The Heart of the Master

Phantasma. I waken from the horror. Every nerve is numb, every muscle frozen, every bone one ache, my blood throbbing with poison. But the shambles is now dimly to be seen. What? Can the Voice have spoken Truth after all? Is then that Star a Sun, whose light is at last piercing the foul mists of massacre, whose heat is forcing the congealed miasma to steam skyward in those murky banks of dim grey cloud? Hark! Yes, the few that are still alive have seen what rouses them to lift their crippled arms, to star with blear bloodshot eyes, to jabber with broken jaw-bones and torn tongues. “For Christ's sake,” screams an emasculate rag of flesh, “don't look at that damned Star!” “We're lost,” another squeals. “The Beast!” yells a third: maniac. I too am appalled not a little. For on the moving fumes crawl monstrous and hideous shapes—frightful forms, detestable gestures. All past belief for loathsomeness: filling my mortal spirit with delirious fear. Beholding them, the wounded writhe in deadly anguish. Some crazily catch up the filth in which they are already half sunk to throw it at the spectre, thereby only to smear themselves more thickly in the face. Their impotent malice so exceeds itself that I am moved for a moment to laugh. At that, as at the Master-spell of a great sage, the charm is snapped: I soar into sanity. I must be simple indeed! How did I fail for a moment to understand that Brocken-Spectres must be shadows cast by some Star, a Sun, upon sun-lifted vapours—that all these diverse shapes of madness are but distortions of one form upon the mountain-crest, a solitary shadow—the shadow of a Man! Lux. I stood erect. I found myself unhurt. I turned. I lifted up mine yes. Behold! The Hill! The apex of the colossal Pyramid is crowned by a stern silent figure, cut in sharp silhouette against the Orb of the Sun. I cried aloud: Hail unto Thee, O Star that art the Sun, Star that mountest the Height of the Heavens! But my heart answered me, mysteriously, yet so that it availed me to understand it; “He riseth not nor sets! He goeth shining on His