There was no road at all to that high place

But through the smothering grove,

Where as we went the shadows wove

Adulterous shapes of animal hate and love,

The idol crowded nightmare Space,

Wood beyond wood, tree behind tree,

And every tree an empty face

Gashed by the zigzag lightning mark

The first great Luciferian animal

Scored on clay and leaf and bark.

This was, we knew, the heraldic ground,

And therefore now we heard our footsteps fall

With the true legendary sound,

Like secret trampling behind a wall,

As if they were saying: To be, to be.

And oh, the silence, the drugged thicket dozing

Deep in its dream of fear,

The ring closing

And coming near,

The well-bred self-sufficient animals

With clean rank pelts and proud and fetid breath,

Screaming their arrogant calls,

Their moonstone eyes set straight at life and death.

Did we see or dream it? And the jungle cities—

For there were cities there and civilizations,

Deep in the forest; powers and dominations

Like shapes created by dreaming animals,

Proud animal’s dreams uplifted high,

Booted and saddled on the animal’s back

And staring with the arrogant animal’s eye:

The golden dukes, the silver earls, and gleaming black

The curetting knights sitting their curetting steeds,

The sweet silk-tunicked eunuchs singing ditties,

Swaying like wandering weeds,

The scarlet cardinals,

And lions high in the air on the banner’s field,

Crowns, sceptres, spears and stars and moons of blood,

And sylvan wars in bronze within the shield,

All quartered in the wide world’s wood.

The smothering grove where there was place for pities.

We trod the maze like horses in a mill

And then passed through it

As in a dream of the will.

How could it be? There was the stifling grove,

Yet here was light; what wonder led us to it?

How could the blind road go

To climb the crag and top the towering hill

And all that splendor spread? We only know

There was no road except the smothering grove.