Song of the wave / George Cabot Lodge [electronic text]

THE SONG

WHEN the vortex of Heaven was blind The sword Was framed from a primal desireThat shook thro' the void like a wind; Then it rose as a shivering fire And crimsoned God's vision of peace; Then sank, like the trail of a star, Down the frail twilight of space And stood over hell like a scar Furrowed deep in the forehead of night, Till the universe called, "There is light, And life and the promise of war."

Lamping the limitless gloom, The sword Glowed in the saffron of Hell, As might in a tenanted tomb

Some strenuous memory swell Over death and illume the dead eyes. Then—O wonder!—ere ever it fell, A hand gat the sword in its grasp, And while earth and sea uttered their spawn, Far-flung on the ocean of skies, It lay like the welter of dawn In the giant immutable clasp.

Then white as the darkness of deathThe swordSang like a boreal breath Blown thro' the idyll of dawn, Cadenced as steel that is drawn Tense thro' the crest of a storm, It exalted the choir of earth, Singing deep where the heart-blood is warm, And pervaded the resonant sky Like the solemn and sorrowful mirth Of life that is living to die.

And down thro' the legended years The sword, Sonorous with laughter and tears, Has sung its old epic to man; And the earlier glory awakes As when life in its anguish began, Till, whenever the noon-brilliance shakes Down the scabbardless steel, joy and woe, All is blended to passion that has Neither laughter, nor weeping, nor name, But love and the lusting for fame, Even death in its agony, grow Into life that is, shall be and was— Life the ichor of earth, the spring-throe, Ever manifold, ever the same.