At Philae, in the temple of Isis,

The fruitful and terrible goddess,

Under a running panel of the sacred ibis,

Is pictured the dead body of Osiris

Waiting the resurrection morn.

And a priest is pouring water blue as iris

Out of a pitcher on the stalk of corn

That from the body of the god is growing,

Before the rising tides of the Nile are flowing.

And over the pictured body is this inscription

In the temple of Isis, the Egyptian:

This is the nameless one, whom Isis decrees

Not to be named, the god of life and yearning,

Osiris of the mysteries,

Who springs from the waters ever returning.

At the gate of the Lord's house,

Ezekiel, the prophet, beheld the abomination of Babylon:

Women with sorrow on their brows

In lamentation, weeping

For the bereavement of Ishtar and for Tammuz sleeping,

And for the summer gone.

Tammuz has passed below

To the house of darkness and woe,

But not as Mary Magdalen came to the tomb,

The women in the gardens of Adonis,

Crying, "The winter sun is yet upon us,"

Planted in baskets seeds of various bloom,

Which sprouted like frail hopes, then wilted down

For the baskets' shallow soil.

Then for a beauty dead, a futile toil,

For leaves that withered, yellow and brown,

From the gardens of Adonis into the sea,

They cast the baskets of their hope away:

A ritual of the things that cease to be,

Brief loveliness and swift decay.

And O ye holy women, who at Delphi

Roused from sleep the cradled Dionysius,

Who with an April eye

Looked up at them,

Before the adorable god, the infant Jesus,

Was found at Bethlehem!

For at Bethlehem the groaning world's desire

For spring, that burned from Egypt up to Tyre,