[BNP/E3, 49A1 – 5-6]
Between September 14 + December 31-1905 = Not September. Not October (post).
My soul dwells[1] in the land of dreams,
A fearful, beautiful[2] land –
There sun without a glint the streams;
An eye-moveless main breaks on the strand
Without the white of foam nor gleams
Of sun or moon; it is a land
Abnormal, terrible and grand.
It has things that the soul alone
Can see and feel and understand
Abnormal, terrible and grand –
Like the sight-imagining of a groan…
There are black rocks and caverns black
And a winding, mystic track
That has romance in its flow,
There are Lakes whose waters recall
Darkness, unbroken – no clouds sense
And blackness woods over all.
_______
For all this land is to the sight
As to the ear a bell that tools
And ever through the night that rolls
Upon our mind its envious spell…
A dark and unisensual hell.
One sense behind it, one alone
It is not eye nor ear nor touch
It is worth sense whose tone
Is for our thinking more than much
[5v]
I have never thought of one strange thing.
No sky broods over them.
___
And the whole country (curious nation)
Is made of such a texture droll
As that of fearful expectation
Unfulfilled – within the soul.
And the whole country, I know it well
Is all horror and undelight
And it is a unisensual hell
For it comes to no human sight
My view is not a human view
But it is to me – that mournful land –
As {…}
Abnormal, terrible and grand.
___
A blackness – no! – it is aught more strange
Deeper than thought and than all of ours
Far out of one timid dreams that range
No further than birth and death and change
In the jaws of Time that all devours.
[6r]
All through the space there is no air
All through that land here is no light
And well I know there is thunder there
Although no rumble shake around
Although no lightning hit my sight…
For here is neither light nor sound
Nor taste nor swell nor feeling here…
But the soul of thunder I know is there.
Ah what horror to see[3] the mind
Blows down the valleys are uncomposed
Although ‘tis with bad unseen to that in what it doth bow
But the greatest horror – above all thought
It is not that no stars do gem
A firmament – and it is not
That here is not life’s diadem
But it is that I remember well:
These lands are lone and each work is a hell
And so no sky broods over them.
I remember there is ought that hails
The humans souls with my race
I tremble to know that these fails
The human idea of space
No sky, nor lack of it, no-Fear
He dreamst, † doth shake
Me not the thought.
[6v]
I thought I loved the sweet virgin soul
Of a maiden fair
With a pure love above mortal control
{…}
But as I wished to[4] my heart to know
What is purity
I praised to God in my dreams to show
Ofer soul to me.
I wake into sleep as that of mutes
Stand the prayer an effect (ask I well)
For I dreamt of lechers and prostitutes
Burning in hell.
__________________________________________________
[1] dwells /knows well\
[2] beautiful /terrific\
[3] see /know\
[4] to /in\
