Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode

Excerpt: ...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. Pg 326 THE GARDEN OF CYMODOCE Sea, and bright wind, and heaven of ardent air, More dear than all things earth-born; O to me Mother more dear than love's own longing, sea, More than love's eyes are, fair, Be with my spirit of song as wings to bear, As fire to feel and breathe and brighten; be A spirit of sense more deep of deity, A light of love, if love may be, more strong In me than very song. For song I have loved with second love, but thee, Thee first, thee, mother; ere my songs had breath, That love of loves, whose bondage makes man *, Was in me strong as death. And seeing no slave may love thee, no, not one That loves not freedom more, And more for thy sake loves her, and for hers Thee; or that hates not, on whate'er thy shore Or what thy wave soever, all things done Of man beneath the sun In his despite and thine, to cross and curse Your light and song that as with lamp and verse Guide safe the strength of our sphered universe, Thy breath it was, thou knowest, and none but thine, That taught me love of one thing more divine. Pg 327 Str. 1. Ah, yet my youth was old Its first years dead and cold As last year's autumn's gold, And all my spirit of singing sick and sad and sere, Or ever I might behold The fairest of thy fold Engirt, enringed, enrolled, In all thy flower-sweet flock of islands dear and near. Str. 2. Yet in my heart I deemed The fairest things, meseemed, Truth, dreaming, ever dreamed, Had made mine eyes already like a god's to see: Of all sea-things that were Clothed on with water and air, That none could live more fair Than thy sweet love long since had shown for love to me. Ant. 1. I knew not, mother of mine, That one birth more divine Than all births else of thine That hang like flowers or jewels on thy deep soft breast Was left for me to...