THE INSTALLATION OF A TWIN-SOUL (CONTINUED).
While priest and priestess were folded with mutual emotion two of the
loveliest souls took the place of the high priest and priestess on the
silver pavement. The girl was young and tender, golden white in
complexion with crimson lips. Her figure was swathed in a vermilion
robe, on the breast of which was embroidered in outline a sea-green
sun whose swaying rays reached the furthest parts of her garment. Her
pale blue hair was crowned with a chaplet of daffodils. The youth wore
a robe of scarlet silk embroidered with a golden sun similar in design
to that of the priestess. His pose was singularly noble. These two
souls were about to become priest and priestess, and, after having
taken the vows of hopeless love in presence of the goddess, high
priest and priestess and congregation of twin-souls, they sang the
following anthem, accompanied by a wailing storm of music from several
hundred violins, entitled:
THE TWIN-SOUL.
PRIEST.
Love is a heated furnace that devours
The thickest ice; love is a sweet moist wind
That cools the fevered desert with its balm.
There is no rain nor heat, yea, even snow
Is warm and rosy to ideal souls
That shudder in life's sweetest ecstasies.
If love, that makes ideal life, that dwells
In fragrant silences, makes green the grass,
And far more tender the diviner flowers,
It surely makes both bold and delicate
The warm superiority of flesh
Of that strange, sacred soul that dwells with mine.
The clear, yet golden whiteness of the form
That shines through pale green diaphane,
Showing its pliant beauty, is the dress
Of that rapt soul that is all tenderness.
Her brow is crowned with wistful daffodils,
Making her fair face fairer, and her eyes
Are clouded sapphires; yea, her perfect lips
(Whereon my soul will dwell for evermore)
Clear blood-red rubies! The sweet hand holds
Red poppies and blue lotus, and the soft
And sulphur blossomed wind flower. If such dress
Enshrine a soul as perfect, if the curves
That make her form voluptuous describe
The splendor of her soul (and this I know),
Love has no purer temple, nor more sweet!
The priest had sung alone so far, and now both priest and priestess
joined their voices in a marvellous song. Wilder, sweeter and more
intense, the violins stormed and wailed pathetic whirlwinds of
ecstasy. At times their insufferable moans caught the excited hearts
of the audience, and twin-souls in their passion would rise on their
wings and, revolving, sweep around the amphitheatre locked in each
other's arms.
PRIEST AND PRIESTESS.
Sharper than pain, we love, and the caress,
Keener than torment, overmaddens us!
There is no fasting when our feverish lips
Meet in the shock that strikes the spirit dumb
With swooning raptures! The dilated soul,
Intemperate with the enormous moan
Of passion, would outleap the strenuous will.
The flesh, transfigured with the crisis, reels,
Stretches the chain of duty and would leap
To grasp the tempting and forbidden fruit,
Were not that virtue is our comrade now.
We lift our eager faces to the sun
And feast on life and in each other's souls
Luxuriate, confounded with delight.
For us no mouldy cloister waits its prey,
Nor cave of darkness, where existence mourns
And dies beneath its scourgings. We have made
Our grim novitiate with reality.
Have known its agony, for we were born
So eminent for rapture, that the pain
All men inherit desolated us
And spread a living terror in our souls;
So that through clouds of everlasting woe
Scarce came the gleam of gladness or of love,
And earth was pitiless, and brutal souls
Who cannot feel there ruled. Oh, the wide world,
Degraded by ignoble brutishness,
Could yield no tendernesses infinite
For we who feed on rapture. Thus it was
Our souls on meeting, in the thrilling kiss
Were fused in indissoluble embrace;
We who were famished, in ideal love
Found sustenance and passed from death to life!
The song was perfect. The strange, fresh accents of the singers, so
full of love and passion, melted every heart in the temple with their
ecstasy. One might hear such measures without thought of lapse of time
or of worldly concerns. Ah! if one could hear such melody
forevermore!
With a burst of dramatic joy the singing of the last stanza revealed
whole worlds of rapture.
Reincarnated in an earthly heaven,
Now have we reached Nirvana, now
Above us open the wide gulfs of joy,
And luminous and glorious round us blow
Millions of flowers; while afar there shines
The mighty splendor of the exhaustless sea!
We dwell in breathless joys, thrilled through and through
With majesty and sweetness; we have grown
Athletes of joy in our Agapemone:
Eager and breathless, we have found at last
The fount of youth, the magical Arjeels;
Fruits of organic gold amid the leaves
Sparkle, and around our island home
Are spread the veritable golden sands
Whereon our happy feet tread evermore!
The singers disappeared, and in their places a hundred
wondrously-arrayed figures moved in the dance of pure being on the
silver pavement. Lithe as leopards, with unclad limbs and feet, priest
and priestess danced all the ecstasies of Egyplosis. The dancers were
so young, so fresh, so tender, so beautiful, and so innocent, that it
was a supreme joy to behold them. Rapture grew universal and lovers
cried with hysterical shudderings. The rainbow-colored throng, moving
to the music of the golden instruments, flashed upon the pavement like
joy taking possession of the world!
I felt intensely sad for Lyone, who sat like a statue of golden
marble, gazing on the abyss of joy beneath. Had the goddess no lover
to press her to his heart amid the universal rapture? Alas! the
immense dignity of her position and the unalterable laws of Atvatabar
alike prevented any single soul from feeding the intense hunger that
consumed her.
Accompanying the dancers, the unseen choir in the cloisters began to
sing a new opera of love, and the strains of an "Ave, Lyone, bona
dea," stole upon the senses like the bewildering sighs of angels,
making one ache with delight. A story of romantic love once more
sculptured the faces of priest and priestess with angelic beauty, as
it rose on wings of song and swept in delightful moans upon the carven
stone.
It was a memorable scene, one never to be forgotten! The hieroglyphic
walls, carved in high relief with the instruments of empire, the dome
with its ten thousand fadeless lights, the terraces of twin-souls
radiant with delight, the marvellous dancers, the superb music that
seemed to shake the heart of the solid stone that enclosed us, and
high over all the supreme goddess in whose honor all this adoration
was made, seated in bliss on the throne of the gods--such was the
situation at that moment.
It was a monstrous and a splendid joy!
Suddenly a roar of invincible music issued from gigantic tubes that
pierced the body of the throne itself with fresh and warlike
explosions of melody. I was filled with a maddening delight, until
consciousness could hardly bear the strain any longer. I cried aloud,
amid a Chimborazo of song, a hundred-cratered Popocatapetl of sweet
strains. The audience, enraptured with the climax, became an inferno
of passion, laughter tears and felicity!