In ages past, when the evening star <br />shone down from an azure sky, <br />it carried warmth from the goddess of love: <br />love shone from her twinkling eye. <br /> <br />Now the warmth is gone, and the stardust’s cold: <br />a goddess’ demise brings pain. <br />There’s a vacant void in the heavenly skies, <br />where Venus used to reign. <br /> <br />Oh, where did she go from her star-cast home, <br />where she lived in the glowing past? <br />Could she have died like a mortal soul? <br />Does only her memory last? <br /> <br />This won’t be true, oh; it can’t be true, <br />for a goddess never dies. <br />Somewhere she roams around the earth <br />in an earthly girl’s disguise. <br /> <br />If it should be true that a goddess, too, <br />like a mortal passes away, <br />and leaves no sign of a past domain, <br />but a lifeless lump of clay: <br /> <br />Oh, let the men of a modern world <br />bemoan the loss of her worth. <br />May the winds of hell send a tidal wave <br />of anguish around the earth. <br /> <br />Let the muted sound of the golden horn <br />and the muffled beat of the drum <br />wail a mournful dirge to the evening star <br />where the goddess has wandered from. <br /> <br />The wayward way of the wandering ones <br />toward the whispering will-o-the-wisp <br />is as endless as time and as timeless as love, <br />and as joyful and painful and crisp. <br /> <br />As the errant breeze murmurs through the trees, <br />and the leaves do a moonlit dance, <br />the voice still calls through the earth-bound halls, <br />and the sound soothes to a trance. <br /> <br />The magnet sound makes a magic mood <br />that draws toward the lodestone queen, <br />and the addict bows to the beckoning light: <br />elusive and faint, but seen. <br /> <br />When the sprinkled dust of the evening star <br />drifts down from the stellar height, <br />and enchantment-powders a lone disciple <br />in fragments of splintered light – <br /> <br />the soul recharged and the search renewed <br />in a quest that will never cease, <br />‘till the sudden sight of the hidden throne <br />that can bring a searcher peace.<br /><br />James Walter Orr<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-s-disciple/
