Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,

Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?

BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF YEARS

O that man's heart were as fire and could Before the beginning of years spring to her,

Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!

20

For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling
to her,

There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;

And the southwest-wind, and the west- Strength without hands to smite;

Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,

And life, the shadow of death.
And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the laboring earth;
And bodies of things to be

5

ΙΟ

15

20

In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after

And death beneath and above,

For a day and a night and a morrow,

25

They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,

They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labor and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight,

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35

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,

35

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,

80

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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95

100

105

IIO

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?

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

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