Classic Poem

Voices of Unseen Spirits

Here falls no light of sun nor stars;
No stir nor striving here intrudes;
No moan nor merry-making mars
The quiet of these solitudes.

Submerged in sleep, the passive soul
Is one with all the things that seem;
Night blurs in one confusid whole
Alike the dreamer and the dream.

O dwellers in the busy town!
For dreams you smile, for dreams you weep.
Come out, and lay your burdens down!
Come out; there is no God but Sleep.

Sleep, and renounce the vital day;
For evil is the child of life.
Let be the will to live, and pray
To find forgetfulness of strife.

Beneath the thicket of these leaves
No light discriminates each from each.
No Self that wrongs, no Self that grieves,
Hath longer deed nor creed nor speech.

Sleep on the mighty Mother's breast!
Sleep, and no more be separate!
Then, one with Nature's ageless rest,
There shall be no more sin to hate.

Taliesin

Spirits of Sleep,
That swell and sink
In the sea of Being
Like waves on the deep,
Forming, crumbling,
Fumbling, and tumbling
Forever, unseeing,
From brink to brink!

Perishing voices,
That call and call
From the coves of dream
With hollow noises!
I hear the sweep
Of the tides of sleep,
The ocean stream
Where the ages fall.

But not for these
Will I let me die,
Though my heart remembers
The calling seas;
For the cycles fought
Till form was wrought
And Might had members
And I was I.

Yet still to you,
O Dreams, I turn;
Not with a prayer
But a bidding to do!
I surmount and subdue you;
Not without you but through you
I shall forge and fare
To the chosen bourne.

Voices

We are ware of a will
Cries " Peace, be still! "
And our waters cease
To a troubled peace.

Taliesin

Lo, star upon star!
They dwell alone
Sirius, Altair,
Algebar!
Their ways are asunder, —
Aloof, in thunder
They march and flare
From zone to zone.

But the formless ether
Far and far
Enfolds their places.
Therein together
At one they sweep
From deep to deep,
And over its spaces
Star calls to star.

Through its waves they reach
Beyond their spheres
To their fellow fires.
Each yearns to each,
And the straight wills swerve
To a yielding curve,
And a moth's desires
Deflect the years.

And with urge on urge
Of the rippling wave
Light speeds through space;
The domes emerge;
And the halls of Night
Behold each light
Reveal his face
To the vast conclave.

The centred Soul
By these is known.
Its will it wreaks
At its own control;
But dumb, unseeing,
The sea of Being
Washes the peaks
Where it strives alone.

Voices

As the dawn awaits
The recoiling gates
Of the eastern air,
We are calm and hear.