“Cynthia: The Love Elegies”

On The Music Box: Parachute Woman~The Rolling Stones…

So, I survived the changes wrought on the old birthday, and had a great time to boot! Good friends came over, and we ate and drank together until late in the evening. I heard from several friends as well, with an especially kind note from Will Penna.

Friends are the jewels in our life, I swear, I swear. A big thank you to all!

Rowan headed off to school today, the summer has come to a crashing close. He is just 1/2 inch shorter than me, and looks like he will pass me this year coming. His hair comes down to the bottom of his back when wet, but being so curly, it sits just below his shoulders. This was a good summer for him, he learned a lot, and grew in so many directions.

Todays Entry is an interesting one, ancient poetry (actually it was translated as prose) by Sextus Propertius. Take your time, and enjoy. He was very influencial, and his work is worth going over again and again. It still sings after 20+ centuries….

On The Menu:

The Links

“Cynthia: The Love Elegies”

Ancient Roman Erotic Art

Enjoy!

Gwyllm

________________

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Cynthia: The Love Elegies – Sextus Propertius

After A Night’s Drinking

Just as Ariadne, the girl of Cnossus, lay on the naked shore, fainting, while Theseus’s ship vanished; or as Andromeda, Cepheus’s child, lay recumbent in her first sleep free now of the harsh rock; or like one fallen on the grass by Apidanus, exhausted by the endless Thracian dance; Cynthia seemed like that to me, breathing the tender silence, her head resting on unquiet hands, when I came, deep in wine, dragging my drunken feet, and the boys were shaking the late night torches.

My senses not totally dazed yet, I tried to approach her, pressing gently against the bed: and though seized by a twin passion, here Amor and there Bacchus, both cruel gods, urging me on, to attempt to slip my arm under her as she lay there, and lifting my hand snatch eager kisses, I was still not brave enough to trouble my mistress’s rest, fearing her proven fierceness in quarreling, but, frozen there, clung to her, gazing intently, like Argus on Io’s newly horned brow.

Now I freed the garlands from my forehead, and set them on your temples: now I delighted in playing with your loose hair, furtively slipping apples into your open hands, bestowing every gift on your ungrateful sleep, repeated gifts breathed from my bowed body. And whenever you, stirring, gave an infrequent sigh, I was transfixed, believing false omens, some vision bringing you strange fears, or another forced you to be his, against your will.

At last the moon, gliding by distant windows, the busy moon with lingering light, opened her closed eyes, with its tender rays. Raised on one elbow on the soft bed, she cried: ‘Has another’s severity driven you out, closing her doors, bringing you back to my bed at last? Alas for me, where have you spent the long hours of this night, that was mine, you, worn out now, as the stars are put away? O you, cruel to me in my misery, I wish you the same long-drawn out nights as those you endlessly offer to me. Till a moment ago, I staved off sleep, weaving the purple threads, and again, wearied, with the sound of Orpheus’s lyre. Until Sleep impelled me to sink down under his delightful wing I was moaning gently to myself, alone, all the while, for you, delayed so long, so often, by a stranger’s love. That was my last care, amongst my tears.’

Cynthia’s Infidelities

Cynthia I’ve often feared great pain from your fickleness, yet I still did not expect treachery. See with what trials Fortune drags me down! Yet you still respond slowly to my anxiety, and can lift your hands to last night’s tresses, and examine your looks in endless idleness, and go on decking out your breast with Eastern jewels, like a beautiful woman preparing to meet a new lover.

Calypso didn’t feel like that when Odysseus, the Ithacan, left her, when she wept long ago to the empty waves: she sat mourning for many days with unkempt hair, pouring out speech to the cruel brine, and though she would never see him again, she still grieved, thinking of their long happiness. Hypsipyle, troubled, didn’t stand like that in the empty bedroom when the winds snatched Jason away: Hypsipyle never felt pleasure again after that, melting, once and for all, for her Haemonian stranger. Alphesiboea was revenged on her own brothers for her husband Alcmaeon, and passion broke the bonds of loving blood. Evadne, famous for Argive chastity, died in the pitiful flames, raised high on her husband’s pyre.

Yet none of these alters your existence, that you might also be known in story. Cynthia, stop now revoking your words by lying, and refrain from provoking forgotten gods. O reckless girl, there’ll be more than enough grief at my misfortune if it chances that anything dark happens to you! Long before the love for you changes in my heart, rivers will flow out of the vast ocean, and the year reverse its seasons: be whatever you wish, except another’s.

Don’t let those eyes appear so worthless to you through which your treachery was so often believed by me! You swore by them, if you’d been false in anything, they’d vanish away when your fingers touched them. And can you raise them to the vast sun, and not tremble, aware of your guilty sins? Who forced your pallor of shifting complexion, and drew tears from unwilling eyes? Those are the eyes I now die for, to warn lovers like me: ‘No charms can ever be safely trusted!’

His Mistress’s Harshness

First you must grieve, many times, at your mistress’s wrongs towards you, often requesting something, often being rejected. And often chew your innocent fingernails in your teeth, and tap the ground nervously with your foot, in anger!

My hair was drenched with scent: no use: nor my departing feet, delaying, with measured step. Magic plants are worth nothing here, nor a Colchian witch of night, nor herbs distilled by Perimede’s hand, since we see no cause or visible blow from anywhere: still, it’s a dark path so many evils come by.

The patient doesn’t need a doctor, or a soft bed: it’s not the wind or weather hurts him. He walks about – and suddenly his funeral startles his friends. Whatever love is it’s unforeseen like this. What deceitful fortune-teller have I not been victim of, what old woman has not pondered my dreams ten times?

If anyone wants to be my enemy, let him desire girls: and delight in boys if he wants to be my friend. You go down the tranquil stream in a boat in safety: how can such tiny waves from the bank hurt you? Often his mood alters with a single word: she will scarcely be satisfied with your blood.

—-

Sinful Cynthia

Is it true all Rome talks about you, Cynthia, and you live in unveiled wantonness? Did I expect to deserve this? I’ll deal punishment, faithless girl, and my breeze will blow somewhere else. I’ll find one of all the deceitful women who wishes to be made famous by my song, who won’t taunt me with such harsh ways: she’ll insult you: ah, so long loved, you’ll weep too late.

Now my anger’s fresh: now’s the time to go: if pain returns, believe me, love will be back. The Carpathian waves don’t change in the northerlies as fast, or the black storm cloud, in a shifting southwest gale, as lovers’ anger alters at a word. While you can take your neck from the unjust yoke. Then you won’t grieve at all, except for the very first night: all love’s evils are slight, if you are patient.

But, by the gentle laws of our lady Juno, mea vita, stop hurting yourself on purpose. It’s not just the bull that hits out with a curving horn at its aggressor, even a sheep, it’s true, opposes an enemy. I won’t rip the clothes off your lying flesh, or break open your shut doors, or tear at your plaited hair in anger, or dare to bruise you with my hard fists. Let some ignoramus look for quarrels as shabby as these, a man whose head no ivy ever encircled. I’ll go write: what your lifetime won’t rub out: ‘Cynthia, strong in beauty: Cynthia light of word.’ Trust me, though you defy scandal’s murmur, this verse, Cynthia, will make you pale.

—-

The Spartan Girls

I admire many of the rules of your training, Sparta, but most of all at the great blessings derived from the girls’ gymnasia, where a girl can exercise her body, naked, without blame, among wrestling men, when the swift-thrown ball eludes the grasp, and the curved rod sounds against the ring, and the woman is left panting at the furthest goal, and suffers bruises in the hard wrestling.

Now she fastens near the glove the thongs that her wrists delight in, now whirls the discuss’s flying weight in a circle, and now her hair sprinkled with hoar frost, she follows her father’s dogs over the long ridges of Taygetus, beats the ring with her horses, binds the sword to her white flank, and shields the virgin head with hollow bronze, like the crowd of warlike Amazons who bathe bare-breasted in Thermodon’s stream; or as Helen, on the sands of Eurotas, between Castor and Pollux, one to be victor in boxing, the other with horses: with naked breasts she carried weapons, they say, and did not blush with her divine brothers there.

So Sparta’s law forbids lovers to keep apart, and lets each man walk by her side in the crossways, and there is no fear for her, no guardians for captive girls, no dread of bitter punishment from a stern husband. You yourself can speak about things without a go-between: no long waiting rebuffs you. No Tyrian garments beguile roving eyes, no affected toying with perfumed hair.

But my love goes surrounded by a great crowd, without the slimmest chance of getting an oar in: and you can’t come upon how to act, or what words to ask with: the lover is in a blind alley.

Rome, if you’d only follow the rules and wrestling of Sparta, you’d be dearer to me for that blessing.

——

Sextus Propertius (50—16 B.C.), the greatest of the elegiac poets of Rome, was born of a well-to-do Umbrian family at or near Asisium (Assisi), the birthplace also of the famous St. Francis. We learn from Ovid that Propertius was his senior, but also his friend and companion; and that he was third in the sequence of elegiac poets, following Gallus, who was born in 69 B.C., and Tibullus, and immediately preceding Ovid himself, who was born in 43 B.C. We shall not then be far wrong in supposing that he was born about 50 B.C. His early life was full of misfortune. He lost his father prematurely; and after the battle of Philippi and the return of Octavian to Rome, Propertius, like Virgil and Horace, was deprived of his estate to provide land for the veterans, but, unlike them, he had no patrons at court, and he was reduced from opulence to comparative indigence. The widespread discontent which the confiscations caused provoked the insurrection generally known as the bellum frerusinum from its only important incident, the fierce and fatal resistance of Perugia, which deprived the poet of another of his relations, who was killed by brigands while making his escape from the lines of Octavian. The loss of his patrimony, however, thanks no doubt to his mother’s providence, did not prevent Propertius from receiving a superior education. After, or it may be, during its completion he and she left Umbria for Rome; and there, about the year 34 B.C., he assumed the garb of manly freedom. He was urged to take up a pleader’s profession; but, like Ovid, he found in letters and gallantry a more congenial pursuit. Soon afterwards he made the acquaintance of Lycinna, about whom we know little beyond the fact that she subsequently excited the jealousy of Cynthia, and was subjected to all her powers of persecution (vexandi). This passing fancy was succeeded by a serious attachment, the object of which was the famous ” Cynthia.” Her real name was Hostia, and she was a native of Tibur. She was a courtesan of the superior class, somewhat older than Propertius, but, as it seems, a woman of singular beauty and varied accomplishments. Her own predilections led her to literature; and in her society Propertius found the intellectual sympathy and encouragement which were essential for the development of his powers. Her character, as depicted in the poems, is not an attractive one; but she seems to have entertained a genuine affection for her lover. The intimacy began in 28 and lasted till 23 B.C. These six years must not, however, be supposed to have been a period of unbroken felicity. Apart from minor disagreements an infidelity on Propertius’s part excited the deepest resentment in Cynthia; and he was banished for a year. The quarrel was made up about the beginning of 25 B.C.; and soon after Propertius published his first book of poems and inscribed it with the name of his mistress. Its publication placed him in the first rank of contemporary poets, and amongst other things procured him admission to the literary circle of Maecenas. The intimacy was renewed; but the old enchantment was lost. Neither Cynthia nor Propertius was faithful to the other. The mutual ardour gradually cooled; motives of prudence and decorum urged the discontinuance of the connexion; and disillusion changed insensibly to disgust. Although this separation might have been expected to be final, it is not certain that it was so. It is true that Cynthia, whose health appears to have been weak, does not seem to have survived the separation long. But a careful study of the seventh poem of the last book, in which Propertius gives an account of a dream of her which he had after her death, leads us to the belief that they were once more reconciled, and that in her last illness Cynthia left to her former lover the duty of carrying out her wishes with regard to the disposal of her effects and the arrangements of her funeral. Almost nothing is known of the subsequent history of the poet. He was alive in 16 B.C., as some allusions in the last book testify. And two passages in the letters of the younger Pliny mention a descendant of the poet, one Passennus Paullus. Now in 18 B.C. Augustus carried the Leges Juliae, which offered inducements to marriage and imposed disabilities upon the celibate. Propertius then may have been one of the first to comply with the new enactments. He would thus have married and had at least one child, from whom the contemporary of Pliny was descended.

Propertius had a large number of friends and acquaintances, chiefly literary, belonging to the circle of Maecenas. Amongst these may be mentioned Virgil, the epic poet Ponticus, Bassus (probably the iambic poet of the name), and at a later period Ovid. We hear nothing of Tibullus, nor of Horace, who also never mentions Propertius. This reciprocal silence is probably significant. In person Propertius was pale and thin, as was to be expected in one of a delicate and even sickly constitution. He was very careful about his personal appearance, and paid an almost foppish attention to dress and gait. He was of a somewhat voluptuous and self-indulgent temperament, which shrank from danger and active exertion. He was anxiously sensitive about the opinion of others, eager for their sympathy and regard, and, in general, impressionable to their influence. His over-emotional nature passed rapidly from one phase of feeling to another; but the more melancholy moods predominated. A vein of sadness runs through his poems, sometimes breaking out into querulous exclamation, but more frequently venting itself in gloomy reflections and prognostications. He had fits of superstition which in healthier moments he despised.

The poems of Propertius, as they have come down to us, consist of four books containing 4046 lines of elegiac verse. The first book, or Cynthia, was published separately and early in the poet’s literary life. It may be assigned to 25 B.C. The dates of the publication of the rest are uncertain, but none of them was published before 24 B.C., and the last not before 16 B.C. The unusual length of the second one (1402 lines) has led Lachmann and other critics to suppose that it originally consisted of two books, and they have placed the beginning of the third book at ii. 10, a poem addressed to Augustus, thus making five books, and this arrangement has been accepted by several editors.

The subjects of the poems are threefold: (I) amatory and personal, mostly regarding Cynthia—seventy-two (sixty Cynthia elegies), of which the last book contains three; (2) political and social, on events of the day—thirteen, including three in the last book; (3) historical and antiquarian—six, of which five are in the last book.

The writings of Propertius are noted for their difficulty and their disorder. The workmanship is unequal, curtness alternating with redundance, and carelessness with elaboration. A desultory sequence of ideas, an excessive vagueness and indirectness of expression, a peculiar and abnormal latinity, a constant tendency to exaggeration, and an immoderate indulgence in learned and literary allusions—all these are obstacles lying in the way of a study of Propertius. But ‘those who have the will and the patience to surmount them will find their trouble well repaid. For power and range of imagination, for freshness and vividness of conception, for truth and originality of presentation, few Roman poets can compare with him when he is at his best. And this is when he is carried out of himself, when the discordant qualities of his genius are, so to say, fused together by the electric spark of an immediate inspiration. His vanity and egotism are undeniable, but they are redeemed by his fancy and his humour.

Two of his merits seem to have impressed the ancients themselves. The first is most obvious in the scenes of quiet description and emotion. in whose presentation he particularly excels. Softness of outline, warmth of colouring, a fine and almost voluptuous feeling for beauty of every kind, and a pleading and melancholy tenderness—such were the elements of the spell which he threw round the sympathies of his reader, and which his compatriots expressed by the vague but expressive word bland itia. His poetic facundia, or command of striking and appropriate language, is noticeable still. Not only is his vocabulary very extensive, but his employment of it extraordinarily bold and unconventional. New settings of use, idiom and construction continually surprise us, and, in spite of occasional harshness, secure for his style an unusual freshness and freedom. His handling of the elegiac couplet, and especially of its second line, deserves especial recognition. It is vigorous, varied and even picturesque. In the matter of the rhythms, caesuras and elisions which it allows, the metrical treatment is much more severe than that of Catullus, whose elegiacs are comparatively rude and barbarous; but it is not bound hand and foot, like the Ovidian distich, in a formal and conventional system. An elaborate symmetry is observable in the construction of many of his elegies, and this has tempted critics to divide a number of them into strophes.

Propertius’s poems bear evident marks of the study of his predecessors, both Greek and Latin, and of the influence of his contemporaries. He tells us himself that Callimachus and Philetas were his masters (iii. I, seq.), and that it was his ambition to be the Roman Callimachus (iv. I, 64). But, as Teuffel has said, his debt to these writers is chiefly a formal one. Even into his mythological learning he breathes a life to which these dry scholars are strangers. We can trace obligations to Meleager, Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius and other Alexandrines, and amongst earlier writers to Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus and others. Propertius’s influence upon his successors was considerable. There is hardly a page of Ovid which does not show obligations to his poems, while other writers made a more sparing use of his stories.

A just appreciation of the genius and the writings of Propertius is made sensibly more difficult by the condition in which his works have come down to us. Some poems have been lost; others are fragmentary; and many are more or less disfigured by corruption and disarrangement. The manuscripts on which we have to rely are both late and deeply interpolated. Thus the restoration and interpretation of the poems is one of peculiar delicacy and difficulty.

Lady Mary Wroth

(Alchemical Landscape – Laurel Price)

Tis the 5th of September and school is coming down the pike for many a kid….

On the Menu

The Links

God As Consciousness Without An Object – John Lilly

Poetry: Lady Mary Wroth

Lady Mary Wroth, an exception in her time with the most exquisite of poesy…. This edition is dedicated to her, and her works…

Gwyllm

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GOD AS CONSCIOUSNESS-WITHOUT-AN-OBJECT

by John C. Lilly

Within the last two years I have come to know a man and his work who run counter to my own simulations and by whom I am influenced beyond previous influences. In 1936, Franklin Merrell-Wolff wrote a journal that was later published as Pathways Through to Space. In 1970 he wrote another book called The Philosophy 0f Consciousness-Without-an-Object.1 In studying his works, and the chronicle of his personal experience I arrived at some places new for me.

Wolff had been through the Vedanta training, through the philosophy of Shankara; he knew the philosophy of Kant and others of the Western world; and he spent twenty-five years working to achieve a state of Nirvana, Enlightenment, Samadhi, and so forth. In 1936 he succeeded in this transformation and with varying success maintained it over the subsequent years. He is an amazingly peaceful man now in his eighties. Meeting him, I felt the influence of his transformation, of his recognitions, of some sort of current flowing through me. I felt a peace which I have not felt in my own searchings; a certain peculiar kind of highly indifferent contentment took place, and yet the state was beyond contentment, beyond the usual human happiness, beyond bliss, beyond pleasure. This is the state that he calls the state of “High Indifference.” He experienced this at his third level of recognition, beyond Nirvana, beyond Bliss. His perceptions in this state are recounted in The Philosophy of Consciousness-Without-an-Object.

In his chapter “Aphorisms on Consciousness-With- out-an-Object” Merrell-Wolff expresses his discoveries in a series of sutra-like sentences, The first one is: “Consciousness-without-an-object is.” The culmination of the series is that Consciousness-without-an-object is SPACE. This is probably the most abstract and yet the most satifying way of looking at the universe which I have come across anywhere. If one pursues this type of thinking and feeling and gets into the introceptive spaces, the universe originates on a ground, a substrate of Consciousness-Without-an-Object: the basic fabric of the universe beyond space, beyond time, beyond topology, beyond matter, beyond energy, is Consciousness. Consciousness without any form, without any reification, without any realization.

In a sense, Merrell-Wolff is saying that the Star Maker is Consciousness-Without-an-Object. He does not give hints to how objects are created out of Consciousness-Without-an-Object. He does not give hints to how an individual consciousness is formed out of Consciousness-Without-an-Object. The details of these processes were not his primary interest. His primary interest apparently was in arriving at a basic set of assumptions upon which all else can be built. In this sense he is like Einstein, bringing the relativity factor into the universe out of Newton’s absolutes.

If we are a manifestation of Consciousness-Without-an-Object, and if, as Wolff says, we can go back into Consciousness-Without-an-Object, then my rather pessimistic view that we are merely noisy animals is wrong. If there is some way that we can work our origins out of the basic ground of the universe, bypassing our ideas that the evolutionary process generates us by generating our brains–if there is some contact, some connection between us and Consciousness-Without-an-Object and the Void, and if we can make that contact, that connection known to ourselves individually, as Wolff claims, then there is possible far more hope and optimism than I ever believed in the past. If what he says is true, we have potential far beyond that I have imagined we could possibly have. If what he says is true, we can be and realize our being as part of the Star Maker.

It may be that Wolff, like all the rest of us, is doing an over-valuation of his own abstractions. It may be that he is generating, i.e., seif-metaprogramming, states of his own mind and those of others in which the ideals of the race are reified as thought objects, as programs, as realities, as states of consciousness. It may be that this is all we can do. If this is all we can do, maybe we had better do it and see if there is anything beyond this by doing it.

If by getting into a state of High Indifference, of Nirvana, Samadhi, or Satori, then one can function as a teaching example to others and it may be that if a sufficiently large number of us share this particular set of metaprograms we may be able to survive our own alternative dichotomous spaces of righteous wrath. If righteous wrath must go as a non-surviving program for the human species, then it may be that High Indifference is a reasonable alternative.

Setting up a hierarchy of states of consciousness with High Indifference at the top, Nirvana next, Satori next, Samadhi next, and Ananda at the bottom is an interesting game, especially when one becomes capable of moving through all these spaces and staying a sufficient time in each to know it.

This may be a better game than killing our neighbors because they do not believe in our simulations of God. At least those who espouse these states claim that these states are above any other human aspiration; that once one has experienced them, he is almost unfit for wrath, for pride, for arrogance, for power over others, for group pressure exerted either upon oneself or upon others. One becomes fit only for teaching these states to those who are ready to learn them. The bodhisattva vow is no longer necessary for those who have had direct experience. One becomes the bodhisattva without the vow. One becomes Buddha without being Buddha.

One becomes content with the minimum necessities for survival on the planetside trip; one cuts back on his use of unnecessary articles-machines, gadgets, and devices. He no longer needs motion pictures, television, dishwashers, or other luxuries. One no longer needs much of what most people value above all else. One no longer needs the excitement of war. One no longer needs to be a slave to destructive thoughts or deeds. One no longer needs to organize.

Krishnamurti’s story of the Devil is pertinent here. Laura Huxley furnished me with a copy of it. The Devil was walking down the street with a friend, and they saw a man pick something up, look at it carefully and put it in his pocket. The friend said to the Devil, “What’s that?” The Devil said, “He has found a bit of the truth.” The friend said, “Isn’t that bad for your business?” The Devil said, “No, I am going to arrange to have him organize it.”

So it behooves us not to organize either the methods or the states which Wolff describes so well. It is better not to try to devise groups, techniques, churches, places, or other forms of human organization to encourage, foster, or force upon others these states. If these states are going to do anything with humanity, they must “creep by contagion,” as it were, from one individual to the next.

God as Consciousness-Without-an-Object, if real, will be apperceived and introcepted by more and more of us as we turn toward the inner realities within each of us. If God as Consciousness-Without-an-Object inhabits each of us, we eventually will see this. We will become universally aware. We will realize consciousness as being everywhere and eternal. We will realize that Consciousness-Without-an-Object in each of us is prejudiced and biased because it has linked up with a human brain.

REFERENCE

1. Merrell-Wolif, Franklin, Pathways Through to Space, and The Philosophy of Consciousness- Without-an-Object, both New York: Julian-Press, 1973.

Dr. John C. Lilly, M.D., Simulations of God

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Poetry: Lady Mary Wroth

Fie tedious Hope, why doe you still rebell?

Fie tedious Hope, why doe you still rebell?

Is it not yet enough you flatter’d me,

But cunningly you seeke to use a Spell

How to betray; must these your Trophees bee?

I look’d from you farre sweeter fruite to see,

But blasted were your blossomes when they fell:

And those delights expected from hands free,

Wither’d and dead, and what seemd blisse proves hell.

No Towne was won by a more plotted slight,

Then I by you, who may my fortune write,

In embers of that fire which ruin’d me:

Thus Hope your falshood calls you to be tryde,

You’r loth, I see, the tryall to abide;

Prove true at last, and gaine your liberty.

—-

Flye hence, O Joy, no longer heere abide

Flye hence, O Joy, no longer heere abide,

Too great thy pleasures are for my despaire

To looke on, losses now must prove my fare;

Who not long since on better foode relide.

But foole, how oft had I Heav’ns changing spi’de

Before of mine owne fate I could have care:

Yet now past time I can too late beware,

When nothings left but sorrowes faster ty’de.

While I enjoyd that Sunne, whose sight did lend

Me joy, I thought that day could have no end:

But soone a night came cloath’d in absence darke;

Absence more sad, more bitter then is gall,

Or death, when on true Lovers it doth fall;

Whose fires of love, disdaine reasts poorer sparke

You blessed shades, which give me silent rest

You blessed shades, which give me silent rest,

Witnes but this when death hath clos’d mine eyes,

And separated me from earthly tyes;

Being from hence to higher place adrest.

How oft in you I have laine heere opprest?

And have my miseries in wofull cryes

Deliver’d forth, mounting up to the Skyes?

Yet helplesse, backe return’d to wound my brest.

Which wounds did but strive how to breed more harm

To me, who can be cur’d by no one charme

But that of Love, which yet may me releeve;

If not, let Death my former paines redeeme,

My trusty friends, my faith untouch’d, esteeme,

And witnesse I could love, who so could grieve.

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How fast thou fliest, O Time, on Loves swift wings

How fast thou fliest, O Time, on Loves swift wings,

To hopes of joy, that flatters our desire:

Which to a Lover still contentment brings;

Yet when we should injoy, thou dost retire.

Thou stay’st thy pace (false Time) from our desire

When to our ill thou hast’st with Eagles wings:

Slow only to make us see thy retire

Was for Despaire, and harme, which sorrow brings.

O slake thy pace, and milder passe to Love,

Be like the Bee, whose wings she doth but use

To bring home profit; masters good to prove,

Laden, and weary, yet againe pursues.

So lade thy selfe with hony of sweet joy,

And do not me the Hive of Love destroy.

______

Lady Mary Wroth

Lady Mary Wroth was born Mary Sidney, on October 18, 1587, into a family connected to the royal courts of Elizabeth I and James I. She was the daughter of Sir Robert Sidney, later Earl of Leicester, and Lady Barbara Gamage. She is best known as the first English woman to write a full-length prose romance and a sonnet sequence, departing from traditional “women’s” genres such as epitaph and translation. Her work helped to open up the English literary world to women, and allowed female writers to move beyond pious subject matter (Beilin 212).

Like other girls of her day, Wroth did not attend school. But unlike most, she was taught at home by private tutors. Her mother was known as a patron of the arts, and in 1973 a previously unknown manuscript containing 66 poems written by her father was discovered. Wroth was also heavily influenced by her father’s literary siblings. Her uncle, Sir Philip Sidney, was famous as a soldier, statesman and poet, and her aunt, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, both composed her own and revised and edited her brother’s works.

In contrast to Mary Wroth’s literary family, her husband, Sir Robert Wroth, whom she married in 1604, had little to do with the arts. He preferred hunting and the life of the court. Husband and wife often clashed, though as much as Wroth grew to detest Sir Robert, his friendship with the King brought her into a close contact with Queen Anne (Roberts, Dictionary of Literary Biography 121: 297). She performed with the Queen in court masques early in James’ reign, including Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness, in January of 1605. Jonson even dedicated The Alchemist (1612) to Wroth.

As a poet, Wroth reversed the customary gender roles of the sonnet sequence. The complaining Petrarchan lover attempting to court a cool, unwilling woman is replaced, in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, by a woman who wrestles with her own emotions and with the absence of her beloved. In Wroth’s own life the role of Amphilanthus seems to have been played by her first cousin, William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, the father of two of Wroth’s three children. In contrast to Wroth’s husband, Herbert was a renowned patron of the arts. Sir Robert Wroth seems either to have been ignorant of, or untroubled by, this liaison; he named Pembroke as an executor of his will, and referred to Wroth as a “deere and loving wife.” After Robert Wroth’s death in 1614, Mary was left heavily in debt. She could not longer afford the lavish expenses attendance at court demanded, and she was plagued by vicious rumours, which led eventually to her fall from favour with Queen Anne. For a time Wroth lived in Pembroke’s London home.

Turning to writing after her alienation from the court, Wroth produced Urania, a pastoral romance containing thinly veiled references to court figures. To this work she appended the sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. The book was dedicated to another friend and literary patron, Pembroke’s sister-in-law, Susan (Vere) Herbert, Countess of Montgomery. One reader of the Urania, Sir Edward Denny, took the romance to contain an account of his own infidelities, and his complaints to the King succeeded in having Wroth’s book removed from circulation. The controversy did not end Wroth’s writing career, however, and she produced a pastoral tragicomedy, Love’s Victory, in the mid 1620s. Wroth spent the last years of her life in seclusion, and died in 1653, at the age of 66.

The Changing Life….

( Man Ray~Louise Brooks…. Screen Beauty of Early Cinema…)

Today being the 4th of September, dear to Hermes…

On the Menu:

The Links

On The Personal Side of Things…

Poetry: Robert Graves

Photography: Louise Brooks As Subject…

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The Links:

Stolen dinosaur fossils recovered

Stone by stone, craftsmen build medieval-style castle

Absolve Me!

Scientists pinpoint polar catastrophe

_________________

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On The Personal Side Of Things…

PK Graduates!

Our dear friend PK graduated from Oriental Medical School… Cramming 4 years into 3, while maintaining a job. I don’t know how he did it. He is now known as ‘Doctor Needles’ due to his drive to start up his practice with Acupuncture…

It was an amazing graduation, excellent speakers, wonderfully presented and heartfelt.

We got to hang with him through the evening afterwards, and watch the celebration at the graduating party. Though we left early, we heard PK ended up dancing with some 20 young ladies at the same time… Must of been his Indian charm, or maybe his imitation of Krishna which drove the young ladies wild!

Anyways… a big congratulations to Dr. Needles, and may he ever find the right meridian…. 8o)

Visiting The Folks….

We got to visit with Rowan’s Grandfather and Grandmother (my Dad n’ Step Mum) up in Washington. It was a quick visit, but we will be back there soon.

They recently moved into their new house…. ever the gypsies, they have moved some 3 times over the last 2 years! Now, my Father isn’t a spring chicken, but he is up for anything it seems. He is starting to slow down, and he has problems with his hips. I think he finds this a bit much at times, seeing as he jogged until he was 72 and skiied until he was 74. He ran 5 – 10 miles daily from his 50th birthday on. I should be so determined!

He keeps active with his religious studies, and taking care around the house, and my Step-Mum Gloria, really is a fantastic cook, having studied in Italy. She is also an accomplished artist in several areas. She still amazes me after all these years.

They are celebrating their 42nd year of marriage today, which coincidentially happens to be my birthday. It is an odd, conjunction, but somehow it works fine for us.

This is kind of a banner year, I am now on the slippery slope to sixty. I know it is an artifice, but it is fascinating (at least for yours truly) the changes wrought by another year of being exposed to the cosmic winds. Irridated from above, honed by the atmosphere, drenched in the industrial chemical stew we call the modern world, it is always a surprise to make it another year.

When younger, I honestly didn’t expect to make it to 30. At times, that seemed a real possibility with some of the stuff I got into, but I am happy to say that affectation passed when September 4th passed in 1981, accompanied with an earthquake just for good measure at our morning breakfast with champagne, and mushrooms over toast… 80)

My sister Rebecca, who is a few years older sent a message this morning: “At 55 your are at the beginning of a new cycle. May this year be gentle with you, full of fun and creativity, and may you move with your deepest purpose.”

One would hope so!

Much Love,

G

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Poetry: Robert Graves…

THE FINDING OF LOVE

Pale at first and cold,

Like wizard’s lily-bloom

Conjured from the gloom,

Like torch of glow-worm seen

Through grasses shining green

By children half in fright,

Or Christmas candelelight

Flung on the outer snow,

Or tinsel stars that show

Their evening glory

With sheen of fairy story–

Now with his blaze

Love dries the cobweb maze

Dew-sagged upon the corn,

He brings the flowering thorn,

Mayfly and butterfly,

And pigeons in the sky,

Robin and thrush,

And the long bulrush,

The cherry under the leaf,

Earth in a silken dress,

With end to grief,

With joy in steadfastness.

—-

To Be Called a Bear

Bears gash the forest trees

To mark the bounds

Of their own hunting grounds;

They follow the wild bees

Point by point home

For love of honeycomb;

They browse on blueberries.

Then should I stare

If I am called a bear,

And is it not the truth?

Unkept and surly with a sweet tooth

I tilt my muzzle toward the stary hub

Where Queen Callisto guards her cub,

But envy those that here

All winter breathing slow

Sleep warm under the snow,

That yawn awake when the skies clear,

And lank with longing grow

No more than one brief month a year.

—-

The Eremites

We may well wonder at those bearded hermits

Who like the scorpion and the basilisk

Couched in the desert sands, to undo

Their scrufy flesh with tortures.

They drank from pools fouled by the ass and the camel,

Chewed uncooked millet pounded between stones,

Wore but a shame-rag, dusk or dawn,

And rolled in thorny places.

In the wilderness there are no women;

Yet hermits harbour in their shrunken loins

A penitential paradise,

A leaping-house of glory.

Solomons of a thousand lusty love-chants,

These goatish men, burned Aethiopian black,

Kept vigil till the angelic whores

Should lift the latch of pleasure.

And what Atellan orgies of the soul

Were celebrated then among they rocks

They testify themselves in books

That rouse Atellan laughter.

Haled back at last to wear the ring and mitre,

They clipped their beards and, for their stomachs’ sake,

Drank now and then a little wine,

And tasted cakes and honey.

Observe then how they disciplined the daughters

Of noble widows, who must fast and thirst,

Abjure down-pillows, rouge and curls,

Deform their delicate bodies:

Whose dreams were curiously beset by visions

Of stinking hermits in a wilderness

Pressing unnatural lusts on them

Until they wakened screaming.

Such was the virtue of our pious fathers:

To refine pleasure in the hungry dream.

Pity for them, but pity too for us –

Our beds by their leave lain in.

—-

The Siren’s Welcome to Cronos

Cronos the Ruddy, steer your boat

Toward Silver Island whence we sing;

Here you shall pass your days.

Through a thick-growing alder-wood

We clearly see, but are not seen,

Hid in a golden haze.

Our hair the hue of barley sheaf,

Our eyes the hue of blackbird’s egg,

Our cheeks like asphodel.

Here the wild apple blossoms yet;

Wrens in the silver branches play

And prophesy you well.

Here nothing ill or harsh is found.

Cronos the Ruddy, steer your boat

Across these placid straits,

With each of us in turn to lie

Taking your pleasure on young grass

That for your coming waits.

No grief nor gloom, sickness nor death.

Disturbs our long tranquility;

No treachery, no greed.

Compared with this, what are the plains

Of Elis, where you ruled as king?

A wilderness indeed.

A starry crown awaits your head,

A hero feast is spread for you:

Swineflesh, milk and mead.

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Have a great day!

The Real Work

Check Out Radio Free EarthRites Spoken Word Channel!

Paste this into your URL Stream on your media player: http://87.194.36.124:8002/spokenword

Something to tide everyone over for the weekend…. outa here until tomorrow.

On the Menu

The Real Work – Rumi

The Links

The Caravan of Summer by Peter Lamborn Wilson

Poetry: Rumi

Enjoy!

Gwyllm

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The Real Work – Rumi

There is one thing in this world that you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to

worry about; but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.

It’s as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don’t do it, it’s as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat. It’s a golden bowl being used to cook turnips, when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots. It’s a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.

You say, “But look, I’m using the dagger. It’s not lying idle.” Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds? For a penny, an iron nail could be bought to serve the purpose. You say, “But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises. I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and all the rest.”

But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself.

Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t, you will be exactly like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You’ll be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly ignoring your dignity and your purpose.

From The Teachings of Rumi edited by Andrew Harvey

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Links…

DMT

‘Beast’ just a dog, DNA test shows

Jesus sighting bolsters believers in Eastern Connecticut

Fossils Suggest Chaotic Recovery from Mass Extinction

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The Caravan of Summer by Peter Lamborn Wilson

Something of the real difference between pilgrim and tourist can be detected by comparing their effects on the places they visit. Changes in a place a city, a shrine, a forest may be subtle, but at least they can be observed. The state of the soul may be a matter of conjecture, but perhaps we can say something about the state of the social.

Pilgrimage sites like Mecca may serve as great bazaars for trade and they may even serve as centers of production (like the silk industry of Benares) but their primary “product” is baraka or mana. These words (one Arabic, one Polynesian) are usually translated as “blessing”, but they also carry a freight of other meanings.

The wandering dervish who sleeps at a shrine in order to dream of a dead saint (one of the “people of the Tombs”) seeks initiation or advancement on the spiritual path; a mother who brings a sick child to Lourdes seeks healing; a childless woman in Morocco hopes the Marabout will make her fertile if she ties a rag to the old tree growing out of the grave; the traveler to Mecca yearns for the very center of the Faith, and as the caravans come within sight of the Holy City the hajji calls out, “Labaika Allahumma!” “I am here, O Lord!”

All these motives are summed up by the word baraka, which sometimes seems to be a palpable substance, measurable in terms of increased charisma or “luck.” The shrine produces baraka. And the pilgrim takes it away. But blessing is a product of the imagination and thus no matter how many pilgrims take it away, there’s always more.

In fact, the more they take, the more blessing the shrine can produce (because a popular shrine grows with every answered prayer.) To say that baraka is “imaginal” is not to call it “unreal.” It’s real enough to those who feel it. But spiritual goods do not follow the rules of supply and demand like material goods. The more demand for spiritual goods, the more supply. The production of baraka is infinite.

By contrast, the tourist desires not baraka but cultural difference. The tourist consumes difference. But the production of cultural difference is not infinite. It is not “merely” imaginal. It is rooted in languages, landscape, architecture, custom, taste, smell. It is very physical. The more it is used up or taken away, the less remains. The social can produce just so much “meaning,” so much difference. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

The modest goal of this essay is to address the individual traveler who has decided to resist tourism. Even though we may find it impossible in the end to “purify” ourselves and our travel from every last taint and trace of tourism, we still feel that improvement may be possible.

Not only do we disdain tourism for its vulgarity and its injustice, and therefore wish to avoid any contamination (conscious or unconscious) by its viral virulency, we also wish to understand travel as an act of reciprocity rather than alienation. In other words, we don’t wish merely to avoid the negatives of tourism, but even more to achieve positive travel, which we envision as a productive and mutually enhancing relationship between self and other, guest and host, a form of cross-cultural synergy in which the whole exceeds the sum of parts.

We’d like to know if travel can be carried out according to a secret economy of baraka, whereby not only the shrine but also the pilgrims themselves have blessings to bestow.

Before the Age of Commodity, we know, there was an Age of the Gift, of reciprocity, of giving and receiving. We learned this from the tales of certain travelers, who found remnants of the world of the Gift among certain tribes, in the form of pot latch or ritual exchange, and recorded their observations of such strange practices.

Not long ago there still existed a custom among South Sea islanders of traveling vast distances by outrigger canoe, without compass or sextant, in order to exchange valuable and useless presents (ceremonial art-objects rich in mana) from island to island in a complex pattern of overlapping reciprocities.

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity, even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map, even though tourism seems to have triumphed. Even so, we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even “secret” pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel.

Perhaps the greatest and subtlest practitioners of the art of travel were the Sufis, the mystics of Islam. Before the age of passports, immunizations, airlines and other impediments to free travel, the Sufis wandered footloose in a world where borders tended to be more permeable than nowadays, thanks to the trans nationalism of Islam and the cultural unity of Dar al-Islam , the Islamic world.

The great medieval Moslem travelers, like Ibn Battuta and Naser Khusraw, have left accounts of vast journeys, Persia to Egypt, or even Morocco to China, which never set foot outside a landscape of deserts, camels, caravanserais, bazaars, and piety. Someone always spoke Arabic, however badly, and Islamic culture permeated the remotest backwaters, however superficially. Reading the tails of Sinbad the Sailor (from the 1001 Nights) gives us the impression of a world where even the terra incognita was still, despite all marvels and oddities, somehow familiar, somehow Islamic. Within this unity, which was not yet a uniformity, the Sufis formed a special class of travelers. Not warriors, not merchants, and not quite ordinary pilgrims either, the dervishes represent a spiritualization of pure nomadism.

According to the Koran, God’s Wide Earth and everything in it are “sacred,” not only as divine creations, but also because the material world is full of “waymarks,” or signs of divine reality. Moreover, Islam itself is born between two journeys, Mohammad’s hijra or “flight” from Mecca to Medina, and his hajj, or return voyage. The hajj is the movement toward the origin and center for every Moslem even today, and the annual Pilgrimage has played a vital role, not just in the religious unity of Islam, but also in its cultural unity.

Mohammad himself exemplifies every kind of travel in Islam; his youth with the Meccan caravans of Summer and Winter, as a merchant; his campaigns as a warrior; his triumph as a humble pilgrim. Although an urban leader, he is also the prophet of the Bedouin and himself a kind of nomad, a “sojourner”an “orphan.” From this perspective travel can almost be seen as a sacrament. Every religion sanctifies travel to some degree, but Islam is virtually unimaginable without it.

The Prophet said, “Seek knowledge, even as far as China.” From the beginning, Islam lifts travel above all “mundane” utilitarianism and gives it an epistemological or even Gnostic dimension. “The jewel that never leaves the mine is never polished,” says the Sufi poet Saadi. To “educate” is to “lead outside,” to give the pupil a perspective beyond parochiality and mere subjectivity.

Some Sufis may have done all their traveling in the Imaginal World of archetypal dreams and visions, but vast numbers of them took the Prophet’s exhortations quite literally. Even today dervishes wander over the entire Islamic worldbut as late as the 19th century they wandered in veritable hordes, hundreds or even thousands at a time, and covered vast distances. All in search of knowledge.

Unofficially, there existed two basic types of wandering Sufi: the “gentleman-scholar” type, and the mendicant dervish. The former category includes Ibn Battuta (who collected Sufi initiations the way some occidental gentlemen once collected Masonic degrees), andon a much more serious level the “Greatest Shaykh” Ibn Arabi, who meandered slowly through the 13th century from his native Spain, across North Africa, through Egypt to Mecca, and finally to Damascus.

Ibn Arabi actually left accounts of his search for saints and adventurers on the road, which could be pieced together from his voluminous writings to form a kind of rihla or “travel text”: ( a recognized genre of Islamic literature) or autobiography. Ordinary scholars traveled in search of rare texts on theology or jurisprudence, but Ibn Arabi sought only the highest secrets of esotericism and the loftiest “openings” into the world of divine illumination; for him every “journey to the outer horizons” was also a “journey to the inner horizons” of spiritual psychology and gnosis.

On the visions he experienced in Mecca alone, he wrote a 12-volume work (The Meccan Revelations), and he has also left us precious sketches of hundreds of his contemporaries, from the greatest philosophers of the age to humble dervishes and “madmen,” anonymous women saints and “hidden Masters.”

Ibn Arabi enjoyed a special relation with Khezr, the immortal and unknown prophet, the “Green Man,” who sometimes appears to wandering Sufis in distress, to rescue them from the desert, or to initiate them. Khezr, in a sense, can be called the patron saint of the traveling dervishes and the prototype. (He first appears in the Koran as a mysterious wanderer and companion of Moses in the desert.)

Christianity once included a few orders of wandering mendicants (in fact, St. Francis organized one after meeting with dervishes in the Holy Land, who may have bestowed upon him a “cloak of initiation” the famous patchwork robe he was wearing when he returned to Italy), but Islam spawned dozens, perhaps hundreds of such orders.

As Sufism crystallized from the loose spontaneity of early days to an institution with rules and grades, “travel for knowledge” was also regularized and organized. Elaborate handbooks of duties for dervishes were produced which included methods for turning travel into a very specific form of meditation. The whole Sufi “path” itself was symbolized in terms of intentional travel.

In some cases itineraries were fixed (e.g. the Hajj); others involved waiting for “signs” to appear, coincidences, intuitions, “adventurers” such as those which inspired the travels of the Arthurian knights. Some orders limited the time spent in any one place to 40 days; others made a rule of never sleeping twice in the same place. The strict orders, such as the Naqshbandis, turned travel into a kind of full-time choreography, in which every movement was preordained and designed to enhance consciousness.

By contrast, the more heterodox orders (such as the Qalandars) adopted a “rule” of total spontaneity and abandon “permanent unemployment” as one of them called it an insouciance of bohemian proportions a “dropping-out” at once both scandalous and completely traditional. Colorfully dressed, carrying their begging bowls, axes, and standards, addicted to music and dance, carefree and cheerful (sometimes to the point of “blameworthiness”!), orders such as the Nematollahis of 19th century Persia grew to proportions that alarmed both sultans and theologians. Many dervishes were executed for “heresy.”

Today the true Qalandars survive mostly in India, where their lapses from orthodoxy include a fondness for hemp and a sincere hatred of work. Some are charlatans, some are simple bums, but a surprising number of them seem to be people of attainment…how can I put it?…people of self-realization, marked by a distinct aura of grace, or baraka.

All the different types of Sufi travel we’ve described are united by certain shared vital structural forces. One such force might be called a “magical” world view, a sense of life that rejects the “merely” random for a reality of signs and wonders, of meaningful coincidences and “unveilings.” As anyone who’s ever tried it will testify, intentional travel immediately opens one up to this “magical” influence.

A psychologist might explain this phenomenon (either with awe or with reductionist disdain) as “subjective”; while the pious believer would take it quite literally. From the Sufi point of view neither interpretation rules out the other, nor suffices in itself, to explain away the marvels of the Path. In Sufism, the “objective” and the “subjective” are not considered opposites, but complements. From the point of view of the two-dimensional thinker (whether scientific or religious) such paradoxology smacks of the forbidden.

Another force underlying all forms of intentional travel can be described by the Arabic word “adab”. On one level “adab” simply means “good manners,” and in the case of travel, these manners are based on the ancient customs of desert nomads, for whom both wandering and hospitality are sacred acts. In this sense, the dervish shares both the privileges and the responsibilities of the guest.

Bedouin hospitality is a clear survival of the primordial economy of the Gift – a relation of reciprocity. The wanderer must be taken in (the dervish must be fed) but thereby the wanderer assumes a role prescribed by ancient custom and must give back something to the host. For the Bedouin this relation is almost a form of clientage Ð the breaking of bread and sharing of salt constitutes a sort of kinship. Gratitude is not a sufficient response to such generosity. The traveler must consent to a temporary adoption, anything less would offend against “adab”.

Islamic society retains at least a sentimental attachment to these rules, and thus creates a special niche for the dervish, that of the full-time guest. The dervish returns the gifts of society with the gift of baraka. In ordinary pilgrimage, the traveler receives baraka from a place, but the dervish reverses the flow and brings baraka to a place. The Sufi may think of himself (or herself) as a permanent pilgrim but to the ordinary stay-at-home people of the mundane world, the Sufi is a kind of preambulatory shrine.

Now tourism in its very structure breaks the reciprocity of host and guest. In English, a “host” may have either guests or parasites. The tourist is a parasite for no amount of money can pay for hospitality. The true traveler is a guest and thus serves a very real function, even today, in societies where the ideals of hospitality have not yet faded from the “collective mentality.” To be a host, in such societies, is a meritorious act. Therefore, to be a guest is also to give merit.

The modern traveler who grasps the simple spirit of this relation will be forgiven many lapses in the intricate ritual of “adab” (how many cups of coffee? Where to put one’s feet? How to be entertaining? How to show gratitude? etc.) peculiar to a specific culture. And if one bothers to master a few of the traditional forms of “adab”, and to deploy them with heartfelt sincerity, then both guest and host will gain more than they put into the relation and this more is the unmistakable sign of the presence of the Gift.

Another level of meaning of the word “adab” connects it with culture (since culture can be seen as the sum of all manners and customs): In modern usage the Department of “Arts and Letters” at a university would be called Adabiyyat. To have “adab” in this sense is to be “polished” (like that well-traveled gem) but this has nothing necessarily to do with “fine arts” or literacy or being a city-slicker, or even being “cultured.” It is a matter of the “heart.”

“Adab” is sometimes given as a one-word definition of Sufism. But insincere manners (ta’arof in Persian) and insincere culture alike are shunned by the Sufi. “There is no ta’arof in Tassawuf [Sufism],” as the dervishes say; “Darvishi” is an adjectival synonym for informality, the laid-back quality of the people of the Heart and for spontaneous “adab”, so to speak. The true guest and host never make an obvious effort to fulfill the “rules” of reciprocity they may follow the ritual scrupulously, or they may bend the forms creatively, but in either case, they will give their actions a depth of sincerity that manifests as natural grace. “Adab” is a kind of love.

A complement of this “technique” (or “Zen”) of human relations can be found in the Sufi manner of relating to the world in general. The “mundane” world of social deceit and negativity, of usurious emotions, unauthentic consciousness (“mauvaise conscience”), boorishness, ill-will, inattention, blind reaction, false spectacle, empty discourse, etc. etc. all this no longer holds any interest for the traveling dervish. But those who say that the dervish has abandoned “this world”, “God’s Wide Earth”would be mistaken.

The dervish is not a Gnostic Dualist who hates the biosphere (which certainly includes the imagination and the emotions, as well as “matter” itself). The early Muslim ascetics certainly closed themselves off from everything. When Rabiah, the woman saint of Basra, was urged to come out of her house and “witness the wonders of God’s creation,” she replied, “Come into the house and see them,” i.e., come into the heart of contemplation of the oneness which is above the manyness of reality. “Contraction” and “Expansion” are both terms for spiritual states. Rabiah was manifesting Contraction: a kind of sacred melancholia which has been metaphorized as the “Caravan of Winter,” of return to Mecca (the center, the heart), of interiority, and of ascesis or self-denial. She was not a world-hating Dualist, nor even a moralistic flesh-hating puritan. She was simply manifesting a certain specific kind of grace.

The wandering dervish, however, manifests a state more typical of Islam in its most exuberant energies. He indeed seeks expansion, spiritual joy based on the sheer multiplicity of the divine generosity in material creation. (Ibn Arabi has an amusing “proof” that this world is the best world. For, if it were not, then God would be ungenerous which is absurd. Q.E.D.) In order to appreciate the multiple waymarks of the wide earth precisely as the unfolding of this generosity, the Sufi cultivates what might be called the theophanic gaze: The opening of the “Eye of the Heart” to the experience of certain places, objects, people, events as locations of the “shining-through” of divine light. The dervish travels, so to speak, both in the material world, and in the “World of Imagination” simultaneously. But for the eye of the heart, these worlds interpenetrate at certain points.

One might say that they mutually reveal or “unveil” each other. Ultimately, they are “one” and only our state of tranced inattention, our mundane consciousness, prevents us from experiencing this “deep” identity at every moment. The purpose of intentional travel, with its “adventures” and its uprooting of habits, is to shake loose the dervish from all the trance-effects of ordinariness. Travel, in other words, is meant to induce a certain state of consciousness or “spiritual state” that of Expansion.

For the wanderer, each person one meets might act as an “angel,” each shrine one visits may unlock some initiate dream, each experience of nature may vibrate with the presence of some “spirit of place.” Indeed, even the mundane and ordinary may suddenly be seen as numinous (as in the great travel haiku of the Japanese Zen poet Basho) : a face in the crowd at a railway station, crows on telephone wires, sunlight in a puddle.

Obviously one doesn’t need to travel to experience this state. But travel can be used, that is, an art of travel can be required to maximize the chances for attaining such a state. It is a moving meditation, like the Taoist martial arts.

The Caravan of Summer moved outward, out of Mecca, to the rich trading lands of Syria and Yemen. Likewise, the dervish is “moving out” (it’s always “moving day”), heading forth, taking off, on “perpetual holiday” as one poet expressed it, with an open heart, an attentive eye (and other senses), and a yearning for meaning, a thirst for knowledge. One must remain alert, since anything might suddenly unveil itself as a sign. This sounds like a bit of paranoia although “metanoia” might be a better term and indeed one finds “madmen” amongst the dervishes, “attracted ones,” overpowered by divine influxions, lost in the Light.

In the Orient, the insane are often cared for and admired as helpless saints, because mental illness may sometimes appear as a symptom of too much holiness rather than too little “reason.” Hemp’s popularity amongst the dervishes can be attributed to its power to induce a kind of intuitive attentiveness which constitutes a controllable insanity, herbal metanoia. But travel itself in itself can intoxicate the heart with the beauty of theophanic presence. It’s a question of practice, the polishing of the jewel, removal of moss from the rolling stone.

In the old days (which are still going on in some remote parts of the East), Islam thought of itself as a whole world, a wide world, a space with great latitude within which Islam embraced the whole of society and nature. This latitude appeared on the social level as tolerance. There was room enough, even for such marginal groups as mad wandering dervishes. Sufism itself, or at least its austere orthodox and “sober” aspect occupied a central position in the cultural discourse. “Everyone” understood intentional travel by analogy with the Hajj, everyone understood the dervishes, even if they disapproved.

Nowadays, however, Islam views itself as a partial world, surrounded by unbelief and hostility, and suffering internal raptures of every sort. Since the 19th century Islam has lost its global consciousness and sense of its own wideness and completeness. No longer therefore, can Islam easily find a place for every marginalized individual and group within a pattern of tolerance and social order. The dervishes now appear as an intolerable difference in society. Every Muslim must now be the same, united against all outsiders, and struck from the same prototype.

Of course, Muslims have always “imitated” the Prophet and viewed his image as the norm and this has acted as a powerful unifying force for style and substance within Dar al-Islam. But “nowadays” the puritans and reformers have forgotten that this “imitation” was not directed only at an early medieval Meccan merchant named Mohammad, but also at the insan al-kamil (the “Perfect Man” or “Universal Human”), an ideal of inclusion rather than exclusion, an ideal of integral culture, not an attitude of purity in peril, not xenophobia disguised as piety, not totalitarianism, not reaction.

The dervish is persecuted nowadays in most of the Islamic world. Puritanism always embraces the most atrocious aspects of modernism in its crusade to strip the Faith of “medieval accretions” such as popular Sufism. And surely the way of the wandering dervish cannot thrive in a world of airplanes and oil-wells, of nationalistic/chauvinistic hostilities (and thus of impenetrable borders), and of a Puritanism which suspects all difference as a threat.

The Puritanism has triumphed not only in the East, but rather close to home as well. It is seen in the “time discipline” of modern too-late-Capitalism, and in the porous rigidity of consumerist hyper-conformity, as well as in the bigoted reaction and sex-hysteria of the Christian Right. Where in all this can we find room for the poetic (and parasitic!) life of “Aimless Wandering”, the life of Chuang Tzu (who coined this slogan) and his Taoist progeny, the life of Saint Francis and his shoeless devotees, the life of (for example) Nur Ali Shah Isfahani, a 19th century Sufi poet who was executed in Iran for the awful heresy of meandering-dervishism?

Here is the flip side of the “Problem of Tourism”: The problem with the disappearance of “aimless wandering.” Possibly the two are directly related, so that the more tourism becomes possible, the more dervishism becomes impossible. In fact, we might well ask if this little essay on the delightful life of the dervish possesses the least bit of relevance for the contemporary world. Can this knowledge help us to overcome tourism, even within our own consciousness and life? Or is it merely an exercise in nostalgia for lost possibilities, a futile indulgence in romanticism?

Well, yes and no. Sure, I confess I’m hopelessly romantic about the form of the dervish life, to the extent that for a while I turned my back on the mundane world and followed it myself. Because of course, it hasn’t really disappeared. Decadent, yes, but not gone forever. What little I know about travel I learned in those few years I owe a debt to “Medieval accretions” I can never pay and I’ll never regret my “escapism” for a single moment. But I don’t consider the form of dervishism to be the answer to the “problem of tourism.” The form has lost most of its efficacy. There’s no point in trying to “preserve” it (as if it were a pickle, or a lab specimen) there’s nothing quite so pathetic as mere “survival.”

But beneath the charming outer forms of dervishism lies the conceptual matrix, so to speak, which we’ve called intentional travel. On this point we should suffer no embarrassment about “nostalgia.” We have asked ourselves whether or not we desire a means to discover the art of travel, whether we want and will to overcome “the inner tourist,” the false consciousness which screens us from the experience of the Wide World’s waymarks. The way of the dervish (or of the Taoist, the Franciscan, etc.) interests us, not the key, perhaps but…a key. And of course it does.

Peter Lamborn Wilson is the author of Sacred Drift and several books and studies exploring the role of heresy and mysticism in Islam. Wilson spent ten years wandering in the Middle East. He now wanders the streets of New York City. This paper was read at the annual meeting of The Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society and appeared in White Cloud Press’s Common Era: Best New Writings on Religion (PO Box 3400, Ashland, Oregon (97520, 1-800-380-8286).

October 1999

————-

Poetry- Rumi

Not Intrigued With Evening

What the material world values does

not shine the same in the truth of

the soul. You have been interested

in your shadow. Look instead directly

at the sun. What can we know by just

watching the time-and-space shapes of

each other? Someone half awake in the night sees imaginary dangers; the

morning star rises; the horizon grows

defined; people become friends in a

moving caravan. Night birds may think

daybreak a kind of darkness, because

that’s all they know. It’s a fortunate

bird who’s not intrigued with evening,

who flies in the sun we call Shams.

—-

Light Breeze

As regards feeling pain, like a hand cut in battle,

consider the body a robe

you wear. When you meet someone you love, do you kiss their clothes? Search out

who’s inside. Union with God is sweeter than body comforts.

We have hands and feet

different from these. Sometimes in dream we see them.

That is not

illusion. It’s seeing truly. You do have a spirit body;

don’t dread leaving the

physical one. Sometimes someone feels this truth so strongly

that he or she can live in

mountain solitude totally refreshed. The worried, heroic

doings of men and women seem weary

and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit.

Moving Water

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river

moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling

disappears. Don’t let

others lead you. They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope

of God. And what is that? Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness

people sit in jail, the trapped bird’s wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness. You’ve seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment. Now

see the invisible. If you could leave your selfishness, you

would see how you’ve

been torturing your soul. We are born and live inside black water in a well.

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is? Don’t

insist on going where

you think you want to go. Ask the way to the spring. Your

living pieces will form

a harmony. There is a moving palace that floats in the air

with balconies and clear

water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained

under a single tent.

The Ballad of Elaine…

In Memory of Tomas’ lovely Anka…

“A finer friend would be near impossible to find”

Just got off the phone with my friend Tomas. We had a nice talk about Anka, and her passing last week. He misses her, as does the community she graced.

PK is graduating today, from Oriental Medical School! Very excited for him, 4 years! Amazing really. More on this later…

An abbreviated form of Turfing…

On The Menu:

The Links

Is this the right office?

The Ballad of Elaine…

Enjoy,

Gwyllm

___________

The Links:

Drought threat to Spain as farmers and developers gulp down precious water

The fight for democracy: The return of the Sandinista

British Ministry Of Truth Wants To Prosecute American Bloggers

Bail granted for journalist Josh Wolf

____________

____________

The Ballad of Elaine – by Sydney Fowler Wright

“What would ye that I did?” said Sir Lancelot.

“I would have you to my husband,” said Elaine.

“Fair damosel, I thank you,” said Sir Lancelot,

“but truly,” said he, “I cast me never to be wedded man.”

“Then, fair knight,” said she, “will ye be my paramour?”

“Jesu defend me,” said Sir Lancelot, “for then I

rewarded your father and your brother full evil

for their great goodness.”

“Alas,” said she, “then must I die for your love.”

Le Morte D’Arthur.

Book XVIII Chap. XIX.

PART I

She came when evening came, – her feet

The cool grass comforted, –

Where love through morn and noon-day heat

Her seeking steps had led

To him who had no love for her,

And nigh whose life was dead.

Lone through the lengthened days he lay

Within that hermit’s cave,

Since, on the fatal tourney day,

So deep the lancehead drave

It seemed nor any skill could heal,

Nor any love could save.

Was closed that riven hurt where-through

The restless life had drained.

No more the aching wound he knew,

No more its healing pained.

Quiet in the shadowed cave he lay,

As one whose goal was gained.

Only he would for speech with him

To whom in life he clave,

The good knight Bors, whose lance too well

That wound unweening gave,

That he might ere his parting tell

How well his heart forgave.

“Damsel, my space of days is sped,

I wot God’s night is near,

But could’st thou hold my life,” he said,

“Till that good knight is here,

You might not ask so great a thing

That you should ask in fear.”

“I’ll ask one boon of God’s Mother,

Ere aught I’ll ask of thee.

I’ll ask one gift of God’s Mother,

That she should grant it me,

Though needly at the feet of God

She lay my life in fee.”

She searched that closing wound anew,

Its utter depth she learned.

She dressed it with the skill she knew,

With herbs that waked and burned,

Till where the dying life withdrew

Its aching pain returned.

The changing day was night without,

The changing night was day.

Through the long hours with life in doubt

In ever pain he lay.

Only the weary day was night:

Only the night was day.

And still her constant watch she kept,

And gained nor glance nor word,

And still her constant prayer she wept

Till Mary Virgin heard,

And then in quiet ease he slept,

And then from sleep he stirred.

“Damsel, a lightsome dream was mine:

A dream of truth, I ween.

I saw that good knight’s harness shine

The singing shaws between.

I pray thee look thou forth a space,

He should not pass unseen.”

She said, “The bending shaws above

A goodly knight I view.

His helm it bears no lady’s glove,

No plume is trailed thereto;

His shield hath but a small white dove,

That soareth in the blue;

He rideth as thy kinsmen ride;

He cometh close hereto.”

They heard the stamping hooves anear,

They heard the ringing bit,

They heard his voice the charger cheer

As that good knight alit.

Before the low cave-entrance trod

Sir Bors de Ganis, knight of God,

And stooping entered it.

Beside the lowly couch he knelt

In grief he might not stay,

Whose hand the deathful thrust had dealt

On that sad tourney day,

The chief of his great House to see,

Whom most of mortal men loved he,

How reft of strength he lay.

“Lancelot, there may no grief atone

The woeful chance,” he said,

“That deeming from a knight unknown

Our gathered Table fled,

Late ere the ceasing trump was blown,

The fatal charge I led.

But not thy changed arms had missed

Thy comrades used of yore

Their lord in any guise to wist,

But that red sleeve you bore:

A damsel’s favour down the list,

Thy never wont before.”

“Good friend, for nought you mourn,” he said,

“The day for grief is done.

My life, that sought the silent dead,

This damsel’s care hath won,

And days are mine that had not been,

And other life begun.

Whate’er device of pride I hid,

In fameless guise to shine,

My boast thy better lance fordid.

For that sure thrust of thine

That drave the brittle point unbent,

May rest you in good heart content:

My folly’s price is mine.

But speak what outer chance hath been

While here my life hath lain,

Withholding nought thine eyes have seen,

For either peace or pain.

For thou hast known the Grail of God,

Where that is false is vain.”

“When wounded from the lists you drew,

And no man marked thy way,

Forthright the ceasing trumpet blew,

The dying strife to stay,

As Arthur charged, alone who knew

Thy questioned name to say.

And spake the King for all that would

To seek thee wide and near.

Eager from noble heart he spake,

Who loves thee for thy glory’s sake,

The while that Guenevere,

Entreated half, and half forbid,

As half in fear her wrath she hid,

And half in wrath her fear.

From those who rode thy fate to trace

Lord Gawain first returned.

At Guildford, from thy biding place,

Thy present need he learned,

But brought he from his halting there

Such word of damsel; worth and fair,

Who gave thee that red sleeve to wear,

That little thank he earned.

For when I spoke my thought aloud

That hither ride would I,

(Her wrath it was a waiting cloud

Where the still thunders lie),

Thy queen in bitter speech aside

Forgiveness of thy fault denied,

Yea, though the race of kind had died,

Until ye twain should die.”

PART II

NOT God shall stay the ending day

That closeth dole or good.

With guerdon earned for life returned,

At parting hour they stood.

To right the way the downland lay,

To left the hawthorn wood.

“Damsel there is no gold to give

The price of life shall pay,

But speak you all your heart,” he said,

“And in such things I may,

To serve thee is my part,” he said,

“It is but thine to say.”

“If I have won thy life,” she said,

“I will no gold in fee.

Except our willing hearts were wed,

There were no gain for me.

Men speak me for the fairest maid

From Guildford to the sea, –

I would no sooner flower should fade

If all be nought to thee.”

“Damsel, the bitter boon you would

I may not grant,” said he,

“Since by the heavy doom of God

The Grail I might not see,

I know till all my path be trod

A wrought sin clingeth me,

And I am nothing worth to God,

Nor fitting mate for thee.”

“If word of quick, or word of dead,

Or word of God Most High,

Should speak thee any shame,” she said,

“Or any worth deny,

In this thing were it shown,” she said,

“That very God could lie.”

“I may not change my word,” said he,

“Though well in heart I wot,

My grief before the throne of God

Shall be I loved thee not.”

“But there,” she said, “my boast shall be

That I loved Lancelot.”

“My Benoic lands are large,” he said,

“My sword is strong to friend;

My lands were thine to take,” he said,

“My wealth were thine to spend,

But well I wot such gifts as these

Were nought for love’s amend

The small dust of the balances

God brushes ere the end.”

“I’ll ask no holding bond to share,

“No lengthened price to pay.

My life is thine to take,” she said,

“Is thine to cast away.

The day thy love shall tire,” she said,

“Shall be our parting day,

And I will bless thy name in prayer,

Yea, before God, alway.”

“I will not waste thy life,” he said,

“God put it far from me.

Not any strain of strife,” he said,

“No sin that clingeth me,

Should close me from the courts of God

As this you speak should be,

The clean gift of thy love to take,

Who have no love for thee.

There is no woe of mortal kind

But God may cease,” he said,

“Believe, thy later days shall find

A better knight to wed,

And leave me in thy life behind,

As having loved the dead.”

She had no further hope to plead,

No other word to say.

She turned beneath the hawthorn seed,

Where once had blown the may.

The may was white as innocence,

But dark as blood were they.

The meaning of this thing to rede

There is no man that may.

But slow she clomb the upward way,

And slow she toiled the flat.

Nought saw she where her footsteps lay,

No word her heart forgat.

So won she at the fail of day

The towers of Astolat.

No more to meet the morn she rose,

No more she sought the sun,

But while she lay in wearihed,

And while she walked as one

Whose soul a living corse had shed,

Whose use of days was done.

“Bethink thy gentle birth,” they said,

“Bethink thy virgin name.

A love to seek unsought,” they said,

“There is no greater shame.

Would God that treasoned knight had died,

Ere to these lonely towers aside

To work our grief he came.”

But hotly in his sisters plea

Spake the young knight, Lavaine,

“What use in reasoned speech may be,

In urging customs vain?

For they that noble knight who see,

The nobler that themselves they be,

They love him to the like degree,

And are not whole again.

Myself since that red dusk of day

When here in hall he stood,

I have but thought to seek his way,

Nor other life I would,

Save but to serve his need alway,

For evil days or good.”

She said, “What God hath in me wrought,

That shall not God deny.

The noblest of my kind I sought.

And no way shamed am I,

Though love be given in gain of nought,

And glad of grief I die.

But you shall bear and lay me dead

The river barge within,

And tire it as the bridal bed

Of maid of loftiest kin,

For this way shall I gain,” she said,

“That only death should win.

Shall be one silent hand to steer

Down the still stream and wide,

Until the palace walls appear,

That rise in terraced marble sheer

From the full waterside;

And he shall turn his course anear,

And wait what things betide.”

PART III

LOOKED Arthur from a casement high,

O’er the long waterside.

He marked a black barge gliding by,

Down the full stream and wide;

And white as Mary’s lilies lie,

On the dark shrine when night is nigh,

And tired like a bride,

It seemed a sleeping damsel lay,

And while he watched await,

In marvel if some moonland fey

Besought a mortal mate,

The barge with steady lapse and slow

Turned to the watergate.

Then bade he two good knights anigh

That sleeping maid to meet,

And of her grace and courtesy

Her biding days entreat.

In haste of eager steps they sped,

But came they from that damsel dead

With slower-moving feet.

“None there,” they told, “for bridal sleeps,

But timeless tryst with death she keeps,

Nor showeth cause therefor,

Of violence in the wildwood ways,

Nor leaping plague that loathly slays,

Nor the slow feet of wasting days,

Nor wrong of rape or war.

But in the barge its course to steer,

There sits, and pointeth inward here,

A silent servitor.

No mortal maid thine eyes shall see,

Though the sweet life be there,

No damsel of the Southland sea,

Or lands where Freya’s daughters be,

Nor the fey-grace of Nimue,

More fainly formed and fair.”

Then to Brandiles spake the King

And Agravaine to inward bring

That wonder dole and rare.

Brandiles bent and Agravaine

That burden worth to bear,

Watched of the wonder-silenced throng

That leaned those terraced walls along,

And lined the shining stair.

For there, that marvelled sight to see,

Were dame and lord of most degree,

And chiefs of song and minstrelsy,

And knights in steel and cramoisie,

And gay-clad damsels fair.

No snowdrop of the breaking snows,

When the long snows delay;

Nor flower the sweet mid-season knows,

Wood-lilies white as they;

Nor fuller summer’s guelder-rose,

That falleth where the dogwood glows;

Nor the white chalice-flower that grows

In the green heart of May;

At lift of dawn or evenclose,

Unflawed than she or fairer shows,

As there in death she lay.

But Arthur marked a script secure

In the cold hand contained,

And spake he that its word be read.

“For haply shall it prove,” he said,

“That this way from the silent dead

Her living tale be gained,

By those with swords to venge her wrong,

If craft or guile or treason strong,

Or darker powers that night belong,

Her blossomed life have baned.”

Was silence while the scroll was read,

“Lo, that Elaine am I

Whose tourney sleeve Sir Lancelot wore,

Whose rootless hope was high,

And in reverse of heart therefor

Of love rejected die.

For this may ladies all who hear,

And know my passing day,

Even from the high queen Guenevere,

And thou, Sir Lancelot, pray,

Who wast God’s knight without a peer,

And my good lord alway.”

“O Lancelot,” said the King, “is wrought

A seldom tale and sad.

If every ventured realm ye sought

You might no fairer bride have brought.

For the pure love she had

I would thine heart some grace had thought,

Awhile to make her glad;

For thee no vow to Heaven withheld,

Nor other bond forbad.”

And answered Lancelot, “Sooth ye say,

That treadeth earthly ground,

Or mortal maid or night-land fey,

There were no fairer found.

All else I gaged of gain or good,

But nought but of my love she would,

And love will not be bound.

And grieving o’er this damsel’s death,

And whence its cause should spring,

For her much love that witnesseth,

Appeal to God I bring,

That ne’er in open wrong have I

Distressed her that her life should die,

Or any secret thing.”

Then drew the high queen Guenevere,

(In green and gold was she),

Out from the silent throng more near

That damsels face to see.

She knew not if her heart were glad

That death had loosed her free,

Though well she knew the joy she had

His living love to be.

“Fair lord,” she said, “such grace was here,

That whom she sought to grant her cheer

There were but few to shun.

I would that in thine heart had lain

Such comfort of her longing fain

As had her death foredone.”

“O Queen,” he said, “such love she sought

To take or yield as no man ought,

Save of clean heart and single thought,

And other might I none.”

And Arthur answered, “Yea, perde,

Is none may speak thee nay,

There was no better end to be,

Nor any blame to say.

The High God’s thought is mystery,

It is no mortal’s way.

Yet were it to our worship seen,

This maid of noble heart and clean,

And worth as any here, I ween,

In the like ground to lay.”

PART IV

THEY laid her in the holy ground

Where the dead kings are laid.

They wrote her tale her tomb around

That whoso knelt and prayed

Might join her name, who seeking fain

Earth’s best, when showed her seeking vain,

Returned her life to God again,

And was of nought afraid.

But in a privy tower they met,

His queen and Lancelot.

Of that dark place his life had dured,

Of whom unblest his hurt had cured,

Of aught but of his faith assured,

Sufficing, recked she not.

Should she not other’s death forget,

Who when wellnear its sun was set

Had love itself forgot?

“O Lancelot, in thy love,” she said,

“You will not bear it blame,

When wrong that flying sleeve I read,

And tale of whispers round me spread

That joined a lowlier name

To thine, whose faith was hereward plight,

I held thee nevermore my knight,

And scorn to in like scorn requite,

Although with little heart I might,

I spake thee wrath and shame.”

“O Queen,” he said, “my service still,

For any tale untrue,

Is thine for guerdon fair or ill,

Thy given hest to do;

In all who only would thy will,

As ever yet you knew.”

When weaker faith shall pardon need

Shall surer love forgive.

Was here her secret joy to plead,

His larger joy to give;

And yet beyond their ceasing day

A further hope may live

That when shall God his bounty share,

And none her meed shall lack,

Not she, that jealous queen and fair

Who brought his life to wrack,

Nor she, more worth, his babe who bare,

And died at Carbonac.

Allied in that new mystery,

Which none of earth may wot,

Rejoiced shall stand. But then shall He

Her nearer place allot,

Found kindred in the courts of God,

Elaine and Lancelot.

The End