Altamira In the cave of Altamira, hidden afar On walls of ancient rock, lie the dawn-streaks Of art, the painter soul's awakening To animal beauty and animal energy— Bison for ever caught by primitive hands! But older than this cave, a secrecy Hung between earth and eternity, is the rapt Room of the inmost reverie within man. Here hides a power of world-creating art, Here dawns the ultimate simplicity From whose omniscient oneness springs the birth Of the million moods that make our universe. The truth-soul Vigilling through time's changing tones Writes, on the walls of this profound of trance, Visions which archetype

Strange Enemy Coward who criest to lose a single soul, Yellow heart lapped in the omnipotent sun, Traitor who flingers' our loves to heavenly hands, Fifth-columnist of fire, hooded in hush To break a door of dreams through Matter's sleep Or else to hide a time-bomb in our heart For blowing up wife and child to eternity! Torpedo to our lusts and luxuries, Magnetic mine for shipwrecks of desire, Diver with gold block-busters from the Inane, Huge paratrooper out of primal Night, Now have I caught Thy stratagem of the Unknown, Broadcasting bliss from radios under earth, Swooping, on the myriad cries that quiver and clash,

Lord of Dream-Love Eyes like blue lotuses, Figure and face of gold, Each finger-nail a gem— The seers behold The Perfect and Eternal, Past wonderings: Moved by His glorious calm The whole heart sings! With halo of silver hair Out-timing time— Beard like a starless night, Secret sublime Of a young infinity— The nameless One Is waiting and Vigilling Yet calling none. Love ocean-deep, sky-high, Dreams in that gaze; Tongues of a fire of love, The arms upraise Their gold to the unknown From which He came For showing the dull earth How to be flame! Not through a

Veilless Word Mine be the Veilless word, Pure spirit grown! No more in the mould of stone Blindly bestirred At the foot of the mountain-muse Galling to its peak The chasmed cries and hues That wander and seek—- No more in the dusky bark Built round dream-day, Or even the quivering coat Of bright and dark Hungers for unseen prey. To free the stainless note Each swathe must fall aswoon; Nor must the glorious skin Whose passionate pores outbreathe The splendoured soul within Be left—the very last Subtlest and gauziest sheath Has keenly to be cast Down if the hidden glow Would bare the d

Turn Your Bach Turn your back on everything Utterly— There's no other way to gain Infinity. Spirit's grandeur cannot brook Compromise— Once for all you must surrender To the skies. But when all earth fades behind Soul's firm back, It has not become for soul One huge black. By a magic most divine, Things we spurn For the sake of Spirit's ether Always turn Part of the same mystery That we quest, But within that near Unknown None can rest: O this Wonder will not tear Its wide veil Ere we first in the beyond Learn to hail The one Marvel which shall give Soul r

The Two Crosses O wide-winged crucifixion in the sky, Floating in a light of sempiternal ease, Singing in a fire of incorruptible joy— Bird with full stretch of golden reverie Spanning thy own vast soul and breaking forth To sapphire liberties of the Unknown! O same bright body that on blinded earth Liest pinned by steely spikes of mortal law, With human hands thrown out in time's fatigue, Palms bearing the dark boon of torn life-blood, Nails frozen to a sky's blue cut and crushed! O supine sorrowful creature, lift thy gaze There where the invisible cross creating all And speeding all to the Space-Self's four extreme

Lament and Rhapsody Lost are the ancient mournings, the old mirths Of Gods grown men, holding the world in their hearts And breaking with its beauty and its bale And washing with blood of roses every limb! The epic's hurricane, the lyric's gurgle, The pastoral's tremolo of bending reeds, The drama's splendoured hells and darkling heavens— And through them all the Voice without a name, Crying beyond power, passion, pleasure, pang, Hushing to an ecstasy that has blind eyes And sees but through a hole suddenly shining In the magic centre of the marbled brow! Then were the Angels afloat, the Devils wore wings, And even

Eternity Vain is the immensity of the one God If all that vast is but intolerance Of time and life and earth's long cry for love! No laughter crosses with its rippling light Monotonies of measureless Self-space Where Being broods on Being evermore And heaven seeks not heaven in a hundred shapes. Undepthed of the One the many are futile foam; But losing the love-smite of soul on soul The single God is a darkness in full noon! O we must shatter the walls of mortal mind, Grow white waves of the universal sea, Win our true selves by loss in the breakless All; But how shall loss of narrow humanhood— The small snake with its tail

-038_God^s elephant.htm God's Elephant Why art thou slow, with grey somnambulist gait, Eyes like small gems gripped in a giant rock, An elephant swaying to some dense delight Whose mystery bulks too heavy for time's heart? "Loaded with a dream out measuring common deed, Ponderous I come and all swift slynesses Laugh to themselves, 'He never shall lay bare The wisdom-grandeur locked in that huge head.' Dust are these wanton jeering, when I hold Their doom in my belly of beatitude! Little they guess the immobile Vigilling And the enormous hesitation pack A plenitude's power deep and more deep within Like the drawn cord of some omniscient bow

The Missing Touch Evening The west is a giant Tamburlaine Bannering with a sky of blood the marching main. The east, a hush of white world-witchery, Is some unveiled supreme Zenocraté. Yet one transfiguring touch both marvels miss, Touch that would bring an infinite of bliss, And in that one touch lost by sun sublime And moon intense are all the tears of time! Dream after mystic dream my painter heart Mixes to erase the tiny shadow and smart Spoiling earth's mightiest mood of loveliness. Vain are all dreams—for O the little less That kills perfection, blinds eternity, Is the puny spot of self I grasp as me! If I