Page:Songs before sunrise (IA beforesunrisongs00swinrich).pdf/261

 From hollow and hill, from vales and all thy springs, From all shapes born and breath of all lips made, From thunders, and the sound of winds and wings, From light, and from the solemn sleep of shade, From the full fountains of all living things, Speak, that this plague be stayed. Bear witness all the ways of death and life If thou be with us in the world's old strife, If thou be mother indeed, And from these wounds that bleed Gather in thy great breast the dews that fall, And on thy sacred knees Lull with mute melodies, Mother, thy sleeping sons in death's dim hall. For these thy sons, behold, Sons of thy sons of old, Bear witness if these be not as they were; If that high name of Greece Depart, dissolve, decease From mouths of men and memories like as air. By the last milk that drips Dead on the child's dead lips, By old men's white unviolated hair, By sweet unburied faces That fill those red high places Where death and freedom found one lion's lair,