The Star in the West

THE VIRGIN 99 : tress he had denied himself in vain , stung with insult and vile word , he slays him : Stark dead . The queen-I hate the name of her ! So grew the mustard -seed , one moment's lust . Wounded himself, he is nursed back to life by the wife of his adversary . Ah God ! she won that most reluctant breath Out of corruption : love ! ah ! love is strong ! What waters quench it ? King Shalomeh saith .? Thus failed the Quest , as all quest against love must inevitably fail . A man who truly loves a woman loves her so intensely that all else is as naught ; she grows before him gigantic through the mist of his desire , swallowing him up in the affinity of her being . The King's sword was of little use ; the pillar of the Higher Self lay in the salt - encrusted plains , saline with the tears and sobs of failure ; the ring emblem atic of surrender , without beginning or end , was em blematic also of the eternality of love , that circling girdle of the world . In “ Tannhäuser " we have a similar idea , though reversed ; for Tannhäuser enmeshed in the web of the Venusberg , strives against the sensual to gain a spiritual victory ; whilst in “ The Nameless Quest " the knight , fearful of falling in the sensual slough , seeks , and loses his straight way in the spiritual desert . Thus , as in the latter case , the striving against the desire of a pure love leads to an almost certain failure , so in the former , when sunk deep in the mud of an impure affection , even if released from its circling arms , worldly mercy is as cold to him who 1 The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p . 192 2 Ibid .