The Song of the Sword, and Other Verses

Transcribed from the 1892 David Nutt edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
W. E. HENLEY
LONDON Published by DAVID NUTT in the Strand 1892
To R. T. Hamilton-Bruce
Edinburgh , Mar. 17, 1892
With three exceptions , these numbers have appeared in ‘ The National Observer ,’ by permission of whose proprietors they are here reprinted .
The Sword Singing — The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword Clanging imperious Forth from Time’s battlements His ancient and triumphing Song .
In the beginning, Ere God inspired Himself Into the clay thing Thumbed to His image, The vacant, the naked shell Soon to be Man:
Thoughtful He pondered it, Prone there and impotent, Fragile, inviting Attack and discomfiture: Then, with a smile— As He heard in the Thunder That laughed over Eden The voice of the Trumpet, The iron Beneficence, Calling His dooms To the Winds of the world— Stooping, He drew On the sand with His finger A shape for a sign Of His way to the eyes That in wonder should waken, For a proof of His will To the breaking intelligence:
That was the birth of me: I am the Sword.
Hard and bleak, keen and cruel, Short-hilted, long-shafted, I froze into steel: And the blood of my elder, His hand on the hafts of me, Sprang like a wave In the wind, as the sense Of his strength grew to ecstasy, Glowed like a coal At the throat of the furnace, As he knew me and named me The War-Thing, the Comrade, Father of honour And giver of kingship, The fame-smith, the song-master,