The Equinox (Volume I, Number VI)

THE EARTH of Paradise. Then, if he have kept the holy fire alight, perhaps with much false fuel, that fire shall instant blaze and fill the temple 01 his soul. By its insistent energy it shall destroy even the memory of all those marsh—lights that came to greet it; and the priest shall bow down in the glory, and grasp the altar with his hands, and strike it with his forehead seven times. Now this altar is the earthen altar of Demeter. Then understanding all things by the light of that love, he shall know that this is love, that this is the soul of the earth, that this is fertility and understanding, the secret of Demeter. Nay, (even I) the Oracle may speak in his heart and foretell or foreshadow the greater mysteries of Persephone, of Death the daughter of Love. Those, too, who are thus reborn will understand that I who write these words am stretched on the wet earth on the day of Spring. It is night, but only the sea whispers of Per- sephone, as the stars intimate Urania whose mystery is the third, and beyond. My body is absorbed in scent and touch; for the consuming fire of my sight has burnt itself out to blind- ness, and in my mouth is only the savour of an infinite kiss. The moist earth burns my lips; my fingers search down about the roots of the grass. The life of earth itself is my life: I shall be glad to be buried in the earth. Let my body dissolve into hers, putrefy in her reviving limbeck. He never loved who let them case him in a coffin from the supreme embrace. It is from the earth, bride of the sun, that all bodily strength derives. It is no figure that Antæus regained all his force when he touched earth. It is no pedantry and folly of the Hindus, who (fearing bodily lust) isolate their acolytes from earth, no futility their doctrine of Prana and the Tamo— IO9