The Winds of Wonder

An awful dimness wrapped the great rock-doors

Carved in the massive stone of Matter’s trance. ||125.22||

Two golden serpents round the lintel curled,

Enveloping it with their pure and dreadful strength,

Looked out with wisdom’s deep and luminous eyes. ||125.23||

An eagle covered it with wide conquering wings. ||125.24||

Flames of self-lost immobile reverie,

Doves crowded the grey musing cornices

Like sculptured postures of white-bosomed peace. ||125.25||

Across the threshold’s sleep she entered in

And found herself amid great figures of gods

Conscious in stone and living without breath,

Watching with fixed regard the soul of man,

Executive figures of the cosmic self,

World-symbols of immutable potency. ||125.26||

On the walls covered with significant shapes

Looked at her the life-scene of man and beast

And the high meaning of the life of gods,

The power and necessity of these numberless worlds

And faces of beings and stretches of world-space

Spoke the succinct and inexhaustible

Hieratic message of the climbing planes. ||125.27||

In their immensitude signing infinity

They were the extension of the self of God

And housed, impassively receiving all,

His figures and his small and mighty acts

And his passion and his birth and life and death

And his return to immortality. ||125.28||