Classic Poem

I had stumbled up thro' Time from the slime to the heights,
Then fallen into the stillness of the tomb.
For an age I had lain in the pulseless, senseless dark,
I had swooned in the darkness of the tomb.

I had slept for an age without a dream or stir
Till a voice came, troubling the pools of sleep.
From the long-forgotten bones, the immemorial dust,
I fled up from the smother of my sleep.

A naked soul, I bathed in the light ineffable,
I floated in the ecstasy of light.
Yet I ached with desire for a dream I could not grasp,
And I struggled to pierce beyond the light.

As the light had been a veil I swam through the veil
And sank through shadows to a blissful gloom.
And the ache of my desire was sweetly assuaged
As I sheathed me blindly in the gloom.

In my heart, as it seemed, I heard a craving, faint cry.
I was darkly aware of moving warmth.
I thirsted, and my groping thirst was satisfied;
And I slumbered, wrapt and folded in the warmth.

Once again was I snared in the kindly flesh of man.
The kind flesh closed away my sight.
But before the mists of temporal forgetting shut me in
I had seen, far off, the Vision and the Height.