The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE SEVENFOLD SACRAMENT Yet suffereth in itself the curse Of the infinite universe, Having made its own confession Of the mystery of transgression; Where it is wedded solemnly With the ring of space and eternity, And where the oil, the Holiest Breath, With Its first whisper dedicateth Its new life to a further death. Iwas cold as earth: the night Had given way. One star hung bright Over the church, now gray; I rose up to greet the ray That thrilled through elm and chestnut, lit The grass, made diamonds of it, And bade the weir’s long smile of spray Leap with laughter for the day. The birds woke over all the weald; The sullen peasants slouched afield; The lilies swayed before the breeze That murmured matins in the trees; The trout leapt in the shingly shallows. Soared skyward the great sun, that hallows The pagan shrines of labour and light As the moon consecrates the night. Labour is corn and love is wine, And both are blesséd in the shrine; Nor is he for priest designed Who partakes only in one kind. 193