Night is the true democracy. When day Like some great monarch with his train has passed, In regal pomp and splendor to the last, The stars troop forth along the Milky Way, A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray, On heaven's broad boulevard in pageants vast, And things of earth, the hunted and outcast, Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea, Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start, And specters of dead joy, that shun the light, And impotent regrets and terrors blind, Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night. The Mystic. [Cale Young Rice] There is a quest that calls me, In nights when I am lone, The need to ride where the ways divide The Known from the Unknown. I mount what thought is near me And soon I reach the place, The tenuous rim where the Seen grows dim And the Sightless hides its face. ~I have ridden the wind, I have ridden the sea, I have ridden the moon and stars. I have set my feet in the stirrup seat Of a comet coursing Mars. And everywhere Thro' the earth and air My thought speeds, lightning-shod, It comes to a place where checking pace It cries, "Beyond lies God!"~ It calls me out of the darkness, It calls me out of sleep, "Ride! ride! for you must, to the end of Dust!" It bids -- and on I sweep To the wide outposts of Being, Where there is Gulf alone -- And thro' a Vast that was never passed I listen for Life's tone. ~I have ridden the wind, I have ridden the night, I have ridden the ghosts that flee From the vaults of death like a chilling breath Over eternity. And everywhere Is the world laid bare -- Ether and star and clod -- Until I wind to its brink and find But the cry, "Beyond lies God!"~ It calls me and ever calls me! And vainly I reply, "Fools only ride where the ways divide What Is from the Whence and Why"! I'm lifted into the saddle Of thoughts too strong to tame And down the deeps and over the steeps I find -- ever the same. ~I have ridden the wind, I have ridden the stars, I have ridden the force that flies With far intent thro' the firmament And each to each allies. And everywhere That a thought may dare To gallop, mine has trod -- Only to stand at last on the strand Where just beyond lies God.~ I would I might forget that I am I. [George Santayana] I would I might forget that I am I, And break the heavy chain that binds me fast, Whose links about myself my deeds have cast. What in the body's tomb doth buried lie Is boundless; 't is the spirit of the sky, Lord of the future, guardian of the past, And soon must forth, to know his own at last. In his large life to live, I fain would die.