Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 43
man’s.
For the waste of the dead void air took form of a world at birth,
And the waters and firmaments were, and light, and the life-giving
earth.
The beautiful bird unbegotten that night brought forth without pain
In the fathomless years forgotten whereover the dead gods reign,
Was it love, life, godhead, or fate? we say the spirit is one
That moved on the dark to create out of darkness the stars and the
sun.
Before the growth was the grower, and the seed ere the plant was
sown;
But what was seed of the sower? and the grain of him, whence was it
grown?
Foot after foot ye go back and travail and make yourselves mad;
Blind feet that feel for the track where highway is none to be had.
Therefore the God that ye make you is grievous, and gives not aid,
Because it is but for your sake that the God of your making is made.
Thou and I and he are not gods made men for a span,
But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is man.
Our lives are as pulses or pores of his manifold body and breath;
As waves of his sea on the shores where birth is the beacon of death.
We men, the multiform features of man, whatsoever we be,
Recreate him of whom we are creatures, and all we only are he.
Not each man of all men is God, but God is the fruit of the whole;
Indivisible spirit and blood, indiscernible body from soul.
Not men’s but man’s is the glory of godhead, the kingdom of time,
The mountainous ages made hoary with snows for the spirit to climb.
A God with the world inwound whose clay to his footsole clings;
A manifold God fast-bound as with iron of adverse things.
A soul that labours and lives, an emotion, a strenuous breath,
From the flame that its own mouth gives reillumed, and refreshed with
death.
In the sea whereof centuries are waves the live God plunges and
swims;
His bed is in all men’s graves, but the worm hath not hold on his
limbs.
Night puts out not his eyes, nor time sheds change on his head;
With such fire as the stars of the skies are the roots of his heart
are fed.
Men are the thoughts passing through it, the veins that fulfil it
with blood,
With spirit of sense to renew it as springs fulfilling a flood.
Men are the heartbeats of man, the plumes that feather his wings,
Storm-worn, since being began, with the wind and thunder of things.
Things are cruel and blind; their strength detains and deforms:
And the wearying wings of the mind still beat up the stream of their
storms.
Still, as one swimming up stream, they strike out blind in the blast,
In thunders of vision and dream, and lightnings of future and past.
We are baffled and caught in the current and bruised upon edges of
shoals;
As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the wind-shaken
souls.
Spirit by spirit goes under, a foam-bell’s bubble of breath,
That blows and opens in sunder and blurs not the mirror of death.
For a worm or a thorn in his path is a man’s soul quenched as a
flame;
For his lust of an hour or his wrath shall the worm and the man be
the same.
O God sore stricken of things! they have wrought him a raiment of
pain;
Can a God shut eyelids and wings at a touch on the nerves of the
brain?
O shamed and sorrowful God, whose force goes out at a blow!
What world shall shake at his nod? at his coming what wilderness
glow?
What help in the work of his hands? what light in the track of his
feet?
His days are snowflakes or sands, with cold to consume him and heat.
He is servant with Change for lord, and for wages he hath to his hire
Folly and force, and a sword that devours, and a ravening fire.
From the bed of his birth to his grave he is driven as a wind at
their will;
Lest Change bow down as his slave, and the storm and the sword be
still;
Lest earth spread open her wings to the sunward, and sing with the
spheres;
Lest man be master of things, to prevail on their forces and fears.
By the spirit are things overcome; they are stark, and the spirit
hath breath;
It hath speech, and their forces are dumb; it is living, and things
are of death.
But they know not the spirit for master, they feel not force from
above,
While man makes love to disaster, and woos desolation with love.
Yea, himself too hath made himself chains, and his own hands plucked
out his eyes;
For his own soul only constrains him, his own mouth only denies.
The herds of kings and their hosts and the flocks of the high priests
bow
To a master whose face is a ghost’s; O thou that wast God, is it
thou?
Thou madest man in the garden; thou temptedst man, and he fell;
Thou gavest him poison and pardon for blood and burnt-offering to
sell.
Thou hast sealed thine elect to salvation, fast locked with faith for
the key;
Make now for thyself expiation, and be thine atonement for thee.
Ah, thou that darkenest heaven — ah, thou that bringest a sword -
By the crimes of thine hands unforgiven they beseech thee to hear
them, O Lord.
By the balefires of ages that burn for thine incense, by creed and by
rood,
By the famine and passion that yearn and that hunger to find of thee
food,
By the children that asked at thy throne of the priests that were fat
with thine hire
For bread, and thou gavest a stone; for light, and thou madest them
fire;
By the kiss of thy peace like a snake’s kiss, that leaves the soul
rotten at root;
By the savours of gibbets and stakes thou hast planted to bear to
thee fruit;
By torture and terror and treason, that make to thee weapons and
wings;
By thy power upon men for a season, made out of the malice of things;
O thou that hast built thee a shrine of the madness of man and his
shame,
And hast hung in the midst for a sign of his worship the lamp of thy
name;
That hast shown him for heaven in a vision a void world’s shadow and
shell,
And hast fed thy delight and derision with fire of belief as of hell;
That hast fleshed on the souls that believe thee the fang of the
death-worm fear,
With anguish of dreams to deceive them whose faith cries out in thine
ear;
By the face of the spirit confounded before thee and humbled in dust,
By the dread wherewith life was astounded and shamed out of sense of
its trust,
By the scourges of doubt and repentance that fell on the soul at thy
nod,
Thou art judged, O judge, and the sentence is gone forth against
thee, O God.
Thy slave that slept is awake; thy slave but slept for a span;
Yea, man thy slave shall unmake thee, who made thee lord over man.
For his face is set to the
east, his feet on the past and its dead;
The sun rearisen is his priest, and the heat thereof hallows his
head.
His eyes take part in the morning; his spirit out-sounding the sea
Asks no more witness or warning from temple or tripod or tree.
He hath set the centuries at union; the night is afraid at his name;
Equal with life, in communion with death, he hath found them the
same.
Past the wall unsurmounted that bars out our vision with iron and
fire
He hath sent forth his soul for the stars to comply with and suns to
conspire.
His thought takes flight for the centre wherethrough it hath part in
the whole;
The abysses forbid it not enter: the stars make room for the soul.
Space is the soul’s to inherit; the night is hers as the day;
Lo, saith man, this is my spirit; how shall not the worlds make way?
Space is thought’s, and the wonders thereof, and the secret of space;
Is thought not more than the thunders and lightnings? shall thought
give place?
Is the body not more than the vesture, the life not more than the
meat?
The will than the word or the gesture, the heart than the hands or
the feet?
Is the tongue not more than the speech is? the head not more than the
crown?
And if higher than is heaven be the reach of the soul, shall not
heaven bow down?
Time, father of life, and more great than the life it begat and
began,
Earth’s keeper and heaven’s and their fate, lives, thinks, and hath
substance in man.
Time’s motion that throbs in his blood is the thought that gives
heart to the skies,
And the springs of the fire that is food to the sunbeams are light to
his eyes.
The minutes that beat with his heart are the words to which worlds
keep chime,
And the thought in his pulses is part of the blood and the spirit of
time.
He saith to the ages, Give; and his soul foregoes not her share;
Who are ye that forbid him to live, and would feed him with
heavenlier air?
Will ye feed him with poisonous dust, and restore him with hemlock
for drink,
Till he yield you his soul up in trust, and have heart not to know or
to think?
He hath stirred him, and found out the flaw in his fetters, and cast
them behind;
His soul to his soul is a law, and his mind is a light to his mind.
The seal of his knowledge is sure, the truth and his spirit are wed;
Men perish, but man shall endure; lives die, but the life is not
dead.
He hath sight of the secrets of season, the roots of the years and
the fruits;
His soul is at one with the reason of things that is sap to the
roots.
He can hear in their changes a sound as the conscience of consonant
spheres;
He can see through the years flowing round him the law lying under
the years.
Who are ye that would bind him with curses and blind him with vapour
of prayer?
Your might is as night that disperses when light is alive in the air.
The bow of your godhead is broken, the arm of your conquest is
stayed;
Though ye call down God to bear token, for fear of you none is
afraid.
Will ye turn back times, and the courses of stars, and the season of
souls?
Shall God’s breath dry up the sources that feed time full as it
rolls?
Nay, cry on him then till he show you a sign, till he lift up a rod;
Hath he made not the nations to know him of old if indeed he be God?
Is no heat of him left in the ashes of thousands burnt up for his
sake?
Can prayer not rekindle the flashes that shone in his face from the
stake?
Cry aloud; for your God is a God and a Saviour; cry, make yourselves
lean;
Is he drunk or asleep, that the rod of his wrath is unfelt and
unseen?
Is the fire of his old loving-kindness gone out, that his pyres are
acold?
Hath he gazed on himself unto blindness, who made men blind to
behold?
Cry out, for his kingdom is shaken; cry out, for the people
blaspheme;
Cry aloud till his godhead awaken; what doth he to sleep and to
dream?
Cry, cut yourselves, gash you with knives and with scourges, heap on
to you dust;
Is his life but as other gods’ lives? is not this the Lord God of
your trust?
Is not this the great God of your sires, that with souls and with
bodies was fed,
And the world was on flame with his fires? O fools, he was God, and
is dead.
He will hear not again the strong crying of earth in his ears as
before,
And the fume of his multitudes dying shall flatter his nostrils no
more.
By the spirit he ruled as his slave is he slain who was mighty to
slay,
And the stone that is sealed on his grave he shall rise not and roll
not away.
Yea, weep to him, lift up your hands; be your eyes as a fountain of
tears;
Where he stood there is nothing that stands; if he call, there is no
man that hears.
He hath doffed his king’s raiment of lies now the wane of his kingdom
is come;
Ears hath he, and hears not; and eyes, and he sees not; and mouth,
and is dumb.
His red king’s raiment is ripped from him naked, his staff broken
down;
And the signs of his empire are stripped from him shuddering; and
where is his crown?
And in vain by the wellsprings refrozen ye cry for the warmth of his
sun -
O God, the Lord God of thy chosen, thy will in thy kingdom be done.
Kingdom and will hath he none in him left him, nor warmth in his
breath;
Till his corpse be cast out of the sun will ye know not the truth of
his death?
Surely, ye say, he is strong, though the times be against him and
men;
Yet a little, ye say, and how long, till he come to show judgment
again?
Shall God then die as the beasts die? who is it hath broken his rod?
O God, Lord God of thy priests, rise up now and show thyself God.
They cry out, thine elect, thine aspirants to heavenward, whose faith
is as flame;
O thou the Lord God of our tyrants, they call thee, their God, by thy
name.
By thy name that in hell-fire was written, and burned at the point of
thy sword,
Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten; thy death is upon thee,
O Lord.
And the love-song of earth as thou diest resounds through the wind of
her wings -
Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things.
THE PILGRIMS
Who is your lady of love, O ye that pass
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 han
ds 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 anything.
- 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 place,
In vain they cry unto her, seeking her face,
In vain their mouths make much of her; for they
Cry with vain tongues, till the heart lives again.
- O ye that follow, and have ye no repentance?
For on your brows is written a mortal sentence,
An hieroglyph of sorrow, a fiery sign,
That in your lives ye shall not pause or rest,
Nor have the sure sweet common love, nor keep
Friends and safe days, nor joy of life nor sleep.
— These have we not, who have one thing, the divine
Face and clear eyes of faith and fruitful breast.
- And ye shall die before your thrones be won.
- Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun
Shall move and shine without us, and we lie
Dead; but if she too move on earth and live,
But if the old world with all the old irons rent
Laugh and give thanks, shall we be not content?
Nay, we shall rather live, we shall not die,
Life being so little and death so good to give.
- And these men shall forget you. — Yea, but we
Shall be a part of the earth and the ancient sea,
And heaven-high air august, and awful fire,
And all things good; and no man’s heart shall beat
But somewhat in it of our blood once shed
Shall quiver and quicken, as now in us the dead
Blood of men slain and the old same life’s desire
Plants in their fiery footprints our fresh feet.
- But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant,
Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present,
That clothe yourselves with the cold future air;
When mother and father and tender sister and brother
And the old live love that was shall be as ye,