Songs before Sunrise | Page 4

hate-offering of wrongs,
And time the thanksgiving of
years,
And years the thanksgiving of ages;
I bring you my handful of songs.

If a perfume be left, if a bloom,
Let it live till Italia be risen,
To be strewn in the dust of her car
When her voice shall awake from
the tomb
England, and France from her prison,
Sisters, a star by a star.
I bring you the sword of a song,
The sword of my spirit's desire,
Feeble; but laid at your feet,
That which was weak shall be strong,
That which was cold shall take fire,
That which was bitter be sweet.
It was wrought not with hands to smite,
Nor hewn after swordsmiths' fashion,
Nor tempered on anvil of steel;
But with visions and dreams of the
night,
But with hope, and the patience of passion,
And the signet of love for a seal.
Be it witness, till one more strong,
Till a loftier lyre, till a rarer
Lute praise her better than I,
Be it witness before you, my song,
That I knew her, the world's banner-bearer,

Who shall cry the republican cry.
Yea, even she as at first,
Yea, she alone and none other,
Shall cast down, shall build up, shall bring home;
Slake earth's
hunger and thirst,
Lighten, and lead as a mother;
First name of the world's names, Rome.
PRELUDE
Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and
shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes
and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the
gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time's ears
Youth's dreams hung singing,
and Time's truth
Was half not harsh in the ears of Youth.
Between the bud and the blown flower
Youth talked with joy and
grief an hour,
With footless joy and wingless grief
And twin-born faith and
disbelief
Who share the seasons to devour;
And long ere these made up their sheaf
Felt the winds round him
shake and shower
The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,
Delight whose germ grew never

grain,
And passion dyed in its own pain.
Then he stood up, and trod to dust
Fear and desire, mistrust and trust,
And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,
And bound for sandals on his
feet
Knowledge and patience of what must
And what things may be, in the heat
And cold of years that rot and
rust
And alter; and his spirit's meat
Was freedom, and his staff was
wrought
Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought.
For what has he whose will sees clear
To do with doubt and faith and
fear,
Swift hopes and slow despondencies?
His heart is equal with the sea's

And with the sea-wind's, and his ear
Is level to the speech of these,
And his soul communes and takes
cheer
With the actual earth's equalities,
Air, light, and night, hills, winds,
and streams,
And seeks not strength from strengthless dreams.
His soul is even with the sun
Whose spirit and whose eye are one,
Who seeks not stars by day, nor light
And heavy heat of day by night.

Him can no God cast down, whom none
Can lift in hope beyond the height
Of fate and nature and things done
By the calm rule of might and right
That bids men be and bear and do,

And die beneath blind skies or blue.
To him the lights of even and morn
Speak no vain things of love or

scorn,
Fancies and passions miscreate
By man in things dispassionate.
Nor
holds he fellowship forlorn
With souls that pray and hope and hate,
And doubt they had better
not been born,
And fain would lure or scare off fate
And charm their doomsman
from their doom
And make fear dig its own false tomb.
He builds not half of doubts and half
Of dreams his own soul's
cenotaph,
Whence hopes and fears with helpless eyes,
Wrapt loose in cast-off
cerecloths, rise
And dance and wring their hands and laugh,
And weep thin tears and sigh light sighs,
And without living lips
would quaff
The living spring in man that lies,
And drain his soul of faith and
strength
It might have lived on a life's length.
He hath given himself and hath not sold
To God for heaven or man
for gold,
Or grief for comfort that it gives,
Or joy for grief's restoratives.
He
hath given himself to time, whose fold
Shuts in the mortal flock that lives
On its plain pasture's heat and cold
And the equal year's alternatives.
Earth, heaven, and time, death, life,
and he,
Endure while they shall be to be.
"Yet between death and life are hours
To flush with love and hide in
flowers;

What profit save in these?" men cry:
"Ah, see, between soft earth and
sky,
What only good things here are ours!"
They say, "what better wouldst thou try,
What sweeter sing of? or
what powers
Serve, that will give thee ere thou die
More joy to sing and be less
sad,
More heart to play and grow more