The Mother’s Tragedy

54 THE FATAL FORCE They foam upon the sands that burn With spring’s delirious festivals. They flash upon the gleaming ways, They cry, they chant aloud the praise Of Isis, and our temple kisses Their flowery water-wildernesses, Whose foamheads nestle to the stones With slumberous antiphones. All birds and beasts and fish are fain To mingle passion with the hope All creatures hold, that cycled pain May make its stream the wider scope Of many lives and changing law, Till to the sacred fountains draw Essences of dim being, mated With lofty substance uncreated, Concluding the full period That makes all being God. PACHAD (desguised in the mask of a lion). I lift the censer. Hail, immortal queen, From the vast hall of death! Dead Horus cries Towards the dawn. Bid me awake, O mother! O mother! from the darkness of the tomb, That live Osiris may cry back to thee, O spouse! O sister! from the halls of life, The profound lake, the immeasurable depth, The sea of the three Loves! O mother, mother! Isis, the voice that even Ament hears,