Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 6

and wintry spring

Between the tortive serpent-shapen roots
Wherethrough their dim
growth hardly strikes and shoots
And shews one gracious thing

Hardly, to speak for summer one sweet word
Of summer's self scarce
heard.
But higher the steep green sterile fields, thick-set
With
flowerless hawthorn even to the upward verge
Whence the woods
gathering watch new cliffs emerge
Higher than their highest of
crowns that sea-winds fret,
Hold fast, for all that night or wind can
say,
Some 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