Collected Works (Vol. I)

186 THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST Cling to the white and bloody feet that hang, And drink the purple of a God’s pure side; With your wild hair assuage His deadliest pang, And on His broken bosom still abide His virginal white bride. So, in the dawn of skies unseen above, Your passion’s fiercest flakes shall catch new gold, The sun of an inmeasurable love More beautiful shall touch the chaos cold Of earth that is grown old. Then, shameful sisterhood of earth’s disdain, Your lips shall speak your hearts, and understand ; Your lovers shall assuage the amorous pain With spiritual lips more keen and bland, And ye shall take God’s hand. THE NAMELESS QUEST.! Tue king was silent. In the blazoned hall Shadows, more mute than at a funeral True mourners, waited, waited in gloom ; Waited to hear what child was in the womlh Of his high thoughts. As dead men were we all; As dead men wait the trumpet in the tomb. the The king was silent. Tense the high-strung air” Must save itself by trembling—if it dare. Then a long shudder ran across the space ; Each man ashamed to see his fellow’s face, Each troubled and confused. He did not spare Our fear—he spake not yet a little space. 1 This poem has no foundation in tradition. 2 Here and in several other passages intense energy of will, or importance of situation, is represented as producing an actual condition of strain in the air or the ether. The fact observed is at least subjectively true to many people. After a while he took the word again : ‘Go thou then. moonwards? on the great salt plain; — So to a pillar. It stands. King, earl, and knight. ing slain, A thousand years forgotten—bone by bone. Adamant, alone, Around it see them overthrown, There lie the quest- ‘*No more is spoken—the tradition goes : ‘There learns the seeker what he seeks or knows.’ Thence—none have passed. leagues may keep Some other secret—some profounder deep Than this one echoed fear: the desert shows Its ghastly triumph—silence. There they sleep. The desert ‘There, brave and pure, there, true and strong, they stay Bleached in the desert, till the solemn day Of God’s revenge—none knoweth them: they rest Unburied, unremembered, unconfessed. What names of strength, of majesty, had they? What suns are these gone down into the West? ‘Even I myself—my youth within me said : Go, seek this folly ; fear not for the dead, And God is with thine arm! I reached the ridge, And saw the river and the ghastly bridge I told you of. Even then, even there, I fled. Nor knight, nor king—a miserable midge ! ‘Yet from my shame I dare not turn and run. My oath grows urgent as my days are done. Almost mine hour is on me: for its sake I tell you this, as if my heart should break :— The infinite desire—a burning sun ! The listening fear —the sun-devouring snake !"’ 1 The moon here symbolises the path of , which leads from Tiphereth, the human will, to Kether, the divine Will.