Oracles

I68 IN THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GHIZEH deed of mere brute muscle and nerve ! Thence, by great Will new-freed, the ardent life leaps, sixth, to Effort’s tower, invoking the occult, the secret power, found in the void when all but Will is lost ; so, seventh, he bends it from its bodily station into the great abyss of Meditation, whence the firm level is at last his own and Rapture’s royal throne is more than throne, sarcophagus ! an end ! an end ! Resounds the echo in the stone, in- calculable myriads of tons poised in gigantic balance overhead, about, beneath. O blend your voices, angels of the awful earth ! dogs ! demons leaping into hideous birth from the imprisoned deserts of the Nile ! And thou, O habitant most dread, disastrous crocodile, hear thou the Law, and live, and win to peace ! [If this poem be repeatedly read through, it falls into a subtly rhymed and metrical form.—R. P. L.]