Orpheus

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 62