I that saw where ye trod The dim paths of the night In your skies to give light; But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight. The tree many-rooted That swells to the sky In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die. But the Gods of your fashion That scourge and forgive, They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off: they shall die and not live. My own blood is what stanches Stars caught in my branches Make day of the dark, And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark. Where dead ages hide under In my darkness the thunder In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea. That noise is of Time, As his feathers are spread Through the boughs overhead, And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread. The storm-winds of ages Blow through me and cease, The spring-wind of peace, Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms in crease. All sounds of all changes, All shadows and lights On the world's mountain-ranges Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm-clouds on earthshaking nights; All forms of all faces, All works of all hands Of time-stricken lands, All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands. Though sore be my burden Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or death worms below. These too have their part in me, As I too in these; Such fire is at heart in me, Such sap is this tree's, Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas. In the spring-colored hours Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays. And the sound of them springing And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits. I bid you but be; I have need not of prayer; I have need of you free As your mouths of mine air; That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair. More fair than strange fruit is That blooms in your boughs; Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows. In the darkening and whitening With dayspring and lightning God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord. O my sons, O too dutiful Toward Gods not of me, For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and see. Lo, wing'd with world's wonders, With the fires of his thunders God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of God. For his twilight is come on him, His anguish is here; And his spirits gaze dumb on him, Grown gray from his fear; And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his infinite year. Thought made him and breaks Truth slays and forgives; This new thing it gives, Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives. For truth only is living, Man's polestar and pole; Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul. One birth of my bosom ; One beam of mine eye; That scales the sky; Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I. 1871. Singing? and is it for sorrow of that which was That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be? For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing." -"Our lady of love by you is unbeholden For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden Treasure of hair, nor face nor form; But we That love, we know her more fair than any thing." --"Is she a queen, having great gifts to give?" "Yea, these: that whoso hath seen her shall not live Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain, Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears; And when she bids die he shall surely die. And he shall leave all things under the sky, And go forth naked under sun and rain, And work and wait and watch out all his years." -"Hath she on earth no place of habitation?" "Age to age calling, nation answering nation, Cries out, Where is she? and there is none to say; For if she be not in the spirit of men, For if in the inward soul she hath no "Is this worth life, is this, to win for wages? Lo, the dead mouths of the awful graygrown ages, The venerable, in the past that is their prison, In the outer darkness, in the unopening grave, Laugh, knowing how many as ye now say have said, How many, and all are fallen, are fallen and dead: Shall ye dead rise, and these dead have not risen?" -"Not we but she, who is tender, and swift to save." 66 Enough of light is this for one life's span, That all men born are mortal, but not man; And we men bring death lives by night to sow, That men may reap and eat and live by day.' 1871. TO WALT WHITMAN IN AMERICA SEND but a song oversea for us, Heart of their hearts who are free, Heart of their singer, to be for us More than our singing can be ; Ours, in the tempest at error, With no light but the twilight of terror; Send us a song oversea! Of war's last flame-stricken field, In the godhead of man revealed. Round your people and over them Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn. Chains are here, and a prison, Kings, and subjects, and shame : If the God upon you be arisen, How should our songs be the same? God is buried and dead to us, The earth-god Freedom, the lonely Face lightening, the footprint unshod. Not as one man crucified only Nor scourged with but one life's rod : The soul that is substance of nations, Reincarnate with fresh generations; The great god Man, which is God. But in weariest of years and obscurest Doth it live not at heart of all things The one God and one spirit, a purest Life, fed from unstanchable springs? Within love, within hatred it is, And its seed in the stripe as the kiss, And in slaves is the germ, and in kings. Freedom we call it, for holier Name of the soul's there is none; Surelier it labors, if slowlier, Than the metres of star or of sun; Slowlier than life unto breath, Surelier than time unto death, It moves till its labor be done. Till the motion be done and the measure Circling through season and clime, Slumber and sorrow and pleasure, Vision of virtue and crime; Till consummate with conquering eyes, Till the voice of its heart's exultation It is one with the world's generations, With the cross, and the chain, and the rod ; The most high, the most secret, most lonely, The earth-soul Freedom, that only FROM MATER TRIUMPHALIS I am thine harp between thine hands, All my strong chords are strained with love of thee. We grapple in love and wrestle, as each with other Wrestle the wind and the unreluctant sea. I am no courtier of thee sober-suited, Nor molten crowns, nor thine own sins, dismay. Sinned hast thou sometime, therefore art thou sinless; Stained hast thou been, who art there fore without stain; Even as man's soul is kin to thee, but kinless Thou, in whose womb Time sows the all-various grain. I do not bid thee spare me, O dreadful mother! I pray thee that thou spare not, of thy grace. How were it with me then, if ever another Should come to stand before thee in this my place? |