Hence, swift hour! and quench thy Which, like flowers, will burst from them. As the fruit is to the tree light, Sad was his life who bore thee in his Who from yon thrones pinnacled on the breast, Wild bird for that weak nest. Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought, And from the very wound of tender thought Drew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies, past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Steaming from earth, conceals the of assemble Surmount the loss, the terror, and the Before your Father's throne; the swift Less in the beauty of its tender light it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow Impels the generations When, as summer lures the swallow, O weak heart of little wit! PROLOGUE TO HELLAS Herald of Eternity. It is the day Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss The shadow of God, and delegate Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends his decrees veiled in eternal. . . Within the circuit of this pendant orb There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn Earliest and most benign, and from it Temples and cities and immortal forms And when the sun of its dominion failed, Hierarchs and kings | That dew into the utmost wildernesses In wandering clouds of sunny rain that Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, Upon the name of Freedom; from the Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er Of faction, which like earthquake shakes Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be And as the Heavens and the Earth To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no arrayed Their presence in the beauty and the light Of thy first smile, O Father, as they gather The spirit of thy love which paves for them Their path o'er the abyss, till every Shall be one living Spirit, so shall less Than of the Father's; but lest thou shouldst faint, The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence, Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forkèd snake ... Insatiate Superstition still shall Satan. Be as all things beneath the Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and empyrean, Change Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Des- Shall flit before thee on her dragon tiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns? Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn; wings, Convulsing and consuming, and I add Three vials of the tears which demons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death Pass triumphing over the thorns of life, For seest thou not beneath this crystal Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords floor The innumerable worlds of golden light Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou would'st redeem Know'st thou not them my portion? strife and snares, Trampling in scorn, like Him and The first is Anarchy; when Power and Glory and science and security, Which our great Father then did arbi- Then pour it forth, and men shall gather Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence | Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Or could the morning shafts of purest light Are more than furnace-sparks or rain- Again into the quivers of the Sun bow-drops fill the waning crescent Be gathered-could one thought from Return into the temple of the brain III A star has fallen upon the earth With beams as keen as those which 'Mid the benighted nations, pierced the shadow Of Christian night rolled back upon the When the orient moon of Islam rode in From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow. Wake, thou Word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny Even to the utmost limit of thy way May Triumph Be thou a curse on them whose creed In a form of mortal birth, Till, as a spirit half arisen Divides and multiplies the most high The thin and painted garment of the God. FRAGMENTS WRITTEN FOR |