And bright before his face
      That Hour became a Grace,
  As in the light of their Athenian quire
      When the Hours before the sun
      And Graces were made one,
  Called by sweet Love down from the aerial gyre
    By one dear name of natural joy,
To bear on her bright breast from heaven a heaven-born boy.

4.

Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunder
  Or love could lift them for the sun to smite,
His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder
  Had risen, perplexing the presageful night
With shadow and glory around her sphere and under
  And portents prophesying by sound and sight;
And half the sound was song and half was thunder,
  And half his life of lightning, half of light: 
      And in the soft clenched hand
      Shone like a burning brand
  A shadowy sword for swordless fields of fight,
      Wrought only for such lord
      As so may wield the sword
  That all things ill be put to fear and flight
    Even at the flash and sweep and gleam
Of one swift stroke beheld but in a shuddering dream.

5.

Like the sun’s rays that blind the night’s wild beasts
  The sword of song shines as the swordsman sings;
From the west wind’s verge even to the arduous east’s
  The splendour of the shadow that it flings
Makes fire and storm in heaven above the feasts
  Of men fulfilled with food of evil things;
Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests,
  Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings;
      Turns dark the lamp’s hot light,
      And turns the darkness bright
  As with the shadow of dawn’s reverberate wings;
      And far before its way
      Heaven, yearning toward the day,
  Shines with its thunder and round its lightning rings;
    And never hand yet earlier played
With that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, and fire its blade.

6.

As dropping flakes of honey-heavy dew
  More soft than slumber’s, fell the first note’s sound
From strings the swift young hand strayed lightlier through
  Than leaves through calm air wheeling toward the ground
Stray down the drifting wind when skies are blue
  Nor yet the wings of latter winds unbound,
Ere winter loosen all the AEolian crew
  With storm unleashed behind them like a hound. 
      As lightly rose and sank
      Beside a green-flowered bank
  The clear first notes his burning boyhood found
      To sing her sacred praise
      Who rode her city’s ways
  Clothed with bright hair and with high purpose crowned;
    A song of soft presageful breath,
Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death;

7.