A Channel Passage and Other Poems | Page 2

deck was upright as a
sheer cliff's wall.?Stern and prow plunged under, alternate: a glimpse, a recoil, a
breath,?And she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the
throat of death.?Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal
joy,?Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird's
heart in a boy.?For the central crest of the night was cloud that thundered and
flamed, sublime?As the splendour and song of the soul everlasting that quickens the
pulse of time.?The glory beholden of man in a vision, the music of light
overheard,?The rapture and radiance of battle, the life that abides in the
fire of a word,?In the midmost heaven enkindled, was manifest far on the face of
the sea,?And the rage in the roar of the voice of the waters was heard but
when heaven breathed free.?Far eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out
into light?From the rims of the storm to the sea's dark edge with flames that
were flowerlike and white.?The leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that
laugh as they fade?From the cloud's black base to the black wave's brim rejoiced in
the light they made.?Far westward, throned in a silent sky, where life was in lustrous
tune,?Shone, sweeter and surer than morning or evening, the steadfast
smile of the moon.?The limitless heaven that enshrined them was lovelier than dreams
may behold, and deep?As life or as death, revealed and transfigured, may shine on the
soul through sleep.?All glories of toil and of triumph and passion and pride that it
yearns to know?Bore witness there to the soul of its likeness and kinship, above
and below.?The joys of the lightnings, the songs of the thunders, the strong
sea's labour and rage,?Were tokens and signs of the war that is life and is joy for the
soul to wage.?No thought strikes deeper or higher than the heights and the depths
that the night made bare,?Illimitable, infinite, awful and joyful, alive in the summit of
air--?Air stilled and thrilled by the tempest that thundered between its
reign and the sea's,?Rebellious, rapturous, and transient as faith or as terror that
bows men's knees.?No love sees loftier and fairer the form of its godlike vision in
dreams?Than the world shone then, when the sky and the sea were as love
for a breath's length seems--?One utterly, mingled and mastering and mastered and laughing with
love that subsides?As the glad mad night sank panting and satiate with storm, and
released the tides.?In the dense mid channel the steam-souled ship hung hovering,
assailed and withheld?As a soul born royal, if life or if death be against it, is
thwarted and quelled.?As the glories of myriads of glowworms in lustrous grass on a
boundless lawn?Were the glories of flames phosphoric that made of the water a
light like dawn.?A thousand Phosphors, a thousand Hespers, awoke in the churning
sea,?And the swift soft hiss of them living and dying was clear as a
tune could be;?As a tune that is played by the fingers of death on the keys of
life or of sleep,?Audible alway alive in the storm, too fleet for a dream to keep: Too fleet, too sweet for a dream to recover and thought to remember
awake:?Light subtler and swifter than lightning, that whispers and laughs
in the live storm's wake,?In the wild bright wake of the storm, in the dense loud heart of
the labouring hour,?A harvest of stars by the storm's hand reaped, each fair as a
star-shaped flower.?And sudden and soft as the passing of sleep is the passing of
tempest seemed?When the light and the sound of it sank, and the glory was gone as
a dream half dreamed.?The glory, the terror, the passion that made of the midnight a
miracle, died,?Not slain at a stroke, nor in gradual reluctance abated of power
and of pride;?With strong swift subsidence, awful as power that is wearied of
power upon earth,?As a God that were wearied of power upon heaven, and were fain of a
new God's birth,?The might of the night subsided: the tyranny kindled in darkness
fell:?And the sea and the sky put off them the rapture and radiance of
heaven and of hell.?The waters, heaving and hungering at heart, made way, and were
wellnigh fain,?For the ship that had fought them, and wrestled, and revelled in
labour, to cease from her pain.?And an end was made of it: only remembrance endures of the glad
loud strife;?And the sense that a rapture so royal may come not again in the
passage of life.
THE LAKE OF GAUBE
The sun is lord and god, sublime, serene,?And sovereign on the mountains: earth and air?Lie prone in passion, blind with bliss unseen?By force of sight and might of rapture, fair?As dreams that die and know not what they were.?The lawns, the gorges, and the peaks, are one?Glad glory, thrilled with sense of unison?In strong compulsive silence of the sun.
Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame?And living things of light like flames in flower?That glance and flash as though no hand