The Mother’s Tragedy

40 THE FATAL FORCE And comets moving through the deep Unfathomable skies, Darker for moonlight, and the glowworm eyes Of dusky women that were stars, And paler curves of the immutable bars That line the universe with light, Great eagle-flights of mystic moons That dip, while the dull midnight swoons About the skirts of Night: These bowed and shaped themselves and said : “It shall be thus!” And the intolerable luminous Death that is god bent down his head And answered: “ Thus, immutably, Above all days and deeds, shall be!” And the great Light that is above all gods Lifted his calm brow, spake, and all the seas, And all the air, and all the periods Of seasons and of stars gave ear, and these Vaults of the heaven heard The great white Light that shaped its secrecies Into one holy terrible word, | Higher than all words spoken; for He said: ‘‘ Death is made change, and only change is dead.” For the most holy spirit of a man Burns through the limit of the wheels that ran Through all the unrelenting skies When Icarus died, And leaps, the flight of wise omnipotent eyes, When Deedalus espied