Rosa Alchemica - W. B. Yeats

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ROSA ALCHEMICA

Y

B. YEATS

blessed and happy he, who knowing the mysteries of the gods,nctifies his life, and purifies his soul, celebrating orgies in theountains with holy purifications.— Euripides.

OSA ALCHEMICA. I

is now more than ten years since I met, for the last time, Michaelobartes, and for the first time and the last time his friends and fellowudents; and witnessed his and their tragic end, and endured thoserange experiences, which have changed me so that my writings have

own less popular and less intelligible, and driven me almost to therge of taking the habit of St. Dominic. I had just published Rosalchemica, a little work on the Alchemists, somewhat in the manner or Thomas Browne, and had received many letters from believers in tcane sciences, upbraiding what they called my timidity, for they cou

ot believe so evident sympathy but the sympathy of the artist, which

alf pity, for everything which has moved men's hearts in any age. I hscovered, early in my researches, that their doctrine was no merelyhemical phantasy, but a philosophy they applied to the world, to theements and to man himself; and that they sought to fashion gold out

ommon metals merely as part of an universal transmutation of all thito some divine and imperishable substance; and this enabled me toake my little book a fanciful reverie over the transmutation of life in

t, and a cry of measureless desire for a world made wholly of essenc



was sitting dreaming of what I had written, in my house in one of thed parts of Dublin; a house my ancestors had made almost famousrough their part in the politics of the city and their friendships with tmous men of their generations; and was feeling an unwonted happinhaving at last accomplished a long-cherished design, and made myoms an expression of this favourite doctrine. The portraits, of more

storical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the bluend bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history antivity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at mrevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein thrm was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought thower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knel a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when Iondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I hadortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beau

nd without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with manycrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book wa

ound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefullyhosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Da

the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calmnd I could experience what I would of human passions without their tterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods becaus

elieved in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave mysenone, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of

olished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds era, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels;

my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed theoorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent aeauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in soany other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitternes

xcept the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed ought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow. All thoserms: that Madonna with her brooding purity, those rapturous facesnging in the morning light, those bronze divinities with their



assionless dignity, those wild shapes rushing from despair to despairelonged to a divine world wherein I had no part; and every experiencowever profound, every perception, however exquisite, would bring me bitter dream of a limitless energy I could never know, and even in ost perfect moment I would be two selves, the one watching with he

yes the other's moment of content. I had heaped about me the gold bo

the crucibles of others; but the supreme dream of the alchemist, theansmutation of the weary heart into a weariless spirit, was as far frome as, I doubted not, it had been from him also. I turned to my last

urchase, a set of alchemical apparatus which, the dealer in the Rue leeletier had assured me, once belonged to Raymond Lully, and as I joe alembic to the athanor and laid the lavacrum maris at their side, I

nderstood the alchemical doctrine, that all beings, divided from theeat deep where spirits wander, one and yet a multitude, are weary; ampathized, in the pride of my connoisseurship, with the consumingirst for destruction which made the alchemist veil under his symbolons and dragons, of eagles and ravens, of dew and of nitre, a search fn essence which would dissolve all mortal things. I repeated to mysee ninth key of Basilius Valentinus, in which he compares the fire of

st day to the fire of the alchemist, and the world to the alchemist'srnace, and would have us know that all must be dissolved before thevine substance, material gold or immaterial ecstasy, awake. I hadssolved indeed the mortal world and lived amid immortal essences,

ad obtained no miraculous ecstasy. As I thought of these things, I dreide the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to moubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were th

rnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually,rning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the

arkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavnd I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age havied, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone

plift souls weighted with so many dreams.



I

y reverie was broken by a loud knocking at the door, and I wonderede more at this because I had no visitors, and had bid my servants do ings silently, lest they broke the dream of my inner life. Feeling a li

urious, I resolved to go to the door myself, and, taking one of the silvndlesticks from the mantlepiece, began to descend the stairs. Thervants appeared to be out, for though the sound poured through ever

orner and crevice of the house there was no stir in the lower rooms. Imembered that because my needs were so few, my part in life so litt

ey had begun to come and go as they would, often leaving me alone ours. The emptiness and silence of a world from which I had drivenverything but dreams suddenly overwhelmed me, and I shuddered asew the bolt. I found before me Michael Robartes, whom I had not ser years, and whose wild red hair, fierce eyes, sensitive, tremulous lip

nd rough clothes, made him look now, just as they used to do fifteenars before, something between a debauchee, a saint, and a peasant. H

ad recently come to Ireland, he said, and wished to see me on a mattemportance: indeed, the only matter of importance for him and for meis voice brought up before me our student years in Paris, andmembering the magnetic power ne had once possessed over me, a liar mingled with much annoyance at this irrelevant intrusion, as I leday up the wide staircase, where Swift had passed joking and railing, urran telling stories and quoting Greek, in simpler days, before men'inds, subtilized and complicated by the romantic movement in art anerature, began to tremble on the verge of some unimagined revelatiolt that my hand shook, and saw that the light of the candle wavered a

uivered more than it need have upon the Maenads on the old Frenchanels, making them look like the first beings slowly shaping in thermless and void darkness. When the door had closed, and the peacoc

urtain, glimmering like many- coloured flame, fell between us and th



orld, I felt, in a way I could not understand, that some singular andnexpected thing was about to happen. I went over to the mantlepiecend finding that a little chainless bronze censer, set, upon the outside,ith pieces of painted china by Orazio Fontana, which I had filled wit

ntique amulets, had fallen upon its side and poured out its contents, Iegan to gather the amulets into the bowl, partly to collect my though

nd partly with that habitual reverence which seemed to me the due ofings so long connected with secret hopes and fears. 'I see,' said Michobartes, 'that you are still fond of incense, and I can show you ancense more precious than any you have ever seen,' and as he spoke hok the censer out of my hand and put the amulets in a little heap

etween the athanor and the alembic. I sat down, and he sat down at thde of the fire, and sat there for awhile looking into the fire, and holde censer in his hand. 'I have come to ask you something,' he said, 'ane incense will fill the room, and our thoughts, with its sweet odour hile we are talking. I got it from an old man in Syria, who said it waade from flowers, of one kind with the flowers that laid their heavy

urple petals upon the hands and upon the hair and upon the feet of Chthe Garden of Gethsemane, and folded Him in their heavy breath, u

e cried against the cross and his destiny.' He shook some dust into thnser out of a small silk bag, and set the censer upon the floor and lit

ust which sent up a blue stream of smoke, that spread out over theiling, and flowed downwards again until it was like Milton's banyan

ee. It filled me, as incense often does, with a faint sleepiness, so thatarted when he said, 'I have come to ask you that question which I askou in Paris, and which you left Paris rather than answer.'

e had turned his eyes towards me, and I saw them glitter in the firelind through the incense, as I replied: 'You mean, will I become an initf your Order of the Alchemical Rose? I would not consent in Paris, wwas full of unsatisfied desire, and now that I have at last fashioned mfe according to my desire, am I likely to consent?'

ou have changed greatly since then,' he answered. 'I have read your



ooks, and now I see you among all these images, and I understand yoetter than you do yourself, for I have been with many and manyeamers at the same cross-ways. You have shut away the world and

athered the gods about you, and if you do not throw yourself at their et, you will be always full of lassitude, and of wavering purpose, foran must forget he is miserable in the bustle and noise of the multitu

this world and in time; or seek a mystical union with the multitudeho govern this world and time.' And then he murmured something I

ould not hear, and as though to someone I could not see.

or a moment the room appeared to darken, as it used to do when he wbout to perform some singular experiment, and in the darkness theeacocks upon the doors seemed to glow with a more intense colour. I

st off the illusion, which was, I believe, merely caused by memory, y the twilight of incense, for I would not acknowledge that he couldvercome my now mature intellect; and I said: 'Even if I grant that I nspiritual belief and some form of worship, why should I go to Eleusi

nd not to Calvary?' He leaned forward and began speaking with aightly rhythmical intonation, and as he spoke I had to struggle again

ith the shadow, as of some older night than the night of the sun, whicegan to dim the light of the candles and to blot out the little gleams ue corner of picture- frames and on the bronze divinities, and to turn ue of the incense to a heavy purple; while it left the peacocks toimmer and glow as though each separate colour were a living spirit.

ad fallen into a profound dream-like reverie in which I heard himeaking as at a distance. 'And yet there is no one who communes with

nly one god,' he was saying, 'and the more a man lives in imaginationnd in a refined understanding, the more gods does he meet with and tith, and the more does he come under the power of Roland, whounded in the Valley of Roncesvalles the last trumpet of the body's w

nd pleasure; and of Hamlet, who saw them perishing away, and sighend of Faust, who looked for them up and down the world and could nnd them; and under the power of all those countless divinities who hken upon themselves spiritual bodies in the minds of the modern po



nd romance writers, and under the power of the old divinities, who sie Renaissance have won everything of their ancient worship except crifice of birds and fishes, the fragrance of garlands and the smoke ocense. The many think humanity made these divinities, and that it ca

nmake them again; but we who have seen them pass in rattling harnend in soft robes, and heard them speak with articulate voices while w

y in deathlike trance, know that they are always making and unmakiumanity, which is indeed but the trembling of their lips.'

e had stood up and begun to walk to and fro, and had become in myaking dream a shuttle weaving an immense purple web whose folds egun to fill the room. The room seemed to have become inexplicablylent, as though all but the web and the weaving were at an end in the

orld. 'They have come to us; they have come to us,' the voice begangain; 'all that have ever been in your reverie, all that you have met w

books. There is Lear, his head still wet with the thunder-storm, and ughs because you thought yourself an existence who are but a shado

nd him a shadow who is an eternal god; and there is Beatrice, with heps half parted in a smile, as though all the stars were about to pass aw

a sigh of love; and there is the mother of the God of humility who cgreat a spell over men that they have tried to unpeople their hearts e might reign alone, but she holds in her hand the rose whose every pa god; and there, O swiftly she comes! is Aphrodite under a twilightlling from the wings of numberless sparrows, and about her feet are ey and white doves.' In the midst of my dream I saw him hold out hift arm and pass his right hand over it as though he stroked the wings

oves. I made a violent effort which seemed almost to tear me in two,id with forced determination: 'You would sweep me away into andefinite world which fills me with terror; and yet a man is a great mst in so far as he can make his mind reflect everything with indiffereecision like a mirror.' I seemed to be perfectly master of myself, andent on, but more rapidly: 'I command you to leave me at once, for yoeas and phantasies are but the illusions that creep like maggots intovilizations when they begin to decline, and into minds when they be



decay.' I had grown suddenly angry, and seizing the alembic from thble, was about to rise and strike him with it, when the peacocks on thoor behind him appeared to grow immense; and then the alembic fellom my fingers and I was drowned in a tide of green and blue and broathers, and as I struggled hopelessly I heard a distant voice saying: 'aster Avicenna has written that all life proceeds out of corruption.' T

ittering feathers had now covered me completely, and I knew that I hruggled for hundreds of years, and was conquered at last. I was sinkito the depth when the green and blue and bronze that seemed to fill orld became a sea of flame and swept me away, and as I was swirledong I heard a voice over my head cry, 'The mirror is broken in twoeces,' and another voice answer, 'The mirror is broken in four pieces

nd a more distant voice cry with an exultant cry, 'The mirror is broketo numberless pieces'; and then a multitude of pale hands were reachwards me, and strange gentle faces bending above me, and half wail

nd half caressing voices uttering words that were forgotten the momeey were spoken. I was being lifted out of the tide of flame, and felt memories, my hopes, my thoughts, my will, everything I held to beyself, melting away; then I seemed to rise through numberless

ompanies of beings who were, I understood, in some way more certaan thought, each wrapped in his eternal moment, in the perfect liftin

n arm, in a little circlet of rhythmical words, in dreaming with dim end half-closed eyelids. And then I passed beyond these forms, whichere so beautiful they had almost ceased to be, and, having enduredrange moods, melancholy, as it seemed, with the weight of manyorlds, I passed into that Death which is Beauty herself, and into that

oneliness which all the multitudes desire without ceasing. All thingsat had ever lived seemed to come and dwell in my heart, and I in the

nd I had never again known mortality or tears, had I not suddenly falom the certainty of vision into the uncertainty of dream, and becomeop of molten gold falling with immense rapidity, through a nightaborate with stars, and all about me a melancholy exultant wailing. Ill and fell and fell, and then the wailing was but the wailing of the wthe chimney, and I awoke to find myself leaning upon the table and



pporting my head with my hands. I saw the alembic swaying from sside in the distant corner it had rolled to, and Michael Robartes

atching me and waiting. 'I will go wherever you will,' I said, 'and dohatever you bid me, for I have been with eternal things.' 'I knew,' heplied, 'you must need answer as you have answered, when I heard thorm begin. You must come to a great distance, for we were comman

build our temple between the pure multitude by the waves and thempure multitude of men.'



II

did not speak as we drove through the deserted streets, for my mind wuriously empty of familiar thoughts and experiences; it seemed to haeen plucked out of the definite world and cast naked upon a shorelesa. There were moments when the vision appeared on the point of turning, and I would half-remember, with an ecstasy of joy or sorrowimes and heroisms, fortunes and misfortunes; or begin to contemplaith a sudden leaping of the heart, hopes and terrors, desires and

mbitions, alien to my orderly and careful life; and then I would awak

uddering at the thought that some great imponderable being had swerough my mind. It was indeed days before this feeling passed perfec

way, and even now, when I have sought refuge in the only definite fafeel a great tolerance for those people with incoherent personalities,ho gather in the chapels and meeting-places of certain obscure sectsecause I also have felt fixed habits and principles dissolving before aower, which was hysterica passio or sheer madness, if you will, but w

powerful in its melancholy exultation that I tremble lest it wake agnd drive me from my new-found peace.

When we came in the grey light to the great half-empty terminus, itemed to me I was so changed that I was no more, as man is, a momeuddering at eternity, but eternity weeping and laughing over a mom

nd when we had started and Michael Robartes had fallen asleep, as hon did, his sleeping face, in which there was no sign of all that had saken me and that now kept me wakeful, was to my excited mind mo

ke a mask than a face. The fancy possessed me that the man behind iad dissolved away like salt in water, and that it laughed and sighed,ppealed and denounced at the bidding of beings greater or less than mhis is not Michael Robartes at all: Michael Robartes is dead; dead fo

n, for twenty years perhaps,' I kept repeating to myself. I fell at last



feverish sleep, waking up from time to time when we rushed past sotle town, its slated roofs shining with wet, or still lake gleaming in t

old morning light. I had been too pre-occupied to ask where we wereoing, or to notice what tickets Michael Robartes had taken, but I kneow from the direction of the sun that we were going westward; andesently I knew also, by the way in which the trees had grown into th

mblance of tattered beggars flying with bent heads towards the eastat we were approaching the western coast. Then immediately I saw a between the low hills upon the left, its dull grey broken into white

atches and lines.

When we left the train we had still, I found, some way to go, and set outtoning our coats about us, for the wind was bitter and violent. Mich

obartes was silent, seeming anxious to leave me to my thoughts; ande walked between the sea and the rocky side of a great promontory, alized with a new perfection what a shock had been given to all my

abits of thought and of feelings, if indeed some mysterious change haot taken place in the substance of my mind, for the grey waves, plumith scudding foam, had grown part of a teeming, fantastic inner life;

hen Michael Robartes pointed to a square ancient-looking house, wituch smaller and newer building under its lee, set out on the very enddilapidated and almost deserted pier, and said it was the Temple of tlchemical Rose, I was possessed with the phantasy that the sea, whicept covering it with showers of white foam, was claiming it as part ome indefinite and passionate life, which had begun to war upon our derly and careful days, and was about to plunge the world into a nig

obscure as that which followed the downfall of the classical world.ne part of my mind mocked this phantastic terror, but the other, the pat still lay half plunged in vision, listened to the clash of unknownmies, and shuddered at unimaginable fanaticisms, that hung in thoseey leaping waves.

We had gone but a few paces along the pier when we came upon an ol

an, who was evidently a watchman, for he sat in an overset barrel, cl



a place where masons had been lately working upon a break in the pnd had in front of him a fire such as one sees slung under tinkers' carw that he was also a voteen, as the peasants say, for there was a rosa

anging from a nail on the rim of the barrel, and I saw I shuddered, and not know why I shuddered. We had passed him a few yards when I

eard him cry in Gaelic, 'Idolaters, idolaters, go down to Hell with you

itches and your devils; go down to Hell that the herrings may comegain into the bay'; and for some moments I could hear him half reaming and half muttering behind us. 'Are you not afraid,' I said, 'these wild fishing people may do some desperate thing against you?'

and mine,' he answered, 'are long past human hurt or help, beingcorporate with immortal spirits, and when we die it shall be the

onsummation of the supreme work. A time will come for these peoplso, and they will sacrifice a mullet to Artemis, or some other fish tome new divinity, unless indeed their own divinities, the Dagda, with

verflowing cauldron, Lug, with his spear dipped in poppy- juice lest sh forth hot for battle. Aengus, with the three birds on his shoulder,odb and his red swineherd, and all the heroic children of Dana, set up

nce more their temples of grey stone. Their reign has never ceased, bnly waned in power a little, for the Sidhe still pass in every wind, andance and play at hurley, and fight their sudden battles in every hollownd on every hill; but they cannot build their temples again till there heen martyrdoms and victories, and perhaps even that long-foretold b

the Valley of the Black Pig.'

eeping close to the wall that went about the pier on the seaward sidecape the driving foam and the wind, which threatened every momen

ft us off our feet, we made our way in silence to the door of the squauilding. Michael Robartes opened it with a key, on which I saw the ruf many salt winds, and led me along a bare passage and up an uncarpair to a little room surrounded with bookshelves. A meal would beought, but only of fruit, for I must submit to a tempered fast before

remony, he explained, and with it a book on the doctrine and metho



e Order, over which I was to spend what remained of the winter aylight. He then left me, promising to return an hour before theremony. I began searching among the bookshelves, and found one oe most exhaustive alchemical libraries I have ever seen. There were orks of Morienus, who hid his immortal body under a shirt of hair-oth; of Avicenna, who was a drunkard and yet controlled numberless

gions of spirits; of Alfarabi, who put so many spirits into his lute thae could make men laugh, or weep, or fall in deadly trance as he woulf Lully, who transformed himself into the likeness of a red cock; of amel, who with his wife Parnella achieved the elixir many hundredsars ago, and is fabled to live still in Arabia among the Dervishes; an

f many of less fame. There were very few mystics but alchemicalystics, and because, I had little doubt, of the devotion to one god of eater number and of the limited sense of beauty, which Robartes wo

old an inevitable consequence; but I did notice a complete set of csimiles of the prophetical writings of William Blake, and probably

ecause of the multitudes that thronged his illumination and were 'likee gay fishes on the wave when the moon sucks up the dew.' I noted aany poets and prose writers of every age, but only those who were a

tle weary of life, as indeed the greatest have been everywhere, and wst their imagination to us, as a something they needed no longer nowat they were going up in their fiery chariots.

esently I heard a tap at the door, and a woman came in and laid a lituit upon the table. I judged that she had once been handsome, but heheeks were hollowed by what I would have held, had I seen her

nywhere else, an excitement of the flesh and a thirst for pleasure, insf which it doubtless was an excitement of the imagination and a thirsr beauty. I asked her some question concerning the ceremony, but

etting no answer except a shake of the head, saw that I must awaititiation in silence. When I had eaten, she came again, and having lai

uriously wrought bronze box on the table, lighted the candles, and toway the plates and the remnants. So soon as I was alone, I turned to tox, and found that the peacocks of Hera spread out their tails over th



des and lid, against a background, on which were wrought great starsough to affirm that the heavens were a part of their glory. In the boxas a book bound in vellum, and having upon the vellum and in veryelicate colours, and in gold, the alchemical rose with many spearsrusting against it, but in vain, as was shown by the shattered points oose nearest to the petals. The book was written upon vellum, and in

eautiful clear letters, interspersed with symbolical pictures anduminations, after the manner of the Splendor Soils.

he first chapter described how six students, of Celtic descent, gaveemselves separately to the study of alchemy, and solved, one theystery of the Pelican, another the mystery of the green Dragon, anote mystery of the Eagle, another that of Salt and Mercury. What seem

succession of accidents, but was, the book declared, the contrivanceeternatural powers, brought them together in the garden of an inn in

outh of France, and while they talked together the thought came to that alchemy was the gradual distillation of the contents of the soul, uey were ready to put off the mortal and put on the immortal. An owl

assed, rustling among the vine-leaves overhead, and then an old wom

me, leaning upon a stick, and, sitting close to them, took up the thouhere they had dropped it. Having expounded the whole principle of iritual alchemy, and bid them found the Order of the Alchemical Roe passed from among them, and when they would have followed sheas nowhere to be seen. They formed themselves into an Order, holdieir goods and making their researches in common, and, as they beca

erfect in the alchemical doctrine, apparitions came and went among

em, and taught them more and more marvellous mysteries. The booken went on to expound so much of these as the neophyte was permitknow, dealing at the outset and at considerable length with the

dependent reality of our thoughts, which was, it declared, the doctrinom which all true doctrines rose. If you imagine, it said, the semblanf a living being, it is at once possessed by a wandering soul, and goesther and thither working good or evil, until the moment of its death h

ome; and gave many examples, received, it said, from many gods. Er



ad taught them how to fashion forms in which a divine soul could dwnd whisper what they would into sleeping minds; and Ate forms fromhich demonic beings could pour madness, or unquiet dreams, intoeeping blood; and Hermes, that if you powerfully imagined a hound our bedside it would keep watch there until you woke, and drive awal but the mightiest demons, but that if your imagination was weakly

ound would be weakly also, and the demons prevail, and the hound se; and Aphrodite, that if you made, by a strong imagining, a doveowned with silver and had it flutter over your head, its soft cooingould make sweet dreams of immortal love gather and brood over moeep; and all divinities alike had revealed with many warnings andmentations that all minds are continually giving birth to such beings

nd sending them forth to work health or disease, joy or madness. If yould give forms to the evil powers, it went on, you were to make thegly, thrusting out a lip, with the thirsts of life, or breaking theoportions of a body with the burdens of life; but the divine powersould only appear in beautiful shapes, which are but, as it were, shapeembling out of existence, folding up into a timeless ecstasy, driftingith half-shut eyes, into a sleepy stillness. The bodiless souls who

escended into these forms were what men called the moods; and worl great changes in the world; for just as the magician or the artist coull them when he would, so they could call out of the mind of theagician or the artist, or if they were demons, out of the mind of the mthe ignoble, what shape they would, and through its voice and its

estures pour themselves out upon the world. In this way all great eveere accomplished; a mood, a divinity, or a demon, first descending l

faint sigh into men's minds and then changing their thoughts and thetions until hair that was yellow had grown black, or hair that was bl

ad grown yellow, and empires moved their border, as though they weut drifts of leaves. The rest of the book contained symbols of form, aund, and colour, and their attribution to divinities and demons, so the initiate might fashion a shape for any divinity or any demon, and bpowerful as Avicenna among those who live under the roots of tear

nd of laughter.



V

couple of hours after Sunset Michael Robartes returned and told meat I would have to learn the steps of an exceedingly antique dance,

ecause before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three tima magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on which ale transient and accidental could be broken, and the spirit set free. Iund that the steps, which were simple enough, resembled certain

ntique Greek dances, and having been a good dancer in my youth andaster of many curious Gaelic steps, I soon had them in my memory.

en robed me and himself in a costume which suggested by its shapeoth Greece and Egypt, but by its crimson colour a more passionate lian theirs; and having put into my hands a little chainless censer of onze, wrought into the likeness of a rose, by some modern craftsman

e told me to open a small door opposite to the door by which I hadntered. I put my hand to the handle, but the moment I did so the fumef the incense, helped perhaps by his mysterious glamour, made me fa

gain into a dream, in which I seemed to be a mask, lying on the counf a little Eastern shop. Many persons, with eyes so bright and still thanew them for more than human, came in and tried me on their faces, last flung me into a corner with a little laughter; but all this passed oment, for when I awoke my hand was still upon the handle. I openee door, and found myself in a marvellous passage, along whose sideere many divinities wrought in a mosaic, not less beautiful than theosaic in the Baptistery at Ravenna, but of a less severe beauty; theedominant colour of each divinity, which was surely a symbolic col

eing repeated in the lamps that hung from the ceiling, a curiously-ented lamp before every divinity. I passed on, marvelling exceeding

ow these enthusiasts could have created all this beauty in so remote aace, and half persuaded to believe in a material alchemy, by the sigh

much hidden wealth; the censer filling the air, as I passed, with smo



f ever-changing colour.

stopped before a door, on whose bronze panels were wrought greataves in whose shadow were faint suggestions of terrible faces. Thoseeyond it seemed to have heard our steps, for a voice cried: 'Is the worf the Incorruptible Fire at an end?' and immediately Michael Robarte

nswered: 'The perfect gold has come from the atbanor .' The door swupen, and we were in a great circular room, and among men and womho were dancing slowly in crimson robes. Upon the ceiling was an

mmense rose wrought in mosaic; and about the walls, also in mosaic,as a battle of gods and angels, the gods glimmering like rubies andpphires, and the angels of the one greyness, because, as Michaelobartes whispered, they had renounced their divinity, and turned from

e unfolding of their separate hearts, out of love for a God of humilitnd sorrow. Pillars supported the roof and made a kind of circular oister, each pillar being a column of confused shapes, divinities, itemed, of the wind, who rose as in a whirling dance of more than humhemence, and playing upon pipes and cymbals; and from among theapes were thrust out hands, and in these hands were censers. I was b

ace my censer also in a hand and take my place and dance, and as Irned from the pillars towards the dancers, I saw that the floor was ofeen stone, and that a pale Christ on a pale cross was wrought in theidst. I asked Robartes the meaning of this, and was told that they

esired 'To trouble His unity with their multitudinous feet.' The danceound in and out, tracing upon the floor the shapes of petals that copie petals in the rose overhead, and to the sound of hidden instruments

hich were perhaps of an antique pattern, for I have never heard the lind every moment the dance was more passionate, until all the winds e world seemed to have awakened under our feet. After a little I hadown weary, and stood under a pillar watching the coming and goingose flame-like figures; until gradually I sank into a half-dream, fromhich I was awakened by seeing the petals of the great rose, which hanger the look of mosaic, falling slowly through the incense-heavy ai

nd, as they fell, shaping into the likeness of living beings of an



xtraordinary beauty. Still faint and cloud-like, they began to dance, athey danced took a more and more definite shape, so that I was able

stinguish beautiful Grecian faces and august Egyptian faces, and nownd again to name a divinity by the staff in his hand or by a birduttering over his head; and soon every mortal foot danced by the whot of an immortal; and in the troubled eyes that looked into untroubl

adowy eyes, I saw the brightness of uttermost desire as though they und at length, after unreckonable wandering, the lost love of their

outh. Sometimes, but only for a moment, I saw a faint solitary figureith a Rosa veiled face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancut like a dream within a dream, like a shadow of a shadow, and I kney an understanding born from a deeper fountain than thought, that it ros himself, and that his face was veiled because no man or womanom the beginning of the world has ever known what love is, or looketo his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit, and hidpassions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal hea

o that if a man love nobly he knows love through infinite pity,nspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if ignobly through vehemealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire; but unveiled love he

ever knows. While I thought these things, a voice cried to me from thimson figures: 'Into the dance! there is none that can be spared out oe dance; into the dance! into the dance! that the gods may make them

odies out of the substance of our hearts'; and before I could answer, aysterious wave of passion, that seemed like the soul of the danceoving within our souls, took Alchemica. hold of me, and I was swep

either consenting nor refusing, into the midst. I was dancing with an

mmortal august woman, who had black lilies in her hair, and her dreaesture seemed laden with a wisdom more profound than the darknessat is between star and star, and with a love like the love that breathe

pon the waters; and as we danced on and on, the incense drifted overnd round us, covering us away as in the heart of the world, and agesemed to pass, and tempests to awake and perish in the folds of our bes and in her heavy hair.



uddenly I remembered that her eyelids had never quivered, and that hies had not dropped a black petal, or shaken from their places, and

nderstood with a great horror that I danced with one who was more oss than human, and who was drinking up my soul as an ox drinks up ayside pool; and I fell, and darkness passed over me.

awoke suddenly as though something had awakened me, and saw thaas lying on a roughly painted floor, and that on the ceiling, which wao great distance, was a roughly painted rose, and about me on the waalf-finished paintings. The pillars and the censers had gone; and nearscore of sleepers lay wrapped in disordered robes, their upturned facoking to my imagination like hollow masks; and a chill dawn wasining down upon them from a long window I had not noticed before

nd outside the sea roared. I saw Michael Robartes lying at a littlestance and beside him an overset bowl of wrought bronze which loothough it had once held incense. As I sat thus, I heard a sudden tum

f angry men and women's voices mix with the roaring of the sea; andaping to my feet, I went quickly to Michael Robartes, and tried to shm out of his sleep. I then seized him by the shoulder and tried to lift

m, but he fell backwards, and sighed faintly; and the voices becameuder and angrier; and there was a sound of heavy blows upon the dohich opened on to the pier. Suddenly I heard a sound of rending woo

nd I knew it had begun to give, and I ran to the door of the room. Iushed it open and came out upon a passage whose bare boards clatternder my feet, and found in the passage another door which led into anmpty kitchen; and as I passed through the door I heard two crashes in

uick succession, and knew by the sudden noise of feet and the shoutsat the door which opened on to the pier had fallen inwards. I ran frome kitchen and out into a small yard, and from this down some stepshich descended the seaward and sloping side of the pier, and from theps clambered along the water's edge, with the angry voices ringing y ears. This part of the pier had been but lately refaced with blocks oanite, so that it was almost clear of seaweed; but when I came to the

art, I found it so slippery with green weed that I had to climb up on to



e roadway. I looked towards the Temple of the Alchemical Rose, whe fishermen and the women were still shouting, but somewhat moreintly, and saw that there was no one about the door or upon the pier;I looked, a little crowd hurried out of the door and began gathering

rge stones from where they were heaped up in readiness for the nextme a storm shattered the pier, when they would be laid under blocks

anite. While I stood watching the crowd, an old man, who was, I thine voteen, pointed to me, and screamed out something, and the crowdhitened, for all the faces had turned towards me. I ran, and it was wer me that pullers of the oar are poorer men with their feet than witheir arms and their bodies; and yet while I ran I scarcely heard thellowing feet or the angry voices, for many voices of exultation andmentation, which were forgotten as a dream is forgotten the momeney were heard, seemed to be ringing in the air over my head.

here are moments even now when I seem to hear those voices of xultation and lamentation, and when the indefinite world, which has alf lost its mastery over my heart and my intellect, seems about to clperfect mastery; but I carry the rosary about my neck, and when I he

seem to hear them, I press it to my heart and say: 'He whose name iegion is at our doors deceiving our intellects with subtlety and flatterur hearts with beauty, and we have no trust but in Thee'; and then thear that rages within me at other times is still, and I am at peace.

nd of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rosa Alchemica, by W. B. Ye

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Documents

Rosa Alchemica - W. B. Yeats