are brother!
Bearer of the cross of God!
Your destiny the lodestar of our epoch,
Your life our rood-littered road of the Lord.
Arise, awake, halt not
Till the goal is reached;
Raise high the Host of freedom
Blare the trumpet of light.
"Suffer you, for the world to rejoice";
"Die" so they "can live";
Live that you may bring the light
To the meeting place of the West and East.
17
In the perfumed shrine of love,
Where burns memory's exhaustless incense
From the irridescent thurible of hope,
On the altar and couch of my heart
Rest thy limbs, O, god of my soul.
Drink of the unquenchable draught of caresses;
Tear the flowers of my dreams and fancies;
Scatter the sacred petals of my passion
To the four winds of thy rejoicing.
Thy rejoicing, that one festival of the High Gods,
Where no offering that I bring ever be too dear,
Where no soul burnt in the fire of senses can perish;
Where no suffering fails to be mother and daughter of joy.
Take all, great God among these Gods:
The pearl of my woman-soul buried in deeps of passion,
The coral-wreath from the ocean of my bleeding heart;
And ravish with exquisite merciless touch
The one star in my heaven that has led thee hither--
My life's eternity in this worship of an hour.
18
THE INFIRM BEGGAR SINGS
Broken and bruised by the hand of Fate,
Dark night, my staff,
Leaning on its shadowy strength I walk
Toward thee, my God.
Thy crescent my e'er-present friend;
Thy wind, thy voice,
Calls me to go on without end
To thy star that my soul hath seen.
The hour is black, my road unbuilt;
My beggar's song
I cannot sing; yet, thou knowest,
For thy love I long!
I come, O Lord! broken and battered
To thy world where sorrow is not.
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Kiss, my love, kiss
My burning, breaking being;
So when cold death
Will put out the light
In some wilderness
Of far forsaken life
Might each kiss blossom
Into a lotus and a Shephali.[2]
And in the desolate hours
Of loneliness of traveling
In the dusk of despair
One petal of these
Will cheer the vagrant souls
That tread the pathway
Of love's forsaking.
Or, when Death will sow
This Soul of mine
On the lake-shore of sorrow,
Like a weeping wi
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