Songs before Sunrise | Page 8

feet of time?Who treads through blood and passes, time shall glance
Pardon, and Italy forgive,?And Rome arise up whom thou slewest, and bid thee live.
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I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The night is broken southward; the springs run,?The daysprings and the watersprings that flow
Forth with one will from where their source was one,?Out of the might of morning: high and low,
The hungering hills feed full upon the sun,?The thirsting valleys drink of him and glow
As a heart burns with some divine thing done,
Or as blood burns again?In the bruised heart of Spain,?A rose renewed with red new life begun,
Dragged down with thorns and briers,?That puts forth buds like fires?Till the whole tree take flower in unison,
And prince that clogs and priest that clings?Be cast as weeds upon the dunghill of dead things.
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Ah heaven, bow down, be nearer! This is she,
Italia, the world's wonder, the world's care,?Free in her heart ere quite her hands be free,
And lovelier than her loveliest robe of air.?The earth hath voice, and speech is in the sea,
Sounds of great joy, too beautiful to bear;?All things are glad because of her, but we
Most glad, who loved her when the worst days were.
O sweetest, fairest, first,?O flower, when times were worst,?Thou hadst no stripe wherein we had no share.
Have not our hearts held close,?Kept fast the whole world's rose??Have we not worn thee at heart whom none would wear?
First love and last love, light of lands,?Shall we not touch thee full-blown with our lips and hands?
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O too much loved, what shall we say of thee?
What shall we make of our heart's burning fire,?The passion in our lives that fain would be
Made each a brand to pile into the pyre?That shall burn up thy foemen, and set free
The flame whence thy sun-shadowing wings aspire??Love of our life, what more than men are we,
That this our breath for thy sake should expire,
For whom to joyous death?Glad gods might yield their breath,?Great gods drop down from heaven to serve for hire?
We are but men, are we,?And thou art Italy;?What shall we do for thee with our desire?
What gift shall we deserve to give??How shall we die to do thee service, or how live?
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The very thought in us how much we love thee
Makes the throat sob with love and blinds the eyes.?How should love bear thee, to behold above thee
His own light burning from reverberate skies??They give thee light, but the light given them of thee
Makes faint the wheeling fires that fall and rise.?What love, what life, what death of man's should move thee,
What face that lingers or what foot that flies?
It is not heaven that lights?Thee with such days and nights,?But thou that heaven is lit from in such wise.
O thou her dearest birth,?Turn thee to lighten earth,?Earth too that bore thee and yearns to thee and cries;?Stand up, shine, lighten, become flame,?Till as the sun's name through all nations be thy name.
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I take the trumpet from my lips and sing.
O life immeasurable and imminent love,?And fear like winter leading hope like spring,
Whose flower-bright brows the day-star sits above,?Whose hand unweariable and untiring wing
Strike music from a world that wailed and strove,?Each bright soul born and every glorious thing,
From very freedom to man's joy thereof,
O time, O change and death,?Whose now not hateful breath?But gives the music swifter feet to move
Through sharp remeasuring tones
Of refluent antiphones?More tender-tuned than heart or throat of dove,?Soul into soul, song into song,?Life changing into life, by laws that work not wrong;
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O natural force in spirit and sense, that art
One thing in all things, fruit of thine own fruit,?O thought illimitable and infinite heart
Whose blood is life in limbs indissolute?That still keeps hurtless thine invisible part
And inextirpable thy viewless root?Whence all sweet shafts of green and each thy dart
Of sharpening leaf and bud resundering shoot;
Hills that the day-star hails,?Heights that the first beam scales,?And heights that souls outshining suns salute,
Valleys for each mouth born?Free now of plenteous corn,?Waters and woodlands' musical or mute;
Free winds that brighten brows as free,?And thunder and laughter and lightning of the sovereign sea;
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Rivers and springs, and storms that seek your prey;
With strong wings ravening through the skies by night;?Spirits and stars that hold one choral way;
O light of heaven, and thou the heavenlier light?Aflame above the souls of men that sway
All generations of all years with might;?O sunrise of the repossessing day,
And sunrise of all-renovating right;
And thou, whose trackless foot?Mocks hope's or fear's pursuit,?Swift Revolution, changing depth with height;
And thou, whose mouth makes one?All songs that seek the sun,?Serene Republic of a world made white;?Thou, Freedom, whence the soul's springs ran;?Praise earth for man's sake living, and for earth's sake man.
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Make yourselves wings, O tarrying feet of fate,
And hidden hour that hast our hope to bear,?A child-god, through the morning-coloured gate
That lets love in upon the golden air,?Dead on whose