Classic Poem

Up through the clouds, and higher, higher still,
Flew Icarus the free, on untried wings,
Mad with the song-filled spaces of the blue,
Encircling dome—outsoaring wantonly
The cloud-sailed galleons and the wind-built walls
Of dim, mist citadels that plunged and swayed,
Or, crumbling, died in rainbow agonies.

Below, an opal, rimmed in liquid gold,
The earth, his prison lay, a thing for scorn,
Chained by the flashing tides.

White Icarus
Breasting the swirling waves of jeweled snow,
Flew on—the mighty winds against his face,
The songs of unseen stars within his ears,
And gilded arches of the upper sky
Before his ardent gaze; flew till he lost
Remembrance of the earth he once had loved,
The blossomed Spring and Autumn's golden wine,
The hearth-stone of his mother and the ways
Of men, who live with feet upon the ground;
Forgot—O triumph of the wingéd air,—
The Cretan woe, the scar beneath his wings;
And soaring, singing, mounting ever, felt
The motion steal his body's bone and weight,
Until at last, he knew a surging warmth,
And lifting dauntless eyes, beheld unveiled,
Full-splendored on his throne of light—the God.

A moment paused the wings of Icarus,
A moment swayed he, mindful of a dream,
A voice once heard, an echo of the earth;
Then with a madder song more swiftly rose,
Until the white glow smote his very heart,
Broke wide the mortal prison where it beat,
And set it free at last, a thing of light,
To live forever, singing in the blue,
Nor heeding that a body's sky-wrecked ruin
Plunged to a violet sea.

And heedless are the after-men who hear,
On still, blue noons, or in the gold of dawn,
The wonder of the sun-freed heart that sings,
Waking a strange sky yearning in their breasts,
The lift of wings, the glory of far clouds,
Calling aloft the children of the air.

Eager they listen, then with crafty tools
They make the wings, brave, man-made wings as his,
That tremble to the hands, strain to the winds,
And strongly bear through pathless ways untried
The bird-souled sons of Icarus the Mad.
O men of earth, who dare the sun's fierce strength,
Inheritors of unfamiliar space,
Flying too near the breaking point of law,
The rift where worlds divide—yours still the wings!
Not broken as they fall, a tattered shroud,
But banners of the air, flags of the vast
Uncharted, scarred by swords of flame and wind,
That play in vacancy—the flashing seal,
Borne to the conquered kingdom's utmost edge,
Set in the windy gateway of the sky,
Marking possession to eternity,
And flung to earth, the star-dust in their folds,
A pledge that men shall yet be borne with wings!