Thou art chief of us, and lord; Thy song is as a sword Keen-edged and scented in the blade from flowers; Thou art lord and king; but we Lift younger eyes, and see Less of high hope, less light on wandering hours; Hours that have borne men down so long, Seen the right fail, and watched uplift the wrong. But thine imperial soul, As years and ruins roll To the same end, and all things and all dreams With the same wreck and roar Drift on the dim same shore, Still in the bitter foam and brackish streams Tracks the fresh water-spring to be And sudden sweeter fountains in the sea. As once the high God bound With many a rivet round Man's saviour, and with iron nailed him through, At the wild end of things, Where even his own bird's wings Flagged, whence the sea shone like a drop of dew, From Caucasus beheld below Past fathoms of unfathomable snow; So the strong God, the chance Central of circumstance, Still shows him exile who will not be slave; All thy great fame and thee Girt by the dim strait sea With multitudinous walls of wandering wave; Shows us our greatest from his throne Fate-stricken, and rejected of his own. Yea, he is strong, thou say'st, A mystery many-faced, The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee; The blind night sees him, death Shrinks beaten at his breath, And his right hand is heavy on the sea: We know he hath made us, and is king; We know not if he care for anything. Thus much, no more, we know; He bade what is be so, Bade light be and bade night be, one by one; Bade hope and fear, bade ill And good redeem and kill, Till all men be aweary of the sun And his world burn in its own flame And bear no witness longer of his name. Yet though all this be thus, Be those men praised of us Who have loved and wrought and sorrowed and not sinned For fame or fear or gold, Nor waxed for winter cold, Nor changed for changes of the worldly wind; Praised above men of men be these, Till this one world and work we know shall cease. Yea, one thing more than this, We know that one thing is, The splendour of a spirit without blame, That not the labouring years Blind-born, nor any fears, Nor men nor any gods can tire or tame; But purer power with fiery breath Fills, and exalts above the gulfs of death. Praised above men be thou, Whose laurel-laden brow, Made for the morning, droops not in the night; Praised and beloved, that none Of all thy great things done Flies higher than thy most equal spirit's flight; Praised, that nor doubt nor hope could bend Earth's loftiest head, found upright to the end. BEFORE DAWN