Part 2 (1/2)

How large and liberal her soul, How confident, how purely chare, How trusting; how untried the whole Great heart, grand faith, that blossomed there!

XVI

Ay, she was as Madonna to The tawny, lawless, faithful few Who touched her hand and knew her soul: She drew thes to itself

She drew Men upward as a , vast and bosom-full, Half clad in clouds and white as wool, Draws all the strong seas following

Yet still she moved as sad, as lone As that sah heaven through For so, all-sufficient love, For one brave love to be her own, To lean upon, to love, to woo, To lord her high white world, to yield His clashi+ng sword against her shi+eld

Oh, I once knew a sad, white dove That died for such sufficient love, Such high-born soul ings to soar: That stood up equal in its place, That looked love level in the face, Nor wearied love with leaning o'er To lift love level where she trod In sad delight the hills of God

XVII

Ho before the sleeping breeze, That stranger shi+p fro are, round, rich, impassioned arms, Tossed forth fro stood Above that sea, beside the wood!

The shi+p crept strangely up the seas; Her shrouds seee tattered trees of toughest bough That knew no cease of storm till now

The ht coht come,--they came, As birds that answer to a na hair That bound her beauteous self about; The sea-winds housed within her hair: She let it go, it blew in rout About her bosom full and bare

Her round, full arh hands clasped, as clasped in prayer

XVIII

The breeze grew bold, the battered shi+p Began to flap her weary wings; The tall, torn s

She rounded in, she struck the stream, She moved like some majestic drea his men; And noatched the sea, and then He peered as if to pierce the wood

He now looked back, as if pursued, Noept the sea with glass, as though He fled or feared so up the river'ssouth, He touched the overhanging wood; He tacked his shi+p; his tall black mast Touched tree-top mosses as he passed; He touched the steep shore where she stood

XIX

Her hands still clasped as if in prayer, Sweet prayer set to silentness; Her sun-browned throat uplifted, bare And beautiful

Her eager face Illurace, Dark shadowed in her cloud of hair, That she seemed more than mortal fair

XX

He saw He could not speak No ht the sea; No ht coht flee; He could not speak, he would not stir,-- He saw but her, he feared but her

The black shi+p ground against the shore, She ground against the bank as one With long and weary journeys done, That would not rise to journey ainst that sun-lit wood, As one whose soul is anywhere

All seemed so fair, so wondrous fair!