yiBLES & Poems
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 Lucasta.
 
 Lucasta 
 
 PARABLES AND POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE 
 
 " I see the better things of the life to come before mine eyes." 
 
 A A'ezv Light of Alcliymy. 
 
 London 
 
 JAMES ELLIOTT & CO. 
 
 Te.mi'LK Chambers, Falcon Court, Fleet Street, E.C. 
 
 1894
 
 
 TO MY WIFE. 
 
 (-^■r\r^Vi(Df\
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 With IIakp and Crown ... ... ... ... ... 9 
 
 Prologue 13 
 
 PARABLES:— 
 
 The First Parable. — The Generation of Luca.sta 21 
 
 The Interlude. — In Exile 25 
 
 The Second Parable.— A Golden Key lo a Mystic 
 
 Palace ... ... ... ... ... ... 29 
 
 The Interlude. — The Message 33 
 
 The Third Parable. — The Manifestation ofLucasta 35 
 
 The Interlude 41 
 
 The Fourth Parable. — The Mystic Marriage of 
 
 Lucasta ... ... ... ... ... ... 44 
 
 The Interlude. — A Rover's Hynin 50 
 
 The Fifth Parable. — The Regeneration of Lucasta 55 
 
 The Interlude. — The Benediction of Lucasta ... 60 
 
 The .Sixth Parable. — The Divine Mission of 
 
 Lucasta ... ... ... ... ... ... 62 
 
 The Interlude. — A Vision 67 
 
 The Seventh Parable. — The Transfiguration of 
 
 Lucasta .. ... ... ... ... ... 71 
 
 EriLOGUE 76 
 
 MISCELLAlvEOUS POEMS :— 
 
 Azalea 85 
 
 In Akidi'jy 91 
 
 A Sea Prophecy 93 
 
 Stella 95
 
 With Harp and Crown. 
 
 ONS of the Morning and Eternity, 
 
 *~-^ Children of Benediction and of Light, 
 Daughters of angels' kisses, I have wrought 
 A little book of melody and love — 
 A book against the Resurrection Day, 
 Song-mystic of humanity divine, 
 Achieved in one regenerated )-outh. 
 Our bright, sidereal beacon — Israfel. 
 
 1 swear, my brethren, by the Orphic faith. 
 And by the faithful prophecies inscribed 
 Deep in discerning souls, that starry hosts. 
 Empyrean kings, and galaxies of gods. 
 Lead on that Spirit, and his reign is nigh. 
 He stands erect among frankincense clouds, 
 A pillar of melody. His saffron hair 
 
 Is a cloud of harpstrings ; as he moves in grace, 
 And ministers, the ground beneath his feet 
 Quivers in music like a sounding-board ; 
 The parted air about him slowly streams
 
 lO Wzi/i Harp and Crown, 
 
 Into faint flute-notes. In God's Holy Place 
 He wears himself the aspect of a God : — 
 Has eyes, and sees celestial hierarchies, 
 And companies of martyrs and of saints, 
 Who from the four-square basis of the Church, 
 Now visible and militant on earth. 
 Slope off, ascending to the apex point 
 Whence undimensional Deity looks down 
 O'er the vast triangle of intelligence, 
 Upreaching towards beatitude and light : — 
 Has lips which shape man's language to divine 
 By inspiration of divinity, 
 And voice it past the common range of sound. 
 To traverse God's infinity as prayer : — 
 Has ears wherein celestial melodies 
 Find passage to the galleries of soul. 
 Wherein they circulate and amplify, 
 As in white sea-shells tinged with coral pink 
 All ocean's vastness hollowly resounds : — 
 Has hands to sanctify by service meet, 
 Among the vessels and the mysteries : — 
 Has feet ascending to the Throne of God : — 
 And, with a clamorous music in his throat, 
 Utters the watchwords of Eternity. 
 
 Sons of the Voice and Peers of Everlasting, 
 Monarchs of organ-melodies, against
 
 With Harp and Croivn. 1 1 
 
 The meeting of the Bridegroom and the Bride, 
 
 I bring you once again a httle book 
 
 Of transformation on the psychic plane — 
 
 Most magical, miraculous, emprize, 
 
 Which by imagination's power intent, 
 
 Was truthfully accomplished and endures. 
 
 may Lucasta's litanies and chants, 
 
 This praise of love, this praise of maiden light, 
 
 These visionary parables and songs, 
 
 This hidden meaning, this arcane romance. 
 
 Be counted as the prophecy and pledge 
 
 Of more resplendent exploits still to come — 
 
 The transmutations of your Orphic art ! 
 
 1 look to see most mighty things of God, 
 Accomplish'd in the land of living men ! 
 The unprepared but pure hypostasis 
 Developed and elaborated here, 
 
 Was one fair-shining maid's simplicity ; 
 
 She in her outward, manifested life. 
 
 Remains beside me as a gracious sign, 
 
 A sacramental type of hidden truth, 
 
 Reality, and beauty, which transcend 
 
 Expression. We are born with faces veil'd 
 
 As Moses' was, to hide the God within — 
 
 Lucasta's mystic veil with Horeb's light 
 
 Is now transfigured, Earth and Heaven are join'd 
 
 In an alchemic marriage, which transmutes
 
 12 JVzt/i Harp and Crown. 
 
 The world to gold. Discriminate between 
 
 The letter and the spirit that informs — 
 
 Be, then, lucidity and lustre yours. 
 
 Peace, inspiration, pure imagining, 
 
 Unspotted spirit in a frame unsoil'd, 
 
 A royal robe, a grand and dreadful doom, 
 
 A mission, a re\ealment, a wide sea. 
 
 An open sea, a boat to sail thereon. 
 
 Laurel, and sacred palm, and Crown of Life !
 
 I 
 
 Prologue. 
 
 I. 
 
 MAGI NAT I ON, clothing mortal form 
 With attributes of Deity, be thou 
 My minister I Immortal Will, proclaim 
 Thy strength once more ! Magician of the mind, 
 Directing both, divine, eternal soul 
 Of inspiration and of poesy, 
 Thy high, creative faculties assume, 
 Thy concentrated energies collect. 
 For holy task ! On thee the mantle falls. 
 It wraps thee round in vivifying folds — 
 Though o'er thee broods an unresponsive sky, 
 And round thee spreads a disillusion'd world. 
 Mind can illumine both, begin thy spells. 
 A life is put into thy priestly hands 
 To beautify, develop, and inform — 
 To lead by evolution of the mind. 
 From realm to realm of ideality.
 
 14 Prologue. 
 
 Creative frenzy searches all my soul ; 
 
 The panorama of the outward world, 
 
 Before mine eyes transfigured in a breath, 
 
 Is supernaturally glorified. 
 
 The inspiration lights up earth and sky, 
 
 And some far-gleaming pageantry, some flash 
 
 Of crumbling crests proclaim the open sea, 
 
 Mine adoration and my heritage. 
 
 O one thing more to beautify and bless — 
 
 One human soul to deify — one maid 
 
 To drape with immortality — one deep, 
 
 Illuminating, infinite dream of love ! 
 
 High art and duty call, for whatsoe'er 
 Imagination, by its lofty spells, 
 Confers on beautiful and human things, 
 May well, projected by a conscious mind, 
 Become the chosen object's attributes. 
 However much it be invisible ; 
 May even by effort of determined will, 
 A plastic, passive, nature permeate, 
 Until imagined beauty, glory, grace, 
 Shine realised and visible therein 
 With eminent perfection. Be it thus — 
 Be this imagination's holy end ! 
 For no transmutatory enterprise 
 Transcends love's grand, illimitable range.
 
 Prologue. 15 
 
 Who, after every possible emprize, 
 
 Retains profound, potential energies 
 
 For new achievements on the golden lines 
 
 Of that ineffable, surpassing art 
 
 And splendid path of ideality, 
 
 Which in the order of the intellect 
 
 Lifts glorified humanity to God. 
 
 II. 
 
 The supplicated power of poesy, 
 
 Imagination's high, creative aid 
 
 Have beautified thine incarnation fair, 
 
 Of modest, maidenlike humanity. 
 
 The strength implored m turn from Heaven and'Earth, 
 
 Sky's brightness of deep azure swooning off 
 
 To softest lilac on the misty verge ; 
 
 The sea's invigoi'ating influence. 
 
 The airy ecstasy of open downs, 
 
 Wind-swept, and flooded by a midnight moon, 
 
 The concentrated faculty of will. 
 
 And inspirations, caught at intervals, 
 
 From infinite, imperial realms of thought, 
 
 Have each and all in many a mystic mood 
 
 Their solemn part of ministry perform'd ; 
 
 But all dependence on the outward world — 
 
 This summer spectacle of mead and wood,
 
 1 6 Proloo;iie. 
 
 i>' 
 
 Of early moon which buoys a phantom shell 
 
 In ether's shining depths — seems needless now. 
 
 Thy rosebud grace, before the magic glance 
 
 Of sympathetic contemplation, bursts. 
 
 With sudden plenitude of loveliness. 
 
 Into a perfect flower, whose affluent bloom 
 
 Attracts the venerating sense of art ; 
 
 Whose fragrance trances thought ; attraction turns 
 
 To passion, passing as an incense up, 
 
 And leaving crystal gold of perfect love 
 
 Upon the holy altar of the heart 
 
 Fire-tried and shining. Veil on veil removes, 
 
 And then the wonder of a lambent star 
 
 Above the gracious presence of thy brow, 
 
 Doth in a solemn and a metric trance 
 
 Of silence meet and worshipful begin 
 
 To manifest a majesty of light 
 
 And gentle radiation. Five at length 
 
 Complete the lucent chaplet ; then I see 
 
 Thy nature's heights withdrawn and cryptic depths ; 
 
 The circular progression of thy soul 
 
 Reveals its phases, all its latent strength, 
 
 Its unelicited abilities 
 
 For dread achievement. Thou art infinite ; 
 
 The unform'd vastness of thy beauty, strength. 
 
 And thine unlimited capacities 
 
 For life, love, truth, have taken partial shape
 
 Prologue. 17 
 
 And faint expression in thy mortal form, 
 
 Where maiden elegance and charm of mien 
 
 Hint dimly the Invisible within. 
 
 I will not say that thine is vaster strength, 
 
 Thy spiritual beauty's vistas more 
 
 Prolong'd, thine altitude unsearchable 
 
 Beyond all height, depth more profoundly sunk, 
 
 And striking roots of being in the dark 
 
 Abyss of God, more infinitely low 
 
 Than other souls. There are unfathom'd depths, 
 
 Untravell'd spaces, undetermined heights 
 
 In every heart. There is no human soul 
 
 Whose possibilities can be limited ; 
 
 Whose utmost point of progress can be mark'cl 
 
 On any chart ; but most are veil'd to me. 
 
 Thine opens slowly, as the ether bares 
 
 Its shining distance through the parted clouds. 
 
 After a storm, at evening. I am bound 
 
 By that divine revealment evermore 
 
 Thy being to develop and expand. 
 
 III. 
 
 Invoked with passion of a purpose fix'd. 
 That potent Monad which in life o'erbroods 
 The psychal man, directing searching light. 
 Has rectified and clarified and cleansed
 
 1 8 Prologue. 
 
 The chemical florescence of the soul, 
 
 And gross purgations of man's coarser part. 
 
 trustfully resign thy gentle self, 
 And I will bear thee hence to holy hills 
 Of noble intellectuality ! 
 
 From all things common, limited, and low. 
 
 To all things lofty, limitless, and rare. 
 
 To naked peaks above the line of snow, 
 
 The mountains of the mind, the breathless, free, 
 
 Capacious world of visionary thought — 
 
 Beyond ambition of the boldest lark, 
 
 Beyond the eagle's flight — a realm unknown — 
 
 An unexplored, intelligible realm, 
 
 Invested with the majesty of dream. — 
 
 There is no peace, no beauty in the glare 
 
 About these low, relaxing meadow-lands. 
 
 1 bless Thee for the bracing mountain-air 
 Which freshens all the summits of the Soul, 
 Thou mighty God I I yearn — I yearn — to Thee ! 
 My heart ascends in aspiration pui^e 
 
 To meet Thy majesty and trancjuil light ; 
 Another being in my arms I bear — 
 Baptise her beauty in benignant beams, 
 Invest her with the liberty complete 
 Of Thine illuminated and elect I
 
 parable6.
 
 21 
 
 The First Parable 
 
 The Generation of Lucasta. 
 
 'T^HE generations of immortal soul, 
 
 High soul in delicate and dainty form 
 Of marvellous mortality ! . . . 
 
 There floats 
 A pungent perfume, changing every step 
 And sweet in each mutation. Does it come 
 From orchards nigh me, from the garden close, 
 Or clover meadows ? . . . 'Tis the evening breath 
 Of nature lapsing towards her night's repose. 
 In bridal splendour of the latest spring 
 Right royally invested. How my life 
 Expands within it, and is bathed therein ! — 
 Deep, deep it drinks ! 
 
 What golden gates unbar ! 
 What cryptic springs of melody unseal ! 
 I float serenely up life's lucent stream 
 Into the further past. I see thy soul
 
 22 TJlc First Parable. 
 
 Serenely dwelling in its fontal home — 
 
 In spiritual mansion bright and blest — 
 
 Thine ante-natal state — a virgin clime, 
 
 A purple plain of unalloy'd delights, 
 
 Twelve cubits sphered above the loftiest hills, 
 
 The phoenix-home of immortality, 
 
 And morning joy. The golden rule of life, 
 
 From star to star its undisputed sway 
 
 Immutably extending, has evolved 
 
 P'rom out the simple, pure, subjective state. 
 
 By an interior, harmonious law, 
 
 A portion of thy nature into form. 
 
 The inner essence takes an outward shape 
 
 Of melody made visible, conform'd 
 
 To that divine and individual thought 
 
 Eternal cause had consciously express'd 
 
 To bring thee into being. . . . Is it well 
 
 To call thee fair, to say thy mien is high, 
 
 Thy vesture argent, and thy lily crown 
 
 A star-eclipsing wreath of loveliness ? 
 
 I see thy perfect, superhuman form, 
 
 Like poetry in happy music clothed. 
 
 But thine unsearchable, unbounded soul 
 
 Has human shape alone to human thought. 
 
 I sense thy presence in the sphere of mind, 
 
 I know not what thou art ; I call on thee, 
 
 And thou respondest in the brightest shape
 
 The First Parable. 23 
 
 Supreme imagination pictures, based 
 
 On human form. I see thy haunting eyes, 
 
 Like evening's grey from Heaven's eternal hills 
 
 View'd in a holy trance. I pass therein — 
 
 Through fragrant spaces, poised on eager wings 
 
 Of upward aspiration — pass in dream ; 
 
 I see thy timeless origin express'd 
 
 In spiritual symbols — a pure spark 
 
 Or point of life intense, profoundly plunged 
 
 In the electric ocean of God's bright, 
 
 Essential intellectuality 
 
 Support the dreamer now, ye mighty downs. 
 
 Thou scarlet sunset, draped in formless cloud, 
 
 Pinewoods, and wilderness, and windy peaks, 
 
 And shadow-haunted prospects far prolong'd. 
 
 And closing night ! . . . An inner impulse prompts 
 
 That point of light ; above the burning sea 
 
 It lifts itself; a radiant globe it grows, 
 
 And down creation's stream of forming life 
 
 It glimmers slowly into consciousness. 
 
 The conscious life consumes the shining form ; 
 
 It turns one thought intent ; through ages long 
 
 It feeds upon itself, and, sinking far, 
 
 Its own unsearchable profundities, 
 
 And unimaginable, endless heights. 
 
 It dimly measures, till the vast beyond, 
 
 The contact form'd with God at either end,
 
 24 The First Parable. 
 
 Pulse and vibrate therein ; the tide of thought 
 Turns outward then ; sense-music charms it on, 
 Desire and will unite ; the magic change, 
 Encompass'd enigmatically, gives 
 The outward shape. Thou takest angel form. 
 And in the sexless, simple world of soul — 
 The purple plain of unalloy'd delights — 
 Diaphanously draped, with wide, white wings, 
 One torch-like star, from pale and lofty brow 
 Diffusintr lisrht — and auburn hair unbound 
 
 o o 
 
 In rainbow ripples — thus I picture thee. 
 
 Still works the outward evolution's law. 
 And towards the circle of material things 
 It draws thy nature out. A vortex takes 
 The circle ever towards its central depths, 
 And downward sailing with the might)' tide, 
 Eyes fixed for ever on eternal things, 
 Thou enterest the generating world — 
 A narrow passage with a door of night 
 At either end, a golden hope beyond. 
 Cross, combat, victory, and crown betwixt. 
 
 The generations of immortal soul. 
 High soul in dehcate and dainty form 
 Of marvellous mortality !
 
 25 
 
 The Interlude. 
 
 In Exile. 
 
 'T^HE town recedes, the turbid stream is cross'd ; 
 
 The heart that throbs beneath the weight of worlds 
 Is borne with no more stress of steaming steeds 
 Than this child-heart beside me. . . . 
 
 Queen of Stars, 
 White-breasted Virgin, tender, trusting, true, 
 Translucent Lily, pour thy dainty light — 
 White light, bright fragrance, beautifying earth. 
 Whose shadows melt in parabolic morn 
 Of maiden mildness and enravishment, 
 While every desert place thy being's pure, 
 Intelligible harmonies invest 
 With lily blossoms in thy likeness made. 
 All lustre, softness ! . . . . Now the leaning elms 
 Line country lanes, which take through gentle scenes — 
 May-scented still, their dilatory way ; 
 Now burning sunshine floods transforming skies. 
 And winds are winsome as the voice of Christ 
 
 ■>
 
 26 The Interlude. 
 
 In childhood wafted over Syrian fields ; 
 
 Now pleasant pools, with basking swans beside, 
 
 In dim recesses spread their brown expanse, 
 
 And something ever cf exalting light, 
 
 Which thine eyes lend to all on earth and sea, 
 
 Has visibly transfigured and enrich'd 
 
 Those golden slopes of uplands far away. 
 
 Thy consecrated, delicate, gentle lips, 
 
 The homes of spiritual melody. 
 
 On thy true poet's still in trance are press'd ; 
 
 Thy warm arms clasp him, thine eyes shine on him ; 
 
 And when the amplitude of all the world, 
 
 With woodland wastes and miles of dreaming fell, 
 
 And an intolerable, seraphic sky, 
 
 With sudden rushing of awaken'd wind 
 
 From buoyant seas, invigorates once more 
 
 The sacrificing priest of Nature's shrine^ 
 
 And breaks up every fountain of the soul 
 
 Into floods of adoration — then I know — 
 
 Yon naked heath, with heaven drawn out beyond, 
 
 A threshold of the infinite, assures ; 
 
 That one black pine upon the dizzy hill. 
 
 And orchard-closes' plenteous prophecies, 
 
 This sacred and illuminating truth 
 
 Do visibly and sensibly infuse — 
 
 That thou, sweet maid, though meek in all thy ways, 
 
 And not more firmly poised on breathless heights
 
 The Interlude. 27 
 
 Of unattainable virginity, 
 And dread Uranian loveliness, than low 
 Immersed in glad humility of thought, 
 And parted far from vanity as I 
 From thy pure peace aud haunting sanctity, 
 Art truly Queen of Stars, Christ-lighted moon 
 Of soul-effulgence, shedding mystic rays, 
 And sprinkling melody of countless larks 
 Entranced in morning ether. Do I err ? 
 Let cold imaginations bound to sense 
 Misread thy beauty's parable profound. 
 No less that Cosmos of incarnate soul 
 Shall in the incandescent light of love — 
 Before the quicken'd faculties of mind — 
 Burn gorgeous, golden. 
 
 Whether love reveals — 
 Pure love that clarifies and purges sight — 
 Or by its spiritual chemistry 
 Transmutes, transfigures, still the change is true. 
 Thine outward beauty is a hand which points, 
 Which leads by lily-lined, azalean paths 
 To the seraphic and ineffable shrine 
 Of thy soft, shining, thine unsullied soul. 
 The outward charm that binds a thousand hearts 
 Is but the shadow of thy loveliness, 
 The first faint fragrance of the full-blown rose 
 Inhaled from far, a promise of the deep
 
 28 The Inicriuac. 
 
 Intoxication of ecstatic sense, 
 When venerating hands shall part its screen 
 Of jealous leaves, and bent, adoring^ face 
 Press lips against its petals.
 
 29 
 
 The Second Parable. 
 
 A Golden Key to a Mystic Palace. 
 
 A CRYSTAL palace, built by mortal hands, 
 Uplifts the splendours of its tetrad form. 
 Above the level pastures, on the height ! 
 A crystal cresset to a world of dreams, 
 It stands transfigured. As the sinking sun 
 Invests all commonplace and humble things 
 With poetry and glory, this light pile. 
 By mortals built, by mighty genii plann'd. 
 Is draped for ever with a rainbow sheen. 
 And from diaphanous and hyaline. 
 Through opal transits, to refulgent turns. 
 And scintillates and coruscates, and shines 
 With countless vivid and prismatic hues. 
 While every Gilead breeze that breathes around 
 Is raised by passage of angelic wings, — 
 For there Lucasta dwelt. Her steps therein 
 Awoke adoring echoes. There her voice 
 Did, thrush-like, stir in the enravish'd air
 
 30 TJie Second Parable. 
 
 Vibrations subtly circulating still, 
 
 And stirring timelong in the hearer's mind 
 
 The pulse of purest thought. In secret nooks, 
 
 In sacred chambers utterly apart, 
 
 By fountain sides, by many a spellbound lake. 
 
 By solemn statues, still her voice is stored. 
 
 In tiny ripples of ecstatic song 
 
 Is audible at times to ears elect. 
 
 She haunts them still — the palace and the park — 
 
 As those pale spiritual clouds of gold 
 
 Are by the vanish'd sunbeams haunted still. 
 
 Thou crystal cresset to a world of dreams, 
 
 I enter thee, thy haunted halls explore ! 
 
 I know thee well, I dwelt myself in thee, 
 
 But darkness reign'd, and spurr'd by powers without, 
 
 1 scaled thine endless flights of hollow stairs 
 
 To ghostly turrets with a soul adread 
 
 And nameless doom above. Now light has dawn'd, 
 
 And from thy windows on the age to come. 
 
 By prophesy and parable and dream 
 
 Made evident, by all our hopes ensured. 
 
 The mystic thinker looks. Creative thought 
 
 Has limn'd its landscapes, it is nigh this day. 
 
 It passes all our schemes — it comes, it comes ! 
 
 O solemn Niglit, involving earth and sea! 
 With inspiration my receptive soul
 
 The Second Parable. 31 
 
 By all its channels of perception fill ! 
 
 Thy May-time fragrance, like a wine, exalts. 
 
 Thy cool wind wraps imagination round, 
 
 And lifts it into prophecy. Thy dews 
 
 Refresh, thy dai'kness haunts, thy stars untold — 
 
 O Night, the joyful wonder of thy stars I — 
 
 Prostrate my spirit in adoring lo\-e I 
 
 Ah, mystic, tender, mild, maternal Night, 
 
 With silent tides of shadow lap me round ! 
 
 Ah, haunting lavender of fusing sky ! 
 
 Ah, fading saffron, atmospheric grey — 
 
 Clear as Lucasta's eyes ! Eternal speech, 
 
 Among the tops of tall and trembling trees. 
 
 Prolong your parables and mysteries ! 
 
 magic space of sleep and dream and love. 
 Beneath thy sleepless trees, thy broodmg sky, 
 
 1 utterly adore thee 1 On these downs. 
 By mighty spectacles of open sea 
 
 In stormy moods of majesty — in all 
 
 Thy moods and phases, wheresoe'er thou art — 
 
 I praise thee, minister to me thy scald ! 
 
 I place my spirit in thy holy hands — 
 
 Haunt, thrill me, fill me, thy desire and love 
 
 Make agony of illimitable void. 
 
 Which frenzied inspiration pouring forth 
 
 Alone can soothe, which thou alone canst fill, 
 
 Until the rosy morning of my soul,
 
 32 
 
 The Second Payable. 
 
 Lucasta, come, with light of liquid eyes 
 And stream of aureate tresses — honey-lipp'd, 
 Dew-fed, sea-scented, and sjringa-crown'd. 
 Fall dimly, then, serene and holy Night, 
 And let the tender marvel of her eyes 
 Thy dusk and mournful spaces glorify ! 
 Fall softly, then, most cool, enchanted Night, 
 And let the pulses of Lucasta's heart 
 With secret words enrich thy mystery ! 
 O bend thy beautiful and star-crown'd head, 
 Hush all thy winds, and lull thy latest bird, 
 And let the melody of Lucasta's voice 
 Upon the tideless surface of thy soul's 
 Unfathomable ocean wake some light 
 And silver ripples, from whose tender gleam 
 Shall rise the crescent of a new-born moon 
 To beautify thy being !
 
 33 
 
 The Interlude. 
 
 The Message. 
 
 IVT Y Star has shed one beam of purest light 
 
 To soothe me by lone waters wandering, 
 My Swan one feather in her starry flight 
 
 Has shaken from her wing, 
 Vibrating with melodious delight ; 
 And with the voice of seraphs, when they sing 
 Their unknown canticles ineffable, 
 My virgin Philomel, 
 My Dove that, dwelling in Dodonian grove, 
 On dread, divine, immutable decrees 
 Of all providing Fates, 
 Amidst the rustle of /Eonian trees 
 
 Vaticinates, 
 Hath sung me one revivifying song 
 
 Which lifts me straight from darkness into day- 
 A thousand echoes in my soul prolong 
 
 The silver lay ; 
 It cools all fever, as a fountain's spray
 
 34 TJic Interlude. 
 
 Makes cool the forehead on an August day ; 
 
 Again my heart is strong, 
 My toihng brain intuitively clear : 
 
 Mine eyes behold reality and truth ; 
 The harmonies of every starry sphere — 
 Endow'd with inner faculties — I hear ; 
 That golden and unconquerable youth — 
 
 Pure, buoyant, and divine. 
 Which under some more favour'd influence 
 Than common stars of destiny dispense. 
 
 Had once been mine — 
 That youth flows bounding now through every vein ; 
 I hold the measure of the mighty main 
 
 Within the single compass of my being ; 
 The bounds of possibility expand. 
 There is no scheme too grand, 
 
 No doom too great for dreeing. 
 And throned for ever on the seat of mind — 
 All doubts dispell'd, all darkness left behind — 
 Divine imagination, purged from Earth, 
 
 Beholds the world's new birth — 
 Beholds the future, like a formless sea, 
 Stretch, ever bright'ning, to infinity, 
 The evolutiu i into dream'd Ideal 
 
 Of that we call the Real, 
 And through the purple vistas of the distance, 
 The Magic and the Meaning of Existence I
 
 35 
 
 The Third Parable. 
 
 The Manifestation of Lucasta.. 
 
 A LL sense of duty seems in thee to mer^e, 
 
 1 have no duty left but love for thee ; 
 I ha\e no hopes, no dreams, no conscious thought ; 
 I do not breathe nor feel, I am no more, 
 I simply love, I "love but live no more." 
 The passion in me, like a radiant star. 
 Through all the world in light and warmth diffused, 
 Embraces all, contains and searches all. 
 I love the world in thee, ser\e man in thee, 
 I worship all things beautiful in life 
 When my pent spirit its existence pours 
 In ardour forth on thee. O love, love, love 1 
 O adoration of ecstatic love, 
 The entrance to the palace of the King, 
 Against all scorners closed and barr'd and seal'd. 
 With twelve hermetical and mystic seals ! 
 O Salem, city on the mountain-top ! 
 O promised land of honey and of milk !
 
 36 The Third Parable. 
 
 O Aden, Eden, land of holy dream ! 
 
 O House of God ! 'Tis cold to call thee strong, 
 
 'Tis weak to call thee beautiful, 'tis vain. 
 
 With the drear commonplace of mortal speech, 
 
 To name thy storms, thy calms, thy heights, thy depths, 
 
 To call thee joy, to call thee life of life. 
 
 For thou art love, which names both man and God — 
 
 Which names creation's law, whose fourfold term 
 
 Is God's own mystic city built four-square. 
 
 The everlasting, mighty tetragram. 
 
 Thou art salvation, immortality, 
 
 The resurrection and the crown to come: 
 
 Thou art God infinite, thou boundest all : 
 
 Darkness and horror and the deep abyss. 
 
 The void and vortex ot impurity. 
 
 Chaotic malice, arrogance, and hate — 
 
 Those deaths in life — alone devoid of thee. 
 
 'Tis not the moon whose spiritual light 
 Has spell'd the sea, for thou art moon and sun 
 And in immeasurable ocean thou 
 Assumest other majesty and form : 
 Thy grace is in acacia and in beech. 
 And when thy lover in a lane at noon 
 Beneath some maple lays his languid limbs. 
 And those broad, beautiful, benignant leaves 
 Make shade and shelter in a torrid time.
 
 The Third Parable. 37 
 
 And drooping low with lissome whispering 
 Fan fever'd forehead and in ears adream 
 Recite dryadic rhymes and roundelays, 
 It is the providence of thy pure love 
 Which closes round him ; on thy lap he lies, 
 Thy heart the moss which pillows, and thy breath 
 The zephyr, the leaf-messages thy voice, 
 And those dryadic rhymes and roundelays — 
 The rhythmic efflorescence of thy soul, 
 Whose depths are resonant with organ-odes 
 And the high epics of eternity. 
 
 A haunted house where ghosts and mortals dwell 
 
 Together, in a city of the dead — 
 
 The dreadful city of the dead in soul — 
 
 I, bent on secrets to be won from death, 
 
 Ambitious of the dream'd-of life beyond. 
 
 And ardently, incessantly devour'd 
 
 With aspiration to prolong life's line 
 
 Round all the circle of eternity. 
 
 Sought out, won entrance, took my place assign'd, 
 
 Among the hush'd and necromantic throng, 
 
 And round a table such as Merlin plann'd. 
 
 We communed nightly with the men call'd dead. 
 
 Ye melancholy shadows of the past. 
 Ye unsubstantial entities, ye thin
 
 58 • The Third Parable. 
 
 Phantasmata, reflecting back my thoughts — 
 
 With dim, repellent, unobservant eyes, 
 
 And baleful blue and phosphorescent lights — 
 
 About the darksome chamber floating slowly 
 
 In ominous silence — was it there and then, 
 
 On such an awesome and forbidden quest, 
 
 That any light native to earth or sea 
 
 Could ever reach ? . . . A sacramental pause 
 
 Came in that thaumaturgic mystery, 
 
 And with the brightness of thy human laugh. 
 
 And with thy human presence passing fair. 
 
 Thou didst its space enrich and beautify. 
 
 I sought the wither'd leaves of fairy gold, 
 
 And I found thee, a true and living wealth, 
 
 The vivifying seed of deathless gold, 
 
 Within the ivory casket of thy fresh, 
 
 Intelligible beauty. . . . Not at once — 
 
 O many moons of misery and want, 
 
 Of passion spent in vain, of lines misread 
 
 Through all the tangled skein of destin)-. 
 
 Of inspiration round the idol-shrine 
 
 Long squander'd in abortive prophecy. 
 
 The harvest moon of fruit and fulness shines — 
 
 The skein unrolls, the knots are loosed therein. 
 
 The inspiration finds an impulse new. 
 
 The prophecies discredited assume
 
 The Third Parable. 39 
 
 A new significance and solemnity ; 
 
 For by the psychic telegraph of tlioughts, 
 
 From mind to mind incessantly transferr'd, 
 
 Thou Jost electrify me day by day 
 
 With beautiful imaginings, with soft 
 
 And tender messages, with odours sweet 
 
 Which ever follow upon fancy's flight. 
 
 Uprising, bird-like, from thy being's nest 
 
 With random lines of poetry, song-bursts, 
 
 Sky-fallen cadences. I stand this day, 
 
 As in the middle of a mighty wold 
 
 Which open heaven enrings, still belted round 
 
 By normal sequences of circumstance 
 
 In common and unvisionary spheres ; 
 
 But on the verge an arch of rainbow light — 
 
 With battlemented turrets of pure gold. 
 
 With blazon'd banners of the sunset land- — 
 
 Star-glister'd — edified by elfin kings 
 
 And powers pontifical of fairyland — 
 
 In shining stillness stands — the entrance-gate. 
 
 Gate Beautiful, to thine own nature's world. 
 
 My path is there ; it leads from mundane things, 
 
 'Tis lost in thee — from disenchantment thou 
 
 The refuge, all things common and unclean, 
 
 O exaltation, poetry, and joy ! 
 
 The bright illimitable elfin land 
 
 Of thy regenerating beauty's depths —
 
 40 The Third Parable. 
 
 My path is there, my path, O soul ! is there, 
 And there romance shall lead through all my life 
 By mead and stream, o'er uplands cool and high. 
 Through harvest fields, exploring further still. 
 Sense-thrilled, enraptured, borne on ardent wings, 
 Thy woman-world. And gazing backward thence. 
 That haunted house, where ghosts and mortals dwell 
 Together in a city of the dead. 
 Becomes itself the mystic rainbow arch, 
 The portal of the palace of the queen ; 
 The phosphorescent vapours brooding there 
 Are blazon'd banners of the sunset land ; 
 And those dim ghosts with unobservant eyes, 
 And cold corpse-touches, are the elfin hosts, 
 Which on the threshold of the elfin world 
 Seem spectres, ever to the dreamers sunk 
 In drear delusions of Reality.
 
 41 
 
 The Interlude. 
 
 npHE wind blows freshly. In this morning light 
 
 The beauty round should win discerning praise, 
 But through the threshold of thy glorious eyes, 
 By magical election, have I gazed. 
 And 1 have seen thy soul. All stars, all seas, 
 Are stripped of beauty now .... 
 
 O mighty main, 
 Lift thine immeasurable voices high ! 
 Stars of the distant twilight, circle still — 
 Reproach me all, and chide thy chosen priest, 
 Sweet Mother Nature ! I adore thee still. 
 Most wondrous world of waters ; thy bright breast. 
 At once placidity and restlessness. 
 All light, all azure — like Lucasta's face — 
 Is but an efflorescence of thyself, 
 Thy grandeur, depth, and mystery. Her height, 
 Her soul's unconscious height of chastity ; 
 Thy depth, thy vastness, seem but phases all 
 Of one unsearchable secret. 
 
 Her I see, 
 4
 
 42 TIic Interlude. 
 
 Who distant in the City of the Blest, 
 
 Will tarry in cool shadow till I come, 
 
 When, in the vigour of the morning wind 
 
 I stand, self-poised, upon a peak of rock, 
 
 And all thy glittering and gladsome pomp 
 
 Of hasty tide about me swirls and swells : 
 
 While every shallow in the shingly shore 
 
 Is like a boy's voice meeting careful life 
 
 With blithesome laughter— all the distant depth 
 
 Speaks as with tidings of a mission'd man. 
 
 Who from the heart and centre of all things 
 
 Ascends with revelation. Thou art there, 
 
 When in the dreadful City of the Blest — 
 
 The dreadful City by thy beauty Blest— 
 
 I stand absorb'd in adoration deep 
 
 Before Lucasta's eyes. Absorb'd 1 stand ! 
 
 Grey eyes — Madonna — adoration deep — 
 
 Immeasurable main of mighty soul — 
 
 Seraphic spirit— thou hast fiU'd the world ! 
 
 There is no sea, no sky, no fertile earth ; 
 
 'Tis not the lark which sings, the summer wind 
 
 That cools and freshens ; it is thou in each — 
 
 Thou variously, inscrutably reveal'd. 
 
 And plunged for ever in a dream of thee — 
 
 My soul no more a separable form — 
 
 I lose myself, 1 melt, I merge in thee ; 
 
 For in the circle of all knowable things
 
 TJic Interlude. 43 
 
 Thou only art reality and truth, 
 
 Though mystic voices, which are part of thee. 
 
 Vibrating oft the visionary air. 
 
 Divide the hush intent of ecstacy 
 
 With names — the images of things unknown — 
 
 With high prophetic names — thy Christ, thy God !
 
 44 
 
 The Fourth Parable. 
 
 The Mystic Marriage of Lucasta. 
 
 /^ NIGHT of fragrance, on these open downs — 
 
 On these unlimited, exalted downs — 
 Descend, descend ! I yearn once more for thee ! 
 Thou art moi'e precious still, more beautiful : 
 Thou penetratest more and more the deep 
 And hidden fount of visionary thought I 
 Thou art so cool, so vague, so mystical, 
 So close enfolding ! I adore the sea. 
 But I am passionate and mad for thee, 
 And for the luminous splendour of thine eyes, 
 And thy moon-crown of burnish'd, burning gold. 
 Mine inner being in the ample folds 
 Of thy black, beautiful, and boundless limbs 
 Is drained in sensuous delirium ; 
 And in ecstatic, universal bliss 
 The soft luxuriance of thine unseen mouth 
 Draws all my spiritual strength away 
 In frenzied, fascinated utterance.
 
 The Fourth Parable. 45 
 
 O occidental light of saffron gold, 
 
 Collect thy dilatory splendours now, 
 
 And linger not ! With all thy dews and stars 
 
 Enfold me, Night, in infinite embrace. 
 
 Let me lie with thee on these open downs, 
 
 A naked soul, with every inmost part 
 
 Responding, by a tingling sense intense 
 
 Of an immeasurable luxury. 
 
 To thine unstinted, unrestrain'd embrace. 
 
 So cried the spirit of the wandering scald ; 
 
 Night answered him — Night answer'd me, the scald — 
 
 And Night with Spirit in communion join'd 
 
 Had progeny of prophecy and song ; 
 
 And then the visionary mystic rose. 
 
 With inspirations as with mantle clothed. 
 
 And wings endow'd, transcended starry Night, 
 
 And, with the chrism of a psychic love 
 
 Baptised, virginified, regenerate, 
 
 To saffron Morn's auroral-rose embrace, 
 
 To thee, Lucasta, came, thou morn of soul. 
 
 Thou mother-fountain of Time's kings to come, 
 
 The continent of lips, the clean of heart. 
 
 Creation's human crown. As earthly night 
 
 By stellar steps to blessed day leads on, 
 
 So mystic Night, Lucasta, leads to thee. 
 
 And thou, mine Eos, to a Golden Age
 
 46 TJie Fourth Parable. 
 
 Which every scald foreshew'd, but one fulfils — 
 Strike, harps of Angels ! harps of God, the Scald 
 Strike, harps of Kings ! Strike ! lo EvoHE ! 
 With choral chants proclaim the Golden Age 
 
 When in a solemn solitude apart 
 
 I watch for \isions amid God's mystery 
 
 Of dying sunset and of tender sky, 
 
 And smell dry fragrance of the thirsty hedge, 
 
 Which supplicates the tardy evening dew, 
 
 While busy sparrows on the ivied elm 
 
 Chirp out their secrets all unconsciously. 
 
 And I interpret by a magic art 
 
 Not vainly learn'd, the ferret from the dells 
 
 Bounds frighten'd by, the burnish'd beetle halts 
 
 To let me pass, the blackbird hops before, 
 
 And some new interest of floral life. 
 
 Of beasts', or birds', distracts in joyful way 
 
 From over contemplation, step by step. 
 
 The dreamer's mind. These influences soft 
 
 Of sylvan things confer receptive moods. 
 
 And some new image for thy shining crown 
 
 Of memorable emblems Nature grants. 
 
 Or some new name, which happy fancy wins. 
 
 Thou child of " Nature's bridal ecstacy," 
 
 Who in the nuptial night of heaven and earth 
 
 Wast procreated on the pyschic plane,
 
 The Fourth Parable. 47 
 
 And somewhat thinly clothed with starry flesh — 
 By spirit interpenetrated oft — 
 Art now commission'd into worlds of sense, 
 With magic, life-illuminating words 
 Of everlasting love, celestial pledge, 
 Delivering. Indelibly this day 
 Those holy words are written in my heart. 
 And when for us the bridal morning comes 
 A Mystic Marriage shall be made therein, 
 A crowning and consummate spectacle, 
 Where I shall wed with ideality, 
 Where I shall wed with thee, mid pyschic pomp, 
 Poetic pageantry. The sunset land 
 Shall lend its banners, and the night her stars. 
 The morn her dew-spread garlands. Then shall rise 
 A choric grandeur from the infinite sea. 
 The grand, immeasurable, endless sea, 
 The holy, holy sea. Light from the full. 
 The smiling earth, light from the moon and sun. 
 Light from the mind of man, the soul within, 
 The deathless spirit overbrooding both, 
 Light out of fancy lands, from elfin shores, 
 Light from imagination's loftier realms, 
 Light from the desolate, the awful wastes 
 Of magic worlds involved by woful spells- 
 Light concentrated, light ineffable. 
 Light shall be round us then, shall clothe us then ;
 
 48 TJie Fourth Parable. 
 
 The splendour bursts e'en now, O sky of grey, 
 Which veils insufferable sunset gold ! 
 O lonely lanes and vistas in the wood, 
 Which twilight fills with mystery ! Wan star, 
 White star, first star, pure font of trembling light I 
 
 deep, adorable, ecstatic hush. 
 
 Which fills my soul with longings for the far. 
 The unattainable, the sky-bound verge, 
 Profounder hush and higher mystery ! 
 
 By application of the alchemy 
 
 Of purged imagination, fix'd intent, 
 
 1 will diaphanise mine outward self— 
 A process possible but hard attain'd, 
 One of the sciences of faerie land — 
 And then by aid of well-directed will's 
 Unlimited ability, I'll drape 
 
 Thy virgin body for a bridal robe 
 
 In living light. On nuptial couch of dream, 
 
 Star-dighted, in a house of prophecy, 
 
 And overbrooded by a moonlit vault 
 
 Of visionary violet, star-sprent. 
 
 With a most perfect spiritual embrace 
 
 I'll compass all thy being. By an art 
 
 Man masters only on immortal heights 
 
 Out-pinnacling Parnassus — magic heights — 
 
 The astralising of my soul and flesh
 
 The Fourth Parable. 49 
 
 Shall be so perfect, eminent, complete, 
 Accomplish'd with such plenitude, that by 
 The secret contact of that bridal night. 
 Thou shalt thyself transfigure to the mind. 
 And thine eyes' ravishment, thy heart, thy limbs, 
 Shall kindle all the potencies of soul — 
 Stars m thine eyes and moon upon thy brow. 
 Morn's saffron in the masses of thy hair — 
 Shalt thou pass off through dreams to Deity.
 
 CO 
 
 The Interlude. 
 
 A Rover's Hymn. 
 
 /^NCE I wish'd a thousand things, 
 
 Thoughts that soar on eagle wings 
 
 Follow'd in their soaring ; 
 Now my raptures rarely rise 
 Further than thy dear grey eyes, 
 
 There mine ardours pouring. 
 
 Oft in midnights lone and still 
 Fancy fleeted far at will 
 
 Through the starry spaces ; 
 Now it dreams, both day and night. 
 Round about one only light. 
 
 Shining where thy grace is. 
 
 O for darksome forest haunts, 
 And — for him no danger daunts, — 
 
 Wilds and wildernesses ! 
 Open seas to sail far over, 
 Dizzy peaks, to draw the rover, 
 
 Draped in gleaming dresses !
 
 TJie Interlude. $1 
 
 O to dare both height and deep, 
 Where the Kraken Hes asleep, 
 
 Where the last star quivers, 
 Where the last word of existence 
 Through the darkness, and the distance, 
 
 Life to void delivers ! 
 
 And beyond all space and time, 
 Far transcending speech or rhyme, 
 
 Out of thought's dimension, 
 That one central point to win 
 Which all secrets centre in, 
 
 By a soul-ascension. 
 
 May God's mercy grant me these— 
 Nature's " primal sanities," 
 
 And high Truth's unfolding ! 
 In such dreams my life exhaled, 
 Till thy tender form unveil'd 
 
 Unto my beholding. 
 
 Then the light of rose and gold 
 Gather'd up from \ale and wold, 
 
 From the sky descended. 
 Shifted off the open sea, 
 Came and draped thy symmetry 
 
 In a garment splendid.
 
 52 TJie Interlude. 
 
 All the beauty named in truth 
 In thy tender human youth 
 
 Visibly inhering, 
 Breaks the ancient spells investing 
 Speculation's fields of questing, 
 
 At its first appearing. 
 
 Melody of merle in copse, 
 Mavis in the poplar tops, 
 
 Lark at morning's gateway- 
 How thy laughter's silver lightness 
 Robs the bird-world of its brightness, 
 
 And absorbs it straightway ! 
 
 Now the sunset lights may kindle, 
 And the mild moon wax and dwindle. 
 
 And the winds keep calling. 
 While the Alpine hills point o'er me, 
 While the long paths wind before me, 
 
 Falling, rising, falling. 
 
 And the bright, the lucent distance 
 Open realms of new existence. 
 
 Keen and cold and splendid ; 
 See the spirit in its trances 
 There uplifted, there advances, 
 
 Lone and unattended !
 
 The Interlude. 53 
 
 Unattended, lone, untiring, 
 Upward, onward, still aspiring, 
 
 Through the light and glory — 
 O the grandeur ; Ah, the breathless 
 Heights and flights unfolding, deathless 
 
 Voyager, before thee I 
 
 But the distance gleams in vain— 
 To immeasurable main, 
 
 Grand in tidal diction, 
 To sidereal expansions, 
 And to scintillant star-mansions, 
 
 God give benediction ! 
 
 tj' 
 
 When the furthest flights are ended, 
 And the furthest heights ascended. 
 
 The last star transcended. 
 All the world's resource expended. 
 Be the roving soul commended 
 
 Unto love more splendid — 
 
 Love more splendid still than all. 
 May its blessings him befall, 
 
 Inner worlds disclosing ! 
 O may space's final verge 
 Into Christ's own light emerge. 
 
 There be his reposing !
 
 54 The Interlude. 
 
 But for me the dream is o'er ; 
 Through the outer world no more 
 
 Roving and exploring ; 
 Past the beauty of one face 
 Do I look to greet Christ's grace, 
 
 In love daily soaring. 
 
 Has the rover lost or gain'd ? 
 
 Has the thinker, tax'd and strain'd. 
 
 Balancing and proving, 
 Lost the vista, lost the vision. 
 Sinking all the sense of mission 
 
 In the sense of loving ? 
 
 'o 
 
 Nay, thou art an open sea, 
 And a green world fair and free 
 
 Meet for love's emprising ; 
 In the depths of thy grey eves 
 Brood a thousand mysteries 
 Souls may sink or rise in. 
 
 So, with mystic love my guide 
 In thy woman-nature's wide, 
 
 Magian world I enter ; 
 There the tranced thinker wanders 
 Ever there the rover ponders 
 
 Voyaging and venture.
 
 55 
 
 I 
 
 The Fifth Parable. 
 
 The Regeneration of Lucasta. 
 
 S that thy voice which deep in haunted glades 
 Expounds the passion of the nightingale ? 
 Is that thy smile beneath whose fruitful glance 
 The wheatfields mellow on these Kentish cliffs ? 
 Is that thine eyes' light on the gleaming sea? 
 Is that the dainty fragrance of thy breath 
 In hyacinthine dingles deeply sunk, 
 Possess'd by spells and odours ? Is it thou 
 Whose beauty's light, in amaranthine blue 
 And glory draped, looks down on joj-ful earth, 
 And royal majesty of open sea, 
 From such unmeasured distance ? Hast thou won 
 Thy dimpled whiteness from the sea-gull's wings — 
 Thy splendour drawn from heaven's blue ecstacy — 
 Thy freedom's grace from fountains — from the depths 
 Of brooding ocean thine unsearchable 
 Profundity of spirit-speaking eyes ? 
 Or dost thou lend thy nature's boundless wealth 
 To beautify the Cosmos ?
 
 56 The Fifth Parable. 
 
 The ravish'd spirit into trance ascends — 
 
 Again — again. I reach the world of mind, 
 
 I reach that world where all things dream'd may be. 
 
 If by subhmity and beauty they 
 
 Can urge a claim on life. Uplifted there, 
 
 By night and day, and glimpsing still beyond, 
 
 And soaring still, and winding far away, 
 
 The spiral stairs of being, which transcend 
 
 The uttermost infinity, my soul — 
 
 Impassion'd by the poetry of love — 
 
 Beats now with eager wings through starry space, 
 
 Aflame with inspiration, seeking out 
 
 That process hidden in the psychic plane 
 
 Whereby the beauty of a mortal maid 
 
 May with the luxury and wealth of light — 
 
 The radiant, adorable, supreme. 
 
 The highest good, desired of all our eyes- — • 
 
 Be visibly emblazon'd I have found 
 
 The secret path, I know the perfect way. 
 
 By which the streams of spiritual life 
 
 Flow down to vivify the minds of men ; 
 
 I know the channels of receptive mind 
 
 Can open out and more that flow receive. 
 
 Till, every bank o'erflow'd and floodgate burst, 
 
 Through all the pores and particles of flesh 
 
 It radiates and coruscates and glows 
 
 In visible splendour bright — to purge, to cleanse.
 
 The Fifth Parable. 57 
 
 To clarify, reijenerate, baptize, 
 
 And with electric shock to wake in man 
 
 Affinities with Godhead, as the sun, 
 
 With gentle heat on tender days in spring 
 
 Fills germs with teeming life, makes buds unfold, 
 
 And all the inner power of new-born things 
 
 Evokes to outward beauty and delight. 
 
 The secret palli is found, the perfect wa)- ; 
 
 And when, Lucasta, far from human life, 
 
 I set thee down, after an arrowy flight, 
 
 Beside the lone coast's utter solitude, 
 
 And fill thy spirit with the ocean's voice. 
 
 As lone sea caves are filled ; shall haunt thy brain 
 
 With singing winds and clamour of joyful birds 
 
 In heaven afloat ; thine eyes of trust and love 
 
 Transfigure with an ardent violet 
 
 From the bright zenith's royal altitude ; 
 
 When sunset's light of rose has tinged thy cheeks. 
 
 When lanes and gardens full of floral scents 
 
 Have made thy breath magnolia)"! ; when thy speech 
 
 To day-long melody of summer months 
 
 Is modulated ; when harp-harmonies 
 
 Have mellow'd the movements of thy limbs ; 
 
 When I have set thee with thy hair unbound 
 
 To meet the magic of a moon at full, 
 
 And by an adoration of the soul 
 
 s
 
 58 The Fifth Parable. 
 
 Pour'd out to Dian, the beloved, the crown'd, 
 
 The plenteous queen, have drawn a virtue out 
 
 From her benignant beams of tawny light 
 
 To glorify thy tresses ; when the stars 
 
 Have overwatch'd thee ; when the saintly night 
 
 Has tranquillised the waters of thy soul ; 
 
 When thou art hush'd, and hallow'd, and subdued, 
 
 And vitalised, exalted, and made strong ; 
 
 And when the veils of matter and of time 
 
 Are rent and torn, and when, beyond their shows, 
 
 The scald-magician to the secret truth. 
 
 The secret beauty points, and that within 
 
 The fair illusion of thine outward form 
 
 Makes answer, leaping towards the actual 
 
 With parabolic bursts of melody — 
 
 Then from the glory of a thousand stars. 
 
 With lifted hands, I'll draw the secret light 
 
 To pour on thee, to pour on soul and mind. 
 
 To make a visible splendour in thy flesh ; 
 
 And thy first nuptial dream of Deity 
 
 Shall pass into a consciousness divine ; 
 
 And sanctified, regenerated, high 
 
 Uplifted, an illuminated soul. 
 
 The Mystic Marriage of that bridal night 
 
 Shall be completed then, Lucasta shine 
 
 To light the age when every maid and boy 
 
 Shall equal glories wear, her crown assume.
 
 TJic Fifth Parable. 59 
 
 Where, in the earthly city of the blest, 
 No sun shall set, nor moon shall need to rise, 
 But there the Christ-light of the human soul 
 In house and street abide.
 
 6o 
 
 The Interlude. 
 
 The Benediction of Lucasta. 
 
 /^NE dainty, soft, and fruitful shower of rain 
 Has purged and clarified the fragrant air, 
 On this God-favour'd evening, late in spring. 
 It shines as lucent as thy virgin brow, 
 Lucasta mine : to every slightest stir, 
 Its cool, translucent particles, replete 
 With a most sensitive, subtle, soul-like hfe, 
 By tremulous emotions far prolong'd. 
 Respond in chiming cadence — the lark's song — 
 The seething murmurs of the shifting sea, 
 Plunged in the pleasaunce of a mood of dreams- 
 The tcmper'd merriment and melody 
 Which in the church bell sounds, recalling oft 
 The benediction of thy beautiful voice, 
 Which lifts my soul into Eternity. 
 
 Then falls a gleam upon the open sea. 
 Which is not blue nor grey ; the placid, pure 
 Perfection of thine all-delighting eyes—
 
 TJie Interlude. 6 1 
 
 Thine eyes' true light — shines magically there. 
 
 God bless the wonder of those waters deep ! 
 
 God bless thine eyes, whose beauty fills my life ! 
 
 God bless that lark whose frenzy haunts the sky ! 
 
 God bless thy voice, whose modulated tones 
 
 Have spell'd full often many a waste of waves, 
 
 And oft Astarte bound through formless nights, 
 
 When tempests raved, to pour her soothing light 
 
 On riven landscapes in the inner world ! 
 
 God bless the ripples of thy laughter, all 
 
 My nature lifting to love's mantic height, 
 
 The inspiration which is poesy. 
 
 And bold ambition towards all noble deeds, 
 
 All spiritual flights of life and thought ! 
 
 God bless thee ever, and in all thy ways ! 
 
 I stand this night upon a lofty down ; 
 
 A dreaming city by a dreaming sea 
 
 Beneath me spreads, bevvitch'd in dreaming air ; 
 
 Round me are solitude and wilderness. 
 
 With all the potence of immortal will, 
 
 I called God's rain of benediction down 
 
 To water all the paradise of thy soul. 
 
 Descend, Celestial and Deific Dew ! 
 
 Rise Eden Incense, and thy virtue sweet 
 
 Diffuse around thee, as the clover fills 
 
 These fields uplifted with its teeming scent !
 
 62 
 
 The Sixth Parable. 
 
 The Divine Mission of Lucasta. 
 
 'T*HE silent pageantry of sunset draws 
 
 The exiled dreamer forth down winding roads, 
 Where bindweeds close their vein'd and trailing cups 
 About the treasure of the first cool drops 
 Of evening dew. Thou, also, wayside rose, 
 Thy fragile petals delicate of tint, 
 And permeated with felicitous 
 But unobtrusive fragrance, dost uplift 
 Thine airy chalice. May a gentle rain 
 Refresh thy buds; may ever thorns protect 
 Thine elfin beauties from the rustic hand; 
 May temper'd winds about thine arbours green 
 Breathe light in modulated melodies; 
 May golden bees when thy full bloom is come 
 Thy mellow sweets extract to fill their hives 
 And honeycombs; with wings of azure gauze 
 The moth which haunts the fruitful fields beyond 
 Above thee hover; may thy heaven ne'er want 
 A lark to sing in; may thy fabled love,
 
 The Sixth Parable. 63 
 
 The nightingale, through all night's holy space 
 
 Of vision and of mystery abide 
 
 In glow-worm lighted thickets close at hand, 
 
 And all the senses of thy floral soul 
 
 With rapture ravish ! . . . Have I bless'd thee well ? 
 
 Lo, now thy blush is in the western sky ! 
 
 Above the orange, o'er the azure blue, 
 
 It slowly steals. A solitary star 
 
 With solemn expectation high uplifts 
 
 The astronomic spirit, which is vow'd 
 
 To adoration under starry heights 
 
 And furthest flights of spiritual thought. 
 
 All day I've tarried in the burning fields. 
 
 Awaiting Night. The sun has tann'd my skin, 
 
 The heat has sapp'd my strength, a parching thirst 
 
 Consumes me. Minister in cooling dew. 
 
 In gentle rain, in vivifying wind, 
 
 And in the shelter of thy plumage soft. 
 
 And in the refuge of thy bridal breast, 
 
 Receive and hide me now, supernal Queen ! 
 
 Bid all thy plaintive nightingales begin 
 
 In vale and thicket ! Droop thy pinions down, 
 
 And quench that burst of occidental light 
 
 Which through thy sea-born panoply of clouds 
 
 Has torn so suddenly. . . . The splendour fades — 
 
 Where art thou now ? Stoop, beautiful and grand
 
 64 The Sixth Parable. 
 
 Unbind thy tresses, let them fall on me, 
 
 Diffuse thine odours round ! With thy bright eyes, 
 
 Thy beautiful, innumerable eyes. 
 
 While I adore thee, gaze I Now thrill me through 
 
 With mystic whispers in the wind and trees — 
 
 How wonderful, how mystical thou art, 
 
 How deep thy secrets are ! Thy tenderness 
 
 Surpasses all, and I am lost in thee I 
 
 Thy cool, unconscious kisses on my mouth 
 
 Are pattering in aromatic rain ; 
 
 Lean over, press me, breathe into m)' mouth, 
 
 I read thine eyes like poems ! Speak to me — 
 
 Speak ever to the spirit that hast form'd. 
 
 And consecrated with Uranian love, 
 
 And astral chrism of a scald elect, 
 
 O Night of odours and of sanctity ! 
 
 And lo, the darkness, like a loving mouth, 
 Parts in the utterance of a bcll-swcet name ; 
 The stars stand closer round, the trees incline. 
 From every quarter of the open world 
 The mystic name Lucasta softly breathes ; 
 A fragrance foreign to the land and sea 
 That trisyllabic harmony distils. . . . 
 May the strong influence of naked heaths, 
 Of aromatic odours brought from far, 
 Of voices speaking from the heart of things,
 
 TJie Sixth Parable. 65 
 
 Of inspiration and divinity, 
 
 Of Night's unutterable loveliness 
 
 And boundless breadth of being, concentrate 
 
 And pour on her ! O may her gentle form 
 
 Become a porcelain vessel for the night's 
 
 Ecstatic myrrh and essences of nard I 
 
 The utter rapture seems a moment's space, 
 
 But all the starry hours elapse therein ; 
 
 And stars recede, and aureate morning gleams. 
 
 Its marvel fills the zenith ; the black wings 
 
 Are lifted from me, there Lucasta shines ; 
 
 The darkness blossoms into open day — 
 
 Do thou, Lucasta, bloom, the Day of Christ. 
 
 With potent seed of spiritual song 
 
 'Tis mine to fill thy virgin womb of mind. 
 
 Which out of poetry conceiving light, 
 
 Shall with a glorified intelligence 
 
 Illuminate the new humanity. 
 
 Shall people the regenerated earth 
 
 With hierarchies of heroes and of gods, 
 
 Who in a dual stream of perfect life 
 
 Shall issue from thee and shall flood the worlds. 
 
 I see them crown'd with vital beauty's bright 
 
 And coruscated splendours — maid and youth 
 
 Join'd in one magic bond of chastity — 
 
 A biune spirit, with a cosmic blaze
 
 66 T/ie SixtJi Parable. 
 
 Of planetary glory circling round 
 A solar marvel of wind-woven hair 
 In spiral aureole. With gleaming limbs, 
 Whose loyal loins of continence contain 
 The ecstacy, the ravishment, the joys 
 Of generative Nature : with full breasts 
 Of honey'd milk, with mouths of melody, 
 With earnest eyes of everlasting love, 
 They stand, the innocent, the illuminate, 
 The youthhood and the royalty to come — 
 Thy sons, thy daughters reign — celestial fruit 
 And magnum opus of consummate bliss. 
 When in thy gentle nature's inmost shrine 
 The Bridal Spirit unto Mystic Love 
 Made modest ministry.
 
 ^7 
 
 The Interlude. 
 
 A Vision. 
 
 T KNOW some dreadful, most exalted doom 
 
 My future waits. My soul is taken hence 
 And set full often by a stormy sea — 
 A grey, perturb'd, immeasurable sea — 
 The desolation of whose terrible voice 
 Transfixes all my being. There are clouds 
 Heap'd by the wild art of a winter wind 
 In wild confusion. There is saffron light 
 Through lurid rifts. The verge is tooth'd by waves, 
 The whole sky torn by tempest. There are sharp 
 And bulging headlands, promontories bleak, 
 And melancholy miles of winding coast. 
 With stones and seaweed strewn. No sea-mew cries; 
 I stand, wind-wrapp'd, and dream deep dreams 
 
 thereby. 
 Or wander aimless, waiting, hush'd and white, 
 Some fierce convulsion in the boding sky. 
 My soul is shrivell'd by the fire of thought, 
 My frame is search'd and pierced by icy winds
 
 6S The Interlude. 
 
 Mine eyes are fixed upon the raving waste 
 Of whirling waves, and, utterly apart 
 From every sympathy and voice of man, 
 I face with madden'd faculties alone 
 The mysteries of being. 
 
 I accept 
 The doom. My spirit has been tortured there 
 But has not fail'd. An inspiration comes 
 From misery, from desolation strength, 
 From Nature in convulsed, terrific moods 
 The solemn secret of supernal things. 
 I hail that terrible and rending scene 
 A threshold of revealment. That rent sky 
 Will open suddenly, in depths serene 
 A sunset all of majesty and light 
 Revealing ; clouds transfigured grouping round 
 Will lead imagination on from world 
 To world of thoughts ineftable. Some ray 
 Will fall full redly on the restless sea 
 And soothe its tortured surges, smoothing out 
 A path of magical and mystic light — 
 Salt breeze and rosy splendour — all whose length 
 My soul, uplifted in a mighty trance, 
 With faculties made clean, with tranquil step, 
 Will swiftly traverse. . . . To the Land of Light 
 Go, favour'd Soul ! A magnet draws thee on ; 
 The spiritual prospects open wide,
 
 TJie Interlude. 69 
 
 Dream preludes vision ; like a flower of flame 
 
 Unfolds high vision into truth attain'd ; 
 
 Thy pinions bear thee to ecstatic rest, 
 
 In quiet seas of spiritual space 
 
 Profoundly la]5p'd. . . . The magnet draws thee on ; 
 
 Thou art awaken'd in the world of mind, 
 
 Whose hosts of beautiful and perfect life 
 
 Are gleaming round thee, poised and sphered at length 
 
 Upon the heights of supersensual things. 
 
 An emblematic but objective world 
 
 Prolongs its shining vistas far and wide, 
 
 And ministers in beauty and delight 
 
 To thy reflned perceptions. Life therein 
 
 Takes form according to the loftiest laws 
 
 Which rule thine own imaginings — purest types 
 
 And fairest images of truths all thought, 
 
 All dream transcending. Thou art taught thereby, 
 
 Thou art inspired; the end of all is seen— 
 
 How man proceeds through death to birth anew 
 
 In more refined and more significant worlds 
 
 Of typical phenomena ; in each 
 
 Is taught, prepared, and led to face at length 
 
 The naked and unutterable truth 
 
 Whose essence is the Deity reveal'd. 
 
 And when the vision into night recedes. 
 
 The soul descends, and in some wondrous way
 
 70 The Interlude, 
 
 I stand and look into Lucasta's eyes, 
 The whole significance of outward things 
 Unrolls before me, as a scroll unwinds, 
 And in the hyaline and crystal depths 
 Of her unspotted spirit do I read 
 Infinities of meaning.
 
 71 
 
 The Seventh Parable. 
 
 The Transfiguration of Lucasta. 
 
 'T'HE summer storm has ravaged wide and far, 
 
 The rent sea, madden'd, flings its tortured crests 
 In savage tatters to a writhing sky. 
 Defiant of the hghtning. AU the air 
 Is rack'd by winds; the firm, establish'd earth 
 Itself makes answer to the thunder's shock 
 With spasms of portentous shivering. 
 Reverberation and vibration both 
 Combine about my path to terrify; 
 But, like a necromantic Magus wali'd 
 And fortified by mystic circle, poised 
 Erect and central there, with pointed sword 
 And prominent pentagram, commanding thence 
 Chaotic crowds of elemental souls. 
 Which headlong surge against that mighty line, 
 And break like billows into formless spume — 
 The dregs and lees of life— adoring love 
 Of Nature, manifest in milder moods.
 
 72 The Seventh Parable, 
 
 Doth now protect me like a four-fold shield; 
 And as the fishes when a tempest tears 
 The surface of their glorious element, 
 Plunge down to still, immeasurable depths, 
 I sink unconscious to consummate calm 
 In dream-world's oceanic bowers profound. 
 When from this mystic matrix of the mind 
 The virile spirit into time returns — 
 " Lo, I make all things new ! " creative Light 
 Cries sparkling forth from every globe of rain; 
 With rose-leaf softness falls the tender night. 
 Its breath— the moderate, mellifluous air — 
 With aromatic odours softly blent 
 In delicate proportions, intertwines 
 Among the unbound meshes of thy hair, 
 And in the alabaster " entrance gates 
 Of melody," with low-toned breathings soft 
 And infinitely modulated, makes 
 A silken rustling. The bindweed twines 
 The sincosity of spiral sprays, 
 With graceful terminals of pendant bells — 
 A simple chaplet — round thy dainty head, 
 And drooping down in errant elegance 
 About thy shoulders falls in gladsome gleam. 
 And slowly folds — Lucasta — into sleep. 
 
 O luminiferous and azurine,
 
 The Seventh Parable. 73 
 
 Immeasurable vault of holy sky, 
 
 Thy living purple soften slowly down 
 
 Through hyacinthus and through heliotrope 
 
 To opal's pallid and evasive charm ! 
 
 And in the twilight let Lucasta's eyes, 
 
 Dilating gently, as a soul expands 
 
 Within the vital light of noble thought, 
 
 Ineffably diffuse a conscious light 
 
 Of holy, human love ! Descending dew, 
 
 The long-desired, distil thy purest drops, 
 
 These scattered tresses cool and consecrate ! 
 
 My nature softens in a pool of love. 
 
 Which is the Mystic Water of the Wise, 
 
 Apollo's Baths, removing all things rank, 
 
 All imperfections, superfluities. 
 
 Which pass in fumes and leave the Mystic Stone, 
 
 The Perfect White — ineffable, supreme. 
 
 Inclusive Love, which flows for all mankind — 
 
 My dove of Dian, my Hesperian Tree, 
 
 My Phoebus bright, my oriental Pearl, 
 
 My Psychal Chemistry which tinges life 
 
 And aureates the Cosmos. 
 
 Nature drinks 
 The sacred, deifying soma di-aught 
 Of dews and moonlight ; then in every leaf, 
 In each light breath which stirs its magic sleep, 
 Vaticinates about us, pouring forth
 
 74 TJic Seventh Parable. 
 
 An aromatic blessing, which, in turn, 
 
 Exalts my spirit, as its pulses beat 
 
 By thee, Lucasta, as a virtue falls 
 
 In broad vibrations from the trembling beams 
 
 Of that orb'd moon aureoline, whose eyes. 
 
 Whose lucent eyes are turned alone on thee ; 
 
 While by thy being's mediation sweet. 
 
 And through thy luminiferous nature's love, 
 
 As through the vistas of a magic glass. 
 
 The world transfigures, . . . Thou art Isis now, 
 
 I'he manifested mother of the Gods. 
 
 An unimaginable splendour fills 
 
 My spirit with an infinite prophecy, 
 
 And in the floral future of the world 
 
 I stand translated, in that golden age 
 
 The royal line laegotten of thy pure. 
 
 Elected body, has by psychic art. 
 
 After the pattern in the poet's mind, 
 
 Created. On the summits of the soul 
 
 The four-square city of the Salem new 
 
 Stands high erected, stands the House of God, 
 
 The final Temple of Humanity. 
 
 This is the bright and everlasting day — 
 
 The Lord hath made, this is the Day of Christ; 
 
 And thou — the mystical and moonlit morn 
 
 Which did that day of majesty forerun 
 
 And by conception did originate —
 
 TJie S event] L Parable. 7$ 
 
 Art in beatifying memory 
 And venerating love that lifts thee up^ 
 A joy transfigured through the infinite — 
 Held in the endless age. 
 
 I lose thee now ; 
 Thy glory passes on its grand ascent, 
 Beyond the. narrow range of mental sight, 
 Along the circle of Eternity. 
 I stand in vision on the timeless plane — 
 What part for me in the di\ine romance, 
 Ye stars of prophecy, is granted^there ? 
 Lucasta shines this eve a simple maid ; 
 I wake the splendid and titanic dream 
 Of Psycho-solar majesty by strong 
 Ecstatic force of penetrating will 
 In all her being. INIay its end achieved 
 Find one star-chaplet for the poet's brow 
 Whose medial^mortality received 
 The inspiration from seraphic heights. 
 And permeates the spirit of his bride 
 With magic ideality
 
 76 
 
 Epilogue. 
 
 "V/'E scornful crowds, far hence — far hence, profane ! 
 
 There falls a rapture on my heart and mind 
 Above the measure of all sordid thoughts, 
 Above the common reach of intellect. 
 Above imaginations based on clay. 
 My lips are cleansed with spirit-kindled flame, 
 My features shine, mine eyes are glorified 
 With a strange, mystical, and purple light. 
 And I am beautiful a little space. 
 O golden light which swathes both mead and hill, 
 Beatifying sunset, flood the world ! 
 Shew open downs, illimitable sky 
 Incarnadine, and brood on maple leaves. 
 On oaks and orchards brood ! O little space 
 To shine with borrow'd beauty, lengthen out ! 
 O sweet new sense of happiness and health ! 
 O ever to be beautiful and free ! 
 Thou sacred chann, thou presence in the eyes, 
 Thou grace of inmost deity ungauged
 
 Epilogue. yy 
 
 Which from the furthest vistas of the soul 
 Uplightest outer life — abide awhile I . . . 
 The day is spent, alas ! the glory fades, 
 The borrow'd glory from thy beauty caught, 
 When by a privilege and grace supreme 
 Of magical election, I was set, 
 By dread imagination's awful aid, 
 To utterly transmute thy mortal life 
 With supermortal beauty, and behold 
 The ravish'd wonder, the uplighted shrine. 
 The soul, the sourunveil'd. 
 
 That deed is done — 
 That wonder compass'd — consuintnatum est — 
 And thou art bound to me by holy ties. 
 By intimate and infinitely close. 
 Indissoluble, spiritual bonds 
 Of magic's strong affinity. Thine own 
 Imperishable part, thy human form. 
 Its every phase of mien, thy lineaments' 
 Innumerable changes, every light 
 And transitory gleam of gentle thought 
 Which beautifies the planets of thine eyes, 
 Are wholly and irrevocably mine. 
 O Love, the moon above the vanish'd sea, 
 Above those silent waters merged in mist, 
 Uplifts the splendour of her perfect disc 
 With hay-time halo ring'd, and fills the sky
 
 78 Epilogue. 
 
 With golden glamour. . . . Turn thine eyes on me! 
 
 Consummate altitudes of azure sky's 
 
 Immeasurable distance fill my soul 
 
 With boundless exultation. When I seek 
 
 Some lofty ridge which fronts the boreal fount 
 
 And source of souls, and evening's balmy wind 
 
 Breaks tide-like round me, bathing all my frame 
 
 With viewless billows, fragrant, cool, and fresh, 
 
 And life-infusing, then some psychic force 
 
 Expands my faculties, the length and breadth, 
 
 The beauty, the resources of the world 
 
 I realise. And when with patient, fond. 
 
 Discerning eyes, I gaze and gaze on thee, 
 
 Thy nature's possibilities unfold. 
 
 Thine own inherent joy, thy light, thy might ; 
 
 Elected mother of the life to come. 
 
 Of unborn nations, kings and priests to be. 
 
 The holy hierarchs of intelligence. 
 
 I see the new regenerated earth 
 
 With emanant humanities divine 
 
 From thy most sacred, pure, and fruitful womb — 
 
 The matrix of the cosmic man to come — 
 
 As with resplendent blossoms, all adorn'd 
 
 In everlasting May-time of the mind. 
 
 By God's auroral redness far diffused ; 
 By that bright, beautiful, supernal hope,
 
 Epilogue. 79 
 
 Which makes an eminent lustre in my soul ; 
 
 By all associations of romance 
 
 Which bind me close with unobtrusive ties 
 
 To simple things — white roads and winding lanes, 
 
 And country inns, and certain upland slopes 
 
 Which moons transfigure, or to ancient lore, 
 
 To tales of prowess in the times of old, 
 
 To truthful chronicles of knightly deeds 
 
 And kingly quests and faerie ventures wild ; — 
 
 By mine own spiritual enterprise, 
 
 My pilgrim travels into mystic realms, 
 
 My psychic explorations far prolong'd. 
 
 My progress there, the triumphs still to come, 
 
 The prophecies, the presages, the s'gns 
 
 Inscribed upon the spiritual sky. 
 
 And timeless wonders stored Beyond the Gates ; 
 
 By most of all the iron force of will. 
 
 Which fells and tills and levels and makes smooth, 
 
 Which crushes opposition; O by all 
 
 Unfolding prospects, as I speak reveal'd. 
 
 Height over height, of infinite romance. 
 
 With golden dreams emblazon'd — I am pledged 
 
 To perfect thee. My soul is staked thereon. 
 
 All crowns thereon contingent. I have search'd 
 
 Thy nature's depths with sp' ritual eyes, 
 
 And all its possibilities reveal'd 
 
 Have bound Ijcyond revoke through life and death
 
 8o Epilogue. 
 
 My whole devotion, my resources all, 
 To compass their development. 
 
 Receive 
 These canticles and parables, wherein 
 Thy soul's creation in prophetic thought 
 Is dimly sketch'dl The mountains round us spnid 
 Heights beckon, blue, illimitable vault, 
 Pierced by the snow-capp'd peaks, exalts and thrills. 
 I take thee hence, I lead, I lead thee on ; 
 The aspiration, the desire, the will 
 Uplift us both ; thou art no more of earth — 
 The troubled ocean of created things 
 Remotely gleams and glimmers. O the wings 
 Which bear thee now — the Morning Dawn which 
 
 breaks 
 And floods thy stars with everlasting light, 
 Auriferous, intolerable light 
 Of circumambient sunshine! .... It is Love, 
 Strong Love proclaims these heights, this path reveals, 
 Which lifts thee up, which will not, will not fail ! 
 The Faerie World, the mystic Avalon, 
 Sword-guarded Eden, and those gardens bright, 
 Those shadow palaces, those haunted mosques — 
 Irem, the wandering City, are in thee 
 The permanent possession of my soul, 
 O Garden Rose, O Lily of the Blest, 
 Pomegranate of the Paradise of God,
 
 Epilogue. 8 1 
 
 My cistus white, syringa pure and sweet, 
 My glory-marvel of Magnolia! 
 
 Now, God be praised Who made thy gentle soul. 
 And Christ the Word by Whom thy soul was made, 
 And those beneficent, wonder-working gods 
 Who shaped the plastic matter of thy frame, 
 And soften'd all the geometric curves, 
 Contourine symmetry for matchless limbs, 
 For grace of poised head and holy breast, 
 EHciting! Be bright Aurora blest. 
 Who under sacramental veils abides 
 Within thy nature's virgin sanctuary ! 
 Bless'd all the stars that shape thy future ways 1 
 Bless'd all who love thee and are loved by thee ! 
 Be thy true lover in thy beauty blest. 
 His dreams ideal, taking shape in thee, 
 And truth ecstatic, truth triumphant, truth 
 lUuminant, the deathless Crown of Life, 
 Attain'd in thee. The Daughter of the Voice — 
 Bath-Kol the Mystic, Daughter of the Voice — 
 Makes answer in the Infinite — Amen !
 
 riDisccllaneoue pocnicn
 
 85 
 
 Azalea. 
 
 /^NE dream is over now; the morning dawns, 
 
 The beautiful and visionary night, 
 Moon-haunted all its length, by winds inform'd, 
 Star-litten plenitude of pure romance 
 And inspiration, temple of high thought. 
 And mystic, consecrated house of love. 
 The worshipful and spiritual night, 
 Has in this grey and disillusion'd morn 
 Been slowly merged. The coarse and common life 
 Begins to stir. I wake, I stand alone — 
 One billow broke upon the sea far out 
 This moment pass'd ; it flash'd a seething crest, 
 Then fell. No space for inspiration now. 
 No magic left, no message in the sea! 
 The once bright-shining moon is bleak and white 
 And burnt to cinders. When the trees were draped 
 In solemn darkness, in their mien was awe, 
 Their aspect majesty, their rustling leaves 
 Dodonian prophecy — they were mighty thoughts
 
 86 Azalea. 
 
 Made typically visible, not trees. 
 The spell is broken ; as a part once more 
 Of vegetable nature, they stand stripp'd 
 Of poetry and meaning. The lark's song 
 Is just the singing of the morning lark; 
 The engine's drawn out, melancholy shriek 
 Fills all its silver pauses far prolong'd, 
 And drowns with dismal wail its golden close. 
 
 bitterness ! There is no human word 
 To give expression to the infinite depth 
 Of desolation in a human heart ; 
 
 The futile methods of our mortal speech 
 Choke sympathy by commonizing grief. 
 Thou art gone, gone — O misery ! I learnt 
 Such spells to beautify thy house of life, 
 Now am I as an alchemist bereft 
 Of sophic sulphur and of mercuiy. 
 
 1 made by magic in a winter month 
 A Paradisal garden full of bloom — 
 The holy lotus in its lakes abode 
 
 With plumaged swans, and all its paths were lined 
 
 With lustrous lilies. The azalea fiU'd 
 
 The consecrated air with grateful light 
 
 From myriad blooms. Thou hadst no care therein ; 
 
 I spent the strength of spirit on thy dreams — 
 
 To crowd the magic hush of maiden sleep
 
 Azalea. 'Sy 
 
 With pleasing idealities. I search'd 
 
 The world of mind to deck thy maiden bed, 
 
 In amaranthine bowers, with purple blooms 
 
 Of dim inviolable violets 
 
 Whose scented heads received thy psychal limbs 
 
 And soften'd moss beneath. . . . Themorningbroke — 
 
 Then was a latch upon the garden gate 
 
 Uplifted by thy voluntary hand 
 
 And out from poesy, from purple light 
 
 Of high, adorable, divine romance, 
 
 From ecstacy of dream, from magic hush, 
 
 Into the commonplace, material world 
 
 Thou didst go forth. A poet's arms embraced tliee, 
 
 A poet's lips have dwelt and dream'd on thine, 
 
 A poet's eyes, by conscious act and art, 
 
 With magic skill thy beauty's mortal grace, 
 
 And passing charm transfiguring, had clothed 
 
 With utter immortality, but thou 
 
 Hast chosen earth. I had been god for thee. 
 
 I am a priest, I swear, a mission'd man — 
 
 High Nature, delegate of God supreme, 
 
 Imposed pontifical and holy hands 
 
 Upon her prostrate postulant, ordain'd, 
 
 Commission'd, consecrated, set apart. 
 
 And dedicated to her ministry 
 
 And sacred service, me deserving not, — 
 
 Me miserable lifted, royal robes
 
 88 Azalea. 
 
 Of inspiration made my soul assume, 
 And set me ever at her secret shrine 
 To sacrifice. 
 
 The blush of Morning bursts 
 Above the dim and wavering line of downs 
 And sends a sanguine glory up the sky, 
 Whose lofty and immeasurable arch 
 Transforms from grey to lavender, and fills 
 With sudden ecstacy of morning birds .... 
 The charm arrested leaves thee clay once more. 
 I might have leaven'd thee with angelhood — 
 Attest it, Prophecy, imperial Dreams, 
 A thousand Songs attest .... And thou art gone \ 
 Thou art not wholly false nor wholly true. 
 Thou art not clay nor spirit, and the world, 
 God knows, may leaven thee — one golden chance 
 Thy foolish heart rejecting, leaves thy life 
 Bereft of glamour and divinity. 
 But lo, the dream remains to comfort me ! 
 For me, the mortal part alone hath pass'd. 
 I have not lost ; 'tis thou hast fallen short 
 Of immortality and beatitude, 
 Because I would have clothed thee with a love 
 Of power unparallel'd. I pictured thee 
 In mystic samite, zoned and lily-crown'd, 
 Even so would I have crown'd thee in thy mind ; 
 God's secrets fashion'd into shining stars
 
 Azalea. 89 
 
 Had shone upon thy forehead as a hght 
 
 To lead humanity, to lead the world, 
 
 Torchlike, to truth and Him ! There was no height 
 
 Beyond the will-ability of soul 
 
 To scale for thee. There was no height beyond 
 
 The heights to which my spirit would itself 
 
 Have lifted thee. O poised in purest space, 
 
 Seraphic, sunlike, crown'd, beatified, 
 
 Intolerable God-light seething round 
 
 Thy beauty's blaze, beyond all time and thought 
 
 My poet's art ineffable, intense. 
 
 Had set thy soul infallibly — and now, 
 
 My God, and now ! . . . I see thee deck'd with 
 
 pearls 
 And turquoise rings, and splendours brought from 
 
 East 
 And West invest thy body. Thou art clothed 
 With earthly wealth instead of phantasy. 
 O sole and only truths of deathless mind, 
 O intellectual realities, 
 O infinite, intolerable lapse 
 From starry heaven of seraphic mind. 
 Of sacred, inmost, pure, unclouded mind, 
 The everlasting, the adorable, 
 To the gross, coarse, and commonizing wealth 
 Of earthly riches ! Can I wish thee bless'd 
 In these, or mated unto mortal man 
 
 7
 
 90 Azalea. 
 
 Ascribe thee true beatitude therein ? 
 
 Thou wast a spirit in my arms' embrace, 
 
 And I transfigured in thine own became 
 
 A god beside thee, deified thereby. 
 
 How art thou fallen, O Lucifera ! 
 
 But ecstacy of passion never quench'd 
 
 Exalts me ever up the heights of soul. 
 
 O upward ever ! O the endless height ! 
 
 Which meets the bottomless abysmal depth 
 
 In the infinite circle of Eternity. 
 
 Light for thee still — O somewhere, somewhere Ligh 
 
 O further charm ! O strength for steeper path ! 
 
 If I eclipse thee in my angelhood, 
 
 O thou too pure e'er to be wholly false, 
 
 I'll clothe thee in the mantle of my light, 
 
 And on my shoulders raise thee past myself 
 
 To heights beyond me !
 
 91 
 
 In Aridity. 
 
 'T^HE road is brown, a hundred yards below 
 
 It dives full steeply — aspen, elm, and ash, 
 With graceful willow, at the sides thereof 
 Make shade and music round it. It has rain'd 
 Through all the morn, but now the August sun 
 Is warm and brilliant, flooding mead and down — 
 Far hills are flooded, tiles of gabled farms 
 
 And distant churches glow I gaze on all 
 
 The manifested beauties of the world, 
 
 And have not lost the vivid sense of charm 
 
 Which all can weave. The power of speech is mine, 
 
 The strength of love — why seems the tide of song 
 
 Arrested in me .'' Thou inspiring God, 
 
 By bard and prophet commonly invoked, 
 
 One in thy varied names, I call on Thee — 
 
 Forsake me not ! Abide in song with me ! 
 
 The grace of inspiration still vouchsafe ! 
 
 I am a poet ; I can see, below 
 
 This constant flu.\ of outward surfaces, 
 
 One soul in all ; and in ecstatic trance
 
 92 In Aridity. 
 
 I stand by hedges where the fern and oak 
 
 With modest hawthorn interweave and blend 
 
 The variations of their greenery, 
 
 And there the gnat which buzzes in the air 
 
 A busy message of continual life — 
 
 Of life in all, of life through all and all — 
 
 The cool fresh wind which stirs in flower and frond, 
 
 In leaf and twig, in every blade of grass ; 
 
 Which tempers summer at its thirsting noon, 
 
 Awake some random thought to bless my life. 
 
 As dews bless eve. Descend once more on me — 
 
 Descend ; I call thee in the name of all 
 
 Which soothes and vivifies — thou fire of God ! 
 
 Thou "light that never wast on land or sea," 
 
 Transform the world ! Thou inner sense of sight, 
 
 Transform my soul ! 
 
 The fountain seal'd awhile 
 Is broken now, the speech from heaven descends — 
 From yon intolerable, azure sky, 
 Which hath no cloud to stain its virgin depths, 
 It does descend — and Ave, Ave, Earth ! 
 The Poet cries; the Priest of Nature puts 
 His vestments on, the prophet's mantle wears, 
 And offers praise again. A thousand trees 
 Take up the message; may the winds prolong — 
 The distant hills re-echo— all is song !
 
 93 
 
 A Sea Prophecy. 
 
 A N infinite shimmer on the open sea — 
 
 A thousand, thousand lights ! To cross thee 
 now, 
 And ever — ever — ever— sail away, 
 Till with thy vastness, with the mighty vault 
 Which rounds thine urgent being, 1 am one- 
 One with the stellar ministers of night 
 Who populate the spaces of the air 
 Above thy breezy bosom, one with her 
 Whose path of pure, illuminating light, 
 Through all the four-fold phases of her reign, 
 Is night by night, with blanch'd, transfigured face, 
 Perform'd in silent ecstacy^with these 
 To unify existence ! . . . I am yours, 
 Stars, Sea, Moon— Mother of all mystic thought! 
 Wrap me, ye Winds, away to some wild place, 
 Where, in the centre of a surging world 
 Of crested billows full of stormy speech, 
 My sea-dream bark is bound, awaiting me.
 
 94 A Sea Prophecy. 
 
 There is an ecstacy which passes speech, 
 
 There is an inspiration which transcends 
 
 Expression, there is joy which deifies; 
 
 The Hmitations of our mortal hfe 
 
 Dissolve therein; through every sense enlarged 
 
 The floods of rapture pour into the soul. 
 
 All these in generous measure have been mine, 
 
 But something waits me far from every coast, 
 
 From every harbour far — alone, alone ! 
 
 The promise, the prevision cannot fail. 
 
 But drifting— drifting— drifting— night and day, 
 
 And drifting — drifting— drifting — moon by moon, 
 
 Amid revolving galaxies above, 
 
 The scenic splendours and illuminant glare 
 
 Of lissome lightnings, and the organ tones 
 
 Of rending thunder, over open seas 
 
 Of majesty and turbulence and might, 
 
 I shall go forth invincible, erect, 
 
 Inspired, to seek the threshold of my doom. 
 
 Whereon the crests and surges and sea-winds. 
 
 And all the echoing voices of the sea, 
 
 With one precipitous, infinite music crash, 
 
 Shall break and merge in revelating light, 
 
 In vistas, in low melodies, in speech — 
 
 In silver speech divine — of Spirit Land.
 
 95 
 
 Stella. 
 
 T^HE mystic singer to a certain " Star " 
 
 In salutation ! ... Be thy secret name 
 Inscribed upon the Palace of the King, 
 And on the white apocalyptic stone 
 Indelibly engraved ! I paced at night 
 The City's streets; an inspiration came, 
 And, like a tempest, suddenly it rent 
 Through all my being. To thyself it bore 
 A mighty message, until now retain'd, 
 That from the sacred heart of sylvan things, 
 From woods and forests, from eternal downs, 
 From water-sides, the Golden Word might come 
 In the mellifluous, melodious names 
 Of multitudinous angels, of divine 
 And ministrant immortals, and of high, 
 Supreme, exalted, everlasting kings. 
 The Golden Word descends to sun thy soul — 
 A formal promise of the Crown of Life 
 Assured in poem which is prophecy. 
 
 h bids me first recall thy nature's depths. 
 And next its heights, and then those sacred arts
 
 96 Stella. 
 
 With whose exalted themes thy nature holds 
 
 Impassion'd correspondence. These are proofs, 
 
 And that outreaching towards ennobled thought, 
 
 That consciousness of purpose unfulfiU'd, 
 
 Of thwarted mission, of exalted fate, 
 
 Whose plans miscarried, which I read in thee, 
 
 Are unmistakable, convincing proofs 
 
 That nothing is beyond thee. In thy hands 
 
 Thy future lies; conceive what height thou wilt, 
 
 And, on the honour of the angel bands, 
 
 Thou shalt attain it, thou shalt reign therefrom ! 
 
 My soul is set upon an endless quest 
 
 To span the bounds of being; on the height?, 
 
 The high-exalted, spiritual hills, 
 
 Towards which my face is set, behold, I swear 
 
 To greet thy spirit, be it late or soon ! '■ 
 
 Forth to the Light ! Forth to the height of God ! 
 
 The tocsin call comes from the Infinite ; 
 
 All Nature taking voice, her organ tones 
 
 Have culminated in a single cry 
 
 Of clamorous accordance, urging on ! 
 
 Speed on ! The arrow to the Star ascends, 
 
 Through mortal channel comes immortal speed 
 
 The mystic singer to a certain " Star " 
 His salutation sends. 
 
 n.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Bound in peacock blue, luith an asthetic and symbolic 
 design. Price ^s. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF JASPER CARTWRIGHT. 
 
 SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " In this work Mr. Waite has produced a poem very 
 much above the average of poetic merit. Though A 
 SouPs Comedy is never Hkely to become a popular book, 
 yet it will be read by many with a considerable amount of 
 pleasure. Jasper Cartwright's struggle against the cir- 
 cumstances which have combined to ruin his spiritual 
 existence, and his final triumph over them, are powerfully 
 portrayed, and cannot fail to interest such as are thought- 
 fully inclined. . . . His blank verse is pleasing and 
 melodious. Scattered at intervals throughout his volume 
 there are passages of more than ordinary beauty." — The 
 Spectator. 
 
 "A Sotil's Comedy is a very extraordinary composition. 
 . . . The story of this poem is in some respects very 
 repulsive, and yet told with great delicacy and beauty.
 
 ii Opmions of the Press. 
 
 Part of the book is the baldest prose, cut up into lengths ; 
 part is unintelligible mysticism about magical studies ; 
 and part— by far the largest part — is real poetry. . . . 
 Its sustained poetry will well repay the reader, if he will 
 put up with the bald prose of Mister Gilp, the school- 
 master . . . , and the mystic nonsense of the magical 
 part. . . . One merit should be noticed in encourage- 
 ment of those who might be repelled by the opening of 
 the story, viz., that it steadily increases in interest and 
 in beauty until near the end. . . . Some songs or 
 poems introduced into the narrative are very good ; one, 
 a passionate address to a dead boy-friend, Gabriel, being 
 especially beautiful. If the poem were recast in the 
 sense that we have indicated, we venture to think that it 
 would be entitled to a high place among the poems of the 
 day." — The Guardian. 
 
 " Mr. Waite is possessed of genuine inspiration that 
 lifts his work above the mass of wares sent forth every 
 year to the world as poetry. The presence of an over- 
 subtle mysticism, and even of an occasional tinge of 
 Rosicrucian darkness, will not prevent lovers of poetry 
 from enjoying the many passages in his play as re- 
 markable for power of thought as for beauty of expression. 
 Mr. Waite's sympathy with Nature and his descriptive 
 powers are likewise of a high order." — Literary World, 
 
 " Some time has elapsed since we paid a sincere 
 tribute to the beauty of Israfel, and we are not sorry to 
 meet with another work from the same pen in A Soul's 
 Comedy. ... It may suffice to say in general that the 
 poem, cast in a quasi-dramatic form, is a very noble one, 
 though painful to a degree. The main idea of Jasper's 
 origin is so horrible in its pathetic tragedy as to rouse 
 reminiscences of Ford's masterpiece, and the after-episode 
 of Mary Blake is little less distressing ; but out of these 
 seemingly unpromising materials Mr. Waite has evoked a
 
 opinions of the Press. iii 
 
 tale of human sorrow, struggle, and final triumph such 
 as must appeal to the heart of every true man. . . . The 
 poetry rises at times to unusual heights, as, for instance, 
 in the description of Mary's death, the Benediction in the 
 monastery chapel, Austin Blake's prologue to the third 
 part, or, best of all, the scene where Jasper resigns 
 Gertrude to his friend. . . . Jasper's prose fairy-tale is 
 delightful, though not, it may be, suited to all compre- 
 hensions. . . . Taken altogether, this is a true and 
 worthy poem." — The Graphic.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 Cro-d'ii ^vo, parchment, red top. Price y. 6J. 
 
 LETTERS, VISIONS, AND POEMS. 
 
 Mystical Allegory of the New Age and the New Regenerated 
 
 Humanity. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " If, as seems most likely, a small but appreciative 
 audience will satisfy the author, the favourable reception 
 of Israfcl: letters, visions, and poems, by Arthur Edward 
 Waite, need not be matter of conjecture ; the book must 
 be both admired and prized by the few elect spirits fitted 
 to appreciate and understand it. For our own part, we 
 should rank it very near to that marvellous work, The 
 Droadstoue of Honour. It is undoubtedly true that the 
 whole is pitched in far too high a key for the generality of 
 modern readers ; some may be deterred from perusal 
 by the subtle mysticism of much of the contents, while 
 others, it may be feared, will fail to grasp the pure and lofty 
 Christian ideal embodied in the letters and visions, but 
 we may unhesitatingly aver that no man reading the work
 
 opinions of the Press. v 
 
 with a properly prepared intellect, and with a sympathetic 
 mind, can rise from it without feeling better and stronger 
 for the task. This is not the place, even did space permit, 
 to enter into a discussion of the author's theme, but if any 
 seek the keynote of the whole, we would refer him to the 
 last lines of that fine poem, The Higher Life, or to pages 
 23, 24, and 108. The poetry is of a high order, and, apart 
 from its more spiritual aspects, remarkable for a passionate 
 appreciation of natural beauty, and for pictorial treatment. 
 The blank verse is specially good, reminding one, perhaps, 
 more of Cowper at his best than of any other poet, but 
 thoroughly original both in style and matter. Israfel is 
 one of those rare books which are part of the salt of the 
 earth, but it is not for all readers." — Tlie Graphic. 
 
 " To those who delight in magic and ' dabble in 
 Bab)-lonian numbers,' Israfel, by Arthur Edward Waite, 
 will afford much comfort and consolation. ... By way 
 of a guess, we hazard the suggestion that Israfel is the 
 ideal soul of man, distinct from individual souls, and per- 
 sonified in order at once tu mirror and to magnify the 
 aspirations of individual souls not yet at one with the 
 universal. . . . The verse is harmonious, and not without 
 a peculiar and original beauty." — Wtstininstcr RevicitK 
 
 " It is a long time since Horace said that poets have the 
 right (juid libet audetidi, and the maxim seems to be acted 
 upon to-day with no less confidence than it was, we may 
 presume, when the Roman critic wrote. No flight appears 
 to be too daring for the modern poet, and if his wild career 
 leads him into the misty obscurity of the clouds, he will 
 generally find a band of admirers to declare that it is the 
 reader's obtuseness alone which prevents a due under- 
 standing of the poet's ideas. It may be that there are 
 some who will grasp the true meaning of Mr. Waite's 
 remarkable poem, Israfel, though we confess to a lurking 
 suspicion that the author was animated by no very lively 
 anxiety to make himself understood, even granting that
 
 vi Opinio7is of the Press. 
 
 he knew what he meant himself. . . . But we have the 
 satisfaction of reading, among a great deal that is rather 
 unintelligible, passages which bear the unmistakable stamp 
 of true poetic talent. . . . We have quoted enough to 
 show that Mr. Waite's poetry is of no mean order, and, 
 after all, Israfel is a work of considerable power, and in 
 parts quite intelligible." — Literary World. 
 
 " It may, perhaps, be gathered that the writer has, or 
 has had, a friend of an exceptionally pure, exalted, and 
 powerful nature : that in contemplating his character 
 under an emotion similar to that which gave rise to the 
 Laureate's In Memoriam, the writer, by employing the 
 Divine exaggeration of analogy, has constructed to himself 
 a conception of the nature of the angel or presiding 
 masculine influence — its Michael, so to speak, of the new 
 age or order, which in all spiritual aspirational natures is 
 being now earnestly looked for, and, by some such, realised 
 to be in actual operation. In realising the Divine per- 
 sonage symbolised, the symbolical human person is lost 
 by, or absorbed to, the seer, who sees only the being 
 symbolised, and celebrates in a distinctly deep and 
 genuinely earnest spirit the virtues and Divine attributes 
 of the angel under the name of Israfel. This inductive 
 method of arriving at a spiritual conception by means of a 
 material symbol, belongs, no doubt, to the higher order 
 of mysticism. . . . Speaking generally, we should say 
 that the profit of this book to most readers will not be its 
 dogma, or body, but the spirit in which it is written. It 
 is pure, elevated, and aspirational, and is, moreover, 
 singularly free from that arrogant individualism which dis- 
 figures so frequently the utterances of those entering the 
 spiritual region of life, and as yet unaware of the phan- 
 tasies of the Dwellers on the Threshold . . , . The mis- 
 cellaneous verse in the volume is very graceful." — Light.
 
 university ot California 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LiBRARV'=ACUTY^^^ 
 
 "" °,irANG°S:ls 'crF?.RN,"90095.13S8 
 
 -RENEWABLE 
 
 JUL 1 2 ZOO 
 
 DOEZWRSFBOWIDATEpElVEO 
 
 jC--. ,aCCESS S! 
 nterlibrary Loans 
 11630 University 
 3ox 951575 
 _os Angeles, CA 900S 
 
 :R 
 
 ;V!CbS BU^ 
 
 oh library 
 -1575
 
 PR ^Yaite - 
 
 5706 Lucasta 
 Wl3 1 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 PR 
 5706 
 
 W13-1 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES