Prelude to Songs Before Sunrise

Between the green bud and the red     Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed     From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,     From heart and spirit hopes and fears,     Upon the hollow stream whose bed     Is channelled by the foamless years;     And with the white the gold-haired head     Mixed running locks, and in Times ears     Youths dreams hung singing, and Times truth     Was half not harsh in the ears of Youth.     Between the bud and the blown flower     Youth talked with joy and grief an hour,     With footless joy and wingless grief     And twin-born faith and disbelief     Who share the seasons to devour;     And long ere these made up their sheaf     Felt the winds round him shake and shower     The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,     Delight whose germ grew never grain,     And passion dyed in its own pain.     Then he stood up, and trod to dust     Fear and desire, mistrust and trust,     And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,     And bound for sandals on his feet     Knowledge and patience of what must     And what things may be, in the heat     And cold of years that rot and rust     And alter; and his spirits meat     Was freedom, and his staff was wrought     Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought.     For what has he whose will sees clear     To do with doubt and faith and fear,     Swift hopes and slow despondencies?     His heart is equal with the seas     And with the sea-winds, and his ear     Is level to the speech of these,     And his soul communes and takes cheer     With the actual earths equalities,     Air, light, and night, hills, winds, and streams,     And seeks not strength from strengthless dreams.     His soul is even with the sun     Whose spirit and whose eye are one,     Who seeks not stars by day, nor light     And heavy heat of day by night.     Him can no God cast down, whom none     Can lift in hope beyond the height     Of fate and nature and things done     By the calm rule of might and right     That bids men be and bear and do,     And die beneath blind skies or blue.     To him the lights of even and morn     Speak no vain things of love or scorn,     Fancies and passions miscreate     By man in things dispassionate.     Nor holds he fellowship forlorn     With souls that pray and hope and hate,     And doubt they had better not been born,     And fain would lure or scare off fate     And charm their doomsman from their doom     And make fear dig its own false tomb.     He builds not half of doubts and half     Of dreams his own souls cenotaph,     Whence hopes and fears with helpless eyes,     Wrapt loose in cast-off cerecloths, rise     And dance and wring their hands and laugh,     And weep thin tears and sigh light sighs,     And without living lips would quaff     The living spring in man that lies,     And drain his soul of faith and strength     It might have lived on a lifes length.     He hath given himself and hath not sold     To God for heaven or man for gold,     Or grief for comfort that it gives,     Or joy for griefs restoratives.     He hath given himself to time, whose fold     Shuts in the mortal flock that lives     On its plain pastures heat and cold     And the equal years alternatives.     Earth, heaven, and time, death, life, and he,     Endure while they shall be to be.     Yet between death and life are hours     To flush with love and hide in flowers;     What profit save in these? men cry:     Ah, see, between soft earth and sky,     What only good things here are ours!     They say, what better wouldst thou try,     What sweeter sing of? or what powers     Serve, that will give thee ere thou die     More joy to sing and be less sad,     More heart to play and grow more glad?     Play then and sing; we too have played,     We likewise, in that subtle shade.     We too have twisted through our hair     Such tendrils as the wild Loves wear,     And heard what mirth the Maenads made,     Till the wind blew our garlands bare     And left their roses disarrayed,     And smote the summer with strange air,     And disengirdled and discrowned     The limbs and locks that vine-wreaths bound.     We too have tracked by star-proof trees     The tempest of the Thyiades     Scare the loud night on hills that hid     The blood-feasts of the Bassarid,     Heard their songs iron cadences     Fright the wolf hungering from the kid,     Outroar the lion-throated seas,     Outchide the north-wind if it chid,     And hush the torrent-tongued ravines     With thunders of their tambourines.     But the fierce flute whose notes acclaim     Dim goddesses of fiery fame,     Cymbal and clamorous kettledrum,     Timbrels and tabrets, all are dumb     That turned the high chill air to flame;     The singing tongues of fire are numb     That called on Cotys by her name1     Edonian, till they felt her come     And maddened, and her mystic face     Lightened along the streams of Thrace.     For Pleasure slumberless and pale,     And Passion with rejected veil,     Pass, and the tempest-footed throng     Of hours that follow them with song     Till their feet flag and voices fail,     And lips that were so loud so long     Learn silence, or a wearier wail;     So keen is change, and time so strong,     To weave the robes of life and rend     And weave again till life have end.     But weak is change, but strengthless time,     To take the light from heaven, or climb     The hills of heaven with wasting feet.     Songs they can stop that earth found meet,     But the stars keep their ageless rhyme;     Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet,     But the stars keep their spring sublime;     Passions and pleasures can defeat,     Actions and agonies control,     And life and death, but not the soul.     Because mans soul is mans God still,     What wind soever waft his will     Across the waves of day and night     To port or shipwreck, left or right,     By shores and shoals of good and ill;     And still its flame at mainmast height     Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill     Sustains the indomitable light     Whence only man hath strength to steer     Or helm to handle without fear.     Save his own souls light overhead,     None leads him, and none ever led,     Across births hidden harbour-bar,     Past youth where shoreward shallows are,     Through age that drives on toward the red     Vast void of sunset hailed from far,     To the equal waters of the dead;     Save his own soul he hath no star,     And sinks, except his own soul guide,     Helmless in middle turn of tide.     No blast of air or fire of sun     Puts out the light whereby we run     With girded loins our lamplit race,     And each from each takes heart of grace     And spirit till his turn be done,     And light of face from each mans face     In whom the light of trust is one;     Since only souls that keep their place     By their own light, and watch things roll,     And stand, have light for any soul.     A little time we gain from time     To set our seasons in some chime,     For harsh or sweet or loud or low,     With seasons played out long ago     And souls that in their time and prime     Took part with summer or with snow,     Lived abject lives out or sublime,     And had their chance of seed to sow     For service or disservice done     To those days dead and this their son.     A little time that we may fill     Or with such good works or such ill     As loose the bonds or make them strong     Wherein all manhood suffers wrong.     By rose-hung river and light-foot rill     There are who rest not; who think long     Till they discern as from a hill     At the suns hour of morning song,     Known of souls only, and those souls free,     The sacred spaces of the sea.