A Channel Passage and Other Poems | Page 4

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 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withdrawn.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