And Benreddin’s aching soul, In each sense intoxicated, Reached, at last, what seemed the goal Of all passion: golden-gated, Vast, a fountain: where he saw Limbs of light without a flaw; Breasts and arms of bloom; that waited For his soul to nearer draw.
Houri faces shimmered there; Fluid forms.--It, with a thunder Of wild music, like the hair Of a genie, flamed from under Caverns of the demon-world: Filled with voices, high it hurled, Calling him, with beckoning wonder Of cœrulean forms that swirled.
And with burning lips and eyes In he plunged: hoarse laughter greeted, Demon laughter: then sad sighs, Dying downward: passion-heated Hands seemed drawing him away, Downward: where a rocking ray Flamed and swung, and Eblis-sheeted Shadows wandered ghostly gray.
And, ’tis said, that he was young, Young that morning. When the darting, Anguish-throated bulbuls sung, In the silent starlight starting, One, a Baghdad merchant, led By the hoarness of its head, Found what seemed a mummy: parting Hair from brow, Benreddin--dead.
“_The Fire-Philosophers, and the Rosicrucians, or Illuminati, taught that all knowable things (both of the soul and of the body) were evolved out of fire, and finally resolvable into it: and that fire was the last and the only-to-be known God: as that all things were capable of being searched down into it, and all things were capable of being thought up into it._”--The Rosicrucians.
Once she breathed upon my eyes, Touched the soul that dreamed within me; All the magic that might win me Whispered to my heart with sighs-- Darkness can not make them lies!...
Bring me moly, hellebore! Mix them for my soul’s nepenthe, For my spirit’s dread Amenti, For the curse that comes once more With unutterable lore!
Sunlight, starlight or the moon, Stormlight, firelight or the sheening Witchlight intimate no meaning Of her glory’s plenilune; Of her soul’s unriddled rune,
And most awful beauty! nor Actual, nor yet ideal!-- Insubstantial and yet real; Partly flame and partly star, Yet no part of what these are.
I am hers and--woe is mine!... Has she drugged me with the sadness Of some elemental madness?-- Like a demigod I pine ’Twixt the mortal and divine....
When I see her, lo, she stands In the luminous electre Of a star: a smiling spectre With white scintillating hands Luring to unhallowed lands.