“O all things fair to sate my various eyes! O shapes and hues that please me well! O silent faces of the Great and Wise, My Gods, with whom I dwell![34] “O God-like isolation which art mine, I can but count thee perfect gain, What time I watch the darkening droves of swine That range on yonder plain.[34] “In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin, They graze and wallow, breed and sleep; And oft some brainless devil enters in, And drives them to the deep.”[34] Then of the moral instinct would she prate, And of the rising from the dead, As hers by right of full-accomplish’d Fate; And at the last she said: “I take possession of man’s mind and deed. I care not what the sects may brawl, I sit as God holding no form of creed, But contemplating all.”[35] Full oft[36] the riddle of the painful earth Flash’d thro’ her as she sat alone, Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, And intellectual throne. And so she throve and prosper’d: so three years She prosper’d: on the fourth she fell,[37] Like Herod,[38] when the shout was in his ears, Struck thro’ with pangs of hell. Lest she should fail and perish utterly, God, before whom ever lie bare The abysmal deeps of Personality,[39] Plagued her with sore despair. When she would think, where’er she turn’d her sight, The airy hand confusion wrought, Wrote “Mene, mene,” and divided quite The kingdom of her thought.[40] Deep dread and loathing of her solitude Fell on her, from which mood was born Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood Laughter at her self-scorn.[41] “What! is not this my place of strength,” she said, “My spacious mansion built for me, Whereof the strong foundation-stones were laid Since my first memory?” But in dark corners of her palace stood Uncertain shapes; and unawares On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, And horrible nightmares, And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame, And, with dim fretted foreheads all, On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, That stood against the wall. A spot of dull stagnation, without light Or power of movement, seem’d my soul, ’Mid onward-sloping[42] motions infinite Making for one sure goal. A still salt pool, lock’d in with bars of sand; Left on the shore; that hears all night The plunging seas draw backward from the land Their moon-led waters white. A star that with the choral starry dance Join’d not, but stood, and standing saw The hollow orb of moving Circumstance Roll’d round by one fix’d law. Back on herself her serpent pride had curl’d. “No voice,” she shriek’d in that lone hall, “No voice breaks thro’ the stillness of this world: One deep, deep silence all!” She, mouldering with the dull earth’s mouldering sod, Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame, Lay there exiled from eternal God, Lost to her place and name; And death and life she hated equally, And nothing saw, for her despair, But dreadful time, dreadful eternity, No comfort anywhere;