LITMIR.BIZ

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a wave

       Grown arrogant: it rushed into her house,

       Clasped her waist-high, then out again and away

       To swell the devilish laughter in the fog,

       And leave her clinging to the rocky wall,

       With white face watching. When it came no more,

       And the tide ebbed, not yet she slept—sat down,

       And sat unmoving, till the low gray dawn

       Grew on the misty dance of spouting waves,

       That made a picture in the rugged arch;

       Then the old fascination woke and drew;

       And, rising slowly, forth she went afresh,

       To haunt the border of the dawning sea.

      Yet all the time there lay within her soul

       An inner chamber, quietest place; but she

       Turned from its door, and staid out in the storm.

       She, entering there, had found a refuge calm

       As summer evening, as a mother's arms.

       There had she found her lost love, only lost

       In that he slept, and she was still awake.

       There she had found, waiting for her to come,

       The Love that waits and watches evermore.

      Thou too hast such a chamber, quietest place,

       Where that Love waits for thee. What is it, say,

       That will not let thee enter? Is it care

       For the provision of the unborn day,

       As if thou wert a God that must foresee?

       Is it poor hunger for the praise of men?

       Is it ambition to outstrip thy fellow

       In this world's race? Or is it love of self—

       That greed which still to have must still destroy?—

       Go mad for some lost love; some voice of old,

       Which first thou madest sing, and after sob;

       Some heart thou foundest rich, and leftest bare,

       Choking its well of faith with thy false deeds—

       Unlike thy God, who keeps the better wine

       Until the last, and, if he giveth grief,

       Giveth it first, and ends the tale with joy:

       Such madness clings about the feet of God,

       Nor lets them go. Better a thousandfold

       Be she than thou! for though thy brain be strong

       And clear and workful, hers a withered flower

       That never came to seed, her heart is full

       Of that in whose live might God made the world;

       She is a well, and thou an empty cup.

       It was the invisible unbroken cord

       Between the twain, her and her sailor-lad,

       That drew her ever to the ocean marge.

       Better to die for love, to rave for love,

       Than not to love at all! but to have loved,

       And, loved again, then to have turned away—

       Better than that, never to have been born!

      But if thy heart be noble, say if thou

       Canst ever all forget an hour of pain,

       When, maddened with the thought that could not be,

       Thou might'st have yielded to the demon wind

       That swept in tempest through thy scorching brain,

       And rushed into the night, and howled aloud,

       And clamoured to the waves, and beat the rocks;

       And never found thy way back to the seat

       Of conscious self, and power to rule thy pain,

       Had not God made thee strong to bear and live!

       The tale is now in thee, not thou in it;

       But the sad woman, in her wildest mood,

       Thou knowest her thy sister! She is fair

       No more; her eyes like fierce suns blaze and burn;

       Her cheeks are parched and brown; her haggard form

       Is wasted by wild storms of soul and sea;

       Yet in her very self is that which still

       Reminds thee of a story, old, not dead,

       Which God has in his keeping—of thyself.

      Ah, not forgot are children when they sleep!

       The darkness lasts all night, and clears the eyes;

       Then comes the morning with the joy of light.

       Oh, surely madness hideth not from Him!

       Nor doth a soul cease to be beautiful

       In his sight, that its beauty is withdrawn,

       And hid by pale eclipse from human eyes.

       As the chill snow is friendly to the earth,

       And pain and loss are friendly to the soul,

       Shielding it from the black heart-killing frost;

       So madness is but one of God's pale winters;

       And when the winter over is and gone,

       Then smile the skies, then blooms the earth again,

       And the fair time of singing birds is come:

       Into the cold wind and the howling night,

       God sent for her, and she was carried in

       Where there was no more sea.

      What messenger

       Ran from the door of heaven to bring her home?

       The sea, her terror.

      In the rocks that stand

       Below the cliff, there lies a rounded hollow,

       Scooped like a basin, with jagged and pinnacled sides:

       Low buried when the wind heaps up the surge,

       It lifts in the respiration of the tide

       Its broken edges, and, then, deep within

       Lies resting water, radiantly clear:

       There, on a morn of sunshine, while the wind

       Yet blew, and heaved yet the billowy sea

       With memories of a night of stormy dreams,

       At rest they found her: in the sleep which is

       And is not death, she, lying very still,

       Absorbed the bliss that follows after pain.

       O life of love, conquered at last by fate!

       O life raised from the dead by saviour Death!

       O love unconquered and invincible!

       The enemy sea had cooled her burning brain;

       Had laid to rest the heart that could not rest;

       Had hid the horror of its own dread face!

       'Twas but one desolate cry, and then her fear

       Became a blessed fact, and straight she knew

       What God knew all the time—that it was well.

      O thou whose feet tread ever the wet sands

       And howling rocks along the wearing shore,

       Roaming the borders of the sea of death!

      

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