Songs Before Sunrise Part 19

Mother, that by that Pegasean spring Didst 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 hereof Must I take sample how the G.o.ds can love?

"O child, thou hast seen indeed, poor child of mine, The b.r.e.a.s.t.s and flanks of Pallas bare in sight, But never shalt see more the dear sun's light; O Helicon, how great a pay is thine For 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 G.o.ddess, 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 be As eyesight to the feet of men that see.

Perchance I shall not die at all, nor pa.s.s The general door and lintel of men dead; Yet even the very tongue of wisdom said What grace should come with death to Tiresias, What special honour that G.o.d's hand accord Who gathers all men's nations as their lord.

And sometimes when the secret eye of thought Is changed with obscuration, and the sense Aches with long pain of hollow prescience, And fiery foresight with foresuffering bought Seems 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 dreams Talk with the stars and with the winds and streams And with the inevitable years, and weep; For how should he who communes with the years Be sometime not a living spring of tears?

O child, that guided of thine only will Didst set thy maiden foot against the gate To strike it open ere thine hour of fate, Antigone, men say not thou didst ill, For love's sake and the reverence of his awe Divinely dying, slain by mortal law;

For love is awful as immortal death.

And through thee surely hath thy brother won Rest, out of sight of our world-weary sun, And in the dead land where ye ghosts draw breath A royal place and honour; so wast thou Happy, though earth have hold of thee too now.

So hast thou life and name inviolable And joy it may be, sacred and severe, Joy secret-souled beyond all hope or fear, A monumental joy wherein to dwell Secluse and silent, a selected state, Serene possession of thy proper fate.

Thou art not dead as these are dead who live Full 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 give Life, nor have eyesight who lack heart to see When 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 long Make your own souls part of your own soul's wrong?

Son of the word of the most high G.o.ds, man, Why wilt thou make thine hour of light and breath Emptier of all but shame than very death?

Fool, wilt thou live for ever? though thou care With 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 hair Sleeping, 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 name Is 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 flame Shall have it for a garland on his head To 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 down With joys and griefs ign.o.bler 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 dream And sees with instant eyes the naked thought Whereof 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 h.o.a.r 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 death And this grey hour had built to bury her The hollow twilight for a sepulchre.

But in my soul I saw as in a gla.s.s A pale and living body full of grace There lying, and over it the prophet's face Fixed; and the face was not of Tiresias, For such a starry fire was in his eyes As though their light it was that made the skies.

Such eyes should G.o.d's have been when very love Looked forth of them and set the sun aflame, And such his lips that called the light by name And bade the morning forth at sound thereof; His face was sad and masterful as fate, And like a star's his look compa.s.sionate.

Like a star's gazed on of sad eyes so long It seems to yearn with pity, and all its fire As a man's heart to tremble with desire And 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 bread Wherewith the lips of banishment are fed; But nothing was there in the world so sweet As the most bitter love, like G.o.d's own grace, Wherewith he gazed on that fair buried face.

Grief and glad pride and pa.s.sion and sharp shame, Wrath and remembrance, faith and hope and hate And pitiless pity of days degenerate, Were in his eyes as an incorporate flame That burned about her, and the heart thereof And central flower was very fire of love.

But all about her grave wherein she slept Were noises of the wild wind-footed years Whose footprints flying were full of blood and tears, Shrieks as of Maenads on their hills that leapt And yelled as beasts of ravin, and their meat Was the rent flesh of their own sons to eat:

And fiery shadows pa.s.sing with strange cries, And Sphinx-like shapes about the ruined lands, And the red reek of parricidal hands And intermixture of incestuous eyes, And light as of that self-divided flame Which 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 head That bowed down silent on that sleeping slave Who was the lady of empire from her birth And light of all the kingdoms of the earth.

Within the compa.s.s of the watcher's hand All strengths of other men and divers powers Were 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 lay Twilight and dawn and night and labouring day.

He was most awful of the sons of G.o.d.

Even now men seeing seemed at his lips to see The trumpet of the judgment that should be, And in his right hand terror for a rod, And in the breath that made the mountains bow The horned fire of Moses on his brow.

The strong wind of the coming of the Lord Had blown as flame upon him, and brought down On his bare head from heaven fire for a crown, And fire was girt upon him as a sword To smite and lighten, and on what ways he trod There fell from him the shadow of a G.o.d.

Pale, with the whole world's judgment in his eyes, He stood and saw the grief and shame endure That 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 sleep That 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 Paradise With Love's name sealing up its starry speech - The tripled might of hand that found in reach All 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 give That 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 south Breathed 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 pa.s.sion and ambiguous strife The 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 grave Stretched forth his hand and touched her, and her eyes Opened as sudden suns in heaven might rise, And her soul caught from his the faith to save; Faith above creeds, faith beyond records, born Of the pure, naked, fruitful, awful morn.

For in the daybreak now that night was dead The light, the shadow, the delight, the pain, The purpose and the pa.s.sion of those twain, Seemed gathered on that third prophetic head, And all their crowns were as one crown, and one His face with her face in the living sun.

For even with that communion of their eyes His whole soul pa.s.sed 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?

THE SONG OF THE STANDARD

Maiden most 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 s.h.i.+ps, and remembrance a flame-coloured light; Out of thine eyes thou shalt shew us as surely the sun-dawn of right.