Collected Works (Vol. III)

152 ORPHEUS As the children of Fear In the Fear-God’s Power, And their names disappear As the fall of a flower! The universe-day (Whereof I am a second) Shall fall away And be no more reckoned; Shall fall into ruin. (Sad garden it grew in !) Unguessed at, unknown, Beyond them alone, Is a space that is grey As it caught them, and beckoned, And lost them—their way Is nor counted nor reckoned ! Inconceivable hollow, Eternity’s womb! Cataclysmal they follow, Tomb hidden in tomb. Keeled off and unspun, Time’s fashion is done In the ultimate Abysses of fate. ‘Kons they swallow, And swamp in the gloom, Where Eternities follow Their biers to their tomb. ORPHEUS. O Mother, O hollow Sweet heart of the moon ! O matchless Apollo That granted the tune ! Time’s children follow The strings that commune With Nature well cloven that comes to the lyre’s lilt silver-hewn. O bays of the wind, And shoreland of Thrace! O beaten and blind In the light of my face ! Heaven thunders behind, Hell shakes for a space, As I fling the loud sound to the sky, and the vaults of the Earth give place. O mystical tune Of a magic litten Of music, the moon, The stars unsmitten, The sun, the unhewn Stones deeply bitten By runic fingers of time, where decrees of the Fates are written ! Time listens, obeys me ; All Nature replies ; Nought avoids me, nor stays me, Nor checks, nor defies. Tribute she pays me From seas unto skies, But Death—shall he heed me or hear? shall he list to the lyre and arise? O thou who art seated, Invisible king, The never-defeated, The shadowy thing ! What mortal hath greeted Thy shrine, but shall sing Not earthly but tunes of thine own, in the vaults of Aornos that ring? Nor caring nor hearing For hearts that be bowed, Nor hating nor fearing Man’s crying aloud, Solemnly spearing The single, the crowd, Thou sittest remote and alone, unprofane, with due silence endowed ! I call thee by Nature, My mother and friend ! By every creature ! By life and its end! By love, the true teacher, My chanting I send, Invoking thy stature immense, the terrible form of a fiend !