I that saw where ye trod The dim paths of the night In your skies to give light; But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight. The tree many-rooted In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves ye shall live and not die. But the Gods of your fashion That scourge and forgive, They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off: they shall die and not live. My own blood is what stanches Make day of the dark, And are worshipp'd as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark. Where dead ages hide under Makes utterance of me; In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea. That noise is of Time, As his feathers are spread Through the boughs overhead, And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread. The storm-winds of ages Blow through me and cease, The spring-wind of peace, Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms increase. All sounds of all changes, All shadows and lights Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm-clouds on earth-shaking nights; All forms of all faces, All works of all hands Of time-stricken lands, All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands. Though sore be my burden And my growth have no guerdon Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below. These too have their part in me, As I too in these ; Such fire is at heart in me, Such sap is this tree's, Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas. In the spring-color'd hours Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays. And the sound of them springing And smell of their shoots Were as warmth and sweet singing And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits. I bid you but be; I have need not of prayer; I have need of you free As your mouths of mine air ; That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair. More fair than strange fruit is In me only the root is That blooms in your boughs; Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows. In the darkening and whitening With dayspring and lightning For lamp and for sword, God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord. plain. Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? What love was ever as deep as a grave? The wind that wanders, the weeds wind- They are loveless now as the grass above shaken, These remain. them Or the wave. Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs But this man found his mother dead and drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, slain, With fast-seal'd eyes, And bade the dead rise up and live again, And she did rise: Here now in his triumph where all things And all the world was bright with her through him: But dark with strife, Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds Oн, what shall be the burden of our rhyme, And what shall be our ditty when the blossom's on the lime? Our lips have fed on winter and on weariness too long: We will hail the royal summer with a golden-footed song! O lady of my summer and my spring, We shall hear the blackbird whistle and the brown sweet throstle sing, And the low clear noise of waters running softly by our feet, When the sights and sounds of summer in the green clear fields are sweet. We shall see the roses blowing in the green, The pink-lipp'd roses kissing in the golden summer sheen; We shall see the fields flower thick with stars and bells of summer gold, And the poppies burn out red and sweet across the corn-crown'd wold. The time shall be for pleasure, not for pain; There shall come no ghost of grieving for the past betwixt us twain ; But in the time of roses our lives shall grow together, And our love be as the love of gods in the blue Olympic weather. SIBYL THIS is the glamour of the world antique : The thyme-scents of Hymettus fill the air, And in the grass narcissus-cups are fair. The full brook wanders through the ferns to seek The amber haunts of bees; and on the peak Of the soft hill, against the gold-marged sky, She stands, a dream from out the days gone |