Robartes

Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon, The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents, Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in: For there's no human life at the full or the dark. From the first crescent to the half, the dream But summons to adventure and the man Is always happy like a bird or a beast; But while the moon is rounding towards the full He follows whatever whim's most difficult Among whims not impossible, and though scarred As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind, His body moulded from within his body Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then Athenae takes Achilles by the hair, Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born, Because the heroes' crescent is the twelfth. And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must, Before the full moon, helpless as a worm. The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war In its own being, and when that war's begun There is no muscle in the arm; and after Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon The soul begins to tremble into stillness, To die into the labyrinth of itself!