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Epilogue to Songs Before Sunrise

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Between the wave-ridge and the strand

I let you forth in sight of land,

Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyes

Strain eastward till the darkness dies;

Let signs and beacons fall or stand,

And stars and balefires set and rise;

Ye, till some lordlier lyric hand

Weave the beloved brows their crown,

At the beloved feet lie down.

O, whatsoever of life or light

Love hath to give you, what of might

Or heart or hope is yours to live,

I charge you take in trust to give

For very love's sake, in whose sight,

Through poise of hours alternative

And seasons plumed with light or night,

Ye live and move and have your breath

To sing with on the ridge of death.

I charge you faint not all night through

For love's sake that was breathed on you

To be to you as wings and feet

For travel, and as blood to heat

And sense of spirit to renew

And bloom of fragrance to keep sweet

And fire of purpose to keep true

The life, if life in such things be,

That I would give you forth of me.

Out where the breath of war may bear,

Out in the rank moist reddened air

That sounds and smells of death, and hath

No light but death's upon its path

Seen through the black wind's tangled hair,

I send you past the wild time's wrath

To find his face who bade you bear

Fruit of his seed to faith and love,

That he may take the heart thereof.

By day or night, by sea or street,

Fly till ye find and clasp his feet

And kiss as worshippers who bring

Too much love on their lips to sing,

But with hushed heads accept and greet

The presence of some heavenlier thing

In the near air; so may ye meet

His eyes, and droop not utterly

For shame's sake at the light you see.

Not utterly struck spiritless

For shame's sake and unworthiness

Of these poor forceless hands that come

Empty, these lips that should be dumb,

This love whose seal can but impress

These weak word-offerings wearisome

Whose blessings have not strength to bless

Nor lightnings fire to burn up aught

Nor smite with thunders of their thought.

One thought they have, even love; one light,

Truth, that keeps clear the sun by night;

One chord, of faith as of a lyre;

One heat, of hope as of a fire;

One heart, one music, and one might,

One flame, one altar, and one choir;

And one man's living head in sight

Who said, when all time's sea was foam,

'Let there be Rome' and there was Rome.

As a star set in space for token

Like a live word of God's mouth spoken,

Visible sound, light audible,

In the great darkness thick as hell

A stanchless flame of love unsloken,

A sign to conquer and compel,

A law to stand in heaven unbroken

Whereby the sun shines, and wherethrough

Time's eldest empires are made new;

So rose up on our generations

That light of the most ancient nations,

Law, life, and light, on the world's way,

The very God of very day,

The sun-god; from their star-like stations

Far down the night in disarray

Fled, crowned with fires of tribulations,

The suns of sunless years, whose light

And life and law were of the night.

The naked kingdoms quenched and stark

Drave with their dead things down the dark,

Helmless; their whole world, throne by throne,

Fell, and its whole heart turned to stone,

Hopeless; their hands that touched our ark

Withered; and lo, aloft, alone,

On time's white waters man's one bark,

Where the red sundawn's open eye

Lit the soft gulf of low green sky.

So for a season piloted

It sailed the sunlight, and struck red

With fire of dawn reverberate

The wan face of incumbent fate

That paused half pitying overhead

And almost had foregone the freight

Of those dark hours the next day bred

For shame, and almost had forsworn

Service of night for love of morn.

Then broke the whole night in one blow,

Thundering; then all hell with one throe

Heaved, and brought forth beneath the stroke

Death; and all dead things moved and woke

That the dawn's arrows had brought low,

At the great sound of night that broke

Thundering, and all the old world-wide woe;

And under night's loud-sounding dome

Men sought her, and she was not Rome.

Still with blind hands and robes blood-wet

Night hangs on heaven, reluctant yet,

With black blood dripping from her eyes 1

On the soiled lintels of the skies,

With brows and lips that thirst and threat,

Heart-sick with fear lest the sun rise,

And aching with her fires that set,

And shuddering ere dawn bursts her bars,

Burns out with all her beaten stars.

In this black wind of war they fly

Now, ere that hour be in the sky

That brings back hope, and memory back,

And light and law to lands that lack;

That spiritual sweet hour whereby

The bloody-handed night and black

Shall be cast out of heaven to die;

Kingdom by kingdom, crown by crown,

The fires of darkness are blown down.

Yet heavy, grievous yet the weight

Sits on us of imperfect fate.

From wounds of other days and deeds

Still this day's breathing body bleeds;

Still kings for fear and slaves for hate

Sow lives of men on earth like seeds

In the red soil they saturate;

And we, with faces eastward set,

Stand sightless of the morning yet.

And many for pure sorrow's sake

Look back and stretch back hands to take

Gifts of night's giving, ease and sleep,

Flowers of night's grafting, strong to steep

The soul in dreams it will not break,

Songs of soft hours that sigh and sweep

Its lifted eyelids nigh to wake

With subtle plumes and lulling breath

That soothe its weariness to death.

And many, called of hope and pride,

Fall ere the sunrise from our side.

Fresh lights and rumours of fresh fames

That shift and veer by night like flames,

Shouts and blown trumpets, ghosts that glide

Calling, and hail them by dead names,

Fears, angers, memories, dreams divide

Spirit from spirit, and wear out

Strong hearts of men with hope and doubt.

Till time beget and sorrow bear

The soul-sick eyeless child despair,

That comes among us, mad and blind,

With counsels of a broken mind,

Tales of times dead and woes that were,

And, prophesying against mankind,

Shakes out the horror of her hair

To take the sunlight with its coils

And hold the living soul in toils.

By many ways of death and moods

Souls pass into their servitudes.

Their young wings weaken, plume by plume

Drops, and their eyelids gather gloom

And close against man's frauds and feuds,

And their tongues call they know not whom

To help in their vicissitudes;

For many slaveries are, but one

Liberty, single as the sun.

One light, one law, that burns up strife,

And one sufficiency of life.

Self-stablished, the sufficing soul

Hears the loud wheels of changes roll,

Sees against man man bare the knife,

Sees the world severed, and is whole;

Sees force take dowerless fraud to wife,

And fear from fraud's incestuous bed

Crawl forth and smite his father dead:

Sees death made drunk with war, sees time

Weave many-coloured crime with crime,

State overthrown on ruining state,

And dares not be disconsolate.

Only the soul hath feet to climb,

Only the soul hath room to wait,

Hath brows and eyes to hold sublime

Above all evil and all good,

All strength and all decrepitude.

She only, she since earth began,

The many-minded soul of man,

From one incognizable root

That bears such divers-coloured fruit,

Hath ruled for blessing or for ban

The flight of seasons and pursuit;

She regent, she republican,

With wide and equal eyes and wings

Broods on things born and dying things.

Even now for love or doubt of us

The hour intense and hazardous

Hangs high with pinions vibrating

Whereto the light and darkness cling,

Dividing the dim season thus,

And shakes from one ambiguous wing

Shadow, and one is luminous,

And day falls from it; so the past

Torments the future to the last.

And we that cannot hear or see

The sounds and lights of liberty,

The witness of the naked God

That treads on burning hours unshod

With instant feet unwounded; we

That can trace only where he trod

By fire in heaven or storm at sea,

Not know the very present whole

And naked nature of the soul;

We that see wars and woes and kings,

And portents of enormous things,

Empires, and agonies, and slaves,

And whole flame of town-swallowing graves;

That hear the harsh hours clap sharp wings

Above the roar of ranks like waves,

From wreck to wreck as the world swings;

Know but that men there are who see

And hear things other far than we.

By the light sitting on their brows,

The fire wherewith their presence glows,

The music falling with their feet,

The sweet sense of a spirit sweet

That with their speech or motion grows

And breathes and burns men's hearts with heat;

By these signs there is none but knows

Men who have life and grace to give,

Men who have seen the soul and live.

By the strength sleeping in their eyes,

The lips whereon their sorrow lies

Smiling, the lines of tears unshed,

The large divine look of one dead

That speaks out of the breathless skies

In silence, when the light is shed

Upon man's soul of memories;

The supreme look that sets love free,

The look of stars and of the sea;

By the strong patient godhead seen

Implicit in their mortal mien,

The conscience of a God held still

And thunders ruled by their own will

And fast-bound fires that might burn clean

This worldly air that foul things fill,

And the afterglow of what has been,

That, passing, shows us without word

What they have seen, what they have heard,

By all these keen and burning signs

The spirit knows them and divines.

In bonds, in banishment, in grief,

Scoffed at and scourged with unbelief,

Foiled with false trusts and thwart designs,

Stripped of green days and hopes in leaf,

Their mere bare body of glory shines

Higher, and man gazing surelier sees

What light, what comfort is of these.

So I now gazing; till the sense

Being set on fire of confidence

Strains itself sunward, feels out far

Beyond the bright and morning star,

Beyond the extreme wave's refluence,

To where the fierce first sunbeams are

Whose fire intolerant and intense

As birthpangs whence day burns to be

Parts breathless heaven from breathing sea.

I see not, know not, and am blest,

Master, who know that thou knowest,

Dear lord and leader, at whose hand

The first days and the last days stand,

With scars and crowns on head and breast,

That fought for love of the sweet land

Or shall fight in her latter quest;

All the days armed and girt and crowned

Whose glories ring thy glory round.

Thou sawest, when all the world was blind,

The light that should be of mankind,

The very day that was to be;

And how shalt thou not sometime see

Thy city perfect to thy mind

Stand face to living face with thee,

And no miscrowned man's head behind;

The hearth of man, the human home,

The central flame that shall be Rome?

As one that ere a June day rise

Makes seaward for the dawn, and tries

The water with delighted limbs

That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims

Right eastward under strengthening skies,

And sees the gradual rippling rims

Of waves whence day breaks blossom-wise

Take fire ere light peer well above,

And laughs from all his heart with love;

And softlier swimming with raised head

Feels the full flower of morning shed

And fluent sunrise round him rolled

That laps and laves his body bold

With fluctuant heaven in water's stead,

And urgent through the growing gold

Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red,

And his soul takes the sun, and yearns

For joy wherewith the sea's heart burns;

So the soul seeking through the dark

Heavenward, a dove without an ark,

Transcends the unnavigable sea

Of years that wear out memory;

So calls, a sunward-singing lark,

In the ear of souls that should be free;

So points them toward the sun for mark

Who steer not for the stress of waves,

And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.

For if the swimmer's eastward eye

Must see no sunrise, must put by

The hope that lifted him and led

Once, to have light about his head,

To see beneath the clear low sky

The green foam-whitened wave wax red

And all the morning's banner fly

Then, as earth's helpless hopes go down,

Let earth's self in the dark tides drown.

Yea, if no morning must behold

Man, other than were they now cold,

And other deeds than past deeds done,

Nor any near or far-off sun

Salute him risen and sunlike-souled,

Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one,

Let man's world die like worlds of old,

And here in heaven's sight only be

The sole sun on the worldless sea.