Collected Works (Vol. III)

LIBER TERTIUS VEL LABORIS 185 The steeps of heaven: but these, these chil- dren, cry Their bitter cry for justice. Mighty Ones, Lords of the Dusk, incline ye, mercifully, Rightly, to misery of all stars and suns And planets and all grains of dust that sorrow— Hark! from grim Tartarus, most doleful bound, Their throats of anguish notes of triumph borrow At my loud strain’s unprofitable sound. For who are ye? Poor judges of the dead, In your stern eyes the sadness is mine own, Mingled with sense that all your forces dread Are vain to take the spirit from one stone. I would have called to ye in wild strong joy; ** Arise, O Lords of Justice, and be girt With lightnings, and be ardent to destroy This Fool’s creation and to heal its hurt !’? Ye are vain, But yet the damned With swift annihilation Alas! poor powers ! rejoice Hearing the splendour, prophet in my strain, And certain comfort in my mighty voice. For this shall be, that in the utter end Shall be an end, that in the vast of time Shall come a ceasing, and the steel bar bend Of the God’s will, himself from his sublime Pinnacled house in heaven headlong cast Like his own thunder to the abyss of nought When space and time and being shall be past, And the grim thinker perish with his thought. Therefore I leave in hands unshakable The destinies of being, and care not For all the miseries of the damned in hell, Or the vain gods’ unenviable lot. [ leave the cry of chaos, and recall My private pang and woe particular, One drop of water by mischance let fall From some white slave’s divinely carven jar. O Lords of Justice, universal woe Hath yet its shadows in a singer’s soul, He feels the arrow from a party bow Who yet hath strength to struggle with the whole. I love my wife. The many-coloured throne Of Grecian meadows hath nor charm nor lure Now she is gone. Lamenting and alone My dulled heart aches, most that it must endure. Give this decree, O masters! Few the days And light the hours since Heracles de- scended The dusky steep, the intolerable ways, And one prey—Theseus—from your prisons rended By might of godhead and the skill of man. But now with music from a Muse’s breast Sweetened with milk of tenderness, I scan Your eyes with hope, and with a man’s unrest And a man’s purpose I appeal. Be just, O ye whom greater justice baulks and bars ! Return my lover from the unkind dust To the sweet light of the eternal stars! 3e kind, and from the unjust place of fear Return by kindness her, the innocent one, From the grey places to the waters clear And meadows fair, and light of moon and sun ! Relent. Reverse the doom. I see your eyes Quiver despite ye: but your hands ye wring; Little by little bitter tears arise Like stubborn water from a frozen spring,