The Nuts of Knowledge | Page 2

these low degrees?To starry dynasties,?But, looking far where now the silence owns?And rules from empty thrones,?Thou seest the enchanted halls of heaven burn?For joy at our return.?Thy tender kiss hath memory we are kings?For all our wanderings.?Thy shining eyes already see the after?In hidden light and laughter.
THE BURNING GLASS
A shaft of fire that falls like dew,?And melts and maddens all my blood,?From out thy spirit flashes through?The burning glass of womanhood.
Only so far; here must I stay:?Nearer I miss the light, the fire:?I must endure the torturing ray,?And, with all beauty, all desire.
Ah, time-long must the effort be,?And far the way that I must go?To bring my spirit unto thee,?Behind the glass, within the glow.
A VISION OF BEAUTY
Where we sat at dawn together, while the star-rich heavens shifted, We were weaving dreams in silence, suddenly the veil was lifted. By a hand of fire awakened, in a moment caught and led?Upward to the wondrous vision: through the star-mists overhead Flare and flaunt the monstrous highlands; on the sapphire coast of night Fall the ghostly froth and fringes of the ocean of the light. Many coloured shine the vapours: to the moon-eye far away 'Tis the fairy ring of twilight mid the spheres of night and day, Girdling with a rainbow cincture round the planet where we go, We and it together fleeting, poised upon the pearl glow; We and it and all together flashing through the starry spaces In a tempest dream of beauty lighting up the place of places. Half our eyes behold the glory: half within the spirit's glow Echoes of the noiseless revels and the will of beauty go. By a hand of fire uplifted--to her star-strewn palace brought, To the mystic heart of beauty and the secret of her thought: Here of yore the ancient mother in the fire mists sank to rest, And she built her dreams about her, rayed from out her burning breast: Here the wild will woke within her lighting up her flying dreams, Round and round the planets whirling break in woods and flowers and streams, And the winds are shaken from them as the leaves from off the rose, And the feet of earth go dancing in the way that beauty goes, And the souls of earth are kindled by the incense of her breath As her light alternate lures them through the gates of birth and death. O'er the fields of space together following her flying traces, In a radiant tumult thronging, suns and stars and myriad races Mount the spirit spires of beauty, reaching onward to the day When the Shepherd of the Ages draws his misty hordes away Through the glimmering deeps to silence, and within the awful fold Life and joy and love forever vanish as a tale is told, Lost within the mother's being. So the vision flamed and fled, And before the glory fallen every other dream lay dead.
REST
On me to rest, my bird, my bird:?The swaying branches of my heart?Are blown by every wind toward?The home whereto their wings depart.
Build not your nest, my bird, on me:?I know no peace but ever sway:?O, lovely bird, be free, be free,?On the wild music of the day.
But sometimes when your wings would rest,?And winds are laid on quiet eves:?Come, I will bear you breast to breast,?And lap you close with loving leaves.
THE EARTH BREATH
From the cool and dark-lipped furrow breathes a dim delight Through the woodland's purple plumage to the diamond night. Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass?Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass. And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering, Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king;?For a fiery moment looking with the eyes of God?Over fields a slave at morning bowed him to the sod.?Blind and dense with revelation every moment flies.?And unto the mighty mother, gay, eternal, rise?All the hopes we hold, the gladness, dreams of things to be. One of all thy generations, mother, hails to thee.?Hail, and hail, and hail for ever, though I turn again?From thy joy unto the human vestiture of pain.?I, thy child who went forth radiant in the golden prime, Find thee still the mother-hearted through my night in time: Find in thee the old enchantment there behind the veil?Where the gods, my brothers, linger. Hail, for ever hail!
DIVINE VISITATION
The heavens lay hold on us: the starry rays?Fondle with flickering fingers brow and eyes:?A new enchantment lights the ancient skies.?What is it looks 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