Æ

Prelude to Collected Poems

            Oh, be not led away,

Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day.

The gay romance of song

Unto the spirit life doth no belong:

Though far-between the hours

In which the Master of Angelic powers

Lightens the dusk within

The holy of holies, be it thine to win

Rare vistas of white light,

Half-parted lips through which the Infinite

Murmurs in ancient story,

Hearkening to whom the wandering planets hoary

Waken primeval fires,

With deeper rapture in celestial choirs

Breathe, and with fleeter motion

Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean.

So hearken thou like these,

Intent on it, mounting by slow degrees,

Until thy song’s elation

Echoes the multitudinous meditation.

Notes: First published in the Irish Theosophist November 15, 1893 with the title To a Poet. In Æ’s Collected Poems the poem was published as an epigraph without a title.