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One
blaze of brightness fills the whole wide hall
That mirror-stretched fades out beyond all thought
Into wide vistas incorporeal
Like dim fields and groves where Autumn's court
Pearls the o'erburthened year, and woods lie faint
And seeming distant, and familiar sounds
Grow hushed as though some aetheric constraint
Enwrapped the near distance and the wide surround
In half-penetrable veils. The place
Lies on the ears and heart like velvet balm
With music mellowed, heavy with the grace
Of haunting perfume of a noonday warm
With languorous indolence, 'neath burnished skies
With wine and roses, and a worshipped one
In vast communion of lips and eyes
Far from the world's unrest. In place of sun
The glittering domes illume the hall below
Down shedding brilliance on white napery
And shimmering glass; and ever to and fro
Like sun-drowsed bees in noon-tide revelry
The dim shapes pass in restless carnival
Amid the flowers and laughter and the drone
Of voices, fluctuant and musical
As of slow rills that babble over stone
And tufted grass along some woody dell
The music ebbs and flows betwixt soft themes
Slow measured as the waving asphodel
Weaving a warp of ears on a weft of dreams –
And the full diapason roll of war
Of rippling laughter tremulously free
That trips like Thebis down the sunlit shore
Betwixt the meadows and the sparkling sea
Or dryadlike along Arcadian dales
That wind about the temple of my heart
And all the shining place my heart regales
With pastoral songs in a dim world apart......
Now in a pause between, when the rich sound
Swoons to a sudden hush, and aimless eyes
Wake from the thrall to send enquiry round
The immaterial throng, in stranger-guise
Through the bright vap'rous veil of light I see
In
a far corner mingling artlessly
With the gay throng, but from them all outlined
Like Cassiopia in the Galaxy
A child of dreams that leaps upon my mind
As though the sight of her had snatched away
The kindly shrouds of sweet oblivion
Baring my hidden sorrows to the day
That stares unpitying. Now, stealing on
Like drowsing perfume through a starlit eve
From dew-kissed petals of some rosary
On the scarce-stirring sighs of night that weave
A veil for the dark, to comfort tenderly
The fretful sobbing of the dying hours
Come thoughts of Her unbodied as a dream
Dimly
mysterious as scent of flowers
Or soughing winds across a moonlit stream
Chasing the shadows fantasy that glides
Along the lightless depths beneath the reeds
And from the mournful mistiness that hides
Life's rosary in sorrow's gloomy weeds
Arise the undefinèd shapes of something
Lost in the dim forgotten, many a sprite
Of old unquenched desires that smouldering
In secret corners of my heart where light
And waking thought are ever shuttered out
Burns to a sudden blaze, amid the shades
Of starless dusk that wraps my dreams about
Lo! As the quickening smoke rolls down the glades
Of memory, I see the long-loved face
Dream-called from darkness....Oh the bitter tears
That fill my dimming eyes and softly race
Down – dropping silently. Oh light that sears
My reeling brain with harsh relentless glare
And summons phantom sorrows from the hosts
Of darkness, all the dreaded band that bear
In memory's train, grey-garmented like ghosts
The torch to light the gloomy Stygian shores
And bring to earth old Unforgotten dreams!....
Faint the laughter grows, the voices pause
Hushing in reverence until it seems
The very essence of the place evades
The fast-dissolving will; and all around
Like far sea-murmuring the music fades
From ears that hear not while the unheard sound
Of plaintive chords that tell perchance of love
Fans all unknowing fires that will not die
Fades now the light from dazzling domes above
As though the very light had heard my sigh
And fled away from me on silent wings
As mourners round a sorely wounded friend
That, failing, utters little intimate things,
Creep off in silence conscious of the end.
For even as his my wandering fancies speak
Like some lost spirit wandering alone
Through desolate charnel-house and grave-yard bleak
Seeking the temple that was once his own....
"Take
thou my latter days for thine, oh Fate
Give me for just one hour my yesterday
One golden hour to linger at the gate
Then will I go for ever on my way
Out to the last abyss, beyond all grief
Friendless and all unsung nor yet with sighs
By anyone remembered, like some thief
Hungry for joy, but cheated of the prize
All undesirous of my mood and praise
Clothed not in falsity of modest mien
I will go forth, Oh Fate, for all my days
If thou wilt bridge one hour the years between.
Give me again those thronging years o'ergone
Day-long replete and the fair golden sands
Wherein I Built my life all shadow-spun
With dim imaginings of languorous lands
My gaze should light upon when Argo-wise
Seeking life's golden destiny it sailed
For many a morn of sunlight and fair skies
Over the deep blue seas that never paled
In darkness or in storm, though doubt and fear
Loomed like twin gods of ruin on the verge.
Though black-browed hurricanes and tempests drear
Moaned out their gruesome unmelodious dirge
Far down the grey wide realms across the east,
For around Argo's prow the storm-clouds fled
Lashed by some hand supernal and the yeast
Of waters left away untenanted.....
When every straight and every league of sea
Led to a Paradise at evenfall
Enchanted islands of chalcedony
Lost in the merging amethystine pall
Of the sun's drowsing, lovingly enshrined
In the unlined meeting of the sea and sky
At the world's ending where the waters wind
Like streams of languid glass, and breezes sigh
In cool contentment. Where the golden sands
Woo the slow tides with gentle blandishments
And sultry noons glide down to the purple lands
To bathe their burning fevers. When the scents
Of flowerage musk-redolent at eve
Charm dark-eyed slumber from its lurking place
Amid the forest glades and softly weave
A mesh of dreams to veil the patient face
Of tired day. Of such wide-eyed delight
The far-off day-dreams of my innocence!
Those golden hours of laughter-noon till night
That sped through airy worlds of radiance
Unsullied and ungloomed, until aloft
In some green island dim in the sky's descent
The close-wrapped fondling of the twilight soft
That
broods maternally o'er the day, and darkly blent
With the fast purpling shades of amethyst
I found a blush-red tender lotus flower
Lapped in a silent pool no winds had kissed,
A gem resplendent from Prosperine's bower
That lured my eager heart and wooed my will
Just at the sleeping hour of consciousness
That I unknowing, fiercely ate my fill
Staying my steps in listless idleness.
Oh rose-flushed flower why is thy honey bane!
Oh rose-flushed cheeks and deep encarmined lips
That first Hephaestus in the grips
Of passionate desire, oh thou fair
Pandora, thou worst hidden in the heart
Of that pale blossom for a cruel god's snare
To lose the few poor blessings set apart
For man – 'Save Hope' ye say? but what is Hope
To me whose heart has died before my death
Whose steps unpiloted pass down the slope
To darkness, yea the dark that compasseth
In muffled cerements the dead desires
The threadbare dreams, the dim rememberings
Of bright-eyed Youth. Come, oh ye hated fires
Consume me utterly! and ye dark clouds, take wings
And bear me silently into the gloom
That ye may hide what time cannot repress.
But give me just one hour before the doom
One hour of gold before the silentness."
Rises
afar a hand that beckons me
Back through the darkness to the day I mourn
Over the wide abyss to where I see
Eyes that are mocking, features set in scorn.
Scorn can it be on lips erstwhile so dear?
Or mockery in those once tender eyes
Wherein the stolen fire shone amber-clear
Down to my secret soul, and where the wise
All-knowing, all-embracing sympathy
Of heart for the kindred heart seemed to proclaim
To all the world in triumph that in me
Lay the hot fire that kindled its bright flame!
"Can it be scorn," I say, and somewhere deep
In their still-glowing depths an answering spark
The last faint ember where the bright fires sleep
Points back to the golden day beyond the dark.
 Mutely
I follow, eager for the pain
That subtly tempts like bittersweet my heart
To sorrows ecstasy to taste again
The joy of feeling all the world apart
Myself alone and Death the sweetest thing.
Death, oh thou healer of a thousand ills,
Oh fostermother death, from whose dread wing
We shrink affrighted when cold twilight fills
The day-bright halls where we were wont disport
– The thronging palace of our memory –
With spectral murmurings and echoes fraught
With fears of the unknowable; when we
In craven-heart despair and blindly moved
Grasp the frail border of the bright-hued robe
To stay our going. Oh thou dearly unloved
Whose hands are darkness, but whose heart a globe
Of light eternal to illume the way
That lies through Time's black fastness where our eyes
Living are blind, waking our dupes of day
Who givest for a solace to our cries
The everlasting unction of thy smile
Where dids't thou torture to exact thy toll
Like Life before whose blood-red feet we pile
In Moloch sacrifice our immortal soul?
Swift as the swallow at the call of Spring
Over the bridge of golden dreams I go
Spanning the cloud gulf, blindly following
The hands that guide me and the eyes that grow
Tender again for me. The old words said
Sound as of old in ears that have not heard
Their like for many days and laughter dead
Year-long, awakes to welcome each loved word.
Oh the fresh sap of Youth rises within
Thronging my old desires and a bright green
New tips the buds, bursting the drab brown skin
That clad my heart's hope, and the Immortal Queen,
Springtime, the mother of the world shakes out
The folded leaves that lay as dead so long
In the quiet lap of darkness, closed about
With the relentless bonds of will, and like the song
Of Orpheus, the unheard whisper of thy words
Flies to the farthest borders of my soul
And bids the young leaves forth, recalls the birds
That long have left my land, and all the whole
Bright band that thronged the golden summer skies
Of my dead Youth ere winter's chill despair
Froze the gay streams of laughter and drear sighs
Ghost-birds of murdered hopes filled all the air.
Oh who shall know the music of her voice
As I have known, each quivering silvern chord –
A spring of gladness, oh ye days rejoice
That are her heirs and who shall feel the sword
As I have felt it stabbing my heart blood out
When dreams recalled the sound, each note a thrust
more keen than steel claws and with ne'er a doubt,
I'll feel it still when my lone heart is dust!
Oh for the touch of thy lips belovèd, dumb
In the last parting ere the curtain falls
Upon life's woeful scene. Ah bid me come
If only once belovèd, darkness calls –
And I would hold thee in a long embrace
And kiss thy lips and press thy heart to mine
And sense the throbbing glory of thy grace
Know the swift dream of love, fiercely entwine
My arms about thee, fondle all thy hair
Fragment of womanhood. Kiss thy dear eyes
Often and often; ah what wonder there!
Deep shining waters bright in still moon-rise
Stars of a cloudless night, the very sun
All are most bright, but only with things known
Known as of flame or light that vap'rous run
About cold worlds and sanctify the loan
Vast spaces of the infinite domains
Measurably, calmly bright, but thine
Thine eyes beyond the chains
Of thought or word, or dream so they outshine
For me all other, lesser holiness!
Inenarrable! God, whate'er thou art
That thus transcend through her that little less
That holds Truth from the world, it is Thy heart
Thin veiled, but ever veiled in thy wide blue
Thy seas and winds and trees and all that lies
Most wond'rously vouchsafed us shining through
The wonder and the glory of her eyes.
Ah! dear my love, I that have reached so high
And fared so far along, daring to gaze
Upon the naked splendour of the sky
Of God's supernal word in countless ways
Fulfilled in thy smile, I Phæthon,
Have sought to gird my pretty world with flame
Bare-eyed and near to thee to look upon
Light infinite, far past the bounds of fame.
To yoke Love's wingèd steeds, at my own word
Bid them the way I would, to serve my pride
And my wild dreams towards thee. Nobly to gird
Myself in borrowed light of thee, to ride
Unto the highest realms of mortal bliss
Made strong and whole by thee, my all in all!
And now I, Phæthon, but crave a kiss
And just to feel thee ere the darkness fall
To press thy hand, one word, one little sign
Of that old love, a smile, perchance a tear,
Only a turning of the head, Oh love of mine!
A glance, a sigh, a whisper – dost not hear?
Vain!
Vain! my Daphne, ah! within our hearts
Speeding from high Parnassus at the hest
Of boastful Eros lie the fatal darts
Of Love and Loathing, Oh had I but guessed
Ere first I smiled pierced by the golden doom
That lay within, the power that Eros held
To make me love, to make thee loathe in whom
Lay the pale lead, then I had surely quelled
My light disdain. Too late! too late!
Thou fleest my coming like a hunted steer
As when Apollo loved and thou in hate
Dreading his ravished words as he drew near
Cried to the gods who hid thee in the guise
Of a fair laurel, so dost thou flee from me
My fairer Daphne down the misty skies
From now to yesteryear – Ah vanity!
E'en now she haunts me ever as I move
Like boyhood melodies in manhood days;
Or midnight stars, the fleece-white clouds above
Oh! how the phantom dear eludes my gaze!
For dim the eyes grow and the guiding hand
Receding leaves the footsteps of my mind
Fainting and stumbling in an unknown land
Beset by death-dark clouds, and moaning wind
That sweeps across a lone and misty heath
Through fens and swamps, where stagnant pools lie out
In open midnight sending on their breath
The foulest germs of death to spread about
The noisome gloomy world. Grey wreaths of mist
Hang from the lightless sky like ghastly trees
Rooted in darkness, some that writhe and twist
In gruesome convolutions, some that freeze
To solid rocks of cloud. But stay! they fade
They change, grow fuller, nearer, mouth and eyes!
They nod, they speak, approach and close arrayed
Grow individual, their voices rise
In semblance of a psalm, and manifold
As though from rocks and cavern of the night
Through narrow places and through forests old
From star and world and wandering siderite
Oft-times re-echoed, softly answer me.
"Think
not the world is yours because she smiled
Nor dream in life, lest sad the waking be
To find the smile a snare, the dream defiled
Think not the grave holds laughter beyond death
Oh thou poor dreamer, burst the chains that bind
Thy spirit, loose the bond that strangleth
Thy captive heart and fetter up thy mind!
They die who dream of death and in the dark
Of slumber everlasting there's no gleam
Stolen from Phoebus' lamp lighting the stark
Cold pulseless waters of the Stygian stream.
The soul lies anchored in the gloomy deep
And though it wake it shall not know the waking,
But waking shall have glimpses of its sleep
Faint fleeting memories swelling and breaking
Elusive bubble gleams of older days
Shining an instant in the inner mind
Of other lovers down the lengthening ways
Of men, age upon age of human kind
Shall learn its griefs anew but not for thee
Its heritage, now only is thy day
To make or mar, to fetter or set free.
Be thou its pilot, laugh thy dreams away
Fling down thy glove to Fate and lightly bear
The wounds and blows he deals relentlessly.
Pray to thyself and answer thine own prayer
As thou wort God, and God fulfilled in thee
Thou who hast offered up thy soul to Fate
One moment since, for one forbidden hour
Of ill-supposèd joy who seized the bait
The tempter showed thee to betray thy dower
Of happiness, heed not the coward word
Spoken in thrall of music and the haze
Of subtle perfumes and the laughter heard
Go not in mourning through thine earthy days
For golden times o'erpast and hopes foregone
Though bitter be the dream and sad the sight
Of happy things recalled and eyes that shone
And shine again for thee the livelong night
That holds thee waking, bind thy faithless eyes
With mists inpenetrable, lest their flame
Be quenched in tears and soul-devouring sighs.
Oh be thou strong, fond dreamer, hide thy shame
Rock-deep in Lethe where the lifeless air
Wakes never an echo of the golden past
Dead thoughts are meet for death and howsoe'er
A day be dark or heavens overcast
The clouds are fleeting things and night a space
That
twines the dawning with the setting sun.
Now is that hour where past things interlace
With future when dead memories are one
With new-born hopes that rainbow hour of dreams
Like a calm summer even after rain
When from the westering day the sunlight streams
In pale broad phalanxes across the plain
And o'er the dropping trees and tear-soaked wood
Pales to effulgent cloudless night of stars
Wide, tranquil, overpowering to the blood
Like old Falernian wine or sweet guitars
O'er moonlit meres. An eastern night of peace
That fondles in its breast a wond'rous morn
Of azure skies, high clouds, and great increase
As a tired daisy on a midnight lawn
Enfolds the morrow's flower of gold and white.
List,
dreamer, through thy dreams the music comes
Down hidden by-ways from the world of light
Music, the leeless wine, music that numbs,
Drugs, wakens, mocks, enchants, but is divine
Like the divinest mysteries of the world –
Life, love and beauty, the wide hyaline
And everlasting clouds for ever curled
Around a mountain's majesty. Ah when
Euterpe's lute awakes to a song how fades
The dead unhappy past to some far glen
Dim at the end of vasty colonnades
Dreamed, not remembered, and how golden grow
The laughing leaping seconds! hand in hand
With winelike melody. Could life but know
Eternal music where wild waves expand
Of flowing sound, it were itself eterne
And when the soft chords wake, the skies down-drop
In pearling mists so that the heavens return
Again to edenless earth and each earth hope
Mates with its heavenly counterpart and lives!
And earthly forms, dissolving, softly fade
In music fragrance, low-breathed fugitives
As swift as snow in sun or gloomy shade
In night. Come now the earth-free sprites and dance
On lightsome foot, each to its several chord
In perfect measure, gladness, love, romance
Sorrow, desire, despair, the flaming sword
Of Anger, or lust or madness or the thrill
Of Springtime. Oh the very soul of life
Is there, is yours Awake, awake and fill
Thine eyes with all the splendour of the strife.
The world is calling and its trumpets blow
Down from the hillsides, through the windy ways
O'er moor and fen and shimmering field of snow
To the great sunrise where the sky's ablaze
With life and light and love; and there shall be
All thine old unforgotten dreams fulfilled.
Fair Argo rides unreined, the seas run free,
Thine oarsmen wait the word, their voices thrilled
With the sea-borne whispers from the dawn, make song
Attuned to the murmuring music of the tide;
Thy search is not yet done, and the way is long
To the haven of the dawn and seas untried
Tempt thee with other isles as fair as this
Green forest hidden graves of enterprise
Where the fair foam kneels softly down to kiss
The lurking rock-fangs and the current dies
– The Siren-song of death is sweet to hear
In the cold silences and beauteous
The sudden haven empty seas endear
Oh! many a goodly barque has foundered thus
Thinking its goal is nigh and that the first
Bright land that looms up from the lowering day
Is the long journey's ending. They who thirst
For swift contentment only find decay.
The end is in the sunrise leagues beyond
The farthest reaching, but the envied goal
Lies in the seeking, and the silken bond
Of dusk-hued dreams that life weaves round the soul
Thread upon thread as the sunlight wanes and pales
Wrack of stray thought cast up by the eddying tides
In surge of the gray waves and the gloomy gales
Of doubt, is but the lowering day that hides
The bright horizon where the ending is.
Oh sunder the cloud, behold the veilèd light
Shimmering in far-drawn silvern traceries
A-down the waters from its eastern height!
Softly
down my dreamy twilight steals a strain
Of music, like ghost-weeping on the wind
So wan and timorous as though the pain
Of centuries of sorrowing souls were twined
In its faint wistful plaint – and yet withal
So infinitely fraught with tenderness
That my mazed thoughts lie prostrate in its thrall
And yield their fevers to its cool caress.
The skies drop tears, the waters hush their speech
Crooning in unison; the ambient air
Hangs breathless, and a-down the darkling beach
Of Heav'ns grey cloudland bathed in the rare
Cool gleam of day to be, the messengers
Of morning rise to the summons of the sound
Blowing the trump of day. The darkness stirs
Weary of sleep; and from the realms around
From sky and air and sea all shadowy
Like souls of the echoes of the vibrant note
Gather the gray shapes on the wings of the winds caress
Gossamer webs; impalpably they float
Up to the airy dome to coalesce
In one dim godlike form. The first bright ray
Glides from its sea-couch 'neath the eastern sky
Twining an aureole from the gold of day
To crown her head, and lo! Hope stands on high
Daughter of morning, spirit of the Dawn!
Bright mother of a teeming universe!
High majesty of Life whose heart unborn
And uncreate, but one continuous
With God and all sublimity throngs all
The narrow confines of our entities!
Soul of our souls, the ever merciful
Mother of ours, thy love our lodestar is
Thy hands our beacon and thy radiant smile
Nirvana. Death is dead and shrouded Night
Is one with death, queen of the misty isle
Of sleep, betwixt Alaea flower bedlight
where lies the maiden twilight rosy-hued
And the green Carian mountain of the sea
That ever-lightless chasm, deep imbued
With the most dismal night's obscurity.
Where shades insentient and immobe like flowers
Far-lapped in the immeasurable lake
Leagues down in endless silence twine their hours
Into a timeless dream, the world awake
Passes, knowing them not, for Time exacts
Endless obedience and tireless watch –
'Neath sunless skies and gray unstarry tracts
Pendant with clouds that shun Hope's faery touch....
Now all the girding world from bay to bay
Is living fire that through the shuttered night
The stars have lit till in the ears of day
Hope whispers and the World is full of light!
The music like a mighty river grown
From a poor trickle to a sweeping surge
Crashes its thunders round the lofty throne
Of Day. From the dim vale of dreams emerge
The lights, the sounds, the restless murmurings
That held my heart erewhile. As from a mist
Folding some valley in the down soft wings
Of Dawn's delight, ere that the sun has kissed
The lips of morning, draping the silent hills
In breath-white unenduring fantasies
The faint shapes creep uncertain and the frills
Of the slowly looming trees show one by one
From the soft-fleeting slumber shrouds of night
At the hot bidding of the heightening sun –
So, slowly fades the veil that glooms my sight,
The harper of the marless melody
Called sweet oblivion, begins forsake
His dream-song and awakes in rarer key
His parting psalm and dies. Oh heart awake
It boots not sorrow in a world of joy
Or aching hearts when sunshine fills the air.
Grey doubts are enemies, grey fears destroy
The patient pulse of life, and dull-eyed care
Waits with the eternal winding-sheet outspread.
Ye have seen Hope mantled in faery gold
Calling from Dawn's high fastness canopied
Twixt the wide azure vault of Time. – Untold
Delight awaits thy search; undreamed-of things
Lie o'er the hill whose summit tops the world
Oh, make the crest despite the falterings
That pay like winter's draughts about the eaves
Of thy intent – lo! there are things divine
Awaiting thee for all thy spirit grieves
Awake fond dreamer, for the World is thine!.......
I see again the laughter-peopled hall
Filled with a thousand restless puppet shapes
And myriad twinkling lights; and over all
The vine-crowned Bacchus with his purple grapes
Strides like a thurifer from heart to heart
Waving his fiery incense blindly strewn
On laughter's ways, bright Nature's counterpart
Ephemeral sunshine of the spirits noon
Piercing life's thunder-cloud with white-hot rays
That slant supernally athwart the sky
Of heliotrope marbled with many grays
Into the chilly shadows, joyfully
The warm blood pulses, and lamps twinkling bright
Waken in kindling eyes. The music throbs
Thundering still along the sea of light
Golden with Hope's bright dawn .....but waking robs
The sweetest substance from the heart of dreams
Stealing the fruit, leaving the bitter rind
Like shadow-wrack of happiness that gleams
Bright in the dark of sleep, but faintly lined
In the gold fulsomeness of waking day
Some wandering ghost left by departing sleep
Forgotten in exile realms, lonely and grey
condemned eternally to wait and weep
In penance, having strayed beyond the bourn
Of the dark kingdoms of Astroea's daughter
Hecate – thrice divine. Some sea-flower lorn
Cast on the golden sand from the cool water
(The wine that is its beauty's sacrament)
That shrivels to a shadow of itself
Substance bereft of form, its spirit spent
In sunshine, withered on the sandy shelf
A flame in daylight or a sigh in wind
Like unto those are drams when sleep is past
And wide-eyed memory with breath unkind
Sweeps out the airy spells that sleep has cast
Upon the naked flesh of agony
Leaving for day the bitter nakedness
Bursting the bubble film that wond'rously
Reflects from the deep heart the images
Of numbing hopes, desires, loves and fears
The music that I hear is earthly sound
Pregnant with sorrow, twined with many tears
Matter whose gladliness is darkly bound
In slumber and the pulse of golden dawn
Lies silent and the radiance fades, and I
Who have gazed at blinding sunlight subtly drawn
Like mirage on the mind's concavity –
Being desire, shadow-drawn as Hope, –
Taste but the bitterness joy drags behind
And in my eyes, as in the dark I grope
For light is dark as to one being blind
Dark shrinking suns float gleamily across
The air – all trembles to my waking sight
Drear ghosts of still-born hopes. A sense of loss
Nurtured on disillusion brings fresh pangs
As one by one the fantasies repass
Black-shrouded, silent, where the memory hangs
Reluctant, dreading to die, across the glass.
Look not. Ah God – she is not there – the
one
The one that lured my powerlessness to hope
That snapped the bonds that I all blind had spun
Sorrowing round my memory, a rope
To bind the wandering dreams that sorrow brings
And keep them hid in darkness from my thought
The one that called up old forgotten things
The one that was as she – now is there nought
Of all that joy and all those tars, no star
Of all the constellation of her smile
No song her image sang me from afar
Through stranger's lips and duller eyes erewhile
No golden skies, no deep blue seas to sail
From dawn till sunset in the breathless quest
Of youth's bright hermitage, that Holy Grail
The cup of life – that martyr'd blood has blessed
Nothing of these remain, it is all dark
And silent where the golden sun's light shone
Hope is a mirage, – just a glowing spark
That lights the petty clay it falls upon
With clouds of brilliant fire-bent to consume
In flaming glory all the pettiness, –
The dust, the darkness and the aching gloom,
Then dies, with a poor flicker, something less
Than the pale will-o'-the-wisp that leads astray
A wanderer's step. But deep within the glow
Scarcely an instant showing, there's a ray
That pierces the mind, and stays and starts to grow
Raising a flower from an eternal root
Maybe the flower is Truth, maybe 'tis God
Divinely fulfilled and the ultimate fruit –
The pilot of the soul to fears untrod.
Ah! well I know that Hopes were meant to die
Whether new-fledged sowing the divine seed
Or in their zenith, dying with a cry
Upon fulfillment's pyre. What time the weed
Of drear despair springs from the whitened ash
And love, like hope, burns out on its fulfilment
With clouds of smouldering flame – a white hot
flash
Then darkness and cold tears, but the long pent
Hungerings of hopeless love burn not
But lie like the diamonds and jewels of gold
Enshrined in marble tombs never forgot
But guarded by sanctity within the fold
Of dead men's shrouds. Oh urn of stainless love
Untride and virginal, most sacred gift
My body's tomb shall guard thee, while above
The great dawn shines, the foamlike cloudlands drift
A-down the sunlight hours through breathless noons
To languid eventides, While grateful dews
Sunder the heart's suspense. Or sallow moons
Shed ghostly shadows through night's avenues
Or waken silvery dreams where dusk has hid
The sleep of waters. While through woodland aisle
The green-garbed dryad and the bassarid
Dance many an idle hour away. And while
Day comes and goes and night with all her stars
Brings dreams and mysteries and peaceful sleep
The world lives on and laughs – or sorrow mars
Its laughter; while the guilty shadows creep
From Autumn, glooming the earth with wintriness
While streams lay pale and frozen and the frost
Borne on the north wind fondles the loneliness
Shedding its hoary tears; that day has lost
The sparkling wine of sunlight. So methinks
My life must be, like to the frozen rivers
Where the cold ice lies passionless and shrinks
From the day's glance and never a ripple quivers
Though winds may moan through leafless willow copse
Or scarce in filtering sunlight try to smile
through day's cold tears upon the wan snowdrops.
For naught the vasty silence can beguile
Of outward sorrow or of outward joy.......
But deep below, under the moveless ice
Where never sunlight comes, nor storms destroy
Like some dim flood expelled from Paradise
Run throbbing waters that more swiftly flow
Being confined; and on through clogging weeds
Entwined with roots of trees whose branches throw
Broad shadows in the outer world, and reeds
With spiky stems and many a gurgling stone
Where whirlpools form, that rising through the gray
Die in the darkness, and through caverns lone
And silent doth the current carve its way.
So in the icy fastness of my breast
The calm of a frozen world conceals hot streams
Of biting fire, relentlessly repressed
From smiles or frowns of day, rushing through dreams
That guide the current of a life's desires
Towards the unfathomed seas of destiny
And all the laughter that the world requires
And all the littleness that has to be
The sun of joy, the numbing wind of care
Pierce not my breast, so deep – so aching deep
To warm or chill the stream that courseth there.
But sometimes in the flickerings of sleep
An outward ray will come, sometimes hot tears
That follow Hyad-like sweet music's showers
Or reverence a face that thought endears
Or fall like dew, for joy of darkling hours
Shall burn a passage out to freeze in day
For day and thou, O hidden fire of mine
Are silent foes and the enshrouding grey
Of daylight thoughts that in my breast confine
Thy panting stream holds mastery of thee
O Acheron, thou river of the night
Whose exiled waters flow eternally
O Acheron – O Acheron, my sight.
Night intimate bows down to kiss thy lips
And kissing, tastes the bitterness that lies
Like foetid dew where Autumn's breathing drips
Among the rank and fulsome shrubberies
Of festering weeds or fleshy agaric
Rots in the foul miasmata of death.
My thoughts are drunk with darkness and lie sick
Within thine arms, O Acheron, my breath
Mingles with thine, and our hearts beat as one
For ever and for ever, and though skies
Grow bright in passing dreams, the sudden sun
Pleases me not, but only blinds my eyes.
"Awake!"
ye say O dreams, "awake, forget,"
How to forget what is more strong than I?
What is myself, and I a stranger yet
Who knows myself no more than mine own eye
Knoweth the quickening mind; for deep amid
The caverns of mortality's vast mind
That guides the eye of day, the stream is hid
That flows from ante-natal night where wind
The utter threads of life in simple plait
Down Time thro' many and thro' divers ways
In every heart that every womb begat –
Through tears and laughter and unending days
And some day, suddenly, in every heart
The stream bursts into inner consciousness
And all the outward things lie dumb apart
Watching in wide amaze the moments press
The years are hours, hours years, and Time a jest
That means but little, but brings smiles and tears
And misery is joy, and joy oppressed
With weight of grievings garnered from the years
And we but jetsam on the hidden shoals
Wasted in the wake of every aimless wave
Call the stream many ways – the helot souls
Say "God" and those whose restless dreams engrave
Across the World a veil of airy clouds
O'ershone with the gold light of romantic tales
Say "Love" (an idol of the kneeling crowds
That give their soul for what the gift avails
Shielding their credence in fair poesy).
Others say "instinct" other "fate"
and some
Whose hearts their sponsors are, hold it to be
Life's Passionate Desire of Life to come.
Can I forget when every mortal shred
Of my frail self lies guardian of the founts
Of Life eternal; when the tears I shed
Fall not, the idly scattered gems Love counts
Its rightful tribute, but the stormy drift
Of gales tempestuous that wage grim war
Through the mind's black hour, the winds uplift
With many a wail across the desolate shore
That soothes the waters of Life's boiling flood
When light is darkness for the thoughts it brings
When wine grows foul and water turns to blood
When in the throbbing ears sweet music sings
With devil's laughter, when the words of friends
Are poisoned arrows from the clogging past
Steeped in black memories, when Nature bends
Tried string to breaking-point until at last
The tomb of marble splits, yielding its dead
The ice-bound river sunders its canopy
The great spring-tides swirl from the fountain head
And feeling fades to numb passivity,
Under the burden. When the rocks drip sweat
And skies drop down in pity, so that night
Severs life's aching nerve – can I forget?
Can I forget and with a new delight
sowing the wilderness, can I go forth
To seek new spheres, that other dreams invest
To look for laughter in the devil's wrath?......
I want not laughter, only give me rest.
I want no tears of friends, no sympathy
Of careless hearts with half-averted glance
Trailing old doggerel to comfort me;
That look with mild contentment at my dance
With destiny. Oh God, Oh God of rivers
Of endless life, Oh God of the silent springs
That throb in the heart-beats of the universe.
Thou 'neath the shadow of whose umbrial wings
The lone star, life, burns on its secret hearth
With Hesper's everlasting flame that creeps
From the block forehead of the night when earth
Couched in the undesirous æther sleeps
Its else unlustful sleep most tranquilly
Thou of the flame of lust and high desire
Thou of the light that wakes eternally
Unquiet gleamings in the primal mire
Thou, God of sorrows and of lonely seas
Hast kindled biting fires and restless dreams
Thy seas are fed with death, and to appease
The hunger of thy maw, frail life's extremes
Writhe in the frenzied quickening of pain.
Lighter of wanton fires, quench thou the spark
That in the first was life and now profane
To thine own self, thou arch-heresiarch
With burning grief; for all thy rocks and seas
That compass life about from pole to pole
Close on me like the blue Symplegades
And from the void whence thy first whisper stole
Like hounds of darkness hungering for prey
About my aimless feet thy waters roar
A powerless thing upon thy chartless sway.
Unanchored and unhelmed I lose the shore
Without a beacon-lamp without a star
In the cimmerian blackness of the dome
Of shrinking heaven. A torn broken spar
Tossed like a straw among the seething foam
That roars like boiling vapour in my ears
Is all my anchorage. How can life live
Lashed to a hopeless hope, a staff of fears,
A rock of cloud; a sightless fugitive,
An airy bubble in a universe
A soulless body or a sightless soul
A coin of gold with death on its reverse?
Cold winds are moaning round me and the bowl
Of endless darkness yawns beneath my feet
The unstable pavement of the lonely sea
Creeps up about me. The drear waters meet
With eerie dirge whose doleful monody
Dins in my heart, the flying spin-drift seethes
With stinging touch into my numbèd face
As from its roaring lungs the darkness breathes
An icy exhalation. Love winds race
Tempestuously through the pathless gloom
And fill the air with sounds of flapping wings
As of some armies at the trump of doom
Sound the advance and all the underlings
Of Tarturus reform their mighty legions
In outer night and many a harbinger
Proclaims the coming hosts; the silent regions
Clamour with unknown sounds – the shadows stir
Uneasily like watchdogs that perceive
A deeper darkness in the heart of night
A tenser silence where the whispers cleave
The murmurous atmosphere, and in their flight
Beget strange hushes of expectancy.
Across the quivering wave the wind grows warm
And eerie lights come stealing wearily
of hue inexpressible that the seas inform
With their especial shadows, and more black
Make darkness. Low-muttered shudderings
Deepen the silence so that Time holds back
The tireless feet for fear of hidden things
Till finding nought but silence and hushed skies
He roars with thunderous anger at the loss
Of stolen moments, rushes with flashing eyes
O'er the wide sky that opens the World across
To overtake them, till his awful frown
Scowls thro' the hour's wide eye and darksomely
Girdles the air with anger's tears poured down
In scathing cataracts so that the sea
Rushes to meet the sky and misty shrouds
Of the rain's weaving seal the swift embrace,
Far down, the darkling vast grey scudding clouds
Blot out the hyaline. The ponderous race
Of the lone surge roars out its mystic rune
The chant of its myriad dead who call to me
Calling, calling and the cold waters croon
Into my lonely heart alluringly
The siren's song. Oh wanderer there is peace
deep peace, oh aching heart, and endless rest
Here in the grey gloom where the breakers cease
Here where the phantoms are, here in the west
Under the happy isles, lapped in the cool
Live the grey shadows of the comforted
Down, deep down within our crystal pool
There lies the far grove where the heart is hid
Far down the dark the murmurous echoes call
And they are luring me and creeping nigher
Those floods of darkness come, and the closing pall
Sweeps round my eyes. The final flickering fire
Dies, and my dreams die, and the soothing wave
Fondles my heart. Oh fate, O destiny
Thine is the kindness, thine the lowly grave
But whose the ultimate goal, the final sea
The last stagnation of the streams of life
The haven of dreams, the maelstrom of tears
Of sighs, the resting place, the end of strife,
The dim horizon of the outer spheres?
And in the last sea, is the current still?
Where all the dreams run down, is there no flowing
Onward, beyond, where the last floods fulfil
The allotted chasm and the high growing
Levels of the sea, o'errun its bourne
So that Life dies? or living pulsate free
In higher streams, or haply the floods return
To the fountain-head, and so eternally.
None answer, my faint whispers die, the place
Lies cold and empty in the cheerless stare
Of the now lustreless lamps and all its grace
Has long departed. On the foetid air
There hangs no more its fragrance. The frail notes
Of music sob and I am dropping tired –
Tired, and the darkness calls and the sea-song floats
Up from the cold grave where bright Hope expired.
O'er the dead groves and gardens of my heart
And the sere leaves lie festered in their slime
And breed corruption. Destiny thou art
Dust, only dust in the timeless void of time.
Emptiness, blankness, silence, boundless space
And thou, Oh Life, only a sob of pain
And the sea-song calls, and the grey waves embrace
Ah me! I go into the dark and rain.........
ENVOI
Go
thou, the firstling of my heart's desire
Unto the threshold of my heart's first friend
A feeble gift, maybe, a tuneless lyre.
Playing a harp's song without grace to lend.
Meet melody to such a holy thing
Or fitting sweetness to so dear a theme
Such as thou art, Oh music that I sing
Into the voiceless yearnings of a dream
Go thou and be thyself for what thou art
Thou art myself – what further can I give
Than all myself – the image of my heart
Dream down upon thy page – not fugitive
Or faint or passing with the flight of years
As earthly gift of heart to heart may be?
Nay, friend of mine that oft hast turned to tears
For grief of mine, I gave my heart to thee
Once as a thing in trust eternally
To know as the wind knows the woods, or shining night
The duskèd carpet of the silent sea –
From above, and glancing over in soft flight
From tree to tree or wave to wave so fleeting
That naught grows individual or enters in
Mixing commingling there and ever meeting
Knowing each thought of me, the thick and thin
Of hope, despair, desire, self-consciousness
And all I hold and think and dream of life.
Oh many a fleeting glimpse perchance I gave
As many the gleams of the moon on the unsheathed knife
That yet must enter in, deeply to drive
Its own deep way, be known and keenly felt
For what it really is! Here then I give
All twined about with sighs and dreams that melt
To less than dreaming when the tale is told
My deeper self – the rarer complement
The – – – of that unknown one
Thou hast called "friend". The flower roughly
bent
To please the wilful wind returns again
Even as fair, and all the shining thing
Forgets the petty wind, the sun, the rain
The things that murmur and the things that sting
All outward – upon earth – to daylight given
What matter they – ye ask – what matter they
What is a flower but what shine up to heaven?
To live in light and shine a-down the day
Be wond'rous coloured, bright with airy grace
Be unto man only what man can see
Else not a flower. Ah! tho' the eye embrace
All that is fairest, all that shineth free
And panders to the eye that glances o'er,
Deeper the beauty is, deeper the root, far down
Forgot by man, dismembered from the flower,
Not loved for beauty – love is beauty's crown
But stranger to sweetness, yea the heart of all
For every smile there is an inner tear.
For every sorrow, some frail coronal
Of fleeting laughter for the heart to hear.
Enwreathes the patient soul, not lone they are
Those outer flowers, the blossoms of our heart
Laughter and tears, and glory and despair
But have their roots away from winds that smart
And sting, and crush, and devastate the flower
Deep lapped in steadfast life, and as they live
And wane and wither with the changing hour
So the fair helpless blossom – Oh sweet fate
That hides the heart from every transient wind
That the deep fount of beauty may await
The fairer skies, and firm the soul may bind
The heart and brow in one harmonious whole.
I seek again – dull anguish in my blood
And on my lips a tremor like the sea's
Beneath the grey dawn, when in wreathing scud
The clouds drift over on the land – sent breeze
To steal the comfort of the lingering stars
From that drear hour most comfortless of all
And light creeps o'er the morning's foamy bars
With sleepy eyes and sullen feet that crawl
Across the bitter wave, and lone, long shadows
Spread o'er the shivering silence of the sky
To droop in sorrow o'er the glassy meadows
Icy, friendless, sighing, – and to die.
And this the time 'Dawn', that I dreamed was gold
This thing of ice and silence and grey death,
This bitter hemlock-friend that grapples hold
Of all my blood, and creeps with icy breath
To linger, ebb and flow – then stab a shaft
A fatal numbness in my very heart?
Fool, fool! 'Tis now I dream; that oft have laughed
For joy of sorrow, gloried in the smart
Of burning tears, have plunged breast-deep in grief
As in a summer-pool to dive and splash
And float and fondle all the cool relief
From hot satiety – have sealed life's ash
In sorrow's marble splendour for a tomb.
I that have laughed – and loved the pool of tears
A backward glance of hope – this dream of gloom
This dream – oh! yes I dream – away ye fears!
I dream, I dream, I say, and shall awake
At dawn to songs I love, and golden light
And flowers and rustling leaves that softly shake
In winds inaudible, and meadows bright
With far-spread damask-folds of purple flowers
And sparkling streams and high majestic trees
And love – ah love. In deep secluded bowers
Where none can hear – none but the list'ning breeze,
I dream and shall awake, Oh hear of me
Why dost thou beat with such unbridled zeal?
What dost thou fear, oh heart? Let be, let be!
Oh eyes, what pallid ghosts are these that steal
From out their golden splendour? Oh my ears
Why list ye thus? Ye know 'tis but a dream!
Sleep on, sleep on! But why, what are these fears
Bidding me slumber, tho' the loathly beam
Awakes from the misty marshes of my sleep
And prays upon my sight? I fear to move
And know myself awake! To let light creep
Into the portals of my sight and prove
I do not dream! Oh heart, Oh heart of mine
How can'st thou beat, how can'st thou taunt me so.
Oh eyes! Do not betray, drink deep your wine
Of tears and slumber on! – And yet I know
The dream is past and she no more remains
A star-queen in a galaxy, – the star
That hailed me o'er its myriad-jewelled plains
Its chaining arches, sparkling out afar
Across the misty hemisphere of Love
So to its utmost Sun – brushing aside
The fickle webs of darkness twined above
My memory by that maternal bride
Of all desire, the tireless watcher, "Will".
Ah "Will!" and even thou art daunted now
And memory, defenceless like the hill
That meets the last onslaught on its topmost brow
When all the garden forests lie ablaze
And nothing stands between, and wave on wave
The dread invaders storm the sacred ways
Ev'n to the utter height; nought but the grave
And the wide sky above holds out a way.
And let me climb the sky on leaden wings,
– The Daedal pinions of self-coquetry
The age-old art of tangling pretty things
Before the eyes to turn the heart aside!
Not to be caught, for then the heart turns back
Ever a day's march on; at eventide
The dawn, at dawn the dusk; the Zodiac
Perchance that runs along on endless course
Belting the heavens as the year runs out
Call them ideals, gird up the wingèd horse
Sprung from the blood of agony, what doubt
but Helicon awaits the fatal stroke
And some new Hippocrene will turn to song
With something of the – Thamyris woke
The vapid offspring of thy dreams and tears!
Golden ideals girt with poesy!
A fair alternative from death, dream on
And weave salvation! All the sanctity
Of misconceived Immanuel grew upon
The blended harmonies of broken dreams!
Out of the ruins of a wrecked desire
Some Pegasus mounts up on odic streams
To strike the sacred spring that in its fire
Some dormant flood, long hid may grow to be!
Oh God, or poesy, or great ideals
Oh, they are one – this mighty trinity.
One bond of life above three diverse seals
One stream through different springs! One spreading
root
With three-fold stems, one mountain with three peaks
One rock of gold from three commute
One harmony a great Musician speaks
On three syntopic harps. One poesy
One great ideal! One God! Dream on, dream on
Deck out in gold thy pretty frippery
Mount it on high, and strive to reach thy Sun!
What though thy wings be waxen Icarus?
What though the end be death! Dream on – and thou
Thou meek handmaiden pale and timorous,
That minister the sorrows of the brow,
Thou leman of desire, thou drudge of grief
Thou slave to all the woes of all the world!
Poor Poesy! dear Poesy! Tho' brief
My feeble flight, tho' weak my wings unfurled,
Across the rainbow sky, tho' death await
And darkness be my meed, oh aid me now!
Light in my heart a lamp, will sublimate
The vasy upswellings of the Spring, endow
Their coldness with some majestic fire
Translate them into spreading clouds of glory
To wreath, and catch the light in golden rays
Spread it about the world, thro' forests hoary,
Oceans illimitable; virgin ways
O'er hill and valley, mountain, wood and grove
In one translucent aureole of flame!
Immortal light, the child of mortal love!
And into hoary hearts, help me proclaim
My god – thy second self, Oh poesy –
Where day has come not since the start of time
Where dusk as on some subterranean sea
Broods o'er a placid mind, o'er where the slime
Of prehistoric swamps engirt in mists
Engulfs the footsteps of a word of love
Or some grey rugged granite rock resists
The breaking of a sea that seeks to move
Its hoary hardness to a human throb!
There is more Nature in a beggar's eyes
Than all the wild wide seas. More in the sob
Of uncouth man than in all the windy skies
About the world. Ah man, but shed a tear
Upon the barren earth, and lo! a flower
More splendid than the rose; and thrice as near
To Eden's flaming heart shall yet embower
The sun-perched rocks of life and dusty plains
In perfume bathèd clouds of crimson hue
That twined with heliotrope and golden rains
And radiant panoplies of shining dew
Shall roof the world with light. But dream a dream
And lo! The sorrows of a heart of clay
Shall melt in glowing fire. For in its beam
A passionate heart can dream the world away!
If but it dream so high! Oh I will mount
Upon thy goddess' wings and float about
The upper reaches of the world, recount
My visions and my dreams and breathe them out
Upon the lute in faery coronal,
Of flower within flower eternally to lie
Upon the drab day's brow. So shall they fall
Soft, perfume laden, through the honied-sky
Unfelt, unheard, like dew. And like the dew
With sudden glory they shall gird the day
With sudden freshness, bathe the satiate blue
Aweary of soulless sunlight, every way
With breath not earthly, fragrance, half-divine
Turning the petal to a crystal chalice
Upfilled with saphire lights the hyaline
Into an azure sparkling airy palace
The words to wonderlands, the winds to sighs
That whisper angels loves. The star to jewels
Of such surpassing brilliancy, thought dies
In utterance, the opaque clouds to pools
Of rare distillèd ether, moon to sun
Winter to Summer, Earth to Paradise
And flowers and seas and angels' loves to One
And that One, "God", that on thy wings shall
rise
In glory of love and light, the central soul
Made manifest in power, the central thought
From whom all instinct flows, the central pole
Round which creation turns, the central heart
That knows, and is the world. And all shall bow
At last in natural reverence flowing free
From overburdened hearts and eyes that grow
At last the mirrors of thy mind to see.
The ineffable powers of life to feel, to feel
With rushing blood, with quickened breath and fire
Of most celestial ecstasy, light steal
O'er darkness growing brighter, clearer, higher.
O'er darkness once supposèd light, o'er gloom
Imagined radiance, as when a cloud
Athwart a stormy sky that veils the tomb
Of faintly piercing moonlight lifts in shroud
With sudden wantonness and floods the land
From dim uncertainty to brilliant white!
To feel with fainting breath the Truth, to stand
Uncovered in illimitable light!
To feel, to see, to know, in heart and mind
If but the music of the songs I sing
If but the fragrance of the flowers I wind
Into a heavenly coronal, can bring
The vision of my God, so long a wraith
Unseen by tributary minds to eyes
No longer blinded by the light of faith
If but the dreams I dream, and thro' the skies
Send earthwards, clothed in majesty of song
Unwound from the magic weaving of thy lute
Oh Poesy, should wake a chord along
The world's wide resonance, that hearts now mute
May seize some wandering tremor from its sound
And organ-like, give back an answering note
If but in stagnant souls and visions bound
with bonds accursèd and with vows immote
To one fixed image, graven of spiritual stone
Some wandering thread of song at last should seek
And with a godlike instinct find the throne
Of God who is within; though frail and weak
Should wake a fuller burst of harmony
And fill the soul's domain with sound of mirth
With laughing song, with hope, with sympathy,
With dreams not vain, with tears not born of earth
But wrought of some sublime impatience
Of some diviner discontent some greed
Of things that lie beyond thought, an impotence
A yearning, a desire, a spring seed
Of boundless Heaven, that lives in the heart!
If but these things should be, not vain my grief
Not vain my darkened hopes, not vain the smart
The transient bitterness, the withered leaf
Of love, if Hippocrene should really flow
And with thy goddess' aid such things betide
As in my dreams – – – – –
Then not in vain Medusa will have died
Ah! let us go, the wind is o'er the hill
There is a limpid whisper in its lips
A cool delightful kiss! the clouds are still
And hushed the sighing of the sea. The ships
Scarce stir their mirror'd sails, oh 'tis an hour
Adrift from time upon a timeless lake,
When not to worship, not to glow with power
Were but a dead heart's doom. Come let us shake
Our straining pinions to the breeze; come goddess mine
High o'er the calling heavens let us soar
Ah, we will show the world how dreams may shine
Even in darkest hearts! There is a shore
Beside an eternal sea, where flowers of sleep
Celestial poppy dreams of redder hue
Than ever sunset painted o'er the deep
Horizon! – breathe a ,
honey dew
Wherein our dreams are culled. There we will fly
Cleaving the tractless heavens, higher, higher,
Hard by the Palace of the Trinity!
Beyond Hyperion's everlasting fire.........
Ah
Icarus, thou hast forgot, thy wings
Are stolen plumes, girt on with waxen bonds,
And ye have sought the sun! Vain flutterings,
Vain cries, where only emptiness responds
Vain echoes answering to vanity!
Dream-music lost in day, the cries of lovers
Over the wide wide world, the lonely sea
Yearning for Panope when midnight hovers
Over the dead lone wave! A wailing bird
Disported from the flight when winds are loud
Beneath a weeping winter sky; – unheard,
Unheeded, noteless! How thy wings are bowed
How every hope a jewelled star of gold
Enthroned in swimming mists rimmed round with spheres
Of everlasting light,
How every hope to hearts that mount on air
From ecstacy to ecstasy and thence
By thoughts and dreams upscale the golden stair
Whose height is lost in dim magnificence
Whose topmost gateway is the door of heaven
That opens only to a long-lost key
To eyes that looking inward – driven
Seek out a silenced wish that decked........
_____________________
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