Part 2
Thy words are cast on air. My heart possessed Throbs in the sudden rapture of new joy As in a shaken hand against the light Tumultuously the ruby heart of wine Pants to the racing pulses. O farewell The weary days and ordered tasks of Thebes! I am no more a servant of the hour, But bend all hours and seasons to my will. For look! I drink and time is nought to me, I reel with joy as yond sky reels with day, Swayed by no less a god, no god of thine, But mine, my god, and I his thing, his slave, Stricken to rapture, as one strikes a lyre And wakes the madness sleeping in its strings. Lo! shall such strings respond to touch of man, That once have thrilled to mightier harmonies Swept by the passionate fingers of a god? Might such things be, call for me once again, And I will come repentant to thine hand, And thou shalt set me to what tune thou wilt Nor one wild random strain betray the past.
Not you I loved, Not you at all, but something seen in you, Some glory shining in your eyes, some word Crying through all your speech, some prisoned joy Half-manifest in you. Could your arms shut in My spirit awakened? Or your kiss assuage The stirring tides that beat against the bounds Of all my being? As a sailor calls A favouring wind and the gods answer him With braying storm and cruel-running surge, So at your summons all my life uprose In tempest and the overflowing wave Carried me from the shallows to the sea. And there were voices roaming on the hills And wild free winds that wantoned through the world And clouds that loitered, shadowing earth, or hung Fire-winged above the sunset. All of these Mixed with my blood and, lingering at my heart, Joined with its pulses and were one with me. Being one with such, how could I else but roam With wind and cloud and whomsoever of men Such eager longing severs from their kind To chase the flying freedom of the hills In open day of shadow and sun, or when Night glooms and glimmers in the windy moon. And then he came, who seemed no less to me Than as the winds and clouds had stooped to earth And, gathering all the grace of bending flowers And sinuous streams and grasses of the hills And all the lithe and splendid mountain forms, Had taken shape and stood triumphant there Moulded to human beauty.
O gods, gods! Must I not leave the weary round of earth And follow, follow, follow in his train With foam-white nymphs and goat-foot demigods Through all the splendour and the pride of things To the unknown end of rapture? O! the hills Snow-topped above the climbing ranks of pine, Soared over by the eagle only and trod Only of men half-eagle. These are mine, My sisters and companions till I die. There will I live, there die. The nights shall shed Solace of dews upon me, and the sun Burn up my beauty with his amorous gaze And the wind lash me with his whips of rain, But never shall I come to human doors, Or know a human sorrow, or a joy That is not half a god. The years are mine Winged with delight and rapture and desire. Not as men die shall I forsake the day With weeping and with wailing and a hope Half-known of other lives in other worlds, But sure of slumber, with no backward gaze, On some wild eve of autumn I shall pass With the last leaf descending, as the sun Sinks headlong in the ruined west, and far Night gathers round the breaking heart of day. So shall I pass for ever without fear, Happy in life, in death, unfalteringly Gazing with steady eyes as darkness dawns And my rapt soul goes burning into night.
SONNETS.
SONNETS.
(1)
Last night we heard the elements in pain Rage o’er the sanctuary where we lay enshrined, The creeping murmur of the insidious rain And unavailing anger of the wind. Yet what to us the thunder on the roof, Or the lashed windows wailing in our ears, For in prophetic peace we stand aloof And look through tempest to the sunlit years. Time and his wrathful ministers of storm Take arms against us vainly, for we know That in the soul the things to be take form, And love stands firm though all the world turn foe. Let us love on, and dream, nor be afraid, For out of dreams and love the world is made.
(2)
O terrible world, that hast such store of pain, Such dangers ambushed in thy waste of years, Such sorrows showering like the winter rain, And for men’s thirst such bitter wells of tears! Love’s chronicles of sorrow have we read, And conned his weary precedents of pain, How many longing lovers died unwed And how young passion did with beauty wane; Yet not the less we front the dangerous days Unbending and unawed as those of yore, And confidently tread the ancient ways With all of doubt behind, all hope before. One wins the quest where all the many fail, And many died that one might see the Grail.
(3)
Those morning lovers of the times of old, That first laid hands upon the wings of joy, That found earth brazen and that left it gold, Wrought at the building that no years destroy. ’Twas love that laid the bases, fixed the scope, And measured justly with his rule and line, And they, his labourers, builded with their hope, Their dreams, their wonder and their tears divine. So age by age the fabric scaled the skies With walls of silver and with towers of rose, And chambers hung with woven tapestries Figured with all his raptures, all his woes; And we within this fortress live, whereof The builder and the architect is Love.
(4)
Not the great morning with his flight of fire Or the king-eagle gazing in the sun Outflies the upward wing of my desire Or clearlier lists Love’s earliest orison. Up from the region of forgetting night Love lifts me on, and ever as I climb I watch within my widening scope of sight The long perspectives stretch of space and time. There all the lovers of to-day’s sweet earth, There all the hoarded joys of yesterday, There the young heralds of to-morrow’s mirth Raise one triumphing and accordant lay; And the song’s secret my purged ears discover, Love’s one same substance lives in every lover.
(5)
The stars are throbbing in the lucid sky With silver pulses restlessly astir, And thin-drawn wafts of vapour wander by And fade and leave no witness that they were. Of old the starry aspect gave presage Of motions stirring in the womb of time; Men read the lettering of the heavenly page And reading, shunned to fall or dared to climb. But the one planet ruling our intents Is Love that burns, a steady orb of light, Set far above the sphere of accidents And changing orbit of the hosts of night. Shall not our joy be from their joys as far As this our planet from their faithless star?
(6)
O many a morning shall we see unfold, And many a night that takes the sun away, Day’s gradual growing of the gray to gold, Night’s slow subsidence of the gold to gray! Each day that comes is as a ship in flight From the far circle of the unknown sea, That touches at our island of delight In the vast ocean of Eternity. And now their merchandise is sweet as Spring, Now salt as bitter leavings of the wave, But we will take the traffic that they bring And bless the hands that good or evil gave; For one munificent day has given us more Than all the evil merchants have in store.
(7)
Look from the cliff, look out upon the sea That, coiling round innumerable isles, Foams on the borders of infinity, Fretted with travelling storms and treacherous smiles. Our ship swings at the anchor far below, With folded sails and silence round the keel, Unwitting what strange surge her bows shall know, What shores her peering crows-nest shall reveal. Far off the islands in their locked lagoons, All surf-surrounded and inviolate, Dream under larger suns and mightier moons Than light this idle country where we wait; Let us with morning from the harbour sweep, Our pilot knows the ways of all the deep.
(8)
They say the gods are to the woodlands fled, Or deep withdrawn into the heedless sky; In solitudes and silence of the dead Lies disenthroned each slumbering deity. But I have seen in many a radiant street, Through mists of morning or of evening gold, A soundless vision borne on glancing feet, Love delicately going as of old. For he was made alone of man’s delight And follows still the crowded ways of men; Altars of others crumble in the night, His with a kiss are builded up again; And on those altars hearts instead of spice Are made an offering and a sacrifice.
(9)
Say not that beauty is an idle thing And gathered lightly as a wayside flower That on the trembling verges of the spring Knows but the sweet survival of an hour. For ’tis not so. Through dedicated days And foiled adventure of deliberate nights We lose and find and stumble in the ways That lead to the far confluence of delights. Not with the earthly eye and fleshly ear, But lifted far above mortality, We see at last the eternal hills, and hear The sighing of the universal sea; And kneeling breathless in the holy place We know immortal Beauty face to face.
(10)
Ah! cease to sing. The heavenward flight of song Limed by a mortal weakness, sinks to earth, Into the drear infinitudes of wrong And sad impossibilities of mirth. The veiled and awful night resumes anew Her territories in debate with day, The grass is tingling with the earliest dew, The last flower folded, the last bird away. And we, the trembling children of desire, Let us go too, but never to forget How the sky filled with presences of fire That even after sundown linger yet, And this my mortal music seemed as fair As incense melting in a golden air.
HYMENAEA.
HYMENAEA.
I.
If I with song could make your music more Or with its rapture quicken all your joys, Then would I summon from my singing store The poise and counterpoise Of rhythmic words made sweet with gathered lore From all their past employs.
II.
Would they but come, the coloured words and brave, Each murmuring of the hour that gave him birth, How one was sad, one merry and one grave; But all the sorrow and mirth, Blent in a symphony, should be your slave And sing the joys of earth.
III.
And, as it sang, the world would be again As in the golden morning of desire, When the first maiden loved the first of men, And the first dawn shed fire, And the young winds about their woodland den Sang through the leafy lyre.
IV.
There were no cities then, no smoky pall, No eager highways opening on despair, No flame of lights when gracious gloom should fall Through the dim evening air, But gradual moons and timorous stars were all That lit the secret lair.
V.
Round them the forest-wildernesses sighed Under the homeless winds that stir and stray; Night-wandering owlets in the darkness cried, The panther took his prey; They had no fear; Love’s sheltering wings were wide And brought them safe till day.
VI.
We cannot know their simple joys and sweet, Or of the brown leaf make the buds of spring, For time has trampled with his flying feet The mouths that strive to sing And bound with leaden vanities the fleet And heavenward-climbing wing.
VII.
But the great world goes onward as of old, With moon and stars and nightly gift of dew; The unwearied sun’s magnificence of gold Doth day by day renew The fainting earth, that leaps from out the cold Unto her summons true.
VIII.
There is a resurrection from the tomb Of years, the grave-clothes that our souls enmesh; Each wakening day brings with it from the gloom Its dreams and deeds afresh, Dreams that are deeds astir within the womb, Deeds that are dreams made flesh.
IX.
Therefore, remembering all the weary change And heavy burden of our lifeless fears, We yet have hope, and watch the morning range Above the mist of tears, If haply, to our prayers no longer strange, She shall shine down the years.
X.
I do not bid you rest. The field is set, The great battalions through the twilight move, Each to his post. The call is chanting yet And we stand forth to prove If good shall strike down ill in conflict met-- And on our side is Love.