t mark and last,
The goal where good kills evil with a kiss,
And Darkness in God's sight
Grows as his brother Light,
And heaven and hell one heart whence all the abyss
Throbs with love's music; from his trance
Love waking leads it home to her who stayed in France. 320

But now from all the world-old winds of the air [_Str._ 9.
One blast of record rings
As from time's hidden springs
With roar of rushing wings and fires that bear
Toward north and south sonorous, east and west,
Forth of the dark wherein its records rest,
The story told of the ages, writ nor sung
By man's hand ever nor by mortal tongue
Till, godlike with desire,
One tongue of man took fire, 330
One hand laid hold upon the lightning, one
Rose up to bear time witness what the sun
Had seen, and what the moon and stars of night
Beholding lost not light:
From dawn to dusk what ways man wandering trod
Even through the twilight of the gods to God.

From dawn of man and woman twain and one [_Ant._ 9.
When the earliest dews impearled
The front of all the world
Ringed with aurorean aureole of the sun, 340
To days that saw Christ's tears and hallowing breath
Put life for love's sake in the lips of death,
And years as waves whose brine was fire, whose foam
Blood, and the ravage of Neronian Rome;
And the eastern crescent's horn
Mightier awhile than morn;
And knights whose lives were flights of eagles' wings,
And lives like snakes' lives of engendering kings;
And all the ravin of all the swords that reap
Lives cast as sheaves on heap 350
From all the billowing harvest-fields of fight;
And sounds of love-songs lovelier than the light.

The grim dim thrones of the east [_Ep._ 9.
Set for death's riotous feast
Round the bright board where darkling centuries wait,
And servile slaughter, mute,
Feeds power with fresh red fruit,
Glitter and groan with mortal food of fate;
And throne and cup and lamp's bright breath
Bear witness to their lord of only night and death. 360

Dead freedom by live empire lies defiled, [_Str._ 10.
And murder at his feet
Plies lust with wine and meat,
With offering of an old man and a child,
With holy body a