Collected Works (Vol. III)

184 ORPHEUS I came indeed before this awful throne To seek a party favour, but I wait Shuddering and silent, steadfast and alone, And change my music at the call of Fate. For while ye spake in tumult, in this ear A music rang from earth’s remotest mine, From star and comet, flaming wheel and sphere, From Hell’s deep vault and from the Ilouse divine. A voice diverse, a voice identical Called me this hour from bitterest woes and black, Constraining eloquence and mighty thrall Of cosmic agony, and wrung me back From my poor plea to challenge in my song The whole domain of deeply-seated law, Taunch thunders not Olympic at the strong Bars of the Order backed with strength and awe That men call Will of Zeus: the after scheme And primal fate and most primordial plan Shaped from the earth’s first protoplasmic dream Up to the last great mischief that is man. All this I challenge: that the suns and stars Work in due order and procession meet Without caprice in viewless, changeless bars, Nor self-determinate in their wingless feet. All nature and all consciousness and thought He hath thrown asunder and divided them; Fixing a gulf of agony athwart, Where rolls a tide no soul of man may stem. Himself fixed high, he mocked us with his name Of ‘‘reconciler,” and of ‘‘one beyond all’’; And cast his shadow to the deep, to shame That oneness in its own division’s thrall ; So that Himself appears in cloud and fire Distorted in the world’s distorted mirror; And dark convulsion and confusion dire Stands for his form of error and of terror. But I perceive, I Orpheus, Lord of Song, And every Lord of Song that me shall follow Down steeps of time’s own agony and wrong, Shall see the lightning bridge the dreadful hollow With jagged flame of master-music, hear The blind curse thunder forth against in vain When the swift glory of the rolling sphere Of song pours forth its utterance, keen with pain, Mad with delight, and calm beyond woe and pleasure. Yea, every son of this my soul shall know In the swift concourse of his music’s measure One thing impatient of this to and fro March of hell’s dancers. I perceive a key To lock the prison of the world on him That built the iron walls and made decree Long past in zeons now grown gray and dim, Like halls ancestral whence their folk have fled, The marbles all are broken, and the weeds Grown o’er the bones of the unquiet dead, And time’s remorse avails not on its deeds. I see thatitime is one: future and past Are but one present; space is one, the North And South and all the sixfold shame holds fast No more: the poet’s fiat hath gone forth And tamed the masters of division. Me Nor sun can burn, nor moon make mad, nor time Alter: I drown not in the deepest sea, Nor choke where icy mounta.n ridges climb