Studies in Song | Page 3

all his love and faith in life and death;
7.
Who should love two things only and only praise?More than all else for ever: even the glory?Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days?Take light whereby death's self seems transitory;?And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise,?Love that wipes off the miry stains and gory?From Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways,?And lightens with his light the night of story;
Love that lifts up from dust?Life, and makes darkness just,?And purges as with fire of purgatory
The dense disastrous air,?To burn old falsehood bare?And give the wind its ashes heaped and hoary;?Love, that with eyes of ageless youth?Sees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth.
8.
For at his birth the sistering stars were one?That flamed upon it as one fiery star;?Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun,?And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are.?Of all that love not liberty let none?Love her that fills our lips with fire from far?To mix with winds and seas in unison?And sound athwart life's tideless harbour-bar
Out where our songs fly free?Across time's bounded sea,?A boundless flight beyond the dim sun's car,
Till all the spheres of night?Chime concord round their flight?Too loud for blasts of warring change to mar,?From stars that sang for Homer's birth?To these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth
9.
Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave,?Stars of our worship, lights of our desire!?For never man that heard the world's wind rave?To you was truer in trust of heart and lyre:?Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave?Beheld your flame against the wind burn higher:?Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly wave?With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire:
No blast of all that blow?Might bid the torch burn low?That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre,
Indomitable of storm,?That now no flaws deform?Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire,?One light of godlike breath and flame,?To write on heaven with man's most glorious names his name.
10.
The very dawn was dashed with stormy dew?And freaked with fire as when God's hand would mar?Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue?Deep heaven was kindled round her thunderous car,?That saw how swift a gathering glory grew?About him risen, ere clouds could blind or bar?A splendour strong to burn and burst them through?And mix in one sheer light things near and far.
First flew before his path?Light shafts of love and wrath,?But winged and edged as elder warriors' are;
Then rose a light that showed?Across the midsea road?From radiant Calpe to revealed Masar?The way of war and love and fate?Between the goals of fear and fortune, hope and hate.
11.
Mine own twice banished fathers' harbour-land,?Their nursing-mother France, the well-beloved,?By the arduous blast of sanguine sunrise fanned,?Flamed on him, and his burning lips were moved?As that live statue's throned on Lybian sand?When morning moves it, ere her light faith roved?From promise, and her tyrant's poisonous hand?Fed hope with Corsic honey till she proved
More deadly than despair?And falser even than fair,?Though fairer than all elder hopes removed
As landmarks by the crime?Of inundating time;?Light faith by grief too loud too long reproved:?For even as in some darkling dance?Wronged love changed hands with hate, and turned his heart from France.
12.
But past the snows and summits Pyrenean?Love stronger-winged held more prevailing flight?That o'er Tyrrhene, Iberian, and ?gean?Shores lightened with one storm of sound and light.?From earliest even to hoariest years one p?an?Rang rapture through the fluctuant roar of fight,?From Nestor's tongue in accents Achillean?On death's blind verge dominant over night
For voice as hand and hand?As voice for one fair land?Rose radiant, smote sonorous, past the height
Where darkling pines enrobe?The steel-cold Lake of Gaube,?Deep as dark death and keen as death to smite,?To where on peak or moor or plain?His heart and song and sword were one to strike for Spain.
13.
Resurgent at his lifted voice and hand?Pale in the light of war or treacherous fate?Song bade before him all their shadows stand?For whom his will unbarred their funeral grate.?The father by whose wrong revenged his land?Was given for sword and fire to desolate?Rose fire-encircled as a burning brand,?Great as the woes he wrought and bore were great.
Fair as she smiled and died,?Death's crowned and breathless bride?Smiled as one living even on craft and hate:
And pity, a star unrisen,?Scarce lit Ferrante's prison?Ere night unnatural closed the natural gate?That gave their life and love and light?To those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight.
14.
Tears bright and sweet as fire and incense fell?In perfect notes of music-measured pain?On veiled sweet heads that heard not love's farewell?Sob through the song that bade them rise again;?Rise in the light of living song, to dwell?With memories crowned of memory: so the strain?Made soft as heaven the stream that girdles hell?And sweet the darkness of the breathless plain,
And with Elysian flowers?Recrowned the wreathless hours?That mused and mourned upon their works