LILITH A Fantasy Novel By George MacDonald - online book

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THE PERSIAN CAT                       201
understood perfectly, although I could not write the words, or give their meaning save in poor approxima­tion. These fragments, then, are the shapes which those he read have finally taken in passing again through my brain :—
' But if I found a man that could believe
In what he saw not, felt not, and yet knew,
From him I should take substance, and receive Firmness and form relate to touch and view; Then should I clothe me in the likeness true
Of that idea where his soul did cleave I'
He turned a leaf and read again:—
' In me was every woman. I had power
Over the soul of every living man, Such as no woman ever had in dower—
Could what no woman ever could, or can;
All women, I, the woman, still outran, Outsoared, outsank, outreigned, in hall or bower.
' For I, though me he neither saw ncr heard, Nor with his hand could touch finger of mine,
Although not once my breath had ever stirred A hair of him, could trammel brain and spine With rooted bonds which Death could not untwine—'
Or life, though hope were evermore deferred.'
Again he paused, again turned a leaf, and again began :—
For by his side I lay, a bodiless thing;
I breathed not, saw not, felt not, only thought,
And made him love me—with a hungering After he knew not what—if it was aught Or but a nameless something that was wrought
By him out of himself; for I did sing
1A song that had no sound into his soul;
I lay a heartless thing against his heart,
Giving him nothing where he gave his whole
Being to clothe me human, every part:
That I at last into his sense might dart,
Thus first into his living mind I stole.
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