Classic Poem

Is it your birth-dance, brother of white fire burning?
Is it your death-song, brother of red-charred tree?
There is a stir of flame and dance returning
Through the brown body of me.

Am I alive, yet cannot feel ye flitting,
Brothers of heat, in rush of tongue and spark?
Was that rough of my bones, flesh-bare and gritting,
As I turned in the dark?

Was there not hair that wrapped me, red and swaying
Harsh on the huddled knees that flamed a-ring,
Where we crouched and rocked to the white gusts playing
Through your red rioting?

Had I not eyes that flashed to watch ye leaping,
Seared, and red, and glad of your stabbing light:
Eyes that shunned the devil shadows creeping
Close through the hidden night?

Shadows, shadows of dusk! swift in pursuing,
Soon as the sun-lord slept and his shrine burned grey,
Hemming our fearful watch, till his might renewing
Sucked them in shreds of day!

Shadowy throng in the forest! Ever they sought me
When as a boy I sped on the lowland chase;
Ha! how I dared the dark that all but caught me,
Leaped for the bare green space.

When in the drought I drove the flocks from drinking
Up the white chalk scarp from the hollow of dew,
Grey wolf shadows, I knew them, sly and shrinking,
Peering from thorn and yew.

Shadows of summer stealth, alert and cunning,
Lapping the cliff that ringed the herds below;
Shadows to flee, in their gaunt and savage running
O'er wintry downs of snow:

Shadow-voices of night, of winds assailing,
Stilled to a shuffle of feet that crept and crept;
Shuddering hungry death when the flame-god failing
Hissed that his servant slept.

Darkness, and dread, and only shadowy thinking.
Sure was the night, but would the daybreak tire?
Heap our brother the wood-sap for his drinking!
Rouse the red dream of fire!

Shadows of men to fight! They sought us, shrilling
Hoarse attack from the vale of marsh and flood;
Fierce the lust of the heavy hand and the killing,
The lanchards sodden with blood.

Blood on the sun-blink stone at day's unsealing
Held thee, brother of light, for my hunting hours.
Blood on the night stone pledged ye to my shielding,
Brother of dew and showers.

Am I not lord of the dene and the valley waters?
Son of the thong-ringed axe and the shapen stone?
These I slew, and the sons of their mist-haired daughters
Are hill-born, and mine own.

Grey stones of life I raised in countless number,
Barring with woven gloom the shadow raid.
High I heaped my hill of moonlit slumber,
Mocking death's master-shade.

Did I but dream that the long grey shadows spied me,
Crushed my strength, shrunken and old for flight,
Far on the hollow down, with none beside me,
Lonely for my last night?

Have I not dreamed a sound of summers sowing
Sod on sod o'er my cyst of secret stones?
Have I not dreamed a frost of winters throwing
Dust through my whitening bones?

These are the herds, my sons, for ever crying
Summons to unseen flocks along my hills:
The changeless mutter of hidden watchmen plying
The handstones in my mills.

'Tis but a night of winds, and shadows fleeting,
Of dry chalk whispering at the sip of rain
The downs still keep fire and the dawn from meeting;
And I may sleep again.