"Withers once more the old blue flower of day,"
as in "The Great Breath"; or at twilight, when
"Dusk wraps the village in its dim caress,"
"The yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory In the lilac-scented stillness,"
as in "The Singing Silences"; or at sunrise, when there is
as in "Dawn";--it is most often through some beauty of the sky at such times that he becomes one with the Universal Spirit in "the rapture of the fire," that he is "lost within the 'Mother's Being,'" he would say that the soul returns to the Oversoul, Emerson would There are ways by which the soul homes other than these--sometimes it is
"By the hand of a child I am led to the throne of the King."
but it is most often by way of beauties of the sky. Some reasons are not far to seek. From sunset to sunrise the poet is free as he may be from the treadmill of the "common daily ways," and the high moods he tries to express are most easily symbolized by skyey images--massed clouds and sweeping lights of diamond, sapphire, amethyst; the still blue black of heaven thrilling with far stars; the purples of twilight horizons. In his use of these splendid symbols he is but following Proclus, whom he found quoted by Emerson as saying that "the mighty heaven exhibits, in its transfiguration, clear images of the splendor of intellectual perceptions, being moved in conjunction with the unapparent period of intellectual natures."
How important the symbol is to "A.E."--as important as it is to Emerson--may be gathered from "Symbolism," which, read in the light of what I have quoted, needs, I hope, no further interpretation.
"Now when the giant in us wakes and broods, Filled with home-yearnings, drowsily he flings From his deep heart high dreams and mystic moods. Mixed with the memory of the loved earth things: Clothing the vast with a familiar face; Reaching his right hand forth to greet the starry race.
Wondrously near and clear the great warm fires Stare from the blue; so shows the cottage light To the field laborer whose heart desires The old folk by the nook, the welcome bright From the housewife long parted from at dawn-- So the star villages in God's great depths withdrawn.
"Nearer to Thee, not by delusion led, Though there no house-fires burn nor bright eyes gaze: We rise, but by the symbol charioted, Through loved things rising up to Love's own ways: By these the soul unto the vast has wings And sets the seal celestial on all mortal things."