University of Virginia Library

Honey and milk and bread and wine,
The mystic chest unlades its store,
The needs of men and the life divine,
Honey and milk and wine and bread.
We touch our foreheads to the floor,
We from the cup libations pour,
We smite with steel the sacred swine,
We trebly bar the temple door.
For she sits, she sits in the inward shrine
In a garden gown and a wheaten crown.
Stand apart! ye non-elect,
Ere our mysteries begin.
He only keeps his soul erect,
Who is clean from soil of sin.
As the garment, which ye wear,
Let your mind be pure as snow;
To those who love and those who dare
The mighty mother is not slow
To bring illumination near,
To melt the veil, unwrap the night
And flood upon the eye and ear
The sights of dread and sounds of might.
Ye alone shall gaze in fear
Whose eyes are ready for the sight;
Ye alone shall trembling hear
Whose minds can fathom depth and height;
And ye alone shall peep and peer
To astral circle, crystal sphere,
Till the deaf man shall hear
And the blind man gain light.

Let the priestly choir
Raise their droning song,
Voices scaling higher,
As the hymn grows strong,
Shawms and flute and lyre.
Let the augur's throng
Feed the sacred fire,
Beat the drum and gong;
Let the cymbals ring.
Let the censer swing
Till it cloud the fane
Like the amethyst
Veils that floating wane
Above the hilly violet crest
That crowns the Attic plain.
But now the pipes refrain
And let the lyres desist
Their wailing strain.

Now come the rites of fire,—
The cleanser of the world,—
Rose-coloured flames mount higher,
In quivering spiral curled;
Now the storax burns
And burns the resin slow,
Now the ember turns,
And gently breathing blow
Frankincense and myrrh,
Ambergris and gum.
Pray the while to her,
Whose ghostly garments come
Sweeping the marble floor.
O make the pavement sweet
As daffodils to bear
Touch of the holy feet!
Now pause in silence dumb,
And hardly draw your breath,
Until the symbol come,
To mention which is death;
The emblem of a vast
Application, mighty sign
Of awful chrism cast
Upon a brow divine,
And beads of sorrow fast
Falling from eyes that pine.
The weird of her we praise,
Who makes the harvest grow.
Approach and trembling gaze
Upon the mother's woe.
Who is she that sits
In long concluded days,
On a boulder stone,
By the bulrush pits?
Who is she that weeps,
Weeping for her daughter,
Making grievous moan
By the Attic water,
Broken and alone?
Hunger in the land,
Hope of harvest slain:
Mildew, smut and rust,
Ears of blighted grain,
Clouds of poisoned dust:
Kine that cannot graze,
Tainted herd and steer
Dying in the ways:
Shepherds pale with fear.
Goes a wail on high
From hamlets lacking bread.
The soil is parched and dry,
No seed will germinate
The germs of life are dead.
Some god with scathing hate
In this our Attic home,
Hath moved the wheels of Fate
And cursed it, glebe and loam.
Why hath this terror come?
What trespass hath been ours
That the seasons lose their date,
That spring forgets her powers?
Curse the cause of all this ill,
Curse Ascalaphus, the owl,
Blabbing tongue and bitter skill
To watch and pry, to peep and prowl:
With our sign we curse him—thus:—
Fowl of hell, Ascalaphus,
Feather-fledged, with large round eyes.
Perish thus officious spies!
Sit aloft with snoring horn
And hoot the dim eclipsing morn;
Shroud thy shame in owlet's plume,
Punished with a righteous doom;
Thou, who saw the tiny seed
Tasted in the halls of gloom.
With bite nor sup her lips were wet,
One only grain the maiden ate
Of clear and rubied pomegranate
Taken at her utmost need,
Prompted by an evil fate:
A speck, a grain, and yet of power
To hold her in, sweet prisoned flower.
If she had tasted naught, Zeus said,
She should return from the halls of dread—
And this beast told it—thus and thus—
The trebly-cursed Ascalaphus!

And lo, our mystic service ends
With symbol of the thrice-ploughed field,
A fearful weird that sign portends,
A root immortal, when the seed
Of awful harvests blends
A fallow ripe with mystic deed.
Fearful is the weird.
Drops of moisture quiver
On the pale priest's brow,
And waving like a river
The broken fallow bends,
As the thunder-shock is pealed
O'er the upturned furrows of the field.
Blue the tapers burn
At the spirits overhead;
The altar candles turn
Pale blue from fiery red.
We feel them at the most,
But the flame perceives a ghost
And flickers dim with dread.
The pure flame quails to hear
The waft of the floating dead,
Which cannot reach our ear.
Extinguish now all light;
Pray fervently each one.
Ye have known a strange delight,
Ye are wise in love of might;
Ye see beyond the sight
Of a world of fleeting night.
Our mysteries are done.