The undefeated enemy, the chill
That shall benumb the voiceful earth at last,
Is master of our moment, and has bound
The viewless wind itself. There is no sound.
It freezes. Every friendly stream is fast.
It freezes, and the graven twigs are still.
XXVI
O my companion, O my sister Sleep,
The valley is all before us, bear me on.
High through the heaven of evening, hardly gone,
Beyond the harbour lights, beyond the steep,
Beyond the land and its lost benison
To where, majestic on the darkening deep,
The night comes forward from Mount Aurion.
O my companion, O my sister Sleep.
Above the surf-line, into the night-breeze;
Eastward above the ever-whispering seas;
Through the warm airs with no more watch to keep.
My day’s run out and all its dooms are graven.
O dear forerunner of Death and promise of Haven.
O my companion, O my sister Sleep.
XXVII
Are you the end, Despair, or the poor least
Of them that cast great shadows and are lies?
That dread the simple and destroy the wise,
Fail at the tomb and triumph at the feast?
You were not found on Olivet, dull beast,
Nor in Thebaid, when the night’s agonies
Dissolved to glory on the effulgent east
And Jesus Christ was in the morning skies.
You did not curb the indomitable crest
Of Tzerna-Gora, when the Falcon-bred
Screamed over the Adriatic, and their Lord
Went riding out, much angrier than the rest,
To summon at ban the living and the dead
And break the Mahommedan with the repeated sword.
XXVIII
But oh! not Lovely Helen, nor the pride
Of that most ancient Ilium matched with doom.
Men murdered Priam in his royal room
And Troy was burned with fire and Hector died.
For even Hector’s dreadful day was more
Than all his breathing courage dared defend
The armouréd light and bulwark of the war
Trailed his great story to the accustomed end.
He was the city’s buttress, Priam’s Son,
The Soldier born in bivouac praises great
And horns in double front of battle won.
Yet down he went: when unremembering fate
Felled him at last with all his armour on.
Hector: the horseman: in the Scæan Gate.