Temperance: A Tract for the Times

Contains in its nature the sum of the functions of being and thought. Still as I sit, and destroy all possible trace of the past, All germ of the future, nor joy nor knowledge alive at the last, It is vain, for the Silence is dowered with a nature, the seed of a name: Necessity, fearfully flowered with the blossom of possible Aim. I am Necessity? Scry Necessity mother of Fate! And Fate determines me “I”; and I have the Will to create. Vast is the sphere, but it turns on itself like the prettiest star, And I am the looby that learns that all things equally are. Inscrutable Nothing, the Gods, the cosmos of Fire and of Mist. Suns, atoms, the clouds and the clods ineluctable dare to exit— I have made the Voyage of Thought, the Voyage of Vision, I swam To the heart of the Ocean of Naught from the source of the Spring of I Am: I know myself wholly the brother alike of the All and the One; I know that all things are each other, that their sum and their substance is None; But the knowledge itself can excel, its fulness hath broken its bond; All’s Truth, and all’s falsehood as well, and—what of the region beyond? So, still though I sit, as for ever, I stab to the heart of my spine; I destroy the last seed of endeavour to seal up my soul in the shrine Of Silence, Eternity, Peace; I abandon the Here and the Now; I cease from the effort to cease, I absolve the dead I from its Vow, I am wholly content to be dust, whether that be a mote or a star, To live and to love and to lust, acknowledge what seem for what are, Not to care what I am, if I be, whence I came, whither go, how I thrive, If my spirit be bound or be free, save as Nature contrive. What I am, that I am, ’tis enough. I am part of a glorious game. Am I cast for madness or love? I am cast to esteem them the same. Am I only a dream in the sleep of some butterfly? Phantom of fright Conceived, who knows how, or how deep, in the measureless womb of the night? I imagine impossible thought, metaphysical voids that beget Ideas intangible wrought to things less conceivable yet. It may be. Little I reck—but, assume the existence of earth, Am I born to be hanged by the neck, a curse from the hour of my birth? Am I born to abolish man’s guilt? His horrible heritage, awe? Or a seed in his wantonness spilt by a jester? I care not a straw, For I understand Do what thou wilt; and that is the whole of the Law.