One deck is burst up from the waters below,
And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow
O'er the lakes of the desert. Who sit on the other?
Is that all the crew that lie burying each other,
Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? are those Twin tigers-who burst, when the waters arose,
In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold
(What now makes them tame is what then made them bold),
Who crouch side by side, and have driven like a crank
The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank—
Are these all?
Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain
On the windless expanse of the watery plain,
Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon,
And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon;
Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep,
Whose breath was quick pestilence. Then the cold sleep
Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn,
O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn,
With their hammocks for coffins, the seamen aghast
Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast
Down the deep, which closed on them above and around;
And the sharks and the dogfish their grave-clothes unbound,
And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down
From God on their wilderness. One after one
The mariners died; on the eve of this day,
When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array,
But seven remained. Six the thunder has smitten,
And they lie black as mummies on which Time has written
His scorn of the embalmer, the seventh, from the deck
An oak splinter pierced through his breast and his back,
And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck.
No more? At the helm sits a woman, more fair
Than heaven when, unbinding its star-braided hair,
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea.
She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee.
It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder
Of the air and the sea; with desire and with wonder
It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near,-
It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear
Is outshining the meteors. Its bosom beats high;
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye,
Whilst its mother's is lustreless. "Smile not, my child,
But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,—
So dreadful since thou must divide it with me!
Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed,
Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis beating with dread!
Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we,
That when the ship sinks we no longer may be?
What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?
To be after life what we have been before?
Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those eyes,
Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise
Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit,-which I, day by day,
Have so long called my child, but which now fades away
Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?"
Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip.
The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and cyne,
Stand rigid with horror. A loud, long, hoarse cry
Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously;
And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave,
Rebounding, like thunder from crag to cave,
Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane.
The hurricane came from the west, and passed on
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form
Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.
Black as a cormorant, the screaming blast
Between ocean and heaven like an ocean passed,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world,
Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurled,
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
The dome of the tempest. It rent them in twain,
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag;
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed,
Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast.
They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and, where
The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air
Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate.
And that breach in the tempest is widening away;
And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day;
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
Lulled by the motion and murmurings,
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea;
And overhead, glorious but dreadful to see,
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves behold
The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above;
And, like passions made still by the presence of Love,
Beneath the clear surface, reflecting it, slide
Tremulous with soft influence. Extending its tide
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,
Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's azure smile,
The wide world of waters is vibrating.
Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay,
One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray
With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle
Stain the clear air with sunbows. The jar and the rattle
Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress
Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness;
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains
Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins
Swoln with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash,
As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash
The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams
And hissings-crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean-streams,
Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion,
A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other
Is winning his way, from the fate of his brother,
To his own with the speed of despair.
Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought
Urge on the leen keel, the brine foams. At the stern
Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn
In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone
('Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone)
Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.
With her left hand she grasps it impetuously,
With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, fear,
Love, beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere,
Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread
Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,
Like a meteor of light o'cr the waters. Her child
Is yet smiling and playing and murmuring; so smiled
The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother,
The child and the ocean still smile on each other,
THE WANING MOON.
AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.
3. First our pleasures die, and then
Our hopes, and then our fears: and, when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust-and we die too.
4. All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves, must fade and perish.
Such is our rude mortal lot:
Love itself would, did they not.
THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.
TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?
Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?
Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?
PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.
HERALD OF ETERNITY.
It is the day when all the Sons of God
Wait in the roofless senate-house whose floor
Is chaos and the immovable abyss
Frozen by his steadfast word to hyaline.
The shadow of God, and delegate
Of that before whose breath the universe
Is as a print of dew.
Hierarchs and kings,
Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past
Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit
Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom
Of mortal thought, which, like an exhalation
Steaming from earth, conceals the . . of heaven
Which gave it birth,
Before your Father's throne. The swift decree
Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation
Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall
The fairest of those wandering isles that gem
The sapphire space of interstellar air,
That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped Less in the beauty of its tender light
Than in an atmosphere of living spirit
Which interpenetrating all the
it rolls from realm to realm
And age to age, and in its ebb and flow
Impels the generations
To their appointed place,
Whilst the high Arbiter
Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time
Sends his decrees veiled in eternal
Within the circuit of this pendent orb
There lies an antique region, on which fell
The dews of thought, in the world's golden dawn, Earliest and most benign; and from it sprung
Temples and cities and immortal forms,
And harmonies of wisdom and of song,
And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And, when the sun of its dominion failed,
And when the winter of its glory came,
The winds that stripped it bare blew on, and swept That dew into the utmost wildernesses
In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed
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