The Star-Treader

I         A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams,         Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth         Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth         Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams         Thine ancient pathway of the suns,         Whose flame is part of thee;         And deeps outreach immutably         Whose largeness runs         Through all thy spirit's mystery.         Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze         Of stars where through thou camest in old days;         Pierce without fear each vast         Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past.         A hand strikes off the chains of Time,         A hand swings back the door of years;         Now fall earth's bonds of gladness and of tears,         And opens the strait dream to space sublime."         II         Who rides a dream, what hand shall stay!         What eye shall note or measure mete         His passage on a purpose fleet,         The thread and weaving of his way!         It caught me from the clasping world,         And swept beyond the brink of Sense,         My soul was flung, and poised, and whirled,         Like to a planet chained and hurled         With solar lightning strong and tense.         Swift as communicated rays         That leap from severed suns a gloom         Within whose waste no suns illume,         The wingd dream fulfilled its ways.         Through years reversed and lit again         I followed that unending chain         Wherein the suns are links of light;         Retraced through lineal, ordered spheres         The twisting of the threads of years         In weavings wrought of noon and night;         Through stars and deeps I watched the dream unroll,         Those folds that form the raiment of the soul.         III         Enkindling dawns of memory,         Each sun had radiance to relume         A sealed, disused, and darkened room         Within the soul's immensity.         Their alien ciphers shown and lit,         I understood what each had writ         Upon my spirit's scroll;         Again I wore mine ancient lives,         And knew the freedom and the gyves         That formed and marked my soul.         IV         I delved in each forgotten mind,         The units that had builded me,         Whose deepnesses before were blind         And formless as infinity -         Knowing again each former world -         From planet unto planet whirled         Through gulfs that mightily divide         Like to an intervital sleep.         One world I found, where souls abide         Like winds that rest upon a rose;         Thereto they creep         To loose all burden of old woes.         And one I knew, where warp of pain         Is woven in the soul's attire;         And one, where with new loveliness         Is strengthened Beauty's olden chain -         Soft as a sound, and keen as fire -         In light no darkness may depress.         V         Where no terrestrial dreams had trod         My vision entered undismayed,         And Life her hidden realms displayed         To me as to a curious god.         Where colored suns of systems triplicate         Bestow on planets weird, ineffable,         Green light that orbs them like an outer sea,         And large auroral noons that alternate         With skies like sunset held without abate,         Life's touch renewed incomprehensibly         The strains of mirth and grief's harmonious spell.         Dead passions like to stars relit         Shone in the gloom of ways forgot;         Where crownless gods in darkness sit         The day was full on altars hot.         I heard - once more a part of it -         The central music of the Pleiades,         And to Alcyone my soul         Swayed with the stars that own her song's control.         Unchallenged, glad I trod, a revenant         In worlds Edenic longly lost;         Or walked in spheres that sing to these,         O'er space no light has crossed,         Diverse as Hell's mad antiphone uptossed         To Heaven's angelic chant.         VI         What vasts the dream went out to find!         I seemed beyond the world's recall         In gulfs where darkness is a wall         To render strong Antares blind!         In unimagined spheres I found         The sequence of my being's round -         Some life where firstling meed of Song,         The strange imperishable leaf,         Was placed on brows that starry Grief         Had crowned, and Pain anointed long;         Some avatar where Love         Sang like the last great star at morn         Ere Death filled all its sky;         Some life in fresher years unworn         Upon a world whereof         Peace was a robe like to the calms that lie         On pools aglow with latter spring:         There Life's pellucid surface took         Clear image of all things, nor shook         Till touch of Death's obscuring wing;         Some earlier awakening         In pristine years, when giant strife         Of forces darkly whirled         First forged the thing called Life -         Hot from the furnace of the suns -         Upon the anvil of a world.         VII         Thus knew I those anterior ones         Whose lives in mine were blent;         Till, lo! my dream, that held a night         Where Rigel sends no word of might,         Was emptied of the trodden stars,         And dwindled to the sun's extent -         The brain's familiar prison-bars,         And raiment of the sorrow and the mirth         Wrought by the shuttles intricate of earth.