Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

139. The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty

I WOULD I could weave in

The colour, the wonder,

The song I conceive in

My heart while I ponder,

And show how it came like

The magi of old

Whose chant was a flame like

The dawn’s voice of gold;

Whose dreams followed near them

A murmur of birds,

And ear still could hear them

Unchanted in words.

In words I can only

Reveal thee my heart,

Oh, Light of the Lonely,

The shining impart.

Between the twilight and the dark

The lights danced up before my eyes:

I found no sleep or peace or rest,

But dreams of stars and burning skies.

I knew the faces of the day—

Dream faces, pale, with cloudy hair,

I knew you not nor yet your home,

The Fount of Shadowy Beauty, where?

I passed a dream of gloomy ways

Where ne’er did human feet intrude:

It was the border of a wood,

A dreadful forest solitude.

With wondrous red and fairy gold

The clouds were woven o’er the ocean;

The stars in fiery æther swung

And danced with gay and glittering motion.

A fire leaped up within my heart

When first I saw the old sea shine;

As if a god were there revealed

I bowed my head in awe divine;

And long beside the dim sea marge

I mused until the gathering haze

Veiled from me where the silver tide

Ran in its thousand shadowy ways.

The black night dropped upon the sea:

The silent awe came down with it:

I saw fantastic vapours flee

As o’er the darkness of the pit.

When lo! from out the furthest night

A speck of rose and silver light

Above a boat shaped wondrously

Came floating swiftly o’er the sea.

It was no human will that bore

The boat so fleetly to the shore

Without a sail spread or an oar.

The Pilot stood erect thereon

And lifted up his ancient face,

Ancient with glad eternal youth

Like one who was of starry race.

His face was rich with dusky bloom;

His eyes a bronze and golden fire;

His hair in streams of silver light

Hung flamelike on his strange attire,

Which, starred with many a mystic sign,

Fell as o’er sunlit ruby glowing:

His light flew o’er the waves afar

In ruddy ripples on each bar

Along the spiral pathways flowing.

It was a crystal boat that chased

The light along the watery waste,

Till caught amid the surges hoary

The Pilot stayed its jewelled glory.

Oh, never such a glory was:

The pale moon shot it through and through

With light of lilac, white and blue:

And there mid many a fairy hue,

Of pearl and pink and amethyst,

Like lightning ran the rainbow gleams

And wove around a wonder-mist.

The Pilot lifted beckoning hands;

Silent I went with deep amaze

To know why came this Beam of Light

So far along the ocean ways

Out of the vast and shadowy night.

“Make haste, make haste!” he cried. “Away!

A thousand ages now are gone.

Yet thou and I ere night be sped

Will reck no more of eve or dawn.”

Swift as the swallow to its nest

I leaped: my body dropt right down:

A silver star I rose and flew.

A flame burned golden at his breast:

I entered at the heart and knew

My Brother-Self who roams the deep,

Bird of the wonder-world of sleep.

The ruby vesture wrapped us round

As twain in one; we left behind

The league-long murmur of the shore

And fleeted swifter than the wind.

The distance rushed upon the bark:

We neared unto the mystic isles:

The heavenly city we could mark,

Its mountain light, its jewel dark,

Its pinnacles and starry piles.

The glory brightened: “Do not fear;

For we are real, though what seems

So proudly built above the waves

Is but one mighty spirit’s dreams.

“Our Father’s house hath many fanes;

Yet enter not and worship not,

For thought but follows after thought

Till last consuming self it wanes.

“The Fount of Shadowy Beauty flings

Its glamour o’er the light of day:

A music in the sunlight sings

To call the dreamy hearts away

Their mighty hopes to ease awhile:

We will not go the way of them:

The chant makes drowsy those who seek

The sceptre and the diadem.

“The Fount of Shadowy Beauty throws

Its magic round us all the night;

What things the heart would be, it sees

And chases them in endless flight.

Or coiled in phantom visions there

It builds within the halls of fire;

Its dreams flash like the peacock’s wing

And glow with sun-hues of desire.

We will not follow in their ways

Nor heed the lure of fay or elf,

But in the ending of our days

Rest in the high Ancestral Self.”

The boat of crystal touched the shore,

Then melted flamelike from our eyes,

As in the twilight drops the sun

Withdrawing rays of paradise.

We hurried under archéd aisles

That far above in heaven withdrawn

With cloudy pillars stormed the night,

Rich as the opal shafts of dawn.

I would have lingered then—but he:

“Oh, let us haste: the dream grows dim,

Another night, another day,

A thousand years will part from him,

Who is that Ancient One divine

From whom our phantom being born

Rolled with the wonder-light around

Had started in the fairy morn.

“A thousand of our years to him

Are but the night, are but the day,

Wherein he rests from cyclic toil

Or chants the song of starry sway.

He falls asleep: the Shadowy Fount

Fills all our heart with dreams of light:

He wakes to ancient spheres, and we

Through iron ages mourn the night.

We will not wander in the night

But in a darkness more divine

Shall join the Father Light of Lights

And rule the long-descended line.”

Even then a vasty twilight fell:

Wavered in air the shadowy towers:

The city like a gleaming shell,

Its azures, opals, silvers, blues,

Were melting in more dreamy hues.

We feared the falling of the night

And hurried more our headlong flight.

In one long line the towers went by;

The trembling radiance dropt behind,

As when some swift and radiant one

Flits by and flings upon the wind

The rainbow tresses of the sun.

And then they vanished from our gaze

Faded the magic lights, and all

Into a starry radiance fell

As waters in their fountain fall.

We knew our time-long journey o’er

And knew the end of all desire,

And saw within the emerald glow

Our Father like the white sun-fire.

We could not say if age or youth

Were on his face: we only burned

To pass the gateways of the day,

The exiles to the heart returned.

He rose to greet us and his breath,

The tempest music of the spheres,

Dissolved the memory of earth,

The cyclic labour and our tears.

In him our dream of sorrow passed,

The spirit once again was free

And heard the song the morning stars

Chant in eternal revelry.

This was the close of human story;

We saw the deep unmeasured shine,

And sank within the mystic glory

They called of old the Dark Divine.

Well it is gone now,

The dream that I chanted:

On this side the dawn now

I sit fate-implanted.

But though of my dreaming

The dawn has bereft me,

It all was not seeming

For something has left me.

I feel in some other

World far from this cold light

The Dream Bird, my brother,

Is rayed with the gold light.

I too in the Father

Would hide me, and so,

Bright Bird, to foregather

With thee now I go.