+es to pan de soi lego,+
+bomon aidesai dikas;+
+mede nin+
+kerdos idon atheo podi lax atises;+
+poina gar epestai.+
+kyrion menei telos.+

AESCH. _Eum._ 538-544

+para to phos idein.+

AESCH. _Cho._ 972

THE ALTAR OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

I

Light and night, whose clouds and glories change and mingle and
divide,
Veil the truth whereof they witness, show the truth of things
they hide.
Through the darkness and the splendour of the centuries, loud or
dumb,
Shines and wanes and shines the spirit, lit with love of life to
come.
Man, the soul made flesh, that knows not death from life, and
fain would know,
Sees the face of time change colour as its tides recoil and flow.
All his hope and fear and faith and doubt, if aught at all they
be,
Live the life of clouds and sunbeams, born of heaven or earth or
sea.
All are buoyed and blown and brightened by their hour's evasive
breath:
All subside and quail and darken when their hour is done to
death.
Yet, ere faith, a wandering water, froze and curdled into creeds,
Earth, elate as heaven, adored the light that quickens dreams to
deeds.

Invisible: eye hath not seen it, and ear hath not heard as the
spirit hath heard
From the shrine that is lit not of sunlight or starlight the sound
of a limitless word.
And visible: none that hath eyes to behold what the spirit must
perish or see
Can choose but behold it and worship: a shrine that if light were
as darkness would be.
Of cloud and of change is the form of the fashion that man may
behold of it wrought:
Of iron and truth is the mystic mid altar, where worship is none
but of thought.
No prayer may go up to it, climbing as incense of gladness or
sorrow may climb:
No rapture of music may ruffle the silence that guards it, and
hears not of time.
As the winds of the wild blind ages alternate in passion of light
and of cloud,
So changes the shape of the veil that enshrouds it with darkness
and light for a shroud.
And the winds and the clouds and the suns fall silent, and fade out