Collected Works (Vol. III)

LIBER PRIMUS VEL CARMINUM 143 Our voiceless clefts and spires of delicate hue, Changing and lost in the exultant blue, By fire and whirlwind fashioned and then riven, Invoke fresh song, with deep solemnity In noble notes of mastery answering thee, By some young tumult in our old hearts driven ; And this immortal path of splintered rock Shall lead the wild chant to the sky, and mock The nectared feast of Gods with its im- passioned shock. Deep-mouthed, I, earthquake, wake in echoing thunder. I break my mother’s breast ; I tear asunder The womb that bore me; I arise in terror, Threatening to ruin her, crag, crown, and column, Reverberate music of that mighty and solemn Call of creation, Vulcan’s awful mirror. I rend the sky with clamour terrible, Shaking the thrones of earth and heaven and hell, Confound the universe in universal error. I sound the awful note that summons mortals, As I awake, to pass the dreadful portals And face the gloom of Dis, the unnameable immortals. Soft our mild music steals through thunder- ous pauses, A phrase made magic by the Second Causes, The mighty Ones that dwell beneath the empyrean. We, vines and fruits and trees with autumn laden, - Sing as the bride-song of a married maiden Before the god-like vigour of the man Breaks the frail temple-doors of love asunder, And wakes the new life’s promise in pale wonder, Shattering the moulded glass, the shape Selenian. Fruits of the earth, our low song joins the crowd. We need not (to be heard) to thunder loud. Our hearts are lifted up, our heads with love low bowed. The tenderest light, the deepest hidden, is shed Up through dark earth—your home, O happy dead !— Crusted in darkness lie the secret lights. Formed in the agony of earth as tears, Clothed in the crystal mirror of the years, We dwell, sweet-hearted nun-like eremites ! Diamond and ruby, topaz and sapphire, Emerald and amethyst, one clear bright fire, We are earth’s stars below, as she ahove hath Night’s. Our sweet clean song pierces the cover, And thin keen notes of music flit and hover Like spirit-birds upon the lyre of this our lover. We, children of the mountains, lying low On earth’s own bosom, deep, embowered, flow In wide soft waves of land: upon us sweep The mightiest rivers: in our hollows lie Great lakes: our voices hardly rise, but die In the cold streams of air: shallow and deep: Leagues by the thousand, dells a minute long; All we are children of the mighty throng That cluster where the mountains fail, and sleep In such cool peace that even thy lyre awakes Hardly a soul that tenderer music makes. Yet we arise and listen for cur own sweet sakes. THE LIVING CREATURES OF THE EARTH. The heavy hand is held, And the whips leave weary blows. The mysteries of eld Are cancelled and expelled, And the miserable throes.