[Ant. 6.For storm on earth above had risen from under,
Out of the hollow of hell,
Such storm as never fell
From darkest deeps of heaven distract with thunder;
221A cloud of cursing, past all shape of thought,
More foul than foulest dreams, and overfraught
With all obscene things and obscure of birth
That ever made infection of man's earth;
Having all hell for cloak
Wrapped round it as a smoke
And in its womb such offspring so defiled
As earth bare never for her loathliest child,
Rose, brooded, reddened, broke, and with its breath
230
Put France to poisonous death; Yea, far as heaven's red labouring eye could glance,
France was not, save in men cast forth of France.
[Ep. 6.Then,—while the plague-sore grew
Two darkling decades through,
And rankled in the festering flesh of time,—
Where darkness binds and frees
The wildest of wild seas
In fierce mutations of the unslumbering clime,
There, sleepless too, o'er shuddering wrong
240One hand appointed shook the reddening scourge of song.
[Str. 7.And through the lightnings of the apparent word
Dividing shame's dense night
Sounds lovelier than the light
And light more sweet than song from night's own bird
Mixed each their hearts with other, till the gloom
Was glorious as with all the stars in bloom,
Sonorous as with all the spheres in chime
Heard far through flowering heaven: the sea, sublime
Once only with its own
250Old winds' and waters' tone,
Sad only or glad with its own glory, and crowned
With its own light, and thrilled with its own sound,
Learnt now their song, more sweet than heaven's may be,
Who pass away by sea;
The song that takes of old love's land farewell,
With pulse of plangent water like a knell.
[Ant. 7.And louder ever and louder and yet more loud
Till night be shamed of morn
Rings the Black Huntsman's horn
260Through darkening deeps beneath the covering cloud,
Till all the wild beasts of the darkness hear;
Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear,
Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale,
Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail,
Till mitre and cowl bow down
And crumble as a crown,
Till Cæsar driven to lair and hounded Pope
Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope,
And one the uncleanest kinless beast of all
270Lower than his fortune fall;
The wolfish waif of casual empire, born
To turn all hate and horror cold with scorn.
[Ep. 7.Yea, even at night's full noon
Light's birth-song brake in tune,
Spake, witnessing that with us one must be,
God; naming so by name
That priests have brought to shame
The strength whose scourge sounds on the smitten sea;
The mystery manifold of might
280Which bids the wind give back to night the things of night.
[Str. 8.Even God, the unknown of all time; force or thought,
Nature or fate or will,
Clothed round with good and ill,
Veiled and revealed of all things and of nought,
Hooded and helmed with mystery, girt and shod
With light and darkness, unapparent God.
Him the high prophet o'er his wild work bent
Found indivisible ever and immanent
At hidden heart of truth,
290In forms of age and youth
Transformed and transient ever; masked and crowned,
From all bonds loosened and with all bonds bound,
Diverse and one with all things; love and hate,
Earth, and the starry state
Of heaven immeasurable, and years that flee
As clouds and winds and rays across the sea.
[Ant. 8.But higher than stars and deeper than the waves
Of day and night and morrow
That roll for all time, sorrow
300Keeps ageless watch over perpetual graves.
From dawn to morning of the soul in flower,
Through toils and dreams and visions, to that hour
When all the deeps were opened, and one doom
Took two sweet lives to embrace them and entomb,
The strong song plies its wing
That makes the darkness ring
And the deep light reverberate sound as deep;
Song soft as flowers or grass more soft than sleep,
Song bright as heaven above the mounting bird,
310Song like a God's tears heard
Falling, fulfilled of life and death and light,
And all the stars and all the shadow of night.
[Ep. 8.Till, when its flight hath past
Time's loftiest mark and last,
The goal where good kills evil with a kiss,
And Darkness in God's sight
Grows as his brother Light,
And heaven and hell one heart whence all the abyss
Throbs with love's music; from his trance
320Love waking leads it home to her who stayed in France.
[Str. 9.But now from all the world-old winds of the air
One blast of record rings
As from time's hidden springs
With roar of rushing wings and fires that bear
Toward north and south sonorous, east and west,
Forth of the dark wherein its records rest,
The story told of the ages, writ nor sung
By man's hand ever nor by mortal tongue
Till, godlike with desire,
330One tongue of man took fire,
One hand laid hold upon the lightning, one
Rose up to bear time witness what the sun
Had seen, and what the moon and stars of night
Beholding lost not light:
From dawn to dusk what ways man wandering trod
Even through the twilight of the gods to God.
[Ant. 9.From dawn of man and woman twain and one
When the earliest dews impearled
The front of all the world
340Ringed with aurorean aureole of the sun,
To days that saw Christ's tears and hallowing breath
Put life for love's sake in the lips of death,
And years as waves whose brine was fire, whose foam
Blood, and the ravage of Neronian Rome;
And the eastern crescent's horn
Mightier awhile than morn;
And knights whose lives were flights of eagles' wings,
And lives like snakes' lives of engendering kings;
And all the ravin of all the swords that reap
350Lives cast as sheaves on heap
From all the billowing harvest-fields of fight;
And sounds of love-songs lovelier than the light.