DEM. O child, my child! that were a temple indeed. 'Tis such a temple as man needs on earth; A holy shrine that makes no pact with sin, A worthy shrine to draw the worthy and good, A shrine of wisdom trifling not with folly, A shrine of beauty, where the initiated Drank love and light.... Strange thou shouldst speak of it. I have inaugurated such a temple 1031 These last days in Eleusis, have ordain'd These very mysteries!--Strange thou speakest of it. But by what path return we to the Cave Of Cacophysia? PER. By this path, dear Mother. The Cave of Cacophysia is in all things T'ward evil, as that temple were t'ward good. I enter'd in. Outside the darkness was But as accumulated sunlessness; Within 'twas positive as light itself, 1040 A blackness that extinguished: Yet I knew, For Hades told me, that I was to see; And so I waited, till a forking flash Of sudden lightning dazzlingly reveal'd All at a glance. As on a pitchy night The warder of some high acropolis Looks down into the dark, and suddenly Sees all the city with its roofs and streets, Houses and walls, clear as in summer noon, And ere he think of it, 'tis dark again,-- 1050 So I saw all within the Cave, and held The vision, 'twas so burnt upon my sense. DEM. What saw'st thou, child? what saw'st thou? PER. Nay, the things Not to be told, because there are no words Of gods or men to paint the inscrutable And full initiation of hell.--I saw The meaning and the reason of all things, All at a glance, and in that glance perceiv'd The origin of all things to be evil, And the énd evil: that what seems as good 1060 Is as a bloom of gold that spread thereo'er May, by one stroke of the hand, Be brush'd away, and leave the ill beneath Solid and foul and black.... DEM. Now tell me, child, If Hades love thee, that he sent thee thither. PER. He said it coud not harm me: and I think It hath not. [_Going up to Demeter, who kisses her._