48
SONGS OF THE SPIRIT
THE STORM.
In the storm that divides the wild night
from the passionate kiss of the morn-
ing
Stands there a tower by the sea un-
shaken by wave and by wind ;
Lightning assails, and the sea breaks-vain on
the battlements, scorning
Even to fling back the foam shattered
before and behind ;
Save for one window its height rears up
unbroken and blind.
tere may a man gaze out to the night by the
stars of it stricken,
Out to the blind black air that the lightning
divides, and is dumb;
Ifere, and look back in the tower’ where
pallid shades murmur and quicken :
Low laughs leap in the silence, sink to a
sigh ere there come,
Far from the feet of the storm, a pulse like
the beat of a drum.
Throbs the wild sound through the storm,
and the wings of it waken and quiver,
Only the watcher, unmoved, looks on the
face of the night ;
Sees the strong hosts that unite, a fervent
implacable river
Foaming from heaven and hell, two armies
of crimson and white ;
Flecked is the sky with their blood shed
as by sabres of light.
Now they are clutching his arms, the
phantoms that throng there behind
him,
Foul and distorted, whose sight may not
on men ever dawn ;
Now they entice and entreat, nowstrive with
fresh fury to bind him,
Cords that are cut by an angel whose
sword is unceasingly drawn,
Glitters, and bids them fall back as if
struck by the eye of the morn.
Would he but turn he should see a woman
laid naked before him,
Stretching her arms to his breast, reach-
ing her lips to his face,
Lips that should grant but one kiss ere the
demons descended and tore him
Limb from wet limb, and devoured, and bore
his stained soul into space
Far from the regions of hope and the lands
that are holy with grace.
Alway the battle proceeds and alway the
tempest re-quickens,
Pregnant with thunder, delivered when the
swift knife is let flash ;
Alway the wind has its will and the slaughter-
steam rises and thickens ;
Alway the sea is a lion, enraged by the
wind and its lash; .
Alway the heavens resound with the
thunder’s reverberate crash.
Heaven has conquered, behold! and the
hosts of the demons are fleeing;
Dawn drives before her fair feet the feather-
light wings of the gale ;
Silent the tower rears aloft its front into
beauty and seeing.
Only the window is dark; only there
hangs like a veil
Sleep on the chamber and clings.
I a woman-fiend wail?
Heard I the sound of a kiss? Has man
been destroyed in the daylight,
Man whom the night could not quell?
What angel fled weeping away?
‘There in the East there extends a white
light devouring the grey light,
There the sun rises and brings hope with
the dawn of the day.
Silence hides certainty—surely voices of
angels that pray,
Surely the sound of delight, and of praise,
and unspeakable glory
Rings in the wind like a bell, and wakes
the white air of the lea;
All the bright sea is aflame, and the caps of
it, golden or hoary,
Leap in the light of the sun, in the light
of the eyes of the sea.
Triumph is born like a flower, and the
soul of the adept is free.
Heard