Songs Before Sunrise Part 9

Thou, in the day that breaks thy prison, People, though these men take thy name, And hail and hymn thee rearisen, Who made songs erewhile of thy shame, Give thou not ear; for these are they Whose good day was thine evil day.

Set not thine hand unto their cross.

Give not thy soul up sacrificed.

Change not the gold of faith for dross Of Christian creeds that spit on Christ.

Let not thy tree of freedom be Regrafted from that rotting tree.

This dead G.o.d here against my face Hath help for no man; who hath seen The good works of it, or such grace As thy grace in it, Nazarene, As that from thy live lips which ran For man's sake, O thou son of man?

The tree of faith ingraffed by priests Puts its foul foliage out above thee, And round it feed man-eating beasts Because of whom we dare not love thee; Though hearts reach back and memories ache, We cannot praise thee for their sake.

O hidden face of man, whereover The years have woven a viewless veil, If thou wast verily man's lover, What did thy love or blood avail?

Thy blood the priests make poison of, And in gold shekels coin thy love.

So when our souls look back to thee They sicken, seeing against thy side, Too foul to speak of or to see, The leprous likeness of a bride, Whose kissing lips through his lips grown Leave their G.o.d rotten to the bone.

When we would see thee man, and know What heart thou hadst toward men indeed, Lo, thy blood-blackened altars; lo, The lips of priests that pray and feed While their own h.e.l.l's worm curls and licks The poison of the crucifix.

Thou bad'st let children come to thee; What children now but curses come?

What manhood in that G.o.d can be Who sees their wors.h.i.+p, and is dumb?

No soul that lived, loved, wrought, and died, Is this their carrion crucified.

Nay, if their G.o.d and thou be one, If thou and this thing be the same, Thou shouldst not look upon the sun; The sun grows haggard at thy name.

Come down, be done with, cease, give o'er; Hide thyself, strive not, be no more.

TENEBRAE

At the chill high tide of the night, At the turn of the fluctuant hours, When the waters of time are at height, In a vision arose on my sight The kingdoms of earth and the powers.

In a dream without lightening of eyes I saw them, children of earth, Nations and races arise, Each one after his wise, Signed with the sign of his birth.

Sound was none of their feet, Light was none of their faces; In their lips breath was not, or heat, But a subtle murmur and sweet As of water in wan waste places.

Pale as from pa.s.sionate years, Years una.s.suaged of desire, Sang they soft in mine ears, Crowned with jewels of tears, Girt with girdles of fire.

A slow song beaten and broken, As it were from the dust and the dead, As of spirits athirst unsloken, As of things unspeakable spoken, As of tears unendurable shed.

In the manifold sound remote, In the molten murmur of song, There was but a sharp sole note Alive on the night and afloat, The cry of the world's heart's wrong.

As the sea in the strait sea-caves, The sound came straitened and strange; A noise of the rending of graves, A tidal thunder of waves, The music of death and of change.

"We have waited so long," they say, "For a sound of the G.o.d, for a breath, For a ripple of the refluence of day, For the fresh bright wind of the fray, For the light of the sunrise of death.

"We have prayed not, we, to be strong, To fulfil the desire of our eyes; - Howbeit they have watched for it long, Watched, and the night did them wrong, Yet they say not of day, shall it rise?

"They are fearful and feeble with years, Yet they doubt not of day if it be; Yea, blinded and beaten with tears, Yea, sick with foresight of fears, Yet a little, and hardly, they see.

"We pray not, we, for the palm, For the fruit ingraffed of the fight, For the blossom of peace and the balm, And the tender triumph and calm Of crownless and weaponless right.

"We pray not, we, to behold The latter august new birth, The young day's purple and gold, And divine, and rerisen as of old, The sun-G.o.d Freedom on earth.

"Peace, and world's honour, and fame, We have sought after none of these things; The light of a life like flame Pa.s.sing, the storm of a name Shaking the strongholds of kings:

"Nor, fas.h.i.+oned of fire and of air, The splendour that burns on his head Who was chiefest in ages that were, Whose breath blew palaces bare, Whose eye shone tyrannies dead:

"All these things in your day Ye shall see, O our sons, and shall hold Surely; but we, in the grey Twilight, for one thing we pray, In that day though our memories be cold:

"To feel on our brows as we wait An air of the morning, a breath From the springs of the east, from the gate Whence freedom issues, and fate, Sorrow, and triumph, and death

"From a land whereon time hath not trod, Where the spirit is bondless and bare, And the world's rein breaks, and the rod, And the soul of a man, which is G.o.d, He adores without altar or prayer:

For alone of herself and her right She takes, and alone gives grace: And the colours of things lose light, And the forms, in the limitless white Splendour of s.p.a.ce without s.p.a.ce:

"And the blossom of man from his tomb Yearns open, the flower that survives; And the shadows of changes consume In the colourless pa.s.sionate bloom Of the live light made of our lives:

"Seeing each life given is a leaf Of the manifold multiform flower, And the least among these, and the chief, As an ear in the red-ripe sheaf Stored for the harvesting hour.

"O spirit of man, most holy, The measure of things and the root, In our summers and winters a lowly Seed, putting forth of them slowly Thy supreme blossom and fruit;

"In thy sacred and perfect year, The souls that were parcel of thee In the labour and life of us here Shall be rays of thy sovereign sphere, Springs of thy motion shall be.

"There is the fire that was man, The light that was love, and the breath That was hope ere deliverance began, And the wind that was life for a span, And the birth of new things, which is death

There, whosoever had light, And, having, for men's sake gave; All that warred against night; All that were found in the fight Swift to be slain and to save;

"Undisbranched of the storms that disroot us, Of the lures that enthrall unenticed; The names that exalt and trans.m.u.te us; The blood-bright splendour of Brutus, The snow-bright splendour of Christ.

"There all chains are undone; Day there seems but as night; Spirit and sense are as one In the light not of star nor of sun; Liberty there is the light.

She, sole mother and maker, Stronger than sorrow, than strife; Deathless, though death overtake her; Faithful, though faith should forsake her; Spirit, and saviour, and life."

HYMN OF MAN (DURING THE SESSION IN ROME OF THE Ec.u.mENICAL COUNCIL)

In the grey beginning of years, in the twilight of things that began, The word of the earth in the ears of the world, was it G.o.d? was it man?

The word of the earth to the spheres her sisters, the note of her song, The sound of her speech in the ears of the starry and sisterly throng, Was it praise or pa.s.sion or prayer, was it love or devotion or dread, When the veils of the s.h.i.+ning air first wrapt her jubilant head?

When her eyes new-born of the night saw yet no star out of reach; When her maiden mouth was alight with the flame of musical speech; When her virgin feet were set on the terrible heavenly way, And her virginal lids were wet with the dew of the birth of the day: Eyes that had looked not on time, and ears that had heard not of death; Lips that had learnt not the rhyme of change and pa.s.sionate breath, The rhythmic anguish of growth, and the motion of mutable things, Of love that longs and is loth, and plume-plucked hope without wings, Pa.s.sions and pains without number, and life that runs and is lame, From slumber again to slumber, the same race set for the same, Where the runners outwear each other, but running with lampless hands No man takes light from his brother till blind at the goal he stands: Ah, did they know, did they dream of it, counting the cost and the worth?

The ways of her days, did they seem then good to the new-souled earth?

Did her heart rejoice, and the might of her spirit exult in her then, Child yet no child of the night, and motherless mother of men?

Was it Love brake forth flower-fas.h.i.+on, a bird with gold on his wings, Lovely, her firstborn pa.s.sion, and impulse of firstborn things?

Was Love that nestling indeed that under the plumes of the night Was hatched and hidden as seed in the furrow, and brought forth bright?

Was it Love lay shut in the sh.e.l.l world-shaped, having over him there Black world-wide wings that impel the might of the night through air?

And bursting his sh.e.l.l as a bird, night shook through her sail- stretched vans, And her heart as a water was stirred, and its heat was the firstborn man's.