A SONG IN TIME OF ORDER 1852

PUSH hard across the sand,

For the salt wind gathers breath; Shoulder and wrist and hand,

Push hard as the push of death.

The wind is as iron that rings,

The foam-heads loosen and flee; It swells and welters and swings,

The pulse of the tide of the sea.

And up on the yellow cliff

The long corn flickers and shakes; Push, for the wind holds stiff,

And the gunwale dips and rakes. Good hap to the fresh fierce weather, The quiver and beat of the sea! While three men hold together

The kingdoms are less by three.

Out to the sea with her there,

Out with her over the sand, Let the kings keep the earth for their share !

We have done with the sharers of land.

They have tied the world in a tether, They have bought over God with a fee;

While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three.

We have done with the kisses that sting, The thief's mouth red from the feast, The blood on the hands of the king,

And the lie at the lips of the priest.

Will they tie the winds in a tether,

Put a bit in the jaws of the sea? While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three.

Let our flag run out straight in the wind! The old red shall be floated again

When the ranks that are thin shall be thinned,

When the names that were twenty are ten;

When the devil's riddle is mastered

And the galley-bench creaks with a
Pope,

We shall see Buonaparte the bastard

Kick heels with his throat in a rope.

While the shepherd sets wolves on his sheep

And the emperor halters his Kine, While Shame is a watchman asleep

And Faith is a keeper of swine.

Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,

Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!

While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three.

All the world has its burdens to bear, From Cayenne to the Austrian whips;

Forth, with the rain in our hair

And the salt sweet foam in our lips: In the teeth of the hard glad weather, In the blown wet face of the sea; While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three. 1862. CHORUSES FROM ATALANTA IN CALYDON

THE YOUTH OF THE YEAR

WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;

And the brown bright nightingale amor

ous

Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,

The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,

Maiden most perfect, lady of light, With a noise of winds and many rivers, With a clamor of waters, and with

might;

Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, Over the splendor and speed of thy feet; For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,

Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,

Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?

O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,

Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!

For the stars and the winds are unto her As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; For the risen stars and the fallen cling

to her,

And the southwest-wind and the westwind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins. The full streams feed on flower of rushes, Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot, The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes

From leaf to flower and flower to fruit; And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, And the oat is heard above the lyre, And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes The chestnut-husk at the chestnut

root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, Follows with dancing and fills with delight

And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;

And dust of the laboring earth; And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after

And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a
span

With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south

They gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth, They filled his body with life;

We have seen thee, O Love, thou art fair; thou art goodly, O Love; Thy wings make light in the air as the wings of a dove.

Thy feet are as winds that divide the stream of the sea;

Earth is thy covering to hide thee, the garment of thee.

Thou art swift and subtle and blind as a flame of fire;

Before thee the laughter, behind thee the tears of desire;

And twain go forth beside thee, a man with a maid;

Her eyes are the eyes of a bride whom delight makes afraid;

As the breath in the buds that stir is her

bridal breath:

But Fate is the name of her; and his name is Death.

NATURE

O that I now, I too were

By deep wells and water-floods,
Streams of ancient hills, and where
All the wan green places bear
Blossoms cleaving to the sod,
Fruitless fruit, and grasses fair,
Or such darkest ivy-buds
As divide thy yellow hair,
Bacchus, and their leaves that nod
Round thy fawnskin brush the bare
Snow-soft shoulders of a god;
There the year is sweet, and there
Earth is full of secret springs,
And the fervent rose-cheeked hours,
Those that marry dawn and noon,
There are sunless, there look pale
In dim leaves and hidden air,

Pale as grass or latter flowers,
Or the wild vine's wan wet rings
Full of dew beneath the moon,
And all day the nightingale
Sleeps, and all night sings ;
There in cold remote recesses
That nor alien eyes assail,
Feet, nor imminence of wings,
Nor a wind nor any tune,
Thou, O queen and holiest,
Flower the whitest of all things,
With reluctant lengthening tresses
And with sudden splendid breast
Save of maidens unbeholden,
There art wont to enter, there
Thy divine swift limbs and golden
Maiden growth of unbound hair,
Bathed in waters white,

Shine, and many a maid's by thee
In moist woodland or the hilly
Flowerless brakes where wells abound
Out of all men's sight;

Or in lower pools that see

All their marges clothed all round
With the innumerable lily,
Whence the golden-girdled bee
Flits through flowering rush to fret
White or duskier violet,
Fair as those that in far years
With their buds left luminous
And their little leaves made wet
From the warmer dew of tears,
Mother's tears in extreme need,
Hid the limbs of Iamus,
Of thy brother's seed;
For his heart was piteous

Toward him, even as thine heart now
Pitiful toward us;

Thine, O goddess, turning hither
A benignant blameless brow;
Seeing enough of evil done

And lives withered as leaves wither
In the blasting of the sun;
Seeing enough of hunters dead,
Ruin enough of all our year,

Herds and harvest slain and shed,
Herdsmen stricken many an one,
Fruits and flocks consumed together,
And great length of deadly days.
Yet with reverent lips and fear
Turn we toward thee, turn and praise
For this lightening of clear weather
And prosperities begun.

For not seldom, when all air
As bright water without breath
Shines, and when men fear not, fate
Without thunder unaware
Breaks, and brings down death.
Joy with grief ye great gods give,

Good with bad, and overbear
All the pride of us that live,
All the high estate,

As ye long since overbore,
As in old time long before,

Many a strong man and a great,
All that were.

But do thou, sweet, otherwise,
Having heed of all our prayer,
Taking note of all our sighs;
We beseech thee by thy light,
By thy bow, and thy sweet eyes,
And the kingdom of the night,
Be thou favorable and fair;
By thine arrows and thy might
And Orion overthrown;
By the maiden thy delight,
By the indissoluble zone
And the sacred hair.

FATE

Not as with sundering of the earth
Nor as with cleaving of the sea
Nor fierce foreshadowings of a birth
Nor flying dreams of death to be,
Nor loosening of a large world's girth
And quickening of the body of night,
And sound of thunder in men's ears
And fire of lightning in men's sight,
Fate, mother of desires and fears,
Bore unto men the law of tears;
But sudden, an unfathered flame,

And broken out of night, she shone, She, without body, without name,

In days forgotten and foregone; And heaven rang round her as she came Like smitten cymbals, and lay bare; Clouds and great stars, thunders and

Shall the waves take pity on thee

Or the south-wind offer thee love? Wilt thou take the night for thy day Or the darkness for light on thy way Till thou say in thine heart, Enough?

Behold, thou art over fair, thou art over wise:

The

sweetness of spring in thine hair, and the light in thine eyes. The light of the spring in thine eyes, and the sound in thine ears; Yet thine heart shall wax heavy with sighs and thine eyelids with tears. Wilt thou cover thine hair with gold; and with silver thy feet?

Hast thou taken the purple to fold thee, and made thy mouth sweet? Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate;

Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate.

For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;

And the veil of thine head shall be grief; and the crown shall be pain.

THE DEATH OF MELEAGER

Meleager. Let your hands meet
Round the weight of my head,
Lift ye my feet

As the feet of the dead;

For the flesh of my body is molten, the limbs of it molten as lead.

Chorus. O thy luminous face,
Thine imperious eyes!

O the grief, O the grace,

As of day when it dies!

Who is this bending over thee, lord, with tears and suppression of sighs!

Meleager. Is a bride so fair?

Is a maid so meek?

With unchapleted hair,

With unfilleted cheek.

Atalanta, the pure among women, whose name is as blessing to speak.

Atalanta. I would that with feet,
Unsandalled, unshod,

Overbold, overfleet,

I had swum not nor trod

From Arcadia to Calydon, northward, a blast of the envy of God.

Meleager. Unto each man his fate; Unto each as he saith

In whose fingers the weight

Of the world is as breath;

Yet I would that in clamor of battle mine hands had laid hold upon death.

Chorus. Not with cleaving of shields
And their clash in thine ear,
When the lord of fought fields

Breaketh spearshaft from spear, Thou art broken, our lord, thou art broken, with travail and labor and fear.

Meleager. Would God he had found me
Beneath fresh boughs!
Would God he had bound me
Unawares in mine house.
With light in mine eyes and songs in my
lips, and a crown on my brows!

Chorus. Whence art thou sent from us?
Whither thy goal?

How art thou rent from us,
Thou that wert whole,

As with severing of eyelids and eyes, as with sundering of body and soul!

Meleager. My heart is within me

As an ash in the fire; Whosoever hath seen me,

Without lute, without lyre,

Shall sing of me grievous things, even things that were ill to desire.

Chorus. Who shall raise thee

From the house of the dead?

Or what man praise thee

That thy praise may be said?

Alas thy beauty! alas thy body! alas thine head!

Meleager. But thou. O mother,
That dreamer of dreams,
Wilt thou bring forth another
To feel the sun's beams

When I move among shadows a shadow, and wail by impassable streams?

Eneus. What thing wilt thou leave me
Now this thing is done?

A man wilt thou give me,
A son for my son,

For the light of mine eyes, the desire of my life, the desirable one?

Chorus. Thou wert glad above others,
Yea, fair beyond word;
Thou wert glad among mothers;

For each man that heard

Of thee, praise there was added unto thee, as wings to the feet of a bird.

Eneus. Who shall give back
Thy face of old years,
With travail made black,
Grown gray among fears,

Mother of sorrow, mother of cursing, mother of tears?

Meleager. Though thou art as fire
Fed with fuel in vain,
My delight, my desire.

Is more chaste than the rain. More pure than the dewfall, more holy than stars are that live without stain.

Atalanta. I would that as water

My life's blood had thawn, Or as winter's wan daughter Leaves lowland and lawn Spring-stricken, or ever mine eyes had beheld thee made dark in thy dawn.

Chorus. When thou dravest the men
Of the chosen of Thrace,

None turned him again

Nor endured he thy face

Clothed round with the blush of the battle, with light from a terrible place.

Enens. Thou shouldst die as he dies For whom none sheddeth tears;

Filling thine eyes

And fulfilling thine ears,

With the brilliance of battle, the bloom and the beauty, the splendor of

spears.

Chorus. In the ears of the world

It is sung, it is told,

And the light thereof hurled

And the noise thereof rolled From the Acroceraunian show to the ford of the fleece of gold.

Meleager. Would God ye could carry me
Forth of all these;
Heap sand and bury me

By the Chersonese,

Where the thundering Bosphorus answers the thunder of Pontic seas.

Eneus. Dost thou mock at our praise And the singing begun