Astrophel and Other Poems | Page 5

silence now, as
the sun when the woods wax hoar.
The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life
Imbues the
rapture of dawn and of noon with dread,
Infects the peace of the
star-shod night with strife,
Informs with terror the sorrow that guards
the dead. No service of bended knee or of humbled head
May soothe
or subdue the God who has change to wife:
And life with death is as
morning with evening wed.
And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here Seem soft and
splendid and fervid as sleep may seem
Be more than the shine of a
smile or the flash of a tear, Sleep, change, and death are less than a

spell-struck dream, And fear than the fall of a leaf on a starlit stream.
And yet, if the hope that hath said it absorb not fear, What helps it man
that the stars and the waters gleam?
What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense,
The night be
indeed worth worship? Fear and pain
Were lords and masters yet of
the secret sense,
Which now dares deem not that light is as darkness,
fain Though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain. For whence,
thou God of the light and the darkness, whence Dawns now this vision
that bids not the sunbeams wane?
What light, what shadow, diviner than dawn or night,
Draws near,
makes pause, and again--or I dream--draws near? More soft than
shadow, more strong than the strong sun's light, More pure than
moonbeams--yea, but the rays run sheer As fire from the sun through
the dusk of the pinewood, clear And constant; yea, but the shadow
itself is bright
That the light clothes round with love that is one with
fear.
Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie,
Terrible, radiant
with mystery, superb and subdued,
Triumphant in silence; and hardly
the sacred sky
Seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb
fierce mood Which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood
The breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by
And leave her
spirit released and her peace renewed.
I sleep not: never in sleep has a man beholden
This. From the shadow
that trembles and yearns with light Suppressed and elate and
reluctant--obscure and golden As water kindled with presage of dawn
or night--
A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight,
Grows great
as the moon through the month; and her eyes embolden Fear, till it
change to desire, and desire to delight.
I sleep not: sleep would die of a dream so strange;
A dream so sweet
would die as a rainbow dies,
As a sunbow laughs and is lost on the
waves that range And reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies.

But the sun withdraws not, the woodland shrinks not or sighs, No sweet
thing sickens with sense or with fear of change; Light wounds not,
darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes.
Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul
Whence now my
spirit is kindled with breathless bliss Knows well if the light that
wounds it with love makes whole, If hopes that carol be louder than
fears that hiss,
If truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss, Of
clouds and stars that contend for a sunbright goal. And yet may I dream
that I dream not indeed of this?
An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth, Held fast by
the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat And kindle to rapture or
wrath, to desire or to mirth, May hear not surely the fall of immortal
feet,
May feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet;
And here is
my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth,
Light, silence, bloom, shade,
murmur of leaves that meet.
Bloom, fervour, and perfume of grasses and flowers aglow, Breathe
and brighten about me: the darkness gleams,
The sweet light shivers
and laughs on the slopes below, Made soft by leaves that lighten and
change like dreams; The silence thrills with the whisper of secret
streams That well from the heart of the woodland: these I know: Earth
bore them, heaven sustained them with showers and beams.
I lean my face to the heather, and drink the sun
Whose flame-lit
odour satiates the flowers: mine eyes Close, and the goal of delight and
of life is one:
No more I crave of earth or her kindred skies.
No
more? But the joy that springs from them smiles and flies: The sweet
work wrought of them surely, the good work done, If the mind and the
face of the season be loveless, dies.
Thee, therefore, thee would I come to, cleave to, cling, If haply thy
heart be kind and thy gifts be good,
Unknown sweet spirit, whose
vesture is soft in spring, In summer splendid, in autumn pale