Arcadia
written by: Paul Thwaites
Wake day,
Dawn revealed with kiss of light,
And all the clamour of the waking birds,
In chorus risen,
Nudging the bedfellow of night,
They lift the sun with song,
And mount him on his golden throne,
Where lifted drapes of mist reveal ~
The rosy columns of Arcadia.
Chiffoned in veils,
The shadowed gods obscure,
Pan, with reedy flute to thrall
With captive melody,
All who drift in Somnus strain,
To hear such reveries of sound,
And wake reborn to Paradise.
And naked, free, to this refrain,
Of dreamy love,
In soporific innocence,
New cherubs lounge on Eden’s sward,
With verdant heart
To break their earthy bound,
And soar like lark song to the brazen light.
And cool in their white majesty,
Where vernal echoes haunt green glades,
To wake some wistful yearning of the soul,
Rise up the towers of Arcadia,
Till shrouded in the bye ways of sweet sleep,
They tinge each waking day with longing
To see again the pageant of the night,
Lost in a dream to fade away.
Pine then, if it will bring to sight,
All that in love burns blind,
And build Arcadia against the light.
Find me fascinated in the piper’s train,
Surrendering my earthly song,
To hear his note and find the end of bliss,
Capering rapt into Arcadia.
For rest I cannot here, nor stay the swirl,
These eyes have seen in sleep’s sweet sentence,
Drunken on furies!
I quaffed the goblet of the dawn,
To see it pass in all its frenzy,
And grace the dervish days with my lament,
Whilst dancing Pan roils in his rage,
And in abandon find again, Arcadia.
Last to dance in lusty tumble,
Fallen, to bright day return,
And watch Arcadia fade that I may mourn
The figment mirage of the sun,
Crumpled like dust, dry eyed,
Blinded to Puck’s optic, now to gaze,
In vision gauzed, to grieve this waking day,
And hold Arcadia within a tear.
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