Lights flew about me; images sparkled in the imperishable Akasa. Oh, such ancient, ancient places and peoples! Such forms of primitive grandeur and antique simplicity! I was thrilled through with strangeness, and anon quickened with a familiar sense as when one returns to the scenes of childhood and the places of long ago. Then the visions faded away, and I became folded up in blackness; out of the stillness came forth again the light of the elder day; the blackness grew thick with stars; I saw burning skies fading into dawn; over distant hills danced up the star of day; it brought others with it to pale soon in the grey light; from the roof of a high building I watched it shadowed by a multitude of magical spires and turrets which rose up darkly from a great city erected on the plain. I looked down through the gloom into the square below; already there was a stir; I could see black forms moving about; they plied at ponderous engines. I could hear cries of wrath from these giants; then a stony despair came over me, for I knew the Golden Age had passed away, and the earth was crowded with these pitiless and inhuman races, the masters of all magical arts. Proud, exultant, tireless heroes of old Atlantis, this was your day of glory! What sin of all your sins did I witness? I watched from above, without comprehending it, the stir and rage; then suddenly impelled, I raised my eyes once more to the holy light. There I saw a new wonder borne high on the luminous air. His starry front proclaimed him straight one of the Children of the Wise—one of divine race. The brilliant moon-coloured lord—a vast phantom—floated erect with outstretched arms over the city; his shadowy hair drifted about him like a grey mist seen against the dawn. He glanced hither and thither beneath, and his hands swayed rhythmically as if he were weaving some enchantment; the rainbow fires danced about him; they flew here and there; I watched those radiant messengers; where they fell below, the toilers stopped suddenly as if stricken by light, looking vaguely about and above, seeing nothing; I knew then that the Lord was unknown to them. One after another I saw the toilers so touched steal away from labour, and far beyond I could see the way over the hills darkened here and there with moving forms passing hurriedly from the city. I looked up again; the Wise One was nigh the parapet I leaned on; I trembled being so near. I had but to stretch out my hands to touch greatness. I looked at the wonderful eyes; they were lightless as if the power were turned within; but they flashed anon, the fire in them seeming suddenly to run out from sphere deep-hidden in sphere; they were upon me.
I looked up. “Lord, why or whither should I fly as all these do?”
His thought answered me; “Your eyes are not yet sealed. See for thyself.”
Forthwith the eye of old memory opened, and the earth in its fairy-first beginning returned to me. I wandered—a luminous shadow; without eyes I saw the glory of life; without ears I heard its marvellous song; without nostrils I knew its sweet odours. I, the seer, lived in and shared the imagination of the Mighty. I knew the old earth once more, clear, transparent, shining, whose glory was self-begotten, flung up from its own heart, kindling the air with the reflection of its multitudinous fires. The fires ran in and out of the heart, in tides of crimson and torrents of gold, through veins of lilac, azure, and deepest blue. A million creatures ran free with indescribably flashing movement within them—the lustrous populace of the elements. Then the vision of the earth moved onwards and darkened, and the fiery heart was shadowed slowly from the eye of man who fell from dream and vision into deed and thought; for his deeds he needed power, and for his thoughts messengers; he took the creatures of the elements; they became his servants to do his will, and his will was darkness; he moulded them into shapes of passion and hatred. As he sank deeper he knew them no longer from himself, though what he willed was accomplished by them. As he moved from place to place they followed in hordes, and the fiery tides—their habitation—rolled along with them beneath the earth. When cities were builded these terrible armies were thronged thick around, within, and under; in air, in fire, in earth, and in the hidden waters. Then I saw below me where the fires were gathering, surging, pressing, ready to leap forth and devour; there passed upwards from them, continually, strange beings, shadowy creatures of the underworld called forth by the will of the giants who meditated the destruction of another city; they entered into these giants who sent them forth again. Full of terror I cried out—
“The fires will follow! Oh, look, look, how ruddy and red they glow! They live, and they send forth living creatures!”
I looked up, but the Wise One had gone away, I knew not where. Then I arose hurriedly, went downward and out of the city. I fled, without stopping, across the mountain path, until I left far behind the city and the doomed giants.