SONG OF FIRE
A FETTERLESS, bright spirit, wing'd and pure,Soul from all souls of Suns in essence bred,Lo! Fire am I,--without me shall endureNo Life, nor plant nor creature lift its head.In burning beards of comets red I float;I dance with lambent torches on the stars;I wash with sulphurous flame the roaring throatOf peaks, and blaze beneath the thunder's cars.Master of Earth am I;--on her my willI stamp, and with fierce searing kisses pressMy passion on her naked flesh and thrillHer hidden veins with rapture. My caressIs lustral. In her lovers' hearts I creepAnd tip with fateful coals the prophet's tongue;God-like from lips of poets I sing and leap,--I the eternal fair, the eternal young!And none shall conquer me save they who callMy strength to sovereign toil in craft or strife;With me shall tribes of men hold festival,--Cities and realms shall find me Death or Life.
Repossessed of their ancient heritage, the four conqueror Elements sit on their dowered spheres.
Wind, Ember, Current, conscious Earth, the eternal weavers and toilers, labour in felicity.
Chaos and Night and Death are disenthroned. The system burns along its orbits through the dark. The benisons of the stars and suns are cast upon these youngest worlds.
Buoyant and blithe the planets wheel.
Their year-long arcs and each season's ordained processional are portioned unto them: their vassal moons also and the speed of their turning and their measure of night and day.
The ruddy jocund Earth presses close to the Sun, timorous of the outer void, baring her bosom to his kiss.
Has not the inevitable and recurrent Spring of Existence come unto her once again? The iron shackles of Silence--are they not broken?--the granite of the Night, is it not crumbled low?--the ice of Death, is it not molten?
She blooms in her resurrection; her voice is lifted in the universal litany to Life. She rolls in her golden garniture of beams, circling with the singing sister-spheres. Her rondure floats against the distant cohorts of the constellations.
The ancient Spirit of Chaos swings her pitchy cressets, and sinks down the starless deep on her tall catafalque of Death.
Rejoice, O orb vestured in beauty! Put forth thy wings, thy coronals of Love, wrap thee with fluctuant Winds and exulting Seas!
Shall thy offspring feel dismay, knowing what light shall burst from dark, what life leap from Death, what flowers blow from dust?
So the anointed and belted spheres, re-risen from their bath of silence and their sleep of time, move on companioned with eternal hope.
The fingers of the Sun stroke forth a glorious strain; the worlds are shawns and cymbals for his minstrelsy. The Spirit of Creation pours forth her victorious baptismal harmonies.
Triumphantly her music daunts the firmament and echoes against the dusks of the Unapproachable.
SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF CREATION
ONCE more the soft, terraqueous chaunt I hearIn choral, and the nuptial planet-danceI mark. With puissant sceptre o'er each sphere,Life thrones in music and in wonder's trance.Hail! vessels solar and terrestrial, hail!Whose prows shall cross the dim, celestial barsWith helm sidereal and cloudy sail,Bannered with youth and lanterned with the stars.What fates for ballast? by what voices grimAnd laughters urged, your astral course I mark,--Warped to what ports remote your hulks shall swimOr anchor silent in what stagnant dark?Mine arms have raised you from the cosmic deep;Now Fire hath sprent his jewelled drops and sownMarvellous seeds whence beauty's plants shall creepSeason to season weaving, zone to zone.Now sacerdotal Love shall shape and dyeHis forms within the house of joy and tears,And Birth shall bless and Death shall sanctifyEarth's passion and her pageant through the years.
Down the everlasting, unchangeable cope the hymnal of Life is reft away.
But its music is showered over Earth.
It is prisoned in the sea-shells; the flowers garner it in their chalices.
It stirs in the heart of Man.