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A chattel and a plaything of Time's lords, Or one more pawn who comes destined to be pushed One slow move forward on a measureless board In the chess-play of the earth-soul with Doom,-- Such is the human figure drawn by Time. A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force. In this enigma of the dusk of God, This slow and strange uneasy compromise Of limiting Nature with a limitless Soul, Where all must move between an ordered Chance And an uncaring blind Necessity, Too high the fire spiritual dare not blaze. If once it met the intense original Flame, An answering touch might shatter all measures made And earth sink down with the weight of the Infinite. A gaol is this immense material world: Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law, At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace. A grey tribunal of the Ignorance, An Inquisition of the priests of Night In judgment sit on the adventurer soul, And the dual tables and the Karmic norm Restrain the Titan in us and the God: Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe Guard the Wheel's circling immobility. A bond is put on the high-climbing mind, A seal on the too large wide-open heart; Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life. Thus is the throne of the Inconscient safe While the tardy coilings of the aeons pass And the Animal browses in the sacred fence And the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more. But one stood up and lit the limitless flame. Arraigned by the dark Power that hates all bliss In the dire court where life must pay for joy, Sentenced by the mechanic justicer 
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