A burning fire rose up within me, You were away long miles apart; You could not wait the day to win me, But came a lightning to my heart.
I call into that flaming centre "Spirit, I love you." Far away Fades from the paradise I enter The dim unreal land of day.
The blue dusk ran between the streets: my love was winged within my mind, It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind. To-day was past and dead for me, for from to-day my feet had run Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon. On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days. The tower of heaven turns darker blue, a starry sparkle now begins; The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins Come back to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers; Within the gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers. The waters lull me and the scent of many gardens, and I hear Familiar voices, and the voice I love is whispering in my ear. Oh real as in dream all this; and then a hand on mine is laid: The wave of phantom time withdraws; and that young Babylonian maid, One drop of beauty left behind from all the flowing of that tide, Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in Ireland by my side. Oh light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken wings, While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.
I could praise you once with beautiful words ere you came And entered my life with love in a wind of flame. I could lure with a song from afar my bird to its nest, But with pinions drooping together silence is best.
In the Land of Beautiful Silence the winds are laid, And life grows quietly one in the cloudy shade. I will not waken the passion that sleeps in the heart, For the winds that blew us together may blow us apart.
Fear not the stillness; for doubt and despair shall cease With the gentle voices guiding us into peace. Our dreams will change as they pass through the gates of gold, And Quiet, the tender shepherd, shall keep the fold.
Not unremembering we pass our exile from the starry ways: One timeless hour in time we caught from the long night of endless days. With solemn gaiety the stars danced far withdrawn on elfin heights: The lilac breathed amid the shade of green and blue and citron lights. But yet the close enfolding night seemed on the phantom verge of things, For our adoring hearts had turned within from all their wanderings: For beauty called to beauty, and there thronged at the enchanter's will The vanished hours of love that burn within the Ever-living still. And sweet eternal faces put the shadows of the earth to rout, And faint and fragile as a moth your white hand fluttered and went out. Oh, who am I who tower beside this goddess of the twilight air? The burning doves fly from my heart, and melt within her bosom there. I know the sacrifice of old they offered to the mighty queen, And this adoring love has brought us back the beauty that has been. As to her worshippers she came descending from her glowing skies, So Aphrodite I have seen with shining eyes look through your eyes: One gleam of the ancestral face which lighted up the dawn for me: One fiery visitation of the love the gods desire in thee!