Collected Poems
Pagan Prayer
Pagan Prayer
The skies are wide and beautiful,
the stars are strong—
Orion, belted like a warrior,
magnificent and young,
and the shining Cross that shrives the southern ocean
all night long.
Here where the starlit seas of darkness,
wave on cresting wave,
break on the world, and the cold deep desolate night
foreshadows the grave,
sun and moon are blind, only the resolute stars
are strong to save.
O lord of the firmament, O warrior-god,
Orion, serene and bright,
lead me through the dark and across the years
till my soul's swift flight
shall end where the stars and the sun are gathered at last
in ultimate night.