Song, and the secrets of it, and their might, What blessings curse it and what curses bless, I know them since my spirit had first in sight, Clear as thy song's words or the live sun's light, The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness That held the fire eternal; eye and ear Were as a god's to see, a god's to hear, Through all his hours of daily and nightly chime, The sundering of the two-edged spear of time: The spear that pierces even the sevenfold shields Of mightiest Memory, mother of all songs made, And wastes all songs as roseleaves kissed and frayed As here the harvest of the foam-flowered fields; But thine the spear may waste not that he wields Since first the God whose soul is man's live breath, The sun whose face hath our sun's face for shade, Put all the light of life and love and death Too strong for life, but not for love too strong, Where pain makes peace with pleasure in thy song, And in thine heart, where love and song make strife, Fire everlasting of eternal life.
Sea, and bright wind, and heaven of ardent air, More dear than all things earth-born; O to me Mother more dear than love's own longing, sea, More than love's eyes are, fair, Be with my spirit of song as wings to bear, As fire to feel and breathe and brighten; be A spirit of sense more deep of deity, A light of love, if love may be, more strong In me than very song. For song I have loved with second love, but thee, Thee first, thee, mother; ere my songs had breath, That love of loves, whose bondage makes man free, Was in me strong as death. And seeing no slave may love thee, no, not one That loves not freedom more, And more for thy sake loves her, and for hers Thee; or that hates not, on whate'er thy shore Or what thy wave soever, all things done Of man beneath the sun In his despite and thine, to cross and curse Your light and song that as with lamp and verse Guide safe the strength of our sphered universe, Thy breath it was, thou knowest, and none but thine, That taught me love of one thing more divine.
Ah, yet my youth was old [_Str._ 1. Its first years dead and cold As last year's autumn's gold, And all my spirit of singing sick and sad and sere, Or ever I might behold The fairest of thy fold Engirt, enringed, enrolled, In all thy flower-sweet flock of islands dear and near.