Page:Songs before sunrise (IA beforesunrisongs00swinrich).pdf/223

 Thou sawest, and heardst the rumour scare belief Even unto death and madness, when the flame Was lit whose ashes dropped about the pyre That of two brethren made one sundering fire;

O bitter nurse, that on thine hard bare knees Rear’dst for his fate the bloody-footed child Whose hands should be more bloodily defiled And the old blind feet walk wearier ways than these, Whose seed, brought forth in darkness unto doom, Should 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 birth Watch with veiled heads and weaponed hands, and see Good things and evil, strengthless yet and dumb, Sit in the clouds with cloudlike hours to come;

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