A Channel Passage and Other Poems | Page 4

and the winds and the sunbeams are warring and
strengthening with joy that they live,?Spring, from reluctance enkindled to rapture, from slumber to
strife,?Stirs, and repents, and is winter, and weeps, and awakes as the
frosts forgive,?And the dark chill death of the woodland is troubled, and dies
into life.?And the honey of heaven, of the hives whence night feeds full on
the springtide's breath,?Fills fuller the lips of the lustrous air with delight in the
dawn:?Each blossom enkindling with love that is life and subsides with a
smile into death?Arises and lightens and sets as a star from her sphere withdrawn. Not sleep, in the rapture of radiant dreams, when sundawn smiles on
the night,?Shows earth so sweet with a splendour and fragrance of life that
is love:?Each blade of the glad live grass, each bud that receives or
rejects the light,?Salutes and responds to the marvel of Maytime around and above.
Joy gives thanks for the sight and the savour of heaven, and is
humbled?With awe that exults in thanksgiving: the towers of the flowers
of the trees?Shine sweeter than snows that the hand of the season has melted and
crumbled,?And fair as the foam that is lesser of life than the loveliest of
these.?But the sense of a life more lustrous with joy and enkindled of
glory?Than man's was ever or may be, and briefer than joys most brief, Bids man's heart bend and adore, be the man's head golden or hoary, As it leapt but a breath's time since and saluted the flower and
the leaf.?The rapture that springs into love at the sight of the world's
exultation?Takes not a sense of rebuke from the sense of triumphant awe: But the spirit that quickens the body fulfils it with mute
adoration,?And the knees would fain bow down as the eyes that rejoiced and
saw.
II
Fair and sublime as the face of the dawn is the splendour of May, But the sky's and the sea's joy fades not as earth's pride passes
away.?Yet hardly the sun's first lightning or laughter of love on the sea So humbles the heart into worship that knows not or doubts if it be As the first full glory beholden again of the life new-born That hails and applauds with inaudible music the season of morn. A day's length since, and it was not: a night's length more, and
the sun?Salutes and enkindles a world of delight as a strange world won. A new life answers and thrills to the kiss of the young strong
year,?And the glory we see is as music we hear not, and dream that we
hear.?From blossom to blossom the live tune kindles, from tree to tree, And we know not indeed if we hear not the song of the life we see.
For the first blithe day that beholds it and worships and cherishes
cannot but sing?With a louder and lustier delight in the sun and the sunlit earth Than the joy of the days that beheld but the soft green dawn of the
slow faint spring?Glad and afraid to be glad, and subdued in a shamefast mirth. When the first bright knoll of the woodland world laughs out into
fragrant light,?The year's heart changes and quickens with sense of delight in
desire,?And the kindling desire is one with thanksgiving for utter fruition
of sight,?For sight and for sense of a world that the sun finds meet for
his lyre.?Music made of the morning that smites from the chords of the mute
world song?Trembles and quickens and lightens, unfelt, unbeholden, unheard, From blossom on blossom that climbs and exults in the strength of
the sun grown strong,?And answers the word of the wind of the spring with the sun's own
word.
Hard on the skirt of the deep soft copses that spring refashions, Triumphs and towers to the height of the crown of a wildwood tree One royal hawthorn, sublime and serene as the joy that impassions Awe that exults in thanksgiving for sight of the grace we see, The grace that is given of a god that abides for a season,
mysterious?And merciful, fervent and fugitive, seen and unknown and adored: His presence is felt in the light and the fragrance, elate and
imperious,?His laugh and his breath in the blossom are love's, the beloved
soul's lord.?For surely the soul if it loves is beloved of the god as a lover Whose love is not all unaccepted, a worship not utterly vain: So full, so deep is the joy that revives for the soul to recover Yearly, beholden of hope and of memory in sunshine and rain.
III
Wonder and love stand silent, stricken at heart and stilled. But yet is the cup of delight and of worship unpledged and
unfilled.?A handsbreadth hence leaps up, laughs out as an angel crowned, A strong full fountain of flowers overflowing above and around. The boughs and the blossoms in triumph salute with adoring mirth The womb that bare them, the glad green mother, the sunbright
earth.?Downward sweeping, as song subsides