The Nuts of Knowledge | Page 3

between us gaze on gaze?
Does the wild spirit of the
endless days
Chase through my heart some lure that ever flies?

Only I know the vast within me cries
Finding in thee the ending of all
ways.
Ah, but they vanish; the immortal train
From thee, from me,

depart, yet take from thee
Memorial grace: laden with adoration

Forth from this heart they flow that all in vain
Would stay the proud
eternal powers that flee
After the chase in burning exultation.
THE MASTER SINGER
A laughter in the diamond air, a music in the trembling grass; And one
by one the words of light as joydrops through my being pass. I am the
sunlight in the heart, the silver moonglow in the mind; My laughter
runs and ripples through the wavy tresses of the wind. I am the fire
upon the hills, the dancing flame that leads afar Each burning-hearted
wanderer, and I the dear and homeward star. A myriad lovers died for
me, and in their latest yielded breath I woke in glory giving them
immortal life though touched by death. They knew me from the dawn
of time: if Hermes beats his rainbow wings, If Angus shakes his locks
of light, or golden-haired Apollo sings, It matters not the name, the
land; my joy in all the gods abides: Even in the cricket in the grass
some dimness of me smiles and hides. For joy of me the day star glows,
and in delight and wild desire The peacock twilight rays aloft its
plumes and blooms of shadowy fire, Where in the vastness too I burn
through summer nights and ages long, And with the fiery footed
Watchers shake in myriad dance and song.
APHRODITE
Not unremembering we pass our exile from the starry ways: One
timeless hour in time we caught from the long night of endless days.
With solemn gaiety the stars danced far withdrawn on elfin heights:
The lilac breathed amid the shade of green and blue and citron lights.
But yet the close enfolding night seemed on the phantom verge of
things, For our adoring hearts had turned within from all their
wanderings: For beauty called to beauty and there thronged at the
enchanter's will The vanished hours of love that burn within the
Ever-living still. And sweet eternal faces put the shadows of the earth
to rout, And faint and fragile as a moth your white hand fluttered and
went out. Oh, who am I who tower beside this goddess of the twilight
air? The burning doves fly from my heart and melt within her bosom

there. I know the sacrifice of old they offered to the mighty queen, And
this adoring love has brought us back the beauty that has been. As to
her worshippers she came descending from her glowing skies So
Aphrodite I have seen with shining eyes look through your eyes: One
gleam of the ancestral face which lighted up the dawn for me: One fiery
visitation of the love the gods desire in thee!
ILLUSION
What is the love of shadowy lips
That know not what they seek or
press,
From whom the lure for ever slips
And fails their phantom
tenderness?
The mystery and light of eyes
That near to mine grow dim and cold;

They move afar in ancient skies
Mid flame and mystic darkness
rolled.
O, beauty, as thy heart o'erflows
In tender yielding unto me,
A vast
desire awakes and grows
Unto forgetfulness of thee.
BABYLON
The blue dusk ran between the streets; my love was winged within my
mind; It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.
To-day was past and dead for me for from to-day my feet had run
Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.
On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays
Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days. The
tower of heaven turns darker blue; a starry sparkle now begins; The
mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins Come back
to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers; Within the
gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers. The waters lull me,
and the scent of many gardens, and I hear Familiar voices, and the
voice I love is whispering in my ear. Oh real as in dream all this; and
then a hand on mine is laid: The wave of phantom time withdraws; and
that young Babylonian maid, One drop of beauty left behind from all
the flowing of that tide, Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in

Ireland by my side. Oh, light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken
wings, While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.
ALTER EGO
All the morn a spirit gay
Breathes within my heart a rhyme,
'Tis but
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