Prologue to Hellas

HERALD OF ETERNITY

T is the day when all the sons of

God

Wait in the roofless senate-house,

whose floor

Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss

Frozen by his steadfast word to hyaline

The shadow of God, and delegate

Of that before whose breath the universe
Is as a print of dew.

Hierarchs and kings

Who from yon thrones pinnacled on the past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom

Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation

Steaming from earth, conceals the

heaven

Which gave it birth,

of

assemble here

Before your Father's throne; the swift decree

Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation

Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall

annul

The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air,

That

green and azure sphere, that earth inwrapt Less in the beauty of its tender light Than in an atmosphere of living spirit Which interpenetrating all the . . .

it rolls from realm to realm

And age to age, and in its ebb and flow

Impels the generations

To their appointed place,

Whilst the high Arbiter

Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time

Sends his decrees veiled in eternal . . .

Within the circuit of this pendant orb
There lies an antique region, on which fell

The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn

Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms

And harmonies of wisdom and of song,

And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts

so fair.

And when the sun of its dominion failed,
And when the winter of its glory came,

The winds that stript it bare blew on and swept
That dew into the utmost wildernesses

In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed The unmaternal bosom of the North.

Haste, sons of God,

for ye beheld,

Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished,

The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece

Ruin and degradation and despair.

A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend,

If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, The unaccomplished destiny.

CHORUS

The curtain of the Universe

Is rent and shattered,

The splendour-winged worlds disperse
Like wild doves scattered.

Space is roofless and bare,
And in the midst a cloudy shrine,
Dark amid thrones of light.

In the blue glow of hyaline
Golden worlds revolve and shine.

From every point of the Infinite,

Like a thousand dawns on a single night

The splendours rise and spread;

And through thunder and darkness dread

Light and music are radiated,

And in their pavilioned chariots led

By living wings high overhead

The giant Powers move,

Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill.

A chaos of light and motion
Upon that glassy ocean.

The senate of the Gods is met,
Each in his rank and station set;
There is silence in the spaces-
Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet
Start from their places!

CHRIST

Almighty Father!

Low kneeling at the feet of Destiny

There are two fountains in which spirits

weep

When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named, And with their bitter dew two Destinies

Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third, Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added

Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's lymph, And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain