And shrill fierce climes of inconsolable air,
Shining below the beamless aureole
   That hangs about the north-wind’s hurtling hair,
A comet-lighted lamp, sublime and sole
   Dawn of the dayless heaven where suns despair;
Earth, skies, and waters, smitten into soul,
   Feel the hard veil that iron centuries wear
         Rent as with hands in sunder,
         Such hands as make the thunder
   And clothe with form all substance and strip bare;
         Shapes, shadows, sounds and lights
         Of their dead days and nights
   Take soul of life too keen for death to bear;
      Life, conscience, forethought, will, desire,
Flood men’s inanimate eyes and dry-drawn hearts with fire.

10

Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder
   All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder
   And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,
   Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;
   The hands are mighty, were the head not blind.
         Priest is the staff of king,
         And chains and clouds one thing,
   And fettered flesh with devastated mind.
         Open thy soul to see,
         Slave, and thy feet are free;
   Thy bonds and thy beliefs are one in kind,
      And of thy fears thine irons wrought
Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought.

11

O soul, O God, O glory of liberty,
   To night and day their lightning and their light!
With heat of heart thou kindlest the quick sea,
   And the dead earth takes spirit from thy sight;
The natural body of things is warm with thee,
   And the world’s weakness parcel of thy might;
Thou seest us feeble and forceless, fit to be
   Slaves of the years that drive us left and right,
         Drowned under hours like waves
         Wherethrough we row like slaves;
   But if thy finger touch us, these take flight.
         If but one sovereign word
         Of thy live lips be heard,
   What man shall stop us, and what God shall smite?
      Do thou but look in our dead eyes,
They are stars that light each other till thy sundawn rise.

12

Thou art the eye of this blind body of man,
   The tongue of this dumb people; shalt thou not
See, shalt thou speak not for them?
   Time is wan And hope is weak with waiting, and swift thought
Hath lost the wings at heel wherewith he ran,
   And on the red pit’s edge sits down distraught
To talk with death of days republican
   And dreams and fights long since dreamt out and fought;
         Of the last hope that drew
         To that red edge anew
   The firewhite faith of Poland without spot;
         Of the blind Russian might,
         And fire that is not light;
   Of the green Rhineland where thy spirit wrought;
      But though time, hope, and memory tire,
Canst thou wax dark as they do, thou whose light is fire?

13

I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
   The night is broken westward; the wide sea
That makes immortal motion to and fro
   From world’s end unto world’s end, and shall be
When nought now grafted of men’s hands shall grow
   And as the weed in last year’s waves are we
Or spray the sea-wind shook a year ago
   From its sharp tresses down the storm to lee,
         The moving god that hides
         Time in its timeless tides
   Wherein time dead seems live eternity,
         That breaks and makes again
         Much mightier things than men,
   Doth it not hear change coming, or not see?
      Are the deeps deaf and dead and blind,
To catch no light or sound from landward of mankind?

14

O thou, clothed round with raiment of white waves,
   Thy brave brows lightening through the grey wet air,
Thou, lulled with sea-sounds of a thousand caves,
   And lit with sea-shine to thine inland lair,
Whose freedom clothed the naked souls of slaves
   And stripped the muffled souls of tyrants bare,
O, by the centuries of thy glorious graves,
   By the live light of the earth that was thy care,
         Live, thou must not be dead,
         Live; let thine armèd head
   Lift itself up to sunward and the fair
         Daylight of time and man,
         Thine head republican,
   With the same splendour on thine helmless hair
      That in his eyes kept up a light
Who on thy glory gazed away their sacred sight;

15

Who loved and looked their sense to death on thee;
   Who taught thy lips imperishable things,
And in thine ears outsang thy singing sea;
   Who made thy foot firm on the necks of kings
And thy soul somewhile steadfast—woe are we
   It was but for a while, and all the strings
Were broken of thy spirit; yet had he
   Set to such tunes and clothed it with such wings
         It seemed for his sole sake
         Impossible to break,
   And woundless of the worm that waits and stings,
         The golden-headed worm
         Made headless for a term,
   The king-snake whose life kindles with the spring’s,
      To breathe his soul upon her bloom,
And while she marks not turn her temple to her tomb.

16

By those eyes blinded and that heavenly head
   And the secluded soul adorable,
O Milton’s land, what ails thee to be dead?
   Thine ears are yet sonorous with his shell
That all the songs of all thy sea-line fed
   With motive sound of spring-tides at mid swell,
And through thine heart his thought as blood is shed,
   Requickening thee with wisdom to do well;
         Such sons were of thy womb,
         England, for love of whom
   Thy name is not yet writ with theirs that fell,
         But, till thou quite forget
         What were thy children, yet
   On the pale lips of hope is as a spell;
      And Shelley’s heart and Landor’s mind
Lit thee with latter watch-fires; why wilt thou be blind?

17

Though all were else indifferent, all that live
   Spiritless shapes of nations; though time wait
In vain on hope till these have help to give,
   And faith and love crawl famished from the gate;
Canst thou sit shamed and self-contemplative
   With soulless eyes on thy secluded fate?
Though time forgive them, thee shall he forgive,
   Whose choice was in thine hand to be so great?
         Who cast out of thy mind
         The passion of man’s kind,
And made thee and thine old name separate?
         Now when time looks to see
         New names and old and thee