I awoke at a breath, and looked out on the world's wan face
While the dew like a death-damp hung upon leaves and lawn;
As a corpse—the agony over—lies still in its place,
So still was the earth that I asked: ‘Is it death or dawn?’
Then the night's last sigh, or the first drawn breath of the day,
Became as a wind to my thought, and the out-spread shears
Of its brooding wings cut the clouds; I was wafted away,
I had cast off the flesh, I had no more to do with the years.
I arose with the wind, I arose to the rhythmic beat
Of those questing wings, still on through the blue, and up,
While the world in its dawn or its death as it slipped from my feet
Grew hollow and guarded my flight as a graven cup.
Through the tremulous air, straight on through the ether pure
To that midmost heaven whence nothing can rise or fall,
I flew with my thought; there it hung as an eagle secure,
And the cup of the earth grew to sight as a burnished ball.
I was set in the midst of the spheres, and they came and went,
As they wove wide circles around me of music and light,
But my gaze on the earth, still the home of my heart, was bent,
And it loomed more large through the tears that perturbed my sight.
For the earth I had quitted I left not for sun or for star,
Of the quiring legions its psalm in my ears was clearest,
No, I left it for love's sake, the better to see it from far,
And its paling image was still to mine eyes the nearest.
Alway before me wherever I turned my face
The waning light of the world, with its sorrowful freight,
And deep in its shade, as it circled its path in space,
The weary Titan who reeled with its growing weight.
As a bark that is blown on its way by an unseen wind,
As a swimmer helpless and stark on the torrent of change,
The world and its world-worn bearer, grown deaf and blind,
Wheeled on the beaten path that for ever seemed strange.
And I cried in my heart: ‘O Earth, that art left forlorn,
As a questionless beast fast bound to a ruthless mill,
As an ox that is muzzled thou treadest untasted corn,
And workest the unknown work of an unknown will.
‘Thou workest ever, and lo, of thy toil the fruit:
The gathering burthen of doubt and of lost desire,
The famine of faith, and of knowledge the empty bruit,
The senile caution of age, and its burnt-out fire.’
And I saw in the coming time, when the bodily need
Had lost yet further its sting, how the rack of the mind
Would break the spirit the languorous flesh had freed
Or drive it in wildering quest i’ the wake of the wind:
Yea, I saw men groan in the lap of their opulent ease,
And I saw them droop in the arms of a lust supine,
And sigh for the time when they drank new wine from the lees,
When man's life as his lot was low, but his hope divine.
For the world he could span with his breath, or could girdle with light,
The world whose rising and setting were both in Time,
Was a home too straight for that thought which the Infinite
Drew to its fathomless depths with a madness sublime.
And I said: ‘O Earth, thou art dear as the welcome grave
Of the cherished ones I have loved with a love inept.
Of the suffering ones whom my love was not gifted to save,
Tho' it rested never till safe on thy bosom they slept;
‘O Earth, sad Earth, where the love which has conquered Time,
And has purged the place where it dwelt with its own white flame,
Still loses the sanction of beauty which gladdened its prime,
And goes on its luminous way in the silence of shame.’
Then I wept for love: ‘What tho’ barren and bitter you be,
Shorn of your glory and pride in the thick of the strife,
Barren and bitter and deep as the fathomless sea,
Your restless heart is the ocean and cradle of life!
‘Deep sea, wild sea, with your waves and your stormy breath,
You have rocked the cradle of life till the high emprise
Of your pathless ways nursed the spirit which wrung from death
Wings which should cleave you a way through the pathless skies.
‘Will the feebler hearts of the elder time that shall be
Embark with the best of their store on your wayward tides?
Will they dare, O love, to put out on your barren sea
When the stars of your heaven have proved to be lying guides?’
Then I cried to the Earth: ‘How when love shall be seen no more,
And the work he hath done betwixt heaven and thee proved vain,
When no heart shall follow his flight as he forces the door
To the presence of God, and he drops down among us self-slain?
‘How will it be with the world when of love bereft,—
With the hungry deep of the heart where his sea hath been?
Or its sinking waters cut off from their source, and left
To the shapeless horrors that brood on a calm unclean?’
Then a voice more sad than the sough of the sad west wind
Returning lonely from bidding farewell to the sun,
Made answer for love: ‘Let him vanish, nor look behind
On the seedless fallows of life when his day is done.’

‘Let him vanish for ever, or rise on the younger spheres,
To live and reign, or to die with his twin-born Faith,
To paint with the hues of heaven new bridges of tears
That shall span for the infants of time new gulphs of death.
‘Let him go who of old was a king as a king should be,
Who with faith and hope was to lead us to storm the skies;
Let him go ere a lonely tyrant and thief of the sea
He seize on the wealth of our souls making mock of our cries.
‘For love without faith and hope is a foeman dire,
Who softens the hearts of his victims the better to rend,
As hungry and stronger than death, and more cruel than fire.
But should he be light of our life to the desolate end,
How would he mourn for the hearts that could only be fed
With the food of the gods in the days of the coming dearth?’—
Then I lifted a psalm of thanksgiving for love that was dead,
Hid deep in the bosom of God or the bosom of earth.
And I heard the Titan who staggered beneath his load
Groan in the depths of the darkness that covered his face,
As he cursed the obdurate will that had power to goad
To barren endeavour the weakness it spurned through space.
And I rose in a passion of pity and mad revolt
And cried to the Titan: ‘Away with the love-lorn world.
Cast the sorrowful burthen from off thee,—a deadly bolt
To hurl through the orderly spheres.’ And the Titan hurled.
The Titan hurled as I guarded mine ears and eyes
From the crash of the falling spheres that hailed fiery death
Each against each,—from the flames as of hell, and the cries
Of a universe lost in the storm of my passionate breath.
But lo, the music and measure were alway the same,
The symphony weaving for ever its circles of sound,
As the stars on the floor of the universe guarded their flame,
Or yielded it, fairer for use, when they left the round.
And the earth sped on, though the Titan had failed from sight,
It was gold on the sun-side, silver anent the moon,
And it spun to the tapering point of its garment of light
As a weaving worm that is closing its own cocoon.
Then I knew that the thing which had perished had reached its mark,
That the weary light upon death as the bird on the nest,
That on eyes that are heavy with sleep falls the lid of the dark,
That the Titan was eased of his burthen and taking his rest.
And I lighted down on the outspread wings of my thought,
Through the clanging chords at the crossing paths of the spheres,
Till again in the clouds of the earth I was tangled and caught,
Ere I breasted the tide of the swift-running stream of the years.
Then I lay on my bed, and a flutter past over the night,
As the curtains of darkness were shaken before they were drawn;
And the spokes of the wheels of the sun cleft the clouds with new light,
So I saw that the season was spring—that the day was at dawn.