FROM PRELUDE TO "SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE"

Play then and sing; we too have played,
We likewise, in that subtle shade.

We too have twisted through our hair
Such tendrils as the wild Loves wear,
And heard what mirth the Mænads made,
Till the wind blew our garlands bare
And left their roses disarrayed,

And smote the summer with strange air,

And disengirdled and discrowned

The limbs and locks that vine-wreaths bound.

We too have tracked by star-proof trees

The tempest of the Thyiades

Scare the loud night on hills that hid

The blood-feasts of the Bassarid,

Heard their song's iron cadences

Fright the wolf hungering from the kid, Outroar the lion-throated seas,

Outchide the north-wind if it chid, And hush the torrent-tongued ravines With thunders of their tambourines.

But the fierce flute whose notes acclaim
Dim goddesses of fiery fame,

Cymbal and clamorous kettledrum,
Timbrels and tabrets, all are dumb
That turned the high chill air to flame;
The singing tongues of fire are numb
That called on Cotys by her name
Edonian, till they felt her come
And maddened, and her mystic face
Lightened along the streams of Thrace.

For Pleasure slumberless and pale,
And Passion with rejected veil,

Pass, and the tempest-footed throng
Of hours that follow them with song
Till their feet flag and voices fail,

And lips that were so loud so long
Learn silence, or a wearier wail;

So keen is change, and time so strong,
To weave the robes of life and rend
And weave again till life have end.

But weak is change, but strengthless time,
To take the light from heaven, or climb
The hills of heaven with wasting feet.
Songs they can stop that earth found meet,

But the stars keep their ageless rhyme ;

Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet, But the stars keep their spring sublime;

Passions and pleasures can defeat,

Actions and agonies control,

And life and death, but not the soul.

Because man's soul is man's God still,
What wind soever waft his will

Across the waves of day and night
To port or shipwreck, left or right,
By shores and shoals of good and ill;

And still its flame at mainmast height
Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill
Sustains the indomitable light
Whence only man hath strength to steer
Or helm to handle without fear.

Save his own soul's light overhead,
None leads him, and none ever led,
Across birth's hidden harbour-bar,

Past youth where shoreward shallows are, Through age that drives on toward the red Vast void of sunset hailed from far,

To the equal waters of the dead;

Save his own soul he hath no star,
And sinks, except his own soul guide,
Helmless in middle turn of tide.
No blast of air or fire of sun
Puts out the light whereby we run
With girdled loins our lamplit race,
And each from each takes heart of

grace

And spirit till his turn be done,

And light of face from each man's face In whom the light of trust is one;

Since only souls that keep their place By their own light, and watch things roll, And stand, have light for any soul.

A little time we gain from time
To set our seasons in some chime,

For harsh or sweet or loud or low,
With seasons played out long ago
And souls that in their time and prime
Took part with summer or with snow,
Lived abject lives out or sublime,

And had their chance of seed to sow For service or disservice done

To those days dead and this their son.

A little time that we may fill

Or with such good works or such ill

As loose the bonds or make them strong
Wherein all manhood suffers wrong.

By rose-hung river and light-foot rill

There are who rest not; who think long Till they discern as from a hill

At the sun's hour of morning song, Known of souls only, and those souls free, The sacred spaces of the sea.

FROM "MATER TRIUMPHALIS”

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, pass 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.