"rslcm10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yeats William Butler)

all this beauty in so remote a place, and half persuaded to believe
in a material alchemy, by the sight of so much hidden wealth; the
censer filling the air, as I passed, with smoke of ever-changing
colour.

I stopped before a door, on whose bronze panels were wrought great
waves in whose shadow were faint suggestions of terrible faces. Those
beyond it seemed to have heard our steps, for a voice cried: 'Is the
work of the Incorruptible Fire at an end?' and immediately Michael
Robartes answered: 'The perfect gold has come from the
_atbanor_.' The door swung open, and we were in a great circular
room, and among men and women who were dancing slowly in crimson
robes. Upon the ceiling was an immense rose wrought in mosaic; and
about the walls, also in mosaic, was a battle of gods and angels, the
gods glimmering like rubies and sapphires, and the angels of the one
greyness, because, as Michael Robartes whispered, they had renounced
their divinity, and turned from the unfolding of their separate
hearts, out of love for a God of humility and sorrow. Pillars
supported the roof and made a kind of circular cloister, each pillar
being a column of confused shapes, divinities, it seemed, of the
wind, who rose as in a whirling dance of more than human vehemence,
and playing upon pipes and cymbals; and from among these shapes were
thrust out hands, and in these hands were censers. I was bid place my
censer also in a hand and take my place and dance, and as I turned
from the pillars towards the dancers, I saw that the floor was of a
green stone, and that a pale Christ on a pale cross was wrought in
the midst. I asked Robartes the meaning of this, and was told that
they desired 'To trouble His unity with their multitudinous feet.'
The dance wound in and out, tracing upon the floor the shapes of
petals that copied the petals in the rose overhead, and to the sound
of hidden instruments which were perhaps of an antique pattern, for I
have never heard the like; and every moment the dance was more
passionate, until all the winds of the world seemed to have awakened
under our feet. After a little I had grown weary, and stood under a
pillar watching the coming and going of those flame-like figures;
until gradually I sank into a half-dream, from which I was awakened
by seeing the petals of the great rose, which had no longer the look
of mosaic, falling slowly through the incense-heavy air, and, as
they fell, shaping into the likeness of living beings of an
extraordinary beauty. Still faint and cloud-like, they began to
dance, and as they danced took a more and more definite shape, so
that I was able to distinguish beautiful Grecian faces and august
Egyptian faces, and now and again to name a divinity by the staff in
his hand or by a bird fluttering over his head; and soon every mortal
foot danced by the white foot of an immortal; and in the troubled
eyes that looked into untroubled shadowy eyes, I saw the brightness
of uttermost desire as though they had found at length, after
unreckonable wandering, the lost love of their youth. Sometimes, but
only for a moment, I saw a faint solitary figure with a Rosa veiled
face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancers, but like a