Chapter 4
Gold, and fair marbles, and again more gold, And space of halls afloat that glance and gleam Like the green heights of sunset heaven, or seem The golden steeps of sunrise red and cold On deserts where dark exile keeps the fold Fast of the flocks of torment, where no beam Falls of kind light or comfort save in dream, These we far off behold not, who behold The cordage woven of curses, and the decks With mortal hate and mortal peril paven; From stem to stern the lines of doom engraven That mark for sure inevitable wrecks Those sails predestinate, though no storm vex, To miss on earth and find in hell their haven.
II.
All curses be about her, and all ill Go with her; heaven be dark above her way, The gulf beneath her glad and sure of prey, And, wheresoe'er her prow be pointed, still The winds of heaven have all one evil will Conspirant even as hearts of kings to slay With mouths of kings to lie and smile and pray, And chiefliest his whose wintrier breath makes chill With more than winter's and more poisonous cold The horror of his kingdom toward the north, The deserts of his kingdom toward the east. And though death hide not in her direful hold Be all stars adverse toward her that come forth Nightly, by day all hours till all have ceased:
III.
Till all have ceased for ever, and the sum Be summed of all the sumless curses told Out on his head by all dark seasons rolled Over its cursed and crowned existence, dumb And blind and stark as though the snows made numb All sense within it, and all conscience cold, That hangs round hearts of less imperial mould Like a snake feeding till their doomsday come. O heart fast bound of frozen poison, be All nature's as all true men's hearts to thee, A two-edged sword of judgment; hope be far And fear at hand for pilot oversea With death for compass and despair for star, And the white foam a shroud for the White Czar.
_September 30, 1880._
_SIX YEARS OLD._
To H.W.M.
Between the springs of six and seven, Two fresh years' fountains, clear Of all but golden sand for leaven, Child, midway passing here, As earth for love's sake dares bless heaven, So dare I bless you, dear.
Between two bright well-heads, that brighten With every breath that blows Too loud to lull, too low to frighten, But fain to rock, the rose, Your feet stand fast, your lit smiles lighten, That might rear flowers from snows.
You came when winds unleashed were snarling Behind the frost-bound hours, A snow-bird sturdier than the starling, A storm-bird fledged for showers, That spring might smile to find you, darling, First born of all the flowers.
Could love make worthy things of worthless, My song were worth an ear: Its note should make the days most mirthless The merriest of the year, And wake to birth all buds yet birthless To keep your birthday, dear.
But where your birthday brightens heaven No need has earth, God knows, Of light or warmth to melt or leaven The frost or fog that glows With sevenfold heavenly lights of seven Sweet springs that cleave the snows.
Could love make worthy music of you, And match my Master's powers, Had even my love less heart to love you, A better song were ours; With all the rhymes like stars above you, And all the words like flowers.
_September 30, 1880._
_A PARTING SONG._
(To a friend leaving England for a year's residence in Australia.)
These winds and suns of spring That warm with breath and wing The trembling sleep of earth, till half awake She laughs and blushes ere her slumber break, For all good gifts they bring Require one better thing, For all the loans of joy they lend us, borrow One sharper dole of sorrow, To sunder soon by half a world of sea Her son from England and my friend from me.
Nor hope nor love nor fear May speed or stay one year, Nor song nor prayer may bid, as mine would fain, The seasons perish and be born again, Restoring all we lend, Reluctant, of a friend, The voice, the hand, the presence and the sight That lend their life and light To present gladness and heart-strengthening cheer, Now lent again for one reluctant year.
So much we lend indeed, Perforce, by force of need, So much we must; even these things and no more The far sea sundering and the sundered shore A world apart from ours, So much the imperious hours, Exact, and spare not; but no more than these All earth and all her seas From thought and faith of trust and truth can borrow, Not memory from desire, nor hope from sorrow.
Through bright and dark and bright Returns of day and night I bid the swift year speed and change and give His breath of life to make the next year live With sunnier suns for us A life more prosperous, And laugh with flowers more fragrant, that shall see A merrier March for me, A rosier-girdled race of night with day, A goodlier April and a tenderer May.
For him the inverted year Shall mark our seasons here With alien alternation, and revive This withered winter, slaying the spring alive With darts more sharply drawn As nearer draws the dawn In heaven transfigured over earth transformed And with our winters warmed And wasted with our summers, till the beams Rise on his face that rose on Dante's dreams.
Till fourfold morning rise Of starshine on his eyes, Dawn of the spheres that brand steep heaven across At height of night with semblance of a cross Whose grace and ghostly glory Poured heaven on purgatory Seeing with their flamelets risen all heaven grow glad For love thereof it had And lovely joy of loving; so may these Make bright with welcome now their southern seas.
O happy stars, whose mirth The saddest soul on earth That ever soared and sang found strong to bless, Lightening his life's harsh load of heaviness With comfort sown like seed In dream though not in deed On sprinkled wastes of darkling thought divine, Let all your lights now shine With all as glorious gladness on his eyes For whom indeed and not in dream they rise.
As those great twins of air Hailed once with oldworld prayer Of all folk alway faring forth by sea, So now may these for grace and guidance be, To guard his sail and bring Again to brighten spring The face we look for and the hand we lack Still, till they light him back, As welcome as to first discovering eyes Their light rose ever, soon on his to rise.
As parting now he goes From snow-time back to snows, So back to spring from summer may next year Restore him, and our hearts receive him here, The best good gift that spring Had ever grace to bring At fortune's happiest hour of star-blest birth Back to love's homebright earth, To eyes with eyes that commune, hand with hand, And the old warm bosom of all our mother-land.
Earth and sea-wind and sea And stars and sunlight be Alike all prosperous for him, and all hours Have all one heart, and all that heart as ours. All things as good as strange Crown all the seasons' change With changing flower and compensating fruit From one year's ripening root; Till next year bring us, roused at spring's recall, A heartier flower and goodlier fruit than all.
_March 26, 1880._
BY THE NORTH SEA
TO WALTER THEODORE WATTS.
'We are what suns and winds and waters make us.'--LANDOR.
_Sea, wind, and sun, with light and sound and breath The spirit of man fulfilling--these create That joy wherewith man's life grown passionate Gains heart to hear and sense to read and faith To know the secret word our Mother saith In silence, and to see, though doubt wax great, Death as the shadow cast by life on fate, Passing, whose shade we call the shadow of death.
Brother, to whom our Mother as to me Is dearer than all dreams of days undone, This song I give you of the sovereign three That are as life and sleep and death are, one: A song the sea-wind gave me from the sea, Where nought of man's endures before the sun._
BY THE NORTH SEA
I.
1.
A land that is lonelier than ruin; A sea that is stranger than death: Far fields that a rose never blew in, Wan waste where the winds lack breath; Waste endless and boundless and flowerless But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as free: Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless To strive with the sea.
2.
Far flickers the flight of the swallows, Far flutters the weft of the grass Spun dense over desolate hollows More pale than the clouds as they pass: Thick woven as the weft of a witch is Round the heart of a thrall that hath sinned, Whose youth and the wrecks of its riches Are waifs on the wind.
3.
The pastures are herdless and sheepless, No pasture or shelter for herds: The wind is relentless and sleepless, And restless and songless the birds; Their cries from afar fall breathless, Their wings are as lightnings that flee; For the land has two lords that are deathless: Death's self, and the sea.
4.
These twain, as a king with his fellow, Hold converse of desolate speech: And her waters are haggard and yellow And crass with the scurf of the beach: And his garments are grey as the hoary Wan sky where the day lies dim; And his power is to her, and his glory, As hers unto him.
5.
In the pride of his power she rejoices, In her glory he glows and is glad: In her darkness the sound of his voice is, With his breath she dilates and is mad: 'If thou slay me, O death, and outlive me, Yet thy love hath fulfilled me of thee.' 'Shall I give thee not back if thou give me, O sister, O sea?'
6.
And year upon year dawns living, And age upon age drops dead: And his hand is not weary of giving, And the thirst of her heart is not fed: And the hunger that moans in her passion, And the rage in her hunger that roars, As a wolf's that the winter lays lash on, Still calls and implores.
7.
Her walls have no granite for girder, No fortalice fronting her stands: But reefs the bloodguiltiest of murder Are less than the banks of her sands: These number their slain by the thousand; For the ship hath no surety to be, When the bank is abreast of her bows and Aflush with the sea.
8.
No surety to stand, and no shelter To dawn out of darkness but one, Out of waters that hurtle and welter No succour to dawn with the sun But a rest from the wind as it passes, Where, hardly redeemed from the waves, Lie thick as the blades of the grasses The dead in their graves.
9.
A multitude noteless of numbers, As wild weeds cast on an heap: And sounder than sleep are their slumbers, And softer than song is their sleep; And sweeter than all things and stranger The sense, if perchance it may be, That the wind is divested of danger And scatheless the sea.
10.
That the roar of the banks they breasted Is hurtless as bellowing of herds, And the strength of his wings that invested The wind, as the strength of a bird's; As the sea-mew's might or the swallow's That cry to him back if he cries, As over the graves and their hollows Days darken and rise.
11.
As the souls of the dead men disburdened And clean of the sins that they sinned, With a lovelier than man's life guerdoned And delight as a wave's in the wind, And delight as the wind's in the billow, Birds pass, and deride with their glee The flesh that has dust for its pillow As wrecks have the sea.
12.
When the ways of the sun wax dimmer, Wings flash through the dusk like beams; As the clouds in the lit sky glimmer, The bird in the graveyard gleams; As the cloud at its wing's edge whitens When the clarions of sunrise are heard, The graves that the bird's note brightens Grow bright for the bird.
13.
As the waves of the numberless waters That the wind cannot number who guides Are the sons of the shore and the daughters Here lulled by the chime of the tides: And here in the press of them standing We know not if these or if we Live truliest, or anchored to landing Or drifted to sea.
14.
In the valley he named of decision No denser were multitudes met When the soul of the seer in her vision Saw nations for doom of them set; Saw darkness in dawn, and the splendour Of judgment, the sword and the rod; But the doom here of death is more tender And gentler the god.
15.
And gentler the wind from the dreary Sea-banks by the waves overlapped, Being weary, speaks peace to the weary From slopes that the tide-stream hath sapped; And sweeter than all that we call so The seal of their slumber shall be Till the graves that embosom them also Be sapped of the sea.
II.
1.
For the heart of the waters is cruel, And the kisses are dire of their lips, And their waves are as fire is to fuel To the strength of the sea-faring ships, Though the sea's eye gleam as a jewel To the sun's eye back as he dips.
2.
Though the sun's eye flash to the sea's Live light of delight and of laughter, And her lips breathe back to the breeze The kiss that the wind's lips waft her From the sun that subsides, and sees No gleam of the storm's dawn after.
3.
And the wastes of the wild sea-marches Where the borderers are matched in their might-- Bleak fens that the sun's weight parches, Dense waves that reject his light-- Change under the change-coloured arches Of changeless morning and night
4.
The waves are as ranks enrolled Too close for the storm to sever: The fens lie naked and cold, But their heart fails utterly never: The lists are set from of old, And the warfare endureth for ever.
III.
1.
Miles, and miles, and miles of desolation! Leagues on leagues on leagues without a change! Sign or token of some eldest nation Here would make the strange land not so strange. Time-forgotten, yea since time's creation, Seem these borders where the sea-birds range.
2.
Slowly, gladly, full of peace and wonder Grows his heart who journeys here alone. Earth and all its thoughts of earth sink under Deep as deep in water sinks a stone. Hardly knows it if the rollers thunder, Hardly whence the lonely wind is blown.
3.
Tall the plumage of the rush-flower tosses, Sharp and soft in many a curve and line Gleam and glow the sea-coloured marsh-mosses, Salt and splendid from the circling brine. Streak on streak of glimmering seashine crosses All the land sea-saturate as with wine.
4.
Far, and far between, in divers orders, Clear grey steeples cleave the low grey sky; Fast and firm as time-unshaken warders, Hearts made sure by faith, by hope made high. These alone in all the wild sea-borders Fear no blast of days and nights that die.
5.
All the land is like as one man's face is, Pale and troubled still with change of cares. Doubt and death pervade her clouded spaces: Strength and length of life and peace are theirs; Theirs alone amid these weary places. Seeing not how the wild world frets and fares.
6.
Firm and fast where all is cloud that changes Cloud-clogged sunlight, cloud by sunlight thinned, Stern and sweet, above the sand-hill ranges Watch the towers and tombs of men that sinned Once, now calm as earth whose only change is Wind, and light, and wind, and cloud, and wind.
7.
Out and in and out the sharp straits wander, In and out and in the wild way strives, Starred and paved and lined with flowers that squander Gold as golden as the gold of hives, Salt and moist and multiform: but yonder, See, what sign of life or death survives?
8.
Seen then only when the songs of olden Harps were young whose echoes yet endure, Hymned of Homer when his years were golden, Known of only when the world was pure, Here is Hades, manifest, beholden, Surely, surely here, if aught be sure!
9.
Where the border-line was crossed, that, sundering Death from life, keeps weariness from rest, None can tell, who fares here forward wondering; None may doubt but here might end his quest. Here life's lightning joys and woes once thundering Sea-like round him cease like storm suppressed.
10.
Here the wise wave-wandering steadfast-hearted Guest of many a lord of many a land Saw the shape or shade of years departed, Saw the semblance risen and hard at hand, Saw the mother long from love's reach parted, Anticleia, like a statue stand.
11.
Statue? nay, nor tissued image woven Fair on hangings in his father's hall; Nay, too fast her faith of heart was proven, Far too firm her loveliest love of all; Love wherethrough the loving heart was cloven, Love that hears not when the loud Fates call.
12.
Love that lives and stands up re-created Then when life has ebbed and anguish fled; Love more strong than death or all things fated, Child's and mother's, lit by love and led; Love that found what life so long awaited Here, when life came down among the dead.
13.
Here, where never came alive another, Came her son across the sundering tide Crossed before by many a warrior brother Once that warred on Ilion at his side; Here spread forth vain hands to clasp the mother Dead, that sorrowing for his love's sake died.
14.
Parted, though by narrowest of divisions, Clasp he might not, only might implore, Sundered yet by bitterest of derisions, Son, and mother from the son she bore-- Here? But all dispeopled here of visions Lies, forlorn of shadows even, the shore.
15.
All too sweet such men's Hellenic speech is, All too fain they lived of light to see, Once to see the darkness of these beaches, Once to sing this Hades found of me Ghostless, all its gulfs and creeks and reaches, Sky, and shore, and cloud, and waste, and sea.
IV.
1.
But aloft and afront of me faring Far forward as folk in a dream That strive, between doubting and daring Right on till the goal for them gleam, Full forth till their goal on them lighten, The harbour where fain they would be, What headlands there darken and brighten? What change in the sea?
2.
What houses and woodlands that nestle Safe inland to lee of the hill As it slopes from the headlands that wrestle And succumb to the strong sea's will? Truce is not, nor respite, nor pity, For the battle is waged not of hands Where over the grave of a city The ghost of it stands.
3.
Where the wings of the sea-wind slacken, Green lawns to the landward thrive, Fields brighten and pine-woods blacken, And the heat in their heart is alive; They blossom and warble and murmur, For the sense of their spirit is free: But harder to shoreward and firmer The grasp of the sea.
4.
Like ashes the low cliffs crumble, The banks drop down into dust, The heights of the hills are made humble, As a reed's is the strength of their trust: As a city's that armies environ, The strength of their stay is of sand: But the grasp of the sea is as iron, Laid hard on the land.
5.
A land that is thirstier than ruin; A sea that is hungrier than death; Heaped hills that a tree never grew in; Wide sands where the wave draws breath; All solace is here for the spirit That ever for ever may be For the soul of thy son to inherit, My mother, my sea.
6.
O delight of the headlands and beaches! O desire of the wind on the wold, More glad than a man's when it reaches That end which it sought from of old And the palm of possession is dreary To the sense that in search of it sinned; But nor satisfied ever nor weary Is ever the wind.
7.
The delight that he takes but in living Is more than of all things that live: For the world that has all things for giving Has nothing so goodly to give: But more than delight his desire is, For the goal where his pinions would be Is immortal as air or as fire is, Immense as the sea.
8.
Though hence come the moan that he borrows From darkness and depth of the night, Though hence be the spring of his sorrows, Hence too is the joy of his might; The delight that his doom is for ever To seek and desire and rejoice, And the sense that eternity never Shall silence his voice.
9.
That satiety never may stifle Nor weariness ever estrange Nor time be so strong as to rifle Nor change be so great as to change His gift that renews in the giving. The joy that exalts him to be Alone of all elements living The lord of the sea.
10.
What is fire, that its flame should consume her? More fierce than all fires are her waves: What is earth, that its gulfs should entomb her? More deep are her own than their graves. Life shrinks from his pinions that cover The darkness by thunders bedinned: But she knows him, her lord and her lover, The godhead of wind.
11.
For a season his wings are about her, His breath on her lips for a space; Such rapture he wins not without her In the width of his worldwide race. Though the forests bow down, and the mountains Wax dark, and the tribes of them flee, His delight is more deep in the fountains And springs of the sea.
12.
There are those too of mortals that love him, There are souls that desire and require, Be the glories of midnight above him Or beneath him the daysprings of fire: And their hearts are as harps that approve him And praise him as chords of a lyre That were fain with their music to move him To meet their desire.
13.
To descend through the darkness to grace them, Till darkness were lovelier than light: To encompass and grasp and embrace them, Till their weakness were one with his might: With the strength of his wings to caress them, With the blast of his breath to set free; With the mouths of his thunders to bless them For sons of the sea.
14.
For these have the toil and the guerdon That the wind has eternally: these Have part in the boon and the burden Of the sleepless unsatisfied breeze, That finds not, but seeking rejoices That possession can work him no wrong: And the voice at the heart of their voice is The sense of his song.
15.
For the wind's is their doom and their blessing; To desire, and have always above A possession beyond their possessing, A love beyond reach of their love. Green earth has her sons and her daughters, And these have their guerdons; but we Are the wind's and the sun's and the water's, Elect of the sea.
V.
1.
For the sea too seeks and rejoices, Gains and loses and gains, And the joy of her heart's own choice is As ours, and as ours are her pains: As the thoughts of our hearts are her voices, And as hers is the pulse of our veins.
2.
Her fields that know not of dearth Nor lie for their fruit's sake fallow Laugh large in the depth of their mirth But inshore here in the shallow, Embroiled with encumbrance of earth, Their skirts are turbid and yellow.
3.
The grime of her greed is upon her, The sign of her deed is her soil; As the earth's is her own dishonour, And corruption the crown of her toil: She hath spoiled and devoured, and her honour Is this, to be shamed by her spoil.
4.
But afar where pollution is none, Nor ensign of strife nor endeavour, Where her heart and the sun's are one, And the soil of her sin comes never, She is pure as the wind and the sun, And her sweetness endureth for ever.
VI.
1.
Death, and change, and darkness everlasting, Deaf, that hears not what the daystar saith, Blind, past all remembrance and forecasting, Dead, past memory that it once drew breath; These, above the washing tides and wasting, Reign, and rule this land of utter death.
2.
Change of change, darkness of darkness, hidden, Very death of very death, begun When none knows,--the knowledge is forbidden-- Self-begotten, self-proceeding, one, Born, not made--abhorred, unchained, unchidden, Night stands here defiant of the sun.
3.