Chapter LXIV

There are figures in the shadow but the shadow hides the faces, And their silence is a subject that must flagellate the flesh. There are hands and arms that touch you with their lingering embraces Like the petals of clipped flowers still miraculously fresh.

There are voices through the darkness 'round which darkness swiftly closes; Remembered words and phrases that are only lost in death, Heard within some misted twilight in a garden filled with roses As though our own youth whispered with its awed and hollow breath.

There is nothing in the shadow that will satisfy our quest, For each shore that's undiscovered has been lined with molding wrecks, And if we should burst on Beauty with her healing hands of rest Life would bind us down in duty to some slavery of sex.

There is something quite sardonic in the race's old ideals, And the struggle for their gaining is derisive as a jest.... He who prays unto his Godhead will be wiped out as he kneels, While the wonders of decay will destroy all the rest.

We are grinding in the shadow for the glory of the ages, Though no hope of immortality has ever come to stay; Yet each human soul is fretting at the bars of separate cages Hearing rhythms of tomorrow in the discords of today.

All the ones who started seeking when the game was strange and new, See the beauty of believing lost in wonders of deceit There is truth in every vision, but the day is hardly through, Ere the night is all around us with her silence and defeat.

There is dogma, there is duty in the urge of dead emotion Through the worshipped gods of yesterday the present gods exist Hid away among our temples for the dreams of our devotion The alters of the ages in their ruins still persist.

Let the mothers bear their children for the centuries to come There is truth in adoration for the thing that is adored And if all the many answers on the lips of life are dumb At least the coming children may be murdered for the Lord.