Part 7 (2/2)
Far flickers the flight of the swallows, Far flutters the weft of the gra.s.s Spun dense over desolate hollows More pale than the clouds as they pa.s.s: 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 cra.s.s with the scurf of the beach: And his garments are grey as the h.o.a.ry 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 pa.s.sion, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.ses, Where, hardly redeemed from the waves, Lie thick as the blades of the gra.s.ses The dead in their graves.
9.
A mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.s, 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.
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