The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE GARDEN OF JANUS Thy name! cried I. The answer that he gave Was but one tempest-whisper—“ If!” Ah, then! his tongue to his black palate clave; For on Soul’s curtain Is written this one certainty that naught is certain ! XIX So then I caught that goat up in a kiss, And cried Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Then all this body’s wealth of ambergris, (Narcissus-scented flesh of man !) I burnt before him in the sacrifice; For he was sure— Being the Doubt of Things, the one thing to endure! XX Wherefore, when madness took him at the end, He, doubt-goat, slew the goat of doubt ; And that which inward did for ever tend Came at the last to have come out; And I who had the World and God to friend Found all three foes! Drowned in that sea of changes, vacancies, and woes! XXI Yet all that Sea was swallowed up therein ; So they were not, and it was not, 99