CHAPTER XXX.
THE INSTALLATION OF A TWIN-SOUL (CONTINUED).
While priest and priestess were folded with mutual emotion two of theloveliest souls took the place of the high priest and priestess on thesilver pavement. The girl was young and tender, golden white incomplexion with crimson lips. Her figure was swathed in a vermilionrobe, on the breast of which was embroidered in outline a sea-greensun whose swaying rays reached the furthest parts of her garment. Herpale blue hair was crowned with a chaplet of daffodils. The youth worea robe of scarlet silk embroidered with a golden sun similar in designto that of the priestess. His pose was singularly noble. These twosouls were about to become priest and priestess, and, after havingtaken the vows of hopeless love in presence of the goddess, highpriest and priestess and congregation of twin-souls, they sang thefollowing anthem, accompanied by a wailing storm of music from severalhundred 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 priestessjoined their voices in a marvellous song. Wilder, sweeter and moreintense, the violins stormed and wailed pathetic whirlwinds ofecstasy. At times their insufferable moans caught the excited heartsof the audience, and twin-souls in their passion would rise on theirwings and, revolving, sweep around the amphitheatre locked in eachother'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, sofull of love and passion, melted every heart in the temple with theirecstasy. One might hear such measures without thought of lapse of timeor of worldly concerns. Ah! if one could hear such melodyforevermore!
With a burst of dramatic joy the singing of the last stanza revealedwhole 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 hundredwondrously-arrayed figures moved in the dance of pure being on thesilver pavement. Lithe as leopards, with unclad limbs and feet, priestand priestess danced all the ecstasies of Egyplosis. The dancers wereso young, so fresh, so tender, so beautiful, and so innocent, that itwas a supreme joy to behold them. Rapture grew universal and loverscried with hysterical shudderings. The rainbow-colored throng, movingto the music of the golden instruments, flashed upon the pavement likejoy taking possession of the world!
I felt intensely sad for Lyone, who sat like a statue of goldenmarble, gazing on the abyss of joy beneath. Had the goddess no loverto press her to his heart amid the universal rapture? Alas! theimmense dignity of her position and the unalterable laws of Atvatabaralike prevented any single soul from feeding the intense hunger thatconsumed her.
Accompanying the dancers, the unseen choir in the cloisters began tosing a new opera of love, and the strains of an "Ave, Lyone, bonadea," stole upon the senses like the bewildering sighs of angels,making one ache with delight. A story of romantic love once moresculptured the faces of priest and priestess with angelic beauty, asit rose on wings of song and swept in delightful moans upon the carvenstone.
It was a memorable scene, one never to be forgotten! The hieroglyphicwalls, carved in high relief with the instruments of empire, the domewith its ten thousand fadeless lights, the terraces of twin-soulsradiant with delight, the marvellous dancers, the superb music thatseemed to shake the heart of the solid stone that enclosed us, andhigh over all the supreme goddess in whose honor all this adorationwas made, seated in bliss on the throne of the gods--such was thesituation at that moment.
It was a monstrous and a splendid joy!
Suddenly a roar of invincible music issued from gigantic tubes thatpierced the body of the throne itself with fresh and warlikeexplosions of melody. I was filled with a maddening delight, untilconsciousness could hardly bear the strain any longer. I cried aloud,amid a Chimborazo of song, a hundred-cratered Popocatapetl of sweetstrains. The audience, enraptured with the climax, became an infernoof passion, laughter tears and felicity!