The might of the night subsided: the tyranny kindled in darkness fell:
And the sea and the sky put off them the rapture and radiance of heaven and of hell.
The waters, heaving and hungering at heart, made way, and were wellnigh fain,
For the ship that had fought them, and wrestled, and revelled in labour, to cease from her pain.
And an end was made of it: only remembrance endures of the glad loud strife;
And the sense that a rapture so royal may come not again in the passage of life.
THE LAKE OF GAUBE
The sun is lord and god, sublime, serene,
And sovereign on the mountains: earth and air
Lie prone in passion, blind with bliss unseen
By force of sight and might of rapture, fair
As dreams that die and know not what they were.
The lawns, the gorges, and the peaks, are one
Glad glory, thrilled with sense of unison
In strong compulsive silence of the sun.
Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame
And living things of light like flames in flower
That glance and flash as though no hand might tame
Lightnings whose life outshone their stormlit hour
And played and laughed on earth, with all their power
Gone, and with all their joy of life made long
And harmless as the lightning life of song,
Shine sweet like stars when darkness feels them strong.
The deep mild purple flaked with moonbright gold
That makes the scales seem flowers of hardened light,
The flamelike tongue, the feet that noon leaves cold,
The kindly trust in man, when once the sight
Grew less than strange, and faith bade fear take flight,
Outlive the little harmless life that shone
And gladdened eyes that loved it, and was gone
Ere love might fear that fear had looked thereon.
Fear held the bright thing hateful, even as fear,
Whose name is one with hate and horror, saith
That heaven, the dark deep heaven of water near,
Is deadly deep as hell and dark as death.
The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath
With pause more sweet than passion, ere they strive
To raise again the limbs that yet would dive
Deeper, should there have slain the soul alive.
As the bright salamander in fire of the noonshine exults and is glad of his day,
The spirit that quickens my body rejoices to pass from the sunlight away,
To pass from the glow of the mountainous flowerage, the high multitudinous bloom,
Far down through the fathomless night of the water, the gladness of silence and gloom.
Death-dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover and dreamer may be,
It clasps and encompasses body and soul with delight to be living and free:
Free utterly now, though the freedom endure but the space of a perilous breath,
And living, though girdled about with the darkness and coldness and strangeness of death:
Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each nerve of the spirit at rest,
All sense of the soul’s life rapture, a passionate peace in its blindness blest.
So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed of man,
The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for blessing or ban;
And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and the dive is done,
Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into sight of the sun;
And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of the pines above,
Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled and sustained of love.
As a sea-mew’s love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden for rapture’s sake
Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight of the soundless lake:
As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought’s space more
Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of the darkness from shore to shore.
Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off time as a robe,
The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake of Gaube.
Whose thought has fathomed and measured
The darkness of life and of death,
The secret within them treasured,
The spirit that is not breath?
Whose vision has yet beholden
The splendour of death and of life?
Though sunset as dawn be golden,
Is the word of them peace, not strife?
Deep silence answers: the glory
We dream of may be but a dream,
And the sun of the soul wax hoary
As ashes that show not a gleam.
But well shall it be with us ever
Who drive through the darkness here,
If the soul that we live by never,
For aught that a lie saith, fear.
THE PROMISE OF THE HAWTHORN
Spring sleeps and stirs and trembles with desire
Pure as a babe’s that nestles toward the breast.
The world, as yet an all unstricken lyre,
With all its chords alive and all at rest,
Feels not the sun’s hand yet, but feels his breath
And yearns for love made perfect. Man and bird,
Thrilled through with hope of life that casts out death,
Wait with a rapturous patience till his word
Speak heaven, and flower by flower and tree by tree
Give back the silent strenuous utterance. Earth,
Alive awhile and joyful as the sea,
Laughs not aloud in joy too deep for mirth,
Presageful of perfection of delight,
Till all the unborn green buds be born in white.
HAWTHORN TIDE
I
Dawn is alive in the world, and the darkness of heaven and of earth
Subsides in the light of a smile more sweet than the loud noon’s mirth,
Spring lives as a babe lives, glad and divine as the sun, and unsure
If aught so divine and so glad may be worshipped and loved and endure.
A soft green glory suffuses the love-lit earth with delight,
And the face of the noon is fair as the face of the star-clothed night.
Earth knows not and doubts not at heart of the glories again to be:
Sleep doubts not and dreams not how sweet shall the waking beyond her be.
A whole white world of revival awaits May’s whisper awhile,
Abides and exults in the bud as a soft hushed laugh in a smile.
As a maid’s mouth laughing with love and subdued for the love’s sake, May
Shines and withholds for a little the word she revives to say.
When the clouds and the winds and the sunbeams are warring and strengthening with joy that they live,
Spring, from reluctance enkindled to rapture, from slumber to strife,
Stirs, and repents, and is winter, and weeps, and awakes as the frosts forgive,
And the dark chill death of the woodland is troubled, and dies into life.
And the honey of heaven, of the hives whence night feeds full on the springtide’s breath,
Fills fuller the lips of the lustrous air with delight in the dawn:
Each blossom enkindling with love that is life and subsides with a smile into death
Arises and lightens and sets as a star from her sphere withdrawn.
Not sleep, in the rapture of radiant dreams, when sundawn smiles on the night,
Shows earth so sweet with a splendour and fragrance of life that is love:
Each blade of the glad live grass, each bud that receives or rejects the light,
Salutes and responds to the marvel of Maytime around and above.
Joy gives thanks for the sight and the savour of heaven, and is humbled
With awe that exults in thanksgiving: the towers of the flowers of the trees
Shine sweeter than snows that the hand of the season has melted and crumbled,
And fair as the foam that is lesser of life than the loveliest of these.
But the sense of a life more lustrous with joy and enkindled of glory
Than man’s was ever or may be, and briefer than joys most brief,
Bids man’s heart bend and adore, be the man’s head golden or hoary,
As it leapt but a breath’s time since and saluted the flower and the leaf.
The rapture that springs into love at the sight of the world’s exultation
Takes not a sense of rebuke from the sense of triumphant awe:
But the spirit that quickens the body fulfils it with mute adoration,
And the knees would fain bow down as the eyes that rejoiced and saw.
II
Fair and sublime as the face of the dawn is the splendour of May,
But the sky’s and the sea’s joy fades not as earth’s pride passes away.
Yet hardly the sun’s first lightning or laughter of love on the sea
So humbles the heart into worship that knows not or doubts if it be
As the first full glory beholden again of the life new-born
That hails and applauds with inaudible music the season of morn.
A day’s length since, and it was not: a night’s length more, and the sun
Salutes and enkindles a world of delight as a strange world won.
A new life answers and thrills to the kiss of the young strong year,
And the glory we see is as music we hear not, and dream that we hear.
From blossom to blossom the live tune kindles, from tree to tree,
And we know not indeed if we hear not the song of the life we see.
For the first blithe day that beholds it and worships and cherishes cannot but sing
With a louder and lustier delight in the sun and the sunlit earth
Than the joy of the days that beheld but the soft green dawn of the slow faint spring
Glad and afraid to be glad, and subdued in a shamefast mirth.
When the first bright knoll of the woodland world laughs out into fragrant light,
The year’s heart changes and quickens with sense of delight in desire,
And the kindling desire is one with thanksgiving for utter fruition of sight,
For sight and for sense of a world that the sun finds meet for his lyre.
Music made of the morning that smites from the chords of the mute world song
Trembles and quickens and lightens, unfelt, unbeholden, unheard,
From blossom on blossom that climbs and exults in the strength of the sun grown strong,
And answers the word of the wind of the spring with the sun’s own word.
Hard on the skirt of the deep soft copses that spring refashions,
Triumphs and towers to the height of the crown of a wildwood tree
One royal hawthorn, sublime and serene as the joy that impassions
Awe that exults in thanksgiving for sight of the grace we see,
The grace that is given of a god that abides for a season, mysterious
And merciful, fervent and fugitive, seen and unknown and adored:
His presence is felt in the light and the fragrance, elate and imperious,
His laugh and his breath in the blossom are love’s, the beloved soul’s lord.
For surely the soul if it loves is beloved of the god as a lover
Whose love is not all unaccepted, a worship not utterly vain:
So full, so deep is the joy that revives for the soul to recover
Yearly, beholden of hope and of memory in sunshine and rain.
III
Wonder and love stand silent, stricken at heart and stilled.
But yet is the cup of delight and of worship unpledged and unfilled.
A handsbreadth hence leaps up, laughs out as an angel crowned,
A strong full fountain of flowers overflowing above and around.
The boughs and the blossoms in triumph salute with adoring mirth
The womb that bare them, the glad green mother, the sunbright earth.
Downward sweeping, as song subsides into silence, none
May hear what sound is the word’s they speak to the brooding sun.
None that hearken may hear: man may but pass and adore,
And humble his heart in thanksgiving for joy that is now no more.
And sudden, afront and ahead of him, joy is alive and aflame
On the shrine whose incense is given of the godhead, again the same.
Pale and pure as a maiden secluded in secret and cherished with fear,
One sweet glad hawthorn smiles as it shrinks under shelter, screened
By two strong brethren whose bounteous blossom outsoars it, year after year,
While earth still cleaves to the live spring’s breast as a babe unweaned.
Never was amaranth fairer in fields where heroes of old found rest,
Never was asphodel sweeter: but here they endure not long,
Though ever the sight that salutes them again and adores them awhile is blest,
And the heart is a hymn, and the sense is a soul, and the soul is a song.
Alone on a dyke’s trenched edge, and afar from the blossoming wildwood’s verge,
Laughs and lightens a sister, triumphal in love-lit pride;
Clothed round with the sun, and inviolate: her blossoms exult as the springtide surge,
When the wind and the dawn enkindle the snows of the shoreward tide.
Hardly the worship of old that rejoiced as it knelt in the vision
Shown of the God new-born whose breath is the spirit of spring
Hailed ever with love more strong and defiant of death’s derision
A joy more perfect than here we mourn for as May takes wing.
Time gives it and takes it again and restores it: the glory, the wonder,
The triumph of lustrous blossom that makes of the steep sweet bank
One visible marvel of music inaudible, over and under,
Attuned as in heaven, pass hence and return for the sun to thank.
The stars and the sun give thanks for the glory bestowed and beholden,
For the gladness they give and rejoice in, the night and the dawn and the day:
But nought they behold when the world is aflower and the season is golden
Makes answer as meet and as sweet as the flower that itself is
May.
THE PASSING OF THE HAWTHORN
The coming of the hawthorn brings on earth
Heaven: all the spring speaks out in one sweet word,
And heaven grows gladder, knowing that earth has heard.
Ere half the flowers are jubilant in birth,
The splendour of the laughter of their mirth
Dazzles delight with wonder: man and bird
Rejoice and worship, stilled at heart and stirred
With rapture girt about with awe for girth.
The passing of the hawthorn takes away
Heaven: all the spring falls dumb, and all the soul
Sinks down in man for sorrow. Night and day
Forego the joy that made them one and whole.
The change that falls on every starry spray
Bids, flower by flower, the knell of springtime toll.
TO A BABY KINSWOMAN
Love, whose light thrills heaven and earth,
Smiles and weeps upon thy birth,
Child, whose mother’s love-lit eyes
Watch thee but from Paradise.
Sweetest sight that earth can give,
Sweetest light of eyes that live,
Ours must needs, for hope withdrawn,
Hai
l with tears thy soft spring dawn.
Light of hope whose star hath set,
Light of love whose sun lives yet,
Holier, happier, heavenlier love
Breathes about thee, burns above,
Surely, sweet, than ours can be,
Shed from eyes we may not see,
Though thine own may see them shine
Night and day, perchance, on thine.
Sun and moon that lighten earth
Seem not fit to bless thy birth:
Scarce the very stars we know
Here seem bright enough to show
Whence in unimagined skies
Glows the vigil of such eyes.
Theirs whose heart is as a sea
Swoln with sorrowing love of thee
Fain would share with thine the sight
Seen alone of babes aright,
Watched of eyes more sweet than flowers
Sleeping or awake: but ours
Can but deem or dream or guess
Thee not wholly motherless.
Might they see or might they know
What nor faith nor hope may show,
We whose hearts yearn toward thee now
Then were blest and wise as thou.
Had we half thy knowledge, — had
Love such wisdom, — grief were glad,
Surely, lit by grace of thee;
Life were sweet as death may be.
Now the law that lies on men
Bids us mourn our dead: but then
Heaven and life and earth and death,
Quickened as by God’s own breath,
All were turned from sorrow and strife:
Earth and death were heaven and life.
All too far are then and now
Sundered: none may be as thou.
Yet this grace is ours — a sign
Of that goodlier grace of thine,
Sweet, and thine alone — to see
Heaven, and heaven’s own love, in thee.
Bless them, then, whose eyes caress
Thee, as only thou canst bless.
Comfort, faith, assurance, love,
Shine around us, brood above,
Fear grows hope, and hope grows wise,
Thrilled and lit by children’s eyes.
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 143