Chorus
Ill thoughts breed fear, and fear ill words; but
these [Str. 1
The Gods turn from us that have kept their law.
Let us lift up the strength of our
hearts in song,
And our souls to the height of the
darkling day.
If the wind in our eyes blow blood for
spray,
Be the spirit that breathes in us life
more strong,
Though the prow reel round and the helm
point wrong,
And sharp reefs whiten the shoreward
way.
For the steersman time sits hidden
astern, [Ant. 1
With dark hand plying the rudder of
doom,
And the surf-smoke under it flies like
fume
As the blast shears off and the
oar-blades churn
The foam of our lives that to death
return,
Blown back as they break to the gulfing
gloom.
What cloud upon heaven is arisen, what
shadow, what sound, [Str. 2
From the world beyond earth, from the
night underground,
That scatters from wings unbeholden the weight of
its darkness around?
For the sense of my spirit is broken,
and blinded its eye, [Ant. 2
As the soul of a sick man ready to die,
With fear of the hour that is on me, with dread if
an end be not nigh.
O Earth, O Gods of the land, have ye
heart now to see and to hear [Str. 3
What slays with terror mine eyesight and
seals mine ear?
O fountains of streams everlasting, are all ye not
shrunk up and withered for fear?
Lo, night is arisen on the noon, and
her hounds are in quest by day, [Ant. 3
And the world is fulfilled of the noise
of them crying for their prey,
And the sun's self stricken in heaven, and cast out
of his course as a blind man astray.
From east to west of the south sea-line
[Str. 4
Glitters the lightning of spears that
shine;
As a storm-cloud swoln that comes up from the skirts
of the sea
By the wind for helmsman to shoreward
ferried,
So black behind them the live storm
serried
Shakes earth with the tramp of its foot, and the
terror to be.
Shall the sea give death whom the land
gave birth? [Ant.
4
O Earth, fair mother, O sweet live
Earth,
Hide us again in thy womb from the waves of it, help
us or hide.
As a sword is the heart of the God thy
brother,
But thine as the heart of a new-made
mother,
To deliver thy sons from his ravin, and rage of his
tide.
O strong north wind, the pilot of cloud
and rain, [Str.
5
For the gift we gave thee what gift hast
thou given us again?
O God dark-winged, deep-throated, a terror to
forth-faring ships by night,
What bride-song is this that is blown on
the blast of thy breath?
A gift but of grief to thy kinsmen, a
song but of death,
For the bride's folk weeping, and woe for her
father, who finds thee against him in fight.
Turn back from us, turn thy battle,
take heed of our cry; [Ant. 5
Let thy dread breath sound, and the
waters of war be dry;
Let thy strong wrath shatter the strength of our
foemen, the sword of their strength and the shield;
As vapours in heaven, or as waves or the
wrecks of ships,
So break thou the ranks of their spears
with the breath of thy lips,
Till their corpses have covered and clothed as with
raiment the face of the sword-ploughed field.
O son of the rose-red morning, O God
twin-born with the day, [Str. 6
O wind with the young sun waking, and
winged for the same wide way,
Give up not the house of thy kin to the host thou
hast marshalled from northward for prey.
From the cold of thy cradle in Thrace,
from the mists of the fountains of night, [Ant. 6
From the bride-bed of dawn whence day
leaps laughing, on fire for his flight,
Come down with their doom in thine hand on the ships
thou hast brought up against us to fight.
For now not in word but in deed is the harvest of
spears begun, [Str.
7
And its clamour outbellows the thunder, its
lightning outlightens the sun.
From the springs of the morning it thunders and
lightens across and afar
To the wave where the moonset ends and the fall of
the last low star.
With a trampling of drenched red hoofs and an earth
quake of men that meet,
Strong war sets hand to the scythe, and the furrows
take fire from his feet.
Earth groans from her great rent heart, and the
hollows of rocks are afraid,
And the mountains are moved, and the valleys as
waves in a storm-wind swayed.
From the roots of the hills to the plain's dim verge
and the dark loud shore,
Air shudders with shrill spears crossing, and
hurtling of wheels that roar.
As the grinding of teeth in the jaws of a lion that
foam as they gnash
Is the shriek of the axles that loosen, the shock of
the poles that crash.
The dense manes darken and glitter, the mouths of
the mad steeds champ,
Their heads flash blind through the battle, and
death's foot rings in their tramp.
For a fourfold host upon earth and in heaven is
arrayed for the fight,
Clouds ruining in thunder and armies encountering as
clouds in the night.
Mine ears are amazed with the terror of trumpets,
with darkness mine eyes,
At the sound of the sea's host charging that deafens
the roar of the sky's.
White frontlet is dashed upon frontlet, and horse
against horse reels hurled,
And the gorge of the gulfs of the battle is wide for
the spoil of the world.
And the meadows are cumbered with shipwreck of
chariots that founder on land, [Ant. 7
And the horsemen are broken with breach as of
breakers, and scattered as sand.
Through the roar and recoil of the charges that
mingle their cries and confound,
Like fire are the notes of the trumpets that flash
through the darkness of sound.
As the swing of the sea churned yellow that sways
with the wind as it swells
Is the lift and relapse of the wave of the chargers
that clash with their bells;
And the clang of the sharp shrill brass through the
burst of the wave as it shocks
Rings clean as the clear wind's cry through the roar
of the surge on the rocks:
And the heads of the steeds in their headgear of
war, and their corsleted breasts,
Gleam broad as the brows of the billows that
brighten the storm with their crests,
Gleam dread as their bosoms that heave to the
shipwrecking wind as they rise,
Filled full of the terror and thunder of water, that
slays as it dies.
So dire is the glare of their foreheads, so fearful
the fire of their breath,
And the light of their eyeballs enkindled so bright
with the lightnings of death;
And the foam of their mouths as the sea's when the
jaws of its gulf are as graves,
And the ridge of their necks as the wind-shaken mane
on the ridges of waves:
And their fetlocks afire as they rear drip thick
with a dewfall of blood
As the lips of the rearing breaker with froth of the
manslaying flood.
And the whole plain reels and resounds as the fields
of the sea by night
When the stroke of the wind falls darkling, and
death is the seafarer's light.
But thou, fair beauty of heaven, dear face of the
day nigh dead, [Epode.
What horror hath hidden thy glory, what hand hath
muffled thine head?
O sun, with what song shall we call
thee, or ward off thy wrath by what name,
With what prayer shall we seek to thee, soothe with
what incense, assuage with what gift,
If thy light be such only as lightens to deathward
the seaman adrift
With the fire of his house for a beacon,
that foemen have wasted with flame?
Arise now, lift up thy light; give ear to us, put
forth thine hand,
Reach toward us thy torch of deliverance, a lamp for
the night of the land.
Thine eye is the light of the living, no
lamp for the dead;
O, lift up the light of thine eye on the
dark of our dread.
Who hath blinded thee? who hath
prevailed on thee? who hath ensnared?
Who hath broken thy bow, and the shafts
for thy battle prepared?
Have they found out a fetter to bind thee, a chain
for thine arm that was bared?
Be the name of thy conqueror set forth, and the
might of thy master declared.
O God, fair God of the morning, O glory
of day,
What ails thee to cast from thy forehead
its garland away?
To pluck from thy temples their chaplet
enwreathed of the light,
And bind on the brows of thy godhead a
frontlet of night?
Thou hast loosened the necks of thine horses, and
goaded their flanks with affright,
To the race of a course that we know not on ways
that are hid from our sight.
As a wind through the darkness the
wheels of their chariot are whirled,
And the light of its passage is night on
the face of the world.
And there falls from the wings of thy
glory no help from on high,
But a shadow that smites us with fear
and desire of thine eye.
For our hearts are as reeds that a wind on the water
bows down and goes by,
To behold not thy comfort in heaven that hath left
us untimely to die.
But what light is it now leaps forth on
the land
Enkindling the waters and ways of the
air
From thy forehead made bare,
From the gleam of thy bow-bearing hand?
Hast thou set not thy right hand again
to the string,
With the back-bowed horns bent sharp for
a spring
And the barbed shaft drawn,
Till the shrill steel sing and the tense
nerve ring
That pierces the heart of the dark with
dawn,
O huntsman, O king,
When the flame of thy face hath twilight
in chase
As a hound hath a blood-mottled fawn?
He has glanced into golden the grey
sea-strands,
And the clouds are shot through with the
fires of his hands,
And the height of the hollow of heaven
that he fills
As the heart of a strong man is
quickened and thrills;
High over the folds of the low-lying
lands,
On the shadowless hills
As a guard on his watchtower he stands.
All earth and all ocean, all depth and
all height,
At the flash of an eyebeam are filled
with his might:
The sea roars backward, the storm drops
dumb,
And silence as dew on the fire of the
fight
Falls kind in our ears as his face in
our sight
With presage of peace to come.
Fresh hope in my heart from the ashes of
dread
Leaps clear as a flame from the pyres of
the dead,
That joy out of woe
May arise as the spring out of tempest
and snow,
With the flower-feasted month in her
hands rose-red
Borne soft as a babe from the
bearing-bed.
Yet it knows not indeed if a God be
friend,
If rescue may be from the rage of the
sea,
Or the wrath of its lord have end.
For the season is full now of death or
of birth,
To bring forth life, or an end of all;
And we know not if anything stand or
fall
That is girdled about with the round
sea's girth
As a town with its wall;
But thou that art highest of the Gods
most high,
That art lord if we live, that art lord
though we die,
Have heed of the tongues of our terror
that cry
For a grace to the children of
Earth.