The ancient Spirit of Chaos swings her pitchy cressets, and sinks down the starless deep on her tall catafalque of Death.
Rejoice, O orb vestured in beauty! Put forth thy wings, thy coronals of Love, wrap thee with fluctuant Winds and exulting Seas!
Shall thy offspring feel dismay, knowing what light shall burst from dark, what life leap from Death, what flowers blow from dust?
So the anointed and belted spheres, re-risen from their bath of silence and their sleep of time, move on companioned with eternal hope.
The fingers of the Sun stroke forth a glorious strain; the worlds are shawns and cymbals for his minstrelsy. The Spirit of Creation pours forth her victorious baptismal harmonies.
Triumphantly her music daunts the firmament and echoes against the dusks of the Unapproachable.
SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF CREATION
ONCE more the soft, terraqueous chaunt I hear
In choral, and the nuptial planet-dance
I mark. With puissant sceptre o'er each sphere,
Life thrones in music and in wonder's trance.
Hail! vessels solar and terrestrial, hail!
Whose prows shall cross the dim, celestial bars
With helm sidereal and cloudy sail,
Bannered with youth and lanterned with the stars.
What fates for ballast? by what voices grim
And laughters urged, your astral course I mark,--
Warped to what ports remote your hulks shall swim
Or anchor silent in what stagnant dark?
Mine arms have raised you from the cosmic deep;
Now Fire hath sprent his jewelled drops and sown
Marvellous seeds whence beauty's plants shall creep
Season to season weaving, zone to zone.
Now sacerdotal Love shall shape and dye
His forms within the house of joy and tears,
And Birth shall bless and Death shall sanctify
Earth's passion and her pageant through the years.
Down the everlasting, unchangeable cope the hymnal of Life is reft away.