Page:Songs before sunrise (IA beforesunrisongs00swinrich).pdf/253

 If thou be mortal, if thou change or cease, If thine hand fail, or thine eyes turn from Greece, Thy first-born, and the first-fruits of thy fame, God is no God, and man is moulded out of shame.

Is there change in the secret skies, In the sacred places that see The divine beginning of things, The weft of the web of the world? Is Freedom a worm that dies, And God no God of the free? Is heaven like as earth with her kings And time as a serpent curled Round life as a tree?

From the steel-bound snows of the north, From the mystic mother, the east, From the sands of the fiery south, From the low-lit clouds of the west, A sound of a cry is gone forth; Arise, stand up from the feast, Let wine be far from the mouth, Let no man sleep or take rest, Till the plague hath ceased.