 Section 5 of the Testaments of John Davidson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Sean Kilpatrick. The Testament of John Davidson. Dedication to the peers temporal of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. My Lords, I address you because having each of you inherited or accepted a title which you share, Duke or Marquis, Earl or Viscount, with the creator of the universe, the common title of Lord. You are not to be supposed incapable of greatness. And I invite you to read this book, the prologue to a literature that is to be a literature which I have already begun in my Testaments and tragedies, believing that you at least will recognize integrity of thought and integrity of imagination. However unexpected the form and substance of these may be, I have to tell you also that it is still Christendom. In England, the old defeat, economic world of Christendom. For centuries a dull evolution by degeneration arrived now at the barracks of the Salvation Army, and a no government by agitation Christendom ascendant to the heyday of the papacy. Decadent ever since this decadence of Christendom, mirrored in its own fancy as a virtuousness of democracy, of progress, of improvement of the species, should be best known to you, my Lords, in the atrophy of your function in the state, and the loss of individual prestige. Many generations have come and gone since you were the great baronage of England extorting rights, granting or refusing subsidies, making and unmaking kings. Yes, you remain after the monarch, and as in the case of the monarch, by reason of permanence, a most effective estate of the realm, your unacknowledged veto being our main bulwark against the anarchy of the franchise. It must be a source of intolerable chagrin, and of intolerable mortification to your lordships, to behold the destinies of England and of the empire at the mercy of the feeblest minds in these islands, at the mercy of the few thousand feather-brained taxpayers. The vibration of whose vote determines the result of every general election. I trust that your chagrin and mortification are indeed intolerable, chagrin and mortification being in all ages a root and fount of greatness in life, in polity, in art, in war. And I trust that your resolution to transmute these emotions into action will appear in the development of some power of initiative centered in your house, and entirely uninfluenced by the veering flaw of popular opinion which has hitherto been of the very essence of that phantasm, the British constitution. And my lords, we want great men to govern the kingdoms and the empire, we want government, we have it not. If we were governed, there would be no Irish question, no labor question, no franchise question, the demands of women, the demands of the Irish, the demands of labor. To me all that is heinous in the last degree, I demand a house of peers able to say to women, to the Irish, to labor, we are not here to consider your demands. What we have to do is to enforce our requirements, which are the requirements of the kingdoms and of the empire. With you, our good folk of Ireland, we have the utmost sympathy, an unconquerable race. You had the terrible misfortune to be brought under the government of a people who destroyed your power of armed resistance but never vanquished you, a terrible misfortune. Yet not an irredeemable one, rather a misfortune, pregnant with hope. You are unconquered, you are still the Irish nation, and we desire you to be more and more the Irish nation. But our own initiatory power, and without reference to the House of Commons whose slow machinery and emasculating compromise spoil all its legislature, we intend to grant a degree of autonomy to the various parts of the kingdoms, to the Welsh, to the English, to the Highlands of Scotland, and to the Lowlands, and, in the case of Ireland, to the four historical divisions of the country, to Ulster, Lannister, Connacht, and Munster, independently, certainly each division, to be independent of the other in the measure of home rule accorded. That is not what you want, unfair to Ireland, the prosperous Ulster. Ah, the important part of Ulster is not nationalist. You would have your Ulster question, as we have our Irish question, were your nationalist majority to attempt the control of the loyal minority, but you particularly desire the control of Ulster? Frankly, you will be satisfied with nothing short of an independent parliament. You are a witty race governed by a dull one, and we lose patience now. England wishes you to be national, as the Welsh are national, as the Scots are national. In your relations to the other British kingdoms, to the empire, and to the world, England requires you to be English, as the Welsh are English, as the Scots are English, the Welsh and the Scots, having accepted England, and the meaning of England, remain magnanimous. The Irish, having refused England and the great meaning of England, are less fortunate to live with England, and yet to decline the destiny of England, is to be unfortunate indeed, and as regards the supposed racial incompatibility, we assure you we do not think you a witty people at all, the English have the will, you are an amusing people, a comical people, which is a very different thing. We like you, and intend nothing but your best interests. We recommend you heartily to cease thinking of demands on England, and of what England should do for Ireland. Set yourselves, rather, to study and understand what England requires of you and what you should do for England. Remember, in the meantime, that the Irish question is unfortunately solving itself. Your population has decreased in recent years at a rate that will, if it continues, put a speedy and final stop to the Irish question for lack of Irish questioners. And hark, sirs, a last word, get rid of your priests, be done with other world. For you, our working men, we have profound regard, but we are somewhat tired of your labor question. Already one of your demands is being attended to, your old age pension is assured, but men, we beg you to note that your old age pension is your heaviest handicap in the competition for power and wealth. In the failures and defeats of life, which none escape, even the gallantists among you will be tempted to give in, will sometimes give in. Now that dens of starvation or the horror of the poor house no longer await poverty at the journey's end, we question very much if it would not be more humane as it would certainly be greater to inflict a dire penalty on failure instead of awarding it a pension. But you want to have done with competition, you want everything socialized, we decline to listen to a word of that. The members of this house are proprietors of much of the soil, much of the means of production, much of the capital of these kingdoms. They are not going to sit with folded hands and see their lands and factories voted away. Civil war lies across the path of that attempt. But what are you to do? If there is no scope for your energies at home, do as your fathers did in all ages, hive off, acquire lands and factories of your own. We have made room for you, ample room, but you want to be great. You have heard of the overman and would transcend humanity. Do not be misled by any speciousness of that kind. Let us understand this of the overman. Ubermench, a word of Gertes, of the young Gertes, having a pre-Darwinian half meaning was interpreted in an evolutionary sense by Nietzsche and received its European vogue from him. When the misapprehension of Ibsen in England gave place to a misapprehension of Nietzsche, Celtic panics both of these, not English at all. The English care nothing for either Ibsen or Nietzsche. Your absurd neologism overman was accepted by the panic stricken as an index of evolution in humanity, but not by the English. You must remember that Nietzsche, fugulman, in this business, was a pole, the poles being the Celts of Eastern Europe, an inferior race, unable to conquer and unable to be conquered, the idea of a higher type of man than they is natural to them. But such an idea could never occur to an Englishman. The Englishman is the overman and the history of England is the history of his evolution. You think we are unjust to Nietzsche, the most powerful mind in recent times? We admit the power, a shattering mind that never spared itself, but an extraordinary individual may spring from any source. Napoleon was a Corsican, the smallness, the much meanness of Napoleon was racial, the blood of the pygmies, ran in the veins of the giant. And thus it is that Napoleon appears monstrous rather than great. Nietzsche's notion of beyond man was not of the individual, it came of the inferiority of the stock. But why should the English working man trouble himself about Nietzsche? Have you never heard of burns? Go to sharpen your tools, square your shoulders to the work, eat and drink lustily, love your wives and children, and read the Jolly Beggars. And as for you, the women of England who desire political equality with men, what is to be said? Do you know what has happened in the world in the matter of women? It is this woman question that betrays most definitely the decadence, the disintegration of Christendom. Do you know that hitherto woman, either as the legitimate or illegitimate minion of man, has ruled the world? Part and parcel of his goods and chattels, you develop the finest intellectual capacity, ruse, stratagem, chicanery, the simplest and therefore the subtlest artifice, in your whole armory, being the expert touch of the helmsman's hand, which while it seemed only to stroke and caress was all the time steering the world. You are tired of hearing that? You want direct representation? We shall come to the franchise, but we must ask you to consider, very importantly, the stupendous change long elaborated in silence, the quiet, crumbling and decomposition of society of which your militant campaign is the sudden sound and sign. The history of the past is the history of the regiment of women. Man having made women and offspring his private property became, as their provider, the virtual slave of his wife and children, and on that account, and during the many centuries of the intellectual development of women, man continued to grow in instinct and in all human qualities. That is to say, an intelligence and experience. What do we mean by such sophistry? It is not sophistrical. There is a vast distinction and a difference between intellect and intelligence. It is hitherto the difference between men and women. Intellect is of the nerve and of the brain, but intelligence is more of the blood. Passion, instinct, genius. It was the intelligence of man that developed his ideas of justice, of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, and created a moral order of the universe to be the nest for his wife and family that transmuted the base metal of desire into a golden miracle, invented the divine mystery of maternal love, a most masculine invention, and imposed upon himself under the unperceived tyranny of women. The semi-celebrate life of the monogamist. You cannot make us out? Do you mean that women are superior to men intellectually? We do, but even so, there have been instances of men able to hold their own intellectually with women. And indeed, men's rudimentary intellect is only a few marks lower in capacity than that of women trained and strengthened, edged and pointed by millenniums of constant exercise in the art of changing in every circumstance her nominal and apparent subordination into an actual and rational dominion. We stated paradoxically, but is there some truth in it? We are glad you admit that. From beginning to end, the automatic subtlety and the matter was so exquisite that men conceived himself the lord of creation, and women felt that she was only a minor consideration in the universal order, little better than an evil thing necessary for the continuance of the race. But you're going to change all that. It has been very much changed already. We came to an end of that, indeed, when the French Revolution plunged the world and its ideas into the crucible. The beginning of the end, that is, for almost all those ideas, which seemed at the time annihilated, reappeared from the furnace changed but not transformed. The destructive distillation of marriage into some new compound, but only a distillation as of seawater into freshwater, marriage remained, but it had lost the rich salt and savor of sanctity, no longer necessarily a sacrament surrounded with glories and terrors. It became and becomes more and more a merely economical arrangement, terminable under various disguises on economical ground. Back from the crucible came also the idea of property, the only philosopher's stone that ever did change anything into gold. Much cracked and buckled by the fire, this talisman still retained its identity and some of its magic virtue, but its most potent witchcraft had departed. Man was no longer to have any property in man, not even in his wife and family. What about votes for women? We shall come to that, but we are determined, first of all, to let you know what has happened to you. The increasing impotence of these two charms, the amulet of marriage and the talisman of property, began the change which is now rapidly determining the new orientation of man and woman, and if this philosopher's stone of property is pulverized and scattered on the wind never again to be reintegrated, then will the last phylactery of marriage be burned away to everlasting tinder, when men have no lands and money to bequeath, a son of their own blood will be of no consequence. You see how far the decadence has gone, how deep the corruption of Christendom is, how entire the dissolution of our complex society. You are on the verge of a reversion to a community of goods and men. Some condition of things in which the old tribal systems of polyandry and polygyny, never entirely superseded, will coalesce and become universal. What are we going to do about votes for women? Something rigorous. In the meantime, we beg you to notice that by this loosening of the bonds of property, woman is already free to do as she chooses and obtain what she can. Having abdicated unwittingly, you had and have no conception of what you are doing. Having abdicated, the uncrowned sovereignty of the world, you enter the arena with man and find yourself with your wonderfully evolved intellect, at least as equal. With great liberty and rejoicing, you turn into the broad way of intelligence and experience. And with the sweetest arrogance imaginable, you say to the clerk, the merchant, the physician, the lawyer, the politician, I wish to work side by side with you. We shall march together in Elysium. Not knowing that the true expression of your action is Otoi Dila K. J. Meti, and that particular way to the Elysium no one ever reaches is a descending road to every kind of hell, to absolute perdition. You deny that, and all your leaders and social reformers everywhere insist that it is not a case of Otoi Dila. You will find it is if the disruption of society continues. So far as it has gone, you bat, bowl, and field your best, while we, with our undeveloped intellects stand about awkwardly and play the game with a broomstick in the left hand. But if the game were to become serious, if it is ceased to be a game played in examination halls and in pantomime scuffles with a constable, were it to change into the actual battle of life along the whole line? What would happen, votes for women? This would happen. Man with an intellect in its undeveloped state, only a little lower than the perfected instrument of woman, would set about the evolution of a masculine subtlety, a keenness of ruse, a fathomlessness of chicanery, an undetectable stratagem beyond the imagination of the craftiest maitres fem, and long before woman had begun to realize that the battle was lost in the nature of things, she would find herself at the opponent's mercy, disarmed and powerless. When woman ruled the world, man, in most things her slave, worshipped her, sedulously built up his moral order of the universe for the safety of her and her children, reared a heaven for her and her friends, dug the pit of hell for her foes and blasphemers. If, upon her abdication, challenge and defeat, woman becomes the slave of man and a reorientation of the sexes is perfected, then we shall have indeed a new order of things, and in the place of home we shall see what shelter woman will provide, what substitute for man's heroic spiritualization of passion, what of worth and worship for the divinity of motherhood. While that goes in at one ear and out at the other, give you votes and you can take care of yourselves. You are under the strongest of all delusions, the idea of representative government, of government by vote. England, the true England, has long suspected representative government to be the sheerest phantasm. We, the peers of England, have always recognized its shadowy, tentative nature, and we propose wielding our new initiative to stem the forces of social evolution by degeneration, which England, intending something very different, was the first to set free. Hitherto, the franchise has had a merely economic foundation and the more temperate among you ask for no more than men have, a property qualification. That, we will not give you because we intend to introduce an entirely new principle to place the franchise upon a moral as well as upon an economic basis. We propose to limit the male vote to married men who are householders and to extend the franchise to married women who are the mothers of at least three children. You may exclaim, but we know what we are about. Mass and mass in this generation have eaten greedily of the modern tree of the knowledge of good and evil and there will be no children teeth to set on edge unless some stringent measure is taken. What? You want to be mothers or not as you choose? Men will never allow that. Do not dream of it. Masculine control of offspring is of the very form and substance of life, votes for women. We invite you to reconsider the whole matter, votes for women, votes for women. There is remedy for the terrible lot of some of your sisters and sweated industries. And for such artificial disabilities as may impede your true advancement without your becoming active politicians. You, votes for women, votes for women, votes for women. In the above interview, which I have imagined for you, I have shown you the litter and broken bits of a shattered society, the debris and wreckage of Christendom clamoring to be put together again after a pattern of its own. Is there any political secoutine, stick fast or fish glue equal to it? I think not. When the dilapidators have begun upon a house, it is best to let them go through with it and build again from a new foundation. For my own part, I have come out of it all and have found another abode for my mind and imagination, not in any symbol of the universe which Christendom was, but in the universe itself. How shall I say it? How shall I get this thing said to you, briefly and in prose? I am persuaded that the thing I have to tell is for you of all classes. You are raised above the rank and file accustomed to greatness and able at once to grasp a great idea, briefly then and without more preamble. My Lords, there is no other world. There never was anything that man has meant by other world, neither spirit nor mystical behind the veil, nothing not ourselves, that makes for righteousness no metaphysical abstraction. Time is a juggler's trick of the sun and moon. There is only matter, which is the infinite, which is space, which is eternity. Which we are. In the beginning matter had only one form, that of the oblivious, omnisolvent, imponderable ether. The principal constituents of matter, that is to say of eternity, of the infinite are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, but these, with the other elements, consist of lightning, the first emergence of the ponderable from the imponderable. Lightning, with its poles or sexes, essence at once and seed and yeast, secreted in drops or cells or electrons, the first limitation of matter and began the fermentation in the eternal ether, which was not to cease until the appearance of the visible universe. No sooner had the drops or cells or electrons sprung from the tension of the dark, oblivious, omnipotent ether in eddying vortices that they sought an equilibrium and combined themselves into groups, each group consisting of an array of negative and positive electrons neutralizing each other and revolving about a common center like a miniature solar system, and this is the evolution of the atom. In each individual atom, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of cubic miles of the primal substance, which in its tenuous, imponderable form feels space, are constrained into the ponderable, garnered up and packed away, every atom is thus a repository of the material of eternity and the fountain of all force, physical, mental, imaginative. These microscopic systems of electrons whirled into vast swarms, forming nebulae, and one of the smallest of many million, million nebulae, resolved itself into our solar system. Within the nebulae, or after, when the planets had been flung off to circle around the sun, from the primal atom by process of chemical selection, all other atoms were evolved, and these assemblies of electrons, themselves combined in molecules, gave form and stability to the various elements, gaseous, metalloid, or metallic. By an advanced process of chemical selection, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen were chosen out to be the basis of all life, and the life through geologic periods of natural selection arrived at men and women in whom are enshrined the two poles of sexes of the light thing, the earliest, nieces of matter towards self-consciousness, matter now capable in us of the highest ecstasy and of all knowledge. Thus I break the world out of the imaginary chrysalis or cocoon of other world in which it has slumbered so long, and man beholds himself, not now as that fabulous monster, half god, half devil, of the Christian era, but as man, the very form and substance of the universe, the material of eternity, eternity itself, become conscious, and self-conscious. This is the greatest thing told since the world began. It means an end of the strangling past, an end of our conceptions of humanity and divinity, of our ideas of good and evil, of our religion, our literature, our art, our polity. It means that which all men have desired in all ages. It means a new beginning. It means that the material forces of mind and imagination can now re-establish the world as if nothing had ever been thought or imagined before. It means that there is nothing greater than man anywhere. It means infinite terror, infinite greatness, and that is the meaning of me, and of my testaments and tragedies, and of this testament, which I have placed between a poem of the dawn of life and a poem of its close, which I commend to your lordship's notice as my most original presentation of the thing I have to tell. I am my lord's most faithfully yours, John Davidson. Prologue. Honeymoon. I awake in a dawn, and your head on the pillow beside me lies. And I wonder, although we were wed such an infinite fortnight ago, have the planets stood still in the sky since my sweetheart, Nye, were wed, since first I awoke and low on the pillow beside me her head, through our window the wind for spent marauder, in garth and wild his opulent burden of scent, unloads least he faint by the way, for the flowers they were subtly beguiled, and their dewdrops and manifold scent perfume now the crimsoning day on the wings of the wind for spent. And I look at your face, till my thought of you pierces your sleep till your silken lashes unlace, and your blossom-like lids upheave till your eyes emerge from the deep as your rhythm lashes unlace and mourn an awakening weave the wonder and joy in your face. Then your memory quickens and bids a blush and happy sigh, and the lift of your azure lids a concord of color and sound, and their dawns in your violet dye when you open your flower-like lids a thought from the depths profound as an exquisite memory bids. And this is your twentieth year, and your bright groom is twenty-one, and our thoughts are as fragrant and clear as a lucent splendor of noon. My love is as rich as the sun, and your love is as tender and clear as the lily-light of the moon in the sweetest month of the year. At once, when we waken, we rise, for the earth is as fresh as our thought, and the heaven-high dome of the skies, a miracle constantly new, a marvel diurnally wrought, the earth with its seas and its skies, its flowers and its mattinole dew awaits us as soon as we rise. Through the woodland and over the lee, that dips to a golden strand, like fugitives seeking the sea, we hasten our mourning mood, together and hand in hand we hurry to reach the sea, through the purple shade of the wood and over the spangled lee. In our boat, on the swell of the tide, we steer for the heart of mourn, and I say to you, sweet in my bride, should hope be for ever undone, should destiny leave us forlorn, thus shall we journey, my bride, right into the heart of the sun, on the mourning or evening tide. Could we harbor, with sorrow and care, and friendless and punery lost, remain at the back of despair, like prisoners of impotent folk? Could we chaffer and reckon the cost, and measure out love till despair subdued us, bereft, to a yoke, in harness, with sorrow and care? Oh, not while the mourning is crowned, and the evening wise roses and gold, because, like adventurers bound, for a kingdom their faith could create, in a future of beauty untold, like hazardous mariners bound, from the haven and wharf of fate, on a voyage with happiness crowned, in our boat when the day is done, on the lift of the evening tide, I should steer for the heart of the sun, and sigh with my ebbing breath, be resolute, sweet, and my bride, we shall sink with the setting sun. And shelter our love and death, since our beautiful day is done. But now, while our hearts beat high, with youth and unfolding delight, and the honeymoon in the sky, at her zenith usurps the rain, of the day as well as the night, with the honeymoon in the sky, we steer for the shore again, while our bosoms with hope beat high. Through the tassled oats and the wheat, we march to the skylark's song, where the roses pallet and sweet, and delicate pomp parade, the precincts, the wild bees throng, where the winding byways, sweet with scent of the roses wade, through the flowing tide of the wheat. O hark from the meadows, O hear the burden the mower sings, the past how it hovers near, this utmost isle of the sea, where the stone on the sickle rings, the shadow we pass draws near, and the spirit of Eld said free, revives in the song we hear. End of Section 5 of the Testaments of John Davidson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Testament of John Davidson, read by Sean Kilpatrick. To know how all things are the infinite, imponderable ether that possessed illimitable space with tension, pure, spontaneous energy, the pristine state of matter and its last consummate doom. Before the galaxies with silver seemed the swart oblivion of the universe, or pearly nebula began to glow upon the sable bosom of the night, or any living nerve electric leapt to elementary ecstasy and most atoning recompense to fill my self ethereal fabric exquisitely spun, entranced in wreath of light and sound, the warp and wolf of matter, flesh and blood, a lyre of tuneful colors, every nerve, a strain of sphero music, body, mind, and soul, material intensity evolved from unseen atom, each a reservoir and ponderable treasury of power, infinitude condensed and garnered up in ions to be sifted, blunt, sublime, transmuted into life of every grade, lightening the sexes of eternity, become a group of chosen elements in flower and beast and capable and man of knowledge understanding rapture truth. Therefore it shook me when my senses lost the full material power of crystal vision and audience infinite that could outstair a million suns and happily engulf as in sea of cloud harmonic curves reverberant through the ether, fathom depths profound and subtle darknesses unplumbed by asterism, remote and shimmering, wave, comet, or meteorite, or shooting star resolved the discords of imagined spheres inharmonized a virgin galaxy, in purest planes arrest and deathly cleave irradiance everywhere from cadent fire in woe of blanched intolerant stars that burn, polluted flame, unbraiding prismal hues to stud and gem enameled firmaments and stain the welkin and the steep of space with shadowy tinctures, grip the tumult high that echoes through the vast unvaulted course interminable with a nebulae evolving constellations their spindless whirl and break it into rhythmic chords as light asunder bursts and blazoned intervals against refractive adamant or drops in jeweled tears before the cloudless sun so being unwirried of the universe as of myself and my supernal place. But faint with glory by my sound conceived and by my soul begotten in the rapt cohabitation with eternity I left my palace in the melky way my outlook in the skies and sought the earth for men must still descend to earth to die. None should outlive his power, I said, who kills himself subdues the conqueror of kings. Exempt from death is he who takes his life, my time has come, the native energy whereby I exercise fantastical immutability and in my own resemblance reproduce the plastic world. Beginning to relent abates the thrust and tension of my thought discharges love unwinds the poignant charm of living freeze imagination known eternity can find in lightning light or radiant soul that breaks atomic chrysalades unseen unthinkable but certain and innate to melt into the ether and to be transmuted to infinity again. We are the plunging fire the molten sea that gladdens well then rent the generous wolves we harbored in most willful fateful births predestined by ourselves before the world or time began and wholly answerable for had we not beyond all yay or nay escaped alive among the myriad germs devoutly squandered from abundant rains to dour a woman's body with delight we had not been. By my own will alone the ethereal substance which I am attained and now by my own sovereign will forgoes of consciousness and thus our men supreme no other living thing can choose to die this franchise and this high prerogative I show the world men are the universe aware at last and must not live in fear. Plays of the seasons padded bolstered up clustered and drenched in dieted and drugged or hateful victims of senility toothless and like an infant checked and schooled or in the dungeon of a sick room drain. By some to abuse and horror in their prime but when the tide of life begins to turn before the treason of the ebbing wave divulges refuse in the barren shore upon the very period of the flood stand out to see and bend our weathered sales against the sunset valiantly resolved to win the haven of eternal night. Ten lustres of authentic life compact and many a visit to the heaven of heavens had thus determined me so forth I sped upon the mountaintop to die alone at sunset on the mountain of my choice I stood above the cataflack of day and watched the quilted vapor harness heaven and chrysalite and ruby of countless hues unnamed unknown on thought of only guessed upon the moment of vicissitude and pulsing cadence which lofty winds unseen battalions swung their shining gales against me and across the hills behind with bridal bells appeal and vibrant tread went down into the gloaming and the night suddenly fear against me stumbling struck with heavy foot my heart that missed a pulse then beat upon my ribs as if to break the prison of humanity my blood like snow dredged water labored in my veins. My nerves as pithless as peeled rushes now and now as taught as harp springs flagged inert or hummed with agony my sight went out I strained on tiptoe to escape myself like one hung up at barely touches ground my arms flung forth my stiffened fingers spread repulsing death I fell and clutched the earth without a weapon or a potent drug my very will to die had seemed enough. To end the consciousness of matter shriined in me a while and so indeed it was but in the travail of it fierce revolt broke out with this intolerable thought thrust through me by the sunset and the wind deadlier than dying pains or fabled throes in hell or anguish actual in dungeons broached by vengeance lust of souls or lust of game. That being dead we neither see nor hear and beauty ceases to renew our blood with form and color light and harmony. Out of my swoon I wrestled the further rouse to live again by high remembrances being the first to understand himself I felt my life the universal will my death more terrible than death. In me more terrible than in all the world beside for when I die the universe shall cease to know itself a thought the tenebrous oblivion of the starless infinite the lightning eddied into nebulae systems and sons the earth and life and sex that I might see the beauty hear the music the loveliness which is the infinite that I might be and know and feel myself eternity incarnate in the powers material that eat and drink and love beget imagine labor think invent the multitudinous atonement knit in brain and blood in marrow seed and soul of all the substance of the universe. Wherefore I drove my vision through the world as in the turf my fingers dug I drew the winds sonorous tune into my ears as whirlpools suck the sea down drank the air in pregnant size and lusty bosomfuls and felt the mountain underneath me throb. Uplifted by this freshened will I stood erect again upon the mountaintop and looked about me rebeholding earth as though I had never seen it. In the west a range of regular of summits clear as polished ebony with giant notch dented the crimson shadow of the sun that faded into purple. Utmost heights immortal in romance with forests fledge and battlefields beneath keen crusted hung in air then the loomed uncharactered as dusk to darkness turned and sank into the ground when in the wakeful bosom of the night the slumbering landlady hushed. The monthly star whose silvery sorcery fills the tidal wave ascendant with the sun and hidden courts her interlunar festival observed and through the swarthy battlements no glance sidereal from any loophole fell. I breathed the darkness fragrant as a wine delivered from the leaves it laced my blood with night's material elixir old and mightier than magic. Subtly slaked the phoenix ashes of my thoughts affine their diverse elements and internet the myriad forbilled intellects that store the engine and the battery of the brain with power and powers eternity installed. The ganglion tissue long I stood entranced until a rumor in my quickened ears a resonance and noise of breathing woke of heavy pinions in a gripping step on earthly faint afar and sheath within the louder wind but heard with wonder heard and terror on the instant I divine divinity. My hands my soul is red with blood of gods and battle slain and now I thought some deity and adamant a courtred wheels against me drag and drawn from glowing new spell high or charioted by cyclopean craftsmanship and armed with thunders of celestial vengeance forged. In my great day and vigor of my prime no god could stand against me but the mood that drew me from my palace in the skies to die alone unmanned me was in truth the lowering of the flame of life that means surcease of strength so that I trembled. I who hitherto had sought divinity as champions seek co-rivals faintly hoped objectively hoped insidious now I would screen my presence not withstanding when the sounds heraldic of divine approach increased in menace though my tremor flashed again my old disdain of spirit and other world the cowardice of immaterial things I muttered when our days are nearly done. Our nation withered passion stale as splith of blood in shambles thought a net in tangling action and our sense corrupt would soul the pious title of decay then come the treacherous powers to daunt us gods that in the flood and torrent of our lives we left bewildered in their ruined feigns or tossed ashore in aisles forlorn or fought and overthrew if any durst on sea or land abide or on set face us then. Our nation with smooth effrontery empanopled in all their specious terrors sure that scorn can hurt us in our impotence a supercilious look with anguish pierce our naked hearts and lofty silence ring our flayed and bleeding vanity. The noise uncouth of supernatural flight archaic jangle of celestial gear rapacious step and breathing arrogant outstripped the winds sonorous pilgrimage till with the very neighborhood of dread the sheer immediacy of some divine appellants on slot power enough to brim a year's adventurous life from energies material within me disengaged in rudder your stains died deep my laboring heart we strung my bone. And reattuned my nerves to quarrel and to cope with the unseen in visionary essences be held forth as a wrestler steps I strode my hands advanced palm uppermost and raked the night with glances keen from bended brows discharged. Perconym undoubted now the braided sounds phantasmal violently throb and ring and swift crescendo as the visitant unknown wheeled up the mountain savage eyes like burning emeralds glared through vapors streaked with yellow flame from ruddy nostrils flung and on the instant while I held my breath still as the statue of a combatant about to grapple his antagonist dragon and chariot and chariteer swept past me. Clearly seen by dulcet light a molten crescent through crowning the brow superb of her trod the chariot floor with sandaled feet umber and gold locks and loose adornment clustered crescent held or streamed behind unchapleted one hand with easy manage curbed the dragon's flight. The other grasped the glittering spear her arms uncovered fair and firm as woman's flesh and rounded beauty shown her loose samar a fabric of the freshest mountain green rustled above her bosom and the wind wedged in between her thighs and frilled it close about her comely lake. She flung a look upon me as she passed her lips apart her pearly nostrils quivering with her speed and on her ardent countenance divine virginity mantling to see me there while yet her vivid eyes in secret smiled. She thinks herself unseen I guessed at once spelling my hands after her down the wind I shouted Hala Hectate I saw her swerve and pant like one thrust through that scarce for pain can breathe Hala again I cried Diana Artemis Selene ghost or goddess deity beheld Halt Halt she dropped the bridal rain she dropped her spear. She wheeled about and gripped in either hand the chariot sides devouring me with eyes that cracked their sockets eyebrows arch beneath alarm engraved upon her forehead wide her mouth to drink in wonder at a drought and every fiber of her godhead tense with utter most amazement thus she stood a breathing space until her eddying hair blinded her vision. Swiftly then she turned and snatched the bridal whispering the urgent word that rendered up the dragon to his speed I following hard behind shouldered the wind that like an unseen sighing a multitude of Preston swarmed upon me toughed and stoned with every step the dragon's talent showered his furnace breath in rhythmic blasts respired a ruddy gloom that lit his brindled name. His leather and opinions wide as Latin sails on curving yards of Berber pirates bent with steady motion winged the chariot dawn fluent upon its wording wheels that droned like mammoth bees and from the mountains skim the rotary purchase merely far outpaced I labored after hoping still an audience of the goddess of the night. For straight across the dragon's course a stream entangled in the mountains deeply clave a torturous plan with precipices ribbed with rocky cauldrons pools and waterfalls and testing fleeced with shaggy woods and dark with necromanic memories haunt and hold in faithful ages of unchristened things. Now if the goddess deems that there her flight may find an end in arbored secrecy I knowing every cavern nook and vault can take her unawares or if intense emotion of divinity be held after millenniums of enfranchisement where with invisibility endowed celestial being if perturbed she leaves the way to chance the briar and the thorn will soon ensnare her wheels. But when I changed on these presumptions to the measured stride suddenly chariot and charioteer cresting a knoll that broke the deep descent with upward impulse climbed against the wind and voyaging aloft from mountain cross to mountain lightly born on mighty vans and revivant indiscernible that wreathe the outstretched dragon in elastic coils of humming speed I watched as one who sees a miracle within a miracle. At length the crescent like a wandering moon in mundane paths astray twinkle that rest against a wooded swartness opposite my stance of wonder. Did their thinking not of hazard toil impediment or woe allotted all who fling themselves on chance I sped across the devious ravine and fording thrice the sluggish brook that seemed with whispered threat to haunt my way unlit and perilous down heedlessly and up by crumbling verges where the earth exhaled a spicy a spicy riddlance of nature's vet by scars of torrent stone by ivied cliffs thickets and mossy brinks and breaks of fern I reached the virgin deity's retreat a vaulted hollow in the mountainside within it grew the hawthorn and the ash by briar roses linked whose blossoms gleamed like shards of pearly lustre mirroring the dulcet light that shone there. Foxgloves piled their leaning campanilees about the groined embayment in the mountain somewhere near the lowly. Eglantine enriched the night with incense overhung by dewy boughs the crystal chariot stood its shafts of gold inclined its jeweled wheels at rest among the bracken. On a crag the goddess sat her molten crescent welling silver fire while at her feet the unharnessed dragon crouched. Goddess I cried ascending goddess hail but at my shout her guardian leapt up right the russet plates and crimson purple bronze emerald and topas hues that overlaid his sinuous body like a lattice bark glowed in the fury of his onslaught eyes loom. With the sombrest blaze of wrath his mane erect his sheathless talons curved his folded wings clanking against his hues he hurled himself upon me snorting flame my very heart grew pale my marrow froze I rolled my helpless eyes this way and that expecting death but in the chariot low spear celestial shrill the dragon made about to overwhelm me but I stopped and under thwart his overhanging bulk escaped and seized the weapon crying out and triumphed in articulate. Put down my spear the goddess said divinity affronted deepening her voluptuous tones to such a menace I had almost cast my life away with that her proper arm. Her proper arm but while her absolute command still rang in my enchanted ear the dragon bulked in desperate now fresh defiance breathed surging against me with his scalloped vans outspread in thunderous whirlwind like he whipped me up and shrouding me and over my head gnashing his teeth tossed high his wrinkled stout in act to grind my skull betwixt his jaws no room had I so closely held to strike but upward through his furrowed brisket rough wood stumps of wiry hair I dug and rocked. Begetting death devoutly as a groom begets a son until his wings relaxed affording ample liberty to drive the weapon home and through and out among his upper ribs and L beyond the chime he straddled blindly shrieking like a horse whose stable burns flounced hither tither tore his dripping breast and broke the shaft across wheeled round and whining hideously fell dead. The gorgeous colors of his plated hide burned out and left his carcass dull and gray as some forgotten lichen covered log. His dragon's blood with bitter fragrance laced the mountain air and like a smoldering fire crept scorching turf and fern. The battle won I leaned against the chariot and addressed the goddess faint but resolute to dare another hazard wanderer of the night. I am the foe of all the gods. I slew Apollo Thor. Adenas behold your dragon dead. Wherewith shall you and I contend? I spoke thus high and hard aware that deities are daunted even as men by arrogance unlooked for and abrupt. And surely for a space the goddess still enthroned upon the moss-grown crag like one whose purpose and whose speech are both forestalled, lowered at me with a baffled look of hate and non turning her gaze upon her dead attendant. Fixedly she left her seat beside the body knelt and stroked awhile the heavy mane inert and withered now. She sighed. She looked to heaven. She looked to earth. She searched the horny, leaden reptile eyes. She listened close for any sounds of life with such sad gesture, such abandonment of deity forlorn and so divine a tenderness that I forbore to look. At last she cast my way, a wounded frown and whispered in a heel-less voice of woe, why did you kill him? I answered, drawing near I should have known you now a goddess. Wherefore now, she asked, and stood confronting me, I said, because idea of calamity to them or theirs, the gods conceived not loftily she said. Loftily she asked, what can you know of gods? All men I answered, know the god who made the world, then killed his son in ecstasy of grief, a wanton slaughter that destroyed himself, when he beheld the pleasure of his hands, that seemed so lovely in the making turn to repine murder, madness, death, and hell. Swiftly she said, and wistfully, and wan, you did not like that god? And on me showered the chest and luster of her mournful eyes, that with her crescent languid from dismay a dusky local twilight interwoven, nor any god, I said. Then softly she, and with the naity of divinity, nor goddess, and I answered, feigning scorn, nor goddess. But she heeded not, and knelt again beside her dead protector, why? With duller anguish than before she wailed, why did you kill him? In my own defense, I answered, like a child you prayed as gods are want to do. On me unarmed you loosed your champion, I encountered him, and won. Would you have had me die without a blow? You should be dead, she said, in rose and wrath, the still blue lightning blazing in her eyes, while ruddy fire, her crescent overbrimmed. You had beheld me, all who see me die, and you shall die. If looks could kill, I said, I should be now a cinder at your feet, but I am stronger than the strongest gods. You stronger than the gods, what are you then? She asked her mouth so near me that her voice embalmed the breath I spoke with. I am he that was to come, I said. But are you god? She cried, her eyes clashing on mine like flints. Not god, I told her, man, but such a man as was not in the world before my time, and cannot be again. One man is like another, she replied, the world is full of men. This was the only dragon left, now all your nation could atone for him. I said, bethink you, there are men and men, how many men have had the power to see your virgin deity. But for, she said, end me an Actaeon, Orion, you. Know you the fate of those whose second sight divined me in the forest or on the hill. I know it well, I said, do you indeed? Then let us hear what mortals say of that, she cried with withering malice. Orion now, what is the tale of him? He, having heard how the sweet goddess of the liberal womb had honored and delighted chosen men, determined, on a hardier enterprise, seduction of a willing deity, being for him not perilous enough. Wherefore he swore a stygian oath to see, to capture, and to ravish you, the chaste divinity whom not a god dare touch. His savage lust it was that couched his eyes and showed you naked in your secret bower, about to dawn your hunting habit fierce as that insanguated bore of Caledon, but you unslipped it with atolia upon your hallowed privacy. He crashed the thicket through, seeing to be seen and at the sight of you at once to die, for in the bosom of his wicked hope your glittering instantaneous arrow saying infallible as light. So ended he, the mighty hunter whose renowned adorns instell her script at the figured vault of heaven. She scald upon my version, but said, end of Actaeon, then, what tale is told? A wanton boy, he hunted you with dogs and tracked you to your bath. Your silver bow beyond your reach, the magic of your glance undid his nature, and his mongrels tore him down and killed him for a rascal stag. And Damien's fate, you must not speak of him. But I replied, and Damien and I pursued you not, but by your own design or by incommunicable power described you. Hush, she said, as though I had profaned her person, such rebuke was in her voice, such distance in her eyes, such reverence in her motion, such an awe upon her face, I understood instead with equal inspiration. You may know how great I am at this, that I shall tell Damien's story swiftly, yet religiously, and with such warranty that you will think your recollection speaks. You loved him, goddess, with a woman's love, him only, in your monthly glory, him in all your shining centuries, in all your sweetest millenniums of virginity. One night, on Latmos, as he watched his sheep, he sang a wistful diddy to the moon, fragrant with budded passion and the rich account of opening manhood. In your heart that cherished silvery, as maidens should, a delicate, discarnate thought of him, the golden message of his sonnet, flowered in roses, read his blood, and ere you knew your deity and raptured, and had put him on the beauty visible that maddened men. A moment in his sight, your lovely disappeared, a woman's naked godhood stained with blushes of desire and faded knot, but in his fancy groove, Olympus saw you instantly, and jove before your haste had comment of your voice, knowing your plea accorded it. He shall not die, jove said, had he beheld you by an empires will reprieve had been impossible, that once unwanted ecstasy should overpower my virgin daughter pleases fate in me, therefore the gift bestowed on him unsought a vision of impassioned deity shall be endymion's abiding joy. He in eternal slumber shall retain eternal youth, and in his continence eternally the rapture of his dream. You laid him in a cave, and every night untouched, unkissed with maiden vehemnance adored him even to lunacy. Your whole divine existence spirit sex entranced in his entrancement, and your daily thoughts as through the carrion woods, you still outstripped the swiftest nymph that followed in the chase, were with indium always poignantly transposed by the sweet subtlety of jove's decree, that made you the beatify to behold her nightly, and remember by day of happiness your image gave the dreamer you the virgin heroine of the eternal miracle of love. Alas, she said, and sank upon the ground, the miracle was not eternal. Him, edemmion, oh, my caverned treasure, him I have not seen. Of him I have not dared to think with intimate remembrances for many and many an empty century. Faint as a glowworm now, her crescent showed a wan and fitful luster. Size profound she shook and rent her bosom that she seemed about to fade and crumble in my sight. Although the ruthless foe of all the God, the instinct of the flesh and ominous thought, eluding thought constrained me, and I vowed she should not perish thus. Two crystal ewers, a golden platter, and I get cup adjusted in a frame by Vulcan's craft of old equipped the chariot, no device for ease of travel lacked, had stirred a vague conjecture when I saw them. Now I knew the goddess's Olympian larder, choice and frugal in the golden dish for one pelucid pitcher flayed with gems, turquoise and ruby, jasper, opal, pearl. I shook a portion of ambrosia, sliced in mansions of a mouthful daintily and from the other that bore about its neck a wreath of emerald ruddy tourmaline. Topaz, an amethyst, I brimmed the cup with nectar, and the pitchers both appeared after the service replenished as at first. I pondered on the marvel but a sigh as of the wind among eolian strings deep shuttering through the night upon my knees beside the goddess brought me speedily. She ate and drank, and with the sacrament of food, the universal pledge of life and health, her virgin deity regained the power, the passion, the celestial looks that filled the picture of Endymion's dream, and in the mountain vault her crescent made a golden day the darkness thronged upon. Then taste, she said, the nurture of the gods, and handed me the platter and the cup. Having appeased her appetite, repaired her vigor, and assuaged her grief with less than half my offering, so restorative to every faculty of sense and soul was that ethereal fair. No words can tell the relish of ambrosia, represent aroma unimagined out of heaven until I drank the nectar lips divine had taste. Such a supper never manned before me palleted, and none again shall eat in time or in eternity. My high material nature hitherto had vanquished all divinity that dared encounter it, but now to this innate supremacy no spirit could withstand the food and wine of other world conjoined whatever in their supernatural breed advantaged gods against me. By the hand I took my chance companion of the night and from that battle place with dragons blood perfumed and smoldering sword we passed beneath a lowly architrave of banded boughs. Thence, winding by a path where briars caught her green samar, we gained a bosked bode of solitude sequestered from the wind that hummed a tune without and rounded off the tingling silence there from all the world an arbor to possess a goddess in. With roses hung and sweet with eglutine that sweetens all the mountains tawny flank. The deep intolerant sexual rankers stored in men who innocently undertake the death of women in the name of love and ruin beauty that beauty may endure from age to age augmented wetted fired by a paradiscy and a refreshment life itself is melting mouthfuls and its gold and potable elixir of the gods incensed me with the malignant joy to think that I should hear deflower the undeflowered immortal blossom of virginity chasing the chastity of heaven with love invade the roseal bower of deity the very maiden head of maiden head. But she for boating doom withdrew her hand and set a space between. What then is this she asked dismay and doubt in voice and eye I thought you led me to a temple near some sanctuary some porch some ruined feign. This hidden lodge and magic nook of old inhabited by nameless gods uncouth progenitors of deities whose rights infected still with horror daunts my soul celestial though it be. Conduct me hence unhappy mortal air primeval fate betray us utterly and ancient woe entangle both in undivine despair the latest tenants of this secret shade they fill it now I said our dreams of mine my place of inspiration in my youth my refuge study haunt and hermitage the ground is hallowed goddess here can come no horror only beauty and delight inhabit mansions youth has sanctified what was foretold the prophet who was he Proteus announced it centuries ago so many empty centuries ago she panted paused and paled her godhead all aghast as in the sapphire eyes arose terrific memories from the depth of time oh and the idle sweetness of the year she caught her breath and cried the endless years a myriad summers for I followed still the scent of roses fate predicted past me by it seemed I never gave it thought or if it lingered with the pageantry roaming the background of my tranquil mind was merged in legend an Olympian lore my mother most beloved the light of him whose lust immortalized mortality leto sweet breeder of the sun and moon hushed me to sleep with when the world was young in golden delos by the Ionian sea what dead prediction buried in your heart revives with such an import ominous not you she cried not you in violent wrath you are not he the prophet warned me of some like and throw in borrowed manhood some detestable fanatic or nympho lept or parasite of fame like him that burnt my temple beautiful in a fussus for I remember your insensate brag that fell at first unheeded on my ears repeat it now you killed them come you killed apollo Thor adonises swear it you that dared not face a dragon without my spear contend with gods and like the bridal bells imagined an elfin cavalcade her laughter filled the night with ringing scorn I overthrew those three apollo Thor adonisius temperately I spoke inured to tell all misprision both of God is n men her sudden anger passed for in her heart the teeth of fear had met how can one do a thing insupperable she asked no man could overcome Apollo at any time and know you not my brother vanished long before renown went west or north of Rome I overcame him but adonisius first then Thor I said adonisius never he she told me ended when apollo did but had that sullen monarchs rule endured even you with all your boasted second sight could not have seen still less encountered him the wearer of the helm invisible I said speaking like fate there is no term no brink no confine to my vision he who can spy electrons in their dance atomic and delight his burnished gaze in depths of ether fathomless till now by sight of God or men was never yet deceived by artifice archaic cask of darkness deity impure obscene and skulking usage neither hid nor helped your somber God of hell when once I tracked him out his hateful presence on the earth was known to me from boyhood by the high poetic gift I gave unerringly when manly years to genius added power I sought and found him by the looser inshore haunting the entrance of the underworld once far he might not stray for fear of death that was his minion once in countless shapes unknown when he with Joven Neptune ruled their trivial universe he saw me come and laughed his hellish laugh for centuries a rarity and that my coming caused the last to ring his fallen countenance he grasps his helm upon a willow hung whose shade obscured the gloomy port of hell and shambled towards me doubting not to see terror and headlong flight but my strong tread advanced on him echoed loud as doom on the hollow roof of Tartarus and daunted him whose office it had been an atomic function to appeal mankind throughout the ages of his power insanity the goddess cried a wild sacrilegious lie I saw him quail I said and when she moved to speak again continued my recital hardly he stood a moment swithering then he dawned his head piece and came at me with dispatch had I remembered Vulcan's magic gift such power as fantasy I might have failed to see Adonius helmeted but lust of battle so obsessed my mind that hell's belated champion changed nor shape nor bulk until my wrath destroyed him utterly for when he noted in my fervid gaze that I beheld him still and feared him not despite the cyclopean sorcery of unseen omnipresence subtly forged that once with Neptune's triple spear and Jove's compelling thunderbolt ordained the world irrational terror inhibited his power darkened his vision and delivered him to my remorseless hands I gripped his throat and strangled him I knelt upon his breast and crushed his ribs I battered helm and head to powder on the stones and trot and stamped him down into the dust and put an end forever to the nether deity forthwith I plucked the brazen gates of hell from off their adamantine hinges tossed them far into the middle sea and took the facile way by my heroic deed to become at last I thought a thoroughfare mistaking the consummate consequence for men both break and make beyond their aim yet trembling I went down the ever nine slope so dreadful was the gloom the roar and wine so shrill and shattering penetrant and harsh the fume of charred humanity so foul so noisome and so sulfurous the anti corruption of the air time out of mine unwinnowed unrenewed while such a sense intolerable of age long agonies invaded every nerve that the command all hope abandoned me who enter here sunk in the oceans with the gates of hell and scribed itself upon the stagnant smoke and glittering fire the image of my doubt but soon the tide of power within me rose to flood again and when my sight attuned to darkness dimly dipered and guilt by withered beams and luster and decay the relics and despair of ruined light began to search the tract of hell it seemed at first as though the place were empty voice of woe and carnal smell of burning all hypnotic fancy and the realm itself so spacious once a cavern in the earth for antiquaries only and even they should have discovered there are no vast machines and horrible inventions of a God's revenge and of section six of the testaments of John Davidson section seven of the testaments of John Davidson the testament to John Davidson read by Sean Kilpatrick this is a Libra box recording all Libra box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit to Libra box dot org when I derided you divinity adorable above all adoration my thoughts I said were wandering far astray in labyrinths where human doubt devours the first born of the mind now I return to earth to heaven and hell nor Jove nor God did ever speak more truly than I and this I tell you not a gnome or a filmy elf demon or angel hero deity can ever cease to be they and their realms romantic fairy lands elysium bliss and bail the people the universe of man's fantastical creation as the scope of vision trebly harnessed for the strife against encroaching distances against my newton is still dividing and the war that spectral colors wage upon the stars in conquest of their nature substance growth I say as vision widen deep and struggle off extending everywhere domains imaginative and unsearchable by keenest lens or prison resolvent past beyond material can advancing swift as thought or as the constellations speed forever in goalless infinite above the highest heaven your palace shines with tenderness light tither you will ascend when you with me fulfill your destiny and win high welcome for the gods await your certain advent in their new abode I doubt you I distrust you all you spoke I thought allowed affirming crudely things debatable to clear my turbid mind work with your astounding presence here the gathered draws the slag and scoria scummed I drain a noble metal unalloyed and cast it in the very mold of fate alone and helpless you have none but me you must believe and I must speak the truth how shall I know the truth yourself I said being divine our test enough reject the thing you doubt without a second thought then what must I believe do you believe the gods exist I asked I neither doubt in my divinist moments that the gods exist nor doubt I shall at last attain the lofty home of my celestial folk what would you do to bring that time about what can I do she asked what have you left undone the meaning of your maidenhood abandoned here without a token sent from any heaven the meaning even this that deity neglected on the earth contemned denied or utterly misknown since Golgotha and the debacle there begun is yet again to be the world's unquestioned glory in a golden age wherewith the times Saturnian shall compare as winter's palace gleam and drizzling sky with the steep sun of summer and its rose my long terrestrial exile means a new beginning of divinity on earth tell me of that the goddess cried her eyes her crescent luminous with hope tell tell the wonder the delight the truth of that it could not be I said nor is it high and holy that the everlasting youth fluorescent in the icor of the gods should bloom infertile through millennial years unhappy women or it well may be the happiest can continue maidenhood till death at last if flowers the scentless weed for women wither and their summertime is not so long a war of continents that all must yield but with the unfading gods who live in the eternal moment time has not to do their beauty and their strength renew themselves with every ardent pulse desire augments throughout eternity what are you going to say that all the change in both worlds was from Calvary till now the elaborate accomplishment of fates mature device our casual meeting here is this a horror or a glorious thing the goddess asked the night a glorious thing I from my mansion in the milky way come down to earth to die you on your beat nocturnal round the summer world patrol the frontier of the north and low we meet and we shall mingle not even with higher God than God would I unite my deity no but with man with me you shall unite the gods have paired with women and begot beloved sons and daughters dynasties divine but unending and beyond restoral banished let a greater race than any hitherto adored in heaven in Asgard or Olympus my guardian dead no spear no arrow god oh any god in any heaven or hell limbo or land forgotten here and aid me it is I virginity your flameclad maidenhood so highly feared so holily the scene the innocent goddess whom the gods themselves adored and oh sweet stars my bowermades long agon why are you hid tonight unveil the very eyes of heaven are closed I said that none may see us I shall see you I goddess but by you I would be seen my eyes in your unfathomed orbs deep sunk as in a tide of glory never she cried show the proud legend of my life the high achievement of millennial purity immortal flower of maidenhood be turned to laughter tarnished and undone and rent and rifled by a man or by a beast or by a devil vampire ghost or ghoul no fiercest strongest subtlest man alive dare touch me go I bid you go your wrath betrays your ill assurance in your heart installed by jove when he begot you love a dreaming world long time enchanted wakes in uttermost amazement passion stirs the curtains of your mind are drawn in light not of the moon that borrows daily fire and nightly freezes it but sevenfold light eternal floods your thought clear as the sun the secret of a celestial rune dawns upon your wonder for the sin of heaven that sapped Olympian power and guest till now was lodged in you the cult of maidenhood virginity is never will never be divine the worship of an incomplete existence of one half of a being sin unpardonable and inconceivable as soon as known but this very sin the unhollowed worship of virginity achievement of the automatic fates you were preserved the maid and in your sex myriads of virgin years have so matured essential deity so burdened every load with golden ore of love and so fulfilled your beauty with the sorcery of heaven that he who sees you needs you with a need no mortal can endure and you goddess you in unreserved divinity or death she gazed into the darkness she rung her hands her bosom heaved her bosom thronged with size but now her soul yielded and I knew that being a goddess she would give herself without another thought than to be mine look goddess look I said aware how love had rolled the years up like a debt discharged erased across hatched shadows of old time and lit my face with youth truly to love a woman will transfigure any man but I desiring deity became the avatar of deity's desire she looked and on the instant stood entranced then slowly from her lips her meaning poured like organ music greater than the gods oh man immortal immortality for your delight for your supreme delight I kept my maiden head without a doubt I know it in my sex and in my soul my womb will team with daughters fairer far than their most happy mother with many sons as great as he whose love so deified will found a mightier dynasty of gods than any in the records of all the heavens justice and gird and do my chastity preserved throughout Millenniums at a cost now I may say it now that sudden fate unites my virgin not oh at a cost incalculable of sleepless centuries and midnight madness that the muffled skies concealed from gods and men that pallid dream and Demian and Latmian cave oh that tender and sweet and beautiful a thing to tell about for slander must be fed in heaven and earth masking forbidden lust that might have horrified the world with birds more heinous than Chimera or Minotaur had not occasion still in opportune undone the evil thought at such a cost the maiden treasure of my deity was kept for you to plunder every pulse exalts and every nerve my bosom swells already at the thought of sucklings there my babes upon my breast but this comes first the sum and harmony of every joy that I shall suffer and that you shall wreck sweet vengeance for millennial chastity that my long lonely passion will be shared with one who loves me and is by me beloved the bracken of our couch our bridal sheets her green samar by her divinity spread the while she wished to hide and would not hide her tender shuttering sighs her flower like smiles that bloomed in sweet succession with crystal tears for dew drops and dazzling blood that welled in momentaneous surges and overcame her face her neck her bosom with a tide where in as in the mirror of the wave as unseen dawn its rosy shadow through she was the virgin goddess of the night and she lay down with me and in my arms she sacrificed the chastity of heaven and swooned with happiness and whispered close I see my palace on the highest height the one you told me of thither will we so stealthily when our first boy is born and take with sudden wonder all my kin that was the burden of her nuptial song until the tumult of her own delight invaded all her being then oh then her molten crescent dripped with honeyed fire a light to love by hand we needed light with fragrant kisses like a magic cup forever brimming with the wine of love her mouth was at my lips her golden voice and murmurs and unworded rapture told voluptuous secrets of our rich embrace and over us the moonless starless night a velvet coverlet of darkness spread but when her soul was satiated with love a little while before the morning broke wanton she grew and would not be appeased although her crescent waned and in its gloom her eyes and eyelids withered and her face grew haggard with the ashen stain of death yet would she cling to me when hungry sense alone alive and take me take me love or else I die she saw her arms and limbs about me ribbon like a serpent's coils once when a momentary lull reprieve the travail of her body she shrieked loud anathema a man has conquered me the end has come and sufferable hell begin again and disembowel the earth with hotter fire than any stolen from heaven to be a living sepulcher of pain for that pernicious prophet whose presage sly gods vanished gods dead gods I heeded not because it was to be then at my ear and through her grinding teeth save me from death she said by love save me from death by love such as being the tragic loom of it and she and I the warp and wolf I still renewed the anguish that was ecstasy at first but I drained my love in one resolved embrace her fire went out her deity decayed and by the sullen clouded dawn that dredged the sky with dim diffusive dust there vanished from my sight a carrion shape with shriveled dugs rye mouth and posture rose a naked egg on lewdness bent with shrunk veins empty minds suspended will scarce had I noted veils and shreds of mist hanging upon the mountains and the woods and through my marrow felt the morning air like curdling venom steal when death came down and brought about tremendous punishment for my seduction of the goddess lust indulged to frenzy self deceit and a dark betrayal of the ethereal universe without a paying I died but shrieking waked in the last hell remaining hell unknown to men before my visit appalling hell the hell of deity where other world intolerable agony endured although the instantaneousness of hell extorted sudden outcry yet the thought that immaterial falsehood of the spirit had not escaped but that the gods themselves a fire year flame a fiercer torture new than any penalty infernal dealt the human victims of their wrath divine inventors patrons connoisseurs of hell was as a drop of water on my tongue a cord of music and a breath of wind amid the dismal noise the withering heat the awful restlessness the live despair beside me on the threshold the goddess stood as young as full of zest and as divine as when she passed me on the mountaintop I also in the splendor of my youth entered the dread inferno of the gods for that the anguish there might still surpass the utmost pain in every other hell the spirit and strength of all the denzians restored at once were to the height maintained by the pure flame they breathe the atmosphere being also nurture and stimulant and one exhaustive torment of that shrine of woe that all the essences of other world should breathe should feed on hell like plants on air and should become in every artery nerve secretion organ bone and muscle hell and sufferable hell was the supreme distinction the redundancy superb and hellishness that made the hell of the gods preeminent hell but over and above the general torture native in the air so stringent and imbuing that the might combine the majesty and pride of gods the highest Jove, Poseidon Mulsipper, Ormuzd the Araman, Woden Surtur, Mars could not have born in silence a moments throw each individual from the daintiest elf that fed on perfume once and bathed in dew to Cyclopean figures vast of yore the armories and farriers of the gods endured the unendurable impaled against a towering cliff of adamant sheer as a waterfall and smooth as glass broad as the bastion of an island realm and topaz hewed by reflex of the flame that filled the wide and lofty vault of hell its atmosphere impalement manifold the pegs and bolts the hooks the skewers and beams being of the soul of metal an element unknown on earth that where it pierces lives an aching life metallic in pain itself and to the wounded spirit imparting power transcendent to experience agonies that felt less keenly with a single paying had ended every god pain or prone the fairies cobalt dwarfs by pins and nails transfixed like butterflies and beetles screamed with stretched mouths wings abuzz and wriggling limbs and though they wrenched and rung their bodies they and every sufferer there incessantly the puncture of the impalement sucked the stake like a fierce mouth which was the energy constrictive in the magic metal lodged titans and the thursies huge dropped from the height on ganches pined such groups barbs and spikes as on the walls of orient cities clutched the mangled malefactor dying long in hideous misery through the bowels thrust hooked by a leg and in the shoulders griped the storm leviathan enormous thyrum terrific anguish from his cavernous maw continually beside him hung uncouthly by the head his eye hole pierced by other malice then the wandering greeks his bulk contorted immanly trust on giant prongs that dug through either thigh and curving gashed his midriff ocean's sun the cloud high polyphemus writhed and roared upon a skewer and through their navels stuck Vulcan and Mars with venus wedged between bellow discordant frenzy as they bit and clawed each other Juno stitched to jove four persons in the godhead the sire, the sun, the holy spirit and the evil one the faculty of hell within me cried and in the instant though that instant seemed eternity quadrupled so intense my fourfold agony became the last of all the hells and the most terrible desisted holy and I stood once more alone upon the mountain of my choice and saw the northern dawn break the world the mechanism of automatic fate brought it about that when I thought to die eternally I died to live again thus in my night adventure and my death I purged the world of the last remnant left of other world the hideous hell of the gods of virgin worship and in myself of god pernicious slander of material truth so terribly avenged in the last hell and thus I made the world a fit abode for greatness and the men who yet may be and can myself with joy become again the mountains and the ocean the winds the flowers the life and death and fear and love and hope and tender sorrow and heavy grief and all humanity and all that thinks and is remaining still the conscious mystery thrown among the stars with systems round beset by throngs of constellations haunted disks gigantic looming whites on every hand and married globes whose orbits intertwine whose burnished lights distinct with diverse stains revolve about each other deep in space saffron with sapphire emerald with ruby red and purple stars with topaz doubles speared or wonderful as instruments attuned to some new ravishment of keen accord in virgin gold and lilac burning bright a stellar passion of harmonious fire I dare not must not die I am the sight and hearing of the infinite in me matter fulfills itself before me none beheld or heard imagined thought or felt and though I make the mystery known to men it may be none hereafter shall achieve the perfect purpose of eternity it may be that the universe attains self-knowledge only once when I cease to see and hear imagine think and feel the end may come and matter satisfied devolve once more through wanton change and tides of slow relapse sun's systems galaxies back to ethereal oblivion pure accomplished darkness might immaculate augmenting everlastingly in space me therefore it besiems while life endures to haunt my palace in the melky way and into music change the tumult high that echoes through the vast unvaulted courts interminable where the nebulae evolving constellations their spindles whirl me it besiems to take my joy in heaven revealing glory by my soul conceived and by my soul be gotten in the rapt cohabitation with eternity epilogue the last journey I felt the world a spinning on its nave I felt it shearing blindly around the sun felt the time had come to find a grave I knew it in my heart my days were done I took my staff in hand I took the road and wandered out to seek my last abode hearts of gold and hearts of lead sing it yet in sun and rain heal and tow from dawn to dusk round the world and home again oh long before the burr were steeped for malt and long before the grape was crushed for wine the glory of the march without halt the triumph of a stride like yours and mine was known to folk like us who walked about to be the sprightliest cordial out and out folk like us with hearts that beat sing it too in sun and rain heal and tow from dawn to dusk round the world and home again my feet are heavy now but on I go my head erect beneath the tragic years the way is steep but I would have it so and dusty but I lay the dust with tears though none can see me weep alone I climb the rugged path that leads me out of time out of time and out of all singing yet in sun and rain heal and tow from dawn to dusk round the world and home again deeds all done in songs all sung while others chant in sun and rain heal and tow from dawn to dusk round the world and home again End of section 7 of the Testaments of John Davidson