Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 8

that struck my whole soul
through,
Pierced my keen spirit of sense with edge more keen,
Even
when I knew not,--even ere sooth was seen,--
When thou wast but the
tawny sweet winged thing
Whose cry was but of spring.
And yet even so thine ear should hear me--yea,
Hear me this nightfall
by this northland bay,
Even for their sake whose loud good word I
had,
Singing of thee in the all-beloved clime
Once, where the
windy wine of spring makes mad
Our sisters 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