Collected Works (Vol. I)

A SPRING SNOWSTORM IN WASTDALE 43 That crown I hope for shall be garlanded Of deathless flowers of equal bloom. And thou, O thou true lover, thou belovéd head And marble pallor of a prince's brow, At the cliff’s edge we stand together now ; The parting of our ways has come at last. Mine is the bitterest journey, as I trow, A man may take, so solitary, so vast, It binds the future now, and stultifies the past. Only the hope that God may reunite Our ways diverging, and make one again The deathless love that burns a beacon bright On the black deeps, the irremeable main, That men must launch on, the exalted plain Of Life. We sever, and our tears are few, Knowing perchance beyond the moment’s pain We shall regather where the skies are blue, And live and love for aye, pure, passionate, and true. Also before my eyes there gleams from Tleaven The likeness ofa Man in glory set ; The sun is blotted, and the skies are riven— A God flames forth my spirit to beget ; And where my body and his love are met A new desire possesses altogether My whole new self as in a golden net Of transcendental love one fiery tether, Dissolving all my woe into one sea of weather. So I am reacly to assume the Cross, Start on my journey with the last word said ; Turn my back resolute on dung and dross, And face the future with no twitch of dread, But dare to converse with the holy dead, And taste the earnest of the church’s bliss. Love, God be with you! He is overhead And watches us, that nothing be amiss— Love! our hearts bleed as one in the last lingering kiss. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye! the echo rings A harsh, jarred sound in my self-tortured ears, And agony, a fount of blood, upsprings And tears our bosoms with dividing fears. The cruel sea its final billow rears And I must pass to seek an unknown sky; We dare not see each other's face for tears, And the last kisses—Did we. only die! Love! Ah! Onekiss! Onekiss ! One kiss ! Good-bye, Good-bye! A SPRING SNOWSTORM IN WASTDALE.? ON rocky mountain bare Of grass, and meadows fair, Angels their trumpets blow upon the night. While o’er the shrinking dale The insatiable gale Roars with unconquered and impassive might. Their robes of snow they rend, And their deep voices blend With tempest, like that angry Amphitrite,? Her hair blown wild and loose On windy Syracuse, Lashing the waves with words of wrath, a terror of bright light. Ifere the thick snowflakes fall, Till mountain in their pall, and stream beneath their curtain are em- braced ; They drive and beat and hiss, Till their cold maiden kiss Touches the lake’s intolerable waste, And from the wave is born A maiden like the morn, In sudden foam, an Aphrodite chaste, Clean as the cold wind blown From each abyss of stone, Where the north whirlpool rushes down with wreckage interlaced. 1 Crowley was one of the pioneers of rock- climbing among the Cumbrian fells. 2 Goddess of the Mediterranean Sea.