A FETTERLESS, bright spirit, wing'd and pure,
Soul from all souls of Suns in essence bred,
Lo! Fire am I,--without me shall endure
No Life, nor plant nor creature lift its head.
In burning beards of comets red I float;
I dance with lambent torches on the stars;
I wash with sulphurous flame the roaring throat
Of peaks, and blaze beneath the thunder's cars.
Master of Earth am I;--on her my will
I stamp, and with fierce searing kisses press
My passion on her naked flesh and thrill
Her hidden veins with rapture. My caress
Is lustral. In her lovers' hearts I creep
And tip with fateful coals the prophet's tongue;
God-like from lips of poets I sing and leap,--
I the eternal fair, the eternal young!
And none shall conquer me save they who call
My strength to sovereign toil in craft or strife;
With me shall tribes of men hold festival,--
Cities and realms shall find me Death or Life.
Repossessed of their ancient heritage, the four conqueror Elements
sit on their dowered spheres.
Wind, Ember, Current, conscious Earth, the eternal weavers
and toilers, labour in felicity.
Chaos and Night and Death are disenthroned. The system burns along
its orbits through the dark. The benisons of the stars and suns
are cast upon these youngest worlds.
Buoyant and blithe the planets wheel.
Their year-long arcs and each season's ordained processional
are portioned unto them: their vassal moons also and the speed of
their turning and their measure of night and day.
The ruddy jocund Earth presses close to the Sun, timorous of the
outer void, baring her bosom to his kiss.
Has not the inevitable and recurrent Spring of Existence come
unto her once again? The iron shackles of Silence--are they
not broken?--the granite of the Night, is it not crumbled low?--the
ice of Death, is it not molten?
She blooms in her resurrection; her voice is lifted in the
universal litany to Life. She rolls in her golden garniture of
beams, circling with the singing sister-spheres. Her rondure
floats against the distant cohorts of the constellations.
The ancient Spirit of Chaos swings her pitchy cressets, and
sinks down the starless deep on her tall catafalque of Death.
Rejoice, O orb vestured in beauty! Put forth thy wings, thy
coronals of Love, wrap thee with fluctuant Winds and exulting Seas!
Shall thy offspring feel dismay, knowing what light shall burst
from dark, what life leap from Death, what flowers blow from dust?
So the anointed and belted spheres, re-risen from their
bath of silence and their sleep of time, move on companioned
with eternal hope.
The fingers of the Sun stroke forth a glorious strain; the
worlds are shawns and cymbals for his minstrelsy. The Spirit
of Creation pours forth her victorious baptismal harmonies.
Triumphantly her music daunts the firmament and echoes against
the dusks of the Unapproachable.