The Earth Gods（大地之神）

The Earth Gods

When the night of the twelfth aeon fell,

And silence, the high tide of night, swallowed the hills,

The three earth-born gods, the Master Titans of life,

Appeared upon the mountains.

Rivers ran about their feet;

The mist floated across their breasts,

And their heads rose in majesty above the world.

Then they spoke, and like distant thunder

Their voices rolled over the plains.

First God

The wind blows eastward;

I would turn my face to the south,

For the wind crowds my nostrils with the odors of dead things.

Second God

It is the scent of burnt flesh, sweet and bountiful.

I would breathe it.

First God

It is the odor of mortality parching upon its own faint flame.

Heavily does it hang upon the air,

And like foul breath of the pit

It offends my senses.

I would turn my face to the scentless north.

Second God

It is the inflamed fragrance of brooding life

This I would breathe now and forever.

Gods live upon sacrifice,

Their thirst quenched by blood,

Their hearts appeased with young souls,

Their sinews strengthened by the deathless sighs

Of those who dwell with death;

Their thrones are built upon the ashes of generations.

First God

Weary is my spirit of all there is.

I would not move a hand to create a world

Nor to erase one.

I would not live could I but die,

For the weight of aeons is upon me,

And the ceaseless moan of the seas exhausts my sleep.

Could I but lose the primal aim

And vanish like a wasted sun;

Could I but strip my divinity of its purpose

And breathe my immortality into space,

And be no more;

Could I but be consumed and pass from times memory

Into the emptiness of nowhere!

Third God

Listen my brothers, my ancient brothers.

A youth in yonder vale

Is singing his heart to the night.

His lyre is gold and ebony.

His voice is silver and gold.

Second God

I would not be so vain as to be no more.

I could not but choose the hardest way;

To follow the seasons and support the majesty of the years;

To sow the seed and to watch it thrust through the soil;

To call the flower from its hiding place

And give it strength to nestle its own life,

And then to pluck it when the storm laughs in the forest;

To raise man from secret darkness,

Yet keep his roots clinging to the earth;

To give him thirst for life, and make death his cupbearer;

To endow him with love that waxeth with pain,

And exalts with desire, and increases with longing,

And fadeth away with the first embrace;

To girdle his nights with dreams of higher days,

And infuse his days with visions of blissful nights,

And yet to confine his days and his nights

To their immutable resemblance;

To make his fancy like the eagle of the mountain,

And his thought as the tempests of the seas,

And yet to give him hands slow in decision,

And feet heavy with deliberation;

To give him gladness that he may sing before us,

And sorrow that he may call unto us,

And then to lay him low,

When the earth in her hunger cries for food;

To raise his soul high above the firmament

That he may foretaste our tomorrow,

And to keep his body groveling in the mire

That he may not forget his yesterday.

Thus shall we rule man unto the end of time,

Governing the breath that began with his mothers crying,

And ends with the lamentation of his children.

First God

My heart thirsts, yet I would not drink the faint blood of a feeble race,

For the cup is tainted, and the vintage therein is bitter to my mouth.

Like thee I have kneaded the clay and fashioned it to breathing forms

That crept out of my dripping fingers unto the marshes and the hills.

Like thee I have kindled the dark depths of beginning life

And watched it crawl from caves to rocky heights.

Like thee I have summoned spring and laid the beauty thereof

For a lure that seizes youth and binds it to generate and multiply.

Like thee I have led man from shrine to shrine,

And turned his mute fear of things unseen

To tremulous faith in us, the unvisited and the unknown.

Like thee I have ridden the wild tempest over his head

That he might bow before us,

And shaken the earth beneath him until he cried unto us;

And like thee, led the savage ocean against his nestled isle,

Till he hath died calling upon us.

All this have I done, and more.

And all that I have done is empty and vain.

Vain is the waking and empty is the sleep,

And thrice empty and vain is the dream.

Third God

Brothers, my august brothers,

Down in the myrtle grove

A girl is dancing to the moon,

A thousand dew-stars are in her hair,

About her feet a thousand wings.

Second God

We have planted man, our vine, and tilled the soil

In the purple mist of the first dawn.

We watched the lean branches grow,

And through the days of seasonless years

We nursed the infant leaves.

From the angry element we shielded the bud,

And against all dark spirits we guarded the flower.

And now that our vine hath yielded the grape

You will not take it to the winepress and fill the cup.

Whose mightier hand than yours shall reap the fruit?

And what nobler end than your thirst awaits the wine?

Man is food for the gods,

And the glory of man begins

When his aimless breath is sucked by gods hallowed lips.

All that is human counts for naught if human it remain;

The innocence of childhood, and the sweet ecstasy of youth,

The passion of stern manhood, and the wisdom of old age;

The splendour of kings and the triumph of warriors,

The fame of poets and the honor of dreamers and saints;

All these and all that lieth therein is bred for gods.

And naught but bread ungraced shall it be

If the gods raise it not to their mouths.

And as the mute grain turns to love songs when swallowed by the nightingale,

Even so as bread fo gods shall man taste godhead.

First God

Aye, man is meat for gods!

And all that is man shall come upon the gods eternal board!

The pain of child-bearing and the agony of childbirth,

The blind cry of the infant that pierces the naked night,

And the anguish of the mother wrestling with the sleep she craves,

To pour life exhausted from her breast;

The flaming breath of youth tormented,

And the burdened sobs of passion unspent;

The dripping brows of manhood tilling the barren land,

And the regret of pale old age when life against lifes will

Calls to the grave.

Behold this is man!

A creature bred on hunger and made food for hungry gods.

A vine that creeps in dust beneath the feet of deathless death.

The flower that blooms in nights of evil shadows;

The grape of mournful days, and days of terror and shame.

And yet you would have me eat and drink.

You would bid me sit amongst shrouded faces