Astrophel and Other Poems | Page 7

while here this
flower of
their grafting blooms.
Flower more fair than the sun-thrilled air bids laugh and lighten
and wax and rise,
Fruit more bright than the fervent light sustains
with strength
from the kindled skies,
Flower and fruit that the deathless root of
man's love rears though
the man's name dies.
Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar
and near,
Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze
from the
seaboard here;
Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of
heights that
the dawn holds dear.
Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn, on the
low green lea,
Lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent
and strange
and free,
Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on

the
fairer sea.
Eastward, round by the high green bound of hills that fold the
remote fields in,
Strive and shine on the low sea-line fleet waves and
beams when the
days begin;
Westward glow, when the days burn low, the sun that
yields and the
stars that win.
Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the
first ray peers;
Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to
Shoreham, crowned with
the grace of years;
Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave
with glory that
death reveres.
Death, more proud than the kings' heads bowed before him, stronger
than all things, bows
Here his head: as if death were dead, and
kingship plucked from his
crownless brows,
Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appals
not and time
avows.
Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a
flower that spreads,
Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven's
the luminous

oyster-beds,
Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with
gems that
the sundown sheds.
Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that
kindled it shines with shine
Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but
heavenlier yet than the sun's
own shrine:
Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper
and more
divine.
Flowers on flowers, that the whole world's bowers may show not,
here may the sunset show,
Lightly graven in the waters paven with
ghostly gold by the clouds
aglow:
Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens the
wave
below.
Rosy grey, or as fiery spray full-plumed, or greener than emerald,
gleams
Plot by plot as the skies allot for each its glory, divine as
dreams
Lit with fire of appeased desire which sounds the secret of all
that seems;
Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know not save by the
grace of sleep,
Sleep whose hands have removed the bands that eyes
long waking and

fain to weep
Feel fast bound on them--light around them strange, and
darkness
above them steep.
Yet no vision that heals division of love from love, and renews
awhile
Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit
of
speech and smile,
Shows on earth, or in heaven's mid mirth, where no
fears enter or
doubts defile,
Aught more fair than the radiant air and water here by the twilight
wed,
Here made one by the waning sun whose last love quickens to
rosebright red
Half the crown of the soft high down that rears to
northward its
wood-girt head.
There, when day is at height of sway, men's eyes who stand, as we
oft have stood,
High where towers with its world of flowers the
golden spinny that
flanks the wood,
See before and around them shore and seaboard glad
as their gifts
are good.
Higher and higher to the north aspire the green smooth-swelling
unending downs;
East and west on the brave earth's breast glow
girdle-jewels of

gleaming towns;
Southward shining, the lands declining subside in
peace that the
sea's light crowns.
Westward wide in its fruitful pride the plain lies lordly with
plenteous grace;
Fair as dawn's when the fields and lawns desire her
glitters the
glad land's face:
Eastward yet is the sole sign set of elder days and a
lordlier
race.
Down beneath us afar, where seethe in wilder weather the tides
aflow,
Hurled up hither and drawn down thither in quest of rest that
they
may not know,
Still as dew on a flower the blue broad stream now
sleeps in the
fields below.
Mild and bland in the fair green land it smiles, and takes to its
heart the sky;
Scarce the meads and the fens, the reeds and grasses,
still as they
stand or lie,
Wear the palm of a statelier calm than rests on waters
that pass
them by.
Yet shall these, when the winds and seas of equal days and coequal
nights
Rage, rejoice, and uplift a voice whose sound is even as a

sword
that smites,
Felt and heard as a doomsman's word from seaward
reaches to
landward heights,
Lift their heart up, and take their part of triumph, swollen and
strong