William Vaughn Moody

Here you will find the Poem The golden journey of poet William Vaughn Moody

The golden journey

All day he drowses by the sail 
With dreams of her, and all night long 
The broken waters are at song 
Of how she lingers, wild and pale, 
When all the temple lights are dumb, 
And weaves her spells to make him come. 

The wide sea traversed, he will stand 
With straining eyes, until the shoal 
Green water from the prow shall roll 
Upon the yellow strip of sand - 
Searching some fern-hid tangled way 
Into the forest old and grey. 

Then he will leap upon the shore, 
And cast one look up at the sun, 
Over his loosened locks will run 
The dawn breeze, and a bird will pour 
Its rapture out to make life seem 
Too sweet to leave for such a dream. 

But all the swifter will he go 
Through the pale, scattered asphodels, 
Down mote-hung dusk of olive dells, 
To where the ancient basins throw 
Fleet threads of blue and trembling zones 
Of gold upon the temple stones. 

There noon keeps just a twilight trace; 
Twixt love and hate, and death and birth, 
No man may choose; nor sobs nor mirth 
May enter in that haunted place. 
All day the fountain sphynx lets drip 
Slow drops of silence from her lip. 

To hold the porch-roof slender girls 
Of milk-white marble stand arow; 
Doubt never blurs a single brow, 
And never the noon's faintness curls 
From their expectant hush of pride 
The lips the god has glorified. 

But these things he will barely view, 
Or if he stay to heed them, still 
But as the lark the lights that spill 
From out the sun it soars unto, 
Where, past the splendors and the heats, 
The sun's heart's self forever beats. 

For wide the brazen doors will swing 
Soon as his sandals touch the pave; 
The anxious light inside will wave 
And tremble to a lunar ring 
About the form that lieth prone 
Before the dreadful altar-stone. 

She will not look or speak or stir, 
But with drowned lips and cheeks death-white 
Will lie amid the pool of light, 
Until, grown faint with thirst of her, 
He shall bow down his face and sink 
Breathless beneath the eddying brink. 

Then a swift music will begin, 
And as the brazen doors shut slow, 
There will be hurrying to and fro, 
And lights and calls and silver din, 
While through the star-freaked swirl of air 
The god's sweet cruel eyes will stare.