| AGAIN that Voice, which on my listening ears | |
| Falls like star-music filtering through the spheres: | |
| ‘Know this, O Man, sole root of sin in thee | |
| Is not to know thine own divinity!’ | |
| |
| And the Voice said: | 5 |
| ‘Awake, thou drunken and yet not with wine! | |
| Arise and shine! | |
| Uplift thee from the dead! | |
| Cast off the clinging cerements of sin | |
| Fool-sense hath swathed thee in! | 10 |
| Though drugged and dulled | |
| With every evil anodyne | |
| From the rank soil of the world’s waste-heap culled, | |
| Thou crown and pattern of the eternal Plan, | |
| Awake, O Soul of Man! | 15 |
| O Soul of Mine, | |
| Awake, I say, and know thyself divine! | |
| |
| ‘Behold, behold! | |
| Thou art not that thou deemest, | |
| Or to thy fellows seemest | 20 |
| In death-bound body hearsed: | |
| But, like a silver summit | |
| Enshrouded | |
| And o’er-clouded | |
| With earth-born vapour vainest, | 25 |
| So gross no eye may plumb it, | |
| E’en as of old | |
| From out My Heart all-seeing— | |
| Ere yet in body dressed, | |
| Best of the best, | 30 |
| And of most holy holiest— | |
| Thou soared’st into being, | |
| So, godlike as at first | |
| I made thee, thou remainest. | |
| |
| ‘What look of wonder dawns within thine eyes, | 35 |
| O soul of Mine? | |
| Hast utterly forgot from whence art risen? | |
| That essence rare can walls of space imprison, | |
| Or time with dull decrepitude surprise? | |
| Nay now | 40 |
| From every chain thy self hath forged for thee | |
| Thy Self can set thee free: | |
| Let the sea burn, | |
| Let fire to water turn, | |
| But thou | 45 |
| Cleave to thy birthright and thy Royal Line! | |
| |
| ‘For lo! thou hast within thee to dispel | |
| This haunting hell | |
| Of error-teemèd night | |
| That hides thy height, | 50 |
| And the dread rumour and malefic breath | |
| Of thy doomed enemy, Death, | |
| Whose birth-lair, ignorance, like a stagnant pool, | |
| Of its accursèd kind | |
| Breeds ague of unfaith, and terrors blind | 55 |
| Hatched in the darkened hollows of the mind; | |
| Whence too arise | |
| Hallucinations, lurid phantasies, | |
| And gross desires, with every vice that springs | |
| From false imaginings, | 60 |
| And vain reliance upon visible things— | |
| The mad misrule | |
| Of creeds and deeds idolatrous, whereof | |
| Love were sworn hater, an she were not Love. | |
| |
| ‘These in their hidden dens | 65 |
| Behoves thee with pure thoughts to cleave or cleanse, | |
| Aye, and unmask those counterfeits of bliss, | |
| Which to believe thy deep undoing is— | |
| Joys which but lure to leave thee, | |
| And leave to grieve thee, | 70 |
| Not of the fine-spun stuff | |
| That from the eternal spool | |
| My Hands would weave thee! | |
| Enough, enough! | |
| How long shall they deceive thee, | 75 |
| And thou still dote | |
| Importuning high Heaven | |
| That more be given | |
| With cries monotonous as the wry-neck’s note? | |
| |
| ‘Such pleasures and such pain | 80 |
| Alike are vain. | |
| Not while the chords of thought are keyed to these | |
| Shalt thou find rest or ease, | |
| Seeing that thyself art tuned eternally | |
| To That which only is without alloy | 85 |
| Pure Life and Joy. | |
| Ah! would thy throbbing shell | |
| Awake the Spirit’s whispered harmonies, | |
| Bethink thee well | |
| That every trembling hidden string must be | 90 |
| Vibrant of Me | |
| Who am the Truth, and at thy centre dwell— | |
| The very Breath of God made visible! | |
| For know the myriad miseries of mankind, | |
| And the long reign of sin, | 95 |
| Came but of questing outward, for to find | |
| That which abides within. | |
| |
| ‘But what hast thou to do with sinning, | |
| O Soul of Mine, | |
| Or what with dying, | 100 |
| Sorrow and sighing, | |
| Who hast nor ending nor beginning, | |
| Nor power from thy perfection to decline?— | |
| Who canst not guess | |
| From the gaunt shadow cast | 105 |
| On folly’s fog-belt, but shalt learn at last, | |
| Thine own inalienable loveliness; | |
| Whom sinless, deathless, I created | |
| Of elements so fine, | |
| That with my Being sated, | 110 |
| In glorious garments dight | |
| Of Life and Light, | |
| Lowly, yet unafraid, | |
| With an eternity of joy sufficed, | |
| The Spirit’s Self might love thee | 115 |
| And brood above thee, | |
| Pure Maid | |
| And Mother of the indwelling Christ! | |
| |
| ‘Hereby thou comest at last unto thine own, | |
| The Heaven of Heaven! | 120 |
| Self-wittingly at one | |
| With Him who hath the Universe for throne, | |
| Who wieldeth the stars seven; | |
| Who only is | |
| The Mystery of Mysteries | 125 |
| Ineffable, My Son, | |
| My sole-begotten ere the worlds began, | |
| Made manifest as Man. | |
| |
| ‘And the grim Nothingness thou namest Death, | |
| With all his shadowy peers— | 130 |
| Angers, and lusts, and fears— | |
| The which so long against thy peace did plot, | |
| Shall be remembered not, | |
| Or, shrivelling at a breath, | |
| Be known as naught; | 135 |
| Yea, that they never were | |
| Save in the realm of things that but appear, | |
| Creations of thine unillumined thought. | |
| |
| ‘Then deem not Heaven a place, | |
| As though ’twere measurable in terms of sense— | 140 |
| Length, breadth, circumference, | |
| Or spread throughout illimitable space. | |
| It is the enthronization of the soul | |
| Upon the heights of Being; it is to know; | |
| It is the rapture that I AM is so, | 145 |
| Whatever clouds of ignorance up-roll. | |
| It is the joy of joys, | |
| To thrill co-operant with the primal cause | |
| Of the unswerving laws | |
| Which hold in everlasting equipoise | 150 |
| Those balances of God, | |
| The visible and invisible Universe; | |
| Wherein, couldst thou but measure with His rod— | |
| With undistorted sight | |
| Couldst read aright— | 155 |
| Nor better is, nor worse, | |
| But only best; | |
| ’Tis from thy centre to thine utmost bound | |
| To feel that thou hast found— | |
| That thou too art | 160 |
| From all to all eternity a part | |
| Of that which never was in speech expressed, | |
| The unresting Order which is more than rest. | |
| |
| ‘Who is he prateth of Original Sin? | |
| I am thine Origin, | 165 |
| And I thy Kingdom waiting thee within! | |
| Seek Me, and thou hast found it, | |
| My seas of Life surround it, | |
| My Love’s o’er-arching splendour | |
| For canopy hath crowned it. | 170 |
| All that nor eye nor ear | |
| Can hear or see | |
| Lies stored within its boundless empery. | |
| Not there, O Soul of Mine, | |
| Shalt thou surrender, | 175 |
| Torn from thy tortured breast, | |
| Those whom thou heldest here | |
| In bonds so tender. | |
| Death cannot quell | |
| Their residue divine. | 180 |
| Seek, then, within, but spurn the unhallowed spell: | |
| In light unutterable alive they shine, | |
| Leave thou to Me the rest! | |
| Have I not said? | |
| And shall not they that mourn be comforted? | 185 |
| |
| ‘Yet these for whom thou pinest, | |
| Thy dearest and divinest, | |
| Are but rills from out the river | |
| Of the all-and-only Giver: | |
| Why tarry, then, thy thirst in Him to slake | 190 |
| Who flowed through earthen channels for thy sake, | |
| From death-drought to deliver? | |
| Hadst thou but eyes for seeing | |
| The wells of thine own being, | |
| What draughts of living water wouldst thou take! | 195 |
| |
| ‘Ever, then, singly, and all aims above,— | |
| For That I AM is thine,— | |
| Think Oneness, and think Worship, and think Love; | |
| The which, translated to thine outward need | |
| (Sith every thought must still creative prove), | 200 |
| Shall limn their likeness with invisible hand— | |
| As the sea-ripples write them on the sand— | |
| In bodily form and deed. | |
| So shalt thou make for thine eternal Meed; | |
| So shalt thou fashion thee, O Soul of Mine, | 205 |
| A glorious shrine | |
| Wherein to house thee, and wherethrough to shine— | |
| Or here, or in My Mansions crystalline— | |
| Serenely changeless, dazzlingly divine!’ | |
