Many are the doors of the spirit that lead Into the inmost shrine: And I count the gates of the temple divine, Since the god of the place is God indeed. And these are the gates that God decreed Should lead to his house:--kisses and wine, Cool depths of thought, youth without rest, And calm old age, prayer and desire, The lover's and mother's breast, The fire of sense and the poet's fire. But he that worships the gates alone, Forgetting the shrine beyond, shall see The great valves open suddenly, Revealing, not God's radiant throne, But the fires of wrath and agony. VILLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM. Up from the darkness on the laughing stage A sudden trap-door shot you unawares, Incarnate Tragedy, with your strange airs Of courteous sadness. Nothing could assuage The secular grief that was your heritage, Passed down the long line to the last that bears The name, a gift of yearnings and despairs Too greatly noble for this iron age. Time moved for you not in quotidian beats, But in the long slow rhythm the ages keep In their immortal symphony. You taught That not in the harsh turmoil of the streets Does life consist; you bade the soul drink deep Of infinite things, saying: "The rest is naught." DARKNESS. My close-walled soul has never known That innermost darkness, dazzling sight, Like the blind point, whence the visions spring In the core of the gazer's chrysolite ... The mystic darkness that laps God's throne In a splendour beyond imagining, So passing bright. But the many twisted darknesses That range the city to and fro, In aimless subtlety pass and part And ebb and glutinously flow; Darkness of lust and avarice, Of the crippled body and the crooked heart ... These darknesses I know. MOLE.