Page:Songs before sunrise (IA beforesunrisongs00swinrich).pdf/222

Where day kills night and night again kills day
And dies; but where is that Harmonia?

O all-beholden light not seen of me,
Air, and warm winds that under the sun’s eye
Stretch your strong wings at morning; and thou, sky,
Whose hollow circle engirdling earth and sea
All night the set stars limit, and all day
The moving sun remeasures; ye, I say,

Ye heights of hills, and thou Dircean spring
Inviolable, and ye towers that saw cast down
Seven kings keen-sighted toward your seven-faced town
And quenched the red seed of one sightless king;
And thou, for death less dreadful than for birth,
Whose wild leaves hide the horror of the earth,

O mountain whereon gods made chase of kings,
Cithæron, thou that sawest on Pentheus dead
Fangs of a mother fasten and wax red
And satiate with a son thy swollen springs,
And heardst her cry fright all thine eyries’ nests
Who gave death suck at sanguine-suckling breasts;

Yea, and a grief more grievous, without name,
A curse too grievous for the name of grief,