III.
I breathed a name once and again,
I said a bitter thing in my pain,
“I gave you all my love, and I spent it all in vain!”
Then I saw a form across the night
Glide down the stars in a veil of light,
And I said, “Who are you, dweller of the Infinite?”
And I heard a voice on the stilly air,
“You chide amiss in your own despair;
Lo, I am the soul of her love, and I follow you everywhere!”
THE SEA-KING’S GRAVE.
High over the wild sea-border, on the furthest downs to the west,
Is the green grave-mound of the Norseman, with the yew-tree grove on its crest.
And I heard in the winds his story, as they leapt up salt from the wave,
And tore at the creaking branches that grow from the sea-king’s grave.
Some son of the old-world Vikings, the wild sea-wandering lords,
Who sailed in a snake-prowed galley, with a terror of twenty swords.
From the fiords of the sunless winter, they came on an icy blast,
Till over the whole world’s sea-board the shadow of Odin passed,
Till they sped to the inland waters and under the South-land skies,
And stared on the puny princes, with their blue victorious eyes.
And they said he was old and royal, and a warrior all his days,
But the king who had slain his brother lived yet in the island ways;
And he came from a hundred battles, and died in his last wild quest,
For he said, “I will have my vengeance, and then I will take my rest.”
He had passed on his homeward journey, and the king of the isles was dead;
He had drunken the draught of triumph, and his cup was the Isle-king’s head;
And he spoke of the song and feasting, and the gladness of things to be,
And three days over the waters they rowed on a waveless sea;
Till a small cloud rose to the shoreward, and a gust broke out of the cloud,
And the spray beat over the rowers, and the murmur of winds was loud
With the voice of the far-off thunders, till the shuddering air grew warm,
And the day was as dark as at even, and the wild god rode on the storm.
But the old man laughed in the thunder as he set his casque on his brow,
And he waved his sword in the lightning and clung to the painted prow.
And a shaft from the storm-god’s quiver flashed out from the flame-flushed skies,
Rang down on his war-worn harness and gleamed in his fiery eyes,
And his mail and his crested helmet, and his hair, and his beard burned red;
And they said, “It is Odin calls;” and he fell, and they found him dead.
So here, in his war-guise armoured, they laid him down to his rest,
In his casque with the rein-deer antlers, and the long grey beard on his breast;
His bier was the spoil of the islands, with a sail for a shroud beneath,
And an oar of his blood-red galley, and his battle-brand in the sheath;
And they buried his bow beside him, and planted the grove of yew,
For the grave of a mighty archer, one tree for each of his crew;
Where the flowerless cliffs are sheerest, where the sea-birds circle and swarm,
And the rocks are at war with the waters, with their jagged grey teeth in the storm;
And the huge Atlantic billows sweep in, and the mists enclose
The hill with the grass-grown mound where the Norseman’s yew-tree grows.
DISILLUSION.
Ah! what would youth be doing
To hoist his crimson sails,
To leave the wood-doves cooing,
The song of nightingales;
To leave this woodland quiet
For murmuring winds at strife,
For waves that foam and riot
About the seas of life?
From still bays, silver sanded,
Wild currents hasten down
To rocks where ships are stranded
And eddies where men drown.
Far out, by hills surrounded,
Is the golden haven gate,
And all beyond unbounded
Are shoreless seas of fate.
They steer for those far highlands
Across the summer tide
And dream of fairy islands
Upon the further side.
They only see the sunlight,
The flashing of gold bars;
But the other side is moonlight
And glimmer of pale stars.
They will not heed the warning
Blown back on every wind,
For hope is born with morning,
The secret is behind.
Whirled through in wild confusion,
They pass the narrow strait,
To the sea of disillusion
That lies beyond the gate.
ON THE BORDER HILLS.
So the dark shadows deepen in the trees
That crown the border mountains, all the air
Is filled with mist-begotten phantasies
Shaped and transfigured in the sunset glare.
What wildly spurring warrior-wraiths are these?
What tossing headgear, and what red-gold hair?
What lances flashing, what far trumpet’s blare,
That dies along the desultory breeze?
Slow night comes creeping with her misty wings
Up to the hill’s crest, where the yew trees grow;
About their shadow-haunted circle clings
The rumour of an unrecorded woe,
Old as the battle of those border kings
Slain in the darkling hollow-lands below.
WHEN HE HAD FINISHED.
When He had finished, first his orbèd sun
Blazed through the startled firmament, and all
His hosts cried glory, and the stars each one
Sang joy together,—then did there not fall
A peace of solemn silence on His world,
A moment’s hush before one leaf was stirred
Or one wave o’er the ocean mirror curled!
Lo! then it was the carol of a bird
Gave the joy-note of being, up the sky
Some lark’s song mounted and the young greenwood
Woke to a matin of wild melody,—
And He looked down and saw that it was good.
THE LONELY BAY.
Hollowed and worn by tide on tide
The rocks are steep, to the water’s side;
Never a swimmer might hope to land
With the sheer, sheer rocks upon either hand;
Never a ship dare enter in
For the sunken reefs are cruel and thin;
Only at times a plaintive moan
Comes from yon arch in the caverned stone,
When the seals that dwell in the ocean cave
Rise to look through the lifting wave;
Only the gulls as they float or fly
Answer the waves with their wind-borne cry.
Weeds of the waste uptossed lie there
On the sandy space that the tide leaves bare,
Ever at ebb some waif or stray
That ever the flood wave washes away,
And round and round in the lonely bay.
And one dwells there in the caves below
That only the seals and the seagulls know,
And the haunting spirit is passing fair
With sea-flowers set in her grey-green hair,
But she looks not oft to the daylight skies
For the sunshine dazzles her ocean eyes;
But now and again the sea-winds say,
In the twilight hour of after-day,
They have seen her look through her veil of spray.
Stilled are the waves when she lies asleep
And the stars are mirrored along the deep,
The gulls are at rest on the rifted rocks
And slumbering round are the ocean flocks,
Where the waving oarweeds lull and lull
And the calm of the water is beautiful.
But ever and aye in the moonless night,
When the waves are at war and the surf is white,
When the storm-wind howls in the dreary sky,
And the storm-clouds break as it whirls them by;
When it tears the boughs from the churchyard tree
And they think in the world of the folk at sea,
When the great cliffs quake in the thunder’s crash
And the gulls are scared at the lightning flash,
You will hear her laugh in the depths below,
Where the moving swell is a sheet of snow,
Mocking the mariner’s shriek of woe.
Let us away, for the sky grows wild
And the wind has the voice of a moaning child!
And if she looked through her veil of spray,
And called and beckoned, you might not stay;
You would leap from the height to her cold embrace
And drown in the smile of her wanton face!
She would carry you under the mazy waves
From deep to deep of her ocean caves,
Hold you fast with the things that be
Held in the drifts of the drifting sea,
Round and round for eternity!
The sun goes under, away, away!
It’s dark and weird by the lonely bay.
MUSIC.
What angel viol, effortless and sure,
Speaks through the straining silence, whence, ah whence
That tremulous low joy, so keen, so pure
That all existence narrows to one sense,
Lapped round and round
In rapture of sweet sound?
Oh, how it wins along the steep, and loud and loud,
Over the chasm and the cloud,
Swells in its lordly tide
Higher and higher, and undenied,
Full throated to the star!—
Then lowlier, softer, dreaming dies and dies
Over the closing eyes,
Dies with my spirit away, afar,
Swayed as on ocean’s breast
Dies into rest.
“WHAT HOLDS THEE BACK?”
What holds thee back then? Hast thou aught to do,
And fearest for the venture, art thou too,
So light a thing that every wind blows through?
What hast thou envied in the lives of these,
That thou should’st heed to please them or displease
And fill thine own with mirrored mockeries?
This arm of thine is thine alone, and strong
To thy free service through thy whole life long,
Hear thine heart’s voice, it will not lead thee wrong!