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And no more their lamentation might the maid- And the sheathéd Wrath of Sigurd lies still ens hold aback, by his mighty side. But the sound of their bitter mourning was as Then cometh an elder of days, a man of the if red-handed wrack ancient times, Ran wild in the Burg of the Niblungs, and the Who is long past sorrow and joy, and the fire were master of all.

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steep of the bale he climbs;

And he kneeleth down by Sigurd, and bareth
the Wrath to the sun

That the beams are gathered about it, and
And wide o'er the plain of the Niblungs doth
from hilt to blood-point run,
the Light of the Branstock glare,

Till the wondering mountain-shepherds on that
star of noontide stare,

And fear for many an evil; but the ancient man stands still

With the war-flame on his shoulder, nor thinks

of good or of ill,

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Till the feet of Brynhild's bearers on the topmost bale are laid,

And her bed is dight15 by Sigurd's; then he sinks the pale white blade

And lays it 'twixt the sleepers, and leaves them there alone

He, the last that shall ever behold them,-and his days are well-nigh done.

Then is silence over the plain; in the noon shine the torches pale,

And out through the gate of the Niblungs As the best of the Niblung Earl-folk16 bear fire

the holy corpse they bore,

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And thence forth to the mead of the people, and the high-built shielded bale:

Then afresh in the open meadows breaks forth the women's wail

to the builded bale:

Then a wind in the west ariseth, and the white flames leap on high,

And with one voice crieth the people a great and mighty cry,

When they see the bed of Sigurd and the glit And men cast up hands to the Heavens, and tering of his gear;

pray without a word,

And fresh is the wail of the people as Bryn- As they that have seen God's visage, and the hild draweth anear,

And the tidings go before her that for twain the bale is built,

That for twain is the oak-wood shielded and the pleasant odours spilt.

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voice of the Father have heard.

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THE VOICE OF TOIL*

I heard men saying, Leave hope and praying,
All days shall be as all have been;
To-day and to-morrow bring fear and sorrow,
The never-ending toil between.

When Earth was younger mid toil and hunger,
In hope we strove, and our hands were strong;
Then great men led us, with words they fed us,
And bade us right the earthly wrong.

Go read in story their deeds and glory,
Their names amidst the nameless dead;
Turn then from lying to us slow-dying
In that good world to which they led;

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Where home is a hovel and dull we grovel, Forgetting that the world is fair;

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Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,

Maiden most perfect, lady of light, With a noise of winds and many rivers, With a clamour of waters, and with might; Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;

Where no babe we cherish, lest its very soul For the faint east quickens, the wan west

perish;

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shivers,

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The faint fresh flame of the young year | All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow; flushes

From leaf to flower and flower to fruit; And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, And the oat is heard above the lyre,‡ And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with deligh!
The Mænad and the Bassarid; 2
And soft as lips that laugh and hide,
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

And we that sowed, though all we fell on

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Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
She would not love.

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Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers

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(AFTER THE PROCLAMATION IN ROME OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH)

Vicisti, Galilæe

Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is I have lived long enough, having seen one thing,
here?

There is no help, for all these things are so, And all the world is bitter as a tear;

that love hath an end;

Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.

And how these things are, though ye strove to Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the show, seasons that laugh or that weep;

She would not know.

14 For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep. We gave love many dreams and days to keep, Flowers without scent, and fruits that would

not grow, Saying, "If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap."

2 Names for bacchanals, or frenzied votaries of Bacchus.

That is. pastoral, out-of-door music takes the place of indoor, festal song: Pan supplants Apollo. An oat is a shepherd's pipe made of

an oat stem,

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But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the Why should he labour and bring fresh grief to grapes or love. blacken his years?

Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harp- Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world string of gold, has grown gray from thy breath; A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed behold? on the fulness of death.

I am sick of singing; the bays burn deep and Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet chafe; I am fain for a day; To rest a little from praise and grievous pleas- But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel ure and pain. outlives not May. For the Gods we know not of, who give us our Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world daily breath, is not sweet in the end;

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We know they are cruel as love or life, and For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new lovely as death.

years ruin and rend.

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O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a wiped out in a day! rock that abides; From your wrath is the world released, re- But her ears are vexed with the roar and her deemed from your chains, men say. face with the foam of the tides.

New Gods are crowned in the city, their flow- O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings ers have broken your rods; of racks and rods!

They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibcompassionate Gods. beted Gods!

look to the end.

But for me their new device is barren, the days Though all men abase them before you in are bare; spirit, and all knees bend, Things long past over suffice, and men forgot- I kneel not, neither adore you, but standing, ten that were. Time and the Gods are at strife: ye dwell in All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and the midst thereof, Draining a little life from the barren breasts Far out with the foam of the present that of love. sweeps to the surf of the past; I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,

all, be at peace,

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sorrows are cast

Till the bitter milk of her breast and the bar- Waste water washes, and tall ship founder, ren bosom shall cease.

and deep death waits:

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Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about

shalt not take,

The laurel, the palms, and the pæan, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;

Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;

with the seas as with wings,

And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,

White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,

And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, before death;

the wave of the world.

the storms flee away;

All the feet of the hours that sound as a single The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, lyre, Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings In the hollow before it the thunder is taken that flicker like fire. and snared as a prey;

More than these wilt thou give, things fairer In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its than all these things? salt is of all men's tears;

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Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and wings. pulse of years; A little while and we die; shall life not thrive With travail of day after day, and with trouble as it may? of hour upon hour;

For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving And bitter as blood is the spray; and the his day.

crests are as fangs that devour:

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And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath And its vapour and storm of its steam as the enough of his tears:

sighing of spirits to be;

And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one depth as the roots of the sea:

more fair than ye all.

surely abide in the end;

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And the height of its heads as the height of the But I turn to her still, having seen she shall utmost stars of the air;

And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare.

Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.

Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown chasten the high sea with rods? and blossom of birth, Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came is older than all ye Gods? unto earth. All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye In the night where thine eyes are as moons are pass and be past; in heaven, the night where thou art, Ye are Gods, and behold ye shall die, and the Where the silence is more than all tunes, where waves be upon you at last. sleep overflows from the heart,

In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our years, in the changes of things,

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world, and the red rose is white,

fume of the flowers of the night, the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar

Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,

Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the And the wind falls faint as it blows with the world shall forget you for kings. Though the feet of thine high priests tread And where thy lords and our forefathers trod, Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God, Though before thee the throned Cytherean be In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavfallen, and hidden her head, ens untrod by the sun, Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead Let my soul with their souls find place, and shall go down to thee dead. forget what is done and undone.

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Of the maiden thy mother, men sing as a god- Thou art more than the Gods who number the dess with grace clad around; days of our temporal breath;

Thou art throned where another was king; For these give labour and slumber; but thou, where another was queen she is crowned. Proserpina, death.

Yea, once we had sight of another; but now she is queen, say these.

Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know

Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they blossom of flowering seas,1 sleep; even so. Clothed round with the world's desire as with For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we raiment, and fair as the foam, gaze for a span;

And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess A little soul for a little bears up this corpse and mother of Rome.

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which is man.2

For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not to sorrow; but ours, again, neither weep.

Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and For there is no God found stronger than death;

colour of flowers,

White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,

Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.

For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she

Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea,

And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,

And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the seablue stream of the bays.

Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall.

1 Venus, born of the foam.

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PRELUDE OF SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE*

Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,

2 Adapted from Epictetus.

* Swinburne's Songs Before Sunrise, published in 1871, and dedicated to Joseph Mazzini, the Italian patriot, are a noteworthy contribution to the poetry of political and religious freedom. They were mainly inspired by the long struggle for a free and united Italy. The partial union of Italy, effected in 1861, was completed by the occupation of Rome in 1870. but the government was monarchical, and not republican, as the more ardent revolutionists had hoped.

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