The Song Of The Sword

Prelude

In the ineffable days when from the summits of morning,
Through the extravagant noon, down to the murmurous eve,
Lands of the plenteous vine lay in their vernal adorning,
Robed in immutable calm, God's everlasting reprieve.

Lands of imperial sun, lands of enduring fruition,
Lands where abundant the wine perfumed the madness of youth,
Lands where the women and men flamed in the vernal ignition,
Gained through the shadows of sense rays from the ultimate truth.

Where on the tenanted seas flashed the flushed feet of the moon-rise
And stirred the dumb heart with its touch—silent, alone, unconfined;
Where, as to promiseful dawn, scattered the natural tune dies,
Women's bare feet in the dew, women's wild hair in the wind.

Where—O immaculate dream—Hope that endureth forever,
Beauty and adequate peace opened wide gates for the soul,
Where the low lyric of love welded so nought could dissever,
Where there was marble and song, where death was divine and its dole.

There in impossible times, lands of the amorous turtle,
Still, on a porphyry shrine lay the memorial sword,
Sheathed in reverberate gold, consecrate laurel and myrtle,
Cold in the plenty and peace, waiting the hand of the Lord.

Passionate, passive and proud, stark on the porphyry altar,
Menacing, waiting the years, serving an absolute need,
Ever the sword is at hand, lest, when the hearts of men falter,
Rise from the satiate peace sons of degenerate seed.

So there may come to the need, filled with enormous desire,
One from the mire of men bearing the resonant word,
Then shall the slumber dissolve, shattered as crystal by fire,
He alone voids the gold sheath, chaunting the song of the sword.

Then shall the spirits of men wake to a novel refulgence,
Over the marginal sea break an irradiate star,
Flame shall arise in the heart, desire demanding indulgence,
Lust of the greatness of earth, lust of dominion and war.

Invocation

God of the hand and loin and burning heart,
God of the whelming ecstasy and lust,
God of the fretful youth and lifeless dust,
God that art travailed with a vital smart!

God of the earlier races, limbed like Mars,
Epic as Odin echoing bell-voiced forth,
God of the sun-gilt South and iron North,
Symbol of life's impulsion—God of Wars!

Thine, in thy powerful hand, before mankind
Sprang from the womb of nature, blazed the sword,
Forged in the vital heat creation poured,
White from its core and tempered in the wind,

That walked through chaos down the cold expanse
Of lucent solitude from sun to sun!
O sign of life when life was unbegun,
This life of earth where death is circumstance!

The Song

When the vortex of Heaven was blind
The sword
Was framed from a primal desire
That shook thro' the void like a wind;
Then it rose as a shivering fire
And crimsoned God's vision of peace;
Then sank, like the trail of a star,
Down the frail twilight of space
And stood over hell like a scar
Furrowed deep in the forehead of night,
Till the universe called, "There is light,
And life and the promise of war."

Lamping the limitless gloom,
The sword
Glowed in the saffron of Hell,
As might in a tenanted tomb
Some strenuous memory swell
Over death and illume the dead eyes.
Then—O wonder!—ere ever it fell,
A hand gat the sword in its grasp,
And while earth and sea uttered their spawn,
Far-flung on the ocean of skies,
It lay like the welter of dawn
In the giant immutable clasp.

Then white as the darkness of death
The sword
Sang like a boreal breath
Blown thro' the idyll of dawn,
Cadenced as steel that is drawn
Tense thro' the crest of a storm,
It exalted the choir of earth,
Singing deep where the heart-blood is warm,
And pervaded the resonant sky
Like the solemn and sorrowful mirth
Of life that is living to die.

And down thro' the legended years
The sword,
Sonorous with laughter and tears,
Has sung its old epic to man;
And the earlier glory awakes
As when life in its anguish began,
Till, whenever the noon-brilliance shakes
Down the scabbardless steel, joy and woe,
All is blended to passion that has
Neither laughter, nor weeping, nor name,
But love and the lusting for fame,
Even death in its agony, grow
Into life that is, shall be and was—
Life the ichor of earth, the spring-throe,
Ever manifold, ever the same.

After-Word

Is it this, Belovèd, this the secret?—
Life, the earth life, thee and me compelling,
Life and only life?—Where flowers have withered,
Lavished perfume on the impartial breezes,
Fed the bee and crowned the bush with beauty,
Then, the summer spent; the petals perish,
Then, the spring returned, the sap returning,
Novel buds that ripen to perfection,—
Flowers may fade but never so the impulse,
Shift the scenes the play goes on forever?—
Is it this, Belovèd, this the secret?

Oh, consider!—Sure that life endureth—
Do I kiss thy lips, thine adolescent
Breast of marble, do my fingers even
Touch thy hand, the perfume of thy tresses
Fall upon my sense, thy voice's cadence
Turn concordant all my soul's confusion—
Do I these, or look upon thee even,
Comes a certainty of life's persistence,
Life that speaks in thee, in me, in nature,
Life demanding choate form and substance,
Life pervasive, deathless and enduring.

Is it this, Belovèd, this the secret?
This I sing to, since the word suffices,
This thou hearest?—I strove to sing the man's song,
Sing the earth's song, Life, the strength and splendour!
Thou did'st lean and hark and comprehend me:—
Life abideth, thou must know—a lover!—
Thou did'st know and then, and then —I, pausing,
Hear you question, "Is it this, the secret?"
Hear you ask, "Is life the spirits answer?
Shall the inward voice be stilled in living?"
Hear you wonder, "What's the good of life, then?
Why endure the pain and natural anguish,
Wherefore draw the furrow, sweat the year-long,
When the winter shuts its jaws of crystal,
Kills the generous spring, refuses fruitage—
This the secret? What's the good of life then?"

Ah, there's still a song—men strive to sing it,
Sing their striving, reach their goal, are silent.
What's the song?—No utterance can confine it
Only silence great enough to bear it.
I who cannot praise thee, thee my woman,
Singing life, as dim as life my verses,
Could I call the winds and waves to witness,
Could I pull the stars down from their courses,
Were I lion-voiced as old Jehovah,
Then my words could be but shadowy symbols;
None may phrase the spirit's simple knowledge,
And the secret and the revelation
Of what is not, where the mind of mortal
Turns to ashes and where life is tacit.

Oh, my Well-Beloved forget the pæan!
Let the sword-blade and the gold and glory
Warp no longer thine eternal vision.
Seek thy soul, and, finding, cease from struggle;
Cease, forget the song of life and living;
That's the world's way—Life and more and endless,
Copious earth-life in its rich completion,
Life and death and after, Life eternal,
Sapphire pavements and the domes of opal,
Life of blended music fair and fancied:
Only life—what life might be—a vision!

Then the Soul's way: lapse from sound to silence,
Merge oblivious in entire ceasing
In thy nativeness, the matrix ocean,
Thou a spray-drop hung on slippery verges;
Ah! the world's way—thine to be no longer;
Thine the soul's way, thou hast seen and known it!
Like an empty tale the worlds shall vanish,
Frail as dream, and life be quite forgotten.
What of life-songs then, and what of death-songs?
Sound and fury down the babbling ages,
They shall cease, the echoes pass and perish;
On the void the 'stablishment eternal
Bides alone—the Soul's gigantic silence.