Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 8

of Majano, who kept time?Clear to my choral rhyme.?Yet was the song acclaimed of these aloud?Whose praise had made mute humbleness misproud,?The song with answering song applauded thus,?But of that Daulian dream of Itylus.?So but for love's love haply was it--nay,?How else?--that even their song took my song's part,?For love of love and sweetness of sweet heart,?Or god-given glorious madness of mid May?And heat of heart and hunger and thirst to sing,?Full of the new wine of the wind of spring.
Or if this were not, and it be not sin?To hold myself in spirit of thy sweet kin,?In heart and spirit of song;?If this my great love do thy grace no wrong,?Thy grace that gave me grace to dwell therein;?If thy gods thus be my gods, and their will?Made my song part of thy song--even such part?As man's hath of God's heart--?And my life like as thy life to fulfil;?What have our gods then given us? Ah, to thee,?Sister, much more, much happier than to me,?Much happier things they have given, and more of grace?Than falls to man's light race;?For lighter are we, all our love and pain?Lighter than thine, who knowest of time or place?Thus much, that place nor time?Can heal or hurt or lull or change again?The singing soul that makes his soul sublime?Who hears the far fall of its fire-fledged rhyme?Fill darkness as with bright and burning rain?Till all the live gloom inly glows, and light?Seems with the sound to cleave the core of night.
The singing soul that moves thee, and that moved?When thou wast woman, and their songs divine?Who mixed for Grecian mouths heaven's lyric wine?Fell dumb, fell down reproved?Before one sovereign Lesbian song of thine.?That soul, though love and life had fain held fast,?Wind-winged with fiery music, rose and past?Through the indrawn hollow of earth and heaven and hell,?As through some strait sea-shell?The wide sea's immemorial song,--the sea?That sings and breathes in strange men's ears of thee?How in her barren bride-bed, void and vast,?Even thy soul sang itself to sleep at last.
To sleep? Ah, then, what song is this, that here?Makes all the night one ear,?One ear fulfilled and mad with music, one?Heart kindling as the heart of heaven, to hear?A song more fiery than the awakening sun?Sings, when his song sets fire?To the air and clouds that build the dead night's pyre??_O thou of divers-coloured mind, O thou?Deathless, God's daughter subtle-souled_--lo, now,?Now too the song above all songs, in flight?Higher than the day-star's height,?And sweet as sound the moving wings of night!?_Thou of the divers-coloured seat_--behold,?Her very song of old!--?_O deathless, O God's daughter subtle-souled!_?That same cry through this boskage overhead?Rings round reiterated,?Palpitates as the last palpitated,?The last that panted through her lips and died?Not down this grey north sea's half sapped cliff-side?That crumbles toward the coastline, year by year?More near the sands and near;?The last loud lyric fiery cry she cried,?Heard once on heights Leucadian,--heard not here.
Not here; for this that fires our northland night,?This is the song that made?Love fearful, even the heart of love afraid,?With the great anguish of its great delight.?No swan-song, no far-fluttering half-drawn breath,?No word that love of love's sweet nature saith,?No dirge that lulls the narrowing lids of death,?No healing hymn of peace-prevented strife,--?This is her song of life.
_I loved thee_,--hark, one tenderer note than all--?_Atthis, of old time, once_--one low long fall,?Sighing--one long low lovely loveless call,?Dying--one pause in song so flamelike fast--?_Atthis, long since in old time overpast_--?One soft first pause and last.?One,--then the old rage of rapture's fieriest rain?Storms all the music-maddened night again.
_Child of God, close craftswoman, I beseech thee,?Bid not ache nor agony break nor master,?Lady, my spirit_--?O thou her mistress, might her cry not reach thee??Our Lady of all men's loves, could Love go past her,?Pass, and not hear it?
She hears not as she heard not; hears not me,?O treble-natured mystery,--how should she?Hear, or give ear?--who heard and heard not thee;?Heard, and went past, and heard not; but all time?Hears all that all the ravin of his years?Hath cast not wholly out of all men's ears?And dulled to death with deep dense funeral chime?Of their reiterate rhyme.?And now of all songs uttering all her praise,?All hers who had thy praise and did thee wrong,?Abides one song yet of her lyric days,?Thine only, this thy song.
O soul triune, woman and god and bird,?Man, man at least has heard.?All ages call thee conqueror, and thy cry?The mightiest as the least beneath the sky?Whose heart was ever set to song, or stirred?With wind of mounting music blown more high?Than wildest wing may fly,?Hath heard or hears,--even ?schylus as I.?But when thy name was woman, and thy word?Human,--then haply, surely then meseems?This thy bird's note was heard on earth of none,?Of none save only in dreams.?In all the world then surely was but one?Song; as