But thou, fair beauty of heaven, dear face of the day nigh dead, [_Epode._ What horror hath hidden thy glory, what hand hath muffled thine head? 1380 O sun, with what song shall we call thee, or ward off thy wrath by what name, With what prayer shall we seek to thee, soothe with what incense, assuage with what gift, If thy light be such only as lightens to deathward the seaman adrift With the fire of his house for a beacon, that foemen have wasted with flame? Arise now, lift up thy light; give ear to us, put forth thine hand, Reach toward us thy torch of deliverance, a lamp for the night of the land. Thine eye is the light of the living, no lamp for the dead; O, lift up the light of thine eye on the dark of our dread. Who hath blinded thee? who hath prevailed on thee? who hath ensnared? Who hath broken thy bow, and the shafts for thy battle prepared? 1390 Have they found out a fetter to bind thee, a chain for thine arm that was bared? Be the name of thy conqueror set forth, and the might of thy master declared. O God, fair God of the morning, O glory of day, What ails thee to cast from thy forehead its garland away? To pluck from thy temples their chaplet enwreathed of the light, And bind on the brows of thy godhead a frontlet of night? Thou hast loosened the necks of thine horses, and goaded their flanks with affright, To the race of a course that we know not on ways that are hid from our sight. As a wind through the darkness the wheels of their chariot are whirled, And the light of its passage is night on the face of the world. 1400 And there falls from the wings of thy glory no help from on high, But a shadow that smites us with fear and desire of thine eye. For our hearts are as reeds that a wind on the water bows down and goes by, To behold not thy comfort in heaven that hath left us untimely to die. But what light is it now leaps forth on the land Enkindling the waters and ways of the air From thy forehead made bare, From the gleam of thy bow-bearing hand? Hast thou set not thy right hand again to the string, With the back-bowed horns bent sharp for a spring 1410 And the barbed shaft drawn, Till the shrill steel sing and the tense nerve ring That pierces the heart of the dark with dawn, O huntsman, O king, When the flame of thy face hath twilight in chase As a hound hath a blood-mottled fawn? He has glanced into golden the grey sea-strands,