But not in the world as voices storm-shatter’d,
    Not borne down by the wind’s weight;
The rushing time rings with our splendid word
          Like darkness filled with fires.

For Love doth use us for a sound of song,
    And Love’s meaning our life wields,
Making our souls like syllables to throng
          His tunes of exultation.

Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly,
    As rain blown along earth’s fields;
Yet are we god-desiring liturgy,
          Sung joys of adoration;

Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife,
    We go charged with a strong flame;
For as a language Love hath seized on life
          His burning heart to story.

Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee. 
    Thy thought’s golden and glad name,
The mortal conscience of immortal glee,
          Love’s zeal in Love’s own glory.

PART I

DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY

PRELUDE

Night on bleak downs; a high grass-grown trench runs athwart the slope.  The earthwork is manned by warriors clad in hides.  Two warriors, BRYS and GAST, talking.

Gast.  This puts a tall heart in me, and a tune Of great glad blood flowing brave in my flesh, To see thee, after all these moons, returned, My Brys.  If there’s no rust in thy shoulder-joints, That battle-wrath of thine, and thy good throwing, Will be more help for us than if the dyke Were higher by a span.—­Ha! there was howling Down in the thicket; they come soon, for sure.

Brys.  Has there been hunger in the forest long?

Gast.  I think, not only hunger makes them fierce:  They broke not long since into a village yonder, A huge throng of them; all through the night we heard The feasting they kept up.  And that has made The wolves blood-thirsty, I believe.

Brys. 
     O fools
To keep so slack a waking on their dykes!  Now have they made a sleepless winter for us.  Every night we must look, lest the down-slope Between us and the woods turn suddenly To a grey onrush full of small green candles, The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh.  And well for us then if there’s no more mist Than the white panting of the wolfish hunger.

Gast.  They’ll come to-night.  Three of us hunting went Among the trees below:  not long we stayed.  All the wolves of the world are in the forest, And man’s the meat they’re after.

Brys. 
     Ay, it must be
Blood-thirst is in them, if they come to-night, Such clear and starry weather.—­What dost thou make, Gast, of the stars?

Gast. 
     Brother, they’re horrible. 
I always keep my head as much as I may
Bent so they cannot look me in the eyes.