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Read Ebook: The Masque of the Elements by Scheffauer Herman George
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Ebook has 122 lines and 7265 words, and 3 pages
Triumphant rolls his paean. He casts from him his tempests of solar melody, vibrant and far-winged.
SONG OF THE SUN
EMBATTLED life in living light immerst, I shed the glory of my fatherhood! These shafts shall quell the surgent dark and burst The walls of night that pent my circling brood. Rolled twyfold in each shining cirque and arch, My jewelled court of splendour ring on ring, Salutes me down my firmamental march, Hailing me sire, all-quickener, lord and king! I fling eternal largesses of light And warmth, and wave my torch within the deep,-- Dance! purple planet-children, in my sight Around Creation's golden core! Go sweep Within this blaze of winnowed flames, you sons And daughters wing'd with veils of rain and fire, Hold high your mirrored Moons!--you myrmidons Of meteors robed with flame--you comets dire, Far-wandering lights, go seek my brother spheres And yonder orbs, now basking span on span; And bear me tidings if their ripened years Have made them joyous with the face of Man.
Emblazoned with crests of lustre like the Sun, the Earth-orb wanders singing through her rounds.
She flings her arms and tresses of Fire to the stars, a maenad in the planetary dance.
The cold voids of hungry space drink up her ardours. She glows redly; the Fires retreat into her heart and her form is clothed with lava as with the Sea. Now is she muffled in her new-born clouds and the rains struggle through her fervent Airs.
She floats, a watery globe, in the face of the Sun.
She urges up her writhing continents that smoke high unto Heaven.
And they grow green as her Seas are green. The Winds are in her hair, the Sun dowers her with riches as a bride, the Waters lace her robes with silver cords.
The tributary seasons begin their march, laden with store of beauty.
The stately sphere lifts up her chant, measured unto her dance in majestic tides of rhythm:
SONG OF THE PLANET EARTH
Again before thee winding, O Sun, at length,-- At length, thou call'st me from the wintry deep! With cornucopian Fire thou giv'st me strength, Caresses and golden hours and grace of sleep. My filial song I weave with theirs who roll Afar or close, past thy celestial face, My sister lamps that o'er the Zodiac's scroll From fane to fane in adoration pace. The rapt Equator's crimson cincture holds Me close; my emerald ocean-robes flow free, And purple soar my mountains, folds on folds, With vale and plain. My bondmaid Moon to me Reveals her marbled snow in cusp and shale-- Whilst in my flinty womb the valiant strife Of Fire proclaims me thine and bans the pale Usurper Death beyond my fields of Life. In Winds that wrap my path, lo, I shall sing To thee a choral eternal, Lord of Days, And Life with myriad hearts in me shall sing Thy glory to scan forever, and chant thy praise.
The wrinkled Moon, charred by the fires of her brief youth, sits serene above the rose-blown round of Earth.
Like an aged beldam she crouches in the heavens, ashes upon her head, weaving her ancient silver magic, spelling enchantment upon the nether Sea.
She is a sybil in whom the wisdom of the worlds is garnered up. Her eyelids are heavy with the poppy.
She smiles and spins in sunlight and in shadow, weaving robes of slumber for her mistress. She holds her shining disk on high as a mirror for her queen.
Her song is such as the watchers sing that sit by the couches of birth and death.
SONG OF THE MOON
THE silvern mistress of the golden Sun, The milk-white sister to the wine-red Earth, My lord still smiles upon me, nor will shun My face for hers of younger, fairer birth. Though oft her fruitful beauty glides between And robs me of his countenance, I will Ne'er hate her, but yield up my borrowed sheen To make her hallowed nights more hallowed still. Burn then, my pale and vestal flame, make fair The nuptials of the amorous Earth with night! My sickle reaps the lurking stars in air, My argent shield hangs lucent on the height. Yet he that chafes and wounds the Earthen shores, And flees though she embrace--the yearning Sea,-- Is shackled by my smiling and implores My chaster, colder kiss and mounts to me. With pearls of white enchantment I bestrew The happy realms where lovers hunt their bliss; My ray is pale as frost and soft as dew; My path is woven in snow through the abyss.
The ambient fluid of the Winds is born, Air is born, invisible Element, felt yet unfeeling. The fissure of the lightning leaves it unwounded, the destroying tempest undestroyed.
It is the bath of the girdled Earth, perfumed with balms and essences. It is the crystal shell whereunder Earth ripens like a fruit.
The light Winds sing as they roll in their courses, weaving the bland and passionate Airs into prophetic chords.
The Element stirs into harmony and musters into one universal voice:
SONG OF AIR
AGAIN I clasp the pure, the passive globe, Her delving valleys and each granite range,-- The Sun and Heaven's bent azure form my robe: With me the Oceans rove, the cloudlands change. Once more the quarters of the world I part, And part those quarters 'twixt my princely sons And pennoned fowl! Let lark and eagle dart! And warbling flocks fill my dominions! Son of the South! bring perfume, nard and spice, Lade all thine amorous burdens on my gales:-- Thou that the Pole-star wooest, mailed in ice, Let swarm thy snow-white bees upon these vales! O West Wind, from each rude and swooping wing Shake forth thy salty tempests, from the plains Transport me healing! Golden Orient, sing, And fan me with thy murmurous painted vanes. O whirlwinds, rash and rude! O headlong wrath Of your unbridled and cyclonic staves! Shall man yet tread you like some earthly path? Shall I, your king, wear shackles like his slaves?
Lord of all waters, Ocean, wrapped in emerald robes, clasps and usurps the world.
The flagrant arrows of the Sun shower on his glancing mail. The estray Winds are wanton with his locks. His mutinous waves whisper each to each, and leap and sink.
Desire irresistible roves within his heaving deeps. Life wields a goad in every drop.
He decks his floods for the face of the Moon, and enlaces them with chains of shackled pearls and bands of foam.
He sends his salty breath aloft and wreathes the Sun with clouds. But his mists return again, falling as tears upon his face.
Inert in the profounds the blind bathybus lies. Fecundity flings her seeds and spores into the glazed abysses, and they teem. There is a heaving in the broken, sunless bottoms; the continents and islands are upcast, rugged and black, shaking the roaring Seas from their flanks.
The labour and song of the Sea begin; the billows repeat it to the lips of the infant land.
SONG OF THE SEA
FLOW, Waters! spread afar my zones of green, So I with salt baptismal waves may haunt And bathe the new-sprung continents terrene, Hearing my freshets and young rivers chaunt. O white-armed children of mine elder waves, Behold what golden lands lie in your sight! Bellow! you molten thunders, in my caves, You whales, gush forth your fountains of delight! Dance, merfolk and mad dolphins, dance the Seas,-- My watery palace-halls are deep and wide, And Earth hath quaffed mine emerald wine whose lees Shall make her shores teem fertile. O'er my tide, The ermine of my surges and the flags And mews lie dense, and pearls sleep in my breast. The coral burns upon my darkest crags, And the slow, mountant atoll knows no rest. My leman fair, the charmed Moon, bends low To draw me with her webs of mute desire, And lo! beyond her magic empires glow Pale fires of sunrise and red sunset fire!
SONG OF EARTH THE ELEMENT
Earth, the Element, mute, impassive, primal, lies shaped to valley, plain and peak. Enwombed in her, the ancient vast fertility lives on.
Her veins are charged with promise and birth, exhaustless quickenings of her eager flesh. She drinks from rocky bowls where lakes lie spread, from twining rivers and living streams.
She pours her virgin vigour through fields no plow has riven. In darkness granite-ribbed, she prisons her mineral hoards.
She lies as a garment upon the Mother-sphere; her feet trespass on Ocean.
Her heart is fretted with Fire, her flanks by the Seas, her brows by Sun and Wind.
In patience and sweet sufferance she lies, substance, nurse and genetrix of Life.
Her Song is heard, a mutter of music, low yet coalescent in slow estrangement from her lips.
I WAKE again!--O dauntless peaks that stand, Watch-towers to all the Heavens--O vales that lie,-- See where I rise or stretch, the lusty land Checks Seas and winnows Winds and frets the sky. Deep in my vaulted heart and womb of fire, And in the domes and chambers of my breasts, The seeds of Life glow teeming--O Sun-king, sire! Arch-quickener of Existence, gild these crests;-- Scatter thy warmth till harvest clothe these plains, And I shall broider me in bridal dreams, Yea, light my feast with blazonry, my veins Leap like my crystal and tellurian streams. In me bright blooms and golden fruitage blown Shall mark where errant, immortal summers creep, And man that is flesh of me, in every zone Build jewelled towns where quick and dead shall sleep. O fixed and faithful through the seasons round, The throne of Earth, her sceptre and her loom, Are mine, with mute, maternal glory crowned, In me all Life shall flower, all Death re-bloom!
Child of the Sun, unmastered and insurgent pulse of Life; breath of the empyrean, seraph winged with ardours and with loveliness!
Comes Fire, pontiff celestial, King of Elements, errant angel, that basks and rejoices in his spaces.
He comes and takes from darkness and cold their undivided victories. Out of the famished sands he leaps, out of the crater's maw.
The genius of flame winds on, touching the peaks with consecration. His red and golden nakedness is crested with his sable clouds of hair.
Upward and onward he aspires. His crimson vans are spread against the heavens, his torches flutter, making glorious the funerals of the day. His feet are a scourge across the soil; his arms are lifted to the stars.
Co-eval with them he burns and sings with a thousand tongues.
SONG OF FIRE
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