The intimations of our golden youth
Are whispering the dreams of manhood-
Subtle ways of ageless yearning
Which in kind with ambient stars
Quarterly describes, in subtle play
The chiming of a universal soul
Whose consort is a universal heart
In man or woman, ever yielding scales
From pole to pole, the hermeneutic art.
Sweet songs of knowing, harmonies in time
Resolved, upwelling, urging on the climb
Of sacred being, born to unify…
Conceived of ash, from ash to mount the skies
On wings supernal, loft on fiery reins
To ring the victors’ anthem and the aims
Of truth and love for life’s enduring worth!



O fair noblesse and sweet repose
Of sacred care, always we hold you dear
In trials of election and sojourning.
Your constant grace, deep from within, unfolds
To free the tortured thought and lonely fears
Of desperate nights and homesick yearning.

At last in you we find the kindliness
Of heart, whose honored worth is bright as gold
To phantom souls and this, too darkened, world.
Your equipage and host of tenderness
Wrought pure intent, more sure than has been told
Of truth by men, the best of mind unfurled!

Let none forget, in U we find our rest
From whom we’re born, to whom we must return
Our hope of innocence, in us the best
Of love, whose lamp has ever inward burned.



Mystery of love that sends
In timeless whispers, on the mend
Of heart and mind, eternal tides
Of being; faith unto sacred faith
Raising up the ancient gates
Where mercy ever abides.

Patiently, your mourning dove
Has preened the pinions of our love
Recouping every bit of life’s content.
At last, what awful beauty drapes the sea
And broods the dark on holy wings of peace
A train of captives, born to pure intent!

Still working yet upon the day
Though battered in the idols’ fray
To overcome the world and show forth
The proven heart, all worthlessness disposed;
Not trusting in those shadowy ways
But piercing what, upon the naked eye
Has taunted love, too dimly beheld.

While alone the thought matured
One social pact allied the tortured doubts
And rose upon the gate Beautiful
Acceptance and cooperation
Our universal worth, more brightly lit!

And who shall care for that o'er which you weep
Or share the burden of this world's foredoom
Seen starkly? Behold, a haunting specter creeps
Among the binding fates spun on life's loom.
You’ll wake them not to that great misery
Which emptiness of pride has reckless wove
But pluck the web for loss and trembling
Of idols in the soul for which they strove.
Put off your glossy youth and early oaths
Devout nativity; raise up your cup
To ***** Lethe and thunder with the strokes
Of fury, treading out the ripened sup!
They will not bear to flay their sacred cows
But shades of death endure and prostrate bow.

Ages in their veins, more raging, whirl
As titanic potentials’ dreadful might
Turns girl to boy, conversely boy to girl
Unlimbing reason for unreason's fright.
That once gone right, here deftly ventures left
As self-conception staggers to its doom
Bursting the bonds of day and night, distressed
With desperate grasping measures, late and soon.
So set on generation's awesome curve
Of ageless heart and mind, how shall they bear
The die they cast at first when madly swerved
Into contesting congresses of care?
Dividing parts, dissolving in the same
The common wealth, no part the whole maintains.

Boast of the times and gilded privilege
Are these pretended guardians of State
Whose politics of power have sought to bank
Their future 'gainst dissenting arguments.
With rhetoric to foist a brave new age
They come as chaos mages on the brink
Of all disposing will, all ends betrayed
To serve their corporations’ nod and wink.
Auctioning the world, their goods are sold
Commercially with avaricious might
That sanctions lust, in quest of pyrite gold
And pirate earnings, staked upon deceit.
At last, the men of mock integrity
Luring the world to covert slavery!

Hurrah, the master men and lords of time-
From time brought forth, they are the world's latest
Whose overweening strut is in the best
Of culminating age, the mind refined!
Now to and fro they go, their lists increased
With every tally; line for line computes
Their beads of enterprise, the while relieved
Of tribulation, fate of hapless dupes.
Learning is theirs, precepts are theirs to bend;
Lawyers, clerics, politicians rest
Upon this pillar; they can split or mend
The finest lines; no guile their thoughts distress.
Step by step they round the universe
And finite lies to infinite converse!

What pride of theirs that strains for fleeting fame
Seeking to wrest from time the wasting plaque
Of recognition, host to every hack
That postures on the stage of the obscene!
Pretending worth, their practiced scripts dispose
In mocking light an empty dignity
While darkening intents; witless disclosed
On lips and brow their self-important glee.
As if full-wrought by truth's heroic wing
Their pride aspires; on vain conceits they soar
Up through the mist while private songs they sing
In self-made praise for deeds of phantom lore.
From belfries of the schools, in broken flight
They shriek away, hell's banshees of the night!

These timely wise, entranced of mind, decree-
Hear all you simple what we shall disclose
Which craft of our discernment is repose
Of wealth in understanding mastery.
A gift to all, these rich-invested beings
Pretending to resolve profundities
Decoct the world with learned fluency
Of torture ways, all gnostic knots untied.
A flair for comedy, their gelded self
Mounts every snorting bore of certainty
Then armchair resting, pants to yet indulge
Another ******* idol’s reckless scheme.
Some stowaways upon the open seas
And polished sextants of academe!

Here is their derogation, born from creeds
Of judgment in self-righteous confidence
That proves for nothing to the innocent
But swamps life's refugees with cruel conceit.
With ages they have built the edifice
Of dogma; every pit and lion’s maw
Is their contraption, set in consciousness
Of the condemning letter of their laws.
Cunning serpents, masquerading doves
They fashion argument, more vicious wrought
With rationales to blacklist those who strove
To flee their institutions’ heinous plot.
Enamored with a fascist benefit
The systems of the world they implement!

Fanatic men, how bold they tempt the fates
That meet to each the fruits of brutish will
Redoubled, which they’ve spent in kind to date
Upon their brothers, sisters…other self.
They make an estimation, rule the span
Between men; lord over equity
With zero tolerance and brazen hand
To smash upon their consanguinity.
Such is the wicked priesthood’s confidence
In its own judgment, ever owning not
The wrong condemned in others, deep dispensed
To every heart, from roots of life begot.
More wretched they, and haunted with the shame
Of hypocrites, bedeviled by the same!

O law of learning, sum of thinkers' best
Now magnified, ensconced upon the power
Of natal worth and privileged social dower;
Once ruled by you, the Earth pleads for redress.
No scruple sought, no reservation found
To staunch against your certifying will
Which point of iron stylus now furrows
The world at large as object for the ****.
So cart away your pleading victim, mired
In ****** wallows of concupiscence
And grace deny, self-dubbed the doubtless squire-
Errant usurper of the human quest.
How dignified, the rake of your ambition
That promises continual division!

Though in the public place arrives
A winnowing on wisdom’s wind
And threshers haste to finalize
The harvest of its sifting breath
Yet orphans cry and widows plead
Their plight before the sacred site
As seers peer upon the hearth
Of ages, garnering their end!

Such faith, conceived by truth-revealing trials
Would open up the way for sojourn hearts
Which, too long groaning, some contend the while
And fix not, pierced through with searing darts
Of cruel despite.  The back and not the front
Too much pursued, then turns away the thought
Which, rightly meek, could otherwise wax blunt
The plaint of sorrow, though not falsely wrought.
The vale they pass, and must, which set before
Is flood with tears of loss for grace remiss
Unkindly given, faithfully now born-
Both cheeks for smiting, doubly felt love's kiss.
Forbearing calls of tempted wrath, uncouth
They still the soul with love to love in truth.

Miners do not bemoan their lot or odds
Toiling amidst the mountains for the boon
Of rare and costly things, nor curse the gods
That one is later rich, one richer soon.
Attentiveness they hold who sooner reap
The treasure that's around them secret sown
While into every crevice careful peek
To pluck what heedless others pass unknown.
Life is not slack to proffer all the glee
Of finding underfoot their stainless wealth
If but the waking heart might, pious, see
The subtle vision slipped their soul in stealth.
A fool to Fortune's ways too tempted cling
As others own great price in common things.

What is a plowman’s good who does not know
To rend the fallow starts a noble work
And sluggard helper who rose not to sow
For early rains, and still the labor shirks?
All seasons come upon a certain time
Accounting naturally important ends
Then run together, pending to adjoin
And pass one into each toward that they tend.
So bides the heart, all dispositions moved
Proportionate to their respective toil
And meets the trials of reason, thorough proved
To blend experience for richer soil.
Such faithfulness lays hold upon the tares
And garners truth in joy of harvest tears.

The carpenters, with line and cornered rule
Perfect their plan, all purposes befitting;
Discerning every plane, they make it true
To need and art, nothing good omitting.
Time, space, and material, they well acquaint
To suit what in idea they have known
And do not reckon aimlessly to joint
The forms of care which discipline bestows.
Determining at first, their soul aspires
With upright means to prove a steady norm
In outward style, contracting the attire
To fit, more solid, ‘gainst the pending storms.
All ends appraised, no castle in the air
They raise integrity’s undoubted lair.

The shifting winds of glancing pride toss-on
The ship of fools ambition ere the port
Of youth is left, though life will not disport
With careless confidence and ****** throngs.
Awake you sleepers, grab onto the helm
Of discipline and keep a watchful eye
For them false prophets' quackery that o’er whelms
The halting reason; now, the trial draws nigh.
Set sail for deeper waters, brave the depths
Of judgment, yet retain a stern relief
'gainst piercing cynicism, which has cleft
Many strong hull upon the siren’s reef.
A hero braves the dark, where Dagon preys
To pluck the pearly gem from wisdom's lay.

Seeming and unseemly, like and dislike
The teeter and the totter is such play
Of mind and meaning, cause and mirrored sight
Which founding can confound the night with day.
The child is parent to the man while life
On loss is nourished; so a fusion rules
The universe inverse, returning strife
To compound allegory, deft endued.
Now what in words the wise of men contend
Consistent with or contra-wise contrived
Truth veers centripetal as spirit bends
The line’s division into circumscribed.
So Hermes’ message, as with salty might
Transforms the fixed in point of solving light.

The trials’ invocation always lends
Two ways to go, all faithless thoughts determined;
Another’s liberty of life extends
And once encompassed, all sure hope resounds.
What outward and destructive ways are there
In boasted things and ****** aspirations
Darkens careless souls that proudly bear
The cruelty of reckless estimations;
Though as an envoy of the light there’s one
That demonstrates a proven dignity
In all the world, illumined as the Sun
Their character’s sublime prosperity.
Such paragon of peace must ever live
In conquest of the other's death and sin.

As donning faces for the shift of things
Accommodation is the passing rite
That opens up upon the newest things
Where right or wrong, as given's, always nice.
What dogma won, in things of captured worth
Then fails for certain as both night and day
Impose fierce gauntlets which, ordained by birth
Initiates into humanity.
Whether comes fair or foul, truth ever is
Between what was, perhaps that which shall be
Where nothing good's received, nothing given
Except that proven by integrity.
More prudent hearts, in seeming-self discern
What loss to own, what gains to yet forgo.

No longer bothered in the waking hours
To vex the soul with thoughts of cruel reproof
They lighten every gloom with kinder bowers
And firm affections for shared primal youth.
Life’s promises they keep and sooner turn
On admiration of a sincere care
That judges not but, ever ready, learns-
What good or bad, by name, is common shared.
So being one within a true respect
They dare no more contend with right or wrong
Nor weary coming days with old regrets
But thank the night as harbinger of song.
At last to love in truth and constant live
By word of grace, their best of care to give!

Confessing nothing rash to vainly give
An estimation of life’s fleeting span
They overcome the world and constant live
In each, uniting, as is fit to stand.
Too soon, contesting banter comes about
On winds of contradiction, outward born
For inward wreck upon the teeth of doubt
As partial men from better self are shorn.
But owning what is due in right respect
Of station that sets all among the stars
So puny, comes a night to recollect
Those cares that found and folly each discharged.
Without more striving then, their way bestows
A humble truth, in love more plainly known.

So comes the proof upon transcendent will
To study every thought and whispered care
In what is sought and how may grace distill
The phantom soul; from private ways to bear
All things of good and evil in compound
As strange concoctions are at first the mead
Of sojourn ways, from ancient roots to bound
With vital links of continuity.
No star of vacant hope to glimpse at first
Where subtle intimations strike the mind
For sacred unction, urging on a birth
Through shadowed veils of self and misty kinds.
Once found in each, born by integrity
They compass perfect care to open up
The fount of golden youth while manhood’s key
Unlocks the treasures of salvific sup.
Such ripened grace of knowing, rightly heard
Stores up the nations, garnering the world.

A vision in the heart of Man, more true
To magnify the deed and, pure as gold
Proved equity of faith in each that holds
As dung all things which strife of pride once lured.
Allied and filling up the high measure
Of righteousness, with precepts born of love
It rectifies the will, drawing treasures
From Hade’s misty shrine and dank abode.
Thereby to light their lamps and truth reflect
The awesome wonder of life’s unity
While nothing of their tears to yet regret
Nor grant a loss to love's great sanctity.
Great mystery, though measured in the known
It rises, all in each and each in all!

Who knows what by this awful sight is spied
For proofs more sturdy, sought upon the word
To shape the justice of their dawning days
And lift to yet new life the palling world?
More subtle than the silent creep of time
It slips on by like whispers of a dream
To walk amidst the hustle and the grind
Of souls, too careless snared by cruel disdain.
Not here or there with proud insistency
Nor couched in dainty flirting of the mind-
A form of light and golden verity
Clothed in itself, itself a world sublime.
Substance of being, hope without a fear
This faith, indemnified by countless tears.

Ten thousand times ten thousand worlds employed
With weight and number, light and vast devoid
Before this fairest seat could faith enjoin
As heaven’s solar dame to the sublime.
Compressed within its bowels, the work's distress
From many tons of ore brings forth one stone
Which rare carbunculus the sage invest
With value, their beloved to adorn.
But this and all true wonder has not shown
What men and women may, in time, bequeath
As one pure breath of aurum spirit, born
To comprehend and compliment the rest.
Great agony has justified the odds
In consequence of Man, revealing God!

As firm as a rock I would be set
Against the world and its lewd contentions
More steady proving clearest virtue, stressed
With brilliant facets of the light, resolving factions.
A hope amidst the strife, this worth bestows
To character, ruling every passions’ season
For perfect care, great purposes to show
In blooms of time or timeless, sacred reasons!
Converging and uniting, such care met
Life's waking might, more near in sight to shine
With pure intent, whose knowing best reflects
All states, here cast in figures of design.
O dawning vision, pierce the awful night
And horns of plenty pour, true love requite!

When I was young I thought humanity
To be my nurse, my comfort and sure strength;
An eager hope, in every hour to length
Fleet days of wonder, all of life to see.
I cherished kindness, lain upon the breast
Of upright admonitions and good will;
A care of grace, in love, a founding rest
And honor for my vision’s windowsill.
How yet, too soon, cruel condemnations frowned
On ways I blessed in youth, now grown insane
With outward forms, the worldly pride bestows
And falsehood, waking my dread infamy.
Alas, my wasting sorrow and the shame
That groans with silent tears of faith betrayed!

Long hours, cruel hours that vex my wearied soul
With thoughts of contradiction; fawning days
Of youth are closed, in stock of lies arraigned
For inquisition and condemning powers.
What tyrannous and brutal, ruthless ways
That slam this sanctioned slavery overhead;
While bravery endures an awful crime
In contemplate of shame, too stark with dread.
So mock, O State, the way of noble ends
More false, discharge your rotten judgments’ fate;
A greater cause, at last, where first you rend
The back and front of self... my selves berate!
Dare now upon life’s brow your six-thrice brand
And testify!  All stripes shall truth withstand.

DEDICATION


This first book of the trilogy: “The Odyssey of Heart,” first appeared August 28, 2001 online under BeingQuest.com Academy of the Arts, a Minnesota based publication dedicated to the prospect of the reclamation and reformation of the moral world.

We at BeingQuest.com have adopted the proposition to consider, among the many ten-thousand apparently worthy aims we may engage our energies on whether, in fact “…really, only one thing is necessary.” ~Jesus of Nazareth

“The Odyssey of Heart” is our attempt to decipher this enigmatic proposition, and if true, what it may mean for both us individually in our daily lives, and for The People in the birth-pains of their struggle upon this same mission. May the humane and best of our hoped-for future prevail!



Orientation


Not in myself I trust, for I am weak
To noble deeds and proofs of lasting worth
But ever forms of faith and hope poured over us
When meekness, in heart, with love communes.
Better than reason, brighter than the tropes
Wrought by our sager minds who, for all times
Sought to mark down in sign that yet unseen...
Better the just humility of faith
That, from itself, bears truth’s emerging light
Able to steer the golden reins through heights
Of knowing, where the dryer air imbues
Essential manna: food of gods, the mead
Which heroes owning, few dare earn, is sup
Of perfect comfort, ever over-flown
In foment of new life; from pride's decay
To boundless grace, our liberty revealed.

Best Charity, heart of saints and ever true
To faithfulness of hope!  Great care you show
Where there’s no rod of law save principles
Most holy, by the proud unknown; exalting
Sacred sense, beyond surmise; submissive
Tender, patient, always kind with comfort
For the sojourn soul, from tribulation born…
Relieve our cause, pour down your shining balm
As in this world we all must yet forbear
And lead us straight.  Held fast in you we live.

Such faithfulness of care is born Below
Where many hours again we turn aside
Ignoble ways, by empty musings led
Where much is lost of hope, too troubling bound
But helped by love and truth for healing song.

Even the best of faith, not always solved
For clearest virtue, evident in deed
Is made exempt from trial; better to prove
The gold of piety when thorough plied.
Such constancy of soul is sooner known
When, as is judged by some, we're given leave
To go our way when yet is left behind

That care of grace we’d own, born from the heart.
So help my halting verse your work portray
Set down with pain to coax the one in all
And tend the goal of peace our heroes seek.

May then we own consistently our worth
Through mundane laws that, constant, drape the soul
And from the faintest things, secure our truth
Distilled to clarity in care of all.

Always, for grace, this comforting's renewed
Untainted by the loot of rusted gain-
Foul dross!  Many, for this, are bound in chains
Though freedom shunts the petty tyrant’s rule.

We look to sift and ply our souls again
For better ways, to each more kindly given
Though groaning under pride; wretched stain
Of brutal men, too noisy under heaven.
Yet heaven in each we sing for tiding songs
And phantom ways distrust.  In each is all-
That honest faith, for which the brave are strong
And proving glad, the patient cares install.

Great sympathy, the worth of each conjoined
To mirror in the promised, home-felt rest
Our truth and proven love, forever coined
In honor of the victors’ upright quest!


This call upon the wild that springs
To dignities of life, refined
Not of ****** mind-
A secret that has long been kept
Of old, which seers saw and wept;
Yet how shall one so lonely, frail
Train the flashing reins to follow?
Steady now, upon the gates and gap
Defending 'gainst presumption, overflown
To self-conceit, abominable
We glimpse the true and lasting vision
Whose care is no fruitless burden
But for the proper meekness, bidden
And yoke, humility, sure-bound
Not glancing here or there
To fix in heart upon the clear-
New city, famed uncloven stone
That tends azure upon the midnight sun
Out-braving that of brutal minds
By light of faith and the sublime.


Yet can the child's waking care
Through tribulation heroes bear
Overcome the vast depravity
Being only a child?
Resolved upon their sojourn friends
They bide the cornered time among the trees
Whose verdant leaves
Drip honeyed milk from gently swelling hills.
Reclined beside our sacred hearth
They turn aside the mortal strife
For truth in love, assaying peace;
So drinking down their heart’s content
They fortify ‘gainst burdens, bent
By iron rods, waved over the whole-
This world’s proud tyranny.
Some pain to bear, yet worth to lend
Through grace, by ways that flows within
The open gates of honest faith!
Not wielding rule of force, they sway
To ends, the burnished virtue won.
Of such is the vision-
Demeter’s preternatural ones.


Heigh kind upon the sacred fountain
Whose sentiments brought forth upon the fold
Life's faithful brook, more true than what is told
Of bitter waters, flowing pure as gold!

What can put at naught?
As ageless, undaunted abides
The head, by right established
From the heart, just inclined.
No thing in heaven or earth
Thwarts their destined uprightness
But straight through the gates they pass on
With wholly complied intent.

Blessed are those who shall drink
The waters that flow out this throne
As ancient wonders rise on the brink
Of Eleusinian fields, whose hearth is home!


Descending on the heart anew
Anointed by the morning dew
They seek consistently
To own their bright integrity.
With fuller' soap in hand
They wash the inner walls
And scourge away what is not grand
Within the darkened chamber's hall.
Relying on substantial grace
Comes falling on corrupting stains
A foment on the one relation
Love has earned and faith persuades.
Intending for a future, cleansed
Inclined and fixed, the will more pure
Finds out what lasting, perfect friends
Commend as worthy and true.
Thus seeking only to reflect
Their crystal best in every word
They overthrow the world, naught bereft
Of innocence, one mind and heart assured.


Though many cynics traffic in the hour
Barking at the heels of sacred power
Truth kicks the scale of false standards
As light from out the dark more daring spreads
Through the wilderness
A flowering festival of peace, assured
.
Now mythic, seven thunders ring
A promised day of liberty;
A day of freedom for the captive-
Hurrah, the day of Jubilee
Hosanna, arching Sabbath for all times-
Light and life in love’s relation!

The potsherds scoff
Alack! They cry-
Aurum heirs treading down the mountains.

“Suppliants of the Hearth”
~AESCHYLUS



With suppliant olive branch, to what kinder land could Man return?
Whose cities and earth of brightened water
Olympian lords, ye ancient gods below
Whose end possessed the tomb, though Savior Zeus
Keeps pious souls and yet receives
(respectful in the airy lands of men)
Those suppliants of the Hearth, rehearsed!

Though for the smarmy scorn of ****** men
Before the draught tastes the dregs of waste
Return their ships upon the brothing seas
And wintry stings of hurricanes the braved
Pressed on by lightnings, thunders, cast upon
More wild of winds, by facing life to death
Undo what wrong the law forbids
Cousins of pain who lie in strain upon unwilling beds!

Who shows the faithful witness
Still unknown by natives here
As unexpected to the false
Unknown upon who know and last at length!
Meloncoly more of song than Ionian strings
My heart unused to tears on Nile’s cheek
We gather bloom of sorrow
Anxious friends
Someone in search of strength
As exiles, far away on an empty mist!

Hear then, ancestral gods
And kindly look upon the tears of justice lost
With hating people, nothing left to lawlessness undecreed-
Our union justly met!

Behold the Heavens
Invincible in bulwark
Touring always the lasting weary
Among men, respect of gods!

Now will be done
Traced easy in the Earth
Uncompromised of fortune
And blackness through the hearts of men!