LITMIR.BIZ

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half-lit air of hazardous mystery

      The eye that looks at the dark half of truth

      Made out an image mid a vivid blur

      And peering through a mist of subtle tints

      He saw a half-blind chained divinity

      Bewildered by the world in which he moved,

      Yet conscious of some light prompting his soul.

      Attracted to strange far-off shimmerings,

      Led by the fluting of a distant Player

      He sought his way amid life’s laughter and call

      And the index chaos of her myriad steps

      Towards some total deep infinitude.

      Around crowded the forest of her signs:

      At hazard he read by arrow-leaps of Thought

      That hit the mark by guess or luminous chance,

      Her changing coloured road-lights of idea

      And her signals of uncertain swift event,

      The hieroglyphs of her symbol pageantries

      And her landmarks in the tangled paths of Time.

      In her mazes of approach and of retreat

      To every side she draws him and repels,

      But drawn too near escapes from his embrace;

      All ways she leads him but no way is sure.

      Allured by the many-toned marvel of her chant,

      Attracted by the witchcraft of her moods

      And moved by her casual touch to joy and grief,

      He loses himself in her but wins her not.

      A fugitive paradise smiles at him from her eyes:

      He dreams of her beauty made for ever his,

      He dreams of his mastery her limbs shall bear,

      He dreams of the magic of her breasts of bliss.

      In her illumined script, her fanciful

      Translation of God’s pure original text,

      He thinks to read the Scripture Wonderful,

      Hieratic key to unknown beatitudes.

      But the Word of Life is hidden in its script,

      The chant of Life has lost its divine note.

      Unseen, a captive in a house of sound,

      The spirit lost in the splendour of a dream

      Listens to a thousand-voiced illusion’s ode.

      A delicate weft of sorcery steals the heart

      Or a fiery magic tints her tones and hues,

      Yet they but wake a thrill of transient grace;

      A vagrant march struck by the wanderer Time,

      They call to a brief unsatisfied delight

      Or wallow in ravishments of mind and sense,

      But miss the luminous answer of the soul.

      A blind heart-throb that reaches joy through tears,

      A yearning towards peaks for ever unreached,

      An ecstasy of unfulfilled desire

      Track the last heavenward climbings of her voice.

      Transmuted are past suffering’s memories

      Into an old sadness’s sweet escaping trail:

      Turned are her tears to gems of diamond pain,

      Her sorrow into a magic crown of song.

      Brief are her snatches of felicity

      That touch the surface, then escape or die:

      A lost remembrance echoes in her depths,

      A deathless longing is hers, a veiled self’s call;

      A prisoner in the mortal’s limiting world,

      A spirit wounded by life sobs in her breast;

      A cherished suffering is her deepest cry.

      A wanderer on forlorn despairing routes,

      Along the roads of sound a frustrate voice

      Forsaken cries to a forgotten bliss.

      Astray in the echo caverns of Desire,

      It guards the phantoms of a soul’s dead hopes

      And keeps alive the voice of perished things

      Or lingers upon sweet and errant notes

      Hunting for pleasure in the heart of pain.

      A fateful hand has touched the cosmic chords

      And the intrusion of a troubled strain

      Covers the inner music’s hidden key

      That guides unheard the surface cadences.

      Yet is it joy to live and to create

      And joy to love and labour though all fails,

      And joy to seek though all we find deceives

      And all on which we lean betrays our trust;

      Yet something in its depths was worth the pain,

      A passionate memory haunts with ecstasy’s fire.

      Even grief has joy hidden beneath its roots:

      For nothing is truly vain the One has made:

      In our defeated hearts God’s strength survives

      And victory’s star still lights our desperate road;

      Our death is made a passage to new worlds.

      This to Life’s music gives its anthem swell.

      To all she lends the glory of her voice;

      Heaven’s raptures whisper to her heart and pass,

      Earth’s transient yearnings cry from her lips and fade.

      Alone the God-given hymn escapes her art

      That came with her from her spiritual home

      But stopped half-way and failed, a silent word

      Awake in some deep pause of waiting worlds,

      A murmur suspended in eternity’s hush:

      But no breath comes from the supernal peace:

      A sumptuous interlude occupies the ear

      And the heart listens and the soul consents;

      An evanescent music it repeats

      Wasting on transience Time’s eternity.

      A tremolo of the voices of the hours

      Oblivious screens the high intended theme

      The self-embodying spirit came to play

      On the vast clavichord of Nature-Force.

      Only a mighty murmur here and there

      Of the eternal Word, the blissful Voice

      Or Beauty’s touch transfiguring heart and sense,

      A wandering splendour and a mystic cry,

      Recalls the strength and sweetness heard no more.

      Here is the gap, here stops or sinks life’s force;

      This deficit paupers the magician’s skill:

      This want makes all the rest

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