Classic Poem

I

Outward from the planets are blown the fumes of thought,
And the breath of prayer drifts out and makes a mist between the stars;

The void shall be void no longer,
And the caverns of infinity shall be fulfilled of spirit;

For in the wilderness between the worlds a sentience struggles to awaken,
Passions and ghosts and visions gather into a Form.

The God that we have worshipped for a million years begins to be,
And he whom we have prayed to creates himself out of the stuff of our prayers.

His wings are still heavy with chaos,
And his pinions are holden down as with a weight of slumber;

His face is ambiguous,
His countenance is uncertain behind the veils of space;

He has not speech,
He has but only thunder for his voice;

But the mornings gather to shape his eye,
And the fire of many dawns has thrilled his twilight with a prescience of vision.

II

From myriad altars a reek of incense,
And outward from the constellations there leaps the flame of burning prophets;

There goes forth the breath of lovely purpose,
As a south wind bearing seeds over a meadow it goes forth across the firmament;

There arises a dew from the bruised foreheads of martyrs,
And the broken hearts of the just, of them that have loved justice, are dissolved into a bloody dew;

Out from the populated spheres a mist,
And from the peopled worlds a breeding fog:

And in the mist a God gathers unto Himself Form, and apparels himself in Being,
For them that have desired a God create him from the stuff of that desire.

III

In the nebular chasms there is a shaping soul,
And a light begins to glow in the dark abyss;

That which is to be draws to itself what has been and what is,
He drinks up the hopes of them that were as a sun sucks up water;

He builds himself out of the desperate faith of them that have sought him,
And his face shall be wrought of the wish to see his face.

Man has lifted his voice unto the hollow sky and there was no answer but the echo of his voice,
But out of many echoes there shall grow a word.

There is a cry from the peaks of Caucasus,
From the throat of Prometheus a hoarse shout of agony and courage and defiance;

Answer, O you stars! and make reply, you rushing worlds!
Have you not always chained your Titans where the vultures scream about the bloodied rocks?
Have you not thrust your beaks into the livers of them that loved you?

There is a cry goes forth from all the stars,
The voice of rebels and great lovers;

Out of agonies and love shall God be made,
He is wrought of cries that meet between the worlds,
Of seeking cries that have come forth from the cruel spheres to find a God and be stilled.

Answer, you populations,
And make reply, you planets that are red in space:
Do not ten thousand broken Christs this hour cry their despair?

Are not Golgothas shaken this hour and the suns shamed?
Goes there not forth a manifold wailing of them that cry,
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

These cries have wandered out along the waste places,
And these despairs have met in the wilderness of chaos,
And they have wrought a God;

For he builds himself of the passion of martyrs,
And he is woven of the ecstasy of great lovers,
And he is wrought of the anguish of them that have greatly needed him.