Songs Before Sunrise Part 25

By the strong patient G.o.dhead seen Implicit in their mortal mien, The conscience of a G.o.d held still And thunders ruled by their own will And fast-bound fires that might burn clean This worldly air that foul things fill, And the afterglow of what has been, That, pa.s.sing, shows us without word What they have seen, what they have heard,

By all these keen and burning signs The spirit knows them and divines.

In bonds, in banishment, in grief, Scoffed at and scourged with unbelief, Foiled with false trusts and thwart designs, Stripped of green days and hopes in leaf, Their mere bare body of glory shines Higher, and man gazing surelier sees What light, what comfort is of these.

So I now gazing; till the sense Being set on fire of confidence Strains itself sunward, feels out far Beyond the bright and morning star, Beyond the extreme wave's refluence, To where the fierce first sunbeams are Whose fire intolerant and intense As birthpangs whence day burns to be Parts breathless heaven from breathing sea.

I see not, know not, and am blest, Master, who know that thou knowest, Dear lord and leader, at whose hand The first days and the last days stand, With scars and crowns on head and breast, That fought for love of the sweet land Or shall fight in her latter quest; All the days armed and girt and crowned Whose glories ring thy glory round.

Thou sawest, when all the world was blind, The light that should be of mankind, The very day that was to be; And how shalt thou not sometime see Thy city perfect to thy mind Stand face to living face with thee, And no miscrowned man's head behind; The hearth of man, the human home, The central flame that shall be Rome?

As one that ere a June day rise Makes seaward for the dawn, and tries The water with delighted limbs That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims Right eastward under strengthening skies, And sees the gradual rippling rims Of waves whence day breaks blossom-wise Take fire ere light peer well above, And laughs from all his heart with love;

And softlier swimming with raised head Feels the full flower of morning shed And fluent sunrise round him rolled That laps and laves his body bold With fluctuant heaven in water's stead, And urgent through the growing gold Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red, And his soul takes the sun, and yearns For joy wherewith the sea's heart burns;

So the soul seeking through the dark Heavenward, a dove without an ark, Transcends the unnavigable sea Of years that wear out memory; So calls, a sunward-singing lark, In the ear of souls that should be free; So points them toward the sun for mark Who steer not for the stress of waves, And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.

For if the swimmer's eastward eye Must see no sunrise--must put by The hope that lifted him and led Once, to have light about his head, To see beneath the clear low sky The green foam-whitened wave wax red And all the morning's banner fly - Then, as earth's helpless hopes go down, Let earth's self in the dark tides drown.

Yea, if no morning must behold Man, other than were they now cold, And other deeds than past deeds done, Nor any near or far-off sun Salute him risen and sunlike-souled, Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one, Let man's world die like worlds of old, And here in heaven's sight only be The sole sun on the worldless sea.

NOTES

P. 7 That called on Cotys by her name.

AEsch. Fr. 54

P. 94

Was it Love brake forth flower-fashion, a bird with gold on his wings?

Ar. Av. 696.

P. 161

That saw Saint Catherine bodily.

Her pilgrimage to Avignon to recall the Pope into Italy as its redeemer from the distractions of the time is of course the central act of St. Catherine's life, the great abiding sign of the greatness of spirit and genius of heroism which distinguished this daughter of the people, and should yet keep her name fresh above the holy horde of saints, in other records than the calendar; but there is no less significance in the story which tells how she succeeded in humanizing a criminal under sentence of death, and given over by the priests as a soul doomed and desperate; how the man thus raised and melted out of his fierce and brutal despair besought her to sustain him to the last by her presence; how, having accompanied him with comfort and support to the very scaffold, and seen his head fall, she took it up, and turning to the spectators who stood doubtful whether the poor wretch could be "saved," kissed it in sign of her faith that his sins were forgiven him. The high and fixed pa.s.sion of her heroic temperament gives her a right to remembrance and honour of which the miracle-mongers have done their best to deprive her. Cleared of all the refuse rubbish of thaumaturgy, her life would deserve a chronicler who should do justice at once to the ardour of her religious imagination and to a thing far rarer and more precious--the strength and breadth of patriotic thought and devotion which sent this girl across the Alps to seek the living symbol of Italian hope and unity, and bring it back by force of simple appeal in the name of G.o.d and of the country. By the light of those solid and actual qualities which ensure to her no ign.o.ble place on the n.o.ble roll of Italian women who have deserved well of Italy, the record of her visions and ecstasies may be read without contemptuous intolerance of hysterical disease. The rapturous visionary and pa.s.sionate ascetic was in plain matters of this earth as pure and practical a heroine as Joan of Arc.

P. 164

There on the dim side-chapel wall.

In the church of San Domenico.

P. 165

But blood nor tears ye love not, you.

In the Sienese Academy the two things notable to me were the detached wall-painting by Sodoma of the tortures of Christ bound to the pillar, and the divine though mutilated group of the Graces in the centre of the main hall. The glory and beauty of ancient sculpture refresh and satisfy beyond expression a sense wholly wearied and well-nigh nauseated with contemplation of endless sanct.i.ties and agonies attempted by mediaeval art, while yet as handless as accident or barbarism has left the sculptured G.o.ddesses.

P. 168

Saw all Italian things save one.

O patria mia, vedo le mura e gli archi, E le colonne e i simulacri e l'erme Torri degli avi nostri; Ma la gloria non vedo, Non vedo il lauro a il ferro ond' eran carchi I nostri padri antichi.

LEOPARDI.

P. 179

Mother, that by that Pegasean spring.

Call. Lav. Pall. 105-112.

P. 229

With black blood dripping from her eyes.

AEsch. Cho. 1058.