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Read Ebook: The Masque of the Elements by Scheffauer Herman George
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Ebook has 122 lines and 7265 words, and 3 pages
ppress the old Equator.
The coasts he laved and swept are marred with deadly froth. They are now but ruins of the vast poison-chalice of the sea, all fringed with bloody spume.
This is his final anguish and these his final groans.
It is the last song of the sorrowing Sea!
Hoarsely reverberates his threnody; he piles up higher and higher his tremendous tomb of sound, beneath which he shall compose himself in tideless calms of sleep.
SONG OF THE SEA
Oh, I am old and hoar! so old that none Of all my drops holds memory of birth: My mists no longer rise to robe the Sun, No longer lend great rivers to the Earth. Low in my deeps my broken creatures die,-- They die! and their corruption loads my floors; Countless and cold, my lordly monsters lie On league-long sands of continental shores. Where bide you, O white stallions of the waves? And you torrential surges,--where the crest You flung on leaping mountains that you drave Across your father's fields from East to West? Shine forth, O Moon! unveil thee, pallid queen! Heal me, as when my passion clomb to thine; Shed down thy lucent drench, thy light serene, Oh, lift me back to Life and Love--oh, shine! My salt hath lost its virtue in men's blood And o'er their hearts the marish vapour crawls; Now Death o'erwhelms me with his colder flood, And, prey to Time, my royal glory falls.
Daemon of Fire, fairest of all elements, fairest, purest, divinest, Spirit of Life and Power, that dwells never with Death!
His feet take hold on Earth, but his crest rears its unhampered glory in the highest airs.
Fleeing from Nature's frozen breast, he trends to lowest crypts, swift to some final refuge, moving in leaping sheets and sinuous trails.
The mouths of all volcanoes, once his throne, are choked with snow. In subterranean corridors cold creeps upon the central vaults of flame.
SONG OF FIRE
BACK to the womb I creep, back to the womb! Let snows and stagnant seas my province blight, Deep down in matrix grots shall I consume My mother's flesh, my spirit and the night. I shall beat about her heart a few brief years,-- I, who once rolled fiery gold through all her veins, And soared from mountain-throats o'er hemispheres, And throbbed in huts and palaces and fanes. What power in me abode! what loveliness! The three vast elements proclaimed me king, Straight from the Sun I sank with gifts to bless The world with living tongue and burning wing. I came, and Man sat caverned with the brute; I nursed him and he rose into a god; I leave him and he withers with the fruit Of ages on the ground his splendour trod. Farewell, you airs and skies from whence I fell, Fond Earth, farewell, and all thy beauty past-- And thou, old pulseless Ocean foe, farewell!-- All dead! I too shall die, though I be last.
Utter silence and utter lifelessness engulf the Globe; the frozen and adamantine bars of oblivion fall.
As the soft sibilant tones of the Fire-daemon flutter away, slowly the spheres recede and vanish in the clasp of Night.
Once more is heard, sweet and clear, the voice of the Spirit of Chaos.
Her music of mercy sinks softly down like star-dust, or as of old dew on terrestrial flowers.
Through the infinite Universe, through Eternity, she sings her everlasting song.
She lulls her endless flocks of worlds asleep; she seals them up in the dark cycles of mutation--or makes them to bloom in the Night.
For they awaken once more when rings aloud the impulsive alternating song of the Spirit of Life, her joyful sister, clad with inevitable day.
Now the solar orbs are overcast with swift eclipse as with a mantle.
They are swept into illimitable abysses.
Above, below and all about gleam vast cohorts and constellations of living stars, pouring crystalline melody from thrones of Light.
Ghosts of worlds drift by, and suns wrapped in extinction.
They too are floating tombs, in them too, Life, Love and Thought lie sepultured like seeds.
Sepultured, until from the mighty marriage of orb with orb in planetary impact shall the great rose of Existence re-unfold its leaves in the light and warmth of suns new-born.
So follow and follow the unending successions of the Seasons of Eternity.
SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF CHAOS
DARKNESS, unconquered Darkness, spread thy tent, Silence, build up thy co-eternal wall. Death, who art silent and dark, this firmament Is thine, these withered worlds--Oh, take them all! Pearls dead and lustreless, float back to Death,-- You from the sun-dust born and starry spray, Life set you free and warmed you with his breath A day, and Night hath fallen on that day. Float back to Death, pearls dead and lustreless, So he may sow you on the stormy streams That wander unto aweful wars and press Onward their throneless orbs that know no beams,-- Blind sepulchres that hold within their stones Ashes that sang and dust that shone with thought. Though suns on suns emergent dash your zones With lustre-floods,--no wonder shall be wrought, Till out of ruins of transmuting strife With sister globes that weld the eternal chain, You win alternate Life and Death and Life Again . . . and again . . . and again . . .
The voice of the Spirit passes away into Immensity.
Darkness and Silence in Immanence.
The unheard rhythmical suspiration of the Universe.
Peace.
RE-BIRTH
The vacant room of stars is flooded with a presence.
The tides of Life pulsate with the prophecy of Birth.
Now it is the Song of the Spirit of Creation that is heard on high above the perished Solar Universe.
The dead worlds are hidden in the lap of Night, sightless, forlorn wanderers. They move in darkness, unseeing and unseen, though smitten by the rays of living stars.
Upon their cold breasts of stone the dust of ruined worlds lies as a garment. Windless it lies as it falls or rises out of Chaos that encompasses all.
The Spirit of Creation moves grandly through the deeps. In her hands she bears Fire and Light, on her lips her all-conquering command. She flings dead worlds among the dead, as a sower his seed or a slinger his stones.
A spark is lit in the vast obscure. A glory, a rose of fire, blooms in the pit of darkness. It is now a glowing mist with far-spread vans, a phoenix wrought of flame.
The cloud gathers about it its flowing veils and swarming foam of Fire. It winds them around its white effulgent heart. The sundered flakes of crimson twist and turn, they shrink, yet do not flee.
Out of the blazing mists a new-born Sun shapes forth his awful splendour. His worlds divest themselves of robes and wings, shining in beauty white and pure.
The dead are born again and the stars rejoice in light.
From the molten orbs there comes a murmur, a fresh music to mingle with the Sun's.
The words of the Spirit of Creation swell in a harmonious storm, they mould the worlds as with hands, they sweep the plumbless spaces as with a besom of winds.
SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF CREATION
LET orb be wedded unto orb!--let light Engender in the wombs of fiery clouds In flashing spirals scarring the dead Night, With tongues of argent fire and crimson shrouds. You bear the seed of Worlds; from you shall spring A Universe through roaring cycles spun Round him whose bulk enormous crowns him king And master of all vassal orbs, the Sun! You golden worlds or white, you gelid Moons, Each in your mountant orbit king or queen, In midnights plunged or soaring in your noons, Accoutred in glory male, or virgin sheen, Awake! awake! the dark unbars her gate! Burst forth like gems from Death's titanic tomb! The joyous zenith and mute nadir wait, Vessels of Life reborn, to yield you room. Rocks and their garnered ores shall form your flesh, And you shall pant in flowing seas of Air; You shall have boon of Waters, salt and fresh, And gift of godlike Fire to make you fair.
Afloat in splendour, panoplied in light--the arch-pontifical Sun!
He shakes his threshing, intolerable mane of flames, his face bans darkness and makes a burning void in his domains. He pours his lustihood and power upon the joyous spheres. His rays transmute all things. Through the dancing infant host his Magnificat is upborne on the breath of his desire.
Triumphant rolls his paean. He casts from him his tempests of solar melody, vibrant and far-winged.
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