A Channel Passage and Other Poems | Page 3

might tame?Lightnings whose life outshone their stormlit hour?And played and laughed on earth, with all their power Gone, and with all their joy of life made long?And harmless as the lightning life of song,?Shine sweet like stars when darkness feels them strong.
The deep mild purple flaked with moonbright gold?That makes the scales seem flowers of hardened light, The flamelike tongue, the feet that noon leaves cold,?The kindly trust in man, when once the sight?Grew less than strange, and faith bade fear take flight, Outlive the little harmless life that shone?And gladdened eyes that loved it, and was gone?Ere love might fear that fear had looked thereon.
Fear held the bright thing hateful, even as fear,?Whose name is one with hate and horror, saith?That heaven, the dark deep heaven of water near,?Is deadly deep as hell and dark as death.?The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath?With pause more sweet than passion, ere they strive?To raise again the limbs that yet would dive?Deeper, should there have slain the soul alive.
As the bright salamander in fire of the noonshine exults and is
glad of his day,?The spirit that quickens my body rejoices to pass from the sunlight
away,?To pass from the glow of the mountainous flowerage, the high
multitudinous bloom,?Far down through the fathomless night of the water, the gladness of
silence and gloom.?Death-dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover and
dreamer may be,?It clasps and encompasses body and soul with delight to be living
and free:?Free utterly now, though the freedom endure but the space of a
perilous breath,?And living, though girdled about with the darkness and coldness and
strangeness of death:?Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each nerve of the
spirit at rest,?All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in its
blindness blest.?So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed
of man,?The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for
blessing or ban;?And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and
the dive is done,?Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into
sight of the sun;?And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of
the pines above,?Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled and
sustained of love.?As a sea-mew's love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden for
rapture's sake?Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight of the
soundless lake:?As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought's
space more?Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of the
darkness from shore to shore.?Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off time
as a robe,?The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake
of Gaube.
Whose thought has fathomed and measured?The darkness of life and of death,?The secret within them treasured,?The spirit that is not breath??Whose vision has yet beholden?The splendour of death and of life??Though sunset as dawn be golden,?Is the word of them peace, not strife??Deep silence answers: the glory?We dream of may be but a dream,?And the sun of the soul wax hoary?As ashes that show not a gleam.?But well shall it be with us ever?Who drive through the darkness here,?If the soul that we live by never,?For aught that a lie saith, fear.
THE PROMISE OF THE HAWTHORN
Spring sleeps and stirs and trembles with desire?Pure as a babe's that nestles toward the breast.?The world, as yet an all unstricken lyre,?With all its chords alive and all at rest,?Feels not the sun's hand yet, but feels his breath?And yearns for love made perfect. Man and bird,?Thrilled through with hope of life that casts out death, Wait with a rapturous patience till his word?Speak heaven, and flower by flower and tree by tree?Give back the silent strenuous utterance. Earth,?Alive awhile and joyful as the sea,?Laughs not aloud in joy too deep for mirth,?Presageful of perfection of delight,?Till all the unborn green buds be born in white.
HAWTHORN TIDE
I
Dawn is alive in the world, and the darkness of heaven and of earth Subsides in the light of a smile more sweet than the loud noon's
mirth,?Spring lives as a babe lives, glad and divine as the sun, and
unsure?If aught so divine and so glad may be worshipped and loved and
endure.?A soft green glory suffuses the love-lit earth with delight, And the face of the noon is fair as the face of the star-clothed
night.?Earth knows not and doubts not at heart of the glories again to be: Sleep doubts not and dreams not how sweet shall the waking beyond
her be.?A whole white world of revival awaits May's whisper awhile, Abides and exults in the bud as a soft hushed laugh in a smile. As a maid's mouth laughing with love and subdued for the love's
sake, May?Shines and withholds for a little the word she revives to say.
When the clouds