Fore-Song Of Malmorda

I.
To me by early morn
Came memories of Old Ireland by the sea,
The tenderest and sweetest that there be,
Wherein the songs of water and of wind
And joy of loving human kind
Mingled in ecstacy of harmony.
All was so low-toned and so sweet,
Near voices seeming ever to repeat
Soft syllables of blessing on my head;
And the faces ah, the faces of the dead
Companions of my youth were there,
And one face fairer than all faces fair,
And one face oh, my mother from whose eyes
The well-springs of all tendernesses rise;
And all were shaping
Love and love and love!
II.
But at night again
Came the old, old pain,
And I saw the storm-gods whirling through the air,
With Desolation's armies everywhere,
The long and lean lines, ragged, reaching back,
Torch-flared and wild-eyed in the wrack,
And the roll, roll, roll of the long thunder,
As the forked flash of the lightning leaped there under,
And nowhere any peace or rest
For the children of the land they called the Blest.
But the surges and the tempest loud were singing,
And the heavens through their wrath were with it ringing,
All shaping
Love and love and love!
III.
Oh my soul! how can it be
That by still or stormy sea,
By the calm that swoons below, or the fury loose above,
The voice of Erin calls on love and love?
Passionate our hearts be, well I know,
Whether our tears or laughter flow,
Whether our faces gloom or glow.
Yea, through our Irish souls Love's flame
Shoots its red blaze and shakes the frame;
Beats on the heart with wings of fire,
As the wind's sleepless fingers shake a lyre,
Making wild eerie music never stilled.
And be our lives with toil or torment filled,
Ever a crisping, whisp ring undertone,
Or hot-caught fiery breath makes known
The dominant, deep impulse that the hoar
Old ages stirred with, and that o'er and o'er
Re-born with travail in the hearts of men,
Is shaping on our lips, yea, now as then--
Love and love and love!
IV.
Then spake a voice to me:
"Beyond the far days of the Flame-god's time
A fair god looked upon the young land's prime,
And on the mountains and the streams and seas
Set seals of loving. Then in mystic threes
Came many gods to curse or bless,
Each with his portent of the soul's distress
Or jubilance Bravery, Envy, Jealousy,
Reverence, Pity, Faith all joy that bides,
Or pain that lasts between the ocean's tides,
Or through the heaven-circling of a star.
All these have there endured to make or mar;
But under the sea's breast ever stir the dreams
First waked by love, and in the babbling streams
Love murmurs all day long,
And down in the hearts of the mountains strong,
Love makes its melody of notes so deep
That the dead gods stir in their stony sleep,
Their cold lips shaping
Love and love and love!"
V.
Then full voiced came my song.
Twixt day and dark the dead Past called to me.
A long wave rolled along the Irish sea,
Its white foam fronted with tossing spears,
Red with the rust of a thousand years.
It brake on the sands and the waters ran
With a blood-red stain, and the song began.
They were there, the steel-capped Ostman hordes;
In the dusk they flashed their two-edged swords.
Their warships tossed on the purpling waves;
At the rowers benches toiled the slaves.
Then the Irish king in his youth and might,
With sweep of battle and roar of fight
About him, and circling his Norseland prize,
The blue of the sea in her wild, sweet eyes,
The life of a man in each strand of her hair,
And the glow of a flame on her bosom bare.
Mid storm and battle, by moon and mist,
I saw through their very souls, I wiste!
And the shields that rang, and the sobs that died,
And the echoing hills and the sombre tide
Ever were shaping
Love and love and love!