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In the air that our dead things infest
A blast of the breath of the west,

Till east way as west way is clear.

Out of the sun beyond sunset,

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It sees not what season shall bring to it
Sweet fruit of its bitter desire;
Few voices it hears yet sing to it,
Few pulses of hearts reaspire;
Foresees not time, nor forehears

From the evening whence morning shall The noises of imminent years,

be,

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Earthquake, and thunder, and fire: 84

When crowned and weaponed and curb-
less

It shall walk without helm or shield
The bare burnt furrows and herbless
Of war's last flame-stricken field,
Till godlike, equal with time,
It stand in the sun sublime,
In the godhead of man revealed.

Round your people and over them

Light like raiment is drawn,
Close as a garment to cover them

Wrought not of mail nor of lawn;
Here, with hope hardly to wear,
Naked nations and bare

Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn.
Chains are here, and a prison,
Kings, and subjects, and shame;
If the God upon you be arisen,
How should our songs be the same?
How, in confusion of change,
How shall we sing, in a strange

Land, songs praising his name?

God is buried and dead to us,
Even the spirit of earth,
Freedom; so have they said to us

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Some with mocking and mirth,
Some with heartbreak and tears;
And a God without eyes, without ears,
Who shall sing of him, dead in the
birth?

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Within love, within hatred it is,

And its seed in the stripe as the kiss,

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So shall the soul seen be the self-same

one

And in slaves is the germ, and in That looked and spake with even such

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lips and eyes

As love shall doubt not then to recognize, And all bright thoughts and smiles of all time past

II

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With the cross, and the chain, and the Shone sole and stern before her and above, rod;

The most high, the most secret, most
lonely,

The earth-soul Freedom, that only
Lives, and that only is God.

AFTER SUNSET

If light of life outlive the set of sun That men call death and end of all things, then

How should not that which life held best

for men

And proved most precious, though it
seem undone

By force of death and woful victory won, 5
Be first and surest of revival, when
Death shall bow down to life arisen again?

Sure stars and sole to steer by; but more sweet

Shone lower the loveliest lamp for earthly feet,

The light of little children, and their love.

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Not yet might'st thou be praised enough of Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the

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Under yonder beech-tree single on the No, she is athirst and drinking up her greensward,

Couched with her arms behind her

wonder;

Earth to her is young as the slip of the

new moon.

Knees and tresses folded to slip and Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid

golden head,

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