Songs of the Spirit

THE INITIATION. THERE is a bare bleak headland which the sea Incessantly devours, A rock impregnable, where herb and tree Are not. A vision of it came to me In night’s most ghastly hours. I who desire, beyond all named desire, To pass the envious bounds of air and fire, And penetrate the bosom of the night, Saw in a vision such a neophyte Stand on the forehead of the rock ; I saw The armies of unalterable law Shudder within their spheres, as to him came His master’s spirit, like a tongue of flame, To touch his lips and ears and eyes and hands With that pale amber that divides the lands Of sense and spirit, and beheld him quail 67