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

BEAUTY III

Deft as the Fates, she plies her fingers,

her steps tracing the sacred circle,

drawing swivelling, swanlike strands

from each violet dusk and coral dawn.

Dreams and despair, joy and grief,

minutiae and immensities, she gleans

from the heart of every life:

The priestess' mellifluous incantation,

the ploughman's weary tread, 

frosted leaves, dewy coronets, Spring's

amble through glens atremble,

Summer's death throes, the minstrel's

gentlest tune, the slayer's imprecation,

man's toil, his leisured pursuits.

Silver strings, bright and tarnished alike,

she lays along the springlike Goddess'

vivifying varicoloured archway,

looping freshened yarn upon the cusps

of yonder blessed pearly crescent, 

for Truth shall complect these with her

own sublime threads.

Thus the Daughters of Time ally, for to

work Earth's chronicle into His

cosmic fabric, a veil of miracles woven

from evanescence that breathes

the worthiest of every earth and sky,

anointed with luminous thanksgiving,

a fitting garment for Eternity.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: THE SPIRIT OF THE RAINBOW (edited)

Source: nevsepic.com.ua

Artist: Henry Mosler

BEAUTY II

Leaves long gone still shine, their
discarnate green
lastingly allied to dark boughs 
that bore them.
The blunt wind, softly hoarse this
November dawn, sunders
the faintly berry haze upon the hill,
as a stifled sob
the pristine silence of 
an abandoned crypt.
A barn owl calls over the webbed 
purple-grey of veiled heather
staining the unvaryingly nocturnal air.
I marvel at the startling beauty
of the Goddess' tone poem,
of mists ravenous as an inferno,
of these swelling, soundless, ghostly
tides razing the land, 
consuming the last vestige 
of Autumn's breathing colours,
as though yearning to attain
the form and pulse of those who
surrendered them.
The Celestial Goldsmith drowses,
dreaming of the glory
of foregone Summers, heedless of
the ploughman's dispraise.
Yet Earth does not cavil, or tames
this impulsion, for she, too,
longs for respite from shadows and
storms, for slumbers replete with
visions of an immemorial past.
Life and Death must heed
cosmic concantenation.
The darkling mist shall gather its tales
of light, of a thousand and one lamps,
of Flame, Moon, Stars and Sun,
ere the liminal Season ends.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: ALLEGORY OF INCLINATION (detail)
Source: www.pinterest.com
Artist: Artemisia Gentileschi

BEAUTY

She dwells in a space and time apart

beyond the realms of birth and death.

She lingers in the silence between

Dawn and the lark's first note,

upon the nascent leaf,

in the heart that wears its glow,

binding soul to verdant soul.

Within the bud she bides awhile,

bids the Sun unfurl its petalled portal,

that she may glide upon

perfumed wafts to her radiant throne.

Her votaries ensoul her essence,

the Muses and Nymphs awaiting her 

in woods and bowers,

in fire and snow,

amid watery waves and airy.

She is the recondite harmony that

unites Light and the supernal, 

setting the spirit upon its journey

to cosmic purpose,

reaching out to the Good that remains

in a world that no more worships

her reflection, merely her replica

wrought of earthly gold.

She alone construes the absence

of those gathering fragments

of broken stars, whom indirection holds

in its dark spell.

She shall not forsake them,

this divine Intercessor whom life shall 

never touch, though she enfolds

the Universe.

Yet man may ponder her Grace,

imbibe her hues of First and Last Light,

as the Gods raise temples to Her

and scatter stars at Her altar.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: SPRING SCATTERING STARS

Source: nevsepic.com.ua

Artist: Edwin Howland Blashfield

NOVEMBER MIST

As the land and skies it turns and endures,
at once incomplex and unfathomable,
womb and tomb, 
drifting past the world, pausing over
cold, hardened earth,
as seekers ponder Time and Space,
the depths of change,
futures past and pasts returning,
truths foretold and dominions unknown.

The land claimed the Seasons' testimonials 
of pride and fealty.
I alone wander this derelict enclave, for I am
a native of November mists,
born of veins of liquid fire, 
baptised amid frosty showers, 
each crystal orb a microcosm, 
epicedium to bygone states of being and
paean to future wonders. 

At my birth, they descended, gliding as spirits
transiting the ether.
My soul shall hold eternal bond with their
gelid glister,
with yonder frozen pool upon marbled
blue-grey reaching out to my blood,
directing its tides, bidding me commit its
icy pledge to my life's page. 

I fill this place breath abandoned aeons ago,
this lonely hollow trusting that one 
such as I would seek it.
It does not know my journey, my lives and
deaths, merely my purpose.
My blood contracts and beats its pulse, 
incandescent pentimenti of my ancient cosmic
peregrinations stretching through mortal layers
into its core, clinging to its verges.

© 2015 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: A YORKSHIRE LANE IN NOVEMBER

Source: nevsepic.com.ua

Artist: John Atkinson Grimshaw