The collected poems of Arthur Edward Waite :: :: University of Virginia Library

I see, my God, thy scarlet sun descend!
There is no shadow on that blazing orb,
There is no mist about it; magnified,
Still-glowing, rayless—so it sinks in silence! . . .
Behold the burning circle broken now!
There is no wind on land, no wave at sea;
Behind this meadow, with the mill beside,
The day-god's head devolves! A lark's last song,
High in the lavender and opal sky,
To grey refined, through summer silence rings,
And night is held thereby; with balanced plumes,
The dusk Queen waits. Sustain, sweet mother, Earth,
Thy gifted messenger, deferring still!
Ascend, thou voice; ring on; thy parent doth
The aspiration of her evening fragrance
After thy flight direct! And I too stand;
I stand a humble, image-haunted man,
Who in that melody and madness loses
The dreamlike, rippled cadence of the sea,
Who loses earth and sea, whose soul ascends,
And, like a fragrance from the earth exhaled,
In aspiration and in ecstasy,
Where thy wings beat the air, wild bird, it dies!