The Soul of Osiris

72 THE SOUL OF OSIRIS. Love is the lotus that is sickly sweet, That makes men drunken, and betrays their feet : Beauty, the sacred lotus : let me say The word, and make my purity complete. The whole is mine, and shall I keep a part ? O Beauty, I must see thee as thou art ! Then on my withered gaze that Beauty grew— Rosy quintessence of alchemic dew ! The Self-informing Beauty ! In my heart The many were united : and I knew. Smitten by Beauty down I fell as dead— So strikes the sunlight on a miner’s head. Blind, stricken, crushed ! That vast effulgence stole, Flooded the caverns of my secret soul, And gushed in waves of weeping. I was wed Unto a part, and could not grasp the whole. Thus, I was broken on the wheel of Truth. Fled all the hope and purpose of my youth, The high desire, the secret joy, the sin That coiled its rainbow dragon scales within. Hope’s being, life’s delight, time’s eager tooth ; All, all are gone ; the serpent sloughs his skin ! The quest is mine ! Here ends mortality In contemplating the eternal Thee. Here, She is willing. Stands the Absolute Reaching its arms toward me. I am mute,