(TALIESIN TO VENUS)
Venus, Loreley-breasted,
Ceaseless mother of change,
Born where the rainbow shivers
Bright from the breaking wave,
Rocked where the seabird rested,
Did you not charm the strange
Boats from the various rivers
Into a single grave?
Sprung from merciless weathers
Hard and hostile to man,
You that have launched and shaken
Ships, and destroyed so much,
Why should a crest and feathers
Which in wild air began,
Wheeling, dive and awaken
All that you dare not touch?
Patterning sunbeams serve you,
Doves, and pinks in the rock,
Drenched where the spray of breakers
Flies to the ravens’ nest.
Who but I can preserve you
Chaste, from shudder and shock?
See: all others forsake us;
Only the dead have rest.
Yet that golden-eyed egret
Still as a hawk shall stay,
While you proclaim to islands
Nothing dark shall endure.
I have discerned a secret
Hid from the arc of day,
Locked in the heart of silence,
Stronger than death, and pure.
Lacework pattern of fingers
Spun and cast by the wave,
Brilliance a rainbow scatters,
Bride-veils falling away:
I, the last of your singers,
See how the shells you gave
Shine where the breaker shatters
All that we know of day.
Just as Semele’s wonder
Looked for the thunder’s truth,
So, as the breakers whitening
Crash on the brittle shore,
Out of a clap of thunder
Springs an immortal youth:
He who is born of lightning
Lives under time no more.
I, with strength from the giver,
Kindling coral and horn,
Taught by the tides of ages,
Take you, at last subdued.
I am come to deliver
You, of the white spray born.
Do not all faiths and sages
End in a child their feud?
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