On the Cliffs

ἱμερόφωνος ἀηδὼν. Sappho.
Between the moondawn and the sundown here The twilight hangs half starless; half the sea Still quivers as for love or pain or fear Or pleasure mightier than these all may be A man's live heart might beat Wherein a God's with mortal blood should meet And fill its pulse too full to bear the strain With fear or love or pleasure's twin-born, pain. Fiercely the gaunt woods to the grim soil cling That bears for all fair fruits Wan wild sparse flowers of windy and wintry spring Between the tortive serpent-shapen roots Wherethrough their dim growth hardly strikes and shoots And shews one gracious thing Hardly, to speak for summer one sweet word Of summer's self scarce heard. But higher the steep green sterile fields, thick-set With flowerless hawthorn even to the upward verge Whence the woods gathering watch new cliffs emerge Higher than their highest of crowns that sea-winds fret, Hold fast, for all that night or wind can say, Some pale pure colour yet, Too dim for green and luminous for grey. Between the climbing inland cliffs above And these beneath that breast and break the bay, A barren peace too soft for hate or love Broods on an hour too dim for night or day.
O wind , O wingless wind that walk'st the sea , Weak wind , wing-broken, wearier wind than we, Who are yet not spirit-broken, maimed like thee, Who wail not in our inward night as thou In the outer darkness now, What word has the old sea given thee for mine ear From thy faint lips to hear? For some word would she send me, knowing not how.
Nay, what far other word Than ever of her was spoken, or of me Or all my winged white kinsfolk of the sea Between fresh wave and wave was ever heard, Cleaves the clear dark enwinding tree with tree Too close for stars to separate and to see Enmeshed in multitudinous unity? What voice of what strong God hath stormed and stirred The fortressed rock of silence, rent apart Even to the core Night's all-maternal heart? What voice of God grown heavenlier in a bird, Made keener of edge to smite Than lightening— yea, thou knowest, O mother Night, Keen as that cry from thy strange children sent Wherewith the Athenian judgment-shrine was rent, For wrath that all their wrath was vainly spent, Their wrath for wrong made right By justice in her own divine despite That bade pass forth unblamed The sinless matricide and unashamed? Yea, what new cry is this, what note more bright Than their song's wing of words was dark of flight, What word is this thou hast heard, Thine and not thine or theirs, O Night, what word More keen than lightning and more sweet than light? As all men's hearts grew godlike in one bird And all those hearts cried on thee, crying with might, Hear us, O mother Night.
Dumb is the mouth of darkness as of death: Light, sound and life are one In the eyes and lips of dawn that draw the sun To hear what first child's word with glimmering breath Their weak wan weanling child the twilight saith; But night makes answer none.
God, if thou be God,—bird, if bird thou be,— Do thou then answer me. For but one word, what wind soever blow, Is blown up usward ever from the sea . In fruitless years of youth dead long ago And deep beneath their own dead leaves and snow Buried, I heard with bitter heart and sere The same sea's word unchangeable, nor knew But that mine own life-days were changeless too And sharp and salt with unshed tear on tear And cold and fierce and barren; and my soul, Sickening, swam weakly with bated breath In a deep sea like death, And felt the wind buffet her face with brine Hard, and harsh thought on thought in long bleak roll Blown by keen gusts of memory sad as thine Heap the weight up of pain, and break, and leave Strength scarce enough to grieve In the sick heavy spirit, unmanned with strife Of waves that beat at the tired lips of life.
Nay, sad may be man's memory, sad may be The dream he weaves him as for shadow of thee, But scarce one breathing-space, one heartbeat long, Wilt thou take shadow of sadness on thy song. Not thou, being more than man or man's desire, Being bird and God in one, With throat of gold and spirit of the sun ; The sun whom all our souls and songs call sire, Whose godhead gave thee, chosen of all our quire, Thee only of all that serve, of all that sing Before our sire and king, Borne up some space on time's world-wandering wing, This gift, this doom, to bear till time's wing tire— Life everlasting of eternal life.
Thee only of all; yet can no memory say How many a night and day My heart has been as thy heart, and my life As thy life is, a sleepless hidden thing, Full of the thirst and hunger of winter and spring , That seeks its food not in such love or strife As fill men's hearts with passionate hours and rest. From no loved lips and on no loving breast Have I sought ever for such gifts as bring Comfort, to stay the secret soul with sleep. The joys, the loves, the labours, whence men reap Rathe fruit of hopes and fears, I have made not mine; the best of all my days Have been as those fair fruitless summer strays , Those water-waifs that but the sea-wind steers, Flakes of glad foam or flowers on footless ways That take the wind in season and the sun, And when the wind wills is their season done.
For all my days as all thy days from birth My heart as thy heart was in me as thee, Fire ; and not all the fountains of the sea Have waves enough to quench it, nor on earth Is fuel enough to feed, While day sows night and night sows day for seed.
We were not marked for sorrow, thou nor I, For joy nor sorrow, sister, were we made, To take delight and grief to live and die, Assuaged by pleasures or by pains affrayed That melt men's hearts and alter; we retain A memory mastering pleasure and all pain, A spirit within the sense of ear and eye, A soul behind the soul, that seeks and sings And makes our life move only with its wings And feed but from its lips, that in return Feed of our hearts wherein the old fires that burn Have strength not to consume Nor glory enough to exalt us past our doom.
Ah, ah, the doom (thou knowest whence rang that wail) Of the shrill nightingale! (From whose wild lips, thou knowest, that wail was thrown) For round about her have the great gods cast A wing-borne body, and clothed her close and fast With a sweet life that hath no part in moan. But me, for me (how hadst thou heart to hear?) wiles a sundering with the two-edged spear.
Ah, for her doom! so cried in presage then The bodeful bondslave of the king of men, And might not win her will. Too close the entangling dragnet woven of crime, The snare of ill new-born of elder ill, The curse of new time for an elder time , Had caught, and held her yet, Enmeshed intolerably in the intolerant net, Who thought with craft to mock the God most high, And win by wiles his crown of prophecy From the Sun's hand sublime, As God were man, to spare or to forget.
But thou,—the gods have given thee and forgiven thee More than our master gave That strange-eyed spirit-wounded strange-tongued slave There questing houndlike where the roofs red-wet Reeked as a wet red grave. Life everlasting has their strange grace given thee, Even hers whom thou wast wont to sing and serve With eyes, but not with song , too swift to swerve; Yet might not even thine eyes estranged estrange her, Who seeing thee too, but inly, burn and bleed Like that pale princess-priest of Priam's seed, For stranger service gave thee guerdon stranger; If this indeed be guerdon, this indeed Her mercy, this thy meed— That thou, being more than all we born, being higher Than all heads crowned of him that only gives The light whereby man lives, The bay that bids man moved of God's desire Lay hand on lute or lyre, Set lip to trumpet or deflowered green reed— If this were given thee for a grace indeed, That thou, being first of all these, thou alone Shouldst have the grace to die not, but to live And lose nor change one pulse of song, one tone Of all that were thy lady's and thine own, Thy lady's whom thou criedst on to forgive, Thou, priest and sacrifice on the altar-stone Where none may worship not of all that live, Love's priestess, errant on dark ways diverse; If this were grace indeed for Love to give, If this indeed were blessing and no curse.
Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song, Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love, Name above all names that are lights above, We have loved, praised, pitied, crowned and done thee wrong, O thou past praise and pity; thou the sole Utterly deathless, perfect only and whole Immortal, body and soul. For over all whom time hath overpast The shadow of sleep inexorable is cast, The implacable sweet shadow of perfect sleep That gives not back what life gives death to keep; Yea, all that lived and loved and sang and sinned Are all borne down death's cold sweet soundless wind That blows all night and knows not whom its breath, Darkling, may touch to death: But one that wind hath touched and changed not,—one Whose body and soul are parcel of the sun; One that earth's fire could burn not, nor the sea Quench; nor might human doom take hold on thee; All praise, all pity, all dreams have done thee wrong, All love, with eyes love-blinded from above; Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love, Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song.
Hast thou none other answer then for me Than the air may have of thee, Or the earth's warm woodlands girdling with green girth Thy secret sleepless burning life on earth, Or even the sea that once, being woman crowned And girt with fire and glory of anguish round, Thou wert so fain to seek to, fain to crave If she would hear thee and save And give thee comfort of thy great green grave? Because I have known thee always who thou art, Thou knowest, have known thee to thy heart's own heart, Nor ever have given light ear to storied song That did thy sweet name sweet unwitting wrong, Nor ever have called thee nor would call for shame, Thou knowest, but inly by thine only name, Sappho—because I have known thee and loved, hast thou None other answer now? As brother and sister were we, child and bird, Since thy first Lesbian word Flamed on me, and I knew not whence I knew This was the song that struck my whole soul through, Pierced my keen spirit of sense with edge more keen, Even when I knew not,—even ere sooth was seen,— When thou wast but the tawny sweet winged thing Whose cry was but of spring .
And yet even so thine ear should hear me—yea, Hear me this nightfall by this northland bay, Even for their sake whose loud good word I had, Singing of thee in the all-beloved clime Once, where the windy wine of spring makes mad Our sisters of Majano, who kept time Clear to my choral rhyme. Yet was the song acclaimed of these aloud Whose praise had made mute humbleness misproud, The song with answering song applauded thus, But of that Daulian dream of Itylus. So but for love's love haply was it—nay, How else?—that even their song took my song's part, For love of love and sweetness of sweet heart, Or god-given glorious madness of mid May And heat of heart and hunger and thirst to sing, Full of the new wine of the wind of spring .
Or if this were not, and it be not sin To hold myself in spirit of thy sweet kin, In heart and spirit of song; If this my great love do thy grace no wrong, Thy grace that gave me grace to dwell therein; If thy gods thus be my gods, and their will Made my song part of thy song—even such part As man's hath of God's heart— And my life like as thy life to fulfil; What have our gods then given us? Ah, to thee, Sister, much more, much happier than to me, Much happier things they have given, and more of grace Than falls to man's light race; For lighter are we, all our love and pain Lighter than thine, who knowest of time or place Thus much, that place nor time Can heal or hurt or lull or change again The singing soul that makes his soul sublime Who hears the far fall of its fire-fledged rhyme Fill darkness as with bright and burning rain Till all the live gloom inly glows, and light Seems with the sound to cleave the core of night.
The singing soul that moves thee, and that moved When thou wast woman, and their songs divine Who mixed for Grecian mouths heaven's lyric wine Fell dumb, fell down reproved Before one sovereign Lesbian song of thine. That soul, though love and life had fain held fast, Wind-winged with fiery music, rose and past Through the indrawn hollow of earth and heaven and hell, As through some strait sea-shell The wide sea's immemorial song,—the sea That sings and breathes in strange men's ears of thee How in her barren bride-bed, void and vast, Even thy soul sang itself to sleep at last.
To sleep? Ah, then, what song is this, that here Makes all the night one ear, One ear fulfilled and mad with music, one Heart kindling as the heart of heaven , to hear A song more fiery than the awakening sun Sings, when his song sets fire To the air and clouds that build the dead night's pyre? O thou of divers-coloured mind, O thou Deathless, God's daughter subtle-souled—lo, now, Now too the song above all songs , in flight Higher than the day-star's height, And sweet as sound the moving wings of night! Thou of the divers-coloured seat—behold, Her very song of old!— O deathless, O God's daughter subtle-souled! That same cry through this boskage overhead Rings round reiterated, Palpitates as the last palpitated, The last that panted through her lips and died Not down this grey north sea's half sapped cliff-side That crumbles toward the coastline, year by year More near the sands and near; The last loud lyric fiery cry she cried, Heard once on heights Leucadian,—heard not here.
Not here; for this that fires our northland night, This is the song that made Love fearful, even the heart of love afraid, With the great anguish of its great delight. No swan-song, no far-fluttering half-drawn breath, No word that love of love's sweet nature saith, No dirge that lulls the narrowing lids of death, No healing hymn of peace-prevented strife,— This is her song of life.
I love thee,—hark, one tenderer note than all— Atthis, of old time , once—one low long fall, Sighing—one long low lovely loveless call, Dying—one pause in song so flamelike fast— Atthis, long since in old time overpast— One soft first pause and last. One,—then the old rage of rapture's fieriest rain Storms all the music-maddened night again.
Child of God, close craftswoman, I beseech thee, Bid not ache nor agony break nor master, Lady, my spirit— O thou her mistress, might her cry not reach thee? Our Lady of all men's loves, could Love go past her, Pass, and not hear it?
She hears not as she heard not; hears not me, O treble-natured mystery,—how should she Hear, or give ear?—who heard and heard not thee; Heard, and went past, and heard not; but all time Hears all that all the ravin of his years Hath cast not wholly out of all men's ears And dulled to death with deep dense funeral chime Of their reiterate rhyme. And now of all songs uttering all her praise, All hers who had thy praise and did thee wrong, Abides one song yet of her lyric days, Thine only, this thy song.
O soul triune, woman and god and bird, Man, man at least has heard. All ages call thee conqueror, and thy cry The mightiest as the least beneath the sky Whose heart was ever set to song, or stirred With wind of mounting music blown more high Than wildest wing may fly, Hath heard or hears,—even Aeschylus as I. But when thy name was woman, and thy word Human,—then haply, surely then meseems This thy bird's note was heard on earth of none, Of none save only in dreams. In all the world then surely was but one song; as in heaven at highest one sceptred sun Regent, on earth here surely without fail One only, one imperious nightingale. Dumb was the field, the woodland mute, the lawn Silent; the hill was tongueless as the vale Even when the last fair waif of cloud that felt Its heart beneath the colouring moonrays melt, At high midnoon of midnight half withdrawn, Bared all the sudden deep divine moondawn . Then, unsaluted by her twin-born tune, That latter timeless morning of the moon Rose past its hour of moonrise ; clouds gave way To the old reconquering ray, But no song answering made it more than day; No cry of song by night Shot fire into the cloud-constraining light. One only, one Æolian island heard Thrill, but through no bird's throat, In one strange manlike maiden's godlike note, The song of all these as a single bird. Till the sea's portal was as funeral gate For that sole singer in all time's ageless date Singled and signed for so triumphal fate, All nightingales but one in all the world All her sweet life were silent; only then, When her life's wing of womanhood was furled, Their cry, this cry of thine was heard again, As of me now, of any born of men. Through sleepless clear spring nights filled full of thee, Rekindled here, thy ruling song has thrilled The deep dark air and subtle tender sea And breathless hearts with one bright sound fulfilled. Or at midnoon to me Swimming, and birds about my happier head Skimming, one smooth soft way by water and air , To these my bright born brethren and to me Hath not the clear wind borne or seemed to bear A song wherein all earth and heaven and sea Were molten in one music made of thee To enforce us, O our sister of the shore, Look once in heart back landward and adore? For songless were we sea-mews , yet had we More joy than all things joyful of thee—more, Haply, than all things happiest; nay, save thee, In thy strong rapture of imperious joy Too high for heart of sea-borne bird or boy, What living things were happiest if not we? But knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong, No more we knew of song.
Song, and the secrets of it, and their might, What blessings curse it and what curses bless, I know them since my spirit had first in sight, Clear as thy song's words or the live sun's light, The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness That held the fire eternal; eye and ear Were as a god's to see, a god's to hear, Through all his hours of daily and nightly chime, The sundering of the two-edged spear of time: The spear that pierces even the sevenfold shields Of mightiest Memory, mother of all songs made, And wastes all songs as roseleaves kissed and frayed As here the harvest of the foam-flowered fields; But thine the spear may waste not that he wields Since first the God whose soul is man's live breath, The sun whose face hath our sun's face for shade, Put all the light of life and love and death Too strong for life, but not for love too strong, Where pain makes peace with pleasure in thy song, And in thine heart, where love and song make strife, Fire everlasting of eternal life.