O man, be glad! be grandly glad,
And kinglike walk thy ways of death!
For more than years of bliss you had
That one brief time you breathed her breath.
Yea, more than years upon a throne
That one brief time you held her fast,
Soul surged to soul, vehement, vast,—
True breast to breast, and all your own.
Live me one day, one narrow night,
One second of supreme delight
Like that, and I will blow like chaff
The hollow years aside, and laugh
A loud triumphant laugh, and I,
King-like and crowned, will gladly die.
Oh, but to wrap my love with flame!
With flame within, with flame without!
Oh, but to die like this, nor doubt—
To die and know her still the same!
To know that down the ghostly shore
Snow-white she waits me evermore!
XXXIX.
He poised her, held her high in air,—
His great strong limbs, his great arm’s length!—
Then turned his knotted shoulders bare
As birth-time in his splendid strength,
And strode, strode with a lordly stride
To where the high and wood-hung edge
Looked down, far down upon the molten tide.
The flames leapt with him to the ledge,
The flames leapt leering at his side.
XL.
He leaned above the ledge. Below
He saw the black ship idly cruise,—
A midge below, a mile below.
His limbs were knotted as the thews
Of Hercules in his death-throe.
The flame! the flame! the envious flame!
She wound her arms, she wound her hair
About his tall form, grand and bare,
To stay the fierce flame where it came.
The black ship, like some moonlit wreck,
Below along the burning sea
Crept on and on all silently,
With silent pygmies on her deck.
That midge-like ship far, far below;
That mirage lifting from the hill!
His flame-lit form began to grow,—
To grow and grow more grandly still.
The ship so small, that form so tall,
It grew to tower over all.