Happy Beltane

Beltane is the festival of rampant Eros, when the Earth is fully woken from sleep and all Nature is desirous of mating.  Maypoles and Beltane fires remind us of the leaping life-force.

Jason at The Wild Hunt has a round-up of Beltane blogging.

Here's some Beltane poetry to get you in the mood...

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,

Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,

Follows with dancing and fills with delight

    The Mænad and the Bassarid;

And soft as lips that laugh and hide

The laughing leaves of the trees divide,

And screen from seeing and leave in sight

    The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair

Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;

The wild vine slipping down leaves bare

Her bright breast shortening into sighs;

The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,

But the berried ivy catches and cleaves

To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare

The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

from Atalanta in Calydon by Algernon Charles Swinburne