O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower, The name that is love's name to me The hard sun, as thy petals knew, O sundew, not remembering her. FROM PRELUDE TO "SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE" Play then and sing; we too have played, We too have twisted through our hair And smote the summer with strange air, And disengirdled and discrowned The limbs and locks that vine-wreaths bound. We too have tracked by star-proof trees Scare the loud night on hills that hid Heard their song's iron cadences Fright the wolf hungering from the kid, Outroar the lion-throated seas, Outchide the north-wind if it chid, And hush the torrent-tongued ravines With thunders of their tambourines. But the fierce flute whose notes acclaim Dim goddesses of fiery fame, Cymbal and clamorous kettledrum, Timbrels and tabrets, all are dumb That turned the high chill air to flame; The singing tongues of fire are numb That called on Cotys by her name Edonian, till they felt her come And maddened, and her mystic face Lightened along the streams of Thrace. For Pleasure slumberless and pale, Pass, and the tempest-footed throng And lips that were so loud so long So keen is change, and time so strong, But weak is change, but strengthless time, The hills of heaven with wasting feet. Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet, But the stars keep their spring sublime; Passions and pleasures can defeat, Actions and agonies control, And life, and death, but not the soul. Because man's soul is man's God still, Across the waves of day and night And still its flame at mainmast height Save his own soul's light overhead, None leads him, and none ever led, Past youth where shoreward shallows are, Through age that drives on toward the red Vast void of sunset hailed from far, To the equal waters of the dead; Save his own soul he hath no star, And sinks, except his own soul guide, Helmless in middle turn of tide. No blast of air or fire of sun And spirit till his turn be done, And light of face from each man's face In whom the light of trust is one; Since only souls that keep their place By their own light, and watch things roll, And stand, have light for any soul. A little time we gain from time For harsh or sweet or loud or low, Took part with summer or with snow, And had their chance of seed to sow To those days dead and this their son. A little time that we may fill Or with such good works or such ill As loose the bonds or make them strong By rose-hung river and light-foot rill At the sun's hour of morning song, FROM "MATER TRIUMPHALIS” I do not bid thee spare me, O dreadful mother! Should come to stand before thee in this my place? I am the trumpet at thy lips, thy clarion Full of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath; |