PART II

As when one wakes out of a waning dream

And sees with instant eyes the naked thought

Whereof the vision as a web was wrought,

I saw beneath a heaven of cloud and gleam,

Ere yet the heart of the young sun waxed brave,

One like a prophet standing by a grave.

In the hoar heaven was hardly beam or breath,

And all the coloured hills and fields were grey,

And the wind wandered seeking for the day,

And wailed as though he had found her done to death

And this grey hour had built to bury her

The hollow twilight for a sepulchre.

But in my soul I saw as in a glass

A pale and living body full of grace

There lying, and over it the prophet's face

Fixed; and the face was not of Tiresias,

For such a starry fire was in his eyes

As though their light it was that made the skies.

Such eyes should God's have been when very love

Looked forth of them and set the sun aflame,

And such his lips that called the light by name

And bade the morning forth at sound thereof;

His face was sad and masterful as fate,

And like a star's his look compassionate.

Like a star's gazed on of sad eyes so long

It seems to yearn with pity, and all its fire

As a man's heart to tremble with desire

And heave as though the light would bring forth song;

Yet from his face flashed lightning on the land,

And like the thunder-bearer's was his hand.

The steepness of strange stairs had tired his feet,

And his lips yet seemed sick of that salt bread

Wherewith the lips of banishment are fed;

But nothing was there in the world so sweet

As the most bitter love, like God's own grace,

Wherewith he gazed on that fair buried face.

Grief and glad pride and passion and sharp shame,

Wrath and remembrance, faith and hope and hate

And pitiless pity of days degenerate,

Were in his eyes as an incorporate flame

That burned about her, and the heart thereof

And central flower was very fire of love.

But all about her grave wherein she slept

Were noises of the wild wind-footed years

Whose footprints flying were full of blood and tears,

Shrieks as of Maenads on their hills that leapt

And yelled as beasts of ravin, and their meat

Was the rent flesh of their own sons to eat:

And fiery shadows passing with strange cries,

And Sphinx-like shapes about the ruined lands,

And the red reek of parricidal hands

And intermixture of incestuous eyes,

And light as of that self-divided flame

Which made an end of the Cadmean name.

And I beheld again, and lo the grave,

And the bright body laid therein as dead,

And the same shadow across another head

That bowed down silent on that sleeping slave

Who was the lady of empire from her birth

And light of all the kingdoms of the earth.

Within the compass of the watcher's hand

All strengths of other men and divers powers

Were held at ease and gathered up as flowers;

His heart was as the heart of his whole land,

And at his feet as natural servants lay

Twilight and dawn and night and labouring day.

He was most awful of the sons of God.

Even now men seeing seemed at his lips to see

The trumpet of the judgment that should be,

And in his right hand terror for a rod,

And in the breath that made the mountains bow

The horned fire of Moses on his brow.

The strong wind of the coming of the Lord

Had blown as flame upon him, and brought down

On his bare head from heaven fire for a crown,

And fire was girt upon him as a sword

To smite and lighten, and on what ways he trod

There fell from him the shadow of a God.

Pale, with the whole world's judgment in his eyes,

He stood and saw the grief and shame endure

That he, though highest of angels might not cure,

And the same sins done under the same skies,

And the same slaves to the same tyrants thrown,

And fain he would have slept, and fain been stone.

But with unslumbering eyes he watched the sleep

That sealed her sense whose eyes were suns of old;

And the night shut and opened, and behold,

The same grave where those prophets came to weep,

But she that lay therein had moved and stirred,

And where those twain had watched her stood a third.

The tripled rhyme that closed in Paradise

With Love's name sealing up its starry speech -

The tripled might of hand that found in reach

All crowns beheld far off of all men's eyes,

Song, colour, carven wonders of live stone -

These were not, but the very soul alone.

The living spirit, the good gift of grace,

The faith which takes of its own blood to give

That the dead veins of buried hope may live,

Came on her sleeping, face to naked face,

And from a soul more sweet than all the south

Breathed love upon her sealed and breathless mouth.

Between her lips the breath was blown as fire,

And through her flushed veins leapt the liquid life,

And with sore passion and ambiguous strife

The new birth rent her and the new desire,

The will to live, the competence to be,

The sense to hearken and the soul to see.

And the third prophet standing by her grave

Stretched forth his hand and touched her, and her eyes

Opened as sudden suns in heaven might rise,

And her soul caught from his the faith to save;

Faith above creeds, faith beyond records, born

Of the pure, naked, fruitful, awful morn.

For in the daybreak now that night was dead

The light, the shadow, the delight, the pain,

The purpose and the passion of those twain,

Seemed gathered on that third prophetic head,

And all their crowns were as one crown, and one

His face with her face in the living sun.

For even with that communion of their eyes

His whole soul passed into her and made her strong;

And all the sounds and shows of shame and wrong,

The hand that slays, the lip that mocks and lies,

Temples and thrones that yet men seem to see -

Are these dead or art thou dead, Italy?