Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 6

pale pure colour yet,?Too dim for green and luminous for grey.?Between the climbing inland cliffs above?And these beneath that breast and break the bay,?A barren peace too soft for hate or love?Broods on an hour too dim for night or day.
O wind, O wingless wind that walk'st the sea,?Weak wind, wing-broken, wearier wind than we,?Who are yet not spirit-broken, maimed like thee,?Who wail not in our inward night as thou?In the outer darkness now,?What word has the old sea given thee for mine ear?From thy faint lips to hear??For some word would she send me, knowing not how.
Nay, what far other word?Than ever of her was spoken, or of me?Or all my winged white kinsfolk of the sea?Between fresh wave and wave was ever heard,?Cleaves the clear dark enwinding tree with tree?Too close for stars to separate and to see?Enmeshed in multitudinous unity??What voice of what strong God hath stormed and stirred?The fortressed rock of silence, rent apart?Even to the core Night's all-maternal heart??What voice of God grown heavenlier in a bird,?Made keener of edge to smite?Than lightning--yea, thou knowest, O mother Night,?Keen as that cry from thy strange children sent?Wherewith the Athenian judgment-shrine was rent,?For wrath that all their wrath was vainly spent,?Their wrath for wrong made right?By justice in her own divine despite?That bade pass forth unblamed?The sinless matricide and unashamed??Yea, what new cry is this, what note more bright?Than their song's wing of words was dark of flight,?What word is this thou hast heard,?Thine and not thine or theirs, O Night, what word?More keen than lightning and more sweet than light??As all men's hearts grew godlike in one bird?And all those hearts cried on thee, crying with might,?Hear us, O mother Night.
Dumb is the mouth of darkness as of death:?Light, sound and life are one?In the eyes and lips of dawn that draw the sun?To hear what first child's word with glimmering breath?Their weak wan weanling child the twilight saith;?But night makes answer none.
God, if thou be God,--bird, if bird thou be,--?Do thou then answer me.?For but one word, what wind soever blow,?Is blown up usward ever from the sea.?In fruitless years of youth dead long ago?And deep beneath their own dead leaves and snow?Buried, I heard with bitter heart and sere?The same sea's word unchangeable, nor knew?But that mine own life-days were changeless too?And sharp and salt with unshed tear on tear?And cold and fierce and barren; and my soul,?Sickening, swam weakly with bated breath?In a deep sea like death,?And felt the wind buffet her face with brine?Hard, and harsh thought on thought in long bleak roll?Blown by keen gusts of memory sad as thine?Heap the weight up of pain, and break, and leave?Strength scarce enough to grieve?In the sick heavy spirit, unmanned with strife?Of waves that beat at the tired lips of life.
Nay, sad may be man's memory, sad may be?The dream he weaves him as for shadow of thee,?But scarce one breathing-space, one heartbeat long,?Wilt thou take shadow of sadness on thy song.?Not thou, being more than man or man's desire,?Being bird and God in one,?With throat of gold and spirit of the sun;?The sun whom all our souls and songs call sire,?Whose godhead gave thee, chosen of all our quire,?Thee only of all that serve, of all that sing?Before our sire and king,?Borne up some space on time's world-wandering wing,?This gift, this doom, to bear till time's wing tire--?Life everlasting of eternal fire.
Thee only of all; yet can no memory say?How many a night and day?My heart has been as thy heart, and my life?As thy life is, a sleepless hidden thing,?Full of the thirst and hunger of winter and spring,?That seeks its food not in such love or strife?As fill men's hearts with passionate hours and rest.?From no loved lips and on no loving breast?Have I sought ever for such gifts as bring?Comfort, to stay the secret soul with sleep.?The joys, the loves, the labours, whence men reap?Rathe fruit of hopes and fears,?I have made not mine; the best of all my days?Have been as those fair fruitless summer strays,?Those water-waifs that but the sea-wind steers,?Flakes of glad foam or flowers on footless ways?That take the wind in season and the sun,?And when the wind wills is their season done.
For all my days as all thy days from birth?My heart as thy heart was in me as thee,?Fire; and not all the fountains of the sea?Have waves enough to quench it, nor on earth?Is fuel enough to feed,?While day sows night and night sows day for seed.
We were not marked for sorrow, thou nor I,?For joy nor sorrow, sister, were we made,?To take delight and grief to live and die,?Assuaged by pleasures or by pains affrayed?That melt men's hearts and alter; we retain?A memory mastering pleasure and all pain,?A spirit within the