Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.
139. The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty
I
The colour, the wonder,
The song I conceive in
My heart while I ponder,
The magi of old
Whose chant was a flame like
The dawn’s voice of gold;
A murmur of birds,
And ear still could hear them
Unchanted in words.
Reveal thee my heart,
Oh, Light of the Lonely,
The shining impart.
The lights danced up before my eyes:
I found no sleep or peace or rest,
But dreams of stars and burning skies.
Dream faces, pale, with cloudy hair,
I knew you not nor yet your home,
The Fount of Shadowy Beauty, where?
Where ne’er did human feet intrude:
It was the border of a wood,
A dreadful forest solitude.
The clouds were woven o’er the ocean;
The stars in fiery æther swung
And danced with gay and glittering motion.
When first I saw the old sea shine;
As if a god were there revealed
I bowed my head in awe divine;
I mused until the gathering haze
Veiled from me where the silver tide
Ran in its thousand shadowy ways.
The silent awe came down with it:
I saw fantastic vapours flee
As o’er the darkness of the pit.
A speck of rose and silver light
Above a boat shaped wondrously
Came floating swiftly o’er the sea.
The boat so fleetly to the shore
Without a sail spread or an oar.
And lifted up his ancient face,
Ancient with glad eternal youth
Like one who was of starry race.
His eyes a bronze and golden fire;
His hair in streams of silver light
Hung flamelike on his strange attire,
Fell as o’er sunlit ruby glowing:
His light flew o’er the waves afar
In ruddy ripples on each bar
Along the spiral pathways flowing.
The light along the watery waste,
Till caught amid the surges hoary
The Pilot stayed its jewelled glory.
The pale moon shot it through and through
With light of lilac, white and blue:
And there mid many a fairy hue,
Of pearl and pink and amethyst,
Like lightning ran the rainbow gleams
And wove around a wonder-mist.
Silent I went with deep amaze
To know why came this Beam of Light
So far along the ocean ways
Out of the vast and shadowy night.
A thousand ages now are gone.
Yet thou and I ere night be sped
Will reck no more of eve or dawn.”
I leaped: my body dropt right down:
A silver star I rose and flew.
A flame burned golden at his breast:
I entered at the heart and knew
My Brother-Self who roams the deep,
Bird of the wonder-world of sleep.
As twain in one; we left behind
The league-long murmur of the shore
And fleeted swifter than the wind.
We neared unto the mystic isles:
The heavenly city we could mark,
Its mountain light, its jewel dark,
Its pinnacles and starry piles.
For we are real, though what seems
So proudly built above the waves
Is but one mighty spirit’s dreams.
Yet enter not and worship not,
For thought but follows after thought
Till last consuming self it wanes.
Its glamour o’er the light of day:
A music in the sunlight sings
To call the dreamy hearts away
Their mighty hopes to ease awhile:
We will not go the way of them:
The chant makes drowsy those who seek
The sceptre and the diadem.
Its magic round us all the night;
What things the heart would be, it sees
And chases them in endless flight.
Or coiled in phantom visions there
It builds within the halls of fire;
Its dreams flash like the peacock’s wing
And glow with sun-hues of desire.
We will not follow in their ways
Nor heed the lure of fay or elf,
But in the ending of our days
Rest in the high Ancestral Self.”
Then melted flamelike from our eyes,
As in the twilight drops the sun
Withdrawing rays of paradise.
That far above in heaven withdrawn
With cloudy pillars stormed the night,
Rich as the opal shafts of dawn.
“Oh, let us haste: the dream grows dim,
Another night, another day,
A thousand years will part from him,
Who is that Ancient One divine
From whom our phantom being born
Rolled with the wonder-light around
Had started in the fairy morn.
Are but the night, are but the day,
Wherein he rests from cyclic toil
Or chants the song of starry sway.
He falls asleep: the Shadowy Fount
Fills all our heart with dreams of light:
He wakes to ancient spheres, and we
Through iron ages mourn the night.
We will not wander in the night
But in a darkness more divine
Shall join the Father Light of Lights
And rule the long-descended line.”
Wavered in air the shadowy towers:
The city like a gleaming shell,
Its azures, opals, silvers, blues,
Were melting in more dreamy hues.
We feared the falling of the night
And hurried more our headlong flight.
In one long line the towers went by;
The trembling radiance dropt behind,
As when some swift and radiant one
Flits by and flings upon the wind
The rainbow tresses of the sun.
Faded the magic lights, and all
Into a starry radiance fell
As waters in their fountain fall.
And knew the end of all desire,
And saw within the emerald glow
Our Father like the white sun-fire.
Were on his face: we only burned
To pass the gateways of the day,
The exiles to the heart returned.
The tempest music of the spheres,
Dissolved the memory of earth,
The cyclic labour and our tears.
In him our dream of sorrow passed,
The spirit once again was free
And heard the song the morning stars
Chant in eternal revelry.
We saw the deep unmeasured shine,
And sank within the mystic glory
They called of old the Dark Divine.
The dream that I chanted:
On this side the dawn now
I sit fate-implanted.
The dawn has bereft me,
It all was not seeming
For something has left me.
World far from this cold light
The Dream Bird, my brother,
Is rayed with the gold light.
Would hide me, and so,
Bright Bird, to foregather
With thee now I go.