Shadows and Lights

What gods have met in conflict to arouse

This whirling shadow of invisible things.

These hosts that writhe amid the shattered sods?

O Father, and O Mother of the Gods,

Is there some trouble in the heavenly house?

We who are captained by its unseen kings

Wonder what thrones are shaken in the skies,

What powers who held dominion o'er our will

Let fall the sceptre, and what destinies

The younger gods may drive us to fulfill.

Have they not swayed us, earth's invisible lords,

With whispers and with breathings from the dark?

The very border-stones of nations mark

Where silence swallowed some wild prophet's words

That rang but for an instant and were still,

Yet were so burthened with eternity,

They maddened all who heard to work their will,

To raise the lofty temple on the hill.

And many a glittering thicket of keen swords

Flashed out to make one law for land and sea ,

That earth might move with heaven in company.

The cities that to myriad beauty grew

Were altars raised unto old gods who died,

And they were sacrificed in ruins to

The younger gods who took their place of pride;

They have no brotherhood, the deified,

No high companionship of throne by throne,

But will their beauty still to be alone.

What is a nation but a multitude

United by some god-begotten mood,

Some hope of liberty or dream of power

That have not with each other brotherhood

But warred in spirit from their natal hour,

Their hatred god-begotten as their love

Reverberations of eternal strife?

For all that fury breathed in human life,

Are ye not guilty, answer, ye above?

Ah, no, the circle of the heavenly ones,

That ring of burning, grave, inflexible powers,

Array in harmony amid the deep

The golden legionaries of the suns,

That through their day from dawn to twilight keep

The peace of heaven, and have no feuds like ours,

The Morning Stars their labours of the dawn

Close at the advent of the Solar Kings,

And these with joy their sceptres yield, withdrawn

When the still Evening Stars begin their reign,

And twilight time is thrilled with homing wings

To the All-Father Being turned again.

No, not on high begin divergent ways,

The galaxies of interlinked lights

Rejoicing on each other's beauty gaze,

'Tis we who do make errant all the rays

That stream upon us from the astral heights,

Love in our thickened air too redly burns;

And unto vanity our beauty turns;

Wisdom, that gently whispers us to part

From evil, swells to hatred in the heart.

Dark is the shadow of invisible things

On us who look not up, whose vision fails.

The glorious shining of the heavenly kings

To mould us to their image naught avails.

They weave a robe of many-coloured fire

To garb the spirits moving in the deep,

And in the upper air its splendours keep

Pure and unsullied, but below it trails

Darkling and glimmering in our earthly mire.

Our eyes are ever earthward. We are swayed

But by the shadows of invisible light,

And shadow against shadow is arrayed

So that one dark may dominate the nigaht.

Though kinsmen are the lights that cast the shade,

We look not up, nor see how, side by side,

The high originals of all our pride

In crowned and sceptred brotherhood are throned

Compassionate of our blindness and our hate

That own the godship but the love disowned.

Ah, let us for a little while abate

The outward roving eye, and seek within

Where spirit unto spirit is allied;

There, in our inmost being, we may win

The joyful vision of the heavenly wise

                                    To see the beauty in each other's eyes.