THE MYSTIC

Published in the U.K. Vanity Fair

London, England

22 July 1908

(page 105)

(The Philosopher Heracleitus and his disciple Chrysippus in their travels come

upon a company sleeping after their revels.)

                                   Heracleitus.

Look, my darling, and confess

Life on flame of loveliness!

                                   Chrysippus.

Master! Master! how fairy fond

Is yonder maid like a lily-frond!

Let us lies on the moss by the spring, let us share

In their silence serene, the languor rare!

For oh! my lover, I never did see

So goodly a company.

                                   Heracleitus.

Wait but a moment—stand apart,

Revolving the light in thine innermost heart!

Content not the soul with the skin of the grape.

But the fume of the juice shall inform its shape

With a truer sense than the eye and the ear

Make to appear!

                                   Chrysippus.

Verily, master, I obey.

I travel the exalted way.

I pierce the sense, I gain the goal:—

Distil the essence of the soul—

                                   Heracleitus.

I shroud thee in the web of wool.

I lift the burden of the bull.

Lion and eagle! dart ye forth

Into the cold clime of the North,

Where past the star that points the pole

Rests the unstirred axis of the soul.

                                   Chrysippus.

Hear then! By Abrasax! the bar

Of the unshifting star

Is broken—lo! Asar!

My spirit is wrapt in the wind of light;

It is whirled away on the wings of night.

Sable-plumed are the wonderful wings,

But the silver of moonlight subtly springs

Into the feathers that flash with the pace

Of our flight to the violate bounds of space.

Time is dropt like a stone from the stars.

Space is a chaos of broken bars.

Being is merged in a furious flood

That rages and hisses and foams in the blood.

See! I am dead! I am passed, I am passed

Out of the sensible world at last.

I am not. Yet I am, as I never was,

A drop in the sphere of molten glass

Whose radiance changes and shifts and drapes

The infinite soul in finite shapes.

There is light, there is life, there is love, there is sense

Beyond speech, beyond song, beyond evidence.

There is wonder intense, a miraculous sun,

As the many are molten and mixed into one

With the heat of its passion; the one hath invaded

The heights of its soul, and its laughter is braided

With comets whose plumes are the galaxies

Like winds on the night’s inaccessible seas.

Oh master! my master! nay, bid me not ride

To the heaven beyond heaven; for I may not abide.

I faint: I am frail; not a mortal may bear

The invisible light, the abundance of air.

I fail; I am sinking: O Thou, be my friend!

Bear me up! Bear me up! Bear me up to the end!

Now! Now! In the heart of the bliss beyond being

The None is involved in the One that, unseeing,

Dashes its infinite splendour to death

Beyond light, beyond love, beyond thought, beyond breath,

Ah! but my master! the death of the sun—

Break, break, the last veil! It is done—it is done!

He falls as one dead, upon the grass.

Aleister Crowley.