SONGS OF A PAGAN

Hunger

I long for the barren, windswept peaks
Where the stars burn clear in the midnight dome
And the panther screams to his mate at dawn ...
Freezing the heart to its very bone.

I long for the thunder of wind in sails ...
For the keening of storms in ropes on high ...
For the stinging spray from charging waves
And the stormy petrels skimming by.

I long for the silence of desert lands ...
For the velvet night and the whisper of stars ...
For the gray wind's sweep as it lifts the clouds
When the day star pales and night unbars.

I long for a Presence ... beloved and lost ...
With a hunger a mortal must understand
Who has drunk of the wine of this human life ...
And ocean and mountain, comfort his hand.

Anne Brigman

SONGS OF A PAGAN

PAGE 38

The Presence

The gray-mist-veil has fallen once again

Your form is hidden from my searching eyes

The sun that shone is drenched by weeping skies

And major songs have turned to minor strain.

Is joy forever more the twin of pain...?

Must mortals drink the cup of shining guise

Nor flinch the galling draught that makes for wise

And steady vision ... know that loss is gain...?

I dream the quiet radiance of your face

It is a Holy Grail... a Star to me...

A Memory, subtler than I understand

For glowing in my sheltering heart I trace

Your Presence ... even as the under-sea

Holds in its deep embrace ... the quiet land.

Anne Brigman

(Glossary, Songs of a Pagan, by Anne Brigman, p. 3)

Toccata--"with an air of improvisation"; suggesting also the "plucked strings on a
violin."

Wind Harp--At timber line (between eight and nine thousand feet altitude) trees, like pine and juniper, have been for centuries subject to the fierce blasts of winter winds and the cutting action of fine, dry snow. Here the winds play their delicate undersounds.

Perihelion

Across the long, long years... you have returned
To hold me in your arms against your breast
And press your lips upon my own in quest
Of nameless harmonies that we had learned
Yet could not know the throbbing under-deep
That drew us. Chill winds blew and darkness came...

We wandered far and lost. There was no Name
To whisper, hand to touch ... we turned to weep
Our separate ways alone... too blind to know

That Fate... The Subtle One... holding the draught
Of bitterness would make us drink the last
Dread drop of grief we had to taste ... but lo
A miracle..! for we have touched... and laughed
Brave laughter... softening the past.

19

Cry

Beloved Earth ... I am weary of your mighty clasp...
Life crowds ... I am exhausted with the stern decree
Of your relentless, ageing, binding, bending grasp...
Beloved Earth...

Yet... where shall I go...? I have but glimmering memories
Of lives before. This carapace begins to rasp
My spirit and there seems no light ahead for me
Beyond these fleshly eyes. I grope but cannot see
The path. The rusting lock of life holds fast the hasp
Against my tired, struggling heart... I would go free...
Beloved Earth.

SONGS OF A PAGAN

PAGE 16

Earth-Lover

Quivering with wordless need I come
To pillow my head on your quiet breast...
What Lover can ever ask less of more
Than that his woman shall give him rest...
Dear Earth..!

My body longs for the touch of you...
Longs for your power and simple grace...
Thirsts for the kiss a man can know
From the lips of the well-beloved face.

What Lover can ever ask less of more
Than that his woman shall give him rest...
Or lift him to heights that the sun-gods know...
On the deep-laid sacrament of her breast...
Dear Earth..?

Lethe

From these pale lowlands by the curving sea
Where I am lulled as by the the taste of wine...
I lift my drowsy eyes across the line
Of endless blue... to where I know of tree
And peak that live in ageless, timeless space ✓
Against the heart of God... and snow-banks shine
In crystal filigrees of brittle lace ✓
And wind is shrilling in the sprawling pine ✓
And crouching hemlocks... bleak against the night.

But I am drugged as by an anodyne...
The wine of lotus, quieting the heart...
Slaved by the siren's song and flashing light
On ocean's breast, until nolonger mine
The gnawing hunger... or the wild tears start.

Memoria

We found the beauty of the sea and sky
Down through those valleys where the wild sage grows
And lark and blackbirds wing where salt wind blows
The flowers... and tall cliffs stand... and stars wheell by.
We found the primal joy of drifted wood
Flung on the beach by ocean's restless hands
And builded fire... and knew no other lands
In those bright hours when comradeship was food
And drink to our starved need... and Earth was kind
And Time was glorified... and cankering hates
Were slowly blotted from the heart and mind.

Dear, vanished days of hungering, groping quest
When Lovers cling and part... and blind Fate... waits.

Travail

The bitter silences that hurt the heart
Sing gently with the passing of the years
And though the memories make my wild blood start
There is but love where once flowed scalding tears.
Sad mortal... clinging to a dream
Of evanescent stuff as frail as mist...
As transient as the last, white lingering beam
That holds the first star in the quiet west.
There is no trail to those far, shining days...
Fruit cannot turn and be a bud again
And sorrow twists the heart in devious ways
That makes for beauty in its grinding pain.
We do not see the shining wings of Grief
Because we face the dark of unbelief.

24

Hymn Of Thanks

For long, black, wind-swept wings of winter clouds
For glittering light upon the ocean's breast
For hurrying waves of steely gray and crowds
Of dark gulls drifting toward the sullen west.
For bitter storms that tear the lonely shore...
For heaps of amber kelp that lie forlorn...
For fluted shells that sing of ocean's lore...
And sea-pools when the tide is low at morn.
Here are the sacraments of earth and sky...
Here are the long, pale, planes of sandy waste...
Where never-ending, cleansing winds pass by
That know no rest... nor laggard times... nor haste.

For these I lift my heart, for Thou Radiant Power
And worship with undisturbed peace in this still hour.

Anne Brigman

February 1937.

Correct Couplet.

For these I lift my heart... Thou Radiant Power
And worship with undisturbed peace in this still hour.

25

How Could I Know

How could I know that the thorns had buds

Lying in trust at their shining base..?

How could I know that the years would bring

Back to my sight your blessed face..?

How could I know that your touch would play

Melodies that I thought were dead...

How could I know..?

How could I know I would meet the years

With courage born of a new-born strength..?

How could I know that my heart would bloom

With strange, new glory... out of the tomb...

Woven of tears on the master-loom...

How could I know..?

26

# Nirvana

I have left my mountains
I have come to the sea
Gone are my peaks and granite wilds
And the glorious twist of the juniper tree.

My heart cries back to the sheer, stark heights
For the rocky trails and the starry nights
For the camp-fire's glow and the icy stream
For the songs of the winds and the cougars' scream...

I have come to the shore
With its age-old song
Its endless horizons and terrible deeps...
I have come to the ocean... and I belong.

25

Anodyne

Now, since I have not you, I have the sea
With its strange beauty and its lonely wastes...
Yet, when the moon arise and the sun sets come
I long to share... like sacramental bread
And wine... the living wonder, spread before
My hungry heart and eyes. Could I but know
That somewhere, far beyond the curve of tide
And curving shores, you turn to evening star
Remembering we shared its glory once
When shadows crept across the darkening hills
And mists came drifting from the ocean's rim
And startled birds rose in the last dim light.

Remembrance now, is gentle sacrament...
And though I have not you... I have the sea.

30

The Tides Of March

The breakers are white hounds racing, racing,
Chasing invisible rabbits in from the sea...
Chasing their swift-footed quarry before them
Who run to the long, swaying grass on the lea.

And the long grass shelters the trembling creatures
While the white hounds snarl as they claw at the baffling shore,
Leaping and fighting and buffeting wildly...
Mad at their loss of thousands of times before.

Anne Brigman

33

Elegie
Elegie

Out of the south, wet mists are trailing
Their weeping-rain on the ocean's face
And the wind and the little gray waves are wailing
With the cry of the gulls and the dayflight failing.

My heart is weary with too much crying
I stand alone... there is no trace
Of those I loved... the day is dying...

Gray birds in the dusk are flying, flying.

34

# Full Moon

The pale Moon moves above the ocean's breast
And draws the tides with faithful, lifting hands
From dreaming shores, to shores in other lands
In endless, steady toil from east to west.

The pale Moon moves alone... nor knows of rest...
No starry hosts around her presence swing
As whirl the suns round Jupiter who sing
The triumph of their heavenly zest.

The pale Moon moves in steady silence... lest
Her tyrant, Earth... become aware that she
But seeks the sight of ONE... her God... and he
The Sun, fulfils... one night, her endless quest.

Unseen

What was it stirred the bough..?
There was no breath of wind..?
Why did the aspens tremble
In the quiet of sunset..?

Was it the shadow of trees
That slipped softly
Over the hill
Into the canyon..?

Why did the slim young moon
Shine as of minted silver
And the little, red foxes
Bark from their coverts...?

Then I knew
In the scent of the wild rose...
Knew in the strange, sweet breath
Flooding the trail
That Beauty was passing...
Diana... the lovely and swift
With her lean, gray, phantom hounds.

6

Elf-World

Deep in the heart of silences it lies...
A little lake below dark, towering peak
And whispering trees where myriad wild-things seek
A sanctuary under gracious skies.

Wild thunders roll above its crystal deep
And song of hail and wind and lightning's flare
Stoop to its beauty... and the flooding air
Shimmers its surface out of dreaming sleep.

Perhaps my feet shall never tread again

Beloved trails marked high against the sun--
Nor this wild, pagan heart will miss a beat

At elfin cry of bird or sound of *sudden* rain...
Or watch long shadows trailing tree and stone
Into the cool of night... after the heat.

7

The Chase

The galloping hooves of the centaur's ring
Striking fire from the beetling crags
As they bellow and shout in their hard-run chase
To capture the little white nymphs of the stream
Fragile as mist... eyes agleam...
To hold them close in a wild, strange dream
And bear them away in their fierce embrace
Over the ocean... over the waves
Over the canyons the cliffs the peaks
And in through the stars to their hidden caves.

To A Snow-Line Tree

I wish I were as fine as a tree is fine
With its sturdy form and its beautiful line...
As steady... serene... immobile... and yet
Vivid with grace and dignified...
Friendly... sheltering... throwing wide
Beneficent calm that knows no fret.

I wish I were fine as a tree is fine
With its sturdy form and its beautiful line...
Living through storms with their stinging hail...
Quietly singing through summer days...
And when autumn comes with its amethyst haze
And the low sun's rays grow thin and pale...
To whisper in quiet antiphonals
With the sound of rivers in canyon walls...
Sing of the time when the north winds blow
Folding the peaks in their drifting snow...
And ice stills the echo of water-falls
And threnodys drift through the sombre pine.

I wish I were fine as a tree is fine.

Anne I. Brigman

12

Wild Trees That Stand Apart

I love wild trees that stand apart and stark
Beaten by wind and rain and stinging hail...
Nurtured by centuries of sun... and dark
Of countless nights. Trees that withstand the flail
Of lightnings and the bellowing thunder's roar...
Aloof, supreme... unmindful of the storms.
Instead, the rhythms of their lines pour
Like the flowing sap within their valiant forms
Until like flames against the wind, they sway
In upward line and convoluting sweeps
Breasting the tempest ... peaceful in the day
Of breeze and the immeasurable deeps.

For grace and courage in this human life
Grant us the beauty, trees have found through strife.

13

Echo
One silent dusk in the long gone years
Close by the camp-fire's ruddy glow
With only the muffled flute of an owl
And the quick, wide sweep of a whispering bat...

I called a wild, chromatic scale
Into the dark...
Called to the sky...

Called in a voice full-pitched and keen
To waken an echo for comradeship.

A miracle sang in the crystal night...
Seven echoes answered my call..!

The first came back from across the gorge...
Rang from a peak with its crown of stars...
Then tossed it across the steep ravine
Where it laughed again from another crest
The two calls blending as tiny ripples
Melt to each-other in widening rings
On the limpid mirror of some still pool
When rain-drops fall.

Then another canyon caught the sound
To share again the joyous song
With the summits and valleys down the range
Till the vibrance was like a seraph choir
Of delicate beauty, floating away.

I wonder how far my small voice sang
On the wings of the echoes that mountain night..?
I wonder whether the canyons rang
On another star in the fading light..?

Anne Brigman

Earth-Lover

Quivering with wordless need I come
To pillow my head on your quiet breast...
What Lover can ever ask less or more
Than that his woman shall give hum rest...
Dear Earth..!

What Lover can ever ask less or more
Than that his woman shall give him rest...
Or lift him to heights that the sun-gods know...
On the deep-laid sacrament of her breast...
Dear Earth..!

17

Defense

They who have veiled the hurt, bruised places
Of their hearts with strange beauty
Are as the blossoming thistles

Thrusting wide their slender lance-like thorns
Against the onslaught of the wandering greed
Of curious mind and idle touch.

They who have grown the keen, bright points
Of parrying wit and quiet, smiling silences
Are guarded in a spell of unguessed power...
Even as thistle-blooms
Within their diadem
Of shining thorns.

18

Invocation

When I am very ancient

God give me wits that I shall not be garrulous...

But like the high-crest junipers

On storm-worn peaks...

Whisper with deep-laid quiet in my self

Of the gone years... nor tell a racing world

That having lived a short eternity

Bound in this human form...

That I have found that Love is good

And Work and Play ... and Grief.

SONGS OF A PAGAN

Perihelion

Across the long, long years... you have returned
To hold me in your arms close to your breast

And press your lips upon my own in quest
Of nameless harmonies that we had learned
Yet could not know the throbbing under-deep
Of Life, Chill winds blew and darkness came...

We blindly wandered far. There was no Name
To whisper, hand to touch... we turned to weep
Our separate ways alone... too blind to know

Thet Fate... the Subtle One... holding the Draught
Of Bitterness would make us drink the last

Dread drop of grief we had to taste ... but lo
A miracle..! for we have touched... and laughed...

SONGS OF A PAGAN

PAGE 327

Memoria

We found the beauty of the sea and sky
Down through those valleys where the wild sage grows
And lark and blackbird wing where the salt wind blows
The flowers... and tall cliffs stand... and stars wheel by.
We found the primal joy of drifted wood
Flung on the beach from ocean's restless hands
And builded fire... and knew no other lands
In those bright hours when comradeship was food
and drink to out starved need... and Earth was kind
And nourished us from her sweet mother-breast
And Time was glorified... and cankering hates
Were slowly blotted from the heart and mind.

Dear vansihed days of hungering, gropeing quest
When Lovers cling and part... and Blind Fate... waits.

SONGS OF A PAGAN

PAGE 34

Full Moon

The pale Moon moves alone... nor knows of rest...
No starry hosts around her presence swing
As whirl the suns round Jupiter, who sing
The triumph of their heavenly quest.

The pale Moon moves in steady silence... lest
Her tyrant, Earth... become aware that she
But seeks the sight of ONE... her God... and he
The Sun fulfills... one night, her endless quest.

SONGS OF A PAGAN

PAGE 15

Toccata

Can I believe that I saw a tree quiver
And out of its heart step a radiant thing
With slim, golden body, translucent and shining
To dance with light tread in a green, fairy-ring..?

It floated in rhythms of delicate cadence
Hummed by the wind in the tall pine's crest...
Floated in spirals and swift-whirling rondos
Dipping and swaying nor pausing for rest.

Tremulous laughter came drifting from no-where...
The forest sighed softly... the low branches stirred...
And myriad beauty came weaving and bending
To Phapsodies chanted by flower and bird...
While slender young fauns and bronzed satyrs flourished
Their horns and their hooves in the dance of the breeze...
And then they were vanished... the wild, lovely Beings...
And all that I saw were the glimmering trees..!

SONGS OF A PAGAN

PAGE 13.

Echo

One silent dusk in the long, gone years
Close by the camp-fire's ruddy glow
With only the muffled flute of an owl
And the quick, wide sweep of a whispering bat...
I called a wild, chromatic scale
Into the dark...
Called to the sky...
Called in a voice full-pitched and keen
To waken an echo for comradeship.

The first came back from across the gorge...
Rang from a peak with its crown of stars...
Then tossed it across the steep ravine
Where it laughed again from another crest
The two calls blending as tiny ripples
Melt to each other in widening rings
On the limpid mittor of some still pool
When rain-drops fall.

Then another canon caught the sound
To share again the joyous song
With the summits and valleys down the range
Till the vibrance was like a seraph choir
Of delicate beauty, floating away.

I wonder how far my small voice sang
On the wings of the echoes that mountain night..?
I wonder whether the canons rang
On another star in the fading light::?

SONGS OF A PAGAN.

PAGE 8

Sierra Night

Why should I fear the icy wind
That shrilla in the twisted juniper tree..?
Why should I start at the nighthawk's cry
Since you are close to me..?
Close to me in the open dark
Of the mountain night... clean-cut and stark...
Away from the world a
And its whine.

Yonder a star like a fairy light
Gleams at the tip of a hemlock bough...

Here in the camp-fire's hearty glow
The world is well lost in the perfect now.
The hush of the earth... the hush of the sky...
The rustle of wings as an owl floats by...
And your face
In the wood-fire's shine

SONGS OF A PAGAN

PAGE 19

Cry

Beloved Earth ... I am weary of your mighty clasp..!
Life crowds ... I am exhausted with the stern decree
Of your relentless, ageing, binding, bending grasp...
Beloved Earth..!

Yet... where shall I go..? I have no glimmering memories
Of lives before. This carapace begins to rasp
My spirit and there seems no light ahead for me
Beyond these fleshly eyes. I grope but cannot see the
The path. The rusting lock of life holds fast the hasp
Against my tired, struggling heart ... I would go. free..!
Beloved Earth.