Sec. Strange travail and strong pains, Our mother, hast thou borne these many years While thy pure blood and tears Mixed with the Tyrrhene and the Adrian sea; Light things were said of thee, As of one buried deep among the dead; Yea, she hath been, they said, She was when time was younger, and is not; The very cerecloths rot That flutter in the dusty wind of death, Not moving with her breath; Far seasons and forgotten years enfold Her dead corpse old and cold With many windy winters and pale springs: She is none of this world's things. Though her dead head like a live garland wear The golden-growing hair That flows over her breast down to her feet, Dead queens, whose life was sweet In sight of all men living, have been found So cold, so clad, so crowned, With all things faded and with one thing fair, Their old immortal hair, When flesh and bone turned dust at touch of day: And she is dead as they. So men said sadly, mocking; so the slave, Whose life was his soul's grave; So, pale or red with change of fast and feast, The sanguine-sandalled priest; So the Austrian, when his fortune came to flood, And the warm wave was blood; With wings that widened and with beak that smote, So shrieked through either throat From the hot horror of its northern nest That double-headed pest; So, triple-crowned with fear and fraud and shame, He of whom treason came, The herdsman of the Gadarean swine; So all his ravening kine, Made fat with poisonous pasture; so not we, Mother, beholding thee. Make answer, O the crown of all our slain, Ye that were one, being twain, Twain brethren, twin-born to the second birth, Chosen out of all our earth To be the prophesying stars that say How hard is night on day, Stars in serene and sudden heaven rerisen Before the sun break prison And ere the moon be wasted; fair first flowers In that red wreath of ours Woven with the lives of all whose lives were shed To crown their mother's head With leaves of civic cypress and thick yew, Till the olive bind it too, Olive and laurel and all loftier leaves That victory wears or weaves At her fair feet for her beloved brow; Hear, for she too hears now, O Pisacane, from Calabrian sands; O all heroic hands Close on the sword-hilt, hands of all her dead; O many a holy head, Bowed for her sake even to her reddening dust; O chosen, O pure and just, Who counted for a small thing life's estate, And died, and made it great; Ye whose names mix with all her memories; ye Who rather chose to see Death, than our more intolerable things; Thou whose name withers kings,