Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

60. A Vision of Beauty

WHERE we sat at dawn together, while the star-rich heavens shifted,

We were weaving dreams in silence, suddenly the veil was lifted.

By a hand of fire awakened, in a moment caught and led

Upward to the heaven of heavens—through the star-mists overhead

Flare and flaunt the monstrous highlands; on the sapphire coast of night

Fall the ghostly froth and fringes of the ocean of the light.

Many coloured shine the vapours: to the moon-eye far away

’Tis the fairy ring of twilight, mid the spheres of night and day,

Girdling with a rainbow cincture round the planet where we go,

We and it together fleeting, poised upon the pearly glow;

We and it and all together flashing through the starry spaces

In a tempest dream of beauty lighting up the face of faces.

Half our eyes behold the glory; half within the spirit’s glow

Echoes of the noiseless revels and the will of Beauty go.

By a hand of fire uplifted—to her star-strewn palace brought,

To the mystic heart of beauty and the secret of her thought:

Here of yore the ancient Mother in the fire mists sank to rest,

And she built her dreams about her, rayed from out her burning breast:

Here the wild will woke within her lighting up her flying dreams,

Round and round the planets whirling break in woods and flowers and streams,

And the winds are shaken from them as the leaves from off the rose,

And the feet of earth go dancing in the way that beauty goes,

And the souls of earth are kindled by the incense of her breath

As her light alternate lures them through the gates of birth and death.

O’er the fields of space together following her flying traces,

In a radiant tumult thronging, suns and stars and myriad races

Mount the spirit spires of beauty, reaching onward to the day

When the Shepherd of the Ages draws his misty hordes away

Through the glimmering deeps to silence, and within the awful fold

Life and joy and love forever vanish as a tale is told,

Lost within the Mother’s being. So the vision flamed and fled,

And before the glory fallen every other dream lay dead.