LITMIR.BIZ

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is now thought’s guide;

      His subtle defeatist murmur slays the faith

      And, lodged in the breast or whispering from outside,

      A lying inspiration fell and dark

      A new order substitutes for the divine.

      A silence falls upon the spirit’s heights,

      From the veiled sanctuary the God retires,

      Empty and cold is the chamber of the Bride;

      The golden Nimbus now is seen no more,

      No longer burns the white spiritual ray

      And hushed for ever is the secret Voice.

      Then by the Angel of the Vigil Tower

      A name is struck from the recording book;

      A flame that sang in Heaven sinks quenched and mute;

      In ruin ends the epic of a soul.

      This is the tragedy of the inner death

      When forfeited is the divine element

      And only a mind and body live to die.

      For terrible agencies the Spirit allows

      And there are subtle and enormous Powers

      That shield themselves with the covering Ignorance.

      Offspring of the gulfs, agents of the shadowy Force,

      Haters of light, intolerant of peace,

      Aping to the thought the shining Friend and Guide,

      Opposing in the heart the eternal Will,

      They veil the occult uplifting Harmonist.

      His wisdom’s oracles are made our bonds;

      The doors of God they have locked with keys of creed

      And shut out by the Law his tireless Grace.

      Along all Nature’s lines they have set their posts

      And intercept the caravans of Light;

      Wherever the Gods act, they intervene.

      A yoke is laid upon the world’s dim heart;

      Masked are its beats from the supernal Bliss,

      And the closed peripheries of brilliant Mind

      Block the fine entries of celestial Fire.

      Always the dark Adventurers seem to win;

      Nature they fill with evil’s institutes,

      Turn into defeats the victories of Truth,

      Proclaim as falsehoods the eternal laws,

      And load the dice of Doom with wizard lies;

      The world’s shrines they have occupied, usurped its thrones.

      In scorn of the dwindling chances of the Gods

      They claim creation as their conquered fief

      And crown themselves the iron Lords of Time.

      Adepts of the illusion and the mask,

      The artificers of Nature’s fall and pain

      Have built their altars of triumphant Night

      In the clay temple of terrestrial life.

      In the vacant precincts of the sacred Fire,

      In front of the reredos in the mystic rite

      Facing the dim velamen none can pierce,

      Intones his solemn hymn the mitred priest

      Invoking their dreadful presence in his breast:

      Attributing to them the awful Name

      He chants the syllables of the magic text

      And summons the unseen communion’s act,

      While twixt the incense and the muttered prayer

      All the fierce bale with which the world is racked

      Is mixed in the foaming chalice of man’s heart

      And poured to them like sacramental wine.

      Assuming names divine they guide and rule.

      Opponents of the Highest they have come

      Out of their world of soulless thought and power

      To serve by enmity the cosmic scheme.

      Night is their refuge and strategic base.

      Against the sword of Flame, the luminous Eye,

      Bastioned they live in massive forts of gloom,

      Calm and secure in sunless privacy:

      No wandering ray of Heaven can enter there.

      Armoured, protected by their lethal masks,

      As in a studio of creative Death

      The giant sons of Darkness sit and plan

      The drama of the earth, their tragic stage.

      All who would raise the fallen world must come

      Under the dangerous arches of their power;

      For even the radiant children of the gods

      To darken their privilege is and dreadful right.

      None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.

      This too the traveller of the worlds must dare.

      A warrior in the dateless duel’s strife,

      He entered into dumb despairing Night

      Challenging the darkness with his luminous soul.

      Alarming with his steps the threshold gloom

      He came into a fierce and dolorous realm

      Peopled by souls who never had tasted bliss;

      Ignorant like men born blind who know not light,

      They could equate worst ill with highest good,

      Virtue was to their eyes a face of sin

      And evil and misery were their natural state.

      A dire administration’s penal code

      Making of grief and pain the common law,

      Decreeing universal joylessness

      Had changed life into a stoic sacrament

      And torture into a daily festival.

      An act was passed to chastise happiness;

      Laughter and pleasure were banned as deadly sins:

      A questionless mind was ranked as wise content,

      A dull heart’s silent apathy as peace:

      Sleep was not there, torpor was the sole rest,

      Death came but neither respite gave nor end;

      Always the soul lived on and suffered more.

      Ever he deeper probed that kingdom of pain;

      Around him grew the terror of a world

      Of agony followed by worse agony,

      And in the terror a great wicked joy

      Glad of one’s own and others’ calamity.

      There thought and life were a long punishment,

      The breath a burden and all hope a scourge,

      The body a field of torment, a massed unease;

      Repose was a waiting between pang and pang.

      This

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