Poetry

A region desolate and wild, Black, chafing water: and afloat, And lonely as a truant child In a waste wood, a single boat: No mast, no sails are set thereon; It moves, but never moveth on: And welters like a human thing Amid the wild waves weltering.

Behind, a buried vale doth sleep, Far down the torrent cleaves its way: In front the dumb rock rises steep, A fretted wall of blue and grey; Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone With many a wild weed overgrown: All else, black water: and afloat, One rood from shore, that single boat.

Last night the wind was up and strong; The grey-streak’d waters labour still: The strong blast brought a pygmy throng From that mild hollow in the hill; From those twin brooks, that beachèd strand So featly strewn with drifted sand; From those weird domes of mounded green That spot the solitary scene.

This boat they found against the shore: The glossy rushes nodded by. One rood from land they push’d, no more; Then rested, listening silently. The loud rains lash’d the mountain’s crown, The grating shingle straggled down: All night they sate; then stole away, And left it rocking in the bay.

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below. Now my brothers call from the bay; Now the great winds shoreward blow; Now the salt tides seawards flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away. This way, this way.

Call her once before you go. Call once yet. In a voice that she will know: “Margaret! Margaret!” Children’s voices should be dear (Call once more) to a mother’s ear: Children’s voices, wild with pain. Surely she will come again. Call her once and come away. This way, this way. “Mother dear, we cannot stay.” The wild white horses foam and fret. Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down. Call no more. One last look at the white-wall’d town, And the little grey church on the windy shore. Then come down. She will not come though you call all day. Come away, come away.

The sea is calm to-night, The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the Straits;⁠—on the French coast, the light Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch’d sand, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d; But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating to the breath Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil’s book⁠— Come, let me read the oft-read tale again, The story of the Oxford scholar poor Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, Who, tir’d of knocking at Preferment’s door, One summer morn forsook His friends, and went to learn the Gipsy lore, And roam’d the world with that wild brotherhood, And came, as most men deem’d, to little good, But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country lanes, Two scholars whom at college erst he knew Met him, and of his way of life inquir’d. Whereat he answer’d, that the Gipsy crew, His mates, had arts to rule as they desir’d The workings of men’s brains; And they can bind them to what thoughts they will: “And I,” he said, “the secret of their art, When fully learn’d, will to the world impart: But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.”

So on the floor lay Balder dead; and round Lay thickly strewn swords, axes, darts, and spears, Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown At Balder, whom no weapon pierc’d or clove; But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave To Hoder, and unwitting Hoder threw: ’Gainst that alone had Balder’s life no charm. And all the Gods and all the Heroes came And stood round Balder on the bloody floor Weeping and wailing; and Valhalla rang Up to its golden roof with sobs and cries: And on the tables stood the untasted meats, And in the horns and gold-rimm’d skulls the wine: And now would Night have fall’n, and found them yet Wailing; but otherwise was Odin’s will: And thus the Father of the Ages spake:⁠—