And the throats of the gulfs are agape for thirst,
And stars are as flowers that the wind bids wither,
And dawn is as hope struck dead by fear,
The rage of the ravenous night sets hither,
And the crown of her work is here.
All shores about and afar lie lonely,
But lonelier are these than the heart of grief,
These loose-linked rivets of rock, whence only
Strange life scarce gleams from the sheer main reef,
With a blind wan face in the wild wan morning,
With a live lit flame on its brows by night,
That the lost may lose not its word’s mute warning
And the blind by its grace have sight.
Here, walled in with the wide waste water,
Grew the grace of a girl’s lone life,
The sea’s and the sea-wind’s foster-daughter,
And peace was hers in the main mid strife.
For her were the rocks clothed round with thunder,
And the crests of them carved by the storm-smith’s craft:
For her was the mid storm rent in sunder
As with passion that wailed and laughed.
For her the sunrise kindled and scattered
The red rose-leaflets of countless cloud:
For her the blasts of the springtide shattered
The strengths reluctant of waves back-bowed.
For her would winds in the mid sky levy
Bright wars that hardly the night bade cease
At noon, when sleep on the sea lies heavy,
For her would the sun make peace.
Peace rose crowned with the dawn on golden
Lit leagues of triumph that flamed and smiled:
Peace lay lulled in the moon-beholden
Warm darkness making the world’s heart mild
For all the wide waves’ troubles and treasons,
One word only her soul’s ear heard
Speak from stormless and storm-rent seasons,
And nought save peace was the word.
All her life waxed large with the light of it,
All her heart fed full on the sound:
Spirit and sense were exalted in sight of it,
Compassed and girdled and clothed with it round.
Sense was none but a strong still rapture,
Spirit was none but a joy sublime,
Of strength to curb and of craft to capture
The craft and the strength of Time.
Time lay bound as in painless prison
There, closed in with a strait small space.
Never thereon as a strange light risen
Change had unveiled for her grief’s far face
Three white walls flung out from the basement
Girt the width of the world whereon
Gazing at night from her flame-lit casement
She saw where the dark sea shone.
Hardly the breadth of a few brief paces,
Hardly the length of a strong man’s stride,
The small court flower lit with children’s faces
Scarce held scope for a bud to hide.
Yet here was a man’s brood reared and hidden
Between the rocks and the towers and the foam,
Where peril and pity and peace were bidden
As guests to the same sure home.
Here would pity keep watch for peril,
And surety comfort his heart with peace.
No flower save one, where the reefs lie sterile,
Gave of the seed of its heart’s increase.
Pity and surety and peace most lowly
Were the root and the stem and the bloom of the flower:
And the light and the breath of the buds kept holy
That maid’s else blossomless bower.
With never a leaf but the seaweed’s tangle,
Never a bird’s but the seamew’s note,
It heard all round it the strong storms wrangle,
Watched far past it the waste wrecks float.
But her soul was stilled by the sky’s endurance,
And her heart made glad with the sea’s content;
And her faith waxed more in the sun’s assurance
For the winds that came and went.
Sweetness was brought for her forth of the bitter
Sea’s strength, and light of the deep sea’s dark,
From where green lawns on Alderney glitter
To the bastioned crags of the steeps of Sark.
These she knew from afar beholden,
And marvelled haply what life would be
On moors that sunset and dawn leave golden,
In dells that smile on the sea.
And forth she fared as a stout-souled rover,
For a brief blithe raid on the bounding brine:
And light winds ferried her light bark over
To the lone soft island of fair-limbed kine.
But the league-long length of its wild green border,
And the small bright streets of serene St. Anne,
Perplexed her sense with a strange disorder
At sight of the works of man.
The world was here, and the world’s confusion,
And the dust of the wheels of revolving life,
Pain, labour, change, and the fierce illusion
Of strife more vain than the sea’s old strife.
And her heart within her was vexed, and dizzy
The sense of her soul as a wheel that whirled:
She might not endure for a space that busy
Loud coil of the troublous world.
Too full, she said, was the world of trouble,
Too dense with noise of contentious things,
And shews less bright than the blithe foam’s bubble
As home she fared on the smooth wind’s wings.
For joy grows loftier in air more lonely,
Where only the sea’s brood fain would be;
Where only the heart may receive in it only
The love of the heart of the sea.
A BALLAD OF SARK.
High beyond the granite portal arched across
Like the gateway of some godlike giant’s hold
Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss
East and westward, and the dell their slopes enfold
Basks in purple, glows in green, exults in gold
Glens that know the dove and fells that hear the lark
Fill with joy the rapturous island, as an ark
Full of spicery wrought from herb and flower and tree.
None would dream that grief even here may disembark
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea.
Rocks emblazoned like the mid shield’s royal boss
Take the sun with all their blossom broad and bold.
None would dream that all this moorland’s glow and gloss
Could be dark as tombs that strike the spirit acold
Even in eyes that opened here, and here behold
Now no sun relume from hope’s belated spark
Any comfort, nor may ears of mourners hark
Though the ripe woods ring with golden-throated glee,
While the soul lies shattered, like a stranded bark
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea.
Death and doom are they whose crested triumphs toss
On the proud plumed waves whence mourning notes are tolled.
Wail of perfect woe and moan for utter loss
Raise the bride-song through the graveyard on the wold
Where the bride-bed keeps the bridegroom fast in mould,
Where the bride, with death for priest and doom for clerk,
Hears for choir the throats of waves like wolves that bark,
Sore anhungered, off the drear Eperquerie,
Fain to spoil the strongholds of the strength of Sark
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea.
>
Prince of storm and tempest, lord whose ways are dark,
Wind whose wings are spread for flight that none may mark,
Lightly dies the joy that lives by grace of thee.
Love through thee lies bleeding, hope lies cold and stark,
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea.
NINE YEARS OLD.
FEBRUARY 4, 1883.
I.
Lord of light, whose shine no hands destroy,
God of song, whose hymn no tongue refuses,
Now, though spring far hence be cold and coy,
Bid the golden mouths of all the Muses
Ring forth gold of strains without alloy,
Till the ninefold rapture that suffuses
Heaven with song bid earth exult for joy,
Since the child whose head this dawn bedews is
Sweet as once thy violet-cradled boy.
II.
Even as he lay lapped about with flowers,
Lies the life now nine years old before us
Lapped about with love in all its hours;
Hailed of many loves that chant in chorus
Loud or low from lush or leafless bowers,
Some from hearts exultant born sonorous,
Some scarce louder-voiced than soft-tongued showers
Two months hence, when spring’s light wings poised o’er us
High shall hover, and her heart be ours.
III.
Even as he, though man-forsaken, smiled
On the soft kind snakes divinely bidden
There to feed him in the green mid wild
Full with hurtless honey, till the hidden
Birth should prosper, finding fate more mild,
So full-fed with pleasures unforbidden,
So by love’s lines blamelessly beguiled,
Laughs the nursling of our hearts unchidden
Yet by change that mars not yet the child.
IV.
Ah, not yet! Thou, lord of night and day,
Time, sweet father of such blameless pleasure,
Time, false friend who tak’st thy gifts away,
Spare us yet some scantlings of the treasure,
Leave us yet some rapture of delay,
Yet some bliss of blind and fearless leisure
Unprophetic of delight’s decay,
Yet some nights and days wherein to measure
All the joys that bless us while they may.
V.
Not the waste Arcadian woodland, wet
Still with dawn and vocal with Alpheus,
Reared a nursling worthier love’s regret,
Lord, than this, whose eyes beholden free us
Straight from bonds the soul would fain forget,
Fain cast off, that night and day might see us
Clear once more of life’s vain fume and fret:
Leave us, then, whate’er thy doom decree us,
Yet some days wherein to love him yet.
VI.
Yet some days wherein the child is ours,
Ours, not thine, O lord whose hand is o’er us
Always, as the sky with suns and showers
Dense and radiant, soundless or sonorous;
Yet some days for love’s sake, ere the bowers
Fade wherein his fair first years kept chorus
Night and day with Graces robed like hours,
Ere this worshipped childhood wane before us,
Change, and bring forth fruit — but no more flowers.
VII.
Love we may the thing that is to be,
Love we must; but how forego this olden
Joy, this flower of childish love, that we
Held more dear than aught of Time is holden —
Time, whose laugh is like as Death’s to see —
Time, who heeds not aught of all beholden,
Heard, or touched in passing — flower or tree,
Tares or grain of leaden days or golden —
More than wind has heed of ships at sea?
VIII.
First the babe, a very rose of joy,
Sweet as hope’s first note of jubilation,
Passes: then must growth and change destroy
Next the child, and mar the consecration
Hallowing yet, ere thought or sense annoy,
Childhood’s yet half heavenlike habitation,
Bright as truth and frailer than a toy;
Whence its guest with eager gratulation
Springs, and life grows larger round the boy.
IX.
Yet, ere sunrise wholly cease to shine,
Ere change come to chide our hearts, and scatter
Memories marked for love’s sake with a sign,
Let the light of dawn beholden flatter
Yet some while our eyes that feed on thine,
Child, with love that change nor time can shatter,
Love, whose silent song says more than mine
Now, though charged with elder loves and latter
Here it hails a lord whose years are nine.
AFTER A READING.
For the seven times seventh time love would renew
the delight without end or alloy
That it takes in the praise as it takes in the presence
of eyes that fulfil it with joy;
But how shall it praise them and rest unrebuked
by the presence and pride of the boy?
Praise meet for a child is unmeet for an elder
whose winters and springs are nine
What song may have strength in its wings to expand them,
or light in its eyes to shine,
That shall seem not as weakness and darkness if matched
with the theme I would fain make mine?
The round little flower of a face that exults
in the sunshine of shadowless days
Defies the delight it enkindles to sing of it
aught not unfit for the praise
Of the sweetest of all things that eyes may rejoice in
and tremble with love as they gaze.
Such tricks and such meanings abound on the lips
and the brows that are brighter than light,
The demure little chin, the sedate little nose,
and the forehead of sun-stained white,
That love overflows into laughter and laughter
subsides into love at the sight.
Each limb and each feature has action in tune
with the meaning that smiles as it speaks
From the fervour of eyes and the fluttering of hands
in a foretaste of fancies and freaks,
When the thought of them deepens the dimples that laugh
in the corners and curves of his cheeks.
As a bird when the music within her is yet
too intense to be spoken in song,
That pauses a little for pleasure to feel
how the notes from withinwards throng,
So pauses the laugh at his lips for a little,
and waxes within more strong.
As the music elate and triumphal that bids
all things of the dawn bear part
With the tune that prevails when her passion has risen
into rapture of passionate art,
So lightens the laughter made perfect that leaps
from its nest in the heaven of his heart.
Deep, grave and sedate is the gaze of expectant
intensity bent for awhile
And absorbed on its aim as the tale that enthralls him
uncovers the weft of its wile,
Till the goal of attention is touched, and expectancy
kisses delight in a smile.
And it seems to us here that in Paradise hardly
the spirit of Lamb or of Blake
May hear or behold aught sweeter than lightens
and rings when his bright thoughts break
In laughter that well might lure th
em to look,
and to smile as of old for his sake.
O singers that best loved children, and best
for their sakes are beloved of us here,
In the world of your life everlasting, where love
has no thorn and desire has no fear,
All else may be sweeter than aught is on earth,
nought dearer than these are dear.
MAYTIME IN MIDWINTER.
A new year gleams on us, tearful
And troubled and smiling dim
As the smile on a lip still fearful,
As glances of eyes that swim:
But the bird of my heart makes cheerful
The days that are bright for him.
Child, how may a man’s love merit
The grace you shed as you stand,
The gift that is yours to inherit?
Through you are the bleak days bland;
Your voice is a light to my spirit;
You bring the sun in your hand.
The year’s wing shows not a feather
As yet of the plumes to be;
Yet here in the shrill grey weather
The spring’s self stands at my knee,
And laughs as we commune together,
And lightens the world we see.
The rains are as dews for the christening
Of dawns that the nights benumb:
The spring’s voice answers me listening
For speech of a child to come,
While promise of music is glistening
On lips that delight keeps dumb.
The mists and the storms receding
At sight of you smile and die:
Your eyes held wide on me reading
Shed summer across the sky:
Your heart shines clear for me, heeding
No more of the world than I.
The world, what is it to you, dear,
And me, if its face be grey,
And the new-born year be a shrewd year
For flowers that the fierce winds fray?
You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear;
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 115