A Channel Passage and Other Poems | Page 3

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
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