Collected Works (Vol. II)

IN THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GHIZEH 53 TO ‘‘ ELIZABETH.” WITH A COPY OF TANNHAUSER. Written in the Akasa.} THE story ofa fool. From love and death Emancipate, he stands above. The goal Is in the shrines of misty air: there roll The voices and the songs of One who saith : ‘There is no peace for him who lingereth.” Love is a cinder now that was a coal : Either were vain. The great magician’s soul Is far too weak to risk Elizabeth. All this is past and under me. Above, Around, the magian tree of knowledge waves Its rosy flowers and golden fruit. I know Indeed that he is caught therein who craves ; But I, desiring not, accept the glow And blossom of that Knowledge that is Love. RONDELS (AT MONTE CARLO). Written in the Casino, Monte Cario. I. THERE is no hell but earth: O coil of fate Binding us surely in the Halls of Birth, The unsubstantial, the dissolving state ! There is no hell but earth. Vain are the falsehoods that subserve to mirth. - Dust is to dust, create or uncreate. The wheel is bounded by the world’s great girth. By prayer and penance unregenerate, Redeemed by no man’s sacrifice or worth, _We swing: no mortal knows his ultimate. There is no hell but earth. II. In all the skies the planets and the stars Receive us, where our fate in order plies. Somewhere we live between the savage bars In all the skies. 1 Space or Ether. The Hindus say that all actions, especially important (z.e. spiritual) ones, are written therein. It is an Automatic Recording Angel. Let God’s highest heaven receive the man who dies— All hath an end: he falls: the stains and scars Are his throughout unwatched eternities. The roses and the scented nenuphars Give hope—oh! monolith! oh house of lies ! We change and change and fade, strange avatars In all the skies, Ill. One way sets free. That way is not to tread Through fire or earth or spirit, air or sea. That secret is not gathered of the dead. One way sets free. Not to desire shall lead to mot to be. There is no hope within, none overhead, None by the chance of fate’s august decree. It is a path where tears are ever shed. There is no joy—is that a path for me? Yea ! though F track the ways of utmost dread, One way sets free. IN THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GHIZEH.} I SAw in a trance or a vision the web of the ages unfurled, flung wide with a scream of derision, a mockery mute of the world. As it spread over sky I mapped it fair on a sheet of blue air with a hurricane pen. I copy it here for men. First on the ghostly adytum of pale mist that was the abyss of time and space (the stars all blotted out, poor faded nenuphars on the storm-sea of the infinite :) I wist a shapeless figure arise and cover all, its cloak an ancient pall, vaster and older than the skies of night, and blacker than all broken’ years—aye! but it grew and held me in its grasp so that _ 1 If this poem be repeatedly read through, it falls into a subtly rhymed and metrical form.