The Vision and the Voice

THE VISION AND THE VOICE For the blood of my heart is like a warm bath of myrrh and ambergris; bathe thyself therein. The blood of my heart is all gathered upon my lips if I kiss thee, burns in my finger- tips if I caress thee, burns in my womb when thou art caught up into my bed. Mighty are the stars; mighty is the sun; mighty is the moon; mighty is the voice of the ever-living one, and the echoes of his whisper are the thunders of the dissolution of the worlds. But my silence is mightier than they. Close up the worlds like unto a weary house; close up the book of the recorder, and let the veil swallow up the shrine, for I am arisen, O my fair one, and there is no more need of all these things. If once I put thee apart from me, it was the joy of play. Is not the ebb and flowing of the tide a music of the sea? Come, let us mount unto Nuit our mother and be lost! Let being be emptied in the infinite abyss! For by me only shalt thou mount; thou hast none other wings than mine. All this while the Rose has been shooting out blue flames, coruscating like snakes through the whole Aire. And the snakes have taken shapes of sentences. One of them is: Sud umbra alarum tuarum A donat guies etfelicitas. And another: Summum bonum, vera sapientia, magnanima vita, sub noctis nocte sunt. And another is: Vera medicina est vinum mortis. And another is: Libertas evangelit perjugum legis ob gloriam dei intactam ad vacuum nequaguam. tendit. And another is: Sub agué lex tervarum. And another is: Mens edax rerum, cor umbra verum, intelligentia via summa. And another is: Summa via lucis: per Hephaestum undas vegas. And another is: Vir introit tumulum regis, invenit oleum lucis. And all round the whole of these things are the letters 27