Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 2

boy loved his laurel-laden hair
As his own father's risen on the
eastern air,
And that less white brow-binding bayleaf bloom
More
than all flowers his father's eyes relume;
And those high songs he
heard,
More than all notes of any landward bird,
More than all
sounds less free
Than the wind's quiring to the choral sea.
High things the high song taught him; how the breath
Too frail for
life may be more strong than death;
And this poor flash of sense in
life, that gleams
As a ghost's glory in dreams,
More stabile than the
world's own heart's root seems,
By that strong faith of lordliest love
which gives
To death's own sightless-seeming eyes a light
Clearer,
to death's bare bones a verier might,
Than shines or strikes from any
man that lives.
How he that loves life overmuch shall die
The dog's
death, utterly:
And he that much less loves it than he hates

All
wrongdoing that is done
Anywhere always underneath the sun
Shall
live a mightier life than time's or fate's.
One fairer thing he shewed
him, and in might
More strong than day and night
Whose strengths
build up time's towering period:
Yea, one thing stronger and more
high than God,
Which if man had not, then should God not be:
And
that was Liberty.
And gladly should man die to gain, he said,


Freedom; and gladlier, having lost, lie dead.
For man's earth was not,
nor the sweet sea-waves
His, nor his own land, nor its very graves,

Except they bred not, bore not, hid not slaves:
But all of all that is,

Were one man free in body and soul, were his.
And the song softened, even as heaven by night
Softens, from sunnier
down to starrier light,
And with its moonbright breath
Blessed life
for death's sake, and for life's sake death.
Till as the moon's own
beam and breath confuse
In one clear hueless haze of glimmering
hues
The sea's line and the land's line and the sky's,
And light for
love of darkness almost dies,
As darkness only lives for light's dear
love,
Whose hands the web of night is woven of,
So in that heaven
of wondrous words were life
And death brought out of strife;
Yea,
by that strong spell of serene increase
Brought out of strife to peace.
And the song lightened, as the wind at morn
Flashes, and even with
lightning of the wind
Night's thick-spun web is thinned
And all its
weft unwoven and overworn
Shrinks, as might love from scorn.

And as when wind and light on water and land
Leap as twin gods
from heavenward hand in hand,
And with the sound and splendour of
their leap
Strike darkness dead, and daunt the spirit of sleep,
And
burn it up with fire;
So with the light that lightened from the lyre

Was all the bright heat in the child's heart stirred
And blown with
blasts of music into flame
Till even his sense became
Fire, as the
sense that fires the singing bird
Whose song calls night by name.

And in the soul within the sense began
The manlike passion of a
godlike man,
And in the sense within the soul again
Thoughts that
make men of gods and gods of men.
For love the high song taught him: love that turns
God's heart toward
man as man's to Godward; love
That life and death and life are
fashioned of,
From the first breath that burns
Half kindled on the
flowerlike yeanling's lip,
So light and faint that life seems like to slip,

To that yet weaklier drawn
When sunset dies of night's devouring

dawn.
But the man dying not wholly as all men dies
If aught be left
of his in live men's eyes
Out of the dawnless dark of death to rise;
If
aught of deed or word
Be seen for all time or of all time heard.

Love, that though body and soul were overthrown
Should live for
love's sake of itself alone,
Though spirit and flesh were one thing
doomed and dead,
Not wholly annihilated.
Seeing even the hoariest
ash-flake that the pyre
Drops, and forgets the thing was once afire

And gave its heart to feed the pile's full flame
Till its own heart its
own heat overcame,
Outlives its own life, though by scarce a span,

As such men dying outlive themselves in man,
Outlive themselves for
ever; if the heat
Outburn the heart that kindled it, the sweet
Outlast
the flower whose soul it was, and flit
Forth of the body of it
Into
some new shape of a strange perfume
More potent than its light live
spirit of bloom,
How shall not something of that soul relive,
That
only soul that had such gifts to give
As lighten something even of all
men's doom
Even from the labouring womb
Even to the seal set on
the unopening tomb?
And these the loving light of song and love

Shall wrap and lap round and impend above,
Imperishable; and all
springs born illume
Their sleep with brighter thoughts than wake the
dove
To music, when the hillside winds resume
The marriage-song
of heather-flower and broom
And all the joy thereof.
And hate the song too taught him: hate of all
That brings or holds in
thrall
Of spirit or flesh, free-born ere God began,
The holy body
and sacred soul of man.
And wheresoever a curse was