Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics

Part II. Hesitation

     XXII. L'Apprenti Sorcier

     Suddenly there came to me
     The music of a mighty sea
     That on a bare and iron shore
     Thundered with a deeper roar
     Than all the tides that leap and run
     With us below the real sun:
     Because the place was far away,
     Above, beyond our homely day,
     Neighbouring close the frozen clime
     Where out of all the woods of time,
     Amid the frightful seraphim
     The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam,
     Revolving hate and misery
     And wars and famines yet to be.
     And in my dreams I stood alone
     Upon a shelf of weedy stone,
     And saw before my shrinking eyes
     The dark, enormous breakers rise,
     And hover and fall with deafening thunder
     Of thwarted foam that echoed under
     The ledge, through many a cavern drear,
     With hollow sounds of wintry fear.
     And through the waters waste and grey,
     Thick-strown for many a league away,
     Out of the toiling sea arose
     Many a face and form of those
     Thin, elemental people dear
     Who live beyond our heavy sphere.
     And all at once from far and near,
     They all held out their arms to me,
     Crying in their melody,
     "Leap in! Leap in and take thy fill
     Of all the cosmic good and ill,
     Be as the Living ones that know
     Enormous joy, enormous woe,
     Pain beyond thought and fiery bliss:
     For all thy study hunted this,
     On wings of magic to arise,
     And wash from off thy filmed eyes
     The cloud of cold mortality,
     To find the real life and be
     As are the children of the deep!
     Be bold and dare the glorious leap,
     Or to thy shame, go, slink again
     Back to the narrow ways of men."
     So all these mocked me as I stood
     Striving to wake because I feared the flood.