Studies in Song | Page 3

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 Ægean

Shores lightened with one storm of sound and light.
From earliest
even to hoariest years one pæan
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