Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/214

thrumming of various stringed instruments, and an occasional ziraleet, or rapture-shriek from the lips of women and voting whose enthusiasm was unrestrainable, and who gave vent to it in wild movements of their graceful and supple bodies, and in shrill cries that might be heard long miles away, like voices from heaven awakening the echoes of Space! … Advancing with a slow, voluptuous, rhythmic movement, not of the feet alone, bit of the whole form from crown to toe, the girls—aged about fifteen, brown as berries, agile as antelopes, graceful as gazelles: lovely, with barbaric splendor, as an Arab's ideal houri;—they swayed, bent, advanced by twists and curves, by nameless writhings, by sweeping genuflexions, by movements the very poetry of passion. but passion of soul far more than of body, with suffused faces and moistly gleaming eyes, toward the taller emblem, round which they slowly whirled and danced, ever and anon stirring with a silver spatula the dark substance contained in the vessels they bore. This by turns. While the two youths, bearing similar vessels, performed corresponding movements about the vessel which symbolized Nature in her productive aspect—until we five Europeans were lost in a maze of astonishment at the capacity of the human frame to express mutely, but with more meaning and eloquence than a thousand tongues could convey, the amazing heights, depths, and shades of passion, but a passion totally free from vulgarity or indecency; and as pure as that of the ocean billows when they kiss each other over the grave of a dead cyclone! … Observing my surprise, the old Sheikh touched my arm, and in purest Bengalee whispered:—'Sahib, Ardor begat the Universe! There is no power on earth either for good or ill, but Passion underlies it. That alone is the spring of all human action, and the father and mother alike of all the good and evil on the Earth! It is the golden key of Mystery, the fountain of Weakness and of Strength; and through its halo alone can man sense the ineffable essence of the Godhead! The materials in the vessels are charged with life,—with the very essence of the human soul, hence with celestial and divine magic power! for O, Sahib, it is only lust and hatred that keep closed the eves of the soul!—and in the crystals whose backs