Songs Before Sunrise Part 15

But their children, by kings made quiet, by priests made wise, Love better the heat of their hearths than the light of her eyes.

Are they children of these thy children indeed, who have sold, O golden G.o.ddess, the light of thy face for gold?

Are they sons indeed of the sons of thy dayspring of hope, Whose lives are in fief of an emperor, whose souls of a Pope?

Hide then thine head, O beloved; thy time is done; Thy kingdom is broken in heaven, and blind thy sun.

What sleep is upon you, to dream she indeed shall rise, When the hopes are dead in her heart as the tears in her eyes?

If ye sing of her dead, will she stir? if ye weep for her, weep?

Come away now, leave her; what hath she to do but sleep?

But ye that mourn are alive, and have years to be; And life is good, and the world is wiser than we.

Yea, wise is the world and mighty, with years to give, And years to promise; but how long now shall it live?

And foolish and poor is faith, and her ways are bare, Till she find the way of the sun, and the morning air.

In that hour shall this dead face s.h.i.+ne as the face of the sun, And the soul of man and her soul and the world's be one.

MATER TRIUMPHALIS

Mother of man's time-travelling generations, Breath of his nostrils, heartblood of his heart, G.o.d above all G.o.ds wors.h.i.+pped of all nations, Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.

Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things; The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings.

Angels and G.o.ds, spirit and sense, thou takest In thy right hand as drops of dust or dew; The temples and the towers of time thou breakest, His thoughts and words and works, to make them new.

All we have wandered from thy ways, have hidden Eyes from thy glory and ears from calls they heard; Called of thy trumpets vainly, called and chidden, Scourged of thy speech and wounded of thy word.

We have known thee and have not known thee; stood beside thee, Felt thy lips breathe, set foot where thy feet trod, Loved and renounced and wors.h.i.+pped and denied thee, As though thou wert but as another G.o.d,

"One hour for sleep," we said, "and yet one other; All day we served her, and who shall serve by night?"

Not knowing of thee, thy face not knowing, O mother, O light wherethrough the darkness is as light.

Men that forsook thee hast thou not forsaken, Races of men that knew not hast thou known; Nations that slept thou hast doubted not to waken, Wors.h.i.+ppers of strange G.o.ds to make thine own.

All old grey histories hiding thy clear features, O secret spirit and sovereign, all men's tales, Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures, They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils.

Thine hands, without election or exemption, Feed all men fainting from false peace or strife, O thou, the resurrection and redemption, The G.o.dhead and the manhood and the life.

Thy wings shadow the waters; thine eyes lighten The horror of the hollows of the night; The depths of the earth and the dark places brighten Under thy feet, whiter than fire is white.

Death is subdued to thee, and h.e.l.l's bands broken; Where thou art only is heaven; who hears not thee, Time shall not hear him; when men's names are spoken, A nameless sign of death shall his name be.

Deathless shall be the death, the name be nameless; Sterile of stars his twilight time of breath; With fire of h.e.l.l shall shame consume him shameless, And dying, all the night darken his death.

The years are as thy garments, the world's ages As sandals bound and loosed from thy swift feet; Time serves before thee, as one that hath for wages Praise or shame only, bitter words or sweet.

Thou sayest "Well done," and all a century kindles; Again thou sayest "Depart from sight of me,"

And all the light of face of all men dwindles, And the age is as the broken gla.s.s of thee.

The night is as a seal set on men's faces, On faces fallen of men that take no light, Nor give light in the deeps of the dark places, Blind things, incorporate with the body of night.

Their souls are serpents winterbound and frozen, Their shame is as a tame beast, at their feet Couched; their cold lips deride thee and thy chosen, Their lying lips made grey with dust for meat.

Then when their time is full and days run over, The splendour of thy sudden brow made bare Darkens the morning; thy bared hands uncover The veils of light and night and the awful air.

And the world naked as a new-born maiden Stands virginal and splendid as at birth, With all thine heaven of all its light unladen, Of all its love unburdened all thine earth.

For the utter earth and the utter air of heaven And the extreme depth is thine and the extreme height; Shadows of things and veils of ages riven Are as men's kings unkingdomed in thy sight.

Through the iron years, the centuries brazen-gated, By the ages' barred impenetrable doors, From the evening to the morning have we waited, Should thy foot haply sound on the awful floors.

The floors untrodden of the sun's feet glimmer, The star-unstricken pavements of the night; Do the lights burn inside? the lights wax dimmer On festal faces withering out of sight.

The crowned heads lose the light on them; it may be Dawn is at hand to smite the loud feast dumb; To blind the torch-lit centuries till the day be, The feasting kingdoms till thy kingdom come.

Shall it not come? deny they or dissemble, Is it not even as lightning from on high Now? and though many a soul close eyes and tremble, How should they tremble at all who love thee as I?

I am thine harp between thine hands, O mother!

All my strong chords are strained with love of thee.

We grapple in love and wrestle, as each with other Wrestle the wind and the unreluctant sea.

I am no courtier of thee sober-suited, Who loves a little for a little pay.

Me not thy winds and storms nor thrones disrooted Nor molten crowns nor thine own sins dismay.

Sinned hast thou sometime, therefore art thou sinless; Stained hast thou been, who art therefore without stain; Even as man's soul is kin to thee, but kinless Thou, in whose womb Time sows the all-various grain.

I do not bid thee spare me, O dreadful mother!

I pray thee that thou spare not, of thy grace.

How were it with me then, if ever another Should come to stand before thee in this my place?

I am the trumpet at thy lips, thy clarion Full of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath; The graves of souls born worms and creeds grown carrion Thy blast of judgment fills with fires of death.

Thou art the player whose organ-keys are thunders, And I beneath thy foot the pedal prest; Thou art the ray whereat the rent night sunders, And I the cloudlet borne upon thy breast.

I shall burn up before thee, pa.s.s and perish, As haze in sunrise on the red sea-line; But thou from dawn to sunsetting shalt cherish The thoughts that led and souls that lighted mine.

Reared between night and noon and truth and error, Each twilight-travelling bird that trills and screams Sickens at midday, nor can face for terror The imperious heaven's inevitable extremes.

I have no spirit of skill with equal fingers At sign to sharpen or to slacken strings; I keep no time of song with gold-perched singers And chirp of linnets on the wrists of kings.

I am thy storm-thrush of the days that darken, Thy petrel in the foam that bears thy bark To port through night and tempest; if thou hearken, My voice is in thy heaven before the lark.

My song is in the mist that hides thy morning, My cry is up before the day for thee; I have heard thee and beheld thee and give warning, Before thy wheels divide the sky and sea.

Birds shall wake with thee voiced and feathered fairer, To see in summer what I see in spring; I have eyes and heart to endure thee, O thunder-bearer, And they shall be who shall have tongues to sing.

I have love at least, and have not fear, and part not From thine unnavigable and wingless way; Thou tarriest, and I have not said thou art not, Nor all thy night long have denied thy day.