The world holds the practice of alchemy in bad odor
The good or ill fortune of a fortune hunter
The transparent falsehoods of a confidence man
Knowledge owing to depraved demonic congress
Or if you like luck lies and license

Thus point by point
Any discovery any advancement
Will of necessity involve the element of chance
And success will come with the Aha! erlebnis
Success rare fleeting and never whole alas so far

What one seeks is gold that’s true
But mainly in a metaphorical sense
And metaphors are not quite true or false
But only apt or inapt as the case may be
And all we know is symbol

The pure the permanent the incorruptible
Require more than human hands
More than the skill to build a fire
Or the catalogue of those mnemonic contrivances
That we call spells

We humans live in the provinces
Of space and time and matter and energy
Which alchemy has deemed a hidden unity
Which philosophers have tried to excavate
To perceive a truth past all sensation