THE PILGRIMS



Who is your lady of love, O ye that pass Singing? and is it for sorrow of that which was That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be? For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing. - Our lady of love by you is unbeholden; For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden Treasure of hair, nor face nor form; but we That love, we know her more fair than anything.

- Is she a queen, having great gifts to give? - Yea, these; that whoso hath seen her shall not live Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain, Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears; And when she bids die he shall surely die. And he shall leave all things under the sky And go forth naked under sun and rain And work and wait and watch out all his years.

- Hath she on earth no place of habitation? - Age to age calling, nation answering nation, Cries out, Where is she? and there is none to say; For if she be not in the spirit of men, For if in the inward soul she hath no place, In vain they cry unto her, seeking her face, In vain their mouths make much of her; for they Cry with vain tongues, till the heart lives again.

- O ye that follow, and have ye no repentance? For on your brows is written a mortal sentence, An hieroglyph of sorrow, a fiery sign, That in your lives ye shall not pause or rest, Nor have the sure sweet common love, nor keep Friends and safe days, nor joy of life nor sleep. —These have we not, who have one thing, the divine Face and clear eyes of faith and fruitful breast.

- And ye shall die before your thrones be won. - Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun Shall move and shine without us, and we lie Dead; but if she too move on earth and live, But if the old world with all the old irons rent Laugh and give thanks, shall we be not content? Nay, we shall rather live, we shall not die, Life being so little and death so good to give.

- And these men shall forget you.—Yea, but we Shall be a part of the earth and the ancient sea, And heaven-high air august, and awful fire, And all things good; and no man's heart shall beat But somewhat in it of our blood once shed Shall quiver and quicken, as now in us the dead Blood of men slain and the old same life's desire Plants in their fiery footprints our fresh feet.

- But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant, Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present, That clothe yourselves with the cold future air; When mother and father and tender sister and brother And the old live love that was shall be as ye, Dust, and no fruit of loving life shall be. —She shall be yet who is more than all these were, Than sister or wife or father unto us or mother.

- Is this worth life, is this, to win for wages? Lo, the dead mouths of the awful grey-grown ages, The venerable, in the past that is their prison, In the outer darkness, in the unopening grave, Laugh, knowing how many as ye now say have said, How many, and all are fallen, are fallen and dead: Shall ye dead rise, and these dead have not risen? —Not we but she, who is tender and swift to save

- Are ye not weary and faint not by the way, Seeing night by night devoured of day by day, Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire? Sleepless: and ye too, when shall ye too sleep? - We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet, And surely more than all things sleep were sweet, Than all things save the inexorable desire Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep.

- Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow? Is this so sure where all men's hopes are hollow, Even this your dream, that by much tribulation Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight? - Nay, though our life were blind, our death were fruitless, Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless; But man to man, nation would turn to nation, And the old life live, and the old great word be great.

- Pass on then and pass by us and let us be, For what light think ye after life to see? And if the world fare better will ye know? And if man triumph who shall seek you and say? - Enough of light is this for one life's span, That all men born are mortal, but not man: And we men bring death lives by night to sow, That man may reap and eat and live by day.



ARMAND BARBES



I

Fire out of heaven, a flower of perfect fire, That where the roots of life are had its root And where the fruits of time are brought forth fruit; A faith made flesh, a visible desire, That heard the yet unbreathing years respire And speech break forth of centuries that sit mute Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit; That touched the highest of hope, and went up higher; A heart love-wounded whereto love was law, A soul reproachless without fear or flaw, A shining spirit without shadow of shame, A memory made of all men's love and awe; Being disembodied, so thou be the same, What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name?

II

All woes of all men sat upon thy soul And all their wrongs were heavy on thy head; With all their wounds thy heart was pierced and bled, And in thy spirit as in a mourning scroll The world's huge sorrows were inscribed by roll, All theirs on earth who serve and faint for bread, All banished men's, all theirs in prison dead, Thy love had heart and sword-hand for the whole. "This was my day of glory," didst thou say, When, by the scaffold thou hadst hope to climb For thy faith's sake, they brought thee respite; "Nay, I shall not die then, I have missed my day." O hero, O our help, O head sublime, Thy day shall be commensurate with time.



QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT



Am I not he that hath made thee and begotten thee, I, God, the spirit of man? Wherefore now these eighteen years hast thou forgotten me, From whom thy life began? Thy life-blood and thy life-breath and thy beauty, Thy might of hands and feet, Thy soul made strong for divinity of duty And service which was sweet. Through the red sea brimmed with blood didst thou not follow me, As one that walks in trance? Was the storm strong to break or the sea to swallow thee, When thou wast free and France? I am Freedom, God and man, O France, that plead with thee; How long now shall I plead? Was I not with thee in travail, and in need with thee, Thy sore travail and need? Thou wast fairest and first of my virgin-vested daughters, Fairest and foremost thou; And thy breast was white, though thy hands were red with slaughters, Thy breast, a harlot's now. O foolish virgin and fair among the fallen, A ruin where satyrs dance, A garden wasted for beasts to crawl and brawl in, What hast thou done with France? Where is she who bared her bosom but to thunder, Her brow to storm and flame, And before her face was the red sea cloven in sunder And all its waves made tame? And the surf wherein the broad-based rocks were shaking She saw far off divide, At the blast of the breath of the battle blown and breaking, And weight of wind and tide; And the ravin and the ruin of throned nations And every royal race, And the kingdoms and kings from the state of their high stations That fell before her face. Yea, great was the fall of them, all that rose against her, From the earth's old-historied heights; For my hands were fire, and my wings as walls that fenced her, Mine eyes as pilot-lights. Not as guerdons given of kings the gifts I brought her, Not strengths that pass away; But my heart, my breath of life, O France, O daughter, I gave thee in that day. Yea, the heart's blood of a very God I gave thee, Breathed in thy mouth his breath; Was my word as a man's, having no more strength to save thee From this worse thing than death? Didst thou dream of it only, the day that I stood nigh thee, Was all its light a dream? When that iron surf roared backwards and went by thee Unscathed of storm or stream: When thy sons rose up and thy young men stood together, One equal face of fight, And my flag swam high as the swimming sea-foam's feather, Laughing, a lamp of light? Ah the lordly laughter and light of it, that lightened Heaven-high, the heaven's whole length! Ah the hearts of heroes pierced, the bright lips whitened Of strong men in their strength! Ah the banner-poles, the stretch of straightening streamers Straining their full reach out! Ah the men's hands making true the dreams of dreamers, The hopes brought forth in doubt! Ah the noise of horse, the charge and thunder of drumming, And swaying and sweep of swords! Ah the light that led them through of the world's life coming, Clear of its lies and lords! By the lightning of the lips of guns whose flashes Made plain the strayed world's way; By the flame that left her dead old sins in ashes, Swept out of sight of day; By thy children whose bare feet were shod with thunder, Their bare hands mailed with fire; By the faith that went with them, waking fear and wonder, Heart's love and high desire; By the tumult of the waves of nations waking Blind in the loud wide night; By the wind that went on the world's waste waters, making Their marble darkness white, As the flash of the flakes of the foam flared lamplike, leaping From wave to gladdening wave, Making wide the fast-shut eyes of thraldom sleeping The sleep of the unclean grave; By the fire of equality, terrible, devouring, Divine, that brought forth good; By the lands it purged and wasted and left flowering With bloom of brotherhood; By the lips of fraternity that for love's sake uttered Fierce words and fires of death, But the eyes were deep as love's, and the fierce lips fluttered With love's own living breath; By thy weaponed hands, brows helmed, and bare feet spurning The bared head of a king; By the storm of sunrise round thee risen and burning, Why hast thou done this thing? Thou hast mixed thy limbs with the son of a harlot, a stranger, Mouth to mouth, limb to limb, Thou, bride of a God, because of the bridesman Danger, To bring forth seed to him. For thou thoughtest inly, the terrible bridegroom wakes me, When I would sleep, to go; The fire of his mouth consumes, and the red kiss shakes me, More bitter than a blow. Rise up, my beloved, go forth to meet the stranger, Put forth thine arm, he saith; Fear thou not at all though the bridesman should be Danger, The bridesmaid should be Death. I the bridegroom, am I not with thee, O bridal nation, O wedded France, to strive? To destroy the sins of the earth with divine devastation, Till none be left alive? Lo her growths of sons, foliage of men and frondage, Broad boughs of the old-world tree, With iron of shame and with pruning-hooks of bondage They are shorn from sea to sea. Lo, I set wings to thy feet that have been wingless, Till the utter race be run; Till the priestless temples cry to the thrones made kingless, Are we not also undone? Till the immeasurable Republic arise and lighten Above these quick and dead, And her awful robes be changed, and her red robes whiten, Her warring-robes of red. But thou wouldst not, saying, I am weary and faint to follow, Let me lie down and rest; And hast sought out shame to sleep with, mire to wallow, Yea, a much fouler breast: And thine own hast made prostitute, sold and shamed and bared it, Thy bosom which was mine, And the bread of the word I gave thee hast soiled, and shared it Among these snakes and swine. As a harlot thou wast handled and polluted, Thy faith held light as foam, That thou sentest men thy sons, thy sons imbruted, To slay thine elder Rome. Therefore O harlot, I gave thee to the accurst one, By night to be defiled, To thy second shame, and a fouler than the first one, That got thee first with child. Yet I know thee turning back now to behold me, To bow thee and make thee bare, Not for sin's sake but penitence, by my feet to hold me, And wipe them with thine hair. And sweet ointment of thy grief thou hast brought thy master, And set before thy lord, From a box of flawed and broken alabaster, Thy broken spirit, poured. And love-offerings, tears and perfumes, hast thou given me, To reach my feet and touch; Therefore thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee, Because thou hast loved much.

18 brumaire, an 78.



GENESIS



In the outer world that was before this earth, That was before all shape or space was born, Before the blind first hour of time had birth, Before night knew the moonlight or the morn;

Yea, before any world had any light, Or anything called God or man drew breath, Slowly the strong sides of the heaving night Moved, and brought forth the strength of life and death.

And the sad shapeless horror increate That was all things and one thing, without fruit, Limit, or law; where love was none, nor hate, Where no leaf came to blossom from no root;

The very darkness that time knew not of, Nor God laid hand on, nor was man found there, Ceased, and was cloven in several shapes; above Light, and night under, and fire, earth, water, and air.

Sunbeams and starbeams, and all coloured things, All forms and all similitudes began; And death, the shadow cast by life's wide wings, And God, the shade cast by the soul of man.

Then between shadow and substance, night and light, Then between birth and death, and deeds and days, The illimitable embrace and the amorous fight That of itself begets, bears, rears, and slays,

The immortal war of mortal things that is Labour and life and growth and good and ill, The mild antiphonies that melt and kiss, The violent symphonies that meet and kill,

All nature of all things began to be. But chiefliest in the spirit (beast or man, Planet of heaven or blossom of earth or sea) The divine contraries of life began.

For the great labour of growth, being many, is one; One thing the white death and the ruddy birth; The invisible air and the all-beholden sun, And barren water and many-childed earth.

And these things are made manifest in men From the beginning forth unto this day: Time writes and life records them, and again Death seals them lest the record pass away.

For if death were not, then should growth not be, Change, nor the life of good nor evil things; Nor were there night at all nor light to see, Nor water of sweet nor water of bitter springs.

For in each man and each year that is born Are sown the twin seeds of the strong twin powers; The white seed of the fruitful helpful morn, The black seed of the barren hurtful hours.

And he that of the black seed eateth fruit, To him the savour as honey shall be sweet; And he in whom the white seed hath struck root, He shall have sorrow and trouble and tears for meat.

And him whose lips the sweet fruit hath made red In the end men loathe and make his name a rod; And him whose mouth on the unsweet fruit hath fed In the end men follow and know for very God.

And of these twain, the black seed and the white, All things come forth, endured of men and done; And still the day is great with child of night, And still the black night labours with the sun.

And each man and each year that lives on earth Turns hither or thither, and hence or thence is fed; And as a man before was from his birth, So shall a man be after among the dead.



TO WALT WHITMAN IN AMERICA



Send but a song oversea for us, Heart of their hearts who are free, Heart of their singer, to be for us More than our singing can be; Ours, in the tempest at error, With no light but the twilight of terror; Send us a song oversea!

Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses, And blown as a tree through and through With the winds of the keen mountain-passes, And tender as sun-smitten dew; Sharp-tongued as the winter that shakes The wastes of your limitless lakes, Wide-eyed as the sea-line's blue.

O strong-winged soul with prophetic Lips hot with the bloodheats of song, With tremor of heartstrings magnetic, With thoughts as thunders in throng, With consonant ardours of chords That pierce men's souls as with swords And hale them hearing along,

Make us too music, to be with us As a word from a world's heart warm, To sail the dark as a sea with us, Full-sailed, outsinging the storm, A song to put fire in our ears Whose burning shall burn up tears, Whose sign bid battle reform;

A note in the ranks of a clarion, A word in the wind of cheer, To consume as with lightning the carrion That makes time foul for us here; In the air that our dead things infest A blast of the breath of the west, Till east way as west way is clear.

Out of the sun beyond sunset, From the evening whence morning shall be, With the rollers in measureless onset, With the van of the storming sea, With the world-wide wind, with the breath That breaks ships driven upon death, With the passion of all things free,

With the sea-steeds footless and frantic, White myriads for death to bestride In the charge of the ruining Atlantic Where deaths by regiments ride, With clouds and clamours of waters, With a long note shriller than slaughter's On the furrowless fields world-wide,

With terror, with ardour and wonder, With the soul of the season that wakes When the weight of a whole year's thunder In the tidestream of autumn breaks, Let the flight of the wide-winged word Come over, come in and be heard, Take form and fire for our sakes.

For a continent bloodless with travail Here toils and brawls as it can, And the web of it who shall unravel Of all that peer on the plan; Would fain grow men, but they grow not, And fain be free, but they know not One name for freedom and man?

One name, not twain for division; One thing, not twain, from the birth; Spirit and substance and vision, Worth more than worship is worth; Unbeheld, unadored, undivined, The cause, the centre, the mind, The secret and sense of the earth.

Here as a weakling in irons, Here as a weanling in bands, As a prey that the stake-net environs, Our life that we looked for stands; And the man-child naked and dear, Democracy, turns on us here Eyes trembling with tremulous hands

It sees not what season shall bring to it Sweet fruit of its bitter desire; Few voices it hears yet sing to it, Few pulses of hearts reaspire; Foresees not time, nor forehears The noises of imminent years, Earthquake, and thunder, and fire:

When crowned and weaponed and curbless It shall walk without helm or shield The bare burnt furrows and herbless Of war's last flame-stricken field, Till godlike, equal with time, It stand in the sun sublime, In the godhead of man revealed.

Round your people and over them Light like raiment is drawn, Close as a garment to cover them Wrought not of mail nor of lawn; Here, with hope hardly to wear, Naked nations and bare Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn.

Chains are here, and a prison, Kings, and subjects, and shame; If the God upon you be arisen, How should our songs be the same? How, in confusion of change, How shall we sing, in a strange Land, songs praising his name?

God is buried and dead to us, Even the spirit of earth, Freedom; so have they said to us, Some with mocking and mirth, Some with heartbreak and tears; And a God without eyes, without ears, Who shall sing of him, dead in the birth?

The earth-god Freedom, the lonely Face lightening, the footprint unshod, Not as one man crucified only Nor scourged with but one life's rod; The soul that is substance of nations, Reincarnate with fresh generations; The great god Man, which is God.

But in weariest of years and obscurest Doth it live not at heart of all things, The one God and one spirit, a purest Life, fed from unstanchable springs? Within love, within hatred it is, And its seed in the stripe as the kiss, And in slaves is the germ, and in kings.

Freedom we call it, for holier Name of the soul's there is none; Surelier it labours if slowlier, Than the metres of star or of sun; Slowlier than life into breath, Surelier than time into death, It moves till its labour be done.

Till the motion be done and the measure Circling through season and clime, Slumber and sorrow and pleasure, Vision of virtue and crime; Till consummate with conquering eyes, A soul disembodied, it rise From the body transfigured of time.

Till it rise and remain and take station With the stars of the worlds that rejoice; Till the voice of its heart's exultation Be as theirs an invariable voice; By no discord of evil estranged, By no pause, by no breach in it changed, By no clash in the chord of its choice.

It is one with the world's generations, With the spirit, the star, and the sod; With the kingless and king-stricken nations, With the cross, and the chain, and the rod; The most high, the most secret, most lonely, The earth-soul Freedom, that only Lives, and that only is God.



CHRISTMAS ANTIPHONES



I—IN CHURCH

Thou whose birth on earth Angels sang to men, While thy stars made mirth, Saviour, at thy birth, This day born again;

As this night was bright With thy cradle-ray, Very light of light, Turn the wild world's night To thy perfect day.

God whose feet made sweet Those wild ways they trod, From thy fragrant feet Staining field and street With the blood of God;

God whose breast is rest In the time of strife, In thy secret breast Sheltering souls opprest From the heat of life;

God whose eyes are skies Love-lit as with spheres By the lights that rise To thy watching eyes, Orbed lights of tears;

God whose heart hath part In all grief that is, Was not man's the dart That went through thine heart, And the wound not his?

Where the pale souls wail, Held in bonds of death, Where all spirits quail, Came thy Godhead pale Still from human breath -

Pale from life and strife, Wan with manhood, came Forth of mortal life, Pierced as with a knife, Scarred as with a flame.

Thou the Word and Lord In all time and space Heard, beheld, adored, With all ages poured Forth before thy face,

Lord, what worth in earth Drew thee down to die? What therein was worth, Lord, thy death and birth? What beneath thy sky?

Light above all love By thy love was lit, And brought down the Dove Feathered from above With the wings of it.

From the height of night, Was not thine the star That led forth with might By no worldly light Wise men from afar?

Yet the wise men's eyes Saw thee not more clear Than they saw thee rise Who in shepherd's guise Drew as poor men near.

Yet thy poor endure, And are with us yet; Be thy name a sure Refuge for thy poor Whom men's eyes forget.

Thou whose ways we praised, Clear alike and dark, Keep our works and ways This and all thy days Safe inside thine ark.

Who shall keep thy sheep, Lord, and lose not one? Who save one shall keep, Lest the shepherds sleep? Who beside the Son?

From the grave-deep wave, From the sword and flame, Thou, even thou, shalt save Souls of king and slave Only by thy Name.

Light not born with morn Or her fires above, Jesus virgin-born, Held of men in scorn, Turn their scorn to love.

Thou whose face gives grace As the sun's doth heat, Let thy sunbright face Lighten time and space Here beneath thy feet.

Bid our peace increase, Thou that madest morn; Bid oppressions cease; Bid the night be peace; Bid the day be born.

II—OUTSIDE CHURCH

We whose days and ways All the night makes dark, What day shall we praise Of these weary days That our life-drops mark?

We whose mind is blind, Fed with hope of nought; Wastes of worn mankind, Without heart or mind, Without meat or thought;

We with strife of life Worn till all life cease, Want, a whetted knife, Sharpening strife on strife, How should we love peace?

Ye whose meat is sweet And your wine-cup red, Us beneath your feet Hunger grinds as wheat, Grinds to make you bread.

Ye whose night is bright With soft rest and heat, Clothed like day with light, Us the naked night Slays from street to street.

Hath your God no rod, That ye tread so light? Man on us as God, God as man hath trod, Trod us down with might.

We that one by one Bleed from either's rod. What for us hath done Man beneath the sun, What for us hath God?

We whose blood is food Given your wealth to feed, From the Christless rood Red with no God's blood, But with man's indeed;

How shall we that see Nightlong overhead Life, the flowerless tree, Nailed whereon as we Were our fathers dead -

We whose ear can hear, Not whose tongue can name, Famine, ignorance, fear, Bleeding tear by tear Year by year of shame,

Till the dry life die Out of bloodless breast, Out of beamless eye, Out of mouths that cry Till death feed with rest -

How shall we as ye, Though ye bid us, pray? Though ye call, can we Hear you call, or see, Though ye show us day?

We whose name is shame, We whose souls walk bare, Shall we call the same God as ye by name, Teach our lips your prayer?

God, forgive and give, For His sake who died? Nay, for ours who live, How shall we forgive Thee, then, on our side?

We whose right to light Heaven's high noon denies, Whom the blind beams smite That for you shine bright, And but burn our eyes,

With what dreams of beams Shall we build up day, At what sourceless streams Seek to drink in dreams Ere they pass away?

In what street shall meet, At what market-place, Your feet and our feet, With one goal to greet, Having run one race?

What one hope shall ope For us all as one One same horoscope, Where the soul sees hope That outburns the sun?

At what shrine what wine, At what board what bread, Salt as blood or brine, Shall we share in sign How we poor were fed?

In what hour what power Shall we pray for morn, If your perfect hour, When all day bears flower, Not for us is born?

III—BEYOND CHURCH

Ye that weep in sleep, Souls and bodies bound, Ye that all night keep Watch for change, and weep That no change is found;

Ye that cry and die, And the world goes on Without ear or eye, And the days go by Till all days are gone;

Man shall do for you, Men the sons of man, What no God would do That they sought unto While the blind years ran.

Brotherhood of good, Equal laws and rights, Freedom, whose sweet food Feeds the multitude All their days and nights

With the bread full-fed Of her body blest And the soul's wine shed From her table spread Where the world is guest,

Mingling me and thee, When like light of eyes Flashed through thee and me Truth shall make us free, Liberty make wise;

These are they whom day Follows and gives light Whence they see to slay Night, and burn away All the seed of night.

What of thine and mine, What of want and wealth, When one faith is wine For my heart and thine And one draught is health?

For no sect elect Is the soul's wine poured And her table decked; Whom should man reject From man's common board?

Gods refuse and choose, Grudge and sell and spare; None shall man refuse, None of all men lose, None leave out of care.

No man's might of sight Knows that hour before; No man's hand hath might To put back that light For one hour the more.

Not though all men call, Kneeling with void hands, Shall they see light fall Till it come for all Tribes of men and lands.

No desire brings fire Down from heaven by prayer, Though man's vain desire Hang faith's wind-struck lyre Out in tuneless air.

One hath breath and saith What the tune shall be - Time, who puts his breath Into life and death, Into earth and sea.

To and fro years flow, Fill their tides and ebb, As his fingers go Weaving to and fro One unfinished web.

All the range of change Hath its bounds therein, All the lives that range All the byways strange Named of death or sin.

Star from far to star Speaks, and white moons wake, Watchful from afar What the night's ways are For the morning's sake.

Many names and flames Pass and flash and fall, Night-begotten names, And the night reclaims, As she bare them, all.

But the sun is one, And the sun's name Right; And when light is none Saving of the sun, All men shall have light.

All shall see and be Parcel of the morn; Ay, though blind were we, None shall choose but see When that day is born.



A NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE TO JOSEPH MAZZINI



Send the stars light, but send not love to me. Shelley.

I

Out of the dawning heavens that hear Young wings and feet of the new year Move through their twilight, and shed round Soft showers of sound, Soothing the season with sweet rain, If greeting come to make me fain, What is it I can send again?

2

I know not if the year shall send Tidings to usward as a friend, And salutation, and such things Bear on his wings As the soul turns and thirsts unto With hungering eyes and lips that sue For that sweet food which makes all new.

3

I know not if his light shall be Darkness, or else light verily: I know but that it will not part Heart's faith from heart, Truth from the trust in truth, nor hope From sight of days unscaled that ope Beyond one poor year's horoscope.

4

That faith in love which love's self gives, O master of my spirit, lives, Having in presence unremoved Thine head beloved, The shadow of thee, the semitone Of thy voice heard at heart and known, The light of thee not set nor flown.

5

Seas, lands, and hours, can these divide Love from love's service, side from side, Though no sound pass nor breath be heard Of one good word? To send back words of trust to thee Were to send wings to love, when he With his own strong wings covers me.

6

Who shall teach singing to the spheres, Or motion to the flight of years? Let soul with soul keep hand in hand And understand, As in one same abiding-place We keep one watch for one same face To rise in some short sacred space.

7

And all space midway is but nought To keep true heart from faithful thought, As under twilight stars we wait By Time's shut gate Till the slow soundless hinges turn, And through the depth of years that yearn The face of the Republic burn.

1870.



MATER DOLOROSA



Citoyen, lui dit Enjoiras, ma mere, c'est la Republique. Les Miserables.

Who is this that sits by the way, by the wild wayside, In a rent stained raiment, the robe of a cast-off bride, In the dust, in the rainfall sitting, with soiled feet bare, With the night for a garment upon her, with torn wet hair? She is fairer of face than the daughters of men, and her eyes, Worn through with her tears, are deep as the depth of skies.

This is she for whose sake being fallen, for whose abject sake, Earth groans in the blackness of darkness, and men's hearts break. This is she for whose love, having seen her, the men that were Poured life out as water, and shed their souls upon air. This is she for whose glory their years were counted as foam; Whose face was a light upon Greece, was a fire upon Rome.

Is it now not surely a vain thing, a foolish and vain, To sit down by her, mourn to her, serve her, partake in the pain? She is grey with the dust of time on his manifold ways, Where her faint feet stumble and falter through year-long days. Shall she help us at all, O fools, give fruit or give fame, Who herself is a name despised, a rejected name?

We have not served her for guerdon. If any do so, That his mouth may be sweet with such honey, we care not to know. We have drunk from a wine-unsweetened, a perilous cup, A draught very bitter. The kings of the earth stood up, And the rulers took counsel together, to smite her and slay; And the blood of her wounds is given us to drink today.

Can these bones live? or the leaves that are dead leaves bud? Or the dead blood drawn from her veins be in your veins blood? Will ye gather up water again that was drawn and shed? In the blood is the life of the veins, and her veins are dead. For the lives that are over are over, and past things past; She had her day, and it is not; was first, and is last.

Is it nothing unto you then, all ye that pass by, If her breath be left in her lips, if she live now or die? Behold now, O people, and say if she be not fair, Whom your fathers followed to find her, with praise and prayer, And rejoiced, having found her, though roof they had none nor bread; But ye care not; what is it to you if her day be dead?

It was well with our fathers; their sound was in all men's lands; There was fire in their hearts, and the hunger of fight in their hands. Naked and strong they went forth in her strength like flame, For her love's and her name's sake of old, her republican name. But their children, by kings made quiet, by priests made wise, Love better the heat of their hearths than the light of her eyes.

Are they children of these thy children indeed, who have sold, O golden goddess, the light of thy face for gold? Are they sons indeed of the sons of thy dayspring of hope, Whose lives are in fief of an emperor, whose souls of a Pope? Hide then thine head, O beloved; thy time is done; Thy kingdom is broken in heaven, and blind thy sun.

What sleep is upon you, to dream she indeed shall rise, When the hopes are dead in her heart as the tears in her eyes? If ye sing of her dead, will she stir? if ye weep for her, weep? Come away now, leave her; what hath she to do but sleep? But ye that mourn are alive, and have years to be; And life is good, and the world is wiser than we.

Yea, wise is the world and mighty, with years to give, And years to promise; but how long now shall it live? And foolish and poor is faith, and her ways are bare, Till she find the way of the sun, and the morning air. In that hour shall this dead face shine as the face of the sun, And the soul of man and her soul and the world's be one.



MATER TRIUMPHALIS



Mother of man's time-travelling generations, Breath of his nostrils, heartblood of his heart, God above all Gods worshipped of all nations, Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.

Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things; The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings.

Angels and Gods, spirit and sense, thou takest In thy right hand as drops of dust or dew; The temples and the towers of time thou breakest, His thoughts and words and works, to make them new.

All we have wandered from thy ways, have hidden Eyes from thy glory and ears from calls they heard; Called of thy trumpets vainly, called and chidden, Scourged of thy speech and wounded of thy word.

We have known thee and have not known thee; stood beside thee, Felt thy lips breathe, set foot where thy feet trod, Loved and renounced and worshipped and denied thee, As though thou wert but as another God,

"One hour for sleep," we said, "and yet one other; All day we served her, and who shall serve by night?" Not knowing of thee, thy face not knowing, O mother, O light wherethrough the darkness is as light.

Men that forsook thee hast thou not forsaken, Races of men that knew not hast thou known; Nations that slept thou hast doubted not to waken, Worshippers of strange Gods to make thine own.

All old grey histories hiding thy clear features, O secret spirit and sovereign, all men's tales, Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures, They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils.

Thine hands, without election or exemption, Feed all men fainting from false peace or strife, O thou, the resurrection and redemption, The godhead and the manhood and the life.

Thy wings shadow the waters; thine eyes lighten The horror of the hollows of the night; The depths of the earth and the dark places brighten Under thy feet, whiter than fire is white.

Death is subdued to thee, and hell's bands broken; Where thou art only is heaven; who hears not thee, Time shall not hear him; when men's names are spoken, A nameless sign of death shall his name be.

Deathless shall be the death, the name be nameless; Sterile of stars his twilight time of breath; With fire of hell shall shame consume him shameless, And dying, all the night darken his death.

The years are as thy garments, the world's ages As sandals bound and loosed from thy swift feet; Time serves before thee, as one that hath for wages Praise or shame only, bitter words or sweet.

Thou sayest "Well done," and all a century kindles; Again thou sayest "Depart from sight of me," And all the light of face of all men dwindles, And the age is as the broken glass of thee.

The night is as a seal set on men's faces, On faces fallen of men that take no light, Nor give light in the deeps of the dark places, Blind things, incorporate with the body of night.

Their souls are serpents winterbound and frozen, Their shame is as a tame beast, at their feet Couched; their cold lips deride thee and thy chosen, Their lying lips made grey with dust for meat.

Then when their time is full and days run over, The splendour of thy sudden brow made bare Darkens the morning; thy bared hands uncover The veils of light and night and the awful air.

And the world naked as a new-born maiden Stands virginal and splendid as at birth, With all thine heaven of all its light unladen, Of all its love unburdened all thine earth.

For the utter earth and the utter air of heaven And the extreme depth is thine and the extreme height; Shadows of things and veils of ages riven Are as men's kings unkingdomed in thy sight.

Through the iron years, the centuries brazen-gated, By the ages' barred impenetrable doors, From the evening to the morning have we waited, Should thy foot haply sound on the awful floors.

The floors untrodden of the sun's feet glimmer, The star-unstricken pavements of the night; Do the lights burn inside? the lights wax dimmer On festal faces withering out of sight.

The crowned heads lose the light on them; it may be Dawn is at hand to smite the loud feast dumb; To blind the torch-lit centuries till the day be, The feasting kingdoms till thy kingdom come.

Shall it not come? deny they or dissemble, Is it not even as lightning from on high Now? and though many a soul close eyes and tremble, How should they tremble at all who love thee as I?

I am thine harp between thine hands, O mother! All my strong chords are strained with love of thee. We grapple in love and wrestle, as each with other Wrestle the wind and the unreluctant sea.

I am no courtier of thee sober-suited, Who loves a little for a little pay. Me not thy winds and storms nor thrones disrooted Nor molten crowns nor thine own sins dismay.

Sinned hast thou sometime, therefore art thou sinless; Stained hast thou been, who art therefore without stain; Even as man's soul is kin to thee, but kinless Thou, in whose womb Time sows the all-various grain.

I do not bid thee spare me, O dreadful mother! I pray thee that thou spare not, of thy grace. How were it with me then, if ever another Should come to stand before thee in this my place?

I am the trumpet at thy lips, thy clarion Full of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath; The graves of souls born worms and creeds grown carrion Thy blast of judgment fills with fires of death.

Thou art the player whose organ-keys are thunders, And I beneath thy foot the pedal prest; Thou art the ray whereat the rent night sunders, And I the cloudlet borne upon thy breast.

I shall burn up before thee, pass and perish, As haze in sunrise on the red sea-line; But thou from dawn to sunsetting shalt cherish The thoughts that led and souls that lighted mine.

Reared between night and noon and truth and error, Each twilight-travelling bird that trills and screams Sickens at midday, nor can face for terror The imperious heaven's inevitable extremes.

I have no spirit of skill with equal fingers At sign to sharpen or to slacken strings; I keep no time of song with gold-perched singers And chirp of linnets on the wrists of kings.

I am thy storm-thrush of the days that darken, Thy petrel in the foam that bears thy bark To port through night and tempest; if thou hearken, My voice is in thy heaven before the lark.

My song is in the mist that hides thy morning, My cry is up before the day for thee; I have heard thee and beheld thee and give warning, Before thy wheels divide the sky and sea.

Birds shall wake with thee voiced and feathered fairer, To see in summer what I see in spring; I have eyes and heart to endure thee, O thunder-bearer, And they shall be who shall have tongues to sing.

I have love at least, and have not fear, and part not From thine unnavigable and wingless way; Thou tarriest, and I have not said thou art not, Nor all thy night long have denied thy day.

Darkness to daylight shall lift up thy paean, Hill to hill thunder, vale cry back to vale, With wind-notes as of eagles AEschylean, And Sappho singing in the nightingale.

Sung to by mighty sons of dawn and daughters, Of this night's songs thine ear shall keep but one; That supreme song which shook the channelled waters, And called thee skyward as God calls the sun.

Come, though all heaven again be fire above thee; Though death before thee come to clear thy sky; Let us but see in his thy face who love thee; Yea, though thou slay us, arise and let us die.



A MARCHING SONG



We mix from many lands, We march for very far; In hearts and lips and hands Our staffs and weapons are; The light we walk in darkens sun and moon and star.

It doth not flame and wane With years and spheres that roll, Storm cannot shake nor stain The strength that makes it whole, The fire that moulds and moves it of the sovereign soul.

We are they that have to cope With time till time retire; We live on hopeless hope, We feed on tears and fire; Time, foot by foot, gives back before our sheer desire.

From the edge of harsh derision, From discord and defeat, From doubt and lame division, We pluck the fruit and eat; And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet.

We strive with time at wrestling Till time be on our side And hope, our plumeless nestling, A full-fledged eaglet ride Down the loud length of storm its windward wings divide.

We are girt with our belief, Clothed with our will and crowned; Hope, fear, delight, and grief, Before our will give ground; Their calls are in our ears as shadows of dead sound.

All but the heart forsakes us, All fails us but the will; Keen treason tracks and takes us In pits for blood to fill; Friend falls from friend, and faith for faith lays wait to kill.

Out under moon and stars And shafts of the urgent sun Whose face on prison-bars And mountain-heads is one, Our march is everlasting till time's march be done.

Whither we know, and whence, And dare not care wherethrough. Desires that urge the sense, Fears changing old with new, Perils and pains beset the ways we press into;

Earth gives us thorns to tread, And all her thorns are trod; Through lands burnt black and red We pass with feet unshod; Whence we would be man shall not keep us, nor man's God.

Through the great desert beasts Howl at our backs by night, And thunder-forging priests Blow their dead bale-fires bright, And on their broken anvils beat out bolts for fight.

Inside their sacred smithies Though hot the hammer rings, Their steel links snap like withies, Their chains like twisted strings, Their surest fetters are as plighted words of kings.

O nations undivided, O single people and free, We dreamers, we derided, We mad blind men that see, We bear you witness ere ye come that ye shall be.

Ye sitting among tombs, Ye standing round the gate, Whom fire-mouthed war consumes, Or cold-lipped peace bids wait, All tombs and bars shall open, every grave and grate.

The locks shall burst in sunder, The hinges shrieking spin, When time, whose hand is thunder, Lays hand upon the pin, And shoots the bolts reluctant, bidding all men in.

These eyeless times and earless, Shall these not see and hear, And all their hearts burn fearless That were afrost for fear? Is day not hard upon us, yea, not our day near?

France! from its grey dejection Make manifest the red Tempestuous resurrection Of thy most sacred head! Break thou the covering cerecloths; rise up from the dead.

And thou, whom sea-walls sever From lands unwalled with seas, Wilt thou endure for ever, O Milton's England, these? Thou that wast his Republic, wilt thou clasp their knees?

These royalties rust-eaten, These worm-corroded lies, That keep thine head storm-beaten And sunlike strength of eyes From the open heaven and air of intercepted skies;

These princelings with gauze winglets That buzz in the air unfurled, These summer-swarming kinglets, These thin worms crowned and curled, That bask and blink and warm themselves about the world;

These fanged meridian vermin, Shrill gnats that crowd the dusk, Night-moths whose nestling ermine Smells foul of mould and musk, Blind flesh-flies hatched by dark and hampered in their husk;

These honours without honour, These ghost-like gods of gold, This earth that wears upon her To keep her heart from cold No memory more of men that brought it fire of old;

These limbs, supine, unbuckled, In rottenness of rest, These sleepy lips blood-suckled And satiate of thy breast, These dull wide mouths that drain thee dry and call thee blest;

These masters of thee mindless That wear thee out of mind, These children of thee kindless That use thee out of kind, Whose hands strew gold before thee and contempt behind;

Who have turned thy name to laughter, Thy sea-like sounded name That now none hearkens after For faith in its free fame, Who have robbed thee of thy trust and given thee of their shame;

These hours that mock each other, These years that kill and die, Are these thy gains, our mother, For all thy gains thrown by? Is this that end whose promise made thine heart so high?

With empire and with treason The first right hand made fast, But in man's nobler season To put forth help the last, Love turns from thee, and memory disavows thy past.

Lest thine own sea disclaim thee, Lest thine own sons despise, Lest lips shoot out that name thee And seeing thee men shut eyes, Take thought with all thy people, turn thine head and rise.

Turn thee, lift up thy face; What ails thee to be dead? Ask of thyself for grace, Seek of thyself for bread, And who shall starve or shame thee, blind or bruise thine head?

The same sun in thy sight, The same sea in thine ears, That saw thine hour at height, That sang thy song of years, Behold and hearken for thee, knowing thy hopes and fears.

O people, O perfect nation, O England that shall be, How long till thou take station? How long till thralls live free? How long till all thy soul be one with all thy sea?

Ye that from south to north, Ye that from east to west, Stretch hands of longing forth And keep your eyes from rest, Lo, when ye will, we bring you gifts of what is best.

From the awful northland pines That skirt their wan dim seas To the ardent Apennines And sun-struck Pyrenees, One frost on all their frondage bites the blossoming trees.

The leaves look up for light, For heat of helpful air; The trees of oldest height And thin storm-shaken hair Seek with gaunt hands up heavenward if the sun be there.

The woods where souls walk lonely, The forests girt with night, Desire the day-star only And firstlings of the light Not seen of slaves nor shining in their masters' sight.

We have the morning star, O foolish people, O kings! With us the day-springs are, Even all the fresh day-springs; For us, and with us, all the multitudes of things.

O sorrowing hearts of slaves, We heard you beat from far! We bring the light that saves, We bring the morning star; Freedom's good things we bring you, whence all good things are.

With us the winds and fountains And lightnings live in tune; The morning-coloured mountains That burn into the noon, The mist's mild veil on valleys muffled from the moon:

The thunder-darkened highlands And lowlands hot with fruit, Sea-bays and shoals and islands, And cliffs that foil man's foot, And all the flower of large-limbed life and all the root:

The clangour of sea-eagles That teach the morning mirth With baying of heaven's beagles That seek their prey on earth, By sounding strait and channel, gulf and reach and firth.

With us the fields and rivers, The grass that summer thrills, The haze where morning quivers, The peace at heart of hills, The sense that kindles nature, and the soul that fills.

With us all natural sights, All notes of natural scale; With us the starry lights; With us the nightingale; With us the heart and secret of the worldly tale.

The strife of things and beauty, The fire and light adored, Truth, and life-lightening duty, Love without crown or sword, That by his might and godhead makes man god and lord.

These have we, these are ours, That no priests give nor kings; The honey of all these flowers, The heart of all these springs; Ours, for where freedom lives not, there live no good things.

Rise, ere the dawn be risen; Come, and be all souls fed; From field and street and prison Come, for the feast is spread; Live, for the truth is living; wake, for night is dead.



SIENA



Inside this northern summer's fold The fields are full of naked gold, Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves; The green veiled air is full of doves; Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let Light on the small warm grasses wet Fall in short broken kisses sweet, And break again like waves that beat Round the sun's feet.

But I, for all this English mirth Of golden-shod and dancing days, And the old green-girt sweet-hearted earth, Desire what here no spells can raise. Far hence, with holier heavens above, The lovely city of my love Bathes deep in the sun-satiate air That flows round no fair thing more fair Her beauty bare.

There the utter sky is holier, there More pure the intense white height of air, More clear men's eyes that mine would meet, And the sweet springs of things more sweet. There for this one warm note of doves A clamour of a thousand loves Storms the night's ear, the day's assails, From the tempestuous nightingales, And fills, and fails.

O gracious city well-beloved, Italian, and a maiden crowned, Siena, my feet are no more moved Toward thy strange-shapen mountain-bound: But my heart in me turns and moves, O lady loveliest of my loves, Toward thee, to lie before thy feet And gaze from thy fair fountain-seat Up the sheer street;

And the house midway hanging see That saw Saint Catherine bodily, Felt on its floors her sweet feet move, And the live light of fiery love Burn from her beautiful strange face, As in the sanguine sacred place Where in pure hands she took the head Severed, and with pure lips still red Kissed the lips dead.

For years through, sweetest of the saints, In quiet without cease she wrought, Till cries of men and fierce complaints From outward moved her maiden thought; And prayers she heard and sighs toward France, "God, send us back deliverance, Send back thy servant, lest we die!" With an exceeding bitter cry They smote the sky.

Then in her sacred saving hands She took the sorrows of the lands, With maiden palms she lifted up The sick time's blood-embittered cup, And in her virgin garment furled The faint limbs of a wounded world. Clothed with calm love and clear desire, She went forth in her soul's attire, A missive fire.

Across the might of men that strove It shone, and over heads of kings; And molten in red flames of love Were swords and many monstrous things; And shields were lowered, and snapt were spears, And sweeter-tuned the clamorous years; And faith came back, and peace, that were Fled; for she bade, saying, "Thou, God's heir, Hast thou no care?

"Lo, men lay waste thine heritage Still, and much heathen people rage Against thee, and devise vain things. What comfort in the face of kings, What counsel is there? Turn thine eyes And thine heart from them in like wise; Turn thee unto thine holy place To help us that of God for grace Require thy face.

"For who shall hear us if not thou In a strange land? what doest thou there? Thy sheep are spoiled, and the ploughers plough Upon us; why hast thou no care For all this, and beyond strange hills Liest unregardful what snow chills Thy foldless flock, or what rains beat? Lo, in thine ears, before thy feet, Thy lost sheep bleat.

"And strange men feed on faultless lives, And there is blood, and men put knives, Shepherd, unto the young lamb's throat; And one hath eaten, and one smote, And one had hunger and is fed Full of the flesh of these, and red With blood of these as who drinks wine And God knoweth, who hath sent thee a sign, If these were thine."

But the Pope's heart within him burned, So that he rose up, seeing the sign, And came among them; but she turned Back to her daily way divine, And fed her faith with silent things, And lived her life with curbed white wings, And mixed herself with heaven and died: And now on the sheer city-side Smiles like a bride.

You see her in the fresh clear gloom, Where walls shut out the flame and bloom Of full-breathed summer, and the roof Keeps the keen ardent air aloof And sweet weight of the violent sky: There bodily beheld on high, She seems as one hearing in tune Heaven within heaven, at heaven's full noon, In sacred swoon:

A solemn swoon of sense that aches With imminent blind heat of heaven, While all the wide-eyed spirit wakes, Vigilant of the supreme Seven, Whose choral flames in God's sight move, Made unendurable with love, That without wind or blast of breath Compels all things through life and death Whither God saith.

There on the dim side-chapel wall Thy mighty touch memorial, Razzi, raised up, for ages dead, And fixed for us her heavenly head: And, rent with plaited thorn and rod, Bared the live likeness of her God To men's eyes turning from strange lands, Where, pale from thine immortal hands, Christ wounded stands;

And the blood blots his holy hair And white brows over hungering eyes That plead against us, and the fair Mute lips forlorn of words or sighs In the great torment that bends down His bruised head with the bloomless crown, White as the unfruitful thorn-flower, A God beheld in dreams that were Beheld of her.

In vain on all these sins and years Falls the sad blood, fall the slow tears; In vain poured forth as watersprings, Priests, on your altars, and ye, kings, About your seats of sanguine gold; Still your God, spat upon and sold, Bleeds at your hands; but now is gone All his flock from him saving one; Judas alone.

Surely your race it was that he, O men signed backward with his name, Beholding in Gethsemane Bled the red bitter sweat of shame, Knowing how the word of Christian should Mean to men evil and not good, Seem to men shameful for your sake, Whose lips, for all the prayers they make, Man's blood must slake.

But blood nor tears ye love not, you That my love leads my longing to, Fair as the world's old faith of flowers, O golden goddesses of ours! From what Idalian rose-pleasance Hath Aphrodite bidden glance The lovelier lightnings of your feet? From what sweet Paphian sward or seat Led you more sweet?

O white three sisters, three as one, With flowerlike arms for flowery bands Your linked limbs glitter like the sun, And time lies beaten at your hands. Time and wild years and wars and men Pass, and ye care not whence or when; With calm lips over sweet for scorn, Ye watch night pass, O children born Of the old-world morn.

Ah, in this strange and shrineless place, What doth a goddess, what a Grace, Where no Greek worships her shrined limbs With wreaths and Cytherean hymns? Where no lute makes luxurious The adoring airs in Amathus, Till the maid, knowing her mother near, Sobs with love, aching with sweet fear? What do ye here?

For the outer land is sad, and wears A raiment of a flaming fire; And the fierce fruitless mountain stairs Climb, yet seem wroth and loth to aspire, Climb, and break, and are broken down, And through their clefts and crests the town Looks west and sees the dead sun lie, In sanguine death that stains the sky With angry dye.

And from the war-worn wastes without In twilight, in the time of doubt, One sound comes of one whisper, where Moved with low motions of slow air The great trees nigh the castle swing In the sad coloured evening; "Ricorditi di me, che son La Pia"—that small sweet word alone Is not yet gone.

"Ricorditi di me"—the sound Sole out of deep dumb days remote Across the fiery and fatal ground Comes tender as a hurt bird's note To where, a ghost with empty hands, A woe-worn ghost, her palace stands In the mid city, where the strong Bells turn the sunset air to song, And the towers throng.

With other face, with speech the same, A mightier maiden's likeness came Late among mourning men that slept, A sacred ghost that went and wept, White as the passion-wounded Lamb, Saying, "Ah, remember me, that am Italia." (From deep sea to sea Earth heard, earth knew her, that this was she.) "Ricorditi.

"Love made me of all things fairest thing, And Hate unmade me; this knows he Who with God's sacerdotal ring Enringed mine hand, espousing me." Yea, in thy myriad-mooded woe, Yea, Mother, hast thou not said so? Have not our hearts within us stirred, O thou most holiest, at thy word? Have we not heard?

As this dead tragic land that she Found deadly, such was time to thee; Years passed thee withering in the red Maremma, years that deemed thee dead, Ages that sorrowed or that scorned; And all this while though all they mourned Thou sawest the end of things unclean, And the unborn that should see thee a queen. Have we not seen?

The weary poet, thy sad son, Upon thy soil, under thy skies, Saw all Italian things save one - Italia; this thing missed his eyes; The old mother-might, the breast, the face, That reared, that lit the Roman race; This not Leopardi saw; but we, What is it, Mother, that we see, What if not thee?

Look thou from Siena southward home, Where the priest's pall hangs rent on Rome, And through the red rent swaddling-bands Towards thine she strains her labouring hands. Look thou and listen, and let be All the dead quick, all the bond free; In the blind eyes let there be sight; In the eighteen centuries of the night Let there be light.

Bow down the beauty of thine head, Sweet, and with lips of living breath Kiss thy sons sleeping and thy dead, That there be no more sleep or death. Give us thy light, thy might, thy love, Whom thy face seen afar above Drew to thy feet; and when, being free, Thou hast blest thy children born to thee, Bless also me.

Me that when others played or slept Sat still under thy cross and wept; Me who so early and unaware Felt fall on bent bared brows and hair (Thin drops of the overflowing flood!) The bitter blessing of thy blood; The sacred shadow of thy pain, Thine, the true maiden-mother, slain And raised again.

Me consecrated, if I might, To praise thee, or to love at least, O mother of all men's dear delight, Thou madest a choral-souled boy-priest, Before my lips had leave to sing, Or my hands hardly strength to cling About the intolerable tree Whereto they had nailed my heart and thee And said, "Let be."

For to thee too the high Fates gave Grace to be sacrificed and save, That being arisen, in the equal sun, God and the People should be one; By those red roads thy footprints trod, Man more divine, more human God, Saviour; that where no light was known But darkness, and a daytime flown, Light should be shown.

Let there be light, O Italy! For our feet falter in the night. O lamp of living years to be, O light of God, let there be light! Fill with a love keener than flame Men sealed in spirit with thy name, The cities and the Roman skies, Where men with other than man's eyes Saw thy sun rise.

For theirs thou wast and thine were they Whose names outshine thy very day; For they are thine and theirs thou art Whose blood beats living in man's heart, Remembering ages fled and dead Wherein for thy sake these men bled; They that saw Trebia, they that see Mentana, they in years to be That shall see thee.

For thine are all of us, and ours Thou; till the seasons bring to birth A perfect people, and all the powers Be with them that bear fruit on earth; Till the inner heart of man be one With freedom, and the sovereign sun; And Time, in likeness of a guide, Lead the Republic as a bride Up to God's side.



COR CORDIUM



O heart of hearts, the chalice of love's fire, Hid round with flowers and all the bounty of bloom; O wonderful and perfect heart, for whom The lyrist liberty made life a lyre; O heavenly heart, at whose most dear desire Dead love, living and singing, cleft his tomb, And with him risen and regent in death's room All day thy choral pulses rang full choir; O heart whose beating blood was running song, O sole thing sweeter than thine own songs were, Help us for thy free love's sake to be free, True for thy truth's sake, for thy strength's sake strong, Till very liberty make clean and fair The nursing earth as the sepulchral sea.



IN SAN LORENZO



Is thine hour come to wake, O slumbering Night? Hath not the Dawn a message in thine ear? Though thou be stone and sleep, yet shalt thou hear When the word falls from heaven—Let there be light. Thou knowest we would not do thee the despite To wake thee while the old sorrow and shame were near; We spake not loud for thy sake, and for fear Lest thou shouldst lose the rest that was thy right, The blessing given thee that was thine alone, The happiness to sleep and to be stone: Nay, we kept silence of thee for thy sake Albeit we knew thee alive, and left with thee The great good gift to feel not nor to see; But will not yet thine Angel bid thee wake?



TIRESIAS



PART I

It is an hour before the hour of dawn. Set in mine hand my staff and leave me here Outside the hollow house that blind men fear, More blind than I who live on life withdrawn And feel on eyes that see not but foresee The shadow of death which clothes Antigone.

Here lay her living body that here lies Dead, if man living know what thing is death, If life be all made up of blood and breath, And no sense be save as of ears and eyes. But heart there is not, tongue there is not found, To think or sing what verge hath life or bound.

In the beginning when the powers that made The young child man a little loved him, seeing His joy of life and fair face of his being, And bland and laughing with the man-child played, As friends they saw on our divine one day King Cadmus take to queen Harmonia.

The strength of soul that builds up as with hands Walls spiritual and towers and towns of thought Which only fate, not force, can bring to nought, Took then to wife the light of all men's lands, War's child and love's, most sweet and wise and strong, Order of things and rule and guiding song.

It was long since: yea, even the sun that saw Remembers hardly what was, nor how long. And now the wise heart of the worldly song Is perished, and the holy hand of law Can set no tune on time, nor help again The power of thought to build up life for men.

Yea, surely are they now transformed or dead, And sleep below this world, where no sun warms, Or move about it now in formless forms Incognizable, and all their lordship fled; And where they stood up singing crawl and hiss, With fangs that kill behind their lips that kiss.

Yet though her marriage-garment, seeming fair, Was dyed in sin and woven of jealousy To turn their seed to poison, time shall see The gods reissue from them, and repair Their broken stamp of godhead, and again Thought and wise love sing words of law to men.

I, Tiresias the prophet, seeing in Thebes Much evil, and the misery of men's hands Who sow with fruitless wheat the stones and sands, With fruitful thorns the fallows and warm glebes, Bade their hands hold lest worse hap came to pass; But which of you had heed of Tiresias?

I am as Time's self in mine own wearied mind, Whom the strong heavy-footed years have led From night to night and dead men unto dead, And from the blind hope to the memory blind; For each man's life is woven, as Time's life is, Of blind young hopes and old blind memories.

I am a soul outside of death and birth. I see before me and afterward I see, O child, O corpse, the live dead face of thee, Whose life and death are one thing upon earth Where day kills night and night again kills day And dies; but where is that Harmonia?

O all-beholden light not seen of me, Air, and warm winds that under the sun's eye Stretch your strong wings at morning; and thou, sky, Whose hollow circle engirdling earth and sea All night the set stars limit, and all day The moving sun remeasures; ye, I say,

Ye heights of hills, and thou Dircean spring Inviolable, and ye towers that saw cast down Seven kings keen-sighted toward your seven-faced town And quenched the red seed of one sightless king; And thou, for death less dreadful than for birth, Whose wild leaves hide the horror of the earth,

O mountain whereon gods made chase of kings, Cithaeron, thou that sawest on Pentheus dead Fangs of a mother fasten and wax red And satiate with a son thy swollen springs, And heardst her cry fright all thine eyries' nests Who gave death suck at sanguine-suckling breasts;

Yea, and a grief more grievous, without name, A curse too grievous for the name of grief, Thou sawest, and heardst the rumour scare belief Even unto death and madness, when the flame Was lit whose ashes dropped about the pyre That of two brethren made one sundering fire;

O bitter nurse, that on thine hard bare knees Rear'dst for his fate the bloody-footed child Whose hands should be more bloodily defiled And the old blind feet walk wearier ways than these, Whose seed, brought forth in darkness unto doom, Should break as fire out of his mother's womb;

I bear you witness as ye bear to me, Time, day, night, sun, stars, life, death, air, sea, earth, And ye that round the human house of birth Watch with veiled heads and weaponed hands, and see Good things and evil, strengthless yet and dumb, Sit in the clouds with cloudlike hours to come;

Ye forces without form and viewless powers That have the keys of all our years in hold, That prophesy too late with tongues of gold, In a strange speech whose words are perished hours, I witness to you what good things ye give As ye to me what evil while I live.

What should I do to blame you, what to praise, For floral hours and hours funereal? What should I do to curse or bless at all For winter-woven or summer-coloured days? Curse he that will and bless you whoso can, I have no common part in you with man.

I hear a springing water, whose quick sound Makes softer the soft sunless patient air, And the wind's hand is laid on my thin hair Light as a lover's, and the grasses round Have odours in them of green bloom and rain Sweet as the kiss wherewith sleep kisses pain.

I hear the low sound of the spring of time Still beating as the low live throb of blood, And where its waters gather head and flood I hear change moving on them, and the chime Across them of reverberate wings of hours Sounding, and feel the future air of flowers.

The wind of change is soft as snow, and sweet The sense thereof as roses in the sun, The faint wind springing with the springs that run, The dim sweet smell of flowering hopes, and heat Of unbeholden sunrise; yet how long I know not, till the morning put forth song.

I prophesy of life, who live with death; Of joy, being sad; of sunlight, who am blind; Of man, whose ways are alien from mankind And his lips are not parted with man's breath; I am a word out of the speechless years, The tongue of time, that no man sleeps who hears.

I stand a shadow across the door of doom, Athwart the lintel of death's house, and wait; Nor quick nor dead, nor flexible by fate, Nor quite of earth nor wholly of the tomb; A voice, a vision, light as fire or air, Driven between days that shall be and that were.

I prophesy, with feet upon a grave, Of death cast out and life devouring death As flame doth wood and stubble with a breath; Of freedom, though all manhood were one slave; Of truth, though all the world were liar; of love, That time nor hate can raze the witness of.

Life that was given for love's sake and his law's Their powers have no more power on; they divide Spoils wrung from lust or wrath of man or pride, And keen oblivion without pity or pause Sets them on fire and scatters them on air Like ashes shaken from a suppliant's hair.

But life they lay no hand on; life once given No force of theirs hath competence to take; Life that was given for some divine thing's sake, To mix the bitterness of earth with heaven, Light with man's night, and music with his breath, Dies not, but makes its living food of death.

I have seen this, who live where men are not, In the high starless air of fruitful night On that serenest and obscurest height Where dead and unborn things are one in thought And whence the live unconquerable springs Feed full of force the torrents of new things.

I have seen this, who saw long since, being man, As now I know not if indeed I be, The fair bare body of Wisdom, good to see And evil, whence my light and night began; Light on the goal and darkness on the way, Light all through night and darkness all through day.

Mother, that by that Pegasean spring Didst fold round in thine arms thy blinded son, Weeping "O holiest, what thing hast thou done, What, to my child? woe's me that see the thing! Is this thy love to me-ward, and hereof Must I take sample how the gods can love?

"O child, thou hast seen indeed, poor child of mine, The breasts and flanks of Pallas bare in sight, But never shalt see more the dear sun's light; O Helicon, how great a pay is thine For some poor antelopes and wild-deer dead, My child's eyes hast thou taken in their stead—"

Mother, thou knewest not what she had to give, Thy goddess, though then angered, for mine eyes; Fame and foreknowledge, and to be most wise, And centuries of high-thoughted life to live, And in mine hand this guiding staff to be As eyesight to the feet of men that see.

Perchance I shall not die at all, nor pass The general door and lintel of men dead; Yet even the very tongue of wisdom said What grace should come with death to Tiresias, What special honour that God's hand accord Who gathers all men's nations as their lord.

And sometimes when the secret eye of thought Is changed with obscuration, and the sense Aches with long pain of hollow prescience, And fiery foresight with foresuffering bought Seems even to infect my spirit and consume, Hunger and thirst come on me for the tomb.

I could be fain to drink my death and sleep, And no more wrapped about with bitter dreams Talk with the stars and with the winds and streams And with the inevitable years, and weep; For how should he who communes with the years Be sometime not a living spring of tears?

O child, that guided of thine only will Didst set thy maiden foot against the gate To strike it open ere thine hour of fate, Antigone, men say not thou didst ill, For love's sake and the reverence of his awe Divinely dying, slain by mortal law;

For love is awful as immortal death. And through thee surely hath thy brother won Rest, out of sight of our world-weary sun, And in the dead land where ye ghosts draw breath A royal place and honour; so wast thou Happy, though earth have hold of thee too now.

So hast thou life and name inviolable And joy it may be, sacred and severe, Joy secret-souled beyond all hope or fear, A monumental joy wherein to dwell Secluse and silent, a selected state, Serene possession of thy proper fate.

Thou art not dead as these are dead who live Full of blind years, a sorrow-shaken kind, Nor as these are am I the prophet blind; They have not life that have not heart to give Life, nor have eyesight who lack heart to see When to be not is better than to be.

O ye whom time but bears with for a span, How long will ye be blind and dead, how long Make your own souls part of your own soul's wrong? Son of the word of the most high gods, man, Why wilt thou make thine hour of light and breath Emptier of all but shame than very death?

Fool, wilt thou live for ever? though thou care With all thine heart for life to keep it fast, Shall not thine hand forego it at the last? Lo, thy sure hour shall take thee by the hair Sleeping, or when thou knowest not, or wouldst fly; And as men died much mightier shalt thou die.

Yea, they are dead, men much more worth than thou; The savour of heroic lives that were, Is it not mixed into thy common air? The sense of them is shed about thee now: Feel not thy brows a wind blowing from far? Aches not thy forehead with a future star?

The light that thou may'st make out of thy name Is in the wind of this same hour that drives, Blown within reach but once of all men's lives; And he that puts forth hand upon the flame Shall have it for a garland on his head To sign him for a king among the dead.

But these men that the lessening years behold, Who sit the most part without flame or crown, And brawl and sleep and wear their life-days down With joys and griefs ignobler than of old, And care not if the better day shall be - Are these or art thou dead, Antigone?

PART II

As when one wakes out of a waning dream And sees with instant eyes the naked thought Whereof the vision as a web was wrought, I saw beneath a heaven of cloud and gleam, Ere yet the heart of the young sun waxed brave, One like a prophet standing by a grave.

In the hoar heaven was hardly beam or breath, And all the coloured hills and fields were grey, And the wind wandered seeking for the day, And wailed as though he had found her done to death And this grey hour had built to bury her The hollow twilight for a sepulchre.

But in my soul I saw as in a glass A pale and living body full of grace There lying, and over it the prophet's face Fixed; and the face was not of Tiresias, For such a starry fire was in his eyes As though their light it was that made the skies.

Such eyes should God's have been when very love Looked forth of them and set the sun aflame, And such his lips that called the light by name And bade the morning forth at sound thereof; His face was sad and masterful as fate, And like a star's his look compassionate.

Like a star's gazed on of sad eyes so long It seems to yearn with pity, and all its fire As a man's heart to tremble with desire And heave as though the light would bring forth song; Yet from his face flashed lightning on the land, And like the thunder-bearer's was his hand.

The steepness of strange stairs had tired his feet, And his lips yet seemed sick of that salt bread Wherewith the lips of banishment are fed; But nothing was there in the world so sweet As the most bitter love, like God's own grace, Wherewith he gazed on that fair buried face.

Grief and glad pride and passion and sharp shame, Wrath and remembrance, faith and hope and hate And pitiless pity of days degenerate, Were in his eyes as an incorporate flame That burned about her, and the heart thereof And central flower was very fire of love.

But all about her grave wherein she slept Were noises of the wild wind-footed years Whose footprints flying were full of blood and tears, Shrieks as of Maenads on their hills that leapt And yelled as beasts of ravin, and their meat Was the rent flesh of their own sons to eat:

And fiery shadows passing with strange cries, And Sphinx-like shapes about the ruined lands, And the red reek of parricidal hands And intermixture of incestuous eyes, And light as of that self-divided flame Which made an end of the Cadmean name.

And I beheld again, and lo the grave, And the bright body laid therein as dead, And the same shadow across another head That bowed down silent on that sleeping slave Who was the lady of empire from her birth And light of all the kingdoms of the earth.

Within the compass of the watcher's hand All strengths of other men and divers powers Were held at ease and gathered up as flowers; His heart was as the heart of his whole land, And at his feet as natural servants lay Twilight and dawn and night and labouring day.

He was most awful of the sons of God. Even now men seeing seemed at his lips to see The trumpet of the judgment that should be, And in his right hand terror for a rod, And in the breath that made the mountains bow The horned fire of Moses on his brow.

The strong wind of the coming of the Lord Had blown as flame upon him, and brought down On his bare head from heaven fire for a crown, And fire was girt upon him as a sword To smite and lighten, and on what ways he trod There fell from him the shadow of a God.

Pale, with the whole world's judgment in his eyes, He stood and saw the grief and shame endure That he, though highest of angels might not cure, And the same sins done under the same skies, And the same slaves to the same tyrants thrown, And fain he would have slept, and fain been stone.

But with unslumbering eyes he watched the sleep That sealed her sense whose eyes were suns of old; And the night shut and opened, and behold, The same grave where those prophets came to weep, But she that lay therein had moved and stirred, And where those twain had watched her stood a third.

The tripled rhyme that closed in Paradise With Love's name sealing up its starry speech - The tripled might of hand that found in reach All crowns beheld far off of all men's eyes, Song, colour, carven wonders of live stone - These were not, but the very soul alone.

The living spirit, the good gift of grace, The faith which takes of its own blood to give That the dead veins of buried hope may live, Came on her sleeping, face to naked face, And from a soul more sweet than all the south Breathed love upon her sealed and breathless mouth.

Between her lips the breath was blown as fire, And through her flushed veins leapt the liquid life, And with sore passion and ambiguous strife The new birth rent her and the new desire, The will to live, the competence to be, The sense to hearken and the soul to see.

And the third prophet standing by her grave Stretched forth his hand and touched her, and her eyes Opened as sudden suns in heaven might rise, And her soul caught from his the faith to save; Faith above creeds, faith beyond records, born Of the pure, naked, fruitful, awful morn.

For in the daybreak now that night was dead The light, the shadow, the delight, the pain, The purpose and the passion of those twain, Seemed gathered on that third prophetic head, And all their crowns were as one crown, and one His face with her face in the living sun.

For even with that communion of their eyes His whole soul passed into her and made her strong; And all the sounds and shows of shame and wrong, The hand that slays, the lip that mocks and lies, Temples and thrones that yet men seem to see - Are these dead or art thou dead, Italy?



THE SONG OF THE STANDARD



Maiden most beautiful, mother most bountiful, lady of lands, Queen and republican, crowned of the centuries whose years are thy sands, See for thy sake what we bring to thee, Italy, here in our hands.

This is the banner thy gonfalon, fair in the front of thy fight, Red from the hearts that were pierced for thee, white as thy mountains are white, Green as the spring of thy soul everlasting, whose life-blood is light.

Take to thy bosom thy banner, a fair bird fit for the nest, Feathered for flight into sunrise or sunset, for eastward or west, Fledged for the flight everlasting, but held yet warm to thy breast.

Gather it close to thee, song-bird or storm-bearer, eagle or dove, Lift it to sunward, a beacon beneath to the beacon above, Green as our hope in it, white as our faith in it, red as our love.

Thunder and splendour of lightning are hid in the folds of it furled; Who shall unroll it but thou, as thy bolt to be handled and hurled, Out of whose lips is the honey, whose bosom the milk of the world?

Out of thine hands hast thou fed us with pasture of colour and song; Glory and beauty by birthright to thee as thy garments belong; Out of thine hands thou shalt give us as surely deliverance from wrong.

Out of thine eyes thou hast shed on us love as a lamp in our night, Wisdom a lodestar to ships, and remembrance a flame-coloured light; Out of thine eyes thou shalt shew us as surely the sun-dawn of right.

Turn to us, speak to us, Italy, mother, but once and a word, None shall not follow thee, none shall not serve thee, not one that has heard; Twice hast thou spoken a message, and time is athirst for the third.

Kingdom and empire of peoples thou hadst, and thy lordship made one North sea and south sea and east men and west men that look on the sun; Spirit was in thee and counsel, when soul in the nations was none.

Banner and beacon thou wast to the centuries of storm-wind and foam, Ages that clashed in the dark with each other, and years without home; Empress and prophetess wast thou, and what wilt thou now be, O Rome?

Ah, by the faith and the hope and the love that have need of thee now, Shines not thy face with the forethought of freedom, and burns not thy brow? Who is against her but all men? and who is beside her but thou?

Art thou not better than all men? and where shall she turn but to thee? Lo, not a breath, not a beam, not a beacon from midland to sea; Freedom cries out for a sign among nations, and none will be free.

England in doubt of her, France in despair of her, all without heart - Stand on her side in the vanward of ages, and strike on her part! Strike but one stroke for the love of her love of thee, sweet that thou art!

Take in thy right hand thy banner, a strong staff fit for thine hand; Forth at the light of it lifted shall foul things flock from the land; Faster than stars from the sun shall they fly, being lighter than sand.

Green thing to green in the summer makes answer, and rose-tree to rose; Lily by lily the year becomes perfect; and none of us knows What thing is fairest of all things on earth as it brightens and blows.

This thing is fairest in all time of all things, in all time is best - Freedom, that made thee, our mother, and suckled her sons at thy breast; Take to thy bosom the nations, and there shall the world come to rest.



ON THE DOWNS



A faint sea without wind or sun; A sky like flameless vapour dun; A valley like an unsealed grave That no man cares to weep upon, Bare, without boon to crave, Or flower to save.

And on the lip's edge of the down, Here where the bent-grass burns to brown In the dry sea-wind, and the heath Crawls to the cliff-side and looks down, I watch, and hear beneath The low tide breathe.

Along the long lines of the cliff, Down the flat sea-line without skiff Or sail or back-blown fume for mark, Through wind-worn heads of heath and stiff Stems blossomless and stark With dry sprays dark,

I send mine eyes out as for news Of comfort that all these refuse, Tidings of light or living air From windward where the low clouds muse And the sea blind and bare Seems full of care.

So is it now as it was then, And as men have been such are men. There as I stood I seem to stand, Here sitting chambered, and again Feel spread on either hand Sky, sea, and land.

As a queen taken and stripped and bound Sat earth, discoloured and discrowned; As a king's palace empty and dead The sky was, without light or sound; And on the summer's head Were ashes shed.

Scarce wind enough was on the sea, Scarce hope enough there moved in me, To sow with live blown flowers of white The green plain's sad serenity, Or with stray thoughts of light Touch my soul's sight.

By footless ways and sterile went My thought unsatisfied, and bent With blank unspeculative eyes On the untracked sands of discontent Where, watched of helpless skies, Life hopeless lies.

East and west went my soul to find Light, and the world was bare and blind And the soil herbless where she trod And saw men laughing scourge mankind, Unsmitten by the rod Of any God.

Out of time's blind old eyes were shed Tears that were mortal, and left dead The heart and spirit of the years, And on mans fallen and helmless head Time's disanointing tears Fell cold as fears.

Hope flowering had but strength to bear The fruitless fruitage of despair; Grief trod the grapes of joy for wine, Whereof love drinking unaware Died as one undivine And made no sign.

And soul and body dwelt apart; And weary wisdom without heart Stared on the dead round heaven and sighed, "Is death too hollow as thou art, Or as man's living pride?" And saying so died.

And my soul heard the songs and groans That are about and under thrones, And felt through all time's murmur thrill Fate's old imperious semitones That made of good and ill One same tune still.

Then "Where is God? and where is aid? Or what good end of these?" she said; "Is there no God or end at all, Nor reason with unreason weighed, Nor force to disenthral Weak feet that fall?

"No light to lighten and no rod To chasten men? Is there no God?" So girt with anguish, iron-zoned, Went my soul weeping as she trod Between the men enthroned And men that groaned.

O fool, that for brute cries of wrong Heard not the grey glad mother's song Ring response from the hills and waves, But heard harsh noises all day long Of spirits that were slaves And dwelt in graves.

The wise word of the secret earth Who knows what life and death are worth, And how no help and no control Can speed or stay things come to birth, Nor all worlds' wheels that roll Crush one born soul.

With all her tongues of life and death, With all her bloom and blood and breath, From all years dead and all things done, In the ear of man the mother saith, "There is no God, O son, If thou be none."

So my soul sick with watching heard That day the wonder of that word, And as one springs out of a dream Sprang, and the stagnant wells were stirred Whence flows through gloom and gleam Thought's soundless stream.

Out of pale cliff and sunburnt health, Out of the low sea curled beneath In the land's bending arm embayed, Out of all lives that thought hears breathe Life within life inlaid, Was answer made.

A multitudinous monotone Of dust and flower and seed and stone, In the deep sea-rock's mid-sea sloth, In the live water's trembling zone, In all men love and loathe, One God at growth.

One forceful nature uncreate That feeds itself with death and fate, Evil and good, and change and time, That within all men lies at wait Till the hour shall bid them climb And live sublime.

For all things come by fate to flower At their unconquerable hour, And time brings truth, and truth makes free, And freedom fills time's veins with power, As, brooding on that sea, My thought filled me.

And the sun smote the clouds and slew, And from the sun the sea's breath blew, And white waves laughed and turned and fled The long green heaving sea-field through, And on them overhead The sky burnt red

Like a furled flag that wind sets free, On the swift summer-coloured sea Shook out the red lines of the light, The live sun's standard, blown to lee Across the live sea's white And green delight.

And with divine triumphant awe My spirit moved within me saw, With burning passion of stretched eyes, Clear as the light's own firstborn law, In windless wastes of skies Time's deep dawn rise.



MESSIDOR



Put in the sickles and reap; For the morning of harvest is red, And the long large ranks of the corn Coloured and clothed as the morn Stand thick in the fields and deep For them that faint to be fed. Let all that hunger and weep Come hither, and who would have bread Put in the sickles and reap.

Coloured and clothed as the morn, The grain grows ruddier than gold, And the good strong sun is alight In the mists of the day-dawn white, And the crescent, a faint sharp horn, In the fear of his face turns cold As the snakes of the night-time that creep From the flag of our faith unrolled. Put in the sickles and reap.

In the mists of the day-dawn white That roll round the morning star, The large flame lightens and grows Till the red-gold harvest-rows, Full-grown, are full of the light As the spirits of strong men are, Crying, Who shall slumber or sleep? Who put back morning or mar? Put in the sickles and reap.

Till the red-gold harvest-rows For miles through shudder and shine In the wind's breath, fed with the sun, A thousand spear-heads as one Bowed as for battle to close Line in rank against line With place and station to keep Till all men's hands at a sign Put in the sickles and reap.

A thousand spear-heads as one Wave as with swing of the sea When the mid tide sways at its height; For the hour is for harvest or fight In face of the just calm sun, As the signal in season may be And the lot in the helm may leap When chance shall shake it; but ye, Put in the sickles and reap.

For the hour is for harvest or fight To clothe with raiment of red; O men sore stricken of hours, Lo, this one, is not it ours To glean, to gather, to smite? Let none make risk of his head Within reach of the clean scythe-sweep, When the people that lay as the dead Put in the sickles and reap.

Lo, this one, is not it ours, Now the ruins of dead things rattle As dead men's bones in the pit, Now the kings wax lean as they sit Girt round with memories of powers, With musters counted as cattle And armies folded as sheep Till the red blind husbandman battle Put in the sickles and reap?

Now the kings wax lean as they sit, The people grow strong to stand; The men they trod on and spat, The dumb dread people that sat As corpses cast in a pit, Rise up with God at their hand, And thrones are hurled on a heap, And strong men, sons of the land, Put in the sickles and reap.

The dumb dread people that sat All night without screen for the night, All day without food for the day, They shall give not their harvest away, They shall eat of its fruit and wax fat: They shall see the desire of their sight, Though the ways of the seasons be steep, They shall climb with face to the light, Put in the sickles and reap.



ODE ON THE INSURRECTION IN CANDIA



STR. 1

I laid my laurel-leaf At the white feet of grief, Seeing how with covered face and plumeless wings, With unreverted head Veiled, as who mourns his dead, Lay Freedom couched between the thrones of kings, A wearied lion without lair, And bleeding from base wounds, and vexed with alien air.

STR. 2

Who was it, who, put poison to thy mouth, Who lulled with craft or chant thy vigilant eyes, O light of all men, lamp to north and south, Eastward and westward, under all men's skies? For if thou sleep, we perish, and thy name Dies with the dying of our ephemeral breath; And if the dust of death o'ergrows thy flame, Heaven also is darkened with the dust of death. If thou be mortal, if thou change or cease, If thine hand fail, or thine eyes turn from Greece, Thy firstborn, and the firstfruits of thy fame, God is no God, and man is moulded out of shame.

STR. 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 ministrant 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.