Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 2

things the high song taught him; how the breath?Too frail for life may be more strong than death;?And this poor flash of sense in life, that gleams?As a ghost's glory in dreams,?More stabile than the world's own heart's root seems,?By that strong faith of lordliest love which gives?To death's own sightless-seeming eyes a light?Clearer, to death's bare bones a verier might,?Than shines or strikes from any man that lives.?How he that loves life overmuch shall die?The dog's death, utterly:?And he that much less loves it than he hates?All wrongdoing that is done?Anywhere always underneath the sun?Shall live a mightier life than time's or fate's.?One fairer thing he shewed him, and in might?More strong than day and night?Whose strengths build up time's towering period:?Yea, one thing stronger and more high than God,?Which if man had not, then should God not be:?And that was Liberty.?And gladly should man die to gain, he said,?Freedom; and gladlier, having lost, lie dead.?For man's earth was not, nor the sweet sea-waves?His, nor his own land, nor its very graves,?Except they bred not, bore not, hid not slaves:?But all of all that is,?Were one man free in body and soul, were his.
And the song softened, even as heaven by night?Softens, from sunnier down to starrier light,?And with its moonbright breath?Blessed life for death's sake, and for life's sake death.?Till as the moon's own beam and breath confuse?In one clear hueless haze of glimmering hues?The sea's line and the land's line and the sky's,?And light for love of darkness almost dies,?As darkness only lives for light's dear love,?Whose hands the web of night is woven of,?So in that heaven of wondrous words were life?And death brought out of strife;?Yea, by that strong spell of serene increase?Brought out of strife to peace.
And the song lightened, as the wind at morn?Flashes, and even with lightning of the wind?Night's thick-spun web is thinned?And all its weft unwoven and overworn?Shrinks, as might love from scorn.?And as when wind and light on water and land?Leap as twin gods from heavenward hand in hand,?And with the sound and splendour of their leap?Strike darkness dead, and daunt the spirit of sleep,?And burn it up with fire;?So with the light that lightened from the lyre?Was all the bright heat in the child's heart stirred?And blown with blasts of music into flame?Till even his sense became?Fire, as the sense that fires the singing bird?Whose song calls night by name.?And in the soul within the sense began?The manlike passion of a godlike man,?And in the sense within the soul again?Thoughts that make men of gods and gods of men.
For love the high song taught him: love that turns?God's heart toward man as man's to Godward; love?That life and death and life are fashioned of,?From the first breath that burns?Half kindled on the flowerlike yeanling's lip,?So light and faint that life seems like to slip,?To that yet weaklier drawn?When sunset dies of night's devouring dawn.?But the man dying not wholly as all men dies?If aught be left of his in live men's eyes?Out of the dawnless dark of death to rise;?If aught of deed or word?Be seen for all time or of all time heard.?Love, that though body and soul were overthrown?Should live for love's sake of itself alone,?Though spirit and flesh were one thing doomed and dead,?Not wholly annihilated.?Seeing even the hoariest ash-flake that the pyre?Drops, and forgets the thing was once afire?And gave its heart to feed the pile's full flame?Till its own heart its own heat overcame,?Outlives its own life, though by scarce a span,?As such men dying outlive themselves in man,?Outlive themselves for ever; if the heat?Outburn the heart that kindled it, the sweet?Outlast the flower whose soul it was, and flit?Forth of the body of it?Into some new shape of a strange perfume?More potent than its light live spirit of bloom,?How shall not something of that soul relive,?That only soul that had such gifts to give?As lighten something even of all men's doom?Even from the labouring womb?Even to the seal set on the unopening tomb??And these the loving light of song and love?Shall wrap and lap round and impend above,?Imperishable; and all springs born illume?Their sleep with brighter thoughts than wake the dove?To music, when the hillside winds resume?The marriage-song of heather-flower and broom?And all the joy thereof.
And hate the song too taught him: hate of all?That brings or holds in thrall?Of spirit or flesh, free-born ere God began,?The holy body and sacred soul of man.?And wheresoever a curse was or a chain,?A throne for torment or a crown for bane?Rose, moulded out of poor men's molten pain,?There, said he, should man's heaviest hate be set?Inexorably, to faint not or forget?Till the last warmth bled forth of the last vein?In flesh that none should call a king's again,?Seeing wolves and dogs and birds that