IV
Should I take pleasure in the fond perfume
That curls about my altars? in the throats
That chant my glory in the decent gloom
Of lofty minsters? Shall the blood of goats
And bulls and men send up a fragrant steam
To me, who am ? Shall shriek of pythoness
Or wail of augur move this dreadful dream
To some less melancholy consciousness ?
I have created men, who made them gods
Of their own excrements, and worshipped them.
I cannot match these calculating clods
Vho twist themselves a faecal diadem
From all the thorny thoughts that plague them mast ;
Break wind, and cali upon the Holy Ghost. ~
Yet I abide; for who is Pan is all.
He hath no refuge in deceitful death.
What soul is immanent may never fall;
What soul is Breath can never fail of breath.
The pity and the terror and the yearning
Of this my silence and my solitude
Are broken by the blazing and the burning
Of this dread majesty, this million-hued
Brilliance that coruscates its jetted fire
Into the infinite aether; this austere
And noble countenance set fast in dire
And royal wrath, this awful face of fear
Before whose glance the ashen world grows grey,
Crashes, and chaos crumbles all away.