A BALLAD OF BEDLAM

  OUT from the windswept hollows of the Tomb
  Into the Night, ---
  Impenetrable gloom
  Folding me in from sound and sense and sight;
  No Light,
  Save from that leprous orb men call the Moon,
  Whose rune
  Spells Death and Madness:
  Like to a blinded babe from out the womb,
  Like a dishevelled ghost before the tomb,
  I wandered, seeking for my Self the DOOM
  OF ANCIENT DAYS was on me.

  Not a star
  Swam in the heavens, --- but aloft, afar,
  One Meteor
  Rolled like a great gold goblet through the sky,
  Spilling strange dreams.
  Strange dreams that ever flow, yet flow amiss
  The while a slow voice whispers: "This, perchance then THIS!"
  Yet never comes the "right" one.

  Time is ended.
  Time and Eternity with Fate have blended {207}
  Mine awful Destiny: ---
  "To watch for ever.
  For ever watch, nor see the blind endeavour
  Of battling with the soul that wills Eclipse.

  "Ever to know.
  And yet to know not ever
  The thing that irks thee most, how to dissever
  Thy Self from the blind wraith that watches thee.

  "The deed undone, that is before thee ever!
  There is NO TIME, thou canst forget it never,
  The Thing Undone is as the Thing Before.
  An endless chain, they stretch before thee, ever
  Mocking thy soul with purblind hopes that shiver
  As salt sea-spray on ice-bound rocks beneath.

  "LAUGH!  For I bid thee laugh.
  I bid thee mangle
  These unborn babes of thine,
  These hopes that dangle
  Like fond frail lilies o'er a lost lagoon:
  Witch-tress of innocence it sure would tangle
  In subtler mesh than those strange weeds that strangle
  Lost swimmers in the foul Sargasso Sea!"

  I shut me up.  I builded me a Tower
  To hide me from the laughter of the world.
  I said: "They shall not lure me from my bower
  To where their love, a lecherous snake, is curled: {208}
  A Basilisk-snake that plays upon the sward
  Writhing in slow obedience to its lord.

  "What if the Day be long, the night be cheerless?
  Is not an universe within my brain?
  Is not the high will strong, the strong will fearless?
  All I have built, shall I not build again?
  Some other Universe where All is One.
  Where ONE is ALL I am, and I AM --- NONE!

  "Words! 'Tis ever words, and I am stranded
  With words, and tangled skeins of Things to Be.
  Each word denies a word, and all are branded
  Within my brain, and I must strive to see
  The subtly sneering forms, the leering faces
  Of words each word calls up.  For me, NO GRACE is."
                                        ETHEL ARCHER.


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