Classic Poem

L LYN-Y -V AN V ACH .

Now the Morn, arrayed in light,
Gold and grey and silvery white,
Hastens to the ardent pool
That lies brimmed and beautiful
In its mountain cup of green;
Ardent, radiant; cool, serene.
There the water for the fire,
All the night, with wan desire,
For the morning watched and lay
Longing for the break of day, —
Hiding in its heart the dream
Of the Sun's awakening gleam.
Now he comes, and light meets light:
Now his spears the host of night
Drive into the earthen deeps
Where essential darkness sleeps;
And the water throbs and stirs
With the flashing of his spears,
One in elemental glow,
Fire and water, ebb and flow.

Now, once more, the mountain way,
After many an exiled day,
We are come to seek for grace
Of this solitary place:
Looking from the rippled deep,
Where the shadow of the steep
Casts a burnished shield that seems
To be lifted as it swims,
Like Arthur's Sword, to where beside
One Golden Bough is in the tide
Mirrored so exquisitely,
It half seems spirit, half seems tree.

Is it there the linnet sings,
That brief note whose music brings
All the light and grace of earth
To one strain of lyric mirth?
Or, is what we hear, a voice
Of the lake, — a naiad noise,
Liquid, fine as light, and sweet
As this fragrance at our feet?
Tree and Lake and all around
Tell this place is holy ground,
And that strain that died away,
Too, proclaim this Holy Day.

Now the mystery grows more,
And the thoughts we lost before
Swift return: and winged they rove
Far to an Italian grove:
For this pool in spirit is
One in its green mysteries
With that fair Arician lake,
Where of old for Dian's sake
Came the dreadful slave to slay,
On the pale predestined day:
And the slain god straight gave up
To the slaying, the Grail's red cup.
Oh, if we have changed our faith,
And forgot the phrase of Death,
And its purple, spilt to give
To the slayer, art to live:
Not the less be ours to know
The secret of the Golden Bough,
And the awe and mystery
Of Fire and Water, Lake and Tree.
Still the Golden Bough shall bloom
In the coming days of gloom:
Still at morn, the living lake
To the Sun-gleam shall awake,
Still the bird shall sing the strain
Of Love's grace of joy and pain.
By their sign, a different priest
Of Dian's, let me live, at least, —
To sing the Heavenly Mysteries
And hymn the Eternal Essences,
And serve you, Dian, as of old,
With morning light, and Bough of Gold.