Volume II Part 4 (1/2)
VI
Poised between me, light, time, eternity, So tinged with all, that in its delicate brain Kindling it as a lamp with her bright wings Day-long, night-long, young Ariel sits and sings Echoing the lucid sea, Listening it echo her own unearthly strain, Watching through lucid walls the world's rich tide, One light, one substance with her own, rise and subside.
VII
And over soft brown woods, limpid, serene, Puffing its fans the Nautilus went its way, And from a hundred salt and weedy shelves Peered little horned faces of sea-elves: The prawn darted, half-seen, Thro' watery sunlight, like a pale green ray, And all around, from soft green waving bowers, Creatures like fruit out-crept from fluted sh.e.l.ls like flowers.
VIII
And, over all, that glowing mirror spread The splendour of its heaven-reflecting gleams, A level wealth of tints, calm as the sky That broods above our own mortality: The temporal seas had fled, And ah, what hopes, what fears, what mystic dreams Could ruffle it now from any deeper deep?
Content in its own bounds it slept a changeless sleep.
IX
Suddenly, from that heaven beyond belief, Suddenly, from that world beyond its ken, Das.h.i.+ng great billows o'er its rosy bars, s.h.i.+vering its dreams into a thousand stars, Flooding each sun-dried reef With waves of colour, (as once, for mortal men Bethesda's angel) with blue eyes, wide and wild, Naked into the pool there stepped a little child.
X
Her red-gold hair against the far green sea Blew thickly out: her slender golden form Shone dark against the richly waning West As with one hand she splashed her glistening breast, Then waded up to her knee And frothed the whole pool into a fairy storm!...
So, stooping through our skies, of old, there came Angels that once could set this world's dark pool a-flame,
XI
From which the seas of faith have ebbed away, Leaving the lonely sh.o.r.e too bright, too bare, While mirrored softly in the smooth wet sand A deeper sunset sees its blooms expand But all too phantom-fair, Between the dark brown rocks and sparkling spray Where the low ripples pleaded, shrank and sighed, And tossed a moment's rainbow heavenward ere they died.
XII
Stoop, starry souls, incline to this dark coast, Where all too long, too faithlessly, we dream.
Stoop to the world's dark pool, its crags and scars, Its yellow sands, its rosy harbour-bars, And soft green wastes that gleam But with some glorious drifting G.o.d-like ghost Of cloud, some vaguely pa.s.sionate crimson stain: Rend the blue waves of heaven, shatter our sleep again!
THE ISLAND HAWK
(A SONG FOR THE FIRST LAUNCHING OF HIS MAJESTY'S AERIAL NAVY)
I
_Chorus_-- _s.h.i.+ps have swept with my conquering name Over the waves of war, Swept thro' the Spaniards' thunder and flame To the splendour of Trafalgar: On the blistered decks of their great renown, In the wind of my storm-beat wings, Hawkins and Hawke went sailing down To the harbour of deep-sea kings!
By the storm-beat wings of the hawk, the hawk, Bent beak and pitiless breast, They clove their way thro' the red sea-fray: Who wakens me now to the quest?_
II
Hushed are the whimpering winds on the hill, Dumb is the shrinking plain, And the songs that enchanted the woods are still As I shoot to the skies again!
Does the blood grow black on my fierce bent beak, Does the down still cling to my claw?
Who brightened these eyes for the prey they seek?
Life, I follow thy law!