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.