These coils of flesh to which I am bound,
Do hold and upset, do try to confound
All the things that I live for, long for,
That by my right should be mine:
The parts of me left when in past time,
Unsatisfied with perfection, first body I wore.

Enthralled with this fleshy work of my art,
I did soon come to believe that this body was me;
And that all that I lived for was to breathe;
And that an end I’d have just like this had a start;
And that nothing more was that wasn’t real by sense.
Such a fool then, in foolhardy ways!
My Self did I lose – how? In the things that I made.

Yes! my Self was lost in those bodies of mine,
To live and to struggle through this illusion of time
And of matter and thought, and on thinking now,
I long for and live for my return to True Life;
To knowing my Selves as once they were – One.

My desire lies elsewhere, not this limited plane,
Where toiling and struggle for pathetic gain,
For sensual pleasures – short-lived as they are –
Do take the possession of too many a man,
Each granted the facility to live out his desires:
This body is my tool to get out of this plane
Of menial existence, of hard-earned pain.

This plane of illusion, though the illusion is real,
Does, to most men, the beauty of Self conceal.
Little or none is known of the parallel planes
That permeate matter, that permeate mind,
That know it not but it all; that procreate Time;
The planes on which thought has substance and life,
And controls the events in the passage of history,
Which teach the man through pain and through strife;
That love the man – for Love is the Life.