BY THE NORTH SEA. [Studies in Song, 1880.] I. A LAND that is lonelier than ruin; A sea that is stranger than death; Wan waste where the winds lack breath; Far flickers the flight of the swallows, More pale than the clouds as they pass: Round the heart of a thrall that hath sinned, Whose youth and the wrecks of its riches. Are waifs on the wind. The pastures are herdless and sheepless, Their cries from afar fall breathless, Their wings are as lightnings that flee; For the land has two lords that are deathless: Death's self, and the sea. These twain, as a king with his fellow, And her waters are haggard and yellow And crass with the scurf of the beach: And his garments are grey as the hoary In the pride of his power she rejoices, With his breath she dilates and is mad: "If thou slay me, O death, and outlive me, Yet thy love hath fulfilled me of thee." "Shall I give thee not back if thou give me, O sister, O sea?" And year upon year dawns living, And the thirst of her heart is not fed: And the hunger that moans in her passion, And the rage in her hunger that roars, As a wolf's that the winter lays lash on, Still calls and implores. Her walls have no granite for girder, No surety to stand, and no shelter To dawn out of darkness but one, Out of waters that hurtle and welter No succour to dawn with the sun, But a rest from the wind as it passes, Where, hardly redeemed from the waves, Lie thick as the blades of the grasses The dead in their graves. A multitude noteless of numbers, That the roar of the banks they breasted As the souls of the dead men disburdened Birds pass, and deride with their glee When the ways of the sun wax dimmer, As the clouds in the lit sky glimmer, As the cloud at its wing's edge whitens As the waves of the numberless waters That the wind cannot number who guides In the valley he named of decision And gentler the wind from the dreary The seal of their slumber shall be II. For the heart of the waters is cruel, And their waves are as fire is to fuel Though the sun's eye flash to the sea's Live light of delight and of laughter, And her lips breathe back to the breeze The kiss that the wind's lips waft her From the sun that subsides, and sees No gleam of the storm's dawn after. And the wastes of the wild sea-marches Where the borderers are matched in their mightBleak fens that the sun's weight parches, Dense waves that reject his light— Change under the change-coloured arches Of changeless morning and night. The waves are as ranks enrolled Too close for the storm to sever: The fens lie naked and cold, But their heart fails utterly never: The lists are set from of old, And the warfare endureth for ever. III. Miles, and miles, and miles of desolation! Leagues on leagues on leagues without a change! Sign or token of some eldest nation Here would make the strange land not so strange. Time-forgotten, yea since time's creation, Seem these borders where the sea-birds range. |