Songs before Sunrise | Page 7

sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and
spirits, forged by fear and wonder
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire
from heaven before their thunder,
Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and
souls that ache thereunder;
The hands are mighty, were the head not blind.
Priest is the staff of king,
And chains and clouds one thing,
And
fettered flesh with devastated mind.
Open thy soul to see,
Slave, and thy feet are free;
Thy bonds and
thy beliefs are one in kind,
And of thy fears thine irons wrought
Hang weights upon thee
fashioned out of thine own thought.
11
O soul, O God, O glory of liberty,
To night and day their lightning and their light!
With heat of heart
thou kindlest the quick sea,
And the dead earth takes spirit from thy sight;
The natural body of
things is warm with thee,
And the world's weakness parcel of thy might;
Thou seest us feeble
and forceless, fit to be
Slaves of the years that drive us left and right,
Drowned under hours like waves
Wherethrough we row like slaves;


But if thy finger touch us, these take flight.
If but one sovereign word
Of thy live lips be heard,
What man shall
stop us, and what God shall smite?
Do thou but look in our dead eyes,
They are stars that light each other
till thy sundawn rise.
12
Thou art the eye of this blind body of man,
The tongue of this dumb people; shalt thou not
See, shalt thou speak
not for them?
Time is wan And hope is weak with waiting, and swift thought Hath
lost the wings at heel wherewith he ran,
And on the red pit's edge sits down distraught
To talk with death of
days republican
And dreams and fights long since dreamt out and fought;
Of the last hope that drew
To that red edge anew
The firewhite faith
of Poland without spot;
Of the blind Russian might,
And fire that is not light;
Of the green
Rhineland where thy spirit wrought;
But though time, hope, and memory tire,
Canst thou wax dark as they
do, thou whose light is fire?
13
I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The night is broken westward; the wide sea
That makes immortal
motion to and fro

From world's end unto world's end, and shall be
When nought now
grafted of men's hands shall grow
And as the weed in last year's waves are we
Or spray the sea-wind
shook a year ago
From its sharp tresses down the storm to lee,
The moving god that hides
Time in its timeless tides
Wherein time
dead seems live eternity,
That breaks and makes again
Much mightier things than men,
Doth
it not hear change coming, or not see?
Are the deeps deaf and dead and blind,
To catch no light or sound
from landward of mankind?
14
O thou, clothed round with raiment of white waves,
Thy brave brows lightening through the grey wet air,
Thou, lulled
with sea-sounds of a thousand caves,
And lit with sea-shine to thine inland lair,
Whose freedom clothed the
naked souls of slaves
And stripped the muffled souls of tyrants bare,
O, by the centuries of
thy glorious graves,
By the live light of the earth that was thy care,
Live, thou must not be dead,
Live; let thine armed head
Lift itself
up to sunward and the fair
Daylight of time and man,
Thine head republican,
With the same
splendour on thine helmless hair

That in his eyes kept up a light
Who on thy glory gazed away their
sacred sight;
15
Who loved and looked their sense to death on thee;
Who taught thy lips imperishable things,
And in thine ears outsang
thy singing sea;
Who made thy foot firm on the necks of kings
And thy soul
somewhile steadfast--woe are we
It was but for a while, and all the strings
Were broken of thy spirit;
yet had he
Set to such tunes and clothed it with such wings
It seemed for his sole sake
Impossible to break,
And woundless of
the worm that waits and stings,
The golden-headed worm
Made headless for a term,
The
king-snake whose life kindles with the spring's,
To breathe his soul upon her bloom,
And while she marks not turn
her temple to her tomb.
16
By those eyes blinded and that heavenly head
And the secluded soul adorable,
O Milton's land, what ails thee to be
dead?
Thine ears are yet sonorous with his shell
That all the songs of all thy
sea-line fed
With motive sound of spring-tides at mid swell,
And through thine

heart his thought as blood is shed,
Requickening thee with wisdom to do well;
Such sons were of thy womb,
England, for love of whom
Thy name
is not yet writ with theirs that fell,
But, till thou quite forget
What were thy children, yet
On the pale
lips of hope is as a spell;
And Shelley's heart and Landor's mind
Lit