| |
| AT Philae, in the temple of Isis, | |
| The fruitful and terrible goddess, | |
| Under a running panel of the sacred ibis, | |
| Is pictured the dead body of Osiris | |
| Waiting the resurrection morn. | 5 |
| And a priest is pouring water blue as iris | |
| Out of a pitcher on the stalk of corn | |
| That from the body of the god is growing, | |
| Before the rising tides of the Nile are flowing. | |
| And over the pictured body is this inscription | 10 |
| In the temple of Isis, the Egyptian: | |
| This is the nameless one, whom Isis decrees | |
| Not to be named, the god of life and yearning, | |
| Osiris of the mysteries, | |
| Who springs from the waters ever returning. | 15 |
| |
| At the gate of the Lord’s house, | |
| Ezekiel, the prophet, beheld the abomination of Babylon: | |
| Women with sorrow on their brows | |
| In lamentation, weeping | |
| For the bereavement of Ishtar and for Tammuz sleeping, | 20 |
| And for the summer gone. | |
| Tammuz has passed below | |
| To the house of darkness and woe, | |
| Where dust lies on the bolt and on the floor | |
| Behind the winter’s iron door; | 25 |
| And Ishtar has followed him, | |
| Leaving the meadows gray, the orchards dim | |
| With driving rain and mist, | |
| And winds that mourn. | |
| Ishtar has vanished, and all life has ceased; | 30 |
| No flower blossoms and no child is born. | |
| |
| But not as Mary Magdalen came to the tomb, | |
| The women in the gardens of Adonis, | |
| Crying, “The winter sun is yet upon us,” | |
| Planted in baskets seeds of various bloom, | 35 |
| Which sprouted like frail hopes, then wilted down | |
| For the baskets’ shallow soil. | |
| Then for a beauty dead, a futile toil, | |
| For leaves that withered, yellow and brown, | |
| From the gardens of Adonis into the sea, | 40 |
| They cast the baskets of their hope away: | |
| A ritual of the things that cease to be, | |
| Brief loveliness and swift decay. | |
| |
| And O ye holy women, there at Delphi | |
| Rousing from sleep the cradled Dionysus, | 45 |
| Who with an April eye | |
| Looked up at them, | |
| Before the adorable god, the infant Jesus, | |
| Was found at Bethlehem! | |
| |
| For at Bethlehem the groaning world’s desire | 50 |
| For spring, that burned from Egypt up to Tyre, | |
| And from Tyre to Athens beheld an epiphany of fire: | |
| The flesh fade flower-like while the soul kept breath | |
| Beyond the body’s death, | |
| Even as nature which revives; | 55 |
| In consummation of the faith | |
| That Tammuz, the Soul, survives, | |
| And is not sacrificed | |
| In the darkness where the dust | |
| Lies on the bolt and on the floor, | 60 |
| And passes not behind the iron door | |
| Save it be followed by the lover Christ, | |
| The Ishtar of the faithful trust, | |
| Who knocks and says: “This soul, which winter knew | |
| In life, in death at last, | 65 |
| Finds spring through me, and waters fresh and blue. | |
| For lo, the winter is past; | |
| The rain is over and gone. | |
| I open! It is dawn! | |
| |
