a principle, Christ's gift.
5
I kiss my hand?To the stars, lovely-asunder?Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;?Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:?Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour and wonder, His mystery must be instressed, stressed;?For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.
6
Not out of his bliss?Springs the stress felt?Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt--?Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,?That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt-- But it rides time like riding a river?(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss),
7
It dates from day?Of his going in Galilee;?Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;
Manger, maiden's knee;?The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat;?Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,?Though felt before, though in high flood yet--?What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,
8
Is out with it! Oh,?We lash with the best or worst?Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,?Gush!--flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,?Brim, in a flash, full!--Hither then, last or first,?To hero of Calvary, Christ,'s feet--?Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it--men go.
9
Be adored among men,?God, three-numberèd form;?Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,
Man's malice, with wrecking and storm.?Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,?Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm; Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:?Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.
10
With an anvil-ding?And with fire in him forge thy will?Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring
Through him, melt him but master him still:?Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul,?Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,?Make mércy in all of us, out of us all?Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.
_PART THE SECOND_
11
'Some find me a sword; some?The flange and the rail; flame,?Fang, or flood' goes Death on drum,
And storms bugle his fame.?But wé dream we are rooted in earth--Dust!?Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same, Wave with the meadow, forget that there must?The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.
12
On Saturday sailed from Bremen,?American-outward-bound,?Take settler and seamen, tell men with women,
Two hundred souls in the round--?O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing?The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned; Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing?Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve
even them in?
13
Into the snows she sweeps,?Hurling the haven behind,?The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,
For the infinite air is unkind,?And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow, Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;?Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow?Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.
14
She drove in the dark to leeward,?She struck--not a reef or a rock?But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her
Dead to the Kentish Knock;?And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel:?The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock;?And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel?Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured.
15
Hope had grown grey hairs,?Hope had mourning on,?Trenched with tears, carved with cares,
Hope was twelve hours gone;?And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day?Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone,?And lives at last were washing away:?To the shrouds they took,--they shook in the hurling and
horrible airs.
16
One stirred from the rigging to save?The wild woman-kind below,?With a rope's end round the man, handy and brave--
He was pitched to his death at a blow,?For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew:?They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro?Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do?With the burl of the fountains of air, buck and the flood of the wave?
17
They fought with God's cold--?And they could not and fell to the deck?(Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled
With the sea-romp over the wreck.?Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, The woman's wailing, the crying of child without check-- Till a lioness arose breasting the babble,?A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told.
18
Ah, touched in your bower of bone?Are you! turned for an exquisite smart,?Have you! make words break from me here all alone,
Do you!--mother of being in me, heart.?O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth,?Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start! Never-eldering revel and river of youth,?What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own?
19
Sister, a sister calling?A master, her master and mine!--?And the inboard seas run swirling and bawling;
The rash smart sloggering brine?Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one;?Has one fetch in her:
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