 Section 8 of the Testaments of John Davidson read by Sean Kilpatrick. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Spokesprung wheels with guisened hubs, fruit in a ropey puddle, petrified dead vultures, splintered stones, and tattered sieves, lumber of specimens unlisted left to molder in a cellar underground. I scarce had time to note a bluish scurf, or a phosphorescent mildew here and there, the dregs the palsied letchery of flame, licking with fitful tongue the roasted loins of ancient sinfulness that still could writhe after millenniums of incessant hell, scarce to behold beneath the rocky frown and sullen drip of precipices, bleached and bitten through the marbled ice, abominable spongy faces peer when silence came with other darkness down, silence more penetrative, darkness more essential, veheminent in absolute than ear or eye the craftiest could gauge. I stood intensely strong expecting death, but sudden miracle befell instead, for sweet and fresh the fragrance of the dew, the voice of larks the wind among the trees, flowers in the meadow and on the mountains mourn, filling the region with music and delight, established day upon the wreck of hell. Thus did I kill Adonisius, thus did I annihilate perdition that began to fade the moment of his monarch's death, and ceased upon my advent as a dream disperses with the sound that gave its shape. Hardly was hell abolished, hardly Don had lit his crimson campfires in the green translucent orient, when the forest leaves inquired in silent terror, every blade immortal in its rigid stalk, which way against us will destruction come, storm thunder deluge and the swords of fire and swift and steep it fell, like mountains hurled from Utgard, cloud on cloud descended black, convolved in dense with rain a slant, and white as burning steel in driven showers with funeral darkness from the crest of mourn, and hollow on the resonant floor above, the ramble of the chariot wheels of death, long golden thongs of lightning leapt and stung, forked brands and brands like blue-green icicles hissed hot and spat and crackled through the air, continual fire and beryl cascades poured, irregular convulsive peal on peal, the thunder rent and shook the firmament, the whole world trembled like a beaten bell, forth from the storm gigantic ruddy, fierce as rage itself, the oldest son of earth appeared before me, challenge in his eyes, thaw with his conquering hammer, my linear, armed, my northern cousin, said the goddess, ceased when our tradition ended, thrundheim fell, I made no answer but continued, thaw aware of my inexorable hate, my dire hostility for gods discerned their enemies without appeal or war declared, up heaved his hammer millenor high above his head and brought it down on mine with all the ancient power of other world, before his merest gesture, giant host had fled without a stroke from many a field, but never had he met a man in fight, his dreaded hammer, millenor, forged of storm in Elfheim, in the furnace of the dwarves, did me no harm at all. When he beheld me standing there unhurt, after a blow so mighty indirect, he clutched his beard and glare astounded by material strength and vulnerable and men, then heaved once more his magic mace in both hands, like a sledge and thundered blow on blow, I moved aside after a shower of strokes that struck of old in Juntenheim, might easily have cracked the skulls of all the thursies here, and down the weapon crashed into the earth, to dig itself so deep a sepulchre that god could not withdraw it, ere my arms embraced him like a vice, and pinioned his against his cloud-girt flanks. All day he strove and panted in my grasp, and while his bulk enormous and his sinew, bone and nerve of spiritual substance and fire-knit, dwindled and shrank and withered to a wraith, illusory that sighed itself away in tenuous vapor on the evening wind, that was the end of Thor, the mankind god, the mighty worker for the sake of work, whose work was never seen and still to do the bluff old hero of a hundred fights, by inaludable entrenchment won, like every conquest of the other world, crushed to a film in my material clasp, the god of use and want, of daily toil, the home, the cupboard, tedium, common things still flicked in the sky, a wisp of cloud, when from the sunset in Olympian state, terribly beautiful Apollo came, for this was my great day, the finest scorn bathing her crescent in a rudder blush, than that which damascenes would sanguine fire the glowing sickle of the harvest moon, the goddess silently confronted me and looked me in the face, but my great night had dawned. Your brother goddess, he, even he, I said, offered me insult, his away they have in heaven, and all the heavens, he called me man with infinite contempt, a name I mean to make the greatest of all time, of all eternity, and challenged me to sing against him, who shall judge, I thought, expecting no rejoinder? I shall judge, Apollo answered, whereupon I left, so godlike was the word. I asked him then, what girden shall the victor have? He said, the victory, which was great, and men like even the penalty, I said, shall be defeat. I, said the god, defeat, and after death in agony, I flayed the vanquished, hell eternally to follow, a reply worthy the hatefulest of all the gods, but if you lose, I asked, I cannot lose, Apollo answered. Think you so, I said, and spoke with high disdain, whichever way the judgment goes, his eye shall win this bout, who first shall sing? He struck his lyre and sang. Great was the song melodious and divine, polluting darkly in the vast abyss, with heavy sounds and words that summed up benighted chaos of ever gods and men of heaven, and hell were known till gathering might, as in the Olympian mystery of things, reunion and disjunction, heaven and hell, with earth between gods, titans, heroes, spraying in passion from the all-conceiving gulf, big by relentless fate, then sweet as fire that murmurs in a golden censer lit to blandish adoration, love began a honeyed ecstasy and soon evolved in gorgeous strains, and dazzling cadences, with rich division fledged and winged aloft, soaring decant like savory smoke of sacrifice that God might offer God, with crashing resonance of brazen strings, as lightning to the thunder of his voice, Apollo uttered a next titanic war and Job's achievement and supremacy, a muted passage followed, dissonant and emphasized with level looks of scorn, showing the origin of men from earth and pasted by Prometheus and the breed after Dukalian's flood by miracle preserved, where stones were dowered with life, a race eternally subservient to the gods, whom they must worship with profoundest awe, and chiefly him Apollo, God of light, of knowledge, justice, purity and truth, he finished in a Pollyan rapture, playing the sphero music Troy was builded with, intolerably sweet and jubilant as trumpets of the dawn to honor now and magnify the essence of the gods, consummate jealousy, wherein himself had no superior and that I might lose courage and hope and fall in easy prey in this the swan song of the music gets. Although the prophet knew it not, he poured a fountain of memorial melody to grace the lofty peon that extolled his treacherous vengeance on the satter. Last, blasphemous mortal cried the goddess, death assail and choke you now, hell gnaw your bones, Apollo treacherous, noble scott of all my brother, most divine and most adored, theophany of justice, light and truth, revealed to men, Marceus, a silent, foul, abominable, bestial fit for death a thousand times in monstrous agonies. His song surpassed Apollo's, it never did, no voice of heaven or earth could equal his, no flute, no pipe, be favorably heard whenever Apollo deigned to touch his lyre. The prepossession of Olympus, know the truth at last, I said, both flute and pipe surpassed Apollo's lyre. Pan overcame with powerful music of the woods and wilds dancing in mirth and wine and harvest home, the mountains and the pastures and the chase. Apollo's moral ode and heavenly hymn and Marceus, also with harmonious flute, excelled his minstrelsy. The god performed a new thing seeming needless in war already won, a new thing seeming needless in a war already won, a famous masterpiece, the most uplifting music rung from strings, his Trojan overture, when Midas judged between Apollo and the venturous fawn, but Marceus blew a melody so rich in mourn and eve in midnight and in noon, so stained with spring that blushes in the snow, with summer's diverse bloom and autumn's gold, so passionate and so instinct with love, in single notes like water in a well that drops an orb of music lingeringly in warbled showers of jewels and streams of sound, like vintage flowing free, more searching sweet than twilight when the stars at intervals in shadowy magnificence appear till darkness like the bridegroom lifts the veil that Midas, though he laughed aloud to see the eager satyr's crimson cheeks distend to bursting crowned him victor and the joy of every hearer save the deity defeated echoed to the skies. Now mark the nature of divinity of yours as of Apollo's for you slew with him the lovely children, fruitful, Naiobi, Ampion, Boar, a wife whose generous boast of rich maternity and loyal claim that he, her spouse, had built a city too. By ocean, thebes with music of his loot deserved a smile well pleased from gods and men instead of such bereavement as you dealt. The stolid vengeance of celestial art the ruthless spite of noisome chastity. I was patroness of motherhood, she cried in anguish all the gods I said were arrogant in virtues self-assumed to palliate their malice let me end this history of divine malevolence between Apollo and his challenger life was fair and true award pronounced upon the instant issue the delight, the skill and music of the players gave but your theophany of hallowed truth adorned the arbiter with asses ears and flayed the genial champion alive behavior, wanton as Jehovah's trick who set his creatures in a garden fair beside a beautiful attempting fruit and bade them eat it not on pain of death knowing that they would eat it no more till I have finished goddess of the night, you interrupted when Apollo sang his treacherous triumph over Marcius, last rending a shriek from every lyric string, mournful in heinous as the doom portrayed, the satyr's agony beneath the knife, he smiled with glittering narrowed eyes of hate and ample expectation of revenge immediate, bloody and sufficing even the anger of a god, silent I gazed on the superb divinity a while my senses and melodious surges drowned such as on Helicon, Nemo's sign had joyed in with her daughters heard by me once more and never to be heard again by any ear throughout eternity the god's conceit of triumph, unexpressed delight of mine and still a demeanor fed until it flamed you yield without a song he cried malignant even to happy tears whose dew annealed the fury of his glance, roused from my reverie not a word I spoke but clasped my hands behind me having no liar and mightily against Apollo's song that pleased Olympus in established Troy I waged the universe itself in being before Apollo or any god debauched imagination of the aether, first I sang one sub-dial tension of entire immaculate energy, omnipotent eternal, stretching taut in bornless space this infinite elastic aether pure dynamic form no chaos ever was but order always mutable and free change possessed no sun no star no meteorite no atom or element being a sheer oblivious ecstasy until the lightning wakened and began a limitation of eternal space which is the aether in eddying fortices the offspring of the aether energized under continual omnipresent strain that sought stability in golden drops by sexual electrons, pith and seed at once of imponerable matter each invisible corpuscule being condensed from myriads of measures of imponerable elastic stuff and therefore each a packed compendium of the universe and orb, a reservoir and continent of power incalculable manifest occult repository of eternity and hidden treasure of the infinite when these electric gems confederate all in balanced companies began to spin like planets in a system of radiant atom of hydrogen first condensed of the infinite and these again, these atoms clustered stars of bezled lightning instantly con globed as passionate molecules atomic pairs in most material wedlock interfused insatiably tooth-wrong and countless swarms hive upon hive of radiancy insfeared and whirling through immensities of space till into sumptuous nebulae they swelled the scene the herd the ponderable at last from an improbable omnipotent eternal ether gloriously evolved come to the gods apolo cried the gods I take them in their turn I said and kept the tenor of my song the least of all the nebulae contracting as it cooled flung off the planets they their moors to swing in ample bursts miraculously moored by gravitation in a spatial gulf thousand millions of our mundane miles diametrically measured circumscribed by Neptune's orbit centered by the sun haunted by errant comets that wander out obliquely curving through the desolate night that lies between us and the nearest star and driven directly on towards hercules in Lyra, planets, comets, and the sun though moored advancing with the speed of thought and representing in colossal form the balanced clusters of electrons grouped to constitute infinitesimal cosmic parcels of an element as solar systems are evolved to be the mighty members of the universe secreted by the primal atom all the other atoms as the planet cooled became and all their elements how much so ever differing in appearance, weight amount, condition, function, volume gold from iodine, argon from iron rot of the purest ether in electron spring as lightning from the tension filling space forms of the ether primal hydrogen, azote, and oxygen unstable shapes with carbon most purdurable of all the elements forthwith were sifted out to be the diverse warp and wolf of life the lowest and the highest Laos and man how came the gods to be Apollo cried smiting his lyre and wrath their day arrived I said but man the fault they are came first then saying I other miracles of time telluric history brought to light by power, material and men of resolute attention from the dust of ages, shells and scattered limbs and footprints petrified in rocky strata or in fossil mud matrixed like scripture for the founders craft, organic stone wherein whole species plant an animal of their own substance built their tomb and monument shale, lava, moral, obsidian porphyry, cyanite travertine mica and talc blown sand and drifted sand in deserts and in oceans fruitful soil with forest pastures, orchids harvests fledged millennial almanac and open scroll bay louge, fire, volcano glacial drift compaction, fierce and winnowing tides of air that forged and tempered and engraved the earth enameled it with sapphire seas and hung an emerald veil about its nakedness then did I sing the greatest miracle the origin of species devoutly traced throughout the scale of being in the deep brain we honor most today and showed the god as shridly as one who can reveal by power poetic what the groper fears to institute sex from the aether strained as lightning male and female first and last delimitation of eternity immaculate, discarnate twee-fold sex electrons, joule substance of evolved ethereal and created universe in protoplasm embodied sarcoed stuff or vegetable in woven of the same quaternion of elements vapors, three azote and hydrogen with oxygen the great protagonist and carbon crowd and chorus common tissue of the whole wherein the aether lightened into life organical, omibae monoraw, bacteria diatoms, single cells that sped through differentiation changed environment in series manifold, binatural selection and sexual into the rose the oak tree and the vine and into men and women and swift again I sang what no one sang before or said or thought, eternity which was and is none other than the aether infinite unconscious rapture tensely strong in space by travail in and arable and urge adventurous of evolution shrine individual in men and women to know itself to understand the whole and keep the primal everlasting ecstasy self-conscious and the passionate kiss of love the gods, the gods, the gods apollo cried but shrilly now and fearfully then I come I said and sang the body of man mucus, the blood unlit on fire as blood in flesh compact and baked like earthenware in nerve as pith as mineral in bone, fibrous in muscle and in the viscera vegetal repeating in the microplasm electron, atom, system, universe with cells and organs numbers, moon, sand, suns the gods, the gods, the gods I sang the brain a double sponge soaked in the aether fruit, hisperium in the garth of space the goal and conscious lightning aimed at when it led the onset of eternity toward man, receiver and recorder carter, sieve alembic, loom and lyre and every arm, machine and implement for art, war use to put in act the thoughts the body thinks I sang the multitudinous cells that bud in blossom and the trellis to protoplasm filling the skull and make the chambers there, arbors of color beauty, fragrance, joy bisulphur is gold and purple blooms up lit and garlanded with phosphorescent wreaths crimson and ivory and violet and then I sang the gods, infinity and edoms that developed power in many modes and changed and counterchanged through force and forces to become in us terror and hatred anger, worship, love and be projected on itself again fantastic immaterial eclipse of actual material universe the undeciphered fancy thought complete self-consciousness of man flung blindly forth to master mystery and to know the unknown, vitality the ether in densest stones asleep whose thronged electrons still at ease in arbors and imperial roadsteads, rides, wake in protoplasm a formless stir or distaste of life that lends the clot of carbon curdled vaporous poetic power to gather to itself and to transmute diversity of matter into man the crown of evolution this was that men supposed to be another thing than they not knowing that the whole in one material substance gods and god are man's mistake no brain exists behind the galaxies above them or beneath, no thought and habiteth eternity no reason, no intelligence at all till conscious life begins the oofs and elves the saders, centaurs, goblins gnomes and trolls the ancient lands of fairy and romance infernal and supernal domiciles the dreadful dwellers there and wonderful cosmogony of other world perverse reflections of his unenlightened mind upon the mirror of eternity and on the mirrors of the sun and moon, the stars the flowers, the sea the woods, the wilds the material, nothings deceived mankind even as his shadow on a dark some way looms like a ghost and daunts the pilgrims still I am no ghost, apollo cried a god and son of god but now his voice a thin and bat like shriek dismayed himself his light had waned his figure shrunk before the truth, the greatness and the terror of my song alone remaining fierce from his lyre he struck sundering dissonance that might have ended time for lo the gallant curving horns were warped the strings awry and beaded thick with rust again he smote so savage was his rage as with a bestial claw the tuneless lyre and straight the instrument of power that worked by poignant melody enchantments strong as bastion cities crumbled into dust swift like a famished werewolf at my throat he leapt or vampire fresh from sepulcher in semblance only for the fire was out his sinew tinder and his bloody fume his empty quiver every arrow spent how long ago flapped on his shriveled haunch like a cast sloth not even the knife he skinned the setter with was left him as he sprained he clenched teeth moldered in his jaws his eyes like gathered leaves that in a kiln curl up shrink in their gloomy sockets and on my flesh his withered fingers hung like gossamer the evening breezes trail for all you gods without your weapons or your magic arts your heavens and hells and cyclopean bolts and venom arrows, casks and visible girdles and shoes of swiftness and gorgon heads are impotent as palsied eld I struck him down, dismembered him as one might tear a mannequin in pieces by breach and neck I seized and needed him and bent and plied and rung him like a rag until he ceased to be as in the conjurers nimble hands a kerchief vanishes thus did I meet thus did I conquer an annihilate apollo, thor, adenius gods that were the goddess said and smiled divinity commiserating man's simplicity her grief and horror past complacent now and beautiful as heavens devoted maiden in the flower of youth and freshness of her knights fair as herself she bade me know the truth these were not gods and loftily spoke at first I feared I knew not what so wide and so profound a gulf divides my solitary time from those olympiades sweet and every break blossomed with deity undisciplined when dryads, hama dryads oriads, nymphs haunted the wilderness and watched my sport that things immemorable had fallen away leaving my lonely mind and tranquil thought a thoroughfare of beauty chief of all unblessed remembrance are the lonesome wanes forgotten till you told how the voice that named itself apollo shrillness struck and fear with dwindled volume then I knew a wane had mocked you only voices now they once had deity archaic sprites adored by uncouth beings hardly men that ceased or ever ouranos began the dynasties of heaven unworshipped gods may haughtily retain divine state the scion of the race endures whose gods they were but when the blood that warmed and fostered them with worship burned entirely out they wither into sound involving baneful power to personate the very gods themselves if time and place accord would second sight like yours at hand to see the phantom I supposed indeed the apporances had perished from the world but those apparent gods you thought you killed were certainly none other than the wanes still at their exerable masquerade are you of them I asked her crescent flushed a saffron hue and from her sparkling eyes keen lightnings pierced me not a word she spoke if the three deities I slew were wanes can I believe that no inequitous embodiment of empty sound like them encounters me tonight assured the slain divinities were what they seemed I am the only deity she said remaining on the earth since you remain might not a remnant of divinity frequent the day as you frequent the night no pensively she answered all the gods except my single self departed hence wither I know not centuries ago let me recall the past and let me tell what I have never told since there was none to hear can I remember can I bear to think it silent noon in Arcady I in my dragon car driving at speed compelled to wonder meant and awe by fate unknown invading heaven and earth unknown but felt then darkness inexpressible the gods could see by day and night but I renowned for vision saw not heard not out the darkness blotted every sense save one blazed by contrast when I shut my eyes then I remembered Proteus once I sought the crafty shepherd of the sea and bade him tell my fortune gods must come and go but virgin deity outlast them all he said I thanked him for his prophecy and left his cave well pleased he followed loath but powerless not to tell the whole of doom until a man shall conquer you he said you cannot pass away which might have been a cryptic promise of eternal life but in the strangling darkness long the horror brooded I believed in end of all had come it had for all but me the faithful beast you slew my dragon stood as motionless as I I neither heard his laboring heart nor mine though every throb uncounted in that dread obsession seemed a night of fear at last a sound of rose far off a rumbling deep and low that shook the earth as thunder shakes it traveling on it filled the air as tempest do and yet no louder than a murmur than a sigh the word went round the world great pan is dead soon as the whisper traversed Arcady the all devouring darkness rendered up the day again but not the day that was gone were the golden sunbeams iron skies or a canipede the world through the dull air I hastened to my hidden place of joy I have still endamian I thought an empty heaven an empty world for me are terrorless his image in my mind eternal youth and in his continence eternal rapture words of yours or joe's I reached my latmian power and found I found no priceless treasures there a wind that sighed a charnel smell dead leaves where spiders span their dusty webs a bat a toad usurped the mountain cave endamian and his dream myself naked deity beheld had made the very jewel of the earth I swore by stick's vengeance more horrible than any punishment in tartarus and lit the air in meteoric flight to high olympus and the ear of joe alas no mortal mind can comprehend no words can tell no thought can think the change where the twelve places had soared aloft in massive splendor beauty and balance strength the wonder of the gods themselves there spread a leprous snow winnowed by icy blasts I sought no further what had chanced I knew the intolerant jewish god the terrible joe hova subtlest of supernal powers by magic more inscrutable than his had conquered joe and wiped olympus out you know that awful god better than I the rumor of his might I know of him I said eager to speak the sorcery whereby he seemed to unfold first and foremost re-iterant assertion of supreme domination I am I there is no god but me assailed the jewish mind for ages and destroyed the sense of hearing for the voice of gods less arrogant to make himself renown beyond all rivalry in mythic times joe hova had proclaimed himself the world's creator never imagining that men would rest its secret from the universe how be it long before we understood that all things of themselves evolved his boast he had pronounced the whole creation good exposed him to derision great indeed the world was and will always be but good it never can become and worst of worsts his chosen race the jews the only folk in all the world that worshiped him had passed from slavery into slavery and were then writhing beneath the heel of Rome joe's might incarnate some unparagoned device alone could raise a god discredited so utterly to eminence again nor was that wanting in the operant part of plausible enchantment reinforced with it to rinse unending of the spell primeval I am I there is no god beside when jove divinely errant chose to mingle blood with mortals heroes or gods were still the offspring as become a sire eternal but this desperate deity begot a common man and in his son not as a natural parent reappears but really incarnate lived on earth to change the mood of men and make them his now mark how relative omnipotence and all divine ascriptions are without disquietude and when it pleased him best triumph at jove destroyed jove left to Rome joe's delegate and by that power abandoned to the mercy of the mob whose god he was his claim was laughed to scorn and he on calvary hammered to a cross that was your time of darkness what happened then on calvary when christ was crucified the end of god head happened once for all so interwoven and infinity entangled all the gods so spiritual a fabric so essentially lied where all your states and towers of other world a single death of deity involved the entire extinction of the race divine celestial and infernal and the rune irredeemable of every heaven in the hell that was an accident on calvary then the goddess cried enlightened had jove known joe hova would become a man in all mortality he never would have risk destruction in permitting men to work their will upon his rival could he dream that deity would so forget itself put on without reprieve the flesh of men the madness of a god the irony exorbitant of chance I said pursued throughout the centuries with keenest zest for only then when all the gods were dead of moribund did men begin to pray in earnest and to worship truly both joe hova and his conqueror the one as christ the man of arrows the other jove as god of kings and armies pride and pomp in Rome besides his ancient seat of power if deity went out upon the cross how comes it I am here the goddess asked not now disdainful but in thoughtful guise as having met the master of her fate I said the point of time on calvary when christ gave up the ghost the three dark hours you passed in arcady the centuries of christian dumb in which joe hova dead appeared to triumph our in eternity one single moment and the same with this in which we meet the goddess understood but asked me of the gods whom I had killed were they not wanes then no not wanes I said unless they were the fittest how they survived no one could tell I know I killed the three and I she asked by the great power I have to join the ends of time and to compress eternity glowing point one teeming moment of imagination the act of some of all material force nothing in this or in the other world extinguished now no cause no accident no import no result no fate so called that ever did be tied his hid from me given this faculty the rain I said goddess and hallowed lamp of stainless youth shining supreme in the lilyd sovereignty because of maiden hood you are tonight as beautiful as fragrant fresh and rich in deity and in divine desire as on the evening when you came of age and jove with such a daughter overjoyed and thrown and crowned you while the dusky stars and envy swooned or hung about you too enchanted with your excellence to dream of emulation wistfully she said but where for then do I survive alone ethean was a virgin a sexless one not from jove's loins but from his head she sprang when the end came she was the first to fade to fade she murmured while a crescent field and new with pulsing fire lit up the night they ceased somehow they vanished every god myself accepted and the three you slew I will believe you slew them but was at the end of all the death on Calvary when johova's treason undid himself and us may there not be celestial homes beyond the stars a lodge above Olympus a higher heaven than heaven where jove confederate with johova dwells and juno visits aphrodite's bower in sweetest amity I think there may it goddess's romance in bornless space fulfilled with matter multi-form no room for any immaterial might remains no room for immaterial things but I am immaterial if you mean by immaterial immortal and divine I was about to say sheer fantasy you are not never were but in my veins the aphrodisian force of other world began a revel as of molten ore tumultuous in the entrails of the earth that shatters mountains and upheaves the sea embroideral food and nectar of the gods whereof I had partaken with careless zest being savory morsels of essential life I mean the unreal essence of the spirit and ariate passion pottable and pure as the first lightnings though impossible as the uncharactered inane itself no filter and no witchcraft ever tuned to such a pitch of poignant ecstasy the senses of her lord beloved in vain by some unhappy bride is that which now inspired me goddess I said above the stars I see the dazzling fronts of palaces that overlook eternity on one a crescent burns and beckons your democene untenanted and waiting for bare deceit she cried you said romance and now you say in the same wanton breath the highest heaven exists with room for me against her will to call the flower of her virginity had been my purpose with the loss of maidenhood yet he I knew must end at once and should then have purged the universe of the last exile last inheritance of other world but now material things or immaterial seemed the self same substance or it mattered not whether they were betrayal of the truth and of my own material being for which I suffered torment dire all one designing golf has in a vortex all my thoughts in some vertiginous moment of the blood to win the virgin goddess of the night and to possess her with her sweetest will and of section eight of the testaments of John Davidson section nine of the testaments of John Davidson this is a leverbox recording all leverbox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit the leverbox.org Saint Valentine's Eve Percy a moping always journalist for shame though this be lint no journalist need mope the blazing candlemaz was foul and wet we shall be happy yet sweethearts and crocuses together op Menzies a sale console me not in jest or trope give me your golden silence or if speech must wake a ripple on the stagnant gloom of this lamp darkened room speak blasphemy and let the man drake Screech Percy dread words tis Eric Lee's vein and fit to teach the man drake self new ecstasies of woe have passed my lips in blame of God and man now surely nothing can constrain my soul serene to riot so Menzies but you are old the tide of life is low no wind can raise a tempest in a cup easy it is for withered nerves and veins parched hearts and barren brains to be serene and give life's question up Percy although no longer chamber doors I dup for willing maids that never conquered me though unimpassioned be my tranquil mind and all my force declined my quenchless soul confronts its destiny but tell me now what ghastly misery peeps from the shadowy cupboard of your eye this chastened month in white and gold is dressed lilies and snow drops blessed be shriven by me as you were now to die shrove tide is come Menzies confessions purify my skeletons I will uncovered straight and if you think me pitiful and weak I pray you do not speak but go and leave me lonely with my fate my daily toil has irked me much of late of books that never will be read I write what save the anxious authors no one reads and chronicle the deeds of fashion crime and counsel day and night once in a quarter when my heart is light I write a poem in a weekly sheet to lie in clubs on tables crowned with bays immortal for seven days this is the life my echoing years repeat Percy the very round my aged steps still beat Menzies and brooding thus on my ephemeral flowers that smolder in the wilderness I thought by envy sore distraught of plants that burn in lordly bowers of men divinely blessed with leisure d'ours and all the savage in my blood was roused I cursed the father who begot me poor the patient womb that bore me last of ten ill fed ill clad ill house I cursed the barren common where I browsed and sickened on the arid mental fair the state has sown broadcast I cursed the strain when spring my blood and brain frugal and dry I cursed myself the air of things that met me everywhere of uncouth nauseous venals smoky skies a chill and watery climb a thrifty race using all means of grace to save their souls and purses lingering lies remnants of creeds and tags of party cries scarecrows and rattles then I cursed this flesh which must be daily served with meat and drink which will not let me think but holds me prisoner in the sexual mesh I cursed all being and began afresh my education my geniture which keep me running always from the goal or stranded on time's shawl in naked speech a six penny reviewer a hungry parasite of literature Percy no reasoning can meet so fierce a mood I'll tell you of a journalist instead these many winters dead who out of evil could distill the good he found his lot untameable and sometimes ate what beggars had disdained left at the donor's door once on a time a wanton youthful rhyme I read him with my tears and hearts bloodstained wherein of fate I bitterly complained he praised my rhymes then said the poet's name is overhollowed and the statements praise unearned unearned the bays that crowned the warrior beauty art I blame for love alone deserves the meat of fame men's I understand you not Percy be still and mark and so he said though I am faint and old high in my Garrett cold while on the pain death's knuckles rattles dark and hungry pangs keep sleep off in the dark I think how brides and bridegrooms many a pair with human sanction or all unvouched together softly couched wander and throb and rapture how the care of ways and means the thought of whitening hair of trenchant wrinkles fade when night has set and many along with man and woman find the deepest peace of mind sweet and mysterious to each other yet I think that I am still in nature's debt scorn disappointed starving bankrupt old because I loved a lady in my youth and was beloved and soothed I think that all the horrors ever told of tonsured men when women sable stalled of long drawn tortures wrought with evil zest of war and massacre and martyrdom of slaves and pagan Rome and Christian England who begin to test the purpose of their state to strike for the rest and time to feel alive in all the blight of pain age madness ravished innocence despair and impotence the lofty anguish that affords the light and seems to fill the past with utter night is but love's needful shadow though the poles the spangled zodiac and the stars that beat in heaven's high waitling street their myriad rounds though every orb that rules lighting or lit were filled with tortured souls if one man and one woman heart and brain entranced above all fear above all doubt might ring their essence out the groaning of a universe and pain were as an under song in love's refrain then in a vision holy time I see as one sweet bridal night earth softly spread one fragrant bridal bed and all my unrest leaves me utterly I sometimes feel almost I got may be men's ease you touch me not I stretched upon the rack of consciousness still curse woman in love I would be thrown above humanity yet where I got a lack I think that I should want my manhood back hating and loving limits Percy I know how ill you are you shall tomorrow do what I now order you at early dawn through London you must go until you come where long black hedge rows grow with pink buds purled with here and there a tree and gates and styles and watch good country folk and sent the spicy smoke of withered weeds that burn where gardens be and in a ditch perhaps a primrose sea the rocks shall stock the plow larks mount the skies blackbirds and speckled thrushes sing aloud hid in the warm white cloud mantling the thorn and far away shall rise the melky low of cows and farm yard cries from windy heavens the climbing sun shall sign in February greet you like a maid in russet cloak a raid and you shall take her for your business fine and pluck a crocus for her valentine men's ease in russet cloak a raid with homespun smock and apple cheeks Percy I pray you do not mock men's ease I mock not I shall see earth and be glad London's a darksome cell where men go mad End of section nine of the Testaments of John Davidson End of the Testaments of John Davidson