A VOICE [_Sings._] Upon my lips, like a cloud To burst on the peaks of light, Sit cowled impossible things To tie my hands at their prime and height. Power, break through their shroud; Pierce them so thoroughly, Thoroughly enter me, Know me for one dead; Break the shadowy thread, The cowering spirit’s bond Writ by illusions blond! Ah! Let the morning pale Throb with a wilder pulse: No delicate flame shall quail With terror at your convulse. Thin branches whip the white skies To lips and spaces of song That chant a mood to my eyes.... Ah! Sleep can be overlong. MOSES Voices thunder, voices of deeds not done: Lo, on the air are scrawled in abysmal light Old myths never known and yet already forgone, And songs more lost, more secret than desert light: Martyrdoms of uncreated things, Virgin silences waiting a breaking voice— As in a womb they cry, in a cage beat vain wings Under life, over life: is their unbeing my choice? Dull wine of torpor—the unsoldered spirit lies limp. Ah! If she would run into a mould, Some new idea unwalled To human by-ways, an apocalyptic camp Of utterest and ulterior dreaming, Understood only in its gleaming, To flash stark naked the whole girth of the world. I am sick of priests and forms, This rigid dry-boned refinement: As ladies’ perfumes are Obnoxious to stern natures, This miasma of a rotting god Is to me. Who has made of the forest a park? Who has changed the wolf to a dog? And put the horse in harness? And man’s mind in a groove? I heard the one spirit cry in them, “Break this metamorphosis, Disenchant my lying body; Only putrefaction is free, And I, Freedom, am not. Moses! Touch us, thou!” There shall not be a void or calm, But a fury fill the veins of time— Whose limbs had begun to rot, Who had flattered my stupid torpor With an easy and mimic energy, And drained my veins with a paltry marvel More monstrous than battle; For the soul ached and went out dead in pleasure. Is not this song still sung in the streets of me? A naked African Walked in the sun Singing—singing Of his wild love. I slew the tiger With your young strength (My tawny panther) Rolled round my life. Three sheep, your breasts And my head between, Grazing together On a smooth slope.