bank;
Where a Man-loving ruddock warbled soft,
From sweet briar bush; and twittered in his sleep.

And I, (I know not hów,) being lifted up:
Under stars' sublime March, from the Worlds night.
Beheld-dream-City estáblished, ón white cloud:
Nay and all Skys Phantom Plain seemed builded thus.
For great astonishment, almost failed my breath!
And sounded ín mine ears the Muses Voice;
Saying ít that City wás, whereof She spake;
Hid from Worlds sight, abóve the mountain tops.

A City I saw of twice ten-thousand roofs;
Four-square, encompassed wide with walls and towers;

196

Where I beheld, and on my fingers told,
Twice-twelve tower-gates, with lofty battlements crowned:
Conformable tó Earth-rounds succeeding hours.
And light Dream City, of péarly o'er-shining cloud;
And not of radiance óf the Sun, received.

To one of thóse tower-gates, approached my feet.
And thronged great ghostly multitude in thereat.
Whereas soul-wardens mány-eyed, saw I sit.
Immortal keepers áre they of that Port:
Which révolved mighty Registers in their hands;
Nor suffered any Souls therein to trace;
Whose names not written, in Great Book-of-Light.
Seemed those, thus busied, not to heed my steps.
I entered thús Dream-Citys Liberties.

But somewhile stood, where parted several streets;
In doubt which way to take: not daring yet;
Where rumour none of wains, nor echoing tread
Of man or beast; in my souls solitude:
Of wight, and should there any pass, to ask.

Where seemed some human concourse, I made forth;
Supposing such should be a market-street:

197

And house-rows, thresholds, open doorways passed;
Of unlike Nations' building-wise and height.
Souls saw I enter pillared halls, and courts;
And issue as many forth.

I walked, únmarked,
Through to Dream-Citys great thronged marketplace:
Large as some ántique Stadium, marble-flagged.
Three sides were cloistered round, the fourth side flanked,
A stately marble Guildhalls mullioned front.

Dream-souls, of Tribes and Families of the World;
To common profit, congregate there to trade;
Which make a joint exchange of their minds' wares.
Like to a fair, were booths and stalls set up:
Whereon was store displayed of merchandise.
And published, running up and down, loud Criers;
Might each one take of all, whatso he would,
And give like good again!

I only in part
Might survey, so World-thronged wide Market-space;
Where Nations hanselled, with much cónfused noise.
And drew nigh where, made judgment by their looks;

198

Regardful citizen-throngs, mongst thém conversed:
Hoping hear somewhat unto mine intent:
Since later Time hath made of slender worth;
Much that erewhile contented human thought:
Of tongues was given me, an understanding mind.)

Nor few old saws, now newly weighed, are found;
To be, as many esteem, of less account;
Or else past use, as orchard boughs bemossed;
Whereof none longer looketh to taste fruit.
Or walls once steadfast, whereon hanged men hopes,
For days to come; which lean now to their fall.

With One, me happed, a chapman, fall in talk;
Who trafficked to far Countries, East and West:
And knew the mind of Nations, of unlike
Both hew and hearts; and more than gold in purse,
Had gotten Knowledge.

Lay a mouldered heap,
In corner of those porches, where we walked;
Which seemed wind-driven leaves of ancient books.
Engrossed with pride of scriveners' characters;
The initials purple-royal and broad gilt;
With precious portraitures, many a page adorned.

Unto a learned Licenciáte, who then passed;

199

And took some up, at our request thereof;
Such showed to be, for all their outward glance;
Old Gropers' still-born labours, in Worlds dark:
Yielding to mens, new hungry and thirsting spirit;
Scant more than should lean diet of flinty dust;
And Autumns withered leaves, to living flesh.
My Friend methought well spake, saying, More than such;
Today is profitable right human worth.

Nigh to that place, I saw a stall set forth;
Whereat there solemn long-gowned ancients sate;
Whose foreheads rimpled were, as ashen rind;
Reputed men of knowledge. Vent those made;
Of far-fetcht drugs, in basons, bowls and trays,
Whereon the cryptic signs, I saw expressed;
Helped not as I might understand a whit,
To any certain end: to bodys health,
Or to allay mans' souls solicitudes.

I many citizens saw to them resort.
But when rose sudden hubbub, stir of spirits;
Thick thronging from nigh streets, tumultuous Press:
Their table it was, of word-wise merchandise;
I saw, midst justling souls, first overset.

200

Of that commotion cause and eddying feet,
Great Mansoul Himself was; this night returned,
From ghostly Underworld, to living ground.
Great-statured, but now plainly of human mould,
He entered thus, mongst Dream-Towns citizens;
That, like to swarming bees, round him contend.

Mounted upon staged scaffold, he made sign,
That he would speak. Disquietly he dispaced,
A little while. Anon souls' concourse husht:
Opened Mansoul his mouth. Praised be the Gods!
(He quoth,) I, O citizens, únto living light,
Am now returned, from sunless Underworld
And dust of death: I, in só dread, dark great Voyage;
Have, ín much trembling, traversed hundred paths.

Wisdom and Knowledge of Worlds ages past:
Sooth I enquired throughout, in míne unrest.
But all spake darkness: prisoned hád been each,
In blind compácture of a corruptible flesh:
Whence, one and all, might little they unfold.
Each from eyehole, of hís small tenement
Of clay, gazed forth. The Rest, past reasons reach,
Man taketh, as finding naught better, upón Trust.

I again, since I returned above, have sought

201

With fervent súpplication, to be taught:
Seeing lurks, in every átomy of thís Worlds dross;
Though void of sénsible life, an íntimate force:
Attractions ánd repulsions, not unlike
To perturbations, ín Mans jelly-flesh:
But vainly.

And díligéntly I gave ear;
If háply I, in Rhýthm, óf the Universe;
Some súper-élemental Voice might hear.
But tó no purpose! Far as eye might reach;
All-that-is, éver hangs in á vast flux:
Whereín there seemeth to sóund, aye manifest Note,
Of Imperfection! Though mine every sense,
I bent to the úttermost, ánd continued thus:
I naught at áll perceived of human import.
Yet those be the Dumb Powers, from whence derive,
Untó this day, the actívities of our lives.

What though I tread continually áll lives' paths:
The múrmur of áll waters cannot teach;
Nor Winds blind breath, which substance of all speech,
Instruct my spirit. I furthermore besought,
The Intelligéncies óf the lofty air.
But none inclined, (and there be any such,)

202

Unto mine instant prayer, with singleness
Of heart, breathed forth; a favourable Ear.
Too slender, brief, mens lives, tóo fugitive are;
We mostly apply, to thíngs of mean account:
Where daily Opínion veereth ás a vane:
The whiles we toy, on án abysmal brink.

Child of the Sky and Earth, and featured thus;
Even he who móst is happy and fortunate:
Fleets, líke some garish búbble, in trembling-stream;
To, unto nothingness, be resolved anon.

Answered some souls, methought, from certain housetops:
Bove busy hum of Cítys market-place.
(Voices Heard From Housetops)

Purgeth each new found Knowledge, by degrees,
The Vision of our souls. In time to come,
When these days shall be old, more light shall shine;
On tardy generations of new men.

Our soul is as a bird, which lights on spray:
We know not whence it cometh unto our sight.
Rockt by the wind; uneasily it dwelleth,

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Not long, adréad of évery flickering leaf.
Nor wot we whíther it presently flitted forth.

Eachwhere, like sighs be breathed of human breasts;
Shines everywhere thé same Sun. Infinitude hangs,
O'er all our heads of everlasting stars:
Whiles we, men of few life-days, change and pass.

Knowledge, by little and little, shall unwind
Our unweaned souls, out of their swaddling bands.
Full Knowledge, is unattainable, in Mans state,
We only at best perceive some little part;
After short purblind vision of our hearts:
Wisdom, our heritage, lies within our might.
Time past our fathers' was, this day that is
Is ours; the Future we ourselves beget.

The Sum of all is, There be many paths;
Of Mans endeavour, seeking Righteousness;
Wherein, reborn, a soul may fearless walk;
Towards the Infinite Unknown, ín eternal paths.

Till some be found new aspect of Mans mind.
Till shall a taper-light exceed the Sun;
May none read Riddle of the Universe.
It passeth all understanding, and shall pass.

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Book 6: Mansouls Dream City

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I borne was forth then, ín much mingled Press,
Of cítizen dream-souls, fróm their Market-place;
Which sued with Mansoul, towards the Acropolis.

Founded was that on white great marble cliff:
Whereon, on this part, stood the Parliament House;
With majesty of more than craftsmens handiwork.

A two-fold flight of sculptured steps ascended;
To that Basilica-like proud Edifice:
Wherein appeared bright golden stately porch;
Not builded, but with chisel only wrought.
And seemed likewise, óf the same living rock;
The many-chambered marble colonnades;
Which joined, thereto, as wings, on either part.

And whiles I gazed, Mansoul I saw mount up,
Alone by the degrees. And at the height;
To meet him, stand Dream-Citys purpled Senate.
Worship and dignity was in their high looks.
All entered then, and thé great gates were shut.
Whose two-leaved doors, of fretted cedar-work,

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Gold-ringed, with noble bronze bedight in part;
(And that gem-set, with azure stars and flowers;)
Upon their brazen sockets, silent rolled
Had to.

On the large alabaster step,
I watched an hour without, but all for naught:
Came Mansoul and the Council no more forth.
The entáblature I márked and pediment fair adorned,
With inlaid portraitures of Worlds righteous spirits;
And crystal-clear were pillars underset.
Whose chapiters were, of copper-smiths cunning-work;
Gilt leaves, adorned.

Mine eyes, from that high terrace,
Surveyed Dream-Citys Prospect forth; great Maze,
Of hundred streets beneath, 'twixt clustered roofs;
But soon anéw I felt impelled my steps;
On that high chambered marble colonnade;
Which on the right hand was.

First, I was stayed;
Where men severe of port, Philosophers,
Conférred of Mans estate. A little group,

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Next whom I stood, (Hellenes,) entreated thus:

. . . Renouncing all, whereof Man hath no need;
Lifted above base ferment of birth-flesh;
Made subject rédeemed human sense thenceforth,
Unto every good intent: might, with souls health,
Man best approach to Wisdoms perfect source.
And the Hinges of the World, with patient steps,
Ascending from things known, take knowledge of.

Some there I viewed, which stood, by twos and threes,
Them night, that would be counted of their part.
But little had they wrought of wórthy work.
I looked, and presently those became a masque;
Which púrsued after painted butterflies.
Each then his sovereign Remedy loud professed;
When he had caught a fly, of human ills.
I marvelled, how théy passed the Citys Watch!

Went further forth, I stayed with peace of spirit;
Beneath domed Chamber, on whose azure walls;
Pourtrayed were the night-seasons starry signs.
Wherein, past Reasons reach, may eyes of flesh;
That wheeling Temple, of the Firmament;
Mens thousand ages' dread Astonishment!

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Behold! Eternity visible to Mankind:
And Architecture of the Universe;
Governed by immutable Laws, (might we them read!)

Within, Nights lifelong faithful Watchers sate;
Sons of Urania, ambrosial heavenly Muse.
Great-souled, large-browed, attent; it was their part,
Beholding reverent fróm Earths tiding Round
That sovereign March of Heavens Firmament:
The supreme works to Chronicle, óf the SIRE
Of men and Gods.

Whilst World self-shadowed sleeps,
Till tardy day awake; sáve the lone voice,
Of elemental winds, waves, water-brooks:
Gazing, through their perspective tubes, they may pierce;
The amazing Vision of heavens starry coast!

And being their discipline, that alone which doth;
Of mens school-doctrines, stand without debate,
Of inept tongues, which better fed than taught:
They of Times, the everlasting Ordinance,
Predict; and can, in Balances of the Mind,
Poise even Earths Mass; compute celestial paths

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And numbers supputate, which exceeding thought;
Can only, in empty ciphers be expressed.

I in next chamber, many found assembled;
And listened, in that doorway leaned, to hear;
Their lore. Disputed was, whence Sun and Stars,
Their being had derived. As whether were,
An infinite elemental Mist, the Source;
Of this material visible Universe.
And some there were, who maintained thus; that Earth
From Sun, condensed to a great flaming Bulk;
As clay from Potters wheel, had been whirled-off:
And body of the Moon likewise, from Earth.
Fell ceaseless rains, on molten Earths chilled Round,
Conglobed; and rivers ran down, from all heights;
And became meres, and those to seas increased.
Whose storm-beat boisterous surges, lifted up;
Whelmed on first Lava-cliffs, in cataracts:
And thereto Her great streaming water-courses;
Gnawed much warp forth, in Morning of the World:
Warp, that in countless æons, layed layer on layer;
Was spread mile-deep, on Seas abysmal ground:

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Where ages sith, hath hardened it to stone.
And yet is ever full Earths great round Rind;
Of bowels of molten ores, whose swelling force
Is cause that shaken and riven is oft Her face;
Through tension of that planetary dross.
A certain young man standing mongst them spake:
Such day have I in mind of Etnas wrath.
Voices.
We would hear that.

Young Man.

A Summers night of stars,
It was, wherein I had painfully thróugh long hours,
With mule and guide, climbed on the mountains flanks.
Reached to an height whereas all husbandry ceased;
Before us only rose, that great last Steep,
With sulphur strewed, of Etnas cinder-cone.
Beside our path, appeared (now chill midnight;)
A shelter-cots rude walls of cinder blocks.
Our meaning was, therein, awhile to rest.
And leaving tied the mule, ascend afoot;
And reach, ere day, His cragged utmost crest:
And from those horrid cliffs, surview far out;
Trinacria, and great Italias mighty Foot;
And Etnas ímmense shadow on the Dawn-mist;

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That sun-rising should cast: and look from thence,
In the huge hollow mountains Gulf, downforth.

Dismounted in dim twilight, and about
To enter in that roofless lodge; the ground
Reeled underfoot, and seemed above our heads
To nod the stars: again with rumour deep
The ground seemed shaken, and stagger under us.

Cried that Siciliot, having found his wit;
And laid strong sudden hand on his mule-beast:
Mount! Ætna will erupt; to tarry is death!
Mount thou! and grant us Heaven, we perish not.

Headlong then breathless fugitives, we contended,
To outgo that fearful peril, in night-murk;
And stumbling oft, beyond, above, all paths:
Downward, aye downward, towards the mountains foot.

Hour-long we strove thus: detonations dread
Amazed our ears: corroding sulphurous fume
Us overtook; and seemed púrsue our steps.
When first, nigh spent, we durst pause tó draw breath;
We had gained a downward mile; and gazing back,

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A league-wide horror and fury of flame and smoke;
Saw, issuing from vast Ætnas burning crest.

Might mortal eye it survey from on height:
Should not that old-heaped, cliff-bound fearful Gulf;
Seem a fiery boiling caldron, lava-lake:
With heaving film, of molten iron dross;
Risen from infernal bowels of Mother Earth;
Through two-miles' stature of the hollow mount.

New thundrous immense din, is in our ears;
Of that rent films shards, launcht in the element:
With startling blasts, as were they cannon-shots.

Terrific conflagration! whereunto
No flesh might more approach. Should, in such moment,
To a cinder, his mortal being be consumed!

When next in downward flight for life, we halt
And glance back: hid from view is Ætnas height;
In bellowing gloom, of fiery uprolling smoke;
Wherefrom dart ceaseless quivering lightnings forth.

Was then from Ætnas cinder-flanks above;
Flowed down an horrid molten-footed flood;

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Inévitable creeping lava-tide:
That licketh all up, before his withering course.
Nor builded work, nor rampire cast in haste;
Of thousand mens hands, might, and they were helped
Of unborn-Angels, súffice to hold back;
That devastating, soulless, impious march
Of molten dross.

Dwellers round Ætnas roots;
(His, four days' journeys round encompassing Plain:)
Roused by that fearful uproar and midnight noise;
From tottering bedsteads leapt, have rushed, half-clad,
Abroad.

In silence, in awed knots, they watch;
Ætna from far-off, kindled in the skies;
(Such as years gone they heard their fathers tell!)
Whilst men gaze on, with cold and fainting hearts;
Folding their hands, with trembling lips, to Heaven:
Not few lament their toilful years, undone;
Those fields o'erwhelmed, wherein their livelihood.
Other enquire; if this were that last fire,
Divine; whose wrath, is writ, should end the world?

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Groping in night-like gloom, to lower league:
'T is there we halt, where first found mens trode paths.
Ætna is raging ever more and more!
Uprushing wreathing, teeming train blown out
And spread large forth, cloud-canopy of Hellish smoke:
(Like to a pine tree, as that Siciliot quoth;)
Huge roaring fury of His Titanic throat:
O'er lurid glow of hidden fires beneath.

Nor cease those vast heart-beats, in immane deeps
Of Ætna in travail: in this Circuit of
Worlds crust; as were it would Earth cast us forth.

Fell on our eyeballs then so thick sharp dust:
A man the cinder-ground might see uneath;
Nor the uplifted hand, that shields his face.
For thunders' din, none hears now his own voice;
Nor his companions words, how loud he shout.

To make my telling short; days midst was past;
And over all prevailed deep gloom as night;
When we attained, at length, the mountains foot;
And our first safety sought, in a walled town;
And needful rest and meat.

Was the same eve,

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We heard, how ascending certain hapless wights,
Towards their plots, on Ætnas cinder-steeps;
All suddenly, á dire rain of fiery dust;
Did on them light and deadly them invest.
Which like sparks glowing from a furnace pierced
Their coats and fretted through to the quick flesh.
Scorched unto death, those perished miserably thus.

Men lived on in a twilight World-dismayed,
Then many days, all traffic well-nigh ceased;
Days that seemed nights: and when hour was to sleep;
We alway in dread, of kindled skies above;
With Ætnas roaring ever in our ears;
(Like ceaseless weary sound, of storm-bound shore;)
Lay down unrestful ón still rocking beds.

When dawn was by the clock and men arose;
To daze another day on throbbing Earth:
We looked still on blind skies and blackened streets.
And housewives, from their doors, more cinder dust;
(Whose powder lay on every chamber-floor;)
Swept forth, on squalid heaps, as snow in frost.

Voices.

The young man sayeth sooth. To see so much

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Of Natures soulless elemental Force;
That can lift Continénts, and Sea-grounds abase;
Falleth unto few: so narrow are our days,
But naught immutable is. Like as a seed,
All that is, works, though hid, and moves and tends
Circling, without cease, meeting, without end.

Tremblings of Earths únstable Frame are rife;
Even daily, albeit not sensible unto us;
Though révealed by our réfined instruments.
(Nay is Ætna but a pimple, on Earths Face.)

New threshold passed, their cheerful looks I marked;
Which busied, in much throbbing chamber sate.
Heirs of those giants, which wrested at the first;
The Keys of Heaven, from the ancient Gods.
All full of running wheel-work, was that bower.
Tread of those soulless engines, in one hour;
Wrought more than might mens hands, in a round year;
For the Worlds welfare.
Men of ínsight there;
Founders and Builders sate of a New Era:
Searchers of hid things, in seld trodden paths;
Weaving the subtle gossamer óf their minds.

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When such, midst multitude óf their fugitive thoughts,
Discern, (or of soul-voice, which in them, taught;)
Aught, that by likelihood, might serve mankind:
They abide, and study to it bring to pass.
Though lamps themselves of little-enduring clay;
They ply their witty hands and blow to flame,
Each elect spark, which kindles in their breasts:
Whence further Light. They bridle, they even compel
Earths elements, tó yield their Titanic force;
Obey their list and execute all their hests.
By that same doorway, passed few sighing spirits
Whose hope had died, in Wínter of their hearts.
I heard some of the harms, which they professed.
Voices That Pass
What though we grope and ágonise, in Worlds dark:
Séemeth éver some malignant ínfluence;
Frail expectation of Mans mortal wit,
To dísappoint. Our days' brief season spent,
We in World of Darkness wíther as a plant.

Other Voices.

A reverent expectation best befits us;

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And live in Faith of thé Eternal Good.
Unto even the sacred Muses rest unwist;
The highest and éverlásting Ocean-mysteries.

To whom: were once made known the least of such;
Would not that sacred Sisterhoods' golden Band;
(Whose power divine uphólds the hearts of men;
And comforts ín rude hubbubs of the World;)
Pluck from their crystal foreheads, thé proud bays;
Wherewith mens twilight ages have thém crowned.
And meekly adoring the Eternal Verities;
Prostrate them lowly on ground, before the Throne:
And with hymn, worship, the All-High alone;
Who inhabitéth the Harmonies of Heaven?

At which new saying, I turned me tó hear more:
And following ón, a líttle Company I saw:
Known by rapt looks, of soaring high desire;
For Sectaríes, of their celestial Skill.

Such now be few, that from Earths mould durst tower,
Towards Living Light, as lavrock 'gainst the Sun:
Whence oft they lanterns, óf mens ages are:

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Which them, in théir lean bitter-sweet life-days,
More oft reprove. Which past, too late those crown;
Their silent hearse, with blossoms óf vain flowers.

Two young men stayed, of cheer magnanimous;
Of that small passing fellowship, ón the terrace.
I gave ear únto words which they professed.

They likened souls, that sounding hear aloft;
Some Harp of Heaven, whose chords be beams of light.
Like aged, and éach to other sworn those were:
Both White-cliffed Albions sons, the Muses Isle.

Quaint antique tome lay open, in thís ones hand;
The scripture azure, wíth vermilion limned.
The Title charactered was, in Sun-bright gold;
Dan Chaucers Merry Tales: in Temple of Fame,
Most worthy name, for aye to be enrolled:
Fór the right-wise humanity óf his verse.

Yet sooth to say, not all commendable is,
That Geoffrey writ: too oft he speaketh full large;
Whén that sets forth churls' bórel talk, his page.
But he, in hís high sentence, ín the rest;
Yet beckoneth to us, ín his well-knit measures:

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From the homely ínfancy óf right English verse.

Of Custance, cast away in Sea-deeps' waves;
Long buffeted, far from land and human kind,
The noble legend was; for whom with sighs,
Surprised be, ánd suspent that read, our hearts.

Chanted his fere an hymn, when this had ceased,
Of Heavenly Beauty: wíth soft warbling voice.
(How I admired the turning of each verse!)
Of Edmund, my lodestar, the ditty was:
(Whose Art is mine endeavour to restore.)
Hé who déscant sang, amóng his shepherd peers;
As lavrock doth, which lifted úp of Love;
In spires exulteth in the Element;
Devoid of all offence of groundling flesh.

Went other by; but somewhat in their steps,
Halting, behind that gentle fellowship.
The transports óf whose breasts, wherein a sense
Of Music lurks; Eolian harmoniés
Might haply sound; but that their áccords lack
Fulness of Vision, ánd diviners' art:
Being semblable unto shimmering gossamer weft;
Wafted from uplands, ón late Summers breath;
Whereof no Webster can weave a coats cloth.

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But óf that former twain, remained in place.
Quoth Friend to Friend; mongst human masteries:
To what might we compare the skill of such,
As travail tó bring forth immortal verse:
Whose every chord resoundeth human life;
With new Mæonian lofty hardihood.
Their místery it fár and súbtil artific
Excelleth that precious gem-stones cleave and set,
In dædale-wise in réfined goldsmiths' work.
Póets well-flédged words, aye bíg with orient light;
Of golden, heaven-derived beams, shed to Earth:
Be as threaded pearls of price, on living lace.

Whereto his fellow musing, made response:
Must Poet, priest of the Muses, eyewasht, dipt:
His soul in well of life; his mortal part,
In pure white lawn arrayed, and cónsecrate:
Hill-steep ascénd alóne, with painful steps:
And fróm celestial height, fetch vital breath.

And ín the Muses' garden walking sith,
(As they vouchsafe;) gather of flowers that blow
All months; with kindly fruits of every hew,
And simples, for souls health. And háving drunk,
Of springing Helicon, their learnéd well,

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Whence memory flows: there slumber fast beside,
And dream as babe, all in the ambrosial arms,
Of Nature Mother: whó his souls high seeing;
(Revealed some moment, tó his pensive vision;
As bow ís, Daughter of the air, in heaven;)
Would pourtray and body forth, wíth the gross substance,
Of mortals' speech; broidering his web of song;
With buds and blossoms, óf Euterpe taught.

His Friend.
Who is hé, who ríghtly endites melodious measures?
(Who ín his brother-man, perceives himself?)
He, in whose breast dwelleth Lóve, and Hope is left,
Ingenúous. Whose spirit lifted up;
Above cloud of unworthy fleshly sense:
Drinks of pure springs, and proffers of his cup,
To all that thirst. The same profaneth not,
A virgin Muses gift, in hís access.

First Friend.
His soul should be, as dreaming instrument:
Whose wind-weaved chords respond, to every breath.
And whereon master-hand can modulate;
What measures noblest are in human heart.

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Second Friend.
Wherefore be those too much to blame, that pinch;
Of malice, rankling ín ungenerous breast;
(Such having been, with acorns, alway fed:
Or else wont, after kind, to thistles diet:)
That might, themselves, a cattle-crib, uneath
Devise, at Master-artificers work;
And with the drivel, of vénomed lips, consperse.

Who, moved of hearts devotion, vows to Heavens
High service a Cathedral. And of such,
Unwist, upbuilds, in his few mortal years,
Of goodly stones: where naught before-time was,
Save poppies, docks, and briers, in wasteful ground.

The Site considered well, and all made plain;
And plotted out the pattern of the Place;
His strong foundations truly laid thereon:
He rears well-dressed, to reed, square, lead and line;
Up stately walls, that age-long may endure,
Under GODS Sun and Stars.

The Nave, the Aisles,
The lofty Transepts and his sacred Choir;
Be rightly well addressed, towards morning-star.
His énranged rampant buttresses, meetly upbear;

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Each one, a gracious work of masons craft,
(Pleasant to look upon;) his Fanes long flanks.

Within, the great Cathedral-structure rests
On álligned clustered pillars' striding arcs:
Their chapitérs graced with graven lily flowers
And palms; whose spandrels deckt with effigies are,
Of blesséd wights; that beckon down to us,
Of righteous paths: whose walling, white, above;
Gem-like, lo, ancient storied windows pierce;
Radiant with purple joy of Heavens light.
And ceiled all is with vault of sculptured stone;
Of noble aspect, like to palm-leaf work.

His Vow, with patient zeal, accomplished thus;
(Like as he had conceived it ín his thought:)
And furnished wíth all necessary gifts;
To Service óf the Eternal dedicate:
Trembles from floor to roof, the hallowed House;
With pealing organ-tones and anthems' chant.
Whiles the aspirátions rise, of wórshippers' hearts;
Which therein list, sequester them a space;
From troublous traffic óf the World without:
And bow their knees, untó the God of Peace.

The Western porch, for brévity, I overpass;

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Grounded, on strong óld Roman rudiments.
Likewise the round-framed marble chapter-house:
(Quaint frettéd dome on faír-wreathed pillar set;)
The devout travail, of a simple wight;
An hewer of stone, one living of days work;
After that pattern of the Tree-of-Life;
Which he beheld in Dream, and sculptured thus;
With boughs and fruits and buds. Each day he wrought
An hour, after his labour; till his task,
Like as he had conceived it, in his thought;
Was brought to end; and duly dedicate.

They who, ín the dim Cathedral crofts, descend,
By lighted steps; may see fair chantries deckt,
With public banners and with private gifts;
Where sepulchres óf Gods knights and noble Dead.
Of whom some effigied ín enduring bronze;
Seem sleep, in their ring-kirtles, laid to rest.

Without lies well-designed, fair cloister-garth;
For meditation and for quietness;
Of who those silent ambulatóries pace,
With tile-stones paved; them bordering wholesome herbs,

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And cheerfulness óf glad flowers. In mídst whereof;
A fount of living waters wells, days haunt
Of ever-thirsting, over-flittering doves.
And there be leafy summer arbours made;
Cool havens óf green boughs, with well-entrailed,
Fresh clambering woodbind sweet, and roses blithe.
Where seats, for who, past years of Worldly tasks;
Must needs now rest.

Pass other ón the terrace:
Of líke aspiring looks: wont like hill-steeps
Essay to climb, which hitherto seldom trod;
With hardy foot. On whóm some kindred Muse,
Hath gracious breathed. That unto them is given,
With harmony and form, grace, passion, in their hearts;
To paint with hews on tables: shadowing forth,
Visions of their souls seeing, in Natures glass.

Howbeit should many faint, midst golden tasks;
Were not, when fails them breath, they wont refresh
Them, at clear well-springs óf right poets' verse;
Men true of hearts intent, and unfeigned lips.

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Again was I borne forth, mongst spírits' press.
And fell mongst some, from Worlds sunsetting parts:
Whose thicker air breathes strenuous vital blood;
With hardy understánding of mens minds;
To essáy and bring to pass main enterprises.
Mongst whom some ones debated, whiles they walked:
Whether Mans Reason wére, his only guide,
(Being that the measure of each Human mind;)
Sufficient tó right governance of our lives.
How might we attain, midst so much murk and smart;
To right discernment, wíth a clay-born mind!

Responded one, now ín his years' first force;
Whom ín magnanimous mould had Nature cast:
We, (a mote, ah! in infinite darkness,) waked from naught;
Till ín Etérnity, whence we issued forth;
We sleep again, resólved our fleshly being:
Should bear such constant mind, in steadfast breast;
As may in all vicissitudes, resist;
Blind buffets of the World and froward Fortune:
Forsaking nót, the while, heart-easing mirth;
Nor looking for Worlds griefs.

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Anew went forth;
A company assembled, ín a further room:
I found, consulting fór the Public Weal:
Being some of those, whose faculty it is;
To know by proof the virtues of all saps,
Of herbs and roots; and wíth deft practic touch;
Distinguish fróm the whole, each únsound part;
And to every sóre apply meet remedies.

And whoso dóth most worthily exercise
That humane art, being therein throughly taught;
A comforter is, in chamber of the sick;
Ready of his skill: one who, with úrbane speech,
Giveth hope for sighs and sád infirmities.

And when descend contagions ón the Earth;
Sword of an angry Heaven and á great Death:
Those stand betwixt the Living and the Dead;
At peril of their own, to heal, to save.
But óf the event of souls released from flesh:
Can none of áll physicians certify aught.

Nay and áll dream-spirits, whíther-where hápped my steps;
Of whatso occupátion they were of;

231

Were in like case: even foreheads, that seemed versed,
In Faiths and Disciplines of their several schools.
Whose aspect grave and learned habiliments,
Were veneráble ín the Peoples sight.
I heard that secret sighing of their hearts;
Which, each day, drew more nigh their own dark deaths.

More chambers passed, now weary, I drew apart;
To an airy balcony, of marble lattice-work;
Me a rest-place seemed, with pleasant prospect forth.

There, ín an oriel, sate men of the East;
On purple précious tappets, of those parts:
Whereon Sun shineth in His meridian force;
And bóuntiful Bósom of that Mother-Earth;
Her goodliest fruits, of many kinds, brings forth.

Judged bý their honourable cóuntenance;
Their vesture, ánd broidered rolls of camlet fine;
Wound round, in comely wise, ón their digne heads:
To be some worshipful elders, I them deemed,
Of Great Religious Asia. And óf the Muse,
Was given me to, those Strangers' speech, perceive;
Whose meek and lowly gaze was bent on ground.

He who, in their midst, revered seemed of the rest,

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As one of chief regard, in their discourse;
Sighed, as he pensive spake, with voice demiss:
Whoso, in his intégrity, lifteth up
Pure hands towards Heaven, the same accepted is.
All made response, with bowed-down pious looks:
In ónly Mercy of Heaven, our Confidence is.

So rose they; and óf the humánity óf their hearts;
And nurture, in which excells the Orient.
They all blessed me, each saying, as they before me passed:
Upon thy soul, be Peace!

Pious Sectaries,
Those seekers were, as I might understand;
Of Truth divine. That which they énquired was,
How might they please High Heaven, before their deaths.

I passed thence-further ón the Colonnade;
By diverse Nations' companies óf dream-spirits;
Which reasoned and conversed: and came in sight,
Where a bright arc, made of some substance rare
Of changeful rainbow-hews, as none on Earth;
(Lifting and lowering,) spans that marble terrace:

233

So lówly, it sóuls I saw might hardly pass,
Save on their bénded knees. Those thenceforth walk
Left there their former fleshly seeing; that cloak
Was on their inward sight, by light of Faith.

Upon that Pylon, súperscribed, I read;
Humility; and hárdly have crept through ón my breast:
And came mongst some, in óne poor livery clad,
Of frieze; that meekly worshipped as they went;
Folding their hands towards Héaven, unto HÍM, in WHOM,
They live, they move and have their humble being:
Intoning pious ántique lítanies.
Whom by that noble tongue, which they professed;
I guessed to be, of Worlds Italic parts:
(Loved Land benign, of an ambrosial breath!)

Brothers of lowly Francis, saint of GOD:
Théy, in thát now fórlorn Country óf the Christ;
Receivers of poor pilgrims are to lodge:
Whom they, full of the Love of God, refrésh,
With almes of wine and bread devout; and wash
Their way-bruised feet.

Exalted were their looks;

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Whose conversation, wíth thanksgíving, was
Already, with All-Father in Heaven; left
All worlds desires, and malice of Mans heart.
Whose only part of this Worlds goods, was that
Poor worsted frock; which shóuld be their grave-cloth.

Lastly, I bethóught me, of that Great Párliament-House;
With shut-to doors, which had I left unviewed;
And terrace-chambers, ón that fúrther part.
But the Inner-voice forbade, which in my breast,
Me to range thither: saying, Eléct dream-spirits
Inhabited there; which ábsent from their flesh:
Converse with Shining-Ones, whích descend from God.
Nor it might be revealed, what Light that is,
Which on them shines; nor could in speech be taught;
Nor such might comprehend my simple thought.

The aspirations, ín their several Faiths,
Of mens dream-spirits, those Shining Ones receive,
In fiery censers; whích borne forth on height:
They seven tímes purge, in a celestial flame;
From blind Worlds several darknesses; óf all dross.
What then may rest, acceptable in Heavens sight;

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They, in theír celestial courses, offer up;
Before the Throne Divine.

Thus said the Voice.
And I, being come to énd now of the térrace:
My feet trod many thence descending steps;
To Dreamsoul-Citys league-large lower Court;
Which ceiled steep Gulf, of heavens vast azure firmament.
Whose pavement all, with gem-stones, was inset,
Like a mosaic-work: figuring Worlds wide Face;
Lands of mens sons, plains, hills, floods, Ocean-streams:
In Hollow all hólden, of Almighty Hand:
Amidst Illimitable Universe.

There great resort was; ebb and flow of spirits,
From all Worlds Coasts. Whiles I admired; disperse
I saw a fleecy shining cloud, anon.
And stood revealed, amidst, a Temple-House,
High lifted up! Not of Mans handiwork;
Búilded; but growén from ground úp, ás tree doth.
That ín its symmetry, of crýstal walls and pinnacles:
Of things on Eárth, móst líkeneth, ín Mans sight,
Some clear frostwork.

Environed on each part,

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The Sánctuary, great ground-sills of jásper-rock;
On whose stepped banks, dream-citizens' Nations sate,
In their degrees: awaiting, wíth eyes fixt;
The opening óf the Temple-gates.

I marked
The Temples dedication ón the frieze.
And read there, lightning-bright, with awe of heart;
Large written, as seemed me bý the Finger of HEAVEN.
To the Thrice-Holy All-only Eternal Fatherhood
Which hath revealed Himself in all the Earth.

And suddenly, fróm a pinnacle, which toucht heaven:
Proclaimed a Seraph; Hour was come to cast
Up the Fanes gates: where entering áll in one,
Might souls adore the Father of all Being!
I, albe unworthy, in with that Concourse went,
Of spirits; which, seemed me, were of every Nation.
Seeing all their pieties and their several Faiths
Accord in One; which do devoutly seek,

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The cleansing of Mans soul, towards Life, through Death.
Diverse were they, of customs, hew, guise, feature.

Amidst the Sanctuary, shone an altár-stone;
(Which navel of the living World esteemed,)
Self-luminóus: whose springing beams sufficed,
Dream-spirits, which bowed them, ín each hallowed place.
It crystal seemed: and whoso gazed therein;
Might his resemblance see; how clear or dim
His soul yet were, through Sin.

I supplications,
From hundred óratories there, behéld ascend;
Visibly embódied, midst thick fume of incense:
Like little golden tongues, on flaming wings.

Venerable was he of aspect, whó Chief-priest,
And habited ín long albe of shining line;
Kneeled ón his prayer-worn knees; and lifting up
Pure hands, presented líving sacrifice,
Of all those souls. And shone his countenance as;
Who Brightness seéth óf the Invisible.

I, amázed, of á dóor-keeper asked anon,
Of all these things. Who answered; This it was,

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Who Friend of all, of únknown parentage;
Bearing a censer, fróm his childhood up;
Had ín these holy precincts served devout;
Unwitting ill, in ínnocency of life,
Girded in spotless raiment. And no meat,
Unmeet for priests, at any time, had passed
His consecrated lips: nor uttered aught
Had they, that might offend, unsooth, unworth.

Unto him, in hoary age, the People went,
As tó their Father. Him, they show their griefs:
And he, in taking pious thought, High Priest;
Determines soon, and sets their several parts:
Through comfort óf mild righteous words, at one.

I further, óf that doorward, understood:
How, in twílight óf the stars, him little babe;
At a dawns opening, óf the Temple doors;
The Sacristan had found, which that time was,
Fast sleeping; laid beside the altar-stone.

The watchmen, called before the magistrates;
Had testified, being examined, wíth one breath:
That mid of night, with mist was overcast;
They a rushing heard, of mighty wings aloft:
As tired some erne to Earth, tumultuous.

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An aureole shone around the infants head,
Shaped líke a mitre. Whence the aged Priest-sire;
Him taking up, and lulling in his arms;
To the heaven-sent foundling, ín his swaddling bands;
Gave name, Gift-of-the-Highest; and nourished up:
And consecrated sith, his acolyte.

As he, now stooped in heavy age, uprose,
From his bowed knees; all spirits within the House,
Assembled, breathlings óf immortal Gods;
Sang, in their tongues, one harmony high divine:
To The ÁLL-I-AM, The ALL-IN-ALL, ALL-ONE,
The UNSEARCHABLE WHO the ALL, ALLWHERE, sustains.
The outpouring, 'bove all words articulate;
Of brief-lived souls, that seek as flowers to light:
Towards Heavens hígh hid, albe aye-shining Hope.
Beseeching thé remission of past guilts.

But I admonished ínwardly of the Voice;
To a curtained door withdrew me, únseen ere:
And souls saw issuing forth there, one by one:
But none, might I perceive, return again.

I following soon without; have nighed to place:

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Where drooping shivering souls; (as who unclothed
In cold,) stood on dark brink. Were spirits deceased,
This night-time in Dream-City, amidst their sleep.
I feared, till on a lintel which those passed:
I read, large-writ, in Everlasting Light;
Fear ye not Little Flock: and underneath,
Hath not Jeshûa said that God is Love.
(Words, which abide, a Perfume, in our hearts.)

Trad. Maspero.