The Earth Gods（大地之神）(2)

And draw my life from stony lips

And from withered hands receive my eternity.

Third God

Brothers, my dreaded brothers,

Thrice deep the youth is singing,

And thrice higher is his song.

His voice shakes the forest

And pierces the sky,

And scatters the slumbering of earth.

Second God (Always unhearing)

The bee hums harshly in your ears,

And foul is the honey to your lips.

Fain would I comfort you,

But how shall I?

Only the abyss listens when gods call unto gods,

For measureless is the gulf that lies between divinities,

And windless is the space.

Yet I would comfort you,

I would make serene your clouded sphere;

And though equal we are in power and judgement,

I would counsel you.

When out of chaos came the earth, and we, sons of the beginning, beheld each other in the lustless light, we breathed the first hushed, tremulous sound that quickened the currents of air and sea.

Then we walked, hand in hand, upon the gray infant world, and out of the echos of our first drowsy steps time was born, a fourth divinity, that sets his feet upon our footprints, shadowing our thoughts and desires, and seeing only with our eyes.

And unto earth came life, and unto life came the spirit, the winged melody of the universe. And we ruled life and spirit, and none save us knew the measure of the years nor the weight of years nebulous dreams, till we, at noontide of the seventh aeon, gave the sea in marriage to the sun.

And from the inner chamber of their nuptial ecstasy, we brought man, a creature who, though yielding and infirm, bears ever the marks of his parentage.

Through man who walks earth with eyes upon the stars, we find pathways to earths distant regions; and of man, the humble reed growing beside dark waters, we make a flute through whose hollowed heart we pour our voice to the silence-bound world. From the sunless north to the sun-smitten sand of the south.

From the lotus land where days are born

To perilous isles where days are slain,

Man the faint hearted, overbold by our purpose,

Ventures with lyre and sword.

Ours is the will he heralds,

And ours the sovereignty he proclaims,

And his love trodden courses are rivers, to the sea of our desires.

We, upon the heights, in mans sleep dream our dreams.

We urge his days to part from the valley of twilights

And seek their fullness upon the hills.

Our hands direct the tempests that sweep the world

And summon man from sterile peace to fertile strife

And on to triumph.

In our eyes is the vision that turns mans soul to flame,

And leads him to exalted loneliness and rebellious prophecy,

And on to crucifixion.

Man is born to bondage,

And in bondage is his honor and his reward.

In man we seek a mouthpiece,

And in his life our self fulfillment.

Whose heart shall echo our voice if the human heart is deafened with dust?

Who shall behold our shining if mans eye is blinded with night?

And what would you do with man, child of our earliest heart, our own self image?

Third God

Brothers, my mighty brothers,

The dancers feet are drunk with songs.

They set the air a-throbbing,

And like doves her hands fly upward.

First God

The lark calls to the lark,

But upward the eagle soars,

Nor tarries to hear the song.

You would teach me self love fulfilled in mans worship,

And content with mans servitude.

But my self love is limitless and without measure.

I would rise beyond my earthbound mortality

And throne me upon the heavens.

My arms woud girdle space and encompass the spheres.

I would take the starry way for a bow,

And the comets for arrows,

And with the infinate would I conquer the infinite.

But you would not do this, were it in your power.

For ever as man is to man,

So are gods to gods.

Nay, you would bring to my weary heart

Remembrance of cycles spent in mist,

When my soul sought itself among the mountains

And mine eyes pursued their own image in slumbering waters;

Though my yesterday died in child-birth

And only silence visits her womb,

And the wind strewn sand nestles at her breast.

Oh yesterday, dead yesterday,

Mother of my chained divinity,

What super-god caught you in your flight

And made you breed in the cage?

What giant sun warmed your bosom

To give me birth?

I bless you not, yet I would not curse you;

For even as you have burdened me with life

So I have burdened man

But less cruel have I been.

I, immortal, made man a passing shadow;

And you, dying, conceived me deathless.

Yesterday, dead yesterday,

Shall you return with distant tomorrow,

That I may bring you to judgment?

And will you wake with lifes second dawn

That I may erase your earth-clinging memory from the earth?

Would that you might rise with all the dead of yore,

Till the land choke with its own bitter fruit,

And all the seas be stagnant with the slain,

And woe upon woe exhaust earths vain fertility.

Third God

Brother, my sacred brothers,

The girl has heard the song.

And now she seeks the singer.

Like a fawn in glad surprise

She leaps over rocks and streams

And turns her to every side.

Oh, the joy in mortal intent,

The eye of purpose half-born;

The smile on lips that quiver

With foretaste of promised delight!

What flower has fallen from heaven,

What flame has risen from hell.

That startled the heart of silence

To this breathless joy and fear?

What dream dreamt we upon the height,

What thought gave we to the wind

That woke the drowsing valley

And made watchful the night?

Second God

The sacred loom is given you,

And the art to weave the fabric.

The loom and the art shall be yours for evermore,

And yours the dark thread and the light,

And yours the purple and the gold.

Yet you would grudge yourself a raiment.

Your hands have spun mans soul

From living air and fire,

Yet now you would break the thread,

And lend your versed fingers to an idle eternity.

First God

Nay, unto eternity unmoulded I would give my hands,

And to untrodden fields assign my feet.

What joy is there in songs oft heard,

Whose tune the remembering ear arrests

Ere the breath yields it to the wind?

My heart longs for what my heart conceives not,

And unto the unknown where memory dwells not

I would command my spirit.

Oh, tempt me not with glory possessed,

And seek not to comfort me with your dream or mine,

For all that I am, and all that there is on earth,

And all that shall be, inviteth not my soul.

Oh my soul,

Silent is thy face,

And in thine eyes the shadows of night are sleeping.

But terrible is thy silence,

And thou art terrible.

Third God

Brothers, my solemn brothers,

The girl has found the singer.

She sees his raptured face.

Panther-like she slips with subtle steps