Songs before Sunrise | Page 8

thee with latter watch-fires;
why wilt thou be blind?
17
Though all were else indifferent, all that live
Spiritless shapes of nations; though time wait
In vain on hope till
these have help to give,
And faith and love crawl famished from the gate;
Canst thou sit
shamed and self-contemplative
With soulless eyes on thy secluded fate?
Though time forgive them,
thee shall he forgive,
Whose choice was in thine hand to be so great?
Who cast out of thy mind
The passion of man's kind,
And made
thee and thine old name separate?
Now when time looks to see
New names and old and thee
Build up
our one Republic state by state,
England with France, and France with Spain,
And Spain with
sovereign Italy strike hands and reign.
18

O known and unknown fountain-heads that fill
Our dear life-springs of England! O bright race
Of streams and waters
that bear witness still
To the earth her sons were made of! O fair face
Of England, watched
of eyes death cannot kill,
How should the soul that lit you for a space
Fall through sick
weakness of a broken will
To the dead cold damnation of disgrace?
Such wind of memory stirs
On all green hills of hers,
Such breath
of record from so high a place,
From years whose tongues of flame
Prophesied in her name
Her
feet should keep truth's bright and burning trace,
We needs must have her heart with us,
Whose hearts are one with
man's; she must be dead or thus.
19
Who is against us? who is on our side?
Whose heart of all men's hearts is one with man's?
Where art thou
that wast prophetess and bride,
When truth and thou trod under time and chance?
What latter light of
what new hope shall guide
Out of the snares of hell thy feet, O France?
What heel shall bruise
these heads that hiss and glide,
What wind blow out these fen-born fires that dance
Before thee to thy death?
No light, no life, no breath,
From thy dead

eyes and lips shall take the trance,
Till on that deadliest crime
Reddening the 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.
20
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.
21
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?
22
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?
23
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