readenglishbook.com » Fiction » The Goddess of Atvatabar<br />Being the history of the discovery of the interior world and conquest of Atvatabar, William Richard Bradshaw [mobi reader txt] 📗

Book online «The Goddess of Atvatabar&lt;br /&gt;Being the history of the discovery of the interior world and conquest of Atvatabar, William Richard Bradshaw [mobi reader txt] 📗». Author William Richard Bradshaw



1 ... 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ... 46
Go to page:
(CONTINUED).

While priest and priestess were folded with mutual emotion two of the loveliest souls took the place of the high priest and priestess on the silver pavement. The girl was young and tender, golden white in complexion with crimson lips. Her figure was swathed in a vermilion robe, on the breast of which was embroidered in outline a sea-green sun whose swaying rays reached the furthest parts of her garment. Her pale blue hair was crowned with a chaplet of daffodils. The youth wore a robe of scarlet silk embroidered with a golden sun similar in design to that of the priestess. His pose was singularly noble. These two souls were about to become priest and priestess, and, after having taken the vows of hopeless love in presence of the goddess, high priest and priestess and congregation of twin-[160]souls, they sang the following anthem, accompanied by a wailing storm of music from several hundred 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 priestess joined their voices in a marvellous song. Wilder, sweeter and more intense, the violins stormed and wailed pathetic whirlwinds of ecstasy. At times their insufferable moans caught the excited hearts of the audience, and twin-souls in their passion would rise on their wings and, revolving, sweep around the amphitheatre locked in each other's arms.[161]

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, so full of love and passion, melted every heart in the temple with their ecstasy. One might hear such measures without thought of lapse of time or of worldly concerns. Ah! if one could hear such melody forevermore![162]

With a burst of dramatic joy the singing of the last stanza revealed whole 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 hundred wondrously-arrayed figures moved in the dance of pure being on the silver pavement. Lithe as leopards, with unclad limbs and feet, priest and priestess danced all the ecstasies of Egyplosis. The dancers were so young, so fresh, so tender, so beautiful, and so innocent, that it was a supreme joy to behold them. Rapture grew universal and lovers cried with hysterical shudderings. The rainbow-colored throng, moving to the music of the golden instruments, flashed upon the pavement like joy taking possession of the world!

I felt intensely sad for Lyone, who sat like a statue of golden marble, gazing on the abyss of joy beneath. Had the goddess no lover to press her to his heart amid the universal rapture? Alas! the immense dignity of her position and the unalterable laws of Atvatabar alike prevented any single soul from feeding the intense hunger that consumed her.

Accompanying the dancers, the unseen choir in the cloisters began to sing a new opera of love, and the strains of an "Ave, Lyone, bona dea," stole upon the senses like the bewildering sighs of angels, making one ache with delight. A story of romantic love once more sculptured the faces of priest and priestess with angelic beauty, as it rose on wings of song and swept in delightful moans upon the carven stone.[163]

It was a memorable scene, one never to be forgotten! The hieroglyphic walls, carved in high relief with the instruments of empire, the dome with its ten thousand fadeless lights, the terraces of twin-souls radiant with delight, the marvellous dancers, the superb music that seemed to shake the heart of the solid stone that enclosed us, and high over all the supreme goddess in whose honor all this adoration was made, seated in bliss on the throne of the gods—such was the situation at that moment.

It was a monstrous and a splendid joy!

Suddenly a roar of invincible music issued from gigantic tubes that pierced the body of the throne itself with fresh and warlike explosions of melody. I was filled with a maddening delight, until consciousness could hardly bear the strain any longer. I cried aloud, amid a Chimborazo of song, a hundred-cratered Popocatapetl of sweet strains. The audience, enraptured with the climax, became an inferno of passion, laughter tears and felicity!

CHAPTER XXXI. THE MYSTERY OF EGYPLOSIS.

The palace of the goddess at Egyplosis was a component part of the vast quadrangle known as the supernal palace. The view therefrom embraced the wide inner garden of the entire palace of temples, discovering jungles of shrubs and flowers of all imaginable hues, interspersed with lakes sleeping in their marble basins like enormous jewels. Fountains of solid silver gushed forth a brilliant foam of waters amid the embowering foliage, and there glad priests, in the society of priestesses sweeter than the flowers themselves, dreamed life away in enthusiastic peace. Surrounding all was the high and glorious palace, forming a background, on the design of which imagination and art had been entirely exhausted.

The scene the day following the Ritual of the installation of a twin-soul in the temple of Egyplosis was a boudoir in the palace of the goddess. It was a large apartment, whose walls were hung with panels of rose-colored velvet, embroidered with gray-green silk foliage. In one large tapestry, the hands of[164] loving priestesses had embroidered a scene in the garden of Egyplosis. On a dais, upon a couch of soft red silk upholstery sat Lyone, swathed in draperies of shrimp pink and pale peacock green, embroidered with ivory-white silk. A large terra-cotta silk rug, whose only ornament was an elaborate border, covered the floor. The goddess wore a belt of aquelium serpents having tulips in their mouths. Heavy terrelium bracelets adorned her wrists, and she wore a diminutive tiara on her head.

I sat on a luxurious seat, the sole guest of the goddess. I was rapidly learning from the divinity the mystery of Egyplosis. I was especially anxious to find out how the jewel of one hundred years of youth could be grafted into the ordinary existence. An idea so splendid seemed to be the germ of earthly immortality. We were discussing the subject of hopeless love, and I asked her if she considered life and love were the same element.

"Life and love are synonymous," she replied. "By love I mean the spiritual, ideal, romantic passion that is hopeless."

"Yes," I replied, "but does not the idea of inaccessibility create a worthless desire, that is, a desire for something that is forbidden or unattainable? The majority of men, I think, will prefer an every-day love with all its risks and imperfections to the shadowy ghost of a hopeless love. The hopeful love does no violence to nature such as is contemplated by the hopeless sentiment."

"You hardly understand me," said she; "the pleasure we aspire to is superior to any physical delight, and is an end in itself. It is romantic love, that blooms like a single flower in the crevices of a volcano. It is the quintessence of existence, the rarest wine of life, the expressed sweetness of difficulty and repression and long-suffering, the choicest holiday of the soul. We are willing to pay the price of hopelessness to taste such nectar. In the every-day world such joy only rarely exists. Interest, indulgence, ambition, fortune, time, temper and marriage destroy it. Youth, captivated by a beautiful face or a winning smile, thinks it has discovered its true counterpart, and so takes possession of the prize. It finds afterward it was mistaken, and all its life thenceforth becomes miserable."

"But," I replied, "if the world at large had discovered that your theory of love was the true one, it would long since have[165] acted on its discovery and put no destroying restraint or obligation on so precious a possession. But the world found that a thousand accidents would infallibly open the eyes of both parties to the fact that they possessed but few qualities in common, or in counterpart, and with such knowledge of good and evil they would infallibly separate. Hence the foundation of society would be torn asunder and the rising generation of helpless children become orphaned of home, the very bulwark of life. Society must have assurances that people do not get married simply as an experiment, but are willing to honorably undertake the mutual sacrifices their act carries with it."

"I have already admitted," said she, "that the joy of spiritual love hardly ever exists in its virgin force in the every-day world. I admit that the necessary regulations of society, although they tend to destroy it, must be enforced. The Atvatabar nation rests on the marriage idea. At one time in our history the people strove for ideal love and overthrew the ordinary marriage yoke without the restraint of reason. Law and order disappeared and social chaos reigned. The land was filled with the wailings of orphans whose parents had deserted them, and men and women formed new associates every day. Unbridled license devastated the country. Our lawgivers re-established the law of marriage as being the only law suitable to mankind. Man

1 ... 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ... 46
Go to page:

Free e-book «The Goddess of Atvatabar&lt;br /&gt;Being the history of the discovery of the interior world and conquest of Atvatabar, William Richard Bradshaw [mobi reader txt] 📗» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment