Now like a fugitive, who, on the desert sand,
A moment broods upon the life he spilt.
And, with averted gaze,
Circling the dusky ruin of his hand,
Surveys
The Arab measure of his guilt
Before a Presence standing there that calls
His name; in cloud and shadow and in whirlwind reads
The inviolate scripture of the fates;
Then full across the desert speeds,
Until he falls,
Caught by the Avenger near the City Gates;—
So underneath the heavens' lighted scroll,
Ablaze with cryptic tokens of the slain,
Headlong to shore thy spiral waters roll
Swept by the besom of the winds; by rain
And thunder driven in flight
Along the galleries of the night,
Until upon the surge-line locked in strife
With reef and breaker thou art shattered, soon
In fang and sinew to be strewn
Around the cliffs that guard the ports of life.
O wild, tumultuous sea!
Thy waters mock our liturgy,
For thou dost take the threads of faith apart.
Wherewith the cables of our life are spun,
Strand upon strand unravelling;—thou dost hear,
Recited from a tide-wet shore,
Our creeds. Each hope and fear
Filtered from life's confessions—one by one,
Out of the dumb confusions of the heart,
Are spread before thy sight—thou Arch-Inquisitor!
How in a ruthless moment dost thou strip
The veilings from our eyes, and bid us cast
Our glances on a labyrinthine past,
Stirred by a flash that on a wave's white lip
Gleams for an instant, or by some dark sign
Within thy fearful hollows where night flings
Her crape of shadow on a tossing line
Of jetsam, will our years turn back,
To gather from a weed-grown track
A bitter tale of dimmed rememberings.
RE-BORN
As to its end the tempest drags
Its way, thou art re-born
To strength of body and beauty of face;
And thou dost cover with a tranquil grace
Those whom the winds had buffeted,
And laid upon the waters—dead.
In darkness dost thou cover them,
As some white-winged mother of the crags,
That daily gathering food
From sea-weed and from tide-wash, brings,
At fall of night, to her rock-nurtured brood
The drowsy silence of her wings.
THE DEAD CALM
How like a Pontiff dost thou lie at last,
Impassive, robed at Death's high-unctioned hour
With those grey vestments that the storm,
In the dread legacy of its power,
Around thy level form
Majestically hast cast,—
In the pale light of the moon's slow tapers burning;
All-silent in the calm recessional
Of the tide's turning;
All-passionless, though on the distant sands
Where the wreathed lilies of the spray, keen-sifted
By the late winds, are strewn, thy children call,
Their patient hands
In prayer, to thee, uplifted.
The Toll of the Bells
I
We gave them at the harbor every token—
The ritual of the guns, and at the mast
The flag half-high, and as the cortege passed,
All that remained by our dumb hearts unspoken.
And what within the band's low requiem,
In footfall or in head uncovered fails
Of final tribute, shall at altar-rails
Around a chancel soon be offered them.