HYMN OF MAN
(During the Session in Rome of the Ecumenical Council)
In the grey
beginning of years, in the twilight of things that began,
The word of the earth in the ears of the world, was it God? was
it man?
The word of the earth to the spheres her sisters, the note of her
song,
The sound of her speech in the ears of the starry and sisterly
throng,
Was it praise or passion or prayer, was it love or devotion or
dread,
When the veils of the shining air first wrapt her jubilant
head?
When her eyes new-born of the night saw yet no star out of
reach;
When her maiden mouth was alight with the flame of musical
speech;
When her virgin feet were set on the terrible heavenly way,
And her virginal lids were wet with the dew of the birth of the
day:
Eyes that had looked not on time, and ears that had heard not of
death;
Lips that had learnt not the rhyme of change and passionate
breath,
The
rhythmic anguish of growth, and the motion of mutable things,
Of love that longs and is loth, and plume-plucked hope without
wings,
Passions and pains without number, and life that runs and is
lame,
From slumber again to slumber, the same race set for the same,
Where the runners outwear each other, but running with lampless
hands
No man takes light from his brother till blind at the goal he
stands:
Ah, did they know, did they dream of it, counting the cost and
the worth?
The ways of her days, did they seem then good to the new-souled
earth?
Did her heart rejoice, and the might of her spirit exult in her
then,
Child yet no child of the night, and motherless mother of men?
Was it Love brake forth flower-fashion, a bird with gold on his
wings,
Lovely, her firstborn passion, and impulse of firstborn
things?
Was Love that nestling indeed that under the plumes of the
night
Was hatched and hidden as seed in the furrow, and brought forth
bright?
Was it Love lay shut in the shell world-shaped, having over him
there
Black world-wide wings that impel the might of the night through
air?
And bursting his shell as a bird, night shook through her
sail-stretched vans,
And her
heart as a water was stirred, and its heat was the firstborn
man’s.
For the waste of the dead void air took form of a world at
birth,
And the waters and firmaments were, and light, and the
life-giving earth.
The beautiful bird unbegotten that night brought forth without
pain
In the fathomless years forgotten whereover the dead gods
reign,
Was it love, life, godhead, or fate? we say the spirit is one
That moved on the dark to create out of darkness the stars and
the sun.
Before the growth was the grower, and the seed ere the plant was
sown;
But what was seed of the sower? and the grain of him, whence was
it grown?
Foot after foot ye go back and travail and make yourselves
mad;
Blind feet that feel for the track where highway is none to be
had.
Therefore the God that ye make you is grievous, and gives not
aid,
Because it is but for your sake that the God of your making is
made.
Thou and I and he are not gods made men for a span,
But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is
man.
Our lives are as pulses or pores of his manifold body and
breath;
As waves of his sea on the shores where birth is the beacon of
death.
We men,
the multiform features of man, whatsoever we be,
Recreate him of whom we are creatures, and all we only are he.
Not each man of all men is God, but God is the fruit of the
whole;
Indivisible spirit and blood, indiscernible body from soul.
Not men’s but man’s is the glory of godhead, the
kingdom of time,
The mountainous ages made hoary with snows for the spirit to
climb.
A God with the world inwound whose clay to his footsole
clings;
A manifold God fast-bound as with iron of adverse things.
A soul that labours and lives, an emotion, a strenuous breath,
From the flame that its own mouth gives reillumed, and refreshed
with death.
In the sea whereof centuries are waves the live God plunges and
swims;
His bed is in all men’s graves, but the worm hath not hold
on his limbs.
Night puts out not his eyes, nor time sheds change on his
head;
With such fire as the stars of the skies are the roots of his
heart are fed.
Men are the thoughts passing through it, the veins that fulfil it
with blood,
With spirit of sense to renew it as springs fulfilling a
flood.
Men are the heartbeats of man, the plumes that feather his
wings,
Storm-worn, since being began, with the wind and thunder
of things.
Things are cruel and blind; their strength detains and
deforms:
And the wearying wings of the mind still beat up the stream of
their storms.
Still, as one swimming up stream, they strike out blind in the
blast,
In thunders of vision and dream, and lightnings of future and
past.
We are baffled and caught in the current and bruised upon edges
of shoals;
As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the wind-shaken
souls.
Spirit by spirit goes under, a foam-bell’s bubble of
breath,
That blows and opens in sunder and blurs not the mirror of
death.
For a worm or a thorn in his path is a man’s soul quenched
as a flame;
For his lust of an hour or his wrath shall the worm and the man
be the same.
O God sore stricken of things! they have wrought him a raiment of
pain;
Can a God shut eyelids and wings at a touch on the nerves of the
brain?
O shamed and sorrowful God, whose force goes out at a blow!
What world shall shake at his nod? at his coming what wilderness
glow?
What help in the work of his hands? what light in the track of
his feet?
His days are snowflakes or sands, with cold to consume him and
heat.
He is
servant with Change for lord, and for wages he hath to his
hire
Folly and force, and a sword that devours, and a ravening
fire.
From the bed of his birth to his grave he is driven as a wind at
their will;
Lest Change bow down as his slave, and the storm and the sword be
still;
Lest earth spread open her wings to the sunward, and sing with
the spheres;
Lest man be master of things, to prevail on their forces and
fears.
By the spirit are things overcome; they are stark, and the spirit
hath breath;
It hath speech, and their forces are dumb; it is living, and
things are of death.
But they know not the spirit for master, they feel not force from
above,
While man makes love to disaster, and woos desolation with
love.
Yea, himself too hath made himself chains, and his own hands
plucked out his eyes;
For his own soul only constrains him, his own mouth only
denies.
The herds of kings and their hosts and the flocks of the high
priests bow
To a master whose face is a ghost’s; O thou that wast God,
is it thou?
Thou madest man in the garden; thou temptedst man, and he
fell;
Thou gavest him poison and pardon for blood and burnt-offering to
sell.
Thou hast sealed thine elect to salvation, fast locked with faith
for the key;
Make now
for thyself expiation, and be thine atonement for thee.
Ah, thou that darkenest heaven—ah, thou that bringest a
sword—
By the crimes of thine hands unforgiven they beseech thee to hear
them, O Lord.
By the balefires of ages that burn for thine incense, by creed
and by rood,
By the famine and passion that yearn and that hunger to find of
thee food,
By the children that asked at thy throne of the priests that were
fat with thine hire
For bread, and thou gavest a stone; for light, and thou madest
them fire;
By the kiss of thy peace like a snake’s kiss, that leaves
the soul rotten at root;
By the savours of gibbets and stakes thou hast planted to bear to
thee fruit;
By torture and terror and treason, that make to thee weapons and
wings;
By thy power upon men for a season, made out of the malice of
things;
O thou that hast built thee a shrine of the madness of man and
his shame,
And hast hung in the midst for a sign of his worship the lamp of
thy name;
That hast shown him for heaven in a vision a void world’s
shadow and shell,
And hast fed thy delight and derision with fire of belief as of
hell;
That hast fleshed on the souls that believe thee the fang of the
death-worm fear,
With anguish of dreams to deceive them whose faith cries out in
thine ear;
By the
face of the spirit confounded before thee and humbled in dust,
By the dread wherewith life was astounded and shamed out of sense
of its trust,
By the scourges of doubt and repentance that fell on the soul at
thy nod,
Thou art judged, O judge, and the sentence is gone forth against
thee, O God.
Thy slave that slept is awake; thy slave but slept for a span;
Yea, man thy slave shall unmake thee, who made thee lord over
man.
For his face is set to the east, his feet on the past and its
dead;
The sun rearisen is his priest, and the heat thereof hallows his
head.
His eyes take part in the morning; his spirit out-sounding the
sea
Asks no more witness or warning from temple or tripod or tree.
He hath set the centuries at union; the night is afraid at his
name;
Equal with life, in communion with death, he hath found them the
same.
Past the wall unsurmounted that bars out our vision with iron and
fire
He hath sent forth his soul for the stars to comply with and suns
to conspire.
His thought takes flight for the centre wherethrough it hath part
in the whole;
The abysses forbid it not enter: the stars make room for the
soul.
Space is the soul’s to inherit; the night is hers as the
day;
Lo,
saith man, this is my spirit; how shall not the worlds make
way?
Space is thought’s, and the wonders thereof, and the secret
of space;
Is thought not more than the thunders and lightnings? shall
thought give place?
Is the body not more than the vesture, the life not more than the
meat?
The will than the word or the gesture, the heart than the hands
or the feet?
Is the tongue not more than the speech is? the head not more than
the crown?
And if higher than is heaven be the reach of the soul, shall not
heaven bow down?
Time, father of life, and more great than the life it begat and
began,
Earth’s keeper and heaven’s and their fate, lives,
thinks, and hath substance in man.
Time’s motion that throbs in his blood is the thought that
gives heart to the skies,
And the springs of the fire that is food to the sunbeams are
light to his eyes.
The minutes that beat with his heart are the words to which
worlds keep chime,
And the thought in his pulses is part of the blood and the spirit
of time.
He saith to the ages, Give; and his soul foregoes not her
share;
Who are ye that forbid him to live, and would feed him with
heavenlier air?
Will ye feed him with poisonous dust, and restore him with
hemlock for drink,
Till he yield you his soul up in trust, and have heart not to
know or to think?
He hath
stirred him, and found out the flaw in his fetters, and cast them
behind;
His soul to his soul is a law, and his mind is a light to his
mind.
The seal of his knowledge is sure, the truth and his spirit are
wed;
Men perish, but man shall endure; lives die, but the life is not
dead.
He hath sight of the secrets of season, the roots of the years
and the fruits;
His soul is at one with the reason of things that is sap to the
roots.
He can hear in their changes a sound as the conscience of
consonant spheres;
He can see through the years flowing round him the law lying
under the years.
Who are ye that would bind him with curses and blind him with
vapour of prayer?
Your might is as night that disperses when light is alive in the
air.
The bow of your godhead is broken, the arm of your conquest is
stayed;
Though ye call down God to bear token, for fear of you none is
afraid.
Will ye turn back times, and the courses of stars, and the season
of souls?
Shall God’s breath dry up the sources that feed time full
as it rolls?
Nay, cry on him then till he show you a sign, till he lift up a
rod;
Hath he made not the nations to know him of old if indeed he be
God?
Is no heat of him left in the ashes of thousands burnt up for his
sake?
Can
prayer not rekindle the flashes that shone in his face from the
stake?
Cry aloud; for your God is a God and a Saviour; cry, make
yourselves lean;
Is he drunk or asleep, that the rod of his wrath is unfelt and
unseen?
Is the fire of his old loving-kindness gone out, that his pyres
are acold?
Hath he gazed on himself unto blindness, who made men blind to
behold?
Cry out, for his kingdom is shaken; cry out, for the people
blaspheme;
Cry aloud till his godhead awaken; what doth he to sleep and to
dream?
Cry, cut yourselves, gash you with knives and with scourges, heap
on to you dust;
Is his life but as other gods’ lives? is not this the Lord
God of your trust?
Is not this the great God of your sires, that with souls and with
bodies was fed,
And the world was on flame with his fires? O fools, he was
God, and is dead.
He will hear not again the strong crying of earth in his ears as
before,
And the fume of his multitudes dying shall flatter his nostrils
no more.
By the spirit he ruled as his slave is he slain who was mighty to
slay,
And the stone that is sealed on his grave he shall rise not and
roll not away.
Yea, weep to him, lift up your hands; be your eyes as a fountain
of tears;
Where he stood there is nothing that stands; if he call, there is
no man that hears.
He hath
doffed his king’s raiment of lies now the wane of his
kingdom is come;
Ears hath he, and hears not; and eyes, and he sees not; and
mouth, and is dumb.
His red king’s raiment is ripped from him naked, his staff
broken down;
And the signs of his empire are stripped from him shuddering; and
where is his crown?
And in vain by the wellsprings refrozen ye cry for the warmth of
his sun—
O God, the Lord God of thy chosen, thy will in thy kingdom be
done.
Kingdom and will hath he none in him left him, nor warmth in his
breath;
Till his corpse be cast out of the sun will ye know not the truth
of his death?
Surely, ye say, he is strong, though the times be against him and
men;
Yet a little, ye say, and how long, till he come to show judgment
again?
Shall God then die as the beasts die? who is it hath broken his
rod?
O God, Lord God of thy priests, rise up now and show thyself
God.
They cry out, thine elect, thine aspirants to heavenward, whose
faith is as flame;
O thou the Lord God of our tyrants, they call thee, their God, by
thy name.
By thy name that in hell-fire was written, and burned at the
point of thy sword,
Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten; thy death is upon
thee, O Lord.
And the love-song of earth as thou diest resounds through the
wind of her wings—
Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things.
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 BARBÈS
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 thronèd 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,
Orbèd 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 mère, c’est la République.
Les Misérables.
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 belovèd; 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
pæan,
Hill to hill thunder, vale cry back to vale,
With wind-notes as of eagles Æschylean,
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.