The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems/The Occultation of Orion
THE OCCULTATION OF ORION.
I saw, as in a dream sublime,The balance in the hand of Time.O'er East and West its beam impended;And day, with all its hours of light,Was slowly sinking out of sight,While, opposite, the scale of nightSilently with the stars ascended.
Like the astrologers of eld,In that bright vision I beheld Greater and deeper mysteries.I saw, with its celestial keys,Its chords of air, its frets of fire,The Samian's great Æolian lyre,Rising through all its sevenfold bars,From earth unto the fixed stars.And through the dewy atmosphere,Not only could I see, but hear,Its wondrous and harmonious strings,In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,From Dian's circle light and near,Onward to vaster and wider rings,Where, chanting through his beard of snows,Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes,And down the sunless realms of spaceReverberates the thunder of his bass.
Beneath the sky's triumphal archThis music sounded like a march, And with its chorus seemed to bePreluding some great tragedy.Sirius was rising in the east;And, slow ascending one by one,The kindling constellations shone.Begirt with many a blazing star,Stood the great giant Algebar,Orion, hunter of the beast!His sword hung gleaming by his side,And, on his arm, the lion's hideScattered across the midnight airThe golden radiance of its hair.
The moon was pallid, but not faint;And beautiful as some fair saint,Serenely moving on her wayIn hours of trial and dismay.As if she heard the voice of God,Unharmed with naked feet she trod Upon the hot and burning stars,As on the glowing coals and bars,That were to prove her strength, and tryHer holiness and her purity.
Thus moving on, with silent pace,And triumph in her sweet, pale face,She reached the station of Orion.Aghast he stood in strange alarm!And suddenly from his outstretched armDown fell the red skin of the lionInto the river at his feet.His mighty club no longer beatThe forehead of the bull; but heReeled as of yore beside the sea,When, blinded by Œnopion,He sought the blacksmith at his forge,And, climbing up the mountain gorge,Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun.
Then, through the silence overhead,An angel with a trumpet said,"Forevermore, forevermore,The reign of violence is o'er!"And, like an instrument that flingsIts music on another's strings,The trumpet of the angel castUpon the heavenly lyre its blast,And on from sphere to sphere the wordsRe-echoed down the burning chords,—"Forevermore, forevermore,The reign of violence is o'er!"