THE KASÎDAH VII, 25, 36

Life is a ladder infinite-stepped,
 that hides its rungs from human eyes;
Planted its foot in chaos-gloom,
 its head soars high above the skies:

No break the chain of Being bears;
 all things began in unity;
And lie the links in regular line
 though haply none the sequence see.

The Ghost, embodied natural Dread
 of dreary death and foul decay,
Begat the Spirit, Soul and Shade
 with Hades’ pale and wan array.

THE KASÎDAH III, 47, 62

How every high heroic Thought
 that longed to breathe empyrean air,
Failed of its feathers, fell to earth,
 and perisht of a sheer despair;

How, dower’d with heritage of brain,
 whose might has split the solar ray,
His rest is grossest coarsest earth,
 a crown of gold on brow of clay;

This House whose frame be flesh and bone,
 mortar’d with blood and faced with skin,
The home of sickness, dolours, age;
 unclean without, impure within:

Sans ray to cheer its inner gloom,
 the chambers haunted by the Ghost,
Darkness his name, a cold dumb Shade
 stronger than all the heav’nly host.