o lamp for the dead;
O, lift up the light of thine eye on the dark of our dread.
Who hath blinded thee? who hath prevailed on thee? who hath
ensnared?
Who hath broken thy bow, and the shafts for thy battle
prepared? 1390
Have they found out a fetter to bind thee, a chain for thine
arm that was bared?
Be the name of thy conqueror set forth, and the might of thy
master declared.
O God, fair God of the morning, O glory of day,
What ails thee to cast from thy forehead its garland away?
To pluck from thy temples their chaplet enwreathed of the light,
And bind on the brows of thy godhead a frontlet of night?
Thou hast loosened the necks of thine horses, and goaded their
flanks with affright,
To the race of a course that we know not on ways that are hid from
our sight.
As a wind through the darkness the wheels of their chariot
are whirled,
And the light of its passage is night on the face of the
world. 1400
And there falls from the wings of thy glory no help from on high,
But a shadow that smites us with fear and desire of thine eye.
For our hearts are as reeds that a wind on the water bows down
and goes by,
To behold not thy comfort in heaven that hath left us untimely
to die.
But what light is it now leaps forth on the land
Enkindling the waters and ways of the air
From thy forehead made bare,
From the gleam of thy bow-bearing hand?
Hast thou set not thy right hand again to the string,
With the back-bowed horns bent sharp for a spring 1410
And the barbed shaft drawn,
Till the shrill steel sing and the tense nerve ring
That pierces the heart of the dark with dawn,
O huntsman, O king,
When the flame of thy face hath twilight in chase
As a hound hath a blood-mottled fawn?
He has glanced into golden the grey sea-strands,
And the clouds are shot through with the fires of his hands,
And the height of the hollow of heaven that he fills
As the heart of a strong man is quickened and thrills; 1420
High over the folds of the low-lying lands,
On the shadowless hills
As a guard on his watchtower he stands