When Beauty lies hand-folded, pale and still, Forsaken of her lovers and her lords, And winter keeps cold watch upon the hill, Then he lets fall his bale of coloured words. At frosty midnight June shall rise in flame, Move at his magic with her bells and birds, The rose will redden as he speaks her name. He shall release earth's frozen bosom there, And with great words shall cuff the whining air.
I will build up a wall for Freedom to dwell therein, A high wall with towers And steel fangs for a gate. For Freedom that lacks a home falleth by pit and gin, A prey to the alien powers That lie in wait.
I will build up a house for her where the ways divide, A house set on a hill, With a lamp in the topmost tower, And a trumpet calling to arms, and a flag like a flame blown wide, And a sword to save and to kill As her bridal dower.
I will take her to wife, she that is life and death; Life--for a trumpet calls; Death--for it calls me still, And I shall know love--a star, and a fluttering breath Till the shadow of silence falls In the house on the hill.
I will build up a house for her where the ways divide, Four-square on the rock, A high house and a great; So, when I fly, spent, back from a broken ride, Her key shall cry in the lock, She shall stand in the gate.
She shall stand in the gate--the prize of the world to win, Stand steel-shod, Crowned with a cloud of flowers. I will build up a wall, a wall, for Freedom to dwell therein In the name of the most high God, A wall with towers.
Soldier, soldier, burnishing your sword, Is there no place for a wayfaring man in the courts of your lord? A couch, and a crust, and a song, and a flagon of wine? Haggard, begrimed though I be, and out at heel, A lean, grey hop-and-go-one with a crutch of steel, Brother-at-arms with death? Behold the sign:
I have tasted great weather on high, white, green-turreted cliffs by the sea. I have tramped the tough heather, the purple, the brown, By pools of peat water; from the night to the day, Till the moon has dropped down: the ghost of a minim, low down, In a high-piping treble of grey.
In shy, dim recesses, mid tresses, green tresses. Slow dipping, caressing, I've heard A whisper, a chuckle of laughter, a scamper; and high, High up in the air the cry, the call of a bird. And when the night came with a flicker of wings I have heard the earth breathing quiet and slow Like a pulse in the tiny, wild tumult of things.