The Earth Gods（大地之神）(3)

Through rustling vine and fern.

And now amid his ardent cries

He gazes full on her.

Oh my brothers, my heedless brothers,

Is it some other god in passion

Who has woven this web of scarlet and white?

What unbridled star has gone astray?

Whose secret keepeth night from morning?

And whose hand is upon our world?

First God

Oh my soul, my soul,

Thou burning sphere that girdles me,

How shall I guide thy course.

And unto what space direct thy eagerness?

Oh my mateless soul,

In thy hunger thou preyest upon thyself,

And with thine own tears thou wouldst quench thy thirst;

For night gathers not her dew into thy cup,

And the day brings thee no fruit.

Oh my soul, my soul,

Thou grounded ship laden with desire,

Whence shall come the wind to fill thy sail,

And what higher tide shall release thy rudder?

Weighed is thine anchor and thy wings would spread,

But the skies are silent above thee,

And the still sea mocks at thy immobility.

And what hope is there for thee and me?

What shifting of worlds, what new purpose in the heavens,

That shall claim thee?

Does the womb of the virgin infinite

Bear the seed of thy Redeemer,

One mightier than thy vision

Whose hand shall deliver thee from thy captivity?

Second God

Hold your importunate cry,

And the breath of your burning heart,

For deaf is the ear of the infinite,

And heedless is the sky.

We are the beyond and we are the Most High,

And between us and boundless eternity

Is naught save our unshaped passion

And the motive thereof.

You invoke the unknown,

And the unknown clad with moving mist

Dwells in your own soul.

Yea, in your own soul your Redeemer lies asleep,

And in sleep sees what your waking eye does not see.

And that is the secret of our being.

Would you leave the harvest ungathered,

In haste to sow again the dreaming furrow?

And wherefore spread you your cloud in trackless fields and desolate,

When your own flock is seeking you,

And would fain gather in your own shadow?

Forbear and look down upon the world.

Behold the unweaned children of your love.

The earth is your abode, and the earth is your throne;

And high beyond mans furtherest hope

Your hand upholds his destiny.

You would not abandon him

Who strives to reach you through gladness and through pain.

You would not turn away your face from the need in his eyes.

First God

Does dawn hold the heart of night unto her heart?

Or shall the sea heed the bodies of her dead?

Like dawn my soul rises within me

Naked and unencumbered.

And like the unresting sea

My heart casts out a perishing wrack of man and earth.

I would not cling to that clings to me.

But unto that that rises beyond my reach I would arise.

Third God

Brothers, behold, my brothers,

They meet, two star-bound spirits in the sky encountering.

In silence they gaze the one upon the other.

He sings no more,

And yet his sunburnt throat throbs with the song;

And in her limbs the happy dance is stayed

But not asleep.

Brothers, my strange brothers,

The night waxeth deep,

And brighter is the moon,

And twixt the meadow and the sea

A voice in rapture calleth you and me.

Second God

To be, to rise, to burn before the burning sun,

To live, and to watch the nights of the living

As Orion watches us!

To face the four winds with a head crowned and high,

And to heal the ills of man with our tideless breath!

The tentmaker sits darkly at his loom,

And the potter turns his wheel unaware;

But we, the sleepless and the knowing,

We are released from guessing and from chance.

We pause not nor do we wait for thought.

We are beyond all restless questioning.

Be content and let the dreaming go.

Like rivers let us flow to ocean

Unwounded by the edges of the rocks;

And when we reach her heart and are merged,

No more shall we wrangle and reason of tomorrow.

First God

Oh, this ache of ceaseless divining,

This vigil of guiding the day unto twilight,

And the night unto dawn;

This tide of ever remembering and forgetting;

This ever sowing destinies and reaping but hopes;

This changeless lifting of self from dust to mist,

Only to long for dust, and to fall down with longing unto dust,

And still with greater longing to seek the mist again.

And this timeless measuring of time.

Must my soul needs to be a sea whose currents forever confound one another,

Or the sky where the warring winds turn hurricane?

Were I man, a blind fragment,

I could have met it with patience.

Or if I were the Supreme Godhead,

Who fills the emptiness of man and of gods,

I would be fulfilled.

But you and I are neither human,

Nor the Supreme above us.

We are but twilights ever rising and ever fading

Between horizon and horizon.

We are but gods holding a world and held by it,

Fates that sound the trumpets

Whilst the breath and the music come from beyond.

And I rebel.

I would exhaust myself to emptiness.

I would dissolve myself afar from your vision,

And from the memory of this silent youth, our younger brother,

Who sits beside us gazing into yonder valley,

And though his lips move, utters not a word.

Third God

I speak, my unheeding brothers,

I do indeed speak,

But you hear only your own words.

I bid you see your glory and mine,

But you turn, and close your eyes,

And rock your thrones.

Ye sovereigns who would govern the above world and the world beneath,

God self-bent, whose yesterday is ever jealous of your tomorrow,

Self-weary, who would unleash your temper with speech

And lash our orb with thunderings!

Your feud is but the sounding of an Ancient Lyre

Whose strings have been half forgotten by His fingers

Who has Orion for a harp and the Pleiades for cymbals.

Even now, while you are muttering and rumbling,

His harp rings, His cymbals clash,

And I beseech you hear his song.

Behold, man and woman,

Flame to flame,

In white ecstacy.

Roots that suck at the breast of purple earth,

Flame flowers at the breasts of the sky.

And we are the purple breast,

And we are the enduring sky.

Our soul, even the soul of life, your soul and mine,

Dwells this night in a throat enflamed,

And garments the body of a girl with beating waves.

Your sceptre cannot sway this destiny,

Your weariness is but ambition.

This and all is wiped away

In the passion of a man and a maid.

Second God

Yea, what of this love of man and woman?

See how the east wind dances with her dancing feet,

And the west wind rises singing with his song.

Behold our sacred purpose now enthroned,

In the yielding of a spirit that sings to a body that dances.