SONG OF FIRE
A FETTERLESS, bright spirit, wing'd and pure,
Soul from all souls of Suns in essence bred,
Lo! Fire am I,--without me shall endure
No Life, nor plant nor creature lift its head.
In burning beards of comets red I float;
I dance with lambent torches on the stars;
I wash with sulphurous flame the roaring throat
Of peaks, and blaze beneath the thunder's cars.
Master of Earth am I;--on her my will
I stamp, and with fierce searing kisses press
My passion on her naked flesh and thrill
Her hidden veins with rapture. My caress
Is lustral. In her lovers' hearts I creep
And tip with fateful coals the prophet's tongue;
God-like from lips of poets I sing and leap,--
I the eternal fair, the eternal young!
And none shall conquer me save they who call
My strength to sovereign toil in craft or strife;
With me shall tribes of men hold festival,--
Cities and realms shall find me Death or Life.
Repossessed of their ancient heritage, the four conqueror Elements sit on their dowered spheres.
Wind, Ember, Current, conscious Earth, the eternal weavers and toilers, labour in felicity.
Chaos and Night and Death are disenthroned. The system burns along its orbits through the dark. The benisons of the stars and suns are cast upon these youngest worlds.
Buoyant and blithe the planets wheel.
Their year-long arcs and each season's ordained processional are portioned unto them: their vassal moons also and the speed of their turning and their measure of night and day.
The ruddy jocund Earth presses close to the Sun, timorous of the outer void, baring her bosom to his kiss.
Has not the inevitable and recurrent Spring of Existence come unto her once again? The iron shackles of Silence--are they not broken?--the granite of the Night, is it not crumbled low?--the ice of Death, is it not molten?
She blooms in her resurrection; her voice is lifted in the universal litany to Life. She rolls in her golden garniture of beams, circling with the singing sister-spheres. Her rondure floats against the distant cohorts of the constellations.