Tiresias

PART I

It is an hour before the hour of dawn.Set in mine hand my staff and leave me hereOutside the hollow house that blind men fear,More blind than I who live on life withdrawn5And feel on eyes that see not but foreseeThe shadow of death which clothes Antigone.

Here lay her living body that here liesDead, if man living know what thing is death,If life be all made up of blood and breath,10And no sense be save as of ears and eyes.But heart there is not, tongue there is not found,To think or sing what verge hath life or bound.

In the beginning when the powers that madeThe young child man a little loved him, seeing15His joy of life and fair face of his being,And bland and laughing with the man-child played,As friends they saw on our divine one dayKing Cadmus take to queen Harmonia.

The strength of soul that builds up as with hands20Walls spiritual and towers and towns of thoughtWhich only fate, not force, can bring to nought,Took then to wife the light of all men's lands,War's child and love's, most sweet and wise and strong,Order of things and rule and guiding song.25

It was long since: yea, even the sun that sawRemembers hardly what was, nor how long.And now the wise heart of the worldly songIs perished, and the holy hand of lawCan set no tune on time, nor help again30The power of thought to build up life for men.

Yea, surely are they now transformed or dead,And sleep below this world, where no sun warms,Or move about it now in formless formsIncognizable, and all their lordship fled;35And where they stood up singing crawl and hiss,With fangs that kill behind their lips that kiss.

Yet though her marriage-garment, seeming fair,Was dyed in sin and woven of jealousyTo turn their seed to poison, time shall see40The gods reissue from them, and repairTheir broken stamp of godhead, and againThought and wise love sing words of law to men.

I, Tiresias the prophet, seeing in ThebesMuch evil, and the misery of men's hands45Who sow with fruitless wheat the stones and sands,With fruitful thorns the fallows and warm glebes,Bade their hands hold lest worse hap came to pass;But which of you had heed of Tiresias?

I am as Time's self in mine own wearied mind,50Whom the strong heavy-footed years have ledFrom night to night and dead men unto dead,And from the blind hope to the memory blind;For each man's life is woven, as Time's life is,Of blind young hopes and old blind memories.55

I am a soul outside of death and birth.I see before me and afterward I see,O child, O corpse, the live dead face of thee,Whose life and death are one thing upon earthWhere day kills night and night again kills day60And dies; but where is that Harmonia?

O all-beholden light not seen of me,Air, and warm winds that under the sun's eyeStretch your strong wings at morning; and thou, sky,Whose hollow circle engirdling earth and sea65All night the set stars limit, and all dayThe moving sun remeasures; ye, I say,

Ye heights of hills, and thou Dircean springInviolable, and ye towers that saw cast downSeven kings keen-sighted toward your seven-faced town70And quenched the red seed of one sightless king;And thou, for death less dreadful than for birth,Whose wild leaves hide the horror of the earth,

O mountain whereon gods made chase of kings,Cithaeron, thou that sawest on Pentheus dead75Fangs of a mother fasten and wax redAnd satiate with a son thy swollen springs,And heardst her cry fright all thine eyries' nestsWho gave death suck at sanguine-suckling breasts;

Yea, and a grief more grievous, without name,80A curse too grievous for the name of grief,Thou sawest, and heardst the rumour scare beliefEven unto death and madness, when the flameWas lit whose ashes dropped about the pyreThat of two brethren made one sundering fire;85

O bitter nurse, that on thine hard bare kneesRear'dst for his fate the bloody-footed childWhose hands should be more bloodily defiledAnd the old blind feet walk wearier ways than these,Whose seed, brought forth in darkness unto doom,90Should break as fire out of his mother's womb;

I bear you witness as ye bear to me,Time, day, night, sun, stars, life, death, air, sea, earth,And ye that round the human house of birthWatch with veiled heads and weaponed hands, and see95Good things and evil, strengthless yet and dumb,Sit in the clouds with cloudlike hours to come;

Ye forces without form and viewless powersThat have the keys of all our years in hold,That prophesy too late with tongues of gold,100In a strange speech whose words are perished hours,I witness to you what good things ye giveAs ye to me what evil while I live.

What should I do to blame you, what to praise,For floral hours and hours funereal?105What should I do to curse or bless at allFor winter-woven or summer-coloured days?Curse he that will and bless you whoso can,I have no common part in you with man.

I hear a springing water, whose quick sound110Makes softer the soft sunless patient air,And the wind's hand is laid on my thin hairLight as a lover's, and the grasses roundHave odours in them of green bloom and rainSweet as the kiss wherewith sleep kisses pain.115

I hear the low sound of the spring of timeStill beating as the low live throb of blood,And where its waters gather head and floodI hear change moving on them, and the chimeAcross them of reverberate wings of hours120Sounding, and feel the future air of flowers.

The wind of change is soft as snow, and sweetThe sense thereof as roses in the sun,The faint wind springing with the springs that run,The dim sweet smell of flowering hopes, and heat125Of unbeholden sunrise; yet how longI know not, till the morning put forth song.

I prophesy of life, who live with death;Of joy, being sad; of sunlight, who am blind;Of man, whose ways are alien from mankind130And his lips are not parted with man's breath;I am a word out of the speechless years,The tongue of time, that no man sleeps who hears.

I stand a shadow across the door of doom,Athwart the lintel of death's house, and wait;135Nor quick nor dead, nor flexible by fate,Nor quite of earth nor wholly of the tomb;A voice, a vision, light as fire or air,Driven between days that shall be and that were.

I prophesy, with feet upon a grave,140Of death cast out and life devouring deathAs flame doth wood and stubble with a breath;Of freedom, though all manhood were one slave;Of truth, though all the world were liar; of love,That time nor hate can raze the witness of.145

Life that was given for love's sake and his law'sTheir powers have no more power on; they divideSpoils wrung from lust or wrath of man or pride,And keen oblivion without pity or pauseSets them on fire and scatters them on air150Like ashes shaken from a suppliant's hair.

But life they lay no hand on; life once givenNo force of theirs hath competence to take;Life that was given for some divine thing's sake,To mix the bitterness of earth with heaven,155Light with man's night, and music with his breath,Dies not, but makes its living food of death.

I have seen this, who live where men are not,In the high starless air of fruitful nightOn that serenest and obscurest height160Where dead and unborn things are one in thoughtAnd whence the live unconquerable springsFeed full of force the torrents of new things.

I have seen this, who saw long since, being man,As now I know not if indeed I be,165The fair bare body of Wisdom, good to seeAnd evil, whence my light and night began;Light on the goal and darkness on the way,Light all through night and darkness all through day.

Mother, that by that Pegasean spring170Didst fold round in thine arms thy blinded son,Weeping "O holiest, what thing hast thou done,What, to my child? woe's me that see the thing!Is this thy love to me-ward, and hereofMust I take sample how the gods can love?175

"O child, thou hast seen indeed, poor child of mine,The breasts and flanks of Pallas bare in sight,But never shalt see more the dear sun's light;O Helicon, how great a pay is thineFor some poor antelopes and wild-deer dead,180My child's eyes hast thou taken in their stead--"

Mother, thou knewest not what she had to give,Thy goddess, though then angered, for mine eyes;Fame and foreknowledge, and to be most wise,And centuries of high-thoughted life to live,185And in mine hand this guiding staff to beAs eyesight to the feet of men that see.

Perchance I shall not die at all, nor passThe general door and lintel of men dead;Yet even the very tongue of wisdom said190What grace should come with death to Tiresias,What special honour that God's hand accordWho gathers all men's nations as their lord.

And sometimes when the secret eye of thoughtIs changed with obscuration, and the sense195Aches with long pain of hollow prescience,And fiery foresight with foresuffering boughtSeems even to infect my spirit and consume,Hunger and thirst come on me for the tomb.

I could be fain to drink my death and sleep,200And no more wrapped about with bitter dreamsTalk with the stars and with the winds and streamsAnd with the inevitable years, and weep;For how should he who communes with the yearsBe sometime not a living spring of tears?205

O child, that guided of thine only willDidst set thy maiden foot against the gateTo strike it open ere thine hour of fate,Antigone, men say not thou didst ill,For love's sake and the reverence of his awe210Divinely dying, slain by mortal law;

For love is awful as immortal death.And through thee surely hath thy brother wonRest, out of sight of our world-weary sun,And in the dead land where ye ghosts draw breath215A royal place and honour; so wast thouHappy, though earth have hold of thee too now.

So hast thou life and name inviolableAnd joy it may be, sacred and severe,Joy secret-souled beyond all hope or fear,220A monumental joy wherein to dwellSecluse and silent, a selected state,Serene possession of thy proper fate.

Thou art not dead as these are dead who liveFull of blind years, a sorrow-shaken kind,225Nor as these are am I the prophet blind;They have not life that have not heart to giveLife, nor have eyesight who lack heart to seeWhen to be not is better than to be.

O ye whom time but bears with for a span,230How long will ye be blind and dead, how longMake your own souls part of your own soul's wrong?Son of the word of the most high gods, man,Why wilt thou make thine hour of light and breathEmptier of all but shame than very death?235

Fool, wilt thou live for ever? though thou careWith all thine heart for life to keep it fast,Shall not thine hand forego it at the last?Lo, thy sure hour shall take thee by the hairSleeping, or when thou knowest not, or wouldst fly;240And as men died much mightier shalt thou die.

Yea, they are dead, men much more worth than thou;The savour of heroic lives that were,Is it not mixed into thy common air?The sense of them is shed about thee now:245Feel not thy brows a wind blowing from far?Aches not thy forehead with a future star?

The light that thou may'st make out of thy nameIs in the wind of this same hour that drives,Blown within reach but once of all men's lives;250And he that puts forth hand upon the flameShall have it for a garland on his headTo sign him for a king among the dead.

But these men that the lessening years behold,Who sit the most part without flame or crown,255And brawl and sleep and wear their life-days downWith joys and griefs ignobler than of old,And care not if the better day shall be -Are these or art thou dead, Antigone?

PART II260

As when one wakes out of a waning dreamAnd sees with instant eyes the naked thoughtWhereof the vision as a web was wrought,I saw beneath a heaven of cloud and gleam,Ere yet the heart of the young sun waxed brave,265One like a prophet standing by a grave.

In the hoar heaven was hardly beam or breath,And all the coloured hills and fields were grey,And the wind wandered seeking for the day,And wailed as though he had found her done to death270And this grey hour had built to bury herThe hollow twilight for a sepulchre.

But in my soul I saw as in a glassA pale and living body full of graceThere lying, and over it the prophet's face275Fixed; and the face was not of Tiresias,For such a starry fire was in his eyesAs though their light it was that made the skies.

Such eyes should God's have been when very loveLooked forth of them and set the sun aflame,280And such his lips that called the light by nameAnd bade the morning forth at sound thereof;His face was sad and masterful as fate,And like a star's his look compassionate.

Like a star's gazed on of sad eyes so long285It seems to yearn with pity, and all its fireAs a man's heart to tremble with desireAnd heave as though the light would bring forth song;Yet from his face flashed lightning on the land,And like the thunder-bearer's was his hand.290

The steepness of strange stairs had tired his feet,And his lips yet seemed sick of that salt breadWherewith the lips of banishment are fed;But nothing was there in the world so sweetAs the most bitter love, like God's own grace,295Wherewith he gazed on that fair buried face.

Grief and glad pride and passion and sharp shame,Wrath and remembrance, faith and hope and hateAnd pitiless pity of days degenerate,Were in his eyes as an incorporate flame300That burned about her, and the heart thereofAnd central flower was very fire of love.

But all about her grave wherein she sleptWere noises of the wild wind-footed yearsWhose footprints flying were full of blood and tears,305Shrieks as of Maenads on their hills that leaptAnd yelled as beasts of ravin, and their meatWas the rent flesh of their own sons to eat:

And fiery shadows passing with strange cries,And Sphinx-like shapes about the ruined lands,310And the red reek of parricidal handsAnd intermixture of incestuous eyes,And light as of that self-divided flameWhich made an end of the Cadmean name.

And I beheld again, and lo the grave,315And the bright body laid therein as dead,And the same shadow across another headThat bowed down silent on that sleeping slaveWho was the lady of empire from her birthAnd light of all the kingdoms of the earth.320

Within the compass of the watcher's handAll strengths of other men and divers powersWere held at ease and gathered up as flowers;His heart was as the heart of his whole land,And at his feet as natural servants lay325Twilight and dawn and night and labouring day.

He was most awful of the sons of God.Even now men seeing seemed at his lips to seeThe trumpet of the judgment that should be,And in his right hand terror for a rod,330And in the breath that made the mountains bowThe horned fire of Moses on his brow.

The strong wind of the coming of the LordHad blown as flame upon him, and brought downOn his bare head from heaven fire for a crown,335And fire was girt upon him as a swordTo smite and lighten, and on what ways he trodThere fell from him the shadow of a God.

Pale, with the whole world's judgment in his eyes,He stood and saw the grief and shame endure340That he, though highest of angels might not cure,And the same sins done under the same skies,And the same slaves to the same tyrants thrown,And fain he would have slept, and fain been stone.

But with unslumbering eyes he watched the sleep345That sealed her sense whose eyes were suns of old;And the night shut and opened, and behold,The same grave where those prophets came to weep,But she that lay therein had moved and stirred,And where those twain had watched her stood a third.350

The tripled rhyme that closed in ParadiseWith Love's name sealing up its starry speech -The tripled might of hand that found in reachAll crowns beheld far off of all men's eyes,Song, colour, carven wonders of live stone -355These were not, but the very soul alone.

The living spirit, the good gift of grace,The faith which takes of its own blood to giveThat the dead veins of buried hope may live,Came on her sleeping, face to naked face,360And from a soul more sweet than all the southBreathed love upon her sealed and breathless mouth.

Between her lips the breath was blown as fire,And through her flushed veins leapt the liquid life,And with sore passion and ambiguous strife365The new birth rent her and the new desire,The will to live, the competence to be,The sense to hearken and the soul to see.

And the third prophet standing by her graveStretched forth his hand and touched her, and her eyes370Opened as sudden suns in heaven might rise,And her soul caught from his the faith to save;Faith above creeds, faith beyond records, bornOf the pure, naked, fruitful, awful morn.

For in the daybreak now that night was dead375The light, the shadow, the delight, the pain,The purpose and the passion of those twain,Seemed gathered on that third prophetic head,And all their crowns were as one crown, and oneHis face with her face in the living sun.380

For even with that communion of their eyesHis whole soul passed into her and made her strong;And all the sounds and shows of shame and wrong,The hand that slays, the lip that mocks and lies,Temples and thrones that yet men seem to see -385Are these dead or art thou dead, Italy?