Songs before Sunrise Read Online

3

Is there change in the secret skies,

In the sacred places that see

The divine beginning of things,

The weft of the web of the world?

Is Freedom a worm that dies,

And God no God of the free?

Is heaven like as earth with her kings

And time as a serpent curled

Round life as a tree?

From the steel-bound snows of the north,

From the mystic mother, the east,

From the sands of the fiery south,

From the low-lit clouds of the west,

A sound of a cry is gone forth;

Arise, stand up from the feast,

Let wine be far from the mouth,

Let no man sleep or take rest,

Till the plague hath ceased.

Let none rejoice or make mirth

Till the evil thing be stayed,

Nor grief be lulled in the lute,

Nor hope be loud on the lyre;

Let none be glad upon earth.

O music of young man and maid,

O songs of the bride, be mute.

For the light of her eyes, her desire,

Is the soul dismayed.

It is not a land new-born

That is scourged of a stranger's hand,

That is rent and consumed with flame.

We have known it of old, this face,

With the cheeks and the tresses torn,

With shame on the brow as a brand.

We have named it of old by name,

The land of the royallest race,

The most holy land.

Str. 4

Had I words of fire,

Whose words are weak as snow;

Were my heart a lyre

Whence all its love might flow

In the mighty modulations of desire,

In the notes wherewith man's passion worships woe;

Could my song release

The thought weak words confine,

And my grief, O Greece,

Prove how it worships thine;

It would move with pulse of war the limbs of peace

Till she flushed and trembled and became divine.

(Once she held for true

This truth of sacred strain;

Though blood drip like dew

And life run down like rain,

It is better that war spare but one or two

Than that many live, and liberty be slain.)

Then with fierce increase

And bitter mother's mirth,

From the womb of peace,

A womb that yearns for birth,

As a man-child should deliverance come to Greece,

As a saviour should the child be born on earth.

Str. 5

O that these my days had been

Ere white peace and shame were wed

Without torch or dancers' din

Round the unsacred marriage-bed!

For of old the sweet-tongued law,

Freedom, clothed with all men's love,

Girt about with all men's awe,

With the wild war-eagle mated

The white breast of peace the dove,

And his ravenous heart abated

And his windy wings were furled

In an eyrie consecrated

Where the snakes of strife uncurled,

And her soul was soothed and sated

With the welfare of the world.

Ant. 1

But now, close-clad with peace,

While war lays hand on Greece,

The kingdoms and their kings stand by to see;

»Aha, we are strong,« they say,

»We are sure, we are well,« even they;

»And if we serve, what ails ye to be free?

We are warm, clothed round with peace and shame;

But ye lie dead and naked, dying for a name.«

Ant. 2

O kings and queens and nations miserable,

O fools and blind, and full of sins and fears,

With these it is, with you it is not well;

Ye have one hour, but these the immortal years.

These for a pang, a breath, a pulse of pain,

Have honour, while that honour on earth shall be;

Ye for a little sleep and sloth shall gain

Scorn, while one man of all men born is free.

Even as the depth more deep than night or day,

The sovereign heaven that keeps its eldest way,

So without chance or change, so without stain,

The heaven of their high memories shall nor wax nor wane.

Ant. 3

As the soul on the lips of the dead

Stands poising her wings for flight,

A bird scarce quit of her prison,

But fair without form or flesh,

So stands over each man's head

A splendour of imminent light,

A glory of fame rearisen,

Of day rearisen afresh

From the hells of night.

In the hundred cities of Crete

Such glory was not of old,

Though her name was great upon earth

And her face was fair on the sea.

The words of her lips were sweet,

Her days were woven with gold,

Her fruits came timely to birth;

So fair she was, being free,

Who is bought and sold.

So fair, who is fairer now

With her children dead at her side,

Unsceptred, unconsecrated,

Unapparelled, unhelped, unpitied,

With blood for gold on her brow,

Where the towery tresses divide;

The goodly, the golden-gated,

Many-crowned, many-named, many-citied,

Made like as a bride.

And these are the bridegroom's gifts;

Anguish that straitens the breath,

Shame, and the weeping of mothers,

And the suckling dead at the breast,

White breast that a long sob lifts;

And the dumb dead mouth, which saith,

»How long, and how long, my brothers?«

And wrath which endures not rest,

And the pains of death.

Ant. 4

Ah, but would that men,

With eyelids purged by tears,

Saw, and heard again

With consecrated ears,

All the clamour, all the splendour, all the slain,

All the lights and sounds of war, the fates and fears;

Saw far off aspire,

With crash of mine and gate,

From a single pyre

The myriad flames of fate,

Soul by soul transfigured in funereal fire,

Hate made weak by love, and love made strong by hate.

Children without speech,

And many a nursing breast;

Old men in the breach,

Where death sat down a guest;

With triumphant lamentation made for each,

Let the world salute their ruin and their rest.

In one iron hour

The crescent flared and waned,

As from tower to tower,

Fire-scathed and sanguine-stained,

Death, with flame in hand, an open bloodred flower,

Passed, and where it bloomed no bloom of life remained.

Ant. 5

Hear, thou earth, the heavy-hearted

Weary nurse of waning races;

From the dust of years departed,

From obscure funereal places,

Raise again thy sacred head,

Lift the light up of thine eyes;

Where are they of all thy dead

That did more than these men dying

In their godlike Grecian wise?

Not with garments rent and sighing,

Neither gifts of myrrh and gold,

Shall their sons lament them lying,

Lest the fame of them wax cold;

But with lives to lives replying,

And a worship from of old.

Epode

O sombre heart of earth and swoln with grief,

That in thy time wast as a bird for mirth,

Dim womb of life and many a seed and sheaf,

And full of changes, ancient heart of earth,

From grain and flower, from grass and every leaf,

Thy mysteries and thy multitudes of birth,

From hollow and hill, from vales and all thy springs,

From all shapes born and breath of all lips made,

From thunders, and the sound of winds and wings,

From light, and from the solemn sleep of shade,

From the full fountains of all living things,

Speak, that this plague be stayed.

Bear witness all the ways of death and life

If thou be with us in the world's old strife,

If thou be mother indeed,

And from these wounds that bleed

Gather in thy great breast the dews that fall,

And on thy sacred knees

Lull with mute melodies,

Mother, thy sleeping sons in death's dim hall.

For these thy sons, behold,

Sons of thy sons of old,

Bear witness if these be not as they were;

If that high name of Greece

Depart, dissolve, decease

From mouths of men and memories like as air.

By the last milk that drips

Dead on the child's dead lips,

By old men's white unviolated hair,

By sweet unburied faces

That fill those red high places

Where death and freedom found one lion's lair,

By all the bloodred tears

That fill the chaliced years,

The vessels of the sacrament of time,

Wherewith, O thou most holy,

O Freedom, sure and slowly

Thy minlstrant white hands cleanse earth of crime;

Though we stand off afar

Where slaves and slaveries are,

Among the chains and crowns of poisonous peace;

Though not the beams that shone

From rent Arcadion

Can melt her mists and bid her snows decrease;

Do thou with sudden wings

Darken the face of kings,

But turn again the beauty of thy brows on Greece;

Thy white and woundless brows,

Whereto her great heart bows;

Give her the glories of thine eyes to see;

Turn thee, O holiest head,

Toward all thy quick and dead,

For love's sake of the souls that cry for thee;

O love, O light, O flame,

By thine own Grecian name,

We call thee and we charge thee that all these be free.

Jan. 1867.

»Non Dolet«

It does not hurt. She looked along the knife

Smiling, and watched the thick drops mix and run

Down the sheer blade; not that which had been done

Could hurt the sweet sense of the Roman wife,

But that which was to do yet ere the strife

Could end for each for ever, and the sun:

Nor was the palm yet nor was peace yet won

While pain had power upon her husband's life.

It does not hurt, Italia. Thou art more

Than bride to bridegroom; how shalt thou not take

The gift love's blood has reddened for thy sake?

Was not thy lifeblood given for us before?

And if love's heartblood can avail thy need,

And thou not die, how should it hurt indeed?

Eurydice

To Victor Hugo

Orpheus, the night is full of tears and cries,

And hardly for the storm and ruin shed

Can even thine eyes be certain of her head

Who never passed out of thy spirit's eyes,

But stood and shone before them in such wise

As when with love her lips and hands were fed,

And with mute mouth out of the dusty dead

Strove to make answer when thou bad'st her rise.

Yet viper-stricken must her lifeblood feel

The fang that stung her sleeping, the foul germ

Even when she wakes of hell's most poisonous worm,

Though now it writhe beneath her wounded heel.

Turn yet, she will not fade nor fly from thee;

Wait, and see hell yield up Eurydice.

An Appeal

I

Art thou indeed among these,

Thou of the tyrannous crew,

The kingdoms fed upon blood,

O queen from of old of the seas,

England, art thou of them too

That drink of the poisonous flood,

That hide under poisonous trees?

II

Nay, thy name from of old,

Mother, was pure, or we dreamed

Purer we held thee than this,

Purer fain would we hold;

So goodly a glory it seemed,

A fame so bounteous of bliss,

So more precious than gold.

III

A praise so sweet in our ears,

That thou in the tempest of things

As a rock for a refuge shouldst stand,

In the bloodred river of tears

Poured forth for the triumph of kings;

A safeguard, a sheltering land,

In the thunder and torrent of years.

IV

Strangers came gladly to thee,

Exiles, chosen of men,

Safe for thy sake in thy shade,

Sat down at thy feet and were free.

So men spake of thee then;

Now shall their speaking be stayed?

Ah, so let it not be!

V

Not for revenge or affright,

Pride, or a tyrannous lust,

Cast from thee the crown of thy praise.

Mercy was thine in thy might;

Strong when thou wert, thou wert just;

Now, in the wrong-doing days,

Cleave thou, thou at least, to the right.

VI

How should one charge thee, how sway,

Save by the memories that were?

Not thy gold nor the strength of thy ships,

Nor the might of thine armies at bay,

Made thee, mother, most fair;

But a word from republican lips

Said in thy name in thy day.

VII

Hast thou said it, and hast thou forgot?

Is thy praise in thine ears as a scoff?

Blood of men guiltless was shed,

Children, and souls without spot,

Shed, but in places far off;

Let slaughter no more be, said

Milton; and slaughter was not.

VIII

Was it not said of thee too,

Now, but now, by thy foes,

By the slaves that had slain their France,

And thee would slay as they slew –

»Down with her walls that enclose

Freemen that eye us askance,

Fugitives, men that are true!«

IX

This was thy praise or thy blame

From bondsman or freeman – to be

Pure from pollution of slaves,

Clean of their sins, and thy name

Bloodless, innocent, free;

Now if thou be not, thy waves

Wash not from off thee thy shame.

X

Freeman he is not, but slave,

Whoso in fear for the State

Cries for surety of blood,

Help of gibbet and grave;

Neither is any land great

Whom, in her fear-stricken mood,

These things only can save.

XI

Lo, how fair from afar,

Taintless of tyranny, stands

Thy mighty daughter, for years

Who trod the winepress of war;

Shines with immaculate hands;

Slays not a foe, neither fears;

Stains not peace with a scar.

XII

Be not as tyrant or slave,

England; be not as these,

Thou that wert other than they.

Stretch out thine hand, but to save;

Put forth thy strength, and release;

Lest there arise, if thou slay,

Thy shame as a ghost from the grave.

November 20, 1867.

Perinde Ac Cadaver

In a vision Liberty stood

By the childless charm-stricken bed

Where, barren of glory and good,

Knowing nought if she would not or would,

England slept with her dead.

Her face that the foam had whitened,

Her hands that were strong to strive,

Her eyes whence battle had lightened,

Over all was a drawn shroud tightened

To bind her asleep and alive.

She turned and laughed in her dream

With grey lips arid and cold;

She saw not the face as a beam

Burn on her, but only a gleam

Through her sleep as of new-stamped gold.

But the goddess, with terrible tears

In the light of her down-drawn eyes,

Spake fire in the dull sealed ears;

»Thou, sick with slumbers and fears,

Wilt thou sleep now indeed or arise?

With dreams and with words and with light

Memories and empty desires

Thou hast wrapped thyself round all night;

Thou hast shut up thine heart from the right,

And warmed thee at burnt-out fires.

Yet once if I smote at thy gate,

Thy sons would sleep not, but heard;

O thou that wast found so great,

Art thou smitten with folly or fate

That thy sons have forgotten my word?

O Cromwell's mother, O breast

That suckled Milton! thy name

That was beautiful then, that was blest,

Is it wholly discrowned and deprest,

Trodden under by sloth into shame?

Why wilt thou hate me and die?

For none can hate me and live.

What ill have I done to thee? why

Wilt thou turn from me fighting, and fly,

Who would follow thy feet and forgive?

Thou hast seen me stricken, and said,

What is it to me? I am strong:

Thou hast seen me bowed down on my dead

And laughed and lifted thine head,

And washed thine hands of my wrong.

Thou hast put out the soul of thy sight;

Thou hast sought to my foemen as friend,

To my traitors that kiss me and smite,

To the kingdoms and empires of night

That begin with the darkness, and end.

Turn thee, awaken, arise,

With the light that is risen on the lands,

With the change of the fresh-coloured skies;

Set thine eyes on mine eyes,

Lay thy hands in my hands.«

She moved and mourned as she heard,

Sighed and shifted her place,

As the wells of her slumber were stirred

By the music and wind of the word,

Then turned and covered her face.

»Ah,« she said in her sleep,

»Is my work not done with and done?

Is there corn for my sickle to reap?

And strange is the pathway, and steep,

And sharp overhead is the sun.

I have done thee service enough,

Loved thee enough in my day;

Now nor hatred nor love

Nor hardly remembrance thereof

Lives in me to lighten my way.

And is it not well with us here?

Is change as good as is rest?

What hope should move me, or fear,

That eye should open or ear,

Who have long since won what is best?

Where among us are such things

As turn men's hearts into hell?

Have we not queens without stings,

Scotched princes, and fangless kings?

Yea,« she said, »we are well.

We have filed the teeth of the snake

Monarchy, how should it bite?

Should the slippery slow thing wake,

It will not sting for my sake;

Yea,« she said, »I do right.«

So spake she, drunken with dreams,

Mad; but again in her ears

A voice as of storm-swelled streams

Spake; »No brave shame then redeems

Thy lusts of sloth and thy fears?

Thy poor lie slain of thine hands,

Their starved limbs rot in thy sight;

As a shadow the ghost of thee stands

Among men living and lands,

And stirs not leftward or right.

Freeman he is not, but slave,

Who stands not out on my side;

His own hand hollows his grave,

Nor strength is in me to save

Where strength is none to abide.

Time shall tread on his name

That was written for honour of old,

Who hath taken in change for fame

Dust, and silver, and shame,

Ashes, and iron, and gold.«

Monotones

Because there is but one truth;

Because there is but one banner;

Because there is but one light;

Because we have with us our youth

Once, and one chance and one manner

Of service, and then the night;

Because we have found not yet

Any way for the world to follow

Save only that ancient way;

Whosoever forsake or forget,

Whose faith soever be hollow,

Whose hope soever grow grey;

Because of the watchwords of kings

That are many and strange and unwritten,

Diverse, and our watchword is one;

Therefore, though seven be the strings,

One string, if the harp be smitten,

Sole sounds, till the tune be done;

Sounds without cadence or change

In a weary monotonous burden,

Be the keynote of mourning or mirth;

Free, but free not to range;

Taking for crown and for guerdon

No man's praise upon earth;

Saying one sole word evermore,

In the ears of the charmed world saying,

Charmed by spells to its death;

One that chanted of yore

To a tune of the sword-sweep's playing

In the lips of the dead blew breath;

Therefore I set not mine hand

To the shifting of changed modulations,

To the smiting of manifold strings;

While the thrones of the throned men stand,

One song for the morning of nations,

One for the twilight of kings.

One chord, one word, and one way,

One hope as our law, one heaven,

Till slain be the great one wrong;

Till the people it could not slay,

Risen up, have for one star seven,

For a single, a sevenfold song.

The Oblation

Ask nothing more of me, sweet;

All I can give you I give.

Heart of my heart, were it more,

More would be laid at your feet:

Love that should help you to live,

Song that should spur you to soar.

All things were nothing to give

Once to have sense of you more,

Touch you and taste of you sweet,

Think you and breathe you and live,

Swept of your wings as they soar,

Trodden by chance of your feet.

I that have love and no more

Give you but love of you, sweet:

He that hath more, let him give;

He that hath wings, let him soar;

Mine is the heart at your feet

Here, that must love you to live.

A Year's Burden

1870

Fire and wild light of hope and doubt and fear,

Wind of swift change, and clouds and hours that veer

As the storm shifts of the tempestuous year;

Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

Hope sits yet hiding her war-wearied eyes,

Doubt sets her forehead earthward and denies,

But fear brought hand to hand with danger dies,

Dies and is burnt up in the fire of fight.

Hearts bruised with loss and eaten through with shame

Turn at the time's touch to devouring flame;

Grief stands as one that knows not her own name,

Nor if the star she sees bring day or night.

No song breaks with it on the violent air,

But shrieks of shame, defeat, and brute despair;

Yet something at the star's heart far up there

Burns as a beacon in our shipwrecked sight.

O strange fierce light of presage, unknown star,

Whose tongue shall tell us what thy secrets are,

What message trembles in thee from so far?

Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

From shores laid waste across an iron sea

Where the waifs drift of hopes that were to be,

Aross the red rolled foam we look for thee,

Across the fire we look up for the light.

From days laid waste across disastrous years,

From hopes cut down across a world of fears,

We gaze with eyes too passionate for tears,

Where faith abides though hope be put to flight.

Old hope is dead, the grey-haired hope grown blind

That talked with us of old things out of mind,

Dreams, deeds and men the world has left behind;

Yet, though hope die, faith lives in hope's despite.

Ay, with hearts fixed on death and hopeless hands

We stand about our banner while it stands

Above but one field of the ruined lands;

Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

Though France were given for prey to bird and beast,

Though Rome were rent in twain of king and priest,

The soul of man, the soul is safe at least

That gives death life and dead men hands to smite.

Are ye so strong, O kings, O strong men? Nay,

Waste all ye will and gather all ye may,

Yet one thing is there that ye shall not slay,

Even thought, that fire nor iron can affright.

The woundless and invisible thought that goes

Free throughout time as north or south wind blows,

Far throughout space as east or west sea flows,

And all dark things before it are made bright.

Thy thought, thy word, O soul republican,

O spirit of life, O God whose name is man:

What sea of sorrows but thy sight shall span?

Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

With all its coils crushed, all its rings uncurled,

The one most poisonous worm that soiled the world

Is wrenched from off the throat of man, and hurled

Into deep hell from empire's helpless height.

Time takes no more infection of it now;

Like a dead snake divided of the plough,

The rotten thing lies cut in twain; but thou,

Thy fires shall heal us of the serpent's bite.

Ay, with red cautery and a burning brand

Purge thou the leprous leaven of the land;

Take to thee fire, and iron in thine hand,

Till blood and tears have washed the soiled limbs white.

We have sinned against thee in dreams and wicked sleep;

Smite, we will shrink not; strike, we will not weep;

Let the heart feel thee; let thy wound go deep;

Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

Wound us with love, pierce us with longing, make

Our souls thy sacrifices; turn and take

Our hearts for our sin-offerings lest they break,

And mould them with thine hands and give them might.

Then, when the cup of ills is drained indeed,

Will we come to thee with our wounds that bleed,

With famished mouths and hearts that thou shalt feed,

And see thee worshipped as the world's delight.

There shall be no more wars nor kingdoms won,

But in thy sight whose eyes are as the sun

All names shall be one name, all nations one,

All souls of men in man's one soul unite.

O sea whereon men labour, O great sea

That heaven seems one with, shall these things not be?

O earth, our earth, shall time not make us free?

Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

Epilogue

Between the wave-ridge and the strand

I let you forth in sight of land,

Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyes

Strain eastward till the darkness dies;

Let signs and beacons fall or stand,

And stars and balefires set and rise;

Ye, till some lordlier lyric hand

Weave the beloved brows their crown,

At the beloved feet lie down.

O, whatsoever of life or light

Love hath to give you, what of might

Or heart or hope is yours to live,

I charge you take in trust to give

For very love's sake, in whose sight,

Through poise of hours alternative

And seasons plumed with light or night,

Ye live and move and have your breath

To sing with on the ridge of death.

I charge you faint not all night through

For love's sake that was breathed on you

To be to you as wings and feet

For travel, and as blood to heat

And sense of spirit to renew

And bloom of fragrance to keep sweet

And fire of purpose to keep true

The life, if life in such things be,

That I would give you forth of me.

Out where the breath of war may bear,

Out in the rank moist reddened air

That sounds and smells of death, and hath

No light but death's upon its path

Seen through the black wind's tangled hair,

I send you past the wild time's wrath

To find his face who bade you bear

Fruit of his seed to faith and love,

That he may take the heart thereof.

By day or night, by sea or street,

Fly till ye find and clasp his feet

And kiss as worshippers who bring

Too much love on their lips to sing,

But with hushed heads accept and greet

The presence of some heavenlier thing

In the near air; so may ye meet

His eyes, and droop not utterly

For shame's sake at the light you see.

Not utterly struck spiritless

For shame's sake and unworthiness

Of these poor forceless hands that come

Empty, these lips that should be dumb,

This love whose seal can but impress

These weak word-offerings wearisome

Whose blessings have not strength to bless

Nor lightnings fire to burn up aught

Nor smite with thunders of their thought.

One thought they have, even love; one light,

Truth, that keeps clear the sun by night;

One chord, of faith as of a lyre;

One heat, of hope as of a fire;

One heart, one music, and one might,

One flame, one altar, and one choir;

And one man's living head in sight

Who said, when all time's sea was foam,

»Let there be Rome« – and there was Rome.

As a star set in space for token

Like a live word of God's mouth spoken,

Visible sound, light audible,

In the great darkness thick as hell

A stanchless flame of love unsloken,

A sign to conquer and compel,

A law to stand in heaven unbroken

Whereby the sun shines, and wherethrough

Time's eldest empires are made new;

So rose up on our generations

That light of the most ancient nations,

Law, life, and light, on the world's way,

The very God of very day,

The sun-god; from their star-like stations

Far down the night in disarray

Fled, crowned with fires of tribulations,

The suns of sunless years, whose light

And life and law were of the night.

The naked kingdoms quenched and stark

Drave with their dead things down the dark,

Helmless; their whole world, throne by throne,

Fell, and its whole heart turned to stone,

Hopeless; their hands that touched our ark

Withered; and lo, aloft, alone,

On time's white waters man's one bark,

Where the red sundawn's open eye

Lit the soft gulf of low green sky.

So for a season piloted

It sailed the sunlight, and struck red

With fire of dawn reverberate

The wan face of incumbent fate

That paused half pitying overhead

And almost had foregone the freight

Of those dark hours the next day bred

For shame, and almost had forsworn

Service of night for love of morn.

Then broke the whole night in one blow,

Thundering; then all hell with one throe

Heaved, and brought forth beneath the stroke

Death; and all dead things moved and woke

That the dawn's arrows had brought low,

At the great sound of night that broke

Thundering, and all the old world-wide woe;

And under night's loud-sounding dome

Men sought her, and she was not Rome.

Still with blind hands and robes blood-wet

Night hangs on heaven, reluctant yet,

With black blood dripping from her eyes

On the soiled lintels of the skies,

With brows and lips that thirst and threat,

Heart-sick with fear lest the sun rise,

And aching with her fires that set,

And shuddering ere dawn bursts her bars,

Burns out with all her beaten stars.

In this black wind of war they fly

Now, ere that hour be in the sky

That brings back hope, and memory back,

And light and law to lands that lack;

That spiritual sweet hour whereby

The bloody-handed night and black

Shall be cast out of heaven to die;

Kingdom by kingdom, crown by crown,

The fires of darkness are blown down.

Yet heavy, grievous yet the weight

Sits on us of imperfect fate.

From wounds of other days and deeds

Still this day's breathing body bleeds;

Still kings for fear and slaves for hate

Sow lives of men on earth like seeds

In the red soil they saturate;

And we, with faces eastward set,

Stand sightless of the morning yet.

And many for pure sorrow's sake

Look back and stretch back hands to take

Gifts of night's giving, ease and sleep,

Flowers of night's grafting, strong to steep

The soul in dreams it will not break,

Songs of soft hours that sigh and sweep

Its lifted eyelids nigh to wake

With subtle plumes and lulling breath

That soothe its weariness to death.

And many, called of hope and pride,

Fall ere the sunrise from our side.

Fresh lights and rumours of fresh fames

That shift and veer by night like flames,

Shouts and blown trumpets, ghosts that glide

Calling, and hail them by dead names,

Fears, angers, memories, dreams divide

Spirit from spirit, and wear out

Strong hearts of men with hope and doubt.

Till time beget and sorrow bear

The soul-sick eyeless child despair,

That comes among us, mad and blind,

With counsels of a broken mind,

Tales of times dead and woes that were,

And, prophesying against mankind,

Shakes out the horror of her hair

To take the sunlight with its coils

And hold the living soul in toils.

By many ways of death and moods

Souls pass into their servitudes.

Their young wings weaken, plume by plume

Drops, and their eyelids gather gloom

And close against man's frauds and feuds,

And their tongues call they know not whom

To help in their vicissitudes;

For many slaveries are, but one

Liberty, single as the sun.

One light, one law, that burns up strife,

And one sufficiency of life.

Self-stablished, the sufficing soul

Hears the loud wheels of changes roll,

Sees against man man bare the knife,

Sees the world severed, and is whole;

Sees force take dowerless fraud to wife,

And fear from fraud's incestuous bed

Crawl forth and smite his father dead:

Sees death made drunk with war, sees time

Weave many-coloured crime with crime,

State overthrown on ruining state,

And dares not be disconsolate.

Only the soul hath feet to climb,

Only the soul hath room to wait,

Hath brows and eyes to hold sublime

Above all evil and all good,

All strength and all decrepitude.

She only, she since earth began,

The many-minded soul of man,

From one incognizable root

That bears such divers-coloured fruit,

Hath ruled for blessing or for ban

The flight of seasons and pursuit;

She regent, she republican,

With wide and equal eyes and wings

Broods on things born and dying things.

Even now for love or doubt of us

The hour intense and hazardous

Hangs high with pinions vibrating

Whereto the light and darkness cling,

Dividing the dim season thus,

And shakes from one ambiguous wing

Shadow, and one is luminous,

And day falls from it; so the past

Torments the future to the last.

And we that cannot hear or see

The sounds and lights of liberty,

The witness of the naked God

That treads on burning hours unshod

With instant feet unwounded; we

That can trace only where he trod

By fire in heaven or storm at sea,

Not know the very present whole

And naked nature of the soul;

We that see wars and woes and kings,

And portents of enormous things,

Empires, and agonies, and slaves,

And whole flame of town-swallowing graves;

That hear the harsh hours clap sharp wings

Above the roar of ranks like waves,

From wreck to wreck as the world swings;

Know but that men there are who see

And hear things other far than we.

By the light sitting on their brows,

The fire wherewith their presence glows,

The music falling with their feet,

The sweet sense of a spirit sweet

That with their speech or motion grows

And breathes and burns men's hearts with heat;

By these signs there is none but knows

Men who have life and grace to give,

Men who have seen the soul and live.

By the strength sleeping in their eyes,

The lips whereon their sorrow lies

Smiling, the lines of tears unshed,

The large divine look of one dead

That speaks out of the breathless skies

In silence, when the light is shed

Upon man's soul of memories;

The supreme look that sets love free,

The look of stars and of the sea;

By the strong patient godhead seen

Implicit in their mortal mien,

The conscience of a God held still

And thunders ruled by their own will

And fast-bound fires that might burn clean

This worldly air that foul things fill,

And the afterglow of what has been,

That, passing, shows us without word

What they have seen, what they have heard,

By all these keen and burning signs

The spirit knows them and divines.

In bonds, in banishment, in grief,

Scoffed at and scourged with unbelief,

Foiled with false trusts and thwart designs,

Stripped of green days and hopes in leaf,

Their mere bare body of glory shines

Higher, and man gazing surelier sees

What light, what comfort is of these.

So I now gazing; till the sense

Being set on fire of confidence

Strains itself sunward, feels out far

Beyond the bright and morning star,

Beyond the extreme wave's refluence,

To where the fierce first sunbeams are

Whose fire intolerant and intense

As birthpangs whence day burns to be

Parts breathless heaven from breathing sea.

I see not, know not, and am blest,

Master, who know that thou knowest,

Dear lord and leader, at whose hand

The first days and the last days stand,

With scars and crowns on head and breast,

That fought for love of the sweet land

Or shall fight in her latter quest;

All the days armed and girt and crowned

Whose glories ring thy glory round.

Thou sawest, when all the world was blind,

The light that should be of mankind,

The very day that was to be;

And how shalt thou not sometime see

Thy city perfect to thy mind

Stand face to living face with thee,

And no miscrowned man's head behind;

The hearth of man, the human home,

The central flame that shall be Rome?

As one that ere a June day rise

Makes seaward for the dawn, and tries

The water with delighted limbs

That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims

Right eastward under strengthening skies,

And sees the gradual rippling rims

Of waves whence day breaks blossom-wise

Take fire ere light peer well above,

And laughs from all his heart with love;

And softlier swimming with raised head

Feels the full flower of morning shed

And fluent sunrise round him rolled

That laps and laves his body bold

With fluctuant heaven in water's stead,

And urgent through the growing gold

Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red,

And his soul takes the sun, and yearns

For joy wherewith the sea's heart burns;

So the soul seeking through the dark

Heavenward, a dove without an ark,

Transcends the unnavigable sea

Of years that wear out memory;

So calls, a sunward-singing lark,

In the ear of souls that should be free;

So points them toward the sun for mark

Who steer not for the stress of waves,

And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.

For if the swimmer's eastward eye

Must see no sunrise – must put by

The hope that lifted him and led

Once, to have light about his head,

To see beneath the clear low sky

The green foam-whitened wave wax red

And all the morning's banner fly –

Then, as earth's helpless hopes go down,

Let earth's self in the dark tides drown.

Yea, if no morning must behold

Man, other than were they now cold,

And other deeds than past deeds done,

Nor any near or far-off sun

Salute him risen and sunlike-souled,

Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one,

Let man's world die like worlds of old,

And here in heaven's sight only be

The sole sun on the worldless sea.