English

When blood-red Revolution in the air
Waveth her banner — when thought's streams flow deep
Waking, loud-resonant, from their summer sleep —
When all the age one wide unrest doth share —
When the Republic's lions from their lair
Emerge, and with their roar make cowards creep, —
When vast ideas like cataracts overleap
The common bounds, and down the hill-sides tear:
Then is love sweet? Yea, sweeter than of old,

O artist dreaming thus thy life away,
There is a higher life than thou canst guess.
Art thou a poet? sweet love answers, “nay.”
Was Christ a poet? woman answers, “yes.”

The highest poethood is ever this:
To love as Christ loved, and to save the race.
Not to spend wild years, seeking kiss on kiss,
But to draw forth the soul in woman's face.

To aid the weary, and to lift the low:
To show God's pity in the human sphere:
Besought by sorrow, never to say “no”
To lend the helpless heart a ready ear:

Before the child the world expands,
And dreams of green or sunny lands
Float in upon his soul from space.
Each child upon the planet born
Brings back that planet's early morn
In the sweet sunrise of his face.

The world for each is recreate,
And each may meet and conquer Fate,
And mould his life to woe or weal.
For each the sea again is blue:
For each the mountain-summits new;
For each the morning bugles peal.

For each God sheds his glory again
On hill and dell and lake and plain:

High thoughts and soaring impulse hath the age,
  Our age, our age of passion and of song:
Fierce warfare with untruth its warriors wage,
 Pitiless battle with each hoary wrong
 That sits miscrowned, with impious sceptre strong.
A rose thou art, and I the rose's singer,
 Yet will I with a spear-shaft supple and long
Amid the tilters at the tourney linger,
Then sweep again my harp with boisterous finger,
 Strengthened by battle 'mid the echoing lists—
Of battle's red bloom I will be the bringer,

I fall, O Lord, before thy feet,
For thou hast taught me things most sweet,
Most pure, most grand.
Behold! I longed to conquer thee;
But am content — if this may be —
To kiss thine hand.

I dreamed of love, and passion wild,
But now, O Lord, am reconciled
To loveless hours.
Thou art so vast in purity!
I dreamed of sin; but, thanks to thee,
I dream of flowers.

Thou art my God: for thou hast taught
Truths reaching far beyond man's thought,
Deep truths and grave.

God at last has heard our crying.
Through the ages past
We have sought him, groaning, sighing:
He has heard at last.

Man has mocked us through the ages,
Goaded to despair.
Poets, thinkers, soldiers, sages,
All have called us fair.

All have praised our lips and tresses,
Golden locks or black:
All have sought our love-caresses:
All have held us back.

All have checked our souls's aspiring:
All have dreaded this.
This has tired men, never tiring
Of the lips they kiss.

Lo! this night the Lord descending
Comes on earth to dwell.
Evil's bitter reign is ending,
And the power of hell.

Neither Greek nor Roman poet,
Great-souled though they be,
Read God's secret.—Who shall know it?
Darkness, or the sea?

Greek and Roman, full of learning,
Full of strength and might,
Sought for God, their strong hearts yearning
Godward in the night.

Wise men worshipped God for ages;
Builded temples grand:
Graved their souls on deathless pages
Wrought in many a land.

If, after death, my singing may be heard
Within the land of Shelley and of Keats —
The land that shook at vast-souled Milton's word,
The land that every morn its Shakespeare greets
Smiling and proud — if this my land repeats
My lady's name, my song, when I am dead
Crowned am I then for ever — yea, the red
Sunset of death as life eternal falls
Beaming around me, summons in its walls
My spirit glad beyond all mortal measure
Then at the great sweet death-voice as it calls;
Yea, if one song my land shall love and treasure,

There is no death.—The death-deep awful gloom
We see and dread
Is not the real invincible fog-fume
Round the death-bed.

There is no death, no darkness. All is light.
The deepest gloom
Is not the murk impenetrable night
Around the tomb.

There is a deeper darkness than the dark
Where no stars beam:
A blackness where not one most faint star-spark
Can ever gleam.

Wrong-doing is death, and this alone is death.
Death is senThere
That we may shiver at his ice-cold breath
And, shuddering, fear:

Thine English eyes are sweeter than the day,
More beautiful than light at early morn,
Tenderet than stars, or than the tender grey
Of even when the moon's slow car is borne
Upward by grey far propping waves forlorn:
Not Beatrice, in Italy the queenly,
Flashed love, or mirth, or summer-lightning scorn,
So sweetly, or so roselike and serenely.

The English breezes crowned thy young fair head,
And kissed thy lips, and made them roses red:
The English meadow-sweet purloined thy breath,