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

A keeper's stray shot suddenly divides
This evening's silence, then the dogs respond,
And up the steep hill's moist and rutted road
Hardly the waggon horses toil and strain.
An ancient beech is by me, broad of girth
And all about its roots enrich'd with moss,
While through the wooded vista of the slope
Only the bush makes dark the rover's way.

Now pleasant pools, with basking swans beside,
In dim recesses spread their brown expanse,
While East and South the spell of sunset light
Has visibly transfigured and enrich'd
Those golden slopes of uplands far away.

Her priestly function so the soul assumes—
Invoking, praising. Here the peace without
Makes peace within; the peace profound within
Sheds deeper peace without than Nature knows,
Save in the mystic equipoise of man's
Immortal part with her essential life,
Exalting both; then both repose therein,
In common bliss dependent each on each,
And unified.

Sweet Spirit of the sky—
So speaks the Soul, vibrating, brimm'd with song—
May peace of God o'er all thy broad expanse
Be spread for ever! May thy roving clouds,
Which carry coolness and life-yielding showers,
From zone to zone, to freshen every field,
To swell the streams and seas, thyself invest
With beauties new! May each returning eve

197

From one new star, more bright than all before,
Enrich thy gem-set crown with silver gleam,
Thy lucid spaces purify and fill—
As with the lenity and grace of God!
O may thy peace and beauty's broad increase
On hearts distil in other showers and dew!
May all bright eyes beneath thy glance uplifted
Be with thine azure, with thine argent rays,
Suffused, and melted towards love's mildest mood,
Yet thy full joy reflect in every glance!

Ascending still this winding woodland road,
I see thy gentle blue to golden green,
Like shapes in sleep, transfigure. Then it seems
Thine answer comes; thy splendour passing down
Invests the soul and blesses in return;
Man's love for Nature on himself devolves
In lucid gifts; he sees, he feels, he knows,
And inspiration to a throne of thought
Uplifts him. Take, sweet Nature, take thy child!
Speak in the winds of evening, speak in mists,
Speak in the revelation of the stars!
And in the tremor of the midnight hush,
Wherein the lone sea washes far away,
Reveal and speak!

“So art thou child no more”—
This mystic Nature utters to the soul—
“But, one in essence, thou art old like me,
Yet ever young, for ever changed and born,
As through the pageant of created things
Thou passest slowly towards the utmost point;
And all my light goes with thee, all my hopes
Spread wings before thee, while the end, the end,
Is not so distant but its glory streams
Far and away, not from the East or West—
O not from star or sun!—far and away,
Where the heart rests—all in the light, the light—

198

Truth-light and love-light, splendour of over-soul,
Making the soul a splendour; and my form,
Which is the circle of created things,
Glows in thy glory, in thy change transmutes.
For what divides us, whether dark or day?
What makes our union? Ever that which joins
The God encompassing to thee within!”

And in the fading splendour of the West,
When spent larks drop, when waters merge in mist,
Who wills may read this message of God's light
And find already in his inmost self
The first faint gleams of that effulgence shine.