Sword Song

[Opening — Henley, "The Song of the Sword" (1892)]
The Sword
Singing--
The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword
Clanging imperious
Forth from Time's battlements
His ancient and triumphing Song.

Verse 1 — Earth
In the beginning,
ere God inspired Himself
into the clay thing thumbed to His image —
that was the birth of me:
I am the Sword.
Stand on the ground and know it:
know the smallest things and the biggest things,
the shallowest things and the deepest things.
Nine stones under the house, one way under the feet —
earth first, or nothing stands.

Verse 2 — Water
Hard and bleak, keen and cruel,
short-hilted, long-shafted, I froze into steel —
and the blood of my elder sprang like a wave in the wind.
Water takes the shape of what holds it and never loses itself:
look with both eyes, the whole field and the single cut,
and flow where the opening opens.

Verse 3 — Fire
Glowed like a coal at the throat of the furnace,
as he knew me and named me the War-Thing, the Comrade,
father of honour and giver of kingship.
Fire is the moment: strike in the rhythm between rhythms,
take the initiative, take the heat, and let the cut arrive
before the thought of it does.

Verse 4 — Wind
Calling His dooms to the Winds of the world —
the winds are the schools of other men.
Learn every wind, wear none of them:
no school owns the wind, and the sword that copies
is a sword already beaten.

Verse 5 — Void
Prone down the nethermost chasms of the Void —
clear singing, clean slicing;
sweet spoken, soft finishing;
making death beautiful.
When form falls away, the cut is already made:
empty hand, empty mind, and the sword sings on its own.

Bridge — Dokkodo
Do nothing that is of no use.
Follow, O follow me, heroes, my children —
edged to annihilate, hilted with government —
and never stray from the way.

[Closing — Henley, "The Song of the Sword"]
The Sword
Singing--
The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword
Clanging majestical,
As from the starry-staired
Courts of the primal Supremacy,
His high, irresistible song.