1821. The fair hand that wounded it, LXXIII. PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. HERALD OF ETERNITY. It is the day when all the Sons of God The shadow of God, and delegate Of that before whose breath the universe Hierarchs and kings, Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air,— That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped Less in the beauty of its tender light ... it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow Impels the generations To their appointed place, Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends his decrees veiled in eternal. . . Within the circuit of this pendent orb There lies an antique region, on which fell And harmonies of wisdom and of song, And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And, when the sun of its dominion failed, And when the winter of its glory came, The winds that stripped it bare blew on, and swept In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed Haste, Sons of God, . . for ye beheld, Reluctant or consenting or astonished, The stern decrees go forth which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair, A fourth now waits. Assemble, Sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend (If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld) The unaccomplished destiny. CHORUS. The curtain of the universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour-winged worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered. Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst a cloudy shrine, In the blue glow of hyaline From every point of the Infinite, flight Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread. And through thunder and darkness dread Light and music are radiated, And, in their pavilioned chariots led By living wings, high overhead The giant Powers move, Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. A chaos of light and motion The senate of the Gods is met, There is silence in the spaces- CHRIST. Almighty Father! Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny There are two fountains in which spirits weep The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood; by these wide wounds; By this imperial crown of agony; By infamy and solitude and death, (For this I underwent); and by the pain From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms To stamp, as on a winged serpent's seed, Of faction, which like earthquakes shakes and sickens By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn.. . . She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from chaos! Be as all things beneath the empyrean, Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns-Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed Which pierces thee, whose throne a chair of scorn? For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor The innumerable worlds of golden light Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou wouldst redeem from me? ... Know'st thou not them my portion? Or wouldst rekindle the . . strife Which our great Father then did arbitrate Each his apportioned realm ? Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task, To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou vicegerent of my will, no less Than of the Father's. But, lest thou shouldst faint, The earth behind thy steps; and war shall hover On freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, CHRIST. Obdurate spirit! Thou seest but the past in the to-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Haste thou, and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow Of Christian night rolled back upon the West When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow. Wake, thou word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny May triumph |