This is the alchemical fusion of male and female principles which
produces
gold, a process sacred to Hermes Trismegistos.
19th Century French Poetry
You stirred it with agile foot, but yesterday,
And suddenly ash drowned the horizon's circle.
Since a Norman duke broke your gods of clay,
Eternally, beneath Virgil's laurel spray,
The pale hydrangea is wed to the green myrtle.
Note: Myrtho a shining mask of Venus Murcia to whom myrtle was sacred, is the counterpart to the dark prince of El Desdichado. Alchemically she is De Nerval's feminine principle to be fused with the masculine. Iacchus was an epithet of the god Dionysus (Bacchus) and the name of the torch-bearer at the Eleusinian mysteries, herald of the child born of the underworld.
Horus
Trembling Kneph, the god, shook the starry ways:
Isis, the mother, then raised herself from her bed,
Made, to her savage spouse, a sign of hatred,
In her green eyes shone the passion of elder days.
'Do you see him, she cried, the old lecher dies;
Through his mouth the frosts of earth take flight;
Bind his lame feet, destroy his squinting sight,
He's the god of craters, king of the winter's ice!
The new spirit summons, the eagle is done,
Cybele's robe for him do I now put on. . .
The beloved son of Hermes and Osiris! '
The goddess fled away on her golden shell,
Her adored image returning to us on the swell,
And the sky shone beneath the scarf of Iris.
Note: This poem is a consequence of the two previous poems. Kneph, is Amon-Ra the great god of Egypt. Isis was the Egyptian mother goddess (Cybele was her equivalent in Asia Minor): consort of Osiris she bore the child Horus-Harpocrates, the new sun (De Nerval's image here for the Christ-Child).
This is the alchemical fusion of male and female principles which produces gold, a process sacred to Hermes Trismegistos. Iris' scarf is the rainbow, she being sky-messenger for Hera (the Greek great-goddess). Isis returns as Venus from the waves but fused with Mary, the Stella Maris.
Delfica
Do you know it, Daphne, that ballad of old,
At the sycamore-foot, or beneath the white laurels,
Under myrtle or olive or trembling willows,
That song of love that resounds forever? . . .
Do you know it, the Temple with vast peristyle,
And the lemons, bitter, marked by your teeth,
And the grotto fatal to imprudent guests,
Where the vanquished dragon's ancient seed sleeps? . . .
Those gods you endlessly weep will return!
Time bring back the order of classic days;
Earth has shuddered with prophetic breath. . .
Yet the sibyl with Latinate face still sleeps
Under the arch of Constantine
- And the austere portico nothing disturbs.
