Page:Songs before sunrise (IA beforesunrisongs00swinrich).pdf/222

 Where day kills night and night again kills day And dies; but where is that Harmonia?

O all-beholden light not seen of me, Air, and warm winds that under the sun’s eye Stretch your strong wings at morning; and thou, sky, Whose hollow circle engirdling earth and sea All night the set stars limit, and all day The moving sun remeasures; ye, I say,

Ye heights of hills, and thou Dircean spring Inviolable, and ye towers that saw cast down Seven kings keen-sighted toward your seven-faced town And 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, Cithæron, thou that sawest on Pentheus dead Fangs of a mother fasten and wax red And satiate with a son thy swollen springs, And heardst her cry fright all thine eyries’ nests Who gave death suck at sanguine-suckling breasts;

Yea, and a grief more grievous, without name, A curse too grievous for the name of grief,