Wemix from many lands,We march for very far;In hearts and lips and handsOur staffs and weapons are;The light we walk in darkens sun and moon and star.
It doth not flame and waneWith years and spheres that roll,Storm cannot shake nor stainThe strength that makes it whole,The fire that moulds and moves it of the sovereign soul.
We are they that have to copeWith time till time retire;We live on hopeless hope,We feed on tears and fire;Time, foot by foot, gives back before our sheer desire.
From the edge of harsh derision,From discord and defeat,From doubt and lame division,We pluck the fruit and eat;And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet.
We strive with time at wrestlingTill time be on our sideAnd hope, our plumeless nestling,A full-fledged eaglet rideDown the loud length of storm its windward wings divide.
We are girt with our belief,Clothed with our will and crowned;Hope, fear, delight, and grief,Before our will give ground;Their calls are in our ears as shadows of dead sound.
All but the heart forsakes us,All fails us but the will;Keen treason tracks and takes usIn pits for blood to fill;Friend falls from friend, and faith for faith lays wait to kill.
Out under moon and starsAnd shafts of the urgent sunWhose face on prison-barsAnd mountain-heads is one,Our march is everlasting till time’s march be done.
Whither we know, and whence,And dare not care wherethrough.Desires that urge the sense,Fears changing old with new,Perils and pains beset the ways we press into;
Earth gives us thorns to tread,And all her thorns are trod;Through lands burnt black and redWe pass with feet unshod;Whence we would be man shall not keep us, nor man’s God.
Through the great desert beastsHowl at our backs by night,And thunder-forging priestsBlow their dead bale-fires bright,And on their broken anvils beat out bolts for fight.
Inside their sacred smithiesThough hot the hammer rings,Their steel links snap like withies,Their chains like twisted strings,Their surest fetters are as plighted words of kings.
O nations undivided,O single people and free,We dreamers, we derided,We mad blind men that see,We bear you witness ere ye come that ye shall be.
Ye sitting among tombs,Ye standing round the gate,Whom fire-mouthed war consumes,Or cold-lipped peace bids wait,All tombs and bars shall open, every grave and grate.
The locks shall burst in sunder,The hinges shrieking spin,When time, whose hand is thunder,Lays hand upon the pin,And shoots the bolts reluctant, bidding all men in.
These eyeless times and earless,Shall these not see and hear,And all their hearts burn fearlessThat were afrost for fear?Is day not hard upon us, yea, not our day near?
France! from its grey dejectionMake manifest the redTempestuous resurrectionOf thy most sacred head!Break thou the covering cerecloths; rise up from the dead.
And thou, whom sea-walls severFrom lands unwalled with seas,Wilt thou endure for ever,O Milton’s England, these?Thou that wast his Republic, wilt thou clasp their knees?
These royalties rust-eaten,These worm-corroded lies,That keep thine head storm-beatenAnd sunlike strength of eyesFrom the open heaven and air of intercepted skies;
These princelings with gauze wingletsThat buzz in the air unfurled,These summer-swarming kinglets,These thin worms crowned and curled,That bask and blink and warm themselves about the world;
These fanged meridian vermin,Shrill gnats that crowd the dusk,Night-moths whose nestling ermineSmells foul of mould and musk,Blind flesh-flies hatched by dark and hampered in their husk;
These honours without honour,These ghost-like gods of gold,This earth that wears upon herTo keep her heart from coldNo memory more of men that brought it fire of old;
These limbs, supine, unbuckled,In rottenness of rest,These sleepy lips blood-suckledAnd satiate of thy breast,These dull wide mouths that drain thee dry and call thee blest;
These masters of thee mindlessThat wear thee out of mind,These children of thee kindlessThat use thee out of kind,Whose hands strew gold before thee and contempt behind;
Who have turned thy name to laughter,Thy sea-like sounded nameThat now none hearkens afterFor faith in its free fame,Who have robbed thee of thy trust and given thee of their shame;
These hours that mock each other,These years that kill and die,Are these thy gains, our mother,For all thy gains thrown by?Is this that end whose promise made thine heart so high?
With empire and with treasonThe first right hand made fast,But in man’s nobler seasonTo put forth help the last,Love turns from thee, and memory disavows thy past.
Lest thine own sea disclaim thee,Lest thine own sons despise,Lest lips shoot out that name theeAnd seeing thee men shut eyes,Take thought with all thy people, turn thine head and rise.
Turn thee, lift up thy face;What ails thee to be dead?Ask of thyself for grace,Seek of thyself for bread,And who shall starve or shame thee, blind or bruise thine head?
The same sun in thy sight,The same sea in thine ears,That saw thine hour at height,That sang thy song of years,Behold and hearken for thee, knowing thy hopes and fears.
O people, O perfect nation,O England that shall be,How long till thou take station?How long till thralls live free?How long till all thy soul be one with all thy sea?
Ye that from south to north,Ye that from east to west,Stretch hands of longing forthAnd keep your eyes from rest,Lo, when ye will, we bring you gifts of what is best.
From the awful northland pinesThat skirt their wan dim seasTo the ardent ApenninesAnd sun-struck Pyrenees,One frost on all their frondage bites the blossoming trees.
The leaves look up for light,For heat of helpful air;The trees of oldest heightAnd thin storm-shaken hairSeek with gaunt hands up heavenward if the sun be there.
The woods where souls walk lonely,The forests girt with night,Desire the day-star onlyAnd firstlings of the lightNot seen of slaves nor shining in their masters’ sight.
We have the morning star,O foolish people, O kings!With us the day-springs are,Even all the fresh day-springs;For us, and with us, all the multitudes of things.
O sorrowing hearts of slaves,We heard you beat from far!We bring the light that saves,We bring the morning star;Freedom’s good things we bring you, whence all good things are.
With us the winds and fountainsAnd lightnings live in tune;The morning-coloured mountainsThat burn into the noon,The mist’s mild veil on valleys muffled from the moon:
The thunder-darkened highlandsAnd lowlands hot with fruit,Sea-bays and shoals and islands,And cliffs that foil man’s foot,And all the flower of large-limbed life and all the root:
The clangour of sea-eaglesThat teach the morning mirthWith baying of heaven’s beaglesThat seek their prey on earth,By sounding strait and channel, gulf and reach and firth.
With us the fields and rivers,The grass that summer thrills,The haze where morning quivers,The peace at heart of hills,The sense that kindles nature, and the soul that fills.
With us all natural sights,All notes of natural scale;With us the starry lights;With us the nightingale;With us the heart and secret of the worldly tale.
The strife of things and beauty,The fire and light adored,Truth, and life-lightening duty,Love without crown or sword,That by his might and godhead makes man god and lord.
These have we, these are ours,That no priests give nor kings;The honey of all these flowers,The heart of all these springs;Ours, for where freedom lives not, there live no good things.
Rise, ere the dawn be risen;Come, and be all souls fed;From field and street and prisonCome, for the feast is spread;Live, for the truth is living; wake, for night is dead.
Insidethis northern summer’s foldThe fields are full of naked gold,Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves;The green veiled air is full of doves;Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams letLight on the small warm grasses wetFall in short broken kisses sweet,And break again like waves that beatRound the sun’s feet.
But I, for all this English mirthOf golden-shod and dancing days,And the old green-girt sweet-hearted earth,Desire what here no spells can raise.Far hence, with holier heavens above,The lovely city of my loveBathes deep in the sun-satiate airThat flows round no fair thing more fairHer beauty bare.
There the utter sky is holier, thereMore pure the intense white height of air,More clear men’s eyes that mine would meet,And the sweet springs of things more sweet.There for this one warm note of dovesA clamour of a thousand lovesStorms the night’s ear, the day’s assails,From the tempestuous nightingales,And fills, and fails.
O gracious city well-beloved,Italian, and a maiden crowned,Siena, my feet are no more movedToward thy strange-shapen mountain-bound:But my heart in me turns and moves,O lady loveliest of my loves,Toward thee, to lie before thy feetAnd gaze from thy fair fountain-seatUp the sheer street;
And the house midway hanging seeThat saw Saint Catherine bodily,Felt on its floors her sweet feet move,And the live light of fiery loveBurn from her beautiful strange face,As in the sanguine sacred placeWhere in pure hands she took the headSevered, and with pure lips still redKissed the lips dead.
For years through, sweetest of the saints,In quiet without cease she wrought,Till cries of men and fierce complaintsFrom outward moved her maiden thought;And prayers she heard and sighs toward France,“God, send us back deliverance,Send back thy servant, lest we die!”With an exceeding bitter cryThey smote the sky.
Then in her sacred saving handsShe took the sorrows of the lands,With maiden palms she lifted upThe sick time’s blood-embittered cup,And in her virgin garment furledThe faint limbs of a wounded world.Clothed with calm love and clear desire,She went forth in her soul’s attire,A missive fire.
Across the might of men that stroveIt shone, and over heads of kings;And molten in red flames of loveWere swords and many monstrous things;And shields were lowered, and snapt were spears,And sweeter-tuned the clamorous years;And faith came back, and peace, that wereFled; for she bade, saying, “Thou, God’s heir,Hast thou no care?
“Lo, men lay waste thine heritageStill, and much heathen people rageAgainst thee, and devise vain things.What comfort in the face of kings,What counsel is there? Turn thine eyesAnd thine heart from them in like wise;Turn thee unto thine holy placeTo help us that of God for graceRequire thy face.
“For who shall hear us if not thouIn a strange land? what doest thou there?Thy sheep are spoiled, and the ploughers ploughUpon us; why hast thou no careFor all this, and beyond strange hillsLiest unregardful what snow chillsThy foldless flock, or what rains beat?Lo, in thine ears, before thy feet,Thy lost sheep bleat.
“And strange men feed on faultless lives,And there is blood, and men put knives,Shepherd, unto the young lamb’s throat;And one hath eaten, and one smote,And one had hunger and is fedFull of the flesh of these, and redWith blood of these as who drinks wineAnd God knoweth, who hath sent thee a sign,If these were thine.”
But the Pope’s heart within him burned,So that he rose up, seeing the sign,And came among them; but she turnedBack to her daily way divine,And fed her faith with silent things,And lived her life with curbed white wings,And mixed herself with heaven and died:And now on the sheer city-sideSmiles like a bride.
You see her in the fresh clear gloom,Where walls shut out the flame and bloomOf full-breathed summer, and the roofKeeps the keen ardent air aloofAnd sweet weight of the violent sky:There bodily beheld on high,She seems as one hearing in tuneHeaven within heaven, at heaven’s full noon,In sacred swoon:
A solemn swoon of sense that achesWith imminent blind heat of heaven,While all the wide-eyed spirit wakes,Vigilant of the supreme Seven,Whose choral flames in God’s sight move,Made unendurable with love,That without wind or blast of breathCompels all things through life and deathWhither God saith.
There on the dim side-chapel wallThy mighty touch memorial,Razzi, raised up, for ages dead,And fixed for us her heavenly head:And, rent with plaited thorn and rod,Bared the live likeness of her GodTo men’s eyes turning from strange lands,Where, pale from thine immortal hands,Christ wounded stands;
And the blood blots his holy hairAnd white brows over hungering eyesThat plead against us, and the fairMute lips forlorn of words or sighsIn the great torment that bends downHis bruised head with the bloomless crown,White as the unfruitful thorn-flower,A God beheld in dreams that wereBeheld of her.
In vain on all these sins and yearsFalls the sad blood, fall the slow tears;In vain poured forth as watersprings,Priests, on your altars, and ye, kings,About your seats of sanguine gold;Still your God, spat upon and sold,Bleeds at your hands; but now is goneAll his flock from him saving one;Judas alone.
Surely your race it was that he,O men signed backward with his name,Beholding in GethsemaneBled the red bitter sweat of shame,Knowing how the word of Christian shouldMean to men evil and not good,Seem to men shameful for your sake,Whose lips, for all the prayers they make,Man’s blood must slake.
But blood nor tears ye love not, youThat my love leads my longing to,Fair as the world’s old faith of flowers,O golden goddesses of ours!From what Idalian rose-pleasanceHath Aphrodite bidden glanceThe lovelier lightnings of your feet?From what sweet Paphian sward or seatLed you more sweet?
O white three sisters, three as one,With flowerlike arms for flowery bandsYour linked limbs glitter like the sun,And time lies beaten at your hands.Time and wild years and wars and menPass, and ye care not whence or when;With calm lips over sweet for scorn,Ye watch night pass, O children bornOf the old-world morn.
Ah, in this strange and shrineless place,What doth a goddess, what a Grace,Where no Greek worships her shrined limbsWith wreaths and Cytherean hymns?Where no lute makes luxuriousThe adoring airs in Amathus,Till the maid, knowing her mother near,Sobs with love, aching with sweet fear?What do ye here?
For the outer land is sad, and wearsA raiment of a flaming fire;And the fierce fruitless mountain stairsClimb, yet seem wroth and loth to aspire,Climb, and break, and are broken down,And through their clefts and crests the townLooks west and sees the dead sun lie,In sanguine death that stains the skyWith angry dye.
And from the war-worn wastes withoutIn twilight, in the time of doubt,One sound comes of one whisper, whereMoved with low motions of slow airThe great trees nigh the castle swingIn the sad coloured evening;“Ricorditi di me,che sonLa Pia”—that small sweet word aloneIs not yet gone.
“Ricorditi di me”—the soundSole out of deep dumb days remoteAcross the fiery and fatal groundComes tender as a hurt bird’s noteTo where, a ghost with empty hands,A woe-worn ghost, her palace standsIn the mid city, where the strongBells turn the sunset air to song,And the towers throng.
With other face, with speech the same,A mightier maiden’s likeness cameLate among mourning men that slept,A sacred ghost that went and wept,White as the passion-wounded Lamb,Saying, “Ah, remember me, that amItalia.” (From deep sea to seaEarth heard, earth knew her, that this was she.)“Ricorditi.
“Love made me of all things fairest thing,And Hate unmade me; this knows heWho with God’s sacerdotal ringEnringed mine hand, espousing me.”Yea, in thy myriad-mooded woe,Yea, Mother, hast thou not said so?Have not our hearts within us stirred,O thou most holiest, at thy word?Have we not heard?
As this dead tragic land that sheFound deadly, such was time to thee;Years passed thee withering in the redMaremma, years that deemed thee dead,Ages that sorrowed or that scorned;And all this while though all they mournedThou sawest the end of things unclean,And the unborn that should see thee a queen.Have we not seen?
The weary poet, thy sad son,Upon thy soil, under thy skies,Saw all Italian things save one—Italia; this thing missed his eyes;The old mother-might, the breast, the face,That reared, that lit the Roman race;This not Leopardi saw; but we,What is it, Mother, that we see,What if not thee?
Look thou from Siena southward home,Where the priest’s pall hangs rent on Rome,And through the red rent swaddling-bandsTowards thine she strains her labouring hands.Look thou and listen, and let beAll the dead quick, all the bond free;In the blind eyes let there be sight;In the eighteen centuries of the nightLet there be light.
Bow down the beauty of thine head,Sweet, and with lips of living breathKiss thy sons sleeping and thy dead,That there be no more sleep or death.Give us thy light, thy might, thy love,Whom thy face seen afar aboveDrew to thy feet; and when, being free,Thou hast blest thy children born to thee,Bless also me.
Me that when others played or sleptSat still under thy cross and wept;Me who so early and unawareFelt fall on bent bared brows and hair(Thin drops of the overflowing flood!)The bitter blessing of thy blood;The sacred shadow of thy pain,Thine, the true maiden-mother, slainAnd raised again.
Me consecrated, if I might,To praise thee, or to love at least,O mother of all men’s dear delight,Thou madest a choral-souled boy-priest,Before my lips had leave to sing,Or my hands hardly strength to clingAbout the intolerable treeWhereto they had nailed my heart and theeAnd said, “Let be.”
For to thee too the high Fates gaveGrace to be sacrificed and save,That being arisen, in the equal sun,God and the People should be one;By those red roads thy footprints trod,Man more divine, more human God,Saviour; that where no light was knownBut 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 God, let there be light!Fill with a love keener than flameMen sealed in spirit with thy name,The cities and the Roman skies,Where men with other than man’s eyesSaw thy sun rise.
For theirs thou wast and thine were theyWhose names outshine thy very day;For they are thine and theirs thou artWhose blood beats living in man’s heart,Remembering ages fled and deadWherein for thy sake these men bled;They that saw Trebia, they that seeMentana, they in years to beThat shall see thee.
For thine are all of us, and oursThou; till the seasons bring to birthA perfect people, and all the powersBe with them that bear fruit on earth;Till the inner heart of man be oneWith freedom, and the sovereign sun;And Time, in likeness of a guide,Lead the Republic as a brideUp to God’s side.
Oheartof hearts, the chalice of love’s fire,Hid round with flowers and all the bounty of bloom;O wonderful and perfect heart, for whomThe lyrist liberty made life a lyre;O heavenly heart, at whose most dear desireDead love, living and singing, cleft his tomb,And with him risen and regent in death’s roomAll 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 fairThe nursing earth as the sepulchral sea.
Isthine 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 hearWhen the word falls from heaven—Let there be light.Thou knowest we would not do thee the despiteTo wake thee while the old sorrow and shame were near;We spake not loud for thy sake, and for fearLest 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 sakeAlbeit we knew thee alive, and left with theeThe great good gift to feel not nor to see;But will not yet thine Angel bid thee wake?
Itis an hour before the hour of dawn.Set in mine hand my staff and leave me hereOutside the hollow house that blind men fear,More blind than I who live on life withdrawnAnd feel on eyes that see not but foreseeThe shadow of death which clothes Antigone.
Here lay her living body that here liesDead, 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 madeThe young child man a little loved him, seeingHis 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 dayKing Cadmus take to queen Harmonia.
The strength of soul that builds up as with handsWalls spiritual and towers and towns of thoughtWhich 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 sawRemembers hardly what was, nor how long.And now the wise heart of the worldly songIs perished, and the holy hand of lawCan set no tune on time, nor help againThe 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 formsIncognizable, 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 jealousyTo turn their seed to poison, time shall seeThe gods reissue from them, and repairTheir broken stamp of godhead, and againThought and wise love sing words of law to men.
I, Tiresias the prophet, seeing in ThebesMuch evil, and the misery of men’s handsWho 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 pass;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 ledFrom 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 earthWhere day kills night and night again kills dayAnd dies; but where is that Harmonia?
O all-beholden light not seen of me,Air, and warm winds that under the sun’s eyeStretch your strong wings at morning; and thou, sky,Whose hollow circle engirdling earth and seaAll night the set stars limit, and all dayThe moving sun remeasures; ye, I say,
Ye heights of hills, and thou Dircean springInviolable, and ye towers that saw cast downSeven kings keen-sighted toward your seven-faced townAnd 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 gods made chase of kings,Cithæron, thou that sawest on Pentheus deadFangs of a mother fasten and wax redAnd satiate with a son thy swollen springs,And heardst her cry fright all thine eyries’ nestsWho gave death suck at sanguine-suckling breasts;
Yea, and a grief more grievous, without name,A curse too grievous for the name of grief,Thou sawest, and heardst the rumour scare beliefEven unto death and madness, when the flameWas lit whose ashes dropped about the pyreThat of two brethren made one sundering fire;
O bitter nurse, that on thine hard bare kneesRear’dst for his fate the bloody-footed childWhose hands should be more bloodily defiledAnd 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 birthWatch with veiled heads and weaponed hands, and seeGood things and evil, strengthless yet and dumb,Sit in the clouds with cloudlike hours to come;
Ye forces without form and viewless powersThat 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 giveAs 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 allFor 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 soundMakes softer the soft sunless patient air,And the wind’s hand is laid on my thin hairLight as a lover’s, and the grasses roundHave odours in them of green bloom and rainSweet as the kiss wherewith sleep kisses pain.
I hear the low sound of the spring of timeStill beating as the low live throb of blood,And where its waters gather head and floodI hear change moving on them, and the chimeAcross them of reverberate wings of hoursSounding, and feel the future air of flowers.
The wind of change is soft as snow, and sweetThe sense thereof as roses in the sun,The faint wind springing with the springs that run,The dim sweet smell of flowering hopes, and heatOf unbeholden sunrise; yet how longI 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 mankindAnd 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 deathAs 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’sTheir powers have no more power on; they divideSpoils wrung from lust or wrath of man or pride,And keen oblivion without pity or pauseSets them on fire and scatters them on airLike ashes shaken from a suppliant’s hair.
But life they lay no hand on; life once givenNo 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 nightOn that serenest and obscurest heightWhere dead and unborn things are one in thoughtAnd whence the live unconquerable springsFeed 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 seeAnd 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.
Mother, that by that Pegasean springDidst fold round in thine arms thy blinded son,Weeping “O holiest, what thing hast thou done,What, to my child? woe’s me that see the thing!Is this thy love to me-ward, and hereofMust I take sample how the gods can love?
“O child, thou hast seen indeed, poor child of mine,The breasts and flanks of Pallas bare in sight,But never shalt see more the dear sun’s light;O Helicon, how great a pay is thineFor some poor antelopes and wild-deer dead,My child’s eyes hast thou taken in their stead—”
Mother, thou knewest not what she had to give,Thy goddess, though then angered, for mine eyes;Fame and foreknowledge, and to be most wise,And centuries of high-thoughted life to live,And in mine hand this guiding staff to beAs eyesight to the feet of men that see.
Perchance I shall not die at all, nor passThe general door and lintel of men dead;Yet even the very tongue of wisdom saidWhat grace should come with death to Tiresias,What special honour that God’s hand accordWho gathers all men’s nations as their lord.
And sometimes when the secret eye of thoughtIs changed with obscuration, and the senseAches with long pain of hollow prescience,And fiery foresight with foresuffering boughtSeems even to infect my spirit and consume,Hunger and thirst come on me for the tomb.
I could be fain to drink my death and sleep,And no more wrapped about with bitter dreamsTalk with the stars and with the winds and streamsAnd with the inevitable years, and weep;For how should he who communes with the yearsBe sometime not a living spring of tears?
O child, that guided of thine only willDidst set thy maiden foot against the gateTo strike it open ere thine hour of fate,Antigone, men say not thou didst ill,For love’s sake and the reverence of his aweDivinely dying, slain by mortal law;
For love is awful as immortal death.And through thee surely hath thy brother wonRest, out of sight of our world-weary sun,And in the dead land where ye ghosts draw breathA royal place and honour; so wast thouHappy, though earth have hold of thee too now.
So hast thou life and name inviolableAnd joy it may be, sacred and severe,Joy secret-souled beyond all hope or fear,A monumental joy wherein to dwellSecluse and silent, a selected state,Serene possession of thy proper fate.
Thou art not dead as these are dead who liveFull of blind years, a sorrow-shaken kind,Nor as these are am I the prophet blind;They have not life that have not heart to giveLife, nor have eyesight who lack heart to seeWhen to be not is better than to be.
O ye whom time but bears with for a span,How long will ye be blind and dead, how longMake your own souls part of your own soul’s wrong?Son of the word of the most high gods, man,Why wilt thou make thine hour of light and breathEmptier of all but shame than very death?
Fool, wilt thou live for ever? though thou careWith all thine heart for life to keep it fast,Shall not thine hand forego it at the last?Lo, thy sure hour shall take thee by the hairSleeping, or when thou knowest not, or wouldst fly;And as men died much mightier shalt thou die.
Yea, they are dead, men much more worth than thou;The savour of heroic lives that were,Is it not mixed into thy common air?The sense of them is shed about thee now:Feel not thy brows a wind blowing from far?Aches not thy forehead with a future star?
The light that thou may’st make out of thy nameIs in the wind of this same hour that drives,Blown within reach but once of all men’s lives;And he that puts forth hand upon the flameShall have it for a garland on his headTo sign him for a king among the dead.
But these men that the lessening years behold,Who sit the most part without flame or crown,And brawl and sleep and wear their life-days downWith joys and griefs ignobler than of old,And care not if the better day shall be—Are these or art thou dead, Antigone?
PART II
As when one wakes out of a waning dreamAnd sees with instant eyes the naked thoughtWhereof the vision as a web was wrought,I saw beneath a heaven of cloud and gleam,Ere yet the heart of the young sun waxed brave,One like a prophet standing by a grave.
In the hoar heaven was hardly beam or breath,And all the coloured hills and fields were grey,And the wind wandered seeking for the day,And wailed as though he had found her done to deathAnd this grey hour had built to bury herThe hollow twilight for a sepulchre.
But in my soul I saw as in a glassA pale and living body full of graceThere lying, and over it the prophet’s faceFixed; and the face was not of Tiresias,For such a starry fire was in his eyesAs though their light it was that made the skies.
Such eyes should God’s have been when very loveLooked forth of them and set the sun aflame,And such his lips that called the light by nameAnd bade the morning forth at sound thereof;His face was sad and masterful as fate,And like a star’s his look compassionate.
Like a star’s gazed on of sad eyes so longIt seems to yearn with pity, and all its fireAs a man’s heart to tremble with desireAnd heave as though the light would bring forth song;Yet from his face flashed lightning on the land,And like the thunder-bearer’s was his hand.
The steepness of strange stairs had tired his feet,And his lips yet seemed sick of that salt breadWherewith the lips of banishment are fed;But nothing was there in the world so sweetAs the most bitter love, like God’s own grace,Wherewith he gazed on that fair buried face.
Grief and glad pride and passion and sharp shame,Wrath and remembrance, faith and hope and hateAnd pitiless pity of days degenerate,Were in his eyes as an incorporate flameThat burned about her, and the heart thereofAnd central flower was very fire of love.
But all about her grave wherein she sleptWere noises of the wild wind-footed yearsWhose footprints flying were full of blood and tears,Shrieks as of Mænads on their hills that leaptAnd yelled as beasts of ravin, and their meatWas the rent flesh of their own sons to eat:
And fiery shadows passing with strange cries,And Sphinx-like shapes about the ruined lands,And the red reek of parricidal handsAnd intermixture of incestuous eyes,And light as of that self-divided flameWhich made an end of the Cadmean name.
And I beheld again, and lo the grave,And the bright body laid therein as dead,And the same shadow across another headThat bowed down silent on that sleeping slaveWho was the lady of empire from her birthAnd light of all the kingdoms of the earth.
Within the compass of the watcher’s handAll strengths of other men and divers powersWere held at ease and gathered up as flowers;His heart was as the heart of his whole land,And at his feet as natural servants layTwilight and dawn and night and labouring day.
He was most awful of the sons of God.Even now men seeing seemed at his lips to seeThe trumpet of the judgment that should be,And in his right hand terror for a rod,And in the breath that made the mountains bowThe horned fire of Moses on his brow.
The strong wind of the coming of the LordHad blown as flame upon him, and brought downOn his bare head from heaven fire for a crown,And fire was girt upon him as a swordTo smite and lighten, and on what ways he trodThere fell from him the shadow of a God.
Pale, with the whole world’s judgment in his eyes,He stood and saw the grief and shame endureThat he, though highest of angels might not cure,And the same sins done under the same skies,And the same slaves to the same tyrants thrown,And fain he would have slept, and fain been stone.
But with unslumbering eyes he watched the sleepThat sealed her sense whose eyes were suns of old;And the night shut and opened, and behold,The same grave where those prophets came to weep,But she that lay therein had moved and stirred,And where those twain had watched her stood a third.
The tripled rhyme that closed in ParadiseWith Love’s name sealing up its starry speech—The tripled might of hand that found in reachAll crowns beheld far off of all men’s eyes,Song, colour, carven wonders of live stone—These were not, but the very soul alone.
The living spirit, the good gift of grace,The faith which takes of its own blood to giveThat the dead veins of buried hope may live,Came on her sleeping, face to naked face,And from a soul more sweet than all the southBreathed love upon her sealed and breathless mouth.
Between her lips the breath was blown as fire,And through her flushed veins leapt the liquid life,And with sore passion and ambiguous strifeThe new birth rent her and the new desire,The will to live, the competence to be,The sense to hearken and the soul to see.
And the third prophet standing by her graveStretched forth his hand and touched her, and her eyesOpened as sudden suns in heaven might rise,And her soul caught from his the faith to save;Faith above creeds, faith beyond records, bornOf the pure, naked, fruitful, awful morn.
For in the daybreak now that night was deadThe light, the shadow, the delight, the pain,The purpose and the passion of those twain,Seemed gathered on that third prophetic head,And all their crowns were as one crown, and oneHis face with her face in the living sun.
For even with that communion of their eyesHis whole soul passed into her and made her strong;And all the sounds and shows of shame and wrong,The hand that slays, the lip that mocks and lies,Temples and thrones that yet men seem to see—Are these dead or art thou dead, Italy?
Maidenmost beautiful, mother most bountiful, lady of lands,Queen and republican, crowned of the centuries whose years are thy sands,See for thy sake what we bring to thee, Italy, here in our hands.
This is the banner thy gonfalon, fair in the front of thy fight,Red from the hearts that were pierced for thee, white as thy mountains are white,Green as the spring of thy soul everlasting, whose life-blood is light.
Take to thy bosom thy banner, a fair bird fit for the nest,Feathered for flight into sunrise or sunset, for eastward or west,Fledged for the flight everlasting, but held yet warm to thy breast.
Gather it close to thee, song-bird or storm-bearer, eagle or dove,Lift it to sunward, a beacon beneath to the beacon above,Green as our hope in it, white as our faith in it, red as our love.
Thunder and splendour of lightning are hid in the folds of it furled;Who shall unroll it but thou, as thy bolt to be handled and hurled,Out of whose lips is the honey, whose bosom the milk of the world?
Out of thine hands hast thou fed us with pasture of colour and song;Glory and beauty by birthright to thee as thy garments belong;Out of thine hands thou shalt give us as surely deliverance from wrong.
Out of thine eyes thou hast shed on us love as a lamp in our night,Wisdom a lodestar to ships, and remembrance a flame-coloured light;Out of thine eyes thou shalt shew us as surely the sun-dawn of right.
Turn to us, speak to us, Italy, mother, but once and a word,None shall not follow thee, none shall not serve thee, not one that has heard;Twice hast thou spoken a message, and time is athirst for the third.
Kingdom and empire of peoples thou hadst, and thy lordship made oneNorth sea and south sea and east men and west men that look on the sun;Spirit was in thee and counsel, when soul in the nations was none.
Banner and beacon thou wast to the centuries of storm-wind and foam,Ages that clashed in the dark with each other, and years without home;Empress and prophetess wast thou, and what wilt thou now be, O Rome?
Ah, by the faith and the hope and the love that have need of thee now,Shines not thy face with the forethought of freedom, and burns not thy brow?Who is against her but all men? and who is beside her but thou?
Art thou not better than all men? and where shall she turn but to thee?Lo, not a breath, not a beam, not a beacon from midland to sea;Freedom cries out for a sign among nations, and none will be free.
England in doubt of her, France in despair of her, all without heart—Stand on her side in the vanward of ages, and strike on her part!Strike but one stroke for the love of her love of thee, sweet that thou art!
Take in thy right hand thy banner, a strong staff fit for thine hand;Forth at the light of it lifted shall foul things flock from the land;Faster than stars from the sun shall they fly, being lighter than sand.
Green thing to green in the summer makes answer, and rose-tree to rose;Lily by lily the year becomes perfect; and none of us knowsWhat thing is fairest of all things on earth as it brightens and blows.
This thing is fairest in all time of all things, in all time is best—Freedom, that made thee, our mother, and suckled her sons at thy breast;Take to thy bosom the nations, and there shall the world come to rest.
Afaintsea without wind or sun;A sky like flameless vapour dun;A valley like an unsealed graveThat no man cares to weep upon,Bare, without boon to crave,Or flower to save.
And on the lip’s edge of the down,Here where the bent-grass burns to brownIn the dry sea-wind, and the heathCrawls to the cliff-side and looks down,I watch, and hear beneathThe low tide breathe.
Along the long lines of the cliff,Down the flat sea-line without skiffOr sail or back-blown fume for mark,Through wind-worn heads of heath and stiffStems blossomless and starkWith dry sprays dark,
I send mine eyes out as for newsOf comfort that all these refuse,Tidings of light or living airFrom windward where the low clouds museAnd the sea blind and bareSeems full of care.
So is it now as it was then,And as men have been such are men.There as I stood I seem to stand,Here sitting chambered, and againFeel spread on either handSky, sea, and land.
As a queen taken and stripped and boundSat earth, discoloured and discrowned;As a king’s palace empty and deadThe sky was, without light or sound;And on the summer’s headWere ashes shed.
Scarce wind enough was on the sea,Scarce hope enough there moved in me,To sow with live blown flowers of whiteThe green plain’s sad serenity,Or with stray thoughts of lightTouch my soul’s sight.
By footless ways and sterile wentMy thought unsatisfied, and bentWith blank unspeculative eyesOn the untracked sands of discontentWhere, watched of helpless skies,Life hopeless lies.
East and west went my soul to findLight, and the world was bare and blindAnd the soil herbless where she trodAnd saw men laughing scourge mankind,Unsmitten by the rodOf any God.
Out of time’s blind old eyes were shedTears that were mortal, and left deadThe heart and spirit of the years,And on mans fallen and helmless headTime’s disanointing tearsFell cold as fears.
Hope flowering had but strength to bearThe fruitless fruitage of despair;Grief trod the grapes of joy for wine,Whereof love drinking unawareDied as one undivineAnd made no sign.
And soul and body dwelt apart;And weary wisdom without heartStared on the dead round heaven and sighed,“Is death too hollow as thou art,Or as man’s living pride?”And saying so died.
And my soul heard the songs and groansThat are about and under thrones,And felt through all time’s murmur thrillFate’s old imperious semitonesThat made of good and illOne same tune still.
Then “Where is God? and where is aid?Or what good end of these?” she said;“Is there no God or end at all,Nor reason with unreason weighed,Nor force to disenthralWeak feet that fall?
“No light to lighten and no rodTo chasten men? Is there no God?”So girt with anguish, iron-zoned,Went my soul weeping as she trodBetween the men enthronedAnd men that groaned.
O fool, that for brute cries of wrongHeard not the grey glad mother’s songRing response from the hills and waves,But heard harsh noises all day longOf spirits that were slavesAnd dwelt in graves.
The wise word of the secret earthWho knows what life and death are worth,And how no help and no controlCan speed or stay things come to birth,Nor all worlds’ wheels that rollCrush one born soul.
With all her tongues of life and death,With all her bloom and blood and breath,From all years dead and all things done,In the ear of man the mother saith,“There is no God, O son,If thou be none.”
So my soul sick with watching heardThat day the wonder of that word,And as one springs out of a dreamSprang, and the stagnant wells were stirredWhence flows through gloom and gleamThought’s soundless stream.
Out of pale cliff and sunburnt health,Out of the low sea curled beneathIn the land’s bending arm embayed,Out of all lives that thought hears breatheLife within life inlaid,Was answer made.
A multitudinous monotoneOf dust and flower and seed and stone,In the deep sea-rock’s mid-sea sloth,In the live water’s trembling zone,In all men love and loathe,One God at growth.
One forceful nature uncreateThat feeds itself with death and fate,Evil and good, and change and time,That within all men lies at waitTill the hour shall bid them climbAnd live sublime.
For all things come by fate to flowerAt their unconquerable hour,And time brings truth, and truth makes free,And freedom fills time’s veins with power,As, brooding on that sea,My thought filled me.
And the sun smote the clouds and slew,And from the sun the sea’s breath blew,And white waves laughed and turned and fledThe long green heaving sea-field through,And on them overheadThe sky burnt red
Like a furled flag that wind sets free,On the swift summer-coloured seaShook out the red lines of the light,The live sun’s standard, blown to leeAcross the live sea’s whiteAnd green delight.
And with divine triumphant aweMy spirit moved within me saw,With burning passion of stretched eyes,Clear as the light’s own firstborn law,In windless wastes of skiesTime’s deep dawn rise.