--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

Ragnarok: In Norse and Teutonic cosmogony, the end of the present state of the world, when a new age of righteousness on a new earth will be accomplished by a battle between the gods and the evil giants, in which evil will be overthrown.

Ragnarok (Icelandic) [from ragna plural of regin ruler + rok sentence, judgment, reason, ground, origin] In Norse mythology, the time when the ruling powers (gods) return to their ground, are reabsorbed in their divine origin. The judgment is their evaluation of the life that has just been completed. Ragnarok has commonly been called the twilight of the gods, probably because of confusion with rokkr (twilight). It has also been interpreted as they age of fire and smoke, because in Swedish rok means smoke. However, in Icelandic it has a more sacred meaning referring to wonders and signs, and the departure of the gods to their home ground, the source of their being.

--- QUOTES [0 / 0 - 35 / 35] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

KEYS (10k)


NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   7 Rick Riordan
   7 Neil Gaiman
   3 Bernard O'Dowd
   3 Bernard Cornwell
   2 Kevin Hearne
   2 A S Byatt

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Ragnarok is coming. ~ Neil Gaiman

2:Þar liggr hann till ragnarokrs ~ R I Page

3:Did you just say Ragnarok is poppycock? ~ Kevin Hearne

4:In case of Ragnarok break glass and play an E flat. Where’s ~ Lev Grossman

5:Ragnarok is coming. When the sky splits asunder and the dark powers of Muspell march out on their war journey, Frey ~ Neil Gaiman

6:Okay, cool,” said Jack. “As long as you realize you’ll probably all die in agony and start Ragnarok, I’m down. Let’s do this! ~ Rick Riordan

7:Ragnarok will begin in the next few days, and it won’t end well for anyone, because apocalypses tend not to include happy endings. ~ Kevin Hearne

8:In the Norse sagas Ragnarok was supposed to be preceded by the Fimbulwinter - thirty years of bitter cold, without a single day of warmth. ~ E William Brown

9:On the day the Gjallerhorn is blown, it will wake the gods, no matter where they are, no matter how deeply they sleep. Heimdall will blow Gjallerhorn only once, at the end of all things, Ragnarok. ~ Neil Gaiman

10:I learned the Norse gods came with their own doomsday: Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, the end of it all. The gods were going to battle the frost giants, and they were all going to die. Had Ragnarok happened yet? Was it still to happen? I did not know then. I am not certain now. ~ Neil Gaiman

11:It's always Ragnarok. Regular mortals have the power to blow the world sky-high and all the major supernatural factions can do the same. The thing is, though, as long as people want to live then you're going to have people stepping in the way of those who want to do something to blow us up. That's the only way you can endure it. ~ C T Phipps

12:As for how to avoid going crazy here…Some do lose it, Magnus. Waiting for Ragnarok is hard. The trick is to keep busy. There’s plenty to do here. Me, I’ve learned a dozen languages, including English. I earned a doctorate in Germanic literature, and I learned to knit.” T.J. nodded. “That’s why I invited you to breakfast, Magnus.” “To learn knitting? ~ Rick Riordan

13:I think it's human nature to go and to watch things that are done, and see the flaws, but I cannot think of anything that we would want to go so far as to completely change or redo to be honest with you. I think there are characters, you look at the Thor: Ragnarok trailer, there are characters that can evolve and can continue to change and grow throughout. ~ Kevin Feige

14:It is our fate," Thorgil said. "In the spring look for us again, or if you don't find us, we'll meet in Valhalla." She looked away. Jack knew she had no real hope, or desire, now to go to Valhalla. ... "Jack leaned over and took her hand. "You are Jill Allyson's Daughter," he said, using the name Thorgil's dead mother had given her at birth. "You are not meant for Ragnarok. ~ Nancy Farmer

15:In Muspell, at the edge of the flame, where the mist burns into light, where the land ends, stood Surtr, who existed before the gods. He stands there now...It is said that at Ragnarok, which is the end of the world, and only then, Surtr will leave his station. He will go forth from Muspell with his flaming sword and burn the world with fire, and one by one the gods will fall before him. ~ Neil Gaiman

16:It will never end. Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight. ~ Bernard Cornwell

17:But if you write a version of Ragnarok in the twenty-first century, it is haunted by the imagining of a different end of things. We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness. ~ A S Byatt

18:Ragnarok. Is that all the North ever thinks about? Is that what you want, Snorri? Some great battle and the world ruined and dead?” I couldn’t blame him if he did. Not with what had befallen him this past year, but I would be disturbed to know he had always lusted after such an end, even on the night before the black ships came to Eight Quays. The light kindling on my torch caught him in midshrug. “Do you want the paradise your priests paint for you on cathedral ceilings?” “Good point. ~ Mark Lawrence

19:And you, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Uhtred of Nothing, will die last and die slowest because you have betrayed the gods. You are cursed. You are all cursed!" She cackled then, a mad sound, before pointing the blade at me again. "The gods hate you, Uhtred! You were their son, you were their favourite, you were loved by them, but you chose to use your gifts for the false god, for the filthy Christian god, and now the real gods hate you and curse you! I speak to the gods, they listen to me, they will give you to me and I will kill you so slowly that your death will last till Ragnarok! ~ Bernard Cornwell

20:Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis’s comments on them, and burned them. ~ A S Byatt

21:A video screen descended from the spear-enhanced ceiling and locked into place. He pushed another button. Images of wolves, giants, gods, and weapons flashed across the screen. Then a title: The Signs of Ragnarok: Doomed if You Know Them, Doomed if You Don’t. I groaned inwardly. I’d sat through Odin’s instructional video when I first became a Valkyrie. I saw it a second time after I helped re-shackle the dreaded killer Fenris Wolf on Lyngvi, the Isle of Heather. Then once more after I’d inadvertently aided my father Loki, a vile trickster, to escape his imprisonment. And after Loki was recaptured? Yep—got to see it again. ~ Rick Riordan

22:I know you,” said Maddy. “You’re -“ “What’s a name?” Loki grinned. “Wear it like a coat; turn it, burn it, throw it aside, and borrow another. One-Eye knows; you should ask him.” “But Loki died,” she said, shaking her head. “He died on the field at Ragnarok.” “Not quite.” He pulled a face. “You know there’s rather a lot the Oracle didn’t foretell, and old tales have a habit of getting twisted.” “But in any case, that was centuries ago,” Maddy said bewildered. “I mean - that was the End of the World, wasn’t it?” “So?” said Loki impatiently. “This isn’t the first time the world has come to an end, and it won’t be the last either. ~ Joanne Harris

23:Auster Rampant! A larger Argo ploughs our clearer blue! Your Zephyr won no such auroral bride As her I woo! The South is whence the tide Springs downhill to refresh the North and you! To melt your adamantine basements too, When, as your sagas sang, the flaming-eyed Children of Southern Muspel scatter wide Your world, your gods, when Ragnarok is due! Antipodean? Whew! We are the head, The oceanic head, while you, slung low With lands that scrape the floor of heaven, gaze, Par o'er the Bull your odd Europa wed, Up to the Chambers of the South where glow Our pennant stars, our wider Milky Ways! ~ Bernard O'Dowd

24:Auster Rampant! A larger Argo ploughs our clearer blue! Your Zephyr won no such auroral bride As her I woo! The South is whence the tide Springs downhill to refresh the North and you! To melt your adamantine basements too, When, as your sagas sang, the flaming-eyed Children of Southern Muspel scatter wide Your world, your gods, when Ragnarok is due! Antipodean? Whew! We are the head, The oceanic head, while you, slung low With lands that scrape the floor of heaven, gaze, Par o'er the Bull your odd Europa wed, Up to the Chambers of the South where glow Our pennant stars, our wider Milky Ways! ~ Bernard O'Dowd

25:The bowl she holds fills slowly, one drop at a time, but eventually the poison fills the bowl to the brim. It is then and only then that Sigyn turns away from Loki. She takes the bowl and pours the venom away, and while she is gone, the snake’s poison falls on to Loki’s face and into his eyes. He convulses then, jerks and judders, jolts and twists and writhes, so much that the whole earth shakes. When that happens, we here in Midgard call it an earthquake. They say that Loki will be bound there in the darkness beneath the earth, and Sigyn will be with him, holding the bowl to catch the poison above his face and whispering that she loves him, until Ragnarok comes and brings the end of days. ~ Neil Gaiman

26:THE DAY THE SAUCERS CAME “That day, the saucer day the zombie day The Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the Computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars, And all the bells of London were sounded, the day Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day, The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day, You didn’t notice any of this because you were sitting in your room, not doing anything not even reading, not really, just looking at your telephone, wondering if I was going to call. ~ Neil Gaiman

27:Loki was now captured, and with no thought of mercy he was taken to a cave. They [the Æsir] took three flat stones and, setting them on their edges, broke a hole through each of them. Then they caught Loki’s sons, Vali and Nari or Narfi. The Æsir changed Vali into a wolf, and he ripped apart his brother Narfi. Next the Æsir took his guts, and with them they bound Loki on to the top of the three stones – one under his shoulders, a second under his loins and the third under his knees. The fetters became iron. ‘Then Skadi took a poisonous snake and fastened it above Loki so that its poison drips on to his face. But Sigyn, his wife, placed herself beside him from where she holds a bowl to catch the drops of venom. When the bowl becomes full, she leaves to pour out the poison, and at that moment the poison drips on to Loki’s face. He convulses so violently that the whole earth shakes – it is what is known as an earthquake. He will lie bound there until Ragnarok. ~ Snorri Sturluson

28:I Know you are asking: What if I am wrong? What if RAGNAROK does not come? What if it does not happen the way I say it is going to happen? I suppose that is a possibility. Perhaps the Mayans WERE wrong. Maybe we WILL enter a new era of consciousness. Maybe we will NOT destroy ourselves with technology. Perhaps it will be that some new old god comes. Say his name is DOZGOTH, the 701st, and say he takes pity on us. And a thousand years after all the suffering of RAGNOROK, he will retcon us back to the very day this book was pusblished. You will remember nothing of what happened or what you did to survive. The only evidence that any of this ever happened will be this book, and the fact that ou now have a tentacle instead of an arm. But you will explain that away simply by saying you are wearing an octopus sleeve. The mind can explain so many things when it wants to close its eyes and sleep. Perhaps only one person will remember what really happened, and he will be named Jonathan Coulton. But he cannot tell anyone, for he is but an animal. ~ John Hodgman

29:JACK I’m Jack, the Sword of Summer, Sumarbrander, Blade of Frey. That is, I was his, until he tossed me away. FREY Jack, I did you wrong. You know I’m feeling the guilt. JACK Yeah, right. Forget you, man. Talk to my hilt! FREY Come on, Slice! Give me a chance. At least let me explain why I passed you off to Skirnir— JACK I know why. You were insane. You sat on Odin’s throne to search for Freya, your lost sister. A giantess caught your eye. So much for Freya. You just dissed her. FREY Gerd was gorgeous. Total hottie. I dream of her still. Shining face, lovely hair— JACK I think I’m going to be ill. FREY I know you’ve suffered, Blade of Frey, Sword of Summer, Sumarbrander. JACK The worst is yet to come, when I’m with my new commander. FREY You mean Surt, at Ragnarok. JACK The Black One of Muspellheim. On the day of doom, he’ll wield me— FREY —and free the Wolf. Chaos time. JACK Boiling seas. Bloodred skies. FREY Gods will vanish. Giants rise. JACK I’ll be sad to see you go. FREY Will you really? JACK Really? No. FREY Destiny is destiny. We all have our parts to play. JACK I’ll act mine now then, Nature Boy, and say, “See you later, Frey.” FREY There’ll never be another quite like you, Sword of Summer. Our paths may cross again. If not…good-bye, old friend. ~ Rick Riordan

30:You are aware that my hellhound, Garm, will devour your father, Tyr, when Ragnarok is unleashed?” I nodded. “As Tyr’s spawn, you have his blood in your veins.” I nodded again, wondering where this was going. “Well. Garm has run off,” she told me. “You, son of Tyr, are the only one who can find him. Or rather”—she treated me to a ghastly smile—“he will find you.” “I don’t follow.” “Why, it’s very simple. My hellhound will smell the blood of Tyr and come running.” I clutched my rifle more tightly. “So basically, you’re using me as bait.” “More like a moving target,” Hel amended. “Why me?” I dared to ask. “Why not just, I don’t know, poof Garm back to his cave yourself? Or send your demons to retrieve him?” “Garm can be . . . elusive,” she said evasively. “He’s run off before, and past attempts to bring him home with magic and demons have failed.” I was going to suggest she use a hellhound whistle, but I thought better of it. “If you don’t mind my asking, why not just let him stay lost?” Hel’s expression darkened. “And risk word getting out that my dog is beyond my control? No. There is only one solution. You must lure him back to his cave.” I scowled. “Let me guess. If I refuse, you torture my mother. If I tell anyone Garm didn’t come when you called, you torture my mother.” “Oh yes. And Thomas . . . T.J. . . . if you think killing Garm will stop the hound from killing your father, think again. You cannot stop destiny. Now, away you go! ~ Rick Riordan

31:He thrust his hand in the air and summoned his sword of pure white flame. The gods and goddesses cowered. Throwing his head back and laughing, Surt grew to his full giant size. “You minor, forgotten, pathetic deities! So easy to bend to my will. Not one of you would dare to defy me!” I chose that moment to shape-shift into a bee, buzz up Surt’s teeny-tiny nose, and jab him with my stinger. With a howl of pain, Surt dropped his sword and shrank to his previous size. I changed into my true form. “I dare.” I whipped one end of my golden garrote around his neck and yanked it tight. Then I snatched up his flame sword and with one upward flick, sliced off his pubescent nose. “Jack and Magnus send their regards.” Surt lunged for me. I transformed into a bighorn sheep and head-butted him right where his nose used to be. Then I changed back to human, tightened the garrote until his eyes bulged, and threatened him with his own sword. “Come at me again,” I warned, “and you’ll regret it.” I surveyed the stunned deities. “If one einherji can do this, imagine what all of us can do. And will do, come Ragnarok. We are not destined to win, but we will fight with honor. We would welcome you on our side of the fight. But, if you must side with him”—I gave the garrote a vicious tug and was rewarded with a gurgle from Surt—“know this: I will personally hunt you down on the Last Battlefield of Vigridr and see that you are sent straight to Ginnungagap. The choice is yours.” The deities vanished. ~ Rick Riordan

32:In the end, the most disastrous consequence of the building of the nuclear pyramid may turn out to be not nuclear weapons themselves or some irretrievable act of extermination that they may bring about. Something even worse may be in store, and should it go far enough, be equally irretrievable: namely, the universal imposition of the megamachine, in a perfected form, as the ultimate instrument of pure 'intelligence,' whereby every other manifestation of human potentialities will be suppressed or completely eliminated. Already the blueprints for that final structure are available: they have even been advertised as man's highest destiny. Yet happily for mankind the megamachine itself is in trouble, largely because of its early dependence upon the nuclear bomb. for the very concept of wielding absolute power has set a collective trap, so delicately balanced that its mechanism has more than once been on the point of snapping down on its appointed victims, the inhabitants of the planet. Had that happened, the megamachine would have shattered its own structure as well. Over the entire Pentagon of Power, thanks to the technocratic arrogance and automated intelligence of those who have built this citadel, hovers a nuclear Ragnarok, a Twilight of the Gods, long ago predicted in Norse mythology: a world consumed in flames, when all things human and divine would be overcome by the cunning dwarfs and the brutal giants. After the Sixth Dynasty the Pyramid Age in Egypt came to an end in a violent popular uprising, even without any such cosmic disruption. And something less than the Norse nightmare, though no less ominous to the megamachine, may be in store-or is it now perhaps actually taking place? ~ Lewis Mumford

33:I mounted the stairs to my pavilion and sank onto Hlidskjalf, the magic throne from which I can peer into the Nine Worlds. The seat cradled my posterior with its ermine-lined softness. I took a few deep breaths to focus my concentration, then turned to the worlds beyond. I usually begin with a cursory look-see of my own realm, Asgard, then circle through the remaining eight: Midgard, realm of the humans; the elf kingdom of Alfheim; Vanaheim, the Vanir gods’ domain; Jotunheim, land of the giants; Niflheim, the world of ice, fog, and mist; Helheim, realm of the dishonorable dead; Nidavellir, the gloomy world of the dwarves; and Muspellheim, home of the fire giants. This time, I didn’t make it past Asgard. Because goats. Specifically, Thor’s goats, Marvin and Otis. They were on the Bifrost, the radioactive Rainbow Bridge that connects Asgard to Midgard, wearing footy pajamas. But there was no sign of Thor, which was odd. He usually kept Marvin and Otis close. He killed and ate them every day, and they came back to life the next morning. More disturbing was Heimdall, guardian of the Bifrost. He was hopping around on all fours like a deranged lunatic. “So here’s what I want you guys to do,” he said to Otis and Marvin between hops. “Cavort. Frolic. Frisk about. Okay?” I parted the clouds. “Heimdall! What the Helheim is going on down there?” “Oh, hey, Odin!” Heimdall’s helium-squeaky voice set my teeth on edge. He waved his phablet at me. “I’m making a cute baby goat video as my Snapchat story. Cute baby goat videos are huge in Midgard. Huge!” He spread his hands out wide to demonstrate. “I’m not a baby!” Marvin snapped. “I’m cute?” Otis wondered. “Put that phablet away and return to your duties at once!” According to prophecy, giants will one day storm across the Bifrost, a signal that Ragnarok is upon us. Heimdall’s job is to sound the alarm on his horn, Gjallar—a job he would not be able to perform if he were making Snapchat stories. “Can I finish my cute baby goat video first?” Heimdall pleaded. “No.” “Aw.” He turned to Otis and Marvin. “I guess that’s a wrap, guys.” “Finally,” Marvin said. “I’m going for a graze.” He hopped off the bridge and plummeted to almost certain death and next-day resurrection. Otis sighed something about the grass being greener on the other side, then jumped after him. “Heimdall,” I said tightly, “need I remind you what could happen if even one jotun snuck into Asgard?” Heimdall hung his head. “Apologetic face emoji.” I sighed. “Yes, all right. ~ Rick Riordan

34:When we are young, we yearn for battle. In the firelit halls we listen to the songs of heroes; how they broke the foemen, splintered the shield wall, and soaked their swords in the blood of enemies. As youngsters we listen to the boast of warriors, hear their laughter as they recall battle, and their bellows of pride when their lord reminds them of some hard-won victory. And those youngsters who have not fought, who have yet to hold their shield against a neighbour's shield in the wall, are despised and disparaged. So we practise. Day after day we practise, with spear, sword, and shield. We begin as children, learning blade-craft with wooden weapons, and hour after hour we hit and are hit. We fight against men who hurt us in order to teach us, we learn not to cry when the blood from a split skull sheets across the eyes, and slowly the skill of the sword-craft builds. Then the day comes when we are ordered to march with the men, not as children to hold the horses and to scavenge weapons after the battle, but as men. If we are lucky we have a battered old helmet and a leather jerkin, maybe even a coat of mail that hangs like a sack. We have a sword with a dented edge and a shield that is scored by enemy blades. We are almost men, not quite warriors, and on some fateful day we meet an enemy for the first time and we hear the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and we begin to learn that the poets are wrong and that the proud songs lie. Even before the shield walls meet, some men shit themselves. They shiver with fear. They drink mead and ale. Some boast, but most are quiet unless they join a chant of hate. Some men tell jokes, and the laughter is nervous. Others vomit. Our battle leaders harangue us, tell us of the deeds of our ancestors, of the filth that is the enemy, of the fate our women and children face unless we win, and between the shield walls the heroes strut, challenging us to single combat, and you look at the enemy's champions and they seem invincible. They are big men; grim-faced, gold hung, shining in mail, confident, scornful, savage. The shield wall reeks of shit, and all a man wants is to be home, to be anywhere but on this field that prepares for battle, but none of us will turn and run or else we will be despised for ever. We pretend we want to be there, and then the wall at last advances, step by step, and the heart is thumping fast as a bird's wing beating, the world seems unreal. Thought flies, fear rules, and then the order to quicken the charge is shouted, and you run, or stumble, but stay in your rank because this is the moment you have spent a lifetime preparing for, and then, for the first time, you hear the thunder of shield walls meeting, the clangour of battle swords, and the screaming begins. It will never end. Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight. ~ Bernard Cornwell

35:The Bush I wonder if the spell, the mystery, That like a haze about your silence clings, Moulding your void until we seem to see Tangible Presences of Deathless Things, Patterned but little to our spirits' woof, Yet from our love or hate not all aloof, Can. be the matrix where are forming slowly Troy tales of Old Australia, to refine Eras to come of ordered melancholy 'Neath lily-pale Perfection's anodyne. For Troy hath ever been, and Homer sang Its younger story for a lodging's fee, While o'er Scamander settlers' axes rang Amid the Bush where Ilium was to be. For Cretan Art, dim centuries before, Minoan Dream-times some Briseis bore. Sumerian Phoebus by a willowed water Song-built a Troy for far Chaldea, where The sons of God, beholding Leda's daughter, Bartered eternal thrones for love of her. Across each terraced aeon Time hath sowed With green tautology of vanished years, Gaping aghast or webbed with shining lode, Achilles' anger's earthquake-rift appears. The towers that Phoebus builds can never fall: Desire that Helen lights can never pall: Yea, wounded Love hath still but gods to fly to, When lust of war inflames Diomedes: Must some Australian Hector vainly die, too? Captives in ships? (0 change that omen, Trees!) Yea, Mother Bush, in your deep dreams abide Cupids alert for man and maid unborn, Apprentice Pucks amid your saplings hide, And wistful gorges wait a Roland horn: Wallet of Sigurd shall this swag replace, And centaurs curvet where those brumbies race. 39 That drover's tale of love shall greaten duly Through magic prisms of a myriad years, Till bums Isolde to Tristram's fervour newly, Or Launcelot to golden Guinevere's. The miner cradling washdirt by the creek, Or pulled through darkness dripping to the plat: The navvy boring tunnels through the peak: The farmer grubbing box-trees on the flat: The hawker camping by the roadside spring: The hodman on the giddy scaffolding: Moths that around the fashion windows flutter: The racecourse spider and the betting fly: The children romping by the city gutter, While baby crows to every passer-byFrom these rough blocks strewn o'er our ancient stream Sculptors shall chisel brownie, fairy, faun, Any myrmidons of some Homeric dream From Melbourne mob and Sydney push be drawn. The humdrum lives that now we tire of, then Romance shall be, and 'we heroic men Treading the vestibule of Golden Ages, The Isthmus of the Land of Heart's Desire: For lo! the Sybil's final volume's pages Ope with our Advent, close when we expire. Forgetful Change in one 'antiquity' Boreal gleams shall drown, and southern glows; Out of some singing woman's heart-break plea Australia's dawn shall flush with Sappho's rose: Strong Shirlow's hand shall trace Mantegna's line, And Soma foam from Victor Daley's wine: Scholars to be our prehistoric drama From Esson's 'Woman Tamer' shall restore, Or find in Gilbert's 'Lotus Stream and Lama' An Austral Nile and Buddhas we adore. The sunlit Satyrs follow Hugh McCrae, Quinn spans the ocean with a Celtic ford, And Williamson the Pan-pipe learns to play From magpie-songs our schoolboy ears ignored: 40 A sweeter woe no keen of Erin gave Than Kendall sings o'er Araluen's grave: Tasmanian Wordsworth to his chapel riding The Burning Bush and Ardath mead shall pass, Or, from the sea-coast of Bohemia gliding On craft of dream, behold a shepherd lass. Jessie Mackay on Southern Highlands sees The elves deploy in kem and gallowglass: Our Gilbert Murray writes 'Euripides': Pirani merges in Pythagoras: Marsyas plunges into Lethe, flayed, From Rhadamanthine Stephens' steady blade: While Benvenuto Morton, drunk with singing, Sees salamanders in a bush-fire's bed, And Spencer sails from Alcheringa bringing Intaglios, totems and Books of the Dead. On Southern fiords shall Brady's Long Snakes hiss, Heavy with brides he wins to Viking troth: O'Reilly's Sydney shall be Sybaris, While Melbourne's Muses sup their Spartan broth: Murdoch, Zenobia's counsellor, in time, Redacts from Burke his book on The Sublime: By Way was Homer into Greek translated: And Shakespeare's self is Sophocles so plain They know the kerb whereon the Furies waited Outside the Mermaid Inn in Brogan's Lane. Vane shall divide with Vern Eureka's fame; Tillett and Mann are Tyler then and Cade: Dowie's entwines with Cagliostro's name, And in Tarpeia's, lo, those fair forms fade Who drug the poor, for social bread and wine, And lift the furtive latch to Catiline: There, where the Longmore-featured Gracchi hurry, And Greek-browed Higinbotham walks, anon, The 'wealthy lower orders' leap the Murray Before the stockwhip cracks of Jardine Don. Cleons in 'Windsor dress at Syracuse Their thin plebeians' promised meal delay; 41 And Archibald begets Australia's Muse Upon an undine red of Chowder Bay: Paterson's swan draws Amphitrite's car, And Sidon learns from Young what purples are: Rose Scott refutes dogmatic Cyril gaily, Hypatia turns the anti-suffrage flank, And Herod's daughter sools her 'morning daily' On John the Baptist by the Yarra Bank. Yon regal bustard, fading hence ere long, Shall seem the guide we followed to the Grail; This lyre-bird on his dancing-mound of song Our mystagogue of some Bacchantic vale, Where feathered Pan guffaws 'Evoe!' above, And Maenad curlews shriek their midnight love: That trailing flight of distant swans is bearing Sarpedon's soul to its eternal joy: This ibis, from the very Nile, despairing, Memnon our own would warn from fatal Troy. Primeval gnomes distilled the golden bribes That have impregnated your musing waste with men; But shall the spell of your pathetic tribes Curl round, in time, our fairer limbs again? Through that long tunnel of your gloom, I see Gardens of a metropolis to be! Out of the depths the mountain ash is soaring To embryon gods of what unsounded space? Out of the heights what influence is pouring Thin desolation on your haunted face? Many there are who see no higher lot For all your writhing centuries of toil Than that the avaricious plough should blot Their wilding burgeon, and the red brand spoil Your cyclopean garniture, to sow The cheap parterres of Europe on your woe. They weave all sorceries but yours, and borrow The tinkling spells of alien winds and seas To drown the chord of purifying sorrow, Bom ere the world, that pulses through your trees. 42 For, save when we, in not o'er-subtle mood, Hear magpies warbling soft November in, Or, hand in hand with Love, a dreaming wood Or bouldered crest of crisper April win, Your harps, unblurred by glozing strings, intone The dirges that behind Creation moan'Where, riding reinless billows, new lives dash on The souring beach of yesterday's decay, Where Love's chord leaps from mandrake shrieks of passion, And groping gods mould man from quivering clay. (Is Nature deaf and blind and dumb? A cruse Unfilled of wine? Clay for an unbreathed soul? Alien to man, till his desires transfuse Their flames through wind and water, leaf and bole, And each crude fane elaborately fit With oracles that echo all his wit? The living wilds of Greece saw death returning When Pan that men had made fell from his throne: Till through her sap our very blood is churning The Bush her lonely alien woe shall moan! Or is she reticent but to be kind? Whispers she not beneath her mask of clods'Who asks he shall receive, who seeks shall find, Who knocks shall open every door of God's?' Dumb Faith's, blind Hope's eternal consort she, Gravid with all that is on earth to be; Corn, wine and oil in hungry granite hiding, All Beauty under sober wings of clay, All life beneath her dead heart long abiding, Yea, all the gods her sons and she obey!) What sin's wan expiation strewed your Vast With mounded pillage of what conquering fire? Slumbering throes of what prodigious Past Exhale these lingering ghosts of its desire? Sunshine that bleached corruption out, that glare? Desolate blue of Purgatory, there? Flagellant winds through guilty Eden scouring? Sahara drowning Prester John's domain? Satumian dam her progeny devouring? Hath dawn-time Hun these footprints left? Hath Cain? 43 Even the human wave, that shall at length To man's endurance key your strident surge, Sings in your poignant tones and sombre strength, And makes, as yet, its own your primal dirge: A gun-shot startles dawn back from the sky, And mourning tea-trees echo Gordon's sigh: Nardoo with Burke's faint sweat is dank for ever: Spectral a tribe round poisoned rations shrieks: Till doomday Leichhardt walks die Never Never: Pensive, of Boake, the circling stock-whip speaks. The wraiths unseen of roadside crimes unnamed About that old-time shanty's ruins roam: This squatter's fenceless acres hide ashamed The hearth and battered zinc of Naboth's home: Deserted 'yam-holes' pit your harmonies With sloughing pock-marks of the gold-disease: The sludgy creek 'mid hungry rushes rambles, Where teal once dived and lowan raised her mound: That tree, with crows, o'erlooks the township shambles: These paddocks, ordure-smeared, the city bound. 0 yield not all to factory and farm! For we, who drew a milk no stranger knows From her scant paps, yearn for the acrid charm That gossamers the Bush Where No Tree Grows. And we have ritual moments when we crave For worship in some messmate-pillared nave, Where contrite 'bears' for woodland sins are kneeling, And, 'mid the censers of the mountain musk, Acolyte bell-birds the Angelus are pealing, And boobooks moan lone vespers in the dusk, And you have Children of the Dreaming Star, Who care but little for the crowded ways Where meagre spirits' vapid prizes are, Or for the paddocked ease of dreamless days And hedges clipped of every sunny growth That plights the soul to God in daily troth: Their wayward love prefers your desolation, Or (where the human trail hath seared its charm) 44 The briar-rose on some abandoned 'station', To all the tilled obedience of the farm. Vineyards that purblind thrift shall never glean The weedy waste and thistly gully hold: No mint shall melt to currency unclean Yon river-rounded hillock's Cape-broom gold: The onion-grass upon that dark green slope Returns our gaze from eyes of heliotrope: But more we seek your underflowered expanses Of scrub monotonous, or, where, O Bush, The craters of your fiery noon's romances, Like great firm bosoms, through the bare plains push. As many. Mother, are your moods and forms As all the sons who love you. Here, you mow Careering grounds for every brood of storms The wild sea-mares to desert stallions throw; Anon, up through a sea of sand you glance With green ephemeral exuberance, And then quick seeds dive deep to years of slumber From hot-hoofed drought's precipitate return: There, league on league, the snow's cold fingers number The shrinking nerves of supple-jack and fern. To other eyes and ears you are a great Pillared cathedral tremulously green, An odorous and hospitable gate To genial mystery, the happy screen Of truants or of lovers rambling there 'Neath sun-shot boughs o'er miles of maidenhair. Wee rubies dot the leaflets of the cherries, The wooing wagtails hop from log to bough, The bronzewing comes from Queensland for the berries, The bell-bird by the creek is calling now. And you can ride, an Eastern queen, they say, By living creatures sumptuously borne, With all barbaric equipages gay, Beneath the torrid blue of Capricorn. That native lotus is the very womb That was the Hindoo goddess' earthly tomb. 45 The gang-gang screams o'er cactus wildernesses, Palm trees are there, and swampy widths of rice, Unguents and odours ooze from green recesses, The jungles blaze with birds of Paradise. But I, in city exile, hear you sing Of saplinged hill and box-tree dotted plain, Or silver-grass that prays the North Wind's wing Convey its sigh to the loitering rain: And Spring is half distraught with wintry gusts, Summer the daily spoil of tropic lusts The sun and she too fiercely shared together Lingering thro' voluptuous Hindoo woods, But o'er my windless, soft autumnal weather The peace that passes understanding broods. When, now, they say 'The Bush!', I see the top Delicate amber leanings of the gum Flutter, or flocks of screaming green leeks drop Silent, where in the shining morning hum The gleaning bees for honey-scented hours 'Mid labyrinthine leaves and white gum flowers. Cantering midnight hoofs are nearing, nearing, The straining bullocks flick the harpy flies, The 'hatter' weeds his melancholy clearing, The distant cow-bell tinkles o'er the rise. You are the brooding comrade of our way, Whispering rumour of a new Unknown, Moulding us white ideals to obey, Steeping whate'er we learn in lore your own, And freshening with unpolluted light The squalid city's day and pallid night, Till we become ourselves distinct, Australian, (Your native lightning charging blood and nerve), Stripped to the soul of borrowed garments, alien To that approaching Shape of God you serve. Brooding, brooding, your whispers murmur plain That searching for the clue to mystery In grottos of decrepitude is vain, That never shall the eye of prophet see 46 In crooked Trade's tumultuous streets the plan Of templed cities adequate to man. Brooding, brooding, you make us Brahmins waiting (While uninspired pass on the hurtling years), Faithful to dreams your spirit is creating, Till Great Australia, born of you, appears. For Great Australia is not yet: She waits (Where o'er the Bush prophetic auras play) The passing of these temporary States, Flaunting their tawdry flags of far decay. Her aureole above the alien mists Beacons our filial eyes to mountain trysts: 'Mid homely trees with all ideals fruited, She shelters us till Trade's Simoom goes by, And slakes our thirst from cisterns unpolluted . For ages cold in brooding deeps of sky. We love our brothers, and to heal their woe Pluck simples from the known old gardens still: We love our kindred over seas, and grow Their symbols tenderly o'er plain and hill; We feel their blood rebounding in our hearts, And speak as they would speak our daily parts: But under all we know, we know that only A virgin womb unsoiled by ancient fear Can Saviours bear. So, we, your Brahmins, lonely, Deaf to the barren tumult, wait your Year. The Great Year's quivering dawn pencils the Night To be the morning of our children's prime, And weave from rays of yet ungathered Light A richer noon than e'er apparelled Time. If it must be, as Tuscan wisdom knew, Babylon's seer, and wistful Egypt too, That mellow afternoon shall pensive guide us Down somnolent Decay's ravine to rest, Then you, reborn, 0 Mother Bush, shall hide us All the long night at your dream-laden breast. Australian eyes that heed your lessons know Another world than older pilgrims may: 47 Prometheus chained in Kosciusko's snow Sees later gods than Zeus in turn decay: Boundless plateaux expand the spirit's sight, Resilient gales uphold her steeper flight: And your close beating heart, 0 savage Mother, Throbs secret words of joy and starker pain Than reach the ears all old deceptions smother In Lebanon, or e'en in Westermain. We marvel not, who hear your undersong, And catch a glimpse in rare exalted hours Of something like a Being gleam along Festooned arcades of flossie creeper flowers, Or, toward the mirk, seem privileged to share The silent rapture of the trees at prayerWe marvel not that seers in other ages, With eyes unstrained by peering logic, saw The desolation glow with Koran pages, Or Sinai stones with Tables of the Law. Homers are waiting in the gum trees now, Far driven from the tarnished Cyclades: More Druids to your green enchantment bow Than 'neath unfaithful Mona's vanished trees: A wind hath spirited from ageing France To our fresh hills the carpet of Romance: Heroes and maids of old with young blood tingling In ampler gardens grow their roses new: And races long apart their manas mingling Prepare the cradle of an Advent due. And those who dig the mounded eld for runes To read Religion's tangled cipher, here, Where all Illusion haunts the fainting noons Of days hysteric with the tireless leer Of ravenous enamoured suns, shall find How May a flings her mantle o'er the mind, Till sober sand to shining water changes, Dodona whispers from the she-oak groves, Afreets upon the tempest cross the ranges, And Fafnir through the bunyip marshes roves. 48 Once, when Uranian Love appeared to glow Through that abysmal Night that bounds our reignLove that a man may scarcely feel and know i Quite the same world as other men againWith earthward-streaming frontier wraiths distraught, Your oracles, 0 Mother Bush, I sought: But found, dismayed, that eerie light revealing Those wraiths already in your depths on sleuth, Termagant Scorns along your hillsides stealing, Remorse unbaring slow her barbed tooth. My own thoughts first from far dispersion flew Back to their sad creator, with the crops Of woes in flower and all the harvests due Till tiring Time the fearful seeding stops: In pigmy forms of friends and foes, anon In my own image, they came, stung, were gone: And then I heard the voice of Him Who Questions, Knowing the faltered answer ere it came, Chilling the soul by hovering suggestions Of wan damnation at a wince of blame. And all your leaves in symbols were arranged, Despairs long dead would leap from bough to bough, A gum-tree buttress to a goblin changed Grinning the warmth of some old broken vow: Furtive desires for scarce-remembered maids Glanced in a fearful bo-peep from your shades: Till you became a purgatory cleansing With rosy flakes in form of manikins, To fiercer shame within my soul condensing, The dim pollution of forgotten sins. And She, the human symbol of that Love, Would, as my cleansed eyes forgot their fear, Comrade beside me. Comforter above, With sunny smile ubiquitous appear: Run on before me to the nooks we knew, Walk hand in hand as glad young lovers do, Gravely reprove me toying with temptation, Show me the eyes and ears in roots and clods, Bend with me o'er some blossom's revelation, 49 Or read from clouds the judgments of the gods. My old ideals She would tune until The grating note of self no longer rang: She drove the birds of gloom and evil will Out of the cote wherein my poems sang. Time at Her wand annulled his calendar, And Space his fallacy of Near and Far, For through my Bush along with me She glided, And crowded days of Beauty made more fair, Though lagging weeks and ocean widths divided Her mortal casing from Her Presence there. Her wetted finger oped my shuttered eyes To boyhood's scership of the Real again: Upon the Bush descended from the skies The rapt-up Eden of primordial men: August Dominions through the vistas strode: On white-maned clouds the smiling cherubs rode: Maltreated Faith restored my jangled hearing Till little seraphs sang from chip and clod: And prayers were radiant children that, unfearing, Floated as kisses to the lips of God. It matters not that for some purpose wise Myopic Reason censored long ago The revelations of that Paradise, When, back of all I feel or will or know, Its silent angels beacon through the Dark And point to harbours new my drifted ark. Nor need we dread the fogs that round us thicken Questing the Bush for Grails decreed for man, When Powers our fathers saw unseen still quicken Eyes that were ours before the world began. 'Twas then I saw the Vision of the Ways, And 'mid their gloom and glory seemed to live, Threaded the coverts of the Dark Road's maze, Toiled up, with tears, the Track Retributive, And, on the Path of Grace, beheld aglow The love-lit Nave of all that wheeled below. And She who flowered, my Mystic Rose, in Heaven, 50 And lit the Purging Mount, my Guiding Star, Trudged o'er the marl, my mate, through Hell's wan levin, Nor shrank, like lonely Dante's love, afar. High towered a cloud over one leafy wild, And to a bridged volcano grew. Above, A great Greek group of father, mother, child, Illumed a narrow round with radiant love. Below, a smoke-pool thick with faces swirled, The mutinous omen. of an Under-world, Defeated, plundered, blackened, but preparing, E'en though that calm, white dominance fell down, To overflow the rim, and, sunward faring, Shape myriad perfect groups from slave and clown. Or thus I read the symbol, though 'twas sent To hound compunction on my wincing pride, That dreamed of raceless brotherhood, content Though all old Charm dissolved and Glory died. For often signs will yield their deeper signs, Virginal Bush, in your untrodden shrines, Than where the craven ages' human clamour Distorts the boldest oracle with fear, Or where dissolving wizards dew with glamour Arden, Broceliande, or Windermere. Once while my mother by a spreading tree Our church's sober rubric bade me con, My vagrant eyes among the boughs would see Forbidden wings and •wizard aprons on Father's 'wee people' from their Irish glades Brighten and darken with your lights and shades. And I would only read again those stern leaves For whispered bribe that, when their tale I told, We would go and look for fairies in the fern-leaves And red-capped leprechauns with crocks of gold. Anon, my boyhood saw how Sunbursts flamed Or filmy hinds lured on a pale Oisin, Where lithe indignant saplings crowding claimed The digger's ravage for their plundered queen: And heard within yon lichened 'mullock-heap' 51 Lord Edward's waiting horsemen moan in sleep: Or flew the fragrant path of swans consoling Lir's exiled daughter wandering with me, And traced below the Wattle River rolling Exuberant and golden toward the sea. Here, would the •wavering wings of heat uplift Some promontory till the tree-crowned pile Above a phantom sea would swooning drift, St. Brendan's vision of the Winged Isle: Anon, the isle divides again, again, Till archipelagos poise o'er the main. There, lazy fingers of a breeze have scattered The distant blur of factory chimney smoke hi poignant groups of all the young lives shattered To feed the ravin of a piston-stroke! Or when I read the tale of what you were Beyond these hungry eyes' home-keeping view, I peopled petrel rocks with Sirens fair, In Maid Mirage the Fairy Morgan knew, Steered Quetzalcoatl's skiff to coral coasts, On Chambers' Pillar throned the Olympian hosts, Heard in white sulphur-crested parrots' screeches Remorseful Peris vent their hopeless rage, Atlantis' borders traced on sunken beaches, m Alcheringa found the Golden Age. Sibyl and Siren, with alternate breaths You read our foetal nation's boon and bane, And lure to trysts of orgiastic Deaths Adventurous love that listens to your strain: Pelsarts and Vanderdeckens of the world Circle your charms or at your feet are hurled: And, Southern witch, whose glamour drew De Quiros O'er half the earth for one unyielded kiss, Were yours the arms that healed the scalded Eros When Psyche's curious lamp darkened their bliss? Ye, who would challenge when we claim to see The bush alive with Northern wealth of wings, Forget that at a common mother's knee 52 We learned, with you, the lore of Silent Things. There is no New that is not older far Than swirling cradle of the first-born star: Our youngest hearts prolong the far pulsation And churn the brine of the primordial sea: The foetus writes the précis of Creation: Australia is the whole world's legatee. Imagination built her throne in us Before your present bodies saw the sky: Your myths were counters of our abacus, And in your brain developed long our eye: We from the misty folk have also sprung Who saw the gnomes and heard the Ever Young: Do Southern skies the fancy disinherit Of moly flower and Deva-laden breeze? Do nerves attuned by old defect and merit Their timbre lose by crossing tropic seas? All mysteries ye claim as yours alone Have wafted secrets over oceans here: Our living soil Antiquity hath sown With just the corn and tares ye love and fear: Romance and song enthral us just as you, Nor change of zenith changes spirit too: Our necks as yours are sore with feudal halters: To the Pole ye know our compasses are set; And shivering years that huddled round your altars Beneath our stars auspicious tremble yet. Who fenced the nymphs in European vales? Or Pan tabooed from all but Oxford dreams? Warned Shakespeare off from foreign Plutarch's tales? Or tethered Virgil to Italian themes? And when the body sailed from your control Think ye we left behind in bond the soul? Whate'er was yours is ours in equal measure, The Temple was not built for you alone, Altho' 'tis ours to grace the common treasure With Lares and Penates of our own! Ye stole yourselves from gardens fragrant long 53 The sprouting seed-pods of your choicest blooms, And wove the splendid garments of your song From Viking foam on grave Hebraic looms: 'Twas Roman nerve and rich Hellenic lymph Changed your pale pixie to a nubile nymph: Yea, breathed at dawn around Atlantis' islands, Wind-home o'er some Hesperidean road, The morning clouds on dim Accadian highlands Spring-fed the Nile that over Hellas flowed! As large-eyed Greek amid Sicilian dews Saw Dis, as ne'er before, pursue the Maid, Or, safe 'neath screening billows, Arethuse Alpheus' rugged sleuth unsoiled evade: We shall complete the tale ye left half-told, Under the ocean lead your fountains old, To slake our sceptic thirst with haunted water, And tame our torrents with a wedding kiss, Shall loose, mayhap, the spell on Ceres' daughter, And show, unclouded, God in very Dis. (Yet, there are moods and mornings when I hear, Above the music of the Bush's breath, The rush of alien breezes far and near Drowning her oracles to very death: Exotic battle-cries the silence mar, Seductive perfumes drive the gum-scent far; And organ-tones august a moment show me Miltonic billows and Homeric gales Until I feel the older worlds below me, And all her wonder trembles, thins and fails.) Yea, you are all that we may be, and yet In us is all you are to be for aye! The Giver of the gifts that we shall get? An empty womb that waits the wedding day? Thus drifting sense by age-long habit buoyed Plays round the thought that knows all nature void! And so, my song alternate would believe her Idiot Bush and Daughter of the Sun, A worthless gift apart from the receiver, An empty womb, but in a Deathless One. 54 To shapes we would of Freedom, Truth and Joy Shall we your willing plasm mould for man: Afresh rebuild the world, and thus destroy What only Ragnarok in Europe can: There is no Light but in your dark blendes sleeps, Drops from your stars or through your ether leaps: Yea, you are Nature, Chaos since Creation, Waiting what human Word to chord in song? Matrix inert of what auspicious nation? For what far bees your nectar hiving long? Exhausted manas of the conquering North Shall rise refreshed to vivid life again At your approach, and in your lap pour forth Grateful the gleanings of his mighty reign: As, when a tropic heat-king southward crawls, Blistering the ranges, till he hears the calls Of some cold high-browed bride, her streaming tresses, Sprinkled with rose-buds, make his wild eyes thrill To such desire for her superb caresses He yields his fiery treasures to her will. 'Where is Australia, singer, do you know? These sordid farms and joyless factories, Mephitic mines and lanes of pallid woe? Those ugly towns and cities such as these With incense sick to all unworthy power, And all old sin in full malignant flower? No! to her bourn her children still are faring: She is a Temple that we are to build: For her the ages have been long preparing: She is a prophecy to be fulfilled! All that we love in olden lands and lore Was signal of her coming long ago! Bacon foresaw her, Campanella, More And Plato's eyes were with her star aglow! Who toiled for Truth, whate'er their countries were, Who fought for Liberty, they yearned for her! No corsair's gathering ground, or tryst for schemers, 55 No chapman Carthage to a huckster Tyre, She is the Eldorado of old dreamers, The Sleeping Beauty of the world's desire! She is the scroll on which we are to write Mythologies our own and epics new: She is the port of our propitious flight From Ur idolatrous and Pharaoh's crew. She is our own, unstained, if worthy we, By dream, or god, or star we would not see: Her crystal beams all but the eagle dazzle; Her wind-wide ways none but the strong-winged sail: She is Eutopia, she is Hy-Brasil, The watchers on the tower of morning hail I Yet she shall be as we, the Potter, mould: Altar or tomb, as we aspire, despair: What wine we bring shall she, the chalice, hold: What word we write shall she, the script, declare: Bandage our eyes, she shall be Memphis, Spain: Barter our souls, she shall be Tyre again: And if we pour on her the red oblation All o'er the world shall Asshur's buzzards throng: Love-lit, her Chaos shall become Creation: And dewed with dream, her silence flower in song. ~ Bernard O'Dowd

--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

0