Songs Before Sunrise

The trumpets of the four winds of the world

From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night heaves,

With breasts palpitating and wings refurled,

With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves

Sleeping, and in her sleep she sees uncurled

Dreams serpent-shapen, such as sickness weaves,

Down the wild wind of vision caught and whirled,

Dead leaves of sleep, thicker than autumn leaves,

Shadows of storm-shaped things,

Flights of dim tribes of kings,

The reaping men that reap men for their sheaves,

And, without grain to yield,

Their scythe-swept harvest-field

Thronged thick with men pursuing and fugitives,

Dead foliage of the tree of sleep,

Leaves blood-coloured and golden, blown from deep to deep.

I hear the midnight on the mountains cry

With many tongues of thunders, and I hear

Sound and resound the hollow shield of sky

With trumpet-throated winds that charge and cheer,

And through the roar of the hours that fighting fly,

Through flight and fight and all the fluctuant fear,

A sound sublimer than the heavens are high,

A voice more instant than the winds are clear,

Say to my spirit, "Take

Thy trumpet too, and make

A rallying music in the void night's ear,

Till the storm lose its track,

And all the night go back;

Till, as through sleep false life knows true life near,

Thou know the morning through the night,

And through the thunder silence, and through darkness light."

I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.

The height of night is shaken, the skies break,

The winds and stars and waters come and go

By fits of breath and light and sound, that wake

As out of sleep, and perish as the show

Built up of sleep, when all her strengths forsake

The sense-compelling spirit; the depths glow,

The heights flash, and the roots and summits shake

Of earth in all her mountains,

And the inner foamless fountains

And wellsprings of her fast-bound forces quake;

Yea, the whole air of life

Is set on fire of strife,

Till change unmake things made and love remake;

Reason and love, whose names are one,

Seeing reason is the sunlight shed from love the sun.