Moonchild

She looked at him with open mouth and eyes. He was always stupefying her by the picturesqueness of his allegories, and his trick of presenting them dramatically. "What then?" "This is what really happened last night — only there's no such thing as time. This is what you should have seen, and what you will see one day, if you cling to the highest in you." He drew a note-book of white vellum from his pocket, and began to read. "The whirlwind of the Eagle and the Lion! The Tree upon the Mountain that is Zion! The marriage of the Starbeam and the Clod! The mystic Sabbath of the Saints of God! Bestride the Broomstick that is God-in-man! Spur the rough Goat whose secret name is Pan! Before that Rod Heaven knows itself unjust; Beneath those hoofs the stars are puffs of dust. Rise up, my soul! One stride, and space is spanned; Time, like a poppy, crushed in thy left hand, While with thy right thou reachest out to grip The Graal of God, and tilt it to thy lip? Lo! all the whirring shafts of Light, a web Wherein the Tides of Being flow and ebb, One heart-beat, pulsing the Eternal stress, Extremes that cancel out in Nothingness. Light thrills through Light, the spindle of desire, Cross upon Cross of elemental Fire; Life circles Life, the Rose all flowers above, And in their intermarriage they are Love. Lo! on each spear of Splendour burns a world Revolving, whirling, crying aloud; and curled About each cosmos, bounding in its course, The sacred Snake, the father of its force, Energized, energizing, self-sustained, Man-hearted, Eagle-pinioned, Lion-maned, Exulting in its splendour as it lashes