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

the due of things so long connected with secret hopes and fears. 'I
see,' said Michael Robartes, 'that you are still fond of incense, and
I can show you an incense more precious than any you have ever seen,'
and as he spoke he took the censer out of my hand and put the amulets
in a little heap between the _athanor_ and the _alembic_. I
sat down, and he sat down at the side of the fire, and sat there for
awhile looking into the fire, and holding the censer in his hand. 'I
have come to ask you something,' he said, 'and the incense will fill
the room, and our thoughts, with its sweet odour while we are
talking. I got it from an old man in Syria, who said it was made from
flowers, of one kind with the flowers that laid their heavy purple
petals upon the hands and upon the hair and upon the feet of Christ
in the Garden of Gethsemane, and folded Him in their heavy breath,
until he cried against the cross and his destiny.' He shook some dust
into the censer out of a small silk bag, and set the censer upon the
floor and lit the dust which sent up a blue stream of smoke, that
spread out over the ceiling, and flowed downwards again until it was
like Milton's banyan tree. It filled me, as incense often does, with
a faint sleepiness, so that I started when he said, 'I have come to
ask you that question which I asked you in Paris, and which you left
Paris rather than answer.'

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

'You have changed greatly since then,' he answered. 'I have read your
books, and now I see you among all these images, and I understand you
better than you do yourself, for I have been with many and many
dreamers at the same cross-ways. You have shut away the world and
gathered the gods about you, and if you do not throw yourself at
their feet, you will be always full of lassitude, and of wavering
purpose, for a man must forget he is miserable in the bustle and
noise of the multitude in this world and in time; or seek a mystical
union with the multitude who govern this world and time.' And then he
murmured something I could not hear, and as though to someone I could
not see.

For a moment the room appeared to darken, as it used to do when he
was about to perform some singular experiment, and in the darkness
the peacocks upon the doors seemed to glow with a more intense
colour. I cast off the illusion, which was, I believe, merely caused
by memory, and by the twilight of incense, for I would not
acknowledge that he could overcome my now mature intellect; and I
said: 'Even if I grant that I need a spiritual belief and some form
of worship, why should I go to Eleusis and not to Calvary?' He leaned
forward and began speaking with a slightly rhythmical intonation, and