A Channel Passage and Other Poems | Page 8

the whirlwind ride, and rejoiced as the winds
rejoice. Subdued and exalted and kindled and quenched by the sense of
his
might,
Faith flamed and exulted and dwindled, and saw not, and
clung to
the sight.
The wastes of the wilderness brightened and trembled with
rapture
and dread
When the word of him thundered and lightened and spake
through the
quick and the dead.
The chant of the prophetess, louder and loftier
than tempest and
wave,
Rang triumph more ruthless and prouder than death, and
profound as
the grave.
And sweet as the moon's word spoken in smiles that the
blown clouds
mar
The psalmist's witness in token arose as the speech of a star.
Starlight supreme, and the tender desire of the moon, were as one To
rebuke with compassion the splendour and strength of the godlike
sun.
God softened and changed: and the word of his chosen, a fire at
the
first,
Bade man, as a beast or a bird, now slake at the springs his

thirst.
The souls that were sealed unto death as the bones of the dead
lie
sealed
Rose thrilled and redeemed by the breath of the dawn on the
flame-lit field.
The glories of darkness, cloven with music of thunder,
shrank As the web of the word was unwoven that spake, and the soul's
tide
sank.
And the starshine of midnight that covered Arabia with light as
a
robe
Waxed fiery with utterance that hovered and flamed through the
whirlwind on Job.
And prophet to prophet and vision to vision made
answer sublime, Till the valley of doom and decision was merged in
the tides of
time.
III
Then, soft as the dews of night,
As the star of the sundawn bright,
As the heart of the sea's hymn deep,
And sweet as the balm of sleep,
Arose on the world a light
Too pure for the skies to keep.
With music sweeter and stranger than heaven had heard
When the
dark east thrilled with light from a saviour's word And a God grew man
to endure as a man and abide
The doom of the will of the Lord of the
loud world's tide, Whom thunders utter, and tempest and darkness hide,

With larger light than flamed from the peak whereon
Prometheus,
bound as the sun to the world's wheel, shone, A presence passed and
abode but on earth a span,
And love's own light as a river before him
ran,
And the name of God for awhile upon earth was man.

O star that wast not and wast for the world a sun,
O light that was
quenched of priests, and its work undone, O Word that wast not as
man's or as God's, if God
Be Lord but of hosts whose tread was as
death's that trod On souls that felt but his wrath as an unseen rod,

What word, what praise, what passion of hopeless prayer, May now
rise up to thee, loud as in years that were,
From years that gaze on the
works of thy servants wrought While strength was in them to satiate the
lust of thought That craved in thy name for blood as the quest it
sought?
From the dark high places of Rome
Far over the westward foam
God's heaven and the sun saw swell
The fires of the high priest's hell,
And shrank as they curled and clomb
And revelled and ravaged and fell.
IV
Yet was not the work of thy word all withered with wasting flame By
the sons of the priests that had slain thee, whose evil was
wrought in thy name.
From the blood-sodden soil that was blasted
with fires of the
Church and her creed
Sprang rarely but surely, by grace of thy spirit,
a flower for a
weed.
Thy spirit, unfelt of thy priests who blasphemed thee,
enthralled
and enticed
To deathward a child that was even as the child we
behold in
Christ.
The Moors, they told her, beyond bright Spain and the strait
brief
sea,
Dwelt blind in the light that for them was as darkness, and knew

not thee.
But the blood of