BEAUTY WEPT

Through webs of heavenly heliotrope
I beheld Beauty weep for Her
chastened, cozened pilgrim mired in
a brooding, hiemal Dark of his own
devising, lamenting prayers unheeded
and the grace of Parnassus withheld.

"By callous cosmic disposition am I
scourged, born under a vagrant, 
variable Star of inconstant course,
of eclipsed orb and mutable radiance,
by its varicoloured caprice across Life's
Seasons to fruitless pursuits urged.

My muse, now befuddled and breathless,
droops upon shorn meadows white
with frost, where once she swayed in
Spring's saporous embrace, clad in her
sprigged skirts, unheeded languished,
though her hand be deathless.

The voice in my quill, the tint in my brush,
lies amid the frozen ruins of my 
thwarted aspirations, pale and songless 
as my own spirit, her labours squandered
upon a pleasure-seeking heart that
spurned purpose with youth's first flush.

Winter's wizened light descends as a pall
over past joys and pain, laid to rest
with maps rent and paths unexplored.
Nor limbs nor mind could defy Time's will,
triumph over Life's last Season, though
her march I faltering seek to stall.

My homeward Path illumine, vagrant One,
past the eternally toiling Fates, toward
etheric gates, for my mettle wanes as my
bones thin; my senses would no more of
glitter and din. Muse of my heart, lead me
to the Star of my Dreams beyond the Sun."

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: DAY AND THE DAWNSTAR

source: www.liveinternet.ru

Artist: Herbert James Draper