The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE THREE WORMS “Tam her heart, her ordinary, commonplace woman’s heart. Commonplace! Ah! nothing is so mysterious as the common- place, for it is only Subtlety sleeping and holding its hands a little while. A country clod is more interesting than the most awake and magnetic of geniuses, even as the veiled and cloistered odours of Spring with which one knows the earth is tingling in Winter are more delirious and exciting than the naked bosoms of May. “Will you believe me, that, by I know not what exquisite contradiction, the sweetest kiss was ever a pang to her, and yielding was only less terrible than denial? “On my small insistent beat have lain heads that were heavy with great dreams: men of action and men of fancy who loved her and were loved, it may be, a little of her too. I have been the couch of treaties and the pillow of financial strifes, and on me much uncoined gold has slept through dreamless transparent nights. “Once a poet received her favours, and his head, bowed and weighted with its spongy amorphous magic, rested on me like a honeycomb, all giddy and vibrant with perfume and emotion. “And once an old mother’s head, gray and weary with its long rolling down the years, found on me the unexpected peace and happiness of the old. For the old are so lonely, and no one is their friend. . . . So, my brothers, I give you the key of all her secrets except that secret which she shares with Time and herself. “T can make all plain except my own mystery, which is the tragedy of everyone, worm, or man, or God. “Blaspheme no more in such childish, imitative fashion! 323