SONG OF THE SEA

Oh, I am old and hoar! so old that none Of all my drops holds memory of birth: My mists no longer rise to robe the Sun, No longer lend great rivers to the Earth. Low in my deeps my broken creatures die,--  They die! and their corruption loads my floors; Countless and cold, my lordly monsters lie On league-long sands of continental shores. Where bide you, O white stallions of the waves? And you torrential surges,--where the crest You flung on leaping mountains that you drave  Across your father's fields from East to West? Shine forth, O Moon! unveil thee, pallid queen! Heal me, as when my passion clomb to thine; Shed down thy lucent drench, thy light serene, Oh, lift me back to Life and Love--oh, shine! My salt hath lost its virtue in men's blood And o'er their hearts the marish vapour crawls; Now Death o'erwhelms me with his colder flood, And, prey to Time, my royal glory falls.

Daemon of Fire, fairest of all elements, fairest, purest, divinest, Spirit of Life and Power, that dwells never with Death!

His feet take hold on Earth, but his crest rears its unhampered glory in the highest airs.

Fleeing from Nature's frozen breast, he trends to lowest crypts, swift to some final refuge, moving in leaping sheets and sinuous trails.

The mouths of all volcanoes, once his throne, are choked with snow. In subterranean corridors cold creeps upon the central vaults of flame.

 

 

 

 

SONG OF FIRE

BACK to the womb I creep, back to the womb! Let snows and stagnant seas my province blight, Deep down in matrix grots shall I consume My mother's flesh, my spirit and the night. I shall beat about her heart a few brief years,--  I, who once rolled fiery gold through all her veins, And soared from mountain-throats o'er hemispheres, And throbbed in huts and palaces and fanes. What power in me abode! what loveliness! The three vast elements proclaimed me king, Straight from the Sun I sank with gifts to bless The world with living 

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