I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood--
With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die,
For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood,
And I knew how He looked on the cosmic light and called it "Good";
I thrilled with a vibrant joy; I hummed with ecstasy.
Men hear me sing but they know not the source of my song;
I hold them enthralled with my mysterious eyes;
They quiver when I purr with the voice of a wanton woman;
They touch me and fall dead.
I am a dream of the Creator made visible;
My voice is an echo of the Voice that taught
The morning stars their choral hymn;
The force that binds me to the marts of men
Is the force that holds the planets in a leash while God
Drives them in glittering galaxy around the sun.
Here I am a weakling's symbol of a power
That spins the luminous girdle of Saturn in sure hands,
And frames the awful face of God in the shifting boreal light.
My soul is destiny and immortality;
It flashes in the eyes of the tempest, glows along
The phosphorescent billows where the hand of the Almighty
Is laid for a moment on the breast of the sea,
And the sea smiles;
My soul is the wingless word
That flies from zone to zone and speaks suddenly out of the void.
In the years that are to be
I shall soar like an evil bird over the warring camps of men,
And spew destroying poison.
I shall be the sinew of a strange wing,--
A wing that shall bear men into the forge of the thunder and the lightning.
But when I fail the groundlings shall look up
And see their brothers through the ether plunge,
Stricken, a haggard rout of flame-flotillas of the sun!
In the years that are to come
I shall be a servant in the house of men;
I shall breathe unutterable music on the spindle and the loom;
I shall sing, exultant, with the choristers of dreams fulfilled,
And light shall be bound like sandals on my feet.
I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood--
With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die,
For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood,
And I knew how He looked on the cosmic light and called it "Good";
I thrilled with a vibrant joy; I hummed with ecstasy.