Page:The Soul of a Century.djvu/132

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The grandiose light of the Universe that through my vision stole,
With its secret of eternal flames and timeless might,
Was reflected by the mirror of the Cosmos in my soul
And focused itself into a crimson burning nucleus of light.

The stench of dessicated blood I breathed from the tales of old
The terrors of the Unknown, the depths of my soul amassed,
I saw in life the phantom of happiness unfold
And break when refracted by the upper spheres it passed.

I do not long to quench my thirst at life’s water-ways
Nor as Gedeon’s army, drink at the source from out my palms,
I gathered in my soul the tenderness of mystic rays,
And in the Secret shrine I knelt with unknown qualms.

My soul is saddened now, and full of a longing scent,
My thought is just a taper of feeble light that shone
Quiveringly in the human sconce, impure and bent
A taper upon the timeless altar of the Great Unknown . . .

O strength of ecstasies and dreams, all art from you
Glows with a fan of hues and in its tones resounds
Beneath your spell, thoughts in a blaze stream through
As the light from ether in vibrant threads rebounds.

Send down upon my soul your glowing burning flow
O might victorious where inspiration lies,
As onto the altar of stone heavens poured fires below
Wheron Elias of old offered his bloody sacrifice . . .

WASTED YOUTH

In one lone refrain melted our youth’s romance. At twilight’s gleam,
Our gazes met and kissed, in one embrace two forms nervously shook,
With rapture I breathed the scent of your being, and in the garden of dreams,
Like one seeking a lover, my soul sought you at the murmuring brook.

To us spoke yearning and passion, power and dread and sin
The veiled mysteries of stony nature spoke to us not in vain,
In the features of my thought and yours, set the same frigid grin,
The same contraction of muscles, the same cramping pain.

The splendor of the night I absorbed and inhaled with our two souls
The delicate fluid of music I gathered with dual nervous strands
And the miracle of beauty imprisoned with dual sight, mournfully stole
Over me, like rays of light passing through a prism to burn with fiery brands.

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