Algernon Charles Swinburne

“ To see their joy who love us; all our friends
Save only we, and all save we that love
This holiness of Athens, in our sight
Shall lift their hearts up, in our hearing praise
Gods whom we may not; for to these they give
310 Life of their children, flower of all their seed,
For all their travail fruit, for all their hopes
Harvest; but we for all our good things, we
Have at their hands which fill all these folk full
Death, barrenness, child-slaughter, curses, cares,
Sea-leaguer and land-shipwreck; which of these,
Which wilt thou first give thanks for? all are thine. ”

“ Foam-rimmed and hollow like the womb of heaven,
But black for shining, and with death for life
Big now to birth and ripe with child, full-blown
With fear and fruit of havoc, takes the sun
Out of our eyes, darkening the day, and blinds
The fair sky's face unseasonably with change,
A cloud in one and billow of battle, a surge
High reared as heaven with monstrous surf of spears
490 That shake on us their shadow, till men's heads
Bend, and their hearts even with its forward wind
Wither, so blasts all seed in them of hope
Its breath and blight of presage ”

“ Happiest, thy word be hallowed; in all time
Thy name shall blossom, and from strange new tongues
High things be spoken of thee; for such grace
The Gods have dealt to no man, that on none
1080 Have laid so heavy sorrow. From this day
Live thou assured of godhead in thy blood,
And in thy fate no lowlier than a God
In all good things and evil; such a name
Shall be thy child this city's, and thine own
Next hers that called it Athens. Go now forth
Blest, and grace with thee to the doors of death.
CHTHONIA.
O city, O glory of Athens, O crown of my father's land, farewell. ”

“ Green pastures of grass for all cattle, and life-giving corn;
But here of thy bosom, here only, the man-child was born.
All races but one are as aliens engrafted or sown,
Strange children and changelings; but we, O our mother, thine own.
Thy nurslings are others, and seedlings they know not of whom;
For these hast thou fostered, but us thou hast borne in thy womb.
Who is he of us all, O beloved, that owe thee for birth,
Who would give not his blood for his birth's sake, O mother, O Earth? ”

“ I heard, hear thou: thus saith he; There shall die
340 One soul for all this people; from thy womb
Came forth the seed that here on dry bare ground
Death's hand must sow untimely, to bring forth
Nor blade nor shoot in season, being by name
To the under Gods made holy, who require
For this land's life her death and maiden blood
To save a maiden city. Thus I heard,
And thus with all said leave thee; for save this
No word is left us, and no hope alive. ”

“ Blood-guiltless, though bought back with innocent blood,
City mine own; I Pallas bring thee word,
I virgin daughter of the most high God
Give all you charge and lay command on all
The word I bring be wasted not; for this
1660 The Gods have stablished and his soul hath sworn,
That time nor earth nor changing sons of man
Nor waves of generations, nor the winds
Of ages risen and fallen that steer their tides
Through light and dark of birth and lovelier death
From storm toward haven inviolable, shall see
So great a light alive beneath the sun
As the awless eye of Athens ”

“ All earth and all ocean, all depth and all height,
At the flash of an eyebeam are filled with his might:
The sea roars backward, the storm drops dumb,
And silence as dew on the fire of the fight
Falls kind in our ears as his face in our sight
With presage of peace to come.
1430 Fresh hope in my heart from the ashes of dread
Leaps clear as a flame from the pyres of the dead,
That joy out of woe
May arise as the spring out of tempest and snow,
With the flower-feasted month in her hands rose-red
Borne soft as a babe from the bearing-bed. ”

“ Yea, the word has wings of fire that hovered, loth to burn thine ear.
CHORUS.
1470 From thy lips it leapt forth loosened on a shrill and shadowy wing.
ATHENIAN HERALD.
Long they faltered, fain to hide it deep as death that hides the king.
CHORUS.
Dead with him blind hope lies blasted by the lightning of one sword.
[Pg 90]
ATHENIAN HERALD.
On thy tongue truth wars with error; no man's edge hath touched thy lord.
CHORUS.
False was thine then, jangling menace like a war-steed's brow-bound bell? ”

“ Be chosen of all for this land's love to die
And save to thee thy city, know this well,
Happiest I hold me of her seed alive.
ERECHTHEUS.
O sun that seest, what saying was this of thine,
280 God, that thy power has breathed into my lips?
For from no sunlit shrine darkling it came.
[Pg 15]
PRAXITHEA.
What portent from the mid oracular place
Hath smitten thee so like a curse that flies
Wingless, to waste men with its plagues? yet speak.
ERECHTHEUS.
Thy blood the Gods require not; take this first.
PRAXITHEA.
To me than thee more grievous this should sound. ”

“ That thy dead for their death shall have life in thy sight and a name everliving
At heart of thy people to be.
[Pg 105] In the darkness of change on the waters of time they shall turn from afar
To the beam of this dawn for a beacon, the light of these pyres for a star.
They shall see thee who love and take comfort, who hate thee shall see and take warning,
Our mother that makest us free;
And the sons of thine earth shall have help of the waves that made war on their morning,
1760 And friendship and fame of the sea. ”

“ None of all is lovelier, loftier love is none,
Less is bride's for bridegroom, mother's less for son,
Child, than this that crowns and binds up all in one;
Love of thy sweet light, thy fostering breast and hand,
Mother Earth, and city chosen, and natural land ”

“ Tears for triumph, wail for welfare, what strange godhead's shrine requires?
ATHENIAN HERALD.
Death's or victory's be it, a funeral torch feeds all its festal fires.
CHORUS.
Like a star should burn the beacon flaming from our city's head.
[Pg 89]
ATHENIAN HERALD.
Like a balefire should the flame go up that says the king is dead.
CHORUS.
Out of heaven, a wild-haired meteor, shoots this new sign, scattering fear. ”

“ Save of light life that breathes and bleeds, even I
Will help thee to this better gift than mine
[Pg 31] And lead thee by this little living hand
That death shall make so strong, to that great end
550 Whence it shall lighten like a God's, and strike
Dead the strong heart of battle that would break
Athens; but ye, pray for this land, old men,
That it may bring forth never child on earth
To love it less, for none may more, than we. ”

“ O thou not born of the womb, nor bred
In the bride-night's warmth of a changed God's bed,
But thy life as a lightning was flashed from the light of thy father's head,
[Pg 9] O chief God's child by a motherless birth,
If aught in thy sight we indeed be worth,
Keep death from us thou, that art none of the Gods of the dead under earth. ”

“ By the wind for helmsman to shoreward ferried,
So black behind them the live storm serried
Shakes earth with the tramp of its foot, and the terror to be.
[Ant. 4.
Shall the sea give death whom the land gave birth?
O Earth, fair mother, O sweet live Earth,
[Pg 77] Hide us again in thy womb from the waves of it, help us or hide.
As a sword is the heart of the God thy brother,
But thine as the heart of a new-made mother,
1320 To deliver thy sons from his ravin, and rage of his tide. ”

“ Thy soul-struck mother, piercing like a sword
700 The immortal womb that bare thee; by the waves
That no man bridles and that bound thy world,
And by the winds and storms of all the sea,
He swears to raze from eyeshot of the sun
This city named not of his father's name,
And wash to deathward down one flood of doom
This whole fresh brood of earth yeaned naturally,
Green yet and faint in its first blade, unblown
With yellow hope of harvest; so do thou,
Seeing whom thy time is come to meet, for fear
710 Yield, or gird up thy force to fight and die.
ERECHTHEUS.
To fight then be it ”

“ Hast thou told not by measure the waves of the waste wide sea,
And the ways of the wind their master and thrall to thee?
[Pg 45] Hast thou filled not the furrows with fruit for the world's increase?
Has thine ear not heard from of old or thine eye not read
The thought and the deed of us living, the doom of us dead?
Hast thou made not war upon earth, and again made peace? ”

“ But her mouth was a fountain of song,
And her heart as a citadel strong
1190 That guards the heart of the city.
MESSENGER.
High things of strong-souled men that loved their land
On brass and stone are written, and their deeds
On high days chanted; but none graven or sung
That ever set men's eyes or spirits on fire,
Athenians, has the sun's height seen, or earth
Heard in her depth reverberate as from heaven,
More worth men's praise and good report of Gods
Than here I bring for record in your ears. ”

“ And bind on the brows of thy godhead a frontlet of night?
Thou hast loosened the necks of thine horses, and goaded their flanks with affright,
To the race of a course that we know not on ways that are hid from our sight.
As a wind through the darkness the wheels of their chariot are whirled,
1400 And the light of its passage is night on the face of the world.
[Pg 84] And there falls from the wings of thy glory no help from on high,
But a shadow that smites us with fear and desire of thine eye. ”

“ Then hast thou in it a better part than we,
A holier portion than we all; for each
Hath but the length of his own life to live,
And this most glorious mother-land on earth
To worship till that life have end; but thine
Hath end no more than hers; thou, dead, shalt live
Till Athens live not ”

“ But none of the nations of men shall they liken to thee,
1150 Whose children true-born and the fruit of thy body are we.
The rest are thy sons but in figure, in word are thy seed;
We only the flower of thy travail, thy children indeed.
Of thy soil hast thou fashioned our limbs, of thy waters their blood,
And the life of thy springs everlasting is fount of our flood.
No wind oversea blew us hither adrift on thy shore,
None sowed us by land in thy womb that conceived us and bore. ”

“ Know thou this much for all thy loud blast blown,
We lack not hands to speak with, swords to plead,
[Pg 37] For proof of peril, not of boisterous breath,
Sea-wind and storm of barren mouths that foam
And rough rock's edge of menace; and short space
660 May lesson thy large ignorance and inform
This insolence with knowledge if there live
Men earth-begotten of no tenderer thews
Than knit the great joints of the grim sea's brood
With hasps of steel together; heaven to help,
One man shall break, even on their own flood's verge,
That iron bulk of battle ”

“ With the fire of his house for a beacon, that foemen have wasted with flame?
Arise now, lift up thy light; give ear to us, put forth thine hand,
Reach toward us thy torch of deliverance, a lamp for the night of the land.
Thine eye is the light of the living, no lamp for the dead ”

“ From the slumberless bed for thy bedfellow spread and his bride under earth
Hast thou brought forth a wild and insatiable child, an unbearable birth.
Fierce are the fangs of his wrath, and the pangs that they give;
360 None is there, none that may bear them, not one that would live. ”

“ Through a pass rock-rimmed and narrow the light that gleams
On the faces of men falls faint as the dawn of dreams,
The dayspring of death as a star in an under sky
Where night is the dead men's day. ”

“ But a life that is given for the life of the whole live land,
From a heart unspotted a gift of a spotless hand,
Of pure will perfect and free, for the land's life's sake,
What man shall fear not to put forth his hand and take? ”

“ Haply beyond all women; and the word
Speaks thee divine, dear queen, that speaks thee dead,
Dead being alive, or quick and dead in one
Shall not men call thee living? yet I fear
To slay thee timeless with my proper tongue,
With lips, thou knowest, that love thee; and such work
Was never laid of Gods on men, such word
No mouth of man learnt ever, as from mine
260 Most loth to speak thine ear most loth shall take
And hold it hateful as the grave to hear. ”

“ Harder now the breast, and girded with no marriage-band for girth,
Where thine head shall sleep, the namechild of the lords of under earth.
PRAXITHEA.
Dark the name and dark the gifts they gave thee, child, in childbirth were,
Sprung from him that rent the womb of earth, a bitter seed to bear,
880 Born with groanings of the ground that gave him way toward heaven's dear air.
CHTHONIA.
Day to day makes answer, first to last, and life to death ”

“ If blood may buy them surety, cleanse or soil
The helpless hands men raise and reach no stay.
CHORUS.
Ill thoughts breed fear, and fear ill words; but these
The Gods turn from us that have kept their law.
[Str. 1.
Let us lift up the strength of our hearts in song,
And our souls to the height of the darkling day.
If the wind in our eyes blow blood for spray,
[Pg 75] Be the spirit that breathes in us life more strong,
Though the prow reel round and the helm point wrong,
1290 And sharp reefs whiten the shoreward way. ”

“ Come down with their doom in thine hand on the ships thou hast brought up against us to fight.
[Str. 7.
For now not in word but in deed is the harvest of spears begun,
1340 And its clamour outbellows the thunder, its lightning outlightens the sun.
[Pg 79] From the springs of the morning it thunders and lightens across and afar
To the wave where the moonset ends and the fall of the last low star.
With a trampling of drenched red hoofs and an earthquake of men that meet,
Strong war sets hand to the scythe, and the furrows take fire from his feet. ”