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