Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 9

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 Æschylus 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 in heaven

at highest one sceptred sun
Regent, on earth here surely without fail

One only, one imperious nightingale.
Dumb was the field, the
woodland mute, the lawn
Silent; the hill was tongueless as the vale

Even when the last fair waif of cloud that felt
Its heart beneath the
colouring moonrays melt,
At high midnoon of midnight half
withdrawn,
Bared all the sudden deep divine moondawn.
Then,
unsaluted by her twin-born tune,
That latter timeless morning of the
moon
Rose past its hour of moonrise; clouds gave way
To the old
reconquering ray,
But no song answering made it more than day;

No cry of song by night
Shot fire into the cloud-constraining light.

One only, one Æolian island heard
Thrill, but through no bird's throat,

In one strange manlike maiden's godlike note,
The song of all these
as a single bird.
Till the sea's portal was as funeral gate
For that sole
singer in all time's ageless date
Singled and signed for so triumphal
fate,
All nightingales but one in all the world
All her sweet life
were silent; only then,
When her life's wing of womanhood was
furled,
Their cry, this cry of thine was heard again,
As of me now,
of any born of men.
Through sleepless clear spring nights filled full
of thee,
Rekindled here, thy ruling song has thrilled
The deep dark
air and subtle tender sea
And breathless hearts with one bright sound
fulfilled.
Or at midnoon to me
Swimming, and birds about my
happier head
Skimming, one smooth soft way by water and air,
To
these my bright born brethren and to me
Hath not the clear wind
borne or seemed to bear
A song wherein all earth and heaven and sea

Were molten in one music made of thee
To enforce us, O our sister
of the shore,
Look once in heart back landward and adore?

For
songless were we sea-mews, yet had we
More joy than all things
joyful of thee--more,
Haply, than all things happiest; nay, save thee,

In thy strong rapture of imperious joy
Too high for heart of
sea-borne bird or boy,
What living things were happiest if not we?

But knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong,
No more we
knew of song.

Song, and the secrets of it, and their might,
What blessings curse it
and what curses bless,
I know them since my spirit had first in sight,

Clear as thy song's words or the live sun's light,
The small dark
body's Lesbian loveliness
That held the fire eternal; eye and ear

Were as a god's to see, a god's to hear,
Through all his hours of daily
and nightly chime,
The sundering of the two-edged spear of time:

The spear that pierces even the sevenfold shields
Of mightiest
Memory, mother of all songs made,
And wastes all songs as
roseleaves kissed and frayed
As here the harvest of the
foam-flowered fields;
But thine the spear may waste not that he
wields
Since first the God whose soul is man's live breath,
The sun
whose face hath our sun's face for shade,
Put all the light of life and
love and death
Too strong for life, but not for love too strong,

Where pain makes peace with pleasure in thy song,
And in thine heart,
where love and song make strife,
Fire everlasting of eternal life.
THE GARDEN OF CYMODOCE
Sea, and bright wind, and heaven of ardent air,
More dear than all
things earth-born; O to me
Mother more dear than love's own longing,
sea,
More than love's eyes are, fair,
Be with my spirit of song as
wings to bear,
As fire to feel and breathe and brighten; be
A spirit
of sense more deep of deity,
A light of love, if love may be, more
strong
In me than very song.
For song I have loved with second
love, but thee,
Thee first, thee, mother; ere my songs had breath,

That love of loves, whose bondage makes man free,
Was in me strong
as death.
And seeing no slave may love thee, no, not one
That loves
not freedom more,
And more for thy sake loves her, and for hers

Thee; or that hates not, on whate'er thy shore
Or what thy wave
soever, all things done
Of man beneath the sun
In his despite and
thine, to cross and curse
Your light and song that as with lamp and
verse
Guide safe the strength of our sphered universe,
Thy breath it
was, thou knowest, and none but thine,
That taught me love of one

thing more divine.
Ah, yet my youth was old [_Str._ 1. Its first years dead and cold
As
last year's autumn's gold,
And all my spirit of singing sick and sad
and sere,
Or ever I might behold
The fairest of thy fold
Engirt, enringed,
enrolled,
In all thy flower-sweet flock