8. CONTINUATION

For words—let it be known—are living lights.
The dreamer’s hand vibrates, tremblingly writes;
The pen, stretching its reach like a wing, lurches
Quivers on paper as this figure emerges—
The word, the term, archetype from a dark source,
Invisible face, tracing an unknown course;
Created by whom? Forged by whom? Shadowkind;
Rising and falling within our dark minds,
Always finding its meaning as water finds its level;
Formula of the brief gleams within the brain’s vessel.

Yes, all must understand words are things, are those.
That tumble pell-mell in the dark abyss of prose,
Or rouse verse—that stormtossed forest—til it sings.
Word holds the secret of the Human Spirit—that sphinx.
Word wills or refuses, rushes forth—fairy or bacchante—
Offers itself, gives, or flees; before Nero’s chant
Or a rhyming Charles IX, it recoils in amazement;
One word is a smile, another’s a gaze sent;
Of some profound word we are all disciples;
Every force on earth finds the word multiple;
Moulded by the brain—brisk or slow, grave or shorn—
The hollow of the human skull gives it form;
The old imprint remains there beside the new;
What one word cannot grasp, another will show;
Words strike the brow like waves on a reef;
They teem, opening us to what is pensive,
Spread claws or hands and, some of them, wings;
As a blackened hearth shows its sparks’ wanderings,
Dreamy, sad, joyful, bitter, sweet or sinister—
A dark host, words come and go within us there;
Words are the mysterious wayfarers of the soul.

Each one casts a shadow or makes flames unroll;
Each of them guards a province of the brain;
Why? Because Word’s name is Legion; each strain
In accordance with lightning that brightly plays there,
Performs a unique task in the common labour;
Because from these signs and sounds in chorus
That, whether writing or speaking, we drive before us
Are born cries and orations, sighs and songs;
Everywhere—a dwarf hidden beneath all these tongues—
The word treads down and enslaves worldwide;
And, just as man is the animal wherein abides
The soul—that light from above the body hides here—
So God makes the word the beast of the Idea.

The word makes the very depths of our minds flourish.
It stirs—speaking names like “Beatrice”, “Lycoris”—
Dante at the Campo Santo, Virgil at Posillipo.
In the ocean of thought it is the dark polypo
When a book springs up from Aeschylus or Manu,
When Saint John at Patos writes upon his knee, so,
One sees, amidst verse crammed with hydras and strigae,
Monstrous words crawling through works that are mighty.

O intangible hand! O astonishing power!
Place a word upon a man, and, shuddering over,
He withers and dies, pierced by that profound force;
Attach vengeful word to the whole world’s torso,
That world—dragging with it shields, scaffolds, swords,
Laws, customs, gods—crumbles under the word.
Omnipotence vast issued from human lips;
Earth lies beneath words as flies swarm over tips.
The word devours; nothing can withstand its bite.
At its breath—aided by the soul and by the light—
Sombre enormity slow peels away.
Puts dark strength in those whom nothing can sway;
Cato bears this syllable in his loins: No.
Great obstinate souls—Brutus, Columbus, Zeno—
Held that flaming word under eyelids that shone:
Hope! — It can pry open a mouth of stone
Within the dread enclosure where the dead are buried,
And lo, the petrified Don Juan turns livid!
It turns marble to spectre, man into a statue.
It strikes, wounds, it leaves its mark, resurrects, slays you.
Nimrod cries: War! Then, from Ganges to Ilissus,
Iron gleams, blood flows. Love one another! says Jesus,
And this word shines forever, upon all of us
Echoing throughout the vast cosmos—even Tiberius,
The heavens, flowers, upon man remade aright—
The blazing love that flows from the Infinite!

In the days when earth opened its first flowerhead,
The first man uttered the very first word,
The word born of his lips—heard by all creation—
Met the light in the heavens and its iteration:
Was: “Sister!
—————Take flight! Soar high! Never die!
Kindle the star! … forever fill up the eye!
Warm ethers, blue depths, spheres, fiery orbs-spinner;
Light up the outer world, while I light up the inner.
You shall be one life, the other I’ll cross all.
Be the tongue of flame, my sister; I’m the apostle.
Arise, banish shadow, and dazzle the horizon,
Be the dawn; I’m your equal, for my name Reason;
Yours the eyes, mine the brows. O sister, blonde-curled,
Beneath the web of Light, you shall grasp the world;
With your golden rays, you shall make cleave
Landscapes and suns, blooms and glassy wave,
Fields and skies; and I, I shall bind men’s mouths;
And over man—swept up in a thousand wild flights—
Weave, with threads of harmony and day, prove
The capture of every heart in Love’s mighty weave.
I existed before the soul; Adam is not my pere.
I was here even before you; Light could not appear,
Sans me from abyss where chained-things crawl, held there;
My name is Fiat Lux, and I am your elder!”

Yes, Word is all-potent. Only the fool defies it!
When error ties a knot in man, Word unties it.
It is lightning in shadow, worm in ripe apple.
It blasts from a trumpet, it trembles to clap wall,
And Belshazzar staggers, and Jericho crumbles.
It is one with the people, being itself great numbers.
It’s life, soul, fire, hurricane, virtue, seedpod;
For the word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.

Jersey, October 1854.