Anthem of Dawn
I
Then up the orient heights to the zenith, that balanced
the crescent,—
Up and far up and over,—the heaven grew
erubescent,
Vibrant with rose and with ruby from the hands of
the harpist Dawn,
Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament’s barbiton:
And the East was a priest who adored with offerings
of gold and of gems,
And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible
hems
Of the glistening robes of her limbs; that, lily and
amethyst,
Swept glorying on and on through temples of cloud
and mist.
II
Then out of the splendor and richness, that burned
like a magic stone,
The torrent suffusion that deepened and dazzled and
broadened and shone,
The pomp and the pageant of color, triumphal procession
of glare,
The sun, like a king in armor, breathing splendor
from feet to hair,
Stood forth with majesty girdled, as a hero who towers
afar
Where the bannered gates are bristling hells and the
walls are roaring war:
And broad on the back of the world, like a Cherubin’s
fiery blade,
The effulgent gaze of his aspect fell in glittering
accolade.
III
Then billowing blue, like an ocean, rolled from the
shores of morn to even:
And the stars, like rafts, went down: and the
moon, like a ghost-ship, driven,
A feather of foam, from port to port of the cloud-built
isles that dotted,
With pearl and cameo, bays of the day, her canvas
webbed and rotted,
Lay lost in the gulf of heaven: while over her
mixed and melted
The beautiful children of Morn, whose bodies are opal-belted;
The beautiful daughters of Dawn, who, over and under,
and after
The rivered radiance, wrestled; and rainbowed heaven
with laughter
Of halcyon sapphire.—O Dawn! thou visible
mirth,
And hallelujah of Heaven! hosanna of Earth!
Dithyrambics
I
TEMPEST
Wrapped round of the night, as a monster is wrapped
of the ocean,
Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold,
in the tower
Of the heaven, the thunder! on stairways of cloudy
commotion,
Colossal of tread, like a giant, from echoing hour
to hour
Goes striding in rattling armor ...
The Nymph, at her billow-roofed dormer
Of foam; and the Sylvan—green-housed—at
her window of leaves appears;
—As a listening woman, who hears
The approach of her lover, who comes to her arms in
the night;
And, loosening the loops of her locks,
With eyes full of love and delight,
From the couch of her rest in ardor and haste arises.—
The Nymph, as if breathed of the tempest, like fire
surprises
The riotous bands of the rocks,
That face with a roar the shouting charge of the seas.