THE GREAT GOD HAS BEEN RELEASED FROM DARKNESS'

(VEDIC HYMN)

THE Sun that flames in the East, the Lightgiver, Agni, Lord of the House of Gold,

Rose radiant in Heaven and scattered afar the Gray Maidens of the Dawn,

And men turned their eyes to the Light, and worshipped a Majesty burning and old,

Till a fire sprang up in the soul of the wise, and delight, and a new song was born.

20

GREAT GOD RELEASED

But here under heavy boughs that droop

over rain-haunted pools in the West, Whilst the daughters of Mannanan croon at sunset their old and shadowy rune,

We, the children of dreams, who wander beside pale waters where waves are at

rest,

Have made a song for the white Life

giver, the Lonely-the silver-souled

Moon.

THE ANCIENT WISDOM

TIME in dark underground dungeons

brought the pale seed to birth,

Whilst the slow array of the seasons shed sunshine, and the centuries watered the

sod,

Till the Tree of Knowledge grew silently towering out of the darkness of earth,

And the sun's face was veiled in a mist of

green boughs like the face of an angry

God.

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THE ANCIENT WISDOM

But the broken dream that fell long ago

from the far blue deeps of the twilight

skies,

Carved in the likeness of gods forgotten,

great-browed desolate Powers Divine, Like a star that gleams in the blue abyss, or

a moonlit wave in the soul of the Wise, In the innermost chancel of dreams shall

brood, o'er a secret and shadowy shrine.

THE CITY

On through the iron day each stone-bound

square

The soul of the green grass entombed hides, The buried spirit of the Wise and Fair Imprisoned in the earth's heart still abides.

Then evening passes cool hands o'er the

town,

Making a dream, against the conquering

skies,

Of giant Labour-houses that crush down

The buried spirit of the Fair and Wise.