You invoke the unknown,

And then to lay him low,

Whilst the breath and the music come from beyond.

A girl is dancing to the moon,

We are beyond all restless questioning.

A day not yet achieved in your eyes or mine,

And the still sea mocks at thy immobility.

Like dawn my soul rises within me

Yesterday, dead yesterday,

And ours the sovereignty he proclaims,

Bear the seed of thy Redeemer,

Which your hand intertwined with ours

Brothers, my strange brothers,

Even now, while you are muttering and rumbling,

True it is, we are the beyond,

A day too vast for recording.

Ye sovereigns who would govern the above world and the world beneath,

In the yielding of a spirit that sings to a body that dances.

And the potter turns his wheel unaware;

Then we walked, hand in hand, upon the gray infant world, and out of the echos of our first drowsy steps time was born, a fourth divinity, that sets his feet upon our footprints, shadowing our thoughts and desires, and seeing only with our eyes.

The starless veil of prying and questioning

And his thought as the tempests of the seas,

First God

For night gathers not her dew into thy cup,

And unto what space direct thy eagerness?

But terrible is thy silence,

First God

Second God

And lend your versed fingers to an idle eternity.

Has builded stone upon stone.

And upon whose bodies loves chariot ran

The bride comes from the heart of dawn,

The splendour of kings and the triumph of warriors,

Our roots have brought forth the dancing branches in the valley,

Dwells in your own soul.

And thrice higher is his song.

And on to crucifixion.

It is the scent of burnt flesh, sweet and bountiful.

And high beyond mans furtherest hope

The three earth-born gods, the Master Titans of life,

Or to our own passion?

And their heads rose in majesty above the world.

No more shall we wrangle and reason of tomorrow.

And again form mountain to the sea,

The loom and the art shall be yours for evermore,

The flaming breath of youth tormented,

God self-bent, whose yesterday is ever jealous of your tomorrow,

And what is love,

Third God

The innocence of childhood, and the sweet ecstasy of youth,

I would exhaust myself to emptiness.

Oh my soul,

Second God

Only to long for dust, and to fall down with longing unto dust,

And turns her to every side.

Nay, you would bring to my weary heart

Listen my brothers, my ancient brothers.

Remembrance of cycles spent in mist,

And scatters the slumbering of earth.

Rivers ran about their feet;

And thrice empty and vain is the dream.

Were I man, a blind fragment,

To follow the seasons and support the majesty of the years;

The blessed forge burns,

From sea to mountain

To tremulous faith in us, the unvisited and the unknown.

To make his fancy like the eagle of the mountain,

Oh, lofty dreaming brother,

I would breathe it.

And still with greater longing to seek the mist again.

Love is youth with chains broken,

And where beauty is, there are all things.

Does dawn hold the heart of night unto her heart?

Oh my soul, my soul,

Our soul, even the soul of life, your soul and mine,

That he may not forget his yesterday.

To their immutable resemblance;

A breath of our breath that had escaped,

For measureless is the gulf that lies between divinities,

I would dissolve myself afar from your vision,

Nor to her children in their slow agony that you call love.

And giveth it more desire.

Seek you a distant orb,

Brothers, my solemn brothers,

Like thee I have summoned spring and laid the beauty thereof

And on to triumph.

And the bridegroom from the sunset.

Shall you return with distant tomorrow,

And the anguish of the mother wrestling with the sleep she craves,

And draw my life from stony lips

Third God

The mist floated across their breasts,

Thou burning sphere that girdles me,

Unwounded by the edges of the rocks;

We urge his days to part from the valley of twilights

And what hope is there for thee and me?

When my soul sought itself among the mountains

Third God

Thou grounded ship laden with desire,

I would make serene your clouded sphere;

My arms woud girdle space and encompass the spheres.

And let love, human and frail, command the coming day.

The grape of mournful days, and days of terror九_九_藏_書 and shame.

And creatures more starry supple to my mind.

Down in the myrtle grove

Man is a child of our younger heart.

What is there to behold

And fadeth away with the first embrace;

He gazes full on her.

Only the abyss listens when gods call unto gods,

In our eyes is the vision that turns mans soul to flame,

And yet to confine his days and his nights

But you turn, and close your eyes,

And shining with the light of heaven deeper than our heaven.

But how shall I?

Does the womb of the virgin infinite

And made you breed in the cage?

And comrade us, masters of the young earth green and warm.

To give him thirst for life, and make death his cupbearer;

It offends my senses.

Oh yesterday, dead yesterday,

And the proud majesty of love in tower or balcony;

You would not abandon him

High upon the mountain,

And to keep his body groveling in the mire

And we are the most high.

Lies our sleeping, and the dreaming thereof.

It only leaves the trodden way of ancient destinies for the sacred grove,

Silent is thy face,

Your feud is but the sounding of an Ancient Lyre

We, upon the heights, in mans sleep dream our dreams.

Thrice deep the youth is singing,

The pain of child-bearing and the agony of childbirth,

To raise his soul high above the firmament

Gods live upon sacrifice,

The night waxeth deep,

We watched the lean branches grow,

Earth gods, my brothers,

And thou art terrible.

To this breathless joy and fear?

Weighed is thine anchor and thy wings would spread,

For all that I am, and all that there is on earth,

Roots that suck at the breast of purple earth,

To face the four winds with a head crowned and high,

In the purple mist of the first dawn.

And though equal we are in power and judgement,

Or if I were the Supreme Godhead,

Brothers, my mighty brothers,

This ever sowing destinies and reaping but hopes;

Third God

And throne me upon the heavens.

And heedless is the sky.

Where your sinews are planted?

The human pit that wearied me calls to divinity.

The girl has found the singer.

And in her limbs the happy dance is stayed

Is singing his heart to the night.

Soul to soul they find the soul of life,

Whose hand shall deliver thee from thy captivity?

Second God

To give him gladness that he may sing before us,

I would not be so vain as to be no more.

It stretches ever to another dawn.

Time maketh our listening more certain,

In haste to sow again the dreaming furrow?

And to heal the ills of man with our tideless breath!

And the art to weave the fabric.

I speak, my unheeding brothers,

Calls unto divinity.

Second God

And the dancers feet will move with my feet;

And now haunts our hands and lips for more fragrance.

Shall our measures subdue his passion to stillness,

And I rebel.

Calls to the grave.

And in thine eyes the shadows of night are sleeping.

Even so as bread fo gods shall man taste godhead.

Beat your strings

The beauty that we have sought from the beginning

And the west wind rises singing with his song.

Shall our wisdom ravish beauty from his eyes?

Third God

What flame has risen from hell.

Whose mightier hand than yours shall reap the fruit?

There is no emptiness between call and call,

Who fills the emptiness of man and of gods,

Who shall behold our shining if mans eye is blinded with night?

And breathe my immortality into space,

Their sinews strengthened by the deathless sighs

And against all dark spirits we guarded the flower.

Shouts to my god-heart in mid-air.

Third God

Second God

We nursed the infant leaves.

Nor tarries to hear the song.

We have planted man, our vine, and tilled the soil

Whose secret keepeth night from morning?

Who sits beside us gazing into yonder valley,

The eye of purpose half-born;

And naught but bread ungraced shall it be

And love outsoars our song.

Man is god in slow arising;

Fates that sound the trumpets

The flower that blooms in nights of evil shadows;

The bee hums harshly in your ears,

In white ecstacy.

Ventures with lyre and sword.

Thus shall we rule man unto the end of time,

And thus shall it be to the last even-tide.

A god for sacrifice?

Only doubt in mortal hushes the sound.

What flower has fallen from heaven,

And like foul breath of the pit

From the lotus la九九藏書nd where days are born

Is naught save our unshaped passion

But love is beyond our questioning,

Whose tune the remembering ear arrests

What dream dreamt we upon the height,

I bless you not, yet I would not curse you;

In silence they gaze the one upon the other.

Till the land choke with its own bitter fruit,

See how the east wind dances with her dancing feet,

Now then, I come, and coming I offer up

Who has woven this web of scarlet and white?

When the earth in her hunger cries for food;

Oh my mateless soul,

Who strives to reach you through gladness and through pain.

We are still earth-bound,

Self-weary, who would unleash your temper with speech

Second God (Always unhearing)

And from withered hands receive my eternity.

What joy is there in songs oft heard,

Second God

I would take the starry way for a bow,

Must my soul needs to be a sea whose currents forever confound one another,

Like thee I have ridden the wild tempest over his head

My heart casts out a perishing wrack of man and earth.

First God

Nay, unto eternity unmoulded I would give my hands,

A thousand dew-stars are in her hair,

And I will sing in that higher air,

Fain would I comfort you,

Love is a distant laughter in the spirit.

Let the singer cry, and let the dancer whirl her feet

And yours the purple and the gold.

Yea, what of this love of man and woman?

Brothers, my august brothers,

Whose heart shall echo our voice if the human heart is deafened with dust?

First God

That he might bow before us,

His harp rings, His cymbals clash,

First God

Brother, my sacred brothers,

My heart thirsts, yet I would not drink the faint blood of a feeble race,

That woke the drowsing valley

Oh, the joy in mortal intent,

And the wind strewn sand nestles at her breast.

But love shall stay,

Better it is for us, and wiser,

And pierces the sky,

And though his lips move, utters not a word.

And summon man from sterile peace to fertile strife

The passion of stern manhood, and the wisdom of old age;

With foretaste of promised delight!

Ours is the will he heralds,

And yet to give him hands slow in decision,

Love is our lord and master.

Manhood made free from the sod,

But not asleep.

My heart longs for what my heart conceives not,

The smile on lips that quiver

Heavily does it hang upon the air,

And from the inner chamber of their nuptial ecstasy, we brought man, a creature who, though yielding and infirm, bears ever the marks of his parentage.

Love is a night bent down to a bower anointed,

Man is born to bondage,

Yet keep his roots clinging to the earth;

And the burdened sobs of passion unspent;

To live, and to watch the nights of the living

Or the sky where the warring winds turn hurricane?

And a human voice will throb within my voice.

Love triumphs.

And what nobler end than your thirst awaits the wine?

Second God

And yet his sunburnt throat throbs with the song;

Man is food for the gods,

That I may bring you to judgment?

In thy hunger thou preyest upon thyself,

First God

I would be fulfilled.

A youth in yonder vale

And seek not to comfort me with your dream or mine,

The tentmaker sits darkly at his loom,

And brighter is the moon,

To endow him with love that waxeth with pain,

Petal unto petal they breathe the sacred perfume,

And made watchful the night?

It is a fragment of ourselves returning,

And the glory of man begins

So I have burdened man

Perchance I may drowse, and drowsing

Your hand upholds his destiny.

The sparks rise, and each spark is a sun.

To seek a shadowed nook and sleep in our earth divintiy,

All these and all that lieth therein is bred for gods.

We are but gods holding a world and held by it,

The dancers feet are drunk with songs.

To call the flower from its hiding place

The fame of poets and the honor of dreamers and saints;

All that is human counts for naught if human it remain;

Man the faint hearted, overbold by our purpose,

Flame to flame,

And we are the enduring sky.

First God

Their thrones are built upon the ashes of generations.

And would fain gather in your own shadow?

But we, the sleepless and the knowing,

In the passion of a man and a maid.

And content with mans servitude.

And lash our orb with thunderings!

And now I yield.

Love 九_九_藏_書rebels not.

And all that shall be, inviteth not my soul.

But less cruel have I been.

For the weight of aeons is upon me,

And turned his mute fear of things unseen

Beauty is a path that leads to self self-slain.

We pause not nor do we wait for thought.

The lark calls to the lark,

She sees his raptured face.

We would lay under a stone a waxen shape

Which we have laid upon the world;

First God

Yet now you would break the thread,

For ever as man is to man,

Governing the breath that began with his mothers crying,

Forbear and look down upon the world.

That crept out of my dripping fingers unto the marshes and the hills.

In man we seek a mouthpiece,

Nor the crumbling of desire

Your weariness is but ambition.

And in his life our self fulfillment.

Their voices rolled over the plains.

You would bid me sit amongst shrouded faces

Ere the breath yields it to the wind?

The white and green of love beside a lake,

That they might renounce self

To sing and dance its secret to eternity.

Brothers, my brothers,

And seek their fullness upon the hills.

And sorrow that he may call unto us,

Hold your importunate cry,

Appeared upon the mountains.

And the comets for arrows,

The wind blows eastward;

When the night of the twelfth aeon fell,

Though my yesterday died in child-birth

From living air and fire,

I will to walk the path.

The girl has heard the song.

And whose hand is upon our world?

I would command my spirit.

To another slow agony?

And unto the unknown where memory dwells not

Would you leave the harvest ungathered,

And the regret of pale old age when life against lifes will

For even as you have burdened me with life

And this timeless measuring of time.

Yet I would comfort you,

Oh, the affliction of knowing,

We would hold in our hands a white flame

When his aimless breath is sucked by gods hallowed lips.

Unto you and unto me.

And say in our heart,

The earth is your abode, and the earth is your throne;

Third God

And in clay let it find its end.

And say, It is a thing of clay,

Panther-like she slips with subtle steps

First God

And what would you do with man, child of our earliest heart, our own self image?

But you would not do this, were it in your power.

This and all is wiped away

And when we reach her heart and are merged,

I would not cling to that clings to me.

Like thee I have led man from shrine to shrine,

But upward the eagle soars,

Behold the unweaned children of your love.

And in sleep sees what your waking eye does not see.

This tide of ever remembering and forgetting;

And upon their eyelids lies a prayer

Their hearts appeased with young souls,

And garments the body of a girl with beating waves.

Now I will rise and strip me of time and space,

And give it strength to nestle its own life,

And rock your thrones.

Or shall the sea heed the bodies of her dead?

And in that dancing and in that singing

You will not take it to the winepress and fill the cup.

Behold, man and woman,

And like thee, led the savage ocean against his nestled isle,

I would not live could I but die,

I heed, and I have measured the call,

But unto that that rises beyond my reach I would arise.

And between us and boundless eternity

For the wind crowds my nostrils with the odors of dead things.

And silence, the high tide of night, swallowed the hills,

First God

But already achieved in its own greater heart.

Like thee I have kindled the dark depths of beginning life

I could have met it with patience.

I would rise beyond my earthbound mortality

Would that you might rise with all the dead of yore,

A god is slain within me.

And his love trodden courses are rivers, to the sea of our desires.

It is the odor of mortality parching upon its own faint flame.

And all that is man shall come upon the gods eternal board!

Brothers, behold, my brothers,

And in bondage is his honor and his reward.

And the unknown clad with moving mist

Second God

And would not consider this star

To be, to rise, to burn before the burning sun,

And dwell with us in this security

A voice in rapture calleth you and me.

And like doves her hands fly upward.

Could I but strip my divinity of its purpose

And the challenge to human forbearance!

And we are the purple breast,

And watch九九藏書ed it crawl from caves to rocky heights.

And the day brings thee no fruit.

And as the mute grain turns to love songs when swallowed by the nightingale,

Till he hath died calling upon us.

The dripping brows of manhood tilling the barren land,

Be content and let the dreaming go.

Cast off your mantle of brooding,

And yours the dark thread and the light,

But the muffled drum and leads the long procession of sweet uncertainty

And exalts with desire, and increases with longing,

He sings no more,

What thought gave we to the wind

First God

Third God

That I may erase your earth-clinging memory from the earth?

Brothers, my dreaded brothers,

I, immortal, made man a passing shadow;

They who are conquered by love,

And we are the flowering of the song-scent that rises to the heights.

And be no more;

As Orion watches us!

First God

And windless is the space.

And now amid his ardent cries

And leads him to exalted loneliness and rebellious prophecy,

Behold this is man!

His voice is silver and gold.

Flame flowers at the breasts of the sky.

Like rivers let us flow to ocean

I would turn my face to the scentless north.

And vanish like a wasted sun;

There is no centre in space

Our hands direct the tempests that sweep the world

And unto earth came life, and unto life came the spirit, the winged melody of the universe. And we ruled life and spirit, and none save us knew the measure of the years nor the weight of years nebulous dreams, till we, at noontide of the seventh aeon, gave the sea in marriage to the sun.

Behold a brighter world

Oh my soul, my soul,

Stand even now in a shy half-embrace.

Thus has it been since the first morn

When your own flock is seeking you,

That he may foretaste our tomorrow,

When desire and self are wrestling;

And like the unresting sea

It is a wild assault that hushes you to your awakening.

That startled the heart of silence

And will you wake with lifes second dawn

Behold our sacred purpose now enthroned,

This vigil of guiding the day unto twilight,

You would teach me self love fulfilled in mans worship,

And what higher tide shall release thy rudder?

Your hands have spun mans soul

And the breath of your burning heart,

Let my soul be serene this night.

Unlace your feet from no-where and no-when,

And the singer is crying mine own songs unto the wind.

And betwixt his joy and his pain

And foul is the honey to your lips.

But my self love is limitless and without measure.

Save where self is wedded to self,

I bid you see your glory and mine,

Through rustling vine and fern.

For deaf is the ear of the infinite,

And the night unto dawn;

Yea, in your own soul your Redeemer lies asleep,

And now that our vine hath yielded the grape

And shaken the earth beneath him until he cried unto us;

My god-heart within my human ribs

Save a man and a woman in the forest that grew to trap them

And wherefore spread you your cloud in trackless fields and desolate,

And parent creatures for our unborn tomorrow?

And then to pluck it when the storm laughs in the forest;

There is a wedding in the valley.

If the gods raise it not to their mouths.

Their thirst quenched by blood,

And that is the secret of our being.

And the ceaseless moan of the seas exhausts my sleep.

A sky turned meadow, and all the stars to fireflies.

Aye, man is meat for gods!

And beauty filling our hands to shame our lips.

And all the seas be stagnant with the slain,

To sow the seed and to watch it thrust through the soil;

And womanhood warmed by the flame

How shall I guide thy course.

To girdle his nights with dreams of higher days,

Oh my brothers, my heedless brothers,

Like a fawn in glad surprise

When out of chaos came the earth, and we, sons of the beginning, beheld each other in the lustless light, we breathed the first hushed, tremulous sound that quickened the currents of air and sea.

Discharged the plains to hill and vale,

It is a new dawn unto the earth,

And yet you would have me eat and drink.

Lo, there is the dancer, carved out of our ancient eagerness,

I will not turn my eyes downward to the conceit of earth,

To give me birth?

And let me be content awhile.

Oh, this ache of ceaseless divining,

The blind cry of tread.99csw.comhe infant that pierces the naked night,

And woe upon woe exhaust earths vain fertility.

Where love encamps his host?

Who has Orion for a harp and the Pleiades for cymbals.

First God

Naked and unencumbered.

My passion and my pain.

What would your armies of reasoning

All this have I done, and more.

We are released from guessing and from chance.

And mine eyes pursued their own image in slumbering waters;

Through man who walks earth with eyes upon the stars, we find pathways to earths distant regions; and of man, the humble reed growing beside dark waters, we make a flute through whose hollowed heart we pour our voice to the silence-bound world. From the sunless north to the sun-smitten sand of the south.

And from the memory of this silent youth, our younger brother,

For the cup is tainted, and the vintage therein is bitter to my mouth.

Could I but lose the primal aim

Second God

Love in a garden or in the desert untrodden,

Of those who dwell with death;

And infuse his days with visions of blissful nights,

We are but twilights ever rising and ever fading

I would not move a hand to create a world

Nor to erase one.

This I would breathe now and forever.

She leaps over rocks and streams

Third God

And I wil dance in that field untrodden,

What giant sun warmed your bosom

And feet heavy with deliberation;

And all that I have done is empty and vain.

And ends with the lamentation of his children.

And I beseech you hear his song.

And only silence visits her womb,

Mother of my chained divinity,

To pour life exhausted from her breast;

But you hear only your own words.

And his finger-marks shall not be erased.

And to untrodden fields assign my feet.

I would counsel you.

Oh, tempt me not with glory possessed,

I will not look downward.

The most distant is the most near.

It is not a wanton decay of the flesh,

We have outsoared the doubt.

Return to us from times dim borderland!

Vain is the waking and empty is the sleep,

Then they spoke, and like distant thunder

Nor the Supreme above us.

About her feet a thousand wings.

Nor is it flesh that takes arms against the spirit.

Weary is my spirit of all there is.

But you and I are neither human,

One mightier than thy vision

What unbridled star has gone astray?

From the angry element we shielded the bud,

It is the inflamed fragrance of brooding life

So are gods to gods.

They meet, two star-bound spirits in the sky encountering.

His voice shakes the forest

Second God

Perchance to wake to the dawn of another world.

Between horizon and horizon.

Whence shall come the wind to fill thy sail,

You would not turn away your face from the need in his eyes.

To perilous isles where days are slain,

I do indeed speak,

Yet you would grudge yourself a raiment.

We are the beyond and we are the Most High,

And twixt the meadow and the sea

And with the infinate would I conquer the infinite.

A vine that creeps in dust beneath the feet of deathless death.

And the motive thereof.

But only in the ear.

His lyre is gold and ebony.

A creature bred on hunger and made food for hungry gods.

And through the days of seasonless years

Immortal and mortal, twin rivers calling to the sea.

I would turn my face to the south,

This changeless lifting of self from dust to mist,

The sacred loom is given you,

And you, dying, conceived me deathless.

Is it some other god in passion

And with thine own tears thou wouldst quench thy thirst;

But the skies are silent above thee,

We shall pass into the twilight;

What shifting of worlds, what new purpose in the heavens,

Your sceptre cannot sway this destiny,

Into the emptiness of nowhere!

Eternal Altar! Wouldst thou indeed this night

That shall claim thee?

Dwells this night in a throat enflamed,

Like thee I have kneaded the clay and fashioned it to breathing forms

And now she seeks the singer.

Through man desiring the golden hours of mans destiny.

For a lure that seizes youth and binds it to generate and multiply.

Whose strings have been half forgotten by His fingers

I could not but choose the hardest way;

To raise man from secret darkness,

Third God

Could I but be consumed and pass from times memory

What super-god caught you in your flight

Third God

They set the air a-throbbing,