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Goddess of Atvatabar

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<h2>CHAPTER XXX.</h2> <h2>THE INSTALLATION OF A TWIN-SOUL (CONTINUED).</h2> While priest and priestess were folded with mutual emotion two of the loveliest souls took the place of the high priest and priestess on the silver pavement. The girl was young and tender, golden white in complexion with crimson lips. Her figure was swathed in a vermilion robe, on the breast of which was embroidered in outline a sea-green sun whose swaying rays reached the furthest parts of her garment. Her pale blue hair was crowned with a chaplet of daffodils. The youth wore a robe of scarlet silk embroidered with a golden sun similar in design to that of the priestess. His pose was singularly noble. These two souls were about to become priest and priestess, and, after having taken the vows of hopeless love in presence of the goddess, high priest and priestess and congregation of twin-[160]souls, they sang the following anthem, accompanied by a wailing storm of music from several hundred violins, entitled: THE TWIN-SOUL. PRIEST. <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Love is a heated furnace that devours The thickest ice; love is a sweet moist wind That cools the fevered desert with its balm. There is no rain nor heat, yea, even snow Is warm and rosy to ideal souls That shudder in life's sweetest ecstasies. If love, that makes ideal life, that dwells In fragrant silences, makes green the grass, And far more tender the diviner flowers, It surely makes both bold and delicate The warm superiority of flesh Of that strange, sacred soul that dwells with mine. </div> <div class="stanza"> The clear, yet golden whiteness of the form That shines through pale green diaphane, Showing its pliant beauty, is the dress Of that rapt soul that is all tenderness. Her brow is crowned with wistful daffodils, Making her fair face fairer, and her eyes Are clouded sapphires; yea, her perfect lips (Whereon my soul will dwell for evermore) Clear blood-red rubies! The sweet hand holds Red poppies and blue lotus, and the soft And sulphur blossomed wind flower. If such dress Enshrine a soul as perfect, if the curves That make her form voluptuous describe The splendor of her soul (and this I know), Love has no purer temple, nor more sweet! </div> </div> The priest had sung alone so far, and now both priest and priestess joined their voices in a marvellous song. Wilder, sweeter and more intense, the violins stormed and wailed pathetic whirlwinds of ecstasy. At times their insufferable moans caught the excited hearts of the audience, and twin-souls in their passion would rise on their wings and, revolving, sweep around the amphitheatre locked in each other's arms.[161] PRIEST AND PRIESTESS. <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Sharper than pain, we love, and the caress, Keener than torment, overmaddens us! There is no fasting when our feverish lips Meet in the shock that strikes the spirit dumb With swooning raptures! The dilated soul, Intemperate with the enormous moan Of passion, would outleap the strenuous will. The flesh, transfigured with the crisis, reels, Stretches the chain of duty and would leap To grasp the tempting and forbidden fruit, Were not that virtue is our comrade now. </div> <div class="stanza"> We lift our eager faces to the sun And feast on life and in each other's souls Luxuriate, confounded with delight. For us no mouldy cloister waits its prey, Nor cave of darkness, where existence mourns And dies beneath its scourgings. We have made Our grim novitiate with reality. Have known its agony, for we were born So eminent for rapture, that the pain All men inherit desolated us And spread a living terror in our souls; So that through clouds of everlasting woe Scarce came the gleam of gladness or of love, And earth was pitiless, and brutal souls Who cannot feel there ruled. Oh, the wide world, Degraded by ignoble brutishness, Could yield no tendernesses infinite For we who feed on rapture. Thus it was Our souls on meeting, in the thrilling kiss Were fused in indissoluble embrace; We who were famished, in ideal love Found sustenance and passed from death to life! </div> </div> The song was perfect. The strange, fresh accents of the singers, so full of love and passion, melted every heart in the temple with their ecstasy. One might hear such measures without thought of lapse of time or of worldly concerns. Ah! if one could hear such melody forevermore![162] With a burst of dramatic joy the singing of the last stanza revealed whole worlds of rapture. <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Reincarnated in an earthly heaven, Now have we reached Nirvana, now Above us open the wide gulfs of joy, And luminous and glorious round us blow Millions of flowers; while afar there shines The mighty splendor of the exhaustless sea! We dwell in breathless joys, thrilled through and through With majesty and sweetness; we have grown Athletes of joy in our Agapemone: Eager and breathless, we have found at last The fount of youth, the magical Arjeels; Fruits of organic gold amid the leaves Sparkle, and around our island home Are spread the veritable golden sands Whereon our happy feet tread evermore! </div> </div> The singers disappeared, and in their places a hundred wondrously-arrayed figures moved in the dance of pure being on the silver pavement. Lithe as leopards, with unclad limbs and feet, priest and priestess danced all the ecstasies of Egyplosis. The dancers were so young, so fresh, so tender, so beautiful, and so innocent, that it was a supreme joy to behold them. Rapture grew universal and lovers cried with hysterical shudderings. The rainbow-colored throng, moving to the music of the golden instruments, flashed upon the pavement like joy taking possession of the world! I felt intensely sad for Lyone, who sat like a statue of golden marble, gazing on the abyss of joy beneath. Had the goddess no lover to press her to his heart amid the universal rapture? Alas! the immense dignity of her position and the unalterable laws of Atvatabar alike prevented any single soul from feeding the intense hunger that consumed her. Accompanying the dancers, the unseen choir in the cloisters began to sing a new opera of love, and the strains of an "Ave, Lyone, bona dea," stole upon the senses like the bewildering sighs of angels, making one ache with delight. A story of romantic love once more sculptured the faces of priest and priestess with angelic beauty, as it rose on wings of song and swept in delightful moans upon the carven stone.[163] It was a memorable scene, one never to be forgotten! The hieroglyphic walls, carved in high relief with the instruments of empire, the dome with its ten thousand fadeless lights, the terraces of twin-souls radiant with delight, the marvellous dancers, the superb music that seemed to shake the heart of the solid stone that enclosed us, and high over all the supreme goddess in whose honor all this adoration was made, seated in bliss on the throne of the gods—such was the situation at that moment. It was a monstrous and a splendid joy! Suddenly a roar of invincible music issued from gigantic tubes that pierced the body of the throne itself with fresh and warlike explosions of melody. I was filled with a maddening delight, until consciousness could hardly bear the strain any longer. I cried aloud, amid a Chimborazo of song, a hundred-cratered Popocatapetl of sweet strains. The audience, enraptured with the climax, became an inferno of passion, laughter tears and felicity! <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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