The Equinox (Volume I, Number V)

106 THE RITES OF ELEUSIS Before the vast blind spaces of the sky ? Ο galaxy Of thousands upon thousands closely curled, Your golden world Incalculably small, its closest cluster Mere milky lustre Staining the infinite darkness! Base and blind Our minion mind Seeks a great light, a light sufficient, light Insufferably bright, Hence hidden for an hour: imagining This vast vain thing, We call it God, and Father. Empty hand And prayer unplanned Stretch fatuous to the void Ah ! men my friends What fury sends This folly to intoxicate your hearts Ρ Dread air disparts Your vital ways from these unsavoury follies; Black melancholies Sit straddled on your bended backs. The throne Of the unknown 15 fit for children. We are too well ware How vain is prayer, How nought is great, since all is immanent The vast content Of all the universe unalterabler We know too well How no one thing abides awhile at all, How all things fall, Fall from their seat, the lamentable place, Before their face, Weary and pass and are no more. So we, Since hope must be, Look to the future, to the chance minute That life may shoot Some flower at least to blossom in the night, Since vital light Is sure to fail us on the hideous way. What? Must we pray?