Astrophel and Other Poems | Page 9

time, The
wild wan heaven at its height was assailed and subdued and made More
fair than the skies that know not of storm and endure not
shade.
The grim sea-swell, grey, sleepless, and sad as a soul
estranged, Shone, smiled, took heart, and was glad of its wrath: and the
world's face changed.
V
Up from moorlands northward gleaming
Even to heaven's
transcendent height,
Clothed with massive cloud, and seeming
All
one fortress reared of night,
Down to where the deep sea, dreaming

Angry dreams, lay dark and white,
White as death and dark as fate,

Heaving with the strong wind's weight,
Sad with stormy pride of state,

One full rainbow shone elate.
Up from inmost memory's dwelling
Where the light of life abides,

Where the past finds tongue, foretelling
Time that comes and grace
that guides,
Power that saves and sways, compelling
Souls that ebb
and flow like tides,
Shone or seemed to shine and swim
Through
the cloud-surf great and grim,
Thought's live surge, the soul of him

By whose light the sun looks dim.
In what synod were they sitting,
All the gods and lords of time,

Whence they watched as fen-fires flitting
Years and names of men
sublime,
When their counsels found it fitting
One should stand
where none might climb--
None of man begotten, none
Born of
men beneath the sun
Till the race of time be run,
Save this
heaven-enfranchised one?
With what rapture of creation
Was the soul supernal thrilled,
With
what pride of adoration
Was the world's heart fired and filled,

Heaved in heavenward exaltation
Higher than hopes or dreams might

build,
Grave with awe not known while he
Was not, mad with
glorious glee
As the sun-saluted sea,
When his hour bade
Shakespeare be?
VI
There, clear as night beholds her crowning seven,
The sea beheld his
likeness set in heaven.
The shadow of his spirit full in sight
Shone:
for the shadow of that soul is light.
Nor heaven alone bore witness:
earth avowed
Him present, and acclaimed of storm aloud.
From the
arching sky to the ageless hills and sea
The whole world, visible,
audible, was he:
Each part of all that wove that wondrous whole

The raiment of the presence of his soul.
The sun that smote and
kissed the dark to death
Spake, smiled, and strove, like song's
triumphant breath; The soundless cloud whose thunderous heart was
dumb
Swelled, lowered, and shrank to feel its conqueror come. Yet
high from heaven its empire vast and vain
Frowned, and renounced
not night's reluctant reign.
The serpentine swift sounds and shapes
wherein
The stainless sea mocks earth and death and sin,
Crawls
dark as craft, or flashes keen as hate,
Subdued and insubmissive,
strong like fate
And weak like man, bore wrathful witness yet
That
storms and sins are more than suns that set;
That evil everlasting, girt
for strife
Eternal, wars with hope as death with life.
The dark sharp
shifting wind that bade the waves
Falter, lose heart, bow down like
foes made slaves,
And waxed within more bitter as they bowed,

Baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud,
Devouring fast as
fire on earth devours
And hungering hard as frost that feeds on
flowers,
Clothed round with fog that reeked as fume from hell,
And
darkening with its miscreative spell
Light, glad and keen and splendid
as the sword
Whose heft had known Othello's hand its lord,
Spake
all the soul that hell drew back to greet

And felt its fire shrink
shuddering from his feet.
Far off the darkness darkened, and recoiled,

And neared again, and triumphed: and the coiled
Colourless cloud
and sea discoloured grew
Conscious of horror huge as heaven, and

knew
Where Goneril's soul made chill and foul the mist,
And all the
leprous life in Regan hissed.
Fierce homeless ghosts, rejected of the
pit,
From hell to hell of storm fear watched them flit.
About them
and before, the dull grey gloom
Shuddered, and heaven seemed
hateful as the tomb
That shrinks from resurrection; and from out

That sullen hell which girt their shades about
The nether soul that
lurks and lowers within
Man, made of dust and fire and shame and
sin,
Breathed: all the cloud that felt it breathe and blight Was blue as
plague or black as thunderous night.
Elect of hell, the children of his
hate
Thronged, as to storm sweet heaven's triumphal gate.
The
terror of his giving rose and shone
Imminent: life had put its likeness
on.
But higher than all its horrent height of shade
Shone sovereign,
seen by light itself had made,
Above the woes of all the world, above

Life, sin, and death, his myriad-minded love.
From landward
heights whereon the radiance leant
Full-fraught from heaven, intense
and imminent,
To depths wherein the seething strengths of cloud

Scarce matched the wrath of waves whereon they bowed,
From
homeborn pride and kindling love of home
To the outer skies and
seas of fire and foam,
From splendour soft as dew that sundawn
thrills
To gloom that shudders round the world it fills,
From
midnights murmuring round Titania's ear
To midnights maddening
round the rage of Lear,
The wonder woven of storm and sun became

One with the light that lightens from his name.
The music moving
on the sea that felt
The storm-wind even as snows of springtide melt

Was blithe as Ariel's hand or voice might make
And bid all grief