Buphaga

I dreamed that I was walking down the streets
Of an old town. Softly as blood beats,
Along curved secret ways my footsteps went.
The day was still but clear, and green trees bent
Over the walls, their shadows drawn on stone
With that ethereal softness sometimes blown
By faint pure winds on water. Countries snow-stilled,
Heaped in the sky that same soft brightness filled
Where high carved peaks bloomed in stiff clouds of light.
Beyond the roofs bright-ranged they filled my sight.

In street-pools lay
Pale wind-flowers, china-blue, bits of the day
That shone above, solid and clear and deep.
'Twas but an hour from dawn, and fresh from sleep
The very stones gazed with dream-seeing eyes
Upon me as I passed. The houses all
Were shuttered still, although I caught the fall
Of voices in a garden—they are, thought I,
Two girls beneath a bough who to the sky
Swing in dawn's dreamfulness deliciously,
Putting dark feet against the ivory
Of heaven above the tree-tops. Softly I sang
Bright dreamy songs that clear and silvery rang
Patterned upon the calm like fretted stains
On chalcedony, or the faint branching veins
Of trees in smooth steel water. But my heart
Was flowering in a desert. At the song's start
Those other voices stilled, a hush came down
That filled the street like snow. The little town
Seemed like a star that's fallen on a hill
Solid but noiseless. Not a murmuring tree
Rustled its leaves. And so, fantastically,
I hurried under jutting roofs; and no
Wind came, my garments to out-blow.

At the town's edge,
Its stones uprising from a slow river's sedge,
A massive building lay, its garden space
High-walled, not to be spied upon by any face
That wandered underneath the Moon or Sun.
And there I heard a sweet-voiced tale begun;
Locked out I lay upon the grass and heard
A low, clear-tinkling voice like a caged bird
That with bright magic garlanded the air,
And though when it began the scene was fair
That my eyes held imagined, yet it grew
Ever more dark, and other voices drew
About it, voices emptier, and cold.
Until as on earth's hills a disc of gold
Enters, came warmth unimaged, and I lay,
With cold fear in my heart. Yet the bright day
Was tranquil, and no cloud by me was seen
Hung in the sky to dim the meadow's green.

THE VOICE:

In the blue sky the sun's a fount of gold
Bubbling invisibly into the air;
The sightless stones are wonderfully bright-eyed;
The trees are fragments earth-torn from night's dreams,
Sprinkled with crystal rain that fell from stars
Jarred in their circumambulatory trance
In the dark airy halls beyond this world.
Much brighter sings the river than at noon,
For then its shrill and silver babbling falls
Into the mellow mournfulness of age,
And all its shining coils are filmed and dim,
Its flashing body dulled, and heavily lying
Upon its bed by banks of withered grass.
Small bell-mouthed trumpets blown by hidden lips
Below the soil, now break upon the air
In carven tones, purer than scrolls of wax
Or linen hoods of nuns in chapel vaults;
The grass is white, milk-white our ancient walls;
The pure soft morning's like a pearl fished up
Out of a sea at sunrise, with the Moon
A heavenly sloop, low in the light-washed sky.
The drifting fishers by the pearl-grey shore,
Cast up from space by the transparent calm,
Emerge with dripping masts;
The Moon has sailed, they push their oars and glide
Into the pale gold Eastern mists, and find
The dawn's great Topaz on the water's rim,
And when they see it, gaily rise and sing!

SECOND VOICE:

At dawn I feel there is a bell in space,
That with a quivering tongue tolls music forth
From its high tower on seas of glimmering pearl,
Greeting the cold blush of the morning sky
With a cold azure clangour of delight!

THE VOICE:

The trees that drip are prisoners of the earth,
And can but lift their branches to the sky.
They stand like fountains chained by winter frosts
Breathing a cold bright glory, frail as smoke
Or breath of cattle on the dewy grass.
But we are free, free, yet we wither here
In these black gowns, as dead as trees in winter
Fenced in white walls of everlasting peace!

SECOND VOICE:

I found a toad one day beneath a stone,
And he was golden-mottled, velvet-dark,
With a great emerald eye. I shrieked with fear,
And ran back with delight, he was so lovely.
At last, trembling, I stooped to touch his side:
Ugh! he was cold! I never shall forget
The shock it was to find a thing so bright
Colder than my cell's walls. Next day he'd gone.
I should have placed him in a little box,
And kept him just to gaze on...

THE VOICE:

The sunset's gold, and that is all we see
Of the great glory there must be in life.
Here in this garden we can watch it dip
Beyond those western mountains whose high peaks
Are more remote than any hills of dream.
For in the dead of night, and fast asleep,
There are no boundaries to my travelling soul,
No vale or hillside but I wander there,
And pluck its flowers, and wave delighted hands
Above its tranquil streams, and those white fans
Startle gold shadows in the crystal waters,
Faint undulations in the rippling tide
Of that frail blushing glory on the hills
That creeps at evening from the fading sky,
And steals down all the rivers. Softly it sings
In many a dark wood carolling on a bough,
A tiny ghost of that departed sun.
And such a ghost I heard, once wandering here—
Out of my bed arisen an hour ere dawn—
Stealing between the shadow-shapes of trees.
So still it was I scarcely dared to breathe.
It seemed to me that life lay all around
Loud crying from a million million throats.
Though 'twas so silent, I could almost hear
The star fires crackling in the dark of heaven.
Then suddenly I heard a voice that came—
Thinner than crying drakes that die at dusk—
Up from the stone beneath my feet, and I
Heard without hearing, in tranquillity
Deeper than evening's calm, this lonely song:

Weary I wait until the rising Sun
Shall reach me where I lie,
And then shall I
Burn with sharp sweetness the pale-scented grass;
And marigolds upright
Shall droop their proud fair heads, until I see
Their faces bright
Clouded with that slow-passing panoply
Of great star-dimming light.
But naked, I, unblinking, shall gaze back,
And dumbly shout, unheard,
As loud as dark-groved bird
Whom, wood-entombed, Dawn's pale splinter finds.
And on night's brink—
When icy winds do weep, and hidden in leaves
Silent they shrink—
I shall cry out once more to ghostly stars,
And pale dews drink.

The silence never trembled. I stood still
Down in the garden, motionless as stone,
My face upturned to stars, my lips half-open
As if that song had passed out with my breath,
And was my spirit leaving my cold body,
Sighed up from earth and under star-blue skies
A moon-lit wave of lava, petrified.

SECOND VOICE:

I do not know what other life you seek.
In this quiet garden all is beautiful,
And I am glad to be safe harboured here,
For there's a hidden cruelty in the sky...

THE VOICE:

I have no fear of cruelty: I would live,
And see my blood phantasy my white hands,
And stain my linen with dark, silent shrieks,
Rather than sit immaculate and sing—
A frosty angel cloud-carved from the sky—
Calm, stainless songs of snow in heavenly streets,
Archangels blowing clarion harmony
With faces like those marble cherubs who
Gaze from the corners of our father's tomb.

SECOND VOICE:

There is a pale rapt beauty on their brows
That I do long for. Jesu, give me peace
To dig such holiness from my weak flesh
As looking on Thou shalt incline Thy Face—
Howe'er so far away—with loveliness
Benign and calm, Thou shining on my soul
As the Moon shines on the pale pools of earth!

THE VOICE:

The dreams of virgins are both ice and fire.
It may be that these starry frosts of thine—
Like those at morning found upon the trees
When a night's snow has stolen away the wind
And left a sepulchre of shining boughs—
Do pierce the soul with brighter agony,
And light more sparkling tracks within the mind
Than mid-day suns that beat upon the heart,
And bleed in wild cloud-jungles of the sky,
Dissolving dawn's white wraiths to woods of gloom
Where hidden waters curve upon the boughs
In great green billows, and on crowded stems
The earth's sun-seeking myriads twist their souls;
Frail angels from the moss they sing to God,
Lifting a weight of prayer towards the sky
To burst into a sudden clap of bloom,
Hanging faint heads after wild-coloured cries;
While round about prowl darker things than these,
Who also praise God ravening through the world.
In green foam and in silver streams
The nightingales now sing,
And many souls are wandering by
The frail, white boughs of spring
Who from my dreaming thrust a hand
Under cold, milk-pale skies
To catch the shining song they hear
Ere in dream-dark it dies.

In dream-dark die earth's jaguars,
Eagles and spotted deer;
The crested birds who from great flowers
Upon the silence peer:
The blossoms of a far-off world
In the night sky gather;
They shall all walk down with me
In the dark earth together.

SECOND VOICE:

The songs you sing, Moryrria, fill my mind
With meaning strange as music that disturbs
The soul desiring peace and to know God.

MORYRRIA:

Wilt thou know God, seated upon a stone,
Thy face bent o'er a lily? In what book
Hath God appeared Who made the green-eyed toad
That sits in meadows (while the flock of stars
Creeps from the sky) as thou sittest at thy window—
His eyes the same great field of far-off fires
Which pale and redden in the invisible wind?
From what deep pool of mud did he creep up
Out of the bowels of earth to see the sky,
To gaze as thou dost gaze? It is the earth itself
That from deep concentration lifts its soul,
And from that meadow and your window looks.
And there is something that looks up in me,
But cannot find what it would gaze upon.

SECOND VOICE:

You frighten me, Moryrria...

MORYRRIA:

Open your white-paged book in the green woods.
Your calm face will bring peace to the green boughs,
Who'll flutter round that bright tranquillity
That comes among them, whence they cannot know.
Nor do I know what brought you, sister, here,
Into this world of turbulence and lust,
A white cascade among wild rocks and trees.

SECOND VOICE:

The Reverend Mother comes—but, look! Moryrria!
I thought I saw the Sun shout, huge and gold,
Among the pigmy stars: BEHOLD, BUPHAGA!

PRIORESS:

This creature, daughter, has been sent to thee
From thy lost brother, who in heathen lands
Fought for the souls of men mid things like these.
But I do fear—for it is marvellous gold,
And hues of sunset sparkle on its body—
Now that thou hast this morsel of the Sun,
It shall entice thy mind to earthly lusts,
Strange fornications of thy maiden spirit
That is so apt to crucify the flesh
In wild embracing of the cold night stars.
I fear a fire will eat into this garden
That has been lit by the pale purified Orb
Amid our northern mountains. And the Moon,
That Christlike treads our calm, seraphic hills,
Will no more hang upon our garden harps
Bright harmony of still, transparent sound—
As though the angels carved on Heaven's walls
In contemplation had down-dropped their gaze
To this dark earth...

MORYRRIA:

Art thou my brother's soul, or art thou Life
That I have waited for these empty years?
Out of the black abysses of dead Time
Thou art come hither, barred with the golden Sun,
Voiced with a million, million forest leaves
Shadow-like falling through the dateless past
Where great mossed trunks fade like the wings of evening,
Passing at twilight into eternity.
Male moths like devil's faces fluttering come
Floating from hell, making no sound at all
Mid silent-shrieking flowers dragged off by night
Suddenly from all fearful-gazing eyes.
I hear the jubilation of cold streams
When the gold ghosts of tigers, walking, pale,
With heads uplifted gaze on their embryo stars—
Those milky beasts that haunt the desert skies,
And then descend to drink the evening water
In wandering streams...

That voice went falling on,
As falls the sea's voice from the traveller, gone
Some miles inland, who sees the motionless hills
And clouds hung silent in the sky. Sound fills
The still wide valley with no audible cry
From bright waves painted cold in memory.
I gazed in dream upon the swelling ground
That undulated softly to the sea,
Against those dark walls foaming noiselessly.
And there was not a sound in earth or sky:
No bird rose up out of the trees to fly,
Dwindling through space upon a noiseless wing
And in departing hope of renewal bring.
But all around seemed a stiff painted scene,
Air-ambered butterflies hung 'twixt bushes green,
Insects' antennae moved not, nor their great eyes
In grass as still as the bright fadeless skies.
Birds stood on rocks, fish gazed from wave-still coigns—
Earth on itself protruding from its own loins.
But Earth was not, for Earth had entered in
That secret spiritual garden. The awful din
Of astronomic emptiness swung round
My naked soul. But not a tangible sound
Flew to the drums of my corporeal ear
Bent, listening....

And I looked up and found that it was even,
Pale stars were clustered dimly in the heaven.
I heard no voices, walking to the sea
Quivering upon earth's coast, soundlessly.
And in a boat I stole, without wind, away
From the dead shore where that great Convent lay.