Where is the priestess of this shrine,
        And by what place does she adore? 
The woodland haunt below the pine
        Now hears her whisper nevermore.

Ah, wrapped in her own beauty now
        She dreams a dream that shall not cease;
Priestess, to her own soul to bow
        Is hers in everlasting peace.

—­July 15, 1893

A Tragedy in the Temple

I have often thought with sadness over the fate of that comrade.  That so ardent and heroic a spirit, so much chivalry and generosity should meet such a horrible fate, has often made me wonder if there is any purpose in this tangled being of ours; I have hated life and the gods as I thought of it.  What brought him out of those great deserts where his youth was spent, where his soul grew vast knowing only of two changes, the blaze of day and night the purifier, blue, mysterious, ecstatic with starry being?  Were not these enough for him?  Could the fire of the altar inspire more?  Could he be initiated deeper in the chambers of the temple than in those great and lonely places where God and man are alone together?  This was my doing; resting in his tent when I crossed the desert, I had spoken to him of that old wisdom which the priests of the inner temple keep and hand down from one to the other; I blew to flame the mystic fire which already smouldered within him, and filled with the vast ambition of God, he left his tribe and entered the priesthood as neophyte in the Temple of Isthar, below Ninevah.

I had sometimes to journey thither bearing messages from our high priest, and so as time passed my friendship with Asur grew deep.  That last evening when I sat with him on the terrace that roofed the temple, he was more silent than I had known him before to be; we had generally so many things to speak of; for he told me all his dreams, such vague titanic impulses as the soul has in the fresh first years of its awakening, when no experience hinders with memory its flights of aspiration, and no anguish has made it wise.  But that evening there was, I thought, something missing; a curious feverishness seemed to have replaced the cool and hardy purity of manner which was natural to him; his eyes had a strange glow, fitful and eager; I saw by the starlight how restless his fingers were, they intertwined, twisted, and writhed in and out.

We sat long in the rich night together; then he drew nearer to me and leaned his head near my shoulder; he began to whisper incoherently a wild and passionate tale; the man’s soul was being tempted.

“Brother” he said, “I am haunted by a vision, by a child of the stars as lovely as Isthar’s self; she visits my dreaming hours, she dazzles me with strange graces, she bewilders with unspeakable longing.  Sometime, I know, I must go to her, though I perish.  When I see her I forget all else and I have will to resist no longer.  The vast and lonely inspiration of the desert departs from my thought, she and the jewel-light she lives in blot it out.  The thought of her thrills me like fire.  Brother give me help, ere I go mad or die; she draws me away from earth and I shall end my days amid strange things, a starry destiny amid starry races.”