Page:Songs of the Springtides - Swinburne (1880).pdf/26

 Thoughts that make men of gods and gods of men.

For love the high song taught him: love that turns God's heart toward man as man's to Godward; love That life and death and life are fashioned of, From the first breath that burns Half kindled on the flowerlike yeanling's lip, So light and faint that life seems like to slip, To that yet weaklier drawn When sunset dies of night's devouring dawn. But the man dying not wholly as all men dies If aught be left of his in live men's eyes Out of the dawnless dark of death to rise; If aught of deed or word Be seen for all time or of all time heard. Love, that though body and soul were overthrown Should live for love's sake of itself alone,