We gather to the sombre sound, as spring
Had whispered, “ Follow,” hiding in her wing
Her glorious head and flowing breast of wine.
Though in the hollow of her heart be set
So deep and awful a fire, though the net
Of all her robes be frail as we are fine,
We gather, listening to the living lyre
Like falling water shot with amber fire,
And blown aloft by winds even to heaven’s desire.
Deep starry gems set in a silver sea,
Sullen low voices of dark minstrelsy,
Light whispers of strange loves, of silver woven,
Dumb kisses and wild laughter following:
All these as lives of autumn and of spring
We are: we follow across the rainbow cloven,
A never-fading path of golden glory,
Whereof the lone Leucadian promontory
Holds one divinest gate: the other troven
Far, far beyond in interlunar skies,
Where the Himalayas stir them, and arise
To listen to the song that swells our arteries.
O moving labyrinth sun-crowned, dread maze
Of starry paths, of Zeus-untrodden ways,
Of mystic vales unfooted of the deep,
Our mother, virgin yet in many places
Unseen of man, beholden of the faces
Only of elemental shapes of sleep
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