The Eve of Revolution

1     The trumpets of the four winds of the world     From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night heaves,     With breasts palpitating and wings refurled,     With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves     Sleeping, and in her sleep she sees uncurled     Dreams serpent-shapen, such as sickness weaves,     Down the wild wind of vision caught and whirled,     Dead leaves of sleep, thicker than autumn leaves,     Shadows of storm-shaped things,     Flights of dim tribes of kings,     The reaping men that reap men for their sheaves,     And, without grain to yield,     Their scythe-swept harvest-field     Thronged thick with men pursuing and fugitives,     Dead foliage of the tree of sleep,     Leaves blood-coloured and golden, blown from deep to deep. 2     I hear the midnight on the mountains cry     With many tongues of thunders, and I hear     Sound and resound the hollow shield of sky     With trumpet-throated winds that charge and cheer,     And through the roar of the hours that fighting fly,     Through flight and fight and all the fluctuant fear,     A sound sublimer than the heavens are high,     A voice more instant than the winds are clear,     Say to my spirit, Take     Thy trumpet too, and make     A rallying music in the void nights ear,     Till the storm lose its track,     And all the night go back;     Till, as through sleep false life knows true life near,     Thou know the morning through the night,     And through the thunder silence, and through darkness light. 3     I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.     The height of night is shaken, the skies break,     The winds and stars and waters come and go     By fits of breath and light and sound, that wake     As out of sleep, and perish as the show     Built up of sleep, when all her strengths forsake     The sense-compelling spirit; the depths glow,     The heights flash, and the roots and summits shake     Of earth in all her mountains,     And the inner foamless fountains     And wellsprings of her fast-bound forces quake;     Yea, the whole air of life     Is set on fire of strife,     Till change unmake things made and love remake;     Reason and love, whose names are one,     Seeing reason is the sunlight shed from love the sun. 4     The night is broken eastward; is it day,     Or but the watchfires trembling here and there,     Like hopes on memorys devastated way,     In moonless wastes of planet-stricken air?     O many-childed mother great and grey,     O multitudinous bosom, and breasts that bare     Our fathers generations, whereat lay     The weanling peoples and the tribes that were,     Whose new-born mouths long dead     Those ninefold nipples fed,     Dim face with deathless eyes and withered hair,     Fostress of obscure lands,     Whose multiplying hands     Wove the worlds web with divers races fair     And cast it waif-wise on the stream,     The waters of the centuries, where thou satst to dream; 5     O many-minded mother and visionary,     Asia, that sawest their westering waters sweep     With all the ships and spoils of time to carry     And all the fears and hopes of life to keep,     Thy vesture wrought of ages legendary     Hides usward thine impenetrable sleep,     And thy veiled head, nights oldest tributary,     We know not if it speak or smile or weep.     But where for us began     The first live light of man     And first-born fire of deeds to burn and leap,     The first war fair as peace     To shine and lighten Greece,     And the first freedom moved upon the deep,     Gods breath upon the face of time     Moving, a present spirit, seen of men sublime; 6     There where our east looks always to thy west,     Our mornings to thine evenings, Greece to thee,     These lights that catch the mountains crest by crest,     Are they of stars or beacons that we see?     Taygetus takes here the winds abreast,     And there the sun resumes Thermopylae;     The light is Athens where those remnants rest,     And Salamis the sea-wall of that sea.     The grass men tread upon     Is very Marathon,     The leaves are of that time-unstricken tree     That storm nor sun can fret     Nor wind, since she that set     Made it her sign to men whose shield was she;     Here, as dead time his deathless things,     Eurotas and Cephisus keep their sleepless springs. 7     O hills of Crete, are these things dead? O waves,     O many-mouthed streams, are these springs dry?     Earth, dost thou feed and hide now none but slaves?     Heaven, hast thou heard of men that would not die?     Is the land thick with only such mens graves     As were ashamed to look upon the sky?     Ye dead, whose name outfaces and outbraves     Death, is the seed of such as you gone by?     Sea, have thy ports not heard     Some Marathonian word     Rise up to landward and to Godward fly?     No thunder, that the skies     Sent not upon us, rise     With fire and earthquake and a cleaving cry?     Nay, light is here, and shall be light,     Though all the face of the hour be overborne with night. 8     I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.     The night is broken northward; the pale plains     And footless fields of sun-forgotten snow     Feel through their creviced lips and iron veins     Such quick breath labour and such clean blood flow     As summer-stricken spring feels in her pains     When dying May bears June, too young to know     The fruit that waxes from the flower that wanes;     Strange tyrannies and vast,     Tribes frost-bound to their past,     Lands that are loud all through their length with chains,     Wastes where the winds wings break,     Displumed by daylong ache     And anguish of blind snows and rack-blown rains,     And ice that seals the White Seas lips,     Whose monstrous weights crush flat the sides of shrieking ships; 9     Horrible sights and sounds of the unreached pole,     And shrill fierce climes of inconsolable air,     Shining below the beamless aureole     That hangs about the north-winds hurtling hair,     A comet-lighted lamp, sublime and sole     Dawn of the dayless heaven where suns despair;     Earth, skies, and waters, smitten into soul,     Feel the hard veil that iron centuries wear     Rent as with hands in sunder,     Such hands as make the thunder     And clothe with form all substance and strip bare;     Shapes, shadows, sounds and lights     Of their dead days and nights     Take soul of life too keen for death to bear;     Life, conscience, forethought, will, desire,     Flood mens inanimate eyes and dry-drawn hearts with fire. 10     Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder     All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind     Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder     And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;     There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,     Nor are the links not malleable that wind     Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;     The hands are mighty, were the head not blind.     Priest is the staff of king,     And chains and clouds one thing,     And fettered flesh with devastated mind.     Open thy soul to see,     Slave, and thy feet are free;     Thy bonds and thy beliefs are one in kind,     And of thy fears thine irons wrought     Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought. 11     O soul, O God, O glory of liberty,     To night and day their lightning and their light!     With heat of heart thou kindlest the quick sea,     And the dead earth takes spirit from thy sight;     The natural body of things is warm with thee,     And the worlds weakness parcel of thy might;     Thou seest us feeble and forceless, fit to be     Slaves of the years that drive us left and right,     Drowned under hours like waves     Wherethrough we row like slaves;     But if thy finger touch us, these take flight.     If but one sovereign word     Of thy live lips be heard,     What man shall stop us, and what God shall smite?     Do thou but look in our dead eyes,     They are stars that light each other till thy sundawn rise. 12     Thou art the eye of this blind body of man,     The tongue of this dumb people; shalt thou not     See, shalt thou speak not for them?     Time is wan And hope is weak with waiting, and swift thought     Hath lost the wings at heel wherewith he ran,     And on the red pits edge sits down distraught     To talk with death of days republican     And dreams and fights long since dreamt out and fought;     Of the last hope that drew     To that red edge anew     The firewhite faith of Poland without spot;     Of the blind Russian might,     And fire that is not light;     Of the green Rhineland where thy spirit wrought;     But though time, hope, and memory tire,     Canst thou wax dark as they do, thou whose light is fire? 13     I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.     The night is broken westward; the wide sea     That makes immortal motion to and fro     From worlds end unto worlds end, and shall be     When nought now grafted of mens hands shall grow     And as the weed in last years waves are we     Or spray the sea-wind shook a year ago     From its sharp tresses down the storm to lee,     The moving god that hides     Time in its timeless tides     Wherein time dead seems live eternity,     That breaks and makes again     Much mightier things than men,     Doth it not hear change coming, or not see?     Are the deeps deaf and dead and blind,     To catch no light or sound from landward of mankind? 14     O thou, clothed round with raiment of white waves,     Thy brave brows lightening through the grey wet air,     Thou, lulled with sea-sounds of a thousand caves,     And lit with sea-shine to thine inland lair,     Whose freedom clothed the naked souls of slaves     And stripped the muffled souls of tyrants bare,     O, by the centuries of thy glorious graves,     By the live light of the earth that was thy care,     Live, thou must not be dead,     Live; let thine armed head     Lift itself up to sunward and the fair     Daylight of time and man,     Thine head republican,     With the same splendour on thine helmless hair     That in his eyes kept up a light     Who on thy glory gazed away their sacred sight; 15     Who loved and looked their sense to death on thee;     Who taught thy lips imperishable things,     And in thine ears outsang thy singing sea;     Who made thy foot firm on the necks of kings     And thy soul somewhile steadfastwoe are we     It was but for a while, and all the strings     Were broken of thy spirit; yet had he     Set to such tunes and clothed it with such wings     It seemed for his sole sake     Impossible to break,     And woundless of the worm that waits and stings,     The golden-headed worm     Made headless for a term,     The king-snake whose life kindles with the springs,     To breathe his soul upon her bloom,     And while she marks not turn her temple to her tomb. 16     By those eyes blinded and that heavenly head     And the secluded soul adorable,     O Miltons land, what ails thee to be dead?     Thine ears are yet sonorous with his shell     That all the songs of all thy sea-line fed     With motive sound of spring-tides at mid swell,     And through thine heart his thought as blood is shed,     Requickening thee with wisdom to do well;     Such sons were of thy womb,     England, for love of whom     Thy name is not yet writ with theirs that fell,     But, till thou quite forget     What were thy children, yet     On the pale lips of hope is as a spell;     And Shelleys heart and Landors mind     Lit thee with latter watch-fires; why wilt thou be blind? 17     Though all were else indifferent, all that live     Spiritless shapes of nations; though time wait     In vain on hope till these have help to give,     And faith and love crawl famished from the gate;     Canst thou sit shamed and self-contemplative     With soulless eyes on thy secluded fate?     Though time forgive them, thee shall he forgive,     Whose choice was in thine hand to be so great?     Who cast out of thy mind     The passion of mans kind,     And made thee and thine old name separate?     Now when time looks to see     New names and old and thee     Build up our one Republic state by state,     England with France, and France with Spain,     And Spain with sovereign Italy strike hands and reign. 18     O known and unknown fountain-heads that fill     Our dear life-springs of England! O bright race     Of streams and waters that bear witness still     To the earth her sons were made of! O fair face     Of England, watched of eyes death cannot kill,     How should the soul that lit you for a space     Fall through sick weakness of a broken will     To the dead cold damnation of disgrace?     Such wind of memory stirs     On all green hills of hers,     Such breath of record from so high a place,     From years whose tongues of flame     Prophesied in her name     Her feet should keep truths bright and burning trace,     We needs must have her heart with us,     Whose hearts are one with mans; she must be dead or thus. 19     Who is against us? who is on our side?     Whose heart of all mens hearts is one with mans?     Where art thou that wast prophetess and bride,     When truth and thou trod under time and chance?     What latter light of what new hope shall guide     Out of the snares of hell thy feet, O France?     What heel shall bruise these heads that hiss and glide,     What wind blow out these fen-born fires that dance     Before thee to thy death?     No light, no life, no breath,     From thy dead eyes and lips shall take the trance,     Till on that deadliest crime     Reddening the feet of time     Who treads through blood and passes, time shall glance     Pardon, and Italy forgive,     And Rome arise up whom thou slewest, and bid thee live. 20     I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.     The night is broken southward; the springs run,     The daysprings and the watersprings that flow     Forth with one will from where their source was one,     Out of the might of morning: high and low,     The hungering hills feed full upon the sun,     The thirsting valleys drink of him and glow     As a heart burns with some divine thing done,     Or as blood burns again     In the bruised heart of Spain,     A rose renewed with red new life begun,     Dragged down with thorns and briers,     That puts forth buds like fires     Till the whole tree take flower in unison,     And prince that clogs and priest that clings     Be cast as weeds upon the dunghill of dead things. 21     Ah heaven, bow down, be nearer! This is she,     Italia, the worlds wonder, the worlds care,     Free in her heart ere quite her hands be free,     And lovelier than her loveliest robe of air.     The earth hath voice, and speech is in the sea,     Sounds of great joy, too beautiful to bear;     All things are glad because of her, but we     Most glad, who loved her when the worst days were.     O sweetest, fairest, first,     O flower, when times were worst,     Thou hadst no stripe wherein we had no share.     Have not our hearts held close,     Kept fast the whole worlds rose?     Have we not worn thee at heart whom none would wear?     First love and last love, light of lands,     Shall we not touch thee full-blown with our lips and hands? 22     O too much loved, what shall we say of thee?     What shall we make of our hearts burning fire,     The passion in our lives that fain would be     Made each a brand to pile into the pyre     That shall burn up thy foemen, and set free     The flame whence thy sun-shadowing wings aspire?     Love of our life, what more than men are we,     That this our breath for thy sake should expire,     For whom to joyous death     Glad gods might yield their breath,     Great gods drop down from heaven to serve for hire?     We are but men, are we,     And thou art Italy;     What shall we do for thee with our desire?     What gift shall we deserve to give?     How shall we die to do thee service, or how live? 23     The very thought in us how much we love thee     Makes the throat sob with love and blinds the eyes.     How should love bear thee, to behold above thee     His own light burning from reverberate skies?     They give thee light, but the light given them of thee     Makes faint the wheeling fires that fall and rise.     What love, what life, what death of mans should move thee,     What face that lingers or what foot that flies?     It is not heaven that lights     Thee with such days and nights,     But thou that heaven is lit from in such wise.     O thou her dearest birth,     Turn thee to lighten earth,     Earth too that bore thee and yearns to thee and cries;     Stand up, shine, lighten, become flame,     Till as the suns name through all nations be thy name. 24     I take the trumpet from my lips and sing.     O life immeasurable and imminent love,     And fear like winter leading hope like spring,     Whose flower-bright brows the day-star sits above,     Whose hand unweariable and untiring wing     Strike music from a world that wailed and strove,     Each bright soul born and every glorious thing,     From very freedom to mans joy thereof,     O time, O change and death,     Whose now not hateful breath     But gives the music swifter feet to move     Through sharp remeasuring tones     Of refluent antiphones     More tender-tuned than heart or throat of dove,     Soul into soul, song into song,     Life changing into life, by laws that work not wrong; 25     O natural force in spirit and sense, that art     One thing in all things, fruit of thine own fruit,     O thought illimitable and infinite heart     Whose blood is life in limbs indissolute     That still keeps hurtless thine invisible part     And inextirpable thy viewless root     Whence all sweet shafts of green and each thy dart     Of sharpening leaf and bud resundering shoot;     Hills that the day-star hails,     Heights that the first beam scales,     And heights that souls outshining suns salute,     Valleys for each mouth born     Free now of plenteous corn,     Waters and woodlands musical or mute;     Free winds that brighten brows as free,     And thunder and laughter and lightning of the sovereign sea; 26     Rivers and springs, and storms that seek your prey;     With strong wings ravening through the skies by night;     Spirits and stars that hold one choral way;     O light of heaven, and thou the heavenlier light     Aflame above the souls of men that sway     All generations of all years with might;     O sunrise of the repossessing day,     And sunrise of all-renovating right;     And thou, whose trackless foot     Mocks hopes or fears pursuit,     Swift Revolution, changing depth with height;     And thou, whose mouth makes one     All songs that seek the sun,     Serene Republic of a world made white;     Thou, Freedom, whence the souls springs ran;     Praise earth for mans sake living, and for earths sake man. 27     Make yourselves wings, O tarrying feet of fate,     And hidden hour that hast our hope to bear,     A child-god, through the morning-coloured gate     That lets love in upon the golden air,     Dead on whose threshold lies heart-broken hate,     Dead discord, dead injustice, dead despair;     O love long looked for, wherefore wilt thou wait,     And shew not yet the dawn on thy bright hair.     Not yet thine hand released     Refreshing the faint east,     Thine hand reconquering heaven, to seat man there?     Come forth, be born and live,     Thou that hast help to give     And light to make mans day of manhood fair:     With flight outflying the sphered sun,     Hasten thine hour and halt not, till thy work be done.