I have spoken of his verbal felicity, and alluded to his poetry. Before passing to his mystic gospel, I will refresh the reader (doubtless now fatigued with so much dialectic) by a sample of his verse. "The Lion of the Nile" is an allegory of the "champion spirit of the world" in its various incarnations.
"Whelped on the desert sands, and desert bred From dugs whose sustenance was blood alone-- A life translated out of other lives, I grew the king of beasts; the hurricane Leaned like a feather on my royal fell; I took the Hyrcan tiger by the scruff And tore him piecemeal; my hot bowels laughed And my fangs yearned for prey. Earth was my lair: I slept on the red desert without fear: I roamed the jungle depths with less design Than e'en to lord their solitude; on crags That cringe from lightning--black and blasted fronts That crouch beneath the wind-bleared stars, I told My heart's fruition to the universe, And all night long, roaring my fierce defy, I thrilled the wilderness with aspen terrors, And challenged death and life. . . ."
"Naked I stood upon the raked arena Beneath the pennants of Vespasian, While seried thousands gazed--strangers from Caucasus, Men of the Grecian Isles, and Barbary princes, To see me grapple with the counterpart Of that I had been--the raptorial jaws, The arms that wont to crush with strength alone, The eyes that glared vindictive.--Fallen there, Vast wings upheaved me; from the Alpine peaks Whose avalanches swirl the valley mists And whelm the helpless cottage, to the crown Of Chimborazo, on whose changeless jewels The torrid rays recoil, with ne'er a cloud To swathe their blistered steps, I rested not, But preyed on all that ventured from the earth, An outlaw of the heavens.--But evermore Must death release me to the jungle shades; And there like Samson's grew my locks again In the old walks and ways, till scapeless fate Won me as ever to the haunts of men, Luring my lives with battle and with love." . . .
I quote less than a quarter of the poem, of which the rest is just as good, and I ask: Who of us all handles his English vocabulary better than Mr. Blood?[7]
His proclamations of the mystic insight have a similar verbal power:--
"There is an invariable and reliable condition (or uncondition) ensuing about the instant of recall from anaesthetic stupor to 'coming to,' in which the genius of being is revealed. . . . No words may express the imposing certainty of the patient that he is realizing the primordial Adamic surprise of Life.