Speak low and low, along the line the whispered word is flying
Before the touch, before the time, we may not loose a breath:
Their guns must mash us to the mire and there be no replying,
Till the hand is raised to fling us for the final dice to death.
“There were two windows in your tower,
Barbara, Barbara,
For all between the sun and moon
In the lands of Africa.
Hath a man three eyes, Barbara,
A bird three wings,
That you have riven roof and wall
To look upon vain things?”
Her voice was like a wandering thing
That falters yet is free,
Whose soul has drunk in a distant land
Of the rivers of liberty.
“There are more wings than the wind knows
Or eyes than see the sun
In the light of the lost window
And the wind of the doors undone.
For out of the first lattice
Are the red lands that break
And out of the second lattice
Sea like a green snake,
But out of the third lattice
Under low eaves like wings
Is a new corner of the sky
And the other side of things.”
It opened in the inmost place an instant beyond uttering,
A casement and a chasm and a thunder of doors undone,
A seraph’s strong wing shaken out the shock of its unshuttering,
That split the shattered sunlight from a light behind the sun.
“Then he drew sword and drave her
Where the judges sat and said
‘Caesar sits above the gods,
Barbara the maid.
Caesar hath made a treaty
With the moon and with the sun,
All the gods that men can praise
Praise him every one.