Chorus from "Atalanta in Calydon"
by Swinbourne




Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven;
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And life the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand 
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the labouring earth;
And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after
And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow
the holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south
They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech the wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labour and thought
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways
And love, and a space for delight
And beauty and length of days
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap.
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.