Of seven hues in white elision,
the radii of your silver gyre,
are the seven swords of vision
that spoked the prophets’ flaming tyre;
their sistered stridences ignite
the spectrum of the poets’ lyre
whose unison becomes a white
revolving disc of stainless fire,
and sights the eye of that sole star
that, in the heavy clods we are,
the kindred seeds of fire can spy,
or, in the cold shell of the rock,
the red yolk of the phœnix-cock
whose feathers in the meteors fly.
The First Sword.
The first’s of lunar crystal hewn,
a woman’s beauty, through whose snows
the volted ecstasy outglows
a dolphin dying in the noon;
and fights for love, as that for life,
and leaps and turns upon its side
and swirls the anger of its strife
a radiant iris far and wide,
bronze, azure, and auroral rose
faint-flushing through its nacreous snows—
electric in a god’s strong hand
this sword was tempered in my blood
when all its tides were at the flood
and heroes fought upon the strand.
The Second Sword.
Clear spirits of the waveless sea
have steeped the second in their light,
a low blue flame, the halcyon’s flight
passing at sunset swift and free
along the miles of tunny-floats
when the soft swell in slumber rolls
and sways the lanterns on their poles
and idly rocks the drifting boats;
when evening strews the rosy fleece
and the low conches sound from far,
a lonely bird whose sword of air
is hilted with the evening star
has slain upon the shrine of peace
the daily slaving forms I wear.
The Third Sword.
Like moonbeams on a wintry sea
the third is sorrowful and pale
and from my vision guards the grail
whose glory I shall never see;
a boreal streamer burning green,
it shivers in a land of shade
as if some wandering Cain had seen
his soul reflected in its blade.
It glitters in some frozen hold
that leaves its icy hilt unthawn;
its radius is a flame of cold,
the skyline of an arctic dawn;
Vulcan in forging it grew old
and sorrow froze when it was drawn.
The Fourth Sword.
In crimson sash and golden vest
a gay dædalion of the day
transfixing with a sworded ray
its black and melancholy breast,
the tiger-fly with whirring vans
rifles a sombre grape, whose heart,
red-glowing to the hilted dart,
seems a lit furnace that he fans—
so to the soured and black despairs
my blasted vine in autumn bears,
so horneted with strident wings,
to his own trumpet peal and drum
the toreadoring sylph will come
and anger is the sword he brings.
The Fifth Sword.
Silent and vertical and dim
the lunar flambeau of a prayer
that rising in the frosty air
is silvered by the seraphim,
thawing the night with airy blade,
like a funereal candle set
to burn the fuel of regret
(though in the noon it casts a shade)
the fifth, a lifetime to consume,
in vigilance is still the same,
a sword of silver in the gloom
it guards a grief that is my shame;
by day a cypress on a tomb,
but in the night it is a flame.
The Sixth Sword.
From that Toledo of the brain
where none but perfect steel is wrought,
of all its cities thronged with thought
that soars the farthest from the plain,
clear lightning with a sheath of gold,
a scarlet tassel at the hilt,
a blade the noonday sun to jilt
and sparkle in a cherub’s hold,
the sixth salutes the last Crusade
and her, by all the world betrayed,
who reared its red and golden streamer
upon the ramparts of Castile—
of the great West the sole redeemer
and rainbow of the Storms of Steel.
The Seventh Sword.
The seventh arms a god’s desire
who lusts, in Psyche, to possess
his white reluctant pythoness;
as in the fugitive of fire,
pale ice, the sworded flame is caught;
or the red images of ire
in the pure person of a thought.
As arctic crystals that would shun,
but each become, the living sun,
where best his image may be sought;
so to the shining sword he probes,
her breasts are lighted, and their globes
each to a vase of crystal wrought.