LIBER PRIMUS VEL CARMINUM
Fivefold: the year that is in darkness hidden,
Being beginning: then the moving year,
All change and tumult; then the quiet un-
chidden
Of deep reflection; then the gladdening
tear
Or saddening smile, the laughter not for-
bidden
And love enfolding the green-woven
sphere:
Lastly, the burning year of flame and fume
That burns men up in fire’s sepulchral womb.
Fivefold: the child, the frail, the delicate:
Then the strong lauzhing mischief: then
the proud
Fight toward manhood and the sense elate,
Creative power and passion: then the loud
Assertion of young will, the quickening rate
And strength in blood, in youth with life
endowed,
And firmness fastening ; the last lustre’s span
Consolidates and shows the perfect man.
Fivefold : the humour changes as his child
Calls him first father” ; sense of strength
divine
Fills him; then man’s work in the world,
and wild
Efforts to fame: then steadier in the shrine
Burns the full flame: then, turning, the years
piled
Seem suddenly a burden ; then the fine
Flavour of full maturity is tasted :
The man looks back, and asks if life be
wasted.
Fivefold : delight in woman altering
To joy of sunlight only: love of life
Changing to fear of death: the golden spring
Trembles; he hates the cold, the winter
strife,
Laughs not with lust of combat : feebly cling
His old hands: he has sepultured his wife :
Last, palsied, shaking, drawing tremorous
breath,
He gasps
and stumbles in the pit of death.
Of worlds—I invoke ye!
ORPHEUS.
O girded and spanned
By the deeds of time,
Rocks shattered and planned
In your depth: where climb
The race and the Jand,
And the growth sublime
centuries! Come to the rhyme!
THE CENTURIES.
How hardly a man
Come forth, ye
Though his strength were as spring’s
Shall stretch out his span
To the width of my wings !
The years are enfolden
In my bosom golden,
My periods
Are the hours of the Gods.
They have their plan
In my seasons; all things
Are woven in the span
Of the spread of my wings.
My brazen gates cleft
By shafts shed of time,
Are ruined and left
As the Gods sing their rhyme.
Buttress and joist are
Effaced of the cloister.
Fane after fane
We lift us again
To the hoarier transept
Where ages climb,
And ruin is left
Where the Gods said their rhyme.
The deity-year
(WhereofI am an hour)
Shall be born and appear
As the birth ofa flower,
Shall fade as they faded,
The flower wreaths braided
In maiden’s hair.
The Gods shall fare