Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 4

heaven and lightening hell;?And statelier stood he than a tower that stands?And darkens with its darkness far-off sands?Whereon the sky leans red;?And with a voice that stilled the winds he said:?'I am he that was thy lord before thy birth,?I am he that is thy lord till thou turn earth:?I make the night more dark, and all the morrow?Dark as the night whose darkness was my breath:?O fool, my name is sorrow;?Thou fool, my name is death.'
And he that heard spake not, and looked right on?Again, and Love was gone.
Through many a night toward many a wearier day?His spirit bore his body down its way.?Through many a day toward many a wearier night?His soul sustained his sorrows in her sight.?And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea?Sorrowful even as he.?And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb;?And with too long strong stress of grief to be?His heart grew sere and numb.
And one bright eve ere summer in autumn sank?At stardawn standing on a grey sea-bank?He felt the wind fitfully shift and heave?As toward a stormier eve;?And all the wan wide sea shuddered; and earth?Shook underfoot as toward some timeless birth,?Intolerable and inevitable; and all?Heaven, darkling, trembled like a stricken thrall.?And far out of the quivering east, and far?From past the moonrise and its guiding star,?Began a noise of tempest and a light?That was not of the lightning; and a sound?Rang with it round and round?That was not of the thunder; and a flight?As of blown clouds by night,?That was not of them; and with songs and cries?That sang and shrieked their soul out at the skies?A shapeless earthly storm of shapes began?From all ways round to move in on the man,?Clamorous against him silent; and their feet?Were as the wind's are fleet,?And their shrill songs were as wild birds' are sweet.
And as when all the world of earth was wronged?And all the host of all men driven afoam?By the red hand of Rome,?Round some fierce amphitheatre overthronged?With fair clear faces full of bloodier lust?Than swells and stings the tiger when his mood?Is fieriest after blood?And drunk with trampling of the murderous must?That soaks and stains the tortuous close-coiled wood?Made monstrous with its myriad-mustering brood,?Face by fair face panted and gleamed and pressed,?And breast by passionate breast?Heaved hot with ravenous rapture, as they quaffed?The red ripe full fume of the deep live draught,?The sharp quick reek of keen fresh bloodshed, blown?Through the dense deep drift up to the emperor's throne?From the under steaming sands?With clamour of all-applausive throats and hands,?Mingling in mirthful time?With shrill blithe mockeries of the lithe-limbed mime:?So from somewhence far forth of the unbeholden,?Dreadfully driven from over and after and under,?Fierce, blown through fifes of brazen blast and golden,?With sound of chiming waves that drown the thunder?Or thunder that strikes dumb the sea's own chimes,?Began the bellowing of the bull-voiced mimes,?Terrible; firs bowed down as briars or palms?Even at the breathless blast as of a breeze?Fulfilled with clamour and clangour and storms of psalms;?Red hands rent up the roots of old-world trees,?Thick flames of torches tossed as tumbling seas?Made mad the moonless and infuriate air?That, ravening, revelled in the riotous hair?And raiment of the furred Bassarides.
So came all those in on him; and his heart,?As out of sleep suddenly struck astart,?Danced, and his flesh took fire of theirs, and grief?Was as a last year's leaf?Blown dead far down the wind's way; and he set?His pale mouth to the brightest mouth it met?That laughed for love against his lips, and bade?Follow; and in following all his blood grew glad?And as again a sea-bird's; for the wind?Took him to bathe him deep round breast and brow?Not as it takes a dead leaf drained and thinned,?But as the brightest bay-flower blown on bough,?Set springing toward it singing: and they rode?By many a vine-leafed, many a rose-hung road,?Exalt with exultation; many a night?Set all its stars upon them as for spies?On many a moon-bewildering mountain-height?Where he rode only by the fierier light?Of his dread lady's hot sweet hungering eyes.?For the moon wandered witless of her way,?Spell-stricken by strong magic in such wise?As wizards use to set the stars astray.?And in his ears the music that makes mad?Beat always; and what way the music bade,?That alway rode he; nor was any sleep?His, nor from height nor deep.?But heaven was as red iron, slumberless,?And had no heart to bless;?And earth lay sere and darkling as distraught,?And help in her was nought.
Then many a midnight, many a morn and even,?His mother, passing forth of her fair heaven,?With goodlier gifts than all save gods can give?From earth or from the heaven where sea-things live,?With shine of sea-flowers through the bay-leaf braid?Woven for a crown her foam-white hands had made?To crown him with land's laurel and sea-dew,?Sought the sea-bird that was her boy: