34
ORACLES
Here, in the crescent beach and bay, the sea,
Curven and carven in warm shapes of
dream,
Answers the love-song of the lilied
stream,
And moves to bridal music.
The lion-shapen headland guards the
shore 3;
The ocean, the bull-throated, evermore
Roars; the vast wheel of heaven turns
above,
Its rim of pain, its jewelled heart of
love ;
Sun-waved, the eagle wing
Of the air of feathered spring
Royally sweeps, and on the musical marge
Watches alone the man.
O silvern shape and span
Of moonlight, reaching over the grey,
large
Breast of the surf-bound strand,
Life of the earth, God’s child, Man’s bride,
the light of the sweet land !
Are emeralds ever a spark of this clear green,
Or sapphires hints of this diviner blue,
Or rubies shadows of this rosy hue,
Or light itself elsewhere so clear and clean?
For all the sparkling dews of heaven
fallen far
Crystalline, fixed, forgotten (as a star
Forgets its nebulous virginity)
Are set in all the sky and earth and sea.
Shining with solar fire,
The single-eyed desire
Of scent and sound and sight and sense
perfuses
The still and lambent light
Of the essential night ;
And all the heart of me is fain, and muses,
As if for ever doomed to dream
Or pass in peace Lethean adown the grey
Lethean stream.
So deep the sense of beauty, and so keen !
‘The calm abiding holiness of love
Reigns; and so fallen from the heights
above
Stern and free, |
Immeasurable, the influence unseen
Of music and of spiritual fire,
That the soul sleeps, forgotten of desire,
Only remembering its God-like birth
Reflected in the deity of earth,
Becometh even as God.
The pensive period
OF night and day beats like a waving fan
No more, no more: the years, —
Reft of their joys and fears,
Pass like pale faces, leave the life of man
Untroubled of their destinies,
eave him forgotten of life and time, im-
‘mortal, calm and wise.
Only the ceaseless surf on coral towers,
The changeless change of the unchanging
ocean,
Laps the bright night, with unsubstantial
motion
Winnowing the starlight, plumed with
feathery flowers
Of foam and phosphor glory, the strange
glow
Of the day’s amber fallen to indigo,
Lit of its own depth in some subtle
wise, —
A pavement for the footsteps from
the skies
Of angels walking thus
Not all unseen of us,
Nor all unknown, nor unintelligible,
When with souls lifted up
In the Cadmean cup, ?
As incense lifted in the thurible,
We know that God is even as we,
Light from the sky, and life on earth, and
love beneath the sea.
THE TRIADS OF DESPAIR.
Written off the Coast of Japan.
I,
I Lie in liquid moonlight poured from the
exalted orb.
Orion waves his jewelled sword ; the tingling
waves absorb
1 See Euripides, Bacchae.