ROSS NICHOLS, who wasa contemporary of Eliot, andrated highly by many includ-ing Edwin Muir, was Chiefof the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids until hissudden and unexpected deathin . An accomplishedprose writer, essayist, editor,and water colourist whoexhibited at the RoyalAcademy, we can now seehim as one of the“Apocalypse poets” of the’’s. As Chief of the Orderfrom , his contributionwas substantial, re-introduc-ing into contemporary Druidpractice the Winter SolsticeFestival and the four CelticFire Festivals, which he led inLondon and at Glastonbury.

Prophet, Priest And King is a long overdue selection of his poetry,which includes poems from Prose Chants and Proems (), TheCosmic Shape (with James Kirkup, ), Seasons At War (), andunpublished poems from the early ’’s onwards which continue thethread of his preoccupations with myth, redemption, and rebirth. JayRamsay’s strong and perceptive selection helps us to see Ross Nicholsnot only as a poet of his own time, but as one of our own time, whichhis emphasis on the sacred anticipated, and with that, his grasp of what it means ‘to stand before the Living God’.

Prophet Priest and KingThe Poetry of Philip Ross Nichols

Edited and Introduced by Jay Ramsay

This photograph was taken by his hutat the place of retreat he created

in the Oxfordshire woods.

9 781903 232088

ISBN 1-903232-08-2

Prophet Priest and King

PROPHET PRIEST AND KING

The Poetry of Philip Ross Nichols

Edited and Introduced by Jay RamsayWoodcuts by David Lazarus

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

New Year Songs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Antaeus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Indian Symphony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Novel, Theme For . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cyclistic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Transcript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Celtic Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Taliesin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Flower And Spirit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Norse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It’s All Bloody Greek To Me — One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It’s All Bloody Greek To Me — Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Isian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . January Survey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spring Equinox With The Forty Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Holy Week: I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Holy Week: II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Man Of Friday. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Black Saturday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Formal Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Faith Of Eostre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

© Philip Peter Ross Nichols,

Published by The Oak Tree PressPO Box

LewesE. Sussex BN7 1DX

http://druidry.org

ISBN 1-903232-08-2

CONTENTS

long overdue selection will, I hope, re-introduce the workof an accomplished and neglected poet into public awareness.Ross Nichols’ published poetry came out between and, in three main collections: Prose Chants and Proems ()The Cosmic Shape (co-authored with James Kirkup, ) andSeasons At War (). It has not been reprinted since,although he continued to write right up until his sudden andunexpected death in . There are several reasons for this,not least his own gradual withdrawal from the literary scene— a literary scene he went beyond as a result of his increasingpreoccupation with the priestly role that found its expressionin his leadership of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids(from ). Poetry, for him, however, remained essential, asthe quality of his unpublished work unquestionably demon-strates. As Philip Carr-Gomm (the present Chief of the Order)remarked in his introduction to Ross’ last major work, TheBook of Druidry (Aquarian Press, ): “Often that which wethink of as lost is only in fact hidden from us for a time, in orderthat we may discover or rediscover it at the right moment.” I’drefer anyone interested in the unusual circumstances aroundthe loss and retrieval of Ross’ poems to that introduction.

Besides having retrieved much, and perhaps all (we cannever know for certain) of Ross’ poems, we also have a recordof the appreciation his work received when it was first pub-lished, including his lively and acute prose journal SassenachStray (The Fortune Press, ). His work was noted by theTLS (Times Literary Supplement), Poetry Quarterly, TheListener (for its “sharp intellectual wit”), and by Edwin Muir,who described Ross as having “A genuine sensibility of his

INTRODUCTION

Sesha, World-Serpent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Faith Of June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Month Augustus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yggdrasil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Faith Of September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

October Backward-Looking: II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Orcus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Quadrivia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Incantation From Eire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Idyll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Stranger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Soul Transmigrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Seven Voices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Songs Of The Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

An Approach To Heliopolis, Sun-City. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Choros; Corsican Fate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rapt Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dark Lights From Aberystwyth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Solstice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A Human Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Coming Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Index of First Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

he asks, in “New Year Songs” (). And in the second of thesongs, the question is left hanging with its ominous, ambigu-ous closing line

and the sky is wide.

Later (in the same collection), there is the poem “Now ItIs High Time To Awake Out Of Sleep”, with the lines

Psychic sees from the personal mindAngels drift in the sunsetMany-armed and -winged, stately inclined,with a seething roar, as a distant flameOr a fan that winnows the grain…

reflecting, with eerie precision, more recent events in relation-ship to global Babylon. At the same time, he is already lookingbeneath the surface, and not only for causes, but towards resolutions, with that particular combination of invisible (or“psychic”) metaphor and earthliness which is the hallmark ofhis style, with all its occasional and deliberate subjectivequirks. So, in “Cyclistic”, he meditates on the phenomenon ofcycle riding: “Novel, Theme For” on destiny, and in thehaunting “Transcript”, past-life knowing and recognition:

and when I looked at him I knewthat I knew him

and had always known himwhen time was never.

Introduction

own.” Although by birth a contemporary of Eliot, Auden andthe thirties — he was born in — his poetry, at its begin-ning, belongs to the forties, to the “Apocalypse” group whichincluded Dylan Thomas, Henry Treece and J. F. Hendryamong others. It was a period dominated by consciousness ofthe War, as everyone knows from Eliot’s Four Quartets; and itwas a short-lived period, in many ways pre-determined by thestyle of the thirties, dominated by Auden, which subsequentlyfed directly into the mainstream English “house style” of thefifties, eclipsing the emphasis on imagination, and puttingmore popular survivors like Thomas, and David Gascoyne, outon a limb. This is important to realize. Fashions, and fashion-able status quo, however temporary, can successfully bury allopposition: the politics of poetry is no less innocent than thepolitics of government, as any committed poet tends to discov-er. (The present emphasis on journalese in so-called main-stream British Poetry, after Larkin, is strikingly similar — as isits unwillingness to confront what is entailed by a new apoca-lypse in relationship to outmoded forms and values).

Wit and intellectualism have their place in early Nichols,as do a number of literary echoes that recall Eliot, and (moreinterestingly) Beckett (the section of Prose Chants And Proemstitled “The Moment’s Madness”, as well as using devices fromSurrealism, echoes Beckett’s own “Whoroscope”, not thenwidely available). Nichols’ work retains a satirical and objectiveslant, but from the outset his emphasis is on the imaginal, thelyrical, the prophetic:

Do we chase into gas-filled ruinDown a Cresta run of years?

Prophet, Priest and King

I am slowly reborn.

After The Cosmic Shape, his work deepens into the mythic.Seasons At War, which is a cyclical sequence using the monthsof the year, is an attempt, using both the poem and the prose-poem, to come to terms with the rhythm of time itself inher-ent in the movement of the seasons — a focus which predictsthe rituals and festivals he would grow into as a Druid. It alsoanticipates his own increasing realization of the connectionbetween imagination and earth: a realization that led him tobecome a naturist and vegetarian, and stress issues of ecologywe are only now recognizing as paramount.

At the same time, the journey his poetry takes explores theexperience and meaning of priesthood. The Druid or Druidessis a priest or priestess of earth — and also a priest/ess of thesoul. Both dimensions interpenetrate. It is no easy journey. InSeasons At War, he strikingly identifies his personal experiencehere:

Did I indeed ask for worship, and would I not rather lodge in a wall?

But walls will not hold me, nor cages contain me,because I hold in me a Word:

But the Word is dumb.

And, prior to this in xiii (faith of eostre) as he predicts:

I will hold up the chalice and wear yellow silkand around me shall be an aura of joy

Introduction

The tension between time and the timeless — the conceptthat the process of time can only be revealed and understoodby what is beyond time, becomes a major theme in his work,and is at the centre of The Cosmic Shape, both in “CosmicLegend”, with its recollections of Egypt and the Arthurian, andin the shorter poems, gathered under the title “The LyricShape”. Both the process around the Egyptian sun god (Ra)and his passage through the night towards dawn and rebirth;and the Arthurian wounded Fisher King, which is central toEliot’s The Waste Land, are references which remain in Nichols’poetry right into the ’s. Death and rebirth become keys tothe secret of time and the meaning of time — of living intime, as part of something far larger than we can generally oreasily imagine. In “The Lyric Shape”, “Taliesin” embodies thisquest, and like Eliot’s Tiresias

knew all things, suffered all things.

Nichols adds:

And Taliesin shall bein many wonderful shapes,a grain of wheat and a hare sown and running

while there are fields, and the spirit of menleaping alive at a harvest, or silver in the waters of time.

It is a prophecy he furthers in his Cecil Collins poem“Reflection” (about the archetype of the Fool) and in the Isispoem “Isian”:

Prophet, Priest and King

Both his narrative and formal (as well as his lyrical) giftsgo into the telling of these stranger stories, which are nowspecifically archetypal and which parallel the preoccupations ofRobert Graves. What Nichols adds, or never forgets, is thehuman touch. So in “Incantation From Eire”, “Stranger”, and“The Soul Transmigrant” there is a humanness and a humilitythat in Graves is lacking. As he says at the end of the latterpoem:

Be suffering fish in man again.

This is the Christ-fish, the Pisces emblem — as distinctfrom Graves’ paganism (or even Yeats’ magical autonomy). Atthe same time, his language becomes more — in one sense —hieratic: but this is a conscious, rather than inflated, device.So, in “Seven Voices”:

then is the trumpet blast, the victor voicethe voice as of a trumpetproclaiming that the kingdoms of this worldare those of the spirit.

This is the “trumpet voice” or “Voice Direct” mediumsspeak of: it is channelled, in the same way that Yeats recog-nized. It is the angel voice that serves that which comes frombehind it. It is the voice at the essence of inspiration. It is theconnection that humanism has forgotten. It is a paradox ofwhich Nichols is well aware.

Introduction

because I spring from a craband hide my face before the Lord.

It is at this stage, from the fifties onwards, that his gradualwithdrawing and deepening begins. It is a development thattakes place out of the public eye. It is, first and foremost, nolonger a question of “Literature”, but of the Word. The gate ofdumbness he passes through is the transition from poet topriest: from bard to ovate to druid. The three basic grades ofDruidry are what he himself experienced. They are a logicaland necessary development involving an increasing transparen-cy of the ego (or little “I”) which anyone on any spiritual pathinvariably encounters. For some poets, it also requires a periodof silence. Something else has to come in, beyond the vocabu-lary of the poet. Literature is a question of time — the Word istimeless. That is the difference, and the relationship. (It is per-haps best illustrated in Kahlil Gibran — and not only in TheProphet, but in his less well known books, particularly Jesus,The Son Of Man).

In the final sequence of unpublished poems (from“Quadrivia”) the ‘classic mythos, truth outside of time’ that hehad identified in Seasons At War is explored in a variety of co-existent traditions. Myth, and creativity itself, become vehiclesfor understanding both the mystery and the responsibility ofincarnation. As he puts it in “Creation”:

All have been sent from sea to find the land,first footprint for a shore.Ulysses and his folk are waiting, tenseand the keel is ready to ground.

Prophet, Priest and King

Mabon in the Druid tradition, who is both the inner child, thegolden child; and the Christ child: the redeemer of innocenceand — as Collins so lucidly realized — of paradise.

Light and dark struggle in these final poems; and in thelast three they come together as the journey enters into a real-ization both of peace and endurance, beautifully encapsulatedin “Solstice”, contained as it is in the ritual it makes.

In “A Human Situation”, this realization which in thedeep sense is kingly, is coupled with humility. Standing, so tospeak, and kneeling, come together and define humanness inall its uniqueness and its limitation. The poem reads almostlike a farewell in its poignant naturalness:

Also our colours and changings of direction are of a small corner of the world,we are small creatures, and playing perhaps ata wrong point.

Do not be frenetic with dogma.

His final word is faith, because there isn’t any other:

The waters of the weir are dammedBut the falls flow on;

The sun dies and is eaten of SetBut there is a new sun.

Ross Nichols died of a heart attack, fifteen years ago. Hewas .

Introduction

In these last poems, there is a direct perception of andbeyond the cosmic apocalypse — seen through as a time ofpain and confusion and break-up before rebirth. Some of ustend to forget that the “New Age” isn’t new — not only doyou find it in Blake, but you find it in the Gospels themselves(the text from Matthew Chap. is perhaps the best examplefor now). What we are experiencing now is a harvest of time— and this is the theme of Nichols’ last writings. What hemoves towards is exactly the breakdown we are witnessing. Butnow, he can see its purpose and its meaning. In “Tors”:

But the thunderbolt comesthat flashes from east even to westthat strikes where it will.Indeed it has destroyed:But where it has struck, there the Graal is made.

Eliot evoked the Hanged Man as a sign for his time —Nichols evokes The Lightning Struck Tower for ours, fiftyyears later. “The heart is transformation”, as I found myselfwriting it in the introduction to my anthology Transformation— it is the change of heart that can alone change who we areand how we experience who we in fact are. What Parsifal con-fronts now is not so much a Grail castle as a crumbling super-structure — but at the root of it, and of himself, is redemption— is the heart’s opening. For Nichols, this was the ankh, thekey, where the rivers of different traditions meet: in the heart,the heart’s blood connection with the earth (with matter) and,within the heart itself, in what he saw as “the child” — the

Prophet, Priest and King

This selection is essentially an introduction to Ross’ work.It is not a Collected Poems. I have chosen poems that I feltreflected the full range of his themes and his style, and which(it seemed to me) narrate the stages of his journey. These are,mainly, his shorter poems. His longer ones are almost impossi-ble to extract from in an appropriate way (“Cosmic Legend”for example). Anyone interested can either contact the Orderof Bards Ovates & Druids or visit the Poetry Library at theSouth Bank, where the full texts are available. I have retainedhis private or esoteric spellings because they were deliberate onhis part. They are not mine to correct. We stand most by ourwords, perhaps, when our words are strangest.

At least, Ross did.

Jay RamsayOctober

Prophet, Priest and King

Prophet Priest and King

The hour when minute by minutethe colours are stolen away,when red goes brown then blackand green goes grey.

The simple twilight-falling hourthe twinkle hour the dewdrop minutewhen the hare with a scuffle is gonethrough long grass with a forked twig in it,

when thrush drops downlast loud twirrup and jigfrom the aldertop bare.Lo then is the time of calling and taking,of mating, and the enlarging of mind into mind,when the eye thinks and the light stays behind.

CHANT

Clip in a textbook’s clauseThe various future’s plan?Strong woman bursts into man,And a vicar has woman’s face,And our sex indeterminate flickers.

Do we chase into gas-filled ruinDown a Cresta run of years?Does a world with a neon sunCrammed with unknown compeersIn another dimension’s foldRevolve into gold our tin?

In the cosmic aerodromeTime’s novel pilot sitsWith final orders from homeUntil the conjunction fitsTo climb into our kenAnd strike his peace through men.

Cromwell was England’s HitlerSimpson her Lupescu,Jerusalem is Knole I hearWith the prolly tramping through.Now what shall we all do?

NEW YEAR SONGS

. horsepower sings on the bridge-rise,Sing me a bottle of hay;The petrol pump clocks overin the good old Tudor way.Heil Hitler on Olympus,The discus thrown by a frau,For Dunne has done in time for us,There is no then but now.

The mountains look on MarathonAnd Marathon looks on the sea,Where now the warships gladdenThe hearts of the unfree.(The world will end to-morrowAt the Pyramid chamber’s rise.)Eleusis in its sorrowOf the corn-god mysteriesIs hushed with a holy promiseOf a saviour in the snow.

We tell not if two-backed beastOr the lonely unicorn wins,Spectators in idyll-contest,The monk v. the Dionne quins;If the end of breeding is bestAs our hearts urge — and our sins:

Can they hook with a line of lawsThe whales of the future race?

ANTAEUS

. the airmanlean and keeneyed in grey warfeathers,ready to swoop and zoom, alert in loop and spiral.His joystick is alert, his sexual symbol is bright:his ailerons are taut, he faces immensity —the wide and the empty bowl is his, in the which

to cast a cracking stone.

. With circular clawcrawling up carefully under the cloud

belches and thickenspirouetting down the sun-hollows

poised on a wingtoehence and heavily

lunged to destruction: only the glow.

. We would circle widelyas the stiff gull circles

evenly whitely, ‘planing preciselyon to the table-floor green blue or yellowamong the landing-lights yellow or blue

where the grass is true or the hard sandsor tides run lightly.

. leaves at helter-skeltersome turn the weary sod

some put their trust in shelterand some their trust in God

some dive into the chunnelsand run beneath the drains.

Some climb up roofs and runnelsto spot for aeroplanes:

the dubious bear above themswings round from side to side

the cockcrow wails below themand the sky is wide.

INDIAN SYMPHONY

dainty nodes of fetlocks whiteWent softly to and fro, to and fro,

Against the brown and even weight of the night.The scarlet scabbards of the dharsOn undulating saddlerySlight-squeaked, a little jingling thrustA little way into the large and perfumed darknessFrom silver bit on the embroidered reins;But from no hoof a sound stainsThe air along the pathway, white with silent dust,As trod by one and one the princes by.The manes’ long ebonyDipped sleek and bentOnward, beneath the velvet-studding starsAround the deep vault drawing slow.And by the side of each there wentA hound, a tense-arched bow.

The tamarisks silently, silently swayLacing unseen into the fingers of warm air.Above the path they are green and bare.

Two brown upturned hands;Red, fallen plain to the footFrom gold breast-bands,A girl beside the way:Ears hung with circles of brass, narrow almond eyes, whiteAnd a deep star set in each.

. And we would loveas flowers or bees love

with auras fusing, the brightmingle of sunflower snow,

Only this will satisfy, this done alone seems right.Man or woman it is nothingage or youth are less than nothing —

only the glow.

. Stupor grips him:the intensity of cold froze upon the wingsthey bend and droop, splitting are the group-controls.Man not supples and the joints go tubular.Then indeed steel is the airman, steel him governing:and death hovers offstage as a prompter,dictates already his last motions reflexdrifting in a leafglide, without brain landing.

. Yet the children of Gaea retouching lightly the earth-mother

start up again their wheel automatick of life.Behold then the phoenix, his supreme red eyeblazing eternal heat and life and hatethe phoenix and his turtle-matehis contest and his enemy,most mystical, most passionate,striving for mastery.

Under a heavy moon, at bleachAre square and square of grass beard-bright:At the edges silhouetted blackCreep in the silver nightBare feet anklettedBetween the boles from root to rootWith sari numinous and slackAnd crimson-red.

The tamarisks brush against small window-barsSilently, silently;An air green-scented stealsInto the night’s deep woof.

A thousand fretted arches yellowUpon thin-twisted pillars grewFantastic over pools deep-filledWhere the large pedmas stilledFloat white beneath the scurrying odalisquesLeading inward to wild domesTipped into spikes; below, gold gloom is mellowAnd by the decorated arcature go silent shapesWith luxious padded robes; or shining bareLank limbs and turban. Gathered thereBeneath the highest dome — and round it flyBroad owls, and in and out their ruinous homesLike little old women climb grey hunchbacked apes —Cluster in a rusma’d swarmWasp-waisted, bangled, pale and warm,

The rich hareem;Each hand upholds a heavy breastAnd, as with a single eye,Upon the master’s door(A great flat gleam)They wait, and flank to flank are foward pressed.

The holy tamarisksSo press upon the airSecretly, silently,Green in the darkness, expectant, bare.

But lo he maketh his beloved a flower;She whom he can desireIs as a vineyard in shy blossom dressed:As a bee drugged with scent in some soft bowerTo conflict bowed, will prick his golden thigh,He the master takes his pleasure; hot face closely thrustWith his copper finger he touched her shrinking lust:

Sated laying byHis ardour, and the large fans coolAnd lotion falls upon his limbs in spray:As jewels glimmer within high-coffered ciels,As point to point the minaretted roofLeaps out into dull azure blueSwift-cloaked in fire.

The tamarisks brush against the starsSilently, silently,Above the chased marble floor,Above the brightening rim of day.

w

Within the whirling stars of trinityShiva many-armed doth shakeDancing death into the worldShatters into rhythmic dust.

Mighty Vishnu manifoldAll things supports upon his word:The thousand-pulsing huge Creator he:But Brahma is the white and saving God.

The everlasting arch beneath the earthIs viewless Vishnu.

He that hurledThe universes into birthAnd out to death their cold forms thrust,He is Shiva, he is heardIn the dust-devils’ symphony.

But Brahma knows of neither death nor cold:Only warm incarnation everlasting.

w

His image is larger than mortal,He treads in the grass without stain.By the pillars that frame like a portalThe sun-disc, he weeps in pain

For the sorrows of man and of KarmaStrung on foredestined loom;But thou art more mighty than doomAnd more perfect than love, O Bhrahma.

His aching image, contemplative, fasting,In the heavy dough of humanity is leaven,Is on the vine of man the rich new grapeAnd of the fruit the all-sustaining stem.He is the silver wings of Bethlehem.Held between earth and heaven,His bloodless and immortal shapeHangs on the snowy mount between Gods and men.

Yet he is softer than the bird’s wing,Less of voice than is the nestling,And he speaks in silences.

SUNSET

aftersummer storm in the wind of creationblowing softly and large through the hands of trees

lifting immensely the leafhair of the docile head.The great wind came from the west out of the

red width of sunsettoucht with a gold rim. The multicoloured

wings of Rastretcht over the sky in final benediction:the beetle had rolled the brownglowing ball

finally below horizon.

The hemicycle moon with crocodile cramped within itits false jaws ready to biterises; the secret springs of cold vegetation

dew-touchtthe embranched hand feeds, and the bucket rainfalls.Madness is ready to strike, and the woman crouches.

O heaven-supported figure, slow day and nightsupporting, and the four heavensupon thy bowed shoulders;the prayercolumn risesfrom mud to ether continuously carrying,interpenetrant the rare molecules of matter.

The tamarisks quietly, quietly swayBehind the night, before the day.

Yea, as the princes ride through the scented night,Beside the way there stands a maid;Presently her red sari creeps between the trees.

There is a night also of the soul; The tamarisks wave thereinSilently, silently.

NOVEL, THEME FOR

- went all in a dream because of you —A wordseeking literary dreamAnd your image dimmed amid sound-track flourishesAnd simile-seeking, word-rending, lost the feel of you.

Nerve eye voice intensity piled on the senseThe wire of words jams under, overpressed.A shorthand note ill-taken and compressedIs all the communication from this immense.

Thus the fleshTrumpets in me: as a descanting singerSuddenly lifts the themeOut of the bass and tenor clear and high:As from a weaving meshOf wheels in mind-machinery, you springA cleansing jet of steamInto life’s boiler-room.As one car from the traffic cuts aheadThe straggling menagerie hooting on behind:So does your dominant passion overpassAll others in the mind —And leaps perhaps to a wrecking placeOr a collision head-on.

CYCLISTIC

bikes and tandems they rush out,enthusiastic, anonymous,

shouting to each other, riding wilfully,releasing their energy, skimming down hills,sinuously hugging the contours in extended embrace.Raw things with blotched faces,pasty faces, awkward backsideselemental in energy, anonymous.They cannot walk, and to linger they are afraid —some instinct for speed bids them flee —speed as of the corpuscles coursingas of ants that race like giants,speed that makes plants animalsand of men who are animals something different —something anonymous, something enthusiastic.

I cannot sleep for thinkingdreaming and wondering of the endless

movement of the seaand the flotsam it throws and the

jetsam it bears away,and I wonder whether in this life

is ever an end of voyaging;because I saw somewhere a boywith three stripes on his great

collar, and brown hands,and when I looked at him I knew

that I knew him,and had always known him,

when time was never.

TRANSCRIPT

CELTIC SONG

around my island-groundmute my trees and magic flocks,

brown sands silvered: tabor soundin and out the giant rocks.

Birds of glory and of paindiving into stream and sea

in the rainbow-coloured rainare fishing for the salmon beauty.

In the white mists hang the saintsstanding on seraphic stones

of cloud reflected in the sea,over ossifying bonesbrowsing on eternity.

Mute my trees and magic flocks,tabor in giant rocks.

the Fish entersthe world of dark water

pre-birth waterswaterworld elysiumLake Tegid and the magic weir.

Much does he grow,many his transformations.

Warm are the watersthe dark waters of Tegid,and they softly flow

downward as he grows.

Taliesinis found in the weir:Elphin finds himin a bag of leatherwhere the waterworld dams,where the womb-waters

are falling terriblyat the weir of birth.

The entering Fishwas the spirit of Taliesin:

his transformationswere the many souls and bodies of Taliesin:leading him gently, drifting him slowlyinto the bodily definition of Taliesin,

his bag of leather,his separated skin.

TALIESIN

Pattern repeats, repeats, the mother pattern linkingdesign between humans, ritual elaborationsthe primitive and the fantastic decorationsthe enrichment of Thibet and Nijinsky’s arabesques …

Fixed hieratic formalthe quartered symbol of the golden flowerin thousand variations: universal dreamprimary in the mind’s anatomy,a symptom, an expression, a purgation,fixated shape of madness and of art,man’s flower of unfoldment.

What then against you to set, O static beauty?for man is a spirit, must also,besides from within imposing on things his pattern,now freely accept and be ventof the manifold spirit in things,a harp to the wind creative, himself to make whole.

With spirit draw trees, rocks and clouds, so that the heartspirit-resonant, shall be ableto move the hearts of beholders, and cause them to ponderbehind appearance upon the very meanings.The spirit causing the brush to move is seizingwithout doubt the shape of thingsand in an order will establish them;And so from the wonderful winnows by art the true.

FLOWER AND SPIRIT

And Taliesin, after his separated life,his songs and his wonders, his challenges and his fame,

shall enter again as a Fish,shall know again sufferings and transfigurations

and the waters of Tegid.For Taliesin was ever upon earth,

knew all things, suffered all things.And Taliesin shall bein many wonderful shapes,a grain of wheat and a hare

sown and runningwhile there are fields, and the spirit of menleaping alive at a harvest, or silver in the waters of time.

And the two children walked across the starswater-drawing, Juki upclimbing the hill of the skygrowing after him water, clouds and the tidewave:Bjil the sky-slope descending, thinning the waterspherethe rain-bucket emptying. So they eternally play,month after month, on the circling tide-washed shoresof the great playball earth, Juki and Bjiltwins of the lunar night.

What are they stealing from the branchy wood,the springing field? for the increase is theirsof swelling watery growth, and so is theirsthe phase of loss, the deadness of the stickscut for the fire. They are the thieves of play,the night disturbers of the honest day:

two yellowcapped and licenced antickersJuki and Bjil, in tide and rainswinging up sky and down again.

NORSE

And following flexible the transient formsof mists and moon, of skies and wind,between the scene and the ink the brush must moverapidly, so that all things fly or move.And so from the heart reach to significanceand so from reality move to the one sublime meaninguniting the likeness and the spirit in truth.

(See Ching Hao, in a discussion recorded in the tenth century.)

MASS

the largeness of mountain-sidesand lifted from the marrow-bone

unfolded layers which dissolvedlike vapour from a stone

leaving but the basic natureplain in wood and tree

discoverable in human nature,locked and unlocked in me.

sleep what are you, in sleepin the ebb of the tide:a body dormant, a thing breathing,or a soul afloat?

What are you in sleepin the small watch of the nightbut a ray of life regathering forces,the secret retreat of light.

The owl of darkness perchingpale-eyed on the bedpostis the gathering of wisdom, the unsleeping watcherthe other self ’s ghost.

SONG

REFLECTION(after a Cecil Collins exhibition)

He to whom the old is newcan throw off time’s weight of fat,carries the sunlight slim,dances in the fields. His paper hatis focus of creative rays. He is glad,proclaims glad folly; beneficence streams about himand the hill lifts to his handhe smooths the furrow, and the viewon every side studs with a diamond gladnessbecause creation is akin to madnessthe fool God’s surrogate.But youth’s native sadnessdramatises itself ever against timein experimental mimeagainst the immensities.And youth cannot meetwith any gladness the glad elementaldancing upon rayant feet.Only awhile, by the sunlit wallknowing the great winds and the paper dancing,may he be lulled into joy,the insect’s autonomous joy.Then the old becomes newin the diamond view prancing.

ITS ALL BLOODY GREEK TO ME — ONE

Between heaven and earthflies the bird the messengerpartaking of the divine naturerevealing the word of the gods.Aetos the eagle is the broad-pinioned and soaringangel from Zeus the all-father, dwelling in mountains.The wisdom-bird sits on the post, wisdom of Atheneslant-eyed by day. And Apollospeaks in the croak koraks of the large black ravenbut his swift rays are the goshawk hunting the skykirkos kirkos: and Charon the death-bird broodingis the brown owl on the roof-tree perched.

Divinationfrom them is known, and by the knife the wing-boneis a Sibylline page.

ITS ALL BLOODY GREEK TO ME — TWO

in the shades, make readyand be glad, make now my wedding,for I take for wife to-dayblack earth, and the hard rockis mother of my wife, and kindredare the stones and sand.Seek for water and for snowin those fields and mountains,quinces from elysian gardens,for to-day I come to youwhere the maiden is unitedon the rocky bed with Hadesand Persephone the young manholds in the bridal-chamber Death.

ISIAN

the still lips the soultranspired, and in virginal coldhung in new birthrigid and unconscious formover dead clayawaiting the world-dawn.

I am drawn awayto the waters of the lotos,the fields of eternal cornwhose seed is sown on earth;I am slowly reborn.

With the birth-web hanging about himthe albuminous film-eyed childcomes from the creature creationfrom the monkey-hung trees and the mildco-operative herds; he is crawlingfrom the evil dreamswhere power burns in the mindinfective, and crafty inventionabuses the goodness of growthand the gentle onflow of thingsseems an old mockery,tales told in age and for youth.

I strengthen, I rise, I walk,through the curious flowersas a bird looming through mistoutside the ring of hours.I am ready Osiris for the test,the record is plainfor the judgement-hall: in the memorythe passages are scoured and washedthe deeds are confest.

He to the garden the worldis led, and a work assigned,the tended with the tender exchangingtheir lots, in the overall minda thought fulfilling, in the god’s imagewakened and satisfied.

JANUS

white doors stand infixed with ice.The two-faced god within is sealed; the pasthe mourns, but into future his set eyessee in reverse.

Below the temple steeplife falls earthward in thick sleep:men heaped in halls pass feudal night,the trees’ moist sense holds to their root defence,abandons outwork branches, goes numb and bright.

Not yet this god looks outward; there, behindthe just-closed year, age-linedone face broods bitterly, the other loomsbefore the door of expectation,before the occult hour moves the year on,before the truce breaks and the seasons war,the ice cracks far and the ice-floe booms.

comes egality of day with night, powers of darkness andlight at grapple, light winning around earth. Herein is passionupon the tree of Attis, his resurrection in gardens of Adonis.Now the jealous God passes over the Hebrew first-born as he smites the Pharaonic land with the direst plague, and thespring feast follows. Descendants of the wanderer Abram are ready for the hike; loins girded, feet shod, staffs besidethem, their packs humped. Higher humped are the camels, enormous in the moonlight of Egypt, black shadows stretch to the waiting foot.

SPRING EQUINOX WITH THE FORTY DAYS

hames grey-outlined with grey birds floating, steelybridges over banks barge-lined. Deeper into city where theTower’s dry moat under a vaster bridge, and the steamers arebig and unrefined. Out into the miles of mudflatted channels winding like the Yangtse out of yellow soil, bearingits thousands of lights, its congregated funnels, myriads atunpicturesque sea-toil…

Up there the ballons d’essai float, looking cool in summer, cheerfully Christmassy in winter, near and remote,like a war that cannot start or a holiday boat.

JANUARY SURVEY

a vision of something I deniedimmensely, and so died.

Here I did not belongto place time song

but drewelsewhere the roots wherefrom my being grew,

and for awhileinchmile

the sprite’s true mansion knewsomewhere somehow compass the dark demesnewhere boon- and week-work give material gain.

My soul is gone inland.Alas why did she go

and leave me foot and handbound in this prison so?

HOLY WEEK: II

with a rush is springing, his lion-mane hides thebright prey.

the Lamb the world-sun the perfection of day.I have hidden myself within nothing,I am an invisible observation.An heap of charred bones, I attendhow stray branches work across the deepof grey sky in the sunrise-wind powerful.Long flames of the auroral sunshoot out, pass into me and die;the Boddhisattvas on the petals of the lotosenfold themselves through a lightbeam into my navel.

HOLY WEEK: I

the solitary lampasthe occult student poringin the magic cirque shade -throwntracing signs cabalistic, beautiful,builds with knowledgean house in the beyond,touches the key-leversthat operate eternity.

They are floating they are floatingbeyond the final cerementsspices and steepings,the whorling of mummiesamid weaving bands,the sunken face eaten by cariesand the thin thin hands:passing in the dead men’s boatsferried by a host of invisible Charons.With the wind for lamentthey are floating on.

BLACK SATURDAY

unto us, not unto usthe longranged thought creative. Onlythe word speak and the gun flashwith low trajectory.

Weak is the action of my heart.Time’s diaphragm, over-wrought,expands, contracts. The hastening eventruns militarily ahead of civil thought.

The outrageous and the far-flungare the real, the nightmares invade the day.Dracula into London is comeboxed in Balkan clay.

MAN OF FRIDAY

to the holiestpraise him in the highestwhere the top icicles in sunlight melt:praise him in the blue grotto of icewhere the green stream threads below.Praise him on the exalted passesHimalayan-high, in the Hindu-Kushand in the depths where the caverns reekwith dragonish breath and forked tongues.I will hold up the chalice and wear yellow silkand around me shall be an aura of joybecause I spring from a craband hide my face before the Lord.

FAITH OF EOSTRE

of the way all souls must tread, approach to Thanatos?— By Taenarum’s rock, or stream Avernus, first: then themouth-filling obolus persuades Charon’s punt-pole, over blackAcheron; then to the twin-throned gods, Pluto, Persephonethere where they sit surrounded by nine shapes, a court in theeternal. Three the gods of judgement, these their names:Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus; and for them Themisholds judicial scales. Beside sit sisters who card and spin ourlife — Clotho, Lachesis, and slitting Atropos. On the far sidethe lighter souls await the Dirae who shall drive them —Tisiphone, Alecto, Megaera — and these the hands of Nemesisassist — over the burning Phlegethon, through brass gates intoTartarus’ flames. There Pelops sits, with Ceres-nibbled shoulder in ivory restored, and the tortured dead who thencetheir tears combining shape briny Cocytus. Yet to endure thisland who to Elysium’s peace can never reach (for had theyweighed worthily they had escaped, seeing not Hades but intransit-vision) these damned are by two kinder streamsrefreshed: Styx, water by the which the gods swear nor maybreak, and that other where memoried men forget, them-calledLethean.

So classic mythos, truth outside of time.

FORMAL REFLECTION

the spring the blue serpent completes the year’s cycle and swallows the tail the completed dead tail of the winterthe red brush of autumn, the white rabbit-scut of the snowlate-lingered. The head filmeyed creeps arrowy between tree-boleswith flickering tongue here and there, and the growth flies upwardto the worship of the sun that centres the green-spotted serpentlooped round the world of sight generation and growth,first cries of the spirit then drawn to the manifest globeto the day-circling Eye from the overworld’s long bright levels.

The serpentine progeny, tongues of the earth-fire subsoil,issue even into steam of suspiring valleys.The hawthorn whitens and the violet eyes upwardhere in the rumble of springas the volcano prepares through its fissures seepinghot growth from the underworld’s reflowing cup.Though magpies and the curlew interpipein light alarm — and silver birchshiver in delicate umbrage at the cold driveof interfluent air the oaktop tossing —yet the light-hours winning from the hours of the shadowshall win back the summer to his great Eye again:as the blue-green serpent yet moves eternally round them.

SESHA, WORLD-SERPENT

reed against bluewhite water(laplapping water)

I hold you a momentbending your spruceness

until you spring back upright and proudswaying again into place.

Under the elms I layunder their whisper

the wind lifted thousands of leaves(leaves singing down to me),hair in moving air caressed.

Near me a bee bent a flowerclinging downpulling, and dipping his thigh.

The cloud dragon crawls dreamilyaround the bowl of porcelain.

Three bowing figures on a bridgeare massively urbane.

Peace and its thin blue skymay crack, for a metal midge

is whirring continuouslyand dropping another rain.

THE MONTH AUGUSTUS

THE FAITH OF JUNE:

spring is over the new grass over,grass-moon and bud-moon have faded out,the spotlight moves on the screen of silverto the rose-moon harshly lit.Springtime ends, and the summer startingscattering bright in pieces and blitz —

— But the spring lingers this late year,cuckoo and bluebell-masses, and the longvery long grasses, intense and demure,fill all the world beneath the arch of birdsong.

He loves to bring about himthe golden wings of sky,

— the blackened auras doubtinghe cannot see, nor whytheir long sad questions come —he rapid-moving, dumb

in the caressing rayof hope and certainty.

Versicles, icicles,singing simple and warm,

thin flanks pressed to embrace,are something yet nothing

in the timeless chasealoft and elate

between the watchdogs of spaceand the beasts frothing,betweeen the soul in stormand the divine Mate.

pressure of dazzlefrom stone-broken stream in sunlightstabs the belief into the heart: the roarof fuming waterfalls sings in the blood,gives to excess the unspent urge, and the birdthe graphic sweep of sudden certaintyand life’s new cry.

Longings and aims through generations growingthe great-boled beeches aspirant swayin time-wind; little individual hopesmere season’s growth of cabbage. Horny oakswith horizontal realism hangagainst mere visonary sky. Leap lowthe frogs in the subconscious undergrowth.

The quilted valley supine with fielded cropsis annual and seasonal quietudeof charitable certainty.The tortured static stonecan but strike freea scattering brilliance of faith,white passage on night’s cave of predestiny.

LANDSCAPE

Summer is the beautiful and the suffering season of roses;sadness that lies in fulness and gaping earth,beauty in the heavy tree, reconciling water and warmth in onepool of shadow and dapple of reflection.

The great tree rose into the sky out of the straining landdowndrawing moisture for the fields, for the red of furrowsfor the mauve seedflowering grasses and their drifts of yellowtheir stars and their wind-waves and for the crops that come:for all the yield and ripening of the foison of the field:creating a cool mystery within its fluttering dome.

The hope and prayer of fields and all their mown death-treasurethe arms are offering to the sun’s strength and the fertility moonin living stupa the fragrance of the earthwithin its own attempered weather.

Rooted in harrowed soilthe cross-tree of the suffering universeis lifting the fruit of all sufferinginto the heavenly eye.

I saw the summer an epitomeof foursquare earth and tree-trunk manupstriving seed-enriched, overborne into pain,and the great spangather the sweetness of rain.

YGGDRASIL

can I into words put the unputtable,certain things only by analogy to be told?Can the mountain tell of the cave within itor the stone speak of its quarry?I was digged out was carved and ornamentedand one put upon me earrings of brass, and another reeds for hair.Did I indeed ask for worship, and would I not rather lodge in a wall?But walls will not hold me, nor cages contain me,because I hold in me a Word;but the Word is dumb.

OCTOBER BACKWARD-LOOKING: II

the seven reapersswing green enormous sleeves,

the hesitant dreams of sleeperscarrying in sheaves

out of the plains of nightto the levels of the spirit’s play

where ricks and barns stand brightand the foursquare fort is gay.

THE FAITH OF SEPTEMBER

The fires of autumn are amongst the treesFlashing in the bare hedgerows as I passin and out, and the grey mist surrounds them.

By the shallow poolSmall fires burn leavesThe willows reflect their long stemsin the flooded fields. Mutual recognitionSpirit and fire, spirit and waterillumine, reflect.

Over the dark earthThe air exhales.

ELEMENTS

The river under the trees passes into the shadowsfrom the apparent, bearing on its silent waterthe barge that carries the emblems of death and of lifefallen leaf crossed knives, ringed ankh and the wide seed

winging.

In darkness descends to fields of the lotosNilus, where the ripple breaks dimly and slow are the oarsmenphantasmal; the fir-cone and seeds trodden by the brown

shadesminimal, the life-spark in ember and the death-flower stilly.

The autumn stream with its leafage choked to the brim-reedsmoles through the roots of the steep white hillside of beauty;sun lowers, and the rain’s train sweeps over earth without

ceasingas brown fire falls from the wind-harried forest.

Under the trees the river passes on into shadowbearing the barge with emblems of life and of death.

ORCUS

arches of the bridge sink low upon the surfacesthe watervoices are deep in their fulnesshere in the place of the One and the Three, O my sisters.Ours is the floodplain of the fourfold streamwhere the thin blue waters swirl together,swirling amongst rushes.The One and the Three are making here the fourfold Self,we are troubled and commingled, my sisters and I.

We are met and we minglewith how many eddyings and voicesuntil we come to consciousness in a yellow-walled poolwhere the leeted water came down with a rushand a millstream swirled in from an arch at the sideand we found ourselves still.

I was full of awareness, too full, I and my selves;we meet thus contendingto work out a unity of direction, which is perhapsthe only true or possible unity.

The sedge rises now, and in these stiller watersis a little yellow waterflower that liftsabove flat-floated leaves,I am Tamise of the reedy hairof the drowned face, the hairy bosom and the drifting beard.I rose in the west, and my three sisters flow into me

QUADRIVIA

Here are the deep reflections of the tall wharves,here the jerseyed foreign sailors hang from ropeswith their paintpots, swinging,We too suspend from our ropes of life.

It is time to turn the vessels,and time to nose our fish-ways upwardInto the narrow locks, into higher fresher watersuntil we come again to our meeting-place.

There we can surely spawn anewand give birth to ourselves again:on berries of the sacred rowan feedingwe bear its wise red marks along our sides.

(from Lechlade, Fairford and Wapping)

Coln the matri of the north, of the many villages Leachand from the southward Cole: tres matres —tria matri — lost from Rome into the dark ageslost again into my waters, woman into manflowing, indistinguished.

Morta mortaliatangunt: the things of deathtouch closely those who have its seed in themWe have no death, nor that near touch of timethat stains the spirit; we are eternal dancers,the elementals floated from the hills;you know us, we not know you.

The dirt of man dabbles our hems,The soot of man settles our surfaces,his oil defaces us.

I too corrupted into towns my waters,heavy the reckoning; and I work upstreamfor my salvation, contra natura.

O sisters, separate but within me,whose stone faces stare at Coriniumvirgins very English with high dressed hair:each with a quality her own and minethat flows on softly in my central river:what shall I say to you, now we have reached these dark stresses?

The blackshawled woman has gone by us like a thundercloudand rushed high into the mountain,the girl with the inward smilehas clambered down the rocks into the defile.

Tonight the little hill is all alight,a golden cavern is within.The shapes of little people passacross it and across.The hill is all alive, a hiveswarming with more than bees,and the dusty beams of lightmove and dissolve and changeacross the dark of the land.And all the hill is full of musicspeechless and entranced.

The lightning comes from the cloudsthe mist rises from the valley.

Let their protection be upon us but their backs to us,Let their tricks be far from us and their faces turned from us —they that dwell in the hills, they that are tiny or monstrous.

One has given us a prayer, a charm from the King of Heavenagainst the power of the sidhe and against their evil eyes:between us and the tiny hostsbetween us and the powers of the windto fasten the door of words, to be between usand the drowning water and the shame and laughter of the world,between us and the black death of the captive.

INCANTATION FROM EIRE

Let there be light.And light a sparkling streakalong the sea lay, wide rays from ranging cloud.

And life was a great shipUlysses and his crew, with a high sternand broken foremast: insect and beast and birdwere in the ark, awaitingthe coming of the land.

Let there be lightoutlining life, the forms of life to be.Argo looms upon the grey horizon,And the white birds swoop oversoft yelling gull, sea chick, majestic swan,albatross, hawk, king eagle of the sea.All have been sent from sea to find the land,first footprint for a shore.

Ulysses and his folk are waiting, tenseand the keel ready to ground.

CREATION

IDYLL

For the fairy woman goes to and fro on the earthto find the unfaithful to their promise, the breaker of sidhe faith.With nine cow-fetters, with crosses and spells she binds himand there is the bald tricky calf with three legsthat is worse than its not-to-be-spoken name.Let their protection be upon us but their backs towards us.

Put the salt upon the child’s head,Put it beneath the quern:Upon your eyes rub ointment of four-leaf clover —so you shall see the delusion and their gold shall not dazzle you.Put the ass-skin upon the pregnant womanand the power of the ass shall protect heras the ass stood before the Lady in the stable:and on your ways put on you the turned garment,turn your coat upon your journeysand you shall pass by the house of the sidhe,the place in the field where the grass is not cutand the dun that is their dwelling.

Let their tricks be far from us and their faces turned from usAnd the boy strides quickly over the hillbeloved of the mist, beloved of the dark.He spends his days without wildness, hidden.The dark wind is in him and the Tod of thunder.

The woman comes down from the mountain, stricken;the girl from the deep defile upclimbingstill is smiling inwardly.

The fire of growth that leaps within the treeis the instant fire of springwhen Celi moves the sap, the power without and withinthe sky that calls up the life.

In the buds and the blossoms Niwalencomes, the tall daughter tree-high:her footprints are tiny spring flowers,in her hand is the wand of powerand the sign of the benign star.

Yellow her cold tresses float liberaland clothe her waist-deep.She holds by a leash the thin wind-dogsthat harry the clouds of sleep.

In the autumn throned with her childrenin a bronze palace of leavesthere is her home, where the applesare piled with the rye-sheaves.

And the fires again are burning, but dimmerwith the fallen leafthe red leaf and the yellow, and the dry woodof age transforms from its grief:

Ah stranger, I was met by a beautiful strangerand he had a crest on his headlike to the canna-seed blowing in the windand under the soles of his feetwas a bright curling flame.

He came to my sheiling when I was oldabove the fourscore years.

Many things he said, prophesying curious things.A white cloak he hadand to his feet it felland his handswere hidden always in its folds. But oncehe stretched a hand to touch me, and I sawstrangely, for his flesh was seen like waterhis bones were skeletal in brine.Green weeds were floating,red weed lay nearwithin his glassy skin.

And then I knewhow in my island shielingwith Mannanan Mac Ler I had been speaking.May the holy saints be with me Murdoch mac Ianfor it is the old gods I have been seeing.

STRANGER

And the horse he is mounted on woodhis flesh is consumed, his spirit of speedrises and carries off dailyin his skeleton cage man’s soulwhilst to the root sinks Celito guard winter’s life, condensinginto vital coal.

I was the only man who did not dieof those first men, old Portholan my nameand many years after they died lived I.

Then came that nephew Nemedand all his folk. As I watched them concealedbranches came covered me, and the changecame upon me: I was to be the stagas Nemed multiplied, and I was kingof all the deer in Eire, noble beastswise with the ageless past.

But death came upon men and then againthe current in me changed, and many yearsflowed past: I grew the tusky boar thickshoulderedoaring his way through floods, and Semion Stariatbrought all his bagmen a buying-selling hordefrom the far south.

Against them I stood firmdisguised in pig’s flesh I, the basic man.How long before a salving raceleaven this dough?

Within a mista race of gods from the hills and seas they camewith golden hair and music. A thousand yearsthe people of Dana ruled as stars rule menand the Firbolg hid.

From depths to heights I climbedflew as a bird with feathers on my limbsand as an eagle scanned the earththe plain of riverine Eire.

THE SOUL TRANSMIGRANT

And the Sea-Eagle views the heights and weighsall things by over-sight.

Yet I again have change, this Partholanwho was from the beginning and with much changebought so far wisdom. I am doomed and drownin waters falling as the White Way leadsinto the deep tides of the washing heart.I swim with glassy eyeup into rivers and I bearthe fresh and salmon shape.Here am I caughtin Elphin’s weir — yes I am caught and soldfor my rebirth, my very self is changednot as with outward forms. Within her bodymy fish-form grew to human, is rebornthe son of Carell, Tuan; and so I amPartholan and MacCarell, and the kingof all the stags and boars, and I have seenall from an eyrie’s heightthen with my fins driven through the ocean.Three the migrations of my middle selfand one the change that brings me man againnot the old Partholan but Carell’s son.

To break the heavy earth be strongBe as the deer swift king.Bear up mankind upon the boar’s strong tusk.Know the immediate sightfrom the crag of inner light.Be suffering fish in man again.

Then at the last men came again, for greythe halfmen bagmen were, deformed and strange of limb.and those of Dana were a folk of airthe Sidhe that broke the wall ordained betweenthe living and the dead and movedtofro the seen and unseen lands.

From seaNow Miled’s sons came slowly and in fightthey fairly conquered all material soil.Still did this eagle watch them from aboveas they by treaty and on Moytura’s fieldleft to the heavenly ones their heavenly hilland all the land of Connacht and the sea;for man has of himself material mindBut of the Sidhe come soul and spirit both.

Patholan and Nemed early tilled the landAnd tamed beast-nature by an earthy will.Fomorians gave both gains and greed to men,yet needful is the cave of nightwhence there is born the silver light.Miled between them is the bridgefrom earthy building into visionfor life between these shores a river flows.

Let man his pilgrimage begin.The Stag in majesty and speedoutstrips the men in tangled toils of fen.The Boar is strong against corruption’s corehe swims against all currents in the flood.

The victor rises ready to combatthe forces ranged to battle for the worldconflicting causes cloudily arranged —the hosts are seen in heavenby Merlin called above the mountain heights.The bamboo flint shrills out, forces engage —a lifetime long, or a second in time —a flash of the eternal —

then is the trumpet blast, the victor voicethe voice as of a trumpetproclaiming that the kingdoms of this worldare those of the spirit.This for an aeon and the halcyon agethe paradise return, age of alchemic gold —

which as a vision parcelled shortly uprolls away the systems and the worlds are folded —the roll of thunder and the bolt of Zeus,the lightning-flash of the cosmos. And beholdthere are the windless standards of our war.

Hear the seven voices of thy inner Godfrom gate to gate calling, a love-voice that changesas the Elohim walk with men in a garden.The nightingale that mourns unto her mate,with voice persuading of great loss and loveat evening in the shadows of the grovethe grove of all the living souls of manforgiveness and the planting of new seed.

And then from end to end of luminous heavenDhyamis’ cymbals clash above the starswakening and proclaiming now the end of karmathe worlds are balanced and the life is clear —and the soul enters on the inner wayrenouncing much, entering a grey seato exercise and make the strong resolves:A plaintive beauty from an ocean shella sweet balm wrung from sorrow.

So strengthened, enter now the very deepthat crucifies upon matter, sweating bloodplucking the heartstrings of the vina outin the nadir of being: fourth of the voicesdarkest and most anguished, truth that dwellsat bottom of a well of suffering.

w

SEVEN VOICES

WaterBut πασι ρει — all things flow:che serà serà — let them gointo all creatures here below:And yet there is no flowAnd yet there is no waste.Movement is life itself in waterAmûn the motion, Mút the matter,Khons is both the son and daughter,Green is the fire of BastElusive beauty of the Moonin the darkness of creationis flowing in Khonsuthe old and new, future and past.

AirI think, I therefore am, and knowbecause my Kà has life.Hathor is mother of a day —

Thou mother of my mortal claydidst me to mortal life betray —

Bà is but movement in the tides of time,the Kà alone has true eternity

the Kà is the one ray and the white stone

FireI come from the eastMy egg is a firethat burns in the nestof the funeral pyre.My fiery bushthe song of the priest

inspires

For —I am Khapera the beetle in my red risingI am Ra in all my strengthAmûn I am in my departure hence

EarthThe Potter Ptah casts on the wheel the mudand shapes out men for birth(of how much water and of how much earth?)Imhotep builds the solid stonefrom much and many into oneabove the Nilus flood.Yet, long before, the Ancients’ work was done,already in the Mind was birth:the Ancients wrote it, building in the earth.

SONGS OF THE ELEMENTS

The gold-crested wren is a creature ofearth, flying little

seeking holes and belonging to them, matriarchal.A hunted look is the lot of most humans.All this is within

the sun’s lower kingdom.

Let yardlands of the face grow longso the heat may pulverise

the waters refresh,the winds smooth them.

So shall the higher sun come into this kingdomas the mighty ray,as the Eye of Ra

that fires the gold of the obeliskwhere the phoenix burns and ishatched again.

airview calm and largeis of air over water and land, air with clouds

air developing mist,air clear but blue.

Here the sun is seen as king,the pervasive regent of all,

conditioner and exemptor,raying upon all, but hidden

indeed from many,by water emanations from earth.

Sky is beyond sun, where the sun lives,æther above Olympus,

heaven above Indra.Our little heavens are one thing,

universal sun kingdomis another. Through this sky kingdom

the human bird flies on;but the sunmoves his kingdom throughkingdoms.

See this bird of naturefluttering in his air-world

the swallow the swift the martenare all about the houses of man, the

trees and his fields.

AN APPROACH TO HELIOPOLIS, SUN-CITY

Always the snow on the passand on the waterfall the icicleas the Luckless Ones move upon the unviewed pathin the midst of storm.

They bring back also with equal footto the mother the child,to the stricken the turning of fate again.They strike where no one strikesand they give when none has asked,they work in the heart of things a leaven.

is it that understands Fateand what shall be said of it?It strikes when none is striking,there is terror in the noonday as at night.

They brood they are invisible, theseViewless Ones,

they leave not the track of him who is markedbut suddenly Evil descends,Who shall

defend from it?Only the Peculiar People can sometimes

bend and avert it;but Evil itself has its rules, they

cannot be far broken.

Over the bluffs of the cliffs, in the foldsof the hills,

Fate has her favourite places and in theboiling gorges of streams.

Fate is intense, never still.I can never desire for youthe moirai, the man or the woman:for he stabs in the dark, and the womanopens beneath you at night:both are invisible, although the Peculiar Peoplecan see them with inverted sight.

CHOROS; CORSICAN FATE

upon Night the way flashingCove within Earth the seed receiving

South into North of us —Eagle upon mountain and the light ascendingThe Bowl of the daily dark descending

Stars beyond the shore of usThe Centre stays and the pattern fixesThe Centre moves and the diagram mixes

For many and more of us.

The Eye shines as the cast is shiningThe Bowl gathers darkness as the shade is spreading

The Obelisk stabs down the rayThe Pentagram weaves its tent overheadingThe stars and the Polestar turning and twining

Until the rotating of day.

O day and night O night of time{the weft upon the warp of rhyme}I backward step to the abyssWhere the Form ends and Nothing is —Where Nothing ends and All-Thing is.

RAPT FORM

softly as the stone, as silentlyas he speaks into earth.Smile, as the tree-gods smile into their beardswhen all smile in one mirthspreading their fronds as antennaethat only a spirit-eye can see.

Move as the ashtree swings her branchand with the strength of oakspread out on horizontal armsthe showings of the thunderstrokeJove elemental into dryads…

TREES

bowl of night was troubledin a brown and indigo darkan edge of light moved and a thread came through — How is this language without words! — the tomb was litthat’s all there was to it, and that was the sign given.

move up, the dawn flows in softly,the quires give out their quavers, and passages of peaceappear — mist and the cloudsclamber one over another.And now the light looks downno longer up, with shadow-gathering force.Water is in mist and fire is in water.Both give to earth and to the eye of man,fire is sun, the mist his daughter.

And so the quiring is done, and the mid-morning shapesthe workaday world.

But the heart of the longest day awakenedmoves up the hours to noonand to the balancing handsraises its emblem gifts:Bread, which is man’s making of earth,Salt, crystal quintessence, the chemical mother,to feed the being of the soul: and Winemovement of fire and of the will in matter —

these, these the hands in converse givegive out, reach down, offer up.All that the dawn brought, at the noon by menis given and given again.

SOLSTICE

tossing mass horizon-farof green-brown waters breaking and spumingtearing at the fronting wall, and the mist fuming…Here is the primitive violence of the harsh motherthe endless chaos of the fighting kings…here are circlets of white and patches of diamonds,clottings, sceptres and rings,the warfare of the many against the manyand all are against the one.For they break, break endlesslyover the steady frontal bastion.

DARK LIGHTS FROM ABERYSTWYTH

I come from the west into the eastI am from the place of recollecting and my heart

is strangely stirred.

On my right hand is the place of fireand at my left hand is water

For my right hand holds the sun my fatherand my left hand the moon my mother.

Before me are the diamonds of lighttheir sword is in my hand with the long rays of dawn

Behind me is the cup of waters and winesthe bowl into which the diviner gazes.

Where is my centre, for the centre risesit lifts and is in no place,in no place and everywhere.

Deep blue and green are the waters of the west,O Master of the Past,blue green and white in their churning and gliding.

At my right are the flames and the rays’ long handsfrom Ré at his noon.

At my left are little pools and the face of the moonshedding her pearly light on a stream.

A HUMAN SITUATION

The finest of yellow skies is before me and ittrembles and changes every momentbuilding shapes and dissecting them —vistas, palaces, masses of trees as arbitraryas ice packs.

Move now to calm the heart: let the questingintelligence balance the blue deep of the tragicvoice that says: think no more, search only thesedepths within.

The violence of the search, let it be quenched againin those fastnesses of the northern mind,those impenetrable mountains.

Remember the cone of the great sun above us,and equally the cone of shadow beneath us:our shadows and our lights stretch all to the universe

Also our colours and changings of direction are of asmall corner of the world,we are small creatures, and playing perhaps at a wrong point.

Do not be frenetic with dogma.

When the scales are adjusted comes the wrapping of a cloaka rough cloak but adequate, covering the personae.

Then here I am and here I am not.

The waters of the weir are dammedBut the falls flow on;

The sun dies and is eaten of SetBut there is new sun.

The river cannot stop nor for long be stayed,And its mighty fall

Is the descending of the milk of life,Birth and succour of all.

We have created a web of flesh and blood,A fish in our river, a frog in our shallows;

And he shall be a beast of promiseAnd a springing grain.

Shedding the child is the act of plentyThe womb full-eared, the excess of the year

And its coming again.He came in a tent, he

Paddled in a boat, heWent to the weir.

Who is he that came in a tentAnd was known in the waters of the firmament?

Even he, the web of blood and flesh,The small thing nestled in green and red,

Floating in the water of motherheadIn a bag of skin.

This beast shall leap aloud and shoutFrom rock to rock;

And this new grain shall be in earBefore twelve year.

What is the sign that this shall be?for life and death fall fatally.

THE COMING CHILD

Rose of the fiverose of the nineever folding inwardto the divinebeginnings of lifeleap in the beautiful guardof the red heart…O rose of firerose of the poet’s lyre…Leave but a kiss within the cupand I’ll not look for wine —Roses roses everywhere

and not a drop to drink —If it be true as I do think

there are three causes men do drink…

ROSE

Ah stranger, I was met by a beautiful stranger . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And the two children walked across the stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Behold the airman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Between heaven and earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Browse around my island-ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Constatic pressure of dazzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Darkness with a rush is springing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fire upon Night the way flashing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

He to whom the old is new . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hear the seven voices of thy inner God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Here the Fish enters the world of dark water . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How can I into words put the unputtable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I come from the east. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I come from the west into the east . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I conquered the largeness of mountain-sides. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I saw a vision of something I denied . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I saw the seven reapers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I was the only man who did not die . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In sleep what are you, in sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In the spring the blue serpent completes the year’s cycle . . . . . .

Let there be light. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Not unto us, not unto us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now comes egality of day and night. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now I cannot sleep for thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

O mother in the shades, make ready . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

On bikes and tandems they rush out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pattern repeats, repeats, the mother pattern linking . . . . . . . . .

Praise to the holiest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rose of the five. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Summer is the beautiful and the suffering season of roses . . . . .

The aftersummer storm in the wind of creation . . . . . . . . . . . .

The airview calm and large. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The arches of the bridge sink low upon the surfaces . . . . . . . . .

The blackshawled woman has gone by us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The bowl of night was troubled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The dainty nodes of fetlocks white . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The fire of growth that leaps within the tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The fires of autumn are amongst the trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The horsepower sings on the bridge-rise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The hour when minute by minute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The river under the trees passes into the shadows . . . . . . . . . . .

The spring is over the new grass over. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The tossing mass horizon-far . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The white doors stand infixed with ice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Through the still lips the soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To-night I went all in a dream because of you . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Tread softly as the stone, as silently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Under the solitary lampas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We have created a web of flesh and blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What of the way all souls must tread, approach to Thanatos? . .

White reed against bluewhite water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Who is it that understands Fate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wide Thames grey-outlined with grey birds floating . . . . . . . . .

INDEX OF FIRST LINES