Songs Before Sunrise Part 18

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

Let there be light, O Italy!

For our feet falter in the night.

O lamp of living years to be, O light of G.o.d, let there be light!

Fill with a love keener than flame Men sealed in spirit with thy name, The cities and the Roman skies, Where men with other than man's eyes Saw thy sun rise.

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

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

COR CORDIUM

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

IN SAN LORENZO

Is thine hour come to wake, O slumbering Night?

Hath not the Dawn a message in thine ear?

Though thou be stone and sleep, yet shalt thou hear When the word falls from heaven--Let there be light.

Thou knowest we would not do thee the despite To wake thee while the old sorrow and shame were near; We spake not loud for thy sake, and for fear Lest thou shouldst lose the rest that was thy right, The blessing given thee that was thine alone, The happiness to sleep and to be stone: Nay, we kept silence of thee for thy sake Albeit we knew thee alive, and left with thee The great good gift to feel not nor to see; But will not yet thine Angel bid thee wake?

TIRESIAS

PART I

It is an hour before the hour of dawn.

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

Here lay her living body that here lies Dead, if man living know what thing is death, If life be all made up of blood and breath, And no sense be save as of ears and eyes.

But heart there is not, tongue there is not found, To think or sing what verge hath life or bound.

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

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

It was long since: yea, even the sun that saw Remembers hardly what was, nor how long.

And now the wise heart of the worldly song Is perished, and the holy hand of law Can set no tune on time, nor help again The power of thought to build up life for men.

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

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

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

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

I am a soul outside of death and birth.

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

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

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

O mountain whereon G.o.ds made chase of kings, Cithaeron, thou that sawest on Pentheus dead Fangs of a mother fasten and wax red And satiate with a son thy swollen springs, And heardst her cry fright all thine eyries' nests Who gave death suck at sanguine-suckling b.r.e.a.s.t.s;

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

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

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

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

What should I do to blame you, what to praise, For floral hours and hours funereal?

What should I do to curse or bless at all For winter-woven or summer-coloured days?

Curse he that will and bless you whoso can, I have no common part in you with man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life that was given for love's sake and his law's Their powers have no more power on; they divide Spoils wrung from l.u.s.t or wrath of man or pride, And keen oblivion without pity or pause Sets them on fire and scatters them on air Like ashes shaken from a suppliant's hair.

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

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

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