What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more? To be after life what we have been before?
Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those eyes, Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit,-which I, day by day, Have so long called my child, but which now fades away Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?"
Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip. The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne, Stand rigid with horror. A loud, long, hoarse cry
Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously;
And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave, Rebounding, like thunder from crag to cave, Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain, Hurried on by the might of the hurricane. The hurricane came from the west, and passed on By the path of the gate of the eastern sun, Transversely dividing the stream of the storm; As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form
Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste. Black as a cormorant, the screaming blast
Between ocean and heaven like an ocean passed, Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world, Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurled, Like columns and walls did surround and sustain The dome of the tempest. It rent them in twain, As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag; And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag, Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed, Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast. They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and, where The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise flow in, Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline, Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate They encounter, but interpenetrate.
And that breach in the tempest is widening away; And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day; And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings, Lulled by the motion and murmurings, And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea; And overhead, glorious but dreadful to see, The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves behold The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above; And, like passions made still by the presence of Love, Beneath the clear surface, reflecting it, slide Tremulous with soft influence. Extending its tide From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,
Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's azure smile, The wide world of waters is vibrating.
Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay, One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray
With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle Stain the clear air with sunbows. The jar and the rattle Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress
Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness;
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins Swoln with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash, As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams And hissings-crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean-streams, Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion, A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean, The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other Is winning his way, from the fate of his brother, To his own with the speed of despair.
Lo! a boat Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought Urge on the keen keel, the brine foams. At the stern Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone ('Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone) Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea. With her left hand she grasps it impetuously,
With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, fear, Love, beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere,
Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head, Like a meteor of light o'er the waters. Her child Is yet smiling and playing and murmuring; so smiled The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother, The child and the ocean still smile on each other, Whilst
THE WANING MOON.
AND, like a dying lady lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky east A white and shapeless mass.
1. DEATH is here, and death is there, Death is busy everywhere;
All around, within, beneath,
Above, is death-and we are death.
2. Death has set his mark and seal On all we are and all we feel, On all we know and all we fear,
3. First our pleasures die, and then
Our hopes, and then our fears: and, when These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust-and we die too.
4. All things that we love and cherish, Like ourselves, must fade and perish. Such is our rude mortal lot:
Love itself would, did they not.
THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.
TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?
Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, In what depth of night or day Seekest thou repose now?
Weary wind, who wanderest Like the world's rejected guest, Hast thou still some secret nest On the tree or billow?
It is the day when all the Sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house whose floor Is chaos and the immovable abyss Frozen by his steadfast word to hyaline.
The shadow of God, and delegate
Of that before whose breath the universe Is as a print of dew.
Hierarchs and kings,
Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom Of mortal thought, which, like an exhalation Steaming from earth, conceals the . . of heaven Which gave it birth, .. assemble here Before your Father's throne. The swift decree Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation
Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall
The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air,—
That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped Less in the beauty of its tender light
Than in an atmosphere of living spirit
Which interpenetrating all the
it rolls from realm to realm
And age to age, and in its ebb and flow Impels the generations
To their appointed place,
Whilst the high Arbiter
Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time
Sends his decrees veiled in eternal
Within the circuit of this pendent orb
There lies an antique region, on which fell
The dews of thought, in the world's golden dawn, Earliest and most benign; and from it sprung
Temples and cities and immortal forms,
And harmonies of wisdom and of song,
And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And, when the sun of its dominion failed,
And when the winter of its glory came,
The winds that stripped it bare blew on, and swept That dew into the utmost wildernesses
In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed
The unmaternal bosom of the North. Haste, Sons of God, . . for ye beheld, Reluctant or consenting or astonished,
The stern decrees go forth which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair.
A fourth now waits. Assemble, Sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend
(If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld) The unaccomplished destiny.
The curtain of the universe Is rent and shattered,
The splendour-winged worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered.
Space is roofless and bare,
And in the midst a cloudy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine. In
From every point of the Infinite,
Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread.
And through thunder and darkness dread Light and music are radiated,
And, in their pavilioned chariots led
By living wings, high overhead
The giant Powers move,
Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill.
A chaos of light and motion Upon that glassy ocean.
The senate of the Gods is met, Each in his rank and station set; There is silence in the spaces— Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet, Start from their places!
Almighty Father!
Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny
which spirits weep and Slavery named;
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