Part 7 (1/2)

The Breath of Light

From the cool and dark-lipped furrows breathes a dim delight Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of gra.s.s Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pa.s.s: And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king; For a fiery moment looking with the eyes of G.o.d Over fields a slave at morning bowed him to the sod.

Blind and dense with revelation every moment flies, And unto the Mighty Mother gay, eternal, rise All the hopes we hold, the gladness, dreams of things to be.

One of all they generations, Mother, hails to thee!

Hail! and hail! and hail for ever: though I turn again For they joy unto the human vestures of pain.

I, thy child, who went forth radiant in the golden prime Find thee still the mother-hearted through my night in time; Find in thee the old enchantment, there behind the veil Where the G.o.ds my brothers linger, Hail! for ever, Hail!

--May 15, 1895

The Free

They bathed in the fire-flooded fountains; Life girdled them round and about; They slept in the clefts of the mountains: The stars called them forth with a shout.

They prayed, but their wors.h.i.+p was only The wonder at nights and at days, As still as the lips of the lonely Though burning with dumbness of praise.

No sadness of earth ever captured Their spirits who bowed at the shrine; They fled to the Lonely enraptured And hid in the Darkness Divine.

At twilight as children may gather They met at the doorway of death, The smile of the dark hidden Father The Mother with magical breath.

Untold of in song or in story, In days long forgotten of men, Their eyes were yet blind with a glory Time will not remember again.

--November 15, 1895

Songs of Olden Magic--IV

The Magi

”The mountain was filled with the hosts of the Tuatha de Dannan.”

--Old Celtic Poem

See where the auras from the olden fountain Starward aspire; The sacred sign upon the holy mountain s.h.i.+nes in white fire: Waving and flaming yonder o'er the snows The diamond light Melts into silver or to sapphire glows Night beyond night; And from the heaven of heavens descends on earth A dew divine.

Come, let us mingle in the starry mirth Around the shrine!

Enchantress, mighty mother, to our home In thee we press, Thrilled by the fiery breath and wrapt in some Vast tenderness The homeward birds uncertain o'er their nest Wheel in the dome, Fraught with dim dreams of more enraptured rest, Wheel in the dome, But gather ye to whose undarkened eyes The night is day: Leap forth, Immortals, Birds of Paradise, In bright array Robed like the s.h.i.+ning tresses of the sun; And by his name Call from his haunt divine the ancient one Our Father Flame.

Aye, from the wonder-light that wraps the star, Come now, come now; Sun-breathing Dragon, ray thy lights afar, Thy children bow; Hush with more awe the breath; the bright-browed races Are nothing worth By those dread G.o.ds from out whose awful faces The earth looks forth Infinite pity, set in calm; their vision cast Adown the years Beholds how beauty burns away at last Their children's tears.

Now while our hearts the ancient quietness Floods with its tide, The things of air and fire and height no less In it abide; And from their wanderings over sea and sh.o.r.e They rise as one Unto the vastness and with us adore The midnight sun; And enter the innumerable All, And s.h.i.+ne like gold, And starlike gleam in the immortals' hall, The heavenly fold, And drink the sun-breaths from the mother's lips Awhile--and then Fail from the light and drop in dark eclipse To earth again, Roaming along by heaven-hid promontory And valley dim.