THE EARTH
of Paradise.
Then, if he have kept the holy fire alight, perhaps
with much false fuel, that fire shall instant blaze and fill the
temple 01 his soul.
By its insistent energy it shall destroy
even the memory of all those marsh—lights that came to greet
it; and the priest shall bow down in the glory, and grasp the
altar with his hands, and strike it with his forehead seven
times.
Now this altar is the earthen altar of Demeter.
Then understanding all things by the light of that love, he
shall know that this is love, that this is the soul of the earth,
that this is fertility and understanding, the secret of Demeter.
Nay, (even I) the Oracle may speak in his heart and foretell or
foreshadow the greater mysteries of Persephone, of Death the
daughter of Love.
Those, too, who are thus reborn will understand that I
who write these words am stretched on the wet earth on the
day of Spring.
It is night, but only the sea whispers of Per-
sephone, as the stars intimate Urania whose mystery is the
third, and beyond.
My body is absorbed in scent and touch;
for the consuming fire of my sight has burnt itself out to blind-
ness, and in my mouth is only the savour of an infinite kiss.
The moist earth burns my lips; my fingers search down about
the roots of the grass.
The life of earth itself is my life: I
shall be glad to be buried in the earth.
Let my body dissolve
into hers, putrefy in her reviving limbeck.
He never loved
who let them case him in a coffin from the supreme embrace.
It is from the earth, bride of the sun, that all bodily
strength derives.
It is no figure that Antæus regained all his
force when he touched earth.
It is no pedantry and folly of
the Hindus, who (fearing bodily lust) isolate their acolytes
from earth, no futility their doctrine of Prana and the Tamo—
IO9