The Star in the West

176 THE STAR IN THE WEST one of his most interesting and attractive , and this is how I interpret it . A soul standing in the lupanar of life , aspiring to grasp the mystic riddle from the chilly lips of the eternal sphinx, salutes us , as we open this frail little volume . Our bodies are not burst asunder as was that of Judas , but our souls are reft and rent , and in the end know not God from Satan , or which of these twain have won . “ All the dream is wrought a spider tapestry ” yet the soul stands on the blood - red field of Aceldama : II. whose red banners beat Their radiant fire Into my shrivelled head , to wither Love's desire ?? The picture becomes grander still , the child of life becomes old in thought : III . I was a child long years ago , it seems , Or months it may be - I am still a child ! They pictured me the stars as wheeling wild In a huge bowl of water ; but my dreams Built it of Titan oak , its sides were piled Of fearful wood Hewn from God's forests , paid with sweat and tears and blood . Yet to what does this infinite yearning lead ? The soul looks “ out to the beyond ,” and from the shape less and unstayed there bursts the cry of “ Nothing ,” “ But evermore came out by the same door wherein I went . In verse vi we find the mysticism of Bera shith “ Nothing was everything "; and in verse vii , the perfection of life in death “ Absorbed my life in 92 | Aceldama , vol . i, p . 2. a Omar Khayyam ,