The Project Gutenberg eBook of Songs Before Sunrise
Title: Songs Before Sunrise
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne
Release date: May 1, 2003 [eBook #4072]
Most recently updated: September 13, 2014
Language: English
Credits: Transcribed from the 1917 William Heinemann edition by David Price
Transcribed from the 1917 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE
By
Algernon Charles Swinburne
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
First published
(Ellis), 1871. New impressions
(Chatto) 1874, ’77, ’80, ’83, ’88,
’92, ’99, 1903,
’08, ’11, ’15. Also Florence Press
Edition, 1909
The Golden Pine Edition (Heinemann), 1917
Included in Collected Poems
(Chatto), 1904 (twice),
’09, ’10, ’12. (Heinemann),
1917
London: William Heinemann, 1917
DEDICATION
TO
JOSEPH MAZZINI
Take, since you bade
it should bear,
These, of the seed of your sowing,
Blossom or berry or weed.
Sweet though they be not, or fair,
That the dew of your word kept growing,
Sweet at least was the seed.
Men bring you love-offerings of tears,
And sorrow the kiss that assuages,
And slaves the hate-offering of
wrongs,
And time the thanksgiving of years,
And years the thanksgiving of ages;
I bring you my handful of
songs.
If a perfume be left, if a bloom,
Let it live till Italia be risen,
To be strewn in the dust of her
car
When her voice shall awake from the tomb
England, and France from her prison,
Sisters, a star by a star.
I bring you the sword of a song,
The sword of my spirit’s desire,
Feeble; but laid at your feet,
That which was weak shall be strong,
That which was cold shall take fire,
That which was bitter be
sweet.
It was wrought not with hands to smite,
Nor hewn after swordsmiths’ fashion,
Nor tempered on anvil of steel;
But with visions and dreams of the night,
But with hope, and the patience of passion,
And the signet of love for a
seal.
Be it witness, till one more strong,
Till a loftier lyre, till a rarer
Lute praise her better than I,
Be it witness before you, my song,
That I knew her, the world’s banner-bearer,
Who shall cry the republican
cry.
Yea, even she as at first,
Yea, she alone and none other,
Shall cast down, shall build up,
shall bring home;
Slake earth’s hunger and thirst,
Lighten, and lead as a mother;
First name of the world’s
names, Rome.
CONTENTS
SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE |
|
Prelude |
|
The Eve of Revolution |
|
A watch in the Night |
|
Super Flumina Babylonis |
|
The halt before Rome |
|
Mentana: First Anniversary |
|
Blessed among Women |
|
The Litany of Nations |
|
Hertha |
|
Before a crucifix |
|
Tenebræ |
|
Hymn of man |
|
The pilgrims |
|
Armand Barbès |
|
Quia Multum Amavit |
|
Genesis |
|
To Walt Whitman in America |
|
Christmas Antiphones |
|
A New Year’s Message |
|
Mater Dolorosa |
|
Mater Triumphalis |
|
A Marching Song |
|
Siena |
|
Cor Cordium |
|
In San Lorenzo |
|
Tiresias |
|
The Song of the Standard |
|
On the Downs |
|
Messidor |
|
Ode on the Insurrection in Candia |
|
“Non Dolet” |
|
Eurydice |
|
An Appeal |
|
Perinde ac Cadaver |
|
Monotones |
|
The Oblation |
|
A Year’s Burden |
|
Epilogue |
|
Notes |
|
PRELUDE
Between the green
bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time’s ears
Youth’s dreams hung singing, and Time’s truth
Was half not harsh in the ears of Youth.
Between the bud and the blown flower
Youth talked with joy and grief an hour,
With footless joy and wingless grief
And twin-born faith and disbelief
Who share the seasons to devour;
And long ere these made up their sheaf
Felt the winds round him shake and shower
The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,
Delight whose germ grew never grain,
And passion dyed in its own pain.
Then he stood up, and trod to dust
Fear and desire, mistrust and trust,
And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,
And bound for sandals on his feet
Knowledge
and patience of what must
And what things may be, in the heat
And cold of years that rot and rust
And alter; and his spirit’s meat
Was freedom, and his staff was wrought
Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought.
For what has he whose will sees clear
To do with doubt and faith and fear,
Swift hopes and slow despondencies?
His heart is equal with the sea’s
And with the sea-wind’s, and his ear
Is level to the speech of these,
And his soul communes and takes cheer
With the actual earth’s equalities,
Air, light, and night, hills, winds, and streams,
And seeks not strength from strengthless dreams.
His soul is even with the sun
Whose spirit and whose eye are one,
Who seeks not stars by day, nor light
And heavy heat of day by night.
Him can no God cast down, whom none
Can lift in hope beyond the height
Of fate and nature and things done
By the calm rule of might and right
That bids men be and bear and do,
And die beneath blind skies or blue.
To him the lights of even and morn
Speak no vain things of love or scorn,
Fancies and passions miscreate
By man in things dispassionate.
Nor holds he
fellowship forlorn
With souls that pray and hope and hate,
And doubt they had better not been born,
And fain would lure or scare off fate
And charm their doomsman from their doom
And make fear dig its own false tomb.
He builds not half of doubts and half
Of dreams his own soul’s cenotaph,
Whence hopes and fears with helpless eyes,
Wrapt loose in cast-off cerecloths, rise
And dance and wring their hands and laugh,
And weep thin tears and sigh light sighs,
And without living lips would quaff
The living spring in man that lies,
And drain his soul of faith and strength
It might have lived on a life’s length.
He hath given himself and hath not sold
To God for heaven or man for gold,
Or grief for comfort that it gives,
Or joy for grief’s restoratives.
He hath given himself to time, whose fold
Shuts in the mortal flock that lives
On its plain pasture’s heat and cold
And the equal year’s alternatives.
Earth, heaven, and time, death, life, and he,
Endure while they shall be to be.
“Yet between death and life are hours
To flush with love and hide in flowers;
What profit save in these?” men cry:
“Ah, see, between soft earth and sky,
What only
good things here are ours!”
They say, “what better wouldst thou try,
What sweeter sing of? or what powers
Serve, that will give thee ere thou die
More joy to sing and be less sad,
More heart to play and grow more glad?”
Play then and sing; we too have played,
We likewise, in that subtle shade.
We too have twisted through our hair
Such tendrils as the wild Loves wear,
And heard what mirth the Mænads made,
Till the wind blew our garlands bare
And left their roses disarrayed,
And smote the summer with strange air,
And disengirdled and discrowned
The limbs and locks that vine-wreaths bound.
We too have tracked by star-proof trees
The tempest of the Thyiades
Scare the loud night on hills that hid
The blood-feasts of the Bassarid,
Heard their song’s iron cadences
Fright the wolf hungering from the kid,
Outroar the lion-throated seas,
Outchide the north-wind if it chid,
And hush the torrent-tongued ravines
With thunders of their tambourines.
But the fierce flute whose notes acclaim
Dim goddesses of fiery fame,
Cymbal and clamorous kettledrum,
Timbrels and tabrets, all are dumb
That turned
the high chill air to flame;
The singing tongues of fire are numb
That called on Cotys by her name
Edonian, till they felt her come
And maddened, and her mystic face
Lightened along the streams of Thrace.
For Pleasure slumberless and pale,
And Passion with rejected veil,
Pass, and the tempest-footed throng
Of hours that follow them with song
Till their feet flag and voices fail,
And lips that were so loud so long
Learn silence, or a wearier wail;
So keen is change, and time so strong,
To weave the robes of life and rend
And weave again till life have end.
But weak is change, but strengthless time,
To take the light from heaven, or climb
The hills of heaven with wasting feet.
Songs they can stop that earth found meet,
But the stars keep their ageless rhyme;
Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet,
But the stars keep their spring sublime;
Passions and pleasures can defeat,
Actions and agonies control,
And life and death, but not the soul.
Because man’s soul is man’s God
still,
What wind soever waft his will
Across the waves of day and night
To port or shipwreck, left or right,
By shores
and shoals of good and ill;
And still its flame at mainmast height
Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill
Sustains the indomitable light
Whence only man hath strength to steer
Or helm to handle without fear.
Save his own soul’s light overhead,
None leads him, and none ever led,
Across birth’s hidden harbour-bar,
Past youth where shoreward shallows are,
Through age that drives on toward the red
Vast void of sunset hailed from far,
To the equal waters of the dead;
Save his own soul he hath no star,
And sinks, except his own soul guide,
Helmless in middle turn of tide.
No blast of air or fire of sun
Puts out the light whereby we run
With girded loins our lamplit race,
And each from each takes heart of grace
And spirit till his turn be done,
And light of face from each man’s face
In whom the light of trust is one;
Since only souls that keep their place
By their own light, and watch things roll,
And stand, have light for any soul.
A little time we gain from time
To set our seasons in some chime,
For harsh or sweet or loud or low,
With seasons played out long ago
And souls
that in their time and prime
Took part with summer or with snow,
Lived abject lives out or sublime,
And had their chance of seed to sow
For service or disservice done
To those days daed and this their son.
A little time that we may fill
Or with such good works or such ill
As loose the bonds or make them strong
Wherein all manhood suffers wrong.
By rose-hung river and light-foot rill
There are who rest not; who think long
Till they discern as from a hill
At the sun’s hour of morning song,
Known of souls only, and those souls free,
The sacred spaces of the sea.
THE EVE OF REVOLUTION
1
The trumpets of the
four winds of the world
From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night
heaves,
With breasts palpitating and wings refurled,
With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves
Sleeping, and in her sleep she sees uncurled
Dreams serpent-shapen, such as sickness weaves,
Down the wild wind of vision caught and whirled,
Dead leaves of sleep, thicker than autumn leaves,
Shadows of
storm-shaped things,
Flights of dim
tribes of kings,
The reaping men that reap men for their sheaves,
And, without
grain to yield,
Their
scythe-swept harvest-field
Thronged thick with men pursuing and fugitives,
Dead foliage of the tree of
sleep,
Leaves blood-coloured and golden, blown from deep to deep.
2
I hear the midnight on the mountains cry
With many tongues of thunders, and I hear
Sound and resound the hollow shield of sky
With trumpet-throated winds that charge and
cheer,
And
through the roar of the hours that fighting fly,
Through flight and fight and all the fluctuant
fear,
A sound sublimer than the heavens are high,
A voice more instant than the winds are clear,
Say to my
spirit, “Take
Thy trumpet too,
and make
A rallying music in the void night’s ear,
Till the storm
lose its track,
And all the
night go back;
Till, as through sleep false life knows true life
near,
Thou know the morning through the
night,
And through the thunder silence, and through darkness
light.”
3
I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The height of night is shaken, the skies break,
The winds and stars and waters come and go
By fits of breath and light and sound, that wake
As out of sleep, and perish as the show
Built up of sleep, when all her strengths forsake
The sense-compelling spirit; the depths glow,
The heights flash, and the roots and summits
shake
Of earth in all
her mountains,
And the inner
foamless fountains
And wellsprings of her fast-bound forces quake;
Yea, the whole
air of life
Is set on fire
of strife,
Till change unmake things made and love remake;
Reason and love, whose names are
one,
Seeing reason is the sunlight shed from love the sun.
4
The night is broken eastward; is it day,
Or but the watchfires trembling here and there,
Like hopes on memory’s devastated way,
In moonless wastes of planet-stricken air?
O many-childed mother great and grey,
O multitudinous bosom, and breasts that bare
Our fathers’ generations, whereat lay
The weanling peoples and the tribes that were,
Whose new-born
mouths long dead
Those ninefold
nipples fed,
Dim face with deathless eyes and withered hair,
Fostress of
obscure lands,
Whose
multiplying hands
Wove the world’s web with divers races fair
And cast it waif-wise on the
stream,
The waters of the centuries, where thou sat’st to
dream;
5
O many-minded mother and visionary,
Asia, that sawest their westering waters sweep
With all the ships and spoils of time to carry
And all the fears and hopes of life to keep,
Thy vesture wrought of ages legendary
Hides usward thine impenetrable sleep,
And thy veiled head, night’s oldest tributary,
We know not if it speak or smile or weep.
But where for us
began
The first live
light of man
And first-born fire of deeds to burn and leap,
The first war
fair as peace
To shine and
lighten Greece,
And the first freedom moved upon the deep,
God’s breath upon the face
of time
Moving, a present spirit, seen of men sublime;
6
There where our east looks always to thy
west,
Our mornings to thine evenings, Greece to thee,
These lights that catch the mountains crest by crest,
Are they of stars or beacons that we see?
Taygetus takes here the winds abreast,
And there the sun resumes Thermopylæ;
The light is Athens where those remnants rest,
And Salamis the sea-wall of that sea.
The grass men
tread upon
Is very
Marathon,
The leaves are of that time-unstricken tree
That storm nor
sun can fret
Nor wind, since
she that set
Made it her sign to men whose shield was she;
Here, as dead time his deathless
things,
Eurotas and Cephisus keep their sleepless springs.
7
O hills of Crete, are these things dead?
O waves,
O many-mouthed streams, are these springs dry?
Earth, dost thou feed and hide now none but slaves?
Heaven, hast thou heard of men that would not
die?
Is the
land thick with only such men’s graves
As were ashamed to look upon the sky?
Ye dead, whose name outfaces and outbraves
Death, is the seed of such as you gone by?
Sea, have thy
ports not heard
Some Marathonian
word
Rise up to landward and to Godward fly?
No thunder, that
the skies
Sent not upon
us, rise
With fire and earthquake and a cleaving cry?
Nay, light is here, and shall be
light,
Though all the face of the hour be overborne with night.
8
I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The night is broken northward; the pale plains
And footless fields of sun-forgotten snow
Feel through their creviced lips and iron veins
Such quick breath labour and such clean blood flow
As summer-stricken spring feels in her pains
When dying May bears June, too young to know
The fruit that waxes from the flower that wanes;
Strange
tyrannies and vast,
Tribes
frost-bound to their past,
Lands that are loud all through their length with
chains,
Wastes where the
wind’s wings break,
Displumed by
daylong ache
And anguish of blind snows and rack-blown rains,
And ice that seals the White
Sea’s lips,
Whose monstrous weights crush flat the sides of shrieking
ships;
9
Horrible sights and sounds of the unreached
pole,
And shrill fierce climes of inconsolable air,
Shining below the beamless aureole
That hangs about the north-wind’s hurtling
hair,
A comet-lighted lamp, sublime and sole
Dawn of the dayless heaven where suns despair;
Earth, skies, and waters, smitten into soul,
Feel the hard veil that iron centuries wear
Rent as with
hands in sunder,
Such hands as
make the thunder
And clothe with form all substance and strip
bare;
Shapes, shadows,
sounds and lights
Of their dead
days and nights
Take soul of life too keen for death to bear;
Life, conscience, forethought,
will, desire,
Flood men’s inanimate eyes and dry-drawn hearts with
fire.
10
Light, light, and light! to break and melt in
sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,
Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;
The hands are mighty, were the head not blind.
Priest is the
staff of king,
And chains and
clouds one thing,
And fettered flesh with devastated mind.
Open thy soul to
see,
Slave, and thy
feet are free;
Thy bonds and thy beliefs are one in kind,
And of thy fears thine irons
wrought
Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought.
11
O soul, O God, O glory of liberty,
To night and day their lightning and their light!
With heat of heart thou kindlest the quick sea,
And the dead earth takes spirit from thy sight;
The natural body of things is warm with thee,
And the world’s weakness parcel of thy
might;
Thou seest us feeble and forceless, fit to be
Slaves of the years that drive us left and right,
Drowned under
hours like waves
Wherethrough we
row like slaves;
But if thy finger touch us, these take flight.
If but one
sovereign word
Of thy live lips
be heard,
What man shall stop us, and what God shall smite?
Do thou but look in our dead
eyes,
They are stars that light each other till thy sundawn rise.
12
Thou art the eye of this blind body of man,
The tongue of this dumb people; shalt thou not
See, shalt thou speak not for them?
Time is wan And hope is weak with waiting, and swift
thought
Hath lost the wings at heel wherewith he ran,
And on the red pit’s edge sits down
distraught
To talk with death of days republican
And dreams and fights long since dreamt out and
fought;
Of the last
hope that drew
To that red edge
anew
The firewhite faith of Poland without spot;
Of the blind
Russian might,
And fire that is
not light;
Of the green Rhineland where thy spirit wrought;
But though time, hope, and memory
tire,
Canst thou wax dark as they do, thou whose light is fire?
13
I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The night is broken westward; the wide sea
That makes immortal motion to and fro
From world’s end unto world’s end, and
shall be
When nought now grafted of men’s hands shall grow
And as the weed in last year’s waves are we
Or spray the sea-wind shook a year ago
From its sharp tresses down the storm to lee,
The moving god
that hides
Time in its
timeless tides
Wherein time dead seems live eternity,
That breaks and
makes again
Much mightier
things than men,
Doth it not hear change coming, or not see?
Are the deeps deaf and dead and
blind,
To catch no light or sound from landward of mankind?
14
O thou, clothed round with raiment of white
waves,
Thy brave brows lightening through the grey wet
air,
Thou, lulled with sea-sounds of a thousand caves,
And lit with sea-shine to thine inland lair,
Whose
freedom clothed the naked souls of slaves
And stripped the muffled souls of tyrants bare,
O, by the centuries of thy glorious graves,
By the live light of the earth that was thy care,
Live, thou must
not be dead,
Live; let thine
armèd head
Lift itself up to sunward and the fair
Daylight of time
and man,
Thine head
republican,
With the same splendour on thine helmless hair
That in his eyes kept up a
light
Who on thy glory gazed away their sacred sight;
15
Who loved and looked their sense to death on
thee;
Who taught thy lips imperishable things,
And in thine ears outsang thy singing sea;
Who made thy foot firm on the necks of kings
And thy soul somewhile steadfast—woe are we
It was but for a while, and all the strings
Were broken of thy spirit; yet had he
Set to such tunes and clothed it with such wings
It seemed for
his sole sake
Impossible to
break,
And woundless of the worm that waits and stings,
The
golden-headed worm
Made headless
for a term,
The king-snake whose life kindles with the
spring’s,
To breathe his soul upon her
bloom,
And while she marks not turn her temple to her tomb.
16
By those eyes blinded and that heavenly head
And the secluded soul adorable,
O Milton’s land, what ails thee to be dead?
Thine ears are yet sonorous with his shell
That all the songs of all thy sea-line fed
With motive sound of spring-tides at mid swell,
And through thine heart his thought as blood is shed,
Requickening thee with wisdom to do well;
Such sons were
of thy womb,
England, for
love of whom
Thy name is not yet writ with theirs that fell,
But, till thou
quite forget
What were thy
children, yet
On the pale lips of hope is as a spell;
And Shelley’s heart and
Landor’s mind
Lit thee with latter watch-fires; why wilt thou be blind?
17
Though all were else indifferent, all that
live
Spiritless shapes of nations; though time wait
In vain on hope till these have help to give,
And faith and love crawl famished from the gate;
Canst thou sit shamed and self-contemplative
With soulless eyes on thy secluded fate?
Though time forgive them, thee shall he forgive,
Whose choice was in thine hand to be so great?
Who cast out of
thy mind
The passion of
man’s kind,
And made thee and thine old name separate?
Now when time
looks to see
New names and
old and thee
Build up our one Republic state by state,
England with France, and France
with Spain,
And Spain with sovereign Italy strike hands and reign.
18
O known and unknown fountain-heads that fill
Our dear life-springs of England! O bright
race
Of streams and waters that bear witness still
To the earth her sons were made of! O fair
face
Of England, watched of eyes death cannot kill,
How should the soul that lit you for a space
Fall through sick weakness of a broken will
To the dead cold damnation of disgrace?
Such wind of
memory stirs
On all green
hills of hers,
Such breath of record from so high a place,
From years whose
tongues of flame
Prophesied in
her name
Her feet should keep truth’s bright and
burning trace,
We needs must have her heart with
us,
Whose hearts are one with man’s; she must be dead or
thus.
19
Who is against us? who is on our side?
Whose heart of all men’s hearts is one with
man’s?
Where art thou that wast prophetess and bride,
When truth and thou trod under time and chance?
What latter light of what new hope shall guide
Out of the snares of hell thy feet, O France?
What heel
shall bruise these heads that hiss and glide,
What wind blow out these fen-born fires that
dance
Before thee to
thy death?
No light, no
life, no breath,
From thy dead eyes and lips shall take the
trance,
Till on that
deadliest crime
Reddening the
feet of time
Who treads through blood and passes, time shall
glance
Pardon, and Italy forgive,
And Rome arise up whom thou slewest, and bid thee live.
20
I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The night is broken southward; the springs run,
The daysprings and the watersprings that flow
Forth with one will from where their source was
one,
Out of the might of morning: high and low,
The hungering hills feed full upon the sun,
The thirsting valleys drink of him and glow
As a heart burns with some divine thing done,
Or as blood
burns again
In the bruised
heart of Spain,
A rose renewed with red new life begun,
Dragged down
with thorns and briers,
That puts forth
buds like fires
Till the whole tree take flower in unison,
And prince that clogs and priest
that clings
Be cast as weeds upon the dunghill of dead things.
21
Ah heaven, bow down, be nearer! This is
she,
Italia, the world’s wonder, the world’s
care,
Free in her heart ere quite her hands be free,
And lovelier than her loveliest robe of air.
The earth hath voice, and speech is in the sea,
Sounds of great joy, too beautiful to bear;
All things are glad because of her, but we
Most glad, who loved her when the worst days
were.
O sweetest,
fairest, first,
O flower, when
times were worst,
Thou hadst no stripe wherein we had no share.
Have not our
hearts held close,
Kept fast the
whole world’s rose?
Have we not worn thee at heart whom none would
wear?
First love and last love, light of
lands,
Shall we not touch thee full-blown with our lips and hands?
22
O too much loved, what shall we say of thee?
What shall we make of our heart’s burning
fire,
The passion in our lives that fain would be
Made each a brand to pile into the pyre
That shall burn up thy foemen, and set free
The flame whence thy sun-shadowing wings aspire?
Love of our life, what more than men are we,
That this our breath for thy sake should expire,
For whom to
joyous death
Glad gods might
yield their breath,
Great gods drop down from heaven to serve for hire?
We are but men,
are we,
And thou art
Italy;
What shall we do for thee with our desire?
What gift shall we deserve to
give?
How shall we die to do thee service, or how live?
23
The very thought in us how much we love thee
Makes the throat sob with love and blinds the
eyes.
How should love bear thee, to behold above thee
His own light burning from reverberate skies?
They give thee light, but the light given them of thee
Makes faint the wheeling fires that fall and
rise.
What love, what life, what death of man’s should move
thee,
What face that lingers or what foot that flies?
It is not heaven
that lights
Thee with such
days and nights,
But thou that heaven is lit from in such wise.
O thou her
dearest birth,
Turn thee to lighten earth,
Earth too that bore thee and yearns to thee and
cries;
Stand up, shine, lighten, become flame,
Till as the sun’s name through all nations be thy name.
24
I take the trumpet from my lips and sing.
O life immeasurable and imminent love,
And fear like winter leading hope like spring,
Whose flower-bright brows the day-star sits
above,
Whose hand
unweariable and untiring wing
Strike music from a world that wailed and strove,
Each bright soul born and every glorious thing,
From very freedom to man’s joy thereof,
O time, O change
and death,
Whose now not hateful breath
But gives the music swifter feet to move
Through sharp remeasuring tones
Of refluent
antiphones
More tender-tuned than heart or throat of dove,
Soul into soul, song into song,
Life changing into life, by laws that work not wrong;
25
O natural force in spirit and sense, that
art
One thing in all things, fruit of thine own
fruit,
O thought illimitable and infinite heart
Whose blood is life in limbs indissolute
That still keeps hurtless thine invisible part
And inextirpable thy viewless root
Whence all sweet shafts of green and each thy dart
Of sharpening leaf and bud resundering shoot;
Hills that the
day-star hails,
Heights that the
first beam scales,
And heights that souls outshining suns salute,
Valleys for each
mouth born
Free now of
plenteous corn,
Waters and woodlands’ musical or mute;
Free winds that brighten brows as
free,
And thunder and laughter and lightning of the sovereign sea;
26
Rivers and springs, and storms that seek your
prey;
With strong wings ravening through the skies by
night;
Spirits and stars that hold one choral way;
O light of heaven, and thou the heavenlier light
Aflame above the souls of men that sway
All generations of all years with might;
O sunrise of the repossessing day,
And sunrise of all-renovating right;
And thou, whose
trackless foot
Mocks
hope’s or fear’s pursuit,
Swift Revolution, changing depth with height;
And thou, whose
mouth makes one
All songs that
seek the sun,
Serene Republic of a world made white;
Thou, Freedom, whence the soul’s springs
ran;
Praise earth for man’s sake living, and for earth’s
sake man.
27
Make yourselves wings, O tarrying feet of
fate,
And hidden hour that hast our hope to bear,
A child-god, through the morning-coloured gate
That lets love in upon the golden air,
Dead on whose threshold lies heart-broken hate,
Dead discord, dead injustice, dead despair;
O love long looked for, wherefore wilt thou wait,
And shew not yet the dawn on thy bright hair.
Not yet thine
hand released
Refreshing the
faint east,
Thine hand reconquering heaven, to seat man there?
Come forth, be
born and live,
Thou that hast
help to give
And light to make man’s day of manhood
fair:
With flight outflying the
spherèd sun,
Hasten thine hour and halt not, till thy work be done.
A WATCH IN THE NIGHT
1
Watchman, what of
the night?—
Storm and thunder and rain,
Lights that waver and wane,
Leaving the watchfires unlit.
Only the balefires are bright,
And the flash of the lamps now and then
From a palace where spoilers sit,
Trampling the children of men.
2
Prophet, what of the night?—
I stand by the verge of the sea,
Banished, uncomforted, free,
Hearing the noise of the waves
And sudden flashes that smite
Some man’s tyrannous head,
Thundering, heard among graves
That hide the hosts of his dead.
3
Mourners, what of the night?—
All night through without sleep
We weep, and we weep, and we weep.
Who shall give us our sons?
Beaks of raven and kite,
Mouths of wolf and of hound,
Give us them back whom the guns
Shot for you dead on the ground.
4
Dead men, what of the night?—
Cannon and scaffold and sword,
Horror of gibbet and cord,
Mowed us as sheaves for the grave,
Mowed us down for the right.
We do not grudge or repent.
Freely to freedom we gave
Pledges, till life should be spent.
5
Statesman, what of the night?—
The night will last me my time.
The gold on a crown or a crime
Looks well enough yet by the lamps.
Have we not fingers to write,
Lips to swear at a need?
Then, when danger decamps,
Bury the word with the deed.
6
Warrior, what of the night?—
Whether it be not or be
Night, is as one thing to me.
I for one, at the least,
Ask not of dews if they blight,
Ask not of flames if they slay,
Ask not of prince or of priest
How long ere we put them away.
7
Master, what of the night?—
Child, night is not at all
Anywhere, fallen or to fall,
Save in our star-stricken eyes.
Forth of our eyes it takes flight,
Look we but once nor before
Nor behind us, but straight on the skies;
Night is not then any more.
8
Exile, what of the night?—
The tides and the hours run out,
The seasons of death and of doubt,
The night-watches bitter and sore.
In the quicksands leftward and right
My feet sink down under me;
But I know the scents of the shore
And the broad blown breaths of the sea.
9
Captives, what of the night?—
It rains outside overhead
Always, a rain that is red,
And our faces are soiled with the rain.
Here in the seasons’ despite
Day-time and night-time are one,
Till the curse of the kings and the chain
Break, and their toils be undone.
10
Christian, what of the night?—
I cannot tell; I am blind.
I halt and hearken behind
If haply the hours will go back
And return to the dear dead light,
To the watchfires and stars that of old
Shone where the sky now is black,
Glowed where the earth now is cold.
11
High priest, what of the night?—
The night is horrible here
With haggard faces and fear,
Blood, and the burning of fire.
Mine eyes are emptied of sight,
Mine hands are full of the dust.
If the God of my faith be a liar,
Who is it that I shall trust?
12
Princes, what of the night?—
Night with pestilent breath
Feeds us, children of death,
Clothes us close with her gloom.
Rapine and famine and fright
Crouch at our feet and are fed.
Earth where we pass is a tomb,
Life where we triumph is dead.
13
Martyrs, what of the night?—
Nay, is it night with you yet?
We, for our part, we forget
What night was, if it were.
The loud red mouths of the fight
Are silent and shut where we are.
In our eyes the tempestuous air
Shines as the face of a star.
14
England, what of the night?—
Night is for slumber and sleep,
Warm, no season to weep.
Let me alone till the day.
Sleep would I still if I might,
Who have slept for two hundred years.
Once I had honour, they say;
But slumber is sweeter than tears.
15
France, what of the night?—
Night is the prostitute’s noon,
Kissed and drugged till she swoon,
Spat upon, trod upon, whored.
With bloodred rose-garlands dight,
Round me reels in the dance
Death, my saviour, my lord,
Crowned; there is no more France.
16
Italy, what of the night?—
Ah, child, child, it is long!
Moonbeam and starbeam and song
Leave it dumb now and dark.
Yet I perceive on the height
Eastward, not now very far,
A song too loud for the lark,
A light too strong for a star.
17
Germany, what of the night?—
Long has it lulled me with dreams;
Now at midwatch, as it seems,
Light is brought back to mine eyes,
And the mastery of old and the might
Lives in the joints of mine hands,
Steadies my limbs as they rise,
Strengthens my foot as it stands.
18
Europe, what of the night?—
Ask of heaven, and the sea,
And my babes on the bosom of me,
Nations of mine, but ungrown.
There is one who shall surely requite
All that endure or that err:
She can answer alone:
Ask not of me, but of her.
19
Liberty, what of the night?—
I feel not the red rains fall,
Hear not the tempest at all,
Nor thunder in heaven any more.
All the distance is white
With the soundless feet of the sun.
Night, with the woes that it wore,
Night is over and done.
SUPER FLUMINA BABYLONIS
By the waters of
Babylon we sat down and wept,
Remembering thee,
That for ages of agony hast endured, and slept,
And wouldst not see.
By the waters of Babylon we stood up and
sang,
Considering thee,
That a blast of deliverance in the darkness rang,
To set thee free.
And with trumpets and thunderings and with
morning song
Came up the light;
And thy spirit uplifted thee to forget thy wrong
As day doth night.
And thy sons were dejected not any more, as
then
When thou wast shamed;
When thy lovers went heavily without heart, as men
Whose life was maimed.
In the desolate distances, with a great
desire,
For thy love’s sake,
With our hearts going back to thee, they were filled with
fire,
Were nigh to break.
It was said to us: “Verily ye are great of
heart,
But ye shall bend;
Ye are bondmen and bondwomen, to be scourged and smart,
To toil and tend.”
And with harrows men harrowed us, and subdued
with spears,
And crushed with shame;
And the summer and winter was, and the length of years,
And no change came.
By the rivers of Italy, by the sacred
streams,
By town, by tower,
There was feasting with revelling, there was sleep with
dreams,
Until thine hour.
And they slept and they rioted on their
rose-hung beds,
With mouths on flame,
And with love-locks vine-chapleted, and with rose-crowned
heads
And robes of shame.
And they knew not their forefathers, nor the
hills and streams
And words of power,
Nor the gods that were good to them, but with songs and dreams
Filled up their hour.
By the rivers of Italy, by the dry streams’
beds,
When thy time came,
There was casting of crowns from them, from their young
men’s heads,
The crowns of shame.
By the horn of Eridanus, by the Tiber mouth,
As thy day rose,
They arose up and girded them to the north and south,
By seas, by snows.
As a water in January the frost confines,
Thy kings bound thee;
As a water in April is, in the new-blown vines,
Thy sons made free.
And thy lovers that looked for thee, and that
mourned from far,
For thy sake dead,
We rejoiced in the light of thee, in the signal star
Above thine head.
In thy grief had we followed thee, in thy
passion loved,
Loved in thy loss;
In thy shame we stood fast to thee, with thy pangs were moved,
Clung to thy cross.
By the hillside of Calvary we beheld thy
blood,
Thy bloodred tears,
As a mother’s in bitterness, an unebbing flood,
Years upon years.
And the north was Gethsemane, without leaf or bloom,
A garden sealed;
And the south was Aceldama, for a sanguine fume
Hid all the field.
By the stone of the sepulchre we returned to
weep,
From far, from prison;
And the guards by it keeping it we beheld asleep,
But thou wast risen.
And an angel’s similitude by the unsealed
grave,
And by the stone:
And the voice was angelical, to whose words God gave
Strength like his own.
“Lo, the graveclothes of Italy that are
folded up
In the grave’s gloom!
And the guards as men wrought upon with a charmèd cup,
By the open tomb.
“And her body most beautiful, and her
shining head,
These are not here;
For your mother, for Italy, is not surely dead:
Have ye no fear.
“As of old time she spake to you, and you
hardly heard,
Hardly took heed,
So now also she saith to you, yet another word,
Who is risen indeed.
“By my saying she saith to you, in your ears she
saith,
Who hear these things,
Put no trust in men’s royalties, nor in great men’s
breath,
Nor words of kings.
“For the life of them vanishes and is no
more seen,
Nor no more known;
Nor shall any remember him if a crown hath been,
Or where a throne.
“Unto each man his handiwork, unto each
his crown,
The just Fate gives;
Whoso takes the world’s life on him and his own lays
down,
He, dying so, lives.
“Whoso bears the whole heaviness of the
wronged world’s weight
And puts it by,
It is well with him suffering, though he face man’s
fate;
How should he die?
“Seeing death has no part in him any
more, no power
Upon his head;
He has bought his eternity with a little hour,
And is not dead.
“For an hour, if ye look for him, he is
no more found,
For one hour’s space;
Then ye lift up your eyes to him and behold him crowned,
A deathless face.
“On the mountains of memory, by the world’s
wellsprings,
In all men’s eyes,
Where the light of the life of him is on all past things,
Death only dies.
“Not the light that was quenched for us,
nor the deeds that were,
Nor the ancient days,
Nor the sorrows not sorrowful, nor the face most fair
Of perfect praise.”
So the angel of Italy’s resurrection
said,
So yet he saith;
So the son of her suffering, that from breasts nigh dead
Drew life, not death.
That the pavement of Golgotha should be white
as snow,
Not red, but white;
That the waters of Babylon should no longer flow,
And men see light.