III
How very still this odorous, dim space
Amid the pines! the light is reverent,
Pausing as one who stands with meek intent
On thresholds of an everlasting place.
A single iris waits in weary grace—
Her countenance before the dawning bent,
As Faith might linger, husht and innocent,
With all an altar’s glory on her face.
But silence now is hateful: I would be,
By midnight dark and wild as Satan’s soul,
Where the winds’ unreturning charioteers
Lash, with the hurtling scourges of the sea,
Their frantic steeds to some tempestuous goal—
The deep’s enormous music in their ears.
IV
O thou unalterable sea! how vast
Thine utterance! What portent in thy tone,
As here thy giant choirs, august, alone,
Roll forth their diapason to the blast!—
Great waters hurled and broken and upcast
In timeless splendour and immeasured moan,
As tho’ Eternity to years unknown
Bore witness of the sorrows of the Past.
Thou callest to a deep within my soul—
Untraversed and unsounded; at thy voice
Abysses move with phantoms unbegot.
What paeans haunt me and what pangs control!—
Thunders wherewith the seraphim rejoice,
And mighty hunger for I know not what.
AUTUMN
Now droops the troubled year
And now her tiny sunset stains the leaf.
A holy fear,
A rapt, elusive grief,
Make imminent the swift, exalting tear.
The long wind’s weary sigh—
Knowest, O listener! for what it wakes?
Adown the sky
What star of Time forsakes
Her pinnacle? What dream and dreamer die?
A presence half-divine
Stands at the threshold, ready to depart
Without a sign.
Now seems the world’s deep heart
About to break. What sorrow stirs in mine?