Collected Works (Vol. I)

THE TALE OF ARCHAIS 27 Flush ! the music swells apace, Rolls its silver billows up Through the void demesné of space To the heavens’ azure cup ! Hush, my love, and sleep shall sigh This is immortality ! EPILOGUE. IN LIOLLOW STONEs, SCAWFELL. B.LiINnp the iron pinnacles edge the twilight ; lind and black the ghylls of the mountain clefted, Crag and snow-clad slope in a distant vision Rise as before me. Here (it seems) my feet by a tiny torrent Press the moss with a glad delight of being : Here my eyes look up to the riven moun- tain Split by the thunder. Rent and rifted, shattered of wind and lightning, Smilten, scarred, and stricken of sun and tempest, Seamed with wounds, like adamant, shod with iron, Torn by the earthquake. Still through all the stresses of doubtful weather IIfold the firm old pinnacles, sky-defying ; Still the icy feet of the wind relentless Walk in their meadows. Fields that flower not, blossom in no new spring-tide ; Fields where grass nor herb nor abounding darnel Flourish ; fields more barren, devoid, than ocean’s Pasture ungarnered. Deserts, stone as arid as sand, savannahs! Black with wrecks, a wilderness fruitless ; Still, to me, a land of the bluest heaven Studded with silver. evil, Castles bleak and bare as the wrath of ocean, Wasted wall and tower, as the blast had risen; Taken keep and donjon, and hurled them earthward, Rent and uprooted. Such rock-ruins people me tribes and nations, Kings and queens and princes as pure as dawning, Brave as day and true; and a happy people Lulled into freedom ; Nations past the stormier times of tyrants, Past the sudden spark of a great rebellion, Past the iron gates that are thrust asunder Not without bloodshed : Past the rule of might and the rule of lying, I'ree from gold’s illusion, and free to cherish Joys of life diviner than war and passion— Falsest of phantoms. Only now true love, like a sun of molten Glory, surging up from a sea of liquid Silver, golden, exquisite, overflowing, Soars into starland, Sphere on sphere unite in the chant of wonder; Star to star must add to the glowing chorus ; Sun and moon must mingle and speed the echo Flaming through heaven. Night and day divide, and the music strengthens, Gathers roar of seas and the dirge of moor- lands; Tempest, thunder, birds, and the breeze of summer Join to augment it. 1 Spanish term for wide, grassy plains.