ch: others dream
He was pre-Adamite, and has survived
Cycles of generation and of ruin.
The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence,
And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh,
Deep contemplation and unwearied study,
In years outstretched beyond the date of man,
May have attained to sovereignty and science
Over those strong and secret things and thoughts
Which others fear and know not.
_Mahmud._ I would talk
With this old Jew.
_Hassan._ Thy will is even now
Made known to him where he dwells in a sea-cavern
'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible
Than thou or God! He who would question him
Must sail alone at sunset where the stream
Of ocean sleeps around those foamless isles,
When the young moon is westering as now,
And evening airs wander upon the wave;
And, when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle,
Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow
Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water,
Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud
'Ahasuerus!' and the caverns round
Will answer 'Ahasuerus!' If his prayer
Be granted, a faint meteor will arise,
Lighting him over Marmora; and a wind
Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest,
And with the wind a storm of harmony
Unutterably sweet, and pilot him
Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:
Thence, at the hour and place and circumstance
Fit for the matter of their conference,
The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare
Win the desired communion."

Already in Dublin, I had been attracted to the Theosophists because they
had affirmed the real existence of the Jew, or of his like, and, apart
from whatever might have been imagined by Huxley, Tyndall, Carolus Duran,
and Bastien-Lepage, I saw nothing against his reality. Presently having
heard that Madame Blavatsky had arrived from France, or from India, I
thought it time to look the matter up. Certainly if wisdom existed
anywhere in the world it must be in some such lonely mind admitting no
duty to us, communing with God only, conceding nothing from fear or
favour. Have not all peoples, while bound together in a single mind and
taste, believed that such men existed and paid them that honour, or paid
it to their mere shadow, which they have refused to philanthropists and to
men of learning.

XIX

I found Madame Blavatsky in a little house at Norwood, with but, as she
said, three followers left--the Society of Psychical Research had