The fisher maiden's prayers-- "For _him_!--that storms may take not unawares!"
So wan, so unavailing, Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing!
But Night shall come atoning Thy phantom life thro' day, and high enthroning
Thee in her chambers arrassed With star-hieroglyphs, leave thee unharassed
To glide with silvery passion, Till in earth's shadow swept thy glowings ashen.
"Beauty! all--all--is beauty?" Was ever a bird so wrong! "No young in the nest, no mate, no duty?" Ribald! is this your song?
"Glad it is ended," are you? The Spring and its nuptial fear? "Freedom is better than love?" beware you There will be May next year!
"Beauty!" again? still "beauty"? Wait till the winter comes! Till kestrel and hungry kite seek booty And there are so few crumbs!
Wait? nay, fling it unbidden, The false little song you prate! Too sweet are its fancies to be chidden, E'en of the rudest fate!
Art thou enraged, O sea, with the blue peace Of heaven, so to uplift thine armèd waves, Thy billowing rebellion 'gainst its ease, And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves, From shuddering profundities where shapes Of awe glide through entangled leagues of ooze, To hoot thy watery omens evermore, And evermore thy moanings interfuse With seething necromancy and mad lore?
Or, dost thou labour with the drifting bones Of countless dead, thou mighty Alchemist, Within whose stormy crucible the stones Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist, Are crumbled by thine all-abrasive beat? With immemorial chanting to the moon, And cosmic incantation dost thou crave Rest to be found not till thy wild be strewn Frigid and desert over earth's last grave?
Thou seemest with immensity mad, blind-- With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn; Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony. Bound in thy briny bed and gnawing earth With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides, Thou art as Fate in torment of a dearth Of black disaster and destruction's strides.
And how thou dost drive silence from the world, Incarnate Motion of all mystery! Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled Whither thy Ghost tempestuous can see A desolate apocalypse of death. Oh, how thou dost drive silence from the world, With emerald overflowing, waste on waste Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled 'Gainst isles and continents and airs o'erspaced!