Poems By Arjava

THE guiding voice with pleading cried

"For third last test the hour

Now comes, when many have espied

Something of Pixie power."

With glad consent I took my way :

A door vas closed behind.

A rocky slope, "a twilight grey,

A winding path I find.

It seems to be the furthest bound

Of a pleasure garden wild.

Trees loom above, below, around ;

But here great stones are piled

To harbour plants that tuft and creep

And nestle in their shade.

On near-by path are men who sweep—

My guide is half afraid

Their zealous care may interfere

With what we plan to do.

By upward path we disappear

Out of their rockbound view,

And through the wood expectant press

To where the trees grow thin :

A slender thong hangs motionless,

As waiting to begin

Some magic dance that shall enhance

Slow pulse and vision dull;

It trembles now, though yet in trance,

Impatient of the lull

(As eerie calm, before a storm,

Sets quivering all the air),

I fain would know what subtle form

Has power to make it stir—

For in slow circles round it goes,

Then faster, wider flies ;

The silent woods no breeze disclose,

No being stays our eyes.

Encircling zones, bright diamond clear,

The earth-jarred limbs and sense refresh ;

And mind must weave a quicker mesh

Tuned to this joy-vibrating sphere.

With quizzing smile, the laughing answer :

One rhythmic step the flower-bud measures,

Another weaves our Pixie pleasures—

And Life's the dancer !

BEFORE the chronicles of time began

Or sundering space her canopy unfurled,

The uncreated Over-Thought had plan

Itself to lose—self-offered, form a world.

Smooth as untrodden snow the gleaming Host,

Fraught with all history, ringed by opal pyx,

Shone through eternity rays innermost

On all symbolic forms that intermix

Silence of Heaven with lisping speech.  God takes

His very substance that from Beauty came ;

Then with world-urging power He freely breaks

The bread that builds the fabric of His Name.

Seven great realms the fragments make : and we

In meanest dust may touch Divinity.

FINALE comes to thoughtful night's superb

Slow symphony, not meant for mortal ears ;

(These can but sense sea-sighings, listeners' tears,

The whispered undertones of tree and herb,

Plaudits of frog, brief scufflings that disturb.)

From sky-vast score sheet graven by the years

Slowly each jewelled star-note disappears,

Darkened by light which longer will not curb

Long gathering eagerness to limn the red

And golden dado over eastern sea ;

Then—heralding noon's opening far ahead—

Peeps up a crimson tip of peony.

Young day, a well-knit youth, swings up the skies,

Known by soft voice, slow smile and level eyes.

THE undiminished moon weaves threefold spell.

A month of phantoms Mars or Mammon serve ;

Yet, falsehood-freed in this true-centred curve,

Of Falsehood's motley empire ring the knell !

Two weeks' unvanquished growth can swiftly quell

Grave's insolence, englobes with living fire

Whatever haunts decay and darkness hire—

Triumphant Life by crescent pictured well !

Eight days ago Sorrow from lonely cell

Cried for completion 'cross the skies : but here

Lover with loved make one un severed sphere

Of seamless Beauty, joy's clear citadel.

From phantoms freed—and death—might we possess

The life of truth—love's everlastingness !

OUT of a hazy stillness

Softly the bird notes call :

" Shatter your tired chillness,

Stay not within the wall."

Unicorns play through the morning,

Phoenix is lord of the noon,

Centaurs give delicate warning

Under a huge red moon.

Unicorn uncreated,

Time may grow tired—not you !

For changes of rhythm are dated

By the clang of your topaz shoe.

Custom shall never confine you ;

Tame less the sweep of your horn :

Nor shall the future define you,

Song of a world new born !

Shadow less splendour of heaven—

Sapphire of endless extent;

Eldest Day of the Seven :

Immaculate bird that is sent

From the high noon descending

To foster the questing flame

(For far beyond comprehending

ShinesThat from whence you came).

Fearing no sword that may sever,

Diamond serene on the height—

Blissful beyond our endeavour,

Invisible Day of our night:

For still from the ruby beacon

Faintly your rays are shed

And the ancient fetters weaken,

And the young god lifts his head—

His ivory shoulders gleaming

Are tinged with the ruby glow,

His eyes of a far sun dreaming

Give aim to asteadfast bow ;

And under the feet of his living

Is the glint of a topaz shoe ;

And fragrant the flame of self-giving

That the phoenix comes to renew.

The sound of tiny voices

As when a wood rejoices

Upon Midsummer Eve.

Or willow-wren who poises

Low piping pixie noises

That body-fastness cleave :—

(One voice)

"Alder tree, alder tree,

June has set in with pageantry,

All that you saw now tell to me

On the brink of your lily lagoon."

(Another)

"Clover white, clover red,

Wing with me to the clover bed :

Heriesthe lark high overhead

Bird happy hours of June."

(Another)

" Filmy the mist on the high mountain tarn

Veiling the sombre hue,

And sedges aglimmer with attercop yarn

Spangled with midsummer dew."

(Another)

" Deep lay the valley of moon-bright lake

Lapping an island dim—

Spell which the dipping swallows break

With sunrise on far sea-brim."

THERE came in sight a treasure cove

With foam-lipped shore ;

And with delight my galleon strove

To reive that ore—

Rathe daffodil and bluebell grove

From springs of yore,

Gay tormentil whose tresses rove

On forest floor.

Upon Time's marge prevailing mist

Of Lethe dew

O'erlies the charge of amber-kissed

Moments that flew—

The gentian flowers, like skies, untwist

Soul-piercing blue,

The leafy towers of spring enlist

Their birdchimes new.

The thoughts that flit through Nature's mind

As seasons go

Their bodies quit—we do not find

Their essence so.

Unfading flower, with magic signed,

Inlybestow,

Bright fairy power who laughed behind

That moving show.

SILVER mist of April shower,

Primrose -pale and cuckooflower,

Blossoms agleam with a magical power

Rosy and white on the crab-apple tower.

Foxglove red and campion see,

Foamy tuft of elder tree ;

Poised o'er the pool mid the drone of the bee

Kingfisher trance on the willow-root knee.

Twilight blue of ripening sloes ;

Saffron-bright the birch leaf glows ;

Back in his lair let the dormouse doze

Dreaming of cornfields and white hedge-rose.

Spring may peep from winter's edge—

Coltsfoot stars the terrace ledge,

Catkins aswing on the high hazel hedge,

Golden the sun-glint of celandine pledge.

APRICOT bloom we weave on our loom,

And tassels of silk we will Spin—

The silver and gold which the sallows unfold,

Or dark red where the cobnuts begin.

From a rainbow vat we draw the cravat

For the drake with his emerald gleam,

And a bridegroom suit for the crested newt

And thetiddlers that joust in the stream.

With satin-cloth white we garnish the height

Of the grim winter hedgegrow bare—

For the stitchwort spray has hidden away

The bonesof a by-gone year.

But along the hem ground ivy stem

Invades with a purply-blue,

Dog-violets rove in paler mauve

With hyacinths piercing through.

Of azure shade the clutch is laid

In the neat hedgesparrow's nest,

And the life she rears all unawares

Fulfils Love's agelong quest.

FAR-FADED moon has sought new life in death :

Tier above tier the myriad worshippers

Their vigil keep, and each one burnisheth

To brighter gold his spear-tip, nor incurs A

A sloven's name as one whose nature stirs

When Beauty is presented to the sense,

Yet breeds no deep response, no messengers

To bring fresh thoughts in absent love's defence.

From faltering hand you strengthen none shall wrench

The flaming spear of Love's fidelity.

His faithfulness no Lethe draught can dim,

The hungry years will vainly strive to quench

Star-kindled hope within the heart of him

Who holds faint echoes of your mystery.

A WINDLESS eve in a quiet coomb ;

Rock-roseyellow and golden broom.

Sandmartins wheel aloft

Watching day's goblet quaffed

A dream-laden wind from the sky escorts

The starry ships of the Argonauts.

Sandmartinstirs in the hole ;

Peeps out one guardian troll—

I

Page 16

RED ladybird, black ladybird,

Ladybird sable and gold,

Lowly you sing, flutter your wing,

And fare to the fete on the world.

Goldfinches sing ; butterflies cling :

Guests that are plumed or furred-

Timid and bold, beasts manifold,

A harvest-mouse marshals the herd !

Fairy drums rolled, flutings foretold

Favours thepixie-folk fling :

Flown thitherward, each tiny bird

Will hery the midsummer king.

Red ladybird, black ladybird,

Ladybird sable and gold,

Pollen-dust bring in a gossamer sling—

Make haste ere the tickets are sold !

DOWN the nesh pathway into the wood,

into the pixie dell,

We had passed the turn where an elmtree stood

and a rathe-ripe harvest fell

On the withered fern and the phantom leaves

of yesterautumn's revel ;

Washed by the waves that the windflower breathes

across the glimmering level

Green sea that laves the forbidden shore

in the rune of the white flower-foam,

Was the heart of the dene—and the shimmering floor

decked for the dance of the gnome.

Maheshwari

NOR mote nor world may swerve beyond Thy law,

O Veiled One : but starry incense bore

Rumour of Thee from midnight's ancient hill—

" Tranquil insistence with compassionate will."

Mahasaraswati

Far-avenued between the day and night

Thy lotus breathes perfection from its heart,

Crowning our shadow-dream with crystal light,

Moulding Time's clay to ever-living Art.

Mahakali

Men of the noon-tide, careless of earthly norm,

Shall trace Thy fire-dance down the ways of storm,

Mocking the ramparts of the world's deceit,

Casting their death beneath Thy Living Feet.

Mahalakshmi

Very softly when the day with

folded wings Feels underneath its weight the curved calm

Of mothering earth, the water nuphar sings

Through Thee her moon-enscrolling river-psalm.

HOW came your green translucency

to palimpsest my page,

shadow of dim-wayed alchemy

backthrown from after-age ?

No this-world-print enwalls my cage,

but script of gramarye

up glimmers past your filmy wings

and dips my hodden thought

in some faint moon washed tide that brings

colours undreamt, unsought !

If all your kind are fosterlings

a phantom gale up caught

from dragoned meadows of the moon,

your flutter-fans of jade

belong where palaces are hewn

from porcelain, choicely made,

whose silver carp in trance have swayed

through chasms emerald-strewn

divergelessly.... and midnight's rim

of green-veined marble stairs

ascend to where the fireflies limn

a flicker of green tears

before a golden-pillared seat,

dragon-chased with green,

that bears— in silver cage of light—

the hierarch parakeet,

whose sustenance has ever been

the rainbow of the night

where topaz wines with sapphire meet

within the chrysoprase

moon-brimmed bowl of haze

borne by green-silked serving maids

from dim green-vista'd lunar glades.

THE sky of night is but the ebon door,

star-golden with nails of fire :

beyond, the unimaginable floor

is flecked with glory from the kindled pyre

of gift immortal in the mortal giving

and firth serene 'cross war,

wing worthiness and alchemy of living,-—

flooding with trust our gloom-sad corridor.

The phoenix egg of quintessential light

Death in the desert place

vainly encompasses : beyond their night

loves the archetypal Form of lovers' race

in Whom the shadow-barriers have vanished

and prison walls of name

come not between (for blended incense banished

their wraith in ashes winnowed by the flame).

A wan and worn earth sleeps in warless grave ;

Arabian phoenixland

fossils un habited shell—so save

toil of aspiring will to understand !

Other the thy my wakefulness that beckoned

Phaedrus on wing ward way—

child of the Sun whose wakening memories reckoned

the wing-bright peace of Solar Yesterday.

Vivid as almandine, world-hallowing feet

flame from the sunrise lair.

Uprush of wings matching the paths they beat

of crystalline blue diamond thoroughfare.

Tranquil the phoenix-poise of golden crested,

fleece-white and sorrow less

head of the undefeated vision who had nested

where on Time's moments looms the Everliving ness.

[Suggested in part by Yeats' lines :—

" And lingered in the hidden desolate place,

Where the last Phoenix died*

And wrapped the flames above his holy head ;"]

HEART of the holy Phoenix, grant my prayer

to be thy hierophant:

then in the desert precincts I prepare

beggarly tokens of Love's regnitude,

high sphered in spirit-lovely adamant,—

dog worthy crumbs of the ambrosial food

lifted in lordly rites by blissful celebrant

amid the joy-thrilled firmaments of being.

From wan and wind-swayed ashes came the victor, phoenix-renewed ;

so from the dim earth symbol rise up, O Rose of seeing.

Concealing silver calyx of the Rose,

no more you wholly hide

the myriad-shaded mystery that flows

in crimson whorls of splendour round the pure

centrality of dross less gold beside

the nectar wells of wonder and the sure

petal-breathed tang of changeless love time-verified.

Surely this petal-sweetened breeze came flowing

out of the sheer unfathomed vastness to procure

rum our of the Undying Rose from finite clay up growing ?

But now through moonlit roadstead swings the sun

in height's tranquillity;

Time's brabble pauses—as a beck may run

into a sky-clear pool, held dreaming-deep ;

Day's minutecourse tangents Eternity

and all unshapely thought is put to sleep.

Veiled in a flicker of wings, from that immensity

on delicate azure pinions calm descending,

he crowns, Prometheus wise, life with resurgent leap

of a quenchless flame fraught worship,—phoenix-lit fire unending.

WILLOW and rowan and alder

at the mountain river side

whose rocks, below their wavering arch,

in gullies of gloom the mossy horsemen ride.

And outpost-isles loom balder

because no shadows hide

their boulders bleached by day's-breadth parch

amid the foams hot silver-chanting glide.

November pads her pillow

with thoughts no bough may keep

after the year's-end Lethe flood

dismemoried all the trees and gave them sleep :

' twixt rowan stems, and willow,

chill starbeams creep ;

through skulls of last year cones that stud

the alder-crest the clams of winter seep.

By yesterfreshet's leavings

the withy wands were dight

half-mast for Winter's overthrow,—

but yet those buglers golden on the height

entrap the sunlit weavings

of Spring with catkin-light

and set the quivering air aglow

with colour and bee-song by the honey bight.

The flower-fletched arrow

of the year's course came

into this autumn solitude

and fired the rowan's tinder with its aim.

Light's lovely glories narrow

and sweal in the crimson flame :

Time veered,—the lightless days renewed

graith for the lightward urge no bars can tame.

ALL space is cribbed, confined,

Alf time abeggar's mite :

There is a bitter rind

No after-depths requite.

Dustwhirl of galaxies.

As a top, gathers and sleeps

In swift tranquillities

Of time-unwearied deeps.

Error to Eden came,

Drew from Eve's mouth

Sweetness that changed to grame

And lonely drouth

And with rinded hardness

First joined to the tree,—

A symbol of this marred-ness,

Strange hope of things to be.

NOR sleep nor leave me ; evermore press on

Unswervingly as justice, paramount,

Shadow less, unhasting, undismayed,

Or as in tenderness of twilit skies

Translunar radiance forthglimmering

Starkly from Truth's vigil and far thronging

Of gold-apparelled unappeasable stars.

AS tyrant eats the selfhood of his slave,

As captive strikes no root in loneliness,

Must draughtsman ship avoid all figure save

These two,—the centre less circumference,

And that self-weariness of Present whence

Nor silvern hopes nor pure gold memories gave

Access to one, friend-welcome, fetterless ?

High dreams have limned the triptych, scored the stave.

Now stave is set with ampler harmonies ;

Ulysses has resailed from Ithaca,—

To fairest apples of Hesperides,

Beyond our drossed horizons, traveller ;

And Argo's prow is aimed for Colchis Fleece :

Foam-plash of silver. . . .courage.. shimmering peace.

UNDER the evening storm-lower

Far in the western sky

Gold are the wings of the eagle

Who bringeth Beauty nigh.

Heard we the sedges answer

The wind in a whispered cry—

Or a silk robe's fading rustle

And Her feet passing by ?

Framed in the day-dawn glimmer

Her fields of lotus lie,—

In the heart one worship-petal

Wins God-horizonry.

FRET Truth into false flinders

And-rend time moment-meal,

Leave on Love's altar cinders,

—Let no bells peal.

Moider the sage and the wizard,

Be fleering-fain to trace

As A leads on to izzard

So fair to base.

Now in no darn full acre

Is manhood leasing-loath;

Wealth guards the craven breaker

Of yester-oath.

O moon, draw the waters over

Atlantean fields :

Let some star, some aeon-rover

Be the egg that yields

Singers of truth who mingle

All beauty in one cry,-—

A wingway where Love's single

Phoenix shall fly.

MY mind would be as wax or snow

Smoothly white, silent and aware

Of a Song unsphered in earth-dim register,

Of Bliss where peace ward footsteps go.

Waves of desire be still and leave

A grief-un furrowed lotus lake,

Whereon the quest full lifting blossoms break

In worship-banners when the eve

Has limned a trance upon the air,

A swirl of sunset on the stream,

An ecstasy of quivering bells that seem

Born from the heart of Prayer.

GOOD-BYE to the beechen girdles,

Then slantwise up the-hill—

And a shimmering silence curdles

To notes that spill

Out from a feathered mote

Or a spark

Of the unseen joy, from the throat

Of light-enfettered lark.

Leaving the past to kindle

Springlight, Persephone

Ended winter's dwindle

In Sicily ;

And out of Pluto's tomb

Engendered

For deathless Love a bloom

—Love stays, though flowers are rendered.

How should one flowing stream-head

Reck neither joy nor pain

Unless heaven's gift were dream-led

To light again ?

High on the hillside welling

From sad earth,

—Pure mirror, sky-compelling,

—Soul's nectar of new birth.

A FOREST of shadows gliding fast,

Magnetwise, as drawn on by the sun

For westerly waning sunset-goal—

Zenith past, how eerily they run !

On paths that meander 'cross the sky,

Gleam and bend cloud-centaurs from afar

Moon-bow that is aiming, silver-taut,

Arrows made of silence at a star.

FROM a vista of stillness hugely hewn

Beechen pillars looming, on the floor

Trance-light of a summer afternoon

Ambers Time—and Silence—to the core.

Eternity hovers, creeping through

Clouds that move too slowly to be kenned ;

Infinity sails on wings of blue

'Thwart a sky un shadowed and un penned.

The slopes of the Silence-hill are passed ;

Piping sweeps all sadness from the air :

Dissolvings of fear show naked vast

Thunderous limbs man-momently-appear.

SWIFT lord of the golden arrow-flight,

Splendour-limbs we sought as in a dream.

Our closeness to the Uncreated Light,

Wideness-Truth and Purity supreme.

The giants of night are battle-fled,

Noisome clouds are wrested from the slough ;

Immortal flame-glow is about Thy head,

Honey-pale the stillness of Thy brow.

A moment, poise-mirrored, tokens Thee,—

Guise of neck and arching of his wing

Enlimned on the faultless ripple-free

Sheen of light where swan hood is the king.

White shrine near the sacred laurel boughs,

Marble quest of Timelessness adored,

From Night's bitter ocean hastening prows,

Urged to thee, come visionary-oared.

When guardians of cities, wisdom-fast,

Freed the gates of Beauty for the soul,

On vision-splendoured days where Thou had passed

Broke what gale of strangeness from the Whole !

Thy body is a song that never palls,

Singing thoughts Thy sandals on the way ;

Across Thy limbs no shadow vesture falls—

Bright beyond thralled reckoning of clay.

THE wide sable expanse of infinite skies

From north to south is unfurled by giant hands :

And a new moon is cradled in swaddling bands

Somewhere beyond ; and the winds hush in surprise.

As a flight of grey murmuring birds aswim

On a mere of sky, darkness unharshens ; a shimmer and breath

Phantom the air : a sun reddening from underneath

Bend of the earth minutely forges to the brim.

Very lightly the tree-tops in a summer breeze

Wave their green plumes to the haze-rimmed sapphire sky :

June is ablaze with meandering butterfly

And bright lairs that bewilder the engrossed bees.

The heron's unhurrying nestward flight

Threads through the silence, and his deserted pool

Crimsons to wine.... Reremice across the cool

Flicker and spider-weave the shadowy night.

I

ON high trees the silver blooms of light

Mingle with intenser brilliances

Of gold's perfection, blinding to earth-sight.

The ail, like harpstrings, thrilled with fragrances

Changed and renewed at every veering breeze

In shimmer-time with bird-wing radiances.

II

Burden less the skies that here release

Their dream-glow of ineffable joy-white

Rim of pearl and zenith of sheer peace.

In whose deep heart the fountain's rainbow height

From an undying worship-rapture flows ?

Or whose thoughts hold lagoons and plumage-bright

Flamingoes that no ruffling zephyr blows—

Yet in one swirl their myriad winging leaves

Earth a green stalk, unpetalled like a rose ?

III

A river-song and diamond stream enfold

The dateless battlements that shall achieve

In Time's last sunset walls of living gold.

THIS was the country that I did not know.

The joy that has no shadow-throw.

A lore which worldlings worthless deem,

That love our thralled hearts fear to show,

That power no helmed hosts bestow

—Of freedomed soul the source and stream.

Here was day's imprisoned beam.

The dying sunset's fadeless gleam,

And prayer of all green things that grow ;

This the Spring's eternal theme—

Flowering trees in silver dream

And visioned globes of gold hood glow.

HASTENING arrow-fall of hazard flight,

Poor earthen counterpart of shooting stars ;

Or meanly carven wood-block on the bench

Where no Form-spirit beats against the bars

And leaps no chaos-ending chisel-smite

To cancel Death, Time, Change, Forgetfulness.

These feebly kindled tapers Time must quench

In fickle, slothful, craven years—unless

The undreamable epiphany of Light

Has flashed from other soul's most secret sky

And turned to gold and everliving flame

This tawdry candle of mortality :

Life-giver to unborn gods, heaven-building Might,

Love without form, end, variance, or name.

I PACED the length of shrouded street

Desponding, weary of earth :

"Loathed charnel-dust beneath my feet,

Prevailer over birth,"

I groaned—when, harnessed in his light,

The Love God loomed upon my sight ;

Eros, or youth—with parted lips

(Where was now the long eclipse ?)

And raptured eyes and lily brow

(The whole earth was singing now)

And lovely look of joy too deep

To dream athwart its wonder sleep.

That vision veiled, a larger scope

Engulphed the sense in swathes of hope.

No light, but Inner Power of light

Lifted vast pinions o'er the night

Fathomless and indigo.

No form that shifted to and fro ;

No Presence.—We were present to

Those shadowy plumes of violet hue,

That ageless Brow with roses crowned,

Mysterious Lips that made no sound....

With Eyes in aeoned darkness furled,

The primal Eros of our world.

IF at joy's noon you are the sun,

A sapphire-girded flame,

Each veering crescent and half moon

Turns light ward memory's aim

When noon is done.

If one star fills the day bright thought,

The myriad glitter-play

Of evening spreads in a thousand rills

For the delta of dreams that ray

Which you have brought.

If the new moon leave my barren sky

Emptied of thoughts of you,

Behind this bleakening world receive

From a shrine the votive blue

Petals of ecstasy.

NO, do not seal my eyes,

Death, do not come :

Some voice your power denies—

Beat not your drum ;

These victor thoughts arise,

" Amabo, ergo sum."

Here is no love that dies,

Though for aeons dumb ;

Not Lethe wards it flies,

Nor do its wings grow numb

But spurn your nether skies :

" Amabo, ergo sum."

IN the core of this shadowy world

A shadow less place

Where Sorrow's dark wings are unfurled,

Banished Death's trace.

Pinions of sheer delight

Conquer pain ;

Self-subsistent Light

Comes again.

Shifting and sunder hood

This cannot mar ;

Quenchless, unriven stood

Love's single star.

How manifold disguises

Teemed from the One :

Loaned iterance suffices—

Till the play is done.

ONLY the foam made rainbows

In that cloudless land,

Where no storm or stain shows

Enmities at hand.

Under the blue blue ocean

Sealed in a pearl-white grot

Singers of heart's devotion

Frame song-ways to that spot.

Flowers are not more fragrant

Than the incense of their strain ;

The whispering currents vagrant

Sift their golden grain.

They've a tune of the silver fretting

Of love's first eager dawn,

And a rune of sun's outward setting

In fields of deathless corn

Where each poppy's a flaming token

Of all that the world denies

And a cornflower in sapphire has spoken

Of fathomless skies.

GLIMMER of day beam

Harbingers night's end

Swiftening of the stream

Looses the bubbles penned

Against their foam-white leap fore kenned.

O for a sword

To cleave the murk asunder ;

O for a heart assured

Amidst the torrent's thunder

To balk that Time-race thief of plunder.

Out of a questant morrow

Curlews drifting by

Send ekings of sorrow

Across the moorland sky—

And whimbrels pipe strange sevenfold cry.

If there be so much sadness

In the fore-end of the day,

What ort or lag of gladness

Is lapped in noontide's ray ?—

O scan the silver salmon's way.

Doffed was the sea-wont's ill

And the garb of wave-borne good,

Heading upriver still.

Following yonder hood,

Fain of reaching where high hills stood.

If glossed sea-wealth could hold him

In bitter loveless ways,

Some god should dream-enfold him

And echo through his days

That hest he swervelessly obeys.

Liegedom of Time is ended,

Souls in their freedom love,—

The steep foamfall ascended,

And the last gloomy clough ;

And a joy-vast sky azures above.

THE silken web of the moon

Is fallen on the sea :

Silence bereaved set free

An old and a new tune.

Swing slow, swing low.

Gently your pinions lifting.

Swing low, swing slow,

Starlight your pinions sifting.

Swing slow, swing low,

Silent and moonwardly drifting.

From this moon so nearly full

Gaze upon crescent earth

Sad children of lunar dearth

Fain would pull.

Swing by, swing nigh,

You are an earthbeam here.

Swing nigh, swing by,

Scatter earthshine from your hair.

Swing by, swing nigh,

On deadness and shadowscape drear.

Starkly that silver tomb

Eschewed, receding—

Hail to new glories breeding

In earth's womb.

Swing fast, swing past,

Life's cry through the silence seeping.

Swing past, swing fast,

Song wards and earthwards leaping.

Swing fast, swing past.

No more by death-tide neaping.

WATER softly swirling

In sea cave,

Shadowlessly furling

Tainture of the grave,

Utterly revealing

The strewn pearl.

And the blue fish wheeling

Waver and curl;

In their swift bright motion

They glint and feel

The wield and surge of ocean

Moment-meal.

HOW should I smooth Thy way,

Speed Thy feet,

O sojourner of Day ?—

" Doff deceit."

How shall heart's waters lure

Thee to my shrine ?—

" Be stillness and candle-pure

Vigil thine."

Make this poor fitful flame

Bright as of yore,

Shiningly spell Thy Name

Evermore.

Take, take my moteling gem—

Words fain to greet ;

There is no worth in them

Save at Thy feet.

I HAVE come to the windless place,

To the high rock set

In the midst of the tedious valley

Where the embrangled joys and sorrows race

And will nowise let

Fulfilling and intendment tally.

I have come to the lonely place

Of friends unmet—

One sole resolve up bear me :

" May the rock melt and breathe itself to space

Rather than I forget

The so-long-striven-for goal now near me.'

THE silent Deep all strewn with stars

Unswayably withholds

A moon to reap the star-fraught ears

That midnight's acre folds ;

Though a sickle-blade in the harvest hour

Reap all the stars away,

And the gleaner maid of dawn shall leave

The stark bare field of day.

O Siva-moon be swift and raze

Number and name and form,

Leaving the boon of Wideness bright

And Peace beyond all storm.

GlVE me not only gold,

But the use un wasted

Of each grain of splendour

My dazzled eyes behold—

Or be Thy nectar-cup untasted,

O Heavenly Lender.

Cleanse and furnish new

This heart receiving

Till, like a child new-born,

Its day's unshadowed hue

Can no more suffer cloud-rack's reiving.

Sunless, forlorn.

May my thought in some inmost shrine

Be ever deeming

Thee as the Taintless Giver—

In grateful tranced shine,

A soul ensilvered with Thy Gleaming

Like a moonlit river.

HIGH over glen, tarn, pool or chine,

Hills, forest lands, cloud-ways, ocean foam,

Beyond the ethers and the sun's tethered home

And the last sphere-wall set with starry shine,

My spirit skims ; as one who weds the sea

And swims in tune with rhythmic waves of sleep,

He sends a joyous furrow through the deep,—

Vain mesh of words to snare such ecstasy !

Flee far away from fever-sullen places,

O self; be rinsed of taint on heights divine,

And quaff that pure, that quintessential wine

Of clear fire filling the limpid spaces.

Past this wearying bulk of undelight

That cumbers all our mist-enfolded world,

Happy the one who with limber wings unfurled

Voyages to peace and lovely lawns of light ;

He who his thoughts, like larks with quivering wings,

At each day's dawn for heavenward flight unpens,

Who soars o'er life and effortlessly kens

The hidden speech of flowers and all dumb things.

IT stays so memory-clear,

White house with the city near,

A little house where peace abides.

Pomona in plaster set,

And a Venus older yet;

Each in a spindly tree-clump hides

Limbs that bear no robe :

And evening-splendoured globe

Of the sun who streams with level light

And—like a living eye Open in watchful sky—

Regards our long meal's silent flight

Through the window-glass

Which breaks the rays that pass

And strews a sheaf of glittering beam

About the room within

In steady pools akin

To a tall white candle's gleam ;

There, lapped in the amber of clear light,

The homely table-linen white,

And dark curtains for the night.

(From Baudelaire)

NATURE is a shrine where vista'd gloom enhances

Whispering tongues that speak from every column—

Whereto man fares through serried forests solemn

Of symbols that scan him with their intimate glances.

As flight of echoes from a far-off beach

Into a shadowiness profound unite,

Vast as the day's width or as the titaned night,

Are matched sounds, colours, perfumes each to each.

For perfumes are sensed dawn-pure as childhood's flesh,

Softly as oboes, greenly as meadow-shroud,

-And others, vitiate, choicely and richly proud,

Winged with out flowing through the finite's mesh,

As musk, benzoin, incense, ambergris,

That sing the mind's and senses' joy-release.

WHAT is the fabric of that flag ?

And with what tincture dyed ?

O fadeless gold within time-slag,

O taint-proof silver tide.

Beyond the frontiers of one life

Those folds are waving still

To gleam down weary leagues of strife,

Flame certitudes of will!

TURN to the inscape of turquoise ;

Be one with the unicorn :

And gain with bared feet the shrine way of renewal

Through the pearl-hush of dawn.

Gather blue lotus at moonrise

And with colours un guessed at strew

That sunward path the unicorns are keeping

In the pearl-pale dew ;

Matchless their worship and un veering,

Their arrow-perfect flight

Beyond the last dim barriers of morning,

Unencumbered by the night.

Greet from the quiet gateway

Of that hilltop shrine

The unimaged splendour of new day-birth,—

Heart's un beleaguered shine !

I SING of a different place

Where dreamlight falls .

Not through dissevering space

On outward walls,

But cleaves a comelier way

Where falsehood holds no sway

And friendship gains

A truth beyond the puppet hood of Time's chains.

Within the moonscape of my dream

The silvery hooves

Of a snow-white unicorn shall gleam,

And as it moves

No harshness clangs upon the air—

But earth-born thoughts remade,

From swathes of sound stripped bare,

Are echoed in moon-purity from cliffs of jade.

There was a very silent pool:

But at midnight's stroke

When moon-rays from the zenith rule,

That mirror woke,

Enframing dream within a dream,

Song within song,

Soul's love behind all mental theme

Or passions' throng.

I WOULD not draw thee to myself,

But I would go to thee

(Beyond known land and bordering delf

And dyke, the unknown sea).

Embodied distance is a mote

In the all-span of Space—

But thou on Mind's expectance wrote

An un deciphered trace.

Thy husk the wandering earth still tows

In her wave-wake sable-hued :

But whose brow felt that wind which blows

Through thy selenitude ?

Thought's anti-earth, hast thou enshrined

All aspects other most—

Memento nasci of the mind-

Un beaconed, nameless coast ?

THE power of the desert by water,

Of icefields by the sun, .

Of heart's dearth by love broken—

What if the three be one ?

Faint and far wind-whispers stirring,

Far and faint wash of the waves ;

Inly and near me your presence

Soundlessly utters and saves.

Then touch less hands may touch you,

And bodiless vision see,

And the heart of the heart may know you

By love set free.

O WHO or what had called me

That blue-skied day—

Spring's aftermath of magic

And meadowsweet and hay ?

Across moon daisies nodding

In the dream-surge of grass

Time's haste less mirror fretted

By a swallow's keening pass ?

Certainly between each moment

And its mate was set

The wizard blade of the Timeless

Swordsman no man has met.

Thought at each crevice riven

Sped swirling through,—

A swift stream fringed with brooklime,

It danced to a rhythm of blue.

And like clear starlight flowing

That stream went by

Through the un regarding silence

To a fetterless rim of sky.

HEMMED by the sea on the eastward,

By hummocking land on, the west

Goes the clear smooth trail of sand-space

Where way worn feet may rest.

Hemmed by the day and the next day

Hovers one moon-haunted night—

On day weary eyes droop the salving

Dream-hested petals of light.

For those bruised by arrogant laughter,

Unraptured by glamorous show,

Is there somewhere a shrine of healing

Where truth and friendship grow ?

DRAWING too quietly, the woven nets of sleep

Had borne me far and far from shores of day

Unwitting, till over the grey surge of a ship less deep

A reef-girt island lifted plumes of spray.

Born from the womb of trance, my shadowy feet alight

Beneath pale dunes that drift within a dream :

And Silence was taking shape in a robe of drowsy white,

And level brows beneath the dark hair gleam.

O I would find the truth way

That leads to Thee

From the outward shores of silver

To the Ultimate Sea.

O I would hear the fire-speech"

That echoes Thee

And pens in flaming ramparts

Each galaxy.

O I would rock the infant

Born with each world—

Feel the fingers of Beauty

On my finger curled.

O PERFECT moon ; O sky of undimmed glory ;

O earth as won with a far wave-murmured story

Winding among your dreams

(Guarded from mercenary sight,

That silver palace built of light,

Those fountains fed from moon-enchanted streams).

Moon-fragrant deep, strew thy petalled hours

Upon our sleep, till touched with subtler powers

Of augury it scries

Within the crystal bowl of night

An inscape of unfettered Light ;

Lagoons embrinked with joy ; grief-unshadowed skies.

AS we spin towards the Bright,

Trundling to the hem of night,

Earth with bated hours hides

In dark more dreamless and more deep

Her winnowing air and crooning tides

And aeon-builded hills of sleep.

Out of darkness what shall come ?

Banished voices of the dumb—

Memories of forgotten splendour—

Sudden gleam of buried might

In the heart where Love the Lender

Mocks with Day the outward Night.

THE flower of silence opens in the sky ;

A moon enealmed, a poised and frozen song,

Has gained the zenith where the clouds go by

Un convoyed by the shadow-shape of wrong.

Half of twelve to usher midnight's chiming ;

Three yoked with three to harbinger new day ;

Between, un time fast silences are climbing

To the hilltop glint where golden Truth Beams play.

Emptied of time, this rift between two beats

Of the hammer, fate, upon mortality,—

This threshing-floor whereon our being meets

The living One who bears us, henceforth, free.

ACROSS the sea a vision fled

With fluttering wings ; and overhead

The invisible ultimate Supreme

Above the token towers of dream

In a builder's sleep did countervail

The shadow-pull of earthdom pale.

Then rose with hieratic grace

The massy grandeurs of that place

That men call Nineveh.

Across the sea a shadow fled

With painter-like precision led

To the unrest of one square inch

North-eastward on the sapphire squinch

Crowning the stillness of a fane

Where timeless echoes seem to gain,

Beyond the brabbling rush of tears

And efforts of forgotten years,

Their shrine—Byzantium.

Across the sea a whisper fled,

Heard in the seasons' chiming tread

Of nesting birds or falling fruit,

Or heard more surely in the mute

Smoke-rise of rivers in the air

Or where the moon's unbraided hair

Twined with the foam of a waterfall :

And built the fairy palace wall

In a limpid ether—Baudelaire.

O TO besom a path for the Mother

To a welcoming-place apart,—

Road running, meant for no other,

Straight to the heart.

Be Her light footfall a token

Of a Stillness fraught with Grace ;

Keep the truth ward prayer unspoken

Her sandals trace.

Not solely Heaven descended

But earth up flowers to God

Each where Her heaven-attended

Silence trod.

LONG deathly silent sky

Shrill with star-jets that gleam

For the life ward yearning eye

Weary of false dream—

A dream that Love the lord

Long long ago was slain,

When Chaos and leasing's horde

Began their reign.

Light's welkin, star-befriended,

Swiftly your banner spread ;

Love's banishment is ended,

He was not dead.

CALM sky of liquid gold ;

Indigo sea at eventide ;

Tawny red on the desert side

Of the red cliff aeons old.

No- breathing thing on the land ;

No fleck of foam on ocean's breast;

An aureate sky that had gained its quest

One vast silence spanned.

Before the cradle Time

Was framed or Space was fraught

With uttering sublime

From God's creative Thought,

The mantra of this colour chime

Was unreckonably wrought

In all its sorcery of hue

From gold and red and blue.

TO drop through a hole in the sky -

Out of Space,

Beyond all distance reckoned by

Our earthly race.

Into forgotten sea

Of backward time

Dive and swirl down unerringly

To a fairer clime,—

Finding some deep sea-cave,

There to abide

Till the last buffet and foam-wan wave

Of Time subside.

DEEP in a far green forest land

Is the shore of an inland sea:

No grey shingle or gleaming sand

Or wave's white ecstasy.

Only a moon-pale ledge of rock,

Lapped by that sullen waste

Of Limbo-drift where a shadowy flock

Of dream birds spaced.

In the unquiet wideness of their lonelihood

Are as that sky-line aimlessly empty of good.

TELL me the rune word of the moon,

A glittering key of sound

Hid far underground

Beneath the palaces of noon.

There, deep below, moon-waters flow

Between the ivory height

Of unsealed solar light

And earthward curdling banks of woe.

Surely the lotus of wisdom may float

One arm's length out of reach

From earth sorrow-beach

Petal-perfect, silvery remote. .

A SILVER shimmer and silence

Far out upon the sea :

Silenceward steps of yearning

Inly to Thee,

Mother of tranquil shine.

Soft pearl glimmer in hazing,

Yet moon-revealing, sky :

A hush and a dim heard footfall—

And Grace is nigh,

Mother of inner hood shrine.

Power and immaculate Glory,

Whom outward eyes may greet—

In this hour might the inward quicken,

Cloudlessly meet

Mother and Beauty Divine.

FROM the rim of the world to the zenith

Is a chasm-roof of cloud '

(What shape in this gloom-built sepulchre

Is stretched in a shroud ?)

Storm-drift like vampires crowding

All earth kindred note—

But different guises of one Silence

(Is it terror seized their throat ?)

Not one star-ship left floating

And the moon-beacon dowsed :

Shall the Guardians of earth, so sleep-enchanted,

Be ever roused ?

A SKY swept free of cloud ;

Trees whose true guise of growing

Stayed, through all tempests blowing,

Root fast and un cowed ;

Headland of rock that' braved

All through the hurl of winter

Buffets that rive and splinter

From sea-might, million-waved.

Drawing near of sun despite

Serried griefs dim-shrouding,

Then to silver glory prouding

Dawn-sky forestowed with light.

.. I FINE, the slang they talk in heaven must be Greek,

Foot-hills of music to fade beneath the peak

Of the unseizable august angelic speech

That earth's joy-scanted tongue may never reach

Nor these din-baffled ears hope once to hear :

Yet,—rending joy's ebb and winter most of year,—

Incarnate in melody, on wings of power to them

Who guard the sheep on wakeful hills of Bethlehem.

FEATURELESS grey-white cloud

Wrapping the earth in a shroud,

Muting the foam-lilt tune

Of sea-bewitching moon.

Silence sprung from no womb.

Gathered about with gloom

And un shape of Not-Being,

Glimpse less to mortal seeing.

Un transitory Beam

Behind earth-shapes that seem ;

Shore to the last dim wave :

Death's ultimate grave.

CAST off that outward life,

The foe to what must be born ;

Bevel with whittling knife

Wide windows for the dawn.

Break through the subtle net

Of past ward-aimed desire :

High in hope's turret set

The all-renewing fire.

Within a barren world,

Clear spring, a space of trees,—

Could the mirage Wrong unfurled

Be matched with these ?

Fore speech

BEFORE the sun goes down

And the dark's waterfall

Swarthily sprinkles quiet

Beyond recall,

Bestow one just true thought

For these words not overlong

(Night knows no countervailing,

Nor any song).

Firedrake

A flinder of old folklore

Tells of a shooting star,

How wishes of a man who spies it

No ill-haps mar.

Since hearing of that legend

Each firedrake that I see

Goes fraught with wishes for your thriving

And supremacy.

O would that through your life's welkin

I like the star could slide,

Twine for each breath and every heart-beat

Joys that abide;

Then to the limbo and ending

I should speed forth content,

An arrow that had not gone wide of target

From bow not vainly bent.

(SYMBOLS OF THE INNER VITAL WORLD)

UNDER the amethyst tree

In a cavern of ocean

Pale limbs of the daughters of the sea

Weave their mystical motion.

There was no rumour from the land

Of reef's wave-grapple :

Their leader shed from her right hand

The gleam of a ruby apple.

Each other moon-pale maid

Bore, heaped and mellow,

Pomegranates carved from lunar jade

On topaz salvers yellow.

No date for steps they dance,

For song no dimming ;

Time will reive not their beauty but enhance

Joy's glyph those feet are limning.

AS they wander by the edges of the world

In the uncharted place,

By shimmering lagoons and shores impearled

With light from all the moons that ever curled

Thin horns round Space,

They whisper to each other words of boding

From no human lips

Like windle-straws that feel the night wind's goading,

Like the whine when rockets reel and zoom, exploding,

And the star-shower dips.

They weave no shadow pattern with the moon-rays,

They cast no shade

As they stalk across the land of that lagoon-maze :

Though their feet have crossed the sand on certain noondays,

No dints were made.

'THE moon is a hollow gong. O let it beat

The indiscerptible union of day and morrow,

The chimes of midnight that from each other borrow—

Toll three, count six, and three not yet complete.

The moon is a hollow gong and it shall greet

Snake-charming of Breath from Dust and Joy from Sorrow :

Earth's wax shall yet the print of heaven borrow—

Once three, now six, and three for the future's mete.

The moon is a hollow gong that must complete

The swiftening rush from a day to a fairer morrow

That reaches Joy on stepping-stones of Sorrow—

Slow three, swift six, three more-unimaged-fleet.

SWIFTLY the moment goes,

O, who can stay it ?

All that Love's debtor owes—

And but dreams to pay it.

Had I a sapphire pen

And page of argent,

What title known to men

Write on its margent ?

May speed out dare Love's wing

Or web of song entrap him ?

He recks no words we sing—

Silence, and truth, enlap him.

WHITE-COMBING waves from a cloudless ocean

Fall on a fairy shore :

Faint rhythm of their un shadowed motion

Beats evermore

A sorrow less dream, drugged by their magical potion,

Within Time's core.

Marble-white in the summer's glory,

Foam-toss from sea to land :

Mating their dance to a wordless story,

Joy-silent band

Of the ones whose locks can never be hoary

Pass like flame on the sand.

MEN call you far. You are not far enough.

For the beggar earth your, alms of holy love

Drop through the consecrated night—consuminegfir.

Deafness has mouths belying you as dumb.

From some Deep beyond the deep your 'rhythms come

Of Titan fingers wakening Truth's implacable lyre.

The craven flee from the calm light of your eyes ;

Drunken with darkness, how should they surmise

Intrepid loveliness no haste, no weakness mars ?

Bemusing the dim roof of vaulted space

Consentient clouds of golden incense trace

High homage of His Beauty from the enraptured stars.

SWIFTLY come and swiftly pass

Through the .shadows on the grass

Joyful bands and faery glee

Over the rainbow-flowered lea.

Bright their eyes and bright their hair ;

Song-bright "voices free from care.

Scarfed with webs of golden glow :

Sweet are the silver horns they blow.

All the summer-laden day

Bathes their bird swift meadow-play

In a more translucid ray

Than spills from cloudless noon of May ;

For the fair strand through which they range

Lies far across the foam of change.

Invocation

BRIGHT world across the foaming sea of change,

Pine-odorous peak and all the purple range

Of hills where the ever-living gay ones dwell,

To sleep-hushed ear some tale of splendour tell.

[Based on the occult teaching about the Elements, that Air reconciles the disharmony between Fire and Water —just as, physically, vapour is engendered by the contact of heat with moisture.]

NIGHT with mustered star-flares harries

Moisture and dark :

Lo, lightless earth with sun-flame marries

When bids the lark.

Night her load of star-tears carried—

A sacrificial dew.

Was not silver mist with the bright gold married

When the dawn-winds blew ?

Did the thrusts of air the star-spears parry

Spring from Night's lip ?

O let not Morning's whiteness tarry—

Sail-bright ship.

" Because, to him who ponders well,

My rhymes more than their rhyming tell

Of things discovered in the deep,

Where only body's laid asleep. "

WHEN twilight falls in a dim cascade

Over the eastern bars,

And vapour-woven tent of shade

Makes earth forget the stars,

The Bringers of the hidden sleep

From in world of star-lotus deep

Are burthened with a heavy cry ;

They mourn and half forget to fly.

But when star-dignities exult

Through twilight-softened air,

The Borderers of sleep consult

With violet-shadowed hair

Waving across the evening's cool

Pellucid-watered lotus pool.

And night is stirred by tremulous wings

To dream of unimagined things.

IN a garden that had fallen out of Time

The pristine lily grew,

Beside a stream ; and roses in their prime,

Braziers of ruby, had embalmed the air

Through which no wing of darkening sorrow flew,—

But humming-birds, dream-hovering everywhere,

Had fled the tear-wet rainbow bough of Time.

I SAW the moving flood of crystal sweep

Over translucent gold,

Aureate boulders, topaz jut and peep

Where argent Silence rolled.

I saw the tall flamingoes waiting there ;

And the stream held, mirror-wise,

Dream-tokens, unspotted by shadow or care,—

A strangeness, a timeless prize.

I felt the hushed sublimity of noon

In that flashing silver dew—

Insurgent sun's at-one-ness with the moon—

As in Time glimpsed the Timeless through.

WIDE ways of gold across the sea

Westward, at evenfall,

Still lead to the strand whence echoes flee

As the Danaan bugles call.

Faint and soft and honey sweet

From faery city wall

That golden clamour bids our feet

Where the Danaan bugles call.

At moonrise we'll list for the fabulous oars

On the dark waves' rise and fall,

And they'll ferry us to the magical shores

Whence the Danaan bugles call.

[A RENDERING OF XAVIER DE MAGALLON'S LINES, IN "l' Ombre" ON HIS SON, A FLYING OFFICER WHO WAS KILLED IN THE WAR]

LOVELY dawns return not of long ago :

Fair were the two striplings-yourself and day

Who together rose to the quickened sun;

Then the sun and you in the echoing air

Redolent, purified with dew, together

Linked your ways like comrades, sleep left behind.

I unlatch my window as in days gone by,

Letting in pellucid dawn-litanies ;

Cerement drops from newly-arisen day ;

Morning reappears on the sad hill-tops—

Dark is he, now dragging un companioned steps.

ACROSS triumphant acres of the night

Slow-swung pinions of the unborn dream

To the hidden daybreak pursue primeval flight.

Chartless un frontiered aeons of the dark,

On their lonely silence breaks no morning theme,—

Our dreams have held the Promethean spark.

But half descried, the dawn-lit peaks of joy,—

There, living hues shall blend in a rainbow stream,

And there no sundering thought can enter or destroy.

THE cloudless sky has burnished all the hours

Across the hours the figured Afternoon

Has passed, and in her wake the sultry flowers

Of nenuphars have drowsed on the lagoon.

Day's clamorous tide has ebbed far out along

The golden shining sands of western sky ;

Moments of quiet are threaded on a song—

Softer than thistledown the sylphs go by.

SURGING softly on the pebbles of the brim

To that ocean-swaying under .the quiet moon,

Wave-syllables quicken enchantments dim

Through this long hour of midnight's nether-noon.

Far forgotten now the heaviness of day,"

The unreal shadows and all things that die ;

Immortal prescience on the pearl-white way

Where the moon's magic drips down from the sky.

Vision fails and hearing gropes to seize no more

Foam silver-shining, dream-notes of the wave :

The hushed soul mirrored, echoed, gained the shore

Of Light self-offered, of taintless Love that gave.

CEASELESS was the seeking,

Golden was the light,

Sullen was the bleaking

Of encircling Night.

Reason's sigil sealing

All things from great to least:

No man to tyrant kneeling ;

No proud usurping priest.

Friendship's bond uniting

Cities of Man set free ;

Beauty from soul's inviting

Earthly dungeon's key !

IF all the stars were grapes that I might pluck

We'd fill that goblet where no shadows twine,

Not with sublunar fitfulness of wine,

But with the golden ichor of the Blest,—

That nectar which Tyndarian brethren suck,

Castor and Pollux, whose comrade feet have pressed

High paths too hard for wavering mortal zest

Where no vows dwindle nor mutual loves decline.

Still grant, O Shining Ones, our lives may bear

The cup of unflawed light, soul harmony,

Pellucid diamond that spreads no shade ;

There let the Wine of deathless gold appear,

Distilled as themes of lovely music fade

To a hush dew-drenched with immortality.

O HEIGHT beyond the stature of the mind,

O width outreaching finite heart's embrace,

Poised puissance on the limits of the world,

Enlighten us ; we would no more be blind.

We seek ourselves behind each comely face,

And bind the myriad detail sense-unfurled

To one bright spear-point, and therewith we trace

Swift utterance which no thought-fetters bind.

Shining lance, far above rifted woe,

Reveal to earth the ending of thy quest;

When thou to the Holy Logos shall be pressed,

The Hidden Love behind all universe

Sends ruby fire and ever-living flow,—

And night is fading, dreams of self disperse.

SEED-SCATTERING and withered stems precede

The earth-redemption, the return of light :

Orphean fragments,—like offering,—still bleed,

Shed over forest dene or upland height.

Four elements on inmost altar ranged

In equal balance, body of Orpheus slain ;

By a fifth, his death to Incorruption changed,—

Soul's quintessential Light within the fane.

One paten with five sides I contemplate,

Foreseeing far-off lives ; thereon we heap

Actions and struggles and the thoughts we keep

For future pyres, betokening mastery.

" How should unnumbered acts be rendered great?"—

" Only if offered up to Love's Winged Victory."

THE moon that metes the dark time

With hush full hours

And drowns in a tide of shimmering peace

The tallest to wars,

Sweeps with swift surge of loveliness

Far other lands ;

And no feet heavy with sorrow press

Those dread less sands.

Sentinel trees are fringing

A far-off shore—

O stillness of the boughs that trace

On a mossy floor

An ageless pattern of white moon-rays

That shift and cross,

A glyph of beauty and of love-filled days

Taintless, with no dross.

O I would voyage among the nearer stars

With those winged horses and their spirit cars

That leave a luminous dust of glittering thought

Amid the fabulous deserts of the Nought.

Emptily vast is all that starlit room ;

But when the winged commotion enters there,

New light's un desolation threads the gloom

Like comet's sunward tread with burnished hair.

O DRAW some divination from the stars

To shape anew the wryness and misgrowth

Of worlds where light is scathed or ill-fare mars

The heart by dimness and the deed by sloth.

To gaze and gaze upon the fire-strewn sky

Until the hush" of heaven loom within,

Where the un shadowed splendours fill the eye

And world-renewing harmonies begin.

You stars who span with strength long leagues of space,

Blessed beyond the confines of our thought,

Surely you guard the palace sages sought,

Gold-shining sentries of Truth's dwelling-place.

Emptied of shadow, we would be as you,—

Gold untarnished,—girt vigil of the True.

'THE inward shining of the star

Is lovelier far ; .

The in furled glitter of the moon

Is a silver noon

Of living radiance and calm majesty.

On coral strands of ecstasy

Untroubled spray

Weaves rainbow garlands from the foam

Of waves that comb

In melody of that song-quivering Day.

A WHITE and alabaster colonnade,

Lit by cressets deftly kid

Column-high and in each nook

Which the bats by night forsook.

Ranged and ranked in double rows

Plinth by plinth the long file goes

From forgotten aeons dead

To the unpublished days ahead.

—All the thought-filled moods of man

Down those flickering mind ways ran.

A SETTING star,

A rising sun,

Or Zenithing of moon

May leave a scar

When they are done

Unsmoothed by the wave-soft croon.

By day and night

The lilting sea

Sings of a rhythmic whole ;

Yet come delight

And misery

To vex and revex the soul.

Behind the curve

Of yonder most

Sea-line or mountain rim,

With tautened nerve

The new spear-host

Glamour the dawn light dim.

SPLENDOUR in the penury of night ;

All this everlastingness of light ;

A dole of leaven hid within the meal ;

The vivid disarray that woodlands feel

As trim dead Winter steals away

On the first warm spring full day.

All outward heaviness of Death

Made nought by one sweet cowslip's breath,

Though love be the glint of a cowslip-flame

That on the heels of winter came,

No time can from these ears drive out

Its golden-clamoured fairy shout,

No swathing custom reave these eyes

Of that sun-miracled surprise

When on an elfin ridge of earth

They saw Love's fire-bloom spring to birth.

WHERE shall I come back to you ?

Will the forlorn seaway shoal

Under earth-bright zenith blue ?

There, un lonely, gain my goal ?

Or impassive spirit-clime

Sanctuary what earth denied,—

All the treasure-seeking time

End there as I gain your side ?

Either how may flames of peace

Beacon wise bewray your heart,

So suffuse this un release,

So retouch my fading chart.

Lonely depths long travelled through,

But the seaway starts to shoal,—

All my being drawn to you,

Fair name and space hood of my goal.

IF setting suns were quenched for aye,

Or gales could blow the stars away,

Then scant un mindfulness of you

Could prove my living thought untrue.

As soon the bee forget the hive

At heath ward flight or blossom-dive,

As one his nectar-load not guide

Again to your imagined side.

May compass needle turn awry

Or flame no longer scale the sky,

Ere grate full nesses cease to wend,—

Mine their heart way, you their end.

SlLVER bee on brooch of jade

In this ebon casket laid,

What taper fingers thrust you there,

Put on the lid and turned with care

The bronzen key as if afraid ?

Though dream-poised by neck as bright

As a lily built of light,

Where his proud lips flashing red

Kissed so very Time was bled

Of scathful ichor, tarry flight ;

Live those moments through again—

Nimble joy with unthrift pain—,

Let the lingering shadows lie

In that dim pagoda high,

Where caged cicadas chaunt their strain.

SHADOW-SILENT is the sky :

Teeming earth, a muted cry

Sends but whispers down the breeze.

Shadow-pinioned glide the hours ;

Slumber-freighted lie the flowers';

Silent listeners are the trees.

Star-engirt the heaven's pole ;

Horned moon seeks westward goal;

Day's quaffed wine cup holds but lees.

Surging thoughts have ebbed away ;

Passions wane ; and spirit sway,

Girt with Silence, out-tops these.

THERE are shadows on the pathway in the wood

And a tracery of greenness overhead ;

In ecstasy the glistening cherry stood—

Her petal-hidden boughs with April sun spray wed.

Joy-burnished-is the air ; the autumn sod

With green flame of Dog's Mercury is lit-—

What raptured air drift from the torch of God

By the slow splendour of the Spring hath lighted it ?

Earth is wounded

With deep gash

Filled with the briny flow

Of narrow seas and wide seas

Whose anguished billows dim the, ash

That heaven's breezes charged with glow.

Earth is sunken

In the main of air,

Whose storm breakers thunder

Through her soul in frenzied

Moods of anger or despair—

And lightning blades her strength asunder.

But ever guarded

By this living globe

In the unpierced tenuity

Of rapt ionosphere

Is the untroubled Beauty, the seamless robe

Woven on wide-loomed Eternity.

O THOU white undazzling splendour,

Quiescent moon,

Renew thy sway upon our life-tides ;

Let it be soon.

O thou white silence of the night skies,

Bestow thy peace ;

Wind thy cold flame on every thought-way,

Give heart's release.

Through rhythmic cycles of thy spring

What culminant hour

Blooms now when shadows drop defeated,

Full-opened flower !

PAINT the music of the star world,

Sing the hues

Of thunder fret and birds a-herrying ;

All that accuse

Our darkening ears, our eyes' hush-burying

Show now unfurled.

Timid clamour-pomps we see

Whose mingled sound

Leave naked yet the limbs of earthly faring :

While all around

The undraped silences go Selfward, wearing

Form's ecstasy.

THINE be the winds of devotion,

Thine be the stars of flame,—

Their whisper to echo that Music,

Their outline to girdle the Name.

The world is a shadowy motion,—

The dream at the back of a dream,

With days that faint echo the Footstep,

And fields that wan-mirror the Gleam.

Token re-mirrored in token,

Sign that had echoed a sign,—

Might our senses be net of the Hunter,

Our thought-ways a fishing line.

So with not one word spoken,

So with nor ever a look

To Beauty we're borne by the Hunter,

To the soot hafts shore by the hook.

WHEN I darken my lamp in the twilight

Till farness is shed through the house—

A viewless flicker of ghost-flame

In the stead of the flame that I dowse—

There are fitfully hearkened voices

Floating through gulfs of air

With the golden cry of a harpstring

And a bicker of lintwhite hair.

O honey-sweet was the music

With dancers lithe and gay

In the realms of the woven half light

And the harvested joys of day.

THREE fairies went aleaping

Adown the glades of May ;

They found a field mouse keeping

A woodland holiday.

Quoth they, " Where is your burrow ?

Our gifts we would bestow."

Quoth he, " In yonder furrow

Where the yellow thistles grow."

" Here's one puff ball for filling

With the grey sow-thistle down,

And a gossamer gramarye shilling

Stamped with Titania's crown ;

And we give you the wing of a cricket

To winnow your store of grain."

—Then they hastened away to their thicket

And he never could find them again.

But always the wing would sever

The dross of earth from the gold.

And always ere winter weather

He would delve away from the cold,

And snug on the pixie pillow

Be wafted and swayed in the air—

Or ferry across the billow

With a shilling to pay his fare.

STAR-ISLANDS in wide welkin lake,

A continent of moon,

The firestones with their shimmery wake

Through deeps of anti-noon.

Soothlight—true being's underwork—

With a welter of Nothing between,—

May Light prevail where shadows lurk

Of empty, lonely teen.

Then utter argosies of Light

Across the Un shape sea,

Refashion worlds arrayed with Sight

At speech of ' Let Love Be.'

GREEN gathering of summer-mantled trees

Against a hush of turquoiser-torpid sky,

And underfoot pale cow-wheat,—yellow rattle,—

A tall-stemmed toadflax, more yellow than the twain,

Trim whorled with leaves of smoothly glaucous hue.

A footway skirts the flanges of each bole

And roughens with the jut and twist of root

And darkly wanders through embodied shade

As it might lead to unimagined core,

Stripped self, essential Form of woodland ness.

HAVE you seen the Evening Primrose open

In, the Dusk,

When the surface din of day is newly broken

And its husk

Is trolled across the sky by homing rook ?

And silence-fall is mingled with the dewfall

And many bats

Are summoning the shadows with their cue-call

From the vats

Where the dawnghosts hang for hours on moon's-ort hook.

A hedgepig threads the path along the streamway

At gambol-gait;

Gnats that hover in the after sunset gleam-play

Mate, remate

Where water-buttercups make white the brook.

One, launched ungainly on dorbeetle fare,

Heavily flies ;

And one, with pinions furled, tweet-tweets an air

In dream-replies—

A bird wing weary, from her dozy nook.

Around the Evening Primrose by the wonstead

The moths now flit;

For it summons with pale fragrance from its gloamstead :

Dusk's candle lit

Spires silence ward. ... " The Primrose, look."

HEAR the moon ring Sorrow's knell

(Listen to her silver bell),

Through the mind and through the heart

Sound like sword-blade shadows part.

Dark's misdeeming put to flight,

What espy by songcraft light ?

Prester's realm, or the uncharted lea—

Pentexoire and Femenye ?

Swift as arrow cleaves to goal

Music flings from pole to pole—

Earth from aeon-depth of trance

Silvered forth to utterance.

PRECARIOUS boat that brought me to this strand

Shall feed flame-pinnacles from stem to stern,

Till not one rib my backward glance can find—

Down to the very keelson they shall burn.

Now to the unreal sea-line I would no more yearn ;

Fain to touch with feet an unimaginable land. . ..

The gates of false glamour have closed behind ;

There is no return.

WHERE had all the starlight flown ?

Or who had held the moon.

From waxing on, when Spring had gone,

To silver the flowers of June ?

Over the beech-crowned chalky hill

Zenithed a baldachin

Of silken hush and ebon crush

Where columns of cloud begin.

Every sky-mark of the night

Was blotted utterly ;

And darkness flowed where stars had glowed—

Thought's land o'errun by sea.

SWIFTLY the morning pours

Over far sea ;

Future's extremity

Finds the dream doors.

Sudden as thunderclap,

Gold of sun's rim

Bridges with daybreak hymn

The witless gap.

GREY skies : the limb of ocean olive-green ;

While wind-blown plumes of coco-palm are seen

In silhouette against the sea and sky.

The jet-black birds weave with their raucous cry

Intricate patterns through the sunless air.

Through smouldering shroud grown momently more clear,

A phantom sun makes gestures to appear.

THE hush of silver and the song of gold,

Enwound upon the midnight's axle, sway

The tide less heart, where centuries untold

Are fashioned to the swiftness of a day.

A silent dancer on the moving wave

Goes ankleted with silver of the night:

A rose-crowned singer of a sky-borne stave

Climbs goldenly the summit of delight;

Far poised upon the mountain-top of noon,

Thou signet felt by Form-enshrining mood,-

Or, deep-indrawn, beneath some midnight moon

A dream-dance weaved by silver solitude.

THE Royal Fern with swaying plume,

The ravelled tumult of a brook,

Three dragonflies that dart and zoom,

And the red-loaden rowan's crook.

A dipping scud of yellowness

Bewrays a wagtail nestward flown :

At water brink two grey flies press

Gauzy wings to buff-grey stone.

Against the clearness of the sky

A buzzard looms in wheeling flight;

And water-mosses wavering lie

In the nether clearness flecked with white.

All changing, yet so ghostly still—

Could fragments one Quintessence frame ?

All vistas One Unvista'd fill ?

All spoken names one Silence name ?

FIVE candles burning steadily

Hard by that austere altar of the heart,

Foursquare, with lines that wry

Not leftward nor to right

(Nor spendthrift Life nor sophistries of Art

Could wrench it from the worship of the Light).

The Light has entered in its substance and

Framed, shaped, wrought it to Perfection's day

In those dark wrappings of the Direful Land ;

Beleaguered there by fitful gusts' desiring,

Set amid futilities of mortal clay,

It waits the Light, with fivefold flame aspiring.

COME on the wings of sleep

Grave or with a smile,

Come ere the hushed tide neap

Or tangling thoughts beguile.

On this dark spirit-main

Rise as a full-orbed moon,

Transform the murk of pain

To a fleckless silver boon.

Or through dream-heavy air

On sandals of sound draw nigh

Till echoes waking there

Spring forth in thrilled reply.

Out from a planet's gloom

All aspects call to Thee,—

Life in our stir less tomb,

Light on our darkened sea.

SUBTLE beyond all gauging,

Sudden as lightning blade,

Unflawed by earthly aging,

The Woundless, the Undismayed

Back in the world's beginning

Wielded a three-pronged spear,

Unpierced by Falsehood's dinning,

Unswayed by soundless Fear.

Nor Maya-spell's devising

Nor seemings that divide

Dishevelled the assizing

Of the Wakeful Myriad-Eyed ;

But many an eye-filled feather

Gathered in battle-dress

Betokened there together

Serene one-pointed ness.

O THOSE unburied dead

By whom the first word is said,

And the last,.... and all between :

Comes now a spectral power,

In their most arrogant hour,

Dreaming to life the thing that might have been ?

So may they, girt with pride,

As a doomed iceberg ride

On this great sea of lewth :

In their own falsehood penned

Utterly meet their end,

Probed mockingly by Spring-warm waves of truth.

They hated comely things,

Misprized the love that brings

Beauty and Strength and Calm......

Love gave the New Race light:

Singingly they dight

His breast with myrtle and his brow with palm.

SOME pointilliste had left this canvas called " The Stars '

Half-finished, in his dilettante way,— "

" And why this planet skit

Devolving-ape-infest ?"—

Their pointillistic mind-stuff lit,

Sage minds co-deem " Pure jest."

COME down the level ways

Of nightly dark,.

Though Thou bring not all Thy rays,

But one dim spark.

But one dim spark suffice

The tindery heart

And all Fire's might entice

And not depart.

And not depart but keep

That fiery mesh,

Spun from the Sovran Deep

For this poor flesh :

For this poor flesh who yet

Would change divine,

Be sundered from all fret.

Be wholly Thine ;

Be wholly Thine and glow

With limitless Light,

Born from Thy Thought to grow

Truth-meeting sight.

WHEN Heavenly Powers are loosed upon the earth,

When high Perfections take corporeal birth.

Then the least flashings of their Speed divine

Seem winged with light from blades in battle-shine,—

Such rutilant onset through Night's phalanx tore,

The Dark has foundered and returns no more.

" SHIP,—What is your name ? Where do you sail ?"

" The vessel Beauty, over foam-waste pale

Of future time proud moving, such am I."

" Some gale of magic wafting ever by

These tall masts and crimson canvas-surge,

Through rhythmic leagues of Art this dream prow urge ?'

" Under Eternity, that changeless dome,

Across wave-fret of centuries I roam :

Yet in times halcyon of some Golden Age

The hours held my likeness in their glassy page.

MYRIADS of purple grapes,

Rain falling, the ancientness of trees

— Giant boles with bushy branches crowned.

How soon the sad soil gapes ;

And of wine but bitter lees

Remain—and of the boles, dun peaty ground.

But somewhere nectar flows

Of the unmixed joy ; immortal springs

The Shadow less River by the fadeless groves.

There, life's rhythm goes

On feet untiring ; fearless wings

Speed unveering to their haven loves.

I DREAMT I fell through silver wave

To the gold sand below

And gazed upon an emerald cave

Where green-lit swordfish go.

With sea-den yawning shadowy

And swordfish sailing slow,

The emerald thoughts fare drowsily.

Greenly the moments flow.

No future's threatening wry-light,

No glooms of bygone shame

Fretted the verdurous twilight

Of a dawn that nowise came.

FAR and far is the turquoise sea

Where under a sapphire sky

Only the dream-drenched travellers be :

And the wings of brightness fly. ¹

Odorous forests are swaying there

And the winds are a perfumed sigh—

Balsam and frankincense and myrrh—

Where the wings of healing fly.

Only for joy the young deer run

Or in glades of greenness lie ;

On their fallow flanks is a spilth of sun :

And the wings of Morning fly.

WHAT will spring up from the beating of the pulse

And strange things wrought within the hollow skull,

Sea's quivering onset which dead rocks repulse

And the unanswered clamour of the gull ?

One Life within the winding sheet of lives,"

Some warmth of thought in embers of a world,

Beauty kept out by selves, lusts, hates and shives,

A lone quest through unheeding ages whirled.

I LAY upon a hill-slope in the sun

And barely had his dipping trend begun :

Surely the daytide hours were rife with room

Before Night's axe could hurl him to his doom ;

These May time clouds far-roaming would have played

Before the East up threatened with chill shade.

Time, like a drift of airborne foam,

Crept on slow wings above dusk's aerodrome,

The pilot moment loth to end his flight

With grossening sweep from airy leagues of light.

Beyond the blur where sky's blue brushed the downs

Din's motor-ways, and pylons, link the towns,

New griding sorrow slays the joyous hush

That broods upon these banks of wanton lush

Grass, gold of buttercup, white magic of may

Mile after winding mile of waterway,

Whose summit lies along these quiet hills,

Whose burnished peace only sky-silence fills.

SOLITARY breath of silent dream,

You show the lonely breakers op a shore ;

Untrodden are the hue less sands that gleam ;

Never that foam-waste brooked a plash of oar.

A narrow spit runs far into the sea :

The empty sea calls to an emptier land.

No throng of birds to shake the air with glee ;

Naught stirs beneath upon the strew of sand.

To landward, hillocks thinly set with trees

(Vacancy garbed with listless leaf and bough),

—Their blooms lie idle, tenantless of bees,

Hearing no motion but the sea-wind's changeless sough.

DARK pine trees soughing by the lakeside,

A steel-grey sky above,

A tilted slope of hills upended—

Too steep for Love.

Around dark mirror of the waters

Gauntly the high hills frown,

Framing a harsh bleak sky reflected

Where all loves drown.

No mellow fruit finds room afforded

Nor any golden wheat ;

Sour, shallow, rock-swayed roods betoken

Love's defeat.

Here soul—if any soul be prisoned—

Were phoenix, not paired dove :

Sole-Seen its image—found no other

Shape to love.

HIGH up in beds of air

The grey cloud-oysters keep

Those gems of sunray-snare

And rainbow-sleep—

Pearl-pale, yet fain to flush

With sunset's lingering hue,

Ere on Time the Eternal Hush

Shed grace of dew.

So let the light-brimmed heart

Sing with refracted ray

The unutterable art

Of heaven-fraught Day.

NEWLY woken day

Build the un broken light,

Sweep far far away

Sullenness of night.

Tumult of gold descending,

Thou diapason bright,

All our Darkness rending

With melody of Sight.

Ever the ampler Dream-day

Spreading calm wings of flight

Wafted through widening gleam-way

On the peaks of the world will alight.

WHETHER by glare of tropic noon,

Or under the sprinkled stars,

Or when the high hush of the moon

Splinters the waves with silver gars,

Or while the first hours flush the foam

Or the sun sets in a wash of gold,

Swift-glimpsed by seafowl as they roam

What new leaf lurks whom waves enfold

This was the strangeness of that day—

The shrunken tides lay bare

Sharp ridge where goes withstood the sway

Of waves, where feet of wildfowl fare.

NOW all nearer things are vanished ;

Wonted shapes leave empty air :

Thankfully I Find me banished

From the worldly thoroughfare.

Garishness the moon-thrill plunders :

Hosting billows glide to shore—

Waves that break in phantom thunders.

Sands which feel no footprint-score.

Drowsy pinions whitely winging

Smoulder dimly past the strand,

Visionary trance-light bringing

From some strange remoter land.

Past the "me" and past the " other "

Let the questant farer speed,

Wilder grow the foam way smother,

More weird the moon-script he must read.

[A descriptive title that has come into use for the matriarchal people of Neolithic times whose barrows are still preserved on chalk downs in England and elsewhere].

TAKE the road that runs across the down land.

Leave the water meadows of the vale ;

Death the Reaper there may make him merry,

Here no greeds of weapon-dint assail.

Though yon pliant earth obey the yeoman

And this soil heap bare two inch of height,

Hark the barrows reared by dread less races :

" Trust and fair dealing deigned not to fight."

WIDE ocean, quivering of wings,

The first star-glow in a quiet sky

Bequeathed by sun to planetary kings

And way wodes of an untold galaxy,—

Orts and similitude's of Love

Whose calm is wider than all sea:

To trace that joy would wings throb fast enough ?

Could star-tossed thought attain His mystery ?

INTO the clear sky

Where no moon grows,

Like smoke wends up the cry

Of earthly woes.

Up through the shrouded bars

Where the stream fors lows

Shine forth imprisoned stars

Of heaven's repose.

Round hidden point of rest

Loveliness goes,

Swirling hues will end our quest,

Regain The Rose.

BEHIND the verge of western hills

The sun has sunk,

Rivers of light to niggard rills

Have shrunk.

Beyond the melancholy sea

Of separate lives

Loom shores which Love still holds in fee

(Nor strives

With intermittent promptings of the heart

To build song's Whole from each disfavouring part).

TREAD lightly over the crocus flame

That„flares from the floor of March ;

Gay gold from the solemn winter came,

And frith from the war-bow arch.

Hither the bee and the butterfly

To the goblets of the sun

Wing swift and sip and joyward hie

And every shadow shun.

What alchemy from winter's mould

Has framed this miracle,

These laughing cups of spirit-gold

Sundream, springbeam full ?

TAKE up your pen, O Man,

Write on the book of earth : ,

" Beginning less I ran

On through increasing worth.

There was a page of wonder,

Then many empty of joy,—

The castings-up of plunder,

Of skills that I misemploy

Beyond the smoking cities,

The callous pomps of war,

Still troubling were the ditties

Of the better days before—

How hate was still nurtured by love,

And the lies were the shadows of truth :

Where were Death save there live things enough,

What were Eld uningrafted on youth ?

Those towers that ring Perfection

No vista leaves untraced,

And by each new rejection

Toward them still I faced.

For the flame-crests of perfect living

On the watch-towers of Time ever burned

—Still they drew all the heart's deepest giving.

And the Thought in our thoughts thither yearned."

MUST be thy .grief, Duperrier, unending,

Or what the sad mind enfold,

The uttered thoughts a father's love is sending,

Be a tale that is never told ?

By our mortal lot thy daughter tom bward driven—

Is such exceeding pain

A labyrinth from whence thy thoughts grief-riven

Find not their way again ?

I, being most mindful of her girlhood's charm,

To assuage thy sufferings

Have tried not, like a friend who'd cause thee harm,

To gauge them but slight things.

Seen in a world which to fairest shapes is giving

Still the most heavy of dooms,

A rose, hers was the roses' span of living

Which one brief morn consumes.

Death shows a harshness no other sway imposes :

Vain to implore her ears,

For these the cruel goddess straightway closes

And leaves us to our tears.

The cottager whose roof the wheat-straw yielded

Her stern decree awaits ;

And from her power not even kings are shielded

By the watch at their palace gates.

Impatient murmurs, or embittered turning

Against her, deem not best;

Save willing the thing God wills, no other learning

Shall bring us to our rest.

ONE by one the earth-lights fail

And the shores sink down, behind :

The prow leaps on with a freshening gale

Over the course assigned.

I strain my eyes but cannot see

The lofty coasts ahead,

But still behold waves' sapphire glee

And the sky with ocean wed,

And lily-white foam on blue sea foil

And the sail by breezes bent....

And sunsets like volcanoes boil,

And the star host pitch their tent.

Now anger stirs the up risen moon,

For she argently strikes the waves

And lures the prow with a silver tune

To sky-rim goals or graves.

THAT living Lotus, petal by petal, unfolding,

Which through the mists of this avidya looms,

Vicegerent of the Sun, nowise withholding

The light we lack in Maya's nether glooms.

When spirit-sense to the last high peak gyring

Finds all Thy mountain-bud aflame with rose—

Touched by the eager hues of Dawn's aspiring—

What raptured Silence watches Thee unclose!

Then the vast span of those Truth-petals reaching

To the utmost arc of Being's finitude

With vibrant answer to dark's wan beseeching

Transforms a world, from Thy grave beauty hued.

O puissant heart amidst whose raptured shrining

A nameless Love is garbed in Name's disguise,

Last metronome to mortal things assigning

A fadeless rhythm wrung from Dawn's echoing skies.

COME nearer ; do not tarry ;

Quickly pass

The odorous gates of twilight

And the dew-drenched grass.

Bring the mazer moonlight-filled—

All dreams dissolve

Therein : and with the moon-dance

Let slow steps revolve.

Then by this conjuration

Unlinked from Time,

As from a hilltop vantage

Be witness of world mime.

O FLOWER-CROWNED figure with wide wings

On us bestow

The insight for the hidden juice of things

Where fragrant nectars flow.

Being of ether radiances

And white star-glow.

Singer of the First Morning's cadences

As of last petal throw,

Bring now the chaplets of the forenoon,

Let richly blow

Trumpets whose unison foreshows a boon

More than the sun's gold owe.

THEY came—the woodland water

Was lightly .shadowed

By the gauzy tumult of their wings.

Then tiny shrillings and such little laughters

As hardly shook or stirred the air-built web

Of attercops upon the bramble thorn.

It was some distillation from the autumn,

When the un havened windings of hearts' loneliness

Are trembling on the verge of bodiment

In those white-mist-drenched mornings

Where the gossamer is dew-silvered

Among still mushrooms on the upland field.

COULD Time's advancing leave but slender screen

Before I sit beside you, hear you speak,

How swift these gloomy skies would be swept clean,

How deft a motion gained by wheels that creak !

In dreams your voice is known, with hated end

Of solitary waking to an unshared light,-—

Most bitter mirage that will never blend

With nearness deemed, the certainties of sight.

Days come. . are worthless pebbles thrown aside

By one who searches on the shelving years

For that sole diamond who shall glint and guide

Because the continuing beauty that it bears

Is living light, a gratefulness, a pride

When tallied minds have wiped out stale arrears.

AT six of the. clock when evening comes

Up the dale, down the dale echo the drums ;

Flutings are heard from the depths of the vale,

Bugle note's silver and fairie fife wail.

And a flicker of elves with sandals of gold

Are threading with laughter the shadowing world

Till scarves are awhirl—on their filmy gauze,

Mothlike, a moon-trance stillness pours.

OUT beyond the watch towers of the morning

Silence waits

Where that gnarled old thorn tree blossoms whitely

And guards the gates

Gramarye has founded here her frontier ;

White and green

Is the jade-built wall where foam-bright-blossomed

Trees are seen.

Emerald-acred sward so safe enfolding,

The ramparts run

Lordlily amid the laneway cleaving

Shade from sun.

There the sky is never fierce or sullen ;

Blueness wields

Sway of tearless dancing-tide and singing

For those bright fields.

OUT of the opening blossom

Spirit flame

Brandish thy fiery arrow,

Innerly aim.

Bent be the bow with thy straining

Taut the string :

Heartward the arrowy speedings

Blithely sing.

Enter the innermost chamber,

O fire born dart,

Till thy rhythming love and thy beauty

Thrill through the heart.

FROM the dusky borderlands of sleep

I'd come, not empty handed,

But bearing strangely banded

Odorous blooms whose vague recesses keep

Echoes wheeling round—

The faint imprisoned sound

From soft-velvet-beating wings that sweep

In pale moth-flight across the glimmering deep.

Dream-fragrances and patternings of trance

Where the rich-jewelled pinions gravely dance

In that un hastening flight

Into the dim delight

Woven out of the gloom

Upon the starry loom

Of Night.