Spirits in Bondage | Page 5

present curse?And build a heaven of dreams in real hell,
Go you to them and speak among them thus:?"There were no greater grief than to recall,?Down in the rotting grave where the lithe worms crawl,?Green fields above that smiled so sweet to us."
Is it good to tell old tales of Troynovant?Or praises of dead heroes, tried and sage,?Or sing the queens of unforgotten age,?Brynhild and Maeve and virgin Bradamant?
How should I sing of them? Can it be good?To think of glory now, when all is done,?And all our labour underneath the sun?Has brought us this-and not the thing we would?
All these were rosy visions of the night,?The loveliness and wisdom feigned of old.?But now we wake. The East is pale and cold,?No hope is in the dawn, and no delight.
VIII. Ode for New Year's Day
Woe unto you, ye sons of pain that are this day in earth,?Now cry for all your torment: now curse your hour of birth?And the fathers who begat you to a portion nothing worth.?And Thou, my own beloved, for as brave as ere thou art,?Bow down thine head, Despoina, clasp thy pale arms over it, Lie low with fast-closed eyelids, clenched teeth, enduring heart, For sorrow on sorrow is coming wherein all flesh has part.?The sky above is sickening, the clouds of God's hate cover it, Body and soul shall suffer beyond all word or thought,?Till the pain and noisy terror that these first years have wrought Seem but the soft arising and prelude of the storm?That fiercer still and heavier with sharper lightnings fraught Shall pour red wrath upon us over a world deform.
Thrice happy, O Despoina, were the men who were alive?In the great age and the golden age when still the cycle ran On upward curve and easily, for them both maid and man?And beast and tree and spirit in the green earth could thrive. But now one age is ending, and God calls home the stars?And looses the wheel of the ages and sends it spinning back Amid the death of nations, and points a downward track,?And madness is come over us and great and little wars.?He has not left one valley, one isle of fresh and green?Where old friends could forgather amid the howling wreck.?It's vainly we are praying. We cannot, cannot check?The Power who slays and puts aside the beauty that has been.
It's truth they tell, Despoina, none hears the heart's complaining For Nature will not pity, nor the red God lend an ear,?Yet I too have been mad in the hour of bitter paining?And lifted up my voice to God, thinking that he could hear?The curse wherewith I cursed Him because the Good was dead. But lo! I am grown wiser, knowing that our own hearts?Have made a phantom called the Good, while a few years have sped Over a little planet. And what should the great Lord know of it Who tosses the dust of chaos and gives the suns their parts? Hither and thither he moves them; for an hour we see the show of it: Only a little hour, and the life of the race is done.?And here he builds a nebula, and there he slays a sun?And works his own fierce pleasure. All things he shall fulfill, And O, my poor Despoina, do you think he ever hears?The wail of hearts he has broken, the sound of human ill??He cares not for our virtues, our little hopes and fears,?And how could it all go on, love, if he knew of laughter and tears?
Ah, sweet, if a man could cheat him! If you could flee away Into some other country beyond the rosy West,?To hide in the deep forests and be for ever at rest?From the rankling hate of God and the outworn world's decay!
IX. Night
After the fret and failure of this day,?And weariness of thought, O Mother Night,?Come with soft kiss to soothe our care away?And all our little tumults set to right;?Most pitiful of all death's kindred fair,?Riding above us through the curtained air?On thy dusk car, thou scatterest to the earth?Sweet dreams and drowsy charms of tender might?And lovers' dear delight before to-morrow's birth.?Thus art thou wont thy quiet lands to leave?And pillared courts beyond the Milky Way,?Wherein thou tarriest all our solar day?While unsubstantial dreams before thee weave?A foamy dance, and fluttering fancies play?About thy palace in the silver ray?Of some far, moony globe. But when the hour,?The long-expected comes, the ivory gates?Open on noiseless hinge before thy bower?Unbidden, and the jewelled chariot waits?With magic steeds. Thou from the fronting rim?Bending to urge them, whilst thy sea-dark hair?Falls in ambrosial ripples o'er each limb,?With beautiful pale arms, untrammelled, bare?For horsemanship, to those twin chargers fleet?Dost give full rein across the fires that glow?In the wide floor of heaven, from off their feet?Scattering the