| Superphysics

The World as It Now Is.

Come! I will name the like-primeval Four, Whence rose to sight all things we now behold— Earth, many-billowed Sea, and the moist Air, And Aether, the Titan, who binds the globe about.

Earth and Air Not Illimitable.

If Earth’s black deeps were endless, and o’er-full Were the white Ether, as forsooth some tongues Have idly prated in the babbling mouths Of those who little of the All have seen . . .

Sun and Moon.

Keen-darting Helios and Selene mild.
But the sun’s fires, together gathered, move Attendant round the mighty space of heaven,
The sun’s beams The moon, in passing under, covers o’er, And darkens a bleak tract of earth as large As is the breadth of her, the silver-eyed.
As sunbeam striking on the moon’s broad disk.
Toward Olympos back he darts his beams,

With fearless face.

Round earth revolves a disk of alien light.
Even as revolves a chariot’s nave, which round

The outmost. . .

For toward the sacred circle of her lord

She gazes face to face.

But earth makes night for beams of sinking sun.

The Darkling Night.

Of night, the lonely, with her sightless eyes.

Wind and Rain.

Iris from sea brings wind or mighty rain.

Fire.

And fire sprang upward with a rending speed.
And many a fire there burns beneath the ground.

Air.

For sometimes so upon its course it met, And ofttimes otherwise.
In Earth sank Ether with deep-stretching roots.
Earth’s sweat, the sea.
The salt grew solid, smit by beams of sun.

Strange Creatures of Olden Times.

There budded many a head without a neck, And arms were roaming, shoulderless and bare, And eyes that wanted foreheads drifted by.
In isolation wandered every limb, Hither and thither seeing union meet.
But now as God with God was mingled more, These members fell together where they met, And many a birth besides was then begot In a long line of ever varied life.
Creatures of countless hands and trailing feet.
Many were born with twofold brow and breast, Some with the face of man on bovine stock, Some with man’s form beneath a bovine head, Mixed shapes of being with shadowed secret parts, Sometimes like men, and sometimes woman-growths.
But come! now hear how ’twas the sundered Fire

Led into life the germs, erst whelmed in night,

Of men and women, the pitied and bewailed;

For ’tis a tale that sees and knows its mark.

First rose mere lumps of earth with rude impress,

That had their shares of Water and of Warm.

These then by Fire (in upward zeal to reach

Its kindred Fire in heaven) were shot aloft,

Albeit not yet had they revealed a form

Of lovely limbs, nor yet a human cry,

Nor secret member, common to the male.

The Process of Human Generation To-day.

But separate is the birth of human limbs;

For ’tis in part in man’s . . .

Love-longing comes, reminding him who sees.
Into clean wombs the seeds are poured, and when

Therein they meet with Cold, the birth is girls;

Boys, when contrariwise they meet with Warm.

Into the cloven meads of Aphrodite.
For bellies with the warmer wombs become

Mothers of boys, and therefore men are dark,

More stalwart and more shaggy.

On the tenth day, in month the eighth, the blood Becomes white pus.
Twice bearing.
Sheepskin.