MIRROR

I could not shine your truth as the stars,
those cosmic mirrors of fire
wheeling along Destiny's pathway.
The Sun sustains my art,
as spalls of conjured, contrived radiance.
Before my silent presence,
you leach the core of your courage, 
drawing its essence into
your lonely armour,
for I am your tractable ally in the wings 
of life's stage,
powerless before your veiled eyes,
a voiceless inhabiter of this ephemeral 
sphere of matter. 
Aye, I am an instrument of your illusions
and their perpetuation,
of your charades and vanities.

Yet, I see the triskelion of your inner light;
your immense paracosm
and secret caverns of mystery;   
the wings you seek to rise to your higher
incarnation; 
your spirit's oneness with Nature's power.
Would that you could see
buried blossoms, a corroding Spring
within your unseen perdition!
Would that you could know your most
redoubtable foe,
one who mocks the bloodless veins and
sunless catacombs of your self-abnegation!
Stand unguarded before yourself,  
for you would glimpse a garden abandoned,
seeds you neither sun nor water,
roots that lie hidden in the grasp of Time.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: THE MIRROR

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Artist: Sir Frank Dicksee

BEAUTY VIII

I dreamt a dream of Beauty's fane,

of sublimity beyond

birth and ascension, of a brightness

that transcends faith and hope,

of timeless Grace

that is a law unto itself.

My spirit traced Her path through a

substanceless shimmer,

as a peasant's eye the lark's song

across Dawn's brow,

calling to Her ethereal silvery gold,

as a smothered leaf

bereft of reviving Summer showers

to the nightingale, 

whose liquid strains alone could

drench its parched throat.

Upon the threshold of Her cosmic

sanctum I stood,

regarding the pinnacle of Eternity's 

design with a child's 

pure, wondering gaze that binds

dewdrops to the stars.

Infant souls embraced before Her

altar of aery alabaster, 

beneath Polaris' hallowed light,

His glow, Her temple dome,

His orb, its blazing oculus.

What oblation could I lay at the feet

of Time's own daughter,

of Nature's second soul?

- Naught had I, but tears of rapture

and my mortal devotion. 

An invocation for Life I cast into the

stream of prayers that moats

Her Universal shrine.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: ERATO, MUSE OF POETRY

Source: blog.daum.net

Artist: Sir Edward John Poynter

STARLIT NIGHT II

Rise, little stars and great, gleaming
as mirrors small and immense,

each a force of mystical sympathy

in a realm of subtler light.

Dreams and reflections you bestow

upon me, every vision and likeness

a portal into my soul.

Castor clads my weeping shadow in

a cilice; Pollux bids Mercy crown

my bleeding brow;

Polaris surrounds me with his myriad

gently guiding arms,

as the Pleiades, Nymphs of the skies,

smile upon Nyx and her children;

Gienah draws me into his dark camber,

willing me to take wing, 

to discover motion within my stillness;

Rigel anchors me to Gaia's dominion;

Altair bears me into the ether.

In tempests and temples my silhouette

shines, in idylls and Stygian depths,

upon thresholds of mysteries.

With arms outstretched, I yield to this

hallowed dome that reveals

to me my every self; the fallacies of my

illusory triumphs; deeper, hidden

meanings in the mundane;

my wounds and wings.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: NIGHT

Source: www.liveinternet.ru

Artist: Auguste Raynaud

STARLIT NIGHT

Day's harsh glow wearies me;

this Keeper of illusions,

her sharp rays sunder Life

into brightness and shade,

cloaking treasures and 

trantles in the selfsame gold.

I close my sun-blinded eyes,

seeking that vibrant part

of my being human

perverseness could not sully, 

prospecting the inner indigo,

a sempiternal twilight

that is my refuge from man's

wanton debasement of

blessings that are his alone.

Gilt masks are your preserve,

Helios, as pyrrhic victories

and perfidious pretensions.

Night, our gentle preserver,

marks all Creation with edges

darkly silver, with moonlit

brush and starry, tracing

shadows within shadows.

Truth is her robe, Selene's fair,

fulgent visage her mirror,

starglow her embrocation. 

Hers is a space of revelation,

of atonement and restoration,

stilling the mind and

sparking the soul.

What shall my book of life be?

A treasury, perchance,

of retreats into the serene folds

of Mother Nyx's inky robes,

of luminous moments spent in

stirring converse with

Hypnos and Thanatos.

I would be a word in Time's 

Annals of Starlight.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: THE NIGHT WITH THE GENII OF STUDY AND LOVE
Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Artist: Pedro Américo

THE LOST GODDESS

A hueless flimmer slid into the

space of my trance,

a presence of clear shadows

and vaporous dew,

a power unsought, uninvoked, 

yet sensible to the eye

that paints the unseen dove

upon hearing the beat

of its wings.

No wight was this, nor spirit's

echo, nor godly light.

Still, it seemed an oddment of

shattered divine emanation,

restively fluttering through the

indigo vortex of my 

inner eye as Spring's spectral

butterfly over Winter's

white wasteland.

"Are you the forgotten goddess

of legends, whose dictum

mystics and priestesses expound?

What grave transgression

provoked your exilement from

Ogygia's dominion?

What torment caused the ichor

to bleed from your

immortal veins?"

The inky hush grew ever deeper,

subsuming my whispered

musings. The lost divinity sighed,

her resolute melancholy

luminous with helpless eloquence.

The Light spoke her name,

for words are denied her in death,

this deity of Silence,

fair Calypso.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: KALIPSO

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Artist: Jan Styka

BEAUTY VII

To Her, I pledged my devotion in

the damasked twilight,

amid mists reflecting Morning's

dappled, dreaming gold,

within the deepening shade of

Winter's penurious Sun,

by swirling eddies that were

Autumn's crypt.

At Her altars, I knelt through the

ages and Seasons,

where Daphnis and Chloe loved;

where Crocus, Hyacinth

and Anemone sprang from the

blood of Her favoured children;

where Orpheus wept for Eurydice;

where Clytie yet pines for Apollo.

At the sonneteer's feet, I learned

her ways, at the melodist's

and painter's, for She dwells, 

it is said, in the artist's aura.

My eyes wept my soul's joy to see

the sculptor at his craft, 

as he caressed the marble into life, 

for She guided his

worshipping hand, casting Her

divine shadow upon matter,

bestowing upon it Her light.

Over ancient, arcane tomes I pored, 

imbibing mystics' precepts

and meditations. Seers expounded 

Her spirit's devices in contradictions

and inversion; 

in the merging of paradoxes; 

in displacement and death, for such

hold promises of transition.

I see Her now in the Temple blaze and

the sacrificial flame;

in flowering and decay; in the eternal

sacred cycle that directs all Life.

Here shall I praise Her, till velvet tides 

bear me to Her Universal Shrine.

© 2015 Lily's Verse
Lilium Candidum

Image: PINE FOREST IN LIGOVO

Source: aria-art.ru

Artist: Ivan Shishkin

BEAUTY VI

Scintillating swarms welled from
an agatine astral spring,
from a fulminating fluid sconce
of deepening ultramarine
and purple brume, raining life
and light upon my soul's
wishful, wistful windows.

My poet's heart strained towards 
the ethereal geode,
that fount of fiery filaments, 
as if to peer into elysian bowers,
aiming to espy divinities
at their craft,
unwinding clinquant moments
from Time's singing,
swinging spools. 

Each burnished orb scalded the
ether, emanating binary trails,
every strand distinct, 
yet linked to its twin by a barely
discernible thread of kinship.

My seeker's spirit now ponders
the doubling light,
a transmutation sacred as birth,
bewildered by visions
of an exalted consciousness 
beyond the domain of
earthly percipience.

What deity would bestow this
unforeseen benediction
upon one so unworthy?
Do I not contemplate mystics'
accounts with yearning
bereft of the hope and faith
that govern more 
venturous souls?

"In the seeking of the Light is its
worship, in the treading
of its path is sacred fellowship
with the Universe.
Seek Truth and Beauty, pilgrims all!
Thus shall ye know that
radiant composite."

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: A RETRIEVAL
Source: www.pinterest.com
Artist: Eduard Veith

BEAUTY V

She paints the Dawn, ardent as Spring's

thrush, her godly brush flitting

as a note from Calliope's own lyre,

gliding at the pace of Summer's ripening

over fragrant grapes nestled

in Apollo's palms, their blood, redolent of

his vaulted realm, soon to grace

his Golden bowl.

Hovering hues weep and laugh through

her luculent meditations with

strokes and stains, silhouettes and shapes,

as she sways and twirls

to the rhythm of the Horae's song, kindling

turbulence and peace alike 

within Life and Being, for she is Nature's

second Soul, shining beyond the confines

of her mutable vessel.

At her feet the Nymphs and Muses kneel,

as their favoured children

of Parnassus and Earth, as with her sister

Truth she pens silver reams, 

these to adorn Time's sacred Book of Days.

Her luminous legacy she gives

unto Eternity, this omnipresent fount that

soothes the stricken spirit,

opens mortal eyes to wonder and divinity. 

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: JOYOUS SUMMER

Source: www.artrenewal.org

Artist: Philip Hermogenes Calderon 

BEAUTY IV

I awoke to a pale periwinkle chalice
Nyx tipped over in her haste,
spilling sparkling sprays upon Dawn's
recumbent form,
Beauty anointing Beauty,
a lustrous parade streaming through 
barren Earth's grey dreams.

Brimming radiants spouted fireballs;
attired in a wondrous furore
of stardust streams and opal haze,
the Goddess floated from
feast to fulminating feast.
I sought words amid her scattered
jewels, for to versify
this splendour, frame its nebulous lapis
nacrescence in strands wrought
from Night's own radiance....

Want of breath stifled my burgeoning
hubris; such a quest was destined
for worthier mortals. Still, I cannot cease
pondering Beauty's immensity,
her depth and reach.
What birthed this elusive Force that stirs 
the most arid spirit to fervent response?
Through what hallowed ether
glide her impulses to willing substrates
that are convergences of
soul, mind, heart and vision?

Unseen, unheard, yet perceived, she raises 
the lowliest to the Light, 
elevating matter to a lesser, tangible divinity,
blessing the insatiate human eye with
momentary glimpses of the preternatural,
the soul with whispered portraits
of revelation, of ascension,
nor promises, nor pronouncements,
yet, echoing the essence of the Absolute.

© 2015 Lily's Verse
Lilium Candidum

Image: MORNING STARS (edited)
Source: www.liveinternet.ru
Artist: Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson