Birthday Ode

Spring, born in heaven ere many a springtime flown, strophe. 1Dead spring that sawest on earthA babe of deathless birth,A flower of rosier flowerage than thine own,A glory of goodlier godhead; even this day,That floods the mist of February with May,And strikes death dead with sunlight, and the breathWhereby the deadly doers are done to death,

They that in day's despiteWould crown the imperial night,10And in deep hate of insubmissive springRethrone the royal winter for a king,This day that casts the days of darkness downLow as a broken crown,We call thee from the gulf of deeds and days,Deathless and dead, to hear us whom we praise.

A light of many lights about thine head, antistrophe. 1Lights manifold and one,Stars molten in a sun,A sun of divers beams incorporated,20Compact of confluent aureoles, each more fairThan man, save only at highest of man, may wear,So didst thou rise, when this our grey-grown ageHad trod two paces of his pilgrimage,

Two paces through the gloomFrom his fierce father's tomb,Led by cross lights of lightnings, and the flameThat burned in darkness round one darkling name;So didst thou rise, nor knewest thy glory, O thouRe-risen upon us now,30The glory given thee for a grace to give,And take the praise of all men's hearts that live.

First in the dewy rayepode. 1Ere dawn be slain of dayThe fresh crowned lilies of discrowned kings' primeSprang splendid as of oldWith moonlight-coloured goldAnd rays refract from the oldworld heaven of time;Pale with proud light of stars decreasedIn westward wane reluctant from the conquering east.40

But even between their golden olden bloom str. 2Strange flowers of wildwood glory,With frost and moonshine hoary,Thrust up the new growths of their green-leaved gloom,Red buds of ballad blossom, where the dewBlushed as with bloodlike passion, and its hueWas as the life and love of hearts on flame,And fire from forth of each live chalice came:Young sprays of elder song,Stem straight and petal strong,50Bright foliage with dark frondage overlaid,And light the lovelier for its lordlier shade;And morn and even made loud in woodland loneWith cheer of clarions blown,And through the tournay's clash and clarion's cheerLaugh to laugh echoing, tear washed off by tear.

Then eastward far past northland lea and lawn ant. 2Beneath a heavier lightOf stormier day and nightBegan the music of the heaven of dawn;60Bright sound of battle along the Grecian waves,Loud light of thunder above the Median graves,New strife, new song on Æschylean sea,Canaris risen above Themistocles;Old glory of warrior ghostsShed fresh on filial hosts,With dewfall redder than the dews of day,And earth-born lightnings out of bloodbright spray;Then through the flushed grey gloom on shadowy sheavesLow flights of falling leaves;70And choirs of birds transfiguring as they throngAll the world's twilight and the soul's to song.

Voices more dimly deepep. 2Than the inmost heart of sleep,And tenderer than the rose-mouthed morning's lips;And midmost of them heardThe viewless water's word,The sea's breath in the wind's wing and the ship's,That bids one swell and sound and smiteAnd rend that other in sunder as with fangs by night.80

But ah! the glory of shadow and mingling ray,str. 3The story of morn and evenWhose tale was writ in heavenAnd had for scroll the night, for scribe the day!For scribe the prophet of the morning, farExalted over twilight and her star;For scroll beneath his Apollonian handThe dim twin wastes of sea and glimmering land.

Hark, on the hill-wind, clearFor all men's hearts to hear 90Sound like a stream at nightfall from the steepThat all time's depths might answer, deep to deep,With trumpet-measures of triumphal wailFrom windy vale to vale,The crying of one for love that strayed and sinnedWhose brain took madness of the mountain wind.

Between the birds of brighter and duskier wing, ant. 3What mightier-moulded formsGirt with red clouds and stormsMix their strong hearts with theirs that soar and sing? 100Before the storm-blast blown of death's dark hornThe marriage moonlight withers, that the morn

For two made one may find three made by deathOne ruin at the blasting of its breath:Clothed with heart's flame renewedAnd strange new maidenhood,Faith lightens on the lips that bloomed for hirePure as the lightning of love's first-born fire:Wide-eyed and patient ever, till the curseFind where to fall and pierce,110Keen expiation whets with edge more dreadA father's wrong to smite a father's head.

Borgia, supreme from birth ep. 3As loveliest born on earthSince earth bore ever women that were fair;Scarce known of her own houseIf daughter or sister or spouse;Who holds men's hearts yet helpless with her hair;

The direst of divine things made,Bows down her amorous aureole half suffused with shade. 120

As red the fire-scathed royal northland bloom,str. 4That left our story a nameDyed through with blood and flameEre her life shrivelled from a fierier doomThan theirs her priests bade pass from earth in fireTo slake the thirst of God their Lord's desire:As keen the blast of love-enkindled fateThat burst the Paduan tyrant's guarded gate:As sad the softer moanMade one with music's own 130For one whose feet made music as they fellOn ways by loveless love made hot from hell:But higher than these and all the song thereof

The perfect heart of love,The heart by fraud and hate once crucified,That, dying, gave thanks, and in thanksgiving died.

Above the windy walls that rule the Rhine ant. 4A noise of eagles' wingsAnd wintry war-time rings,With roar of ravage trampling corn and vine 140And storm of wrathful wassail dashed with song,And under these the watch of wreakless wrong,With fire of eyes anhungered; and aboveThese, the light of the stricken eyes of love,The faint sweet eyes that followThe wind-outwinging swallow,And face athirst with young wan yearning mouthTurned after toward the unseen all-golden south,Hopeless to see the birds back ere life wane,

Or the leaves born again; 150And still the might and music mastering fateOf life more strong than death and love than hate.

In spectral strength biformep. 4Stand the twin sons of stormTransfigured by transmission of one handThat gives the new-born timeTheir semblance more sublimeThan once it lightened over each man's land;There Freedom's winged and wide-mouthed hound,And here our high Dictator, in his son discrowned. 160

What strong-limbed shapes of kindred throng round these str. 5Before, between, behind,Sons born of one man's mind,

Fed at his hands and fostered round his knees?Fear takes the spirit in thraldom at his nod,And pity makes it as the spirit of God,As his own soul that from her throne aboveSheds on all souls of men her showers of love,On all earth's evil and painPours mercy forth as rain 170And comfort as the dewfall on dry land;And feeds with pity from a faultless handAll by their own fault stricken, all cast outBy all men's scorn or doubt,Or with their own hands wounded, or by fateBrought into bondage of men's fear or hate.

In violence of strange visions north and south ant. 5Confronted, east and west,With frozen or fiery breast,

Eyes fixed or fevered, pale or bloodred mouth,180Kept watch about his dawn-enkindled dreams;But ere high noon a light of nearer beamsMade his young heaven of manhood more benign,And love made soft his lips with spiritual wine,And left them fired, and fedWith sacramental bread,And sweet with honey of tenderer words than tearsTo feed men's hopes and fortify men's fears,And strong to silence with benignant breathThe lips that doom to death,190And swift with speech like fire in fiery landsTo melt the steel's edge in the headsman's hands.

Higher than they rose of old,ep. 5New builded now, behold,The live great likeness of Our Lady's towers;

And round them like a doveWounded, and sick with love,One fair ghost moving, crowned with fateful flowers,Watched yet with eyes of bloodred lustAnd eyes of love's heart broken and unbroken trust.200

But sadder always under shadowier skies, str. 6More pale and sad and clearWaxed always, drawn more near,The face of Duty lit with Love's own eyes;Till the awful hands that culled in rosier hoursFrom fairy-footed fields of wild old flowersAnd sorcerous woods of Rhineland, green and hoary,Young children's chaplets of enchanted story,The great kind hands that showedExile its homeward road,210And, as man's helper made his foeman God,

Of pity and mercy wrought themselves a rod,And opened for Napoleon's wandering kinFrance, and bade enter in,And threw for all the doors of refuge wide,Took to them lightning in the thunder-tide.

For storm on earth above had risen from under, ant. 6Out of the hollow of hell,Such storm as never fellFrom darkest deeps of heaven distract with thunder;A cloud of cursing, past all shape of thought, 221More foul than foulest dreams, and overfraughtWith all obscene things and obscure of birthThat ever made infection of man's earth;Having all hell for cloakWrapped round it as a smokeAnd in its womb such offspring so defiled

As earth bare never for her loathliest child,Rose, brooded, reddened, broke, and with its breathPut France to poisonous death; 230Yea, far as heaven's red labouring eye could glance,France was not, save in men cast forth of France.

Then,—while the plague-sore grew ep. 6Two darkling decades through,And rankled in the festering flesh of time,—Where darkness binds and freesThe wildest of wild seasIn fierce mutations of the unslumbering clime,There, sleepless too, o'er shuddering wrongOne hand appointed shook the reddening scourge of song.240

And through the lightnings of the apparent word str. 7Dividing shame's dense night

Sounds lovelier than the lightAnd light more sweet than song from night's own birdMixed each their hearts with other, till the gloomWas glorious as with all the stars in bloom,Sonorous as with all the spheres in chimeHeard far through flowering heaven: the sea, sublimeOnce only with its ownOld winds' and waters' tone,250Sad only or glad with its own glory, and crownedWith 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 knel

And louder ever and louder and yet more loud ant. 7Till night be shamed of mornRings the Black Huntsman's hornThrough darkening deeps beneath the covering cloud, 260Till 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 downAnd crumble as a crown,Till Cæsar driven to lair and hounded PopeReel breathless and drop heartless out of hope,And one the uncleanest kinless beast of allLower than his fortune fall; 270The wolfish waif of casual empire, bornTo turn all hate and horror cold with scorn.

Yea, even at night's full noon ep. 7Light's birth-song brake in tune,Spake, witnessing that with us one must be,God; naming so by nameThat priests have brought to shameThe strength whose scourge sounds on the smitten sea;The mystery manifold of mightWhich bids the wind give back to night the things of night.280

Even God, the unknown of all time; force or thought, str. 8Nature 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 shodWith light and darkness, unapparent God.Him the high prophet o'er his wild work bentFound indivisible ever and immanentAt hidden heart of truth,In forms of age and youth290Transformed 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 stateOf heaven immeasurable, and years that fleeAs clouds and winds and rays across the sea.

But higher than stars and deeper than the waves ant. 8Of day and night and morrowThat roll for all time, sorrowKeeps ageless watch over perpetual graves.300

From dawn to morning of the soul in flower,Through toils and dreams and visions, to that hourWhen all the deeps were opened, and one doomTook two sweet lives to embrace them and entomb,The strong song plies its wingThat makes the darkness ringAnd 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,Song like a god's tears heard310Falling, fulfilled of life and death and light,And all the stars and all the shadow of night.

Till, when its flight hath past ep. 8Time's loftiest mark and last,The goal where good kills evil with a kiss,

And Darkness in God's sightGrows as his brother Light,And heaven and hell one heart whence all the abyssThrobs with love's music; from his tranceLove waking leads it home to her who stayed in France.320

But now from all the world-old winds of the air str. 9One blast of record ringsAs from time's hidden springsWith roar of rushing wings and fires that bearToward north and south sonorous, east and west,Forth of the dark wherein its records rest,The story told of the ages, writ nor sungBy man's hand ever nor by mortal tongueTill, godlike with desire,One tongue of man took fire,330

One hand laid hold upon the lightning, oneRose up to bear time witness what the sunHad seen, and what the moon and stars of nightBeholding lost not light:From dawn to dusk what ways man wandering trodEven through the twilight of the gods to God.

From dawn of man and woman twain and one ant. 9When the earliest dews impearledThe front of all the worldRinged with aurorean aureole of the sun,340To days that saw Christ's tears and hallowing breathPut life for love's sake in the lips of death,And years as waves whose brine was fire, whose foamBlood, and the ravage of Neronian Rome;And the eastern crescent's hornMightier 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 reapLives cast as sheaves on heap350From all the billowing harvest-fields of fight;And sounds of love-songs lovelier than the light.

The grim dim thrones of the east ep. 9Set for death's riotous feastRound the bright board where darkling centuries wait,And servile slaughter, mute,Feeds power with fresh red fruit,Glitter and groan with mortal food of fate;And throne and cup and lamp's bright breathBear witness to their lord of only night and death.360

Dead freedom by live empire lies defiled, str. 10And murder at his feet

Plies lust with wine and meat,With offering of an old man and a child,With holy body and blood, inexpiableCommunion in the sacrament of hell,Till, reeking from their monstrous eucharist,The lips wax cold that murdered where they kissed,And empire in mid feastFall as a slaughtered beast 370Headless, and ease men's hungering hearts of fearLest God were none in heaven, to see nor hear,And purge his own pollution with the floodPoured of his black base bloodSo first found healing, poisonous as it poured;And on the clouds the archangel cleanse his sword.

As at the word unutterable that made ant. 10Of day and night division,From vision on to vision,

From dream to dream, from darkness into shade,380From sunshine into sunlight, moves and livesThe steersman's eye, the helming hand that givesLife to the wheels and wings that whirl alongThe immeasurable impulse of the sphere of songThrough all the eternal years,Beyond all stars and spheres,Beyond the washing of the waves of time,Beyond all heights where no thought else may climb,Beyond the darkling dust of suns that were,Past height and depth of air;390And in the abyss whence all things move that areFinds only living Love, the sovereign star.

Nor less the weight and worth ep. 10Found even of love on earthTo wash all stain of tears and sins away,

On dying lips alitThat living knew not it,In the winged shape of song with death to play:To warm young children with its wings,And try with fire the heart elect for godlike things. 400

For all worst wants of all most miserable str. 11With divine hands to dealAll balms and herbs that heal,Among all woes whereunder poor men dwellOur Master sent his servant Love, to beOn earth his witness; but the strange deep sea,Mother of life and death inextricate,What work should Love do there, to war with fate?Yet there must Love too keepAt heart of the eyeless deep410Watch, and wage war wide-eyed with all its wonders,

Lower than the lightnings of its waves, and thundersOf seas less monstrous than the births they bred;Keep high there heart and head,And conquer: then for prize of all toils pastFeel the sea close them in again at last.

A day of direr doom arisen thereafter ant. 11With cloud and fire in strifeLightens and darkens lifeRound one by man's hand masked with living laughter,420A man by men bemonstered, but by love,Watched with blind eyes as of a wakeful dove,And wooed by lust, that in her rosy denAs fire on flesh feeds on the souls of men,To take the intense impureBurnt-offering of her lure,

Divine and dark and bright and naked, strangeWith ravenous thirst of life reversed and change,As though the very heaven should shrivel and swellWith hunger after hell,430Run mad for dear damnation, and desireTo feel its light thrilled through with stings of fire.

Above a windier sea, ep. 11The glory of Ninety-threeFills heaven with blood-red and with rose-red beamsThat earth beholding growsHerself one burning roseFlagrant and fragrant with strange deeds and dreams,Dreams dyed as love's own flower, and deedsStained as with love's own life-blood, that for love's sake bleeds.440

And deeper than all deeps of seas and skies str. 12Wherein the shadows areCalled sun and moon and starThat rapt conjecture metes with mounting eyes,Loud with strange waves and lustrous with new spheres,Shines, masked at once and manifest of years,Shakespeare, a heaven of heavenly eyes beholden;And forward years as backward years grow goldenWith light of deeds and wordsAnd flight of God's fleet birds,450Angels of wrath and love and truth and pity;And higher on exiled eyes their natural cityDawns down the depths of vision, more sublimeThan all truths born of time;And eyes that wept above two dear sons deadGrow saving stars to guard one hopeless head.

Bright round the brows of banished age had shone ant. 12In vision flushed with truthThe rosy glory of youthOn streets and woodlands where in days long gone460Sweet love sang light and loud and deep and dear:And far the trumpets of the dreadful yearHad pealed and wailed in darkness: last aroseThe song of children, kindling as a roseAt breath of sunrise, bornOf the red flower of mornWhose face perfumes deep heaven with odorous lightAnd thrills all through the wings of souls in flightClose as the press of children at His kneeWhom if the high priest see,470

Dreaming, as homeless on dark earth he trod,The lips that praise him shall not know for God.

O sovereign spirit, above ep. 12All offering but man's love,All praise and prayer and incense undefiled!The one thing stronger foundThan towers with iron bound;The one thing lovelier than a little child,And deeper than the seas are deep,And tenderer than such tears of love as angels weep.480

Dante, the seer of all things evil and good, str. 13Beheld two ladies, BeautyAnd high life-hallowing Duty,That strove for sway upon his mind and mood

And held him in alternating accordFast bound at feet of either: but our lord,The seer and singer of righteousness and wrongWho stands now master of all the keys of song,Sees both as dewdrops runTogether in the sun,490For him not twain but one thing twice divine;Even as his speech and song are bread and wineFor all souls hungering and all hearts athirstAt best of days and worst,And both one sacrament of Love's great givingTo feed the spirit and sense of all souls living.

The seventh day in the wind's month, ten years gone ant. 13Since heaven-espousing earthGave the Republic birth,

The mightiest soul put mortal raiment on 500That came forth singing ever in man's earsOf all souls with us, and through all these yearsRings yet the lordliest, waxen yet more strong,That on our souls hath shed itself in song,Poured forth itself like rainOn souls like springing grainThat with its procreant beams and showers were fedFor living wine and sacramental bread;Given all itself as air gives life and light,Utterly, as of right; 510The goodliest gift our age hath given, to beOurs, while the sun gives glory to the sea.

Our Father and Master and Lord, ep. 13Who hast thy song for sword,For staff thy spirit, and our hearts for throne:

As in past years of wrong,Take now my subject song,To no crowned head made humble but thine own;That on thy day of worldly birthGives thanks for all thou hast given past thanks of all on earth. 520