Chapter 2

Again before thee winding, O Sun, at length,-- At length, thou call'st me from the wintry deep! With cornucopian Fire thou giv'st me strength, Caresses and golden hours and grace of sleep. My filial song I weave with theirs who roll Afar or close, past thy celestial face, My sister lamps that o'er the Zodiac's scroll From fane to fane in adoration pace. The rapt Equator's crimson cincture holds Me close; my emerald ocean-robes flow free, And purple soar my mountains, folds on folds, With vale and plain. My bondmaid Moon to me Reveals her marbled snow in cusp and shale-- Whilst in my flinty womb the valiant strife Of Fire proclaims me thine and bans the pale Usurper Death beyond my fields of Life. In Winds that wrap my path, lo, I shall sing To thee a choral eternal, Lord of Days, And Life with myriad hearts in me shall sing Thy glory to scan forever, and chant thy praise.

The wrinkled Moon, charred by the fires of her brief youth, sits serene above the rose-blown round of Earth.

Like an aged beldam she crouches in the heavens, ashes upon her head, weaving her ancient silver magic, spelling enchantment upon the nether Sea.

She is a sybil in whom the wisdom of the worlds is garnered up. Her eyelids are heavy with the poppy.

She smiles and spins in sunlight and in shadow, weaving robes of slumber for her mistress. She holds her shining disk on high as a mirror for her queen.

Her song is such as the watchers sing that sit by the couches of birth and death.

SONG OF THE MOON

THE silvern mistress of the golden Sun, The milk-white sister to the wine-red Earth, My lord still smiles upon me, nor will shun My face for hers of younger, fairer birth. Though oft her fruitful beauty glides between And robs me of his countenance, I will Ne'er hate her, but yield up my borrowed sheen To make her hallowed nights more hallowed still. Burn then, my pale and vestal flame, make fair The nuptials of the amorous Earth with night! My sickle reaps the lurking stars in air, My argent shield hangs lucent on the height. Yet he that chafes and wounds the Earthen shores, And flees though she embrace--the yearning Sea,-- Is shackled by my smiling and implores My chaster, colder kiss and mounts to me. With pearls of white enchantment I bestrew The happy realms where lovers hunt their bliss; My ray is pale as frost and soft as dew; My path is woven in snow through the abyss.

The ambient fluid of the Winds is born, Air is born, invisible Element, felt yet unfeeling. The fissure of the lightning leaves it unwounded, the destroying tempest undestroyed.

It is the bath of the girdled Earth, perfumed with balms and essences. It is the crystal shell whereunder Earth ripens like a fruit.

The light Winds sing as they roll in their courses, weaving the bland and passionate Airs into prophetic chords.

The Element stirs into harmony and musters into one universal voice:

SONG OF AIR

AGAIN I clasp the pure, the passive globe, Her delving valleys and each granite range,-- The Sun and Heaven's bent azure form my robe: With me the Oceans rove, the cloudlands change. Once more the quarters of the world I part, And part those quarters 'twixt my princely sons And pennoned fowl! Let lark and eagle dart! And warbling flocks fill my dominions! Son of the South! bring perfume, nard and spice, Lade all thine amorous burdens on my gales:-- Thou that the Pole-star wooest, mailed in ice, Let swarm thy snow-white bees upon these vales! O West Wind, from each rude and swooping wing Shake forth thy salty tempests, from the plains Transport me healing! Golden Orient, sing, And fan me with thy murmurous painted vanes. O whirlwinds, rash and rude! O headlong wrath Of your unbridled and cyclonic staves! Shall man yet tread you like some earthly path? Shall I, your king, wear shackles like his slaves?

Lord of all waters, Ocean, wrapped in emerald robes, clasps and usurps the world.

The flagrant arrows of the Sun shower on his glancing mail. The estray Winds are wanton with his locks. His mutinous waves whisper each to each, and leap and sink.

Desire irresistible roves within his heaving deeps. Life wields a goad in every drop.

He decks his floods for the face of the Moon, and enlaces them with chains of shackled pearls and bands of foam.

He sends his salty breath aloft and wreathes the Sun with clouds. But his mists return again, falling as tears upon his face.

Inert in the profounds the blind bathybus lies. Fecundity flings her seeds and spores into the glazed abysses, and they teem. There is a heaving in the broken, sunless bottoms; the continents and islands are upcast, rugged and black, shaking the roaring Seas from their flanks.

The labour and song of the Sea begin; the billows repeat it to the lips of the infant land.

SONG OF THE SEA

FLOW, Waters! spread afar my zones of green, So I with salt baptismal waves may haunt And bathe the new-sprung continents terrene, Hearing my freshets and young rivers chaunt. O white-armed children of mine elder waves, Behold what golden lands lie in your sight! Bellow! you molten thunders, in my caves, You whales, gush forth your fountains of delight! Dance, merfolk and mad dolphins, dance the Seas,-- My watery palace-halls are deep and wide, And Earth hath quaffed mine emerald wine whose lees Shall make her shores teem fertile. O'er my tide, The ermine of my surges and the flags And mews lie dense, and pearls sleep in my breast. The coral burns upon my darkest crags, And the slow, mountant atoll knows no rest. My leman fair, the charmed Moon, bends low To draw me with her webs of mute desire, And lo! beyond her magic empires glow Pale fires of sunrise and red sunset fire!

SONG OF EARTH THE ELEMENT

Earth, the Element, mute, impassive, primal, lies shaped to valley, plain and peak. Enwombed in her, the ancient vast fertility lives on.

Her veins are charged with promise and birth, exhaustless quickenings of her eager flesh. She drinks from rocky bowls where lakes lie spread, from twining rivers and living streams.

She pours her virgin vigour through fields no plow has riven. In darkness granite-ribbed, she prisons her mineral hoards.

She lies as a garment upon the Mother-sphere; her feet trespass on Ocean.

Her heart is fretted with Fire, her flanks by the Seas, her brows by Sun and Wind.

In patience and sweet sufferance she lies, substance, nurse and genetrix of Life.

Her Song is heard, a mutter of music, low yet coalescent in slow estrangement from her lips.

I WAKE again!--O dauntless peaks that stand, Watch-towers to all the Heavens--O vales that lie,-- See where I rise or stretch, the lusty land Checks Seas and winnows Winds and frets the sky. Deep in my vaulted heart and womb of fire, And in the domes and chambers of my breasts, The seeds of Life glow teeming--O Sun-king, sire! Arch-quickener of Existence, gild these crests;-- Scatter thy warmth till harvest clothe these plains, And I shall broider me in bridal dreams, Yea, light my feast with blazonry, my veins Leap like my crystal and tellurian streams. In me bright blooms and golden fruitage blown Shall mark where errant, immortal summers creep, And man that is flesh of me, in every zone Build jewelled towns where quick and dead shall sleep. O fixed and faithful through the seasons round, The throne of Earth, her sceptre and her loom, Are mine, with mute, maternal glory crowned, In me all Life shall flower, all Death re-bloom!

Child of the Sun, unmastered and insurgent pulse of Life; breath of the empyrean, seraph winged with ardours and with loveliness!

Comes Fire, pontiff celestial, King of Elements, errant angel, that basks and rejoices in his spaces.

He comes and takes from darkness and cold their undivided victories. Out of the famished sands he leaps, out of the crater's maw.

The genius of flame winds on, touching the peaks with consecration. His red and golden nakedness is crested with his sable clouds of hair.

Upward and onward he aspires. His crimson vans are spread against the heavens, his torches flutter, making glorious the funerals of the day. His feet are a scourge across the soil; his arms are lifted to the stars.

Co-eval with them he burns and sings with a thousand tongues.

SONG OF FIRE

A FETTERLESS, bright spirit, wing'd and pure, Soul from all souls of Suns in essence bred, Lo! Fire am I,--without me shall endure No Life, nor plant nor creature lift its head. In burning beards of comets red I float; I dance with lambent torches on the stars; I wash with sulphurous flame the roaring throat Of peaks, and blaze beneath the thunder's cars. Master of Earth am I;--on her my will I stamp, and with fierce searing kisses press My passion on her naked flesh and thrill Her hidden veins with rapture. My caress Is lustral. In her lovers' hearts I creep And tip with fateful coals the prophet's tongue; God-like from lips of poets I sing and leap,-- I the eternal fair, the eternal young! And none shall conquer me save they who call My strength to sovereign toil in craft or strife; With me shall tribes of men hold festival,-- Cities and realms shall find me Death or Life.

Repossessed of their ancient heritage, the four conqueror Elements sit on their dowered spheres.

Wind, Ember, Current, conscious Earth, the eternal weavers and toilers, labour in felicity.

Chaos and Night and Death are disenthroned. The system burns along its orbits through the dark. The benisons of the stars and suns are cast upon these youngest worlds.

Buoyant and blithe the planets wheel.

Their year-long arcs and each season's ordained processional are portioned unto them: their vassal moons also and the speed of their turning and their measure of night and day.

The ruddy jocund Earth presses close to the Sun, timorous of the outer void, baring her bosom to his kiss.

Has not the inevitable and recurrent Spring of Existence come unto her once again? The iron shackles of Silence--are they not broken?--the granite of the Night, is it not crumbled low?--the ice of Death, is it not molten?

She blooms in her resurrection; her voice is lifted in the universal litany to Life. She rolls in her golden garniture of beams, circling with the singing sister-spheres. Her rondure floats against the distant cohorts of the constellations.

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.

But its music is showered over Earth.

It is prisoned in the sea-shells; the flowers garner it in their chalices.

It stirs in the heart of Man.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Masque of the Elements, by Herman Scheffauer