Meeting for Worship: 28.08.11

The reading for this week's meeting will be:

“The Indian upon God”

William Butler Yeats (Irish poet and dramatist 1865 – 1939)


I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes around my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moor-fowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between his bill and made us strong or weak
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.


I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk
Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.


A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
Brimful of starlight and he said: The Stamper of the Skies
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?


I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.