Astrophel and Other Poems | Page 6

THEODORE WATTS
Hills and valleys where April rallies his radiant squadron of
flowers and birds,?Steep strange beaches and lustrous reaches of fluctuant sea that
the land engirds,?Fields and downs that the sunrise crowns with life diviner than
lives in words,
Day by day of resurgent May salute the sun with sublime acclaim, Change and brighten with hours that lighten and darken, girdled
with cloud or flame;?Earth's fair face in alternate grace beams, blooms, and lowers, and
is yet the same.
Twice each day the divine sea's play makes glad with glory that
comes and goes?Field and street that her waves keep sweet, when past the bounds of
their old repose,?Fast and fierce in renewed reverse, the foam-flecked estuary ebbs
and flows.
Broad and bold through the stays of old staked fast with trunks of
the wildwood tree,?Up from shoreward, impelled far forward, by marsh and meadow, by
lawn and lea,?Inland still at her own wild will swells, rolls, and revels the
surging sea.
Strong as time, and as faith sublime,--clothed round with shadows
of hopes and fears,?Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of
prayers and tears,--?Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and
waning years.
Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that
glooms and glows,?Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to suns and
snows,?Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a
straight stem grows.
Aisle and nave that the whelming wave of time has whelmed not or
touched or neared,?Arch and vault without stain or fault, by hands of craftsmen we
know not reared,?Time beheld them, and time was quelled; and change passed by them
as one that feared.
Time that flies as a dream, and dies as dreams that die with the
sleep they feed,?Here alone in a garb of stone incarnate stands as a god indeed, Stern and fair, and of strength to bear all burdens mortal to man's
frail seed.
Men and years are as leaves or tears that storm or sorrow is fain
to shed:?These go by as the winds that sigh, and none takes note of them
quick or dead:?Time, whose breath is their birth and death, folds here his
pinions, and bows his head.
Still the sun that beheld begun the work wrought here of unwearied
hands?Sees, as then, though the Red King's men held ruthless rule over
lawless lands,?Stand their massive design, impassive, pure and proud as a virgin
stands.
Statelier still as the years fulfil their count, subserving her
sacred state,?Grows the hoary grey church whose story silence utters and age
makes great:?Statelier seems it than shines in dreams the face unveiled of
unvanquished fate.
Fate, more high than the star-shown sky, more deep than waters
unsounded, shines?Keen and far as the final star on souls that seek not for charms or
signs;?Yet more bright is the love-shown light of men's hands lighted in
songs or shrines.
Love and trust that the grave's deep dust can soil not, neither may
fear put out,?Witness yet that their record set stands fast, though years be as
hosts in rout,?Spent and slain; but the signs remain that beat back darkness and
cast forth doubt.
Men that wrought by the grace of thought and toil things goodlier
than praise dare trace,?Fair as all that the world may call most fair, save only the sea's
own face,?Shrines or songs that the world's change wrongs not, live by grace
of their own gift's grace.
Dead, their names that the night reclaims--alive, their works that
the day relumes--?Sink and stand, as in stone and sand engraven: none may behold
their tombs:?Nights and days shall record their praise 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