In The Bay

I     Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star     Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west,     Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest,     Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar     To fold the fleet in of the winds from far     That stir no plume now of the bland seas breast: II     Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay     Southwestward, far past flight of night and day,     Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher     Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire,     My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way     To find the place of souls that I desire. III     If any place for any soul there be,     Disrobed and disentrammelled; if the might,     The fire and force that filled with ardent light     The souls whose shadow is half the light we see,     Survive and be suppressed not of the night;     This hour should show what all day hid from me. IV     Night knows not, neither is it shown to day,     By sunlight nor by starlight is it shown,     Nor to the full moons eye nor footfall known,     Their worlds untrodden and unkindled way.     Nor is the breath nor music of it blown     With sounds of winter or with winds of May. V     But here, where light and darkness reconciled     Held earth between them as a weanling child     Between the balanced hands of death and birth,     Even as they held the new-born shape of earth     When first life trembled in her limbs and smiled,     Here hope might think to find what hope were worth. VI     Past Hades, past Elysium, past the long     Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethepast the toil     Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil,     The Stygian web of watersif your song     Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong     As ere ye too shook off our temporal coil; VII     If yet these twain survive your worldly breath,     Joy trampling sorrow, life devouring death,     If perfect life possess your life all through     And like your words your souls be deathless too,     To-night, of all whom night encompasseth,     My soul would commune with one soul of you. VIII     Above the sunset might I see thine eyes     That were above the sundawn in our skies,     Son of the songs of morning,thine that were     First lights to lighten that rekindling air     Wherethrough men saw the front of England rise     And heard thine loudest of the lyre-notes there IX     If yet thy fire have not one spark the less,     O Titan, born of her a Titaness,     Across the sunrise and the sunsets mark     Send of thy lyre one sound, thy fire one spark,     To change this face of our unworthiness,     Across this hour dividing light from dark. X     To change this face of our chill time, that hears     No song like thine of all that crowd its ears,     Of all its lights that lighten all day long     Sees none like thy most fleet and fiery spheres     Outlightening Siriusin its twilight throng     No thunder and no sunrise like thy song. XI     Hath not the sea-wind swept the sea-line bare     To pave with stainless fire through stainless air     A passage for thine heavenlier feet to tread     Ungrieved of earthly floor-work? hath it spread     No covering splendid as the sun-gods hair     To veil or to reveal thy lordlier head? XII     Hath not the sunset strewn across the sea     A way majestical enough for thee?     What hour save this should be thine hourand mine,     If thou have care of any less divine     Than thine own soul; if thou take thought of me,     Marlowe, as all my soul takes thought of thine? XIII     Before the morns face as before the sun     The morning star and evening star are one     For all mens lands as England. O, if night     Hang hard upon us,ere our day take flight,     Shed thou some comfort from thy day long done     On us pale children of the latter light! XIV     For surely, brother and master and lord and king,     Whereer thy footfall and thy face make spring     In all souls eyes that meet thee wheresoeer,     And have thy soul for sunshine and sweet air     Some late love of thine old live land should cling,     Some living love of England, round thee there. XV     Here from her shore across her sunniest sea     My soul makes question of the sun for thee,     And waves and beams make answer. When thy feet     Made her ways flowerier and their flowers more sweet     With childlike passage of a god to be,     Like spray these waves cast off her foemens fleet. XVI     Like foam they flung it from her, and like weed     Its wrecks were washed from scornful shoal to shoal,     From rock to rock reverberate; and the whole     Sea laughed and lightened with a deathless deed     That sowed our enemies in her field for seed     And made her shores fit harbourage for thy soul. XVII     Then in her green south fields, a poor mans child,     Thou hadst thy short sweet fill of half-blown joy,     That ripens all of us for time to cloy     With full-blown pain and passion; ere the wild     World caught thee by the fiery heart, and smiled     To make so swift end of the godlike boy. XVIII     For thou, if ever godlike foot there trod     These fields of ours, wert surely like a god.     Who knows what splendour of strange dreams was shed     With sacred shadow and glimmer of gold and red     From hallowed windows, over stone and sod,     On thine unbowed bright insubmissive head? XIX     The shadow stayed not, but the splendour stays,     Our brother, till the last of English days.     No day nor night on English earth shall be     For ever, spring nor summer, Junes nor Mays,     But somewhat as a sound or gleam of thee     Shall come on us like morning from the sea. XX     Like sunrise never wholly risen, nor yet     Quenched; or like sunset never wholly set,     A light to lighten as from living eyes     The cold unlit close lids of one that lies     Dead, or a ray returned from deaths far skies     To fire us living lest our lives forget. XXI     For in that heaven what light of lights may be,     What splendour of what stars, what spheres of flame     Sounding, that none may number nor may name,     We know not, even thy brethren; yea, not we     Whose eyes desire the light that lightened thee,     Whose ways and thine are one way and the same. XXII     But if the riddles that in sleep we read,     And trust them not, be flattering truth indeed,     As he that rose our mightiest called them,he,     Much higher than thou as thou much higher than we     There, might we say, all flower of all our seed,     All singing souls are as one sounding sea. XXIII     All those that here were of thy kind and kin,     Beside thee and below thee, full of love,     Full-souled for song,and one alone above     Whose only light folds all your glories in     With all birds notes from nightingale to dove     Fill the world whither we too fain would win. XXIV     The world that sees in heaven the sovereign light     Of sunlike Shakespeare, and the fiery night     Whose stars were watched of Webster; and beneath,     The twin-souled brethren of the single wreath,     Grown in kings gardens, plucked from pastoral heath,     Wrought with all flowers for all mens hearts delight. XXV     And that fixed fervour, iron-red like Mars,     In the mid moving tide of tenderer stars,     That burned on loves and deeds the darkest done,     Athwart the incestuous prisoners bride-house bars;     And thine, most highest of all their fires but one,     Our morning star, sole risen before the sun. XXVI     And one light risen since theirs to run such race     Thou hast seen, O Phosphor, from thy pride of place.     Thou hast seen Shelley, him that was to thee     As light to fire or dawn to lightning; me,     Me likewise, O our brother, shalt thou see,     And I behold thee, face to glorious face? XXVII     You twain the same swift year of manhood swept     Down the steep darkness, and our father wept.     And from the gleam of Apollonian tears     A holier aureole rounds your memories, kept     Most fervent-fresh of all the singing spheres,     And April-coloured through all months and years. XXVIII     You twain fate spared not half your fiery span;     The longer date fulfils the lesser man.     Ye from beyond the dark dividing date     Stand smiling, crowned as gods with foot on fate.     For stronger was your blessing than his ban,     And earliest whom he struck, he struck too late. XXIX     Yet love and loathing, faith and unfaith yet     Bind less to greater souls in unison,     And one desire that makes three spirits as one     Takes great and small as in one spiritual net     Woven out of hope toward what shall yet be done     Ere hate or love remember or forget. XXX     Woven out of faith and hope and love too great     To bear the bonds of life and death and fate:     Woven out of love and hope and faith too dear     To take the print of doubt and change and fear:     And interwoven with lines of wrath and hate     Blood-red with soils of many a sanguine year. XXXI     Who cannot hate, can love not; if he grieve,     His tears are barren as the unfruitful rain     That rears no harvest from the green seas plain,     And as thorns crackling this mans laugh is vain.     Nor can belief touch, kindle, smite, reprieve     His heart who has not heart to disbelieve. XXXII     But you, most perfect in your hate and love,     Our great twin-spirited brethren; you that stand     Head by head glittering, hand made fast in hand,     And underfoot the fang-drawn worm that strove     To wound you living; from so far above,     Look love, not scorn, on ours that was your land. XXXIII     For love we lack, and help and heat and light     To clothe us and to comfort us with might.     What help is ours to take or give? but ye     O, more than sunrise to the blind cold sea,     That wailed aloud with all her waves all night,     Much more, being much more glorious, should you be. XXXIV     As fire to frost, as ease to toil, as dew     To flowerless fields, as sleep to slackening pain,     As hope to souls long weaned from hope again     Returning, or as blood revived anew     To dry-drawn limbs and every pulseless vein,     Even so toward us should no man be but you. XXXV     One rose before the sunrise was, and one     Before the sunset, lovelier than the sun.     And now the heaven is dark and bright and loud     With wind and starry drift and moon and cloud,     And nights cry rings in straining sheet and shroud,     What help is ours if hope like yours be none? XXXVI     O well-beloved, our brethren, if ye be,     Then are we not forsaken. This kind earth     Made fragrant once for all time with your birth,     And bright for all men with your love, and worth     The clasp and kiss and wedlock of the sea,     Were not your mother if not your brethren we. XXXVII     Because the days were dark with gods and kings     And in times hand the old hours of time as rods,     When force and fear set hope and faith at odds,     Ye failed not nor abased your plume-plucked wings;     And we that front not more disastrous things,     How should we fail in face of kings and gods? XXXVIII     For now the deep dense plumes of night are thinned     Surely with winnowing of the glimmering wind     Whose feet we fledged with morning; and the breath     Begins in heaven that sings the dark to death.     And all the night wherein men groaned and sinned     Sickens at heart to hear what sundawn saith. XXXIX     O first-born sons of hope and fairest, ye     Whose prows first clove the thought-unsounded sea     Whence all the dark dead centuries rose to bar     The spirit of man lest truth should make him free,     The sunrise and the sunset, seeing one star,     Take heart as we to know you that ye are. XL     Ye rise not and ye set not; we that say     Ye rise and set like hopes that set and rise     Look yet but seaward from a land-locked bay;     But where at last the seas line is the skys     And truth and hope one sunlight in your eyes,     No sunrise and no sunset marks their day.