Songs before Sunrise | Page 5

glad?"
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 Maenads 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 girded 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 daed 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.
THE EVE OF REVOLUTION
1
The trumpets of the four winds of the world
From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night heaves, With breasts
palpitating and wings refurled,
With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves
Sleeping, and in
her sleep she sees uncurled
Dreams serpent-shapen, such as sickness weaves,
Down the wild
wind of vision caught and whirled,
Dead leaves of sleep, thicker than autumn leaves,
Shadows of storm-shaped things,
Flights of dim tribes of kings,
The
reaping men that reap men for their sheaves,
And, without grain to yield,
Their scythe-swept harvest-field

Thronged thick with men pursuing and fugitives,
Dead foliage of the tree of sleep,
Leaves blood-coloured and golden,
blown from deep to deep.
2

I hear the midnight on the mountains cry
With many tongues of thunders, and I hear
Sound and resound the
hollow shield of sky
With trumpet-throated winds that charge and cheer,
And through the
roar of the hours that fighting fly,
Through flight and fight and all the fluctuant fear,
A sound sublimer
than the heavens are high,
A voice more instant than the winds are clear,
Say to my spirit, "Take
Thy trumpet too, and make
A rallying
music in the void night's ear,
Till the storm