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

Our sleep is over now: what morning dawns?
The beautiful and visionary night,
Moon-haunted all its length, by winds inform'd,
A worshipful and spiritual night,
Has in this daylight disillusion grey
Been sadly merged. The prose of life on earth
Begins to speak. And here I stand alone—
One billow broke upon the bay far out
This moment pass'd; it flash'd a seething crest,
Then fell. What space for inspiration now?
What magic left? What message in the sea?
The once bright-shining moon is bleak and white
And burnt to cinders. When the trees were draped
By solemn darkness, in their mien was awe,
Their aspect majesty, their rustling leaves
Dodonian prophecy—they were mighty thoughts.
Now their spell shatters; as a part once more
Of vegetative nature, they stand stripp'd
Of poetry and meaning. The lark's song
Is some mere singing of a morning lark;
That engine's drawn out, melancholy shriek
Fills all its silver pauses far prolong'd,
And drowns with dismal wail its golden close.

O bitterness! There is no human word
Which gives expression to the craving depth
Of desolation foss'd in human hearts;
All futile methods of our mortal speech
Choke sympathy by commonizing grief.
I made by magic in a winter month
An Eden-garden full of holy bloom:
The blessed lotus in its lakes abode

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With stately swans, and all its paths were lined
By lustrous lilies. Thine azaleas filled
The consecrated air with grateful light,
From myriad blooms. Thou hadst no care therein;
I spent the strength of spirit on thy dreams—
To crowd the sacred hush of mystic sleep
With all high-speaking images. I search'd
The world of mind to build thy maiden bed,
In amaranthine bowers, with purple blooms
Of dim, inviolable violets:
Their scented heads received thy psychic limbs
And soften'd moss beneath. . . . But morning broke—
Then was a latch upon the garden gate
Uplifted by thy voluntary hand
And from the aureate place of our dream-light
Thou didst go forth; thy beauty's human grace
Has chosen earth. . . .

A blush of morning bursts
Above the dim and wavering line of downs
Far flashing sanguine glory up the sky;
That lofty and immeasurable arch
Transforms from grey to lavender, and fills
With sudden ecstasy of morning birds . . . .

The charm arrested leaves thee clay once more:
Thou art not wholly false nor wholly true;
The world, God knows, may leaven thee. But me
The dream shall hearten; the earth's part dissolves,
God's part remains, whilst thou hast fallen short
Of immortality and beatitude.
There was no height beyond the power of soul
To scale for thee. There was no height beyond
Those heights to which my spirit should itself
Have lifted thee. . . .

I see thee deck'd with pearls
And turquoise rings; the splendours brought from East

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And West invest thy body. Thou art clothed
With earthly wealth instead of phantasy.
O sole and only truth of deathless mind,
And dreadful lapse from starry heaven of thought
To lower riches! Can I wish thee bless'd
In these, or mated unto man of earth,
Ascribe thee true beatitude therein?
Thou wast a spirit in these arms' embrace,
And I transfigured in thine own had dwelt
As god beside thee, deified thereby.
How art thou fallen, O Lucifera!
But ecstasy of ardour never quench'd
Suffers a golden change on heights of soul.
So upward ever! To the endless height,
Which meets the bottomless, abysmal depth
In the infinite circle of Eternity!
Light for thee still—O somewhere, somewhere Light—
If I eclipse thee in my angelhood,
O thou too pure e'er to be wholly false,
I'll clothe thee in the mantle of my soul,
And on my shoulders raise thee past myself
To heights beyond me!